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diff --git a/36734-h/36734-h.htm b/36734-h/36734-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ef0ef8b --- /dev/null +++ b/36734-h/36734-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,22602 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Browning Cyclopædia, by Edward Berdoe. + </title> + + <style type="text/css"> + + p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;} + + body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right; font-style: normal;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;} + + hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;} + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + .giant {font-size: 200%} + .huge {font-size: 150%} + .large {font-size: 125%} + + .blockquot {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .poem {margin-left:15%;} + .note {margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;} + + .right {text-align: right;} + .center {text-align: center;} + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .smcaplc {text-transform: lowercase; font-variant: small-caps;} + + p.dropcap:first-letter{float: left; padding-right: 3px; font-size: 250%; line-height: 83%; width:auto;} + .caps {text-transform:uppercase;} + + a:link {color:#0000ff; text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:#6633cc; text-decoration:none} + + .spacer {padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em;} + + ins.correction {text-decoration:none; border-bottom: thin solid gray;} + + .verts {margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;} + .vertsbox {border: solid 2px; padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em; margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;} + + .hang {margin-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Browning Cyclopædia, by Edward Berdoe + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Browning Cyclopædia + A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning + +Author: Edward Berdoe + +Release Date: July 14, 2011 [EBook #36734] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROWNING CYCLOPÆDIA *** + + + + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive/American +Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<p class="center"><span class="giant">“The Browning Cyclopædia.”</span></p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<div class="verts"> +<p class="center"><i>SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE FIRST EDITION.</i></p> + +<p>“Conscientious and painstaking,”—<i>The Times.</i></p> + +<p>“Obviously a most painstaking work, and in many ways it is very well +done.”—<i>Pall Mall Gazette.</i></p> + +<p>“In many ways a serviceable book, and deserves to be widely bought.”—<i>The +Speaker.</i></p> + +<p>“A book of far-reaching research and careful industry ... will make <ins class="correction" title="original: his">this</ins> +poet clearer, nearer, and dearer to every reader who systematically uses +his book.”—<i>Scotsman.</i></p> + +<p>“Dr. Berdoe is a safe and thoughtful guide; his work has evidently been a +labour of love, and bears many marks of patient research.”—<i>Echo.</i></p> + +<p>“Students of Browning will find it an invaluable aid.”—<i>Graphic.</i></p> + +<p>“A work suggestive of immense industry.”—<i>Morning Post.</i></p> + +<p>“Erudite and comprehensive.”—<i>Glasgow Herald.</i></p> + +<p>“As a companion to Browning’s works the Cyclopædia will be most valuable; +it is a laborious, if necessary, piece of work, conscientiously performed, +for which present and future readers and students of Browning ought to be +really grateful.”—<i>Nottingham Daily Guardian.</i></p> + +<p>“A monumental labour, and fitting company for the great compositions he +elucidates.”—<i>Rock.</i></p> + +<p>“It is very well that so patient and ubiquitous a reader as Dr. Berdoe +should have written this useful cyclopædia, and cleared the meaning of +many a dark and doubtful passage of the poet.”—<i>Black and White.</i></p> + +<p>“It is not too much to say that Dr. Berdoe has earned the gratitude of +every reader of Browning, and has materially aided the study of English +literature in one of its ripest developments.”—<i>British Weekly.</i></p> + +<p>“Dr. Berdoe’s Cyclopædia should make all other handbooks +unnecessary.”—<i>Star.</i></p> + +<p>“We are happy to commend the volume to Browning students as the most +ambitious and useful in its class yet executed.”—<i>Notes and Queries.</i></p> + +<p>“A most learned and creditable piece of work. Not a difficulty is +shirked.”—<i>Vanity Fair.</i></p> + +<p>“A monument of industry and devotion. It has really faced difficulties, it +is conveniently arranged, and is well printed and bound.”—<i>Bookman.</i></p> + +<p>“A wonderful help.”—<i>Gentlewoman.</i></p> + +<p>“Can be strongly recommended as one for a favourite corner in one’s +library.”—<i>Whitehall Review.</i></p> + +<p>“Exceedingly well done; its interest and usefulness, we think, may pass +without question.”—<i>Publishers’ Circular.</i></p> + +<p>“In a singularly industrious and exhaustive manner he has set himself to +make clear the obscure and to accentuate the beautiful in Robert +Browning’s poem ... must have involved infinite labour and research. It +cannot be doubted that the book will be widely sought for and warmly +appreciated.”—<i>Daily Telegraph.</i></p> + +<p>“Dr. Berdoe tackles every allusion, every proper name, every phase of +thought, besides giving a most elaborate analysis of each poem. He has +produced what we might almost call a monumental work.”—<i>Literary +Opinion.</i></p> + +<p>“This cyclopædia may certainly claim to be by a long way the most +efficient aid to the study of Browning that has been published, or is +likely to be published.... Lovers of Browning will prize it highly, and +all who wish to understand him will consult it with advantage.”—<i>Baptist +Magazine.</i></p> + +<p>“The work has evidently been one of love, and we doubt whether any one +could have been found better qualified to undertake it.”—<i>Cambridge +Review.</i></p> + +<p>“All readers of Browning will feel indebted to Dr. Berdoe for his +interesting accounts of the historical facts on which many of the dramas +are based, and also for his learned dissertations on ‘The Ring and the +Book’ and ‘Sordello.’”—<i>British Medical Journal.</i></p> + +<p>“The work is so well done that no one is likely to think of doing it over +again.”—<i>The Critic</i> (New York).</p> + +<p>“This work reflects the greatest credit on Dr. Berdoe and on the Browning +Society, of which he is so distinguished a member,—it is simply +invaluable.”—<i>The Hawk.</i></p> + +<p>“The Cyclopædia has at any rate brought his (Browning’s) best work well +within the compass of all serious readers of intelligence—Browning made +easy.”—<i>The Month.</i></p></div> + + +<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center">THE</p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">BROWNING CYCLOPÆDIA.</span></p> + +<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> +<div class="vertsbox"> +<p class="center"><span class="large">By the Same Author.</span></p> + +<p class="hang"><b>BROWNING’S MESSAGE TO HIS TIME. His Religion, Philosophy, and Science.</b> +With Portrait and Facsimile Letters. Second edition, price 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i></p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.</i></p> + +<p>“Full of admiration and sympathy.”—<i>Saturday Review.</i></p> + +<p>“Much that is helpful and suggestive.”—<i>Scotsman.</i></p> + +<p>“Should have a wide circulation, it is interesting and +stimulative.”—<i>Literary World.</i></p> + +<p>“It is the work of one who, having gained good himself, has made it his +endeavour to bring the same good within the reach of others, and, as such, +it deserves success.”—<i>Cambridge Review.</i></p> + +<p>“We have no hesitation in strongly recommending this little volume to any +who desire to understand the moral and mental attitude of Robert +Browning.... We are much obliged to Dr. Berdoe for his volume.”—<i>Oxford +University Herald.</i></p> + +<p>“Cannot fail to be of assistance to new readers.”—<i>Morning Post.</i></p> + +<p>“The work of a faithful and enthusiastic student is here.”—<i>Nation.</i></p></div> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p class="center">THE</p> +<p class="center"><span class="giant"><span class="smcap">Browning Cyclopædia</span></span></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>A GUIDE TO THE STUDY OF THE WORKS</i></p> +<p class="center"><small>OF</small></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">ROBERT BROWNING</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">WITH<br /> +<b>Copious Explanatory Notes and References<br /> +on all Difficult Passages</b></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">BY<br /> +EDWARD BERDOE<br /> +<small>LICENTIATE OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, EDINBURGH; MEMBER OF<br /> +THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS, ENGLAND, ETC., ETC.<br /> +<i>Author of “Browning’s Message to his Time,” “Browning as a Scientific<br /> +Poet,” etc., etc.</i></small></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">LONDON: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. LTD.<br /> +NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.<br /> +1897</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">First Edition</span>, <i>December, 1891</i>.<br /> +<span class="smcap">Second Edition</span>, <i>March, 1892</i>.<br /> +<span class="smcap">Third Edition</span> (Revised), <i>September, 1897</i>.</p> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><strong>I gratefully Dedicate these pages</strong></p> +<p class="center"><small>TO</small></p> +<p class="center"><span class="large">DR. F. J. FURNIVALL</span></p> +<p class="center"><small>AND</small></p> +<p class="center">MISS E. H. HICKEY,</p> +<p class="center"><small>THE FOUNDERS OF</small></p> +<p class="center">THE BROWNING SOCIETY.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.</span></p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">The</span> demand for a second edition of this work within three months of its +publication is a sufficient proof that such a book meets a want, +notwithstanding the many previous attempts of a more or less partial +character which have been made to explain Browning to “the general.” With +the exception of certain superfine reviewers, to whom nothing is +obscure—except such things as they are asked to explain without previous +notice—every one admits that Browning requires more or less elucidation. +It is said by some that I have explained too much, but this might be said +of most commentaries, and certainly of every dictionary. It is difficult +to know precisely where to draw the line. If I am not to explain (say for +lady readers) what is meant by the phrase “<i>De te fabula narratur</i>,” I +know not why any of the classical quotations should be translated. If +Browning is hard to understand, it must be on account of the obscurity of +his language, of his thought, or the purport of his verses; very often the +objection is made that the difficulty applies to all these. I have not +written for the “learned,” but for the people at large. <i>The Manchester +Guardian</i>, in a kindly notice of my book, says “the error and marvel of +his book is the supposition that any cripple who can only be crutched by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> +it into an understanding of Browning will ever understand Browning at +all.” There are many readers, however, who understand Browning a little, +and I hope that this book will enable them to understand him a great deal +more: though all cripples cannot be turned into athletes, some undeveloped +persons may be helped to achieve feats of strength.</p> + +<p>A word concerning my critics. No one can do me a greater service than by +pointing out mistakes and omissions in this work. I cannot hope to please +everybody, but I will do my best to make future editions as perfect as +possible.</p> + +<p class="right">E. B.</p> + +<p><i>March 1892.</i></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">PREFACE.</span></p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps">I make</span> no apology for the publication of this work, because some such book +has long been a necessity to any one who seriously proposes to study +Browning. Up to its appearance there was no single book to which the +leader could turn, which gave an exposition of the leading ideas of every +poem, its key-note, the sources—historical, legendary, or fanciful—to +which the poem was due, and a glossary of every difficult word or allusion +which might obscure the sense to such readers as had short memories or +scanty reading. It would be affectation to pretend to believe that every +educated person ought to know, without the aid of such a work as this, +what Browning means by phrases and allusions which may be found by +hundreds in his works. The wisest reader cannot be expected to remember, +even if he has ever learned, a host of remote incidents in Italian +history, for example, to say nothing of classical terms which “every +schoolboy” ought to know, but rarely does. Browning is obscure, +undoubtedly, if a poem is read for the first time without any hint as to +its main purport: the meaning in almost every case lies more or less below +the surface;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span> the superficial idea which a careless perusal of the poem +would afford is pretty sure to be the wrong one. Browning’s poetry is +intended to make people think, and without thought the fullest commentary +will not help the reader much. “I can have little doubt,” said the poet, +in his preface to the First Series of <i>Selections</i> from his works, “that +my writing has been in the main too hard for many I should have been +pleased to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle +people, as some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, I never +pretended to offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar +or a game at dominoes to an idle man. So, perhaps, on the whole, I get my +deserts, and something over—not a crowd, but a few I value more.” As for +my own qualifications for the task I have undertaken, I can only say that +I have attended nearly every meeting of the Browning Society from its +inauguration; I have read every book, paper, and article upon Browning on +which I could lay my hands, have gone over every line of the poet’s works +again and again, have asked the assistance of literary friends in every +difficulty, and have pegged away at the obscurities till they <i>seemed</i> (at +any rate) to vanish. It is possible that a scientific education in some +considerable degree assists a man who addresses himself to a task of this +sort: a medical man does not like to be beaten by any difficulty which +common perseverance can conquer; when one has spent days in tracing a +nerve thread through the body to its origin, and through all its +ramifications, a few visits to the library of the British Museum, or a few +hours’ puzzling over the meaning of a difficult passage in a poem, do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span> not +deter him from solving a mystery,—and this is all I can claim. I have not +shirked any obscurities; unlike some commentators of the old-fashioned +sort, who in dealing with the Bible carefully told us that a score meant +twenty, but said nothing as to the meaning of the verse in Ezekiel’s dream +about the women who wept for Tammuz—but have honestly tried to help my +readers in every case where they have a right to ask such aid. Probably I +have overlooked many things which I ought to have explained. It is not +less certain that some will say I have explained much that they already +knew. I can only ask for a merciful judgment in either case. I am quite +anxious to be set right in every particular in which I may be wrong, and +shall be grateful for hints and suggestions concerning anything which is +not clear. I have to thank Professor Sonnenschein for permission to +publish his valuable Notes to <i>Sordello</i>, with several articles on the +history of the Guelf and Ghibelline leaders: these are all indicated by +the initial [S.] at the end of each note or article. I am grateful also to +Mr. A. J. Campbell for permission to use his notes on Rabbi Ben Ezra. I +have also to thank Dr. Furnivall, Miss Frances Power Cobbe, and the Very +Rev. Canon Akers, M.A., for their kindness in helping me on certain +difficult points which came within their lines of study. It would be +impossible to read the works of commentators on Browning for the years +which I have devoted to the task without imbibing the opinions and often +insensibly adopting the phraseology of the authors: if in any case I have +used the ideas and language of other writers without acknowledging them, I +hope it will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> be credited to the infirmity of human nature, and not +attributed to any wilful appropriation of other men’s and women’s literary +valuables. As for the poet himself, I have largely used his actual words +and phrases in putting his ideas into plain prose; it has not always been +possible, for reasons which every one will understand, to put quotation +marks to every few words or portions of lines where this has occurred. +When, therefore, a beautiful thought is expressed in appropriate language, +it is most certainly not mine, but Browning’s. My only aim has been to +bring the Author of the vast body of literature to which this book is an +introduction a little nearer to the English and American reading public; +my own opinions and criticisms I have endeavoured as much as possible to +suppress. In the words of Dr. Furnivall, “This is a business book,” and +simply as such I offer it to the public.</p> + +<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Edward Berdoe.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">London</span>, <i>November 28th, 1891</i>.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge"><i>BOOKS, ESSAYS, ETC., WHICH ARE ESPECIALLY USEFUL TO THE BROWNING STUDENT.</i></span></p> + +<div class="note"> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">BIOGRAPHICAL WORKS.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>Life of Robert Browning.</b> By <span class="smcap">Mrs. Sutherland Orr</span>. London: 1891.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>Life of Robert Browning.</b> By <span class="smcap">William Sharp</span>. London: 1890.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">On the whole, Mr. Sharp’s Biography will be found the more useful for +the student. It contains an excellent Bibliography by Mr. John P. +Anderson of the British Museum, and a Chronological List of the Poet’s +Works.</p></div> + +<p class="hang"><b>Robert Browning: Chief Poet of the Age.</b> By <span class="smcap">W. G. Kingsland</span>. London: 1890. +Excellent for beginners.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>Robert Browning: Personalia.</b> By <span class="smcap">Edmund Gosse</span>. Boston: 1890.</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">WORKS OF CRITICISM AND EXPOSITION.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>Robert Browning: Essays and Thoughts.</b> By <span class="smcap">John T. Nettleship</span>. London: 1868. +Artistic and suggestive.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>Stories from Robert Browning.</b> By <span class="smcap">F. M. Holland</span>; with Introduction by <span class="smcap">Mrs. +Sutherland Orr</span>. London: 1882.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning.</b> By <span class="smcap">Mrs. Sutherland Orr</span>. +London: 1885.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>An Introduction to the Study of Browning.</b> By <span class="smcap">Arthur Symons</span>. London: 1886. +Intensely sympathetic and appreciative.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>A Bibliography of Robert Browning, from 1833 to 1881.</b> By <span class="smcap">Dr. F. J. +Furnivall</span>. 1881.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning’s Poetry.</b> By <span class="smcap">Hiram Corson</span>. +Boston: 1888.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning.</b> By <span class="smcap">James Fotheringham</span>. London: +1887.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>Browning Guide Book.</b> By <span class="smcap">George Willis Cooke</span>. Boston: 1891.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span></p> +<p class="hang"><b>Strafford: a Tragedy.</b> With Notes and Preface, by <span class="smcap">E. H. Hickey</span>, and +Introduction by <span class="smcap">S. R. Gardiner</span>. London: 1884.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>Browning and the Christian Faith.</b> The Evidences of Christianity from +Browning’s Point of View. By <span class="smcap">Edward Berdoe</span>. London: 1896.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>Browning as a Philosophical Religious Teacher.</b> By Prof. <span class="smcap">Henry Jones</span>. +Glasgow: 1891.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>Browning’s Message to His Time: His Religion, Philosophy and Science.</b> By +<span class="smcap">Edward Berdoe</span>. London: 1890.</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">THE BROWNING SOCIETY’S PUBLICATIONS.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>The Browning Society’s Papers, Part I.</b> Vol. I., 1881-4, pp. 1-116 +(<i>presented by Dr. Furnivall</i>). [1881-2.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">1. A Reprint of <span class="smcap">Browning’s</span> Introductory Essay to the 25 spurious +<i>Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley</i>, 1852: On the Objective and +Subjective Poet, on the Relation of the Poet’s Life to his Work; on +Shelley, his Nature, Art, and Character.</p> + +<p class="hang">2. A Bibliography of <span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span>, 1833-81: Alphabetical and +Chronological Lists of his Works, with Reprints of discontinued +Prefaces, of <i>Ben Karshook’s Wisdom</i>, partial collations of <i>Sordello</i> +1840, 1863, and <i>Paracelsus</i> 1835, 1863, etc., and with Trial-Lists of +the Criticisms on <span class="smcap">Browning</span>, Personal Notices of him, etc., by <span class="smcap">F. J. +Furnivall</span>.</p></div> + +<p class="hang"><b>The Browning Society’s Papers, Part II.</b> Vol. I., 1881-4, pp. 117-258. +[1881-2.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">3. Additions to the Bibliography of <span class="smcap">R. Browning</span>, by <span class="smcap">F. J. Furnivall</span>. +1. Browning’s Acted Plays. 2. Fresh Entries of Criticisms on +Browning’s Works. 3. Fresh Personal Notices of Browning. 4. Notes on +Browning’s Poems and my Bibliography. 5. Short Index.</p> + +<p class="hang">4. Mr. <span class="smcap">Kirkman’s</span> Address at the Inaugural Meeting of the Society, +October 28th, 1881.</p> + +<p class="hang">5. Mr. <span class="smcap">Sharpe’s</span> Paper on “<i>Pietro of Abano</i>” <i>and</i> “<i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, +Series II.”</p> + +<p class="hang">6. Mr. <span class="smcap">Nettleship’s</span> <i>Analysis and Sketch of “Fifine at the Fair.”</i></p> + +<p class="hang">7. Mr. <span class="smcap">Nettleship’s</span> Classification of Browning’s Poems.</p> + +<p class="hang">8. Mrs. <span class="smcap">Orr’s</span> Classification of Browning’s Poems.</p> + +<p class="hang">9. Mr. <span class="smcap">James Thomson’s</span> Notes on <i>The Genius of Robert Browning</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">10. Mr. <span class="smcap">Ernest Radford</span> on <i>The Moorish Front to the Duomo of Florence, +in “Luria,”</i> I., pp. 122-132.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p> +<p class="hang">11. Mr. <span class="smcap">Ernest Radford</span> on <i>The Original of “Ned Bratt’s” Dramatic +Lyrics</i>, I., pp. 107-43.</p> + +<p class="hang">12. Mr. <span class="smcap">Sharpe’s</span> Analysis and Summary of <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>.</p></div> + +<p class="hang"><b>The Browning Society’s Papers, Part III.</b> Vol. I., 1881-4, pp. 259-380, +with <i>Abstract</i>, pp. 1<a href="#print">*</a>-48<a href="#print">*</a>. [1882-3.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">13. Mr. <span class="smcap">Bury</span> on <i>Browning’s Philosophy</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">14. Prof. <span class="smcap">Johnson</span> on <i>Bishop Blougram</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">15. Prof. <span class="smcap">Corson</span> on <i>Personality, and Art as its Vice-agent, as +treated by Browning</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">16. Miss <span class="smcap">Beale</span> on <i>The Religious Teaching of Browning</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">17. <i>A Short Account of the Abbé Vogler</i> (“<i>Abt Vogler</i>”). By Miss <span class="smcap">E. +Marx</span>.</p> + +<p class="hang">18. Prof. <span class="smcap">Johnson</span> on <i>Science and Art in Browning</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">The <i>Monthly Abstract</i> of such papers as have not been printed in +full, and of the Discussions on all that have been discussed. Nos. +I.-X.</p></div> + +<p class="hang"><b>Illustrations to Browning’s Poems. Part I.</b>: Photographs of (<i>a</i>) Andrea +del Sarto’s Picture of Himself and his Wife, in the Pitti Palace, +Florence, which suggested Browning’s poem <i>Andrea del Sarto</i>; (<i>b</i>) Fra +Lippo Lippi’s ‘Coronation of the Virgin,’ in the Accademia delle belle +Arti, Florence (the painting described at the end of Browning’s <i>Fra +Lippo</i>); and (<i>c</i>) Guercino’s ‘Angel and Child,’ at Fano (for <i>The +Guardian Angel</i>); with an Introduction by <span class="smcap">Ernest Radford</span>. [1882-3.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>Illustrations to Browning’s Poems. Part II.</b><a href="#print">*</a> (<i>d</i>) A photo-engraving of +Mr. C. Fairfax Murray’s drawing of Andrea del Sarto’s Picture named above. +(<i>e</i>) A Woodburytype copy of Fredelle’s Cabinet Photograph of <span class="smcap">Robert +Browning</span> in three sizes, to bind with the Society’s <i>Illustrations</i>, and +<i>Papers</i>, and Browning’s <i>Poems</i>: presented by Mrs. Sutherland Orr. (<i>f</i>) +Reductions in fcap. 8vo, to bind with Browning’s <i>Poems</i>, of <i>d</i>, <i>b</i>, +<i>c</i>, above, and of (<i>g</i>) the engraving of Guercino’s First Sketch for his +“Angel and Child.” [1882-3.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>The Browning Society’s Papers, Part IV.</b> Vol. I., 1881-4, pp. 381-476, with +<i>Abstract</i>, pp. 49<a href="#print">*</a>-84<a href="#print">*</a> and <i>Reports</i>, i-xvi. [1883-4.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span></p> +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">19. Mr. <span class="smcap">Nettleship</span> on <i>Browning’s Intuition, specially in regard to +Music and the Plastic Arts</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">20. Prof. <span class="smcap">B. F. Westcott</span> on <i>Some Points in Browning’s View of Life</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">21. Miss <span class="smcap">E. D. West</span> on <i>One Aspect of Browning’s Villains</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">22. Mr. <span class="smcap">Revell</span> on <i>Browning’s Poems on God and Immortality as bearing +on Life here</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">23. The Rev. <span class="smcap">H. J. Bulkeley</span> on “<i>James Lee’s Wife</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">24. Mrs. <span class="smcap">Turnbull</span> on “<i>Abt Vogler</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">The <i>Monthly Abstract</i> of the Proceedings of Meetings Eleven to +Eighteen.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>First and Second Reports</i> of the Committee (1881-2 and 1882-3).</p></div> + +<p class="hang"><b>The Browning Society’s Papers, Part V.</b> Vol. I., 1881-4, pp. 477-502, with +<i>Abstract</i> and <i>Notes and Queries</i>, pp. 85<a href="#print">*</a>-153<a href="#print">*</a>, and <i>Report</i>, pp. +xvii-xxiii. [1884-5.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">25. Mr. <span class="smcap">W. A. Raleigh</span> on <i>Some Prominent Points in Browning’s +Teaching</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">26. Mr. <span class="smcap">J. Cotter Morison</span> on <i>“Caliban on Setebos,” with some Notes on +Browning’s Subtlety and Humour</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">27. Mrs. <span class="smcap">Turnbull</span> on “<i>In a Balcony</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">The <i>Monthly Abstract</i> of the Proceedings of Meetings Nineteen to +Twenty-six, including “Scraps” contributed by Members.</p> + +<p class="hang"><i>Third Report of the Committee</i>, 1883-4.</p></div> + +<p class="hang"><b>Illustration, Part III.</b> Presented by Sir F. Leighton, P.R.A., etc., +Vice-President of the Browning Society. A Woodburytype Engraving of Sir +Frederick Leighton’s picture (in the possession of Sir Bernhard Samuelson, +Bart., M.P.) of “Hercules contending with Death for the Body of Alkestis” +(<i>Balaustion’s Adventure</i>).</p> + +<p class="hang">[<b>Part VI.</b> of the Browning Society’s Papers, a Second Supplement to Parts +I. and II., with illustrations, is in the press.]</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>The Browning Society’s Papers, Part VII.</b> Vol. II., 1885-90, (being Part I. +of Vol. II.), pp. 1-54, with <i>Abstract</i> and <i>Notes and Queries</i>, +1<a href="#print">*</a>-88<a href="#print">*</a>, i.-viii., and Appendix, 1-16. [1885-6.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">28. Mr. <span class="smcap">Arthur Symons’</span> Paper, <i>Is Browning Dramatic?</i></p> + +<p class="hang">29. Prof. <span class="smcap">E. Johnson</span> on “<i>Mr. Sludge the Medium</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">30. Dr. <span class="smcap">Berdoe</span> on <i>Browning as a Scientific Poet</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span></p> +<p class="hang">The <i>Monthly Abstract</i> of Proceedings of Meetings Twenty-seven to +Thirty-three; <i>Notes and Queries</i>, <i>etc.</i>; <i>Fourth Annual Report</i>; +Programme of the Annual Entertainment at Prince’s Hall, etc.</p></div> + +<p class="hang"><b>The Browning Society’s Papers, Part VIII.</b> Vol. II., 1885-90, pp. 55-146, +with <i>Abstract</i> and <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 89<a href="#print">*</a>-164<a href="#print">*</a>, and Report i-vii. +[1886-7.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">31. Mr. <span class="smcap">J. T. Nettleship</span> on <i>The Development of Browning’s Genius in +his Capacity as Poet or Maker</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">32. Mr. <span class="smcap">J. B. Bury</span> on “<i>Aristophanes’ Apology</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">33. Mr. <span class="smcap">Outram</span> on <i>The Avowal of Valence</i> (<i>Colombe’s Birthday</i>).</p> + +<p class="hang">34. Mr. <span class="smcap">Albert Fleming</span> on “<i>Andrea del Sarto</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">35. Mr. <span class="smcap">Howard S. Pearson</span> on <i>Browning as a Landscape Painter</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">36. Rev. <span class="smcap">H. J. Bulkeley</span> on <i>The Reasonable Rhythm of some of Mr. +Browning’s Poems</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">37. Prof. <span class="smcap">C. H. Herford</span> on “<i>Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">Abstracts of all Meetings held, <i>Notes and Queries</i>, <i>Fifth Annual +Report</i>, <i>etc.</i></p></div> + +<p class="hang"><b>Reprint of the First Edition of Browning’s</b> <i>Pauline</i>. [1886-7.</p> + +<p class="hang"><b>The Browning Society’s Papers, Part IX.</b> (being Part III. of Vol. II.). +[1887-8.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">38. Dr. <span class="smcap">Todhunter</span> on <i>The Performance of “Strafford.”</i></p> + +<p class="hang">39. Mrs. <span class="smcap">Glazebrook</span> on “<i>A Death in the Desert</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">40. Dr. <span class="smcap">Furnivall</span> on <i>A Grammatical Analysis of “O Lyric Love.”</i></p> + +<p class="hang">41. Mr. <span class="smcap">Arthur Symons</span> on “<i>Parleyings with Certain People</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">42. Miss <span class="smcap">Helen Ormerod</span> on <i>The Musical Poems of Browning</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">Abstracts of all Meetings held, <i>Notes and Queries</i>, <i>Sixth Annual +Report</i>, <i>etc.</i></p></div> + +<p class="hang"><b>The Browning Society’s Papers, Part X.</b> (being Part IV. of Vol. II.). +[1888-9.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">43. Mr. <span class="smcap">Revell</span> on <i>Browning’s Views of Life</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">44. Dr. <span class="smcap">Berdoe</span> on <i>Browning’s Estimate of Life</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">45. Prof. <span class="smcap">Barnett</span> on <i>Browning’s Jews and Shakespeare’s Jew</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">46. Miss <span class="smcap">Helen Ormerod</span> on <i>Abt Vogler, the Man</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">47. Miss <span class="smcap">C. M. Whitehead</span> on <i>Browning as a Teacher of the Nineteenth +Century</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">48. Miss <span class="smcap">Stoddart</span> on “<i>Saul</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">Abstracts of all Meetings held, <i>Notes and Queries</i>, <i>Seventh Annual +Report</i>, <i>etc.</i></p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span></p> +<p class="hang"><b>The Browning Society’s Papers, Part XI.</b> (being Part V. of Vol. II.). +[1889-90.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">49. Dr. <span class="smcap">Berdoe</span> on <i>Paracelsus: the Reformer of Medicine</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">50. Miss <span class="smcap">Helen Ormerod</span> on <i>Andrea del Sarto and Abt Vogler</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">51. Rev. <span class="smcap">W. Robertson</span> on “<i>La Saisiaz</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">52. Mr. <span class="smcap">J. B. Oldham</span> on <i>The Difficulties and Obscurities encountered +in a Study of Browning’s Poems</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">53. Mr. <span class="smcap">J. King</span>, Jun., on “<i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">54. Mrs. <span class="smcap">Alexander Ireland</span> on “<i>A Toccata of Galuppi’s</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">55. Mrs. <span class="smcap">Glazebrook</span> on “<i>Numpheleptos and Browning’s Women</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">56. Rev. <span class="smcap">J. J. G. Graham</span> on <i>The Wife-love and Friend-love of Robert +Browning</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">Abstracts of all Meetings held, <i>Notes and Queries</i>, <i>Eighth Annual +Report</i>, <i>etc.</i></p></div> + +<p class="hang"><b>The Browning Society’s Papers, Part XII.</b> (being Part I. of Vol. III.). +[1890-91.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">57. Prof. <span class="smcap">Alexander’s</span> <i>Analysis of “Sordello.”</i></p> + +<p class="hang">58. Dr. <span class="smcap">Furnivall</span> on <i>Robert Browning’s Ancestors</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">59. Mrs. <span class="smcap">Ireland</span> on <i>Browning’s Treatment of Parenthood</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">60. Mr. <span class="smcap">Sagar</span> on <i>The Line-numbering, etc., in “The Ring and the +Book.”</i></p> + +<p class="hang">61. Mr. <span class="smcap">Revell</span> on <i>The Value of Browning’s Work</i> (Part I.).</p> + +<p class="hang">62. Mr. <span class="smcap">W. M. Rossetti</span> on “<i>Taurello Salinguerra</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">List of Some of the Periodicals in which Notices of Robert Browning +have appeared since his Death.</p> + +<p class="hang">Abstracts of all Meetings held, <i>Notes and Queries</i>, <i>Ninth Annual +Report</i>, <i>etc.</i></p></div> + +<p class="hang"><b>The Browning Society’s Papers, Part XIII.</b> (being Part II. of Vol. III., +1890-93). [1891-92.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="hang">63. Mrs. <span class="smcap">A. Ireland</span> on “<i>Christina and Monaldeschi</i>.”</p> + +<p class="hang">64. <span class="smcap">Jón Stefánsson</span>, M.A., on <i>How Browning Strikes a Scandinavian</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">65. <span class="smcap">W. F. Revell</span>, Esq., on <i>Browning’s Work in Relation to Life</i> (Part +II.).</p> + +<p class="hang">66. <span class="smcap">J. B. Oldham</span>, B.A., on <i>Browning’s Dramatic Method in Narrative</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">67. <span class="smcap">R. G. Moulton</span>, M.A., on <i>Browning’s “Balaustion” a beautiful +Perversion of Euripides’ “Alcestis.”</i></p> + +<p class="hang">Abstracts of all Meetings held, <i>Notes and Queries</i>, <i>Tenth Annual +Report</i>, <i>etc.</i></p></div> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><a name="print" id="print"></a>*Out of print at present.</p></div></div> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge"><span class="smcap">CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS, Etc.</span></span></p> + +<p> </p> + +<table width="75%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td valign="top" align="right">1812.</td> + <td>Robert Browning born at Camberwell on May 7th. He “went to the Rev. Thos. Ready’s school at Peckham till he was + near fourteen, then had a private tutor at home, and attended some lectures at the London University, now University College, London” (Dr. Furnivall).</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1833.</td> + <td><i>Pauline</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1834.</td> + <td>Browning travelled in Russia.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1835.</td> + <td><i>Paracelsus</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td valign="top" align="right">1836.</td> + <td><i>Porphyria</i>, <i>Johannes Agricola</i>, <i>The King</i>, and the lines “Still ailing wind” in <i>James Lee</i> published by Mr. W. J. Fox in his + magazine <i>The Monthly Repository</i>.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1837.</td> + <td><i>Strafford</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1840.</td> + <td><i>Sordello</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1841-6.</td> + <td><i>Bells and Pomegranates</i> appeared.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1841.</td> + <td><i>Pippa Passes</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1842.</td> + <td><i>King Victor and King Charles</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td><i>Dramatic Lyrics</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1843.</td> + <td><i>The Return of the Druses</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td><i>A Blot in the ’Scutcheon</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1844.</td> + <td><i>Colombe’s Birthday</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1845.</td> + <td><i>The Tomb at St. Praxed’s</i> published in <i>Hood’s Magazine</i>, March.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td><i>The Flight of the Duchess</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td><i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1846.</td> + <td><i>Lucia</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td><i>A Soul’s Tragedy</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td>Robert Browning married (34), Sept. 12th, at St. Mary-le-bone parish church our greatest poetess, Elizabeth Barrett, aged 37 (Dr. Furnivall).</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1847.</td> + <td>The Brownings resident in Florence.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1849.</td> + <td>March 9th, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning born.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td><i>Browning’s Poems</i> published in two vols.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span>1850.</td> + <td><i>Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1852.</td> + <td>Browning writes the Introductory Essay to the Shelley (spurious) Letters.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1855.</td> + <td><i>Men and Women</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td>The Brownings travel to Normandy.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1861.</td> + <td>June 28th, Mrs. Browning died at Casa Guidi.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1863.</td> + <td><i>The Poetical Works</i> of Robert Browning published in three vols.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1864.</td> + <td><i>Dramatis Personæ</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1868.</td> + <td><i>The Poetical Works</i> published in six vols.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1868-9.</td> + <td><i>The Ring and the Book</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1871.</td> + <td><i>Hervé Riel</i> published in the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td><i>Balaustion’s Adventure</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td><i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1872.</td> + <td><i>Fifine at the Fair</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1873.</td> + <td><i>Red Cotton Night-Cap Country</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1875.</td> + <td><i>Aristophanes’ Apology</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td><i>The Inn Album</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1876.</td> + <td><i>Pacchiarotto</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1877.</td> + <td><i>The Agamemnon of Æschylus</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1878.</td> + <td><i>La Saisiaz</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td><i>The Two Poets of Croisic</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1879.</td> + <td><i>Dramatic Idyls</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1880.</td> + <td><i>Dramatic Idyls</i> (<i>Second Series</i>) published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1881.</td> + <td>The Browning Society inaugurated, Oct. 28th.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1883.</td> + <td><i>Jocoseria</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1884.</td> + <td><i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1887.</td> + <td><i>Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day</i> published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">1889.</td> + <td><i>Asolando: Fancies and Facts</i>, published.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td>Robert Browning died in Venice, December 12th; buried in Westminster Abbey, December 31st.</td></tr></table> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">BROWNING CYCLOPÆDIA.</span></p> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Abano</b>, a town of Northern Italy, 6 miles S.W. of Padua, the birthplace of +<span class="smcap">Pietro d’Abano</span> (<i>q.v.</i>).</p> + +<p><b>Abate, Paolo</b> (or Paul), brother of Count Guido Franceschini. He was a +priest residing in Rome. (<i>Ring and the Book.</i>)</p> + +<p><b>Abbas I.</b>, surnamed <span class="smcap">The Great</span>. <i>See</i> <a href="#abbas"><span class="smcap">Shah Abbas</span></a>.</p> + +<p><b>Abd-el-Kader</b>, a celebrated Algerian warrior, born in 1807, who in 1831 led +the combined tribes in their attempt to resist the progress of the French +in Algeria. He surrendered to the French in 1847, and was set at liberty +by Louis Napoleon in 1852. (<i>Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kader.</i>)</p> +<p><a name="vogler" id="vogler"></a></p> +<p><b>Abt Vogler.</b> [<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864.) George Joseph Vogler, +usually known as Abbé Vogler, or, as Mr. Browning has called him, Abt +Vogler, was an organist and composer, and was born at Würzburg, June 15th, +1749. He was educated for the Church from his very early years, as is the +custom with Catholics; but every opportunity was taken to develop his +musical talents, which were so marked that at ten years old he could play +the organ and the violin well. In 1769 he studied at Bamberg, removing +thence in 1771 to Mannheim. In 1773 he was ordained priest in Rome, and +was admitted to the famous Academy of Arcadia, was made a Knight of the +Golden Spur, and was appointed protonotary and chamberlain to the Pope. He +returned to Mannheim in 1775, and opened a School of Music. He published +several works on music, composition, and the art of forming the voice. He +was made chaplain and <i>Kapellmeister</i> at Mannheim, and about this time +composed a <i>Miserere</i>. In 1779 Vogler went to Munich. In 1780 he composed +an opera, <i>The Merchant of Smyrna</i>, a ballet, and a melodrama. In 1781 his +opera <i>Albert III.</i> was produced at the Court Theatre of Munich. As it was +not very favourably received, he resigned his posts of chaplain and +choirmaster. He was severely criticised<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> by German musical critics, and +Mozart spoke of him with much bitterness. Having thus failed in his own +country, he went to Paris, and in 1783 brought out his comic opera, <i>La +Kermesse</i>. It was so great a failure that it was not possible to conclude +the performance. He then travelled in Spain, Greece, and the East. In 1786 +he returned to Europe, and went to Sweden, and was appointed +<i>Kapellmeister</i> to the King. At Stockholm he founded his second School of +Music, and became famous by his performances on an instrument which he had +invented, called the “Orchestrion.” This is described by Mr. G. Grove as a +very compact organ, in which four keyboards of five octaves each, and a +pedal board of thirty-six keys, with swell complete, were packed into a +cube of nine feet. In 1789 Vogler performed without success at Amsterdam. +He then went with his organ to London, and gave a series of concerts at +the Pantheon in January 1790. These proved eminently successful: Vogler +realised over £1200, and made a name as an organist. He seems to have +excelled in pedal playing, but it is not true that pedals were unknown in +England until the Abbé introduced them. “His most popular pieces,” says +the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>, “were a fugue on themes from the +‘Hallelujah Chorus,’ composed after a visit to the Handel festival at +Westminster Abbey, and on ‘A Musical Picture for the Organ,’ by Knecht, +containing the imitation of a storm. In 1790 Vogler returned to Germany, +and met with the most brilliant receptions at Coblentz and Frankfort, and +at Esslingen was presented with the ‘wine of honour’ reserved usually for +royal personages. At Mannheim, in 1791, his opera <i>Castor and Pollux</i> was +performed, and became very popular. We find him henceforward travelling +all over Europe. At Berlin he performed in 1800, at Vienna in 1804, and at +Munich in 1806. Next year we find him at Darmstadt, accepting by the +invitation of the Grand Duke Louis I. the post of <i>Kapellmeister</i>. He +opened his third school of music at Darmstadt, one of his pupils being +Weber, another Meyerbeer, a third Gänsbacher. The affection of these three +young students for their master was ‘unbounded.’ He was indefatigable in +the pursuit of his art to the last, genial, kind and pleasant to all; he +lived for music, and died in harness, of apoplexy, at Darmstadt, May 6th, +1814.”</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] The musician has been extemporising on his organ, and as the +performance in its beauty and completeness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> impresses his mind with +wonderful and mysterious imagery, he wishes it could be permanent. He has +created something, but it has vanished. He compares it to a palace built +of sweet sounds, such a structure as angels or demons might have reared +for Solomon, a magic building wherein to lodge some loved princess, a +palace more beautiful than anything which human architect could plan or +power of man construct. His music structure has been real to him, it took +shape in his brain, it was his creation: surely, somewhere, somehow, it +might be permanent. It was too beautiful, too perfect to be lost. Only the +evil perishes, only good is permanent; and this music was so true, so +good, so beautiful, it could not be that it was lost, as false, bad, ugly +things are lost! But Vogler was but an extemporiser, and such musicians +cannot give permanence to their performances. He has reached a state +almost of ecstasy, and the spiritual has asserted its power over the +material, raising the soul to heaven and bringing down heaven to earth. In +the words of Milton, he had become—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">“All ear,</span><br /> +And took in strains that might create a soul<br /> +Under the ribs of death,”</p> + +<p>and in this heavenly rapture he saw strange presences, the forms of the +better to come, or “the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body +and gone.” The other arts are inferior to music, they are more human, more +material than music,—“here is the finger of God.” And this was all to +go—“Never to be again!” This reflection starts the poet on a familiar +train of thought—the permanence of good, the impermanence, the nullity of +evil. The Cabbalists taught that evil was only the shadow of the Light; +Maimonides, Spinoza, Hegel and Emerson taught the doctrine which Mr. +Browning here inculcates. Leibnitz speaks of “evil as a mere set-off to +the good in the world, which it increases by contrast, and at other times +reduces moral to metaphysical evil by giving it a merely negative +existence.” “God,” argued Aquinas (<i>Sum. Theol.</i>, i., § 49), “created +everything that exists, but Sin was <i>nothing</i>; so God was not the Author +of it.” So, Augustine and Peter Lombard maintained likewise the negative +nature of moral evil:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Evil is more frail than nonentity.”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">(Proclus, <i>De Prov.</i>, in Cory’s <i>Fragm.</i>)</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>“Let no one therefore say that there are precedaneous productive +principles of evil in the nature of intellectual paradigms of evil in the +same manner as there are of good, or that there is a malefic soul or an +evil-producing cause in the gods, nor let him introduce sedition or +eternal war against the First God” (Proclus, <i>Six Books</i>, trans. Thomas +Taylor, B. i., c. 27). In heaven, then, we are to find “the perfect +round,” “the broken arcs” are all we can discover here. Rising in the +tenth stanza to the highest stature of the philosophical truth, the poet +proclaims his faith in the existence of a home of pure ideals. The harmony +of a few bars of music on earth suggests the eternal harmonies of the +Author of order; the rays of goodness which brighten our path here suggest +a Sun of Righteousness from which they emanate. The lover and the bard +send up to God their feeble aspirations after the beautiful and the true, +and these aspirations are stored in His treasury. Failure? It is but the +pause in the music, the discords that set off the harmony. To the musician +this is not something to be reasoned about mathematically; it is +knowledge, it is a revelation which, however informing and consoling while +it lasts, must not too long divert a man from the common things of life; +patient to bear and suffer because strengthened by the beautiful vision of +the Mount of Transfiguration, proud that he has been permitted to have +part and lot with such high matters, he can solemnly acquiesce in the +common round and daily task. He feels for the common chord, descends the +mount, gliding by semitones, glancing back at the heights he is leaving, +till at last, finding his true resting-place in the C Major of this life, +soothed and sweetly lulled by the heavenly harmonies, he falls asleep. The +Esoteric system of the Cabbalah was largely the outcome of Neo-Platonism +and Gnosticism, and from these have sprung the theosophy of Meister +Eckhart and Jacob Boehme. It is certain that Mr. Browning was a student of +the latter “theosophist” <i>par excellence</i>. In his poem <i>Transcendentalism</i> +he refers to the philosopher by name, and there are evidences that the +poet’s mind was deeply tinctured with his ideas. The influence of +Paracelsus on Boehme’s mind is conspicuous in his works, and the sympathy +with that great medical reformer which the poem of <i>Paracelsus</i> betrays on +every page was no doubt largely due to Boehme’s teaching. The curious +blending of theosophy and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> science which is found in the poem of +<i>Paracelsus</i> is not a less faithful picture of Mr. Browning’s +philosophical system than of that of his hero. Professor Andrew Seth, in +the article on theosophy in the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>, thus expounds +Boehme’s speculation on evil: it turns “upon the necessity of reconciling +the existence and the might of evil with the existence of an all-embracing +and all-powerful God.... He faces the difficulty boldly—he insists on the +necessity of the Nay to the Yea, of the negative to the positive.” Eckhart +seems to have largely influenced Boehme. We have in this poem what has +been aptly called “the richest, deepest, fullest poem on music in the +language.” (Symons.) Mr. Browning was a thorough musician himself, and no +poet ever wrote what the musician felt till he penned the wonderful +music-poems <i>Abt Vogler</i>, <i>Master Hugues of Saxe Gotha</i> and <i>A Toccata of +Galuppi’s</i>. The comparison between music and architecture is as old as it +is beautiful. Amphion built the walls of Thebes to the sound of his +lyre—fitting the stones together by the power of his music, and “Ilion’s +towers,” they say, “rose with life to Apollo’s song.” The “Keeley Motor” +was an attempt in this direction. Coleridge, too, in <i>Kubla Khan</i>, with +“music loud and long would build that dome in air.” In the May 1891 number +of the <i>Century Magazine</i> there is a very curious and a very interesting +account by Mrs. Watts Hughes of certain “Voice-figures” which have lately +excited so much interest in scientific and musical circles. “By a simple +method figures of sounds are produced which remain permanent. On a thin +indiarubber membrane, stretched across the bottom of a tube of sufficient +diameter for the purpose, is poured a small quantity of water or some +denser liquid, such as glycerine; and into this liquid are sprinkled a few +grains of some ordinary solid pigment. A note of music is then sung down +the tube by Mrs. Watts Hughes, and immediately the atoms of suspended +pigment arrange themselves in a definite form, many of the forms bearing a +curious resemblance to some of the most beautiful objects in +Nature—flowers, shells, or trees. After the note has ceased to sound the +forms remain, and the pictorial representations given in the <i>Century</i> +show how wonderfully accurate is the lovely mimicry of the image-making +music.” (<i>Spectator</i>, May 16th, 1891.) The thought of some soul of +permanence behind the transience of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> music, provided the motive of +Adelaide Procter’s <i>Lost Chord</i>. In the <i>Idylls of the King</i> Lord Tennyson +says—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">“The city is built</span><br /> +To music, therefore never built at all,<br /> +And therefore built for ever.”</p> + +<p>Cardinal Newman, too, as the writer in the <i>Spectator</i> points out, +expresses the same thought in his Oxford sermon, “The Theory of +Development in Christian Doctrine.” The preacher said: “Take another +example of an outward and earthly form of economy, under which great +wonders unknown seem to be typified—I mean musical sounds, as they are +exhibited most perfectly in instrumental harmony. There are seven notes in +the scale: make them fourteen; yet what a slender outfit for so vast an +enterprise! What science brings so much out of so little? Out of what poor +elements does some great master create his new world! Shall we say that +all this exuberant inventiveness is a mere ingenuity or trick of art, like +some fashion of the day, without reality, without meaning?... Is it +possible that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich +yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic, +should be a mere sound which is gone and perishes? Can it be that those +mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings +after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, +should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and +begins and ends in itself? It is not so! It cannot be.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<span class="smcap">Stanza I.</span> “<i>Solomon willed.</i>” Jewish legend gave Solomon +sovereignty over the demons and a lordship over the powers of Nature. In +the Moslem East these fables have found a resting-place in much of its +literature, from the Koran onwards. Solomon was thought to have owed his +power over the spiritual world to the possession of a seal on which the +“most great name of God was engraved” (see Lane, <i>Arabian Nights</i>, +Introd., note 21, and chap. i., note 15). In Eastern philosophy, the +“Upādana” or the intense desire produces <span class="smcaplc">WILL</span>, and it is the <i>will</i> +which develops <i>force</i>, and the latter generates <i>matter</i>, or an object +having form (see <i>Isis Unveiled</i>, Blavatsky, vol. ii., p. 320). “<i>Pile +him a palace.</i>” Goethe called architecture “petrified music.” “<i>The +ineffable Name</i>”: the unspeakable name of God. Jehovah is the European<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> +transcription of the sacred tetragrammaton יהוה. The later Jews +substituted the word Adonai in reading the ineffable Name in their law and +prayers. Mysterious names of the Deity are common in other religions than +the Jewish. In the Egyptian <i>Funeral Ritual</i>, and in a hymn of the Soul, +the Word and the Name are referred to in connection with hidden secrets. +The Jewish enemies of Christ said that the miracles were wrought by the +power of the ineffable Name, which had been stolen from the Sanctuary. +(See <i>Isis Unveiled</i>, vol. ii, p. 387.)—<span class="smcap">Stanza III.</span> <i>Rampired</i>: an old +form of ramparted. “<i>The Illumination of Rome’s Dome.</i>” One of the great +sights of Rome used to be the illumination of the dome of St. Peter’s on +great festivals, such as that of Easter. Since the occupation of Rome by +the Italian Government such spectacles, if not wholly discontinued, have +been shorn of most of their splendour.—<span class="smcap">Stanza IV.</span> “<i>No more near nor +far.</i>” Hegel says that “Music frees us from the phenomena of time and +space,” and shows that they are not essentials, but accidents of our +condition here.—<span class="smcap">Stanza V.</span> “<i>Protoplast.</i>” The thing first formed, as a +copy to be imitated.—<span class="smcap">Stanza VII.</span> “<i>That out of three sounds he frame, not +a fourth sound, but a star.</i>” “A star is perfect and beautiful, and rays +of light come from it.” <span class="smcap">Stanza XII.</span> “<i>Common chord.</i>” A chord consisting +of the fundamental tone with its third and fifth. “<i>Blunt it into a +ninth.</i>” A ninth is (<i>a</i>) An interval containing an octave and a second; +(<i>b</i>) a chord consisting of the common chord, with the eighth advanced one +note. “<i>C Major of this life.</i>” Miss Helen Ormerod, in a paper read to the +Browning Society of London, November 30th, 1888, has explained these +musical terms and expressions. “C Major is what may be called the natural +scale, having no sharps or flats in its signature. A Minor, with A (a +third below C) for its keynote, has the same signature, but sharps are +introduced for the formation of correct intervals. Pauer says that minor +keys are chosen for expressing ‘intense seriousness, soft melancholy, +longing, sadness, and passionate grief’; whilst major keys with sharps and +flats in their signatures are said to have distinctive qualities;—perhaps +Browning chose C major for the key, as the one most allied to matters of +everyday life, including rest and sleep. The common chord, as it is +called, the keynote with its third and fifth, contains the rudiments of +all music.”</p> +<p><a name="adam" id="adam"></a></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span><b>Adam, Lilith, and Eve</b> (<i>Jocoseria</i>, 1883). The Talmudists, in their +fanciful commentaries on the Old Testament, say that Adam had a wife +before he married Eve, who was called Lilith; she was the mother of +demons, and flew away from Adam, and the Lord then created Eve from one of +his ribs. Lilith had been formed of clay, and was sensual and disobedient; +the more spiritual Eve became his saviour from the snares of his first +wife. Mr. Browning in this poem merely uses the names, and makes no +reference to the Talmudic or Gnostic legends connected with them. Under +the terror inspired by a thunderstorm, two women begin a confession of +which they make light when the danger has passed away. The man says he saw +through the joke, and the episode was over. It is a powerful and +suggestive story of falsehood, fear, and a forgiveness too readily +accorded by a man who makes a joke of guilt when he has lost nothing by +it.</p> + +<p><b>Adelaide, The Tuscan</b> (<i>Sordello</i>), was the second wife of Eccelino da +Romano, of the party of the Ghibellines.</p> + +<p><b>Admetus</b> (<i>Balaustion’s Adventure</i>). King of Pheræ, in Thessaly. Apollo +tended his flocks for one year, and obtained the favour that Admetus +should never die if another person could be found to lay down his life for +him: his wife, Alcestis, in consequence cheerfully devoted herself to +death for him.</p> + +<p><b>Æschylus.</b> The Greek tragic poet who wrote the <i>Agamemnon</i> translated by +Mr. Browning. Æschylus was born in the year 525 before Christ, at Eleusis, +a town of Attica opposite the island of Salamis. When thirty-five years +old Æschylus not only fought at Marathon, but distinguished himself for +his valour. He was fifty-three years old when he gained the prize at +Athens, <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 472, for his trilogy or set of three connected plays. He +wrote some seventy pieces, but only seven have come down to our times: +they are <i>Prometheus Chained</i>, <i>The Suppliants</i>, <i>The Seven Chiefs against +Thebes</i>, <i>Agamemnon</i>, <i>The Choëphoræ</i>, <i>The Furies</i>, and <i>The Persians</i>. +The <i>Agamemnon</i>, which Mr. Browning has translated, is one of the plays of +the Oresteia, the <i>Choëphoræ</i> and the <i>Eumenides</i> or Furies completing the +trilogy. The poet died at Gela, in Sicily, <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 456. Æschylus both in +order of time and power was the first of the three great tragic poets of +ancient Greece. Euripides and Sophocles were the other two.</p> + +<p><b>After.</b> See <a href="#before"><span class="smcap">Before</span> and <span class="smcap">After</span></a>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span><b>Agamemnon of Æschylus, The.</b> A translation published in London, 1877. The +scene of the play is laid by Æschylus at Argos, before the palace of +Agamemnon, Mycenæ, however, really being his seat. Agamemnon was a son of +Atreus according to Homer, and was the brother of Menelaus. In a later +account he is described as the son of Pleisthenes, who was the son of +Atreus. He was king over Argolis, Corinth, Achaia, and many islands. He +married Clytemnestra, daughter of Tyndarus, king of Sparta, by whom he had +three daughters Chrysothemis, Iphigenia and Electra, and one son Orestes. +When Helen was carried off by Paris, Agamemnon was chosen to be +commander-in-chief of the expedition sent against Troy by the Greeks, as +he was the mightiest prince in Greece. He contributed one hundred ships +manned with warriors, besides lending sixty more to the Arcadians. The +fleet being detained at Aulis by a storm, it was declared that Agamemnon +had offended Diana by slaying a deer sacred to her, and by boasting that +he was a better hunter than the goddess; and he was compelled to sacrifice +his daughter Iphigenia to appease her anger. Diana is said by some to have +accepted a stag in her place. Homer describes Agamemnon as one of the +bravest warriors before Troy, but having received Chryseis, the daughter +of Chryses, priest of Apollo, as a prize of war, he arrogantly refused to +allow her father to ransom her. This brought a plague on the Grecian host, +and their ruin was almost completed by his carrying off Briseis, who was +the prize of Achilles—who refused in consequence to fight, remaining +sulking in his tent. After the fall of Troy the beautiful princess +Cassandra fell to Agamemnon as his share of the spoils. She was endowed +with the gift of prophecy, and warned him not to return home. The warning, +however, was disregarded, although he was assured that his wife would put +him to death. During the absence of Agamemnon Clytemnestra had formed an +adulterous connection with Ægisthus, the son of Thyestes and Pelopia; and +when he returned, the watchman having announced his approach to his +palace, Clytemnestra killed Cassandra, and her lover murdered Agamemnon +and his comrades. The tragic poets, however, make Clytemnestra throw a net +over her husband while he was in his bath, and kill him with the +assistance of Ægisthus, in revenge for the sacrifice of her daughter +Iphigenia. In the introduction to the translation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> of the Agamemnon in +<i>Morley’s Universal Library</i> we have an excellent description of the great +play. “In this tragedy the reader will find the strongest traces of the +genius of Æschylus, and the most distinguishing proofs of his skill. Great +in his conceptions, bold and daring in his metaphors, strong in his +passion, he here touches the heart with uncommon emotions. The odes are +particularly sublime, and the oracular spirit that breathes through them +adds a wonderful elevation and dignity to them. Short as the part of +Agamemnon is, the poet has the address to throw such an amiable dignity +around him that we soon become interested in his favour, and are +predisposed to lament his fate. The character of Clytemnestra is finely +marked—a high-spirited, artful, close, determined, dangerous woman. But +the poet has nowhere exerted such efforts of his genius as in the scene +where Cassandra appears: as a prophetess, she gives every mark of the +divine inspiration, from the dark and distant hint, through all the noble +imagery of the prophetic enthusiasm; till, as the catastrophe advances, +she more and more plainly declares it; as a suffering princess, her grief +is plaintive, lively, and piercing; yet she goes to meet her death, which +she clearly foretells, with a firmness worthy the daughter of Priam and +the sister of Hector; nothing can be more animated or more interesting +than this scene. The conduct of the poet through this play is exquisitely +judicious: every scene gives us some obscure hint or ominous presage, +enough to keep our attention always raised, and to prepare us for the +event; even the studied caution of Clytemnestra is finely managed to +produce that effect; whilst the secrecy with which she conducts her design +keeps us in suspense, and prevents a discovery till we hear the dying +groans of her murdered husband.” As Mr. Browning announces in his preface +to his translation of the tragedy, he has aimed at being literal at every +cost, and has everywhere reproduced the peculiarities of the original. He +has also made an attempt to reproduce the Greek spelling in English, which +has made the poem more difficult than some other translations to the +non-classical reader. We have ample recompense for this peculiarity by the +way in which he has imbibed the spirit of his author, and so faithfully +reproduced, not alone his phraseology, but his mind. It required a rugged +poet to interpret for us correctly the ruggedness of an Æschylus.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> Line +for line and word for word we have the tragedy in English as the Greeks +had it in their own tongue. If there are obscurities, we must not in the +present instance blame Mr. Browning: a reference to the original, so +authorities tell us, will prove that Greek poets were at times obscure. +The <i>Agamemnon</i> is part of the Oresteian Trilogy or group of three plays; +this trilogy of Æschylus is our only example extant, and it is necessary +to say something of the other parts. Atreus, the son of Pelops, was king +of Mycenæ. By his wife Ærope were born to him Pleisthenes, Menelaus, and +Agamemnon. Thyestes, the brother of Atreus, had followed him to Argos, and +there seduced his wife, by whom he had two, or according to some, three +children. Thyestes was banished from court on account of this, but was +soon afterwards recalled by his brother that he might be revenged upon +him. He prepared a banquet where Thyestes was served with the flesh of the +children who were the offspring of his incestuous connection with his +sister-in-law the queen. When the feast was concluded, the heads of the +murdered children were produced, that Thyestes might see of what he had +been partaking. It was fabled that the sun in horror shrank back in his +course at the horrible sight. Thyestes fled. The crime brought the most +terrible evils upon the family of which Agamemnon was a member. When this +hero was murdered by his wife and her paramour, young Orestes was saved +from his mother’s dagger by his sister Electra. When he reached the years +of manhood, he visited his ancestral home, and assassinated both his +mother and her lover Ægisthus. In consequence of this he was tormented by +the Furies, and he exiled himself to Athens, where Apollo purified him. +The murder of Clytemnestra by her son is described in the second play of +the Trilogy, called the <i>Choëphoræ or the Libation Pourers</i>. <i>The Furies</i> +is the title of the third and concluding play of the Trilogy. (For an +account of Æschylus see <a href="#Page_8">p. 8</a>.)</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—[N.B. The references here are to the pages of the poem in the last +edition of the complete works in sixteen vols.]—P. 269, <i>Atreidai</i>, a +patronymic given by Homer to Agamemnon and Menelaus, as being the sons of +Atreus; <i>Troia</i>, the capital of Troas == Troy. p. 270, <i>Ilion</i>, a citadel +of Troy; <i>Menelaos</i>, a king of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon. p. 271, +<i>Argives</i>, the inhabitants of Argos and surrounding country; <i>Alexandros</i>, +the name of Paris in the Iliad: <i>Atreus</i>, son of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> Pelops, was king of +Mycenæ; <i>Danaoi</i>, a name given to the people of Argos and to all the +Greeks; <i>Troes</i> == Trojans. p. 272, <i>Tundareus</i>, king of Lacedæmon, who +married Leda; <i>Klutaimnestra</i> == Clytemnestra, daughter of Tyndarus by +Leda. p. 273, <i>Teukris land</i>, the land of the Trojans—from Teucer, their +king; “<i>Achaians’ two-throned empery</i>”: the brother kings Agamemnon and +Menelaos. p. 274, <i>Linos</i>, the personification of a dirge or lamentation; +<i>Priamos</i>, the last king of Troy, made prisoner by Hercules when he took +the city. p. 275, <i>Icïos Paian</i>, an epithet of Apollo; <i>Kalchas</i>, a +soothsayer who accompanied the Greeks to Troy. p. 277, <i>Kalchis</i>, the +chief city of Eubœa, founded by an Athenian colony; <i>Aulis</i>, a town of +Bœotia, near Kalchis; <i>Strumon</i>, a river which separates Thrace from +Macedonia. p. 282, <i>Hephaistos</i>, the god of fire, according to Homer the +son of Zeus and Hera. The Romans called the Greek Hephaistos Vulcan, +though Vulcan was an Italian deity. The news of the fall of Troy was +brought to Mycenæ by means of beacon fires, so fire was the messenger. +<i>Ide</i> == Mount Ida; <i>of Lemnos</i>, an island in the Ægean Sea. p. 283, +<i>Athoan</i>, of Mount Athos; <i>Makistos</i> == Macistos, a city of Tryphylia; +<i>Euripos</i>, a narrow strait separating Eubœa from Bœotia; +<i>Messapios</i>, a name of Bœotia; <i>Asopos</i>, a river of Thessaly; <i>Mount +Kitharion</i>, sacred to the Muses and Jupiter. Hercules killed the great +lion there; <i>Mount Aigiplanktos</i> was in Megaris; <i>Strait Saronic</i>: +Saronicus Sinus was a bay of the Ægean Sea; <i>Mount Arachnaios</i>, in +Argolis. p. 286, <i>Ate</i>, the goddess of revenge; <i>Ares</i>, the Greek name of +the war-god Mars. p. 288, <i>Aphrodite</i>, a name of Venus. p. 290, <i>Erinues</i> +== the Furies. p. 292, <i>Puthian</i> == Delphic; <i>Skamandros</i>, a river of +Troas. p. 293, <i>Priamidai</i>, the patronymic of the descendants of Priam. p. +300, <i>Threkian breezes</i> == Thracian breezes; <i>Aigaian Sea</i>, the Ægean Sea; +<i>Achaian</i>, pertaining to Achaia, in Greece. p. 301, <i>Meneleos</i>, son of +Atreus, brother to Agamemnon and husband of Helen; <i>water-Haides</i>, the +engulfing sea. p. 302, <i>Zephuros</i>, the west wind; <i>Simois</i>, a river in +Troas which rises in Mount Ida and falls into the Xanthus. p. 304, +<i>Erinus</i>, an avenging deity. p. 307, <i>the Argeian monster</i> == the company +of Argives concealed in the wooden horse; <i>Pleiads</i>, a name given to seven +of the daughters of Atlas by Pleione, one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> of the Oceanides. They became a +constellation in the heavens after death. p. 309, “<i>triple-bodied Geruon +the Second</i>,” Geryon, king of the Balearic Isles, fabled to have three +bodies and three heads: Hercules slew him; <i>Strophios the Phokian</i>, at +whose house Orestes was brought up with Pylades son of Strophios. p. 316, +<i>Kassandra</i>, daughter of Priam, slain by Clytemnestra. p. 317, “<i>Alkmene’s +child</i>”—Hercules was the son of Alkmene. p. 319, <i>Ototoi</i>—alas!; +<i>Loxias</i>, a surname of Apollo. p. 322, <i>papai, papai</i> == O strange! +wonderful! p. 324, <i>Itus</i>, or <i>Itys</i>, son of Tereus, killed by his mother. +p. 325, “<i>Orthian style</i>,” in a shrill tone. p. 332, <i>Lukeion +Apollon</i>—Lyceus was a surname of Apollo. p. 335, <i>Surian</i> == Syrian. p. +343, <i>Chruseids</i>, the patronymic of the descendants of Astynome, the +daughter of Chryses. p. 348, <i>Iphigeneia</i>, daughter of Agamemnon and +Clytemnestra; her father offered to sacrifice her to appease the wrath of +Diana. p. 350, <i>The Daimon of the Pleisthenidai</i>, the genius of +Agamemnon’s family. p. 351, <i>Thuestes</i>, son of Pelops, brother of Atreus; +<i>Pelopidai</i>, descendants of Pelops, son of Tantalus.</p> + +<p><b>Agricola, Johannes</b>, (<i>Johannes Agricola in Meditation</i>,) was one of the +foremost of the German Reformers. He was born at Eisleben, April 20th, +1492. He met Luther whilst a student at Wittenberg, and became attached to +him, accompanying him to the Leipsic Assembly of Divines, where he acted +as recording secretary. He established the reformed religion at Frankfort. +In 1536 he was called to fill a professorial chair at Wittenberg. Here he +first taught the views which Luther termed <i>Antinomian</i>. He held that +Christians were entirely free from the Divine law, being under the Gospel +alone. He denied that Christians were under any obligations to keep the +ten commandments. Mr. Browning has quite accurately, though unsparingly, +exposed his impious teaching in his poem <i>Johannes Agricola in Meditation</i> +(<i>q.v.</i>).</p> + +<p><b>Agrippa, Henry Cornelius</b>, the mediæval doctor and magician, was born at +Cologne in 1486, and was educated at the university of that city. He was +denounced in 1509 by the monks, who called him an “impious cabalist”; in +1531 he published his treatise <i>De Occulta Philosophia</i>, written by the +advice and with the assistance of the Abbot Trithemius of Wurzburg, the +preceptor of Paracelsus. In 1510 he came to London on a diplomatic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> +mission, and was the guest of Dean Colet at Stepney. He afterwards fought +at the battle of Ravenna. In 1511 he attended the schismatic council of +Pisa as a theologian. In 1515 he lectured at the university of Pavia. We +afterwards find him at Metz, Geneva, and Freiburg, where he practised as a +physician. In 1529 he was appointed historiographer to Charles V. He died +at Grenoble in 1535. A man of such vast and varied learning could hardly +in those days have avoided being accused of diabolical practices and +heretical opinions; the only wonder is that he was not burned alive for +his scientific attainments, which were looked upon as dangerous in the +highest degree. (<i>Pauline</i> in the Latin prefatory note.)</p> + +<p><b>“A King lived long ago.”</b> Song in <i>Pippa Passes</i>, which is sung by the girl +as she passes the house of Luigi. Mr. Browning first published the song in +the <i>Monthly Repository</i>, in 1835 (vol ix., N.S., pp. 707-8), it was +reprinted with added lines, and was revised throughout, in <i>Pippa Passes</i> +1841.</p> + +<p><b>Alberic</b> (<i>Sordello</i>). Son of Eccelino the monk, described in the poem as +“many-muscled, big-boned Alberic.”</p> + +<p><b>Alcestis</b> (<i>Balaustion’s Adventure</i>), the daughter of Pelias, was the wife +of Admetus, son of Pheres, who was king of Pheræ in Thessaly. Apollo, +when—for an offence against Jupiter—he was banished from heaven, had +been kindly received by Pheres, and had obtained from the Fates a promise +that his benefactor should never die if he could find another person +willing to lay down his life for him. The story how this promise was +obtained is set forth with great dramatic force in Mr. Browning’s <i>Apollo +and the Fates</i> (<i>q.v.</i>). Alcestis volunteered to die in the place of her +husband when he lay sick unto death. Her sacrifice was accepted, and she +died. But Hercules, who had been hospitably entertained by Pheres, hearing +of the tragic circumstance, brought Alcestis from Hades out of gratitude +to his host, and presented her to her grief-stricken husband. Euripides +has used these circumstances as the basis of his tragedy of <i>Alcestis</i>.</p> + +<p><b>“All Service ranks the same with God.”</b> A song in <i>Pippa Passes</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Amphibian.</b> The Prologue to <i>Fifine at the Fair</i> is headed “Amphibian,” +under which title it is included in the <i>Selections</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Anael.</b> A Druse girl who loves Djabal and believes him to be divine (<i>The +Return of the Druses</i>).</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span><b>Andrea del Sarto</b> [<span class="smcap">The Man</span>] <i>Men and Women</i>, +1855, called “the faultless painter,” also Andrea senza Errori (Andrew the Unerring) was a great +painter of the Florentine School. His father was a tailor (<i>sarto</i>), so +the Italians, with their passion for nicknames, dubbed him “The Tailor’s +Andrew.” He was born in Gualfonda, Florence, in 1487. It is not certain +what was his real name: Vannuchi has been constantly given, but without +authority. He was at first put to work with a goldsmith, but he disliked +the business, and preferred drawing his master’s models. He was next +placed with a wood-carver and painter, one Gian Barill, with whom he +remained till 1498. He then went to the draughtsman and colourist, Piero +di Cosimo, under whom he studied the cartoons of Leonardo da Vinci and +Michelangelo. We next find him opening a shop in partnership with his +friend Francia Bigio, but the arrangement did not last long. The +brotherhood of the Servi employed Andrea from 1509 to 1514 in adorning +their church of the Annunziata at Florence. Mrs. Jameson, in her <i>Legends +of the Monastic Orders</i>, thus describes the church and cloisters +identified with the work of this painter at Florence: “Every one who has +been at Florence must remember the Church of the ‘Annunziata’; every one +who remembers that glorious church, who has lingered in the cloisters and +the cortile where Andrea del Sarto put forth all his power—where the +<i>Madonna del Sacco</i> and the <i>Birth of the Virgin</i> attest what he could +<i>do</i> and <i>be</i> as a painter—will feel interested in the Order of the +<span class="smcap">Servi</span>. Among the extraordinary outbreaks of religious enthusiasm in the +thirteenth century, this was in its origin one of the most singular. Seven +Florentines, rich, noble, and in the prime of life, whom a similarity of +taste and feeling had drawn together, used to meet every day in a chapel +dedicated to the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin (then outside the +walls of Florence), there to sing the <i>Ave</i> or evening service in honour +of the Madonna, for whom they had an especial love and veneration. They +became known and remarked in their neighbourhood for those acts of piety, +so that the women and children used to point at them as they passed +through the streets and exclaim, <i>Guardate i Servi di Maria</i> (Behold the +<i>Servants</i> of the Virgin!) Hence the title afterwards assumed by the +Order.” These seven gentlemen at length forsook the world, sold all their +possessions and distributed their money<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> to the poor, and retired to a +solitary spot in the mountains about six miles out of Florence; here they +built themselves huts of boughs and stones, and devoted themselves to the +service of the Virgin. It was for the cloisters of the church of the Servi +at Florence that Andrea del Sarto painted the <i>Riposo</i>. His <i>Nativity of +the B.V. Mary</i> is a grand fresco, the characters are noble and dignified, +and “draped in the magnificent taste which distinguished Andrea.” The +following account of the artist’s life is summarised from the article on +Del Sarto by Mr. W. M. Rossetti in the <i>Encyc. Brit.</i> He was an easy-going +plebeian, to whom a modest position in life and scanty gains were no +grievances. As an artist he must have known his own value; but he probably +rested content in the sense of his superlative powers as an executant, and +did not aspire to the rank of a great inventor or leader, for which, +indeed, he had no vocation. He led a social sort of life among his +compeers of the art. He fell in love with Lucrezia del Fede, wife of a +hatter named Carlo Recanati; the latter dying opportunely, the tailor’s +son married her on December 26th, 1512. She was a very handsome woman, and +has come down to us treated with great suavity in many a picture of her +lover-husband, who constantly painted her as a Madonna or otherwise; and +even in painting other women he made them resemble Lucrezia in general +type. Vasari, who was at one time a pupil of Andrea, describes her as +faithless, jealous, overbearing, and vixenish with the apprentices. She +lived to a great age, surviving her second husband forty years. Before the +end of 1516, a Pietà of his composition, and afterwards a Madonna, were +sent to the French Court. These were received with applause; and the +art-loving monarch Francis I. suggested in 1518 that Andrea should come to +Paris. He left his wife in Florence and went accordingly, and was very +cordially received, and moreover for the first time in his life handsomely +remunerated. His wife urged him to return to Italy. The king assented, on +the understanding that his absence was to be short; and he entrusted +Andrea with a sum of money to be expended in purchasing works of art for +the king. Andrea could not resist temptation, and spent the king’s money +and some of his own in building a house for himself in Florence. He fell +into disgrace with the king, but no serious punishment followed. In 1520 +he resumed work in Florence, and painted many pictures for the cloisters +of Lo Scalzo. He dwelt in Florence throughout<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> the memorable siege, which +was followed by an infectious pestilence. He caught the malady, struggled +against it with little or no tending from his wife, who held aloof, and +died, no one knowing much about it at the moment, on January 22nd, 1531, +at the early age of forty-three. He was buried unceremoniously in the +church of the Servi. Mr. Rossetti gives the following criticisms on his +work as an artist. “Andrea had true pictorial style, a very high standard +of correctness, and an enviable balance of executive endowments. The point +of technique in which he excelled least was perhaps that of discriminating +the varying textures of different objects and surfaces. There is not much +elevation or ideality in his works—much more of reality.” He lacked +invention notwithstanding his great technical skill. He had no inward +impulse toward the high and noble; he was a man without fervour, and had +no enthusiasm for the true and good. It is said that Michelangelo once +remarked that if he had attempted greater things he might have rivalled +Rafael, but Andrea was not a man for the mountain-top—the plains sufficed +for him.</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] On the bare historical facts, as recorded by Vasari in his +life of Andrea del Sarto, Mr. Browning has framed this wonderful art-poem. +He has taken Vasari’s “notes” and framed “not another sound but a star,” +as he says in his <i>Abt Vogler</i>. Given the Vasari life, he has mixed it +with his thought, and has transfigured it so that the sad, infinitely +pathetic soul, in its stunted growth and wasted form, lives before us in +Mr. Browning’s lines. As <i>Abt Vogler</i> is his greatest music-poem, so this +is his greatest art-poem, and both are unique. No poet has ever given us +such utterances on music and painting as we possess in these works: if all +the poet’s work were to perish save these, they would suffice to insure +immortality for their author. It is said that the poem was suggested by a +picture in the Pitti Palace at Florence. “Faultless but soulless” is the +verdict of art critics on Andrea’s works. Why is this? Mr. Browning’s poem +tells us in no hesitating phrase that the secret lay in the fact that +Andrea was an immoral man, an infatuated man, passionately demanding love +from a woman who had neither heart nor intellect, a wife for whom he +sacrificed his soul and the highest interests of his art. He knew and +loved Lucrezia while she was another man’s wife; he was content that she +should also love other men when she was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> his. He robbed King Francis, his +generous patron, that he might give the money to his unworthy spouse. He +neglected his parents in their poverty and old age. Is there not in these +facts the secret of his failure? To Mr. Browning there is, and his poem +tells us why. But, it will be objected, many great geniuses have been +immoral men. This is so, but we cannot argue the point here; the poet’s +purpose is to show how in this particular case the evil seed bore fruit +after its kind. The poem opens with the artist’s attempts to bribe his +wife by money to accord him a little semblance of love: he promises to +paint that he may win gold for her. The keynote of the poem is struck in +these opening words. It is evening, and Andrea is weary with his work, but +never weary of praising Lucrezia’s beauty; sadly he owns that he is at +best only a shareholder in his wife’s affections, that even her pride in +him is gone, that she neither understands nor cares to understand his art. +He tells her that he can do easily and perfectly what at the bottom of his +heart he wishes for, deep as that might be; he could do what others +agonise to do all their lives and fail in doing, yet he knows for all that +there burns a truer light of God in them than in him. Their works drop +groundward, though their souls have glimpses of heaven that are denied to +him. He could have beaten Rafael had he possessed Rafael’s soul; for the +Urbinate’s technical skill, as he half hesitatingly shows, is inferior to +his own; and had his Lucrezia urged him, inspired him, to claim a seat by +the side of Michelangelo and Rafael, he might for her sake have done it. +He sees he is but a half-man working in an atmosphere of silver-grey. He +had his chance at Fontainebleau; there he sometimes seemed to leave the +ground, but he had a chain which dragged him down. Lucrezia called him. +Not only for her did he forsake the higher art ambitions, but the common +ground of honesty; he descended to cement his walls with the gold of King +Francis which he had stolen, and for her. From dishonesty to connivance at +his wife’s infidelity is an easy step; and so, while in the act of +expressing his remorse at his ingratitude to the king, we find him asking +Lucrezia quite naturally, as a matter of ordinary occurrence—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">“Must you go?</span><br /> +That cousin here again? he waits outside?<br /> +Must see you—you, and not with me?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>Here we discover the secret of the soullessness: the fellow has the tailor +in his blood, even though the artist is supreme at the fingers’ ends. He +is but the craftsman after all. Think of Fra Angelico painting his saints +and angels on his knees, straining his eyes to catch the faintest glimpse +of the heavenly radiance of Our Lady’s purity and holiness, feeling that +he failed, too dazzled by the brightness of Divine light, to catch more +than its shadow, and we shall know why there is soul in the great +Dominican painter, and why there is none in the Sarto. Lucrezia, +despicable as she was, was not the cause of her husband’s failure. His +marriage, his treatment of Francis, his allowing his parents to starve, to +die of want, while he paid gaming debts for his wife’s lover,—all these +things tell us what the man was. No woman ruined his soul; he had no soul +to ruin!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Fiesole</i>, a small but famous episcopal city of Italy, on the +crown of a hill above the Arno, about three miles to the west of Florence. +<i>Morello</i>, a mountain of the Apennines. <i>The Urbinate</i>: Rafael was born at +Urbino. <i>George Vasari</i>, painter and author of the “Lives of the Most +Excellent Italian Painters, Sculptors and Architects.” <i>Rafael</i>, Raphael +Sanzio of Urbino. <i>Agnolo</i>: Michel Agnolo is the more correct form of +Michael Angelo. <i>Francis</i>, King Francis I. of France, the royal patron of +Andrea. <i>Fontainebleau</i>, a town of France 37 miles S.E. of Paris; its +palace is one of the most sumptuous in France. “<i>The Roman’s is the better +when you pray.</i>” Catholics, however, do not use the works of the great +masters for devotional purposes nearly so much as might be supposed. No +“miraculous” picture is by this class. <i>Cue-owls</i>: The Scops Owl: Scops +Giú (Scopoli). Its cry is a ringing “ki-ou”—whence Italian “chiù” or +“ciù.” “<i>Walls in the New Jerusalem.</i>” Revelation xxi. 15-17. <i>Leonard</i>, +Leonardo da Vinci.</p> + +<p><b>Andromeda.</b> In <i>Pauline</i>, Mr. Browning has commemorated the fascination for +his youthful mind which was exercised by an engraving of a picture by +Caravaggio of Andromeda and Perseus. This picture was always before him as +a boy, and he loved the story of the divine deliverer and the innocent +victim which it presented. The lines begin</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“Andromeda!</span><br /> +And she is with me,—years roll, I shall change,<br /> +But change can touch her not.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span><b>Another Way of Love.</b> +See <a href="#oneway"><i>One Way of Love</i></a>, this poem being its sequel.</p> + +<p><b>Any Wife to Any Husband.</b> A dying wife finds the bitterest thing in death +to be the certainty that her husband’s love for her, which, would life but +last, she could retain, will fade and wither when she is no longer present +to tend it:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">“Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,</span><br /> +’Tis woman’s whole existence.”</p> + +<p>The great pure love of a wife is a reign of love. Woman’s love is more +durable and purer than man’s, and few men are entirely worthy of being the +objects of that which they can so imperfectly understand. Mr. Nettleship, +commenting on this poem, very truly says, “The real love of the man is +never born until the love of the woman supplements it.” The wife of the +poem feels that there would be no difficulty in her case about being +faithful to the memory of her husband; but she foresees that his love will +not long survive the loss of her personal presence. This will be to +depreciate the value of his life to him; his love will come back to her +again at last, back to the heart’s place kept for him, but with a stain +upon it. The old love will be re-coined, re-issued from the mint, and +given to others to spend, alas! with some alloy as well as with a new +image and superscription. She foresees that he will dissipate his soul in +the love of other woman, he will excuse himself by the assurance that the +light loves will make no impression on the deep-set memory of the woman +who is immortally his bride; he will have a Titian’s Venus to desecrate +his wall rather than leave it bare and cold,—but the flesh-loves will not +impair the soul-love.</p> + +<p><b>Apollo and the Fates.</b> (See Prologue to <i>Parleyings</i>.) Apollo (the Sun +God), having offended Jupiter by slaying the Cyclopes, who forged his +thunderbolts by which he had killed Æsculapius for bringing dead men to +life, had been banished from heaven. He became servant to Admetus, king of +Thessaly, in whose employment he remained nine years as one of his +shepherds. He was treated with great kindness by his master, and they +became true lovers of each other. When Apollo, restored to the favour of +heaven, had left the service of Admetus and resumed his god-like offices, +he heard that his old master and friend was sick unto death, and he +determined to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> save his life. Accordingly he descended on Mount Parnassus, +and penetrated to the abode of the Fates, in the dark regions below the +roots of the mountains, and there he found the three who preside over the +destinies of mankind—Clotho with her distaff, Lachesis with her spindle, +and Atropos with a pair of scissors about to cut the thread of Admetus’ +life—and begins to plead for the life of his friend Admetus, whom Atropos +has just doomed to death. The Fates bid Apollo go back to earth and wake +it from dreams. Apollo demands a truce to their doleful amusement, and +requests them to extend the years of Admetus to threescore and ten. The +Fates ask him if he thinks it would add to his friend’s joy to have his +life lengthened, seeing that life is only illusion? Infancy is but +ignorance and mischief, youth becomes foolishness, and age churlishness. +Apollo should ask for life for one whom he hates, not for the friend he +loves. The Sun’s beams produce such semblance of good as exists by simply +gilding the evil. Apollo objects that if it were happier to die, men’s +greeting would not be “Long life!” but “Death to you!” Man loves his life, +and he ought to know best. The Fates say this is all the glamour shed by +Apollo’s rays. Apollo concedes that man desponds when debarred of +illusion: “suppose he has in himself some compensative law?” and the God +then produces a bowl of wine, man’s invention, of which he invites them to +taste. The Fates, after some objection, drink and get tipsy and merry, +Atropos even declaring she could live at a pinch! Apollo delivers them a +lecture; he tells them Bacchus invented the wine; as he was the youngest +of the gods, he had to discover some new gift whereby to claim the homage +of man. He tampered with nothing already arranged, yet would introduce +change without shock. As the sunbeams and Apollo had transformed the +Fates’ cavern without displacing a splinter, so has the gift of Bacchus +turned the adverse things of life to a kindlier aspect; man accepts the +good with the bad, and acquiesces in his fate; this is the work of Zeus. +He demands of the Fates if, after all, Life be so devoid of good? “Quashed +be our quarrel!” they exclaim, and they dance till an explosion from the +earth’s centre brings them to their senses once more, and the pact is +dissolved. They learn that the powers above them are not to be cajoled +into interfering with the laws of life and the inevitable decrees of which +the Fates<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> are but the ministers. At last they agree to lengthen the life +of Admetus if any mortal can be found to forgo the fulfilment of his own +life on his account. Apollo protests that the king’s subjects will strive +with one another for the glory of dying that their king may survive. First +in all Pheræ will his father offer himself as his son’s substitute. “Bah!” +says Clotho. “Then his mother,” suggests Apollo; “or, spurning the +exchange, the king may choose to die.” With the jeers of the three the +scene closes. Mr. Browning’s lovely poem <i>Balaustion’s Adventure</i> should +be read next after this, as the Prologue to the <i>Parleyings</i> has little or +no relation to the rest of the volume.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Parnassus</i>, a mountain of Greece, sacred to the Muses and Apollo +and Bacchus. <i>Dire ones</i>, the Fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. +<i>Admetus</i>, the husband of Alcestis, whose wife died to save his life. <i>The +Fates</i>, the Destinies, the goddesses supposed to preside over human life: +<i>Clotho</i>, who spins the thread of life; <i>Lachesis</i>, who determines the +length of the thread; <i>Atropos</i>, who cuts it off. <i>Woe-purfled</i>, +embroidered with woe. <i>Weal-prankt</i>, decked out with prosperity. <i>Moirai</i>, +the Parcæ, the Fates. <i>Zeus</i>, Jupiter, the Supreme Being. <i>Eld</i>, old age. +<i>Sweet Trine</i>, the Three, the Trinity of Fates. <i>Bacchus</i>, the Wine-God. +<i>Semele’s Son</i>: Semele was the daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia; when Zeus +appeared to her in his Divine splendour she was consumed by the flames and +gave birth to Bacchus, whom Zeus saved from the fire and hid in his thigh. +Bacchus, when made a god, raised her to heaven under the name of Thyone. +<i>Swound</i>, a swoon. <i>Cummers</i>, gossips, female acquaintances. <i>Collyrium</i>, +eye-wash. <i>Pheræ</i>, a town in Thessaly, where King Pheres reigned, who was +the father of Admetus.</p> + +<p><b>Apparent Failure.</b> (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864.) Mr. Ruskin has laboured hard +to save St. Mark’s, Venice, from the destroying hand of the restorer. Mr. +Browning wrote this poem to save from complete destruction a much less +important, though a celebrated building, the Paris Morgue, the deadhouse +wherein are exposed the bodies of persons found dead, that they may be +claimed by their friends. The Doric little Morgue is close to Notre Dame, +on the banks of the Seine, and is one of the sights of Paris—repulsive as +it is—which everybody makes a point of seeing. The poet entered the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> +building and saw behind the great screen of glass three bodies exposed for +identification on the copper couch fronting him. They were three men who +had killed themselves, and the poet mentally questions them why they +abhorred their lives so much. You “poor boy” wanted to be an emperor, +forsooth; you “old one” were a red socialist, and this next one fell a +prey to misdirected love. The three deadly sins of Pride, Covetousness, +and Lust had each its victim. And before them stands the poet of optimism, +not staggered in his doctrine even by this sad sight. Not for a moment +does his faith fail that “what God blessed once can never prove accurst.” +His optimism in this poem is at high-water mark; where some weak-kneed +believers in humanity would have found a breaking link in the chain, Mr. +Browning sees but “apparent failure,” and declines to believe the doom of +these poor wrecks of souls to be final.</p> + +<p><b>Apparitions.</b> (Introduction to <i>The Two Poets of Croisic</i>, 1878.) This +exquisite poem is a tribute to the charm exercised by a human face, from +which looks out God’s own smile, gladdening a cold and scowling prospect +as a burst of May soon dispels the lingering chills of winter.</p> + +<p><b>Appearances.</b> (<i>Pacchiarotto, with other Poems</i>, 1876.) Metaphysicians +would explain this poem by an essay on the association of ideas; strong as +imagination is, it can never exceed experience which has come to us +through sight. Feelings are associated with one another according as they +have been operant in more or less frequent succession. Reasoning may +associate ideas, but for force and permanence our actual sight, and +contact are the wonder-workers in this department of soul-life. Nothing +can beautify the place where we have in the past suffered some great +mental distress or wrong; so no place can ever be unbeautiful where the +true lover wins his life’s prize. When the upholsterer’s art does more for +a room than the memory of a first love, that love is not of the eternal +sort our poet sings.</p> + +<p><b>Aprile.</b> The Italian poet who sought to love, as Paracelsus sought to know. +He represents the Renaissance spirit in its emotional aspect, as +Paracelsus represents the spirit of the Reformation in its passion for +knowledge. As Mr. Browning says, they were the “two halves of a dissevered +world.” (<i>Paracelsus.</i>)</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span><b>Arcades Ambo.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) If a man runs away in battle when the +balls begin to fly, we call him a coward. He may excuse himself by the +argument that man must at all risks shun death. This is the excuse made by +the vivisector: he is often a kind and amiable man in every other relation +of life than in that aspect of his profession which demands, as he holds, +the torture of living animals for the advancement of the healing art. +Health of the body must be preserved at all costs; the moral health is of +little or no consequence in comparison with that of the body; above all we +must not die, death is the one thing to be avoided, hide therefore from +the darts of the King of Terrors behind the whole creation of lower +animals. Mr. Browning says this is cowardice exactly parallel with that of +the soldier who runs away in battle; the principle being that at all costs +life is the one thing to be preserved. The Anti-Vivisectionist principles +of Mr. Browning were very pronounced. He was for many years associated +with Miss F. P. Cobbe in her efforts to suppress the practice of torturing +animals for scientific purposes, and was a Vice-President of the Victoria +Street Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection at the time +of his death. See my <i>Browning’s Message to his Time</i> (chapter on +“Browning and Vivisection”).</p> + +<p><b>Aristophanes</b>, the celebrated comic poet of Athens, was born probably about +the year 448 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> His first comedy was brought out in 427 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> Plato in +his <i>Symposium</i> gives Aristophanes a position at the side of Socrates. The +festivals of Dionysus greatly promoted the production of tragedies, +comedies and satiric dramas. The greater Dionysia were held in the city of +Athens in the month of March, and were connected with the natural feeling +of joy at the approach of summer. These Bacchanalian festivals were scenes +of gross licentiousness, and the coarseness which pervades much of the +work of the great Greek comedian was due to the fact that the popular +taste demanded grossness of allusion on occasions like these. The Athenian +dramatist of the old school was entirely unrestrained. He could satirise +even the Eleusinian mysteries, could deal abundantly in personalities, +burlesque the most sacred subjects, and ridicule the most prominent +persons in the republic. Professor Jebb, in his article on Aristophanes in +the <i>Encyclopedia Britannica</i>, says: “It is neither in the denunciation +nor in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> mockery that he is most individual. His truest and highest +faculty is revealed by those wonderful bits of lyric writing in which he +soars above everything that can move to laughter or tears, and makes the +clear air thrill with the notes of a song as free, as musical and as wild +as that of the nightingale invoked by his own chorus in the <i>Birds</i>. The +speech of Dikaios Logos in the <i>Clouds</i>, the praises of country life in +the <i>Peace</i>, the serenade in the <i>Eccleziazusæ</i>, the songs of the Spartan +and Athenian maidens in the <i>Lysistrata</i>; above all, perhaps, the chorus +in the <i>Frogs</i>, the beautiful chant of the Initiated,—these passages, and +such as these, are the true glories of Aristophanes. They are the strains, +not of an artist, but of one who warbles for pure gladness of heart in +some place made bright by the presence of a god. Nothing else in Greek +poetry has quite this wild sweetness of the woods. Of modern poets +Shakespeare alone, perhaps, has it in combination with a like richness and +fertility of fancy.” Fifty-four comedies were ascribed to Aristophanes. We +possess only eleven: these deal with Athenian life during a period of +thirty-six years. The political satires of the poet, therefore, cannot be +understood without a knowledge of Athenian history, and an acquaintance +with its life during the period in which the poet wrote. “Aristophanes was +a natural conservative,” says Professor Jebb; “his ideal was the Athens of +the Persian wars. He detested the vulgarity and the violence of mob-rule; +he clove to the old worship of the gods; he regarded the new ideas of +education as a tissue of imposture and impiety. As a mocker he is +incomparable for the union of subtlety with wit of the comic imagination. +As a poet he is immortal.” The momentous period in the history of Greece +during which Aristophanes began to write, forms the groundwork, more or +less, of so many of his comedies, that it is impossible to understand +them, far less to appreciate their point, without some acquaintance with +its leading events. All men’s thoughts were occupied by the great contest +for supremacy between the rival states of Athens and Sparta, known as the +Peloponnesian War. It is not necessary here to enter into details; but the +position of the Athenians during the earlier years of the struggle must be +briefly described. Their strength lay chiefly in their fleet; in the other +arms of war they were confessedly no match for Sparta and her confederate +allies. The heavy-armed Spartan infantry,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> like the black Spanish bands of +the fifteenth century, was almost irresistible in the field. Year after +year the invaders marched through the Isthmus into Attica, or were landed +in strong detachments on different points of the coast, while the powerful +Bœotian cavalry swept all the champaign, burning the towns and +villages, cutting down the crops, destroying vines and +olive-groves,—carrying this work of devastation almost up to the very +walls of Athens. For no serious attempt was made to resist these +periodical invasions. The strategy of the Athenians was much the same as +it had been when the Persian hosts swept down upon them fifty years +before. Again they withdrew themselves and all their movable property +within the city walls, and allowed the invaders to overrun the country +with impunity. Their flocks and herds were removed into the islands on the +coasts, where, so long as Athens was mistress of the sea, they would be in +comparative safety. It was a heavy demand upon their patriotism; but, as +before, they submitted to it, trusting that the trial would be but brief, +and nerved to it by the stirring words of their great leader Pericles. The +ruinous sacrifice, and even the personal suffering, involved in this +forced migration of a rural population into a city wholly inadequate to +accommodate them, may easily be imagined, even if it had not been forcibly +described by the great historian of those times. Some carried with them +the timber framework of their homes, and set it up in such vacant spaces +as they could find. Others built for themselves little “chambers on the +wall,” or occupied the outer courts of the temples, or were content with +booths and tents set up under the Long Walls, which connected the city +with the harbour of Piræus. Some—if our comic satirist is to be +trusted—were even fain to sleep in tubs and hen-coops. Provisions grew +dear and scarce. Pestilence broke out in the overcrowded city; and in the +second and third years of the war the great plague carried off, out of +their comparatively small population, about 10,000 of all ranks. But it +needed a pressure of calamity far greater than the present to keep a good +citizen of Athens away from the theatre. If the times were gloomy, so much +the more need of a little honest diversion. The comic drama was to the +Athenians what a free press is to modern commonwealths. It is probable +that Aristophanes was himself earnestly opposed to the continuance of the +war, and spoke his own sentiments on this point<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> by the mouth of his +characters; but the prevalent disgust at the hardships of this +long-continued siege—for such it practically was—would in any case be a +tempting subject for the professed writer of burlesques; and the +caricature of a leading politician, if cleverly drawn, is always a success +for the author. The <i>Thesmophoriazusæ</i> is a comedy about the fair sex, +whose whole point—like that also of the comedy of the <i>Frogs</i>—lies in a +satire upon Euripides. Aristophanes never wearied of holding this poet up +to ridicule. Why this was so is not to be discovered: it may have been +that the conservative principles of Aristophanes were offended by some +new-fashioned ideas of his brother poet. The <i>Thesmophoria</i> was a festival +of women only, in honour of Ceres and Proserpine. Euripides was reputed to +be a woman-hater: in one of his tragedies he says,</p> + +<p class="poem">“O thou most vile! thou—<i>woman!</i>—for what word<br /> +That lips could frame, could carry more reproach?”</p> + +<p>He can hardly, however, have been a woman-hater who created the beautiful +characters of Iphigenia and Alcestis. In this comedy the Athenian ladies +have resolved to punish Euripides, and the poet is in dismay in +consequence, and takes measures to defend himself. He offers terms of +peace to the offended fair sex, and promises never to abuse them in +future.</p> + +<p><b>Aristophanes’ Apology</b>; including a Transcript from Euripides, being the +last adventure of Balaustion. London, 1875.—As Aristophanes’ Apology is +the last adventure of Balaustion, it is necessary to read <i>Balaustion’s +Adventure</i> (<i>q.v.</i>) before commencing this poem. Balaustion has married +Euthukles, the young man whom she met at Syracuse. She has met the great +poet Euripides, paid her homage to his genius, and has received from his +own hands his tragedy of <i>Hercules</i>. The poet is dead, and Athens fallen. +She returns to the city after its capture by the Spartans, but she can no +longer remain therein. Athens will live in her heart, but never again can +she behold the place where ghastly mirth mocked its overthrow and death +and hell celebrated their triumph. She has left the doomed city, now that +it is no longer the free Athens of happier times, and has set sail with +her husband for Rhodes. The glory of the material Athens has departed. But +Athens will live as a glorious spiritual entity—</p> + +<p class="poem">“That shall be better and more beautiful,<br /> +And too august for Sparté’s foot to spurn!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>She and Euthukles are exiles from the dead Athens, not the living: “That’s +in the cloud there, with the new-born star!” As they voyage, for her +consolation she will record her recollections of her Euripides in Athens, +and she bids her husband set down her words as she speaks. She must “speak +to the infinite intelligence, sing to the everlasting sympathy.” There are +dead things that are triumphant still; the walls of intellectual +construction can never be overthrown; there are air-castles more real and +permanent than the work of men’s hands. She will tell of Euripides and his +undying work. She recalls the night when Athens was still herself, when +they heard the news that Euripides was dead—“gone with his Attic ivy home +to feast.” Dead and triumphant still! She reflected how the Athenian +multitude had ever reproached him: “All thine aim thine art, the idle poet +only.” It was not enough in those times that thought should be “the soul +of art.” The Greek world demanded activity as well as contemplation. The +poet must leave his study to command troops, forsake the world of ideas +for that of action, otherwise he was a “hater of his kind.” The world is +content with you if you do nothing for it; if you do aught you must do +all. But when Euripides was at rest, censorious tongues ceased to wag, and +the next thing to do was to build a monument for him! But for the hearts +of Balaustion and her husband no statue is required: he stood within their +hearts. The pure-souled woman says, “What better monument can be than the +poem he gave me? Let him speak to me now in his own words; have out the +Herakles and re-sing the song; hear him tell of the last labour of the +god, worst of all the twelve.” And lovingly and reverently the precious +gift of the poet was taken from its shrine and opened for the reading. +Suddenly torchlight, knocking at the door, a cry “Open, open! Bacchos +bids!” and a sound of revelry and the drunken voices of girl dancers and +players, led by Aristophanes, the comic poet of Greece. A splendid +presence, “all his head one brow,” drunk, but in him sensuality had become +a rite. Mind was here, passions, but grasped by the strong hand of +intellect. Balaustion rose and greeted him. “Hail house,” he said, +“friendly to Euripides!” and he spoke flatteringly, but in a slightly +mocking tone, as men who are sensual defer to spiritual women whom they +rather affect to pity while they admire. Balaustion loves genius; to her +mind it is the noblest gift of heaven: she can bow to Aristophanes though<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> +he is drunk. (Greek intoxication was doubtless a very different thing from +Saxon!) The comic poet had just achieved a great triumph: his comedy had +been crowned. The “Women’s Festival” (the <i>Thesmophoriazusæ</i> as it was +called in Greek) was a play in which the fair sex had the chief part. It +was written against Euripides’ dislike of women, for which the women who +are celebrating the great feast of Ceres and Proserpine (the Thesmophoria) +drag him to justice. And so, with all his chorus troop, he comes to the +home of Balaustion, as representing the Euripides whom he disliked and +satirised, to celebrate his success. The presence of Balaustion has +stripped the proper Aristophanes of his “accidents,” and under her +searching gaze he stands undisguised to be questioned. She puts him on his +defence, and hence the “Apology.” He recognises the divine in her, and she +in him. The discussion, therefore, will be on the principles underlying +the works of Euripides, the man of advance, the pioneer of the newer and +better age to come, and those of the conservative apologist of +prescription, Aristophanes the aristocrat. He defends his first +<i>Thesmophoriazusæ</i>, which failed; his <i>Grasshopper</i>, which followed and +failed also. There was reason why he wrote both: he painted the world as +it was, mankind as they lived and walked, not human nature as seen though +the medium of the student’s closet. “Old wine’s the wine; new poetry +drinks raw.” The friend of Socrates might weave his fancies, but flesh and +blood like that of Aristophanes needs stronger meat. “Curds and whey” +might suit Euripides, the Apologist must have marrowy wine. The author of +the <i>Alkestis</i>, which Balaustion raved about, was but a prig: he wrote of +wicked kings. Aristophanes came nearer home, and attacked infamous abuses +of the time, and scourged too with tougher thong than leek-and-onion +plait. He wrote <i>The Birds</i>, <i>The Clouds</i>, and <i>The Wasps</i>. The +poison-drama of Euripides has mortified the flesh of the men of Athens, so +nothing but warfare can purge it. The play that failed last year he has +rearranged; he added men to match the women there already, and had a hit +at a new-fangled plan by which women should rule affairs. It succeeded, +and so they all flocked merrily to feast, and merrily they supped till +something happened,—he will confess its influence upon him. Towards the +end of the feast there was a sudden knock: in came an old pale-swathed +majesty, who addressed the priest, “Since Euripides is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> dead to-day, my +choros, at the Greater Feast next month, shall, clothed in black, appear +ungarlanded!” Sophocles (for it was he) mutely passed outwards and left +them stupefied. Soon they found their tongues and began to make satiric +comment, but Aristophanes swore that at the moment death to him seemed +life and life seemed death. The play of which he had made a laughingstock +had meaning he had never seen till now. The question who was the greater +poet, once so large, now became so small. He remembers his last discussion +with the dead poet, two years since, when he said, “Aristophanes, you know +what kind’s the nobler—what makes grave or what makes grin!” He pointed +out why his Ploutos failed: he had tried, alas! but with force which had +been spent on base things, to paint the life of Man. The strength demanded +for the race had been wasted ere the race began. Such thoughts as these, +long to relate, but floating through the mind as solemn convictions are +wont to do, occupied him till the Archon, the Feast-Master, divining what +was passing in his mind, thought best to close the feast. He gave “To the +good genius, then!” as a parting cup. Young Strattis cried, “Ay, the Comic +Muse”; but Aristophanes, stopping the applause, said, “Stay! the Tragic +Muse” (in honour of the dead Tragic Poet), and then he told of all the +work of the man who had gone from them. But he had mocked at him so often +that his audience would not believe him to be serious now, and burst into +laughter, exclaiming, “The unrivalled one! He turns the Tragic on its +Comic side!” He felt that he was growing ridiculous, and had to repair +matters; so he thanked them for laughing with him, and also those who wept +rather with the Lord of Tears, and bade the priest—president alike over +the Tragic and Comic function of the god,—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Help with libation to the blended twain!”</p> + +<p>praising complex poetry operant for body as for soul, able to move to +laughter and to tears, supreme in heaven and earth. The soul should not be +unbodied; he would defend man’s double nature. But, even as he spoke, he +turned to the memory of “Cold Euripides,” and declared that he would not +abate attack if he were to encounter him again, because of his +principle—“Raise soul, sink sense, Evirate Hermes!” And so, as they left +the feast, he asked his friends to accompany him to Balaustion’s home, to +the lady and her husband who, passionate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> admirers of Euripides, had not +been present on his triumph-day. When they heard the night’s news, +neither, he knew, would sleep, but watch; by right of his crown of triumph +he would pay them a visit. Balaustion said, “Commemorate, as we, +Euripides!” “What?” cried the comic poet, “profane the temple of your +deity!—for deity he was, though as for himself he only figured on men’s +drinking mugs. And then, as his glance fell on the table, he saw the +Herakles which the Tragic Poet had given to Balaustion. “Give me the +sheet,” he asks. She interrupted, “You enter fresh from your worst infamy, +last instance of a long outrage—throw off hate’s celestiality, show me a +mere man’s hand ignobly clenched against the supreme calmness of the dead +poet.” Scarcely noticing her, he said, “Dead and therefore safe; only +after death begins immunity of faultiness from punishment. Hear Art’s +defence. Comedy is coeval with the birth of freedom, its growth matches +the greatness of the Republic. He found the Comic Art a club, a means of +inflicting punishment without downright slaying: was he to thrash only the +crass fool and the clownish knave, or strike at malpractice that affects +the State? His was not the game to change the customs of Athens, lead age +or youth astray, play the demagogue at the Assembly or the sophist at the +Debating Club, or (worst and widest mischief) preach innovation from the +theatre, bring contempt on oaths, and adorn licentiousness. And so he +new-tipped with steel his cudgel, he had demagogues in coat-of-mail and +cased about with impudence to chastise; he was spiteless, for his attack +went through the mere man to reach the principle worth purging from +Athens. He did not attack Lamachos, but war’s representative; not Cleon, +but flattery of the populace; not Socrates, but the pernicious seed of +sophistry, whereby youth was perverted to chop logic and worship +whirligig. His first feud with Euripides was when he maintained that we +should enjoy life as we find it instead of magnifying our miseries. +Euripides would talk about the empty name, while the thing’s self lay +neglected beneath his nose. Aristophanes represented the whole +Republic,—gods, heroes, priests, legislators, poets—all these would have +been in the dust, pummelled into insignificance, had Euripides had his +way. To him heroes were no more, hardly so much, as men. Men were ragged, +sick, lame, halt, and blind, their speech but street terms; and so, having +drawn sky earthwards, he must next<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> lift earth to sky. Women, once mere +puppets, must match the male in thinking, saying, doing. The very slave he +recognised as man’s mate. There are no gods. Man has no master, owns +neither right nor wrong, does what he likes, himself his sole law. As +there are no gods, there is only “Necessity” above us. No longer to +Euripides is there one plain positive enunciation, incontestable, of what +is good, right, decent here on earth. And so Euripides triumphed, though +he rarely gained a prize. And Aristophanes, wielding the comic weapon, +closed with the enemy in good honest hate, called Euripides one name and +fifty epithets. He hates “sneaks whose art is mere desertion of a trust.” +And so he doses each culprit with comedy, doctors the word-monger with +words. Socrates he nicknames chief quack, necromancer; Euripides—well, he +acknowledges every word is false if you look at it too close, but at a +distance all is indubitable truth behind the lies. Aristophanes declares +the essence of his teaching to be, Accept the old, contest the strange, +misdoubt every man whose work is yet to do, acknowledge the work already +done. Religion, laws, are old—that is, so much achieved and victorious +truth, wrung from adverse circumstance by heroic men who beat the world +and left their work in evidence. It was Euripides who caused the fight, +and Aristophanes has beaten him; if, however, Balaustion can adduce +anything to contravene this, let her say on.” Balaustion replies that she +is but a mere mouse confronting the forest monarch, a woman with no +quality, but the love of all things lovable. How should she dare deny the +results he says his songs are pregnant with? She is a foreigner too. Many +perhaps view things too severely, as dwellers in some distant isles,—the +Cassiterides, for example,—ignorant and lonely, who seeing some statue of +Phidias or picture of Teuxis, might feebly judge that hair and hands and +fashion of garb, not being like their own, must needs be wrong. So her +criticism of art may be equally in fault as theirs, nevertheless she will +proceed if she may. “Comedy, you say, is prescription and a rite; it rose +with Attic liberty, and will fall with freedom; but your games, Olympian, +Pythian and the others, the gods gave you these; and Comedy, did it come +so late that your grandsires can remember its beginning? And you were +first to change buffoonery for wit, and filth for cleanly sense. You +advocate peace, support religion, lash irreverence, yet rebuke +superstition with a laugh. Innovation and all change you attack:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> with you +the oldest always is the best; litigation, mob rule and mob favourites you +attack; you are hard on sophists and poets who assist them: snobs, scamps, +and gluttons you do not spare,—all these noble aims originated with you! +Yet Euripides in Cresphontes sang Peace before you! Play after play of his +troops tumultuously to confute your boast. No virtue but he praised, no +vice but he condemned ere you were boy! As for your love of peace, you did +not show your audience that war was wrong, but Lamachos absurd, not that +democracy was blind, but Cleon a sham, not superstition vile but Nicias +crazy. You gave the concrete for the abstract, you pretended to be earnest +while you were only indifferent. You tickled the mob with the idea that +peace meant plenty of good things to eat, while in camp the fare is hard +and stinted. Peace gives your audience flute girls and gaiety. War freezes +the campaigners in the snow. And so, with all the rest you advocate; do +not go to law: beware of the Wasps! but as for curing love of lawsuits, +you exhibit cheating, brawling, fighting, cursing as capital fun! And when +the writer of the new school attacks the vile abuses of the day, +straightway to conserve the good old way, you say the rascal cannot read +or write, is extravagant, gets somebody to help his sluggish mind, and +lets him court his wife; his uncle deals in crockery, and himself—a +stranger! And so the poet-rival is chased out of court. And this is +Comedy, our sacred song, censor of vice and virtue’s safeguard! You are +indignant with sophistry, and say there is but a single side to man and +thing; but the sophists at least wish their pupils to believe what they +teach, and to practise what they believe; can you wish that? Assume I am +mistaken: have you made them end the war? Has your antagonist Euripides +succeeded better? He spoke to a dim future, and I trust truth’s inherent +kingliness. ‘Arise and go: both have done honour to Euripides!’” But +Aristophanes demands direct defence, and not oblique by admonishment of +himself. Balaustion tells him that last year Sophocles was declared by his +son to be of unsound mind, and for defence his father just recited a +chorus chant of his last play. The one adventure of her life that made +Euripides her friend was the story of Hercules and Alcestis. When she met +the author last, he said, “I sang another Hercules; it gained no prize, +but take it—your love the prize! And so the papyrus, with the pendent +style,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> and the psalterion besides, he gave her: by this should she +remember the friend who loved Balaustion once. May I read it as defence? I +read.” [The <span class="smcap">Herakles</span>, or Raging Hercules of Euripides, is translated +literally by Mr. Browning on the principles which he laid down in the +preface to the Agamemnon. In Potter’s <i>Translation of the Tragedies of +Euripides</i> we have the following from the introduction to the play: “The +first scenes of this tragedy are very affecting; Euripides knew the way to +the heart, and as often as his subject leads him to it, he never fails to +excite the tenderest pity. We are relieved from this distress by the +unexpected appearance of Hercules, who is here drawn in his private +character as the most amiable of men: the pious son, the affectionate +<ins class="correction" title="original: hnsband">husband</ins>, and the tender father win our esteem as much as the unconquered +hero raises our admiration. Here the feeling reader will perhaps wish that +the drama had ended, for the next scenes are dreadful indeed, and it must +be confessed that the poet has done his subject terrible justice, but +without any of that absurd extravagance which, in Seneca becomes <i>un +tintamarre horrible qui se passe dans le tête de ce Héros devenu fou</i>. +From the violent agitation into which we are thrown by these deeds of +honour, we are suffered by degrees to subside into the tenderest grief, in +which we are prepared before to sympathise with the unhappy Hercules by +that esteem which his amiable disposition had raised in us; and this +perhaps is the most affecting scene of sorrow that ever was produced in +any theatre. Upon the whole, though this tragedy may not be deemed the +most agreeable by the generality of readers, on account of the too +dreadful effects of the madness of Hercules, yet the various turns of +fortune are finely managed, the scenes of distress highly wrought, and the +passions of pity, terror and grief strongly touched. The scene is at +Thebes before the palace of Hercules. The persons of the +Drama—Amphitryon, Megara, Lycus, Hercules, Iris, Lyssa (the goddess of +madness), Theseus, Messenger; Chorus of aged Thebans.”] They were silent +after the reading for a long time. “Our best friend—lost, our best +friend!” mused Aristophanes, “and who is our best friend?” He then +instances in reply a famous Greek game, known as <i>kottabos</i>, played in +various ways, but the latest with a sphere pierced with holes. When the +orb is set rolling, and wine is adroitly thrown a figure suspended in a +certain position<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> can be struck by the fluid; but its only chance of +being so hit is when it fronts just that one outlet. So with Euripides: he +gets his knowledge merely from one single aperture—that of the High and +Right; till he fronts this he writes no play. When the hole and his head +happen to correspond, in drops the knowledge that Aristophanes can make +respond to every opening—Low, Wrong, Weak; all the apertures bring him +knowledge; he gets his wine at every turn; why not? Evil and Little are +just as natural as Good and Great, and he demands to know them, and not +one phase of life alone. So that he is the “best friend of man.” No doubt, +if in one man the High and Low could be reconciled, in tragi-comic verse +he would be superior to both when born in the Tin Islands (as he +eventually was in the person of Shakespeare). He will sing them a song of +Thamyris, the Thracian bard, who boasted that he could rival the Muses, +and was punished by them by being deprived of sight and voice and the +power of playing the lute. Before he had finished the song, however, he +laughed, “Tell the rest who may!” He had not tried to match the muse and +sing for gods; he sang for men, and of the things of common life. He bids +this couple farewell till the following year, and departs. In a year many +things had happened. Aristophanes had produced his play, <i>The Frogs</i>. It +had been rapturously applauded, and the author had been crowned; he is now +the people’s “best friend.” He had satirised Euripides more vindictively +than before; he had satirised even the gods and the Eleusinian Mysteries; +and, in the midst of the “frog merriment,” Lysander, the Spartan, had +captured Athens, and his first word to the people was, “Pull down your +long walls: the place needs none!” He gave them three days to wreck their +proud bulwarks, and the people stood stupefied, stonier than their walls. +The time expired, and when Lysander saw they had done nothing, he ordered +all Athens to be levelled in the dust. Then stood forth Euthukles, +Balaustion’s husband, and “flung that choice flower,” a snatch of a +tragedy of Euripides, the <i>Electra</i>; then—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Because Greeks are Greeks, though Sparté’s brood,<br /> +And hearts are hearts, though in Lusandros’ breast,<br /> +And poetry is power, and Euthukles<br /> +Had faith therein to, full face, fling the same—<br /> +Sudden, the ice thaw!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>And the assembled foe cried, “Reverence Elektra! Let stand Athenai!” and +so, as Euripides had saved the Athenian exiles in Syracuse harbour, now he +saved Athens herself. But her brave long walls were destroyed, destroyed +to sound of flute and lyre, wrecked to the kordax step, and laid in the +dust to the mocking laughter of a Comedy-chorus. And so no longer would +Balaustion remain to see the shame of the beloved city. “Back to Rhodes!” +she cried. “There are no gods, no gods! Glory to God—who saves +Euripides!” [The long walls of Athens consisted of the wall to Phalerum on +the east, about four miles long, and of the wall to the harbour of Piraeus +on the west, about four and a half miles long; between these two, at a +short distance from the latter and parallel to it, another wall was +erected, thus making two walls leading to the Piraeus, with a narrow +passage between them. The entire circuit of the walls was nearly +twenty-two miles, of which about five and a half miles belonged to the +city, nine and a half to the long walls, and seven miles to Piraeus, +Munychia, and Phalerum.]</p> + +<p>Plutarch, in his life of Lysander, tells how Euripides saved Athens from +destruction and the Athenians from slavery:—“After Lysander had taken +from the Athenians all their ships except twelve, and their fortifications +were delivered up to him, he entered their city on the sixteenth of the +month Munychon (April), the very day they had overthrown the barbarians in +the naval fight at Salamis. He presently set himself to change their form +of government; and finding that the people resented his proposal, he told +them ‘that they had violated the terms of their capitulation, for their +walls were still standing after the time fixed for the demolishing of them +was passed; and that, since they had broken the first articles, they must +expect new ones from the council.’ Some say he really did propose, in the +council of the allies, to reduce the Athenians to slavery; and that +Erianthis, a Theban officer, gave it as his opinion that the city should +be levelled with the ground, and the spot on which it stood turned to +pasturage. Afterwards, however, when the general officers met at an +entertainment, a musician of Phocis happened to begin a chorus in the +<i>Electra</i> of Euripides, the first lines of which are these—</p> + +<p class="poem">‘Unhappy daughter of the great Atrides,<br /> +Thy straw-crowned palace I approach.’</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>The whole company were greatly moved at this incident, and could not help +reflecting how barbarous a thing it would be to raze that noble city, +which had produced so many great and illustrious men. Lysander, however, +finding the Athenians entirely in his power, collected the musicians of +the city, and having joined to them the band belonging to the camp, pulled +down the walls, and burned the ships, to the sound of their instruments.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span> [The pages are those of the complete edition, in 16 vols.]—P. 3, +<i>Euthukles</i>, the husband of Balaustion, whom she met first at Syracuse. p. +4, <i>Koré</i>, the daughter of Ceres, the same as Proserpine. p. 6, +<i>Peiraios</i>, the principal harbour of Athens, with which it was connected +by the long walls; “<i>walls, long double-range Themistoklean</i>”: after +Themistocles, the Athenian general, who planned the fortifications of +Athens; <i>Dikast</i> and <i>heliast</i>: the Dikast was the judge (<i>dike</i>, a suit, +was the term for a civil process); the heliasts were jurors, and in the +flourishing period of the democracy numbered six thousand. p. 7, +<i>Kordax-step</i>, a lascivious comic dance: to perform it off the stage was +regarded as a sign of intoxication or profligacy; <i>Propulaia</i>, a court or +vestibule of the Acropolis at Athens; <i>Pnux</i>, a place at Athens set apart +for holding assemblies: it was built on a rock; <i>Bema</i>, the elevated +position occupied by those who addressed the assembly. p. 8, <i>Dionusia</i>, +the great festivals of Bacchus, held three times a year, when alone +dramatic representations at Athens took place; “<i>Hermippos to pelt +Perikles</i>”: Hermippos was a poet who accused Aspasia, the mistress of +Pericles, of impiety; “<i>Kratinos to swear Pheidias robbed a shrine</i>”: +Kratinos was a comic poet of Athens, a contemporary of Aristophanes; +<i>Eruxis</i>, the name of a small satirist. (Compare “<i>The Frogs</i>” ll. +933-934.) <i>Momos</i>, the god of pleasantry: he satirised the gods; +<i>Makaria</i>, one of the characters in the <i>Heraclidæ</i> of Euripides: she +devoted herself to death to enable the Athenians to win a victory. p. 9, +“<i>Furies in the Oresteian song</i>”—Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megæra: they +haunted Orestes after he murdered his mother Clytemnestra: “<i>As the +Three</i>,” etc., the three tragic poets, Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. +<i>Klutaimnestra</i>, wife of Agamemnon and mother of Orestes, Iphigenia, and +Electra: she murdered her husband on his return from Troy; <i>Iocasté</i>, +Iocasta, wife of Laius<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> and mother of Œdipus; <i>Medeia</i>, daughter of +Aetes: when Jason repudiated her she killed their children; <i>Choros</i>: the +function of the chorus, represented by its leader, was to act as an ideal +public: it might consist of old men and women or maidens; dances and +gestures were introduced, to illustrate the drama. p. 10, <i>peplosed and +kothorned</i>, robed and buskined. <i>Phrunicos</i>, a tragic poet of Athens: he +was heavily fined by the government for exhibiting the sufferings of a +kindred people in a drama. (Herod., vi., 21.) “<i>Milesian smart-place</i>,” +the Persian conquest of Miletus. p. 11, <i>Lenaia</i>, a festival of Bacchus, +with poetical contentions, etc.; <i>Baccheion</i>, a temple of Bacchus; +<i>Andromedé</i>, rescued from a sea-monster by Perseus; <i>Kresphontes</i>, one of +the tragedies of Euripides; <i>Phokis</i>, a country of northern Greece, whence +came the husband of Balaustion, who saved Athens by a song from Euripides; +<i>Bacchai</i>, a play by Euripides, not acted till after his death. p. 12, +<i>Amphitheos</i>, a priest of Ceres at Athens, ridiculed by Aristophanes to +annoy Euripides. p. 14, <i>stade</i>, a single course for foot-races at +Olympia—about a furlong; <i>diaulos</i>, the double track of the racecourse +for the return. p. 15, <i>Hupsipule</i>, queen of Lemnos, who entertained Jason +in his voyage to Colchis: “<i>Phoinissai</i>” (<i>The Phœnician Women</i>), title +of one of the plays of Euripides; “<i>Zethos against Amphion</i>”: Zethos was a +son of Jupiter by Antiope, and brother to Amphion; <i>Macedonian Archelaos</i>, +a king of Macedonia who patronised Euripides. p. 16, <i>Phorminx</i>, a harp or +guitar; “<i>Alkaion</i>,” a play of Euripides; <i>Pentheus</i>, king of Thebes, who +refused to acknowledge Bacchus as a god; “<i>Iphigenia in Aulis</i>,” a play by +Euripides; <i>Mounuchia</i>, a port of Attica between the Piræus and the +promontory of Sunium; “<i>City of Gapers</i>,” Athens—so called on account of +the curiosity of the people; <i>Kopaic eel</i>: the eels of Lake Copais, in +Bœotia, were very celebrated, and to this day maintain their +reputation. p. 17, <i>Arginousai</i>, three islands near the shores of Asia +Minor; <i>Lais</i>, a celebrated courtesan, the mistress of Alcibiades; +<i>Leogoras</i>, an Athenian debauchee; <i>Koppa-marked</i>, branded as high bred; +<i>choinix</i>, a liquid measure; <i>Mendesian wine</i>: Wine from Mende, a city of +Thrace, famous for its wines; <i>Thesmophoria</i>, a women’s festival in honour +of Ceres, made sport of by Aristophanes. p. 18, <i>Krateros</i>, probably an +imaginary character.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> <i>Arridaios</i> and <i>Krateues</i>, local poets in royal +favour; <i>Protagoras</i>, a Greek atheistic philosopher, banished from Athens, +died about 400 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>; “<i>Comic Platon</i>,” Greek poet, called “the prince of +the middle comedy,” flourished 445 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>; <i>Archelaos</i>, king of Macedonia. +p. 19, “<i>Lusistraté</i>” a play by Aristophanes, in which the women demand a +peace; <i>Kleon</i>: Cleon was an Athenian tanner and a great popular +demagogue, 411 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>, distinguished afterwards as a general; he was a great +enemy of Aristophanes. p. 20, <i>Phuromachos</i>, a military leader; <i>Phaidra</i>, +fell in love with Hippolytus, her son-in-law, who refused her love, which +proved fatal to him. p. 21, <i>Salabaccho</i>, a performer in Aristophanes’ +play, <i>The Lysistrata</i>, acting the part of “Peace”; <i>Aristeides</i>, an +Athenian general, surnamed the Just, banished 484 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>; <i>Miltiades</i>, the +Athenian general who routed the armies of Darius, died 489 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.;</span> “<i>A +golden tettix in his hair</i>” (a grasshopper), an Athenian badge of honour +worn as indicative that the bearer had “sprung from the soil”; <i>Kleophon</i>, +a demagogue of Athens. p. 22, <i>Thesmophoriazousai</i>, a play by Aristophanes +satirising women and Euripides, <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 411. p. 23, <i>Peiraios</i>, the seaport +of Athens; <i>Alkamenes</i>, a statuary who lived 448 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>, distinguished for +his beautiful statues of Venus and Vulcan; <i>Thoukudides</i> (Thucydides), the +Greek historian, died at Athens 391 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> p. 24, <i>Herakles</i> (Hercules), who +had brought Alcestis back to life: the subject of a play by Euripides. p. +25, <i>Eurustheus</i>, king of Argos, who enjoined Hercules the most hazardous +undertakings, hoping he would perish in one of them; <i>King Lukos</i>, the son +of an elder Lukos said to have been the husband of Dirke; <i>Megara</i>, +daughter of Creon, king of Thebes, and wife of Hercules; <i>Thebai</i>—<i>i.e.</i>, +of Creon of Thebes; <i>Heracleian House</i>, the house of Hercules. p. 26, +<i>Amphitruon</i>, a Theban prince, foster-father of Herakles, <i>i.e.</i>, the +husband of Alkmene the mother of Herakles by Zeus; <i>Komoscry</i>, a “Komos” +was a revel; <i>Dionusos</i>, <i>Bacchos</i>, <i>Phales</i>, <i>Iacchos</i> (all names of +Bacchus): the goat was sacrificed to Bacchus on account of the propensity +that animal has to destroy the vine. p. 27, <i>Mnesilochos</i>, the +father-in-law of Euripides, a character in the <i>Thesmophoriazousai</i>; +<i>Toxotes</i>, an archer in the same play; <i>Elaphion</i>, leader of the chorus of +females or flute-players. p. 30, <i>Helios</i>, the God of the Sun; <i>Pindaros</i>, +the greatest lyric<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> poet of Greece, born 552 +<span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>; “<i>Idle cheek band</i>” +refers to a support for the cheeks worn by trumpeters; <i>Cuckoo-apple</i>, the +highly poisonous tongue-burning Cuckoo-pint (<i>Arum maculatum</i>); <i>Thasian</i>, +Thasus, an island in the Ægean Sea famous for its wine; <i>threttanelo</i> and +<i>neblaretai</i>, imitative noises; <i>Chrusomelolonthion-Phaps</i>, a dancing +girl’s name. p. 31, <i>Artamouxia</i>, a character in the <i>Thesmophoriazousai</i> +of Aristophanes; <i>Hermes</i> == Mercury; <i>Goats-breakfast</i>, improper +allusions, connected with Bacchus; <i>Archon</i>, a chief magistrate of Athens; +“<i>Three days’ salt fish slice</i>”: each soldier was required to take with +him on the march three days’ rations. p. 32, <i>Archinos</i>, a rhetorician of +Athens (Schol. in Aristoph. Ran.); <i>Agurrhios</i>, an Athenian general in +<span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 389: he was a demagogue; “<i>Bald-head Bard</i>”: this describes +Aristophanes, and the two following words indicate his native place; +<i>Kudathenaian</i>, native of the Deme Cydathenê; <i>Pandionid</i>, of the tribe of +Pandionis; “<i>son of Philippos</i>”: Aristophanes here gives the names of his +father and of his birthplace; <i>anapæsts</i>, feet in verse, whereof the first +syllables are short and the last long; <i>Phrunichos</i> (see on <a href="#Page_10">p. 10</a>); +<i>Choirilos</i>, a tragic poet of Athens, who wrote a hundred and fifty +tragedies. p. 33, <i>Kratinos</i>, a severe and drunken satirist of Athens, 431 +<span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>; “<i>Willow-wicker-flask</i>,” <i>i.e.</i>, “Flagon,” the name of a comedy by +Kratinos which took the first prize, 423 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>; <i>Mendesian</i>, from Mende in +Thrace. p. 36, “<i>Lyric shell or tragic barbiton</i>,” instruments of music: +the barbiton was a lyre; shells were used as the bodies of lyres; +<i>Tuphon</i>, a famous giant chained under Mount Etna. p. 38, <i>Sousarion</i>, a +Greek poet of Megara, said to have been the inventor of comedy; +<i>Chionides</i>, an Athenian poet, by some alleged to have been the inventor +of comedy. p. 39, “<i>Grasshoppers</i>,” a play of Aristophanes; +“<i>Little-in-the-Fields</i>,” suburban or village feasts of Bacchus. p. 40, +<i>Ameipsias</i>, a comic poet ridiculed by Aristophanes for his insipidity; +<i>Salaminian</i>, of Salamis, an island on the coast of Attica. p. 41, +<i>Archelaos</i>, king of Macedonia, patron of Euripides. p. 42, <i>Iostephanos</i> +(violet-crowned), a title applied to Athens; <i>Dekeleia</i>, a village of +Attica north of Athens; <i>Kleonumos</i>, an Athenian often ridiculed by +Aristophanes; <i>Melanthios</i>, a tragic poet, a son of Philocles; +<i>Parabasis</i>, an address in the old comedy, where the author speaks through +the mouth of the chorus; “<i>The Wasps</i>,” one of the famous plays of +Aristophanes. p. 43, <i>Telekleides</i>, an Athenian comic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> poet of the age of +Pericles; <i>Murtilos</i>, a comic poet; <i>Hermippos</i>, a poet, an elder +contemporary of Aristophanes; <i>Eupolis</i>: is coupled with Aristophanes as a +chief representative of the old comedy (born 446 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>); <i>Kratinos</i>, a +contemporary comic poet, who died a few years after Aristophanes began to +write for the stage; <i>Mullos</i> and <i>Euetes</i>, comic poets of Athens; +<i>Megara</i>, a small country of Greece, p. 44, <i>Morucheides</i>, an archon of +Athens, in whose time it was ordered that no one should be ridiculed on +the stage by name; <i>Sourakosios</i>, an Athenian lawyer ridiculed by the +poets for his garrulity; <i>Tragic Trilogy</i>, a series of three dramas, +which, though complete each in itself, bear a certain relation to each +other, and form one historical and poetical picture—<i>e.g.</i>, the three +plays of the <i>Oresteia</i>, the <i>Agamemnon</i>, the <i>Choëphoræ</i>, and the +<i>Eumenides</i> by Æschylus. p. 45, “<i>The Birds</i>,” the title of one of +Aristophanes’ plays. p. 46, <i>Triphales</i>, a three-plumed helmet-wearer; +<i>Trilophos</i>, a three-crested helmet-wearer; <i>Tettix</i> (the grasshopper), a +sign of honour worn as a golden ornament; “<i>Autochthon-brood</i>”: the +Athenians so called themselves, boasting that they were as old as the +country they inhabited; <i>Taügetan</i>, a mountain near Sparta. p. 47, +<i>Ruppapai</i>, a sailor’s cry; <i>Mitulené</i>, the capital of Lesbos, a famous +seat of learning, and the birthplace of many great men; <i>Oidipous</i>, son of +Laius, king of Thebes, and Jocasta: he murdered his own father; <i>Phaidra</i>, +who fell in love with her son Hippolytus; <i>Augé</i>, the mother of Telephus +by Hercules; <i>Kanaké</i>, a daughter of Æolus, who bore a child to her +brother Macareus; <i>antistrophé</i>, a part of the Greek choral ode. p. 48, +<i>Aigina</i>, an island opposite Athens. p. 49, <i>Prutaneion</i>, the large hall +at Athens where the magistrates feasted with those who had rendered great +services to the country; <i>Ariphrades</i>, a person ridiculed by Aristophanes +for his filthiness; <i>Karkinos</i> and his sons were Athenian dancers: +supposed here to have been performing in a play of Ameipsias. p. 50, +<i>Parachoregema</i>, the subordinate chorus; <i>Aristullos</i>, an infamous poet; +“<i>Bald Bard’s hetairai</i>,” Aristophanes’ female companions. p. 51, +<i>Murrhiné</i> and <i>Akalanthis</i>, chorus girls representing “good-humour” and +“indulgence”; <i>Kailligenia</i>, a name of Ceres: here it means her festival +celebrated by the woman chorus of the <i>Thesmophoriaxousai</i>; <i>Lusandros</i> == +Lysander, a celebrated Spartan general; <i>Euboia</i>, a large island in the +Ægean Sea; “<i>The Great King’s Eye</i>,” the nickname of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> Persian +ambassador in the play of <i>The Acharnians</i>; <i>Kompolakuthes</i>, a puffed-up +braggadocio. p. 52, <i>Strattis</i>, a comic poet; <i>klepsudra</i>, a water clock; +<i>Sphettian vinegar</i> == vinegar from the village of Sphettus; <i>silphion</i>, a +herb by some called masterwort, by some benzoin, by others pellitory; +<i>Kleonclapper</i>, <i>i.e.</i>, a scourge of Cleon; <i>Agathon</i>, an Athenian poet, +very lady-like in appearance, a character in <i>The Women’s Festival</i> of +Aristophanes; “<i>Babaiax!</i>” interjection of admiration. p. 54, “<i>Told him +in a dream</i>” (see Cicero, <i>Divinatione</i>, xxv); <i>Euphorion</i>, a son of +Æschylus, who published four of his father’s plays after his death, and +defeated Euripides with one of them; <i>Trugaios</i>, a character in the comedy +of <i>Peace</i>: he is a distressed Athenian who soars to the sky on a beetle’s +back; <i>Philonides</i>, a Greek comic poet of Athens; <i>Simonides</i>, a +celebrated poet of Cos, 529 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>: he was the first poet who wrote for +money: he bore the character of an avaricious man; <i>Kallistratos</i>, a comic +poet, rival of Aristophanes; <i>Asklepios</i> == Æsculapius; <i>Iophon</i>, a son of +Sophocles, who tried to make out that his father was an imbecile. p. 58, +<i>Maketis</i>, capital of Macedonia; <i>Pentelikos</i>, a mountain of Attica, +celebrated for its marble. p. 60, <i>Lamachos</i>: the “Great Captain” of the +day was the brave son of Xenophanes, killed before Syracuse <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 414: +satirised by Aristophanes in <i>The Acharnians</i>; <i>Pisthetairos</i>, a character +in Aristophanes’ <i>Birds</i>; <i>Strepsiades</i>, a character in <i>The Clouds</i> of +Aristophanes; <i>Ariphrades</i> (see under p. 49). p. 63, “<i>Nikias, +ninny-like</i>,” the Athenian general who ruined Athens at Syracuse—was very +superstitious. p. 64, <i>Hermai</i>, statues of Mercury in the streets of +Athens: we have one in the British Museum. p. 67, <i>Sophroniskos</i>, was the +father of Socrates. p. 75, <i>Kephisophon</i>, a friend of Euripides, said to +have afforded him literary assistance. p. 79, <i>Palaistra</i>, the boy’s +school for physical culture. p. 82, <i>San</i>, the letter S, used as a +horse-brand. p. 81, <i>Aias</i> == Ajax. p. 82, <i>Pisthetairos</i>, an enterprising +Athenian in the comedy of the <i>Birds</i>. p. 83, “<i>Rocky-ones</i>” == Athenians; +<i>Peparethian</i>, famous wine of Peparethus, on the coast of Macedonia. p. +85, <i>Promachos</i>, a defender or champion, name of a statue: the bronze +statue of <i>Athene Promachos</i> is here referred to, which was erected from +the spoils taken at Marathon, and stood between the Propylæa and the +Erechtheum: the proportions of this statue were so gigantic that the +gleaming point of the lance and the crest of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> the helmet were visible to +seamen on approaching the Piræus from Sunium (Seyffert, <i>Dict. Class. +Ant.</i>); <i>Oresteia</i>, the trilogy or three tragedies of Æschylus—the +<i>Agamemnon</i>, the <ins class="correction" title="original: Chöephoræ"><i>Choëphoræ</i></ins>, and the <i>Eumenides</i>. p. 86, <i>Kimon</i>, son of +Miltiades: he was a famous Athenian general, and was banished by the +<i>Boulé</i>, or council of state; <i>Prodikos</i>, a Sophist put to death by the +Athenians about 396 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>, satirised by Aristophanes. p. 87, <i>Kottabos</i>, a +kind of game in which liquid is thrown up so as to make a loud noise in +falling: it was variously played (<i>see</i> Seyffert’s <i>Dict. Class. Ant.</i>, p. +165); <i>Choes</i>, an Athenian festival; <i>Theoros</i>, a comic poet of infamous +character. p. 88, <i>Brilesian</i>, Brilessus, a mountain of Attica. p. 89, +“<i>Plataian help</i>,” prompt assistance: the Platæans furnished a thousand +soldiers to help the Athenians at Marathon; <i>Saperdion</i>, a term of +endearment; <i>Empousa</i>, a hobgoblin or horrible sceptre: “Apollonius of +Tyana saw in a desert near the Indus an empousa or ghûl taking many forms” +(<i>Philostratus</i>, ii., 4); <i>Kimberic</i>, name of a species of vestment. p. +93, “<i>Kuthereia’s self</i>,” a surname of Venus. p. 94, <i>plethron square</i>, +100 square feet; <i>chiton</i>, the chief and indispensible article of female +dress, or an undergarment worn by both sexes. p. 95, <i>Ion</i>, a tragic poet +of Chios; <i>Iophon</i>, son of Sophocles, a poor poet; <i>Aristullos</i>, an +infamous poet. p. 98, <i>Cloudcuckooburg</i>, in Aristophanes’ play <i>The Birds</i> +these animals are persuaded to build a city in the air, so as to cut off +the gods from men; <i>Tereus</i>, a king of Thrace, who offered violence to his +sister-in-law Philomela; <i>Hoopoe triple-crest</i>: Tereus was said to have +been changed into a hoopoe (<i>The Birds</i>); <i>Palaistra tool</i>, <i>i.e.</i>, one +highly developed; <i>Amphiktuon</i>, a council of the wisest and best men of +Greece; <i>Phrixos</i>, son of Athamas, king of Thebes, persecuted by his +stepmother was fabled to have taken flight to Colchis on a ram. p. 99, +<i>Priapos</i>, the god of orchards, gardens, and licentiousness; <i>Phales +Iacchos</i>, indecent figure of Bacchus. p. 102, <i>Kallikratidas</i>, a Spartan +who routed the Athenian fleet about 400 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>; <i>Theramenes</i>, an Athenian +philosopher and general of the time of Alcibiades. p. 103, <i>chaunoprockt</i>, +a catamite. p. 113, <i>Aristonumos</i>, a comic poet, contemporary with +Aristophanes; <i>Ameipsias</i>, a comic poet satirised by Aristophanes; +<i>Sannurion</i>, a comic poet of Athens: <i>Neblaretai! Rattei!</i> exclamations +of joy. p. 117, <i>Sousarion</i>, a Greek poet of Megara, who introduced comedy +at Athens on a movable stage,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> 562 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>: he was unfriendly to the ladies. +p. 118, <i>Lemnians</i>, <i>The Hours</i>, <i>Female Playhouse</i>, etc., these are all +lost plays of Aristophanes. p. 119, <i>Kassiterides</i>, “the tin islands”: the +Scilly Islands, Land’s End, and Lizard Point. p. 121, “<i>Your games</i>”: +<i>Olympian</i>, in honour of Zeus at Olympia; <i>Pythian</i>, held near Delphi; +<i>Isthmian</i>, held in the Isthmus of Corinth; <i>Nemeian</i>, celebrated in the +valley of Nemea. p. 126, <i>Phoibos</i>, name of Apollo or the sun; <i>Kunthia</i> +== Cynthia, a surname of Diana, from Mount Cynthus, where she was born. p. +128, <i>skiadeion</i>, the umbel or umbrella-like head of plants like fennel or +anise—hence a parasol or umbrella; <i>Huperbolos</i>, an Athenian demagogue. +p. 129, <i>Theoria</i>, festival at Athens in honour of Apollo—character in +<i>The Peace</i>; <i>Opôra</i>, a character in <i>The Peace</i>. p. 133, “<i>Philokleon +turns Bdelukleon</i>,” an admirer of Cleon, turned detester of Cleon: +character in Aristophanes’ comedy <i>The Wasps</i>. p. 135, <i>Logeion</i>, the +stage where the actors perform—properly “the speaking place.” p. 137, +<i>Lamia-shape</i>, as of the monsters with face of a woman and body of a +serpent; <i>Kukloboros</i>, roaring—a noise as of the torrent of the river in +Attica of that name; <i>Platon</i> == Plato. p. 140, <i>Konnos</i>, the play of +Ameipsias which beat the <i>Clouds</i> of Aristophanes in the award of the +judges; <i>Moruchides</i>, a magistrate of Athens, in whose time it was decided +that no one should be ridiculed on the stage by name; <i>Euthumenes</i>, +<i>Argurrhios</i>, <i>Surakosios</i>, <i>Kinesias</i>, Athenian rulers who endeavoured to +restrain the gross attacks of the comic poets. p. 141, <i>Acharnes</i>, +Aristophanes’ play <i>The Acharnians</i>: it is the most ancient specimen of +comedy which has reached us. p. 143, <i>Poseidon</i>, the Sea == Neptune. p. +144, <i>Triballos</i>, a vulgar deity. p. 145, <i>Kolonos</i>, an eminence near +Athens; <i>stulos</i>, a style or pen to write with on wax tablets; +<i>psalterion</i>, a musical instrument like a harp, a psaltery. p. 146, +<i>Pentheus</i>, king of Thebes, who resisted the worship of Bacchus, and was +driven mad by the god and torn to pieces by his own mother and her two +sisters in their Bacchic frenzy. p. 147, <i>Herakles</i> == Hercules; <i>Argive +Amphitruon</i>, son of Alkaios and husband of Alcmene; <i>Alkaios</i>, father of +Amphitruon and grandfather of Hercules; <i>Perseus</i>, son of Jupiter and +Danae; <i>Thebai</i>, capital of Bœotia, founded by Cadmus; <i>Sown-ones</i>, the +armed men who rose from the dragons’ teeth sown by Cadmus; <i>Ares</i>, Greek +name of Mars; <i>Kadmos</i>, founder of Bœotian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> Thebes; <i>Kreon</i>, king of +Thebes, father of Megara slain by Lukos; <i>Menoikeus</i>, father of the Kreon +above referred to. p. 148, <i>Kuklopian city</i>: Argos, according to +Euripides, was built by the seven Cyclopes: “These were architects who +attended Prœtus when he returned out of Asia; among other works with +which they adorned Greece were the walls of Mycenæ and Tiryns, which were +built of unhewn stones, so large that two mules yoked could not move the +smallest of them” (Potter); <i>Argos</i>, an ancient city, capital of Argolis +in Peloponnesus; <i>Elektruon</i>, a son of Perseus; <i>Heré</i> == Juno; +<i>Tainaros</i>, a promontory of Laconia, where was the cavern whence Hercules +dragged Cerberus; <i>Dirké</i>, wife of the Theban prince Lukos; <i>Amphion</i>: +“His skill in music was so great that the very stones were said to have +been wrought upon by his lyre, and of themselves to have built the walls +of Thebes”—<i>Carey</i> (<i>see</i> <a href="#vogler"><span class="smcap">Abt Vogler</span>)</a>; <i>Zethos</i>, brother of Amphion; +<i>Euboia</i>, the largest island in the Ægean Sea, now Negroponte. p. 149, +<i>Minuai</i>, the Argonauts, companions of Jason. p. 150, <i>Taphian town</i>, +Taphiæ, islands in the Ionian Sea. p. 153, <i>peplos</i>, a robe. p. 154, +<i>Hellas</i> == Greece; <i>Nemeian monster</i>, the lion slain by Hercules. p. 156, +<i>Kentaur race</i>, a people of Thessaly represented as half men and half +horses; <i>Pholoé</i>, a mountain in Arcadia; <i>Dirphus</i>, a mountain of Eubœa +which Hercules laid waste; <i>Abantid</i>: Abantis was an ancient name of +Eubœa. p. 158, <i>Parnasos</i>, a mountain of Phocis. p. 165, <i>Peneios</i>, a +river of Thessaly; <i>Mount Pelion</i>, a celebrated mountain of Thessaly; +<i>Homole</i>, a mountain of Thessaly; <i>Oinoé</i> == Œne, a small town of +Argolis; <i>Diomede</i>, a king of Thrace who fed his horses on human flesh, +and was himself destroyed by Hercules. p. 166, <i>Hebros</i>, the principal +river of Thrace; <i>Mukenaian tyrant</i>, Eurystheus, king of Mycenæ; +<i>Amauros</i>, Amaurus, a river of Thessaly near the foot of Pelion; <i>Kuknos</i>, +a son of Mars by Pelopea, killed by Hercules; <i>Amphanaia</i>, a Dorian city; +<i>Hesperian</i>, west, towards Spain; <i>Maiotis</i>, Lake Mæotis, <i>i.e.</i>, the Sea +of Azof. p. 167, <i>Lernaian snake</i>, the hydra slain by Hercules, who then +drained the marsh of Lerna; <i>Erutheia</i>, an island near Cadiz, where +Hercules drove the oxen of Geryon. p. 169, <i>Pelasgia</i> == Greece; +<i>Daidalos</i>, mythical personage, father of Icarus; <i>Oichalia</i>, a town of +Laconia, destroyed by Hercules. p. 177, <i>Ismenos</i>, a river of Bœotia +flowing through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> Thebes. p. 180, <i>Orgies</i>, festivals of Bacchus; +<i>Chthonia</i>, a surname of Ceres; <i>Hermion</i>, a town of Argolis where Ceres +had a famous temple; <i>Theseus</i>, king of Athens, conqueror of the Minotaur. +p. 182, <i>Aitna</i> == Etna. p. 183, <i>Mnemosuné</i>, the mother of the Muses; +<i>Bromios</i>, a surname of Bacchus; <i>Delian girls</i>, of Delos, one of the +Cyclades islands; <i>Latona</i>, mother of Apollo and Diana. p. 188, +<i>Acherontian harbour</i>: Acheron was one of the rivers of hell. p. 189, +<i>Asopiad sisters</i>, daughters of the god of the river Asopus; <i>Puthios</i>, +surname of the Delphian Apollo; <i>Helikonian muses</i>: Mount Helicon, in +Bœotia, was sacred to Apollo and the Muses. p. 190, <i>Plouton</i> == Pluto, +god of hell; <i>Paian</i>, name of Apollo, the healer; <i>Iris</i>, the swift-footed +messenger of the gods. p. 193, <i>Keres</i>, the daughters of Night and +personified necessity of Death. p. 194, <i>Otototoi</i>, woe! alas! p. 195, +<i>Tariaros</i> == Hades; <i>Pallas</i>, <i>i.e.</i>, Minerva. p. 198, <i>Niso’s city</i>, +port town of Megara; <i>Isthmos</i>, the isthmus of Corinth. p. 201, <i>Argolis</i>, +a country of Peloponnesus, now Romania; <i>Danaos</i>, son of Belus, king of +Egypt: he had fifty daughters, who murdered the fifty sons of Egyptus; +<i>Prokné</i>, daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, wife of Tereus, king of +Thrace. p. 202, <i>Itus</i>, son of Prokné. p. 206, <i>Taphioi</i>, the Taphians, +who made war against Electryon, and killed all his sons; <i>Erinues</i> == the +Furies. p. 213, <i>Erechtheidai’s town</i> == Athens. p. 215, <i>Hundredheaded +Hydra</i>, a dreadful monster slain by Hercules. p. 216, <i>Phlegruia</i>, a place +of Macedonia, where Hercules defeated the giants. p. 234, <i>Iostephanos</i>, +violet-crowned, a name of Athens. p. 235, <i>Thamuris</i>, an ancient Thracian +bard; <i>Poikilé</i>, a celebrated portico of Athens, adorned with pictures of +gods and benefactors; <i>Rhesus</i> was king of Thrace and ally of the Trojans; +<i>Blind Bard</i> == Thamuris. p. 236, <i>Eurutos</i>, a king of Œchalia, who +offered his daughter to a better shot than himself: Hercules won, but was +denied the prize; <i>Dorion</i>, a town of Messenia, where Thamyris challenged +the Muses to a trial of skill; <i>Balura</i>, a river of Peloponnesus. p. 241, +<i>Dekeleia</i>, a village of Attica north of Athens, celebrated in the +Peloponnesian war; <i>spinks</i>, chaffinches. p. 242, <i>Amphion</i>, son of +Jupiter and inventor of Music: he built the walls of Thebes to the sound +of his lyre. p. 245, <i>Castalian dew</i>, the fountain of Castalia, near +Phocis, at the foot of Parnassus. p. 247, <i>Pheidippides</i>, the celebrated +runner, a character also in <i>The Clouds</i>. p. 248, <i>Aigispoiamoi</i>, +Ægospotamos was the river where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> the Athenians were defeated by Lysander, +<span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 405; <i>Elaphebolion month</i>, stag-hunting time, when the poetical +contests took place; <i>Lusandros</i>, the celebrated Spartan general Lysander; +<i>triremes</i>, galleys with three banks of oars one above another. p. 249, +<i>Bakis-prophecy</i>, Bacis was a famous soothsayer of Bœotia. p. 253, +<i>Elektra</i>, daughter of Agamemnon, king of Argos; <i>Orestes</i>, brother of +Elektra, who saved his life. p. 254, <i>Klutaimnestra</i>, murdered her husband +Agamemnon. p. 255, <i>Kommos</i>, a great wailing; <i>eleleleleu</i>, a loud crying; +<i>Lakonians</i>, the <ins class="correction" title="original: Lacedemonians">Lacedæmonians</ins> == the Spartans. p. 258, <i>Young Philemon</i>, +a Greek comic poet; there was an old Philemon, contemporary with +Menander.—Mr. Fotheringham, in his “Studies in the Poetry of Robert +Browning,” says: “Browning’s <i>preference for Euripides</i> among Greek +dramatists, and his defence of that poet in the person of Balaustion +against Aristophanes, shows how distinctly he has considered the +principles raised by the later drama of Greece, and how deliberately he +prefers Euripidean art and aims to Aristophanic naturalism. He likes the +human and ethical standpoint, the serious and truth-loving spirit of the +tragic rather than the pure Hellenism of the comic poet; while the +<i>Apology</i> suggests a broader spirit and a larger view, an art that unites +the realism of the one with the higher interests of the other—delight in +and free study of the world with ideal aims and spiritual truth” (p. 356).</p> + +<p><b>Arezzo.</b> A city of Tuscany, the residence of Count Guido Franceschini, the +husband of Pompilia and her murderer. It is now a clean, well-built, +well-paved, and flourishing town of ten thousand inhabitants. It is +celebrated in connection with many remarkable men, as Mæcenas, Guido the +musician, Guittone the poet, Cesalpini the botanist, Vasari, the author of +the “Lives of the Painters,” and many others. (<i>The Ring and the Book.</i>)</p> + +<p><b>Art Poems.</b> The great poems dealing with painting are “Fra Lippo Lippi,” +“Andrea del Sarto,” “Old Pictures in Florence,” “Pictor Ignotus,” and “The +Guardian Angel.”</p> +<p><a name="artemis" id="artemis"></a></p> +<p><b>Artemis Prologizes.</b> (<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, in <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, No. +III. 1842.) Theseus became enamoured of Hippolyta when he attended +Hercules in his expedition against the Amazons. Before she accepted him as +her lover, he had to vanquish her in single combat, which difficult and +dangerous task he accomplished. She accompanied him to Athens, and bore +him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> a son, Hippolytus. The young prince excelled in every manly virtue, +but he was averse to the female sex, and grievously offended Venus by +neglecting her and devoting himself entirely to the worship of Diana, +called by the Greeks Artemis. Venus was enraged, and determined to ruin +him. Hippolyta in process of time died, and Theseus married Phædra, the +daughter of Minos, the king of Crete. Unhappily, as soon as Phædra saw the +young and accomplished Hippolytus, she conceived for him a guilty +passion—which, however, she did her utmost to conceal. It was Venus who +inspired her with this insane love, out of revenge to Hippolytus, whom she +intended to ruin by this means. Phædra’s nurse discovered the secret, and +told it to the youth, notwithstanding the commands of her mistress to +conceal it. The chaste young man was horrified at the declaration, and +indignantly resented it. The disgraced and betrayed Phædra determined to +take her own life; but dying with a letter in her hand which accused +Hippolytus of attempts upon her virtue, the angry father, without asking +his son for explanations, banished him from the kingdom, having first +claimed the performance from Neptune of his promise to grant three of his +requests. As Hippolytus fled from Athens, his horses were terrified by a +sea monster sent on shore by Neptune. The frightened horses upset the +chariot, and the young man was dragged over rocks and precipices and +mangled by the wheels of his chariot. In the tragedy, as left by +Euripides, Diana appears by the young man’s dying bed and comforts him, +telling him also that to perish thus was his fate:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">“But now</span><br /> +Farewell: to see the dying or the dead<br /> +Is not permitted me: it would pollute<br /> +Mine eyes; and thou art near this fatal ill.”</p> + +<p>The tragedy ends with the dying words of Hippolytus:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“No longer I retain my strength: I die;<br /> +But veil my face, now veil it with my vests.”</p> + +<p>So far Euripides. Mr. Browning, however, carries the idea further, and +makes Diana try to save the life of her worshipper, by handing him over to +the care of Æsculapius, to restore to life and health by the wisest +pharmacies of the god of healing. Mr. Browning’s poem closes with the +chaste goddess watching and waiting for the result of the attempt to save +his life. The poet has adopted the Greek spelling in place of that to +which we are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> more accustomed. The Greek names require their Latin +equivalents for non-classical scholars. <i>Artemis</i> is the Greek name for +<i>Diana</i>; <i>Asclepios</i> is <i>Æsculapius</i>; <i>Aphrodite</i>, the Greek name of +<i>Venus</i>; <i>Poseidon</i> is <i>Neptune</i>; and <i>Phoibus</i> or <i>Phœbus</i> is +<i>Apollo</i>, the Sun. <i>Heré</i> == Hera or Juno, Queen of Heaven. <i>Athenai</i> == +Minerva. <i>Phaidra</i>, daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, who married Theseus. +<i>Theseus</i>, king of Athens. <i>Hippolutos</i>, son of Theseus and Hippolyte. +<i>Henetian horses</i>, or <i>Enetian</i>, of a district near Paphlagonia.</p> + +<p><b>Artemisia Genteleschi</b> (Beatrice Signorini, <i>Asolando</i>), “the consummate +Artemisia” of the poem, was a celebrated artist (1590-1642). <i>See</i> +<a href="#beatrice"><span class="smcap">Beatrice Signorini</span></a>.</p> + +<p><b>“Ask not the least word of praise,”</b> the first line of the lyric at the end +of “A Pillar at Sebzevah,” No. 11 of <i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Asolando: Fancies and Facts.</b> Published in London, December 12th, 1889, on +the day on which Mr. Browning died in Venice. <i>Contents</i>: Prologue; Rosny; +Dubiety; Now; Humility; Poetics; Summum Bonum; A Pearl, A Girl; +Speculative; White Witchcraft; Bad Dreams, I., II., III., IV.; +Inapprehensiveness; Which? The Cardinal and the Dog; The Pope and the Net; +The Bean-Feast; Muckle-mouth Meg; Arcades Ambo; The Lady and the Painter; +Ponte dell’ Angelo, Venice; Beatrice Signorini; Flute Music, with an +Accompaniment; “Imperante Augusto, Natus est ——”; Development; Rephan; +Reverie; Epilogue. The volume is dedicated to the poet’s friend, Mrs. +Arthur Bronson. In the dedication the poet explains the title Asolando: it +was a “<i>title-name popularly ascribed to the inventiveness of the ancient +secretary of Queen Cornaro, whose palace-tower still overlooks us</i>.” +Asolare—“to disport in the open air, amuse oneself at random.” “The +objection that such a word nowhere occurs in the works of the Cardinal is +hardly important. Bembo was too thorough a purist to conserve in print a +term which in talk he might possibly toy with; but the word is more likely +derived from a Spanish source. I use it for love of the place, and in +requital of your pleasant assurance that an early poem of mine first +attracted you thither; where and elsewhere, at La Mura as Cà Alvisi, may +all happiness attend you!—Gratefully and affectionately yours, R. +B.”—Asolo, <i>Oct. 5th, 1889</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Asolo</b> (<i>Pippa Passes—Sordello—Asolando</i>), the ancient<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> Acelum: a very +picturesque mediæval fortified town, in the province of Treviso, in +Venetia, Italy, 5500 inhabitants, at the foot of a hill surmounted by the +ruins of a castle, from which one of the most extensive panoramas of the +great plain of the Brenta and the Piave, with the encircling Alps, and the +distant insulated group of the Euganean hills, opens before the traveller. +On a fine summer evening the two silver lines of the Piave and the Brenta +may be followed from their Alpine valleys to the sea, in the midst of the +green alluvial plain in which Treviso, Vicenza and Padua are easily +recognised. Venice, with its cupolas and steeples, is seen near the +extreme east horizon, which is terminated by the blue line of the +Adriatic; whilst behind, to the north, the snow-capped peaks of the Alps +rise in majestic grandeur. The village of Asolo is surrounded by a wall +with mediæval turrets, and several of its houses present curiously +sculptured façades.—The castle, a quadrangular building with a high +tower, is an interesting monument of the thirteenth century. It was the +residence of the beautiful Caterina Cornaro, the last queen of Cyprus, +after the forced resignation of her kingdom to the Venetians in 1489. Here +this lady of elegant tastes and refined education closed her days in +comparative obscurity, in the enjoyment of an empty title and a splendid +income, and surrounded by a small court and several literary characters. +Of these, one of the most celebrated was Pietro Bembo, the historian of +Venice, afterwards Cardinal, whose celebrated philosophical dialogues on +the nature of love, the <i>Asolani</i>, have derived their name from this +locality. Mr. Browning visited Asolo first when a young man; it was here +that he gathered ideas for <i>Pippa Passes</i> and <i>Sordello</i>, and in the last +year of his life his loving footsteps found their way to the little +hill-town of that Italy whose name was graven on his heart. Here, as Mr. +Sharp reminds us in his <i>Life of Browning</i>, the poet heard again the echo +of Pippa’s song—</p> + +<p class="poem">“God’s in His heaven, All’s right with the world!”</p> + +<p>He heard it as a young man, he hears it as he nears the dark river, the +conviction had never left his soul for a moment in all the length of +intervening years. Asolo will be a pilgrim spot for Browning lovers. The +Catherine Cornaro referred to was the wife of King James II., of Cyprus; +his marriage with this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> Venetian lady of rank was designed to secure the +support of the Republic of Venice. After his death, and that of his son +James III., Queen Catherine felt she was unable to withstand the attacks +of the Turks, and was induced to abdicate in favour of the Republic of +Venice, which in 1487 took possession of the island. Catherine was +assigned a palace and court at Asolo, as already mentioned. Her palace was +the resort of the learned and accomplished men and women of Venice, famous +amongst whom was her secretary, Cardinal Pietro Bembo, the celebrated +author of the <i>History of Venice</i>, from 1487 to 1513, and a number of +essays, dialogues, and poems. His dialogue on Platonic love is entitled +<i>Gli Asolani</i>. He died in 1547. When Queen Catherine settled in her +beautiful castle of Asolo, she could have found little cause to regret the +circumstances which led her from her troubled kingdom of Cyprus to the +idyllic sweetness of her later life. Surrounded by her twelve maids of +honour and her eighty serving-men, her favourite negress, her parrots, +apes, peacocks, and hounds, her peaceful life passed in ideal +pleasantness. But the wealth and luxury of her surroundings did not make +her selfish, or unconcerned for the welfare of her little kingdom. In all +that concerned the happiness and well-being of her people she was as +deeply interested as the monarchs of more important states. She opened a +pawnbroking bank for the poor, imported corn from Cyprus and distributed +it, and appointed competent officials to settle the complaints and +difficulties of her subjects. She lived for her people’s welfare, and won +their affections by her goodness and grace. For twenty years she lived at +Asolo, leaving it on only three occasions: to visit her brother in +Brescia; to walk to Venice across the frozen lagoon; and once when troops +occupied her little town. She died then, at Venice, on July 10th, 1510, +and was buried by the republic of the city in the sea, with its utmost +magnificence. The fate could scarcely have been called cruel which gave a +royal residence amid scenery such as Asolo can boast, under such +conditions as blessed the later years of good Queen Catherine.</p> + +<p><b>At the Mermaid.</b> The Mermaid Tavern, in Cheapside, was the favourite resort +of the great Elizabethan dramatists and poets. Raleigh’s Club at the +Mermaid was the meeting-place of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, where he +feasted with Raleigh, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Massinger, +Donne,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> Drayton, Camden, Selden, and the rest. “At this meeting-place of +the gods,” says Heywood, in his <i>Hierarchy of Angels</i>:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Mellifluous Shakespeare, whose enchanting quill<br /> +Commanded mirth or passion, was but <i>Will</i>,<br /> +And famous Jonson, tho’ his learned pen<br /> +Be dipt in Castaly, is still but <i>Ben</i>.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Browning introduces us to Shakespeare protesting that he makes no +claim and has no desire to be the leader of a new school of poetry. In the +person of Shakespeare Mr. Browning tells the world that if they want to +know anything about him they must take his ideas as they are expressed in +his works, not seek to pry into his life and opinions behind them. His +works are the world’s, his rest is his own. He protests, too, that when he +utters opinions and expresses ideas dramatically they are not to be +snatched at by leaders of sects and parties, and bottled as specimens for +their museums, or used to give authority to their own pet principles. He +does not set open the door of his bard’s breast: on the contrary, he bars +his portal, and leaves his work and his inquisitive visitors alike +“outside.” Notwithstanding this emphatic declaration, it is probable that +few great poets have opened their hearts to the world more completely than +Mr. Browning: it is as easy to construct his personality from his works as +it is to reconstruct an old Greek temple from the sculptured stones which +are scattered on its site. All Mr. Browning’s characters talk the Browning +tongue, and are as little given to barring their portals as he to closing +the door of his breast. This fact must not, of course, be unduly pressed. +The utterances of Caliban are not to be put on the same level as the +thoughts, expressed a hundred times, which justify the ways of God to man. +Having declared himself as determined to let the public have no glimpse +inside his breast, in Stanza 10 be proceeds to admit us to his innermost +soul, in its joy of life and golden optimism. It is as perfect a picture +of the poet’s healthy mind as he could possibly have given us, and is an +earnest deprecation of the idea that a poet must necessarily be more or +less insane. <span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Oreichalch</i> (7), a mixed metal resembling +brass—bronze. “<i>Threw Venus</i>” (15): in dice the best cast (three sixes) +was called “Venus.” Ben Jonson tells us that his own wife was “a shrew, +yet honest.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span><b>Austin Tresham.</b> Gwendolen Tresham’s betrothed, in <i>A Blot in the +’Scutcheon</i>. He is next heir to the earldom.</p> + +<p><b>Azoth</b> (<i>Paracelsus</i>). The universal remedy of Paracelsus, in alchemy. The +term was applied to mercury, which was supposed to exist in every metallic +body, and constitute its basis. The Azoth of Paracelsus, according to Mr. +Browning, was simply the laudanum which he had discovered. The alchemists +by Azoth sometimes meant to express the creative principle of nature. As +“he was commonly believed to possess the double tincture, the power of +curing diseases and transmuting metals,” as Mr. Browning explains in a +note to the poem, the expression is often difficult to define precisely, +as indeed are many of the terms used by alchemists.</p> + +<p><b>Azzo.</b> Lords of Este (<i>Sordello</i>): Guelf leaders. The poem is concerned +with Azzo VI. (1170-1212), who became the head of the Guelf party. During +the whole lifetime of Azzo VI. a civil war raged almost without +interruption in the streets of Ferrara, each party, it is said, being ten +times driven from the city. Azzo VII. (1205-64) was constantly at war with +Eccelino III. da Romano, who leagued himself with Salinguerra. Azzo +married Adelaide, niece of Eccelino, and died 1264. (<i>Encyc. Brit.</i>)</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Bad Dreams.</b> (<i>Asolando.</i>) I. In the first dream the lover sees that the +face of the loved one has changed: love has died out of the eyes, and the +charm of the look has gone. Love is estranged, for faith has gone. With a +breaking heart the lover can say love is still the same for him. II. A +weird dream of a strange ball, a dance of death and hell, where, +notwithstanding harmony of feet and hands, “man’s sneer met woman’s +curse.” The dreamer creeps to the wall side, avoiding the dance of haters, +and steps into a chapel where is performed a strange worship by a priest +unknown. The dreamer sees a worshipper—his wife—enter, to palliate or +expurgate her soul of some ugly stain. How contracted? “A mere dream” is +an insufficient excuse. The soul in sleep, free from the disguises of the +day, wanders at will. Perhaps it may indeed be that our suppressed evil +thoughts—thoughts that, kept down by custom, conventionality, and respect +for public opinion, never become incarnate in act—walk at night<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> and +revel in unfettered freedom, as foul gases rise from vaults and basements +when the house is closed at night, and the purifying influences of the +light and air are excluded. III. Is a dream of a primeval forest: giant +trees, impenetrable tangle of enormous undergrowths, where lurks some +brute-type. A lucid city of bright marbles, domes and spires, pure streets +too fine for smirch of human foot, its solitary traverser the soul of the +dreamer; and all at once appears a hideous sight: the beautiful city is +devoured by the forest, the trees by the pavements turned to teeth. Nature +is represented by the forest, Art by the city and its palaces. Each in its +place is seen to be good and worthy, but when each devours the other both +are accurst. The man seems to think that his wife conceals some part of +her life from him; her nature is good and true, but he fears her art (or +perhaps arts, we should say) destroys it. IV. A dream of infinite pathos. +The wife’s tomb, its slab weather-stained, its inscription overgrown with +herbage, its name all but obliterated. Her husband comes to visit the +grave. Was he her lover?—rather the cold critic of her life. She had felt +her poverty in all that he demanded, and she had resigned him and life +too; and as she moulders under the herbage, she sees in spirit her +husband’s strength and sternness gone, and he broken and praying that she +were his again, with all her foibles, her faults: aye, crowned as queen of +folly, he would be happy if her foot made a stepping-stone of his +forehead. What had worked the miracle? Was the date on the stone the +record of the day when his chance stab of scorn had killed her? There are +cruel deeds and still more cruel words that no veiling herbage of balm and +mint shall keep from haunting us in the time when repentance has come too +late.</p> + +<p><b>Badman, Mr.</b> <i>The Life and Death of Mr. Badman</i>, as told by John Bunyan, +contains the story of “Old Tod,” which suggested to Mr. Browning the poem +of <i>Ned Bratts</i> (<i>q.v.</i>).</p> + +<p><b>Balaustion.</b> The name of the Greek girl of Rhodes, who, when the Athenians +were defeated at Syracuse and her countrymen had determined to side with +the enemies of Athens, refused to forsake Athens, the light and life of +the world. She saved her companions in the ship by which she fled from +Rhodes by reciting to the people of Syracuse the <i>Alcestis</i> of Euripides. +Her story is told in <i>Balaustion’s Adventure</i>, and <i>Aristophanes’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> +Apology</i>, which is its sequel. Her name means “wild pomegranate flower.”</p> + +<p><b>Balaustion’s Adventure</b>, including a transcript from Euripides. London, +1871.—The adventure of Balaustion in the harbour of Syracuse came about +as follows. Nicias (or Nikias as he is called in the poem), the Athenian +general, was appointed, much against his inclination, to conduct the +expedition against Sicily. After a long series of ill-successes he was +completely surrounded by the enemy and was compelled to surrender with all +his army. He was put to death, and all his troops were sent to the great +stone quarries, there to perish of disease, hard labour and privation. At +Syracuse Athens was shamed, and lost her ships and men, gaining a “death +without a grave.” After the disgraceful news had reached Greece the people +of Rhodes rose in tumult, and, casting off their allegiance to Athens, +they determined to side with Sparta. Balaustion, though only a girl, was +so patriotic that she cried to all who would hear, begging them not to +throw Athens off for Sparta’s sake, nor be disloyal to all that was worth +calling the world at all. She begged that all who agreed with her would +take ship for Athens at once; a few heard and accompanied her. They were +by adverse winds driven out of their course, and, being pursued by +pirates, made for the island of Crete. Balaustion, to encourage the +rowers, sprang upon the altar by the mast, crying to the sons of Greeks to +free their wives, their children, and the temples of the gods; so the oars +“churned the black waters white,” and soon they saw to their dismay Sicily +and the city of Syracuse,—they had run upon the lion from the wolf. A +galley came out, demanding “if they were friends or foes?” “Kaunians,” +replied the captain. “We heard all Athens in one ode just now. Back you +must go, though ten pirates blocked the bay.” It was explained to the +exiles that they wanted no Athenians there to spirit up the captives in +the quarries. The captain prayed them by the gods they should not thrust +suppliants back, but save the innocent who were not bent on traffic. In +vain! And as they were about to turn and face the foe, one cried, “Wait! +that was a song of Æschylus: how about Euripides? Might you know any of +his verses too?” The captain shouted, “Praise the god. Here she +stands—Balaustion. Strangers, greet the lyric girl!” And Balaustion said, +“Save us, and I will recite that strangest, saddest, sweetest song of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>his—<span class="smcap">Alkestis</span>. +Take me to Herakles’ temple you have here. I come a suppliant to him; put me upon his temple steps, to tell you his +achievement as I may!” And so they rowed them in to Syracuse, crying, “We +bring more of Euripides!” The whole city came out to hear, came rushing to +the superb temple, on the topmost step of which they placed the girl; and +plainly she told the play, just as she had seen it acted in Rhodes. A +wealthy Syracusan brought a whole talent, and bade her take it for +herself; she offered it to the god—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">“For had not Herakles a second time</span><br /> +Wrestled with death and saved devoted ones?”</p> + +<p>The poor captives in the quarries, when they heard the tale, sent her a +crown of wild pomegranate flower—the name (Balaustion in Greek) she +always henceforth bore. But there was a young man who every day, as she +recited on the temple steps, stood at the foot; and, when liberated, they +set sail again for Athens. There in the ship was he: he had a hunger to +see Athens, and soon they were to marry. She visited Euripides, kissed his +sacred hand, and paid her homage. The Athenians loved him not, neither did +they love his friend Socrates; but they were fellows, and Socrates often +went to hear him read.—Such was her adventure; and the beautiful +Alcestis’ story which she told is transcribed from the well-known play of +Euripides in the succeeding pages of Mr. Browning’s book. Whether the +story has undergone transformation in the process we must leave to the +decision of authorities on the subject. A comparison between the Greek +original and Mr. Browning’s translation or “transcript” certainly shows +some important divergences from the classic story. We have only to compare +the excellent translation of Potter in Morley’s “Universal Library,” vol. +54 (Routledge, 1<i>s.</i>), to discern this fact at once. As the question is +one of considerable literary importance, it is necessary to call attention +to it in this work. For those of my readers who may have forgotten the +<i>Alkestis</i> tragedy, it may be well to recall its principal points. Potter, +in his translation of the <i>Alkestis</i> of Euripides, gives the following +prefatory note of the plot:—“Admetus and Alcestis were nearly related +before their marriage. Æolus, the third in descent from Prometheus, was +the father of Cretheus and Salmoneus; Æson, the father of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> Jason, and +Pheres, the father of Admetus, were sons of Cretheus; Tyro, the daughter +of Salmoneus, was by Neptune mother to Pelias, whose eldest daughter +Alcestis was. The historian, who relates the arts by which Medea induced +the daughters of Pelias to cut their father in pieces in expectation of +seeing him restored to youth, tells us that Alcestis alone, through the +tenderness of her filial piety, concurred not with her sisters in that +fatal deed (Diodor. Sic.). Pheres, now grown old, had resigned his kingdom +to his son, and retired to his paternal estate, as was usual in those +states where the sceptre was a spear. Admetus, on his first accession to +the regal power, had kindly received Apollo, who was banished from heaven, +and compelled for the space of a year to be a slave to a mortal; and the +god, after he was restored to his celestial honours, did not forget that +friendly house, but, when Admetus lay ill of a disease from which there +was no recovery, prevailed upon the Fates to spare his life, on condition +that some near relation should consent to die for him. But neither his +father nor his mother, nor any of his friends, was willing to pay the +ransom. Alcestis, hearing this, generously devoted her own life to save +her husband’s.—The design of this tragedy is to recommend the virtue of +hospitality, so sacred among the Grecians, and encouraged on political +grounds, as well as to keep alive a generous and social benevolence. The +scene is in the vestibule of the house of Admetus. Palæphatus has given +this explanation of the fable: After the death of Pelias, Acastus pursued +the unhappy daughters to punish them for destroying their father. Alcestis +fled to Pheræ; Acastus demanded her of Admetus, who refused to give her +up; he therefore advanced towards Pheræ with a great army, laying the +country waste with fire and sword. Admetus marched out of the city to +check these devastations, fell into an ambush, and was taken prisoner. +Acastus threatened to put him to death. When Alcestis understood that the +life of Admetus was in this danger on her account, she went voluntarily +and surrendered herself to Acastus, who discharged Admetus and detained +her in custody. At this critical time Hercules, on his expedition to +Thrace, arrives at Pheræ, is hospitably entertained by Admetus, and being +informed of the distress and danger of Alcestis, immediately attacks +Acastus, defeats his army, rescues the lady, and restores her to +Admetus.”