PR
i|231
W5
'RIMER
ON
OWNING
rr" WILSON
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFCmNIA
SAN DIEGO
J
A,..
Iv5
A PRIMER
ON
B Pi W N I N a
BY
F. MARY ^yILSOX
ILontiou
MACMJLLAX AXD CO.
A N I) N K W V (J K K
1891
All righU rtserrtd
C N T E N T S.
CHAPTER T.
BROWNING S LITERARY LIFE.
1.
' Lives of the Poets ' .
TAOE
. 1
2.
Rrowiiing's Reticence and Openness
. 2
3.
Parentage ....
. 3
4.
Cliildhooil and Education
. 5
5.
Earlier ilanliood
6
6.
Marriage and Middle Life
9
7.
Later Life ....
. 10
rTT.XPTER TT.
UROWNINOS CHAUACTEHlSTICi?.
1. Universality
2. Courage
3. Philosophy and llcHgiou
15
If.
17
VI
CONTENTS.
4. Subjects
5. The Art of Browning .
6. Browning as a Writer of Plays
7. Defects and Difficulties
PAGE
23
36
41
43
CHAPTER III.
INTRODTJCTIONS TO THE POEMS
Pauline .
Paracelsus
Strafford
Sordello .
Pippa Passes
King Victor and King Charles
Dramatic Lyrics .
The Return of tlie Druses
A Blot in the 'Scutcheon
Colombe's Birthday
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics
Luria
A Soul's Tragedy
Christmas-Eve and E&,ster-Day
Men and Women
Dramatis Personse
The Rino; and the Book
49
53
61
64
75
78
81
83
86
88
92
97
101
103
lOS
124
131
CONTENTS.
VI 1
PAciK
Biilaustion's Ailvcuture ..... l(il
Prince Hoheiistiel-Schwaiij,';iu . .166
Fifine at the Fail- . . 170
Red Cotton Night-Cap Coimtrj- . .177
Aristophanes' Aiiolopy . . .182
The Inn Album . .188
Pacchiarotto and how lie Worked in Distemper: willi
other Poems . . . . .196
The Agamemnon of .ffischylus .... 202
La Saisiaz : The Two Poets of Croisic . .207
Dramatic Idyls . . .211
Jocoscria . . . . 220
Ferishtah's Fancies ..... 226
Parleyings with Certain People .... 233
Asolando . . . . .239
Inde.\ ....... 246
N.B.-Thc references to the Poems, by page, are to Tfic
Poetical U'urks of Jlohrrl Bnnrnmij, Smith, Elder, 1888, in
sixteen volumes ; and to Asolando, Smith, Elder, 1890.
A rrJMER ON BEOAYNING.
CHAPTET^ T.
browning's literary LIFH.
1. 'Lives of the Poets.'— A gi-eat writer's life is
to be fuuiul in his works rather than in his biography.
The essential life of Wordsworth, George Eliot, and
Carlyle is absorbed in their writings, and any other
record of their years is comparatively fruitless lore.
Out of the raw material of their sensations and
perceptions they weave a finished product, with
which alone we need greatly concern ourselves. The
necessity to specialise and sulxlivide various depart-
ments of human laljour increases with each century,
and men who are at once fanujus as warriors, courtiers,
statesmen, and pcjets scarcely exist in our times.
Kven a master spirit now has to exert himself to the
utmost before he can make a step in advance of all
tliat has already been created or di-scovered in one
field alone.' Accordingly the observers and tran-
scribers of bfe tend more and nioro to become a
' WorkH, XII. 89. lied CuUun Xi<jht-Cap Vounlry.
& B
2 BROWNING. chap.
separate class, so that the lives of the literary men
of this age are, to speak broadly, private and
uneventful.
2. Browning's Reticence and Openness.—
Having allowed all this, it is still natural that we
should wish to know something of what were the
makings of a great poet as we read him in his Avorks,
and in what circumstances the works were written.
Some outline of such facts is precious, for often what
specially hallows our poets to us is a silent happiness
or fortitude of living which no reader's spirit-sense
could unaided find between the lines. The more
dramatic a Avriter is, the less easy it is to construct his
personality out of his writings, and no writer ever
had a more dramatic spirit running through his poems
than BroAvning. If Ave read Childe Harold or Elia
we lay them doAvn Avith some-idea of what manner of
men were Byron and Lamb, but it is Browning's ideaP
and his individual claim,^ that through the poet's
' AAdndoAV ' all men may look, but no foot be allowed
across his 'threshold.' Moreover, Browning's poetical
Avorks fill at least seventeen volumes, and are, as has
been said, not books but a literature. Yet no one
Avho studies these seventeen volumes fails to find the
presentation of a personality subdominant throughout,
a personality more explicit, it may be, in one place
than another, and only speaking with direct utterance
in some later poems entirely, and elseAvhere in
' XIII. 40, 41. Aristophanes' Apology.
2 XIV. 39. House.
I LITERARY IJFE. 3
scattered passages, luit always the same Browning,
self-expressed, even when most dramatic, in his
selection of characters and their action, one whose
moral tests and spiiitual hopes, hatreds, loves, and
scorns are (even in his own despite, if that be so)
ours to know. Most minds possess marked opposites
of their strongest characteristics, and so Browning's
professed austerity of attitude ^ towards his readers
is at most the reaction from that great instinct of
seif-reveiiling which he shares ^\^th every other poet.
3. Parentage. — Robert Browning was born May
7th, 1812. His father, also Kobert, for nearly fifty
yciirs a clerk in the Bank of England, was the son
of another Kubert Browning, who held an important
jxjst in the same place for over the half century.
The Brownings had been Dorsetshire people, but
London and the "West of England did not supply the
only pre-natal streams that flowed into the blood of
the poet. It is extremely interesting to know, as any
observer of his sympathies and insights would reason-
ably expect, that he came of mixed nationalities.
His gi~andmother on the paternal side was a Creole,
owning a sugar plantation at St. Kitt's, where his
father spent some time wlien a youth. His mother,
Siiriarnia Wiedemann, born at her parents' home in
Dundee, was the daughter of a mother who was pure
Scotfl and a father of German extraction. There is
no proof, though the question has been mooted, that
» XIV. 31. AlUie "MennauL" XV. IGI. Ki.iloKur I., /tntmatic
Idyll. \\\. 89, Lyric to A Bean- Stripe, Frrishtalis Fancies,
4 BROWNING. chap.
this grandfather on the spindle side had any Jewish
traces.
Thus there were in Browning mingled threads of
nationality, worked upon a web of English middle
class. In Browning's heredity were germinated his
vast intellectual and emotional range and his sus-
ceptibility to race differences, but the genius which
modulated these varying strains into undreamed-of
harmony was his own. As we shall see, intelligence
and cultivation were preparing in the Browning
family before 1812^ but though something of the
perfected intelligence we call genius may be prepared
by progenitors, much more seems directly inspired
by the breath of a wind which bloweth where it
listeth.'^
Browning's grandfather was an expert man of
business. His father was a genial, popular man,
versatile and accomplished. Besides his clever cari-
catures of faces, well known in the Bank of England,
he was learned in art history. He could improvise
and illustrate stories in rhyme for the children.
He "was a scholar and knew Greek," ^ and used to
rock his little boy in his arms to the sound of Anacreon.
In English poetry he adhered to Pope's secure couplets,
in contradistinction to his wife, who liked more
innovating fashions of verse. Both parents were
Congregationalists. One of the poet's uncles, William
Shergold Browning, wrote a highly regarded History
' See, on this subject, XI. 202, 203.
^ Asolando. 123. Development.
I LITERARY LIFE. 6
of the Hutpienots. An interesting note on Browning's
father is his ingenuity in the dovetailing of detective
eWdence, and his intimacy with mediaeval legends,
"he seemed to have known Paracelsus and even
Talmudic personages personally," a noteworthy
environment for the future author of The Ring and
the Book, Pktro of Abano, Paracelsus, and Jochanan
Hakkadosh. Doubtless Browning's inherited vigour
and buoyancy of constitution helped to preserve his
cheerful trust in unprovable spiritualities from the
falterings and backslidings of other men. What of
the poet's mother? She was a religious woman
who loved music, and whom her son loved with
never-fitrgctting emotion.
4. Childhood and Education.— Browning was
born in Suuihaniptun Street, rcckham. That suburb
and its neighbours, Camberwell and Heme Hill,
were less absorbed then than now into the circle
of fog and soot, and we may think of Browning's
childhood as spent among 'old trees,' 'climbing
plant.s,' and ' morning swallows.' ^ His imagination
was deeply impressed by distant London, murmur-
ous, lighting the sky by night, and imaging that
' need of a world of men ' ^ so paramount in the
after years. We hear of Avison's March, to the air
of which the little boy wcnild step,^ of an Italian
etigmving of Andromeda,^ oi the tale of Troy as
' I. 8. I'aiiline.
' VI. 46. I'artinij at Afurning.
" XVI. 'I'Si. I'urlryin'jH. With ''harks AvUutu
* I. 29. I'auline.
6 BROWNING. chap.
suggested by the outlines of the coals in the grate.
Such trifles fed his fancy - hunger. Some of the
poems of Browning's maturity drew their magic
suggestion from isolated memories of childhood,
and a habit of seeing human contours in coals and
clouds may have originated such a memorable tableau
of the sunset's Persian encounter as we find in Gerard
de Lairesse in Parleyiiujs.
Till he was fourteen, Browning was taught at
private schools near home. Then he studied for a
time with a tutor, who used to come to his father's
house. When, in 1829, University College, London,
was opened, Browning attended a few lectures there.
The bald enumeration of such chartered means of
education seems in Browning's case peculiarly vain.
Browning's are the works of a great reader, a winner
of universal knowledge, and he early began to
assimilate his proper food. His brief inthralment
to Byron, of which boyish verses were the natural
acknoAvledgment, was annulled, in 1826, by a
wondrous boon, for then Browning became possessed
of the poems of Shelley and Keats. It was a memor-
able day to the coming poet when the inspiring
beauty of those earlier twain was revealed to him.
5. Earlier Manhood. — His son and daughter
having the pro&pect of fair means, there was wisely
no thought with Browning's father of tying Robert
down to uncongenial occupation to make money
withal. Browning was left free to follow his own
bent, i.e. to make poetry his profession.
I LITERARY LIFE. 7
III 1832, Browning wrote Pauline, and in 1833
it was pul dished. Soon after this, the poet went
abroad for nearly a year. Travel was a valualilc
element in the shaping of Browning. He went to
Knssia, and Italy, first visited in 1838, was, in his
own phrase, his 'University.' He delved into the
history, famous and out-of-the-way, of the places he
stiiyed in,^ and became familiar with the people. In
the Italian journey of 1838, he made his first acquaint-
ance with his perennial loves, Asolo" and Venice.^
In 1835, Paracflsit3, Browning's first acknowledged
work, was published, and about the same time several
brilliant and spirited short poems came out in the
Mmitlih/ Heposihiri/, which was edited by Browning's
firm friend, Mr. W. Johnson Fox. Among these were
the two, Juluuines Agrimht and ]'i»j)hi/ria (called later
Porphyrias Lover), which, in 1842, were combined
under the title of Madhouse Cells. ]\Iany of Brown-
ing's earlier friendships, with the gi-eat men wlio
})elonged U) the generation that was old Avhen he him-
self was young, date from the appearance of Paracelsus.
At Macrcady's instance. Browning wrote a tragedy,
and Straffonl was produced at Covcnt Garden Theatre,
May 1st, 1837. The drama, like nuich of Pararel.'ius,
had been partly conceived during those midnight
walks, dear to the imaginatif)n of Browning, in a
wo<k1 near Dulwich. The i)lay was not unsuccessful,
but it W518 more than the most successful play could
' I. 'J85, 'ibtf. SorJello. '^ I. Iii9. Sjrddlo.
* I. 161. Sm-dello.
8 BROWNING. chap.
do to prop the tottering fortunes of Covent Garden
Theatre. After five nights the financial storm broke,
and Strafford bent to it. As Browning's boyish
writings had been considered too easily melodious
and transparent, so Paracelsus was condemned by
Sterling and Caroline Fox for being verbose. Brown-
ing laid the unexpected word to heart, and Sonlello
(1840) witnesses to its bitter fruit, for the music of
Pauline and Paracelsus is silenced, and in one word
he essays the work of five. Strafford is concise too,
not with the curtailed compressions of Sordello, but
only in keeping with the stern conciseness of its
chronicle and characters. Sordello was attacked and
ridiculed on all sides, and from this time forth Brown-
ing followed his own course and took no more lessons
from his critics.^ He had to work and wait for two
more decades before any full measure of jDublic re-
cognition became his. As we can well imagine,
such neglect was disadvantageous to his art and
bitter and hard to bear. In the years following
on Strafford, Browning Avrote a number of poetical
dramas. Two of these, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon and
Colombe's Birthday, were performed in by the chief
actors of the time — Macready, Miss Helena Faucit,
and Phelps. The plays, together with many short
poems, included in later editions under the headings
of Dramatic Lyrics, Dramatic Romances, and Men and
Women, came out, between 1841 and 1846, in eight
1 XIII. 70, 71. Aristophanes Apology; XVI. 257. The Two Poels
of Croisic ; aud XV. 260. Pambo,
I LITKRARV LIFE. 9
numbers, bearing the general name of Bells and
Ponifgranate^. This name, borrowed from the decora-
tion round the higli-priest's robe, was thus explained
b}' Browning,^ " I meant l)v the title to indicate an
endeiivour towards something like an alternation, or
mixture of music with discoursing, sound with sense,
poetry with thought, which looks too ambitions thus
expressed, so the symbol was preferred." Browning's
taste was ever towards such symbols, imaginatively
bcjiutiful in themselves, nor was it always his first care
to point out how they should be read. Fii'st in the
series of Bells and Pomegranates was that wonderful
prove rhe, Pippa Passes (1841).
6. Marriage and Middle Life. — The forties
form a great epoch in tlie .story of Kobert Browning,
not only for the marvellous poems he was then
writing, but for the commencement of a perfect inward
poem, his marriage with Elizabeth Barrett, which
took place September 12th, 1846. A week later, the
two poets left England, and Mrs. Browning's health for
ever forl»ade her return on any but flitting visits. The
first winter was .sj)ent in Pisa, the summer in Ancona
and its neighbourhood. Before the ii^xt winter Mr.
and Mrs. Browning had Uiken up their residence in
Florence. Except the house of the Alighieri, there is
no sp<jt in Fl<jrence so siicred for jwetry's sake as Casa
Ciuidi. Here, on March 9th, 1849, a child, Robert Wiedc-
niaini liarrett Browning, wjus born. The Brcjwnings
spent two or three of their winters in Home, and one in
> (No. VIII.) Preface to A iknU't Tragedy.
10 BROWNING. CHAP.
Paris with Mr. Browning's father and sister, who were
living there. Florence gave Browning the prompting
idea of his famous Art poems, such as Amlrea del
Sarto. The time was rich in poetic plans formed and
carried out. Mrs. Browning wrote Casa Guidi
JFindows, Aurora Leigh, and other famous poems, and
the publication of the fifty — and One — AIe7i ami
JFomen, in 1855, marks a new era in the widening
renown of Browning. In 1861, the golden union
underwent the sorrow that comes to all unions, for,
on June 29th, the fragile life of Mrs. Browning passed
beyond mortal ken. A few months after, Browning
wrote Prospke, that grand testimony to the faith
that looks through death. Three years after, the
poem was published in Dramatis Personce. In 1868-69
Browning's giant work. The Iling and the Book, was
given to the world. At the beginning of it, Browning
tells how, in 1865, he accidentally picked up, at a
book-stall in Florence, the square, yellow book, the
record of the Francescbini trial, that was the germ
of his wonderful production.
7. Later Life. — Bereft of his Wifc,Browningceased
to consider Italy his home, and with his boy he came
to live in London, at 19. Warwick Crescent, like the
Valladolid poet's, a 'stuccoed third house by the
bridge.'^ After the death of their father, in 1866,
his sister. Miss Browning, came to live with him, and
continued to do so till he died. From 1868 forward,
few were the years unmarked by a book by Brown-
1 IV. 179. Ilnw it Strikes a Contemporary.
I LITEKAKV LIFK. 11
ing. In 1887, Browning left Pjiddington for 29. De
Vere Ciarilens. He went abroad every year, and Bed
Cotton Xight-Cap Count n/, hi Saisiaz, and A sol a mi o record
such visits. Browning spent his autumns in Venice.
In Tlie Flight of the Dudusn, Browning wrote :
" What a thing friendship is, world without end ! " ^
and no man has lived his life through more encora-
piissed with friends. The only ones of whom it
behoves here to speak are those to whom Browning
refei-s in his works. We remember how Meres spoke
of Shakspere's ^sugred sonnets among his private
friend.s,' and the same epithet applies to Browning's
dediciitions. Among the loved and loving friends in
Browning's poems, we early find the names of John
Foreter and M. Milsiind of Dijon,'- the French critic,
and Browning's enthusiiistic admirer. Walter Savage
Landor is referred to in Sordello,'^ and Lurui is dedi-
catetl to him. Browning's goodness to Landor, when
the older jx^et stood in urgent need of a friend's help,
is one of the many lovable traits of his character.
' My English Eyeljright ' of the third Book of
,Svrdello* is Miss Euphrasia Haworth, an early friend.
Paracelsus is inscribed to aM(jther, Count de Ripert-
Munclar, and Strafford to William Macready, for
whose little boy, Willy, Browning wrote tlie I'ied
Piper, not thinking at the time of including it among
> V. 150.
' It waj» the 1863 rejifiut of Surddlo thut was tltdicutcd lo .M.
Militand.
* I. 169-170. * I. 170.
12 BROAVNING. chap.
his 'works.' In three epigrammatic lines, Browning
dedicated Pippa Passes to Mr. Sergeant Talfoxird, and
the literaiy name of Procter is affectionately written
at the beginning of Colomhe^s Birthday. To John
Kenyon, Miss Barrett's cousin, who introduced the
poet and poetess to each other, and possessed social
and intellectual eminence as well as wealth and gener-
osity, Browning dedicated Dramatic Lyrics (1842). The
original of ' Waring ' was Mr. Domett, a lyrical writer,
sometime a minister of state in New Zealand, and
the ' Alfred ' to whom The Guardian-Angel is addressed.
Belonging to Browning's later period {i.e. taking The
Ring and the Book, 1868-69), as in some sort a bound-
ary between the first and second halves of Browning's
literary life) is the charming inscription of Balau-
stion's Adventure to Lady Cowper, who had inspired
its production. Browning dedicated his selection
from his poetry (1872) to Tennyson, to whom, in the
preface to an earlier nosegay (1865), he had done
graceful homage. Red Cotton Night - Cap Country,
besides being formally 'to Miss Thackeray,' is full
of sweet and informal reference to her and to
honoured Milsand. In the prose 'chat,' that goes
with the Agamemnon, Browning quotes from one
'eloquent friend,' Matthew Arnold, and refers his
own work to another, 'dear and noble,' Carlyle. The
subject of Browning's 'In Afemoriam,' La Saisiaz,is Miss
Anne Egerton Smith. Parleyings is sacred to the
memory of the highly valued Joseph Milsand. With
Asolando goes a letter to Mrs. Bronson, Browning's
1 LITERARY LIFE. 13
American friend and hostess at Venice and Asolo.
'My Kirkup,' who appairs in a parenthesis on the
first iKige of racchiarutto, w;vs a Florentine acquaint-
ance, the discoverer of Giotto's portrait of Dante in
the Rirgello. John Kelfe, apostropliiscd in Charles
Avi^un, had been one of Browning's music-mastei-s in
boyhood.
In 1872, Browning's popularity was proved and
furthered by the issue of two volumes in the
Tauchnitz edition of poems selected from his works.
Browning was made Honorary Fellow of Balliol in
1868, and honorary degrees have been given him by
Oxford, Cambridge, and Edin])urgh. Browning took
great pride in his artist son, and that son's marriage
to an Americjin lady, Miss Fanny Coddington, meant
yet another affectionate bond to the old man. Brown-
ing, by character and career, stands among the sane
and well-ordered representatives of a high civilisa-
tion, which allows of 'placid lives, leisurely works.' ^
It wa.s a part of his transcendentalism to insist that
the soul, insteiid of aging like the body, gi-ows and
gain.s,^ and certainly he lived out his own belief. The
la.st works of ' K;ibl>i ' Browning are mellow, and
have none of the spleen of ad\anced years. Brown-
ing had not learnt from his Greeks their cruel
worship of youth and abhorrence of age.^ In the
passage * in Aristupliancs' Ajjolotjy in which Aristo-
'XIV. 2.'19. The T\cn I'l^h of Croisic.
• XI. 2-1 .1. Fiji'"' 'it If"" '''"'■•
» XI 11. 272. Agamemnon. ' Mil 10, 11.
14 BROWNING. CHAP.
phanes depicts a poet in and out of the world, there
seems a likeness to the poet who was so fond of, and
yet so independent of society, able to dispense him-
self prodigally because conscious of the colossal
strength which he had only to shut his study door
upon the silken company to renew. Browning's per-
sonal appearance was expressive to those who could
see deep enough. His eyes wonderfully combined
searching scrutiny with the meditative far-off regard.
Landor, long ago describing Browning's exterior per-
sonality, spoke of the spruce, hale man, with 'active
step,' ' inquiring eye,' and ' tongue so varied in
discoiu-se.'
In the autumn of 1889, after spending some time
at Asolo, Browning moved on to Venice, to the
Rezzonico Palace, the property of his. daughter and
son. There, late in November, he was attacked by
bronchitis, aggravated by asthma, and rendered
serious by weak action of the heart. On December
12th, after a short illness, he died at the age of
seventy-seven.
It was thought that what was mortal of the poet
would lie by his wife in the Florentine cemetery, but
this was not to be. England claimed her poet for
Westminster Abbey. On December 31st, 1889, the
body of Browning was interred in Poets' Corner,
amid a great throng of witnesses, representative of
England's best.
II CHARACTERISTICS. 15
CIlAl'TEK II.
bkonyning's charactkkistics.
1. Universality. — No criticism on Browning has
surpjissed those lines written by his wife, then Miss
liirrett, wherein she indivitlualised him by his 'veined
humanity," and added that his works, 'pomegranates'
indeetl, need cutting deep to come at the red heart
within. The greatest passion and the utmost power
of Browning are spent in depicting men and women.
His poems are full of incidents ; he ransacks history
and the world for curious and effective stories ; but
to Browning, unlike Scott or Homer, incident alone
is meaningless, valuable only as an opportunity for
revftiling character. Browning is most at home
with complexity, outward and inward. The more
exceptional the incident, the more exceptional and
interesting the character, according to him. That
is why his works are so full, and ever increasingly
so, of the out-of-the-way, occasionally the repellent.
With every poet matter and manner are wedded,
and with none more indissolubly than with Browning.
Every thing in Browning, his ideas, especially those
which at first seem contradictory, his beliefs, his
selection of subjects, his defects and untowardnesses
prove on close inspection to be ])arts of th(.' most
immutable, welde<l whole. His continuous unity of
thought ami purpose is extraordinary.
16 BROWNING. chap.
Browning's penetrative sympathy delights to
enter all the various forms of life, to try to look
through each man's eyes, and describe in his character
how his outside world is affecting the individual
within. In Browning's harvesting all ranks afford
an equally rich yield of humanity. He shows the
husk, only to remove it and present us with the
soul. He is as interested in psychologising a Paris
jeweller as a queen. The soul in each is his great
object of study, the soul testing itself on circum-
stances,^ strong if it aims, grows, fights on,^ despic-
able if it shirks conflict.^
2. Courage. — In nothing is Browning more
remarkable than in the second light he will throw
on actions and motives, and in his new treatment
of old episodes. After every one else tas comfortably
acquiesced, in some ' obvious ' verdict and fancied
that further appeal is over, hoAV poor and crude
that verdict appears under the illumination of this
mind, late in time, but fresh as the primal morn-
ing ! Take, for instance, in The Ring and the Booh,
the unconventional summing-up of the Pope on
Gruido, with that sublime illustrative storm,^
only excelled by the matchless tempest in Pippa
Passes.^ The same electric light flashes out in Ivb,n
Ivanovikh, in the old priest's judgment, swift and
* VII. Rahhi hen Ezra. Et passim.
^ IV. 266. Bishop Blougram's Apology.
^ V. The Statue and the Bust.
* X. 147, 148. The Rinfj and the Book. The Pope.
^ III. 23. Pippa Passes. Morning.
II L1IAUACTERISTIC8. 17
overturning as one of Christ's.^ Similar originality
and fearlessness come out in llic Glare and Vl'ur.
Then what an unusual view of death there is in
Prospice ! Browning ever sides with the fighter,
Ciiger ' to grapple danger where1)y souls grow
strong,'" as in his view of temptation, which he would
wish to have dragged up by its haii- in order to do
battle with it.^ The second light he throws on
character appears in his reasoning too, as in the
opulent re-inforcement in Two Camels^ to the
argument against asceticism. A curious extra
argument, entirely Browning's own, is to be found
in Fijine at the Fair, XI. c.x.wiii. Another instance
occurs in Fust's dilemma of conscience in the
Epilogue to Farleifini/s.'' There is not one line of
fluff or claptrap in Browning.
3. Philosophy and Religion.— Browning is not
solely a i><jetic artist, he is besides that a ' thinker,'
with so persistent an answer to the ultimate question
of life that few of his poems can l^e appraised without
reference to it. He would have thought his work
of little worth if it only served to mirror the chance
and scattered experience of many men, or give
artistic satisfaction by its mere perfection of utter-
ance. If he ditl not originate the broadest expression
of nineteenth century belief, at least he tiaiisinutes
it, so that through his poetry it re-enters many a soul
' XV. [,0-r,i. /ivlrt Inhifrvitch.
■ X. no. r/./- j'i'jx', liiiL- i;j02.
' X. 111. T/u: i'ujjf, lim-s 1 IK,--..! 19L'.
♦ XVI. VJ, .'/J. " XVI. -JC-J, -i;.] 271.
{■
18 BROWNING. chap.
with healing in its wings. To many people his
works are a latter evangel of reasonable Christianity.
Browning restates, in language proper to our day,
the need, the fitness, one might say the inevitahle-
ness of two correlative beings, the soul and God.
While he acknowledges that these two existences
are unprovable, being beyond the region of scientific
experiment, he, for his own part, takes them as self-
evident and the 'knowledge' of them as intuitive.
Like Wordsworth, he looks within, not without,
for the sources of knowledge.^ Knowledge from
within he deems absolute truth and, at the same
time, transcendent mystery. The existence of the
soul is the root of Browning's philosophy, the one
thing in it which is taken for granted. The soul
being allowed as the subject — that which perceives,
that which is perceived — God, follows as a matter
of course, the object complementary to the subject.
Browning has a fine passage in Red Cotton Night-Cap
Country in which he definitely confronts the insidious
idea of soul and body being one and the same,
'the new Beligio Medici' as he calls it,^ and there
he explains his own concept of body, as ministrant
and servant to soul, not including soul in itself.
To recapitulate : — the soul represents to Browning
the fundamental fact of life, it is the basis of his
philosophy, and the only part of it which tran-
scends logical proof. In every further step Browning
^ XV. 243. Jochanan Hakkadosh.
^ XII. 113. Bed Cotton Night-Caj) Country.
II
CHAILVCTERISTICS. 19
addresses liini.-^olf to the intellect and submits his
arguments to its severest tests. AVhilc his process
is intellectual, it is far from being colourless. A
philosopher, dealing ^vith abstract ideas, appeals
solely to intellect, so does a historian, discussing
the value of documentary e\'idence, but Browning is
above every thing a poet, and a poet ascribing the
deepest thrill of his inspiration to a religion which
represents the vitidising and personal element in
philosophy and history. Both the man and the theme
are in touch with the heart and the emotions.
Herein lies the value to religion of a great poet
when enlisted in its service, he above all men having
the faculty for raising the key of the appeal so that
it enters the soul by the double gateway of intellect
and feelings. There is something very sustaining to
weaker faith in the unfaltering vigour of Browning's.
One of the greatest intellects of the age encounters
materialistic thought with a constant determination
to 'hope hard in the subtle thing that's spirit.'^
In the very uncertainty of the unseen. Browning
finds the foremost evidence of its truth. Life is
probation, the race -ground of the soul, and soids
develop only when will and faith have perfectly
free play.'^ He never tires of sttiting and exemplifying
this cardimil idea, he looks at it from every side,
and never finds it fail. In Fvnrs and Sa-uples wo
have one of his strangest illustrations of the spiritual
* XIV. 4. Prologue to PacrJiiarotta.
'•' IV. 101, 192. An K]jUlc.
20 BROWNING. chap.
uses of uncertainty. The existence of evil offers
development to man's moral energy, just as the
noblest possibility of human love is provided for by
the existence of pain and weakness.^ Our failures
are an evidence of our ultimate triumph, and life's
shortness and imperfection imply immortality.
Browning is Wagner in literature ; for both, discords
exist to be quenched in concord."
Given God's power and knowledge. His love is as
inevitable as the third angle of the triangle. Man's
sublimest love being the strength of weakness, Brown-
ing sees nothing for it but that God's love should be
similar in manifestation. This is the point at which
he is touched by the appeal of Christ.^ God's love
once proved a necessity, no way lies open by which
it can meet man half-way but by clothing its strength
in weakness like man's own. How can man bridge
the gulf between his own need and the claim Christ
made 1 Shall he ' reject Christ through very need of
Him ' 1 * No, for Christianity is the only hypothesis
by which Browning, and those who have been able to
follow him thus far, can ' solve all questions in the
earth and out of it,'^ even while taking every oppos-
ing difficulty into consideration.
To Browning all secondary dogma is subject to
the relativity of truth. Man's knowledge and condi-
^ VI. 117. Saul, and XIV. La Sakiaz.
2 VII. 108. Aht Vocjler, and XVI. 224. With Charles Avison.
3 VI. 122. Sa2i,l, and XVI. 30. Ferishtah : The Sim.
* VII. 141. A Death in the Desert.
5 VII. 139. A Death in the Desert.
n CHARACTERISTICS. 21
tions sxiit his degree of development. He is accorded
just so much truth as will prick him <»n to earn more.
Education comes to the race, as to every child,' hy
gradual steps, by concessions to Aveakness and ignor-
ance, by a slowly increasing grant of opportunities to
develop and leave childish horizons and old illusions,
i.e. old aids, behind. " Law deals the same with soul
and body."- Browning affirms the existence of 'a
falsish false' and 'a falsish true,'^ as well as truth
pure and simple, the difference between them being
that the falsity is fleeting, a means to the end, which
is truth itself.^ Delusions are essential to man's
growth, and whom God deludes, Browning considers
well deluded.
" When faith is ripe for sight, — why, icasonuhly then
Comes the great cleariiig-ui). Wait threescore years and ten ! "
Browning's ever present thought is the indivitlual
soul ;is judged individually.^ He constantly reiterates
the independent personal relation that exists between
the soul and (Jml. While he believes that every man
shall give account of his own soul first and foremost,
he thinks no less of the other side of the shield, the
working out, or rather the witness, of soul in love
and Kicrificc. He never tires of saying, "Love is
\yest," "Love is all and Death is nought," "Renounce
' Aiolando, p. l'J3. Juvdopmrnt, ami VII. 115. liahbi Ikn
Ezra.
* XVI. 118. J'arlri/iit'jn, lirrnard de MaiulevUle.
* XII. <5r». IM Cnllnn yifflU-Cap Country.
* XI. 3.1'J, 'SM. F,finf at live Fair.
* V. 2yi, 'Ji»2. I'hrialiinu- Kic and KttjiUr ■ Day, VII. ti.'-l,
KpUogue, nml XVI. "2, FrrisfUn/i's Funcifn : A /iran-Stiipr.
22 BROWNING. chap.
joy for my fellows' sake? That's joy beyond joy."
The question Browning would ask at the end of any
man's life is not, What has he done 1 but, What did he
try to do 1 Other lives may follow this, let them suffice
for perfection, all man can do here is to tend upward,
If his reach be beyond his grasp, so much the better,
therein lies his warrant of immortality. A com-
parison l)etween the spirituality of Browning and
that of Lord Tennyson is suggested by the conclu-
sion of Apparent Failure, which closely resembles
much in In Memoriam. Generally speaking, where
Lord Tennyson is meditative. Browning is argument-
ative, showing us his thought in process as it moves
from point to point. In this, the difference between
the two poets resembles the similar difference between
S. John and S. Paul. But while Browning delights in
demonstrating the entire structure of his belief. Lord
Tennyson's belief is a sentiment, a pensive desire, a
temperamental bias, shaken by materialistic thought.
Though Browning weaves in the ideas, terms, and
tales of science as much as does his great compeer,
he is far less affected by its pessimism. He is really
disregardful of it, being principally occupied with the
spiritual region which science ignores. There is no re-
cord in Browning's work of a personally sceptical stage.
Even Pauline, far from being touched with a young
man's infidelity, such as finds extreme expression in
Shelley's earlier work, is markedly religious, even
devout. Dramatically, of course, as in Christmas-Eve
and Easier-Day, Browning frequently travels over the
II CHARACTERISTICS. 23
waste places ii\ which he himself seems never to have
lingered. His imagination loves the larger possil)ili-
ties otiered it by faith. Yet the optimism of his
watchwoi-d, "Trust God nor be afraid," is not really
easy-going. Such a charge is etl'ectually replied to in
lied Cotton Night - Cap Countri/, cxxviii. Equally
significant as a reply is Browning's comparison of
faith to the angel Michael, with the snake, unbelief,
beneath his foot, treading firmer, " because he feels
it writhe."^ Bro^^^^ing is a later Coleridge, with a
theolo£ric<il instinct less bounded and more acute than
Coleridge's, manageable, not nebulous, thinking about
men, not about thought. In another direction, some
readers are disappointed to find certain characters, as
in The Pope and the Xct, dismissed without blame or
punishment. Browning sympathises with energy of
life, with life as life, and, keenly aware of life's com-
plexity, he cannot constrain it or dogmatise about it in
any narrow or restricted way. If he occasionally
troubles us by his seeming sympathy with evil and
mi.schief, it is of his dramatic imagination, like the
Shaksperian artistry which joyed equally in present-
ing lago and Desdemona. There is room in a gi-cat
master for many theories, without his being him.sclf
Ixjundcd ])}■ any, nor is tlie consistency of Browning's
philosophy marred, but rather strengthened, by his
sutfenince of evil,
4. Subjects. — Browning cares far more U>r tli*^
individual than for men in niasses. Unlike Sliak-
' IV. '2«i5. Buhop BliiuijTams Apology,
24 BROWNING. chap.
spore, he troubles little about national life. He
shows a growing^ indifference, which is half scorn,
for general movements. The collective progress of
the race and the material advancement of civilisation
do not swell his theme as they do Lord Tennyson's,
or intoxicate him as they do Whitman. In this re-
gard, a Wordsworthian aloofness characterises Brown-
ing. Indeed, Browning is in saneness and tonic effect,
and also, it must be said, in a tendency to prolixity,
Wordsworth's lineal descendant. The blazing ques-
tions of the day all seem to Browning to be more or
less beside the mark. ' Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau'
(XL 152, 163) compares the socialistic and individual-
istic views to the disadvantage of the former, and in
Pacchiarotto Browning laughs at socialists' belief that
'aims heavenly' can be 'attained by means earthly.'
He rejoices in the impossibility, since he sees im-
perfection necessary to the world, and only personal
reform valuable. His favourite 'revolutionary' is
sober Pym. Browning's reply ^ to his question, " How
can I help England f'^ is not concerned with democratic
solutions. Like Chaucer, like Shakspere, though
perhaps from different causes, he does not love the
mob. There is very little of the fanatic or the
enthusiast about him. Eesponsibility and retribution
are his leading notes. He believes in ' war for hate
of war,'^ he glories in the failure of science to explain
1 Compare II. 36, 171. Paracelsus with XV. 242. Jochanan
Hakkadosh. ^ XIV. 203. La Saisiaz.
^ Vr. 97. Home-Thoughts, from the Sea.
•* XI. 200. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau,
II C1IARACTF.KI>^TICS. 26
the facts of heredity/ he uphoUls the punishment of
(Iciith,- fimling in his ^schyhis that l)lood is the
inentalile price of l)]oo(l,^ that "the killrr has all
to p;iy.''
Against ViWsectiun Ijiowiiing has (liiectcJ two
poems, Tray and Arcades Amlio. Simihir in applica-
tion are Ihnald and Titc IauJij and the Painter. The
other Animal Poems are Uow they hrmtciht the Good A^eivs
and MuhUjkeh. Browning is always ready to speak
for the speechless, and his references to animals are
as observant as they are sympathetic. The idea of
the hero, even a dog hero,'* is characteristic of
him.
Concerning children (with the exception of TJw I'icd
Piper of Jlamelin, which was written e.\'i)ressly for a
child), and the ptirental and filial relation, Browning
h;is few specific poems. Pom])ilia's motherhood,'' in
The liing and the Book, is unsurpassed in our litera-
ture. Pompilia, with her ba])e, reflects the white
and tender holiness of a Kafael Madonna. In Tvhn
Jvanoi'itch, Browning speaks his mind on parental
respon8il)ility and the sacredness of motherhood, of
whicii Dmitri's wife is the disgrace, as Pompilia is
the extpiisite examj)le. "Womanliness means only
motherhofxl," Browning says in The Inn Alburn.^
JLdberl and Iloh is the stf)ry of the terrible sa\agery
' XI. 202, 203. Prince IloJunstid-Schminijau.
' Koc the I'ojie'H reaiMiiiK for j>roiiouiiciiiK Ki-iitence on Gnido in
The liing and the liiMik (X), ami XV. 17. Ivdn li\\novilrh.
* XIII. .'K'lO. Ayiimfiniiun. * XV. ■'i7. Trail.
•IX. 2)5-239. I'omjiUia. " XII. L'it(J.
26 BROWNING. chap.
and tardy softening of a grown-up son and his father.
In Browning's Euripides there is a passage on fathers
with their lads, in which Herakles naively describes
men as 'the children -loving race. ' ^ There are
Strafford's care for his children, and the advocate's,
Don de Archangelis, fussy fondness for his boy of
the many diminutives,^ but, besides these, little or
nothing on the subject of child-love in Browning's
works. Browning has drawn a whole world of
women. One-third of his poetry is on the subject
of love, culminating in his personal expression about
his wife. The numerous lyrics, scattered about, like
jewels, in the hewn gold of his works, are sufficient
to redeem him from the charge of constant difficulty
and harshness, as, for instance. The Lost Mistress,
Round us the wild creatures in Ferishtah, and Summwm
Bonum. Browning's essentially man-like imagination
of woman is as subtle and free from commonplace as
all his fancy is. He seems peculiarly attracted by an
outwardly reserved, inwardly glowing disposition. ^
From Faidine, up through Any JVife to amj Husband,
he loves to accentuate woman's best beauty, faithful-
ness. Men who can die for a principle are not more
abundant in Browning than women who can die for
a personality. He nobly vindicates women's friend-
ship, women's belief in women, in Guendolen Tresham,*
1 XTII. 181. 2 IX. 242. The Ring and the Booh.
» VI. 125. My Star, XIV. 60. Magical Nature, XIV. 167.
La Saisiaz (XIV. 211, 212. The Two Poets of Groisic and Asolando.
14. A Pearl, A Girl.)
■* IV. 45-51. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon.
II
CHARACTERISTICS. 27
fighting, like generous Bcittrice, against men's coward-
ice and condemnation. In Bifurcation, Brooming
asserts that mutual love constitutes duty. The
woman there called the love-forsaking path duty, but
the responsibility of her lover's spoiled life lies at her
door. The s;ime idea is still more strikingly brought
out in Crist inn. Browning's handling of love in all
its aspects is strong and healthful. To him, earthly
marriage is the type and expression of the soul union
which consecrates it. An impulse to protect, pity,
and console, rather than to worship and take pride
in, tinges Bro^^^ling's vision of love, as in Jules and
Phene and the song, " Give her but a least excuse," ^
and in the ' digi-ession ' in Surdclhr This minister-
ing love, the passion to serve, is also indicated in The
Flight of the Durhess (V. 1 46). In simple little Pippa's
reverie, love me<ins to be cherished and safely folded
with a protector's arm,'' and in A JFoman^s Last JFord
a woman's hope of love is the same. But, for all
that. Browning maintains that only 'the weaker
woman's-want ' is to lean, the best women themselves
uplift and sustain, so that all their love is a kind of
motherhood.* In Browning's earliest poem, th(! ycung
jxjfCs beli»'f in love — Pauline's — saves him. Love,
purity, devotion, these are the most divine things in
the world, and so recognised in his heart of hearts
by every character in Browning's works, even l>y tlir
> III. 44-46. Pippa PoMft. ' I. 159-104. Sordello.
» III. 11, 12. Pippa I'msrs.
* .Ml. l.'ir.. JUd Cullon yujht-Cap Country, nml XII. 29;'., 290.
Inn Allium.
28 BROWNING. chap.
most debased criminal, as in that tremendous last line
wrung from Guido Franceschini —
"Christ,— Maria,— God, . . .
Pompilia, will you let them murder me 1 "
The poem of the cricket, who supplied the missing
string of the lyre, turns on the might of love, as do
the Prologue to Pacchiar otto and JFanting is — What?
The eternity of love Browning considers dependent
on a mutual response between souls. Love needs
soul's beauty to make it live on, the value of bodily
beauty is in arousing it.^ In Fifine at the Fair,'^ Avith
seeming ingenuity, but entirely derivatively from his
philosophy of individuality, Browning accounts for
tastes in faces and forms by saying that the soul sees,
consciously or unconsciously, its complement, what it
loves, in another soul, a-strain through some bodily
token more or less minute, and that it straightway
seeks to gain that other soul to amalgamate its OAvn
with it. Nature, the imperfect artist, is supplemented,
remedied, by the perfect artist, love. But the separate
individuality of the soul of each is for ever to be
retained and respected. True love and perfect
marriage mean union, not unification.^
All Browning's dealings Avith human love are
sanctified by his own love for his 'dearest poet,'
Avhich over and over again finds expression in his
works. Explicitly, he Avrites of her, during her life,
in By the Fireside, in The Guardian- Angel, incidentally,
1 XII. 273. Inn Album. ^ XI. 254-267.
3 XII. 92. Red Cotton Night-Cap Country.
It
CHARACTERISTICS. 29
<is 'nvj angel,' 'my love,' and in Our Jf'ord More,
to E. B. B. ; since her death, in Prospke, in the
'Invocation," and end of Th^ Bing and the Bool;
in Bulau^tions Adventure,- where he quotes from her
Wine of Cyprius and in the Epilogue to Parrhiarotto,
where he again quotes from the same poem. How
many more poems may not be due to the inspiration
of his Wife ? For in speaking of the explicit reference
of Prospice, it seems almost arbitrary to exclude
'A Jrall,'^ and IFanting xs—JPliat? from the same
category. In various touches of description of
Browning's favourite women, and in the tender
intimacy with a mother's feelings in Pompilia, we
may judge h<jw life fed art.
From early youth. Browning was strongly attracted
towanls Greek life and literature. Perhaps in the
very fact that his own mind is pre-eminently Gothic
lies the fjiscination to him of the clear-cut bright-
ness and poignancy of Greece. This interest was
strengthened and deepened by Mrs. Browning's
classicid scholarship. Balaxuition's Adventure (1871),
with the ' Transcript ' from Mr. and Mrs. Browning's
favourite pjct, Euripides, ylristophanes' Apologij (1875),
emlMxlying another transcript, and the Agnmeranon of
/Eschylus (1877) .sufficiently bear out the presenti-
ment which Browning already had in Bij Die Fireside
(1855) of how, in the years to come, the study of
' Vlll. .'<t;;)7. Thf Rin'j and Ihe lioiik.
- \\. Vl\.
• (The l^n4iMjue to I'accliiaruUo with otiicr I'uems. )
30 BROWNING. chap.
Greek would lead him on Avith increasing force.
