LIBRARY OF 
 
 EDS. PIPER, H.D. 
 
 No.
 
 (Jfoorp SMtUte Coofce. 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT: A Critical Study of her Life, 
 Writings, and Philosophy. With Portrait, izmo, 
 
 $2.00. 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON : His Life, Writings, 
 and Philosophy. With Portrait, izmo, $2.00. 
 
 POETS AND PROBLEMS. (Tennyson, Ruskin, 
 Browning.) i2mo, $2.00. 
 
 A GUIDE-BOOK TO THE POETIC AND DRA- 
 MATIC WORKS OF ROBERT BROWNING. 
 Crown 8vo, $2.00. 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY, 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
 
 A GUIDE-BOOK TO THE POETIC 
 
 AND DRAMATIC WORKS OF 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE WILLIS COOKE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "POETS AND PROBLEMS," "RALPH WALDO EMERSON: HIS LIFE 
 WRITINGS AND PHILOSOPHY," ETC. 
 
 Best bard, because the wisest. FOB, in IsraftL 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 (<Cf;c fitoerpibe Press, Cambcib0e 
 
 1896
 
 Copyright, 1891, 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Uoughtou & Co.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS book has been prepared on the theory that a poet is 
 his own best interpreter. No attempt has been made to 
 expound Browning ; that has been well done by Mrs. Orr, 
 Professor Alexander, Mr. Symons, Mr. Nettleship, Mr. 
 Fotheringham, and others. The attempt here made is of 
 quite another kind, and one claiming less of merit and origi- 
 nality. Browning's works are so voluminous that an anno- 
 tated edition is impracticable at present, but an effort has 
 been made in this volume to supply that want in part. The 
 introductions and notes which such an edition would provide 
 are here given in a volume by themselves, and under the 
 titles of the poems arranged alphabetically. 
 
 Browning's method being dramatic, and his special liter- 
 ary form the monologue, he rarely gives any very definite 
 clue to the situations of his characters. The obscurity of 
 many of his poems grows wholly out of the fact that they 
 are filled with allusions which are not easily understood. 
 He uses historic situations, biographical incidents, and artis- 
 tic details without furnishing a sufficiently clear and full 
 interpretation of them. He assumes that the reader is in 
 possession of all needed information concerning his charac- 
 ters, when it is often difficult to understand who is speaking, 
 to what time or place he belongs, and what are the circum- 
 stances under which he speaks. Given these, it is quite pos- 
 sible to follow Browning's meanings, and to read him with 
 pleasure. 
 
 This book has not been prepared for those who think
 
 iv Preface. 
 
 Browning needs no helps in making his meanings clear to his 
 readers, but for those who have found it difficult to read 
 him, and for those who have not a library at hand for the 
 explanation of his allusions. In its preparation the work of 
 others has been drawn upon freely. The Papers of the 
 London Browning Society have been the chief source of in- 
 formation. The great amount of interesting matter con- 
 tained in the twelve numbers now issued of those Papers 
 has been carefully studied ; but it is in a form very incon- 
 venient for reference. In this volume much of it will be 
 found under the titles of the poems to which it refers. Mrs. 
 Orr's valuable Handbook to Robert Browning's Works has 
 been used to a considerable extent, because it contains much 
 information supplied directly by Browning for the elucida- 
 tion of his poems. In every instance where such informa- 
 tion was necessary to the purpose of the present volume it 
 has been used, credit being given wherever possible. An- 
 other valuable source of information has been the magazine 
 called Poet-Lore, which has given special attention to the 
 interpretation of Browning's poems, and to awaking an in- 
 terest in his poetry. For the aid of the student of Brown- 
 ing who may wish to consult the books and essays referred 
 to throughout this volume, and also the best things written 
 of the poet, there have been added to this preface a number 
 of brief reference lists. Very much not contained in any of 
 the books devoted to Browning and his poetry will be found 
 in these pages, arranged systematically and in a form con- 
 venient for reference. The book will be found to contain 
 the following kinds of information about Browning and his 
 works : 
 
 1. So far as known, the date, place, and circumstances of 
 the writing of each poem are given. 
 
 2. The date of the publication of each poem, an account 
 of subsequent changes and editions, and such other biblio- 
 graphical details as may be of interest.
 
 Preface. v 
 
 3. When a poem is based on any particular book or other 
 writing, that special work has been drawn upon for its ex- 
 planation, and as far as possible the exact words of such 
 book have been given. When a poem is based on some 
 historical or biographical incident, it has been explained in 
 such fullness as seemed necessary for an understanding of 
 the poem. 
 
 4. Browning's own explanations of his poems have been 
 given in every instance where they were known to exist. 
 His interpretations of whole poems or of special allusions 
 are numerous and often of much importance. His letters 
 and notes in explanation of his method of spelling Greek 
 words, his use of certain grammatical forms, etc., have been 
 given in full. 
 
 5. Many of the allusions are explained, especially those 
 of an historical, biographical, and artistic nature. No at- 
 tempt, however, has been made to explain all of the poet's 
 allusions ; and there will be found plenty of work in this 
 direction for any Browning society that is not unusually 
 active and zealous. 
 
 6. About fifteen poems of minor importance written by 
 Browning, but not included in his published volumes, are 
 reprinted here, with accounts of the circumstances of their 
 writing and publication. They are included because they 
 illustrate some of his poetical characteristics and some of 
 his personal traits. 
 
 7. Reference is made under each title to such books as 
 will be found most helpful in the interpretation of the poem 
 or that bear upon its general subject. 
 
 8. A list is given of the best articles and books which 
 have been published on each poem. The attempt has been 
 made to include only such articles and books as are of real 
 value, and to make the references accurate in every in- 
 stance ; but no infallibility is claimed. Owing to the fact 
 that Mrs. Orr, in her Handbook, has provided an interpre-
 
 vi Preface. 
 
 tation for all the poems, it has not been thought necessary 
 to refer to that work under each poem. As Symons's Intro- 
 duction to the Study of Browning and Fotheringham's 
 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning give interpre- 
 tations of a large proportion of the poems, they have not 
 been mentioned. Although each of these books gives some- 
 thing in the way of interpretation on nearly every poem 
 they will not be found equally helpful at all times, nor will 
 their comments afford in all instances the best word that has 
 been said on the poems. 
 
 9. Special editions, volumes of selections, illustrations, 
 poems set to music, have been mentioned under individual 
 poems or in special articles. 
 
 10. Each of the principal characters in Browning's 
 poems is noted in its alphabetical order, and a brief de- 
 scription given, such as will serve to identify its nature and 
 the poem where it may be found. 
 
 11. Significant criticisms by leaders of literary opinion 
 have been given when they were of special value. 
 
 12. In the case of the dramas accounts are given of their 
 stage presentation. 
 
 13. The original prefaces are reprinted in all instances 
 where they are not now printed with the poems. They are 
 in several instances of much value in the presentation of 
 Browning's poetical theories, or on account of their personal 
 statements. 
 
 14. All extended and important changes in the poems 
 since their first publication have been mentioned. The 
 Riverside edition of Browning's Works gives the first edi- 
 tion in full of Pauline, as well as the poem in its latest 
 revised form. In this book the changes made in Paracel- 
 sus and Sordello between the first and the latest editions 
 have been indicated in parallel columns. For many of the 
 shorter poems the changes have been indicated. 
 
 In this book the first word in each title not an article has
 
 Preface. vii 
 
 been taken as the one determining its alphabetic position, in 
 this following for the most part the Index to the Riverside 
 edition of 1889. 
 
 A few annotations omitted by accident from their proper 
 place, and one or two received too late for insertion, have 
 been included in an appendix. 
 
 The page references throughout this work are to the 
 Riverside edition of 1889, which is in six volumes, the 
 present volume being uniform therewith. The Riverside 
 edition of 1888 does not contain Browning's latest revisions. 
 
 The great number of details contained in this volume 
 make it more than probable that errors will appear in it. 
 Also it is probable that needed information for the full ex- 
 planation of some of the poems has been omitted, which 
 more time and opportunity might have supplied. Any in- 
 formation that will insure greater accuracy and helpfulness 
 to a second edition will be thankfully received. 
 
 G. W. C. 
 
 DEDHAM, MASS.
 
 THE BEST THINGS SAID OF BROWNING. 
 
 ONLY the best books and magazine articles about Brown- 
 ing are mentioned in the following lists. No attempt has 
 been made to compile a complete bibliography, but rather 
 to give a helpful guide in finding what is really valuable. 
 Dr. Furnivall's Bibliography is very complete, but not very 
 convenient for ready consultation. What it lacks in con- 
 ciseness and adaptability for use is made up in the appendix 
 to Sharp's Life. The reader might be referred at once to 
 the latter work were it not that it puts the good and the 
 bad together, and gives little hint of what will be found of 
 value or what is best worth consulting. The names of 
 authors in the following lists guarantee merit ; and in the 
 case of writers not well known as critics a careful examina- 
 tion has shown the worth of what is cited. 
 
 I. BIOGRAPHICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Life of Robert Browning. William Sharp. London : Walter Scott. 
 New York : A. Lovell & Co. 1890. 
 
 Robert Browning : Chief Poet of the Age. William G. Kingsland. 
 London : J. W. Jarvis & Son. 1890. 
 
 Same, revised and enlarged. London : J. W. Jarvis & Son. 1891. 
 
 Same, revised and enlarged. Philadelphia : Poet-Lore Publishing 
 Co. 1891. 
 
 Robert Browning : Personalia. Edmund Gosse. [The Century arti- 
 cle of 1881, with a paper published after the death of the poet.} 
 Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1890. 
 
 Famous Women. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. John H. Ingram. 
 Boston: Robert Brothers. 1888. 
 
 Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning addressed to Richard Hen- 
 gist Home. With a Preface and Memoir by Richard Henry Stod- 
 dard. New York : James Millar. 1877. 
 
 Last Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. With a Memoir by 
 Theodore Tilton. New York : James Millar. 1862. 
 
 The Living Authors of England. Thomas Powell. New York : 
 Appleton & Co. 1849. 
 
 A New Spirit of the Age. R. H. Home. London, 1844. 
 
 Six Months in Italy. George Stillman Hillard. Boston, 1853.
 
 x The Best Things said of Browning. 
 
 French and Italian Note-books. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston. 
 1871. 
 
 Life of Landor. John Forster. London, 1869. 
 
 Macready's Reminiscences and Letters. London, 1875. 
 
 Literary Life. "The Brownings." W. Shepard. New York: 
 Putnams. 1882. 
 
 In Memoriam : Memorial to Robert Browning, King's Chapel, 
 January 28, 1890, by Browning Society of Boston. Boston : Brown- 
 ing Society. 1890. 
 
 London Letters. G. W. Smalley. New York, 1891. 
 
 II. BIOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE ARTICLES. 
 
 Harper's Magazine. George W. Curtis. 23 : 555. 
 
 The Century Magazine. " The Early Writings of Robert Brown- 
 ing." Edmund Gosse. December, 1881. 23 : 189. 
 
 Harper's Magazine. George W. Curtis. January, 1890. 80 : 637. 
 
 Magazine of Art. " Portraits of Robert Browning." W. M. Ros- 
 setti. 13 : 181, 246, 261. 
 
 Poet-Lore. Letters by Browning. 2 : 101. 
 
 Poet-Lore. Personal Recollections of Browning. William G. 
 Kingsland. 2 : 130. 
 
 New Review. Edmund Gosse. January, 1890. 1 : 91. 
 
 The Manhattan. "The Brownings." K. M. Rowland. June, 
 1884. 
 
 The Century. "A Day with the Brownings at Pratolino." Mrs. 
 E. C. Kinney. 1 : 185. 
 
 The Argosy. E. F. Bridell-Fox. February, 1890. 
 
 HI. BOOKS OF INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM. 
 
 Essays on Robert Browning's Poetry. John T. Nettleship. Lon- 
 don, 1868. 
 
 Sordello : A Story from Robert Browning. Frederic May Holland. 
 New York: Putnams. 1881. 
 
 Stories from Robert Browning. Frederic May Holland ; with Intro- 
 duction by Mrs. Sutherland Orr. London : G. Bell & Sons. 1882. 
 
 A Bibliography of Robert Browning from 1833 to 1881. Compiled 
 by Frederick J. Furnivall. London: The Browning Society, 1881. 
 
 Same, enlarged, including Shelley essay. 1882. 
 
 An Introduction to Robert Browning. A Criticism of the Purpose 
 and Method of his Earlier Works. Bancroft Cooke. London, 1883. 
 
 Strafford : A Tragedy. With Notes and Preface by E. H. Hickey, 
 and Introduction by S. R. Gardiner. London : G. Bell & Sons. 1884. 
 
 A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning. Mrs. Sutherland 
 Orr. London : George Bell & Sons. 1885. 
 
 Same, revised and enlarged. 1887. 
 
 Sordello's Story Retold in Prose. Annie Wall. Boston : Hough- 
 ton, Mifflin & Co. 1886. 
 
 Robert Browning's Poetry : Outline Studies of the Chicago Brown- 
 ing Society. Chicago : Charles H. Kerr & Co. 1886.
 
 The Best Things said of Browning. xi 
 
 An Introduction to the Study of Browning. Arthur Symons. Lon- 
 don : Cassell & Co. 1886. 
 
 Browning's Women. Introduction by Rev. E. E. Hale. Mary E. 
 Burt. Chicago : Charles H. Kerr & Co. 1887. 
 
 Select Poems of Robert Browning. Edited, with notes, by William 
 J. Rolfe and Heloise E. Hersey. New York : Harper & Brothers. 
 1887. 
 
 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, and other Dramas [Colombe's Birthday 
 and A Soul's Tragedy]. By Robert Browning. Edited, with notes, 
 by William J. Rolfe and Heloise E. Hersey. New York : Harper & 
 Brothers. 1887. 
 
 An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry. Hiram 
 Corsoii. Boston : Heath & Co. 1888. 
 
 Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. James Fotheringham. 
 London, 1887. 
 
 Same, revised and enlarged. New York: Scribner & Welford. 
 1888. 
 
 An Introduction to the Poetry of Robert Browning. William J. 
 Alexander. Boston : Ginn & Co. 1889. 
 
 Sordello : An Outline Analysis of Mr. Browning's Poem. Jeanie 
 Morison. Edinburgh : Blackwood & Sons. 1889. 
 
 Outline of Browning's Paracelsus, with a Sketch of the Paracelsus 
 of History. Mrs. Fanny Holy. Chicago : Charles H. Kerr & Co. 
 1889. 
 
 Browning's Message to his Time : His Religion, Philosophy, and 
 Science. Edward Berdoe. London : Swan Sonnenschein & Co. 1890. 
 
 Robert Browning : Essays and Thoughts. John T. Nettleship. 
 London : Macmillan & Co. 1890. [The same as Essays on Robert 
 Browning's Poetry, but greatly enlarged with new essays.] 
 
 Robert Browning. Memorial Meeting of the Syracuse Browning 
 Club, January 9, 1890. Syracuse : C. W. Bardeen. 1890. 
 
 IV. BOOKS WITH ESSAYS ON BROWNING. 
 
 Papers on Literature and Art. " Browning's Poems." Margaret 
 Fuller. Boston, 1846. 
 
 Essays on English Literature. " Browning and Landor." Thomas 
 McNicoll. London, 1861. 
 
 Our Living Poets : An Essay in Criticism. H. B. Forman. Lon- 
 don, 1871. 
 
 Essays Theological and Literary, vol. ii. R. H. Button. London, 
 1871. 
 
 Same, in Literary Essays. London : Macmillan & Co. 1888. 
 
 A Comparative Estimate of Modern English Poets. J. Devey. 
 London : Moxon. 1873. 
 
 Studies in Literature. " Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning." Ed- 
 ward Dowden. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1878. 
 
 Literary Studies. " Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning ; or, 
 Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art in English Poetrv." Walter Bage- 
 hot. [Reprinted from The National Review, 19 : 27.] London, 1879.
 
 xii TJie Best Things said of Browning. 
 
 Poets in the Pulpit. H. R. Haweis. London : Sampson Low & Co. 
 1880. 
 
 Obiter Dicta. "On the Alleged Obscurity of Mr. Browning's 
 Poetry." Augustine Birrell. London, 1884. 
 
 Urbana Scripta. Studies of Five Living Poets. Arthur Galton. 
 London, 1885. 
 
 Chapters on English Metre. Joseph B. Mayor. London, 1886. 
 
 Poets and Problems : Tennyson, Ruskin, Browning. George Wil- 
 lis Cooke. Boston, 1886. 
 
 Essays on Poetry and Poets. Roden Noel. London, 1886. 
 
 Victorian Poets. Edmund C. Stedman. Boston, 1876. 
 
 Same, revised and enlarged. 1887. 
 
 Transcripts and Studies. "Mr. Browning's Sordello." Edward 
 Dowden. London, 1888. 
 
 Studies, New and Old. " Robert Browning : Writer of Plays." 
 W. L. Courtney. London, 1888. 
 
 Dante and other Essays. "Sordello." R. W. Church. London, 
 1888. 
 
 Philosophy and Religion. " Poetry and Robert Browning : a Lec- 
 ture." A. H. Strong. New York, 1888. 
 
 Three Lectures on English Literature. " The Poetry of Robert 
 Browning." William S. M'Cormack. London, 1889. 
 
 Le Renaissance de la poe'sie anglaise. Gabriel Sarrazin. Paris : 
 Perrin et Cie. 1889. 
 
 Studies in Literature and Life. George E. Woodberry. [Reprinted 
 from The Atlantic Monthly, 65 : 243.] Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & 
 Co. 1890. 
 
 Four Great Teachers. Joseph Forster. Orpington, 1890. 
 
 V. MAGAZINE ARTICLES OF SPECIAL VALUE. 
 
 North American Review. 1848. " Browning's Plays and Poems." 
 James Russell Lowell. 66 : 357. 
 
 The Contemporary Review. 1867. "Robert Browning." 4:1, 
 133. 
 
 The Dark Blue. 1871. " Browning as a Preacher." Miss E. Dick- 
 inson West. 2 : 171, 305. [Reprinted in Littell's Living Age.] 
 
 The Contemporary Review. 1874. " Mr. Browning's Place in Lit- 
 erature." Mrs. Sutherland Orr. 23 : 934. [Reprinted in Littell's 
 Living Age. 122 : 67.] 
 
 International Review. 1879. G. Barnett Smith. 6 : 176. 
 
 The Contemporary Review. January, 1890. Stopford Brooke. 
 
 The National Review. January, 1890. H. D. Traill. 14 : 592. 
 
 The Arena. February, 1890. " Browning's Message to the Nine- 
 teenth Century." James T. Bixby. 
 
 The Cosmopolitan. March, 1890. " Browning's Place in Litera- 
 ture." Mrs. E. S. Forman. 
 
 The Andover Review. February, 1889. "The Tragic Motive in 
 Browning's Dramas." Professor C. C. Everett.
 
 The Best Things said of Browning^ xiii 
 
 GENERAL ARTICLES IN THE BROWNING SOCIETY 
 PAPERS. 
 
 Introductory Address to the Browning Society. By Rev. J. Kirk- 
 man. 1 : 171. 
 
 Mr. Nettieship's Classification of Browning's Works. 1 : 231. 
 
 Mrs. Orr's Classification of Browning's Poems. 1 : 235. 
 
 Notes on the Genius of Robert Browning. By James Thomson. 
 1 : 239. 
 
 Browning's Philosophy. By John Bury. 1 : 259. 
 
 The Idea of Personality, as embodied in Robert Browning's Poetry. 
 By Hiram Corson. 1 : 293. 
 
 The Religious Teaching of Browning. By Dorothea Beale. 1 : 323. 
 
 Conscience and Art in Browning. By Prof. E. Johnson. 1 : 345. 
 
 Robert Browning. His Genius and Works. By G. Barnett Smith. 
 1:7*. 
 
 PABT IV. 
 
 Browning's Intuition, specially in regard of Music and the Plastic 
 Arts. By J. T. Nettleship. 1 : 381. 
 
 On Some Points in Browning's View of Life. By Prof. B. F. West- 
 cott. 1 : 397. 
 
 One Aspect of Browning's Villains. By Miss D. West. 1 : 411. 
 
 Browning's Poems on God and Immortality as bearing on Life. 
 By William F. Revell. 1 : 435. 
 
 On Some Prominent Points in Browning's Teaching. By W. A. 
 Raleigh. 1 : 477. 
 
 Browning's Ecclesiastics. By Rev. J. S. Jones. 1 : 109*. 
 
 Is Browning Dramatic ? By Arthur Symons. 2:1. 
 Browning as a Scientific Poet. By Edward Berdoe. 2 : 33. 
 
 PABT vm. 
 
 Development of Browning's Genius in his Capacity as Poet or Maker. 
 By J. T. Nettleship. 2 : 55. 
 
 Browning as a Landscape Painter. By Howard Pearson. 2 : 103. 
 
 The Reasonable Rhythm of Some of Mr. Browning's Poems. By 
 Rev. H. J. Bulkeley. 2 : 119.
 
 xiv The Best Things said of Browning. 
 
 Some Notes on Browning's Poems relating to Music. By Helen J. 
 Ormerod. 2 : 180. 
 
 Browning's Views of Life. By William F. Revell. 2 : 197. 
 
 Browning's Estimate of Life. By Edward Berdoe. 2 : 200. 
 
 Browning's Jews and Shakespeare's Jew. By Prof. P. A. Barnett 
 2 : 207. 
 
 Browning as a Teacher of the Nineteenth Century. By Miss C. M. 
 Whitehead. 2 : 237.
 
 LEADING EVENTS IN ROBERT BROWNING'S 
 LIFE. 
 
 ANCESTRY. 
 
 Robert Browning, butler, died November 25, 1746. 
 
 Thomas Browning, innkeeper, born October 1, 1721 ; died Septem- 
 ber 5, 1794. 
 
 Robert Browning, bank clerk, born July 26, 1749 ; died December 
 11, 1833. 
 
 Robert Browning, bank clerk, born July 6, 1782 ; died June 14, 
 1866 ; married Sarab Anne (Sarianna) Weidemann, born 1790 (?) ; 
 died 1849. 
 
 1812. Robert Browning, born May 7, Parish of St. Giles, Camber- 
 well, London. 
 
 Baptized June 14, by George Clayton, Congregational 
 Chapel, Walworth. 
 
 Attended private school until fourteen. 
 
 Then had a tutor at home. 
 1825. Obtains Shelley's poems. 
 
 1829-30. Attends lectures at University College, London. 
 1833. Pauline published, January. 
 1833-34. Travels in Russia and Italy. 
 1835. Paracelsus published. 
 1837. Strafford published. 
 
 Strafford produced at the Covent Garden Theatre, May 1. 
 
 1840. Sordello published. 
 
 1841. Publication of Bells and Pomegranates begun. 
 Pippa Passes published. 
 
 1842. King Victor and King Charles published. 
 Dramatic Lyrics published. 
 
 1843. The Return of the Druses published. 
 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon published. 
 
 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon produced at the Theatre Royal, 
 Drury Lane, February 11.
 
 xvi Leading Events in Robert Browning's Life. 
 
 1844. Colombe's Birthday published. 
 
 1845. Dramatic Romances and Lyrics published. 
 
 1846. Lwria published. 
 
 A Soul's Tragedy published. 
 
 Marriage of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, Septem- 
 ber 12. 
 
 1847. Settles in Italy, at Casa Guidi, Florence. 
 
 1849. Birth of Robert Barrett Browning, March 9. 
 Poems published, first collected edition. 
 
 1850. Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day published. 
 
 1852. Introductory Essay to (spurious) Letters of Percy Bysshe 
 
 Shelley published. 
 
 1853. Colombe's Birthday produced at The Haymarket Theatre, by 
 
 Miss Helen Faucit, April 25. 
 1855. Men and Women published. 
 1861. Mrs. Browning died at Casa Guidi, June 29. 
 
 1863. Poetical Works published. 
 
 1864. Dramatis Persona published. 
 
 1868. Poetical Works published (in six volumes). 
 1868-69. The Ring and the Book published. 
 
 1871. Balaustion's Adventure published, August. 
 
 Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Savior of Society, published, 
 December. 
 
 1872. Fifine at the Fair published. 
 
 1873. Red Cotton Night-Cap Country ; or, Turf and Towers, pub- 
 
 lished. 
 
 1875. Aristophanes' Apology published, April. 
 The Inn Album published, November. 
 
 1877. The Agamemnon of ^Eschylus published, October. 
 
 1878. La Saisiaz : The Two Poets of Croisic, published. 
 
 1879. Dramatic Idyls published, May. 
 
 Elected President of the New Shakespeare Society. 
 
 1880. Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, published, July. 
 
 1881. London Browning Society holds its first meeting, October 25. 
 
 1883. Jocoseria published, March. 
 
 1884. Ferishtah's Fancies published, November. 
 
 1887. Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day 
 
 published. 
 1889. Asolando: Fancies and Facts, published, December. 
 
 Robert Browning died, Palazzo Rezzonico, Venice, December 
 12 ; buried in Westminster Abbey, December 31.
 
 A GUIDE BOOK 
 
 WRITINGS OF ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 Abt Vogler. Dramatis Personce, 1864. No changes 
 have been made except that in the tenth stanza " semblance " 
 has taken the place of " likeness." 
 
 Abt Vogler was a Catholic priest (hence abt or abbe"), 
 and a musical composer. His full name was George Joseph 
 Vogler, and he was born at Wiirzburg, Bavaria, June 15, 
 1749. He early showed musical talent, and he learned to 
 play on several instruments without instruction. He was 
 educated at the Jesuit school in his native town, and at 
 Bamberg. While studying at Mannheim he attracted the 
 attention of the Elector, Carl Theodore, who became his 
 patron, and sent him to study counterpoint under Abbe" 
 Martini at Bologna. Tiring of this teacher in six weeks, 
 Vogler went to Padua to study harmony and musical com- 
 position with Abb Vallotti. Going to Rome to complete 
 his theological studies, he was ordained a priest in 1773. 
 Here he was warmly received, admitted to the famous acad- 
 emy of Arcadia, made a knight of the Golden Spur, and 
 appointed protonotary and chamberlain to the Pope. 
 
 He returned to Mannheim in 1775, opened a music-school 
 and published several musical works. He invented a new 
 system of fingering for the harpsichord, which Mozart pro- 
 nounced " miserable " ; and he also invented a new method 
 of building the organ, by introducing free reeds and uniso- 
 nous stops. His new theories were strongly opposed, and he 
 was called a charlatan. His school prospered, however ; it
 
 2 Alt Vogler. 
 
 produced several able musicians, and he was made court 
 chaplain and kapellmeister. He followed his patron to 
 Munich in 1779, produced several operas and other works, 
 became disappointed because he did not meet with greater 
 success and because he was made the butt of critics, re- 
 signed his posts, and wandered in several countries. He 
 collected the national melodies of the people in the various 
 countries he visited. In 1786 he became the kapellmeister 
 to the king of Sweden, and in Stockholm he opened a sec- 
 ond music-school. At this time he invented the " Orches- 
 trion," which was " a compact organ, with four key-boards 
 of five octaves each, a pedal board of thirty-six keys, with 
 swell complete." This is the instrument of his own inven- 
 tion on which he is extemporizing in Browning's poem. It 
 was much praised by some ; it was as violently attacked by 
 others. 
 
 In 1790 he went to London with his instrument, gave a 
 series of very successful concerts, and was commissioned to 
 build an organ for the " Pantheon." Returning to Ger- 
 many he met with an enthusiastic reception, brought out an 
 opera, and published a musical work. He retained his 
 position at Stockholm until 1799, but he visited other coun- 
 tries, established music schools, published various works, 
 brought out operas and gave concerts. In 1807 he became 
 the kapellmeister to the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, 
 and settled in Darmstadt. Here he opened his third music- 
 school, and had among his pupils Weber and Meyerbeer. 
 Vogler died of apoplexy in Darmstadt, May 6, 1814, his 
 last years having been occupied with his school and in the 
 publication of his works. These last were on musical 
 methods. 
 
 Much difference of opinion has existed in regard to the 
 character of Vogler as a composer and inventor. Some 
 have regarded him as a man of originality and a genius ; 
 by others he has been pronounced a mere charlatan. He 
 was very eccentric, at least, and much of a visionary as to 
 his theories. A brilliant performer, he had a madness for 
 reform ; but he had not the genius which discovers new 
 methods of permanent value. In various ways he contrib- 
 uted to the growth of musical science, and he aided largely 
 in making music popular. His visionary character, his
 
 Alt Vogler. 3 
 
 wonderful talent as an extemporizer, and his religious call- 
 ing are well brought out in the poem. 
 
 The improvements proposed by Vogler in the construction 
 of the organ were four in number : the introduction of 
 smaller and less expensive pipes ; the use of free reeds ; a 
 different order in the arrangement of the pipes in the wind- 
 chest ; and the discarding of mutation stops. His inventive 
 genius did much for music, however severely he was con- 
 demned, but he had not the wise judgment which was 
 necessary to perfect success. He suggested rather than 
 accomplished great results. 
 
 " It was as an organist and theorist," says the writer in 
 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, " that Vo- 
 gler made most stir. It would be difficult to find an im- 
 portant town in central Europe in which he had not per- 
 formed on the organ. He could stretch two octaves with 
 ease, and practice had turned this natural advantage to such 
 good use that he was indisputably the first organist of his 
 age. His extempore playing never failed to create an im- 
 pression, and in the elevated fugal style he easily distanced 
 all rivals." " It is as a teacher," says the same authority, 
 " that Vogler has most claims on posterity, for no musician 
 has ever had so many remarkable pupils. As a teacher of 
 singing he was in great request." 
 
 The following account of the musician is given by Dr. J. 
 H. Mee, a musical critic : " Vogler was short in stature, and 
 latterly became corpulent. His arms were of great length, 
 his hands enormous, and his general aspect has been de- 
 scribed as that of a fat ape. His singular character was 
 strongly tinged with vanity, and not without a touch of ar- 
 rogance. He delighted to array himself in his purple 
 stockings and gold buckles, with his black silk ecclesiastical 
 mantle, and the great cross of the Order of Merit given him 
 by the Grand Duke of Hesse. He would take his prayer- 
 book with him into society, and often keep his visitors 
 waiting while he finished his devotions. Beneath his quaint 
 exterior lay remarkable mental gifts, a great insight into 
 character, and a powerful memory. Nor were his egotism 
 and affectation without counterbalancing excellences. He 
 was always anxious to avoid a quarrel, ready to acknow- 
 ledge the merits of brother artists, and to defend them
 
 4 Abt Vogler. 
 
 even if they had opposed him, provided their music was 
 good. The civility which he showed to Mozart is in marked 
 contrast to Mozart's behavior towards him. Moreover, 
 his vanity did not blind him to his own defects. He was 
 well aware that harmony, not melody, was the department 
 in which he excelled. An enthusiastic contemporary, 
 Schubart, calls him an epoch-making man. The expression 
 is too strong, but as a musical iconoclast Vogler certainly 
 did excellent service. His incessant attacks on the pedantic 
 methods of musical instruction and systems of harmony in 
 vogue, and on the old methods of organ-building, were often 
 extravagant and untrue, as, for example, the statement that 
 Bach did not know what a chorale was. ... As a com- 
 poser it was his aim to retain the simple and severe beauty 
 of the old church music and yet enrich it with the wealth 
 of harmony at the command of modern music." 
 
 It has been said that Vogler's music has been lost ; but 
 this statement is not true. His Missa Pastoricia is per- 
 formed every Christmas at the Hofkapelle, Vienna. Herr 
 Richter reports that he has heard this mass more than once, 
 and he describes it as a remarkably fine composition, with 
 beautiful effects for oboes and horns. Other works of Vo- 
 gler's are accessible, and are not infrequently met with. 
 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives the best 
 account of Vogler in English, also a full list of his works. 
 The Browning Society's Papers, number ten, 2 : 221 and 
 2 : 229*, gives an extended biographical account of Vogler 
 by Helen J. Ormerod ; and a briefer sketch will be found in 
 number three, 1 : 339, by Eleanor Marx. 
 
 An excellent interpretation of the poem is that by Mrs. 
 Turn bull in number four of The Browning Society's Papers, 
 1 : 469 and 1 : 79*. It brings out fully Browning's indebt- 
 edness to the idealistic philosophy of Plato, Spinoza, Hegel, 
 More and Norris, for the ideas presented in the poem. It 
 is shown that these thinkers haye regarded music as the art 
 most capable of interpreting the spiritual world, or, in the 
 words of the Religio Medici, as having " something in it of 
 divinity more than the ear discovers." Other expositions 
 are those of the Rev. J. Kirkman, in The Browning 
 Society's Papers number two, 1 : 180, and Corson, in his 
 Introduction to Browning.
 
 Adam, LilitJi and Eve. After. 5 
 
 Adam, Lilith and Eve. Jocoseria, 1883. This poem 
 is based on the Hebrew rabbinical legend, that Adam had a 
 wife before Eve, whose name was Lilith. The origin of the 
 legend is to be found in the two accounts of the creation of 
 man and woman, contained in Genesis. In the first account, 
 Genesis i. 27, man and woman were created together ; in the 
 second, ii. 18, the man is created first, and afterwards the 
 woman taken from his side. The Talmudists explained the 
 first text by saying that the wife created of clay with Adam 
 was Lilith ; but she became proud and willful, and would 
 not submit to Adam's rule. Finding they could not agree 
 she left him and fled to the sea, where she had many children, 
 who were demons ; and because she would not return to 
 Adam a hundred of her children died each day. Another 
 form of the legend says God drove her out of Paradise and 
 then created Eve in the manner of the second account ; and 
 for the reasons there given. The legend also says that Lilith 
 married the Devil and became the mother of the Jins, a race 
 of beings having the characteristics of both men and demons. 
 In Hebrew popular legend Lilith was a destroyer of infants ; 
 and the names of protecting angels were written on parch- 
 ment and bound on children to counteract her influence. Her 
 name was associated with the screech-owl as a being of night 
 and desolation. The lilith was often described as a nocturnal 
 spectre in the form of a beautiful woman, who stole away 
 children in the night and destroyed them. The word " lul- 
 laby "is referred by some philologists to Lilith. 
 
 The details of this legend are not used by the poet ; and 
 he makes Lilith and Eve both seek for the love of Adam at 
 the same time. In fact, he uses nothing more of the legend 
 than the names. The poem is a study of character, and 
 especially of the influence of fear in causing an expression 
 of the true nature of the individual. The women make 
 confession of their real thoughts under the effects of fear ; 
 but when the danger is past they seek to annul the confession 
 by giving it a trifling interpretation. Although the poem 
 is a short one it contains a subtle .study of two forms of 
 love in women, and of the masculine manner of receiving 
 that love. 
 
 After. .See Before to which this poem is the sequel. 
 The two were published together, as one poem.
 
 6 The Agamemnon of ^Eschylus, 
 
 Agamemnon of ^Eschylus, The. This is a translation, 
 first published in October, 1877, by Smith, Elder and Co., 
 London. Pages i. vi. 1148. 
 
 The Agamemnon is the first play in the trilogy of Orestes. 
 The Orestean is the only extant specimen of a trilogy ; and 
 it is undoubtedly the greatest of the works of Aeschylus. 
 It was written with reference to the political and religious 
 condition of Athens at the time of its presentation, and in 
 the interests of the conservative party, but without marked 
 effect. It is based on the story of Agamemnon, as related 
 in the Iliad and Odyssey, and on the belief that wrongdoing 
 is punished, even to the third and fourth generation, or 
 until some one makes expiation for the sin committed. The 
 story is this : Atreus, son of Pelops, avenged himself of a 
 wrong done by his brother Thyestes, by inviting him to a 
 banquet consisting of the flesh of Thyestes' children, of which 
 the father unconsciously partook. This horrible crime 
 brought dark evils upon the family until it was expiated by 
 Orestes. Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks against Troy, 
 was the son of the impious Atreus, and this relation brought 
 upon him the infidelity of his wife, and his own death at her 
 hands. While he was at Troy, Clytemnestra had taken as 
 her paramour JEgisthus, a son of Thyestes. Two years 
 after, Troy was conquered, and Agamemnon returned to his 
 home, bringing with him Cassandra as a concubine. 
 
 At the opening of Agamemnon the watch set by Clytem- 
 nestra has discovered the signal agreed upon for reporting 
 the end of the war. Soon after follows a herald announ- 
 cing the speedy return of the king. In a few days Agamem- 
 non appears, accompanied by Cassandra, who has prophetic 
 gifts of a remarkable kind. When the king and queen pass 
 into the palace, after the first salutations are over, Cassandra 
 begins to see in vision, and to describe to the chorus, the 
 sins of the family, and to behold the death of the king and 
 herself. Then is heard the death-cry of Agamemnon as he 
 is being murdered by Clytemnestra and ./Egisthus. Cassan- 
 dra rushes into the palace, and meets a like fate. Then 
 Clytemnestra declares that she has been the hand of fate to 
 avenge the death of Iphigenia her daughter, who had been 
 slain by Agamemnon to appease the wrath of Artemis ; and 
 also that she has avenged the evil brought upon her by 
 the presence of Cassandra.
 
 The Agamemnon of ^Jschylus. 7 
 
 In the Libation Pourers Orestes becomes the avenger of 
 the death of his father Agamemnon by the death of Clytem- 
 nestra, his mother. In the' Eiimenides the Furies pursue 
 Orestes because of the sins of his family, until he makes 
 expiation at the shrine of the Delphic oracle, when the curse 
 is removed. 
 
 In the preface to this translation Browning sets forth the 
 principles which he has followed in producing it. These are, 
 that it should be literal at every cost ; and that it should 
 reproduce the peculiarities of the original. He has also 
 attempted to reproduce the Greek spelling in English, after 
 a manner of his own. Mr. Frederic Harrison says of this 
 translation, that " its uncouthness is not the rugged majesty 
 of ^Eschylus." On the other hand, Professor J. P. Mahaffy 
 says that the translator " has given us an over-faithful ver- 
 sion from his matchless hand matchless in conveying the 
 deeper spirit of the Greek poets. But in this instance he 
 has outdone his original in ruggedness, owing to his excess 
 of conscience as a translator." 
 