—At the eighty-fourth meeting of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> London Browning Society +(June 26th, 1891), Mr. R. G. Moulton, M.A. Camb., read a paper on +<i>Balaustion’s Adventure</i>, which he described as “a beautiful +misrepresentation of the original.” In this he said: “To those who are +willing to decide literary questions upon detailed evidence, I submit that +analysis shows the widest divergence between the Admetus of Euripides and +the Admetus sung by Balaustion. And, in answer to those who are influenced +only by authority, I claim that I have on my side of the question an +authority who on this matter must rank higher than even Browning himself; +and the name of my authority is Euripides.” The following extracts from +Mr. Moulton’s able and scholarly criticism will explain his chief points. +(The whole paper is published in the Transactions of the Browning Society, +1890-1.) Mr. Moulton says: “My position is that Browning, in common with +the greater part of modern readers, has entirely misread and +misrepresented Euripides’ play of <i>Alcestis</i>. If any one wishes to +pronounce “Balaustion’s Adventure” a more beautiful poem than the Greek +original, I have no wish to gainsay his estimate; but I maintain, +nevertheless, that the one gives a distorted view of the other. The +English poem is no mere translation of the Greek, but an interpretation +with comments freely interpolated. And the poet having caught a wrong +impression as to one of the main elements of the Greek story, has +unconsciously let this impression colour his interpretations of words and +sentences, and has used his right of commenting to present his mistaken +conception with all the poetic force of a great master, until I fear that +the Euripidean setting of the story is for English readers almost +hopelessly lost. The point at issue is the character of Admetus. Taken in +the rough, the general situation has been understood by modern readers +thus: A husband having obtained from Fate the right to die by substitute, +when no other substitute was forthcoming his wife Alcestis came forward, +and by dying saved Admetus. And the first thought of every honest heart +has been, “Oh, the selfishness of that husband to accept the sacrifice!” +But my contention is, that if Euripides’ play be examined with open and +unbiassed mind, it will be found that not only Admetus is not selfish, +but, on the contrary, he is as eminent for unselfishness in his sphere of +life as Alcestis proves in her own. If this be so, the modern readers, +with Browning at their head, have been introducing into the play a +disturbing element that has no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> place there. And they have further, I +submit, missed another conception—to my thinking a much more worthy +conception—which really does underlie and unify the whole play. If +Admetus is in fact selfish, how comes it that no personage in the whole +play catches this idea?—no one, that is, except Pheres, whose words go +for nothing, since he never discovers this selfishness of Admetus until he +is impelled to fasten on another the accusation which has been hurled at +himself. Except Pheres, all regard Admetus as the sublime type of +generosity. Apollo, as representing the gods, uses the unexpected word +“holy” to describe the demeanour with which his human protector cherished +him during the trouble that drove him to earth in human shape. The Chorus, +who, it is well known, represent in a Greek play public opinion, and are a +channel by which the author insinuates the lesson of the story, cannot +restrain their admiration at one point of the action, and devote an ode to +the lofty character of their king. And Hercules, so grandly represented by +Browning himself as the unselfish toiler for others, feels at one moment +that he has been outdone in generosity by Admetus. There can be no +question, then, what Euripides thought about the character of Admetus. And +will the objector seriously contend that Euripides has, without intending +it, presented a character which must in fact be pronounced selfish? The +suggestion that the poet who created Alcestis did not know selfishness +when he saw it, seems to me an improbability far greater than the +improbability that Browning and the English readers should go wrong. +Browning’s suggestion of Pheres as Admetus “push’d to completion” seems to +me grossly unfair: it ignores all Admetus’ connection with Apollo and +Hercules, and all his world-wide fame for hospitality. There is nothing in +the legend or in the play to suggest that Pheres is anything more than an +ordinary Greek: certainly the gods never came down from heaven to wonder +at Pheres, nor did Hercules ever recognise him as generous beyond himself. +In no view can the scene be other than a painful one. But it is +intelligible only when we see in it, not the son rebuking his father, but +the head of the State pouring out indignation on the officer whose +self-preserving instinct has shirked at once a duty and an honourable +opportunity to sacrifice, and thereby lost a life more valuable than his +own. In this light the situation before us wears a different aspect. It is +no case of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> a wife dying for a husband, but it is a subject dying to save +the head of the State. And nothing can be clearer than that such a +sacrifice is <i>taken for granted</i> by the personages who appear before us in +Euripides’ play. For I must warn the reader of <i>Balaustion</i> that there is +not the shadow of a shade of foundation in the original for the scornful +words of the English poet telling how the idea of a substitute for their +king nowhere appears unnatural to the personages of the play; the sole +surprise they express is that the substitute should be the youthful +Alcestis and not the aged parents. The situation may fairly be paralleled +in this respect with the crisis that arises in Sir Walter Scott’s <i>Fair +Maid of Perth</i>, when the seven sons of Torquil go successively to certain +death to shield their chief; and, while they cover themselves with glory, +no one accuses Hector of selfishness for allowing the sacrifice: the +sentiment of clan institutions makes it a matter of course. The +hospitality of Admetus is the foundation of the story; for it is this +which has led Apollo (as he tells us in the prologue) to wring out of Fate +the sparing to earth of the generous king on condition of a substitute +being found.”</p> + +<p>The stone quarries of ancient Syracuse are now called Latomia, the largest +and most picturesque of which is named Latomia de’ Cappuccini. It is a +vast pit, from eighty to a hundred feet in depth, and is several acres in +extent. Murray, describing these vast quarries, says: “It is certain that +they existed before the celebrated siege by the Athenians, 415 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>; and +that some one of them was then deep enough to serve for a prison, and +extensive enough to hold the unhappy seven thousand, the relics of the +great Athenian host who were captured at the Asinarus. There is every +probability that that of the Capuchins is the one described by Thucydides, +who gives a touching picture of the misery the Athenians were made to +endure from close confinement, hunger, thirst, filth, exposure and +disease. Certain holes in the angles of the rocks are still pointed out by +tradition as the spots where some of the Athenians were chained. The +greater part of them perished here, but Plutarch tells us that some among +them who could recite the verses of Euripides were liberated from +captivity.” Lord Byron’s lines in <i>Childe Harold</i> may be quoted in this +connection—</p> + +<p class="poem">“When Athens’ armies fell at Syracuse,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war,<br /> +Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse—<br /> +Her voice the only ransom from afar.<br /> +See! as they chaunt the tragic hymn, the car<br /> +Of the o’ermastered victor stops; the reins<br /> +Fall from his hands; his idle scimitar<br /> +Starts from his belt: he rends his captive’s chains,<br /> +And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains.”</p> + +<p>“Some there were who owed their preservation to Euripides. Of all the +Grecians, his was the muse whom the Sicilians were most in love with. From +every stranger that landed in their island, they gleaned every small +specimen or portion of his works, and communicated it with pleasure to +each other. It is said that on this occasion a number of Athenians, upon +their return home, went to Euripides, and thanked him in the most +respectful manner for their obligations to his pen; some having been +enfranchised for teaching their masters what they remembered of his poems, +and others having got refreshments, when they were wandering about after +the battle, for singing a few of his verses. Nor is this to be wondered +at, since they tell us that when a ship from Caunus, which happened to be +pursued by pirates, was going to take shelter in one of their ports, the +Sicilians at first refused to admit her; but upon asking the crew whether +they knew any of the verses of Euripides, and being answered in the +affirmative, they received both them and their vessel.” (Plutarch’s life +of Nicias.)</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span> [The numbers refer to the pages in the complete edition of the +Works.]—P. 5, <i>Kameiros</i>, a Dorian town on the west coast of Rhodes, and +the principal town before the foundation of Rhodes itself; <i>The League</i>, +the Spartan league against the domination of Athens. p. 6, <i>Knidos</i>, city +famous for the statue of Venus by Praxiteles, in one of her temples there; +<i>Ilissian</i>, Trojan; <i>gate of Diomedes</i>, the Diomæan gate, leading to a +grove and gymnasium; <i>Hippadai</i>, the gate of Hippadas, leading to the +suburb of Cerameicus; <i>Lakonia</i> or <i>Laconica</i> or <i>Lacedæmon</i>: Sparta was +the only town of importance—in this connection it means Sparta; <i>Choës</i> +(the Pitchers) an Athenian festival of Dionysus or Bacchus; <i>Chutroi</i>, a +Bacchic festival at Athens—the feast of pots; <i>Agora</i>, the Athenian +market and chief public place; <i>Dikasteria</i>, tribunals; <i>Pnux</i> == the +Pnyx, the place of public assembly for the people of Athens;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> <i>Keramikos</i>, +two suburban places at Athens were thus called: the one a market and +public walk, the other a cemetery; <i>Salamis</i>, an island on the west coast +of Attica, memorable for the battle in which the Greeks defeated the fleet +of Xerxes, 480 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>; <i>Psuttalia</i>, a small island near Salamis; <i>Marathon</i>: +the plain of Marathon was twenty-two miles from Athens, and the famous +battle there was fought 490 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>; <i>Dionusiac Theatre</i>, the great theatre +of Athens on the Acropolis. p. 7, <i>Kaunos</i>, one of the chief cities of +Caria, which was founded by the Cretans. p. 8, <i>Ortugia</i>, the island close +to Syracuse, and practically part of the city. p. 9, <i>Aischulos</i> == the +song was from Æschylus, the great tragic poet of Greece; <i>pint of corn</i>: +the wretched captives in the quarries were kept alive by half the +allowance of food given to slaves. Thucydides says (vii. 87): “They were +tormented with hunger and thirst; for during eight months they gave each +of them daily only a <i>cotyle</i> (the <i>cotyle</i> was a little more than half an +English pint) of water, and two of corn.” p. 10, <i>salpinx</i>, a trumpet. p. +11, <i>rhesis</i>, a proverb; <i>monostich</i>, a poem of a single verse; <i>region of +the steed</i>: horses were supposed by the Greeks to have originated in their +land. p. 12, <i>Euoi</i>, <i>Oöp</i>, <i>Babai</i>, exclamations of wonder. p. 13, <i>Rosy +Isle</i>, Rhodes, the Greek word meaning rose. p. 16, <i>Anthesterion month</i> == +February-March; <i>Peiraieus</i>, the chief harbour of Athens, about five miles +distant; <i>Agathon</i>, a tragic poet of Athens, born 448 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>—a friend of +Euripides and Plato; <i>Iophon</i>, son of Sophocles: he was a distinguished +tragic poet; <i>Kephisophon</i>, a contemporary poet; <i>Baccheion</i>, the +Dionysiac temple. p. 17, <i>The mask of the actor</i>: it should be remembered +that the Greek actors were all masked. p. 20, <i>Phoibos</i>, the <i>bright</i> or +<i>pure</i>—a name of Apollo; <i>Asklepios</i> == Æsculapius, the god of medicine; +<i>Moirai</i>, the Fates—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, the divinities of +human life. p. 25, <i>Eurustheus</i>, king of Mycenæ, who imposed the “twelve +labours” on Hercules. p. 26, <i>Pelias’ child</i>: Alcestis was the daughter of +Pelias, son of Poseidon and of Tyro; <i>Paian</i>, a surname of Apollo, derived +from <i>pæan</i>, a hymn which was sung in his honour. p. 27, <i>Lukia</i> == Lycia, +a country of Asia Minor; <i>Ammon</i>, a god of Libya and Upper Egypt: Jupiter +Ammon with the horns of a ram. p. 32, <i>pharos</i>, a veil or cloak covering +the eyes. p. 35, <i>Iolkos</i>, a town in Thessaly. p. 41, <i>Koré</i>, the Maiden, +a name by which Proserpine is often<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> called. p. 47, <i>Acherontian lake</i>: +Acheron was one of the rivers of hell; <i>Karneian month</i> == +August-September, when the Carnean festival was celebrated in honour of +Apollo Carneus, protector of flocks. p. 48, <i>Kokutos’ stream</i>, a river in +the lower world: the river Cocytus is in Epirus. p. 51, <i>Thrakian +Diomedes</i>, a king of Thrace who fed his horses on human flesh: it was one +of the labours of Hercules to destroy him; <i>Bistones</i> == Thracians. p. 53, +<i>Ares</i>, Greek name of Mars; <i>Lukaon</i>, a mythical king of Arcadia; +<i>Kuknos</i>, son of Mars and Pelopia == Cycnus. p. 60, <i>Lyric Puthian</i>: +musical contentions in honour of Apollo at Delphi were called the Pythian +modes: so Apollo, worshipped with music, was called the lyric Pythian, in +commemoration of his victory over the Python, the great serpent; <i>Othrus’ +dell</i>, in the mountains of Othrys, in Thessaly, the residence of the +Centaurs. p. 61, <i>Boibian lake</i>, in Thessaly, near Mount Ossa; <i>Molossoi</i>, +a people of Epirus, in Greece. p. 68, <i>Ludian</i> == Lydian; <i>Phrugian</i> == +Phrygian. p. 73, <i>Akastos</i>, the son of Peleus, king of Iolchis; he made +war against Admetus. p. 74, <i>Hermes the infernal</i>: he was the son of Zeus +and Maia, and was herald of the gods and guide of the dead in Hades—hence +the epithet “infernal.” p. 78, <i>Turranos</i>, Tyrant or King. p. 79, <i>Ai, ai! +Pheu! pheu! e, papai</i> == woe! alas, alas! oh, strange! p. 81, <i>The Helper</i> +== Hercules. p. 83, <i>Kupris</i>, Venus, the goddess of Cyprus. p. 87, +“<i>Daughter of Elektruon, Tiruns’ child</i>”: Electryon was the father of +Alcmene, Tiryns was an ancient town in Argolis. p. 88, <i>Larissa</i>, a city +in Thessaly. p. 94, <i>Thrakian tablets</i>, the name of Orpheus is associated +with Thrace: the Orphic literature contained treatises on medicine, +plants, etc., originally written on tablets, and preserved in the temple; +<i>Orphic voice</i>, of Orpheus, which charmed all Nature; <i>Phoibos</i>, Apollo +was the god of medicine, and taught the art to Æsculapius; <i>Asklepiadai</i>, +who received from Phoibos or Apollo the medical remedies. p. 95, +<i>Chaluboi</i>, a people of Asia Minor, near Pontus. p. 96, <i>Alkmené</i> was the +daughter of Electryon: she was the mother of Hercules, conceived by +Jupiter. p. 99, <i>Pheraioi</i>, the belongings of Admetus as a native of +Pheræ. p. 110, “<i>The Human with his droppings of warm tears</i>,” a quotation +from a poem by Mrs. Browning, entitled <i>Wine of Cyprus</i>. p. 111, <i>Mainad</i>, +a name of the priestesses of Bacchus. p. 119, “<i>Straying among the flowers +in Sicily</i>”:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> Proserpine, daughter of Ceres, one day gathering flowers in +the meadows of Enna, was carried away by Pluto into the infernal regions, +of which she became queen. p. 121, “<i>a great Kaunian painter</i>”: +Protogenes, a native of Caunus in Caria, a city subject to the Rhodians, +flourished 332-300 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>, and was one of the most celebrated of Greek +painters. “The story of his friendly rivalry with Apelles, who was the +first to recognise his genius, is familiar to all.”—<i>Browning Notes and +Queries</i> (Pt. vii. 25): the description of the picture refers to Sir +Frederick Leighton’s noble work on this subject. p. 122, <i>Poikilé</i>, the +celebrated portico at Athens, which received its name from the variety of +the paintings which it contained. It was adorned with pictures of the gods +and of public benefactors.</p> + +<p><b>Balkis</b> (“Solomon and Balkis,” <i>Jocoseria</i> 1883). The Queen of Sheba who +came to visit Solomon. See <a href="#solomon"><span class="smcap">Solomon and Balkis</span></a>.</p> + +<p><b>Bean Feast, The</b> (<i>Asolando</i>). Pope Sixtus the Fifth (Felice Peretti) was +pope from 1585 to 1590. He was born in 1521, and certainly in humble +circumstances, but there seems no proof that he was the son of a +swineherd, as described in the poem (see <i>Encyc. Brit.</i>, vol. xxii, p. +104). He was a great preacher, and one of the most vigorous and able of +the popes that ever filled the papal chair. Within two years of his +election he issued seventy-two bulls for the reform of the religious +orders alone. When anything required to be done, he did it himself, and +was evidently of the same opinion as Mr. Spurgeon, who holds that a +committee should never consist of more than one person. He reformed the +condition of the papal finances, and expended large sums in public works; +he completed the dome of St. Peter’s, and erected four Egyptian obelisks in +Rome. Ever anxious to reform abuses, he made it his business to examine +into the condition of the people and see with his own eyes their mode of +life. Mr. Browning’s poem relates how, going about the city in disguise, +he one day turned into a tumbledown house where a man and wife sat at +supper with their children. He inquired if they knew of any wrongs which +wanted righting; bade them not stop eating, but speak freely of their +grievances, if any. He bade them have no fear when he threw his hood back +and let them see it was the Pope. The poor people were filled with a +joyful wonder, the more so as the Pope begged a plate of their tempting +beans. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> sat down on the doorstep, and having eaten, thanked God that he +had appetite and digestion.</p> + +<p><b>Bean-Stripe, A: also Apple Eating.</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>, No. 12.) One of +Ferishtah’s scholars demanded to know if on the whole Life were a good or +an evil thing. He is asked if beans are taken from a bushelful, what +colour predominates? Make the beans typical of our days. What is Life’s +true colour,—black or white? The scholar agrees with Sakya Muni, the +Indian sage who declared that Life, past, present and future, was black +only—existence simply a curse. Memory is a plague, evil’s shadow is cast +over present pleasure. Ferishtah strews beans, blackish and whitish, +figuring man’s sum of moments good and bad; in companionship the black +grow less black and the white less white: both are modified—grey +prevails. So joys are embittered by sorrows gone before and sobered by a +sense of sorrow that may come; thus deepest in black means white most +imminent. Pain’s shade enhances the shine of pleasure, the blacks and +whites of a lifetime whirl into a white. But to the objector the world is +so black, no speck of white will unblacken it. Ferishtah bids his pupil +contemplate the insect on a palm frond: what knows he of the uses of a +palm tree? It has other uses than such as strike the aphis. It may be so +with us: our place in the world may, in the eye of God, be no greater than +is to us the inch of green which is cradle, pasture and grave of the palm +insect. The aphis feeds quite unconcerned, even if lightning sear the moss +beneath his home. The philosopher sees a world of woe all round him; his +own life is white, his fellows’ black. God’s care be God’s: for his own +part the sorrows of his kind serve to sober with shade his own shining +life. There is no sort of black which white has not power to disintensify. +His philosophy, he admits, may be wrecked to-morrow, but he speaks from +past experience. He cannot live the life of his fellow, yet he knows of +those who are not so blessed as to live in Persia, yet it would not be +wise to say: “No sun, no grapes,—then no subsistence!” There are lands +where snow falls; he will not trouble about cold till it comes to Persia. +But the Indian sage, the Buddha, concluded that the best thing of Life was +that it led to Death! The dervish replied that though Sakya Muni said so +he did not believe it, as he lived out his seventy years and liked his +dinner to the last—he lied, in fact. The pupil demands truth at any cost, +and is told to take this: God is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>all-good, all-wise, all-powerful. What +is man? Not God, yet he is a creature, with a creature’s qualities. You +cannot make these two conceptions agree: God, that only can, does not; +man, that would, cannot. A carpet web may illustrate the meaning: the sage +has asked the weaver how it is that apart the fiery-coloured silk, and the +other of watery dimness, when combined, produce a medium profitable to the +sight. The artificer replies that the medium was what he aimed at. So the +quality of man blended with the quality of God assists the human sight to +understand Life’s mystery. Man can only know <i>of</i> and think <i>about</i>, he +cannot understand, earth’s least atom. He cannot know fire thoroughly, +still less the mystery of gravitation. But, it is objected, force has not +mind; man does not thank gravitation when an apple drops, nor summer for +the apple: why thank God for teeth to bite it? Forces are the slaves of +supreme power. The sense that we owe a debt to somebody behind these +forces assures us there is somebody to take it. We eat an apple without +thanking it. We thank Him but for whose work orchards might grow +gall-nuts.</p> + +<p>Ferishtah in the Lyric asks no praise for his work on behalf of mankind. +He who works for the world’s approval, or even for its love, must not be +surprised if both are withheld. He has sought, found and done his duty. +For the rest he looks beyond.</p> +<p><a name="beatrice" id="beatrice"></a></p> +<p><b>Beatrice Signorini</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889) was a noble Roman lady who married +Francesco Romanelli, a painter, a native of Viterbo, in the time of Pope +Urban VIII. He was a favourite of the Barberini family. Soon after his +marriage he became attached to Artemisia Gentileschi, a celebrated lady +painter. One day he proposed to her that she should paint him a picture +filled with fruit, except a space in the centre for her own portrait, +which he would himself insert. He kept this work amongst his treasures; +and one day, wishing to make his wife jealous, he unveiled it in her +presence, dilating on the graces and beauty of the original. His wife was +a very beautiful woman also, and was not inclined to tolerate this rivalry +for her husband’s affections; she therefore destroyed the face of the fair +artist in the picture, so that it could not be recognised. Her husband was +not angry at this, but admired and loved his wife all the more for this +outburst of natural wrath, and soon ceased to think further of his quondam +love. Artemisia<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> Gentileschi, daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, lived +1590-1642. She was a pupil of Guido, and acquired great fame as a portrait +painter. She was a beautiful woman; her portrait painted by herself is in +Hampton Court. Her greatest work is the picture of Judith and Holofernes, +in the Pitti Palace, Florence. She came to England with her father in the +reign of Charles I., and painted for him David with the head of Goliath. +She soon returned to Italy, and passed the remainder of her life at +Naples. Baldinucci tells the story of Romanelli.</p> + +<p><b>Beer.</b> See <a href="#nationality"><span class="smcap">Nationality in Drinks</span></a> (<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>).</p> +<p><a name="before" id="before"></a></p> +<p><b>“Before and After.”</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic +Lyrics</i>, 1868.) Two men have quarrelled, and a duel is proposed. It is +urged that the injured man should forgive his enemy, but a philosophical +adviser considers that Christianity is hardly equal to this particular +matter: “Things have gone too far.” Forgiveness is all very well in good +books, but these men are sunk in a slough where they must not be left to +“stick and stink.” As the offender never pardons, and the offended in this +case will not, there is nothing for it but to fight. Besides, “while God’s +champion lives” (the just man), “wrong shall be resisted” and the +wrong-doer punished. These two men have quarrelled, and it is impossible +to say which of them is the injured and which the injurer. Wrong has been +done—this much is certain; beyond that human judgment is at fault, and +the Divine must be invoked. Let them fight it out, then! Of course the +poet is speaking dramatically, and not laying down the principle that +where we see evil done, especially in our own concerns, we are bound to +avenge the wrong. This sentiment is that of the philosophical observer of +the feud, though there are phrases here and there quite in accord with Mr. +Browning’s axioms: “Better sin the whole sin”; “Go, live his life out”; +“Life will try his nerves.” [This teaching is much in the way of that in +the concluding verses of <i>The Statue and the Bust</i> (<i>q.v.</i>)] For the +culprit there, the speaker says, it is better he should add daring courage +to face the consequences of his crime, than by running away from them be +coward as well as criminal. He may come off victor, but his future life, +his garden of pleasure, will have a warder, a leopard-dog thing (his sin), +ever at his side. This leering presence, this “sly, <ins class="correction" title="original: mutething">mute thing</ins>,” crouching +under every “rose wall” and “grape-tree,” will exact the penalty of past +sin,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> and mayhap sting the sinner to repentance. “So much for the +culprit.” The injured, “the martyred man,” has borne so much, he can at +least bear another stroke—“give his blood and get his heaven.” If death +end it, well for him—“he forgives”; if he be victor he has punished sin +as God’s minister of justice. In “After,” what is not said is more +powerful than any words which could have filled the intervening space +between these two poems. The imagination here is all-sufficient. The chill +presence of death has altered the aspect of everything. The rush of +thought, the casuistry, the intensity of the preceding poem, is all hushed +and silent here. Death makes things so real in its presence, masks drop +off from souls’ faces, and truth can make her voice heard above the +contentions of sophistry. The victor speaks—he has no desire to +masquerade here as God’s avenging angel; he recognises that even his foe +has the rights of a man, and as the spirit of the dead man wanders, +absorbed in his new life, he heeds not his wrongs nor the vengeance of his +slayer; the great realities of the other world make those of this world +trivial, and the victor estimates at its true value the worthlessness of +his conquest. If they could be as they were of old! So forgiveness would +have been better and Christ’s command is vindicated—“I say unto you that +ye resist not evil.” There are some victories which are always the worst +of defeats.</p> + +<p><b>“Bells and Pomegranates.”</b> Under this title Mr. Browning published a cheap +edition, in serial form, of his poems in 1841. The following works +appeared in this manner:—<i>Pippa Passes</i>; <i>King Victor and King Charles</i>; +<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>; <i>The Return of the Druses</i>; <i>A Blot in the ’Scutcheon</i>; +<i>Colombe’s Birthday</i>; <i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i>; <i>Luria</i>; and <i>A +Soul’s Tragedy</i>. (“A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a +pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about.”—<span class="smcap">Exod.</span> xxviii. 34, +35.) “The reason supposed in the Targum for the directions given to the +priest is that the priest’s approach should be <i>cautious</i> to the innermost +‘Holy of Holies,’ or Sanctuary of the Tabernacle. The sound of the small +bells upon his robe was intended to announce his approach before his +actual appearance.” Philo says the bells were to denote the harmony of the +universe. St. Jerome says they also indicated that every movement of the +priest should be for edification. Mr. Browning, however, intimated that he +had no such symbolical intention in the choice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> of his title. In the +preface to the last number of the series, he said: “Here ends my first +series of ‘Bells and Pomegranates,’ and I take the opportunity of +explaining, in reply to inquiries, that I only meant by that title to +indicate an endeavour towards something like an alternation or mixture of +music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought; which looks +too ambitious, thus expressed, so the symbol was preferred. It is little +to the purpose that such is actually one of the most familiar of the many +Rabbinical (and Patristic) acceptations of the phrase; because I confess +that, letting authority alone, I supposed the bare words, in such +juxtaposition, would sufficiently convey the desired meaning. ‘Faith and +good works’ is another fancy, for instance, and, perhaps, no easier to +arrive at; yet Giotto placed a pomegranate fruit in the hand of Dante, and +Raffaelo crowned his theology (in the <i>Camera della Segnatura</i>) with +blossoms of the same; as if the Bellari and Vasari would be sure to come +after, and explain that it was merely ‘<i>simbolo delle buone opere—il qual +Pomogranato, fu però usato nelle vesti del Pontefice appresso gli +Ebrei</i>.’—R. B.”</p> +<p><a name="karshook" id="karshook"></a></p> +<p><b>“Ben Karshook’s Wisdom.”</b> Mr. Sharp says, in his <i>Life of Browning</i>, “In +the late spring (April 27th, 1854), also, he wrote the short dactylic +lyric, “Ben Karshook’s Wisdom.” This little poem was given to a friend for +appearance in one of the then popular <i>keepsakes</i>—literally given, for +Browning never contributed to magazines. As “Ben Karshook’s Wisdom,” +though it has been reprinted in several quarters, will not be found in any +volume of Browning’s works, and was omitted from <i>Men and Women</i> by +accident, and from further collections by forgetfulness, it may be fitly +quoted here. <i>Karshook</i>, it may be added, is the Hebraic word for a +thistle.</p> + +<p class="poem">“‘Would a man ’scape the rod?’—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rabbi Ben Karshook saith,</span><br /> +‘See that he turns to God,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The day before his death.’</span><br /> +<br /> +‘Ay, could a man inquire,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When it shall come!’ I say,</span><br /> +The Rabbi’s eye shoots fire—<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">‘Then let him turn to-day!’</span><br /> +<br /> +Quoth a young Sadducee,—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">‘Reader of many rolls,</span><br /> +Is it so certain we<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Have, as they tell us, souls?’—</span><br /> +<br /> +‘Son, there is no reply!’<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Rabbi bit his beard;</span><br /> +‘Certain, a soul have <i>I</i>,—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We may have none,’ he sneered.</span><br /> +<br /> +Thus Karshook, the Hiram’s-Hammer,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Right-hand Temple column,</span><br /> +Taught babes in grace their grammar,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And struck the simple, solemn.”</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">(<span class="smcap">Rome</span>, <i>April 27th, 1854</i>.)</span></p> + +<p>The reference in the last verse is to 1 Kings vii. 13-22. Hiram was a +Phœnician king, and a skilful builder of temples. The Temple columns +referred to were called Jachin and Boaz, and were made of brass and set up +at the entrance; Boaz (<i>strength</i>) on the left hand, and Jachin +(<i>stability</i>) on the right. The Freemasons have adopted the names of these +pillars in their ceremonial and symbolism.</p> + +<p><b>Bernard de Mandeville</b> [<span class="smcap">The Man</span>] (1670-1733) was a native of Rotterdam, and +the son of a physician who practised in that city. He studied medicine at +Leyden, and came to England “to learn the language.” He did this with such +effect that it was doubted if he were a foreigner. He practised medicine +in London, and is known to fame by his celebrated book <i>The Fable of the +Bees</i>, a miscellaneous work which includes “<i>The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves +Turned Honest</i>; <i>An Inquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue</i>; <i>An Essay on +Charity Schools</i>; and <i>A Search into the Origin of Society</i>.” When, in +1705, the country was agitated by the question as to the continuance of +Marlborough’s war with France, Mandeville published his <i>Grumbling Hive</i>. +All sorts of charges were being made against public officials; every form +of corruption and dishonesty was freely charged on these persons, and it +was in the midst of this agitation that Mandeville humorously maintained +that “private vices are public benefits,”—that self-seeking, luxury, +ambition, and greed are all necessary to the greatness and prosperity of a +nation. “Fools only strive to make a great and honest hive.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> “The bees of +his fable,” says Professor Minto, “grumbled, as many Englishmen were +disposed to do,—cursed politicians, armies, fleets, whenever there came a +reverse, and cried, ‘Had we but honesty!’” Jove, at last, in a passion, +swore that he would “rid the canting hive of fraud,” and filled the hearts +of the bees with honesty and all the virtues, strict justice, frugal +living, contentment with little, acquiescence in the insults of enemies. +Straightway the flourishing hive declined, till in time only a small +remnant was left; this took refuge in a hollow tree, “blest with content +and honesty,” but “destitute of arts and manufactures.” “He gives the name +of virtue to every performance by which man, contrary to the impulse of +nature, should endeavour the benefit of others, or the conquest of his own +passions, out of a rational ambition of being good”; while everything +which, without regard to the public, man should commit to gratify any of +his appetites, is vice.” He finds self-love (a vice by the definition) +masquerading in many virtuous disguises, lying at the root of asceticism, +heroism, public spirit, decorous conduct,—at the root, in short, of all +the actions that pass current as virtuous.” He taught that “the moral +virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride.” +Politicians and moralists have worked upon man to make him believe he is a +sublime creature, and that self-indulgence makes him more akin to the +brutes. In 1723 Mandeville applied his analysis of virtue in respect to +the then fashionable institution of charity schools, and a great outcry +was raised against his doctrines. His book was presented to the justices, +the grand jury of Middlesex, and a copy was ordered to be burned by the +common hangman. It is probable that Mandeville was not serious in all he +wrote; much of his writings must be considered merely as a political <i>jeu +<ins class="correction" title="original: d esprit">d’esprit</ins></i>. His was an age of speculation upon ethical questions, and a +humorous foreigner could not but be moved to satirise English methods, +which are frequently peculiarly open to this kind of attack.</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] (<i>Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day</i>: +London, 1887.) The sketch of Mandeville’s opinion given above will afford +a key to the drift of Mr. Browning’s poem. His aim is to point out the +great truths which, on a careful examination, will be found to underlie +much of the old philosopher’s paradoxical teaching; not as understood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> by +fools, he says, but by those who let down their sounding line below the +turbid surface to the still depths where evil harmoniously combines with +good, Mandeville’s teaching is worthy of examination. We must take life as +we find it, ever remembering that law deals the same with soul and body; +life’s rule is short, infancy’s probation is necessary to bodily +development; and we might as well expect a new-born infant to start up +strong, as the soul to stand in its full-statured magnificence without the +necessary faculty of growth. Law deals with body as with soul. Both, stung +to strength through weakness, strive for good through evil. And all the +while the process lasts men complain that “no sign, no stirring of God’s +finger,” indicates His preference for either. Never promptly and beyond +mistake has God interposed between oppression and its victim. But suppose +the Gardener of mankind has a definite purpose in view when he plants evil +side by side with good? How do we know that every growth of good is not +consequent on evil’s neighbourhood? As it is certain that the garden was +planted by intelligence, would not the sudden and complete eradication of +evil repeal a primal law of the all-understanding Gardener? “But,” retorts +the objector, “suppose these ill weeds were interspersed by an enemy?” +Man’s faculty avails not to see the whole sight. When we examine the plan +of an estate, we do not ask where is the roof of the house—where the +door, the window. We do not seek a thing’s solid self in its symbol: +looking at Orion on a starry night, who asks to see the man’s flesh in the +star-points? If it be objected that we have no need of symbols, and that +we should be better taught by facts, it is answered that a myth may teach. +The rising sun thrills earth to the very heart of things; creation +acknowledges its life-giving impulse and murmurs not, but, unquestioning, +uses the invigorating beams. Is man alone to wait till he comprehends the +sun’s self to realise the energy that floods the universe? Prometheus drew +the sun’s rays into a focus, and made fire do man service. Thus to utilise +the sun’s influence was better than striving to follow beam and beam upon +their way, till we faint in our endeavour to guess their infinitude of +action. The teaching of the poem is, that to make the best use of the +world as we find it, is wiser than torturing our brains to comprehend +mysteries which by their nature and our own weakness are insoluble.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span><b>Bifurcation.</b> (<i>Pacchiarotto and other Poems</i>: London, 1876.) A woman loves +a man, but “prefers duty to love”—enters a convent, perhaps, or adopts +some life for reasons which she considers imperative, and so cannot marry. +Rejecting love, she thinks she rejects the tempter’s bribe when the paths +before her diverge. It is a sacrifice, she feels, and a great one; but her +heart tells her, probably because it has been suggested by those whose +influence over her was very great, that heaven will repair the wrongs of +earth. She chooses the darkling half of life, and waits her reward in the +world “where light and darkness fuse.” The man loved the woman. Love was a +hard path for him, but duty was a pleasant road. When the ways parted, and +his love forsook him to abide by duty, she told him their roads would +converge again at the end, and bade him be constant to his path, as she +would be to hers, that they might meet once more. But, when the guiding +star is gone, man’s footsteps are apt to stray, and every stumbling-block +brought him to confusion. And after his falls and flint-piercings he would +rise and cry “All’s well!” and struggle on, since he must be content with +one of the halves that make the whole. He would have the story of each +inscribed on their tomb, and he demands to know which tomb holds sinner +and which holds saint! If love be all—if earth and its best be our +highest aim—then the woman was the sinner for not marrying her lover, and +settling down in a suburban villa, and surrounding herself with children +and domestic pleasures. But if the ideal life—if a love infinitely higher +and purer than any earthly affection—be taken into account; if in her +soul she had heard the call, “Leave all and follow Me,” and she obeyed +with breaking heart, in a perfect spirit of self-sacrifice, then was she +no sinner, but saint indeed. Surely there are higher paths in life than +even the holy one of wedded love. Mr. Browning’s own married life was so +ideally perfect that he has been led into some exaggeration of its +advantages to the mass of mankind.</p> + +<p><b>Bishop Blougram’s Apology.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, vol. i., 1855.) Bishop +Blougram is a <i>bon vivant</i>, a man of letters, of fastidious taste and of +courtly manners—a typical Renaissance prince of the Church, in fact. He +has been successful in life, as he understands it, and there seems no +reason why he should make any apology for an existence so in every way +congenial to his nature. Mr. Gigadibs is a young literary man, smart at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> +“articles” for the magazines, but possessing no knowledge outside the +world of books, and incapable of deep thought on the great problems of +life and mind. He can settle everything off-hand in his flippant, +free-thinking style, and he has arrived at the conclusion that a man of +Blougram’s ability cannot really believe in the doctrines which he +pretends to defend, and that he is only acting a part; as such a life +cannot be “ideal,” he considers his host more or less of an impostor. By +some means he finds himself dining with the Bishop, and after dinner he is +treated to his lordship’s “Apology.” The ecclesiastic has taken the +measure of his man, and good-humouredly puts the case thus: “You say the +thing is my trade, that I am above the humbug in my heart, and sceptical +withal at times, and so you despise me—to be plain. For your own part you +must be free and speak your mind. You would not choose my position if you +could you would be great, but not in my way. The problem of life is not to +fancy what were fair if only it could be, but, taking life as it is, to +make it fair so far as we can. For a simile, we mortals make our +life-voyage each in his cabin. Suppose you attempt to furnish it after a +landsman’s idea. You bring an Indian screen, a piano, fifty volumes of +Balzac’s novels and a library of the classics, a marble bath, and an “old +master” or two; but the ship folk tell you you have only six feet square +to deal with, and because they refuse to take on board your piano, your +marble bath, and your old masters, you set sail in a bare cabin. You peep +into a neighbouring berth, snug and well-appointed, and you envy the man +who is enjoying his suitable sea furniture; you have proved your artist +nature, but you have no furniture. Imagine we are two college friends +preparing for a voyage; my outfit is a bishop’s, why won’t you be a bishop +too? In the first place, you don’t and can’t believe in a Divine +revelation; you object to dogmas, so overhaul theology; you think I am by +no means a fool, so that I must find believing every whit as hard as you +do, and if I do not say so, possibly I am an impostor. Grant that I do not +believe in the fixed and absolute sense—to meet you on your own +premise—overboard go my dogmas, and we both are unbelievers. Does that +fix us unbelievers for ever? Not so: all we have gained is, that as +unbelief disturbed us by fits in our believing days, so belief will ever +and again disturb our unbelief, for how can we guard our unbelief and make +it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> bear fruit to us? Just when we think we are safest a flower, a +friend’s death, or a beautiful snatch of song, and lo! there stands before +us the grand Perhaps! The old misgivings and crooked questions all are +there—all demanding solution, as before. All we have gained by our +unbelief is a life of doubt diversified by faith, in place of one of faith +diversified by doubt.” “But,” says Gigadibs, “if I drop faith and you drop +doubt, I am as right as you!” Blougram will not allow this: “the points +are not indifferent; belief or unbelief bears upon life, and determines +its whole course; positive belief brings out the best of me, and bears +fruit in pleasantness and peace. Unbelief would do nothing of the sort for +me: you say it does for you? We’ll try! I say faith is my waking life; we +sleep and dream, but, after all, waking is our real existence—all day I +study and make friends; at night I sleep. What’s midnight doubt before the +faith of day? You are a philosopher; you disbelieve, you give to dreams at +night the weight I give to the work of active day; to be consistent, you +should keep your bed, for you live to sleep as I to wake—to unbelieve, as +I to still believe. Common-sense terms you bedridden: common-sense brings +its good things to me; so it’s best believing if we can, is it not? Again, +if we are to believe at all, we cannot be too decisive in our faith; we +must be consistent in all our choice—succeed, or go hang in worldly +matters. In love we wed the woman we love most or need most, and as a man +cannot wed twice, so neither can he twice lose his soul. I happened to be +born in one great form of Christianity, the most pronounced and absolute +form of faith in the world, and so one of the most potent forms of +influencing the world. External forces have been allowed to act upon me by +my own consent, and they have made me very comfortable. I take what men +offer with a grace; folks kneel and kiss my hand, and thus is life best +for me; my choice, you will admit, is a success. Had I nobler instincts, +like you, I should hardly count this success; grant I am a beast, beasts +must lead beasts’ lives; it is my business to make the absolute best of +what God has made. At the same time, I do not acknowledge I am so much +your inferior, though you do say I pine among my million fools instead of +living for the dozen men of sense who observe me, and even they do not +know whether I am fool or knave. Be a Napoleon, and if you disbelieve, +where’s the good of it? Then concede there is just a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> chance: doubt may be +wrong—just a chance of judgment and a life to come. Fit up your cabin +another way. Shall we be Shakespeare? What did Shakespeare do? Why, left +his towers and gorgeous palaces to build himself a trim house in +Stratford. He owned the worth of things; he enjoyed the show and respected +the puppets too. Shakespeare and myself want the same things, and what I +want I have. He aimed at a house in Stratford—he got it; I aim at higher +things, and receive heaven’s incense in my nose. Believe and get +enthusiasm, that’s the thing. I can achieve nothing on the denying +side—ice makes no conflagration.” Gigadibs says, “But as you really lack +faith, you run the same risk by your indifference as does the bold +unbeliever; an imperfect faith like that is not worth having; give me +whole faith or none!” Blougram fixes him here. “Own the use of faith, I +find you faith!” he replies. “Christianity may be false, but do you wish +it true? If you desire faith, then you’ve faith enough. We could not +tolerate pure faith, naked belief in Omnipotence; it would be like viewing +the sun with a lidless eye. The use of evil is to hide God. I would rather +die than deny a Church miracle.” Gigadibs says, “Have faith if you will, +but you might purify it.” Blougram objects that “if you first cut the +Church miracle, the next thing is to cut God Himself and be an atheist, so +much does humanity find the cutting process to its taste.” If Gigadibs +says, “All this is a narrow and gross view of life,” Blougram answers, “I +live for this world now; my best pledge for observing the new laws of a +new life to come is my obedience to the present world’s requirements. This +life may be intended to make the next more intense. Man ever tries to be +beforehand in his evolution, as when a traveller throws off his furs in +Russia because he will not want them in France; in France spurns flannel +because in Spain it will not be required; in Spain drops cloth too +cumbrous for Algiers; linen goes next, and last the skin itself, a +superfluity in Timbuctoo. The poor fool was never at ease a minute in his +whole journey. I am at ease now, friend, worldly in this world, as I have +a right to be. You meet me,” continues Blougram, “at this issue: you think +it better, if we doubt, to say so; act up to truth perceived, however +feebly. Put natural religion to the test with which you have just +demolished the revealed, abolish the moral law, let people lie, kill, and +thieve, but there are certain instincts,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> unreasoned out and blind, which +you dare not set aside; you can’t tell why, but there they are, and there +you let them rule, so you are just as much a slave, liar, hypocrite, as +I—a conscious coward to boot, and without promise of reward. I but follow +my instincts, as you yours. I want a God—must have a God—ere I can be +aught, must be in direct relation with Him, and so live my life; yours, +you dare not live. Something we may see, all we cannot see. I say, I see +all: I am obliged to be emphatic, or men would doubt there is anything to +see at all” Then the Bishop turns upon his opponent and presses him: +“Confess, don’t you want my bishopric, my influence and state? Why, you +will brag of dining with me to the last day of your life! There are men +who beat me,—the zealot with his mad ideal, the poet with all his life in +his ode, the statesman with his scheme, the artist whose religion is his +art—such men carry their fire within them; but you, you Gigadibs, poor +scribbler,—but not so poor but we almost thought an article of yours +might have been written by Dickens,—here’s my card, its mere production, +in proof of acquaintance with me, will double your remuneration in the +reviews at sight. Go, write,—detest, defame me, but at least you cannot +despise me!” The average superficial reasoner is in the constant habit of +setting down as insincere such learned persons as make a profession of +faith in the dogmas of Christianity. The ordinary man of the world +considers the mass of Christian people as bound to their faith by the +fetters of ignorance. Such men, however, as it is impossible to term +ignorant, who profess to hold the dogmas of Christianity in their +integrity, are actuated, they say, by unworthy motives, self-interest, the +desire to make the best of both worlds, unwillingness to cast in their lot +with those who put themselves to the pain and discredit of thinking for +themselves, and casting off the fetters of superstition. So, say these +cynics, the dignified clergy of the Established Church repeat creeds which +they no longer believe, that they may live in splendour and enjoy the best +things of life, while the poorer clergy retain their positions as a decent +means of gaining a livelihood. When such flippant thinkers and impulsive +talkers contemplate the lives of such men as Cardinal Wiseman or Cardinal +Newman, who were acknowledged to be learned and highly cultivated men, +they say it is impossible such men can be sincere when they profess to +believe the teachings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> of the Catholic Church, which they hold to be +contemptible superstition; they must be actuated by unworthy motives, love +of power over men’s minds, craving for worldly dignities and the adulation +of men and the like. That a man like Newman should give up his +intellectual life at Oxford “to perform mummeries at a Catholic altar” in +Birmingham, was plainly termed insanity, intellectual suicide, or sheer +knavery. The late Cardinal Wiseman was an exceedingly learned man, of +great scientific ability, and such admirable <i>bonhomie</i> that this class of +critic had no difficulty whatever in relegating his Eminence to what was +considered his precise moral position. Mr. Browning in this monologue +accurately postulates the popular conception of the Cardinal’s character +in the utterances of one Gigadibs, a young man of thirty who has rashly +expressed his opinions of the great churchman’s religious character. The +poet, though completely failing to do justice to the Bishop’s side of the +question, has presented us with a character perfectly natural, but which +in every aspect seems more the picture of an eighteenth-century +fox-hunting ecclesiastic than that of a bishop of the Roman Church, who +would have had a good deal more to say on the subject of faith as +understood by his Church than the poet has put into the mouth of his +Bishop Blougram. As it is impossible to see in the description given of +the Bishop anybody but the late Cardinal Wiseman, it is necessary to say +that the description is to the last degree untrue, as must have been +obvious to any one personally acquainted with him. A review of the poem +appeared in the magazine known as the <i>Rambler</i>, for January 1856, which +is credibly supposed to have been written by the Cardinal himself. “The +picture drawn in the poem,” says the article in question, “is that of an +arch hypocrite, and the frankest of fools.” The writer says that Mr. +Browning “is utterly mistaken in the very groundwork of religion, though +starting from the most unworthy notions of the work of a Catholic bishop, +and defending a self-indulgence which every honest man must feel to be +disgraceful, is yet in its way triumphant.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—“<i>Brother Pugin</i>,” a celebrated Catholic architect, who built many +Gothic churches for Catholic congregations in England. “<i>Corpus Christi +Day</i>,” the Feast of the Sacrament of the Altar, literally the Body of +Christ; it occurs on the Thursday after Trinity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> Sunday. <i>Che, che</i>, what, +what! <i>Count D’Orsay</i> (1798-1852), a French savant, and an intellectual +dandy. “<i>Parma’s pride—the Jerome</i>” the St. Jerome by Correggio, one of +the most important paintings in the Ducal Academy at Parma. There is a +curious story of the picture in Murray’s Guide to North Italy. <i>Marvellous +Modenese</i>—the celebrated painter Correggio was born in the territory of +Modena, Italy. “<i>Peter’s Creed, or rather, Hildebrand’s</i>,” Pope Hildebrand +(Gregory VII., 1073-85). The temporal power of the popes, and the +authority of the Papacy over sovereigns, were claimed by this pope. <i>Verdi +and Rossini</i>, Verdi wrote a poor opera, which pleased the audience on the +first night, and they loudly applauded. Verdi nervously glanced at +Rossini, sitting quietly in his box, and read the verdict in his face. +<i>Schelling</i>, Frederick William Joseph von, a distinguished German +philosopher (1775-1854). <i>Strauss</i>, David Friedrich (1808-74), who wrote +the Rationalistic <i>Life of Jesus</i>, one of the Tübingen philosophers. <i>King +Bomba</i>, a soubriquet given to Ferdinand II. (1810-59), late king of the +Two Sicilies; it means King Puffcheek, King Liar, King Knave. <i>lazzaroni</i>, +Naples beggars—so called from Lazarus. <i>Antonelli</i>, Cardinal, secretary +of Pope Pius IX., a most astute politician, if not a very devout +churchman. “<i>Naples’ liquefaction.</i>” The supposed miracle of the +liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius the Martyr. A small quantity of +the saint’s blood in a solid state is preserved in a crystal reliquary; +when brought into the presence of the head of the saint it melts, bubbles +up, and, when moved, flows on one side. It is preserved in the great +church at Naples. On certain occasions, as on the feast of St. Januarius, +September 19th, the miracle is publicly performed. See Butler’s <i>Lives of +the Saints</i> for September 19th. The matter has been much discussed, but no +reasonable theory has been set up to account for it. Mr. Browning is quite +wrong in suggesting that belief in this, or any other of this class of +miracles, is obligatory on the Catholic conscience. A man may be a good +Catholic and believe none of them. He could not, of course, be a Catholic +and deny the miracles of the Bible, because he is bound to believe them on +the authority of the Church as well as that of the Holy Scriptures. Modern +miracles stand on no such basis. <i>Fichte</i>, Johann Gottlieb (1762-1814). An +eminent German metaphysician. He defined God as the <i>moral order</i> of the +universe. “<i>Pastor est tui Dominus</i>,” the Lord<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> is thy Shepherd. <i>In +partibus, Episcopus</i>, A bishop <i>in partibus infidelium</i>. In countries +where the Roman Catholic faith is not regularly established, as it was not +in England before the time of Cardinal Wiseman, there were no bishops of +sees in the kingdom itself, but they took their titles from heathen lands; +so that an English bishop would perhaps be called Bishop of Mesopotamia +when he was actually appointed to London. This is now altered, so far as +this country is concerned.</p> + +<p><b>“Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church, The”</b> (Rome, 15—. +<i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics—Bells and Pomegranates</i> No. VII., +1845).—First published in <i>Hood’s Magazine</i>, 1845, and the same year in +<i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i>; in 1863 it appeared under <i>Men and Women</i>: +St. Praxed or Praxedes. An old <i>title</i> or parish church in Rome bears the +name of this saint. It was mentioned in the life of Pope Symmachus (<span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> +498-514). It was repaired by Adrian I. and Paschal I., and lastly by St. +Charles Borromeo, who took from it his title of cardinal. He died 1584; +there is a small monument to his memory now in the church. St. Praxedes, +Virgin, was the daughter of Pudens, a Roman senator, and sister of St. +Pudentiana. She lived in the reign of the Emperor Antoninus Pius. She +employed all her riches in relieving the poor and the necessities of the +Church. The poem is a monologue of a bishop of the art-loving, luxurious, +and licentious Renaissance, who lies dying, and, instead of preparing his +soul for death, is engaged in giving directions about a grand tomb he +wishes his relatives to erect in his church. He has secured his niche, the +position is good, and he desires the monument shall be worthy of it. Mr. +Ruskin, in <i>Modern Painters</i>, vol. iv., pp. 377-79, says of this poem: +“Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle +Ages—always vital, right, and profound; so that in the matter of art, +with which we are specially concerned, there is hardly a principle +connected with the mediæval temper that he has not struck upon in these +seemingly careless and too rugged lines of his” (here the writer quotes +from the poem, “As here I lie, In this state chamber dying by degrees,” to +“Ulpian serves his need!”). “I know no other piece of modern English prose +or poetry in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the +Renaissance spirit—its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, +ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is +nearly all that I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> said of the central Renaissance, in thirty pages +of the <i>Stones of Venice</i>, put into as many lines, Browning’s also being +the antecedent work.” It was inevitable that the great period of the +Renaissance should produce men of the type of the Bishop of St. Praxed’s; +it would be grossly unfair to set him down as the type of the churchmen of +his time. As a matter of fact, the Catholic church was undergoing its +Renaissance also. The Council of Trent is better known by some historians +for its condemnation of heresies than for the great work it did in +reforming the morals of Catholic nations. The regulations which it +established for this end were fruitful in raising up in different +countries some of the noblest and most beautiful characters in the history +of Christianity. St. Charles Borromeo, archbishop of Milan, whose +connection with St. Praxed’s Church is noticed above, was the founder of +Sunday-schools, the great restorer of ecclesiastical discipline and the +model of charity. St. Theresa rendered the splendour of the monastic life +conspicuous, leading a life wholly angelical, and reviving the fervour of +a great number of religious communities. The congregation of the Ursulines +and many religious orders established for the relief of corporeal +miseries—such as the Brothers Hospitallers, devoted to nursing the sick; +the splendid missionary works of St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis +Xavier—all these, and many other evidences of the awakening life of the +Catholic Church, were the products of an age which is as often +misrepresented as it is imperfectly understood. There were bishops of St. +Praxed’s such as the poet has so inimitably sketched for us; but had there +been no others of a more Christian type, religion in southern Europe would +have died out instead of starting up as a giant refreshed to win, as it +did, the world for Christ. The worldly bishop of the poem is an “art for +art’s sake” ecclesiastic, who is not at all anxious to leave a life which +he has found very satisfactory for a future state about which he has +neither anxiety nor concern. What he is concerned for is his tomb. His old +rival Gandolf has deprived him of the position in the church which he +longed for as a resting-place, but he hopes to make up for the loss by a +more tasteful and costly monument, with a more classical inscription than +his. The old fellow is as much Pagan as Christian, and his ornaments have +as much to do with the gods and goddesses of old Rome as with the Church +of which he is a minister. In all this Mr. Browning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> finely satirises the +Renaissance spirit, which, though it did good service to humanity in a +thousand ways, was much more concerned with flesh than spirit.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Basalt</i>, trap rock of a black, bluish, or leaden-grey colour; +<i>peach-blossom marble</i>, an Italian marble used in decorations; +<i>olive-frail</i> == a rush basket of olives; <i>lapis lazuli</i>, a mineral, +usually of a rich blue colour, used in decorations; <i>Frascati</i> is a +beautiful spot on the Alban hills, near Rome; <i>antique-black</i> == Nero +antico, a beautiful black stone; <i>thyrsus</i>, a Bacchanalian staff wrapped +with ivy, or a spear stuck into a pine-cone; <i>travertine</i>, a cellular +calc-tufa, abundant near Tivoli; <i>Tully’s Latin</i> == Cicero’s, the purest +classic style; <i>Ulpian</i>, a Roman writer on law, chiefly engaged in +literary work (<span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 211-22). “<i>Blessed mutter of the mass</i>”; To devout +Catholics the low monotone of the priest saying a low mass, in which there +is no music and only simple ceremonies, is more devotional than the high +mass, where there is much music and ritual to divert the attention from +the most solemn act of Christian worship; <i>mortcloth</i>, a funeral pall; +<i>elucescebat</i>, he was distinguished; <i>vizor</i>, that part of a helmet which +defends the face; <i>term</i>, a bust terminating in a square block of stone, +similar to those of the god Terminus; <i>onion-stone</i> == cippolino, +cipoline, an Italian marble, white, with pale-green shadings.</p> + +<p><b>Blot in the ’Scutcheon, A.</b> (Part V. of <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, 1843.) <i>A +Tragedy.</i> Time, 17—. The story is exceedingly dramatic, though simple. +Thorold, Earl Tresham, is a monomaniac to family pride and conventional +morality: his ancestry and his own reputation absorb his whole attention, +and the wreck of all things were a less evil to him than a stain on the +family honour. He is the only protector of his motherless sister, Mildred +Tresham, who has in her innocence allowed herself to be seduced by Henry, +Earl Mertoun, whose estates are contiguous to those of the Treshams. He, +too, has a noble name, and he could have lawfully possessed the girl he +loved if he had not been deterred by a mysterious feeling of awe for Lord +Tresham, and had asked her in marriage. But he is anxious to repair the +wrong he has done, and the play opens with his visit to Thorold to +formally present himself as the girl’s lover. Naturally the Earl, seeing +no objection to the match, makes none. The difficulty seems at an end; +but, unfortunately,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> Gerard, an old and faithful retainer, has seen a man, +night after night, climb to the lady’s chamber, and has watched him leave. +He has no idea who the visitor might be, and, after some struggles with +contending emotions, decides to acquaint his master with the things which +he has seen. Thorold is in the utmost mental distress and perturbation, +and questions his sister in a manner that is as painful to him as to her. +She does not deny the circumstances alleged against her. Her brother is +overwhelmed with distress at the sudden disgrace brought upon his noble +line, and confounded at the idea of the attempt which has been made to +involve in his own disgrace the nobleman who has sought an alliance with +his family. Mildred refuses to say who her lover is, and weakly—as it +appears to her brother—determines to let things take the proposed course. +Naturally Thorold looks upon his sister as a degraded being who is dead to +shame and honour, and he rushes from her presence to wander in the grounds +in the neighbourhood of the house, till at midnight he sees the lover +Mertoun preparing to mount to his sister’s room. They fight, and the Earl +falls mortally wounded. In the chamber above the signal-light in the +window has been placed as usual by Mildred, who awaits Thorold in her +room. He does not appear, and her heart tells her that her happiness is at +an end. Now she sees all her guilt, and the consequences of her +degradation to her family. In the midst of these agonising reflections her +brother bursts into her room. She sees at once that he has killed Mertoun, +sees also that he himself is dying of poison which he has swallowed. Her +heart is broken, and she dies. Mildred’s cousin Gwendolen, betrothed to +the next heir to the earldom, Austin Tresham, is a quick, intelligent +woman, who saw how matters stood, and would have rectified them had it not +been rendered impossible by the adventure in the grounds, when the unhappy +young lover allowed Thorold to kill him. Mr. Forster, in his <i>Life of +Charles Dickens</i> (Book iv. I), says: “This was the date [1842], too, of +Mr. Browning’s tragedy of the <i>Blot in the ’Scutcheon</i>, which I took upon +myself, after reading it in the manuscript, privately to impart to +Dickens; and I was not mistaken in the belief that it would profoundly +touch him. ‘Browning’s play,’ he wrote (November 25th), ‘has thrown me +into a perfect passion of sorrow. To say that there is anything in its +subject save what is lovely, true, deeply affecting, full of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> the best +emotion, the most earnest feeling, and the most true and tender source of +interest, is to say that there is no light in the sun and no heat in +blood. It is full of genius, natural and great thoughts, profound and yet +simple and beautiful in its vigour. I know nothing that is so +affecting—nothing in any book I have ever read—as Mildred’s recurrence +to that “I was so young—I had no mother!” I know no love like it, no +passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception like +it. And I swear it is a tragedy that <span class="smcaplc">MUST</span> be played; and must be played, +moreover, by Macready. There are some things I would have changed if I +could (they are very slight, mostly broken lines); and I assuredly would +have the old servant <i>begin his tale upon the scene</i>, and be taken by the +throat, or drawn upon, by his master in its commencement. But the tragedy +I never shall forget, or less vividly remember, than I do now. And if you +tell Browning that I have seen it, tell him that I believe from my soul +there is no man living (and not many dead) who could produce such a +work.’” Mr. Browning wrote the play in five days, at the suggestion of +Macready, who read it with delight. The poet had been led to expect that +Macready would play in it himself, but was annoyed to hear that he had +given the part he had intended to take to Mr. Phelps, then an actor quite +unknown. Evidently Macready expected that Mr. Browning would withdraw the +play. On the contrary, he accepted Phelps, who, however, was taken +seriously ill before the rehearsal began. The consequence was (though +there was clearly some shuffling on Macready’s part) that the great +tragedian himself consented to take the part at the last moment. It is +evident that Macready had changed his mind. He had, however, done more: he +had changed the title to <i>The Sisters</i>, and had changed a good deal of the +play, even to the extent of inserting some lines of his own. Meanwhile, +Phelps having recovered, and being anxious to take his part, Mr. Browning +insisted that he should do so; and, to Macready’s annoyance, the old +arrangement had to stand. The play was vociferously applauded, and Mr. +Phelps was again and again called before the curtain. Mr. Browning was +much displeased at the treatment he had received, but his play continued +to be performed to crowded houses. It was a great success also when Phelps +revived it at Sadlers Wells. Miss Helen Faucit (who afterwards became Lady +Martin) played the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> part of Mildred Tresham on the first appearance of +<i>The Blot</i> in 1843. The Browning Society brought it out at St. George’s +Hall on May 2nd, 1885; and again at the Olympic Theatre on March 15th, +1888, when Miss Alma Murray played Mildred Tresham in an ideally perfect +manner. It was, as the <i>Era</i> said, “a thing to be remembered. From every +point of view it was admirable. Its passion was highly pitched, its +elocution pure and finished, and its expression, by feature and gesture, +of a quality akin to genius. The agonising emotions which in turn thrill +the girl’s sensitive frame were depicted with intense truth and keen and +delicate art, and an excellent discretion defeated any temptation to +extravagance.” It cannot be seriously held by any unprejudiced person that +<i>A Blot in the ’Scutcheon</i> has within it the elements of success as an +acting play. The subject is unpleasant, the conduct of Thorold +monomaniacal and improbable, the wholesale dying in the last scene +“transpontine.” The characters philosophise too much, and dissect +themselves even as they die. They come to life again under the stimulation +of the process, only to perish still more, and to make us speculate on the +nature of the poison which permitted such self-analysis, and on the nature +of the heart disease which was so subservient to the patient’s +necessities. An analytic poet, we feel, is for the study, not for the +boards.</p> + +<p><b>Bluphocks.</b> (<i>Pippa Passes.</i>) The vagabond Englishman of the poem. “The +name means <i>Blue-Fox</i>, and is a skit on the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, which is +bound in a cover of blue and fox.” (Dr. Furnivall.)</p> + +<p><b>Bombast.</b> The proper name of <i>Paracelsus</i>; “probably acquired,” says Mr. +Browning in a note to <i>Paracelsus</i>, “from the characteristic phraseology +of his lectures, that unlucky signification which it has ever since +retained.” This is not correct. Bombast, in German <i>bombast</i>, cognate with +Latin <i>bombyx</i> in the sense of cotton. “Bombast, the cotton-plant growing +in Asia” (Phillips, <i>The New World of Words</i>). It was applied also to the +cotton wadding with which garments were lined and stuffed in Elizabeth’s +time; hence inflated speech, fustian. (See Stubbes, <i>The Anatomy of +Abuses</i>, p. 23; Trench, <i>Encyc. Dict.</i>, etc.)</p> +<p><a name="boot" id="boot"></a></p> +<p><b>Boot and Saddle.</b> No. III. of the “Cavalier Songs,” published in <i>Bells and +Pomegranates</i> in 1842, under the title “Cavalier Tunes.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span><b>Bottinius.</b> (<i>The Ring and the Book.</i>) Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista +Bottinius was the Fisc or Public Prosecutor and Advocate of the Apostolic +Chamber at Rome. The ninth book of the poem contains his speech as +prosecutor of Count Guido.</p> + +<p><b>Boy and the Angel, The.</b> (<i>Hood’s Magazine</i>, vol. ii., 1844, pp. 140-42.) +Reprinted, revised, and with five fresh couplets, in “Dramatic Romances +and Lyrics” (1845), No. VII. <i>Bells and Pomegranates.</i> Theocrite was a +poor Italian boy who, morning, evening, noon and night, ever sang “Praise +God!” As he prayed well and loved God, so he worked well and served his +master faithfully and cheerfully. Blaise, the monk, heard him sing his +<i>Laudate</i>, and said: “I doubt not thou art heard, my son, as well as if +thou wert the Pope, praising God from Peter’s dome this Easter day”; but +Theocrite said: “Would God I might praise Him that great way and die!” +That night there was no more Theocrite, and God missed the boy’s innocent +praise. Gabriel the archangel came to the earth, took Theocrite’s humble +place, and praised God as did the boy, only with angelic song,—playing +well, moreover, the craftsman’s part, content at his poor work, doing +God’s will on earth as he had done it in heaven. But God said: “There is +neither doubt nor fear in this praise; it is perfect as the song of my +new-born worlds; I miss my little human praise.” Then the flesh disguise +fell from the angel, and his wings sprang forth again. He flew to Rome: it +was Easter Day, and the new pope Theocrite, once the poor work-lad, stood +in the tiring room by the great gallery from which the popes are wont to +bless the people on Easter morning, and he saw the angel before him, who +told him he had made a mistake in bringing him from his trade to set him +in that high place; he had done wrong, too, in leaving his angel-sphere: +the stopping of that infant praise marred creation’s chorus; he must go +back, and once more that early way praise God—“back to the cell and poor +employ”; and so Theocrite grew to old age at his former home, and Rome had +a new pope, and the angel’s error was rectified. Legends and stories of +saints, angels, and our Lord Himself, are common in all Catholic +countries, where these heavenly beings are far more real to the minds of +the people than they are to the colder intelligence of Protestant and more +logical lands. In southern Europe, hosts of such stories as these cluster +round our Lady and the Saints. The Holy Virgin does not disdain to take +her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> needle and sew buttons on the clothing of her worshippers, and the +angels and saints think nothing of a little domestic or trade employment +if it will assist their devout clients.</p> + +<p>In <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 3rd Series, xii. 6, July 6, 1867, there appeared +two queries on this poem by “John Addis, Jun.”: “1. What is the precise +inner meaning? 2. On what legend is it founded? With regard to my first +question, I see dimly in the poem a comparison of three kinds of +praise—viz., human, ceremonial, and angelic. Further, I see dimly a +contrasting of Gabriel’s humility with Theocrite’s ambition.... The poem +... has been recalled to me by reading ‘Kyng Roberd of Cysillé’ (Hazlitt’s +<i>Early Popular Poetry</i>, vol. i., p. 264). There is a general analogy (by +contrast perhaps rather than likeness) between the two poems, which +points, I think, to the existence of a legend kindred to ‘Kyng Roberd’ as +the prototype of Browning’s poem, rather than to ‘Kyng Roberd’ itself as +that prototype.... To ‘Sir Gowghter’ and the Jovinianus story of <i>Gesta +Romanorum</i>, I have not present access; but both I fancy (while akin to +‘Kyng Roberd of Cysillé’) have nothing in common with ‘The Boy and the +Angel.’” At page 55 another correspondent says that according to Warton +(ii. 22), “‘Sir Gowghter’ is only another version of ‘Robert the Devil,’ +and therefore of ‘King Roberd of Cysillé.’ He goes on to say that +Longfellow has closely followed the old poem in ‘King Robert of Sicily’ +printed in <i>Tales of a Wayside Inn</i>; but no answer is given to Mr. Addis’ +queries about ‘The Boy and the Angel’” (<i>Browning Notes and Queries</i>, No. +13, Pt. I., vol. ii.) Leigh Hunt, in his <i>Jar of Honey</i>, chap. vi., gives +the story of King Robert of Sicily. We can only include the following +abbreviation here of the beautiful legend told so delightfully by the +great essayist.</p> + +<p>One day, when King Robert of Sicily was hearing vespers on St. John’s Eve, +he was struck by the words of the <i>Magnificat</i>—“Deposuit potentes de +sede, et exaltavit humiles” (“He hath put down the mighty from their seat, +and hath exalted the humble”). He asked a chaplain near him what the words +meant; and when they were explained to him, scoffingly replied that men +like himself were not so easily put down, much less supplanted by those +contemptible poor folk. The chaplain was horrified, and made no reply, and +the king relieved his annoyance by going to sleep. After some time the +king awoke and found<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> himself in the church with no creature present +except an old deaf woman who was dusting it. When the old lady saw the man +who was trying to make her hear, she cried “Thieves!” and scuttled off to +the door, closing it behind her. King Robert looked at the door, then at +the empty church, then at himself. His ermine robe was gone, his coronet, +his jewels, all the insignia of his royalty had disappeared. Raging at the +door, he demanded that it should be opened; but they only mocked him +through the keyhole and threatened him with the constable; but as the +sexton mocked the captive king the great door was burst open in his face, +for the king was a powerful man and had dashed it down with his foot. He +strode towards his palace, but they would not admit him, and to all his +raving replied “Madman!” Then the king caught sight of his face in a +glass, which he tore from the hands of one of his captains who was +admiring himself, and saw that he was changed: it was not his own face. +Fear came upon him: he knew it was witchcraft, and his violence was +increased when the bystanders laughed to hear him declare he was his +majesty changed. Next the attendants came from the palace to say the king +wanted to see the madman they had caught; and so he was taken to the +presence chamber, where he found himself face to face with another King +Robert, whom the changed king called “hideous impostor,” which made the +court laugh consumedly, because the king on the throne was very handsome, +and the man who fell asleep in the church was very coarse and vulgar. And +now the latter could see that it was an angel who had taken his place, and +hated him accordingly. He was still more disgusted when the king told him +he would make him his court fool, because he was so amusing in his +violence; and he had to submit while they cut his hair and crowned the +king of fools with the cap and bells. King Robert then gave way, for he +felt he was in the power of the devil and it was no use to resist; and so +went out to sup with the dogs, as he was ordered. Matters went on in this +way for two years. The new king was good and kind to everybody except the +degraded monarch, whom he never tired of humiliating in every possible +way. At the end of two years the king went to visit his brother the Pope +and his brother the Emperor, and he dressed all his court magnificently, +except the fool, whom he arrayed in fox-tails and placed beside an ape. +The crowds of people who came out to see the grand procession<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> laughed +heartily at the sorry figure cut by the poor fool. He, however, was glad +he was going to see the Pope, as he trusted the meeting would dispel the +magic by which he was enchained; but he was disappointed, for neither Pope +nor Emperor took the slightest notice of him. Now, it happened that day it +was again St. John’s Eve, and again they were all at vespers singing: “He +hath put down the mighty from their seat, and exalted the humble.” And now +with what different feelings he heard those words! The crowded church was +astonished to see the poor fool in his ridiculous disguise bathed in +tears, meekly kneeling in prayer, his head bowed in penitence and sorrow. +Somehow every one felt a little holier that day: Pope and Emperor wished +to be kinder and more sympathetic to their people, and the sermon went to +every one’s heart, for it was all about charity and humility. After +service they told the angel-king of the singular behaviour of the fool. Of +course he knew all about it, though he did not say so; but he sent for the +fool, and, when he had him in private (except that the ape was there, to +whom the fool had become much attached), he asked him, “Art thou still a +king?” “I am a fool, and no king.” “What wouldst thou, Robert?” asked the +angel gently. “What thou wouldst,” replied poor King Robert. Then the +angel touched him, and he felt an inexpressible calm diffuse itself +through his whole being. He knelt, and began to thank the angel. “Not to +me,” the heavenly being said—“not to me! Let us pray.” They knelt in +prayer; and when the King rose from his knees the angel was gone, the +ermine was once more on the King’s shoulder and the crown upon his brow; +his humiliation was over, but his pride never returned. He lived long and +reigned nobly, and died in the odour of sanctity. Mr. Browning may have +drawn upon some Italian legend for his story of Theocrite: it may even +have been suggested by the legend of King Robert; but he must have been so +familiar with the Catholic idea of the interest in human affairs taken by +angels and saints, that he might readily have invented the story. Nothing +can be easier to understand than its lesson. With God there is no great or +small, no lofty or mean, nothing common or unclean. To do the will of God +in the work lying nearest us, to praise God in our daily task and the +common things of life as they arise, this is better for us and more +acceptable service to Him than doing some great thing, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> we, with our +false estimates of things, may be led to apprise it.</p> + +<p><b>By the Fireside.</b> (First published in vol. i. of <i>Men and Women</i>, 1855.) A +man of middle life and very learned is addressing his wife. He looks +forward to his old age, and prophesies how it will be passed. He will +pursue his studies; but, deep as he will be in Greek, his soul will have +no difficulty in finding its way back to youth and Italy, and he will +delight to reconstruct the scene in his imagination where he first made +all his own the heart of the woman who blessed him with her love and +became his wife. Once more he will be found on that mountain path, again +he will conjure from the past the Alpine scene by the ruined chapel in the +gorge, the poor little building where on feast days the priest comes to +minister to the few folk who live on the mountain-side. The bit of fresco +over the porch, the date of its erection, the bird which sings there, and +the stray sheep which drinks at the pond, the very midges dancing over the +water, and the lichens clinging to the walls,—all will be present, for it +was there heart was fused with heart, and two souls were blent in one. +“With whom else,” he asks his wife, “dare he look backward or dare pursue +the path grey heads abhor?” Old age is dreaded by the young and +middle-aged, none care to think of it; but the speaker dreads it not, he +has a soul-companion from whom not even death can separate him, and with +the memory of this moment of irrevocable union he can face the bounds of +life undaunted. “The moment one and infinite,” to which both their lives +had tended, had wrought this happiness for him that it could never cease +to bear fruit, never cease to hallow and bless his spirit; the mountain +stream had sought the lake below, and had lost itself in its bosom; two +lives were joined in one without a scar. “How the world is made for each +of us!” everything tending to a moment’s product, with its infinite +consequences—the completion, in this case, of his own small life, whereby +Nature won her best from him in fitting him to love his wife. The</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“great brow</span><br /> +And the spirit small hand propping it,”</p> + +<p>refer to Mrs. Browning, and the whole poem, though the incidents are +imaginary, is without doubt a confession of his love for her, and its +influence on his own spiritual development.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p> +<p> </p> +<p><b>Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island.</b> (<i>Dramatis +Personæ</i>, 1864.) The original of Caliban is the savage and deformed slave +of Shakespeare’s <i>Tempest</i>. The island may be identified with the Utopia +<ins class="correction" title="outopos">ουτοπος</ins>, the nowhere) of Hythloday. Setebos was the Patagonian +god (Settaboth in Pigafetta), which was by 1611 familiar to the hearers of +<i>The Tempest</i>. Patagonia was discovered by Magellan in 1520. The new +worlds which Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Gomara, Lane, Harriott and +Raleigh described, should, according to the popular fancy of the time, be +peopled by just such beings of bestial type as the Caliban of <i>The +Tempest</i>. The ancients thought the inhabitants of strange and distant +lands were half human, half brutal, and monstrous creatures, ogres, and +“anthropophagi, men who each other eat.” The famous traveller Sir John +Mandeville, in the fourteenth century, describes “the land of Bacharie, +where be full evil folk and full cruel. In that country been many +Ipotaynes, that dwell sometimes in the water and sometimes on the land; +half-man and half-horse, and they eat men when they may take them.” Marco +Polo (1254-1324) represents the Andaman Islanders as a most brutish savage +race, having heads, eyes and teeth resembling the canine species, who ate +human flesh raw and devoured every one on whom they could lay their hands. +The islander as monster was therefore familiar enough to English readers +in Shakespeare’s time, and the date of the old book of travels “Purchas +his Pilgrimage,” very nearly corresponding with the probable date of the +production of <i>The Tempest</i>, affords reasonable proof that the poet has +embodied the story given in that work of the pongo, the huge brute-man +seen by Andrew Battle in the kingdom of Congo, where he lived some nine +months. This pongo slept in the trees, building a roof to shelter himself +from the rain, and living wholly on nuts and fruits. Mr. Browning has +taken the Caliban of Shakespeare, “the strange fish legged like a man, and +his fins like arms,” yet “no fish, but an islander that hath lately +suffered by a thunderbolt,” and has evolved him into “a savage with the +introspective powers of a Hamlet and the theology of an evangelical +churchman.” Shakespeare’s monster did not speculate at all; he liked his +dinner, liked to be stroked and made much of, and was willing to be taught +how to name the bigger light and how the less. He could curse, and he +could worship<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> the man in the moon; he could work for those who were kind +to him, and had a doglike attachment to Prospero. Mr. Browning’s Caliban +has become a metaphysician; he talks Browningese, and reasons high</p> + +<p class="poem">“Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,<br /> +Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute.”</p> + +<p>He has studied Calvin’s <i>Institutes of Theology</i>, and knows enough of St. +Augustine to caricature his teaching. Considered from the anthropologist’s +point of view, the poem is not a scientific success; Caliban is a +degradation from a higher type, not a brute becoming slowly developed into +a man. Mr. Browning’s early training amongst the Nonconformists of the +Calvinistic type had familiarised him with a theology which, up to fifty +years ago, was that of a very large proportion of the Independents, the +Baptists, and a considerable part of the Evangelical school in the Church +of England. Without some acquaintance with this theological system it is +impossible to understand the poem. At the head is a quotation from Psalm +l. 21, where God says to the wicked, “thou thoughtest that I was +altogether such an one as thyself,” and the object of the poem is to +rebuke the anthropomorphic idea of God as it exists in minds of a narrow +and unloving type. It is not a satire upon Christianity, as has been +sometimes declared, but is an attempt to trace the evolution of the +concrete idea of God in a coarse and brutal type of mind. Man from his +advent on the earth has everywhere occupied himself in creating God in his +own image and likeness:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Make us a god, said man:<br /> +Power first the voice obeyed;<br /> +And soon a monstrous form<br /> +Its worshippers dismayed.”</p> + +<p>The motto of the poem shows us how much nobler was the Hebrew conception +of God than that of the nations who knew Him not. The poem opens with +Caliban talking to himself in the third person, while he sprawls in the +mire and is cheating Prospero and Miranda, who think he is at work for +them. He begins to speculate on the Supreme Being—Setebos: he thinks His +dwelling-place is the moon, thinks He made the sun and moon, but not the +stars—the clouds and the island on which he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> dwells; he has no idea of +any land beyond that which is bounded by the sea. He thinks creation was +the result of God being ill at ease. The cold which He hated and which He +was powerless to change impelled Him. So He made the trees, the birds and +beasts and creeping things, and made everything in spite. He could not +make a second self to be His mate, but made in envy, listlessness or sport +all the things which filled the island as playthings. If Caliban could +make a live bird out of clay, he would laugh if the creature broke his +brittle clay leg; he would play with him, being his and merely clay. So he +(Setebos). It would neither be right nor wrong in him, neither kind nor +cruel—merely an act of the Divine Sovereignty. If Caliban saw a +procession of crabs marching to the sea, in mere indifferent playfulness +he might feel inclined to let twenty pass and then stone the twenty-first, +pull off a claw from one with purple spots, give a worm to a third fellow, +and two to another whose nippers end in red, all the while “Loving not, +hating not, just choosing so!” [Apart from revelation, mankind has not +reached the conception of the Fatherhood of God, whose tender mercies are +over all His works. The gods of the heathen are gods of caprice, of malice +and purposeless interference with creatures who are not the sheep of their +pastures, but the playthings of unloving Lords.] But he will suppose God +is good in the main; He has even made things which are better than +Himself, and is envious that they are so, but consoles Himself that they +can do nothing without Him. If the pipe which, blown through, makes a +scream like a bird, were to boast that it caught the birds, and made the +cry the maker could not make, he would smash it with his foot. That is +just what God Setebos does; so Caliban must be humble, or pretend to be. +But why is Setebos cold and ill at ease? Well, Caliban thinks there may be +a something over Setebos, that made Him, something quiet, impassible—call +it The Quiet. Beyond the stars he imagines The Quiet to reside, but is not +much concerned about It. He plays at being simple in his way—makes +believe: so does Setebos. His mother, Sycorax, thought The Quiet made all +things, and Setebos only troubled what The Quiet made. Caliban does not +agree with that. If things were made weak and subject to pain they were +made by a devil, not by a good or indifferent being. No! weakness and pain +meant sport to Him who created creatures subject to them. Setebos makes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> +things to amuse himself, just as Caliban does; makes a pile of turfs and +knocks it over again. So Setebos. But He is a terrible as well as a +malicious being; His hurricanes, His high waves, His lightnings are +destructive, and Caliban cannot contend with His force, neither can he +tell that what pleases Him to-day will do so to-morrow. We must all live +in fear of Him therefore, till haply The Quiet may conquer Him. All at +once a storm comes, and Caliban feels that he was a fool to gibe at +Setebos. He will lie flat and love Him, will do penance, will eat no +whelks for a month to appease Him.</p> + +<p>There are few, if any, systems of theology which escape one or other of +the arrows of this satire. Anthropomorphism in greater or less degree is +inseparable from our conceptions of the Supreme. The abstract idea of God +is impossible to us, the concrete conception is certain to err in making +God to be like ourselves. That the Almighty must in Himself include all +that is highest and noblest in the soul of man is a right conception, when +we attribute to Him our weaknesses and failings we are but as Caliban. The +doctrine of election, and the hideous doctrine of reprobation, are most +certainly aimed at in the line—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.”</p> + +<p>The doctrine of reprobation is thus stated in the Westminster Confession +of Faith, iii. 7. “The rest of mankind [<i>i.e.</i> all but the elect] God was +pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He +extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of His +sovereign power over His creatures to pass by, and to ordain them to +dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious grace.” +Calvin, in his <i>Institutes of the Christian Religion</i>, taught that “God +has predestinated some to eternal life, while the rest of mankind are +predestinated to condemnation and eternal death” (<i>Encyc. Brit.</i> iv., art. +“Calvin,” p. 720).</p> + +<p><b>Camel Driver, A.</b> (Punishment by Man and by God: <i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>, 7.) +A murderer had been executed, the criminal acknowledging the justice of +his punishment, but lamenting that the man who prompted him to evil had +escaped; the murderer reflected with satisfaction that God had reserved a +hell for him. But punishment is only man’s trick to teach; if he could see +true repentance in the sinner’s soul, the fault would not be repeated.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> +God’s process in teaching or punishing nowise resembles man’s. Man lumps +his kind in the mass, God deals with each individual soul as though they +two were alone in the universe, “Ask thy lone soul what laws are plain to +thee,” said Ferishtah, “then stand or fall by them!” Ignorance that sins +is safe,—our greatest punishment is knowledge. No other hell will be +needed for any man than the reflection that he deliberately spurned the +steps which would have raised him to the regard of the Supreme. In the +Lyric it is complained that mankind is over-severe with mere +imperfections, which it magnifies into crimes; but the greater faults, +which should have been crushed in the egg, are either not suspected at all +or actually praised as virtues.</p> + +<p><b>Caponsacchi</b> (<i>The Ring and the Book</i>), the chivalrous priest, Canon of +Arezzo, who aided Pompilia in her flight to Rome from the tyranny of Count +Guido.</p> + +<p><b>Cardinal and the Dog, The.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) The Papal Legate, at the +later sessions of the Council of Trent in 1551 and 1552, was Marcel +Crescenzio, who came of a noble Roman family. At the fifteenth session of +the Council (March 20th, 1552) he was writing to the Pope nearly the whole +night, although he was ill at the time; and as he rose from his seat he +saw a black dog of great size, with flaming eyes and ears hanging down to +the ground, which sprang into the chamber, making straight for him, and +then stretched himself under the table where Crescenzio wrote. He called +his servants and ordered them to turn out the beast, but they found none. +Then the Cardinal fell melancholy, took to his bed and died. As he lay on +his death-bed at Verona he cried aloud to every one to drive away the dog +that leapt on his bed, and so passed away in horror. The poem was written +at the request of William Macready, the eldest son of the great actor. He +asked the poet to write something which he might illustrate. This was in +1840, but the work was only published in the <i>Asolando</i> volume in 1889. +Howling dogs have from remote times been connected with death. In Ossian +we have: “The mother of Culmin remains in the hall—his dogs are howling +in their place—‘Art thou fallen, my fair-haired son, in Erin’s dismal +war?’” There is no doubt that the howling of the wind suggested the idea +of a great dog of death. The wind itself was a magnified dog, heard but +not seen. Burton, in <i>The Anatomy of Melancholy</i>, says (Part I., sect ii., +mem. 1, subs. 2): “Spirits<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> often foretell men’s death by several signs, +as knockings, groanings, etc., though Rich. Argentine, c. 18, <i>De +præstigiis dæmonum</i>, will ascribe these predictions to good angels, out of +the authority of Ficinus and others; prodigies frequently occur at the +deaths of illustrious men, as in the Lateran Church in Rome the popes’ +deaths are foretold by Sylvester’s tomb. Many families in Europe are so +put in mind of their last by such predictions; and many men are forewarned +(if we may believe Paracelsus) by familiar spirits in divers shapes—as +cocks, crows, owls—which often hover about sick men’s chambers.” The dog +is such a faithful friend of man that we are unwilling to believe him, +even in spirit-form, the harbinger of evil to any one. Cardinal +Crescenzio, had he been a vivisector, would have been very appropriately +summoned to his doom in the manner described in the poem. If the men who, +like Professor Rutherford of Edinburgh University, boast of their ruthless +torturing of dogs by hundreds, should ever find themselves in Cardinal +Crescenzio’s plight, there would be a fitness in things we could readily +appreciate. The devil in the form of a great black dog is a familiar +subject with mediæval historians. Not all black dogs were evil, +though—for example, the black dog which St. Dominic’s mother saw before +the birth of the saint. Some of the animals called dogs were probably +wolves; but even these appeared not entirely past redemption, such as the +one of which we read in the <i>Golden Legend</i>, who was converted by the +preaching of St. Francis, and shed tears of repentance, and became as meek +as a lamb, following the saint to every town where he preached! Such is +the power of love. In May 1551 the eleventh session of the Council of +Trent was held, under the presidency of Cardinal Crescenzio, sole legate +in title, but with two nuncios—Pighini and Lippomani. It was merely +formal, as was also the twelfth session, in September 1551. It was +Crescenzio who refused all concession, even going so far as to abstract +the Conciliar seal, lest the safe-conduct to the Protestant theologians +should be granted. He was, however, forced to yield to pressure, and had +to receive the Protestant envoys in a private session at his own house. +The legate in April 1552 was compelled to suspend the Council for two +years, in consequence of the perils of war. There was a general stampede +from Trent at once, and the legate Crescenzio, then very ill, had just +strength to reach<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> Verona, where he died three days after his arrival +(<i>Encyc. Brit.</i>, art. “Trent,” vol. xxiii.). Moreri (<i>Dict. Hist.</i>) tells +the story in almost the same way as Mr. Browning has given it, and adds: +“It could have been invented only by ill-meaning people, who lacked +respect for the Council.”</p> + +<p><b>Carlisle, Lady.</b> (<i>Strafford.</i>) Mr. Browning says: “The character of Lady +Carlisle in the play is wholly imaginary,” but history points clearly +enough to the truth of Mr. Browning’s conception.</p> + +<p><b>Cavalier Tunes.</b> (Published first in <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i> in 1842.) +Their titles are: “Marching Along,” “Give a Rouse,” and “Boot and Saddle.” +Villiers Stanford set them to music.</p> + +<p><b>Cenciaja.</b> (<i>Pacchiarotto, with other Poems</i>, London, 1876.)</p> + +<p class="poem">“Ogni cencio vuol entrare in bucato.”</p> + +<p>The explanation of the title of this poem, as also of the Italian motto +which stands at its head, is given in the following letter written by the +poet to Mr. Buxton Forman:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right">“19, <span class="smcap">Warwick Crescent</span>, W., <i>July 27th, ’76</i>.</p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Buxton Forman</span>,—There can be no objection to such a simple +statement as you have inserted, if it seems worth inserting. ‘Fact,’ +it is. Next: ‘Aia’ is generally an accumulative yet depreciative +termination. ‘Cenciaja,’ a bundle of rags—a trifle. The proverb means +‘every poor creature will be pressing into the company of his +betters,’ and I used it to deprecate the notion that I intended +anything of the kind. Is it any contribution to ‘all connected with +Shelley,’ if I mention that my ‘Book’ (<i>The Ring and the Book</i>) +[rather the ‘old square yellow book,’ from which the details were +taken] has a reference to the reason given by Farinacci, the advocate +of the Cenci, of his failure in the defence of Beatrice? ‘Fuisse +punitam Beatricem’ (he declares) ‘pœnâ ultimi supplicii, non quia +ex intervallo occidi mandavit insidiantem suo honori, sed quia ejus +exceptionem non probavi tibi. Prout, et idem firmiter sperabatur de +sorore Beatrice si propositam excusationem probasset, prout non +probavit.’ That is, she expected to avow the main outrage, and did +not; in conformity with her words, ‘That which I ought to confess, +that will I confess; that to which I ought to assent, to that I +assent; and that which I ought to deny, that will I deny.’ Here is +another Cenciaja!</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“Yours very sincerely, <span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span>.”</span></p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>The opening lines of the poem refer to Shelley’s terrible tragedy, <i>The +Cenci</i>, in the preface to which the story on which the work is founded, is +briefly told as follows: “A manuscript was communicated to me during my +travels in Italy, which was copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace +at Rome, and contains a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the +extinction of one of the noblest and richest families of that city, during +the pontificate of Clement VIII., in the year 1599. The story is, that an +old man, having spent his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived at +length an implacable hatred towards his children; which showed itself +towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous passion, aggravated +by every circumstance of cruelty and violence. This daughter, after long +and vain attempts to escape from what she considered a perpetual +contamination both of body and mind, at length plotted with her +mother-in-law and brother to murder their common tyrant. The young maiden, +who was urged to this tremendous deed by an impulse which overpowered its +horror, was evidently a most gentle and amiable being; a creature formed +to adorn and be admired, and thus violently thwarted from her nature by +the necessity of circumstances and opinion. The deed was quickly +discovered; and, in spite of the most earnest prayers made to the Pope by +the highest persons in Rome, the criminals were put to death. The old man +had, during his life, repeatedly bought his pardon from the Pope for +capital crimes of the most enormous and unspeakable kind, at the price of +a hundred thousand crowns; the death, therefore, of his victims can +scarcely be accounted for by the love of justice. The Pope, among other +motives for severity, probably felt that whosoever killed the Count Cenci +deprived his treasury of a certain and copious source of revenue.” This +explanation is exactly what might be expected from a priest-hater and +religion-despiser like Shelley. The <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>, in the +article on Clement VIII., says: “Clement was an able ruler and a sagacious +statesman. He died in March 1605, leaving a high character for prudence, +munificence, and capacity for business.” Mr. Browning’s contribution to +the Cenci literature affords a more reasonable motive for refusing to +spare the lives of the Cenci. Sir John Simeon lent the poet a copy of an +old chronicle, of which he made liberal use in the poem we are +considering. According to this account,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> the Pope would probably have +pardoned Beatrice had not a case of matricide occurred in Rome at the +time, which determined him to make an example of the Cenci. The Marchesa +dell’ Oriolo, a widow, had just been murdered by her younger son, Paolo +Santa Croce. He had quarrelled with his mother about the family rights of +his elder brother, and killed her because she refused to aid him in an act +of injustice. Having made his escape, he endeavoured to involve his +brother in the crime, and the unfortunate young man was beheaded, although +he was perfectly innocent. In <i>Cenciaja</i> Mr. Browning throws light on the +tragic events of the Cenci story. When Clement was petitioned on behalf of +the family, he said: “She must die. Paolo Santa Croce murdered his mother, +and he is fled; she shall not flee at least!”</p> + +<p><b>Charles Avison.</b> [<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] (<i>Parleyings with Certain People of Importance +in their Day.</i> 1887. No. VII.) “Charles Avison, a musician, was born in +Newcastle about 1710, and died in the same town in 1770. He studied in +Italy, and on his return to England became a pupil of Geminiani. He was +appointed organist of St. Nicholas’ Church, Newcastle, in 1736. In 1752 +appeared his celebrated <i>Essay on Musical Expression</i>, which startled the +world by the boldness with which it put the French and Italian schools of +music above the German, headed by Handel himself. This book led to a +controversy with Dr. Hayes, in which, according to the <i>Dictionary of +National Biography</i>, from which we take the facts, ‘Hayes had the best of +the argument, though Avison was superior from a literary point of view.’ +Avison, who is reported to have been a man of great culture and polish, +published several sets of sonatas and concertos, but there are probably +few persons at the present day who have ever heard any of his music.” +(<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, Jan. 18th, 1887.)</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] This is a criticism of the province and office of music in its +influence on the mind of man.</p> + +<p class="poem">“There is no truer truth obtainable<br /> +By man, than comes of music,”</p> + +<p>says Mr. Browning. Underneath Mind rolls the unsounded sea—the Soul. +Feeling from out its deeps emerges in flower and foam.</p> + +<p class="poem">“Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of Soul?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>Music essays to solve how we feel, to match feeling with knowledge. +Manifest Soul’s work on Mind’s work, how and whence come the hates, loves, +joys, hopes and fears that rise and sink ceaselessly within us? Of these +things Music seeks to tell. Art may arrest some of the transient moods of +Soul; Poetry discerns, Painting is aware of the seething within the gulf, +but Music outdoes both: dredging deeper yet, it drags into day the abysmal +bottom growths of Soul’s deep sea.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—ii., “<i>March</i>”: Avison’s <i>Grand March</i> was possessed in MS. by +Browning’s father. The music of the march is added to the poem. iv., +“<i>Great John Relfe</i>”: Browning’s music master—a celebrated contrapuntist. +<i>Buononcini, Giovanni Battista</i>, Italian musician. He was a gifted +composer, declared by his clique to be infinitely superior to Handel, with +whom he wrote at one time in conjunction. <i>Geminiani, Francesco</i>, Italian +violinist (1680-1762). He came to London under the protection of the Earl +of Essex in 1714. His musical opinions are said to have had no foundation +in truth or principle. <i>Pepusch, John Christopher</i>, an eminent theoretical +musician, born at Berlin about 1667. He performed at Drury Lane in about +1700. He took the degree of Mus. Doc. at Oxford at the same time with +Croft, 1713. He was organist at the Charter-House, and died in 1752. v., +<i>Hesperus</i>. The song to the Evening Star in <i>Tannhauser</i>, “O Du mein +holder Abendstern,” is referred to here (Mr. A. Symons). viii., +“<i>Radamista</i>,” the name of an opera by Handel, first performed at the +Haymarket in 1720. “<i>Rinaldo</i>,” the name of the opera composed by Handel, +and performed under his direction at the Haymarket for the first time on +Feb. 24th, 1711. xv., “<i>Little Ease</i>,” an uncomfortable punishment similar +to the stocks or the pillory.</p> + +<p><b>Charles I.</b> (<i>Strafford.</i>) The character of this king, who basely +sacrifices his best friend Strafford, is founded in fact, but his weakness +and meanness are doubtless exaggerated by the poet—to show his meaning, +as the artists say.</p> + +<p><b>Cherries.</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>, 9.) “On Praise and Thanksgiving.” All +things are great and small in their degree. A disciple objects to +Ferishtah that man is too weak to praise worthily the All-mighty One; he +is too mean to offer fit praise to Heaven,—let the stars do that! The +dervish tells a little story of a subject of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> the Shah who came from a +distant part of the realm, and wandered about the palace wonderingly, till +all at once he was surprised to find a nest-like little chamber with his +own name on the entry, and everything arranged exactly to his own peculiar +taste. Yet to him it was as nothing: he had not faith enough to enter into +the good things provided for him. He tells another story. Two beggars owed +a great sum to the Shah. This one brought a few berries from his +currant-bush, some heads of garlic, and five pippins from a seedling tree. +This was his whole wealth; he offered that in payment of his debt. It was +graciously received; teaching us that if we offer God all the love and +thanks we can, it will gratify the Giver of all good none the less because +our offering is small, and lessened by admixture with lower human motives. +For the grateful flavour of the cherry let us lift up our thankful hearts +to Him who made that, the stars, and us. We know why He made the +cherry,—why He made Jupiter we do not know. The Lyric compares +verse-making with love-making. Verse-making is praising God by the stars, +too great a task for man’s short life; but love-making has no depths to +explore, no heights to ascend; love now will be love evermore: let us give +thanks for love, if we cannot offer praise the poet’s own great way.</p> + +<p><b>Chiappino.</b> (<i>A Soul’s Tragedy.</i>) The bragging friend of Luitolfo, who was +compelled to be noble against his inclination, and who became “the +twenty-fourth leader of a revolt” ridiculed by the legate.</p> +<p><a name="childe" id="childe"></a></p> +<p><b>“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; +<i>Romances</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Romances</i>, 1868.) The story of a knight who +has undertaken a pilgrimage to a certain dark tower, the way to which was +full of difficulties and dangers, and the right road quite unknown to the +seeker. Those who had preceded him on the path had all failed, and he +himself is no sooner fairly engaged in the quest than he is filled with +despair, but is impelled to go on. At the stage of his journey which is +described in the poem he meets a hoary cripple, who gives him directions +which he consents to follow, though with misgivings. The day was drawing +to a close, the road by which he entered on the path to the tower was +gone; when he looked back, nothing remained but to proceed. Nature all +around was starved and ignoble: flowers there were none; some weeds that +seemed to thrive in the wilderness only added to its desolation; dock<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> +leaves with holes and rents, grass as hair in leprosy; and wandering on +the gloomy plain, one stiff, blind horse, all starved and stupefied, +looking as if he were thrust out of the devil’s stud. The pilgrim tried to +think of earlier, happier sights: of his friend Cuthbert—alas! one +night’s disgrace left him without that friend; of Giles, the soul of +honour, who became a traitor, spit upon and curst. The present horror was +better than these reflections on the past. And now he approached a petty, +yet spiteful river, over which black scrubby alders hung, with willows +that seemed suicidal. He forded the stream, fearing to set his foot on +some dead man’s cheek; the cry of the water-rat sounded as the shriek of a +baby. And as he toiled on he saw that ugly heights (mountains seemed too +good a name to give such hideous heaps) had given place to the plain, and +two hills in particular, couched like two bulls in fight, seemed to +indicate the place of the tower. Yes! in their midst was the round, squat +turret, without a counterpart in the whole world. The sight was as that of +the rock which the sailor sees too late to avoid the crash that wrecks his +ship. The very hills seemed watching him; he seemed to hear them cry, +“Stab and end the creature!” A noise was everywhere, tolling like a bell; +he could hear the names of the lost adventurers who had preceded him. +There they stood to see the last of him. He saw and knew them all, yet +dauntless set the horn to his lips and blew, “<i>Childe Roland to the Dark +Tower came</i>.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—At the head of the poem is a note: “See Edgar’s song in <i>Lear</i>.” +In Act III., scene iv., Edgar, disguised as a madman, says, while the +storm rages: “Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led +through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, over bog and +quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow and halters in his pew; +set ratsbane by his porridge; made him proud of heart to ride on a bay +trotting-horse over four-inched bridges, to course his own shadow for a +traitor.—Bless thy five wits! Tom’s a-cold.—O do de, do de, do, +de.——Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! Do poor Tom +some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes.” At the end of the scene Edgar +sings:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Childe Rowland to the dark tower came,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His word was still,—Fie, foh, and fum</span><br /> +I smell the blood of a British man.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>“Childe Roland was the youngest brother of Helen. Under the guidance of +Merlin he undertook to bring back his sister from elf-land, whither the +fairies had carried her, and he succeeded in his perilous exploit.”—Dr. +Brewer. (See the ancient Ballade of <i>Burd Helen</i>.) <i>Childe</i> was a term +specially applied to the scions of knightly families before their +admission to the degree of knighthood, as “Chyld Waweyn, Loty’s Sone” +(<i>Robert of Gloucester</i>).</p> + +<p>This wonderful poem, one of the grandest pieces of word-painting in our +language, has exercised the ingenuity of Browning students more than any +other of the poet’s works. <i>Sordello</i> is difficult to understand, but it +was intended by the poet to convey a definite meaning and important +lessons, but <i>Childe Roland</i>, we have been warned again and again, was +written without any moral purpose whatever. “We may see in it,” says Mrs. +Orr, “a poetic vision of life.... The thing we may not do is to imagine +that we are meant to recognise it.” A paper was read at the Browning +Society on this poem by Mr. Kirkman (<i>Browning Society Papers</i>, Part iii., +p. 21) suggesting an interpretation of the allegory. In the discussion +which followed, Dr. Furnivall said “he had asked Browning if it was an +allegory, and in answer had, on three separate occasions, received an +emphatic ‘no’; that it was simply a dramatic creation called forth by a +line of Shakespeare’s. Browning had written it one day in Paris, as a +vivid picture suggested by Edgar’s line; the horse was suggested by the +figure of a red horse in a piece of tapestry in Browning’s house.... +Still, Dr. Furnivall thought, it was quite justifiable that any one should +use the poem to signify whatever image it called up in his own mind. But +he must not confuse the poet’s mind with his. The poem was <i>not</i> an +allegory, and was never meant to be one.” The Hon. Roden Noel, who was in +the chair on this occasion, said “he himself had never regarded <i>Childe +Roland</i> as having any hidden meaning; nor had cared so to regard it. But +words are mystic symbols: they mean more, very often, than the utterer of +them, poet or puppet, intended.” When some one asked Mendelssohn what he +meant by his <i>Lieder ohne Worte</i>, the musician replied that “they meant +what they said.” A poem so consistent as a whole, with a narrative in +which every detail follows in a perfectly regular and natural sequence, +must inevitably convey to the thinking mind some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> great and powerful idea, +suiting itself to his view of life considered as a journey or pilgrimage. +The wanderings of the children of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land +may be considered simply as a historical event, like the migrations of the +Tartars or the Northmen; or they may be viewed as an allegory of the +Christian life, like Bunyan’s immortal dream. The historian of the Exodus +could never have had in his mind all the interpretations put upon the +incidents which he recorded; yet we have the warrant of St. Paul for +allegorising the story. Any narrative of a journey through a desert to a +definite end held in view throughout the way, is certain to be pounced +upon as an allegory; and it is impossible but that Mr. Browning must have +had some notion of a “central purpose” in his poem. Indeed, when the Rev. +John W. Chadwick visited the poet, and asked him if constancy to an +ideal—“He that endureth to the end shall be saved”—was not a sufficient +understanding of the central purpose of the poem, he said, “Yes, just +about that.” Mr. Kirkman, in the paper already referred to, says, “There +are overwhelming reasons for concluding that this poem describes, after +the manner of an allegory, the sensations of a sick man very near to +death—<i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i> and <i>Prospice</i>—are the two angels that lead on to +<i>Childe Roland</i>.” Mr. Nettleship, in his well-known essay on the poem, +says the central idea is this: “Take some great end which men have +proposed to themselves in life, which seemed to have truth in it, and +power to spread freedom and happiness on others; but as it comes in sight, +it falls strangely short of preconceived ideas, and stands up in hideous +prosaicness.” Mrs. James L. Bagg, in the <i>Interpretation of Childe +Roland</i>, read to the Syracuse (U.S.) Browning Club, gives the following on +the lesson of the poem:—“The secrets of the universe are not to be +discovered by exercise of reason, nor are they to be reached by flights of +fancy, nor are duties loyally done to be recompensed by revealment. A life +of <i>becoming</i>, <i>being</i>, and <i>doing</i>, is not loss, nor failure, nor +discomfiture, though the dark tower for ever tantalise and for ever +withhold.” Some have seen in the poem an allegory of <i>Love</i>, others of +<i>the Search after Truth</i>. Others, again, understand the Dark Tower to +represent Unfaith, and the obscure land that of Doubt—Doubting Castle and +the By-Path Meadow of John Bunyan, in short. For my own part, I see in the +allegory—for I can consider it no other—a picture of the Age of +Materialistic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> Science, a “science falsely so called,” which aims at the +destruction of all our noblest ideals of religion and faith in the unseen. +The pilgrim is a truth-seeker, misdirected by the lying spirit—the hoary +cripple, unable to be or do anything good or noble himself; in him I see +the cynical, destructive critic, who sits at our universities and +colleges, our medical schools and our firesides, to point our youth to the +desolate path of Atheistic Science, a science which strews the ghastly +landscape with wreck and ruthless ruin, with the blanching bones of +animals tortured to death by its “engines and wheels, with rusty teeth of +steel”—a science which has invaded the healing art, and is sending +students of medicine daily down the road where surgeons become +cancer-grafters (as the Paris and Berlin medical scandals have revealed), +and where physicians gloat over their animal victims—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">“Toads in a poisoned tank,</span><br /> +Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage,”</p> + +<p>in their passion to reach the dark tower of Knowledge, which to them has +neither door nor window. The lost adventurers are the men who, having +followed this false path, have failed, and who look eagerly for the next +fool who comes to join the band of the lost ones. “In the Paris School of +Medicine,” says Mr. Lilly in his <i>Right and Wrong</i>, “it has lately been +prophesied that, ‘when the rest of the world has risen to the intellectual +level of France, the present crude and vulgar notions regarding morality, +religion, Divine providence, and so forth, will be swept entirely away, +and the dicta of science will remain the sole guide of sane and educated +men.’” Had Mr. Browning intended to write for us an allegory in aid of our +crusade, a sort of medical Pilgrim’s Progress, he could scarcely have +given the world a more faithful picture of the spiritual ruin and +desolation which await the student of medicine who sets forth on the fatal +course of an experimental torturer. I have good authority for saying that, +had Mr. Browning seen this interpretation of his poem, he would have +cordially accepted it as at least one legitimate explanation. Most of the +commentators agree that when Childe Roland “dauntless set the slug horn to +his lips and blew ‘<i>Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came</i>,’” he did so as +a warning to others that he had failed in his quest, and that the way of +the Dark Tower was the way of destruction and death.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span><b>Christmas Eve.</b> (<i>Christmas Eve and Easter Day</i>: London, 1850.) Two poems +on the same subject from different points of view. The scene is a country +chapel, a barnlike structure, from which ornament has been rigorously +excluded, not so much on account of want of funds as horror of anything +which should detract from “Gospel simplicity.” The night is stormy, and +Christmas Day must have fallen on a Monday that year, or surely no +worshippers in that building would have troubled themselves about keeping +the vigil of such a “Popish feast” as Christmas. It must have been Sunday +night as well as Christmas Eve, that year of ’49. The congregation eyed +the stranger “much as some wild beast,” for “not many wise” were called to +worship in their particular way, and the stranger was evidently not of +their faith or class. In came the flock: the fat woman with a wreck of an +umbrella; the little old-faced, battered woman with the baby, wringing the +ends of her poor shawl soaking with the rain; then a “female something” in +dingy satins; next a tall, yellow man, like the Penitent Thief; and from +him, as from all, the interloper got the same surprised glance. “What, +you, Gallio, here!” it expressed. And so, after a shoemaker’s lad, with a +wet apron round his body and a bad cough inside it, had passed in, the +interloper followed and took his place, waiting for his portion of New +Testament meat, like the rest of them. What with the hot smell of greasy +coats and frowsy gowns, combined with the preacher’s stupidity, the +visitor soon had enough of it, and he “flung out of the little chapel” in +disgust. As he passed out he found there was a lull in the rain and wind. +The moon was up, and he walked on, glad to be in the open air, his mind +full of the scene he had left. After all, why should he be hard on this +case? In many modes the same thing was going on everywhere—the endeavour +to make you believe—and with much about the same effect. He had his own +church; Nature had early led him to its door; he had found God visibly +present in the immensities, and with the power had recognised his love too +as the nobler dower. Quite true was it that God stood apart from +man—apart, that he might have room to act and use his gifts of brain and +heart. Man was not perfect, not a machine, not unaware of his fitness to +pray and praise. He looked up to God, recognised how infinitely He +surpassed man in power and wisdom, and was convinced He would never in His +love bestow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> less than man requires. In this great way <i>he</i> would seek to +press towards God; let men seek Him in a narrow shrine if they would. And +as he mused thus, suddenly the rain ceased and the moon shone out, the +black clouds falling beneath her feet; a moon rainbow, vast and perfect, +rose in its chorded colours. Then from out the world of men the worshipper +of God in Nature was called, and at once and with terror he saw Him with +His human air, the back of Him—no more. He had been present in the poor +chapel—He, with His sweeping garment, vast and white, whose hem could +just be recognised by the awed beholder, He who had promised to be where +two or three should meet to pray—and He had been present as the friend of +these poor folk! He was leaving him who had despised the friends of the +Human-Divine. Then he clung to the salvation of His vesture, and told Him +how he had thought it best He should be worshipped in spirit and becoming +beauty; the uncouth worship he had just left was scarcely fitted for Him. +Then the Lord turned His whole face upon him, and he was caught up in the +whirl of the vestment, and was up-borne through the darkness and the cold, +and held awful converse with his God; and then he came to know who +registers the cup of cold water given for His sake, and who disdains not +to slake His Divine thirst for love at the poorest love ever offered—came +to know it was for this he was permitted to cling to the vesture himself. +And so they crossed the world till they stopped at the miraculous dome of +God, St. Peter’s Church at Rome, with its colonnade like outstretched +arms, as if desiring to embrace all mankind. The whole interior of the +vast basilica is alive with worshippers this Christmas Eve. It is the +midnight mass of the Feast of the Nativity under Rome’s great dome. The +incense rises in clouds; the organ holds its breath and grovels latent, as +if hushed by the touch of God’s finger. The silence is broken only by the +shrill tinkling of a silver bell. Very man and Very God upon the altar +lies, and Christ has entered, and the man whom He brought clinging to His +garment’s fold is left outside the door, for He must be within, where so +much of love remains, though the man without is to wait till He return:</p> + +<p class="poem">“He will not bid me enter too,<br /> +But rather sit as I now do.”</p> + +<p>He muses as he remains in the night air, shut out from the glory<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> and the +worship within, and he desires to enter. He thinks he can see the error of +the worshippers; but he is sure also that he can see the love, the power +of the Crucified One, which swept away the poetry, rhetoric and art of old +Rome and Greece, “till filthy saints rebuked the gust” which gave them the +glimpse of a naked Aphrodite. Love shut the world’s eyes, and love +sufficed. Again he is caught up in the vesture’s fold, and transferred +this time to a lecture-hall in a university town in Germany, where a +hawk-nosed, high-cheek-boned professor, with a hacking cough, is giving a +Christmas Eve discourse on the Christ myth. He was just discussing the +point whether there ever was a Christ or not, and the Saviour had entered +here also; but He would not bid His companion enter “the exhausted +air-bell of the critic.” Where Papist with Dissenter struggles the air may +become mephitic; but the German left no air to poison at all. He rejects +Christ as known to Christians; yet he retains somewhat. Is it His +intellect that we must reverence? But Christ taught nothing which other +sages had not taught before, and who did not damage their claim by +assuming to be one with the Creator. Are we to worship Christ, then, for +His goodness? But goodness is due from man to man, still more to God, and +does not confer on its possessor the right to rule the race. Besides, the +goodness of Christ was either self-gained or inspired by God. On neither +ground could it substantiate His claim to put Himself above us. We praise +Nature, not Harvey, for the circulation of the blood; so we look from the +gift to the Giver—from man’s dust to God’s divinity. What is the point of +stress in Christ’s teaching? “Believe in goodness and truth, now +understood for the first time”? or “Believe in Me, who lived and died, yet +am Lord of Life”? And all the time Christ remains inside this +lecture-room. Could it be that there was anything which a Christian could +be in accord with there? The professor has pounded the pearl of price to +dust and ashes, yet he does not bid his hearers sweep the dust away. No; +he actually gives it back to his hearers, and bids them carefully treasure +the precious remains, venerate the myth, adore the man as before! And so +the listener resolved to value religion for itself, be very careless as to +its sects, and thus cultivate a mild indifferentism; when, lo! the storm +began afresh, and the black night caught him and whirled him up and flung +him prone on the college-step. Christ was gone, and the vesture<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> fast +receding. It is borne in upon him then that there must be one best way of +worship. This he will strive to find and make other men share, for man is +linked with man, and no gain of his must remain unshared by the race. He +caught at the vanishing robe, and, once more lapped in its fold, was +seated in the little chapel again, as if he had never left it, never seen +St. Peter’s successor nor the professor’s laboratory. The poor folk were +all there as before—a disagreeable company, and the sermon had just +reached its “tenthly and lastly.” The English was ungrammatical; in a +word, the water of life was being dispensed with a strong taint of the +soil in a poor earthen vessel. This, he thinks, is his place; here, to his +mind, is “Gospel simplicity”; he will criticise no more.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Sect. ii., “<i>a carer for none of it, a Gallio</i>”: “And Gallio cared +for none of these things” (Acts xviii. 17). “<i>A Saint John’s candlestick</i>” +(see Rev. i. 20). “<i>Christmas Eve of ’Forty-nine</i>”: Dissenters do not keep +Christmas Eve, nor Christmas Day itself; they would not, therefore, have +been found at chapel unless Christmas happened to fall on a Sunday. In +1849 Christmas Eve fell on a Monday. Sect. x., <i>the baldachin</i>: the canopy +over the high altar of St. Peter’s at Rome is supported by magnificent +twisted brazen columns, from designs by Bernini. It is 95 feet in height, +and weighs about 93 tons. The high altar stands immediately over the tomb +of St. Peter. Sect. xiv., “<i>Göttingen, most likely</i>”: a celebrated +university of Germany, which has produced many eminent Biblical critics. +Neander and Ewald were natives of Göttingen. Sect. xvi.,—</p> + +<p class="poem">“<i>When A got leave an Ox to be,<br /> +No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G.</i>”</p> + +<p>The letter Aleph, in Hebrew, was suggested by an ox’s head and horns. +Gimel, the Hebrew letter G, means camel. Sect. xviii., “<i>anapæsts in +comic-trimeter</i>”: in prosody an <i>anapæst</i> is a foot consisting of three +syllables; the first two short, and the third long. A <i>trimeter</i> is a +division of verse consisting of three measures of two feet each. “<i>The +halt and maimed ‘Iketides’</i>”: <i>The Suppliants</i>, an incomplete play of +Æschylus, called “maimed” because we have only a portion of it extant. +Sect. xxii., <i>breccia</i>, a kind of marble.</p> + +<p><b>Christopher Smart.</b> (<i>Parleyings with Certain People of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> Importance in +their Day.</i> 1887.) [<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] (1722-1771.) It has only recently been +discovered that Smart was anything more than a writer of second-rate +eighteenth-century poetry. He was born at Shipbourne, in Kent, in 1722. He +was a clever youth, and the Duchess of Cleveland sent him to Cambridge, +and allowed him £40 a year till her death in 1742. He did well at college, +and became a fellow of Pembroke, gaining the Seaton prize five times. When +he came to London he mixed in the literary society adorned by Dr. Johnson, +Garrick, Dr. James, and Dr. Burney—all of whom helped him in his constant +difficulties. He married a daughter of Mr. Newbery, the publisher. He +became a Bohemian man of letters, but the only work by which he will be +remembered is the <i>Song to David</i>, the history of which is sufficiently +remarkable. It was written while he was in confinement as a person of +unsound mind, and was—it is said, though we know not if the fact be +precisely as usually stated—written with a nail on the wall of the cell +in which he was detained. The poem bears no evidence of the melancholy +circumstances under which it was composed: it is powerful and healthy in +every line, and is evidently the work of a sincerely religious mind. He +was unfortunately a man of dissipated habits, and his insanity was +probably largely due to intemperance. He died in 1771 from the effects of +poverty and disease. His <i>Song to David</i> was published in 1763, and is +quite unlike any other production of the century. The poem in full +consists of eighty-six verses, of which Mr. Palgrave, in the <i>Golden +Treasury</i>, gives the following:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“He sang of God—the mighty Source<br /> +Of all things, the stupendous force<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On which all strength depends;</span><br /> +From Whose right arm, beneath Whose eyes,<br /> +All period, power, and enterprise<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Commences, reigns, and ends.</span><br /> +<br /> +“The world,—the clustering spheres, He made,<br /> +The glorious light, the soothing shade,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dale, champaign, grove, and hill:</span><br /> +The multitudinous abyss.<br /> +Where Secrecy remains in bliss,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">And Wisdom hides her skill.</span><br /> +<br /> +“Tell them, I <span class="smcaplc">AM</span>, Jehovah said<br /> +To Moses, while earth heard in dread,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And, smitten to the heart,</span><br /> +At once above, beneath, around,<br /> +All Nature, without voice or sound,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Replied, <span class="smcap">O Lord, Thou art</span>.”</span></p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] “How did this happen?” asks Mr. Browning. He imagined that he +was exploring a large house, had gone through the decently-furnished +rooms, which exhibited in their arrangement good taste without +extravagance, till, on pushing open a door, he found himself in a chapel +which was</p> + +<p class="poem">“From floor to roof one evidence<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of how far earth may rival heaven.”</span></p> + +<p>Prisoned glory in every niche, it glowed with colour and gleamed with +carving: it was “Art’s response to earth’s despair.” He leaves the chapel +big with expectation of what might be in store for him in other rooms in +the mansion, but there was nothing but the same dead level of indifferent +work everywhere, just as in the rooms which he had passed through on his +way to the exquisite chapel: nothing anywhere but calm Common-Place. +Browning says this is a diagnosis of Smart’s case: he was sound and sure +at starting, then caught up in a fireball. Heaven let earth understand how +heaven at need can operate; then the flame fell, and the untransfigured +man resumed his wonted sobriety. But what Browning wants to know is, How +was it this happened but once? Here was a poet who always could but never +did but once! Once he saw Nature naked; once only Truth found vent in +words from him. Once the veil was pulled back, then the world darkened +into the repository of show and hide.</p> + +<p><b>Clara de Millefleurs.</b> (<i>Red Cotton Night-Cap Country.</i>) The mistress of +Miranda, the jeweller of Paris.</p> + +<p><b>Claret.</b> See <a href="#nationality">“Nationality in Drinks”</a> (<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>).</p> + +<p><b>Classification.</b> Mr. Nettleship’s classification of Browning is the best I +know. It is no easy matter to table the poet’s works: they do not readily +accommodate themselves to classification. Such poems as the great Art and +Music works, the Dramas, Love, and Religious poems are to be found in this +book under the respective subjects.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span><b>Cleon.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855.) The speculation of this poem may be +compared with a picture in a magic lantern slowly dissolving into another +view, and losing itself in that which is succeeding it. We have the latest +utterances of the beautiful Greek thought, saddened as they were by the +despairing note of the sense of hopelessness which marred the highest +effort of man, and which was never so acutely felt as at the period when +the Sun of Christianity was rising and about to fill the world with the +Spirit of Eternal Hope. The old heathenism is dissolving away, the first +faint outlines of the gospel glory are detected by the philosopher who has +heard of the fame of Paul, and is not sure he is not the same as the +Christ preached by some slaves whose doctrine “could be held by no sane +man.” The quotation with which the poem is headed is from Acts of the +Apostles, chap. xvii. 28: “As certain also of your own poets have said, +‘For we are also his offspring.’” The quotation is from the <i>Phænomena</i> of +Aratus, a poet of <i>Tarsus</i>, in Cilicia, St. Paul’s own city. There is also +a very similar passage in a hymn of the Stoic Cleanthes: “Zeus, thou crown +of creation, Hail!—We are thy offspring.” The persons of the poem are not +historical, though the thought expressed is highly characteristic of that +of the Greek philosophers of the time. As the old national creeds +disappeared under the advancing tide of Roman conquest, and as +philosophers calmly discussed the truth or falsity of their dying +religions, an easy tolerance arose, all religions were permitted because +“<ins class="correction" title="original: indiffererence">indifference</ins> had eaten the heart out of them.” Four hundred years before +our era Eastern philosophy, through the Greek conquests in Asia, had begun +to influence European thinkers by its strange and subtle attempts to solve +the mystery of existence. A spirit of inquiry, and a restless craving for +some undefined faith which should take the place of that which was +everywhere dying out, prepared the way for the progress of the simple, +love-compelling religion of Christ, and made every one’s heart more or +less suitable soil for the good seed. Cleon is a poet from the isles of +Greece who has received a letter from his royal patron and many costly +gifts, which crowd his court and portico. He writes to thank his king for +his munificence, and in his reply says it is true that he has written that +epic on the hundred plates of gold; true that he composed the chant which +the mariners will learn to sing as they haul<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> their nets; true that the +image of the sun-god on the lighthouse is his also; that the +Pœcile—the portico at Athens painted with battle pictures by +Polygnotus the Thasian, has been adorned, too, with his own works. He +knows the plastic anatomy of man and woman and their proportions, not +observed before; he has moreover</p> + +<p class="poem">“Written three books on the soul,<br /> +Proving absurd all written hitherto,<br /> +And putting us to ignorance again.”</p> + +<p>He has combined the moods for music, and invented one:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“In brief, all arts are mine.”</p> + +<p>All this is known; it is not so marvellous either, because men’s minds in +these latter days are greater than those of olden time because more +composite. Life, he finds reason to believe, is intended to be viewed +eventually as a great whole, not analysed to parts, but each having +reference to all: the true judge of man’s life must see the whole, not +merely one way of it at once; the artist who designed the chequered +pavement did not superimpose the figures, putting the last design over the +old and blotting it out,—he made a picture and used every stone, whatever +its figure, in the composition of his work. So he conceives that perfect, +separate forms which make the portions of mankind were created at first, +afterwards these were combined, and so came progress. Mankind is a +synthesis—a putting together of all the single men. Zeus had a plan in +all, and our souls know this, and cry to him—</p> + +<p class="poem">“To vindicate his purpose in our life.”</p> + +<p>As for himself he is not a poet like Homer, such a musician as Terpander, +nor a sculptor like Phidias; point by point he fails to reach their +height, but in sympathy he is the equal of them all. So much for the first +part of the king’s letter: it is all true which has been reported of him. +Next he addresses himself to the questions asked by the king: “has he not +attained the very crown and proper end of life?” and having so abundantly +succeeded, does he fear death as do lower men? Cleon replies that if his +questioner could have been present on the earth before the advent of man, +and seen all its tenantry, from worm to bird, he would have seen them +perfect. Had Zeus asked him if he should do more for creatures than he had +done,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> he would have replied, “Yes, make each grow conscious in himself”; +he chooses then for man, his last premeditated work, that a quality may +arise within his soul which may view itself and so be happy. “Let him +learn how he lives.” Cleon would, however, tell the king it would have +been better had man made no step beyond the better beast. Man is the only +creature in whom there is failure; it is called advance that man should +climb to a height which overlooks lower forms of creation simply that he +may perish there. Our vast capabilities for joy, our craving souls, our +struggles, only serve to show us that man is inadequate to joy, as the +soul sees joy. “Man can use but a man’s joy while he sees God’s.” He +agrees with the king in his profound discouragement: most progress is most +failure. As to the next question which the letter asks: “Does he, the +poet, artist, musician, fear death as common men? Will it not comfort him +to know that his works will live, though he may perish?” Not at all, he +protests—he, sleeping in his urn while men sing his songs and tell his +praise! “It is so horrible.” And so he sometimes imagines Zeus may intend +for us some future state where the capability for joy is as unlimited as +is our present desire for joy. But no: “Zeus has not yet revealed it. He +would have done so were it possible!” Nothing can more faithfully portray +the desolation of the soul “without God,” the sense of loss in man, whose +soul, emanating from the Divine, refuses to be satisfied with anything +short of God Himself. Art, wealth, learning, honours, serve not to +dissipate for a moment the infinite sadness of this soul “without God and +without hope in the world.” And, as he wrote, Paul, the Apostle of the +Gentiles, had turned to the Pagan world with the Gospel which the Jews had +rejected. To the very island in the Grecian sea whence arose this sad wail +of despair the echo of the angel-song of Bethlehem had been borne, “Peace +on earth, good-will towards men.” Round the coasts of the Ægean Sea, +through Philippi, Troas, Mitylene, Chios, and Miletus, “the mere barbarian +Jew Paulus” had sown the seeds of a faith which should grow up and shelter +under its branches the weary truth-seekers who knew too well what was the +utter hopelessness of “art for art’s sake” for satisfying the infinite +yearning of the human heart. In the crypt of the church of San Marziano at +Syracuse is the primitive church of Sicily, constructed on the spot where +St. Paul is said to have preached<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> during his three days’ sojourn on the +island. Here is shown the rude stone altar where St. Paul broke the bread +of life; and as we stand on this sacred spot and recall the past in this +strange city of a hundred memorials of antiquity—the temples of the gods, +the amphitheatre, the vast altar, the Greek theatre, the walls of Epipolæ, +the aqueducts, the forts, the harbour, the quarries, the Ear of Dionysius, +the tombs, the streams and fountains famed in classic story and sung by +poets—all fade into insignificance before the hallowed spot whence issued +the fertilising influences of the Gospel preached by this same Paulus to a +few poor slaves. The time would come, and not so far distant either, when +the doctrines of Christ and Paul would be rejected “by no sane man.”</p> + +<p><b>Clive.</b> (<i>Dramatic <ins class="correction" title="original: Idylls">Idyls</ins></i>, Series II., 1880.) The poem deals with a +well-known incident in the life of Lord Clive, who founded the empire of +British India and created for it a pure and strong administration. Robert +Clive was born in 1725 at Styche, near Market Drayton, Shropshire. The +Clives formed one of the oldest families in the county. Young Clive was +negligent of his books, and devoted to boyish adventures of the wildest +sort. However, he managed to acquire a good education, though probably by +means which schoolmasters considered irregular. He was a born leader, and +held death as nothing in comparison with loss of honour. He often +suffered, even in youth, from fits of depression, and twice attempted his +own life. He went out to Madras as a “writer” in the East India Company’s +civil service. Always in some trouble or other with his companions, he one +day fought the duel which forms the subject of Mr. Browning’s poem. In +1746 he became disgusted with a civilian’s life, and obtained an ensign’s +commission. At this time a crisis in Indian affairs opened up to a man of +high courage, daring and administrative ability, like Clive, a brilliant +path to fortune. Clive seized his opportunity, and won India for us. His +bold attack upon the city of Arcot terminated in a complete victory for +our arms; and in 1753, when he sailed to England for the recovery of his +health, his services were suitably rewarded by the East India Company. He +won the battle of Plassey in 1757. Notwithstanding his great services to +his country, his conduct in India was severely criticised, and he was +impeached in consequence, but was acquitted in 1773. He committed suicide +in 1774, his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> mind having been unhinged by the charges brought against him +after the great things he had done for an ungrateful country. He was +addicted to the use of opium; this is referred to in the poem in the line +“noticed how the furtive fingers went where a drug-box skulked behind the +honest liquor.” Lord Macaulay in his Essay on Clive, says he had a +“restless and intrepid spirit. His personal courage, of which he had, +while still a writer, given signal proof by a desperate duel with a +military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David, speedily made him +conspicuous even among hundreds of brave men.” The duel took place under +the following circumstances. He lost money at cards to an officer who was +proved to have cheated. Other losers were so in terror of this cheating +bully that they paid. Clive refused to pay, and was challenged. They went +out with pistols; no seconds were employed, and Clive missed his opponent, +who, coming close up to him, held his pistol to his head and told him he +would spare his life if he were asked to do so. Clive complied. He was +next required to retract his charge of cheating. This demand being +refused, his antagonist threatened to fire. “Fire, and be damned!” replied +Clive. “I said you cheated; I say so still, and will never pay you!” The +officer was so amazed at his bravery that he threw away his pistol. +Chatting, with a friend, a week before he committed suicide, he tells the +story of this duel as the one occasion when he felt fear, and that not of +death, but lest his adversary should contemptuously permit him to keep his +life. Under such circumstances he could have done nothing but use his +weapon on himself. This part of the story is, of course, imaginary.</p> + +<p><b>Colombe of Ravenstein.</b> (<i>Colombe’s Birthday.</i>) Duchess of Juliers and +Cleves. When in danger of losing her sovereignty by the operation of the +Salic Law, she has an offer of marriage from Prince Berthold, who could +have dispossessed her. Colombe loves Valence, an advocate, and he loves +her. The prince does not even pretend that love has prompted his offer, +and so Colombe sacrifices power at the shrine of love.</p> + +<p><b>Comparini, The.</b> (<i>The Ring and the Book.</i>) Violatne and Pietro Comparini +were the foster-parents of Pompilia, who, with her, were murdered by Count +Guido Franceschini.</p> + +<p><b>Confessional, The.</b> (<i>Dramatic Romances</i> in <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, +1845.) The scene is in Spain, in the time of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>Inquisition. A girl has +confessed to an aged priest some sinful conduct with her lover Bertram; as +a penance, she has been desired to extract from him some secrets relating +to matters of which he has been suspected. As a proof of his love, he +tells the girl things which, if known, would imperil his life. The +confidant, as requested, carries the story to the priest. She sees her +lover no more till she beholds him under the executioner’s hands on the +scaffold. Passionately denouncing Church and priests, she is herself at +the mercy of the Inquisition, and the poem opens with her exclamations +against the system which has killed her lover and ruined her life.</p> + +<p><b>Confessions.</b> (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864.) A man lies dying. A clergyman +asks him if he has not found the world “a vale of tears”?—a suggestion +which is indignantly repudiated. As the man looks at the row of medicine +bottles ranged before him, he sees in his fancy the lane where lived the +girl he loved, and where, in the June weather, she stood watching for him +at that farther bottle labelled “Ether”—</p> + +<p class="poem">“How sad and bad and mad it was!—<br /> +But then, how it was sweet!”</p> + +<p><b>Constance</b> (<i>In a Balcony</i>), a relative of the Queen in this dramatic +fragment. She is loved by Norbert, and returns his love. The queen, +however, loves the handsome young courtier herself, and her jealousy is +the ruin of the young couple’s happiness.</p> + +<p><b>Corregidor, The.</b> (<i>How it strikes a Contemporary.</i>) In Spain the +corregidor is the chief magistrate of a town; the name is derived from +<i>corregir</i>, to correct—one who corrects. He is represented as going about +the city, observing everything that takes place, and is consequently +suspected as a spy in the employment of the Government. He is, in fact, +but a harmless poet of very observant habits, and is exceedingly poor.</p> + +<p><b>Count Gismond.</b> <span class="smcap">Aix in Provence.</span> Published in <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i> under the +title “<i>France</i>,” in 1842. An orphan maiden is to be queen of the tourney +to-day. She lives at her uncle’s home with her two girl cousins, each a +queen by her beauty, not needing to be crowned. The maiden thought they +loved her. They brought her to the canopy and complimented her as she took +her place. The time came when she was to present the victor’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> crown. All +eyes were bent upon her, when at that proud moment Count Gauthier +thundered “Stay! Bring no crown! bring torches and a penance sheet; let +her shun the chaste!” He accuses her of licentious behaviour with himself; +and as the girl hears the horrible lie, paralysed at the baseness of the +accusation, she never dreams that answer is possible to make. Then out +strode Count Gismond. Never had she met him before, but in his face she +saw God preparing to do battle with Satan. He strode to Gauthier, gave him +the lie, and struck his mouth with his mailed hand: the lie was damned, +truth upstanding in its place. They fought. Gismond flew at him, clove out +the truth from his breast with his sword, then dragging him dying to the +maiden’s feet, said “Here die, but first say that thou hast lied.” And the +liar said, “To God and her I have lied,” and gave up the ghost. Gismond +knelt to the maiden and whispered in her ear; then rose, flung his arm +over her head, and led her from the crowd. Soon they were married, and the +happy bride cried:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Christ God who savest man, save most<br /> +Of men Count Gismond who saved me!”</p> + +<p><b>Count Guido Franceschini.</b> (<i>The Ring and the Book.</i>) The wicked nobleman +of Arezzo who marries Pompilia for her dowry, and treats her so cruelly +that she flies from his home to Rome, in company with Caponsacchi, who +chivalrously and innocently devotes himself to her assistance. While they +rest on the way they are overtaken by the Count, who eventually kills +Pompilia and her foster-parents.</p> + +<p><b>Courts Of Love</b> (<i>Sordello</i>) “were judicial courts for deciding affairs of +the heart, established in Provence during the palmy days of the +Troubadours. The following is a case submitted to their judgment: A lady +listened to one admirer, squeezed the hand of another, and touched with +her toe the foot of a third. Query, Which of these three was the favoured +suitor?” (<i>Dr. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.</i>) It was at a +Court of Love at which Palma presided, that Sordello outdid Eglamour in +song, and received the prize from the lady’s hand. At these courts, +Sismondi tells us, <i>tensons</i> or <i>jeux partis</i> were sung, which were +dialogues between the speakers in which each interlocutor recited +successively a stanza with the same rhymes. Sismondi introduces a +translation of a <i>tenson</i> between Sordello and Bertrand,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> adding that this +“may, perhaps, give an idea of those poetical contests which were the +great ornament of all festivals. When the haughty baron invited to his +court the neighbouring lords and the knights his vassals, three days were +devoted to jousts and tourneys, the mimicry of war. The youthful +gentlemen, who, under the name of pages, exercised themselves in the +profession of arms, combated the first day; the second was set apart for +the newly-dubbed knights; and the third, for the old warriors. The lady of +the castle, surrounded by youthful beauties, distributed crowns to those +who were declared by the judges of the combat to be the conquerors. She +then, in her turn, opened her court, constituted in imitation of the +seignorial tribunals, and as her baron collected his peers around him when +he dispensed justice, so did she form her Court of Love, consisting of +young, beautiful, and lively women. A new career was opened to those who +dared the combat—not of arms, but of verse; and the name of <i>tenson</i>, +which was given to these dramatic skirmishes, in fact signified a contest. +It frequently happened that the knights who had gained the prize of valour +became candidates for the poetical honours. One of the two, with his harp +upon his arm, after a prelude, proposed the subject of the dispute. The +other then advancing, and singing to the same air, answered him in a +stanza of the same measure, and very frequently having the same rhymes. +This extempore composition was usually comprised in five stanzas. The +Court of Love then entered upon a grave deliberation, and discussed not +only the claims of the two poets, but the merits of the question; and a +judgment or <i>arrêt d’amour</i> was given, frequently in verse, by which the +dispute was supposed to be decided. At the present day we feel inclined to +believe that these dialogues, though little resembling those of Tityrus +and Melibæus, were yet, like those, the production of the poet sitting at +ease in his closet. But, besides the historical evidence which we possess +of the troubadours having been gifted with those improvisatorial talents +which the Italians have preserved to the present time, many of the +<i>tensons</i> extant bear evident traces of the rivalry and animosity of the +two interlocutors. The mutual respect with which the refinements of +civilisation have taught us to regard one another, was at this time little +known. There existed not the same delicacy upon questions of honour, and +injury returned for injury was supposed to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> cancel all insults. We have a +<i>tenson</i> extant between the Marquis Albert Malespina and Rambaud de +Vaqueiras, two of the most powerful lords and valiant captains at the +commencement of the thirteenth century, in which they mutually accuse one +another of having robbed on the highway and deceived their allies by false +oaths. We must charitably suppose that the perplexities of versification +and the heat of their poetical inspiration compelled them to overlook +sarcasms which they could never have suffered to pass in plain prose. Many +of the ladies who sat in the Courts of Love were able to reply to the +verses which they inspired. A few of their compositions only remain, but +they have always the advantage over those of the Troubadours. Poetry, at +that time, aspired neither to creative energy nor to sublimity of thought, +nor to variety. Those powerful conceptions of genius which, at a later +period, have given birth to the drama and the epic, were yet unknown; and, +in the expression of sentiment, a tenderer and more delicate inspiration +naturally endowed the productions of these poetesses with a more lyrical +character.” (Sismondi, <i>Lit. Mod. Europe</i>, vol. i., pp. 106-7.)</p> + +<p><b>Cristina</b> (or <b>Christina</b>). <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i> (<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i> No. +III.), 1842.—Maria Christina of Naples is the lady of the poem. She was +born in 1806, and in 1829 became the fourth wife of Ferdinand VII., King +of Spain. She became Regent of Spain on the death of her husband, in 1833. +Her daughter was Queen Isabella II. She was the dissolute mother of a +still more dissolute daughter. Lord Malmesbury’s <i>Memoirs of an +Ex-Minister</i>, 1884, vol. i., p. 30, have the following reference to the +Christina of the poem: “Mr. Hill presented me at Court before I left +Naples [in 1829].... The Queen [Maria Isabella, second wife of Francis I., +King of the Two Sicilies] and the young and handsome Princess Christina, +afterwards Queen of Spain, were present. The latter was said at the time +to be the cause of more than one inflammable victim languishing in prison +for having too openly admired this royal coquette, whose manners with men +foretold her future life after her marriage to old Ferdinand [VII., King +of Spain]. When she came up to me in the circle, walking behind her +mother, she stopped, and took hold of one of the buttons of my uniform—to +see, as she said, the inscription upon it, the Queen indignantly calling +to her to come on.” The passion of love, throughout Mr. Browning’s works, +is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> treated as the most sacred thing in the human soul. We are here for +the chance of loving and of being loved; nothing on earth is dearer than +this; to trifle with love is, in Browning’s eyes, the sin against that +Divine Emanation which sanctifies the heart of man. The man or woman who +dissipates the capacity for love is the destroyer of his or her own soul; +the flirt and the coquette are the losers,—the forsaken one has saved his +own soul and gained the other’s as well.</p> + +<p><b>Cristina and Monaldeschi.</b> (<i>Jocoseria</i>, 1883.)—I am indebted to the +valuable paper which Mrs. Alexander Ireland contributed to the Browning +Society on Feb. 27th, 1891, for the facts relating to the subject of this +poem. Queen Cristina of Sweden was the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. She +was born in 1626, and came to the throne on the death of her father, in +1632. She was highly educated and brilliantly accomplished. She was +perfectly acquainted with Greek, Latin, French, German, English, Italian, +and Spanish. In due time she had batches of royal suitors, but she refused +to bind herself by the marriage tie; rather than marry, she decided to +abdicate, choosing as her successor her cousin Charles Gustavus. The +formal and unusual ceremony of abdication took place in the cathedral of +Upsala, in June 1654. Proceeding to Rome, she renounced the Protestant +religion, and publicly embraced that of the Catholic Church. The officers +of her household were exclusively Italian. Among these was the Marquis +Monaldeschi, nominated “Master of the Horse,” described by Cristina in her +own memoirs as “a gentleman of most handsome person and fine manners, who +from the first moment reigned exclusively over my heart.” Cristina +abandoned herself to this man, who proved a traitor and a scoundrel. He +took every advantage of his position as favourite, and having reaped +honour and riches, Monaldeschi wearied of his royal mistress and sought +new attractions. The closing scene of Queen Cristina’s <i>liaison</i> with the +Grand Equerry inspired Mr. Browning’s poem. He has chosen the moment when +all the treachery of Monaldeschi has revealed itself to the Queen. The +scene is at Fontainebleau, whither Cristina has removed from Rome; here +the letters came into her hands which broke her life. A Cardinal Azzolino +had obtained possession of a wretched and dangerous correspondence. The +packet included the Queen’s own letters to her lover—letters written in +the fulness of perfect trust, telling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> much that the unhappy lady could +have told to no other living being. Monaldeschi’s letters to his young +Roman beauty made a jest, a mockery of the Queen’s exceeding fondness for +him. They were letters of unsparing and wounding ridicule; and, while +acting thus, Monaldeschi had steadily adhered to the show of unaltered +attachment to the Queen and deep respect for his royal mistress. +Cristina’s emotions on seeing the whole hateful, cowardly treachery laid +bare were doubtless maddening. She arranged an interview with the Marquis +in the picture gallery in the Palace of Fontainebleau. She was accompanied +by an official of her Court, and had at hand a priest from the +neighbouring convent of the Maturins, armed with copies of the letters +which were to serve as the death-warrant of the Marquis. They had been +placed by Cardinal Azzolino in Cristina’s hands through the medium of her +“Major-Domo,” with the knowledge that the Cardinal had already seen their +infamous contents. The <i>originals</i> she had on her own person. Added to +this, she had in the background her Captain of the Guard, Sentinelli, with +two other officers. In the Galerie des Cerfs hung a picture of François I. +and Diane de Poictiers. To this picture the Queen now led the Marquis, +pointing out the motto on the frame—“Quis separabit?” The Queen reminds +her lover how they were vowed to each other. The Marquis had vowed, at a +tomb in the park of Fontainebleau, that, as the grave kept a silence over +the corpse beneath, so would his love and trust hold fast the secret of +Cristina’s love to all eternity. Now the woman’s spirit was wounded to +death. She was scorned, her pride outraged; but she was a queen, and the +man a subject, and she felt she must assert her dignity at least once +more. The Marquis doubtless tottered as he stood. “Kneel,” she says. This +was the final scene of the tragedy. Cristina now calls forth the priest +and the assassins, having granted herself the bitter pleasure of such +personal revenge as was possible for her, poor woman!</p> + +<p class="poem">“Friends, my four! You, Priest, confess him!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I have judged the culprit there:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">my sentence! Care</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">For no mail such cowards wear!</span><br /> +Done, Priest? Then, absolve and bless him!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Now—you three, stab thick and fast,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Deep and deeper! Dead at last?”</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>In October 1657 Cristina already felt suspicious of Monaldeschi. Keenly +watching his actions, she had found him guilty of a double perfidy, and +had led him on to a conversation touching a similar unfaithfulness. +“What,” the Queen had said, “does the man deserve who should so have +betrayed a woman?” “Instant death,” said Monaldeschi; “’twould be an act +of justice.” “It is well,” said she; “I will remember your words.” As to +the right of the Queen to execute Monaldeschi, it must be remembered that, +by a special clause in the Act of Abdication, she retained absolute and +sovereign jurisdiction over her servants of all kinds. The only objection +made by the French Court was, that she ought not to have permitted the +murder to take place at Fontainebleau. After this crime Cristina was +compelled to leave France, and finally retired to Rome, giving herself up +to her artistic tastes, science, chemistry and idleness. She died on April +19th, 1689; her epitaph on her tomb in St. Peter’s at Rome was chosen by +herself—“Cristina lived sixty-three years.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—“<i>Quis separabit?</i>” who shall separate? <i>King Francis</i>—François +I. The gallery of this king is the most striking one in the palace. +<i>Diane</i>, the gallery of Diana, the goddess. <i>Primatice</i> == Primaticcio, +who designed some of the decorations of the <i>Galerie de François I.</i> +<i>Salamander sign</i>: the emblem of Francis I., often repeated in the +decorations. <i>Florentine Le Roux</i> == Rossi, the Florentine artist. +<i>Fontainebleau</i>: its Château Royal is very famous. “<i>Juno strikes Ixion</i>,” +who attempted to seduce her. <i>Avon</i>, a village near Fontainebleau.</p> + +<p><b>Croisic.</b> The scene of the <i>Two Poets of Croisic</i>. Le Croisic is a seaport +on the southern coast of Brittany, with about 2500 inhabitants, and is a +fashionable watering-place. It has a considerable industry in sardine +fishing.</p> + +<p><b>Cunizza</b>, called Palma in <i>Sordello</i>, till, at the close of the poem the +heroine’s historical name is given. She was the sister of Ezzelino III. +Dante places her in <i>Paradise</i> (ix. 32). Longfellow, in his translation of +the <i>Divine Comedy</i>, has the following note concerning her: “Cunizza was +the sister of Azzolino di Romano. Her story is told by Rolandino, <i>Liber +Chronicorum</i>, in Muratori (<i>Rer. Ital. Script.</i>, viii. 173). He says that +she was first married to Richard of St. Boniface; and soon after had an +intrigue with Sordello—as already mentioned (<i>Purg.</i> vi., Note 74). +Afterwards she wandered about the world with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> soldier of Treviso, named +Bonius, ‘taking much solace,’ says the old chronicler, ‘and spending much +money’ (<i>multa habendo solatia, et maximas faciendo expensas</i>). After the +death of Bonius, she was married to a nobleman of Braganza; and finally, +and for a third time, to a gentleman of Verona. The <i>Ottimo</i> alone among +the commentators takes up the defence of Cunizza, and says: ‘This lady +lived lovingly in dress, song, and sport; but consented not to any +impropriety or unlawful act; and she passed her life in enjoyment, as +Solomon says in Ecclesiastes,’ alluding probably to the first verse of the +second chapter—“I said in my heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with +mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure; and behold, this is also vanity.”</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>“Dance, Yellows and Whites and Reds.”</b> A beautiful lyric at the end of +“Gerard de Lairesse,” in <i>Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in +their Day</i>, begins with this line. It originally appeared in a little book +published for the Edinburgh University Union Fancy Fair, in 1886.</p> + +<p><b>Daniel Bartoli.</b> <i>Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their +Day</i>: 1887. [<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] “Born at Ferrara in 1608, died at Rome in 1685. He +was a learned Jesuit, and his great work was a history of his Order, in +six volumes, published at various times. It is enriched with facts drawn +from the Vatican records, from English colleges, and from memoirs sent him +by friends in England; and is crowded with stories of miracles which are +difficult of digestion by ordinary readers. His style is highly esteemed +by Italians for its purity and precision, and his life was perfectly +correct and virtuous” (<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, Jan. 18th, 1887). “His +eloquence was wonderful, and his renown as a sacred orator became +universal. He wrote many essays on scientific subjects; and although some +of his theories have been refuted by Galileo, they are still cited as +models of the didactic style, in which he excelled. His works on moral +science and philology are numerous. Died 1684.” (<i>Imp. Dict. Biog.</i>)</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] The poet tells the narrator of saintly legends that he has a +saint worth worshipping whose history is not legendary at all, but very +plain fact. It is her story which is told in the poem, and not that of +Bartoli. The minister of a certain king had managed to induce a certain +duke to yield two of his dukedoms to the king at his death. The promise +was a verbal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> one, but the duke was to sign the deed of gift which +deprived him of his rights when it was duly prepared by the lawyers. While +this was in progress the duke met at his sister’s house a good and +beautiful girl, the daughter of an apothecary. He proposed to marry her, +and was accepted, notwithstanding the opposition of his family. The banns +were duly published, and the marriage ceremony was soon to follow. +Meanwhile this turn in the duke’s affairs came to the ear of the crafty +minister of the king, who promptly informed his royal master that the +assignment of the dukedoms might not proceed so smoothly under the altered +circumstances. “I bar the abomination—nuptial me no such nuptials!” +exclaimed the king. The minister hinted that caution must be used, lest by +offending the duke the dukedoms might be lost. The next day the +preliminary banquet, at which all the lady’s friends were present, took +place; when lo—a thunderclap!—the king’s minister was announced, and the +lady was requested to meet him at a private interview. She was informed +that the duke must at once sign the paper which the minister held in his +hand, ceding to the king the promised estates, or the king would withhold +his consent to the marriage and the lady would be placed in strict +seclusion. Should he, however, sign the deed of gift without delay, the +king would give his consent to the marriage, and accord the bride a high +place at court; and the druggist’s daughter would become not only the +duke’s wife but the king’s favourite. They returned to the dining-room, +and the lady, addressing the duke, who sat in mute bewilderment at the +head of the table, made known the king’s commands. She told him that she +knew he loved her for herself alone, and was conscious that her own love +was equal to his. She bade him read the shameful document which the king +had sent, and begged him to bid her destroy it. She implored him not to +part with his dukedoms, which had been given him by God, though by doing +so he might make her his wife: if, however, he could so far forget his +duty as to yield to these demands, he would, in doing so, forfeit her +love. The duke was furious, but could not be brought to yield to the +lady’s request, and she left the place never to meet again. Next day she +sent him back the jewellery he had given her. This story was told to a +fervid, noble-hearted lord, who forthwith in a boyish way loved the lady. +When he grew to be a man he married her, dropped from camp and court into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> +obscurity, but was happy, till ere long his lady died. He would gladly +have followed, but had to be content with turning saint, like those of +whom Bartoli wrote. The poet next philosophises on the life which the duke +might have led after this crisis in his history. He would sooner or later +reflect sadly on the beautiful luminary which had once illumined his path: +he could fancy her mocking him as false to Love; he would reflect how, +with all his lineage and his bravery, he had failed at the test, but would +recognise that it was not the true man who failed, not the ducal self +which quailed before the monarch’s frown while the more royal Love stood +near him to inspire him;—some day that true self would, by the strength +of that good woman’s love, be raised from the grave of shame which covered +it, and he would be hers once more.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—vi., <i>Pari passu</i>: with equal pace, together. xv., “<i>Saint +Scholastica ... in Paynimrie</i>”: she lived about the year 543. She was +sister to St. Benedict, and consecrated herself to God from her earliest +youth. The legend referred to is not given, either in Butler’s <i>Lives of +the Saints</i>, or Mrs. Jameson’s <i>Legends of the Monastic Orders</i>. +<i>Paynimrie</i> means the land of the infidel. xvi., <i>Trogalia</i>: sweetmeats +and candies.</p> + +<p><b>Dante</b> is magnificently described in <i>Sordello</i> (Book I., lines 374-80):—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Dante, pacer of the shore<br /> +Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom,<br /> +Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume—<br /> +Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope<br /> +Into a darkness quieted by hope;<br /> +Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God’s eye<br /> +In gracious twilights where His chosen lie.”</p> + +<p><b>Date et Dabitur.</b> “Give, and it shall be given unto you.” (See <a href="#twins"><i>The Twins</i></a>.)</p> + +<p><b>David.</b> (See <a href="#saul"><i>Saul</i></a>, and <a href="#epilogue">Epilogue to <i>Dramatis Personæ</i>: First Speaker</a>).</p> + +<p><b>Deaf and Dumb.</b> A group by Woolner (1862). How a glory may arise from a +defect is the keynote of this poem. A prism interposed in the course of a +ray of sunlight breaks it into the glory of the seven colours of the +spectrum; the prism is an obstruction to the white light, but the rainbow +tints which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> are seen in consequence of the obstacle reveal to us the +secret of the sunbeam. So the obstruction of deafness or dumbness often +greatly enhances the beauty of the features, as in the group of statuary +which forms the subject of the poem, and which was exhibited at the +International Exhibition of 1862. The children were Constance and Arthur, +the son and daughter of Sir Thomas Fairbairn.</p> + +<p><b>Death in the Desert, A.</b> (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864.) John, the disciple +whom Jesus loved, who lay on His breast at the last sad paschal supper, +who stood by the cross, and received from the lips of his Lord His only +earthly possession—His mother; John, the writer of the Gospel which bears +his name, and of the letters which breathe the spirit of the incarnated +love which was to transform a world lying in wickedness; the seer of the +awful visions of Patmos—the tremendous Apocalypse which closes the +Christian revelation—lay dying in the desert; recalled from exile after +the death of Domitian from the isle of the Sporades, the volcanic +formation of which, with its daily scenes of smoke, brimstone, fire, and +streams of molten lava, had aided the apostle to imagine the day of doom, +when the angel should cry, “Time shall be no longer.” The beloved +disciple, who had borne the message of Divine love through the cities of +Asia Minor, had founded churches, established bishoprics, and had laboured +by spoken and written word, and even more effectually by his beautiful and +gentle life, to extend the kingdom of God and of His Christ, now worn out +with incessant labours, and bent with the weight of well-nigh a hundred +years, the last of the men who had seen the Lord, the final link which +bound the youthful Church to its apostolic days, lies dying in a cave, +hiding from the bloody hands of those who breathed out threatenings and +slaughter against the followers of Christ. Companioned by five converts +who tenderly nursed the dying saint, he had been brought from the secret +recess in the rock where they had hidden him from the pursuers into the +midmost grotto, where the light of noon just reached a little, and enabled +them to watch</p> + +<p class="poem">“The last of what might happen on his face.”</p> + +<p>And at the entrance of the cave there kept faithful watch the Bactrian +convert, pretending to graze a goat, so that if thief or soldier passed +they might have booty without prying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> into the cave. The dying man lies +unconscious, but his attendants think it possible to rouse him that he may +speak to them before he departs: they wet his lips with wine, cool his +forehead with water, chafe his hands, diffuse the aromatic odour of the +spikenard through the cave, and pray; but still he sleeps. Then the boy, +inspired by a happy thought, brings the plate of graven lead on which are +the words of John’s gospel, “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” and +having found the place, he presses the aged man’s finger on the line, and +repeats it in his ear. Then he opened his eyes, sat up, and looked at +them; and no one spoke, save the watcher without, signalling from time to +time that they were safe. And first, the beloved one said, “If one told me +there were James and Peter, I could believe! So is my soul withdrawn into +its depths.”—“Let be awhile!”—And then—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 12em;">“It is long</span><br /> +Since James and Peter had release by death,<br /> +And I am only he, your brother John,<br /> +Who saw and heard, and could remember all.”</p> + +<p>He reminds them how in Patmos isle he had seen the Lord in His awful +splendour; how in his early life he saw and handled with his hands the +Word of Life. Soon it will be that none will say “I saw.” And already—for +the years were long—men had disputed, murmured and misbelieved, or had +set up antichrists; and remembering what had happened to the faith in his +own days, he could well foresee that unborn people in strange lands would +one day ask—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Was John at all, and did he say he saw?”</p> + +<p>“What can I say to assure them?” he asks; the story of Christ’s life and +death was not mere history to him: “<i>It is</i>,” he cries,—“<i>is, here and +now</i>.” Not only are the events of the gospel history present before his +eyes, so that he apprehends nought else; but not less plainly, not less +firmly printed on his soul, are the more mysterious truths of God’s +eternal presence in the world visibly contending with wrong and sin; and, +as the wrong and sin are manifest to his soul-sight, so equally does he +see the need, yet transiency of both. But matters, which to his +spiritualised vision were clear, must be placed before his followers +through some medium which shall, like an optic glass, segregate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> them, +diminish them into clearness; and so he bids them stand before that fact, +that Life and Death of Jesus Christ, till it spreads apart like a star, +growing and opening out on all sides till it becomes their only world, as +it is his. “For all of life,” he says, “is summed up in the prize of +learning love, and having learnt it, to hold it and truth, despite the +world in arms against the holder. We can need no second proof of God’s +love for man. Man having once learned the use of fire, would not part with +the gift for purple or for gold. Were the worth of Christ as plain, he +could not give up Christ. To test man, the proofs of Christianity shift; +he cannot grasp that fact as he grasps the fact of fire and its worth.” He +asks his disciples why they say it was easier to believe in Christ once +than now—easier when He walked the earth with those He loved? “But,” says +John, who had seen all,—the transfiguration, the walking on the sea, the +raising of the dead to life,—“could it be possible the man who had seen +these things should ever part from them?” Yes, it was! The torchlight, the +noise, the sudden inrush of the Roman soldiers, on the night of the +betrayal, caused even him, John, the beloved disciple, to forsake Him and +fly. Yet he had gained the truth, and the truth grew in his soul, so that +he was enabled to impress it so indelibly on others, that children and +women who had never seen the least of the sights he had seen would clasp +their cross with a light laugh, and wrap the burning robe of martyrdom +round them, giving thanks to God the while. But in the mind of man the +laws of development are ever at work, and questioners of the truth arose, +and it was necessary that he should re-state the Lord’s life and work in +various ways, to rectify mistakes. God has operated in the way of Power, +later in the way of Love, and last of all in Influence on Soul: men do not +ask now, “Where is the promise of His coming?” but—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Was He revealed in any of His lives,<br /> +As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul?”</p> + +<p>“Miracles, to prove doctrine,” John says, “go for nought, but love +remains.” Then men ask, “Did not we ourselves imagine and make this love?” +(That is to say, love having been discovered by mankind to be the noblest +thing on earth, have not men created a God of Infinite Love, out of their +own passionate imagining of what man’s love would be if perfectly +developed?)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> “The mind of man can only receive what it holds—no more.” +Man projects his own love heavenward, it falls back upon him in another +shape—with another name and story added; this, he straightway says, is a +gift from heaven. Man of old peopled heaven with gods, all of whom +possessed man’s attributes; horses drew the sun from east to west. Now, we +say the sun rises and sets as if impelled by a hand and will, and it is +only thought of as so impelled because we ourselves have hands and wills. +But the sun must be driven by some force which we do not understand; will +and love we do understand. As man grows wiser the passions and faculties +with which he adorned his deities are taken away: Jove of old had a brow, +Juno had eyes; gradually there remained only Jove’s wrath and Juno’s +pride; in process of time these went also, till now we recognise will and +power and love alone. All these are at bottom the same—mere projections +from the mind of the man himself. Having then stated the objections +brought against the faith of Christ, St. John proceeds to meet them. +“Man,” he says, “was made to grow, not stop; the help he needed in the +earlier stages, being no longer required, is withdrawn; his new needs +require new helps. When we plant seed in the ground we place twigs to show +the spots <ins class="correction" title="original: whree">where</ins> the germs lie hidden, so that they may not be trodden upon +by careless steps. When the plants spring up we take the twigs away; they +no longer have any use. It was thus with the growth of the gospel seed: +miracles were required at first, but, when the plant had sprung up and +borne fruit, had produced martyrs and heroes of the faith, what was the +use of miracles any more? The fruit itself was surely sufficient testimony +to the vitality of the seed. Minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth, +as babes with milk; a boy we bid feed himself, or starve. So, at first, I +wrought miracles that men might believe in Christ, because no faith were +otherwise possible; miracles now would compel, not help. I say the way to +solve all questions is to accept by the reason the Christ of God; the sole +death is when a man’s loss comes to him from his gain, when—from the +light given to him—he extracts darkness; from the knowledge poured upon +him he produces ignorance; and from the manifestation of love elaborates +the lack of love. Too much oil is the lamp’s death; it chokes with what +would otherwise feed the flame. An overcharged stomach starves. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> man +who rejects Christ because he thinks the love of Christ is only a +projection of his own is like a lamp that overswims with oil, a stomach +overloaded with nurture; that man’s soul dies.” “But,” the objector may +say, “You told your Christ-story incorrectly: what is the good of giving +knowledge at all if you give it in a manner which will not stop the +after-doubt? Why breed in us perplexity? why not tell the whole truth in +proper words?” To this St. John replies, “Man of necessity must pass from +mistake to fact; he is not perfect as God is, nor as is the beast; lower +than God, he is higher than the beast, and higher because he +progresses,—he yearns to gain truth, catching at mistake. The statuary +has the idea in his mind, aspires to produce it, and so calls his shape +from out the clay:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Cries ever, ‘Now I have the thing I see’:<br /> +Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought,<br /> +From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself.”</p> + +<p>Suppose he had complained, ‘I see no face, no breast, no feet’? It is only +God who makes the live shape at a jet. Striving to reach his ideals, man +grows; ceasing to strive, he forfeits his highest privileges, and entails +the certainty of destruction. Progress is the essential law of man’s +being, and progress by mistake, by failure, by unceasing effort, will lead +him,</p> + +<p class="poem">“Where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!”</p> + +<p>Such is the difficulty of the latest time; so does the aged saint answer +it. He would remain on earth another hundred years, he says, to lend his +struggling brothers his help to save them from the abyss. But even as he +utters the loving desire, he is dead,</p> + +<p class="poem">“Breast to breast with God, as once he lay.”</p> + +<p>They buried him that night, and the teller of the story returned, +disguised, to Ephesus. St. John is said to have been banished into the +Isle of Patmos, <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 97, by the order of Domitian. After this emperor had +reigned fifteen years Nerva succeeded him (<span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 99), and historians of the +period wrote that “the Roman senate decreed that the honours paid to +Domitian should cease, and such as were injuriously exiled should return +to their native land and receive their substance again. It is also among +the ancient traditions, that then John the Apostle returned from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> +banishment and dwelt again at Ephesus.” Eusebius, quoting from Irenæus, +says that John after his return from Patmos governed the churches in Asia, +and remained with them in the time of Trajan. Irenæus also says that the +Apostle carried on at Ephesus the work begun by Paul; Clement of +Alexandria records the same thing. It is said that St. John died in peace +at Ephesus in the third year of Trajan—that is, the hundredth of the +Christian era, or the sixty-sixth from our Lord’s crucifixion, the saint +being then about ninety-four years old; he was buried on a mountain +without the town. A stately church stood formerly over this tomb, which is +at present a Turkish mosque. The sojourn of the Apostle in Asia, a country +governed by Magi and imbued with Zoroastrian ideas, and in those days full +of Buddhist missionaries, may account for many things found in the Book of +Revelation. Mr. Browning refers to this in the bracketed portion of the +poem, commencing:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“This is the doctrine he was wont to teach,<br /> +How divers persons witness in each man,<br /> +Three souls which make up one soul.”</p> + +<p>They are described by Theosophists as “(1) The fluidic perisoul or astral +body; (2) The soul or individual; and (3) The spirit, or Divine Father and +life of his system.” (See <i>The Perfect Way</i>, Lecture I., 9.) These three +souls make up, with the material body, the fourfold nature of man.