But it is in independent, short poems and in scattered
passages, such as Artemis Prologizes, Pheidippides, the
early lines of Cleon, and Prometheus, Artemis, and
the nymph and Satyr in Gerard de Lairesse, that we
get the nearest approach in Biowning to Greek
presentment.
Another love and source of inspiration to both
poet husband and poet wife is Italy, their home for
fifteen years. Browning is saturated with the
language, art, and history of Italy, and a large
proportion of his subjects is Italian. He directly
records his love of Italy in By the Fireside, " De
Gusiihiis ," and the end of Pietro of Abano, and he
describes Italian natural scenery in The Englishman
in Italy and many another poem. Bordello, Pippa
Passes, My Last Duchess, In a Gondola, The Bishop
orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church, The Boy
and the Angel, A Soul's Tragedy, Up at a Villa —
Dovm in the City, A Toccata of Galuppi's, Holy-Cross
Day, The Guardian-Angel, Two in the Campagna, The
Ring and the Book, Pacchiarotto, Cemiaja, The Cardinal
and the Dog, The Pope and the Net, The Bean Feast,
Ponte delV Angela, Venice, Beatrice Signorini, "Imperante
Augusta natus est ," are all Italian in characters and
circumstances. Pictor Ignotus, Luria, Fra Lippo Lippi,
The Statue and the Bust, Andrea del Sarto, Old Pictures in
Florence, and Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial
belong especially to Florence. The Italian in Eng-
land, Old Pictures in Florence, and "i)e Gustibus "
II CHARACTERISTICS. 81
express the Italian hate of the foreign rule in Italy,
so fervently shared by Kobert and Elizabeth Brown-
ing. There are other poems, such as Forphi/rias Lover,
A Face, Daniel Bartuli, and Francis Fitriiti, which,
even if not definitely placed in Italy, are under
Italian iiiHuences. The atmosphere of Browning's
only drama of English life, The Blot in the 'Scutcheon,
is Italian rather than English. The criminal,
treacherous, magnificent character that fascinated
Webster, Tourneur, and Massinger, and all their
company has a powerful attraction for the subtle
mind of Browning. Of the three or four pages of
The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxcd's Church,
Mr. Kuskin says that the exact temper of the Italian
central Renaissance has never been more unerringly
discerned. Browning's longest work, however, Tlie
Ring and the Book, is occupied with a meaner period
in Italian annals, the late seventeenth centmy.
Many of Browning's poems are on Art and artists.
His treatment of pictorial art is characteristic, in
that he finds his examples in Italy, and that there
the early painters, men of lofty aims and imperfect
accompli-shments, are dearest to him. The advance
of the pre-Kaphaelites on the Greek sculptors is that
while the latter wrought a perfection unattainable
by the 'actual generations,' and thereby taught
stunted men humility, as well as uphold 'the Truth
of Man,' the lUilian painters suggested the larger
swjpe by their very defectiveness, and cared most
to expres.s the new strife and hopes of the inward
32 BROWNING. chap.
and invisible.^ Browning does not cherish the defects
of the eariy schools as final excellences. In Fra
Lippo Lippi, he traces the evolution of the next step
beyond Giotto and Fra Angelico, art's supreme gift,
to make us " love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see."
In Fifine,^ Browning deepens this definition by
speaking of art as the disinterested, instinctive
passion for reaching at all points the truth of
things. The artist struggles to make out of nature's
scattered fragments a human creation, which shall at
once surpass nature and reach reality. Perfectly
comprehensible in this connection is Browning's
acknowledgment in Red Cotton Night -Cap Country^
that the ' artist-preference ' is ' for work complete,
inferiorly ' proposed, to incompletion, though it aim
aright.' That preference is an intellectual necessity,
because it is part of the work of intellect to rightly
adjust means to ends. Meissonier as an artist is
better than Blake. Only in poetry, which Browning
places above art, because nearer the 'soul's verge
of vastness,' is the 'incomplete more than completion.'
Browning, as an artist, recognises and applauds in
artists the j^erpetual endeavour to obliterate
' Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete ' ; ^ as
a spectator, he pronounces incompleteness inevitable,
1 VI. 80-86. Old Pictures in Florence.
2 XI. 256. 3 XII. 168.
■* X. 210. The Ring and tlie Book, repeated on Asolando. 78.
II CHARACTERISTICS. 33
and a blessing, for it goads on to further effort, and
points to perfection Itehind the veil. In J'tirlcj/inga,
Browning deals with various art questions. He
indignantly opposes the attack on the nude in art,
in Francis Furini, as he does in The Lady and the
Painter, and, implicitly, in Fra Lippo Lippi, and in
Ari,-<tophane's Apology, XII 1. 21, 120. In Christopher
Smart ^ it is interesting to see what modern painters
Browning joins -with the august names of Michael
Angelo, Kafael, and Leonardo. In the lines in
Aristophanes' Apology- that describe the listeners to
Balaustion's adventure, we can fancy Greek girlhood
as depicted by Sir Frederick Leighton, who is, in
rejility, the ' great Kaunian painter ' ^ M'hose work
is described in the earlier narrative. In the first
section of Furini,* there is what, if not intended as
such, serves aa a criticism on the paintings of a
great poet, Rossetti. Browning's descriptions of
ol»jects of art both steal and give beauty, e.g. the
della Robbia in The Statue and the Bmt, the Eastern
weapons in yl Forgiveness, and the font in the castle
of Goito.* Browning's descriptions constantly suggest
pictures. Such are the landscape in " Childe lioland,"
the group of the gipsy queen, the lady, and Jacynth
'in a rosy sleep along the floor,' in 'The Flight of the
Ifuehess, and I'omjjilia, a portrait with which even
Dante's .Mjwionna I'ia cannot compare.
' XVI. 152. ^ XIII. II.
* XI. 121. lialaiiftiiin'g Adwutitre. (.See also Kiirydice to
Orphfut),
* XVI. 170, 177. » I. 67, 08. Sn-deUo.
I)
34 BROWNING. chap.
Browning's love of music has given birth to what
is perhaps his most faultless poem, Abt Vogler, and
to A Toccata of Gahtppi's, blaster Hugues of Saxe-
GotJia, and Charles Avison. Music not only gives
Browning intense emotional pleasure, but it is to
him the truest truth; how and why are explained
in Avison}
Browning claims the highest place for poetry,
because it 'impinges on and illuminates the other
arts.' He throws light on his own poetic methods in
the lines
' ' Who is a poet needs must understand
Alike both speech and thoughts which prompt to speak." ^
Browning draws a sharp line between the dilettant
and the artist,^ and, while giving a grim smile to the
former's make-believe, he emphasises the strenuous
labour of the artist's life. In Furini, he speaks of
the 'agony' of 'art's high-strung brain.'* In de-
scribing poets, Browning constantly dwells on the
separateness of the genius and the man, in each.
This idea is thoroughly worked out in Sordello. Even
in Ralhi Ben Ezra (xxiii.-xxv.), we meet with a
similar view : a man's work is not himself. The same
feeling tinges Browning's references to his own poetry.
One Word More contains a highly poetic expression of
this separation between the artist and the man, and
1 XVI. 227, etc.
2 XIT. 138. Red Cotton Night-Cap Country.
•* XII. 89-91. Red Cotton Night-Cap Country.
•* XVI. 179.
II CHARACTERISTICS. 35
Shop sounds, from the other end of the scale, a pro-
test against a man's profession, his 'shop,' constitut-
ing his life. There is no doubt that Browning drew
the idcii from his own expeiience, and in this way it
throws considerable light on the dramatic shape of
his mind.
Very beautifnl are the wreaths which Browning
lays at the feet of his predecessors in the kingdom of
poetry. He celebrates Dante in Sordello and One Word
Mure, and Shelley in 1\iuUm, Sordello,^ Memorahilut, and
Cenciaja, as well as in his prose Introductory Essay to
Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1852. Popidarity is
Siicred to the memory of Keats, who is again referred
tx) in a similar vein at the commencement of Tlie Two
Poets of Cruisic. Beside At the " Mermaid," House, and
Aristopluiiies' Apology, XIII. 234, Browning has, in
Bishop Blougram's Apology, at least three vivid lines
on Shakspere,
and
" His power and consciousness and self-delight,"
" He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces
To build the trimmest house in Stratford town.'"-
In Prinr4' Jlahenstiel - Schwangau,^ Fifine,* Epilogue
to J'arrhi/irotto,^ At the ''Mermaid,"^ and La Saisiaz~'
Browning derides Byron for his contempt of men and
' I. W-54.
' Sec aliio V. 248. Christmag - Eve and Easter - Day ; and
Browning's vnrolUcted Sonnet, Thr Xuiiu-.i.
* XI. 145-147. * XI. 277-279. » XIV. 111).
" XIV. 35. 7 XIV. 200-201.
36 BROWNING. chap.
glorification of waste nature, and for his slipshod way
of writing; but in La Saisiaz a tenderness for the
'Pilgrim' escapes him.^ Like 'Childe Harold'
before him, Browning, in La Saisiaz, pauses before
those illustrious men of letters who made their
homes round Lake Leman. He approaches Voltaire,
Gribbon, Kousseau, and Byron himself, to weigh what
they gave by what they received. Browning often
flashes out a phrase that contains a volume of criti-
cism, as in ' Addison's tye-wig preachment,' ^ and it is
interesting to note how he esteems a comparatively
recent poetical writer, that singular mind, Thomas
Lovell Beddoes.^
Browning's works almos£ defy an orderly arrange-
ment according to subjects. Too many a poem
eludes classification, or demands a class to itself.
Only after reading through the poems in the order
in which they were written, do we gain a true idea
of Browning's immense range.
5. The Art of Browning*. — Only those who
know Browning intimately can say what an educa-
tion he is in the resources of langiiage. His memory
and circumstantial lore seem boundless. As each of
his dissolving views disappears to give place to its
successor, Browning seems to steep himself in every
appropriate phrase and befitting suggestion that maj^
give vividness to his next creation. We notice
instances in Ned Bratts, in
1 XIV. 200, 202-203. ^ xvi. 120. Bernard de Mandeville.
3 XIV. 270. The Two Poets of Croisic.
II CHARACTERISTICS. 87
' ' A burden at your back,
Good Master Christmas ? "
(Ned Bratt5 means ' Christian ')
"To-morrow brings Tom Bcarward with his hears :
One new black-muzzled brute beats Sackcrson he swears."
('Sackerson' was the famous bear kept at Paris
Garden), and
" I rather see the fruit of twelve years' pious reign —
Astnea Redux, Charles."
Browning might well call himself the 'far-flyer.'^
He has the cuiiosities of all dictionaries at his fingers'
ends. He uses technical and obsolete words ^vith
the most familiar usage, coining new and amplifying
old for his piu-poses. All sorts of colloquialisms
and rarities help to feather his dramatic nest. This
habit helps to make up the total impression made by
Browning of intellectual resource and power. He
often repeats his turns of phrase, and many parallel-
isms may be cited from his works. Such slovenliness
as ' better than them all ' never appears in Brown-
iiig,2 his grammar being exquisitely accurate, some-
times even to pedantry. His mentid associations are
akin to his vocabulary in variety and unexpectedness.
As insUinces, we may take from among his illustra-
tions Cloethe's Weimar Kstate in Bernard de Maiide-
vUlc and Joan of Arc in Franrui Furini. Among
Browning's finest siniiies and metaphors are the
CJibin (sopliistical) in Uislmp Jiloiiyrain'n Aixdngy and
> XIV. 223. Charlts Avison.
' e.'j. X. 81. Tlu Rin'j and the Book.
38 BROWNING. chap.
the cup (truthful) in Rahhi Ben Ezra. Every alkision
is exactly in keeping with the ^-^bits of the person
who uses it. We note in An Epistle how the Arab
physician measures the distance between Bethany and
Jerusalem,
' ' scarce the distance
A man with plague-sores at the third degree
Runs till he drops down dead."
Entire freeness from commonplace in imagery and
nomenclature distinguishes Browning. With the
' White Way ' ^ of Pauline, Browning commenced a
long series of new names for well-known things, delight-
ful for freshness and the sense of direct impression.
Perhaps of all objects in nature he has found the moon
most 'noteworthy.'^ The descriptions of the moon
in Christmas-Eve, One JFord More, Pan and Luna, and
the passage from 'Mark the flying orb' to 'one
glow and variegation ! ' ^ in A Bean-Stripe are in
Browning's finest vein. They have all the charm of
eloquence and emotion that can be claimed for poetry.
Parleyings is rich in day-breaks.* The thunder that
ushers the day into being, dawning, mid-day, and
sunset form the loom on which, in Gerard de Lairesse,
Browning weaves a web, alternately real and fan-
tastic, though, at the end, the fantastic fails, con-
quered by thi^, potency of the real. The salute to.
Spring,^ in the same poem, is instinct with the modern
feeling for nature, which refuses personifications or
1 I. 19. 2 jy_ 303_ 3 XVI. 72-73.
■* XVI. 126-127, and 209-216. ^ xvi. 219-220.
II CHARACTERISTICS. 39
any other derivative sentiments. It delights ns by
its simple tliish of vernal colour and movement,
though perhaps, like Shelley's 'West Wind,' it is not
far from the kingdom of pathos. Browning gives in
The Inn Alhuia (XII. L'OO) a fine bit of English village
road, and the woods under the sunset ^ in SordeUo
form another of Browning's beauties of description.
We have, too, in Introduction and Part I. of Pippa
Piuses wonderful representations of the glare of
Italian morning, and in LaSaisiaz as faithful glimpses
of the mountain sides round the Lake of Geneva.
Browning's observation is pre-eminently original. He
notices, trejisiu-es, and uses what others might meet
with and pass again and again, as in his conmient on
the myth of Hercules and Atlas.^ This is Browning's
value to us, he so enriches observation, reflection, and
love. In reading his works, we experience the
exhilaration that comes from contact with a forceful
personality. He catches us up in the free play of his
genius over the whole visible and invisible world,
every thing of both lying before him, he only having
to choose what shall serve him on each occasion. If
we wrestle, it is with an angel. If the reading bo
RtrenuoiLs, it imparts life, and a strange power seems to
pxss from him to us. For the time being, we see oiu--
selves us a^loured by a stripe of his rainbow genius.
Less often possessed by his theme, and therefore
less pjissionately imaginative than Shaksj)cro or
Coleridge, Browning not infrequently reaches their
» I. 54. ■•' XI. 153.
40 BROWNING. chap.
white-heat of intensity. One example of this is in
Caponsacchi's Dantesque forecdct of Guido, left by
his judges to 'live,' and how, when he dies, or at
least disappears from among men, he will find only
Judas to be his companion, ' the cockatrice ' met 'with
the basilisk.'^ Browning's works abound in gro-
tesqueness and humour. That Browning is intensely
capable of the ludicrous is clear from such a passage
as that in which the advocate deplores for Capon-
sacchi the comi^anionship on the drive to Rome of
' ' only one young female substitute
For seventeen other Canons of ripe age
Were wont to keep liim company." ^
Sometimes we find the humour of a single word, as
in one physician writing to another,
•' Scalp-disease
Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy :
Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar."^
Browning is a wonderful and versatile rhymer.
Nothing daunts him. Sustained double rhymes, as
in A Grammarian's Funeral, are his daily wear.
Through the Metidja is a triumph of rhymes on one
word only. Browning revels in whimsicalities, as
in The Flight of the Duchess and The Pied Piper.
Pacchiarotto is a carnival of rhymes. They pour out
as in some uproarious game of capping rhymes and
rapping rhymes. Pietro of Ahano shows Browning's
1 IX. 159-160. The Ring and the Book.
' X. 28. The Ring and the Book.
^ IV. 188. An Epistle.
II CHARACTERISTICS. 41
metrical ability, and Ixion is a skilful example of hex-
ameters ami pentameters. With extreme eflectiveness,
the beat of the vei-se in Ivan Ivhnovitch is changed after
the fii-st distant 'pad' of the wolves, so that the
woman's tight breathing, and the terrible excitement
of that most nightmare-like fear of being gained upon
by the four-footed demons seem to inspire its hard
pidscs, through which we hear too the ever nearing
' pad,' 'pad,' and at last the horrid onset. The Last
Hide Together may be counted among Browning's
most musical productions.
6. Browning as aWriterof Plays.— Humanity
is the theme of drama, ucliuu its instrument. A
drama is an organic structme of interesting events
which are the interaction of its characters. No
dramatist ever took a keener interest in human
beings than Browning, nor felt more strongly that
they must be represented dramatically to be repre-
sented truthfully, must not be described as from
without, but must speak for themselves as from
within. Accordingly, Browning's vivid, picturesque
poems alx)und in one great dramatic quality, char-
actcri.sjitiun. My hist Duchess, A Light Jl'oinan, A
For(jivene.<s prove Browning's mastery of dramatic
material. To this he adds forcible objective realisa-
tion of the great moments of life. If his poems
disj)lay material for dramatic situations, his jjjays are
rirh in sitiuitions themselves, Jis in the night of
I^uria's dciith, the alternations of false and true
kiriglines-s in Victor and Charles, aii«l that great
42 BROWNING. chap.
scene in which Strafford drains the cup of anguish.^
For tragic terror it would be hard to match the
dialogue between Ottima and Sebald in Pippa Passes.
Yet, when all is said, Browning's plays are not
dramas, but studies. They are without the light
and shade, the inevitable cohesion and the indubit-
able conclusion that are the distinguishing marks of
a great drama. Their beauties are inorganic or
fragmentary. A complex but indissoluble action
is the very life of drama, whereas Browning cares
little for action and sacrifices it to soliloquy. His
eight plays represent the dynamics of the soul rather
than of incident. He is more occupied with the
intricacies of motive than Avith its fruit in conduct.
Probably Browning's century does not excel in the
kind of greatness that stimulates drama. Its sub-
jective character, its introspection, its self-absorption
are all opposed to the objective character of dramatic
genius. In Browning's eyes, the more internal, the
more real, but the invisible, however momentous, is
apt to be ineffectual in drama, and, if not that, its
expression comes too near showing machinery that
should be hidden. Neither should a play, which is
primarily intended for acting, strain the mental
attention as severely as a poem intended for reading
may do. The piece hastens on, and no halt, no
retracing are possible. Browning expects of his
audience transitions of mind as swift and subtle as
his own. Too much is taken as said, and the
1 11. 290-307. Strafford.
II CnARACTKKISTICS. 43
speeches, besides being frequently of immoderiitc
leii^'th, are diffitult from extreme condensation. As
a playwright, Browning lacked acquaintance with
theatrical conditions and verisimilitudes,^ which even
such a b(jrn dramatist as Shakspero could ill have
spared. It may be sjiid of Browning that, adjectively
dramatic, he is not substantively a dramatist. Urged,
at firet, to drama by the qualities in him which were
dramatic, with time he wisely forsook the limitations
of the theatre, and created for himself a fitter instru-
ment in the dramatic monologue, the form of so
many of his greatest poems. Mental debates in
character, both debates and characters being ex-
tremely interesting in themselves, they arc properly
indepoiidiMit of stage and footlights.
7. Defects and Difficulties. — Browning has not
an infalliJde metrical ear. His metres are frequently
unsuited to his themes. Christmas-Eve contiiins
doggerel rhymes that give to their great argiunent
an alien air of burlesque, as if a seer broke oflf in the
midst of his vision to turn wheels like a street arab.
SordtUo would have been ennobled and lilicrated by
blank verse. The rmUKjue. to Parlcyings has a falsely
archaic air from being a conversation arranged in
stiinzas, reciilling some old Mystery or Miracle Play.
It is an altogether anomalous metrical arrangement.
In these examples, and wherever his rhymes and
fancies iMJur out in pcll-nitll confusion. Browning
fihowa a want of the selectivencss of fine art. ' Mind-
* See Song in A lilot in t/ie 'HcutcliMn.
44 BROWNING. chap.
Freaks'^ is an expression "«ed by Browning which
fits many passages in his own writings, where the
liberty of power degenerates into licence. After the
poetical line in Popularity,
' ' The sea has only just o'erwhispered ! " ^
one shrinks from
" As if they still the water's lisp Tieard "
as from an unexpected, intentional rudeness. Brown-
ing's rhymes often coerce his ideas, leading him off
after them into some parenthesis or congested allusion
from which he re-emerges, with great cleverness, no
doubt, but with cleverness that seems a blot on genius.
If in some places Browning makes mere rhyme the
pivot of the sense, in others he neglects rhythm.
His blank verse is sometimes regardless of scansion,
and not true blank verse at all. His poetry is often
unpoetic by reason of its crabbedness and harshness,
its lack of grace and melody, as in
"Irks care the crop -full bird? Frets doubt the maw-
crammed beast ? " ^
Browning perpetually makes polysyllabic superla-
tives, for compression's sake, as 'portentousest,'*
' sagaciousest.' ^ A crudity disfigures the close of
Furini in
' ' Memorize that burst's moment, Francis ! " ^
1 XV. 94. Olive. a VI. 194.
=* VII. 110. Rabbi Ben Ezra.
■* VIII. 9. The Ring and the Book.
5 XV. 49. Ivdn Ivdnovitch. « XVI. 199.
II CHARACTERISTICS. 45
A string of ' possessivcs ' is not rare, as
"The strong fierce heart's love's labour's due." '
Browning's works are professedly not meant for
a slothful or inattentive reader. Browning's intel-
lectual processes are performed so rapidly, his turns
of thought are so abrupt, that a less leaping, less
impetuous brain is apt to consider the expression of
such velocity incoherent. Stringent reasoning, of
which there is so much in BroAATiing, is necessarily
hard to follow, and demands considerable stress of
attention. But most of his verbal difficulties proceed
from condens;ition. Sordello's sources of feeling are
no more remote than Hamlet's, but the expression of
them is infinitely more crumpled. As a specimen of
close packing, see
" Etrurian circlets found . . .
. . . alive
Spark-like 'mid urifarthed slope-side figtree-roots,
That roof old tombs at Chiusi."-
At first, the reader's comprehen.sion seems often
to be balancing on a tight-rope, where the slightest
touch woulcl be dangerous, and, if it comes, in the
shape of an additional difficulty, does indeed jn-ccipi-
tate the already faltering comi)rehcnsion into an
abyss of bewilderment. Comparative ease in re;idiiig
Browning being due to familiarity with his peculi-
arities, the following notes may prove useful finger-
' XV. 190. Mara WidhtonfcraJ't mid Fundi.
' VIII. 1. The Ring and the liook.
46 BROWNING. ohap.
posts. There is in Browning's sentences a frequent
omission ... of relatives, e.g.
" Hold her tottering ark Ipiat or wliidi] had tumbled else " ^
... of ' pronominal ' adjectives, e.g.
" DofF [your] spectacles, wipe [your] pen, shut [your] book " ^
... of ^0 with the infinitive, e.g.
" Mend matters peradventure God loves [to] mar ? " ^
Readers have to become used to a general scarcity of
prepositions, as well as of conjunctions, e.g.
"The gap 'twixt what is, [and] what should be."^
Pronouns sometimes precede by several lines the
nouns for which they stand. Dialogues within
dialogues are another source of difficulty. Readers
have often to look several lines forward to help their
notion of the sense by finding whether the expected
note of interrogation ends the sentence. Notes of
interrogation are very frequent, especially in the
poems of internal debate, or where casuistry meets
casuistry. Inversions are characteristic, e.g.
" Of joy were it fuller, of span because ampler ? " ''
Any dozen pages of Browning contain a volume's
references to history and biography, and question
and research are being continually aroused. Brown-
1 VIII. 9. The Ring and the Book.
^ XI. 207. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.
3 VIII. 221. The Ring and the Book.
•» IX. 102. The Ring a7id the Book.
^ XVI. 101. Apollo and the Fates.
i
II CHARACTERISTICS. 47
ing loves to go off at ;i tangent. He follows np a
Itninch line with as much interest j\s though it were
his niiiin theme. He is a 'creeper into wormholes,'
antl the oli.scurities and unknowns of the past are more
to him than its great events and trampling conquerors.
Yet Browning's hardest lines are no harder to subject
to grammaticiil analysis than many in Paradise Lost.
The worst that can be said of his roughness and
difficulty is as much as to say : here is pure gold, but
it is uncoined and must be dug for, and certain frag-
ments of rock are sticking to the nuggets.
There is another valid charge brought against
Browning, a charge which the reputation of many a
Iftiding poet has encountered and survived, that of
inequality of poetic inspiration. Large portions of
Browning's works are, from the poetic stand-point,
comparatively sterile. Good sense and pungency
are rarely, if ever, lacking to a single line, but these
are the virtues of the prosaist, not the wonder-work
of emotion and word without which great i)oetry is
not. Much of La Saisiaz is too polemical for poetry.
Those 'five facts' and 'six facts' (XIV. 193,
194), are not poetry, but 'divinity.' The Pope's
meditation in T/ie Ring ami the 2^oo^• is poetically finer,
partly because the theology is subordinated to the
cluiracter of the Pope, and consequently the present-
ment is more imaginative. Mere serpentinings of
thought and hair-splittings ciinnot of themselves reach
that incandescent point at whiih poetry is Btnuk
from the anvil. Piincf lioheiiHtiel -Schwangau's
48 BROWNING. chap.
special pleading is metri'^al prose, with most occa-
sional gleams of poetry. Browning's later characters
are too eager to ' try conclusions ' with their outside
adversary or innei' tempter, too intent to ' read their
title clear ' to theism and immortality, in a word, too
argumentative for poetic creations. Though Brown-
ing reached his high- water mark in the vital mono-
logues of Tlie Ring and the Booh, his short poems,
such as are to be found in the volumes of Selections,
contain his most flawless poetry. To cover his work,
and not only account for special portions of it, it
must e'en be conceded that truth is more to Brown-
ing than beauty. What is this but saying that the
man is greater than the artist ? Truly, a brave sin,
and one which more than ever confirms the sense of
unity in Browning's personality and all its output.
Browning's poetics manifest a temporary decline in
Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Fifine at the Fair, and
Aristophanes' Apology. These books are thorny read-
ing, and in them, and more especially in Red Cotton
Night - Cap Country, Browning's passion for strange
backwaters of character takes him among that which
is morally ugly and even worthless. Browning's
optimism is a stumbling-block to some readers, and
certainly it does not leave him much room for ulti-
mate pathos. Whether, in this. Browning does well
or ill depends on whether his root belief, that no
failure is final, be well founded or no. The question
is wider than a criticism of Browning.
Ill INTKOUUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 49
CHAPTER ILL
INTRODUCTIONS TO TIIE FORMS.
Pauline; A Fragment of a Confession. 1833
(VoL L), was the tirst work Browning gave the
world. In conformity M-ith an intention of youtli,
he issued it anonymously. The word 'Richmond,'
added to the date at the end, was a fiction, intended
to baffle I'eaders. PauUiw was not included among
Browning's works till the edition of 18G8, when, for
necessary reasons, ' with extreme repugnance ' he
acknowledged and retained it. He made some slight
corrections for the 1888 edition. Pauline, by an
unknown poet, met with little general notice. Two
great men. separate enough, Stuart Mill and Dante
Rossetti, were much struck by it, Rossetti divining
that the writer of Pauline was the Browning of
Paracelsus. The motto from the old French of
Ck'ment Marot, " I am no longer — I could never be
again — what I was," is the burden of the 'Confes-
sion.' The preface of Cornelius Agrippa suggests
that Browning cared to 'half reveal and liall con-
ce<'il ' a partial identity l^etween his own youthful
mind and the mind of the young poet who is supposed
to be speaking — or writing — throughout. ' Pauline '
herself only speaks once, iis supposed editress of the
K
50 BROWNING. CHAP.
fragment, in a prose note in French. She is repre-
sented by the poet as a wise, calm friend, unfailing in
her devotion to him, forgiving the inconstancy and
degradation he has previously confessed to her, for a
former confession is referred to (pp. 5, 6), the result
of which emboldens this one. If we Avere to take
dramatically Pauline's note, in which she speaks of
her ' pauvre ami ' in a tone of pitying patronage, her
calm would be more apparent than her love, but the
note, with its very just criticism, is in fact Brown-
ing's, not 'Pauline's.' As a foretaste of the sanity
and reflectiveness of Browning's genius, it is extremely
interesting. It shows the youth of twenty, looldng
at his just written poem, and even then recognising
its indistinctness, fitfulness, and lack of balance.
Throughout the Confession, the young ;poet^s vivid
imagination of Pauline makes him address her as if
she, Avith her 'soft breast' and 'sweet eyes,' were
listening to his words, though he is really alone,
writing what she is to read (see Pauline's note,
p. 36). The chief things the poet has to confess are
the faults of a genius ahead of moral judgment. He
records no incidents, only the phases of thought and
feeling which underlay action, or were in great part
their own end, for he exaggerates his faults, and is
abnormally sensitive about merely imaginative sins
— perhaps, after all, as ' real ' to this typical idealist
as matter-of-fact offences. Excess of imagination
combined with moral wavering (p. 42), self-absorp-
tion, restless craving after unattainable joy and
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 51
beauty, have di-iven his now exhausted miiul into
every untenable extreme. He bitterly regrets his
loss of the freshness of youth (p. 8), his powers of
concentration foregone (pp. 27, 28), his aimless,
truthless, unlonng state. He sadly tells Pauline
how, Im-ed by beauty in strange eyes, he has broken
his allegiance. Much of his experience resembles
that of Paracelsus and Sordello. He is a sketch for
their finished portraits. Like Paracelsus, he craves
for knowledge (p. 28), and for a time makes that his
god. Still more like Aprile, and with the same
artistic and poetic temperament, he forsakes duty to
follow after loveliness. Most like Sordello, in his
' first dawn of life ' be fancies himself all the bright
heroes of childhood (p. 16), and, grown man, resem-
bles him in despair of translating his passion and
insight into any form that can influence the many
(pp. 19-25), and so essays to be himself his All-in-all
(p. 31). Like those other three, the mind of this
first of Browning's characters clears again (pp. 39, 40,
45). Through all his wanderings, he never loses
sight of some fixed stars. His ' yearning after God '
(pp. 15, 37), partly obscured by a fatuous fatalism
(p. 15), never dies, and he longs to see and be loved
by Chri.st (p. 38). Then, too, introductory to the
beautiful address in which Browning glorifies Slielley
under the title of ' Sun-treader ' (pp. 9, 10, 11), tli^
poet says —
" the glow I felt at HIS {i.e. Shelley's) awunl
AiiHured me all was uot extiuct withiu."
52 BROWNING. chap.
He speaks of first poetic efforts being half original,
half imitative (p. 19), and the reader hears echoes of
Shelley in various lines. The poem closes with an
invocation to him. At that time Browning was
steeped in Shelley. He has always expressed intense
admiration for the earlier poet, the most aerial
charming the most indubitably human ! Music is
another voice that appealed to Pauline's lover. In
this first work, Browning speaks of music (p. 18)
as the one language of innermost soul, not mind,
exactly as in Abt Vogler (1864) and Charles Avison
(1887). One speaks ad^dsedly of Browning's con-
tinuous unity of thought and purpose ! Again, the
poet speaks of the limitless dreams opened to him
by Plato (p. 20), but at the failure (p. 21) of such
hopes of life's perfectibility he denies all goodness
(p. 22). This dark mood is too foreign to his natui-e
to last. Beauty and desire are stronger temptations
than negation to this poet as typical as Keats.
Browning's intense susceptibility to the charm of
Greek life and myth are as marked in Pauline as
ever later. Whenever, even in his most analytic
years. Browning approaches Hellas, he becomes
simpler and more direct, his hand to a perceptible
extent subdued to what it works in. That cameo,
the passage that describes Andromeda (pp. 29, 30),
would grace the finest anthology. The lines referring
to Agamemnon, Ajax, and Orestes (p. 26), and the
'pale sister,' Antigone (p. 43) are equally poetical.
Separated in subject, yet akin in interpenetrative
Ill ixTRODrrxioxs to the poems. 68
imagination, are the lines on Christ's sorrow and
tiiuniph (p. 38). England was a potent word to
Browning (pp. 31, 43) while Italy was still unknown
eiirth. Tlw poet and Paidine are to go to her native
pines and snows, there his humility and her love
shall fit him for truer life. Pauline is fuller of
' poets' poetry ' and of nature than any later work.
The faithful reporting of natiu-e, after impassioned
contemplation of it, in such passages as the spring
morning (p. 5), the bird mounting the tree (p. 32),
the pool (p. 33), the forest water (p. 34), those
Shelleyan snakes, and, not least, the li\'ing natiu'e
of Paidine's eyes and cheeks and neck (p. 40) need
no commentator. Though full of poetry in 1832,
Browning had not yet foimd his true walk, i.e.
souls dramatically revealed, poetry resting on a
substantial prose basis.
Paracelsus, 1835 (Vol. II.), met, on publication,
with at all events one competent re\iewer. In his
article, 'Evidences of a New Dramatic Poetry,'
John Forster wrote, "Mr. Browning is a man of
genius, he has in himself all the elements of a gi-eat
poet, philosojjhical as well as dramatic." Paracelsus
is chiefly in dialogue, but though in one sense
intensely dramatic, the poem is no drama, and, by
a note to the first edition, Browning secured it from
l)cing so regarded. Incidents Uikc no i)art in Paracelsus,
though it is less remote from action than I'auUM,
and, to a much greater extent, its crises of tlutught
and feeling presage or follow events. The narnitivo
54 BROWNING. chap.
is definite, 'no problem for tlie fancy but a life
spent and decided ' (pp. 40, 41). Browning's erudite,
eight-paged note at the end of the poem gives history's
account of Bombastus Paracelsus (1493-1541), a
famous name in the progress of chemistry and
medical science, a 'prodigious genius,' according
to Lavater. He was German or German -Swiss,
contemporary with Luther, Zuinglius, Erasmus, and
Frobenius. He introduced the use of mercury and
laudanum, and his writings foreshadow some of the
most productive discoveries of modern times. Wonder-
ful tales were told of magic residing in his sword,
Azoth. The discoverer of laudanum was naturally
associated with sorcery, at a date when the Ages of
Roger Bacon, elixir vitse, and the philosopher's stone
had scarcely succumbed to printing and Luther.
Paracelsus himself sought science through astrology
and alchemy, and, if research and experiment scattered
his belief, he continued to impose on others' credulity.
As a lecturer he was boastful and domineering, and
instead of answering the sages, burned their books.
Exposed as an impostor, he had to vacate his Basel
professorship. He wandered through many lands,
restlessly pursuing knowledge. The father of
chemistry, a world benefactor, a drunkard and
pretender, he died in a hospital cell. This was
history's Paracelsus. What is Browning's ? Paracelsus
is in five parts ; in the first, Paracelsus is on the eve,
perhaps, in the midst, of a crisis. The last links
between the lowly charities of home feelings and
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 55
his proud, unquestioning flight are snapping in this
Wiirzburg garden, where ' Paracelsus aspires ' to
knowledge. Part I. is a conversation between him
and Festus, with an occasional word from sweet
Michal. This night precedes the departure of
Paracelsus on his quest. Festus, who has always
adored his genius, prophesied his transcendency,
and cherished his spirit (p. 11), now, when Paracelsus
touches 'the brink of his design' (p. 11), seems
faint-heartedly dissuading him from what his previous
encouragements might have prepared him for. He
is really dissuading him from the immolation of all
life's good except what comes from grappling physics
and metciphysics to force them to render up the
wonderful secret which Paracelsus believes can, when
once seized, be v\Tung out in one ineffable moment
to raise and magnify mankind. Paracelsus abjures
Black Arts (p. 19), "too intimate a tie connects him
with God." but in his undisciplined expectation of
some universal secret he belongs to a half art, half
science period. Paracelsus starts with entire self-
confidence (p. 20), and a convenient belief that he
is (Io<l'8 organ (pp. 17, 27-28), working Clod's will.
In sublime prophecy, pathetic in the light of subse-
•juent non-fulfilment, he declares his conviction oi
'God's commission' to him (p. 11) to go forth and
conquer knowledge for mankind. There is already
a vague 8f)phisticjdnes3, a mixture of motives, in
Paracelsus. We share tht? siidne.ss and doubts of
I'V'stus whose hero-worship of his fnVnd and agree-
56 BROWNING. ohap.
ment with his theories are disturbed by an uneasy
instinct he is powerless to define that ' Aureole ' is
entering on a self-willed, arrogant course. \.t every
objection Festus raises, Paracelsus routs his arguments,
floods him with oratorical rhetoric (p 20), or stuns
him with his self-belief. He further confounds his
impressible, somewhat ineffectual friend by a genuine
sympathy with his ideals, a true sense of what he
himself renounces. Paracelsus, Festus presently
acknowledges, is so exceptional that he does right
to take an exceptional course. God has a special
message to deliver by such angel -men, and woe to
the dullards who would restrain them. Paracelsus
mistakenly imagines his 'vast longings' God -sent
(p. 13), and, ignorant of himself, condemns those
who believe in their ' innate strength ' (p. 17). Festus
timidly questions the sincerity of his friend's self-anni-
hilation in devotion to ' God's will,' whether, for all he
fancies, a more personal ambition does not mingle with
the nobler one, whether he discerns his path clear as his
desire (pp. 17-18). With overwhelming eloquence,
Paracelsus deprecates rather than meets this objection
(p. 19). Then Festus urges the solidarity of great
thinkers. Should not Paracelsus rather receive learn-
ing's torch from Aristotle (p. 22), and pass it on, than
stand solitary '! If Paracelsus really cared for J^ruth, he
Avould gladly accept it from whatever source (p. 22).
Paracelsus reveals his weakness in his contempt of
men (p. 24), his standing, even while their benefactor,
aloof from their lives (pp. 29, 30). He fancies it
Ill IXTKODITTIOXS TO THE TOEMS. 67
disiiiteresteilness, and the voice which whispers so,
Gotl's voice (p. 2G). Of course there is also the
noltly scientific spirit in his determination to take
notliing on trust, to lightly esteem knowled<,'c at
seconil-hand, and insist on interrogating nature direct.
In reading pp. 26, 27, we yearn towards Paracelsus, who
is most self-sacrificing as we commonly coiuit sacrifice,
and whose faults are " brave sins which saint when
shi-iven.' Paracelsus points to the sages' failure in
remedying misery (p. 28); he will adventm-e apart
from their lore. Michal's readier womaidy belief
entirely elicited (pp. 28, 29, 38), she yet joins Festus
in predicting danger from spurning love and fellow-
feeling (pp. 30, 31). Paracelsus asserts that a]»solute
knowledge is shut in a man's brei\st, to be extracted
thence (pp. 34, 35), not, as he finds later (p. 169), to
j)enetrate therein by experience and })ainful toils.
Paracelsus entertains hopes, significant, in their uii-
justifiableness, of his almost unconscious defect
(p. 37). His outlook is terribly far from the perfect
outlook described in SordcUo, the two sights God
has conceded man. Paracelsus has the sight of the
' whole work,' he ignores, or confounds with it,
the 'minute's work.'
By Part II., nine years have elapsed, and Para-
celsus is at Constantinople, at a fortune-teller's he
has 8to«jped to consult. He has just written, in the
guest-book, the sum of his life thus far, and he makes
this a halting-point whence to review his gains. We
know they are disiippointiiig before he coiuits tliem.
58 BROWNING.
CHAP.
Wasted in strength, lowered in spirit (p. 48), inserting
his chronicle among others still more unsound (p. 40),
he is despising the dupes around him equally with
the Greek adept. His hunger for knowledge has
become wolfish (p. 44), he can no longer control it
(p. 45). On pp. 47, 48, 49 he reaches a climax of
bitterness, after which he reflects that, after all, since
God has not sent a warning like Constantine's cross
(p. 50), he must yet be meant for great things. Here
Aprile's wail breaks in. The Italian poet, the ' lover,
had tried to live by art, beauty, and emotion, as the
German philosopher, the ' knower,' by science, power,
and intellect. Both fail because each is half of a dis-
severed whole (p. 65). The Shelley-like Aprile gives
glorious expositions of the artist's passion (pp. 56-64).
Though his trials have been different, Paracelsus is
pierced when Aprile attributes his own failure to hav-
ing gazed upon the prize till blinded to the ' patient
toil ' (p. 59). Finally they bind themselves, Paracel-
sus, to love ; Aprile, to know ; but the tenderness of
Parcelsus cannot save Aprile's life. He dies, leaving
Paracelsus with one first attainment — the discovery
that love must work with knowledge.
In Part III., Paracelsus is a lecturer at Basel.
Apparently he has learned little from Aprile. That
germ has yet t<> develop. To illustrate to Festus his
interest in simple life, Paracelsus describes (p. 72) a
death -bed he has lately tended. This passage is
worthy to be placed beside Shakspere's death of Fal-
staff. Paracelsus explains his half mocking, half wistful
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 59
talk by confessing his deterioration. He is dissatis-
fied mth his discoveries (pp. 90, 91), and disgn.sted at
the stupid opposition of his patients and of liis disciples
(pp. 84-87, 92) — to whom he gives only inferior
knowledge (p. 104). Former hopes gone, he is en-
slaved by former habits of thought. He has reached
the obverse of his infatuated idea of God's will
(p. 88), confesses his sensual excesses, and admits
Ills failure in assimilating Aprile's lesson (pp. 95, 96).
Festus tries to calm his maddened talk (p. 101).
Again the only solution for Festus is in believing
his friend beyond men's scope of judgment (p. 102).
Lastly, Paracelsus sadly acknowledges that 'love,
hope, fear, faith,' and not intellectual gains disparted
from these, 'make humanity.' He is learning, but
slowly as yet.
Part IV. shows Paracelsus in the depths of outward
degradation. Liechtenfels, referred to here, was a
pjitient, recovered by laudanum, who refused liis fee.
The authorities being applied to, Paracelsus raised
such a brawl against them, that he had to leave Basel
for Alsatia. Again 'aspiring,' but in a reckless,
revengeful mood, he explains to Festus tluit he
re-eml>races his earliest aims (p. 118), but sings, in
an exquisite lyric, the requiem of the old means
(p. 119). He now intends to enjoy and know
(p. 121). Presently ho subsides into feverish self-
Ifjathirig (pp. 124, 137), calling his life only a make-
fihift, a Hhufliing U) the grave. Jiy a paral)lc, itsi-lf a
«j)lendid j»ocm. complete, musical, arid dear, lio
60 BROWNING. ohap.
symbolises the fate of mistaken choosers who " have
no heart " to choose afresh. Festus (p. 1 34) blames
Paracelsus for his want of humility, his attempted
tyranny over God. Only in that way, Paracelsus
replies, can such as he serve God (p. 135). Again,
Festus shrinks from condemnation. An exquisite
gleam occurs when Paracelsus, with unusual humility,
expresses his hope of immortality. The solemn
newness of his belief is unmeaning to the tame
orthodoxy of Festus.
In Part V. we come to the last Attainment. The
tender friend seeks to pierce the dying man's lethargy.
Thoughts of Aprile (p. 145), the torture men's scorn
has cost him (p. 153), a recollected visit to a witch
(p. 148), swim before Paracelsus. Festus, like Brown-
ing's David, recites a sweet nature-poem (p. 158) and
soon after a great quietness falls on Paracelsus. In
his person, Browning expresses a doctrine, frequent
in his works, rather to be felt than defined, i.e. that
God's praise rises in any case, and that He sees
deeper in forming his praisers and their way of
praising than men guess (pp. 164, 165), Paracelsus
has a magnificent vision of creation, culminating in
its interpreter, man. Each phase of earth's evolu-
tion is a thrill of God's joy. Man has to love,
learn, be patitmt. But evolution has not ended with
humanity as we know it ; the race is to be liberated
and perfected in each of its members, and to help
this forward men like Paracelsus are born. Patience,
sympathy, wisdom were what he lacked. He noAV
iifc INTRODUCTIONS TO TIIK POEMS. 61
compieheiuls all, and hopefully his great soul dis-
appears.
Strafford; A Tragedy, 1^37 (Vol. II.), came out
a year alter the Lite of ►Suatlord in Lardner's Eminent
British Statesmen. This life, published unilcr Forster's
name, was com])leted, peihaps chieHy written by Brown-
ing with materials supplied by Forster, who was ill and
anxious about the volume's completion, ^\'hatever may
have been the extent of Browning's assistiince to
Forster, the biography furnished the basis and point of
view^ of the drama, and is an invaluable companion to it.