 In The Athenaeum of October 27, 1877, is a long re- 
 view of the translation, in the course of which the writer 
 discusses its merits as follows : " He (the translator) pro- 
 posed to himself a poetical translation of the most rigid liter- 
 ality, and manfully has kept his word. In the choruses 
 alone does he allow himself some very slight latitude, expand- 
 ing the actual, but never engrafting an alien, meaning. 
 These choruses are rhymed, and some percentage of their 
 rhymes are double ones, which increases the lyrical effect 
 and trebles the difficulty. They have evidently taxed the 
 resources of the best English rhymist since the author of 
 Hudibras to the utmost. The trochaic and anapaestic 
 measures of the original are approximately rendered. The 
 speeches and dialogues follow the ordinary trimeter iambics 
 of Greek tragedy. They reproduce word for word, and line 
 for line, the sense of the original. None of the prose ver- 
 sions which we have seen is, choruses excepted, so literal 
 as Mr. Browning. . . . And because Mr. Browning has 
 nobly and unfalteringly acted up to these precepts, his tran- 
 scription is most unequal in its excellence. Had he been 
 less conscientious, he could, no man better, have given us not 
 one bald or commonplace line. . . . But Mr. Browning has
 
 8 A King lived long ago. Andrea del Sarto. 
 
 splendidly denied himself, and is unflinchingly crude, point- 
 less, even clumsy, where the Greek pushes and compels him. 
 Yet in the most rugged passages he never once flings his 
 literality overboard. . . . His verbal resource is amazing. 
 But here and again, when, under his masterly touch, the 
 Greek has rendered itself for a page without to us apparent 
 effort, word for word, and phrase for phrase, into English 
 eloquent and sonorous, all at once some single line crops 
 up which cannot be rendered both beautifully and exactly, 
 so Mr. Browning leaves it unbeautiful and bald, and careers 
 on as finely as before. . . . Mr. Browning is never obscure 
 in the compass of the present translation. When he seems so, 
 turn to the original, and there the obscurity will be found. 
 Indeed, so anxious is he to set forth his author clearly that 
 he manages to make very plausible-looking sense out of 
 many a dubious periphrasis." 
 
 The readers of Browning's translation of the Agamemnon 
 will find much valuable help in the introduction and notes 
 to Professor E. H. Plumptre's translation of the works of 
 ./Eschylus. Many of the obscurities are there explained, as 
 well as the historical and other allusions. See The Acad- 
 emy, Nov. 3, 1877, by J. A. Symonds ; The Edinburgh Re- 
 view, 147 : 409 ; Boston Literanj World, 13 : 419. 
 
 A King lived long ago. The song of Pippa in Pippa 
 Passes, as she goes by the house of Luigi, vol. 1, p. 356, 
 Riverside edition of Browning's Works. See The King, 
 in this volume. This song was first published in The 
 Monthly Repository, edited by W. J. Fox, in 1835. In 
 1841 it was incorporated into Pippa Passes. 
 
 All Service ranks the same with God. Pippa's 
 New Year's hymn in Pippa Passes, vol. 1, p. 341, River- 
 side edition of Browning's Works. 
 
 Amphibian. The prologue to Fiftne at the Fair, as re- 
 printed in the second series of Selections, from his poems 
 made by Browning himself. 
 
 Anael. The young girl in The Return of the Druses, who 
 loves Djabal, and who believes in his being the Hakeem. 
 
 Andrea del Sarto. Published first as the opening 
 poem of the second volume of Men and Women, 1855 ; 
 and it has since remained in that collection of poems. 
 
 Andrea del Sarto was born at Gualfonda, Florence, in
 
 Andrea del Sarto. 9 
 
 1486 or 1487. His father was a tailor, hence his name 
 "Sarto"; translated into English his name would be "An- 
 drew the tailor." The question as to his real name seems not 
 to be settled, as to whether it was Vanucchi or some other. 
 He was apprenticed to a goldsmith, then to a woodcarver 
 and painter ; but he was soon drawn to painting as the one 
 thing he cared for. By 1509 he had obtained quite a repu- 
 tation as a painter ; and he then produced several excellent 
 works for the Servite monks, which brought him much praise. 
 It was at this time he was given the name of " Andrea senza 
 errori " or " Andrew the unerring " ; sometimes given as " il 
 pittore senza errori " or " the faultless painter." 
 
 It is said that Andrea del Sarto worked with rapidity 
 and great correctness of touch, but that naturally he was 
 timid and diffident. He remained a plebeian in his manner 
 of life ; he was easy-going and sociable and fully enjoyed life 
 wherever he might be. He fell in love with Lucrezia del 
 Fede, the wife of a hatter who died soon after, and del 
 Sarto married her in 1512. She was beautiful, but of a 
 somewhat sensual type, selfish and exacting. Recent histo- 
 rians, however, have given her a nobler character than that 
 attributed to her by Browning. Andrea often painted her 
 as a Madonna, and all his women partook of her type. 
 
 In June, 1518, Andrea went to France at the invitation 
 of Francis I., leaving his wife behind. He did some excel- 
 lent work for the king, but his wife urged him to return, 
 and after a few months he obtained permission for a brief 
 season. Francis entrusted him with a considerable sum 
 of money with which to buy pictures ; but this money 
 was spent by Andrea in building a house for himself at 
 Florence, and his wife induced him to abandon his purpose 
 of returning to France. In 1525 he painted his master- 
 piece, the Madonna of the Sack. He died January 22, 1531, 
 at the age of forty-three, of the infectious pestilence which 
 followed the siege of the city shortly before. His wife did 
 not attend him in his last illness, and he was buried with 
 little ceremony. 
 
 Andrea del Sarto painted a large number of pictures, 
 many of them of high merit, of which all the best are in 
 Florence. Vasari was introduced to Andrea by Michel- 
 angelo, and the latter said to Vasari : " There is a little
 
 10 Andrea del Sarto. 
 
 fellow in Florence who will bring sweat to your brow if ever 
 he is engaged in great works." He was lacking in ideality 
 and elevation of thought ; but he had a true pictorial style, 
 a very high standard of correctness, and an enviable bal- 
 ance of executive endowments. He had almost everything 
 necessary to the making of a great painter except inspiration 
 and a deep consecration to a high purpose. In every out- 
 ward requirement of art he was unerring in his certainty of 
 touch, and he was faultless in his executive power. A vital 
 defect lurked at the heart of his work, however, and it 
 lacked the inspiration of a great soul. 
 
 In his work on the Fine Arts in Italy during the Renais- 
 sance Mr. J. A. Symonds, in speaking of Andrea del Sarto 
 as the faultless painter, describes his work and the defect 
 which gave him this designation. " What they meant," 
 says Mr. Symonds of those who gave him the name, " must 
 have been that in all technical requirements of art, in draw- 
 ing, composition, handling of fresco and oils, disposition of 
 draperies, and feeling for light and shadow, he was above 
 criticism. As a colorist he went further and produced 
 more beautiful effects than any Florentine before him. His 
 silver-gray harmonies and liquid Mendings of hues, cool, 
 yet lustrous, have a charm peculiar to himself alone. We 
 find the like nowhere else in Italy. And yet Andrea del 
 Sarto cannot take rank among the greatest Renaissance 
 painters. What he lacked was precisely the most precious 
 gift inspiration, depth of emotion, energy of thought. We 
 are apt to feel that even his best pictures were designed 
 with a view to solving an aesthetic problem. Very few 
 have the poetic charm belonging to the S. John of the Pitti 
 or the Madonna of the Tribune. Beautiful as are many of 
 his types, like the Magdalen in the large picture of the 
 Pieta, we can never be sure that he will not break the spell 
 by forms of almost vulgar mediocrity. The story that his 
 wife, a worthless woman, sat for his Madonnas, and the 
 legends of his working for money to meet pressing needs, 
 seem justified by numbers of his paintings, faulty in their 
 faultlessness and want of spirit. Still, after all these de- 
 ductions, we must allow that Andrea del Sarto not unwor- 
 thily represents the golden age at Florence. There is no 
 affectation, no false taste, no trickery in his style. His
 
 Andrea del Sarto. 11 
 
 workmanship is always solid ; his hand unerring. If Na- 
 ture denied him the soul of a poet and the stern will needed 
 for escaping from the sordid circumstances of his life, she 
 gave him some of the highest qualities a painter can desire 
 qualities of strength, tranquillity and thoroughness, that 
 in the decline of the century ceased to exist outside 
 Venice." 
 
 Browning took his conception of Andrea del Sarto from 
 Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the most Eminent Painters, 
 Sculptors and Architects, in which the painter is described 
 in these words : " In Andrea del Sarto nature and art com- 
 bined to show all that may be done in painting, when design, 
 coloring and invention unite in one and the same person. 
 Had this master possessed a somewhat bolder and more ele- 
 vated mind ; had he been as much distinguished for higher 
 qualifications as he was for genius and depth of judgment in 
 the art he practiced, he would, beyond all doubt, have been 
 without an equal. But there was a certain timidity of mind, 
 a sort of diffidence and want of force in his nature, which 
 rendered it impossible that those evidences of ardor and 
 animation which are proper to the more exalted character, 
 should ever appear in him ; nor did he at any time display 
 one particle of that elevation which, could it have been 
 added to the advantages wherewith he was endowed, would 
 have rendered him a truly divine painter: wherefore the 
 works of Andrea are wanting in those ornaments of gran- 
 deur, richness, and force, which appear so conspicuously 
 in those of many other masters. His figures are, neverthe- 
 less, well drawn, they are entirely free from errors, and 
 perfect in their proportions, and are for the most part sim- 
 ple and chaste ; the expression of his heads is natural and 
 graceful in women and children, while in youths and old 
 men it is full of life and animation. -The draperies of this 
 master are beautiful to a marvel, and the nude figures are 
 admirably executed, the drawing is simple, the coloring is 
 most exquisite, nay, it is truly divine." 
 
 This poem is in a large measure a poetic rendering of the 
 prose account of Vasari, even to the character of Lucrezia. 
 In the first edition of his work Vasari gives a quite full ac- 
 count of her, but this is abbreviated and softened somewhat 
 in the second. The following is the full account given in
 
 12 Andrea del /Sarto. 
 
 the first edition, and from which Browning evidently drew 
 his picture of this fascinating and selfish woman. As 
 Vasari was taught his art by del Sarto he must have known 
 her well and had a good basis of fact for his description, 
 though he may have colored it somewhat to her prejudice. 
 
 " At that time," says Vasari, " there was a most beauti- 
 ful girl in the Via di San Gallo, who was married to a cap- 
 maker, and who, though born of a poor and vicious father, 
 carried about her as much pride and haughtiness as beauty 
 and fascination. She delighted in trapping the hearts of 
 men, and among others ensnared the unlucky Andrea, 
 whose immoderate love for her soon caused him to neglect 
 the studies demanded by his art, and in great measure to 
 discontinue the assistance which he had given to his pa- 
 rents. 
 
 " Now it chanced that a sudden and grievous illness 
 seized the husband of this woman, who rose no more from 
 his bed, but died thereof. Without taking counsel of his 
 friends, therefore ; without regard to the dignity of his art 
 or the consideration due to his genius, and to the eminence 
 he had attained with so much labor ; without a word, in 
 short, to any of his kindred, Andrea took this Lucrezia di 
 Baccio del Fede, such was the name of the woman, to be 
 his wife ; her beauty appearing to him to merit thus much 
 at his hands, and his love for her having more influence 
 over him than the glory and honor towards which he had 
 begun to make such hopeful advances. But when this news 
 became known in Florence, the respect and affection which 
 his friends had previously borne to Andrea changed to con- 
 tempt and disgust, since it appeared to them that the dark- 
 ness of this disgrace had obscured for a time all the glory 
 and renown obtained by his talents. 
 
 " But he destroyed his own peace as well as estranged 
 his friends by this act, seeing that he soon became jealous, 
 and found that he had besides fallen into the hands of an 
 artful woman, who made him do as she pleased in all things. 
 He abandoned his own father and mother, for example, and 
 adopted the father and sisters of his wife in their stead ; in- 
 somuch that all who knew the facts mourned over him, and 
 he soon began to be as much avoided as he had been previ- 
 ously sought after. His disciples still remained with him, it
 
 Andrea del Sarto. 13 
 
 is true, in the hope of learning something useful, yet there was 
 not one of them, great or small, who was not maltreated by 
 his wife, both by evil words and despiteful actions ; none could 
 escape her blows, but although Andrea lived in the midst 
 of all that torment, he yet accounted it a high pleasure." 
 
 In the second edition of Vasari's work the above account 
 of Lucrezia was displaced by the following : " But having 
 fallen in love with a young woman whom on her becoming 
 a widow he took for his wife, he found that he had enough 
 to do for the remainder of his days, and was subsequently 
 obliged to work much more laboriously than he had pre- 
 viously done ; for in addition to the duties and liabilities 
 which engagements of that kind are wont to bring with them, 
 Andrea del Sarto found that he had brought on himself 
 many others ; he was now tormented with jealousy, now by 
 one thing, now by another ; but ever by some evil conse- 
 quence of his new connection." 
 
 Baldinucci says that when Jacopo da Empoli was copying 
 del Sarto's picture on The Birth of the Virgin, in 1570, 
 an aged lady, while on her way to mass, stopped to talk 
 with him. She pointed out to him one of the figures in the 
 fresco as that of Andrea's wife, and finally she revealed to 
 him that she was herself Lucrezia del Fede. 
 
 Andrea del Sarto painted a portrait of himself and wife 
 which is now in the Pitti palace, Florence. In this picture 
 the painter is seen in three-quarter face, with his right hand 
 around his wife and resting on her shoulder, while with his 
 left hand he is appealing to her as he speaks. The wife is 
 presented in full face, with a letter in her hand and a golden 
 chain on her neck. Mrs. Browning's cousin, John Kenyon, 
 asked for a copy of this portrait, but Browning could not 
 find one, and he wrote this poem to take its place, putting 
 into verse what he thought was the meaning of the picture. 
 
 In The Browning Society's Papers, part two, p. 160, is 
 printed a letter, written by Mr. Ernest Radford, which con- 
 tains a description of this picture with reference to the poem. 
 " The artist and his wife," he says, " are presented at half 
 length. Andrea turns towards her with a pleading expres- 
 sion on his face a face not so beautiful as that in the 
 splendid portrait in the National Gallery ; but when once 
 felt, it strikes a deeper chord. It wears an expression that
 
 14 Andrea del Sarto. 
 
 cannot be forgotten, that nothing can suggest but the poem 
 of Browning. Andrea's right arm is round her ; he leans 
 forward as if searching her face for the strength that has 
 gone from himself. She is beautiful. I have seen the face 
 (varied as a musician varies his theme) in a hundred pic- 
 tures. She holds the letter in her hand, and looks neither 
 at that nor at him, but straight out of the canvas. And the 
 beautiful face with the red brown hair is passive and un- 
 ruffled, and awfully expressionless. There is silent thunder 
 in this face if there ever was, though there is no anger. It 
 suggests only a very mild, and at the same time immutable 
 determination to have her own way. Any one who has sat, 
 as I have, looking at the picture of which I write, will feel 
 that the poem is true, not merely typically but historically." 
 
 The Andrea del Sarto of Vasari and the Pitti portrait is 
 described in an exact manner in the poem ; but he is also 
 made to teach a lesson of high ideal import with reference 
 both to art and life. He fully recognizes his own imper- 
 fections as a man and as an artist, for he is not able to 
 paint the soul as well as the body. He praises the work of 
 Raphael as more perfect than his own, because it aspires 
 to an ideal meaning rather than to a technical perfection. 
 This he expresses by saying that " a man's reach should ex- 
 ceed his grasp, or what 's a heaven for ? " 
 
 Michel Agnolo. The more correct form of Michael- 
 angelo. The Urbinate. Raphael, from Urbino, the place 
 of his birth. Leonard. Leonardo da Vinci. 
 
 The chief pictures of Andrea del Sarto are to be found 
 in Florence. In the Uffizi palace are a Madonna, St. 
 James, and two portraits. In the Pitti palace are The En- 
 tombment, Holy Family, The Story of Joseph, Madonna 
 in Glory, Dispute about the Trinity, The Assumption, and 
 St. John Baptist. The Accademia delle belle Arti has 
 the Four Saints, and a fresco. The Scalzo contains four- 
 teen frescos. St. Annunziata has the Birth of the Virgin 
 and the Madonna of the Sack. The Convent of St. Salvi 
 contains the Last Supper. The most important of his 
 other pictures are the Holy Family, Louvre, Paris ; Ma 
 donna, Berlin Gallery ; Sacrifice of Abraham, Dresden ; 
 Holy Family, Dulwich, England. 
 
 In his Six Months in Italy Hillard says of Andrea del
 
 Another Way of Love. Apollo and the Fates. 15 
 
 Sarto's works in the Pitti palace : " This gallery is rich in 
 the productions of Andrea del Sarto, a very pleasing artist, 
 who came very near being a great one. He is a decided 
 mannerist. His pictures have the strongest family likeness, 
 and even the dresses of his Virgins seem all to have been 
 cut from the same piece of cloth." In his Italian Note- 
 books Hawthorne says of the same pictures : " There is too 
 large an admixture of Andrea del Sarto's pictures in this 
 gallery : everywhere you see them, cold, proper, and un- 
 criticisable, looking so much like first-rate excellence, that 
 you inevitably quarrel with your own taste for not admiring 
 them." 
 
 On the other hand, in his Essays and Studies, Swinburne 
 highly praises the frescoes in St. Annunziata. Of The 
 Birth of the Virgin in the same collection Crowe and 
 Cavalcaselle say that it is " on the highest level ever reached 
 in fresco." Writing of the Holy Family in the Pitti pal- 
 ace, Swinburne says : " At Florence only can one trace and 
 tell how great a painter and how various Andrea was. 
 There only, but surely there, can the spirit and presence of 
 the things of time on his immortal spirit be understood." 
 
 See The Browning Society's Papers, Albert Fleming, 
 number eight, 2 : 9, for an interpretation of the poem. 
 
 A photographic copy of Andrea del Sarto's picture has 
 been published by the London Browning Society. A sketch 
 of Andrea's life, with a wood-cut copy of the picture, is 
 given in the Woman's World for April, 1890. 
 
 Another Way of Love. See One Way of Love, to 
 which this poem is the sequel. 
 
 Any Wife to Any Husband. Men and Women, in 
 1855 ; Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 The speaker is a woman about to die, who is addressing 
 her husband. They have loved each other deeply ; but the 
 wife realizes that her presence is necessary to the perfect 
 continuance of her husband's affection. When she is gone 
 he will seek other women, whereas she will remain forever 
 true to him, and would do so if he were to die first. See 
 essay on the love poems in John T. Nettleship's On Robert 
 Browning : JSssays and Thoughts. 
 
 Apollo and the Pates. Prologue to Parleyings with 
 Certain People of Importance in Their Day, 1887.
 
 16 Apollo and the Fates. 
 
 The reference to the Hymn to Hermes, attributed to 
 Homer ; the Eumenides, or Furies, of ^Eschylus ; and the 
 Alcestis of Euripides, indicate the authorities for the char- 
 acter of Apollo given in this short dramatic poem. The 
 reference to Homer may be supplied in the translation of 
 George Chapman, extending the quotation somewhat beyond 
 that indicated by the poet. 
 
 " There dwell 
 
 Within a crooked cranny, in a dell 
 Beneath Parnassus, certain sisters born, 
 Called Parcse, -whom extreme swift wings adorn ; 
 Their number three, that have upon their heads 
 White barley-flour still sprinkled, and are maids ; 
 And these are schoolmistresses of things to come, 
 Without the gift of prophecy. Of whom 
 (Being but a boy, and keeping oxen near) 
 I learned their skill, though my great Father were 
 Careless of it, or them. These flying from home 
 To others' roofs, and fed with honeycomb, 
 Command all skill, and (being enraged then) 
 Will freely tell the truths of things to men. 
 But if they give them not that God's sweet meat, 
 They then are apt to utter their deceit, 
 And lead men from their way." 
 
 The reference to the Eumenides may be supplied with 
 the help of Plumptre's translation. 
 
 " This didst thon also in the house of Pheres, 
 Winning the Fates to make a man immortal. 
 Thou hast o'erthrown, yea, thou, laws hoar with age, 
 And drugged with wine the ancient Goddesses." 
 
 Potter's translation will indicate the reference to the Al- 
 cestis, by expanding its limits. Apollo says, at the open- 
 ing of the drama : 
 
 " The son of Pheres ; him from death I saved, 
 The Fates beguiling." 
 
 Then Orcus replies : 
 
 " Thou dost wrong, again 
 
 The infernal realms defrauding of their honors, 
 Torn from them, or delayed. Sufficed it not 
 To have snatched Admetus from his doom, the Fates 
 With fraudful arts deluding ? " 
 
 In the Alcestis, at the opening of the tragedy, Apollo se- 
 cures a respite for Admetus, on condition that some one will 
 die in his stead. Euripides does not relate how Apollo wins
 
 Apparent Failure. 17 
 
 this privilege from the Fates. Mr. Browning undertakes 
 to supply that defect. 
 
 Apollo descends to the under-world, and asks that the 
 years of Admetus may be extended. The Fates refuse, 
 call Apollo hard names, and say it is better for man to have 
 few days. Apollo says that man really craves for long life ; 
 but the Fates will make no concession. Then Apollo offers 
 them wine ; they resist its temptation for a time, but finally 
 yield, arid immediately on drinking feel its inspiring effects. 
 Then Apollo discourses of man, his mingled woe and weal, 
 and his life under the guidance of reason. The Fates are 
 not convinced, but Apollo shows how man's life is capable 
 of goodness, and how its defeat really becomes a triumph. 
 The Fates say it is not theirs to make the law of man's life ; 
 that they accomplish what is willed by the Higher Powers. 
 Apollo begs for Admetus, when the Fates concede him 
 longer life on condition that some other person take his 
 place. Apollo declares that many will be glad to make the 
 sacrifice. The Fates laugh at this suggestion ; but Apollo 
 assures them that Admetus will die rather than accept such 
 an exchange, that he will spurn it as a thing unworthy. 
 
 See Nettlpship's Essays and Thoughts, and The Brown- 
 ing Society's Papers, number nine, 2 : 169, paper by Ar- 
 thur Symons. 
 
 Apparent Failure. Dramatis Personce, 1864. 
 
 When Browning was once passing through Paris, the 
 Morgue, a small Doric building on one of the quays, was 
 about to be destroyed, as announced in a city newspaper. 
 He wrote this poem with the purpose of saving the build- 
 ing. He relates in the poem what he had seen in the 
 Morgue seven years before, in the summer of 1856, when 
 he was in the city to witness the baptism of Prince Louis 
 Napoleon, only child of Napoleon III., Emperor of France. 
 As he was walking along the banks of the Seine, he thought 
 of the Congress of the European Powers then being held in 
 the city with reference to the freedom and unity of Italy, in 
 which a prominent part was taken by Prince Gortschakoff, 
 the Russian minister of foreign affairs ; Cavour, the great 
 Italian statesman, then prime minister of Piedmont ; and 
 Count Buol, the Austrian minister of foreign affairs. Ca- 
 vour sought to interest the Powers in behalf of Italy, but
 
 18 Apparitions. Arcades Ambo. 
 
 Buol opposed any intervention. As the poet meditated on 
 these affairs of state, he entered the Morgue, and saw three 
 bodies awaiting identification. The men whose bodies were 
 thus exposed had committed suicide by drowning, one from 
 ambition, one becaused he despaired of the realization of 
 the socialist ideal, and one from love. The poem closes 
 with an emphatic declaration of faith in there being an- 
 other opportunity for such men as these, in the life to come. 
 The line in the second stanza on Petrarch's Vaucluse is ex- 
 plained by Corson : '' Fontaine de Vaucluse, a celebrated 
 fountain, in the department of Vaucluse, in Southern 
 France, the source of the Sorgue. The village named 
 after it was for some time the residence of Petrarch." 
 
 Apparitions. The introduction or proem to The Two 
 Poets of Croisic was printed in the second series of Selec- 
 tions made from his poems by Browning, 1880, under this 
 title. Set to music by Sig. F. Tetaldi ; published by London 
 Browning Society. Also set to music by E. C. Gregory. 
 London : Novello, Ewer & Co. Also by Miss Helen A. 
 Clarke. Philadelphia : Poet- Lore Co. ; the same in Poet- 
 Lore for May, 1890. 
 
 Appearances. Pacchiarotto, with other Ppems, 1876. 
 
 The speaker is a man who is addressing the woman he 
 loves. He has brought her from a poorly furnished room 
 to one beautifully adorned ; and she is full of praise. He 
 prefers the old room, because it was there she had plighted 
 troth to him. The poem takes its title from the man not 
 caring for the appearance of the room so much as for the 
 love which he has found in it, while the woman is much in- 
 fluenced by the externals of her situation, and this fact tends 
 to lower the quality of her love. 
 
 Aprile. In Paracelsus, an Italian poet who wishes to 
 love, and as exclusively as Paracelsus aspires to know. He 
 represents the emotions as Paracelsus represents reason. 
 He is a being of feeling and of passionate yearnings for 
 affection. He fails because he cultivates only the emotional 
 side of his life. 
 
 Arcades Ambo. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 This poem is an argument against vivisection. Dr. Ber- 
 doe says it is " a delicate satire on the cowardice of those 
 who advocate vivisection on the ground of its utility in medi-
 
 Aristophanes' Apology. 19 
 
 cine. The poet says that the man who would have animals 
 tortured for the relief of his own pain is as great a poltroon 
 as the soldier who runs away in battle when the balls fly 
 about. Both shun death, and both are cowards to be 
 scorned. Some persons affect to see in this attitude of the 
 poet proof that he was not imbued with the scientific spirit ; 
 that his early religious training and connections had made 
 him afraid of science ; but surely a man is no more expected 
 to follow science blindfold than to adopt the same behavior 
 toward all the claims made for blind adhesion in the name 
 of religion. It would appear, though, that science can be 
 quite as exacting as religion in her claims for the entire 
 allegiance of her followers. Mr. Browning resented the 
 arrogance of both. His anti-vivisection sympathies were no 
 mere philanthropic " fads," no mere amiable fancy adopted 
 by chance, or arising simply from kindness of heart. They 
 were demanded by his ethical system, and were the direct 
 outcome of his philosophy of life. Love is the one word 
 which sums up his moral teaching ; love to God reflected in 
 the service of man. To have excluded anything which 
 lives and suffers from the influence of this love, would have 
 offered violence to the principles which animated every line 
 of his works, from Pauline to Asolando." See Browning's 
 Message to his Time, by Edward Berdoe. 
 
 Aristophanes' Apology. Published in 1875, by Smith, 
 Elder and Co., London. It bears the title in full of Aristo- 
 phanes' Apology, including a Transcript from Euripides, 
 being the Last Adventure of Balaustion. The transcript 
 from Euripides is a translation of the Herakles Mainome- 
 nos or Raging Hercules of that tragic poet. Pages, i.-viii., 
 1-366 ; Herakles, 209-327. 
 
 This poem is a sequel to Balaustioris Adventure. It con- 
 tains the story of her life until after the capture of Athens 
 by Sparta and her allies ; and it relates how she came to re- 
 turn to Rhodes. Euripides is still her hero, and the poem 
 compares him with Aristophanes. In the first adventure 
 Euripides saved her life and the lives of her companions ; 
 in this poem he saves Athens from utter destruction. Aris- 
 tophanes is introduced as the antagonist of Euripides, and 
 as seeking to defend his own dramatic methods. The poem 
 is crowded with learning ; and the life of the time in most
 
 20 Aristophanes' Apology. 
 
 of its phases is brought before us. The poem is in a large 
 degree a study of Aristophanes and his poetry. 
 
 Aristophanes belonged to the conservative party in Athens, 
 the party which desired the return of "the good old times." 
 He opposed Socrates, Euripides, and the other progressive 
 men of his day, ridiculed them, and cast contempt on their 
 opinions. He threw contempt on the new social theories of 
 the time, in the interest of a conservative and reactionary 
 policy. He especially attacked the new theories about wo- 
 men, which seem to have been rife among the radical 
 thinkers of the day. His view of life was not serious, but 
 comic ; he represented the natural instincts of man, and joy 
 in the senses. 
 
 Mr. J. A. Symonds says he is the greatest comic poet of 
 the world. His plays are vast scenic allegories or farces 
 of Titanic purpose. They are " fantastic entertainments, 
 debauches of reason and imagination." They are "a ra- 
 diant and pompous show, by which the genius of the Greek 
 race chose, as it were in bravado, to celebrate an apotheosis 
 of the animal functions of humanity." He brings to light 
 the nudeness of human life, and what is usually hid ; no 
 passion is too vile, no instinct too indelicate, according to 
 our notions, for him to introduce it into his comedies. He 
 had wit, imagination, and comic power in a supreme degree ; 
 and he used these in a robust and vigorous manner. He was 
 brilliant, versatile, and original ; and yet he had the gift of 
 turning everything into an occasion for laughter and fun. 
 How far his laughter had a serious purpose in satire and 
 criticism, it is not possible to say. He made sport of Socra- 
 tes, and yet he was a member of the Socratic circle and the 
 friend of Socrates. 
 
 Much diversity of opinion exists as to the political aims 
 of Aristophanes. Thirl wall, M tiller, and many others, 
 think he was sound in principle and purpose, and that he 
 stood against tendencies that were corrupting and revolution- 
 ary. On the other hand, Grote condemns him as the worst 
 enemy of his city, a reckless conservative and a mischievous 
 enemy of its best men. Mr. Symonds takes a middle course 
 between these two, and thinks the great comic poet was 
 right in purpose, but often wrong in his methods. 
 
 The comedies of Aristophanes have been described as
 
 Aristophanes' Apology. 21 
 
 " madness methodized and with a sober meaning." Grote 
 regards Aristophanes as a man who excited the worst pas- 
 sions of the Athenians, and who did all he could to lead his 
 countrymen astray morally. Others see in him a great 
 ethical teacher, with a high and pure purpose ; but this view 
 has little to support it. All that was vigorous in the natu- 
 ralism of the Greeks he helped to foster ; and his naturalism 
 was of the most open and unconscious kind. 
 
 The Herakles is quite literally turned into English, on the 
 same lines of transcription of those set forth in the preface 
 to the Agamemnon. In Mahaffy's Greek Literature, and 
 also in his Euripides, may be found a helpful analysis of 
 the play, and an outline of its plot. In the first of these 
 works, the author says : " We can now recommend the 
 admirable translation in Mr. Browning's Aristophanes' 
 Apology, as giving English readers a thoroughly faithful 
 idea of this splendid play. The choral odes are, moreover, 
 done justice to, and translated into adequate metre." In 
 the latter work he mentions Mr. Browning's " admirable 
 version, which is so striking in its combination of two sub- 
 jects that it almost deserves to be called a drama of plot." 
 
 An excellent study of Aristophanes and his works will be 
 found in Mahaffy's History of Greek Literature. A more 
 extended but less valuable work is Collins' Aristophanes, 
 in the series of Ancient Classics for English Readers. 
 Kennedy's translation of the Birds has a valuable intro- 
 duction, which will be found to give much important aid in 
 understanding the life and works of Aristophanes. The 
 best study of Aristophanes and his works is contained in 
 Symonds' Studies of the Greek Poets, first series, in which 
 his literary characteristics are presented in a most interest- 
 ing and suggestive manner. This last essay, together with 
 that in the same volume on Euripides, will be found very 
 helpful in rounding out the view of these poets presented by 
 Mr. Browning. Mr. Symonds more fully treats some phases 
 of the subject than it was possible for Mr. Browning to do 
 in his poem, and he comes very near the truth in his estimate 
 of Aristophanes, both as a poet and in his relations to 
 morality. 
 
 In order fully to comprehend Browning's poem, it is nec- 
 essary to know the history of Athens in the period of its
 
 22 Aristophanes' Apology. 
 
 greatest power, and just before its downfall. It is also 
 necessary to understand the history of the drama in Athens, 
 the origin and growth of comedy, and the relations of Aris- 
 tophanes to all the phases of the life of his time. Milller's 
 History of the Literature of Ancient Greece will be found 
 of much value in making such a study, as will also Donald- 
 son's Theater of the Greeks. A later and very suggestive 
 work is Moulton's Ancient Classical Drama. 
 
 The whole poem is a discussion of the comparative merits, 
 not only of Euripides and Aristophanes, and of tragedy and 
 comedy, but of the ideal and the real in literature. On the 
 merits of this discussion Mr. Mahaffy says, in his Greek 
 Literature, that Browning "has treated the controversy 
 between Euripides and Aristophanes with more learning 
 and ability than all other critics, in his Aristophanes' 
 Apology, which is an Euripides' Apology also, if such be 
 required at the present day." 
 
 Browning evidently made an extensive use of the scholi- 
 asts or Greek commentators on Aristophanes, in the writing 
 of this poem. Among those who have thus added to our 
 knowledge of Aristophanes and his work may be mentioned 
 Plutarch, Callimachus, Aristarchus, Crates, Didymus, Sym- 
 machus, and many later writers. These comments have 
 been edited by Dindorf and Diibner, and works upon them 
 have been published by Schneider, Ritschl, and Keil. 
 
 A scene from Plato's Symposium, as translated by Pro- 
 fessor Jowett, will give the clue to the scene when Aristo- 
 phanes bursts into the house of Balaustion and her hus- 
 band. " Agathon arose," says Plato, " in order that he 
 might take his place on the couch of Socrates, when sud- 
 denly a band of revelers entered, and spoiled the order of 
 the banquet. Some one who was going out having left the 
 door open, they had found their way in. and made themselves 
 at home. Great confusion ensued, and every one was com- 
 pelled to drink large quantities of wine. Aristodemus said 
 that Eryxemachus, Phaedrus and others went away. He 
 himself fell asleep, and, as the nights were long, took a 
 good rest. He was awakened towards daybreak by a crow- 
 ing of cocks, and when he awoke, the others either were 
 asleep or had gone away. There remained only Socrates, 
 Aristophanes, and Agathou, who were drinking out of a
 
 Aristophanes' Apology. 23 
 
 large goblet, which they passed round, and Socrates was 
 discoursing to them. Aristodemus did not hear the begin- 
 ning of the discourse, and he was only half awake, but the 
 chief thing which he remembered was Socrates insisting to 
 the other two that the genius of comedy was the same as 
 that of tragedy, and that the writer of tragedy ought to be 
 a writer of comedy also. To this they were compelled to 
 assent, being sleepy, and not quite understanding his mean- 
 ing. And first of all Aristophanes dropped asleep, and 
 then, when the day was already dawning, Agathon. So- 
 crates, when he had put them to sleep, rose to depart, Aris- 
 todemus, as his manner was, following him. At the Lyceum 
 he took a bath, and passed the day as usual, and when even- 
 ing came, he retired to rest at his own house." 
 
 Not only has Browning drawn upon such descriptions as 
 this, but he has employed an actual historical incident as 
 the basis of his poem. Athens was saved by Euripides. 
 When the war had been brought to an end by the Spartan 
 capture of Athens, the conquerer, Lysander, decreed the 
 destruction of the long walls. The doom of utter ruin, 
 however, was prevented by the skillful use of one of the 
 songs of Euripides. This incident is drawn from Plutarch's 
 biography of Lysander, the Spartan general. Browning 
 identifies the man of Phokis mentioned there with Euthu- 
 kles. This Phokian saved the city by his appeal to the 
 Greek love of lofty poetic sentiments. Plutarch, as trans- 
 lated by Clough, says : 
 
 " Lysander, as soon as he had taken all the ships except 
 twelve, and the walls of the Athenians, on the sixteenth 
 day of the month Munychion, the same on which they had 
 overcome the barbarians at Salamis, then proceeded to take 
 measures for altering the government. But the Athenians 
 taking that very unwillingly and resisting, he sent to the 
 people and informed them that he found that the city had 
 broken the terms, for the walls were standing when the 
 days were past within which they should have been pulled 
 down. He should therefore consider their case anew, they 
 having broken their first articles. And some state, in fact, 
 the proposal was made in the congress of the allies, that the 
 Athenians should all be sold as slaves ; on which occasion, 
 Erianthus, the Theban, gave his vote to pull down the city,
 
 24 Aristophanes' Apology. 
 
 and turn the country into sheep-pasture ; yet afterwards, 
 when there was a meeting of the captains together, a man 
 of Phocis, singing the first chorus in Euripides' Mlectra, 
 which begins, 
 
 ' Electra, Agamemnon's child, I come 
 Unto thy desert home,' 
 
 they were all melted with compassion, and it seemed to be 
 a cruel deed to destroy and pull down a city which had 
 been so famous, and produced such men. 
 
 " Accordingly Lysander, the Athenians yielding up every- 
 thing, sent for a number of flute-women out of the city, and 
 collected together all that were in the camp, and pulled 
 down the walls, and burned the ships to the sound of the 
 flute ; the allies being crowned with garlands, and making 
 merry together, as counting that day the beginning of their 
 liberty. He proceeded also at once to alter the govern- 
 ment, placing thirty rulers in the city, and ten in the 
 Peirreus ; he put also a garrison into the Acropolis, and 
 made Callibius, a Spartan, the governor of it." 
 
 Mr. J. A. Symonds, in The Academy for April 17, 1875, 
 devotes a long article to this poem. After giving an out- 
 line of the story, he says that this is the setting which "Mr. 
 Browning has invented for one of the strongest poems he 
 has ever written, for one of the most brilliant tours de force 
 of English verse. A more ingenious or more felicitous 
 framework could not be imagined ; all the motives are well 
 chosen, probable, dramatic ; nor is it possible sufficiently to 
 praise the adroitness with which the poet has seized on 
 every scrap of history, on every tag of antiquarian gossip, 
 which could serve his purpose. The poem literally bursts 
 with erudition, containing, as it does, the stuff for many 
 dissertations on the origin and object of Greek comedy, on 
 the causes of Athenian decay, on the proper estimate of 
 Euripides as a tragic poet, on Greek dancing girls, and last, 
 not least, upon the Kottabos. Yet this learning is lightly 
 borne ; it scarcely can be said to overlay the presentation 
 of the two chief personages, or to distract attention from 
 the subject of their long debate. The aim of the poem be- 
 ing really the glorification of Euripides, the moment selected 
 for Balaustion's improvisation, when Athens has just fallen,
 
 Aristophanes' Apology. 25 
 
 only escaping utter ruin through a song from the Elektra, 
 is sensationally appropriated. By identifying the man of 
 Phokis, mentioned in Plutarch's life of Lysander, with his 
 own Euthukles, Mr. Browning rings and rounds his whole 
 romance within a sphere of plausibility. Euripides, abused 
 by the comic poet as the destroyer of his country, is now 
 shown to have stayed the conqueror's hand ; while the flute- 
 girls, feigned by Mr. Browning to be the veritable crew of 
 Aristophanes, pipe their best and dance their worst all 
 through the pulling down of the long walls. 
 