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Pamphylax the Antiochene</i>, an imaginary person. <i>Epsilon</i>, <i>Mu</i>, +<i>Xi</i>, letters of the Greek alphabet—e, m, and ch respectively. <i>Xanthus</i> +and <i>Valens</i>, disciples of St. John. <i>Bactrian</i>, of Bactria, a province in +Persia. “<i>A ball of nard</i>,” an unguent of spikenard, odorous and highly +aromatic and restorative. <i>Glossa</i>, a commentary. <i>Theotypas</i>, a +fictitious character. <i>Prometheus</i>, son of the Titan Iapetus and the +Ocean-nymph Clymene, brother of Atlas, Menœtius, and Epimetheus, and +father of Deucalion. When Zeus refused to mortals the use of fire, +Prometheus stole it from Olympus, and brought it to men in a hollow reed. +Zeus bound him to a pillar, with an eagle to consume in the daytime his +liver, which grew again in the night. <i>Æschylus</i>, the earliest of the +three great tragic poets of Greece, born at Eleusis, near Athens, <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> +525. He wrote the <i>Prometheus Bound</i>. <i>Ebion</i>, the founder of the early +sect of heretics called<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> Ebionites. They held that the Mosaic law was +binding on Christians, and believed Jesus to have been a mere man, though +an ambassador from God and possessed of Divine power (<i>Encyc. Dict.</i>). +<i>Cerinthus</i> raised great disturbances in obstinately defending an +obligation of circumcision, and of abstaining from unclean meats in the +New Law, and in extolling the angels as the authors of nature: this was +before St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Colossians, etc. He pretended +that the God of the Jews was only an angel; that Jesus was born of Joseph +and Mary, like other men. He taught that Christ flew away at the time of +the crucifixion, and that Jesus in the human part of His nature alone +suffered and rose again, Christ continuing always immortal and impassible. +St. Irenæus relates that on one occasion, when St. John went to the public +baths, he found that this heretic was within, and he refused to remain +lest the bath which contained Cerinthus should fall upon his head.</p> + +<p><b>“De Gustibus——”</b> [<i>De Gustibus non disputandum</i>—“there is no accounting +for tastes.”] (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, +1868.) Every lover of Nature finds some particular kind of scenery which +most appeals to his heart, and to which his thoughts revert in moments of +reflection and meditation. The poet tells the lover of trees that after +death (if loves persist) his ghost will be found wandering in an English +lane by a hazel coppice in beanflower and blackbird time. For his own +part, he loves best in all the world the scenery of his beloved Italy—a +castle on a precipice in “the wind-grieved Apennine”; and if ever he gets +his head out of the grave and his spirit soars free, he will be away to +the sunny South, by the cypress guarding the seaside home, where scorpions +sprawl on frescoed walls; in “Italy, my Italy,”—which beloved name he +declares will be found graven on his heart.</p> + +<p><b>De Lorge.</b> (<i>The Glove.</i>) Sir de Lorge was the knight who recovered his +lady’s glove from the lions, amongst which she had cast it to test his +courage, and then threw it in her face.</p> + +<p><b>Development.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) Mr. Sharp, in his admirable <i>Life of +Browning</i>, says that the poet’s father was a man of exceptional powers. He +was a poet both in sentiment and expression; and he understood, as well as +enjoyed, the excellent in art. He was a scholar, too, in a reputable +fashion; not indifferent to what he had learnt in his youth, nor heedless +of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> high opinion generally entertained for the greatest writers of +antiquity, but with a particular care himself for Horace and Anacreon. As +his son once told a friend, “The old gentleman’s brain was a storehouse of +literary and philosophical antiquities. He was completely versed in +mediæval legend, and seemed to have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and even +Talmudic personages, personally.” Development, indeed! That the embryonic +mediæval lore of the banker’s clerk should have potentially contained the +treasures of <i>Paracelsus</i>, <i>Sordello</i>, and <i>Rabbi Ben Hakkadosh</i>, is as +wonderful as that the primary cell should contain the force which gathers +to itself the man.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Philip Karl Buttmann</i> was a distinguished German philologist, +born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1764, and died at Berlin, 1829. He studied +at Göttingen, and in 1796 was appointed secretary of the Royal Library at +Berlin. His fame rests on his <i>Griechische Grammatik</i>, the <i>Ausführliche +Griechische Sprachlehre</i>, and the <i>Lexilogus oder Beiträge zur +Griechischen Worterklärung</i>. These works are ranked highly for their exact +criticism. He brought out valuable editions of Plato’s <i>Dialogues</i> and the +<i>Meidias</i> of Demosthenes. <i>Friedrich August Wolf</i>, the great critic, was +born at Haynrode, near Nordhausen, in 1759; he died in 1824. He studied +philology at Göttingen, and published an edition of Shakespeare’s +<i>Macbeth</i>, with notes, in 1778. He filled the chair of philology and +pedagogial science at Halle for twenty-three years. In 1806 he repaired to +Berlin. His fame chiefly rests on his <i>Prolegomena in Homerum</i>, which was +devoted to the argument that the <i>Iliad</i> and the <i>Odyssey</i> are not the +work of one single and individual Homer, but a much later compilation of +<i>hymns</i> sung and handed down by oral tradition. Its effect was +overwhelming. <i>Stagirite</i> == Aristotle. “<i>The Ethics</i>” == the <i>Nicomachean +Ethics</i>, the great work of Aristotle. “<i>Battle of the Frogs and Mice</i>,” a +mock epic attributed to Homer. “<i>The Margites</i>,” a humorous poem, which +kept its ground down to the time of Aristotle as the work of Homer; it +began with the words, “There came to Colophon an old man, a divine singer, +servant of the Muses and Apollo.”</p> + +<p><b>Dîs Aliter Visum</b>; or, <b>Le Byron de Nos Jours</b>. “Dîs aliter visum” is from +Virgil, Æn. ii. 428, and means “Heaven thought not so.” (<i>Dramatis +Personæ</i>, 1864.) The poem describes a meeting of two friends after a +parting of ten years.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> They should have been more than friends: they were +made for each other’s love; but love came in a guise which was not +acceptable, and the heart which the man might have won, and the love which +would have blessed him and ennobled his life, was for reasons of prudence +disregarded, and both lovers went their way, having missed their life’s +chance. It is the woman who speaks—the “poor, pretty, thoughtful thing” +of other days; a woman who tried to love and understand art and +literature—to love all, at any rate, that was great and good and +beautiful. She wonders if he—the man who might have completed his partial +life with a great love—ever for a moment valued her rightly, and +determined that “love found, gained and kept,” was for him beyond art and +sense and fame? She was young and inexperienced in the world’s ways; he +was old and full of wisdom: too wise, perhaps, to see where his best +interests lay. It would never do, he thought—a match “’twixt one bent, +wigged and lamed——and this young beauty, round and sound as a mountain +apple.” And so they parted. He chose a lower ideal, she married where she +could not love; so the devil laughed in his sleeve, for not two only, but +four souls were in jeopardy.</p> + +<p>The poem is a good example of the poet’s way of drawing from a +half-serious, half-bantering and indifferent confession of thoughts and +feelings one of his great moral lessons. It has been compared to what is +termed <i>vers de société</i>, and as such, up to stanza xxiii., it may be +fitly described; then comes Mr. Browning’s sudden uprising to his highest +power. It is as though he had lightly touched on the ways of men, and +discussed them half-playfully with some light-hearted, not to say +frivolous, audience in a drawing-room. The listeners stand smiling, and +speculating as to his real meaning, when all at once he rises from his +chair and brings in a moment before the thoughtless group of listeners the +great and awful import of life, and the real meaning of the things which +men call trifles, but which in God’s sight are big with the interests of +Eternity. So, in this poem he leads us from pretty talk of “Heine for +songs and kisses,” “gout, glory, and love freaks, love’s dues, and +consols,” to one of his grandest life-lessons—the necessary +incompleteness of all human existence here, because heaven must finish +what earth can never complete,—the supreme evolution of the soul of man. +Earth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> completes her star-fishes; Heaven itself could make no more perfect +or more beautiful star-fish:</p> + +<p class="poem">“He, whole in body and soul, outstrips<br /> +Man, found with either in default.”</p> + +<p>The star-fish is whole. What is whole can increase no more. It has nothing +to do but waste and die, and there is an end of it.</p> + +<p class="poem">“Leave Now for dogs and apes!<br /> +Man has Forever.”</p> + +<p>On the side of the man in the poem it could be fairly argued that a more +unreasonable match could hardly be imagined than one between a “bent, +wigged and lame” old gentleman and a “poor, pretty, thoughtful” young +beauty, notwithstanding her offer of body and soul.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—viii., <i>Robert Schumann</i>, musical critic and composer: was born +1810, died 1856. <i>Jean August Dominique Ingres</i> (born 1780, died 1867). +“The modern man that paints,” a celebrated historical painter, a pupil of +David. He was opposed to the Romantic School, and depended for success on +form and line. “His paintings, with all their cleverness, appear to +English eyes deficient in originality of conception, coarse, hard and +artificial in manner, and untrue in colour” (<i>Imp. Dict. Biog.</i>), xii., +“<i>The Fortieth spare Arm-chair</i>.” This refers to the French Academy, +founded by Richelieu in 1635. When one of the forty members dies a new one +is elected to fill his place.</p> + +<p><b>Djabal.</b> (<i>Return of the Druses.</i>) The son of the Emir, who seeks revenge +for the murder of his family, and declares himself to be the Hakim—who is +to set the Druse people free. He loves the maiden Anael, and when she dies +stabs himself on her dead body.</p> + +<p><b>Doctor ——.</b> (<i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, Second Series, 1880.) A Rabbinical story. +Satan, as in the opening scene of Job, stands with the angels before God +to make his complaints. Asked “What is the fault now?” he declares that he +has found something on earth which interferes with his prerogatives:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Death is the strongest-born of Hell, and yet<br /> +Stronger than Death is a Bad Wife, we know.”</p> + +<p>Satan protests that this robs him of his rights, as he claims to be +Strongest. He is commanded to descend to earth in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> mortal shape and get +married, and so try for himself the bitter draught. It was Solomon who +said that “a woman whose heart is snares and nets is more bitter than +death” (Ecclesiastes vii. 27), and some commentators on the poem have +thought the Rabbinical legend was suggested by this verse. Satan, married, +in due time has a son who arrives at maturity, and then the question +arises of a profession for him: “I needs must teach my son a trade.” Shall +he be a soldier? That is too cowardly. A lawyer would be better, but there +is too much hard work for the sluggard. There’s divinity, but that is +Satan’s own special line, and that be far from his poor offspring! At last +he thinks of the profession of medicine. Physic is the very thing! So +<i>Medicus</i> he is appointed; and it is arranged that a special power shall +be given to the young doctor’s eyes, so that when on his rounds he shall +behold the spirit-person of his father at his side. Doctor once dubbed, +ignorance shall be no barrier to his success; cash shall follow, whatever +the treatment, and fees shall pour in. Satan tells his son that the reason +he has endowed him with power to recognise his spirit-form is that he may +judge by Death’s position in the sick room what are the prospects of the +patient’s recovery. If he perceive his father lingering by the door, +whatever the nature of the illness recovery will be speedy; if higher up +the room, death will not be the sufferer’s doom; but if he is discovered +standing by the head of the bed’s the patient’s doom is sealed. It +happened that of a sudden the emperor himself was smitten with sore +disease. Of course Dr. —— was called in and promised large rewards if he +saved the imperial life. As he entered the room he saw at once that all +was lost: there stood his father Death as sentry at the bed’s head. Gold +was offered in abundance; the doctor begged his father to go away and let +him win his fee. “No inch I budge!” is the response. Then honours are +offered him whom apparently wealth failed to tempt. The result is the +same. Then Love: “Take my daughter as thy bride—save me for this reward!” +The Doctor again implores a respite from his father, who is obdurate as +ever. A thought strikes the physician: “Reverse the bed, so that Death no +longer stands at the head;” but “the Antic passed from couch-foot back to +pillow,” and is master of the situation again. The son now curses his +father, and declares that he will go over to the other side. He sends to +his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> home for the mystic Jacob’s-staff—a knobstick of proved efficacy in +such cases. “Go, bid my mother (Satan’s wife, be it remembered) bring the +stick herself.” The servant rushes off to do his errand, and all the +anxious while the emperor <ins class="correction" title="original: sink's">sinks</ins> lower and lower, as the icy breath of +Death freezes him to the marrow. All at once the door of the sick room +opens, and there enters to Satan “Who but his Wife the Bad?” The devil +goes off through the ceiling, leaving a sulphury smell behind; and, “Hail +to the Doctor!” the imperial patient straightway recovers. In gratitude he +offers him the promised daughter and her dowry; but the Doctor refuses the +fee—“No dowry, no bad wife!” If this Talmudic legend has any relation to +Solomon, it is well to bear in mind that his bitter experience, as St. +Jerome says, was due to the fact that no one ever fell a victim to impurer +loves than he. He married strange women, was deluded by them, and erected +temples to their respective idols. His opinion, therefore, on marriage as +we understand it is of little importance to us.</p> + +<p><b><ins class="correction" title="original: Deminus">Dominus</ins> Hyacinthus De Archangelis.</b> (<i>The Ring and the Book.</i>) The +procurator or counsel for the poor, who defends Count Guido in the eighth +book of the poem.</p> + +<p><b>Domizia</b> (<i>Luria</i>), a noble lady of Florence. She is loved by the Moorish +captain Luria, who commanded the army of the Florentines. Domizia was +greatly embittered against the republic for its ingratitude to her two +brothers—Porzio and Berto—and hoped to be revenged for their deaths.</p> + +<p><b>Don Juan.</b> (<i>Fifine at the Fair.</i>) The husband of the poem is a +philosophical study of the Don Juan of Molière. He is full of sophistries, +and an adept in the art of making the worse appear the better reason. In +Molière’s play Juan’s valet thus describes his master: “You see in Don +Juan the greatest scoundrel the earth has ever borne—a madman, a dog, a +demon, a Turk, a heretic—who believes neither in heaven, hell, nor devil, +who passes his life simply as a brute beast, a pig of an epicure, a true +Sardanapalus; who closes his ear to every remonstrance which can be made +to him, and treats as idle talk all that we hold sacred.”</p> + +<p><b>Donald.</b> (<i>Jocoseria</i>, 1883.) The story of the poem is a true one, and is +told by Sir Walter Scott, in <i>The Keepsake</i> for 1832, pp. 283-6. The +following abridgement of the account is from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> the Browning Society’s +<i>Notes and Queries</i>, No. 209, p. 328: “... The story is an old but not an +ancient one: the actor and sufferer was not a very aged man, when I heard +the anecdote in my early youth. Duncan (for so I shall call him) had been +engaged in the affair of 1746, with others of his clan; ... on the one +side of his body he retained the proportions and firmness of an active +mountaineer; on the other he was a disabled cripple, scarce able to limp +along the streets. The cause which reduced him to this state of infirmity +was singular. Twenty years or more before I knew Duncan he assisted his +brothers in farming a large grazing in the Highlands.... It chanced that a +sheep or goat was missed from the flock, and Duncan ... went himself in +quest of the fugitive. In the course of his researches he was induced to +ascend a small and narrow path, leading to the top of a high precipice.... +It was not much more than two feet broad, so rugged and difficult, and at +the same time so terrible, that it would have been impracticable to any +but the light step and steady brain of the Highlander. The precipice on +the right rose like a wall, and on the left sank to a depth which it was +giddy to look down upon.... He had more than half ascended the precipice, +when in midway ... he encountered a buck of the red-deer species coming +down the cliff by the same path in an opposite direction.... Neither party +had the power of retreating, for the stag had not room to turn himself in +the narrow path, and if Duncan had turned his back to go down, he knew +enough of the creature’s habits to be certain that he would rush upon him +while engaged in the difficulties of the retreat. They stood therefore +perfectly still, and looked at each other in mutual embarrassment for some +space. At length the deer, which was of the largest size, began to lower +his formidable antlers, as they do when they are brought to bay.... Duncan +saw the danger ... and, as a last resource, stretched himself on the +little ledge of rock ... not making the least motion, for fear of alarming +the animal. They remained in this posture for three or four hours.... At +length the buck ... approached towards Duncan very slowly ... he came +close to the Highlander ... when the devil, or the untameable love of +sport, ... began to overcome Duncan’s fears. Seeing the animal proceed so +gently, he totally forgot not only the dangers of his position, but the +implicit compact which certainly might have been inferred from the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>circumstances of the situation. With one hand Duncan seized the deer’s +horn, whilst with the other he drew his dirk. But in the same instant the +buck bounded over the precipice, carrying the Highlander along with +him.... Fortune ... ordered that the deer should fall undermost, and be +killed on the spot, while Duncan escaped with life, but with the fracture +of a leg, an arm, and three ribs.... I never could approve of Duncan’s +conduct towards the deer in a moral point of view, ... but the temptation +of a hart of grease offering, as it were, his throat to the knife, would +have subdued the virtue of almost any deer stalker.... I have given you +the story exactly as I recollect it.” As the practice of medicine does not +necessarily make a man merciful, so neither does sport necessarily imply +manliness and nobility of soul. In both cases there is a strong tendency +for the professional to be considered the right view. In the story we have +the stag, after four hours’ consideration, offering terms of agreement +which Donald accepted and then treacherously broke. The animal broke +Donald’s fall, yet he has no gratitude for its having thus saved his life. +As one of the poems covered by the question in the prologue, “<i>Wanting +is——What?</i>” we should reply, Honour and humanity.</p> + +<p><b>D’Ormea.</b> (<i>King Victor and King Charles.</i>) He was the unscrupulous +minister of King Victor. He became necessary to King Charles when he +received the crown on his father’s abdication, and was active in defeating +the attempt of the latter to recover his crown.</p> + +<p><b>Dramas.</b> For the Stage: <i>A Blot in the ’Scutcheon</i>, <i>Colombe’s Birthday</i>, +<i>Strafford</i>, <i>Luria</i>, <i>In a Balcony</i>, <i>The Return of the Druses</i>. For the +Study: <i>Pippa Passes</i>, <i>King Victor and King Charles</i>, <i>A Soul’s Tragedy</i>, +and <i>Paracelsus</i>. <i>A Blot in the ’Scutcheon</i>, <i>Strafford</i>, <i>Colombe’s +Birthday</i>, and <i>In a Balcony</i>, have all been recently performed in London, +under the direction of the Browning Society, greatly to the gratification +of the spectators who were privileged to attend these special +performances. Whether such dramas would be likely to attract audiences +from the general public for any length of time is, however, extremely +problematical. Mr. Browning’s poetry is of too subjective and +psychological a character to be popular on the stage.</p> + +<p><b>Dramatic Idyls</b> (1879-80). <i>Series I.</i>: Martin Relph, Pheidippides, Halbert +and Hob, Ivan Ivanovitch, Tray, Ned Bratts;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> <i>Series II.</i>: Proem, +Echetlos, Clive, <ins class="correction" title="original: Muleykeh">Muléykeh</ins>, Pietro of Abano, Doctor ——, Pan and Luna, +Epilogue.</p> + +<p><b>Dramatic Lyrics.</b> (<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, No. III., 1842.) Cavalier +Tunes: i., Marching Along; ii., Give a Rouse; iii., My Wife Gertrude. +Italy and France: i., Italy; ii., France. Camp and Cloister: i., Camp +(French); ii., Cloister (Spanish); In a Gondola, Artemis Prologizes, +Waring. Queen Worship: i., Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli; ii., Cristina. +Madhouse Cells: i., Johannes Agricola; ii., Porphyria. Through the +Metidja, The Pied Piper of Hamelin.</p> + +<p><b>Dramatic Monologue.</b> Mr. Browning has so excelled in this particular kind +of poetry that it may be fitly called a novelty of his invention. The +dramatic monologue is quite different from the soliloquy. In the latter +case the speaker delivers his own thoughts, uninterrupted by objections or +the propositions of other persons. “In the dramatic monologue the presence +of a silent second person is supposed, to whom the arguments of the +speaker are addressed. It is obvious that the dramatic monologue gains +over the soliloquy, in that it allows the artist greater room in which to +work out his conceptions of character. The thoughts of a man in +self-communion are apt to run in a certain circle, and to assume a +monotony” (Professor Johnson, M.A.). This supposed second person serves to +“draw out” the speaker and to stimulate the imagination of the reader. +<i>Bishop Blougram’s Apology</i> is an admirable example of this form of +literature, where Mr. Gigadibs, the critic of Bishop Blougram, is the +silent second person above referred to.</p> + +<p><b>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.</b> (<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, No. VII.: 1845.) +How they Brought the Good News, Pictor Ignotus, Italy in England, England +in Italy, The Lost Leader, The Lost Mistress, Home Thoughts from Abroad, +The Tomb at St. Praxed’s; Garden Fancies: i. The Flower’s Name; ii. +Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. France and Spain: i. The Laboratory; ii. The +Confessional. The Flight of the Duchess, Earth’s Immortalities, Song, The +Boy and the Angel, Night and Morning, Claret and Tokay, Saul, Time’s +Revenges, The Glove.</p> + +<p><b>Dramatis Personæ</b> (1864). James Lee, Gold Hair, The Worst of it, Dîs Aliter +Visum, Too Late, Abt Vogler, Rabbi Ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert, +Caliban upon Setebos, Confessions,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> May and Death, Prospice, Youth and +Art, A Face, A Likeness, Mr. Sludge, Apparent Failure, Epilogue.</p> + +<p><b>Dubiety.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) Richardson said that “a state of dubiety and +suspense is ever accompanied with uneasiness.” Sleep, if sound, is +restful; but the poet asks for comfort, and to be comfortable implies a +certain amount of consciousness—a dreamy, hazy sense of being in +“luxury’s sofa-lap.” An English lady once asked a British tar in the Bay +of Malaga, one lovely November day, if he were not happy to think he was +out of foggy England—at least in autumn? The sailor protested there was +nothing he disliked so much as “the everlasting blue sky” of the +Mediterranean, and there was nothing he longed for so much as “a good +Thames fog.” So the poet here demands,</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“Just a cloud,</span><br /> +Suffusing day too clear and bright.”</p> + +<p>He does not wish to be shrouded, as the sailor did, but his idea of +comfort is that the world’s busy thrust should be shaded by a “gauziness” +at least. Vivid impressions are always more or less painful: they strike +the senses too acutely, as “the eternal blue sky” of the south is too +trying for English eyes. As such a light is sometimes too stimulating, so +even too much intellectual light may be painful; a “gauziness,” a +“dreaming’s vapour wreath” is to the overwrought brain of the thinker +happiness “just for once.” In the dim musings, neither dream nor vision, +but just a memory, comes the face of the woman he had loved and lost, the +memory of her kiss, the impress of the lips of Truth, “for love is Truth.”</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Eagle, The.</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>: I. “On Divine Providence.”) The story +is taken from the fable of Pilpai (or Bidpai, as is the more correct +form), called <i>The Dervish, the Falcon and the Raven</i>. A father told a +young man that all effects have their causes, and he who relies upon +Providence without considering these had need to be instructed by the +following fable:—</p> + +<p>“A certain dervish used to relate that, in his youth, once passing through +a wood and admiring the works of the great Author of Nature, he spied a +falcon that held a piece of flesh in his beak; and hovering about a tree, +tore the flesh into bits, and gave it to a young raven <ins class="correction" title="original: hat">that</ins> lay bald and +featherless in its nest.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> The dervish, admiring the bounty of Providence, +in a rapture of admiration cried out, ‘Behold, this poor bird, that is not +able to seek out sustenance for himself, is not, however, forsaken of its +Creator, who spreads the whole world like a table, where all creatures +have their food ready provided for them! He extends His liberality so far, +that the serpent finds wherewith to live upon the mountain of Gahen. Why, +then, am I so greedy? wherefore do I run to the ends of the earth, and +plough up the ocean for bread? Is it not better that I should henceforward +confine myself in repose to some little corner, and abandon myself to +fortune?’ Upon this he retired to his cell, where, without putting himself +to any further trouble for anything in the world, he remained three days +and three nights without victuals. At last, ‘Servant of mine,’ said the +Creator to him in a dream, ‘know thou that all things in this world have +their causes; and though my providence can never be limited, my wisdom +requires that men shall make use of the means that I have ordained them. +If thou wouldst imitate any one of the birds thou hast seen to my glory, +use the talents I have given thee, and imitate the falcon that feeds the +raven, and not the raven that lies a sluggard in his nest, and expects his +food from another.’ This example shows us that we are not to lead idle and +lazy lives upon the pretence of depending upon Providence.”—<i>Fables of +Pilpay</i> (Chandos Classics), p. 53.</p> + +<p>Ferishtah is in training for a dervish, and is anxious to feed hungry +souls. Mr. Browning makes his charitable bird an eagle, and the moral is +that man is not to play the helpless weakling, but to save the perishing +by his helpful strength. The dervish, duly admonished, asks which lacks in +him food the more—body or soul? He reflects that, as he starves in soul, +so may mankind, wherefore he will go forth to help them; and this Mr. +Browning proposes to do by the series of moral and philosophical lessons +to be drawn from <i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>. The lyric teaches that, though a +life with nature is good for meditation and for lovers of solitude, we are +human souls and our proper place is “up and down amid men,” for God is +soul, and it is the poet’s business to speak to the divine principle +existing under every squalid exterior and harsh and hateful personality.</p> + +<p><b>Earth’s Immortalities.</b> (First published in <i>Dramatic Romances and +Lyrics—Bells and Pomegranates</i> No. VII.) The poet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> was famous, and not so +very long since; but the gravestones above him are sinking, and the +lichens are softening out his very name and date. So fades away his fame. +And the lover who could be satisfied with nothing less than “for ever” has +the fever of passion quenched in the snows that cover the tomb beside the +poet’s. One demanded to be remembered, the other to be loved, for ever. +Thus do “Earth’s immortalities” perish either under lichens or snows.</p> +<p><a name="easter" id="easter"></a></p> +<p><b>Easter-Day.</b> (<i>Christmas Eve and Easter Day</i>: Florence, 1850.) The poem is +a dialogue. The first speaker exclaims, “How very hard it is to be a +Christian!” and says the difficulty does not so much consist in living up +to the Christ-ideal,—hard enough, by the very terms, but hard to realise +it with the moderate success with which we realise the ordinary aims of +life. Of course the aim is greater, consequently the required effort +harder: may it not be God’s intention that the difficulty of being a +Christian should seem unduly great? “Of course the chief difficulty is +belief,” says the second speaker: “once thoroughly believe, the rest is +simple. Prove to me that the least command of God is really and truly +God’s command, and martyrdom itself is easy.” Joint the finite into the +infinite life, and fix yourself safely inside, no doubt all external +things you would safely despise. The second speaker says, “But faith may +be God’s touchstone: God does not reward us with heaven because we see the +sun shining, nor crown a man victor because he draws his breath duly. If +you would have faith exist at all, there must perforce be some uncertainty +with it. We love or hate people because either they do or do not believe +in us. But the Creator’s reign, we are apt to think, should be based on +exacter laws: we desire God should geometrise.” The first speaker says, +“You would grow as a tree, stand as a rock, soar up like fire, be above +faith. But creation groans, and out of its pains we have to make our +music.” The second speaker replies, “I confess a scientific faith is +absurd; the end which it was meant to serve would be lost if faith were +certainty. We may grant that, but may we not require at least probability? +We do not hang a curtain flat along a wall; we prefer it to hang in folds +from point to point. We would not mind the gaps and intervals, if at point +and point we could pin our life upon God. It would be no hardship then to +renounce the world. There are men who live merely to collect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> beetles, +giving up all the pleasures of life to make a completer collection than +has been hitherto formed. Another set lives to collect snuff-boxes, or in +learning to play chess blindfold. It would not be hard to renounce the +world if we had as much <i>certainty</i> as these hermits obtain in their +pleasures to inspire them in renouncing the vanities of life. Of course, +as some will say, there is evidence enough of a sort: as is your turn of +mind, so is your search—you will find just what you look for, and so you +get your Christian evidences in a sense; you may comfort yourself in +having found a scrap of papyrus in a mummy-case which declares there +really was a living Moses, and you may even get over the difficulty of +Jonah and the whale by turning the whale into an island or a rock and set +your faith to clap her wings and crow accordingly. You may do better: you +may make the human heart the minister of truth, and prove by its wants and +needs and hopes and fears how aptly the creeds meet these:</p> + +<p class="poem">“You wanted to believe; your pains<br /> +Are crowned—you do!”</p> + +<p>If once in the believing mood, the renunciation of pleasures adds a spice +to life. Do you say that the Eternal became incarnate—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Only to give our joys a zest,<br /> +And prove our sorrows for the best?”</p> + +<p>The believing man is convinced that to be a Christian the world’s gain is +to be accounted loss, and he asks the sceptic what he counsels in that +case? The answer is, he would take the safe side—deny himself. The +believer does not relish the idea of renouncing life for the sake of +death. The collectors of curiosities at least had something for their +pains, and the believer gets—well, hope! The sceptic claims that he lives +in trusting ease. “Yes,” says the believer, “blind hopes wherewith to +flavour life—that is all;” and he proceeds to relate an incident which +happened in his life one Easter night, three years ago. He was crossing +the common near the chapel (spoken of in <i>Christmas Eve</i>), when he fell to +musing on what was his personal relationship to Christianity, how it would +be with him were he to fall dead that moment—would he lie faithful or +faithless? It was always so with him from childhood; he always desired to +know the worst of everything. “Common-sense” told him he had nothing to +fear: if he were not a Christian, who was? All at once he had this +vision.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> “Burn it!” was written in lines of fire across the sky; the dome +of heaven was one vast rack of ripples, infinite and black; the whole +earth was lit with the flames of the Judgment Day. In a moment he realised +that he stood before the seat of Judgment, choosing the world—his naked +choice, with all the disguises of old and all his trifling with conscience +stripped away. A Voice beside him spoke:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“Life is done,</span><br /> +Time ends, Eternity’s begun,<br /> +And thou art judged for evermore.”</p> + +<p>The Christ stood before him, told him that, as he had deliberately chosen +the world, the finite life in opposition to God, it should be his:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">“’Tis thine</span><br /> +For ever—take it!”</p> + +<p>For the world he had lived, for the things of time and sense he had fought +and sighed; the ideal life, the truth of God, the best and noblest things, +had interested him noway. His sentence, his awful doom—which at first he +was so far from realising that he was thrilled with pleasure at the +words—was that he should take and for ever keep the partial beauty for +which he had struggled. Wedded for ever to the gross material life, in +that he imagined he saw his highest happiness! “Mine—the World?” he +cried, in transport. “Yes,” said the awful Judge: “if you are satisfied +with one rose, thrown to you over the Eden-barrier which excludes you from +its glory—take it!” Our greatest punishment would be the gratification of +our lowest aims. “All the world!” and the sense of infinite possession of +all the beauty of earth, from fern leaf to Alpine heights, brought the +warmth to the man’s heart and extinguished the terror inspired by the +Judgment-seat of God. And the great Judge saw the thought, told him he was +welcome so to rate the mere hangings of the vestibule of the Palace of the +Supreme; and in the scorn of the awful gift the man read his error, and +asked for Art in place of Nature. And that, too, was conceded: he should +obtain the one form the sculptors laboured to abstract, the one face the +painters tried to draw, the perfection in their soul which these only +hinted at. But “very good” as God pronounced earth to be, earth can only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> +serve earth’s ends; its completeness transferred to a future state would +be the dreariest deficiency. The good, tried once, were bad retried. Then +the judged man, seeing the World and the World of Art insufficient to +satisfy his new condition, cried in anguish, “Mind is best—I will seize +mind—forego the rest!” And again it was answered to him that all the best +of mind on earth—the intuition, the grasps of guess, the efforts of the +finite to comprehend the infinite, the gleams of heaven which come to +sting with hunger for the full light of God, the inspiration of poetry, +the truth hidden in fable,—all these were God’s part, and in no wise to +be considered as inherent to the mind of man. Losing God, he loses His +inspirations; bereft of them in the world he had chosen, mind would not +avail to light the cloud he had entered. And the bleeding spirit of the +humbled man prays for love alone. And God said, “Is this thy final choice: +Love is best? ’Tis somewhat late! Love was all about thee, curled in its +mightiness around all thou hadst to do with. Take the show of love for the +name’s sake; but remember Who created thee to love, died for love of thee, +and thou didst refuse to believe the story, on the ground that the love +was too much.” Cowering deprecatingly, the man, who now saw the whole +truth of God, cried, “Thou Love of God! Let me not know that all is lost! +Let me go on hoping to reach one eve the Better Land!” And the man awoke, +and rejoiced that he was not left apart in God’s contempt; thanking God +that it is hard to be a Christian, and that he is not condemned to earth +and ease for ever.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Stanza iv., “<i>In all Gods acts (as Plato cries He doth) He should +geometrise</i>”: see Plutarch, <i>Symposiacs</i>, viii. 2. “Diogenianas began and +said, ‘Let us admit Plato to the conference, and inquire upon what account +he says—supposing it to be his sentence—that <i>God always plays the +geometer</i>.’ I said: ‘This sentence was not plainly set down in any of his +books; yet there are good arguments that it is his, and it is very much +like his expression.’ Tyndares presently subjoined: ‘He praises geometry +as a science that takes off men from sensible objects, and makes them +apply themselves to the intelligible and Eternal Nature, the contemplation +of which is the end of philosophy, as a view of the mysteries of +initiation into holy rites.’” vi., “<i>My list of coleoptera</i>”: in +entomology, an order of insects having four wings—the beetle tribe. “<i>A +Grignon with the Regent’s crest</i>”:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> Grignon was a famous snuff-box maker, +and his name was used for the fashionable boxes. vii., “<i>Jonah’s whale</i>”: +The latest theory is that the great deity of Nineveh was a “fish-god.” Mr. +Tylor considers the story to be a solar myth. Madame Blavatsky says (<i>Isis +Unveiled</i>, vol. ii., p. 258), “‘Big Fish’ is Cetus, the latinised form of +Keto—<ins class="correction" title="kêtô">κητω</ins>, and Keto is Dagon, Poseidon.” She suggests that Jonah +simply went into the cell within the body of Dagon, the fish-god. +<i>Orpheus</i>, the mythical poet, whose mother was the Muse Calliope. His song +could move the rocks and tame wild beasts (see <a href="#eurydice"><span class="smcap">Eurydice to Orpheus</span></a>). +<i>Dionysius Zagrias.</i> Zagreus was a name given to Dionysus by the Orphic +poets. The conception of the Winter-Dionysus originated in Crete: +sacrifice was offered to him at Delphi on the shortest day. This is quite +evidently one of the myths of winter. xii., <i>Æschylus</i>: “<i>the giving men +blind hopes</i>.” In the <i>Prometheus Chained</i> of Æschylus the chorus of ocean +nymphs ask Prometheus—</p> + +<p class="poem">“<i>Chor.</i> But had th’ offence no further aggravation?<br /> +<i>Pro.</i> I hid from men the foresight of their fate.<br /> +<i>Chor.</i> What couldst thou find to remedy that ill?<br /> +<i>Pro.</i> I sent blind Hope t’ inhabit in their hearts.<br /> +<i>Chor.</i> A blessing hast thou given to mortal man.”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">Morley’s <i>Plays of Æschylus</i>, p. 18.</span></p> + +<p>xiv., “<i>The kingcraft of the Lucomons</i>”: Heads of ancient Etruscan +families, and combining both priest and patriarch. The kings were drawn +from them. (Dr. Furnivall.) <i>Fourier’s scheme</i>: Fourierism was the system +of Charles Fourier, a Frenchman, who recommended the reorganisation of +society into small communities living in common. xx., “<i>Flesh refine to +nerve</i>”: this is a remarkable instance of the poet’s scientific +apprehension of the process of nerve formation five years before Herbert +Spencer speculated on the evolution of the nervous system. (See my +<i>Browning’s Message to his Time</i>: “Browning as a Scientific Poet.”) xxvi., +<i>Buonarrotti</i> == Michael Angelo.</p> + +<p><b>Eccelino da Romano III.</b> (<i>Sordello.</i>) Known as Eccelin the Monk, or +Ezzelin III. He was the Emperor Frederick’s chief in North Italy, and was +a powerful noble. He was termed “the Monk” because of his religious +austerity. He is described by Mr. Browning in the poem as “the thin, grey, +wizened, dwarfish devil Ecelin.” He was the most prominent of Ghibelline +leaders,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> was tyrant of Padua, and nicknamed “the Son of the Devil.” +Ariosto, <i>Orlando Furioso</i>, iii. 33, describes him as</p> + +<p class="poem">“Fierce Ezelin, that most inhuman lord,<br /> +Who shall be deemed by men a child of hell.”</p> + +<p>“His story,” says Longfellow, in his notes to Dante’s <i>Inferno</i>, “may be +found in Sismondi’s <i>Histoire des Républiques Italiennes</i>, chap. xix. He +so outraged the religious sense of the people by his cruelties that a +crusade was preached against him, and he died a prisoner in 1259, tearing +the bandages from his wounds, and fierce and defiant to the last. +‘Ezzelino was small of stature,’ says Sismondi, ‘but the whole aspect of +his person, all his movements, indicated the soldier. His language was +bitter, his countenance proud, and by a single look he made the boldest +tremble. His soul, so greedy of all crimes, felt no attraction for sensual +pleasures. Never had Ezzelino loved women; and this, perhaps, is the +reason why in his punishments he was as pitiless against them as men. He +was in his sixty-sixth year when he died; and his reign of blood had +lasted thirty-four years.’”</p> + +<p><b>Eccelino IV.</b> was the elder of the two sons of Eccelino III., surnamed the +Monk, who divided his little principality between them in 1223, and died +in 1235. In 1226, at the head of the Ghibellines, he got possession of +Verona, and was appointed Podesta. He became one of the most faithful +servants of the Emperor Frederick II. In 1236 he invited Frederick to +enter Italy to his assistance, and in August met him at Trent. Eccelino +was soon after besieged in Verona by the Guelfs, and the siege was raised +by the Emperor. Vicenza was next stormed and the government given to +Eccelino. In 1237 he marched against Padua, which capitulated, when he +behaved towards the people with great cruelty. He then besieged Mantua, +and mastered the Trevisa. In 1239 he was excommunicated by the Pope and +deprived of his estates. He behaved with such terrible cruelty that the +Emperor would have gladly been rid of him. Dante, in the <i>Divina +Commedia</i>, Inferno xii., places Eccelino in the lake of blood in the +seventh circle of hell.</p> + +<p><b>Echetlos.</b> (<i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, Second Series: 1880.) A Greek legend (of +which there are many) about the battle of Marathon, in which the Athenians +and Platæans, under Miltiades, defeated the Persians, 490 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> Wherever +the Greeks were hardest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> pressed in the fight a figure driving a +ploughshare was seen mowing down the enemy’s ranks. After the battle was +over the Greeks were anxious to learn who was the man in the clown’s dress +who had done them this great service. They demanded of the oracles his +name. But the oracles declined to tell: “Call him Echetlos, the +Ploughshare-wielder,” they said. “Let his deed be his name:</p> + +<p class="poem">“The great deed ne’er grows small.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—“<i>Not so the great name—Woe for Miltiades, woe for +Themistokles!</i>” After the victory of Marathon, Miltiades sullied his +honour by employing the fleet in an attempt to wreak a private grudge on +the island of Paros. He was sentenced to a heavy fine, which he was unable +to pay, and died in debt and dishonour. Themistocles was accused of having +entered into a traitorous communication with the Persians in his own +interest. He was banished from Greece, and died at Magnesia.</p> + +<p><b>Elcorte</b> (<i>Sordello</i>, Book ii.) was a poor archer who perished in saving a +child of Eccelin’s. He was supposed to be Sordello’s father, but the poet +discovered that he was not.</p> + +<p><b>Eglamour.</b> (<i>Sordello.</i>) The minstrel defeated by Sordello at the contest +of song in the Court of Love. He was the chief troubadour of Count Richard +of St. Bonifacio. He died of grief at his discomfiture in the art of song +by Sordello. “He was a typical troubadour, who loved art for its own sake; +thought more of his songs than of the things about which he sang, or of +the soul whose passion song should express” (Fotheringham, <i>Studies in +Browning</i>, p. 116). Mrs. James L. Bagg, in a comparative study of Eglamour +and Sordello, gives the following as the chief characteristics of this +poet:—“He was a poet not without effort and often faltering; he exhibits +the beautiful as the natural outburst of a heart full of a sense of beauty +that possesses it. He loses himself in his song,—it absorbs his life; his +art ends with his art, and is its own reward. He understands and loves +nature; they are bound up together. He loves all beauty for its own sake, +asking no reward. He craves nothing, takes no thought for the morrow. He +lacks character, and is dreamy, inactive; and attempting little, fails in +little. His life is barren of results as men reckon; he lives and loves, +and sings and dies. His life is almost one unbroken strain of harmony—he +is pleased to please<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> and to serve. His nature is simple and easily +understood; Eglamour is born and dies a creature of perceptions, never +conscious that beyond these there lies a world of thought. His life goes +out in tragic giving up of love, hope and heart.”</p> + +<p><b>Elvire.</b> (<i>Fifine at the Fair.</i>) The wife of Don Juan, who discusses with +her husband the nature of conjugal love, after he has been fascinated by +the gipsy girl at Pornic fair. She is the Donna Elvira of Molière’s <i>Don +Juan</i>, and the part she plays in this poem of <i>Fifine</i> is suggested by her +speech in Act i., Scene 3:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Why don’t you arm your brow<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With noble impudence?</span><br /> +Why don’t you swear and vow<br /> +No sort of change is come to any sentiment<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You ever had for me?”</span></p> + +<p><b>Englishman in Italy, The: Piano di Sorrento</b> (the Plain of Sorrento). +(<i>Dramatic Romances</i>, published in <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, VII. +1845.)—Sorrento, in the province of Naples, is situated on the north side +of the peninsula that separates the Bay of Naples from the Bay of Salerno. +In the time of Augustus it was a finer city than Naples itself. The +neighbourhood of this delightful summer resort is the realm of the olive +tree, and its plain is clothed with orange and lemon groves. A deep blue +sky above and a deep blue sea below, coast scenery unequalled for +loveliness even in Italy, and an atmosphere breathing perfume and +intoxicating the senses with the soft delights of a land of romance and +gaiety, combine to make a residence in this earthly paradise almost too +luxurious for a phlegmatic Englishman. It has a drawback in the form of +the Scirocco—a hot, oppressive and most relaxing wind, crossing from +North Africa over the Mediterranean, and the “long, hot, dry autumn” +referred to in the poem. The Englishman is seated by the side of a +dark-complexioned tarantella-dancing girl, whom he is sheltering from the +approaching storm, and who is timidly saying her rosary, and to whom he is +describing the incidents of Italian life which have most interested +him—the ripening grapes, the quails and the curious nets arranged to +catch them, the pomegranates splitting with ripeness on the trees, the +yellow rock-flower on the road side, all the landscape parched with the +fierce Southern heat, which the sudden<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> rain-storm was about to cool and +moisten. The quail nets are rapidly taken down, for protection; on the +flat roofs, where the split figs lie in sieves drying in the sun, the +girls are busy putting them under cover; the blue sea has changed to black +with the coming storm; the fishing boat from Amalfi—loveliest spot in all +the lovely landscape—sends ashore its harvest of the sea, to the delight +of the naked brown children awaiting it. The grape harvest has begun, and +in the great vats they are treading the grapes, dancing madly to keep the +bunches under, while the rich juice runs from beneath; and still the laden +girls pour basket after basket of fresh vine plunder into the vat, and +still the red stream flows on. And under the hedges of aloe, where the +tomatoes lie, the children are picking up the snails tempted out by the +rain, which will be cooked and eaten for supper, when the grape gleaners +will feast on great ropes of macaroni and slices of purple gourds. And as +he dwells on all the Southern wealth of the land, he tempts the timid +little maid with grape bunches, whose heavy blue bloom entices the wasps, +which follow the spoil to the very lips of the eater; with cheese-balls, +white wine, and the red flesh of the prickly pear. Now the Scirocco is +loose—down come the olives like hail; fig trees snap under the power of +the storm; they must keep under shelter till the tempest is over: and now +he amuses the girl by telling her how in a few days they will have +stripped all the vines of their leaves to feed the cattle, and the +vineyards will look so bare. He rode over the mountains the previous night +with her brother the guide, who feasted on the fruit-balls of the myrtles +and sorbs, and while he ate the mule plodded on, now and then neighing as +he recognised his mates, laden with faggots and with barrels, on the paths +below. Higher they ascended till the woods ceased; as they mounted the +path grew wilder, the chasms and piles of loose stones showed but the +growth of grey fume reed, the ever-dying rosemary, and the lentisks, till +they reached the summit of Calvano; then he says—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">“God’s own profound</span><br /> +Was above me, and round me the mountains, and under, the sea.”</p> + +<p>The crystal of heaven and its blue solitudes; the “infinite movement” of +the mountains, which seem, as they overlook the sensual landscape, to +enslave it—filled him with a grave and solemn fear.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> And now he turns to +the sea, wherein slumber the three isles of the siren, looking as they did +in the days of Ulysses; he will sail among them, and visit with his +companion their strangely coloured caves, and hear the secret sung to +Ulysses ages ago. The sun breaks out over Calvano, the storm has passed; +the gipsy tinker ventures out with his bellows and forge, and is hammering +away there under the wall; the children watch him mischievously. He rouses +his sleepy maiden, and bids her come with him to see the preparations at +the church for the Feast of the Rosary; for the morrow is Rosary Sunday, +and it was on that day the Catholic powers of Europe destroyed the Turkish +fleet at the battle of Lepanto, and in every Catholic church the victory +is annually commemorated by devotions to Our Lady of the Rosary, whose +prayers, they say, won the contest for the Christian arms. The Dominican +brother is to preach the sermon, and all the gay banners and decorations +are being put up in the church. The altar will be ablaze with lights, the +music is to be supplemented by a band, and the statue of the Virgin is to +be borne in solemn procession through the plain. Bonfires, fireworks, and +much trumpet-blowing will wind up the day; and the Englishman anticipates +as great pleasure from the festival as any child, and more—for, “Such +trifles!” says the girl. “Trifles!” he replies; “why, in England they are +gravely debating if it be righteous to abolish the Corn Laws!”</p> + +<p><b>Epilogue to “Asolando”</b> (1889). The words of this poem have a peculiar +significance: they are the last which the poet addressed to the world, and +the volume in which they appeared was published in London on the very day +on which he died in Venice. Had he known when he wrote them that these +were the last lines of his message to the world—that he who had for so +many years urged men to “strive and thrive—fight on!” would pass away as +they were given to the world, would he have wished to close his life’s +work with braver, better, nobler words than these? All Browning is here. +From <i>Pauline</i> to this epilogue the message was ever the same, and the +confidence in the ultimate and eternal triumph of right uniform +throughout. In the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> of February 1st, 1890, there +appeared the following reference to this poem: “One evening, just before +his death illness, the poet was reading this (the third verse) from a +proof to his daughter-in-law and sister. He said, ‘It almost looks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> like +bragging to say this, and as if I ought to cancel it; but it’s the simple +truth; and as it’s true, it shall stand.’ His faith knew no doubting. In +all trouble, against all evil, he stood firm.”</p> + +<p><b>Epilogue to “Dramatic Idyls”</b> (Second Series). This poem combats the notion +that a quick-receptive soil, on which no feather seed can fall without +awakening vitalising virtue, is the hot-bed for a poet; rather must we +hold that the real song-soil is the rock, hard and bare, exposed to sun +and wind-storm, there in the clefts where few flowers awaken grows the +pine tree—a nation’s heritage. (Compare on this Emerson’s <i>Woodnotes</i> +II.)</p> +<p><a name="epilogue" id="epilogue"></a></p> +<p><b>Epilogue to “Dramatis Personæ.”</b>—<span class="smcap">First Speaker</span>, as <i>David</i>. At the Feast +of the Dedication of Solomon’s Temple, when Priests and Levites in +sacrificial robes attended with the multitude praising the Lord as a +single man; when singers and trumpets sound and say, “Rejoice in God, +whose mercy endureth for ever,” then the presence of the Lord filled the +house with the glory of His cloud. This is the highest point reached by +the purest Theism of the Hebrew people.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Second Speaker</span>, as <i>Renan</i>. A star had beamed from heaven’s vault upon our +world, then sharpened to a point in the dark, and died. We had loved and +worshipped, and slowly we discovered it was vanishing from us. A face had +looked from out the centuries upon our souls, had seemed to look upon and +love us. We vainly searched the darkling sky for the dwindling star, faded +from us now and gone from keenest sight. And so the face—the +Christ-face—we had seen in the old records, the Gospels which had seemed +to dower us with the Divine-human Friend, and which warmed our souls with +love, has faded out, and we search the records and sadly fail to find the +face at all, and our hope is vanished and the Friend is gone. The record +searchers tell us we shall never more know ourselves are seen, never more +speak and know that we are heard, never more hear response to our +aspirations and our love. The searcher finds no god but himself, none +higher than his own nature, no love but the reflection of his own, and +realises that he is an orphan, and turning to his brethren cries, with +Jean Paul, “There is no God! We are all orphans!”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Third Speaker</span> is Mr. Browning himself, who offers us consolation in our +bereavement; he asks us to see through his eyes. In head and heart every +man differs utterly from his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> fellows; he asks how and why this difference +arises; he bids us watch how even the heart of mankind may have some +mysterious power of attracting Nature’s influences round himself as a +centre. In Arctic seas the water gathers round some rock-point as though +the waste of waves sought this centre alone; for a minute this rock-point +is king of this whirlpool current, then the waves oversweep and destroy +it, hastening off to choose another peak to find, and flatter, and finish +in the same way. Thus does Nature dance about each man of us, acting as if +she meant to enhance his worth; then, when her display of simulated homage +is done with, rolls elsewhere for the same performance. Nature leaves him +when she has gained from him his product, his contribution to the active +life of the time. The time forces have utilised the man as their pivot, he +has served for the axis round which have whirled the energies which Nature +employed at the moment. His quota has been contributed; he has not been a +force, but the central point of the forces’ revolution; as the play of +waves demanded for their activity the rock-centre, so the mind forces +required for their gyrations the passive man-centre; the rock stood still +in the dance of the waves, but their dance could not have existed without +its mysterious influence on their motion. The man was necessary to the +mind-waves; the play of forces could not have been secured without just +that soul-point standing idly as the centre of the dance of influences. +The waves, having obtained the whirl they demanded, submerge the rock—the +mind forces having gained such direction, such quality of rotation, +dispense with the man; the force lives, however, and his contribution to +its direction is not lost, hot husbanded. Now, there is no longer any use +for the old Temple service of David, neither is the particular aspect of +the Christ-face required as at first beheld. The face itself does not +vanish, or but decomposes to recompose. The face grows; the Christ of +to-day is a greater conception than that which Renan thinks he has +decomposed. It is not the Christ of an idea that sufficed for old-world +conception, but one which expands with the age and grows with the sentient +universe.</p> + +<p><b>Epilogue to “Ferishtah’s Fancies”</b> (<span class="smcap">Venice</span>, <i>December 1st, 1884</i>). This +poem brings into a focus the rays of the fancies which compose the volume: +the famous ones of old, the heroes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> whose deeds are celebrated in the +different poems, were not actors merely, but soldiers, and fought God’s +battle; they were not cowards, because they had confidence in the +supremacy of good, and fighting for the right knew they could leave +results to the Leader. But a chill at the heart even in its supremest joy +induces the question: What if all be error?—if love itself were +responsible for a fallacy of vision?</p> + +<p><b>Epilogue to “Pacchiaratto and other Poems”</b> (1876). In this poem the author +deals with his critics. “The poets pour us wine,” and as they pour we +demand the impracticable feat of producing for us wine that shall be +sweet, yet strong and pure. One poet gives the world his potent man’s +draught; it is admitted to be strong and invigorating, yet is swallowed at +a gulp, as evidently unpleasant to the taste. Another dispenses luscious +sweetness, fragrant as a flower distillation; and men say contemptuously +it is only fit for boys—is useless for nerving men to work. Now, it is +easy to label a bottle as possessing body and bouquet both, but labels are +not always absolute guarantees of that which they cover. Still there is +wine to be had, by judicious blending, which combines these qualities of +body and bouquet. How do we value such vintage when we do possess it? Go +down to the vaults where stand the vats of Shakespeare and Milton wine: +there in the cellar are forty barrels with Shakespeare’s brand—some five +or six of his works are duly appreciated, the rest neglected; there are +four big butts of Milton’s brew, and out of them we take a few drops, +pretending that we highly esteem him the while! The fact is we hate our +bard, or we should not leave him in the cellar. The critics say Browning +brews stiff drink without any flavour of grape: would the public take more +kindly to his wine if he gave it all the cowslip fragrance and bouquet of +his meadow and hill side? The treatment received by Shakespeare and Milton +proves that the public taste is vitiated, notwithstanding all the pretence +of admiration of them. It is our furred tongue that is at fault; it is +nettle-broth the world requires. Browning has some Thirty-four Port for +those who can appreciate it; as for the multitude, let them stick to their +nettle-broth till their taste improves.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Verse i., “<i>The Poets pour in wine</i>”: the quotation is from Mrs. +Browning’s “Wine of Cyprus.” V. 20, “<i>Let them ‘lay, pray, bray’</i>”: this +in ridicule of Byron’s grammar in verse clxxx.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> of Canto IV. of <i>Childe +Harold’s Pilgrimage</i>:—“And dashest him again to earth;—there let him +lay.”</p> + +<p><b>Epilogue to the “Two Poets of Croisic”</b> (1878). (Published in the +<i>Selections</i>, vol. ii., as <span class="smcap">A Tale</span>). A bard had to sing for a prize before +the judges, and to accompany his song on the lute. His listeners were so +pleased with his melody that it seemed as though they would hasten to +bestow the award even before the end of the song; when, just as the poet +was at the climax of his trial, a string broke, and all would have been +lost, had not a cricket “with its little heart on fire” alighted on the +instrument, and flung its heart forth, sounding the missing note; and +there the insect rested, ever at the right instant shrilling forth its +F-sharp even more perfectly than the string could have done. The judges +with one consent said, “Take the prize—we took your lyre for harp!” Did +the conqueror despise the little creature who had helped him with all he +had to offer? No: he had a statue of himself made in marble, life-size; on +the lyre was “perched his partner in the prize.” The author of the volume +of poems of which this story forms the epilogue, says that he tells it to +acknowledge the love which played the cricket’s part, and gave the missing +music; a girl’s love coming aptly in when his singing became gruff. Love +is ever waiting to supply the missing notes in the arrested harmony of our +lives.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—“<i>Music’s Son</i>”: Goethe. “<i>Lotte</i>,” of the <i>Sorrows of Werther</i>, +was Charlotte Buff, who married Kestner, Goethe’s friend, the Albert of +the novel. Goethe was in love with Charlotte Buff, and her marriage with +Kestner roused the temper of his over-sensitive mind. (See <i>Dr. Brewer’s +Reader’s Handbook</i>.)</p> + +<p><b>Epistle, An, Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the +Arab Physician.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, vol. i., 1855.) [The subject of the poem +is the raising of Lazarus from the dead.] Karshish, a wandering +scholar-physician, writing to the sage Abib, from whom he has learned his +art, gives him an account of certain matters of medical interest which he +has discovered in the course of his travels, and which, like a good +student, he communicates to his venerable teacher. After informing him +that he has sent him some samples of rare pharmaceutical substances, he +says that his journeyings brought him to Jericho, on the dangerous road +from which city to Jerusalem he had met with sundry misadventures, and +noted several cases of clinical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> interest, all of which he reports in the +matter-of-fact way which betokens the scientific practitioner of the +period. Amongst his plague, ague, epileptic, scalp-disease, and leprosy +cures, he particularly describes “a case of mania subinduced by epilepsy,” +which especially interested him. The disorder seemed to him of quite easy +diagnosis: “Tis but a case of mania,” complicated by trance and epilepsy, +but well within his powers as a physician to account for, except in the +after circumstances and the means of cure. “Some spell, exorcisation or +trick of art” had evidently been employed by a Nazarene physician of his +tribe, who bade him, when he seemed dead, “Rise!” and he did rise. He was +“one Lazarus, a Jew”—of good habit of body, and indeed quite beyond +ordinary men in point of health; and his three days’ sleep had so +brightened his body and soul that it would be a great thing if the medical +art could always ensure such a result from the use of any drug. He has +undergone such change of mental vision that he eyes the world now like a +child, and puts all his old joys in the dust. He has lost his sense of the +proportion of things: a great armament or a mule load of gourds are all +the same to him, while some trifle will appear of infinite import; yet he +is stupefied because his fellow-men do not view things with his opened +eyes. He is so perplexed with impulses that his heart and brain seem +occupied with another world while his feet stay here. He desires only +perfectly to please God; he is entirely apathetic when told that Rome is +on the march to destroy his town and tribe, yet he loves all things old +and young, strong and weak, the flowers and birds, and is harmless as a +lamb: only at ignorance and sin he is impatient, but promptly curbs +himself. The physician would have sought out the Nazarene who worked the +cure, and would have held a consultation with him on the case, but +discovered that he perished in a tumult many years ago, accused of +wizardry, rebellion, and of holding a prodigious creed. Lazarus—it is +well, says the physician, to keep nothing back in writing to a brother in +the craft—regards the curer as God the Creator and sustainer of the +world, that dwelt in flesh amongst us for a while; but why write of +trivial matters? He has more important things to tell.</p> + +<p class="poem">“I noticed on the margin of a pool,<br /> +Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort<br /> +Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>He begs the sage’s pardon for troubling him with this man’s tedious case, +but it has touched him with awe, it may be partly the effect of his +weariness. But he cannot close his letter without returning to the +tremendous suggestion once more. “Think, Abib! The very God!”—</p> + +<p class="poem">“So the All-Great, were the All-Loving too,—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">It is strange.”</span></p> + +<p>Professor Corson says this poem “is one of Browning’s most remarkable +psychological studies. It may be said to polarise the idea, so often +presented in his poetry, that doubt is a condition of the vitality of +faith. It is a subtle representation of a soul conceived with absolute +spiritual standards, while obliged to live in a world where all standards +are relative and determined by the circumstances and limitations of its +situation.” Lazarus has seen things as they are. “This show of things,” so +far as he is concerned, is done with. He now leads the <i>actual</i> life; his +wonder and his sorrow are drawn from the reflection that his fellow-men +remain in the region of phantasm. He lives really in the world to come. +How infinitely little he found the things of time and sense in the +presence of the eternal verities is grandly shown in the poem. The +attitude of Lazarus under his altered conditions affords an answer to +those who demand that an All-Wise Being should not leave men to struggle +in a region of phenomena but exhibit the actual to us in the present life. +Under such conditions our probation would be impossible. As Browning shows +in <i>La Saisiaz</i>, a condition of certainty would destroy the school-time +value of life; the highest truths are insusceptible of scientific +demonstration. Lazarus is the hero of the poem, not Karshish. As the +Bishop of Durham says in his paper “On Browning’s View of Life,” Lazarus +“is not a man, but a sign: he stands among men as a patient witness of the +overwhelming reality of the divine—a witness whose authority is +confessed, even against his inclination, by the student of nature, who +turns again and again to the phenomena which he affects to disparage. In +this crucial example Browning shows how the exclusive dominance of the +spirit destroys the fulness of human life, its uses and powers, while it +leaves a passive life, crowned with an unearthly beauty.” The professional +attitude of Karshish is drawn with marvellous fidelity. A paper in the +<i>Lancet</i> on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> such a “case” would be precisely on the same lines to-day, +though the wandering off into side details would not be quite so obvious, +and there would be an entire absence of any trifling with the idea that +“the All-Great were the All-Loving too.” This is “emotional,” and modern +science has nothing but contempt for that.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Snake-stone</i>, a name applied to any substance used as a remedy +for snake-bites. Professor Faraday once analysed several which had been +used for this purpose in Ceylon. One turned out to be a piece of animal +charcoal, another was chalk, and a third a vegetable substance like a +bezoar. The animal charcoal might possibly have been useful if applied +immediately. The others were valueless for the purpose. (Tennant, +<i>Ceylon</i>, third ed., i., 200.) “<i>A spider that weaves no web.</i>” Dr. H. +McCook, a specialist in spider lore, has explained this passage in +<i>Poet-Lore</i>, vol. i., p. 518. He says the spider referred to belongs to +the Wandering group: they stalk their prey in the open field, or in divers +lurking places, and are quite different in their habits from the +web-spinners. The spider sprinkled with mottles he thinks is the Zebra +spider (<i>Epiblemum scenicum</i>). It belongs to the Saltigrade tribe. The use +of spiders in medicine is very ancient. Pliny describes many diseases for +which they were used. Spiders were boiled in water and distilled for +wounds by Sir Walter Raleigh. <i>Greek-fire</i> was the precursor of gunpowder; +it was the <i>oleum incendiarum</i> of the Romans. Probably petroleum, tar, +sulphur, and nitre were its chief ingredients. <i>Blue flowering borage</i> +(<i>Borago officinalis</i>). The ancients deemed this plant one of the four +“cordial flowers” for cheering the spirits, the others being the rose, +violet, and alkanet. Pliny says it produces very exhilarating effects. The +stem contains nitre, and the whole plant readily gives its flavour even to +cold water. (See Anne Pratt’s <i>Flowering Plants</i>, vol. iv., p. 75.)</p> + +<p><b>Este.</b> (<i>Sordello.</i>) A town of Lombardy, in the delegation of Padua, +situated at the southern extremity of the Euganean hills. The Rocca or +castle is a donjon tower occupying the site of the original fortress of +Este.</p> + +<p><b>Este, The House of.</b> (<i>Sordello.</i>) One of the oldest princely houses of +Italy, called Este after the name of the town above mentioned. Albert Azzo +II. first bore the title of Marquis of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> Este; he married a sister of +Guelph III., who was duke of Carinthia. The Italian title and estates were +inherited by Fulco I. (1060-1135), son of Albert Azzo II. In the twelfth, +thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries the history of the house of Este is +mixed up with that of the other noble houses of Italy in the struggles of +the Guelphs and Ghibellines. The Estena were the head of the Guelph party, +and at different times were princes of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. “Obizzo +I., son of Folco I., entered into a league against Frederick Barbarossa, +and was comprehended in the Venetian treaty of 1177, by which municipal +podestas (chief magistrates of great cities) were instituted” (<i>Encyc. +Brit.</i>). Strife existed between this house and that of the Torelli, which +raged for two centuries, in consequence of Obizzo I. carrying off +Marchesella, heiress of the Adelardi family, of Ferrara, and marrying her +to his son Azzo V.</p> + +<p><b>Eulalia.</b> (<i>A Soul’s Tragedy.</i>) The shrewd woman who was betrothed to +Luitolfo.</p> + +<p><b>Euripides.</b> The Greek tragic poet, who was born of Athenian parents in 480 +<span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> He brought out his first play—<i>The Peliades</i>—at the age of +twenty-five. At thirty-nine he gained the first prize, which honour he +received only five times in his long career of fifty years. He was the +mediator between the ancient and modern drama, and was regarded at Athens +as an innovator. Aristophanes was an exceedingly hostile and witty critic +of Euripides, and from his point of view his conduct was justified, taking +as he did the standard of Æschylus and Sophocles as the only right model +of tragedy. He is variously said to have written seventy-five, +seventy-eight and ninety-two tragedies. Eighteen only have come down to +us: <i>The Alcestis</i>, <i>Andromache</i>, <i>Bacchæ</i>, <i>Hecuba</i>, <i>Helena</i>, <i>Electra</i>, +<i>Heraclidæ</i>, <i>Heracles in Madness</i>, <i>The Suppliants</i>, <i>Hippolytus</i>, +<i>Iphigenia at Aulis</i>, <i>Iphigenia among the Tauri</i>, <i>Ion</i>, <i>Medea</i>, +<i>Orestes</i>, <i>Rhesus</i>, the <i>Troades</i>, the <i>Phœnissæ</i>, and a satiric play, +the <i>Cyclops</i>. “Aristophanes calls Euripides ‘meteoric,’ because he was +always rising into the air; he was famous for allusions to the stars, the +sea and the elements. Aristophanes uses the epithet sneeringly: Browning, +praisingly” (<i>Br. P.</i> iii. 43).</p> +<p><a name="eurydice" id="eurydice"></a></p> +<p><b>Eurydice to Orpheus. A Picture by Leighton.</b> (Published for the first time +in the Royal Academy Catalogue, 1864. It was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> reprinted in the first +volume of the <i>Selections</i> in 1865.) Orpheus was a famous mythical poet, +who was so powerful in song that he could move trees and rocks and tame +wild beasts by the charms of his voice. His wife (the nymph Eurydice) died +from the bite of a serpent, and Orpheus descended to the lower regions in +search of her. He so influenced Persephone by his music that she gave him +permission to take back his wife on the condition that he should not look +round during his passage from the nether world to the regions above. In +his impatience he disregarded the condition, and having turned his head to +gaze back, Eurydice had to return for ever to Hades (Vergil, <i>Geor.</i> iv., +v. 457, etc.). The poet has represented Eurydice speaking to Orpheus the +passionate words of love which made him forget the commands of Pluto and +Persephone not to look back on pain of losing his wife again.</p> + +<p><b>Euthukles.</b> (<i>Balaustion’s Adventure</i>; <i>Aristophanes’ Apology.</i>) He was the +man of Phokis who heard Balaustion recite <i>Alcestis</i> at Syracuse, and who +followed her when she returned to Athens, and married her. On their voyage +to Rhodes, after the fall of Athens, Balaustion dictated to him the +<i>Apology</i> of Aristophanes, which he wrote down on board the vessel. It was +Euthukles, according to Browning, who saved Athens from destruction by +reciting at a critical moment the lines from Euripides’ <i>Electra</i> and +<i>Agamemnon</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Evelyn Hope.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, +1868.) The lament of a man who loved a young girl who died before she was +old enough to appreciate his love. The maiden was sixteen, the man “thrice +as old.” He contemplates her as she lies in the beauty of death, and asks: +“Is it too late then? Because you were so young and I so old, were we +fellow-mortals and nought beside? Not so: God creates the love to reward +the love,” and he will claim her not in the next life alone, but, if need +be, through lives and worlds many yet to come. His love will not be lost, +for his gains of the ages and the climes will not satisfy him without his +Evelyn Hope. He can wait. He will be more worthy of her in the worlds to +come. Modern science has taught us that no atom of matter can ever be lost +to the world, no infinitesimal measure of energy but is conserved, and the +poet holds that there shall never be one lost good. The eternal atoms, the +vibrations that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> cease not through the eternal years, shall not mock at +the evanescence of human love.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Face, A.</b> (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864.) A portrait of a beautiful girl +painted in words by a poet who had all the sympathies of an artist.</p> + +<p><b>Family, The.</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>, 4: “On the Lawfulness of Prayer.”) +Ferishtah has prayed for a dying man that he might recover. An objector +asks why he does this: if God is all-wise and good, what He does must be +right: “Two best wills cannot be.” Man has only to acquiesce and be +thankful. The dervish tells a tale. A man had three sons, and a wife who +was bitten by a serpent. The husband called in a doctor, who said he must +amputate the injured part. The husband assented. The eldest son said, +“Pause, take a gentler way.” The next in age said, “The doctor must and +should save the limb.” The youngest said, “The doctor knows best: let him +operate!” He agreed with the doctor. Let God be the doctor; let us call +the husband’s acquiescence wise understanding, call the first son’s +opinion a wise humanity. In the second son we see rash but kind humanity; +in the youngest one who apes wisdom above his years. “Let us be man and +nothing more,” says Ferishtah.—man hoping, fearing, loving and bidding +God help him till he dies. The lyric bids us while on earth be content to +be men. The wider sense of the angel cannot be expected while we remain +under human conditions.</p> + +<p><b>Fancy and Reason</b>, in <i>La Saisiaz</i>, discuss the <i>pros</i> and <i>cons</i> of the +probabilities of the existence of God, the soul, and future life, etc.</p> + +<p><b>Fears and Scruples.</b> (<i>Pacchiarotto and Other Poems</i>, 1876: “The Spiritual +Uses of Uncertainty.”) “Why does God never speak?” asks the doubter. The +analogy of the poem compares this silence of the Divine Being with that of +a man’s friend, who wrote him many valued letters, but otherwise kept +aloof from him. It is suggested by experts that the letters are forgeries. +The man loves on. It is then suggested that his friend is acting as a spy +upon him, sees him readily enough and knows all he does, and some day will +show himself to punish him. But this is to make the friend a monster! +Hush!—“What if this friend happen to be—God?” In explanation of this +poem, Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> Kingsland received from the poet the following letter:—“I +think that the point I wanted to illustrate in the poem you mention was +this: Where there is a genuine love of the ‘letters’ and ‘actions’ of the +invisible ‘friend,’ however these may be disadvantaged by an inability to +meet the objections to their authenticity or historical value urged by +‘experts’ who assume the privilege of learning over ignorance, it would +indeed be a wrong to the wisdom and goodness of the ‘friend’ if he were +supposed capable of overlooking the actual ‘love’ and only considering the +‘ignorance’ which, failing to in any degree affect ‘love,’ is really the +highest evidence that ‘love’ exists. So I <i>meant</i>, whether the result be +clear or no.”</p> + +<p><b>Ferishtah’s Fancies.</b> A criticism of Life: Browning’s mellow wisdom. +Published in 1884, with the following quotations as mottoes on the page +facing the title:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“His genius was jocular, but, when disposed, he could be very +serious.”—Article <i>Shakespeare</i>, Jeremy Collier’s <i>Historical, etc., +Dictionary</i>, 2nd edition, 1701. “You, sir, I entertain you for one of +my Hundred; only, I do not like the fashion of your garments: you will +say, they are Persian; but let them be changed.”—<i>King Lear</i>, Act +III., sc. vi.</p> + +<p>The work embraces the following collection of poems:—Prologue. 1. “The +Eagle.” 2. “The Melon-seller.” 3. “Shah Abbas.” 4. “The Family.” 5. “The +Sun.” 6. “Mihrab Shah.” 7. “A Camel-driver.” 8. “Two Camels.” 9. +“Cherries.” 10. “Plot Culture.” 11. “A Pillar at Sebzevah.” 12. “A Bean +Stripe: also Apple Eating.” Epilogue. There was a real personage named +Ferishtah, a celebrated Persian historian, born about 1570. He is one of +the most trustworthy of the Oriental historians. Several portions of his +work have been translated into English. He has, however, no connection +with the subject-matter of Mr. Browning’s book, but it is probable that +his name suggested itself to the poet as a good one for his work. We have +here Mr. Browning in a dervish’s robe, philosophising in a Persian +atmosphere, yet talking the most perfect Browningese, just as do the Pope +in the <i>Ring and the Book</i> and the rabbis in the Jewish poems. Age, +experience, and the calm philosophy of a religious mind, are required for +the poet’s highest teaching. It matters little, these being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> given, +whether the philosophers wear the tiara of the pope, the robe of the +dervish, or the gaberdine of the Jew: the philosophy is the same. The aim +is “to justify the ways of God to men,” and to make reasonable an exalted +Christian Theism. Three great Eastern classics—<i>The Fables of Bidpai</i>, +Firdausi’s <i>Sháh-Námeh</i>, and the Book of Job—are the sources of the +inspiration of the pages of <i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>. Both the <i>Sháh-Náhmeh</i> +and the <i>Fables of Bidpai</i>, or <i>Pilpay</i> as they are commonly termed, are +published in the <i>Chandos Classics</i>. Bidpai is supposed to be the author +of a famous collection of Hindū fables. The name Bidpai occurs in their +Arabic version. Their origin was doubtless the <i>Pantcha Tantra</i>, or “Five +Sections,” a great collection of fables. The <i>Hitopadesa</i> is another such +collection. The fables were translated into Pehlvi in the sixth century. +Then the Persian fables were translated into Arabic, and were transmitted +to Europe. They were translated into Greek in the eleventh century, then +into Hebrew and Latin, afterwards into nearly every European tongue. We +must go to Firdausi, the Persian author of that “standing wonder in poetic +literature,” the <i>Sháh Námeh</i>, for an explanation of several allusions in +the poem. This great chronicle, the Persian Book of Kings, is a history of +Persia in sixty thousand verses. The poem is as familiar to every Persian +as our own great epics to us, and the use Mr. Browning makes of it in this +work is managed in the most natural manner. This we shall notice more +particularly in dealing with the separate poems which compose the volume. +In a letter to a friend, Browning wrote:—“I hope and believe that one or +two careful readings of the poem will make its sense clear enough. Above +all, pray allow for the poet’s inventiveness in any case, and do not +suppose there is more than a thin disguise of a few Persian names and +allusions. There was no such poet as Ferishtah—the stories are all +inventions.... The Hebrew quotations are put in for a purpose, as a direct +acknowledgment that certain doctrines may be found in the Old Book, which +the concocters of novel schools of morality put forth as discoveries of +their own.”</p> + +<p><b>Festus.</b> (<i>Paracelsus.</i>) The old and faithful friend of Paracelsus, who +believes in him from the first. He is the husband of Michal, and both +influence the mind of the hero of medicine for good at various stages of +his career.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span><b>Fifine at the Fair.</b> (1872.) The key-note of the work is given in the +quotation before the Prologue, which is the motto of the poem, from +Molière’s <i>Don Juan</i>, Act I., Sc. 3. There is a certain historic basis for +the character of the Don Juan of European legend. In Seville, in the time +of Peter the Cruel, lived Don Juan Tenorio, the prince of libertines. He +attempted to abduct Giralda, daughter of the governor of Seville: the +consequence was a duel, in which the lady’s father was killed. The sensual +excesses of Don Juan had destroyed his faith, and he defied the +spirit-world so far as to visit the tomb of the murdered man and challenge +his statue to follow him to supper. The statue accepted the invitation, +and appeared amongst the guests at the meal, and carried the blaspheming +sceptic to hell. “As a dramatic type,” says the author of the article “Don +Juan,” in the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>, “Don Juan is essentially the +impersonation of the scepticism that results from sensuality, and is thus +the complement of Faust, whose scepticism is the result of speculation.” +The Prologue describes a swimmer far out at sea, disporting himself under +the noon-sun; as he floats, a beautiful butterfly hovers above him, a +creature of the sky, as he for the time a creature of the water; neither +can unite with the other, for neither can exchange elements; still, if we +cannot fly, the next best thing is to swim,—a half-way house, as it were, +between the world of spirit and that of grosser earth. Poetry is in this +sense, a substitute for heaven: whatever the heaven-dwellers are, the +poets seem; what deeds they do, the poets dream. Does the soul of his +departed wife hover over him in this way, and look with pity on the +mimicry of her airy flight? he wonders. (Mrs. Browning died eleven years +before <i>Fifine</i> was published.)—The scenery of the poem is that of the +neighbourhood of Pornic, a seaside town in the department of the Loire, in +Brittany, the little town being twenty-seven miles distant from Nantes. It +is noted for its sea bathing and mineral waters, and, like many other +places in Brittany, possesses some curious Druidical and other +architectural remains. Mr. Browning, while staying at Pornic with his +family, saw the gipsy woman who suggested to him the idea of Fifine. He +selected her as a type of the sensual woman, in contrast to the spiritual +type of womanhood. The poem deals with incidents connected with Pornic +fair. Don Juan, addressing his wife Elvire, says: “Let us<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> see the +strolling players and the fun of the fair! Who would have supposed that +the night could effect such a change? Yesterday all was rough and +raw—mere tubs, poles and hoarding; now this morning all is gay as a +butterfly, the scaffolding has burst out in colour like a flower-bed in +full bloom. Nobody saw them enter the village, but that is the way of +these tumblers, they like to steal a march and exhibit their spectacle +only when the show is ready. Had any one wandered about the place at night +he would have seen the sober caravan which was the bud that blossomed +to-day into all this gaiety. An airy structure pitched beneath the tower +appeared in the morning surmounted by a red pennon fluttering in the air, +and frantic to be free. To be free!—the fever of the flag finds a +response in my soul, my heart fires up for liberty from the restraints of +law, I would lead the bohemian life these players lead. Why is it that +disgraced people, those who have burst the bonds of conventional life, +always seem to enjoy their existence more than others? They seem conscious +of possessing a secret which sets them out of reach of our praise or +blame; now and again they return to us because they must have our money, +just as a bird must bear off a bit of rag filched from mankind to work up +into his nest. But why need they do that? We think much of our reputation +and family honour, but these people for a penny or two will display +themselves undraped to any visitor. You may tell the showman that his +six-legged sheep is an imposition,—he does not care, he values his good +name at nothing. But offer to make these mountebanks respectable, promise +them any reward you like to forsake their ways, to work and live as the +rest of the world, and your offer will not tempt them. What is the +compensatory unknown joy which turns dross to gold in their case? You +sigh,” says the speaker to his wife, “you shake your head: what have I +said to distress you? Fifine, the gipsy beauty of the show, will +illustrate my meaning: this woman is to me a queen, a sexless, bloodless +sprite; yet she has conquered me. I want to understand how. There is a +honeyed intoxication in the Eastern lily, which lures insects to their +death for its own nourishment: is that a flaw in the flower? Wiser are we +not to be tempted by such dangerous delights; we may admire and keep clear +of them: not poison lilies, but the rose, the daisy, or the violet, for +me,—it is Elvire, not Fifine, I love. You ask how does this woman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> +explain my thought? When Louis the Eleventh lay dying he had a procession +of the famous women of all time made to pass before him: Helen of Troy, +who magically brought men to acquiesce in their own destruction; next was +Cleopatra, all the wonder of her body dominated by her high and haughty +soul, and trampling on her lovers; then the saint of Pornic church who +saves the shipwrecked sailors, and who thinks in her innocence that +Cleopatra has given away her clothes to the poor; then comes my gipsy +beauty Fifine, with her tambourine. Suppose you, Elvire, in spirit join +this procession; then you confront yourself, and I will show you how you +beat each personage there—even this Fifine, whom I will reward with a +franc that you may study her. You draw back your skirts from such filth as +you consider her to be; though, born perhaps as pure and sensitive as any +other woman, she can afford to bear your scorn possibly,—we know such +people often thus minister to age and the wants of sick parents. Her ogre +husband, with his brute-beast face, takes the money she has earned by her +exhibiting herself to us as she passes into the tent. I want to make you +see the beauty of the mind underlying the form in all these women. No +creature is made so mean but boasts an inward worth: this Fifine, a mere +sand-grain on the shore, reflects some ray of sunshine. Say that there was +no worst of degradation spared this woman, yet she makes no pretence—she +is absolutely truthful, she assumes not to be Helen or the Pornic Saint, +she only offers to exhibit herself to you for money.” The wife is not +deceived by all this sophistry; Fifine’s attraction for the man lies in +the fact, not that she possesses some hidden beauty of soul, but some +unconcealed physical charms which awaken desire in him because they are +not his own. What is one’s own is safe, and so despised; any waif which is +a neighbour’s is for the time more desirable,—“Give you the sun to keep, +you would want to steal a boor’s rushlight or a child’s squib.” He +explains that this is always women’s way about such matters—they cannot +be made to comprehend mental analysis. He reminds her how at great cost +and a year’s anxiety he had purchased a Rafael; he gloated over his prize +for a week, and then had more relish in turning over leaf by leaf Doré’s +last picture-book. Suppose the picture reproached him with inconstancy, he +would reply that he knew the picture was his own; anxiety had given place +to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> confidence, and were the house on fire, he would risk his life to save +it, though he were knee deep in Doré’s engravings. He tells his wife she +is to him as the Rafael, the Fifines are as Doré’s wood engravings. Elvire +is the precious wife, her face fits into the cleft in the heart of him, to +him she is perfection; but is she perfect to her mirror? He thinks not. +Where, then, is her beauty? In his soul. He cannot explain the reason, any +more than naming the notes will explain a symphony or describing lines +will call up the idea of a picture. Still there is reason in our choice of +each other. It is principally the effort of one soul to <ins class="correction" title="original: seeks">seek</ins> its own +completion—that which shall aid its development—in another’s. As the +artist’s soul sees the form he is about to create in the marble block, so +does the lover see in his choice that which will draw out his soul-picture +into concrete perfection. The world of sense has no real value for any of +us, save in so far as our souls can detect and appropriate it. It is the +idea which gives worth to that on which it is exercised. The value of all +externals to the soul is just in proportion to its own power of +transmuting them into food for its own growth. The soul flame is +maintained not only by gums and spices, but straw and rottenness may feed +it; if the soul has power to extract from evil things that which supports +its life, what matters the straw so long as the ash is left behind? and so +of the conquests of the soul, its power to evoke the good from the +ungainly and the partial, gives us courage to ignore the failures and the +slips of our lives. The pupil does not all at once evoke the masterpiece +from the marble—he puts his idea in plaster by the side of the Master’s +statue. If the scholar at last evoke Eidotheé, the Master is to thank. “To +love” in its intensest form means to yearn to invest another soul with the +accumulated treasures of our own. The chemic force exerted by one soul in +transmuting coarse things to beautiful is aided by another’s flame. Each +may continue to supplement the other, till the red, green, blue and yellow +imperfections may be fused into achromatic white, the perfect light-ray. +Soul is discernible by soul, and soul is evoked by soul—Elvire by Don +Juan. The wife objects that he abdicates soul’s empire and accepts the +rule of sense: man has left the monarch’s throne, and lies in the kennel a +brute. Searching for soul through all womankind, you find no face so vile +but sense may extract from it some good for soul. This fine-spun theory, +this elaborate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> sophistry, she declares, is merely an ingenious excuse for +sensuality:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Be frank—who is it you deceive—<br /> +Yourself, or me, or God?”</p> + +<p>Don Juan would reply by an illustration from music, which can penetrate +more subtly than words: he would show how we may rise out of the false +into the true, out of the dark into the brightness above the dense and dim +regions where doubt is bred. Bathing in the sea that morning, out in +mid-channel, he was standing in the water with head back, chin up, body +and limbs below—he kept himself alive by breath in the nostrils, high and +dry; ever and again a wavelet or a ripple would threaten life, then back +went the head, and all was safe. But did he try to ascend breast high, +wave arms free of tether, to be in the air and leave the water, under he +went again; before he had mastered his lesson he had plenty of water in +mouth and eyes. “I compare this,” he says, “to the spirit’s efforts to +rise out of the medium which sustains it.” He was upborne by that which he +beat against, too gross an element to live in, were it not for the dose of +life-breath in the soul. Our business is with the sea, not with the air, +so we must endure the false below while we bathe in this life. It is by +practice with the false that we reach the true. We gain confidence, and +learn the trick of doing what we will—sink or rise. His senses do not +reel when a billow breaks over him; he grasps at a wave that will not be +grasped at all, but glides through the fingers—still the failure to grasp +the water sends the head above, far beyond the wave he tried to hold:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“So with this work o’ the world,”</p> + +<p>we try to grasp a soul, catch at it, think we have a prize; it eludes us, +yet the soul helped ours to mount. He seizes Elvire by grasping at Fifine. +Not even this specious reasoning deceives the wife. It is an ugly fact +that the wave grasped at is a woman. He replies that a woman can be +absorbed into the man: women <i>grow</i> you, men at best <i>depend</i> upon you. A +rill that empties itself into the sea can never be separated from it. That +is woman. Man takes all and gives nought. To raise men you must stoop to +teach them, learn their ignorance, stifle your soul in their mediocrities; +but to govern women you must abandon stratagem, cast away<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> disguise, and +reveal your best self at your uttermost. When the music of Arion attracted +the dolphins to the doomed man, one of them bore him on its back to the +coast, and so saved his life; revealing his best to this “true +woman-creature,” he was saved from the men who would have killed him for +gain. A man never puts out his whole self in love—this is reserved for +hate. You do not get the best out of a man by nourishing his root, but by +pruning his branch; as wine came through goats, which, browsing on the +tendrils of the grape, “stung the stock to fertility,” and so gained “the +indignant wine—wrath of the red press.” Mites of men are sore that God +made mites at all; love avails not from such men-animalculæ to coax a +virile thought, but touch the elf with hate, and the insect swells to +thrice its bulk “and cuckoo-spits some rose!” Nothing is to be gained from +ruling men; women take nothing, and give all. Elvire and Fifine, in their +degree, are alike in this respect. “To have secured a woman’s faith in me +is to have centred my soul on a fact. Falseness and change I see all +around me; I expect truth because Fifine knows me much more than Elvire +does.” To this his wife replies, “Why not only she? There can be for each +but one Best, which abolishes the simply Good and Better. Why not be +content with the Elvire, who substitutes belief in truth, in your own +soul, for the falseness which you fear? By toil and effort the boatman may +do with pole and oars what by waiting a few hours the rising water would +do for him without his labour; but men affect unusual ways,—Elvire could +do far better for you all that you expect from Fifine.” To this he replies +that “a voyage may be too safe; there is no excitement, no experiment when +wind and tide do all the needful work. Then may not our hate of falsehood +be that which charms us in these actors who confess ‘A lie is all we do or +say’? Everything has a false outside, stage-play is honest cheating. The +poet never dreams; prose-folk always do.” Then he tells how his thought +had recently sought expression in music rather than in words—as he played +Schumann’s <i>Carnival</i>, and reflected that in the masque of life and +banquet of the world we have ever the same things in a new guise, the +difficulty was ever to conquer commonplace and spice the same old viands +and games. His fancies bore him to a pinnacle above St. Mark’s at Venice, +in Carnival time; he gazed down on a prodigious Fair, the men and women +were disguised as beasts, birds, and fishes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> Descending into the crowd, +disgust gave way to pity; the people were not so beast-like, but much more +human, than when he viewed them from the height, and he began to +contemplate them with a delight akin to that which animates the chemist +when he untwines the composite substance, traces effect back to cause, and +then constructs from its elements the complex and complete. So did he get +to know the thing he was, while contemplating in that Carnival the thing +he was not. Thus Venice Square became the world, the masquerade was life, +the disgust at the pageant was due to the distance from which it was +contemplated, when he learned that the proper goal for wisdom is the +ground and not the sky, he discovered how <i>wisely balanced are our hates +and loves</i>, and how peace and good come from strife and evil. It is no +business of ours to fret about what should be, but we should accept and +welcome what is—<i>is</i>, that is to say, for the hour, for change is the law +even of the religions by which man approaches God. His temples fade to +recompose into other fanes. And not only temples, but the domes of +learning and the seats of science are subject to the same law. Yet +Religion has always her true temple-type; Truth, though founded in a rock, +builds on sands; churches and colleges that grow to nothing always +reappear as something; some building, round or square or polygonal, we +shall always have. But leave the buildings, and let us look at the booths +in the Fair. History keeps a stall, Morality and Art set up their shops. +They acquiesce in law, and adapt themselves to the times; and so, as from +a distance the scene is contemplated as a whole, the multiform subsides in +haze, the buildings, distinct in the broad light of day, merge and lose +their individuality in a common shape. See this Druid monument: how does +its construction strike you? How came this cross here? Learning cannot +enlighten us. It meant something when it was erected which is lost now, +yet the people of the place respect it and are persuaded that what a thing +meant once it must still mean. They thought it had some reference to the +Creator of the world, and was there to remind them that the world came not +of itself. And so, with all the change in religions, there is an imperial +chord which subsists and underlies the mists of music. In all the change +there is permanence as a substratum. Truth inside and truth outside, but +falsehood is between each; it is the falsehood which is change, the truth +is the permanence.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> There is an unchanging truth to which man in all his +waverings is constant. This Druid monument said what it had to say to its +own age; it never promised to help our dream. Don Juan and his wife having +now completed their walk, he proposes to return home to end where they +began; as we were nursed into life, death’s bosom receives us at last, and +that is final, for death is defeat. Our limbs came with our need of them, +our souls grew by mastering the lessons of life; but when death comes, the +soul, which ruled by right while the bodily powers remained, loses its +right to rule. And so the soul has run its round. Love ends too where love +began, and goes back to permanence; each step aside (from Elvire to +Fifine, for example) proves divergency in vain:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Inconstancy means raw, ’tis faith alone means ripe.”</p> + +<p>And as they reach their villa, he resolves to live and die a quiet married +man, earning the approbation of the mayor, and unoccupied with soul +problems, especially those of women. At that moment a letter is put into +his hand: there has been some mistake, Fifine thinks—he has given her +gold instead of silver; he will go and see about it, and is off. Five +minutes was all the time he asked. He is absent much longer, and on his +return Elvire has vanished.</p> + +<p>The Epilogue describes the householder sitting desolate in his melancholy +home, weary and stupid; he is suddenly surprised by the appearance of his +lost wife, whose spirit has returned to claim him; he tells her how the +time has dragged without her, “And was I so much better off up there?” +quoth she. For decency, arrangements are made that the reunion may be in +order; and so, the powers above and those below having been duly +conciliated, husband and wife are once more united: “Love is all, and +death is nought”—the final lesson of life.</p> + +<p>The means whereby we may rise from the false to the true are never wanting +to the earnest and faithful striver, this is the esoteric truth of <i>Fifine +at the Fair</i>. The exoteric meaning may be “an apologia for the revolt of +passion against social rules and fetters.” “Frenetic to be free,” like the +pennon, is in this sense the concentration of its meaning. What was +Browning’s object in this difficult and remarkable work? The question is +not so difficult to answer as it appears at first sight. The poet is a +soul analyst first, and a teacher next. He teaches admirably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> in scores of +passages in <i>Fifine</i>, but his main idea has been to interpret the mental +processes which he supposed might underlie the actions of such a selfish +and heartless voluptuary as Don Juan. Not, of course, was there any idea +of rehabilitating the character of the historic personage; but, as +Browning held that every soul has something to say for itself, every man +some ideal soul-advance at which he aims, however mistaken may be his +methods, so he imagined that even this selfish libertine had his golden +ideal, however deeply bedded in mire. He has not—like the great +dramatists—sunk himself in his character, and striven thus to present the +real man on his stage, but he has lent Don Juan his Browning soul for a +while, that he may make his Apologia to the wife, whom he finds it very +hard to deceive. Dr. Furnivall once asked the poet what his idea really +was in the poem. The poet replied that his “fancy was to show morally how +a Don Juan might justify himself partly by truth, somewhat by sophistry.” +(<i>Browning Society Papers</i>, vol. ii., p. 242*.) See also vol. i., pp. 377, +379, pp. 18*, 61*, vol ii., p. 240*. Mr. Nettleship’s exhaustive analysis +leaves nothing to be desired. (<i>Essays</i>, p. 221.)</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes</span>.—Verse ii., “<i>bateleurs and baladines</i>,” conjurors and mountebanks. +Verse iv., “<i>Gawain to gaze upon the Grail</i>”: Gawain was the son of King +Lot and Margause, in the Arthurian legend of the Holy Grail. Verse xv., +<i>almandines</i>, a variety of garnet. Verse xix., <i>sick Louis</i>: King Louis +XI. of France. Verse xxv., <i>tricot</i>: a knitted vest. Verse xxvii., +<i>Helen</i>: she was declared by some of the Greeks never to have been really +present at Troy, and that Paris only carried off a phantom created by +Hera: the real Helen, they said, was wafted by Hermes to Proteus in Egypt, +whence she was taken home by Menelaus. Verse xxxvi., <i>pochade</i>, a rough +sketch. Verse xlii., <i>Razzi</i>, a corruption of Bazzi, or properly Il +Sodona, the Italian painter (1479-1549). Verse xlvii., <i>Gerôme</i>, a French +painter (born 1824): he exhibited a great picture at the Exposition of +1859, called “The Gladiators.” Verse lii., <i>Eidotheé</i>: a sea-goddess, +daughter of Proteus, the old man of the sea. Verse lix., <i>Glumdalclich</i>, +in <i>Gulliver’s Travels</i>, was a girl nine years old, and “only forty feet +high.” “<i>Theosutos e broteios eper kekramene</i>,” Greek for “God, man, or +both together mixed,” from the <i>Prometheus Bound of Æschylus</i>. Verse lx., +<i>Chrysopras</i>: a precious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> stone, a variety of chalcedony, or perhaps +beryl. Verse lxvii. cannot be understood without reference to the fourth +canto of Byron’s <i>Childe Harold</i>: the lines and words between inverted +commas are taken from verse clxxx., and the argument is directed against +Byron’s teaching as therein expressed: this verse was particularly +obnoxious to Mr. Browning, both on account of its sentiments and grammar +(see under <span class="smcap">La Saisiaz</span>, <a href="#Page_247">p. 247</a>). Verse lxix., <i>Thalassia</i>: sea-nymph, from +the Greek word for the sea: <i>Triton</i>, a sea deity, a son of Neptune. Verse +lxxviii., <i>Arion</i>: a Greek poet and musician: he was rescued from drowning +on the back of a dolphin; his song to his lyre drew the creatures round +the vessel, and one of them bore him to the shore. <i>Periander</i>, the tyrant +of Corinth. “<i>Methymnæan hand</i>”: Arion was born at Methymna, in Lesbos. +<i>Orthian</i>, of Orthia: this was a surname of Diana. <i>Tænarus</i>, the point of +land to which the dolphin carried Arion, whence he travelled to the court +of Periander. Verse lxxxii., “<i>See Horace to the boat</i>”: the ode is the +third of the First Book of Horace’s Odes. Verse lxxxiii., “<i>The long walls +of Athens</i>” (see under <span class="smcap">Aristophanes’ Apology</span>, <a href="#Page_36">p. 36</a>). <i>Iostephanos</i>, +violet crowned—a name of Athens. Verse xcviii., <i>Simulacra</i>, images or +likenesses. Verse cxxiv., <i>protoplast</i>, the original, the thing first +formed. Verse cxxv., <i>Moirai Trimorphoi</i>, the Tri-form Fates.</p> +<p><a name="filippo" id="filippo"></a></p> +<p><b>Filippo Baldinucci</b> on the Privilege of Burial: A Reminiscence of <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> +1676. (<i>Pacchiarotto and other Poems</i>, 1876.) Filippo Baldinucci was a +distinguished Italian writer on the history of the arts. He was born at +Florence in 1624, and died in 1696. His chief work is entitled <i>Notizie de +Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in quà</i> (<i>dal</i> 1260 <i>sino al</i> 1670), and +was first published, in six vols. 4to, 1681-1728. The <i>Encyclopædia +Britannica</i> says: “The capital defect of this work is the attempt to +derive all Italian art from the schools of Florence.” The incidents of the +poem are historical, and are related in the account which Baldinucci gives +of the painter Buti. Its subject is that of the persecution to which the +Jews were subjected in Italy, as in other countries of Europe, and +unhappily down to the present time in Russia. We have the story as told by +a frank persecutor, who regrets that the altered state of the law no +longer permits the actual pelting of the Jews. The good old times had +departed, but in his youth they could play some capital tricks with “the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> +crew,” as he will narrate. There was a Jews’ burying-place hard by San +Frediano, in Florence. Just below the Blessed Olivet, and adjoining this +cemetery, was “a good farmer’s Christian field.” The Jews hedged their +ground round with bushes, to conceal their rites from Christian gaze, for +the public road ran by one corner of it. The farmer, partly from devotion, +partly to annoy the Jews, built a shrine in his vineyard, and employed the +painter Buti to depict thereon the Virgin Mary, fixing the picture just +where it would be most annoying to the Jews. They tried to bribe the owner +of the shrine to turn the picture the other way, to remove its disturbing +presence from spectators to whom it could do no good, and let it face the +public road, frequented by a class of Christians evidently much in need of +religious supervision and restraint. The farmer agreed to remove the +offending fresco in consideration of the bag of golden ducats offered; and +he at once called the painter to cause Our Lady to face the other way. +Buti covers up the shrine with a hoarding, and sets to work. Meanwhile the +Chief Rabbi’s wife died, and was taken for burial to the cemetery. In +passing the shrine in the farmer’s field the mourners became aware of a +scurvy trick played upon them by the Christians; for the Virgin was +removed according to the bargain, but a Crucifixion had been substituted, +and now confronted them. The cheated Jews protested, but in vain: there +was nothing for them but to suffer. Next day, as the farmer and his artist +friend sat laughing over the trick, the athletic young son of the Rabbi +entered the studio, desiring to purchase the original oil painting of the +Madonna from which the fresco of the shrine was painted. The artist was so +frightened at his stalwart form, and so amazed at the request, that, taken +unaware, he asked no more than the proper price! and Mary was borne in +triumph to deck a Hebrew household. They thought a miracle had happened, +and that the Jew had been converted; but the Israelite explained that the +only miracle wrought was that which had restrained him from throttling the +painter. The truth was, he had changed his views about art, and had +reflected that, since cardinals hung up heathen gods and goddesses in +their palaces, there was no reason why his picture of Mary should not be +hung with Ledas and what not, and be judged on its merits, or, more +probably, on its flaws! And he walked off with his picture.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span><b>Fire is in the Flint.</b> +(<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>—opening words of the fifth lyric.)</p> + +<p><b>Flight of the Duchess, The.</b> (<i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i>, 1845—in +<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, VII.). When Mr Browning was little more than a +child, he heard a woman one Guy Fawkes’ Day sing in the street a strange +song, whose burden was, “Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!” The +singular refrain haunted his memory for many years, and out of it was +ultimately born this poem. There is a strange fascination in the +mysterious story, which is told by an old huntsman, who has spent his life +in the service of a Duke and his mother at their castle in a land of the +North which is an appanage of the German Kaiser. The young Duke’s father +died when he was a child, and his mother took him in early life to Paris, +where they remained till the youth grew to manhood. Returning to the old +castle with his head full of mediæval fancies, the Duke upset everybody by +his revivals of outlandish customs and feudal fashions, and this in a +manner which irritated every one concerned. In course of time the Duchess +found a wife for her son—a young, warm-hearted girl from a convent, who +won the affection of the servants of the castle, but was treated with +coldness and severity by its lord and his “hell-cat” of a mother. Chilled +by the want of affection, and neglected by those whose care it should have +been to make her happy, the girl sickened, and was visibly pining away. It +occurred to the Duke to revive, amongst other old customs, those connected +with the hunting of the stag, and a great hunting party on mediæval lines +was arranged. In the course of his researches into the customs of mediæval +hunting, he discovered that the lady of the castle had a special office to +perform when the stag was killed. The authorities said the dame must prick +forth on her jennet and preside at the disembowelling. But the poor, +mewed-up little duchess, secluded from all the pleasures of life, did not +care to be brought out just to play a part in a ceremony for which she had +no heart, and thanking the Duke for the intended honour, begged to be +excused on account of her ill-health; and so the Duke had to give way, but +he sent his mother to scold her. When the hunt began the Duke was sulky +and disheartened; as he rode down the valley he met a troop of gipsies on +their march, and from the company an old witch came forth to greet the +huntsmen. Sidling up to the Duke,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> she began to whine and make her appeal +for the usual gifts. She said she desired to pay her duty to the beautiful +new Duchess, at which the Duke was struck by the idea that he might use +the old crone as a means to frighten his wife and make her more +submissive, so he bade the huntsman who tells the story conduct the gipsy +to the young Duchess. The old hag promised to engage in the project with +hearty goodwill, and, quickened by the sight of a purse as the sign of a +forthcoming reward, she hobbled off to the castle, and the Duke rejoined +his party. The huntsman had a sweetheart at the castle named Jacynth, who +conducted the crone to the lady’s chamber while he waited without. And now +began the mysteries of that eventful day. The maid protested she never +could tell what it was that made her fall asleep of a sudden as soon as +the gipsy was introduced to her mistress. The huntsman had waited on the +balcony for some considerable time, when his attention was arrested by a +low musical sound in the chamber of his lady; then he pushed aside the +lattice, pulled the curtain, and saw Jacynth asleep along the floor. In +the midst of the room, on a chair of state, was the gipsy, transformed to +a queen, with her face bent over the lady’s head, who was seated at her +knees, her face intent on that of the crone. Wondering whether the old +woman was banning or blessing the Duchess, he was about to spring in to +the rescue, when he was stopped by the strange expression on her face. She +was drinking in “Life’s pure fire” from the old woman, was becoming +transformed by some powerful influence that seemed to stream from the +elder to the younger woman; her very tresses shared in the pleasure, her +cheeks burned and her eyes glistened. The influence reached the soul of +the retainer, and he fell under the potent spell as he listened to the +gipsy’s words as she told the Duchess she had discovered she was of their +race by infallible signs. At last he came to know that his mistress was +being bewitched, and he ran to the portal, where he met her, so altered +and so beautiful that he felt that whatever had happened was for the best +and he had nothing to do but take her commands. He was hers to live or to +die, and he preceded his mistress, followed by the gipsy, who had shrunk +again to her proper stature. They went to the courtyard, where, as he was +desired, he saddled the Duchess’s palfrey, which his mistress mounted with +the crone behind her; then, putting a little plait of hair into the +servant’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> hand, the Duchess rode off, and they lost her. As the old +retainer tells the tale, thirty years have passed since the flight took +place. No search was made for the lady; the Duke’s pride was wounded, and +he would not seek her, and made small inquiry about her. The man says he +must see his master through this life, and then he will scrape together +his earnings and travel to the land of the gipsies, to find his lady or +hear the last of her. Has all this an allegorical meaning? Many have tried +to find such in this remarkable poem. But Browning does not teach by +allegory: he rather prefers to let events as they actually happen tell +their own lessons to minds awakened to receive them. It is not at all +difficult, without resorting to allegorical interpretation, to discover +what the poem teaches. And in the first place we are taught that a human +soul cannot thrive without the living sympathy of its kind. The Duchess +was withering under the chill neglect of the hateful mother-in-law and her +contemptible son. The bewitchment of the gipsy was the charm of love—the +strong, passionate love of a great human heart, enshrined though it was in +a witch-like and decrepit frame. The outpouring of the old woman’s +sympathy on this friendless girl sufficed to transfigure the crone till +she became to the huntsman a young and a beautiful queen herself. In the +supreme act of perfectly loving, the woman herself became lovely; for +there is no rejuvenescence like that which comes from loving others and +helping the weak. Then we learn that, as the Duchess seemed to be imbibing +new life from the gipsy queen, virtue goes forth from every true lover of +his kind, and degrees of rank, education, and station, are no barriers to +the magnetism which streams forth from a human heart, however humble, +towards another human heart, however highly placed. Life without love is a +living death, and the Duchess no more did wrong when she rode off with the +gipsy who saw the signs of her people in the marks on her forehead than +the flowers do wrong when they bloom at the invitation of the Spring. The +sign which the gipsy saw was that of a soul capable of responding to a +heart yearning to help it. The girl had a right to human love; she had a +right to seek it in a gipsy heart when she could find it nowhere else. In +the sermon by Canon Wilberforce preached before the British Medical +Association, at their meeting at Bournemouth in 1891, speaking of the +power of Jesus over human diseases, the preacher said, “The secret of this +power was His<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> perfect sympathy. He violated or suspended no natural +laws.... His healings were an influential outpouring of that inherent +divine life which is latent and in some degree operative in every man, but +which existed in fulness and perfection of operation only in Him. Is not +this the force of the word “compassion” used of Him? The verb +<ins class="correction" title="splagchnizomai">σπλαγχνίζομαι</ins> +is not found in any former Greek author. It indicates, so +far as language can express it, a forceful movement of the whole inward +nature towards its object, and personal identification with it. It +indicates that compassion and love are not superficial emotions, but +dynamic forces.” Mrs. Owen, of Cheltenham, read a paper at the meeting of +the Browning Society, Nov. 24th, 1882, entitled “What is ‘The Flight of +the Duchess?’” in which it was suggested that the Duke represents our +gross self; the huntsman represents the simple human nature that may +either rise with the Duchess or sink with the Duke,—the better man. The +Duchess represents the soul, the highest part of our complex nature. The +huntsman aids the Duchess (the soul) to free herself from the coarse, low, +earth-nature, the Duke. So that the ‘Flight of the Duchess’ is “the +supreme moment when the soul shakes off the bondage of self and finds its +true freedom in others.” The paper is published in the <i>Browning Society’s +Transactions</i> (Part iv., p. 49*), and is well worthy of study by those who +seek a deeper spiritual meaning in “this mystic study of redeemed +womanhood” than its primary sense conveys.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes</span>.—Stanza iii., <i>merlin</i>, a species of hawk anciently much used in +falconry; <i>falcon-lanner</i>, a species of long-tailed hawk. vi., <i>urochs</i>, +wild bulls; <i>buffle</i>, buffalo. x., <i>St. Hubert</i>, before his conversion, +was passionately devoted to hunting: he is the patron saint of hunters; +<i>venerers, prickers, and verderers</i>, huntsmen, light horsemen, and +preservers of the venison. xi., <i>wind a mort</i>, to sound a horn at the +death of the stag; <i>a fifty-part canon</i>: Mr. Browning explained that “a +canon, in music, is a piece wherein the subject is repeated in various +keys, and, being strictly obeyed in the repetition, becomes the +“canon”—the imperative law to what follows. Fifty of such parts would be +indeed a notable peal; to manage three is enough of an achievement for a +good musician.” xiii., <i>hernshaw</i>, a heron; <i>fernshaw</i>, a fern-thicket; +<i>helicat</i>, a hag; “<i>imps the wing of the hawk</i>”: to “imp” means to insert +a feather in the broken wing of a bird.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> xiv., <i>tomans</i>, Persian gold +coins. xv., <i>gor-crow</i>, the carrion crow. xvii., <i>morion</i>, a kind of open +helmet. <i>Orson the wood-knight</i>: twin-brother of Valentine; born in a wood +near Orleans, and carried off by a bear, which suckled him with its cubs. +He became the terror of France, and was called “the wild man of the +forest.”</p> + +<p><b>Flower’s Name, The.</b> (<i>Garden Fancies</i>, I.—<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>.) [Published +in <i>Hood’s Magazine</i>, July 1844.] With very few exceptions, Browning did +not contribute to magazines. At the request of Mr. Monckton Milnes +(afterwards Lord Houghton), he sent <i>The Flower’s Name</i>, <i>Tokay</i> and +<i>Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis</i> to “help in making up some magazine numbers +for poor Hood, then at the point of death from hæmorrhage of the lungs, +occasioned by the enlargement of the heart, which had been brought on by +the wearing excitement of ceaseless and excessive literary toil.” A lover +visits a garden, and recalls a previous walk therein with the woman he +loved; he remembers the flowers which she noticed, especially one whose +name—“a soft, meandering Spanish name”—she gave him; he must learn +Spanish “only for that slow, sweet name’s sake.” The very roses are only +beautiful so far as they tell her footsteps.</p> + +<p><b>Flower Songs, Italian.</b> (<i>Fra Lippo Lippi.</i>) The flower songs in this poem +are of the description known as the <i>stornello</i>. This is not to be +confounded with the <i>rispetto</i>, which consists of a stanza of +inter-rhyming lines, ranging from six to ten in number. “The Luccan and +Umbrian <i>stornello</i> is much shorter, consisting indeed of a hemistich +having some natural object which suggests the motive of the little poem. +The nearest approach to the Italian <i>stornello</i> appears to be, not the +<i>rispetto</i>, but the Welsh <i>triban</i>” (<i>Encyc. Brit.</i>, xix. 272). See also +notes to <a href="#lippo"><i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i></a>.</p> + +<p><b>Flute-music with an Accompaniment.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) “Is not outside +seeming real as substance inside?” A man hears a bird-like fluting; he +wonders what sweet thoughts find expression in such sweet notes. Passion +must give birth to such expression. Love, no doubt! Assurance, +contentment, sorrow and hope—he detects all these moods in the music, +softened and mellowed by the interposing trees. His lady companion brushes +away all his fancy-spun notions by telling the prosy fact that the music +proceeds from a desk-drudge, who spends the hour of his luncheon with the +<i>Youth’s Complete Instructor how to Play the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> Flute</i>, the plain truth +being that his hoarse and husky tootlings have not the remotest relation +to the romantic ideas with which her male companion has associated them. +Distance has altered the sharps to flats; the missing bar was not due to +“kissing interruption,” but to a blunder in the playing. The man +philosophises on this to the effect that, if fancy does everything for us, +it matters little what may be the facts. If appearance produces the effect +of reality, seeming is as good as being.</p> + +<p><b>Forgiveness, A.</b> (<i>Pacchiarotto, and other Poems</i>, 1876.) A man kneels in +confession before a monk in a church. He tells the story of a life +destroyed by an insane jealousy of his wife, who was innocent of any fault +in the matter but some slight deception. The penitent was a statesman, +happy in the love of wife and home, but neglectful of his duties to both +in his absorption in the affairs of his sovereign. Returning home one +night, he enters by the private garden way, and sees the veiled figure of +a man flying from the house. Before him, as he turns to enter his door, he +sees his wife, “stone-still, stone-white.” “Kill me!” she cried. “The man +is innocent; the fault is mine alone. I love him as I hate you. Strike!” +But he refrains from this speedy vengeance: henceforth they act a part +before strangers—all goes on as though nothing had happened; alone, they +never meet, never speak. Three years of this life pass, when one night the +wife demands that the acting shall end; she will explain. “Follow me to my +study,” he replies. The wife begins, “Since I could die now....” and then +tells him she had loved him and had lost him through a lie. She had +thought he gave away his soul in statecraft; she strung herself therefore, +to teach him that the first fool she threw a fond look upon would prize +beyond life the treasure which he neglected. It was contempt for the woman +which filled his mind now. At this avowal his feeling rose to hate. He +made her write her confession in words which he dictated, and with her own +blood, drawn by the point of a poisoned poniard. The monk was the woman’s +lover; the husband killed him also.</p> + +<p><b>Founder of the Feast, The.</b> This was the title of some inedited lines by +Browning, written in the album presented to Mr. Arthur Chappell (of the +St. James’s Hall Saturday and Monday Popular Concerts), April 5th, 1884. +They are printed in the Browning Society’s <i>Notes and Queries</i>, vol. ii., p. 18*.</p> + +<p><a name="lippo" id="lippo"></a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span><b>Fra Lippo Lippi.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, +1855; Rome, 1853-54.) [<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] Fra Filippo Lippi (1412-69), the painter, was the son of a butcher in +Florence. His mother died while he was a baby, and his father two years +later than his mother. His aunt, Monna Lapaccia, took him to her home, but +in 1420, when the boy was but eight years old, placed him in the community +of the Carmelites of the Carmine in Florence. He stayed at the monastery +till 1432, and there became a painter. He seems to have ultimately +received a more or less complete dispensation from his religious vows. In +1452 he was appointed chaplain to the convent of S. Giovannino in +Florence, and in 1457 he was made rector of S. Quirico at Legnaia. At this +time he made a large income; but ever and again fell into poverty, +probably on account of the numerous love affairs in which he was +constantly indulging. Lippi died at Spoleto on or about Oct 8th, 1469. +Vasari, in his <i>Lives of the Painters</i>, tells the whole romantic story of +his life.</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] Brother Lippo the painter, working for the munificent House of +the Medici, has been mewed up in the Palace, painting saints for Cosimo +dei Medici. Unable longer to tolerate the restraint (for he was a +dissolute friar, with no vocation for the religious life), he has tied his +sheets and counterpane together and let himself out of the window for a +night’s frolic with the girls whom he heard singing and skipping in the +street below. He has been arrested by the watchmen of the city, who +noticed his monastic garb, and did not consider it in accord with his +present occupation. He is making his defence and bribing them to let him +go. He tells them his history: how he was a baby when his mother and +father died, and he was left starving in the street, picking up fig skins +and melon parings, refuse and rubbish as his only food. One day he was +taken to the monastery, and while munching his first bread that month was +induced to “renounce the pomps and vanities of this wicked world,” and so +became a monk at eight years old. They tried him with books, and taught +him some Latin; as his hard life had given him abundant opportunity for +reading peoples’ faces, he found he could draw them in his copybooks, and +so began to make pictures everywhere. The Prior noticed this, and thought +he detected genius, and would not hear of turning the boy out: he might +become a great painter and “do our church up fine,” he said. So the lad +prospered; he began to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> draw the monks—the fat, the lean, the black, the +white; then the folks at church. But he was too realistic in his work: his +faces, arms and legs were too true to nature, and the Prior shook his +head—</p> + +<p class="poem">“And stopped all that in no time.”</p> + +<p>He told him his business was to paint men’s souls and forget there was +such a thing as flesh:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms!”</p> + +<p>And so they made him rub all out. The painter asks if this was sense:</p> + +<p class="poem">“A fine way to paint soul, by painting body<br /> +So ill, the eye can’t stop there, must go further<br /> +And can’t fare worse!”</p> + +<p>He maintained that if we get beauty we get the best thing God invents. But +he rubs out his picture and paints what they like, clenching his teeth +with rage the while; but sometimes, when a warm evening finds him painting +saints, the revolt is complete, and he plays the fooleries they have +caught him at. He knows he is a beast, but he can appreciate the beauty, +the wonder and the power in the shapes of things which God has made to +make us thankful for them. They are not to be passed over and despised, +but dwelt upon and wondered at, and painted too, for we must count it +crime to let a truth slip. We are so made that we love things first when +we see them painted, though we have passed them over unnoticed a hundred +times before—</p> + +<p class="poem">“And so they are better, painted—better to us.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Art was given for that.”</span></p> + +<p>“The world is no blot for us, nor blank; it means intensely, and means +good.” “Ah, but,” says the Prior, “your work does not make people pray!” +“But a skull and cross-bones are sufficient for that; you don’t need art +at all.”... And then the poor monk begs the guard not to report him: he +will make amends for the offence done to the Church; give him six months’ +time, he will paint such a picture for a convent! It will please the nuns. +“So six months hence. Good-bye! No lights: I know my way back!”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—“<i>The Carmine’s my cloister</i>,” the monastery of the friars Del +Carmine, where Fra Lippo was brought up. “<i>Cosimo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> of the Medici</i>” +(1389-1464), the great Florentine statesman, who was called the “Father of +his country.” <i>Saint Laurence</i> == San Lorenzo at Florence, the church +which contains the Medici tombs and several of Michael Angelo’s pictures. +“<i>Droppings of the wax to sell again</i>”: in Catholic countries, where many +wax torches are used, the wax drippings are carefully gathered by the poor +boys to sell; in Spain they pick up even the ends of the wax vestas used +by smokers at the bull fights for the same purpose. <i>The Eight</i>, the +magistrates who governed Florence. <i>Antiphonary</i>, the Roman Service-Book, +containing all that is sung in the choir—the antiphons, responses, etc.; +it was compiled by Gregory the Great. <i>Carmelites</i>, monks of the Order of +Mount Carmel in Syria; established in the twelfth century. <i>Camaldolese</i>, +an order of monks founded by St. Romualdo in 1027; the name is derived +from the family who owned the land on which the first monastery was +built—the <i>Campo Maldoli</i>. “<i>Preaching Friars</i>”: the Dominicans, +established by St. Dominic; the name of the “Brothers Preachers” or +“Friars Preachers” was given them by Pope Innocent III. in 1215. <i>Giotto</i>, +a great architect and painter (1266-1337); he was a friend of Dante. +<i>Brother Angelico</i> == Fra Angelico; his real name was Giovanni da Fiesole; +he was the famous religious painter, painting the soul and disregarding +the flesh; he was said to paint some of his devotional pictures on his +knees. <i>Brother Lorenzo</i>, Don Lorenzo. <i>Monaco</i> == the monk; he was a great +painter, of the Order of the Camaldolese. <i>Guidi</i> == Tommaso Guidi or +Masaccio, nicknamed <i>Hulking Tom</i>, was a painter, born 1401; he +“laboured,” says the chronicler, in “nakeds.” “<i>A St. Laurence at Prato</i>,” +near Florence, where are frescoes by Lippi: St. Laurence suffered +martyrdom by being burned upon a gridiron; he bore it with such fortitude, +says the legend, that he cried to his tormentors to turn him over, as he +“was done on one side.” <i>Chianti wine</i>, a famous wine of Tuscany. <i>Sant’ +Ambrogio’s</i> == Saint Ambrose’s at Florence. “<i>I shall paint God in the +midst, Madonna and her babe</i>”: the beautiful picture of the Coronation of +the Virgin in the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Florence is the one +referred to in these lines. The Browning Society in 1882 published a very +fine photograph of this great work, by Alinari Brothers of Florence. The +flower songs in the poem are of the variety known as the <i>stornelli</i>; the +peasants of Tuscany sing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> these songs at their work, “and as one ends a +song another caps it with a fresh one, and so they go on vying with each +other. These <i>stornelli</i> consist of three lines. The first usually +contains the name of a flower, which sets the rhyme, and is five syllables +long. Then the love theme is told in two lines of eleven syllables each, +agreeing by rhyme, assonance, or repetition with the first.” [See <i>Poet +Lore</i>, vol ii., p. 262. Miss R. H. Busk’s “Folk Songs of Italy,” and Miss +Strettel’s “Spanish and Italian Folk Songs.”]</p> + +<p><b>Francesco Romanelli</b> (<i>Beatrice Signorini</i>), the artist who paints +Artemisia’s portrait, which his wife destroys in a fit of jealousy.</p> + +<p><b>Francis Furini, Parleyings with.</b> (<i>Parleyings with Certain People of +Importance in their Day</i>: 1887.) [<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] “Francis Furini was born in +1600 at Florence, and has been styled the ‘Albani’ and the ‘Guido’ of the +Florentine school. At the age of forty he took orders, and until his death +in 1649 remained an exemplary parish priest. In his earlier days he was +especially famous for his painting of the nude figure; his drawing is +remarkably graceful, but the colour is defective. One of his French +biographers complains that he paints the nude too well to be quite proper, +and points to the ‘Adam and Eve,’ in the Pitti Palace as a proof of this +statement. Perhaps the painter thought so too, for there is a tradition +that on his death-bed he desired all his undraped pictures to be collected +and destroyed. His wishes were not carried out, and few private galleries +at Florence are without pictures by him.” (<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, January +18th, 1887.)</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] In the opening lines we are introduced to the good pastor, the +painter-priest who lived two hundred and fifty years ago at Florence, and +fed his flock with spiritual food while he helped their bodily +necessities. The picture is a pleasant one, but the poet deals not with +the pastor but the artist; and this painter of the nude has been selected +by Browning as a text on which to express the sentiments of artists on the +subject of,—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">“The dear</span><br /> +Fleshly perfection of the human shape,”</p> + +<p>as a gospel for mankind. When Mr. Browning writes on art<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> we have, as Mr. +Symons expresses it, “painting refined into song.” The lines in the +seventh canto beginning—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“Bounteous God,</span><br /> +Deviser and dispenser of all gifts<br /> +To soul through sense,—in art the soul uplifts<br /> +Man’s best of thanks!”</p> + +<p>aptly define the poet’s position in the passionate defence of the nude as +his art-gospel. As we are intended to admire God’s handiwork in the “naked +star,” so is “the naked female form” declared to be—</p> + +<p class="poem">“God’s best of bounteous and magnificent,<br /> +Revealed to earth.”</p> + +<p>Should any object that “the naked female form,” however beautiful, is not +perhaps the best thing to display in the shop windows of the Rue de Rivoli +or Regent Street, he is set down as “a grubber for pig-nuts,” like Filippo +Baldinucci, who praises the painter-priest for ordering his pictures of +the nude to be destroyed. Mr. Browning deals very severely with those who +think that pictures of the nude have a deleterious influence on the public +character, and who endeavour to prevent their exhibition. It is +instructive, however, to notice the fact that the Paris police are +adopting even severer measures than our own against shopkeepers and others +who exhibit pictures of the nude. Where the governing bodies of the two +greatest cities of the world take the same view of this serious moral +question, we must take leave to hold that if “the gospel of art” has no +better means whereby to elevate the race than those of familiarising our +youth of both sexes with—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">“The dear</span><br /> +Fleshly perfection of the human shape,”</p> + +<p>we can very well afford to dispense with it “Omnia non omnibus,” concludes +the poet. What is perfectly innocent for the artist is not expedient for +the general public, just as the dissecting room, though an excellent +school for doctors, is not a suitable place for the people in the street +below.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Baldinucci</i>, author of the Italian <i>History of Art</i>,—he was a +friend of Furini, and it is from his biography that Browning has derived +the facts recorded in his poem. <i>Quicherat, J.</i>, edited the <i>Procès de +condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> d’Arc</i>, in five vols., +1841-9. <i>D’Alençon—Percival de Cagny</i>, a retainer of the Duke D’Alençon, +who wrote an account of Joan of Arc, which is to be found in the fourth +volume of Quicherat.</p> + +<p><b>Fuseli.</b> See <a href="#wollstone"><span class="smcap">Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli</span></a>.</p> + +<p><b>Fust and his Friends.</b> (The Epilogue <i>to Parleyings</i>.) The scene is laid +“<i>Inside the home of Fust, Mayence, 1457</i>.” Johann Fust is often +considered the inventor, or at least one of the inventors of printing. He +was born at Mayence, in Germany, in the early part of the fifteenth +century (date uncertain). The name ultimately became Faust. It has been +said that Fust was a goldsmith, but there is no evidence of this. He was a +money-lender or speculator, and was connected with Gutenberg, who is now +considered to have been the real inventor of printing. Some however, say +that Fust invented typography, and was the partner of Gutenberg, to whom +he advanced the means to carry out his invention. On Fust first showing +his printed books he was suspected of magic, as he appears to have +concealed the method by which he turned them out. There is no proof that +the monks were hostile to printing, or that they resented the new process +of multiplying books on the ground of interference with their business as +copyists. Fust and Gutenberg were on good terms with several monasteries, +and the early printers often set up their presses in religious houses of +various orders. It is exceedingly probable that the whole magic story +arose from the similarity between the names Fust and Faust, the pupil of +the devil. Browning in this poem accepts the Fust story of the invention +of printing. Fust is visited by some monks, who, having heard confused +accounts of his work, have come to the conclusion that he has made a +compact with Satan, and is in danger of losing his soul; they prepare to +exorcise the demon, but cannot remember the proper formula, and make +amusing mistakes in their repeated attempts to capture the appropriate +Latin terms of the exorcism. They find the inventor melancholy and +depressed: he has not succeeded in perfecting his machinery; but while +they argue with him the right process suddenly dawns upon him, and +invoking the aid of Archimedes (thought by the monks to be a devil of some +sort), he runs to his printing room, and in five minutes returns with the +psalm which they could not remember accurately printed on slips of paper, +one of which he hands to each of the friars. Fust then shows them the +printing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> press, and explains the use of the types and blocks, bursting +out into a noble hymn of praise to God for having enabled him to bless +mankind with his invention. The monks find it exceedingly simple, and +perceive there is no miracle at all. They doubt whether the invention will +prove an unmixed blessing for the Church, and dread the trash which will +come flying from Jew, Moor and Turk. Huss declared in dying that a swan +would succeed the goose they were burning. Fust says he foresees such a +man. (<i>Huss</i> means goose in the dialect he spoke. The swan of whom he +prophesied was Luther.)</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Faust</i> and <i>Fust</i>: these names were often confounded, when people +thought printing a diabolical art. <i>Palinodes</i>, songs repeated a second +time. “<i>Barnabites and Dominican experts</i>”: The Barnabites as a religious +order were inferior in learning and theological attainments to the +Dominicans, who were experts in matters of heresy. <i>Famulus</i>, a servant, +an attendant. “<i>Ne pulvis et ignis</i>”: Latin words misquoted from some +monastic exorcism which the monks have half forgotten. “<i>Asmodeus inside +of a Hussite</i>,” the devil animating the heretic Hussite or follower of +Huss. <i>“Pou sto,” point d’appui</i>: Archimedes said, “Give me <i>pou sto</i> (‘a +place to stand on’), and I could move the world.”</p> + +<p><b>Future State, A.</b> Mr. Browning’s belief in the doctrine of a future state +of reward and punishment is expressed at great length and with much force +in <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p><a name="garden" id="garden"></a> </p> +<p><b>Garden Fancies.</b> (Published in <i>Hoods Magazine</i>, July 1844.) I. <i>The +Flower’s Name.</i> The poem describes a garden wherein to a lover’s fancy +every shrub and flower is hallowed by the looks and touch of the woman he +loves. One flower in particular she named by its “soft meandering Spanish +name.” He bids the buds she touched to stay as they are, never to open, +but to be loved for ever. Even the roses are not so fair after all, +compared with the “shut pink mouth” her fingers have touched. In II., +<i>Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis</i>, we have a garden without romance. A student +takes amongst the flowers a pedantic old volume, a treatise as dry and +crabbed as its title. He read it; then, for his revenge, threw the book +into the crevice of a plum tree, amongst the fungi, the moss, and creeping +things. Solacing himself with bread and cheese and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> wine, he read the +jolly Rabelais to rid his brain of cobwebs. In process of time the student +came to think he had been too severe with the old author, so be fished him +up with a rake and put him in an appropriate place on the library shelves, +there to dry-rot at ease.</p> + +<p><b>Galuppi, Baldassarre.</b> A musical composer (1706-85). See <a href="#toccata"><span class="smcap">Toccata of +Galuppi’s, A</span></a>.</p> + +<p><b>George Bubb Dodington, Parleyings with.</b> (<i>Parleyings with Certain People +of Importance in their Day</i>, 1887.) [<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] “George Bubb Dodington +(born 1691, died 1726) was the son of a gentleman of good fortune named +Bubb. He was educated at Oxford, elected member of Parliament for +Winchelsea in 1715, and soon after sent as envoy to Madrid. In 1720 he +inherited the estate of Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, and took the name of +Dodington. On his entrance into public life he connected himself with Sir +Robert Walpole, to whom he addressed a poetic epistle, which later on he +made, by changing the name, to serve for Lord Bute. His career was full of +political vicissitudes of the most discreditable kind, by which he managed +to obtain a considerable share of the prizes of politics. He held various +offices, chiefly in connection with the navy, to which he was more than +once treasurer. It was from Lord Bute, with whom he was a great favourite, +that he <ins class="correction" title="original: eceived">received</ins> the title of Lord Melcombe. He loved to surround himself +with the distinguished men of the day, whom he entertained at his country +seat; and his interesting diary is a storehouse of information about the +political intrigues and cabals of the time. Pope and Churchill both wrote +in abuse of him, and Hogarth immortalised his wig in his <i>Orders of +Periwigs</i>.” (<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, Jan. 18th, 1887.)</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] Mr. Symons describes this as “a piece of sardonic irony long +drawn out,” and as a “Superior Rogues’ Guide or Instructions for Knaves.” +Browning satirically tells Dodington that he went the wrong way to work in +his attempts to impose upon the world. Admitting the right of the +statesman to “feather his own nest” while pretending to care only for the +public weal, because even the birds build the kind of nests that suit +their own convenience, without regard to other species, he yet declares +there is a right and a wrong way even in deceiving people. “You say, my +Lord, that the rabble will not believe and follow you unless you lie +boldly, and pretend to be animated only by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> the desire to serve them; but +the rabble tell lies for their own purposes daily, and understand the art +as well as you do, and as no man obeys his equal, you must produce +something which outdoes in this respect anything with which they are +familiar.” Browning offers him a hint: wit has replaced force, now +intelligence in its turn must go. “You must have a touch of the +supernatural, you must awe men—not by miracles, they will not be +accepted—but still, you must pretend to some secret and mysterious power, +pretend that, though you know you have fools to deal with, there are some +wise men amongst them who are not to be deceived, and each man will +flatter himself that he is one of these.... Persuade the people that your +real character was merely an assumed one. Pretend to despise, not them, +but yourself. That will make men think you obey some law, ‘quite above +man’s—nay, God’s!’ Missing this secret, your name is greeted with scorn.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>—<i>The Bower-bird</i>: the name given to certain birds of the genera +Ptilorhynchus and Chlamydera, which are ranked under the starling family. +They are found in Australia. They are called bower-birds because they +build bowers as well as nests.</p> + +<p><b>Gerard.</b> (<i>A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.</i>) Lord Tresham’s faithful and trusted +man-servant.</p> + +<p><b>Gerard de Lairesse, Parleyings with.</b> (<i>Parleyings with Certain People of +Importance in their Day</i>: 1877, No. VI.) [<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] “Gerard de Lairesse, a +Flemish painter, was born at Liége in 1640. He early began his career, and +produced portraits and historical pictures at the age of fifteen. He was +of dissipated life, extravagant, and fond of dress, notwithstanding that +he was of deformed figure. The Dutch admired him very much, and modestly +called him their ‘second Raphael,’ Heemskirk being the first. He painted +for many years at Amsterdam, and towards the close of his life was much +troubled by his eyesight, which several times left him. He died in 1711. +Very fond of teaching, he was always ready to communicate his method to +students, and his name is associated with a <i>Treatise on the Art of +Painting</i>, which it is not, however, thought that he wrote. His execution +was very rapid, and there is a story told that he made a wager that he +would paint, in one day, a large picture of Apollo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> and the Muses, and +that he not only gained the wager, but painted into the picture a capital +portrait of a curious bystander. His method of work was eccentric: he +would prepare his canvas, and, sitting down before it, take up his violin +and play for some time; then, putting down the instrument, he would +rapidly sketch in the picture, and again resuming the fiddle, would derive +fresh inspiration from the music.” (<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, Jan. 18th, 1887.)</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] Browning rejoices that, though Gerard had lost his sight, his +mouth was unsealed and “talked all brain’s yearning into birth.” He prizes +his saying that the artist should discern abundant worth in commonplace, +and not despise the vulgar things of town and country as unworthy of his +art. Beyond the actual, he taught there was ever “Imagination’s limitless +domain”: even dull Holland to him became Dreamland. And so in that great +“Walk” of his, written after his blindness, he could evolve greater things +than we with all our sight. Perhaps his sealed sight-sense left his mind +free from obstruction to indulge fancies “worth all facts denied by fate.” +But though we cannot see what the poets of old saw in nature when they +invested trees with human attributes, and yet lost no gain of the tree, +“we see deeper.” “You,” says Browning, “saw the body,—’tis the soul we +see.” We can fancy, too, though fact unseen has taken the place of fancy +somehow. Poets never go back at all: if the past become more precious than +the present, then blame the Creator! But it can never be so. He invites +Gerard to ‘walk with him and see what a poet of the present time discerns +in the face of Nature, in her varying moods from daybreak till the shades +of night.’ Then follows a series of magnificent descriptions of a +thunderstorm in the mountains, the defiant pine tree daring all the +outrage of the lightning. Then the laugh of morning, the baffled tempest, +the trees shaking off the night stupor from their strangled branches. +Diana, with her bow and unerring shaft; for gentle creatures, even on a +morn so blithe, must writhe in pain—so pitiless is Nature still! And then +the conquering noon: the mist ascends to heaven, and the filmy haze +soothes the sun’s sharp glare till tyrannous noon reigns supreme. And when +at last the long day dies, clouds like hosts confronting each other for +battle come trooping silent. Two shapes from out the mass show prominent, +as if the Macedonian flung his purple mantle on the dead<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> Darius. And now +the darkness gathers, the human heroes tread the world of cloud no longer. +’Tis a ghost appears on earth:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">“There he stands,</span><br /> +Voiceless, scarce strives with deprecating hands.”</p> + +<p>But, says Browning, though we to-day could paint Nature in <ins class="correction" title="original: thi">this</ins> manner in +the colours of the Past, we rather prefer “the all-including, the +all-reconciling Future:</p> + +<p class="poem">‘Let things be—not seem,<br /> +Do, and nowise dream.’</p> + +<p>Sad school was Hades! Let it be granted that death is the last and worst +of man’s calamities: come what come will—what once lives never dies.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—2. “<i>The Walk</i>”: this was the title of a part of Gerard’s work +entitled <i>The Art of Painting</i>, by Gerard de Lairesse, translated by J. S. +Fritsch, 1778. 5. <i>Dryope</i>: the fable of Dryope turned into a tree is told +in Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses</i>, book ix. 9. <i>Artemis</i>, Diana, the huntress +goddess. 10. <i>Lyda</i>, a nymph beloved by Pan, but who disdained his uncouth +pathos. 11. <i>Macedonian</i>: Alexander, king of Macedonia, invaded Persia, +and was met by Darius with an army of 600,000 men. Alexander defeated +them, and Darius was slain by the traitor Bessus. Alexander covered the +dead body with his own royal mantle, and honoured it with a magnificent +funeral.</p> + +<p><b>Gigadibs, Mr.</b> (<i>Bishop Blougram’s Apology.</i>) He is a young man of +thirty—immature, desultory, and impulsive—who criticises Bishop +Blougram’s life, and serves to draw out his ideas on his religion and the +honesty of his religious conduct.</p> + +<p><b>Give a Rouse.</b> (<i>Cavalier Tunes</i>, No. II.)</p> + +<p><b>“Give her but the least excuse to love me.”</b> (<i>Pippa Passes</i>.) The song +which Pippa sings as she passes the house of Jules.</p> + +<p><b>Glove, The.</b> [<span class="smcap">Peter Ronsard</span> <i>loquitur</i>.] (<i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i> in +<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, VII., 1845.) This is an old French story of the +time of Francis I. It is familiar in various forms to students of +literature, and may be found in Schiller, Leigh Hunt, and St. Foix. Mr. +Browning, as is his wont, does not tell the story for the sake of telling +it, but that he may give a new turn to it and point out something which +has been <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>overlooked, but which, on reflection, will always prove to be +the precise truth to be conveyed by the narration. The Peter Ronsard who +tells the tale was born in 1524, and was called the “prince of poets” by +his own generation. He was educated at the Collége de Navarre at Paris, +and was page to the Duke of Orleans. He was afterwards attached to the +suite of Cardinal du Bellay-Langey. He became deaf, and in consequence +gave up diplomacy for literature. He published his <i>Amours</i> and some odes +in 1552. Charles IX. gave him rooms in his palace. He died in 1585. The +story of the poem is as follows. King Francis I. was one day amusing +himself by viewing the lions in his courtyard, in company with the lords +and ladies of the palace. The king bade his keeper make sport with an old +lion, which was let out of his den to fight in the pit, the spectators +being secured by a barrier. The king said, “Faith, gentlemen, we are +better here than there.” De Lorge’s lady-love overheard this, and she +thought it a good opportunity to test the courage of her lover, so she +dropped her glove over the barrier amongst the lions, at the same time +smiling to De Lorge the command to jump down and recover it. This was +speedily done, but the lover threw the glove in the lady’s face. The king +approved this course, and said, “So should I: ’twas mere vanity, not love, +which set that task to humanity!” Mr. Browning brings his analysis to bear +on this exploit, and shows that the test was not the outcome of mere idle +trifling with a man’s life to flatter a woman’s vanity. She desired to try +as in a crucible the real meaning of the protestations made by De Lorge; +it was necessary for her to know if her lover was going to serve her alone +or many. He had offered to brave endless descriptions of death for her +sake. When she saw the lions, for whose capture many poor men had dared +death with no spectators to applaud, she felt justified in asking this of +her lover before she trusted herself in his hands for life. A youth led +her away from the scene. She carried her shame from the court, and married +the man who protected her from further mockery. Of course De Lorge was at +once the favourite both of women and men. He married a beauty. The Clement +Marot referred to in the poem was a famous poet of France (1496-1544), and +greatly distinguished in her literary history.</p> + +<p><b>God.</b> Browning’s noblest utterances on God are to be found in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> <i>Christmas +Eve</i>, <i>Easter Day</i>, “The Pope” in <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, and +<i>Paracelsus</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Goito Castle</b> (<i>Sordello</i>), near Mantua, where Sordello was brought up by +Adelaide, wife of Ecelin, with Palma, daughter of Ecelin by a former wife. +Sordello lived at Goito in seclusion and boyish pleasures till he was +nearly twenty years old.</p> + +<p><b>Gold Hair: A Legend of Pornic.</b> (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864.) The poem is +said by Mr. Orr to be founded on facts well known at Pornic, a seaside +town in Brittany. A young girl well connected died with a great reputation +for holiness. She had beautiful golden hair, of which she was very proud. +She begged that it might not be disturbed after her death, and she was +buried with it intact near the high altar of the church of St. Gilles. +Some years after it became necessary to repair the floor of the church in +the proximity of the maiden’s tomb. It was found that the coffin had +fallen to pieces, and a gold coin was noticed, which led to a more careful +examination of the spot. Thirty double louis-d’or were discovered, which +had been hidden by the girl in her hair, thus proving that the supposed +saint was at heart a miser. “Gold goes through all doors except heaven’s +doors”; and for this the girl had lost her heaven. In Stanza xxviii. Mr. +Browning teaches a lesson of which he is never weary:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Evil or good may be better or worse<br /> +In the human heart, but the mixture of each<br /> +Is a marvel and a curse.”</p> + +<p>Original sin, the innate corruption of man’s heart, is illustrated says +the poet, by this girl’s avarice. The priest built a new altar with the +discovered money.</p> + +<p><b>Goldoni.</b> (Published first in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, Dec. 8th, 1883; then +in the <i>Browning Society’s Papers</i>.) Carlo Goldoni (1707-93) was the most +illustrious of the Italian comedy-writers, and the real founder of modern +Italian comedy. He had a pension from the French King Louis XVI., which he +lost at the Revolution, and he was reduced to the extremest misery. A +monument was erected to him at Venice in 1883, and Browning wrote for the +album of the Goldoni monument the following lines:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Goldoni,—good, gay, sunniest of souls,—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Glassing half Venice in that verse of thine.—</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">What though it just reflect the shade and shine</span><br /> +Of common life, nor render, as it rolls,<br /> +Grandeur and gloom? Sufficient for thy shoals<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Was Carnival: Parini’s depths enshrine</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Secrets unsuited to that opaline</span><br /> +Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">There throng the People: how they come and go,</span><br /> +Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb,—see,—<br /> +On Piazza, Calle, under Portico<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And over Bridge! Dear king of Comedy,</span><br /> +Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Venice, and we who love her, all love thee!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">(<span class="smcap">Venice</span>, <i>Nov. 27th, 1883</i>.)</span></p> + +<p><b>“Good to Forgive.”</b> (<i>La Saisiaz.</i>) The epilogue to <i>La Saisiaz</i> begins +with these words. In Vol. II. of the <i>Selections</i> the poem forms No. 3 of +<i>Pisgah Sights</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Gottingen.</b> The university town in Germany to a lecture hall in which +Christ went in the vision on <i>Christmas Eve</i>. Here a consumptive lecturer +was “demolishing the Christ-myth,” but advising the audience to lose +nothing of the Christ idea.</p> + +<p><b>Grammarian’s Funeral, A, shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe.</b> +(<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Romances</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Romances</i>, 1868.) Mr. +Browning often describes a man as a typical product of his age and +environment, and invests him with its characteristics, making him figure +as an historical personage. He has done so in this case, and we seem to +know the grammarian in all his pedantry and exclusive devotion to a minute +branch of human knowledge. The revival of learning, after the apparent +death-blow which it received when the hordes of Northern barbarism overran +Southern Europe and destroyed the civilisation of the Roman empire, began +in the tenth century—that century which, as Hallam says (<i>Lit. Europe</i>, +i. 10), “used to be reckoned by mediæval historians the darkest part of +this intellectual night.” In the twelfth century much greater improvement +was made. The attention of Europe was drawn to literature in this century, +says Hallam, by, “1st, the institution of universities; 2nd, the +cultivation of the modern languages, followed by the multiplication of +books and the extension of the art of writing; 3rd, the investigation of +the Roman law; and lastly, the return to the study of the Latin language +in its Ancient models of purity.” All these factors were at work and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> +progressing gradually down to the fifteenth century. A company of the +grammarian’s disciples are bearing his coffin for burial on a tall +mountain, the appropriate lofty place of sepulture for an elevated man. As +they carry the body, one of them tells his story, and dilates on the +praises of the departed scholar. They cannot fitly bury their master in +the plain with the common herd. Nor will a lower peak suffice: he shall +rest on a peak whose soaring excels the rest. This high-seeking man is for +the morning land, and as they bear him up the rocky heights they step +together to a tune with heads erect, proud of their noble burden. He was +endowed with graces of face and form; but youth had been given to learning +till he had become cramped and withered. This man would eat up the feast +of learning even to its crumbs. He would live a great life when he had +learned all that books had to teach; meanwhile he despised what other men +termed life. Before living he would learn how to live:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Leave Now for dogs and apes!<br /> +Man has Forever.”</p> + +<p>Deeper he bent over his books, racked by the stone (<i>calculus</i>): +bronchitis (<i>tussis</i>) attacked him; but still he refused to rest. He had a +sacred thirst. He magnified the mind, and let the body decay uncared for. +That he long lived nameless, that he even failed, was nothing to him. He +wanted no payment by instalment; he could afford to wait, and thus even in +the death-struggle he “ground at grammar.” And so where the</p> + +<p class="poem">“Lightnings are loosened,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Stars come and go!”</span></p> + +<p>this lofty man was left “loftily lying.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Hotis’ business</i>, <i>Properly based Oun</i>, <i>Enclitic De</i>, these are +points in Greek grammar concerning which grammarians have written learned +treatises.</p> + +<p><b>Greek Poems.</b> Mr. Browning had a peculiar power in rendering the ideas of +the great Greek poets into strong resonant English verse. His lovely +<i>Balaustion’s Adventure</i>, the fascinating and picturesque <i>Aristophanes’ +Apology</i>, with the <i>Herakles</i> of Euripides, and the rough, robust, and +perhaps over-literal <i>Agamemnon</i> of Æschylus, at once proclaim the Greek +scholar and the English master-poet. Some extracts from Professor +Mahaffy’s criticism of Mr. Browning’s Greek translations are given<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> below +from his <i>History of Classical Greek Literature</i>, vol. i. On the +transcription of the <i>Agamemnon</i> (p. 258): “Mr. Robert Browning has given +us an over-faithful version from his matchless hand,—matchless, I +conceive, in conveying the deeper spirit of the Greek poets. But, in this +instance, he has outdone his original in ruggedness, owing to his excess +of conscience as a translator” (p. 277). “Mr. Browning has turned his +genius for reproducing Greek plays upon this masterpiece, and has given a +version which will probably not permit the rest [Miss Anna Swanwick’s, Mr. +Morshead’s, etc.] to maintain their well-earned fame, though it is in +itself so difficult that the Greek original is often required for +translating his English. I confess that, even with this aid, which shows +the extraordinary faithfulness of the work, I had preferred a more +Anglicised version from his master-hand.” On the transcription of +<i>Alcestis</i> (p. 329): “By far the best translation is Mr. Browning’s, in +his <i>Balaustion’s Adventure</i>; but it is much to be regretted that he did +not render the choral odes into lyric verse. No one has more thoroughly +appreciated the mean features of <i>Admetus and Pheres</i>, and their dramatic +propriety” (note, p. 335). On the transcription of <i>The Raging Hercules</i> +(p. 348): “We can now recommend the admirable translation in Mr. +Browning’s <i>Aristophanes’ Apology</i>, as giving English readers a thoroughly +faithful idea of this splendid play. The choral odes are, moreover, done +justice to, and translated into adequate metre—in this, an improvement on +the <i>Alcestis</i>, to which I have already referred.” Speaking afterwards, of +the <i>Helena</i> of Euripides, Mr. Mahaffy remarks (p. 353): “The choral odes +are quite in the poet’s later style, full of those repetitions of words +which Aristophanes derides,”—and he adds in a note: “Mr. Browning has not +failed to reproduce this Euripidean feature with great art and admirable +effect in his version of the <i>Herakles</i>.”... p. 466: “Nothing is more +cleverly ridiculed [in <i>Aristophanes</i>] than those repetitions of the same +word which occur in the pathetic lyrical passages of Euripides. The modern +poet, who best understands Euripides, has followed his example in this +point:—</p> + +<p class="poem">‘Dances, dances, and banqueting,<br /> +To Thebes, the sacred city, through<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>Are a care! for change and change<br /> +Of tears and laughter, old to new,<br /> +Our lays, glad birth, they bring, they bring.’<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>Aristophanes’ Apology</i>, p. 266.</span></p> + +<p>There are many more instances in this version of the <i>Hercules Furens</i>. +This allusion to Mr. Browning suggests the remark that he has treated the +controversy between Euripides and Aristophanes with more learning and +ability than all other critics, in his ‘<i>Aristophanes’ Apology</i>,’ which +is, by the way, an ‘<i>Euripides Apology</i>’ also, if such be required in the +present day.”</p> + +<p><b>Guardian Angel, The: A Picture at Fano.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, +1863.) Fano is a city of Italy in the province of Urbino-e-Pasaro. It is +situated on the shores of the Adriatic, in a fertile plain at the mouth of +the Metauro. Its population in 1871 was 6439. The splendid tombs of the +Malatestas are contained in the church of St. Francesco. The cathedral and +other churches possess valuable pictures by Domenichino, Guido, etc. The +picture referred to in the poem is in the church of St. Augustine. It was +painted by Guercino (so called from his squinting), properly called +Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, who was born at Cento, near Bologna, in 1590. +His first style was formed after that of the Carracci; he fell later under +the influence of Caravaggio, whose strong colouring and shadows greatly +impressed his mind. The nobles and princes of Italy, and his brother +artists, very highly esteemed Guercino’s work, and they classed him in the +first rank of painters. He worked very rapidly, completing 106 large +altar-pieces for churches, besides 144 other pictures. His greatest work +is said to be his Sta. Petronilla, which is now in the Capitol at Rome. +Guercino died in 1666, having amassed a large fortune by his labours. +There is a good photograph of L’Angelo Custode, in the <i>Illustrations to +Browning’s Poems</i>, part i., published by the Browning Society. An angel +with wings outspread is standing in a protecting attitude by a little +child, and the angel’s left arm embraces the infant, while the right hand +encloses the hands of the child clasped in prayer. Cherubs look down from +the clouds. In Guercino’s first sketch of his Angel and Child, the angel +points to heaven with his left hand, while he enfolds the child’s hands +with his right. Mr. Browning was staying at Ancona. He was greatly +impressed by the picture, and forgetting that we all have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> a guardian +angel, overlooked his own, and prayed, good Protestant as he was, to +Guercino’s angel to protect and direct him when he had done with the +child. He, however, recognised Mrs. Browning as his own guardian angel, +and with her went three times to see the painting. The Alfred referred to +in Stanza vi. was Mr. Alfred Dommett, the Waring of the poem of that name. +Mr. Dommett was then in New Zealand, by the Wairoa river of Stanza viii. +Not only the consolatory doctrine of Holy Scripture and the Church as to +the ministry of angels, but the soothing and elevating influence of +religious art in conveying what words would fail to teach half so +impressively, are well emphasised by Mr. Browning’s poem. The beautiful +figure “Bird of God” is from Dante (<i>Purgatorio</i>, Canto iv.).</p> + +<p><b>Guelfs and Ghibellines.</b> (<i>Sordello.</i>) The poem of <i>Sordello</i> is so full of +references to the wars between the Guelfs and Ghibellines, that a +knowledge of the origin of this celebrated feud will help to throw light +on some paragraphs in the poem. Longfellow, in his notes to Dante’s +<i>Inferno</i>, gives the story:—“The following account of the Guelfs and +Ghibellines is from the <i>Pecorone</i> of Giovanni Fiorentino, a writer of the +fourteenth century. It forms the first Novella of the Eighth Day, and will +be found in Roscoe’s <i>Italian Novelists</i>, i. 322. ‘There formerly resided +in Germany two wealthy and well-born individuals, whose names were Guelfo +and Ghibellino, very near neighbours, and greatly attached to each other. +But returning together one day from the chase, there unfortunately arose +some difference of opinion as to the merits of one of their hounds, which +was maintained on both sides so very warmly that, from being almost +inseparable friends and companions, they became each other’s deadliest +enemies. This unlucky division between them still increasing, they on +either side collected parties of their followers, in order more +effectually to annoy each other. Soon extending its malignant influence +among the neighbouring lords and barons of Germany, who divided, according +to their motives, either with the Guelf or the Ghibelline, it not only +produced many serious affrays, but several persons fell victims to its +rage. Ghibellino, finding himself hard pressed by his enemy, and unable +longer to keep the field against him, resolved to apply for assistance to +Frederick I., the reigning emperor. Upon this, Guelfo, perceiving that his +adversary sought the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>alliance of this monarch, applied on his side to +Pope Honorius II., who being at variance with the former, and hearing how +the affair stood, immediately joined the cause of the Guelfs, the emperor +having already embraced that of the Ghibellines. It is thus that the +apostolic see became connected with the former, and the empire with the +latter faction; and it was thus that a vile hound became the origin of a +deadly hatred between the two noble families. Now, it happened that in the +year of our dear Lord and Redeemer 1215, the same pestiferous spirit +spread itself into parts of Italy, in the following manner. Messer Guido +Orlando being at that time chief magistrate of Florence, there likewise +resided in that city a noble and valiant cavalier of the family of +Buondelmonti, one of the most distinguished houses in the state. Our young +Buondelmonte having already plighted his troth to a lady of the Amidei +family, the lovers were considered as betrothed, with all the solemnity +usually observed on such occasions. But this unfortunate young man, +chancing one day to pass by the house of the Donati, was stopped and +accosted by a lady of the name of Lapaccia, who moved to him from her door +as he went along, saying: “I am surprised that a gentleman of <ins class="correction" title="original: yuor">your</ins> +appearance, Signor, should think of taking for his wife a woman scarcely +worthy of handing him his boots. There is a child of my own, whom, to +speak sincerely, I have long intended for you, and whom I wish you would +just venture to see.” And on this she called out for her daughter, whose +name was Ciulla, one of the prettiest and most enchanting girls in all +Florence. Introducing her to Messer Buondelmonte, she whispered, “This is +she whom I have reserved for you”; and the young Florentine, suddenly +becoming enamoured of her, thus replied to her mother, “I am quite ready, +Madonna, to meet your wishes”; and before stirring from the spot he placed +a ring upon her finger, and, wedding her, received her there as his wife. +The Amidei, hearing that young Buondelmonte had thus espoused another, +immediately met together, and took counsel with other friends and +relations, how they might best avenge themselves for such an insult +offered to their house. There were present among the rest Lambertuccio +Amidei, Schiatta Ruberti, and Mosca Lamberti, one of whom proposed to give +him a box on the ear, another to strike him in the face; yet they were +none of them able to agree about it among themselves. On<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> observing this, +Mosca hastily arose, in a great passion, saying, “Cosa fatta capo ha,” +wishing it to be understood that a dead man will never strike again. It +was therefore decided that he should be put to death, a sentence which +they proceeded to execute in the following manner: M. Buondelmonte +returning one Easter morning from a visit to the Casa Bardi, beyond the +Arno, mounted upon a snow-white steed, and dressed in a mantle of the same +colour, had just reached the foot of the Ponte Vecchio, or old bridge, +where formerly stood a statue of Mars, whom the Florentines in their pagan +state were accustomed to worship, when the whole party issued out upon +him, and, dragging him in the scuffle from his horse, in spite of the +gallant resistance he made, despatched him with a thousand wounds. The +tidings of this affair seemed to throw all Florence into confusion; the +chief personages and noblest families in the place everywhere meeting, and +dividing themselves into parties in consequence; the one party embracing +the cause of the Buondelmonti, who placed themselves at the head of the +Guelfs; and the other taking part with the Amidei, who supported the +Ghibellines. In the same fatal manner, nearly all the seigniories and +cities of Italy were involved in the original quarrel between these two +German families: the Guelfs still supporting the interests of the Holy +Church, and the Ghibellines those of the Emperor. And thus I have made you +acquainted with the history of the Germanic faction, between two noble +houses, for the sake of a vile cur, and have shown how it afterwards +disturbed the peace of Italy for the sake of a beautiful woman.’”</p> + +<p><b>Gwendolen Tresham.</b> (<i>A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.</i>) The cousin of Mildred +Tresham.</p> + +<p><b>Gypsy.</b> (<i>The Flight of the Duchess.</i>) The old crone who is sent by the +Duke to frighten the Duchess, and who rescues her from her unhappy life.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Hakeem</b> or <b>Hakem.</b> (<i>Return of the Druses.</i>) He was the chief of the Druses. +The first hakeem was the Fatimite Caliph B’amr-ellah. He professed to be +the incarnate deity. He was slain near Cairo, in Egypt, on Mount Makattam.</p> + +<p><b>Halbert and Hob.</b> (<i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, First Series, 1879.) Two men, father +and son, of brutal type, and the last of their line, are sitting +quarrelling one Christmas night in their <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>homestead. High words, followed +by taunts and curses, led to an attack on the father by his furious son, +who flew at his throat with the intention of casting him out in the snow. +The father was strong and could have held his own in the scuffle, but +suddenly all power left him: he was struck mute. This still more enraged +the son, who pulled him from the room till they reached the +house-door-sill. Slowly the father found utterance and told his son that +on just such a Christmas night long ago he had attacked his father in a +similar manner and had dragged him to the same spot, when he was arrested +by a voice in his heart. “I stopped here; and, Hob, do you the same!” The +son relaxed his hold of his father’s throat, and both returned upstairs, +where they remained in silence. At dawn the father was dead, the son +insane. “Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts?” Certainly +there is, says the mental pathologist. Persons born with such and such +cranial and cerebral characteristics cannot help being brutal and +criminal. They are handicapped heavily by nature from the hour of their +birth, and they only follow out a law of their development, for which they +are not responsible when they become criminal. The mental pathologist +would have no difficulty in drawing the portraits of Halbert and Hob. +There is a monotony and family likeness in the criminal physiognomy which +does not require an expert to detect. When a specialist such as Dr. Down +goes over a great prison like Broadmoor, he has no difficulty in +indicating for us the precise aberrations from the normal type which +distinguish between the honest man and the criminal. This would be a +terrible reflection on the Divine providence, if we omitted to take into +account the pregnant last line of Mr. Browning’s poem:</p> + +<p class="poem">“That a reason out of nature must turn them soft, seems clear.”</p> + +<p>As Nature is never without her compensations, so there is a reason above +all our materialism, our facial angles, our oxycephalic and our +microcephalic heads which justifies the ways of God to men. Doctors are +slow to recognise this, but judges always act upon the principle. Experts +in criminal pathology find responsibility with great difficulty in the men +they are endeavouring to save from the gallows. The judge, however, keeps +to the common-sense rule that if the criminal knew that he was doing what +he ought not to do, he is responsible before the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> law for his crime. +Halbert heard the voice in his heart—Hob relaxed his hold of the father’s +throat. Conscience rules supreme even over heredity and cerebral +aberration. The basis of this story is found in Aristotle’s <i>Ethics</i>, I., +vii., c. 6.</p> + +<p><b>“Heap Cassia, Sandal-buds, and Stripes.”</b> The first line of the song in +<i>Paracelsus</i> iv.</p> + +<p><b>Helen’s Tower.</b> Lines written at the request of the Earl of Dufferin and +Clandeboye, on the tower which the Earl erected to the memory of his +mother, Helen, Countess of Giffard. (Printed in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, +Dec. 28th, 1883.)</p> + +<p><b>Henry, Earl Mertoun.</b> (<i>A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.</i>) He was Mildred +Tresham’s lover, and was killed by her brother, Earl Tresham.</p> + +<p><b>Herakles</b> == Hercules, who wrestles with death, conquers him, and restores +Alkestis to her husband, in <i>Balaustion’s Adventure</i>. The <i>Raging +Hercules</i> of Euripides, which Balaustion read to Aristophanes, is +translated by Mr. Browning in the volume <i>Aristophanes’ Apology</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Heretic’s Tragedy, The; A Middle-Age Interlude.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; +<i>Romances</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Romances</i>, 1868.) “It would seem to be a +glimpse from the burning of Jacques du Bourg Molay, at Paris, <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 1314; +as distorted by the refraction from Flemish brain to brain during the +course of a couple of centuries.” [<span class="smcap">The History.</span>] Molay was Grand Master of +the order of the Knights Templars, suppressed by a decree of Pope Clement +V. and the general council of Vienne, in 1312. The Knights Templars were +instituted by seven gentlemen at Jerusalem, in 1118, to defend the holy +places and pilgrims from the insults of the Saracens, and to keep the +passes free for such as undertook the voyage to the Holy Land. They took +their name from the first house, which was given them by King Baldwin II., +situated near the place where anciently the temple of Solomon stood. By +the liberality of princes, immense riches suddenly flowed to this Order, +by which the knights were puffed up to a degree of insolence which +rendered them insupportable even to the kings who had been their +protectors; and Philip the Fair, king of France, resolved to compass their +ruin. They were accused of treasons and conspiracies with the infidels, +and of other enormous crimes, which occasioned the suppression of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> the +Order. The year following, the Grand Master, who was a Frenchman, was +burnt at Paris, and several others suffered death, though they all with +their last breath protested their innocence as to the crimes that were +laid to their charge. These were certainly much exaggerated by their +enemies, and doubtless many innocent men were involved with the guilty. A +great part of their estates was given to the Knights of Rhodes or Malta. +(<i>Butler’s Lives of the Saints—sub</i> May 5.) For half a century before the +suppression of the Order, horrible stories about various unholy rites +practised at its midnight assemblies had been in circulation. It was said +that every member on his initiation was compelled to deny the Lord Jesus +Christ, to spit upon and trample under foot a crucifix, and submit to +certain indecent ceremonies. It was charged against them that hideous +four-footed idols were worshipped, and other things too terrible to +narrate were said to be done at these assemblies. Whether these things +were true or not, has been hotly disputed ever since the accusations were +made. The spitting on the cross seems, at any rate in France, to have been +admitted by the accused; many of the worst things confessed were admitted +under the most cruel tortures, and are consequently more likely to have +been false than true. In Carlyle’s essay on the “Life and Writings of +Werner” (<i>Critical and Miscellaneous Essays</i>, vol. i., p. 66: 1888), the +whole story of these mysterious rites is discussed. After several pages of +quotations from Werner’s drama <i>The Templars in Cyprus</i>, Carlyle says, +“One might take this trampling on the Cross, which is said to have been +actually enjoined on every Templar at his initiation, to be a type of his +secret behest to undermine that institution (the Catholic Church) and +redeem the spirit of religion from the state of thraldom and distortion +under which it was there held. It is known at least, and was well known to +Werner, that the heads of the Templars entertained views, both on religion +and politics, which they did not think meet for communicating to their +age, and only imparted by degrees, and under mysterious adumbrations, to +the wiser of their own order. They had even publicly resisted, and +succeeded in thwarting, some iniquitous measure of Philippe Auguste, the +French king, in regard to his coinage; and this, while it secured them the +love of the people, was one great cause, perhaps second only to their +wealth, of the hatred which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> that sovereign bore them, and of the savage +doom which he at last executed on the whole body.”</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] The Abbot Deodaet and his monks are singing in the choir of +their church about the burning alive of the Master of the Temple two +hundred years before. He has sinned the unknown sin, and sold the +influence of the Order to the Mohammedan. In a graphic and lurid manner +they picture the details of the execution. They have no pity for the +victim, and seem to be gloating over his sufferings. They imagine that the +victim calls in his agony on the Saviour whom he forsook and traitorously +sold; he cries now “Saviour, save Thou me!” The Face upon which he had +spat, the Face on the crucifix which he trampled upon, is revealed to the +burning man feature by feature; he now sees his awful Judge, his voice +dies, and John’s soul flares into the dark. Said the Abbot, “God help all +poor souls lost in the dark!”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—i., <i>Organ: plagal cadence</i>. The cadence formed when a subdominant +chord immediately precedes the final tonic chord. ii., <i>Emperor Aldabrod</i>, +probably the family name of one of the Greek emperors, but I can find +nothing about him. <i>Sultan Saladin</i>, of Egypt and Syria, whose portrait is +so faithfully drawn by Sir Walter Scott, in <i>The Talisman</i>. <i>Pope Clement +V.</i> (1305-14). Platina, in his life of this Pope, says only a few words on +the Templars: “He took off the Templars, who were fallen into very great +errors (as denying Christ, etc.), and gave their goods to the Knights of +Jerusalem”; <i>clavicithern</i>: an upright musical instrument like a +harpsichord. iv., <i>Laudes</i>: a Catholic service associated with <i>Matins</i>. +It consists, amongst other devotions, of five Psalms. vi., <i>Salvâ +reverentiâ</i>: “saving reverence,” like the “saving your presence” of the +Irishman. vii., <i>Sharon’s Rose: Solomon’s Song</i>, ii. 1. The rose was the +symbol of secrecy. viii., <i>leman</i>: a sweetheart of either sex.</p> + +<p><b>Hervé Riel.</b> (Published in the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>, March 1871. Browning +received £100 for it, which sum he gave to the Paris Relief Fund, to +provide food for the starving people after the siege of Paris. Published +in the <i>Pacchiarotto</i> volume in 1876.) The story told in the poem is +strictly historical. Hervé Riel was a Breton sailor of Le Croisic, who, +after the great naval battle of La Hogue in 1692, saved the remains of the +French fleet by skilfully piloting the ships through the shallows of the +Rance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> and thereby preventing their capture by the English. For this +splendid service he was permitted to ask whatever reward he chose to name. +The brave Breton asked merely for a whole day’s holiday, that he might +visit his wife, the Belle Aurore. Dr. Furnivall says: “The facts of the +story had been forgotten, and were denied at St. Malo, but the reports of +the French Admiralty were looked up, and the facts established. The war +between Louis XIV. and William III. was undertaken by the former with the +object of restoring James II. to the English throne. Admiral Turnville +engaged the English fleet off Cape La Hogue, and thereby wrecked the +French fleet and the cause of James. Apropos of Hervé Riel, Mr. Kenneth +Grahame says (<i>Browning Society’s Papers</i>, March 30th, 1883, p. 68*): ‘In +Rabelais’ <i>Pantagruel</i>, lib. IV., cap. xxi., Panurge says, ‘... quelque +fille de roy ... me fera exiger quelque magnificque cenotaphe, comme feit +Dido à son mary Sychee; ... Germain de Brie à Hervé, le nauctrier Breton,’ +etc. Then a note says, ‘En 1515, dans un combat naval, le Breton Hervé +Primoguet, qui commandoit <i>la Cordelière</i>, attacha son navire en feu au +vaisseau amiral ennemi <i>la Regente d’Angleterre</i>, et se fit sauter avec +lui. Germain de Brie ou Brice (<i>Brixius</i>) qui celebra ce trait heroique +dans un poeme latin, etoit un des amis de Rabelais.’ This was a forerunner +of Browning’s hero. The coincidence of names, etc., is curious.”</p> + +<p><b>Hippolytos.</b> (See <a href="#artemis"><span class="smcap">Artemis Prologizes</span></a>.) The <i>Hippolytus</i> of Euripides is the +chaste worshipper of Diana (Artemis), who will give no heed to Venus. His +step-mother Phædra loves him, and kills herself when she discovers he will +not succumb to her attentions.</p> + +<p><b>Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</b> See <a href="#prince"><span class="smcap">Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</span></a>.