Act I., Scene 1. The play opens in November (or
September), 1639. Ireland is under sword-law and
the Scots' Parliament is just dissolved. England has
had no Parliament for ten years, and her leaders
believe that the growing despotism is due to the
'aiK)state,' Wentworth. The fervent Vane, the
mfxlerate Hampden, Kudyard, even Wentworth's
brother-in-law, Hollis, are gathering, up their pent
indignation U) bring him to doom. Oidy Pym
l>elieves that, from very disgust with Charles, his
once dwir friend may yet be theirs. In Scene 2,
La<ly Carlisle, who loves the stern, heroic Wentworth,
reveids to him the Queen and Coiut's ill-will. Went-
worth, wholly absorbed in king-worship, but worn and
broken by the half trust reposed in him by Charles,
has been meanly summoned to undertiiko the Scots'
war, U> thrust I^uid's Service-book down their throats
at the sword's i>oint. He entirely depreaites the
' See Preface to ttrst edition of StToffonl.
62 BROWNING. chap.
expedition, though he is to bear its odium. With
noble, disarming honesty, Pym strives to regain him,
but no de\dation of career is possible to Wentworth.
Created Earl, Strafford begs his kingly idol to summon
Parliaments, both for levies, and support against
Scotland. The taunts of the pernicious Queen soon
obliterate in Charles the uncongenial influence for
constitutional instrumentation. In Act II., the Short
Parliament has been convened, to be outraged by a
demand for twelve subsidies (about £840,000). The
leaders' bitterness waxes. Only Pym's hope of
Strafford is augmented by Charles's speedy dissolution
of Parliament. In Scene 2, Strafford finds himself
shamefully crossed by Charles in his plans for the
'Bishops' war.' He almost reviles the unthankful
King, whose one care is to screen himself behind
Strafford's thorough devotion, but, Pym and Hamp-
den entering, stronger instincts rush back, and
Strafford, solemiily challenged by the disillusioned
Pym to answer for his crimes, tenderly warned by
Lady Carlisle, the storm gathering darkly around
him, hurries from the presence to fulfil the King's
wiU. By Act III., Scene 1, the Long Parliament
has been reluctantly called (November 3rd, 1640).
Foiled by the Scots, Charles, without consulting
Strafford, has made a truce. This is England's
turning-point. The Commons, not the King, are
now supreme, and their first work is to arraign
Strafford. In this juncture (Scene 2), Charles has
selfishly summoned him to help him through a critical
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO TlIK POEMS. 63
time, though all know that Strafford sacrifices every
chance of sjifety by appearing in London. When,
v^ith unswerWng fidelity, he arrives, a new energy
inspii-es him. Ho reveids to Lucy Percy his intention
of impeaching Pym and the ' Cabal ' for treasonably
in\'iting a Scots invasion. She cannot bear to tell
him that his own impeachment is in hand. Scene 3
depicts the hub-bub near the doors of the House
while Pym's attack on Straftbrd is going on. On
learning his fall, Strafford again almost abjvu-es his
false master. In Act IV., Scene 1, we are in the
midst of Strafford's Trial. Hollis is at Whitehall to
find whether the King will be heartless enough to
escape by thro>nng Strafford to the people. After
much ^\Tetched shuffling, Charles engages in a
desperate plan — depending, however, on Strafford's
unlikely assent — to save him by the army. Mean-
while Strafford has defended himself with colossal
ability, basing his rej)lies on the novel meaning his
opponents put to ' treason.' (Scene 2) It is in vain.
Pym concentrates every engine, bars every escape.
Vane, Pudyard, Fiennes beseech him to stop short
of the Bill of Att-iinder, but the public security is Pym's
supreme law, and England recjuires Strafford's death.
In Scene 3, Pym, disregarding Charles's promises
and penitence, warns him of the danger of refusing
his assent to the death-warrant, and thereby wrings
the act of infamy from him. Act "\'. oj)ens with
Uuly Carlisle'H scheme of rescuing Straflord. Scene 2
represents Strafford iiiipiisone<l, still trusting to the
64 BROWiVING. chap.
King's plighted word to save him. Hollis shatters
this remnant of faith, to leave Charles writhing in
ineffectual remorse before his martyr. The plan of
rescue, accepted by Strafford for his master's sake, is
averted by Pym. At last, the two men stand face
to face as men, and no longer as embodied forces, des-
potism incarnated in Strafford, despotism's vengeance
in Pym. In the new light of ruin and death, Went-
worth partly descries that his love for England has
worn the mask of hate, and that Pym, not himself,
has been her real helper. But still the ruling passion
is devotion to the Stuart, 'the man and not the
king,'i whose life Strafford, foreseeing the future,
implores Pym to spare.
Truth to character rather than historical precision
of facts and events is the aim of the drama. It is in
this play following on Paracelsus, that Browning's
strong sympathy with the world's failures begins to
impress us. Unlike Charles I., Browning is
" of those who care the more for men
That they're unfortunate."^
Sordello, 1840 (Vol. I.), is the story of a poet's
inner life. Difficulties of composition are greater in
Sordello than in any other of Browning's works.
Tantalising and tedious in parts, it is to many readers
his most fascinating poem, over which his unique
imagination seems to brood most lovingly. The pre-
fatory letter is Sordello's most valuable comment.
1 p. 241. 2 p_ 237.
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO TIIK POEMS. 65
The continuous headings, added in 1863 anil designed
to exphiin the poem, are al)sent from the hist edition.
Browning seems to tell Sordello's ^ story just as it first
struck anil shaped itself to hira, an inartistic, though
natural, process. Tirahoschi, Storkt della Lett end a la
Italiami, IV. 3G0, and Mm-atori, Annali iVItalki, Tomo
Sett into, may be referred to, the one for suppositions con-
cerning Sordello's identity and c<areer, the other for the
historical characters and facts the form and pressure of
which compose the backgi'ouiul. The skeleton of the
poem is as follows. Book the First. I*lace, Verona ;
period, e<irly thirteenth century. Pp. 52-54 — To hear
his unexampled story, Browning summons dead and liv-
ing. He gives twa scenes of a night in Verona. (1) In
the market-place. 55 — Disturbing news has come that
the city's prince, Kichard of Saint Boniface, ally of
Azzo of Este, the Guelf ' lion,' is entrapped in Ferrara,
while seeking to thntst thence Taurello Salinguerra,
Ecelin Romano's su})porter. (G7 — Struggles preceding
Richard's capture are narrated.) 5G-63 — Envoys,
Ijurghers, fighters help Browning to describe the em-
broilment. The Lombard League, fifteen cities, must
nmsom Richard. The Emperor's descent on Italy is
feared. 59, GO — ^His barons are compared to sea rocks,
the more democratic Papal party to the growth of
weed. 61 — Tin.' naturalisation of the foiiuidable
family of Ecelo (' liill-ciit ') is describi'tl. (i') Inside
Richard's palace G3, 64 — The heroine has just left
Sonh'Ilo, at some crisis, but for us a glimpse only.
' Sec Dniite, I'unjntorio, VI. 68-81.
V
66 TROWNING. chap.
65 ■ — Browning turns and proposes to disentwine
Sordello, Dante's forerunner in Italian literature,
from the great name in Avhich his own has become
lost. 66 — We are moved back thirty years, and
within Goito Castle, in Mantuan land, a lonely boy
feeds his imagination from carvings and tapestry.
This castle is Ghibellin Adelaide the Tuscan's, Ecelin's
wife. 69 — Here too lives Palma (Dante's ' Cunizza '),
Ecelin's daughter by Agnes of Este. Sordello's poetical
temperament is described in a look forward, not this
time into his ' out- world,' but into his developing
character. 72 — He is of the better class of poets,
separate from, and above their works. 73 — -Two
dangers threaten such, inactivity through despair of
achievement, and impotent strife for completeness.
Both forms of 'leprosy' will be Sordello's. 75 —
The mystery and isolation of the child's life are
traced. 78 — Naddo, the Trouvere, is common-place
sense incarnated. 76, 77 — Sordello outgrows con-
tentment with the ' pretend ' life of unresponding
flowers. 80 — He yearns to surpass and impress a
world more real than the woodland. 82 — His simul-
acrum of men is unsatisfactory, but he will make it
suffice. 83 — The boy cannot equal his heroes, 84^
except in fancy, which, therefore, for the present, he
deifies, 85 — and imagines himself ideal strength and
grace combined, 86 — Apollo. 88 — Apollo demands
Daphne. Palma (designed as bride for Richard — to
ally Este) is she.
Book the Second. 29 — Dreaming of Palma, Sor-
Ill IXTRODUCTIOXS TO THE POEMS. 67
dello comes upon her :it ;v poetic<al tournament. 94
— E_i,'lamor's (Kicharils Troubadour) 'Elys' theme
is excelled in 1»\' Sordello, who, 95 — amid applaust",
is made Palma's minstrel. 96, 97 — Dazed till alone,
Soitlello ponders the supremacy of song. 98 — Egla-
mor, dead of defeat, is carried past. 99 — To such
;is Eglamor, art is the god they serve. 102 — Sordello
{jjiys tribute to the corpse, whence a symbol tlowei-
springs. 103 — Sordello must leiirn his origin. 104
— Ala.s, he is a common archer's child, but, 105 —
knowing his mentnl rarit}', he means yet to master the
world by his will, 106 — for he can enter into all
ideals, 107 — is no mere slave of one. 107 — What
self - importiince to be quenched ! 1 08 — Sordello
expects by consciousness of all powers and delights,
outstripping limited achievement in any one, to sway
mankind. 109 — Poetry shall be his instrument,
whereby to mould humanity. 110 — Called upon to
poetise, Sordello finds that something reached by
song, not song itself, is his desire. 110, 11 1 — Naddo's
gocxl stupidity comments on Sordello. Ill, 112 —
As for Sordello, his fictions so strike the Mantuans,
that he feai-s being spoilt for his lofty aims by their
flattery. 113, 1 14 — Soidello makes of spoken It;dian
a lite, ary language,' but greater ditliculty lies in
adaj)ting perception to the slow recon.struction of
words. He tiikes comfort from thinking that, himself
alx)ve his |K)etry, he, not it, is the vital concern, 1 1.')
— but a blow comes when he finds peo|)lc (h> imt see
' Sec I>aiit«, /m I'ulyari /ilvqiiu), I. 10.
68 BROWNING. chap.
Sordello in Sordello's characters. 116 — This audi-
ence is no better tlian his childish one. 117 — Years
pass, Sordello's ' Man-portion ' is content with ignoble
rewards, is sundered from his still intact Poet-half.
118 — Each cancels the other's action. 121, 122 — He
is matched with poetasters, and ' Naddo ' makes his
vulgar suggestions for Sordello's (and here Brown-
ing's) attainment of success. 124 — Distracted for
want of a comprehensive point of view, Sordello
alternately finds body alone and soul alone impractic-
able. 125 — Adelaide of Vicenza dying, Ecelin seeks
to marry his children to Gruelfs. 126 — Taurello,
apprised, hastens to prevent this, but only Palma is
still unGuelfed. 127-130 — Sordello is urged to greet
Taurello with song, but, disappointed of poetry's
second lure, he retreats to Goito to devise some new
foot-hold.
Book the Third. 134, 135— The river's flooding
rouses Sordello from artificial lethargy, through realis-
ing that though Nature repeats itself, Man's oppor-
tunities do not. Soi'dello has squandered his one
chance of love, pleasure, esteem. His own development,
not these, was his desire ; now he sees that develop-
ment is only attainable through experience of life.
139, 140 — He wasted his Mantuan life, he now will
gather up the fragments, act and live, however im-
perfectly. 141 — Palma summons Sordello to Verona,
142-144 — and we have returned to the night glanced
at in Book the First. 144-146 — Palma confesses her
need of and attraction to Sordello. 147-150 — Sketch-
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THK rO?:i^IS. 60
ing the scheming Adelaide, Palma describes her
death-bed, Ecelin's retirement, and her own ani1)itioii,
stimulated by Salinguerra, to expand Adelaide's
Ghibellin policy. 152 — To enmesh Richard, Palma's
betrothal to him has still to be assumed. 153 —
Palma has come for Ecelin's warrant to Taurello to
act. That failing, she chooses this occasion to declare
herself. Her interests are henceforth indivisi])le
from Sordello. 15^ — Fate^ has placed action ^\^thin
Sordello's grasp. Henceforth mankind shall be
"by him themselves made act,
Not watch Sordello acting each ot them."
156 — Like a magician leaving his magic tree. Brown-
ing — at Venice — enters upon a ' Digression ' till the
end of tlie Book. He exalts Poet Sordello, beyond
and larger than his art, above Poet Eglamor, whose
art is his sole existence. 158 — The greater poet, like
the sailor, willingly describes his voyages, but, at the
first opportunity, departs on new explorations. These,
not describing them, constitute his life. 159 — Brown-
ing by preference chooses a sin and sorrow-burdened
auditor, 1G3 — since evil is inevitable in life, and each
human being latently loves good though apparently
following evil. 1 04 — But false professors of relief, be-
gone ! Browning, calling himself an awkward Moses,
smites the true rock. 165 — He vindicates his poetry
a« that of aprobationary world. 16G-1GH — Three cla.ssc8
of poeiii exist; a specimen from each is given. 169 —
' Sfcc p. 64.
70 BROWNING. chap.
Sordellos and Salinguerras are separate entities as yet,
171 — and Sordello's nature is designated 'agod's germ.'
Book the Fourth. 173, 174 — The ransoming
envoys and Legate appear in Ferrara. The city has
suffered from Guelfs and Ghibellins. 176, 177— The
League's delegates discuss the ill-reputed House of
Ecelo and the ravages around. 178, 179 — The
garden and statues are described that Taurello raised
for his wife, Retrude, Heinrich's kinswoman. 180 —
Sordello, arrived with Palma, is startled by to-day's
experience into finding humanity larger than he
thought. 182 — Behind their representatives, press
the masses. To fulfil their dumb demand for happi-
ness, he primarily vows himself. 185 — Will Pope
or Kaiser help best? 186 — He puts this question to
Taurello, whose answer cruelly wounds his enthusiasm.
As he staggers away, fresh human horrors disclose
themselves. 187 — His rhymes, how futile now!
188-190 — Salinguerra, a contrast to Sordello, is
musing too. 191-194 — His thoughts are occupied
with his past, his curious failui-es in attainment, his
old bitter grudge against the Estian Guelfs, his
Ghibellin marriage, the Guelf routing of himself and
Ecelin from Vicenza. 195 — Since then, he has
merged himself in Ecelin. 196, 197 — Taurello's
accomplishments are worn lightly, for utilitarian, not
ideal, ends. 198-203 — Ecelin's decline and present
monkish dotage are indeed far from that delirious
night they fled and fired Vicenza, when Elcorte ^
' See p. 104.
Ill IXTKOnrCTIOXS to TIIK poems. 71
saved Adelaide and her newborn babe, while Ketnule
and hei-s .... Tanrello recalls Heinrich's promise of
the Prefecture of Lomliardy, to-day redeemed in the
Imperial rescript. 204 — Shall Tanrello wear Fried-
rich's badge? 206 — Shall young Ecelin? Taiu'cllo
returns to more immediate questions. 207 — A
marvellous simile illustrates the cool practicidity that
dispei-ses his reverie. 208 — Sordello begs Palma to
explain Ghibellin ethics. 209 — Her luisatisfactory
reply makes him ask if Guelfs arc better, or as bad ;
whether either party loves the people. 210 — Is there
a third and nobler cause whereby he can serve man 1
The deeds of Crescentius (a.d. 998) suggest the worth
and meaning of Kome. Kome shall typify man's
ciiu.se, and rebuilding Kome, SordcUo's work.
Book the Fifth. 214 — Reactionary di.sgust at the
brutishness of the masses overtakes Sordello. 215-
218 — His visionary Kome disappears. But an en-
couragement Sordellf) needs is given in the form of
an eloquent eidargement of the saying that Rome
was not l)uilt in a day. Progress, in poetry or
sTK'ial welfare, comes of collective, associated eftbrts.
219-222 — Strength (as Charlemagne and his
successors) emerged first, slowly followed by Know-
ledge (as Hildebrand and his). From these, new
combinations arose, and their full developments, in
which Knowledge ever tends to supersede Strength,
are yet to come. 223— Each advance, however small,
must be secure and thorough. Soidcllo may shiik
service if ho ch<x»8e«, but can Ik; nuw / 224, 225 —
72
BROWNING.
CHAP.
His question rather is, how can he, pricked on to real
effort by comprehending real misery, give Crescentius-
like help? 226 — By inspiring action in— Taurello
Salinguerra ! Indifterently well received, 227, 228 —
he adjures Taurello to turn Guelf (since Guelfs and
Eome favour the multitude). Alas, Sordello looks
for applause too, and his speech is vitiated by con-
sciousness of meiit, by self-display. Half-rhetorical,
half -earnest, it gains Taurello's contempt for ' poesy.'
228-235 — Self-scorn is harder, and goaded to his
best, Sordello forgets himself, and with infinite
nobleness vindicates the Poet, while condemning
himself. 236 — The Poet, finest effluence of Know-
ledge, is, and will be, earth's king, exalted in degree,
but resembling other men in kind. Sordello's vision
of poetry distinguishes as types Dante, Shakspere,
and the _poet of a later age, and ends with rejoicing,
237-239 — which may be Browning's or Sordello's, on
his individual advance in securing comprehension
and sympathy. 240 — Taurello is stirred, not moved
Sordello's way. He sanctions Palma's love, recounts
his negative views concerning the badge, 242 — which,
half instinctively, half capriciously, he throws round
Sordello, pronouncing him Eomano's Head. 243 —
Emotion at high tide, Palma tells Goito's secret.
244 - 246 — D'-vining that Taurello's supremacy de-
pended on an heir, Adelaide unscrupulously concealed
the fact of his child's surviving that Vicenza flight,
in jealousy for her boy. Thus, Sordello, called
Elcorte's son, is Salinguerra's. 247-249 — Taurello's
m INTRODUCTIOXS TO THE POEMS. 73
ambition revives ; they shall be independently power-
ful. 251 — A -wonderful picture is presented where
the exultant soldier, alone vrith Palma, describes
their conquering future. 253 — A sound above arrests
them and the end approaches.
Book the Sixth. 255 — Fate, conscious of a crisis,
pauses ^vith Sordello. 256— He becomes aware that
his life has lacked the great motive - power, love.
257 — Without its task -master no life is effective.
Some external motive must inspire Action, which
is a result, never a cause. 259, 260 — Sophistry
intervenes. Does a Sordello transcend, originate
law? Does he not serve men by ministering to
himself? 261 — He can do much for himself, little
for the race. 262 — Conscience suggests the value
of that little, now exemplified in foregoing the
Prefecture. 263-267— Temptation suggests every
specious reason against doing so. Sordello's problem
is hard. 268— Is not Sordello's complete bliss more
than a set-off against an infinitesimal diminution of joy
divided among the crowd ? 269— He longs for life.
Perhaps his world is made to quench his thirst for
life. 270, 271— If so, how gi-eat the error of refusing
the cup for the sake of some future one, and all the
while uncertain if he serves mankind percei)til)ly l)y
his denial ! 272—' Life !' why have ' sage, champion,
martyr,' relinq»iishe<l it then? He has not their
secret. To glean, not forego, experience ever seemed
duty to him. 273, 274— Diving deeper into truth,
S<jrdello perceives that Soul and Eternity are IkikI
74 BROWNING. chap.
to reconcile with their necessary instruments, Matter
and Time. Joy comes of their correlation, Sorrow
comes when Soul overinforms Matter. 275 — Body is
short-lived. Soul eternal, and Soul seeking to reconcile
their difference only finds Body . . . dead. Such is
now the case with Sordello. 277 — But the dispropor-
tion between Soul and Body may be accepted and used
more wisely than Sordello knew. 279 — He needed
God, and especially God in Christ. 279 — Sordello's
last act is to spurn selfishness, to tread underfoot
the badge. Yet an insect understands adapting
means to ends better than Sordello did. 280, 281 —
Salinguerra, his ambition again cut short, marries
Ecelin's youngest daughter and is reabsorbed into
Romano. 282 — The Ghibellins aggrandise, 283 —
but Taurello at eighty is in easy imprisonment in
Venice. ,285 — Ecelin III. and Alberic deserve their
violent ends. 286 — Browning retains a tenderness
for Eglamor, 287 — quotes later Sordello traditions,
288 — and describes Sordello's divided Will as a fatal
disease. Yet, after all, Eglamor is a singing lark,
Sordello a higher being though undeveloped, a child
who sings "unintelligible words," but all the while
" up and up goes he."
This briefest of surveys ignores Sordello's encrusted
gems ; for insv/ance, of quaint adornment, as that
wherein the ' Soldan's pining daughter ' figures
(p. 129), vivid description, as of the scene and
mood when Palma leaves Sordello (p. 64), and
wondrous portraiture, as of Ecelin's daughters,
Ill INTKODUCTIOXS TO THE I'UKMS. 76
"sly and tall
Antl curling and compliant" (p. 62).
AhcrSonhllo,n will be foiiiid that Browning changes
his hero, and in Soixlello himself we trace the change
in process. Browning's characters will always be
full of thought, but hereafter the thoughts will be
about life, not about self.
Pippa Passes; A Drama, 18-11 (Vol. III.), is
simpler to understand than the foregoing poems,
and the help of a detiiiled summary is not needed
towards enjoying the beauty of it and sounding the
depth. Fijypa I'asses is alternately idyllic and tragic.
Fourteen-year-old Pippa, a silk-winder, begins her
one annual holiday l)y deciding that during the day
she will fancy herself each of the four people she
deems happiest in Asolo. Eiich is loved, and she is
lonely, but Pippa 's hymn, the key-note of the piece,
declares the service of all God's children to ])e
equally vahuil)le in His sight. 80 it comes about
that Pippa, as she wanders round Asolo through
morning, noon, evening, and night, unconsciously
inHuences the lives of tho.se four she is fancying
herself, by her songs and the goodness and innocence
they breathe. Ottima, Phene, Luigi, Monsignor, all
owe to Pippa redemjjtion from evil. P^acli of the
day's four groups is at some crisis of character and
action, in which tempUition wouhl conquei-, liut for
the bett<'r inspiration ct>ming from the passing
Words. With beautiful 'dramatic justice,' in the
76 BROWNING. chap.
last case, Monsignor's, Browning makes Pippa the
un^yitting instrument of her own protection.
The 3forning of Pippa Passes is in many respects the
most powerful scene in Browning. At first, Ottima
and her lover attempt a forced disregard of their
crime, but vainly. Sebald, the more accessible to
remorse, will not drink the red wine, for to his
horrified imagination it looks like Luca's blood. It
is the crowning ingratitude of having slain the man
who was good to him that tortures Sebald. Ottima
tries to make him face the deed more coolly, and
seems winning him away from conscience, when
Pippa passes singing, and Sebald's sa^dng recoil is
completed by her words. Ottima looks no longer
superb, but frightful, and he loathes her. Her
replies to his bitter words are intensely dramatic
in their eloquent shortness. When Sebald instinc-
tively feels that death is the only expiation for the
law of life he has outraged, even Ottima rises out
of her selfishness. Buried conscience revives in
"kill me,
Mine is the wliole crime. Do but kill me."
Her one impulse now is to protect Sebald, and that
being impossible, to die with him. In Pippa Passes
and A Soul's Tragedy Browning introduces prose
scenes as suitable to unimaginative characters.
When Pippa passes singing at noon, the crisis,
if less tremendous, is more touching. The lofty,
pure-minded sculptor, tricked and humiliated, is
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 77
dismissing the liriilo who has been palmed upon liiiu,
when a new idea, suggested by Pippa's song, strikes
him. Instead of being the raised in love, shall he
nut be the raiser, the sculptor of a mural Galatea, of
this woman 'with the new soul'? So the diviner
spark is elicited from this apparently hopeless love.
The young patriot, Luigi, who acts from impulse
and feelings, believes it his duty to assassinate the
Austrian iiiler, therefore his temptation lies in being
di.ssuaded from his resolve. His mother works on
him to desist, through her love and the remembrance
of a young girl, Chiara. Here the most beautiful
of Pippa's songs interposes, to remind Luigi that,
for the sake of the ideal 'king,' he must destroy
the 'Python' at Vienna. The poetry of Noon,
especially that exquisite pas.sage beginning 'last
year's sunsets, and gieat stars,' has the pre-eminence,
but the motive of action is not equal to the others.
The meanings assigned to duty and temptation are
tictitious, and the benefit of Pippa's song is accidental,
f<jr only owing to an official blunder is Luigi's departure
for Vienna unmolested.
In Part IV., the little silk-winder being found to
be Monsignor's niece, who.se inheritance he has
wrungfidly enjoyed, the deadly tem[)tatiun to have
her ma<le away with is di.ssii)ated by the sweet
words of passitig Pipj)a.
"Su<Meiily find took me"
is the closing line. Hearing this, the Bishop, who
78 BROWNING. chap.
was to have let a devilish man take the unconscious
singer, can bear the hideous idea no longer. Lastly
we see Pippa back in her bed-room, babbling to her
martagon lily, never dreaming how near she has
come to-day to the inner lives of Asolo's Four chosen
Ones. In this play Browning impresses what Pippa
cannot know, i.e. how mistaken an estimate we may
form of the happiness of others, and hoAV little the
appearance of well-being may mean, for was not
the mill -girl happier than the people she fancied
' Happiest ' ?
King Victor and King Charles ; A Tragedy,
1842 (Vol. III.), is a page from Sardinian history.
In 1730, Victor Amadeus, first King of Sardinia,
abdicated in favour of his son, Charles Emanuel.
In 1731, he attempted to resume the crown. The
only divergence from fact is in the close of the play.
In Charles, Browning depicts a man whose master-
motive is the sense of responsibility. His character,
set over against his father's, represents the moral
triumph of honesty and candour over intrigue and
guile. Inferior to Victor in mental calibre, Charles
attests Browning's line in La Saisiaz,
"Weakness nevei" needs be falseness,"
First Year, 1730. King Victor. Part I. We are
first acquainted with the stunted life dragged on
by Prince Charles and his wife, Polyxena, in Victor's
court. Ignored till his brother's death made him
heir, Charles has ever been sneered at and insulted
Ill INTKODITTIONS TO THE POEMS. 79
by his father and the minister, DOrniOii. When
the tragedy opens, their ' policy ' has exposed
Victor to such threatened vengeance from Spain and
Austria, who have been disgracefully deceived, and
from an overtaxed people, mad with wrongs, that
he decides to escape by passing on the crown, with
its responsibilities, to his son. Charles is at first
ignorant of the intended abdication and its causes,
antl he takes D'Ormea's self-interested dissuasions
from kingship as conveying his father's wish that
he should retire from the succession. Sickened of
painful and fruitless efforts to cope w'iih state-
papers, Charles determines to forestall matters by
voluntarily retiring. Part II. D'Ormea seeks to
dissuade Victor from alxlication, knowing what
ruin the abrupt change means for him, but the
second-rate knave looks in vain for consideration
from the abler one. When Charles enters, his own
intended resignation gives him nerve and self-
respect that surprise Victor. Charles accepts the
pilotiige of the sUite — to Polyxena's dismay. She
suspects all Victor does, and judges his abdication
a temporary ruse. Alieady, the fiim dignity of
Charles's view of his new responsil)ilily ilisconccrls
his father. D'Oraiea tries to leave the ship he
liclicves sinking, but is retiiined by Charles, whose
moral uprigiitness is as.sociated with a hesitant
weakness, which his wife's stronger mind .strives to
correct. Second Year, 1731. King Charles. I'art I.
In a year, Victor is weary of retircim-iit, aiid Cli.iiles
80 . BROWNING. chap.
having supplanted the crooked ways of the last
administration by right dealing, and re-established
the realm in respect and content, the crown again
offers attractions to the perfidious ex -king, now
'Count Tende.' He steals to Rivoli Palace, and
his monologue there is the finest study in the
drama. Till Victor appeared, Charles had not
altogether believed him capable of this perjured
close to his strategical abdication. Victor of course
shows himself utterly ignorant of the depths of
faithfulness and responsil^ility in the nature of
Charles, who however ignores his father's real
design, and even attempts to screen it. Part II.
Victor's conspiracy, spied upon by D'Ormea,
approaches its climax. Charles still mistrusts
D'Ormea, (whom he has made a better man) and
partly to test him, partly because he will not, in
the last resort, resign the realm without doing his
utmost duty in its defence, he insists on putting
the minister's cautions to extreme proof. The great,
unwavering conscience of one of Browning's noblest
women comes out in Polyxena's admonition to
Charles to live out the dim and difficult duty of
supporting the crown. To Charles's anguish, D'Ormea
has persevered, and Victor is brought in, a prisoner.
This unseemly degradation is too much for the
son's instincts, and he returns the crown to his
father. But the old, fraudful life is played «ut,
and, acknowledging Charles's superioiity, Victor
dies. His last word is tantamount to an avowal
Ill INTKODUCTIONS TO THK I'OEMS. 81
that his alxlicatioii provtHl the only real good of his
reign.
Dramatic Lyrics (ISii') was the title of Bells
and l\>iiu<jiaind<.<, No. 111. The sixteen poems are
now (lispei-sed uiuler various headings, as indicated
below.
Caviilkr Tunes (Vol. VI.) (1. Marching Along, II.
Give a Bmise, III. J loot and Saddle, originally called
Ml/ Wife Gertrude), are splendid presentations of the
royalist spirit. ' Young Harry ' is Sir Henry Vane
the younger.
My Last Duchess (Vol. V.) (with Count Gismond,
originally called Jtali/ ami France) ushers in the long
series of Browning's monologues. The Duchess seems
a first sketch for the heroine of The Flight of tlie
Ihirhcss. Note the signific<vnt bronze ' Neptune,
taming a scii - horse.' Such a Neptune Ferrara's
Duke would fain have been.
Count Gisnwml — Aix in Provence (Vol. V.) is a fine
' impression ' of mediiEvali.sm, with its al).solute faith
in ordeids by battle. Among the fine touches is that
foreshadowing of Pompilia and Capoiisacchi in the
twelfth sUmzii.
Incident of the French Camp (Vol. V.) (with Soliloqui/
of Vie SjHinish Cloister, originally c;dled Catnj) (French)
and Cloister (Spanish), vividly realises an insttxnce of
his 'children's' enthusiasm for Napoleon.
Sdilij^iuy of tlie Spanish Cloister (\->\. \l.) is a
'study' of the ingenuities of envy, hatred, malice,
and uncharitjiblerie.ss.
O
82 BROWNING. chap.
In a Gondola (Vol. V.) is a lyric story of love,
every fantasy of Avhich is dogged by tragic destiny.
The dusk villainy of tlie ' Three,' her friends who for
some reason are his foes, gives the fit quietus. In
a Gondola is peerless in lovely grace.
Artemis Prologizes (Vol. IV.) is a fragment of an
unwritten large work. While her ministrant, -5^]scul-
apius, tends and revives the slaughtered Hippolytus,
Artemis recounts his death, its cause, and what
potency bore him to her woods and now awaits his
restoration.
Waring (Vol. V.) is a fantasia on the disappearance
from London of a modern man. The fascination of
mystery hangs about the character, departure, and
subsequent doings of Waring. The simile of the
unflattered lady, by which Waring's friend illustrates
his memory of him, evinces the very genius of
sympathy. Browning speaks in Waring of a certain
March as the month when
' ' small birds said to themselves
What should soon be actual song,"
a lovely infusion of imagination into observation.
Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli (Vol. IV.) reads like
some crusading romaunt, and may Avell be called
Queen Worship, under which title it and Cristina
originally appeared.
Cristina (Vol. VI.) contains Browning's extremest
statement of love being life's paramount object.
It is to be taken to some extent dramatically.
I
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 83
Browning condemns those who allow worldly con-
siderations to (juench confessed and mutual love.
Stcinzas 3 and 4 are particularly fine, apart from
their context.
Johannes Agricohi in Meditation (Vol. IV.) expresses
the ecstatic satisfaction of some medijeval believer
in predestination. Johannes 'glorifies' God by
blaspheming His reason and goodness.
Porphyrias Lover (Vol. V.) describes how a man
strangled his love, in the insane idea of so preserving
her passion for him from defiection. The power of
the poem lies in its imaginative circumstances, and in
the madman's ^'iew of his deed as natural and vii-tuous.
Through the Metiilja to Ahd-El-Kadr (Vol. VT.)
records, in mimetic measure, a desert ride. It
breiithes an Eastern's fanatic mysticism.
The Vied Piper ofllavwiiu; a Child's Story (Vol. V.)
is all fun and frolic, with an indisputable 'moral'
tacked on.
The Return of the Druses; A Tragedy,
1843 (Vol. III.), illustrates Browning's interest in
nice differences. Arab character is throughout the
drama contrasted with 'Frank' or European. The
actifjn ('Time — 14 — , Place — an Islet of the
Southern Sporades '), occui)ic.s half a day, every
hour of which is surcharged with incident and
excitement.
Act I. licgiris with the dawn of the gi-eat day
when the island's Christian Prefect, the scouige of
the Druse exiles, is t<j be .slain \>y l)jubal, and the
84 BROWNING. chap.
re-incarnation of their Khalif God (Hakeem) to take
place in the person of Djabal, who will lead his tribe
under Venetian convoy home to Lebanon. Loys,
Djabal's Breton friend, knows no more of these secrets
than the yet uninitiated among the Druses. If he
did, he would utterly scout the notion of Djabal's
divinity. To-day Loys returns from Rhodes with
other means of delivering the Druse tribe from their
oppression. Act IL Djabal's inherited wrongs and
unique rank marked him for leadership from the first.
Anael, his betrothed, unconsciously lit in him the
enthusiasm of believing himself the latent Hakeem.
Once a genuine delusion, the assumption has grown
almost unbearable to him. It has degraded a noble
nature to the lying tricks of the impostor, hourly
more difficult to abandon. We cannot sympathise
with Djabal if we judge him purely by European
standards. It is the mingling of Frank influences
with the native Orientalism of his character that
furnishes the key to his morbid development. Anael,
a typical theocrat, with her burning Eastern heart,
unconsciously feels, by love's instinct, that Djabal
is merely a man, even such a one as Loys. This,
far from shaking her loyalty, only oppresses her
with a sense of terrible unworthiness in herself, which
prevents her from recognising the coming God,
and renders her unfit to share in Djabal's 'elevation.'
Act III. To wipe out what she considers her disgrace,
Anael meditates some tremendous sacrifice, some
' deed ' which shall absolve her. Almost before her
I
Ill INTRODUCTIOXS TO THE POEMS. 85
interview with Loys (p. *207), we feel that she is
nerving hereelf, and has donned the Druse weapon
in order to forestall Djabal in slaying the Prefect.
She shrinks from it, hut she will do it. Act IV.
Anael's words, when she emerges from the Prefect's
chamber and tells Djabal what she has done, are
thrilled with horror. The utter contrast between the
Prefect's self-gratulation over his safety, and his
instJintaneous death — with the groan Loys takes for
laughter — is intensely dramatic. When Djabal, over-
whelmed by Anael's deed, which truthfulness of his
would have averted, does at last confess to her his
deceit, her momentary rcMdsion, and then her faithful
love, not untouched with g]a(lnes.s, and com1)ined with
fearless resolution to have the truth told, lead up to
the last touch of her devotedness. The torrent of
her contempt .at Djjibal's refusal to confess his false-
ness to their people forces her to denounce him to
the Nuncio. Act V. Wlien, at the end, love, pity,
and pitriotism wring from her a last offering, the
dying cry of Hakeem,^ that turns the tide of the fickle
mob for Djabal, we feel that all the poetry of the
play concentres in Anael. Loys, the kin'ght-novice,
with his noble love for Anael, is a brave, maidy
figure. The Nuncio, sent by the Patriarch of the
t^ustem Church, is, whatever his corruption, at least
no coward. He is a specimen of Browning's favourite
type of a worldly ccclcsiiislic. The same general
features belong to liiiii as to .Mdiisigiioi- in /'iji/m
' (,'oni|)arc Dcfidcmona's " yoboJy ; / m>/.irl/."
86 BROWNING. chap.
Passes, Ogniben in A Soul's Tragedy, and Bishop
Blougram. Khali], Anael's brother, is Anael -^vith
the ever-womanly left out. His appeal to Djabal to
restore his sister to life is piteously poignant. The
swift fire of fanaticism inherent in Asiatics, the clash-
ing ideas and interests of various peoples, and the
mob's unfailing greed and unruliness form a rich and
picturesque background.
A Blot in the 'Scutcheon ; A Tragedy, 1843
(Vol. IV.), is the one play of Browning's which gives
an impression of painful and unconquerable dissonance
between plot and treatment. In Borneo and Juliet and
Faust, every step of the march of events is ineAdtable,
with that inevitableness which is the life of drama,
but from which Mertoun's wronging of Mildred stands
absolutely apart. The central subject of A Blot in the
'Scutcheon is inadequately motived. Mertoun's boyish
dread of Tresham, which he strives to plead in extenua-
tion, would be a wretched coward's excuse, and the
extreme youth of both lovers, also pleaded in extenua-
tion, would as such be repulsive, did we not feel that
both pleas are unreal. Taking the facts of her story as
we find them, the Mildred of Act I. is untrue to nature
as no character of Browning's ever was before or since.
The enchanting beauty of the poetry is heavily handi-
capped, and th3 impression the drama leaves is one of
staginess, slightness, and ineffectualness, almost as
though the planned-out work of an inferior writer had
been bequeathed to Browning to make the best of.
Act I., Scenes 1 and 2 describe the state visit of
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 87
Eiirl Mertoun to sue for the hand of Mildred Troshatii.
Tlie iliamond-wittcJ Guendolen discovers the flaw in
his suit, viz. his al>senee of anxiety to be furthered
in the lady's own good graces. All his diffidence is
expended on Mildred's brother, Lord Tresham. This,
and old Gerard's unexplained trouble, are our first
intimation that all is not well. In Tresham we see
a man of two ideas, fraternal affection and family
pride. The expected canker in the rose proves to be
the pre\'ious illicit love of ^lertoun and Mildred, with
the piteous story of Avhich Scene 3 acquaints us.
Mertoun's tender devotion cannot allay Mildred's
remorse. The glaring falseness of their betrothal is
torture to her deep, earnest nature. In Act II., the
retribution, which Mildred rightly knew was inherent
in the sin, ])egins to be accomplished. Tresham learns
that the sister he deemed so peerless receives an un-
known, secret visitor. Entreated to explain, Mildred
attempts no palliation, only refuses to tell her lover's
name. Tresham accepts a hushed, stained future for
himself and her, but first bids her dictate to him the
Etirl's dismissed. This she refuses to do. Wrought
pjist silence at such crowning depravity, and too head-
strong to guess the truth, Tresham calls his brother
and Cluendolen, and l»efore them cui-ses Mildred.
With womanly chivalry, Guendolen interposes, and
showing the pearl si<le of her character in lefusing
to Ixjlievc the worst, presently guesses that it was
Mertoun's name Mildr«d concealed. Act IIT. At
midnight, in the avenue, Treshiim comes upon the
88 BROWNING. chap.
destroyer of his sister's honour. Challenged to
make known who he is, Mertoun discloses himself.
Tresham, inexpressibly disgusted at his perfidy, with-
oiit alloAving him to speak, bids him draw. Mertoun
suffers himself • to be mortally wounded, and falls.
The non-resistance and the upturned, boyish face give
Tresham's anger pause. Pardoning and pardoned,
he bitterly rues his cruel haste, but too late to save
the life he has taken. In Scene 2, Tresham is with
Mildred. She quickly divines from what deed he
comes, and, dying herself, grants forgiveness to her
brother. Tresham, whose eyes sorrow and repentance
have unbandaged, sees and understands the purity
beneath the blot, the life more sacred than the
'scutcheon. Nothing is left him, he feels, but to
follow Mertoun and Mildred, and as the poison he has
taken ends his life, he reminds those who hang over
him that only disaster and failure come when a man
assumes God's prerogative of judgment and requital.
Colombe's Birthday; A Play, 1844 (Vol. IV.),
is a drama of which the story, only imaginatively
historical, exactly suits the development of Brown-
ing's special methods. It gives scope to the all-
pervasive unconventionality and the creating of
mental zigzags and surprises that characterise his
' fundamental brain- work.'
Act I. Prince Berthold, abetted by Pope and
kings, has just sent in his claim to his young cousin
Colombe's Duchy, under Salic law. The few courtiers
who have not openly deserted Colombe's sinking
Ill IXTRODUCTIONS TO THF, POKMS. 89
fortunes are disputing which shall present the dis-
concerting document. Of the self-interested crew,
Ouucelnic is most, Guiliort least corrupt. Guihert
has just expressed supreme contempt for the brutish
People, when, from the almost empty vesti])ule, a
suitor. Valence, the 'advoavte' of Cleves, forces his
way in. He pleads Cleves' woes to his old debtor,
Guibert, as a means towards laying Cleves' petition
before Colombe. His severely simple negative to
the courtiers' question whether rumour bruits
Colombe's coming ruin convinces Gaucelme that the
right man to present Berthold's missive — as the
price of approach to Colombe — is Valence. Ignorant
of the contents. Valence accedes. Act H. The
Duchess marks the sainty attendance at her audience,
Init as yet no report of Berthold's enti'ance has
reached her. Valence, who saw Colombe a year ago
and loved her with a man's love beside a sul)ject's
loyalty, advances and descril)es his townsmen's
sufferings, at the same time presenting Berthold's
recpiisition. Coloml)e reads it, and with dignified
gentleness prepares to resign her coronet. Valence
tla.shcs his indignation at Guibert for his trickery,
and, turning to Colom])e, begs her to sliakc; oft" this
mist of c(nirtiers between herself and hei- real .subjects,
and remain l)uche.ss for the People's sake. Colombe,
inspiretl Ijy enthusiasm, congenial but hitlierto un-
known, defies Beilhold, dismi.sses her courtiers, and
takes Valence for counsellor. Act HI. liertliold,
arrive<l, is discussing with Melchior liis past .iml
90 BROWNING. chap.
present position regarding this step towards his end,
the Empire. He treats the servile courtiers "vnth
sardonic irony, till Guibert, showing a grain of
conscience, or of shame at being inferior to Valence,
utters Colombe's defiance. Berthold, startled, even
pleasurably piqued, by Colombe's daring, makes
way as she enters talking to Valence. Colombe,
because she feels she has been a 'play -queen,'
is again inclining to relinquish her sway. Berthold
affects to regard the denial of his claim as her friends'
doing, not hers. Valence, with deep, chivalrous
enthusiasm, which transcends Berthold's princely
politeness, dispels this, and, while describing Colombe
as alone, describes her People as hers to live or die.
Berthold, entertaining a new idea, forbears fiu-ther
discussion, gives Valence his credentials, and with-
draws. The courtiers decide that Colombe and
Valence love each other, and retire to shape a suitable
policy. Colombe, best of disciples, though not of
solitary learners — a true woman — leaves Valence to
decide her coiu-se. He is torn between love and
duty, love urging him to lower Colombe's rank,
and duty to guide her towards beneficent rule. But
with the genius of conscience, he determines to judge
regardlessly of consequence. Act IV. The courtiers'
scheme is to "\ du Berthold's gratitude by apprising
him that if Colombe marries the advocate, she forfeits
her Duchy to himself, the next heir. Meantime
Valence has found Berthold's claims incontrovertible.
He is deprecating his own consequent joy, when
in IXTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 91
Bcrthold entei"s to s;vv that he proposes to make
;i.<siii-ance doubly sm-e by weddini,' Colombo — a mes-
s;ige he charges Valence to give her. AVhen Colombo
next appears, she is almost happily contemplating
private liberty, and Valence's task is all the harder.