 " The use made of the advantages offered by these paral- 
 lels and contrasts is superb. As a sophist and a rhetorician 
 of poetry, Mr. Browning proves himself unrivaled, and 
 takes rank with the best writers of historical romances. 
 Yet students may fairly accuse him of some special plead- 
 ing in favor of his friends, and against his foes. It is true 
 that Aristophanes did not bring back again the golden days 
 of Greece ; true that his comedy revealed a corruption la- 
 tent in Athenian life. But neither was Euripides in any 
 sense a savior. Impartiality regards them both as equally 
 destructive ; Aristophanes, because he indulged animalism 
 and praised ignorance in an age which ought to have out- 
 grown both ; Euripides, because he criticised the whole fab- 
 ric of Greek thought and feeling in an age which had not 
 yet distinguished between analysis and skepticism. 
 
 " What has just been said about Mr. Browning's special 
 pleading indicates the chief fault to be found with his poem. 
 The point of view is modern. The situation is strained. 
 Aristophanes becomes the scape-goat of Athenian sins, while 
 Euripides shines forth a saint as well as a sage. Balaus- 
 tion, for her part, beautiful as her conception truly is, takes 
 up a position which even Plato could not have assumed. 
 Into her mouth Mr. Browning has put the views of the 
 most searching and most sympathetic modern analyst. She 
 judges Euripides, not as he appeared to his own Greeks, 
 but as he strikes the warmest of admirers who compare hU 
 work with that of all the poets who have ever lived. No 
 account is taken of his tiresome quibblings and long-winded 
 repartees, his moral hair-splitting and sophistry, the shift- 
 ing of his point of view about such characters as Helen, 
 We, indeed, in the nineteenth century, can overlook these
 
 26 Aristophanes' Apology. 
 
 blemishes, while we dwell on qualities which make him 
 third among the sons of Attic song. But in the eyes of the 
 Greeks they were far otherwise important. The ribaldry 
 of Aristophanes, which seems to us disgusting, and on which 
 Mr. Browning insists with a satire at once delicate and 
 scathing, was not more corrosive of good breeding and high 
 tone. 
 
 " Though it seems to me that Mr. Browning has credited 
 Balaustion with views in advance of her civilization, he can- 
 not be said to have violated dramatic propriety. It is just 
 that Balaustion, saved by the rheseis of Alkestis, and Eu- 
 thukles, savior of Athens through Elektra the very priest 
 and priestess of Euripides should confront their comic 
 adversary in this lofty strain. And, what is more, the poet 
 of our age has obeyed a right instinct in making a woman, 
 and such an inspired woman as Balaustion, his mouthpiece. 
 Of women in Greece we know, indeed, next to nothing. 
 But nature tells us that women, all the world over, have 
 finer moral perceptions than men ; and Balaustion, be it 
 said in passing, is worthy to be placed besides Pompilia. 
 
 " The contrast between this high-spirited woman, wor- 
 shiper of Euripides the sage, wife of Euthukles her own 
 amanuensis, who darts forth withering epigrams at need ; 
 and Aristophanes, the blustering, wine-swollen, blatant mon- 
 arch of the comic scene, who rolls into her room, is highly 
 entertaining. Not less picturesque is the contrast between 
 the quiet home of Balaustion, with its oratory raised beneath 
 the portrait of the freckle-faced poet cool, tranquil and 
 the flame-faced revels of the Bohemian supper party, with 
 Aristophanes for Bacchus, and ' Phaps ' for Aphrodite. 
 The whole poem, it may be said, abounds in contrasts. 
 They detonate at every turn, indeed, like crackers, rather 
 to the detriment of true artistic calm. 
 
 " Mr. Browning has shown his mastery by painting both 
 portraits, Balaustion and Aristophanes, with equal force. 
 His Aristophanes is no vulgar caricature. Though the 
 English poet hates him for his foulness, loathes him for his 
 lies, and scorns his shabby tricks of trade and catchpenny 
 calumnies, he does not fail to appreciate the demiurgic 
 power, the creative energy, and the splendid imagination of 
 the author of the Clouds. Aristophanes is drawn like a
 
 Aristophanes' Apology. 27 
 
 primeval demon, a Titan Typhoeus or Enceladus at 
 war with some new Zeus, whom he contemns, but who is 
 born of Fate's decree to conquer. The flash and flame and 
 force of genius, whereby this conception of Aristophanes is 
 sustained, overpower all criticism. It is only after laying 
 down the book and thinking over it, that we discover what 
 is wanting the aerial beauty which belonged to the true 
 Aristophanes, the delicate drollery which Plato has por- 
 trayed in the Symposium. Mr. Browning's Aristophanes 
 roars and ramps, and snorts and bullies, and dominates us 
 with subtlety of intellect and strength of lung. But where 
 in the hundreds of lines which he pours forth can we detect 
 the teacher of the chorus of the Clouds, the singer of the 
 Birds in their Parabasis ? He is truly finest, and most art- 
 fully depicted, in the passage which describes his feelings 
 when the news of Euripides' death reached him in the midst 
 of his symposium. Mr. Browning soars to a dramatic climax 
 in this masterpiece of powerful delineation. 
 
 " Meanwhile his Euripides is far withdrawn and shadowy, 
 a philosophic phantom, dear to all initiated souls, the 
 burgher of no earthly city, the believer in no earthly gods 
 of Greece, but the beloved of God. He speaks, at great 
 length, in his own Jferakles, which Balaustion, with a wo- 
 man's privilege, pours down the ears of half-drunk Aristo- 
 phanes. But while his comic antagonist is so carefully dis- 
 played, like a cantharus upon the cork of an entomologist, 
 the tragic poet, assumed to be a far superior being, is only 
 reflected on the mirror of Balaustion's womanly mind. 
 Here again we find dramatic propriety of the first water. 
 Balaustion is speaking. She cannot but presuppose the 
 supremacy of her adopted saint. . . . 
 
 " As is the case with all Mr. Browning's work, however, 
 the subject-matter of Aristoplumes 1 Apology serves as a 
 schema for conveying something far more universal than 
 appears upon the surface. That old quarrel between 
 Tragedy and Comedy at Athens, which he has resuscitated, 
 has long ago been settled. It was never so important, per- 
 haps, as he would have us think ; for what are poems or 
 poets, after all, but signs and symbols of a nation's culture ? 
 The accurate scholarship and vivid local coloring which 
 make this poem priceless to a student will repel the gen-
 
 28 Aristophanes' Apology. 
 
 eral reader ; and all of us may cry ' Connu ! ' when we read 
 the prophecy of the new comic art which shall absorb the 
 tragic. But no one is really unconcerned with the strife of 
 the spirit and the flesh, idealized humanity and life materially 
 apprehended, which underlies the shadow-duel between Ba- 
 laustion and Aristophanes, as apprehended by Mr. Brown- 
 ing." 
 
 Page 99. Kore. The Greek for Virgin, a name given 
 to PersephoneV 
 
 101. Dikast. Judge. Heliast. A juryman in Athens. 
 
 Kordax-step. An indecent dance. " A species of dance 
 which no Athenian could practice, sober and unmasked, 
 without incurring a character for the greatest shameless- 
 ness." [Muller.] Propulaia (Propylaia). Gateway of 
 the Acropolis. Pnux (Pnyx). The place where the pop- 
 ular assembly met. Bema. The elevated place where the 
 actors stood when they addressed the popular assembly. 
 Both these were represented in the Athenian theatre. 
 
 102. Hermippos. A poet of the Old Comedy, who 
 satirized Pericles and prosecuted Aspasia. Kratinos. A 
 poet of the Old Comedy, the rival of Aristophanes, who first 
 made the drama a means of personal satire : 519-423 B. c. 
 
 Makaria. A heroine in Euripides' Hecuba, who dies for 
 the salvation of her brothers and sisters. 
 
 103. Phrunichos (Phrynicus). A dramatic poet who 
 made the capture of Miletus the subject of a tragedy, 
 " which, when performed, in 493, so painfully wrung the 
 feelings of the Athenian audience that they burst into tears 
 in the theatre, and the poet was condemned to pay a fine of 
 1,000 drachmae, for having recalled to them their misfor- 
 tunes." [Grote.] He is satirized by Aristophanes in the 
 Frogs for his method of introducing his characters. Mi- 
 lesian smart-place. The painful remembrance of the cap- 
 ture of Milesia thus referred to. Kresphontes. One of 
 the conquerors of Peloponnesus, to whom Messenia fell as 
 his share. 
 
 104. Amphitheos. One of the characters in the Achar- 
 nians of Aristophanes, a being not godlike and yet gifted 
 with immortality. 
 
 105. Stade. The stake where the runner stopped, to 
 return to his starting-point. Diaulos. The race-course
 
 Aristophanes' Apology. 29 
 
 with its double track, one for the out-go, and one for the re- 
 turn. Hupsipule (Hypsipyle). The queen of Lemnos, on 
 Jason's expedition in search of the golden fleece. Phoi- 
 nissai (Phcenissae). A tragedy of Euripides about the 
 woes of the family of QEdipus. Zetlios. A son of Zeus 
 and Antiope, at Thebes, and a brother of Amphion. 
 
 106. Phorminx. A kind of cithara or lyre, the oldest 
 stringed instrument of the Greeks. City of Gapers. A 
 name given to Athens on account of the excessive curiosity of 
 its people. Glauketes. Imaginary person. Morsimos. 
 Imaginary person. Arginousai (Arginusae). Three small 
 islands near ^Eolis, and a hundred and twenty stadia from 
 Mitylene, described by Strabo. Mime. A performer in 
 the mimic dialogues called Mimes. 
 
 107. Lais and Leogoras. Imaginary persons. Koppa- 
 marked. Race-horses marked with the old letter Koppa, 
 which indicated the best breed. Choinix. A measure. 
 Thesmophoria. A festival held by women in honor of Ceres 
 and Proserpine, from which men were rigidly excluded, 
 and which was made by Aristophanes the subject of one 
 of his comedies. Arridaios, Krateues. Minor poets. 
 Comic Platon. The last poet of the Old Comedy, a writer 
 of satirical comedies. Nikodikos. Imaginary person. 
 
 108. Phuromachos. Military leader. 
 
 109. Salabaccho. The name of a famous courtesan of 
 the time of Aristophanes, a character in The Knights. 
 
 110. Peiraios. A character in the Odyssey, son of Clytius 
 of Ithaca, and a friend of Telemachus. Alkamenes, a 
 king of Sparta, mentioned by Herodotus and Pausanias. 
 
 112. Komos-cry. In the Attic drama, the song sung alter- 
 nately by the chorus and an actor, and especially the wail 
 or dirge in which the chorus often indulged. " Komos sig- 
 nifies a revel continued after supper. It was a very ancient 
 custom in Greece for young men, after rising from an even- 
 ing banquet, to ramble about the streets to the sound of the 
 flute or the lyre, and with torches in their hands ; such a 
 band of revelers was called a komos. And as the band of 
 revelers not unfrequently made a riotous entrance into any 
 house where an entertainment was going on, the verb is 
 used metaphorically by Plato to signify any interruption or 
 intrusion. Hence the word Komos is used to denote any
 
 30 Aristophanes' Apology. 
 
 band or company. In a secondary sense, it signifies a song 
 sung either by a convivial party or at the Bacchic feasts 
 (not merely in honor of the god, but also to ridicule cer- 
 tain persons) ; or lastly, by a procession in honor of a victor 
 at the public games." [Donaldson.] 
 
 114. Cheekband. A band worn by trumpeters to support 
 the cheeks. Cuckoo-apple. Make-believe food. Thret- 
 tanelo. A sound imitative of a harp-string. Neblaretai. 
 A sound imitative of any cry of joy. Goafs-breakfast. 
 Allusions of a very indecent nature, probably connected 
 with the early history of the drama, and the worship of 
 Bacchus. 
 
 115. Curtail expense. The cost of bringing out plays was 
 defrayed by the city, and was dependent upon the money 
 which could be spared for that purpose. Three days' salt- 
 fish-slice. The allowance for a soldier when setting out 
 on an expedition, after which he was to forage for himself. 
 Shams-ambassadors. Characters in the Acharnians. 
 Kudathenaian. Famous Athenian. Pandionid. A de- 
 scendant of Pandion, King of Athens. Choirilos. A 
 tragic poet of Athens, contemporary with Sophocles. 
 Goat-song. Tragedy (tragoadia) was thus called because a 
 goat-skin, filled with wine, was at first given as a prize on 
 its production. Donaldson says tragoedia could have no- 
 thing to do with the goat, nor could it imply that the goat 
 was the object of the song. It denotes the singer whose 
 words are accompanied by the gesticulations or movements 
 of a chorus of Satyrs, or a comus of revelers. 
 
 116. Willow^wicker-flask. A nickname for a poet who 
 makes himself a toper. 
 
 117. Lyric shell or tragic barbiton. The lesser and the 
 larger lyre. 
 
 118. Sousarion. A poet of Megara, who is said to have 
 introduced comedy into Athens at a very early date. 
 Chionides. His successor in the development of comedy, 
 and called by Donaldson the first writer of old Athenian 
 comedy. 
 
 119. Little-in-the-Fields. A Dionysian feast, but not so 
 important as that of the city. 
 
 120. Ameipsias. A comic poet, who was the rival of Aris- 
 tophanes. lostephanos. A name of Athens, meaning vio- 
 let-crowned.
 
 Aristophanes' Apology. 31 
 
 121. Kleophon. A demagogue attacked by Aristophanes 
 as a profligate, an enemy of peace, and a man of bad char- 
 acter. Kleonumos. Another demagogue attacked by 
 Aristophanes, a big and cowardly fellow. Melanthios. 
 A petty tragic poet, a descendant of JEschylus. Paraba- 
 sis. That part of the Old Tragedy, not connected with its 
 main action, in which the chorus came forward and ad- 
 dressed the audience in the poet's name. Telekleides. A 
 poet of the Old Comedy of about 444 B. c. Murtilos, 
 ffermippos, Eupolis, Kratinos. Poets contemporary with 
 the great writers of tragedy. Mullos, Euetes. Revivers 
 of comedy in Athens after Sousarion. 
 
 122. Morucheides. The son of Morychus, and like his 
 father a glutton and a comic poet. Surakosios. A comic 
 poet. 
 
 123. Trilophos. A wearer of three crests on his helmets ; 
 this passage probably refers to the abandonment of the aris- 
 tocratic party by Alcibiades. Ruppapai. A word used by 
 a crew in rowing, which came to mean the crew itself. 
 
 124. Prutaneion (Prytaneion). A free dinner was given 
 in this place, at the expense of the city, to the leading per- 
 sons of the city. Ariphrades. An infamous character at- 
 tacked by Aristophanes, a player on the harp. 
 
 125. Karkinos. A comic actor, who had famous dancing 
 sons. Exomis. A woman's garment. Parachoregema. 
 The subordinate chorus, when the principal one is absent 
 from the stage. Aristullos. A bad character, satirized by 
 Aristophanes, and used by him as a travesty of Plato. The 
 incident is mentioned in Plato's Apology. Mnesilochos. 
 The father of the first wife of Euripides, one of the char- 
 acters in the Thesmophoriazusae. Bald Bard. Aristo- 
 phanes was bald at an early age. Murrhine, Akalanthis. 
 Female names in Aristophanes' comedy called Thesmo- 
 phoriazusae. The Toxotes. A Syrian archer in the same 
 comedy. 
 
 126. New Kalligeneia. The name given to Ceres, mean- 
 ing, the bearer of lovely offspring. The Great King's 
 Eye. In the Achamians, a mocking name given to the 
 Persian ambassador. Kompolakuthes. A player of the 
 name of Lamachus, meaning a boaster who is also a bully. 
 Silphion. A plant used as a relish. Kleonclapper. A
 
 32 Aristophanes' Apology. 
 
 corrector of Kleon. Agathon. An Athenian poet of much 
 prominence of the time of Euripides. In the opening of 
 Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae he is brought into close 
 connection with that poet, and he " is appealed to as an ef- 
 feminate and luxurious man whose soft and sensuous poetry 
 was the natural outcome of his nature." 
 
 127. Babaiax. An exclamation of surprise. Strattis. 
 A poet of the Old Comedy, 410-380 B. c. Told him in 
 dream. An allusion to the account given by Cicero in his 
 Divinatione, xxv., as follows : " To the philosophers we 
 may add the testimony of Sophocles, a most learned man, 
 and as a poet quite divine, who, when a golden goblet of 
 great weight had been stolen from the temple of Heracles, 
 saw in a dream the god himself appearing to him, and 
 declaring who was the robber. Sophocles paid no atten- 
 tion to this vision, though it was repeated more than once. 
 When it had presented itself to him several times, he pro- 
 ceeded up to the Court of the Areopagus, and laid the mat- 
 ter before them. On this, the judges issued an order for 
 the arrest of the offender nominated by Sophocles. On the 
 application of the torture, the criminal confessed his guilt, 
 and restored the goblet ; from which event this temple of 
 Heracles was afterwards called, The Temple of Heracles, 
 the Indicator.' " Euphwion. One of the two sons of 
 ,3schylus who were tragic poets, and who brought out four 
 of his father's unpublished plays, defeating Euripides with 
 one of them. Tmgaios. An epithet of Bacchus, mean- 
 ing vintager ; but here refers to a character in the Peace of 
 Aristophanes. Simonides. " The lyric poet sang an ode 
 to his patron Scopas, at a feast ; and as he had introduced 
 into it the praises of Castor and Pollux, Scopas declared 
 that he would only pay his own half-share of the ode, and 
 the Demigods might pay the remainder. Presently it was 
 announced to Simonides that two youths desired to see him 
 outside the palace ; on going there he found nobody, but 
 meanwhile the palace fell in, killing his patron. Thus was 
 he paid" [Mrs. Orr.] 
 
 128. Philonides. A comic poet, but principally known as 
 having brought out several of the plays of Aristophanes. 
 Kallistratos. Another poet who put on the stage several of 
 the plays of Aristophanes. lophon. A son of Sophocles,
 
 Aristophanes' Apology. 33 
 
 said to have been a bad poet, yet gained victories. He tried 
 to take away his father's property by claiming he was not 
 able to manage it, but Sophocles read the chorus of his 
 (Edipus at Colonus to the judges, who decided upon his 
 perfect sanity. 
 
 129. Maketis. The capital of Macedonia. 
 
 131. Lamachos. A general who fell at the siege of Syra- 
 cuse ; satirized by Aristophanes in the Acharnians as a 
 brave but boastful man. Philokleon. A dikast or judge 
 who was made a character in The Wasps. Pisthetairos. 
 A character in The Birds of Aristophanes, an Athenian citi- 
 zen who goes to seek his fortune in the kingdom of birds. 
 
 Strepsiades. A rich old Athenian in The Clouds. 
 Ariphrades. Imaginary person. 
 
 132. Nikias. An Athenian general in the Peloponnesian 
 war, the leader of the aristocratic party. 
 
 135. Sophroniskos 1 son. Socrates. 
 
 139. Kephisophon. An actor, and a friend of Euripides, 
 who was enviously reported to help him in writing his play. 
 
 Wine-lees-song. So called because the comic actors 
 rubbed their faces with wine-lees in place of masks ; hence 
 a comedian was a trayudos or wine-lees-singer. 
 
 141. Palaistra. A wrestling-school or place of exercise. 
 
 142. Kleon. A leader of the Athenian democracy during 
 the Peloponnesian war. Whirligig, or vortex. A satirical 
 substitute for the gods in Aristophanes' Clouds, where he 
 condemns the theories of the philosophers. Cha,irephon. 
 One of the friends of Socrates, and as such introduced by 
 Plato into his dialogues. He appears as such in The 
 Clouds. He was a man of great warmth of temper, so much 
 so as to be almost insane. 
 
 143. Aias. Ajax. San. The letter used to distinguish 
 race-horses. Menippos. A comic poet. Kepphe. Im- 
 aginary person. Sporgilos. Imaginary person. Thea- 
 rion's meal-tub politics. The politics of Thearion, the 
 baker. 
 
 144. Rocky Ones. An epithet applied to the Athenians. 
 
 145. Promachos. Champion. Kimon. An Athenian 
 general in the Persian war. Boule. The state council. 
 
 146. Prodikos. A Greek sophist of the age of Socrates, 
 satirized in the Birds and Clouds. Protagoras. The ear-
 
 34 Aristophanes' Apology. 
 
 liest and greatest of the Sophists, after whom Plato named 
 one of his dialogues. Choes. A festival at Athens, called 
 The Pitchers. 
 
 147. Plataian help. Help that is timely, a phrase that 
 derived its meaning from the fact that the Platseans sent a 
 thousand men to help at Marathon and thus decided the 
 battle. 
 
 150. Plethron square. One hundred square feet. 
 
 151. Archelaos. The king of Macedonia, who became 
 the patron of Euripides. 
 
 152. Cloudcuckooburg. A place in the Birds of Aristo- 
 phanes, satirizing fanciful political theories, a castle in the 
 air. Palaistra-tool. The strigil used at the Palaistra or 
 wrestling-school. 
 
 153. Priapos. Son of Dionysus and Aphrodite, a god of 
 fertility and sensuality. Phales lacchos. Two epithets 
 for Bacchus, the first one indecent. 
 
 160. Kinesias. A dithyrambic poet, who tried in the time 
 of Aristophanes to cut down the money spent upon comedy 
 and thus to decrease its dignity and importance. Aristo- 
 phanes laughed at him for his leanness and his incapacity 
 as a poet, in his Birds. 
 
 161. Aristonumos. A small poet opposed to Aristophanes. 
 Sannurion. A comic poet satirized by Aristophanes for 
 his leanness. Rattei. An imitative sound or gibberish 
 expressive of joy. 
 
 164. Kassiterides. The tin-county of Cornwall in Britain. 
 
 169. Skiadeion. A parasol or sunshade. Huperbolos. 
 An Athenian demagogue, contemporary with Cleon. 
 
 170. Theoria. A character, in the Lysistrata, personify- 
 ing games, spectacles and sights. Opora. A character in 
 the Lysistrata, personifying plenty or a fruitful autumn. 
 
 172. Philokleon turns Bdelukleon. A lover of Cleon 
 turns a reviler of Cleon, two characters in The Wasps. 
 " There are two persons opposed to one another in this piece ; 
 the old Philocleon, who has given up the management of his 
 affairs to his son, and devoted himself entirely to his office 
 of judge (in consequence of which he pays the profoundest 
 respect to Cleon, the patron of the popular courts) ; and 
 his son Bdelycleon, who has a horror of Cleon and of the 
 severity of the courts in general." [Muller.j The same
 
 Aristophanes' Apology. 35 
 
 characters appear in the Clouds, but here their position with 
 reference to Cleon is exactly reversed. Morsimos. A 
 descendant of ^Eschylus, an obscure tragic poet, ridiculed 
 by the comic poets. Kratinos (Cratinus). The originator 
 of political comedy, an audacious satirist, one whose cho- 
 ruses were sung as popular songs. 
 
 173. Logeion. The front of the stage occupied by the 
 actors. 
 
 174. Kuklobor os-roaring. A roaring like that of the tor- 
 rent of Cycloboros in Attica. 
 
 176. Konnos. The play by Ameipsias which beat the 
 Clouds of Aristophanes. Eukrates, Lusikles, Telekleides 
 and Hermippos. Comic poes who satirized Pericles and 
 Cymon. Moruchides. An Athenian archon, who made a 
 law permitting the comic poets to make personal attacks. 
 Euthumenes. An Athenian ruler who refused the pay of the 
 comic poets, but who tripled that of those who attended the 
 assembly. Surakosios. An archon who made a law limit- 
 iting the freedom of lampooning. Argurrhios. An Athe- 
 nian ruler connected with the use made by the comic poets 
 of satire and the lampoon. 
 
 178. Triballos. A country or clownish god. 
 
 179. Pentheus. The successor of Cadmus as king of 
 Thebes, who was destroyed by his own mother because of 
 his opposition to the Dionysius-worship. 
 
 193. Propula (propyla). A name derived from propu- 
 laia (propylaea), the gateway to the Acropolis. 
 
 226. Kottabos (cottabus). " A game of skill for a long 
 time in great vogue in Greece, frequently alluded to by the 
 classic writers, and not seldom depicted on the ancient vases. 
 The object of the player was to cast a portion of wine left 
 in his drinking-cup, in such a way tljat without breaking bulk 
 in its passage through the air, it should reach a vessel set to 
 receive it, and there produce a distinct noise by its impact. 
 The thrower, in the ordinary form of the game, was ex- 
 pected to retain the recumbent position that was usual at 
 table, and in playing the cottabus, to make use of the right 
 hand only." See Becker's Charicles for account of other 
 forms of the game. 
 
 227. Tin-islands. Great Britain, or perhaps more cor- 
 rectly, the Scilly Islands. Thamuris (Thamyris). A
 
 36 Artemis Prologizes. 
 
 musician or poet preceding Homer, native of Thrace, who 
 claimed to despise the Muses, and was punished with blind- 
 ness for his presumption. 
 
 228. Balura. A small stream of Messenia, flowing into 
 the Famisus. 
 
 235. Elaphebolion-month. The month for stag-hunting or 
 stag-striking ; the month when the comedies were presented. 
 Bakis-prophecy. Foolish prophecies attributed to one 
 Bacis, then common ; hence, a general name for all foolish 
 attempts to forecast the future. 
 
 239. Kommos. A name for general weeping by the chorus 
 or by an actor. Phaps-^laphion. The leader of the 
 chorus of females or flute-players. 
 
 240. Philemon. A poet of t<he New Comedy, who wrote 
 many plays, only fragments of which have been preserved. 
 He is mentioned because he is the first of the new school, 
 the greatest of whom was Menander. 
 
 See London Quarterly Review, 44 : 354 ; Athenceum, 
 April 17, 1875 ; Browning Society's Papers, J. B. Bury, 
 number eight, 2 : 79 and 2 :117*. 
 
 Artemis Prologizes. First published in 1842, in 
 Dramatic Lyrics, the third part of Bells and Pomegran- 
 ates. Poems, 1849, under the heading Dramatic Romances 
 and Lyrics. In the Poetical Works of 1863 it was given 
 a place in Men and Women. 
 
 This poem was the result of the reading of the Hippolytus 
 of Euripides. In that play Hippolytus is represented as a 
 chaste worshiper of Artemis (Latin, Diana) who will give no 
 heed to Venus. He is loved by Phaedra, his step-mother, 
 who, when he will not reciprocate her advances, kills herself, 
 but leaves a letter to Theseus, her husband, accusing Hip- 
 polytus of an improper affection for herself. Theseus sends 
 his son into exile ; but the unfortunate young man's horses 
 are frightened by a bull sent by Poseidon ; they run with 
 furious speed, and he is dragged behind his chariot until he 
 is mortally wounded. Theseus rejoices at this punishment 
 until Artemis appears and shows him his error. Then Hip- 
 polytus is conveyed into the presence of his father ; the old 
 love returns between them, and Hippolytus expires in his 
 father's arms. 
 
 At this point Browning takes up the story, and follows
 
 Artemis Prologizes. 37 
 
 the legend which says that Hippolytus was revived by Arte- 
 mis, but falls in love with Aricia, one of her nymphs. He 
 planned a long poem on this legend, but only the present 
 fragment was written ; something diverting his mind from 
 the subject of the poem, it was not again taken up. In this 
 fragment the speaker is Artemis ; and she relates how Hip- 
 polytus came to his death, as the story is told in the play of 
 Euripides. She tells what is not told in the play how 
 she had conveyed him in secret to her forest retreat, where 
 she is at work, with the aid of vEsculapius, in bringing him 
 back to life. Hippolytus is not yet restored, but he -has the 
 appearance of being only in sleep. The fragment closes at 
 the moment when Artemis declares her purpose of awaiting 
 in silence the result of her efforts to revive her favorite. 
 
 It was in this poem that Browning first adopted that 
 form of spelling Greek words which he followed to the end 
 of his life. In the preface to the translation of the Agar 
 memnon, 1877, he set forth his theory on that subject, and 
 defended it with zeal and knowledge. He had occasion 
 now and then in other places to say a word on the subject. 
 " He even assured his friends," says Mrs. Orr, " that if the 
 innovation had been rationally opposed, or simply not ac- 
 cepted, he would probably himself have abandoned it. But 
 when, years later, in Balaustion's Adventure, the new spell- 
 ing became the subject of attacks which all but ignored the 
 existence of the work from any other point of view, the 
 thought of yielding was no longer admissible." 
 
 Mrs. Orr prints in her Hand-book a note from Browning 
 with reference to these attacks. It is in reply to an article 
 in the Nineteenth Century, for January, 1886, written by 
 Mr. Frederick Harrison. " I have just noticed," wrote 
 Browning, " in this month's Nineteenth Century that it is 
 inquired by a humorous objector to the practice of spelling 
 (under exceptional conditions) Greek proper names as they 
 are spelled in Greek literature, why the same principle 
 should not be adopted by ^Egyptologists, Hebraists, San- 
 scrittists, Accadians, Moabites, Hittites, and Cuneif ormists ? 
 Adopt it by all means whenever the particular language 
 enjoyed by any fortunate possessor of these shall, like Greek, 
 have been for about three hundred years insisted upon in 
 England, as an acquisition of paramount importance at
 
 38 Ask not one least word. Asolando. 
 
 school and college, for every aspirant to distinction in learn- 
 ing, even at the cost of six or seven years' study a sacri- 
 fice considered well worth making for even an imperfect 
 acquaintance with the most perfect language in the world. 
 Further, it will be adopted whenever the letters substituted 
 for those in ordinary English use shall do no more than rep- 
 resent to the unscholarly what the scholar accepts without 
 scruple, when, for the hundredth time, he reads the word 
 which, for once, he has occasion to write in English, and 
 which he concludes must be as euphonic as the rest of a 
 language renowned for euphony. And finally, the practice 
 will be adopted whenever the substituted letters effect no 
 sort of organic change, so as to jostle the word from its pride 
 of place in English verse or prose. ' Themistokles ' fits in 
 quietly everywhere, with or without the ' k ; ' but in a cer- 
 tain poetical translation I remember by a young friend, of 
 the Anabasis, beginning thus felicitously, ' Cyrus the Great 
 and Artaxerxes (Whose temper bloodier than a Turk's 
 is) Were children both of the mild, pious, And happy 
 monarch King Darius ; who fails to see that, although a 
 correct ' Kuraush ' may pass, yet ' Darayavash ' disturbs the 
 metre as well as the rhyme ? It seems, however, that ' The- 
 mistokles ' may be winked at ; not so the ' harsh and subver- 
 sive " Kirke." ' But let the objector ask somebody with no 
 knowledge to subvert, how he supposes ' Circe ' is spelled 
 in Greek, and the answer will be, ' With a soft c.' Inform 
 him that no such letter exists, and he guesses, ' Then with s, 
 if there be anything like it.' Tell him that to eye and ear 
 equally, his own k answers the purpose, and you have at all 
 events taught him that much, if little enough and why 
 does he live unless to learn a little ! " This note is signed 
 " R. B." Its date is January 4, 1886. 
 
 See the study of Hippolytus in the first series of Symonds' 
 Greek Poets ; see also William Cranston Lawton's Three 
 Dramas of Euripides. 
 
 Ask not one least word of praise ! The first line 
 of the eleventh lyric in ferishtah's fancies. 
 
 Asolando : Fancies and Facts. Published by Smith, 
 Elder & Co., London, December, 1889. Pages i.-viii., 1- 
 167. 
 
 Contents: Prologue; Rosny ; Dubiety; Now ; Humility ;
 
 Asolando : Fancies and Facts. 39 
 
 Poetics ; Summum Bonum ; A Pearl, a Girl ; Speculative ; 
 White Witchcraft; Bad Dreams: I., II., III., and IV.; 
 Inapprehensiveness ; Which ? The Cardinal and the Dog ; 
 The Pope and the Net; The Bean- Feast; Muckle-Mouth 
 Meg ; Arcades Ambo ; The Lady and the Painter ; Ponte 
 dell' Angelo, Venice ; Beatrice Signorini ; Flute-Music, with 
 an Accompaniment ; " Imperante Augusto Natus Est " ; 
 Development ; Rephan ; Reverie ; Epilogue. 
 
 Browning first visited Asolo when a young man ; he 
 made it the scene of Pippa Passes, and he referred to it in 
 Sordello. He was there again in the early autumn of 1889, 
 as the guest for several weeks at the summer home of Mrs. 
 Arthur Bronson ; there he completed the preparation of 
 Asolando, and there he wrote its dedication to this intimate 
 friend. Then he went to Venice, and there his life came 
 to an end, just after this volume had been issued from the 
 press. 
 
 Asolo is a small town in Venetia. It is located in the 
 province of Treviso, and is about nineteen miles from the 
 city of that name. It is the ancient Acelum, known to 
 Plotemy and Pliny. It was destroyed by the Huns, and 
 came into the hands of the Venetians in 1337. It is finely 
 located, and now has a population of about six thousand. 
 Located on high ground, it is surrounded by fortifica- 
 tions ; and near by is an old castle. It has a cathedral and 
 a public fountain ; it also contains the ruins of public baths 
 and a Roman aqueduct. Not far off is the quarry of Rocca. 
 The town is now famous mainly for its silk culture and 
 manufacture. 
 
 In the immediate neighborhood of Asolo is the palace once 
 occupied by Caterina Cornaro, and now used as a dairy. 
 Caterina was born in Venice in 1454, the daughter of Marco 
 Cornaro, a wealthy and noble citizen. In 1471 she married 
 James Lusignan, king of Cyprus. The next year the king 
 died, and for seven years Caterina was queen of Cyprus, 
 though with little authority or influence. Venice had her 
 hand on the queen's country, and made it her own, compel- 
 ling Caterina to resign. She was given Castle Asolo, by 
 Venice, and there she continued to rule as a queen until her 
 death, in 1510. 
 
 Among those who formed the court of Caterina was
 
 40 Asolando : Fancies and Facts. 
 
 Pietro Bembo, one of the great Italian scholars of the pe- 
 riod, a humanist, a restorer of pure and graceful Latin, and 
 a man of broad and generous tastes. When a young man 
 he was Caterina's secretary, and helped to entertain her 
 court. He wrote a description of its idyllic life, as he saw 
 it, in his Degli Asolani ; and described the music, the acted 
 dialogue, and the graceful outdoor wanderings in grove and 
 garden, with which these people amused themselves. 
 
 The title of the book Browning attributes to Bembo's use 
 of the word asolare " to disport in the open air, amuse 
 one's self at random " ; an expression which admirably de- 
 scribes the life at the court of Caterina Cornaro. It is a 
 far-drawn double play upon words which led to the use of 
 such a title ; but it answers its purpose as well as any other, 
 and connects the last of Browning's books with a place that 
 had pleasant associations for him. 
 
 An account of Asolo, and of Caterina's life there, is given 
 in Mr. Horatio F. Brown's Venetian Studies. " The cas- 
 tle of Asolo stood on the spurs of the Alps, between Bas- 
 sano and Montebelluno, at no great distance from the Villa 
 Maser. Far away it looked across the plain to Padua and 
 the Euganean Hills, those islanded mounds that rise ab- 
 ruptly from the rich growth of vineyards and of mulberry 
 trees. "On the other side of the hills lived another famous 
 woman, beautiful with golden hair Lucrezia Borgia, duch- 
 ess of Ferrara. The morning sun and clear light morning 
 air come fresh to Asolo from the sea that lies round Venice ; 
 while behind it the Julian Alps swell upward, wave on 
 wave, towards the boundary heights. It was here that Cat- 
 erina was to taste the sweet idyllic close to ah 1 her stormy 
 life, surrounded by her little court, her twelve maids of 
 honor, and her eighty serving-men, her favorite negress 
 with the parrots, her apes and peacocks and hounds, and 
 dwarf buffoon. Here the still days went by in garden 
 walks, or by the little brooks, or in the oak grove, where 
 the company would talk of love as though it had no life, 
 like some dead god that could not reach their hearts ; or 
 else would sing the sun to his setting, with touch of lute 
 strings and sweetly modulated voices. 
 
 " Caterina left Venice for Asolo, and all the people of 
 her little principality, olive crowned and bearing olive
 
 At the " Mermaid. 1 " 41 
 
 branches in their hands, came out to meet their lady. 
 Under a canopy of cloth of gold they led her to the piazza of 
 Borgo d' Asolo, where an address was presented to her. . . . 
 Caterina began to give laws to her little kingdom, and to 
 take a queenly interest in its cares and its well-being. She 
 opened a monte di pieta, or pawnbroking bank, for the relief 
 of those in pressing need. She imported grain from Cyprus 
 and distributed it. She appointed her treasurer of state, 
 her potestas regius, and an auditor to hear and judge ap- 
 peals. She wielded her little scepter for her people's good, 
 and won their love by gentleness and grace. Here, in the 
 quiet of twenty years, she lived, surrounded by a phantom 
 royalty ; yet, unsubstantial as it might be, it was as real as 
 any she had known in Cyprus. Here she and her court 
 listened one and all to those grave ragionamenti on platonic 
 love, with their weariful, never-ending age of gold, with their 
 gods and goddesses and mortals made immortal. . . . 
 
 " The queen really loved Asolo, her gardens, and her 
 court, nor ever wished to leave them, summer or winter. 
 Three times only did she make a journey from her castle : 
 once when the weather was so cold that men could walk 
 from Mestre to Venice across the lagoon ; once she paid a 
 visit to her brother Giorgio, podesta in Brescia ; and again 
 when Asolo was occupied by the troops of Maximilian. 
 Caterina went to Venice for greater safety, and died there 
 on the tenth of July, 1510, fifty-six years old. Her funeral 
 displayed as much magnificence as Venice could afford. 
 Over her grave Andrea Navagero, poet, scholar and am- 
 bassador, made the oration that bade farewell to this un- 
 happy queen, whose beauty, goodness, gentleness, and grace, 
 were unavailing to save her from the tyrannous cruelty of 
 fate." 
 
 See Poet-Lore, 2 : 94 ; Academy, Arthur Symons, Janu- 
 ary 11, 1890; Athenceum, January 18, 1890; Spectator, 
 January 25, 1890 ; Andover Review, February, 1890. 
 
 At the " Mermaid." Pacchiarotto, with other Poems. 
 1876. 
 
 In this poem the speaker is Shakespeare, to whom it has 
 just been suggested that he is to be the next great poet. 
 He is speaking to his literary friends, especially to Ben 
 Jonson, gathered at " The Mermaid " tavern, the favorite
 
 42 Austin Tresham. Balaustion's Adventure. 
 
 resort in London of the Elizabethan wits. He refuses to 
 accept the praise given him, says he has no new method as 
 a poet ; and he asks his friends to show him the tokens that 
 he is the dead king's heir and son. He is not at all inclined 
 to produce a sedition in the methods of song or to inaugu- 
 rate a schism in the art of verse-making. 
 