</p> +<p><a name="holy" id="holy"></a></p> +<p><b>Holy-Cross Day</b> [On which the Jews were forced to attend an annual +Christian Sermon in Rome]. (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Romances</i>, 1863; +<i>Dramatic Romances</i>, 1868.)—[<span class="smcap">The History.</span>] Holy Cross Day, or the +Festival of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, falls on September 14th +annually. It is kept in commemoration of the alleged miraculous appearance +of the Cross to Constantine in the sky at midday. The discovery of the +True Cross by St. Helen gave the first occasion of the festival, which was +celebrated under the title of the Exaltation of the Cross on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> September +14th, both by the Latins and Greeks, as early as in the fifth or sixth +centuries at Jerusalem, from the year 335. (See for the history of the +festival Butler’s <i>Lives of the Saints</i>, under September 14th.) The +particular details of this poem are not historical, but it is quite true +that such a sermon was preached to Jews from time to time, and that they +were driven to church to listen to it. A papal bull, issued in 1584, +formerly compelled the Jews to hear sermons at the church of <i>St. Angelo +in Pescheria</i>, close to the Jewish quarter. The Pescheria or fish market +adjoins the Ghetto, the quarter allotted to the Jews by Paul IV. This pope +compelled the Jews to wear yellow head-gear; and, among other oppressive +exactions, they had to provide the prizes for the horse-races at the +Carnival. In a note at the end of the poem Mr. Browning says, “The late +Pope abolished this bad business of the Sermon.” The conduct of the popes +towards the Jews varied according to the policy or humanity in the +character of the pontiff. “In 1442 Eugenius IV. deprived them of one of +their most valuable privileges, and endeavoured to interrupt their +amicable relations with the Christians: they were prohibited from eating +and drinking together. Jews were excluded from almost every profession, +were forced to wear a badge, to pay tithes; and Christians were forbidden +to bequeath legacies to Jews. The succeeding popes were more wise or more +humane. In Naples the celebrated Abarbanel became the confidential adviser +of Ferdinand the Bastard and Alphonso II.; they experienced a reverse, and +were expelled from that city by Charles V. The stern and haughty Pope Paul +IV. renewed the hostile edicts; he endeavoured to embarrass their traffic +by regulations which prohibited them from disposing of their pledges under +eighteen months; deprived them of the trade in corn and in every other +necessary of life, but left them the privilege of dealing in old clothes. +Paul first shut them up in their Ghetto, a confined quarter of the city, +out of which they were prohibited from appearing after sunset. Pius IV. +relaxed the severity of his predecessor. He enlarged the Ghetto, and +removed the restriction on their commerce. Pius V. expelled them from +every city in the papal territory except Rome and Ancona; he endured them +in those cities with the avowed design of preserving their commerce with +the East. Gregory XIII. pursued the same course: a bull was published, and +suspended<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> at the gate of the Jews’ quarter, prohibiting the reading of +the Talmud, blasphemies against Christ, or ridicule against the ceremonies +of the Church. All Jews above twelve years old were bound to appear at the +regular sermons delivered for their conversion; where it does not seem, +notwithstanding the authority of the pope and the eloquence of the +cardinals, that their behaviour was very edifying. At length the bold and +statesmanlike Sextus V. annulled at once all the persecuting or vexatious +regulations of his predecessors, opened the gates of every city in the +ecclesiastical dominions to these enterprising traders, secured and +enlarged their privileges, proclaimed toleration of their religion, +subjected them to the ordinary tribunals, and enforced a general and equal +taxation.” (Milman’s <i>History of the Jews</i>, book xxvii.)</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] Part of the satire of the poem is in the fictitious extract +from the <i>Diary by the Bishop’s Secretary</i>, 1600, prefixed to it. The +Bishop looks upon the matter as though he were compelling the Jews to come +in and partake of the gospel feast; he flatters himself that many +conversions have taken place in consequence of the enforcement of this +law, and that the Church was conferring a great blessing on the Jews by +permitting them to partake of the heavenly grace. What the Jews themselves +thought of the business is told in the poem. The speaker describes the +crowding of the church by the Israelites, packed like rats in a hamper or +pigs in a stye; to the life the poet hits off the behaviour of the +wretched audience, compelled to listen to that which they abhorred, and to +pretend to be converted, and to affect compunction and interest in +doctrines which they detested. Then the most serious part of the poem +begins: the speaker complains that the hand which gutted his purse would +throttle his creed, and for reward the men whom he has helped to their +sins would help him to their God; then the pathos deepens, and while the +pretended converts are going through the farce of acknowledging their +conversion in the sacristy, the speaker meditates on Rabbi Ben Ezra’s +<i>Song of Death</i>. The night the Jewish saint died he called his family +round him and said their nation in one point only had sinned, and he +invokes Christ if indeed He really were the Messiah, and they had given +Him the cross when they should have bestowed the crown, to have pity on +them and protect them from the followers of His teaching,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> whose life +laughs through and spits at their creed. Perhaps, indeed, they withstood +Christ then: it is at least Barabbas they withstand now! Let Rome make +amends for Calvary. Let Him remember their age-long torture, the infamy, +the Ghetto, the garb, the badge, the branding tool and scourge, and this +summons to conversion; by withstanding this they are but trying to wrest +Christ’s name from the devil’s crew.</p> + +<p><b>Home, D. D.</b>: the Spiritualist medium. See <a href="#sludge"><span class="smcap">Mr. Sludge the Medium</span></a>.</p> + +<p><b>Home Thoughts from Abroad.</b> (Published in <i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i>, +in <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, VII., 1845.) In praise of all the mighty +ravishment of our English spring, and the lovely sister months April and +May,—</p> + +<p class="poem">“May flowers bloom before May comes,<br /> +To cheer, a little, April’s sadness.”</p> + +<p>And nowhere, surely, are these months so delightful as in England! +Melon-flowers do not make up “for the buttercups, the little children’s +dower.” In many parts of Southern Europe the trees have all been +ruthlessly cut down, lest they should harbour birds. The absence of our +hedgerows does much to mar the beauty of a Continental landscape in +spring.</p> + +<p><b>Home Thoughts from the Sea.</b> (<i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i>, in <i>Bells and +Pomegranates</i>, VII., 1845.) Patriotic reflections on passing the Bay of +Trafalgar by one who, remembering how here England helped the Englishmen, +asks himself “How can I help England?”</p> + +<p><b>House.</b> (<i>Pacchiarotto, with other Poems</i>: 1876.) If we accept +Shakespeare’s Sonnets in their natural sense, as the best authorities say +we must, they open up to the public gaze passages in the life of the great +poet which those who love an ideal Shakespeare would rather have not +known. If, says Mr. Browning in the poem, Shakespeare unlocked his heart +with a sonnet-key, the less Shakespeare he! For his own part, he will do +nothing of the sort; and, though probably few men led purer and holier +lives from youth to manhood than Mr. Browning, he declines to admit the +vulgar gaze of the public into the secret chambers of his soul. In +earthquakes, indeed, the fronts of houses often fall, and expose the +private arrangements of the home to the impertinent observation of the +passer-by. In earthquakes this cannot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> be helped; but a writer may keep +his secrets to himself till an imprudent biographer gets hold of them to +make “copy” of. As a fact, all that the world is really concerned with in +Mr. Browning’s life and opinions can be gathered “by the spirit-sense” +from his works. The main idea of the poem is very similar to that of <i>At +the Mermaid</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Householder, The.</b> (<i>Fifine at the Fair.</i>) The Epilogue to the poem, +telling how Don Juan is at last united to his wife Elvire by death.</p> + +<p><b>How it strikes a Contemporary.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>: 1855.) The faculty of +observation is essential both to the poet and the spy. Lavater said that +“he alone is an acute observer who can observe minutely without being +observed.” The poet of Valladolid was mistaken by the vulgar mob for an +agent of the Government, because they were always catching him taking +“such cognisance of men and things.” His picture is sketched in a very few +lines; but these are sufficient to show us the very man, in his +scrutinising hat, crossing the Plaza Mayor of the dull and deserted city, +in which there was—one would think—as little life to interest a poet as +to employ a spy. We soon get to feel that the poet-evidences in the man’s +behaviour should have been sufficiently strong to save him from the +reproaches of his neighbours. The dog at his heels, the note he took of +any cruelty towards animals or cursing of a woman, the interest in men’s +simple trades, the poring over bookstalls, reveal to us the image of his +soul. However, his fellow-citizens in all these things thought they had +evidence of a chief inquisitor; and in the land of Spain, which for many +centuries cowered under the shadow of the most terrible weapon ever forged +against the liberties of man, inquisition and espionage were in the air. +Men were better judges of spies than of poets; they were more familiar +with them. So it was set down in their minds that all their doings were +sent by this recording prowler to the king. All the mysteries of the town +were traced to his influence: A’s surprising fate, B’s disappearing, C’s +mistress, all were traced to this “man about the streets.” But it was not +true, says the contemporary, that if you tracked the inquisitor home you +would find him revelling in luxury. On the contrary, his habits were +simple and abstemious; at ten he went to bed, after a modest repast and a +quiet game of cribbage with his maid. And when the poor, mysterious man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> +came to die in the clean garret, whose sides were lined by an invisible +guard who came to relieve him, there was no more need for that old coat +which had seen so much service. How suddenly the angels change the fashion +of our dress—and how much better they understand us than do our +neighbours!</p> + +<p><b>How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.</b> (<i>Dramatic Romances and +Lyrics</i>, in <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, 1845.) There is no actual basis in +history for the incidents of this poem, though there is no doubt that in +the war in the Netherlands such an adventure was likely enough. Three men +go off on horseback at their hardest, at moonset, from the city of Ghent, +to save their town—through Boom, and Düffeld, Mecheln, Aerschot, Hasselt, +Looz, Tongres, and Dalhem, to the ancient city of Aix. The hero of the +work was the good horse Roland, who was voted the last measure of wine the +city had left. Two of the horses dropped dead on the road, and the noble +Roland, bearing “the whole weight of the news,” with blind, distended eyes +and nostrils, fell just as he reached the market-place of Aix, resting his +head between the knees of his master.</p> + +<p><b>Humility.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) A flower-laden girl drops a careless bud +without troubling to pick it up. She has “enough for home.” “So give your +lover,” says the poet, “heaps of love,” he thinking himself happy in +picking up a stray bud, “and not the worst,” which she has gladdened him +by letting fall.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>“I am a Painter who cannot Paint.”</b> (<i>Pippa Passes.</i>) Lutwyche’s speech +begins with these words.</p> + +<p><b>“I go to prove my Soul.”</b> (<i>Paracelsus.</i>) The words of the hero of the poem +when he starts on his career.</p> + +<p><b>Ibn-Ezra</b> == the historical person who forms the subject of the poem <span class="smcap">Rabbi +Ben Ezra</span> (<i>q.v.</i>)</p> + +<p><b>Imperante Augusto Natus Est.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) In the reign of Augustus +Octavianus Cæsar, second emperor of Rome, two Romans are entering the +public bath together, and while the bath is being heated they converse in +the vestibule about the great services which Octavianus has rendered to +the city and the empire, and one of them refers to the panegyric on the +Emperor read out in public on the previous day by Lucius Varius Rufus. He +had praised the Emperor as a god, and the speaker goes on to say how he +once met Octavianus as he was going about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> city disguised as a beggar. +At the end of the poem is the story told by Suidas, the author of a Greek +lexicon, who lived before the twelfth century, and who was probably a +Christian, as his work deals with Scriptural as well as pagan subjects. +This myth narrates the visit of Augustus Cæsar to the oracle at Delphos. +“When Augustus had sacrificed,” said Suidas, “he demanded of the Pythia +who should succeed him, and the oracle replied:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“‘A Hebrew slave, holding control over the blessed gods,<br /> +Orders me to leave this home and return to the underworld.<br /> +Depart in silence, therefore, from our altars.’”</p> + +<p>Nicephorus relates that when Augustus returned to Rome after receiving +this reply, he erected an altar in the Capitol with the inscription “Ara +Primogeniti Dei.” On this spot now stands the Church of S. Maria in +Aracœli, a very ancient building, mentioned in the ninth century as S. +Maria de Capitolio. The present altar also incloses an ancient altar +bearing the inscription <i>Ara Primogeniti Dei</i>, which is said to have been +the one erected here by Augustus. According to the legend of the twelfth +century, this was the spot where the Sibyl of Tibur appeared to the +Emperor, whom the Senate proposed to elevate to the rank of a god, and +revealed to him a vision of the Virgin and her Son. This was the origin of +the name “Church of the Altar of Heaven.” It is historical that Augustus +used to go about Rome disguised as a beggar. Jeremy Taylor’s account of +events in the Roman world, as recorded in his <i>Life of Christ</i>, sec. iv., +will serve as a good introduction to the historical matters referred to in +the poem:—“For when all the world did expect that in Judæa should be born +their prince, and that the incredulous world had in their observation +slipped by their true prince, because He came not in pompous and secular +illustrations; upon that very stock Vespasian (Sueton. <i>In Vitâ Vesp.</i> 4; +Vide etiam Cic., <i>De Divin.</i>) was nursed up in hope of the Roman empire, +and that hope made him great in designs; and they being prosperous, made +his fortunes correspond to his hopes, and he was endeared and engaged upon +that future by the prophecy which was never intended him by the prophet. +But the future of the Roman monarchy was not great enough for this prince +designed by the old prophets. And therefore it was not without the +influence of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> Divinity that his predecessor Augustus, about the time of +Christ’s nativity, refused to be called “lord” (<i>Oros.</i> vi. 22). Possibly +it was to entertain the people with some hopes of restitution of their +liberties, till he had griped the monarchy with a stricter and faster +hold; but the Christians were apt to believe that it was upon the prophecy +of a sibyl foretelling the birth of a greater prince, to whom all the +world should pay adoration; and that prince was about that time born in +Judæa. (Suidas <i>In histor. verb. “Augustus.”</i>) The oracle, which was dumb +to Augustus’ question, told him unasked, the devil having no tongue +permitted him but one to proclaim that ‘an Hebrew child was his lord and +enemy.’” Octavianus chose the title of Augustus on religious grounds, +having assumed the exalted position of Chief Pontiff. The epithet Augustus +was one which no man had borne before—a name only applied to sacred +things. The rites of the gods were termed august, their temples were +august, and the word itself was derived from the auguries. The cult of the +Cæsar began to assume a ritual and a priesthood at the very time when the +approaching birth of Christ was to destroy the empire and its religious +belief. Mrs. Jameson, in her <i>Legends of the Madonna</i>, p. 197, says: +“According to an ancient legend, the Emperor Augustus Cæsar repaired to +the sibyl Tiburtina, to inquire whether he should consent to allow himself +to be worshipped with divine honours, which the Senate had decreed to him. +The Sibyl, after some days of meditation, took the Emperor apart and +showed him an altar; and above the altar, in the opening heavens, and in a +glory of light, he beheld a beautiful Virgin holding an infant in her +arms, and at the same time a voice was heard saying, ‘This is the altar of +the Son of the living God!’ whereupon Augustus caused an altar to be +erected on the Capitoline Hill with this inscription, <i>Ara Primogeniti +Dei</i>; and on the same spot, in later times, was built the church called +the <i>Ara Cœli</i>—well known, with its flight of one hundred and +twenty-four marble steps, to all who have visited Rome. This particular +prophecy of the Tiburtine sybil to Augustus rests on some very antique +traditions, pagan as well as Christian. It is supposed to have suggested +the ‘Pollio’ of Virgil, which suggested the ‘Messiah’ of Pope. It is +mentioned by writers of the third and fourth centuries. A very rude but +curious bas-relief, preserved in the Church of the Ara Cœli, is perhaps +the oldest representation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> extant. The Church legend assigns to it a +fabulous antiquity; and it must be older than the twelfth century, as it +is alluded to by writers of that period. Here the Emperor Augustus kneels +before the Madonna and Child, and at his side is the sibyl Tiburtina +pointing upwards.” Of course, such a subject became a favourite one with +artists. There is a famous fresco on the subject by Baldassare Peruzzi at +Siena, Fonte Giusta. There is also a picture dealing with it at Hampton +Court, by Pietro da Cortona. St. Augustine (<i>De Civitate Dei</i>, lib. +xviii., cap. 23) describes the prophecy of Sibylla Erythrea concerning +Christ:—“Flaccianus, a learned and eloquent man (one that had been +Consul’s deputy), being in a conference with us concerning Christ, showed +us a Greek book, saying they were this sibyl’s verses; wherein, in one +place, he showed us a sort of verses so composed that, the first letter of +every verse being taken, they all made these words: +<ins class="correction" title="Iêsous Christos, Theou uios sôtêr">᾽Ιησους +Χριστος, Θεου υιος σωτὴρ</ins> +(Jesus Christ, Son of God, the Saviour).” Some +think this was the Cumean Sibyl. Lactantius also has prophecies of Christ +out of some sybilline books, but he does not give the reference. The Latin +hymn sung in the Masses for the Dead, and well known as the <i>Dies Iræ</i>, +has this verse:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Dies iræ, dies illa,<br /> +Solvet sæclum in favilla,<br /> +Teste David cum Sibylla.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Publius</i>: not historical. <i>Lucius Varius Rufus</i> was a tragic +poet, the friend of Virgil and Horace. He wrote a panegyric on the Emperor +Augustus, to which Mr. Browning refers in the opening lines of the poem. +<i>Little Flaccus</i> was Horace, who declared that Varius was the only poet +capable of singing the praises of M. Agrippa. His tragedy <i>Thyestes</i> is +warmly praised by Quintillian. <i>Epos</i>: heroic poem. <i>Etruscan kings.</i> The +Rasena or Etrusci inhabited Etruria, in that part of Italy north of Rome. +The kings were elected for life. Roman families were proud to trace back +their ancestry to the Etruscan kings. <i>Mæcenas</i>: patron of letters and +learned men, the adviser of Augustus. He was descended from the ancient +kings of Etruria. <i>Quadrans</i>: a Roman coin, worth about half a farthing of +our money. The price of a bath, paid to the keeper of the public bagnio. +<i>Thermæ</i>, the baths. <i>Suburra</i>: a street in Rome, where the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> dissolute +Romans resorted. <i>Quæstor</i>, the office of Quæstor, under the empire, was +the first step to higher positions. <i>Ædiles</i>, magistrates. The baths were +under their superintendence. <i>Censores</i>, officials whose duty it was to +take the place of the consuls in superintending the five-yearly census. +<i>Pol!</i> an oath. By Pollux! <i>Quarter-as</i>: in Cicero’s time, the as was +equal to rather less than a halfpenny. <i>Strigil</i>, a flesh brush. +<i>Oil-drippers</i>, used after bathing.</p> + +<p><b>In a Balcony.</b> (Published in <i>Men and Women</i>: 1855.) A drama which is +incomplete. Concentrated into an hour, we have the crises of three lives, +which, passing through the fire, reveal a tragedy which has for its scene +the balcony of a palace. A Queen has arrived at the age of fifty with her +strong craving for love still unsatisfied. Constance, a cousin of the +Queen and a lady of her court, is loved by Norbert, who is in the Queen’s +service. He has served the State well and successfully, and the Queen has +set her heart upon him. Norbert is advised by Constance to act +diplomatically, and pretend that he has served the Queen only for her +sake. He must not permit her to see the love which he has for the woman to +whom he has pledged himself. The Queen, who is already married in form, +though not in heart, offers to dissolve the union, in an interview which +she has with Constance, and shows how eagerly she grasps at the prospect +of a new life which opens up before her. Constance is prepared to +sacrifice herself for Norbert and the Queen. She seeks Norbert, and +reveals to him the real state of affairs. The Queen discovers the lovers, +and hears Norbert declare his love for Constance, which she tries to +divert to the Queen. At once the Queen sees all her hopes dashed to the +ground. She says nothing; but having left the balcony, the music of the +ball, which is proceeding within, suddenly ceases, the footsteps of the +guard approach, the lovers feel their impending doom; but one passionate +moment unites them in heart for ever, and they are led away to death.</p> + +<p><b>In a Gondola.</b> (<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, in <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, No. III.: +1842.) In the fourth book of Forster’s <i>Life of Dickens</i> is a letter which +Dickens wrote to Maclise, from which we learn that Browning wrote the +first verse of this poem, beginning, “I send my heart up to thee,” to +express Maclise’s subject in the Academy catalogue. Dickens says, in a +letter to the artist: “In a certain picture called the ‘Serenade,’ for +which Browning wrote<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> that verse in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, you, O Mac, +painted a sky. If you ever have occasion to paint the Mediterranean, let +it be exactly of that colour.” In the poem a lover and his mistress are +singing in a gondola—conscious of their danger, for the interview is a +stolen one, and the three who are referred to are perhaps husband, father, +and brother, or assassins hired by one of them. The chills of approaching +death avail not to cool the ardour of their passion in this precious hour +in the gondola. They feel they have lived, let death come when it will; +and as they glide past church and palace, reality is concentrated in their +boat, the shams and illusions of life are on the banks. The lover is +stabbed as he hands the lady ashore. He craves one more kiss, and dies. He +scorns not his murderers, for they have never lived:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">“But I</span><br /> +Have lived indeed, and so—can die!”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Castelfranco</i> (born 1478) is Giorgione, one of the greatest +Italian painters. His father belonged to the family of the Barbarella, of +Castelfranco in the Trevisan. For his Life see <span class="smcap">Vasari</span>. <i>Schidone</i> was an +Italian painter of the sixteenth century. <i>Haste-thee-Luke</i> is the English +of <i>Luca-fà-presto</i> (“Luke work-fast”), nickname of <i>Luca Giordano</i> +(1632—1705), a Neapolitan painter. His nickname was given to him, not on +account of his rapid method of working, but in consequence of his poor and +greedy father urging him to increased exertions by constantly exclaiming +“Luca, fà presto.” The youth obeyed his father, and would actually not +leave off work for his meals, but was fed by his father’s hand while he +laboured on with the brush. <i>Giudecca</i>: a great canal of Venice. “<i>Lido’s +wet, accursed graves</i>.” Byron desired to be buried at Lido. Ancient Jewish +tombs are there, moss-grown and half covered with sand. The place is +desolate and very gloomy. <i>Lory</i>: a species of parrot.</p> + +<p><b>Inapprehensiveness.</b> (<i>Asolando.</i>) The ruin referred to in the fourth line +is that of the old palace of Queen Cornaro, who, having been driven out of +her kingdom of Cyprus, kept up a shadow of royalty here, with Cardinal +Bembo as her secretary. It was he who told the story, in his <i>Asolani</i>. +Mr. Browning thought that there was no view in all Italy to compare with +that from the tower of the old palace. Two friends stand side by side +contemplating the scene. The lady’s attention is attracted to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> a +chance-rooted wind-sown tree on a turret, and to certain weed-growths on a +wall. She is inapprehensive that by her side stands an incarnation of +dormant passion, needing nothing but a look from her to burst into immense +life. So little does one soul know of another. The Vernon Lee in the last +line is a well-known authoress, Violet Paget, best known perhaps by her +work entitled Euphorion.</p> + +<p><b>In a Year.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1868.) Finely +contrasts the constancy of a woman’s love with the inconstancy of man’s. +Love is not love unless it be “an ever fixed mark.” In exchange for the +man’s love, the woman gave health, ease, beauty, and youth, and was +content to give “more life and more” till all were gone, and think the +sacrifice too little. That was the woman’s “ever fixed mark.” The man asks +calmly: “Can’t we touch these bubbles, then, but they break?”</p> + +<p><b>Incident of the French Camp.</b> (<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, in <i>Bells and +Pomegranates</i>, III.: 1842.) Ratisbon (German Regensburg) is an ancient and +famous city of Bavaria, on the right bank of the Danube. It has endured no +less than seventeen sieges since the tenth century, accompanied by +bombardments, the last of which took place in 1809, when Napoleon stormed +the town, which was obstinately defended by the Austrians. Some two +hundred houses and much of the suburbs were destroyed. As the Emperor was +watching the storming, a rider flew from the city full gallop, saluting +the Emperor. He told him they had taken the city. The chief’s eye flashed, +but presently saddened as he looked on the brave youth who had brought the +news. “You are wounded!” “Nay, I’m killed, sire!” and the lad fell dead.</p> + +<p><b>Inn Album, The.</b> (1875.) The chief features of this tragedy, “where every +character is either mean, or weak, or vile,” are taken from real life. It +is “the story of the wrecked life of a girl who loved her base seducer as +a god.” This curious study in mental pathology opens with a description of +the visitors’ book of a country inn, filled with the usual idiotic entries +which are found in such books. The shabby-genteel parlour of the inn is +occupied by two men playing at cards—a young and a middle-aged man. The +elder, a cultivated and accomplished <i>roué</i>, has just lost to the younger +man ten thousand pounds at play. The loser has hitherto been pretty +uniformly the winner; but his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> companion, who has succeeded in plucking +the pigeon, has not deceived him. He has seen through his pretences, and +is fully aware that he is accompanied on this trip to the village where +the inn in which they are staying is situated, purely for the chance it +offered of winning money from him for the last time before his approaching +marriage. The polished snob who has won is inclined to be satirical at his +companion’s expense, and loftily desires him to consider the debt as +cancelled: he is a millionaire, and can afford to do without it. This the +elder man, with perfect politeness, declines, and assures him that it +shall be paid. They leave the inn. The young man is to visit his intended +bride; but he dare not introduce his companion, as his reputation has made +it impossible to do so. As they walk towards the station the young man +inquires how it is that his friend, with all his advantages in life, is in +every way a failure. He then learns that his chances were missed four +years ago, when he should have married a woman with whom he had certain +relations, and who could have saved him from his aimless and wayward life. +He had won the heart of a lofty-minded girl, had seduced her, and, though +he had not intended marriage at first, had offered it. When she discovered +that he had betrayed her without thinking of marrying her, she rejected +his proposal, which had come too late to appease her wounded pride, and +had settled down as the wife of an obscure country parson, old and poor. +Weakly, she had neglected to secure her safety by telling her husband the +story of her past, and in consequence was liable at any moment to be the +victim of her seducer for the second time. The scoundrel had led the life +of a woman-wrecker, and his love for his victim had turned to hate, as he +told his companion, because she had disdained to save him from himself. +When the elder man has unburdened himself, then the younger tells his +story too. He has loved a peerless woman, who refused him, as she was +vowed to another. There are points in his story which suggest to him that +they have both loved the same woman, though he says that could not be, as +he has heard that she married the man of whom she spoke. The young man now +parts from his companion, and bids him return to the inn, there to await +him for an hour, while he tries to induce his aunt to receive him as her +guest. In the third part of the poem we are introduced to two women—an +elder and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> younger—who are talking in the parlour of the inn, just left +vacant by the departure of the two card-players. The younger is the girl +whom the young man of the story is to marry; and she has begged her old +friend, the elder woman, to meet her, that she may see the man whom she is +to marry. She has come by the train, has been met at the station by her +young friend, and they adjourn to the little inn to talk matters over +quietly. While the younger woman is absent from the parlour, and the elder +is engaged in turning over the leaves of the visitors’ book, she is +terror-stricken at seeing her old lover enter the room. The lady is the +clergyman’s wife, and the man is the old <i>roué</i> who is waiting for his +friend who has won his ten thousand pounds. She believes the whole affair +is a scheme to entrap her, and bitterly reproaches the man who has ruined +her life, and even now must drag her from her retirement for further +persecution. He indulges in recriminations, pretending that it is his life +which she has wrecked, and that she is inspired with hatred for him though +he has not ceased to love her. She thanks God that she had grace to hurl +contempt at the contemptible:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“Rent away</span><br /> +By treason from my rightful pride of place,<br /> +I was not destined to the shame below.<br /> +A cleft had caught me.”</p> + +<p>Revealing to him the bitterness of her position, hanging, as it were, over +the brink of a yawning precipice, his old love for her is reawakened, and +he kneels to the injured woman. He entreats her to fly with him to</p> + +<p class="poem">“A certain refuge, solitary home<br /> +To hide in.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></span><br /> +Come with me, love, loved once, loved only, come,<br /> +Blend loves there!”</p> + +<p>But the woman sees through him, and says:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Your smiles, your tears, prayers, curses move alike<br /> +My crowned contempt.”</p> + +<p>And while he is kneeling there, in bursts the young man, who has returned +to say that his aunt declines to meet him. He is startled to see the lady +to whom he had vainly offered his heart<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> four years ago, and rushes to the +conclusion that he too has been entrapped for some purpose. The fifth +section of the poem opens with a scornful denunciation of the trick which +he considers stands confessed in the scene which he beholds. “O you two +base ones, male and female! Sir!” he exclaims; “half an hour ago I held +your master for my best of friends, and four years since you seemed my +heart’s one love!” The woman explains to him that she has been sent for +simply to counsel his cousin on the question of her proposed marriage. She +finds him innocent save in folly, and will so report. The elder man she +bids to leave the youth, and leave unsullied the heart she rescues and +would lay beside another’s. While she speaks the devil is tempting him to +one more crime. He will turn affairs to his own advantage. He writes some +lines in the album before him, closes the book, hands it to the indignant +woman, and begs her to leave him alone with his friend while he discusses +the situation. In the book which she receives he has written a note to her +telling her that her young lover is still faithful to her, and threatening +her that if she does not receive him on familiar terms the story of her +past shame shall be exposed to her husband. Left alone with the young man, +he opens out a scheme of infernal ingenuity, whereby at once he will pay +his gambling debt and avenge himself for the contempt and scorn with which +his unhappy victim has once more received the offer of his affection. He +proposes to barter the woman who has unwittingly put herself into his +power—to compel her to yield herself up to the man in exchange for the +ten thousand pounds he cannot otherwise pay. He explains to him that she +has deluded her parson husband—would have yielded to himself had he not +determined to substitute his friend. “Make love to her; pick no phrase; +prevent all misconception: there’s the fruit to pluck or let alone at +pleasure!” He leaves the room, and in superb composure the intended victim +enters. Captive of wickedness, she warns him: “Back, in God’s name!” “Sin +no more!” she cries: “I am past sin now.” She implores him to break the +fetters which have bound him to the evil influence which has destroyed her +life. Her noble bearing under the terrible circumstances assures him of +her innocence of any complicity in a trick. He tells her the man has told +heaps of lies about her, which he had not believed. Blushing and +stumbling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> in his speech, he contrives to let her know the use that was to +be made of her. Not knowing if there were truth in what was told him of +her marriage, he offers her his hand if she is free to accept it,—any +way, to take him as her friend. She gives him her hand. At that moment the +adversary returns. “You accept him?” he asks. “Till death us do part!” she +answers. “But before death parts, read here the marriage licence which +makes us one.” He then displays the awful words addressed to her in the +fatal page she holds in her hand. She reads, and when she comes to the +last line—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Consent—you stop my mouth, the only way”—</p> + +<p>turning to the young man, she pitifully asks, “How could mortal ‘stop +it’?” “So!” he cries. “A tiger-flash, and death’s out and on him!” In the +closing scene the wretched, hunted woman dies. She has secured her +vindicator’s acquittal on the charge of murder by writing in the album +that he has saved her from the villain, righteously slain, who would have +outraged her. As she dies the young girl who was to have married the +defender of the dead woman appears on the scene, and the tragedy closes. +In <i>Notes and Queries</i> for March 25th, 1876, Dr. F. J. Furnivall thus +mentions the incidents on which the poem is based: “The story told by Mr. +Browning in this poem is, in its main outlines, a real one—that of Lord +De Ros, once a friend of the great Duke of Wellington, and about whom +there is much in the <i>Greville Memoirs</i>. The original story was, of +course, too repulsive to be adhered to in all its details—of, first, the +gambling lord producing the portrait of the lady he had seduced and +abandoned, and offering his expected dupe, but real beater, an +introduction to the lady as a bribe to induce him to wait for payment of +the money he had won; secondly, the eager acceptance of the bribe by the +younger gambler, and the suicide of the lady from horror at the base +proposal of her old seducer. The story made a great sensation in London +over thirty years ago. Readers of <i>The Inn Album</i> know how grandly Mr. +Browning has lifted the base young gambler, through the renewal of that +old love, which the poet has invented, into one of the most pathetic +creations of modern time, and has spared the base old <i>roué</i> the +degradation of the attempt to sell the love which was once his delight, +and which, in the poem, he seeks to regain, with feelings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> one must hope +are real, as the most prized possession of his life. As to the lady, the +poet has covered her with no false glory or claim on our sympathy. From +the first she was a law unto herself; she gratified her own impulses, and +she reaped the fruit of this. Her seducer has made his confession of his +punishment, and has attributed, instead of misery, comfort and ease to +her. She has to tell him, and the young man who has given her his whole +heart, that the supposed comfort and ease have been to her simply hell; +and tell, too, why she cannot accept the true love that, under other +conditions, would have been her way back to heaven and life. What, then, +can be her end? No higher power has she ever sought. Self-contained, she +has sinned and suffered. She can do no more. By her own hand she ends her +life; and the curtain falls on the most profoundly touching and most +powerful poem of modern times.” The young girl of the poem is the +invention of the poet; the other characters took part in the actual +tragedy. In his <i>Memoirs</i>, first series, Greville mentions Lord De Ros +from time to time, and they travelled together in Italy. Under date of +“Newmarket, March 29th, 1839,” Greville makes the following entry in the +first volume of the second series of his <i>Memoirs</i>, concerning the death +of his friend: “Poor De Ros expired last night soon after twelve, after a +confinement of two or three months from the time he returned to England. +His end was enviably tranquil, and he bore his protracted sufferings with +astonishing fortitude and composure. Nothing ruffled his temper or +disturbed his serenity. His faculties were unclouded, his memory +retentive, his perceptions clear to the last; no murmur of impatience ever +escaped him, no querulous word, no ebullition of anger or peevishness; he +was uniformly patient, mild, indulgent, deeply sensible of kindness and +attention, exacting nothing, considerate of others and apparently +regardless of self, overflowing with affection and kindness of manner and +language to all around him, and exerting all his moral and intellectual +energies with a spirit and resolution that never flagged till within a few +hours of his dissolution, when nature gave way, and he sank into a +tranquil unconsciousness, in which life gently ebbed away. Whatever may +have been the error of his life, he closed the scene with a philosophical +dignity not unworthy of a sage, and with a serenity and sweetness of +disposition of which Christianity itself could afford no more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> shining or +delightful example. In him I have lost, ‘half lost before,’ the last and +greatest of the friends of my youth; and I am left a more solitary and a +sadder man.”</p> + +<p><b>Instans Tyrannus</b> == The Threatening Tyrant. (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; +<i>Dramatic Romances</i>, 1868.) The title of this poem was suggested by +Horace’s Ode on the Just Man (<i>Od.</i> iii. 3. 1):—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Justum et tenacem propositi virum,<br /> +Non civium ardor prava jubentium,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Non vultus instantis tyranni,” etc.</span></p> + +<p>(‘The just man, firm to his purpose, is not to be shaken from his fixed +resolve by the fury of a mob laying upon him their impious behests, nor by +the frown of a threatening tyrant, etc.’) These lines are said to have +been repeated by the celebrated De Witte while he was subject to torture. +When men or causes are suppressed by tyranny, the tyrant knows well in his +heart that force alone, and not justice, enables him to crush opposition +to his will; and he is the first to see, even if he do not acknowledge, +the Divine Arm thrust forth from the heavens to protect his victims and +avenge their wrongs. From some undefined cause a poor, contemptible man +was the object of a tyrant’s hate: he struck him, tried to bribe him, +tempted his blood and his flesh. Having tried every way to extinguish the +man, he contrived thunder above and mine below him to destroy, as a rat in +a hole, this friendless wretch, when suddenly the man saw God’s arm across +the sky. The man</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">—“caught at God’s skirts, and prayed!</span><br /> +So, <i>I</i> was afraid!”</p> + +<p>[Archdeacon Farrar refers the incidents of this poem to the persecution of +the early Christians.—<i>Browning Society Papers</i>, Pt VII., p. 22*.]</p> + +<p><b>In Three Days.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1868.) A lover +anticipates that in three days he shall see his lady. He is aware that +three days may change his future, as has often been changed the history of +the world in the time. He knows, too, that though three days may cast no +shadow in his way, still the years to follow may bring changes and chances +of unimagined end. He reiterates that in three days he shall see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> her, and +fear of all that the future may have in store is absorbed in the blissful +anticipation.</p> + +<p><b>Italian in England, The.</b> (<i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i>, in <i>Bells and +Pomegranates</i>, No. VII., 1845.) The incident is not historical, though +something of the kind might well have happened to any of the Italian +patriots in their revolt against the Austrian domination. A prominent +Italian patriot is hiding from the Austrian oppressors of his country +after an unsuccessful rising. He has taken refuge in England, and the poem +tells how the Austrians pursued him everywhere, and how he would have been +taken if a peasant girl, to whom he confessed his identity, had not +preferred humanity and the love of her country to the gold she might have +earned by delivering him to his pursuers. [Mazzini must have gone through +many such experiences, and the poem was one which he very highly +appreciated.] Hunted by the Austrian bloodhounds, hiding in an old +aqueduct, up to the neck in ferns for three days, the pangs of hunger +induced him to attract the attention of a peasant girl going to her work +with her companions: he threw his glove, to strike her as she passed. +Without giving any sign that could acquaint her friends with her object, +she glanced round and saw him beckon; breaking a branch from a tree, so as +to recognise the spot, she picked up the glove and rejoined her party. In +an hour she returned alone. He had not intended to confide in the woman, +but her noble face led him to confess he was the man on whose head a great +price was set. He felt sure he would not be betrayed. He bade her bring +paper, pen and ink, and carry his letter to Padua, to the cathedral; then +proceed to a certain confessional which he mentions, and whisper his +password. If it was answered in the terms he named, then she was to give +the letter to the priest. She promised to do as he desired. In three days +more she appeared again at his hiding-place. She told him she had a lover +who could do much to aid him. She brought him drink and food. In four days +the scouts gave up the search, and went in another direction. At last help +arrived from his friends at Padua. He kissed the maiden’s hand, and laid +his own in blessing on her head. When he took the boat from the seashore, +on the night of his escape, she followed him to the vessel. He left, and +never saw her more. And now that he is safe in England, he reflects<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> that +it is long since he had a thought for aught but Italy. Those whom he had +trusted, those to whom he had looked for help, had made terms with the +oppressors of his country; his presence in his own land would be awkward +for his brethren. But there is one “in that dear, lost land” whose calm +smile he would like to see; he would like to know of her future, her +children’s ages and their names, to kiss once more the hand that saved +him, and once again to lay his own in blessing on her head, and go his +way. “But to business!”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Metternich</i>: the great Austrian diplomatist, and enemy of Italian +independence. <i>Charles</i>: Carlo Alberto, King of Sardinia. He resorted to +severe measures against the party known as “Young Italy,” founded by +Mazzini. He died in 1849. <i>Duomo</i>, the cathedral. <i>Tenebræ</i> == darkness: +the office of matins and lauds, for the three last days in Holy Week. +Fifteen lighted candles are placed on a triangular stand, and at the +conclusion of each psalm one is put out, till a single candle is left at +the top of the triangle. The extinction of the other candles is said to +figure the growing darkness of the world at the time of the Crucifixion. +The last candle (which is not extinguished, but hidden behind the altar +for a few moments) represents Christ over whom Death could not prevail.</p> + +<p><b>Ivàn Ivànovitch.</b> (<i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, First Series, 1879.) Ivàn Ivànovitch, +or John Jackson, as his name would be in English, was skilled in the use +of the axe, as the Russian workman is. Employed one day in his yard, in +the village where he lived, suddenly over the snow-covered landscape came +a burst of sledge bells, the sound of horse’s hoofs galloping; then a +sledge appeared drawn by a horse, which fell down as it reached the place. +What seemed a frozen corpse lay in the vehicle: it was Dmitri’s wife, +without Dmitri and the children, who left the village a month ago. They +restore the woman, who utters a loud and long scream, followed by sobs and +gasps, as, with returning life, she takes in the fact that she is safe. +“But yesterday!” she cries. “Oh, God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, +cannot You bring again my blessed yesterday? I had a child on either knee, +and, dearer than the two, a babe close to my heart. Intercede, sweet +Mother, with thy Son Almighty—undo all done last night!” Then she reminds +them how, a month ago, she and her children had accompanied her husband, +who had gone to work at a church<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> many a league away: five of them in that +sledge—Ivàn, herself, and three children. The work finished, they were +about to return, when the village caught fire. Then Ivàn hurried his +family into the sledge, and bade them hasten home while he remained to +combat the flames. He bade them wrap round them every rug, and leave +Droug, the old horse, to find his way home. They start; soon the night +comes on; the moon rises. They pass a pine forest: a noise startles the +horse—his ears go back, he snuffs, snorts, then plunges madly. Pad, pad, +behind them are the wolves in pursuit—an army of them; every pine tree +they pass adds a fiend to the pack; the eldest lead the way, their eyes +green-glowing brass. The horse does his best; but the first of the +band—that Satan-face—draws so near, his white teeth gleam, he is on the +sledge—“perhaps her hands relaxed her grasp of her boy,” she says; “for +he was gone.” The cursed crew fight for their share; they are too busy to +pursue. She urges the horse to increased exertion. Alas! the pack is after +them again; “Satan-face” is first, as before, and ravening for more. The +mother fights with the monster, but the next boy is gone—plucked from the +arms she clasped round him for protection. Another respite, while the +fiends dispute for their share; but, as they fly over the snow, the leader +of the pack tells his companions that their food is escaping; he leaves +them to pick the bones, and—pad, pad!—is after the sledge again. All +fight’s in vain: the green brass points, the dread fiend’s eyes, pierce to +the woman’s brain—she falls on her back in the sledge; but, wedging in +and in, past her neck, her breasts, her heart, Satan-face is away with her +last, her baby boy. She remembered no more. And now she is at +home—childless, but with her life. And Ivàn the woodsman sternly looks; +the woman kneels. Solemnly he raises his axe, and one blow falls—headless +she kneels on still—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 11em;">“It had to be.</span><br /> +I could no other: God it was bade ‘Act for Me!’”</p> + +<p>He wipes his axe on a strip of bark, and returns silently to his work. The +Jews, the gipsies, the whole crew, seethe and simmer, but say no word. +Then comes the village priest, and with him the commune’s head, Stàrosta, +wielder of life and death; they survey the corpse, they hear the story. +The priest proclaimed</p> + +<p class="poem">“Ivàn Ivànovitch God’s servant!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>“Amen!” murmured the crowd, and “left acquittal plain adjudged.” They told +Ivàn he was free. “How otherwise?” he asked.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Ivàn Ivànovitch</i> is “an imaginary personage, who is the +embodiment of the peculiarities of the Russian people, in the same way as +<i>John Bull</i> represents the English and <i>Johnny Crapaud</i> the French +character. He is described as a lazy, good-natured person.” (<i>Webster’s +Dict.</i>) <i>A verst</i> is equal to about two-thirds of an English mile. +<i>Droug</i>: the horse’s name means friend, and is pronounced “drook.” <i>Pope</i> +should not be spelled with a capital; it is merely the Russian term for +priest—<i>papa</i>, father. <i>Pomeschìk</i> means a landed proprietor. <i>Stàrosta</i>, +the old man of the village, the overseer.</p> + +<p>This is a variant of a Russian wolf-story which, in one form or another, +we all heard in our childhood. The poet visited Russia in the course of +his great tour in Europe in 1833, and he has told the familiar tale of the +unhappy mother who saved her own life by throwing one after another of her +children to the pursuing wolves, with all the local colouring and fidelity +to the facts to which we are accustomed in the poet’s work. Not merely as +a tale dramatically told are we to consider the poem; but—as might be +expected—we must look upon it as a problem in mental pathology. The +superficial observer, looking upon the mere facts, and not troubling very +much about the psychology of the case, will at once condemn the unhappy +mother, and execute her as promptly in his own mind as did Ivàn Ivànovitch +with his axe. But rough and ready judgments, however necessary in the +conduct of our daily life, are frequently unsound; and the voice of the +people is about the last voice that should be listened to in such a case +as this. If a man who is usually considered a sane and decent member of +society suddenly does some abnormal and outrageous thing, we at once ask +ourselves, “Is he mad?” If a mother, any mother, suddenly violates the +maternal instinct in a flagrant manner, we immediately suspect her of +mental derangement. The maternal instinct is the strongest thing in +nature; the ties which bind a woman to her offspring are stronger, in the +ordinary healthy mother, than the ties which bind a man to decent and +ordinary observance of the laws of society. Old Bailey judgments are not +to be employed in such a case as this; it is one for a specialist. And we +apprehend there is not a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> competent authority in brain troubles living who +would not acquit Louscha on the ground of insanity.</p> + +<p><b>Ixion.</b> (<i>Jocoseria</i>, 1883.) Ixion, in Greek mythology, was the son of +Phlegyas and king of the Lapithæ. He married Dia, daughter of Deioneus, +and promised to make his father-in-law certain bridal presents. To avoid +the fulfilment of his promise, he invited him to a banquet, and when +Deioneus came to the feast he cruelly murdered him. No one would purify +him for the murder, and he was consequently shunned by all mankind. Zeus, +however, took pity on him, and took him up to heaven and there purified +him. At the table of the gods he fell in love with Hera (Juno), and +afterwards attempted to seduce her. Ixion was banished from heaven, and by +the command of Zeus was tied by Mercury to a wheel which perpetually +revolved in the air. Ixion, condemned to eternal punishment, is in the +poem described as defying Zeus after the manner of Prometheus. It is +impossible to doubt that Mr. Browning intends to represent the popular +idea of God and his own attitude towards the doctrine of eternal +punishment. It is, however, only the caricature of God created by popular +misconception at which the poet aims, whatever may have to be said of his +opinions concerning eschatology. As Caliban thought there was a <i>Quiet</i> +above Setebos, so Ixion appeals to the Potency over Zeus. The truth is +intended that both unsophisticated man in the savage state and the highest +type of cultured man agree in their theological beliefs so far as to +acknowledge a Supreme Being of a higher character than the anthropomorphic +God of popular worship. Of course both Caliban and Ixion talk Browningese. +Ixion is represented as comparing himself with his torturer:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">“Behold us!</span><br /> +Here the revenge of a God, there the amends of a Man”—</p> + +<p>a man with bodily powers constantly renewed, to enable him to suffer. +Above the torment is a rainbow of hope, built of the vapour, pain-wrung, +which the light of heaven, in passing tinges with the colour of hope. +Endowed with bodily powers intended to be God’s ministers, Ixion has been +betrayed by them. But he was but man foiled by sense; he has endured +enough suffering to teach him his error and his folly. “Why make the agony +perpetual?” “To punish thee,” Zeus may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> reply. Ixion says he once was king +of Thessaly: he had to punish crime. Had he been able to read the hearts +of the criminals whom he sent to their doom, and had plainly seen +repentance there, would he not have given them</p> + +<p class="poem">“Life to retraverse the past, light to retrieve the misdeed?”</p> + +<p>Zeus made man, with flaw or faultless: it was his work. Ixion had been +admitted, all human as he was, to the company of the gods as their equal. +He had faith in the good faith and the love of Zeus, and for acting upon +it was cast from Olympus to Erebus. Man conceived Zeus as possessing his +own virtues: he trusted, loved him because Zeus aspired to be equal in +goodness to man. Ixion defies him, tells him he apes the man who made him; +it is Zeus who is hollowness. The iris, born of Ixion’s tears, sweat and +blood, bursting to vapour above, arching his torment, glorifies his pain; +and man, even from hell’s triumph, may look up and rejoice. He rises from +the wreck, past Zeus to the Potency above him—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Thither I rise, whilst thou—Zeus, keep the godship and sink!”</p> + +<p>The Zeus of the poem bears no relation whatever to the Christian’s God. +The Potency over all is the All-Father, the God of Love, who yet, in +Infinite Love, may punish rebellious man, who conceivably may reject His +love, may never feel a touch of the repentance which Ixion declared he +felt, who suffering and still sinning, hating and still rebelling, may +conceivably be left to the consequences of the rebellion which knows no +cessation, as the suffering no respite.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Sisuphos</i>, “the crafty”: son of Æolus, punished in the other +world by being forced for ever to keep on rolling a block of stone to the +top of a steep hill, only to see it roll again to the valley, and to start +the toilsome task again. <i>Tantalos</i>, a wealthy king of Sipylus in Phrygia. +He was a favourite of the gods, and allowed to share their meals; but he +insulted them, and was thrown into Tartarus. He suffered from hunger and +thirst, immersed in water up to the chin; when he opened his mouth the +water dried up and the fruits suspended before him vanished into the air. +<i>Heré</i>, in Greek mythology the same as Juno, queen of heaven and wife of +Zeus or Jupiter. <i>Thessaly</i>, a country of Greece, bounded on the south by +the southern parts of Greece,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> on the east by the Ægean, on the north by +Macedonia and Mygdonia, and on the west by Illyricum and Epirus. +<i>Olumpos</i>, a mountain in Thessaly. On the highest peak is the throne of +Zeus, and it is there that he summons the assemblies of the gods. +<i>Erebos</i>, in Greek mythology “the primeval darkness.” The word is usually +applied to the lower regions, filled with impenetrable darkness. +<i>Tartaros-doomed</i> == hell-doomed.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Jacopo</b> (<i>Luria</i>) was the faithful secretary of the Moorish mercenary who +led the army of Florence.</p> + +<p><b>Jacynth.</b> (<i>Flight of the Duchess.</i>) The maid of the Duchess, who went to +sleep while the gipsy woman held the interview with her mistress, and +induced her to leave her husband’s home.</p> + +<p><b>James Lee’s Wife.</b> (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864; originally entitled <i>James +Lee</i>.) This is a story of an unfortunate marriage, told in a series of +meditations by the wife. Mr. Symons describes the psychological processes +detailed in the poem as “the development of disillusion, change, +alienation, severance and parting.” The key-notes of the nine divisions of +the work are: I. Anxiety; II. Apprehension; III. Expostulation; IV. +Despair; V. Reflection; VI. Change; VII. Self-denial; VIII. Resignation; +IX. Self-Sacrifice.</p> + +<p>I. <span class="smcap">At the Window.</span>—The wife reflects that summer has departed. The chill, +which settles upon the earth as the sun’s warm rays are withheld, falls +heavily on her heart. Her husband has been absent but a day, and as she +thinks of the changing year, she asks, with apprehension, “Will he change +too?”</p> + +<p>II. <span class="smcap">By the Fireside.</span>—He has returned, but not the sun to her heart. As +they sit by the fire in their seaside home, she reflects that the fire is +built of “shipwreck wood.” Are her hopes to be shipwrecked too? Sailors on +the stormy waters may envy their security as they behold the ruddy light +from their fire over the sea, and “gnash their teeth for hate” as they +reflect on their warm safe home; but ships rot and rust and get worm-eaten +in port, as well as break up on rocks. She wonders who lived in that home +before them. Did a woman watch the man with whom she began a happy +voyage—see the planks start, and hell yawn beneath her?</p> + +<p>III. <span class="smcap">In the Doorway.</span>—The steps of coming winter hasten; the trees are +bare; soon the swallows will forsake them. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> wind, with its infinite +wail, sings the dirge of the departed summer. Her heart shrivels, her +spirit shrinks; yet, as she stands in the doorway, she reflects that they +have every material comfort. They have neither cold nor want to fear in +any shape, only the heart-chill, only the soul-hunger for the love that is +gone. God meant that love should warm the human heart when material things +without were cold and drear. She will</p> + +<p class="poem">“live and love worthily, bear and be bold.”</p> + +<p>IV. <span class="smcap">Along the Beach.</span>—The storm has burst; it is no longer misgiving, +fear, apprehension: it is certainty. She meditates, as she watches him, +that he wanted her love; she gave him all her heart He has it still: she +had taken him “for a world and more.” For love turns dull earth to the +glow of God. She had taken the weak earth with many weeds, but with “a +little good grain too.” She had watched for flowers and longed for +harvest, but all was dead earth still, and the glow of God had never +transfigured his soul to her. But she did love, did watch, did wait and +weary and wear, was fault in his eyes. Her love had become irksome to him.</p> + +<p>V. <span class="smcap">On the Cliff.</span>—It is summer, and she is leaning on the dead burnt turf, +looking at a rock left dry by the retiring waters. The deadness of the one +and the barrenness of the other suit her melancholy; they are symbols of +her position, and as she muses, a gay, blithe grasshopper springs on the +turf, and a wonderful blue-and-red butterfly settles on the rock. So love +settles on minds dead and bare; so love brightens all! So could her love +brighten even his dead soul.</p> + +<p>VI. <span class="smcap">Reading a Book, under the Cliff.</span>—She is reading the poetry of “some +young man” (Mr. Browning himself, who published these “Lines to the Wind” +when twenty-six years old). The poet asks if the ailing wind is a dumb +winged thing, entrusting its cause to him; and as she reads on she grows +angry at the young man’s inexperience of the mystery of life. He knows +nothing of the meaning of the moaning wind: it is not suffering, not +distress; it is change. That is what the wind is trying to say, and trying +above all to teach: we are to</p> + +<p class="poem">“Rejoice that man is hurled<br /> +From change to change unceasingly,<br /> +His soul’s wings never furled!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>“Nothing endures,” says the wind. +“There’s life’s pact—perhaps, too, its +probation; but man might at least, as he grasps ‘one fair, good, wise +thing,’—the love of a loving woman—grave it on his soul’s hands’ palms +to be his for ever.”</p> + +<p>VII. <span class="smcap">Among the Rocks.</span>—Earth sets his bones to bask in the sun, and smiles +in the beauty with which the rippling water adorns him; and so she +comforts herself by reflecting that we may make the low earth-nature +better by suffusing it with our love-tides. Love is gain if we love only +what is worth our love. How much more to make the low nature better by our +throes!</p> + +<p>VIII. <span class="smcap">Beside the Drawing-Board.</span>—She has been drawing a hand. A clay cast +of a perfect thing is before her. She has learned something of the +infinite beauty of the human hand—has studied it, has praised God, its +Maker, for it; and as she contemplates the world of wonders to be +discovered therein, she is fain to efface her work and begin anew, for +somehow grace slips from soulless finger-tips. The cast is that of a hand +by Leonardo da Vinci. She has passionately longed to copy its perfection, +but as the great master could not copy the perfection of the dead hand, so +she has failed to draw the cast. And so she turns to the peasant girl +model who is by her side that day, “a little girl with the poor coarse +hand,” and as she contemplates it she begins to understand the worth of +flesh and blood, and that there is a great deal more than beauty in a +hand. She has read Bell on the human hand, and she knows something of the +infinite uses of the mechanism which is hidden beneath the flesh. She +knows what use survives the beauty in the peasant hand that spins and +bakes. The living woman is better than the dead cast. She has learned the +lesson that all this craving for what can never be hers—for the love she +cannot gain, any more than the perfection she cannot draw—is wasting her +life. She will be up and doing, no longer dreaming and sighing.</p> + +<p>IX. <span class="smcap">On Deck.</span>—It was better to leave him! She will set him free. She had +no beauty, no grace; nothing in her deserved any place in his mind. She +was harsh and ill-favoured (and perhaps this was the secret of the +trouble). Still, had he loved her, love could and would have made her +beautiful. Some day it may be even so; and in the years to come a face, a +form—her own—may rise before his mental vision, his eyes be opened, his +liberated soul leap forth in a passionate “’Tis she!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span><b>Jesus Christ.</b> That Mr. Browning was something more than a Theist, a +Unitarian, or a Broad Churchman, may be gathered from several passages in +his works, as well as from direct statements to individuals. Three lines +in the <i>Death in the Desert</i> (though often said to be used only +dramatically), when taken in connection with the whole drift and purpose +of the poem, seem to indicate a faith which is more than mere Theism:</p> + +<p class="poem">“The acknowledgment of God in Christ, accepted by thy reason,<br /> +Solves for thee all questions in the earth and out of it,<br /> +And has so far advanced thee to be wise.”</p> + +<p>In the <i>Epistle of Karshish</i>, the Arab physician says concerning Jesus, +who had raised Lazarus from the dead:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“The very God! think, Abib, dost thou think?<br /> +So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too—<br /> +So, through the thunder comes a loving voice<br /> +Saying, ‘O heart I made, a heart beats here!<br /> +Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!<br /> +Thou hast no power nor may’st conceive of mine.<br /> +But love I gave thee, with myself to love,<br /> +And thou must love me who have died for thee!’<br /> +The madman saith He said so: it is strange.”</p> + +<p><i>Christmas Eve</i> and <i>Easter Day</i> seem to be meaningless if they do not +express the author’s faith in the divinity of our Lord. Just as every +believer in Him can detect the true ring of the Christian believer and +lover of his Lord in the lines quoted from the <i>Epistle of Karshish</i>, so +will his touchstone detect the Christian in many other passages of the +poet’s work.</p> + +<p>In <i>Saul</i>, canto xviii., David says:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 11em;">“My flesh, that I seek</span><br /> +In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be<br /> +A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,<br /> +Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand<br /> +Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!”</p> + +<p>David—to whom Christendom attributes the Psalms, even were he only the +editor of that wonderful body of prayer and praise—as the utterer of +sentiments like these, is permitted to express the orthodox opinion that +he prophesied of the Christ who was to come. Mr. Browning would have +hardly done this “dramatically.” (What are termed “the Messianic Psalms” +are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> ii., xxi., xxii., xlv., lxxii., cx.) Pompilia, in <i>The Ring and the +Book</i>, a character which is built up of the purest and warmest faith of +the poet’s heart, says:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“I never realised God’s truth before—<br /> +How He grew likest God in being born.”</p> + +<p>The poem entitled “The Sun,” in <i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>, No. 5, may be +studied in this connection.</p> + +<p><b>Jews.</b> Browning had great sympathy with the Jewish spirit. See <a href="#rabbi"><span class="smcap">Rabbi Ben +Ezra</span></a>, <a href="#jochanan"><span class="smcap">Jochanan Hakkadosh</span></a>, <a href="#karshook"><span class="smcap">Ben Karshook</span></a>, +<a href="#holy"><span class="smcap">Holy Cross Day</span></a>, and <a href="#filippo"><span class="smcap">Filippo Baldinucci</span></a>.</p> +<p><a name="jochanan" id="jochanan"></a></p> +<p><b>Jochanan Hakkadosh.</b> (<i>Jocoseria</i>: 1883.) The Hebrew which Mr. Browning +quotes in the tale as the title of the work from which his incidents are +derived, may be translated as “Collection of many Fables”; and the second +Hebrew phrase means “from Moses to Moses [Moses Maimonides] there was +never one like Moses.” Although the story of this poem is not historical, +it is founded on characters and events which are familiar to students of +Jewish literature and history. Hakkadosh means “The Holy.” Rabbi Yehudah +Hannasi (the Prince) was the reputed author of the <i>Mishnah</i>, and was born +before the year 140 of the Christian era. On account of his holy living he +was surnamed Rabbenu Haḳkadosh. Jochanan means John. In the <i>Jewish +Messenger</i> for March 4th, 1887, the poem is reviewed from a Jewish point +of view by “Mary M. Cohen,” from which interesting study we extract the +following particulars:—The scene of the poem is laid at Schiphaz, which +is probably intended for Sheeraz, in Persia. “I think,” says the +authoress, “that, with artistic licence, Mr. Browning does not here +portray any individual man, but takes the names and characteristics of +several rabbis, fusing all into a whole. Jochanan finds old age a +continued disappointment. He is represented as almost overtaken by death; +his loving scholars, as was usual in the days of rabbinism, cluster about +him for some worthy word of parting advice. One of the pupils asks: ‘Say, +does age acquiesce in vanished youth?’ The rabbi, groaning, answers +grimly:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">“Last as first</span><br /> +The truth speak I—in boyhood who began<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>Striving to live an angel, and, amerced<br /> +For such presumption, die now hardly, man.<br /> +What have I proved of life? To live, indeed,<br /> +That much I learned.”</p> + +<p>It was suggested to the dying rabbi that if compassionating folk would +render him up a portion of their lives, Hakkadosh might attain his +fourscore years. Tsaddik, the scholar, well versed in the Targums, was +foremost in urging the adoption of this expedient. By yielding up part of +their lives, the pupils of Jochanan hope to combine the lessons of perfect +wisdom and varied experience of life. But experience proves fatal to all +the hopes, the aspirations, the high ideals of youth. Experience paralyses +action. Experience chills the aspirations which animate the generous mind +of the lover, the soldier, the poet, the statesman. When the men of +experience contributed their quota, ‘certain gamesome boys’ must needs +throw some of theirs also. This accounts for the rabbi being found alive +unexpectedly after a long interval:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.”</p> + +<p>The rabbi utters heaven-sent intuitions, the gift of these lads. Under the +influence of the <i>Ruach</i>, or spirit, Jochanan declares that happiness, +here and hereafter, is found in acting on the generous impulses, the noble +ideals which are sent into the mind, in spite of the testimony of +experience that we shall fail to realise our aspirations. ‘There is no +sin,’ says the rabbi, ‘except in doubting that the light which lured the +unwary into darkness did no wrong, had I but marched on boldly.’ What we +see here as antitheses, or as complementary truths, are reconciled +hereafter. This reconciliation cannot be grasped by our present faculties. +The rabbi seems to ‘babble’ when he tries to express in words the truth he +sees. The pure white light of truth, seen through the medium of the flesh, +is composed of many coloured rays. Evil is like the dark lines in the +spectrum. The whole duty of man is to learn to love. If he fails, it +matters not; he has learned the art: ‘so much for the attempt—anon +performance.’ Love is the sum of our spiritual intuitions, the law of our +practical conduct.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Mishna</i>, the second or oral Jewish law; the great collection of +legal decisions by the ancient rabbis; and so the fundamental document of +Jewish oral law. <i>Schiphaz</i>, an imaginary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> place; or perhaps <i>Sheeraz</i>, on +the Bundemeer, referred to at end of poem. <i>Jochanan Ben Sabbathai</i>, not +historical. <i>Khubbezleh</i>, a fanciful name of the poet’s invention. +<i>Targum</i>, a Chaldee version or paraphrase of the Old Testament. <i>Nine +Points of Perfection</i>: Nine is a trinity of trinities, and is a mystical +number of perfection; the slang expression “dressed to the nines” means +dressed to perfection. <i>Tsaddik</i> == just, not historical. <i>Dob</i> == Bear +(the constellation). <i>The Bear</i>, the constellation. <i>Aish</i>, the Great +Bear. <i>The Bier</i>: the Jews called the constellation of the Great Bear “The +Bier.” <i>Three Daughters</i>, the tail stars of the Bear. <i>Banoth</i> == +daughters. <i>The Ten</i>: Jewish martyrs under the Roman empire. <i>Akiba</i>, +<i>Rabbi</i>, lived <span class="smcaplc">A.C.</span> 117, and laid the groundwork of the Mishna. He was one +of the greatest Jewish teachers, and was at the height of his popularity +when the revolt of the Jews under Barcochab took place. (See for a history +of the revolt, and of Akiba’s influence, <i>Milman’s History of the Jews</i>, +Book xviii.) He was scraped to death with an iron comb. <i>Perida</i>: a Jewish +teacher of such infinite patience that the Talmud records that he repeated +his lesson to a dull pupil four hundred times, and as even then he could +not understand, four hundred times more, on which the spirit declared that +four hundred years should be added to his life. <i>Uzzean</i>: Job, the most +patient man, was of the land of Uz. <i>Djinn</i>, a supernatural being. <i>Edom</i>: +Rome and Christianity went by this name in the Talmud. “<i>Sic Jesus vult</i>,” +so Jesus wills. <i>The Statist</i> == the statesman. <i>Mizraim</i> == Egypt. +<i>Shushan</i> == lily. <i>Tohu-bohu</i>, void and waste. <i>Halaphta</i>, Talmudic +teachers. <i>Ruach</i>, spirit. <i>Bendimir</i>: no doubt the Bundemeer, one of the +chief rivers of <i>Farzistan</i>, a province in Persia. <i>Og’s thigh bone</i>: “Og +was king of Bashan. The rabbis say that the height of his stature was +23,033 cubits (nearly six miles). He used to drink water from the clouds, +and toast fish by holding them before the orb of the sun. He asked Noah to +take him into the ark, but Noah would not. When the flood was at its +deepest, it did not reach to the knees of this giant. Og lived 3000 years, +and then he was slain by the hand of Moses. Moses was himself ten cubits +in stature (15 feet), and he took a spear ten cubits long, and threw it +ten cubits high, and yet it only reached the heel of Og.... When dead, his +body reached as far as the river Nile. Og’s mother was Enach, a daughter +of Adam. Her fingers were two cubits long (one yard),<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> and on each finger +she had two sharp nails. She was devoured by wild beasts.—<i>Maracci.</i>”</p> + +<p><b>Jocoseria.</b> The volume of poems under this title was published in 1883. It +contains the following works: “Wanting is—What?” “Donald,” “Solomon and +Balkis,” “Cristina and Monaldeschi,” “Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli,” +“Adam, Lilith and Eve,” “Ixion,” “Jochanan Hakkadosh,” “Never the Time and +the Place,” “Pambo.” In a letter to a friend, along with an early copy of +this work, the poet stated that “the title is taken from the work of +Melander (Schwartzmann)—reviewed, by a curious coincidence, in the +<i>Blackwood</i> of this month. I referred to it in a note to ‘Paracelsus.’ The +two Hebrew quotations (put in to give a grave look to what is mere fun and +invention), being translated, amount to: (1) “A Collection of Many Lies”; +and (2) an old saying, ‘From Moses to Moses arose none like to Moses’ +(<i>i.e.</i> Moses Maimonides)....” One of the notes to <i>Paracelsus</i> refers to +Melander’s “Jocoseria” as “rubbish.” Melander, whose proper name was Otho +Schwartzmann, was born in 1571. He published a work called “Joco-Seria,” +because it was a collection of stories both grave and gay.</p> + +<p><b>Johannes Agricola in Meditation.</b> (First published in <i>The Monthly +Repository</i>, and signed “<i>Z.</i>,” in 1836. Reprinted in <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, +in <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, 1842.) Johannes Agricola meditates on the +thought of his election or choice by the Supreme Being, who in His eternal +counsels has before all worlds predestined him as an object of mercy and +salvation. God thought of him before He thought of suns or moons, ordained +every incident of his life for him, and mapped out its every circumstance. +Totally irrespective of his conduct, God having chosen of His own +sovereign grace, uninfluenced in the slightest degree by anything which +Johannes has done or left undone, to consider him as a guiltless being, is +pledged to save him of free mercy. It would make no difference to his +ultimate salvation were he to mix all hideous sins in one draught, and +drink it to the dregs. Predestined to be saved, nothing that he can do can +unsave him; foreordained to heaven, nothing he could do could lead him +hell-wards. As a corollary, those souls who are not so predestined in the +counsels of God to eternal salvation may be as holy, as perfect, in the +sight of men as he (Agricola) might be vile in their sight; yet they shall +be tormented for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> ever in hell, simply because God has mysteriously left +them out of His choice. They are reprobate, non-elect, and nothing that +they could possibly do could avail to save them. When Adam sinned, he +sinned not only for himself, but for the whole human race, and the whole +species was forthwith condemned in him, excepting only those whom God in +His Sovereign mercy had from all eternity elected to save, and that +without regard to their merit or demerit. These reprobate persons might +try to win God’s favour, might labour with all their might to please Him, +and would only thereby add to their sin. Priest, doctor, hermit, monk, +martyr, nun, or chorister,—all these, leading holy and before men +beautiful lives, were eternally foreordained to be lost before God +fashioned star or sun. For all this Johannes Agricola praises God, praises +Him all the more that he cannot understand Him or His ways, praises Him +especially that he has not to bargain for His love or pay a price for his +salvation. Such is the terrible portrait which Mr. Browning has drawn of +the teaching of a man who, as one of the Reformers, and as a friend of +Luther, was the founder of what is known in religious history as +Antinomianism. Hideous as is the perversion of gospel teaching which +Agricola set forth, the doctrines of Antinomianism still linger on amongst +certain sects of Calvinists in England and Scotland. The doctrine of +reprobation is thus stated in the <i>Westminster Confession of Faith</i>, iii. +7: “The rest of mankind (<i>i.e.</i> all but the elect), God was pleased ... to +pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath, etc.” Mosheim, in his +<i>Ecclesiastical History</i> (century xvii., Sect. II., Part II., chap, ii., +23), thus describes the Presbyterian Antinomians: “The Antinomians are +over-rigid Calvinists, who are thought by the other Presbyterians to abuse +Calvin’s doctrine of the absolute decrees of God, to the injury of the +cause of piety. Some of them ... deny that it is necessary for ministers +to exhort Christians to holiness and obedience of the law, because those +whom God from all eternity elected to salvation will themselves, and +without being admonished and exhorted by any one, by a Divine influence, +or the impulse of Almighty grace, perform holy and good deeds; while those +who are destined by the Divine decrees to eternal punishment, though +admonished and entreated ever so much, will not obey the Divine law, since +Divine grace is denied them; and it is therefore sufficient, in preaching<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> +to the people, to hold up only the gospel and faith in Jesus Christ. But +others merely hold that the elect, because they cannot lose the Divine +favour, do not truly commit sin and break the Divine law, although they +should go contrary to its precepts and do wicked actions, and therefore it +is not necessary that they should confess their sins or grieve for them: +that adultery for instance, in one of the elect appears to us indeed to be +a sin or a violation of the law, yet it is no sin in the sight of God, +because one who is elected to salvation can do nothing displeasing to God +and forbidden by the law.” Very similar teaching may be discovered at the +present day in the body of religionists known as Hyper-Calvinists or +Strict Baptists. The professors are for the most part much better than +their creed, and they are exceedingly reticent concerning their doctrines +so far as they are represented by the term Antinomian; but the organs of +their phase of religious belief, <i>The Gospel Standard</i> and <i>The Earthen +Vessel</i>, frequently contain proofs of the vitality of Agricola’s doctrines +in their pages. For example, in the <i>Gospel Standard</i> for July 1891, p. +288, we find the following: “No hope, nor salvation, can possibly arise +out of the law or covenant of works. Every man’s works are sin,—his best +works are polluted. Every page of the law unfolds his defects and +shortcomings, nor will allow of a few shillings to the pound,—Pay the +whole or die the death.” The tendency of Antinomianism is to become an +esoteric doctrine, and it is seldom preached in any grosser form than +this, however sweet it may be to the hearts of the initiated.</p> + +<p><b>John of Halberstadt.</b> The ecclesiastic in <i>Transcendentalism</i> who was also +a magician and performed the “prestigious feat” of conjuring roses up in +winter.</p> + +<p><b>Joris.</b> One of the riders in the poem “How they brought the Good News from +Ghent to Aix.”</p> + +<p><b>Jules.</b> (<i>Pippa Passes</i>). The young French artist who married Phene under a +misunderstanding, the result of a practical joke played upon him by his +companions.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Karshish.</b> (<i>An Epistle.</i>) The Arab physician who wrote of the interesting +cases which he had seen in his travels to his brother leech, and who +described Lazarus, who was raised from the dead, as having been in a +trance.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span><b>King, A.</b> The song in <i>Pippa Passes</i>, beginning “A king lived long ago,” +was originally published in <i>The Monthly Repository</i> (edited by W. J. Fox) +in 1835.</p> + +<p><b>King Charles I.</b> of England. See <a href="#strafford"><span class="smcap">Strafford</span></a>.</p> + +<p><b>King Charles Emanuel</b>, of Savoy (<i>King Victor and King Charles</i>), was the +son of Victor Amadeus II., Duke of Savoy. He became king when his father +suddenly abdicated, in 1730.</p> + +<p><b>King Victor and King Charles: A Tragedy.</b> (<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, II., +1842.) Victor Amadeus II., born in 1666, was Duke of Savoy. He obtained +the kingdom of Sicily by treaty from Spain, which he afterwards exchanged +with the Emperor for the island of Sardinia, with the title of King +(1720). He was fierce, audacious, unscrupulous, and selfish, profound in +dissimulation, prolific in resources, and a “breaker of vows both to God +and man.” He was, however, an able and warlike monarch, and had the +interests of his kingdom at heart. He was, moreover, beloved by the people +over whom he ruled, and under his reign the country made great progress in +finances, education, and the development of its natural <ins class="correction" title="original: resouces">resources</ins>. His +whole reign was one of unexampled prosperity, and his life was a continued +career of happiness until, in 1715, his beloved son Victor died. His +daughter, the Queen of Spain, died shortly after. Charles Emanuel, his +second son, had never been a favourite with the King. He was ill-favoured +in appearance, and weak and vacillating in his conduct. When the Queen +died, in 1728, Victor married Anna Teresa Canali, a widowed countess, whom +he created Marchioness of Spigno. For some reasons or other which have +never been satisfactorily explained, the King now decided to abdicate in +favour of his son Charles Emanuel. He gave out that he was weary of the +world and disgusted with affairs of State, and desired to live in +retirement for the remainder of his days. It is more probable that his +fiery and audacious temper, and his deceitfulness, dissimulation, and +persistent endeavours to overreach the other powers with which he had +intercourse, had involved him in difficulties of State policy from which +he could only extricate himself by this grave step. Mr. Browning implies, +in the preface to his tragedy, that his investigations of the memoirs and +correspondence of the period had enabled him to offer a more reasonable +solution of the difficulties connected with this strange episode in +Italian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> history than any previous account has offered. When the King +announced his intention to resign his crown, he was entreated by his +people, his ministers and his son, to forego a project which every one +thought would be prejudicial to the interests of the kingdom; but nothing +would induce him to reconsider his decision, which he carried out with the +completest ceremonial. After taking this step he retired with his wife to +his castle at Chambéry; and, as might have been expected, he speedily grew +weary of his seclusion. He had an attack of apoplexy, and when he +recovered it was with faculties impaired and a temper readily irritated to +outbursts of violent behaviour. The marchioness now began to suggest to +him that he had done unwisely by resigning his crown; and, day by day, +urged him to recover it. This was probably due to the desire she felt of +being queen. He still remained on good terms with his son, who visited him +at Chambéry; but he gave him to understand that he was not satisfied with +his management of affairs, and constantly intervened in their direction. +In the summer of 1731 Charles, accompanied by his queen (Polyxena) visited +his father at the baths of Eviano, and before his return home he received +private intimation that his father was about to proceed to Turin to resume +the crown he had resigned. He lost no time in returning home, which he +reached just before his father and the marchioness. He visited the ex-king +on the following day, when he was informed that his reason for returning +to Turin was the necessity for seeking a climate more suitable to his +present state of health. Charles was satisfied with the explanation, and +placed the castle of Moncalieri at his father’s service: here the ex-king +received his son’s ministers, and hints were dropped and threatening +expressions used by Victor, which left little doubt as to his intentions +on the minds of his audience. It now became necessary for King Charles to +seriously consider the best means to secure himself and his queen from the +effects of his father’s change of mind. Victor lost little time in +declaring himself: on September 25th, 1731, he sent for the Marquis del +Borgo, and ordered him to deliver up the deed by which he had resigned his +crown. The minister evaded in his reply, and of course informed the King +of the demand. Now it was that Charles was inclined to waver between his +duty to his realm and his duty to his father. He was a good, obedient son, +and of upright and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> generous disposition, and was inclined to yield to his +father’s wishes. He called the chief officers of state around him, and +laid the matter before them. They were not forgetful of the threats which +the old king had recently used towards them, and the Archbishop of Turin +had little difficulty in convincing them and the king that it was +impossible to comply with his father’s demands. If anything were wanting +to confirm them in their decision, it was forthcoming in the shape of news +that the old king had demanded at midnight admittance into the fortress of +Turin, but had been refused by the commander. The council of Charles +Emanuel readily concurred in the opinion that Victor should be arrested. +The Marquis d’Ormea, who had been the old king’s prime minister, was +charged with the execution of the warrant of arrest. He proceeded, with +assistance and appropriate military precautions, to carry out the order, +entering the king’s apartments at Moncalieri. They captured the +marchioness, who was hurried away screaming to a state prison at Ceva, +with many of her relatives and supporters; and then secured the person of +the old king. He was asleep, and when aroused and made acquainted with the +mission of the intruders, he became violently excited, and had to be +wrapped in the bedclothes and forced into one of the court carriages, +which conveyed him to the castle of Rivoli, situated in a small town of +five thousand inhabitants, near Turin. His attendants and guards were +strictly ordered to say nothing to him: if he addressed them, they +maintained an inflexible silence, merely by way of reply making a very low +and submissive bow. He was afterwards permitted to have the company of his +wife and to remove to another prison, but on October 31st, 1732, he died.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Laboratory, The</b>: <span class="smcap">Ancien Regime</span>. First appeared in <i><ins class="correction" title="original: Hooa's">Hood’s</ins> Magazine</i>, June +1844, to which it was contributed to help Hood in his illness; afterwards +published in <i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i> (<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, +VII.) This poem and <i>The Confessional</i> were printed together, and entitled +<i>France and Spain</i>. Mr. Arthur Symons reminds us that Rossetti’s first +water-colour was an illustration of this poem, and has for subject and +title the line “Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?” The keynote +of the poem is jealousy, a distorted love-frenzy that impels to the +rival’s extinction. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> story is told in the most powerful and +concentrated manner. The jealous woman’s whole soul is compressed into her +words and actions; her emotion is visible; her voice, subdued yet full of +energy, is audible in every line. The woman is a Brinvilliers, who has +secured an interview with an alchemist in his laboratory, that she may +purchase a deadly poison for her rival. We gather from the first verse +that the poison consisted principally of arsenic. The “faint smokes +curling whitely,” to protect the chemist from which it was necessary to +wear a glass mask, sufficiently supplement our knowledge of the old +poisoner’s art to enable us to indicate its nature. The patience of the +woman, who in her eagerness for her rival’s death has no desire to hurry +the manufacture of the means of it, is powerfully described. She is +content to watch the chemist at his deadly work, asking questions in a +dainty manner about the secrets of his art. She has all the ideas of “a +big dose” which the uninitiated think requisite for big patients. “She’s +not little—no minion like me!” “What, only a drop?” she asks. She is +anxious to know if it hurts the victim. Is it likely to injure herself +too? Reassured on that point, the glass mask is removed, and for reward +the old man has all her jewels and gold to his fill. He may kiss her +besides, and on the mouth if he will. There is a very remarkable instance +in the second verse of the use made of antithesis by the poet. The proper +emphasis can only be given when we rightly apprehend the ideas which +oppose each other in the lines—</p> + +<p class="poem">“<i>He</i> is with <i>her</i>, and <i>they</i> know that <i>I</i> know<br /> +Where they are, what they do: they believe <i>my tears</i> flow<br /> +While <i>they laugh</i>, laugh at <i>me</i>, at me fled to the <i>drear<br /> +Empty church</i>, to pray God in, for <i>them</i>!—I am <i>here</i>.”</p> + +<p>The antithesis of the several sets of ideas is the only safe guide to the +emphasis—<i>he</i> as opposed to <i>her</i>, <i>tears</i> to <i>laughter</i>, <i>me</i> to <i>them</i>, +the <i>church</i> to the <i>laboratory</i>.<a name='fna_1' id='fna_1' href='#f_1'><small>[1]</small></a> Although the effects of some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> of the +deadliest poisons were well known to the ancients, their detection and +recovery from the body by chemical means is a branch of science of only +modern discovery. The Greeks and Romans were well acquainted with mercury, +arsenic, henbane, aconite and hemlock. The art of poisoning was brought to +great perfection in India; but, though dissection of the living and the +dead was practised by the Alexandrian School in the third century <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>, +the Greek and Roman physicians were quite incapable of such a knowledge of +pathology as would enable them to detect any but the coarsest signs of +poisoning in a dead body. Much less were they able to detect or recover by +analysis the particular poison used by the criminal. It is not surprising +that, under such circumstances, professional poisoners usually escaped +punishment. In the fourteenth century arsenic was generally employed. Of +the great schools of poisoners which flourished in Italy in the sixteenth +and seventeenth centuries, Venice was the earliest. Troublesome people +were removed by the Council of Ten by means of convenient poisons. Toffana +and others combined poisoning with the art of cookery; and T. Baptist +Porta, in his book on “Natural Magic,” under the section of cooking, shows +that the trades of poisoner and cook were often combined. Toffana was the +greatest of all the seventeenth-century poisoners. She made solutions of +arsenic of various strengths, and sold them in phials under the name of +“Naples Water” or “Acquetta di Napol.” It is said that she poisoned six +hundred persons, including Popes Pius III. and Clement XIV. There was +practically no fear of detection, and the liquid was sold openly to any +one willing to pay the price for a deadly compound; the purpose for which +it could alone be employed being perfectly well understood. Mr. Browning’s +poem introduces us to a laboratory, where an arsenical preparation is +being prepared. The glass<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> mask refered to in the first line was used to +protect the purchaser from the white, deadly smoke which the mineral gave +off. The poison for which the lady paid so lavishly could be prepared +nowadays by any chemist’s apprentice for a few pence; but, plentiful as it +is, it is comparatively rarely used by criminals, as the same apprentice +could infallibly detect it in the body after death, and reproduce in a +test tube the very same poison used by the criminal.</p> + +<p><b>Lady and the Painter, The.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>: 1889.) A lady visiting an artist +who has a picture on his easel of a nude female figure, protests against +the irreverence to womanhood involved in his inducing a young woman to +strip and stand stark-naked as his model. Before replying, he asks the +lady what it is that clings half-savage-like around her hat. She, thinking +he is admiring her headgear, tells him they are “wild-bird wings, and that +the Paris fashion-books say that next year the skirts of women’s dresses +are to be feathered too. Owls, hawks, jays and swallows are most in +vogue.” Asking if he may speak plainly, and having been answered that he +may, he tells Lady Blanche that it would be more to her credit to strip +off all her bird-spoils and stand naked to help art, like his poor model, +as a type of purest womanhood. “<i>You</i>, clothed with murder of His best of +harmless beings, what have you to teach?” The poem is directed against the +savage and wicked custom of wearing the plumage of birds, by which +millions of God’s beautiful creatures are doomed annually to slaughter; by +wearing gloves made of skins stripped from the living bodies of animals +(if report be true); and by the use of sealskin and other animal +coverings, which necessitates the wholesale slaughter of countless +thousands of happy creatures in Arctic seas. I recently asked Miss Frances +Power Cobbe—the noble lady who was a friend of Mr. Browning, and who has +devoted her life and splendid literary talents to befriending dumb animals +and protesting against cruelty in high places—to furnish me with some +account of the agitation against the foolish habit of wearing bird-plumage +in women’s bonnets. I have received from Miss Cobbe the following +particulars: “The Plumage League began December 1885. It started with a +letter in the <i>Times</i>, December 18th, 1885 (quoted <i>in extenso</i> in the +<i>Zoophilist</i>, January 1886, p. 164), by the Rev. F. O. Morris, embodying +one from Lady Mount Temple. Before May 1886 a long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> list of names (given +in the <i>Zoophilist</i>) were given as patrons of the League, including Lady +Mount Temple, Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Londesborough, Lady Sudeley, +Hon. Mrs. R. C. Boyle, Louisa Marchioness of Waterford, Princess +Christian, Lady Burdett Coutts, Lady Eastlake, Lady John Manners, Lady +Tennyson, Lady Herbert of Lea, and about forty other ladies of rank. I +should say that the League was originated by Lady Mount Temple and the +Rev. F. O. Morris. There is another society in existence for the same +purpose, working in London—the Birds’ Protection Society—one of whose +local secretaries lately applied to me for a subscription.”</p> + +<p><b>Lady Carlisle, Lucy Percy.</b> (<i>Strafford.</i>) She was the daughter of the +ninth Earl of Northumberland, and did her utmost to save Strafford’s life.</p> + +<p><b>Lapaccia.</b> Mona Lapaccia was Fra Lippo Lippi’s aunt, the sister of his +father, who brought him up till he was eight years old, when, being no +longer able to maintain him, she took him to the Carmelite Convent.</p> + +<p><b>La Saisiaz</b> (A. E. S., Sept. 14th, 1877).—Mr. Browning was staying during +the autumn of 1877, with his sister, amongst the mountains near Geneva, at +a villa called “La Saisiaz,” which in the Savoyard dialect means “The +Sun.” They were accompanied on this occasion by Miss Ann Egerton Smith. +The happiness of the visit to this beautiful spot was marred by the sudden +death of Miss Smith, from heart disease, on the night of September 14th. +The poem is the result of the poet’s musings on death, God, the soul, and +the future state. It is one of Mr. Browning’s noblest and most beautiful +utterances on the great questions of the Supreme Being and the ultimate +destiny of the soul of man. It is Theism of the loftiest kind, and the +grounds on which it is based are as philosophical as they are poetically +expressed. The work has often been compared with the <i>In Memoriam</i> of +Tennyson. The powerful optimism, the robust confidence and devout faith in +the infinite love and wisdom of the Supreme Being, are in each poem +emphasized again and again. After several pages of description of the +scenery of the locality, Mr. Browning imagines that a spirit of the place +bade him question, and promised answer, of the problems of existence—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Does the soul survive the body? Is there God’s self—no or yes?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>He is weak, but “weakness never needs be falseness.” He will go to the +foundations of his faith; he will take stock—see how he stands in the +matter of belief and doubt; will fight the question out without fence or +self-deception. It shall not satisfy him to say that a second life is +necessary to give value to the present, or that pleasure, if not +permanent, turns to pain; in the presence of that recent death there must +be rigid honesty, and it does not satisfy him to know there’s ever some +one lives though we be dead. Such a thought is repugnant to him,—not that +repugnance matters if it be all the truth. He must, however, ask if there +be any prospect of supplemental happiness? In the face of the strong +bodies yoked to stunted souls, and the spirits that would soar were they +not tethered by a fleshly chain; of the hindering helps, and the +hindrances which are really helps in disguise,—the fact remains that +hindered we are. However the fact be explained, life is a burthen; at +best, more or less, in its whole amount is it curse or blessing? He thinks +he has courage enough to fairly ask this question, and accept the answer +of reason. He has questioned, and has been answered. Now, a question +presupposes two things: that which questions and answers must exist. “I +think, therefore I am” (<i>Cogito, ergo sum</i>), said Descartes. (And this is +about the only thing in life of which we can be certain. Matter may be all +illusion; as Bishop Berkeley said, we may be living in one long dream. But +at least it takes a mind to do that. We therefore are; soul <i>is</i>, whatever +else is not.) The second thing presupposed is, that the fact of being +answered is proof that there must be a force outside itself:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Actual ere its own beginning, operative through its course,<br /> +Unaffected by its end,—that this thing likewise needs must be.”</p> + +<p>Here, then, are two facts: the last we may call God; the first, Soul. If +an objector demands that he shall <i>prove</i> these facts his answer is that, +recognising they surpass his power of proving these facts, proves them +such to him:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“Ask the rush if it suspects</span><br /> +Whence and how the stream which floats it had a rise, and where and how<br /> +Falls or flows on still!”</p> + +<p>If the rush could think and speak, it would say it only knows that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> it +floats and is, and that an external stream bears it onward. What may +happen to it the rush knows not: it may be wrecked, or it may land on +shore and take root again; but this is mere surmise, not knowledge. Can we +have better foundation for believing that, because we doubtless are, we +shall as doubtless be? Men say we have, “because God seems good and wise.” +But there reigns wrong in life. “God seems powerful,” they say; “why, +then, are right and wrong at strife?” “Anyhow, we want a future life,” say +men; “without it life would be brutish.” But wanting a thing, and hoping +for it, are not proofs that our aspirations will be gratified; out of all +our hopes, how many have had complete fulfilment? None. But “we believe,” +men sigh. So far as others are concerned the poet will not speak—he knows +not. But he knows not what he is himself, which nevertheless is an +ignorance which is no barrier to his knowing that he exists and can +recognise what gives him pain or pleasure. What others are or are not is +surmise; his own experience is knowledge. To his own experience, then, he +appeals. He has lived, done, suffered, loved, hated, learned and taught +this: there is no reconciling wisdom with a distracted world, no +reconciling goodness with evil if it is to finally triumph, no reconciling +power if the aim is to fail; if—and he only speaks for himself, his own +convictions, and not for any other man’s—if you hinder him from assuming +that earth is a school-time and life a place of probation, all is chaos to +him; he cannot say how these arguments and reasons may affect other men; +he reiterates that he speaks for himself alone, because to colour-blind +men the <ins class="correction" title="original: gras">grass</ins> which is green to him may be red,—who is to decide which +uses the proper term, supposing only two men existed, and one called grass +green, the other red? So God must be the referee in His own case. The +earth, as a school, is perhaps different for each individual; our pains +and pleasures no more tally than our colour-sense. The poet, therefore, +recognises that for him the world is his world, and no other man’s; he <ins class="correction" title="original: s">is</ins> +to judge what it means for himself. He will therefore proceed to estimate +the world as it seems to him, exactly as he would judge of an artisan’s +work,—is it a success or a failure? Was God’s will or His power in fault +when the vapours shrouded the blue heaven, and the flowers fell at the +breath of the dragon? Death waits on every rose-bloom, pain upon every +pleasure, shadow on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> every brightness. We cannot love, but death lurks +hard by; cannot learn sympathy unless men suffer pain. If he is told that +all this is necessity, he will bear it as best he can; if, on the other +hand, you say it has been ordained by a Cause all-good, all-wise, +all-potent, he protests as a man he will not acquiesce if, at the same +time, you tell him that this life is all:</p> + +<p class="poem">“No, as I am man, I mourn the poverty I must impute:<br /> +Goodness, wisdom, power, all bounded, each a human attribute!”</p> + +<p>Speaking for himself he counts this show of things a failure if after this +life there be no other; if the school is not to educate for another +sphere, all its lessons are fruitless pain and toil. But, grant a second +life, he heartily acquiesces; he sees triumph in misfortune’s worst +assaults, and gain in all the loss. When was he so near to knowledge as +when hampered by his recognised ignorance? Was not beauty made more +precious by the deformities surrounding him? Did he not learn to love +truth better when he contemplated the reign of falsehood? And for love, +who knows what its value is till he has suffered by the death-pang? The +poet here breaks off the argument to address the spirit of the lost +friend, and express his hope that one day they may meet again:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Can it be, and must, and will it?”</p> + +<p>Then he recalls his thoughts from the region of surmise, to which they +have wandered, home to stern and sober fact. He needs not the old +plausibilities of the “misery done to man” and the “injustice of God,” if +another life compensate not for the ills of the present; he is prepared to +take his stand as umpire to the champions Fancy and Reason, as they +dispute the case between them. <span class="smcap">Fancy</span> begins the amicable war by conceding +that the surmise of life after death is as plain as a certainty, and +acknowledges that there are now three facts—God, the soul, and the future +life. <span class="smcap">Reason</span> assents, sees there is definite advantage in the +acknowledgment, admits the good of evil in the present life, detects the +progress of everything towards good, and, as the next life must be an +advance upon this one, suggests that, at the first cloud athwart man’s +sky, he should not hesitate, but die. <span class="smcap">Fancy</span> then increases its concession, +and sees the necessity of a hell for the punishment of those who would act +the butterfly before they have played out the worm. Thus we have five +facts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> now—God, soul, earth, heaven and hell. <span class="smcap">Reason</span> declares that more +is required: are we to shut our eyes, stop our ears, and live here in a +state of nescience, simply waiting for the life to come, which is to do +everything for the soul? <span class="smcap">Fancy</span> protests that this present stage of our +existence has worth incalculable—that every moment spent here means so +much loss or gain for that next life which on this life depends. We have +now six plain facts established. <span class="smcap">Reason</span> points out that <span class="smcap">Fancy</span> has proved +too much by appending a definite reward to every good action and a fixed +punishment to every bad one. We lay down laws as stringent in the moral as +the material world. If we say, “Would you live again, be just,” it is to +put a necessity upon man as determined as the law of respiration—“Would +you live now, regularly draw your breath.” If immortality were anything +more than surmise, if heaven and hell were as plainly the consequences of +our course of life here as a fall of a breach of the laws of gravity, then +men would be compelled to do right and avoid evil. Probation would be +gone, our freedom would be destroyed, neither merit nor discipline would +remain—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Thus have we come back full circle.”</p> + +<p>The poet says he hopes,—he has no more than hope, but hope—no less than +hope. Standing on the mountain, looking down upon the Lake of Geneva, his +eye falls on the places where dwelt four great men: <i>Rousseau</i>, who lived +at Geneva; <i>Byron</i>, lived at the villa called “Diodati,” at Geneva; and +wrote the <i>Prisoner of Chillon</i> at Ouchy, on the Lake; <i>Voltaire</i>, who +built himself a château at Fernex; <i>Gibbon</i>, who wrote the concluding +portion of his great work at Lausanne. The somewhat obscure reference to +the “pine tree of Makistos,” near the close of the poem, has caused +considerable puzzling of brains amongst Browning students, none of whom +have been able to assist me in solving the problem. So far as I am able to +understand it, the solution seems to be this: The reference to Makistos is +from the <i>Agamemnon</i> of Æschylus. The town of Makistos had a watch-tower +on a neighbouring eminence, from which the beacon lights flashed the news +of the fall of Troy to Greece. Clytemnestra says:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“sending a bright blaze from Ide,</span><br /> +<i>Beacon did beacon send</i>,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pass on—the pine-tree—to Makistos’ watch-place.”</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>So the famous writers named as connected with that part of the Lake of +Geneva contemplated by Mr. Browning, who were all Theists, passed on the +pine-tree torch of Theism from age to age—Diodati, Rousseau, Gibbon, +Byron, Voltaire, who—</p> + +<p class="poem">“at least believed in Soul, was very sure of God.”</p> + +<p>(Voltaire built a church at Ferney, over the portal of which he affixed +the ostentatious inscription, “<i>Deo erexit Voltaire</i>.”) Many writers +(Canon Cheyne for one, in the <i>Origin of the Psalter</i>, p. 410) have +thought that by the lines beginning, “He there with the brand flamboyant,” +etc., the poet referred to himself. Of course, any such idea is +preposterous; the reference was to Voltaire. Mr. Browning, apart from the +question of the egotism involved, could not say of himself, “he at least +believed in soul.” There was no minimising of religious faith in the poet +Still less could he speak of himself as “crowned by prose and verse.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Python</i>, the Rock-snake, the typical genus of Pythonidæ; +“<i>Athanasius contra mundum</i>” == Athanasius against the world. St. +Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, and one of the most illustrious +defenders of the Christian faith, was born about the year 297. In +defending the Nicene Creed he had so much opposition to contend with from +the Arian heretics that, in the words of Hooker, it was “the whole world +against Athanasius, and Athanasius against it.”</p> + +<p><b>Last Ride Together, The.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Romances</i>, 1863; +<i>Dramatic Romances</i>, 1868.) This poem is considered by many critics to be +the noblest of all Browning’s love poems; for dramatic intensity, for +power, for its exhibition of what Mr. Raleigh has aptly termed Browning’s +“tremendous concentration of his power in excluding the object world and +its relations,” the poem is certainly unequalled. It is a poem of +unrequited love, in which there is nothing but the noblest resignation; a +compliance with the decrees of fate, but with neither a shadow of +disloyalty to the ideal, nor despair of the result of the dismissal to the +lover’s own soul development. The woman may reject him,—there is no +wounded pride; she does not love him,—he is not angry with her, nor +annoyed that she fails to estimate him as highly as he estimates himself. +He has the ideal in his heart; it shall be cherished as the occupant of +his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> heart’s throne for ever—of the ideal he, at least, can never be +deprived. This ideal shall be used to elevate and sublimate his desires, +to expand his soul to the fruition of his boundless aspiration for human +love, used till it transfigures the human in the man till it almost +becomes Divine. And so—as he knows his fate—since all his life seemed +meant for, fails—his whole heart rises up to bless the woman, to whom he +gives back the hope she gave; he asks only its memory and her leave for +one more last ride with him. It is granted:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Who knows but the world may end to-night?”</p> + +<p>(a line which no poet but Browning ever could have written. The force of +the hour, the value of the quintessential moment as factors in the +development of the soul, have never been set forth, even by Browning, with +such startling power.) She lay for a moment on his breast, and then the +ride began. He will not question how he might have succeeded better had he +said this or that, done this or the other. She might not only not have +loved him, she might have hated. He reflects that all men strive, but few +succeed. He contrasts the petty done with the vast undone,</p> + +<p class="poem">“What hand and brain went ever paired?<br /> +What heart alike conceived and dared?<br /> +What act proved all its thought had been?<br /> +What will but felt the fleshly screen?”</p> + +<p>And the meaning of it all, the reason of the struggle, the outcome of the +effort? The poet alone can tell: he <i>says</i> what we <i>feel</i>. “But, poet,” he +asks, “are you nearer your own sublime than we rhymeless ones? You +sculptor, you man of music, have you attained your aims?” Then he consoles +himself that if here we had perfect bliss, still there is the life beyond, +and it is better to have a bliss to die with dim-descried—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?”</p> + +<p>What if for ever he rode on with her as now, “The instant made eternity”?</p> + +<p><b>Lazarus</b>, who was raised from the dead, is the real hero of the poem <i>An +Epistle</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Léonce Miranda.</b> (<i>Red Cotton Night-Cap Country.</i>) The principal actor in +the drama was the son and heir of a wealthy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> Paris jeweller. He formed an +illicit connection with Clara de Millefleurs, and lived with her at St. +Rambert, finally committing suicide from the tower on his estate. It is +said that the real name of the firm of jewellers was “Meller Brothers,” +and that Clara de Millefleurs was Anna de Beaupré.</p> + +<p><b>Levi Lincoln Thaxter.</b> <i>Poet Lore</i>, vol. i., p. 598 (1889), states that Mr. +Browning wrote an inscription for the grave of Levi Lincoln Thaxter, a +well known American Browning reader, on the Maine sea-coast. The +inscription runs thus:—“Levi Lincoln Thaxter. Born in Watertown, +Massachusetts, Feb. 1st, 1824. Died May 31st, 1884.</p> + +<p class="poem">“Thou, whom these eyes saw never! Say friends true<br /> +Who say my soul, helped onward by my song,<br /> +Though all unwittingly, has helped thee too?<br /> +I gave of but the little that I knew;<br /> +How were the gift requited, while along<br /> +Life’s path I pace, couldst thou make weakness strong!<br /> +Help me with knowledge—for Life’s Old——Death’s New!”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">R. B. to L. L. T., <i>April 1885</i>.</span></p> + +<p><b>Life in a Love.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855, <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, +1868.) A man is content to spend his whole life on the chance that the +woman whose heart he pursues will one day cease to elude him. When the old +hope is dashed to the ground, a new one springs up and flies straight to +the same mark. And what if he fail of his purpose here? How can life be +better expended than in devotion to one worthy ideal?</p> + +<p><b>Light Woman, A.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Romances</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic +Romances</i>, 1868.) A wanton-eyed woman ensnares a man in her toils just to +add him to the hundred others she has captured. The victim has a friend +who feels equal to conquering the victor. It is a question which is the +stronger soul; the woman of a hundred conquests lies in the strong man’s +hand as tame as a pear from the wall. But the game turns out to be a +serious one: the light woman recognises her conqueror as the higher soul, +and loves him accordingly. What is he to do? He does not wish to eat the +pear; is he to cast it away? It is an awkward thing to play with souls. +Light as she was, she had a heart, though the hundred others could not +discover a way to it; this man did, and broke it. The question for the +breaker is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> What does he seem to himself? The last lines of the poem are +interesting. The author says of himself:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“And Robert Browning, you writer of plays,<br /> +Here’s a subject made to your hand.”</p> + +<p><b>Likeness, A.</b> (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864.) As no two faces are exactly alike +in every particular, so no two souls are ever cast in one mould. The very +markings of our finger tips differ in every hand, and so each soul has its +own language, which must be learned by whomsoever would discover its +secret. And here science avails not; soul grammars and lexicons are not +written for its tongue. A face, a glance, a word will do; but it must be +the right glance, and the true open-sesame. The face which has spoken to +us, the soul visitant who has penetrated to our solitude, the book, the +deed which has formed the bond between us, speaks not to others as it +spoke to us; and the face which is enshrined in our heart of hearts, to +them is “the daub John bought at a sale.” “Is not she Jane? Then who is +she?” asks the stranger who intermeddleth not with our joys. But when that +face is confessed to be one to lose youth for, to occupy age with the +dream of, to meet death with; then, half in rapture, half in rage, we say, +“Take it, I pray; it is only a duplicate!”</p> +<p><a name="lilith" id="lilith"></a></p> +<p><b>Lilith.</b> (<i>Adam, Lilith, and Eve.</i>) “According to the Gnostic and +Rosicrucian mediæval doctrine, the creation of woman was not originally +intended. She is the offspring of man’s own impure fancy, and, as the +Hermetists say, ‘an obtrusion.’... First ‘Virgo,’ the celestial virgin of +the Zodiac, she became ‘Virgo-Scorpio.’ But in evolving his second +companion, man had unwittingly endowed her with his own share of +spirituality; and the new being whom his ‘imagination’ had called into +life became his ‘saviour’ from the snares of Eve-Lilith, the first Eve, +who had a greater share of matter in her composition than the primitive +‘spiritual man.’”—Madame Blavatsky’s <i>Isis Unveiled</i>, vol. ii., p. 445.</p> + +<p><b>Lost Leader, The.</b> (<i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, in Bells and +Pomegranates</i>, No. VII., 1845; <i>Poems</i>, 1849; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1868.) A +great leader of a party has deserted the cause, fallen away from his early +ideals and forsaken the teaching which has inspired disciples who loved +and honoured him. They are sorrowful not so much for their own loss as for +the moral<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> deterioration he has himself suffered. The poem is a very +popular one, and is generally considered to refer to Wordsworth, who in +his youth had strong Liberal sympathies, but lost them, as Mr. John Morley +says in his introduction to Wordsworth’s poems:—“As years began to dull +the old penetration of a mind which had once approached, like other +youths, the shield of human nature from the golden side, and had been +eager to ‘clear a passage for just government,’ Wordsworth lost his +interest in progress. Waterloo may be taken for the date at which his +social grasp began to fail, and with it his poetic glow. He opposed +Catholic emancipation as stubbornly as Eldon, and the Reform Bill as +bitterly as Croker. For the practical reform of his day, even in +education, for which he had always spoken up, Wordsworth was not a force.” +Browning used to see a good deal of Wordsworth when he was a young man, +but there was no friendship between them. Wordsworth treated with contempt +Browning’s republican sympathies—a contempt heightened, as is usually the +case with those who have lapsed from their former ideals, by the +remembrance that he had once professed to follow them. But, though the +poem has undoubted reference to Wordsworth, it has a certain application +also to Southey, Charles Kingsley, and others, who in youth were Radicals +and in old age became rigidly Conservative. Browning told Walter Thornbury +that Wordsworth was “the lost leader,” though he said “the portrait was +purposely disguised a little; used, in short, as an artist uses a model, +retaining certain characteristic traits and discarding the rest” (<i>Notes +and Queries</i>, 5th series, vol. i., p. 213.) There is a letter published in +Mr. Grosart’s edition of Wordsworth’s <i>Prose Works</i>, which is conclusive +on this point:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right">“<span class="smcap">19, Warwick Crescent, W.</span>, <i>February 24th, 1875</i>.</p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Grosart</span>,—I have been asked the question you now address me +with, and as duly answered, I can’t remember how many times. There is +no sort of objection to one more assurance, or rather confession, on +my part, that I <i>did</i> in my hasty youth presume to use the great and +venerable personality of Wordsworth as a sort of painter’s model; one +from which this or the other particular feature may be selected and +turned to account. Had I intended more—above all, such a boldness as +portraying the entire man—I should not have talked about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> ‘handfuls +of silver and bits of ribbon,’ These never influenced the change of +politics in the great poet—whose defection, nevertheless, accompanied +as it was by a regular face-about of his special party, was, to my +private apprehension, and even mature consideration, an event to +deplore. But, just as in the tapestry on my wall I can recognise +figures which have <i>struck out</i> a fancy, on occasion, that though +truly enough thus derived, yet would be preposterous as a copy; so, +though I dare not deny the original of my little poem, I altogether +refuse to have it considered as the ‘very effigies’ of such a moral +and intellectual superiority.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“Faithfully yours,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">“<span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span>.”</span></p></div> + +<p><b>“Lost, lost! yet come.”</b> The first line of the “Song of April” in +<i>Paracelsus</i>, Part II.</p> + +<p><b>Lost Mistress, The.</b> (<i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i>, in <i>Bells and +Pomegranates</i>, VII., 1845; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1868.) A +calm suppression of intensest feeling, the quiet resignation of a great +love in a spirit of humility and sacrifice, by a man who has complete +control over himself. The pretence of not feeling the blow is exquisitely +represented, and the spirit which underlies it is that of the +strong-souled contender with the trials of life who wrote the poem. The +life’s current frozen, the sun sunk in the heart to rise no more, the joy +gone out of life, are summed up in “All’s over, then!” He remarks the +sparrow’s twitter and the leaf buds on the vine; the snowdrops appear, but +there is no spring in his heart; her voice will stay in his soul for ever, +yet he may hold her hand “so very little longer” than may a mere friend.</p> + +<p><b>Love among the Ruins.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic +Lyrics</i>, 1868.) While Mrs. Browning was staying with Mr. Browning in Rome, +in the winter of 1853-54, she was writing <i>Aurora Leigh</i>, and he was busy +with <i>Men and Women</i>, including this exquisite poem. It is a landscape by +Poussin in words, and is melodious and soothing, as befits the subject. It +is evening in the Roman Campagna, amid the ruins of cities once great and +famous. The landscape cannot fail to touch the soul with deepest +melancholy, as we reflect on the evanescence of all human things. A vast +city, whose memorials have dwindled to a “so they say”; “the domed and +daring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> palaces” represented by a few blocks of half-buried marble and the +shaft of a column, overrun by a vegetation which is the symbol of eternal +beauty, lovingly covering the decaying handiwork of a long vanished +people. And amid the colonnades and temples, the turrets and the bridges, +the spirit of the observer dwells with the mournful reflection that the +hand of death and the devouring tooth of time reduce all earthly things to +ruin, and the shadows of oblivion fall on the world of spirit and cover +the deeds alike of glory and of shame. But from the wreck of the ages, and +the scattered memorials of a forgotten metropolis, there came a +golden-haired girl with eager eyes of love, and the sad-reflecting +contemplator of the past learns, by the glance of her eye and the embrace +which extinguishes sight and speech, that whole centuries of folly, noise, +and sin, are not to be weighed against that moment when we recognise that +Love is best.</p> + +<p><b>Love in a Life.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, +1868.) A lover inhabiting the same house as his love, is constantly eluded +by the charmed object of his pursuit. The perfume of her presence is in +every room, and he is always promising his heart that she shall soon be +found, yet the day wanes with the fruitless quest, for as he enters she +goes out, and twilight comes with—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!”</p> + +<p>Thus do our ideals ever evade us.</p> + +<p><b>Love Poems.</b>—“One Word More,” “Evelyn Hope,” “A Serenade at the Villa,” +“In Three Days,” “The Last Ride Together,” “Numpholeptos,” “Cristina,” +“Love among the Ruins,” “By the Fire Side,” “Any Wife to any Husband,” “A +Lovers’ Quarrel,” “Two in the Campagna,” “Love in a Life,” “Life in a +Love,” “The Lost Mistress,” “A Woman’s Last Word,” “In a Gondola,” “James +Lee’s Wife,” “Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli,” “O Lyric Love!” (in the first +volume of the <i>Ring and the Book</i>), “Count Gismond,” “Confessions,” “The +Flower’s Name,” “Women and Roses,” “My Star,” “Mesmerism.” (These are by +no means all, but are, perhaps, some of the best.)</p> + +<p><b>Lover’s Quarrel, A.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic +Lyrics</i>, 1868.) “A shaft from the devil’s bow,” in the shape of a bitter +word, has divided two lovers who before were all the world to each other. +It seems to him so amazing that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> the tongue can have power to sever such +fond hearts as theirs. He comforts himself with the assurance that though +in summertide’s warmth heart can dispense with heart, the first chills of +winter and the first approach of the storms of life will drive the loved +one to his arms.</p> + +<p><b>Lucrezia.</b> (<i>Andrea del Sarto.</i>) She was the wife of the artist—cold, +unsympathetic, but beautiful—and was the model for much of his work. In +the poem Andrea is conversing with her, and indicating the causes which +have arrested his power as an artist.</p> + +<p><b>Luigi.</b> (<i>Pippa Passes.</i>) The conspiring young patriot who meets his mother +at evening in the turret on the hillside near Asolo. He believes he has a +mission to kill the Emperor of Austria. His mother is trying to dissuade +him, and he is about to yield, when Pippa’s song as she passes re-inspires +him, and he leaves the tower, and so escapes from the police who are on +his track.</p> + +<p><b>Luitolfo.</b> (<i>A Soul’s Tragedy.</i>) Chiappino’s false friend, and Eulalia’s +lover.</p> + +<p><b>Luria, A Tragedy.</b> (<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, VIII., 1846.) Time 14—. The +historical incidents which are to some extent the basis of this play had +their rise in the constant struggles between the Guelf and Ghibelline +factions in Italy, which involved the various republics which arose in +consequence of those wars in the most bitter internecine struggles for +supremacy. One of the most important of these was the war between the +Florentine and the Pisan republics. Wars between different Italian cities +were frequent in the middle ages; according to Muratori, the first +conflict was waged in 1003, when Pisa and Lucca contended for the mastery. +In the eleventh century the military and real importance of Pisa was +greatly developed, and was doubtless due to the necessity of constantly +contending against Saracenic invasions. The chroniclers assert that the +first war with Florence, which broke out in 1222, arose from a quarrel +between the ambassadors of the rival states at Rome over a lapdog. When so +trifling an occasion led to such a result, it is evident there were deeper +grounds for hatred and mistrust at work. It is not within the scope of +this work to trace the causes which led to the war between the two great +Italian republics in the beginning of the fifteenth century. In the early +part of the fourteenth century Castruccio became lord of Lucca and Pisa,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> +and was victorious over the Florentines. In 1341 the Pisans besieged +Lucca, in order to prevent the entry of the Florentines, to whom the city +had been sold by Martino della Scala. The Florentines obtained Porto +Talamone from Siena, and established a navy of their own. They attacked +the harbour of Pisa, and carried away its chains, which they triumphantly +bore to Florence, and suspended in front of the Baptistery, where they +remained till 1848. As the war continued the Pisans suffered more and +more. In 1369 they lost Lucca; in 1399 Visconti captured Pisa, and in 1406 +the Florentines made another attack upon the city, besieging it both by +sea and land. As the defenders were starving, they succeeded in entering +the city on October 9th. The orders of the Ten of War at Florence were to +crush every germ of rebellion and drive out its citizens by measures of +the utmost harshness and cruelty. Mr. Browning’s play has for its object +to show how Pisa fell under the dominion of its powerful rival. The +characters are Luria, a Moorish commander of the Florentine forces; +Husain, a Moor, his friend; Puccio, the old Florentine commander, now +Luria’s chief officer; Braccio, commissary of the republic of Florence; +Jacopo, his secretary; Tiburzio, commander of the Pisans; and Domizia, a +noble Florentine lady. The scene is Luria’s camp, between Florence and +Pisa. The time extends only over one day, and the five Acts are named +“Morning,” “Noon,” “Afternoon,” “Evening,” and “Night.” A battle is about +to take place which will decide the issue of the war. Luria is Browning’s +Othello, and one of the noblest of his characters. He is a simple, honest, +whole-souled creature, incapable of guile, and devoted to the welfare of +Florence. Puccio was formerly at the head of the Florentine army; he has +been deposed for some state reason, and the Moorish mercenary substituted, +he remaining as the subordinate of that general. The reasons which have +induced the Seigniory to abstain from entrusting the command of its army +to a Florentine are the most despicable that could influence any public +body. They were understood to be afraid that they would have to reward the +victorious general, or that he might use his power and influence with the +people to make himself master of their city. So they choose a man whom +they merely pay to fight for them—a Moor, who can have no friends amongst +the citizens, and a stranger who can have no other claim upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> them than +his wages. They go further: they proceed to try him secretly for treason +before he has committed it; they set spies to watch his every movement and +to record his every word; they employ for this purpose unscrupulous men, +well versed in the art of manufacturing evidence; they weave their toils +so skilfully that by the time Luria has won their battle for them, they +will have accumulated all the evidence which is required, and the death +sentence will be pronounced as the victory is won. The appointment of the +displaced Puccio to a secondary position in command was one of the steps +taken for this end: he would naturally be discontented, and become a ready +tool in the hands of the cold, skilful Braccio, all intellect, and +practised in the most devious ways of statecraft. Professor Pancoast, in +his valuable papers on <i>Luria</i> in <i>Poet Lore</i>, vol. i, p. 555, and vol. +ii., p. 19, says: “It is possible that Mr. Browning may have found the +suggestion for this situation in a passage in Sapio Amminato’s <i>Istoria +Fiorentine</i>, relating to this expedition against Pisa. “And when all was +ready, the expedition marched to the gates of Pisa, under the command of +Conte Bartoldo Orsini, a Ventusian captain in the Florentine service, +accompanied by Filippo di Megalotti, Rinaldo di Gian Figliazzi, and Maso +degli Albizzi, in the character of commissaries of the commonwealth. For, +although we have every confidence in the honour and fidelity of our +general, you see it is always well to be on the safe side. And in the +matter of receiving possession of a city, ... these nobles with the old +feudal names! We know the ways of them! An Orsini might be as bad in Pisa +as a Visconti, so we might as well send some of our own people to be on +the spot. The three commissaries therefore accompanied the Florentine +general to Pisa.” (Am. xvii., Lib. Goup. 675.) These words throw an +instructive light on Mr. Browning’s drama, and seem to justify its motive. +From this background of treachery and deceit the grand figure of Luria, +honest, transparently ingenuous, generous, and true to the core, boldly +stands forth to claim our admiration and our esteem. He knows nothing of +their devious ways, can only go straightforward to his aim, and on this +eve of the great battle he receives from Tiburzio, the commander of the +Pisan forces, a letter which has been intercepted from Braccio to the +Florentine Seigniory; he is desired to read it, as it exposes the plots +which the Florentines are hatching against him. Luria<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> declines to read +the letter, tears it to pieces, and gives battle to the enemy. The victory +is a great one: Pisa is in his hands; then he sends for Braccio, charges +him with the treachery, and learns what the letter would have told him if +he had read it. Braccio does not deny what Luria divines; charges have +been prepared against him,—he will be tried that night. He maintains the +absolute right of Florence to do as she has done. Domizia, whose brothers +suffered shame and death in such manner at the hands of Florence, protests +that Florence needs must mistrust a stranger’s faith. At this moment +Tiburzio, the Pisan general, enters, testifies to the faith of the man who +has defeated him, and offers to resign to him his charge, the highest +office, sword and shield, with the help which has just arrived from Lucca. +He begs him to adopt their cause, and let Florence perish in her perfidy. +Here was temptation indeed to Luria: his own victorious troops would not +have turned their arms against him, and Pisa would have eagerly accepted +him. But Luria dismisses Tiburzio, thanks him, bids him go: he is +free,—“join Lucca!” And then, he reflects, he has still time before his +sentence comes; he has it in his power to ruin Florence. Would it console +him that his Florentines walked with a sadder step? He has one way of +escape left him: he has brought poison from his own land for use in an +emergency such as this; he drinks,—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Florence is saved: I drink this, and ere night,—die!”</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Madhouse Cells.</b> The two poems <i>Johannes Agricola in Meditation</i> and +<i>Porphyria’s Lover</i> were published in <i>Dramatic Lyrics, Bells and +Pomegranates</i>, No. III., under the general title <span class="smcap">Madhouse Cells</span>. In the +<i>Poetical Works</i> of 1863 the general title was given up.</p> + +<p><b>Magical Nature.</b> (<i>Pacchiarotto, with other Poems</i>: 1876.) The beauty of a +flower is at the mercy of the destroying hand of time; the beauty of a +jewel is independent of it. The petals drop off one by one, the flower +perishes; every facet of the jewel may laugh at time. Mere fleshly graces +are those of the flower; the soul’s beauty is best symbolised by the gem.</p> + +<p><b>Malcrais.</b> (<i>Two Poets of Croisic.</i>) Paul Desforges Maillard assumed the +name of Malcrais when he sent his poems to the Paris <i>Mercure</i>, pretending +they were the work of a lady.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span><b>“Man I am and man would be, Love.”</b> The fourth lyric in <i>Ferishtah’s +Fancies</i> begins with this line.</p> + +<p><b>Marching Along.</b> (No. I. of <i>Cavalier Tunes</i>.) Originally appeared in +<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, 1842.</p> + +<p><b>Martin Relph.</b> (<i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, First Series: 1879.) This poem deals with +a profound psychological problem. How far do we understand the mystery of +our own heart? How far can we analyse our own motives? Out of two powerful +motives, either of which may equally move us to do or leave undone a +certain thing, can we infallibly tell which one has ultimately prompted +our action? Are we less an enigma to ourselves than to others? The +Scripture warns us that we may not trust our imaginations, by reason of +the deceit which is within our breast. All his life the old man Martin +Relph had been trying to solve a mystery of this kind. He wants to know +whether he is a murderer or only a coward; and every year, till his beard +is as white as snow, has he gone to a hill outside the town where he lived +to ask this question, and to protest with all his power of speech—despite +the misgiving at his heart—that he was a coward. And this was his story. +When a youth he, with the rest of the villagers, had been crowded up in +this spot by the soldiers who held the place, that they might see, for a +terrible warning, the execution of a young woman for playing the spy, and +so interfering in the King’s military concerns. It was in the reign of +King George, and there had been a rebellion, and the rebels had learned +the strength of the troops sent against them by means of some spy. A +letter had been intercepted written by a girl to her lover, and the poor +creature had told him such news of the movements of the troops as she +thought would interest him, not knowing she was doing any harm. In all +this the authorities smelt treason. Her lover was Vincent Parkes, one of +the clerks of the King, “a sort of lawyer,” and therefore dangerous. To +give the girl a chance of clearing herself from suspicion, the commander +of the troops sent for this Parkes, who was in a distant part of the +country, bidding him come and dispel the cloud hanging over the girl if he +could, and giving him a week for the journey. The week is up. Parkes has +taken no notice of the letter; and the girl, tried by court-martial, is to +be shot that day. And now poor Rosamund Page, with pinioned arms and +bandaged face, is left to die. Her faithless lover, who could have saved +her, has not appeared, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> there is no help for her but in God. The +villagers are assembled to see the sight; and Martin Relph, who also loved +the girl, is there also. The word is given: up go the guns in a line, and +the paralysed spectators close their eyes and kneel in prayer,—all except +Martin, who stands in the highest part of the hill and sees a man running +madly, falling, rising, struggling on, waving something white above his +head; and no one in all the crowd sees the messenger but Martin Relph. And +he is speechless, makes no sign, for hell-fire boils in his brain; and the +volley is fired and the woman dead, while stretched on the field, half a +mile off, is Vincent Parkes, dead also, with the King’s letter in his hand +that proclaims his sweetheart’s innocence. He had been hampered and +hindered at every turn by formalities and frivolous delays on the part of +the authorities, and so was too late. Martin Relph, had he called out, +could have stayed the execution. Why did he remain silent? The thought had +flashed through his mind, as he recognised the position, “She were better +dead than his!” and so he had not spoken; but he has told his heart a +thousand times that fear kept him silent, and he has passed his life in +trying to convince himself it was so indeed. But, deceitful as the human +heart may be, deep down in its recesses he knew he was a murderer.</p> +<p><a name="wollstone" id="wollstone"></a></p> +<p><b>Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli.</b> (<i>Jocoseria</i>, 1883.) Mary Wollstonecraft +was the foundress of the Women’s Rights movement. She was born in 1759, +and early gave evidence of the possession of superior mental powers and of +bold ideas of her own. Her first attempt in literature was a pamphlet +entitled <i>Thoughts on the Education of Daughters</i>. She was of a very +energetic spirit, with considerable confidence in her own powers. “I am +going to be the first of a new genus,” she wrote to her sister Everina in +1788. “I tremble at the attempt; yet if I fail, I only suffer. Freedom, +even uncertain freedom, is dear. This project has long floated in my mind. +You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track; the peculiar bent of +my nature pushes me on.” At this time she had secured employment as +literary adviser to Mr. Johnson, the publisher of her pamphlet. At this +gentleman’s house she met many interesting people; amongst others the +author, William Godwin, and the artist, Henry Fuseli. She now began to +attack the established order of society in the most violent manner. She +heartily sympathised<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> with the French Revolution, and denounced Lords and +Commons, the clergy and the game laws, with great violence. She will be +best remembered by her book <i>A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i>. Her +idea was that the women of her time were fools, and that men kept women in +ignorance that they might retain their authority over them. “Strengthen +the female mind by enlarging it,” she pleads: her idea being that men kept +women either as slaves or playthings. She now became greatly interested in +Fuseli, who did not in the least reciprocate her affection, but was +annoyed by it. He was a married man, and though, no doubt, he could see +that at first her love for him was platonic, it was rapidly assuming a +more ardent character. She wrote him many letters full of affection, and +actually ventured to ask Mrs. Fuseli to accept her as an inmate in her +family. Finding that Fuseli remained impervious to her attacks upon his +heart, she went to Paris, sending him a letter asking his pardon “for +having disturbed the quiet tenor of his life.” In Paris she soon consoled +herself with a gentleman named Gilbert Imlay, with whom she lived without +taking what she termed the “vulgar precaution” of marriage. Shortly after +forming this connection Imlay cruelly deserted her. She left Paris, +hurried to London, found her worst fears confirmed, and attempted to +commit suicide by throwing herself from Putney Bridge. She was picked up, +living to regret the “inhumanity” which had rescued her from death. She +heard no more of Imlay; but five years after meeting William Godwin for +the first time at Mr. Johnson’s she met him again by chance at the house +of a mutual friend. As Mary’s opinion about the “vulgar formality” of +marriage remained unchanged, and as Godwin held with her on the subject, +the formality was once more dispensed with; but ultimately it was +considered advisable so far to conciliate the prejudices of society as to +go through the ceremony, which was performed at Old St. Pancras Church, +and Mary Wollstonecraft became Mrs. Godwin in due form. In September 1797 +her troubled life came to a premature close. She died before completing +her thirty-ninth year. Mary left two children; the younger of these, her +daughter by Godwin, became the wife of the poet Shelley. The elder, +Imlay’s daughter, poisoned herself, leaving a slip of paper stating that +she had done so “to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was +unfortunate.” The authoress of the <i>Rights of Woman</i> had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> neglected to +consider the rights of Mrs. Fuseli and of the fruit of her illicit +connection with Imlay when she devoted herself to the emancipation of her +sex. In the poem Mary prates vainly of what she would do if only she were +loved; and as the Rev. John Sharpe, M.A., says in his paper on <i>Jocoseria</i> +with reference to the question, “Wanting is——what?” (a question which +seems to preside over all the poems in the volume to which it is a +prologue): “Deeds, not words, are wanted. Perfect love awakens love in the +indifferent by perfect deeds of loving self-sacrifice.”</p> + +<p><b>Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; +<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1868.) An organist in a church where they have just +concluded the evening service determines to have a colloquy with the old +dead composer Master Hugues as to the meaning of the compositions known as +fugues for which he was celebrated. They were mountainous in their +structure—the ideas were piled one upon another till their meaning was +lost in cloudland. So, while the church is emptying and the altar +ministrants are putting things to rights, he will look into the matter of +the old quaint arithmetical music in fashion before Palestrina brought +back music to the service of melody. There is but one inch of candle left +in the socket, so the composer must tell him what he has to say quickly. +First he delivers his phrase; he gives but a clause. He asserts nothing, +puts forward no proposition; nevertheless there is an answer, though a +needless one, and the two start off together. (It will be seen that the +poet suggests five impersonations of characters taking part in the +discussion or mangle of the composition.) A third interposes, and +volunteers his help; a fourth must have his say, and a fifth must needs +interfere. So the disputation is like that of a knot of angry politicians, +who all want to speak at once, and will scarcely allow each other to utter +a complete sentence. This is a perfect description of a fugue, which even +to the uninstructed listener is a musical wrangle plainly enough. In the +fugue the organist sees a moral of life, with its zigzags, dodges, and ins +and outs. Truth and Nature are over our heads. God’s gold here and there +shines out in our soul-manifestations, if we would but let truth and +Nature have their way with us, the gold would be all the plainer to see; +but with our evasions, our pretences, shams and subterfuges we have all +but obliterated it, just as the inventor of the fugue has buried his +melody under a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> mountain of musical tricks and pedantic finger puzzles. +The organist pauses; he will have no more of it as a moral of life. The +Jesuit’s casuistry, which went to prove that all sorts of evil things +might under certain circumstances and under such and such restrictions +become actual virtues, was swept away by Pascal’s clear-sighted common +sense. So Master Hugues and his fugues shall vanish before the full organ +blaring out the <i>mode Palestrina</i>—the grave, pure, truthful music of the +Church. As Pascal to Escobar, so is Palestrina to Master Hugues; quibbles, +shams, fencings with truth, overlay God’s gold with the cobwebs of +tradition, and must be brushed away. “Rochell has quite correctly +perceived that the approximate best symbol of the uncreated heaven is +music. In the evolution of harmonies in the upper and lower notes, and +their mutual conflict; in the solution of strife and tension into blessed +calm; in the transmutation of the ever-recurring theme into new phrases; +in the constant reappearance of the <i>motif</i>, of the question which seeks a +reply through every evolution of the notes, and which leads the reply into +a new process—in this we see the temporal symbol of the eternal rhythm, +the eternal circular movement in God’s heaven, where melodious colours and +radiant notes are interwoven with each other; where nothing lies in +stagnant repose, but all is in motion; where unity and harmony are +eternally effected by means of the contrasted, movements and action.” +(Martensen’s <i>Jacob Boehme</i>, page 167.)</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Hugues</i> is a purely imaginary composer. Verse i. “<i>mountainous +fugues</i>”: “A fugue is a short, complete melody, which <i>flies</i> (hence the +name) from one part to another, while the original part is continued in +counterpoint against it. The beginning of this art-form dates from very +primitive times” (Sir G. Macfarren). Probably Bach’s fugues are meant in +the poem, vi., <i>Aloys and Jurien and Just</i>, sacristan’s assistants; “<i>darn +the sacrament lace</i>”: the lace on the altar linen. The actual sacrament +linen is washed by the clergy in the Roman Catholic Church. The church +plate (<i>i.e.</i>, chalice, paten, etc.) is cleaned by the clergy also, viii., +<i>claviers</i>, the keyboard of the organ ix., “<i>great breves as they wrote +them of yore</i>”: a breve is the longest note in music, and was formerly +square in shape. In the old Spanish cathedrals I have seen the music-books +used in the services of such a size that it required two men to carry +them. The notes in such books are very large, xvi., “<i>O<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> Danaides, O +Sieve!</i>” the Danaides were the daughters of Danaus, who were condemned for +their crimes to pour water for ever in the regions below into a vessel +with holes in the bottom. xvii., <i>Escobar</i>, y Mendoza, was a Spanish +casuist, the general tendency of whose writings was to find excuses for +human frailties. Pascal severely criticised him in his <i>Provincial +Letters</i>. His doctrines were disapproved at Rome. Escobar himself was a +most excellent man. He died in 1669. xviii., “<i>Est fuga, volvitur +rota</i>” == it is a flight, the wheel rolls itself round. xix., <i>risposting</i> +== riposting, a term in fencing; in this case equal to making a repartee. +xx., <i>ticken</i> == ticking, a twill fabric very closely woven. xxviii., <i>meâ +pœnâ</i> == at my risk of punishment; <i>Gorgon</i>, a monster with a terrible +head, with hair and girdle of snakes; “<i>mode Palestrina</i>”: Giovanni P. da +Palestrina (1524-1594), now universally distinguished as the Prince of +Music, emancipated his art from the trammels of pedantry, which, ignoring +beauty as the most necessary element of music, was tending to reduce it to +mere arithmetical problems.</p> + +<p><b>May and Death.</b> (Published first in <i>The Keepsake</i>, 1857; in 1864 published +in <i>Dramatis Personæ</i>.) Mrs. Orr, in her <i>Life and Letters of Robert +Browning</i>, says that the poet wrote this poem in remembrance of one of his +boy companions, the eldest of “the three Silverthornes, his neighbours at +Camberwell, and cousins on the maternal side.” The name of Charles in the +poem stands for the old familiar Jim. Mrs. Silverthorne was the aunt who +paid for the printing of <i>Pauline</i>. The verses express the wish that all +the delights of spring had died with his friend; yet he would have spared +one plant of the woods in May which has in its leaves a streak of spring’s +blood. Where’er the leaf grows in a wood they know the red drop comes from +the poet’s heart. The question has often been asked “What is the plant +referred to in the fourth stanza?” The following reply was given in the +<i>Browning Society’s Papers</i>:—“Surely the <i>Polygonum Persicaria</i> or +Spotted Persicaria is the plant referred to. It is a common weed, with +purple stains upon its rather large leaves; these spots varying in size +and vividness of colour according to the nature of the soil where it +grows.” The Rev. H. Friend, in <i>Flowers and Flower Lore</i> (p. 5), +says:—“Respecting the Virgin, I have recently found the country folk in +one part of Oxfordshire retaining an interesting legend which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> connects +the name of her ladyship with the <i>Spotted Persicaria</i>. It will be +remembered that, in consequence of the dark spot which marks the centre of +every leaf belonging to this plant, popular tradition asserts that it grew +beneath the Cross, and received this distinction through the drops of +blood which fell from the Saviour’s wounds touching its leaves. The +<i>Oxonian</i> however, says that the Virgin was wont of old to use its leaves +for the manufacture of a valuable ointment, but that on one occasion she +sought it in vain. Finding it afterwards, when the need had passed away, +she condemned it, and gave it the rank of an ordinary weed. This is +expressed in the local rhyme:—</p> + +<p class="poem">‘She could not find in time of need,<br /> +And so she pinched it for a weed.’</p> + +<p>The mark on the leaf is the impression of the Virgin’s finger, and the +persicaria is now the <i>only</i> weed that is not useful for something.” Again +(p. 191) he says, “We are told that in some parts of England the arum, +commonly called lords and ladies, cows and calves, parson in the pulpit, +or parson and clerk, is known as Gethsemane, because it is said to have +been growing at the foot of the cross, and to have received on its leaves +some of the blood:—</p> + +<p class="poem">‘Those deep unwrought marks,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The villager will tell you,</span><br /> +Are the flower’s portion from the atoning blood<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On Calvary shed. Beneath the Cross it grew.’</span></p> + +<p>The same tradition clings to the purple orchis and the spotted persicaria. +We have already seen how many plants are supposed to have gained their +purple hue or ruddy colour from blood of hero, god, or martyr. A similar +legend seems to have been at one time attached to the purple-stained +flowers of the wood-sorrel, which is by Italian painters, including Fra +Angelico, occasionally placed in the foreground of their pictures +representing the Crucifixion. This plant is called Alleluia in Italian, +which may have had something to do, however, with its association with the +Cross of Christ, ‘as if the very flowers round the Cross were giving glory +to God.’ The wallflower, that ‘scents the dewy air,’ is in Palestine +called ‘the blood-drops of Christ’; and its deep hue has led to its being +called by a similar name in the West of England. The rose-coloured lotus, +or melilot, was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> said to have sprung in like manner from the blood of the +lion slain by the Emperor Adrian. It is probable that the story was the +modification of some earlier myth. Mr. Conway tells us he has somewhere +met with a legend telling that the thorn-crown of Christ was made from +rose-briar, and that the drops of blood that started under it and fell to +the ground blossomed to roses. Mrs. Howe, the American poetess, +beautifully alludes to this in the lines—</p> + +<p class="poem">‘Men saw the thorns on Jesus’ brow,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But angels saw the Roses.’”</span></p> +<p><a name="meeting" id="meeting"></a></p> +<p><b>Meeting at Night and Parting at Morning.</b> (Originally published as <span class="smcap">Night +and Morning</span> in <i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i>, <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, +VII.: 1845.) The speaker is a man who joyfully seeks his happy seaside +home at night, where he rejoins the wife from whom the demands of his +daily work have separated him. In the sequel (<i>Parting at Morning</i>) the +rising sun calls men to work: the man of the poem to work of a lucrative +character; and excites in the woman (if we interpret the slightly obscure +line correctly) a desire for more society than the seaside home affords. +Commentators on these poems have evidently “jumped the difficulty.”</p> + +<p><b>Melander.</b> The author whose work “Joco-Seria” suggested the title of Mr. +Browning’s volume of poems <i>Jocoseria</i> (<i>q.v.</i>).</p> + +<p><b>Melon-Seller, The.</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>, II.) The second of the lessons +learned by Ferishtah on his way to dervishhood. He sees a well-remembered +face in a melon-seller near a bridge. He was once the Shah’s Prime +Minister: he peculated, and was disgraced. Shocked at the contrast between +what the man was and has now become, Ferishtah asks him if he did not +curse God for the twelve years’ bliss he enjoyed only to end in misery +like that? The beggar contemptuously asked his questioner if he were +unwise enough to think him such a fool as to repine at God’s just +punishment on sin, and to reproach Him with the happiness he had tasted in +the past? Job said: “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and evil +not receive?” This was just what the melon-seller said. “But great wits +jump”; and Ferishtah, having learned the great lesson, went his way to +dervishhood. The Lyric asks for a little severity from Love: so much +undeserved bliss has been imparted, that a little injustice seems +requisite to balance things.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span><b>Memorabilia.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855—when the title was <i>Memorabilia (on +Seeing Shelley)</i>; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1868.) A man with a +soul crosses a vast moor, a blankness of miles, but on one hand-breadth +spot he spies an eagle’s feather, which he cherishes. An eagle’s feather +meant something to the man with the soul, the miles of blank moor had +nothing to say to him; and so once he saw Shelley plain, and even spoke to +him. The man had lived long before and had lived long after, but the sight +of Shelley and the words he spoke made just that hand-breadth of his life +something different from all the colourless remainder. [Some there are who +love to say the same of Robert Browning!] Mr. Browning early in his youth +(1825) fell under the influence of Shelley. Mr. Sharp, in his <i>Life of +Browning</i>, says that, as he was one day passing a bookstall, “he saw, in a +box of second-hand volumes, a little book advertised as ‘Mr. Shelley’s +Atheistical Poem,—very scarce.’ He had never heard of Shelley, nor did he +learn for a long time that the <i>Dæmon of the World</i> and the miscellaneous +poems appended thereto constituted a literary piracy.” He discovered that +there was such a poet as Shelley; that he had written several volumes, and +was dead. He begged his mother to procure him Shelley’s works, which she +had some difficulty in doing, as several booksellers to whom she applied +knew nothing of them. The books were ultimately purchased at Ollier’s +shop, in Vere Street. Shelley, as Mr. Sharp says, “enthralled” Browning. +His first work, <i>Pauline</i>, was written under the dominance of the Shelley +passion. He refers to Shelley in <i>Sordello</i>. <i>Memorabilia</i> was composed in +the Roman Campagna in the winter of 1853-54.</p> + +<p><b>Men and Women.</b> (Published in 1855, in two vols.; now dispersed in vols. +iii., iv. and v. of <i>Poetical Works</i>, 1868.) The poems included under this +general title were fifty-one in number.</p> + +<p>Vol. 1. contained the following:—“Love among the Ruins,” “A Lovers’ +Quarrel,” “Evelyn Hope,” “Up at a Villa—Down in the City,” “A Woman’s +Last Word,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,” “A Toccata of Galuppi’s,” “By the +Fireside,” “Any Wife to any Husband,” “An Epistle of Karshish,” +“Mesmerism,” “A Serenade at the Villa,” “My Star,” “Instans Tyrannus,” “A +Pretty Woman,” “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” “Respectability,” +“A Light Woman,” “The Statue and the Bust,” “Love in a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> Life,” “Life in a +Love,” “How it Strikes a Contemporary,” “The Last Ride Together,” “The +Patriot,” “Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,” “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” +“Memorabilia.”</p> + +<p>Vol. II.: “Andrea del Sarto,” “Before,” “After,” “In Three Days,” “In a +Year,” “Old Pictures in Florence,” “In a Balcony,” “Saul,” “De +Gustibus——,” “Women and Roses,” “Protus,” “Holy-Cross Day,” “The +Guardian Angel,” “Cleon,” “The Twins,” “Popularity,” “The Heretic’s +Tragedy,” “Two in the Campagna,” “A Grammarian’s Funeral,” “One Way of +Love,” “Another Way of Love,” “Transcendentalism,” “Misconceptions,” “One +Word More.”</p> + +<p>In the six-volume edition of <i>Poetical Works</i> the poems comprised under +the title of <i>Men and Women</i> are the following, and it is these which are +generally understood now by the <i>Men and Women</i> +poems:—“Transcendentalism,” “How it Strikes a Contemporary,” “Artemis +Prologuises,” “An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of +Karshish the Arab Physician,” “Pictor Ignotus,” “Fra Lippo Lippi,” “Andrea +del Sarto,” “The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church,” “Bishop +Blougram’s Apology,” “Cleon,” “Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli,” “One Word +More.”</p> + +<p>Unquestionably in these works we have the very flower of Mr. Browning’s +genius. There is not one of them which the world will willingly let die. +As Mr. Symons says, their distinguishing feature is “the monologue brought +to perfection. Such monologues as <i>Andrea del Sarto</i>, or <i>The Epistle of +Karshish</i>, never have been, and probably never will be, surpassed, on +their own ground, after their own order.”</p> + +<p><b>Mesmerism.</b> (<i>Dramatic Romances</i>: 1855.) A description of an influence of +one mind upon another, which would in modern medical parlance be termed +hypnotism. When an operator has this power, and has frequently exercised +it upon his subject, it is undoubtedly true that what is here described in +so lifelike a manner may actually take place. The subject may have been +led to expect that she would be required to undertake the journey in +question, and the mind in that case would contribute to the success of the +operation. Hypnosis and somnambulism are not produced by any fluid which +escapes from the mesmeriser’s body, but by the fact that the subject has +been induced to form a fixed idea that he is being hypnotised. Braid +asserts that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> the imagination of the subject is an indispensable element +in the success of the experiment; he declares that the most expert +hypnotiser will exert himself in vain unless the subject is aware of what +is passing and surrenders himself body and soul. Binet and Frere, in their +valuable work on <i>Animal Magnetism</i>, p. 96, say that “a whole series of +purely physical agents exist, which prove that sleep can be induced +without the aid of the subject’s imagination, against his will, and +without his knowledge.” The incidents of the poem may all be accounted for +by the doctrine of expectant attention. The use of hypnotic suggestion for +criminal purposes is referred to in stanzas xxvi. and xxvii.—a very real +danger from a medico-legal point of view, as some think. At night, when +all is quiet but the noises peculiar to the hours of darkness, the +mesmeriser of the poem desires that the woman under the influence of his +will-power shall forthwith make her way to him through the rain and mud +straight to his house. In due time she enters without a word. Recognising +the wonderful influence which one mind may exercise upon another, the +operator prays that he may never abuse it, and he reflects that one day +God will call him to account for its exercise.</p> + +<p><b>Mihrab Shah.</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>, 6.) <span class="smcap">The Mystery of Evil and Pain.</span> An +inquirer, while culling herbs, has had his thumb nipped by a scorpion. He +wishes to know “Why needs a scorpion be? Why, in fact, needs any evil or +pain happen to man if God be wholly good and omnipotent?” Ferishtah +replies that when he awoke in the morning he was thankful that his head +did not tumble off his neck. “But,” says the inquirer, “heads do not fall +unchopped.” Says the dervish, “They might do so by natural law; why might +not a staff loosed from the hand spring skyward as naturally as it falls +to the ground?” What would be the bond ’twixt man and man if pain were +abolished? Take away from man thanks to God and love to man, what is he +worth? The lyric explains the compensations of existence. The ardent soul +is enshrined in feeble flesh, the sluggish soul in a robust frame. What +one person lacks is found in another, and this creates a bond of sympathy +between our spirits. No one has everything. What we lack we admire when +present in another, and so our own defects are pardoned for what in us is +excellent.</p> + +<p><b>Mildred Tresham.</b> (<i>A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.</i>) The lady who is loved by +Lord Henry Mertoun, and visited by him in secret<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> at night. She dies when +she learns that her brother has killed her lover.</p> + +<p><b>Misconceptions.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855.) A beautiful fancy of a branch on +which a bird has rested a moment bursting into bloom for pride and joy +that it has been so honoured. The poet treats it as symbolical of a heart +which has thrilled for a moment under the smiles of a queen ere she went +on to her true-love throne.</p> +<p><a name="sludge" id="sludge"></a></p> +<p><b>Mr. Sludge, “The Medium.”</b> (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>: 1864.) Mr. Sludge is a +“medium” who has been detected by his dupe in the act of cheating. He has +worked upon his patron’s love for his dead mother, has pretended that he +has had communications with the spirit world, and has found it a +profitable business. However, he is found out, the game is up, he is half +throttled by the man whom he has swindled, and is about to be kicked out +of his house. He admits the cheating, but tries to make out that it was +prompted by a low species of spirit (<i>elementals</i> as they are called). He +offers, if liberally paid, to explain how the fraud has been carried out. +He pretends one moment that he is repentant, the next he proposes to +increase his guilt by falsely accusing his too confiding benefactor. He is +prepared to swear that he picked a quarrel with him to get back the +presents he had given. The bargain is made; and the medium, seated again +at the “dear old table” which has so often been the partner of his +performances, proceeds to explain that it is much more the fault of the +public that they are cheated, than that of the artful folk who are always +ready to meet demand by supply. In many things, but especially in affairs +relating to the unseen world, people are willing to be deceived; and, as +Demosthenes said, “Nothing is more easy than to deceive ourselves, as our +affections are subtle persuaders.”</p> + +<p class="poem">“It’s all your fault, you curious gentlefolk!”</p> + +<p>said Sludge. “Everybody is interested in ghosts, and everybody will listen +to the ghost-seer. A poor lad, the son of a servant in your house, talks +to you about money, and you immediately suspect him of having stolen some; +if he talk to you about seeing spirits, you encourage him to tell his +story, and you listen with open ears. You make allowances for the +unexplained ‘<i>phenomena</i>,’ and you are not disconcerted by his blunders. +So the boy is encouraged to try again, to see more, hear more and <ins class="correction" title="original: stragner">stranger</ins> +things. You have patience with the primary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> manifestations, always weak +at first; you discourage doubts as always fatal to them, and thus educate +the boy in his cheating. He is compelled to invent; you prompt him, your +readiness to be deceived confirms him in his readiness to deceive. It is +not that the boy starts as a liar; he will soon enough develop into that; +at first however,</p> + +<p class="poem">“‘It’s fancying, fable-making, nonsense-work—<br /> +What never meant to be so very bad.’</p> + +<p>He brightens up his dull facts till they shine, and you no longer +recognise them as dull, but brilliant. He hears what other mediums have +done, he estimates your demands of him; you push him to the brink, he is +compelled to dive. Let him confess his deception, and he has to go back to +the gutter from which you have taken him. Let him keep on, and he lives in +clover. And so he manufactures for you all you demand. He has heard raps +and seen a light. ‘Shaped somewhat like a star?’ you eagerly inquire. +‘Well, like some sort of stars, ma’am.’ ‘So we thought!’ you say. ‘And any +voice?’ ‘Not yet.’ ‘Try hard next time!’ Next time you have the voice. The +medium is launched in the rapids. The falls are hard by: nothing can +hinder but he must go over. He becomes the medium which has been required +of him. The spirits forthwith speak up and become familiar and +confidential. If any complain that the spirits do not fulfil our +expectation of what the ghosts of Bacon, Cromwell, or Beethoven should be +and do, the answer is ready and assumes two forms. If Bacon is deficient +in spelling, does not know where he was born or in what year he died, this +is no argument against spiritualism. The spirits are of all orders; and +many, perhaps most, are tricksy, undeveloped, and delight to deceive. Or, +again, the explanation is put in this way:—What is a medium? He is the +means, and the only means, by which the spirits can hold converse with +mortals. They have no organs; they must use ours. The medium holding +converse with the spirit of Beethoven, not being much of a musician, is, +of course, only able very imperfectly to express the composer’s musical +soul. He pours in—to Sludge’s soul—a sonata. If it comes out the +Shakers’ Hymn in G, that is the defect of the means or medium by which the +master has been driven to express himself.” Sludge tells his dupe that it +was thus he helped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> him out of every scrape; and the fools who attended +every seance did not criticise. Why should they? They did not criticise +his wine or his furniture—why should they criticise his medium? Of course +they sometimes doubted. “Ah!” says the host, “it was just this spirit of +doubt pervading the circle which confused the medium and accounted for his +errors!” Sludge often got out of his difficulties that way. Sometimes, +however the awful aspect of truth would present itself so sternly before +him as to spoil all the cockering and cosseting he received, and he would +gnash his teeth at the thought of the ruin of his soul by the humbug +forced upon him. The cheating was nursed out of the lying. He would have +stopped, but his dupes were for progress; they always demanded fresh and +more striking “phenomena”—from talking to writing, from writing to +flowers from the spirit world. If he actually were detected in jogging the +table, or making squeaks with his toes, he would be accused of joking; if +he pretended he was not, then he was at once in the dupe’s power. Then the +cheating is so easy! A master of an ordinary trade can perform miracles to +the untaught. The glass-blower, pipe maker, even the baker, by long +practice, can puzzle the uninitiated; practise table-tilting, +joint-cracking, playing tricks in the dark, and the phenomena of the +medium’s business become easy as an old shoe. But, apart from this actual +trickery, can the hardest head detect where the cheating begins, even if +he is on his guard? There is a real love of a lie, and liars have no +difficulty in attracting those who are only waiting to be deceived, and +the most sceptical are just the most likely to be caught. Then the Solomon +of saloons, the philosophic diner-out,—these were his patrons. They +“wanted a doctrine for a chopping-block.” They had to be singular, and +hack and hew common sense to show their skill in dialectics. These had +Sludge injured. Then he reminds his patrons that the Bible teaches +spiritualism. We all start with a stock of it; and stars even, we are +taught, are not only worlds and suns, but stand for signs when we should +set about our proper business. Sludge declares he has taught himself to +live by signs: he is broken to the way of nods and winks. He has not +waited for the tingle of the bell, but has obeyed the tap of knuckles on +the wall. Suppose he blunders nine times out of ten as to the meaning of +the knuckle summons, is he not a gainer if the tenth time he guesses +right? Everybody blunders even as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> he. The thing is to imitate the +ant-eater, and keep his tongue out to catch all nature’s motes for food. +It is wisdom to respect the infinitely little, for God comes close behind +the animalcule, life simplified to a mere cell. All was not cheating +either: he has told his lie and seen truth follow. He knows not why he did +what he never tried to do, described what he never saw, spoke more than he +ever intended; and though he believes everybody can and does cheat, he is +not less sure that every cheat’s every inspired lie contains a germ of +truth. Pervade this world by an influx from the next, and all the dead, +dry, dull facts of existence spring into life and freshness, as at the +touch of harlequin’s wand; and harlequin’s wand is Sludge’s lie, for which +the inanimate world was waiting. You see the real world through the false, +and so you have the golden age all by the help of a little lying. At most, +Sludge is only a poet who acts the books which poets write. The more to +his honour! But all his specious reasoning fails to reassure his awakened +dupe, who gives him the notes he promised and dismisses him. No sooner is +the medium out of the presence of the man whom he has deceived than he +pours out a volley of abuse, and wishes he dare burn down the house; he +will declare that he throttled his “sainted mother”—the old hag—in such +a fit of passion as his throat had just felt the effects of; he reproaches +himself for not having prophesied he would die within a year; but he +consoles himself with counting his money, and reflecting that his awakened +dupe is not the only fool in the world. “Sludge” is D. D. Home, the +American medium. Mrs. Browning was an ardent spiritualist, and Mr. +Browning, in consequence, had considerable experience of the ways of +mediums and the talk and arguments of their followers. Although no medium +ever reasoned with such skill and subtlety as Sludge, the main arguments +used by this impostor are precisely those put forward by spiritualists. +The mediums are a wretchedly weak, invertebrate order of beings, quite +incapable of any such virile processes of thought as those expressed in +the poem. There could be no greater mistake than to suppose that Mr. +Browning intended to make any defence for any phase of spiritualism +whatever: he has simply gathered into a poem the best which could be put +forward for spiritualism, and directed it upon the personality of Sludge. +Intimate friends of the Brownings assure me that Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> Browning with great +difficulty restrained his disgust at the practices of spiritualists, and +his annoyance at the fact that his wife devoted so much time and attention +to this aspect of human folly. Perhaps the feature which angered him most +was the habit of trading upon and outraging the most sacred feelings of +the human heart, in the endeavour to gain clients for a money-making +occupation.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Catawba wine</i>: a white wine of American make, from grapes first +discovered about 1801 near the banks of the Catawba river. Its praises +have been sung by Longfellow. <i>Greeley</i>: Horace Greeley, the eminent +American editor. His history was identified with the fortunes of his paper +the <i>Tribune</i>. “<i>Nothing lasts, as Bacon came and said</i>”: Bacon’s Essay +LVIII. is <i>Of the Vicissitude of Things</i>. <i>Phenomena</i>: the spiritualists’ +term for the antics of tables, pats, twitchings, ghostly lights, tinkling +of bells, etc., at their <i>séances</i>. <i>The Horseshoe</i>: the great waterfall +of that name at Niagara. <i>Pasiphae</i>: the daughter of the Sun and of +Perseis, who married Minos, King of Crete. She was enamoured of a bull, or +more probably of an officer named Taurus (a bull). <i>Odic Lights</i>: Od, the +name given by Reichenbach to an <i>influence</i> he believed he had discovered; +it was held to explain the phenomena of mesmerism, and to account for the +luminous appearances at spirit-rapping circles. “<i>Canthus of my eye</i>” == +the corner of the eye. <i>Stomach cyst</i>, an animalcule which is nothing more +than a bag, without limbs or organs; one of the infusoria, the simplest of +creatures endowed with animal life. “<i>The Bridgewater book</i>”: The Earl of +Bridgewater (1758-1829) devised by his will £8,000 at the disposal of the +President of the Royal Society, to be paid to the authors of treatises “On +the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation.” +Several of the treatises are now famous books, as Bell on <i>The Hand</i>, +Kirby on <i>Habits and Instincts of Animals</i>, and Whewell’s <i>Astronomy</i>. +<i>Eutopia</i> == Utopia.</p> + +<p><b>Molinos.</b> <i>See</i> <a href="#molinists"><span class="smcap">Molinists</span></a>.</p> +<p><a name="molinists" id="molinists"></a></p> +<p><b>Molinists, The</b> (<i>Ring and the Book</i>), were followers of Michael Molinos, a +Spanish priest and spiritual director of great repute in Rome, who was a +cadet of a noble Spanish family of Sarragossa. He was born on December +21st, 1627. In 1675 he published, during his residence in Rome, his famous +work entitled <i>The Spiritual Guide</i>, a book which taught the doctrine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> +known as that of Quietism. This species of mysticism had previously been +taught by John Tauler and Henry Suso, as also by St. Theresa and St. +Catherine of Siena, but in a different and more orthodox form than that in +which it was presented by Molinos. Butler, in his <i>Life of St. John of the +Cross</i>, says that the system of perfect contemplation called Quietism +chiefly turned upon the following general principles:—1. In perfect +contemplation the man does not reason, but passively receives heavenly +light, the mind being in a state of perfect inattention and inaction. 2. A +soul in that state desires nothing, not even its own salvation; and fears +nothing, not even hell itself. 3. That when the soul has arrived at this +state, the use of the sacraments and of good works becomes indifferent. +Pope Innocent XI., in 1687, condemned sixty-eight propositions extracted +from this author as heretical, scandalous and blasphemous. Molinos was +condemned by the Inquisition at Rome, recanted his errors, and ended his +life in imprisonment in 1696.</p> + +<p><b>Monaldeschi.</b> (<i>Cristina and Monaldeschi.</i>) The Marquis Monaldeschi, the +grand equerry of Queen Cristina of Sweden. He was put to death at +Fontainebleau by order of Cristina, because he had betrayed her.</p> + +<p><b>Monsignore the Bishop.</b> (<i>Pippa Passes.</i>) He comes to Asolo to confer with +his “Intendant” in the palace by the Duomo; he is contriving how to remove +Pippa from his path, when her song as she passes stings his conscience, +and he punishes his evil counsellor who suggested mischief concerning her.</p> + +<p><b>Morgue, The</b>, at Paris. (<i>Apparent Failure.</i>) The place by the Seine where +the dead are exposed for identification.</p> + +<p><b>Muckle-Mouth Meg</b> (“Big-Mouth Meg”). (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) Sir Walter Scott +was a descendant of the house of Harden, and of the famous chieftain <i>Auld +Watt</i> of that line. Auld Watt was once reduced in the matter of live stock +to a single cow, and recovered his dignity by stealing the cows of his +English neighbours. Professor Veitch says “the Scots’ Border ancestry were +sheep farmers, who varied their occupation by ‘lifting’ sheep and cattle, +and whatever else was ‘neither too heavy nor too hot.’” The lairds of the +Border were, in fact, a race of robbers. Sir Walter Scott was proud of +this descent, and his fame as a writer was due to his Border history and +poetry. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> poem describes the capture red-handed of the handsome young +William Scott, Lord of Harden, who was defeated in one of these forays, +and taken prisoner by Sir Gideon Murray of Elibank, who ordered him to the +gallows. But the Laird’s dame interposed, asking grace for the callant if +he married “our Muckle-mouth Meg.” The young fellow said he preferred the +gallows to the wide-mouthed monster. He was sent to the dungeon for a +week; after seven days of cold and darkness he was asked to reconsider his +decision. He found life sweet, and embraced the ill-favoured maiden.</p> + +<p><b>Muléykeh</b>, (<i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, Second Series, 1880.) A tale of an Arab’s +love for his horse. The story is a common one, and seems adapted from a +Bedouin’s anecdote told in Rollo Springfield’s <i>The Horse and his Rider</i>. +Hóseyn was despised by strangers for his apparent poverty. He had neither +flocks nor herds, but he possessed Muléykeh, his peerless mare, his Pearl: +he could afford to laugh at men’s land and gold. In the race Muléykeh was +always first, and Hóseyn was a proud man. Now, Duhl, the son of Sheybán, +withered for envy of Hóseyn’s luck, and nothing but the possession of the +Pearl would satisfy him: so he rode to Hóseyn’s tent, told him he knew +that he was poor, and offered him a thousand camels for the mare. Hóseyn +would not consider the proposal for a moment. “<i>I love Muléykeh’s face</i>,” +he said, and dismissed her would-be purchaser. In a year’s time Duhl is +back again at Hóseyn’s tent. This time he would not offer to buy the +Pearl. He tells him his soul pines to death for her beauty, and his wife +has urged him to go and beg for the mare. Hóseyn said, “It is life against +life. What good avails to the life bereft?” Another year passes, and the +crafty Duhl is back again—this time to steal what he can neither buy nor +beg. It is night. Hóseyn lies asleep beside the Pearl, with her headstall +thrice wound about his wrist By Muléykeh’s side stands her sister +Buhéyseh, a famous mare for fleetness too: she stands ready saddled and +bridled, in case some thief should enter and fly with the Pearl. Now Duhl +enters as stealthily as a serpent, cuts the headstall, mounts her, and is +“launched on the desert like bolt from bow.” Hóseyn starts up, and in a +minute more is in pursuit on Buhéyseh. They gain on the fugitive, for +Muléykeh misses the tap of the heel, the touch of the bit—the secret +signs by which her master was wont to urge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> her to her utmost speed. Now +they are neck by croup, what does Hóseyn but shout—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Dog Duhl. Damned son of the Dust,<br /> +Touch the right ear, and press with your foot my Pearl’s left flank!”</p> + +<p>Duhl did so: Muléykeh redoubled her pace and vanished for ever. When the +neighbours saw Hóseyn at sunrise weeping upon the ground, he told them the +whole story, and when they laughed at him for a fool, and told him if he +had held his tongue, as a boy or a girl could have done, Muléykeh would be +with him then:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“‘And the beaten in speed!’ wept Hóseyn: ‘You never have loved my Pearl.’”</p> + +<p><b>Music Poems.</b> The great poems dealing with music are “Abt Vogler,” “Master +Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,” “A Toccata of Galuppi’s,” and “Charles Avison.” +Other poems which are musical in a lesser degree are “Saul,” “A +Grammarian’s Funeral,” “The Serenade,” “Up at a Villa,” “The Heretic’s +Tragedy.” “Balaustion’s Adventure” and “Fifine” also have incidental music +references.</p> + +<p><b>My Last Duchess—Ferrara.</b> (Published first in <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, +III., under <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, with the title “Italy,” in 1842; <i>Dramatic +Romances</i>, 1868.) A stern, severe, Italian nobleman, with a +nine-hundred-years’ name, is showing his picture gallery, to the envy of a +Count whose daughter he is about to marry. He is standing before the +portrait of his last duchess, for he is a widower, and is telling his +companion that “the depth and passion of her earnest glance” was not +reserved for her husband alone, but the slightest courtesy or attention +was sufficient to call up “that spot of joy” into her face. “Her heart,” +said the duke, “was too soon made glad, too easily impressed.” She smiled +on her husband (she was his property, and that was right); she smiled on +others (on every one, in fact), and that was an infringement of the rights +of property which this dealer in human souls could not brook, so he “gave +commands,”—“then all smiles stopped together.” The concentrated tragedy +of this line is a good example of the poet’s power of compressing a whole +life story in two or three words. The heartless duke instantly dismisses +the memory of his duchess and her fount of human love sealed up “by +command.” “We’ll go together<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> down, sir,”—and as they descend he draws +his guest’s attention to a fine bronze group, and discusses the question +of the dowry he is to receive with the woman who is <i>to succeed</i> his last +duchess.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>—<i>Fra Pandolf</i> and <i>Claus of Innsbruck</i> are imaginary artists. +Without very careful attention several delicate points in this poem will +be lost. When the duke said “Fra Pandolf” by design, he desired to impress +on the envoy, and his master the Count, the sort of behaviour he expected +from the woman he was about to marry. He intimated that he would tolerate +no rivals for his next wife’s smiles. When he begs his guest to “Notice +Neptune——taming a sea horse,” he further intimated how he had tamed and +killed his last duchess. All this was to convey to the envoy, and through +him to the lady, that he demanded in his new wife the concentration of her +whole being on himself, and the utmost devotion to his will.</p> + +<p><b>My Star.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1868.) +To one observer a beautiful star may appear in iridiscent colours +unobserved by others; just as, by looking at a prism from a certain angle, +we catch a play of rainbow tints which they might miss by adopting a +different point of view. Where strangers see a world, the singer obtains +access to a soul which opens to him all its glory, as the prism reveals +the constituent colours which combine to make the cold white ray of light. +The poem has been considered to be a tribute to Mrs. Browning.</p> + +<p><b>My Wife Gertrude.</b> See <a href="#boot"><span class="smcap">Boot and Saddle</span></a>.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Naddo</b> (<i>Sordello</i>) was a troubadour, and the Philistine friend and +counsellor of Sordello. He told Sordello not to try to introduce his own +ideas to the world: poetry should be founded in common-sense and deal with +the common ideas of mankind. The poet should, above all things, try to +please his audience. People like calm and repose. He must not attempt to +rise to an intellectual level his readers have not reached. Sordello, he +said, should be satisfied with being a poet, and not aim at being a leader +of men as well. Mr. Browning is in all this defending himself and +satirising the popular view of the poet’s province.</p> +<p><a name="names" id="names"></a></p> +<p><b>Names, The.</b> A poem written for the “Show-Book” of the Shakespearean Show +at the Albert Hall, May 1884, held on behalf of the Hospital for Women in +the Fulham Road, London:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>“Shakespeare!—to such name’s sounding, what succeeds<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fitly as silence? Falter forth the spell,—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Act follows word, the speaker knows full well,</span><br /> +Nor tampers with its magic more than needs.<br /> +Two names there are: That which the Hebrew reads<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With his soul only: if from lips it fell,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven, and hell,</span><br /> +Would own, ‘Thou didst create us!’ Nought impedes<br /> +We voice the other name, man’s most of might,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Awesomely, lovingly: let awe and love</span><br /> +Mutely await their working, leave to sight<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All of the issue as—below—above—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shakespeare’s creation rises: one remove,</span><br /> +Though dread—this finite from that infinite.”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span>, <i>March 12th, 1884</i>.</span></p> + +<p>Reprinted in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> of May 29th.