In a speech of nobly imaginative insight, he depicts
the true greatness of the imperial career, then tenders
her Berthold's proposal. The thought of an imperial
lover flattei-s her, but Valence rightly deducts love
from the proposal. His reason asked, it is, ho
answers, love's instinct. The idea that Valence loves
is importunate and engi-ossing (so we watch Colomlio's
own love daAvning), and bit by bit it comes out whom
he loves. At present the declaration hurts Colombo :
the morning's serWco then was love, not loyalty, and
nothing is what it seems. Act V. To Bcrthold,
the fulfilment of ambition is an absorbing art, loved
for the skill's sake. "When ho states his proposal to
Colombo, he explicitly disclaims sentiment, proffering
her his Empire to be, — and regard. The courtiers
here spring their mine, ^vinning scant thanks from
Berthold. What they effect is to hasten C<ilombe's
decision. Neither Berthold nor his friend can c(jn-
ccive the la<ly refusing the Empire, and Valence
trembles. But love beckons sweet C<jlombe, and
she resigns her Duchy in order to bestow lu-rself
ujwn Valence. Bcrthold li;ilf regretfully admires
her conduct, acknowledging the Duchy she so easily
n-linquishcs to he. far mtire necessjiry to himself than
to her. Guibcrt follows the lady to Kiivestein and
92 BROWNING. chap.
his former comrades are promised a sufficiently penal
future.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), was
the title of Bdh ami Pomegranates, No. VII. The
contents are now distributed under other titles.
How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix
(Vol. VI.), that glorious 'stirrup -piece,' is popular
wherever English is spoken, and Roland is the prince
of poetry's horses.
Pidor Ignotus (Vol. IV.) is one of Browning's Art
poems and turns on an artist's personal problem.
Rather than lower his refined ideal to the vulgarity
of picture-buyers and the mart, the 'unknown painter,'
shrinking into himself, chooses to paint cold and life-
less altar-pieces. He gives up conceiving pictures
such as Rafael's, and sacrifices the happiness and
stimulus _ of such praise and love as met the work of
Cimabue.
The Italian in England (Vol. V.) (originally called
Italy in England), is a Lombard exile's reminiscence
of a desperate expedient, during Metternich's ad-
ministration, which brought him rescue at the hands
of a peasant girl. He lives to recall her generous
courage and to labour anew for Italy.
The Englishman in Italy (Vol. V.) (originally called
Englaml in Italy), is Browning's one purely descriptive
poem. ' The Englishman ' tells over to a child listener
details and peculiarities of the nature and natural
life of the Sorrento Plain and Bay of Naples.
Lasagne is the flat, broad macaroni. The English
Ill INTKODUCTIONS TO TllK I'OK.MS. 93
Corn-laws (repealed in 184G) are compared to the
witherini;, oppressive Scirocco.
Thi Lid Liiuhr (Vol. VI.), records the desertion by
11 certain poet of the cause of liberty and proi^ress.
The last four lines recommend him to justify his
instruction l)y doughty fighting, though for the wvw
jKirty, opposing anil menacing the old. Time \\\\\
reconvert him, antl then — for he is still loved — God
will panlon him and reiuiite him to his first allies.
Tlie Lost Misfn.^s (Vol. VI.) is a man's regretful
acceptance of friendship where love existed previously.
Stanzii 2 is a delicious nature note.
JIi'iiii.'-Tlii'U<ili(<; from Almnid (Vol. VI.) sketches
English April and May. Browning's works contain
no more m.agicid touches than the words describing
the ' Imttercups ' and 'wise thrush.'
IIouie-Thnughts, from the Sea (Vol. ^'I.) records a
noble question, nobly answered by Browning in his
gift of j)oetry to England.
7'he Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint P raxed' s Church
(Vol. IV.) (originally adled The Tomb at Saint Praxed's),
is a marvelhjus piece of craftsmanship. After read-
ing it, one never again hears the ' blessed mutter '
in a Il«jnian church, or goes round the ecclesiastics'
monuments of rijinlUiio or iiero<iniico without recalling
the voluptuoiLs pagan of the Renaissance, who im-
plores his 'nephews' for gocwl marljle, good carving,
and Ciceronian Latin. ' Ebu-rsrrhd ' ('he shone forth '
or ' w.'is not;il)le ') should be 'elucebat.' 'J'he Bishop
derides Ulpian's dog-latin.
94 BROWNING. chap.
Garden Fancies (Vol. VI.) I. The Flower's Name is a
lover's delicate rhapsody. II. Sibrandus ScJmafburgensis
is the portentous name of the writer of a dull and
solemn book, a reader's merry revenge on which the
poem narrates. The spider 'with arms akimbo' is
an amusing touch of actuality.
llie Laboratory (Vol. VI.) (mth The Confessional
called France and Spain), is a vivid picture of the
intense, scorching jealousy of an unscrupulous woman,
who flourished when poisoning was fashionable. In
a speaking picture, Browning makes us see the keeper
of the poison shop and his fair, e\'il customer.
Tlie Confessional (Vol. VI.) is the desperate outcry
of an unhappy girl, whom a priest inveigled, under
false pretences, into telling the secrets of her lover,
a malcontent. Two days later, she saw her lover
executed. She has herself been incarcerated and
tortured for her impotent denunciation of priestly
treachery.
The Flight of the Duchess (Vol. V.) is the enchant-
ingly fantastic narrative of an ardent, natural young
girl's immurement in artificial surroundings and
among unloving people. The death-in-life becoming
impossible, she escapes, under the influence of a
wondrous crone, the Gipsies' Queen. The descriptions
of Moldavia, tl e ' middle-age-manners-adapter ' Duke,
the crafts of the gipsies, and the Duchess's departure
are particularly fresh and romantic. The lulling,
stimulating words the gipsy croons over the Duchess
are open to wide interpretation. Their didactic
m INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 9o
mysticalness is etiectively contrasted with the rough
and rei\dy style of the huntsman who tells the story.
In this poem, Browning first speaks of the distinct
happiness of age in restful retrospect, the harvesting
of ripened memories, that happy, characteristic view
of By the Fireside, Babhi Ben Ezra, and other poems.
Earth's Immoi-talities (Vol. VI.) reminds us how
oblivion swallows fame, and how love passes too,
and, despite its febrile promise of ' for exev,' becomes
as forgotten as June is in autumn's snows.
Son^ (Vol. VI.) is a lover's impassioned demand of
praise for his lady, who is too dear to him for his own
praising.
The Boy and the Angel (Vol. V.) is a kind of legend
of how Gabriel took Theocrite's place, that Theocrite
might be Pope. Both angel and boy found their
mistake, for God missed the 'little human praise.'
Each returned to his proper calling, with the chasten-
ing knowledge that while all service ranks the same
with God, Ciich creatiu-e's grace is evinced in acqui-
escence in the conditions of his own life.
M'ding at Xitjht and J'arting at Morning (Vol. VI.)
(originally called Night and Morning), are descriptive
and ethical, the second poem implying that as suiely
.•IS morning brings the sun his task, the privilege and
resptjnsiljility of life in the world devolve on a man
(op. the first lyric in FerLshtah).
Nationality in Drinks (Vol. \'I.) (two-thirds of which
were originally willed Clard ami Tokay), consists of
two lively wine fancies, French and Hungarian, and
96 BROWNING. chap.
a fact concerning Nelson, whose memory is drunk in
' British Beer.'
Saul (VoL VI.), one of the world's finest poems, is
founded on 1 Sam. xvi. 14-23. To arouse the King
from his terrible lethargy, David tries all his harp
tunes. He begins with the music that folds the
sheep, the music that attracts birds and insects, the
music of human existence. All these availing little
to stir Saul, David sings the joys of living, all con-
centrated upon Israel's King. Then he turns to life's
deeper harmonies, and Saul's great deeds that will
never die nor be forgotten. His spirit yearning over
Saul in his distress, a great inspiration enters David,
and laying aside harp and song, he prophesies, step
by step from his own love, which only to die for
Saul, if need were, can satisfy, the existence of a
similar love in God. It is a tremendous inference,
but nothing less is possible, unless the creature is to
surpass the creator, and David, enwrapped in vision,
sees and knows the Human Love in the Divine Power,
the self-sacrificing Christ. As David returns home-
ward through the night, Nature's voices are hushed
Avith acquiescence in or tremulous in attestation of
the new law, the new life. (Saul was written in two
parts, i.-ix., appearing in 1845, the rest in 1855,
among Men avd Women.)
Time's Revenges (Vol. V.) is a man's bitter reflection
on one-sided attraction. His friend's devotion to him,
Avhich he repays with contempt, is revenged by his
own devouring love for a heartless society woman.
Ill INTHODUCTIOXS TO THE POEM.^. 97
The Glove (Vol. V.) takes up Scliillor and Hunt's
liallail, trwits the theme afresh, and eontinues it be-
yond the old conclusion, according to a new view of
the eomluct of the 'dame' and I)e Lorge. Instead
of taking the well-known superficial, and somewhat
brutal, riew of the episoile. Browning convincingly
justifies the lady in putting her knight's professions
to the test.
Luria; A Tragedy. 1846 (Vol. VI.), may well be
allied Browning's favourite drama. The character
of Luria, an absolutely original creation without
historicid kisis, is unmatched in literature. Liuia
shares with Othello the fervour of the Oriental, as,
guileless like him, he is surrounded by Italian craft
and guile. Luria is the most utterly unselfish and
lofty of men. He loved Florence so much, and was
so tme to her, that he woultl perish rather than
allow her t^j be false to him. He died to save
Florence from that shame.
Act I. ('Scene — Liu-ia's Camp between Florence
and Pisa. Time, 14 — .') Puccio, the commander
Luria luus superseded, is reporting to Braccio, the
Florentine Signoria's commissary, how Liuia stands
prepared for to-day's decisive battle with Pisa.
Jealcjus ami carping as his displacement inclines him
to l>e, the honest -natured Puccio c^iimot forbear
leHtifying to Luria's consununate conduct. This
messiige is never destined to reach Florence. Braccio
tears the n-jKJrt as soon as Puccio leaves him, substi-
tuting a missive U> the efVect that as the Pisans are
H
98 BROWNING. chap.
sure to be defeated by Luria, the baseless trial (which
has been secretly proceeded with in Florence) and
sentence of the Moor may be completed. Braccio's
Secretary expostulates, but Braccio has determined
Luria's fate. Depending on no evidence, he merely
takes dangerous ambition for granted in a successful
commander. Florentine captains have ended their
career so, and, according to Braccio, it is inevitable,
all the more in an alien. Braccio regards, or affects
to regard, a Moorish mercenary as a dangerous animal,
best treated with faithlessness. Luria, entering,
shows by his dalliance with the Florentines' suspicion
how unconscious he is of his adored city's treachery.
To Luria, the Italian character is extraordinarily
fascinating, and trustworthy for its very impassi-
bility. Act IL Domizia, whose House has been
uprooted by Florence on charges similar to that now
laid against Luria, is an embodied revenge, who is
influencing Luria for the moment when, his sentence
pronounced, he may rise and, with his worshipping
army, crush the ungrateful city. Husain, Luria's
friend, strives to make Luria distrust Florence and,
this victory won, abjure her service. But Luria's
feeling, his Eastern dower, is laid under a spell by
Florentine thought, and his one prevision is dread of
dismissal when Florence needs her fighter no longer.
Tiburzio, Pisa's commander, a generous foe, here
appears to offer Luria, not truce, but news and proof
of the Signoria's treachery. He invites Luria to join
Pisa. Luria will neither read Braccio's intercepted
Ill INTKODUrTIOXS TO THE POE.MJ?. 90
letter, nor believe the treachery without further test.
Iiicii[«iWe of bjiseness, he cannot imagine but that
Fliirence will acquit him if he goes on steadij}' serving
her through this critical day. B}' Act III., the battle
is won, and Tilnnzio taken prisoner. Luria, who
thought this victory would amend all, finds he Avas
mistaken. Braccio admits the existence of the trial,
indicating the city or nation's carelessness of tlie
individual as necessixry to the preservation of itself,
the type. He disarms Luria's possible appeal to his
soldiery, by denominating such an appeal a justifica-
tion of the Signory's doubts. Hereupon, Tibiu-zio
again beseeches Luria to change masters, and, alone
and Anthout followers, take from him liis own com-
mandei-ship, in Pisa's name. But Luria plans a
difierent punishment for Florence, viz. contiimed
rectitude in her sernce, bound, as he believes, to
bring surprised recognition, with attendant shame
and remorse. Meantime he dismisses Tiburzio,
Braccio, and Domizia, assuring them that till tlie
sentence arrives, he remains the officer of Florence.
Act IV. Puccio, who reveres Luria, and Ilusain,
who loves him, think his vengeance on Florence,
by the d<nible instiument of his and the Pisan anny,
worthy and inevita1»le, and Ditiiiizia appeals to Luria
to tiike this revenge for very righteousness' sake.
Luria, alone again, far from assimilating the othei-s'
suggestions, falls U) thinking his own nicditatcMJ
'revenge' too cruel. .\ft«'r all, tin- Sigiiorv, iint
the I'eople, are false, so why liraiid these uiih
100
BROWNING.
CHAP.
eternal disgrace for those ? Best disappear, his day
ended, like the sun of his native land. To save
Florence from the consequences of her 'strange
mistake,' he swallows a slow poison. Act V. Luria
explains to Puccio how to conclude the campaign
victoriously, when he shall have departed, though
not to Pisa, as Puccio thought. Overwhelmed by
Luria's magnanimity, Puccio refuses to supersede
him, and begs to be allowed to serve him. Jacopo,
too, the Secretary, on whom Luria enjoins the task
of righting the reputation of Domizia's House, is
won from Braccio's equivocal service, and, with his
heart's homage, accepts Luiia's charge. Next enters
Domizia, a changed woman, whom knowledge of
Luria has taught that revenge is a poor ambition.
She divines that whatever Luria now devises for
Florence,- is at least
"No brute-like punishment of bad by worse."
Tiburzio has used his liberty to visit Florence a,nd
there vindicate, as he well could, Luria's unswerving
loyalty. Braccio, too, acknowledges his entire con-
version to the truth of the Moor. During their
speeches, Luria has gradually grown more silent, till
suddenly those present find fulfilled the punishment
he prepared {as a punishment, unconsciously) for
Florence, his own death. Nothing can be more
beautiful and impressive than Luria's comment at
the close of the confession of each of his convertites,
that there's another for eternity. Of all the suicides
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 101
ever read of there was uever one more perfectly
purj^ed of self than Lnriiu
A Soul's Tragedy, 1843 (Vol. III.), is a drama,
the title of which is ironic, as the chief personage,
Chiappino, merely attitudinises.
Act I. Chiappino i.s, with Eulalia, awaiting the
retiu-n of Luitolfo, Eulalia's affianced lover, who has
gone to the tyrannical Provost to try to obtain some
mitigation of the sentence of banishment passed on
Chiappino for reviling the Provost and Provostship.
The graceless ingrate, Chiappino, employs the hour
in sneering down Luitolfo to Eulalia, and professing
his old love for her. This love he describes as all
along unspoken, because choked by the forestalling
glibness and hampering 'benefits' of the prosperous
Luitulfo. Ill - c(jnditioned in adversit}', Chiappino
puts an ungenerous construction on Luitolfo's deeds
and words and, while vaunting his own depth of
feeling, kve of liberty, and general superiority,
proves himself one who only symjiathises with him-
self. He h.is just denounced the craven spirit of the
Faentines and gibed at Luitolfo's probably magnilo-
quent description of an unsuccessful interview with
the Provost, when an agitated knocking is heard.
Luitolfo enters, his garments ]>lood-stained. lie
tells them that, gfjaded past furbearance, he has
struck, and, he believes, killed the Provost. To a
man oi weak nerve, as Luitolfo is, the reaction fioni
his impulsive deed, with the pro.spect of torture and
death, i« stupefying. C'liiajipino rises to the occasion,
102 BROWNING. chap.
and almost is, what he has always considered himself,
heroic. He hurries the half-stunned Luitolfo out of
the house, with his own travelling gear and route,
and then puts on Luitolfo's blood-stained vest. He
is in a highly excited state when, the multitude
rushing in, the situation is instantly transformed, for
they reply to Chiappino's announcement, " I killed
the Provost ! " by hailing him as their saviour and
the destroyer of their oppressor. Before the scene
closes, we are prepared for what is to follow, for
Chiappino shows that the new delight of applause
and popularity ai'e too sweet, coming after such
strain, to be immediately relinquished. Act H., a
month later, represents Luitolfo, in disguise, mingling
with the populace, and hearing that Chiappino,
having modified his revolutionary ideas, is about
to be made the new Provost. To compose the
popular tumult, Ogniben, the Pope's Legate, has
come over from Ravenna, where the old Provost
is lying wounded but not, as was imagined, killed.
Ogniben has quickly taken Chiappino's measure.
He is now for a time fooling him to the top of his
bent, in order to bring him to the more complete
collapse. To this end, in discourse with him, he
carries out into glaring extremes Chiappino's
sophistical vindications of his inconsistency in
accepting the Provostship. At last the wily fisher
of men sees Chiappino floundering and gasping
in the net. Then, to moi-tify him more entirely,
he coolly remarks, that beside the complete depend-
!ii INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 103
ence of the new Provost on himself, uniler Kome,
he has another stipulation to make, which is, 'that
in c<ise the actual assiiilant of the late Provost is
discovered ' . . . a sentence cut short by a discon-
certed ejacxdation from Chiappino. Hereupon,
Ogniben, giving his victim to understand how
exactly he is acquainted with his false position,
publicly demands to have the actual assailant
handed over to justice. To this demand Luitolfo
h;is the courage to respond, whereupon Chiap-
pino, to esciipe the general hiss of derision, slinks
out of Faenza, leanng Ognibcn still master of the
situation.
Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, 1850 (Vol. V.),
is the name of two imaginative religious poems.
The central point of each is the Divinity of Christ,
and each narrates a revelation in a vision. The only
circurastiintial link between the poems is that both
visions appeared on the same common.
The speaker in Christ mas-Eve is a man Avho has
received his religious life from nature, though always
recognising Divine Love above it. On this Christmas-
IWc, he emerges, on the common's edge, from a
• lissenting chajjcl in which he had sheltered from
the rain. Disgust at the bigf)try, the heat without
light, of past(»r and flock, drove him out again.
The Htonn is succeeded by a doul)le lunar rainlxtw,
and out of this appeals tin; Figure of Christ, almost
an though in resiK>nse to an intuitive cxpecUition
thiit a yet more solemn splendour wius about to be
104 BROWNING. chap.
revealed. As in ff dream, terrified, not surprised,
he seizes the hem of Christ's garment, and is borne
along by it to Saint Peter's at Rome, where Christ
enters, he following Him. At first, he hesitated to
do so, feeling that Christ would not expect him to
worship amid so much error. Then he reflects that
the love of those worshijjpers' forefathers is what
once dissipated by its spirituality the earthliness of
the antique world, and that if their descendants'
love is still infantine, it is nevertheless love. Again
he is caught up in the vestiire, and carried to a
Gottingen lecture-hall, Avhere a Professor is disposing
of the Myth of Christ. Eliminating Christ's Divinity,
the lecturer yet calls for enthusiasm for His intellect
and goodness. 'Christ's intellect,' comments the
listener, 'is no higher a title to veneration than
other men's, and rather the less, on account of His
claim to Divinity, supposing Him mere man. On
the same supposition, Christ's goodness is no title
to worship, for goodness, only differing in degree,
is common to all, and God's gift. No ; the worship-
fulness of Christ lies in His Godship, in the motive
of love which that furnishes. It is a matter of
personal religion, not of morality. And yet there
is something to admire in the untamable instinct
of the Professor and his pupils to reverence Christ
though robbed of Divinity.' As the speaker poises
the qualities of the various forms of religion, we
recognise in his purely intellectual toleration a tone
of superiority, far from the proselytising partisanship.
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THK POKMS. 105
the hum1»le fellowsliip with Christ, which the vision
has yet to te<ich him. SntUlenly, he finds the garment
has quitted his hanil, and therefrom he learns his
hick of con^'iction and sincerity. Tlie world is large
and many-voiced, Ijut each liver in ii has only his
one life, and this and what he reads in it of teaching
or warning, are his prime concern. A man must
make some choice of his o\n^. Once more the robe
is in his hand, and he is again inside the chapel,
his >ision over. The people are as ugl}' and mean
as before, but he feels, and no longer only coldly
knows, the earnestness and devotion that tran.sform
them. His eyes are changed to recognise the water
of life in an earthen vessel, and to drink of it
gladly.
The humorous descriptions of people, the exquisite
idea of suldimating the vision from the rainbow,
the repeated description of the movement of the
man carried along by Christ's luminous vesture,
fcjrai a collection of passages that express the whole
gamut of Browning's imaginative genius.
The vision of Easter-Day is of the Judgment, the
account of it being introduced into a conversation
l>ctween two friends. The subject of their dialogue
i.s the hardness of realising faith sutliciently to make
it the master-motive of actual life. l!<>th acknow-
Iwlgc that the difhculty li<'s in relimjuisliing the
worM's obvious gifts ft»r what is at J)est only known
jw a promise. The fii-st speaker, whose opinions are,
;w wu find later, solemnised by his visionaiy experience,
106 BROAVNING. chap.
is the more earnest, though by disposition the less
hopeful, of the two. They discuss and, on the
whole, agree to the necessity of faith as God's touch-
stone for men. They then pass on to consider
faith from man's point of view. What evidences
are there to make it tenable 1 The act of renuncia-
tion is not the hardest part, for people are constantly
found renouncing the world for some one interest
or hobby. Here the friends are divided, the second
speaker denying that it is necessary to renounce
the Avorld in order to be a Christian. The other
describes himself as one who would acknowledge the
absolute justice of God's 'blacking out' his 'brief
life's pleasantness' for his share in the Crucifixion.
For his own part, he cannot ignore the Bible's
reiterated command to abjure the world. This
being his mind, it is, his friend allows, all-important
to him to live up to it. Again the first speaker,
recollecting what has been said as to the ease with
which many renounce the world for purely earthly
pursuits, confesses that in the case of even the most
trifling, the renouncer has something to show for
his pains. This reflection shakes, though it does not
overturn, his faith. His friend chides him for dis-
turbing his easier faith by even suggesting so much
doubt. In reply to this, the first speaker disallows
the faith that looks for easiness. Not only is such
confidence a fool's paradise, but the incessant conflict
with uncertainty is (and here he speaks with deeper
meaning) actually a boon. It proves that the
in IXTRODUCTIOXS TO THE POEMS. 107
priWlege of probation is still oiirs, that no after-
juil^Tnent sUignation has fallen upon ns. He will
explain his conviction by relating a dread vision
he saw on Easter-Eve three years before. He was
musing as to whether, if death overtook him then
and there, he woukl fall faithful or faithless. Common
Sense stayed him with specious comfort, Init still
he longed for a day when God's will and his duty
mijiht be cleared from doubt. Hardly had he done
so, when the sky became alight with fire, and, as the
tlames sprejul, linking earth and heaven in one grand
conflagration, he heard a voice declare his soul judged
and Eternity begiui. Then the fire seemed suddenly
to burn out, leaving the common dai-k as before.
He fancied himself awaked from a nightmare, till
once more he heard the voice and this time saw the
awful Figure of Christ. He fell on his face before
Him, to he.'ir that, having chosen earth during his
life, eiirth shouUl henceforth lu' his portion. At
first, this did not seem the terrible doom it was.
'Nature,' he cried, 'and its beauties, in these I will
joy for ever.' The voice replied that earthly beauty
was but a jjledgc of the plenitude, which, whoso
retains the pledge for ever, foregoes. 'Then I
ch<)(jse art,' he resixjiided. 'Choose it,' said the
voice. 'Without its soul, its hojje, its conscious
suggestion of unearthly perfection, tin- noblest art
is worthless.' Despairingly, the man clung to Mind,
but even ;us he did so, he realised the emptiness of
a race for knowledge the goal of which is proved a
108 BROWNING.
CHAP.
ruin. More deep]y yet the voice impressed upon
him the use of the formei- life's paradoxes, its
intuitions and ignorance, its spirit and sense, its
truth and fable. But the man tried yet another
choice, and this time chose love, admittedly only
the show of it, yet precious for the memory of what
love was. At this, his Judge, instead of relenting,
answered, more austerely than ever, that Love was
the very thing that had mixed in all his former
life's concerns, and yet the very thing he could not
believe God capable of was the Love of Christ. Then
the man, whose every choice had crumbled, prayed
Christ to restore to him the semblance of the old
life of uncertainty and probation, for the sake of its
hope. At this point, the vision passed away, and
he was back in the life he had learned to prize.
This is the explanation of his conviction that worldly
gifts, accepted for their own sake, are unsatisfying,
and that warfare and doubt are precious, compared
with what might be.
Men and Women, 1855, is a collection of great
short poems, chiefly dramatic monologues. The
poems are fifty in number, exclusive of the dedica-
tion or One Word More. Men and Women was published
in two volumes, the second commencing at Andrea
del Sario, and in the following order.
Love among the Ruins (Vol. VI.) describes the glory
and pomp of a long dead capital, as contrasted with
the present silence of its site. A pair of lovers keep
their tryst in the single turret left standing, and
Ill INTKODUCTIOXS TO TITK TOEMS. 100
Bi"owniing consideis it nioio worthily occupiml than
in its proud days.
A Lovers Qunnrl (Vol. VI.) recounts liow happily
and easily two lovers passed their time three months
ago (Jainiary, 1853) when snow-drifts kept them
prisonei-s. They used to play like children, and it
p;vjises the man's comprehension that a word can now
have sundered them, mdlifying their past. It is the
hanler to bear with spring coming on. If only it
were November, the very bareness and coldness of
the world would bring them together in a reconcilia-
tion which is very eiisily imaginable.
Evelyn Hope (Vol. VI.) is a poem of the tenderness
and love felt by a man of middle age for a young
ffirl, who dies at sixteen. Slie was not aware of
this love, but she is to be, when she awakens
in some other life, and, for rememl)rance, the man
folds a leaf into her hand. Evelyn Hope is the
poem of the unmarried, and .shf)uld be read in con-
nection with Cristina, as giving the other side of
love's shield.
Up at a Villa — Down in the City (VdI. VI.) is an
amusing contrast, as drawn ' by an Italian Person of
Quality,' between the borecbnn of his country resi-
dence and the alluring but ruinous life 'in the city-
square.' The menUil calibre of the person of quality
is humf)rously self-revealed.
A IVuman's Last IVord (Vol. VI.) contains the story
of a woman who is striving to confurin licr ideal to a
man's refpiiremcnts. While sorrowfully acknowlcdg-
110 BROWNING. CHAP.
ing their mutual misunderstanding, she decides to
sink her individuality for the sake of the man's love.
To contend with him may imperil love, and is there-
fore as foolish as if two birds were to quarrel while
a hawk was watching them.
Fra Lippo Lippi (Vol. IV.) is first of the great mono-
logues grown out of My Last Duchess and the dramas,
and is one of Browning's finest poems. It is, among
other things, Lippo Lippi's plea for naturalism in art.
The biographical materials, as "vvith Andrea and Old
Pictures in Florence, are in Vasari, and to look from
his biographies to the poems is a lesson in appreci-
ating imaginative literature. Browning's Friar is a
flesh-and-blood reality. He is a man of free and
merry manners, whose head got inside a cowl by
mistake, and a painter who is keenly obsei'vant, and
resolute jn depicting healthful beauty. The man
recruits the painter with the perpetual reminder,
amid the monastery's bones and nimbus preachments,
that
" The world and life's too big to pass for a dream."
' Hulking Tom ' is Masaccio, and ' Brother Lorenzo,'
a monk of the order of Camaldoli, is the Don Lorenzo
of Vasari.
A Toccata ofGahppi's(Vo\. VI.) is a dramatic reverie
on eighteenth century Venice. The reverie, taking
the form of an imaginary conversation with the dead
Venetian composer, is coloured, or rather achromatised,
by one of his capriccios. Galuppi's music reflects the
element of dissatisfaction in the frivolous life around
m INTRODUCTIONS TO TllK I'uK.MS. ill
it. The jMJOple who liked to listen to it have dis-
appeared and left no trace. Their day was an empty
one, and doubtless they deserved extinction. At the
same time, it is a painful reflection that all their grace
and beauty were so vain.
By the Firmde (Vol. VI.) represents a husl)and's
quiet talk, prospect and retrospect, \\\\.\\ his wife.
The ditlerent epochs of his life are strung, like beads,
on a thread of love. Before liini lie age and the
study of Greek, l)ehind him, youth, Itidy, and the
declaration of his love, made during an Alpine walk.
Every feature of that scene was priceless, and seemed
to thrill up to a climax, the spoken word which broke
down the barrier between the pair, and tested the
man's worth and his life's purpose in one supicme
opportiuiity.
Any JFife to any Husband (Vol. VI.) is a dying
woman's lament that a man's consUmcy to a memory
is so much more likely to waver than a woman's
would )>e. She would fain believe that her husband
will rank no other woman beside her in his heart,
that absence will be no sorer trial to him than it
would be U) her — but she knows otherwi.se, and lui-
hust word expres.ses this pathetic cert;iinty.
An Ei>i4U: of Karshish (Vol. IV.) lelates, from an
Anib jjhysician's p)int of view, the impression made
uixm him by I^iziinis, the raised from the dead. 'I'lie
contrast between the physician's (juaint preconceptions
and the awcf-inspiiing uni<iueness of La/arus is most
striking, 'i'he .lew's belief in his ' nncr ' licirig ( lud,
112 BROWNING. chap.
has made an extraordinary impression on the other's
fervent Eastern nature, albeit Karshish professes to
look upon his ' case ' from the materialistic stand-
point. The realisation of the altered mind and
conduct of Lazarus is deeply imaginative.^ An
Epistle is charged with Browning's favourite religious
evidence, the uses of uncertainty. 'Premature full
growth ' unmans Lazarus.
Mesmerism (Vol. V.) is a description of a feat of
'willing.' First, the lover wills into his presence
the image or simulacrum of the girl he loves, and
then, by eager concentration of intent, he draws her-
self, her real presence, into the room. Mesmerism
ends with abjuring the use of an uncomprehended,
unmeasured power.
A Serenade at the Villa (Vol. VI.) is an instance of
Browning's power of absolute fusion of the aspects of
nature with the imaginations of a man's heart. The
serenader hopes his worshipping words were noted,
but fears that his lady only declared hife song the
last element of tiresomeness in oppressive weather.
My Star (Vol. VL) is a lover's allegory. His ' star '
(a favourite term with Browning for untouched
perfectness), having revealed herself to him, no
outside commendation of her is needed to ratify
his love.^
Instans Tyrannus (Vol. V.), like Time's Revenges, re-
presents an ugly trait of humanity. Here it is the
■^ Cp. In Memoriam, xxxi.
^ Contrast with this 2:>ersonal expression a dramatic passage in
opposition to its sentiment in Fijine at the Fair, XI. 243-2-14.
m INTRODUCTIONS TO THE TOEMS. 113
capricious cruelty of some thre<atening ruler, hating
for hating's s;ike. The poem imagines an obstacle,
which intervenes and, apparently miraculously, guards
the man who seemed so helpless from his destroyer.
,/ rnttij iFomaii (Vol. VI.) recalls two lines in Fra
Lippo Lippi —
'* If you get simple beauty and nought else,
You get about the best tiling Goil invents."
The pretty woman is soulless and cannot love. Why
blame her 1 Rither praise and like — love being beside
the mark — the perfection she possesses, prettiness.
''ChilfU Ui>hin<l to the Dark Toiccr came" (Vol. V.)
is a dreiim-like, though profoundly connected and
coherent, romance. Beyond its demanding some
final effort which has cost many lives, the ol)ject of
Childe Itoland's life-long faithful allegiance and pur-
suit is shrouded in mystery. The atmosphere is one
of gloomy horror, heightened by Childe Roland's
imagination that every thing about him is set there
to do him evil. Nothing appears but he transforms
it into something infinitely worse. Sooner than he
e.xpect.s, he comes upon tho object of his quest. The
conclusion of the poem is tantalising, imagination
having been set rocking with expecUition of some
crowning struggle. We only guess success within
the D.irk T<»wer by the fact that Childe Roland lives
to tell his tide.
ly<p('rt(tljililtj(V()\. VI.) is a man's congratulation to
himself and the woman hr l<nes, either that their
I
114 BROWNING. chap.
union has not received the world's shallow approval,
or that they have even temporarily eluded society's
conventionalities. The situation is open to either
interpretation.
A Light Woman (Vol. V.) is the story of a man who
sought a right end by wrong means. He gets him-
self and the two other persons concerned into a
difficult, and, as Browning adds, a particularly dra-
matic position.
The Statue and the Bust (Vol. V.) is founded on a
Florentine legend. In the poem, supineness and
irresolution debar the lovers from their paradise,
and, though it was, as he says, a sinful one, Browning
makes the story serve him for denouncing those faults
which are, from his characteristic standpoint, 'sins.'
Love in a Life (Vol. VI.) describes a lover's un-
daunted chase after the adored one, and her equally
constant elusion of his pursuit.
Life in a Love (Vol. VI.) describes the temper which
animates the chase of Love in a Life. She, the idealised
woman, has but to glance back towards her pursuer,
and, recovering from failure, he determines to renew
the pursuit, though it last his life.
How it strikes a Contemporary (Vol. IV.) tells, in a
specified instance, how mistaken a view may be taken
of a man by those among whom he lives. The ' poet '
is considered to be the King's spy, because of his
©bservant ways. The last paragraph, describing the
' Corrector's ' death-bed, gives the man's true status
and character.
Ill IXTKODUlTlONS TO THE rOEM.S. llo
Tlie Last Hide Tugdhcr (Vol, V.) shows how musical
Browning can make a lyric, which is also a psycho-
logical study. A lover can accept his fate, which is
parting from his mistress, and in this last ride gather
up the raptiu-e of a life-time, since all fail of compass-
ing their o^^^l desire, and since the bliss of life spent
with his mistress woiUd leave no further heaven to
lie hoi)ed for. Again, the ride itself may lengthen
out into eternity. (Cp. the first half of Stanza x.
with Porphyria's Lover.)
The Patriot— A71 Old Story (Vol. V.) tells how the
mob treats one who, a year ago, was its darling and
sa\iour.
Ma.<t>r llugucs of Saxe-Gotha (Vol. \'l.) represents an
organist who desires to summon a dead composer into
the organ-loft to tell what his fugues meant. The
jangle of a fugue is described, but what vexes the
organist is that the business and stiife of it all tend
to no result. It is therefore, as a form of art, either
a discouraging criticism of life, or a false one. The
organist decides that it is the latter.
Bishop Blougram's Apology (Vol. IV.) is the first of
those ' special pleadings ' which are so associated
with Browning's name. It is an elaborate piece of
casuistry, throughout which we must bear in mind
that the Iloman Catholic liishop is talking down an
inferior «lialectician, rather than seriously arguing.
The msiHterly Blougram is able to make niince-mwit
of the young, shallow scribbler, Cigadibs, who is, ho
throughout assume", really envious of him. Most of
116 BROWNING. chap.
the defence, therefore, is ironical, and its fallacies
conscious. It represents what a man of Blougram's
age and position would be likely to reply to a Giga-
dibs, when stung to the quick by him. The chief
fallacy, which Gigadibs should have immediately
questioned, is the comparison of life to the cabin on
a six months' voyage. Blougram's putting of comfort
before the ideal is directly opposed to the idea of his
Church. Blougram's defence is sound when he de-
clares that faith is necessarily struggling; he shows
his untruthfulness in averring that this attitude must
be masked from others in order to rule them. Blou-
gram is not the gross, cynical worldling he seems.
He betrays himself in his reference to Luther. Again,
when Gigadibs finally urges the all-importance of truth
in one's life (p. 270), Blougram has no argument but
to turn the tables and retaliate. At all events, his
talk and his counter-criticism of his critic, if they did
himself no good, caused a ferment in Gigadibs' mind
that led to his relinquishment of merely notional
theories. The beauty of many parts of the ' Apology '
and the power of all need no pointing out. It is a
poem that quickens the intellect at a hundred points.
Memorabilia (Vol. VI.) is supposed to be addressed
to some one who had met Shelley but was unmoved
by the recollection. To Browning, the fact of the
man's having seen Shelley is his one point of interest,
the ' eagle-feather ' off a blank moor.
Andrea del Sarto (Vol. IV.) was written and sent to
a friend in default (!) of a copy of the Pitti portrait
in INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 117
called Andrea and his vdic. The poem is a study in
low tones, its key set by the line —
"A commoji grcyness silvers everything."
Beautiful and interesting as a study, it is not com-
parable \nth the poems in which Browning speaks
right out from his own heart al)out his own feelings.
Andrea attributes his uninspired life to Lucrezia and
to Go<rs ' fetter.' He has sunk into eftbrtless fatalism
and doting worship of Lucrezia's beauty. He inertly
regrets his misappropriation of Francis the First's
mone}', with no thought of atoning for that fatal
dishonesty beyond imagining a certain expiation in
resignation to its consequences. We know Lucrezia's
stupid, sordid mind through Andrea's talk. It is
jKirt of Browning's superb art to characterise a mono-
logue's listener only less clearly than its speaker.
Before (Vol. VI.) gives an onlooker's reasoned assent
to a cert-iin duel. One of the fighters (which, is
unknown) has been too terribly wTonged to make
existence possible without this appeal to God. Should
the guilty man survive, life may be trusted to punish
him. After (Vol. VI.) is the surWvor's speech. Though
victory is with the right, every thing seems luiimport-
ant and bearable now, sjive the terrible! fact that the
man before him lies slain by his hand.
In Thrcf Ihnjii (Vol. VI.) represents a Invcr's delight
ill the prospect of rejoim'ng his mistres.s. lie (oiild
bnive any augury of evil, sjivc that the meeting w.w
to l>e delaye«l.
118 BROAVNING. chap.
In a Year (Vol. VI.) is the comment of a woman,
beautiful, rich, and devoted, on the passing away of
her husband's love. She would have done any thing
to avert it, and cannot guess the cause. Unconsciously
she touches it, and, by the words she imagines the
man uttering, we realise his shallow insensibility.
Old Pictures in Florence (Vol. VI.) is a personal utter-
ance, containing the gist of Browning's art philosophy,
viz., that aim should transcend accomplishment. The
poem's most valuable passage explains wherein early
Italian art, imperfect and faulty as it was, marked an
advance on the period of Greek sculpture. It is
interesting, beside Browning's playful lines, to study
Vasari's accounts of the painters cited. The brilliant
whimsicalness of the rhymes is in keeping with the
serio-comic tone of the piece. 'Carlino' is Carlo
Dolci. Stanzas xxi. and xxii. are alien from the
ruling idea of the poem and from Browning's general
philosophy.^ They need to be taken dramatically, or
as expressing a passing mood in which rest seems the
chief good.
In a Balcony (Vol. VII.) is a condensed drama of
three characters. The oldish Queen, who, beneath
a long frozen exterior is so passionately desirous of
love, and Norbert, Constance's lover, who performs
his startled part between the two women with veracity
and uprightness, are not hard to understand. Con-
stance, whose wits are so subtle, but whose judgment
errs into leading herself, Norbert, and the Queen
1 Contrast Aristo;plianes' Apology, XIII. 8, bottom of page.
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THH POEMS. 119
into a terrible quandary, is a more complex character.
She is a typical woman in lior unstraightforward,
timorous way of seeking her heart's desire, and in
the r.ipiil rising to an occa.sion wherein she utterly
abnegates hei-self. In playing her mock part before
Norbert and the Queen, she is apparently treacherous
to love, and wo can sympathise with the man's up-
braiding of her, but she is really surpassing his
imagination of unselfish generosity. Her motive is
pure and devoted throughout. The tragic blissful-
ness of her last sentences convinces us how tenderly
she loved Norbert through all her divagation. Her
apparent giving of him to the Queen was the effect
of a rush of pity and of sympathy with that
starved, unfriended heart. She would at all costs
spare the cruelty of undeceiving it. She saw, too,
how entirely it lay with the (.^hieen to complete or
ruin Norbert's cherished c<ireei-. She partly trusts
to his ambition of the greatness she ardently desires
for him to make him return the Queen's love, ami
corrolx)rate the impression made by the ill-advised
introduction to the appeal to her for her kinswoman's
hand. ConsUince shows worst in expecting Norlicrt,
at her bidding, to .set her aside. Siie is Inu-ried and
excited by the Queen's appearance in a terribly
unpro[);ired for juncture, and, ardent with self denial,
hardly rwiliscs Norbert's outlook. With time to
reflect, she could never have wronged him by believing
him cajwiblc of the sudden exchange. Neither coidd
she have so blotted out li.r past with liini as to
120 BROWNING. chap.
imagine that he takes her seriously, when she pretends,
before the stricken Queen, that the interrupted scene
was a comedy, and herself all along a smoother of
his path to another woman. Norbert fancies the
Queen is testing his love for Constance. That Con-
stance herself could propose the test, even as a test,
wounds and affronts him. Before his indignation,
his unswerving love, her artifice of self-sacrifice
breaks down. Norbert and Constance once again
know each other and the interrupted perfectness of
their love. But that has crossed their lives which
cannot be gainsaid — ^the force of circumstances, and
they know that the outraged Queen is sending them
the summons of death. In a Balcony is a tragedy of
circumstances rather than of character.
" De Gustibus " (Vol. VI.) describes an English
lane, a tree-loving friend's favourite place, after which
Browning accounts for his own taste, in two enchant-
ing sketches of Italy, 'his Italy.'
Women and Roses (Vol. VI.) is a dreamer's tantalising
vision of an entrancing rose-tree, bearing three sym-
bolic roses. Kound the first rose the beautiful women
of the past dance or float ; round the second, beautiful
living women; roimd the third, ' beauties yet unborn.'
The dreamer appeals to each in turn, but, heedless of
him, they onlj^ go on each circling their rose.
Frotus (Vol. V.) instances how the first may be
last, or rather that to be born Avith a gold spoon in
one's mouth is less conducive to empery than to possess
an iron will.
ni INTRODUCTIONS^ TO THE POEMS 121
HoJtj-Cross Day (Vol. V.), first of ii small group
of Jewish }X)ems, realises, from the inside, one of
the persecutions Jews bore at ' Christian ' hands.
Bro\ming penetrates into the upholding Jewish
consciousness of being reserved for greater things.
The idea in the prayer to Christ is i)iu-e Browning
and nineteenth century, and would not represent
a twelfth century Hebrew, however large-minded.
The Guarduxn-Angd (Vol. VI.) is one of the rare
poems in which Browning lets his love and life look
through. Note the beautiful name, 'bird of God,'
for an angel, and the inspiring words that conclude
Stanza v.
Chan (Vol. IV.) is another Epistle, comjiarable
with ' the Arab phy.sician's ' in tliat it also touches
on the doctrine of Christianity — this time as atiecting
a contemiK)rary Greek mind. In Chon^ however,
the prol)lem of life is rather stated than the solution
l)roposed, though such a solution is imi)licitly associated
with the teaching of 'Christus.' The main theme
of the poem is the vacuum and disappointment that
exist where high culture is nevertheless ignorant of
what p:v8ses knowledge. The blank wall of death and
future non- existence limits the joy of one whose
cuiKibility for joy has grown infinite. The irony of
the merely second-hand life led by the artist, an idea
alrea<ly expressed in The ImsI Hide Tixjcthn- and ///
a Balcony (Vli. :51) is exjjandcd here. As in (lie
other epi.stle, tlu" essence lies in tin; p<(sts(rii)t.
Tlie Twim (Vol. V.) is a parable from Luther,
122 BROWNING. chap.
whose terse vigour of thought and word strikes a
responsive chord from Browning.
Popularity (Vol. VI.) is an imaginary utterance
suitable to one who appreciated Keats's genius while
Keats was living unrecognised. Just as the first
fisher of the murex that contained the famous Tyrian
purple is unknown and um-ewarded, so it is with
a new and original poet.
Tlie Heretic's Tragedy (Vol. V.) is a wonderful,
quaint account of a horrible ' Act of faith.'
Ttoo in the Campagna (Vol. VI.) opens with a
description of the billowy country round Rome,
with its pale verdure. The speaker expresses how
he and the girl with him experience a moment of
mutual supreme emotion, when immediately the
thrill is dissipated by some shadow, incomprehension,
cooling, that the next moment inevitably brings.