 The main purpose of this poem is to protest, in the name 
 of the greatest dramatic poet, against the habit of attribut- 
 ing to the dramatist as his own personal beliefs, those senti- 
 ments and opinions which he puts into the mouths of his 
 characters. He will not accept the tendency to identify 
 his characters with himself as being either just or right ; his 
 life is his own, hid from the world ; and it is not his own 
 life which he puts into his dramatic works. The poem is 
 an emphatic protest against that tendency in criticism which 
 finds in the plays of Shakespeare a full-grown system of 
 philosophy, and it is a denial that the dramatist could have 
 had any such aim. It is also a protest against the tendency 
 in poetry to represent the dark and evil side of life, a ten- 
 dency best shown in Byron. Browning also alludes to 
 Shakespeare in the poem called House, and in Sludge the 
 Medium. 
 
 Austin Tresham. The lover of Guendolen Tresham in 
 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, and the next heir to the earldom 
 of Tresham. 
 
 Bad Dreams. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 Balaustion. The Greek girl of Rhodes who, in Balaus- 
 tion's Adventure, at Syracuse saves the ship-load of her 
 companions journeying to Athens, by her recital of Euri- 
 pides' Alcestis. Her adventures are continued in Aristo- 
 phanes' Apology, wherein she marries her lover, defends 
 Euripides against the great writer of comedies, and sails 
 back again to Rhodes. 
 
 Balaustion's Adventure : Including a Transcript 
 from Euripides. Published in August, 1871, by Smith, 
 Elder and Co., London. The poem was written and the 
 translation made at the suggestion of Lady Cowper, to whom 
 it is dedicated. The motto is from Mrs. Browning's Wine 
 of Cyprus. Pages 1-170. 
 
 This poem is something more than a translation of the 
 Alcestis of Euripides. It is a defense of that dramatic
 
 Balaustion^ s Adventure. 43 
 
 poet as the most human of all the Greek dramatists, and 
 the most modern in spirit. Euripides has been criticised 
 by numerous writers for his defective plots, and for the 
 crudeness of his dramatic methods as compared with JEs- 
 chylus ; but in his dramas there is more of pathos and ten- 
 derness, and a larger appreciation of the facts of human life. 
 This is admirably expressed in the motto taken from Mrs. 
 Browning, as well as in many of the effects produced by 
 Balaustion's recitation of the Alcestis. Professor Mahaffy 
 says Browning is " the modern poet who best understands 
 Euripides." 
 
 The plays of Euripides were more favorably received 
 outside Athens than in it ; and on this fact Browning has 
 based his account of the adventure of Balaustion, which 
 took place in the year 413 B. c., during the second stage of 
 the Peloponnesian war, that great struggle between Athens 
 and Sparta for the leadership of Greece. It occurred at the 
 time when Athens had sent out an expedition against Syra- 
 cuse that had utterly failed. Then the people of Rhodes 
 proposed to withdraw their allegiance from Athens and join 
 Sparta. Balaustion, a native of the city of Camirus in 
 Rhodes, had been so nurtured on Athenian traditions and 
 ideas that she was not willing to submit to Sparta. She 
 persuaded her family to flee with her to Athens. They 
 crossed over to Caunus, on the mainland, where they hired 
 a ship to carry them to Athens. They were driven out of 
 their way by contrary winds, and likely to be captured by 
 a piratical ship, when they sought a harbor, which proved 
 to be that of Syracuse. The people there would not receive 
 the fugitives, because they heard a song coming from the 
 ship, which declared the glory of Athens. When it was 
 found, however, that Balaustion could recite a play by the 
 new dramatic poet, Euripides, they were admitted to the 
 city and most kindly received. Balaustion recited Alcestis, 
 which is presented in a narrative form and, of course, is not 
 literally translated throughout. This is one of the most 
 pathetic of the plays of Euripides, and it justifies the de- 
 scription of the poet by Mrs. Browning as " the human with 
 the droppings of warm tears." 
 
 The Greeks in every country took great interest in the 
 works of the dramatic poets, and were eager to see their
 
 44 Balaustion 's Adventure. 
 
 plays on the stage or to hear them recited. The ability to 
 recite their plays or portions of them was sometimes the oc- 
 casion of the liberation of captives and their kindly treat- 
 ment. The adventure of Balaustion is based on a passage 
 in Plutarch's Lives, contained in his biography of Nicias, 
 the leader of the expedition against Syracuse. Many of 
 the Athenians and their allies were taken prisoners and suf- 
 fered great barbarities, while many who were discreet and 
 orderly were set free. 
 
 " Several were saved for the sake of Euripides," says 
 Plutarch, in Clough's translation, " whose poetry, it appears, 
 was in request amoug the Sicilians more than among any of 
 the settlers out of Greece. And when any travelers arrived 
 that could tell them some passage, or give them any speci- 
 men of his verses, they were delighted to be able to com- 
 municate them to one another. Many of the captives who 
 got safe back to Athens are said, after they reached home, 
 to have gone and made their acknowledgments to Euripides, 
 relating how that some of them had been released from 
 their slavery by teaching what they could remember of his 
 poems, and others, when straggling after the fight, had been 
 relieved with meat and drink, for repeating some of his 
 lyrics. Nor need this be any wonder, for it is told that a 
 ship of Caunus fleeing into one of their harbors for protec- 
 tion, pursued by pirates, was not received, but forced back, 
 till one asked if they knew any of Euripides' verses, and on 
 their saying they did, they were admitted, and their ship 
 brought into harbor." 
 
 This incident from Plutarch is used as introductory to 
 the translation of Alcestis. Balaustion relates to four of 
 her girl-friends the story of her adventure at Syracuse ; how 
 she had saved her companions there, how she had been fol- 
 lowed to Athens by a young man she is now about to marry, 
 and how she recited the new play of Euripides on the steps 
 of the temple of Heracles in Syracuse. She adds to the 
 words of Euripides such words of her own as help to make 
 the drama more clear and vivid in its monologue form. 
 Having repeated the play as she gave it at Syracuse, she 
 concludes her narrative by a legendary addition to the story, 
 relating how Alcestis and Admetus had lived happily to- 
 gether ever after. She also tells how it had all been painted
 
 The Bean-Feast. 45 
 
 by a great painter, and how a great poetess had given the 
 dramatist his true designation as a man and as a poet. 
 The poetess referred to is Mrs. Browning, and the artist is 
 Sir Frederick Leighton. 
 
 The best account of Euripides, his life and his works, is 
 to be found in Professor J. P. Mahaffy's little book con- 
 tained in the series of Classical Writers, edited by J. R. 
 Green. A similar, but less valuable, work is that by W. B. 
 Donne, in the series of Ancient Classics for English Read- 
 ers. Admirable critical studies are to be found in Mahaffy's 
 Greek Literature and J. A. Symonds' Studies of the Greek 
 Poets, first series. There are translations of all of the plays 
 of Euripides by Potter, Banks and Woodhull. Potter has 
 a few notes that will be found helpful. The story of Al- 
 cestis is told by Mr. Morris in his Earthly Paradise. Pro- 
 fessor Mahaffy has this to say of Browning's translation : 
 " By far the best translation is Mr. Browning's, in his Ba- 
 laustion's Adventure, but it is much to be regretted that he 
 did not render the choral odes into lyric verse. No one 
 has more thoroughly appreciated the main features of Ad- 
 metus and Pheres, and their dramatic propriety." See Sy- 
 mons' Introduction for a discussion of the merits of the 
 translation. 
 
 See Contemporary Beview, 18 : 284 ; Nation, 13 : 178 ; 
 St. Paul's Magazine, 13 : 178 ; Penn Monthly, 6 : 928 ; 
 Edinburgh Review, 135 : 221 ; Fortnightly Review, Sydney 
 Colvin, 16 : 478 ; London Quarterly, 37 : 346 ; Poet-Lore, 
 2 : 345 ; Academy, G. A. Slmcox, Sept. 1, 1871. 
 
 Bean-Feast, The. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 Felix Peretti, who became Pope Sixtus V., was born 
 near Montalto in 1521, of very poor parents. His father 
 was a vine-dresser ; but the son was hired to a neighbor 
 to keep sheep, and then was put in charge of a drove of 
 hogs. He accidentally became acquainted with a monk, who 
 was so pleased with him that he secured him a place in the 
 Franciscan monastery, where he was educated. He rapidly 
 advanced, became a priest, then a popular preacher in Rome, 
 and a cardinal in 1570. In 1585, he was unanimously 
 elected pope, and began at once a thorough work of reform. 
 He was one of the purest and most faithful of all the popes, 
 and one of the truest to the ideal conception of that office.
 
 46 A Sean- Stripe. 
 
 He rigidly suppressed crime, destroyed the banditti, ex- 
 tensively improved the city of Rome, built a great aqueduct 
 for supplying the city with water, founded the Vatican 
 library, added the dome to St. Peter's, and made his office 
 everywhere respected. 
 
 He employed spies to search out crime, and he himself 
 sought in all possible ways to suppress evil-doing. It was 
 said that he went about the city in disguise, in order to 
 see how people lived ; but this is merely legend or rumor. 
 In Ellis Farnsworth's Life of Pope Sixtus the Fifth, Lon- 
 don, 1754, is given an account of an actual historic occur- 
 rence. 
 
 " Another time, as he passed through the city, seeing the 
 gates of that Convent open, he suddenly got out of his 
 chariot, and went into the porter's lodge, where he found 
 the porter, who was a lay brother, eating a platter of beans, 
 with oil poured over them. As the meanness of the repast 
 put him in mind of his former condition, he took a wooden 
 spoon, and sitting down close to the porter, on a stair-case, 
 first eat one platter full with him, and then another, to the 
 great surprise of those that were with him. After that he 
 had thanked the lay brother for his entertainment, he turned 
 to his attendants, and said, ' We shall live two years longer 
 for this ; for we have eat with an appetite, and without fear 
 or suspicion.' And then lifting up his eyes to heaven, said, 
 ' The Lord be praised for permitting a Pope, once in his 
 life, to make a meal in peace and quietness.' " 
 
 It is quite possible Browning may have found in some 
 of the Italian gossipy lives of Sixtus, the very anecdote he 
 puts into verse, but such anecdote must be taken only for 
 what it is worth. The poem gives a true idea of the char- 
 acter of the Pope, his deep religious convictions, his humility, 
 and his capacity for mingling on friendly terms with the 
 meanest of his subjects. 
 
 Bean-Stripe, A : Also Apple-Eating. Ferishtah's 
 Fancies, 1884. 
 
 The Indian Sage. Sakya Muni or Buddha, who in his 
 conception of the world was a pessimist. Ahriman. The 
 Persian Devil or personification of evil. Ormuzd. The 
 Persian Deity or good God, who is opposed by Ahriman. 
 Shalim-Shah. The Persian for " King of kings."
 
 Beatrice Signorini. 47 
 
 Rustem, Gew, and Gudarz. Heroes in the Shah-Nameh. 
 Rustem is a noble character, brave, faithful and generous. 
 There is something very human about him, and he seems 
 quite as real as any of the heroes in the Iliad. Sindokht. 
 The wife of Mihrab, another of the legendary characters 
 in the Shah-Nameh. She was the mother of Rudabeh, 
 whose love for Zal forms one of the most romantic episodes 
 in this epic. Sindokht was politic and skillful as a match- 
 maker, and brought the two young people together as she 
 desired. Sulayman. Another personage of the Shah- 
 Nameh. Kawah. In the same poem, the blacksmith 
 who raises the standard of revolt, consisting of his own 
 apron, against the tyrannies of Zohak. Kawah, who was 
 remarkably strong and brave, was aided by Feridun ; and 
 these two were able to overcome the evil king. Seven 
 Thrones. Ursa Major. Zurah. The Persian Venus. 
 Parwin. The Persian name of the Pleiades. Zerdusht. 
 Zoroaster, the founder of the national religion of Persia. 
 
 Beatrice Signorini. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 Giovanni Francesco Romanelli was born at Viterbo in 
 1617, and studied under Domenichino, Pietro da Cortona, 
 and Bernini. He went to Rome, and was patronized by 
 Cardinal Barberini. Baldinucci gives his biography at. 
 considerable length, and enumerates his various works. 
 That part of the sketch relating to the poem is as follows : 
 " He wished to return to Viterbo ; and as he was of a gay 
 and lively 'temperament, likewise very susceptible and of an 
 amorous disposition, fond of all pleasures, such as dancing, 
 games, and the society of the opposite sex, it came to pass 
 that he fell in love with a noble lady, Beatrice Signorini by 
 name. Cardinal Barberini favored the match, and blessed 
 the bans. . . . Romanelli's merits soon reached the ears of 
 the King of France. He reluctantly quitted his wife and 
 family, to whom he was devotedly attached. . . . The Cardi- 
 nal interceded with the king to allow Romanelli to return 
 to Rome, as his absence had caused his wife much uneasi- 
 ness. . . . Romanelli was at work in Rome when he re- 
 ceived news that Louis XIV., who was now reigning, had 
 chosen him to help add lustre to the magnificence of his 
 reign. So he again set out for Paris, this time taking his 
 family with him, and was warmly received by the king."
 
 48 Beatrice Signorini. 
 
 When about to make a third journey to France, in 1662, 
 Romanelli died. He was not a great painter, as Browning 
 correctly indicates ; and few of his pictures are now remem- 
 bered as having any special value. More to the purpose 
 is Baldinucci's statement that he was witty in speech and 
 graceful in manner, and of a noble and lofty bearing. " His 
 personal influence was such that every one with whom he 
 came in contact was charmed and fascinated by him. Dur- 
 ing his sittings he always conversed with his subjects and 
 thus kept them amused and interested by his brilliant con- 
 versation and his lively descriptions. No obscene picture 
 ever issued from his brush, which was ever inimical to a 
 public display of the nude." 
 
 Baldinucci's sketch of Artemisia Genteleschi gives the 
 other particulars referred to in the poem. The family 
 name of this woman-artist was Lomi, but her father, also 
 an artist, was usually called Genteleschi, from the surname 
 of an uncle. " Artemisia Genteleschi was the daughter of 
 Orazio Lomi, a Pisan painter. Artemisia had the reputa- 
 tion of being the most beautiful woman and the most skillful 
 female painter of her time. She married Pier Antonio 
 Schiattesi. She learned her art from her father, and began 
 by painting portraits, in Rome, Florence, and other cities. 
 She painted a beautiful picture of a nude woman entitled 
 Desire for Michelangelo, the younger, in commemoration 
 of the glorious achievements of his ancestor, the great 
 Buonarruoti ; but Lionardo, his nephew and heir, a gentle- 
 man of great modesty and decorum, known for his refine- 
 ment, piety, and all other good qualities, wished this figure 
 draped, and Baldassare Volterrano complied, without in any 
 way lessening the beauty of the picture." 
 
 In the house of Gio. Luigi Arrighetti, a noble Florentine, 
 according to Baldinucci, is a fine picture of Aurora, also 
 nude. In the Pitti palace are two pictures from the hand 
 of Artemisia. One is quite large, and represents The Rape 
 of Proserpine. Another very fine picture in this same pal- 
 ace is a life-size Judith and Holofernes. 
 
 " Besides portrait painting, Artemisia had great talent 
 for reproducing every kind of fruit [which Browning turns 
 into flowers], imitating nature in a marvelous fashion. And 
 at this point we must mention a little incident which took place
 
 Beatrice SignorinL 49 
 
 in the life of Giovanni Francesco Romanelli of Viterbo, pupil 
 of Cortona. He lived and painted during the time of Urban 
 VIII., and was held in great favor by the Barberini. This 
 painter was of a gay and amorous disposition. He became 
 deeply attached to the painter Artemisia, and often visited 
 her in order to watch her working at her art, and to con- 
 verse with her about art and the topics of the day. Ro- 
 manelli wished to paint her portrait. As she was at the 
 height of her art in fruit painting at that time, he desired 
 her to paint a picture filled with fruit, and to leave in the 
 centre space enough for the portrait. Artemisia complied 
 with this request, and made a charming picture, embellished 
 by fruits. Romanelli placed in the centre a most life-like 
 and lovely portrait of Artemisia. This picture he kept him- 
 self, and he placed more value on it than on all the presents 
 he had received from prelates and princes while in Rome. 
 It was accordingly hung in his own house among his other 
 pictures. One day he called his wife's attention to it, 
 pointed out the portrait of Artemisia, and remarked upon 
 the beauty and the ingenuity displayed in the conception of 
 the picture. He purposely praised all the virtues of Arte- 
 misia, her charming manner, her vivacity of speech, and her 
 lively repartee. This he did in order to excite the jealousy 
 of his wife, who was also a very beautiful woman. The 
 latter took occasion, when her husband was out of the house, 
 to pierce and entirely destroy the face of Artemisia with a 
 large pin (spillo), so that it could not be recognized. Ro- 
 manelli, instead of showing anger at this proceeding, was 
 more in love with his wife than ever, and from that time 
 ceased to praise or make mention of the picture, which still 
 is in possession of some of Romanelli's heirs." 
 
 In her youth Artemisia Genteleschi visited England 
 with her father ; she was liberally patronized by Charles I., 
 and she painted the portraits of some of the royal family. 
 She is mentioned in Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in 
 England. She seems to have made well by her art in Eng- 
 land, and on the death there of her father to have returned 
 to Italy. She lived in Naples, and died there in 1642, at 
 the age of fifty-two. Lanzi says her pictures show variety 
 of style, that her Judith slaying Holofernes is a picture of 
 a strong coloring and of a tone and perspicuity that inspire
 
 50 Beer. Bells and Pomegranates. 
 
 awe. He says she was more celebrated for her portraits, 
 which are of singular merit ; they spread her fame over 
 all Europe. She was respected for her talents, and cele- 
 brated for the elegance of her manners and appearance. 
 Artemisia was assisted and improved in her art by Guido 
 Reni, and she diligently studied the works of Domenichino. 
 
 Beer. See Nationality in Drinks. 
 
 Before. Men and Women, 1855 ; Lyrics, 1863 ; Dra- 
 matic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 A sequel to this poem is to be found in After, which 
 poem see. The leopard-dog-thing at his side is thus ex- 
 plained by Mr. Nettleship in his Essays and Thoughts : 
 " Let him lap himself in pleasure, take the flowers and the 
 fruits of this life ; for all that, his sin will ever accompany 
 him like a leopard at his side, ready to spring and throttle 
 him at any moment." An interpretation of these two poems 
 is given by Mr. Nettleship. 
 
 Bells and Pomegranates. This is the title given to 
 a cheap issue of Browning's poem begun in 1841. It was 
 probably taken from a description of the priests' robe in 
 Exodus xxviii. 34, where it was required that the robe 
 should have on the hem of it " a golden bell and a pome- 
 granate." 
 
 According to Mr. Edmund Gosse. in his paper on The 
 Early Writings of Robert Browning published in The 
 Century, December, 1881, reprinted in Personalia, 1890, 
 the earlier works of the poet had but a small sale. " One 
 day," says Mr. Gosse, " as the poet was discussing the matter 
 with Mr. Edward Moxon, the publisher, the latter remarked 
 that at that time he was bringing out some editions of the 
 old Elizabethan dramatists, in a comparatively cheap form, 
 and that if Mr. Browning would consent to print his poems 
 as pamphlets, using this cheap type, the expense would be 
 very inconsiderable. The poet jumped at the idea, and it 
 was agreed that each poem should form a separate brochure 
 of just one sheet, sixteen pages, in double columns, 
 the entire cost of which should not exceed twelve or fifteen 
 pounds. In this fashion began the celebrated series of 
 Bells and Pomegranates, eight numbers of which, a perfect 
 treasury of fine poetry, came out successively between 1841 
 and 1846. Pippa Passes led the way, and was priced first
 
 Bells and Pomegranates. 51 
 
 at sixpence ; then, the sale being inconsiderable, at a shil- 
 ling, which greatly encouraged the sale ; and so, slowly, up 
 to half a crown, at which the price of each number finally 
 rested." 
 
 The poems issued in this series were as follows : I. Pippa 
 Passes, 1841. II. King Victor and King Charles, 1842. 
 III. Dramatic Lyrics, 1842. IV. The Return of the 
 Druses, 1843. V. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, 1843. VI. 
 Colombe's Birthday, 1844. VII. Dramatic Romances 
 and Lyrics, 1845. VIII. Luria ; and A Soul's Tragedy ', 
 1846. With the first number appeared the preface to the 
 whole series, in the following form : 
 
 ADVEBTISEMENT. 
 
 Two or three years ago I wrote a Play, about which the chief 
 matter I much care to recollect at present is, that a Pitfull of good- 
 natured people applauded it : ever since, I have been desirous of do- 
 ing something in the same way that should better reward their atten- 
 tion. What follows, I mean for the first of a series of Dramatical 
 Pieces, to come out at intervals ; and I amuse myself by fancying that 
 the cheap mode in which they appear, will for once help me to a sort 
 of Pit-audience again. Of course such a work must go on no longer 
 than it is liked ; and to provide against a too certain and but too posi- 
 ble contingency, let me hasten to say now what, if I were sure of 
 success, I would try to say circumstantially enough at the close that 
 I dedicate my best intentions most admiringly to the Author of Ion 
 most affectionately to Sergeant Talfourd. 
 
 EOBEKT BROWNING. 
 
 As a preface of the last issue of the series appeared the 
 following : 
 
 " Here ends my first series of Bells and Pomegranates, and I take 
 the opportunity of explaining, in reply to inquiries, that I only meant 
 by that title to indicate an endeavor towards something like an alter- 
 nation, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, 
 poetry with thought ; which looks too ambitious, thus expressed, so 
 the symbol was preferred. It is little to the purpose, that such is 
 actually one of the most familiar of the many Rabbinical (and Patris- 
 tic) acceptations of the phrase ; because I confess that, letting author- 
 ity alone, I supposed the bare words, in such juxtaposition, would 
 sufficiently convey the desired meaning. ' Faith and good works ' is 
 another fancy, for instance, and perhaps no easier to arrive at ; yet 
 Giotto placed a pomegranate fruit in the hand of Dante, and 
 Raffaello crowned his Theology (in the Camera della Segnatura) with 
 blossoms of the same ; as if the Bellarl and Vasari would be sure to 
 come after, and explain that it was merely ' simbolo delle buone opere 
 il qual Pomogranato fu perb usato nelle veste del Pontefice appresso gli 
 Ebrei.' R. B."
 
 52 Ben I^arshooTc's Wisdom. 
 
 In 1849 was published Browning's Poems, in two vol- 
 umes, only Paracelsus and Bells and Pomegranates being 
 included. They were prefaced by the following brief state- 
 ment : 
 
 " Many of these pieces -were out of print, the rest had been with- 
 drawn from circulation, when the corrected edition, now submitted 
 to the reader, was prepared. The various Poems and Dramas have 
 received the author's most careful revision. 
 
 "December, 1848." 
 
 Bells and Pomegranates was printed in small type on 
 poor paper, in a cheap pamphlet form ; but it first made 
 the poet known, and gained him readers. Two or three of 
 the poems attracted wide attention, and they gave Brown- 
 ing a position as a poet. 
 
 The last number of this series of poems was dedicated 
 to Walter Savage Landor ; and when it was sent to him he 
 wrote to Browning a letter containing these words : " Ac- 
 cept my thanks for the richest of Easter offerings made to 
 any one for many years. I stayed at home last evening on 
 purpose to read Luria, and if I lost any good music (as I 
 certainly did) I was well compensated in kind. To-day I 
 intend to devote the ra'iny hours entirely to the Soul's 
 Tragedy." He also made the following poetic acknowledg- 
 ment of the kindness shown him by the younger poet in 
 thus dedicating to him one of his works, in his Works, 
 1846: 
 
 CCCXIII. To ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's, 
 
 Therefore on him no speech ! and brief for thee, 
 
 Browning 1 ! Since Chaucer was alive and hale, 
 
 No man has walked along our roads with step 
 
 So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue 
 
 So varied in discourse. But warmer climes 
 
 Give brighter plumage, stronger wing : the breeze 
 
 Of Alpine heights thon playest with, borne on 
 
 Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where 
 
 The Siren waits thee, singing song for song. 
 
 Ben Karshook's Wisdom. This poem was written 
 at Rome, in April, 1854 ; and it was first printed in an an- 
 nual called The Keepsake, edited by Miss Power, in 1856. 
 It has not been included by Browning in any edition of his 
 poems ; but it is printed in the Browning Bibliography,
 
 Bernard de Mandeville. 58 
 
 p. 56, and in the appendix to the Riverside edition of 1888. 
 It would appear that Browning intended to include it in 
 Men and Women, for in One Word More, lines 135, 136, 
 he says, 
 
 " I am mine and yours the rest be all men's, 
 Karshook, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty.' ' 
 
 In 1872 this defect was remedied by changing " Kar- 
 shook " to " Karshish" in this place, the latter being the name 
 of the narrator of one of the longer poems in the volume. In 
 Hebrew " Karshook " means " thistle." The reference in 
 the last verse is to 1 Kings vii. 13-22, where Hiram is de- 
 scribed as a dexterous worker in brass on Solomon's temple. 
 
 BEN KARSHOOK'S WISDOM. 
 
 I. 
 
 " Would a man 'scape the rod ? " 
 
 Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, 
 " See that he turn to God 
 
 The day before his death." 
 
 " Ay, could a man inquire 
 
 When it shall come ! " I say. 
 The Rabbi's eye shoots fire 
 ' ' Then let him turn to-day ! " 
 
 II. 
 
 Quoth a young Sadducee : 
 
 " Reader of many rolls, 
 Is it so certain we 
 
 Have, as they tell us, souls ? " 
 
 " Son, there is no reply ! " 
 
 The Rabbi bit his beard : 
 " Certain, a soul have I 
 
 We may have none," he sneered. 
 
 Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, 
 
 The Right-hand Temple-column, 
 Taught babes in grace their grammar, 
 
 And struck the simple, solemn. 
 Rome, April 27, 1854. 
 
 Bernard de Mandeville, Parleyings with. Par- 
 leyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day, 
 1887. 
 
 Bernard de Mandeville was born at Rotterdam, Holland,
 
 54 Bernard de Mandeville. 
 
 in 1670, his father being a physician. He studied at Ley- 
 den, and took the degree of medicine in 1691. He then 
 went to London, and settled there as a physician ; but he 
 had little practice. He wrote several works of a satirical 
 nature, which may be found enumerated in Davenport 
 Adam's Dictionary of English Literature. In 1705, in 
 the midst of a heated political contest, he published The 
 Crrumbling Hive, or Knaves Turned Honest. It was a 
 political jeu d'esprit, a defense of the Duke of Marlbo- 
 rough in regard to the wars he was then carrying on, intend- 
 ing to show that the ambition of that great general and his 
 followers, much inveighed against by party opponents, was 
 in reality a public benefit. Charges of bribery, peculation 
 and dishonesty were made against the party in office ; and 
 that the war was continued for private ends. 
 
 Mandeville defended the war by attempting to prove that 
 ambition, greed of office and individual sell-seeking are 
 necessary to the prosperity of the State. He claimed that 
 private vices are public benefits, because they increase the 
 volume of trade. This poem was little more than doggerel 
 as to its literary form, all its interest being in its paradoxi- 
 cal ethical statements. It was a satire of an audacious kind, 
 having a small amount of grim humor in it. 
 
 In 1714 this poem appeared with a prose commentary, in 
 which the author more fully explained his views. In 1723 it 
 was reprinted as The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, 
 Public Benefits. He published with it a severe attack on 
 charity schools, then greatly in favor among the wealthy and 
 philanthropic. He maintained that these schools trained 
 the children of the poorer classes to become cheats and 
 knaves. His book was indicted before the grand jury of 
 Middlesex county for its immoral teachings. His theories 
 were attacked by Berkeley, Law, Hutcheson, Warburton, and 
 others ; and by the moralists of the day he was regarded 
 as a most pernicious writer. 
 
 Mandeville's personal character was not above reproach, 
 for he visited coffee-houses and amused their frequenters by 
 ribald conversation. It is charged that he was hired by 
 distillers to write in favor of the use of intoxicating liquors. 
 He was patronized by Lord Macclesfield, at whose table the 
 conversation, which he led, was of the loosest. There Addi-
 
 Bernard de Mandeville. 55 
 
 son met the satirist, who called the great poet " a parson in 
 tie wig," a circumstance to which Browning refers. On one 
 occasion, when Mandeville was gross in his conversation, 
 a clergyman told him that " his name bespoke his character 
 Man-deville, or a devil of a man." His writings are 
 also coarse and vulgar, but not more so than many others 
 of the time. 
 
 Mandeville's chief idea was one frequently put forward 
 during the eighteenth century. It is, that religion and 
 morality are the invention of priests and rulers, to keep the 
 mass of the people under their influence by the means of 
 credulity. He bitterly opposed asceticism, and he main- 
 tained that what we call virtue is only selfishness putting on 
 a garb in which to be more successful. He also held that 
 consumption, not saving, is a public benefit. " He that 
 gives most trouble to thousands of his neighbors," he said, 
 " and invents the most operose manufacturies is, right or 
 wrong, the greatest benefit to society." He said again : 
 " What we call evil in this world, moral as well as natural, 
 is the grand principle that makes us social creatures, the 
 solid basis, the light and support of all trades without ex- 
 ception." 
 
 It was the eccentric idea of Mandeville, as Sidgwick ex- 
 presses it, " that moral regulation is something alien to the 
 natural man and imposed on him from without." Ueherweg 
 states his doctrine in these words : " What is called a vice 
 is in fact a public benefit. There is no distinction between 
 the moral impulses or springs of action. Each in its place 
 is natural and legitimate, and the general welfare is best 
 promoted by giving indulgence to all. The restraints on 
 human desires and passions by the magistrate and the priest 
 are factitious and unnatural. Any restraint upon private 
 vices is simply usurpation." 
 
 A man of an acute mind Mandeville certainly was ; but 
 he was misled by his paradoxical ideas. He saw a few 
 things with an acute penetration of thought ; but he stated 
 them in a way to mislead. He saw that evil is relative in its 
 nature, and that it serves a purpose of good in the universe. 
 This is an idea frequently put forward in our day, and by 
 no one more strongly than by Browning, who has stated it 
 in many of his poems.
 
 56 Bifurcation. The Bishop orders his Tomb. 
 
 In Leslie Stephen's History of English Thought in the 
 Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. p. 23, will be found the best 
 account of Mandeville's ethical and philosophical theories. 
 
 See Nettleship's Essays and Thoughts, and essay by 
 Arthur Symons in Browning Society's Papers, number 
 nine. 
 
 Bifurcation. First published in Pacchiarotto, in 1876. 
 
 The speaker is a man, and he describes his love experi- 
 ences. The woman he loved, when there came a division 
 between love and duty, took the way of duty ; but with the 
 declaration that she would be true to him until the next life, 
 when they will be united, duty and love having become one. 
 In choosing duty instead^of love, however, she takes the 
 easier path, while he has to stumble along a way that is 
 hard and difficult. Evidently the sympathies of the poet 
 are on the side of the speaker. 
 
 Bishop Blougram's Apology. Men and Women, 
 1855. 
 
 The speaker is a Catholic bishop, sixty years of age ; and 
 he is addressing Gigadibs, a literary man of thirty. The 
 poem is not historical ; but it is understood that Mr. Brown- 
 ing had in mind Cardinal Wiseman when he was giving to 
 the bishop his being and character. In The Rambler, a 
 London Catholic journal, for January, 1856, a review of 
 Men and Women appeared, which has been attributed to 
 the pen of Cardinal Wiseman. It praises Bishop Blou- 
 gram's Apology for its " fertility of illustration and felicity 
 of argument." It says the poem, " though utterly mistaken 
 in the very groundwork of religion, though starting from 
 the most unworthy notions of the work of a Catholic bishop, 
 and defending a self indulgence every honest man must feel 
 to be disgraceful, is yet in its way triumphant." 
 
 See Browning Society's Papers, part three, 1 : 279 and 
 1 : 33*, where is published a careful analysis by Prof. E. 
 Johnson. 
 
 Bishop, The, orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's 
 Church. This poem was first published in Hood's Maga- 
 zine, March, 1845, with the title, The Tomb at St. Prax- 
 ed's (Rome, 15 ). During the same year it was published 
 in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, number seven of Bells 
 and Pomegranates, as The Tomb at St. Praxed's. In the
 
 The Bishop orders his Tomb. 57 
 
 Poetical Works of 1863 it was classed under the head of 
 Men and Women, and was given the present title. 
 
 St. Praxedis or Praxedes was an early Christian saint, 
 who lived about the time of Antoninus Pius. Praxedes and 
 Pudentiana were daughters of Pudens, a Roman senator, 
 the friend of St. Paul, and who is mentioned in 2 Timothy 
 iv. 21. They spent their lives in works of charity and in 
 giving aid to the persecuted Christians. See an account of 
 them in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art. The 
 house of Pudens is said to have been used by St. Peter as 
 a place of worship. Churches were early built to the 
 memory of both these good women, that to St. Praxedes 
 on the spot where the house of Pudens was located. In 
 499 an oratory was built over her grave in Rome by Pius 
 I. This building having been destroyed in 822, the present 
 church was built by Paschal I. Mr. Rolfe says of her 
 church : " During the absence of the popes at Avignon it 
 fell to ruin, but was restored by Nicholas V., in the fif- 
 teenth century, and by St. Charles Borromeo in 1564. 
 The mosaics of the church are especially remarkable. All 
 the stone-work is of the rarest. The tribune is ascended 
 by a flight of steps composed of large slabs of rosso antico. 
 The pillars on each side of the high altar are of white mar 
 ble beautifully carved with foliage. St. Praxed's slab (on 
 which she slept) is of nerobianco granite. One of the 
 chapels is entered by a doorway formed of two columns 
 of the rare black porphyry and granite, supporting an 
 elaborately sculptured frieze. The outer and inner walls 
 are covered by mosaics. From their richness this chapel 
 was called Orto del Paradiso, or the Garden of Paradise. 
 It contains one of the most celebrated relics in Rome the 
 column to which Christ was bound. It is a curious fact 
 that so elaborate a church should have risen in honor of a 
 maiden whose distinguishing virtue was her simplicity. To 
 complete the contrast, to-day no woman is allowed to enter 
 this rich chapel except on Sundays in Lent. At other 
 times they can only look into it through a grating. Oppo- 
 site the side entrance to the Orto del Paradiso is the tomb 
 of Cardinal Cetive (1474) with his sleeping figure, which 
 reminds us of the Bishop's design for his tomb, whereon he 
 is to lie through centuries."
 
 58 The Bishop orders his Tomb. 
 
 The Bishop's tomb has no existence in this church, unless 
 it may have been suggested by that of Cardinal Cetive. It 
 was invented by Browning, as was the Bishop himself. The 
 .aim of the poem evidently is to bring out some of the lead- 
 ing characteristics of the Renaissance, as they had an influ- 
 ence on the Church, and on the lives of its leading ecclesias- 
 tics. The value of the poem as a picture of that period has 
 been well stated by Mr. Ruskin, in his Modern Painters, 
 vol. iv. chap. xx. sections 32 and 34 : 
 
 " Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he 
 writes of the Middle Ages ; always vital, right, and pro- 
 found ; so that in the matter of art there is hardly a prin- 
 ciple connected with the medieval temper, that he has not 
 struck upon in those seemingly careless and too rugged 
 rhymes of his. There is a curious instance, by the way, in 
 a short poem referring to this very subject of tomb and 
 image sculpture ; and illustrating just one of those phases 
 of local human character which, though belonging to Shake- 
 spere's own age, ; he never noticed, because it was specially 
 Italian and un-English ; connected also closely with the in- 
 fluence of mountains on the heart, and therefore with our 
 immediate inquiries. I mean the kind of admiration with 
 which a southern artist regarded the stone he worked in ; 
 and the pride which populace or priest took in the posses- 
 sion of precious mountain substance, worked into the pave- 
 ments of their cathedrals, and the shafts of their tombs. 
 
 " Observe, Shakespere, in the midst of architecture and 
 tombs of wood, or freestone, or brass, naturally thinks of 
 gold as the best enriching and ennobling substance for 
 them ; in the midst also of the fever of the Renaissance 
 he writes, as every one else did, in praise of precisely the 
 most vicious master of that school Giulio Romano ; but 
 the modern poet, living much in Italy, and quite of the 
 Renaissance influence, is able fully to enter into the Italian 
 feeling, and to see the evil of the Renaissance tendency, not 
 because he is greater than Shakespere, but because he is in 
 another element, and has seen other things." 
 
 After two liberal quotations from the poem, descriptive 
 of the church and its marble and granite decorations, Mr. 
 Ruskin speaks especially of this poem as bearing on the age 
 which it describes :
 
 The Bishop orders his Tomb. 59 
 
 " I know no other piece of modern English, prose or 
 poetry, in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of 
 the Renaissance spirit, its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, 
 hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of 
 good Latin. It is nearly all that I said of the central Re- 
 naissance in thirty pages of the Stones of Venice, put into 
 as, many lines, Browning's being also the antecedent work. 
 The worst of it is that this kind of concentrated writing 
 needs so much solution before the reader can fairly get the 
 good of it, that people's patience fails them, and they give 
 the thing up as insoluble ; though, truly, it ought to be to 
 the current of common thought like Saladin's talisman, 
 dipped in clear water, not soluble altogether, but making 
 the element medicinal." 
 
 This poem is a subtle interpretation of a medieval case 
 of self-deceit. A Bishop on his death-bed calls his sons 
 (ostensibly nephews, in accordance with a custom of the 
 time, which allowed ecclesiastics to have wives in fact, but 
 not in name) about him to request of them the erection of 
 a beautiful monument over his grave. His aesthetic taste, 
 his selfishness and love of luxury, his hatred of a rival, and 
 his fear that the greed of his sons will cause them to disre- 
 gard his request are all most faithfully depicted in the words 
 of the dying prelate. The Bishop's beautiful mistress, whom 
 Gandolf, his predecessor in the bishop's chair, had tried to 
 take from him, the death of Gandolf and his securing the 
 place where the Bishop meant to have had his own tomb 
 erected, the Bishop's love of beauty for its sensual delight, 
 his yearning to have his burial place marked with the finest 
 of tombs, and the selfish refusal of his sons to waste money 
 on the dead bishop, are graphically described in his dying 
 address to his sons. 
 