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">The Hebrews will not pronounce the sacred tetragrammaton יהוה. They +substitute Adonai in reading the ineffable name. Jahwé (with the J +pronounced as Y) is the correct pronunciation of the unspeakable name. +Yet the learned hold that the true mirific name is lost, the word +“Jehovah” dating only from the Masoretic innovation. See a discussion +of the whole matter in <i>Isis Unveiled</i> (Blavatsky), vol. ii. p. +398,—a work which contains a good deal of real learning mixed with +infinite rubbish.</p> + +<p><b>Napoleon III.</b> See <a href="#prince"><span class="smcap">Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</span></a>.</p> +<p><a name="nationality" id="nationality"></a></p> +<p><b>Nationality in Drinks.</b> Under this title we have three poems, originally +published separately—namely, <i>Claret</i>, <i>Tokay</i>, and <i>Beer</i>. The first and +second were published in <i>Hood’s Magazine</i>, in June 1844. In 1863 the +poems were brought under their present title in the <i>Poetical Works</i>. In +<i>Claret</i> the fancy of the poet sees in his claret-flask, as it drops into +a black-faced pond, a resemblance to a gay French lady, with her arms held +beside her and her feet stretched out, dropping from life into death’s +silent ocean. In <i>Tokay</i> the bottle suggests a pygmy castle-warder, +dwarfish, but able and determined, strutting about with his huge brass +spurs and daring anybody to interfere with him. <i>Beer</i> is in memory of the +beverage drunk to Nelson’s memory off Cape Trafalgar: it includes an +authentic anecdote given to the poet by the captain of the vessel. He said +they show a coat of Nelson’s at Greenwich<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> with tar still on the shoulder, +due to the habit he had of leaning one shoulder up against the +mizzen-rigging.</p> + +<p><b>Natural Magic.</b> (<i>Pacchiarotto and other Poems</i>, 1876.) Hindū conjurors +are exceedingly clever, and will produce a tree from apparently nothing at +all, in all stages of growth. In the case described the narrator locks a +nautch girl in an empty room and takes his stand at the door; in a short +time the conjuror is embowered in a mass of verdure, fruit and flowers. In +the same way, by the magic of a charming personality, the singer’s life +has been transformed from coldness and gloom to warmth and beauty. The +poem illustrates the supreme power which spirit exerts over matter. The +power of the ideal world, the all-absorbing influence of faith in the +unseen to the Christian, is always being exerted to produce such effects +in the souls of men and women whose lives are spent in the most squalid +and unlovely surroundings.</p> + +<p><b>“Nay, but you who do not love her.”</b> (<i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i>, in +<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, 1845; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1868.) +The first line of a song in praise of some tresses of a lady’s hair. Even +those who do not love her must admit she is pure gold. As for him, he +cannot praise her, he loves her so much: he will leave the praise for +those who do not.</p> + +<p><b>Ned Bratts.</b> (Published in <i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, first series, 1879; written at +Splügen.) The story is taken from <i>The Life and Death of Mr. Badman</i>, by +John Bunyan, the author of the <i>Pilgrim’s Progress</i>, and published in +London 1680. “At a Summer Assizes holden at Hartfort, while the Judge was +sitting upon the Bench, comes this old Tod into the Court, cloathed in a +green suit, with a Leathern Girdle in his hand, his bosom open and all in +a dung sweat, as if he had run for his Life; and being come in, he spake +aloud as follows: ‘My Lord,’ said he, ‘Here is the veriest rogue that +breathes upon the face of the earth. I have been a thief from a child; +when I was but a little one I gave myself to rob orchards, and to do other +such-like wicked things, and I have continued a thief ever since. My Lord, +there has not been a robbery committed these many years, so many miles of +this place, but I have either been at it, or privy to it.’ The Judge +thought the fellow was mad, but after some conference with some of the +Justices, they agreed to indict him; and so they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> did, of several +felonious actions, to all which he heartily confessed Guilty, and so was +hanged with his wife at the same time.” In the poem, <i>Ned Bratts</i>, the +scene is laid at Bedford. The assizes are held on a broiling day in June; +the court-house is crammed; horse stealers, rogues, puritans and preachers +are being tried and sentenced, when through the barriers there burst +Publican Ned Bratts and Tabitha his wife, loudly confessing they were the +“worst couple, rogue and quean, unhanged,” and detailing the various high +crimes and misdemeanours of which they had long been guilty. He tells of +the laces they had bought of the Tinker in the Bedford cage, and of</p> + +<p class="poem">“His girl,—the blind young chit who hawks about his wares”;</p> + +<p>tells of the Book which the girl gave him, the Book her father wrote in +prison, which told of “Christmas” [he meant “Christian”]. “Christmas was +meant for me,” he says,—he must get rid of his burden and hurry from +“Destruction,” which to him is Bedford town. So fearful are the converted +couple that they will fall again into their old sins, and so miss Heaven’s +gate, they beg the judges to</p> + +<p class="poem">“Sentence our guilty selves; so, hang us out of hand!”</p> + +<p>Ned sank upon his knees in the old court-house, while his wife Tab wheezed +a hoarse “Do hang us, please!” The Lord Chief Justice wondered what judge +ever had such a case before him since the world began, and having thought +the matter over, said—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Hanging you both deserve, hanged both shall be this day!”</p> + +<p>And so they were.</p> + +<p><b>Never the Time and the Place.</b> (<i>Jocoseria</i>, 1883.) It is impossible to +doubt that in this exquisite poem is enshrined the memory of Mrs. +Browning. Joy and beauty are all around, time and place are all that heart +could wish, but the loved one is absent, and nothing can fill her place. +Yet beyond the reach of storms and stranger they will meet! The eternal +value of human love is again asserted in this poem.</p> + +<p><b>Norbert.</b> (<i>In a Balcony.</i>) The young man with whom the Queen has fallen in +love, but whose heart is given to Constance.</p> + +<p><b>“Not with my Soul Love.”</b> The tenth lyric in <i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i> begins +with these words.</p> + +<p><b>Now.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) The value of “the quintessential<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> moment,” a +theme on which Mr. Browning frequently dilates, is emphasized in this +poem—</p> + +<p class="poem">“The moment eternal—just that and nothing more,”</p> + +<p>when the assurance comes that love has been definitely won despite of time +future and time past.</p> + +<p><b>Nude in Art, The</b>, is defended by the poet in <i>Francis Furini</i> and <i>The +Lady and the Painter</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Numpholeptos.</b> (<i>Pacchiarotto, with other Poems</i>, 1876.) The word means +“caught or entranced by a nymph.” Primitive man always has invested +natural objects with some form of life more or less resembling our own. +The Greeks and Romans believed the hills, the woods and the streams to be +the peculiar dwelling-places of nymphs, the spirits of external Nature. +They were the maidens of heaven, daughters of Zeus. The nymphs of the +rivers and fountains were called Naiads; those of the forests and +mountains were Dryads, Hamadryads, and Oreades. Plutarch, in his <i>Life of +Aristides</i>, says that “when the hero sent to Delphi to inquire of the +oracle, he was told that the Athenians would be victorious if they +addressed prayers to Jupiter, Juno, Pan, and the nymphs Sphragitides.” The +cave of these nymphs was “in one of the summits of Mount Cithæron, +opposite the quarter where the sun sets in the summer; and it is said in +that cave there was formerly an oracle, by which many who dwelt in those +parts were inspired, and therefore called Nympholepti.” There was an +unnatural idea about a human being enchained by a nymph, just as in the +Rhine legends the connection of sailors with the water maidens always +brought mischief to the human being so fascinated. It was thought by the +Greeks that the Nympholepti lost their reason, though they gained superior +wisdom of the inferior gods. See De Quincey on the Nympholeptoi. (Works, +Masson’s Ed., vol. viii., pp. 438, 442.) In Mr. Browning’s poem the nymph +is a pure, superhuman woman creature, who has entranced a young man +enamoured of her heavenly perfections. She has set him an impossible task; +from the centre of pure white light she bids him trace ray after ray of +light, which is broken into rainbow tints; and she bids him return to her +untinctured by the coloured beams he has been compelled to traverse. The +poem is one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, of Mr. +Browning’s works. It is his largest use of his favourite light +metaphor—the breaking up of pure white light into the coloured rays of +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> solar spectrum. A ray of white light (it is unnecessary, perhaps, to +explain) is composed of the seven primary colours—violet, indigo, blue, +green, yellow, orange and red. A solar ray of light can be separated by a +prism into these seven colours. These again, when painted side by side +upon a disc which is rapidly revolved, are, as the poet says, “whirled +into a white.” The nymph dwells in a realm of this white light. Before the +light reaches the young man the imperfection of the medium which conveys +it, or of his soul which receives it, breaks up the white light into its +constituent coloured rays. He is bidden by her to travel down each red and +yellow ray line, and work in its tint, but return to her without a stain, +as pure as the original beams which rayed forth from her dwelling-place. +This he is unable to do. He returns again and again, exciting her disgust +at his appearance; and he starts off on another path, only to return +coloured by the medium in which he has lived, as before. I have discussed +this poem at length in my chapter on “Browning’s Science, as shown in +<i>Numpholeptos</i>,” in my <i>Browning’s Message to his Time</i>, second edition, +1891. The poem was debated at the Browning Society on May 31st, 1891; and +so many different explanations were suggested, none of them in the least +satisfactory, that the meeting requested Dr. Furnivall to ask Mr. +Browning’s assistance in the matter. He did so, and received the following +reply:—“Is not the key to the meaning of the poem in its title, +<ins class="correction" title="nympholêptos">νυμφοληπτος</ins> +[caught or entranst by a nymph], not <ins class="correction" title="gynaikerastês">γυναικεραστἠς</ins> +[a woman lover]? An allegory, that is, of an impossible ideal object of +love, accepted conventionally as such by a man who, all the while, cannot +quite blind himself to the demonstrable fact that the possessor of +knowledge and purity obtained without the natural consequences of +obtaining them by achievement—not inheritance,—such a being is +imaginary, not real, a nymph and no woman; and only such an one would be +ignorant of and surprised at the results of a lover’s endeavour to emulate +the qualities which the beloved is entitled to consider as pre-existent to +earthly experience, and independent of its inevitable results. I had no +particular woman in my mind; certainly never intended to personify wisdom, +philosophy, or any other abstraction; and the orb, raying colour out of +whiteness, was altogether a fancy of my own. The ‘seven spirits’ are in +the Apocalypse, also in Coleridge and Byron,—a common image.”</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p> +<p> </p> +<p><b>“Oh Love! Love!”</b> The lyric of Euripides in his <i>Hippolytus</i> (<span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 428). +Translated in J. P. Mahaffy’s “Euripides,” in Macmillan’s <i>Classical +Writers</i>. After quoting Euripides’ two stanzas, Mr. Mahaffy says (p. +115):—“Mr. Browning has honoured me (Dec. 18th, 1878), with the following +translation of these stanzas, so that the general reader may not miss the +meaning or the spirit of the ode. The English metre, though not a strict +reproduction, gives an excellent idea of the original one”:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p><span style="margin-left: 10em;">I.</span></p> +<p>“Oh Love! Love, thou that from the eyes diffusest<br /> +Yearning, and on the soul sweet grace inducest—<br /> +Souls against whom thy hostile march is made—<br /> +Never to me be manifest in ire,<br /> +Nor, out of time and tune, my peace invade!<br /> +Since neither from the fire—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">No, nor the stars—is launched a bolt more mighty</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Than that of Aphrodité</span><br /> +Hurled from the hands of Love, the boy with Zeus for sire.</p> + +<p><br /><span style="margin-left: 10em;">II.</span></p> +<p>“Idly, how idly, by the Alpherian river,<br /> +And in the Pythian shrines of Phœbus, quiver<br /> +Blood-offering from the bull, which Hellas heaps:<br /> +While Love we worship not—the Lord of men!<br /> +Worship not him, the very key who keeps<br /> +Of Aphrodité when<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">She closes up her dearest chamber-portals:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Love, when he comes to mortals,</span><br /> +Wide-wasting, through those deeps of woes beyond the deep!”</p></div> + +<p><b>Og.</b> See note to <i>Jochanan Hakkadosh</i> in the Sonnets on the Talmudic legend +of the giant Og’s bones and bedstead. Jewish scholars say the Hebrew work +quoted has no existence, and that Mr. Browning’s stock of Hebrew was very +small.<a name='fna_2' id='fna_2' href='#f_2'><small>[2]</small></a></p> + +<p><b>Ogniben.</b> (<i>A Soul’s Tragedy.</i>) He was the astute Pope’s legate who went to +Faenza to suppress the insurrection. He smoothed matters by getting +Chiappino to leave the city, and he then complacently went away, saying he +had known “<i>four</i>-and-twenty leaders of revolt.”</p> + +<p><b>Old Gandolf.</b> (<i>The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> Church.</i>) The +Bishop’s predecessor in his see, and the man whose tomb he desires to +outdo.</p> + +<p><b>Old Pictures in Florence.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; +<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1868.) On a warm March morning the poet from a height +looks down upon Florence, gleaming in the translucent air, with all the +glory of the beautiful city lying on the mountain side; and of all he saw +the startling bell-tower of Giotto was the best to see. But he reproaches +Giotto because he has played him false. This was unkind, as he loved him +so. And this reflection, in its turn, leads him to think upon Giotto’s +brother artists. He recalls the ancient masters, and sees them haunting +the churches and cloisters where their work was done, and lamenting the +decay and neglect of their frescoes. In particular, he reflects on the +wronged great soul of a painter whose work is peeling from the walls,—“a +lion who dies of an ass’s kick.” The world wrongs its forgotten great +souls, and hums round its famous Michael Angelos and its Raphaels; but +perhaps they do not regard it, safe in heaven seeing God face to face, and +all, as Browning hopes, attained to be poets. He thinks they can hardly be +“quit of a world where their work is all to do,” where the little wits +have no ability to understand the relationship of artist to artist, and +how one whom the world is pleased to honour derives in direct line from +another who is forgotten. Not a word is heard now of men who in their day +were as famous as the rest—Stefano, for example,—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Called Nature’s Ape and the world’s despair<br /> +For his peerless painting.”</p> + +<p>He then reflects on the development of the artist Greek art reuttered the +truth of man, and Soul and Limbs, each betokened by the other, were made +new in marble. Our weakness is tested by the strength, our meagre charms +by the beauty of the matchless forms of Greek sculpture. This taught us +the perfection of the body, but the artists one day awoke to the beauty +and perfection of Soul, and then they worked for eternity, as the Greeks +for time. This Greek art was perfect; these bodies could be no more +beautiful. Consequently, so far there was arrest of development; they +could never change, being whole and complete. Having learned all they have +to teach, we shall see their work abolished. But in painting Souls, the +artificer’s hand can never be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> arrested, for soul develops eternally, and +things learned on earth are practised in heaven. This is illustrated by +the case of Giotto. At a stroke he drew a perfect ⵔ. This could be +done no better: it was perfect, complete, not to be surpassed. But Giotto +planned a bell-tower, wonderful for beauty, but not even yet completed. +The conception outran the power to bring to perfection. Round O’s can be +completed; campaniles are still to finish. And so the Greeks finished +their bodies. The early masters who began by depicting souls have their +work still to finish. Their work is not completed—can, in fact, never be +finished—because the soul is infinite. No doubt, he says, the early +painters had to meet the objection, “What more can you want than Greek +art?” They answered, “To paint man—to make his new hopes shine through +his flesh.” New fears glorify his rags. To bring the invisible full into +daylight, what matters if the visible go to the dogs? How much they dared, +these early masters! The first of this new development, however imperfect, +beats the best of the old. Then he reflects that there is a fancy which +some lean to (it is an Eastern fancy, now popularised by the +Theosophists), that when this life is over we shall begin a fresh +succession of lives—lives wherein we shall repeat in large what here we +practise in little; and so through an infinite series of lives on a scale +that is to be changed. But this is not at all to the poet’s mind. He +thinks he has learned his lesson here. He has seen</p> + +<p class="poem">“By the means of evil that good is best,”</p> + +<p>and considers that the uses of labour may consequently be garnered. He +hopes there is rest; he has had troubles enough. And now he turns away +from abstract conceptions on this deep problem to concrete matters—to the +actual men who have carved and painted the forms he loves; and he brings +up the memories of Nicolo the Pisan sculptor, and of the painter Cimabue, +and goes on to speak of Ghiberti and Ghirlandajo. Alas! their ghosts are +watching their peeling frescoes, their blistered or whitewashed works. He +recalls the names of many a draughtsman and craftsman whose works are left +to stealers and dealers. Suddenly the poet remembers the grudge he has +against Giotto. There was a precious little picture, which Michael Angelo +eyed like a lover, which was lost, but which has just turned up; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> +Browning wanted it, he thinks that he ought to have been prompted by the +spirit of Giotto to go to the right quarter for it, and now it is sold—to +whom?—he cannot discover. But he shall have it yet, his jewel! Then he +expresses his hope that Italy may soon see the last of the hated Austrian; +and then what will not the new Italian republic accomplish for man and +art. The Bell-tower of Giotto shall soar up to its proper stature,</p> + +<p class="poem">“Completing Florence, as Florence Italy.”</p> + +<p>He wonders if he will be alive the morning the scaffold is taken down, and +the golden hope of the world springs from its sleep.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Verse 8, <i>Da Vinci</i>: Leonardo Da Vinci, born 1452, died 1519, +artist, sculptor, architect, musician, and man of letters; in addition to +these he was a scientist and explorer. 9, <i>Dello</i>, the Florentine painter, +born towards the end of the fourteenth century, registered under the name +of Dello di Niccolo Delli. He was a sculptor as well as a painter, and was +employed by the king of Spain: <i>Stefano</i>: a celebrated Italian painter of +Florence (1301?-1350?); his naturalism earned him the title of “Scimia +della Natura” (Ape of Nature). Vasari says, “He not only surpassed all +those who preceded him in the art, but left even his master, Giotto +himself, far behind. Thus he was considered, and with justice, to be the +best of all the painters who had appeared down to that time.” He excelled +in perspective and foreshortening; <i>Nature’s Ape</i>: Christofano Landino, in +the Apology preceding his commentary on Dante, says, “Stefano is called +‘The Ape of Nature’ by every one, so accurately does he express whatever +he designs to represent”; <i>Vasari, Georgio</i>, the author of the <i>Lives of +the Painters</i>; <i>Theseus</i>, one of the statues of the Parthenon of Athens, +now in the British Museum. 13, <i>Son of Priam</i> == Paris; <i>Apollo</i>, the +snake-slayer, the Belvedere as described in the <i>Iliad</i>; <i>Niobe</i>, chief +figure of the celebrated group of statues “Niobe all tears for her +children,” in the Uffizi gallery at Florence; <i>the Racer’s frieze</i> of the +Parthenon; <i>dying Alexander</i>, a fine piece of ancient Greek sculpture at +Florence. 17, <i>Giotto and the “ⵔ”</i>: Pope Benedict XI. sent a +messenger to Giotto to bring him a proof of the painter’s power. Giotto +refused to give him any further example of his talents than a ⵔ, +drawn with a free sweep of the brush from the elbow.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> The Pope was +satisfied, and engaged Giotto at a great salary to adorn the palace at +Avignon (Professor Colvin); <i>Campanile</i>, the bell-tower by the side of the +Duomo at Florence. This is greatly praised by Ruskin, who says: “The +characteristics of power and beauty occur more or less in different +buildings, some in one and some in another. But altogether, and all in +their highest possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, +only in one building of the world—the Campanile of Giotto.” 23, <i>Nicolo +the Pisan</i>: born between 1205 and 1207, died 1278; a sculptor and +architect; <i>Cimabue</i>, Giotto’s teacher (1240-1302), the great art +reformer; <i>Ghiberti, Lorenzo</i> (1381-1455): he executed the wonderful +bronze gates of the Baptistery at Florence, which were said by Michael +Angelo to be worthy to have been the gates of Paradise; <i>Ghirlandajo, +Domenico</i>, Florentine painter (1449-98), was the son of Tommaso del +Ghirlandajo. 26, <i>Bigordi</i>: this is stated by some to have been the family +name of Ghirlandajo, but it is disputed; <i>Sandro Botticelli</i>, born at +Florence in 1457, died 1515; a celebrated Florentine painter; “<i>the +wronged Lippino</i>,” or Filippo Lippi, known as Filippino or Lippino +(1460-1505), a Florentine painter, son of Fra Lippo Lippi. Some of his +pictures were attributed to other artists, hence the expression “wronged”; +<i>Frà Angelico</i> (1387-1455)—Il Beato Fra Giovanni Angelico da Fiesole—was +the great Dominican Friar-Painter of Florence, the greatest of all +painters of sacred subjects. He was a most holy man, shunning all +advancement, and devoted to the poor. He never painted without fervent +prayer; <i>Taddeo Gaddi</i>: an Italian painter and architect of the Florentine +school (1300-1366), son of Gaddo Gaddi; he was one of Giotto’s assistants +for twenty-four years; when Giotto died he carried on the work of the +Campanile; <i>intonaco</i>, rough cast, plaster, paint; <i>Jerome</i>, St. Jerome, +the translator of the Scriptures into Latin; <i>Lorenzo Monaco</i>, Don +Lorenzo, painter and monk, of the Angeli of Florence. First noticed as a +painter, 1410. He executed many works in the Camaldoline monastery of his +order. He was highly esteemed for his goodness. Verse 27, <i>Pollajolo, +Antonio</i> (1433-98), a great painter and sculptor of Florence. He began +life, as many of the great Italian artists did, as a goldsmith; <i>tempera</i>, +a mixture of water and the yoke of eggs—used to give body to colours: the +same as <i>distemper</i>; <i>Alesso Baldovinetti</i>, a Florentine painter +(1422-99): he worked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> in fresco and mosaic. 28, <i>Margheritone of Arezzo</i>, +painter, sculptor, and architect (1236-1313); held in high estimation by +painters who worked in the Greek manner. He was the first in painting on +wood to cover the surface with canvas; <i>barret</i>, a cloak. 29, <i>Zeno</i>, the +founder of the sect of the Stoics; <i>Carlino</i>, a painter. 30, “<i>a certain +precious little tablet</i>,” a lost picture which turned up while Mr. +Browning was in Florence; <i>Buonarroti</i> == Michael Angelo. 31, <i>San +Spirito</i> == “Holy Spirit,” a church in Florence, so named; <i>Ognissanti</i> == +“All Saints’,” name of a church of Florence; “<i>Detur amanti</i>,” let it be +given to the lover; “<i>Jewel of Giamschid</i>”: Byron calls it “the jewel of +Giamschid,” Beckford “the carbuncle of Giamschid” (see Brewer’s <i>Reader’s +Handbook</i>); <i>Persian Sofi</i>, the name of a dynasty (1499-1736). 32, “<i>worst +side of Mont St. Gothard</i>,” the Swiss side; <i>Radetzky</i>, Count, +field-marshal Austria (1766-1858), and famous in the wars against the +insurrections against Austria by the Lombardians; <i>Morello</i>, a mountain +near Florence; 33, <i>Witanagemot</i>, the great national council, the assent +of which was necessary for all the laws of the Anglo-Saxon kings; so in +Mrs. Browning’s poem she refers to “a parliament of lovers of Italy”; +<i>Ex</i>: “<i>Casa Guidi</i>”: Mrs. Browning’s noble poem on Italian liberty; +“<i>quod videas ante</i>,” the which see above; <i>Loraine’s</i>, <i>i.e.</i>, the Guises +of unrivalled eminence in the sixteenth century; <i>Orgagna</i> (1315-76), a +painter of Florence. 34, <i>prologuize</i>, to introduce with a formal preface; +<i>Chimæra</i>, a fabulous animal. 35, “<i>curt Tuscan</i>”: Tuscan is the literary +language of Italy, therefore more dignified and freer from colloquialisms +and vulgarisms than more modern forms; <i>-issimo</i>, termination of the +superlative degree; <i>Cambuscan</i>, king of Sarra, in Tartary, the model of +all royal virtues (see Brewer’s <i>Handbook</i>); “<i>alt to altissimo</i>,” high to +the highest; <i>beccaccia</i>, a woodcock; “<i>Duomo’s fit ally</i>”: Giotto’s +lovely Bell-tower is a fit companion to the cathedral; <i>braccia</i>, a cubit.</p> + +<p><b>“O Lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird.”</b> The first line of the invocation +to the spirit of Mrs. Browning in Book I. of <i>The Ring and the Book</i>. Some +stupid readers have thought this poem an invocation to our Lord, catching +at the words “to drop down, to toil for man, to suffer, or to die.” They +thought they detected some familiar words heard in church; and one +incompetent critic went so far as to write, “Though Lyric Love is here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> a +quality personified, it seems to be so interchangeably with Christ.... +This is the interpretation we attach to the lines, though we have heard +that some interpreters have actually considered them to be addressed to +his wife!” (<i>The Religion of our Literature</i>, by George McCrie, p. 87.) +There is really no difficulty about the lines until we come to parse them. +Dr. Furnivall has done this in his grammatical analysis of the poem +(<i>Browning Society’s Papers</i>, No. IX., p. 165). An old lady who had read +and profited by Bunyan’s <i>Pilgrim’s Progress</i> was advised to read Dr. +Cheever’s <i>Lectures</i> in explanation of the allegory; asked how she liked +the latter work, she said she understood the <i>Pilgrim’s Progress</i>, and +hoped, before she died, to understand Dr. Cheever’s interpretation. I +think I understand ‘O Lyric Love’: I can never hope to understand Dr. +Furnivall’s analysis. It was called, at the time he wrote it, “Furnivall’s +Jubilee Puzzle.”</p> + +<p><b>“Once I saw a Chemist take a Pinch of Powder”</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>). The +first line of the eighth lyric.</p> +<p><a name="oneway" id="oneway"></a></p> +<p><b>One Way Of Love.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic +Lyrics</i>, 1868.) A song of unrequited love. The lover has strewn the +month’s wealth of June roses on his lady’s path: she passes them without +notice. For months he has striven to learn the lute: she will not listen +to his music. His whole life long he has learned to love, and he has lost. +Let roses lie, let music’s wing be folded: he will but say how blest are +they who win her. A noble, dignified way of accepting defeat in love! +<i>Another Way of Love</i> is a sequel to this poem. In this case the roses of +June are actually tiresome to the man to whom they are offered. The woman +in the first poem did not notice her roses, the man in the sequel +confesses himself weary of their charms. His lady is satirical at his +expense, and severely says he may go, and she will be recompensed if June +mend the bower which his hand has rifled. June may also bestow her favours +on a more appreciative recipient. She may also revenge herself by the +lightning she uses to clear away insects and other rose-bower spoilers.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>—Verse 2, <i>Eadem semper</i>, always the same.</p> + +<p><b>One Word More.</b> (To E. B. B. [Elizabeth Barrett Browning], 1855.) This poem +was originally appended to the collection of poems called <i>Men and Women</i> +(<i>q.v.</i>) Browning’s <i>Men and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> Women</i>, containing amongst other noble poems +his <i>Epistle to Karshish</i>, <i>Cleon</i>, <i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i>, and <i>Andrea del +Sarto</i>, were fifty in number, and the concluding poem, <i>One Word More</i>, +formed the dedication to his wife. The volume was in one sense a return +for her <i>Sonnets from the Portuguese</i>, in which she poured out her love to +Mr. Browning. In this poem he not less warmly declares his love for his +wife, his “moon of poets.” The dedication is happy, because his interest +in men and women had been quickened and deepened by his marriage. They had +studied human nature together, and each poetic soul had reacted upon the +other. He explains why he has desired to give something of his best, some +gift which is not a gift to the world but to the woman he loves; and as +the meanest of God’s creatures—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Boasts two soul-sides: one to face the world with<br /> +One to show a woman when he loves her!”</p> + +<p>The poor workman, the most unskilful artisan, will strive to do something +which shall express his utmost effort, to present to his love, and the +greatest geniuses of the world have been actuated by a similar motive. +Raphael, not content with painting, must pour out his soul in poetry for +the woman of his heart (did she love the volume of a hundred sonnets all +her life?), and Mr. Browning says he and his poet-wife would rather read +that volume than wonder at the Madonnas by which his name will be ever +known. But that volume will never be read. Guido Reni treasured it, but, +as treasures do disappear, it vanished. Dante once proposed to paint for +Beatrice an angel—traced it perchance with the corroded pen with which he +pricked the stigma in the brow of the wicked—“Dante, who loved well +because he hated”: hating only wickedness, and that because it hinders +loving. Mr. Browning would rather study that angel than read a fresh +<i>Inferno</i>, but that picture we shall never see. No artist lives and loves +who desires not for once and for one to express himself in a language +natural to him and the occasion, but which to others is but an art; and so +the painter will forgo his painting and write a poem, the writer will try +to paint a picture “once and for one only”—</p> + +<p class="poem">“So to be the man and leave the artist.”</p> + +<p>Why is this? When a man comes before the world as leader,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> teacher, +prophet, artist or poet, in any capacity which is his proper business, he +is open to the unsympathetic criticism of a world which is ever exacting +and always ungrateful in exact proportion to the magnitude of the work +done for it. Under these circumstances the real self in the man seldom +appears; when, however, he presents himself before the sympathetic soul of +the woman who loves him, he no longer works for the critic, no longer acts +a part, no longer appears in a character distasteful to himself. When +Moses smote the rock and saved the Israelites, he had mocking and sneering +for his reward: the ungrateful and unbelieving multitude behaved after +their manner. Could Moses forget the ancient wrong he bore about him? Dare +the man ever put off the prophet? But were there in all that crowd a +woman’s face—a woman he could love—he would for her sake lay down the +wonder-working rod, for he would be as the camel giving up its store of +water with its life. But the poet says he shall never paint pictures, +carve statues, nor express himself in music: for his wife he stands on his +power of verse alone, and so he bids her take the lines of this love poem, +which he has written for her, as the artist in fresco will steal a +hair-pencil and cramp his spirit into missal painting for his lady, and +the musician who sounds the martial strain will breathe his love through +silver to serenade his princess; so he—the Browning men knew for other +work—may this once whisper a love song to the ear of his wife. He will +speak to her not dramatically, as he spoke in the poems in his book, but +in his own true person. She knows him under both aspects, as the moon of +Florence is the same which shines in London, though she has put off her +Italian glory, and hurries dispiritedly through the gloomy skies of +England. Could the moon really love a mortal, she has a side she could +turn towards him, unseen as yet by herdsman or astronomer on his turret. +Dumb to Homer, to Keats even, she would speak to <i>him</i>. And so the poet +has for his love</p> + +<p class="poem">“A side the world has never seen,”</p> + +<p>the novel</p> + +<p class="poem">“Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Verse 2, <i>Century of Sonnets</i>. I can find no evidence that Raphael +wrote a hundred sonnets. Some three, or at most four, are all about which +I can find anything. Michael Angelo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> wrote many impassioned sonnets, and +was undoubtedly a fine poet; but if Raphael wrote many sonnets, they are, +as Mr. Browning says, lost. Probably the whole story is an example of +poetical licence. There is a very mediocre sonnet (as Mr. Samuel +Waddington describes it in the notes to his <i>Sonnets of Europe</i>) by +Raphael, which he has inscribed on one of his drawings now exhibited at +the British Museum:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p><span style="margin-left: 6em;">SONNET.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5.5em;"><span class="smcap">By Raphael.</span></span></p> + +<p>“Un pensier dolce erimembrare e godo<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Di quello assalto, ma più gravo el danno</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Del partir, ch’io restai como quei c’anno</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">In mar perso la stella, s’el ver odo.</span><br /> +Or lingua di parlar disogli el nodo<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A dir di questo inusitato inganno</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ch’ amor mi fece per mio grave afanno,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ma lui più ne ringratio, e lei ne lodo.</span><br /> +L’ora sesta era, che l’ocaso un sole<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Aveva fatto, e l’altro sur se in locho</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ati più da far fati, che parole.</span><br /> +Ma io restai pur vinto al mio gran focho<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Che mi tormenta, che dove lon sole</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Desiar di parlar, più riman fiocho.”</span></p></div> + +<p>“There are also two other sonnets,” says Mr. Waddington, “attributed to +Raphael, but they can hardly be considered worthy of his illustrious +name.” Raphael’s “<i>lady of the sonnets</i>” was Margherita (La Fornarina), +the baker’s daughter, of whom Raphael was devotedly fond, and whose +likeness appears in several of his most celebrated pictures. “<i>Else he +only used to draw Madonnas</i>:” Mrs. Jameson, in her <i>Legends of the +Madonna</i>, gives the following list of Raphael’s famous Madonnas: del +Baldacchino, delle Candelabre, del Cardellino, della Famiglia Alva, di +Foligno, de Giglio, del Passeggio, dell’ Pesce, della Seggiola, di San +Sisto. Verse 3, “<i>Her San Sisto names</i>”: the Madonna di S. Sisto is the +glory of the Dresden gallery. Little is known of its history; no studies +or sketches of it exist. It much resembles the Madonna di Foligno, but is +less injured by restoration. “<i>Her, Foligno</i>”: the Madonna di Foligno was +dedicated by Sigismund Corti, of Foligno, private secretary to Pope Julius +II., and a distinguished patron of learning. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>Sigismund, having been in +danger, vowed an offering to Our Lady, to whom he attributed his escape. +The picture is in the Vatican. It was painted in 1511. “<i>Her that visits +Florence in a Vision</i>”: Mr. Browning, in a letter to Mr. W. J. Rolfe, +said: “The Madonna at Florence is that called <i>del Granduca</i>, which +represents her ‘as appearing to a votary in a vision’—so say the +describers; it is in the earlier manner, and very beautiful.” It is in the +Pitti Palace, Florence. Painted about 1506. “<i>Her that’s left with lilies +in the Louvre</i>” (Paris): on this Mr. Browning explained that, “I think I +meant <i>La Belle Jardinière</i>—but am not sure—from the picture in the +Louvre.” This is a group of three figures: the Mother and Child and St. +John. Painted in 1508. Verse 4, “<i>That volume Guido Reni ... guarded</i>”: +this does not appear to have been a book of Sonnets, as Browning says, but +a volume with a hundred designs drawn by Raphael. Reni left this book to +his heir Signorini. Verse 5, “<i>Dante once prepared to paint an angel</i>”: +Dante was master of all the science of his time. He was a skilful +draughtsman, and tells us that on the anniversary of the death of Beatrice +he drew an angel on a tablet. He was an intimate friend of Giotto, who has +recorded that it was from him he drew the inspiration of the allegories of +Virtue and Vice for the frescoes of the Scrovegni Palace at Padua. He was +also a musician. Verse 7, <i>Bice</i> is Beatrice, Dante’s “gentle love.” Verse +9, “<i>Egypt’s flesh-pots</i>” (Exod. xvi. 3). Verse 10, “<i>Sinai-forehead’s +cloven brilliance</i>” (Exod. xxxiv. 29, 30). Verse 11, <i>Jethro</i>, the +father-in-law of Moses (Exod. iii. 1); “<i>Æthiopian bond-slave</i>” (Numb. +xii. 1). Verse 14, “<i>Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the Fifty</i>”: there is a +distinct caution here to those who seek for Browning’s real opinions on +religion and the various subjects with which he deals, that he is speaking +dramatically in these poems, and not “in his true person.” Verse 15, +<i>Samminiato</i> == San Miniato, a well-known church in Florence. Verse 16, +“<i>Zoroaster on his terrace</i>”: the celebrated founder of the doctrine of +the Persian Magi. Very little is known about him personally, but his +religion is well understood. Ancient historians say he lived five thousand +years before the Trojan War. His scriptures are the <i>Zend Avesta</i>. He +studied at night the aspect of the heavens. “<i>Galileo on his turret</i>”: +Galileo, as an astronomer, required an observatory. <i>Keats</i>: Browning was +much influenced by “the human rhythm”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> of Keats. There is abundant trace +of this in <i>Pauline</i>, and in the second of the <i>Paracelsus</i> songs, “Heap +cassia, sandal-buds, etc.” “<i>Moonstruck mortal</i>”: see Keats’ poem +<i>Endymion</i>, the fable of Endymion’s amours with Diana, or the Moon. The +fable probably originated from Endymion’s study of astronomy requiring him +to pass the night on a high mountain, to observe the heavenly bodies. +“<i>Paved work of a sapphire</i>” (Exod. xxiv. 10). Mr. W. M. Rossetti explains +some of the allusions in this poem in the <i>Academy</i> for January 10th, +1891:—“I understand the allusions, but Browning is far from accurate in +them. 1. Towards the end of the <i>Vita Nuova</i>, Dante says that, on the +first anniversary of the death of Beatrice, he began drawing an angel, but +was interrupted by certain people of distinction, who entered on a visit. +Browning is therefore wrong in intimating that the angel was painted ‘to +please Beatrice.’ 2. Then Browning says that the pen with which Dante drew +the angel was perhaps corroded by the hot ink in which it had previously +been dipped for the purpose of denouncing a certain wretch—<i>i.e.</i>, one of +the persons named in his <i>Inferno</i>. This about the ink, as such, is +Browning’s own figure of speech not got out of Dante. 3. Then Browning +speaks of Dante’s having ‘his left hand i’ the hair o’ the wicked,’ etc. +This refers to <i>Inferno</i>, Canto 32, where Dante meets (among the traitors +to their country) a certain Bocca degli Abati, a notorious Florentine +traitor, dead some years back, and Dante clutches and tears at Bocca’s +hair to compel him to name himself, which Bocca would much rather not do. +4. Next Browning speaks of this Bocca as being a ‘live man.’ Here Browning +confounds two separate incidents. Bocca is not only damned, but also dead; +but further on (Canto 33) Dante meets another man, a traitor against his +familiar friend. This traitor is Frate Alberigo, one of the Manfredi +family of Faenza. This Frate Alberigo was, though damned, not, in fact, +dead; he was still alive, and Dante makes it out that traitors of this +sort are liable to have their souls sent to hell before the death of their +bodies. A certain Bianca d’Oria, Genoese, is in like case—damned but not +dead. 5. Browning proceeds to speak of ‘the wretch going festering through +Florence.’ This is a relapse into his mistake—the confounding of the dead +Florentine Bocca degli Abati with the living (though damned) Faentine and +Genoese traitors, Frate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> Alberigo and Bianca d’Oria, who had nothing to do +with Florence.”</p> + +<p><b>On the Poet, Objective and Subjective; on the latter’s Aim; on Shelley as +Man and Poet.</b> By Robert Browning. (The introductory essay to <i>Letters of +Percy Bysshe Shelley</i>. Moxon: 1852.) Dr. Furnivall says: “The cause of +Browning’s writing this essay was (I believe) as follows:—In or before +1851, a forger clever enough to take in the publishers wrote some ‘letters +of Shelley and Byron.’ Moxon bought the forged Shelley letters, and John +Murray the Byron ones. Before they were proved spurious, Moxon printed the +Shelley letters, and got Browning to write an introductory essay to them. +Murray was slower, and, by the discovery of the forgery, was saved the +exposure and annoyance that Moxon incurred in publishing, and then having +to suppress, his book. The spurious Shelley letters were, as might have +been expected, nugatory, barren of any new revelations of Shelley’s +character. Browning could actually make nothing of them, and therefore +wrote his Essay, not on the Letters, but on the two classes of poets, +objective and subjective, and on Shelley. He wanted a chance of writing on +the poet he admired; the Letters gave him the chance; and, being told that +they were genuine, he accepted them as such without inquiry. Moreover, +being in Paris at the time, he had no opportunity of consulting English +experts, had even any suspicion of forgery crossed his mind. The worth of +his Essay is no way weakened by its having been set before spurious +letters.” A brief extract from Mr. Browning’s Essay will indicate his +estimate of the poetic method which he selected as his own. Speaking of +the subjective poet, he says: “He, gifted like the objective poet with the +fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to embody the thing he +perceives, not so much with reference to the many below, as to the One +above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their +absolute truth—an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially +attained by the poet’s own soul. Not what man sees, but what God sees—the +<i>Ideas</i> of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly in the Divine Hand—it +is toward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in +action, but with the primal elements of humanity he has to do; and he digs +where he stands—preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest +reflex of that absolute Mind, according<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> to the intuitions of which he +desires to perceive and speak. Such a poet does not deal habitually with +the picturesque groupings and tempestuous tossings of the forest-trees, +but with their roots and fibres naked to the chalk and stone. He does not +paint pictures and hang them on the walls, but rather carries them on the +retina of his own eyes: we must look deep into his human eyes to see those +pictures on them. He is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner; and +what he produces will be less a work than an effluence. That effluence +cannot be easily considered in abstraction from his personality,—being +indeed the very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it +but not separated.” In these words we have not only Mr. Browning’s defence +of his work (if any could be needed), but an explanation of the reason why +he seems as much interested in dissecting the soul of a villain or a scamp +as of a saint and hero. Count Guido in his complex wickedness, brooding in +his prison cell, is more interesting to such an analyst than Pompilia +fluttering her wings on the borders of heaven. The old <i>roué</i> in the Inn +Album, has root fibres worth tracing till they grip the stones. Simple old +Rabbi Ben Ezra has nothing to dissect; his innocent soul lies basking in +the smile of God. He has nothing to do with him but sit at his feet and +listen. This “Essay on Shelley” has been reprinted and published in Part +I. of the <i>Browning Society’s Papers</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Optimism.</b> Browning’s optimism is that which perhaps more than anything +else distinguishes his whole work from first to last. Most eloquently has +this been acknowledged by James Thomson, a pessimist of the pessimists. +Unhappily he could not himself feel this confidence in “everything being +for the best in the best of all possible worlds,” but he could admire it +in another. “Browning,” he said, “has conquered life, instead of being +conquered by it: a victory so rare as to be almost unique, especially +among poets in these latter days.” It would be easy to give examples of +Browning’s optimism, which would fill many pages of this work. The +following will suffice:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“God’s in His heaven—all’s right with the world!”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>Song in “Pippa Passes.”</i></span></p> + +<p class="poem">“There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;<br /> +What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;<br /> +On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>Abt Vogler.</i></span></p> + +<p class="poem">“Let us cry ‘All good things<br /> +Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!’”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>Rabbi Ben Ezra.</i></span></p> + +<p class="poem">“My own hope is, a sun will pierce<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;</span><br /> +That, after Last, returns the First,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Though a wide compass round be fetched</span><br /> +That what began best, can’t end worst,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.”</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>Apparent Failure.</i></span></p> + +<p><b>Orchestrion.</b> The musical instrument invented by Abt Vogler (<i>q.v.</i>).</p> + +<p><b>Ottima.</b> (<i>Pippa Passes.</i>) The woman who, with her paramour Sebald, +murdered her husband Luca.</p> + +<p><b>“Overhead the Tree-Tops meet.”</b> (<i>Pippa Passes.</i>) Pippa sings these words +as she passes the Bishop’s house.</p> + +<p><b>“Over the Sea our Galleys went.”</b> (<i>Paracelsus.</i>) The hero sings the song +of which these are the opening words in Part IV., <i>Paracelsus Aspires</i>.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in Distemper.</b> (Published July 1876, in a +volume with <i>Other Poems</i>.) They were: “At the Mermaid,” “Home,” “Ship,” +“Pisgah-Sights,” “Fears and Scruples,” “Natural Magic,” “Magical Nature,” +“Bifurcation,” “Numpholeptos,” “Appearances,” “St. Martin’s Summer,” +“Hervé Riel,” “A Forgiveness,” “Cenciaja,” “Filippo Baldinucci on the +Privilege of Burial,” “Epilogue.”</p> + +<p><b>Pacchiarotto</b> (or <b>Pacchiarotti</b>) <b>Jacopo</b>, has been confused in history with +<b>Girolamo del Pacchia</b>, and this fact is referred to in the beginning of the +poem. The following account of these painters, who lived about the same +time, from the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>, will help to clear the way for +the comprehension of this rather difficult poem,—difficult not on account +of the story, which is told clearly enough, but for the extraneous matter +with which it is intermingled.</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] “Pacchia, Girolamo Del, and Pacchiarotto (or Pacchiarotti) +Jacopo. These are two painters of the Sienese school,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> whose career and +art-work have been much mis-stated till late years. One or other of them +produced some good pictures, which used to pass as the performance of +Perugino; reclaimed from Perugino, they were assigned to Pacchiarotto; now +it is sufficiently settled that the good works are by G. del Pacchia, +while nothing of Pacchiarotto’s own doing transcends mediocrity. The +mythical Pacchiarotto, who worked actively at Fontainebleau, has no +authenticity. Girolamo del Pacchia, son of a Hungarian cannon-founder, was +born probably in Siena, in 1477. Having joined a turbulent club named the +Bardotti, he disappeared from Siena in 1535, when the club was dispersed, +and nothing of a later date is known of him. His most celebrated work is a +fresco of the Nativity of the Virgin, in the chapel of St. Bernardino, +Siena: graceful and tender, with a certain artificiality. Another renowned +fresco, in the church of St. Catherine, represents that saint on her visit +to St. Agnes of Montepulciano, who, having just expired, raises her foot +by miracle. In the National Gallery of London there is a Virgin and Child. +The forms of G. del Pacchia are fuller than those of Perugino (his +principal model of style appears to have been in reality Francialigio); +the drawing is not always unexceptionable. The female heads have sweetness +and beauty of feature, and some of the colouring has noticeable force. +Pacchiarotto was born in Siena in 1474. In 1530 he took part in the +conspiracy of the Libertini and Popolani, and in 1533 he joined the +Bardotti. He had to hide for his life in 1535, and was concealed by the +Observantine fathers in a tomb in the church of St. John. He was stuffed +in close to a new-buried corpse, and got covered with vermin and +dreadfully exhausted by the close of the second day. After a while he +resumed work. He was exiled in 1539, but recalled in the following year; +and in that year, or soon afterwards, he died. Among the few extant works +with which he is still credited is an Assumption of the Virgin, in the +Carmine of Siena.”</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] Pacchiarotto must needs take up “Reform.” He thought it was +his vocation to set things in general to rights. The world he considered +needed reforming, and he was quite ready to undertake the task. He found +mankind stubborn, however, and not much inclined to listen to him. So he +constructed himself a workshop, and painted its walls in fresco with all +sorts and conditions of men, from beggar to noble. He drew kings, clowns,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> +popes, emperors, priests, and ladies; then washed his brushes, cleaned his +pallet, took off his working dress, and began to lecture his figures which +he had painted. He put arguments into their mouths, and of course readily +refuted them. He found his figures very meek and complaisant, and he had +no trouble at all in disposing of their replies to his own satisfaction. +He stripped them one by one of their “cant-clothed abuses,” exposed the +sophistry of their excuses, and left their vices without a leg to stand +upon. Paint-bred men being so easily upset, he was now prepared to deal +with those of flesh and blood, so he wished mortar and paint good-bye and +descended to the streets. It happened just at this time that there fell +upon Siena a famine. This public distress afforded our artist his +opportunity: he blamed the authorities for the famine, and set himself to +the task of teaching them to manage things better. Now, there was at that +time a club of disaffected citizens, who called themselves <i>Bardotti</i>, or +“spare-horses”—those which walk by the side of the waggon drawn by the +working team—horses doing nothing to draw the load, but ready in case of +emergency. Such were these gentry; they did not work, but they were ready +for such an emergency as the present. And their advice to the authorities +was simply to turn things upside down, make servant master, poverty +wealth, and wealth poverty; then things would be righted. Pacchiarotto +placed himself in the midst of these folk, and suggested that what they +wanted was the right man in the right place, and he was the right man. The +words were not out of his mouth ere the Spare-Horses flew at him, and he +had to run for his life. Looking everywhere for some place of shelter, he +found himself at the cemetery of a Franciscan monastery; and the only +place where he could hide himself with safety from the pursuers was in a +vault with a recently-buried corpse, so he was obliged to creep through a +hole in the brickwork and habituate himself to the strange bedfellow. In +this stinking atmosphere, and covered with vermin from the corpse, he lay +in misery for two days, praying the saints to set him free, and promising +for ever to abandon the attempt to preach change to his fellow-citizens. +When he was starved into sanity, he scrambled out of this loathsome +hiding-place, looking like a spectre, only much more “alive.” He then +found his way to the superior of the brotherhood, who had him well +cleansed and rubbed with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> odoriferous unguents. They fed him, clothed him, +and then he told his story all unvarnished. Be sure the good monk gave him +sound advice. He told him how he had had hopes of converting men by his +own preaching, and how hard he had found the task. He had come to the +conclusion that work for work’s sake was the real need of men: let men +work, but not dream, and they would succeed; if present success merely +were intended, heaven would begin too soon. He advised him not to be a +spare-horse, but a working-horse—to stick to his paint brush and work for +his living. Pacchiarotto was mute; he had no need of conversion. He was +reformed already, not by a live man’s arguments, but by the dead +thing—the clay-cold grinning corpse, that had asked him why he was in +such a hurry to leave the warm light and join him in the grave. The corpse +had told him how earth was a place of rehearsal, at which things seldom go +smoothly. The Author, no doubt, had His reasons, which would come out when +the play was produced. Meanwhile he advised him not to interfere with its +production; he was suffering from a swelling called Vanity, which he would +prick and relieve him of. And so Pacchiarotto, having partaken of the +monks’ good cheer, was restored to sanity and said good-bye. Mr. Browning +now addresses his critics. He has told them a plain story, and tried +therewith to content them. He considers them as an assembly of May-day +sweeps, with tongs and bellows, calling at his house and announcing +themselves as</p> + +<p class="poem">“We critics as sweeps out your chimbly!”</p> + +<p>They relieve his flue of the soot, suggest that he burns a deal of coal in +his kitchen, and the neighbours do say he ought to consume his own smoke! +Browning tells them that his housemaid says they bring more dirt into the +house than they remove. But he will not be hard upon them: “’twas God made +you dingy,” he says. He will give them soap, however, and let them dance +away and make a rattle with their brushes, which is a large share of their +whole business, he thinks. He bids them not trample his grass, and flings +out a liberal largess and bids them be off, or his housemaid will serve +them as Xantippe served Socrates once; she will take the first thing that +comes to her hand.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Verse 2, “<i>my Kirkup</i>”: this was Baron Kirkup, an admirer of art +and letters, who was on friendly terms with Browning at Florence. He +received a title of nobility from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> King of Italy for his services to +literature. It was he who discovered Dante’s portrait in the Bargello at +Florence. <i>San Bernardino</i>: St. Bernardino of Siena became, at the age of +twenty-three, one of the most celebrated and eloquent preachers among the +Franciscans, but he refused all ecclesiastical honours. He founded the +Order of the “<i>Observants</i>” (see note to v. 17). He was born 1380. +<i>Bazzi</i>: the Italian painter Giannantonio Bazzi (who, until recent years, +was erroneously named <i>Razzi</i>) bore the name “<i>Sodona</i>” or “<i>Il Sodoma</i>,” +as a family name, and signed it upon some of his pictures. Bazzi was +corrupted into Razzi, and “Sodona” into “Sodoma.” He lived <i>c.</i> 1479-1549. +<i>Beccafumi</i>: a distinguished painter of the Siena school, who lived at the +beginning of the sixteenth century. v. 3, <i>Sopra sotto</i>, topsy-turvy. v. +5, <i>Quiesco</i>, I rest; “<i>priest armed with bell, book, and candle</i>”: in the +major excommunication the bell is rung, the sentence read from the book, +and the lighted candle extinguished. v. 6, <i>frescanti</i>, painters in +fresco. v. 8, <i>Boanerges</i>: sons of Thunder—an appellation given by Jesus +Christ to His disciples James and John. v. 9, <i>Juvenal</i>: the celebrated +Roman satirist; flourished at Rome in the latter half of the first +century. He severely chastised the follies and vices of his times. He was +particularly outspoken concerning the licentiousness of the Roman ladies. +“<i>Quæ nemo dixisset in toto, nisi (ædepol) ore illoto</i>”: which things no +one would have spoken about fully, unless (by Gad) he had a dirty mouth. +(Juvenal’s satires about the Roman ladies are inconceivably filthy, and if +the things were true it was ill to speak of them in this manner. St. Paul +was equally severe, but adopted another method.) <i>Apage</i>: away! begone! v. +11, “<i>non verbis sed factis</i>”: not by words but by deeds. v. 12, “<i>fetch +grain out of Sicily</i>”: Sicily has always been famous for its wheat. Even +at the present day the best wheat for making Naples macaroni comes from +this beautiful island, and the people take in return the inferior wheat of +Italy. Sicily was in ancient times sacred to Ceres, the goddess of the +corn-lands. v. 13, “<i>Freed Ones</i>,” “<i>Bardotti</i>”: a revolutionary club so +called, which was broken up by the authorities in 1535. Pacchia and +Pacchiarotto both seem to have had some connection with it; <i>bailiwick</i>: +the precincts in which a bailiff has jurisdiction. v. 15, “<i>kai tà +loipa</i>,” <ins class="correction" title="Kai ta leipomena">Και τα λειπόμενα</ins> +== and so forth; <i>kappas, taus, lambdas</i> (<ins class="correction" title="k.t.l.">κ.τ.λ.</ins>): +the initial letters of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> above Greek words, +commonly used in learned books. v. 16, “<i>per ignes incedis</i>”: thou art +treading upon fires. Not quite correctly quoted, as to the order of the +words, from Horace (<i>Od.</i> II. i. 6), “Et incedis per ignes, suppositos +cineri doloso.” v. 17, <i>St. John’s Observance</i>: “The Italians call the +Franciscans <i>Osservanti</i>, in France <i>Pères ou Frères de l’Observance</i>, +because they observed the original rule as laid down by St. Francis, went +barefoot, and professed absolute poverty. This order became very popular” +(Mrs. Jameson’s <i>Monastic Orders</i>). v. 18, “<i>haud in posse sed esse +mens</i>”: mind as it is, not as it might be. v. 21, <i>thill-horse</i>, a thiller +horse, a horse which goes between the shafts, or thills. v. 22, +<i>imposthume</i>, an abscess or boil. v. 23, “<i>sæculorum in sæcula!</i>” for ever +and ever; <i>Benedicite</i>: Bless ye! May you be blessed. v. 27, <i>aubade</i> +[Fr.], open-air music performed at daybreak before the window of the +person whom it is intended to honour. v. 27, <i>skoramis</i>, a vessel of +dishonour. v. 28, <i>karterotaton belos</i>, the strongest dart (see Pindar’s +1st Olympic Ode). “<i>which Pindar declares the true melos</i>” == mode. <i>ad +hoc</i>, hitherto. <i>os frontis</i>, the forehead. “<i>hebdome, hieron emar</i>,” the +seventh, the holy day. “<i>tei gar Apollona chrusaora, egeinato Leto</i>”: on +which the golden-sworded Apollo was born of Latona.</p> + +<p><b>Painting Poems.</b> The <i>great poems</i> of this class are <i>Andrea del Sarto</i>, +<i>Pictor Ignotus</i>, and <i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i>. (Vasari’s <i>Lives of the Painters</i> +should be read in connection with the poems which deal with the Italian +artists.)</p> + +<p><b>Palma.</b> The heroine of <i>Sordello</i>. She was the daughter of Eccelino, the +Ghibelline, by Agnes Este. The historical personage represented by +Browning’s Palma was Cunizza.</p> + +<p><b>Pambo.</b> (<i>Jocoseria</i>, 1883.) The poem is based upon a passage in the +<i>Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus</i>, Lib. iv., cap. xviii., +“concerning Ammon the Monk, and divers religious men inhabiting the +Desert.” In the time of St. Antony, in the Nitrian desert, <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 373, there +was a monk named “Pambo, a simple and an unlearned man, who came unto his +friend to learn a Psalm; and hearing the first verse of the thirty-ninth +Psalm, which is there read: ‘I said, I will take heed unto my ways, that I +offend not with my tongue’—would not hear the second, but went away +saying, ‘This one verse is enough for me, if I learn it as I ought to do.’ +And when his teacher blamed him for absenting himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> a whole six months, +he answered for himself that he had not well learned the first verse. Many +years after that, when one of his acquaintances demanded of him whether he +had learned the verse, he said again, that in nineteen years he had scarce +learned in life to fulfil that one line.” His life is taken from +Palladius, in Lausiac and Rufin. <i>Hist. Patr. Sozomen.</i> Alban Butler, in +his <i>Lives of the Saints</i>, under the date September 6th, gives the +following interesting account of the character, whose history was +apparently only partially known by Mr. Browning, as in the second verse of +the poem he says he does not know who he was:—“St. Pambo betook himself +in his youth to the great St. Antony in the desert, and, desiring to be +admitted among his disciples, begged he would give him some lessons for +his conduct. The great patriarch of the ancient monks told him he must +take care always to live in a state of penance and compunction for his +sins, must perfectly divest himself of all self-conceit, and never place +the least confidence in himself or in his own righteousness; must watch +continually over himself, and study to act in everything in such a manner +as to have no occasion afterward to repent of what he had done; and that +he must labour to put a restraint upon his tongue and his appetite. The +disciple set himself earnestly to learn the practice of all these lessons. +The mortification of gluttony was usually laid down by the fathers as one +of the first steps towards bringing the senses and the passions into +subjection: this, consisting in something exterior and sensible, its +practice is more obvious, yet of great importance towards the reduction of +all the sensual appetites of the mind, whose revolt was begun by the +intemperance and disobedience of our first parents. Fasting is also, by +the Divine appointment, a duty of the exterior part of our penance. What a +reproach are the austere lives which so many saints have led to those +slothful and sensual Christians whose god is the belly, and who walk +enemies to the Cross of Christ, or who have not courage, at least by +frequent self-denials, to curb this appetite! No man can govern himself +who is a slave to this base gratification of sense. St. Pambo excelled +most other ancient monks in the austerity of his continual fasts. The +government of his tongue was no less an object of his watchfulness than +that of his appetite. A certain religious brother to whom he had applied +for advice began to recite to him the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> thirty-ninth psalm: ‘I said, I will +take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue.’ Which words Pambo +had no sooner heard, but, without waiting for the second verse, he +returned to his cell, saying that was enough for one lesson, and that he +would go and study to put it in practice. This he did by keeping almost +perpetual silence, and by weighing well, when it was necessary to speak, +every word before he gave any answer. He often took several days to +recommend consultations to God, and to consider what answer he should give +to those who addressed themselves to him. By his perpetual attention not +to offend in his words, he arrived at so great a perfection in this +particular that he was thought to have equalled, if not to have excelled, +St. Antony himself; and his answers were seasoned with so much wisdom and +spiritual prudence that they were received by all as if they had been +oracles dictated by heaven. Abbot Poemen said of our saint: ‘Three +exterior practices are remarkable in Abbot Pambo: his fasting every day +till evening, his silence, and his great diligence in manual labour.’ St. +Antony inculcated to all his disciples the obligation of assiduity in +constant manual labour in a solitary life, both as a part of penance and a +necessary means to expel sloth and entertain the vigour of the mind in +spiritual exercises. This lesson was confirmed to him by his own +experience, and by a heavenly vision related in the Lives of the Fathers +as follows: ‘Abbot Antony, as he was sitting in the wilderness, fell into +a grievous temptation of spiritual darkness; and he said to God: “Lord, I +desire to be saved; but my thoughts are a hindrance to me. What shall I do +in my present affliction? How shall I be saved?” Soon after he rose up, +and, going out of his cell, saw a man sitting and working, then rising +from his work to pray; afterward sitting down again and twisting his cord, +after this rising to pray. He understood this to be an angel sent by God +to teach him what he was to do, and he heard the angel say to him: “Do so, +and thou shalt be saved.” Hereat the Abbot was filled with joy and +confidence, and by this means he cheerfully persevered to the end.’ St. +Pambo most rigorously observed this rule, and feared to lose one moment of +his precious time. Out of love of humiliations, and a fear of the danger +of vain-glory and pride, he made it his earnest prayer for three years +that God would not give him glory before men, but rather contempt. +Nevertheless<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> God glorified him in this life, but made him by His grace to +learn more perfectly to humble himself amidst applause. The eminent grace +which replenished his soul showed itself in his exterior by a certain air +of majesty, and a kind of light which shone on his countenance, like what +we read of Moses, so that a person could not look steadfastly on his face. +St. Antony, who admired the purity of his soul and his mastery over his +passions, used to say that his fear of God had moved the Divine Spirit to +take up His resting-place in him. St. Pambo, after he left St. Antony, +settled in the desert of Nitria, on a mountain, where he had a monastery. +But he lived some time in the wilderness of the Cells, where Rufinus says +he went to receive his blessing in the year 374. St. Melania the Elder, in +the visit she made to the holy solitaries who inhabited the deserts of +Egypt, coming to St. Pambo’s monastery on Mount Nitria, found the holy +abbot sitting at his work, making mats. She gave him three hundred pounds +weight of silver, desiring him to accept that part of her store for the +necessities of the poor among the brethren. St. Pambo, without +interrupting his work, or looking at her or her present, said to her that +God would reward her charity. Then, turning to his disciple, he bade him +take the silver and distribute it among all the brethren in Lybia and the +isles who were most needy, but charged him to give nothing to those of +Egypt, that country being rich and plentiful. Melania continued some time +standing, and at length said: ‘Father, do you know that here is three +hundred pounds weight of silver?’ The Abbot, without casting his eye upon +the chest of silver, replied: ‘Daughter, He to whom you made this offering +very well knows how much it weighs without being told. If you give it to +God, who did not despise the widow’s two mites, and even preferred them to +the great presents of the rich, say no more about it.’ This Melania +herself related to Palladius. St. Athanasius once desired St. Pambo to +come out of the desert to Alexandria, to confound the Arians by giving +testimony to the divinity of Jesus Christ. Our saint, seeing in that city +an actress dressed up for the stage, wept bitterly; and being asked the +reason of his tears, said he wept for the sinful condition of that unhappy +woman, also for his own sloth in the Divine service, because he did not +take so much pains to please God as she did to ensnare men. When Abbot +Theodore begged of St. Pambo some words of instruction: ‘Go,’ said he, +‘and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> exercise mercy and charity toward all men. Mercy finds confidence +before God.’ To the priest of Nitria who asked him how the brethren ought +to live, he said: ‘They must live in constant labour and the exercise of +all virtues, watching to preserve their conscience free from stain, +especially from giving scandal or offence to any neighbour.’ St. Pambo +said, a little before his death: ‘From the time that I came into this +desert, and built myself a cell in it, I do not remember that I have ever +ate any bread but what I had earned by my own labour, nor that I ever +spoke any word of which I afterward repented. Nevertheless, I go to God as +one who has not yet begun to serve Him.’ He died seventy years old, +without any sickness, pain, or agony, as he was making a basket, which he +bequeathed to Palladius, who was at that time his disciple, the holy man +having nothing else to give him. Melania took care of his burial, and +having obtained this basket, kept it to her dying day. St. Pambo is +commemorated by the Greeks on several days. It was a usual saying of this +great director of souls in the rules of Christian perfection, ‘If you have +a heart, you may be saved.’ The extraordinary austerities and solitude of +a St. Antony or a St. Pambo are not suitable to persons engaged in the +world,—they are even inconsistent with their obligations; but all are +capable of disengaging their affections from inordinate passions and +attachment to creatures, and of attaining to a pure and holy love of God, +which may be made the principle of their thoughts and ordinary actions, +and sanctify the whole circle of their lives. Of this all who have a heart +are, through the Divine grace, capable. In whatever circumstances we are +placed, we have opportunities of subduing our passions and subjecting our +senses by frequent denials, of watching over our hearts by +self-examination, of purifying our affections by assiduous recollection +and prayer, and of uniting our souls to God by continual exterior and +interior acts of holy love. Thus may the gentleman, the husbandman, or the +shopkeeper, become an eminent saint, and make the employments of his state +an exercise of all heroic virtues, and so many steps to perfection and to +eternal glory.”—Mr. Browning, in the last verse, addresses his critics in +a jocular manner. He owns he is very much like Pambo,—he has spent much +time in <i>looking to his ways</i>; yet, as he is so often reminded by his +reviewers and critics, he still feels, he says, that he <i>offends with his +tongue</i>!</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span><span class="smcap">Note.</span>—“<i>Arcades sumus +ambo</i>”: “we are both alike eccentric.” From Vergil’s <i>Eclogues</i> (vii.), where Corydon and Thyrsis are described as +<i>both Arcadians</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Pan and Luna.</b> (<i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, Second Series, 1880.) Pan was the god of +shepherds, of huntsmen, and of all the inhabitants of the country. He was +a monster in appearance, had two small horns on his head, his complexion +was ruddy, his nose flat, and his legs, thighs, and feet and tail, were +those of a goat. The god of shepherds lived chiefly in Arcadia, and he is +described by the poets as frequently occupied in deceiving and entrapping +the nymphs of the neighbourhood. Luna was the same as Diana or +Cynthia—names given to the moon. Mr. Browning quotes from Vergil, +<i>Georgics</i>, iii., 390, at the head of the poem the words, “Si credere +dignum est” (if we may trust report), the context giving the account +according to Vergil—</p> + +<p class="poem">“’Twas thou, with fleeces milky-white, (if we<br /> +May trust report) Pan, god of Arcady,<br /> +Did bribe thee, Cynthia; nor didst thou disdain,<br /> +When called in woody shades, to cure a lover’s pain.”</p> + +<p>The legend was the poetical way of accounting for an eclipse of the moon. +The naked maid-moon flying through the night sought shelter in a fleecy +cloud mass caught on some pine-tree top. “Shamed she plunged into its +shroud,” when she was grasped by rough red Pan, the god of all that tract, +who had made a billowy wrappage of wool tufts to simulate a cloud. Vergil +says that Luna was a not unwilling conquest; Mr. Browning does more +justice to the supposed austerity of the goddess of night. It is evident, +however, that the moral of the poem is that she yielded herself to the +love of Pan out of compassion. Pan exalted himself in aspiring to her +austere purity; Luna voluntarily subjected herself to the lower nature out +of sympathy, thus preserving her modesty by sanctifying it with sacrifice.</p> + +<p><b>Paracelsus.</b> [<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] Paracelsus was the son of a physician, William +Bombast von Hohenheim, who taught him the rudiments of alchemy, surgery, +and medicine; he studied philosophy under several learned masters, chief +of whom was Trithemius, of Spanheim, Abbot of Wurzburg, a great adept in +magic, alchemy, and astrology. Under this teacher he acquired<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> a taste for +occult studies, and formed a determination to use them for the welfare of +mankind. He could hardly have studied under a better man in those dark +days. Tritheim himself was well in advance of most of the teachers of his +time; he was of the Theosophists or Mystics, for they are of the same +class, and probably, in their German form, derived their origin from the +labours of Tauler of Strasburg, who afterwards, with “the Friends of God,” +made their headquarters at Basle. The mysticism which is so dear to Mr. +Browning, and which perhaps finds its highest expression in the poem which +we are considering, is not therefore out of place. When he left his home +he went to study in the mines of the Tyrol. There, we are told, he learned +mining and geology, and the use of metals in the practice of medicine. “I +see,” he says, “the true use of chemistry is not to make gold, but to +prepare medicines.” Paracelsus is rightly termed “the father of modern +chemistry.” He discovered the metals zinc and bismuth, hydrogen gas, and +the medical uses of many minerals, the most important of which were +mercury and antimony. He gave to medicine the greatest weapon in her +armoury—the tincture of opium. His celebrated <i>azoth</i> some say was +magnetised electricity, and others that his <i>magnum opus</i> was the science +of fire. He acted as army surgeon to several princes in Italy, Belgium, +and Denmark. He travelled in Portugal and Sweden, and came to England; +going thence to Transylvania, he was carried prisoner to Tartary, visiting +the famous colleges of Samarcand, and went thence with the son of the Khan +on an embassy to Constantinople. All this time he had no books. His only +book was Nature; he interrogated her at first-hand. He mixed with the +common people, and drank with boors, shepherds, Jews, gipsies, and tramps, +so gaining scraps of knowledge wherever he could, and giving colourable +cause to his enemies to say he was nothing but a drunken vagabond fond of +low company. He would rather learn medicine and surgery from an old +country nurse than from a university lecturer, and was denounced +accordingly and—naturally. If there was one thing he detested more than +another, it was the principle of authority. He bent his head to no man. +Paracelsus, as we find him in his works, was full of love for humanity, +and it is much more probable that he learned his lessons while travelling, +and mixing amongst the poor and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> wretched, and while a prisoner in +Tartary, where he doubtless imbibed much Buddhist and occult lore from the +philosophers of Samarcand, than that anything like the Constantinople +drama was enacted. Be this as it may, we have abundant evidence in the +many extant works of Paracelsus that he was thoroughly imbued with the +spirit and doctrines of the Eastern occultism, and was full of love for +humanity. A quotation from his <i>De Fundamento Sapientiæ</i> must suffice: “He +who foolishly believes is foolish; without knowledge there can be no +faith. God does not desire that we should remain in darkness and +ignorance. We should be all recipients of the Divine wisdom. We can learn +to know God only by becoming wise. To become like God we must become +attracted to God, and the power that attracts us is love. Love to God will +be kindled in our hearts by an ardent love for humanity, and a love for +humanity will be caused by a love to God.” In the year 1525 Paracelsus +went to Basle, where he was fortunate in curing Froben, the great printer, +by his laudanum, when he had the gout. Froben was the friend of Erasmus, +who was associated with Œcolampadius; and soon after, upon the +recommendation of Œcolampadius, he was appointed by the city magnates a +professor of physics, medicine and surgery, with a considerable salary; at +the same time they made him city physician, to the duties of which office +he requested might be added inspector of drug shops. This examination made +the druggists his bitterest enemies, as he detected their fraudulent +practices: they combined to set the other doctors of the city against him, +and as these were exceedingly jealous of his skill and success, poor +Paracelsus found himself in a hornet’s nest. We find him then at Basle +University in 1526, the earliest teacher of science on record. He has +become famous as a physician, the medicines which he has discovered he has +successfully used in his practice; he was now in the eyes of his patients +at least,</p> + +<p class="poem">“The wondrous Paracelsus, life’s dispenser,<br /> +Fate’s commissary, idol of the schools and courts.”</p> + +<p>In 1528 we find him at Colmar, in Alsatia. He has been driven by the +priests and doctors from Basle. He had been called to the bedside of some +rich cleric who was ill; he cured him, but so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> speedily that his fee was +refused. Though not at all a mercenary man (for he always gave the poor +his services gratuitously) he sued the priest, but the judge refused to +interfere, and Paracelsus used strong language to him, and had to fly to +escape punishment. The closing scene of the drama is laid in a cell in the +hospital of Salzburg. It is the year 1541, his age but forty-eight, and +the divine martyr of science lies dying. Recent investigations in +contemporary records have proved that he had been attacked by the servants +of certain physicians who were his jealous enemies, and that in +consequence of a fall he sustained a fracture of the skull, which proved +fatal in a few days. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Sebastian at +Salzburg, but in 1752 his bones were removed to the porch of the church, +and a monument was erected to his memory by the archbishop. When his body +was exhumed it was discovered that his skull had been fractured during +life. Writers on magic, of whom Dr. Hartmann is one, describe <i>azoth</i> as +being “the creative principle in Nature; the universal panacea or +spiritual life-giving air—in its lowest aspects, ozone, oxygen, etc.” +Much ridicule has been cast upon Paracelsus for his belief in the +possibility of generating homunculi; but after all he may only mean that +chemistry will succeed in bridging the gulf between the living and the +not-living by the production of organic bodies from inorganic substances. +Paracelsus held that the constitution of man consists of seven principles: +(1) The elementary body; (2) The archæus (vital force); (3) The sidereal +body; (4) The animal soul; (5) The rational soul; (6) The spiritual soul; +(7) The man of the new Olympus (the personal God). Those who are familiar +with Indian philosophy will recognise this anthropology as identical with +its own. Paracelsus, in his <i>De Natura Rerum</i>, says, “The external man is +not the real man, but the real man is the soul in connection with the +Divine Spirit.” We understand now what Mr. Browning means when he says +that “knowing is opening the way to let the imprisoned splendour escape.” +His idea that all Nature was living, and that there is nothing which has +not a soul hidden within it—a hidden principle of life—led him to the +conclusion that, in place of the filthy concoctions and hideous messes +that were in vogue with the doctors of his time, it was possible to give +tinctures and quintessences of drugs, such as we now call active +principles,—in a word, that it is more reasonable and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> pleasant to take a +grain or two of quinine than a tablespoonful of timber. He set himself to +study the causes and the symptoms of disease, and sought a remedy in +common-sense methods. Mr. Browning is right when he makes him say he had a +“wolfish hunger after knowledge”; and surely there never lived a man whose +aim was to devote its fruits to the service of humanity more than his. +There are many hints in his works that he knew a great deal more than he +cared to make known. Take this example. He said: “Every peasant has seen a +magnet will attract iron. I have discovered that the magnet, besides this +visible power, has another and a concealed power.” Again: “A magnet may be +prepared out of some vital substance that will attract vitality.” Mesmer, +who lived nearly three hundred years after him, reaped the glory of a +discovery made, as Lessing says, by the martyred fire-philosopher who died +in Salzburg hospital. “Matter is the visible body of the invisible God,” +says Paracelsus. Matter to him was not dead. “Matter is, so to say, +coagulated vapour, and is connected with spirit by an intermediate +principle which it receives from the spirit.” We cannot understand +Paracelsus and the science of his time without a little inquiry as to what +was meant by the search for the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life, +and the universal medicine. It is very difficult to discern what was +really intended by these phrases. Dr. Anna Kingsford, who paid +considerable attention to the hermetic philosophy, says: “These are but +terms to denote pure spirit and its essential correlative, a will +absolutely firm, and inaccessible alike to weakness from within and +assault from without.” Another writer ingeniously tries to explain the +universal solvent as really nothing but pure water, which has the property +of more or less dissolving all the elements. His <i>alcahest</i>—as he termed +it—as far as I can make out was nothing more than a preparation of lime; +but writers of this school only desired to be understood by the initiated, +and probably the words actually used meant something quite different. +There was a reason for using an incomprehensible style for fear of the +persecutions of the Church, and these books, like the rolls in Ezekiel, +were “written within and without.” Many great truths, we know, were +enshrouded in symbolic names and fanciful metaphors. It is certain that +Paracelsus, like his predecessors, sought to possess the elixir of life. +It does not appear from his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> writings that he thought it possible to +render the physical body immortal; but he held it to be the duty—as the +medical profession holds it still—of the physician to preserve life as +long as possible. A great deal of matter attributed to Paracelsus on this +subject is spurious, but there are some of his authentic writings which +are very curious and entertaining. He describes the process of making the +<i>Primum Ens Melissæ</i>, which after all turns out to be nothing but an +alkaline tincture of the leaves of the common British plant known as the +Balm or <i>Melissa officinalis</i>. Some very amusing stories are told of the +virtues of this concoction by Lesebure, a physician to Louis XIV., and +which speak volumes for the credulity of the doctors of those times. +Another of his great secrets was his <i>Primum Ens Sanguinis</i>. This is +extremely simple, being nothing more than the venous injection of blood +from the arm of “a healthy young person.” In this we see that he +anticipated our modern operation of transfusion. His doctrine of +signatures was very curious and most absurd. He thought that “each plant +was in a sympathetic relation with the Macrocosm and consequently with the +Microcosm.” “This signature,” he says, “is often expressed even in the +exterior forms of things.” So he prescribed the plant we call euphrasy or +“eye bright” for complaints of the eyes, because of the likeness to an eye +in the flower; small-pox was treated with mulberries because their colour +showed that they were proper for diseases of the blood. This sort of thing +still lingers in country domestic medicine. <i>Pulmonaria officinalis</i> or +Lungwort, so called from its spotted leaves looking like diseased lungs, +has long been used for chest complaints. (See my “Paracelsus the Reformer +of Medicine” in <i>Browning’s Message to his Time</i>.)</p> + +<p><b>Paracelsus.</b> [<span class="smcap">The Poem</span>, 1835.] <span class="smcap">Paracelsus Aspires: Book I.</span> (<i>Würzburg</i>, +1512.) Paracelsus the student is talking with his friends Festus and +Michal on the eve of his departure to seek knowledge of the deeper sort, +that cannot be learned from books,—in the great world of men. It is a +time to arouse young men. The dark night of ignorance yields to the rising +sun of learning, for the art of printing and the glories of the Revival of +Learning have liberated the minds of men. Authority no longer suffices: +the men of Germany will see for themselves. So Paracelsus, pupil of the +learned Abbot Trithemius, resolves to forsake the monastery cell and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> +ancient books, and go out to seek for himself knowledge in the byways of +the world. His friends are timid. They mistrust his method; they call him +proud and too self-confident, advise him to stick to the beaten ways of +learning, nor venture into the tangled forests and pathless deserts which +God has evidently closed against man’s rash intrusion. Paracelsus, on the +contrary, feels that he has a great commission from God: he dare not +subdue the vast longings which fill his soul. God’s command is laid upon +him, and he must answer to His will. Festus objects that a man must not +presume to serve God save in the appointed channels. God looks to means as +well as ends, and Paracelsus ought not to scorn the ordinary means of +learning. The impatient student suggests that his fierce energy, his +striving instinct, the irresistible force which works within him, are +proofs that he possesses a God-given strength never imparted in vain. He +will abjure the idle arts of magic. New hopes animate him, new light dawns +upon him: he is set apart for a great work. “Then,” replies his friend, +“pursue it in an approved retreat; turn not aside from the famed spots +where Learning dwells. Rome and Athens shall teach you; leave seas and +deserts to their desolation.” Paracelsus declares his aspiration to be no +less than a passionate yearning to comprehend the works of God, God +Himself, all God’s intercourse with the human mind. He goes to prove his +soul. God, who guides the bird in his trackless way, will guide him: he +will arrive in God’s good time. His friends think that all this may be but +self-delusion; at least, he is selfish to attempt this work alone. Festus +declares that were he elect for such a task he would encircle himself with +the love of his fellows, and not cut himself off from human weal; for +there is nothing so monstrous in the world as a being not knowing what +love is. Michal, the tender woman friend, urges him to cast his hopes +away—warns him that he is too proud. He will find what he seeks, but will +perish so! Paracelsus protests that he does not lightly give up either the +pleasures of life or the love they praise. Truth, he says, is within +ourselves; knowing consists in opening a way where the splendour +imprisoned within the soul may escape. It comes not from outward things. +He offers, therefore, no defiance to God in desiring to know. Humanity may +beat the angels; yet, if once man rises to his true stature, Festus +believes, and so does Michal, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> Paracelsus will succeed. He plunges +for the pearl; they wait his rise.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Paracelsus Attains: Book II.</span> The scene is laid in a Greek conjuror’s house +at Constantinople, 1521. Paracelsus is mentally taking stock of his +attainments—what gained, what lost. He has made discoveries, but the +produce of his toil is fragmentary—a confused mass of fact and fancy. He +can keep on the stretch no longer: he will learn by magic what he has +failed to learn by labour. His overwrought brain demands rest; even in +failure he will have rest. True, he had hoped for attainment once, but +that is past. His heart was human once. He had loving friends in Würzburg; +but love has gone, and his life’s one idea has absorbed him, to obtain at +all costs his reward in the lump. God may take pleasure in confounding +such pride. He may have been fighting sleep off for death’s sake. Is his +mind stricken? He believes that God would warn him before He struck. And +now from within he hears a voice. It is that of Aprile, the spirit of a +departed poet, who has aspired to love beauty only. As Paracelsus has +sought knowledge alone, Aprile would love infinitely all forms of art and +all the delights of Nature. Paracelsus demands he should do obeisance to +him, the Knower. Aprile refuses to acknowledge the kingship of one who +knows nothing of the loveliness of life. Paracelsus now sees the error +into which both have fallen. He has excluded love, as Aprile has excluded +knowledge. They are two halves of one dissevered world. Paracelsus, +learning now wherein lies his defect, feels that he has attained.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Paracelsus: Book III.</span> At Basle, 1526. Paracelsus meets his friend Festus, +who has come to the famous university town to see the wondrous physician, +whom they call “life’s dispenser, idol of the courts and schools.” He has +heard him lecture from his Professor’s chair; has seen the benches +thronged with eager students; has gathered from their approving murmurs +full corroboration of his hopes: his pupils worship him. Paracelsus admits +his outward success, but confides to his friend that he is indeed most +miserable at heart. The hopes which fed his youth have not been realised. +He aspired to know God: he has attained—a professorship at Basle! He has +wrought certain cures by means of drugs whose uses he has discovered; he +has a pile of diplomas and licences; he has received (what he values most) +a generous acknowledgment of his merit from Erasmus; and he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> has a crowded +class-room, and, in place of his high aims, there have sprung up in his +soul like fungi at the roots of a noble tree, a host of petty, vile +delights. As for his eager following, mere novelty and ignorant amazement, +coupled with innate dulness and the opposition to the regular system of +the schools, will account for it. Seeing all this, and feeling that the +work to which he has addressed himself is too hard for him, he has sunk in +his own esteem, fallen from his ambition, and has become brutal, +half-stupid and half-mad. He feels that he precedes his age in his +contempt and scorn for all who worked before him on the same path. He has +in public burned the books of Aetius, Oribasius, Galen, Rhasis, Serapion, +Avicenna, and Averroes.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Paracelsus Aspires. Book IV.</span> The scene is at Colmar, in Alsatia, at an +inn, 1528. Yet once more Paracelsus aspires. He has sent for his friend +Festus to tell him that he is exposed to the world as a quack, that he is +cast off by those who erstwhile worshipped him, and denounced by those +whom he has served. He has saved the life of a church dignitary, who not +only refused afterwards to pay his fee, but made Basle impossible for him. +His pupils grew tired of him when he attempted to teach them and gave up +amusing them. The faculty drew off from him when their old methods were +interfered with; and so he turned his back on the university. And once +more the philosopher has started on his travels, seeking to know with all +the enthusiasm of his youth—with the old aims, but not by the same means. +No longer the lean ascetic, debarring his soul of her rightful pleasures; +but embracing all the joys of life, and combining pleasure with knowledge. +This is to be his new method. His appetites, he must own, are +degraded—his joys impure. Festus warns him that the base pleasures which +have superseded his nobler aims will never content him. Paracelsus +declares he lives to enjoy all he can and to know all he can. He has cast +off his remorseless care, is hardened in his fault; and as he sings the +song of—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">“The men who proudly clung</span><br /> +To their first fault, and perished in their pride,”</p> + +<p>his friend Festus, alarmed at this impiety, urges him to renounce the +past, to wait death’s summons amid holy sights, and return with him to +Einsiedeln. Paracelsus declares this to be <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>impossible: his baser life +forbids; a sneering devil is within him; he is weary; the wine-cup, in +which he has long tried to drown his disappointment, fails him now; he can +hardly sink deeper. Festus attempts to comfort and advise: he too has felt +sorrow: sweet Michal is dead. This rouses Paracelsus to endeavour on his +part to comfort Festus by declaring his faith in the soul’s immortality.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Paracelsus Attains. Book V.</span> In a cell in the hospital of Salzburg, in +1541, Paracelsus lies dying. His faithful friend is by his side, watching +through the weary night; and as he watches the patient, he prays for the +tortured champion of man. He has sinned, but surely he has sought God’s +praise. Had God granted him success, it must have been to His honour. Say +he erred, God fashioned him and knew how he was made. Festus could have +sat quietly at the feet of God. He could never have erred in this great +way. God is not made like us. It will be like Him to save him! Now +Paracelsus awakes; his failing strength struggles like the flame of an +expiring taper. At first, in half-delirious phrases, he tells of the +hissing and contempt which struck at his heart at Basle—the measureless +scorn heaped on him, as they called him quack and cheat and liar. And now +he cries that human love is gone; he dreams of Aprile; he calls on God for +one hour of strength to set his heart on Him and love. And then, with a +clearer consciousness, he recognises Festus, who tells him that God will +take him to His breast, and on earth splendour shall rest upon his name +for ever,—the name of the master-mind, the thinker, the explorer. He +sings of the gliding Mayne they knew so well; and the simple words loose +the dying man’s heart, for he knows he is dying, and his varied life +drifts by him. There is time yet to speak; but he will rise and speak +standing, as becomes a teacher of men. He has sinned, he feels his need +for mercy, and he can trust God. It was meant to be with him as had fallen +out. His fevered thirst for knowledge was born in him. He has learned so +much of God: His joy in creation; His intentions with regard to man. His +final work the product of the world’s remotest ages; its æons of +preparation; the love mingling with everything that tended towards the +highest work of creation; the progress which is the law of life. The +tendency to God he can descry even in man’s present imperfection. He sees +now where his error lay: how he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>overlooked the good in man; how he had +failed to note the good in evil, and to detect the love beneath the mask +of hate; how he had denied the half-reasons, the faint aspirings, the +struggles for truth; the littleness in man, despite his errors; the upward +tendency in all his weakness. All this he knew not, and he failed. Yet if +he</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">“Stoop</span><br /> +Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud,<br /> +It is but for a time.”</p> + +<p>He “shall emerge one day.” And so he sinks to rest. And this is Browning’s +<i>Paracelsus</i>.</p> + +<p>It is in <i>Paracelsus</i> (the work that posterity will probably estimate as +Browning’s greatest) that we must look for the strongest proof of his +sympathy with man’s desire to know and bend the forces of Nature to his +service. To some students this magnificent work will appear only the +string of pearls and precious stones that some of us consider <i>Sordello</i> +to be. To others it is a drama illustrating the contending forces of love +and knowledge; others, again, find in it only an elaborate discussion on +the Aristotelian and Platonic systems of philosophy. It is none of these +alone: rather, if a single sentence could describe it, it is the Epic of +the Healer, not of the hero who stole from heaven a jealously-guarded +fire, but of him who won from heaven what was waiting for a worthy +recipient to take and help us to. In so far as <i>Paracelsus</i> came short, it +was deficiency of love that hindered him; of his striving after knowledge, +and what he won for man, the epic tells in words and music that, to me at +least, have no equal in the whole range of literature. It is most +remarkable that long before the scientific men of our time had given +Paracelsus credit for the noble work he did for mankind, and the lasting +boon many of his discoveries conferred upon the race, Mr. Browning, in +this wonderful poem, recognised both his labours and their results at +their true value, and raising his reputation at this late hour from the +infamy with which his enemies and biographers had covered it, set him in +his proper place amongst the heroes and martyrs of science. We owe the +poet a debt of gratitude for this rehabilitation. No man could have +written this transcendent poem who had less than Browning’s power of +thrusting aside the accidents and accretions of a character, and getting +at the naked germ from which springs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> the life of the real man. That no +follower of medicine, no chemist, no disciple of science, did this for +Paracelsus is, in the splendid light of Mr. Browning’s research and +penetration, a remarkable instance of the fact that the unjust verdicts of +a time and a class need to be reversed in a clearer atmosphere, and in +freedom from class prejudices not often accorded to contemporary +biographers. A poet alone could never have done us this service; and a +single attentive perusal of this work is enough to show that the intimate +blending of the scientific with the poetic faculty could alone have +effected the restoration. How lovingly the poet has taken this +world-benefactor’s remains from the ditch into which his profession had +cast them, and laid them in his own beautiful sepulchre, gemmed, +chiselled, and arabesqued by all the lovely imagery of his fancy, no +reader of Browning’s <i>Paracelsus</i> needs to be told.</p> + +<p>[For a complete study of the life and work of Paracelsus, and Mr. +Browning’s poem thereon, see the chapter “Paracelsus, the Reformer of +Medicine,” in my <i>Browning’s Message to his Time</i> (Sonnenschein).]</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes to Book I.</span>—<i>Würzburg</i> is one of the most ancient and historically +important towns of Germany. Its bishops were made dukes of Franconia in +1120. Its university was founded in 1582. <i>Trithemius</i> of Spanheim was +abbot of Würzburg, and was a great astrologer and alchemist. <i>Einsiedeln</i>, +in Canton Schwyz, Switzerland, is a noted place of pilgrimage on the +Alpbach, thirty miles from Zurich, under the Herrenberg, with an abbey +founded in 861, containing a black statue of the Virgin. Immense +quantities of missals, rosaries, etc., are produced there. Zwingle was a +priest here 1515-19; and not far from the town is the house where +Paracelsus was born. Population now about 7650. <i>Gier-eagle</i>: supposed to +be a small vulture (Lev. xi. 18). <i>Black arts</i>: Black magic == sorcery, as +opposed to white magic == science. <i>The Stagirite</i>: Aristotle, who was +born at Stagira, in Macedon.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes to Book II.</span>—<i>Constantinople</i>, the city of the East where many +astrologers practised their art. “<i>A Turk verse along a scimitar</i>”: the +Arabs use verses of the Koran in the decoration of their walls, pottery, +arms, etc. The Alhambra at Granada is profusely decorated in this way. The +Arabic, Persian, and Turkish letters lend themselves admirably to +ornamental <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>purposes. <i>Arch-genethliac</i>: a <i>genethliac</i> is a calculator of +nativities—an astrologer.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes to Book III.</span>—<i>Pansies</i>: if these flowers were, as is said, +favourites with Paracelsus, the choice was appropriate. <i>Pensées</i> for “the +thinker, the explorer,” and “heartsease” for the anxious and overworked +man. <i>Rhasis</i>, or <i>Rhazes</i>, was a distinguished physician of Bagdad +(925-6). <i>Basil</i> == Basel, Basle. <i>Œcolampadius</i>, a Reformer of Basle, +friend of Erasmus. <i>Castellanus</i> was Pierre Duchatel, a French prelate. +When at Basle, Erasmus procured him employment as a corrector of the press +with Frobenius. He was bishop of Tulle in 1539, of Maçon in 1544, and in +1551 of Orleans. He was a tolerant man in an intolerant age. <i>Munsterus</i>, +a Christian Socialist, connected with the Peasants’ War; executed 1525. +<i>Frobenius</i>, the friend of Erasmus, cured by Paracelsus. He was a famous +printer at Basle. <i>Rear mice</i>: probably a device in the arms on the gate. +<i>Lachen</i>, a village of 1200 inhabitants, on the margin of the lake of +Zurich. The holy hermit Meinrad, the founder of Einsiedeln, originally +lived on the top of the Etzel, near here. “<i>Cross-grained devil in my +sword</i>”: the long sword of Paracelsus is famous:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Bumbastus kept a devil’s bird<br /> +Shut in the pummel of his sword,<br /> +That taught him all the cunning pranks<br /> +Of past and future mountebanks.”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">(<span class="smcap">Hudibras</span>, Part II., Cant. 3.)</span></p> + +<p>Naudæus (in his “History of Magic”) observes of this familiar spirit, +“that though the alchymists maintain that it was the secret of the +philosopher’s stone, yet it were more rational to believe that, if there +was anything in it, it was certainly two or three doses of his laudanum, +which he never went without, because he did strange things with it, and +used it as a medicine to cure almost all diseases.” “<i>Sudary of the +Virgin</i>”: a handkerchief, a relic of the Blessed Virgin Mary. +<i>Suffumigation</i>, a medical fumigation, such as was used by Hippocrates. +<i>Erasmus</i> was born at Rotterdam in 1466. The home of his old age was +Basel, to which place he was attracted by the fame of the printing press +of Frobenius. Here he made the acquaintance of Zwingle and Holbein, and +other men full of the desire for learning. “<i>Ape at the bed’s foot</i>”: +patients who suffer from delirium frequently see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> apes, rats, cats, and +other animals and figures, mocking them at the foot of the bed. “<i>Spain’s +cork-groves</i>”: cork is the bark of the cork-oak (<i>Quercus suber</i>). It +grows in Spain, and is most abundant in Catalonia and Valencia. +“<i>Præclare! Optime!</i>” == Bravo! well done! “<i>I precede my age</i>”: it has +only recently been discovered how much our modern science owes to the +labours and researches of Paracelsus. <i>Aëtius</i> was an Arian doctor, who +was very skilful in medical disputation. He died at Constantinople in 367. +<i>Oribasius</i> was the court physician of Julian the Apostate (326-403). +<i>Galen</i> was a great anatomist and a physiological physician. <i>Rhasis</i> (see +note, <a href="#Page_324">p. 324</a>). <i>Serapion</i>, an Alexandrian physician, “a great name in +antiquity.” <i>Avicenna</i>, an Arabian philosopher and physician, born about +<span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 980, who presented to his countrymen the doctrines of Galen blended +with those of Aristotle. <i>Averröes</i>, an Arabian philosopher and physician, +born at Cordova in 1126, the interpreter of the Aristotelian philosophy to +the Mohammedans. <i>Zuinglius</i> == Zwingle the Reformer, of Zurich. +<i>Carolstadius</i>, or <i>Carlstadt</i>, one of the first Reformers. He was +professor of divinity at Wittemberg, and early joined Luther in the new +religion. He became the leader of the fanatical sect of iconoclasts at +Wittemberg, and excited them to excesses. He was banished, and died at +Basle in 1541. <i>Suabia</i>, the name of an ancient duchy in the south-west +part of Germany. <i>Oporinus</i>: lived two years in close intimacy with +Paracelsus as his secretary, and has been suspected of defaming his +memory. “<i>Sic itur ad astra</i>”: such is the way to immortality. +<i>Liechtenfels</i>, a canon who was cured by Paracelsus when he was in danger +of death, and refused afterwards to pay the stipulated fee.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes to Book IV.</span>—“<i>Quid multa?</i>” why say more? <i>Cassia</i>, an inferior +kind of cinnamon. “<i>Sandal-buds</i>”: the sandal is a low tree, like a +privet, and has a great fragrance. “<i>Stripes of labdanum</i>” or <i>ladanum</i>: a +fragrant, resinous exudation from the plants <i>Cystus creticus</i> and <i>Cystus +ladaniferus</i>. <i>Aloes</i>: the fragrant resin of the <i>agalloch</i> or <i>lign-aloe</i> +of Scripture. <i>Nard</i> == spikenard; very fragrant. “<i>Sweetness from +Egyptian shroud</i>”: the faint odour from the spices used to embalm the +mummy. “<i>Fiat experientia corpore vili</i>,” or <i>fiat experimentum in corpore +vili</i>: Let the experiment be made on a body of no value (a hospital +patient, <i>e.g.</i>!)</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span><span class="smcap">Notes to +Book V.</span>—<i>Salzburg</i>: the beautifully situated old city of +Austria, eighty-seven miles S.E. of Munich. “<i>Jove and the Titans</i>”: the +Titans were the sons of Saturn, who made war against Jupiter; and though +they were of gigantic size, they were subdued. <i>Phæton</i>, the son of +Phœbus and Clymene, who requested his father to give him leave to drive +his chariot. The rash youth was unable to bear the light and heat, and +dropped the reins. To prevent a general conflagration Jupiter struck him +with thunder, and he dropped into the river Eridanus. <i>Galen of Pergamos</i>: +an eminent physician of the time of Trajan. <i>Persic Zoroaster</i> “was one of +the greatest teachers of the East, the founder of what was the national +religion of the Perso-Iranian people from the time of the Achæmenidæ to +the close of the Sassanian period.” He founded the wisdom of the Magi. The +<i>Zend-Avesta</i> is the great Zoroastrian bible. “<i>Thus he dwells in all</i>,” +etc., down to “<i>Man begins anew a tendency to God</i>,” is a faithful +representation of the teaching of the Kabbalah (see <i>Encyc. Brit.</i>, vol. +xiii., p. 812, last ed.): “The whole universe, however, was incomplete, +and did not receive its finishing stroke till man was formed, who is the +acme of the creation and the microcosm. ‘Man is both the import and the +highest degree of creation, for which reason he was formed on the sixth +day. As soon as man was created everything was complete, including the +upper and nether worlds, for everything is comprised in man. He unites in +himself all forms’” (<i>Zohar</i>, iii., 48).</p> + +<p><b>Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day.</b> To wit: Bernard +de Mandeville, Daniel Bartoli, Christopher Smart, George Bubb Dodington, +Francis Furini, Gerard de Lairesse, and Charles Avison. Introduced by A +Dialogue between Apollo and the Fates; concluded by Another between John +Fust and his Friends. The title-page stands thus, and the following +dedication is on the next page: “In Memoriam J. Milsand. Obiit iv. Sept. +<span class="smcaplc">MDCCCLXXXVI</span>. <i>Absens absentem auditque videtque.</i>” Published 1887. M. +Milsand was a well-known French critic, and was an early admirer of Mr. +Browning’s works. <i>Sordello</i> was dedicated to M. Milsand in its revised +edition. The <i>Parleyings</i> volume is dealt with in a lucid and sympathetic +manner in Mr. Nettleship’s <i>Essays and Thoughts</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Parting at Morning.</b> See <a href="#meeting"><span class="smcap">Meeting at Night</span></a>, to which this poem is the +sequel.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span><b>Patriot, The.</b> <span class="smcap">An Old +Story.</span> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Romances</i>, 1863; +<i>Dramatic Romances</i>, 1868.) A patriot who has been the people’s idol, and +now, having fallen from his pedestal, is on his way to execution. A year +ago that very day they would have given him the sun from their skies had +he asked it in that city whose air was a mist of joy bells. He strove his +hardest to pluck down that sun to give them, and to-day the year is run +out, and he goes bound, with bleeding forehead from the pelting stones, to +the shambles. But God will repay, and he feels safe with that. It has been +thought that this poem refers to Arnold of Brescia. Mr. Browning +contradicted this.</p> + +<p><b>Paul Desforges Maillard.</b> (<i>Two Poets of Croisic.</i>) He is the second of the +Poets, René Gentilhomme being the first. He competed for a prize at the +French Academy, and was unsuccessful. The poem tells how he made his name +known through his sister’s influence.</p> + +<p><b>Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession</b> (1832). The first work of the poet, +and his embryonic work, because it contains in their rudiments all the +peculiarities and powers of his genius. He wrote nothing which was not the +legitimate development of the forces which we see in this inchoate work. +It is nebulous, but it is a nebula which has within itself the +potentiality of worlds of thought. Misty and vague as it everywhere seems, +it is influenced by laws which will concentrate its thought into stars and +planets, such as <i>Paracelsus</i>, and the <i>Ring and the Book</i>. It is +autobiographical, and admits us into the laboratory of the writer’s +thought; it is marvellously consistent with the latest utterances of the +poet on the subjects nearest to his heart. High thoughts, which through +the years of a long life will live in royal splendour in his brain, are +born here in travail, as regal things are wont to be. It was a boy’s +work,—the poet was only twenty years old when he wrote it,—but a +competent critic could have detected evidence that in the anonymous author +of <i>Pauline</i> a psychological poet had arisen, one who determined to probe +to their depths the mysteries of the human soul. From Mr. Gosse’s article +in <i>The Century Magazine</i> we learn that the young poet had produced a +quantity of verses while a mere child, and had planned a number of +soul-studies of a similar character to <i>Pauline</i>. He published the poem +anonymously in 1833, when he was twenty years old. It was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> reprinted in +1867, with the following note: “The first piece in the series (<i>Pauline</i>) +I acknowledge and retain with extreme repugnance, indeed purely of +necessity; for not long ago I inspected one, and am certified of the +existence of other transcripts, intended sooner or later to be published +abroad: by forestalling these I can at least correct some misprints (no +syllable is changed), and introduce a boyish work by an exculpatory word. +The thing was my earliest attempt at ‘poetry, always dramatic in +principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine,’ +which I have written since according to a scheme less extravagant and +scale less impracticable than were ventured upon in this crude preliminary +sketch—a sketch that, on reviewal, appears not altogether wide of some +hint of the characteristic features of that particular <i>dramatis persona</i> +it would fain have reproduced; good draughtsmanship, however, and right +handling were far beyond the artist at that time.” With the “good +draughtsmanship” and “right handling” of the work we need not concern +ourselves; what is of paramount importance is the fact that in <i>Pauline</i> +we have “the god, though in the germ.” If the mature artist was ashamed of +his puerile performance, his disciples have always loved and admired it, +and his deeper students have delighted to trace in its pages the nuclei of +principles which have in his maturer works dowered the world with a +priceless treasure. The poem is a fragment of a confession from a young +man to a young woman whom he loves. It concerns Pauline very little, but +is the revelation of the man as a study of the poet’s own naked soul. It +is not a confession of deeds, but of moods and mental attitudes. He who +could unpack his own heart so completely would be likely to reveal the +innermost recesses of the characters with which he should deal in the +future. It is the revelation of a soul all self-centred. A soul’s +awakening, a soul in terror at its own capabilities, desires and forces +too hard to be controlled—“made up of an intensest life”—imbued with “a +principle of restlessness which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel +all”—a soul terrified at its own vast shadow, fearing to face its own +spectres, and instinctively “building up a screen” of woman’s love to be +shut in with from a brood of fancies with which he dare not wrestle. Had +he never left her side he had been spared this shame. He is sure of her +love, though ghosts of the past haunt them. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> has not the love to offer +which befits her; but he has faith, and he trusts her as we trust the east +for morning light. He has communed with her, but she knew not the shame +which lurked behind his words and smiles, and she drove away despair from +him. He has fallen, is ruined; he has felt in dreams he was a fiend +chained in darkness, till, after ages had passed came a white swan to +remain with him, and it contented him. And again, he had seemed to be a +young witch who drew down a god to sing of heaven, and as he sang he +perished grinning, but murmuring “I am still a god to thee.” He has +thought that his early life, his songs and wild imaginings, were the only +worthy things standing out distinct amid the fever of the after years. And +this was his (Shelley’s) award. He, the Sun-treader, had drawn out from +his worshipper the one spark of love remaining in his soul, and in his +tears he praises him. He loved Shelley in his shame, and now he is +renowned he watches him as a star, as one altered and worn and full of +tears looks to heaven. He strips his mind bare, has a most clear +consciousness of self, and recognises that of all his powers an +imagination which has been an angel to him is the one which saves his soul +from utter death. He feels a need, a trust, a yearning after God, which +somehow is reconciled with a neglect of all he deemed His laws. He sees +God everywhere, yet can love nothing; has had high dreams and low aims, +and so lost himself. Then he turned to song, he gazed without fear on the +works of mighty bards, for in them he recognised thoughts his own heart +had also borne; then came the outburst of the soul’s power, a key to a new +world, a sound as of angelic mutterings. He vowed himself to liberty. Men +should be gods, earth,—heaven. His soul rose to meet the new life. As one +watches for a fair girl that comes forth a withered hag, so all these +high-born fancies dwindled into nothing; faith in man, freedom, virtue, +motives, power, human loves, all vanished. They were not missed, for wit +and mockery and pleasure came in their stead. His powers grew, his soul +became as a temple; only God was gone, and a dark spirit sat in His seat, +and mocking shadows cried “Hail!” to him. He resolved to wear himself out +with joy, then to win men’s praise by undying song, and the mockery +laughed out again. Then he met Pauline and knew she loved him; he looked +in his heart for a love to return,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> and love and faith were gone, and +selfishness wears him as a flame, and hunger for pleasure has become pain. +Then came a craving after knowledge, as a sleepless harpy. He begins now +to know what hate is. Yet with it all he has learned the great truth that +his restless longings, his all encompassing selfishness, only prove that +earth is not his sphere, because he cannot so narrow himself but he +exceeds it. Hateful as his selfishness has grown to be, he can pass from +such thoughts. Andromeda, rock-chained, awaiting the snake, causes you no +fear for her safety: God will come in thunder from the stars to save her, +so he will triumph over his decay; when the calm comes again after the +fever has subsided, he will do something equal to his conjecture. He can +project himself into all forms of Nature, live the life of plants, mount +bird-like, breathe in a fish the morning air in the sun-warm water. He +will build a thought-world; he is inspired. Pauline shall come with him to +the world of fancy through the ghostly night and sun-warmed morning; he is +concentrated, he drinks in the life of all, yet cannot be immortal for all +these struggling aims. What is this passionate hunger for the All—this +insatiable thirst for utmost pleasure? It is man’s cry for the satisfying +presence of God in his soul. The alone to the Alone; nothing intervening +can give peace and rest to the spirit of man; flame-like it tends upwards +to its source. The only One, the Crucified, the Risen Christ—“Christus +Consolator” is recognised as the remedy for his sense of infinite loss; +and as he recognises the Divine love he is united with the purest earthly +soul he knows:—“Pauline, I am thine for ever.” “Love me, Pauline—leave +me not.” And so the hideous past shall be the past, and he will go forward +with her—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Feeling God loves us, and that all that errs,<br /> +Is a strange dream which death will dissipate.”</p> + +<p>Again he will go o’er the tracts of thought, again will beauteous shapes +come to him and unknown secrets be divulged,—priest and lover as of +old—“Shelley, Sun-treader,” he cries, “I believe in God, and truth, +love—I would lean on thee.” Professor Johnson, in his paper on +“Conscience and Art in Browning,” gives the following as the theme of the +poem:—“The Divine call and anointing of the poet, so to speak; his sin, +which consists in a self-divorce; his decline and degradation as he sinks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> +into the ‘dim orb of self’; finally, his redemption and restoration by +Divine love, mediated to him by human love.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—“<i>His award</i>,” “<i>Him whom all honour</i>,” “<i>Thou didst smile, +poet</i>,” “<i>Sun-treader</i>” (lines 142, 144, 151, 1020): all these refer to +Shelley. “<i>A god wandering after beauty</i>” (line 321): Apollo seeking +Daphne. Apollo pursued Daphne, who fled from him, seeking the aid of the +gods, who changed her into a laurel. “<i>A giant standing vast in the +sunset</i>” (line 322): Atlas, one of the Titans, is referred to here.</p> + +<p class="poem">“<i>A high-crested chief<br /> +Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos</i>” (line 324):</p> + +<p>“After the fall of Troy, many of the Greek chiefs, among them Nestor, set +sail for home, while others, at the desire of Agamemnon, remained behind +to sacrifice to Pallas. Those who set sail went to the island of Tenedos, +where they made offerings to the gods” (<i>Poet Lore</i>, vol. i., p. 244; +Homer, <i>Odyssey</i>, iii.). “<i>The dim clustered isles in the blue sea</i>” (line +321): the islands of the Ægean Sea, east of Greece.</p> + +<p class="poem">“<i>Who stood beside the naked swift-footed,<br /> +Who bound my forehead with Proserpine’s hair</i>” (line 334):</p> + +<p>the <i>swift-footed</i> was Hermes, the name of Mercury among the Greeks. He +was the messenger of the gods. He was presented by the King of Heaven with +a winged cap, called <i>petasus</i>, and with wings for his feet, called +<i>talaria</i>. <i>Proserpine</i> was the daughter of Ceres by Jupiter. “<i>As Arab +birds float sleeping in the wind</i>” (line 479): this is considered by some +to refer to the pelican, by others to the Birds of Paradise.</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">“<i>The king</i></span><br /> +<i>Treading the purple calmly to his death</i>” (line 568):</p> + +<p>Agamemnon, to whom his loved Cassandra foretells his doom in vain:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Well, sire, I yield me vanquished by thy voice;<br /> +I go, treading on purple, to my house.”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">(Potter’s “Agamemnon” of <i>Æschylus</i>, 1017.)</span></p> + +<p>“<i>The boy with his white breast</i>,” etc. (line 574): see Potter’s +“Choephoræ” of <i>Æschylus</i>, 1073: Orestes avenged his father’s death by +assassinating his mother Clytemnestra and the adulterer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> Ægisthus. +<i>Andromeda</i> (line 656): Andromeda was ordered to be exposed to a +sea-monster, and was tied naked to a rock; but Perseus delivered her, +changed the monster into a rock, and married her. “<i>The fair pale sister +went to her chill grave</i>” (line 963): Antigone interred by night the +remains of her brother Polynices against the orders of Creon, who +commanded her to be buried alive. She, however, killed herself before the +sentence could be executed (see “Antigone” of <i>Sophocles</i>). The long Latin +preface to <i>Pauline</i> from the <i>Occult Philosophy</i> of Cornelius-Agrippa is +thus englished in Mr. Cooke’s <i>Browning Guide-Book</i>:—“I doubt not but the +title of our book, by its rarity, may entice very many to the perusal of +it. Among whom many of hostile opinions, with weak minds, many even +malignant and ungrateful, will assail our genius, who in their rash +ignorance, hardly before the title is before their eyes, will make a +clamour. We are forbidden to teach, to scatter abroad the seeds of +philosophy, pious ears being offended, clear-seeing minds having arisen. +I, as a counsellor, assail their consciences; but neither Apollo nor all +the Muses, nor an angel from heaven, would be able to save me from their +execrations, whom now I counsel that they may not read our books, that +they may not understand them, that they may not remember them, for they +are noxious—they are poisonous. The mouth of Acheron is in this book: it +speaks often of stones: beware, lest by these it shape the understanding. +You, also, who with fair wind shall come to the reading, if you will apply +so much of the discernment of prudence as bees in gathering honey, then +read with security. For, indeed, I believe you about to receive many +things not a little both for instruction and enjoyment. But if you find +anything that pleases you not, let it go that you may not use it, for I do +not declare these things good for you, but merely relate them. Therefore, +if any freer word may be, forgive our youth; I, who am less than a youth, +have composed this work.” The preface is dated London, January 1833. V.A. +XX. is the Latin abbreviation of <i>Vixi annos viginti</i>, I was twenty years +old.</p> + +<p><b>Pearl, A, a Girl.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) According to Eastern fable there is +a great power in a pearl: if you could speak the right word, you could +call a spirit from the simple-looking stone which would make you lord of +heaven and earth. Be this as it may, the poet says if you utter the right +word, that evokes for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> you the love of a girl—held, perhaps, in little +esteem by the world—her soul escapes to you, and you are creation’s lord!</p> + +<p><b>“Periods” of Browning.</b> It is usual with students to divide the poet’s work +into some four or five periods. Mr. Fotheringham’s classification is as +good as any: he makes the periods five.—Period I., “<i>a time of youth and +prelude</i>” (1832-1840), the time of <i>Pauline</i>, <i>Paracelsus</i>, and +<i>Sordello</i>. During this time the poet was trying the nature and compass of +his theme and forming his style.—Period II., “<i>the time of early +manhood</i>” (1841-1846), the time of the dramas and early dramatic lyrics. +All the dramas except <i>Strafford</i> belong to this time. In this period he +was studying how best to use his poetical powers.—Period III. is “<i>the +time of maturity</i>,” his manhood and married life (1846-1869). Now he has +found his standpoint; he is firm, vigorous, and confident. During this +time he gave us <i>Christmas Eve</i>, <i>Men and Women</i>, <i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, and +<i>The Ring and the Book</i>.—Period IV. is “<i>the time of his later maturity</i>” +(1870-1878). Now the casuistic and argumentative element becomes more +prominent; the dramatic aspect retires into the background, the +philosophical teacher advances. “His hardest and least poetic work,” it +has been said, was put forth in this period: <i>Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>, <i>Red +Cotton Night-Cap Country</i>, etc.—Period V. (1879-1889), “<i>the time of the +latest works</i>.” A period of criticism of life, as in <i>Ferishtah</i> and the +<i>Parleyings</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Peter Ronsard.</b> (<i>The Glove.</i>) He tells the story of Sir De Lorge, and how +he leaped amongst the lions to recover his lady’s glove.</p> + +<p><b>Pheidippides.</b> (<i>Dramatic Idyls, First Series</i>, 1879.) Pheidippides, an +athlete, has been commissioned by the Athenian government to run a +race,—to reach Sparta for military assistance in a great crisis in Greek +history. Persia has invaded Greece: in her extremity she implores help +from the neighbouring Spartans; for two days and two nights Pheidippides +the fleet-footed youth ran over hills and along the dales, as fire runs +through stubble, and so he bounded on his way with his message. He broke +into the midst of the Spartan assembly, told his story, and prayed the +prayer of Athens; but Sparta, ever jealous and mistrustful of her great +neighbour, heard it coldly, and cast about for excuses. Then the +passionate runner cried to the gods of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> country—to Pallas Athene, +protector of the city, to Apollo, to Diana—to influence the deliberations +of the council gathered to hear his message, and to say to them “Ye must!” +And no bolt fell from heaven, as they still delayed. At last they gave +their answer,—their religion forbade them to go to war while the moon was +half-orbed in the sky; her circle must be full ere they could assist; +Athens must wait in patience! The youth wasted neither word nor look on +the false and vile Spartans, but turned his face homewards, crying to the +gods of his land; rushing past the woods and streams where they had often +manifested themselves to mortals he reproached them with faithlessness and +ingratitude,—his countrymen had honoured them with sacrifice and +libation, and in their extremity they disregarded their cry for help. All +at once, as he ran by the ridge of Parnassus, there in the cool of a cleft +was seated the majestical god Pan! Grave, kindly were his eyes, his face +amused at the mortal’s awe of him. “Halt, Pheidippides!” he cried; and +with his brain in a whirl the youth stood still. “Hither to me! Why pale +in my presence?” he graciously began. “How is it Athens only in Hellas +holds me aloof?” Then the god told the young man how they might trust him; +that he was to bid Athens take heart,—that when the Persians were not +only lying dead on their soil, but cast into the sea, then they were to +praise great Pan, who had fought in their ranks and made one cause with +the free and the bold Athenians. And for a pledge he gave him the fennel +he grasped in his hand. He went on to speak of reward for himself, but of +that Pheidippides would not speak; if he ran before, now he flew indeed; +he touched not the earth with his foot, the air was his road. “Praise +Pan!” he cried, as he reached Athens, “we stand no more in danger!” Then +Miltiades asked him what his own reward should be? What had the god +promised for him? “Release from the racer’s toil,” he said. “But he would +fight and be foremost in the field of fennel, pounding Persia to the dust; +then marry a certain maid when Athens was free, and in the coming days +tell his children how the god was awful, yet so kind.” The brave youth +fought at Marathon; and when Persia was dust. “Once more run,” they cried, +“Pheidippides, to Akropolis, say Athens is saved, thank Pan,—go shout!” +Then the youth flung down his shield and ran as before. “Rejoice! we +conquer!” he cried; and with joy bursting his heart he died.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> He had +gained the reward promised by Pan,—release from the racer’s toil, no +vulgar reward in praise or in pelf,—he could desire no greater bliss. +Herodotus tells the whole story (Book VI., 94-106). Darius was desirous of +subduing those people of Greece who had refused to give him earth and +water. He sent against Eretria and Athens Datis, who was a Mede by birth, +and Artaphernes, son of Artaphernes, his own nephew; and he despatched +them with strict orders, having enslaved Athens and Eretria, to bring the +bondsmen into his presence. 102. “Having subdued Eretria, and rested a few +days, they sailed to Attica, pressing them very close, and expecting to +treat the Athenians in the same way as they had the Eretrians. Now, as +Marathon was the spot in Attica best adapted for cavalry, and nearest to +Eretria, Hippias, son of Pisistratus, conducted them there. 103. But the +Athenians, when they heard of this, also sent their forces to Marathon; +and ten generals led them, of whom the tenth was Miltiades.... 105. And +first, while the generals were yet in the city, they despatched a herald +to Sparta, one Pheidippides, an Athenian, who was a courier by profession, +one who attended to this very business. This man, then, as Pheidippides +himself said, and reported to the Athenians, Pan met near Mount +Parthenion, above Tegea; and Pan, calling out the name of Pheidippides, +bade him ask the Athenians why they paid no attention to him, who was well +inclined to the Athenians, and had often been useful to them, and would be +so hereafter. The Athenians, therefore, as their affairs were then in a +prosperous condition, believed that this was true, and erected (after +Marathon presumably), a temple to Pan beneath the Akropolis, and in +consequence of that message they propitiate Pan with yearly sacrifices and +the torch race. 106. This Pheidippides, being sent by the generals at that +time when he said Pan appeared to him, arrived in Sparta on the following +day after his departure from the city of the Athenians, and on coming in +presence of the magistrates, he said, ‘Lacedæmonians, the Athenians +entreat you to assist them, and not to suffer the most ancient city among +the Greeks to fall into bondage to barbarians; for Eretria is already +reduced to slavery, and Greece has become weaker by the loss of a renowned +city,’ He accordingly delivered the message according to his instructions, +and they resolved indeed to assist the Athenians; but it was out of their +power to do so immediately,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> as they were unwilling to violate the law; +for it was the ninth day of the current month, and they said they could +not march out on the ninth day, the moon’s circle not being full. They +therefore waited for the full moon.” How the Athenians won the famous +battle of Marathon, “following the Persians in their flight, cutting them +to pieces, till, reaching the shore, they called for fire and attacked the +ships,” should be read also. Herodotus says the Persians lost about six +thousand four hundred men; the Athenians only one hundred and ninety-two. +Mr. Browning seems unduly severe on the Spartans, for Herodotus tells us +(120) that “two thousand of the Lacedæmonians came to Athens after the +full moon, making haste to be in time; that they arrived in Attica on the +third day after leaving Sparta. But having come too late for the battle, +they nevertheless desired to see the Medes; and having proceeded to +Marathon, they saw the slain; and afterwards, having commended the +Athenians and their achievement, they returned home.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<ins class="correction" title="Chairete, nikômen">Χαίρετε, νικωμεν</ins>: Rejoice! we conquer! <i>Zeus, the +Defender</i>: Jupiter was worshipped under many aspects, such as “the +Lightning Flasher,” “the Thunderer,” “the Flight Stayer,” “the Best and +Greatest,” etc. “<i>Her of the aegis and spear</i>” == Minerva, who was +represented with a shield and spear. “<i>Ye of the bow and the buskin</i>” == +Diana, who was represented with a bow and buskined legs of a huntress. +<i>Pan</i>, the goat-god. “<i>Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix</i>” +(<i>tettix</i>, a grasshopper): the Athenians sometimes wore golden +grasshoppers in their hair as badges of honour, because these insects are +supposed to spring from the ground, and thus they showed they were sprung +from the original inhabitants of the country. <i>Sparta</i>, the capital of +Laconia, also called Lacedæmon. The distance from Athens to Sparta is from +135 to 140 miles. The trained couriers had great physical strength and +powers of endurance, being regularly employed for such occasions as this. +“<i>Persia bids Athens proffer slaves’-tribute</i>”: “Darius (<span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 493) sent +heralds into all parts of Greece to require earth and water in his name. +This was the form used by the Persians when they exacted submission from +those they were desirous of bringing under subjection.” (Rollins’ <i>Ancient +History</i>, vol. ii., p. 267.) <i>Eretria</i>, one of the principal cities of +Eubœa, which is the largest Island in the Ægean Sea, now called +Negroponte. <i>Hellas</i> == Greece. <i>Athené</i>, Minerva.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> <i>Phoibos</i>, an epithet +of Apollo; <i>Artemis</i>, the Greek name of Diana. <i>Olumpos</i> == Olympus, the +mountain in Greece believed to be the seat of the gods. <i>Filleted victim</i>: +sacrificial victims were generally decked out with ribbons and wreaths, +and sometimes the cattle had their horns gilded. <i>Fulsome +libation</i>—fulsome in the sense of rich, liberal. Libations were offerings +of oil or wine poured on the ground in honour of the deity. <i>Parnes</i>: the +mountain is called Parthenion above Tegea, by Herodotus. <i>Ivy</i>: the Greeks +highly esteemed the ivy. It was consecrated to Apollo, and Bacchus had his +brows and spear decked with it; <i>Miltiades</i>, the Greek general who +commanded the Athenians at the battle of Marathon; <i>Marathon day</i>: “The +victory of Marathon preserved the liberties of Greece, and perhaps of +Europe, from the dominion of Persia; was fought in the month of September, +<span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 490” (Wordsworth’s <i>Greece</i>, p. 109). <i>Akropolis</i>, the citadel or +stronghold of Athens. <i>Fennel-field</i>: Marathon in Greek meant this; when +Pan gave the handful of fennel to the courier he gave him <ins class="correction" title="Marathron">Μαραθρον</ins>—that +is to say, the fennel field where the battle was to be. +“<i>Rejoice!</i>” <ins class="correction" title="chairete">χαίρετε</ins>: the first of the two Greek words which are +at the head of the poem. <i>Pan</i> (<i>lit.</i> “the pasturer”—from the same root +as the Lat. <i>pastor</i>, shepherd, and <i>panis</i>, bread). He was the protecting +deity of flocks and herds and hunters. He was represented by the ancients +with a pug nose, very hairy, and with horns and feet of a goat. He was +described as wandering about in the woods and dales and hills, playing +with the nymphs and looking after the flocks. He was sleepy in the noonday +sun, and did not like to be disturbed; at such times, therefore, shepherds +did not play their pipes. His voice and appearance used to frighten those +who saw him—so much so, that our word “panic” is derived from his name. +It is said that he won the fight at Marathon for the Athenians by causing +a “panic” amongst the Persians. He was the god of prophecy, and there were +oracles of Pan. Pan as the Universe, the All, is a misinterpretation of +his name. The Romans identified Pan with their Faunus. [Mrs. Browning’s +fine poem <i>The Dead Pan</i> should be read in this connection.]</p> + +<p><b>Pictor Ignotus.</b> <span class="smcap">Florence</span>, 15—. (<i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i> in <i>Bells +and Pomegranates</i>, VII., 1845.) The subject is not historical, but is +conceived in the true spirit which animated the work of the great +religious (chiefly monastic)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> painters of the middle ages. The speaker +says he could have painted pictures like those of a certain youth whose +praise is in every one’s mouth. He could have executed all his soul +conceived: hand and brain were pair, and all he saw he could have +committed to his canvas. Each passion written on the countenance, whether +Hope a-tiptoe for embrace, or Rapture with drooping eyes, or Confidence +lighting up the forehead, all that human faces gave him, has he saved. He +has dreamed of going forth in his pictures to pope or kaiser, to the whole +world, with flowers cast upon the car which bore the freight, through +streets re-named from the triumphal passing of his picture, to the house +where learning and genius should greet his coming; and the thought has +frightened him, and he has shrunk from the popularity as a nun shrinks +from the gaze of rough soldiery; it terrified him to think of his works +dragged forth to be bought and sold as household stuff, to have to live +with people sunk in their daily pettiness, to see their faces, listen to +their prate, and hear his work discussed. If at times he feels his work +monotonous, as he goes on filling the cloisters and eternal aisles with +the same Virgins, Babes, and Saints, with the same cold, calm, beautiful +regard, at least no merchant traffics in his heart. The sacredness of the +place where his pictures moulder and grow black will protect him from vain +tongues which would criticise and discuss his work. This poem has been +much misunderstood. Some have seen in it the bitter complaint and the wail +of half-suppressed longing of one whom fame has passed unnoticed; he has +failed to please the world, and will now retire to pursue his art in the +cloister. Nothing could be further from the poet’s purpose in this work. +Others, and those the majority of critics, have found in the poem a +revelation of the true art-spirit, as though Mr. Browning had made a great +discovery in this connection. The plain fact is that this spirit of +retirement, this abhorrence of working for the praise of men, this hatred +of applause-seeking and of self-advertisement, was that which animated the +men of old Catholic times who built our cathedrals and our abbeys, and who +painted our great pictures and glorified all Europe with works of art. The +poem might fairly be considered as uttered by a Fra Angelico with +reference to Raffaele. The great monastic painters, like Angelico, painted +under the eye of God, looking upon their work as immediately<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> inspired by +His Spirit: for God and through God, not through men and for men, was +their work done. It has been the life-work of Mr. Ruskin to point this +out. These men were not actuated by the vain advertising spirit which +animates so much of our modern work of all kinds. Humility is a virtue now +little appreciated: it was the life of these old artists’ souls. Pictor +Ignotus was not jealous of the popular youth whose pictures were decked +with flowers by the people as they were borne through the streets which +were re-named in their honour. He did not want the mob’s applause; he +shrank from the appreciations of the thoughtless street folk as a nun +would shrink from the compliments of a band of rough soldiery. All this +beautiful spirit is fast dying out. When a writer like Browning reminds us +that there were once, in “15—,” in a place like Florence, men animated by +it, critics cry out, “What a discovery! How wonderful!” It is a discovery +like ours of gold in South Africa, where the men of old time went to Ophir +to find the precious metal.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>—Vasari says that the Borgo Allegri at Florence took its name from +the joy of the inhabitants when a Madonna by Cimabue was carried through +it in procession.</p> + +<p><b>Pied Piper of Hamelin, The.</b> (<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1842.) Written to amuse +little Willie Macready. The story told in the poem is one of a class of +legends dealing with the subject of cheating magicians of a promised +reward for services rendered. Verstegan, in his <i>Restitution of Decayed +Intelligence</i> (1634), has the story on which apparently Mr. Browning’s +poem is written. “A piper named Bunting undertook for a certain sum of +money to free the town of Hamelin, in Brunswick, of the rats which +infested it; but when he had drowned all the rats in the river Weser, the +townsmen refused to pay the sum agreed upon. The piper, in revenge, +collected together all the children of Hamelin, and enticed them by his +piping into a cavern in the side of the mountain Koppenberg, which +instantly closed upon them, and a hundred and thirty went down alive into +the pit (June 26th, 1284). The street through which Bunting conducted his +victims was Bungen, and from that day to this no music is ever allowed to +be played in this particular street.” The same tale is told of the fiddler +of Brandenberg: the children were led to the Marienberg, which opened upon +them and swallowed them up. When Lorch was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> infested with ants, a hermit +led the multitudinous insects by his pipe into a lake, where they +perished. As the inhabitants refused to pay the stipulated price, he led +their pigs the same dance, and they, too, perished in the lake. Next year +a charcoal burner cleared the same place of crickets; and when the price +agreed upon was refused, he led the sheep of the inhabitants into the +lake. The third year came a plague of rats, which an old man of the +mountain piped away and destroyed. Being refused his reward, he piped the +children of Lorch into the Tannenberg. There are similar Persian and +Chinese tales. (See Dr. Brewer’s <i>Reader’s Handbook</i>.) Hamlin or Hamelin +is a town in the province of Hanover, Prussia. “Some trace the origin of +the legend to the ‘Child Crusade,’ or to an abduction of children. For a +considerable time the town dated its public documents from the event” +(<i>Encyc. Brit.</i>). Julius Wolff wrote a poem on the subject (Berlin, 1876). +See S. Baring Gould’s <i>Curious Myths of the Middle Ages</i>, 2nd ser., 1868; +Grimm’s <i>Deutsche Sagen</i>, Berlin, 1866; and Reitzenstein’s edition of +Springer’s <i>Geschichte der Stadt Hameln</i>, Hameln, 1861. Some authorities +consider the story a myth of the wind.</p> + +<p><b>Pietro Comparini</b> (<i>The Ring and the Book</i>) was the reputed father of +Pompilia, and was murdered with his wife by Count Guido.</p> + +<p><b>Pietro of Abano.</b> (<i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, second series, 1880.) [<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] Dr. +Furnivall, in a note to Mr. Sharpe’s excellent paper on Pietro of Abano in +the <i>Browning Society’s Reports</i>, No. V., gives the following particulars +of the character from the <i>Nouvelle Biographie Universelle</i>, Paris, 1855, +i. 29-31. “Pietro of A’bano, Petrus de A’pano or Aponensis, or Petrus de +Padua, was an Italian physician and alchemist; born at Abano, near Padua, +in 1246, died about 1320. He is said to have studied Greek at +Constantinople, mathematics at Padua, and to have been made Doctor of +Medicine and Philosophy at Paris. He then returned to Padua, where he was +Professor of Medicine, and followed the Arabian physicians, especially +Averroes. He got a great reputation, and charged enormous fees. He hated +milk and cheese, and swooned at the sight of them. His enemies, jealous of +his renown and wealth, denounced him to the Inquisition as a magician. +They accused him of possessing the philosopher’s stone, and of making, +with the devil’s help, all money spent by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> him come back to his purse, +etc. His trial was begun; and had he not died naturally in time, he would +have been burnt. The Inquisitors ordered his corpse to be burnt; and as a +friend had taken that away, they had his portrait publicly burnt by the +executioner. In 1560 a Latin epitaph in his memory was put up in the +church of St. Augustine. The Duke of Urbino set his statue among those of +illustrious men; and the Senate of Padua put one on the gate of its +palace, beside those of Livy, etc. His best-known work is his <i>Conciliator +Differentiarum quæ inter Philosophos et Medicos versantur</i> (Mantua, 1472, +and Venice, 1476, fol.); often reprinted. Other works are: 1. <i>De Venenis, +eorumque Remediis</i>, translated into French by L. Boet (Lyons, 1593, 12mo); +2. <i>Geomantia</i> (Venice, 1505, 1556, 8vo); 3. <i>Expositio Problematum +Aristotelis</i> (Mantua, 1475, 4to); 4. <i>Hippocrates de Medicorum Astrologia +Libellus</i>, in Greek and Latin (Venice, 1485, 4to); 5. <i>Astrolabium planum +in tabulis ascendens, continens qualibet hora atque minutæ æquationes +Domorum Cæli</i>, etc. (Venice, 1502, 4to); 6. <i>Dioscorides digestus +alphabetico ordine</i> (Lyons, 1512, 4to); 7. <i>Heptameron</i> (Paris, 1474, +4to); 8. <i>Textus Mesues noviter emendatus</i>, etc. (Venice, 1505, 8vo); 9. +<i>Decisiones physionomiæ</i> (1548, 8vo); 10. <i>Questiones de Febribus</i> (Padua, +1482); 11. <i>Galeni tractatus varii a Petro Paduano, latinitate donati</i>, +MS. in St. Mark’s Library, Venice; 12. <i>Les Eléments pour opérer dans les +Sciences magiques</i>, MS. in the Arsenal Library, Paris.” Murray’s <i>Guide to +Northern Italy</i> says that “Abano may be visited either from Padua or from +Monselice. Its baths have retained their celebrity from the time of the +Romans. The place is also remarkable as being the birthplace of Livy, and +also of the physician and reputed necromancer, Pietro d’Abano, in whom the +Paduans take almost equal pride. This village is about three miles from +the Euganean hills.” The medicinal springs procured this place its ancient +name of <i>Aponon</i>, derived from <ins class="correction" title="a">α</ins>, privative, and +<ins class="correction" title="ponos">πονος</ins>, +pain. At Padua is the <i>Palazzo della Ragione</i>, built by <i>Pietro Cozzo</i> +between 1172 and 1219, a vast building standing entirely upon open arches, +surrounded by a loggia. Murray says: “The history of this hall is as +remarkable as its aspect. It was built in 1306 by an Austin friar, <i>Frate +Giovanni</i>, a great traveller; and he asked no other pay for his work than +the wood and tiles of the old roof which he was to take down. The interior +of the hall is covered by strange, mystical paintings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> designed by Giotto +according to the instructions of <i>Pietro d’Abano</i>.” Pietro d’Abano was the +first reviver of the art of medicine in Europe; and he travelled to Greece +for the purpose of learning the language of Hippocrates and Galen, and of +profiting by the stores which the Byzantine libraries yet contained. He +practised with the greatest success; and his medical works were considered +as amongst the most valuable volumes of the therapeutic library of the +middle ages. His bust is over one of the doors of the hall; the +inscription placed beneath it indignantly repudiates the magic and sorcery +ascribed to him; but the votaries of the occult sciences smiled inwardly +at this disclaimer. His treatises upon necromancy, geomancy, amulets and +conjuration, were circulated from hand to hand. When at Padua, some years +since, the Rev. John Sharpe found a stone set in the wall of the vestibule +of the Sacristy of the Church of the Eremitani, to Pietro of Abano. It +bore the following inscription:—</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Petri Apon.<br /> +Cineres<br /> +Ob. AN. 1315<br /> +Aet. 66.</span></p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] Peter was a magician. He had been of all trades, architect, +astronomer, astrologer, beside physician. Even worse than astrologer, for +men scrupled not to accuse him of having dealings with the devil. This was +the Middle Age way with men of science, and it must be confessed that the +mystical manner of their writings and the uncanny nature of some of their +doings give colour to the accusation. It was convenient, also, to accuse +Peter of diabolic arts. When he had built a tower or cured a prince, it +was an economical way of discharging the debt to accuse the old man of +wizardry. So they cursed him roundly and then rid themselves of their +liability. But Peter grinned and bore it all. He seems to have invented a +steamboat which would have whirled through the water had not the priests +broken up his evil-looking machine, and bastinadoed him beside. One night, +as he reached his lodgings, some one plucked his sleeve and asked an +interview with him. It was a young Greek, who professed great admiration +for the mage. He tells him that he has heard that the price he pays for +his potent arts is that he may not drink a drop of milk; but he has +discovered this is not to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> taken literally,—it is to be considered +figuratively, as he will explain. He asks the master leave to become the +friend of mankind, and that by being himself their model. He begs, +therefore, to be taught the true magic, to learn the art of making fools +subserve the man of mind. A prince is inspired with the idea of building a +palace by an architect. The architect uses the prince as the means of +furthering his own interests—his ambition to be honoured as a great +architect. The workmen who build the mansion are animated by their desire +for wages, and so the architect uses both prince and artisan as his tools. +The young Greek wants to use men of high and low degree for similar ends. +The magician says if he were to comply with his desire he would only make +one ingrate more; he has been so often deceived this way. The Greek +replies that what he wants is the milk of human kindness. He has not been +animated by love of his species in what he has done for mankind. He has +wrought wonders, but not for love. This is the meaning of his enforced +abstinence from milk; but let him confer upon his supplicant this favour +he asks, and he will earn his love and gratitude, which will remove from +him his curse. Every step he lifts him up, by so much greater will the +reward of the benefactor be. The magician determines to comply: he will +test this man’s heart. “Shuffle the cards once more,” he says. Suddenly +the young man becomes aware that he has undergone a great change. He was +talking Plato to the master but a while ago; now he is surrounded by +wealth, and has many friends. A year has passed when one day, lounging at +his ease in his villa, his servant announces an old friend who desires to +speak with him. It is old Peter, who is sore beset by his enemies, who +want to burn him. He has come to the young man who owes him everything, to +beg a hiding-place and a crust. The ingrate will not for a moment listen +to his plea; he cannot think of harbouring him, as if it were to be +discovered it would compromise him. He takes the opportunity, however, to +ask for a greater favour,—he wishes to learn how to rule men and subject +them to his pleasure. Then, if he will wait awhile, he may be able to show +his gratitude. The old man turns his back and leaves the house. He is no +sooner away than the spell begins to work. Politics were the prize now. He +became a statesman and a friend of the Emperor. One day, after a council, +he was pacing his closet,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> when there was a knock at the door, and Peter +entered. He reminds him that ten years have passed since he refused him +the favour he demanded. He had given him a mansion, out of which he only +begged the use of a single chamber, that will no longer suffice. He now +comes to beg a stronghold where he may be safe from his enemies: grant him +this, and he will trouble the young man no more. But the latter is +concerned only with thoughts of more power for himself: he wants now to +rule the souls of men; from the temporal power he would rise to the +spiritual; he would be no less than Pope. Having then reached the highest +rung of the ladder, he promises to pay the debt he owes to the full. Once +more old Peter turns to go, and already the influence is felt. He is at +Rome, has been elected Pope, and has reached the summit of his desires. +Seated in the palace of the Lateran, one day an intruder pushes aside the +arras. It is old Peter again; he is ninety now, and does not care if they +burn him; he has lived his day. He has, however, a favour to ask: he has +written a great book, and he wants it preserved for the use of posterity. +Will the Pope see to this? The Pontiff eyes the frowsy parchment with +disgust, and when the old man kneels to kiss his foot, he spurns him. +“We’re Pope,—once Pope, you can’t unpope us!” In a moment the vision was +over. The three trial scenes of the Greek’s life were played out: he was +himself again. The magic was dissolved; he had been tested, had been shown +the corruption of his own heart in a moment, though it seemed a lifetime +in the passing of the vision. Peter lived out his life, but he had never +yet learned love. Perhaps in another life that lesson was to come. As for +the Greek, nothing is recorded of him. The poet says he may go his way—he +is too selfish not to thrive! The moral of the story is that to win men’s +love we must not merely help them, not merely fling favours at them, but +must consecrate ourselves to their service. In the loving service of, and +the self-sacrificing endeavour to benefit our fellow-men, lies the secret +of winning happiness for ourselves. It is more blessed to give than to +receive only when the giving is to man for God’s sake—for the love of God +manifested by efforts on behalf of our fellow-men.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Verse 2, <i>Petrus ipse</i>, Peter the very same. v. 9, <i>True moly</i>: “A +fabulous herb of secret power, having a black root and white blossoms, +said by Homer to have been given by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> Mercury to Ulysses, as a +counter-charm against the spells of Circe” (<i>Webster’s Dict.</i>). v. 10, +“<i>Mark within my eye its iris mystic-lettered</i>”: Letters of the alphabet +have been seen marked on the human eye as figures on a dial. Mr. Browning +said, “that there was an old superstition that, if you look into the iris +of a man’s eye, you see the letters of his name or the word telling his +fate.” (See <i>Echo</i>, 23rd March, 1896.) v. 14, “<i>Petri en pulmones</i>,” +Behold, the lungs of Peter! v. 15, “<i>Ipse dixi</i>,” I have said. v. 16, +<i>Hans of Halberstadt</i>: a canon of Halberstadt, in Germany, who was a +magician who rode upon a devil in the shape of a black horse, and who +performed the most incredible feats. (See Browning’s poem +<i>Transcendentalism</i>.) v. 19, “<i>De corde natus haud de mente</i>,” born of +heart, not of mind. <i>Bene</i>: the first syllables of Benedicite; here the +charm begins to work. v. 23, <i>Plato on “the Fair and Good”</i>: Emerson, in +his essay on Plato, says: Plato taught this as “the cause which led the +Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose the universe. He was good; and he +who is good has no kind of envy. Exempt from envy, He wished that all +things should be as much as possible like Himself. Whosoever, taught by +wise men, shall admit this as the prime cause of the origin and foundation +of the world, will be in the truth. All things are for the sake of the +good, and it is the cause of everything beautiful.” v. 26, <i>Sylla</i>: the +debauched Roman dictator, who gave up his command and retired to a +solitary retreat at Puteoli. v. 27, “<i>Hag Jezebel and her paint and +powder</i>”: Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, who “painted her face and tired her +head, and looked out at a window” (2 Kings ix. 30). <i>Jam satis</i>, already, +enough! v. 33, “<i>Tantalus’s treasure</i>”: Tantalus was tortured in hell by +having food and drink apparently always within his reach, but always +eluding his grasp. v. 37, “<i>Per Bacco</i>”: by Bacchus,—an Italian oath. v. +38, “<i>Salomo si nôsset</i>,” if Solomon had but known this! “<i>Teneor vix</i>,” I +can hardly contain myself! v. 39, <i>hactenus</i>, up to this time. “<i>Nec ultra +plus!</i>” nothing further. <i>Spelter</i>, zinc. <i>Peason</i>, peas. v. 43, “<i>Pou +sto</i>,” where I may stand. Archimedes said he could move the world if he +had a place to stand on. v. 46, <i>Lateran</i>: the church of St. John Lateran, +in Rome; “the mother and head of all the city and the world,” as it is +called, was the principal church of Rome after the time of Constantine. +Five important councils have been held here.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> Adjoining it is the Lateran +Palace. “<i>Gained the purple</i>”: <i>i.e.</i>, the cardinalate, from the scarlet +hat, stockings, and cassock worn by cardinals. “<i>Bribed the Conclave</i>”: +the meeting of the members of the Sacred College of Cardinals for the +election of a pope is called a <i>conclave</i>. “<i>Saw my coop ope</i>”: the +cardinals go into conclave on the tenth day after the death of the Pope, +attended usually by only one person. No access to the conclave is +permitted. An opening is left for food to be passed in. The voting must +all be done in this assembly. Each cardinal has a boarded cell in the +Vatican assigned him by lot. Voting is carried on till some cardinal is +found who has the requisite majority of two-thirds of those who are +present. v. 47, <i>Tithon</i>: a son of Laomedon, king of Troy. He was so +beautiful that Aurora fell in love with him and carried him away. He +begged her to make him immortal, and the goddess granted the favour. As he +forgot to ask her also to preserve his youth, he became old and decrepid, +and begged to be removed from the world. As he could not die, she changed +him into a grasshopper. v. 48, “<i>Conciliator Differentiarum</i>,” conciliator +of differences. “<i>De Speciebus Ceremonialis Magiæ</i>”: concerning the kinds +of the ceremonial of magic. “<i>The Fisher’s ring, or foot that boasts the +Cross</i>”: one of the titles of the Pope is “the Fisherman,” after St. +Peter. His signet is the ring of the Fisherman; the cross is worked on his +slipper. v. 49, “<i>Apage, Sathanas!</i>” begone Satan! “<i>Dicam verbum +Salomonis</i>,” I command it in the name of Solomon. Peculiar significance is +attached by mystical writers to this word Sol-Om-On (the name of the sun +in three languages). <i>Dicite</i>: the closing syllables of “benedicite,” so +that the visions had all taken place between <i>bene</i>—and—<i>dicite</i>. v. 50, +<i>Benedicite!</i> a word of good omen, a blessing. “<i>Idmen, idmen!</i>” we know, +we know! v. 51, <i>Scientiæ Compendium</i>, compendium of science. +“<i>Admirationem incutit</i>”: it inspires admiration. <i>Antipope</i>: an +opposition pope, of which there have been several examples in history; +they were usurpers of the popedom. v. 53, <i>Tiberius Cæsar</i> (born 42 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>, +died 37 <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span>): Emperor of Rome. When at Padua he consulted the oracle of +Geryon, he drew a lot by which he was required to throw golden tali into +the fountain of Aponus for an answer to his questions; he did so, and the +highest numbers came up. The fountain is situated in the Euganean hills, +near Padua.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> <i>Oracle of Geryon</i>: Geryon was a mythical king in Spain who +had three bodies, or three heads. <i>Suetonius Tranquilius</i>: author of the +biographies of the first twelve Roman emperors. v. 54, <i>Venus</i>: the +highest throw with the four <i>tali</i>, or three <i>tesseræ</i>. The best cast of +the <i>tali</i> (or foursided dice) was four different numbers; but the best +cast of the <i>tesseræ</i> (or ordinary dice) was three sixes. The worst throw +was called <i>canis</i>—three aces in <i>tesseræ</i>, and four aces in <i>tali</i>. +(Brewer’s <i>Handbook</i>.)</p> + +<p><b>Pillar at Sebzevah, A.</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>, II. Key-note: “Love is +better than knowledge.”) Sage and pupil argue as to which is the better, +knowledge or love. The sage says that love far outweighs knowledge; it is +objected that an ass loves food, and perhaps the hand that feeds it—why +depose knowledge in favour of love? Ferishtah says that all his knowledge +only suffices to enable him to say that he loves boundlessly, endlessly. +He had knowledge when a youth, but better knowledge came as he grew older, +and pushed it aside; it has been so ever since—the gain of to-day is the +loss of to-morrow. It is, in fact, no gain at all: knowledge is not +golden, it is but lacquered ignorance. It has a prize: the process of +acquiring knowledge is the only reward. But love is victory. In love we + +are sure to succeed,—there is no delusion there. A child grasps an +orange, though he fails to grasp the sun he strives to reach; he may find +his orange not worth holding, but the joy was in the shape and colour, and +these were better for him than the sun, which would have only burned his +fingers. If we can say we are loved in return for the love we bestow, this +is to hold a good juicy orange, which is better than seeking to know the +mystery of all created things: if we succeeded, it would only be to our +own hurt, as the sun would have scorched the child who cried for it. There +was a pillar in Sebzevah with a sun-dial fixed upon it. Suppose the +townsmen had refused to make use of the dial till they knew the history of +the man and his object in erecting the pillar? Better far to go to dinner +when the dial says “Noon,” and ask no questions. If we love, we know +enough. Suppose in crossing the desert we are thirsty, we stoop down and +scoop up the sand, and water rises: what need have we to dig down fifty +fathoms to find the spring? The best thing we can do is to quench our +thirst with the water which is before us: we do not, under the +circumstances, require a cisternful. There is one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> unlovable thing, and +that is hate. If out of the sand we get nothing but sand, let us not +pretend to be finding water; let us not nickname pain as pleasure. If +knowledge were all our faculty, God must be ignored; but love gains God at +first leap. The lyric bids us not ask recognition for our love: the +deepest affection is the most silent. Words are a poor substitute for the +silence of a long gaze and the touch which reveals the soul.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Mushtari</i>, the planet Jupiter (Persian). <i>Hudhud</i>: fabulous bird +of Solomon, according to Eastern legend: the lapwing, a well-known bird in +Asia. <i>Sitara</i>: Persian for a star.</p> + +<p><b>Pippa Passes: A Drama.</b> (<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, No. I., 1841.) Pippa is +the name of a girl employed at the silk mills at Asolo, in the Trevisan, +in Northern Italy. In the whole year she has but one holiday: it is New +Year’s day, and she determines to make the most of it. She springs out of +bed as day is breaking, mapping out as she dresses herself what she will +do with Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night. She thinks of the four persons +whose lot is most to be envied in the little town, and will imagine +herself each of these in turn. But she claims that the day will be fine +and not ill-use her. There is the great, haughty Ottima, whose husband, +old Luca, sleeps in his mansion while his wife makes love; her lover +Sebald will be just as devoted, however the rain may beat on the home. +Jules, the sculptor, will wed his Phene to-day: nothing can disturb their +happiness, their sunbeams are in their own breasts. Evening may be misty, +but Luigi and his lady mother will not heed it. Monsignor will be here +from Rome to visit his brother’s house: no storm will disturb his holy +peace. But for Pippa, the silkwinder, a wet day would darken her whole +next year. So her morning fancy starts her as Ottima: all the gardens and +the great storehouse are hers. But this is not the kind of love she +envies; there’s better love, she knows. Her next choice shall give no +cause for the scoffer—wedded love, like that of Jules and Phene, for +example. But still improvement can be made even upon that: it is, after +all, but new love; hers should have lapped her round from the beginning: +“only parents’ love can last our lives.” She will be Luigi, communing with +his mother in the turret. But if we come to that, God’s love is better +even than that of Monsignor the holy and beloved priest, for to-night +Pippa will in fancy have her dwelling in the palace by the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>Dome.—<span class="smcap">I. +Morning.</span> Ottima is with her paramour, the German Sebald, in the +shrub-house. They have murdered Luca, and are talking calmly of their sin, +and contrasting their present freedom with the restraint of last New +Year’s day. Ottima’s husband can no longer fondle her before her lover’s +face. But there is the corpse to remove, and as Sebald reflects, he begins +to regret his treachery to the man who fed and sheltered him. Ottima tells +him she loves him better for the crime. They caress each other, and as +Sebald fondles Ottima the voice of Pippa singing as she passes is heard +from without: “God’s in His heaven.” Sebald starts, conscience-stricken; +Ottima says it is only “that ragged little girl!” At once Sebald is +disenchanted; he sees the woman in all the naked horror of her crimes; all +her grace and beauty are gone; he hates and curses her. The woman takes +the guilt all upon her own head, and prays for him, not for herself: +forgetting self, she thinks only of Sebald. “Not me—to him, O God, be +merciful!” To her guilty soul also comes the reflection, “God’s in His +heaven.” In self-sacrifice begins her redemption. Pippa has converted +both. While Pippa is passing to Orcana, some students from Venice are +discussing a jest they have played off on Jules. They have, by means of +sham letters which they have concocted between them and sent him as coming +from the girl he loves, induced him to believe she was a cultivated woman, +and he has been deceived into marrying her.—<span class="smcap">II. Noon.</span> When the ceremony +is over the truth is told him. He gives his bride gold, and is preparing +to separate from her, when Pippa passes, singing “Give her but a least +excuse to love me!” Jules reasons, Here is a woman with utter need of him. +She has an awakening moral sense, a soul like his own sculptured Psyche, +waiting his word to make it bright with life—he will evoke this woman’s +soul in some isle in far-off seas! He forgives her. Pippa’s song has +worked the reconciliation.—<span class="smcap">III. Evening.</span> Luigi and his mother are +conversing in the turret on the hill above Asolo. Luigi is what has been +termed a “patriot”; he is suspected of belonging to the secret society of +the Carbonari, and is at the moment actually discussing with his mother a +plot to kill the Emperor of Austria. His mother tells him that half the +ills of Italy are feigned, that patriotism seems the easiest virtue for a +selfish man to acquire. She urges him to delay his journey to Vienna till +the morning. Endeavouring to dissuade him thus, he is on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> point of +yielding, when Pippa passes, singing “No need the king should ever die!” +“Not that sort of king,” says Luigi. “Such grace had kings when the world +began!” continues the passing Pippa. Luigi says, “It is God’s voice +calls,” and he goes away. He thereby escapes the police, who had just +arranged that if he remained at the turret over the night, he was to be +arrested at once. Pippa goes on from the turret to the Bishop’s brother’s +home, near the Cathedral.—<span class="smcap">IV. Night.</span> And here we are shown how little we +poor puppets know of the strings which prompt our movements. Pippa would +be Ottima, the murderess; and as she, the poor but good and happy +silkwinder, trudges on her way to make the holiday of the year, the +voluptuous murderess is purifying her wicked soul in agony. She sings in +the lightness of her heart, and a line of her morning hymn is the arrow of +God to two sinful souls. She would be the bride of Jules—the bride who +has just been detected in fraud, on the point of rejection, and who has +been redeemed by the snatch of Pippa’s innocent monition. She would be the +happy Luigi, who would have failed in a purpose he deemed to be a noble +one, and would have been a prisoner in the hands of the Austrian police if +he had not been nerved by her careless eulogy of good kings. And now, as +she approaches her ideally perfect persons, the holy Monsignor is actually +engaged in taking steps for her ruin. His superintendent is explaining a +plan he has elaborated for getting rid of Pippa, who is the child of his +brother, and to whom the property he is holding rightfully belongs. The +superintendent has found an English scoundrel named Bluphocks, residing in +the locality, who will entrap the girl and take her to Rome to lead a +vicious life, which will kill her in a few years. The bishop is listening +to the tempter, when Pippa passes, singing one of her innocent little +songs, ending with the line—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Suddenly God took me.”</p> + +<p>This awakens the conscience of the ecclesiastic, who calls his servants to +arrest the villain. All unconscious, as night falls Pippa re-enters her +chamber. She has been in fancy the holy Monsignor, Luigi’s gentle mother, +Luigi himself, Jules the sculptor’s bride, and Ottima as well. Tired of +fooling, she notices that the sun has dropped into a black cloud, and as +night comes on she wonders how nearly she has approached these people of +her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> fancy, to do them good or evil in some slight way; and as she falls +asleep she murmurs—</p> + +<p class="poem">“All service ranks the same with God—<br /> +With God, whose puppets, best and worst,<br /> +Are we: there is no last nor first.”</p> + +<p>The drama shows us how near God is to us in conscience. “God stands +apart,” as the poet says, “to give man room to work”; but in every great +crisis of our life, if we listen we may hear Him warning, threatening, +guiding, revealing. Not near to answer problems of existence, or to solve +the mystery of life: this would interfere with our development of soul; +but near to save us from the dangers that await us at every step. The +drama shows us, too, our mutual interdependence. Pippa, the silk-girl, had +a mission to convert Ottima, Sebald, Jules, and the Bishop. We look for +great things to work for us: it is ever the unseen, unfelt influences +which are the most potent. We are taught, also, that there is nothing we +do or say but may be big with good or evil consequences to many of our +fellows of whom we know nothing. People whom we have never seen, of whose +very existence we are ignorant, are affected for good or evil eternally by +our lightest words and our most thoughtless actions.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—For an account of <i>Asolo</i> see <a href="#Page_49">p. 49</a> of this work. Silk in large +quantities is manufactured in this part of Italy. There is no historical +foundation for any of the incidents of the poem. The song in Part II., +which Jules and Phene hear, relates, however, to Caterina Carnaro, the +exiled Queen of Cyprus. <i>Possagno</i>: an obscure village situated amongst +the hills of Asolo, famous as the birthplace of Canova, the sculptor. +<i>Cicala</i>: a grasshopper.—I. <span class="smcap">Morning.</span> “<i>The Capuchin with his brown +hood</i>”: the Capuchin monks are familiar to all travellers in Italy. They +are a branch of the great Franciscan Order. The habit is brown. The Order +was established by St. Francis in the thirteenth century. “Cappuccino” +means playfully “little hooded fellow.” “<i>Campanula chalice</i>”: the bell of +a flower, as of a Canterbury-bell. “<i>Bluphocks</i>”: the name means “Blue +Fox,” and is a skit on the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, which is bound in a cover +of blue and fox. “<i>Et canibus nostris</i>,” even to our dogs. <i>Canova, +Antonio</i> (1757-1822), one of the greatest sculptors of modern times. He +was born at Passagno, near<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> Asolo, the scene of Pippa’s drama. +“<i>Psiche-fanciulla</i>”: Psyche as a young girl with a butterfly, the +personification of man’s immaterial part. This sculpture is considered as +the most faultless and classical of Canova’s works. <i>Pietà</i>: sculpture +representing the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Christ on her knees. +<i>Malamocco</i>: “The Lagoon, immediately opposite to Venice, is closed by a +long shoaly island, Malamocco” (<i>Murray</i>). <i>Alciphron</i>: lived in the age +of Alexander the Great. He was a philosopher of Magnesia. <i>Lire</i>: the lira +is an Italian coin of the value of a franc (say, tenpence). <i>Tydeus</i>, a +son of Œneus, king of Colydon. He was one of the great heroes of the +Theban war.—II. <span class="smcap">Noon.</span> <i>Coluthus</i>, a native of Lycopolis, in Egypt, who +wrote a poem on the rape of Helen of Troy. He lived probably about the +beginning of the sixth century. <i>Bessarion</i>: Cardinal Bessarion discovered +the poem of Coluthus in Lycopolis in the fifteenth century. <i>Odyssey</i>: +Homer’s poem which narrates the adventures of Ulysses. <i>Antinous</i>: One of +the suitors of Penelope during the absence of Odysseus. He attempted to +seize the kingdom and was killed by Odysseus on his return. <i>Almaign +Kaiser</i>: the German Emperor. <i>Hippolyta</i>: a queen of the Amazons, who was +conquered by Hercules, and by him given in marriage to Theseus. <i>Numidia</i>: +a country of North Africa, now called Algiers. <i>Hipparchus</i>: a son of +Pisistratus, and tyrant of Athens. He was a great patron of literature. +His crimes led to his assassination by a band of conspirators, the leaders +of which were Harmodius and Aristogiton. <i>Archetype</i>: the pattern or model +of a work. <i>Dryad</i>: a wood-nymph. <i>Primordial</i>, original. <i>Cornaro</i>: Queen +of Cyprus. Venice took her kingdom from her, and compelled her to resign, +assigning her a palace at Asolo. <i>Ancona</i>: a city of central Italy, on the +shores of the Adriatic. <i>Intendant</i>, a superintendent. “<i>Celarent, Darii, +Ferio</i>”: coined words used in logic. “<i>Bishop Beveridge</i>”: there was a +bishop of that name; but this is a pun, and means beverage (drink). +<i>Zwanziger</i>: a twenty-kreuzer piece of money. “<i>Charon’s wherry</i>”: Charon +was a god of hell, who conducted souls across the river Styx. +<i>Lupine-seed</i>, in plant-lore “lupine” means wolfish, and is suggestive of +the Evil One. (<i>Flower-lore</i>, by Friend, p. 59.) <i>Hecate</i>, a goddess of +Hell, to whom offerings were made of eggs, fish, and onions. <i>Obolus</i>, a +silver coin of the Greeks, worth 8<i>d.</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> They used to put it into the mouth +of the corpse as Charon’s fee. “<i>To pay the Stygian ferry</i>”: the river +Styx, in the infernal regions, across which Charon conducted the souls, +and received an obolus for his fee. <i>Prince Metternich</i> (1773-1859): a +celebrated Austrian statesman. <i>Panurge</i>: a character of Rabelais’. He was +a companion of Pantagruel’s. He was an impecunious rake and dodger, a boon +companion and licentious coward. <i>Hertrippa</i>: one of Rabelais’ characters +in his <i>Gargantua and Pantagruel</i>. <i>Carbonari</i>: the name of an Italian +secret society which arose in 1820. <i>Spielberg</i>: the name of a hill near +Brünn, in Moravia, on which stands the castle wherein Silvio Pellico the +patriot was confined.—III. <span class="smcap">Evening.</span> <i>Lucius Junius Brutus</i>, whose example +animated the Romans to rise against the tyranny of the infamous Tarquin. +<i>Pellicos</i>: Silvio Pellico was an Italian dramatist and patriot +(1788-1854). He was arrested as a member of a secret society by the +Austrian Government, and imprisoned for fifteen years in Spielberg Castle, +near Brünn. “<i>The Titian at Treviso</i>”: Treviso is a town in Italy, +seventeen miles from Venice. In the cathedral of San Pietro there is a +fine Annunciation by Titian (1519). <i>Python</i>: the monster serpent slain by +Apollo near Delphi. <i>Breganze wine</i>: of Breganza, a village north of +Vicenza.—IV. <span class="smcap">Night</span>. <i>Benedicto benedicatur</i>: a form of blessing. +<i>Assumption Day</i>: the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin into +Heaven. It is kept on August 15th. <i>Correggio</i>: one of the great Italian +painters (1494-1534). <i>Podere</i>, a manor. <i>Cesena</i>: an episcopal city lying +between Bologna and Ancona. <i>Soldo</i>, a penny. “<i>Miserere mei, Domine</i>,” +“Have mercy on me, O God!” <i>Brenta</i>, a river of North Italy. <i>Polenta</i>, a +pudding of chestnut flour, etc.</p> + +<p><b>Pisgah-Sights.</b> (<i>Pacchiarotto</i> volume, 1876.) 1. From a high mountain the +roughness and smoothness of the distant landscape seem to blend into a +harmonious picture, the uncouthness is hidden by the grace, the angles are +blunted into roundness, its harshness is reconciled into a beautiful +whole. If we could be taken by angelic hands and be borne a few miles +beyond the surface of the earth, all her mountains would dwindle down till +the rough, scarred and furrowed earth would become a perfect orb. A little +nearer heaven, and a little farther away from the scene of our pilgrimage +here, and evil and sorrow and pain and want will all soften down and be +lost in good and joy and blessedness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> We are too close to things here to +get the right view of their proportions; a handbreadth off, and things +which are mysteries to us now will be clear as the daylight. All will be +seen as lend and borrow, good will be recognised as the brother of evil, +and joy will be seen to demand sorrow for its completion. Why man’s +existence must so be mixed we cannot say; the majority only begin to see +the round orb of things as they near the end <ins class="correction" title="original: o">of</ins> their journey. 2. If we +could live our life over again, would we strive any longer? Would we +exercise greed and ambition, burrow for earth’s treasures, soar for the +sun’s rights, or not rather be content with turf and foliage—just plain +learners of life’s lessons, with no attempt to teach, with no desire to +rearrange anything at all? Should we not be stationary while the march of +hurrying men defiling past us, made us complacent at our post, reflecting +that the only possibility of fearing, wondering at, or loving anything at +all, lay in our keeping, at a respectful distance from everything which +men were hurrying to seek? 3. If it be better to forget than to forgive, +so is it better than living to die, to let body slumber while soul, as +Indian sages tell, wanders at large, fretless and free, encumbered +nevermore by body’s grossness, soul in sunshine and love, body under +mosses and ferns.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>—V. 2, <i>Deniers</i>, small copper French coins of insignificant value.</p> + +<p><b>Plot-Culture.</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>, 10: “God’s All-Seeing Eye.”) “If all +we do or think or say be marked minute by minute by the Supreme, may not +our very making prove offence to the Maker’s eye and ear?” Thus argued a +disciple. The Dervish answers, “There is a limit-line rounding us, +severing us from the immensity, cutting us from the illimitable. All of us +is for the Maker; all the produce we can within the circle produce for the +Master’s use is His in autumn. He wants to know nothing of the manure +which fertilises the soil—of this we are masters absolute; but we must +remember doomsday.” In the lyric the singer indicates the uses of Sense as +distinguished from Soul. “Soul, travel-worn, toil-weary,” is not for +love-making; for that let Sense quench Soul!</p> + +<p><b>Poetics.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) The singer says the foolish call their Love +“My rose,” “My swan,” or they compare her to the maid-moon blessing the +earth below. He will have none of this: he tells the rose there is no balm +like breath; bids the swan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> bend its neck its best,—his love’s is the +whiter curve. Let the moon be the moon,—he is not afraid to place his +Love beside it. She is her human self, and no lower words will describe +her.</p> + +<p><b>Polyxena.</b> (<i>King Victor and King Charles.</i>) The wife of King Charles: full +of resolution, and instinctively sees the right thing, and does it at the +appropriate moment. Her “noble and right woman’s manliness,” as Mr. +Browning calls it, enables her to counteract her husband’s weakness and to +clear his mental vision. Magnanimous and loyal to all, especially to +herself and truth, she is one of the poet’s finest female characters.</p> + +<p><b>Pompilia.</b> (<i>The Ring and the Book.</i>) She was the wife of Count Guido +Franceschini, and he killed her, with her foster-parents, when she escaped +from his cruel treatment and fled to Rome with the good priest +Caponsacchi. She is Browning’s noblest and most beautiful female +character. There is an excellent study of Pompilia in <i>Poet Lore</i>, vol. +i., p. 263. The keynote of her character is found in the line of the +poem—</p> + +<p class="poem">“I knew the right place by foot’s feel;<br /> +I took it, and tread firm there.”</p> + +<p><b>Ponte dell’ Angelo</b> (Venice) == The Angel’s Bridge. (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) +Boverio, in his <i>Annals</i>, 1552, n. 69, relates this legend of Our Lady. It +is recorded at length in <i>The Glories of Mary</i>, by St. Alphonsus Liguori +(p. 192), a curious work which contains a great number of such stories, +which have for their moral the efficacy of prayers to Our Lady as a +protection from the devil. On one of the large canals at Venice is a house +with the figure of an angel guarding it from harm. Once upon a time (says +Father Boverio in his <i>Annals</i>) this house belonged to a lawyer, who was a +cruel oppressor of all who sought his advice; never was such an +extortionate rascal, though a devout one. On one occasion, after a +particularly lucrative week, he determined to ask some holy man to dinner, +as he could not get the memory of a widow whom he had wronged out of his +mind; so he invited the chief of the Capucins to disinfect his house by +his holy presence. The monk duly presented himself, and was informed that +a most admirable helpmate in the house was an ape, who worked for him +indefatigably. The host leaves his guest for awhile, that he may go below +to see how the dinner progresses. No sooner had the lawyer left the room +than the monk, by the instinct<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> which saints possess for detecting the +devil under every disguise, adjures the ape to come out of his +hiding-place and show himself <i>in propriâ personâ</i>. Satan stands forth, +and explains that he is there to convey to hell the lawyer who plagued the +widows and orphans by his exactions. The monk asks how it came to pass +that he had so long delayed God’s commission by acting as servant where he +should have been a minister of justice. The devil explains that the lawyer +had placed himself under the Virgin’s protection by the prayers which he +never intermitted; thus the man is armed in mail, and cannot be lugged off +to hell while saying, “Save me, Madonna!” If he should discontinue that +prayer, Satan would pounce on him at once. He waits, therefore, hoping to +catch him napping. The holy man adjures him to vanish. The fiend says he +cannot leave the house without doing some damage to prove that his errand +had been fulfilled. The saint bade him make his exit through the wall, and +leave a gap in the stone for every one to see, which, having duly been +done, the monk goes downstairs to dinner with a good appetite. The host +asks what has become of the ape, whose assistance he requires, and is +terrified to see his guest wringing blood from the table napkin. It is +explained that the miracle is performed to show him how he has wrung blood +from his clients, and the host is bidden to go down on his knees and swear +to make restitution. The man consents, and absolution following, he is +forthwith taken upstairs to see the hole in the wall left by the devil +exorcised by his saintship. The lawyer fears that Satan may use the +aperture of exit for an entry to his dwelling at a future time, when the +Capucin bids him erect the figure of an angel and place it by the +aperture, which holy sign will frighten the fiend away. And this is why +the house by the bridge has the angel on the escutcheon, and why the +bridge itself is called the Angel’s Bridge, though Mr. Browning thinks the +Devil’s Bridge would have been as good a name for it.</p> + +<p><b>Pope, The.</b> (<i>The Ring and the Book.</i>) The final appeal in the Franceschini +murder case being to the Pope, he has to decide the fate of the Count. He +reviews the whole case in the tenth book, and gives his decision for the +execution of the murderers. Browning’s old men are some of his greatest +creations, and <i>The Pope</i> is perhaps the finest of such conceptions. There +is an excellent essay on <i>The Pope</i> in <i>Poet Lore</i>, vol i., p. 309, by +Professor Shackford.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span><b>Pope, The, and the Net.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) It is generally supposed that +this poem refers to Pope Sixtus V. Mr. Browning possibly obtained the idea +from Leti’s well-known biography of the Pope, which is full of fables. Dr. +Furnivall, however, thinks that Mr. Browning invented the story. It is +said that the character of Sixtus V. suits the poem better than any other. +The pope in question—Felice Peretti—was born in 1521, of poor parents, +but the story of his having been a swineherd in his youth seems to be mere +legend. The <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i> (9th edition) says he was created +cardinal in 1570, when he lived in strict retirement; affecting, it is +said, to be in a precarious state of health. According to the usual story, +which is probably at least exaggerated, this dissimulation greatly +contributed to his unexpected elevation to the papacy on the next vacancy +(April 24th, 1585). “Sixtus V. left the reputation of a zealous and +austere pope—with the pernicious qualities inseparable from such a +character in his age—of a stern and terrible, but just and magnanimous +temporal magistrate, of a great sovereign in an age of great sovereigns, +of a man always aiming at the highest things, and whose great faults were +but the exaggerations of great virtues.” The best view of his character is +that given by Ranke. Mr. Browning makes his Pope to be the son of a +fisherman, who, on his elevation to the cardinalate, kept his +fisher-father’s net in his palace-hall on a coat-of-arms, as token of his +humility. When, however, he became Pope, the net was removed because it +had caught the fish.</p> + +<p><b>Popularity.