A Grammarian's Funeral (Vol. V.) clothes in a
curious and interesting dress Browning's favourite
tenet, which may be defined in the words of the
Talmud, "It is not incumbent on thee to complete
the work : but thou must not therefore cease from
it." This lesson the grammarian enforces. His
triumphant trust in the endlessness of life saved
him from being the mere pedant and layer of an
atom of mosaic in erudition's perishable floor. As
the corpse bearers wind up the mountain, we seem
to feel the cooler air and to hear their heartening
chorus.
One Way of Love (Vol. VI.) represents an unselfish
in INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 123
lover who has staked his all to win ' Pauline.' He
may fail, he knows, perhaps he has already failed,
but, if so, he will utter no reproachful nor ropiniiii;
woixls, but feelingly felicitate another man who
succeeds. Anoih^ Jfau of Love (^^ol. VI.) is a girl's
warning speech, in semi-allegoric form, to a ' spoilt '
lover. She depicts a selfish man carelessly asking his
betrothed if she would ' greatly care ' if their engage-
ment were broken off. For reply, she dismisses him
with novel asperity, remarking that she is able to live
without him, and perhaps choose a l)etter lover,
or, should this ' spider ' try to weave his web round
her agjiin, be careful to speedily demolish it.
" Transcendentalism. A Poem in Twelve Books "
(Vol. IV.) is addressed by an older poet to a beginner
who is producing a work the title names. The
e.xperienced man's advice is that beauty and emotion
should be a poet's care, rather than the bald, tough
expression of metaphysical truth, better suited to
prose. The poems last eight lines are peculiarly
fine.
Misconceptioiifi (Vol. VI.) contains a touching little
story, preceded by its apologue.
One ll'drd More (Vol. IV.) is the most perfect poetic
love-tf)ken ever laid at the feet of wife or poet.
Like all the words Browning addresses to his ' moon
of poets,' this 'word' seems spoken amid a sacred hush.
The idea of the artist's longing to have a luiique art
L'lngiuigc whereby to address his beloved is exquisitely
dwelt on. Will niiglit iJrowning regard this poem
124 BROWNING. ' chap.
as separate from his other work, and so classible with
Dante's picture, Rafael's sonnets.
Dramatis Personse, 1864 (Vol. VII.), Browning's
next volume, was published after a nine years'
interval. We trace in it the deeper thoughtfulness
and rarer flashes of ardent fancy that distinguish
the bulk of his later from his earlier work. The
contents are as follows . . .
James Lee's Wife (originally called James Lee) is a
wife's chronicle of her husband's estrangement.
Mrs. Lee is a similarly charactered wife to those in
A JFoman's Last Word, Any Wife to any Husband,
In a Year, and Fifine at the Fair. She is a good,
highly strung, but morbid and worrying woman,
married to a man of shallow soul, whom she loves
deeply. Finding him tired of her, bored by her
Avomanly demands for responsiveness, and probably
ruffled by her clear-sighted discernment of his short-
comings, she judges it necessary to his happiness
for her to leave him. To her, the companionship of
marriage means all or nothing. The poem's nine
sections record mood, not action. In I., the wife
first detects and dreads the change she dares hardly
face. In II., she charges her husband with it.
Bitterly, from the depth of her anguished love, she
contrasts the apparent warmth and happiness of their
life with its inner unsoundness. III. records a
deepening of her shuddering sense of change, with
a determination to live it down silently. IV. gives
the secret of her failure to retain her husband's fancy.
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POKMS. l-_'5
V. is her own noble conception of K>\ o, t)ne which,
we feel, would be meaningless and irritating to a
James Lee. In VI., she criticises a young poet's
unt<?ste(l idea of pain. She moans over the pathos
of I0.SS and chantre and the limitation of all achieAO-
ment, though she c<in imagine their value. VII.
records, by a similitude which the rocks inspire,
her resolution to sink all thought of herself in
seeking the best course for her husband. VIII. A
coarse real hand, beside a beautiful cast from a
hand, tells her that duty and labour can survive
and transcend the happiness of being loved. In IX.,
doubt and indecision over, she is leaving James Lee,
grievingly, as regards her own feelings, but in the
belief that her presence was only an incumbrance
and obstacle to his happiness. Her love remains
more yearning than ever.
G<jld Hair illu.strates Browning's love of an eccen-
tricity, a love thinly veiled, in the ca.se of this unpleas-
ing story, under an a.ssumed moralising intention.
The IVirrd of It is the speech of a man whose wife
h;is deceived and deserted him. His oidy feeling is
self-bhime, and intense, pitying regret for her. He
wishes he had siruied in her stead, if that might
have saved her from her sin and its consequences.
He I>elieve8 Grxl must forgive her, ;is he does, lie
would gladly elVace himself to efface the silent
accuHJition he knows he is. She has now turne<l his
gofxl to evil, Ijut this evil he regards ius self-originat
ing, and his own life as con.sequently iii<;rc blamable
126 BROWNING. chap.
than hers. 'The worst of it' is that he can do
nothing for her who formerly gave him all. He
implores her to be good, though not for his sake.
Dts Aliter Visum represents a Avoman Avho recalls
to a man the occasion, ten years ago, when he almost
proposed to her. She describes the sea -side walk
and the man's one moment of sincerity to his en-
nobling impulse, followed by considerations — of in-
compatibilities, his age and her youth, and fears of
future reproaches and disgiist. The considerations
choked the impulse, and life's inestimable opportunity
was rejected. Two lives, nay, four, have been spoiled.
The man measured earthly congruity only, but, in
the words of the title, ' it seemed otherwise to
the gods.'
Too Late is a man's lament over a dead woman.
He never declared his love, and she became the wife
of a pitiful rhymer. It was comparatively easy to
do without her while she lived. Now she is dead, he
feels entirely desolate, and blames himself for his
earlier silence. He seeks a shadowy solace from
fancying her alive and entirely his, since she is no
longer another's.
AU Vogler is a glorious ascent on the Avings of
music into a triumphant expression of faith in im-
mortal personality and in heaven's compensation and
completion. Abb6 Vogler begins with sorrow that
his beautiful improvisation is gone, but this is suc-
ceeded by the thought that nothing good is ever lost.
Through that he rises to the conviction that earth's
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE I'OK.MS, 127
imperfect will be eternity's perfect. Bro\vnin^''s
works haitUy contain such another piece of simple
perfectness as the iletinition of a common chord in
Stanzji vii.
liiibbi Ben Ezra is a poem in which the thinker is
subordinated to the thought. It is consequently
pei-sonal rather than dramatic, and represents Brown-
ings Theism, though not, of course, his Christianity,
through an imaginary utterance of the great Eabbi.
The leading ideas are (1) The value of age in that
it consummates life, and is a peak whence youth may
be reviewed, understood, and hannonised. (2) The
uses of strife and trial in that they attest oiu- higher
miture and oui- kinship with the Father of spirits.
(3) The absolute solitariness of each soul in relation
to God, and its independence of earthly estimates.
Allied with this is the enduringness of the soul amid
the perpetual fliLX of circumstances. Man must take
his means from the Present, Imt his aim (man being
figured by a ' cup '), is solely to slake God's thirst.
A Death in the Desert is the imaginary last scene in
the life of the disciple whom Jesus loved. The poem's
fictitious setting (the 'parchment' 'supposed of
Pamphylax') is exquisitely faithful in its artless
simplicity of word and circumstance. Reflecting that
with his death the la.st witness to Christ's life passes
away, the dying Jrjhn refills his labours and success
in nuiking men believe. Death's insi)iration upon
him, he foresees down the centuries a more fuiida-
mcnUd disbelief than his life tinio lias kiif)wn. His
128 BROWNING. chap.
last word shall be a refutation of disbelief to come.
This disbelief will be two-headed, disbelief in Christ
being other than a projection from man's mind —
(doubt of the Love), and disbelief in a Divine govern-
ance associated with miracles, in view of the early
superstitions of ' will ' everywhere resolved into ' law '
— (doubt of the Power). To these doubts John
prophetically replies that . . . ' Miracles ' guided the
child, they are not to coerce the man. Because man
knows love and will in himself, and must feel that the
acknowledgment of a Divine Love and Power solves
earth's problem as nothing else does, he is preferring
death to life if he rejects the solution. In reply to
the objection against partial truth, imperfect revela-
tion, John urges that only such truth and revelation
give men a chance of progressing through the very
struggle to obtain better. God gives a gleam, that
men may do their part, which is to grow into fuller
light through working their own way to it. Brown-
ing, through John, accepts this age's doubt as a test
and stimulus to faith.
Caliban upon Setebos is one of the most truly creative
of Browning's works. Imagining the rudimentary
religion of Shakspere's most poor credulous monster,
it is in extraordinary contrast with the preceding
poem and with Browning's general transcendentalism.
It accords with the scientific and strictly natural ex-
planation of the evolution of religion. Caliban's
' moral sense ' is the check of fear. He credits
Setebos with his own purposeless malignity, sullen
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 129
jealousy, and cm mini,', these l)eing liis mdimentaiy
idea of Will. Calilian evidences the dualism of
primitive belief in his notion of a certain 'Quiet'
above Setebos, this being his mdimentiiry idea of
Law. The genu of rites and sacrifices lives in Cali-
ban, the idea of Love is entirely latent. Browning
makes his uncouth creatiu-e speak of himself in the
third person, to suggest his undeveloped sense of
personality. This (/echaracterisation is not the least
brilliant stroke of the poem.
Confessions is a perfect piece of the art of realism,
distilling from every-day things a tragic comedy of life.
Minj and Death has the true touch of nature, recog-
nisable by every one who knows the poignancy of
some sight, scent, or sound that is associated Avith
the memory of the dead.
Deaf and Dumb (not included till 18G8) was Avritten
for Woolner's scidptured group of Sir Thomas Fair-
bairn's deiif and dimib children. Subject and statues
suggested an idea germane to Browning's general
conviction that all life's hindrances and limitations
contain compen.s;itory blessings.
J'losjAce is a brave soul's greeting to the enemy,
death. With unliandaged eyes, the strong man will
essay the bust conflict, mindful of its dreadfulness, yet
confident in the faith that anns him again.st fear.
Eurydice to Orpheus (not included till 18G8) is an
expression of overmastering love. The lines ajjpeared
in the Academy Catjdogue, 1864, to describe the face
of Eurydice, in Sir Frederick Leighton'.s picture.
K
130 BROWNING. CHAV.
Youth and Art is a lighter variation of the theme
of Cristina and Dis Aliter Visum. Two people missed
love, once, and once only, within their reach, and,
missing love, they miss the best in life.
A Face records a wish to have a certain 'little
head ' painted in the style most advantageous to its
beauty.
A Likeness dwells on the instinct to keep certain
associations secret and sacred, and the feeling, half
delight, half irritation, when one's heart's hidden
treasure is noticed and admired by others. Marc
Antonio (Kaimondi) was the first famous Italian en-
graver (sixteenth century). Giovanni Volpato was
Bartolozzi's great pupil (1733-1802).
Mr. Sludge, " The Medium" is, with the exception of
Count Guido Franceschini, the only one of Browning's
special pleadings which is almost undiluted falsehood.
The 'medium,' found cheating and brought to bay,
gives his own account of the rise and progress of his
' medium '-ship. That his life has been a tissue of the
most unwholesome fraud is beyond argument, so he
endeavours to throw its odium on his 'patrons,'
who may indeed be considered half responsible for
the garbage of his soul. They encouraged him
from point to point of rappings and manifestations
till the production of them became skilled labour.
They egged him on to emulate the ' Pennsylvanian
mediums.' They petted him for each deeper dip
in the morass. They accounted for every ignorance
and improbability of the spirits. Sludge loathsomely
HI INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 131
insinuates that he has at all events been helpful to the
cause of religion agjiinst atheists. The whole of the
'ajjology' is eiiten through and through with the
despicable artifices of luxuriant moral disease, coward-
ice, and untruthfulness. In the second part, Sludge
plausibly expresses his ' belief ' in the connection be-
tween this world and the supernatural, in di\'ine
intervention in so-called ' small ' events, and in the
selection of cert^iin persons (so w^hy not Sludge ?) to
gather and interpret such communications. The
unmasked character of Sludge only looks througli
when, Mr. Hiram H. Horsfall leaving him, he is
free to indulge in ^^tuperation, and to compose the
story whereby he intends to explain their dissolution
of amity.
Apparent Failure gives the reflections raised in
Browning's mind by the sight of three corpses in
the Morgue, and expresses a noble trust in the
compassion — and the justice — of God (cp. In Meuwriam
liv.)
Epilogue represents three religious phases : the
jubilant worship of David, the bereaved desolateness
of Renan, and la.stly, a renewed faith, dispensing
with symbolism, which Browning declares as
his own.
The Ring and the Book, 1SG8-G9, Brown-
ings niastcrpiuce, is one of lliu l<jiigest poems of the
century and dwils with more life, action, and
chiinicter than any other. It consists of twelve
monologues on one siibject, Count Guido Frances-
132 BROWNHSTG. chap.
chini's murder-case. The first book and the closing
one are Browning's prologue and winding up of his
huge epic drama. The other ten retrospective
monologues are spoken by characters themselves,
nine in all, for Count Guido, the defendant, speaks
twice, once before his condemnation, once after.
Each character recounts the case throughout, and
any one monologue, read alone, would, in a sense,
give the complete story. So many tellings, and yet
no two are alike, and there is no sameness. Each
new version gives facts unnoticed by the others,
every observation and inference being always
exquisitely characteristic of its speaker. The Eing
and (he Book is most free from what Guido calls
' Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete.
We feel that Browning has said all that was sayable
concerning the celebrated cause which was the talk of
Rome early in 1698, and looked at it from the stand-
point of all manner of men. Notwithstanding the
ring-like clasp of the one poetic imagination, we feel
as if we could not be reading one man's work, but
as if a magic mirror had been flashed upon the
individual mind of each long dead speaker. We are
chiefly conscious of this feeling some time aftei'
reading the poem, when the recognisable accent
of Browning has partially faded, and the mental
conceptions remain all the stronger. For us, those
obscure Italian people live with more vividness than
real, historical characters. The most unskilful reader
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE TOEMS. 133
finds it easy to pick out the defects of <a poem wTitten
on such a plan as The Ring and the Book. A story
which is practically known by the end of Book I.,
and yet is going to be retold again and again, certainly
offers no stimulus to curiosity. To Browning, the
story as story is nothing, the characters, the souls in
strife, are all. How the souls strive, how fail, how
conquer, is the matter of real moment. And yet,
the circumstances of outer life are rendered price-
lessly significant by the soul's taking them for
stumbling-blocks or stepping-stones. But that this
\\QVf of Bro^vning's also applies to his subject-matter,
the selection of the Franceschini Trial for a poem
in twelve books might be considered capricious. If
the main motive is unheroic, and only horrible, out
of the meanness, out of the horror, the transcendent
virtue of two characters was disciplined into energy
of life. Of the dramatic monologues, which cover
a space of seven weeks, Guido's are the most uniquely
creative. Shakspere has his lago. Browning his
Guido. Guido's presentment, if without comment
and entirely self -spoken, would remain absolutely
ethical. Througliout his plausible first plea, we want
no light other than his own words attbrd to make us
recognise the evil man. The contrast between his
two speeches is as marvellous as nature. The most
IKJctic monologues, and, besides Guido's, the only
viUil ones, are Pumpilia's, Caponsacchi's, and the
l'oi>e'H. The other nionologties are spoken by ])erson8
IcHS jirofoundly interested in th<' Trial, oljservers,
134 BROWNING. CHAP.
or only secondary actors. Three of them record the
world's rumour, outcry, and opinions. They are
dim-sighted or indifferent, and frivolously prejudiced.
The others are the fustian pleadings of two low-
minded lawyers employed on the case. The story
from real life two centuries ago which Browning
reanimates in The Fdng and the Book is, free from
colouring and briefly, this . . . Pietro and Violante
Comparini, an elderly, childless couple, lived in Rome,
They loved good living and were well-to-do, but the
chief of their property was tied up to pass to some legal
heir. Pietro often lamented their childlessness, which
rendered them unable to draw on the capital, in the
reversion of which they had no personal interest.
In 1679 or '80, Violante decided to bargain with a
woman of the worst class for her expected infant,
and to palm it on Pietro and the world as her own.
When in due time the baby girl came, it gladdened
Pietro's old heart, and he used to spend his days play-
ing with it. This child afterwards became the heroine
and victim of the whole affair, Pompilia. She grew
up as unconscious that the Comparini were not her
parents as Pietro was that she was not their child.
When she was thirteen. Count Guido Franceschini,
a nobleman, aged forty-six, needy and fortune-hunt-
ing, opened communications with the Comparini
through his brother, Abate Paolo, with a view to
wedding Pompilia, for her dowry and expectations.
The Franceschini allured Violante with Adsions of
their grandeur and greatness, for both of which
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO TilK I'OE.MS. 135
she was gi-eedy for Pompiliu. Pietro, however, on
looking into these promises and finding their dehisive-
ness, refused his consent to the match. Thereupon,
the unscrupuk)us and foolish Violante married Pompilia
secretly to Guido. Three weeks later, Guido claimed
bride and wealth, and the Comparini accompanied
Pompilia to live in Guido's palace at Arezzo, stripping
themselves of their money in favour of her husband.
For four months they endured the penuriousness and
siivagery of Guido and his relations. Then they
fled back to Kome, lea^ ing Pompilia to bear the full
brunt. Rick in Rome, Violante closed with the
Jubilee Indulgence of Innocent XII., to confess her
old fraud. Next, the Comparini legally demanded
from Guido Pompilia's doA\Ty, and the interest and
reversion of the usufruct, on the ground that Pompilia
was not their child. The Roman court, in its lao-
dicean way, acknowledged Pompilia's base birth, but
decreed the dowry, though not the rest of the estate,
to Guido. Now began Pompilia's tragedy in her
husl)and's nige and hate levelled against her. A
letter, puriK)rting to be from h«r, but really traced
in ink, over her husband's pencilling, by Pompilia,
who could neither read nor vnritc and was ignorant
of its contents, was received in Rome by Abate Paolo.
It represented Pietro ami \'iiilante in the worst light,
and accu.sed them of giving Pompilia a parting injiuic-
tion to find mmc gallant in whose company she could
follow them as wwjti as jHJSsible, previously jtillaging
and burning her husl>aiid's hoiisc and poisoning its
136 BROWNING. chap.
inmates. The document was not only used as a
return weapon against the Comparinis' outcry against
Guido, but was also intended to pave the way for
what Guido, with "wicked cunning, now set his whole
brain to effect. His desire was to get rid of Pompilia
without ostensibly driving her away, so that the
money might be his. Abetted by his mother and
brother, he tormented his patient girl-wife with un-
remitting cruelty and outrage to body and soul. This
continued for three years. Guido did his secret
utmost to force her into an intimacy with Giuseppe
Caponsacchi, a young Aretine Canon, which should
justify him in divorcing her, but she proved incapable
of guile. At last, in April 1697, Pompilia knew she
was to be a mother, and then the one drear hope left
her of losing her life under Guido's cruelty changed
into the mother's obligation to preserve her child.
She must flee. But how? The Archbishop and
Governor of Arezzo and a friar had long ago refused
or failed to help her, even when she told them that
her miseries tempted her to suicide. Her thoughts
turned to the stranger, Caponsacchi, whose name was
hourly hissed in her ear, and she spoke to him from
her terrace and besought him to help her to escape
to those she called her parents. Ennobled by the
demand upon him, Caponsacchi gave her such help
as an angel might give a saint, and took her towards
Rome. The husband, whose longed for chance had
come, slyly noted all, and, in discreet time, followed.
At Castelnuovo, last stage before Rome, he overtook
(
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 137
the fugitive and the priest. Pompilia hud perforce
halted for a icw hours at the inn, so dangerous did
she believe her journeying farther without rest would
be, after the two days and nights of continuous flight.
In that inn, Pompilia, for the first and last time, con-
fronted her husband Nnth flaming wrath, :ind even
attempted to take his sword and kill him. This she
did, in irrepressible indignation at Guido's false charge
against her innocent deliverer of criminal elopement
with her. The very constables, called in liy the
coward, Guido, felt for the moment the greatness of
tmth as uttered by Pompilia. It did not suit Guido's
purix)se to slay then and there (as his partisans after-
wards regretted), for that might have lost him
Pompilia's money. Avarice as well as cowardice
held him back. Instead, he handed Caponsacchi and
Pompilia to the Public Force to be conveyed to
Rome. Just as he had previously forged letters
purporting to be from Pompilia, and had them de-
livered to Caponsacchi at Arezzo, so now he pretended
to pick up in the inn, as left behind by Pompilia
and Caponsacchi, a bundle of the most incriminating
'love- letters.' These letters, written by Guido, he
hid and foiuid, that they might bear witness against
the two. When Guido brought the case before the
Court, the ambiguous decision given again showed
the half-heartcdness, miswdlcd moderation, of the
Roman Tribiuial. Cap<»n.s;icchi was relegat('<l for
three years to CiviUi, and Pompilia wa.s sent to bide
cloistered with the Convertites, Guido being \ iitually
138 BROWNING. chai>.
deprived of his wife for the time being. The sentence
was half-condemnation, half-acquittal, Caponsacchi's
relegation being distinctly termed no exile. The
Comparini now demanded in Pompilia's name her
divorce on the ground of cruelty, which plea Paolo
tried to frustrate by demanding on the other side a
divorce. Meanwhile, at Arezzo, Guido lay wallowing
in rancour and brooding over his townsfolks' mockery.
Presently, the Convent was allowed to open its door,
and Pompilia passed from one nominal detention to
another, this time going to the Comparini. They
took her to their villa outside Rome, where, shortly
after, her child, Gaetano, was born. Hearing of this,
the black blood of Guido surged indeed. It was at
last free to surge, for the birth of a child, his heir
and Pompilia's, would secure him the money in any
case. For days he meditated and arranged his last
frightful deed. On the second night of the year 1698,
he stole disguised to the villa, with four cutthroats.
He entered it, and with countless stabs killed the
Comparini and Pompilia, they aged seventy, she seven-
teen. But Pompilia, though mortally wounded and
left for dead, was not to die till she had been able to
make the truth apparent. That she might survive long
enough for that was her silent prayer as Guido struck.
She lived four days, to explain her life, to pardon Guido,
and to vindicate and glorify Caponsacchi. Guido
killed Pompilia because he had never tempted her
into sin, because he never could prove any thing
against her, and therefore his cheated avarice, and
Ill INTROnrCTIONS TO THE POKMS. 139
his pride turned into sh;ime had been so long luilked
of revenge. CJuido's liirelings had ah'cady resolveil
to kill him for non-fulfilinent of his promise of pay-
ment, but that was intercepted by their being all
caught red-handed. The frenzy of his hate had
made Guido forget one preciiution of Hight, viz., to
secure the warrant for hiring post-horses. The
murderers were found tired out twenty miles from
the villa. They were carried to Rome, and, after a
month's Trial, were executed, the noble lieing be-
heailed, the others hanged. They were first con-
demned by the civil coiu't, when Guido's advocate,
thinking to &\ve him astutely, pleaded the fact of
his being in some sort a cleric, and therefore
privileged to appeal to the Church. Leniency was
expected of the aged Pope, but Innocent, when he
had msistered the matter, unhesitatingly sealed the
doom of Guido and his ruffian.s. The execution took
place on February L*2nd, 1698, in the Piazza del Popolo,
where a scaftuld, with the framed axe (maunaia), was
erected, flanked bv two gibljets. Pul)lic feeling was
immensely stirred b}' the Trial and its conclusion. The
more so, that Guido, the husband, the man of position
and influence, in whose favour the strange facts of
the case coultl so easily be distorted, liad the sufl'rage
of the superficial majority. . . . Such are the broad
facts «>f Pi>mj»ilia's story, omitting the dramatic
pictures<|Ueness of details and iiiinor ;u:ti<iiis which
are the flcsli and blood of it.
I. y'A<' lUii'J iiiul the Jjook is the sj)ecial title of the
140 BROWNING. chap.
opening section. In it Browning lays before his
readers (1) the meaning of the title, (2) the origin
of the poem, (3) glimpses of the story and of the
contents of the old book, its foundation, (4) the
justification of his imaginative presentation of it,
and (5) his invocation to the dead singer, his wife,
under the name of ' lyric Love, half angel and half
bird.' (1) The notion of the Ring Browning gained
from the Roman jewellers, who mix a harder alloy
with gold in order to beat and emboss it into a ring
with carved devices. The ring finished, the alloy is
easily detached. So Browning intends to mix the
gold of fact with the ' alloy ' of fancy, without which
it could never be forged and filed into shape. This
'fancy,' moreover, what is it but a higher 'fact'?
(2) He tells how he found the Book, the small-quarto
that contained the contemporary records of the
Franceschini Trial, how he fused its facts with his
own insight and realisation, the Book with the ' Ring,'
and how, months after, in London, he knew the time
had come for writing what his spirit had been chaf-
ing to life. (3) Browning recounts his first glowing-
imagination of the story as its successive scenes
flashed upon his mental retina on that June night on
his terrace in Florence. This first telling of the tale,
fragmentary as it is, strikes the keynote of the truth
at once, by giving Browning's own view of the
characters and their action. Portions of the old
book, facts and comments taken from it, are
previously given. These are deeply interesting in
I
I
III INTRODUCTIONS TO THE rOEMS. 141
their place and chiefly as showing the comparative
dea<lness of the Book without the metal that helps
to make the Ring. (4) Then comes a superb
imaginative account of how such a work as The liing
and the Book comes into existence, how a man's liAnng
spirit breathes, Elisha-like, upon the seeming corpses
and informs them with his own abounding life.
Browning next gives the condition, inside and out-
side, of all his speixkers at the time of their speaking.
The passages descriptive of the two Halves of Rome,
Tertium Quid, Count Guido Franceschini, Caponsacchi,
Pompilia, Dom. Hyaiinthus de Archangelis, Giovam-
battista Bottinius, the Pope, and Guido are each pre-
fatory to its proper monologue. Browning explains
his reason for presenting the one scries of actions
from so many stand-points. He wished to be faithful
to the sincerity and reach of real life, and also to
show how warped and how cruel is a narrow, sloth-
ful, or selfish estimate of whatever partakes of life's
Itaffling ob.scurations and changes. (Note on p. 55
the magical touches whereby Browning impersonates
Wint<}r and Summer.) (5) In the lovely posy of his
liing, Browning speaks first of his lyric Love's ante-
oarthly existence, and of her life on earth. Then,
in an exaltt-d strain mingled with pleading, he speaks
of her as retranslated to and gladdening heaven, and
yet accessible to his word that invokes her blessing
on every w<»rk begun and ended l»y him.
II. Ihdf-Iiome is the name of the first dramatic
monologue, the drift of which is
142 BROWNING. chap.
" How Half- Rome found for Guido much excuse."
The speaker is a man predisposed to side with Count
Guido from the fact that he is himself a suspicious
husband. He is just lea\dng San Lorenzo, the
Comparinis' parish church, where Pompilia, who is
now dying in the hospital, was baptized and married.
There, on this, the day following the murder, Pietro
and Violante's bodies are laid out for public inspection,
at their feet the notched dagger that dealt the fatal
wounds. As this sample of Half -Rome leaves the
church, where, with the rest of the crowd, he has
been gloating over the horrible spectacle, he meets
an acquaintance. This person is promptly button-
holed, and has the benefit of hearing the story
of the Franceschini Case, as rumour has filtered it
in and bias filtered it out again of the head
piece of the worthy who addresses him. 'Half-
Rome ' takes it for granted that the deposition that is
expected from Pompilia in the hospital is the con-
fession of her crime. He considers the case extremely
simple, in fact only open to one construction, which
is, guilt on Pompilia's part, rank roguery on the
Comparinis', and on Guido's, justifiable reprisals,
unwisely deferred, it is true. Throughout the account,
Guido's avarice plays no part. In describing the
match-making between Violante and the Franceschini,
'Half -Rome' only sees Violante's blind greed of
grandeeship. Guido is supposed solely to care for
a fair young wife to brighten up his dingy palace.
Ill IXTRODUCTIOX^; TO TIIK FOKMS. 143
The speaker unquestioningly accepts Guide's report
that he and liis household were (hugged and his
escritoire rifled by Ponipilia when she tied. Having
no iKirticuhir staiuhird of goodness and integrity, he
considei-s nothing so likely as cowardice and deceit.
The dutiful and pure Ponipilia, and the soldier-priest,
her champion, are as entirely beyond his range as
beings of a different sphere. Yet even ' Half-Rome's '
words cannot conceal the potency of truth in their
speech and action when Guido came upon them in
the inn. The revelation is nevertheless unrecognised
by the speaker's own dull soul. ' Half-Rome ' fancies
that he allows facts to speak for themselves, and
every now and then reiterates how unprejudiced his
statement is. It is only by comparing the monologue
with others, that we appreciate the fine touches of
descriptive phrase whereby Browning discloses the
bent of the speaker.
HI. 'The Other Half -Rome,' addressing his
audience two days later, finds the wife innocent.
His speech is coloured by the thought of Ponipilia
as she lies in the hospital, surrounded by gazers.
Like all who have seen her, the speaker is touched
by the pitifulne.ss of her youth. From no merit of
his own, but becau.se he has half fortuitously espou.sed
Pompilia's side, and beciiuse his discourse opens with
a sympathetic description of lur dying liouis. his
account of the case comes nairer truth than 'Half-
Rome's.' 'The Oth<T Half-Rome ' laments Violante's
falsification of Pompilia's parentage, but says all lie
144 BROWNIlSrG. chap
can in favour of the arrangement. He stigmatises
the Comparinis' inconsiderate foolishness in apprising
Guido of his wife's base birth. They might have
known that Guido would deny their story and never
give up Pompilia as long as he had the remotest
chance of gaining money through her. Nevertheless,
like the former sample speaker, this one is inclined
to give a choice of readings of the events, and, like
the Court, ruminate both, instead of rejecting one
and nourishing himself on the other. A wonderful
touch — puzzling to the speaker — of Pompilia 's purity
comes out in this narration, in the inconsistency
between her story and Caponsacchi's (both told the
Court eight months earlier) as to whether it was
evening or day-break when they reached Castelnuovo.
In the confusion of utter exhaustion, Pompilia believed
that it was morning when they entered the inn.
' The Other Half-Rome ' is keenly aware of Guido's
main motive, his prompter and check, avarice.
Though he registers Pompilia's innocence, the insult
done to God in her murder is not what strikes
him. Rather, as a law-abiding citizen, speaking in
the interests of all, he condemns Guido for supple-
menting and correcting a decision previously pro-
nounced by law. The Molinists are continually in
and out of the discourses, any thing and every thing
being attributed or compared to their heresy. Such
references secure the approval of every orthodox
listener, and agreeably attest the speaker's sound-
ness. The lesson Browning enforces by these
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO TlIK I'OK.MS. Uj
specimens of ' human estimation,' the two Halves of
Rome, lie impresses by the curious variety in their
statement of events, and the diliering motives they
jissign to an action. Compare the two presentments uf
\'iolante's motive in her Jubilee confession, the two
accounts of Pompilia's Hight from Guido's house, ami
the two explanations of Guido's pass- word at the
villa door.
IV. Tertium Quid views the trial from an angle
different from either of the foregoing. He is the
veritable tertium quid of chemistry, the neutral salt.
Despising the vidgar partisanship of street and
market-place, this dispassionate third party holds a
middle course. His particidar listeners are an Excel-
lency and a Highness, grouped in an embrasure of a
fashionable saloon. Tertium Quid might reasonably be
expected to allow for an instinctive bias in favour of
a nobleman, but he is far too judicial to let this inter-
fere with his full recognition of the evidence against
Guido. He opens with a masterly sketch of aristocratic
poverty, and shows a general disposition to adorn the
tale and omit its less effective points. He supplies
characteristic new details, such as the first introduc-
tion of Pompilia's name to the Franceschini by the
'woman-dealer in penikes.' With his sIkiw of fair-
ness, he leaves the case exactly where he found it,
taking l>ack anything he has .saiil that may seem to
l«in Ui either side*. H<; appeai-s to consider the
refu.s;il« of the Aretine autliuiities to respond to her
appeals a strong point against i*oinpi]ia, and then
L
146 BROWNING. chap.
goes on to reprehend her for escaping under the
escort of a fashionable young priest. He sneers at
Caponsacchi's ready acceptance of Pompilia's woeful
story. Terthim Quid's stupidity is of heart, not
brain. He concludes by avowing that the case is
extremely turbid, as indeed he has made it appear
to himself and others by his cynical summing up of
' six of one and a half a dozen of the other.' Not
that he cares. His main object is to stand well with
his fastidious audience, and he has catered for its
taste accordingly.
V. Count Gruido Franceschini now pleads his cause
before his judges. He and his associates have been
tortured up to the point deemed necessary for ascer-
taining truth, and have, under tortiu'e, confessed to
the murder. ' Not guilty ' being therefore a plea out
of the question, the best Guido can now do for him-
self is to extenuate the ' irregular deed.' He flatters
his judges, strives to enlist their compassion, and
addresses himself to their prejudices. He takes his
stand on his regard for authority, the Church, and
law. Every act of his life has run in a prescribed
groove. Younger brothers are free to become soldiers
or churchmen, he, an eldest son, was bound to support
the house at home, to marry, and continue the
Franceschini line. He describes his married life as a
tortiu-e to pride and self-respect, which no rack
even mimics. He poses as a servant of law who
would not move in the first instance till law gave
the cue. Here, changing his tone to one of simulated
m INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 147
indignation, he reproaches the Court for the inade-
quacy of its previous judgment, which yet he proves
to have been so far an implicit condemnation of Pom-
pilia (as to its shame, it was) as to justify her hushand
and \ictim in supplementing it Anth nature's justice.
Thus he lays the burden of proof on the Judges them-
selves. He skilfully works up to the birth of the
child as the climax of his maddening grievance.
With the utmost nimbleness in fence, he perpetually
shifts his ground, as in his alternative hypothesis
regarding the child's parentage, so as to make it
serve his purpose equally well either way. Guido
professes the innocence which can atford to bring its
secret things to light. Of course he makes the most
of every thing that can by any po.ssi1)ility tell in his
favour, making nothing, or a distortion, of what tells
against him. Like Taiium Quid, he frankly acknow-
ledges the marriage a barter, and, on his side, a fair
bargain. He does not deny that he wrote the letter
which Pompilia traced over, because it is a husband's
duty to guide, and, if need be, coerce his wife into
the right path. He makes light of his cruelties to
Pompiliii as harshness excu-sable to his disappoint-
ment in her, and warranted by her levity. After all,
they were threateiiing.s and frightenings rather than
actual penalties, and her elopement pnjved their in-
efliciicy. Every tnfle in the speech is significant, and
not only the conscious, 1)ut the unconscious touches,
;tH where (luido, in de.scribing his wish to get
bjick to Vittiano from Iif)me, mentions :is Vittiano's
148 BROWNING. chap.
attraction that " one limes flocks of thrushes there."
The fiend of guile consummates his hypocrisy in
the description he gives of his enlisting the sym-
pathies of his four assistants (no ' bravo-hiring '), and
of his waiting through the Christmas season, its
' Good will to man ' battling against the call of his
dread duty. His infamous use of Caponsacchi's
name at the villa door that night he twists into the
last supreme chance given by him to Pompilia. That
failing, he pretends he would have even then spared
the slaughter, had not his arch-enemy, Violante, ap-
peared first at the door.
VI. Giuseppe Caponsacchi's is the first certainty
among the dramatic monologues, the first which is
entirely free from moral confusion, Caponsacchi has
been summoned from Civita to retell, in the changed
circumstances caused by the murder (of which they
have just made him aware), the story he told the
same Court after the arrest at Castelnuovo. This
time he is called in to give counsel. At once he
breaks out into stern condemnation of his judges,
whose base torpidness of eight months ago is respon-
sible for the fresh terrible wrong. Awe-struck now,
they listen to him, till one weeps, another can no
longer keep his place. The whole glorious speech
quivers with impassioned wrath, pity, and sorrow.
One vision inspires it all, that of the 'snow-white
soul,' Pompilia, who ' is only dying while ' they speak.
' Sirs,
'Only seventeen ! '
m INTKODUCnOXS TO THE POEl^IS. 149
C.ipnnsacchi's character from earliest youth had li.ul
a prophecy written upon it. He was one wliosc
deeper nature only slumbered till some enthusiasm
should evoke it. The day he "was blessed by the
revelation " of Pomjiilia and she made her appeal to
him was his spirit's l)irthday. The grand oftcr of
his life and test of his worth came and he accepted
them. All the hollow nothings he had previously
lived in were burnt up like withered leaves. He
instantly recognised that the real and true and sure
were with Pomj)ilia, and threw conventionalities to
the winds. Nothing can be more beautiful than the
description of how Pompilia and Caponsacchi knew
each other instiintly by the look, except his account,
so serious and so simple, of the journey between
Arezzo and Castelnuovo. From first to last, Capon-
sacchi's feeling for Pompilia, which he is careful to
tell his judges is 'not love,' because he recollects
their titter of eight months back, is indeed love and
religion too. He himself cannot designate it except
as "faith, the feeling that there's God." Deep down
anfl unfolded in the characters of Pompilia and
Capf^nsacchi is the human love that exists between
a tnu' man and a pure woman when they love each
other. This love was in their case crystallised at its
first stiigo, at that absorbed devotion to the beauty
of each other's characters, which is really an intei'-
changc and elevation of hearts, transfiguring the rest
of life into res|K)nKibility and thankfidness. Cajjon-
gacchi never ceases to wonder at people's dulness of
150 BROWNING. chap.
perception, at the cruel blindness of the Court's
jog-trot procedure. He himself has been so quick to
seize rights and wrongs, so ready to succour and
redress, a chivalrous soul with no selfish dross.
Heaven and hell are no farther apart than Capon-
sacchi and Guido, the incarnations of devotion and
hate. The worst regret for himself that Caponsacchi
has is that he did not extirpate Guido when he
might. All the tears and irony of life, as it is
mirrored in The Ring and the Book, are concentrated
in Caponsacchi's last line, which is also in a sense
the reaction from the selfless bravery of what precedes
it,
' great, just, good God ! Miserable me ! '
That is the bitter cry of a man who rebels from his
soul against the misnomers of society, the unutterably
pathetic captivity of good to ill, the world's old
error of crucifying its divinity.
VII. Pompilia's is the crowning monologue of the
cycle. Lying in the lazar-house, with her 'twenty-
two wounds, five deadly,' which, as she character-
istically words it, the "surgeon cared for her, to
count," she is full of gentle gratitude for the least
services. So lying and so speaking, Pompilia retraces
her years of nightmare and her few months of peace.
Because she has lived to know the bliss of seeing her
child and had it lying on her breast two days, the
peace seems to obliterate the anguish. On the third
day, the child was taken away to be safer from its
f
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 151
father. But no ; Ponipilia cannot have that, her boy
never had a father, only a mother — and God to
leAve it with. Pompilia rejoices that Guido himself
annulled their marriage by slaying her, saved as by
fire the life he had polluted. The name, Gaetano,
and the pathetic reason why Pompilia chose it for
her boy throw light on what Caponsiicchi could not
luiderstand in the flight from Arezzo, when her mind
was wandering, and he thought she meant ' Caj^on-
sacchi' when she murmured 'Gaetano.' Browning
represents in Pompilia motherhood idealised and
glorified, from that vivid day-break in the preceding
April to this her death-<lay. Pompilia would not be
Pompilia if she were entirely to palliate Violaute's
falsity, the first cause of all the woe. ' It was A\Tong,
or rather misUike, like almost all her life.' The
Comparini, her * poor parents,' as she calls them,
meant well by her, and that must be enough. Even
for the malignant Count Guido Pompilia can make
some excuse. He was cheated in the first instance,
and she, by being innocent and uncomprehending,
thwarted and angered him the more. A wonderful
touch of the mother's sympathy is in the line,
" I could not love liiin, but his mother did."
The outside world may think that CajKinsacchi failed
in his attempt to serve Pompilia, but Pompilia knows
otherwise. Capm.sacchi eflected the turning-point in
her miseries, every thing since then has been happiness
or at liiivt peace, an<l the niunhi-, that too has wrought
152 BROWNING. chap.
good. Apart from consequences, Caponsacchi's deed
and example haA' e been a priceless boon,
" Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of His light
For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise."
Pompilia is incomparable for absolute simplicity
and naturalness in the story of a short, strange,
sorrowful life. We see Pompilia as the pitiable little
bride, the victim in the wolf's den, thrown him like a
bone to mumble and be kept quiet by, the overtaken
and slandered fugitive, and lastly the two weeks'
mother hacked to pieces. The submissiveness, the
conscience, and the rectitude shine through at
every stage of the narrative, and beside them Pom-
pilia 's humility, and unconsciousness, as she explains
her life, of her own sanctity and loveliness of
character.
VIII. Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis next
speaks. He is the Procurator of the Poor, who is
to defend Guido and his four associates. This mono-
logue contains the rough notes of the defence, inter-
spersed Avith asides. These chiefly refer to the
advocate's little boy, his Giacinto, on Avhose name
is lavished every affectionate diminutive of which
the Italian language is capable, and in honour of
Avhose eighth birthday a feast is to be held to-night.
The doting papa cares very much more about 'old
curly -pate ' and the preparation of the lamb's fry
and other delights, than for the Franceschini Case.
Ill IXTKODTTTIOXS TO THE POKMS. ir.3
The plea(liiit:jisverylmniorous,aiul would he extremely
amusing, if the spoit of it wt'io not so incongruous
with the deadly realities it juggles with. Its life-like-
ness is perhaps the stronger for the irony. Arcangeli's
defence is based on the ' Cause of Honour,' to vijidi-
c;\te which a man may do anything, equally so if
the injury be only misprision of the fact. Texts
are wrested and preposterous instances alleged to
support this. Arcangeli constantly has an eye to
the detested Fisc, his adversary, whom he means to
rout by Latinity as well as logic. The speech is
sprinkled Avith verbal bows and scrapes to the
Judges, and Arcangeli has good hopes that his
production will reach the Pope, poor dotard though
he be, and even that his treatment of the case will
\fe adopted by him. With professional identifica-
tion, Arcangeli speaks of Guido as ' we ' and ' our-
.selves,' a humorous touch in its suggestion of the
contnist between the comfortable family man and
the malevolent hater, his client. The entire argu-
ment is, of course, a sham, having nothing to do
with the que.'ition at issue. If a word shows reluct-
ance at being hitched into the lawyer's Latin, he
di.scards it for a more amenable one, even if it
contradicts fact, because if one Judge goes upon
law, another considers style. Nothing can be more
absiufl tli.iii the defence of Guido's 'helpmates,'
whom the Procurat<tr metiimorj)ho.ses into efpiitable,
though immature, nistics. At last the string of
fjuiljbles is finiKhed, and Arcangeli delightedly tlnusts
154 BROWNING. chap.
it into a pigeon-hole, feeling his evening's domestic
joy honestly earned.
IX. Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius is
the public prosecutor, upon whom has devolved the
conduct of the proceedings against Guido. This
monologue supposes Bottini trying over to an
imaginary audience his final speech on the Case.
In it, we see how another kaleidoscopic lawyer can
shake up the facts and variegate them afresh.
Bottini's nominal task is to vindicate Pompilia's
fame, but he proposes a harder, i.e., to admit, for
argument's sake, every calumnious evidence against
her, and yet bring her out triumphing. Accordingly,
his oration, which opens with a self-displaying flourish,
is as futile, and more offensive, than Arcangeli's.
Bottini's waggish quips and abhorrent insinuations
are so glaringly unseemly that the whole discourse
is a burlesque. ' Peccadillos ' are the natural element
of Bottini's imagination, and to assume them in
Pompilia gives him so much the better chance of
exercising a sympathetic ingenuity in explaining
her actions, that he meets the objection of her death-
bed statements by depreciating them as a 'genial
falsehood,' which her (previous) last sacrament
absolved. The similitudes with which Bottinius
garlands the case aptly mark his bestial nature.