 The Tully of this poem was Marcus Tullius Cicero, while 
 Ulpian was a Roman jurist who lived from 170 to 228 
 A. D. Elucescebat is wrongly formed from elucere, and has 
 the meaning, in an epitaph, of " noted " or " notable." Mr. 
 Rolfe says that Frascati is now " a favorite resort, twelve 
 miles from Rome, on the slope of the Alban hills. It was 
 built in 1191 on the ruins of a villa overgrown with under- 
 wood (frasche), whence its name." He says of the expres- 
 sion " the Father's globe " : " In the great Jesuit church in
 
 60 A Slot in the 'Scutcheon. 
 
 Rome, the altar of St. Ignatius is adorned with a group of 
 the Trinity by Bernardino Ludovisi. The Father holds a 
 globe, which is said to be the largest piece of lapislazuli in 
 existence." Of the antique-black basalt the Bishop asks for 
 the slab of his tomb, Mr. Ruskin says : " Nero antico is more 
 familiar to our ears ; but Browning does right in translating 
 it ; as afterwards cipollino into ' onion-stone.' Our stupid 
 habit of using foreign words without translating is continu- 
 ally losing us half the force of the foreign language. How 
 many travelers hearing the term cipollino recognize the in- 
 tended sense of a stone splitting into concentric coats, like 
 an onion?" 
 
 In his Select Poems Rolfe gives notes and comments. 
 
 Blind Man to the Maiden, The. In Mrs. Clara Bell's 
 translation of Wilhelmine von Hillern's novel, The Hour 
 Will Come, a little poem rendered into English verse is 
 attributed to the pen of a friend. This anonymous friend 
 was Browning. His version was reprinted in the White- 
 hall Review for March 1, 1883, and in the fourth number 
 of The Browning Society's Papers. 
 
 The blind man to the maiden said, 
 
 ' ' thou of hearts the truest, 
 Thy countenance is hid from me ; 
 Let not my question anger thee ! 
 
 Speak, though in words the fewest. 
 
 " Tell me, what kind of eyes are thine ? 
 
 Dark eyes, or light ones rather ? " 
 " My eyes are a decided brown 
 So much, at least, by looking down, 
 
 From the brook's glass I gather." 
 
 " And is it red thy little mouth ? 
 
 That too the blind must care for." 
 " Ah ! I -would tell it soon to thee, 
 Only none yet has told it me. 
 
 I cannot answer, therefore. 
 
 " But dost thou ask what heart I have 
 
 There hesitate I ne.ver. 
 In thine own breast 't is borne, and so 
 'Tis thine in weal, and thine in woe, 
 For life, for death thine ever! " 
 
 Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A. The history of the writing 
 and stage production of this drama has been so well told by
 
 A Slot in the '/Scutcheon. 61 
 
 Mr. Edmund Gosse, in his paper on The Early Writings 
 of Robert Browning, reprinted in Personalia, that he will 
 be allowed to retell it here. After mentioning the great 
 success of Macready on the stage, and his taking the man- 
 agement of Drury Lane Theatre, his embarrassed financial 
 condition is described in connection with new plays brought 
 out by him. " But, in the mean time," says Mr. Gosse, 
 " Mr. Browning, who had been asked by Macready to write 
 a play for him, had devised and composed, in the space of 
 five days, one of the most remarkable of his works, A 
 Blot in the 'Scutcheon. This had been received, and de- 
 light had been expressed by Macready on reading it. The 
 author was, therefore, surprised that on the withdrawal of 
 Plighted Troth (a play written by George Darley), he re- 
 ceived no invitation, in accordance with etiquette, to read 
 it aloud to the actors previous to rehearsal. He had no 
 inkling whatever of Macready's embarrassments, and not 
 the slightest notion that it was hoped that he would with- 
 draw the piece. At last, on Saturday, the 4th of February, 
 1843, Macready called Mr. Browning into his private room, 
 and said to him : 
 
 " ' Your play was read to the actors yesterday, and they 
 received it with shouts of laughter.' 
 
 " Who read it ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh, Mr. Wilmot.' 
 
 " Now, Wilmot was the prompter, a broadly comic per- 
 sonage with a wooden leg and a very red face, whose vulgar 
 sallies were the delight of all the idle jesters that hung about 
 the theatre. That such a drama as A Blot in the 'Scutch- 
 eon should be given to Wilmot to read was simply an in- 
 sult, and one of which Mr. Browning did not conceal his 
 perception. Macready saw his mistake, and said : ' Wilmot 
 is a ridiculous being, of course. On Monday I myself will 
 read it to the actors.' On Monday, accordingly, he read it, 
 but he announced to Mr. Browning that he should not act in 
 it himself, but that Phelps, then quite a new man, would 
 take the principal part. This was an unheard-of thing in 
 those days, when it was supposed that Macready was abso- 
 lutely essential to a new tragedy. Of course his hope was 
 that Mr. Browning would say : ' You not play in it ? Then, 
 of course, I withdraw it.' But the actor's manner was so
 
 62 A Slot in the 'Scutcheon. 
 
 far from suggesting that truth that the poet never suspected 
 the real state of the case. He accepted Phelps, but when 
 the rehearsal began on Tuesday, Phelps was very ill with 
 English cholera, and could not be present, so Macready 
 read his part for him. On Wednesday Mr. Browning no- 
 ticed that Macready was not merely reading, he was re- 
 hearsing the part, moving across the stage, and counting his 
 steps. When Mr. Browning arrived on Thursday, there 
 was poor Phelps sitting close to the door, as white as a 
 sheet, evidently very poorly. Macready began : ' As Mr. 
 Phelps is so ill you are very ill, are you not, Mr. Phelps ? 
 it will be impossible for him to master his part by Satur- 
 day, and I shall therefore take it myself.' Mr. Browning 
 was not at all pleased with this shuffling, for which he could 
 divine no cause, and he was still more annoyed by the 
 changes which were being made in the poem. The title was 
 to be changed to The Sisters, the first act was to be cut 
 out, and it was to end without any tragic finale, but with 
 these sublime lines, due to the unaided genius of Macready 
 alone : 
 
 ' Within a monastery's solitude 
 Penance and prayer shall wear my life away.' 
 
 " Mr. Browning was determined, if possible, to check this 
 wanton sacrifice of the poem, and so he took the MS. to his 
 publisher Moxon, who also had a quarrel with Macready, 
 and who was therefore only too pleased to cooperate in his 
 confusion. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon was printed in a few 
 hours, in a single sheet, as part five of Sells and Pome- 
 granates, and was in the hands of each of the actors be- 
 fore Mr. Browning reached the theatre on Friday morning. 
 As he entered, he met Phelps, who was waiting for him at 
 the door, and who said : 
 
 " ' It is true, sir, that I have been ill, but I am better 
 now, and if you choose to give the part to me, which I can 
 hardly expect you to do, I should be able to act it to-morrow 
 night.' 
 
 " ' But is it possible,' said Mr. Browning, ' that you could 
 learn it so soon ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes,' answered Phelps, ' I should sit up all night and 
 know it perfectly.'
 
 A Blot in the ''Scutcheon. 63 
 
 " Mr. Browning's determination was soon taken ; he took 
 Phelps with him into the green - room, where Macready 
 was already studying the play in its printed form, with the 
 actors round him. Mr. Browning stopped him, and said : 
 
 " ' I find that Mr. Phelps, although he has been ill, feels 
 himself quite able to take the part, and I shall be very glad 
 to leave it in his hands.' Macready rose and said : 
 
 " * But do you understand that I, /, am going to act the 
 part ? ' 
 
 " ' I shall be very glad to intrust it to Mr. Phelps,' said 
 Mr. Browning, upon which Macready crumpled up the play 
 he was holding in his hand, and threw it to the other end 
 of the room. 
 
 " After such an event, it was with no very hopeful feel- 
 ings that Mr. Browning awaited the first performance on 
 the next night, February llth. He would not allow his 
 parents or his sister to go to the theatre ; no tickets were 
 sent to him, but finding that the stage-box was his, not by 
 favor, but by right, he went with no other companion than 
 Mr. Edward Moxon. But his expectations of failure were 
 not realized. Phelps acted magnificently, carrying out the 
 remark of Macready, that the difference between himself 
 and the other actors was that they could do magnificent 
 things now and then, on a spurt, but that he could always 
 command his effects. Anderson, a jeune premier of prom- 
 ise, acted the young lover with considerable spirit, although 
 the audience was not quite sure whether to laugh or no 
 when he sang his song, ' There 's a Woman like a Dewdrop,' 
 in the act of climbing in the window. Finally, Miss Helen 
 Faucit almost surpassed herself in Mildred Tresham. The 
 piece was entirely successful, though Mr. R. H. Home, 
 who was in the front of the pit, tells me that Anderson was 
 for some time only half-serious, and quite ready to have 
 turned traitor if the public had encouraged him. When 
 the curtain went down the applause was vociferous. Phelps 
 was called and recalled, and then there rose the cry of 
 ' Author ! ' To this Mr. Browning remained silent and out 
 of sight, and the audience continued to shout until Ander- 
 son came forward, and keeping his eye on Mr. Browning, 
 said, ' I believe that the author is not present, but if he is I 
 entreat him to come forward ! ' The poet, however, turned
 
 64 A Slot in the '/Scutcheon. 
 
 a deaf ear to this appeal, and went home very sore with 
 Macready, and what he considered his purposeless and vex- 
 atious schemings. A Slot in the 'Scutcheon was an- 
 nounced to be played 'three times a week until further 
 notice ' ; was performed with entire success to crowded 
 houses, until the final collapse of Macready's schemes 
 brought it abruptly to a close. 
 
 " Such is the true story of an event on which Macready 
 in his journals has kept an obstinate silence, and which one 
 erring critic after another has chronicled as the failure, ' as 
 a matter of course,' of Mr. Browning's ' improbable ' play. 
 Neither on its first appearance, nor when Phelps revived it 
 at Sadler's Wells, was A Blot in the 'Scutcheon received 
 by the public otherwise than with warm applause. As in 
 the case of Strafford, a purely accidental circumstance, un- 
 connected with Mr. Browning, cut it short in the midst of a 
 successful run." 
 
 In his diary Macready makes the briefest allusions to 
 A Slot in the 'Scutcheon. February 4, he says it is in 
 rehearsal ; on the 6th he mentions Phelps' illness and his 
 own reading of the play in his place, and on the llth its 
 production. The notices of the play given at the time in 
 the newspapers do not fully sustain Mr. Gosse's account. 
 The Literary Gazette said that after the first night, its suc- 
 cess was doubtful, and that its inherent faults were fatal. 
 " At the end," it said, " the applause greatly predominated ; 
 but still we cannot promise the Slot that it will not soon be 
 wiped off the stage." The Examiner spoke of causes in 
 the subject itself that might give the play a short existence 
 on the stage ; but its notice was very favorable. " We are 
 not sanguine of the chances of continued patronage to A 
 Slot in the 'Scutcheon. People are already finding out, we 
 see, that there is a great deal that is equivocal in its senti- 
 ments, a vast quantity of mere artifice in its situations, and 
 in its general composition not much to ' touch humanity.' 
 We do not pretend to know what should touch humanity, 
 beyond that which touchejs our own hearts, but we would 
 give little for the feelings of a man who could read this 
 tragedy without a deep emotion. It is very sad ; painfully 
 and perhaps needlessly so ; but it is unutterably tender, pas- 
 sionate, and true."
 
 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. 65 
 
 John Forster read the play in manuscript, which he sent 
 to Dickens for his perusal. In a letter to Forster, dated 
 November 25, 1842, Dickens wrote : " Browning's play has 
 thrown me into a perfect passion of sorrow. To say that 
 there is anything in its subject save what is lovely, true, 
 deeply affecting, full of the best emotion, the most earnest 
 feeling, and the most true and tender source of interest, is 
 to say that there is no light in the sun, and no heat in blood. 
 It is full of genius, natural and great thoughts, profound 
 and yet simple, and yet beautiful in its vigor. I know no- 
 thing that is so affecting, nothing in any book I have ever 
 read, as Mildred's recurrence to that ' I was so young I 
 had no mother.' I know no love like it, no passion like it, 
 no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception, like it. 
 And I swear it is a tragedy that must be played : and must 
 be played, moreover, by Macready. There are some things 
 I would have changed if I could (they are very slight, 
 mostly broken lines) ; and I assuredly would have the old 
 servant begin his tale upon the scene ; and be taken by the 
 throat, or drawn upon, by his master in its commencement. 
 And if you tell Browning that I have seen it, tell him 
 that I believe from my soul there is no living man (and not 
 many dead) who could produce such a work." 
 
 Miss Helen Faucit. afterwards Lady Martin, who played 
 the part of Mildred Tresham on this occasion gives an ac- 
 count of the reading of the play, in Blaofcwood's Magazine 
 for March, 1881, when writing of Mr. Elton. " It seems 
 but yesterday," she says, " that I sat by his side in the 
 green-room at the reading of Robert Browning's beautiful 
 drama A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. As a rule, Mr. Macready 
 always read the new plays. But owing, I suppose, to some 
 press of business, the task was intrusted on this occasion to 
 the head prompter, a clever man in his way, but wholly 
 unfitted to bring out, or even to understand, Mr. Browning's 
 meaning. Consequently, the delicate, subtle lines were 
 twisted, perverted, and sometimes even made ridiculous in 
 his hands. My ' cruel father ' was a warm admirer of the 
 poet. He sat writhing and indignant, and tried by gentle 
 asides to make me see the real meaning of the verse. But 
 somehow the mischief proved irreparable, for a few of the 
 actors during the rehearsals chose to continue to misunder-
 
 66 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. 
 
 stand the text, and never took the interest in the play which 
 they would have done had Mr. Macready read it, for he 
 had great power as a reader. I always thought it was 
 chiefly because of this contretemps that a play, so thor- 
 oughly dramatic, failed, despite its painful story, to make 
 the great success which was justly its due." 
 
 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon was revived by the Mr. Phelps 
 who played the leading part at its first presentation, at Sad- 
 ler's Wells Theatre, Nov. 27, 1848. It was played in Bos- 
 ton, March 16, 1885, under the management of Mr. Law- 
 rence Barrett. The London Browning Society brought it 
 out at St. George's Hall, May 2, 1885. The action of the 
 play occupies two days. The time of the story it tells is 
 the eighteenth century, according to Mr. Browning himself. 
 The code of honor is still in force, and a morbid spirit of 
 chivalry, characteristic of that code at that period, expresses 
 itself in the play. 
 
 This is the simplest, most direct in method, and the most 
 pathetic of Mr. Browning's plays. In itself the story it 
 tells is interesting, and calculated to appeal to our deepest 
 sympathies. The motive is family honor, which was strong 
 among the aristocratic families of England in the eighteenth 
 century ; and the tragedy arises from a too hasty and a too 
 chivalric desire to avenge any blot on the escutcheon of that 
 honor. Of the tragical motive and the ethical intent of the 
 play Mr. Arthur Symons says this right word in his In- 
 troduction : 
 
 " The whole action is passionately pathetic, and it is in- 
 fused with a twofold tragedy the tragedy of the sin, and 
 that of the misunderstanding the last and final tragedy, 
 which hangs on a word, a word spoken when too late to 
 save three lives. This irony of circumstance is at once the 
 source of earth's saddest discords, and the motive of art's 
 truest tragedies. It takes the place, in our modern world, 
 of the irresistible fate of the Greeks ; and is not less im- 
 pressive because it arises from the impulse and unreasoning 
 willfulness of man rather than from the implacable insist- 
 ency of God. It is with deep justice, both moral and artis- 
 tic, that the fatal crisis, though mediately the result of 
 accident, of error, is shown to be the consequence and the 
 punishment of wrong. A tragedy resulting from the mis-
 
 Bluphocks. Boot and Saddle. 67 
 
 takes of the wholly innocent would jar on our sense of right 
 and could never produce a legitimate work of art. Even 
 CEdipus suffers, not merely because he is under the curse of 
 a higher power, but because he is willful, and rushes upon 
 his own fate. In this play each of the characters calls 
 down upon his own head the suffering which at first seems 
 to be a mere caprice and confusion of chance. Mildred 
 Tresham and Henry Mertoun, both very young, ignorant 
 and unguarded, have sinned. They attempt a late repara- 
 tion, apparently with success, but the hasty suspicion of 
 Lord Tresham, Mildred's brother, diverted indeed into a 
 wrong channel, brings down on both a terrible retribution. 
 Tresham, who shares the ruin he causes, feels, too, that his 
 punishment is due. He has acted without pausing to con- 
 sider, and he is called on to pay the penalty of evil wrought 
 by want of thought." 
 
 A Blot in the 'Scutcheon is put into a narrative form, 
 and therefore more or less fully interpreted, in Mr. F. M. 
 Holland's Stories from Browning. Mr. Fotheringham, in 
 his Studies, criticises somewhat the artistic and ethical mo- 
 tives of the play. He says that when it was produced on 
 the stage in London the play was not quite a success, and 
 that the public thought the subject unpleasant. Mrs. Orr's 
 brief outline of the plot and interpretation of its motives 
 will be found helpful in following the course of the play. 
 Rolfe, in his A Blot in the 'Scutcheon and other dramas by 
 Robert Browning, gives Mr. Lawrence Barrett's account of 
 his own presentation of the play, who also comments on the 
 acting qualities of the drama. Mr. Rolfe gives full an- 
 notations, as well as critical comments on the drama from 
 several persons who have written about it. See Browning 
 Society's Papers, 1 : 77* ; Lawrence Barrett's presentation, 
 2 : 43*, 26* ; presentation in London, 1885, 2 : 59* ; pre- 
 sentation in London, March 15, 1888, 2 : 250*. 
 
 Bluphocks. The English vagabond, in Pippa Passes. 
 
 Boot and Saddle. First published in the third num- 
 ber of Bells and Pomegranates in 1842, and has from that 
 time appeared in Dramatic Lyrics. It was the third num- 
 ber of the Cavalier Tunes with which that work opened. 
 It was at first published under the title of My Wife Ger- 
 trude ; but the present title was given it in the Poems
 
 68 Bottinius. By the Fireside. 
 
 of 1849. It is a Cavalier song of the time of Charles I., 
 sung by a party of gentlemen as they saddle preparatory to 
 the rescuing of a besieged castle. 
 
 Bottinius. The public prosecutor, who in The Ring 
 and the Book presents the case against Count Guido. His 
 speech forms the ninth book of the poem. 
 
 Boy and the Angel, The. First published in Hood's 
 Magazine, August, 1844. It was rewritten, with five new 
 couplets, and was published in 1845, in Dramatic Ro- 
 mances and Lyrics, or number seven of Bells and Pome- 
 granates. When it appeared in the Poetical Works of 
 1868 a fresh verse was added. In 1844 the poem ended 
 as follows : 
 
 " Go back and praise again 
 The early way, while I remain. 
 
 " Be again the boy all curl'd ; 
 I will finish with the world." 
 
 Theocrite grew old at home, 
 Gabriel dwelt in Peter's dome. 
 
 This poem has no historical foundation, although it fully 
 represents the Middle-Age spirit. The lesson is the same as 
 that contained in Pippa Passes, that " all service ranks the 
 same with God," therefore we are not to seek to escape 
 from whatever task he has assigned us. See Kingsland's 
 Chief Poet of the Age. 
 
 By the Fireside. Men and Women, 1855 ; Lyrics, 
 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 The speaker is a man of middle age addressing his wife. 
 The conception of love, presented in this poem, where it is 
 described as a means of spiritual awakening and growth, is 
 discussed in John T. Nettleship's Robert Browning : Essays 
 and Thoughts, where this poem is fully analyzed. Brown- 
 ing's conception of love as a means of conversion is dis- 
 cussed on page 58 of Professor Corson's Introduction to 
 Browning. The picture of the wife with 
 
 " that great brow 
 And the spirit-small hand propping it " 
 
 was taken from Mrs. Browning ; and much of the poem was 
 probably suggested by the poet's own experiences of love and 
 wedded life.
 
 Caliban upon Setebos. 69 
 
 Caliban upon Setebos ; or, Natural Theology in 
 the Island. Dramatis Personce, 1864. 
 
 The motto from the fiftieth Psalm gives the point of view 
 of the poem ; it is a study in anthropomorphism. The god 
 Setebos is described in Richard Eden's History of Travaile, 
 published in London, in 1577. See The First Three Eng- 
 lish Books on America, edited by Edward Arber. Eden 
 quotes from Antonio Pigafetta's account of the circumnaviga- 
 tion of the globe by Magellan. Also see Purchas, His Pil- 
 grimes, 1613, where the same account is given. In describ- 
 ing the capture of some natives of Patagonia, Eden says : 
 
 " After other fifteen days were past, there came four 
 other giants without any weapons, but had hid their bows 
 and arrows in certain bushes. The captain retained two of 
 these which were youngest and best made. He took them 
 by a deceit in this manner, that giving them knives, shears, 
 looking glasses, bells, beads of crystal, and such other trifles, 
 he so filled their hands that they could hold no more. Then 
 caused two pair of shackles of iron to be put on their legs, 
 making signs that he would also give them those chains ; 
 which they liked very well because they were made of 
 bright and shining metal. And whereas they could not 
 carry them because their hands were full, the other giants 
 would have carried them ; but the captain would not suffer 
 them. When they felt the shackles fast about their legs 
 they began to doubt ; but the captain did put them in com- 
 fort and bade them stand still. In fine, when they saw 
 how they were deceived they roared like bulls and cried 
 upon their great devil Setebos to help them. Being thus 
 taken they were immediately separate and put in sundry 
 ships. They could never bind the hands of the other two. 
 Yet was one of them with much difficulty overthrown by 
 nine of our men, and his hands bound ; but he suddenly 
 loosed himself and fled, as did also the other that came with 
 them. In their flying they shot off their arrows, and slew 
 one of our men. They say that when one of them die, there 
 appear x. or xii. devils leaping and dancing about the body 
 of the dead, and seem to have their bodies painted with 
 divers colors. And that among others there is one seen 
 bigger than the residue, who maketh great mirth and re- 
 joicing. This great devil they call Setebos, and call the
 
 70 Caliban upon Setebos. 
 
 lesser Cheleule. One of these giants which they took, de- 
 clared by signs that he had seen devils with two horns 
 above their heads, with long hair down to their feet ; and 
 that they cast forth fire at their throats both before and 
 behind. The Captain named these people Patagoni. The 
 most of them wear the skins of such beasts whereof I have 
 spoken before ; and have no house of continuance, but 
 maketh certain cottages which they cover with the said 
 skins, and carry them from place to place. They live of 
 raw flesh and a certain sweet root which they call Capar. 
 One of these which they had in their ships did eat at one 
 meal a basket of biscuits, and drank a bowl of water at a 
 draught." 
 
 What Pigafetta calls a devil is the deity of the Patago- 
 nians. The conception of a deity higher than Setebos, a 
 deity friendly to man, whereas Setebos torments him, is 
 certainly not borrowed from the Patagonians or any similar 
 people. The benign "Quiet" is much more in harmony 
 with Greek conceptions. It is not even from Shakespeare 
 that Browning gets this idea, although the general concep- 
 tion of the poem is taken from The Tempest. In that 
 romantic drama Caliban is one of the characters, while 
 Prospero and Miranda play leading parts. Shakespeare 
 took Caliban and Setebos from some report of Magellan's 
 voyage which had been given him ; and perhaps the general 
 idea of the play. He describes Caliban, as Coleridge puts 
 it, in his notes on the Tempest, as " all earth, all condensed 
 and gross in feeling and images ; he has the dawnings of 
 understanding without reason or the moral sense, and in 
 him, as in some brute animals, this advance to the intellec- 
 tual faculties, without the moral sense, is marked by the ap- 
 pearance of vice." 
 
 Shakespeare makes Prospero call Caliban "a freckled 
 whelp hag-born." His mother is " the foul witch Sycorax," 
 who has been cast upon the desert island, and has there 
 given birth to Caliban. In the second scene of the second 
 act, Caliban, upon the approach of Trinculo, falls flat upon 
 his face; and when the thunder comes on he grovels in 
 the manner described by Browning at the end of his poem. 
 Later on Caliban takes Stephano for his god, and is anxious 
 to get rid of Prospero, because he is too exacting in regard
 
 Caliban upon Setebos. 71 
 
 to the labor he expects him to perform. Near the end of 
 the drama Alonso says of him : " This is a strange thing as 
 e'er I look'd on." Throughout the drama he is a wild, 
 abject, half-brutish, degraded creature, without moral sense, 
 groveling in superstitious fear. This creature of Shake- 
 speare's has the soliloquy of this poem put into his mouth 
 while Prospero and Miranda sleep ; but in a manner quite 
 other than Shakespeare's, less romantic, more subtle, much 
 influenced by modern philosophic ideas, and with a power 
 of reasoning which Shakespeare's Caliban did not possess. 
 
 The best study of the poem is that by Mr. J. Cotter Mori- 
 son, in The Browning Society's Papers, part five ; though 
 the discussion which followed, reported in the same number, 
 is even better. Mr. Morison says the poem " is an indirect 
 yet scathing satire of a rather painful class of reasoners 
 who, while beginning with the admission that the nature of 
 the Godhead is an inscrutable mystery, proceed to write 
 long books to prove their special and minute knowledge of 
 its character; which knowledge of theirs, you may by no 
 means contradict or deny under penalties. ' Very well,' 
 the poet seems to have said, ' you complacently draw God 
 after your own image a flattering likeness no doubt and 
 you insist upon our accepting your picture as a facsimile 
 of the original. But if your method is legitimate, you can- 
 not pretend to a monopoly of it ; other creatures, whether 
 above or beneath you, have the same right to apply it with 
 equal warranty. Here, for instance, is my Caliban, a sturdy 
 reasoner after his own fashion. He looks within his bosom 
 just as you do and this is what he finds, his conception 
 of Setebos. You think it very unlovely, but what surety can 
 you off er that your conception of the Eternal is not as repul- 
 sive to other beings who may be as much superior to you as 
 you are to Caliban ? Nay, that it is not as repulsive to 
 many of your fellow-men, who, by reason of a different 
 education and studies, do not share your opinions ? ' Some- 
 thing like this may be supposed to have passed through the 
 poet's mind." Mr. Edward Dowden, in his Studies in 
 Literature, says that in this poem " the poet has, with 
 singular and most terrible force, represented what must be 
 the natural theology of one who is merely an intellectual 
 animal, devoid of spiritual cravings, sensibilities and checks."
 
 72 A Camel-Driver. The Cardinal and the Dog. 
 
 Mr. Morison's Browning Society paper is in part five, 
 1 : 489 ; and the discussion which followed its reading is in 
 1 : 115*. 
 
 Camel Driver, A. Ferishtah 's Fancies, 1884. 
 
 The soldier-guide of the first line is a creation of the 
 poet's. Rakhsh or Rakush is the horse of Rustem, the 
 great hero of the Shah Nameh. He was the offspring of 
 Abresh, and born of a Diw or Demon. Rustem subdued 
 Rakhsh after much effort, and found in him ever after a 
 most trusty companion, that carried him through all his 
 marvelous adventures. 
 
 Camp and Cloister. See Soliloquy of the Spanish 
 Cloister and Incident of the French Camp. 
 
 Caponsacchi. The canon of Arezzo, in The Ring and 
 the Book, who assists Pompilia in escaping from Count 
 Guido. His narrative forms the sixth book of the poem. 
 A study of this character is given in Poet-Lore, 1 : 269. 
 
 Cardinal and the Dog, The. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 "William Macready, the eldest son of the actor William 
 Charles Macready, had a talent for drawing, and he asked 
 Browning to give him something to illustrate. In answer 
 to this request the poet made a poem out of an old account 
 of the death of the Pope's legate at the Council of Trent. 
 The boy made such clever drawings for it, that the poet took 
 up a more picturesque subject, and wrote The Pied Piper. 
 The present poem, although written about 1840, the poet 
 kept by him until the publication of Asolando. 
 
 Browning puts this incident in the year 1522, and he 
 says the legate was Crescenzio. A similar story is told in 
 Peter Ribadeneira's Flower of the Lives of the Saints. 
 " When St. Stanislaus Kostka was preparing himself for 
 admission into the Society of Jesus, he was visited with a 
 dangerous sickness ; at the beginning of which the devil 
 appeared to him in the guise of a great black dog, horrible 
 and fearful to behold. The foul fiend took the sick man 
 thrice by the throat, trying to throttle him ; but Stanislaus, 
 with the sign of the cross, not only resisted him manfully, 
 but even drove him away, and he never again disturbed 
 this faithful soldier of Jesus Christ." 
 
 This great black dog is none other than the wind-god or 
 the messenger of death. In his Myths and Myth-Makers,
 
 Cavalier Tunes. Cenciaja. 73 
 
 Mr. John Fiske says : " Countless examples go to show that 
 by the early Aryan mind the howling wind was conceived 
 as a great dog or wolf. As the fearful beast was heard 
 speeding by the windows or over the house-top, the inmates 
 trembled, for none knew but his own soul might forthwith 
 be required of him. Hence, to this day, among ignorant 
 people, the howling of a dog under the window is supposed 
 to portend death in the family. It is the fleet greyhound 
 of Hermes, come to escort the soul to the river Styx. In 
 Persia a dog is brought to the bedside of the person who is 
 dying, that the soul may be sure of a prompt escort ; the 
 same custom exists in India. . . . Throughout all Aryan 
 mythology the souls of the dead are supposed to ride on the 
 night-wind, with their howling dogs, gathering into their 
 throng the souls of those just dying as they pass by their 
 houses. Hence, in many parts of Europe, it is still custo- 
 mary to open the windows when a person dies, in order 
 that the soul may not be hindered in joining the mystic 
 cavalcade. Sometimes the whole complex conception is 
 wrapped up in the notion of a single dog, the messenger of 
 the god of shades, who comes to summon the departing soul." 
 In the Christian mythology of the Middle Ages the dog has 
 simply become a devil or an evil messenger of death. 
 
 It is curious that while Browning wrote this poem and 
 The Pied Piper in one connection, Mr. John Fiske inti- 
 mately associates them in their mythological meanings. 
 They are both myths of the wind ; and of the same nature 
 is the associated myth of Bishop Hatto. See Myths and 
 Myth-Makers, pp. 31-35. See Appendix. 
 
 Cavalier Tunes. Dramatic Lyrics, published in 1842, 
 as the third number of Bells and Pomegranates, opened 
 with three songs under this general title. They represent 
 the interests of Charles I., and strongly oppose the Round- 
 heads. Their separate titles are Marching along, Give a 
 Rouse, and Boot and Saddle ; which see. These songs 
 have been set to music by Dr. Villiers Stanford. Poems, 
 1849 ; Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Cenciaja. Pacchiarotto, with other Poems, 1876. 
 
 The motto means that trifles seek for attention in place of 
 more weighty mattei's. The word " Cenciaja," says Mrs. Orr, 
 as used in this case, is perhaps chiefly a pun on the mean
 
 74 Cenciaja. 
 
 ing of the plural noun cenci, " old rags." The crying of 
 this word, which is frequent in the streets of Rome, was 
 mistaken by Shelley, when he was writing his play of The 
 Cenci, for a voice urging him to go on with that work. 
 By Browning the word is employed as the title of his poem, 
 to indicate the comparative unimportance of his addition to 
 the story of the Cenci. 
 
 The poem opens with a reference to Shelley's tragedy 
 called The Cenci, in the preface to which he tells the story 
 of that family. " A manuscript," he says, " was communi- 
 cated to me during my travels in Italy, which was copied 
 from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome, and con- 
 tains a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the 
 extinction of one of the noblest and richest families of that 
 city, during the Pontificate of Clement VIII., in the year 
 1599. The story is, that an old man having spent his 
 life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived at length an 
 implacable hatred towards his children ; which showed it- 
 self towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous 
 passion, aggravated by every circumstance of cruelty and 
 violence. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to 
 escape from what she considered a perpetual contamination 
 both of body and mind, at length plotted with her mother- 
 in-law and brother to murder their common tyrant. The 
 young maiden, who was urged to this tremendous deed by 
 an impulse which overpowered its horror, was evidently a 
 most gentle and amiable being, a creature formed to adorn 
 and be admired, and thus violently thwarted from her na- 
 ture by the necessity of circumstance and opinion. The 
 deed was quickly discovered, and, in spite of the most ear- 
 nest prayers made to the Pope by the highest persons in 
 Rome, the criminals were put to death. The old man had, 
 during his life, repeatedly bought his pardon from the Pope 
 for capital crimes of the most enormous and unspeakable 
 kind, at the price of a hundred thousand crowns ; the death, 
 therefore, of his victims can scarcely be accounted for by 
 the love of justice. The Pope, among other motives for 
 severity, probably felt that whoever killed the Count Cenci 
 deprived his treasury of a certain and copious source of 
 revenue." 
 
 In the present poem Browning gives another reason for
 
 Cenciaja. 75 
 
 the pope's severity, which came to his knowledge from the 
 pages of a contemporary chronicle, which he has used quite 
 literally in some parts of the poem. This MS. volume was 
 loaned to the poet by Sir John Simeon, and it has since 
 been published by the Philobiblion Society. The pope, ac- 
 cording to this narrative, was likely to grant a pardon to 
 Beatrice ; but just then the Marchesa dell' Oriolo, a widow, 
 was murdered by her younger son, Paolo Santa Croce. The 
 young man sought to secure the rights of his older brother, 
 but when his mother refused to grant him these, he became 
 a matricide. He succeeded in making good his escape ; but 
 a letter written to his older brother seemed to implicate him 
 also, and he, though wholly innocent, was charged with be- 
 ing accessory to the crime, was wrought upon until he was 
 driven into insanity, made confession, and was beheaded. 
 The prosecutor of the case against Onofrio Marchese dell' 
 Oriolo was his rival for the affections of a lady ; and be- 
 cause the Marchese had flaunted his success in the other's 
 face, hatred worked his ruin. This murder having been 
 committed on the very day which closed the trial of the 
 Cenci, sealed the doom of Beatrice. The portrait of Bea- 
 trice Cenci, painted by Guido while she was in prison, has 
 made her face known to every one. 
 
 In Mr. H. B. Forman's edition of the Works of Percy 
 Bysshe Shelley, 1880, vol. ii. p. 418, he gives an account 
 of the Cenci, together with a letter from Browning concern- 
 ing the poem : 
 
 " Mr. Browning's Cenciaja deals with the episode of Paolo 
 Santa Croce, the matricide, whose crime had so disastrous a 
 bearing on the issue of the Cenci tragedy. The main fact, 
 on which Shelley places no very marked stress, though he 
 introduces it, is that, when the fate of Beatrice and her 
 brother and stepmother still hung in the balance, Paolo 
 Santa Croce killed his mother and made good his escape, 
 whereon the Pope became absolutely inflexible in his resolu- 
 tion that the three guilty Cenci should die. Mr. Browning 
 details in Cenciaja the motives, not only of Paolo Santa 
 Croce, but also of Cardinal Aldobrandini, the Pope's nephew, 
 in incriminating Paolo's brother, Onofrio Santa Croce, and 
 hunting him down to execution ; and it is a noteworthy 
 thing that this same cardinal, whose deadly hatred availed
 
 76 Cenciaja. 
 
 to bring Onofrio Santa Croce to a disgraceful death, had 
 also indirectly ruined the Cenci family. It was he who 
 benefited so largely by the continuance of Count Francesco 
 Cenci in his high-priced crimes; and but for him, 'the 
 wickedest man on record,' as Landor calls Cenci, would pro- 
 bably have perished before his daughter had been set in the 
 dire necessity of compassing his death. How far Aldobran- 
 clini may have been interested in extinguishing the family, 
 of whom only the innocent Bernardo escaped with difficulty, 
 it were hazardous to surmise ; but probably his enormous in- 
 fluence with the Pope would be against them. The story of 
 Onofrio and this diabolical dignitary of the Church is within 
 every one's reach, and should be read by all who are inter- 
 ested in those bypaths of history which have fed the im- 
 aginations of our greatest poets ; but a further comment on 
 the Cenci story, which has not, as far as I know, had any 
 opportunity of finding its way about among Shelley students, 
 must be here recorded. 
 
 " Having occasion to write Mr. Browning on another 
 matter connected with this edition of Shelley's works, I 
 asked him the precise value we were to attach to the ter- 
 minal aja in the title of his poem a title, by the way, 
 which is followed by the Italian proverb, Ogni cencio vuol 
 entrare in bucato, and I received the following answer : 
 " 19 WAKWICK CRESCENT, W., July 27, '76. 
 
 " DEAR MR. BUXTON FORMAN : There can be no objection to such 
 a simple statement as you have inserted, if it seems worth inserting. 
 ' Fact,' it is. Next : ' aia ' is generally an accumulative yet depre- 
 ciative termination : ' Cenciaja ' a bundle of rags a trifle. The 
 proverb means ' every poor creature will be pressing into the company 
 of his betters,' and I used it to deprecate the notion that I intended 
 anything of the kind. Is it any contribution to ' all connected with 
 Shelley,' if I mention that my ' Book ' ( The Bing and the Book) 
 [rather the ' old square yellow book ' from which the details were 
 taken] has a reference to the reason given by Farinacci, the advocate 
 of the Cenci, of his failure in the defence of Beatrice ? ' Fuisse pu- 
 nitaiii Beatricem (he declares) poena ultimi supplicii, non quia ex 
 intervallo occidi maiidavit iusidiantem suo honori, sed quia ejus ex- 
 ceptionem non probavi tibi Prout, et idem Jir miter sperabatur de sorore 
 Beatrice si propositam excusationem probasset, prout non probavit.' 1 That 
 is. she expected to avow the main outrage, and did not : in conform- 
 ity with her words, ' That which I ought to confess, that will I con- 
 fess ; that to which I ought to assent, to that I assent ; and that 
 which I ought to deny, that will I deny.' Here is another Cenciaja ! 
 Yours very sincerely, ROBERT BROWNING."
 
 Charles Avison. 77 
 
 Charles Avison, Parleyings with. Parleyings with 
 Certain People of Importance in their Day, 1887. 
 
 Charles Avison was born at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Eng- 
 land, in 1710, studied music in Italy, and became a pupil ot 
 Geminiani on his return. In 1736 he became the organist 
 of St. Nicholas Church at Newcastle ; and in that position 
 the remainder of his life was spent. In 1752 he published 
 an Essay on Musical Expression, which was well written, 
 showing much acuteness of thought, and in which he praised 
 French and Italian music, preferring it to the German. It 
 created quite a stir, was translated into German, and was 
 replied to by Dr. Hayes, a musical critic of the day. To 
 Dr. Hayes, Avison gave answer, but not with entire sue? 
 cess. He gave a higher position to Geminiani than to Han~ 
 del. Avison published five collections of Concertos for a, 
 Full Band, forty-five in all ; and two sets of sonatas for the 
 harpsichord and two violins. He had a considerable repu- 
 tation both as a critic and as a composer of music. His 
 music is light and elegant, but wanting in originality. He 
 also published, in eight volumes, an adaptation of Marcello's 
 Psalms, to the first of which an account of his own life was 
 prefixed. Mr. Barnett Smith says that " very little is 
 known of his life, but he had the reputation of being a man 
 of great culture and polish, and for many years was the 
 chief of a small circle of musical amateurs in the north of 
 England who were devoted to his views." A contempo- 
 rary, in the Gentleman's Magazine, described him as " an 
 ingenious, polite and cultivated man," who " from being an 
 agreeable, well informed and gentlemanlike man of the 
 world, directed the musical opinions of his circle to his own 
 taste, and, in some instances, prejudices." 
 