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, vol. ii., 1855.) This poem is a tribute to +Keats. Shelley and Keats soon displaced Pope and Byron from the mind of +the youthful poet who gave us <i>Pauline</i>: it is not difficult to trace in +that first work of Browning’s the influence of both. When, as a boy, he +made acquaintance with the then little-known works of Keats, we can guess, +even if biographers had not told us, how the author of <i>Endymion</i> and <i>The +Eve of St. Agnes</i> would charm the young poet’s soul. “Remember,” he says +here, “one man saw you, knew you, and named a star!” Then he fancies him +as a fisherman on Tyrian seas, plundering the ocean of her purple dye: +kings’ houses shall be made glorious and their persons beautiful with the +product of the coloured conchs. Then he sees merchants bottling the +extract and selling it to the world. They eat turtle and drink<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> claret, +but who fished up the murex? How does he live? What mean food had John +Keats all his struggling life? He taught men to paint their ideas in +glowing word-tints and images luxuriant. These men gorge, while the man +who ransacked the ocean of thought and the world of fancy is left to +starve.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Verse 6, <i>Tyrian shells</i>: the genera Murex and Purpura have a +gland called the “adrectal gland, which secretes a colourless liquid, +which turns purple upon exposure to the atmosphere, and was used by the +ancients as a dye” (<i>Encyc. Brit.</i>). It was a discovery of the +Phœnicians, and was known to the Greeks in the Homeric age. The juice +collected from the shells was placed in salt, and heated in metal vessels; +then the wool or silk was dyed in it. Tyrian purple wool in Cæsar’s time +cost £43 10<i>s.</i> a pound. Purple robes were used from very early times as a +mark of dignity. Tyre was a very ancient city of Phœnicia, with great +harbours and very splendid buildings. <i>Astarte</i>: the Venus of the Greeks +and Romans, a powerful Syrian divinity. She had a great temple at +Hieropolis, in Syria, with three hundred priests. v. 12, <i>Hobbs, Nobbs, +Stokes, and Nokes</i>: fancy names, of course—meaning the men who profit by +other men’s labours. They bottle and sell the precious things for which +the brave fisherman risks his life and spends his days and nights, after +all receiving but a miserable fraction of the gain. v. 13, <i>Murex</i>: the +genus of molluscs from which the Tyrian purple dye was obtained. It was of +the class <span class="smcap">Gastropoda</span>, order <span class="smcap">Azygobranchia</span>, sub-order <i>Siphonochlamyda</i>, +*<i>Rachiglossa</i>, family <i>Muricidæ</i>. <i>Purpura</i> also was used (hence +<i>purple</i>), of the same sub-order—family <i>Buccinidæ</i>. “<i>What porridge had +John Keats?</i>” John Keats, the poet, was born Oct. 29th, 1795, and died of +consumption in Rome, Feb. 23rd, 1821, when only twenty-six years old. His +<i>Ode to a Nightingale</i> will serve to immortalise him, even if he had +written nothing else. After this his best poems are his <i>Endymion</i>, +<i>Hyperion</i>, and the <i>Eve of St. Agnes</i>. His straitened circumstances and +his ill-health made him hysterical and fretful; but though he was +certainly cruelly used by his reviewers, it is only a ridiculous legend +that he was killed by an article against him in the <i>Quarterly Review</i>. +Bitter reviews of our books do not introduce to our lungs the microbes of +tuberculosis.</p> + +<p><b>Porphyria’s Lover.</b> (Published first in Mr. Fox’s <i>Monthly Repository</i> in +1836, over the signature “Z.” Reprinted as II.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> “Madhouse Cells,” in +<i>Dramatic Lyrics, Bells and Pomegranates</i>, 1842.) In the midst of a storm +at night, to a man sitting alone by a burnt-out fire in his room, enters +the woman whom he loves, but of whose love he has never been sure in +return. She glides in, shuts out the storm, kneels by the dull grate and +makes a cheerful blaze, takes off her dripping cloak, lets down her damp +hair, sits by his side, speaks to him, puts her arm around him, rests his +cheek on her bosom, and murmuring that she loves him, gives herself to him +for ever. At last, then, he knows it; his heart swells with joyful +surprise, he realises the tremendous wealth of which he is thus suddenly +possessed; and lest change should ever come, lest the wealth should ever +be squandered, the possession ever be lost, he will kill her that moment: +and so, as she reposes there, he winds her beautiful long hair in a cord +thrice round her little throat, and she is strangled—painlessly, he +knows, but his unalterably, because dead. And God, he says, has watched +them as they sat the night through, and He has not said a word! This poem +was Browning’s first monologue.</p> + +<p><b>Potter’s Wheel, The.</b> The figure of the potter’s wheel in <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i> +is taken from Isaiah lxiv. 8, Jeremiah xviii. 2-6, and Romans ix. 20, 21. +See a similar use of the figure in Quarles’ <i>Emblems</i> (Book III., Emblem +5).</p> + +<p><b>Pretty Woman, A.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1868.) Here is +a beautiful woman—simply a beauty, nothing more. What, then, is not that +enough? Why cannot we let her just adorn the world like a beautiful +flower? Why do we demand more of her than to gladden us with her charms? +So the craftsman makes a rose of gold petals with rubies in its cup, all +his fine things merely effacing the rose which grew in the garden. The +best way to grace a rose is to leave it; not gather it, smell it, kiss it, +wear it, and then throw it away. Leave the pretty woman just to beautify +the world,—it needs it!</p> + +<p><b>Prince Berthold.</b> (<i>Colombe’s Birthday.</i>) He claims, by right, the duchy +which is held by Colombe.</p> +<p><a name="prince" id="prince"></a></p> +<p><b>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society</b> (1871). Prince +Hohenstiel-Schwangau represents the Emperor Napoleon III. +Hohenstiel-Schwangau represents France. The name is formed from that of +one of the Bavarian royal castles called Hohen-Schwangau. Visitors to the +Ober-Ammergau Passion Play will remember the beautiful and luxurious +castles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> which the mad king built and furnished in so costly a manner in +the midst of the picturesque scenery of the Bavarian Alps. The poem deals +with the subjective processes which Browning supposed animated Napoleon +III. in his character as Saviour of Society. <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i> +is not precisely a soul-portrait of the Emperor Napoleon III. Mr. Browning +does not draw portraits—he analyses characters. He has therefore used the +Emperor as a model is used by an artist. The artist does not simply paint +the model’s portrait, he uses him for a higher purpose of art. Mrs. +Browning was greatly interested in Louis Napoleon, enthusiastically +entered into the spirit of his ambitions, and considered him as “the +Saviour of Society.” She loved Italy so passionately that the destroyer of +the power of Austria over the land which she loved could not fail to win +her admiration; and this, probably, was the chief reason of her esteem for +him. Her poem <i>Napoleon III. in Italy</i> should be read in this connection; +each verse ends “Emperor Evermore.” She says:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“We meet thee, O Napoleon, at this height<br /> +At last, and find thee great enough to praise.<br /> +Receive the poet’s chrism, which smells beyond<br /> +The priest’s, and pass thy ways!<br /> +An English poet warns thee to maintain<br /> +God’s word, not England’s;—let His truth be true,<br /> +And all men liars! with His truth respond<br /> +To all men’s lie.”</p> + +<p>She goes on to call him “Sublime Deliverer,” and praises him for that “he +came to deliver Italy.”</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] For some of my younger readers, who may not be familiar with +the career of the late Emperor of France, it may be necessary to remind +them of the following facts in his history. He was born at Paris on April +20th, 1808. The revolution of 1830, which dethroned the Bourbons, first +launched Louis Napoleon on his eventful career. With his elder brother he +joined the Italian bands who were in revolt against the pope. This revolt +was suppressed by Austrian soldiers. The law banishing the Bonapartes +exiled him on his return to Paris, and he came to England at the age of +twenty-three. In a few weeks he went to Switzerland, and wrote an essay on +that country. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>Returning to France, he was arrested and sent to America by +Louis Philippe in 1836. He returned to Switzerland next year, but shortly +after left for England again, living this time in Carlton Terrace. In 1840 +he made his descent upon France; his party were shot or imprisoned, Louis +being condemned to perpetual imprisonment in the castle of Ham, on the +Somme. He escaped after six years, and once more went to London, living at +10, King Street, St. James’s. When Louis Philippe died, in 1848, Louis +went to France and offered himself to the provisional government. He was +ordered to withdraw from France, which he did. In April 1848 he acted as a +special constable in London at the time of the Chartist disturbances. Soon +after, he was elected in France to the Assembly, in three departments. In +December 1848 he was elected president of the Republic by above five +million votes. On the 2nd December, 1851, he executed the <i>coup d’état</i>, +and soon after was made Emperor by the votes of nearly eight million +persons. For eighteen years Louis Napoleon was sovereign of France. He +married Eugénie de Montigo, Countess of Teba, Jan. 30th, 1853. On the 4th +June was fought the battle of Magenta, for the liberation of Italy; and he +entered Milan the next morning in company with Victor Emmanuel. He met the +Emperor of Austria at Villafranca on July 11th, and the preliminaries of +peace were arranged. He was hurried into the war with Germany by the +clerical party at court in 1870, his advisers seeing no hope for the +permanence of his dynasty but in a successful war. At the defeat of Sedan +he was made prisoner, with ninety thousand men. He was incarcerated at +Wilhelmshöhe, near Cassel, from which he subsequently retired to England. +He lived with the Empress at Chislehurst, dying there on Jan. 9th, 1873.</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] The Prince is talking with Lais, an adventuress, in a room +near Leicester Square. He is explaining that he has not been actuated in +his past life by any desire to make anything new, but merely to conserve +things, and carry on what he found ready for him: thus he has been a +conserver, a saviour of society. He has lived to please himself, though he +recognises God and considers himself as His instrument. God is not to +every one the same; to the woman of the town with whom he is conversing, +He is the Providence that helps her to pay her way. God is to all men just +what they conceive him to be: a shopkeeper’s God and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> king’s God +differ,—it is just as they conceive Him. For his own part he has tried on +a large scale to please himself; but he has an eye to another world also, +so he must carry out God’s wishes so far as he understands them,—he must +preserve what he found established. He thinks himself a great man because +a great conservator of order. There have been changes by God’s acts, but +he has held it his object in life to find out the good already existing, +and preserve it. It is only the inspired man who can change society from +round to square; he is himself only the man of the moment; if he succeeds, +the inspired man will be the first to recognise the value of his work. He +will touch nothing unless reverently; he has no higher hope than to +reconcile good with hardly-quite-as-good; he will not risk a whiff of his +cigar for Fourier and Comte, and all that ends in smoke. He thinks it best +to be contented with what is bad but might be worse. For twenty years he +has held the balance straight, and so has done good service to humanity; +he has not trodden the world into a paste, that he might roll it out flat +and smooth; it has been no part of his task to mend God’s mistakes. All +else but what a man feels is nothing, and the thing on which he +congratulates himself as a ruler of men is that everything he knows, +feels, or can conceive, he can make his own. He thinks that God made all +things for him, and himself for Him. To learn how to set foot decidedly on +some one path to heaven makes it worth while to handle things tenderly; we +might mend them, but also we might mar them; meanwhile they help on so +far, and therefore his end is to save society. He has no novelties to +offer, he creates nothing, has no desire to renew the age,—his task is to +cooperate, not to chop and change. All the good we know comes from order; +he will not interfere with evil, because good is brought about by its +means. When a chemist wants a white substance, and knows that the dye can +be obtained from black ingredients, what a fool he would be if he were to +insist that these also should be white! The Prince does not disapprove +this bad world, and has no faith in a perfectly good one here. Is there +any question as to the wisdom of saving society? Did he work aright with +the powers appointed him for this end? On reviewing his work he finds more +hope than discouragement: what he found he left, what was tottering he +kept stable. It is God’s part to work great changes. He discovered that a +solitary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> great man was worth the world. It was his work to tend the +cornfield, to feed the myriads of hungry men who sought for daily bread +and nothing more. Was he to turn aside from that to play at horticulture, +look after the cornflowers and rear the poppies? “I am Liberty, +Philanthropy, Enlightenment, Patriotism,” cried each: “flaunt my flag +alone!” He objected, “What about the myriads who have no flag at all?” If +he had to choose between faith and freedom, aristocracy and democracy, or +effecting the freedom of an oppressed nation, he would ask, “How many +years on an average do men live in the world?” “Some score,” he is told. +To this he replies, if he had a hundred years to live he might concentrate +his energies on some great cause. But he has a cause, a flag and a faith: +it is Italy. There was a time when he was voice and nothing more, but only +like his censors; then he was full of great aims. Has he failed in promise +or performance? He thinks in neither; he found that men wanted merely to +be allowed to live, and so he consulted for his kind that have the eyes to +see, the mouths to eat, the hands to work. Nature told him to care for +himself alone in the conduct of his mind; he was to think as if man had +never thought before, and act as if all creation watched him. Nature has +evolved her man from the jelly-fish through various stages, till he has +reached the headship of creation. He, too, the Prince, has been evolved, +and can sympathise with all classes of men. Men in the main have little +wants, not large; it was his duty to help the least wants first: if only +he could live a hundred years instead of the average twenty, he could +experiment at ease. Men want meat; they can’t chew Kant’s <i>Critique of +Pure Reason</i> in exchange. Obstacles, he has discovered, are good for +mankind; medicines are impeded in their action, and so are state remedies; +it is not possible always to effect precisely what is intended, neither +would it be always best in the long run. He illustrates this by a story of +an artist’s trick he saw in Rome once. An artist had covered up the sons +and serpents of a Laocoön group, leaving only the central figure, with +nothing to show the purpose of his gesture; then a crowd was called to +give their opinion of the gesture of the figure. Every one thought it +showed a man yawning, except one man, who said “I think the gesture +strives against some obstacle we cannot see.” Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau +would like this far-sighted individual to write his history: he would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> +able to tell the world how he who was so misunderstood has tried to be a +man. And here, he says, ends his autobiography. He will now give some idea +to his companion (Lais, a not unsuitable auditor for his apologia) of what +he might have been if his visions had become realities. Had his story been +told by an historian of the Thiers-Hugo sort, he might have appeared thus. +The nation chose the Assembly first to serve her, chose the President +afterward chiefly to see that her servants did good service; when the time +came that the head servant must vacate his place, and it was patent that +his fellow-servants were all knaves or fools, seeing that everybody was +working to serve his own purposes, that they were only waiting for the +president’s term of office to expire, to see their own longings crowned, +he appealed to the Assembly, showed how his fellow-servants had been +plotting and scheming while he alone had been faithful to the nation which +had trusted him, and suggested that he should be made “master for the +moment.” Let him be entrusted with the utmost power they could confer upon +him, he would use it faithfully. And the nation answered, with a shout,—</p> + +<p class="poem">“The trusty one! no tricksters any more!”</p> + +<p>Up to the time when his term of office as president must expire he had let +things go their own way, knowing all, seeing everything, but letting +things develop. Not that this was unsuspected by his enemies: they guessed +that he was meditating some stroke of state; they saw through him, as he +through them, and were on their guard. He was re-elected, and there was +uprising. “The knaves and fools, each trickster with his dupe,” dropped +their masks, unfurled their flags, and brandished their weapons. Then fell +his fist on the head of craft and greed and impudence; the fancy patriot, +and the night hawk prowling for his prey, all alike were reduced to order +and obedience. Of course it was demurred that he was too prodigal of life +and liberty, too swift, too thorough; and Sagacity complained that he had +let things go on unnoticed till severe measures had been required: he +should have frustrated villainy in the egg; so for want of the by-blow had +to come the butcher’s work. To all this he replies that his oath had +restrained him; he had rather appealed to the people for the commission to +act as he had done. And then began his sway; and his motto had been, +Govern for the many first, think of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> the poor mean multitude, all mouths +and eyes primarily, and then proceed to help the few, the better favoured. +His aim had been to try to equalise things a little, and this by way of +reverence. He did his work with might and main, and not a touch of fear, +but with confidence in God who comes before and after; irresolute as he +was at first, now that the cankers of society were laid bare before him, +he wrenched them out without a touch of indecision. And so, when the +Republic, violating its own highest principle, bade Hohenstiel-Schwangau +(really France) fasten in the throat of a neighbour (Italy), and deprive +her of liberty, in this he saw an infamy triumphant; and when he came into +power, he saw, too, that it demanded his interference. Sagacity said, “Let +the wrong stand over,—he was not to blame for the wrong, it was there +before his time.” But he was prompt to act. Out came the canker, root and +branch, with much abuse for him from friend and foe. Sagacity said he had +been precipitate, rash, and rude, though in the right: he should have +blown a trumpet-blast to let the wrong-doers know they must set their +house in order. He replies that he would have broken another generation’s +heart by the respite to the iniquity. And so the war came. “But France,” +said Sagacity, “had ever been a fighter, and would continue to be so till +the weary world interfered.” Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau recognises this, +and says war for war’s sake is damnable. He will prevent the growth of +this madness. This, however, does not imply that there shall be no war at +all, when the wickedness he denounces comes from the neighbour. He will +deliver Italy from the rule of Austria, smite her oppressor hip and thigh +till he leaves her free from the Adriatic to the Alps. Sagacity suggests +that this should not be all for nought: “there ought to be some honorarium +paid—Savoy and Nice, for example.” But the Prince says “No; let there be +war for the hate of war.” So Italy was free. But there were other points +noteworthy and commendable in the man’s career: he was resolute, fearless, +and true, and by his rule the world had proof a point was gained. He had +shown he was the fittest man to rule; chance of birth and dice-throw had +been outdone here. Sagacity often advised him to confirm the advance, and +bade him wed the pick of the world; if he married a queen, he might tell +the world that the old enthroned decrepitudes acknowledged that their +knell had sounded, and that they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> were making peace with the new order. Or +let him have a free wife for his free state. Sagacity desires to prop up +the lie that the son derives his genius from the sire, but God does not +work like this. He drops His seed of heavenly flame where He wills on +earth; the rock all naked and unprepared is as likely to receive it as the +accumulated store of faculties:</p> + +<p class="poem">“The great Gardener grafts the excellence<br /> +On wildings where He will.”</p> + +<p>He tells the story of the manner in which the succession of priests was +maintained at an old Roman temple. Each priest obtained his predecessor’s +office by springing from ambush and slaying him,—his initiative rite was +simply murder under a religious sanction; so he says it is, and ever shall +be with genius and its priesthood in the world, the new power slays the +old. Thus did the Prince refute Sagacity, always whispering in his ear +that Fortune alternates with Providence, and he must not reckon on a happy +hit occurring twice. But he will trust nothing to right divine and luck of +the pillow; rulers should be selected by supremacy of brains; a blunder +may ensue; it cannot be worse than the rule of the legitimate blockhead. +By this time poor Lais has gone to sleep (little wonder!). The Prince +leaves off imagining what the historian of the Thiers-Hugo school might +have written, of the life he might have led, and the things he might have +done. All this was in cloud-land. In the inner chamber of the soul the +silent truth fights the battle out with the lie, truth which unarmed pits +herself against the armoury of the tongue. We must use words though; and +somehow—as even do the best rifled cannon—words will deflect the shot.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Œdipus</i>, son of Laius, king of Thebes, and Jocasta. He was +exposed to the persecutions of Juno from his birth. He murdered his father +and committed incest with his mother. <i>Riddle of the Sphinx</i>: Œdipus +solved the riddle of the Sphinx, a terrible monster which devoured all +those who attempted its solution and failed. The enigma was this: “What +animal in the morning walks upon four feet, at noon upon two, and in the +evening upon three?” Œdipus said: “Man, in the morning of his life, +goes on all fours; when grown to manhood, he walks erect; and in old age, +the evening of life, supports himself with a stick.” “<i>Home’s stilts</i>”: +the spirit-rapper, D. D. Home, is here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> referred to. (See, for Mr. +Browning’s opinion of Spiritualism, his poem <i>Mr. Sludge the Medium</i>. +Sludge is really Home.) <i>Corinth</i>, an ancient city of Greece, celebrated +for its wealth and the luxury of its inhabitants. <i>Thebes</i>: the Sphinx +resorted to the neighbourhood of this city. It was the capital of +Bœotia, and one of the most ancient cities of Greece. <i>Laïs</i>, a +celebrated courtesan who lived at Corinth, and ridiculed the philosophers. +<i>Thrace</i>, an extensive country between the Ægean, Euxine and Danube. +<i>Residenz</i> (Ger.): the residence of a prince and count. <i>Pradier +Magdalen</i>: the statue of St. Mary Magdalen by James Pradier, in the +Louvre. Pradier was born at Geneva in 1790, and died in Paris 1852. He was +a brilliant and popular sculptor. His chief works are the Son of Niobe, +Atalanta, Psyche, Sappho (all in the Louvre), a bas-relief on the +triumphal arch of the Carousel, the figures of Fame on the Arc de +l’Etoile, and Rousseau’s statue at Geneva. <i>Fourier</i>: Charles Fourier was +a Frenchman who recommended the reorganisation of society into small +communities, living in common. <i>Comte, Auguste</i>: the author of the +Positive Philosophy, the key to which is “the Law of the Three +States”—that is to say, there are three different ways in which the human +mind explains phenomena, each way succeeding the other. These three stages +are the Theological, the Metaphysical, and the Positive. The Positive +stage is that in which the relation is established between the given fact +and some more general fact. “<i>But, God, what a Geometer art Thou!</i>” This +is Plato’s. Browning uses the same idea in <a href="#easter"><i>Easter Day</i></a> (see the notes to +that poem). <i>Hercules</i>, substituting his shoulder for that of Atlas: Atlas +was one of the Titans, and was fabled to support the world on his +shoulders. Hercules was said to have eased for some time the labours of +Atlas by taking upon his shoulders the weight of the heavens. <i>Œta</i>, a +mountain range in the south of Thessaly. <i>Proudhon</i> was a revolutionary +writer (1809-65). His answer to the question, “Qu’est ce-que la +Propriété?” is famous: “La Propriété, c’est le vol,” he replied. His +greatest work was the “<i>Système des Contradictions économiques, ou +Philosophie de la Misère</i>.” His violent utterances led to his imprisonment +for three years. <i>Great Nation</i>: to the French their country is “La Grande +Nation.” <i>Leicester Square</i>: all the foreign refugees in England gravitate +towards Leicester Square. <i>Cayenne</i>: the capital of French Guiana, and a +penal settlement for political<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> offenders. It is anything but “cool,” the +temperature throughout the year being from 76° to 88° Fahr. It is +fever-stricken, and very unhealthy generally. <i>Xerxes and the Plane-tree</i>: +Xerxes going from Phrygia into Lydia, observed a plane-tree, which on +account of its beauty, he presented with golden ornaments. (<i>Herodotus</i> +vii. 31.) <i>Kant</i>: Emmanuel Kant, author of the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> +(1724-1804). He was the greatest philosopher of the eighteenth century. +This celebrated work of Kant’s penetrated to all the leading universities, +and its author was hailed by some as a second Messiah. The falls of +<i>Terni</i>, on the route from Perugia to Orte, in Central Italy, have few +rivals in Europe in point of beauty and volume of water. They are the +celebrated falls of the Velino (which here empties itself into the Nera) +called the Cascate delle Marmore, and are about 650 feet in height. +<i>Laocoön</i>, a Trojan, priest of Apollo, who was killed at the altar by two +serpents. The famous group of sculpture called by this name is in the +Vatican Museum, in the <i>Cortile del Belvedere</i>. According to Pliny, it was +executed by three Rhodians, and was placed in the palace of Titus. It was +discovered in 1506, and was termed by Michael Angelo a marvel of art. +<i>Thiers, Louis Adolphe</i> (1797-1877), “liberator of the territory,” as +France calls him. He wrote the <i>History of the French Revolution</i>. <i>Victor +Hugo</i>, born 1802, a famous politician and novelist of France, was exiled +by Louis Napoleon after the <i>coup d’état</i>. He fulminated against the +Emperor from Jersey his book <i>Napoleon the Little</i>. He was detested almost +fanatically by Napoleon III. “<i>Brennus in the Capitol</i>”: Brennus was a +leader of the Gauls, and conqueror at the Allia, a small river eleven +miles north of Rome, on the banks of which the Gauls inflicted a terrible +defeat on the Romans on July 16th, <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 390. After this defeat the Romans, +terrified by this sudden invasion, fled into the Capitol and left the +whole city in the possession of the enemy. The Gauls climbed the Tarpeian +rock in the night, and the Capitol would have been taken if the Romans had +not been alarmed by the cackling of some geese near the doors, when they +attacked and defeated the Gauls. <i>Salvatore</i>, == Salvator Rosa, a renowned +painter of the Neapolitan school. <i>Clitumnus</i>, a river of Italy, the +waters of which, when drunk, were said to render oxen white. <i>Nemi</i>: the +lake of Nemi, in the Alban mountains, near Rome, was anciently called the +<i>Lacus Nemorensis</i>, and sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> the Mirror of Diana, from its extreme +beauty. Remains have been discovered of a temple to that goddess in the +neighbourhood, and from her sacred grove, or <i>nemus</i>, the present name is +derived.</p> + +<p><b>“Prize Poems.”</b> Dining one day last year at Trinity College, Cambridge, +with that enthusiastic young Browning scholar, Mr. E. H. Blakeney (himself +a poet of great promise), we discussed the question of the comparative +popularity of Browning’s shorter poems, and it was decided that he should +ask the editor of the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> to put it to the vote in his +columns. A prize was offered for the list of fifty poems which came +nearest to the standard list obtained by collating the lists of all the +competitors. The fifty “prize poems” selected by the <i>plébiscite</i> as +Browning’s best, arranged in the order of the votes they severally +received, were the following:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="right">1.</td><td>How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">2.</td><td>Evelyn Hope.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right" valign="top">3.</td><td>Abt Vogler.<br />Saul.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">5.</td><td>Rabbi Ben Ezra.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">6.</td><td>The Lost Leader.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">7.</td><td>The Pied Piper of Hamelin.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">8.</td><td>Prospice.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">9.</td><td>Hervé Riel.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">10.</td><td>Andrea del Sarto.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">11.</td><td>The Last Ride Together.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">12.</td><td>A Grammarian’s Funeral.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">13.</td><td>Home Thoughts from Abroad.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">14.</td><td>The Boy and the Angel.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">15.</td><td>Epilogue to Asolando.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right" valign="top">16.</td><td>By the Fireside.<br />Fra Lippo Lippi.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">18.</td><td>Caliban upon Setebos.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">19.</td><td>One Word More.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">20.</td><td>Any Wife to Any Husband.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">21.</td><td>An Epistle of Karshish.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">22.</td><td>Incident of the French Camp.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">23.</td><td>The Guardian Angel.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">24.</td><td>Love among the Ruins.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right" valign="top">25.</td><td>Apparent Failure.<br />A Forgiveness.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right" valign="top">27.</td><td>A Death in the Desert.<br />A Woman’s Last Word.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">29.</td><td>Count Gismond.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">30.</td><td>In a Gondola.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">31.</td><td>The Patriot.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">32.</td><td>A Toccata of Galuppi’s.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">33.</td><td>My Last Duchess.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right" valign="top">34.</td><td>The Worst of It.<br />Truth and Art.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">36.</td><td>The Statue and the Bust.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">37.</td><td>The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">38.</td><td>Cristina.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">39.</td><td>Clive.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">40.</td><td>Confessions.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">41.</td><td>Two in the Campagna.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">42.</td><td>Summum Bonum.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">43.</td><td>After.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right" valign="top">44.</td><td>Holy Cross Day.<br />The Italian in England.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">46.</td><td>Up at a Villa.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">47.</td><td>Before.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right" valign="top">48.</td><td>James Lee’s Wife.<br />Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="right">50.</td><td>Old Pictures in Florence.</td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span><b>Prologue to Dramatic Idyls.</b> (<i>Second Series.</i>) When we are suffering from +bodily illness, doctors often disagree as to the diagnosis of our +complaint. We go from specialist to specialist, and each physician +declares that we are suffering from that disorder which he makes his +special study: the brain doctor says it is all brain trouble; the heart +man, the liver and lung specialists, are all pretty certain to diagnose +their own favourite malady. And so even the wisest are ignorant of man’s +body. But when we come to soul, there is no difficulty at all: they pounce +on our malady in a trice. They can see the body, and cannot tell what is +the matter with it; the soul, which they cannot see, presents no +difficulties whatever to their wise heads! Mr. Sharp, in his paper on +<i>Dramatic Idyls</i> II., says this Epilogue is the key to the leading idea of +each poem in the volume. <i>Echetlos</i> deals with patriotic action. We think +Miltiades and Themistocles true patriots, but history shows that they only +served their own turn. <i>Clive</i> dreaded death less than a lie, yet +committed suicide: was this due to courage or fear? <i>Mulyekeh</i> loved his +mare, but sacrificed her to his pride. <i>Pietro of Abano</i> did benevolent +actions, yet had no love in his heart. <i>Doctor ——</i> did good actions from +a motive of hate. <i>Pan and Luna</i>: this poem deals with an act of love from +opposite extremes—Pan gross and brutal, Luna pure and modest; yet she +does not spurn Pan. This was not due to want of modesty, but to the power +of love, and Pan was not actuated by brute passion. <i>The Epilogue</i> is to +oppose the idea that poets sing spontaneously about anything. Browning +says his rocks are hard and forbidding, yet they hold, like Alpine crags, +pine seeds of truth.</p> + +<p><b>Prologue to Ferishtah’s Fancies.</b> This is intended to describe the peculiar +construction of the volume of poems. The poet tells his readers how +ortolans are eaten in Italy: the birds are stuck on a skewer, some dozen +or more, each having interposed between himself and his neighbour on the +spit a bit of toast and a strong sage leaf; and the eater is intended to +bite through crust, seasoning, and bird altogether, so the lusciousness is +curbed and the full flavour of the delicacy is obtained. The poem, we are +told, is dished up on the same principle. We have sense, sight and song +here, and all is arranged to suit our digestion. We have the fancy or +fable, then a dialogue, and a melodious lyric to conclude; so, in the +twelve poems, we may see twelve ortolans, with their accompanying toast +and sage leaf.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Ortolans</i> +(<i>Emberiza hortulana</i>): the garden bunting, a native of Continental Europe and Western Asia. It is very much like the +yellowhammer. They are netted, and fed in a darkened room with oats and +other grain. They soon become very fat, and are then killed for the table; +the birds are much prized by gourmands. <i>Gressoney</i>, a village in the +valley of the Aosta. <i>Val d’Aosta</i>, valley of the Aosta, in northern +Piedmont.</p> + +<p><b>Prologue to Pacchiarotto.</b> The poet is imprisoned on a long summer day with +his feet on a grass plot and his eyes on a red brick wall. True, the wall +is clothed with a luxuriant creeper through which the bricks laugh, and +the robe of green pulsates with life, beautifying the barrier. He reflects +that wall upon wall divide us from the subtle thing that is spirit: though +cloistered here in the body-barrier, he will hope hard, and send his soul +forth to the congenial spirit beyond the ring of neighbours which, like a +fence of brick and stone, divides him from his love.</p> + +<p><b>Prospice</b> == “Look forward” (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864) was written in the +autumn following Mrs. Browning’s death. St. Paul speaks of those “who +through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage”: the +author of <i>Prospice</i> and the Epilogue to <i>Asolando</i> was not of this class. +Few men have written as nobly as he on the awful “minute of night,” and +its fight with the “Arch Fear.” Estimating it at its fullest import, as +only a great imaginative mind can do, he is in face of “the black minute” +and “the power of the night”—the Mr. Greatheart of the pilgrims to the +dark river. Nothing grander has been written on the subject than the poems +we have named. In the short poem <i>Prospice</i> is concentrated the strength +of a great soul and the courage of one who is prepared for the worst, with +eyes unbandaged. As an example of the poet’s power nothing can be finer. +The dramatic intensity of the opening lines—the fog, the mist, the snow, +and the blasts which indicate the journey’s end, “the post of the foe”—is +unsurpassed even by Shakespeare himself. It is a defiance of death, a +challenge to battle.</p> + +<p><b>Protus.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Romances</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Romances</i>, +1868.) There is no historical foundation for the poem. In the declining +years of the Roman Empire such rapid transitions of power were not +uncommon. A baby Emperor Protus is described in some ancient work as +absorbing the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> interest of the whole empire: queens ministered at his +cradle. The world rose in war till he was presented at a balcony to pacify +it. Greek sculptors and great artists strove to impress his graces on +their work, his subjects learned to love the letters of his name; and on +the same page of the history it was recorded how the same year a +blacksmith’s bastard, by name John the Pannonian, arose and took the crown +and wore it for six years, till his sons poisoned him. What became of the +young Emperor Protus was then but mere hearsay: perhaps he was permitted +to escape; he may have become a tutor at some foreign court, or, as others +say, he may have died in Thrace a monk. “Take what I say,” wrote the +annotator, “at its worth.”</p> + +<p><b>Puccio.</b> (<i>Luria.</i>) The officer in the Florentine army who was superseded +by the Moorish leader Luria.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Queen, The.</b> (<i>In a Balcony.</i>) The middle-aged woman who, though married, +falls in love with Norbert, the lover of Constance. She prepares to +divorce her husband and marry her officer. When, however, she discovers +the truth about the young lovers, she is the prey of jealousy and offended +dignity, and the drama closes with ominous prospects for the unfortunate +couple.</p> + +<p><b>Queen Worship.</b> Under this title were originally published two poems: i., +<i>Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli</i>; and ii., <i>Cristina</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Quietism.</b> See <a href="#molinists"><span class="smcap">Molinists</span></a>.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p><a name="rabbi" id="rabbi"></a> </p> +<p><b>Rabbi Ben Ezra.</b> (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864.) The character is historical. +The <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i> gives the name as Abenezra, or Ibn Ezra, the +full name being Abraham Ben Meir Ben Ezra; he was also called Abenare or +Evenare. “He was one of the most eminent of the Jewish literati of the +Middle Ages. He was born at Toledo about 1090, left Spain for Rome about +1140, resided afterwards at Mantua in 1145, at Rhodes in 1155 and 1166, in +England in 1159, and died probably in 1168. He was distinguished as a +philosopher, astronomer, physician, and poet; but especially as a +grammarian and commentator. The works by which he is best known form a +series of <i>Commentaries</i> on the books of the Old Testament, which have +nearly all been printed in the great Rabbinic Bibles of Bomberg (1525-26), +Buxtorf (1618-19), and Frankfurter (1724-27). Abenezra’s commentaries are +acknowledged to be of very great value. He was the first who raised +biblical exegesis to the rank of a science,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> interpreting the text +according to its literal sense, and illustrating it from cognate +languages. His style is elegant, but is so concise as to be sometimes +obscure; and he occasionally indulges in epigram. In addition to the +commentaries, he wrote several treatises on astronomy or astrology, and a +number of grammatical works.” He appears to have possessed extraordinary +natural talents; to these he added “indefatigable ardour and industry in +the pursuit of knowledge, and he enjoyed besides, in his youth, the +advantage of the best teachers, among whom was the Karaite, Japhet Hallevi +or Levita, to whom he is believed to have owed his taste for etymological +and grammatical investigation, and his preference for the literal to the +allegorical and cabalistic interpretation of Scripture. He was afterwards +married to Levita’s daughter.” He did not consider his life a fortunate +one as men look upon life. “I strive to grow rich,” he said; “but the +stars are against me. If I sold shrouds, none would die. If candles were +my wares the sun would not set till the day of my death.” The cause of his +leaving Spain was an outbreak against the Jews. Hitherto, he said of +himself, he had been “as a withered leaf; I roved far away from my native +land, from Spain, and went to Rome with a troubled soul.” He seems to have +written no books until after his exile, and then he actively engaged in +literary work. The most complete catalogue of his works is contained in +Furst’s <i>Bibliotheca Judaica</i> (Leipzig, 1849). “Maimonides, his great +contemporary, esteemed his writings so highly for learning, judgment, and +elegance, that he recommended his son to make them for some time the +exclusive object of his study. By Jewish scholars he is preferred, as a +commentator, even to Raschi in point of judiciousness and good sense; and +in the judgment of Richard Simon, confirmed by De Rossi, he is the most +successful of all the rabbinical commentators in the grammatical and +literal interpretation of the Scriptures” (<i>Imp. Dict. Biog.</i>). According +to Rabbi Ben Ezra, man’s life is to be viewed as a whole. God’s plan in +our creation has arranged for youth and age, and no view of life is +consistent with it which ignores the work of either. Man is not a bird or +a beast, to find joy solely in feasting; care and doubt are the life +stimuli of his soul: the Divine spark within us is nearer to God than are +the recipients of His inferior gifts. So our rebuffs, our stings to urge +us on, our strivings, are the measure of our ultimate success: aspiration, +not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> achievement, divides us from the brute. The body is intended to +subserve the highest aims of the soul: it will do so if we live and learn. +The flesh is pleasant, and can help soul as that helps the body. Youth +must seek its heritage in age; in the repose of age he is to take measures +for his last adventure. This he can do with prospect of success +proportionate to his use of the past. Wait death without fear, as you +awaited age. Sentence will not be passed on mere “work” done: our +purposes, thoughts, fancies, all that the coarse methods of human +estimates failed to appreciate, these will be put in the diamond scales of +God and credited to us. God is the Potter; we are clay, receiving our +shape and form and ornament by every turn of the wheel and faintest touch +of the Master’s hand. The uses of a cup are not estimated by its foot or +by its stem; but by the bowl which presses the Master’s lips to slake the +Divine thirst. We cannot see the meaning of the wheel and the touches of +the potter’s hand and instrument; we know this, and this only,—our times +are in His hand who has planned a perfect cup.—I am indebted to Mr. A. J. +Campbell for the following notes, the result of his researches in +endeavouring to trace the real Rabbi Ibn Ezra in the poem <i>Rabbi Ben +Ezra</i>. His fellow-religionists say of the Rabbi that he was “a man of +strongly marked individuality and independence of thought, keen in +controversy, yet genial withal; and it is in words such as these that the +final estimate of his own people is given. ‘He was the wonder of his +contemporaries and of those who came after him ... profoundly versed in +every branch of knowledge, with unfailing judgment, a man of sharp tongue +and keen wit’ (Dr. J. M. Jost, <i>Geschichte des Judenthums</i>, 2nd Abth., p. +419). And again: ‘This man possessed an immense erudition; but his +masterly spirit is far more to be wondered at than the mass of knowledge +he acquired’ (Id., <i>Geschichte des Israeliten</i>, 6<sup>te</sup> Theil, p. 162).” Mr. +Campbell thinks that the distinctive features of the Rabbi of the poem +were drawn by Mr. Browning from the writings of the real Rabbi, and that +the philosophy which he puts into the mouth of Rabbi Ben Ezra was actually +that of Rabbi Ibn Ezra. “It was no worldly success that gave peace to his +age; but he had won a spiritual calm, no longer troubled by the doubts +that at one time or another must come to all who think. ‘While this +remarkable man was roving about from east to west and from north to south, +his mind remained firm in the principles he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> once for all accepted as +true.... His advocacy of freedom of thought and research, his views +concerning angels, concerning the immortality of the soul, are the same in +the earlier commentaries ... as with [those] which were written later; the +same in his grammatical works as in his theological discourses’” (Dr. M. +Friedlander, <i>Essays on Ibn Ezra</i>, Preface and p. 139). “Our times are in +His hand,” says Browning’s Rabbi; so, too, Ibn Ezra, in a poem quoted by +Dr. Michael Sachs (<i>Die Religiose Poesie der Juden in Spanien</i>, p. +117)—“In deiner Hand liegt mein Geschichte.” Says Dr. Friedlander, “He +had very little money, and very much wit, and was a born foe to all +superficiality. So he had spent his youth in preparing himself for his +future career by collecting and storing up materials, in cultivating the +garden of his mind so that it might at a later period produce the choicest +and most precious fruits” (Ibn Ezra’s <i>Comment., Isaiah</i>, Introduction by +Dr. Friedlander). Mr. Campbell says that the keynote of Ibn Ezra’s +teaching is that the essential life of man is the life of the soul. “Man +has the sole privilege of becoming superior to the beast and the fowl, +according to the words ‘He teacheth him to raise himself above the cattle +of the earth’” (Ibn Ezra, <i>Comment., Job</i> xxxv. 11). “He ascribes to man’s +soul a triple nature, or three faculties roughly corresponding to the +division of St. Paul of man into body, soul and spirit. The soul of man, +he holds, can exist with or without the body, and did, in fact, pre-exist” +(Friedlander, <i>Essays on Ibn Ezra</i>, pp. 27-8). This is Browning’s theory +in verse 27. In Browning’s poem the Rabbi describes man’s life as the +<i>lone</i> way of the soul (verse 8). Ibn Ezra, in his <i>Commentary, Psalm</i> +xxii. 22, says, “The soul of man is called lonely because it is separated +during its union with the body from the universal soul, into which it is +again received when it departs from its earthly companion.” When Rabbi Ben +Ezra, in Mr. Browning’s poem, speaks of the body at its best projecting +the soul on its way (verse 8), he is uttering the thought of Ibn Ezra, who +says, “It is well known that, as long as the bodily desires are strong, +the soul is weak and powerless against them, because they are supported by +the body and all its powers: hence those who only think of eating and +drinking will never be wise. By the alliance of the intellect with the +animal soul [sensibility, the higher quality of the body] the desires [the +lower quality or appetite of the body] are subordinated, and the eyes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> of +the soul are opened a little, so as to comprehend the knowledge of +material bodies; but the soul is not yet prepared for pure knowledge, on +account of the animal soul which seeks dominion and produces all kinds of +passion; therefore, after the victory gained with the support of the +animal soul over the desires, it is necessary that the soul should devote +itself to wisdom, and seek its support for the subjection of the passions, +in order to remain under the sole control of knowledge” (Ibn Ezra, +<i>Comment., Eccl.</i> vii. 3). Mr. Campbell has shown how much Mr. Browning +has assimilated Ibn Ezra’s philosophy in many other points in the poem. +(For an extended explanation of the poem see my <i>Browning’s Message to his +Time</i>, pp. 157-72.)</p> +<p><a name="rawdon" id="rawdon"></a></p> +<p><b>Rawdon Brown.</b> “Mr. Rawdon Brown, an Englishman of culture, well known to +visitors in Venice, died in that city in the summer of 1883. He went to +Venice for a short visit, with a definite object in view, and ended by +staying forty years. During one of his rare runs to England, I met him at +Ruskin’s at Denmark Hill, somewhere about 1860. He englished, abstracted, +and calendared for our Record Office, a large number of the reports of the +Venetian Ambassadors in England in the days of Elizabeth, etc. His love +for Venice was so great, that some one invented about him the story which +Browning told in the following sonnet, which was printed by Browning’s +permission, and that of Mrs. Bronson—at whose request it was written—in +the <i>Century Magazine</i> ‘Bric-à-Brac’ for February 1884” (Dr. Furnivall in +<i>Browning Society’s Papers</i>, vol. i., p. 132*).</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Tutti ga i so gusti, e mi go i mii.”—<i>Venetian Saying.</i><br /> +(<i>Tr.</i> Everybody follows his taste, and I follow mine.)<br /> +<br /> +Sighed Rawdon Brown: “Yes, I’m departing, Toni!<br /> +I needs must, just this once before I die,<br /> +Revisit England: <i>Anglus</i> Brown am I,<br /> +Although my heart’s Venetian. Yes, old crony—<br /> +Venice and London—London’s ‘Death the bony’<br /> +Compared with Life—that’s Venice! What a sky,<br /> +A sea, this morning! One last look! Good-bye.<br /> +Cà Pesaro! No, lion—I’m a coney<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To weep—I’m dazzled; ’tis that sun I view</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rippling the—the—<i>Cospetto</i>, Toni! Down</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">With carpet-bag, and off with valise-straps!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Bella Venezia, non ti lascio più!</i>”</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor did Brown ever leave her: well, perhaps</span><br /> +Browning, next week, may find himself quite Brown!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>Nov. 28th, 1883.</i> <span class="smcap">Robert Browning.</span></span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span><b>Reason and Fancy.</b> The discussion between Reason and Fancy is in <i>La +Saisiaz</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Red Cotton Night-cap Country, or Turf and Towers</b> (1873). This may be +termed a pathological poem, a study of suicidal mania and religious +insanity in a young man of dissipated habits whose “mind” was scarcely +worthy of the poet’s analysis. The title given to the work was so bestowed +in consequence of Mr. Browning having met Miss Thackeray in a part of +Normandy which she jokingly christened “White Cotton Night-cap Country,” +on account of its sleepiness. Mr. Browning having heard the tragedy which +his story tells, said “Red Cotton Night-cap Country” would be the more +appropriate term. The alternative title, “Turf and Towers,” is much more +likely to have been suggested by the scenery of the place than by the more +fanciful reasons which have sometimes been imagined for it. The scene of +the story is in the department of Calvados, close to the city of Caen. The +whole country is very interesting, from its historical associations and +architectural remains, and the scenery is exceedingly beautiful. M. de +Caumont, the distinguished archæologist of Caen, enumerates nearly seventy +specimens of the Norman architecture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries +existing in it. Battlemented walls furnished with towers, picturesque +chateaux, old churches and tall spires in a landscape of luxuriant +pastures and grey and purple hills, justified the title “Turf and Towers,” +even apart from the particular circumstances connected with the story. Mr. +Browning visited St. Aubin’s in 1872, and was interested in the singular +history of the family which owned Clairvaux, a restored priory in the +locality. Léonce Miranda, the son and heir of a wealthy Paris jeweller, +led a dissipated life in his times of leisure, but industriously pursued +his calling in strictly business hours. After devoting his attentions to a +number of light-o’-loves, he one day fell in love with an adventuress, one +Clara Mulhausen, who succeeded in securing him in her toils. As she was +already married, the connection was of a nature to be carried on in +seclusion, and the jeweller accordingly left a manager in charge of his +business, retiring with the woman to Clairvaux, where his father had +already purchased property. For five years the couple lived together in +what was considered to be happiness. Then Miranda was suddenly called to +Paris to account to his mother for his extravagance: he had spent large +sums in building <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span>operations, having amongst other things erected a +Belvedere (a sort of tower above the roof built for viewing the scenery). +He so felt the reproaches of his mother that he attempted to commit +suicide by throwing himself into the Seine. He was saved, however, and +having been restored by Clara’s nursing, was convalescent when he was +again urgently summoned to his mother, only to find her dead. He was told +that his conduct was responsible for his mother’s death; and his +relatives, careless of the consequences to a mind so unhinged as +Miranda’s, spared him none of their upbraidings. All this had the +anticipated effect: he gave up the bulk of his property to his relatives, +reserving only enough for his decent support and that of Clara. When the +day arrived for the legal arrangements to be completed, he was found in a +room reading and burning in the fire a number of letters. He had +afterwards, so it was discovered, placed a number of the papers in a bag +and held it in the fire till his hands were destroyed, at the same time +crying, “Burn, burn and purify my past.” If anything more than what had +already happened were necessary to prove the man’s insanity, the fact that +he inflicted this terrible injury upon himself was sufficient evidence on +the point. He declared that he was working out his salvation, and had to +be dragged from the room protesting that the sacrifice was incomplete: “I +must have more hands to burn!” He lay in a fevered condition for three +months, raving against the temptress. When he was sufficiently restored to +health he took her back to his heart, saying however, “Her sex is changed: +this is my brother—he will tend me now.” He disposed of the jeweller’s +shop to his relatives, and went back to Clairvaux with the woman. At this +point Mr. Browning brings the would-be suicide under the influence of +religion; the man devoted his substance liberally to the poor, and made +many gifts to the Church: it was “ask and have” with this kind Miranda, +who was striving to save his soul by acts of charity. It happened that +there was a pilgrimage chapel of <i>La Déliverande</i> near Clairvaux, called +in the poem, rather oddly, “The Ravissante.” The Norman sailors and +peasants have resorted to this place of devotion for the last eight +hundred years. Murray says: “It is a small Norman edifice. The statue of +the Virgin, which now commands the veneration of the faithful, was +resuscitated in the reign of Henry I. from the ruins of a previous chapel +destroyed by the Northmen, through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> the agency of a lamb constantly +grubbing up the earth over the spot where it lay. Such is the tenor of the +legend. The reputation of the image for performing miracles, especially in +behalf of sailors, has been maintained from that time to the present.” Of +course Miranda paid many visits to Our Lady’s shrine; many prayers had +been heard and answered there,—why should not La Déliverande help him? +One splendid day in spring he mounts the stairs of his view-tower, and, as +the poet imagines, addresses the Virgin in exalted phrase. He declares +that he burned his hands off because she had prompted, “Purchase now by +pain pleasure hereafter in the world to come.” He had lightened his purse +even if his soul still retained forbidden treasure, and “Where is the +reward?” He reproaches Our Lady that she has done nothing to help him. She +is Queen of Angels: will she suspend for him the law of gravity if he +casts himself from the tower? He tells her it will restore religion to +France, to the world, if this miracle is worked. He sees Our Lady smile +assent: he will trust himself. He springs from the balustrade, and lies +stone dead on the turf the next moment. “Mad!” exclaimed a gardener who +saw him fall. “No! Sane,” says Mr. Browning. “He put faith to the proof. +He believed in Christianity for its miracles, not for its moral influence +on the heart of man; better test such faith at once—‘kill or cure.’” By a +later will Miranda had bequeathed all his property to the Church, +reserving sufficient for the support of Clara. Of course the relatives +interfered, with the idea of securing the property for themselves. This +led to a trial, which was decided in the lady’s favour, and she was +châtelaine of Clairvaux where Browning saw her in 1872. The real names of +the persons and places are not given in the poem, and there is no good +purpose to be served by giving a key to them.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—[The pages are those of the first edition of the Poem.] Page 2, +“<i>Un-Murrayed</i>”: unfrequented by tourists who carry Murray’s or Bædeker’s +guide-books. p. 4, <i>Saint-Rambert</i> == St. Aubin, a pretty bathing-place in +Calvados, Normandy; <i>Joyous-Gard</i>: the estate given by King Arthur to Sir +Launcelot of the Lake for defending Guinevere. p. 6, <i>Rome’s Corso</i>: the +principal modern thoroughfare of Rome is the Corso. p. 18, <i>Guarnerius</i>, +Andreas, and his son Giuseppe, early Italian violin makers; <i>Straduarius</i>, +Antonio: a famous violin maker of Cremona (1649-1737). p. 19, <i>Corelli</i> +(1653-1713): a celebrated violin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> player and composer; <i>cushat-dove</i> == +the ring-dove or wood-pigeon; <i>giga</i> == <i>gigg</i>: a jig, a dance; <i>Saraband</i>: +a grave Spanish dance in triple time. p. 23, “<i>Quod semel, semper, et +ubique</i>”: what was once, and is always and everywhere. This would seem to +be intended for the celebrated rule of St. Vincent of Lerins as to the +Catholic Faith—“Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ad omnibus creditum est. +Hoc est etenim vere proprieque catholicum” (<i>Comm.</i>, c. 3)—that is to +say, the Catholic doctrine is that which has been believed in all places, +at all times, and by all the faithful. p. 24, <i>Rahab-thread</i>: see Joshua +ii. 18. p. 25, <i>Octroi</i>: a tax levied at the gate of Continental cities on +food, etc., brought within the walls. p. 29, <i>The Conqueror’s country</i>: +Normandy, the native country of William the Conqueror. p. 30, <i>Lourdes</i> +and <i>La Salette</i>: celebrated places of pilgrimage in France. p. 37, +<i>Abaris</i>: a priest of Apollo; he rode through the air, invisible, on a +golden arrow, curing diseases and giving oracles. p. 42, <i>Madrilene</i>, of +Madrid. p. 73, <i>Father Secchi</i>: the great Jesuit astronomer of Rome. p. +83, <i>Acromia</i>: in anatomy, the outer extremities of the shoulder-blades. +p. 84, <i>Sganarelle</i>: the hero of Molière’s comedy <i>Le Mariage Forcé</i>. A +man aged about fifty-four proposes to marry a fashionable young woman, but +he has certain scruples which, however, are allayed by the cudgel of the +lady’s brother. p. 87, <i>Caen</i>: an ancient and celebrated city of Normandy. +p. 88, “<i>Inveni ovem [meam] quæ perierat</i>”: “I have found my sheep which +was lost” (St. Luke xv. 6). p. 108, <i>Favonian breeze</i>: the west wind, +favourable to vegetation; <i>Auster</i>: an unhealthy wind, the same as the +Sirocco. p. 140, <i>L’Ingegno</i>, Andrea Luigi. p. 141, <i>Boileau</i>: the great +French poet, born at Paris 1636; <i>Louis Quatorze</i>: Louis XIV., king of +France; <i>Pierre Corneille</i>: the great dramatic poet (1606-84), born at +Rouen. p. 177, “<i>Religio Medici</i>”: a doctor’s religion; the title of the +celebrated book of Sir Thomas Browne, a devout Christian writer; the new +religion of the hyper-scientific school of doctors is mere materialism. p. +193, <i>Rouher</i>, Eugene: French politician (1814-84); <i>Œcumenical +Assemblage at Rome</i>: a general or universal council of the bishops of the +Roman Catholic Church. p. 202, <i>fons et origo</i>: the fount and origin. p. +203, “<i>On Christmas morn—three Masses</i>”: the first is the midnight mass, +the second at break of day, the third is the Christmas morning mass. p. +204, <i>Cistercian monk</i>: of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> an Order established at Citeaux, in France, by +Robert, abbot of Moleme. The Order is very severe; but its rule is similar +to that of the Benedictines; <i>Capucin</i>: a monk of the Order of St. +Francis; <i>Benedict</i>: St. Benedict, “the most illustrious name in the +history of Western monasticism”: he was born at Nursia, in Umbria, about +the year 480; <i>Scholastica</i>: St. Scholastica was the sister of St. +Benedict: she established a convent near Monte Cassino. p. 210, <i>Star of +Sea</i>: Stella Maris, one of the titles of Our Lady, because <i>mare</i> means +“the sea” in Latin. p. 229, <i>Commines</i> (more correctly Comines): Philippe +de Comines (1445-1509), called “the father of modern history.” Hallam says +that his <i>Memoirs</i> “almost make an epoch in modern history.” p. 234, +“<i>Queen of Angels</i>”: one of the titles of the Blessed Virgin Mary. p. 235, +“<i>Legations to the Pope</i>”: ambassadors or envoys to the Pope of Rome. p. +238, <i>Alacoque</i>: the Ven. Margaret Mary Alacoque, who founded the devotion +to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in France; “<i>Renan burns his book</i>”: Ernest +Renan, born 1823, the famous French philologist and historian, author of +the Rationalistic <i>Life of Jesus</i>, which of course he did not burn! +“<i>Veuillot burns Renan</i>”: Louis Veuillot (1813-83), a celebrated French +writer of the Ultramontane school, who would gladly have suppressed Renan +if he had had the opportunity; “<i>The Universe</i>”: the famous Catholic +journal edited by Veuillot. p. 245, <i>Lignum vitæ</i>: Guaiacum wood, used in +rheumatism, etc.; <i>grains of Paradise</i>: an aromatic drug with carminative +properties, like ginger. p. 268, “<i>Painted Peacock</i>”: the butterfly whose +scientific name is the <i>Vanessa io</i>; <i>Brimstone-wing</i>: the species of +butterfly so called from its bright yellow colour. Its scientific name is +the <i>Rhodocera Rhamna</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Religious Belief of Browning.</b> There was little or no dogmatism in +Browning’s religious faith. He was at least a Theist. “He believed in +Soul, and was very sure of God.” Whether the orthodox would consider him a +Christian in the sense of the old churches is a matter we cannot discuss +here; in the widest sense, however, he has given abundant evidence that he +was a Christian. Those who maintain him to be a believer in the Divinity +of Christ ground their opinion on such poems as <i>A Death in the Desert</i> +and <i>The Epistle of Karshish</i>—which, nevertheless, it is objected, are +merely dramatic utterances, and cannot fairly be held to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> set forth the +poet’s own convictions; to such an opponent I should be content to point +to the following letter, published just after the poet’s death in <i>The +Nonconformist</i>, and reprinted in the Transactions of the Browning Society. +It was written by Browning in 1876 to a lady, who, believing herself to be +dying, wrote to thank him for the help she had derived from his poems, +mentioning particularly <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i> and <i>Abt Vogler</i>, and giving +expression to the deep satisfaction of her mind that one so highly gifted +with genius should hold, as Browning held, to the great truths of our +religion, and to a belief in the glorious unfolding and crowning of life +in the world beyond the grave:—“<i>19, Warwick Crescent, W., May 11th, +1876.</i> Dear Friend,—It would ill become me to waste a word on my own +feelings, except inasmuch as they can be common to us both in such a +situation as you described yours to be—and which, by sympathy, I can make +mine by the anticipation of a few years at most. It is a great thing—the +greatest—that a human being should have passed the probation of life, and +sum up its experience in a witness to the power and love of God. I dare +congratulate you. All the help I can offer, in my poor degree, is the +assurance that I see ever more reason to hold by the same hope—and that, +by no means in ignorance of what has been advanced to the contrary; and +for your sake I would wish it to be true that I had so much of ‘genius’ as +to permit the testimony of an especially privileged insight to come in aid +of the ordinary argument. For I know I myself have been aware of the +communication of something more subtle than a ratiocinative process, when +the convictions of ‘genius’ have thrilled my soul to its depth, as when +Napoleon, shutting up the New Testament, said of Christ—‘Do you know that +I am an understander of men? Well, He was no man!’ (‘Savez-vous que je me +connais en hommes? Eh bien, celui-là ne fut pas un homme.’) Or as when +Charles Lamb, in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would +feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and +blood once more—on the final suggestion, ‘And if Christ entered this +room?’ changed his manner at once, and stuttered out—as his manner was +when moved, ‘You see—if Shakespeare entered, we should all rise; if <i>He</i> +appeared, we must kneel.’ Or, not to multiply instances, as when Dante +wrote what I will transcribe from my wife’s Testament—wherein I recorded +it fourteen years<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> ago—‘Thus I believe, thus I affirm, thus I am certain +it is, that from this life I shall pass to another better, there, where +that lady lives, of whom my soul was enamoured.’ Dear Friend, I may have +wearied you in spite of your good will. God bless you, sustain, and +receive you! Reciprocate this blessing with yours affectionately, <span class="smcap">Robert +Browning</span>.” The Agnostic school is indefatigable in endeavouring to secure +Browning as a great representative of their “know-nothingism,” whatever +that may be. They might as reasonably claim Robert Browning on the side of +Agnosticism as John Henry Newman on the side of Atheism, which also +certain wiseacres in their crass hebetude or vain affectation have +pretended to do.</p> + +<p><b>Religious Poems.</b> (1) More or less expressions of the poet’s own faith are +“La Saisiaz,” “Christmas Eve and Easter Day,” “The Epistle of Karshish,” +“Rabbi Ben Ezra,” “The Pope” (in <i>The Ring and the Book</i>), and “Prospice.” +(2) Dramatic utterances concerning religion may be found in “Caliban upon +Setebos,” “A Death in the Desert,” “Saul,” and “Johannes Agricola,” +amongst many others.</p> + +<p><b>Renan</b> (Epilogue to <i>Dramatis Personæ</i>). The “second speaker” in the +Epilogue is described as Renan. Joseph Ernest Renan, philologist, member +of the Institute of France, was born Feb. 27th, 1823. He is best known by +his <i>Life of Jesus</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Rephan</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889). “Suggested,” as the poet says in a note +prefixed to the poem, “by a very early recollection of a pure story by the +noble woman and imaginative writer, Jane Taylor, of Norwich.”<a name='fna_3' id='fna_3' href='#f_3'><small>[3]</small></a> It will +assist the reader to understand the poem if I give an outline of the story +which lived so long in Browning’s memory and suggested these verses. +“Rephan” is the star mentioned in Jane Taylor’s beautiful story “How it +Strikes a Stranger,” contained in the first volume of her work entitled +<i>The Contributions of Q. Q.</i> Mrs. Oliphant, in her <i>Literary History of +the Nineteenth Century</i>, vol. ii., p. 351, thus describes “How it Strikes +a Stranger.” “A little epilogue in which the supposed impression made upon +the mind of an angel whose curiosity has tempted him, even at the cost of +sharing their mortality, to descend among men, is the theme, recurs to our +mind from the recollections of youth with considerable force.” In one of +the most ancient and magnificent cities of the East there <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>appeared, in a +remote period of antiquity, a stranger of extraordinary aspect. He had no +knowledge of the language of the country, and was ignorant of its customs. +One day, when residing with one of the nobles of the city, after having +been taught the language of the people and having learned something of +their modes of thought, he was seen to be gazing with fixed attention upon +a certain star in the heavens. He explained that this was his home: he was +lately an inhabitant of that tranquil planet, from whence a vain curiosity +had tempted him to wander. When the first idea of death was explained to +him, he was but slightly moved; but when he was informed that the +happiness or misery of the immortal life depended upon a man’s conduct in +the present stage of existence, he was deeply moved, and demanded that he +should be at once minutely instructed in all that was necessary to prepare +himself for death. He lost all interest in wealth and pleasures, and +astonished his friends by his absorption in the thoughts which concerned +another life. Soon, people treated him with contempt, and even enmity; but +this did not annoy him,—he was always kind and compassionate to those +about him. To every invitation to do anything inconsistent with his real +interests, his one answer was, “I am to die! I am to die!” As we might +expect, Mr. Browning takes this simple and beautiful story, and imbues it +with his own philosophy till he has made it his own. In the poem the +wanderer from the star (Rephan), in compliance with the request of his +friends, gives some account of the manner of his life before his human +existence began upon our planet. In the land he has left—his native +realm—all is at most, nowhere deficiency or excess; on this planet we but +guess at a mean. In “Rephan” there is no want; whatever should be, <i>is</i>. +There is no growth, for that is change; nothing begins and nothing ends; +it fell short in nothing at first, no change was required to mend +anything. The stranger explains that, to convey his thoughts, he has to +use our language: his own no one who heard him could understand. In +“Rephan” better and worse could not be contrasted; all was perfection. +Blessing and cursing were alike impossible. There are neither springs nor +winters. Time brings no hope and no fear: as is to-day so shall to-morrow +be. All were happy, all serene. None were better than he: that would have +proved that he lacked somewhat; none worse, for he was faultless. How came +it that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> his perfection grew irksome? How was it his desire arose to +become a mortal on our earth? How did soul’s quietude burst into +discontent? How long had he stagnated there, where weak and strong, wise +and foolish, right and wrong are merged in a neutral Best? He could not +say, neither could he tell how the passion arose in his breast. He knew +not how he came to learn love by hate, to aspire yet never reach, to +suffer that one whom he loved might be happy, to wing knowledge for +ignorance. He tells his hearers that they fear, they agonise and die, and +he asks them have they no assurance that after this earth-life wrong will +prove right? Do they not expect that making shall be mending in the sphere +to which their yearnings tend? And so when in his pregnant breast the +yearnings grew, a voice said to him: “Wouldst thou strive, not rest? burn +and not smoulder? win by contest; no longer be content with wealth, which +is but death? Then you have outlived “Rephan,” you are beyond this sphere. +There is a higher plane for you. Thy place now is Earth!” It is the old +Browning story, the true mark of his highest teaching: the necessity of +evil to evoke the highest good, the need of struggle for development, of +contest for strength and victory. Simple, good Jane Taylor would not +recognise her pretty fable as it comes from Browning’s alembic in the form +of <i>Rephan</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Respectability.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, +1868.) The world will let us do just what we like, provided only we take +out its licence; import what we like, only we must pay the customs duty; +bring into the place what we please, only we must not omit the <i>octroi</i>. +Defy or evade these, and the stamp of respectability being withheld, we +lose caste. Everything depends on the Government stamp which the officers +chalk-mark on our baggage. By conforming we gain the guinea stamp, but run +a risk of losing the gold itself. The world proscribes not love, allows +the caress, provided only we buy of it our gloves. What the world fears is +our contempt for its licence. It is, however, exceedingly placable, and is +quite ready to license anything if we pay it the fee and do it the homage. +At the Institute, for example, Guizot, hating Montalembert (as Liberalism +hates Ultramontanism in theory), will receive him with courtesy, not to +say affection. “We are passing the lamps: put your best foot foremost!”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span><b>Return of the Druses, The.</b> +<span class="smcap">A Tragedy.</span> (<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, IV., 1843.) [<span class="smcap">The Historical Facts.</span>] The Syrian +Druses occupy the mountainous region of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. They are found also in the +Auranitis and in Palestine proper, to the north-west of the Sea of +Tiberias. Crypto-Druses—Druses not by race, but by religion—are believed +to dwell in Egypt, near Cairo. It is said that the Syrian Druses number +over eighty thousand warriors. They covet no proselytes, and are an +exceedingly mysterious, uncommunicative people, though they keep on good +terms, as far as possible, with their Christian and Mahometan neighbours. +They respect the religion of others, but never disclose the secrets of +their own. Of their origin very little has with certainty been +ascertained. They do not accept the name of Druses, and regard the term as +insulting. They call themselves “disciples of Hamsa,” who was their +Messiah, who came to them in the tenth century from the Land of the word +of God. Next in rank to Hamsa are the four throne-angels. One of these was +the missionary Bohaeddin. Mr. Browning probably refers to him under the +name of Bahumid the Renovator. Moktana Bohaeddin committed the Word to +writing and intrusted it to a few initiates. They speak Arabic; but the +Druses are not considered by ethnologists to belong to the Semitic family. +They have a tradition that they belonged originally to China. Whatever may +have been the origin of this people, it is evident that they are now a +very mixed race, as their religion also is compounded of Judaism, +Christianity, and Mahometanism. Mackenzie says: “They have a regular order +of priesthood, and a kind of hierarchy. There is a regular system of +passwords and signs.” It is certain that there are to be found in their +religion traces of Gnosticism and Magianism. One theory of their origin, +to which the poet refers in the drama, is to the effect that the Druses +are the descendants of a crusader, Count Dreux, who left Godfrey de +Bouillon’s army to settle in the Lebanon. “The rise and progress of the +religion which gives unity to the race,” according to the <i>Encyclopædia +Britannica</i>, 9th edition, vol. vii., p. 484, “can be stated with +considerable precision. As a system of thought it may be traced back in +some of its leading principles to the Shiite sect of the Batenians, or +Batiniya, whose main doctrine was that every outer has its inner, and +every passage in the Koran an allegorical sense; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> to the Karamatians, +or Karamita, who pushed this method to its furthest limits; as a creed it +is somewhat more recent. In the year 386 <span class="smcaplc">A.H.</span> (996 <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span>) Hakim Biamrillahi +(<i>i.e.</i>, he who judges by the command of God), the sixth of the Fatimite +caliphs, began to reign; and during the next twenty-five years he indulged +in a tyranny at once so terrible and so fantastic, that little doubt can +be entertained of his insanity. As madmen sometimes do, he believed that +he held direct intercourse with the Deity, or even that he was an +incarnation of the Divine intelligence; and in 407 <span class="smcaplc">A.H.</span>, or 1016 <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span>, his +claims were made known in the mosque at Cairo, and supported by the +testimony of Ismael Darazi.<a name='fna_4' id='fna_4' href='#f_4'><small>[4]</small></a> The people showed such bitter hostility to +the new gospel that Darazi was compelled to seek safety in flight; but +even in absence he was faithful to his god, and succeeded in winning over +the ignorant inhabitants of Lebanon. According to Druse authority this +great conversion took place in the year 410 <span class="smcaplc">A.H.</span> Meanwhile, the endeavours +of the caliph to get his divinity acknowledged by the people of Cairo +continued. The advocacy of Hasan ben Haidara Fergani was without avail; +but in 408 <span class="smcaplc">A.H.</span> the new religion found a more successful apostle in the +person of Hamze ben Ali ben Ahmed, a Persian mystic, feltmaker by trade, +who became Hakim’s vizier, gave form and substance to his creed, and by +his ingenious adaptation of its various dogmas to the prejudices of +existing sects, finally enlisted an extensive body of adherents. In 411 +the caliph was assassinated by contrivance of his sister Sitt Almulk; but +it was given out by Hamze that he had only withdrawn for a season, and his +followers were encouraged to look forward with confidence to his +triumphant return. Darazi, who had acted independently in his apostolate, +was branded by Hamze as a heretic; and thus, by a curious anomaly, he is +actually held in detestation by the very sect which probably bears his +name. The propagation of the faith, in accordance with Hamze’s initiation, +was undertaken by Ismael ben Muhammed <i>Temins</i>, Muhammed ben <i>Wahab</i>, +Abulkhair <i>Selama</i>, ben Abdalwahab ben Samurri, and Moktana Bohaeddin, the +last of whom was known by his writings from Constantinople to the borders +of India. In two letters addressed to the Emperor Constantine VIII. and +Michael the Paphlagonian,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> he endeavours to prove that the Christian +Messiah reappeared in the person of Hamze (or Hasam).” The Druses call +themselves Unitarians or Muahhidin, and believe in the absolute unity of +God. He is the essence of life, and although incomprehensible and +invisible, is to be known through occasional manifestations in human form. +Like the Hindus, they hold that he was incarnated more than once on earth. +Hamsa was the <i>precursor</i> of the last manifestation to be (the tenth +<i>avatar</i>), not the inheritor of Hakem, who is yet to come. Hamsa was the +personification of the “universal wisdom.” Bohaeddin, in his writings, +calls him the Messiah. They hold ideas on transmigration which are +Pythagorean and cabalistic. They have seven great commandments, which are +imparted equally to all the initiated. These would seem to be incorrectly +given by most of the encyclopædias. Professor A. L. Rawson, of New York, +who is an initiate into the mysteries of the religion of the Druses, gives +the following as the actual tenets of the faith. (They are termed the +seven “tablets”).—1. The unity of God, or the infinite oneness of Deity; +2. The essential excellence of truth; 3. The law of toleration as to all +men and women in opinion; 4. Respect for all men and women as to character +and conduct; 5. Entire submission to God’s decrees as to fate; 6. Chastity +of body and mind and soul; 7. Mutual help under all conditions. The Druses +believe that all other religions were merely intended to prepare the way +for their own, and that allegorically it may be discovered in the Jewish +and Christian Scriptures. They treat with the utmost reverence what are +called the Four Books on Mount Lebanon. These are the Pentateuch, the +Psalms, the Gospels, and the Koran. All are bound to keep the seven +commandments of Hamsa above mentioned. [<span class="smcap">The Drama.</span>] Mr. Browning’s drama +does not appear to be founded upon any historical facts. The time occupied +by the tragedy is one day. Djabal is an initiated Druse, a son of the last +Emir, who, when his family was massacred in the island which is the scene +of the drama, had made his escape to Europe. He has resolved to return to +this islet of the southern Sporades, colonised by the Lebanon Druses and +garrisoned by the Knights Hospitallers of Rhodes. He has felt within him a +Divine call to liberate his country and restore them to the land from +which they are exiled. He dwells upon the wrongs which the people have +suffered at the hands of their oppressors, and in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span> his passionate love for +his country, and a desire to gratify his revenge for the slaughter of his +kindred, has determined to become their liberator. The tragedy opens with +the deliberations of the Druse initiates, who are expecting the +manifestation of the Hakeem, the incarnation of the vanished Khalif who is +to free their people, and who is believed by them to have appeared in the +person of Djabal, now returned to the oppressed tribe. The island is +governed by a prefect appointed by the Knights of Rhodes in Europe. This +prefect has used his authority in a cruel and oppressive manner. Djabal +has taken upon himself the redemption of his people, and during his stay +in Europe has made a firm friend of a young nobleman, Lois de Dreux, who +is about to join the Order of the Knights of Rhodes. His period of +probation is to be passed in the island, and for this purpose he has +accompanied Djabal on his return. Djabal has secretly resolved that upon +his return to his people the cruel prefect, who has almost extirpated the +sheikhs, shall be slain. He has secured also the alliance of the +Venetians, who have promised that a fleet of their ships shall be prepared +to transport the Druses to their home in the Lebanon, and shall be in +readiness to receive them when the murder of the prefect shall have +liberated his countrymen. The complicated part of the story now begins. +Anael is a Druse maiden whose devotion to her nation is the strongest +passion of her soul, and who has vowed to wed no one but the man who has +delivered her people from the tyranny which oppresses them. That he may +win her heart Djabal has declared himself to be the Hakeem, who has become +incarnate for the salvation of the Druse nation. He has declared himself +to be the long hoped and prayed for divinity, and offered himself to the +people in that character. His plan has perfectly succeeded. Anael and her +tribe believe that Djabal is the real Hakeem, and that he will liberate +the people, show himself as Divine, and exalt her with himself when the +work is perfected. He has decreed the death of the tyrant, and Anael knows +this. To Anael, Djabal is her God as well as her lover; yet she cannot +worship him as Divine. “‘Oh, why is it,’ she asks,</p> + +<p class="poem">‘I cannot kneel to you?<br /> +Never seem you—shall I speak the truth?—<br /> +Never a God to me!<br /> +’Tis the man’s hand,<br /> +Eye, voice!’”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>Djabal has deceived himself into a half belief in the sanctity of his +mission; but as the day approaches when he is to fulfil his promises his +heart fails him, and he loses faith in himself. He struggles with his own +heart, and endeavours to be true to himself and people; but he has gone +too far, the circumstances in which he is placed are too strong for him, +and he is driven forward on the course on which he has entered. He now +resolves to solve the difficulty by flight. He will make his escape, but +before he does so will kill the prefect with his own hands. He is on his +way to the tyrant’s chamber when he meets Anael, and learns from her that +she has slain the prefect. He now tells her everything. At first she +declines to believe in his falseness; but when a conviction of the truth +is forced upon her she refuses to drive him from her heart. The Divine +nature of Djabal has been in a sense an obstacle to her love in his +character as Hakeem. He has seemed too remote for her merely human +affection, and she has never deemed herself worthy to be associated with +him in his exaltation. In her determination to kill the tyrant, and in the +accomplishment of that act of patriotism, she has been actuated +principally by her desire to elevate herself to his level, so that she +might have a principal share in the liberation of her nation. They now +discover that the murder need not have been committed. Lois de Dreux, the +young nobleman who has accompanied Djabal from Europe, has fallen in love +with Anael also; and though prohibited by the rules of the Order of +knighthood of which he is a postulant, to entangle himself with women, he +has aspired to win her love. Lois has represented to the chapter of the +Order the cruelties inflicted by their prefect on the people, and has +succeeded in obtaining an order for his removal. The young Frankish knight +has been elevated by the Order to the position occupied by the deposed +governor, so that the liberation of the Druses is now close at hand. Anael +urges Djabal to confess his deception and own his imposition to his +people. This he refuses to do. She cannot forgive him. When she finds him +false and cowardly she takes upon herself to denounce him to the European +rulers of the island. Djabal is brought to trial. His accuser is Anael, +who is closely veiled till the appropriate moment, when the veil drops, +and he is confronted by his lover. His life hangs upon her words. He urges +her to speak them; but this she cannot do. Djabal is now man, and man +only: he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> is not separated from her by his Divine nature. She could hardly +hope to be one with him in his glory: she can at least be united with him +in his degradation and disgrace. All her love for him rises within her, +and she hails him “Hakeem!” and falls dead at his feet. The human heart +has proved victorious, and the man has conquered the god. Djabal, +committing the care of the Druses to his friend Lois, and bidding him +guard his people home again and win their blessing for the deed, stabs +himself as he bends over the body of the faithful Anael. As he dies the +Venetians enter the place and plant the Lion of St. Mark. Djabal’s last +cry mingles with their shouts, “On to the mountain! At the mountain, +Druses!”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes</span>—Act i., <i>Rhodian cross</i>: that of the Knights of St. John (see +below). <i>Osman</i>, who founded the Ottoman empire in Asia. <i>White-cross +knights</i>: the Knights Hospitallers. They wore a white cross of eight +points on a black ground. From 1278 till 1289, when engaged on military +duties, they wore a plain straight white cross on a red ground. +<i>Patriarch</i>: in Eastern churches a dignitary superior to an archbishop, as +the Patriarch of Constantinople, Alexandria, etc. <i>Nuncio</i>: an ambassador +from the Pope to an emperor or king. <i>Hospitallers</i>: an order of knights +who built a hospital at Jerusalem, in <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 1042, for pilgrims. They were +called <i>Knights of St. John</i>, and after the removal of the order to Malta +<i>Knights of Malta</i>. <i>Candia</i>: the ancient Crete. It was sold to the +Venetians in 1194. <i>Rhodes</i>: an island of the Mediterranean. “<i>pro fide</i>”: +for the faith. “<i>Bouillon’s war</i>”: the crusade of Godfrey de +Bouillon.—Act ii., “<i>sweet cane</i>”: Acorus calamus. It grows in the Levant +and in this country; is very aromatic, having a smell when trodden on like +incense. Miss Pratt says it has been used from time immemorial for +strewing the floors of Norwich Cathedral. <i>Lilith</i>: Adam’s first wife (see +note to <a href="#adam"><span class="smcap">Adam</span>, <span class="smcap">Lilith</span> and <span class="smcap">Eve</span></a>, +and art. <a href="#lilith"><span class="smcap">Lilith</span></a>). “<i>incense from a +mage-king’s tomb</i>”: students of occult science say that sweet odours have +been known to issue from the tombs of magicians, and lamps have been found +burning therein when broken open. <i>khandjar</i>: an Eastern weapon.—Act. +iii., <i>The venerable chapter</i>: the meeting of an order or community. +<i>Bezants</i>: gold coins of Byzantium. “<i>Red-cross rivals of the Temple</i>”: +the order of the “Knights Templars” (see notes to <i>The Heretics’ +Tragedy</i>). They wore a red cross<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> of eight points.—Act iv., <i>Tiar</i>: a +tiara.—Act v., <i>Biamrallah</i>: Hakem Biamr Allah, sixth Fatimite Caliph of +Egypt. <i>Fatemite</i>, or <i>Fatimite</i>: named from Fatima, the daughter of +Mohammed and wife of Ali, from whom the founder of the dynasty of +Fatimites professed to have sprung. “<i>Romaioi, Ioudaioite kai proselutoi</i>” +(<i>Gr.</i>, Acts ii. 10, 11): “Strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes.”</p> + +<p><b>Reverie.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) In Mr. Browning’s last volume, published in +London as he lay dying in Venice, the two closing poems seem strangely and +nobly intended to gather into a focus his whole philosophy of life, and +give to the world, in two of his most exquisite poems, his fullest and +clearest expressions of the faith of his heart and the quintessence of his +teaching. Had the poet known they were the last lines he should write, had +he foreseen that these were the last accents of his message, it is +impossible to imagine that he could have risen higher than he has done in +<i>Reverie</i> and the “Epilogue.” The purport of <i>Reverie</i> is to reconcile the +ideas of Power and Love—to reconcile by proving them indeed to be one. +“Power is Love.” When power is no longer limited, then is the reign of +love. As Mr. Browning says in <i>Paracelsus</i>, “with much power always much +more love.” That “The All-Great” is “The All-Loving too,” is the teaching +of Christianity. That power, in its perfection, must <i>necessarily</i> be +love, is a point in Mr. Browning’s philosophical system arrived at +independently of dogma. It is the monistic conception of the forces that +mould life, as opposed to the dualistic conception. The Power everywhere +visible in the universe, pervading everything, in all things from the atom +to the sun, making man feel his utter helplessness and insignificance, +requires no further demonstration. We are assured that Power is dominant. +Our only difficulty is about Love. In face of the evil in the world, the +inequalities in life, the dominance of evil, can we say with truth that +the All-Powerful is the All-Loving too? Browning in <i>Reverie</i> says that +truth comes before us here “fitful and half guessed, half seen, grasped +at, not gained, held fast.” Notwithstanding this defect, a single page of +the world’s wide book, properly deciphered, explains the whole. We must +try the clod ere we test the star; know all our earth elements ere we +apply the spectroscope to Mars. It is true that good struggles but evil +reigns; yet earth’s good is proved good and incontrovertibly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> worth +loving, and evil can be nothing but a cloud stretched across good’s +orb—no orb itself. There is no doubt whatever about the infinity of the +power. There is equally no doubt about the value of the good so far as it +goes. Let power “but enlarge good’s strait confine,” and perfection stands +revealed. “Let on Power devolve Good’s right to co-equal reign!” What is +wanted is some law which abolishes everywhere that which thwarts good. And +the poet avows his confidence that somewhen Good will praise God unisonous +with Power.</p> + +<p><b>Richard, Count of St. Bonifacio</b> (father and son). (<i>Sordello.</i>) Guelfs. In +a secret chamber in his palace Palma and Sordello hold earnest conference +with each other in the first book of the poem.</p> + +<p><b>Ring and the Book, The.</b> In twelve books. Published in four volumes, each +consisting of three books, from 1868 to 1869.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book</span> I.—When a Roman jeweller makes a ring, he mingles his pure gold with +a certain amount of alloy, so as to enable it to bear file and hammer; +but, the ring having been fashioned, the alloy is dissolved out with acid, +and the ring in all its purity and beauty of pure gold remains perfect. So +much for the Ring. For the Book it happened thus:—Mr. Browning was one +day wandering about the Square of St. Lorenzo, in Florence, which on that +occasion was crammed with booths where odd things of all sorts were for +sale; and in one of them he purchased for eightpence an old square yellow +book, part print, part manuscript, with this summary of its contents:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“A Roman murder case;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Position of the entire criminal cause</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With certain Four the cut-throats in his pay.</span><br /> +Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">By heading or hanging as befitted ranks,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">At Rome, on February Twenty-Two,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Since our Salvation Sixteen Ninety-Eight:</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Wherein it is disputed if, and when,</span><br /> +Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet ’scape<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 5em;">The customary forfeit.”</span></p> + +<p>As before the ring was fashioned the pure gold lay in the ingot, so the +pure virgin truth of the murder case lay in this book; but it was not in a +presentable form and such as a poet could use.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> As the jeweller adds a +little alloy to permit the artistic working of the Ring, so the poet must +mix his poetic fancy with the simple legal evidence contained in the Book, +and in this manner work up the history for popular edification. And thus +we have <i>The Ring and the Book</i>. The simple, hard, legal documents opened +the story thus. The accuser and the accused said, in the persons of their +advocates, as follows:—The Public Prosecutor demands the punishment of +Count Guido Franceschini and his accomplices, for the murder of his wife. +Then the Patron of the Poor—the counsel acting on behalf of the +accused—protests that Count Guido ought rather to be rewarded, with his +four conscientious friends, as sustainers of law and society. It is true, +he says, that he killed his wife, but he did it laudably. Then the case +was postponed. It was argued that the woman slaughtered was a saint and +martyr. More postponement. Then it was argued that she was a miracle of +lust and impudence. More witnesses, precedents, and authorities called and +quoted on both sides:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Thus wrangled, brangled, jangled they a month,”—</p> + +<p>only on paper—all the pleadings were in print. The Court pronounced Count +Guido guilty, his murdered wife Pompilia pure in thought, word and deed; +and signed sentence of death against the whole five accused. But Guido’s +counsel had a reserve shot. The Count, as was the frequent custom in those +days, was in one of the minor orders of the priesthood, and claimed +clerical privilege. Appeal was therefore made to the Pope. Roman society +began to talk, the quality took the husband’s part, the Pope was +benevolent and unwilling to take life: Guido stood a chance of getting +off. But the Pope was shrewd and conscientious; and having mastered the +whole matter, said, “Cut off Guido’s head to-morrow, and hang up his +mates.” And it was so done. Thus much was untempered gold, as discovered +in the little old book. But we want to know more of the matter, and in +four volumes (of the original edition) Mr. Browning satisfies us. Who was +the handsome young priest, Canon Caponsacchi, who carried off the wife? +Who were the old couple, the Comparini, Pietro and his spouse, who, on a +Christmas night in a lonely villa, were murdered with Pompilia? Mr. +Browning has ferreted it out for us mixed his fancy with the facts to +bring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> them home to us the better. He has been to Arezzo, the Count’s +city—the wife’s “trap and cage and torture place.” He stopped at +Castelnuovo, where husband and wife and priest for first and last time met +face to face. He passed on to Rome the goal, to the home of Pompilia’s +foster-parents. He conjures up the vision of the dreadful night when Guido +and his wolves cried to the escaped wife, “Open to Caponsacchi!” and the +door was opened, showing the mother of the two-weeks’-old babe and her +parents the Comparini. He ponders all the story in his soul in Italy, and +in London when he returns home; till the ideas take clear shape in his +mind, and the whole story lives again in his brain, and he can reproduce +for us the facts as they must have occurred. Count Guido Franceschini was +descended of an ancient though poor family. He was</p> + +<p class="poem">“A beak-nosed, bushy-bearded, black-haired lord,<br /> +Lean, pallid, low of stature, yet robust,<br /> +Fifty years old.”</p> + +<p>He married Pompilia Comparini—young, good, beautiful—at Rome, where she +was born; and brought her to his home at Arezzo, where they lived +miserable lives. That she might find peace, the wife had run away, in +company of the priest Giuseppe Caponsacchi, to her parents at Rome; and +the husband had followed with four accomplices, and catching her in a +villa on a Christmas night with her parents (putative parents really), had +killed the three; the wife being seventeen years old, and the Comparini, +husband and wife, seventy. There was Pompilia’s infant, Guido’s firstborn +son, but he had previously put it in a place of safety.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Line 7, <i>Castellani</i>: a celebrated Roman jeweller (Piazza di Trevi +86), who executes admirable imitations from Greek, Etruscan, and Byzantine +models. <i>Chiusi</i>: a very ancient Etruscan city, full of antiquities and +famous for its tombs. l. 27, <i>rondure</i>, a round. l. 45, <i>Baccio +Bandinelli</i>, a sculptor of Florence (1497-1559). l. 47, “<i>John of the +Black Bands</i>”: Father of Cosimo I., Giovanni delle Bande Neri. l. 48, +<i>Riccardi</i>: the palace of one of the great families of Florence. l. 49, +<i>San Lorenzo</i>, the great church so named in Florence. l. 77, +<i>Spicilegium</i>, a collection made from the best writers. l. 114, “<i>Casa +Guidi, by Felice Church</i>”: this was the residence of the Brownings at +Florence when he bought the little book. l. 223, <i>Justinian</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> Emperor of +the East <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 527. His name is immortalised by his code of laws; <i>Baldo</i>, +an eminent professor of the civil law, and also of canon law, born in +1327; <i>Bartolo</i> of Perugia, a professor of civil law, under whom Baldo +studied; <i>Dolabella</i>, the name of a Roman family; <i>Theodoric</i>, king of the +Ostrogoths (<i>c.</i> <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 454-526); <i>Ælian</i>, a writer on natural history in +the time of Adrian. l. 263, <i>Presbyter, Primæ tonsuræ, Subdiaconus, +Sacerdos</i>: these are some of the different steps to the priesthood in the +Roman Church—that is to say, First tonsure, subdeacon, deacon, priest. l. +284, <i>Ghetto</i>, the Jewish quarter in Rome. l. 300, <i>Pope Innocent XII.</i> +was <i>Antonio Pignatelli</i>. He reigned from 1691 to 1700. He introduced many +reforms into the Church, and, after a holy and self-abnegating life, died +on September 27th, 1700; <i>Jansenists</i>, followers of Jansen, who taught +Calvinism in the Catholic Church; <i>Molinists</i>, followers of Molinos, who +taught Arminianism in the Catholic Church; <i>Nepotism</i>, favouritism to +relations. l. 435, <i>temporality</i>: the material interests of the Catholic +Church. l. 490, “<i>gold snow Jove rained on Rhodes</i>”: as the Rhodians were +the first who offered sacrifices to Minerva, Jupiter rewarded them by +covering the island with a golden cloud, from which he sent showers of +treasures on the people. l. 495, <i>Datura</i>: the thorn apple—stramonium. l. +496, <i>lamp-fly</i> == a fire-fly. l. 868, <i>Æacus</i>, son of Jupiter; on account +of his just government made judge in the lower regions with Minos and +Rhadamanthus. l. 898, “<i>Bernini’s Triton fountain</i>:” in the great square +of the Barberini Palace, the Tritons blowing the water from a conch-shell. +l. 1028, “<i>chrism and consecrative work</i>”: Chrism is the oil used in +ordination, etc., in the Roman and Greek Catholic Churches. l. 1030, +<i>lutanist</i>, one who plays on the lute. l. 1128, “<i>Procurator of the +Poor</i>”: a proctor, an attorney who acts on behalf of the poor. l. 1161, +<i>Fisc</i>, a king’s solicitor, an attorney-general. l. 1209, <i>clavicinist</i>, +one who plays on the clavichord. l. 1212, <i>rondo</i> == rondeau, a species of +lively melody with a recurring refrain; <i>suite</i>, a connected series of +musical compositions. l. 1214, <i>Corelli, Arcangelo</i>, Italian musical +composer; <i>Haendel</i>, Handel the musician. l. 1311, “<i>Brotherhood of +Death</i>”: the Confraternity of the Misericordia, or Brothers of Mercy, who +prepare criminals for death and attend funerals as an act of charity. l. +1328, <i>Mannai</i>, a sort of guillotine.—This seems a fitting place in which +to insert the following note, which serves to explain the origin of the +great poem:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span>In <i>The Christian Register</i> of Boston for Jan. 19th, 1888, there is an +article entitled “An Eagle Feather,” by the Rev. John W. Chadwick, of +Brooklyn. This clergyman visited Mr. Browning and asked him, “And how +about the book of <i>The Ring and the Book</i>? Had he made up that, too, or +was there really such a book? There was indeed; and would we like to see +it? There was little doubt of that; and it was produced, and the story of +his buying it for ‘eightpence English just’ was told, but need not be +retold here, for in <i>The Ring and the Book</i> it is set down with literal +truth. The appearance and character of the book, moreover, are exactly +what the poem represents. It is part print, part manuscript, ending with +two epistolary accounts, if I remember rightly, of Guido’s execution, +written by the lawyers in the case. It was an astonishing ‘find,’ and it +is passing strange that a book compiled so carefully should have been +brought to such a low estate. Mr. Browning did not seem at all inclined to +toss it in the air and catch it, as he does in verse. He handled it very +carefully, and with evident affection. I asked him if it did not make him +very happy to have created such a woman as Pompilia; and he said, ‘I +assure you that I found her just as she speaks and acts in my poem, in +that old book.’ There was that in his tone that made it evident +Caponsacchi had a rival lover without blame. Of the old pope of the poem, +too, he spoke with real affection. He told us how he had found a medal of +him in a London antiquary’s shop, had left it meaning to come back for it; +came back, and found that it had gone. But the shopman told him Lady +Houghton (Mrs. Richard Monckton Milnes) had taken it. ‘You will lend it to +me,’ said Mr. Browning to her, ‘in case I want it some time to be copied +for an illustration?’ She preferred giving it to him; had most likely +intended doing so when she bought it. It was in a pretty little box, and +had a benignant expression, exactly suited to the character of the good +pope in the poem. As a further proof that all is grist that comes to some +folks’ mills, there was a picture of the miserable Count Guido +Franceschini on his execution day, which some one had come upon in a +London printshop and sent to Mr. Browning.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Browning having told the incidents of the story in all their principal +details, might, in the ordinary way, have considered this sufficient. He +has reserved nothing till the last, and in the usual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> way would have +destroyed the interest of his remaining volumes had he been a mere +story-teller. His purpose, however, was different. He will now take the +principal actors in the tragedy, and separately and at length let them +give their account of it in their own language and according to their own +view of the case. He will, moreover, give his readers the opposing views +of the two halves into which the Roman populace have been divided on the +murders. He will introduce us to the Pope considering the course of action +he is called upon to pursue as supreme judge of the matter; and the very +lawyers, who are preparing their briefs and getting up their speeches, +will also have their say. We shall thus have this many-sided subject put +before us in every possible way; and we shall be enabled to follow the +windings of the human mind on such a subject as though we were centred in +the breast, in turn, of each of the actors in the dreadful drama. We have, +therefore, in</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Book I., The dry facts of the case in brief;</p> + +<p>Book II., <span class="smcap">Half Rome</span> (the view of those antagonistic to the wife);</p> + +<p>Book III., <span class="smcap">The Other Half Rome</span> (representing the opinion of those who +take her part);</p> + +<p>Book IV., <span class="smcap">Tertium Quid</span> (a third party, neither wholly on one side nor +the other);</p> + +<p>Book V., <span class="smcap">Count Guido Franceschini</span> (his own defence);</p> + +<p>Book VI., <span class="smcap">Giuseppe Caponsacchi</span> (the Canon’s explanation);</p> + +<p>Book VII., <span class="smcap">Pompilia</span> (her story, as she told it on her deathbed to the +nuns);</p> + +<p>Book VIII., <span class="smcap">Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis</span> (Count Guido’s counsel +and his speech for the defence);</p> + +<p>Book IX., <span class="smcap">Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius</span> (the Public +Prosecutor’s speech);</p> + +<p>Book X., <span class="smcap">The Pope</span> (who in this book reviews the whole case, and gives +his decision in Guido’s appeal to him);</p> + +<p>Book XI., <span class="smcap">Guido</span> (his last interview in prison with his spiritual +advisers);</p> + +<p>Book XII., <span class="smcap">The Book and the Ring</span> (the conclusion of the whole matter).</p></div> +<p><a name="book2" id="book2"></a></p> +<p><span class="smcap">Book II., Half Rome.</span>—A great crowd had assembled at the church of St. +Lorenzo-in-Lucina, hard by the Corso, to view<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> the bodies of the murdered +Comparini exposed to view before the altar. It was at this very church +where Pompilia was baptised, brought by her pretended mother, who had +purchased her to palm off on her husband in his dotage, and so cheat the +heirs. To this very altar-step whereon the bodies lie did Violante, twelve +years after, bring Pompilia to marry the Count clandestinely. It is four +years since the marriage, and from dawn till dusk the multitude has +crowded into the church, coming and going, pushing their way, and taking +their turn to see the victims and talk over the tragedy. We have the story +told by a partisan of the husband, who does not think he was so +prodigiously to blame, he says. The Comparini (the wife’s reputed parents) +were of the modest middle class, born in that quarter of Rome, and +citizens of good repute, childless and wealthy; possessed of house and +land in Rome, and a suburban villa. But Pietro craved an heir, and +seventeen years ago Violante announced that, spite of her age, an heir +would soon be forthcoming. By a trick, Pompilia, the infant, was produced +at the appropriate time—whereat Pietro rejoiced, poor fool! As Violante +had caught one fish, she must try again, and find a husband for the girl. +Count Guido was head of an old noble house, but not over-rich. He had come +up to Rome to better his fortune, was friend and follower of a certain +cardinal, and had a brother a priest, Paolo. Looking out for some petty +post or other, he waited thirty years, till, as he was growing grey, he +thought it time to go and be wise at home. At this moment Violante threw +her bait, Pompilia. She thought it a great catch to find a noble husband +for the child and the shelter of a palace for herself in her old age; and +so old Pietro’s daughter became Guido Franceschini’s lady-wife. Pietro was +not consulted till all was over, when he pretended to be very indignant. +All went to Arezzo to enjoy the luxury of lord-and-lady-ship. They were +soon undeceived. They discovered that they had exchanged their comfortable +bourgeois home for a sepulchral old mansion, the street’s disgrace, to +pick garbage from a pewter plate and drink vinegar from a common mug. They +sighed for their old home, their daily feast of good food and their +festivals of better. Robbed, starved and frozen, they declared they would +have justice. Guido’s old lady-mother, Beatrice, was a dragon; Guido’s +brother, Girolamo, a bad licentious man. Four months of this purgatory was +sufficient. Pietro<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> made his complaints all over the town; Violante +exposed the penurious housekeeping to every willing ear. Bidding Arezzo +rot, they departed for home. Once more at Rome, Violante thought of +availing herself of the Jubilee and making a full confession and +restitution. She told the truth about Pompilia: how she had been purchased +by her several months before birth from a disreputable laundry-woman, +partly to please her husband, partly to defraud the rightful heirs. Was +this due to contrition or revenge? Prove Pompilia not their child, there +was no dowry to pay according to agreement. Guido would then be the biter +bit. Guido took the view that all this was done to cheat him. He +protested, and being left alone with his wife, revenged his wrongs on her. +The case came before the Roman courts. Guido being absent, the Abate, his +clerical brother, had to take his part. The courts refused to intervene. +Appeals and counter-appeals followed. Pompilia’s shame and her parents’ +disgrace were published to the world; and so it went on. Pompilia, left +alone with her old husband, looked outside for life; and lo! Caponsacchi +appeared—a priest, Apollos turned Apollo. He threw comfits to her at the +theatre, at carnival time—no great harm—but he was, moreover, always +hanging about the street where Guido’s palace was. Pompilia observed him +from her window. People began to talk, the husband to open his eyes. +Things went on, till one April morning Guido awoke to find his wife flown. +He had been drugged, he said. Caponsacchi, the handsome young priest, had +brought a carriage for her: they had gone by the Roman road eight hours +since. Guido started in pursuit, coming up with the fugitives just as they +were in sight of Rome. Caponsacchi met the husband unabashed: “I +interposed to save your wife from death, yourself from shame.” Fingering +his sword, he offered fight, or to stand on his defence at Rome. The +police came up and secured the priest, and they went upstairs to arouse +the wife. She overwhelmed her husband with invective, turning to her side +even the very <i>sbirri</i>. “Take us to Rome,” both prisoners demanded. Love +letters and verses were produced, and husband and wife fought out their +case before the lawyers. The accused declared that the letters were not +written by them. The court found much to blame, but little to punish. The +priest was sentenced to three years’ exile at Civita Vecchia; the wife +must go into a convent for a while. Guido was not satisfied: he claimed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> a +divorce. Pompilia did the same. On account of her health a little liberty +was allowed her, and she left the convent to reside with her pretended +parents at their villa. Here she gave birth to a child. Guido was furious +when he heard all this, and went to Rome to the villa with four +confederates, pretending to be Caponsacchi. The door was opened, when he +rushed in with his braves and killed them all; and so the two Comparini +are lying in the church, and Pompilia is in the hospital dying of her +wounds.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Line 84, <i>Guido Reni</i>, a painter of the Bolognese school, +1574-1642. The Crucifixion referred to is above the high altar. l. 126, +“<i>Molino’s doctrine</i>”: a form of Quietism. l. 300, “<i>tacked to the +Church’s tail</i>”: it was the custom in this age for gentlemen who desired +the protection of the Church for their own purposes to take one of the +minor orders, without any intention of going into the diaconate or +priesthood. Count Guido was thus, in a sense, under the Church’s +protection. l. 490, “<i>novercal type</i>”: pertaining to a step-mother; +<i>cater-cousin</i>, or <i>quater-cousin</i>: a cousin within the first four degrees +of kindred; <i>sib</i>: a blood relation (A.-S., <i>sibb</i>, alliance). l. 537, +<i>Papal Jubilee</i>: this is observed every twenty-fifth year. ll. 892-3, +“<i>ears plugged</i>,” etc.: a good description of the effects of a strong dose +of opium. l. 907, <i>osteria</i>: Italian name of an inn. l. 1044, <i>Sbirri</i>: +Papal police. l. 1159, “<i>Apage</i>”: away! begone! l. 1198, “<i>Convertites</i>”: +nuns who devote themselves to the rescue of fallen women. l. 1221, “<i>as +Ovid a like sufferer</i>”: Ovid was banished by Augustus to Tomus, on the +Euxine Sea, either for some amour or imprudence; <i>Pontus</i>: a kingdom of +Asia Minor, bounded on the north by the Euxine Sea. l. 1244, “<i>Pontifex +Maximus whipped vestals once</i>”: the high priest severely scourged the +vestal virgins if they let the sacred fire go out. l. 1250, +“<i>Caponsacchi</i>”: in English “Head i’ the Sack”: this family is mentioned +in Dante’s <i>Paradise</i>, xvi.; in his time they lived at Florence, in the +Mercato Vecchio, having removed from Fiesole; <i>Fiesole</i>, an ancient town +near Florence. l. 1270, “<i>Canidian hate</i>”: Canidia was a Neapolitan, +beloved by Horace. When she deserted him he held her up to contempt as an +old sorceress (Horace, <i>Epodes</i>, v. and xvii.). See Notes to <a href="#witchcraft">“White +Witchcraft.”</a> l. 1342, “<i>domus pro carcere</i>”: a house for a prison. l. +1375, “<i>hoard i’ the heart o’ the toad</i>”: Fenton says, “There is to be +found in the heads of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> old and great toads a stone they call borax or +stelon, which, being used as rings, give forewarning against venom.” See +also Brewer’s <i>Phrase and Fable</i>, art. “Toads.” l. 1487, “<i>male-Grissel</i>”: +Griselda was the patient lady in Chaucer’s <i>Clerk of Oxenford’s Tale</i>. She +came forth victoriously from the repeated trials of her maternal and +conjugal affections. l. 1495, “<i>Rolando-stroke</i>”: Roland, the hero of +Roncesvalles. His trusty sword was called Durandal:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Nor plated shield, nor tempered casque defends,<br /> +When Durindana’s trenchant edge descends.”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">(<span class="smcap">Orlando Furioso</span>, bk. x.)</span></p> + +<p>l. 1496, <i>clavicle</i>: the collar-bone.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book III., The Other Half Rome.</span>—Little Pompilia lies dying in the +hospital, stabbed through and through again. She had prayed that she might +live long enough for confession and absolution. “Never before successful +in a prayer,” this had been answered. She has overplus of life to speak +and right herself from first to last, to pardon her husband and make +arrangements for the welfare of her child. The lawyers came and took her +depositions; the priests, also, to shrive her soul. The other half Rome +make excuses for Pietro and Violante. Their lives wanted completion in a +child: Violante’s fault was not an unnatural one. Her husband was +acquiescent—natural too. Violante’s confession was but right and proper; +and if she wronged an heir, who was he? As for the wooing, it was all done +by the Count: a wife was necessary alike for himself, his mother, and his +palace; and so he dazzled the child Pompilia with a vision of greatness. +The crowd said she might become a lady, but the bargain was but a poor one +at best. Pompilia, aged thirteen years and five months, was secretly +married to the Count one dim December day. Pietro was told when it was too +late, and had to surrender all his property in favour of Guido, who was to +support his wife’s belongings. Four months’ insolence and penury they had +to endure at Arezzo, and then Pietro went back to beg help from his Roman +friends, who laughed and said things had turned out just as they expected. +Violante went to God, told her sin, and reaped the Jubilee’s benefit. +Restitution, however, said the Church, must be made: the sin must be +published and amends forthcoming. Pompilia’s husband must be told that his +contract was null and void. Pietro’s heart leaped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> for joy at the prospect +of recovering all his surrendered estate. Guido naturally pronounced the +whole tale “one long lie”—lying for robbery and revenge—and threw +himself on the courts. The courts held the child to be a changeling. +Pietro’s renunciation they made null: he was no party to the cheat; but +Guido is to retain the dowry! More proceedings naturally followed this +strange decision. Then the Count forms the diabolical plan to drive his +girl-wife, by his cruelty, into the sin which will enable him to be rid of +her without parting with her money. Guido concocts a pencilled letter to +his brother the Abate, which he makes his wife trace over with ink, he +guiding her hand because she could not write, wherein she states—not +knowing a word she pens—that the Comparini advised her, before they left +Arezzo, to find a paramour, carry off what spoil she could, and then burn +the house down. The Abate took care to scatter this information all over +Rome. At Arezzo Guido set himself to make his wife’s life there +intolerable, at the same time setting a trap into which she could not +avoid falling. The Other Half Rome thinks it probable that the priest +Caponsacchi pitied and loved Pompilia, who wept and looked out of window +all day long; for there were passionate letters (prayers, rather), +addressed to him by the suffering wife; though it is true she avers she +never wrote a letter in her life, still she abjured him, in the name of +God, to help her to escape to Rome. If not love, this was love’s +simulation, and calculated to deceive the Canon. Pompilia, however, +protested that she had never even learned to write or read; nor had she +ever spoken to the priest till the evening when she implored him to assist +her to escape. On the other hand, the priest admitted having received the +letters purporting to come from Pompilia. He did write to her: as she +could not read she burned the letters—never bade him come to her, yet +accepted him when Heaven seemed to send him. When Guido’s cruelty first +sprang on Pompilia, she had appealed to the secular Governor and the +Archbishop; but both were friends of Guido, and both refused to interfere +between husband and wife, so she went to confess to a simple friar, told +him how suicide had tempted her, begged him to write to her pretended +parents to come and save her. He promised; but by nightfall was more +discreet, and withdrew from the dangerous business. So the woman, thus +hard-beset, looked out to see if God would help, and saw Caponsacchi; +called him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> to her—she at her window, he in the street below—and at +nightfall fled with him for Rome. The world sees nothing but the simple +fact of the flight. The implicated persons protest that the course they +took, though strange, was justified for life and honour’s sake. Absorbed +in the sense of the blessedness of the flight, she had said little to her +preserver through the long night. As daybreak came they reached an inn: he +whispered, “Next stage, Rome!” Prostrate with fatigue, she could go no +farther; stayed to rest at the osteria, fell asleep, and awoke with Count +Guido once more standing betwixt heaven and her soul—awoke to find her +room full of roaring men, her preserver a prisoner. Then she sprang up, +seized the sword which hung at the Count’s side, and would have slain him, +but men interposed. The priest avers that the flight had no pretext but to +get Pompilia free: how should it be otherwise? If they were guilty, as +Guido would have the world believe, what need to fly? or, if they must, +why halt with Rome in sight? He vindicates Pompilia’s fame. Guido’s tale +was to the effect that he and his whole household had been drugged by the +wife, which gave the fugitives time to get thus far on their way. He +expected easy execution probably; thought he would find his wife cowering +under her shame. When she turned upon him, and would have slain him he had +to invent another story; produce love letters from a woman who could not +write, replies from the priest, who could happily defend his character and +prove the forgery. Then the story of the investigation before the courts +was told: how Pompilia owned she caught at the sole hand stretched out to +snatch her from hell; how Caponsacchi proudly declared that as man, and +much more as priest, he was bound to help weak innocence; how he exposed +the trap set by Guido for them both; how he had never touched her lip, nor +she his hand, from first to last, nor spoken a word the Virgin might not +hear. Then they discussed the decision of the court—the sentence, the +relegation of the priest, the seclusion of the wife in the convent at +Guido’s expense. They discussed the five months’ peace which Pompilia +passed with the nuns, the application made by the sisters on behalf of +Pompilia’s waning health, and her residence with Pietro and his wife at +their villa. They tell of the determination of Guido, after the birth of +his child, to avail himself of the propitious minute and rid himself of +his wife and her putative parents, that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> child remaining might inherit +all and repair his losses. The sympathisers with Pompilia dwelt on the +fact that, while the bells were chiming good-will on earth and peace to +man, the dreadful five stole by back slums and blind cuts to the villa, +asking admission in Caponsacchi’s name. Then follow the murders. Violante +was stabbed first, Pietro next; and then came Pompilia’s turn. It was told +how the murderers escaped, till at Baccano they were overtaken and cast +red-handed into prison.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Line 59, <i>Maratta</i>: Carlo Maratti was the most celebrated of the +later Roman painters of the seventeenth century. He was born 1625. The +great number of his pictures of the Virgin procured him the name of “Carlo +delle Madonne.” l. 95, “<i>That doctrine of the Philosophic Sin</i>”: +“Philosophical Sin,” is a breach of the dignity of man’s rational nature. +Theological Sin offends against the Supreme Reason. (See Rickaby’s <i>Moral +Philosophy</i>, p. 119.) l. 385, “<i>Hesperian ball, ordained for Hercules to +taste and pluck</i>”: the golden apples of the Hesperides plucked by +Hercules, were probably oranges. l. 439, <i>Danae</i>, the daughter of +Acrisius, and mother of Perseus by Jupiter. l. 555, “<i>The Holy Year</i>”: the +Jubilee at Rome, first instituted by Boniface VIII., elected Pope 1294. +The Jubilee occurs every twenty-five years, and is a time of special +indulgences. l. 556, “<i>Bound to rid sinners of sin</i>”: no indulgence +forgives sin, nor gives permission to commit sin; but it is “the +remission, through the merits of Jesus Christ, of the whole or part of the +debt of temporal punishment due to a sin, the guilt and everlasting +punishment of which sin has, through the merits of Jesus Christ, been +already forgiven in the Sacrament of penance” (<i>Catholic Belief</i>, by J. +Bruno, D.D., p. 183). l. 567. “<i>The great door, new-broken for the +nonce</i>”: according to the special ritual, the Pope, at the commencement of +the Jubilee year goes in solemn procession to a particular walled-up door +(the Porta Aurea, or golden door of St. Peter’s), and knocks three times, +using the words of Psalm cxviii. 19, “Open to me the gates of +righteousness.” The doors are then opened and sprinkled with holy water, +and the Pope passes through. When the Jubilee closes, the special doorway +is again built up, with appropriate solemnities (<i>Encyc. Brit.</i>). l. 572, +“<i>Poor repugnant Penitentiary</i>”: a penitentiary is an “officer in some +cathedrals, vested with power from the bishop to absolve in cases reserved +to him. The Pope has a <i>grand penitentiary</i>, who is a Cardinal, and is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> +chief of the other <i>penitentiaries</i>” (<i>Webster’s Dict.</i>). That this +particular ecclesiastic was “repugnant” is a gratuitous assumption of the +poet: he probably took as much interest in his business as any other +clergyman takes in his. 1413, <i>Civita</i>, Civita Vecchia, a seaport near +Rome. 1445, “<i>Hundred Merry Tales</i>”: the tales or novels of Franco +Sacchetti. 1450, <i>Vulcan</i>, the god of fire and furnaces, son of Jupiter +and Juno.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book IV., Tertium Quid</span>.—“A third something,” siding neither wholly with +Guido nor with his victim, attempts to arrive at a judicial conclusion +apportioning in a superior manner blame now on one side now on the other, +and, by granting on each side something, endeavours to reconcile opposing +views, and from the contending forces produce something like order. The +speaker is addressing personages of importance, and his phrase is courtly +and polite. He refers with a sort of contempt to this “episode in +burgess-life.” His account of the business is as follows:—This Pietro and +Violante, living in Rome in a style good enough for their betters, indulge +themselves with luxury till they get into debt and creditors begin to +press. Driven to seek the papal charity reserved for respectable paupers, +they become pensioners of the Vatican, and Violante casts about for means +to restore the fortunes of her household. Certain funds only want an heir +to take, which heir Violante takes measures to supply by the aid of a +needy washerwoman who ekes out her honest trade by a vile one, and who for +a price will sell, in six months’ time, the child of her shame, meantime +pocketing the earnest money and promising secrecy. Violante returns +flushed with success, and reaches vespers in time to sing <i>Magnificat</i>. +Then home to Pietro, to whom is delicately confided the enrapturing but +puzzling news that at last an heir will be born to him. In due time the +infant is put in evidence, and Francesca Vittoria Pompilia is baptised; +and so “lies to God, lies to man,” lies every way. The heirs are robbed, +foiled of the due succession. When twelve years have passed, the scheming +Violante has next to arrange a good match for her daughter, with her +savings and her heritage. This, with all Rome to choose from, may be +proudly done, and then <i>Nunc Dimittis</i> may be sung. Miserably poor as +Count Guido was, the family was old enough to afford the drawback. The +Church helped the second son, Paolo, and made a canon of him—even took +Guido under its protection so far as one of the minor orders went. A<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> +cardinal gave him some inferior post, but afterwards dispensed with his +services. What was to be done? Youth had gone, age was coming on. His +brother advised him to look out for a rich wife, told him of Pompilia, and +offered his assistance in the suit. The burgess family’s one want being an +aristocratic husband for their girl Violante, eagerly accepted the Count, +and they got the marriage done. Pietro had to make the best of things. Who +was fool, who knave, it was difficult to decide: perchance neither or +both. Guido gives the wealth he had not got, and the Comparini the child +not honestly theirs—each cheated the other. It turned out that one party +saw the cheat of the other first, and kept its own concealed. Which sinned +more was a nice point. The finer vengeance which became old blood was +Guido’s, the victim was the hard-beset Pompilia, the hero of the piece +Caponsacchi. “Out by me!” he cried. “Here my hand holds you life out!” +Whereupon Pompilia clasped the saving hand. Then as to the love letters, +Guido protests his wife can write. How could he, granting him skill to +drive the wife into the gallant’s arms, bring the gallant to play his part +so well—a man to whom he had never spoken in his life?</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Line 31, “<i>Trecentos inseris: ohe, jam satis est! Huc apelle!</i>” +(Horace, <i>Sat.</i> i. 5): “Here, bring to, <i>ye dogs</i>, you are stowing in +hundreds; hold, now <i>sure</i> there is enough.” (Smart’s trans.). l. 54, +“<i>basset-table</i>”: basset was a game at cards invented by a Venetian noble; +it was introduced into France in 1674. l. 147, “<i>posts off to vespers, +missal beneath arm</i>”: a rather absurd line; a missal is a mass-book, and +does not contain the vesper services; mass is always said in the morning. +l. 437, “<i>notum tonsoribus</i>,” the common gossip—(Pr.); <i>tonsor</i>, a +barber; <i>zecchines</i>: sequins, Venetian coins worth from 9<i>s.</i> 2<i>d.</i> to +9<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> l. 731, <i>devils-dung</i>: assafœtida, an evil-smelling drug. +l. 761, “<i>cross buttock</i>”: a blow across the back; <i>quarter staff</i>: a long +stout staff used as a weapon of offence or defence. l. 834, “<i>Hophni and +the ark</i>”: “And the ark of God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni +and Phinehas, were slain” (I Sam. iv., II etc.). “<i>Correggio and Ledas</i>”: +Correggio’s picture of “Leda and the Swan,” in the Berlin Museum. l. 1054, +“<i>cui profuerint!</i>” Whom they might profit! l. 1069, “<i>acquetta</i>” == Aqua +Tofana, a poisonous liquid much used in Italy in the seventeenth century +by women who wished to get rid of their husbands or their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> rivals. l. +1131, <i>Rota</i>: a superior Papal court l. 1144, <i>Paphos</i>: a city of Cyprus +where Venus was worshipped. l. 1322, <i>Vicegerent</i>: an officer deputed by a +superior to take his place. l. 1408, <i>Patrizj</i>: the captain of the police +who arrested the criminals. l. 1577, “<i>fons et origo malorum</i>”: fount and +origin of the evils.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book V., Count Guido Franceschini.</span>—We are now introduced to the persons +of the drama themselves; and first to the Count, who is on his defence +before the court for the murder. He has just been put to the torture, and +with bones all loosened by the rack is cringing and trembling before the +arbiters of life and death. He confesses that he killed his wife and the +Comparini, who called themselves her father and mother to ruin him. What +he has now to do is to put the right interpretation on his deed. He +reminds the court that he comes of an ancient family, descended from a +Guido who was Homager to the Empire. His family had become poor as St. +Francis or our Lord. He had cast about for some means to restore the +fallen fortunes of his house, and sought advice of his fellows how this +might be done. He had thoughts of a soldier’s life; but they said that, as +eldest son and heir, his post was hard by the hearth and altar. He should +“try the Church, and contend against the heretic Molinists, and so gain +promotion,” said one; but others said this would not do—“he must marry, +that his line might continue; let him make his brothers priests, and seek +his own fortune in the great world of Rome.” And so to Rome he came. +Humbly, he pleads, he has helped the Church: he has disposed of his +property that he might have means to bribe his way to favour at Rome; for +the better protection of his person and the advancement of his fortunes, +he has taken three or four of the minor orders of the Church, which commit +to nothing, yet help to flavour the layman’s meat. Thus for the Church. On +the world’s side he danced, and gamed, and quitted himself like a +courtier. At this time he was only sixteen, and was willing to wait for +fortune. He waited thirty years, hung about the haunts of cardinals and +the Pope, and made friends wherever he could. One day he grew tired of +waiting any longer; he was hard upon middle life; he must, he saw, be +content to live and die only a nobleman; and so, as his mother was growing +old, his sisters well wedded away, and both his brothers in the Church, he +resolved to leave Rome, return to Arezzo, and be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> content. He was like a +gamester who has played and lost all. The owners of the tables do not like +a man to leave the place penniless. “Let him leave the door handsomely,” +they say; and so his brother Paul whispered in his ear, told him to take +courage and a wife—at least, go back home with a dowry. Paul’s advice was +weighty, and he listened to him; and before the week was out the clever +priest found Pietro and Violante, who had just the daughter, and just the +dowry with her, for his brother. “She is young, pretty, and rich,” he +said; “you are noble, classic, choice.” “Done!” said Guido. All the priest +proposed he accepted, and the girl was bought and sold—a chattel. “Where +was the wrong step?” he asks the court: if all his honour of birth, his +style and state, went for nothing, then society and the law had no reward +nor punishment to give. The social fabric falls like a card-house. He +thought he had dealt fairly; the others found fault, and wanted their +money back, just as the judge, disappointed with a picture for which he +had given a great price, wanted his cash returned. Perhaps, also, the +judge grew tired of the cupids. When he had purchased his wife he expected +wifeliness; just as when, having bought twig and timber, he had bought the +song of the nightingale too. Pompilia broke her pact; refused from the +first to unite with him in body or in soul. More than this, she published +the fact to all the world: said she had discovered he was devil and no +man, and set all the town laughing at his meanness and his misery; said he +had plundered and cast out her parents; and that she was fain to call on +the stones of the street to save her, not only from himself, but the +satyr-love of his own brother, the young priest. Was it any marvel that +his resentment grew apace? Yet he was not a man of ice: women might have +reached the odd corners of his heart, and found some remnants of love +there. Pompilia was no dove of Venus either, but a hawk he had purchased +at a hawk’s price. He does not presume to teach the court what marriage +means: it was composed of priests who had eschewed the marriage state with +Paul; but the court knew how monks were dealt with who became refractory. +If he were over-harsh in bringing his wife to due obedience it was her own +fault; she should have cured him by patience and the lore of love. When +the Comparini had returned to Rome, they boasted how they had cheated him +who cheated them; boasted that Pompilia, his wife, was a bye-blow bastard +of a nameless<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> strumpet, palmed off upon him as the daughter with the +dowry. Dowry? It was the dust of the street. Under these circumstances +Pompilia’s duty was no doubtful one: she ought to have recoiled from them +with horror. She had been their spoil and prey from first to last, and had +aided him in maintaining her cause and making it his own. He admits the +trick of the false letter: it was his, and not hers; yet he protests that +Pompilia, from window, at church and theatre, launched looks forth and let +looks reply to Caponsacchi. And so, in his struggles to extricate his name +and fame, this gad-fly must be stinging him in the face. Pricked with +shame, plagued with his wife and her parents, what was he to do? Ever was +Caponsacchi gazing at his windows. Was he to play at desperate doings with +a wooden sword, or shorten his wife’s finger by a third, for listening to +a serenade? He did nothing of that sort: he only called her a terrible +name; and the effect was, when he awoke next morning he found a crowd in +his room, fire in his throat, wife gone, and his coffers ransacked. The +servants had been drugged too. His wife had eloped with Caponsacchi. He +discovered that all the town was laughing at the comedy. They told him how +the priest had come at daybreak, while all the household slept; how the +wife had led the way out of doors on to the gate where, at the inn, a +carriage waited, and took the two to the gate San Spirito, on the Roman +road. He told the court how he had set out alone on horseback, floundered +through two days and nights, and so at last came up with the fugitives at +an inn, saw his wife and her gallant together waiting to start again for +Rome. “Does the court suggest,” he asks, “that that was, if ever, the time +for vengeance?” But he was content with calling in the law to help. He +pleads guilty to cowardice: he might have killed them then; but cowardice +was no crime. He urges that he had been brought up at the feet of law, and +so had slain them not. He had searched the chamber where they passed the +night, and found love-laden letters with such words on: “Come here, go +there, wait, we are saved, we are lost”; even to details of the sleeping +potion which was to drug his wine. The fugitives declared they had not +written these; they were forged, they said. Then he tells how he had +appealed in vain to the courts. The most he gained was that the priest was +relegated to Civita for three years, and Pompilia was sent to a +sisterhood. He reminds the court of its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> severity in cases of heresy and +the like, and of its mildness in a case like his. Advice was given to him +how to proceed with fresh trials from time to time, and he tried to play +the man and bear his trouble as best he might; and then one day he learned +that Pompilia’s durance was at an end,—she was transferred to her +parents’ house. He reflected then how the Comparini had beaten him at +every point: they gained all; he lost all, even to the wife, the lure; had +caught the fish and found the bait entire. And now another letter from +Rome, with the news that he is a father; his wife has borne a son and +heir,—the reason plain why she left the convent. Then he rose up like +fire; his troubles were but just beginning: the child he had longed for +was stolen too, and scorn and contempt would be heaped on him full +measure. He told the story to his servants, who all declared they would +avenge their master’s wrongs. He picked out four resolute youngsters, and +off they went to Rome. They reached the city on Christmas-eve, as the +festive bells rang for the “Feast of the Babe.” This arrested him; he +dropped the dagger. “Where is His promised peace?” he asked. Nine days he +waited thus, praying against temptation, while the vision of the Holy +Infant was before him. Soon this faded in a mist, and the Cross stood +plain, and he cried, “Some end must be!” He reached the house where +Pompilia lived; he knocked, asked admittance for “Caponsacchi,” and the +door was opened. Had Pompilia even then fronted him in the doorway in her +weakness, had even Pietro opened, he had paused; but it was the hag, the +mother who had wrought the mischief, who appeared. Then he told the court +how the impulse to kill her had seized him, and how, having begun, he had +made an end. He was mad, blind, and stamped on all. He told the court how +the officers of justice had come upon him twenty miles off, when he was +sleeping soundly as a child; and wherefore not? He was his own self again. +His soul safe from serpents, he could sleep. He protests he has but done +God’s bidding, and health has returned and sanity of soul. He declares +that he stands acquitted in the sight of God. If his wife and her lover +were innocent, why did the court punish them? Their punishment was +inadequate, and as soon as their backs were turned the evil began to grow +again. He demands the court should right him now; thank and praise him for +having done what they should have done themselves. He has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span> doubled the +blow they had essayed to strike. He urges them to protect their own +defender. He was law’s mere executant, and he demands his life, his +liberty, good name, and civic rights again. He is for God; the game must +not be lost to the devil. He has work to do: his wife may live and need +his care; his brother to bring back to the old routine; his infant son to +rear—and when to him he tells his story, he will say how for God’s law he +had dared and done.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—“<i>Vigil torment</i>”: this torment is referred to in the speech of +Dominus Hyacinthus, line 329 <i>et seq.</i>, as “the Vigiliarum.” Line 149, +<i>Francis</i>: St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Order of Franciscans; +<i>Dominic</i>: St. Dominic, founder of the Order of Dominicans: “<i>Guido, once +homager to the Empire</i>”: <i>i.e.</i>, he held lands of the Emperor by “homage.” +l. 207, “<i>suum cuique</i>”: let each have his own; <i>omoplat</i>: shoulder-blade. +l. 285, “<i>utrique sic paratus</i>”: so prepared either way. l. 401, “<i>sors, a +right Vergilian dip</i>”: scholars used to open their Vergil at random for +guidance, as people nowadays open their Bible to see what text will turn +up. l. 542, <i>baioc</i> == bajocco: a Roman copper coin worth three farthings. +l. 559, <i>Plautus</i>: a famous comic poet of Rome, who died 184 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>; +<i>Terence</i>: a celebrated writer of comedies, a native of Carthage; he died +159 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> l. 560, “<i>Ser Franco’s Merry Tales</i>”: Sacchetti’s novels and +tales, somewhat in the manner of Boccaccio (1335-1400). l. 627, +<i>Caligula</i>: Emperor of Rome, who delighted in the miseries of mankind, and +amused himself by putting innocent persons to death. He was murdered <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> +41. l. 672, <i>Thyrsis</i>: a young Arcadian shepherd (Vergil, <i>Ecl.</i> vii. 2); +<i>Neæra</i>: a country maid, in Vergil. l. 811, <i>Locusta</i>: a vile woman, +skilled in preparing poisons; who helped Nero to poison Britannicus. l. +850, <i>Bilboa</i>: a flexible-bladed rapier from Bilboa. l. 922, “<i>stans pede +in uno</i>,” standing on one foot. l. 1137, <i>spirit and succubus</i>: evil +spirit, demon, or phantom. l. 1209, <i>Catullus</i>: a learned but wanton poet. +l. 1264, <i>Helen and Paris</i>: Paris, the son of Priam, king of Troy, who +eloped with Helen, the wife of Menelaus, carried her to Troy, and so +occasioned the war between the Greeks and Trojans. l. 1356, <i>Ovid’s art</i>: +(of love). l. 1358, “<i>more than his Summa</i>”: the “<i>Summa Theologiæ</i>,” the +famous work of St. Thomas Aquinas, from which every priest of the Roman +Church has to study his theology. l. 1359, <i>Corinna</i>: a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> celebrated woman +of Tanagra, who seven times obtained a poetical prize when Pindar was her +rival. l. 1365, <i>merum sal</i>, pure salt. l. 1549, “<i>Quis est pro Domino?</i>” +“Who is on the Lord’s side?” l. 1737, <i>acquetta</i>: euphemism for the +acquatofana, a deadly liquid, colourless poison. l. 1760, “<i>ad judices +meos</i>,” to my judges. l. 1780, <i>Justinian’s Pandects</i>: the digest of Roman +jurists, made by order of Justinian in the sixth century. l. 2009, +<i>soldier bee</i>: a bee which fights for the protection of the hive, and +sacrifices his life in the act of using his sting. l. 2010, <i>exenterate</i>: +to disembowel. l. 2333, <i>Tozzi</i>: physician to the Pope. He succeeded +Malpighi. l. 2339, <i>Albano</i>: Guido was right; Albano succeeded Innocent +XII. as Pope in 1700.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book VI., Giuseppe Caponsacchi.</span>—The court now hears the story of +Caponsacchi: he has been sent for to repeat the evidence which he gave on +a former occasion, and to counsel the court in this extremity. It was six +months ago, he says, that in the very place where he now stands, he told +the facts, at which they decorously laughed, the stifled titter that so +plainly meant “We have been young too,—come, there’s greater guilt!” Now +they are grave enough,—they stare aghast; as for himself, in this sudden +smoke from hell he hardly knows if he understands anything aright. He asks +why are they surprised at the ending of a deed whose beginning they had +seen? He had his grasp on Guido’s throat; they had interfered, they saw no +peril, wanted no priest’s intrusion; he had given place to law, left +Pompilia to them,—and there and thus she lies! What do they want with +him? he asks: is it that they understand at last it was consistent with +his priesthood to endeavour to save Pompilia? It was well they had even +thus late seen their error. He owns he talks to the court impertinently, +yet they listen because they are Christians; and even a rag from the body +of the Lord makes a man look greater, and be the better. He will be calm +and tell the simple facts. He is a priest, one of their own body, and of a +famous Florentine descent; he had been brought up for the priesthood from +his youth, but had trembled when he came to take the vows, and would have +shrunk from doing so had not the bishop quieted his qualms of conscience, +and satisfied him there was an easier sense in which the vows could be +taken than had appeared in his first rough reading. Nobody expected him in +these days to break his back in propping up the Church: the martyrs built +it; all that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> priests had to do now was to adorn its walls. He must +therefore cultivate his gift of making madrigals, that he may please the +great ladies, and make the bishop boast that he was theirs. And so he +became a priest, a fribble, and a coxcomb, but a man of truth. He said his +breviary and wrote the rhymes, was regular at service, and as regular at +his post where beauty and fashion ruled. One night, after three or four +years of this life, he found himself at the theatre with a brother Canon; +he saw enter and seat herself,—</p> + +<p class="poem">“A lady, young, tall, beautiful, strange, and sad,”</p> + +<p>like a Rafael over an altar. As he stared, his companion the Canon said he +would make her give him back his gaze; and straightway tossed a packet of +comfits to her lap, and dodged behind him, nodding from over Caponsacchi’s +shoulder. The lady turned, looked their way, and smiled—a strange, sad +smile. “Is she not fair, my new cousin?” said Canon Conti. The fellow at +the back of the box is Guido; she’s his wife, married three years since. +He cautioned him to do nothing to make her husband treat her more cruelly +than he already did; but this was not required,—the sight of Pompilia’s +‘wonderful white soul’ shining through the sadness of her face had filled +him with disgust for the frivolity and the vanity of his former life. Lent +was near; he would live as became a priest. His patron, when he found him +absent from the assemblies of fashion and reproved him, reproached him +with playing truant, Caponsacchi said he had resolved to go to Rome, and +look into his heart a little. One evening, as he sat musing over a volume +of St. Thomas, contrasting his past life with that required of him by his +office, his thoughts recurred to the sad, strange lady. There was a tap at +the door, and a masked, muffled mystery entered with a letter; it +purported to come from her to whom the comfits had been thrown, and +assured him the recipient had a heart to offer him in return. Inquiring +who the messenger might be, she said she was Guido’s “kind of maid”; all +the servants hated him, she added, and she had offered her aid to bring +comfort to the sweet Pompilia. Caponsacchi said he then took pen and +wrote, “No more of this!” explaining that once on a time he should not +have proved so insensible to her beauty, but now he had other thoughts. +Caponsacchi said that he saw Guido’s mean soul grinning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> through this +transparent trick. Next morning a second letter was brought by the same +messenger; it urged him to visit the lovesick lady, and no longer cruelly +delay; it declared she was wretched, that she had heard he was going to +Rome, and implored him to take her with him. He asked the maid “what risk +they ran of the husband?” “None at all,” she answered; “he is more stupid +than jealous.” He took a pen and wrote that she solicited him in vain; he +was a priest and had scruples. After that in many ways he was still +pursued, and ever his reply was “Go your ways, temptress!” Urged to pass +her window, and glance up thereat, if only once, he resolved to expose the +trick and punish the Count. He went. There at the window, with a lamp in +hand, stood Pompilia, grave and grief-full; like Our Lady of all the +Sorrows, she was there but a moment, and then vanished. He knew she had +been induced by some pretence to watch a moment on the balcony. He was +about to cry, “Out with thee, Guido!” when all at once she reappeared, +just on the terrace overhead; so close was she that if she bent down she +could almost touch his head; and she did bend, and spoke, while he stood +still, all eye, all ear. She told him that he had sent her many letters; +that she had read none, for she could neither read nor write; that she was +in the power of the woman who had brought them; that she had explained +their purport, that she had made her listen while she told her that he, a +priest, had dared to love her, a wife, because he had seen her face a +single time. This wickedness she thinks cannot be true,—it were deadly to +them both; but if indeed he had true love to offer, did he indeed mean +good and true, she might accept his help. It was so strange, she said, +that her husband, whom she had not wronged, should hate her so, should +wish to harm her: for his own soul’s sake would the priest hinder the +harm? Then she told him how happily she had dwelt at Rome, with those dear +Comparini whom she had been wont to call father and mother; she could not +understand what it was that had prompted his soul to offer her his help, +but, as he had done so, would he render her just aid enough to save her +life with? To leave the man who hated her so were no sin. “Take me to +Rome!” she cried. “You go to Rome: take me as you would take a dog!” She +told him how she had turned hither and thither for aid,—to great good +men, Archbishop and Governor, she had opened her heart. They only smiled: +“Get you gone, fair one!” they said. In her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span> despair she went to an old +priest, a friar who confessed her; to him she told how, worse than +husband’s hate, she had to bear the solicitations of his young idle +brother. “Write to your parents,” said the friar. She said she could +neither read nor write. “I will write,” he promised; but no answer came. +She ended with repeating her entreaty that he should take her to the +Comparinis’ home at Rome. Caponsacchi promised at once to do this thing +for her; it was settled he should find a carriage, and the money for the +purpose, and return when he had made arrangements for the flight [The +messenger who had brought him the Count’s letters was shown to be his +mistress; the Count had forged the notes from Pompilia, and the replies +thereto.] Then the priest went home to meditate on this strange matter, +and the more he thought of what he had agreed to do, the more incongruous +with his sacred office did it seem. Was he not wedded to the mystic +bride—the Church? Did it not say to him, “Leave that live passion; come, +be dead with me”? Then came the voice of God, His first authoritative +word: “I had been lifted to the level of her!” he exclaimed. Now did he +perceive the function of the priest: to leave her he had thought +self-sacrifice; to save her, was the price demanded, and he paid it. “Duty +to God is duty to her.” Yet, when the morning broke, his heart whispered, +“Duty is still wisdom,” and the day wore on. When evening came he +determined to see her again, to advise her, to bid her not despair. He +went. There she stood as before, and now reproached him for not returning +earlier; and when he saw her sadness, and heard her piteous pleading, he +said</p> + +<p class="poem">“Leave this home in the dark to-morrow night.”</p> + +<p>He told her the place of meeting and the way thereto, promising to be +ready at the appointed time. Then he secured a carriage, made all +arrangements, and, at the time agreed, Pompilia draped in black, but with +the soul’s whiteness shining through her veil, was there. She sprang into +the carriage, he beside her—she and he alone, and so began the flight +through dark to light, through day and night, again to night, once more on +to the last dreadful dawn. He told the court the incidents of the weary +journey,—all her weakness and her craving for rest at Rome,—how she +urged him to continue, till they were at last within twelve hours of the +city, and there seemed no fear of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span> pursuit. Then he entreated her to +descend and take some rest. For a while she waited at a roadside inn, +nursed a woman’s child, sat by the garden wall and talked, then off again +refreshed. On they went till they reached Castelnuovo. “As good as Rome!” +he cried. She was sleeping as he spoke, and woke with a start and scream—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Take me no further; I should die: stay here!<br /> +I have more life to save than mine!”</p> + +<p>then swooned. The people at the inn urged him to let her rest the night +with them. He could not but choose. All the night through he paced the +passage, keeping guard. “Not a sound, nor movement,” they said. At first +pretence of gray in the sky he bade them have out the carriage, while he +called to break her sleep; and as he turned to go there faced him Count +Guido, as master of the field encamped, his rights challenging the world, +leering in triumph, scowling with malice. He was not alone. With him were +the commissary and his men. At once he was arrested. Then “Catch her!” the +husband bade. That sobered Caponsacchi. “Let me lead the way!” he cried, +explaining he was privileged, being a priest, and claiming his rights. +Then they went to Pompilia’s chamber. There she lay sleeping, “wax-white, +seraphic.” “Seize and bind!” hissed Guido. Pompilia started up, stood +erect, face to face with her tormentor. “Away from between me and hell!” +she cried. “I am God’s, whose knees I clasp,—hence!” Caponsacchi tried to +reach her side, but his arms were pinioned fast; the rabble poured in and +took the husband’s part, heaping themselves upon the priest. Springing at +the sword which hung at Guido’s side, she drew and brandished it. “Die, +devil, in God’s name!” she cried; but they closed round her, twelve to +one. Then Guido began his search for the gold, the jewels, and the plate +of which he declared he had been robbed, and for the amorous letters he +had reason to expect to find. They could not refuse the priest’s appeal to +be judged by the Church, and so he was sent to Rome with Pompilia; and to +separate cells in the same prison they were borne. He told his judges then +that he had never touched Pompilia with his finger-tip, except to carry +her that evening to her couch, and that as sacredly as priests carry the +vessels of the altar. He tells the court he might have locked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> his lips +and laughed at its jurisdiction, for when this murder happened he was a +prisoner at Civita. She had only the court to trust to when Guido hacked +her to pieces. He had come from his retreat as friend of the court, had +told his tale for pure friendship’s sake. He reminds them how in the first +trial he had disproved the accusation of the letters, and the verses they +contained: if any were found, it was because those who found had hidden +first. Then he tells how, as in relegation he was studying verse, suddenly +a thunderclap came into his solitude. The whirlwind caught him up and +brought him to the room where so recently the judges had dealt out law +adroitly, and he learned how Guido had upset it all. In a frank and +dignified appeal to the court, he explains how it was that God had struck +the spark of truth from contact between his and Pompilia’s soul, daring +him to try to be good and show himself above the power of show. Had they +not acted as babes in their flight? Had they been criminals, was there not +opportunity for sin without a flight at all? or, if it were necessary to +fly, where had they stayed for sin? Had he saved Pompilia against the +law?—against the law Guido slays her. Deal with him! If they say he was +in love, unpriest him then; degrade, disgrace him: for himself no matter; +for Pompilia let them “build churches, go pray!” They will find him there. +He knows they too will come. He sees a judge weeping: he is glad—they see +the truth. Pompilia helped him just so. As for the Count, he had him on +the fatal morning in arms’ reach; he could have killed him. It was through +him (Caponsacchi) he had survived to do this deed. He asks them not to +condemn the Count to death. Leave him to glide as a snake from off the +face of things, and be lost in the loneliness. He stops the rapid flow of +words, owns he has been rash in what he has said, fears he has been but a +poor advocate of the woman, protests they had no thought of love, and begs +them to be just. Even while he pleads for Pompilia they tell him she is +dead. Why did they let him ramble on?—his friends should have stopped +him. Then he grows almost incoherent in his mental distress; asks them if +they will one day make Pope of the friar who heard Pompilia’s dying +confession, and declares he had never shriven a soul</p> + +<p class="poem">“so sweet and true, and pure and beautiful.”</p> + +<p>Then he grows calm again, speaks of being as good as out of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> world now +he is a relegated priest, and concludes with a despairing cry to the God +whom he is no longer permitted to serve.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Arezzo</i>, the ancient Arretium, is the seat of a bishop and a +prefect. The present population of the town is about eleven thousand, or, +if the neighbouring villages are included, about thirty-nine thousand +inhabitants. In the middle ages the town suffered severely in the wars of +the Guelfs and Ghibellines; in this struggle it usually took the side of +the Ghibellines. Caponsacchi’s church is that of S. Maria della Pieve, +said to be as old as the beginning of the ninth century, with a tower and +façade dating from 1216. The façade has four series of columns, arranged +rather incongruously. Many ancient sculptures are over the doors. The +interior of the church consists of a nave, with aisles and a dome. +Petrarch was born at No. 22 in the Via dell’ Orto; the house bears an +inscription to the effect that “Francesco Petrarca was born here, July +20th, 1304.” The cathedral is a fine Italian Gothic building, dating from +1177; the façade is still unfinished. The interior has no transept, but is +of fine and spacious proportions, with some good stained-glass windows of +the early part of the sixteenth century. Pope Gregory X. died at Arezzo, +and his tomb is in the right aisle. There is a marble statue of Ferdinand +de’ Medici in front of the cathedral, which was erected in 1595 by John of +Douay. Arezzo is about a hundred miles north of Rome. In the story of the +flight from Arezzo towards Rome, Caponsacchi indicates the chief places +which they passed on the road. The first halt was at <i>Perugia</i>, the +capital of the province of Umbria, with a population of some fifty +thousand. It is the residence of a prefect, a military commandant, the +seat of a bishop and a university. The city is built partly on the top of +a hill and partly on the slope. <i>Assisi</i> may well be called “holy ground” +(<i>Caponsacchi</i>, line 1205). Here was born St. Francis in 1182. “He was the +son of the merchant Pietro Bernardine, and spent his youth in frivolity. +At length, whilst engaged in a campaign against Perugia, he was taken +prisoner, and attacked by a dangerous illness. Sobered by adversity, he +soon afterwards (1208) founded the Franciscan order.” St. Francis was one +of the most beautiful characters in religious history. His whole life was +devoted to the poor and sick, and his order, to the present day, is the +most charitable monastic order in the world. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> monastery of St. Francis +at Assisi has existed for six centuries. <i>Foligno</i> is an industrial town +of twenty-one thousand inhabitants, and is the seat of a bishop. The +cathedral was erected in the twelfth century. The church of S. Anna, or +Delle Contesse, once contained Rafael’s famous Madonna di Foligno, now in +the Vatican. <i>Castelnuovo</i>: at this place Guido overtook the travellers. +It is situated about fifteen miles from Rome, and is only a village, with +an inn. Line 230, “<i>Capo-in-Sacco, our progenitor</i>”: see note to <a href="#book2">Book II.</a>, +“<span class="smcap">Half Rome</span>,” l. 1250. l. 234, <i>Old Mercato</i>: the old market-place in +Florence, where the Caponsacchi formerly resided. l. 249, <i>Grand-duke +Ferdinand</i>: the marble statue of Ferdinand in front of the cathedral was +erected by Giovanni da Bologna in 1595. l. 251, <i>Aretines</i>: the men of +Arezzo. l. 280, “<i>The Jews and the name of God</i>”: the Jews do not +pronounce the name of Jehovah, or Jahveh, out of reverence; they +substitute the word Adonai, Lord. l. 333, <i>Marinesque Adoniad</i>: a +celebrated poem called <i>Adonis</i> was written by Giovanni Marini, who lived +at the beginning of the seventeenth century. l. 346, <i>Pieve</i>: the parish +church of S. Maria della Pieve, said to have been built in the ninth +century on the site of a temple of Bacchus. l. 389, <i>Priscian</i> was a great +grammarian of the fifth century, whose name was almost synonymous with +grammar. “To break Priscian’s head” was to violate the rules of grammar. +l. 402, <i>facchini</i>: porters, or scoundrels. l. 449, <i>in sæcula sæculorum</i>, +“world without end”: the concluding words of the “Glory be to the Father,” +etc., chanted at the end of each psalm. l. 467, <i>canzonet</i>: a short song +in one, two, or three parts. l. 559, <i>Thyrsis</i>, a shepherd of Arcadia; +<i>Myrtilla</i>, a country maid in love with Thyrsis. l. 574, “<i>At the Ave</i>”: +at the hour of evening prayer, when the “Hail Mary” and hymns to the +Virgin are sung. l. 707, “<i>Our Lady of all the Sorrows</i>”: the Blessed +Virgin is called “Our Lady of Sorrows,” and is painted with a sword +piercing her heart, from the words of the Gospel, “A sword shall pierce +through thine own soul also” (St. Luke xi. 35). l. 828, <i>The Augustinian</i>: +the friar of the order of St. Augustine. l. 960, <i>St. Thomas with his sober +grey goose-quill</i>: St. Thomas Aquinas is referred to here. He was a famous +Dominican theologian. His <i>Sum of Theology</i> is the standard text-book of +the divine science in all Catholic countries. Aquinas was called “the +angelic doctor.” l. 961, “<i>Plato by Cephisian reed</i>”: the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> Cephisus was a +river on the west side of Athens, falling into the Saronic Gulf; the +largest river in Attica. l. 988, “<i>Intent on his corona</i>”: the rosary or +chaplet of beads is in Italy and Spain called the “corona.” The monk was +intent on his rosary. l. 1102, <i>Our Lady’s girdle</i>: legend says that the +Blessed Virgin, as she was being assumed into heaven, loosened her girdle, +which was received by St. Thomas. (See Mrs. Jameson’s <i>Legends of the +Madonna</i>.) l. 1170, <i>Parian</i>: a pure and beautiful marble of Paros; +<i>coprolite</i>: the petrified dung of carnivorous reptiles. l. 1203, +<i>Perugia</i>: a city about thirty-five miles from Arezzo, on the road to +Rome. l. 1205, “<i>Assisi—this is holy ground</i>”: because there was the +monastery founded by St. Francis of Assisi. l. 1266, <i>The Angelus</i>: a +prayer consisting of the angelical salutation to Mary, with versicle and +response and collect, said three times a day, at morning, noon and night; +in Catholic countries and religious houses a bell is rung in a peculiar +manner to announce the hour of this prayer. l. 1275, <i>Foligno</i>: a small +town near Perugia. l. 1666, “<i>Bembo’s verse</i>”: Cardinal Bembo. (See notes +to <i>Asolo</i>, <a href="#Page_51">p. 51</a>.) l. 1667, “<i>De Tribus</i>”: the title of a scandalous +pamphlet, called “The Three Impostors,” which was well known in the +seventeenth century: Moses, Christ, and Mahomet were thus designated. +(This explanation was sent me by the late Mr. J. A. Symonds.) l. 1747, +“<i>De Raptu Helenæ</i>”: concerning the rape of Helen of Troy.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book VII., Pompilia.</span>—From her deathbed Pompilia tells the story of her +life: says how she is just seventeen years and five months old: ’tis writ +so in the church’s register, where she has five names—so laughable, she +thinks. There will be more to write in that register now; and when they +enter the fact of her death she trusts they will say nothing of the manner +of it, recording only that she “had been the mother of a son exactly two +weeks.” She has learned that she has twenty-two dagger wounds, five +deadly; but she suffers not too much pain, and is to die to-night; thanks +God her babe was born, and better, baptised and hid away before this +happened, and so was safe; he was too young to smile and save himself. Now +she will never see her boy, and when he grows up and asks “What was my +mother like?” they will tell him “Like girls of seventeen”; but she thinks +she looked nearer twenty. She wishes she could write<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> that she might leave +something he should read in time. Her name was not a common one: that may +serve to keep her a little in memory. He had no father that he ever knew +at all, and now—to-night—will have no mother and no name, not even poor +old Pietro’s. This is why she called the boy Gaetano. A new saint should +name her child. Those old saints must be tired out with helping folk by +this time. She had five, and they were! How happy she had been in +Violante’s love, till one day she declared she had never been their child, +was but a castaway and unknown! People said husbands love their wives: +hers had killed her! They said Caponsacchi, though a priest, did love her, +and “no wonder you love him,” shaking their heads, pitying and blaming not +very much. Then she tells the tale of six days ago, when the New Year +broke: how she was talking by the fire about her boy, and what he should +do when he was grown and great. Pietro and Violante had assisted her to +creep to the fireside from her couch, and they sat wishing each other more +New Years. Pietro was telling, too, of the cause he expected to gain +against the wicked Count, and Violante scolded him for tiring Pompilia +with his chatter: she was so happy that friendly eve. Then, next morning, +old Pietro went out to see the churches. It was snowing when he returned, +and Violante brought out a flask of wine and made up a great fire; and he +told them of the seven great churches he had visited, and how none had +pleased him like San Giovanni. He was just saying how there was the fold +and all the sheep as big as cats, and shepherds half as large as life +listening to the angel,—when there was a tap at the door. The rest, she +said, they knew.... Pietro at least had done no harm, and Violante, after +all, how little! She did wrong, she knows; she did not think lies were +real lies when they had good at heart: it was good for all she meant. She +sees this now she is dying: she meant the pain for herself, the happiness +all for Pompilia. And now the misery and the danger are over; as she sinks +away from life, she finds that sorrows change into something which is not +altogether sorrow-like. Her child is safe, her pain not very great. She is +so happy that she is just absolved, washed fair. “We cannot both have and +not have.” Being right now, she is happy, and that colours things. She +will tell the nuns, who watch by her and nurse her, how all this trouble +came about. Up to her marriage at thirteen years, the days were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> as happy +as they were long. Then, one day, Violante told her she meant next day to +bring a cavalier whom she must allow to kiss her hand. He would be the +same evening at San Lorenzo to marry her: but all would be as before, and +she would still live at home. Till her mother spoke she must hold her +tongue: that was the way with girl-brides. So, like a lamb, she had only +to lie down and let herself be clipped. Next day came Guido +Franceschini—old, not so tall as herself, hook-nosed, and with a yellow +bush of beard, much like an owl in face; and his smile and the touch of +his hand made her uncomfortable, though she did not suppose it mattered +anything. Once, when she was ill, an ugly doctor attended her: he cured +her, so his appearance did not affect his skill. Then, on the deadest of +December days, she was hurried away at night to San Lorenzo. The church +door was locked behind the little party, and the priest hurried her to the +altar, where was hid Guido and his ugliness. They were married; and she, +silent and scared, joined her mother, who was weeping; and they went home, +saying no word to Pietro. “Girl-brides,” said Violante, “never breathe a +word!” For three weeks she saw nothing of Guido. Nothing was changed. She +was married, and expected all was over. The scarecrow doctor did not +return: she supposed that Guido would keep away likewise. Then, one +morning, as she sat at her broidery frame alone, she heard voices, and +running to see, found Guido and the priest who had married her. Pietro was +remonstrating, and Guido was claiming his wife, and had come to take her. +Then she began to see that something mean and underhand had happened. Her +mother was to blame, herself to pity. She was the chattel, and was mute. +She retired to pray to God. Violante came to her, told her that she would +have a palace, a noble name, and riches; that young men were volatile; +that Guido was the sort of man for housekeeping; and it had been arranged +they were not to separate, but should all live together in the great +palace at Arezzo, where Pompilia would be queen. And so she went with +Guido to his home. Since then it was all a blank, a terrific dream to her. +The Count had married for money, and the money was not forthcoming; and he +became unkind to his wife to punish the Comparini who had cheated him. So +he accused her of being a coquette, of licentious looks at theatre and +church. She knew this was a false<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> charge, but could not divine his +purpose in making it, so made matters worse by never going out at all. +When the maid began to speak of the priest and of the letters they said he +had written, she begged her to ask him to cease writing, even from passing +through the street wherein she lived. The Count’s object she did not know +was that they might be compromised. In her trouble she went to the +Archbishop, begging him to place her in a convent. It was all so repugnant +to her, barely twelve years old at marriage. But the Church could give no +help: to live with her husband, she was told, was in her covenant. Then +she told the frightful thing—of the advances of her husband’s brother, +who solicited, and said he loved her; told him that her husband knew it +all, and let it go on. The Archbishop bade her be more affectionate to her +husband, and to let his brother see it. So home she went again, and her +husband’s hate increased. Henceforth her prayers were not to man, but to +God alone. She had been, she told them, three dreary years in that gloomy +palace at Arezzo, when one day she learned that there could be a man who +could be a saviour to the weak, and to the vile a foe. It was at the play +where she first saw Caponsacchi. She saw him silent, grave, and almost +solemn; and she thought had there been a man like that to lift her with +his strength into the calm, how she could have rested. At supper that +night her husband let her know what he had seen: the throwing of the +comfits in her lap, her smile and interest in the priest; told her she was +a wanton, drew his sword and threatened her. This was not new to her. He +told her that this amour was the town’s talk, and he menaced the person of +Caponsacchi. A week later, Margherita, her maid, who it was said was more +than servant to her lord, began to tell her of the priest who loved her, +and urged her to send him some token in return. Pompilia bade her say no +more; but ever and again the woman reverted to the subject, and she at +last produced letters said to have been sent by him. And when the +importunity continued, she declared she knew all this of Caponsacchi to be +false. The face which she had seen that night at the play was his own +face, and the portrait drawn of him she was sure was false. And then, when +April was half through, and it was said every one was leaving for Rome, +and Caponsacchi too, a light sprang up within her: was it possible she +also could reach Rome? How she had tried to leave the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span> hateful home! She +had appealed to the Governor of the city, to the Archbishop, to the poor +friar, to Conti her husband’s relative, and he alone suggested a way of +escape. “Ask Caponsacchi,” he said: “he’s your true St. George, to slay +the monster.” Then to Margherita she said, “Tell Caponsacchi he may come!” +And so again she saw the silent and solemn face, and told him all her +trouble: how she was in course of being done to death. She trusted in God +and him to save her—to take her to Rome and put her back with her own +people. He said “he was hers.” The second night, when he came as arranged, +he said the plan was impracticable,—he dare not risk the venture for her +sake. But she urged him, and he yielded. “To-morrow, at the day’s dawn,” +he would take her away. That night her husband, telling her how he loathed +her, bade her not disturb him as he slept. And then she spoke of the +flight, her prayers, her yearning to be at rest in Rome. Then all the +horrors of the fatal night. She pardoned her husband: she knew that her +presence had been hateful to him; she could not help that. She could not +love him, but his mother did. Her body, but never her soul, had lain +beside him. She hopes he will be saved. So, as by fire, she had been saved +by him. As for her child, it should not be the Count’s at all—“only his +mother’s, born of love, not hate!” Then, with her fast-failing mind-sight, +she turns to the image of “the lover of her life, the soldier-saint.” +Death shall not part her from him: her weak hand in his strong grasp shall +rest in the new path she is about to tread. She bids them tell him she is +arrayed for death in all the flowers of all he had said and done. He is a +priest, and could not marry; nor would he if he could, she thinks: the +true marriage is for heaven.</p> + +<p class="poem">“So, let him wait God’s instant men call years;<br /> +Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,<br /> +Do out the duty! Through such souls alone<br /> +God stooping shows sufficient of His light<br /> +For us i’ the dark to rise by. And I rise!”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Line 423, <i>Master Malpichi</i>: probably Marcello Malpighi +(1628-1694), a great physician of Bologna. He was the founder of +microscopic anatomy. In 1691 he removed to Rome to become physician to +Pope Innocent XII. l. 427, “<i>The lion’s mouth</i>”: Via di Bocca di +Leone—the name of a street near<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> the Corso. l. 607, <i>The square o’ the +Spaniards</i>: Piazza di Spagna is the centre of the strangers’ quarter in +Rome. It derives its name from the palace of the Spanish Ambassador. l. +1153, <i>Mirtillo</i>, probably a minor poet of the period. l. 1303, <i>The +Augustinian</i>: an order of monks following the rule of St. Augustine. l. +1377, <i>The Ave Maria</i>: the “Hail Mary”—an evening devotion, wherein the +prayer occurs of which these are the first words.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book VIII., Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum Procurator.</span>—In +this book we have the counsel on behalf of Count Guido at work in his +study, preparing the defence which he is to make on behalf of his client. +He is a family man, and his life is bound up in that of his son, whose +birthday it is, the lad being eight years old. He will devote himself to +his case, and when his work is done will enjoy the yearly lovesome frolic +feast with little Cinuolo. “Commend me,” says the man of law, “to home +joy, the family board, altar and hearth!” He is very anxious to make a +good figure in the courts over this case, his opponent, old bachelor +Bottinius, shall be made to bite his thumb; and he expresses his gratitude +to God that he has Guido to defend just when his boy is eight years old, +and needs a stimulus to study from his sire. He chuckles at his good +fortune: a noble to defend, a man who has almost with parade killed three +persons; it is really too much luck to befall him, and on his son’s +birthday too! he prays God to keep him humble, and mutters “<i>Non nobis +Domine!</i>” as he turns over his papers. He determines to beat the other +side, if only for love, as a tribute to little Cinotto’s natal day (the +boy was called by half a dozen pet names). He will astonish the Pope +himself with his eloquence and skill; and the day shall be remembered when +his son becomes of age. Then he bethinks himself of the night’s feast: the +wine, the minced herbs with the liver, goose-foot, and cock’s-comb, +cemented with cheese; he rubs his hands again, as he thinks of all the +good things getting ready. But now to work: he must puzzle out this case. +He is particular about the Latin he will use; he would like to bring in +Vergil, but that will not do well in prose. His son shall attack him with +Terence on the morrow. Then he curbs his ardour, and sets himself to deal +in earnest with the case. Bottinius will deny that Pompilia wrote any +letter at all. Anticipating what his opponent will say, he says he had +rather lose his case than miss the chance of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span> ridiculing his Latin and +making the judge laugh, who will so enjoy the joke. If it comes to law, +why, he is afraid he cannot “level the fellow”: he sees him even now in +his study, working up thrusts that will be hard to parry, he is sure to +deliver a bowl from some unguessed standpoint. And now he stops to rub +some life into his frozen fingers, hopes his boy will take care of his +throat this cold day, and reflects how chilly Guido must be in his +dungeon, despite his straw. Carnival time too: what a providence, with the +city full of strangers! He will do his best to edify and amuse them: they +may remember Cintino some day! But to the case. “Where are we weak?” he +asks. The killing is confessed: they tortured Guido, and so got it out of +him,—he shall object to that; nobles are exempt from torture. A certain +kind of torture like that called <i>Vigiliarum</i>, is excellent for extracting +confession; he has never known any prisoner stand it for ten hours; they +“touched their ten,” ’tis true, “but, bah! they died!” If the Count had +not confessed, he should have set up the defence that Caponsacchi really +murdered the three, and fled just as Guido, touched by grace,—consequent +upon having been a good deal at church at the holy season—hastened to the +house to pardon his wife, and so arrived just in time—to be charged with +the murders. Yes, he could have done very well on this line, he thinks; +but the confession has spoiled all that. Wonderful that a nobleman could +not stand torture better! Why, he has known several brave young fellows +keep a rack in their back garden, and take a turn at it for an hour or two +at a time, just to see how much pain they could stand without flinching: +he thinks men are degenerating. And so he meanders on, pulling himself up +in the midst of a nice point to wonder whether his cook has remembered how +excellently well some chopped fennel-root goes with fried liver. “But no; +she cannot have been so obtuse as to forget!” He shall begin his speech +with a pretty compliment to His Holiness, then he shall quote St. Jerome, +St. Gregory, Solomon, and St. Bernard, who all say that a man must not be +touched in his honour. Our Lord Himself said, “My honour I to nobody will +give!” (He stops to reflect that a melon would have improved the soup, but +that the boy wanted the rind to make a boat with.) He shall continue, that +a husband who has a faithless wife <i>must</i> raise hue and cry,—the law is +not for such cases,—these are for gentlemen to deal with themselves. Of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span> +course the other side will object that Guido allowed too long an interval +to elapse between the capture of the fugitives and the killing; but he +shall show that there really was no interval between the inn and the +Comparinis’ villa at Rome: Pompilia was inaccessible between these places. +If they object that Guido, when he arrived at Rome on Christmas Eve, +should have sought his vengeance at once, he shall ask, “Is no religion +left?” A man with all those Feasts of the Nativity to occupy his mind +could not be expected to go about his private business. (He pauses to +reflect that a little lamb’s fry will be very toothsome in an hour’s +time.) The charge is that “we killed three innocents”; as to the manner of +the killing, that matters nothing, granted we had the right to kill. Eight +months since they would have been held to blame if they had let this bad +pair escape: true, that was the time to have killed them, but the Count +had not the proper weapons handy. He shall say, too, that he did not +instruct his confederates to kill any one of the three, but merely to +disfigure them; they had been too zealous. He next proceeds to dispose of +a number of points in which it is charged the offence was +aggravated,—such as slaying the family in their own house, and lastly +that the majesty of the sovereign has received a wound. (Here he fervently +hopes the devil will not instigate his cook to stew the rabbit instead of +roasting him: he will have to go and see after things himself—he really +must.) But, if the end be lawful, the means are allowed. (The Cardinal has +promised to go and read the speech to the Pope, and point its beauties +out, so he must be adroit in his words.) As he stands forth as the +advocate of the poor, he must put in a word or two for the four assassins +who did the deed. On their behalf he pleads that, as the husband was in +the right in what he did, those who helped him could not be in the wrong. +(On which more Latin and neat phrases.) He will be reminded that Guido +went off without paying the men the stipulated fee for the murders. “What +fact,” he shall ask, “could better illustrate the perfect rectitude of the +Count?” The men were not actuated by malice, but by a simple desire to +earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. As for the Count, so absorbed +was he in vindicating his honour, that paltry, vulgar questions of money +wholly escaped him; “he spared them the pollution of the pay.” In +conclusion, he shall urge that Guido killed his wife in defence of the +marriage vow, that he might creditably live. “There’s my speech,” he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span> +cries, as he dashes down the pen; “where’s my fry, and family, and +friends? What an evening have I earned to-day!” And off he goes to supper, +singing “Tra-la-la, lambkins, we must live!”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Line 8, “<i>And chews Corderius with his morning crust</i>”: the +<i>Colloquies of Corderius</i> were used in every school of any consequence in +the time of Shakespeare’s boyhood. It was the most popular Latin book for +boys of the time. l. 14, <i>Papinianian pulp</i>: Papinian was the most +celebrated of Roman jurists, and an intimate friend of the Emperor +Septimius Severus. l. 58, <i>Flaccus</i>: Horace, whose full name was Quintus +Horatius Flaccus. l. 94, “<i>Non nobis, Domine, sed Tibi laus</i>”: “Not unto +us, Lord, but to Thee be the praise!” l. 101, <i>Pro Milone</i>: the celebrated +oration of Cicero on behalf of Milo, a friend of his. l. 115, <i>Hortensius +Redivivus</i>: Hortensius, the Roman orator. l. 117, “<i>The Est-est</i>”: a wine +so called because a nobleman once sent his servant in advance to write +“Est,” <i>it is!</i> on any inn where the wine was <ins class="correction" title="original: particulary">particularly</ins> good; at one +place the man wrote “Est-est,” <i>It is! it is!</i> in token of its superlative +excellence, and the vintage has ever since gone by this designation. l. +329, “<i>Questions</i>,” tortures; <i>Vigiliarum</i>: torture by incessant jerking +of the body and limbs. l. 482, <i>Theodoric</i>: king of the Ostrogoths (<i>c.</i> +<span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 454-526); he caused the celebrated Boethius to be put to death. l. +483, <i>Cassiodorus</i>: a Roman historian, statesman, and monk, who lived +about 468 <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span>; he was raised by Theodoric to the highest offices. He was +one of the first of literary monks, and his books were much used in the +middle ages. l. 498, <i>Scaliger</i>: Julius Cæsar Scaliger (1484-1558), a man +of the greatest eminence in the world of letters, and as a man of science, +and a philosopher. He had a son, <i>Joseph Justus Scaliger</i>, not less +eminent, who wrote the work referred to. l. 503, <i>The Idyllist</i> is +Theocritus, the Sicilian poet. l. 513, <i>Ælian</i>: a Roman, in the reign of +Adrian, surnamed the honey-tongued, from the sweetness of his style; he +wrote seventeen treatises on animals. l. 948, <i>Valerius Maximus</i>, a Latin +writer, who made a collection of historical anecdotes, and published his +work in the reign of Tiberius. It was called <i>Books of Memorable Deeds and +Utterances</i>. Most of the tales are from Roman history. <i>Cyriacus</i>: +patriarch of the Jacobites, monk of the convent of Bizona, in Syria; died +at Mosul in 817 <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> He wrote homilies, canons, and epistles. l. 1542, +<i>Castrensis</i>: a distinguished professor of civil and canon law; he died in +1441. He was a professor at Vienna, Avignon, Padua, Florence, Bologna, and +Perugia. His most complete work is his readings on the <i>Digest</i>. +<i>Butringarius</i>: a jurisconsult (1274-1348). [I have not considered it +necessary to translate the many Latin lines in this and the following +section of the work, because in nearly every case their sense is given in +the context, and therefore those who do not read Latin will lose nothing, +as practically they have it all englished in the text.]</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book IX., Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius</span> (<span class="smcap">Fisci et Rev. Cam. +Apostol. Advocatus</span>).—Bottinius is the Public Prosecutor, and has to +present the case against the Count and his confederates. He is not a +family man, and seems to have but a low ideal of feminine virtue. He +admires the sex, but from a superior masculine standpoint; their +weaknesses are amiable. Of girls he says—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Know one, you know all<br /> +Manners of maidenhood: mere maiden she.