To him, 'our paragon,' as he terms Pompilia, was
an alluring, rosy daughter of Eve, Avho may easily
be forgiven, nay, applauded, for having escaped
womanhood's 'greatest sin, impudence,' though by
HI INTKODUCriONS TO THE I'OEMS. 155
the exercise of 'feint, wile, aiul trick,' viz., by
enticing an enamoured priest to her aid by mere-
tricious promises, by a process described as ' splendidly
mendacious.' The action that the Fiscal most admires
throughout the case is clearly Guido's appeal to Law,
and what he defends with perhaps his gx-eatest
ingenuity is the answer Law then delivered.
X. As soon as we open the Pope's deliberation,
we feel, in the weight and fruitfulncss of its every
word, that it is the conclusion of the whole matter.
It seems as though the fragmentary human judgments
were cleared away, while the Pope anticipates the
di\'ine view of each of the characters concerned in
the case, judging the life by the talents. Much was
given to Guido, little to Pompilia, thereby making
the one so much the more guilty, and the other so
much the more admirable. The meditation represents
the after-thoughts of the aged Pontift", who has already
inflexibly determined on confinning the legal sentence
on Guido and his accomplices. The principal note of
the Pope is his sense of responsibility, his conviction
that life is a grave, earnest aflair, a conflict to the
last, its 'business being just the terril)le choice'
between white and l)lack, any evasion of which choice
is grievous sin. Though cidm and cheerful as to his
judgment, the Pope is oppressed l)y the inmiense
gravity of the decision, this sending of five souls into
eternity ju.st bcfcjre his own. I'recedents of human
judgment are unsu.'^Uiining, the records of the Papacy
only rhronicling the cobwebs of 'infallibility.' Yet
156 BROWNING. citap.
the Pope is not disconcei^ted, nor would he be even if
the after-time proved his judgment mistaken, for he
is acting up to his light, and he knows that God
values the intention, or 'seed of act.' The truth he
has evolved painfully from the case, he holds tenaci-
ously, and that is enough for him. The Pope recog-
nises as Pompilia's peculiar grace her brave change
from endurance to resistance at the first whisper of
responsibility. What he chiefly emphasises in the evil
course of Guido is his rejection of each chance of
repentance. Stern as is the condemnation, and rueful
the outlook for Guido's futm^e, the Pope thinks it
possible that his sentence may yet save Guido's soul,
by the very suddenness of retribution. He therefore
speaks of Guido's arrest, which prevented him from
being murdered by his companions, as a mercy-stroke
of respite. Nearly half the Pope's soliloquy has
regard to the ultimate foundations of his judgment.
His responsibility is so grave that it carries his
thoughts to the first principles of his faith. He
acknowledges the doubt urged upon him by the
weakness and guilt of professed Christians, Avhereas
human nature without Christianity is capable of hero-
ism like that which he has been considering to-day,
and of belief in virtue for virtue's sake, as Euripides
testifies. The Pope meets the trial to belief which
such facts suggest and acknowledges its severity.
Yet he overbears it by the thoiight (so characteristic
of Browning, when, as in JRahhi Ben Ezra, Ferishtah,
and here, we listen to his own verifiable tones), that
I
III INTKODrcTIONS TO Till". I'OK.MS. 157
in the very weakiies.s of a rcligiuii is the greatest
incentive to love and help it —
"So, never 1 miss footing in the maze,
No, — I have light nor fear the dark ut all."
The Pope believes that eiich age has its peculiar irial,
and, through the inertness and depravity of his own
time of too assiu'ed noonday, he foresees a coming
period when 'faith in the report' will lie liravely
broken, 'through increased faith in the thing re-
]xtrted.' The somewhat fearful and aged tone that
his retiections on the future assume, presently changes
into a reiteration of his individual determination to
\ntness to the last for Christ — which witness is on
this occiision expressed by his sentence on these
piirticular malefactors. Guido's death shall fulfil the
two aspects of such punishment, and deter as well
as avenge.
XI. Guido next speaks — to the two churchmen
who have been sent to prepare him for execution.
He is no longer the Count Franceschini, wary in
defence, but a raging animal, best described by his
own word, ' wolf.' He clings with desperate cowardice
to the faint h(jpe of intercession and ici)rieve, and
therefore fawn.s, as he begins by doing, intermittently,
on his appalled friends. The horrible prospect of
the severing axe, the near moment wiien he, so alive
now, will l)e liteniUy cut oil" from among the living,
vibnitc all through the mockery and ferocity of his
language. The speech is a rift into the hell of Guido's
158 BROWNING. chap.
naked mind. He alternately pleads innocence and
guilt, provocation and irresponsible wolfishness. He
calls the Pope tlie ' murderous old man ' wlio incon-
sistently pushes a soul into perdition. He accuses
the present Cardinal and Abate, the Pope, and the
whole Christian world of being in a league of hypocrisy,
killing him because he is the one sinner among them
who has been frank. ' He will not pay religion and
morality their toll of confession. Why should he
satisfy their self-interested desire 1 Eepentance will
not save his life. At least, he will tell no lies to
please others. His last words shall be truth. The
social pact defines one man's pleasure as another's
pain. Law, therefore, prohibits undue pleasure.
Guido's life has disregarded this. He now pays for
it.' . . . 'Religion and irreligion are meaningless
and interchangeable terms. Love of life is the un-
spoken motive of everybody. Guido has recognised
no law he could not see. He has at least been
sincere, not played fast and loose with God like
these hypocrites. Because he has had the courage
of their opinions, the others have felled him in self-
defence.' . . . 'Why, among all the incredibilities
people accept, is his tale of maddened jealousy solely
disbelieved ? ' . . . ' He could not choose his tempera-
ment, his failure was a blunder, not a crime.' Guido
describes his detestation of Pompilia, of the patience,
stillness, and meekness which enraged him beyond
all other causes. Caponsacchi's name hardly occurs,
since to Guido he liad no real existence. Guido's
I
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 159
intensest hate of Pompilia is hate of her saintliness
and spiritual iiulepeiKlence of him. Her eyes haunt
him, most unbearable in their 'abnegation of revenge.'
' Pompilia and the old pretentious fools, the Compar-
inis, formed a Chimrera, kid, lion, and serpent, which
he had no peace till he slew.' Guido regards cringing
and feigning as the wisdom of the weak, just as
plaguing, browbeating, and plundering are the in-
stinct and prerogative of the strong. He loathed
Pompilia because she never cringed nor feigned.
' Guido's life has been one long warfare with humanity,
and luck has been against him just when he seemed
(at the inn, after the murder, on his Trial, with the
Pope) touching success.' . . . 'Let him die, life
would have nothing to offer.' Once more Guido
scathingly satirises his dissimulating, material age,
and then plunges frantically into the central abyss
of moral darkne-ss. The lurid gloom is almost grand.
Guido seems to shed his mean manhood, and become
an embodied hate, which may, he suggests, be yet
transformed when its uses have been exhausted. . . .
'Guido has raved because he thought they would not
slay impenitence.' Now he daslics hither and thither,
alternately begging for life and foaming at those who
Ciinnot gnint it. As his doom begins to close round
him in a])proaching steps and voices, Guido's hist
shriek gjithers up the concentrated essence of the
FninccHchini wise in one wcjrd —
" Pvinpiliii, will you lit tliLiii murder meT"
160 BROWNING. chap.
XII. In The Book and the Ring, Browning winds
up the loose threads that remain. Details of Guido's
execution, aftermath of opinions, and the survivors'
subsequent dealings, each after his kind, are given.
Some of these are contributed as by private corre-
spondents, two of whom, Arcangeli and the Fisc, are
familiar to us. Browning veritably found the gi^ound-
work of their letters in the old Book. We learn
from one that the ' poor Count's ' end evinced the
decorum and piety of most reported executions. The
writers unite in misjudging ' old Somebody,' as the
Pope is nicknamed. Bottini encloses in his letter a
paragraph from the sermon of Brother Celestine,
Pompilia's last confessor. The extract is a comment
on the seeming rule of Avrong, and the weakness,
which, even more than Avickedness, falsifies fact.
Though the Augustinian's summary of human affiiirs
is apparently mournful, it really belongs to Brown-
ing's entire view, implicitly strongest in The Ring and
the Booh, that life is a paradox, and that probation
and postponement are the earth's most valid words.
Browning's ultimate hopefulness is not clouded by
the perplexities of Pompilia's story. It is only
tempered to the range and depth of its subject, life,
across whose worst welter Browning still detects
God's hand, in ' accident ' or human service, just, and
only just, upholding the earnest believer. As in life
itself, there are so many lessons in The Ring and the
Book that it seems artificial and futile to emphasise
one above another. It is enough that Caponsacchi
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. IGl
and Pompilia and the Pope rise, while Guido falls.
In Browning's wise words —
*' it is the glory and good of Art,
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking trutii,"
because
"Art may tell a truth
Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought."
Balaustion's Adventure ; including a Trans-
script from Euripides, 1871 (Vol. XI.), is a me-
morial of that affectionate preference for Euripides,
shared by Mr. and Mrs. Browning, and already partly
explained in a passage in 'The Pope.' Euripides'
himianity and pathos appealed to Mrs. Browning, as
the motto of JJalaustion's Adventure, taken from her
I fine of Cyprus, indicates, and a congeniality exists
between Browning and Euripides as poets, for the
last of the three Greek tragedians was, like Brown-
ing, not only an innovator and an extender of bound
in art, but a poet of ' hard matter and harsh manner,'
and a lover of colloquial phrase. The Transcript is
a tran-slation of that most touching story, the Alkestis,
interspersed with Browning's explanations of the
characters. An ethical exhibition of the subject is
thus interwoven with Euripides' dramatic coUocpiies,
while Browning's comments are dramatised in form
by being put into the mouth (jf an imaginary Greek
reciter of the play. Thi.s is Balau.stion, a Kliodiaii
maiden, who intnxluces her recitation of Alki'slis by
narrating her 'Adventure' to f<jur Athenian friends.
162 BROWNING. chap.
She describes how her love and retention of Euri-
pides' poetry saved her life and the lives of a whole
ship's crew the year after the disastrous Syracusan
expedition of Nikias. A sudden wind drove the
Kaunian ship upon the hostile coast of Sicily, and
the Syracusans would have forced it back to be the
prey of a pursuing pirate-bark, had not the 'lyric
girl ' undertaken to save her companions by repeating
to the Syracusans the tragedy of Alkestis, as she
remembered hearing it in the theatre at Kameiros.
The verisimilitude of the ' Adventure ' is founded
on Plutarch's Life of Nikias, where the episode of
the saving of a crew by the power of Euripides'
poetry is given. The Sicilian Greeks were known to
be athirst to hear more of the new poet, and merciful
to such of their prisoners as could recite any frag-
ments from him.
In thinking of Browning as a translator of Alkestis,
we have to think of the modern spirit, with its ob-
stinate questionings, set to work upon the most
perplexing of ancient stories. There is a deep
problem in the strange correlation of its characters,
a problem which Euripides states and does not solve.
We have to imagine how the mystery and anguish of
Alkestis writhed in Browning's mind as he mused on
the tale till he felt compelled to probe its signifi-
cance as well as translate its words. Then, probably,
the recollection of Plutarch's sympathetic legend
came to him, and in the eager jind tender ' Wild-
pomegranate-flower ' be found an artistic means for
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE TOEMS. 163
his own commentary on Alkestis, Admctos, and
Herakles. The stx)ry of the self - immolating vriio,
who consents to die in the place of her cowardly
husband, and is rescued from Hades by Herakles in
gi-atitude for the hospitality of Admetos, has been
ti-ansformed and conformed to conventional ideas by
many a modern poet. While their Admetos is di-
vested of definiteness in order to divert attention from
his baseness, their Alkestis becomes blindly worship-
ful of the ignoble husband who lets her die for him.
This rose-water Alkestis is a phantasm compared
\vith the intensely real, intensely moving Alkestis
of Euripides, who consents to sacrifice herself, but
whose love for Admetos freezes in the act, and whose
last words, so self -measuring, austere, and joyless,
ignore his fluent lamentations, and solely regard the
future she may well fear for her children. It would
seem as though Euripides, true to his age, neither
sought nor cared to seek any solution of the ques-
tions that his heart-aching story would call up to a
modem writer who attempted to represent so daring
a sul)ject. That ineffable disdain for Admetos, how
is it to be forgotten in the restored life of Alkestis 1
What is the strange irony whereby Herakles wrests
Alkestis from Death, not because of his admira-
tion of her heroism, but because Admetos had the
courteous self-control to let him feast in his palace
while ho and his people were mourning? browning's
courageous intellect attempts t<» bridge the moral
chasm between the husband and wife by making
164 BROWNING. chap.
Alkestis the stoiy of the development of a soul in
Admetos. Three-fourths of the Balaustion-Browning
commentary trace the gradual awakening of Admetos,
by means of loneliness and loss, to be a worthier
companion of the restored Alkestis. Euripides, in-
deed, superficially brings this about. But, with him,
the repentance of Admetos is little better than an
increasing self-pity, a growing sense that what with
the taunts of enemies and the widowed halls, his
lot is harder than to have died. Browning makes
much of the bitter altercation between Admetos and
Pheres, but, while to Euripides Pheres' thrusts only
represent to his son the world's scorn of him, to
Browning the scene is instrumental in the regenera-
tion of Admetos, through holding up the mirror of
sarcasm to his selfishness, as it is hardened and grown
shameless in his father. So, too, Browning indicates
the ennoblement of Admetos as complete before
Herakles re-appears with the veiled lady, so that
the demigod's temptations do not try him, but solely
prove him to his -wife. Browning does more for
Admetos than Euripides did, more, probably, than
reality would do. His idea is beautiful and modern,
but it misses the unspeakable tragicalness of the
original. Not satisfied even with his regenerated
Admetos, Browning, at the end of his re-presentation
of the Greek drama, draws a nobler husband, a happier
Alkestis. But the aspiration goes to ground. We
feel that it is intangible and that such a delineation
would not, like that other sterner story, have out-
in INTRODUCTIONS TO THE TOEMS. ItJo
lived two thousiind years. Browning diminislics
what is so characteristic of the Greek drama, its
arbitrariness, which probably reconciled the com-
paratively primitive Euripides to his mournful
tragedy of marriage, in which moral feebleness
muixlers its mate, who dies willingl}*, and yet in an
anguish of open-eyed and despairing contempt.
Euripides' Herakles is idealised by Browning. The
jo\ial giant, glad to help an entertainer, and as glad
of the wine-cup, is essentially Euripidean, and the
scene of Herakles' carousal has been considered
suflBcient to label Alkestis as the satyric drama of a
tetralogy. But the "winning Helper of Browning is
altogether a higher-hearted being, and the compara-
tive slightness of his motive for restoring Alkestis is
overpowered by the pas.siiges of admiration with
which Browning irradiates the speeches and doings
of the man - God. Indeed, Browning's treatment
adumbrates the Christian idea rather than fuses ^^^th
the Greek.
The divergences between Browning and Euripides
are cumulative, for what is pure translation in the
poem is literally faithful, though occasionally the
translating words are just sufficiently tinged by
Browning's interpreUition of the characters to unite
the interludes artistically with the conversjitions. The
result of this comp(jund of the two poets of the
ancient and mfxlern world, each so strongly idiosyn-
cratic, is one of the most interesting and significant
contrasts in literature. Each jjoet steals from and
166 BROWNING. chap.
gives to the other, Browning catching from Euripides
his pathos and simplicity, and Euripides gaining from
Browning ratiocination and a profounder beauty.
Browning's rendering of AUcestis is the greatest enrich-
ment that ancient literature has received from modern.
Prince Hohenstiel - Schwangau, Saviour of
Society, 1871 (Vol. XL), is a casuistical study from
within of Napoleon III., who was one of those moral
failures which so much interested Browning's forsenic
mind. Browning considers him a delinquent, but
one who, like Sludge and Blougram, shall not be
condemned unheard. This work is Louis Napoleon's
imaginary Ajjology for his life, and is principally
interesting in evincing Browning's sympathy with
every phase of thought and feeling. The monologue
is a difficult one on account of its shifting stand-
points. It is further complicated by sharing the
speciousness of its imaginary speaker, by holding in
solution Browning's real opinion on the case, and
by the presence to the reader of a third figure, the
historical Louis Napoleon. The naiTation is matched
by its circumstances. Thus, the entire piece may be
taken as the Emperor's soliloquy as he sits smoking
in the Tuileries, through the small hours, sometime
in the sixties. He has been debating whether to
dispatch a courier Avith a letter to his ' Cousin-Duke '
(' Plon-Plon,' perhaps). Meanwhile, he amuses him-
self by uttering, in dream shape, a defence of his
life-work. This defence takes the circumstantial
form of being addressed to some female haunter of
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 107
Leicester Square, as he sits with her over tai and
cigars — a confused, inconseqiient repetition of his
earlier English exile. The fact that it is a waking
dream, that ' Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau ' is really
in his 'Residenz,' and only fancying himself in
London, is not stated till the end. ' Prince Hohen-
stiel - Schwangau's ' forgetfidness and mistakes in
names and the mixture of circumstances are signi-
ficant of the sul»joct of the work and the manner in
which that subject is treated. Browning almost, but
not quite, allows us to tivke ' Prince Hohenstiel-
Schwangau's ' apology seriously, and it is a curious
fact that, when the book came out, one of the first-
class reviews blamed Browning for bolstering up state
charlatanism. Otherwise, it scarcely need be said
that Browning in no wise whitewashes the temporis-
ing, unprincipled p»jlicy of the Second Empire when
he gives the special pleading by which its head may
be imagined to vindicate it. The manifest sophistry
and inadequacy of the plea are its strongest con-
demnation, and are so expressed by Browning, not
explicitly, but dramatically, according to his wont.
' Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau ' unfolds the doctrine
of expediency, tries to make it appear the best thing
possible, and fails. F(jr clearness, we may divide
J'rince Jlohenstiel-Sdiuangau into two parts. Part the
first (pp. 125-173) gives the grounds of the actual
pcjlicy of Louis Napoleon, according to himself, i.e.
to Browning's Ixjuis Napoleon. ' Piince Hohenstiel-
Schwangau ' first defends his aim, the sustaiiiinont or
168 BROWNING. chap.
' saving ' of society. He is a practical man, professing
a religion which he vaunts as eminently workable.
He endeavours to prove that, in his special case, the
' means ' taken were left to his private inclination,
provided that he attained God's ' end.' He does not
pretend to be one of earth's finest minds, his ' mission '
consisted in utilising his peculiar gift of making the
best of what is. Great reformers are for great
crises, but society's conservators or ' saviours ' are
invaluable in other times. 'Prince Hohenstiel-
Schwangau ' has balanced people's opposing tendencies
for, say, twenty years, for he chiefly reverenced
human life. Browning takes this opportunity of
satirising the last stanzas of Childe Harold, and
declares that the greatest nature is human nature.
'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau ' enlarges on the ad-
vantages of imperfection, here almost identifying the
defence with Bro'vvning's direct philosophy. Perhaps
the adaptability of his own ideas, even in a travestied
form, to Louis Napoleon's apology drew Browning
to the character he is delineating. Life is too short
for theories, pursues 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.'
Fourierism, Comtism, Kantism need a life a century
long. A tinkering policy is best suited to life's
average length. There was a time — when he was
' voice and nothing more ' — w^hen he, too, breathed
lofty aspirations, such as the deliverance of Ital}^
and a democratic internal policy. He was censured
for abandoning these, but it was his conviction
that feeding the hungry is the essence of govern-
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 169
ment that made him subordinate every thing else.
Here Browning touches on Louis Napoleon's best
trait, his apparently genuine care for the poor.
* Prince Hoheiistiel - Schwangau ' acknowledges that
he only ministered to the nuiltitudinous bodies ; he
let the individual souls alone, except so far as to
keep the peace between them. At the conclusion
of this first part of the defence, Louis Napoleon
pauses, perceiving how entirely he has made his
account redqund to his own credit. Ostensibly to
balance this, really to defend himself anew, this
time obliquely, he proposes giving a fictitious auto-
biography, according to the Thiers-Hugo school of
iiistory. This shall represent him as embracing the
fine aims and doing the gi-and things Avhich he is
censured for not having embraced and done. It
shall also disiirm the critics of his actual life by
intimating the equal obloqu}' that would be heaped
upon this imaginary ' Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau '
for being true to an impracticable idciil. 'Prince
I lohenstiel-Schwangau ' actually acted, on the other
hand, according to ' Sagacity,' and Avas condemned in
the spirit of his idealised self. Part the second.
Louis Napoleon describes his accession as it might
have been, and how, had lie spared the Caiip (TEtnt,
he would have been blamed for doing so. He
imagines what would have been the criticism passed
up<jn him had he estiiblished free Rome by the force,
not of the sword, but of public opinion, lb' (It-scribes
how he (in his might-have-been charactci) lioldly
170 BROWNING. chap.
forbade France (' Hohenstiel-Schwangau ') its trucu-
lent joy in fighting, and kept it quiet, not by pretence
of preparation for war, and so forth, but by refusing
the iniquity of causeless bloodshed. In a fine passage
(p. 197), Browning lauds the 'magnetic race' of
France. ' Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau ' pleads his
acceptance of righteous warfare, and gives a favour-
able sketch of his disinterestedness in the Italian
undertaking. He hints that France would not have
supported him without the cession of Savoy and
Nice. He indulges in a final imaginative flight of
patriotism in the reasons he might have alleged for
refusing to have his child declared his successor.
At this point, the reverie is dispersed. The ' perora-
tion ' contains what are perhaps the sincerest words
yet spoken, in Louis Napoleon's expression of dis-
satisfaction both with his life and with its dubious
justification.
Fifine at the Fair, 1872 (Vol. XL), amid its con-
geries of fancies and opinions, has two prominent
themes, the value of falseness or transitoriness, and
the ideal meaning of marriage. These themes re-
spectively reach the height of their expression in
section cxxiv. and sections xliii., xliv. The tone
of intimacy which the poem possesses makes it
delightful reading to those who love Browning's mind
almost more than his art. Here, and in Red Cotton
Night-Cap Country, the poet seems to take his readers
into his confidence, seems to say to them : Be my
friends. As in Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, and other
I
in INTRODUCTIONS TO TlIK I'OE.MS. 171
works, an apparently capricious and remote choice of
sultject brings Browning round to those truths Avhich
he loves to dwell on and to illustrate in a hundred
ways. The dithcult}' of Fijine at (he Fair lies in the
bhuring of outline between its imaginary speaker,
'Don Juan's,' words of sophistry and Browning's
words of truth. Browning does not defend unlimited
experiment in love, though that is the application
forced by Don Juan out of the principle that souls
reach truth through falsity, and the knowledge of
the permanent through the fleeting. When the
monologue touches on principles, we have Browning
and truth, when it applies those principles to the
circumstiinces of its supposed speaker, we have per-
version. The poem is primarily dramatic, but over
and above its artistically complete characterisation
and story, it gives Browning's explanation — a pro-
found and acquiescent one — of life's law of change
and inc(jmpleteness. Fifine contains perhaps a greater
wealth of variegated imagery than any other work
of Browning's, while its rare and fascinating versifica-
tion, its sparkling sea-side air, and its passages of
impassioned imagination atone for its excessive
involution.
The Frolvgui; with its brine and sunshine, is a
fable of poetry as life's mimicry of inunortality —
" Unable to fly, one swims ! "
It also foreshcjws a husband and wife's separation by
dcatij. which we recognise, when we tome to the
172 BROWNING. chap.
Epilogue, as binding together the three portions of
the poem by their deepest idea, the lastingness of
love. The extract from Moliere, giving a wife's
pungent suggestion to her inconstant husband of
the line his defence should take, strikes the key-note
of Fifine at the Fair, on its dramatic side. Browning's
' Don Juan ' founds his plea for an extended experience
with regard to women on the assumption that such
experience is purely intellectual, and enhances, not
deposes, the wife. He addresses his closely knit
argument in defence of this position to Elvire, his
wife (who is a little faded and past her prime), during
an autumn evening's ramble at Pornic in Brittany.
' Don Juan ' is a man of extreme aesthetic impressi-
bility, a warm admirer of opposed types of woman-
hood. His intellect is as subtilising as his senses
are inflammable, and he uses its refinements to try
and deceive his tearful, true wife and himself as to
the direction of his interest in the saucy dancer,
Fifine, who has just arrived at Pornic, with a caravan,
for the Fair, and whom he sees for the first time.
He imagines and formulates Elvire 's objections to his
dangerous marital theory, and combats them. Dram-
atically, the monologue is Don Juan's unconscious
expression of the bohemian impulse, the occasional
desire for chance and change which lurks in every
breast. Starting from a sympathising vindication
of the gipsy vagrants' cherished lawlessness, he soon
reaches the real secret of his interest in the troupe,
the allurement of the girl in tights and spangles,
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 173
Fifine. He gives brilliant sketches of four typical
women, Helen, Cleopatra, El\-ire, and Fitine, basing
the claim of the last on her negation of claim. Tliat
frankness, which she has, even in fraud, Don Juan
later declares to be the inmost charm of the actor
class to which she belongs. He pacifies Ehire by
comparing her to his Rafael, Fifine to a picture-book
of Dor6's. He loves the peerless possession none the
less that he amuses himself with the picture-book,
which, at an alarm of fire, he woidd throw away,
rushing to save his treasure. Having worked him-
self back into an enthusiasm for ' the wondrous wife,'
he defends the philosophical truth of the assertion
that beauty is in the eyes of the seer, by affinning
that it is so because love is the archetypal Art, sup-
plementing and repairing the short-comings and de-
fects of its subject, and discerning its secret beauty.
(Browning here branches into the Platonic theory
of souls seeking their complementary souls.) This
fructification of the lover's soul from the soul of the
beloved produces a new reality for the lover, who is
the sculptor, not of marble or clay, but of life. The
lover gets an absolute gain, of beauty from deformity,
of completeness from what was previously only sugges-
tion. In the fact of this gain, or rather cieation.
Browning finds the sign-manual of immortiility written
un love. He looks forward to a future when the soul
of the loved one tshall be consciously dowered with
the cxperienc(! gained in the individual life of the
other .soul. liutiian beings' eflorts and progress may
174 BROWNING. chap.
to themselves seem self-kindled and self-centred, but
are really incited by, and move towards, their lode-
stars, the complementary souls. Elvira's objection
that this fine talk about minds and souls covers an
unconfessed interest in a certain fleshly sheath is
replied to by her husband thus : ' People have to live
in earthly falseness (which Fifine typifies) just as a
swimmer buoys himself in water, which, were he
submerged, would drown him. Truth is as vital to
the soul as air to the swimmer, but just as flying is
not adapted to man as he now is, so truth undiluted
is impossible in the present state. The impulse to
reach truth and air is necessary to life.' So far the
parallel is honest, but when Don Juan proceeds to
prove all experience, moral or otherwise, equally
valuable to the soul's progress, he is in the sophistical
region, and Browning stands aside. The sea simile
concludes by making fun of the meaning and grammar
of a passage in Childe Harold, and ridiculing Byron
and his imitators for their exaltation of inanimate
nature. 'Elvire may doubtless ask why women,
not men, are to be her husband's educators.' Don
Juan's reply, with its double pair of similitudes,
contains the finest poetry in the work, notably in
Ixxiii., and in the comparison of women to the
self -forgetting, generous dolphins in the legend of
Arion. ' Elvire perhaps wonders why she, avowedly
her husband's Best, cannot suffice him.' 'Because,'
he ingeniously replies, ' the Fifines, like crank boats,
teach ' seamanship ' better than safe and steady ships.
in INTKODITTIOXS TO THE I'OEMS. 175
Life is a tri.il of strength, whence truth is wrested by
practice Avith the false.' Ten lines from the third of
the First Book of the Odes of Horace are translated
here (Ixxxii.) Don Juan attributes the drift of
all he has hitherto said to a dream he had in the
morning, after playing Schumann, while the music
itself atioitls him another instance of the permanence
within change which is the law of art and life. He
dreamed he was gazing down upon a Carnival of
masks, some representing animals, some the hideous-
ness of ignoble Age, or Youth Avithout promise, and
some, the overweening propensity which obliterates
every other trait in its possessor. Then he descended
among the masks to find their aggressive brutality
soften down on closer inspection. He found some-
thing to sympathi.se Anth, even to admire, in those
' safeguards ' of the outward men which, at a distance,
had seemed repulsive. So far the ' dream ' might well
be Browning's own, but Don Juan adds the inevitable
touch of sophistry by emphasising anew the value of
every experience, inasmuch as self-knowledge is only
learned through acquaintince with different Iteings.
(Of course he is indirectly excusing his interest in
Fifine.) In his dream he next saw the houses,
temples, and domes dissolve, signifying to him the
evanescent chanicter of creeds, philosophies, and arts.
After variou.s transmutations, the buildings died into
a great, gatuit Dniid monument, such as exists at
Pomic. To Browning, the monument .symboli.scs the
objective Truth and Prnnanencc which humanity
176 BROWNING. chap.
is meant to reach, through those very ' shows of sense,'
which, each promising to be true and proving false,
are the education which the soul— itself true and
permanent — must pass through in order to arrive
finally at its proper resting-place. The allusion to
the Prometheus of ^schylus, in cxxv., whimsically
compares Fifine to the Daughters of Ocean, who
solaced the chained Titan, In cxxix., Don Juan
overturns his sophistries by enunciating that " incon-
stancy means raw," that " love ends where love began,"
and that
' ' The wanderer brings home no profit from his quest
Beyond the sad surmise that keeping house were best
Could life begin anew."
A less di-amatic writer might have ended his work
here. Not so Browning, cxxxi. prepares us for
an anticlimax, which comes in the revelation of a
private understanding between the husband and
Fifine. There is something half pathetic in the con-
trast between Don Juan's last bit of philosophy and
his practice. If nothing else had done so, this appro-
priate conclusion would prove the fallacy of his
argument so far as he applied it to the justification
of disloyalty. The event and its sequel are sketchily
indicated in the Epilogue, which represents the hus-
band deprived of the wife he was unworthy of, but
rejoined to her in death by the very persistence of
the love which, in life, he had exalted in word and
outraged in deed.
Ill INTRODUCTION'^! TO THE POEMS. 177
Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, or, Turf and
Towers. 1873 (Vol. XII.), is as many-sided as its
maker. According as we regard it, it is a sensational
novel in verse, a study of one of the anachronisms of
our century's religious transition, a realistic revela-
tion of the strange workings of certain hearts, or a
delightfully roundabout book. In any case, it is a
powerfid, wholly unconventional instiince of Brown-
ing's dramatic genius, which here invests with thought
and feeling a painfid story, that was tried, under the
name of the Mellerio-Debacker case, in 1872, in the
Coiui. of Caen. The early part and the close of Eed
Cotton Nifjlit-Cap Country owe their chatty, familiar
tone to the fact that the well-known writer, then
Miss Annie Thackeray, is the story's special recipient.
We learn from the poem that at ' Saint Kambert '
(really Saint Aubin) on the Norman coast, where they
both were in the summer of 1872, a pleasant strife
arose between the poet and his friend as to vhether the
district was completely fitted by the appellation which
Miss Thackeray playfully gave it, of ' White Cotton
Night-Cap Coiuitry.' Browning characteristically in-
sisted that some ' Kcd,' sin's tragic hue, Indeed even
in that land of drowsy -head. For some time, he
plays at di-sappointing his listener's anticipation of
any specific scarlet, thereby awakening a keener
expectancy of it. When it comes, we find that the
grounds for his obstinate assertion that tho ' tragic
bit of Kcd ' could be extracted from the apparently
hum<lnim somnolency of that particular cunor of
N
178 BROWNING. chap.
France were, truly, not far to seek. In April, 1870,
a curious death had occurred at Tailleville, near Saint
Aubin. Monsieur Mellerio, a Parisian ex-goldsmith,
son of a Southern father and French mother, had
mounted to the Belvedere of his chdteau, having been
previously heard to say that ' angels would take him,'
had plunged into the air, and, falling on the turf
below, had been killed instantly. His wealth was
left to the Church, with a life -interest to Madame
Debacker, his seventeen - years' companion. The
cousins of the deceased attempted to wrench away
the property, on the plea that Mellerio was insane
when he made the will, and under Madame Debacker's
influence. The public disasters of 1870 postponed
the lawsuit, which Avas only settled in July, 1872.
The verdict quashed the cousins' grievance, leaving
the property, as willed, to the Church, and to the
lady, sometime adventuress, who had so long lived
with the late Mellerio, and whose absolute fidelity
had only teen equalled by his to her. Many facts
of Mellerio's life came out in the trial, some ugly,
and one horrible yet almost grand. This Avas the
incident of his burning off his hands to the wrists to
' purify bis past,' and to express his remorse for his
mother's death, which he had been made to believe
his profligacy and extravagance had induced. These
facts (waich most writers would have considered too
strange for fiction) Browning pondered, till he was
able to spell out an answer to the enigma, and to
realise, and pronounce sane, a man who could live
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE TOEMS. 179
in avowed sin ^^•ith a woman not his wiie, and yet
entertain the childish ignorance of imagining that
the Virgin would suspend gi-avitation for his special
assurance of her omnipotence and grace. It should
be mentioned that Mellerio, on the day of his death,
had evidently expected that a miracle would be
worked in his favour by one of the three wonder-
working images of France, La Ddivrandc, whose church
and establishment were two miles from Tailleville.
The only difference between the statements of the poem
and what appeared in the actual evidence consists in
an unimportant diversity of dates, and an entire
change of the names, both of persons and places, Paris
and the coast of Normandy alone remaining intact.
Red Cotton Night-Cap Country is so much the most
quickly read of BroA\Tiing's longer works, and is
so rapidly comprehensible that it is needless to
retrace its successive stages here. In it. Browning
shows himself for the first time mindful of the
novelist's art of stimulating curiosity to the end.
The two images of the title round off and illustrate
every incident and reflection. Almost as frequent
are the references to gems, lapidaries' similes which
befit the ex- jeweller's story. The idea of ' turf and
towers,' Ijcsides its manifest suitability to the catas-
trophe between the garden and the Belvedere,
continuoasly points a moral. As the poem proceeds,
the metaphor grows into an elab(»rate allegory, side
by side with the story. 'Turf symbolises self-
indulgence and wrong-doing, while by 'towere' is
180 BROWNING. chap.
signified the life of duty. The towers, ' outline sad,
severe,' look forbidding enough in youth, when the
necessity for soldier-like manning of their ramparts
seems (as low-minded religious teachers would leave
men to infer) fifty years distant. For the present, at
all events, it is pleasanter to erect a tent or pavilion
on the tempting turf, for, doubtless, the towers
can be mounted later. The 'tent' represents the
fatal course of compromise, or 'general utility,'
which that devil-saint, Sganarelle,^ is always ready
to recommend to any one who will listen. ' L^once
Miranda ' (Mellerio) began life by trying to shrewdly
balance God and sin. It is needless to say that he
failed in the endeavour. The second half of his
life was spent in attempting to unite God and sin,
and to compound for guilt by penances. Because
'Clara Muhlhausen' (Madame Debacker) was a
divorced wife, 'Miranda' was too devout a son of
the Church to marry her, though he transgressed a
plainer law than the Church's by living with her with-
out marriage. His religion was a superstition, as his
Divinity was a ' Queen of Angels ' in lace and crown.
Still, it personified conscience to him, and it was
not his credulity, but his half-hearted action, that
wrecked him morally. The sublime bit of his life
was when he threw himself, his struggling and
unsatisfied conscience, his doubt, and the doubt
of the world upon the supernatural being whom he
had never succeeded in realising sufficiently, and,
^ See Moliere's Bon Juan, and other plays.
Ill IXTRODUCTIOXS TO THE TOEMS. 181
with a passionate appeal for acceptance, put his trust
and the power of 'The Bm^issante' (La Ddiirande)
to the test. In Browning's eyes, the deed was not
religious mania, but perfectly reasonable. Given
the belief, or half-belief, which was all that Miranda's
foolish head could hold, and there was something
heroic in risking his life on the promise of its
efficacy. Just because such a distracted deed, such
a folly, was possible. Browning pronounces the
religion which incited it, though 'decomposing,'
dangerous still, not, as some say, an extinct bug-
bear. This is the explanation of the allegory of
'the partial-ruin,' which Browning uses early in the
poem. He coimsels the timely demolition of what-
ever threatens to fall on any \\\\r\g head, letting the
picturesqueness of the 'ruins' be a secondary con-
sideration. The reactionary wave of Catholicism,
so perceptible in France in the early seventies, doubt-
less accentuated Browning's animadversion. At the
same time, it would be grotesquely untrue to regard
Red Cotton Night-Cap Country as principally a protest
against Romanism. To Browning, the worst e^^l
doers of the story are not the foolish thinkers, but
those, the ' Parish-priest ' and the ' Mother of the Con-
vent' of 'The liavissante' who condoned ' Miranda'.s '
sin for the sake of his oflerings. The mother of
Leonce, 'Madame Miranda,' is likewise condemned
for countenancing that most pernicious rule of life,
'general utility.' Browning only judges 'Miranda'
and his poor, l>roken life from ' Miranda's ' own st<uid-
182 BROWNING. chap.
point. It is not because lie mistook ' The Bavissante '
for God, and ' Clara ' (Madame Debacker) for love's
representative, but because lie tried to compromise
between, and, tbat failing, to unite immorality and
religion that he is found wanting. ' Clara ' is a less
vivid shape to Browning's readers than the feminine
'Miranda,' though Browning himself regards her
parasitic character as the more readily definable.
She is a third-rate figure of steel coated with wax.
'Miranda' was constant to his love, generous, and,
at least, distinguished from his mediocre mental
equals by carrying out his fatuous logic to the point
of burning off his hands in expiation, of leaping
from a tower to testify and assure his faith.
The characters of the story, which at first sight
may seem tawdry, and certainly do not rise to heroic
simplicity, aptly represent something of the compli-
cated and dim uneasiness prevalent in the age
to which they belong. Still, there lingers the im-
pression of a kind of sophism about the work, a
making of the artistic worse appear the better, a
■wilful choice of inferiorities, much as though the
glorious creativeness of Caponsacchi and Fompilia
Avere deliberately wasted on the composition of a
Eing and the Book in which Pietro and Violante
Comparini should figure as protagonists.
Aristophanes' Apology; including a Trans-
cript from Euripides; being the Last Adventure
of Balaustion, 1875 (Vol. XIII.), is, like the poem
to which it is in part a sequel, largely in honour of
in IXTKODL'CTIONS TO THE POEMS. 183
the thiixl great Attic tragedian. Nino years have
passed since Rilaustion saved her life and gained
lier husband by reciting Alh'siis from the steps of
the Herakheum at Syracuse. The Peloponnosian
War is over, and Athens' Long Walls have been
razed, to the sound of joyful music. Rilaustion
and her husband, Euthukles, are sorrowfully quitting
the ' detid ' city of their adoption, the city of the
poet who links them to the divine. At every sunset-
close, as the galley beiirs them to Ehodes, Euthukles
writes from Balaustion's dictation her memorial of
Athens, and of its best friend, Euripides. Balaustion
cannot awake her memories without associatinii
them with a discourse, cognate to their subject,
that took place a year earlier between herself and
Aristophanes. That discourse she will revive, for
it is significant now that it ciin be interpreted by
the light of subsequent events.
Another story from Plutarch is embedded in tin's
second record of Biilaustion. The Phokian, mentioned
in the Life of Lysander as having averted the
demolition of Athens by recalling to the Spartans
a Chorus from Em-ipides' Ebklm, is assumed to be
Balaustion's husband. Indeed, this sequel to Balans-
(ion's Adventure is so adroitly founded on historical
facts, that its art seems nature, and the result an
inevitiible coincidence «if the story of declining
Athens with B;ilau.sti(jn, aiul nf l)()th with Euripides.
All things that make for vcrisinnlitudc seem to have
worked together for Browning in this setting of his
184 BROWNING. chap.
translation of Herahles Mainomenos. 'Setting,' how-
ever, is too subordinate a term to describe Browning's
surrounding of Euripides' tragedy, so strenuous and
organic is 'Aristophanes' Apology' and the later
experience of Balaustion, the one as virile and
intellectual as the other is lyric and womanly.
The 'Last Adventure of Balaustion' was her
hearing of ' Aristophanes' Apology,' and occurred on
this wise. One night, a year before Aigispotamoi
(I follow Browning's spelling in order to act as a
finger-post to the poem), Aristophanes and his rabble
rout had burst into Balaustion's quiet home. It had
been the day of the representation of Aristophanes'
ThesmopJioriazusce, parodying and ridiculing Euiipides,
and also the day when the news reached Athens of
Euripides' death in Macedonia. Balaustion was
known to be the tragedian's most prominent admirer
in Athens, and Aristophanes, flown with wine, had
been struck, after his triumph -night feast at the
State's expense, with the idea of half insolently, half
sympathetically, calling upon Euripides' spiritual
executrix, the cloud left rosy with the departed
sunset of the poet. Intrusions upon household
privacy were frequent in Athens, and we need only
turn to the interruption and conclusion of Plato's
' Banquet ' to find what perhaps supplied the hint for
the mise en schie and theme of Aristophanes^ Apology.
Abashed by the purity and severity of the Ehodian
wife, chorus, choragus, flute-boys, and dancing-girls
slink away, leaving the Wine-lees-poet alone with his
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. IS'.
hosts. There ensues a long conversation, which is for
many pages Ari.stophanes' defence of his comedies,
and afterwards Balaust ion's refutation of each of liis
arguments. Challenged to defend her poet, Balaustion
knows no better way than, following an example set
by Sophokles, to read aloud the autograph work
Euripides gave her, which she and Euthukles wore
about to have read in commemoration, not vindica-
tion, had not Aristophanes broken in upon the rite.
Aristophanes' better nature is for the second time
evoked, and he comments, after the reading, on the
ditTerence between himself and Euripides, in a graver
mood than he has hitherto assumed. The ground of
his defence broadens and, for that very reason,
becomes even more sophistical. He tries to quiet
the still, small voice by asserting that artistic perfec-
tion surpasses elevation of character, and that he did
well to perfect his own bent — as if he had not culti-
vated a bent towards muck and mire and towards
' taking stand on lower ground than truth ' ! Ilis
moral baseness, not the limitation of his genius, is the
cause of Balaustion's quarrel against him. The bur-
lesque vein presently reasserts itself, though not
before he has improvised a rhapsodical chant, almost
the one touch in Browning's Aristoi)hanes of that
Shelley -like sensibility to beauty which is as marked
a characteristic of the teacher of the Clouds as his
ribaldry and scurrility. Through the lyric words
breaks, with a strong rebouml, Aristophanes' intense
sense of the ludicrous, that es.sentially Aristophanic
186 BROWNING.
CHAP.
quality which Browning ahnost sinks in the earlier part
of the Apology, when Aristophanes is pressing upon
hostile auditors his demand to be taken seriously.
The triumph of the poem is its imaginative creation
of the man, Aristophanes. Browning is as true to the
extant comedies and the references of contemporaries
as to his own conception and his prejudice against the
lampooner of Euripides. Every page of the Apology
is saturated with references to the plots, characters,
and mud-pellets of Aristophanes' works. ^ That
laughing-stock, Euripides according to the comedies,
with the caricatured lines
My tongue hath sworn — my mind remains unsworn ^
and
Who knows if Life is Death . . .
And Death is Life ? ^
appears throughout the Apology side by side with the
true shape of the retired, ascetic poet, who so much
exasperated his reviler by not noticing his abuse.
The poem is full of contrasts, — between the baldhead
bard and austere Balaustion, between the heroic
simplicity of Herakles and the sophistical complexities
of the 'Apology,' between the two methods, comic
and tragic — opposed systems of working for the social
benefit by depicting the lofty or making game of the
vile, between Aristophanes' attacks on Euripides as
1 The volume on Aristophanes in Ancient Classics for English
Readers is helpful towards understanding many of the allusions.
^ Cp. Eur. Hippolytus, 608-612 with Aris. Thesmojjhoriazusce,
275 and Frogs, 101, i02, and 1471.
^ Cp. Eur. Polyidus, fr. 639, and Phrixus, fr. 830 with Aris.
Frogs, 1082 and 1477.