 The subject of the poem is the Grand March written by 
 Avison, a copy of which was possessed in manuscript by 
 Browning's father, and the music of which is given at the 
 end of tlie poem. The Relfe who is two or three times 
 mentioned was Browning's teacher of music, who was a 
 learned contrapuntist. The poem maintains that music in- 
 terprets the soul as nothing else does, and that the old sim- 
 ple music is best adapted to this end. 
 
 For information about Avison see Hawkins' History of 
 Music ; Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 78, 1808 ; and Leslie
 
 78 Charles L Ckilde Roland. 
 
 Stephen's Dictionary of National Biography. The third 
 volume of The Browning Society's Papers gives an account 
 of the monument erected to his memory in 1890. For in- 
 terpretations of the poem see Browning Society's Papers, 
 part nine, and Nettleship's Essays and Thoughts. 
 
 Charles I. In Strafford, he permits through weakness 
 the death of his truest friend ; appears in second and fourth 
 acts. 
 
 Cherries. Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884. 
 
 Mushtari is the Persian name of the planet Jupiter. The 
 ancient planet worship is implied in some of the allusions of 
 this poem. 
 
 Chiappino. The ambitious schemer in A Soul's Tra- 
 gedy, who seeks to overthrow the Provost of Faenza and to 
 become the ruler of the city in his place. He betrays his 
 friend Luitolfo, shows himself a treacherous schemer, and 
 is obliged to leave the city in the end. 
 
 Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came. Men 
 and Women, 1855 ; Romances, 1863 ; Dramatic Ro- 
 mances, 1868. The poem was written at Paris, January 3, 
 1852, in one day. 
 
 In the title to this poem the author refers his readers to 
 Edgar's song in Lear. In this great drama Edgar pre- 
 tends to be insane, his imagination is active but not under 
 control, his fancy runs riot in his speech, and he intro- 
 duces wild fantasies and grotesque images into his con- 
 versation. The unreal world of the insane man's fancy 
 undoubtedly was the starting point of the poem ; and the 
 student who wishes to read it with true appreciation must 
 study the character of Edgar before attempting to interpret 
 Childe Roland. " The foul fiend who leads poor Tom 
 through fire and through flame, and through ford and 
 whirlpool, o'er bog and quagmire ; that hath laid knives 
 under his pillow, and halters in his pew ; set ratsbane by his 
 porridge ; made him proud of heart to ride on a bay trot- 
 ting horse over four-inched bridges, to course his own shadow 
 for a traitor," is the prototype of that strange world of 
 shadows, grim shapes and things of darkness in Browning's 
 poem. At the end of his strange conversation with Lear 
 and the Fool, before a hovel on the heath, while a storm is 
 approaching, Edgar says :
 
 Childe Roland. 79 
 
 " Child Rowland to the dark tower came, 
 His word was still, Fie, foh, and fum, 
 I smell the blood of a British man." 
 
 The intent and spirit of the poem are well indicated in 
 its origin. It seems to have been written largely in the 
 spirit of Edgar's conception of the unreal and fantastic 
 world of his fancy during the period of his assumed insan- 
 ity. In her Handbook Mrs. Orr says the poem is built up 
 of picturesque impressions, which have separately or collec- 
 tively produced themselves in the author's mind. She says 
 these picturesque materials included a tower which Mr. 
 Browning once saw in the Carrara Mountains, a painting 
 which caught his eye years later in Paris, and the figure of 
 a horse in the tapestry in his drawing-room welded to- 
 gether in the remembrance of the line from King Lear 
 which forms the heading of the poem. Corfe Castle has 
 also been mentioned as having furnished suggestions for the 
 poem. In an article describing a visit to the poet, Rev. 
 John W. Chadwick speaks of this tapestry and Mr. Brown- 
 ing's comments on the poem : 
 
 " Upon the lengthwise wall of the room, above the Ital- 
 ian furniture, sombre and richly carved, was a long, wide 
 band of tapestry, on which I thought I recognized the mis- 
 erable horse of Childe Roland's pilgrimage : 
 
 ' One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, 
 Stood stupefied, however he came there : 
 
 Thrust out past service from the devil's stud ! ' 
 
 I asked Mr. Browning if the beast of the tapestry was 
 the beast of the poem ; and he said yes, and descanted 
 somewhat on his lean monstrosity. But only a Browning 
 could have evolved the stanzas of the poem from the woven 
 image. I further asked him if he had said that he only 
 wrote Childe Roland for its realistic imagery, without any 
 moral purpose, a notion to which Mrs. Sutherland Orr 
 has given currency ; and he protested that he never had. 
 When I asked him if constancy to an ideal ' He that 
 endureth to the end shall be saved ' was not a sufficient 
 understanding of the central purpose of the poem, he said, 
 ' Yes, just about that.' " 
 
 " Childe " is a title of honor, about tantamount to " lord," 
 says Brewer.
 
 80 Childe Roland. 
 
 In Lippincott's Magazine, vol. 45, 1890, Mrs. Bloom- 
 field-Moore gives an account of a conversation with Brown- 
 ing as to the meaning of the poem. He said to her that 
 it was " only a fantasy," that he had written it because it 
 pleased his fancy. 
 
 No poem of Browning's has given origin to more of dis- 
 cussion, and a greater variety of opinions, than this one. 
 It is evidently one of the most obscure of his poems as to 
 any meaning it may have, and this has led to the most di- 
 vergent conceptions pf its purpose. One class of inter- 
 preters have seen in it simply a realistic effort of the 
 fancy, without ethical intent of any kind. Another class 
 find it an allegory of life, and full of the subtlest spirit of 
 ideal interpretation. The latter tendency has perhaps been 
 carried to its extreme in Mr. Nettleship's Essays and 
 Thoughts. 
 
 John Esten Cooke understood the Dark Tower to be that 
 of Unfaith, and the obscure land that of Doubt. Others 
 have defined the Dark Tower, as Truth, Love, Life, Death ; 
 and they have elaborated the whole poem from this point of 
 view, and made it as artificial an allegory as that of Bun- 
 yan's Pilgrim's Progress. One of the most suggestive of 
 these interpretations was contributed by an anonymous 
 writer to The Critic, in 1886. "The Dark Tower is 
 Death," says this writer, " and atheism is the unnatural 
 crime by which the soul denies its Maker. Let us read the 
 poem by this light. The knight, who is inspired by the 
 highest ideal of fealty, is met upon the threshold of life by 
 the doubts and skepticism of the age, and finds relief when 
 his doubts are settled and he finally accepts atheism ; but, 
 even at the outset, he sees that such a creed is a kind of 
 life in death, ,and that it does not offer any true solution. 
 The personification of the Nineteenth Century a bowed 
 old man, time-worn, cynical taunts while it invites him, 
 and the skull grins already in mockery. So long as he was 
 in doubt the ground was still fertile, his feet were set in a 
 path, the heights were still above him ; but from the mo- 
 ment he enters upon the trackless plain all nature becomes 
 arid ; there are no longer any heights to scale. Pure in- 
 stinct could never have brought him here. When he meets 
 the horse he feels it to be a monstrosity, for all living crea-
 
 CMlde Roland. 81 
 
 lures must by their instincts shun negation. Fain would he 
 return to the influences of the past, but the moral failures 
 of those whom he has known deter him. The fallacy of this 
 reasoning is shown at once. He crosses a stream of water 
 water the emblem of life but it is poisoned, and has 
 no life-giving properties. It makes no choice between good 
 and evil ; the graybeard and the newborn babe are alike 
 drowned in the poisonous flood. The waters of the river 
 of faith have life-giving properties ; the waters of this 
 stream kill all life. Even invention and the instrument of 
 torture stand idle. There is no function for a reward and 
 punishment if there is no God and no future life. On this 
 trackless plain there are no footsteps even, only the impress 
 upon the earth of the struggles of lost souls. As he ap- 
 proaches the Dark Tower he expects to encounter birds of 
 night, ' a howlet or a bat.' Not so ; the emblem of dark- 
 ness which comes to meet him, with broad, outstretched 
 wings, dragon-penned, is no living bird, but a mythical 
 creature, an emblem of the darkness of unfaith, not of the 
 peace of night. Over the path which he has abandoned 
 there may be a white dove flying, with the light of dawn on 
 its wings. He begins to see it now. Three times he uses 
 the word ' fool.' The Dark Tower is blind as the fool's 
 heart. That is, the grave is to the atheist like the fool's 
 heart blind and dark, because it denies God. He thinks 
 that he is facing death, or the Dark 'Tower, in the most 
 candid manner, without blind superstition ; but although 
 there are heights and sounds and light about him, at this 
 supreme moment, he has blinded himself to them all. 
 Browning's marvelous characterization is now revealed. 
 As in the Return of the Druses, Djabal fails, through in- 
 heritance and subtle, complex influences, to attain to his 
 ideal, so Childe Roland embodies those peculiar, distinctive 
 qualities of the Nineteenth Century high moral courage, 
 unswerving fealty to conviction ; and knowing there is to be 
 no more of him, believing that life is a vanity of vanities, 
 and he only the framework of a picture, to pass away for- 
 ever in a moment, he blew on the slug-horn; and so 
 Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." 
 
 Mr. Arlo Bates thinks the poem is not allegorical, but 
 that it is an imaginative creation without special meaning,
 
 82 Childe Roland. 
 
 except that it sets forth the value of an ideal. He says that 
 imaginative poetry, or poetry of the highest order, does 
 something more than to say prettily and gracefully and 
 agreeably what might just as well have been said in prose. 
 " Its raison d'etre is that it has a message of which it is at 
 once the substance and the vehicle ; it is the only form pos- 
 sible for the poetical thought, for it is the form which that 
 thought has spontaneously produced ; and labor is lost in 
 trying by paraphrase and elaboration to elucidate, express 
 or explain what the poet has said, not alone in the best, but 
 in the only possible form. It would be idle, therefore, for 
 any one, no matter how gifted, to attempt to set down in 
 any words but those of the poem itself what is the intent of 
 Childe Roland ; and however interesting an allegorical in- 
 terpretation may be, it must from the nature of the case be 
 unsatisfactory. 
 
 " Yet it is sometimes possible to give a clew that helps 
 another into the poet's mood ; so, without meaning to an- 
 alyze, to expound, and least of all to explain a poem from 
 which I would fain keep my hands as reverently as from 
 the Ark, I ask the poet's pardon for saying that to me 
 Childe Roland is the most supreme expression of noble 
 allegiance to an ideal the most absolute faithfulness to a 
 principle regardless of all else ; perhaps I cannot better ex- 
 press what I mean than by saying the most thrilling crystal- 
 lization of that most noble of human sentiments, of which a 
 brilliant flower is the motto Noblesse oblige. 
 
 " Ineffable weariness that state when the cripple's skull- 
 like laugh ceased to irritate, that most profound condition of 
 lassitude, when even trifles cannot vex begins the poem ; 
 with glimpses behind of the long experience of one who has 
 seen hope die, effort fade and worst of all enthusiasm 
 waste, until even success seemed valueless. A state of ex- 
 haustion so utter that nothing but an end, even though it be 
 a failure, could arouse even the phantom of a desire. Then 
 negative objective desolation, so to say ; dreariness around 
 in landscape, starved foliage, and on up to the loathsome 
 horse. Then subjective misery ; a failure of the very 
 memories which in sheer desperation the hero calls up to 
 strengthen him in an hour whose awful numbness stupefies 
 him. Then, when once more relief is sought outside, im-
 
 Childe Roland. 83 
 
 pressions that are positively disheartening; a suggestion of 
 conflicts that brings an overwhelming impression that all 
 the powers of evil actively pervade this place ; then the 
 Round Tower ! 
 
 " What does it matter what the tower signifies whether 
 it be this, that or the other ? If the poem means anything, 
 it means, I am sure, everything in this line. The essential 
 thing is that after a lifetime pledged to this whatever the 
 ideal may be the opportunity has come after a cumulative 
 series of disheartenments, and more than all amid an over- 
 whelming sense that failure must be certain where so many 
 have failed ; where nature and unseen foes and the ghosts 
 of all his baffled comrades stand watching for his destruc- 
 tion, where defeat is certain and its ignominy already cried 
 aloud by the winds of heaven. And the sublime climax 
 comes in the constancy of the hero : 
 
 ' In a sheet of flame 
 
 I saw them and I knew them all. And yet 
 Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set 
 And blew.' 
 
 The nominal issue of the conflict is no matter, because the 
 real issue is here ; with the universe against him, with the 
 realization of all this, dauntless he gives his challenge. 
 
 " The whole poem is a series of cumulative effects, of 
 which the end is a fitting climax. One cannot read it with- 
 out a tingling in every fibre of his being, and a stinging 
 doubt whether in such a case he might not have been found 
 wanting. I cannot conceive of anything more complete, 
 more noble, more inspiring. Heaven forbid that any one 
 should so mistake what I have written as to suppose I think 
 I have explained Childe Roland. I have already said that 
 I believe the meaning of the poem could be put in no other 
 words than those of Mr. Browning ; and what I have said 
 does not even attempt to convey a hundredth part of what 
 that glorious poem means to me." 
 
 For allegorical interpretations of the poem see The Critic, 
 5 : 201, April 24, 1886, Mr. Browning's Great Puzzle, 
 by John Esten Cooke ; also The Critic, 5 : 246, May 15, 
 1886. The Rev. J. Kirkman's paper before the Browning 
 Society is of the same kind. He also attempts to show that
 
 84 Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day. 
 
 the poem grew out of the old Ballad Romance of Childe 
 Roland as contained in R. Jamieson's Illustrations of 
 Northern Antiquities. This paper and the discussion 
 which followed are interesting for their presentation of 
 widely divergent interpretations. Mr. Bates' paper was 
 published in The Critic, 5 : 231, May 8, 1886. Mr. 
 Fotheringham regards the poem as " a romance of the 
 soul." In Richard Grant White's Selections the poem is 
 discussed briefly, in the introduction. The Browning So- 
 ciety's Papers, 1 : 21*, gives an abstract of a paper by J. 
 Kirkman, and a report of the discussion which followed. 
 
 Christmas - Eve and Easter -Day. A Poem. By 
 Robert Browning. London : Chapman and Hall, 186, 
 Strand, 1850. These words formed the title-page of the 
 poem when it first appeared. In 1863 these other words 
 were added to the title : " Florence, 1850." They give the 
 year when the poem was written, as well as that of its pub- 
 lication. Pages, i.-iv., 1-142. Reprinted in Works, 1863, 
 vol. iii. 
 
 What appear to be two poems the author evidently in- 
 tended to have regarded as one, by the form of the title, 
 and by the manner of their publication. They consider 
 different phases of the same general subject. They also 
 agree in being, with one or two exceptions, the only poems 
 in which Browning has spoken in his own personality ; this 
 gives them a special emphasis and interest. 
 
 Christmas-Eve may be thus briefly outlined : 
 
 1. Conventional religion in the little chapel ; sections i. 
 to iii. 
 
 2. The religion of nature ; sections iv. to vii. 
 
 3. Christ revealed to the soul through the supernatural ; 
 sections viii. and ix. 
 
 4. Christ as manifested at Rome, in a great ecclesiastical 
 system ; sections x. to xii. 
 
 5. Christ as interpreted by a rationalistic German pro- 
 fessor ; sections xiv. and xv. 
 
 6. The Poet's communion with his own mind on the na- 
 ture of the Christ ; sections xvi. to xix. 
 
 7. The Poet's own conception of the Christ ; section xx. 
 
 8. Conclusion : Christ as the God of salvation ; sections 
 xxi. and xxii.
 
 Christopher Smart. 85 
 
 See Miss H. E. He*sey, who, in her edition of the poem, 
 gives a brief introduction and notes. J. T. Nettleship, in 
 his Robert Browning : Essays and Thoughts, gives a good 
 interpretation of the poem. Also see Prospective Review, 
 6 : 267 ; Living Age, 25 : 403 ; The Germ, W. M. Rossetti, 
 No. 4 : 187 ; Day of Rest, George MacDonald, 1 : 34. 
 
 A few slight changes were made in the edition of 1868, 
 which are given by Miss Hersey in her notes. 
 
 Christopher Smart. Parleyings with Certain People 
 of Importance in their Day, 1887. 
 
 Christopher Smart was born in Shipbourne, Kent, April 
 11, 1722. Through powerful friends he entered Pembroke 
 Hall, Cambridge, in 1739, and took his degree from Pem- 
 broke College in 1747. While in the university his habits 
 were bad, and his career was marked by folly and extrava- 
 gance. The letters of Gray mention him at this tune. He 
 wrote a drama, which was acted in the college hall ; and 
 he became proficient in English and Latin verse. He 
 married a bookseller's daughter in 1753, and moved to 
 London to live by his pen. He produced a satire called 
 The Hilliad, versified the Fables of Phcedrus, and became 
 the editor of a monthly called The Universal Visitor. In 
 this periodical Johnson wrote a few essays to help his 
 friend. In 1763 Smart was in a mad-house, but as he was 
 not violent he was soon released. He became very intem- 
 perate, misfortune followed him,, he was shut up in the 
 King's Bench prison for debt, and died there in 1770, after 
 a short illness. Johnson said of his insanity : " I do not 
 think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities are not 
 noxious to society. He insists on people praying with him 
 (also falling upon his knees and saying his prayers in the 
 street, or in any other unusual place) ; and I 'd as lief pray 
 with Kit Smart as any one else." Smart's poems were 
 collected in 1753 ; and a more extended edition was pub- 
 lished in two volumes in 1791. 
 
 His one true poem, the Song to David, written during 
 the sane intervals of an attack of insanity brought on by 
 his drunkenness and poverty, is the real subject of Brown- 
 ing's poem. It may be found in full in the earlier editions 
 of Chambers' Cyclopaedia of English Literature and in 
 part in Ward's English Poets. The editor of the latter
 
 86 Christopher Smart. 
 
 work, Mr. T. H. Ward, says : " There is nothing like the 
 Song to David in the eighteenth century ; there is nothing 
 out of which it might seem to have heen developed. . . . 
 There are few episodes in our literary history more interest- 
 ing than this of the wretched bookseller's hack, with his 
 mind thrown off its balance by drink and poverty, rising at 
 the instant of his- deepest distress to a pitch of poetic per- 
 formance unimagined by himself at all other times, un- 
 imagined by all but one or two of his contemporaries, and 
 so little appreciated by the public, that when an edition of 
 his writings was called for it was sent into the world with 
 this masterpiece omitted." Of this poem Mr. William 
 Rossetti has said : " This wonderful poem of Smart's is the 
 only great accomplished poem of the last century. The 
 unaccomplished ones are Chattel-ton's of course I mean 
 earlier than Blake or Coleridge, and without reckoning 
 so exceptional a genius as Burns. A masterpiece of rich 
 imagery, exhaustive resources, and reverberant sound." 
 The Song to David was first published in 1763 in sepa- 
 rate form, and the Rev. R. Harvey republished it in 1819. 
 Smart also made a literal prose translation of the poems of 
 Horace, which is now published in Harper's Classical Li- 
 brary. 
 
 It is said that during Smart's confinement in the mad- 
 house he was denied the use of writing materials, and that 
 he was in the habit of writing his poetic thoughts with a 
 nail or a key on the walls of his cell. In this way his Song 
 to David was composed, according to this tradition. It is 
 not very probable, however, that he could have written so 
 long a poem in this manner, though a part of it may have 
 been thus recorded. Written under these circumstances, it 
 is remarkable that the poem is not morbid or in any way 
 distempered. 
 
 Browning makes Smart give two quotations from his own 
 poems. These seem to be from his five Seaton prize poems 
 on Various Attributes of the Supreme Being. In one of 
 these are the following lines : 
 
 " While here above their heads Leviathan, 
 The terror and the glory of the main, 
 His pastime takes with transport, proud to see 
 The ocean's vast dominion all his own."
 
 Christopher Smart. 87 
 
 In another of these poems he speaks thus of the power of 
 the Supreme Being : 
 
 " 'T were but the echo of the parting breeze 
 When Zephyr faints upon the lily's breast." 
 
 Here follows in full Smart's 
 
 SONG TO DAVID, 
 
 O thou, that sit'st upon a throne, 
 With harp of high, majestic tone, 
 
 To praise the King of kings : 
 And voice of heaven, ascending swell, 
 Which, while its deeper notes excel, 
 
 Clear as a clarion rings : 
 
 To bless each valley, grove, and coast, 
 And charm the cherubs to the post 
 
 Of gratitude in throngs ; 
 To keep the days on Zion's Mount, 
 And send the year to his account, 
 
 With dances and with songs : 
 
 O servant of God's holiest charge, 
 The minister of praise at large, 
 
 Which thou mayst now receive ; 
 From thy blest mansion hail and hear, 
 From topmost eminence appear 
 
 To this the wreath I weave. 
 
 Great, valiant, pious, good and clean, 
 Sublime, contemplative, serene, 
 
 Strong, constant, pleasant, wise! 
 Bright effluence of exceeding grace ; 
 Best man ! the swiftness and the race, 
 
 The peril and the prize ! 
 
 Great from the lustre of his crown, 
 From Samuel's horn, and God's renown, 
 
 Which is the people's voice ; 
 For all the host, from rear to van, 
 Applauded and embraced the man 
 
 The man of God's own choice. 
 
 Valiant the word, and up he rose ; 
 The fight he triumphed o'er the foes 
 
 Whom God's just laws abhor ; 
 And, armed in gallant faith, he took 
 Against the boaster, from the brook, 
 
 The weapons of the war.
 
 88 Christopher Smart. 
 
 Pious magnificent and grand, 
 
 'T was he the famous temple planned, 
 
 (The seraph in his soul :) 
 Foremost to give the Lord his dues, 
 Foremost to bless the welcome news, 
 
 And foremost to condole. 
 
 Good from Jehudah's genuine vein, 
 From God's best nature, good in grain, 
 
 His aspect and his heart : 
 To pity, to forgive, to save, 
 Witness En-gedi's conscious cave, 
 
 And Shimei's blunted dart. 
 
 Clean if perpetual prayer be pure, 
 And love, which could itself inure 
 
 To fasting and to fear 
 Clean in his gestures, hands, and feet, 
 To smite the lyre, the dance complete, 
 
 To play the sword and spear. 
 
 Sublime invention ever young, 
 Of vast conception, towering tongue, 
 
 To God the eternal theme ; 
 Notes from yon exaltations caught, 
 Unrivaled royalty of thought, 
 
 O'er meaner strains supreme. 
 
 Contemplative on God to fix 
 His musings, and above the six 
 
 The Sabbath day he blest ; 
 'T was then his thoughts self-conquest pruned, 
 And heavenly melancholy tuned, 
 
 To bless and bear the rest. 
 
 Serene to sow the seeds of peace, 
 Remembering when he watched the fleece, 
 
 How sweetly Kidron purled 
 To further knowledge, silence vice, 
 And plant perpetual paradise, 
 
 When God had calmed the world. 
 
 Strong in the Lord, who could defy 
 Satan, and all his powers that lie 
 
 In sempiternal night ; 
 And hell, and horror, and despair 
 Were as the lion and the bear 
 
 To his undaunted might. 
 
 Constant in love to God, and Truth, 
 Age, manhood, infancy, and youth 
 To Jonathan his friend
 
 Christopher Smart. 89 
 
 Constant, beyond the verge of death ; 
 And Ziba, and Mephibosheth, 
 His endless fame attend. 
 
 Pleasant and various as the year ; 
 Man, soul, and angel without peer, 
 
 Priest, champion, sage, and boy ; 
 In armor, or in ephod clad, 
 His pomp, his piety was glad ; 
 
 Majestic was his joy. 
 
 Wise in recovery from his fall, 
 Whence rose his eminence o'er all 
 
 Of all the most reviled ; 
 The light of Israel in his ways, 
 Wise are his precepts, prayer and praise, 
 
 And counsel to his child. 
 
 His muse, bright angel of his verse, 
 Gives balm for all the thorns that pierce, 
 
 For all the pangs that rage ; 
 Blest light, still gaining on the gloom, 
 The more than Michal of his bloom, 
 
 The Abishag of his age. 
 
 He sang of God the mighty source 
 Of all things the stupendous force 
 
 On which all strength depends ; 
 From whose right arm, beneath whose eyes, 
 All period, power, and enterprise 
 
 Commences, reigns, and ends. 
 
 Angels their ministry and need, 
 Which to and fro with blessings speed, 
 
 Or with their citterns wait ; 
 Where Michael, with his millions, bows, 
 Where dwells the seraph and his spouse, 
 
 The cherub and her mate. 
 
 Of man the semblance and effect 
 Of God and love the saint elect 
 
 For infinite applause 
 To rule the land, and briny broad, 
 To be laborious in his laud, 
 
 And heroes in his cause. 
 
 The world the clustering spheres, he made, 
 The glorious light, the soothing shade, 
 
 Dale, champaign, grove, and hill ; 
 The multitudinous abyss, 
 Where secrecy remains in bliss, 
 
 And wisdom hides her skill.
 
 Christopher Smart. 
 
 Trees, plants, and flowers of virtuous root ; 
 Gem yielding blossom, yielding fruit, 
 
 Choice gums and precious balm ; 
 Bless ye the nosegay in the vale, 
 And with the sweetness of the gale 
 
 Enrich the thankful psalm. 
 
 Of fowl e'en every beak and wing 
 Which cheer the winter, hail the spring, 
 
 That live in peace, or prey ; 
 They that make music, or that mock, 
 The quail, the brave domestic cock, 
 
 The raven, swan, and jay. 
 
 Of fishes every size and shape, 
 Which nature frames of light escape, 
 
 Devouring man to shun : 
 The shells are in the wealthy deep, 
 The shoals upon the surface leap, 
 
 And love the glancing sun. 
 
 Of beasts the beaver plods his task ; 
 While the sleek tigers roll and bask, 
 
 Nor yet the shades arouse ; 
 Her cave the mining coney scoops ; 
 Where o'er the mead the mountain stoops, 
 
 The kids exult and browse. 
 
 Of gems their virtue and their price, 
 Which, hid in earth from man's device, 
 
 Their darts of lustre sheath ; 
 The jasper of the master's stamp, 
 The topaz blazing like a lamp, 
 
 Among the mines beneath. 
 
 Blest was the tenderness he felt, 
 When to his graceful harp he knelt, 
 
 And did for audience call ; 
 When Satan with his hand he quelled, 
 And in serene suspense he held 
 
 The frantic throes of Saul. 
 
 His furious foes no more maligned 
 As he such melody divined, 
 
 And sense and soul detained ; 
 Now striking strong, now soothing soft, 
 He sent the godly sounds aloft, 
 
 Or in delight refrained. 
 
 When up to heaven his thoughts he piled, 
 From fervent lips fair Michal smiled, 
 As blush to blush she stood ;
 
 Christopher Smart. 91 
 
 And chose herself the queen, and gave 
 Her utmost from her heart "so brave, 
 And plays his hymns so good." 
 
 The pillars of the Lord are seven, 
 
 Which stand from earth to topmost heaven; 
 
 His wisdom drew the plan ; 
 His Word accomplished the design, 
 From brightest gem to deepest mine, 
 
 From Christ enthroned to man. 
 
 Alpha, the cause of causes, first, 
 
 In station, fountain, whence the burst 
 
 Of light and blaze of day ; 
 Whence bold attempt, and brave advance, 
 Have motion, life, and ordinance, 
 
 And heaven itself its stay. 
 
 Gamma supports the glorious arch 
 On which angelic legions march, 
 
 And is with sapphires paved ; 
 Thence the fleet clouds are sent adrift, 
 And thence the painted folds that lift 
 
 The crimson veil are waved. 
 
 Eta with living sculpture breathes, 
 With verdant carvings, flowery wreaths 
 
 Of never- wasting bloom ; 
 In strong relief his goodly base 
 All instruments of labor grace, 
 
 The trowel, spade, and loom. 
 
 Next Theta stands to the supreme 
 Who formed in number, sign, and scheme, 
 
 The illustrious lights that are ; 
 The one addressed his saffron robe, 
 And one, clad in a silver globe, 
 
 Held rule with every star. 
 
 lota's tuned to choral hymns 
 
 Of those that fly, while he that swims 
 
 In thankful safety lurks ; 
 And foot, and chapitre, and niche, 
 The various histories enrich 
 
 Of God's recorded works. 
 
 Sigma presents the social droves 
 With him that solitary roves, 
 
 And man of all the chief ; 
 Fair on whose face, and stately frame, 
 Did God impress his hallowed name, 
 
 For ocular belief.
 
 92 Christopher Smart. 
 
 Omega ! greatest and the best, 
 Stands sacred to the day of rest, 
 
 For gratitude and thought ; 
 Which blessed the world upon his pole, 
 And gave the universe his goal, 
 
 And closed the infernal draught. 
 
 O David, scholar of the Lord ! 
 Such is thy science, whence reward, 
 
 And infinite degree ; 
 O strength, O sweetness, lasting ripe I 
 God's harp thy symbol, and thy type 
 
 The lion and the bee ! 
 
 There is but One who ne'er rebelled, 
 But One by passion unimpelled, 
 
 By pleasures unentieed ; 
 He from himself his semblance sent, 
 Grand object of his own content, 
 
 And saw the God in Christ. 
 
 Tell them, I Am, Jehovah said 
 
 To Moses ; while earth heard in dread, 
 
 And, smitten to the heart, 
 At once above, beneath, around, 
 All nature, without voice or sound, 
 
 Replied, Lord, Thou Art. 
 
 Thou art to give and to confirm, 
 For each his talent and his term ; 
 
 All flesh thy bounties share : 
 Thou shalt not call thy brother fool ; 
 The porches of the Christian school 
 
 Are meekness, peace, and prayer. 
 
 Open and naked of offense, 
 
 Man 's made of mercy, soul, and sense : 
 
 God armed the snail and wilk ; 
 Be good to him that pulls thy plough ; 
 Due food and care, due rest allow 
 
 For her that yields thee milk. 
 
 Rise up before the hoary head, 
 
 And God's benign commandment dread, 
 
 Which says thou shalt not die, 
 "Not as I will, but as thovi wilt," 
 
 Prayed He, whose conscience knew no guilt ; 
 
 With whose blessed pattern vie. 
 
 Use all thy passions ! love is thine, 
 And joy and jealousy divine ; 
 Thine hope's eternal fort,
 
 Christopher Smart, 93 
 
 And care thy leisure to disturb, 
 With fear concupiscence to curb, 
 And rapture to transport. 
 
 Act simply, as occasion asks ; 
 
 Put mellow wine in seasoned casks ; 
 
 Till not with ass and bull ; 
 Remember thy baptismal, bond ; 
 Keep from commixtures foul and fond, 
 
 Nor work thy flax with wool. 
 
 Distribute ; pay the Lord his tithe, 
 
 And make the widow's heart-strings blithe; 
 
 Resort with those that weep ; 
 As you from all and each expect, 
 For all and each thy love direct, 
 
 And render as you reap. 
 
 The slander and its bearer spurn, 
 And propagating 1 praise sojourn 
 
 To make thy welcome last ; 
 Turn from old Adam to the New : 
 By hope futurity pursue : 
 
 Look upwards to the past. 
 
 Control thine eye, salute success, 
 Honor the wiser, happier bless, 
 
 And for thy neighbor feel ; 
 Grutch not of mammon and his leaven, 
 Work emulation up to heaven 
 
 By knowledge and by zeal. 
 
 O David, highest in the list 
 
 Of worthies, on God's ways insist) 
 
 The genuine word repeat ! 
 Vain are the documents of men, 
 And vain the flourish of the pen 
 
 That keeps the fool's conceit. 
 
 Praise above all for praise prevails ; 
 Heap up the measure, load the scales, 
 
 And good to goodness add : 
 The generous soul her Saviour aids. 
 But peevish obloquy degrades ; 
 
 The Lord is great and glad. 
 
 For Adoration all the ranks 
 Of angels yield eternal thanks, 
 
 And David in the midst ; 
 With God's good poor, which, last and least 
 In man's esteem, thou to thy feast, 
 
 O blessed bridegroom, bidst.
 
 94 Christopher Smart. 
 
 For Adoration seasons change 
 
 And order, truth, and beauty range, 
 
 Adjust, attract, and fill : 
 The grass the polyanthus checks ; 
 And polished porphyry reflects, 
 
 By the descending rill. 
 
 Rich almonds color to the prime 
 For Adoration ; tendrils climb, 
 
 And fruit-trees pledge their gems ; 
 And Ivis, with her gorgeous vest, 
 Builds for her eggs her cunning nest, 
 
 And bell-flowers bow their stems. 
 
 With vinous syrup cedars spout ; 
 From rocks pure honey gushing out, 
 
 For Adoration springs : 
 All scenes of painting crowd the map 
 Of nature ; to the mermaid's pap 
 
 The scaled infant clings. 
 
 The spotted ounce and playsome cubs 
 Run rustling 'mongst the flowering shrubs, 
 
 And lizards feed the moss ; 
 For Adoration beasts embark, 
 While waves upholding halcyon's ark 
 
 No longer roar and toss. 
 
 While Israel sits beneath his fig, 
 With coral root and amber sprig 
 
 The weaned adventurer sports ; 
 Where to the palm the jasmine cleaves, 
 For Adoration 'mong the leaves 
 
 The gale his peace reports. 
 
 Increasing days their reign exalt, 
 Nor in the pink and mottled vault 
 
 The opposing spirits tilt ; 
 And by the coasting reader spied, 
 The silverlings and erosions glide, 
 
 For Adoration gilt. 
 
 For Adoration, ripening canes 
 And cocoa's purest milk detains 
 
 The western pilgrim's staff ; 
 Where rain in clasping boughs, enclosed, 
 And vines with oranges disposed, 
 
 Embower the social laugh. 
 
 Now labor his reward receives, 
 For Adoration counts his sheaves 
 To peace, her bounteous prince ;
 
 Christopher Smart. 95 
 
 The nect'rine his strong 1 tint imbibes, 
 And apples of ten thousand tribes, 
 And quick peculiar, quince. 
 
 The wealthy crops of whitening rice 
 ' Mongst thyne woods and groves of spice, 
 
 For Adoration grow ; 
 And, marshaled in the fenced land, 
 The peaches and pomegranates stand, 
 
 Where wild carnations blow. 
 
 The laurels with the winter strive ; 
 The crocus burnishes alive 
 
 Upon the snow-clad earth : 
 For Adoration myrtles stay 
 To keep the garden from dismay 
 
 And bless the sight from dearth. 
 
 The pheasant shows his pompous neck ; 
 And ermine, jealous of a speck, 
 
 With fear eludes offense ; 
 The sable, with his glossy pride, 
 For Adoration is descried, 
 
 Where frosts the wave condense. 
 
 The cheerful holly, pensive yew, 
 And holly thorn, their trim renew ; 
 
 The squirrel hoards his nuts : 
 All creatures batten o'er their stores. 
 And careful nature all her doors 
 
 For Adoration shuts. 
 
 For Adoration, David's Psalms 
 Lift up the heart to deeds of alms ; 
 
 And he, who kneels and chants, 
 Prevails his passions to control, 
 Finds meat and medicine to the soul, 
 
 Which for translation pants. 
 
 For Adoration, beyond match, 
 The scholar bullfinch aims to catch 
 
 The soft flute's ivory touch : 
 And, careless, on the hazel spray 
 The daring redbreast keeps at bay 
 
 The damsel's greedy clutch. 
 
 For Adoration, in the skies, 
 The Lord's philosopher espies 
 
 The dog, the ram, the rose ; 
 The planets ring, Orion's sword ; 
 Nor is his greatness less adored 
 
 In the vile worm that glows.
 
 96 Christopher Smart. 
 
 For Adoration, on the strings 
 
 The western breezes work their wings, 
 
 The captive ear to soothe 
 Hark ! 't is a voice how still, and small - 
 That makes the cataracts to fall, 
 
 Or hids the sea be smooth ! 
 
 For Adoration, incense comes 
 From bezoar, and Arabian gums, 
 
 And from the civet's fur : 
 But as for prayer, or e'er it faints, 
 Far better is the breath of saints 
 
 Than galbanum or myrrh. 
 
 For Adoration, from the down 
 From damsons to the anana's crown, 
 
 God sends to tempt the taste ; 
 And while the luscious zest invites 
 'The sense, that in the scene delights, 
 
 Commands desire be chaste. 
 
 For Adoration, all the paths 
 Of grace are open, all the baths 
 
 Of purity refresh ; 
 And all the rays of glory beam 
 To deck the man of God's esteem, 
 
 Who triumphs o'er the flesh. 
 
 For Adoration, in the dome 
 
 Of Christ, the sparrows find a home, 
 
 And on bis olives perch : 
 The swallow also dwells with thee, 
 O man of God's humility, 
 
 Within his Saviour's Church. 
 
 Sweet is the dew that falls betimes, 
 And drops upon the leafy limes ; 
 
 Sweet Hermon's fragrant air: 
 Sweet is the lily's silver bell, 
 And sweet the wakeful tapers smell 
 
 That watch for early prayer. 
 
 Sweet the young nurse, with love intense, 
 Which smiles o'er sleeping innocence ; 
 
 Sweet when the lost arrive : 
 Sweet the musician's ardor beats, 
 While his vague mind 's in quest of sweets, 
 
 The choicest flowers to hive. 
 
 Sweeter, in all the strains of love, 
 
 The language of thy turtle-dove, 
 
 Paired to thy swelling chord ;
 
 Christopher Smart. 97 
 
 Sweeter, with every grace endued, 
 The glory of thy gratitude, 
 Respired unto the Lord. 
 
 Strong is the horse upon his speed ; 
 Strong in pursuit the rapid glede, 
 
 Which' makes at once his game : 
 Strong the tall ostrich on the ground ; 
 Strong through the turbulent profound 
 
 Shoots xiphias to his aim. 
 
 Strong is the lion like the coal 
 His eyeball like a bastion's mole 
 
 His chest against the foes : 
 Strong the gier-eagle on his sail, 
 Strong against tide the enormous whale 
 
 Emerges as he goes. 
 