<br /> +And since all lambs are like in more than fleece,<br /> +Prepare to find that, lamb-like, she too frisks——”</p> + +<p>He mixes up references to the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, her Babe, Saint +Anne and Herod; with whom he compares Pompilia, the Comparini family, and +the Count; and all this with illustrations from the classics not greatly +to the honour of women. The view of Bottinius, in short, is that of the +bachelor man of the world, with no very lofty ideals about anything. His +philosophy is summed up in his last words, “Still, it pays.” He says he +feels his strength inadequate to paint Pompilia; but we know this is a +professional way of speaking, for he soon relapses into “melting wiles, +deliciousest deceits”—very incongruous with our ideas of what Pompilia +really was. No doubt, he thinks, there were some friskings, for which +Guido naturally threatened the whip, and considers Guido to have been +impatient. He supposes that Pompilia smiled upon everybody, till, when +three years of married life had run their course, she smiled on +Caponsacchi; and as he was a priest, and the court was more or less +ecclesiastical, Bottinius makes light of the affair. He will grant that +the lady somewhat plied “arts that allure,” “the witchery of gesture,” +and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span> the like. This was within the right of beauty, for the purpose of +securing a champion. He will grant, for argument’s sake, that she did +write to Caponsacchi. What of it?—it was but to say her life was not +worth an hour’s purchase. It was not likely that Caponsacchi fell in +love—he who might be Pope some day—yet the lady, being in such a case, +was bound to offer him nothing short of love, as his great service was to +save her. What was she to offer him—money? To escape death she might well +have feigned love, and offered such a reward as the Idyl of Moschus makes +Venus promise to any who should bring back lost Cupid. As it was wiser to +choose a priest for the rescue of her life, if the cleric were young, +handsome, and strong, so much the better, surely. Suppose it were true +that Pompilia administered an opiate to her husband the night before she +left him? Well, that was to protect him from rough usage if he aroused and +interfered. This, says Bottinius, is how he would argue if the things +which are but fables had been true: of course Guido never slept a wink, +and Pompilia, equally of course, knew nothing about opiates. Then, when +she started with her rescuer on the road to Rome, even granting what the +suborned coachman said about the kissing which he saw—the one long +embrace which constituted the journey—a sage and sisterly kiss were +surely allowable, and this is probably what was exaggerated by the drowsy, +tired driver. Then, when the pale creature, exhausted with the long +journey, fainted at the inn, and Caponsacchi carried her to the chamber, +what if he “stole a balmy breath, perhaps”? “why curb ardour here?” He +could but pity her, and “pity is so near to love!” As Pompilia was asleep, +she could neither know nor care. Were he to concede that Pompilia did +write the incriminating letters, she, for self-protection, might deny she +did so. “Would that I had never learned to write!” said one; Pompilia, +splendidly mendacious, merely out-distanced him with, “To read or write I +never learned at all!” Bottinius cannot resist a thrust or two at his “fat +opponent’s” love of good living; calls him “thou arch-angelic swine,” and +reminds him that he had not invited him to last night’s birthday feast, +when all sorts of good things were going. Turning to the action of +Caponsacchi, he reminds the court that Archbishop and Governor, gentle and +simple, did nothing to extricate Pompilia from her troubles; they all went +their ways and left her to her fate; Caponsacchi alone, bursting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span> through +the impotent sympathy of Arezzo, caught Virtue up, and carried her off. He +had not soiled her with the pitch alleged: the marks she bore were the +evanescent black and blue of the necessary grasp. Then he must tell a tale +how Peter, John, and Judas, being on a journey, were footsore and hungry; +how they reached at night an inn for rest where there was but one room; +for food but a solitary fowl, a wretched sparrow of a thing. Peter +suggested they should all go to sleep till the fowl was ready, then he who +had had the happiest dream should eat the entire fowl, as there was not +enough for three; so each rested in his straw. When they awoke, John said +he had dreamed he was the Lord’s favourite disciple, and claimed the meal. +Peter had dreamed he had the keys of heaven and hell, and thought the fowl +must clearly be his. But Judas dreamed that he had descended from the +chamber where they slept and had eaten the fowl. And so the traitor really +had: he had left nothing but the drumstick and the merry-thought; and that +is how the bone called merry-thought earned its name, to put us in mind +that the best dream is to keep awake sometimes. So, said Bottinius, the +great people of Arezzo never meant Innocence to starve while Authority sat +at meat. They meant Pompilia to have something—in their dreams; they were +willing to help her—in their sleep. Caponsacchi did wiser than dream or +sleep: he brought a carriage, while the Archbishop and the Governor +wondered what they could do. Then the Advocate bursts into a fit of +admiration for the majesty and sanctity of the law, and what it would have +done for Guido if only he had been content to wait. He comments on the +penance which Pompilia had undergone; and though he cannot believe that +Caponsacchi ever went near her when she left the convent, is inclined to +ask, Suppose he did? Is it a matter for surprise that he would feel lonely +at Civita, and pine a little for the feminine society to which he had been +accustomed? And so he goes on denying all the accusations, but always +adding, “And suppose it were otherwise?” He says, if he must speak his +mind, it had been better that Pompilia had died upon the spot than lived +to shame the law. Does he credit her story?—no! Did she lie?—still no! +He explains it this way: She had made her confession at the point of +death, and was absolved; it was only charity in her to spend her last +breath by pretending utter innocence, and thus rehabilitate the character +of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span>Caponsacchi. Had she told the naked truth about him, it would have +doubtless injured him, and she was not bound to do that; and as the +Sacrament had obliterated the sin, she was justified in the course he +believes she took.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Line 115, <i>The Urbinate</i>: Rafael. l. 116, <i>The Cortonese</i>: Luca da +Cortona, Italian painter. l. 117, <i>Ciro Ferri</i>, Italian painter +(1634-1689). l. 170, <i>Phryne</i>, a celebrated beauty of Athens. She was the +mistress of Praxiteles, who made a statue of her, which was one of his +greatest works, and was placed in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. l. 226, +<i>The Teian</i>: the Greek poet Anacreon was born at Teos, in Ionia. l. 284, +<i>The Mantuan</i> == Vergil. l. 394, <i>Commachian eels</i> were anciently, and are +still, very celebrated. l. 400, <i>Lernæan snake</i>, the famous hydra which +Hercules slew. l. 530, <i>Idyllium Moschi</i>, the first Idyl of the Greek poet +Moschus, entitled “Love a Runaway.” l. 541, <i>Myrtilus</i>, the son of Mercury +and Phæthusa: for his perfidy he was thrown into the sea, where he +perished; <i>Amaryllis</i>, the name of a countryman mentioned by Theocritus +and Vergil. l. 873, <i>Demodocus</i>, a musician at the court of Alcinous: the +gods gave him the power of song, but denied him the blessing of sight. l. +875, “<i>foisted into that Eighth Odyssey</i>”: see Pope’s Homer’s <i>Odyssey</i>, +Book VIII., with the first note thereto. l. 887, <i>Cornelius Tacitus</i>, a +celebrated Roman historian, born in the reign of Nero. l. 893, +“<i>Thalassian-pure</i>”: Thalassius was a beautiful young Roman in the reign +of Romulus. At the rape of the Sabines, a virgin captured by one of the +ravishers was declared to be reserved for Thalassius, and all were eager +to reserve her pure for him. l. 968, <i>Hesione</i>, a daughter of Laomedon, +king of Troy. It fell to her lot to be exposed to a sea monster. Hercules +killed the monster and delivered her, but Laomedon refused to give him the +promised reward. l. 989, <i>Hercules and Omphale</i>: Omphale was queen of +Lydia, and Hercules loved her so much that he used to spin by her side +amongst her women, while she wore the lion’s skin and bore the club of the +hero. l. 998, <i>Anti-Fabius</i>, <i>i.e.</i>, opposed to the policy of Quintus +Fabius Maximus, the Roman general who opposed the progress of Hannibal, +not by fighting, but by harassing counter-marches and ambuscades; for +which he received the name of the <i>delayer</i>. A Fabian policy, therefore, +is a waiting policy. Caponsacchi acted promptly. l. 1030, “<i>Sepher Toldoth +Yeschu</i>”: the Italians have an endless store of tales and legends of this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> +character. See, for many such, <i>Mr. Crane’s Italian Popular Stories</i> +(Macmillan). l. 1109, “<i>Thucydides and his sole joke</i>”: Thucydides was a +celebrated Greek historian, born at Athens. He wrote the history of the +Peloponnesian war, in which he tells the story of Cylon (l. 126). l. 1345, +<i>Maro</i> == Vergil; <i>Aristæus</i>, a son of Apollo, said to have learnt from +nymphs the art of the cultivation of olives and management of bees, which +he communicated to mankind. l. 1494, <i>Triarii</i>, old soldiers that were +kept in reserve to assist in case of hazard. l. 1573, “<i>famed panegyric of +Isocrates</i>”: Isocrates was one of the ten Attic orators, and one of the +most remarkable men in the literary history of Greece. He was born <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> +436. His splendid panegyric was delivered <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 380, for the purpose of +stimulating the people of Greece to unite against the power of Asia.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book X.</span> [<span class="smcap">The Pope.</span>] As to a court of final appeal, the case has now come +before the Pope, Guido having claimed “benefit of clergy.” The Supreme +Pontiff has made a prolonged study of the evidence adduced on the trials, +and of the whole circumstances surrounding the case; now he has to decide +the fate of the Count and his accomplices in the murder. And that he may +give judgment without bias, in the sight of God and of the world, he +nerves himself for the task by recalling the history of his predecessors +in the Chair of Peter who have, from the Apostle up to Alexander, the last +Pope, dared and suffered. How judged this one, how decided that? did he +well or ill? He remembers that no infallibility attaches to such a +decision as he must give in the case in which he is called upon to act: +judgment must be given in his own behoof; so worked his predecessors. And +now appeal is made from man’s assize to him acting, speaking in the place +of God. He must be just, and dare not let the felon go scot free. It is +not possible to reprieve both criminal and Pope. Guido was furnished for +his life with all the help a Christian civilisation could bestow: he had +intellect, wit, a healthy frame, and all the advantages of family and +position. He accepted the law that man is not here to please himself, but +God; placed himself under obedience to the Church, which is the embodiment +of that principle, and then deliberately clothed himself with the +protection of the Church that he might violate the law with impunity. +Three-parts consecrate, he sought to do his murder in the Church’s pale. +Such a man—religious parasite—proves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span> “irreligiousest of all mankind.” +His low instincts make him believe only in “the vile of life.” He is +clothed in falsehood, scale on scale. The typical actuating principle of +his life was plainly exhibited in his marriage. He was prompted to that by +no single motive which should have suggested matrimony. In this he had +sunk far below the level of the brute, “whose appetite, if brutish, is a +truth.” This lust of money led him to lie, rob and murder; to pursue with +insatiate malice the parents of his wife by punishing their child, putting +day by day and hour by hour,</p> + +<p class="poem">“The untried torture to the untouched place,”</p> + +<p>goading her to death and bringing damnation by rebound to those who loved +her. Ruining the three, he enjoyed luck and liberty, person, rights, fame, +worth, all intact; while these poor souls must waste away, be blown about +as dust. Such cruelty needed only as its complement, as a masterpiece of +hell, the craft of this simulated love intrigue,—these false letters, +false to body and soul they figure forth—as though the man had cut out +some filthy shapes to fasten below the cherubs on a missal-page. But +Pompilia’s ermine-like soul takes no pollution from all this craft. It +arose that in the providence of God were born new attributes to two souls. +Priest and wife—both champions of truth—developed new safeguards of +their noble natures. Then does the law step in, secludes the wife and +gives the oppressor a new probation. It only induces Guido to furbish up +his tools for a fresh assault. He has a son. To other men the gift brings +thankfulness; Guido saw in the babe but a money-bag. Even in the deepest +degradation of his sinful career he has another grace vouchsafed from God. +When he fled from the scene of the murders, he took with him the money +which he had agreed to pay his confederates. They came near to his +hiding-place, intending to kill him for the gold, but were too late: the +agents of the law were too quick for them. He had another chance of +repentance. So stands Guido; and this master of wickedness has for pupils +his “fox-faced, horrible brother-brute the Abate,” and his younger +brother, neither wolf nor fox, but the hybrid Girolamo, and</p> + +<p class="poem">“The hag that gave these three abortions birth,<br /> +Unmotherly mother and unwomanly<br /> +Woman,”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span>and lastly the four companions in the murder, who acceded at once to the +crime, as though they were set to dig a vineyard. Then the Pope recalls +the only answer of the Governor to whom Pompilia appealed—a threat and a +shrug of the shoulder. He has a severe word for the Archbishop, as a +hireling who turned and fled when the wolf pressed on the panting lamb +within his reach. It comforts him to turn to Pompilia, “perfect in +whiteness,” as he pronounces. It makes him proud in the evening of his +life as “gardener of the untoward ground,” that he is privileged to gather +this “rose for the breast of God.”</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 9em;">“Go past me</span><br /> +And get thy praise,—and be not far to seek<br /> +Presently when I follow if I may!”</p> + +<p>Nor very much apart from her can be placed Caponsacchi, his +“warrior-priest.” He finds much amiss in this freak of his. He disapproves +the masquerade, the change of garb; but it was grandly done—that +athlete’s leap amongst the uncaged beasts set upon the martyr-maid in the +mid-cirque. Impulsively had he cast every rag to the winds; but he +championed God at first blush, and answered ringingly, with his glove on +ground, the challenge of the false knight. Where, then, were the Church’s +men-at-arms, while this man in mask and motley has to do their work? When +temptation came he had taken it by the head and hair, had done his battle, +and has praise. Yet he must ruminate. “Work, be unhappy, but bear life, my +son!” He turns to God, “reaches into the dark,” “feels what he cannot +see”; renews his confidence in the Divine order of the universe, but not +without a pause, a shudder, a breathing space while he collects his +thoughts and reviews his grounds of faith. The mind of man is a convex +glass, gathering to itself</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">“The scattered points</span><br /> +Picked out of the immensity of sky.”</p> + +<p>He understands how this earth may have been chosen as the theatre of the +plan of redemption; as he in turn represents God here, he can believe that +man’s life on earth has been devised that he may wring from all his pain +the pleasures of eternity. “This life is training and a passage,” and even +Guido, in the world to come, may run the race and win the prize. It does +not stagger him, receiving and trusting the plan of God as he does, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> +he sees other men rejecting and disbelieving it, any more than it +surprises him to find fishers who might dive for pearls dredging for +whelks and mud-worms. But, alas for the Christians!—how ill they figure +in all this! The Archbishop of Arezzo—how he failed when the test came! +The friar, who had forsaken the world, how he shrank from doing his duty, +for fear of rebuke! Women of the convent to whom Pompilia was +consigned,—their kiss turned bite, and they claimed the wealth of which +she died possessed because the trial seemed to prove her of dishonest +life: so issue writ, and the convent takes possession by the Fisc’s +advice. Their fine speeches were all unsaid—their “saint was whore” when +money was the prize. All this terrifies the aged Pope—not the wrangling +of the Roman soldiers for the garments of the Lord, but the greed in His +apostles. But are not mankind real? Is the petty circle in which he moves, +after all, the world? The instincts of humanity have helped mankind in +every age; they will do so still. If, because Christianity is old, and +familiarity with its teachings has bred a confidence which is ill +grounded, the Christian heroism of past times can no longer be looked for, +yet the heroism of mankind springs up eternally, and will suffice for all +its needs. And now he hears the whispers of the times to come. The +approaching age (the eighteenth century) will shake this torpor of +assurance; discarded doubts will be reintroduced; the earthquakes will try +the towers of faith; the old reports will be discredited. Then what +multitudes will sink from the plane of Christianity down to the next +discoverable base, resting on the lust and pride of life! Some will stand +firm. Pompilias will “know the right place by the foot’s feel”; +Caponsacchis by their mere impulses will be guided aright; the vast +majority will fall. But the Vicar of Christ has a duty to perform, +whatever may be in store in the womb of the coming age. With Peter’s key +he holds Peter’s sword:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 12.5em;">“I smite</span><br /> +With my whole strength once more ere end my part,”</p> + +<p>he says. Men pluck his sleeve, urge him to spare this barren tree awhile; +others point out the privileges of the clergy, the right of the husband +over the wife, the offence to the nobility involved in condemning one of +their order, the danger to his own reputation for mercy. He brushes away +with a sweep of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span> hand all these busy oppositions to his sense of duty, +and signs the order for the execution of Guido and his companions. On the +morrow the men shall die—not in the customary place, where die the common +sort; but Guido, as a noble, shall be beheaded where the quality may see, +and fear, and learn. He has no hope for Guido—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Except in such a suddenness of fate.<br /> +I stood at Naples once, a night so dark<br /> +I could have scarce conjectured there was earth<br /> +Anywhere, sky or sea, or world at all:<br /> +But the night’s black was burst through by a blaze—<br /> +Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore,<br /> +Through her whole length of mountain visible:<br /> +There lay the city, thick and plain, with spires,<br /> +And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.<br /> +So may the truth be flashed out by one blow,<br /> +And Guido see, one instant, and be saved.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></span><br /> +“Carry this forthwith to the Governor!”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Line 1, <i>Ahasuerus</i>: Esther vi. 1. l. 11, “<i>Peter first to +Alexander last</i>”: St. Peter to Pope Alexander VIII., who died 1691. l. 25, +<i>Formosus Pope</i> (891-6): he was bishop of Porto, and succeeded Stephen. He +had formerly, from fear of Pope John, left his bishopric and fled to +France. As he did not return when he was recalled, he was anathematised, +and deprived of his preferments. He returned to the world, and put on the +secular habit. Pope Martin (882-4) absolved him, and restored him to his +former dignity; he then came to the popedom by bribery. (See <i>Platina</i>.) +l. 32, <i>Stephen VII.</i> (The Pope, 896-7): “he persecuted the memory of +Formosus with so much spite, that he abrogated his decrees and rescinded +all he had done; though it was said that it was Formosus that conferred +the bishopric of Anagni upon him. Stephen, because Formosus had hindered +him before of this desired dignity, exercised his rage even upon his dead +body; for Martin the historian says he hated him to that degree that, in a +council which he held, he ordered the body of Formosus to be dragged out +of the grave, to be stripped of his pontifical habit and put into that of +a layman, and then to be buried among secular persons, having first cut +off those two fingers of his right hand which are principally used by +priests in consecration, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> thrown into the Tiber, because, contrary to +his oath, as he said, he had returned to Rome and exercised his sacerdotal +function, from which Pope John had legally degraded him. This proved a +great controversy, and of very ill example; for the succeeding popes made +it almost a constant custom either to break or abrogate the acts of their +predecessors, which was certainly far different from the practice of any +of the good popes whose lives we have written.” (Platina’s <i>Lives of the +Popes</i>, Dr. Benham’s edition, vol. i., p. 237.) l. 89, “<ins class="correction" title="ICHTHYS">ΙΧΘΥΣ</ins>, +<i>which means Fish</i>”: the letters of this word, the Greek for fish, make +the initials of the words Jesus, Christ, of God, Son, Saviour. The fish +emblem for our Lord is common in the Roman catacombs, and is still used in +ecclesiastical art. l. 91, “<i>The Pope is Fisherman</i>”: because he is the +successor of St. Peter the fisherman, and Christ said He would make Peter +a fisher of men (Mark i. 17). l. 108, <i>Theodore II.</i> (Pope 898) restored +the decrees of Formosus, and preferred his friends. l. 122, <i>Luitprand</i>: a +chronicler of Papal history. l. 128, <i>Romanus</i> (Pope 897-8): as soon as he +received the pontificate he disavowed and rescinded all the acts and +decrees of Stephen. Platina calls such men “popelings,” <i>Pontificuli</i> (ed. +1551). l. 132, <i>Ravenna</i>: Pope John IX. removed to Ravenna in consequence +of the disturbances in Rome. He called a synod of seventy-four bishops, +and condemned all that Stephen had done; he restored the decrees of +Formosus, declaring it irregularly done of Stephen to re-ordain those on +whom Formosus had conferred holy orders. (See <i>Platina</i>.) l. 138, <i>De +Ordinationibus</i> == concerning Ordinations. l. 142, <i>John IX.</i> (Pope +898-900) reasserted the cause of Formosus, in consequence of which great +disturbances arose in Rome. <i>Sergius III.</i> (Pope 904-11) “totally +abolished all that Formosus had done before; so that priests, who had been +by him admitted to holy orders, were forced to take new ordination. Nor +was he content with thus dishonouring the dead pope; but he dragged his +carcase again out of the grave, beheaded it as if it had been alive, and +then threw it into the Tiber, as unworthy the honour of human burial. It +is said that some fishermen, finding his body as they were fishing, +brought it to St. Peter’s church; and while the funeral rites were +performing, the images of the saints which stood in the church bowed in +veneration of his body, which gave them occasion to believe that Formosus +was not justly persecuted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> with so great ignominy. But whether the +fishermen did thus, or no, is a great question; especially it is not +likely to have been done in Sergius’ lifetime, who was a fierce persecutor +of the favourers of Formosus, because he had hindered him before of +obtaining the pontificate.” (Platina, <i>Lives of the Popes</i>.) l. 293, “<i>The +sagacious Swede</i>”: this was Swedenborg, born at Stockholm 1688, died 1772: +the mathematical theory of Probability is referred to here. (See <i>Encyc. +Brit.</i>, vol. xix., p. 768.) l. 297, “<i>dip in Vergil here and there, and +prick for such a verse</i>”: just as people open the Bible at random to find +a verse to foretell certain events, so scholars used Vergil for this +purpose; <i>sortes Vergilianæ</i>: Vergilian lots. l. 466, <i>paravent</i>: Fr. a +screen; <i>ombrifuge</i>: a place where one flies for shade. l. 510, +<i>soldier-crab</i>: the same as <i>hermit-crab</i>. Named from their combativeness, +or from their possessing themselves of the shells of other animals. l. +836, <i>Rota</i>: a tribunal within the Curia, formerly the supreme court of +justice and the universal court of appeal. It consists of twelve members +called auditors, presided over by a dean. The decisions of the Rota, which +form precedents, have been frequently published (<i>Encyc. Dict.</i>). l. 917, +<i>she-pard</i>: a female leopard. l. 1097, “<i>The other rose, the gold</i>”: this +is “an ornament made of wrought gold and set with gems, which is blessed +by the Pope on the fourth Sunday of Lent, and usually afterwards sent as a +mark of special favour to some distinguished individual, church, or civil +community” (<i>Encyc. Brit.</i>, x. 758). l. 1188, “<i>Lead us into no such +temptations, Lord</i>”: “It is lawful to pray God that we be not led into +temptation, but not lawful to skulk from those that come to us. <i>The +noblest passage in one of the noblest books of this century</i> is where the +old Pope glories in the trial—nay, in the partial fall and but imperfect +triumph—of the younger hero.” (R. L. Stevenson’s <i>Virginibus Puerisque</i>, +p. 43.) l. 1596: Missionaries to China have always had great difficulty in +expressing the word God with our idea of the Supreme Being in the Chinese +language. l. 1619, <i>Rosy cross</i>: Dr. Brewer says this is “not <i>rosa-crux</i> +== rose-cross; but <i>ros crux</i>, dew cross. Dew was considered by the +ancient chemists as the most powerful solvent of gold; and cross in +alchemy is the synonym of light, because any figure of a cross contains +the three letters L V X (light). ‘Lux’ is the menstruum of the red dragon +(<i>i.e.</i> corporeal light), and this sunlight properly digested produces +gold, and dew is the digester. Hence the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span> Rosicrucians are those who use +dew for digesting lux or light for the purpose of coming at the +philosopher’s stone.” (<i>Brewer’s Dict. of Phrase and Fable</i>, p. 765.) l. +1620, <i>The great work</i> == the <i>magnum opus</i>: “to find the absolute in the +infinite, the indefinite, and the finite. Such is the <i>magnum opus</i> of the +sages; such is the whole secret of Hermes; such is the stone of the +philosophers. It is the great Arcanum.” (<i>Mysteries of Magic</i>, A. E. +Waite, p. 196.) This is the “Azoth” of Paracelsus and the sages. +Magnetised electricity is the first matter of the <i>magnum opus</i>. l. 1698, +“<i>Know-thyself</i>”: <i>e cœlo descendit</i> +<ins class="correction" title="Gnôthi seauton">Γνωθι σεαυτὸν</ins>—“Know +thyself came down from heaven” (Juvenal, <i>Sat.</i> xi. 24); “<i>Take the golden +mean</i>,” “<i>Est modus in rebus</i>”: “There is a mean in all things.” (Horace, +<i>Sat.</i> i. 106.) l. 1707, “<i>When the Third Poet’s tread surprised the +two</i>”: “the talents of Sophocles were looked upon by Euripides with +jealousy, and the great enmity which unhappily prevailed between the two +poets gave an opportunity to the comic muse of Aristophanes to ridicule +them both on the stage with humour and success” (<i>Lemprière, Eur.</i>). l. +1760, <i>schene</i> or sheen == brightness or glitter. l. 1762, <i>tenebrific</i>: +causing or producing darkness. l. 1792, “<i>Paul,—’tis a legend,—answered +Seneca</i>”: Butler, <i>Lives of the Saints</i>, under date June 30th, says: “That +Seneca, the philosopher, was converted to the faith and held a +correspondence with St. Paul, is a groundless fiction.” l. 1904, +<i>antimasque</i> or <i>anti-mask</i>: a ridiculous interlude; <i>kibe</i>: a crack or +chap in the flesh occasioned by cold. l. 1942, <i>Loyola</i>: St. Ignatius +Loyola, founder of the Order of the Jesuits. l. 1986-7, “<i>Nemini honorem +trado</i>”: Isaiah xlii. 8, xlviii. 11—“I will not give mine honour to +another,” or “my glory” (as A.V.). l. 2004, <i>Farinacci</i>: Farinaccius was +procurator-general to Pope Paul V., and his work on torture in evidence, +“<i>Praxis et Theorica Criminalis</i> (Frankfort, 1622),” is a standard +authority. l. 2060, “<i>the three little taps o’ the silver mallet</i>”: when +the Pope dies it is the duty of the <i>camerlingo</i> or chamberlain to give +three taps with a silver mallet on the Pope’s forehead while he calls him; +it is a similar ceremony to that used at the death of the kings of Spain; +where the royal chamberlain calls the dead sovereign three times, “Señor! +Señor! Señor!” l. 2088, <i>Priam</i>: the last king of Troy; <i>Hecuba</i>: the wife +of Priam, by whom he had nineteen children according to Homer; “<i>Non tali +auxilio</i>”: this is from Vergil’s <i>Æneid</i>, ii., +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span>519—“Non tali auxilio, +nec defensoribus istis tempus eget.” “The crisis requires not such aid nor +such defenders as thou art.” l. 2111, <i>The People’s Square</i>: Piazza del +Popolo, at the north entrance to Rome. It is reached from the Corso.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book XI., Guido</span>—is now in the prison cell awaiting execution. He is +visited by Cardinal Acciaiuoli and Abate Panciatichi, who are to remain +with him till the fatal moment. He is pleading with them for their aid; he +reminds them of his noble blood, too pure to leak away into the drains of +Rome from the headsman’s engine. He protests his innocence; he has only +twelve hours to live, and is as innocent as Mary herself. He denounces the +Pope, who could have cast around him the protection of the Church, whose +son he is. His tonsure should have saved him. It was the Pope’s duty to +have shown him mercy, but he supposes he is sick of his life, and must +vent his spleen on him. He asks the Abate if he can do nothing? They used +to enjoy life together, but he concludes that his companions have hearts +of stone. He wishes he had never entangled himself with a wife; he was a +fool to slay her. Why must he die? It need not be if men were good. If the +Pope is Peter’s successor, he should act like Peter. Would Peter have +ordered him to death when there was his soul to save? What though half +Rome condemned him? the other half took his part. The shepherd of the +flock should use the crumpled end of his staff to rescue his sheep, not +the pointed end wherewith to thrust them. The law proclaims him guiltless, +but the Pope says he is guilty; and he supposes he ought to acquiesce and +say that he deserves his fate. Repent? not he! What would be the good of +that? If he fall at their feet and gnash and foam, will that put back the +death engine to its hiding-place? He reflects that old Pietro cried to him +for respite when he chased him about his room. He asked for time to save +his soul: Guido gave him none. Why grant respite to him if he deserves his +doom? Then he reproaches his companions: had they not sinned with him if +he had done wrong? had they ever warned him, not by words, but by their +own good deeds? He declares that he does not and cannot repent one +particle of his past life. How should he have treated his wife? Ought he +to have loved or hated her? When he offered her his love, had she not +recoiled with loathing from him? Had she not acted as a victim at the +sacrifice? Was it not her desire to be anywhere apart<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span> from him? What was +called his wife was but “a nullity in female shape”—a plague mixed up +with the “abominable nondescripts” she called her father and her mother. +It was intended that he should be fooled; it happened that he had +anticipated those who wished to fool him: yet this boast was premature. +All Rome knows that the dowry was a derision, the wife a nameless bastard; +his ancient name had been bespattered with filth, and those who planned +the wrong had revealed it to the world. Yes, he had punished those who +fooled him so. He had punished his wife, too, who had no part in their +crime; and why? Her cold, pale, mute obedience was so hateful to him. +“Speak!” he had demanded, and she obeyed; “Be silent!” and she obeyed +also, with just the selfsame white despair. Things were better when her +parents were present; when they left she ran to the Commissary and the +Archbishop to beg their interference, and then committed the “worst +offence of not offending any more.” Her look of martyr-like endurance was +worse than all: it reminded him of the “terrible patience of God.” All +that meant she did not love him;—she might have shammed the love. As it +was, his wife was a true stumbling-block in his way. Everything, too, went +against him. It was so unlucky for him that he did not catch the pair at +the inn under circumstances when he could lawfully have slain them both +together. There is always some—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Devil, whose task it is<br /> +To trip the all-but-at perfection.”</p> + +<p>Unhappily, he had just missed his chance of appearing grandly right before +the world. When he took his assassins to the villa he was fortunate, it is +true, in finding all at home—the three to kill; but he had been unlucky +in not escaping, as he had arranged. Then, when he thought he had killed +his wife (with his knowledge of anatomy too!), she must linger for four +whole days, the surgeon keeping her alive that every soul in Rome might +learn her story. All the world could listen then. Had it not been for that +he would have had a tale to tell that would have saved his head: he would +have sworn he had caught Pompilia in the embraces of the priest, who had +escaped in the darkness. And now she has lived to forgive him, commend him +to the mercies of God, while fixing his head upon the block. And then at +his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span> trial all was against him: the dice were loaded, and the lawyers of +no service to him. Yet he is sure that the Roman people approve his deed, +though the mob is in love with his murdered wife. He says “there was no +touch in her of hate.” The angels would not be able to make a heaven for +her if she knew he were in hell, she would pray him into heaven against +his will; for it is hell which he demands, so heartily does he hate the +good! Yes, he is impenitent,—no spark of contrition. Would the Church +slay the impenitent? He passionately tells the Cardinal that he knows he +is wronged, yet will not help him. As he sees no chance of their +relenting, he tries to influence them by suggesting how he could have +helped their chances at the next election of a Pope, which cannot be long +delayed. Then he falls to entreaty again: “Save my life, Cardinal; I +adjure you in God’s name!” begs him go, fall at the Pope’s feet, tell him +he is innocent; and if that serve him not, say he is an atheist, and +implore him not to send his soul to perdition. “Take your crucifix away!” +he cries. Then, when all seems hopeless, he begins to abuse the Pope, the +Cardinals, and all. He hates his victims too, he protests, as much as when +he slew them; and while he curses, impenitent, scornful and full of +malice, he hears the chant of the Brotherhood of Mercy, who sing the +Office of the Dying at his cell-door. Then he shrieks that all he had been +saying was false; he was mad:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Don’t open! Hold me from them! I am yours,<br /> +I am the Grand Duke’s—no, I am the Pope’s!<br /> +Abate,—Cardinal,—Christ,—Maria,—God, ...<br /> +Pompilia, will you let them murder me?”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Line 13, <i>Certosa</i>: a Carthusian monastery, La Certosa, in Val’ +Emo, is situated about four miles from Florence. It was founded about +1341. It is Gothic, and is built in a grand style, like that of a castle. +l. 186, <i>mannaia</i>: an instrument for beheading criminals, much like the +guillotine. l. 188, <i>“Mouth-of-Truth”—Bocca della Verità</i>: S. Maria in +Cosmedin, in ancient Rome. From the mouth of a fountain to the left is the +portico, into which, according to a mediæval belief, the ancient Romans +thrust their right hands when taking an oath. l. 261, “<i>Merry Tales</i>”: the +novels and tales of Franco Sacchetti (1335-1400). He wrote some three +hundred <i>novelle</i> in pure Tuscan. l. 272, <i>Albano</i>, or <i>Albani, Francesco</i> +(1578-1660): a celebrated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> Italian painter, who was born at Bologna. He +lived and taught in Rome for many years. Among the best of his sacred +pictures are a “St. Sebastian” and an “Assumption of the Virgin,” both in +the church of St. Sebastian at Rome. l. 274, “<i>Europa and the bull</i>”: +Europa was the daughter of Agenor, king of Phœnicia. Jupiter became +enamoured of her, and assumed the form of a beautiful bull. When Europa +mounted on his back he carried her off. l. 291, <i>Atlas</i> and <i>axis</i> are +bones of the neck on which the head turns: the <i>atlas</i> is the first +cervical vertebra, the <i>axis</i> is the second cervical vertebra; +<i>symphyses</i>, the union of bones with each other. l. 327, “<i>Petrus, quo +vadis?</i>” “Peter, whither goest thou?” On the Appian Way at Rome there is a +small church called Domine Quo Vadis, so named from the legend that St. +Peter, fleeing from the death of a martyr, here met his Master, and +inquired of Him, “Domine, quo vadis?” (“Lord, whither goest Thou?”) to +which he received the reply, “Venio iterum crucifigi” (“I come to be +crucified again”)—whereupon the apostle, ashamed of his weakness, +returned. l. 569, <i>King Cophetua</i>: an imaginary king of Africa, who fell +in love with a beggar girl. He married her, and lived happily with her for +many years. l. 683, “<i>and tinkle near</i>”: at the mass, when the priest +consecrates the elements, a small bell is rung by the server to acquaint +the worshippers with the fact that the consecration has taken place. This, +of course, is the most solemn part of the mass, when the worshippers are +most attentive. l. 685, <i>Trebbian</i>: from Trevi, in the valley of the +Clitumnus. l. 786, “<i>Hocus-pocus</i>”; Nares says these words represent Ochus +Bochus, an Italian magician invoked by jugglers; but there are other +explanations. <i>Vallombrosa Convent</i>: a famous convent near Florence. +Milton says, “Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in +Vallombrosa” (<i>Paradise Lost</i>, i. 302). But the trees are pines, and <i>not +deciduous</i>. l. 1119, “<i>the Etruscan monster</i>”: Mr. Browning was a student +of Etruscan art and archæology. The Etruscans were the nation conquered by +the Romans, and their antiquities are abundant in the district between +Rome and Florence. The monster is the Chimæra, represented with three +heads—those of a lion, a goat, and a dragon. Bellerophon, mounted on the +horse Pegasus, attacked and overcame it. l. 1413, <i>Armida</i>: a beautiful +sorceress, a prominent character in Tasso’s <i>Jerusalem Delivered</i>. l. +1416, <i>Rinaldo</i>, in the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> poem, was the Achilles of the Crusaders’ +army. He ran away from home at the age of fifteen, and was enrolled in the +adventurers’ squadron. Rinaldo fell in love with Armida, and wasted his +time in voluptuous pleasures. l. 1420, <i>zecchines</i>, or <i>sequins</i>: Venetian +gold coins, worth about 9<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> l. 1669, <i>stinche</i>: a prison. l. 1808, +“<i>Helping Vienna</i>”: this refers to the second siege of Vienna by the Turks +in 1683, when 150,000 Turks sat down before the city, Cara Mustapha being +their leader. Pope Innocent XI. and John Sobieski, king of Poland, entered +into a league to oppose the common enemy of Christian Europe. The whole +Turkish army was defeated, and fled in the utmost disorder after the great +battle fought under the walls of Vienna on Sept. 12th, 1683. l. 1850, +<i>Gaudeamus</i>, “let us be glad.” l. 1925, <i>Jove Ægiochus</i>: Jupiter was +surnamed Ægiochus because, according to some authors, he was brought up by +a goat. Properly the name is from the <i>ægis</i> which the god bore. l. 1928, +“<i>Seventh Æneid</i>”: Virgil’s great poem was the “Æneis,” which has for its +subject the settlement of Æneas in Italy. The passage referred to is in +the <i>Eighth Book</i> (426), and begins “His informatum, manibus jam parte +politâ.” l. 2034, “<i>Romano vivitur more</i>”: Life goes on in the Roman way. +l. 2051, “<i>Byblis in fluvius</i>”: Byblis fell in love with her brother, and +was changed into a fountain. l. 2052, “<i>sed Lycaon in lupum</i>”: a cruel +king of Arcadia, named Lycaon, was changed into a wolf by Jupiter, because +he offered human sacrifices on the altar of the god Pan. l. 2144, +<i>Paynimrie</i>, heathendom. l. 2184, <i>Olimpia</i>, in <i>Orlando Furioso</i>: +Countess of Holland and wife of Bireno: when her husband deserted her she +was bound naked to a rock by pirates, but Orlando delivered her and took +her to Ireland. <i>Bianca</i>: wife of Fazio. She tried to save her husband +from death; failed, went mad, and died of a broken heart. l. 2185, <i>Ormuz +wealth</i>: the island Ormuz, in the Persian Gulf, is a mart for diamonds. l. +2211, <i>Circe</i>: a sorceress, who turned the companions of Ulysses into +swine. Ulysses resisted the metamorphosis by virtue of the herb <i>moly</i>, +given him by Mercury. l. 2214, <i>Lucrezia di Borgia</i>: she was thrice +married, her last husband being Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. Through her +influence many persons were put to death. Her natural son Gennaro having +been poisoned, she died herself as he expired. l. 2414, “<i>Who are these +you have let descend my stair?</i>” They were the Brothers of Mercy, whose +duty it was to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span> attend criminals on the scaffold. Their chant was the +Office of the Dying.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book XII., The Book and the Ring.</span>—On Feb. 22nd, 1698, Guido and his +confederates were executed. We have, in the concluding book of this long +poem, the reports of the execution, and the comments made concerning it in +Rome, from four persons. The first which the poet gives is a letter from a +stranger, a man of rank, on a visit to Rome from Venice. He begins his +letter on the evening of the day in question, by stating that the Carnival +is nearly over, the city very full of strangers, the old Pope tottering on +the verge of the grave, and the people already beginning to discuss his +probable successor. The Pope took daily exercise a week ago by the +river-side, for the weather was like May. Then, after more gossip about +politics, he says he has lost his bet of fifty sequins by the execution of +the Count: he had felt, up to two days ago, that he would win the wager, +as everybody seemed to think the Count would save his head; but the Pope’s +was the one deaf ear to every appeal for a reprieve, and so “persisted in +the butchery.” One of the writer’s friends was so annoyed at the Pope’s +refusal to spare the life of a man with whom he had dined, that he would +have actually stayed away from the execution, had it not been for a lady, +whose presence on that occasion made it a desirable amusement for him. Of +course, everybody of any importance was there, and the people made a +general holiday of the occasion. Then he narrates how the ecclesiastics +who had attended Guido on the eve of his execution considered that their +efforts to prepare him for the next world had been crowned at last with +complete success. The procession from the prison to the place of execution +is described; and severe exception is taken to the choice of the Piazza +del Popolo, as a deliberate affront to the aristocracy residing there. +Still, it had its compensations, as it afforded a fine spectacle, and +made, on the whole, a very pleasant day. There were the usual incidents of +a street crowd: the man run over and killed; the pushing and struggling +for good places; outcries there were, also, against the Pope for +forbidding the Lottery; and a miracle was worked upon a lame beggar by the +prayer of the holy Guido as he glanced that way. The Count was the last to +mount the scaffold steps, and the nobility were so occupied with observing +him and his behaviour in the presence of death, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span> they paid no +attention to the peasants who dangled on their respective ropes at the +gallows. The Count made a speech to the multitude, and comported himself +as became a good Christian gentleman. He begged forgiveness of God, and +hoped his fellow-men would put a fair construction on his acts; asked +their prayers for his soul, suggesting that they should forthwith say an +“Our Father” and a “Hail, Mary!” for his sake. Then he turned to his +confessor, made the sign of the cross, and cast a fervent glance at the +church over the way; rose up, knelt down again, bent his head, and with +the name of Jesus on his lips received the headsman’s blow. That +functionary showed the head to the populace in due form, and the spectacle +was over. The strangers present were a little disappointed at the Count’s +height and general appearance. They understood he was fully six feet high, +and youngish for his years, and if not handsome, at least dignified; but +his face was not one to please a wife. No doubt something was due to the +rough costume in which he committed the murder,—a coarse and shabby dress +enough. His end was peace. If his friend wishes to bet on the next Pope, +he will give him a hint; and now will conclude with the last new +pasquinade which has amused the city.</p> + +<p>There were three letters which were bound up with Mr. Browning’s famous +“find” at Florence. One of these was written by the Count’s advocate, De +Archangelis, concerning certain fresh points intended to be used in +mitigation of the sentence; but the lawyer explains that the Pope had set +every plea aside, and had hastened the execution. The letter is addressed +to the friends of the Count, and the client is referred to as a gallant +man, who died in faith in an exemplary manner. He considers that no blot +has fallen on the escutcheon of his noble house, as he had respect and +commiseration from all Rome, and from the cultivated everywhere. He +concludes by hoping that God may compensate for this direful blow by +sending future blessings on the family. Enclosed with this communication +is another, not intended for the noble persons to whom the above polite +effusion is addressed. This is for their lawyer, and is to be kept to +himself. He tells him that their “Pisan aid” was of no avail: the Pope was +determined to see Guido’s head drop off, and would not listen to reason. +Especially annoying was it that his superb defence was wasted: he got +nothing for his work, and he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span> does not care how soon the obstinate and +inept Pope dies. He tells his correspondent, who is his boy’s godfather, +how much the lad enjoyed the fine sight at the execution. He had promised +him, if his defence failed to save the Count’s head, that he should go and +see it chopped off. This was exactly to the boy’s taste; and he sat at a +window with a great lady, who twitted the boy on the triumph of his +father’s opponent Bottini, saying that his “papa, with all his eloquence, +cannot be reckoned on to help as before.” The boy cleverly replied that +his “papa knew better than offend the Pope and baulk him of his grudge +against the Count; he would else have argued off Bottini’s nose.” He would +have his opponent see that he was a man able to drive right and left +horses at once.—The next letter is from the Fisc Bottini, who says the +case ended as he foresaw: Pompilia’s innocence was easily proved. Guido +had made very good sport, and “died like a saint, poor devil!” Bottini +regrets he had not been on the other side. Pompilia gave him no +opportunity to show his skill; he could have done better with the Count. +He can imagine how De Archangelis crows and boasts that he kept the Fisc a +month at bay; he knows how he would grin and bray; but the thing which +most annoys him is the behaviour of the monk, whose report of the dying +Pompilia’s words took all the freshness from his best points; and then, +when preaching at San Lorenzo yesterday about the case, from the text “Let +God be true, and every man a liar,” said this, which he encloses from a +printed copy of the sermon all Rome is reading to-day. “Do not argue from +the result of this trial,” said the preacher, “that truth may look for +vindication from the world.” God seems to acquiesce with those who say ‘He +sleeps,’ and will not always put forth His hand and be recognised:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Because Pompilia’s purity prevails,<br /> +Conclude you, all truth triumphs in the end?”</p> + +<p>Of all the birds that flew from the ark, one only returned: how many +perished? So—</p> + +<p class="poem">“How many chaste and noble sister-fames<br /> +Wanted the extricating hand, and lie<br /> +Strangled, for one Pompilia proud above<br /> +The welter, plucked from the world’s calumny?”</p> + +<p>Truth has to wait God’s time; for how long did the pagans of old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span> Rome +point to the Catacombs and say, “Down there, below the ground, foul and +obscene rites are practised, far from the sight of men”? The most hideous +and fearful practices were charged upon the early Christians, who +worshipped in those places of refuge; but not for ages did God’s lightning +expose to the world those holy receptacles for the mangled remains of His +martyred saints, and permit the gaze of the multitude to penetrate the +sacred chambers, where the faith of Christ was kept alive in those +dreadful centuries of persecution. Then, when God did call the world to +see the whole secret so long preserved from the world above, what was +there to behold?—a poor earthen lump by the rock where the corpse lay, +the grave which held the treasured blood of the martyr:</p> + +<p class="poem">“The rough-scratched palm branch, and the legend left<br /> +<i>Pro Christo</i>.”</p> + +<p>And so these abhorred ones turned out to be saints. The best defence the +law can make for Pompilia is to say that wickedness was bred in her, and +after this specimen of man’s protection, one wave of God’s hand bids the +mists dispel, and the true instinct of a good old man, who hates the dark +and loves the light, adduces another proof that “God is true, and every +man a liar”: he who trusts to human testimony for a fact thereby proves +himself a fool: man is false, man is weak, and “truth seems reserved for +heaven, not earth.” As for himself, added the friar, “he has long since +renounced the world, yet he is not forbidden to estimate the value of that +which he has forsaken. If any one were to press him as to his content in +having put the pleasures of the world aside, he would answer that, apart +from Christ’s assurances, he dare not say whether he had not failed to +taste much joy; how much of human love in varied forms he had lost; how +much joy, from ‘books that teach and arts that help,’ he had missed. He +might have learned how to grow great as well as good. Many precious +things, no doubt, he had forsaken; but there was one—the chief object of +men’s ambition—earthly praise and the world’s good repute; in renouncing +these, his loss, he is sure, was light, and in choosing obscurity he was +convinced he had chosen well.” Bottini thinks this is vanity and spite: +how dare he say “every man is a liar”! What next? He finds that the sermon +has already had its effect for Gomez, who had decided to appeal to another +court, and declines to have any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span> more to do with lawyers; he has resolved +to let the liars possess the world, and so he must whistle for his job and +his fee. He is happy to say, however, that he shall soon be able to show +the rabid monk whether law be powerless or not; for by a great piece of +luck the convent to which Pompilia was first sent has claimed all her +property which she had willed to those who were to act as trustees for her +son and heir; as Pompilia had not been relieved at the trial from her +imputed fault, the convent had a right to claim its due, and take the +whole of the property. It has therefore become the lawyer’s duty to +institute procedure against this very Pompilia, whom last week he held up +as a saint, and charging her with having been a very common sort of +sinner, perform a volte-face before the selfsame court which he had so +recently addressed, and show this “foul-mouthed friar” that his white dove +is a sooty raven. The Pope, however, soon rectified this bad business, and +issued an “instrument,” which the poet says is contained in his precious +little account of the trial, by which the Supreme Pontiff restores the +perfect fame of the dead Pompilia, and quashes all proceedings brought or +threatened to be brought against the heir, by the Most Venerable Convent +of the Convertites in the Corso. So was justice done a second time. Two +years later died good Innocent XII., after a rule of nine years in Rome; +and so there is an end of the story. Mr. Browning is unable to say what +became of the boy Gaetano, the child of Guido and Pompilia.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Line 12, <i>Wormwood Star</i>: a star which (it was fabled) appeared at +the approach of death. l. 43: If the writer did bet on Spada for Pope he +lost, as Cardinal Albani became the next Pope, in 1700. l. 62, <i>Holy +Doors</i>: certain doors in St. Peter’s, at Rome, which are opened only at +the commencement of a Papal jubilee, and at its close are at once bricked +up again. l. 65, “<i>Fenelon will be condemned</i>”: Fenelon was one of the +Jansenist leaders in France, and Jansenism was on its trial in Rome. l. +89, <i>Dogana-by-the-Bank</i>: a new customhouse. l. 104, <i>Palchetto</i>: a +balcony made of scaffolding, used for public spectacles. l. 105, <i>The +Pincian</i>: the Pincian hill, beyond the Piazza del Popolo, is a hill of +gardens. Here were once the gardens of Lucullus, in which Messalina +celebrated her orgies. This is a fashionable drive in the evening for the +modern Romans. l. 114, <i>The Three Streets</i> diverge from the Piazza del<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span> +Popolo on the south; to the right is the <i>Via di Ripetta</i>; to the left the +<i>Via del Babuino</i>, leading to the Piazza di Spagna; in the centre is the +<i>Corso</i>. l. 139, <i>The New Prisons—Carceri Nuovi</i>: these were built by +Pope Innocent X. They are situated in the Via Giulia, leading to the +Bridge of St. Angelo. l. 140, <i>Pasquin’s Street</i>: the street in Rome where +there stands a mutilated statue in a corner of the palace of Ursini; so +called from a cobbler who was remarkable for his sneers and gibes, and +near whose shop the statue was dug up. On this statue it has been +customary to paste satiric papers. Hence a lampoon <i>à Pasquinade</i> is a +piece of satirical writing (<i>Webster’s Dict.</i>). <i>Place Navona</i>: the Piazza +Navona is the largest in Rome after that of St. Peter. It is officially +called Circo Agonale. The name is said to be derived from the <i>agones</i> +(corrupted to Navone, Navona), or contests which took place in the circus. +l. 158, <i>Tern Quatern</i>: a tern is a prize in a lottery, resulting from the +favourable combination of three numbers in the drawing; a quatern is a +combination of four numbers; and a combination of these is, I presume, +some very exceptional prize for the holders of the tickets. l. 178: +“<i>Pater</i>,” the Lord’s Prayer; “<i>Ave</i>,” the angelical salutation to the +Virgin. l. 179, “<i>Salve Regina Cœli</i>”: a hymn to the Virgin, sung at +Vespers, which begins with the words “Hail, Queen of Heaven!” l. 184, This +is a satire against relic-worship, and not in very good taste. l. 199, +<i>just-a-corps</i>: a short coat fitting tightly to the body. l. 208, +<i>quatrain</i>: a stanza of four lines rhyming alternately. l. 217, <i>socius</i>: +an ally, a confederate. l. 224, <i>Tarocs</i>: a game at cards played with +seventy-eight cards. l. 277, “<i>Quantum est hominum venustiorum</i>”: and all +men who have any grace. l. 290, “<i>hactenus senioribus</i>”: hitherto for our +superiors. l. 320, <i>Themis</i>: a daughter of Cœlus and Terra, who married +Jupiter against her own inclination. She is represented as holding a sword +in one hand and a pair of scales in the other. l. 326, “<i>case of Gomez</i>”: +this was a legal matter before the courts, and which was referred to in +one of the manuscripts consulted by Mr. Browning when engaged upon the +poem. l. 327, “<i>reliqua differamus in crastinum!</i>” the rest let us put off +till to-morrow; <i>estafette</i>: courier. l. 361, “<i>Bartolus-cum-Baldo</i>”: the +names of two eminent Italian jurists. l. 367, “<i>adverti supplico humiliter +quod</i>”: I have observed, I humbly beg that. l. 435, <i>Spreti</i>: the +subordinate of “De Archangelis”; he is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> “advocate of the poor.” l. 504, +“<i>their idol god an ass</i>”: the early Christians were accused by their +pagan persecutors of all sorts of horrible and degrading superstitions, +amongst other things of worshipping the head of an ass. There has recently +been discovered amongst the wall scratchings on some relics of ancient +Roman buildings the figure of a crucified man with the head of an ass; and +an inscription roughly scratched implying that this was the god of some +Christian thus held up to ridicule. l. 520, “<i>the rude brown lamp</i>”: used +in the Catacombs, both for light and for burning at the martyrs’ tombs to +honour them. l. 521, <i>the cruse</i>: thousands of these have been discovered, +and are exhibited in the museum at the Church of St. John Lateran in Rome. +l. 522, “<i>the palm branch</i>”: graven in countless parts of the Roman +catacombs, as a sign that the martyr buried beneath it had won the +victory, and had conquered by his faith. l. 523, “<i>pro Christo</i>,” for +Christ: that is to say, the martyrs had shed the blood presented in the +cruse for Christ’s sake. l. 647, <i>ampollosity</i>: windbag behaviour. l. 679, +“<i>claim every paul</i>”: paolo, an Italian coin worth sixpence. l. 715, +“<i>Astræa redux</i>”: justice brought back. l. 745, “<i>Martial’s phrase</i>”: +<i>Mart.</i> iv. 91. l. 787, <i>Gonfalonier</i>: Lord Mayor, who bore the standard, +or <i>gonfalon</i>. l. 811, <i>Buonarotti</i> == Michael Angelo. l. 812, +<i>Vexillifer</i>, standard-bearer. l. 813, <i>The Patavinian</i>: <i>i.e.</i>, Livy of +Padua. l. 815, “<i>Janus of the double face</i>”: Janus, a Roman deity +represented with two faces, because he was acquainted with the past and +future, or because he was taken for the sun who opens the day at his +rising and shuts it at his setting (<i>Lemprière</i>). l. 865, “<i>Deeper than +ever the Andante dived</i>”: a movement or piece in <i>andante</i> (rather slow) +time, as the <i>andante</i> in Beethoven’s fifth symphony. l. 872, “<i>Lyric +Love</i>”: the poet’s dead wife invoked in the first part of this work. Her +poems on Italy are referred to in the last line.—The <i>Encyclopædia +Britannica</i>, vol. xiii., p. 85, says that Innocent XI. was the Pope of +<i>The Ring and the Book</i>. Mr. Browning, however, says that Antonio +Pignatelli (Innocent XII.) was the Pope in question. The character of the +earlier sovereign pontiff certainly agrees better with the story told by +the poet than does that of the latter. It may be, as has been suggested by +Mr. George W. Cooke, in his <i>Guide-Book to Browning</i>, that the poet +confounded the two men with each other, or, what is more <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span>probable, that +he deliberately gave to Innocent XII. qualities which belonged only to +Innocent XI. (p. 339). The following sketch of the life of Innocent XI. +(Benedetto Odelscalchi) is taken from the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>: “He +was Pope from 1676 to 1689; was born at Como in 1611, studied law at Rome +and Naples, [and] held successively the offices of protonotary, President +of the Apostolic Chamber, Commissary of the Marca di Roma, and Governor of +Macerta; in 1647 Innocent X. made him cardinal, and he afterwards +successively became legate to Ferrara and bishop of Novara. In all these +capacities the simplicity and purity of character which he displayed had, +combined with his unselfish and open-handed benevolence, secured for him a +high place in the popular affection and esteem; and two months after the +death of Clement X. he was (Sept. 21st, 1676), in spite of French +opposition, chosen his successor. He lost no time in declaring and +practically manifesting his zeal as a reformer of manners and a corrector +of administrative abuses. He sought to abolish sinecures, and to put the +papal finances otherwise on a sound footing; beginning with the clergy, he +endeavoured to raise the laity also to a higher moral standard of living. +Some of his regulations with the latter object, however, may raise a smile +as showing more zeal than judgment. In 1679 he publicly condemned +sixty-five propositions, taken chiefly from the writings of Escobar, +Suarez, and the like, as ‘<i>propositiones laxorum moralistarum</i>,’ and +forbade any one to teach them under pain of excommunication. Personally +not unfriendly to Molinos, he nevertheless so far yielded to the enormous +pressure brought to bear upon him as to confirm in 1687 the judgment of +the inquisitors by which sixty-eight Molinist propositions were condemned +as blasphemous and heretical. His pontificate was marked by the prolonged +struggle with Louis XIV. of France on the subject of the so-called +‘Gallican Liberties,’ and also about certain immunities claimed by +ambassadors to the papal court. He died after a long period of feeble +health on August 12th, 1689. Hitherto repeated attempts at his +canonisation have invariably failed, the reason popularly assigned being +the influence of France. The fine moral character of Innocent has been +sketched with much artistic power, as well as with historical fidelity, by +Mr. Robert Browning in <i>The Ring and the Book</i>.”—Innocent XII. (Antonio +Pignatelli), whose name Mr. Browning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span> expressly gives, as fixing the +identity of the Pope whose character he portrayed, was born at Naples in +1615. He took Innocent XI. for his model. This pontiff made him, in 1681, +cardinal, bishop of Faenza, legate of Bologna, and archbishop of Naples. +“His election as pope took place February 12th, 1691. At the beginning of +his reign he endeavoured to abolish nepotism by means of a bull, in 1692. +His nepotes were the poor—the Lateran his hospital. The Bullarium +<i>magnum</i> contains many rules relating to cloister discipline and the life +of the secular clergy. His efforts for the restoration of discipline were +so great, that scoffers boasted he had reformed the Church both in its +head and members. He died on September 27th, 1700. Shortly before his +decease he settled a large sum on the hospital he had erected, and ordered +that his goods should be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. He was a +benevolent and pious prelate” (<i>Imp. Dict. Univ. Biog.</i>). There is such +frequent reference to Molinos and the doctrines of Molinism or Quietism in +<i>The Ring and the Book</i>, and the subject is so unfamiliar to the general +reader, that I have thought it wise to extract the following admirable +note on the question from Butler’s <i>Lives of the Saints</i>, under the date +November xxiv., “St. John of the Cross”:—“Quietism was broached by +Michael Molinos, a Spanish priest and spiritual director in great repute +at Rome, who, in his book entitled <i>The Spiritual Guide</i>, established a +system of perfect contemplation. It chiefly turns upon the following +general principles. 1. That perfect contemplation is a state in which a +man does not reason, or reflect, either on God or himself, but passively +receives the impression of heavenly light without exercising any acts, the +mind being in a state of perfect inaction and inattention, which this +author calls quiet. Which principle is a notorious illusion and falsity: +for even in supernatural impressions or communications, how much soever a +soul may be abstracted from her senses, and insensible to external +objects, which act upon their organs, she still exercises her +understanding and will, in adoring, loving, praising, or the like, as is +demonstrable both from principle and from the testimony of St. Teresa, and +all true contemplatives. 2. This fanatic teaches, that a soul in that +state desires nothing, not even his own salvation; and fears nothing, not +even hell itself. This principle, big with pernicious consequences, is +heretical; as the precept and constant obligation of hope of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span> salvation +through Christ is an article of faith. The pretence that a total +indifference is a state of perfection is folly and impiety, as if +solicitude about things of duty was not a precept. And so if a man could +ever be exempt from the obligation of that charity which he owes both to +God and himself, by which he is bound, above all things, to desire and to +labour for his salvation and the eternal reign of God in his soul. A third +principle of this author is no less notoriously heretical: that in such a +state the use of the sacraments and good works becomes indifferent; and +that the most criminal representations and motions in the sensitive part +of the soul are foreign to the superior, and not sinful in this elevated +state; as if the sensitive part of the soul was not subject to the +government of the rational or superior part, or as if this could be +indifferent about what passes in it. Some will have it that Molinos +carried his last principles so far as to open a door to the abominations +of the Gnostics; but most excuse him from admitting that horrible +consequence (see F. Avrigny, Honoré of St. Mary, etc.). Innocent XI., in +1687, condemned sixty-eight propositions extracted from this author as +respectively heretical, scandalous and blasphemous. Molinos was condemned +by the Inquisition at Rome, recalled his errors, and ended his life in +imprisonment in 1696 (see Argentere, <i>Collect. Judiciorum de Novis +Erroribus</i>, t. iii., part 2, p. 402; Stevaert, <i>Damnat. Prop.</i>, p. 1). +Semi-Quietism was rendered famous by having been for some time patronised +by the great Fenelon. Madame Guyon, a widow lady, wrote <i>An Easy and Short +Method of Prayer</i>, and <i>Solomon’s Canticle of Canticles interpreted in a +Mystical Sense</i>, for which, by order of Lewis XIV., she was confined in a +nunnery, but soon after enlarged. Then it was that she became acquainted +with Fenelon; and she published the Old Testament with explanations, her +own life by herself, and other works, all written with spirit and a lively +imagination. She submitted her doctrine to the judgment of Bossuet, +esteemed the most accurate theologian in the French dominions. After a +mature examination, Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, Cardinal Noailles, Fenelon, +then lately nominated archbishop of Cambray, and M. Trowson, superior of +S. Sulpice, drew up thirty articles concerning <i>the sound maxims of a +spiritual life</i>, to which Fenelon added four others. These thirty-four +articles were signed by them at Issy in 1695, and are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span> the famous +‘Articles of Issy’ (see Argentere, <i>Collectio Judiciorum de Novis +Erroribus</i>, t. iii.; Du Plessis, <i>Hist. de Meaux</i>, t. I., p. 492; +<i>Mémoires Chronol.</i>, t. iii., p. 28). During this examination Bossuet and +Fenelon had frequent disputes for and against disinterested love, or +divine love of pure benevolence. This latter undertook in some measure the +patronage of Madame Guyon, and in 1697 published a book entitled <i>The +Maxims of the Saints</i>, in which a kind of Semi-Quietism was advanced. The +clamour which was raised drew the author into disgrace at the court of +Lewis XIV., and the book was condemned by Innocent XII. in 1699, on the +12th of March, and on the 9th of April following, by the author himself, +who closed his eyes to all the glimmerings of human understanding to seek +truth in the obedient simplicity of faith. By this submission he +vanquished and triumphed over his defeat itself, and, by a more admirable +greatness of soul, over his vanquisher. With the book, twenty-three +propositions extracted out of it were censured by the Pope as rash, +pernicious in practice, and erroneous respectively; but none were +qualified as heretical. The principal error of Semi-Quietism consists in +this doctrine,—that, in the state of perfect contemplation, it belongs to +the entire annihilation in which a soul places herself before God, and to +the perfect resignation of herself to His will, that she be indifferent +whether she be damned or saved; which monstrous extravagance destroys the +obligation of Christian hope. The Divine precepts can never clash, but +strengthen one another. It would be blasphemy to pretend that because God, +as a universal ruler, suffers sin, we can take a complacence in its being +committed by others. God damns no one but for sin and final impenitence; +yet, whilst we adore the Divine justice and sanctity, we are bound to +reject sin with the utmost abhorrence, and deprecate damnation with the +greatest ardour, both which by the Divine grace we can shun. Where, then, +can there be any room for such a pretended resignation, at the very +thought of which piety shudders? No such blasphemies occur in the writings +of St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross, or other approved spiritual authors. +If they are, or seem to be, expressed in certain parts of some spiritual +works, as those of Bernieres, or in the Italian translation of Boudon’s +<i>God Alone</i>, these expressions are to be corrected by the rule of solid +theology. Fenelon was chiefly deceived by the authority of an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span> adulterated +edition of <i>The Spiritual Entertainments of St. Francis of Sales</i>, +published at Lyons, in 1628, by Drobet. Upon the immediate complaint and +supplication of St. Francis Chantal and John Francis Sales, brother of the +saint, then bishop of Geneva, Lewis XIII. suppressed the privilege granted +for the said edition by letters patent given in the camp before Rochelle +in the same year, prefixed to the correct and true edition of that book +made at Lyons by Cœurceillys in 1629, by order of St. Francis Chantal. +Yet this faulty edition, with its additions and omissions, has been +sometimes reprinted; and a copy of this edition imposed upon Fenelon, whom +Bossuet, who used the right edition, accused of falsifying the book (see +<i>Mem. de Trev.</i> for July, anno 1558, p. 446). Bossuet had several years +before maintained in the schools of Sorbonne, with great warmth, that a +love of pure benevolence is chimerical. Nothing is more insisted on in +theological schools than the distinction of the love of chaste desire and +of benevolence. By the first, a creature loves God as the creature’s own +good—that is, upon the motive of enjoying Him, or because he shall +possess God and find in Him his own complete happiness,—in other words, +because God is good to the creature himself, both here and hereafter. The +love of benevolence is that by which a creature loves God purely for His +own sake, or because He is in Himself infinitely good. This latter is +called pure or disinterested love, or love of charity; the former is a +love of an inferior order, and is said by most theologians to belong to +hope, not to charity; and many maintain that it can never attain to such a +degree of perfection as to be a love of God above all things; because, say +they, he who loves God merely because He is his own good, or for the sake +of his enjoyment, loves Him not for God’s own increated goodness, which is +the motive of charity; nor can he love Him more than he does his own +enjoyment of Him, though he makes no such comparison, nor even directly or +interpretatively forms such an act, that he loves Him not more than he +does his own possession of Him—which would be criminal and extremely +inordinate. So this love is good, and of obligation, as a part of hope; +and it disposes the soul to the love of charity. Bossuet allowed the +distinct motives of the loves of chaste desire and of benevolence; but +said no act of the latter could be formed by the heart which does not +expressly include an act of the former; because, said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span> he, no man can love +any good without desiring to himself at the same time the possession of +that good or its union with himself, and no man can love another’s good +merely as another’s. This all allow, if this other’s good were to destroy +or exclude the love of his own good. Hence the habit of love of +benevolence must include the habit of the love of desire. But the act may +be and often is exercised without it, for good is amiable in itself and +for its own sake; and this is the general opinion of theologians. However, +the opinion of Bossuet, that an act of the love of benevolence or of +charity is inseparable from an actual love of desire is not censured, but +is maintained also by F. Honoratus of St. Mary (<i>Tradition sur la +Contempl.</i>, t. iii., ch. iv., p. 273). Mr. Morris carries this notion so +far as to pretend that creatures, in loving God, consider nothing in His +perfections but their own good (Letter 2, ‘On Divine Love,’ p. 8). Some +advised Fenelon to make a diversion by attacking Bossuet’s sentiments and +books at Rome, and convicting him of establishing theological hope by +destroying charity. But the pious archbishop made answer that he never +would inflame a dispute by recriminating against a brother, whatever might +have seemed prudent to be done at another season. When he was put in mind +to beware of the artifices of mankind, which he had so well known and so +often experienced, he made answer: “Let us die in our simplicity” +(<i>moriamur in simplicitate nostrâ</i>). On this celebrated dispute the +ingenious Claville (<i>Traité du Vrai Mérite</i>) makes this remark,—that some +of those who carried the point were condemned by the public as if they +lost charity by the manner in which they carried on the contest; but if +Fenelon erred in theory he was led astray by an excess in his desire of +charity. By this adversity and submission he improved his own charity and +humility to perfection, and arrived at the most easy disposition of heart, +disengaged from everything in the world, bowed down to a state of +pliableness and docility not to be expressed, and grounded in a love of +simplicity which extinguished in him everything besides. Those who admired +these virtues in him before were surprised at the great heights to which +he afterwards carried them: so much he appeared a new man, though before a +model of piety and humility. As to the distinction of the motives in our +love of God, in practice, too nice or anxious an inquiry is generally +fruitless and pernicious; for our business is more and more to die to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span> +ourselves, purify our hearts, and employ our understanding in the +contemplation of the Divine perfections and heavenly mysteries, and our +affections in the various acts of holy love—a boundless field in which +our souls may freely take their range. And while we blame the +extravagances of false mystics, we must never fear being transported to +excesses in practice by the love of God. It can never be carried too far, +since the only measure of our love to God is to ‘love without measure,’ as +St. Bernard says. No transports of pure love can carry souls aside from +the right way, so long as they are guided by humility and obedience. In +disputes about such things, the utmost care is necessary that charity be +not lost in them, that envy and pride be guarded against, and that +sobriety and moderation be observed in all inquiries; for nothing is more +frequent than for the greatest geniuses, in pursuing subtleties, to lose +sight both of virtue, of good sense and reason itself. (See Bossuet’s +works on this subject, t. vi., especially his <i>Mystici in Tuto</i>, in which +he is more correct than in some of his other pieces; also Du Plessis, +<i>Hist. de l’Eglise de Meaux</i>, t. I., p. 485; the several lines of Fenelon, +etc.)” Mr. Browning in this poem is like a demonstrator of anatomy in a +famous school of dissection—some Sir Charles Bell lecturing to a crowded +room full of students; taking up nerve after nerve, following it through +all its ramifications, tracing it from its origin in brain or spinal cord, +and never leaving it till it is lost in microscopic fibres at the +periphery. He is as impartial as the anatomist, who asks no questions as +to the presence of the subject on his table: all he has to do with is the +science to which he is devoted. Mr. Browning is as happy with Guido in his +dungeon as with the Pope in the Vatican, or Pompilia in the presence of +the angels waiting to conduct her to God. The matter in hand is the human +soul; and as the greatest poet of the soul that the world has ever seen, +he is lost in his work. Count Guido never could have thought or said so +much for himself as Browning has said for him. Pompilia’s innocent, +unsophisticated heart never attempted to formulate such a meditation on +her brief history. Caponsacchi, we may be sure, never rose from his +sonnets and gallantry to such a conscious elevation of soul as burst +suddenly forth in the splendour of Pompilia’s soldier-saint on his +defence. If the Pope himself, the Vicar of Christ, came to his decision by +any such conscious process of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span> reasoning and high-toned Christian +philosophy—Catholic because it is the highest expression of the highest +thought and noblest impulse of the human heart—as that with which Mr. +Browning has invested him, then Innocent XII. was a man of genius second +only to the poet who has “created” him nearly two hundred years after he +died. But no! These people lived indeed; they wrought all which their +histories tell of them; but how and why, they never knew. God alone +perfectly reads the human heart; and a few men like Browning are +privileged to catch a word of the record here and there.</p> + +<p><b>Roland.</b> (See <a href="#childe"><span class="smcap">Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came</span></a>.)</p> + +<p><b>Rosny.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) Love, pure and passionate, unrestrained by +thought of self, and gluttonous of sacrifice, was the undoing of the hero. +No prudence could keep Rosny from his fate. Strength in love, and its +victory in death is judged by the maiden to be the best. Although there +does not seem to be any historical incident referred to in the poem, it +may be advisable to say that Maximilian de Béthune, duke of Sully +(1560-1641), the French statesman, was born at the château of Rosny, near +Mantes. The title of his baronetcy was derived from the name of his +birthplace, and he was commonly known by the name of Rosny all his life. +Murray says that “Rosny is a dirty little village about half-way between +Mantes and Bonnières. The château was the birthplace of Sully, where he +was frequently visited by his friend and master, Henri IV., who slept here +the night after his victory at Ivry. The king, having overtaken Sully on +the road desperately wounded, carried on a litter, accompanied by his +squires in a like plight, fell on his neck and affectionately embraced +him. The château is a plain, solid building of red brick, with stone +quoins and a high tent roof, surrounded by a deep ditch. It was rebuilt by +Sully at the beginning of the seventeenth century. From 1818 down to the +Revolution of 1830 Rosny was the favourite residence of the Duchesse de +Berri, who erected here a chapel to contain the heart of her husband.”</p> + +<p><b>Rosamund Page.</b> (<i>Martin Relph.</i>) She was the young girl who was shot by +the military for supposed treason, and whose innocence would have been +proved by her lover Parkes, if Mr. Martin had made known his presence when +he saw him arrive at the village from the eminence on which he was +standing.</p> + +<p><b>“Round us the Wild Creatures.”</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies.</i>) +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span>The lyric to the first poem, “The Eagle,” commences with this line.</p> + +<p><b>Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli.</b> (<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, in <i>Bells and +Pomegranates</i>, No. III., 1842. Since transferred to <i>Men and Women</i> in +<i>Poetical Works</i>, 1863.) Geoffrey de Rudel was a gentleman of Blieux, in +Provence, and one of those who were presented to Frederick Barbarossa in +1154. He was a troubadour. Sismondi, in his <i>Literature of the South of +Europe</i>, vol. i., p. 87 (Bohn’s Edit.), gives the following account of +Rudel:—“The knights who had returned from the Holy Land spoke with +enthusiasm of a Countess of Tripoli, who had extended to them the most +generous hospitality, and whose grace and beauty equalled her virtues. +Geoffrey Rudel, hearing this account, fell deeply in love with her without +having ever seen her, and prevailed upon one of his friends, Bertrand +d’Allamanon, a troubadour like himself, to accompany him to the Levant. In +1162 he quitted the court of England, whither he had been conducted by +Geoffrey, the brother of Richard I., and embarked for the Holy Land. On +his voyage he was attacked by a severe illness, and had lost the power of +speech when he arrived at the port of Tripoli. The Countess, being +informed that a celebrated poet was dying of love for her on board a +vessel which was entering the roads, visited him on shipboard, took him +kindly by the hand, and attempted to cheer his spirits. Rudel, we are +assured, recovered his speech sufficiently to thank the Countess for her +humanity, and to declare his passion, when his expressions of gratitude +were silenced by the convulsions of death. He was buried at Tripoli, +beneath a tomb of porphyry which the Countess raised to his memory, with +an Arabic inscription. I have transcribed his verses on “Distant Love,” +which he composed previous to his last voyage:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Angry and sad shall be my way,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">If I behold not her afar:</span><br /> +And yet I know not when that day<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shall rise—for still she dwells afar.</span><br /> +God! who hast formed this fair array<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of worlds, and placed my love afar,</span><br /> +Strengthen my heart with hope, I pray,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of seeing her I love afar.</span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span><br /> +“Oh Lord I believe my faithful lay,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For well I love her, though afar;</span><br /> +Though but one blessing may <ins class="correction" title="original: repa">repay</ins><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The thousand griefs I feel afar,</span><br /> +No other love shall shed its ray<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On me, if not this love afar;</span><br /> +A brighter one, where’er I stray<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I shall not see, or near, or far.”</span></p> + +<p>In Mr. Browning’s poem, Rudel chooses for his device a sun flower, which, +by ever turning towards the sun, has parted with the graces of a flower to +become a mimic sun. He says that men feed on his songs; but the +sunflower’s concern is not for the bees which gather the sweetness of the +flower’s breast,—its concern is solely for the sun. So turns Rudel +longingly to the East, where his lady dwells afar.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>St. John.</b> (<i>A Death in the Desert.</i>) The poem is a monologue of the dying +saint in the desert near Ephesus. He records what he has seen of our Lord, +and sadly anticipates the time when men will ask, “Did he say he saw?”</p> + +<p><b>St. Martin’s Summer.</b> (<i>Pacchiarotto, with Other Poems</i>, 1876.) A husband +and wife, both young, are reflecting on the fact that they have each +buried love under some tomb now moss-grown and forgotten. The man admits +that somehow, somewhere, he has pledged his “soul to endless duty, many a +time and oft.” Grief is fickle, for time is a traitor. Love, being mortal, +must pass away, and he does not think either of them so very guilty; they +grieved over their lost love at the time, though now it is forgotten. Yet, +though Love’s corpse lies quiet, its ghost sometimes escapes, and it is +not well to build too durable a monument over it; trellis-work is better. +It is better to own the power of first love, recognise its permanence in +the soul, and let the succeeding love be estimated at its value, which to +the poet does not seem to be very high. Dead loves are the potent, though +living loves are ghost dispellers. From the oft-repeated expressions of +Mr. Browning’s opinion, and from the drift of this poem, we might be +warranted in concluding that he believed only in first love.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>St. Martin’s Summer</i>; or, <i>St. Martin’s Little Summer</i>. From +October 9th to November 11th. At the close of autumn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> we generally have a +month of magnificent summer weather. “Expect St. Martin’s summer, halcyon +days” (<i>Shakespeare</i>, <i>I Hen. VI.</i>, Act i., sc. 2), and, “Farewell thou +latter spring! farewell All-hallown summer!” It is also called “St. Luke’s +Summer,” and Martinmas, and Martilmasse, because the feast of St. Martin +is kept on November 11th. St. Luke’s Day is October 18th. Verse 12, +<i>Penelope</i> was the wife of Ulysses. During the long absence of her husband +she was several times importuned by suitors to marry them. She told them +that she could not marry again, even if she were assured that Ulysses were +dead, until she had finished weaving a shroud for her aged father-in-law. +Every night she pulled out what she had woven during the day, and so her +work made no progress. <i>Ulysses</i>: is a corrupt form of Odusseus, the king +of Ithaca. He is one of the principal heroes in the Iliad of Homer, and +the chief hero of the Odyssey.</p> + +<p><b>St. Peter’s at Rome.</b> (<i>Christmas Eve.</i>) The great colonnade on either side +of St. Peter’s Square is of semicircular form, and is beautifully +described by the poet as</p> + +<p class="poem">“Arms wide open to embrace<br /> +The entry of the human race.”</p> +<p><a name="saul" id="saul"></a></p> +<p><b>Saul.</b> This is perhaps the grandest and most beautiful of all Mr. +Browning’s religious poems. It is a Messianic oratorio in words. The +influence of music in the cure of diseases has long been a subject of +study by physicians. Disraeli, in his <i>Curiosities of Literature</i>, has an +article on “Medical Music.” In Dr. Burney’s <i>History of Music</i> there is a +chapter on “The Medicinal Powers attributed to Music by the Ancients.” Dr. +Burney thought this influence was partly due to its occasioning certain +vibrations of the nerves, as well as its well-known effect in diverting +the attention. Depression of mind, delirium and insanity, were anciently +attributed to evil spirits, which were put to flight by suitable +harmonies. It was for this reason that David was sent for to cure the +mental derangement of Saul. The influence of music on the lower animals is +often exceedingly marked, and can scarcely in their case, as in our own, +be due to the association of ideas. The peculiar and sweet melancholy +inspired by distant church bells on a calm summer evening in the country, +though<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span> difficult to account for, is not less real than is the inspiring +and invigorating effect produced by march music on weary soldiers. Life is +a harmonious process; where there is most health there is most harmony in +the way in which the bodily functions are performed. A great physician has +described health as “going easy.” It would be strange, therefore, if +animal life were not attuned to sympathy with mechanical harmony. The most +modern theory is that “Music is one of the stimuli which regulates the +vaso-motor activity employed in tissue nutrition.” (See <i>Lancet</i>, May 9th, +1891, p. 1055.) In another article in the same journal, for May 23rd, the +subject is still further treated. The writer says: “The value of music as +a therapeutic method cannot yet be so precisely stated that we may measure +it by dosage or by an invariably similar order of effects. Of its +wholesome influence in various forms of disease, however, there can be +little or no doubt. In making this assertion we do not, of course, assign +to it any specific or peculiar action. It is no quack’s nostrum, no +reputed conqueror of ache or ailment. It is only, as we have already shown +in a recent article, one of those intangible but effective aids of +medicine which exert their healthful properties through the nervous +system. It is as a mental tonic that music acts. Accordingly, we may +naturally expect it to exert its powers chiefly in those diseases, or +aspects of disease, which are due to morbid nervous action. The evidence +of its utility on occasions where fatigue or worry has disturbed the +proper balance and relation between the mind and body of the so-called +healthy will explain its action in disease. We can readily understand how +a pleasing and lively melody can awake in a jaded brain the strong emotion +of hope, and energising by its means the languid nerve-control of the +whole circulation, strengthen the heart-beat and refresh the vascularity +of every organ. We can picture the same brain in forced irritation +fretfully stimulating the service of the vaso-motor nerves, and starving +the tissues of their blood-supply. Here, again, it is easy to comprehend +the regulating effect of quieter harmony, which brings at once a rest and +a diversion to the fretting mind. Even aches are soothed for a time by a +transference of attention; and why, then, should not pain be lulled by +music?” That it sometimes is thus relieved, we cannot doubt. It is +especially in the graver nervous maladies, however, that we should look +for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> benefit from this remedy. Definite statistics on the subject may not +be forthcoming, but all that we have said goes to show that states of +insanity, which are largely influenced by the condition of the sympathetic +system, should find some part of their treatment in the hands of the +musician. It is, therefore, for such cases especially that we would enlist +his services. In nervous diseases music produces a stimulating effect on +the trophic nerves, these are so called because they are supposed to +govern or control the normal metabolism of their tissues (or the phenomena +whereby living organisms assimilate their food into their tissues). +Depressing news will impede or even arrest digestion, as is well known; +cheerful conversation and music assist the assimilation of our sustenance. +The almost total ignorance of the ancients concerning physiological +processes caused them to attribute to demons the maladies which they could +not comprehend. Music was prescribed for Saul empirically: it mattered +little to the patient, so long as he was cured, whether music expelled a +demon who was tormenting him, or lubricated the wheels of his nervous +mechanism. David took his harp to Saul’s tent, untwisted the lilies which +were twined round the strings to keep them cool, and began by playing the +tune all the sheep knew, appealing to his mere animal nature, and bringing +him into harmony with the lower forms of healthy life; for there are +points in our lives touched alike by men and sheep. Then he played the +tune which the quails love, and that which delights the crickets, and the +music which appeals to the quick jerboa; for there is a bond of sympathy +between these creatures of our Father’s hand and ourselves which we do ill +to overlook; it is well for us sometimes to allow ourselves to be +influenced by those things which God has made to delight the beautiful +dumb creatures whom St. Francis of Assisi delighted to call his brothers +and sisters. It was another step towards Saul’s recovery when his soul +achieved the harmony of a quail and a jerboa. Then he advanced his theme: +he led the patient by his melody to the help tune of the reapers; brought +before his saddened soul the good friendship of the toilers at their +merry-making; expanded his heart in the warmth of brotherliness, the +sympathy of man with man. But higher yet! The march of the honoured dead +is played,—the praise of the men who have forgotten the faults in the +work the man completed. And after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span> that the joyful marriage chant, the +abounding life and cheerfulness of the maidens; the march, too, of the +comradeship of man in his greater task, the compulsion of the mechanical +forces to aid the progress of the race. More exalted strains follow when, +in the spirit of the worship of the one God of Israel, the Levites ascend +the altar steps to appease Jehovah in sacrifice. By slow degrees the music +had done the first part of its work: the sluggish forces of his life began +to tremble, the quiverings of returning vital force began to thrill his +torpid nerves. The song went forward: the wild joys of living were +celebrated, the value of man’s life, the good providence of God, the +friendship, the kingship, the gifts combined to dower one head with the +wealth of the world,—the stimulus of high ambition, the surpassing deeds, +the crowning fame all concentrated in Saul, king of Israel. And the leap +of David’s heart voicing itself in the cry “Saul!” went to his wintry soul +as “spring’s arrowy summons to the vale, making it laugh in freedom and +flowers.” Saul was “released and aware,” the despair was gone; pale and +worn, he stood by the tent pole, once more himself; he was recalled to +life, but not yet fitted to enjoy it. David pushes his advantage: the +future, with its glorious prospect, the reward which God shall give to the +successors of the king; and as David sings of the ages to come, which will +ring with his praises and the fame of his mighty deeds, the life stream +courses through his veins, he begins to live once more, he puts out his +hand, touches tenderly the brow of the harpist, and as he looks on David +the beautiful soul of the youthful singer goes out to the king in love, +the magnetism of his sympathy touches him, and he longs to impart to him +more than the past and present; he would give him new life altogether ages +hence as at the moment. If he would do this, how much more would God do!</p> + +<p class="poem">“Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare.<br /> +Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!”</p> + +<p>If he would fain do so much for this suffering man, would save, redeem and +restore him, interpose to snatch Saul the mistake, the failure, from ruin, +and bid him win by the pain-throb, the intensified bliss of the next +world’s reward and repose, if he would starve his own soul to fill up +Saul’s life, surely God would exceed all that David could desire to do, as +the Creator in everything<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span> surpasses the creature, and as the Infinite +transcends the finite. Then, in a magnificent prophetic burst, the singer +tells Saul:</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">“O Saul, it shall be</span><br /> +A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,<br /> +Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever; a Hand like this hand<br /> +Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!”</p> + +<p>The singer leaves the tent, goes to his home through the night, but not +alone: clouds of witnesses hover around him, angels have come to listen to +his prophecy, and the air is full of yearning spirits; the earth has +awakened; hell has heard the echoes of his song,—her crews are loosed +with alarm at the danger which impends; the stars in their courses beat +with emotion; all creation palpitates with excitement; but the Hand which +impelled him “quenched it with quiet,” and earth in rapture sank to rest. +But the world was the better for the blessed news, “felt the new law”; the +flowers rejoiced, the heart of the cedars and the sap of the vines +responded to the thrill of joy the brooks murmured, “E’en so, it is so!” +(What are known as the Messianic Psalms, or those in which David sings of +the Christ, who was to come, are the following: Psalm ii., xxi., xxii., +xlv., lxxii., and cx.)—In Longus’s romance of <i>Daphnis and Chloe</i> there +occur two passages which may have furnished Browning with the suggestion +of this series of tunes. The first is found on pp. 303-4 (I quote from +Smith’s translation, in the Bohn edition): “He ran through all variations +of pastoral melody; he played the tune which the oxen obey, and which +attracts the goats,—that in which the sheep delight. The notes for the +sheep were sweet, those for the oxen deep, those for the goats were +shrill. In short, his single pipe could express the tones of every pipe +which is played upon. Those present lay listening in silent delight; when +Dryas rose up, and desired Philetas to strike up the Bacchanalian tune, +Philetas obeyed; and Dryas began the vintage-dance in which he represented +the plucking of the grapes, the carrying of the baskets, the treading of +the clusters, and the drinking of the new-made wine.... Upon losing sight +of her, Daphnis, seizing the large pipe of Philetas, breathed into it a +mournful strain as of one who loves; then a lovesick strain as of one who +pleads; lastly, a recalling strain, as of one who seeks her whom he has +lost.” The other is from pp. 332-4: “Daphnis <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span>disposed the company in a +semicircle; then standing under the shade of a beech-tree, he took his +pipe from his scrip, and breathed into it very gently. The goats stood +still, merely lifting up their heads. Next he played the pasture tune, +upon which they all put down their heads and began to graze. Now he +produced some notes soft and sweet in tone: at once his herd lay down. +After this he piped in a sharp key, and they ran off to the wood, as if a +wolf were in sight.” Again, may not the impulse to write this poetry have +been derived from Heber’s <i>Spirit of Hebrew Poetry</i>? On p. 197, vol. ii., +of the translation, there is a kind of challenge to poets in general: +“Take David in the presence of Saul. More than one poet has availed +himself of the beauty of this situation; but no one to my knowledge has +yet stolen the harp of David, and produced a poem, such even as Dryden’s +ode in the composition of Handel, where Timotheus plays before Alexander. +If Browning did accept the challenge, it was only to refute the +observation by his success.”—<i>Pall Mall Gazette.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—The Bible story of David playing before Saul is found in 1 Samuel +xvi. 14-23. Stanza i., <i>Abner</i>: the son of Ner, captain of Saul’s host (1 +Samuel xxvi. 5). Stanza vi., <i>jerboa</i>: a small jumping rodent animal, +called also the jumping hare. Stanza viii., <i>Male-Sapphires</i>: the asterias +or star-stone, a semi-transparent sapphire. Stanza xiv., <i>Hebron</i>: the +most southern of the three cities of refuge west of Jordan; <i>Kidron</i>: a +brook in Jerusalem.</p> + +<p><b>Science in Browning.</b> The following are some references to scientific +matters in the poet’s works appended to my essay on “Browning as a +Scientific Poet” in <i>Browning’s Message to his Time</i>. The list of +references makes no pretension to be an exhaustive one—it could be +considerably amplified by a careful reperusal of the works—but it will +suffice for the purpose:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Anatomy.</i>—Poems, v., p. 152; vi., p. 158. Fifine, p. 68.</p> + +<p><i>Astronomy.</i>—Prince H. S., p. 96. Sordello, pp. 187, 188.</p> + +<p><i>Botany.</i>—Poems, i., p. 194; v., pp. 193, 208, 228, 312. Fifine, p. +14. Sordello, p. 20.</p> + +<p><i>Chemistry.</i>—Poems, iii., pp. 219, 220; iv., p. 238; v., pp. 155, +156. Prince H. S., pp. 44, 91. Red Cotton, p. 196. Croisic, pp. 90, +92. Fifine, pp. 65, 97, 130. Ferishtah, pp. 39, 40, 45, 76. Pippa P., +p. 250. Sordello, p. 194. Ring and Book, i., p. 2.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span><i>Electricity.</i>—Poems, vi., pp. 183, 203. Red Cotton, p. 196. Fifine, +p. 115.</p> + +<p><i>Evolution.</i>—Poems, i., p. 188. Prince H. S., p. 68. Fifine, p. 162. +La Saisiaz, p. 57.</p> + +<p><i>Light.</i>—Poems, iii., p. 170. Jocoseria, p. 124. Fifine, pp. 65, 29. +Numpholeptos, p. 101. Ring and Book, i., p. 71; iii., p. 170; iv., pp. +57, 79.</p> + +<p><i>Materia Medica and Therapeutics.</i>—Pietro of Abano, p. 84. Prince H. +S., p. 77. Paracelsus, p. 111.</p> + +<p><i>Medicine.</i>—Poems, iv., p. 273; v., p. 220. Dramatic Idyls, ii., +preface. Red Cotton, p. 199. Ferishtah, pp. 27, 55, 56. Ring and Book, +iv., p. 12.</p> + +<p><i>Pharmacy.</i>—Poems, iii., p. 96; v., p. 220.</p> + +<p><i>Physiology.</i>—Poems, v., p. 191. Sordello, p. 195. Tray.</p> + +<p><i>Scientific Matters in General.</i>—Poems, v., pp. 128, 302; vi., p. +203. Dramatic Idyls, ii., p. 68. Fifine, pp. 51, 86. La Saisiaz, pp. +69, 82. Ferishtah, p. 131. Sordello, pp. 25, 203. Ring and Book, iv., +pp. 61, 77, 180.</p></div> + +<p>The references are to the six-volume edition of the poems, and to the +original separate editions of the larger works.</p> + +<p><b>Sebald.</b> The man in <i>Pippa Passes</i> who murdered Ottima’s husband.</p> + +<p><b>Serenade at the Villa, A.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; +<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1868.) A lover serenades his lady on a sultry summer +night; and the burden of his song is that, as he watches through the dark +night at her villa, so he vows to watch through life over her path, and +shield her from danger and serve her in secret devotion, as he sings to +her now while she sleeps. The lady dreamed of music, but slept on, though +“the earth turned in her sleep in pain,” Earth has heard many serenades +and many vows made only to be broken. The iron gate which ground its teeth +to let the serenader pass seemed to be disputing the lover’s +protestations; and one fears that if his mistress was like the earth, and +“turned in her sleep” too, she would derive little satisfaction from his +music.</p> + +<p><b>Setebos.</b> (<i>Caliban and Setebos.</i>) The god of the Patagonians, whom Caliban +worships because his mother did so. Caliban thinks he lives in the moon, +and has made mankind for his amusement.</p> +<p><a name="abbas" id="abbas"></a></p> +<p><b>Shah ’Abbas.</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies, III.</i>) Shah ’Abbas, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span>surnamed the +Great, was one of the most celebrated of the sovereigns of Persia. He came +to the throne at the age of eighteen, in the year 1585. He defeated the +predatory Uzbeks, who occupied Khorassan, after a long and severe +struggle, in a great battle near Herat (1597), and drove them out of his +dominions. He was successful in the wars he waged against the Turks, and +thereby greatly extended his dominions. He defeated the united armies of +the Turks and Tartars in 1618. Baghdad was taken in 1623. When he died, in +1628, his dominions reached from the Tigris to the Indus. The +circumstances narrated in Mr. Browning’s poem are not historical. The +subject of the poem is Belief. “It is beautiful, but is it true?” +Ferishtah has now achieved dervishhood, and a pupil asks, “Was this life +lived, was this death died, not dreamed?” It was answered, “Many attested +it for fact.” A cup-bearer left on record a story of the death of the +brave Shah ’Abbas of simple fear at discovering a spider in his wine. The +cup-bearer was eye-witness of the fact. The Dervish says we must +distinguish between the noble act of belief, and mere easy acquiescence. +Twenty soldiers testify to the death of a comrade; yet he comes home safe +and sound after the wars. He had two sons. One who heard that his father +was living rejoiced; the other preferred the evidence of the twenty men +who saw him die. Ten years later home comes Ishak. The townsmen bid the +man of ready faith go and welcome his father, and the unbelieving one to +hide his head. The father would praise the loving heart in preference to +the sceptical head. “Is God less wise?” asks Ferishtah. The lyric teaches +that the true light of life is love. The dark ways of life and the +mysteries of the human heart will prove stones of stumbling and rocks of +offence where love is not the guide. With love and truth our obstacles +disappear.</p> + +<p><b>Shakespeare.</b> The poem which Mr. Browning wrote for the <i>Shakespearean +Show-Book</i>, 1884, commenced with the word “<i>Shakespeare!</i>” See <a href="#names"><span class="smcap">Names, The</span></a>.</p> + +<p><b>Shop.</b> (<i>Pacchiarotto, with other Poems</i>, 1876.) “As even in science all +roads,” it has been said, “lead to the mouth,” so is it with Art and +Letters. The poet deplores the life of a tradesman who knows no other use +of life but to enable him to drive a roaring business, his “meat and drink +but money chink,”—and so, because flesh must be fed, spirit is chained to +the counter.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span> The poet would have the tradesman brighten his daily life +with art and song, as men do who let their good angels sometimes converse +with them, in lands where poets and painters think more of art than money. +The danger and wickedness of compelling the soul to be the eternal slave +of sordid desires and petty anxieties is pointed out in this poem, and by +“shop” we are not only to think of tradesmen, but of all the large class +of those who are, like the man in the <i>Pilgrim’s Progress</i>, too busy with +the muck-rake to look at the heavens above them, and losing their higher +selves in their absorption in earthly employments.</p> + +<p><b>Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis.</b> (See <a href="#garden"><span class="smcap">Garden Fancies</span></a>.) The name of some old +scholar, who has written a book, which is read by a profane fellow in a +garden, who throws it into a decaying tree, there to be in company with +congenial fungi.</p> + +<p><b>“Sighed Rawdon Brown.”</b> (See <a href="#rawdon"><span class="smcap">Rawdon Brown</span></a>.)</p> + +<p><b>Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.</b> [<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, in <i>Bells and +Pomegranates, III.</i>, 1842, under the title of “Camp and Cloister—I. Camp +(French), II. Cloister (Spanish).”] There is, of course, no historical +basis for the subject-matter of this poem; but there is no reason why such +things should not occur in a convent or monastery. Human nature, we find, +is pretty much the same, under whatever conditions we examine it; and +petty malice, ill-nature, and evil passions, find their congenial soil +alike in the cloister and the world. Some of the most unpleasant failings +of our nature are no doubt directly fostered by cloister life, just as +religious people of every class are often censorious, uncharitable in +their judgments, pharisaical and severe. Unless monks and nuns are +regularly and entirely employed in useful labour, these evil weeds are +certain to spring up in the untilled soil of the human heart. Work is the +only remedy for pettiness of spirit, and active employment the only +atmosphere for the nobler products of the soul. It must never be +forgotten, however, that thousands of the most beautiful characters which +have blessed the world have been formed in the cloister; such are being +formed now, and will continue to be so formed, in direct proportion to the +useful work in which its inmates are employed.—To inferior and evil +natures the lofty and noble soul is generally an object of hatred and +jealousy. In this poem we have a coarse-minded Spanish monk, boiling over +with abhorrence of a good, gentle brother, who loves his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span> flowers, trims +his bushes and waters his rose trees with tender solicitude for the +welfare of his plants, the only things in the monastery he can love. The +simple talk of the hated friar at meal-time and recreation disgusts him; +he knows in his heart that the good brother is a saint, though he tries in +his malice to rake up some remembrance of a wandering look at odd times, +and is not so ritualistically exact as he is himself. He spites him by +damaging his plants all he can in a sly and ingenious way. He would like +him to lose his chances of <ins class="correction" title="original: savation">salvation</ins> if he could, so he will endeavour to +pervert his orthodoxy and trip him up on his way to heaven; he will slip +in amongst his greengages a wicked French novel; or he will even go so far +as to ask Satan’s aid,—when, as he meditates all this evil doing, the +vesper bell rings and the wicked old fellow goes to his prayers.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Verse ii., “<i>Salve tibi</i>”: a salutation, “Hail to thee!” Verse v., +<i>Cross-wise</i>: the use of the sign of the cross is traceable to the +earliest Christian times; “<i>The Trinity illustrate</i>”: when the sign of the +cross is made it is usual to add internally “In the name of the Father, +and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” A Catholic remembers the +Trinity in numberless ways; <i>Arian</i>: “One who adheres to the doctrines of +Arius, a presbyter of the Church in the fourth century, who held Christ to +be a created being, inferior to God the Father in nature and dignity, +though the first and noblest of created beings.” (<i>Mosheim.</i>) Verse vii., +“<i>The great text in the Galatians</i>” I take to be the tenth verse of the +third chapter: “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the +curse: for it is written, ‘Cursed is every one that continueth not in all +things which are written in the book of the law to do them.’” “It is +written,”—that is to say, in the book of Deuteronomy, xxviii., 15 to 68, +wherein are set forth at length the curses for disobedience. Those +arithmetically-minded commentators on this poem who have been disappointed +in finding only some “seventeen works of the flesh” in Galatians v. 19-21 +will find an abundant opportunity for their discrimination in the chapter +of Deuteronomy to which I refer. The question to settle is “the +twenty-nine distinct damnations.” St. James says in his epistle (ii. 10), +that “he who offends against the law in one point is guilty of all.” If, +therefore, the envious monk could induce his brother<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span> to trust to his +works instead of to his faith, he would fall under the condemnation of the +law, as explained by St. Paul in his epistle. <i>Manichee</i>: “A follower of +Manes, a Persian, who tried to combine the Oriental philosophy with +Christianity; and maintained that there are two supreme principles: the +first of which, <i>light</i>, was held to be the author of all good; the +second, <i>darkness</i>, the author of all evil” (<i>Webster’s Dict.</i>). Verse +viii., <i>Belial</i>: an evil spirit; “<i>Plena gratiâ Ave, Virgo!</i>”: probably +intended to represent “the angelical salutation,” which is “Ave Maria, +gratiâ plena”—“Hail, Mary, full of grace!”</p> +<p><a name="solomon" id="solomon"></a></p> +<p><b>Solomon and Balkis.</b> (<i>Jocoseria</i>, 1883.) The Queen of Sheba sits on +Solomon’s ivory throne, and talks of deep mysteries and things sublime; +she proves the king with hard problems, which he solves ere she has +finished her questions. He humiliates the Queen by making her difficulties +appear so childish that there is no spirit in her; but she musters up +strength enough for just one more hard question: “Who are those,” she +asks, “who of all mankind should be admitted to the palace of the wisest +monarch on application?” Solomon says the wise are the equals of the king; +those who are kingly in craft should be his friends. He in turn asks the +Queen, “Who are those whom she would admit on similar terms?” “The good,” +replies the Queen; and as she speaks she contrives to jostle the king’s +right hand, so that the ring which he wore was turned from inside now to +outside. The ring bore the “truth-compelling Name” of Jehovah; then the +King was obliged to confess that those only would be considered wise who +came to offer him the incense of their flattery.—“You cat, you!” he adds; +and then, turning the Name towards her, makes her also tell the truth. +Promptly she is compelled to answer that by the good she means young men, +strong, tall, and proper: these she enlists always as her servants. Then +sighed the King: the soul that aspires to soar, yet ever crawls, can +discern the great, yet always chooses the small; there is earth’s rest, as +well as heaven’s rest; above, the soul may fly; here, she must plod +heavily on earth. Solomon proposes to resume their discourse; but the +Queen tells him that she came to see Solomon the wise man; not to commune +with mind, but body—and, if she does not make too bold, would rather have +a kiss!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—<i>Conster</i>: Old English for construe. +“<i>spheieron do</i>”:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span> (Greek), +his home: the idea of Balkis talking Greek to Solomon is to show what a +prig she was. <i>Solomon’s Seal</i>, as Solomon’s ring is commonly called, was +celebrated for its potency over demons and genii. It is probably of Hindu +origin, and bore the double triangle sign of the Kabalists. (See <i>Isis +Unveiled</i> (Blavatsky), vol i., pp. 135-6.) “<i>You cat, you!</i>” Solomon +descending to this is exquisitely funny. <i>Habitat</i>: a suitable +dwelling-place. <i>Hyssop</i> (1 Kings iv. 33): a plant which grows in crevices +of walls. Dr. J. Forbes Royle considers it to be the caper (<i>Capparis +spinosa</i>), the <i>asuf</i> of the Arabs. According to the <i>Encyclopædia +Britannica</i>, vol. xxiv., p. 738, the land of Sheba is Yemen, in Arabia. +The ancient name of the people of Yemen was Saba (Sheba). “The Queen of +Sheba who visited Solomon may have come with a caravan trading to Gaza, to +see the great king whose ships plied on the Red Sea. The Biblical picture +of the Sabæan kingdom is confirmed and supplemented by the Assyrian +inscriptions. Tiglath Pileser II. (733 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>) tells us that Teima, Sabá, +and Haipá (== Ephah, Gen. xxv. 4 and Isa. lx. 6) paid him tribute of gold, +silver, and much incense. Similarly Sargon (715 <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span>), in his <i>Annals</i>, +mentions the tribute of Shamsi, queen of Arabia, and of Itamara of the +land of Sabá, gold and fragrant spices, horses and camels.” The following +is the Talmudic legend concerning the visit of the Queen of Sheba to +Solomon. “It is said that Solomon ruled the whole world, and this verse is +quoted as proof of the assertion: ‘And Solomon was ruling over all the +kingdoms, which brought presents, and served Solomon all the days of his +life’ (1 Kings iv. 21). All the kingdoms congratulated Solomon as the +worthy successor of his father, David, whose fame was great among the +nations; all save one, the kingdom of Sheba, the capital of which was +called Kitore. To this kingdom Solomon sent a letter: ‘From me, King +Solomon, peace to thee and to thy government. Let it be known to thee that +the Almighty God has made me to reign over the whole world, the kingdoms +of the north, the south, the east, the west. Lo, they have come to me with +their congratulations, all save thee alone. Come thou also, I pray thee, +and submit to my authority, and much honour shall be done thee; but if +thou refusest, behold, I shall by force compel thy acknowledgment.—To +thee, Queen Sheba, is addressed this letter in peace from me, King +Solomon, the son of David.’ Now, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span> Queen Sheba received this letter, +she sent in haste for her elders and councillors, to ask their advice as +to the nature of her reply. They spoke but lightly of the message and the +one who sent it; but the Queen did not regard their words. She sent a +vessel, carrying many presents of different metals, minerals, and precious +stones, to Solomon. It was after a voyage of two years’ time that these +presents arrived at Jerusalem; and in a letter intrusted to the captain, +the Queen said ‘After thou hast received the message, then I myself will +come to thee.’ And in two years after this time Queen Sheba arrived at +Jerusalem. When Solomon heard that the Queen was coming, he sent Benayahu, +the son of Jehoyadah, the general of his army, to meet her. When the Queen +saw him she thought he was the King, and she alighted from her carriage. +Then Benayahu asked, ‘Why alightest thou from thy carriage?’ And she +answered, ‘Art thou not his majesty, the King?’ No, replied Benayahu, ‘I +am but one of his officers.’ Then the Queen turned back and said to her +ladies in attendance, ‘If this is but one of the officers, and he is so +noble and imposing in appearance, how great must be his superior, the +King!’ And Benayahu, the son of Jehoyadah, conducted Queen Sheba to the +palace of the King. Solomon prepared to receive his visitor in an +apartment laid and lined with glass; and the Queen at first was so +deceived by the appearance that she imagined the King to be sitting in +water. And when the Queen had tested Solomon’s wisdom<a name='fna_5' id='fna_5' href='#f_5'><small>[5]</small></a> and witnessed his +magnificence, she said: ‘I believed not what I heard; but now I have come, +and my eyes have seen it all, behold, the half has not been told to me. +Happy are thy servants who stand before thee continually to listen to thy +words of wisdom. Blessed be the Lord thy God, who hath placed thee on a +throne to rule righteously and in justice.’ When other kingdoms heard the +words of the Queen of Sheba, they feared Solomon exceedingly, and he +became greater than all the other kings of the earth in wisdom and in +wealth. Solomon was born in the year 2912 <span class="smcaplc">A.M.</span>, and reigned over Israel +forty years. Four hundred and thirty-three years elapsed between the date +of Solomon’s reign and that of the Temple’s destruction.” (From Polano’s +translation of selections from the Talmud.)</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span><b>Sonnet</b>:<a name='fna_6' id='fna_6' href='#f_6'><small>[6]</small></a>—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Eyes, calm beside thee, (Lady could’st thou know!)<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">May turn away thick with fast-gathering tears:</span><br /> +I glance not where all gaze: thrilling and low<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Their passionate praises reach thee—my cheek wears</span><br /> +Alone no wonder when thou passest by;<br /> +Thy tremulous lids bent and suffused reply<br /> +To the irrepressible homage which doth glow<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On every lip but mine: if in thine ears</span><br /> +Their accents linger—and thou dost recall<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Me as I stood, still, guarded, very pale,</span><br /> +Beside each votarist whose lighted brow<br /> +Wore worship like an aureole, ‘O’er them all<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My beauty,’ thou wilt murmur, ‘did prevail</span><br /> +Save that one only:’—Lady could’st thou know!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>August 17th, 1834</i> Z.”</span></p> + +<p><b>Sordello.</b> [<span class="smcap">The Man.</span>] Sordello was a troubadour, and we have to thank Dante +for having made, in his <i>Purgatorio</i>, such frequent reference to him as +will preserve his name from oblivion as long as the <i>Divina Commedia</i> is +known to the world. Sordello is referred to in the <i>Purgatorio</i> eight +times: viz., in Canto vi. 75; vii. 2, 52; viii. 38, 43, 62, 93; ix. 53 +(Cary’s translation). In the sixth Canto we are introduced to Sordello +thus:—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“But lo! a spirit there</span><br /> +Stands solitary, and toward us looks;<br /> +It will instruct us in the speediest way.”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We soon approach’d it. O thou Lombard spirit!</span><br /> +How didst thou stand, in high abstracted mood,<br /> +Scarce moving with slow dignity thine eyes.<br /> +It spoke not aught, but let us onward pass,<br /> +Eying us as a lion on his watch.<br /> +But Vergil, with entreaty mild, advanced,<br /> +Requesting it to show the best ascent.<br /> +It answer to his question none return’d;<br /> +But of our country and our kind of life<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span>Demanded—When my courteous guide began,<br /> +‘Mantua,’ the shadow, in itself absorb’d,<br /> +Rose towards us from the place in which it stood,<br /> +And cried, ‘Mantuan! I am thy countryman,<br /> +Sordello.’ Each the other then embraced.</p> + +<p>Cary’s note is valuable: “The history of Sordello’s life is wrapt in the +obscurity of romance. That he distinguished himself by his skill in +Provençal poetry is certain; and many feats of military prowess have been +attributed to him. It is probable that he was born towards the end of the +twelfth, and died about the middle of the succeeding century. Tiraboschi, +who terms him the most illustrious of all the Provençal poets of his age, +has taken much pains to sift all the notices he could collect relating to +him; and has particularly exposed the fabulous narrative which Platina has +introduced on this subject in his history of Mantua. Honourable mention of +his name is made by our poet in the treatise <i>De Vulg. Eloq.</i>, lib. i. +cap. 15, where it is said that, remarkable as he was for eloquence, he +deserted the vernacular language of his own country, not only in his +poems, but in every other kind of writing. Tiraboschi had at first +concluded him to be the same writer whom Dante elsewhere (<i>De Vulg. +Eloq.</i>, lib. ii. c. 13) calls Gottus Mantuanus, but afterwards gave up +that opinion to the authority of the Conte d’Arco and the Abate +Bettinelli. By Bastero, in his <i>Crusca Provenzale</i>, (ediz. Roma., 1724, p. +94), amongst Sordello’s MS. poems in the Vatican, are mentioned “Canzoni, +Tenzoni, Cobbole,” and various “Serventesi,” particularly one in the form +of a funeral song on the death of Blancas, in which the poet reprehends +all the reigning princes in Christendom.—Many of Sordello’s poems have +been brought to light by the industry of M. Raynouard, in his <i>Choix des +Poésies des Troubadours</i> and his <i>Lexique Roman</i>.” Sismondi, in his +<i>Literature of Europe</i>, vol i., p. 103, says that the real merit of +Sordello as a troubadour “consists in the harmony and sensibility of his +verses. He was amongst the first to adopt the ballad form of writing; and +in one of these which has been translated by Millot, he beautifully +contrasts, in the burthen of his ballad, the gaieties of nature, and the +ever-reviving grief of a heart devoted to love. Sordel, or Sordello, was +born at Goïto, near Mantua, and was for some time attached to the +household of the Count of S. Bonifazio, the chief of the Guelf<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span> party, in +the march of Treviso. He afterwards passed into the service of Raymond +Berenger, the last count of Provence of the house of Barcelona. Although a +Lombard, he had adopted in his compositions the Provençal language, and +many of his countrymen imitated him. It was not at that time believed that +the Italian was capable of becoming a polished language. The age of +Sordello was that of the most brilliant chivalric virtues and the most +atrocious crimes. He lived in the midst of heroes and monsters. The +imagination of the people was still haunted by the recollection of the +ferocious Ezzelino, tyrant of Verona, with whom Sordello is said to have +had a contest, and who was probably often mentioned in his verses. The +historical monuments of this reign of blood were, however, little known; +and the people mingled the name of their favourite poet with every +revolution which excited their terror. It was said that he had carried off +the wife of the Count of S. Bonifazio, the sovereign of Mantua; that he +had married the daughter or sister of Ezzelino; and that he had fought +this monster, with glory to himself. He united, according to popular +report, the most brilliant military exploits to the most distinguished +poetical genius. By the voice of St. Louis himself he had been recognised, +at a tourney, as the most valiant and gallant of knights; and at last the +sovereignty of Mantua had been bestowed upon this noblest of the poets and +warriors of his age. Historians of credit have collected, three centuries +after Sordello’s death, these brilliant fictions, which are, however, +disproved by the testimony of contemporary writers. The reputation of +Sordello is owing, very materially, to the admiration which has been +expressed for him by Dante; who, when he meets him at the entrance of +Purgatory, is so struck with the noble haughtiness of his aspect, that he +compares him to a lion in a state of majestic repose, and represents +Virgil as embracing him on hearing his name.”—I am indebted to Professor +Sonnenschein for the following account of the man Sordello, as well as for +the valuable notes on the period, and the persons with whom the poem +deals. The notes distinguished by the initial [S.] are also due to +Professor Sonnenschein’s generous assistance: “All that is known of the +real Sordello is that he was a troubadour of the thirteenth century +mentioned by his contemporary Rolandin, who states that he eloped with +Cuniza, wife of Count Richard de Saint Bonifazio, and sister of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span> Ezzelino +da Romano. Some of his poems still survive, and from them a few more facts +relating to the poet may be gleaned; and that is the whole of our real +knowledge of him. For some reason, however, the poets and romantic +historians have made much more of him. First, Dante met him at the portals +of Purgatory among those who had perished by violence without a chance of +repenting them of their sins. When he saw Vergil he cried: ‘<i>O Montovano +io son Sordello, della tua terra</i>’ (‘Oh Mantuan, I am Sordello of thy +country!’) Dante, in his poem says he had the appearance and aspect of a +lion; and the same author, in a prose treatise on the vulgar tongue, says +Sordello excelled in all kinds of poetry and aided in founding the Italian +language by numerous words skilfully borrowed from the dialects of +Cremona, Brescia and Verona. A century later Benvenuto d’Imola, in a +commentary on the works of Dante, says Sordello was a citizen of Mantua, +an illustrious and able warrior and a courtier, who lived in the reign of +Ezzelin da Romano, whose sister Cuniza fell in love with him and invited +him to a rendezvous. Ezzelino, disguised as a servant, discovered them +together, but permitted Sordello to escape upon promising not to return. +Yielding, however, again to the entreaties of Cuniza, he was again +discovered by her watchful brother, and fled. He was pursued and slain by +the emissaries of Ezzelino. Benvenuto, who gives no authority for his +statements, also says that Sordello was the author of a book which he +admits never to have seen, called <i>Thesaurus thesaurorum</i>. About the same +time some biographical notices of the troubadours, written in the language +of Provence, mention Sordello as having been the son of a poor knight of +Mantua. At an early age he composed numerous songs and poems, which gained +him admittance to the court of the Count of St. Boniface. He fell in love +with the wife of that lord, and eloped with her. The fugitives were +received by the lady’s brothers, who were at war with St. Boniface. After +a time he left the lady there, and passed into Provence, where his talents +obtained such brilliant recognition that he was soon the owner of a +château, and made an honourable marriage. Early in the next century +Aliprando wrote a fabulous rhyming chronicle of Milan, in which Sordello +plays a conspicuous part. In this he is a member of the family of +Visconti, born at Goïto. He began his literary career in early youth by +producing a book<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span> called <i>The Treasure</i>. Arms proving more attractive, by +the time he was twenty-five he was distinguished for his bravery, his +address, his nobility, and the grace of his demeanour, although he was +small of stature. Accepting many challenges, he was always victorious, and +sent the vanquished knights to tell his deeds of valour to the King of +France. At the invitation of that prince he was about to cross the Alps, +when he yielded to the entreaties of Ezzelino and went to reside with him +at Verona. There he long resisted the advances, the prayers, the +entreaties of Ezzelino’s sister Beatrice. At last he fled to Mantua, but +was followed by Beatrice disguised as a man. He finally yielded, and +married her. A few days later he left her, and went to France, where he +spent several months with the court at Troyes, where his valour, his +gallantry and his poetic talents were greatly admired. After being +knighted by the King, who gave him three thousand francs and a golden +falcon, he returned to Italy. All the towns received him with pomp, as the +first warrior of his time. The Mantuans came out to meet him, but he +passed on to Verona to reclaim his bride. When he returned with her, he +was welcomed with eight days of public rejoicing. After that, Ezzelino +laid siege to Mantua, but was driven away by Sordello, who afterwards +aided the Milanese against him and gave him the wound of which he died. +What became of him afterwards does not appear; but this chronicle, which +was a mass of anachronisms, romances, and fictions, was largely drawn upon +by the historic writers of the next century, many of whom have adopted the +story of Sordello as therein told, and of the Lady Beatrice who never +existed. In the sixteenth century, Nostradamus, in his <i>Lives of Provençal +Poets</i>, says: Sordello was a Mantuan, who at the age of fifteen years +entered the service of Berenger, Count of Provence. His verses were +preferred to those of Folquet de Marseille, Perceval Doria, and all the +other Genoese and Tuscan poets. He made very beautiful songs, not about +love, but on subjects relating to philosophy. He translated into +Provençalese a digest of the laws, and wrote a historical treatise on the +Kings of Aragon and Provence. Darenou, to whom I am indebted for most of +my information, after examining all of these and some later authorities, +considers that the only certain facts are those written by Rolandin +shortly after Sordello’s death. Dante was so nearly contemporaneous that +he also may be taken as an authority. Of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span> his Italian poems, and his prose +works, nothing is known to have survived; but at least thirty-four of his +Provençalese poems still exist. Of these one-half are love songs of the +most pronounced type, despite the statement of Nostradamus to the +contrary. Several have been translated into French, and some are said to +be of a high character. In one, the poet boasts of his conquests and his +fickleness. Some are in the form of dialogues, in which he discusses such +questions as, Whether it be better for a lover to die or continue to exist +after the loss of his beloved; or Whether it be right to sacrifice love to +honour, or to prefer the glory of knightly combat to love. In a poetic +letter to the Count of Provence, he begs that prince not to send him to +the Crusades, as he cannot make up his mind to cross the seas, and wishes +to delay as long as possible entering into life eternal. In several of his +poems he violently attacks Pierre Vidal, the troubadour, whom he seems to +have hated bitterly. The whole story is a curious instance of development. +Originally a troubadour, apparently with most of the vices, faults, and +virtues of the typical troubadour of the thirteenth century, he gradually +became, as the centuries advanced, first a hero of romance, a +<i>preux-chevalier</i> and model Italian knight-errant, and finally that which +we see Mr. Browning has made of him. In <i>Sismondi</i> I find the following +concerning Sordello: “Two men, superior in character to these court +parasites, about this time attained great reputations in the Lombard +republics, through their Provençalese songs. One of these, Ugo Cattola, +devoted his talents to combating the corruption and tyranny of princes; +the other, Sordello de Mantua, is enveloped in mysterious obscurity. The +writers of the following century speak of him with profound respect, +without giving us any details of his life. Those who came later have made +him a magnanimous warrior, a valiant defender of his country, and some +even a prince of Mantua. The nobility of his birth and his marriage with a +sister of Eccelino da Romana, are attested by his contemporaries. His +violent death is obscurely indicated by the great Florentine poet; and the +only claims to immortality that remain to Sordello to-day are his words +and actions mentioned by Dante in the <i>Purgatorio</i>.” The following is also +given in <i>Sismondi</i> as one of the few surviving specimens of Sordello’s +poetry. It is called:</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span><br /><span class="smcap">Tensa de Sordel et de Peyre Guilhem.</span></p> + +<table width="60%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">GUILHEM.</td><td><span class="spacer"> </span></td> + <td align="center">GUILLAUME.</td></tr> +<tr><td valign="top">En Sordel que vous en semblan De la pros contessa preysan? +Car tout dison, et van parlan Que per s’amor etz in vengutz, +E quen cujatz esser son drutz, En blanchatz etz por ley canutz.</td><td> </td> +<td>Eh bien, Sordel, que vous en semble de cette aimable comtesse +si prisée? Car tous disent, tous vous répétant que pour son +amour vous êtes veni ici, que vous avez cru pouvoir être son +amant, et que pour elle vos cheveux blanchissent, et vos forces vous abandonnent.</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">SORDEL.</td><td> </td><td align="center">SORDELLO.</td></tr> +<tr><td valign="top">Peyre Guilhem tot son affan Mist Dieu in ley for per mon dan. +Les beautatz que les autratz an En menz, et el pres son menutz. +Ans fos ab emblanchatz perdutz Che esso non fos advengutz.</td><td> </td> +<td>Pierre Guillaume, Dieu mit en elle tout son travail, pour en +faire mon tourment. Les beautés qu’ont toutes les autres ne sont +rien; leur prix est peu de chose. Plutôt fussé-je perdu par la vieil-lesse, +que d’avoir éprouvé ce que j’éprouve.</td></tr></table> + +<p>The poem of <i>Sordello</i> is a picture of the troublous times of the early +part of the thirteenth century in North Italy, and is the history of the +development of Sordello’s soul. Frederick II. is Emperor and Honorius III. +is Pope. Frederick II., the noblest of mediæval princes, the man who +suffered much because he was centuries in advance of his time, is too well +known to need any description. To understand the causes of the conflicts +in which Lombardy was engaged, we must go back to the time of Charlemagne, +who took the Lombard king Desiderius prisoner, in 774, and destroyed the +Lombard kingdom. Luitprand, the sovereign of the Lombards from 713 to 726, +had extended the dominion of Lombardy into Middle Italy. The Popes found +this dominion too formidable, so they solicited the assistance of the +Frankish kings. The whole of Upper Italy had been conquered by the +Lombards in the sixth century. “Charles, with the title of King of the +Franks and Lombards, then became the master of Italy. In 800, the Pope, +who had crowned Pepin King of the Franks, claimed to bestow the Roman +Empire, and crowned his greater son Emperor of the Romans” (<i>Encyc. +Brit.</i>). Now began a vast<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span> system in North Italy of episcopal +“immunities,” which made the bishops temporal sovereigns. In the eleventh +century the Lombard cities had become communes and republics, managing +their own affairs and making war on their troublesome neighbours. Leagues +and counter-leagues were formed, and confederacies of cities even dared to +challenge the strength of Germany. Otto the Great’s empire, in the early +years of the tenth century, consisted of Germany and Lombardy, with the +Romagna and Burgundy; and it was Otto who fixed the principle, that to the +German king belonged the Roman crown. The crown of Germany was at this +period elective, although it often passed in one family for several +generations. Struggles for supremacy between the two powers took place in +the reign of the Emperor Henry IV. of Franconia and the papacy of Gregory +VII., the famous Hildebrand. It was the struggle between Church and State +destined to be fraught with so much misery. The contest ended at this +period in a compromise; but most of the gains were on the side of the +Pope. It was renewed with great fierceness in the reign of Frederick I. of +Hohenstaufen, called Barbarossa or “Red Beard,” who came to the throne in +1152. He bestowed on the Empire the title of Holy. The cities of Lombardy +were commonwealths, somewhat after the fashion of those of ancient Greece; +they had grown very rich and powerful, and whilst they admitted the +Emperor’s authority in theory, were averse to the practice of submission. +The city of Milan, by her attacks on a weaker neighbour, who appealed to +Frederick for aid, began a war which resulted in the Peace of Constance in +1183, by which the Emperor abandoned all but a nominal authority over the +Lombard League. The son and successor of Frederick—Henry VI.—began to +reign in 1190; he married Constance, heiress of the Norman kingdom of +Sicily, which was a fief of the papal crown. After the death of Henry VI., +Philip, his brother, began to reign, in 1198. In 1208, Otho IV., surnamed +the Superb, ascended the throne, and was crowned Emperor. The next year he +was excommunicated and deposed. In 1212, Frederick II., King of Sicily, +who was the son of Henry VI., began his reign, he received the German +crown at Aix-la-Chapelle, 1215, and the Imperial crown of Rome, 1230. When +he died he possessed no fewer than six crowns,—the Imperial crown, and +the crowns of Germany, Burgundy, Lombardy, Sicily, and Jerusalem. He had +assumed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span> cross, and in 1220 he left his Empire for a space of fifteen +years, to accomplish the crusade and to carry on the war with the Lombard +cities and the Pope (Gregory IX.). John of Brienne, the dethroned King of +Jerusalem, who was afterwards Emperor of the East, had a daughter named +Yolande, whom Frederick married. He sent a bunch of dates to Frederick to +remind him of his promised crusade. When that sovereign formed the army of +the East, he left his young son Henry to represent him in Germany. +Frederick was deposed by his subjects, and died in 1250, naming his son +Conrad as his successor. In the beginning of the reign of Conrad III., +1138, the Imperial crown was contested by Henry the Proud Duke of Saxony. +It was at this time that the contests between the factions, afterwards so +famous in history as those of the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, began. Duke +Henry had a brother named Welf, the leader of the Saxon forces. They used +his name as their battle cry, and the Swabians responded by crying out the +name of the village where their leader, the brother of Conrad, had been +born—namely, Waibling. The Welfs and the Waiblings were therefore the +originals of the terms Guelfs and Ghibellines.—“<i>The Romano Family.</i>” +During the reign of Conrad II. (1024-39) a German gentleman, named +Eccelino, accompanied that Emperor to Italy, with a single horse, and so +distinguished himself that, as a reward for his services, he received the +lands of Onaro and Romano in the Trevisan marches. This founder of a +powerful house, famous for its crimes, was succeeded by Alberic, and he by +another Eccelino, called the First and also le Bègue—‘the Stammerer.’ +These gentlemen largely augmented their patrimony, acquiring Bassano, +Marostica, and many other estates situated to the north of Vicenza, +Verona, and Padua; so that their fief formed a small principality, equal +in power to either of its neighbouring republics; and as the factions of +the towns sought to strengthen themselves by alliances with them, the +Seigneurs de Romano were soon regarded as the chiefs of the Ghibelline +party in all Venetia. Eccelin le Bègue and Tisolin de Campo St. Pierre, a +Paduan noble, were warm friends, and the latter was married to a daughter +of the former, and had a son grown to manhood. Cecile, orphan daughter and +heiress of Manfred Ricco d’Abano, was offered in marriage, by her +guardians, to the young St. Pierre; but the father before concluding the +advantageous alliance, thought it proper to consult his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</a></span> friend and +father-in-law, Eccelino. That gentleman, however, wished to obtain this +great fortune for his own son, and secretly bribed the lady’s guardians to +deliver her up to him, when he carried her off to his castle of Bassano +and then hurriedly married her to his son. This treachery made the whole +family of Campo St. Pierre indignant, and they vowed vengeance. They had +not long to wait for their opportunity. Several months after the marriage, +the wife of the young Eccelino went on a visit to her estates in the +Paduan territory, with a suite more brilliant than valiant. Tisolin’s son, +Gerard, who was to have been Cecile’s husband, and was now her nephew, +seized her and carried her off from the midst of her retinue to his castle +of St. André. Cecile, escaping after a time, returned to Bassano and +related her terrible misfortune to her husband, who at once repudiated +her, and she afterwards married a Venetian nobleman. The two families had, +however, thus founded a mutual hate, which descended from father to son, +and cost many lives and much blood. In the meantime, Eccelino II.’s power +was augmented by this marriage and the one he afterwards contracted. He +made alliances with the republics of Verona and Padua; and he soon +required their aid, for in 1194, when one of his enemies was chosen +podesta of Vicenza, he, his family, and the whole faction of Vivario, were +exiled from the city. Before submitting, he undertook to defend himself by +setting fire to his neighbours’ houses; and a great portion of the town +was destroyed during the insurrection. These were the first scenes of +disorder and bloodshed which greeted the eyes of Eccelino III. or the +Cruel, who was born a few weeks before. Exile from Vicenza was not a +severe sentence for the lords of Romano; for they retired to Bassano, in +the midst of their own subjects, and called around them their partisans, +who were persecuted as they themselves were, without the same resources. +By the aid thus given with apparent generosity, they degraded their +associates, transforming their fellow-citizens into mercenary satellites, +and increasing their influence in the town, from which their exile could +not be of long duration. The Veronese interfered to establish peace in +Vicenza. They had the Romanos recalled, with all their party; and an +arrangement was made by which two podestas were chosen at the same time, +one by each party. In 1197, however, the Vicenzese again chose a single +podesta, hostile to Eccelino,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[Pg 487]</a></span> and this time not only banished the +Romanos, but declared war against them, and sent troops to besiege +Marostica. Eccelino, placed between three republics, could choose his own +allies; and decided now upon Padua. The Paduan army attacked that of +Vicenza, near Carmignano, and took two thousand prisoners. The Vicenzese +called upon the Veronese to assist them, and together they invaded the +Paduan territory, desolating it up to the very walls of the city, and so +frightening the Paduans that they delivered up all of their prisoners +without waiting to consult Eccelino. That prince took this opportunity to +break with Padua, and called upon Verona to arbitrate between him and +Vicenza, giving them as hostages his young daughter and his strongest two +castles, Bassano and Anganani. By this thorough confidence he so won the +affection of the podesta of Verona that he concluded peace for him with +Vicenza and the whole Guelf party, and then returned his castles to him. +The Paduans revenged themselves by confiscating Onaro, the first estate +possessed by the Romano family in Italy.—<i>Salinguerra.</i> William +Marchesella des Adelard, chief of the Guelf party in Ferrara, had the +misfortune to see all the male heirs of his house, his brother and all his +sons, perish before him. An only daughter of his brother, named +Marchesella, remained, and he declared her the sole heiress to his immense +estates, naming the son of his sister as heir should Marchesella die +without children. Tired of warfare, and hoping to ensure peace to his +distracted country, he determined to do so by uniting the leading families +of the two factions. Salinguerra, son of Torrello, was at the head of the +Ghibellines in Ferrara; and William not only offered his niece to him in +marriage, but actually before his death placed her, then a child of seven +years, in his hands to be reared and educated. The Guelfs were, however, +unwilling to permit the heiress of their leading family to remain in the +hands of their enemies; and they could not consent to transfer their +affection and allegiance to those with whom they had fought for so long a +time. They therefore found an opportunity to surprise Salinguerra’s +palace, and abduct Marchesella, whom they placed in the palace of the +Marquis d’Este, choosing Obizzo d’Este to be her husband, and placing her +property in the hands of the Marquis. In the end Marchesella died before +she was married; her cousins, designated by William, in this event, to be +his heirs, were afraid to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[Pg 488]</a></span> claim the estates, and the whole property +continued in the hands of the Este family. In the meantime the insult +offered to Salinguerra was keenly resented. The abduction took place in +1180, and for nearly forty years afterwards civil war continued within the +walls of Ferrara without ceasing. During those years, ten times one +faction drove the other out of the city, ten times all the property of the +vanquished was given up to pillage, and all their houses razed to the +ground.—<i>Eccelino and Salinguerra.</i> In 1209 Otho IV. entered Italy, and +held his court near Verona. All the chief lords of Venetia—but especially +Eccelino II., de Romano, and Azzo VI., Marquis d’Este—were summoned to +attend. Those two gentlemen had profited by the long interregnum which +preceded Otho’s reign to increase their influence in the marches, and the +factions were more bitter against each other than ever. These factions had +different reasons for existing in the different towns; but they quickly +adopted the newly introduced names of Guelf and Ghibelline, and a common +tie was thus suddenly formed between the factions in the various places. +Thus, by the mere adoption of a name, Salinguerra in Ferrara and the +Montecci in Verona, found themselves allies of Eccelino; and, on the other +hand, the Adelards of Ferrara, Count St. Bonifazio at Verona and Mantua, +and the Campo St. Pierre at Padua, were all allies of the Marquis d’Este. +The year before, Este, after a short banishment, had re-entered Ferrara, +and had succeeded in being declared lord of that city,—the first time +that an Italian republic abandoned its rights for the purpose of +voluntarily submitting to a tyrant. About the same time the Marquis had +gained an important victory over Eccelino and his party; but, at the +moment when the Emperor entered Italy, Eccelino had gained some advantages +over the Vicenzese, and thought himself on the point of capturing the +city. Azzo marched against him, whereupon Salinguerra entered Ferrara and +drove out all of Azzo’s adherents. The summons sent to the chiefs to meet +the Emperor no doubt prevented a bloody battle and a useless massacre. +(See note, <a href="#Page_500">p. 500</a>; see also the article, <a href="#taurello"><span class="smcap">Taurello Salinguerra</span></a>, in this +work.) In 1235, after a long and turbulent reign, full of vicissitudes, +Eccelino II. retired into a monastery, and divided his principality +between his two sons, Eccelino III. and Alberic. The latter remained at +Treviso; but Eccelino III. became very powerful, kept all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</a></span> Italy in +turmoil, and was notorious for his infamous tyrannies and cruelties. In +1255 he was excommunicated by the Pope, Alexander IV., and a crusade was +preached against him. He fought against his enemies from that time, with +varying success and stubborn courage, until 1259, when he was wounded in +battle and taken prisoner. The leaders of the enemy with difficulty +protected him from the fury of the soldiers and the people; but he himself +tore the bandages from his wounds, and died on the eleventh day of his +captivity. All the cities which he had conquered and oppressed at once +revolted; and Treviso, where Alberic had reigned ever since his fathers +abdication, revolted and drove him out. Alberic, with his family, took +refuge in his fortress of San Zeno, in the Euganean mountains; but the +league of Guelf cities declared against him, and the troops of Venice, +Treviso, Vicenza, and Padua surrounded the castle, where they were soon +joined by the Marquis d’Este. Traitors delivered up the outworks; but +Alberic and his wife, two daughters and six sons, took refuge on the top +of a tower. After three days, compelled by hunger, he delivered himself up +to the Marquis, at the same time reminding him that one of his daughters +was the wife of Renaud d’Este. In spite of this, however, he and his +family were all murdered and torn to pieces, and their dismembered bodies +divided among all the cities over which the hated Romano family had +tyrannised. In 1240 Gregory IX. preached a crusade against the Emperor +Frederick II., and a crusading army surrounded Ferrara, where Salinguerra, +then more than eighty years old, had reigned for some time as prince and +as head of the Ghibellines. He successfully defended the city for some +time; but when attending a conference, to which he was invited by his +enemies, he was treacherously captured and sent to Venice, where, after +five years’ imprisonment, he died.” [S.]</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] <i>Sordello</i> is Browning’s <i>Hamlet</i>, and is the most obscure of +all Mr. Browning’s poems. It has been aptly compared to a vast palace, in +which the architect has forgotten to build a staircase. Its difficulties +are not merely those which are inseparable from an attempt to trace the +development of a soul,—such a work without obscurity could only deal with +a very simple soul,—but are consequent on the remoteness of time in which +the political events and historical circumstances which formed the +environment of Sordello’s existence took place,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</a></span> and the partial interest +which the majority of readers feel concerning those events. The work deals +with the struggles of the Guelfs and Ghibellines; and it is necessary to +possess a fair knowledge of the history of the times, places, and persons +concerned before we can grasp the mere outlines of the story. It must be +admitted, whether we allow the charge of obscurity or not, that Mr. +Browning never helps his reader. He may or may not actually hinder him: it +is certain that he does not go out of his way to assist him. The first +step towards understanding Sordello, then, is to gain some acquaintance +with the period and personages of the story. The work is full of beauty. +Probably no poet ever poured out such wealth of richest thought with such +princely liberality as Mr. Browning has done in this much discussed poem. +It is like a Brazilian forest, in which, though we shall almost certainly +lose our way, it will be amidst such profusion of floral loveliness that +it will be a delight to be buried in its depths.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book I.</span>—The poem in its first scene places us in imagination in Verona +six hundred years ago. A restless group has gathered in its market-place +to discuss the news which has arrived,—that their prince, Count Richard +of St. Boniface, the great supporter of the cause of the Guelfs, who had +joined Azzo, the lord of Este, to depose the Ghibelline leader, Tauzello +Salinguerra, from his position in Ferrara, has become prisoner in Ferrara; +and in consequence immediate aid is demanded from the “Lombard League of +fifteen cities that affect the Pope.” The Pope supported the Guelf cause, +the Kaiser that of the Ghibellines. The leaders of the two causes are +described, and the principles of which each was the representative. We are +next introduced to Sordello; not in his youth, but in a supreme moment +before the end of his career—a moment which has to determine his future. +How this pregnant moment has come about, and how the past has fashioned +the present, the poet now proceeds to explain. We are taken back to the +castle of Goïto, when Sordello was a boy already of the regal class of +poets, musing by the marble figures of the fountain, and finding +companions in the embroidered figures on the arras. Adelaide, wife of +Eccelino da Romano, the Ghibelline prince, was mistress of the castle. +Sordello was only a page, known only as the orphan of Elcorte, an archer, +who, in the slaughter of Vicenza, had saved his mistress<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</a></span> and her new-born +son at the cost of his own life. The son was afterwards known as Eccelin +the Cruel. Sordello led the ideal life of a poet child at Goïto. All +nature was a scene of enchantment to him, was endowed with form and colour +from his own rich fancy. But Sordello was not content with living his own +life, he must combine in his person the lives of his imaginary heroes. He +will be perfect: he chooses Apollo as his ideal: he must love a woman to +match his high ambition. He aims at Palma, Eccelin’s only child by his +former wife, Agnes Este, but who has been already set apart, for reasons +of state, as the wife of Count Richard of St. Boniface, the Guelf. Palma, +however, it is reported in the castle, will refuse him. Sordello anxiously +awaits his opportunity. The return of Adelaide to the castle demands the +services of the troubadours: Sordello’s chance lies this way.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book II.</span> shows us Sordello setting forth on a bright spring day, full of +hope that he will meet Palma. Arriving at Mantua, he finds a Court of +Love, in which his lady sits enthroned as queen, and the troubadour +Eglamor contending for her prize against all comers. Eglamor seems to make +but a poor affair of the story he is singing. He ceases. Sordello knows +the story too, and feels that he can do better with it. He springs +forward, and with true inspiration sings a new song to the old idea +transfigured. He has won the prize from Palma’s hands. Swooning with joy, +he is carried back to Goïto, the poet’s crown on his brow and Palma’s +scarf round his neck. Eglamor is dead with spite, and the troubadours have +a new chief. Thus was Sordello poet, Master of the Realms of Song. He will +slumber: he can arise in his strength any day. He is summoned to Mantua to +sing to order. He finds the idea of work distasteful; but he conquers, and +is crowned with honours. But he feels he has only been loving song’s +results, not song for its own sake; his failure to reach his ideal +destroys the pleasure derived from his success. Soon the true Sordello +vanished, sundered in twain, the poet thwarting the man. The man and bard +was gone; internal struggles frittered his soul; he became too +contemptuous, and so he neither pleased his patrons nor himself. He falls +lower and lower, abjures the soul in his songs, and contents himself with +body. His degradation is complete. Meanwhile Adelaide dies, and Eccelin +resolves to forsake the world and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[Pg 492]</a></span> Emperor, and come to terms with the +Pope. Taurello rages furiously at this news, and returns to Mantua. +Sordello is chosen to sound his praises. “’Tis a test, remember,” says +Naddo. But Sordello loathes the task: he will not sing at all, and runs +away to Goïto.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book III.</span>—Once more at his old home, Mantua becomes but a dream. +Sordello, well or ill, is exhausted: rather than imperfectly reveal +himself, he will remain unrevealed. He will remain himself, instead of +attempting to project his soul into other men. He spent a year with Nature +at Goïto, but as one defeated,—youth gone, love and pleasure foregone, +and nothing really done. With an all-embracing sympathy he has not himself +really lived. When Nature makes a mistake she can rectify it. He must +perish once, and perish utterly. He should have brought actual experience +of things obtained by sterling work to correct his mere reflections and +observations. He may do something yet: though youth is gone, life is not +all spent. He has the will to do,—what of the means? Resolution having +thus been taken, the means are suddenly discovered. Naddo arrives as +messenger from Palma, telling how Eccelin has distributed his wealth to +his two sons, has married them to Guelf brides, and has retired to a +monastery; that Palma is betrothed to Richard of St. Boniface, and +Sordello must compose a marriage hymn. Sordello seizes the opportunity, +and hastens to meet Palma at Verona. We have now arrived at the point at +which the poem of Sordello opens in Book I. He has to hear a strange +confession from the lips of Palma. If Sordello had been paralysed by +indecision, she too had done nothing, because she was awaiting an +“out-soul.” Weary with waiting for her complement, which should enable her +to live her proper life, she had conceived a great love for Sordello when +he burst upon the scene at the Love Court. To win Sordello for herself and +her cause henceforth was her life-object. When Adelaide died this became +practicable. She had heard the astonishing dying confession of Adelaide, +and had witnessed Eccelin’s visit to the death-chamber when he came to +undo everything which Adelaide had done. He had resolved to reconcile the +Guelf and Ghibelline factions. Taurello determined to use Palma to support +the Ghibellines. Palma, as head of the house, agreed to this; but it was +arranged that the project should not at present be made public. She must +profess her intention<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[Pg 493]</a></span> to carry out the arrangement which Taurello had +made, before he entered on the religious life, of marrying the Guelf, +Count Richard. Taurello has thus entrapped the Count, and has him in +prison at Ferrara. Palma’s father, Eccelin, blots out all his old +engagements. All now rests with Palma, and she arranges to fly with +Sordello on the morrow as arbitrators to Taurello at Ferrara. Now is one +round of Sordello’s life accomplished. Mr. Browning here makes a long +digression, beginning, “I muse this on a ruined palace-step at Venice.” +The City in the Sea seems to him a type of life:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Life, the evil with the good,<br /> +Which make up living, rightly understood;<br /> +Only do finish something!”</p> + +<p>No evil man is past hope; if he has not truth, he has at least his own +conceit of truth; he sees it surely enough: his lies are for the crowd. +Good labours to exist; though Evil and Ignorance thwart it. In this life +we are but fitting together an engine to work in another existence. He +sees profound disclosures in the most ordinary type of face: the world +will call him dull for this, as being obscure and metaphysical. There are +poets who are content to tell a simple story of impressions; another class +presents things as they really are in a general, and not, as in the +previous class, in an individual sense; but the highest class of all +brings out the deeper significance of things which would never have been +seen without the poet’s aid. These are the Makers-see—obviously a higher +type of genius than the Seers. “But,” asks the objector, “what is the use +of this?” It is quite true that men of action, like Salinguerra, are not +unwisely preferred to dreamers like Sordello: they, at least, <i>do</i> the +world’s work somehow; this is better than talking about it. But, at any +rate, there is no harm done in compelling the Makers-see to do their duty. +It is their province to gaze through the “door opened in heaven,” and tell +the world what they see, and make us see it too, as did John in Patmos +Isle. And so Mr. Browning has analysed for us the soul of Sordello; but he +expects no reward for it. The world is too indolent to look into heaven +with John, or into hell with Dante.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book IV.</span>—The description of the unhappy position of Ferrara, “the lady +city,” for which both Guelf and Ghibelline contended,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[Pg 494]</a></span> opens the fourth +book. Sordello is here with Palma. He has seen the dreadful condition of +the people, and has espoused their cause. Here, in the midst of carnage +and ruin, Sordello learns his altruism. He appeals to Taurello +Salinguerra, but nothing comes of it. The more he sees of the misery of +the people, the more he vows himself to an effort to raise them. The +soldiers ask him to sing at their camp-fire. He sings, and Palma hears and +takes him back to Taurello Salinguerra. The poet here describes the chief +and tells his story. He is the doer, as contrasted with Sordello the +visionary; but he has led a life of misfortune and adventure. At the +burning of Vicenza he lost wife and child; he embraced the cause of +Eccelin and the Ghibellines. As Eccelin had gone into a monastery, all +Taurello’s plans were disarranged. He ponders as to whom shall be given +the Emperor’s badge of the prefectship; and what shall he do with his +prisoner Richard; Sordello asks Palma what are the laws at work which +explain Ghibellinism. He feels he has been a recreant to his race: +Taurello has the people’s interest at heart; all that Sordello <i>should</i> +have done he <i>does</i>. Are Guelfs as bad as Ghibellines, or better? Both +these do worse than nothing, is a reflection which comforts the do-nothing +poet. What if there were a Cause higher and nobler than either, and he +(Sordello) were to be its true discoverer? A soldier, at this point, +suggests to Sordello a subject for a ballad: a tale of a dead worthy long +ago consul of Rome, Crescentius Nomentanus, who—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">“From his brain,</span><br /> +Gave Rome out on its ancient place again.”</p> + +<p>Sordello resolves to build up Rome again—a Rome which should mean the +rights of mankind, the realisation of the People’s cause.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book V.</span>—The splendid dream of a New Rome has vanished from Sordello’s +mind ere night; his enthusiasm is chilled, and arch by arch the vision has +dissolved. Mankind cannot be exalted of a sudden; the work of ages cannot +be done in a day. The New Rome is one more thing which Sordello could +imagine, but could not make. His heart tells him that the minute’s work is +the first step to the whole work of a man: he has purposed to take the +last step first: he may be a man at least, if he cannot be a god. The +world is not prepared for such a violent change; society has never been +advanced by leaps and bounds. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[Pg 495]</a></span>Charlemagne had to subject Europe by main +force, then Hildebrand was enabled to rule by brain power. Strength +wrought order, and made the rule of moral influence possible; in its turn, +moral power allied itself with material power. The Crusaders learned the +trick of breeding strength by other aid than strength; and so the Lombard +League turned righteous strength against pernicious strength. Then comes, +in its turn, God’s truce to supersede the use of strength by the Divine +influence of Religion. All that precedes is as scaffolding, indispensable +while the building is in progress, but a thing to spurn when the structure +is completed: that, however, is not yet. As talking is Sordello’s trade, +he endeavours to persuade Salinguerra to join the Guelfs, as this, to +Sordello, seems the more popular cause. Taurello hears him with patience, +mixed with a contemptuous indifference. His scornful demeanour rouses +Sordello to make the highest claims for the poet’s authority: “A poet must +be earth’s essential king.” To bend Taurello to the Guelf cause, Sordello +would give up life itself. He knows that “this strife is right for once.” +Taurello is impressed at last: the argument hits him, not the man; himself +must be won to the Ghibellines. Palma, being a woman, is impossible as +leader of the party; her love for Sordello may, however, be cast in the +balance, and in an inspired moment Taurello invests Sordello with the +Emperor’s badge, which he casts upon his neck. Palma now tells Taurello +that Adelaide, on her death-bed, confessed that Sordello was Taurello’s +own son, who did not perish, as he believed, at Vicenza. Adelaide, for her +own purposes, had concealed his rescue. “Embrace him, madman!” Palma +cried; thoughts rushed, fancies rushed. “Nay, the best’s behind,” Taurello +laughed. Palma hurries Taurello away, that Sordello may collect his +thoughts awhile. Sordello is crowned. They hear a foot-stamp as they +discuss the future, in the room where they left Sordello, and “out they +two reeled dizzily.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book VI.</span>—Now has arisen the great temptation of Sordello. Is it to be the +Great Renunciation or the Fall? With the magnificent prospect before him +of Chief of the Ghibellines, the Emperor cause; with the Emperor’s badge +on his neck; with Palma, his Ghibelline bride, he, Taurello Salinguerra’s +son, might at last do something! After all, what was the difference +between Guelf and Ghibelline? Why should he give up all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[Pg 496]</a></span> joy of life +that the multitude might have some joy? “Speed their Then.” “But how this +badge would suffer!—you improve your Now!” So Sordello lovingly eyes the +tempter’s apple. After all, evil is just as natural as good; and without +evil no good can accrue to men. Sordello may then as well be happy while +he may. Soul and body have each alike need of the other: soul must content +itself without the Infinite till the earth-stage is over. He has tried to +satisfy the soul’s longing, and has failed: why not seek now the common +joys of men? Salinguerra and Palma reach the chamber door and dash aside +the veil, only to find Sordello dead, “under his foot the badge.” Has he +lost or won? He learned how to live as he came to die: he made the Great +Renunciation, and in seeming defeat he achieved his soul’s success.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes to Book I.</span>—Line 6, <i>Pentapolin</i>, “o’ the naked arm,” king of the +Garamanteans, who always went to battle with his right arm bare. (See <i>Don +Quixote</i>, I. iii. 4; “The <i>friendless-people’s friend</i>,” etc.) Don Quixote +is here spoken of, and “<i>Pentapolin named o’ the Naked Arm</i>” is mentioned +by Don Quixote when he sees the two flocks of sheep: “Know, friend Sancho, +that yonder army before us is commanded by the Emperor Alifanfaron, +sovereign of the Island of Trapoban; and the other is commanded by his +enemy the king of the Garamanteans, known by the name of Pentapolin with +the naked arm, because he always engages in battle with the right arm +bare.” l. 12, <i>Verona</i>: a city of North Italy, on the Adige, under the +Lombard Alps. l. 66, “<i>The thunder phrase of the Athenian</i>,” etc.: +Æschylus, who fought at Marathon. l. 70, “<i>The starry paladin</i>”: Sir +Philip Sidney’s love poems to Stella were written under the <i>nom de plume</i> +of Astrophel (the lover of the star). [S.] l. 80, <i>The Second Friedrich</i> +== Holy Roman Emperor (1194-1250), surnamed <i>the Hohenstauffen</i>, the most +remarkable historic figure of the middle ages. He was the grandson of +Barbarossa, and was crowned in 1220. l. 81, <i>Third Honorius</i> == Pope +Honorius III. (1216-1227): he was a Guelf. l. 104, <i>Richard of St. +Boniface</i>, Count of Verona, was of the Guelfs; <i>Lombard League</i>: the +famous alliance of the great Lombard cities began in 1164. l. 117, “<i>Prone +is the purple pavis</i>”: a pavise is a large shield covering the whole body: +when the shield was <i>prone</i>—<i>i.e.</i> fallen flat on its face—its owner was +defenceless. l. 124, “<i>Duke o’ the Rood</i>”: of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[Pg 497]</a></span> Order of the Holy +Cross. l. 126, <i>Hell-cat</i> == Eccelin. l. 131, <i>Ferrara</i>: an ancient city +of North Italy, twenty-nine miles from Bologna and seventy from Venice. l. +131, <i>Osprey</i>: a long-winged eagle. “An osprey appears to have been the +coat of arms of Salinguerra, as the ‘ostrich with a horseshoe in his beak’ +was that of Eccelin.” [S.] l. 142, <i>Oliero</i>: the monastery which Eccelin +the monk entered. It is situated near Bassano, in the Eastern Alps. ll. +148 and 149, <i>Cino Bocchimpane</i> and <i>Buccio Virtù</i>: citizens. l. 149, +<i>God’s Wafer</i>: an oath (Ostia di Dio). l. 150, “<i>Tutti Santi</i>” == “All +Saints!” an exclamation. l. 153, <i>Padua</i>: a famous city of Lombardy, said +to be the oldest in North Italy; <i>Podesta</i> == governor of a city. l. 197, +<i>Hohenstauffen</i>: this dynasty of Germany began with Conrad III. (1137-52). +Frederick II. was the most illustrious man of this illustrious family. l. +198, <i>John of Brienne</i>: crusader and titular king of Jerusalem (1204). He +was afterwards Emperor of the East. His daughter Yolande or Iolanthe +married Frederick II. l. 201, <i>Otho IV.</i>, Holy Roman Emperor (<i>c.</i> +1174-1218). l. 202, <i>Barbaross</i> == Frederick Barbarossa: one of the +greatest sovereigns of Germany (1152-90). There is a German tradition that +he is not dead, but only sleeping, and that when he starts from his +slumbers a golden age will begin for Germany. l. 205, <i>Triple-bearded +Teuton</i> Barbarossa: the legend runs that his beard has already grown +through the table slab, but must wind itself thrice round the table before +his second advent. l. 253, <i>Trevisan</i>: of the province of Treviso; its +chief town, Treviso, is distant seventeen miles from Venice. l. 257, +<i>Godego</i>: a town in Venetia, amongst the Asolan hills. <i>Marostica</i>: a town +of North Italy, fifteen miles north-east of Vicenza, at the foot of Mount +Rovero. l. 258, <i>Castiglione</i>: a town at the Italian end of the Lago di +Garda (Cartiglion in the text, but evidently a misprint); <i>Bassano</i>: a +city of Italy, in the province of Vicenza, on the Brenta. In the centre of +the town is the Tower of Ezzelino. <i>Loria</i>, or Lauria: a city of Italy in +the province of Potenza. The castle was the birthplace of Ruggiero di +Loria. l. 259, <i>Suabian</i>: the struggle for the Imperial throne between +Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick (1198-1208) enlisted the sympathies +of Italy, and some of the Guelfic towns took the part of the Guelf Otto. +l. 262, <i>Vale of Trent</i>: Trent or Tridentum was once the wealthiest town +in Tyrol; it lies between Botzen and Verona.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[Pg 498]</a></span> l. 263, <i>Roncaglia</i>, near +Piacenza, where Frederick I. held the Diet in 1154, and received the +submission of the Lombards. l. 265, <i>Asolan and Euganean hills</i>: in the +Trevisan, a district of North Italy, between Trent and Venice. l. 266, +<i>Rhetian</i>, of the country of the Tyrol and the Grisons; <i>Julian</i> +mountains: between Venetia and Noricum. l. 288, <i>Romano</i>: Eccelino da +Romano. l. 304, <i>Rovigo</i>: a city of Italy, about twenty-seven miles S.S.W. +of Padua. From the eleventh to the fourteenth century the Este family was +usually in authority. l. 305, <i>Ancona’s March</i>: the frontier or boundary +of Ancona, a city of Central Italy on the Adriatic. l. 315, <i>Hildebrand</i>: +Pope Gregory VII. (1073-85). l. 317, <i>Twenty-four</i>: the magistrates of +Verona who managed the affairs of the city. l. 324, <i>Carroch</i>, or +<i>caroccio</i>: a Lombard war carriage, which was drawn by oxen, and bore a +great bell, the standard of the army, and the Sacred Host, forming a +rallying point. l. 373, “<i>John’s transcendent vision</i>”—Book of +Revelation. ll. 382 and 385, <i>Mantua</i> and <i>Mincio</i>: about seven hundred +years ago the river Mincio formed a great marsh round the city of Mantua; +this separated the city from the mountains, on the slope of which stood +the castle of Goïto. l. 420, <i>Caryatides</i>: figures of women serving to +support entablatures. l. 587, “<i>That Pisan Pair</i>”: Niccolo Pisano, and +Giovanni Pisano, his son were great sculptors and architects of Pisa +(<i>circ.</i> 1207-78). “Nicolo was born about 1200, and was one of the first +to seek after the truer forms of art in the general quickening of the +century. He was a great sculptor, as his works and those of his son +Giovanni (architect of the Campo Santo at Pisa) and his school bear +witness at Pisa, Orvieto, Pistoia, and many other towns. After he had met +with an example of the genuine antique—a sarcophagus now at Pisa—he +brought his future work into accordance with its rules.” [S.] l. 589, +“<i>while at Sienna is Guidone set</i>”: “The name Guido da Sienna and the date +1221, mark a picture now at Sienna; and this, with other works attributed +to the same painter, show him to have been one of the earliest artists who +express a feeling independent of Byzantine influence.” [S.] l. 591, +“<i>Saint Euphemia</i>”: a fine brick church at Verona, dating from the +thirteenth century. The interior has now been entirely remodelled. [S.]. +<i>Saint Eufemia</i>: of Chalcedon: her body was said to have been +miraculously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[Pg 499]</a></span> conveyed to Rovigno, in the sixth century. l. 606, “<i>so they +found at Babylon</i>”: “It is said that after the city (of Seleucia) was +burnt, the soldiers searching the temple (of Apollo) found a narrow hole, +and when this was opened in the hope of finding something of value in it, +there issued from some deep gulf, which the secret magic of the Chaldeans +had closed up, a pestilence laden with the strength of incurable disease, +which polluted the whole world with contagion, in the time of Verus and +Marcus Antoninus, and from the borders of Persia to Gaul and the +Rhine.”—Ammianus Marcellinus. [S.] l. 607, “<i>Colleagues, mad Lucius and +sage Antonine</i>”: during the joint reign of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (the +philosopher) and the scapegrace Lucius Verus; the latter was in command of +the Roman forces in the east, and engaged in a war with Parthia. His +generals sacked Seleucia, and he was himself present in the neighbourhood +of Babylon during the winters of <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 163-5 (<i>v.</i> Clinton, <i>Fasti +Romani</i>). [S.] l. 608, “<i>Apollo’s shrine</i>”: “Seleuceus, one of Alexander’s +generals, and himself a Macedonian, founded the Syrian empire, and built +the town of Seleucia. A good deal is told of the Hellenization of the East +under Seleucus. He, no doubt, founded the temple of Apollo, who was +claimed as an ancestor of the family.” [S.] l. 617, <i>Loxian</i>: surname of +Apollo. l. 671, <i>Orpine</i>: a yellow plant, commonly called <i>Livelong</i> +(Sedum Telephium). l. 679, “<i>adventurous spider</i>”: the geometric spiders +(Orbitelariæ), are almost the only ones whose method of forming a snare +have been at all minutely recorded. The garden spider (Epeira) spins a +large quantity of thread, which, floating in the air in various +directions, happens, from its glutinous quality, at last to adhere to some +object near it—a lofty plant, or the branch of a tree. When the spider +has one end of the line fixed, he walks along part of it, and fastens +another, then drops and affixes the thread to some object below; climbs +again, and begins a third, fastening that in a similar way. Mr. Browning +is in error when he makes the spider shoot her threads from depth to +height, from barbican to battlement. l. 707, “<i>eat fern seed</i>”: this was +anciently supposed to make the eater invisible; <i>Naddo</i>: appears as +Sordello’s friend and adviser: Mr. Browning makes him a representative of +the “Philistine” party, and puts into his mouth the words of mere +conventional, superficial wisdom. l. 720, “<i>Poppy—a coarse brown rattling +crane</i>”:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[Pg 500]</a></span> the cranium or skull-like poppy head, when it contains the seed +and is dry. l. 784, <i>Valvassor</i>, or <i>vavasour</i>: in feudal law a principal +vassal, not holding immediately of the sovereign, but of a great lord; +<i>suzerain</i>: a feudal lord, a lord paramount. l. 835, “<i>The Guelfs paid +stabbers, etc.</i>”: “In 1209 Otho IV. entered Italy, and held his court near +Verona. All the chief lords of Venetia, but especially Eccelino II., da +Romana, and Azzo VI., Marquis d’Este, were summoned to attend. Those two +gentlemen had profited by the long interregnum which preceded Otho’s +reign. They had used the various discords between the towns to increase +each his own faction; and the hatred between the two was more bitter than +ever. A dramatic scene took place at the meeting before the Emperor. When +Eccelino saw Azzo, he said, in the presence of the whole court, ‘We were +intimate in our youth, and I believed him to be my friend. One day we were +in Venice together, walking on the Place <ins class="correction" title="original: o">of</ins> St. Mark, when his assassins +flung themselves upon me to stab me; and at the same moment the Marquis +seized my arms, to prevent me from defending myself; and if I had not by a +violent effort escaped, I should have been killed, as was one of my +soldiers by my side. I denounce him, therefore, before this assembly as a +traitor; and of you, Sire, I demand permission to prove by a single combat +his treachery to me as well as to Salinguerra, and to the podesta of +Vicenza.’ Shortly afterwards, Salinguerra arrived, followed by a hundred +men at arms, and throwing himself at the feet of the Emperor, he made a +similar accusation against the Marquis, and also demanded the ordeal of +battle. Azzo replied to him, that he had on his hands plenty of gentlemen +more noble than Salinguerra ready to fight for him if he was so anxious +for battle. Then Otho commanded all three to be silent, and declared that +he should not accord to any of them the privilege of fighting for any of +their past quarrels. From these two chiefs the Emperor expected greater +service than from all other Italians; and he secured their allegiance by +confirming the lordship of the Marches of Ancona upon the Marquis, and by +declaring Eccelino to be imperial deputy and permanent podesta of +Vicenza.” [S.] Line 857, <i>Malek</i>, a Moor. l. 885, <i>Miramoline</i>: a Saracen +prince, whose territory was situated in North Africa: in the year 1214, +St. Francis of Assisi set out for Morocco to preach the gospel to this +famous Mahometan,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[Pg 501]</a></span> but was taken seriously ill on the way. l. 888, “<i>dates +plucked from the bough John Brienne sent</i>”: he sent a bunch of dates to +remind Frederick of his promise to join the crusade. l. 924, <i>crenelled</i>: +embattled, crenellated. l. 935, <i>Damsel-fly</i>: the dragon-fly, so called +from its elegant appearance. l. 946, <i>Python</i>: a monstrous serpent which +haunted the caves of Parnassus, and was slain by Apollo. l. 950, +“<i>Girls—his Delians</i>”: at the island of Delos the festival of Apollo was +celebrated. The girls were priestesses of Apollo. l. 956, “<i>Daphne and +Apollo</i>”: Daphne was a nymph who, being pursued by Apollo, was at her own +entreaty changed into a bay tree—the tree consecrated to Apollo. l. 1008, +<i>Trouvères</i> == troubadours.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book II.</span>—Line 68, <i>Jongleurs</i>: minstrels who accompanied the troubadours, +and who sometimes did a little jugglery. l. 71, <i>Elys</i>: “Elys, then, is +merely the ideal subject, with such a name, of Eglamour’s poem, and +referred to in other places as his (Sordello’s) type of perfection, +realised according to his faculty (<i>Ellys</i>—the lily)”—Robert Browning. +[S.] l. 156: “The rhymes ‘Her head that’s sharp ... sunblanched the +livelong summer’ are referred to Book V., l. 246, ‘the vehicle that marred +Elys so much,’ etc., and ‘his worst performance, the Goïto as his first.’ +l. 980 of the same book.” [S.] l. 94, “<i>spied a scarab</i>”: one of the marks +of Apis, the sacred bull of ancient Egypt. The marks were “a black +coloured hide with a white triangular spot on the forehead, the hair +arranged in the shape of an eagle on the back, and a knot under the tongue +in the shape of a scarabæus, the sacred insect and emblem of Ptah, and a +white spot resembling a lunar crescent at his right side” (Dr. S. Birch). +l. 183, “<i>A Roman bride</i>”: “on the wedding day, which in early times was +never fixed upon without consulting the auspices, the bride was dressed in +a long white robe with purple fringe and a girdle at the waist; her veil +was of a bright yellow, and shoes likewise; her hair was divided with the +point of a spear, which the antiquarians explained as emblematic of the +husband’s authority, or as typical of the guardianship of Juno Curitico +(Juno with the lance).” “But while these rites are being performed, remain +unwedded, ye damsels; let the torch of pinewood await auspicious days, and +let not the curved spear part thy virgin ringlets” (Ovid, <i>Fasti</i>, ii. +160). [S.] l. 218, “<i>Perseus</i>”—rescuing Andromeda when chained to the +rock in the sea. l. 222, “<i>gnome</i>”: the Rosicrucians<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[Pg 502]</a></span> imagined gnomes to +be sprites presiding over mines, etc. l. 224, “<i>Agate cup, his topaz rod, +his seed pearl</i>”: amongst the various superstitions connected with +precious stones the agate was held to be an emblem of health and long +life, and to possess certain medicinal uses. The topaz, said the old +doctor, “is favourable to hæmorrhages, to impart strength, and promote +digestion”; it was an emblem of fidelity. l. 307, “<i>Massic jars dug up at +Baiæ</i>”: Massic wine was famous in old Roman days. Baiæ, an ancient town +near Naples; in old Roman days a health and pleasure resort of the +wealthy; innumerable relics of these times have been unearthed. “Mons +Massicus was a vine-clad hill in the Campagna, where the Falernian wine +was grown.” [S.] l. 297, “<i>A plant they have</i>”; The day-lily—St. Bruno’s +lily—the <i>Hemerocallis liliastrum</i>, in French, belle de jour. l. 329, +<i>Vicenza</i>: a city of Northern Italy of great antiquity; the first +encounter between the Guelfs and Ghibellines took place here, about 1194. +l. 330, <i>Vivaresi</i>: a Lombard family. l. 331, <i>Maltraversi</i>: a noble +family of Padua. l. 435, <i>Machine</i>: see l. 1014. l. 460, “<i>some huge +throbbing stone</i>”: “In one of Ossian’s poems a description is given of +bards walking around a rocking stone, and by their singing making it move +as an oracle of battle.” [S.] l. 483, <i>truchman</i> == an interpreter. l. +527, <i>rondel, tenzon, virlai, or sirvent</i>: forms of Provençal poetry. +“<i>Rondel</i>, a thirteen-verse poem, in which the beginning is repeated in +the third and fourth verses—from <i>rotundus</i>; <i>tenzon</i>, a contest in verse +before a tribunal of love—from <i>tendo</i>, in the sense of to strive; +<i>virlai</i>, or <i>vireley</i>, a short poem, always in short lines, and wholly in +two rhymes, with a refrain—from <i>virer</i>; <i>sirvent</i>, a poem of praise or +service, sometimes satirical; from <i>servire</i>.” (<i>Imp. Dict.</i>) [S.] l. 529, +<i>angelot</i>: an instrument of music somewhat resembling a lute. l. 625, +“<i>sparkles off</i>”: intransitive verb,—“his mail sparkles off and it rings, +whirled from each delicatest limb it warps.” [S.] l. 627, “<i>Apollo from +the sudden corpse of Hyacinth</i>”: Apollo was one day teaching Hyacinthus to +play at quoits, and accidentally killed him. l. 630, <i>Montfort</i>: the +father of Simon de Montfort, who fought against the Albigenses. l. 729, +<i>Vidal</i>: Pierre Vidal, of Toulouse, a poet of varied inspiration, was +loaded with gifts by the greatest nobles of his time (see Sismondi, <i>Lit. +Eur.</i>, vol. i., p. 135). Professor Sonnenschein says he was a Provençal +troubadour, who died about 1210. He was a sort of caricature of the usual +troubadour<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[Pg 503]</a></span> excellence and foolishness. Some of his poems are the best +remaining of the Provençal poetry. He went twice to Palestine, once with a +crusade. He was hated by Sordello, and referred to in some of his poems +which are extant. l. 730, <i>filamot</i>: yellow-brown colour; from +<i>feuille-morte</i>; <i>murrey-coloured</i>: of a dark-red or mulberry colour +(<i>morus</i>, mulberry). l. 755, <i>plectre</i>, or plectrum: a staff of ivory, +horn, etc., for playing with on a lyre. l. 784, “<i>Bocafoli’s stark-naked +psalms</i>”: not merely <i>plain</i> song, but <i>naked</i> song. l. 785, <i>Plara’s +sonnets</i>. Both personages are imaginary. l. 786, <i>almug</i>: “probably the +red sandalwood of China and India” (Dr. W. Smith). l. 788, <i>river-horse</i>: +the hippopotamus. l. 792, <i>pompion-twine</i>: pumpkin. l. 843, <i>Pappacoda</i>: a +nickname. <i>Tagliafer</i>, or <i>Taillefer</i>: the favourite minstrel-knight of +William of Normandy, who rode in front of the invading army at the battle +of Senlac, and sang the song of Roland. l. 846, <i>o’ertoise</i>: overstretch? +l. 877, <i>Count Lori</i>, or Loria of Naples. l. 883, “<i>The Grey Paulician</i>”: +“Eccelino II. found the Paterini or Paulicians, a Manichæan sect, who were +driven from the East by the Empress Theodora (who had a hundred thousand +of them killed) and her successors. They were slowly forced westward, and +at last settled in Italy, and in Languedoc, in the neighbourhood of Albi. +They are credited with planting the first seeds of the Reformation in the +Latin Church. Innocent III., alarmed at their doctrines and increasing +numbers, opposed them, and instructed St. Dominic and St. Francis to +preach against them. The result was the cruel crusade of 1206, which +continued in the form of more or less spasmodic persecution for many +years,—at least thirty.” [S.] l. 899, <i>Romano</i>: the birthplace of +Ezzelino, near Bassano. Eccelino Romano was chief of the Ghibellines. l. +901, <i>Azzo’s sister Beatrix</i>: married Otho IV. l. 902, <i>Richard’s Giglia</i>: +a Guelf lady. l. 929, <i>Retrude</i>: wife of Salinguerra. l. 948, +<i>Strojavacca</i>: a troubadour? l. 986, “<i>Cat’s head and Ibis’ tail</i>”: +“Egyptian symbols in mosaic on the porphyry floor.” [S.] l. 989, <i>Soldan</i>: +Sultan. l. 1009, “<i>Iris root the Tuscan grated over them</i>”: orris-root. l. +1013, <i>Carian group</i>: the Caryatides—women dressed as at the feasts of +Diana Caryatis. Carya was a town in Arcadia.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book III.</span>—Line 2, <i>moonfern and trifoly</i>: plants which have supposed +magical and healing properties [S.]; <i>moonfern</i>, the same as +moonwort—<i>Rumex lunaria</i>; <i>mystic trifoly</i> == trefoil;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[Pg 504]</a></span> “Herb Trinity” +was used by St. Patrick to teach the mystery of the Holy Trinity. l. 12, +<i>painted byssus</i>: silky fibres of a mollusc which has sometimes been spun +with silk. l. 14, <i>Tyrrhene whelk</i>: the celebrated Tyrian purple, formerly +prepared from a shell fish at Tyre. l. 14, <i>trireme</i>: a galley or vessel +with three benches of oars on a side. l. 15, <i>satrap</i> == the governor of a +province (Persian). l. 87, “<i>Marsh gone of a sudden</i>”: when the lake +appeared in its place. l. 88, “<i>Mincio in its place laughed</i>”: when the +river occupied the place of the marsh. l. 121, <i>Island house</i>: “a villa +outside Palermo called La Favara” [S.]; <i>Nuocera</i>: between Pompeii and +Amalfi. It was called “de Pagani,” from a Saracenic colony of Frederick +II., who was sometimes contemptuously called the Sultan of Nocera. Villani +preserves the quaint words of the famous taunt which Charles of Anjou +addressed to Manfred, before the bath of Benvinutum: “Alles e dit moi a li +Sultan de Nocere hoggi metorai lui en enfers o il mettar moi en paradis.” +[S.] l. 123, <i>Palermitans</i>: citizens of Palermo. l. 124, <i>Messinese</i>: +citizens of Messina. l. 125, “<i>dusk Saracenic clans Nuocera holds</i>”: +Frederick, who was afterwards the renowned Frederick II., Emperor of +Germany, was crowned at Palermo, in Sicily, in 1198; during his minority +the land was torn by turbulent nobles, and revolted Saracens; in 1220 the +Emperor-King planted a colony of Saracens at Nocera on the mainland. l. +132, <i>mollitious alcoves</i> == soft alcoves. l. 133, <i>Byzant domes</i>: +Byzantine architecture, in which the dome was a feature, developed about +<span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 300. l. 135, “<i>August pleasant Dandolo</i>”: “Enrico Dandolo, one of the +patrician family of that name in Venice, was chosen doge in 1192, although +already blind and seventy-two years old. After naval successes against the +Pisans, he was applied to at the time of the fourth crusade to furnish +vessels for transport to Constantinople. After making terms most +advantageous to the Republic, he himself led the enterprise to success, +and shared with the French in the pillage of the city, and very largely in +booty and privileges accruing. The four horses of St. Mark’s Church were +brought over to Venice by him.” [S.] l. 140, “<i>Transport to Venice +square</i>”: St. Mark’s Church in Venice is adorned with precious columns +brought from temples and buildings in all parts of the ancient world. l. +225, “<i>The bulb dormant, etc.