Ill INTRODUCTIOXS TO THE POEMS. 187
Athens' enemy and the comment thereupon aflbrded b}'
the fact that a line from Euripides saved the Akropolis,
■while to the music of Aristophanes' chorus the Piraniu
bulwarks were demolished. A deeper contrast lies in
the universal meaning of the poem behind its elabo-
rate delineation of Athenian life. It is focused in
that brilliant illustration from the game of kottabos
(pp. 232, 233) which represents the conflict between
idealism and naturalism, between moral selection and
all-inclusive experience. The vitality of the poem
is not to be found in its welding of scholarship with
imagination, nor even in its creation of Balaustion,
Pompilia's kinswoman and the most cultivated heroine
in literature, but in Browning's contribution through
it to the eternal debate : Shall flesh rule me 1 or
spirit and flesh alternately? or together? or shall
spirit rule flesh? On the artistic side. Browning
sympathises with Aristophanes' defence; on the
moral side, he vividly realises his position ; and he
yearns, like his own Euripides, towards the degraded
Titan with his inextinguishable genius. Yet what
the argument, nothing if not ethical, actually resolves
itself into is, on Aristophanes' side, pleas, which he
feels to be dubious, for his lies, bestialities, and deter-
mination to raise a laugh at no matter whom nor at
what expense, and, on Balaustion'.s, a confutation of
Aristophanes by comparing him with Eurijjides, and a
confutation of his pleas, which is focused in the lines —
"know, — worst soplii-stry
Is when man'n own soul plays ita own self false."
188 BROWNING. chap.
In Aristophanes^ Apology, as elseAvhere, we find how
simple is the. substructure of Browning's most laby-
rinthine edifices. His art is so much more complicated
than his philosophy.
Rerakks is as much a sequel to Alkestis as is
Balaustion's later adventure to her earlier one. The
sequence of Euripidean victories is perfect in every
detail, down to its being the self-same Kaunian ship
and captain that now convey Balaustion to Rhodes.
Herakles, the jubilant champion and labourer for
men, cannot live without defeat. Life claims her
due, and the heavy payment comes about thus.
While Herakles performs his last labour, plucking
Kerberos from Haides, his wife, sons, and earthly
father are turned out of their palace by the usurper,
Lukos, and now await death at his hands. Herakles
reappears and slays Lukos, but Herd's vengeance is
not fully wreaked. She sends madness to Herakles,
and, in his frenzied state, he kills his boys, taking
them for his task-master's children. His wife, too,
he slays. When madness departs, despair and shame
take possession of Herakles. The kingly, grateful
Theseus befriends him in this desolation, and, at
Theseus' bidding, Herakles, his faith in God outliving
his rejection of Olympian legends, accepts the sorrow-
fulness of his life, with greater bravery than his most
daring labours evoked. His discipline and patience
are the sublimest picture in Euripides.
The Inn Album, 1875 (Vol. XH.), though in
narrative form, is properly an undeveloped drama.
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 189
and, save in the scene between Ottima and Sebald in
Fippa Fosses, its dramatic intensity is unequalled.
Browning ti\kes for subject, not ' the healthy natures
of a grand epoch,' ^ but a story from modern life, of
crime and moral distortion, suggesting melodrama,
but raised by his treatment to tragedy. So far the
poem resembles I!ed Cotton Xight-Cap Country, but the
speculative background, the meditative atmosphere
of the earlier work are absent from this one. Instead
of feeling the presence of the author, praising,
blaming, sympathising, sometimes momentarily identi-
fying himself Mith one or other of his characters,
we find an absolutely concentrated treatment, which
leaves no space for discursiveness. Browning's own
vision of life is curtained for the nonce, and the
dramatic half of his mind dominates, obliterating the
philosophical half, so far as we may call that oblitera-
tion which is really metamorphism. No embryonic
motives, no instincts still waiting in the cavity of
consciousness to be born and named, but human
nature, fully grown, manifesting itself in action, and
begetting its fate, is the subject of The Inn Album.
Throughout, there is not a line of soliloquy. Brown-
ing forbids himself any sclf-revcalment of his charac-
ters which is not modified by the presence of a hearer
or hearers. The drama is an internal and external
tragedy, and the outcome and conclusion of a former
one. The actors, intensely distinct and clear-cut, but
all nameless, are four — an oldish iikui, ;i woman, a
' Preface to Straffvrd, 1637.
190
BROWNING.
CHAP.
young man, and a girl. Though the girl is instru-
mental to the plot, psychologically, emotionally, the
play lies between the other three.
This tragedy of the passions is in eight scenes, or
half-acts, most of which take place (a contrast gro-
tesquely humorous) in the stuffy parlour of an inn.
The progress of the piece may be summarised thus
... I. (Lord , a too accomplished card-player,
and a libertine 'of much newspaper-paragraph,' has
for a year past attached himself to a young fellow,
the son of a self-made millionaire. The older man,
whose life has been a failure, notwithstanding his
large measure of ability and what must be called
personal magnetism, crossed the young one's path
when the latter was suffering from a disappointment
in love for which he purposed abandoning the world
to misanthropise in a distant solitude. Induced by
his new friend to give up this idea, he became super-
ficially initiated by him in worldliness, and is now
about to marry a rich cousin.) The poem opens in
the village inn, where the youth has been spending
the eve of his visit to the country mansion of his
betrothed in playing cards with his evil genius, who
had hoped to indemnify himself by one night's success
for his approaching loss in the marriage of his 'pupil'
The first speaker is the older man. He asks for the
inn album, wherein to reckon the result of the night's
play. The reckoning proves him to be the loser, to
the extent of ten thousand pounds. The youth
offers to cancel the debt, which he knows would
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE TOEMS. 191
prove an almost impossible one to the needy man.
Lord affects to scout the idea, repl3-ing to the
well-meaning tactlessness of his half -unwilling ad-
mirer in words jxirtly sardonic, partly conciliatory.
IL The youth, still troubled at the thought of taking
the impoverished lord's money, sets to wondering
why it is that one so much older, so infinitely abler,
should be without any of those substantial goods
which he himself possesses in supei-abundance. His
companion acknowledges his failure to be due to a
fatal woman". Then he tells, in an impenitent, ignor-
ant way ('ignorant' in the sense applied to it on pp.
276, 278 of case-lmrdemd or narrow-hearted) the story
of how, four years ago, he won — and betrayed — a
young girl's love. His victim only leapt out of her
fascination, her captivity, when he disclosed that he
had not intended marriage. Her wrath surprised
him into offering it, whereupon she further astonished
him by refusing. He had destroyed the love he had
created. The enormity of his offence seems, even to
him.self, to demand some attempt at palliation, so he
lamely professes that he originally intended to act
honourably, had not circumstances hurried him wrong.
He dimly blames his victim's very perfection of sur-
face for hiding the soul which so removed her from
the women of his experience. Since her disdainful
rejection of his offer of marriage, her life has passed
from his ken. One fact only is known to him — that in
a month she had married a country clergyman. Now
comes one of the piercing flashes of insight into lliis
192 BROWNING. chap.
tragedy of souls. The speaker acknowledges that,
since the affair he has been describing, his life has
withered, and every thing has gone wrong ; yet he
ignores the significance of the nemesis that has pur-
sued him. The man's grand opportunity (and we
know how great is Browning's sense of the value of
life's crises as chances for character) was the revela-
tion of a lofty and, till then, pure woman. She
loved him, and might have been his saviour. Instead,
he blasphemed his opportunity, defiling what he should
have worshipped and cherished.
" I hate who would not understand,
Let me repair things."
The blind heart that utters that is as much fool as
knave, as we shall presently see more completely.
Meanwhile his listener, true to youthfulness, does
not feel the tragedy much, till, as it soon will, it
crosses his own life. Encouraged, however, by his
companion's confidence, he tells' how he too met his
'wonder of a woman.' By this phrase, both in-
stinctively describe her, who, unknown to them, is
one and the same. She had met the young Oxonian
during the time of her captivation by the older man,
and had refused his honest devotion — "she was
another's." When, later, the youth heard that his
ideal had married, he thought it was to the man she
loved. Still, she stands to him for all love, all
loveliness, his afiianced cousin being merely his
cousin. III. The men vacate the stage for awhile.
in IXTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 193
and the woman ami the girl enter. The latter has
lately been disturbed by a vagne fear that she and
her betrothed have mistaken ' easy ignorance ' of each
other for luiowledge. She has sent for the married
woman to decide the case, and, after seeing him,
pronounce judgment on the lover. For four years
the girl has seen nothing of her old friend, whom
conjugal happiness has, .she fancies, engrossed. Who
then so able to decide on a question regarding
marriage 1 The girl, like her cousin, possesses a large
share of insensibility, or she would discern the woman's
terrible world-weariness. In easy assumjition of the
life of bliss led by the parson's wife, she rattles on,
till even her stupidity is shivered by her interlocutor.
Before more can be inquired, the older woman has
despatched her to fetch the lover. IV. The sorrow-
ful lady is alone, when, all unwittingly, he, the fifty-
years-old libertine, enters, who was the cause of her
shame. There they stand, hate fronting hate in
words of ice and fire. The man, detesting the in-
carnation of that image which has seemed to dog
each subsequent false step of his life, taunts her with
her marriage, for which he guessed a l)asc, sh;dlow-
hearted motive. Her reply contiins anotlior of
Browning's fla.shes of insight into human nuture.
When, four years ago, she started l)ack in horror
from the raiscreant'.s (;<)nimoiq)lace proposal of malving
her 'amends by marriage,' eclipsed self-respect re-
dawned in her consciousness of her own cajjacity for
contempt. Browning regards that capacity for great
194 BROWNING. chap.
scorn as the sure pledge of a future, redeemable and
infinite. She who could feel so was not utterly lost
nor degraded. This being so, she could live on, choos-
ing a life penitential in the extreme. She married a
purblind, drudging parish-priest, old and poor, yet
desiring a woman's help in doling out his sterile
ministrations in a sterile parish. Among brutalised
people, she has endured an existence of drear apathy.
No ' human lucid laugh ' has penetrated it, and to-
day's hearing of one had almost forbidden her return
to bondage, till her betrayer's reappearance checked
such impulse. For reply, the man tells her she never
loved him if she loathes him now. She controverts
this, in words that, over its grave, recall the dead
enthusiasm. Then the man's cynicism half breaks
up. Throwing himself before her, he cries to her to
redeem his life by uniting hers with it to the end.
He strives to excuse his doubt of love, he assails her
soul with subtle temptation, finest flattery, himself
for the moment seeming to struggle with his own
evil. The passage is tragical in the contrast between
what is genuine in the man's appeal and the woman's
hurlhig back of all of it. She only hears in it a bid-
ding to break faith with the husband whom she has
rightly kept uninformed of her story of woe. She
is deriding the man, changing his revived ardour
into malignancy, when the youth enters. V. The
young man and she recognise each other. To his
whirl of consciousness, her presence together with
the older man's attitude look like plotted villainy.
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 195
His rash invective she silences by explaining the
situation sufficiently to solemnly warn him against
the ' friend ' who has ruined her life and would ruin
his. (And now the older man, with the luck
against him, and egged on by the woman's scorn and
disbelief, and the young man, his now undeceived
dupe's threats, prepares to play a last card. He con-
ceives the double purpose of ridding himself of his
money debt and revenging his rebuft" from the woman,
by writing in the Album what he calls the price of
his keeping silence on the past to her husband. This
he sends her into the adjoining room to read. The
price of his silence is that she shall accept a frankly
dishonouring offer if such be made her by the younger
man.) VI. Alone with the youth, the 'Adversary'
traduces the woman, predicting, in proof of her infamy,
that she will accept the proposal which he recommends
the young man to make her. The fee for the lesson
in womankind that he represents himself as giving, if
found correct, may fairly be, he urges, the remission
of the ten thousand pounds. VH. The evil one
retires to await success, and the lady re-enters.
(While in the other room, she has taken a poison
always kept by her against some such need.) She
comprehends what has passed during her absence,
and, in word.s that have death's calmness upon them,
disperses the calumnies of her foe. The young man's
reply to her, unknowing though he yet is of the
threat in tlic .Mbiim, is a generous, selfless ofler t(j
her of his life's service. This is one of the grandest
196 BROWNING. chap,
dramatic passages in Browning's works. In its few
minutes, the youth turns man, all his callowness done
away with. Every rag of a boy's conventionality is
scattered to the winds in the equal delicacy and
directness of the speech. He has offered her his
hand for ever. She takes it, knowing, as he does
not, what 'for ever' means. When the enemy re-
turns, even he is taken aback at the apparent success
of his scheme. He little imagines the pact come to
by natures so unlike his. With loathsome compli-
ment, he congratulates the couple, but is interrupted
by the dying woman, who reads to her champion the
writing in the Album. For fitting comment, the
younger man springs at the villain, and strangles
him. Vni. The woman dies, but not till she has
falteringly written what will vindicate her deliverer's
conduct. There is silence in the room. Outside, a
laughing voice is heard. It is that of the girl, to
whom dreadful news has to be broken by the grave
survivor, saved as he is from doing her the supreme
indignity of marriage without love.
Pacchiarotto and how he worked in Dis-
temper: with other Poems, 1876 (Vol. XIV.), is
Browning's first work in the serio - grotesque key
which, on and off, distinguishes his penultimate
period. The poet's personal robustness runs riot in
the present volume. Four of the poems. At the
" Memmid" House, Shop, and the Epilogue repudiate
poetic self - delineation, yet in these very pieces
Browning is self-delineative as to his poetic methods
m INTRODUCTIONS TO THE TOEMS. 107
and principles. Such a paradox conies naturally
from tlie apostle of paradoxes.
ProhHfue {A Jfall in the Selections, Second Series,
1S80) is a little reverie, induced by watching the
pulsation and Hutter of wall foliage. That common
sight, which mysteriously stimulates most imagina-
tions, is full of supersensual suggestiveness to
Browning.
Of PacchiaroUo, and how he worked in Distemper \s
a true story, frolicsomely told, of the Sienese painter
of the early sixteenth century whose personality it
is hard to disentangle from that of his contem-
porary fellow-townsman, Pacchia. The poem, with
its sportive rhymes, is a merry quirk, abounding in
the liberty of power. Browning has frequently in-
sisted that a man's wisdom is no more than he needs
to shai)e his own course aright, and he enjoys this
opiKjrtunity of showing how ill - advised meddling
and dreams of social perfectibility brought to grotesque
grief a reformer who would have done better to stick
to his paint-pot. A similar idea was gravely ex-
pressed in The Buy and the Angel. The reformed
reformer, the Abbot, and the corpse urge no selfish
letting-be, but a strenuous doing of one's individual
l>cst towards earth's amelioration, chastened by a full
acceptance of the uncompierable unevcnncss of what
Browning ' calls this ' Kehoarsal,' life. Browning
tacks on to I'arrhitirotto proper a roistering mockery
of his reviewers, ' in the drabs, blues, and yellows.'
' (;p. Epictetus, Encheiridion, XVII.
198 BROWNING. chap.
The next to naming of a special critic, and the char-
acter of his threatened punishment remind us that
Browning has been recently saturating himself in
Aristophanes.
At the " Mermaid " disclaims the idea of directly
personal utterance having any place in a dramatic
poet's works, and disavows a poetic leadership
founded on any pandering to the taste of the public
for personal disclosures. Browning puts on
Shakspere's mantle to cover the haughtiness of a
declaration of independence all his own. 'Last
king' is, of course, Byron, whom Browning so con-
stantly belabours. The expression " threw Venus "
refers to the best throw, called ' Venus ' (thrice six),
in dice.
House, like At the " Mermaid," disallows any spirit
in poetic utterance but the dramatic one. The quota-
tion is from Wordsworth's sonnet on the Sonnet.
Neither by mind nor art was Browning fitted to form
a triad with the sonnet masters, Shakspere and
Wordsworth.
Shop condemns those who write solely for profit —
of money or fame. Its striking and noble protest
equally applies to all men with muck-rakes, who can
look no way but downwards.
Pisgah - Sights. I. suggests the insight into the
meaning of life, and the acquiescence in its apparent
evils, which a dying man may have. II. resembles
An Epistle of Karshish in representing the paralysis of
action, and untimely spiritual precooity, that a man
Ill INTRODUCTIOXS TO THE POEMS. 199
would have did his ' Pisgah-Sight ' come wliile he was
still toiling through earth's wilderness.
/Vars and Scrupks is a parable of theistic faith on
trial. Its personifications give it an aflecting inward-
ness.
Xatural Magic consists of two stanzas which trans-
pose, as is the case with allegories, the natural order
of thought. No lover needs an interpretation of
love's 'natural magic'
Magical Nature tells of the soul's beauty that age
cannot wither. Note the lovely versification of these
companion poems, especially the smooth opulence
of the line —
' Jewel at no mercy of a moment in your prime.'
Bifurcation is one of Browning's most remarkable
short poems. Simple enough in expression, it is as
mysterious as a transcript from life should be. It is,
like Fears ami Scruple.'^, a riddle, only in this case the
answer is withheld. Browning seems to condemn
the woman for following a counsel of prudence instead
of the ardour of the heart, and the condemnation
would be ciiaracteristic, but perhaps he both forbears
to judge, an<l would have us forbear.
Xumj>hijhj)ti»; in natural proximity to JJifuixatum,
is high-fantajitical in its scenic circumstance. E.ssen-
tially, it describes a man ' seized by a nymjdi ' who
setH him tasks. Ho journeys forth on his (piests, to
return inevitably stainc<l with travelling. Tiie im-
maculate She will not furgive tlicso btain.s. Idle,
200 BROWNING. chap .
useless, and ignorant of life, she expects the impos-
sible, weighing her worshipper by the unreal standard
of her own cloistered virtue. (Happily, the unsym-
pathising and ungenerous being, ' hearted ' in the
white centre of the prism, is not a superior young
woman, but only a ' nymph ' !)
Appearances, a dramatic miniature, tells how life
is made 'poor ' or 'rich,' not by externals, patent to
all, but by the hidden history of the heart.
St. Martinis Summer is instinct with a delicious
shiver of only half - metaphorical ghostliness. The
speaker deprecates the idea of formally entering upon
a new love. He has, and perhaps the lady he ad-
dresses has too, buried loves whose ghosts are unlaid.
Friendliness, better than love, suits such autumnal
creatures as he and she. Yet he is congratulating
himself on virtually eluding the ghosts, when suddenly
they assert their reality, mocking and pulverising the
present.
HervS Eiel, the grand ballad every one knows,
seems to belong to the same inspiration as Good Neivs
from Ghent. Neither of Browning's most popular
poems has an English theme. Hervd Eiel was' origin-
ally published in the Cornhill Magazine, March, 1871,
that Browning might contribute the sum (.£100)
given for it to the fund for sending food to Paris
after the siege.
A Forgiveness is the strongest poem in the Pacchi-
arotto volume. It is one of the four or five ' sample '
pieces that Browning said he " should not object to
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POE.MS. 201
be judged by." The narrative is given by a powerful
ami implacable Spaniard, in seeming confession to a
monk, once the man who wronged him. It is no
common story of a wife's dishonour and a husband's
revenge, for the husband scorned to award 'hate's
puni-shment' to her who had evoked only 'con-
tempts.' He let her act a part, not live, beside him, for
tlu-ee long years. Then she told him that jealousy
of his absorption in state affairs, not passion for the
wretched moth, her lover, had been her motive.
She loved, still loves, her husband. This avowal
raises her out of his contempt — into his hate. He
offers her a poisoned dagger. She uses it on herself,
as.sured that in revenge, hate is quenched, that, dead,
she will be loved ' as erst.' It now only remains to
annihilate the monk. Short as the poem is, its
characterisation is absolutely complete. Nothing
couUl more effectively express the stoic Spaniard, his
c«xle and ideal, than the measured punctiliousness,
the gradation from contempt to hatred, the self-com-
nian<l, the unhasting, unresting vindictivenes.s, and
the e.vquisitc torture devised for his enemy.
Ceiuiuja tracks the reference (in Shelley's Cenci, V.,
4) that weighed with Clement VIII. to seal Beatrice
C'enci's doom. It is a story of the corrupt Church
of the year 1000, avenged, as Browning puts it, in
l.'^TO. The poem evidences Browning's sciiipulnus
love of win<ling uji every loose end of a story,
reminding us of tliat more famous reconl of the
miscariiages, and final vindication, of justice, as
202 BROWNING. chap.
given in the last section of The Piing and the
Book.
Filippo Bcddinucd on the Privilege of Burial is a
grimly comic narration of what befel Jews in Florence.
Up to stanza xxxvi., the story is fact, as related
by Filippo Baldinucci (n. 1624— ob. 1696) in his
voluminous History of Design. Baldinucci's vulgar
imbecility is racily rendered, and in telling contrast
with the patient dignity of the Jews.
Epilogue contains more of such sturdy, vigorous
sentiments as appeared in At the " Mermaid." Brown-
ing now addresses the public rather than the critics.
His turning of the tables on those who swear by the
classics they do not read is caustic raillery. Stanza
xiv. is a piece of suggestive criticism. Again Brown-
ing refuses to make his 'house' his 'shop,' again he
gibes at Byron, again he tells us, what we know so
well, that he himself brews 'stiff drink' and his
' vineyard ' is
' Man's thoughts and loves and hates. '
The Agamemnon of -ffischylus, 1877 (Vol.
XIII. ), is Browning's third transcript from the Greek.
Every one remembers the outline of what forms the
main subject of this Drama, the story of Agamem-
non's death — how he returned from Ilion to Argos in
company with Cassandra, and how Clytemnestra, his
wife, killed them both. The Agamemnon contains,
in common with all Greek plays, but here in sur-
passing measure, so almost infinite a number of
in INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 203
meanings, so incxliaustible a store of ageless life,
that one only wishes Browning had illuminated this
first, this form-creating Drama, as he did the Alkestis,
with such another wise and brilliant commentary.
Then we might have had the hymns concerning
Iphigenia and Helen as detached from the platitudes
of the chorus, and from the speeches of Cassandra,
agonising under Apollo's spell, and of Clytemnestra,
after the deed, ' magnificent in sin,' like Ottima and
Lady Macbeth, though greater and worse than either.
Then, too, Browning could have impressed upon his
readei-s how shallow is the conventional misnomer of
fatalism for ^schylus' supreme sense of retribu-
tion, of Erinnyes. ^schylus is mankind's majestic
prophet of the certainty of punishment for crime,
and of the far-reaching consequences of action, and
he is at his most proi)hetic in the Agamemnon. Itself
the story of the consequences of a precedent event
(the staining of the house of Tantalus by the horrible
meal of Atreus), it is oidy the commencement of
another continuous action, the first play of the
Oreska. Its truth to nature combining with an
artistically rounded, unmistakable presentment of re-
tributive justice makes the Orestm a mine of teaching.
.iEhchylus is no less certain than an old Jewish
lawgiver that the sins of the fathers must be
expiated by the children unto the third and fuuith
genemtiun. At the same time, he shows enough
immediate cause of these visitations to sjitisfy the
demand for justice to individuals and foi- human
204 BROWNING. chap.
volition as well as divine vengeance and its impelling
force. Agamemnon dies, not merely because the un-
sated demon sits on his roof demanding fulfilment
of Thyestes' curse, but because he sacrificed his
daughter to his self-will and ambition. These are
the inner, ethical causes, but on the surface appear
what to the unthinking are causes enough for
Agamemnon's murder, in Clytemnestra's jealousy of
Cassandra, her desertion of Agamemnon for ^gis-
thus, and their joint scheme to destroy him. Neither
does ^schylus omit the favourite Greek moral, the
injury Avrought on character by too great prosperity.
The Greeks preferred a mixture of failure with
prosperity, instead of universal success, and ^schylus
gives effect to this feeling in the case of the King of
men by his 'treading,' though reluctantly, 'the
purple to his death.' ■*•
Both the excellences and defects of Browning's
translation are only appreciable by scholars, and,
on account of its daring, enthusiastic truthfulness
line by line to the text, by them alone can the great-
ness of Browning's toil and its result be valued.
The mode, or, at all events, the effect, of the render-
ing of Agamemnon, differs from that of Alkestis and
HeraMes. Its key is in the preface, where BroAvning
lays down as his axiom of translation literalness,
supporting it by many a good reason. But when
he speaks of translating 'the very turn of each
1 Pauline, i. 26 — an interesting reference when we compare
the dates of FauUne and this Transcript.
Ill IXTRODUCTIOXS TO THE POEMS. 205
phrase,' we cannot lielp thinkini; of what is the
result of turning foreign idioms into literal Phiglish.
This is too much what he has tried to do Avith
^Eschylus. He goes to the roots of both languages
in order to match the Greek word, with the result
that he not infrequently translates according to the
word, not according to the sense. He seems to
ignore how much the meaning of words depends on
the associations that perhaps the English word has
quite lost and is therefore, at the present time, no
real equivalent. The determination to achieve
etymological exactitude has here and there made
fidelity to the spirit of the original o'er -leap itself.
The letter killcth in
" things there be, one barks,"
When uo man harks " (p. 289),
an<l
*' I was rightly of this slaughter stildi-man" (p. 352).
Then ag;iin, Browning acts well in i)reserving the
ruggedness of yEschylus, but ill when he overlays
it with words and phrases which from their oddity
give an added harshness. Inversions peculiar to
UroANTiing prevent the translation from being what
a translation should be, as far as possible a trans-
parent medium. If we compare the openings of
the first two speeches with a literal but unliterary
'crib,' such as Bohn's, we find how Browning has
adde<l tliHiculty to that which had too much, lie
would seem to have been committed to this occasion-
ally artificial fidelity before he translated the tragedy,
206 BROWNING. chap.
otherwise it is hard to imagine how his dramatic
imagination, which stood him in such stead when
he was realising to himself Alkestis and Herakles,
should have permitted the flat rendering of certain
lines of Clytemnestra's and of the last words of the
tragic Cassandra. Doubtless, a less intimate tie
connects Browning's sympathy with yEschylus than
with Euripides. It seems ungracious to disparage
aught in a version wherein genius, scholarship, and
the most special qualifications in Browning's enormous
resources of word and rhymes have done their all
but triumphant. One rather turns to those in-
numerable instances where the native beauty of the
poem is accentuated by Browning. Tact in words
is a translator's genius, and, with certain egregious
exceptions. Browning's rendering abounds in it.
The approximations to the Greek measures both in
the dramatic and choric passages are very successful.
Certain lines, especially from the lyrics, must here-
after for ever cancel all other translations whatso-
ever. For examples, take a line from Clytemnestra's
imagination-picture of the victorious Greeks
' In the spear-captured Troic habitations '
and this of Helen in Troy — a history in a brace of
lines —
" There she stands silent ! meets no honour — no
Shame — sweetest still of things gone long ago "
and the accuracy, infinitely superior to 'elegances'
of translation, of
Ill iXTRODrrnoxs to tiik pok.ms. 207
"All, Linos, say — ah, Linos, song of wail !
But may tlie pood prevail ! "
La Saisiaz : The Two Poets of Croisic, 1878
(\ u\. Xl\.), are the poems, di.ssuciated eiiuugli in
nioml and tlieiue, whieh fonu Brownings next
volume.
La Saisiaz is prefaced by three verses (reprinted as
ru«j<ih-Sighf.<, III. in Selections, Second Series) which,
coming as they are imagined to do, from a just
disembodied soul, sound the key-note of tlic entire
work— faith in a better life after death. The eartli-
bound man utters darkling faith, but the freed spirit,
joyfid assurance. Tlie relation between this prelude
and La Saii<ia: is very beautifid.
' La Saisiaz ' is the name of a villa among the moun-
tains of Savoy, where the sad incident occurred which
suggested the poem. A valued friend, who was staying
with the poet and his sister, died there suddenly on
September 14th, 1877. ^\■ithout warning, death's chill
and blank effaced the gaiety of the holiday, the apparent
security of the life, the sympathy of the companionship.
The mystery of death, never so earnestly interrogated
as after a shock of suddenness like thi.s, turned the
poet's reflections from his loss to the problem whether
the great change means extinction. The subject of
immortality had, a few days previously, been dis-
cussed iK'tween the friends, and Browning, climbing
where they were to have ascended together, speaks
out his train of thought, as though to the ' iJear and
True' who is no longer beside liiiu. iirowning's
208 BROWlSrma chap.
structure of belief entirely rests on two postulates,
the existence of the soul and the existence of God.
He attempts to prove neither, because to him they are
self-evident. This point of individual testimony is
dwelt upon. Browning takes self (as in Eahbi Ben
Ezra) as the centre of its universe and the judge of
all phenomena, and self -development as self's tendency
and eventual aim. To grant these two personalities,
the subjective and the objective, or soul and God, is
an enormous assumption, though Browning never
questions either. This is not because he shrinks from
probing for truth, but because he was born a poet,
and therefore a mystic. Accordingly, he affirms that,
to the extent of his only two assumptions, he kiioivs^
that "which passeth knowledge." All doctrine in-
ferential therefrom is matter for ' surmise,' and that
is the peculiar province of Browning's searching
intellect. The basis of his belief in immortality is
that life is only explicable as probation. It is the
inexplicableness, rather than the injustice, of life for
which he needs the hope of a different hereafter.
Yet, looking at life, he decides that, were its condi-
tions final, evil outweighs good. The positivist's
social immortality is inconsistent with the personal
soul's conception of the personal God. Successively,
Browning tries life, as he knows it, with every key
but that of probation and immortality, and finds that
1 Cp. Abt Vogler's—
"The others may reason and welcome; 'tis we musicians" (poets)
" know."
Ill IXTRODUCTIOXS TO TIIK POEMS. 209
not one of them opens the door. Afterwards, lie
shifts his gi'oiind, and approaches his problem from
the other side. Conceding the existence of personal
immortality, he vindicates the nncertainty on the
snhject that is man's lot here. This vindication is
carried on in an internal debate, which Browning
endeavoni's to make as objective as possible in order
that its result shall not be impeachable as the ott-
spring of sentiment, the easy creation of wishes.
Expressed in a more argumentative form, the
substance of what ' Reason ' says is that of A Death
in the Deseii, Pisgah-Sights, II., and Fears and Scruples.
It proves the value of ignorance in developing forti-
tude which comes of faith, morality which comes of
volition, activity wliich comes of responsi])ility,
and self-reliance which comes of the absence of
authority.
La Sauiiaz sutlers from the personal directness
which Browning di&ivows. The poem is so ratiocina-
tive, that it needs characterisation to raise it generally
to the imaginative level. The serpentining trochaics
add to the strain on the attention, and what witli the
impetuous leaps, and only half expressed links, of its
thought, it is one of Browning's hardest works.
The Two I'ud.'i of Crouic is enclosed between two
exquisite lyrics. The one love of the personal life is
the subject of the first (called yl /i/icarances in the Selec-
tiom). The second (called A Tulr in the Selections), is
a story concerning a poet and his lyre. It brims over
with playful tenderncs.s, and tears - we need not a.sk
P
210 BROWNING. chap.
for wliom — are in the voice that tells us how once in
the poet's life, the
" string that made
' Love ' sound soft was snapt in twain."
The Two Poets of Croisic unearths two personages,
one of the sixteenth century, the other of the
eighteenth. Each made a rocket -like ascent in
Paris, fizzed awhile, and descended like rocket-sticks.
Browning describes himself as sitting over a ship-
wood fire, and telling what his fancy sees therein.
He conjures up the bleak Breton fishing - village,
Croisic, with its memoirs of Druidical savagery. His
first Croisickese poet is Rene Gentilhomme, Conde's
page, and a poetaster to whom came one hour of afflatus,
or, as he and his world believed, of direct revelation.
He prophesied the unhoped-for birth of Louis XHI.
Afterwards, he wrote no more, a wise abstinence
that gives him a title to respect in Browning's eyes.
Stanzas lix.-lxvi. recall Browning's conception in
An Epistle of the after-life of the raised Lazarus.
Browning's second 'poet,' for Avhom a yellow-green
flamelet does duty, is he whose history suggested
Piron's Mitromanie. Desf orges - Maillard, stimulated
by the earlier Croisickese example, determined to
achieve greatness too. He forwarded his verses to
Le Mercure de France to be contemptuously refused
admission into its pages. While he fumed under
the editor. La Roque's, treatment, his shrewder sister
hit on a plan of redress. Copying out her brother's
Ill ixTRonrrTioxs to the poems. 211
efliisions, and forwarding them with a girlisli entreaty
and under a feminine pen-name, she not only subdued
La ixoque, and presently had him at her feet in a love-
letter, but also extracted liomage from Voltaire, and
adulation from literary Paris. The Breton Sappho,
as they calletl lier, doubtless enjoyed the continuance
of her joke, but the conceit of Desforges-iMaillard
covdd not long endure the \icarious reputation. He
journeyed to Paris and stormed the editor. La
Kociue hid his discomfiture, and, to spite Voltaire, to
whom he, being a man of letters, owed a gi-udge, he
passed him on the hoax. A glance was sufficient to
explain the situation to Voltaire, and Desforgcs-
Maillard was speedily returned — empty — to Brittany.
The following extract from Voltaire's correspondence
amusingly connects the poem with literary history :
" L'avcnture tie la Malcrais-Maillard est asscz plais-
ante. Elle prouve au moins (juc nous sommes tres-
galants ; car quand Maillanl nous ecrivait, nous ne
lisions pas ses vers ; quand Mdlle de la Vigne nous
ccrivit, nous lui fimes des declarations."
At the en«l of his story, Browning turns to his
au<litor and gives her a test for judging poets. That
jKHit, he says, who leads the happiest life is the
greatest, because a poet neces.sarily feels, i.e. sullers,
more than others, and if he can but yoke his feelings
to hi.s chariot, instead of being torn to pieces Ijy tiiem,
he proves his pre-eminence.
Dramatic Idyls. Fir.st Series, 1879, (Vol. XV.),
show lliu pijct of unexpectedness at the top uf
212 BROWNING. chap.
his bent. Twists, surprises, abrupt turns which
seem, though they are not actually, changes of idea,
are ingredients in every poem. In Dramatic Idyls,
Browning collects a number of traditions and legends
of sensational action. But where others see the act,
Browning sees the motive, and so, in his accustomed
way, he gives the action as from within, identifying
himself with the doer. Accordingly, these dramatic
idyls illustrate character in action, not action by and
for itself. All the poems depict crises of character,
or those determining moments of life on the signifi-
cance of which Browning never tires of dwelling.
The circumstances of the stories are tragic, the im-
pression left by many of them painful and sad, for
whereas former moral struggles as realised by Brown-
ing have, as a rule, resulted in victory for the soul,
the stories of rare, yet thinkable trials in Martin
Belph, Ivan Ivanovitch, and Clive, with their dread
moral abysses, solely evoke from the depths of us
the trembling prayer. Lead us not into such tempta-
tion. Browning's own reconcilement with much that
is repellent, fierce, and criminal in the subjects of
his poems is to be found in the concluding lines of
Ilalhert and Hob. A spiritual unknown quantity, the
' reason out of nature,' is never far from Bi-owning's
image of life, and we see how it operates in his pre-
sentment even of such characters as Halbert, Hob,
and the Bratts'.
Martin Relph records an old man's self-imposed
penance of annually standing just where he succumbed
m INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 213
to temptation, and telling the surrounding crowd how,
when he was young, he played coward, and, as he
darkly knows, murderer. A girl, suspected of deal-
ing ^^^th the Pretender's friends, was to be shot,
by military law. Martin Eclph alone saw a man
hurrying with the reprieve, but made no sign, and
a double death ensued — the girl's by the muskets,
her hastening lover's by the despair of hearing
them fired. "Was ^Martin Relph's muteness due to
cowardice or to something worse — jealous envy 1
Browning's intense vividness, and active S3^mpathy
with his characters, guilty or innocent, coarse or subtle,
come out strongly in ^lartin Relph's lamentable
confession. All the dramati.st is in that change of
tense from " was " to " am " as the anguished old man
revives the searing scene that constitutes his past
The sympathy the poem e.xcites is with the lover,
Vincent Parkes. But the maddening hindrances he
met in bringing the pardon, the despairing ignorance
of the girl as to the cause of his non-arrival, and the
climax of his being too late and thereat falling dead,
are rendered all the more ti-agic through being ever
afterwards Martin Kelph's instruments of self-torture.
Pheidippifles has for motto the Greek salutation
that was born of Marathon day, "Rejoice, we con-
quer I " The i)oem is a beautiful adaptation from the
story of the runner, Phcidippidcs, who in forty-eight
hours accomplished tlic one hundred and fifty miles
between Alliens anil Sparta, to ask lieli) against the
inva<ling Persians. The request was virtually refused
214 BROWNING. chap.
by the malicious Spartans. Keturning, Pheidippides
met Pan, who gave him a sprig of marathrus for
a pledge of his aid, but juggled, as gods will, with
his personal hopes. The story stands out with
something of the joyful pride of a nobly propor-
tioned Greek statue among its Gothic associates,
between the sobbing passion of Martin Relph, and
the Northern gloom of the next poem.
Halhert and Hob treats of that phonograph-like
conservation of force, heredity, which can bottle up,
for a generation or more, some climax of character,
or rather some efflorescence of it in action, and then
discharge it, seemingly oblivious of the fact that
the particular exponent of the hereditary trait is
a fresh person. There is just enough difference
between Hob's behaviour and what Halbert recalls
as his to make the story as true to the variety as
to the similarity between related individuals. Here,
indeed, the trait deepens by transmission. The
incident of the poem is hideous till we get that
gleam in the gloom, that true light from Browning's
soul into the dark places of his mind, expressed in
the close. Browning can dissociate his imagination
from the vision of beauty, and ponder heredity with
any Northerner, but he is an optimist. Yet he
is rarely as pathetic as in the lines,
"'At his cursing and swearing!' tlie youngsters cried: but
the elders thought ' In prayer.'
A boy threw stones : he picked them up and stored them
in his vest."
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 215
At the same time, Hob's ^^olence has to be punished,
and idiocy, consequent on the moral revohition, comes
ujMjn him.
Ivan Ivhnovitch embodies the Russian folk-lore
tale of the wretched woman in the sledge who saved
herself from the wolves at the price of her children's
lives. Characteristically, and in this case not shrink-
ing from the utmost frightful realism, Browning
speaks as the woman herself. Her description of
the unnatural light, half snowy, half moony, in tlic
pine-forest, the horrible att;icks of the wild beasts,
and her own agony of physical fear are almost
unbearably exciting. Afterwards comes the judg-
ment, when Ivan Ivanovitch strikes off the head of
the woman who could so surrender her children.
And yet this thrilling tale, letting us into the
sophistries, the supreme weakness of the woman,
does not terminate the poem. Where any other
teller would stop, Browning has still much to say.
He has not only to present Ivan Ivanovitch's
execution of the unmotherly mother, but to give
the judgment articulateness through the aged priest
— Innocent XII. in another dress. We must feel
for the woman in her terrible trial, but lirowning
heightens her guilt by representing her as after-
wanls able to congratulate herself on her escape,
and to look forward to pleasant years, instead of
being overwhelmed with remorse, wakened as it
were from a hideous nightmare of her own selfish-
ness. That callous vileness is the justification of
216 BROWNING. chap.
the carpenter's deed. The contrasts and strong
unity in Ivan's character are extremely dramatic.
The part of the poem we could least readily spare
is the final paragraph, where the vindicator of the
primal justice kneels building the model Kremlin
for his own children.
Traij is a curious and effective little poem, not
the less so on account of the obvious anachronism
between the Bard who tells his tale to a kind of
Fran9ois P^ and the eighteenpenny vivisection in
the tale itself. Browning's short pieces are con-
densed dramas, and the multiplicity of ideas even
in the shortest is strikingly exemplified here. The
characteristic after-gust which we find in each poem
in this collection is here the humans' complacent
superiority over the dog against whom they plan
their cold-blooded treachery while he gave them his
spontaneous generosity.
Ned Bratts is founded on ' The Story of old Tod '
in Buny an's Life and Death of Mr. Badman. To compare
the poem with the original is to deepen one's sense
of Browning's imagination. Ned Bratts is a feat of
execution peculiar even in Browning, and resembling
Hogarth more than any other Englishman. The
fiery heat, fittest temperature for the hysterics of
revivalism with its coarse effects on brutalised people,
is wonderfully realised. The ' cause out of nature,'
here The Pilgrim's Progress, is, however, according
to Browning, not to be reasoned away by a mid-
summer madness explanation. This is the only
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 'J17
time a poet has approached the })roblem of con-
vci-sions. As given in Xcd Bratis, the selflessness
of Bunyan and the selfishness of his doctrine when
crystallised by the gross people to whom it appealed
as giving tiiem hold of the highest card form a
chapter in theological criticism.
Second Series, 1880. The proem suggests what most
of the ' Dramatic Idyls ' illustrate, the unaccounta-
bility, according to scientific data, of ' man's soul.' Our
test-tubes and plummets cannot resolve, cannot dive
into human motive. There is always that to count
on which Bro\\Tiing describes as something 'out of
nature,' the finger of God, the assertion of the indi-
vidual and freetlom of his will.
Echetlos (The Holder of the Ploughshare) is a
memory from ^Marathon, a poem that goes hand in
hand with riicidqipidcs.
Clive gives a story, referred to in Macaulay's Essay,
of the 'great unhappy ' Indian hero. Clive is de-
scribed as telling an old friend when, of all his days
of peril and bravery, he felt most fear. It was
when, still a lad, he failed to shoot a bully whom he
had detected cheating at cards. Clive's pistol missed,
and he stood to be shot. His steadiness luinerved
the cheat, who, confessing his disgrace, Hed the com-
pany. These eleven Clive bound over to silence,
with a stern word on their behaviour in the proceed-
ing. So far the story is obvious. Browning's sign-
manual uj)on it is still to come. . . . Il wa-s not dc-ath
Clive feared when the pistol fronted his lin)\v. Wiiat
218 BROWNING. chap.
he dreaded was reprieve, a discreet forgiveness that
would have left him two alternatives, disgrace or
suicide. Here his interlocutor interposes an orthodox
objection — it needs more courage to disobey God's
canon against self-slaughter than to bear reputed
disgrace. Now comes the effectiveness of the
Browning interpolation. A week after the conversa-
tion, Clive destroyed himself. His last words were,
' fearfully courageous ! ' So had the opium-drugged
man designated what he did in a fit of depression, so
had he clung to a possible interpretation of his
friend's words as some desperate excuse.
MuUyheli is a touching story of an Arab's pride in
his steed. It comes refreshingly after the melancholy
of Clive. The pathos of MitUijkeh is bearable.
Pietro of Ahano reads drearily after these vivid
and warm-blooded poems. The 'lilt' is of course
extremely clever and well-suited to the quasi-comic
treatment. Pietro of Abano (a suburb of Padua)
was a sort of inferior Paracelsus of the thirteenth
century, of whom it is recorded that he was pro-
hibited the drinking of milk. Browning takes this
milk as parabolic, or at least suggestive, of the human
kindness which a misunderstood benefactor of man-
kind has to forego. One night, the persecuted
philosopher was accosted by a Greek who offered
him gratitude and love if he would endow him with
his powerful secrets. Pietro seems to comply, mut-
tering the first half of a Benedicite as a charm. The
self-seeking Greek begins by applying the secret of
Ill INTRODUCTIOXS TO THE POEMS. 219
Good the fruit of Evil to the furtherance of his own
schemes for obtaining wealth from his fellows. The
method succeeds. In a year's time, Pietro calls upon
the Greek for his payment. But the Greek prefers
to postpone it till Pietro has endowed him with
power to subjugate men. Power becomes his, and,
at the height of his success, Pietro again asks for
gratitude. This is again deferred, on the plea that
the Greek must first touch the top of the ladder,
and wield power over souls as well as bodies. His
request is granted and he is Pope. Pietro comes
again, and is about to be unceremoniously ousted,
when he utters the latter half of the Benedkite. The
spell is broken, and the Greek finds that Pietro only
gave him an instant's dream of greatness, to test the
sincerity of his promised gratitude. Pietro's would-
be disciple is dismissed, BroA\Tiing telling him that
magic is unnecessary to one so well able to riUe the
masses by * cleverness uncurbed by conscience.' The
conclusion is cynical, but Bro\vning regards his
version of Abano's legend ^ as a mere vagary, a throw
of 'sportive fancy-dice.'