 But stronger still in earth and air, 
 And in the sea the man of prayer, 
 
 And far beneath the tide : 
 And in the seat to faith assigned, 
 Where ask is have, where seek is find, 
 
 Where knock is open wide. 
 
 Beauteous the fleet before the gale ; 
 Beauteous the multitudes in mail, 
 
 Ranked arms, and crested heads ; 
 Beauteous the garden's umbrage mild, 
 Walk, water, meditated wild, 
 
 And all the bloomy beds. 
 
 Beauteous the moon full on the lawn ; 
 And beauteous where the veil 's withdrawn, 
 
 The virgin to her spouse ; 
 Beauteous the temple decked and filled, 
 When to the heaven of heavens they build 
 
 Their heart-directed vows. 
 
 Beauteous, yea beauteous more than these, 
 The Shepherd King upon his knees, 
 
 For his momentous trust ; 
 With wish of infinite conceit, 
 For^nan, beast, mute, the small and great, 
 
 And prostrate dust to dust. 
 
 Precious the bounteous widow's mite ; 
 And precious for extreme delight, 
 
 The largess from the churl : 
 Precious the ruby's blushing blaze, 
 And alba's blest imperial raya, 
 
 And pure cerulean pearl.
 
 98 Clara de Millefleurs. Cleon. 
 
 Precious the penitential tear ; 
 And precious is the sigh sincere ; 
 
 Acceptable to God : 
 And precious are the winning flowers, 
 In gladsome Israel's feast of bowers, 
 
 Bound on the hallowed sod. 
 
 More precious that diviner part 
 
 Of David, e'en the Lord's own heart, 
 
 Great, beautiful, and new : 
 In all things where it was intent, 
 In all extremes, in each event, 
 
 Proof answering true to true. 
 
 Glorious the sun in mid career ; 
 Glorious the assembled tires appear; 
 
 Glorious the comet's train : 
 Glorious the trumpet and alarm ; 
 Glorious the Almighty's stretched-out arm ; 
 
 Glorious the enraptured main : 
 
 Glorious the northern lights astream ; 
 Glorious the song when God 's the theme ; 
 
 Glorious the thunder's roar ; 
 Glorious hosannah from the den ; 
 Glorious the catholic amen ; 
 
 Glorious the martyr's gore : 
 
 Glorious more glorious is the crown 
 Of Him that brought salvation down, 
 
 By meekness called thy Son ; 
 Thou that stupendous truth believed, 
 And now the matchless deed 's achieved, 
 
 Determined, Dared, and Done. 
 
 See Nettleship's Essays and Thoughts, and a paper by 
 Arthur Symons in The Browning Society's Papers, number 
 nine. A letter from William Rossetti will be found in The 
 Athenaeum, for February 19, 1887. 
 
 Clara de Millefleurs. The woman in Red Cotton 
 Night-Cap Country, who forms an illicit connection with 
 Ldonce Miranda, the Parisian jeweler. * 
 
 Claret. See Nationality in Drinks. 
 
 Cleon. Men and Women, 1855. 
 
 The motto of the poem is taken from Acts xvii. 28. The 
 characters are imaginary, but the poem is historical in its 
 spirit. Cleon, the poet and artist, as well as Protus, the 
 Tyrant, are drawn with historical fidelity ; they are typical 
 of the period they represent. 
 
 See Mrs. Orr, Fotheringham, and Symons.
 
 dive. 99 
 
 Olive. Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, 1880. 
 
 Robert Clive was born in Shropshire, England, in 1725. 
 His youth was devoted to mischief. He went to India as a 
 clerk in 1744, became a soldier, showed great courage and 
 consummate skill as a military leader, and built up the 
 English empire in India. He won the battle of Plassey in 
 1757 ; and he secured great wealth by means not strictly 
 honest. In England he entered Parliament. His conduct in 
 India was investigated in 1773, and he was acquitted. The 
 opposition he met with, and his excessive use of opium, led 
 to suicide in 1774. England owes to him her vast empire 
 in India. 
 
 The story told by Browning is of a -well authenticated 
 character. It was first published in the second edition of 
 the Biographia Britannica in a biography of Clive, written 
 by Henry Beaufoy, from family papers and other similar 
 sources of information. This was reproduced substantially 
 in Chalmers' Biographical Dictionary. In Malcolm's Life 
 of Lord Clive, vol. i. p. 46, it is repeated and the above 
 authorities referred to, the account being in these words : 
 
 " Soon after his arrival at Fort St. David he was engaged 
 in a duel with an officer, to whom he had lost some money 
 at cards, but who, with his companion, was clearly proved to 
 have played unfairly. Clive was not the only loser ; but 
 the others were terrified into payment by the threats of 
 those who had won their money. This example had no ef- 
 fect on him ; he persisted in refusing to pay, and was called 
 out by one of them who deemed himself insulted by his 
 conduct. They met without seconds ; Clive fired, and 
 missed his antagonist, who immediately came close up to 
 him, and held the pistol to his head, desiring him to ask his 
 life, with which he complied. The next demand was. to re- 
 cant his assertions respecting unfair play. On compliance 
 with this being refused, his opponent threatened to shoot 
 him. ' Fire and be damned,' said the dauntless young 
 man ; ' I said you cheated ; I say so still, and will never 
 pay you.' The astonished officer threw away his pistol; 
 saying Clive was mad. The latter received from his young 
 companions many compliments for the spirit he had shown ; 
 but he not only declined coming forward against the officer 
 with whom he had fought, but never afterwards spoke of
 
 100 Colombe. Colombes Birthday. 
 
 his behavior at the card-table. ' He has given me my life,' 
 he said, ' and though I am resolved on never paying money 
 which was unfairly won, or again associating with him, I 
 shall never do him an injury.' " 
 
 Macaulay, in his essay on Lord Clive, which is based on 
 Malcolm's work, mentions this incident as follows : " His 
 personal courage, of which he had, while still a writer, 
 given signal proof by a desperate duel with a military bully 
 who was the terror of Fort St. David, speedily made him 
 conspicuous even among hundreds of brave men." Colonel 
 Molleson, the latest biographer of Clive, passes this inci- 
 dent by hastily in these words : " Stories have been handed 
 down of the coolness and resolution he displayed at the 
 pastime of card-playing ; alike in unmasking a cheat, in 
 putting down a bully, and in meeting good and bad for- 
 tune." 
 
 Mrs. Orr says the story, as told by Browning, was related 
 to him, in 1846, by Mrs. Jameson, who had shortly before 
 heard it at Lansdowne House, from Macaulay. Brown- 
 ing invented the "friend," and the repetition of the story, a 
 week before the death of Clive. 
 
 Green's History of the English People gives a good view 
 of the work of Clive in India. Beside Macaulay's, Mal- 
 colm's, and Molleson's, there are biographies by Caraccioli 
 and Gleig. See Rolfe, in his Select Poems, where he gives 
 a sketch of Clive's life, and notes on the poem. 
 
 Colombe of Ravestein. The duchess of Juliers and 
 Cleves, in Colombe's Birthday, who holds her duchy under 
 the Salic law. Her cousin, Prince Berthold, is the lawful 
 duke. She is beloved by Valence, an advocate, whom she 
 finally prefers to the prince, and the probable position of 
 empress which would come with marrying the prince, who 
 offers her his hand, but who does not love her. See Miss 
 Burt's Brownings Women for a study of this character. 
 
 Colombe's Birthday. After giving an account of the 
 stage production of A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Mr. Ed- 
 mund Gosse, in his paper on the early writings of Brown- 
 ing, now published in his Personalia, proceeds to say of 
 the present drama : " Fired with the memory of so many 
 plaudits, Mr. Browning set himself to the composition 
 of another actable play, and this also had its little hour of
 
 Colombe's Birthday. 101 
 
 success, though not until many years afterward. Colombe's 
 Birthday, which formed number six of Bells and Pome- 
 granates, appeared in 1843. I have before me at the 
 present moment a copy of the first edition, marked for act- 
 ing by the author, who has written : ' I made the alterations 
 in this copy to suit some I forget what projected stage 
 representation ; not that of Miss Faucit, which was carried 
 into effect long afterward.' The stage directions are 
 numerous and minute, showing the science which the dra- 
 matist had gained since he first essayed to put his creations 
 on the boards. Some of the suggestions are characteristic 
 enough. For instance, ' unless a very good Valence is 
 found, ' this extremely fine speech, perhaps the jewel of the 
 play, is to be left out. In the present editions the verses 
 run otherwise." Mr. Gosse refers to the speech of Valence 
 in the fourth act, in which he describes Berthold to the 
 Duchess. 
 
 Colombe's Birthday, when published in Bells and Pome- 
 granates, was called : "A play, in five Acts. By Robert 
 Browning, author of Paracelsus." It contained twenty- 
 four pages, and was sold for one shilling. The dedication 
 was dated March, 1844, and was to Barry Cornwall in 
 the words retained in all editions. Reprinted in Poetical 
 Works of 1863, second volume, among " Tragedies and 
 Other Plays." 
 
 This drama was put upon the stage at the Haymarket The- 
 atre, London, Monday evening, April 25, 1853. Miss Helen 
 Faucit took the part of Colombe, and Barry Sullivan that 
 of Valence. It was played for two weeks with success, 
 Miss Faucit having chosen the play from a personal interest 
 in it, and because of her appreciation of the character of 
 Colombe. After outlining the action of the play The Athe- 
 no3um said of it, and of its first performance : " Such is 
 the refined action of this charming poem, rather than drama. 
 Its movements, for the most part, occur in the chambers 
 of the mind. Such themes are evidently not of the usual 
 stage-sort, and will fail of attraction to all who insist on the 
 ordinary dramatic motion and action. To the worn-out and 
 wearied playgoer, who can turn for a moment out of the 
 beaten path, nothing could well be more delicious. The in- 
 voluntary tear was often felt upon the cheek. We feared
 
 102 Colombe 's Birthday. 
 
 that on performance, this fine poem would scarcely be in- 
 telligible to a mixed audience. Miss Faucit, however, by 
 her skill, made them perfectly understand it ; and the 
 applause came in the proper places. That the performance 
 will become popular, it is not for the critic to determine, 
 but we can record its apparent perfect success on the first 
 night." The Examiner said : " The applause was unmixed 
 at the close of the play, and many passages as it proceeded 
 had excited evident admiration and sympathy. If it re- 
 mains on the stage longer than we have ventured to antici- 
 pate, we shall think all the better of the audiences of the 
 Haymarket. Nor, if the great beauty of the contrast be- 
 tween the characters of Berthold and Valence could only 
 have been better exhibited by the actors, should we have 
 entertained so much doubt as we do of the probability of 
 such a result." Another critic complained of the male 
 actors, but praised the acting of Miss Faucit. " Through 
 the finished delicacy of the details, the traces of great latent 
 power are evident, which, while they help to elevate our 
 impression of the character of Colombe, increase our admi- 
 ration of the powers of the actress who so skillfully subordi- 
 nates her genius to perfect harmony with the poet's idea. 
 Her clear and melodious enunciation of the dialogue and 
 delicate phases of emotion seem to discover a force and 
 beauty in the poem which is not elsewhere apparent. The 
 mise en scene is admirable. The scenery and adjuncts have 
 been skillfully selected, and are executed in the best style." 
 This play was given at the Howard Athena3um, Boston, 
 February 16, 1854. 
 
 The Browning Society secured the performance of (70- 
 lombe's Birthday in St. George's Hall, London, on Thurs- 
 day evening, November 19, 1885, with Miss Alma Murray 
 as Colombe. The accounts of the performance contained in 
 The Academy, The Athenaeum, and other journals, were 
 reprinted in number seven of The Browning Society's 
 Papers ; 2 : 93*. In the Boston Literary World, for 
 December 12, 1885, Miss A. M. F. Robinson (now Mrs. 
 Darmesteter) said of the play : " Colombe's Birthday is 
 charming on the boards, clearer, more direct in action, 
 more picturesque, more full of delicate surprises than one 
 imagines it in print. With a very little cutting it could be
 
 The Confessional. Constance. 103 
 
 made an excellent acting play, and the story is so simple 
 and so touching, that even the playgoer might forgive it for 
 being told in modern poetry." 
 
 Rolfe includes Colombe's Birthday in his annotated 
 dramas of Browning, and he gives several pages of selected 
 critical comments, as well as extended notes. Miss Burt's 
 Browning's Women discusses Colombe in the chapter on 
 " magnanimous women." Mr. F. M. Holland puts the play 
 into a prose story in his Stories from Robert Browning. 
 The sixth number of The Browning Society's Papers con- 
 tains a study of the avowal of Valence, by Mr. Leonard S. 
 Outram ; 2 : 87. 
 
 Confessional, The. Published in Dramatic Romances 
 and Lyrics, seventh number of Bells and Pomegranates, 
 1845. It was there printed as II. under the general title 
 of France and Spain. Poems, 1849, under its own title ; 
 Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 This poem is historical only in the sense that it correctly 
 interprets the period of the Inquisition in Spain. A young 
 girl wrings from her lover his secret knowledge, that is in- 
 jurious to the Church ; and she does this at the instigation 
 of her confessor, who has assured her that her lover will be 
 purged of evil by her prayers and fastings. She is then 
 thrown into prison, after being put upon the rack ; when 
 she sees her lover again he is on the scaffold. As she 
 watches his execution from her prison she speaks her con- 
 demnation of the methods by which she has been deceived, 
 and of the religion which could lead men to such deeds. 
 This is a true historical picture of the manner in which the 
 confessional was used to aid the Inquisition. 
 
 Confessions. Dramatis Personce, 1864. 
 
 See Corson for a brief interpretation. 
 
 Constance. The cousin of the Queen in In a Balcony, 
 and the beloved of Norbert. She advises her lover to wait 
 rather than ask of the Queen, who is a hard, selfish woman, 
 the hand of her he loves. The Queen supposes that Nor- 
 bert's devotion is wholly from interest in herself, and pro- 
 poses to marry him, for she has grown to love him. When 
 she knows the truth the lovers tremble at her terrible anger ; 
 but they await the future secure in each other's affection. 
 See essay on Miss Alma Murray's Constance, in The Brown- 
 ing Society's Papers ; 2 : 33*.
 
 104 Corregidor. Cristina. 
 
 Corregidor. In How it Strikes a Contemporary, the 
 poet who goes about seeing everything that is done and 
 sending report of it to " our Lord the King." 
 
 Count Gismond. Aix in Provence. First published 
 in Dramatic Lyrics, third number of Bells and Pomegra- 
 nates, 1842. It there appeared with the title France, be- 
 ing the second poem under the general title of Italy and 
 France, My Last Duchess being the first, and representing 
 Italy. In 1863 it was put among the Romances with the 
 present title, and in 1868 it was classed with the Dramatic 
 Romances. 
 
 In his Living Authors of England, Thomas Powell tells 
 the story of this poem as follows : " An orphan girl is 
 brought up by an uncle whose two daughters are envious 
 of their cousin's beauty and accomplishments ; their jealousy 
 reaches such a pitch that it prompts them to urge the be- 
 trothed knight of one of them to accuse the beautiful or- 
 phan of un chastity. They select the morning of the day 
 when the object of their hatred is to be crowned Queen of 
 the May. The knight accuses her, as prompted by the 
 cousins ; another knight, who secretly loved the beautiful 
 orphan, gives him the lie ; they fight ; the traducer is killed 
 confessing, ere he dies, the plot, and the rescued beauty 
 rewards the noble champion with her hand. When she is 
 relating this, she has been a happy wife and mother for 
 some years. The scene is laid in France." The story is 
 wholly imaginary, but it gives an admirable picture of the 
 times of chivalry. Mr. Symons says " the mediaeval temper 
 of entire confidence in the ordeal by duel has never been 
 better rendered." 
 
 Miss Burt, in Browning's Women, chapter on " complex- 
 ity of character," gives a careful study of the poem. 
 
 Count Guido Franceschini. The husband of Pom- 
 pilia in The Ring and the Book, who married her for 
 money, persecuted her cruelly, and when she escaped from 
 him with the aid of Caponsacchi, murdered her and her 
 parents. His trial forms the subject of the poem. His de- 
 fense of himself forms the fifth book of the poem, and his 
 confession after his sentence to death the eleventh book. 
 
 Cristina. First printed in Dramatic Lyrics, third 
 number of Bells and Pomegranates, 1842, as II. under
 
 Cristina and Monaldeschi. 105 
 
 the general title of Queen-Worship. Poems, 1842, by it- 
 self ; Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 The Cristina of this poem is Christina Maria, daughter 
 of Francis L, King of the Two Sicilies. She was born in 
 1806 ; was married, in 1829, to Ferdinand VII., King of 
 Spain ; became Regent in 1833, on the death of the King ; 
 and in 1843 her daughter ascended the throne as Isabel II. 
 Her life was given to intrigue, and to the use of tyrannical 
 power. She was hated by those she ruled, and despised by 
 them because of her personal character. 
 
 Lord Malmesbury, in his Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, 
 gives this account of Christina, before her marriage to 
 Ferdinand : 
 
 " Mr. Hill presented me at Court before I left Naples [in 
 1829]. . . . The Queen [Maria Isabella, second wife of 
 Francis L, King of the Two Sicilies] and the young and 
 handsome Princess Christina, afterwards Queen of Spain, 
 were present. The latter was said at the time to be the 
 cause of more than one inflammable victim languishing in 
 prison for having too openly admired this royal coquette, 
 whose manners with men foretold her future life after her 
 marriage to old Ferdinand. When she came up to me in 
 the circle, walking behind her mother, she stopped, and 
 took hold of one of the buttons of my uniform, to see, as 
 she said, the inscription upon it, the Queen indignantly call- 
 ing to her to come on." 
 
 The poem is based on the fact that a young man who 
 loved Cristina, and with whom she played the part of the 
 coquette, became insane because of her heartless treatment 
 of him. 
 
 See Nettleship's Essays and Thoughts, for a study of 
 the poem. 
 
 Cristina and Monaldeschi. Jocoseria, 1883. 
 
 The subjects of this poem are Queen Christina of Sweden, 
 daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, and her master of horse. 
 She was born in 1626, was highly educated, succeeded hex- 
 father on the throne in 1632, under the regency of Oxen- 
 stiern, assumed royal power in 1644, concluded the treaty 
 of Westphalia in 1648, abdicated in favor of her cousin, 
 Charles Augustus, in 1650, soon after embraced the Catholic 
 faith, and spent the rest of her life in Rome, where she died
 
 106 Cristina and Monaldeschi. 
 
 in 1689. She had great learning, her tastes and habits 
 were extravagant, and she was one of the most famous 
 persons of her time. During her second visit to France, in 
 1657, she caused the death of the Marquis Monaldeschi, her 
 grand equerry. She was given apartments at the palace 
 of Fontainebleau, thirty-seven miles from Paris, up the 
 Seine, or to the southeast ; and here the murder of the 
 marquis took place. She charged Monaldeschi with treason, 
 but he had no trial, and was brutally stabbed to death. Her 
 act was severely condemned at the time, and it has ever 
 since been regarded as a dark stain on her memory. 
 Monaldeschi is described as being greedy, selfish, ungrate- 
 ful, false, and dishonorable. He was a bitter enemy of 
 Sentinelli, also in the queen's service; and this man he tried 
 to betray and have condemned to death. It was Senti- 
 nelli who commanded the soldiers who murdered Monaldes- 
 chi ; but he went to the queen and plead for his enemy's 
 life. Monaldeschi asked that he might be banished from 
 Europe, but this the Queen refused. When the Queen 
 heard that Monaldeschi would not finish his confession, she 
 said. " The coward ! wound him, and thus force him to con- 
 fess." Her own account of the affair, as published by her 
 court, is in part as follows : 
 
 " The Queen of Sweden had conceived some suspicion of 
 the Marquis Monaldeschi, her Grand Equerry, and this 
 was confirmed daily by various proofs she had of his 
 treachery. Watching all his actions, and the letters written 
 to him, she discovered that he was betraying her interests, 
 and by a double perfidy was scheming to fix upon an inno- 
 cent man, also an officer of the Queen's, the crime of which 
 he alone was guilty. The Queen made pretense of believing 
 that the treachery came from that other, and assured the 
 Marquis she had no doubts of himself, in order the better to 
 discover all. The Marquis thinking he had succeeded in 
 his object, said one day to the Queen : ' Madam, Your 
 Majesty is betrayed, and the betrayer is the absent one 
 known to Your Majesty and me ; and it can be no other. 
 Your Majesty will soon find out who it is ; I beg her not to 
 pardon him.' The Queen said, 'What does the man de- 
 serve who betrays me ? ' The Marquis said : ' Your Majesty 
 should put him to death at once, and I offer myself to be
 
 Cristina and Monaldeschi. 107 
 
 executioner or victim, for 't is an act of justice.' ' Good, ' 
 replied the Queen, ' remember your words ; as for me I 
 promise you I will not pardon him.' Meanwhile she had 
 sealed up the intercepted letters, which she placed in the 
 hands of the Prior of the Maturins at Fontainebleau, in 
 order to present them to the Marquis, when it should be 
 time. He on his side, considering that several posts had 
 passed without his receiving any letters, began to feel some 
 distrust, and endeavored to find at Lyons another surer 
 correspondent ; showing further by different actions that he 
 was thinking of flight. Therefore the Queen, wishing to 
 forestall him, on the 10th November had him summoned 
 to the Galerie des Cerfs according to custom. The Marquis 
 was long in coming ; he did so at length trembling, pale, 
 out of countenance, and quite another man, just as the Court 
 had remarked him for the last few days with surprise. The 
 Queen addressed to him at first some indifferent observa- 
 tions. Meanwhile she had ordered the Prior to come to 
 the gallery, into which he entered by a door that was im- 
 mediately closed, and the Captain of her Guards came in 
 by another. The Queen then changed her talk, and having 
 caused the Prior to give back the letters, she showed them 
 to the Marquis, and reproached him with his enormous 
 crime and his horrible treachery ; she caused also all the 
 papers he had on him to be taken from his pockets, among 
 which she found two counterfeit letters, one addressed to 
 the Queen, the other to the Marquis himself, whereby she 
 discovered a new treason against her, still blacker than the 
 preceding, of which he wished to make use in order to con- 
 firm the bad impression he had attempted to give her against 
 his enemy." 
 
 Father le Bel, prior of the Maturins, as an eye-witness, 
 told how the marquis was put to death. He went to the 
 gallery carrying the letters given him by the queen, who 
 took them out of the package and showed them to the 
 Marquis, who said they were copies. Then she drew out 
 the genuine letters, which he finally confessed were his. 
 He laid the blame on other persons, but finally threw him- 
 self at the queen's feet, asking pardon. At this point the 
 three guards drew their swords, which were not returned 
 until the marquis was dead. " But before this consumma-
 
 108 Cristina and Monaldeschi. 
 
 tion he got up, and drawing the Queen now into one corner 
 of the gallery, now into another, begged her unceasingly to 
 listen to his justification. This she did not refuse, but 
 listened to him with great patience and moderation, without 
 showing by the slightest sign that his importunity was dis- 
 pleasing to her. . . . This conference having lasted for 
 more than an hour, and the Marquis not satisfying the 
 Queen, she approached the Prior, and said to him, in a loud 
 but solemn and measured voice, ' Father, I leave this man 
 in your hands ; prepare him for death, and have care for 
 his soul ! ' At these words the Prior, as terrified as if the 
 sentence was against himself, threw himself at her feet, as 
 well as the Marquis, to ask his pardon. She said she could 
 not grant it. ... 
 
 " She then went away, leaving the Prior with the three 
 men, with their swords bared, ready to kill him. When she 
 had left them, the Marquis cast himself at the feet of the 
 Prior, whom he implored to go and beg for his pardon ; but 
 the three men pressed him to confess himself, holding their 
 swords against his body, though without wounding him. 
 The Prior, with tears in his eyes, exhorted him to ask 
 pardon of God. The chief of the three went to find the 
 Queen, to implore her mercy for the poor Marquis ; but he 
 came back again very sad, and said, weeping, ' Marquis, 
 think upon God and your soul, you must die.' The Marquis, 
 beside himself, threw himself for the second time at the 
 Prior's feet, pressing him to go yet again and ask his pardon 
 from the Queen. He did so, and finding the Queen in her 
 room, her countenance calm and unmoved, he prostrated 
 himself at her feet ; his eyes bathed with tears, his voice 
 choked with sobs, he abjured her, by the passions and 
 wounds of the Saviour, to have mercy upon the Marquis. 
 She told him how sorry she was not to be able to grant his 
 request. . . . She confined her wrath to the enormity of his 
 crime and his treachery, which were without parallel, and 
 affected all the world : further, the King was not lodging 
 her as a prisoner, or an exile ; she was mistress of her own 
 will, and could do justice to her officers, everywhere and 
 always ; that she had to answer for her action to God alone, 
 adding that the deed was not without precedent. . . . ' I 
 will let the King know of it ; return and have a care of his
 
 Cristina and MonaldescM. 109 
 
 soul, I cannot in conscience do what you ask ; ' and so sent 
 him away. The Prior remarked by the change of tone with 
 which she pronounced the last words, that if she could have 
 gone back and changed the state of affairs she undoubtedly 
 would have done so, but having gone too far, she could no 
 longer draw back without placing herself in peril of her 
 life, had the Marquis escaped. 
 
 " In this extremity the Prior knew not what to do ; he 
 could not go away, and even though he could, the duty of 
 charity and his own conscience compelled him to prepare 
 the Marquis for an edifying death. Accordingly he went 
 back to the gallery, and embracing the poor wretch, whom 
 he bathed with his tears, he exhorted him, in the most ener- 
 getic and pathetic terms with which God inspired him, to 
 compose himself for death, and bethink himself of his con- 
 science, since there was no further hope of life for him. . . . 
 At this sorrowful news, after two or three loud shrieks, he 
 knelt at the feet of the Confessor ; . . . the Almoner of the 
 Queen arrived ; . . . the Marquis perceiving him, without 
 waiting for absolution, went to him ; . . . they spoke to- 
 gether for a long time in a low voice ; the Almoner went 
 out, and took with him the chief of the three commissioned 
 to execute him. Shortly afterwards, the chief returned 
 alone, and said to him, ' Marquis, ask pardon of God, for 
 without any further delay you must die ; have you con- 
 fessed ? ' And so saying, he forced him against the wall . . . 
 and gave him a stab in the stomach. The Marquis, wish- 
 ing to guard it, seized the sword in his right hand ; the 
 other, in drawing it back, cut off three fingers of his hand, 
 and finding his sword blunted, he said to a companion that 
 the Marquis was armed underneath, and in fact he had a 
 coat of mail weighing nine or ten pounds on. He then 
 gave him another stroke in the face, at which the Marquis 
 cried out, ' Father ' ; the Confessor drew near him, and the 
 others stood aside ; . . . this received, he threw himself on 
 the floor, and as he fell one of them gave him a blow on 
 the top of the head ; ... as he lay on his stomach he made 
 signs for them to cut his head off. . . . Thus the Marquis 
 ended his life at a quarter to four in the afternoon. . . . 
 The Queen, assured of the Marquis' death, expressed her 
 regret at having been obliged to order this execution of the
 
 110 Cristina and Monaldeschi. 
 
 Marquis, but that it concerned justice to punish him for his 
 crime and treachery, which she prayed God to forgive him. 
 She hade the Confessor to be careful and take him away 
 and bury him ; she sent two hundred livres to the convent, 
 to pray God for the repose of the said Marquis' soul." 
 
 The historical accounts of the death of Monaldeschi give 
 no hint that he was the lover of the queen ; but the gossips 
 and memoir-writers of the time represent their relation to 
 have been of this kind, and Browning has followed them 
 faithfully. The Avon of the poem is a village on the east 
 side of the Park at Fontainebleau, Monaldeschi being buried 
 in its little church, and a marble put in the pavement to 
 mark his grave. The name of the queen is usually spelled 
 with an h, and not as Browning gives it. 
 
 The poem opens with a description of Francis I. and his 
 favorite mistress, Diana of Poitiers. Francis ruled from 
 1515 to 1547, and was one of the most popular monarchs 
 of the sixteenth century. He was the rival and the pris- 
 oner of Charles V., and he contested with Henry VIII. on 
 " the field of the cloth of gold." His wars in Italy and with 
 Spain were of great importance ; while the latter part of 
 his reign was marked by severe persecutions of the Protes- 
 tants. He was frank, generous, and of good breeding, but 
 passionate and a libertine. 
 
 " The chateau or palace of Fontainebleau," says Baede- 
 ker's Paris and its Environs, " situated on the southwest 
 side of the town, is said to occupy the site of a fortified cha- 
 teau founded by Louis VII., in 1162. It was Francis I., 
 however, who converted the mediaeval fortress into a palace 
 of almost unparalleled extent and magnificence. The exte- 
 rior is less imposing than that of some other contemporane- 
 ous edifices, as the building, with the exception of several pa- 
 vilions, is only two stories in height ; but the interior, which 
 was decorated by French and Italian artists, is deservedly 
 much admired. . . . The Galene de Diane, or de la Biblio- 
 theque, is a hall eighty-eight yards in length, constructed 
 under Henri IV., and restored by Napoleon I. and Louis 
 XVIII. It contains the library and a number of curiosities, 
 including Monaldeschi's coat of mail. Under the Galerie 
 de Diane is the old Galerie des Cerfs, which is now con- 
 verted into a ' garde-meuble ' and is not shown to visitors.
 
 Daniel Bartoli. Ill 
 
 It was in this room in 1657 that Queen Christina caused 
 Count Monaldeschi to be put to death after a pretended 
 trial for treason. Louis XIV. expressed his strong disap- 
 probation of this proceeding, but took no farther steps in 
 the matter, and Christina continued to reside at Fontaine- 
 bleau for two years longer." 
 
 Among other parts of the palace, which have special 
 reference to Francis I., are the Galerie d'Henri II., or 
 Salle des Fetes, which is a large hall. It contains the ini- 
 tial and emblem of Diane of Poitiers in frequent recurrence. 
 The Galerie de Francois I. is another large hall. " It is 
 embellished with fourteen large compositions by Rosso 
 Rossi, representing allegorical and mythological scenes re- 
 lating to the history and adventures of Francis I. The 
 paintings are separated from each other by bas-reliefs, 
 caryatides, trophies, and medallions. The winged sala- 
 mander, being the king's heraldic emblem, and his initial 
 F frequently recur." 
 
 F. W. Bain's Christina, Queen of Sweden, London, 1889, 
 is an enthusiastic defense of the queen in regard to this 
 affair, and written from the point of view of ardent admi- 
 ration. It gives the best account of her life. An opposite, 
 and in some respects more truthful, view is given in the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, 1888, by Madame Vincent; 
 translated in The Living Age, December, 1888. 
 
 Dance, yellows and whites and reds. First 
 printed in a small book called the New Amphion, published 
 for the Edinburgh University Union Fancy Fair, 1886, 
 accompanied by an illustration. In 1887 published in Par- 
 leyings with Certain People, at the end of Gerard de 
 Lairesse. 
 
 Daniel Bartoli, Parleyings with. Parleyings with 
 Certain People of Importance in their Day, 1887. 
 
 Daniele Bartoli was born at Ferrara in 1608, became a 
 Jesuit, was a leading preacher of that order, and in 1650 
 was commissioned by the Father-General to write a history 
 of the order. This he did in several volumes treating very 
 fully of its labors in both Asia and Europe. Its style is 
 attractive, but it is filled with superstition and miracle. He 
 also wrote several works on morality, on physical science, 
 and on the Italian language. He was made the Rector of 
 the Roman College in 1671, and he died at Rome in 1685.
 
 112 Daniel Bartoli. 
 
 Browning uses Bartoli and his credulity in regard to the 
 miracles and saints of his Church as a means of showing 
 that the true saints are not generally canonized, and that 
 what they do and are have little comparison with Bartoli's 
 unreal men and women. The poem is not devoted to a dis- 
 cussion of Bartoli or his teachings, but to giving an account 
 of the saint in whom the poet believes. Mrs. Orr tells the 
 story of this saint. 
 
 " Mr. Browning claims Don Bartoli's allegiance for a 
 secular saint ; a woman more divine in her non-miraculous 
 virtues than some at least of those whom the Church has 
 canonized, and whose existence has the merit of not being 
 legendary. The saint in question was Marianne Pajot, 
 daughter of the apothecary of Gaston, Duke of Orleans ; 
 and her story, as Browning relates it, a well-known episode 
 in the lives of Charles IV., Duke of Lorraine, and the Mar- 
 quis de Lassay. Charles of Lorraine fell violently in love 
 with Marianne Pajot, whom he met at the Luxembourg, 
 when visiting Madame d'Orleans, his sister. She was so 
 fair, so modest, so virtuous, and so witty that he did not 
 hesitate to offer her his hand ; and they were man and wife 
 so far as legal formalities could make them, when the mon- 
 arch, Louis XIV., intervened. Charles had by a recent 
 treaty made Louis his heir. This threatened no obstacle 
 to his union, since a clause in the marriage contract barred 
 all claims to succession on the part of the children who 
 might be born of it. But Madame resented the mesal- 
 liance ; she joined her persuasions with those of the Minister 
 le Tellier; and the latter persuaded the young King, not 
 absolutely to prevent the marriage, but to turn it to account. 
 A paper was drawn up pledging the Duke to fresh conces- 
 sions, and the bride was challenged in the King's name to 
 obtain his signature to it. On this condition she was to be 
 recognized as Duchess with all the honors due to her rank ; 
 failing this, she was to be banished to a convent. The 
 alternative was offered to her at the nuptial banquet, at 
 which le Tellier had appeared a carriage and military 
 escort awaiting Trim outside. She emphatically declined 
 taking part in so disgraceful a compact. Her reply was 
 that if she possessed any influence over M. de Lorraine she 
 would never use it to make him do anything so contrary to
 
 Daniel Bartoli. 113 
 
 his honor and to his interests ; she already sufficiently re- 
 proached herself for the marriage to which his friendship 
 for her had impelled him ; and would rather be Marianne 
 to the end of her days than become Duchess on such con- 
 ditions. The reply has been necessarily modified in Mr. 
 Browning's more poetic rendering of the scene. And after 
 doing her best to allay the Duke's wrath (which was for the 
 moment terrible), she calmly allowed the Minister to lead 
 her away, leaving all the bystanders in tears. A few days 
 later Marianne returned the jewels which Charles had given 
 her, saying it was not suitable that she should keep them, 
 since she had not the honor of being his wife. He seems to 
 have resigned her without farther protest. 
 
 " De Lassay was much impressed by this occurrence, 
 though at the time only ten years old. He too conceived 
 an attachment for Marianne Pajot, and married her, being 
 already a widower, at the age of twenty-three. Their union, 
 dissolved a few years later by her death, was one of un- 
 clouded happiness on his part, of unmixed devotion on hers ; 
 and the moral dignity by which she had subjugated this 
 somewhat weak and excitable nature was equally attested 
 by the intensity of her husband's sorrow and by its transi- 
 toriness. The military and still more amorous adventures 
 of the Marquis de Lassay make him a conspicuous figure 
 in the annals of French court life. He is indirectly con- 
 nected with our own through a somewhat pale and artificial 
 passion for Sophia Dorothea, the young Princess of Han- 
 over, whose husband became ultimately George I. Mr. 
 Browning indicates the later as well as the earlier stages of 
 de Lassay's career ; he only follows that of the Duke of 
 Lorraine into an imaginary though not impossible develop- 
 ment. Charles had shown himself a being of a smaller 
 spiritual stature than his intended wife ; and it was only 
 too likely, Mr. Browning thinks, that the diamonds which 
 should have graced her neck soon sparkled on that of some 
 venal beauty whose challenge to his admiration proceeded 
 from the opposite pole of womanhood. Nevertheless he 
 feels kindly towards him. The nobler love was not dis- 
 honored by the more ignoble fancy, since it could not be 
 touched by it. Duke Charles was still faithful as a man 
 may be."
 
 114 Deaf and Dumb. "Z)e Gustibus " 
 
 See Nettleship's Essays and Thoughts, and a paper by 
 Arthur Symons in The Browning Society's Papers, num- 
 ber nine. 
 
 Deaf and Dumb. A Group by Woolner. This 
 poem was written in 1862 for Woolner's partly-draped 
 group of Constance and Arthur, the deaf and dumb chil- 
 dren of Sir Thomas Fairbairn, which was exhibited at the 
 International Exhibition of 1862 ; but the lines did not ap- 
 pear in the Exhibition Catalogue. It was first published 
 in the Poetical Works of 1868, volume vi., in the Dramatis 
 Personal ; and it has retained the same place in subsequent 
 editions. 
 
 Death in the Desert, A. Dramatis Personce, 1864. 
 
 The narrative of this poem is not historical, but some of 
 the early legends about St. John were probably used by the 
 poet. Cerinthus was a contemporary of John, according to 
 Irenseus; but Eusebius places him a little later, early in the 
 second century. He was educated in Egypt, taught in Asia 
 Minor, and maintained Gnostic doctrines. He held that 
 Jesus was the natural offspring of Joseph and Mary, that 
 the Christ became incarnated in Jesus after his baptism, 
 and that the world was created by a demiurge, not by God 
 himself. The poem refers to some of these theories, and it 
 also combats the teachings of Strauss, who wrote a ration- 
 alistic biography of Jesus, to prove that Jesus was a mere 
 man, that John did not write the Gospel which bears his 
 name, and that Christianity was largely an outgrowth from 
 Neoplatonic and other similar tendencies. He tried to 
 show the subjective origin of Christianity, that it did not 
 have a supernatural origin, and that the miracles were 
 either naturalistic, subjective or legendary in their nature. 
 Browning writes this poem to combat these opinions, to 
 maintain the truthfulness of Christianity, and its trust- 
 worthiness as a spiritual interpretation of life and the 
 world. 
 
 In number nine of The Browning Society's Papers, 
 2 : 153, is an extended analysis and interpretation of the 
 poem, by Mrs. M. G. Glazebrook. A good interpretation 
 of the poem is given in Nettleship's Essays and Thoughts. 
 
 "De Gustibus " Men and Women, 1855. Lyrics, 
 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.
 
 Development. Dis aliter Visum. 115 
 
 The speaker is a man, who first describes his friend's 
 love of a rural English scene, and then his own love of a 
 castle among the Apennines. 
 