</i>”: “It was the custom to bury the hyacinth +bulb with mummies.” [S.] l. 85, <i>The Carroch</i>: “during the war of the +Milanese with Conrad, the Salic archbishop,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[Pg 505]</a></span> Eribert, invented the +Carroccio, which was at once adopted by all the cities of Italy. He placed +it at the head of the army, and it was an imitation of the ark of the +covenant of the tribes of Israel. The carroccio was a four-wheeled car +drawn by four yokes of oxen. It was painted red; the oxen were dressed in +red clothes to their heels; a very high mast, also painted red, was in the +midst; it terminated in a golden ball. Below, between two white veils, +floated the standard of the commune, and below that again was a crucifix, +with the Saviour extending His arms to bless the army. A sort of platform +in the front of the car was devoted to some of the bravest soldiers +appointed for its defence. Another platform in the rear was occupied by +musicians and trumpeters. Mass was said upon the carroccio before it left +the town, and there was frequently a special chaplain attached to it.” +[S.] l. 312, “<i>the candle’s at the gateway</i>”: “compare with King Alfred’s +measurement of time. It is still the custom at Bremen for property to be +sold at an auction by the candle—that is, the bidding goes on till the +candle goes out.” [S.] l. 314, <i>Tiso Sampier</i>: “Eccelin I. and Tissolin di +Campo St. Pierre had been warm friends until, a difference occurring about +a marriage portion, Eccelin proved treacherous and grasping, and a lasting +feud arose between the two families.” [S.] l. 315, “<i>Ferrara’s succoured +Palma!</i>” “The preceding passages in quotation marks are all in the Guelf +spirit; this explanation is Ghibelline, say from Browning himself.” [S.] +l. 386, <i>Cesano</i>: a city of Emilia, between Bologna and Ancona, Dante, in +<i>Inferno</i>, canto xxvii., characterises Cesano as living midway between +<ins class="correction" title="original: tryanny">tyranny</ins> and freedom. l. 456, <i>Fomalhaut</i>: a star of the first magnitude, +in the constellation Priscus Australis, one of the brightest visible in +the midnight meridian of September. [S.] l. 476, <i>Conrad</i>: the Swabian +(1138-52). l. 486, <i>Saponian</i>: Mr. Browning explained this puzzling term +as referring to the Saponi, who were a branch of the Eccelini family, +which settled in Lombardy before the time of Sordello. l. 496, +<i>Vincentines</i>: the people of Vicenza. l. 514,</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“<i>... just</i></span><br /> +<i>As Adelaide of Susa could entrust</i><br /> +<i>Her donative ...</i><br /> +<i>... to the superb</i><br /> +<i>Matilda’s perfecting</i>.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[Pg 506]</a></span>“The <i>Biographie Universelle</i> says: ‘Adelaide, Marchioness of Susa, was +contemporary with Matilda the great Countess of Tuscany, and governed +Piedmont with wisdom and firmness. She endeavoured more than once to make +peace between the Emperor and Popes. She was married three times—to a +Duke of Swabia, a Marquis of Montferrat, and a Count of Maurienna; and +partly through her inheritance from the husbands, all of whom she +survived, partly on account of her wise management, her fief Susa became +the most important in Italy. Matilda, the great Countess of Tuscany, was +one of the most famous characters of her age. Absolute ruler of the most +powerful country in Italy, she defended Hildebrand, and adhered to the +Pope against all enemies, proffers or threats. During her lifetime she +transferred the greater part of her possessions by deed of gift to the +papacy; and that deed was the foundation of Papal claims to many lands in +Italy throughout the following centuries. She owned the Castle of Canozza, +where the Pope took refuge from Henry IV., who had married Adelaide’s +daughter; and it was to Canozza that that Emperor was obliged to resort, +when later he sought the Pope’s forgiveness, and when he was left standing +barefoot in the snow awaiting the Pope’s pleasure. Matilda conveyed her +estates to the Pope in 1102, was made sovereign of all Italy in 1110, and +died 1115.’ There appears to be no mention of any donative entrusted to +the superb Matilda, either in the <i>Biographie Universelle</i>, or in +Sismondi.” [S.] Line 501, “<i>lion’s crine</i>” == lion’s hair. l. 583, “<i>like +the alighted Planet Pollux wore</i>.” Castor and Pollux were generally +represented mounted on two white horses, armed with spears, and riding +side by side with their heads covered with a bonnet, on the top of which +glittered a star. The twins took part in the Argonautic expedition, and +when a violent storm arose two flames of fire appeared, and were seen to +play around their heads. Pollux was the son of Jupiter, whilst Castor was +only his half-brother; but he obtained from Jupiter, for Castor, the gift +of immortality, and a place with him amongst the constellations. St. +Elmo’s fire, which frequently appears and plays about masts and yards of +ships during storms, was called Castor and Pollux by Roman sailors” +(Lemprière, <i>Class. Dict.</i>). l. 590,</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">“<i>For thus</i></span><br /> +<i>I bring Sordello</i>.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[Pg 507]</a></span>See Book I., l. 353. l. 616, “<i>Verona’s Lady</i>” is a statue on the top of a +fountain at one end of the Piazza d’Erbe. The fountain was put up in 916, +at the completion of the aqueduct by Berenger. It was restored in 1368. +The statue was first erected by Theodosius in 1380. It is called by the +people <i>Donna Verona</i>, and wears a steel crown as a symbol that the town +was an imperial residence. l. 617, <i>Gaulish Brennus</i>, who besieged Rome +<span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 385. l. 621, <i>Manlïus</i>: Manlius Marcus, a celebrated Roman who +defended the Capitol against the Gauls. l. 625, <i>platan</i>: the plane tree. +l. 626, <i>Archimage</i>: the high priest of the Magi or fire-worshippers. l. +687, <i>colibri</i>: humming birds. l. 712, <i>Bassanese</i>, of Bassano, a noble +town on the Brenta. l. 797, <i>Basilic</i>: the Basilica, St. Mark’s great +Cathedral. l. 798, “<i>God’s great day of the Corpus Domini</i>” (or <i>Body of +the Lord</i>): the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Holy Sacrament of the +Eucharist. It is held on the Thursday following Trinity Sunday. l. 811, +<i>losel</i> == a wasteful, worthless fellow. l. 813,</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“<i>God spoke,</i></span><br /> +<i>Of right hand, foot, and eye</i>.”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">(See St. Matthew v. 29, 30) [S.]</span></p> + +<p>l. 837, <i>mugwort</i> == a herb of the genus <i>Artemisia</i>. l. 839, “<i>Zin the +Horrid</i>”: the Syrian wilderness where the Israelites found no water (Num. +xx. 1). l. 847, “<i>potsherd and Gibeonites</i>”: see Joshua ix. l. 852, +<i>Meribah</i>: see Exod. xvii. 7 and Num. xxvii. 14. l. 898, “<i>Prisoned in the +Piombi</i>”: horrible torture cells on the leads of the Ducal Palace at +Venice, where the prisoners were roasted in the sun. l. 924, “<i>Tempe’s +dewy vale</i>”: a beautiful valley in Thessaly. l. 964, <i>Hercules—in Egypt</i>: +in his quest for the golden apples of the Hesperides, Hercules journeyed +through Egypt—Busiris, the king, was about to sacrifice Hercules to Zeus, +but he broke his bonds and slew Busiris, his sons and servants. l. 975, +<i>patron-friend</i>: Walter Savage Landor, who warmly praised Browning’s +poetry when others abused it; the reference is to Empedocles, a Greek +poet. l. 977, <i>Marathon, Platæa, and Salamis</i>: celebrated Greek +battle-places. l. 987, “<i>The king who lost the ruby</i>”: Polycrates of +Samos. He was advised to throw into the sea the most precious of his +jewels, a beautiful seal; he grieved much at the loss, but in a few days +he had a present of a large fish, in the belly of which his ring was +found.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[Pg 508]</a></span> l. 992, <i>English Eyebright</i>: the botanical name of the plant is +<i>Euphrasia officinalis</i>. Euphrasia was the name of a lady who was an old +friend of Mr. Browning’s (Dr. Furnivall). l. 1021, <i>Xanthus</i>: a disciple +of St. John the Evangelist. l. 1024, <i>Polycarp</i>, an early Christian +martyr, <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 166; and a disciple of St. John. l. 1025, <i>Charicle</i>: also a +disciple. l. 1045, “<i>twy prong</i>” was one of the instruments used by +necromancers in “raising the devil.” “To procure the magic fork.—This is +a branch of a single beam of hazel or almond, which must be cut at a +single stroke with the new knife used in the sacrifice. The rod must +terminate in a fork.” (Waite’s <i>Mysteries of Magic</i>, p. 260.) <i>Pastoral +Cross</i>: the cross on a priest’s vestment is sometimes <strong>Y</strong>-shaped. Hargrave +Jennings, in his <i>Rosicrucians</i>, says it is now used as an anagram +exemplifying the Athanasian Creed; exactly, in fact, like the magic twy +prong in shape. An Archbishop’s crozier or pastoral staff terminates in a +cross at the top.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book IV.</span>—Line 24, <i>quitch-grass</i> == couch-grass or dog-grass; it roots +deeply, and is not easily killed. l. 24, “<i>loathy mallows</i>”: loathsome +mallows, probably because they grow in ditches and in churchyards. l. 34, +<i>Legate Montelungo</i>: Gregorio di Montelongo, Pontifical legate for Gregory +IX. l. 50, <i>arbalist</i>, a crossbow; <i>manganel</i>, an engine of war for +battering down walls and hurling stones; and <i>catapult</i>, a war engine. l. +72, <i>Jubilate</i>: rejoice ye! <i>Jubilate Deo</i>, 66th Psalm. l. 83:</p> + +<p class="poem">“<i>... What cautelous<br /> +Old Redbeard sought from Azzo’s sire to wrench vainly</i>.”</p> + +<p>The Lombard League had built Alexandria to defy Barbarossa, who was twice +unsuccessful in taking it. l. 89, <i>Brenta</i>: a river of North Italy, +passing near Padua. <i>Bacchiglione</i>: the river on which stand Vicenza and +Padua. l. 98, <i>San Vitale</i>: a small town near Vicenza. l. 147, “<i>Messina +marbles Constance took delight in</i>”: the marbles of Sicily. For variety +and beauty they rival those of any country of Europe. l. 229, <i>Mainard</i>, +or <i>Meinhard</i>: Count of Görz, in the Tyrol. l. 280, Concorezzi: a knightly +family of Padua. l. 395, “<i>Crowned grim twy-necked eagle</i>”: the two-headed +eagle, symbol of the empire. l. 479, <i>The Adelardi</i>: were a noble Guelf +family of Ferrara and Mantua. Marchesella was heiress of the Adelardi +family; Obizzo I. carried her off, and married her to his son Azzo V. l. +483, <i>Blacks and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[Pg 509]</a></span> Whites</i>: the Neri, the black party, and the Bianchi the +white. The Bianchi are called the <i>Parte selvaggia</i>, because its leaders, +the Cerchi, came from the forest lands of Val di Sieve. The other party, +the Neri, were led by the Donati. (See Longfellow’s Dante—Notes to +<i>Inferno</i>, vi. 65.) l. 511, “<i>goshawk</i>”: a short-winged slender hawk +(<i>Falco palumbarius</i>). l. 533, <i>Pistore</i>: Pistoia. l. 577, <i>Matilda</i>: +Countess of Tuscany (1046-1114), known as the Great Countess; she was the +champion of the Church and the ally of Hildebrand. l. 585, <i>Heinrich</i>: +“Henry VI., married Constance, daughter of the King of Naples and Sicily. +He reigned from 1190 to 1197.” [S.] “<i>Philip and Otho</i>”: “the latter +conspired against Frederick II., who was brought up by Innocent III., and +after Philip’s death made Emperor, in 1212. He lived till 1250. His son +Henry, King of the Romans, rebelled against him.” [S.] l. 614, <i>Bassano</i>: +a city of Italy, in the province of Vicenza, on the Brenta. There is a +church of St. Francis at Bassano. Lanze says, “It is the peculiar boast of +Bologna that she can claim three of the few artists of the earliest times: +one Guido, one Ventura, and one Ursone, of whom there exist memorials as +far back as 1248.” [S.] l. 615, <i>Guido the Bolognian</i>: Guido Reni, the +great painter of Bologna (1575-1642). l. 645, <i>Guglielm</i> == William; +<i>Aldobrand</i> or <i>Aldovrandino</i>: Governor of Ferrara, in conjunction with +Salinguerra (1231). l. 735, <i>San Biagio</i>: St. Biase, a place near the Lake +of Garda. l. 797, <i>Constance</i>: wife of Henry VI. of Germany; by this +marriage Frederick hoped that his empire would soon include Naples and +Sicily. l. 837, <i>Moorish lentisk</i>: the mastich tree. l. 884, +<i>poison-wattles</i>: the baggy flesh on the animal’s neck, an excrescence or +lobe. l. 977, <i>Crescentius Nomentanus</i>: a Roman tribune, who, in the +absence of Pope John and King Otho, tried to restore consular Rome. But +the Pope and King returned, and crucified him, <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 998. (See Gibbon’s +<i>Decline and Fall</i>, chap. xlix.) Professor Sonnenschein sends me the +following further note: “Crescentius was a Roman who, towards the end of +the tenth century, endeavoured to restore his country’s liberty and +ancient glory. The power of the Eastern emperors had long ceased in Rome, +that of the Western emperors had been suspended by long interregnas. Rome +was a republic in which the citizens, the neighbouring nobles, and the +Pope, disputed the authority. Crescentius, who was of the family of the +Counts of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[Pg 510]</a></span> the Tusculum, placed himself at the head of the anarchic +government about 980, with the title of Consul. He had, to dispute his +rank, Boniface VII., who, murderer of two popes, had become Pope himself. +This pontiff was stained by the most shameful crimes, and as his authority +was not well founded, the nobles and the people aided Crescentius in +breaking the yoke. Boniface died 985. John XV., who succeeded him, was +detained by Crescentius far from Rome, in exile, until he recognised the +sovereignty of the people. Upon his return he did not seek to trouble the +government; and, as well as one can judge through the obscurity of ages, +the Roman republic enjoyed until 996, under the Consul Crescentius, such +peace, order, and security, as it had not known for a long time. John XV. +died the year Otho III. went from Germany to Italy, to receive the +imperial crown. The young monarch chose his relative, Gregory V., to +succeed John. None of the rights or privileges of Rome were known to the +new pontiff, who, long accustomed to regard the popes as gods on earth, +having now himself become pope, could not conceive of any resistance to +his will. Crescentius refused to recognise a pope whose election and +conduct were alike irregular. He opposed to him another pope, a Greek by +birth, who took the name of John XVI., and he asked the Emperor of the +East to send troops to his assistance. Otho III. entered Rome with an army +in 998. He condemned John XVI. to horrible torture, and besieged +Crescentius in the castle of St. Angelo; and as he could not conquer the +latter, he offered him an honourable capitulation. However, he no sooner +had him in his hands than he put him to death and ill-treated his wife. +Three years later, on his return from a penitential pilgrimage, she +succeeded in causing his death by poison.” l. 1006, <i>wranal</i>: a lantern. +l. 1032, “<i>Rome of the Pandects</i>”: “The digest or abridgment in fifty +books of the decisions and opinions of the old Roman jurists, made in the +sixth century, by order of the Emperor Justinian, and forming the first +part of the body of the civil law.” (Webster.)</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book V.</span>—Line 6, <i>Palatine</i>, one invested with royal privileges and +rights. l. 16, <i>atria</i>, halls or principal rooms in Roman houses. l. 17, +<i>stibadium</i>, a half-round reclining couch used by Romans near their baths. +l. 18, <i>lustral vase</i>: used in purification at meals, etc. l. 34, <i>pelt</i>, +a skin of a beast with the hair on. l. 43, <i>obsidion</i>, a kind of black +glass produced by volcanoes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[Pg 511]</a></span> l. 58, <i>Mauritania</i>, an ancient country of +North Africa == land of the Moors, celebrated for the wood called Citrus, +for tables of which the Romans gave fabulous prices. l. 61, <i>Demiurge</i>: a +worker for the people; so God, as Creator of the world. <i>Mareotic</i>: of the +locality of Lake Mareotis, in Egypt. Mareotic wine was very famous; +<i>Cæcuban</i>: Cæcubum, a town of Latium. Cæcubus Ager was noted for the +excellence and plenty of its wines. l. 82, <i>Pythoness</i>: the priestess who +gave oracular answers at Delphi, in Greece. l. 83, <i>Lydian king</i>: Lydia +was a kingdom of Asia Minor. The king referred to was Crœsus, who +interpreted in his own favour the ambiguous answer of the oracle, and was +destroyed by following the advice he thought was given to him. l. 115, +<i>Nina and Alcamo</i>: Sicilian poets of the period. In the life of Joanna, +Queen of Naples, we read of “the Poetess Nina, whose love of her art +caused her to become enamoured of a poet whom she had never seen. This +fortunate bard (who returned her poetical passion) was called Dante; but +we cannot plead in her excuse that he had anything else in common with the +great poet of that name. Nina was the most beautiful woman of the day, and +the first female who wrote verse in Italian. She was so engrossed by her +passion for her lover that she caused herself always to be called ‘The +Nina of Dante.’” [S.] “Sismondi only mentions C. d’Alcamo as a Sicilian +poet, apparently nearly contemporary with Frederick II. See Ginguené for a +full account of Sicilian poetry.” [S.] l. 145, <i>Castellans</i>, governors of +castles. l. 146, <i>Suzerains</i>, feudal lords. l. 163, “<i>Hildebrand of the +huge brain mask</i>”: Pope Gregory VII. He was one of the most famous of the +popes, and he lived in the latter part of the eleventh century. l. 174, +<i>Mandrake</i>: Mandragora—a plant with a bifurcated root, concerning which +many singular superstitions have accumulated. l. 186, “<i>Three Imperial +Crowns</i>”: the Imperial Crown proper, the German crown, and the Italian or +Lombard crown. There seems a little confusion here in the order of the +different metals. The Imperial Crown was of gold. The German is always +spoken of as the silver crown. The Italian or Lombard crown was known as +the iron crown, because one of the nails of Christ’s cross was inserted +into its gold frame. (<i>Encyc. Brit.</i>) l. 188, <i>Alexander IV.</i>, Pope of +Rome (1254-61); <i>Innocent IV.</i>, Pope (1243-54). l. 189, <i>Papal key</i>: the +keys of Peter in the papal arms. l. 194, “<i>The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">[Pg 512]</a></span> hermit Peter</i>”: Peter, the +Hermit of Amiens, who preached up the first Crusade. l. 195, <i>Claremont</i> +== Clermont, a city of France, in which, at a council held in 1095, Pope +Urban II. first formally organised the great Crusade. l. 200, +<i>Vimmercato</i>, a town on the Molgova, fourteen miles north-east of Milan. +l. 203, “<i>Mantuan Albert</i>”: Blessed Albert founder of the Order of Canons +Regular. But it was Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem, who was umpire between +Pope and Emperor. l. 204, <i>Saint Francis</i>, of Assisi, born 1182; one of +the most beautiful characters who ever lived. All living creatures to him +were his “brothers and sisters.” l. 205, “<i>God’s truce</i>”: “The Pax +Ecclesiæ,” or “Treuga Dei”—a suspension of arms, putting a stop to +private hostilities within certain periods. The treaty called the “Truce +of God” was set on foot in <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 999. It was agreed, among other articles, +that “churches should be sanctuaries to all sorts of persons, except those +who violated this truce; and that from Wednesday till Monday morning no +one should offer violence to any one, not even by way of satisfaction for +any injustice he had received” (Butler’s <i>Lives of the Saints</i>, <i>sub</i> “St. +Odilo,” Jan. 1st.) l. 281, <i>hacqueton</i>: a quilted jacket, worn under a +coat of mail. l. 298, <i>trabea</i>: a regal robe. l. 384, <i>thyrsus</i>: a spear +wrapped about with ivy, carried at feasts of Bacchus. l. 405, <i>baldric</i>: a +richly ornamented belt, passing only over one shoulder. l. 453, “<i>Caliph’s +wheel work man</i>”: an automaton. l. 509, <i>Typhon</i>, a giant. l. 660, +<i>Lombard Agilulph</i>: a king of Lombardy, <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 601. l. 712, “<i>changed the +spoils of every clime at Venice</i>”: the great Cathedral of St. Mark’s, +Venice, contains columns and ornaments of various kinds, brought from +heathen temples in all parts of the Roman world. Pillars from the Temple +of Jerusalem, and precious marbles from ancient Roman palaces, combine to +make the interior of St. Mark’s one of the strangest and richest Christian +churches in the world. So these spoils from many lands, taken from temples +devoted to alien worship, have been “changed” to Christian uses in this +church. l. 718, “<i>earth’s reputed consummations</i>”: that is to say, the +noblest works which the world at the time could produce. “The temple at +Thebes was the consummate achievement of one age; of another, that of the +Temple of Jupiter Tonans; of another, the Parthenon at Athens. All these +were ‘earth’s reputed consummations.’” l. 719, “<i>razed a seal</i>”: Thebes +being despoiled like Rome,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">[Pg 513]</a></span> Athens rifled like Byzant, until St. Mark’s at +Venice having razed a seal (<i>i.e.</i> broken the seal, or, as it were, +extracted the nails that fixed the most famous works in the world to their +original site) lo! the glittering symbols of the all-purifying Trinity +blazed above them: so the “horned and snouted god,” the “cinerary +pitcher,” became part of the Christian edifice. l. 719, “<i>The +All-transmuting Triad blazed above</i>”: that is, they were consecrated by +reason of the new faith in the Trinity. The three persons of the Holy +Trinity are represented in the mosaics of St. Mark’s Church.”<a name='fna_7' id='fna_7' href='#f_7'><small>[7]</small></a> l. 750, +<i>Treville</i> or Treviglio: a town in Lombardy, fourteen miles south of +Bergamo. l. 751, <i>Cartiglione</i>: is this a misprint for Castiglione? l. +788, <i>writhled</i> == wrinkled. l. 794, <i>pauldron</i>: a defence of armour-plate +over the shoulders. l. 909, <i>Gesi</i> or Jesi: a city in the Italian province +of Ancona. It was the birthplace of Frederick II. in 1194. l. 943, +<i>Valsugan</i>: a town on the Brenta, on the road from Trent to Venice. l. 970 +<i>Torriani</i>: a faction of Valsassina of Lombardy, contending with the +<i>Visconti</i> (l. 971): Otho Visconti, Archbishop of Milan (1262), founded +the house of Visconti. The Torriani were democrats, the Visconti +aristocrats. l. 1065, “<i>Trent upon Apulia</i>”: <i>i.e.</i>, Northern upon +Southern Italy. l. 1071, <i>Cunizza</i>: called Palma throughout the poem (see +<a href="#Page_123">p. 123</a>). l. 1090, <i>Squarcialupo</i>: not historical.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Book VI.</span>—Line 100, <i>jacinth</i> == hyacinth in mineralogy; a name given to +several kinds of stone—topaz, etc.; <i>lodestone</i>: magnetic oxide of iron. +l. 101, <i>flinders</i>: fragments (of shining metal). l. 142, <i>Cydippe</i>: an +Athenian girl who met Acontius at a festival of Artemis. He wrote a +promise of marriage from the girl to himself on an apple, and threw it at +her feet. The girl read the words aloud, and the oracle told her father +she would have to comply with the words she had read. l. 143, +<i>Agathon</i>—evidently meant for Acontius in the above story. l. 184, +<i>Dularete</i>: not historical. l. 323, “<i>brakes at balm-shed</i>”: brake ferns +at seed time—<i>i.e.</i>, autumn. l. 387, <i>reate</i> == a waterweed, as water +crow-foot. l. 388, <i>gold-sparkling grail</i>: gravel gold-coloured. l. 417, +<i>citrine</i> == crystals: a yellow pellucid variety of quartz; “<i>fierce +pyropus-stone</i>” == a carbuncle of fiery redness. l. 590, <i>King-bird</i>: “The +Phœnix travels (in an egg of myrrh) to Heliopolis to die.” [S.] l. 614, +“<i>an old fable</i>,” etc. See Pindar’s,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">[Pg 514]</a></span> “Fourth Pythian Ode.” l. 630, +<i>Hermit-bee</i>—a species of Apidæ; some of the best known of this species +are solitary in their habits. The Carpenter-bee (<i>Xylocopa</i>) excavates +nests and cells in wood; the Mason-bee (<i>Osmia</i> and <i>Megachill</i>) forms +nests with particles of sand. l. 677-8, <i>“Henry of Egna,” “Sofia,” “Lady +of the Rock,” etc.</i>: Sofia was the “youngest daughter of Eccelin the monk, +widow of Henry of Egna, the ‘Lady of the Rock,’ or of the Trentine Pass” +(W. M. Rossetti). l. 698, <i>Campese</i>: a town on the Brenta, near Bassano. +l. 699, <i>Solagna</i>: a village in the province of Vicenza, in the Eastern +Alps. l. 787, <i>Valley Rù</i>: in the valley of Enneberg or Gaderthal, on the +Eastern Alps. l. 788, <i>San Zeno</i>: the basilica of St. Zeno, an early +bishop of Verona. l. 792, <i>raunce</i>, or rance, a bar or rail. l. 799, +<i>cushat’s chirre</i>—the ringdove’s coo. l. 802, <i>barrow</i>: a tomb. l. 803, +<i>Alberic</i>: brother of Eccelin. He was tortured to death. l. 858, +<i>Hesperian fruit</i>: of the Western land (Italy or Spain). The golden apples +of the Hesperides probably were oranges. l. 894, “<i>rifle a musk pod and +’twill ache like yours</i>”: a freshly-opened musk pod has a most powerful +and pungent ammoniacal odour. Musk requires to be smelt in minute +quantity. Sordello’s story deals with political troubles and horrors of +war, too powerful a dose for reading at one sitting.</p> + +<p><b>“So, the head aches and the limbs are faint!”</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies.</i>) The +sixth lyric begins with these words.</p> + +<p><b>Soul, The.</b> It “existed ages past” (<i>Cristina</i>); “is resting here an age” +(<i>Cristina</i>); “on its lone way” (<i>Cristina</i> and <i>Rabbi ben Ezra</i>); “its +nature is to seek durability” (<i>Red Cotton Night-cap Country</i>); “is +independent of bodily pain” (<i>Red Cotton</i>); “is here to mate another soul” +(<i>Cristina</i>); “shall rise in its degree” (<i>Toccata of Galuppi’s</i>); “it +craves all” (<i>Cleon</i>); and “can never taste death” (<i>Paracelsus</i>). <i>La +Saisiaz</i> is <i>the</i> poem for proof of its existence and immortality.</p> + +<p><b>Soul’s Tragedy, A</b>: Act I. being what was called the poetry of Chiappino’s +life, and Act II. its prose (London, 1846). The incidents are not all +historical; they are imagined to have occurred at Faenza, a city of Italy +about twenty miles south-west of Ravenna, in the sixteenth century. +Chiappino is a patriot—so far as words and fine sentiments go. He is a +good type of the men who in all popular movements seek their own interest +while pretending to be concerned only for the welfare of the people.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">[Pg 515]</a></span> +Having fomented popular feeling against the Provost of Faenza he has been +sentenced to exile. He has, however, an influential friend, Luitolfo, who +has volunteered to exert his good offices with the Provost, with whom he +is on good terms, with the view of obtaining a pardon. The first Act opens +with a dialogue between Eulalia and Chiappino in Luitolfo’s house, +concerning the cause of the latter’s prolonged absence on his errand of +friendly intercession. Luitolfo and Eulalia are betrothed lovers. +Chiappino, while his friend is absent endeavouring to save him, is +bragging of his humanitarian courage and daring, and depreciating his +friend while making love to his betrothed. Eulalia listens, but begs for +“justice to him that’s now entreating, at his risk, perhaps, justice for +you!” Chiappino hates Luitolfo for the favours he has done him, the fines +he has paid for him, the intercession he has made; and so he endeavours to +make himself important in the woman’s eyes, to pose as the martyr of +humanity, while he belittles her betrothed lover, and tries to prove that +his acts of kindness were unimportant. While they discuss, a knocking is +heard without; the door is opened, and Luitolfo rushes in with blood upon +him. He declares he has killed the Provost, and the crowd are in pursuit +of him. Chiappino offers his protection, and talks bravely as usual; +forces Luitolfo to fly in his disguise while he remains with Eulalia and +meets the angry pursuers. The populace enter, and Chiappino, without +hesitation, declares it was he who killed the Provost: he knows the people +will bless him as their saviour, so he takes the credit of Luitolfo’s act +of vengeance. Eulalia is anxious he should give the credit to Luitolfo, as +the murder turns out to be popular; but Chiappino defers the explanation +till the morrow. Act II. is in prose; the scene is laid a month after, in +the market-place of Faenza: Luitolfo is mingling in disguise with the +populace assembled outside the Provost’s palace. A bystander tells him +that Chiappino will be the new Provost: it is he who was the brave friend +of the people; Luitolfo the coward, who ran away from them and their +cause. Ravenna, he says, governs Faenza, as Rome governs Ravenna; and the +Papal legate, Ogniben, has entered the town, saying satirically: “I have +known three-and-twenty leaders of revolts!” He wishes to know what the +revolters want. The soldiers came into Ravenna, bearing their wounded +Provost (he had not been killed, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">[Pg 516]</a></span> Luitolfo supposed). The Legate had +come to arrange matters amicably. He will have no punishments for the +insurrection. What he desires to know is, Do they wish to live without any +government at all? or if not, do they wish their ruler to be murdered by +the first citizen who conceives he has a grievance? Chiappino puts himself +forward as spokesman, and declares he is in favour of a republic. “And you +the administrator thereof?” asks the Legate. After a little fencing, +Chiappino agrees to this; and so the crowd is waiting to see him invested +with the provostship. He is to marry Luitolfo’s love and succeed to his +property. Luitolfo will not believe all this till he sees Eulalia and his +quondam friend. Chiappino enters with Eulalia, making excuses for his +<i>volte-face</i> both in politics and love, and shows that he falls completely +into the trap the clever and satirical ecclesiastic has set for the +pretended patriot. After much cutting sarcasm at Chiappino’s expense on +the part of the brilliant legate, who evidently knows his man to the +marrow, the waiting populace are informed that the provostship will be +conferred on Chiappino as soon as the name of the person who attempted to +kill the late Provost is given up. Luitolfo comes from his place in the +crowd to own and justify his act, much to the confusion of the man who has +claimed all the credit of the deed. The Legate orders Luitolfo to his +house, and recommends the patriot to rusticate himself awhile. Then, +demanding the keys of the Provost’s palace, and advising profitable +meditation to the people, he leaves them chuckling that he has known +<i>four-and-twenty</i> leaders of revolts. The character of the ecclesiastic +Ogniben is one of the finest inventions of Mr. Browning.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Act I. <i>Scudi</i>: dollars. Act II.: <i>Brutus the Elder</i>: who +conspired with Cassius against Julius Cæsar. “<i>Dico vobis!</i>” I tell you! +“<i>St. Nepomucene of Prague</i>” == St. John Nepomucen of Prague (1383), +martyr. He was an anchorite and an apostle. The Emperor Wenceslaus had him +put to death because he refused to betray what the Empress had told him +under the seal of confession. <i>Ravenna</i>: a very celebrated and very +ancient city of North-east Italy. Its great historical importance began +early in the fifth century, when Honorius transferred his court thither. +From 402 to 476 <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> Ravenna was the chief residence of the Roman +emperors. It was subject to papal rulers in the period of this story. +“<i>Cur fremuere gentes?</i>” (Psalm ii. 1): “Why<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">[Pg 517]</a></span> do the heathen so furiously +rage together?” <i>Pontificial Legate</i>: an ambassador sent by the Pope to +the court of a foreign prince or state. “<i>Western Lands</i>”: The allusion is +to the discovery of America and the treasures and curiosities brought by +Columbus to Spain.</p> + +<p><b>Speculative.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) Could the inspirations and pure delights +of the past return, and remain with some great souls who have learned the +divine alchemy of turning to gold the pains and pleasures of earth’s old +life, it would be for them all that lower minds seek in a new life in what +they call heaven; the real heaven being a state, and not a place. Love has +inspired the poem.</p> + +<p><b>Spiritualism.</b> Browning’s opinions on this subject are to be found in his +poem <i>Mr. Sludge the Medium</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Spring Song.</b> The poem commencing</p> + +<p class="poem">“Dance, yellows and whites and reds!”</p> + +<p>was published under the title of “Spring Song” in the <i>New Amphion</i>, 1886. +In 1887 it was published at the end of <i>Gerard de Lairesse</i> in the +“<i>Parleyings</i>” volume.</p> + +<p><b>Statue and the Bust, The.</b> The Riccardi Palace in Florence is the scene of +the story told in this poem. A lady who has just been married to the head +of the noble Riccardi house notices one who rides past her window with a +“royal air.” The bridesmaids whisper that it is the great Duke Ferdinand; +who in his turn directs his glance at the bride the head of the house of +Riccardi had that day brought home. As he looked at the woman and she at +the man, her past was a sleep—her life that day only began. That night +there was a feast in the house of the bride, and the Grand Duke was +present. The lovers stood face to face a minute. In accordance with the +courtly custom of the time, he was privileged to kiss the bride. Whether a +word was spoken or not cannot be said. The husband, who stood by, however, +saw or heard something which mortally offended him; and when, at night, he +led his bride to her chamber, he told her calmly that the door which was +then shut on her was closed till her body should be taken thence for +burial. She could watch the world from the window, which faced the east, +but could never more pass the door. The bride as calmly assented:</p> + +<p class="poem">“Your window and its world suffice,”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">[Pg 518]</a></span>she said. It would be easy, she thought, to fly to the Duke, who loved +her: it would only be necessary to disguise herself as a page, and she +would save her soul. She reflected, however, that next day her father was +to bless her new condition; and she must tarry for a day, consoling +herself with the reflection that she should certainly see the Duke ride +past. And so she turned on her side, and went to sleep. That night the +Duke resolved to ruin body and soul, if need might be, for the sake of +this beautiful woman; and on the morrow he addressed the bridegroom, whose +duties at court brought him into his presence, suggesting that he, with +his wife, should visit him at his country seat at Petraja. The bridegroom +quietly declined the invitation, giving as his reason that the state of +his lady’s health did not permit her to quit the palace, the wind from the +Apennines being particularly dangerous for her. The Duke was foiled in his +project; but promised himself it should not be long before he met the +bride again, yet he must wait a night, for the envoy from France was to +visit him. He too reflects that he shall see the lady as he rides past her +palace. They saw each other, and each resolved that next day they would do +more than glance at a distance; but next day and the next passed, and as +constantly was the project of union deferred; the weeks grew months, the +years passed by, till age crept on, and each perceived they had been +dreaming. One day the lady had to confess that her beauty was fading: her +hair was tinged with grey, her mouth was puckered, and she was +haggard-cheeked; and as she beheld herself in her glass she bade her +servants call a famous sculptor to fix the remains of her beauty, so that +it should no more fade. Della Robbia must make her a face on her window +waiting, as ever, to watch her lover pass in the square below. But long +before the artist’s work was finished, and the cornice in its place, the +Duke had sighed over the escape of his own youth; and he too set John of +Douay to make an equestrian statue of him, and to place it in the square +he had crossed so often, so that men should admire him when he had gone to +his tomb. The figure looks straight at one of the windows of the Riccardi +Palace: the attitude suggests love for the lady and contempt of her +husband. In connection with all this the poet reflects on the condition of +the spirits of these two awaiting the Last Judgment. Do they reflect on +the greatness of the gift of life—how they had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">[Pg 519]</a></span> seen the proper object of +their lives, and yet had missed it? “But,” the poet hears us object, +“their end was a crime, and delay was best.” The test, however, of our use +of life can be as well attained by a crime as a virtue. A game can be +played without money: where a button answers, it would be vain to use a +sovereign. Whether we play with counters or coins, we must do our best to +win:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“If you choose to play!—is my principle,<br /> +Let a man contend to the uttermost<br /> +For his life’s set prize, be it what it will.”</p> + +<p>These people as surely lost their counter as if it were lawful coin. This +moral has been much disputed by Browning students. So far as society was +concerned the lady and the Duke did well: so far as their own souls were +concerned they undoubtedly did ill. The Duke would have been more manly +and the woman truer to her human instincts if he and she had let love have +its way. Both dwarfed and withered their souls by looking and longing and +pining for what they had not courage to grasp. The sin in each case was as +great in the sight of God. It was simply prudence and conventionality +which restrained the lovers; and these things count for nothing with the +poet-psychologist. But conventionality counts for a great deal in our +conduct of life. It may have been “the crowning disaster to miss life” for +the man and woman: if so, it was a sacrifice justly due to human society. +If every woman flew to the arms of the man whom she liked better than her +own husband, and if every governor of a city felt himself at liberty to +steal another man’s wife merely to complete and perfect the circle of his +own delights, society would soon be thrown back into barbarism. The +sacrifice to conventionality and the self-restraint these persons +practised may have atoned for much that was defective in their lives. +“<i>Pecca fortiter</i>” (sin bravely), said Luther; but it would be difficult +to defend the doctrine on any principle of ethics. Many readers have found +difficulties in understanding this poem. One such wrote to an American +paper to inquire: “(1) When, how, and where did it happen? Browning’s +divine vagueness lets one gather only that the lady’s husband was a +Riccardi. (2) Who was the lady? who the Duke? (3) The magnificent house +where Florence lodges her Préfet is known to all Florentine ball-goers as +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">[Pg 520]</a></span> Palazzo Riccardi. It was bought by the Riccardi from the Medici in +1659. From none of its windows did the lady gaze at her more than royal +lover. From what window, then, if from any? Are the statue and the bust +still in their original positions?” These queries fell into the hands of +Mr. Wise, who forwarded them to Mr. Browning, who sent the following +answer:—“Jan. 8th, ’87. <span class="smcap">Dear Mr. Wise</span>,—I have seldom met with such a +strange inability to understand what seems the plainest matter possible. +‘Ball-goers’ are probably not history readers; but any guide-book would +confirm what is sufficiently stated in the poem. I will append a note or +two, however. (1) ‘This story the townsmen tell’: ‘when, how, and where’ +constitutes the subject of the poem. (2) The lady was the wife of +Riccardi, and the Duke—Ferdinand, just as the poem says. (3) As it was +built by and inhabited by the Medici till sold, long after, to the +Riccardi, it was not from the Duke’s palace, but a window in that of the +Riccardi, that the lady gazed at her lover riding by. The statue is still +in its place, looking at the window under which is ‘now the empty shrine.’ +Can anything be clearer? My ‘vagueness’ leaves <i>what</i> to be ‘gathered’ +when all these things are put down in black and white? Oh, +‘ball-goers’!—Yours very sincerely, <span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span>.” The Medicean palace +in the Via Larga, now called the Via Cavour, is meant as the <i>duke’s</i> +palace. See articles on this question in <i>Poet Lore</i>, vol. iii., pp. 284 +and 648. It is an error to suppose that but one palace is referred to in +the poem. The Piazza della Annunziata in Florence is the square referred +to in the first verse. The Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed +Virgin was built in 1250, and adorned at the expense of Pietro de’ Medici +from the designs of Michelozzi. The loggia of the church forms the north +side. On the east is the Foundling Hospital, <i>Spedale degli Innocenti</i>, +dating from the year 1421. In the centre of the square is an equestrian +statue of Ferdinand I., cast from cannon taken by the Knights of St. +Stephen from the Turks.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—“<i>Great Duke Ferdinand</i>”: Ferdinand I. was Grand Duke of Florence, +an honour first conferred on Cosimo (dei Medici) I. by Pope Pius V., who +conferred the patent and crown upon him in Rome. Ferdinand was a cardinal +from the age of fourteen, but he had never taken holy orders. He was an +amiable and capable ruler, and Tuscany flourished under his government.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">[Pg 521]</a></span> +He was thirty-eight years old when, in 1587, he succeeded his brother on +the throne. <i>Riccardi</i>: a noble family of Florence. “The Palazzo Riccardi, +a proud and stately residence, was begun in 1430 by Cosimo dei Medici. It +remained in the possession of the family till 1659, when they sold it to +Gabriele Riccardi; but towards the end of the last century it was bought +by the Grand Duke, and is now employed as a species of Somerset House, +partly for literary purposes and partly for government offices. It is a +noble building, and is most imposing in appearance. The window-sills are +by Michael Angelo” (see Murray’s <i>Handbook to North Italy</i>). <i>Via Larga</i>: +this was overshadowed by the Medici Palace, symbolical of the shadow cast +by the crime of its owners in destroying the liberties of the city. +<i>Encolure</i> (Fr.): the neck and shoulders of a horse. <i>Emprise</i>: +undertaking, enterprise. “<i>Cosimo and his cursed son</i>”: Cosimo dei Medici +was called “the father of his country,” his grandson was “Lorenzo the +Magnificent.” <i>Arno</i>: the river which flows through Florence. <i>Petraja</i>: a +suburban residence near Florence. <i>Apennine</i>: the mountain range in the +valley of which Florence is seated. “<i>Robbia’s craft</i>,” “<i>Robbia’s +cornice</i>”: Della Robbia is the name of a family of great distinction in +the art history of Florence. “Robbia’s craft” would seem to be a term +applied to the kind of work done, and does not refer to the artist +himself, as the last famous Della Robbia (Girolamo) died in 1566. The work +called Robbia ware was terra-cotta relief covered with enamel. <i>John of +Douay</i> (1524-1608), usually called Giovanni da Bologna: a celebrated +sculptor of Italy. “<i>stamp of the very Guelph</i>”: English money of our +time, our royal family being Guelfs. “<i>de te fabula</i>”: the fable is told +concerning yourself.</p> +<p><a name="strafford" id="strafford"></a></p> +<p><b>Strafford.</b> [<span class="smcap">The Statesman and the Historical Period of the Poem.</span>] It is so +important that the reader of the tragedy of <i>Strafford</i> should start with +a clear idea of the historical facts with which it deals, that I have +included in my article the following extract from Professor Gardiner’s +Life of Strafford in the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>. For the benefit of +such of my readers as may have forgotten the fact, I may state that, +before the earldom was conferred on Strafford, he was Sir Thomas +Wentworth:—“High-handed as Wentworth was by nature, his rule in Ireland +made him more high-handed than ever. As yet he had never been consulted on +English affairs, and it was only in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">[Pg 522]</a></span> February 1637 that Charles asked his +opinion on a proposed interference in the affairs of the Continent. In +reply, he assured Charles that it would be unwise to undertake even naval +operations till he had secured absolute power at home. The opinion of the +judges had given the King the right to levy ship-money; but, unless his +Majesty had ‘the like power declared to raise a land army, the crown’ +seemed ‘to stand upon one leg at home, to be considerable but by halves to +foreign princes abroad.’ The power so gained, indeed, must be shown to be +beneficent by the maintenance of good government; but it ought to exist. A +beneficent despotism supported by popular gratitude was now Wentworth’s +ideal. In his own case Wentworth had cause to discover that Charles’ +absolutism was marred by human imperfections. Charles gave ear to +courtiers far too often, and frequently wanted to do them a good turn by +promoting incompetent persons to Irish offices. To a request from +Wentworth to strengthen the position of the deputy by raising him to an +earldom he turned a deaf ear. Yet, to make Charles more absolute continued +to be the dominant note of his policy; and, when the Scottish Puritans +rebelled, he advocated the most decided measures of repression, and in +February 1639 he offered the king £2000 as his contribution to the +expenses of the coming war. He was, however, too clear-sighted to do +otherwise than deprecate an invasion of Scotland before the English army +was trained. In September 1639, after Charles’ failure in the first +Bishops’ War, Wentworth arrived in England, to conduct in the Star Chamber +a case in which the Irish chancellor was being prosecuted for resisting +the deputy. From that moment he stepped into the place of Charles’ +principal adviser. Ignorant of the extent to which opposition had +developed in England during his absence, he recommended the calling of a +parliament to support a renewal of the war, hoping that by the offer of a +loan from the privy councillors, to which he himself contributed £20,000, +he would place Charles above the necessity of submitting to the new +parliament if it should prove restive. In January 1640 he was created Earl +of Strafford, and in March he went to Ireland to hold a parliament, where +the Catholic vote secured a grant of subsidies to be used against the +Presbyterian Scots. An Irish army was to be levied to assist in the coming +war. When, in April, Strafford returned to England, he found<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">[Pg 523]</a></span> the Commons +holding back from a grant of supply, and tried to enlist the peers on the +side of resistance. On the other hand, he attempted to induce Charles to +be content with a smaller grant than he had originally asked for. The +Commons, however, insisted on peace with the Scots; and on May 9th, at the +Privy Council, Strafford, though reluctantly, voted for a dissolution. +After this Strafford supported the harshest measures. He urged the King to +invade Scotland; and, in meeting the objection that England might resist, +he uttered the words which cost him dear: ‘You have an army in +Ireland’—the army which, in the regular course of affairs, was to have +been employed to operate in the west of Scotland—‘you may employ here to +reduce this kingdom.’ He tried to force the citizens of London to lend +money. He supported a project for debasing the coinage, and for seizing +bullion in the Tower, the property of foreign merchants. He also advocated +the purchasing a loan from Spain by the offer of a future alliance. He was +ultimately appointed to command the English army, but he was seized with +illness, and the rout of Newburn made the position hopeless. In the great +council at York he showed his hope that, if Charles maintained the +defensive, the country would still rally round him; whilst he proposed, in +order to secure Ireland, that the Scots of Ulster should be ruthlessly +driven from their homes. When the Long Parliament met, it was preparing to +impeach Strafford, when tidings reached its leaders that Strafford, now +Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, had come to London, and had advised the King +to take the initiative by accusing his chief opponents of treason. On this +the impeachment was hurried on, and the Lords committed Strafford to the +Tower. At his trial in Westminster Hall he stood on the ground that each +charge against him, even if true, did not amount to treason; whilst Pym +urged that, taken as a whole, they showed an intention to change the +government, which in itself was treason. Undoubtedly the project of +bringing over the Irish army—probably never seriously entertained—did +the prisoner most damage; and, when the Lords showed reluctance to condemn +him, the Commons dropped the impeachment, and brought in a bill of +attainder. The Lords would probably have refused to pass it if they could +have relied on Charles’s assurance to relegate Strafford to private life +if the bill were rejected. Charles unwisely took part in projects for +effecting Strafford’s escape, and even for raising a military<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">[Pg 524]</a></span> force to +accomplish that end. The Lords took alarm and passed the bill. On May 9th, +1641, the King, frightened by popular tumults, reluctantly signed a +commission for the purpose of giving to it the royal assent, and on the +12th Strafford was executed on Tower Hill.”</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Tragedy.</span>] (Published 1837, and dedicated to William C. Macready.) +<i>Strafford</i>, a tragedy in five acts (written for the stage at Macready’s +request), has for its plot the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford and +his condemnation and execution. It tells the story of the faithful +statesman who loved his sovereign, and sacrificed his life from an almost +insane devotion to an utterly unworthy man. The tragedy deals with a +period of English history which was richer than any other in the assertion +of the rights of the people against the tyranny of their rulers. We are +introduced to the band of patriots who secured for us the rights which are +to-day the most precious heritage of every Englishman—the brave men who, +like Hampden and Pym, resisted the system of forced loans, and the +obnoxious tax called “ship-money.” Strafford has been carrying fire and +sword through Ireland, and Charles is proposing to persecute the Scotch +with similar severity. Wentworth has answered the summons of the king, and +has yielded to his request to undertake the Scotch war. He now begins to +see how treacherous his sovereign is. Charles, by bribes and promises, has +detached him from the people’s cause only to use him as a catspaw, to bear +the hatred and fury of the people in his stead. Pym tries to win back “the +apostate” to the cause of liberty. They loved each other as David and +Jonathan; and the efforts of Pym to touch the heart of his friend, and win +him from his chivalrous devotion to Charles to his duty to his country, +are finely described in the play. But neither duty, danger, nor the +imminent approach of death itself, can divert for a single moment the +nobleman who is devoted body and soul to the wretchedest semblance of a +“king by right divine” who ever secured such devoted service. Strafford, +deaf alike to the calls of friendship and patriotism, serves one man +only—Charles,—and leaves the patriots to fight for England as best they +may. Lady Carlisle interposes her influence, warns Strafford of his +danger, and begs him to secure his retreat while he may; but he is as +little moved by the appeals of a woman’s love as by those more powerful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">[Pg 525]</a></span> +and legitimate motives which he has refused to entertain. Such blind +devotion to an ideal founded on so insecure a base could have only ruin +for its end. Strafford leads the army to the north, is ignominiously +defeated, finds that Charles has treacherously listened to proposals of +reconciliation with the Scotch, and that the patriots are in league with +them; returns to London, and determines to impeach the patriots, but finds +his move anticipated. He is himself impeached, a bill of attainder against +him is passed, and he is arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. Charles, +who had promised that Strafford should not suffer in life, liberty, or +estate for his devotion to his cause, makes no effort to save him, though +nothing could have been easier than to have done so; and actually, after a +little show of hesitation, signs his death warrant at the request of Pym. +Passionately and entirely devoted to Strafford, Lady Carlisle has +conceived a plan by which, with the King’s connivance, he may escape from +the Tower. A boat has been brought to the river entrance of the fortress, +and arrangements made for his escape to France; but Strafford refuses to +run away from the country which demands his life, and will not let it be +said to his children in after years that their father broke prison to save +his head; and so, while he delays the acceptance of Lady Carlisle’s +assistance, he is led to execution. He sees that not he alone, but the +master who has betrayed him, must incur the vengeance of the outraged +people of England; and his last words addressed to Pym are to implore him +(on his knees) to spare the King’s life. He feels that nothing will move +the stern patriot from his sense of duty, and thanks God that it is +himself who dies first. He expresses no word of ill-feeling against Pym, +and goes bravely to death, the victim of a misplaced affection almost +without parallel in our history. <i>Strafford</i> is a presentation of “naked +souls,” as Dr. J. Todhunter called it. “They are almost like Hugo’s +personages, monomaniacs of ideas—Strafford of loyalty to Charles; Lady +Carlisle of loyalty to Strafford’s infatuation; Pym of loyalty to an ideal +England.... Browning has not left the King even a rag of conventional +royalty to cover his nakedness. He has stript him with a vengeance.” How +far Browning’s representation of the circumstances attendant on the +impeachment and condemnation of Strafford is true to the actual facts must +be left to the decision of the greatest authority on the history of the +period—Professor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">[Pg 526]</a></span> Gardiner. In his introduction to Miss E. H. Hickey’s +<i>Strafford</i>, he says: “We may be sure that it was not by accident that Mr. +Browning, in writing this play, decisively abandoned all attempt to be +historically accurate. Only here and there does anything in the course of +the drama take place as it could have taken place at the actual court of +Charles I. Not merely are there frequent minor inaccuracies, but the very +roots of the situation are untrue to fact. The real Strafford was far from +opposing the war with the Scots at the time when the Short Parliament was +summoned. Pym never had such a friendship for Strafford as he is +represented as having; and, to any one who knows anything of the habits of +Charles, the idea of Pym or his friends entering into colloquies with +Strafford, and even bursting unannounced into Charles’s presence, is, from +the historical point of view, simply ridiculous. So completely does the +drama proceed irrespectively of historical truth, that the critic may +dispense with the thankless task of pointing out discrepancies. He will be +better employed in asking what ends those discrepancies were intended to +serve, and whether the neglect of truth of fact has resulted in the +highest truth of character.—For myself I can only say that, every time I +read the play, I feel more certain that Mr. Browning has seized the real +Strafford, the man of critical brain, of rapid decision, and tender heart, +who strove for the good of his nation without sympathy for the generation +in which he lived. Charles I., too, with his faults perhaps exaggerated, +is the real Charles. Of Lady Carlisle we know too little to speak with +anything like certainty; but, in spite of Mr. Browning’s statement that +his character of her is purely imaginary, there is a wonderful parallelism +between the Lady Carlisle which history conjectures rather than describes. +There is the same tendency to fix the heart upon the truly great man, and +to labour for him without the requital of human affection; though in the +play no part is played by that vanity which seems to have been the main +motive with the real personage.” It has frequently been said that +Browning, in this play, has closely followed the story as given in the +<i>Life of Strafford</i> by the late John Forster. The reason for this +undoubted fact has recently been given to the world. In the <i>Pall Mall +Gazette</i>, in the month of April 1890, Dr. F. J. Furnivall published the +following letter, which asserts the late poet’s right to almost the whole +of the <i>Life of Strafford</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">[Pg 527]</a></span> that has hitherto gone under the name of the +late John Forster, in the second volume of the <i>Lives of Eminent British +Statesmen</i> in Lardner’s “Cabinet Cyclopædia,” pp. 178-411, with the +Strafford Appendix, pp. 412-21: “This volume was published in 1836. John +Forster wrote the life of Eliot, the first in the volume, and began that +of Strafford. He then fell ill; and as he was anxious to produce the book +in the time agreed on, Browning offered to finish <i>Strafford</i> for him, on +his handing over all the material he had accumulated for it. Forster was +greatly relieved by Browning’s kindness. The poet set to work, completed +Strafford’s life on his own lines, in accordance with his own conception +of Strafford’s character, but generously said nothing about it till after +Forster’s death. Then he told a few of his friends—me among them—of how +he had helped Forster. On my telling Prof. Gardiner of this, I found that +he knew it; and had been long convinced that the conception of Strafford +in this Lardner <i>Life</i> was not John Forster’s, but was Robert Browning’s. +The other day Prof. Gardiner urged me to make the fact of Browning’s +authorship public; and I do so now, though I have frequently mentioned it +to friends in private; and at the Browning Society, when a member has +said, ‘It is curious how closely Browning has followed his authority, +Forster’s <i>Life of Strafford</i>,’ I have answered, ‘Yes, because he wrote it +himself.’ We thus understand why, when Macready asked Browning, on May +26th, 1836, to write him a play, the poet suggested Strafford as its +subject; and why, the <i>Life</i> being finished in 1836, the play was printed +and played in 1837. The internal evidence will satisfy any intelligent +reader that almost all the prose <i>Life</i> is the poet’s. It is not only +little touches like these on pp. 182-3, describing James I., which reveal +Browning,—‘He was not an absolute fool, and little more can be said of +him ... whenever an obvious or judicious truth seemed likely to fall in +his way, <i>his pen infallibly waddled off from it</i>’; on p. 227, ‘divers +ill-spelt and solemn sillinesses from the King,’ the reference to the +‘Sordello’ Ezzelin<a name='fna_8' id='fna_8' href='#f_8'><small>[8]</small></a> on p. 229, etc.,—but it is the conception and +working-out of the character of Strafford, ‘<i>that he was consistent to +himself throughout</i>,’ p. 228, etc., and that his one object was to make +Charles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">[Pg 528]</a></span> ‘the most absolute lord in Christendom,’ and that this explains +all apparent inconsistencies and vanities in his conduct. Let any one read +the following last paragraph of the <i>Life</i>, and ask himself if it is not +the poet’s hand. Page 411: ‘A great lesson is written in the life of this +truly extraordinary person. In the career of Strafford is to be sought the +justification of the world’s “appeal from tyranny to God.” In him +Despotism had at length obtained an instrument with mind to comprehend, +and resolution to act upon, her principles in their length and breadth; +and enough of her purposes were effected by him to enable mankind to see +“as from a tower the end of all.” I cannot discern one false step in +Strafford’s public conduct, one glimpse of a recognition of an alien +principle, one instance of a dereliction of the law of his being, which +can come in to dispute the decisive result of the experiment, or explain +away its failure. <i>The least vivid fancy will have no difficulty in taking +up the interrupted design, and by wholly enfeebling, or materially +emboldening, the insignificant nature of Charles, and by according some +half-dozen years of immunity to the “fretted tenement” of Strafford’s +“fiery soul,”—contemplate then, for itself, the perfect realisation of +the scheme of “making the prince the most absolute lord in Christendom.” +That done,—let it pursue the same course with respect to Eliot’s noble +imaginings, or to young Vane’s dreamy aspirings, and apply in like manner +a fit machinery to the working out the project which made the dungeon of +the one a holy place, and sustained the other in his self-imposed exile.</i> +The result is great and decisive! It establishes, in renewed force, those +principles of political conduct which have endured, and must continue to +endure, “like truth from age to age.”’ Take again a couple of passages of +two and a half lines each on Strafford’s illnesses, on page 369, and +recollect that Browning owed much to Donne:—‘The soul of the Earl of +Strafford was indeed lodged, to use the expression of his favourite Donne, +within a “low and fatal room” ... But even by the side of the body’s +weakness we find a witness of the spirit’s triumph,—a vindication of the +mightiness of will!’ And on page 370—‘Then, when every energy was to be +taxed to the uttermost, the question of his fiery spirit’s supremacy was +indeed put to the issue, by a complication of ghastly diseases.’ Are these +and like passages by John Forster? No! They are Robert Browning’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">[Pg 529]</a></span> Plenty +of others have his mark, especially those passages analysing and +philosophising on character. I have appealed to Messrs. Smith & Elder to +reprint this <i>Life of Strafford</i>, with an Introduction by Prof. Gardiner; +but I suppose that there is no copyright in it, as it has always gone +under John Forster’s name. Assuredly all students of Browning should have +this <i>Life</i> on their shelves. I should say that Forster did not write more +than the first four pages of it, and that Browning began with ‘James I. +... came to this country in an ecstasy of infinite relief,’ on page 182.” +In this <i>Life of Strafford</i> there is a striking passage on the question of +that statesman’s “apostacy.” “In one word, what it is desired to impress +upon the reader, before the delineation of Wentworth in his after years, +is this—<i>that he was consistent to himself throughout</i>. I have always +considered that much good wrath is thrown away upon what is usually called +‘apostacy.’ In the majority of cases, if the circumstances are thoroughly +examined, it will be found that there has been ‘no such thing.’ The +position on which the acute Roman thought fit to base his whole theory of +æsthetics—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam<br /> +Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas,<br /> +Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atram<br /> +Desinat in piscem mulier formosa supernè,<br /> +Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?” etc.</p> + +<p>is of far wider application than to the exigencies of an art of poetry; +and those who carry their researches into the moral nature of mankind +cannot do better than impress upon their minds, at the outset, that in the +regions they explore they are to expect no monsters—no essentially +discordant termination to any ‘Mulier formosa supernè.’ Infinitely and +distinctly various as appear the shifting hues of our common nature when +subjected to the prism of <span class="smcaplc">CIRCUMSTANCE</span>, each ray into which it is broken +is no less in itself a primitive colour, susceptible, indeed, of vast +modification, but incapable of further division.<a name='fna_9' id='fna_9' href='#f_9'><small>[9]</small></a> Indolence, however, in +its delight for broad classifications, finds its account in overlooking +this; and among the results none is more conspicuous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530">[Pg 530]</a></span> than the long list +of apostates with which history furnishes us. It is very true, it may be +admitted, that when we are informed by an old chronicler that ‘at this +time Ezzelin changed totally his disposition,’—or by a modern biographer +that ‘at such a period Tiberius first became a wicked prince,’—we examine +too curiously if we consider such information as in reality regarding +other than the act done and the popular inference recorded; beyond which +it was no part of the writer to inquire.—Against all such conclusions I +earnestly protest in the case of the remarkable personage whose ill-fated +career we are now retracing. Let him be judged sternly, but in no +unphilosophic spirit. In turning from the bright band of patriot brothers +to the solitary Strafford—‘a star which dwelt apart’—we have to +contemplate no extinguished splendour, razed and blotted from the book of +life. Lustrous, indeed, as was the gathering of the lights in the +political heaven of this great time, even that radiant cluster might have +exulted in the accession of the ‘comet beautiful and fierce,’ which +tarried a while within its limits ere it ‘darted athwart with train of +flame.’ But it was governed by other laws than were owned by its golden +associates, and impelled by a contrary, yet no less irresistible force, +than that which restrained them within their eternal orbits,—it left +them, never to ‘float into that azure heaven again.’”—John Forster’s +<i>Life of Strafford</i>, in the “Cabinet Cyclopædia” (conducted by Dr. +Lardner), pp. 228-9.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Act I., Scene i. <i>Pym</i>, the great and learned champion of English +liberty, was an intimate friend of Wentworth, and deeply felt his +desertion of the popular cause. <i>Sir Benjamin Rudyard</i> was a prominent +member of the Long Parliament. When the quarrel broke out between Charles +and the Parliament, Rudyard quitted his parliamentary pursuits and joined +Hampden and Pym’s party. He opposed the attainder of Strafford. He +ultimately became anxious for a compromise between the King and the +Commons; he acted, however, to the last with the patriots. <i>Henry Vane</i>, +Sir, the younger, was a disciple of Pym, and was of considerable talents +and equal fanaticism. He purloined from his father’s cabinet a very +important document, which was used against Strafford on his trial. After +the Restoration he was brought to trial and executed. <i>Hampden, John</i>, a +gentleman of Buckinghamshire, quiet, courteous, and submissive; but with a +correct judgment, an invincible spirit, and the most consummate address.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531">[Pg 531]</a></span> +In 1626 he was imprisoned for refusing to contribute towards the forced +loan; he resisted the payment of ship-money. He threw himself heartily +into the work of the Long Parliament, and commanded a troop in the +parliamentary army. He was a great patriot and defender of the rights of +the people. <i>Denzil Hollis, Lord</i>: “In 1629, when the Speaker refused to +put to the vote Sir John Eliot’s remonstrance against the illegal levying +of tonnage and poundage, and against Catholic and Arminian innovations, +Hollis read the resolutions, and was one of two members who forcibly held +the Speaker in the chair till they were passed. He was in consequence +committed to the Tower. He was one of the ‘five members,’ as they were +called, whom Charles accused of high treason in January 1642. He took no +part in the proceedings against Strafford, who was his brother-in-law” +(<i>Imp. Dict. Biog.</i>). <i>The Bill of Rights</i>: the third great charter of +English liberties must not be confounded with “the Petition of Right.” +“The Bill of Rights” was passed in the reign of William and Mary, in 1689. +“<i>much worn Cottington</i>”: he was ambassador to Madrid. “<i>maniac Laud</i>”: +Archbishop Laud was detested by the Puritans because he endeavoured to +assimilate the doctrines and ritual of the Church of England to those of +Rome. He was charged by Holles with high treason, and executed. +<i>Runnymead</i>: the place where Magna Charta was signed. <i>renegade</i>: one +faithless to principle or party; a deserter of a cause. <i>Haman</i>: see the +Book of Esther. Haman resolved to extirpate the Jews out of the Persian +empire, but Haman fell and Mordecai was advanced to his place. <i>Ahitophel</i> +was a conspirator with Absalom against David, who prayed the Lord to turn +the counsel of Ahitophel into foolishness (2 Sam. xv. 31); whence the term +“Ahitophel’s counsel.” <i>League and Covenant</i>: the “Solemn League and +Covenant” was designed by the Scotch to carry out in their integrity the +principles of the Reformation and to establish the Presbyterian in lieu of +the Episcopal Church. <i>Eliot</i>: Sir John Eliot compared Buckingham to +Sejanus in lust, rapacity and ambition, in the House of Commons, and +seconded the motion for his impeachment. Eliot was sent to the Tower. +“<i>The Philistine</i>”: the giant slain by David. “<i>Exalting Dagon where the +ark should be</i>” (1 Sam. v.). Dagon was an idol, half man and half fish. He +was worshipped by the Philistines. When they captured the “ark” from the +Jews, it was placed in his temple,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_532" id="Page_532">[Pg 532]</a></span> the idol fell, and the palms of his +hands were broken off. <i>scourge and gag</i>: instruments of torture well +understood in those days. “<i>The Midianite drove Israel into dens</i>” (Judges +vi. 2): the Israelites for their sins were oppressed by Midian, and were +compelled to hide from them in dens and caves of the mountains. <i>Gideon</i>: +the Israelites prayed to God for deliverance from their enemies, and an +angel sent Gideon, who destroyed Baal’s altar and delivered Israel (Judges +vi.). <i>Loudon</i>: Scottish lord and covenanter; committed to the Tower for +soliciting the aid of the king of France: he was sent to Scotland by +Charles. <i>Hamilton</i>, Marquess of: sent by Charles to Scotland as +commissioner to suppress the Covenant, he dared not land; was suspected of +treason, and fled; was restored to the King’s favour, and became a leader +of the royalists; was defeated by the parliamentary troops; fined +£100,000, and executed. <i>Joab</i>: David, when dying, gave charge to Solomon +to put his enemy Joab to death, which was done (1 Kings ii. 28-34). “<i>No +Feltons</i>”: J. Felton assassinated Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and was +executed. <i>Gracchus</i>: Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, the celebrated Roman +tribunes, were after their death worshipped as gods, and their mother +esteemed herself the happiest of Roman matrons in having given birth to +such illustrious sons. <i>The Petition of Right</i>, the second great charter +of English liberties, was directed against those grievances which +Wentworth thus described in his speech in the third parliament: “the +raising of money by loans, strengthened by commission, with unheard-of +instruction; the billeting of soldiers by the lieutenants.... Our persons +have been injured both by imprisonment without law (the King exercised an +absolute right to imprison any one without legal proceedings), and by +being designed to some office, charge, and employment, foreign or +domestic, as a brand of infamy and mark of disgrace” (Prof. Gardiner). +<i>Aceldama</i>: “a field said to have lain south of Jerusalem, purchased with +the bribe which Judas took for betraying his Master, and therefore called +the <i>field of blood</i>;—sometimes used in figurative sense” (<i>Webster’s +Dict.</i>). <i>Nathaniel Fiennes</i> was the second son of William Fiennes; he was +a lawyer, and in 1640 sat in the House of Commons for Banbury. He was a +rigid Presbyterian, and a member of nearly all Cromwell’s parliaments. +<i>Ship money</i>: “An imposition formerly charged on the ports, towns, cities, +boroughs and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_533" id="Page_533">[Pg 533]</a></span> counties of England, for providing and furnishing certain +ships for the king’s service. The attempt made by Charles I. to revive and +enforce this imposition was resisted by John Hampden, and was one of the +causes which led to the death of Charles. It was finally abolished” +(<i>Webster’s Dict.</i>). “<i>Wentworth’s influence in the North</i>”: Wentworth +represented Yorkshire in parliament, and had great influence in the north +of England.—Scene ii. “<i>Old Vane</i>” was secretary of state and comptroller +of the household under Charles I. <i>Savill</i>: George Savill, Marquis of +Halifax (?). <i>Holland, Earl of</i>: raised forces against the parliament +after espousing its cause against Charles; he was tried after the King’s +death and executed. “<i>Lady Carlisle</i> was the daughter of the ninth Earl of +Northumberland. In 1639 she had been for three years a widow. Her husband +was James, Lord Hay, created successively Viscount Doncaster and Earl of +Carlisle” (from Miss Hickey’s <i>Strafford</i>). <i>Weston, Sir Richard</i>, +Chancellor of the Exchequer, made Earl of Portland; denounced by Sir J. +Eliot as an enemy of the Commonwealth. “<i>This frightful Scots affair</i>”: +Professor Gardiner shows that Strafford opposed peace with the Scots, +supported the harshest measures, and urged the King to invade Scotland +(<i>Encyc. Brit.</i>, vol xxii., p. 586). “<i>In this Ezekiel chamber</i>”: in the +eighth chapter of Ezekiel the prophet has a vision of the chambers of +imagery where he saw “wicked abominations.” “<i>The Faction</i>,” a party +acting in opposition to the constituted authority.—Act II., Scene i. +“<i>Subsidies</i>,” says Blackstone, were taxes, not immediately on property, +but on persons in respect of their reputed estates, after the nominal rate +of 4<i>s.</i> in the pound for lands and 2<i>s.</i> 8<i>d.</i> for goods. <i>cockatrice</i>: +“The basilisk; a fabulous serpent, said to be produced from a cock’s egg +brooded by a serpent. Its breath, and even its look, is fabled to be +fatal” (<i>Webster’s Dict.</i>). <i>Star Chamber</i>: “The origin of this court is +derived from the most remote antiquity. Its title was derived from the +<i>Camera Stellata</i> or Star Chamber, an apartment in the king’s palace at +Westminster, in which it held its sittings; it exercised an illegal +control over the ordinary courts of justice, and in the reign of Charles +I. became very tyrannical and offensive as a means of asserting the royal +prerogative. It was abolished by the Long Parliament” (<i>Student’s Hume</i>, +p. 358).—Scene ii. <i>The George</i>: a figure of St. George on horseback, +worn by knights of the Garter. <i>A masque</i>, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_534" id="Page_534">[Pg 534]</a></span> species of dramatic +entertainment. Fletcher and Ben Jonson wrote many masques which were acted +at Court. The most beautiful work of this kind is the Comus of Milton. Act +III., Scene i.—<i>The new Parliament</i>: “The Long Parliament,” which met +Nov. 3rd, 1640; it voted the House of Lords as useless. <i>The Great Duke</i>: +Buckingham.—Scene ii. <i>Windebank</i>, one of the secretaries of state, was +impeached by the Commons for treason, and escaped to France. “<i>sly, +pitiful intriguing with the Scots</i>”: “Charles, in his eagerness to +conclude the negotiation, was induced to concede many points which he +would otherwise have refused” (Lingard, <i>Hist. Eng.</i>, vol. vii., p. 232). +“<i>The Crew and the Cabal</i>”: the “crew” was a number of people associated +together; the “cabal” a number of persons united to promote their private +views in church or state by intrigue. What is usually understood by the +“cabal” was a name given to a ministry under Charles II., the initial +letters of the names of its members forming the word cabal. <i>Mainwaring, +Dr.</i>, a clergyman who preached in favour of the general loan. He was +impeached by the Commons. <i>Goring, Colonel</i>: he was Governor of +Portsmouth, was an officer of distinguished merit, and devoted to the +King.—Scene iii., <i>rufflers</i>, bullies, swaggerers. “<i>Are we in Geneva?</i>”: +Calvin’s city, where all sorts of puritanical restrictions were enforced +against harmless amusements as well as breaches of morality. <i>St. John, +Oliver</i>: St. John was Solicitor-General; he was one of the leaders of the +Independents. <i>stockishness</i>, hardness, stupidity, blockishness (rare). +<i>Maxwell, Usher of the Black Rod.</i> He received Strafford as his prisoner, +after his impeachment, and required him to deliver his sword.—Act IV., +Scene i. <i>Hollis</i>: Strafford was his brother-in-law, and so he took no +part in the proceedings against him. “<i>A blind moth-eaten law</i>”: Strafford +said on his trial that “it was two hundred and forty years since any man +was touched for this crime.”—Scene ii. “<i>Prophet’s rod</i>”: “Moses took the +rod of God in his hand” (Exod. iv. 20). <i>Haselrig, Sir Arthur</i>: was one of +the five members of the House of Commons whom Charles tried to impeach. +<i>Laud, Archbishop</i>: had been impeached by Sir Harry Vane, and was a +prisoner in the Tower. <i>Bill of attainder</i>: <i>The Student’s Hume</i> says (p. +399): “The student should bear in mind the difference between an +<i>Impeachment</i> and a <i>Bill of Attainder</i>. In an impeachment the Commons<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_535" id="Page_535">[Pg 535]</a></span> +are the accusers, and the Lords alone the judges. In a bill of attainder +the Commons are the judges as well as the Lords; it may be introduced in +either House; it passes through the same stages as any other bill; and +when agreed to by both Houses it receives the assent of the Crown.”—Act +V., Scene ii. “<i>O bell’ andare</i>”: “The Italian boat-song is from Redi’s +<i>Bacco</i>, long since naturalised in the joyous and delicate version of +Leigh Hunt” (R. B.) <i>Term</i>, or <i>Terminus</i>: the Roman god of bounds, under +whose protection were the stones which marked boundaries. <i>Genius</i>: the +Italian peoples regarded the Genius as a higher power which creates and +maintains life, assists at the begetting and birth of every individual +man, determines his character, tries to influence his destiny for good, +accompanies him through life as his tutelary spirit, and lives on in the +<i>Lares</i> after his death. (Seyffert’s <i>Dict. Class. Ant.</i>) “<i>Garrard—my +newsman</i>”: was a clergyman who, when Wentworth went to Ireland as Lord +Deputy, in 1633, was instructed to furnish him with news and gossip. (Miss +Hickey.) <i>Tribune</i>: in ancient Rome, a magistrate chosen by the people to +protect them from the oppression of the patricians or nobles. <i>Sejanus, +Ælius</i>: distinguished himself at the court of Tiberius, who made a +confidant of this fawning favourite, who made himself the darling of the +senate, and the army. He was commander of the prætorian guards, and used +every artifice to make himself important. He became practically head of +the empire. He ridiculed the Emperor by introducing him on the stage; +Tiberius then ordered him to be accused before the senate; he was +subsequently imprisoned and strangled, <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 31. <i>Richelieu, Cardinal</i>: +fomented the first commotions in Scotland, and secretly supplied the +Covenanters with money and arms. He was prime minister to Louis XIII. of +France. “<i>A mask at Theobald’s</i>”: Theobald’s, in Hertfordshire, was a +beautiful house, inherited by Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, from his +father, William Cecil, Lord Burleigh. King James liked this house so much +that, in 1607, he offered Robert Cecil the Queen’s dower-house at Hatfield +in exchange for it. Several of Ben Jonson’s masques were written for +performance at Theobald’s. (Prof. Morley.) <i>Prynne</i>: William Prynne was a +barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, of a morose and gloomy disposition, and a +thorough-going Puritan; he particularly hated theatres, dancing, hunting, +card playing, and Christmas festivities. He wrote a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536">[Pg 536]</a></span> great book against +all these things, which he called <i>Histrio-Mastix</i>. He was indicted as a +libeller of the Queen, condemned to stand in the pillory, to lose both his +ears, to pay £5000 fine to the King, and to be imprisoned for life. +“<i>Strafford shall take no hurt</i>”: Charles had said to Strafford, “Upon the +word of a king you shall not suffer in life, honour, or fortune.” “<i>Put +not your trust in princes</i>”: Psalm cxlvi. 3. <i>Wandesford</i>: Sir Christopher +Wandesford was Master of the Rolls, and Privy Councillor in Ireland, and +had been deputy there during Strafford’s absence. He was an intimate +friend of Strafford’s, and is said to have died of grief at hearing of +Strafford’s arrest. (Miss Hickey’s <i>Strafford</i>.) <i>Radcliffe, Sir George</i>: +was appointed by Strafford guardian of his children; he was charged by Pym +with treason. <i>Balfour</i>: Lieutenant of the Tower. “<i>Too late for sermon at +St. Antholin’s</i>”: the Government had appropriated the Church of St. +Antholin to the use of the Scotch commission. (Miss Hickey.) +<i>Billingsley</i>: Balfour was desired by the King to admit Captain +Billingsley and one hundred men to the Tower to effect Strafford’s escape. +(Miss Hickey’s notes.) “<i>I fought her to the utterance</i>”: the last or +utmost extremity—the same as Fr. <i>à outrance</i>. “<i>David not more +Jonathan</i>”: were inseparable friends. The allusion is to David the +psalmist and Jonathan the son of Saul. David’s lamentation at the death of +Jonathan was never surpassed in pathos and beauty. (2 Sam. i. 19-27.) +“<i>His dream—of a perfect church</i>.” Laud wished to make the Church of +England “Catholic”; he endeavoured to assimilate its doctrines and +ceremonies to those of the Catholic Church, ignoring the fact that “the +Tudor settlement” was Protestant. Laud desired to appropriate all that to +him appeared valuable in the Roman Catholic system, and to reject all that +to him seemed objectionable. His “perfect church” was, as Browning puts +it, “a dream.”</p> + +<p><b>Summum Bonum.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) A Latin phrase meaning the chief or +ultimate good. “In ethics it was a phrase employed by ancient philosophers +to denote that end in the following and attainment of which the progress, +perfection and happiness of human beings consist. Cicero treated of the +subject very fully in his <i>De Finibus</i>.” (<i>Encyc. Dict.</i>) Concentration is +the key-note of the poem: in the honey-bag of one bee there is the breath +and bloom of a year; in a single gem is represented all the chemistry of +nature, from the condensation of the gases<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537">[Pg 537]</a></span> which went to form the earth; +in the beauty of a single pearl is all the wonder of the sea, just as in a +lump of coal are the imprisoned sun-rays of prehistoric forests. But truth +and trust are brighter and purer than gems and pearls; in the love of a +young girl Mr. Browning sees the concentration of the brightest truth and +purest trust in the universe, so holy a thing to him is love. The <i>Summum +Bonum</i> of St. Augustine is, of course, the true, ultimate good of man—the +Love of God—of which the love of the purest of mankind is but a dim +reflection.</p> + +<p><b>Sun, The.</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>, 5.) Some one told one of Ferishtah’s +pupils that it had been reported that “God once assumed on earth a human +shape,” and he desired to know how the strange idea arose. Ferishtah +replied that in days of ignorance men took the sun for God. “Let it be +considered as the symbol of the Supreme,” said the Dervish. “There must be +such an Author of life and light somewhere: let us suppose the sun to be +that Author. This ball of fire gives us all we enjoy on earth, and so +inspires us with love and praise. If we eat a fig we praise the planter; +and so on up to the sun, which gathers to himself all love and praise. The +sun is fire, and more beside. Does the force know that it gives us what it +does? Must our love go forth to fire? If we must thank it, there must be +purpose with the power—a humanity like our own. Power has no need of will +or purpose; and no occasion for beneficence when all that is, so is and so +must be. As these qualities imply imperfection, let us ‘eject the man, +retain the orb,’ and then ‘what remains to love and praise?’ We cannot be +expected to thank insentient things. No! man’s soul can only be moved by +what is kindred soul: man’s way it receives good; man’s way it must make +acknowledgment. If man were an angel, his love and praise, right and fit +enough now, would go forth idly. Man’s part is to send love forth, even if +it go astray.” “But,” says the objector, “man is bound by man’s +conditions, can only judge as good and right what his faculty adjudges +such: how can we then accept in this one case falsehood for truth? We lack +an union of fire with flesh; but lacking is not gaining: is there any +trace of such an union recorded?” Ferishtah replies, “Perhaps there may +be; perhaps the greatly yearned-for once befell; perhaps the sun was flesh +once.” The pupil demands “An union inconceivable once was fact?” The +Dervish replies, “There is something pervading the sun which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_538" id="Page_538">[Pg 538]</a></span> it does not +consume: is it not fitter to stand appalled before a conception +unattainable by man’s intelligence?” Firdausí, in the Sháh Námeh, records +that Húsheng was the first who brought out fire from stone; and from that +circumstance he founded the religion of the fire-worshippers, calling the +flame which was produced the light of the Divinity. Húsheng was the second +king of the Peshadian dynasty; from his time the fire faith seems to have +slept till the appearance of Zerdusht, in the reign of Gushtasp, many +centuries afterwards, when Isfendiyár propagated it by the sword. After +Húsheng had discovered fire by hurling a stone against a rock, thereby +producing a spark, which set light to the herbage, he made an immense +fire, and gave a royal entertainment, calling it the Feast of Siddeh. The +lyric explains that the divine element of fire is enshrined in the earthly +flint when the spark escapes; the relationship is difficult to remember. +So God was once incarnate in the form of man; and this some find it as +hard to believe.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Tab.</b> (<i>Ned Bratts.</i>) Tabitha Bratts, who was converted by John Bunyan, and +who went with her husband to the Chief Justice at the assizes, asking to +be hanged, and whose request was favourably entertained.</p> + +<p><b>Tale, A.</b> The Epilogue to the <i>Two Poets of Croisic</i> is included in the +second series of <i>Selections</i> under this title.</p> +<p><a name="taurello" id="taurello"></a></p> +<p><b>Taurello Salinguerra.</b> (<i>Sordello.</i>) His name, says Mr. W. M. Rossetti, may +be translated as “Bullock Sally-in-war,” or “Dash-into-fight.” He belonged +to the family of the Torelli, one of the two leading families of Ferrara. +He married Sofia, a daughter of Eccelin the Monk, and he became the ruler +of his native city. He was the right-hand man of Eccelin, and also of his +son. The great authority on this character is Muratori (<i>Annali d’ Italia, +compilati da Lodovico Antonio Muratori</i>). Mr. W. M. Rossetti read a paper +to the Browning Society in November 1889 on “Taurello Salinguerra,” and I +am indebted to this valuable essay for the following dates and particulars +concerning this interesting character. He was born about the year 1160. In +1200, when he was head of the Ghibelline faction in Ferrara, he suddenly +assailed the town of Argenta with the Ferrarese army, and having taken it, +sacked it. In 1205 the head of the Guelf faction, both in Ferrara and the +March of Verona, was Azzo VI.,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_539" id="Page_539">[Pg 539]</a></span> Marquis of Este. Naturally they +quarrelled, and Azzo took the castle of La Fratta from Salinguerra and +dismantled it. This was the beginning of the many dissensions between +them. In 1207 Azzo VI. was compelled by Eccelino da Onara and others to +retire from Verona. Then it was that Salinguerra, head of the Ghibellines +in Ferrara, declaring himself the intimate friend of Eccelino, expelled +from that city all the adherents of Marquis Azzo; and, leaving no room for +him, began to act as Lord of Ferrara. In 1208 Marquis Azzo VI. +re-established himself in Verona. Reaching Ferrara with an army, he +expelled Salinguerra. In 1209 Salinguerra re-entered Ferrara, stripped +Azzo VI. of Este of its dominion, and sent his partisans into exile. In +1210, the Emperor Otho IV. professing that the March of Ancona belonged to +the empire, Azzo obtained the investiture of it from the Emperor. Probably +at this time peace was re-established between Azzo VI. and Salinguerra, +the competitors for the lordship of Ferrara. In 1213 Aldrovandino, Marquis +of Este and Ancona, succeeded his father Azzo VI. and continued to hold, +along with Count Richard of San Bonifazio, the dominion of Verona, where +he was created Podestà in this year. He had contests with Salinguerra in +Ferrara. In 1215 Aldrovandino, Marquis of Este, died, and was succeeded by +Azzo VII., a minor. In 1221 Azzo VII. and his adherents assailed +Salinguerra at Ferrara, and forced him to abandon the city, and consigned +the palace of Salinguerra to the flames. After mediation, the expelled men +returned to their homes. In 1222 the Ghibelline cause prevailed at +Ferrara: Azzo and the Guelfs had to leave the city. He collected an army +at Rovigo, and returned to Ferrara. Salinguerra, a crafty fox, made peace, +for fear the people should turn against him. The peace was only a trap, +however, by which to catch Azzo. In 1224 Azzo VII. returned to lay siege +to Ferrara. The astute Salinguerra sent embassies to Count Richard of San +Bonifazio, to induce him, with a number of horsemen, to enter Ferrara +under pretext of concluding a friendly pact. But on entering he was at +once made prisoner, with all his company; and therefore the Marquis of +Este, disappointed, retired from the siege. Enraged at this result, +Marquis Azzo proceeded to the siege of the castle of La Fratta, a +favourite stronghold of Salinguerra, and starved it into submission. +Salinguerra complained of this to Eccelino da Romana,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_540" id="Page_540">[Pg 540]</a></span> his brother-in-law, +and they both studied more assiduously than ever how best to crush the +Guelfs, of which the Marquis of Este was chief. In 1225 the Lombard League +procured the release of Count Richard, who returned to Verona; but he was +expelled, when he took refuge in Mantua. He ultimately returned to Verona. +In 1227 Eccelino the younger was established in Verona, and Count Richard +again expelled. In 1228 Eccelino da Onara, father of Eccelino da Romana +and of Alberic, had become a monk, and led the life of a hypocrite, +finally showing himself to be a Paterine heretic. In 1230 Verona was in +trouble: the Ghibellines raised a riot and imprisoned Count Richard; +Salinguerra was made Podestà. In 1240 Pope Gregory IX. incited the +Lombards and the Marquis of Este to besiege Ferrara. The Doge of Venice +attended in person; the Mantuans concurred, as also did Alberico da +Romana. After some months peace was proposed, and Salinguerra came to the +camp of the confederates to ratify them. Salinguerra was entrapped, and +was transferred as a prisoner to Venice; where, treated courteously, he +ended his days in holy peace; and the House of Este, after so many years, +re-entered Ferrara.</p> + +<p><b>Templars.</b> The poem <i>The Heretic’s Tragedy</i> deals with the suppression of +the order of the Knights Templars.</p> + +<p><b>Theocrite.</b> (<i>The Boy and the Angel.</i>) The boy who wishes to praise God +“the Pope’s great way,” and who leaves his common task, and is replaced by +the angel Gabriel. As neither boy nor angel please God in their changed +positions, each returns to his appropriate sphere.</p> + +<p><b>“The Poets pour us wine.”</b> (Epilogue to <i>Pacchiarotto</i>.) These words are +the beginning of the Epilogue named, and are quoted from a poem of Mr. +Browning’s entitled <i>Wine of Cyprus</i>, the last verse but one, the last +line of which is “And the poets poured us wine.”</p> + +<p><b>“There’s a Woman like a Dewdrop.”</b> (<i>A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.</i>) The song +in Act I., Scene iii., begins with this line. It is sung by Earl Mertoun +as he climbs to Mildred Tresham’s chamber.</p> + +<p><b>“The Year’s at the Spring.”</b> (<i>Pippa Passes.</i>) The song which Pippa sings +as she passes the house of Ottima, and thereby brings conviction to her +lover Sebald.</p> + +<p><b>Thorold, Earl Tresham.</b> (<i>A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.</i>) The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_541" id="Page_541">[Pg 541]</a></span> brother of +Mildred Tresham, who challenges Mertoun, her lover, on his way to a stolen +interview with his sister, and kills him, thinking he has disgraced the +family.</p> + +<p><b>Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kader.</b> (1842.) The Metidja is an extensive +plain near the coast of Algeria, “commencing on the eastern side of the +Bay of Algiers, and stretching thence inland to the south and west. It is +about sixty miles in length by ten or twelve in breadth” (<i>Encyc. Brit.</i>). +Algiers was conquered by the French in 1830; but, after the conquest, +constant outbreaks of hostilities on the part of the natives occurred, and +in 1831 General Bertherene was despatched to chastise the rebels. Later in +the same year General Savary was sent with an additional force of 16,000 +men for the same purpose. He attempted to suppress the outbreaks of +hostilities with the greatest cruelty and treachery. These acts so +exasperated the people against their new ruler that such tribes as had +acquiesced in the new order of things now armed themselves against the +French. It was at this time that the world first heard of Abd-el-Kader. He +was born in 1807, and was a learned and pious man, greatly distinguished +amongst his people for his skill in horsemanship and athletic sports. He +now rapidly collected an army of ten thousand men, marched to Oran and +attacked the French, who had taken possession of the town; but was +repulsed with great loss. He was so popular with his people that he had +little difficulty in recruiting his forces, and he made himself so +dangerous to the French that they found it expedient to offer him terms of +peace, and he was recognised as emir of the province of Mascara. The peace +did not last long, and hostilities broke out, leading to a defeat of the +French in 1835. Constant troubles were caused the French by the opposition +of Abd-el-Kader, and reinforcements on a large scale were sent against him +from France. After varying fortunes, Abd-el-Kader was at last reduced to +extremities, and was compelled to hide in the mountains with a few +followers; at length he gave himself up to the French, and was imprisoned +at Pau, and afterwards at Amboise. He afterwards obtained permission to +remove to Constantinople, and from thence to remove to Damascus. The poem +describes an incident of the war which took place in 1842, when the Duke +d’Aumale fell upon the emir’s camp and took several thousand prisoners, +Abd-el-Kader escaping with difficulty.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_542" id="Page_542">[Pg 542]</a></span><b>“Thus the Mayne glideth.”</b> (<i>Paracelsus.</i>) The song which Festus sings to +Paracelsus in the closing scene in his cell in the Hospital of St. +Sebastian.</p> + +<p><b>Tiburzio.</b> (<i>Luria.</i>) The general of the army of the Pisans, who exposes to +Luria the treachery of the Florentines, and whose letter the Moor destroys +without reading it.</p> + +<p><b>Time’s Revenges.</b> <span class="smcap">A Soliloquy.</span> (<i>Dramatic Romances and Lyrics</i>, in <i>Bells +and Pomegranates</i>, VII., 1845; <i>Romances</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Romances</i>, +1868.) “Love begets love,” they say: probably this is not much truer than +proverbs usually are. The speaker in the poem has a friend who would do +anything in the world for him; in return, he barely likes him. As a +compensation, inasmuch as “human love is not the growth of human will,” +the lady to whom the soliloquiser is passionately devoted, the woman for +whom he is prepared to sacrifice body, soul, everything he holds dear, +cares nothing at all for him; she would roast him before a slow fire for a +coveted ball-ticket. And why not? if love be what the poet says it is—the +merging by affinity of one soul in another—where no affinity exists no +union can result. Lovers should study the elements of chemistry, and the +laws which govern the affinities of the elementary bodies; or, if they are +not inclined to so serious a task, let them take to heart the Spanish +proverb, “Love one that does not love you, answer one that does not call +you, and you will run a fruitless race.”</p> +<p><a name="toccata" id="toccata"></a></p> +<p><b>Toccata of Galuppi’s, A.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855.) Baldassare Galuppi +(1706-85) was a celebrated Italian composer, who was born in 1706 near +Venice. His father was a barber with a taste for music, and he taught his +son sufficient of the elements of music to enable him to enter the +Conservatorio degli Incurabile, where Lotti was a teacher. He produced an +opera at the age of sixteen, but it was a failure; seven years after, +however, he produced a comic opera <i>Dorinda</i>, which was a great success. +The young composer’s great abilities were now everywhere recognised, and +his fame assured. He was a most industrious writer, and left no less than +seventy operas; which, however, have not survived to our time. Galuppi +resided and worked in London from 1741 to 1744. He went to Russia, where +he lived at the court of the Empress Catherine II. (at whose invitation he +went) in great honour, and did much for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_543" id="Page_543">[Pg 543]</a></span> improvement of musical taste +in that country. In 1768 he left Russia, and became organist of St. Mark’s, +Venice. He died in 1785, and left fifty thousand lire to the poor of that +city. His best comic opera is his <i>Il Mondo della Luna</i>. <i>A Toccata</i> is a +“<i>Touch</i>-piece,” a prelude or overture. “It does but <i>touch</i> its theme +rapidly, even superficially, for the most part; so that the interpolation +of solemn chords and emotional phrases, inconsistent with its traditional +character, may naturally, by force of contrast, lead to some suggestion or +recognition of the many irregularities of life” (Mrs. Alexander Ireland). +In the admirable paper on this poem written by Mrs. Alexander Ireland for +the Browning Society, she continues: “<i>A Toccata of Galuppi’s</i> touches on +deep subjects with a mere feather-touch of light and capricious +suggestiveness, interwoven with the graver mood, with the heart-searching +questionings of man’s deep nature and mysterious spirit. The <i>Toccata</i> as +a form of composition is not the measured, deliberate working-out of some +central musical thought, as is the <i>Sonata</i> or <i>sound</i>-piece, where the +trained ear can follow out the whole process to its delightful and orderly +consummation, where the student marks the introduction and development of +the subject, its extension, through various forms, and its whole sequence +of movement and meaning, to its glorious rounding-off and culmination, +spiritually noting each stage of the climbing structure and acknowledging +its perfection with the inward silent verdict, ‘It is well.’ The +<i>Toccata</i>, in its early and pure form, possessed no decided subject, made +such by repetition, but bore rather the form of a capricious Improvisation +or “Impromptu.” It was a very flowing movement, in notes of equal length, +and a homophonous character, the earliest examples of any importance being +those by Gabrieli (1557-1613), and those by Merulo (1533-1604); while +Galuppi, who was born in 1706 and died in 1785, produced a further +advanced development of this particular form of musical composition, with +chords freely introduced and other important innovations.” Vernon Lee, in +her <i>Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy</i> (III. “The Musical Life”) +says of the Venetian, Baldassare Galuppi, surnamed Buranello, that he was +“an immensely prolific composer, and abounded in melody, tender, pathetic +and brilliant, which in its extreme simplicity and slightness occasionally +rose to the highest beauty.... He defined the requisites of his art to +Burney in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_544" id="Page_544">[Pg 544]</a></span> very moderate terms: ‘Chiarezza, vaghezza, e buona +modulazione’—clearness, beauty, and good modulation, without troubling +himself much about any others.... Galuppi was a model of the respectable, +modest artist, living quietly on a moderate fortune, busy with his art and +the education of his numerous children, beloved and revered by his +fellow-artists; and when some fifteen years later [than 1770] he died, +honoured by them with a splendid funeral, at which all the Venetian +musicians performed; the great Pacchiarotti writing to Burney that he had +sung with much devotion to obtain a rest for Buranello’s (Galuppi’s) soul” +(p. 101). In a note Vernon Lee adds: “Mr. Browning’s fine poem, ‘A Toccata +of Galuppi’s,’ has made at least his name familiar to many English +readers.” Ritter, in his <i>History of Music</i> (p. 245), has a concise but +expressive notice of Galuppi. “<i>Balthasar Galuppi</i>, called Buranello +(1706-85), a pupil of Lotti, also composed many comic operas. The main +features of his operas are melodic elegance and lively and spirited comic +forms; but they are rather thin and weak in their execution. He was a +great favourite during his lifetime.” The poem deals with two classes of +human beings—the mere pleasure-takers with their balls and masks (Stanza +iv.), and the scientists (Stanza xiii.) with their research and their +’ologies. The Venetians—who seemed to the poet merely born to blow and +droop, who lived frivolous lives of gaiety and love-making—lived lives +which came to nothing, and did deeds better left undone—heard the music +which dreamily told them they must die, but went on with their kissing and +their dancing till death took them where they never see the sun. The other +class, immersed in the passion for knowledge, the class which despises the +vanities and frivolities of the butterfly’s life, and consecrates itself +to science, not the less surely dissipates its energies and misses the +true end of life if it has nothing higher to live for than “physics and +geology.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—ii., <i>St. Mark’s</i>. The great cathedral of Venice, named after St. +Mark, because it is said that the body of that Evangelist was brought to +Venice and enshrined there. “<i>where the Doges used to wed the sea with +rings</i>”: the Doge was the chief magistrate of Venice when it was a +republic. “The ceremony of wedding the Adriatic was instituted in 1174 by +Pope Alexander III., who gave the Doge a gold ring from off his own finger +in token of the victory achieved by the Venetian fleet at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_545" id="Page_545">[Pg 545]</a></span> Istria over +Frederick Barbarossa, in defence of the Pope’s quarrel. When his Holiness +gave the ring, he desired the Doge to throw a similar ring into the sea +annually, in commemoration of the event” (Dr. Brewer). iii., “<i>the sea’s +the street there</i>”: there are neither horses nor carriages in Venice; you +go everywhere by gondola—to church, to theatre, to market; your gondola +meets you at the railway station; in a word, the sea is the street. +<i>Shylock’s Bridge</i>: they show you Shylock’s house in the old market place +by the Rialto Bridge. vi., <i>clavichord</i>, a keyed and stringed instrument, +not now in use, being superseded by the pianoforte. viii., <i>dominant’s +persistence</i>. The dominant in music is the name given to the fifth note of +the scale of any key, counting upwards. The dominant plays a most +important part in cadences, in which it is indispensable that the key +should be strongly marked (Grove). “<i>dear dead women</i>”: the ladies of +Venice are celebrated for their beauty. An article in <i>Poet Lore</i>, October +1890, p. 546, thus explains the technical musical allusions in <i>A Toccata +of Galuppi’s</i>. These are all to be found in the seventh, eighth, and ninth +verses. “The lesser thirds are, of course, minor thirds, and are of common +occurrence; but the diminished sixth is an interval rarely used. So rare +is it, that I have seen it stated by good authorities that it is never +used harmonically. Ordinarily a diminished sixth (seven semitones), +exactly the same interval as a perfect fifth, instead of giving a +plaintive, mournful, or minor impression, would suggest a feeling of rest +and satisfaction. As I have said, however, there is one way in which it +can be used—as a suspension, in which the root of the chord on the +<i>lowered</i> super-tonic of the scale is suspended from above into the chord +with added seventh on the super-tonic, making a diminished sixth between +the root of the first and the third of the second chord. The effect of +this progression is most dismal, and possibly Browning had it in mind, +though it is doubtful almost to certainty if Galuppi knew anything of it. +Whether it be an anachronism or not, or whether it is used in a +scientifically accurate way or not, the figure is true enough poetically, +for a diminished interval—namely, something less than normal—would +naturally suggest an effect of sadness. <i>Suspensions</i>, as may already have +been guessed by the preceding example, are notes which are held over from +one chord into another, and must be made according<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_546" id="Page_546">[Pg 546]</a></span> to certain musical +rules as strict as the laws of the Medes and Persians. This holding over +of a note always produces a dissonance, and must be followed by a +concord,—in other words, a <i>solution</i>. Sevenths are very important +dissonances in music, and a commiserating seventh is most likely the +variety called a minor seventh. Being a somewhat less mournful interval +than the lesser thirds and the diminished sixths, whether real or +imaginary, yet not so final as ‘those solutions’ which seem to put an end +to all uncertainty, and therefore to life, they arouse in the listeners to +Galuppi’s playing a hope that life may last, although in a sort of +dissonantal, Wagnerian fashion. The ‘commiserating sevenths’ are closely +connected with the ‘dominant’s persistence’ in the next verse:—</p> + +<p class="poem">‘Hark! the dominant’s persistence till it must be answered to:<br /> +So an octave struck the answer.’</p> + +<p>The dominant chord in music is the chord written on the fifth degree of +the scale, and it almost always has a seventh added to it, and in a large +percentage of cases is followed by the tonic, the chord on the first +degree of the scale. Now, in fugue form a theme is repeated in the +dominant key, the latter being called the answer. After further +contrapuntal wanderings of the theme, the fugue comes to what is called an +episode, after which the theme is presented first, in the dominant. ‘Hark! +the dominant’s persistence’ alludes to this musical fact; but, according +to rule, this dominant must be answered in the tonic an octave above the +first presentation of the theme; and ‘so an octave struck the answer.’ +Thus the inexorable solution comes in after the dominant’s persistence. +Although life seemed possible with commiserating sevenths, the tonic, a +resistless fate, strikes the answer that all must end—an answer which the +frivolous people of Venice failed to perceive, and went on with their +kissing. The notion of the tonic key as a relentless fate seems to suit +well with the formal music of the days of Galuppi: while the more hopeful +tonic key of Abt Vogler, the C major of this life, indicates that fate and +the tonic key have both fallen more under man’s control.”—Miss Helen +Ormerod’s paper, read before the Browning Society, May 27th, 1887, throws +additional light on some of the difficulties of this poem. “That the minor +predominated in this quaint old piece (<i>Toccata</i>, by the way, means a +<i>touch</i> piece, and probably was written to display<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_547" id="Page_547">[Pg 547]</a></span> the delicacy of the +composer’s touch) is evident from the mention of—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,</span><br /> +Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions,—‘Must we die?’<br /> +Those commiserating sevenths—‘Life might last! we can but try!’”</p> + +<p>The <ins class="correction" title="original: interual">interval</ins> of the third is one of the most important; the signature of a +piece may mislead one, the same signature standing for a major key and its +relative minor; but the third of the opening chord decides the question, a +lesser ‘plaintive’ third (composed of a tone and a semitone) showing the +key to be <i>minor</i>; the greater third (composed of two whole tones) showing +the key to be <i>major</i>. Pauer tells us that ‘the minor third gives the idea +of tenderness, grief and romantic feeling.’ Next come the ‘diminished +sixths’: these are sixths possessing a semitone less than a minor +sixth,—for instance, from C sharp to A flat: this interval in a different +key would stand as a perfect fifth. ‘Those suspensions, those +solutions’—a suspension is the stoppage of one or more parts for a +moment, while the others move on; this produces a dissonance, which is +only resolved by the parts which produced it moving on to the position +which would have been theirs had the parts moved simultaneously. We can +understand that ‘those suspensions, those solutions’ might teach the +Venetians, as they teach us, lessons of experience and hope; light after +darkness, joy after sorrow, smiles after tears. ‘Those commiserating +sevenths,’ of all dissonances, none is so pleasing to the ear, or so +attractive to musicians, as that of minor and diminished sevenths, that of +the major seventh being crude and harsh; in fact, the minor seventh is so +charming in its discord as to suggest concord. Again, to quote from Pauer: +‘It is the antithesis of discord and concord which fascinates and charms +the ear; it is the necessary solution and return to unity which delights +us.’ After all this, the love-making begins again; but kisses are +interrupted by the ‘dominant’s persistence till it must be answered to.’ +This seems to indicate the close of the piece, the dominant being answered +by an octave which suggests the perfect authentic cadence, in which the +chord of the dominant is followed by that of the tonic. The Toccata is +ended, and the gay gathering dispersed. I cannot help the thought that +this old music of Galuppi’s was more of the head than the heart—more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_548" id="Page_548">[Pg 548]</a></span> +formal than fiery, suggestive rather of the chill of death than the heat +of passion. The temporary silence into which the dancers were surprised by +the playing of the Maestro is over, and the impressions caused by it are +passed away, just as the silence of death was to follow the warmth and +brightness of the glad Venetian life.”</p> + +<p><b>To Edward Fitzgerald.</b> In the <i>Athenæum</i> of July 13th, 1889, appeared this +sonnet:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">“<span class="smcap">To Edward Fitzgerald</span>.</span></p> + +<p>“I chanced upon a new book yesterday;<br /> +I opened it, and, where my finger lay<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">’Twixt page and uncut page, these words I read—</span><br /> +Some six or seven at most—and learned thereby<br /> +That you, Fitzgerald, whom by ear and eye<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She never knew, ‘thanked God my wife was dead.’</span><br /> +Ay, dead! and were yourself alive, good Fitz,<br /> +How to return you thanks would task my wits.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kicking you seems the common lot of curs—</span><br /> +While more appropriate greeting lends you grace,<br /> +Surely to spit there glorifies your face—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Spitting from lips once sanctified by hers.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">“<span class="smcap">Robert Browning.</span></span><br /> +“<i>July 8th, 1889.</i>”</p></div> + +<p>The passage referred to is as follows: “Mrs. Browning’s death is rather a +relief to me, I must say: no more Aurora Leighs, thank God! A woman of +real genius, I know; but what is the upshot of it all! She and her sex had +better mind the kitchen and the children; and perhaps the poor. Except in +such things as little novels, they only devote themselves to what men do +much better, leaving that which men do worse or not at all.” (<i>Life and +Letters of Edward Fitzgerald</i>. Edited by Aldis Wright.)—<i>Browning Society +Papers</i>, Notes, 229.</p> + +<p><b>Tokay.</b> See <a href="#nationality"><span class="smcap">Nationality in Drinks</span></a>. (<i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, III.)</p> + +<p><b>Too Late.</b> (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864.) A man addressing a dead woman whom +he has loved and lost, tells how he feels that she needs help in her grave +and finds none; wants warmth from a heart which longs to send it. She +married another who did not love her “nor any one else in the world.” This +great sorrow was the rock which stopped the even flow of his life current. +Some devil must have hurled it into the stream, and so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_549" id="Page_549">[Pg 549]</a></span> thwarted God, who +had made these two souls for each other. Just a thread of water escaped +from the obstacle, and that wandered “through the evening country” down to +the great sea which absorbs all our life streams. He has hoped at times +that some convulsion of nature might roll the stone from its place and let +the stream flow undisturbed. But all is past hope now: Edith is dead that +should have been his. What should he have done that he omitted? Had he not +taken her “No” too readily? Men do more for trifling reasons than he had +done for his life’s whole peace. Perhaps he was proud—perhaps helpless as +a man paralysed by a great blow; anyway, she was gone from his life, and +he was desolate henceforth. She was not handsome,—nobody said that. She +had features which no artist would select for a model; but she was his +life, and even now that she is dead he will be her slave while his soul +endures. The poem is full of concentrated emotion, and is the expression +of a strong man’s life passion for a woman’s soul; a passion unalloyed by +any gross affection; such a love of one soul for another congenial soul as +proves that man is more than matter.</p> + +<p><b>Transcendentalism: a Poem in Twelve Books.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855.) This +poem is probably intended by Mr. Browning as an answer to his critics. It +has been said of Mr. Browning’s poetry by a hundred competent writers that +he does not sing, but philosophises instead; that he gives the world his +naked thoughts, his analyses of souls not draped in the beauty of the +poet’s art, but in the form of “stark-naked thought.” There is no +objection, says his interviewer, if he will but cast aside the harp which +he does not play but only tunes and adjusts, and speak his prose to Europe +through “the six-foot Swiss tube which helps the hunter’s voice from Alp +to Alp.” The fault is, that he utters thoughts to men thinking they care +little for form or melody, as boys do. It is quite otherwise he should +interpret nature—which is full of mystery—to the soul of man: as Jacob +Boehme heard the plants speak, and told men what they said; or as John of +Halberstadt, the magician, who by his will-power could create the flowers +Boehme thought about. The true poet is a poem himself, whatever be his +utterance. Take back the harp again, and “pour heaven into this short home +of life.” Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) was a German mystical writer, who began +life as a shoemaker and developed into a “seer” of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_550" id="Page_550">[Pg 550]</a></span> highest order. He +was a follower of the school of Paracelsus, and professed to know all +mysteries by actually beholding them. He saw the origin of love and +sorrow, heaven and hell. Nature lay unveiled to him; he saw into the being +of God, and into the heart of things. Mr. Browning refers to this in the +line of the poem, “He noticed all at once that plants could speak.” +“William Law (1686-1761) was a follower of Boehme’s system of philosophy. +The Quakers have been much influenced by the Boehmenists. The old +magicians thought they had discovered in the ashes of plants their +primitive forms, which were again raised up by the force of heat. Nothing, +they say, perishes in Nature; all is but a continuation or a revival. The +germina of resurrection are concealed in extinct bodies, as in the blood +of men; the ashes of roses will again revive into roses, though smaller +and paler than if they had been planted. The process of the +<i>Palingenesis</i>—this picture of immortality—is described. These +philosophers, having burnt a flower by calcination, disengaged the salts +from its ashes, and deposited them in a glass phial; a chemical mixture +acted on it till in the fermentation they assumed a bluish and spectral +hue. This dust, thus excited by heat, shoots upwards into its primitive +form; by sympathy the parts unite, and while each is returning to its +destined place we see distinctly the stalk, the leaves, and the flower +arise; it is the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its +ashes.” (Disraeli’s <i>Curiosities of Literature</i>, art. “Dreams at the Dawn +of Philosophy.”) John of Halberstadt was the magician who made the flowers +on some such principles as is fabled above. He was an ecclesiastic, and +had probably some knowledge of alchemy, often considered in those days as +more or less a diabolical kind of learning. Transcendentalism is thus +described by Webster: “Transcendental, Empirical.—These terms, with the +corresponding nouns <i>transcendentalism</i> and <i>empiricism</i>, are of +comparatively recent origin. <i>Empirical</i> refers to knowledge which is +gained by the experience of actual phenomena, without reference to the +principles or laws to which they are to be referred, or by which they are +to be explained. <i>Transcendental</i> has reference to those beliefs or +principles which are not derived from experience, and yet are absolutely +necessary to make experience possible or useful. Such, in the better sense +of the term, is the transcendental<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_551" id="Page_551">[Pg 551]</a></span> philosophy, or transcendentalism. The +term has been applied to a kind of investigation, or a use of language +which is vague, obscure, fantastic, or extravagant.” The reference in the +title of the poem is purely imaginary: there is no such work.</p> + +<p><b>Tray.</b> (<i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, 1879.) Three bards sing each a song of a hero; +but the bard who sings of Olaf the Dane, and he who tells of the hero +standing unflinching on the precipice, have not their song rewarded here: +the place of honour is reserved by the poet for a dog story. Tray was the +poet’s hero of the three. A beggar child fell into the Seine in Paris. The +bystanders prudently bethought themselves of their families ere risking +their lives to save her. While the people were wondering how the child was +to be extricated, “a mere instinctive dog” jumped over the balustrade and +brought her to land. The people applauded the dog, who had no sooner +deposited his burden on the shore than he was off again, apparently to +save another child whom nobody had seen fall. The dog was so long under +the water that he was thought to have been carried away by the current; +but in a few minutes he was seen swimming to land with the child’s doll in +his mouth. The people began to pride themselves on man’s possession of +reason, and to vaunt the superiority of our race over that of the dog. +Meanwhile Tray trotted off; till one of the crowd, with a larger share of +“reason” than the rest, bade his servant go and catch the animal for him, +that, by expenditure “of half an hour and eighteen-pence,” he might +vivisect it at the physiological laboratory and see “how brain secretes +dog’s soul.” This was poor Tray’s reward at the hands of humanity, endowed +with the “reason” which had been denied to the brave and faithful little +brain of the “lower animal.” (See <a href="#vivisection"><span class="smcap">Vivisection</span></a>.)</p> +<p><a name="twins" id="twins"></a></p> +<p><b>Twins, The.</b> (Originally published in a little volume with a poem of Mrs. +Browning’s, on behalf of the Ragged Schools of London, 1854; then in <i>Men +and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Romances</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Romances</i>, 1868.) In Martin +Luther’s <i>Table Talk</i> there is a story which is the foundation of this +poem. In the talk “On Justification” (No. 316), he says: “Give, and it +shall be given unto you: this is a fine maxim, and makes people poor and +rich.... There is in Austria a monastery which, in former times, was very +rich, and remained rich so long as it was charitable to the poor; but when +it ceased to give, then it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_552" id="Page_552">[Pg 552]</a></span> became indigent, and is so to this day. Not +long since, a poor man went there and solicited alms, which were denied +him; he demanded the cause why they refused to give for God’s sake? The +porter of the monastery answered, ‘We are become poor’; whereupon the +mendicant said, ‘The cause of your poverty is this: ye had formerly in +this monastery two brethren—the one named <i>Date</i> (give), and the other +<i>Dabitur</i> (it shall be given to you): the former ye thrust out, and the +other went away of himself.’... Beloved, he that desires to have anything +must also give: a liberal hand was never in want or empty.” (Mr. +Browning’s poem is simply the above narrative in verse.)</p> + +<p><b>Two Camels.</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>, 8: “Self-mortification.”) Is +self-mortification necessary for the attainment of wisdom? Two camels +started on a long journey with their loads of merchandise. One, desiring +to please his master, refused to eat the food which was provided for him: +he died of exhaustion on the road, and thieves secured his burden. The +other ate his provender thankfully, and safely reached his destination +with his load. Which beast pleased his master? We are here to do our day’s +work: help refused is hindrance sought. We are to desire joy and thank God +for it. The Creator wills that we should recognise our creatureship and +call upon Him in our need. As we are God’s sons, He cannot be indifferent +to our needs and sorrows. Neither work nor the spirit of self-dependence +are antagonistic to prayer. The “ear, hungry for music,” is a more +intelligible phrase when we know that the organ of Corti in the human ear +has three thousand arches, with keys ranged like those of a piano, +marvellously adapted for the appreciation of every tone-shade. The +“seven-stringed instrument” refers to light and the seven colours of the +spectrum.—In the lyric, the chemical combination of two harmless +substances produces an effect which either by itself would have been +powerless to produce. How know we what God intends to work in us by the +influences by which we are surrounded? We are not to reject the joys of +earth, the bliss produced by slight and transient mental stimuli; they +suffice to move the heart. There is earth-bliss which heaven itself cannot +improve, but may make permanent: why despise it?</p> + +<p><b>Two in the Campagna.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic +Lyrics</i>, 1868.) The Campagna di Roma is that portion of the area almost +coinciding with the ancient Latium,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_553" id="Page_553">[Pg 553]</a></span> which lies round the city of Rome. +Gregorovius says we might mark its circumference “by a series of +well-known points: Civita Vecchia, Tolfa, Ronciglione, Soracte, Tivoli, +Palestrina, Albano, and Ostia.” Anciently it was the seat of numerous +cities, and is now dotted with ruins in its whole extent. In summer its +vast expanse is little better than an arid steppe, and is very dangerous +on account of the malaria almost everywhere prevalent. In winter and +spring it is safer, and affords abundant pasture for sheep and cattle. +There is a solemnity and beauty about the Campagna entirely its own. To +the reflective mind, this ghost of old Rome is full of suggestion: its +vast, almost limitless extent, as it seems to the traveller; its abundant +herbage and floral wealth in early spring; its desolation, its crumbling +monuments, and its evidences of a vanished civilisation, fill the mind +with a sweet sadness, which readily awakens the longing for the infinite +spoken of in the poem, the key-note of which is undoubtedly found in the +lines—</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">“Only I discern</span><br /> +Infinite passion, and the pain<br /> +Of finite hearts that yearn.”</p> + +<p>Says Pascal: “This desire and this weakness cry aloud to us that there was +once in man a true happiness, of which there now remains to him but the +mark and the empty trace, which he vainly tries to fill from all that +surround him; seeking from things absent the succour he finds not in +things present; and these are all inadequate, because this infinite void +can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object—that is to say, +only by God Himself.” The speaker in the poem says to the woman, “I would +that you were all to me.” As pleasure, learning, wealth, have failed to +satisfy the soul of man, so not even Love, the holiest passion of the +soul, can satisfy the human heart, which can rest in God alone. Dr. +Martineau says that “all finite loves are only <i>half-born</i>, wandering in a +poor twilight, unknowing of their peace and power, till they lie within +the encompassing and glorifying love of God.” The restful music, the +anodyne for the pain of yearning hearts, comes from no earth-born love, +however pure.</p> + +<p><b>Two Poets Of Croisic, The.</b> (1878, with <i>La Saisiaz</i>.) Le Croisic is an old +town in Brittany, in the department of Loire Inférieure. Murray describes +it as “a popular watering-place.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_554" id="Page_554">[Pg 554]</a></span> Croisic was formerly a place of some +importance—was fortified, and had a castle, and reached its greatest +prosperity in the sixteenth century, when it sent vessels to the +cod-fishery, and had some six thousand inhabitants; but, like many other +towns, was ruined by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. There is a +chapel of St. Gourtan to the west of the town, with a miraculous well near +it. When there is a storm from the south the sailors’ wives pray at St. +Gourtan; when from the north, at the Chapel of the Crucifix, at the east +of the town. About half a mile due north-west of the church is a menhir +eight feet high, situated on a mound overlooking the sea. The rocky cliffs +on the sea shore near it, for about a mile, have been worn by the waves +and weather into the most extraordinary and fantastic shapes, and are well +worth a visit.” Croisic is one of the principal ports of the sardine +fishery. Guérande and Batz, also referred to in the poem, are close to Le +Croisic, the former being “a very curious old town, still surrounded,” +says Murray, “by the ditches and walls built by Duke John V. about 1431. +On Sundays, the assemblage of Bretons from the north, peat-diggers from +the east, and salt-makers from the west, is very striking. Soon after +leaving Guérande the road descends into a wide plain covered with pits and +salterns. This plain is of great extent, below the level of the sea, and +protected by dykes. The water is admitted at high water, by channels or +rivers, into reservoirs called <i>vasières</i>, from which it is passed into +shallow, irregularly-formed receptacles called <i>fares</i>. In these a +considerable portion of the water is evaporated, and the brine is allowed +to run into square basins called <i>œillets</i>, where the sun finally +evaporates the water and leaves a layer of salt. The salt is scraped off +to square patches between the <i>œillets</i>, and is thence carried to a +conical heap on the high ground, where it is left without protection from +the rain until the autumn, when the heap is covered with wood, and so left +until it can be sold. The men engaged in the work are called <i>paludiers</i>, +and receive one-fourth of the salt, the owner of the salterns receiving +the other three-fourths.” Mr. Browning refers to such a process in +<i>Sordello</i>, to illustrate his theory of the necessity of evil:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Where the salt marshes stagnate, crystals branch;<br /> +Blood dries to crimson; Evil’s beautified<br /> +In every shape.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_555" id="Page_555">[Pg 555]</a></span>“The <i>paludiers</i>, and their assistants, called <i>saulniers</i>, inhabit Batz, +Pouliguen, Saillié, and other villages, and form a most peculiar class. +Their usual dress is an enormous black flapped hat, a long white frock or +waistcoat, huge baggy white breeches, white gaiters and white shoes. The +men of <i>Batz</i> are a magnificent race of large, stalwart, evident +Saxons.”—The opening stanzas of the poem are descriptive of a scene in +winter, round a good log-fire of old shipwood. As the flames ascend, they +are tinted with various brilliant colours, due to the chemicals with which +the old timber is impregnated and the metals which are attached to it. +Sodium salts from the sea brine account for the yellow and crimson flames; +the greenish flame owes its tint to the copper; the flake brilliance is +due to the zinc; and so forth. All this flame splendour suggests the flash +of fame—brilliant for a few minutes, and then subsiding into darkness. At +the eleventh stanza begins a description of Croisic, Guérande, and Batz, +and the salt industry as described above. An island opposite was the +Druids’ chosen chief of homes; where their women were employed, building a +temple to the sun, destroying it and rebuilding it every May. Even at the +present day women steal to the sole menhir standing and the rude stone +pillars, with or without still ruder inscriptions, found in many parts of +Brittany. But Croisic has had its men of note: two poets must be +remembered who lived there. René Gentilhomme, in the year 1610, flamed +forth a liquid ruby; he was of noble birth, and page to the Prince of +Condé, whom men called “the Duke.” His cousin the King had no heir, so men +began to call him “Next King,” and he to expect the dignity. His page René +was a poet, and had written many sonnets and madrigals. One day, when he +sat a-rhyming, a storm came on; and, struck by lightning, a ducal crown, +emblem of the Prince, was dashed to atoms. René ceased his sonnets, and, +considering the destruction as an omen of the ruined hopes of the Duke, +wrote forty lines, which he gave to the man, who asked how it came his +ducal crown was wrecked—“Sir, God’s word to you!” It happened as the poet +foresaw: at the year’s end was born the Dauphin, who wrecked the Prince’s +hopes. King Louis honoured René with the title “Royal Poet,” inasmuch as +he not only poetised, but prophesied. The other famous poet of Croisic, +represented by the green flame, was a dapper gentleman, Paul Desforges +Maillard, who lived in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_556" id="Page_556">[Pg 556]</a></span> Voltaire’s time, and did something which made +Voltaire ridiculous. He wrote a poem, which he submitted to the Academy, +but which the Forty ignominiously rejected. When the poet’s rage subsided, +he made bold to offer his work to the Chevalier La Roque, editor of the +<i>Paris Mercury</i>, who rejected it with the polite excuse that he could not +offend the Forty. Flattered, though enraged at this excuse, the poet +abused the editor till he explained that his poetry was execrable, but he +had sought to conceal the truth in his rejection. Maillard had a sister, +who determined to help him by strategy. Copying out some of her brother’s +verses, she sent them as the efforts of a young girl, who threw herself on +the great editor’s mercy, and begged his introduction to a literary career +under the name of Malcrais. The editor fell into the trap, and published +the poems from time to time till she grew famous. He even went so far as +to fall in love with the authoress, and to offer her marriage. Voltaire +moreover was deceived, and wrote “a stomach-moving tribute” in her honour. +Naturally the brother, finding that his poetry had such value, was +unwilling that he should be any longer deprived of the glory attaching to +it; so he determined to go to Paris and confront the editor who had +insulted him with the proofs of his incapability, by explaining who the +real Malcrais was. This step was his ruin: the world does not like to be +convicted of its foolishness. Voltaire was not the man to enjoy a jibe at +his own expense. Maillard’s literary career was over. Piron wrote a famous +play on this subject, entitled <i>Métromanie</i>.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Up at a Villa—Down in the City.</b> As distinguished by an Italian person of +quality. (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, 1868.) +The speaker likes city life: it is expensive, he admits, but one has +something for one’s money there. The whole day long life is a perfect +feast; but up in the villa on the mountain side the life is no better than +a beast’s. In the city you can watch the gossips and the passers-by; +whereas up in the villa there is nothing to see but the oxen dragging the +plough. Even in summer it is no better, and it is actually cooler in the +city square with the fountain playing. He hates fireflies, bees, and +cicalas, about which folks talk so much poetry: what he prefers is the +blessed church-bells, the rattle of the diligence, the ever succeeding +news, the quack doctor, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_557" id="Page_557">[Pg 557]</a></span> fun at the post office, the execution of +“liberals,” and the gay church procession in the streets on festivals, the +drum, the fife, the noise and bustle. Of course it is dear; you cannot +have all these luxuries without paying for them, and that is why he is +compelled to live a country life; but oh, the pity of it,—the +processions, the candles, the flags, the Duke’s guard, the drum, the +fife!—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Stanza ii., “<i>By Bacchus</i>”: Per Bacco—Italians still swear by the +wine-god. Stanza ix., “<i>with a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven +swords stuck in her heart!</i>” The “seven sorrows of Our Lady” are referred +to here. They are (1) Her grief at the prophecy of Simeon; (2) Her +affliction during the flight into Egypt; (3) Her distress at the loss of +her Son before finding Him in the Temple; (4) Her sorrow when she met her +Son bearing His cross; (5) Her martyrdom at the sight of His agony; (6) +The wound to her heart when His was pierced; and (7) Her agony at His +burial. The contrast of these sorrows with the pink gown, the spangles, +and the smiles, is an exquisite satire on some peculiarities in +Continental devotions, very distasteful to English people. Stanza x., +“<i>Tax on salt</i>”: salt is taxed in Italy; the salt monopoly, the lottery, +the grist tax and an octroi are the more important items of Italy’s +immoral system of taxation. “<i>what oil pays passing the gate</i>”: the +<i>octroi</i> or town-dues have to be paid on all provisions entering the +cities of Italy. <i>yellow candles</i>: these are used at funerals, and in +penitential processions in the Roman Church.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Valence.</b> (<i>Colombe’s Birthday.</i>) The advocate of Cleves who marries +Colombe.</p> + +<p><b>“Verse-making was the least of my Virtues.”</b> (<b>Ferishtah’s Fancies.</b>) The +first line of the ninth lyric.</p> + +<p><b>Villains.</b> Browning’s principal villains are the following:—Halbert and +Hob; Ned Bratts; Count Guido Franceschini; the devil-like elder man of the +<i>Inn Album</i>; Paolo and Girolamo in <i>The Ring and the Book</i>; Ottima and the +Intendant of the Bishop, Uguccio, Stefano and Sebald, in <i>Pippa Passes</i> +(Bluphocks, in the same poem, is rather a tool of others than a great +villain on his own account); Louscha, the mother, in <i>Ivan Ivanovitch</i>; +Chiappino in <i>A Soul’s Tragedy</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_558" id="Page_558">[Pg 558]</a></span><b>Vincent Parkes.</b> (<i>Martin Relph.</i>) He was Rosamund Page’s lover. The girl +is accused of being a spy, and unless she can clear herself within a given +time is to be shot. Parkes arrives at the place of execution with the +proofs of the girl’s innocence just as the fatal volley is fired.</p> + +<p><b>Violante Comparini.</b> (<i>The Ring and the Book.</i>) The supposed mother of +Pompilia. She was the wife of Pietro, and by him had no children; she +bought Pompilia of a courtesan, and brought the child up as her own, and +was murdered, with her husband and Pompilia, by Count Guido.</p> +<p><a name="vivisection" id="vivisection"></a></p> +<p><b>Vivisection</b>, or the cutting into living animals for scientific purposes. +Mr. Browning was to the last a Vice-President of the Victoria Street +Society for the Protection of Animals, and he always expressed the utmost +abhorrence of the practices which it opposes. The following letter was +written by Mr. Browning on the occasion of the presentation of the +memorial to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in +1875:—“19, Warwick Crescent, W., December 28th, 1874.—<span class="smcap">Dear Miss +Cobbe</span>,—I return the petition unsigned, for the one good reason—that I +have just signed its fellow forwarded to me by Mrs. Leslie Stephen. You +have heard, ‘I take an equal interest with yourself in the effort to +supress vivisection.’ I dare not so honour my mere wishes and prayers as +to put them for a moment beside your noble acts; but this I know: I would +rather submit to the worst of the deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a +single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two. +I return the paper, because I shall be probably shut up here for the next +week or more, and prevented from seeing my friends. Whoever would refuse +to sign would certainly not be of the number.—Ever truly and gratefully +yours, <span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span>.”—In two of his poems the poet has expressed his +emphatic opinion upon Vivisection: in <i>Tray</i>, and in <i>Arcades Ambo</i>. See +my chapter “Browning and Vivisection” in <i>Browning’s Message to his Time</i>. +In the recently published <i>Life and Letters of Robert Browning</i>, by Mrs. +Sutherland Orr, there are many interesting incidents connected with the +great poet’s love for animals, which characterised him from infancy till +death. Mrs. Orr says (p. 27) this fondness for animals was conspicuous in +his earliest days. “His urgent demand for ‘something to do’ would +constantly include ‘something to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_559" id="Page_559">[Pg 559]</a></span> caught’ for him: ‘they were to catch +him an eft’; ‘they were to catch him a frog.’” He would refuse to take his +medicine unless bribed by the gift of a speckled frog from among the +strawberries: and the maternal parasol, hovering above the strawberry bed +during the search for this object of his desires, remained a standing +picture in his remembrance. But the love of the uncommon was already +asserting itself; and one of his very juvenile projects was a collection +of rare creatures, the first contribution to which was a couple of +lady-birds, picked up one winter’s day on a wall and immediately consigned +to a box lined with cotton-wool, and labelled ‘Animals found Surviving in +the Depths of a Severe Winter.’ Nor did curiosity in this case weaken the +power of sympathy. His passion for beasts and birds was the counterpart of +his father’s love of children, only displaying itself before the age at +which child-love naturally appears. His mother used to read <i>Croxall’s +Fables</i> to his little sister and him. The story contained in them of a +lion who was kicked to death by an ass affected him so painfully that he +could no longer endure the sight of the book; and as he dare not destroy +it, he buried it between the stuffing and the woodwork of an old +dining-room chair, where it stood for lost, at all events for the time +being. When first he heard of the adventures of the parrot who insisted on +leaving his cage, and who enjoyed himself for a little while and then died +of hunger and cold, he—and his sister with him—cried so bitterly that it +was found necessary to invent a different ending, according to which the +parrot was rescued just in time and brought back to his cage to live +peacefully in it ever after. As a boy he kept owls and monkeys, magpies +and hedgehogs, an eagle, and even a couple of large snakes; constantly +bringing home the more portable creatures in his pockets, and transferring +them to his mother for immediate care. I have heard him speak admiringly +of the skilful tenderness with which she took into her lap a lacerated +cat, washed and sewed up its ghastly wound, and nursed it back to health. +The great intimacy with the life and habits of animals which reveals +itself in his works is readily explained by these facts.”</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Wall, A.</b> The prologue to <i>Pacchiarotto</i> (<i>q.v.</i>) bears this title in the +<i>Selections</i>, Series the Second (published in 1880).</p> + +<p><b>Wanting is—what?</b> (Prologue to <i>Jocoseria</i>, 1883.) In every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_560" id="Page_560">[Pg 560]</a></span> phase of +human life, and in every human action, there is imperfection—always +something still to come. In the characters depicted and the incidents +narrated in the volume called <i>Jocoseria</i> the poet asks us to say what is +wanting to perfect them. His question “Wanting is—what?” governs the +whole volume. In <i>Solomon and Balkis</i> what was wanting was not mere +wisdom, but a sanctified nature. In <i>Christina and Monaldeschi</i> the woman +was wanting in forgiveness. Here the love was not perfect. In <i>Mary +Wollstonecraft and Fuseli</i> what was wanting was self-sacrifice. Had Mary +really loved Fuseli, she would not have attempted to ruin his life by +endeavouring to win him from his wife. In <i>Adam, Lilith, and Eve</i>, there +was wanting, says Mr. Sharpe, “the union of perfect love with perfect +holiness.” In <i>Ixion</i> was wanting a just conception of the Fatherhood of +God. God is not the tyrannical Master of the world, but the Loving +All-Father. In <i>Jochanan Hakkadosh</i>, Mr. Sharpe says, in answer to the +question, “Wanting is—what?” “One who shall combine perfect wisdom with +the full experience of life, and the completeness of these intuitions of +the Spirit.” “Is not this the Christ?” In <i>Never the Time and the Place</i>, +to completely develop our souls we need perfect conditions of existence. +We shall not find them till we reach heaven. In <i>Pambo</i> the saint +recognised that he could not perfectly fulfil the smallest of God’s +commandments, nor can we perfectly keep God’s law. Wanting is the +Atonement.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>—“<i>Come, then, complete incompletion, O Comer, Pant through the +blueness</i>,”—<i>i.e.</i> descend from heaven. The Rev. J. Sharpe, M.A., thus +explains the title “<i>O Comer</i>”: “<ins class="correction" title="ho erchomenos">ὁ ἐρχόμενος</ins>, +in the New Testament, is one of the titles of the Messiah—the Future One, He who +shall come (Matt. xi. 3, xxi. 9; Luke vii. 19, 20; John xii. 13; also John +vi. 14, xi. 27). So in the periphrase of the name Jehovah, <ins class="correction" title="ho ôn kai o ên kai ho erchomenos">ὁ ων +καὶ ὀ ὴν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος</ins> +(Rev. i. 4, 8; iv. 8).—Robinson’s <i>Greek Lexicon of the New Testament</i>. The title hints at the connection between +this preface and the stories from the Talmud which follow. The +Incarnation, the union of God and man, of Creator and creation, supplies +the solution of the problem raised by the incompleteness and death all +around us. The beauty is no longer without meaning, for it is a revelation +of God; the huge mass of death is no longer revolting, for ‘all things +were created by Him, and for Him ... and by Him all things consist,’ and +He will ‘reunite all things ...<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_561" id="Page_561">[Pg 561]</a></span> whether they be things on earth or things +in heaven.’” In the character of <i>Donald</i>, what was wanting was the +development of “the latent moral faculty.” He did not recognise the rights +of the stag, which the commonest principles of justice, to say nothing of +gratitude, should have made obvious to the sportsman.</p> + +<p><b>Waring.</b> Waring was the name given by the poet to his friend Mr. Alfred +Domett, C.M.G., son of Mr. Nathaniel Domett, born at Camberwell, May 20th, +1811. He matriculated at Cambridge in 1829, as a member of St. John’s +College. In 1832 he published a volume of poems. He then travelled in +America for two years, and after his return to London, about 1836-7, he +contributed some verses to <i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i>. Mr. Domett afterwards +spent two years in Italy, Switzerland, and other continental countries. He +was called to the bar in 1841. Having purchased some land of the New +Zealand Company, he went as a settler to New Zealand in 1842. In 1851 he +became Secretary for the whole of that country. He accepted posts as +Commissioner of Crown Lands and Resident Magistrate at Hawke’s Bay. +Subsequently he was elected to represent the town of Nelson in the House +of Representatives. In 1862 Mr. Domett was called upon to form a +Government, which he did. Having held various important offices in the +Legislature, and rendered great services to the country, he was created a +Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (1880). He returned to +England and published several volumes of poems. His chief work is <i>Ranolf +and Amohia</i>, full of descriptions of New Zealand scenery, and paying a +warm tribute to Mr. Browning, whom he calls</p> + +<p class="poem">“Subtlest assertor of the soul in song.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Domett suddenly disappeared from London life in the manner described +in the poem. He shook off, by an overpowering impulse, the restraints of +conventional life, and without a word to his dearest friends, vanished +into the unknown. As the story is told in the poem, we see a man with +large ideas, ambitious, full of great thoughts, inspired by a passion for +great things, a man born to rule, and fretting against the restraints of +the petty conventionalities of civilised life. Those about him cannot +understand, and if they did could in no wise help him; he chafes and longs +to break his bonds and live the freer life in which his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_562" id="Page_562">[Pg 562]</a></span> energies can +expand. The poem tells of the cold and unsympathetic criticism he received +amongst his friends; and now that he has disappeared, the poet’s spirit +yearns for his society once more. He wonders where he has pitched his +tent, and in fancy runs through the world to seek him. He has been heard +of in a ghostly sort of way. A vision of him has been narrated by one who +for a few moments caught sight of him and lost him again in the setting +sun. The poet reflects that the stars which set here, rise in some distant +heaven. The following obituary notice of Alfred Domett, by Dr. Furnivall, +appeared in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> of November 9th, 1887. It has had the +advantage of being revised and corrected in a few small details by Mr. F. +Young, “Waring’s” cousin. See also an article in <i>Temple Bar</i>, Feb., 1896, +p. 253, entitled “A Queen’s Messenger.”</p> + +<p><b>“What’s Become of Waring?”</b>—<span class="smcap">In Memoriam.</span> (By a Member of the Browning +Society.) “What’s become of Waring?” is the first line of one of Mr. +Browning’s poems of 1842 (<i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, Part II.), which, from +its dealing with his life in London in early manhood, is a great favourite +with his readers. Alas! the handsome and brilliant hero of the Browning +set in the thirties died last Wednesday, at the house in St. Charles’s +Square, North Kensington, where he had for many years lived near his +artist son. Alfred Domett was the son of one of Nelson’s middies, a +gallant seaman. He was called to the bar, and lived in the Temple with his +friend ‘Joe Arnold,’ a man of great ability, afterwards Sir Joseph, Chief +Justice of Bombay, who ultimately settled at Naples, where he died. Having +an independency, Alfred Domett lingered in London society for a time,—one +of the handsomest and most attractive men there,—till he was induced to +emigrate to New Zealand, to join his cousin, William Young, the son of the +London shipowner, George Frederick Young, who had bought a large tract of +land in the islands. Alfred Domett landed to find his cousin drowned. He +was himself soon after appointed to a magistracy with £700 a year. He had +a successful career in New Zealand,—where Mr. Browning alludes to him in +<i>The Guardian Angel</i>—became Premier, married a handsome English lady, and +then returned to England. He first lived at Phillimore Place or Terrace, +Kensington, and while there saw a good deal of his old friend Mr. +Browning; but after he moved to St.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_563" id="Page_563">[Pg 563]</a></span> Charles’s Square, the former +companions seldom met. On the foundation of the Browning Society, Alfred +Domett declined any post of honour, but became an interested member of the +body. His grand white head was to be seen at all the Society’s +performances and at several of its meetings. He naturally preferred Mr. +Browning’s early works to the later ones. He could not be persuaded to +write any account of his early London days, but said he would try to find +the letters in which his friend ‘Joe Arnold’ reported to him in New +Zealand the doings of their London set. Mr. Domett produced with pride his +sea-stained copy of Browning’s <i>Bells and Pomegranates</i>, now worth twenty +or thirty times its original price. Before he left England, his poem on +Venice was printed in <i>Blackwood</i>, and very highly praised by Christopher +North. (The reprint is in the British Museum.) His longer and chief poem, +<i>Ranolf and Amohia</i> (1872), full of New Zealand scenery, and paying a warm +tribute to Mr. Browning, was reprinted by him in two volumes, revised and +enlarged, some four or five years ago. A lucky accident to a leg, which +permanently lamed him, soon after his arrival in New Zealand, saved his +life; for it prevented his accepting the invitation of some treacherous +native chiefs to a banquet at which all the English guests were killed. A +sterling, manly, independent nature was Alfred Domett’s. He impressed +every one with whom he came in contact, and is deeply regretted by his +remaining friends. We hope that Mr. Browning will in his next volume give +a few lines to the memory of his early friend. Not many of the old set +remain, possibly not one save the poet himself; and all his readers will +rejoice to hear again of Waring, “Alfred, dear friend.” The <i>Guardian +Angel</i> question—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Where are you, dear old friend?”</p> + +<p>needs other answer now than that of 1855—</p> + +<p class="poem">“How rolls the Wairoa at your world’s far end?<br /> +This is Ancona, yonder is the sea.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Notes.</span>—Canto iv., “<i>Monstr’—inform’—ingens—horren-dous</i>”: from +Vergil’s <i>Æn.</i> iii. 657—“Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen +ademtum”: a horrid monster, misshapen, huge, from whom sight had been +taken away. vi., <i>Vishnu-land</i>: India, where Vishnu is worshipped; the +second person of the modern Hindu Trinity. He is regarded as a member of +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_564" id="Page_564">[Pg 564]</a></span> Triad whose special function is to preserve. To do this he has nine +times in succession become incarnate, and will do so once more. <i>Avatar</i>: +the incarnation of a deity. The ten incarnations of Vishnu are—1. +Matsya-Avatar, as a fish; 2. Kurm-Avatar, as a tortoise; 3. Varaha, as a +boar; 4. Nara-Sing, as a man-lion, last animal stage; 5. Vamuna, as a +dwarf, first step toward the human form; 6. Parasu-Rama, as a hero, but +yet an imperfect man; 7. Rama-Chandra, as the hero of Ramayána, physically +a perfect man, his next of kin, friend and ally Hamouma, the monkey-god, +the monkey endowed with speech; 8. Christna-Avatar, the son of the virgin +Devanaguy, one formed by God; 9. Gautama-Buddha, Siddhârtha, or +Sakya-muni; 10. This avatar has not yet occurred. It is expected in the +future; when Vishnu appears for the last time he will come as a “saviour.” +(Blavatzky, <i>Isis Unveiled</i>, vol. ii., p. 274.) <i>Kremlin</i>, the citadel of +Moscow, Russia. <i>serpentine</i>: a rock, often of a dull green colour, +mantled and mottled with red and purple. <i>syenite</i>: a stone named from +Syene, in Egypt, where it was first found. “<i>Dian’s fame</i>”: Diana was +worshipped by the inhabitants of Taurica Chersonesus. <i>Taurica +Chersonesus</i> is now the country called the Crimea. <i>Hellenic speech</i> == +Greek. <i>Scythian strands</i>: Taurica is joined by an isthmus to Scythia, and +is bounded by the Bosphorus, the Euxine Sea, and the Palus Mæotis. +<i>Caldara Polidore da Caravaggio</i> (1495-1543): he was a celebrated painter +of frieze, etc., at the Vatican. Raphael discovered his talents when he +was a mere mortar carrier to the other artists. The “Andromeda” picture, +of which Browning speaks in Pauline, was an engraving from a work of this +artist. “<i>The heart of Hamlet’s Mystery</i>”: few characters in literature +have been more discussed than that of Hamlet. Schlegel thought he +exhausted the power of action by calculating consideration. Goethe thought +he possessed a noble nature without the strength of nerve which forms a +hero. Many say he was mad, others that he was the founder of the +pessimistic school. <i>Junius</i>: the mystery of the authorship of the famous +letters of Junius is referred to. <i>Chatterton, Thomas</i> (1752-70): the boy +poet who deceived the credulous scholars of his day by pretending that he +had discovered some ancient poems in the parish chest of Redcliffe Church, +Bristol. <i>Rowley, Thomas</i>: the hypothetical priest of Bristol, said by +Chatterton to have lived in the reigns<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_565" id="Page_565">[Pg 565]</a></span> of Henry VI. and Edward IV., and +to have written the poems of which Chatterton himself was the author. ii. +2, <i>Triest</i>: the principal seaport of the Austro-Hungarian empire, +situated very picturesquely at the north-east angle of the Adriatic Sea, +in the Gulf of Trieste. <i>lateen sail</i>: a triangular sail commonly used in +the Mediterranean. “<i>’long-shore thieves</i>”: “along-shore men” are the low +fellows who hang about quays and docks, generally of bad character.</p> + +<p><b>“When I vexed you and you chid me.”</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies.</i>) The first +line of the seventh lyric.</p> + +<p><b>Which?</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) Three court ladies make</p> + +<p class="poem">“Trial of all who judged best<br /> +In esteeming the love of a man.”</p> + +<p>An abbé sits to decide the wager and say who was to be considered the best +Cupid catcher. First, the Duchesse maintains that it is the man who holds +none above his lady-love save his God and his king. The Marquise does not +care for saint and loyalist, so much as a man of pure thoughts and fine +deeds who can play the paladin. The Comtesse chooses any wretch, any poor +outcast, who would look to her as his sole saviour, and stretch his arms +to her as love’s ultimate goal. The abbé had to reflect awhile. He took a +pinch of snuff to clear his brain, and then, after deliberation, said—</p> + +<p class="poem">“The love which to one, and one only, has reference,<br /> +Seems terribly like what perhaps gains God’s preference.”</p> +<p><a name="witchcraft" id="witchcraft"></a></p> +<p><b>White Witchcraft.</b> (<i>Asolando</i>, 1889.) Magic is defined to be of two +kinds—Divine and evil. Divine is white magic; black magic is of the +devil. Amongst the ancients magic was considered a Divine science, which +led to a participation in the attributes of Divinity itself. Philo-Judæus, +<i>De Specialibus Legibus</i>, says: “It unveils the operations of Nature, and +leads to the contemplation of celestial powers.” When magic became +degraded into sorcery it was naturally abhorred by all the world, and the +evil reputation attaching to the word, even at the present day, must be +attributed to the fact that white witchcraft had a singular affinity for +the black arts. Perhaps what is now termed “science” expresses all that +was originally intended by the term white magic. The men of science of the +past were not <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_566" id="Page_566">[Pg 566]</a></span>unacquainted with black arts, according to their enemies. +Hence Pietro d’Abano, John of Halberstadt, Cornelius Agrippa, and other +learned men of the middle ages, incurred the hatred of the clergy. +Paracelsus is made expressly by Browning to abjure “black arts” in his +struggles for knowledge. Burton, in his <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>, speaks of +white witches. He says (Part II., sec. i.): “Sorcerers are too common: +cunning men, wizards, and white-witches, as they call them, in every +village, which, if they be sought to, will help almost all infirmities of +body and mind—<i>servatores</i>, in Latin; and they have commonly St. +Catherine’s wheel printed in the roof of their mouth, or in some part +about them.”</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">The Poem.</span>] One says if he could play Jupiter for once, and had the power +to turn his friend into an animal, he would decree that she should become +a fox. The lady, if invested with the same power, would turn him into a +toad. He bids Canidia say her worst about him when reduced to this +condition. The Canidia referred to is the sorceress of Naples in <i>Horace</i>, +who could bring the moon from heaven. The witch boasts of her power in +this respect:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Meæque terra cedit insolentiæ.<br /> +(Ut ipse nosti curiosus) et Polo<br /> +An quæ movere cereas imagines,<br /> +Diripere Lunam.”<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">(<span class="smcap">Horat.</span>, <i>Canid. Epod.</i>, xvii. 75, etc.)</span></p> + +<p>Hudibras mentions this (Part II., 3);—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Your ancient conjurors were wont<br /> +To make her (the moon) from her sphere dismount,<br /> +And to their incantations stoop.”</p> + +<p>The <i>Zoophilist</i> for July 1891 gives the following, from Mrs. Orr’s <i>Life +of Browning</i>, as the origin of the reference to the toad in the poem: +“About the year 1835, when Mr. Browning’s parents removed to Hatcham, the +young poet found a humble friend “in the form of a toad, which became so +much attached to him that it would follow him as he walked. He visited it +daily, where it burrowed under a white rose tree, announcing himself by a +pinch of gravel dropped into its hole; and the creature would crawl forth, +allow its head to be gently tickled, and reward the act with that loving +glance of the soft, full eyes which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_567" id="Page_567">[Pg 567]</a></span> Mr. Browning has recalled in one of +the poems of <i>Asolando</i>.” The lines are:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“He’s loathsome, I allow;<br /> +There may or may not lurk a pearl beneath his puckered brow;<br /> +But see his eyes that follow mine—love lasts there, anyhow.”</p> + +<p><b>“Why from the World.”</b> The first words of the twelfth lyric in <i>Ferishtah’s +Fancies</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Why I am a Liberal</b> was a poem written for Cassell & Co. in 1885, who +published a volume of replies by English men of letters, etc., to the +question, “Why I am a Liberal?”</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">“<span class="smcap">Why I am a Liberal.</span></span></p> + +<p>“‘Why?’ Because all I haply can and do,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All that I am now, all I hope to be,—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whence comes it save from future setting free</span><br /> +Body and soul the purpose to pursue<br /> +God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">These shall I bid men—each in his degree,</span><br /> +Also God-guided—bear, and gayly, too?<br /> +But little do or can, the best of us:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That little is achieved through Liberty.</span><br /> +Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His fellow shall continue bound? Not I,</span><br /> +Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A brother’s right to freedom. That is ‘Why.’”</span></p></div> + +<p><b>Will, The.</b> (<i>Sordello.</i>) Mr. Browning uses the term “will” to express +Sordello’s effort to “realise all his aspirations in his inner +consciousness, in his imagination, in his feeling that he is potentially +all these things.” See Professor Alexander’s <i>Analysis of “Sordello,”</i> +lvii., p. 406 (<i>Browning Society’s Papers</i>); “The Body, the machine for +acting Will” (<i>Sordello</i>, Book II., line 1014, and p. 477 of this work). +Mr. Browning’s early opinions were so largely formed by his occult and +theosophical studies that it is necessary for the full understanding of +his theory of the will and its power, to study the following axioms from +the work of an occult writer, Eliphas Levi, as a good summary of the +teaching so largely imbibed by the poet.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="center"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_568" id="Page_568">[Pg 568]</a></span>“<span class="smcap">Theory of Will-Power.</span></p> + +<p>“<i>Axiom 1.</i> Nothing can resist the will of man when he knows what is +true and wills what is good. <i>Axiom 2.</i> To will evil is to will death. +A perverse will is the beginning of suicide. <i>Axiom 3.</i> To will what +is good with violence is to will evil, for violence produces disorder +and disorder produces evil. <i>Axiom 4.</i> We can and should accept evil +as the means to good; but we must never practise it, otherwise we +should demolish with one hand what we erect with the other. A good +intention never justifies bad means; when it submits to them it +corrects them, and condemns them while it makes use of them. <i>Axiom +5.</i> To earn the right to possess permanently we must will long and +patiently. <i>Axiom 6.</i> To pass one’s life in willing what it is +impossible to retain for ever is to abdicate life and accept the +eternity of death. <i>Axiom 7.</i> The more numerous the obstacles which +are surmounted by the will, the stronger the will becomes. It is for +this reason that Christ has exalted poverty and suffering. <i>Axiom 8.</i> +When the will is devoted to what is absurd it is reprimanded by +eternal reason. <i>Axiom 9.</i> The will of the just man is the will of God +Himself, and it is the law of nature. <i>Axiom 10.</i> The understanding +perceives through the medium of the will. If the will be healthy, the +sight is accurate. God said, ‘Let there be light!’ and the light was. +The will says: ‘Let the world be such as I wish to behold it!’ and the +intelligence perceives it as the will has determined. This is the +meaning of Amen, which confirms the acts of faith. <i>Axiom 11.</i> When we +produce phantoms we give birth to vampires, and must nourish these +children of nightmare with our own blood and life, with our own +intelligence and reason, and still we shall never satiate them. <i>Axiom +12.</i> To affirm and will what ought to be is to create; to affirm and +will what should not be is to destroy. <i>Axiom 13.</i> Light is an +electric fire, which is placed by man at the disposition of the will; +it illuminates those who know how to make use of it, and burns those +who abuse it. <i>Axiom 14.</i> The empire of the world is the empire of +light. <i>Axiom 15.</i> Great minds with wills badly equilibrated are like +comets, which are abortive suns. <i>Axiom 16.</i> To do nothing is as fatal +as to commit evil, and it is more cowardly. Sloth is the most +unpardonable of the deadly sins. <i>Axiom 17.</i> To suffer is to labour.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_569" id="Page_569">[Pg 569]</a></span> +A great misfortune properly endured is a progress accomplished. Those +who suffer much live more truly than those who undergo no trials. +<i>Axiom 18.</i> The voluntary death of self-devotion is not a suicide,—it +is the apotheosis of free-will. <i>Axiom 19.</i> Fear is only indolence of +will; and for this reason public opinion brands the coward. <i>Axiom +20.</i> An iron chain is less difficult to burst than a chain of flowers. +<i>Axiom 21.</i> Succeed in not fearing the lion, and the lion will be +afraid of you. Say to suffering, ‘I will that thou shalt become a +pleasure,’ and it will prove such, and more even than a pleasure, for +it will be a blessing. <i>Axiom 22.</i> Before deciding that a man is happy +or otherwise seek to ascertain the bent of his will. Tiberius died +daily at Caprea, while Jesus proved His immortality, and even His +divinity, upon Calvary and the Cross.”</p></div> + +<p><b>“Wish no word unspoken.”</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies.</i>) The first words of the +lyric to the second poem.</p> + +<p><b>Woman’s Last Word, A.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic +Lyrics</i>, 1868.) In the presence of perfect love words are often +superfluous, wild, and hurtful; words lead to debate, debate to +contention, striving, weeping. Even truth becomes falseness; for if the +heart is consecrated by a pure affection, love is the only truth; and the +chill of logic and the precision of a definition can be no other than +harmful; therefore hush the talking, pry not after the apples of the +knowledge of good and evil, or Eden will surely be in peril. The only +knowledge is the charm of love’s protecting embrace, the only language is +the speech of love, the only thought to think the loved one’s thought—the +absolute sacrifice of the whole self on the altar of love; but before the +altar can be approached sorrow must be buried, a little weeping has to be +done; the morrow shall see the offering presented,—“the might of love” +will drown alike both hopes and fears.</p> + +<p><b>Women and Roses.</b> (<i>Men and Women</i>, 1855; <i>Lyrics</i>, 1863; <i>Dramatic +Lyrics</i>, 1868.) The singer dreams of a red rose tree with three roses on +its branches; one is a faded rose whose petals are about to fall,—the +bees do not notice it as they pass; the second is a rose in its +perfection, its cup “ruby-rimmed,” its heart “nectar-brimmed,”—the bee +revels in its nectar; the third is a baby rosebud. And in these flowers +the poet sees types of the women of the ages,—the past, the present, and +the future: the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_570" id="Page_570">[Pg 570]</a></span> shadows of the noble and beautiful, or wicked women in +history and poetry dance round the dead rose; round the perfect rose of +the present dance the spirits of the women of to-day; round the bud troop +the little feet of maidens yet unborn; and all dance to one cadence round +the dreamer’s tree. The dance will go on as before when the dreamer has +departed, roses will bloom then for other beholders, and other dreamers +will see and remember their loveliness; the creations of the poet even +must join the dance. As the love of the past, so the love to come, must +link hands and trip to the measure.</p> + +<p><b>Women of Browning.</b> The best are Pompilia, in <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, the +lady in the <i>Inn Album</i>, and the heroine in <i>Colombe’s Birthday</i>; the +others, good and bad, are the wife in <i>Any Wife to any Husband</i>; James +Lee’s Wife, Michal, Pippa, Mildred, Gwendolen, Polixena, Colombe, Anael, +Domizia, “The Queen,” Constance; and the heroines of <i>The Laboratory</i>, +<i>The Confessional</i>, <i>A Woman’s Last Word</i>, <i>In a Year</i>, <i>A Light Woman</i>, +and <i>A Forgiveness</i>.</p> + +<p><b>Works of Robert Browning.</b> The new and uniform edition of the works of +Robert Browning is published in sixteen volumes, small crown 8vo. This +edition contains three portraits of Mr. Browning, at different periods of +life, and a few illustrations. Contents of the volumes:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Vol.</td><td align="right">1.</td> + <td><i>Pauline</i> and <i>Sordello</i>.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">2.</td> + <td><i>Paracelsus</i> and <i>Strafford</i>.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">3.</td> + <td><i>Pippa Passes</i>, <i>King Victor and King Charles</i>, <i>The Return of the Druses</i>, and <i>A Soul’s Tragedy</i>; with a portrait of Mr. Browning.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">4.</td> + <td><i>A Blot in the ’Scutcheon</i>, <i>Colombe’s Birthday</i>, and <i>Men and Women</i>.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">5.</td> + <td><i>Dramatic Romances</i>, and <i>Christmas Eve and Easter Day</i>.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">6.</td> + <td><i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, and <i>Luria</i>.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">7.</td> + <td><i>In a Balcony</i>, and <i>Dramatis <ins class="correction" title="original: Personae">Personæ</ins></i>; with a portrait of Mr. Browning.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">8.</td> + <td><i>The Ring and the Book</i>: books i. to iv.; with two illustrations.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">9.</td> + <td><i>The Ring and the Book</i>: books v. to viii.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">10.</td> + <td><i>The Ring and the Book</i>: books ix. to xii.; with a portrait of Guido Franceschini.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">11.</td> + <td><i>Balaustion’s Adventure</i>, <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>, Saviour of Society, and <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_571" id="Page_571">[Pg 571]</a></span>"</td><td align="right">12.</td> + <td><i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country</i>, and <i>The Inn Album</i>.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">13.</td> + <td><i>Aristophanes’ Apology</i>, including a Transcript from Euripides, being the Last Adventure of Balaustion, and <i>The Agamemnon of Æschylus</i>.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">14.</td> + <td><i>Pacchiarotto</i>, and How he worked in Distemper; with other Poems; <i>La Saisiaz</i> and <i>The Two Poets of Croisic</i>.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">15.</td> + <td><i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, first series; <i>Dramatic Idyls</i>, second series, and <i>Jocoseria</i>.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="right">16.</td> + <td><i>Ferishtah’s Fancies</i>, and <i>Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day</i>, with a portrait of Mr. Browning.</td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="3">Also Mr. Browning’s last volume, <i>Asolando</i>, <i>Fancies and Facts</i>.</td></tr></table> + +<p><b>Worst of it, The.</b> (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864.) A fleck on a swan is beauty +spoiled; a speck on a mottled hide is nought. A man had angel fellowship +with a young wife who proved false to him; he loves her still, and mourns +that she ruined her soul in stooping to save his; he made her sin by +fettering with a gold ring a soul which could not blend with his. He +sorrows, not for his own loss, but that his swan must take the crow’s +rebuff. He desires her good, and hopes she may work out her penance, and +reach heaven’s purity at last. He will love on, but if they meet in +Paradise, will pass nor turn his face.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Xanthus.</b> (<i>A Death in the Desert.</i>) One of the disciples of St. John in +attendance upon the dying apostle in the cave.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>“You groped your way across my room.”</b> (<i>Ferishtah’s Fancies.</i>) The first +line of the third lyric.</p> + +<p><b>“You’ll love me yet.”</b> (<i>Pippa Passes.</i>) A song.</p> + +<p><b>Youth and Art.</b> (<i>Dramatis Personæ</i>, 1864.) A meditation on what might have +been, had two young people who had the chance not missed it and lost it +for ever. They lodged in the same street in Rome. The man was a sculptor +who had dreams of demolishing Gibson some day, and putting up Smith to +reign in his stead; the woman was a singer who hoped to trill bitterness +into the cup of Grisi, and make her envious of Kate Brown. The warbler +earned in those days as little by her voice as the chiseller by his work. +They were poor, lived on a crust apiece, and for fun watched each other +from their respective windows. She was evidently dying for an introduction +to him; she fidgeted about with the window plants, and did her best to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_572" id="Page_572">[Pg 572]</a></span> +attract his attention in a quiet sort of way; she did not like his models +always tripping up his stairs, which she could not ascend, and was glad to +have the opportunity of showing off the foreign fellow who came to tune +the piano. But life passed, he made no advances, and so in process of time +she married a rich old lord, and he is a knight, R.A., and dines with the +Prince. With all this show of success neither life is complete, neither +soul has achieved the sole good of its earth wanderings. Their lives hang +patchy and scrappy; they have not sighed, starved, feasted, despaired, and +been happy. There was once the chance of these things; they were missed, +and eternity cannot make good the loss. As for life “<i>Love</i>,” as Browning +is always telling us, “<i>is the sole good of it</i>.” This poem may be +compared with the moral of <i>The Statue and the Bust</i>. In the one case +reasons of prudence and the restrictions of religion and society prevented +the duke and the lady from following the inclinations of their hearts; in +the other case mere worldly motives operated to the same end—the missing +of the union of the actors’ souls. In both cases the lives were spoiled. +In <i>Youth and Art</i> the woman’s character cuts a very poor figure: love is +subordinated to her art, and that to the mere worldly advantage of a rich +marriage and the opportunity of becoming “queen at bals-parés.” The man +was cold, not because his art made him so, but because of his overwhelming +prudence, which we may be sure did not make him a Gibson after all.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Note.</span>—Verse ii., <i>Gibson, John</i> (1790-1866), the sculptor, best known to +fame by his “Tinted Venus.” He died at Rome. Verse iii., <i>Grisi, +Giulietta</i> (born in Milan, 1812), one of the most distinguished singers of +our time She came to London in 1834, and at once took a leading position +in the operatic world. Verse xv., <i>bals-parés</i> == dress-balls.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_573" id="Page_573">[Pg 573]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">APPENDIX.</span></p> + +<p> </p> +<p><b>Epistle Of Karshish.</b> Dr. R. Garnett published the following note on this +poem in the <i>Academy</i> of 10th October, 1896:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="right">“<span class="smcap">British Museum</span>,<br /> +“<i>16th Sept., 1896</i>.</p> + +<p>“Browning, in his ‘Epistle of Karshish,’ commits an oversight, as it +seems to me, in making Lazarus fifty years of age at the eve of the +siege of Jerusalem, <i>circa</i> 68 <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> The miracle of which he was the +subject is supposed to have been wrought about 33 <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> He would +consequently have been only about fifteen at the time, which is quite +inconsistent with the general tenor of the narrative. According to +tradition, Lazarus was thirty at the time, and lived thirty years +longer, not surviving, therefore, to the date intimated in Browning’s +poem.</p> + +<p class="poem">‘A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear.’</p> + +<p>If I do not mistake, there is no such thing as a black lynx, except as +a <i>lusus naturae</i>. It is easy to see how the generally accurate +Browning fell into this error. The Syrian lynx, which he is +describing, has black tufted ears—the whole outer surface of the ear +is black—and the Turkish name by which it is commonly known, +<i>cara-cal</i>, means ‘black ear.’ Browning, intent on the creature’s +special characteristic, has extended the blackness from the ear to the +entire body.”</p></div> + +<p><b>Pietro of Abano.</b> Verse 10.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Alphabet on a Man’s Eyes.</span></p> + +<p>“In Alonzo Lee, of Atlanta, Galveston, the Americans have found a +singular phenomenon, nothing less than the alphabet marked quite +plainly on the edge of the iris of each of his eyes similar to the +figures on a watch. This wonder is said to have been caused by his +mother, who was an illiterate woman, desiring to educate herself. In +each eye the entire alphabet is plainly marked in capital letters, +not, however, in regular order. The ‘W’ is in the lower part of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_574" id="Page_574">[Pg 574]</a></span> +iris and ‘X’ at the top. They appear to be made if white fibre wove +cord, being connected at the top by another cord seemingly linked to +the upper extremity of each letter. The eye itself is blue, with white +lines radiating from the centre almost to the letters themselves: +these letters do not slope exactly in the direction that the radials +extend from the centre. Beginning at the bottom with ‘W’ and following +the letters like the hands of a watch they can be more readily +distinguished. So too, the irregularity is a striking feature, showing +how the mother learned her letters in broken patches, as a child +learns when beginning to read. Lee, who has been three times divorced, +has a son whose eyes are similar to his father’s.”</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>Echo</i>, 23rd March, 1896.</span></p></div> + +<p><b>The Ring and the Book.</b> Book I., l. 902. “<i>Caritellas</i>,” evidently for +“carretellas.” “A kind of drosky with a single pony harnessed to the near +side of the pole.” See <i>The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton</i>, vol. ii., p. +538.</p> + +<p>Book I. “<i>O Lyric Love</i>,” etc. The following letter was sent to me as +likely to be interesting on account of Mr. Browning’s own explanation of +his terms <i>Whiteness</i> and <i>Wanness</i>. My correspondent says: “I happen to +have an original letter from R. Browning in which he says, ‘The greater +and lesser lights indicate the greater and less proximity of the person,’” +etc. Wanness should be taken as meaning simply less bright than absolute +whiteness, as Keats speaks of “wannish fire,” etc.</p> + +<p>Book VIII., l. 329. The torture referred to by De Archangelis as the +<i>Vigiliarum</i>, is evidently identical with that called the “Vigilia” and +which is described in Hare’s <i>Walks in Rome</i>. “Upon a high joint-stool, +the seat about a span large, and, instead of being flat, cut in the form +of pointed diamonds, the victim was seated; the legs were fastened +together and without support; the hands bound behind the back, and with a +running knot attached to a cord descending from the ceiling; the body was +<ins class="correction" title="original: loosley">loosely</ins> attached to the back of the chair, cut also into angular points. A +wretch stood near pushing the victim from side to side; and now and then, +by pulling the rope from the ceiling, gave the arms most painful jerks. In +this horrible position the sufferer remained forty hours, the assistants +being changed every fifth hour.</p> + +<p>Book IX., l. 1109. “<i>The sole joke of Thucydides.</i>” Mr. F. C. Snow, +writing from Oxford to the <i>Daily News</i>, says: “Browning was misled by a +scholiast. The ancient critics said, ‘Here the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_575" id="Page_575">[Pg 575]</a></span> lion laughs,’ with +reference to the passage of Thucydides where the story of Cylon is told +(l. 126, see also the Scholia). But they did not mean that the passage +contained any joke, only that the narrative style was unusually genial. +There are other passages of Thucydides where his grim humour comes much +nearer to the modern idea of pleasantry.”</p> + +<p>“The lion, lo, hath laughed!” in the context, proves the correctness of +Mr. Snow’s explanation.</p> + +<p><b>Sordello.</b> Book III., l. 975. In the <i>Athenæum</i>, 12th December, 1896, Mr. +Alfred Forman published a letter on this passage which is an important +contribution to our commentary on <i>Sordello</i>.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“In a review of Dr. Berdoe’s <i>Browning Cyclopædia</i>, I have seen it +asked: ‘In what form did Empedocles put up with Ætna for a stimulant?’ +In what form indeed! But I think a more pertinent question would have +been: How can either Empedocles or, as is usually alleged, Landor have +anything to do with the passage referred to? To me it has always +appeared to be Æschylus whom Browning (vol. i, pp. 169-70, of the +seventeen-volume edition, 1888-94, Smith, Elder & Co.) addresses as</p> + +<p class="poem">‘Yours, my patron-friend,<br /> +Whose great verse blares unintermittent on<br /> +Like your own trumpeter at Marathon,—<br /> +You who, Platæa and Salamis being scant,<br /> +Put up with Ætna for a stimulant.</p> + +<p>I need not recall the legend of the Greek tragedian having fought at +Marathon as well as at Salamis and Platæa (the ‘stimulants’ to his +‘Persæ’), but his ancient biographer further says: ‘Having arrived in +Sicily, as Hiero was then engaged in founding the city of Ætna, he +exhibited his “Women of Ætna” by way of predicting a prosperous life +to those who contributed to colonise the city.’ After a perusal of pp. +52-53, we may imagine that Æschylus was one of Browning’s audience +(‘few living, many dead’), and not unlikely, as coming from the realm +where Browning says he had ‘many lovers’ (p. 53), to be designated a +‘patron-friend,’ while the ‘great verse’ that ‘blares unintermittent +on,’ etc., is surely identical (pp. 53-4) with</p> + +<p class="poem">‘The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown<br /> +Up out of memories of Marathon.</p> + +<p>“I have not been able to discover any substantiating facts in the +life, or passages in the works, of Landor; but possibly some +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_576" id="Page_576">[Pg 576]</a></span>correspondent of yours may be able to lay me under an obligation by +pointing such out. A simple statement to the effect that ‘Browning +said so’ could not, I think, in such a case as the one in question, be +deemed satisfactory. Dr. Garnett writes to me on the matter as +follows:—</p> + +<p>“‘Could the poet alluded to in <i>Sordello</i> possibly be R. H. Horne? +Horne was, I think, an intimate friend of Browning’s; he was more +Æschylean than any other contemporary; he had served as soldier and +sailor in the Mexican War; and, having given up arms for letters, +might be said to have forsaken Marathon and Salamis for Ætna, although +the introduction of Ætna would be quite incomprehensible but for the +historical fact of Æschylus’s secession thither. I do not feel +convinced that the identification of Horne with Browning’s +“patron-friend” is the correct interpretation, but it seems to me to +deserve attention.’</p> + +<p>“While on the subject of <i>Sordello</i>, may I ask how (as I have seen it +assumed in ‘Browning’ books) the ‘child barefoot and rosy’ of p. 288 +can be Sordello himself? In the first place, are not the words he is +singing taken from Sordello’s own ‘Goito lay’ (cf. pp. 97, 249, 289), +with which he vanquished Eglamor, long after he had ceased to be, if +he ever was, a rosy and barefoot child? And, in the second place, is +there any indication in the whole poem that Sordello was ever ‘by +sparkling Asolo,’ where the aforesaid child is described as being?</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“<span class="smcap">Alfred Forman.</span>”</span></p></div> + +<p>Book VI., l. 614:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“<i>The old fable of the two eagles.</i>” They—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 10em;">“Went two ways</span><br /> +About the world: where, in the midst, they met,<br /> +Though on a shifting waste of sand, men set<br /> +Jove’s temple.”</p> + +<p>The story is referred to in Pindar’s “Fourth Pythian Ode,” where he speaks +of “Jove’s golden eagles.” These were placed near the Delphic tripod, and +probably gave rise to the story of the two birds sent by Jupiter, one from +the east and the other from the west, and which met at Pytho or Delphi. +Mr. Browning seems to be in error here. Delphi was not “on a shifting +waste of sand,” but on a mountain; and the temple was not that of Jove, +but of Apollo. The poet appears to have sent the eagles to the oasis of +Ammon, which was in the middle of a sandy desert and had a most famous +oracle of Zeus.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p> + +<p><a name='f_1' id='f_1' href='#fna_1'>[1]</a> One of the most remarkable instances of the use made of antithesis I +ever heard was at Friern Barnet Church, into the porch of which I strolled +when walking one summer day some twenty-five years ago. I was just in time +to hear the preacher use words which I have never forgotten. The +antithesis of the sentence was perfect:</p> + +<p>“If <i>thou</i> wouldst <i>hereafter be</i> where <i>Christ</i> is, see <i>thou</i> be not +found <i>now</i> where <i>He</i> is <i>not</i>, lest <i>when He come</i> he say to <i>you</i>, what +<i>now</i> by your conduct you say to <i>Him</i> ‘Depart from Me—where <i>I</i> am <i>you</i> +cannot come!’” If any one would investigate this principle of antithetic +reading further, let him take Macaulay’s “Essay on Von Ranke’s Popes,” +vol. ii., p. 128, and beginning at the words, “There is not, and there +never was,” see how to place the correct emphasis by observation of the +opposed ideas. This is the one great secret of good reading. Printers’ +punctuation is horribly misleading, and should usually be disregarded.</p> + +<p><a name='f_2' id='f_2' href='#fna_2'>[2]</a> See <i>Browning Society’s Papers</i>, Pt. XII., p. 81.</p> + +<p><a name='f_3' id='f_3' href='#fna_3'>[3]</a> This is a mistake: it should be Ongar, not Norwich.</p> + +<p><a name='f_4' id='f_4' href='#fna_4'>[4]</a> The name Druses is generally, but not universally, believed to be +derived from this Darazi.—E. B.</p> + +<p><a name='f_5' id='f_5' href='#fna_5'>[5]</a> By means of riddles, as related in the Bible.</p> + +<p><a name='f_6' id='f_6' href='#fna_6'>[6]</a> The above sonnet, by Robert Browning, is copied from <i>The Monthly +Repository</i> (edited by W. J. Fox) for 1834, New series, vol. viii., p. +712.</p> + +<p><a name='f_7' id='f_7' href='#fna_7'>[7]</a> For the above suggestions I am indebted to the <i>Notes of the Browning +Society</i>, Part VII., p. 42*.</p> + +<p><a name='f_8' id='f_8' href='#fna_8'>[8]</a> Browning stopped his work on <i>Sordello</i> to write <i>Strafford</i>.</p> + +<p><a name='f_9' id='f_9' href='#fna_9'>[9]</a> Compare this use of the Light metaphor with Browning’s frequent use of +it in his poems, as I explain in the article on “Browning as a Scientific +Poet” in my <i>Browning’s Message to his Time</i>.</p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><strong>Transcriber’s Notes:</strong></p> + +<p>Punctuation has been corrected without note.</p> + +<p>Other than the corrections noted by hover information, inconsistencies in +spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.</p> + +<p>The original text contains numerous unmatched quotation marks. Obvious errors +have been closed while those requiring interpretation have been left open.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Browning Cyclopædia, by Edward Berdoe + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROWNING CYCLOPÆDIA *** + +***** This file should be named 36734-h.htm or 36734-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/7/3/36734/ + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive/American +Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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