Doctor renders the Talmudic tradition of Satan
married to a virago who is more than his match.
The touch of humour in Satan's medical son refusing
the prince.ss and her dowry (in account of liis father's
unfortunate matrimonial experience is Browning's
after-gust t<> the story.
Pan and Luna is in some respects one of Dinwn-
' {'\t. (>riiiiiiiH' The FUlieniuin ami his Wife.
220 BROWNING. chap.
ing's most perfect gems. Keats could not have
lingered more lovingly about the Girl-moon's orbed
loveliness. Browning averts Virgil's somewhat
equivocal conclusion of the myth by acknowledging
himself gratefully content to rest on the five con-
summate ideas,
' Arcadia, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon ! '
The epilogue to Dramatic Idyls, with its contrasted
presentments of poet - nature, presentments which
after all are probably in Browning's eyes but the
inevitable two sides of a shield, recalls the Epilogue
to Pacchiarotto.
Jocoseria, 1883 (Vol. XV.), is a volume of mis-
cellaneous poems, made up of Browning's twin
moods, gravity and jest. The Joco-Seria of Melander
(16 — ) ■^ suggested the title. BroAvning's personality
is strong in Jocoseria, on his capriccioso side, as in
Solomon and Balkis, and on the side of his creed, as
in the last utterance of Jochanan Hakkadosh. Indi-
viduality, not poetical beauty, characterises the book,
though it contains a leaven of imaginative exaltation
in Ixion and Cristina and Monaldeschi
The prelude, ' Wanting is — what 1 ' expresses the
vivifying, transmuting power of love in a life.
Donald is a striking but improbable story with a
somewhat unfair application. A short introduction
^ A reference was made in the Notes on Paracelsus to tliis jest-
book, in which, too, a version of the story immortalised in" The
Pied Piper appears nnder the title of De Diabolo horrenda
historia.
Ill INTRODUCTIOXS TO THE POEMS. 221
(time, Lonij; Vacation ; place, a Highland Bothie),
ushei's in the story, as tokl, in another bothie, by the
cnlious protagonist. ' Donald ' met a stag on a narrow
way, above a preci{)icc, wliere they could neither turn
nor p:iss each other. The man lay down, and the stag,
with responsive intelligence, was daintily stepping
over him, when Donald, without a vestige of a sense
of honour, stubbed him. They rolled together ilown
the ravine, anti Donald had to repent his deed for the
rest of his lii'e. Browning tells the tale as a retort to
those who maintain that Sport educes manly virtues.
He calls the ^\Tetched ingrate, 'sportsman first, man
after.' As a matter of fact, the treacherous brutality
was not sport any more than the animal's action was
nature, and Donald's meanness would l)o as abhorrent
to honest sportsmen as to Browning himself.
Solomon and Balkis is an extravaganza of sound
and sense. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba hold
high converse on the ivory throne, till the lady,
jerking the hand of the King, brings into sight ' the
truth-compelling Name' on the royal ring. It then
comes out that Solomon's boasted delight in the com-
panionship of wise men is largely tinctured with
vanity and love of flattery, and that Balkis is not to
be taken literally when she professes a disinterested
eagerness for the companionship of the simply good.
She is a frivolous, but fa.scinating ' cat,' but Solomon
is the very Solomon of history.
C'ri.'iliiiu and Monaldn.schi, though it may be justly
accused of obscurity, resembles in dramatic fervency
222 BROWNING. chap.
the grand poems of Men and Women. Cristina,
' King ' of Sweden, the only child of Gnstavus
Adolphus, abdicated after four years' rule. She was
extraordinarily brilliant, but restless and fickle. Her
voice and bearing were manly, and she occasionally
assumed masculine garb. Marchese Monaldeschi, her
Secretary, disgracefully divulged her secrets, and his
violent execution was at least as much in punishment
for political treachery as for waning personal devo-
tion. Louis XIV. had assigned Cristina the palace of
Fontainebleau for a residence, and there, on November
1st, 1657, she had Monaldeschi killed in the Gallery of
Stags. Monaldeschi, coward as well as traitor, wore
beneath his clothes a shirt of mail, which prolonged
his death. An hour's previous conversation between
him and Cristina actually took place, she pacing the
gallery, while he, kneeling and prostrating himself,
implored her to spare his life. Monaldeschi was
buried in the church of Avon, a neighbouring village.
Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli is a lonely woman's
cry for love. The poem represents a strong, but
baffled nature, and so far reflects the general impres-
sion received from Mary's life. Whether Browning,
following Fuseli's biographer, is not unjust to her in
this particular episode of her career, does not, in the
poet's case, very much matter. The poem rests on
its truth to nature, not to Mary Wollstonecraft.
Adam, Lilith, and Eve is excellent fooling, where,
like Shakspere's, the serious lies near the jocular.
Eve confesses to her husband that her superficial
Ill INTUOPrCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 223
disdain of him before they were married would at
any moment have melted at his kiss. Lilith makes
a more sinister avowal, viz. that she only married
Adam because a better man did not turn up. ^Vith
practical wisdom, Adam wiid<s at the confessions of
both his dames.
IxioH is Browning's word on future punishment.
Tlie uses of torment are ovov when the tormented
has learned from it the error of his past. Injustice,
not justice, schemes eternal expiation for crimes
committed against itself by short-lived ignorance and
weakness. Ixion can whirl on his agonising wheel,
yet rejoice in his moral superiority. He rises ' past
Zeus to the Potency o'er him.' The sweat, blood,
and tears that Hy oil' from the wheel make a rainbow
of hope. Prometheus-like, Ixion has wrung from his
suffering a gift for men — the certainty that Unreason
and Injustice cannot be supreme, that the tyrannous
' Zeus ' is less than God, because worse than man.
The man-made Zeus who first tempts, then tortures
eternally, has no real existence. Browning's denial
of the reality of a ' Zeus ' separates, in the latter part
of the poem, from Ixion's protest against the injustice
of his tyrant.
Jochanan Ilakhulosh is introduced as a set-off to
Docfor of the Dramatic Lb/h. It follows the
favourite direction of Browning's mind, about this
period, towards Oriental stories an<l surroundings.
Jtjchawin IlakJcatlosh is professedly derived (see Note
at end) from a Rabbinical work, called A (JnlUdiun oj
224 BROWNING. chap.
many Lies. Such a title sufficiently proves itself 'mere
fun and invention.' The Jewish saint (Hakkadosh-
Saint) lies dying, surrounded by sorrowing disciples.
They beg a last word which shall concentrate the
stored experience of the Kabbi's nine and seventy
years. Jochanan's reply amounts to an avowal that
his life has proved vain, ineffectual, and vexing to his
spirit, because his youth did not know, his age could
not do. He bids his scholars farewell, but they
cannot bear to part with him without having learned
more, so they bethink them of a means, known to
Talmudists, whereby Jochanan's life can be prolonged
a little. This may be effected by the gifts of short
periods from the lives of other people, which can be
grafted on the dying man. An eager competition to
give ensues. Four persons only are chosen, a lover,
a warrior, a poet, and a statesman. Each contributes
three months, and, at the end of each period,
Tsaddik, Jochanan's foremost disciple, comes to his
master to gather his words of wisdom. These arrange
themselves into comments on the special form of life
Jochanan has last imbibed. Remembering that the
four fractions of lives were all taken from the young,
we are prepared for their artificial and discordant
effect upon the octogenarian. First comes the word
on love. Worship and idealism of the beloved object,
enthusiasm for her charms and qualities are graces
proper to a young man, but impossible to the aged
experience of Jochanan. Feeling and his reason
being irreconcilable, 'love' appears bitterness and
Ill IXTRODUCTIOXS TO THE POEMS. 225
vanity. Similar incongruity between tlic outlook of
youth and age is apparent in Jochanan's word on
war. The sage knows that self-sacrifice can be prac-
tised at less cost than by wholesale murder. He
knows, too, that the end striven for rarely justifies —
or is worth — the strife. Men seldom attain by
violence what they might not as well have waited
for. Next as to poetry. Its materials are hope and
the future, but as Jochanan has only the petrified
past to gaze upon, his view of poetry is all disillusion-
ment. Statecraft lastly comes in for its share of
pessimistic criticism. The statist has to legislate for
the mindless masses who obstruct, not for the cultured
few who would encourage his schemes. Tsaddik, who
had hoped to compile a work on The Science of Mtm't;
Life from Jochanan's utterances, feels that this gospel
of disillusionment will be of no use to any body.
Sorrowfully, he leaves Jochanan for dead. Three
months elapse, and the faithful visit the cave where
their master's body lies. To their astonishment, they
find Jochanan still living and supremely happy. A
new light has broken in \\\n}n liiin. lie calls it
' ignorance confirmed by knowledge.' He now sees
life from heaven's standpoint, acquiesces in the
ignorance and failures of mortals, and knows that
all is well. Life, he declares, is a wine-press, who.sc
yield is known oidy in the ne.\t state. Vet Jochanan,
breathing his la.st, feels he caiuiot impart his beautiful
secret, for it 18 incomprehensible to men. Of this
fact the zealous Tsaddik, in his misappreiiension of
Q
226 BROWNING. chap.
what Jochanan meant by ' the secret,' gives ample
corroboration.
Jochanan HaJckadosh is followed by three jocular
Sonnets, delicious exaggerations on the subject of
Og's hugeness. These are the first sonnets Browning
published, and the only ones at present included in
his Worhs. The idea in Jochanan is of the finite
striving to reach the infinite, and in the sonnets the
idea of unattainable distance and dimension is bandied
about in pure merriment.
Never the Time and the Place expresses love's
conquest over distrust. In the prelude. Browning
spoke of love as completing all that lacks without it,
and here he speaks of it as atoning for all other
incompleteness.
Pambo is an Envoy in which Browning amusingly
compares himself to a student who spent much time
trying to master the verse, " I will take heed to my
ways that I sin not with my tongue." Pambo is to
be met with in Wanley's Wonders of the Little World
among illustrations * Of the Veracityof some Persons,
their great Love to Truth.' Browning knows that
the ' darkling ' character of his muse is the very rock
of offence with his critics.
Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884 (Vol. XVI.), deals
with twelve subjects of religious thought. These are
put in quaint Persian guise and in the form of
parables and discussions, sprinkled with lines of dry
humour. A beautiful lyric follows each ' Fancy,' to
re-incarnate its spirit, or rather to give an analogy to
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE TOEMS. 227
it, chiefly from tlie experience of :i pair of Englisli
lovers. To preface his work, Browning (juotcs from
the speech of Lear's that he so ilhimineJ in Halhert
and Hob by his comment. This time, the apt (juotation
signifies what the author of J'auliiu; At the " Menmiht,"
and House couUl hardly be expected to declare openly,
viz. that the 'garments' are ' Ferishtah's,' but the
speculations are the speculations of Browning. Never
before, indeed, has a poet expressed so specifically and
categorically a.s in Feri-^htah's Fancies his attitutle
towards the moot points of theistic influence. It is not
in Browning's fearless, truth-loving nature to shrink
from the responsibilities of his belief — or rather his
surmise, for the fervent faith of AU Vogler is
chastened at this later jjcriod by a deeper conviction
of the unthinkable nature of God.
Prolo(/ue is a whimsical allegory of the scheme of
the poems. They are to combine three ' flavours ' : —
the illustration of Ferishtah's lesson, which is the
plain toasted bread — ' sense ' ; the lesson itself, which
is the sage-leaf— 'sight'; and the lyrical variation on
the theme, which is the ortolan — ' sontr.'
Tlui Earjle narrates Ferishtah's call to dervish-hood.
By a miracle and a dream, he learns that God works
through human means, and that whoever can, must
8up|)ort himself and afterwards support the weak.
The lyric enshrines a similar idea. Love is not
to consist in tlie selfish isolation of two lives. Freely
the lovens have received, freely let them give.
Thr Mcloii-Sclltr resembles the ancient story of the
228 BROWNING. chap.
philosophic slave who accepted the bitter gourd. All
God's gifts are of grace, ' the less deserved, the more
divine.' His stripes alone are 'just' (see Job ii. 10).
In the lyric, the lover prays his love not to retract
an unwonted harshness. If she is for strict justice,
none of all her kindness will remain his.
Shah Abbas deals with the difficulties of historico-
religious belief. An eager desire to believe a story
counts for more than an intellectual assent to its truth
which neither touches the emotions nor influences the
life. Love, even if it cannot justify itself, is dearer
to Grod than a cold credence.
In darkness, every piece of furniture is a stumbling-
block, but when once the lamp is lit, no obstacles
obstruct the way. Love resembles that lamp.
The Family treats of the value of prayer. 'If
God is wise, good, and mighty, why pray to Him,
as though man knew more than He?' To this
familiar objection, Ferishtah replies, 'Man obeys
the heart's instinct in praying. If he shared God's
omniscience, he would not pray, but human as he is,
he does best to act as humanity urges. Let him
pray according to ignorance, and God will answer
according to Knowledge.'
The lover is content to love as a mere man.
Therefore he will not pretend he looks for perfections
which, as man, he could not appreciate.
The Sun approaches the Incarnation from the
philosophical side. Ferishtah claims personality for
the Deity because he himself possesses it. Yet
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE I'OEMS. 229
purpose aiul will, the elements of personality, are
so incompatible with omnipotence that he can Init
confess the God tliat man creates in his own image
ntterly incomprehensible. Such is the enigma. May
not its solution lie in a ' rumour ' there is that
" God once assumed on earth a human shape " ?
The beginning of the poem recalls An Epistle, and
the conclusion, ./ Death in the Desert.
The lyric gives a familiar illustration of a kinship
which might well appear as inconceivable as tliat
between flesh and fire, man and God, viz. the kinship
between fire and flint.
Mihrah Shah contains Browning's reply to the
immemorial problem of the existence of suflfering.
'Pain is the bond of sympathy between man and
man.' The dialogue in tliis poem is particidarly
vigorous and vivacious, yet Mihrah Shah is somewhat
disappointing. We cannot feel that Ferishtah's hardy
optimism really helps to lighten the burden of the
mystery.
The idea is more touchingly expressed in the lyric.
A Camel- Driver, like Ixion, discusses the dogma of
eternal puni.shnient. 'Man's punishments of man
have but one motive — to deter the otlcnder from
oflending again or the by-standers from following his
example. After death, and with God, all is diff'crcnt.
But let none envy him who escapes man's punish-
ment.' Browning is assured that tardy knowledge
is HeU'H severest penalty. "Forgiveness? rather
230 BROAVNING. chap.
grant forgetfulness ! " The thought of the uncon-
ditioned relation between the individual and Glod is
again strong, and the lines,
" Reason aims to raise
Some makeshift scaffold-vantage midway, whence
Man dares, for life's brief moment, peer,"
sum up most of the teaching of the entire volume,
particularly that of The Sun and A Bean-Stripe.
The lyric dwells on the faultiness of human
judgments.
Two Camels condemns that self-regarding mortifica-
tion of the flesh which unfits a man for doing God's
work efficiently. God looks to the end for the multi-
plication of the talents, and it is man's wisdom to
adopt the best means thereto. Again, how is an
ascetic to contribute conscientiously to the joy of
others 1 No ; God who sends joy and the capacity
for joy may be trusted for the wisdom of His gifts.
Heaven itself may be an eternisation of life's
moments of bliss.
Cherries teaches us not to think gratitude to God
is to be reserved for great mercies. Little blessings
best suit our little lives. Cherries please the palate of
him to whom the reason why various planets exist
is incomprehensible. God's omnipotence is even
more displayed in His considering our everyday
requirements than in His creating the remote great-
ness of Jupiter.^ Man, in return, is to act, however
small his action be. Neither is he to be downcast
^ Cp. Giuseppe Caponsacchi, II. 2090-2096.
Ill INTRODUCTIOXS TO THE POKMS. 231
by the mixture of motives in his otlering. The chief
matter is to offer something.
The lyric repeats Ferislitah's last sentiment.
Plot-Culture, like Two Camch, justifies sense and
its gratification. God has regard to the harvest, not
to the year's daily processes towards it.
The particularly lyrical lyric restates the claims
of sense.
A Pillar at Sebzerar demonstrates the worthless-
ncss of knowledge a.s an end in itself, and the value
of love. Knowledge is relative, but love is absolute.
Fcrishtah counsels his disciple to take so much truth
as God lias vouchsafed for his individual needs, and
love and live by it, instead of investigating it and
turning on it the dubious lenses of his 'knowledge'
Silence may e.xpress admiration more eloquently
than volubility.
A Bean-Stripe: also, Apple-Eating crowns Ferish tab's
optimi.sni. The sublimated spiritual egoism, or self-
centralisation, of Ii'itbbi Ben Ezra is the basis of the
argument, yet while Browning herein emphasises
afresh the declaration that his verdict on life is
merely the result of individual experience, he goes
on to express disbelief, not only in practical pessimism,
but in any life being without compensation in some
shape. He derives his cheerful yet sober view from
the progres.s or ' motion ' of life and the growth which
ho detects to be the soul's law. 1 Hacks and whites
ranged alternately and whirled rapidly show neither
blackness nor whiteness but an amalgam of both. So,
232 BROWNING. chap.
thanks to life's spiritual progression, happiness is
saddened and sorrow brightened. When Ferishtah's
scholar quarrels with this thesis for its want of
absoluteness, Ferishtah defends it by demonstrating
how unimaginable is all absolute truth. He instances
(as pre^dously in The Sun, to which he refers) our
necessarily provisional concepts of God. At best, we
can only know "what seems." To the objection that
there may well seem to be no God but mindless force,
Ferishtah replies that man's mind Avould be negatived
by God's mindlessness. Man's instinct of gratitude
is a presumption in favour of the existence of a being
to whom he owes gratitude. It is next urged that
the heroes of our race are fitter objects of gratitude
than an unknown God. 'What, thank myself?'
replies Ferishtah, ' for half the value of these bene-
factors' greatness lies in my perception of it. No,
He who gave me the perception which suggests grati-
tude is the Recipient of my thanks.'
The lyric supposes one of these heroic men, a
poet masked as ' Ferishtah,' disclaiming the worship
a Comtist might ofier him. The poet is answerable
to God, not men.
Fjnlogue is touched with a reaction against the
cheerfulness of A Bean-Stripe, the existence of which
'tremor' (see p. 77) the philosophj- therein expressed
faithfully acknowledged. What if, after all, the
happy circimistances of the individual illusively
paint the general life as worth living? Browning
does not answer the question, but we feel the chill
Ill iNTKonrcTioNs TO Till-: roEMS. -jaa
mood to be only niomentar}-, and tlie lust word, as
well as the first, of Feri^lttah's Fancies to be
" 'Take what is, trust what may be ! '
That's Life's true lesson."
Parleying-s with Certain People of Import-
ance in their Day, 1887 (A^ol. XVI.), is Ihowuiug's
jienultiniate volume, and, in conjunction -with A solando,
the last of his works, it not merely closes, but com-
pletes -B-ith a full carillon the range of music in our
poet's belfry. Echoes and repeats of almost all the
varied harmonies that have ever been there sound
in rarleijing.% not excepting certain bells that have
scarcely been stirred since raracclsus and Sonkllo,
though Browning's distinctively lyrical note is
reserved to ring out clear and sweet in Asohndo.
It is true that occ«isionally in the rarhi/ings, as
in Mandeville and ylvioon, the bells are muffled in
the harshness of argument and the oft- told tale of
optimism to which the years since The Ring and the
Book have inured us. What is the connecting link
of these seven colloquies, their Prologue, and their
Kjiihigue't It seems to be a sense of the multiformity
of life, a sen.se which ever widening experience would
only accentuate, an<l to which Browning's dramatic
imagination and increasing acquiescence in the
fact of man's spiritual darkness converge. A con-
viction that in the world evil cannot be dissociated
from good, and a confession of ultimate ignorance
united to an uncon(iuenible determination to exercise;
234 BROWNING. chap.
that provisional knowledge which leads human exist-
ence to the liighest expression of itself in thought
and deed run through each 'parleying' on art and
life. Characteristically, the brilliant book opens
with Apollo, the god or soul of poetry, and closes
with Fust, the printer, who ministers to literature
as Browning believes body ministers to soul. The
poetic glory, however, which Browning puts into
the gamut between Fust and Apollo, and not the
familiar views, is the principal fact about the book.
The serio-grotesque Introduction is circumstanti-
ally a Prologue in Hell to Alkestis, and really a
summary of Browning's silver-lined-cloud philosophy
of life. Browning purposely reduces the Fates to
garrulous crones, far beneath Shakspere's 'weird
sisters.' Sober, they deny life to be worth living ;
besotted, they pronounce it so well worth living
that its triumph is absolute and unquestionable.
It needs an earthquake to strike the mean, and
convince these blind weavers, who were human for
the nonce, that their shuttles
" Weave living, not life sole and whole: as age — youth,
So death completes living, shows life in its truth."
In other words, no human solution of life may
conceit itself as final. At ,best, it is a crutch, with
the uses and tacit assumption of one.
With Bernard de Mandeville is the first ' parleying.'
Browning, Avith his love of paradox and belief in
the inextricableness of good from evil, naturally
Ill iNTitonrrTioxs to the poems. 235
tiims his attention to the half forgotten fuhuHst of
The GrumUimj Ilivc (170')). Yet the cynical, material-
istic doctor, whose views coincide with all that
Bro\\'ning's philosophy disavows, is a curious supporter
of a piece of transcendentalism, though this felt
discrepancy docs not atlect the purpose of Browning's
IK)em. The real ' parleying ' is not with Mandeville,
hut with another, one who was ' more of a dynamic
than a didactic force,' and the invocation of Mande-
ville's argumentative aid does not necessarily involve
any thing beyond the train of ideas wliich the alterna-
tive title of 'Ihe Ikes (viz. Private Fi(^ Public Bemjits),
freely interpreted, suggests to Bro\vning,
JCith Daniel Barioli does not even take its text
from the invoked Jesuit writer. It is ' a fancy-freak
by contrast born of his loiifj-windcd stories, which
might be read, were they not so rniiioii.di/ full of all
manner of superstitions. " Saint me no saints ! "
Browning virtually says to the ingenious Bartoli,
" I will draw you a woman who outsaints them."
Then follows a story which in treatment resembles
Browning's The Glove.
With Chrvitojihrr Smart contains deeper hannonies.
Smart's Soiuj to Ihivid is the hint on which lirowning
writes, and he deals witli the relation between the
one perfect product, the ' single speech ' which some
men achieve and the mediocre residue of their life-
work. The illustration of the jewel-like chapel
amid tlic commonplaceness of the huge house, by
which Browning introduces his subject, is u never-
236 BROWNING. chap.
to -be -forgotten treasure of imaginative criticism.
Section ix. is, as Browning acknowledges, an ex-
planation of which Smart could never have thought.
Its idea is that economy exists in poetic production,
that the vitalising, Adamic work of naming, which
is the poet's supreme gift to the world, is a gift
conditional on the use to which the world puts it.
Only so much as can, or will, be utilised does the
wise poet disburse. His treasures are, like God's
revelation, sparingly given, and only on the under-
standing that they prick men on to advance.
JFitli George Biibh Dodington is a caustic mock-
reproof to a knavish fool, in this case the most
crawling politician of Walpole's time. The Sludge-
like course ironically recommended to him, Avhich
he was not artful enough to take, resembles that
already outlined in the third stage of the Greek in
Pietro of Ahano. ' Inscrutableness is statecraft's
highest card, and it takes more than ordinary guile
to rule the masses who are already versed in all
the commoner strategies of selfishness.'
With Francis Furini primarily upholds the right
of high Art to depict the nude. Baldinucci (of
Privilege of Burial memory !), in his biography of the
painter-priest, Furini, tells the well-known story of
how, on his death-bed, the artist sought to destroy
his pictures of undraped womanhood.
"Nay, that, Furini, never I at least
Mean to believe ! "
begins Browning, -whose faculty for scorn and indigna-
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THK POEMS. 237
tion is more directly shown here tlian in anj' other
poem. His plea for the nmle in Art is one with
his reverence for God's best handiwork. An artist,
he goes on to say, who would express spirit truth-
fully can only do so by painting flesh truthfully,
since the whole body expres.?cs the soul, which,
bodiless, would be inexpressive. The more philo-
sophical parts of the poem are linked to the rest
by the relation between the study of tlic human
form and the basis of ' Furini's ' philosophy, self-
con.sciousness. The shade of the ' painter-theologian '
asserts that this self-consciou.sness, or this fact of
soul, is approached and known by studying the
revealer and medium of soul, body. The design
and beneficence of which he becomes more deeply
aware the closer he studies lead him on to recognise
the ' out '-soul, God. Thus is life turned cosmos by
' Furini,' who dares the evolutionists to prove it on
their showing any thing but chaos. The poem ends
with a lovely passage which is not exactly comparable
with any other in Browning. It is as quiet and
simple as it is great.
Jl'ith Gerard de Laire'^se, the grandest and most
significant of the ' parleyings,' addresses itself to the
Dutch painter and writer on Art who in his ])lind
age went about fancying Holland peopled with gods
and goddesses. Browning challenges fantasy to
match fact, and then enters the lists in the cause of
reality against de Laire.s.se, who may reasonably be
considered a champion of dreams. Browning, who
238 BROWNING.
CHAP.
in many respects lags behind 'latest developments,'
here heads the van of progress and gives the finest
poetic expression it has yet received to the essentially
modern passion for nature unendowed with any
factitious attributes. The poem, every word of which
is poetry, comes from the old, hopeful poet as an
insj)iring cry of ' forward.'
With Charles Avison reads like a continuation of
the thoughts on music in Fifine at the Fair. Avison
was an eighteenth century composer, of whom, as of
de Lairesse, Browning sjDeaks as an early friend. We
may probably accept as a certainty that most of the
old-world characters whose names are borrowed for
these ' parleyings ' belong to memories of the poet's
boyish reading. Browning evidently shares in the
touching instiiict of life's decline to return to its
earliest associations. Eyery art, says Browning,
strives to arrest the evanescence of feeling, to ' shoot
liquidity into a mould,' and none fails like music,
feeling's most direct language, because no other art
is so susceptible of change and superannuation. Yet
the truths Avhich music strives to register are un-
dying. Each composer is good, and best in that he
represents a link in music's chain, not an independent
ring, final and complete for ever. These ideas about
music, its pathos and its glory, ruled AU Fogler,
only there they were transmuted into sensation,
while here they are merely thought.
Fust and his Friends is a playful glimpse at the
infancy of printing. Besides this, it is, more im-
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 239
Illicitly, a coniniciit, in the sjiiiit of liie entire
volume, on the Heeting nature of our knowledge, its
liability to abuse, anil withal its cajiacity of begetting
new knowledge, which shall l)e in advance of it, just
as Luther was in achaiice of Huss.
Asolando : Fancies and Facts, 1^90, is invested
with a pathetic interest from the circumstances of
its publiaition. It was published on the day on
which Browning died, and his last words, "how
gratifying ! " M'ere in acknowledgment of the tele-
graphed news of its anticipatory welcome. Thus the
book has come to have a sacredness, a personal
association of memory which, at all events at pi-esent,
render an impartial appreciation of it almost im-
possible. One prefers to dwell upon its luimistakable
gems, such as 7V//r,s and Sum mum Bouum, rather
than criticise its tenuous reveries and Uiles wherein
we catch little more than the echo of more vigorous
achievement. It is clear that the general date of
1889 cannot be assigned to each poem, though we
cannot say how many may l)e referred to earlier
periods of production. Some, as J)ubiiii/, J'octicx,
IiKi/rjtieheiisivcuess, DercUipiiuiit, seem more specially
sheafed than othei-s by the binding tlireads of the Pro-
Iti/jur and /■Jjiildiju/', and these may prol)al>ly l)e taken as
the indubitable 'Asolani.' Their peculiar note is one
which could only emanate from a poet who is review-
ing life from its further end. It is that truth suipjisses
fiction as fact 8urpa.s.ses fancy, while, at the same
time, that fiction, far from being worthless, is the sole
240 BROWNING. chap.
ladder up to truth. Browning's readers remember
in Sordello and Fippa Passes the introduction of Asolo,
the small white city of the Trevisan, mountains
behind and Lombard plain before, which, roughly
speaking, lies, for the traveller, between Bassano and
Vicenza. After Venice, Asolo was the first place in
Italy that Browning visited (1838), and it is the last
(1889) with which he is poetically associated. He
was as faithful to his love for Asolo as he was to all
his loves. And here, on the threshold of Browning's
last work, we may reiterate what has been at all
events held in solution by every page of these
comments, viz. that Browning's ' genius ' was the
expressive side of his whole nature. The more we
ponder what we learn from Browning's poetry, and
then compare it with the little we need to learn of
his life, the more we are struck by the unity of the
impression which as a personality, compounded of
genius and man,' he makes upon us, lovable in foibles
and weakness as in nobleness and strength.
Prologue is the lyric counterpart of Gerard de
Lairesse. To a poet of Browning's sage, sweet tem-
perament and development, years and ' disillusion-
ment' bring, not despondency, but gladness at
seeing truth drop the wraps that bound her.
Eosny, with its dramatic characterisation and
abrupt, perhaps bewildering, plunge into the centre
of the situation, belongs to the same class as Cristina
and Monaldeschi. It is spoken by a woman, armed at
all points against her unsuccessful rival, the ' Clara '
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 241
addicsi^ed. Kosny is away in the war, but wlietlier
he reiurns safely or falls, Clara sliall have no share
in his victory or sacrifice, shall not even know that
iier rival can feel anything besides the calmness of
perpetual superiority. There is something soulless
and eerie about the speaker which is indeterminately
heightened by the refrain of names.
Duhi'tij records an hour of mild, autumnal glad-
ness. Whence and whereby tlid it come 1 Not on
the wings of sleep or day-dream. It was a memory
of love.
' Truth ever, truth only the excellent ! '
Now is a poem of fourteen lines upon such a
moment of love as eternalises time, or rather annihil-
ates the conception of it.
IlumilUy is the poet's lovely thought concerning
the ungnidged crumbs which fall from the banquet
of one who makes love rich.
Pot(ii< is the name by which Browning designates
the raetaph«jrs of lovers. ' Ixose,' ' swan,' * moon,' to
these the adored one is compared, while all the time
she suipasses them l)y being a beautiful human
creature.
Surmnum Jionum ranks among the perfect short
love-poems of the English language. The manliness
and restraint of Browning are upon a poem the
melody and wonls of which sound more likc^ a lyric
of Mr. Swinburne's. lict us bear in mind that this
ex(|uiHite piece, as full of freshness as it is simple, was
put forth by a poet of sovcnty-soven.
R
242 BROWNING. chap.
A Pearl, a Girl is hardly less delightful than
Summum Bonum.
Speculative might well be a lyric from Ferishtah's
Fancies. It is similar in idea to the conclusion of the
one that follows Ttvo Camels.
TFJiite JFitchcraft dallies with the innocence of love
and the playful mutual mockery in which tenderness
can securely indulge.
Bad Dreams. I. is a remarkable instance of how
much a great poet can condense into a couple of
quatrains of the simplest words.
Bad Dreams. II. is a curious piece of delicately
suggested horror. Its phantasmagoria recalls Tenny-
son's Vision of Sin. A lover sees in his dream the
girl he worships involved in a grisly and bestial cult.
He charges her with it, and she retorts upon him
with a dream of her own, probably similar in origin,
but ludicrously dispersive of his troubled sensations
regarding her.
Bad Dreams. III. is a nightmare on the grand
scale of upheaval and topsy-turveydom.
Bad Dreams. IV. records, in a particularly striking
way, a man's bitter regret and remorse for the death
of the girl who loved and was affianced to him. He
had systematically snubbed her for her deficient
mental culture, and chilled her heart by his cold scorn
of her frivolous ways. Love had been disguised as
blame and criticism. Now she is dead through his
unkindness, and he would thankfully humble himself
to the dust to have her alive and forgiving him.
Ill INTRODUCTIONS TO THE POEMS. 213
Iriapprehensiveness, somewhat in the spirit of the
preceding poem, tells of a woman who is entirely
absorbed in verifying a writer's observation on a
weed, and utterly unconscious of the love for herself
which is consuming her companion —
" Oh, fancies that might be, oh, facts that are ! "
The worst of it is that her ' inapprehcnsive stave '
freezes the expression of the man's love, so that he
merely replies to her cultured remark with a similar
one. We recall Two in the Campagna when we read
Inapprehensiveness.
jriiich ? paints subtle portraits in miniature. The
Countess is willing to be Providence to a lover, pro-
vided he on his side refers solely to her for salvation.
We are left to decide whether such an ideal of love,
if genuine, is or is not an arrogant usurpation of
God's prerogative.
77k" Cardimd and the Dorj is of a class of story in
frequent demand in a children's hour.
The Pope and ike Net is one of those hizarreries, like
the story of Judas and the fowl in Juris Doctor
Johannes- Buptista Bottinius, for whicli drowning has
a keen relish.
The JJcan- Feast is in the cast of thought of
J-Wisli ttih's Fnnrics.
Murkle-Miiuth Metj is a plea-sant Border ballad.
Armdf.< Ainho censures vivisection, which it ildines
with animosity and dubs cowardice.
Th4' Lady and thr Painter en'cetivcly inveighs again.st
244 BROWNING. chap.
a conventionalism that approves a woman Avho wears
the wings and breasts of murdered birds,' and dis-
approves another who, as a model, suffers her beauti-
ful form to be reproduced in marble or on canvas.
Ponte delV Angelo, Venice, belongs to a group of
poems Browning has written on traditions of places.
Like the Greeks, he is partial to wiliness, especially
when, as here, it is a saint who gets the better of the
evil one.
Beatrice Signorini is a pretty tale of a Griselda
who had the wit on a provocative occasion to turn
Katharine and thereby rose immeasurably in her
husband's estimation.
Fhde Music, with an Accompaniment is a dialogue,
the ideas of which are suggested by a flautist's playing
heard through the ash-trees. A woman ridicules the
poetic construction which a man puts upon the fluting.
At last, he turns the tables upon her by affecting, at
all events, to take her cynical words as descriptive
and consequently condemnatory of her own ways
with him. The poem is accurately described by its
title, the precise meaning that may be put upon the
words being subsidiary — an ' accompaniment ' to
their music.
'^Imperante Augusto iiatus est " is a contemporary
comment on the greatness and glories of Augustus.
It gives the story of his annual donning of a beggar's
garb in order to avert the jealousy of the divine
element so dreaded by the Romans. The title and
the allusion at the end of the poem refer to the
Ill IXTRODUCTIOXS TO THE POEMS. 215
so-called Messianic prophecy in one of the (forged)
Sybilline books. The poem accentuates the j)revail-
ing Koman sentiment of the uncertainty of things
and the nearness of supremacy to destruction.
Denhpmcnt is an interesting and delightful parable
of Browning's philosophy of illusion and growth.
liephan in a noble and imaginative manner ex-
presses contentment with the limitations, difficulties,
and ignorance in which mankind lives.
Reverie expresses Browning's belief that Love is
the hidden name of Power. On earth. Power and
Love appear dissociated, because on earth man is
meant to grope his o^ti way and attest the stuff of
which he is made.
Ejnlogue is the last word spoken by Browning to
the world. It is an ei)ilogue not only to Asolando
but to the whole of his life. Though it is not a
j)0cm that epitomi.ses his genius, it is one that calls
up a backward - glancing vision of the particular
iiiHuence he has everywhere exercised over his
readers. The Ej>ilt)f/ue to Asolando at least reminds
us of Browning's bracing, tonic effect upon all of us
and the hopefulness and support he has afforded
many in hours of gloom or trouble. Standing apart
from criticism, the j)oem is ];rave, energetic, stimulant,
and proves still true lirowniiig's line of self-descri[)-
tion in J'nuliit'; self-description which no moment
lived, no line written since has annulled, and which
is the 'secret' of P*rowning'K greatness —
" I am iiLiilc up of an iiitoiiscst lifi*."
246
BROWNING.
CHAP.
INDEX
Abt Vooler, 126
Adam, Lilith, and Eve, 222
After, 117
Agamemnon of jEschylus, The, 202
Andrea del Sarto, 116
Another Way of Love, 123
Any Wife to any Husband, 111
Apollo and the Fates. A Prologue,
234
Apparent Failure, 131
Ajipearances, 200
Arcades Ambo, 243
Aristophanes' Apology, 182
Artemis Prologizes, 82
Asolando, 239
At the "Mermaid," 198
Avison, Charles, Parleying with,
238
Bad Dreams, 242
Balaustion's Adventure ; including
A Transcript from Euripides, 161
Baldinucei, Filippo, on the Privilege
of Burial, 202
Bartoli, Daniel, Parleying with, 235
Bean-Feast, The, 243
Bean-Stripe, A : also Apple-Bating,
231
Beatrice Signorini, 244
Before, 117
Bells and Pomegranates, 75-103
Bifurcation, 199
Bishop Blougram's Apology, 115
Bishop, The, orders his Tomb at
Saint Praxed's Church, 93
Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A, 86
Book, The, and the Ring, 160
Boot and Saddle, 81
Boy, The, and the Angel, 95
By the Fireside, 111
Caliban upon Setebos, 128
Camel-Driver, A, 229
Capoiisacchi, Giuseppe, 148
Cardinal, The, and the Dog, 243
Cavalier Tunes, 81
Cenciaja, 201
Cherries, 230
"Ohilde Roland to the Dark Tower
came," 113
Christmas-Eve, 103
Cleon, 121
Clive, 217
Colombe's Birthday, 88
Confessional, The, 94
Confessions, 129
Count Gismond, 81
Count Guido Pranceschinl, 146
Cristina, 82
Cristina and Monaldeschi, 221
" De Gustibus ," 120
Deaf and Dumb ; a Group by Wool-
ner, 129
Death in the Desert, A, 127
Development, 245
De Lairesse, Gerard, Parleying with,
237
De Mandeville, Bernard, Parleying
with, 234
Dis Aliter Visum ; or, le Byron de
nos Jours, 126
Doctor , 219
Dodington, George Bubb, Parleying
with, 236
Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis,
152
Donald, 220
Dramatic Idyls, First Series, 211
Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, 217
Dramatic Lyrics, 81
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 92
Dramatis Personae, 124
Dubiety, 241
Eagle, The, 227
Earth's Immortalities, 95
Easter-Day, 105
Bchetlos, 217
Englishman, The, in Italy, 92
Epilogue to Asolando, 245
Epilogue to Dramatis Personae, 131
Epilogue to Ferishtah's Fancies, 232
Epilogue to Pacohiarotto, 202
Epistle, An, containing the Strange
Medical Experience of Karshish,
the Arab Physician, 111
Eurydice to Orpheus ; a Picture by
Leighton, 129
Evelyn Hope, 109
Ill
INDEX.
217
Face, A, 130
Family, Tho, •2-2S
Fears and Scruplos, 1!>0
Ferislitali's Fancies, -Jii!
Fifine at tlie Fair, IVO
Flight of the Duchess, The, 04
Flowers Name, The, !M
Flute -music, with an Accompani-
ment, 244
Forgiveness, A, 200
Pn Lipjo Lippi, 110
Furini, Francis, Parleying with,
236
Fust and his Friends : An Epilogue,
238
Gajiden Fancies, 94
Give a Rouse, 81
GInve, The, 97
Gold Hair: a Story of Pomio, 124
Grammarian's Funeral, A, 122
Guarxlian-Angel, The, 121
Guido, 157
Halbert and Hob, 214
Half-Rome, 141
Heretics Trata-dy, The, 122
Uvrvi- Riel, 200
Holy.Cn..sk Day, 121
Home-Thoughts, from Abrfiad, 93
Home-Thoughts, from the Sea, 93
House, 198
How it Strikes a Contemjiorary, 114
" How they brought the Good News
from Ghent to Alx," 92
Hutnility 241
"ImPERASTE AUOISTO XATCS J>r
" 244
In a Balcony, 118
In a Gondola, 82
In n Year, 118
In Tlirce Days, 117
InapiirehcnHiveness, 243
Incident of the French Camp, 81
Inn Album, Tlie, l^s
InntanH Tvmnnus, 112
It.i' in England, 92
I\ vch, 213
Ixi"ii, ...
Jam»m I,i:»:'m Wike, 124
J'iclian.-in Hiikka<l»Hb, 228
JociMMfria, 220
Johmnnes Agricola in Mc<litatlnn,
88
JuriH Doctor JobanneMUaptUtaUut-
UuiuH, IM
Kino Victor and Kino Charles,
78
I-a Saisiaz, 207
L.ilHvratory, The, 94
Lady, The, and the Painter, 243
Last Rill.' Together, The, 115
Life in a Love, 114
Light Woman, A, 114
Likeness, A, 130
Lost Leader, The, 93
L<jst Mistress, The, 93
Love among the Ruins, 108
Love in a Life, 114
Lover's Quarrel, A, 109
Luria, 97
Magical Nati-re, 199
Marehing Along, SI
Martin Relph, 212
Mary 'Wollstonecraft and Fusell,
222
Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha, 116
May and Death, 129
Meeting at Night, 95
Mellon-Seller, The, 227
>lemorabilia, 116
Men and Women, 108
Mesmerism, 112
Mihrab Shah, 229
Misconceptions, 123
Mr. Sludge, "The Medium," 130
Muckle-Mouth Meg, 243
Muli'ykeh, 218
My Last Duchess, 81
My Star, 112
Nationality in Drinks, 95
Natural JIagic, 199
Ned Bratts, 210
Never the Time and the Place, 226
Now, 241
Numi)holept08, 199
Old Pictures in Florence, 118
One Way of Love, 122
f)ii.- Word More. To K. B. B., 123
Other Half-Rome, The, 143
Pacchiarotto and how he worked
in Dihtkmi-er : with other poems,
UMS
Pacchiarotto, Of, and how ho worked
in DistcmjM-r, 197
Pnmbo, "j'jt;
Pan anci Luna, 210
PaninlKUH, ,'>:(
ParleyiiigH with Certain People of
Importuucu in their Day, 238
248
BROWNING.
CHAP. Ill
Parting at Morning, 95
Patriot, The, 115
Pauline ; A Fragment of a Con-
fession, 49
Pearl, A, A Girl, 242
Pheidippides, 213
Pictor Ignotus, 92
Pied Piper of Hamelin, The, — A
Child's Story, S3
Pietro of Abano, 21S
Pillar at Sebzevar, A, 231
Pippa Passes, 75
Pis^ah Sights, 198
Plot-Culture, 231
Poetics, 241
Pompilia, 150
Ponte dell' Angelo, Venice, 244
Pope, The, 155
Pope, The, and the Net, 243
Popularity, 122
Porphyria's Lover, S3
Pretty Woman, A, 113
Prince Hohenstiel - Schwangau,
Saviour of Society, 166
Prologue to Asolando, 240
Prologue to Perishtah's Fancies, 227
Prologue to Pacchiarotto, 197
Prospice, 129
Protus, 120
Rabbi Ben Ezra, 127
Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, or
Turf and Towers, 177
Rephan, 245
Respectability, 113
Return, The, of the Druses, S3
Reverie, 245
Ring, The, and the Book, 131
Rosny, 240
Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli, 82
Saul, 96
Serenade, A, at the Villa, 112
Shah Abbas, 228
Shop, 198
Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis, 94
Smart, Christopher, Parleying with,
235
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, 81
Solomon and Balkis, 221
Song, 95
Sordello, 64
Soul's Tragedy, A, 101
Speculative, 242
Statue, The, and the Bust, 114
St. Martin's Summer, 200
Stratford, 61
Summum Bonum, 241
Sun, The, 228
Tertidm Quid, 145
Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr,
83
Time's Revenges, 96
Toccata of Galuppi's, A, 110
Too Late, 126
"Transcendentalism ," 123
Tray, 216
Twins, Tlie, 121
Two Camels, 230
Two in the Campagna, 123
Two Poets of Croisic, The, 210
Up at a Villa-
109
-Dov™ in the City,
Waring, 82
Wiiich? 243
White Witchcraft, 242
Woman's I^ast Word, A, 109
Women and Roses, 120
Worst of It, The, 125
Youth and Art, 130
THE END.
!
Printed hy R. S; R. Clark, Edinburgh.
I