 Development. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 This poem is autobiographical, giving an account of the 
 manner in which Browning was taught by his father. Mr. 
 Sharp says the father " was a man of exceptional powers. 
 He was a poet, both in sentiment and expression, and he 
 understood, as well as enjoyed, the excellent in art. He 
 was a scholar, too, in a reputable fashion ; not indiffer- 
 ent to what he had learnt in his youth, nor heedless of the 
 high opinion generally entertained for the greatest writers 
 of antiquity, but with a particular care himself for Horace 
 and Anacreon. As his son once told a friend, ' The old 
 gentleman's brain was a storehouse of literary and philo- 
 sophical antiquities.' " 
 
 To Mrs. Corson, a week or two before his death, Brown- 
 ing said : " It would have been quite unpardonable in my 
 case not to have done my best. My dear father put me in 
 a condition most favorable for the best work I was capable 
 of. He secured for me all the love and comfort that a lit- 
 erary man needs to do good work. It would have been 
 shameful if I had not done my best to realize his expecta- 
 tions of me." 
 
 Philipp Karl Suttmann, 1764-1829, was a German 
 scholar, famous for his Greek grammars and lexicogra- 
 phy. Friedrich August Wolf, 1759-1824, a German 
 scholar, first put forth, in his Prolegomena ad Homerum, 
 the theory that the Homeric poems were not the work of 
 one man, but the product of a number of writers of songs 
 or rhapsodies, whose poems were finally combined into one 
 work. 
 
 Dis aliter Visum ; or, Le Byron de nos Jours. 
 Dramatis Personce, 1864. 
 
 Dr. Daniel G. Brinton thinks this poem is as dainty and 
 delicate as any vers de societe, and adds of the seventh 
 verse: " I think when Browning wrote that he must have 
 had in mind the passage from Jean Paul Richter which 
 Alfred Musset places for motto to that blood-curdling piece 
 of his called Suzon. ' Happy is he,' says Jean Paul, 
 ' whose heart asks not save a heart, and who desires
 
 116 Djabal. Donald. 
 
 neither an English park, nor an opera seria, nor the music of 
 Mozart, nor a picture by Raphael, nor an eclipse of the 
 moon, nor even light of moon, and neither scenes from a 
 romance, nor yet their fulfillment ! ' ' 
 
 The reference in the twelfth verse is to the forty mem- 
 bers of the French Academy, and to the election of a new 
 member whenever one of their number dies. 
 
 Nettleship's Essays and Thoughts gives a suggestive in- 
 terpretation. 
 
 Djabal. The young leader who claims to be the Ha- 
 keem in The Return of the Druses. He is a mystic and 
 schemer who half believes in his own claim, but who finally 
 fails, confesses to Anael, and stabs himself on her dead 
 body. 
 
 Doctor Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, 1880. 
 
 The story told in this poem is similar to one contained in 
 Roquette's Gevatter Tod, in which a young doctor is be- 
 friended by Death, who shows himself at the head of the 
 bed, when the patient is to die. The outcome of the story 
 is different, however. Mrs. Orr says it is an old Hebrew 
 legend, founded upon the saying that a bad wife is stronger 
 than death. Professor Toy, Harvard University, sends the 
 author this note : " I have heard of Browning's story of 
 Death (Satan) and his wife, as a Jewish oral legend, appar- 
 rently invented as a commentary on Ecclesiastes 7 : 26. I 
 know of no written form of the story." 
 
 Dominus Hyacinthus. The advocate for the poor, 
 who, in The Ring and the Book, presents the case for 
 Count Guido. His speech forms the eighth book of the 
 poem. 
 
 Domizia. The noble Florentine lady, in Luria, who 
 is loved by that leader of the army of Florence, and who 
 advises him against vengeance when he finds that he is be- 
 trayed. 
 
 Donald. Jocoseria, 1883. 
 
 The story contained in this poem was told by Sir Walter 
 Scott in The Keepsake, for 1832, an annual published by 
 Longman, London. After a brief introduction, in which 
 he suggests that the " singular incident " he relates is 
 adapted for illustration, Scott tells his story in these words : 
 
 " The story is an old but not an ancient one : the actor
 
 Donald. 117 
 
 and sufferer was not a very aged man, when I heard the 
 anecdote in my early youth. Duncan, for so I shall call 
 him, had been engaged in the affair of 1746 [the invasion 
 of England by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the ' young 
 Pretender ' to the throne of England] with others of his 
 clan ; and was supposed by many to have been an accom- 
 plice, if not the principal actor in a certain tragic affair, 
 which made much noise a good many years after the rebel- 
 lion. I am content with indicating this, in order to give 
 some idea of the man's character, which was bold, fierce, 
 and enterprising. Traces of this natural disposition still re- 
 mained on Duncan's very good features, and in his keen gray 
 eye. But the limbs had become unable to serve the pur- 
 poses and obey the dictates of his inclination. On the one 
 side of his body he retained the proportions and firmness 
 of an active mountaineer ; on the other, he was a disabled 
 cripple, scarce able to limp along the streets. The cause 
 which reduced him to this state of infirmity was singular. 
 
 " Twenty years or more before I knew Duncan, he 
 assisted his brothers in farming a large grazing [a pastoral 
 farm] in the Highlands, comprehending an extensive range 
 of mountain and forest land, morass, lake, and precipice. 
 It chanced that a sheep or goat was missed from the flock, 
 and Duncan, not satisfied with dispatching his shepherds in 
 one direction, went himself in quest of the fugitive in an- 
 other. 
 
 " In the course of his researches, he was induced to as- 
 cend a small and narrow path, leading to the top of a high 
 precipice. Dangerous as it was at first, the road became 
 doubly so as he advanced. It was not much more than two 
 feet broad, so rugged and difficult, and, at the same time, 
 so terrible, that it would have been impracticable to any 
 but the light step and steady brain of a Highlander. The 
 precipice on the right rose like a wall, and on the left sunk 
 to a depth which it was giddy to look down upon, but Dun- 
 can passed cheerfully on, now whistled the Gathering of 
 his clan, now taking heed to his footsteps, when the difficul- 
 ties of the path peculiarly required caution. 
 
 " In this manner, he had more than half ascended the 
 precipice, when in midway, and it might almost be said, in 
 middle air, he encountered a buck of the red-deer species
 
 118 Donald. 
 
 coming down the cliff by the same path in an opposite di- 
 rection. If Duncan had had a gun no rencontre could have 
 been more agreeable, but as he had not this advantage over 
 the denizen of the wilderness, the meeting was in the high- 
 est degree unwelcome. Neither party had the power of re- 
 treating, for the stag had not room to turn himself in the 
 narrow path, and if Duncan had turned his back to go down 
 he knew enough of the creature's habits to be certain that 
 he would rush upon him while engaged in the difficulties of 
 the retreat. They stood therefore perfectly still, and looked 
 at each other in mutual embarrassment for some space. 
 
 " At length the deer, which was of the largest size, began 
 to lower his formidable antlers, as they do when they are 
 brought to bay, and are preparing to rush upon hound and 
 huntsman. Duncan saw the danger of a conflict in which 
 he must probably come by the worst, and, as a last resource, 
 stretched himself on the little ledge of rock which he occu- 
 pied, and thus awaited the resolution which the deer should 
 take, not making the least motion for fear of alarming the 
 wild and suspicious animal. They remained in this posture 
 for three or four hours, in the midst of a rock which would 
 have suited the pencil of Salvator, and which afforded 
 barely room for the man and the stag, opposed to each 
 other in this extraordinary manner. 
 
 " At length the buck seemed to take the resolution of pass- 
 ing over the obstacle which lay in his path, and with this 
 purpose approached towards Duncan very slowly, and with 
 excessive caution. When he came close to the Highlander 
 he stooped his head down as if to examine him more closely, 
 when the devil, or the untamable love of sport, peculiar to 
 bis country, began to overcome Duncan's fears. Seeing the 
 animal proceed so gently, he totally forgot not only the 
 dangers of his position, but the implicit compact which cer- 
 tainly might have been inferred from the circumstances 
 of the situation. With one hand Duncan seized the deer's 
 horn, whilst with the other he drew his dirk. But in the 
 same instant the buck bounded over the precipice, carrying 
 the Highlander along with him. They went thus down up- 
 wards of a hundred feet, and were found the next morning 
 on the spot where they fell. Fortune, who does not always 
 regard retributive justice in her dispensations, ordered that
 
 Dramatic Idyls. Dramatic Lyrics. 119 
 
 the deer should fall undermost and be killed on the spot, 
 while Duncan escaped with life, but with the fracture of a 
 leg, an arm, and three ribs. In this state he was found 
 lying on the carcass of the deer, and the injuries which he 
 had received rendered him for the remainder of his life the 
 cripple I have described. I never could approve of Dun- 
 can's conduct towards the deer in a moral point of view 
 (although, as the man in the play said, he was my friend), 
 but the temptation of a hart of grease, offering, as it were, 
 his throat to the knife, would have subdued the virtue of 
 almost any deer-stalker. I have given you the story exactly 
 as I recollect it." 
 
 Mrs. Orr says this "is a true story, repeated to Mr. 
 Browning by one who had heard it from its hero, the so- 
 called Donald, himself." The fact that Browning had the 
 story given him by word of mouth will explain the slight 
 variations between his narrative and that by Scott. 
 
 Dramatic Idyls. Published in 1879, by Smith, Elder 
 and Co., 15 Waterloo Place, London. Pages, i. vi., 1143. 
 The contents of this First Series were as follows : Martin 
 Relph ; Pheidippides ; Halbert and Hob ; Ivan Ivanovitch ; 
 Tray ; Ned Bratts. 
 
 The Second Series, by the same publishers, 1880. Pages, 
 i.-viii., 1-149. Contents : [Prologue] ; Echetlos ; Clive ; 
 
 Mule*ykeh ; Pietro of Abano ; Doctor ; Pan and 
 
 Luna ; [Epilogue]. 
 
 No changes have been made in these two series of poems, 
 in order of arrangement or in titles. 
 
 See Fortnightly Review, Grant Allen, 32 : 149 ; Con- 
 temporary Review, Mrs. Orr, 35 : 289; Fraser's Maga- 
 zine, 100 : 103 ; St. James Magazine, Thomas Bayne, 
 47 : 108 ; The Academy, Frank Wedmore, May 10, 1879 ; 
 The Athenceum, July 10, 1880. 
 
 Dramatic Lyrics. This is the title given to the third 
 number of Bells and Pomegranates, published in 1842, 
 which was prefaced by these words : 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 Such poems as the following come properly enough, I suppose, 
 under the title of *' Dramatic Pieces" ; being, though for the most 
 part Lyric in expression, always Dramatic in principle, and so many 
 utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine. R. B.
 
 120 Dramatic Lyrics. 
 
 Dramatic Lyrics contained the following poems : Cava- 
 lier Tunes : I. Marching Along. II. Give a Rouse. III. 
 My Wife Gertrude ; Italy and France : I. Italy. II. 
 France ; Camp and Cloister : I. Camp (French). II. 
 Cloister (Spanish) ; In a Gondola ; Artemis Prologizes ; 
 Waring : I. " What 's become of Waring ? " II. " When 
 I last saw Waring " ; Queen- Worship : I. Rudel and the 
 Lady of Tripoli. II. Cristina ; Madhouse Cells : I. 
 " There 's Heaven above." II. " The rain set early in 
 to - night " ; Through the Metidja to Ahd-el-Kadr, 1842 ; 
 The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a Child's Story. 
 
 In the Poetical Works of 1863 several other poems were 
 added to these, and the entire collection, here called Lyrics 
 simply, was as follows : Cavalier Tunes : I. Marching 
 Along. II. Give a Rouse. III. Boot and Saddle ; The 
 Lost Leader ; " How They brought the Good News from 
 Ghent to Aix " ; Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kader ; 
 Nationality in Drinks : I. Claret. II. Tokay. III. Beer ; 
 Garden Fancies : I. The Flower's Name. II. Sibrandus 
 Schafnaburgensis. III. Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister ; 
 The Laboratory ; The Confessional ; Cristina ; The Lost 
 Mistress ; Earth's Immortalities ; Meeting at Night ; Part- 
 ing at Morning ; Song ; A Woman's Last Word ; Evelyn 
 Hope ; Love among the Ruins ; A Lover's Quarrel ; Up at 
 a Villa Down in the City ; A Toccata of Galuppi's ; Old 
 Pictures in Florence ; " De Gustibus " ; Home Thoughts, 
 from Abroad ; Home Thoughts, from the Sea ; Saul ; My 
 Star ; By the Fireside ; Any Wife to Any Husband ; Two 
 in the Campagna ; Misconceptions ; A Serenade at the 
 Villa ; One Way of Love ; Another Way of Love ; A 
 Pretty Woman ; Respectability ; Love in a Life ; Life 
 in a Love ; In Three Days ; In a Year ; Women and 
 Roses ; Before ; After ; The Guardian- Angel a Picture at 
 Fano ; Memorabilia ; Popularity ; Master Hugues of Saxe- 
 Gotha. 
 
 In the Poetical Works of 1868 this collection again re- 
 ceived the title of Dramatic Lyrics. One or two minor 
 changes were made in titles, but the order of the poems was 
 the same. The edition of 1888 also showed one or two 
 trifling changes in titles ; these are mentioned under each 
 poem.
 
 Dramatic Romances. 121 
 
 Dramatic Romances. The seventh number of Bells 
 and Pomegranates, 1845, was called Dramatic Romances 
 and Lyrics. The author's name was given as " Robert 
 Browning, Author of Paracelsus." The price was two shil- 
 lings. The dedication was to John Kenyon, and was dated 
 " Nov. 1845:" It contained the following poems : How they 
 brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix (16 ) ; Pictor 
 Ignotus, Florence, 15 ; Italy in England ; England in 
 Italy ; The Lost Leader ; The Lost Mistress ; Home 
 Thoughts, from Abroad : I. " Oh, to be in England." 
 II. " Here 's to Nelson's Memory." III. " Nobly Cape 
 St. Vincent " ; The Tomb at St. Praxed's ; Garden Fan- 
 cies : I. The Flower's Name. II. Sibrandus Schafna- 
 burgensis ; France and Spain : I. The Laboratory (An- 
 cien Re'gime). II. The Confessional ; The Flight of the 
 Duchess ; Earth's Immortalities : I. " See, as the pret- 
 tiest graves." II. " So, the year 's done with " ; Song ; 
 The Boy and the Angel ; Night and Morning : I. Night. 
 II. Morning ; Claret and Tokay : I. " My heart sunk 
 with our claret-flask." II. " Up jumped Tokay on our 
 table " ; Saul (first part) ; Time's Revenges ; The Glove 
 (Peter Ron sard loquitur). 
 
 This number of Bells and Pomegranates was reviewed 
 by Douglas Jerrold in his Shilling Magazine, in part as 
 follows : " The poems published in this humble form seem to 
 us the utterances of one of the few real poets of the age. . . . 
 He has a soul of fire, and casts away every detail, every 
 thought, that does not ministrate to the portrayal of the pas- 
 sion with which every line of his productions is fraught. 
 This it is that makes his poetry so abrupt, so fragmentary, 
 and to those whose suggestive powers are sluggish, obscure. 
 These qualities, which are objected to by some persons as 
 blemishes, we take to be proofs of the Poet's genuine in- 
 spiration. They display the terrible energy of his concep- 
 tions the truth and earnestness of his visions." 
 
 In the Poetical Works of 1863 the poems contained in 
 this collection, and in Dramatic Lyrics, as well as Men and 
 Women, were redistributed, and a part of them classed 
 under the title Romances, as follows: Incident of the 
 French Camp ; The Patriot An Old Story ; My Last 
 Duchess Ferrara ; Count Gismond Aix in Provence ;
 
 122 Dramatis Personce. The Eagle, 
 
 The Boy and the Angel ; Instans Tyrannus ; Mesmerism ; 
 The Glove ; Time's Revenges ; The Italian in England ; 
 The Englishman in Italy Piano di Sorrento ; In a Gon- 
 dola ; Waring ; The Twins ; A Light "Woman ; The Last 
 Ride Together; The Pied Piper of Hamelin ; a Child's 
 Story ; The Flight of the Duchess ; A Grammarian's 
 Funeral ; Johannes Agricola in Meditation ; The Heretic's 
 Tragedy A Middle-Age Interlude ; Holy-Cross Day ; 
 Protus ; The Statue and the Bust ; Porphyria's Lover ; 
 " Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." The same 
 order was preserved in the Poetical Works of 1868 ; but a 
 few minor changes were made in. the titles, which are noticed 
 under each individual poem in the present volume. 
 
 Dramatis Personae. This volume was published in 
 1864, by Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly, London. 
 Pages, i.-vi., 1-250. Contents as follows : James Lee ; Gold 
 Hair, a Legend of Pornic ; The Worst of It ; Dis Aliter 
 Visum, or Le Byron de nos Jours ; Too Late ; Abt Vo- 
 gler (after he has been extemporizing upon the Musical 
 Instrument of his Invention) ; Rabbi ben Ezra ; A Death 
 in the Desert ; Caliban upon Setebos, or Natural Theology 
 in the Island ; Confessions ; May and Death ; Prospice ; 
 Youth and Art ; A Face ; A Likeness ; Mr. Sludge, " the 
 Medium " ; Apparent Failure ; Epilogue. 
 
 This collection was reproduced in the Poetical Woi'ks of 
 1868, with two poems added, as follows : Deaf and Dumb, 
 a Group by Woolner ; Eurydice to Orpheus, a Picture by 
 Leighton. No changes have been made in subsequent edi- 
 tions. 
 
 See St. James Magazine, 10 : 477 ; Golburn's Magazine, 
 T. F. Wedmore, 133 : 186 ; Dublin University Review, 
 64 : 593 ; Eclectic Review, E. P. Hood, 7 : 62. 
 
 Dubiety. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 Eagle, The. The first poem in Ferishtah's Fancies. 
 
 A dervish is a Mohammedan religious mendicant, in Persia, 
 India, or Turkey. The name signifies " the sill of the door," 
 and refers to the fact that the members of the order beg 
 from door to door as a means of livelihood. Some wander 
 through the country, and others live in monasteries. The 
 order is thought to have had its origin in Sufuism, the 
 mystical form of Mohammedism. Their worship is essen'
 
 The Eagle. Earth's Immortalities. 123 
 
 tially mystical in its nature, consisting of prayers, dances, 
 and frequent mortifications. 
 
 This poem is simply a versification of a fable drawn from 
 The Fables of Pilpay, published in London, 1818. See 
 Ferishtah's Fancies for an account of these fables. As 
 contained in this book the fable reads as follows : 
 
 " THE DEBVISE, THE FALCON, AND THE RAVEN. 
 
 " A certain Dervise used to relate, that in his youth once 
 passing through a wood, and admiring the works of the 
 great Author of nature, he spied a Falcon that held a piece 
 of flesh in his beak ; and hovering about a tree, tore the 
 flesh in bits, and gave it to a young Raven that lay bald 
 and featherless in its nest. The Dervise admiring the 
 bounty of Providence, in a rapture of admiration cried 
 out, ' Behold this poor bird, that is not able to seek out 
 sustenance for himself, is not however forsaken of its Cre- 
 ator, who spreads the whole world like a table, where all 
 creatures have their food provided for them ! He extends 
 his liberality so far, that the serpent finds wherewith to live 
 upon the mountain of Gahen [a mountain in the East, fa- 
 mous for a vast number of venomous animals]. Why then 
 am I so greedy, and wherefore do I run to the ends of the 
 earth, and plough up the ocean for bread ? Is it not bet- 
 ter that I should henceforward confine myself in repose to 
 some little corner, and abandon myself to fortune ? ' Upon 
 this he retired to his cell, where, without putting himself to 
 any farther trouble for anything in the world, he remained 
 three days and three nights without victuals. At last, ' Serv- 
 ant of mind,' said the Creator to him in a dream, ' know 
 thou that all things in this world have their causes: and 
 though my providence can never be limited, my wisdom 
 requires that men shall make use of the means that I have 
 ordained them. If thou wouldst imitate any one of the 
 birds thou hast seen to my glory, use the talents I have 
 given thee, and imitate the Falcon that feeds the Raven, 
 and not the Raven that lies a sluggard in his nest, and ex- 
 pects his food from another.' This example shows us, that 
 we are not to lead idle and lazy lives upon the pretense of 
 depending upon Providence." 
 
 Earth's Immortalities. Published in Dramatic Ro*
 
 124 Echetlos. 
 
 mances and Lyrics, seventh number of Bells and Pome- 
 granates, 1845. The two poems appeared as I. and II., 
 without the subtitles, which were added in 1888. In the 
 Poetical Works of 1863 this poem was classed among the 
 Lyrics, which in 1868 became Dramatic Lyrics. 
 
 Echetlos. Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, 1880. 
 
 This poem is based on a legend given in Pausanias' De- 
 scription of Greece, chapter thirty-two of the first book, 
 which is devoted to Attica. Pausanias gives this account 
 of the place where the battle of Marathon was fought : 
 
 "'The township of Marathon is about equidistant from 
 Athens and Carystus in Euboaa. It was this part of Attica 
 that the Persians landed at, and were defeated, and lost 
 some of their ships as they were putting out to sea in re- 
 treat. And in the plain is the tomb of the Athenians, and 
 on it are pillars with the names of the dead according to 
 their tribes. And another for the Plataeans of Boaotia and 
 their slaves ; for this was the first engagement in which 
 slaves fought. And there is apart a monument to Miltiades 
 the son of Cimon, whose death occurred afterwards, when he 
 failed to capture Paros, and was on that account put on his 
 trial by the Athenians. Here every night one may hear 
 horses neighing and men fighting : those who come on pur- 
 pose to see the sight suffer for their curiosity, but if they 
 are there as spectators accidentally the wrath of the gods 
 harms them not. And the people of Marathon highly honor 
 those that fell in the battle, calling them heroes, as also they 
 pay honors to Marathon (from whom the township gets its 
 name) and Hercules, whom they say they first of all the 
 Greeks worshiped as a god. And it chanced, as they say, 
 in the battle that a man of rustic appearance and dress ap- 
 peared, who slew many of the Persians with a ploughshare, 
 and vanished after the fight : and when the Athenians made 
 inquiry of the oracle, the god gave no other answer, but 
 bade them honor the god Echetlseus. And a trophy of 
 white stone was erected there." 
 
 The meaning of " Echetlos " is " wielder of the plough- 
 share." A picture of this hero was in the Poecile at Athens. 
 Browning contrasts him with Miltiades, who made war on 
 Paros for his own personal gain ; and Themistokles, who 
 went over to the Persians.
 
 Edith. Epilogue. 125 
 
 Edith. The dead woman in Too Late, who is loved by 
 the man who speaks but who is not her husband, though he 
 has hoped that some day she might be his. 
 
 Eglamor. The defeated poet in Sordello, which see in 
 this volume. 
 
 Elvire. The wife in Fifine at the Fair, who walks 
 with her husband through Pornic fair, and listens to his 
 discussions of the nature of the love between husband and 
 wife, caused by his seeing the gypsy woman, Fifine, dan- 
 cing. 
 
 Englishman in Italy, The. First published in Dra- 
 matic Romances and Lyrics, seventh number of Bells and 
 Pomegranates, 1845. The title was England in Italy 
 (Piano di Sorrento), which was changed to the present 
 form in the Poems of 1849. Romances, 1863 ; Dramatic 
 Romances, 1868. 
 
 See Mrs. Orr, who gives an unusually good interpretation 
 of this poem. Mr. Symons says it is " the most entirely 
 descriptive poem ever written by Mr. Browning." 
 
 Epilogue. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 In regard to the third verse of this poem the Pall Mall 
 Gazette of February 1, 1890, related this incident : " One 
 evening, just before his death-illness, the poet was reading 
 this from a proof to his daughter-in-law and sister. He 
 said : ' It almost looks like bragging to say this, and as if I 
 ought to cancel it ; but it 's the simple truth ; and as it 's 
 true, it shall stand.' All Browning was there 'as it 's true 
 it shall stand.' His faith knew no doubting. In all trouble, 
 against all evil, he stood firm. And it is this buoyant trust 
 and unfailing hope in him, and his wonderful power of in- 
 stilling it into others, that constitutes his main hold on his 
 admirers." 
 
 Epilogue. Dramatis Personce, 1864. 
 
 The first speaker interprets the Old Testament super- 
 naturalism ; the second speaker modern rationalism, while 
 the third speaker, the poet himself, interprets the philo- 
 sophic spiritualism which recognizes at once the immanence 
 and the transcendence of God. See Mrs. Orr, Symons, and 
 Fotheringham. 
 
 Epilogue. Ferishtah's Fancies. Written at Venice, 
 December 1st, 1884, it sums up the thought of the entire
 
 126 An Epistle. Eurydice to Orpheus. 
 
 work. It refers to the heroes mentioned in the preceding 
 poems, and by implication to all the world's heroes. It is a 
 plea for heroic faith in the good of life, and in the love 
 that will triumph over every obstacle in the realization of 
 immortality. 
 
 Epistle, An. Containing the Strange Medical 
 Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician. Men 
 and Women, 1855. Begun at Rome in the winter of 
 18531854, and completed at Florence. 
 
 This poem is based on the account of the raising of 
 Lazarus contained in John xi. 1-46. 
 
 Snake-stone. A stone that would charm away the poison 
 of a snake-bite. - A spider that weaves no web. Probably 
 of the saltigrade species. " One often sees this species and 
 its congeners upon the ledges of rocks, the edges of tomb- 
 stones, the walls of buildings, and like situations, hunting 
 their prey, which they secure by jumping upon them, very 
 much as a cat or tiger would do." The expression, " take 
 five and drop them, " probably refers to the use of the 
 spider as a medicine by physicians. The spider was thought 
 to have an occult healing power applied either internally or 
 externally. Pliny describes its use ; and until recently the 
 spider has been so employed. See Poet-Lore, 1 : 518. 
 Greek fire. Described in chapter lii. of Gibbon's Decline 
 and Fall. " It would seem, " he says, " that the principal 
 ingredient was the naphtha, or liquid bitumen, a light, tena- 
 cious, inflammable oil, which springs from the earth, and 
 catches fire as soon as it comes in contact with the air." 
 Slue-flowering borage. Mentioned because of its stimula- 
 ting medical properties. 
 
 See Corson's Introduction. Miss H. E. Hersey, in her 
 edition of Christmas - Eve and Easter - Day, and other 
 Poems, gives brief notes. 
 
 Eulalia. The betrothed wife of Luitolfo, in A Soul's 
 Tragedy. 
 
 Eurydice to Orpheus. A Picture by Leighton. 
 This poem was first printed in the Royal Academy exhibi- 
 tion catalogue for 1864, but in the form of prose. It was 
 printed with the author's name, and called " A Fragment." 
 The first reprinting was in the Selections of 1865, where it 
 bore the title, Eurydice to Orpheus : a picture by Frederick 
 Leighton, A. R. A. Poetical Works, 1868.
 
 Euthukles. The Family. 127 
 
 Frequent mention is made of Orpheus by the classical 
 writers, for he was one of the chief legendary characters of 
 Greece and Rome. Plato mentions him in several of the 
 dialogues, Ovid has something to say of him in the Meta- 
 morphoses, and he is spoken of by Virgil in the Georgics. 
 He was described as a native, and the king, of Thrace ; he 
 was in the Argonautic expedition, and rendered it important 
 service ; he taught the Greeks religion, and established the 
 mysteries ; he founded civilization and social institutions, 
 invented fables, and was expert in medicine. His wife was 
 Eurydice, a nymph. She was bitten by a serpent and died. 
 She was followed into the under-world by Orpheus, where 
 his lyre, which had the power of drawing beasts, trees, and 
 stones about him to listen to its magic tones, was made use 
 of to work enchantment, for even the damned ceased from 
 their torments while he played. His playing even wrought 
 upon Pluto and Proserpine, until they promised to restore 
 his wife to him, on condition that he should not look back 
 upon her until they had passed outside the infernal regions,. 
 Orpheus did look back, and his wife was at once caught 
 away from his sight. On his return to earth he mourned 
 for Eurydice until the Thracian women tore him in pieces 
 because of his excessive grief. The poet represents Eury- 
 dice as speaking the words which caused Orpheus to look 
 back upon her. 
 
 Euthukles. The man of Phokis, the lover of Balaus- 
 tion in Balaustiort s Adventure, and her husband in Aris- 
 tophanes' Apology. He follows her to Athens after she had 
 saved her companions at Syracuse by her recital of Alkes- 
 tis ; they are married soon after ; he describes the scenes 
 following the presentation of the Thesmophoriazusae, and 
 then he accompanies her to her home at Rhodes. 
 
 Evelyn Hope. Men and Women, 1855. Lyrics, 1863 ; 
 Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 See Nettleship's Essays and Thoughts, for comments. 
 
 Face, A. Dramatis Personce, 1864. 
 
 The speaker is a painter, who is describing the beautiful 
 face of the person to whom he is speaking. 
 
 Family, The. Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884. 
 
 Shiraz (Sheeraz). A beautiful Persian city, the capital 
 of the province of Fars, once splendid and prosperous, and
 
 128 Fears and Scruples. Ferishtah's Fancies. 
 
 the home of Saadi and Hafiz. The Hakim, or Hakeem. 
 The Mohammedan Messiah. 
 
 Fears and Scruples. Pacchiarotto, with Other Po- 
 ems, 1876. 
 
 In answer to a letter of inquiry, addressed to him hy Mr. 
 W. G. Kingsland, Browning wrote the following in regard 
 to the meaning of this poem : " I think that the point I 
 wanted to illustrate was this : Where there is a genuine 
 love of the 'letters' and 'actions 'of the invisible 'friend,' 
 however these may be disadvantaged by an inability to 
 meet the objections to their authenticity or historical value 
 urged by ' experts ' who assume the privilege of learning 
 over ignorance, it would indeed be a wrong to the wis- 
 dom and goodness of the ' friend ' if he were supposed 
 capable of overlooking the actual ' love ' and only consider- 
 ing the ' ignorance ' which, failing to in any degree effect 
 ' love,' is really the highest evidence that ' love ' exists. So 
 I meant, whether the result be clear or no." 
 
 Ferishtah's Fancies. Published by Smith, Elder and 
 Co., London, 1884. Pages, i.-viii., 1-143. Contents : Pro- 
 logue : I. The Eagle; II. The Melon-seller; III. Shah 
 Abbas; IV. The Family; V. The Sun; VI. Mihrab 
 Shah; VII. A Camel-Driver; VIII. Two Camels; IX. 
 Cherries ; X. Plot-Culture ; XI. A Pillar at Sebzevar ; 
 XII. A Bean-Stripe, also Apple-Eating ; Epilogue. Dated 
 at the end of the epilogue : Palazzo Giustinian-Recanati, 
 Venice ; December 1, 1883. 
 
 This collection of poems was written under the influence 
 of three Oriental books ; the Fables of Bidpai, Firdusi's 
 Shah-Nameh, and the book of Job. Mrs. Orr says the 
 idea " grew out of a fable by Pilpay [Bidpai], which Mr. 
 Browning read when a boy. He put this into verse ; and 
 it then occurred to him to make the poem the beginning 
 of a series, in which the Dervish, who is first introduced as 
 a learner, should reappear in the character of a teacher. 
 Ferishtah's fancies are the familiar illustrations by which 
 his teachings are enforced." This manner of treating the 
 subject, and the general form of it, gives the book a resem- 
 blance to Jami's Saldmdn and Absdl. 
 
 The opening poem of the series, that called The Eagle, 
 is not drawn from any of the best English translations of
 
 Feris'htah's Fancies. 129 
 
 the Fables of Bidpai. The best translations are North's 
 Morall Philosophie of Doni, 1579 ; Eastwick's, 1 854 ; and 
 Kalilah and Dimnah ; or, The Fables of Bidpai, Keith- 
 Falconer, 1885. In none of these does the fable of the 
 Eagle and the Dervish appear ; and it evidently must have 
 been drawn from some of the many .other connected fables. 
 In fact, this particular fable does appear in a children's 
 book called The Fables of Pilpay, London, 1818. In this 
 translation, which is anonymous, only the short fables are 
 given ; but the introductory narratives, and the continuous 
 story which binds together the fables, are omitted. This 
 translation is wanting in every kind of critical skill, was 
 probably taken from some modern European language, and 
 carelessly or purposely included fables not belonging to 
 Bidpai. 
 
 Mr. Joseph Jacobs, who has recently edited the earliest 
 English translation of the Fables of Bidpai, that of North, 
 says it is " the English version of an Italian adaptation of 
 a Spanish translation of a Latin version of a Hebrew trans- 
 lation of an Arabic adaptation of the Pehlevi (Old Persian) 
 version of the Indian original." This gives us an idea of 
 the changes through which this work has passed, and of its 
 wide - spread diffusion through all languages. Originally 
 these fables were birth stories of Buddha, and their equiva- 
 lents are found in the Pantschatantra, the Hitopadesa, the 
 Katha-sacrit-sagara, and the Mahabharata, the most pop- 
 ular of the Buddhist books. Between 400 B. c. and 200 
 B. c. many of these stories were put together in a frame 
 formed of the life and experience of Buddha. They were 
 translated into Old Persian about 500 A. D., and took sub- 
 stantially the form they now have as the Fables of Bidpai. 
 These are beast-fables, in which animals act as men ; and 
 they originated in the animism, or more especially the me- 
 tempsychosis, of India. 
 
 Jacobs and Keith-Falconer give tables showing the re- 
 markable diffusion of these fables, and their connection 
 with all other fables, even with ^Esop and Uncle Remus. 
 They also give most fascinating accounts of the origin and 
 growth of the Bidpai literature. 
 
 One feature of the Bidpai fables is their moral character, 
 which has commended them to the believers in all the great
 
 130 FerishtaKs Fancies. 
 
 religions. Jacobs says this book " enjoys the unique dis- 
 tinction of having appealed to all the great religions of the 
 world. Originated in Buddhism, it was adopted by Brah- 
 manism, passed on by Zoroastrianism to Islam, which trans- 
 mitted it to Christendom by the mediation of Jews." 
 " Incredible as it may seem, " says Jacobs again, "" the 
 Fables were translated in the first period of their spon- 
 taneous spread, not for the story-interest of them, but on 
 account of their moral interest their ' moral philosophy,' 
 as the title of the Italian and English versions testifies. 
 They were regarded as homilies, and the tales were only 
 tolerated as so much jam to give relish to the morality. It 
 is important to notice this aspect of the book, as it makes it 
 still more remarkable that it should have been accepted as a 
 sort of secular Bible, if we may so term it, by men of so 
 many different religions. There must have been something 
 essentially human in this Buddhist book that it should have 
 been welcomed as a moral encheiridion by Zoroastrians, 
 Moslems, Jews, and Christians. Perhaps we may account 
 for this universal acceptance of its doctrines because they 
 seemed to come from the mouths of those who could not be 
 suspected of heresy from our dumb brethren, the beasts." 
 
 Had Browning continued this series of poems as he began 
 it, the resemblance to the Fables of Bldpai in outward form 
 would have been very close. However, after the first poem, 
 he dropped the element of fable and made his poems a 
 series of philosophical discussions ; and yet enough of the 
 story element remains to bring Bidpai distinctly to mind. 
 Ferishtah very much resembles Bidpai the philosopher, as 
 he appears in the Fables. His character as a sage, and his 
 manner of teaching, are quite similar. 
 
 Another feature of the book is that obtained from Fir- 
 dusi's great epic poem of Persia, the Shah Nameh. The 
 name Ferishtah is evidently itself Persian, and though it 
 does not appear in the Shah Nameh, yet Ferishtah is the 
 name of a Persian historian of the eighteenth century. No 
 part of the machinery of Ferishtah 's Fancies is taken from 
 Firdusi, nor has Browning made use of any of the legends 
 of the Persian epic. Yet it has frequent reference to the 
 'fabulous heroes, characters, and incidents in Firdusi. 
 
 Firdusi. whose name was Abu'l Casim Mansur, was born
 
 Ferishtati 's fancies. 131 
 
 about 941 A. D. and died in 1020. He brought together the 
 legends of ancient Persia, and wrote a great epic poem, 
 called the Shah Nameh or Book of Kings. This poem 
 was edited by Jules de Mohl, and published by the French 
 government ; and the Persian was accompanied by a French 
 translation. Madam Mohl edited a popular edition in 
 1876-77. No complete translation has ever been made into 
 English. That of James Atkinson, now published in the 
 series of Chandos Classics, is a translation of a Persian 
 abridgment, and is in mixed prose and verse. Miss Helen 
 Zimmern's Heroic Tales gives in an abbreviated form from 
 the French some of the most interesting episodes. One of 
 the most beautiful and pathetic of the episodes, the story of 
 Rustem and Sohrab, was made the subject of a poem by 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Browning undoubtedly had the Shah Nameh in mind 
 when he wrote Ferishtah's Fancies, for it shows a close in- 
 timacy with that poem. As Ferishtah is a Persian dervish, 
 it is quite in keeping with his character that he should refer 
 frequently to this great .epic poem, which is known to every 
 school-boy and peasant in Persia. Its legendary characters 
 are known in that country as those of Homer are among us, 
 and it is even more natural to refer to them, because of the 
 associations with the national history and ideas. For descrip- 
 tive and analytical studies of the Shah Nameh, see Miss 
 Zimmern's introduction to her Heroic Tales, and Samuel 
 Johnson's Oriental Religions : Persia,. 
 
 Another element in Ferishtah's Fancies is that taken 
 from the book of Job, though it does not equal that from 
 the Fables of Bidpai or the Shah Nameh. Browning had 
 evidently given some attention to the critical discussion of 
 the origin of the book of Job, for he suggests that it is a 
 Persian book. Scholars have often been of the opinion 
 that Job is not distinctly Hebrew, but Arabic or Syriac in 
 origin and in some of the characteristics of its teachings. 
 Some of the teachings indicate that the author may have 
 come in contact with the religion of Zoroaster, for while Job 
 is a stern monotheist, he believes that God is opposed by an 
 intriguing Adversary. 
 
 In a letter to a friend, written soon after this series of 
 poems was published, Browning said : " I hope and believe
 
 132 Festus. Fifine at the Fair. 
 
 that one or two careful readings of the Poem will make its 
 sense clear enough. Above all, pray allow for the Poet's 
 inventiveness in any case, and do not suppose there is more 
 than a thin disguise of a few Persian names and allusions. 
 There was no such person as Ferishtah the stories are 
 all inventions. . . . The Hebrew quotations are put in for 
 a purpose, as a direct acknowledgment that certain doctrines 
 may be found in the Old Book, which the Concoctors of 
 Novel Schemes of Morality put forth as discoveries of their 
 own." The mottoes indicate the humorous and fictitiously 
 Oriental manner of the poem. 
 
 See The Athenceum, Dec. 6, 1884 ; Saturday Review, 
 58 : 727 ; The Spectator, Dec. 6, 1884 ; The Academy, 
 Dec. 13, 1884 ; The Browning Society's Papers, 2 : 245*. 
 
 Festus. The devoted friend of Paracelsus, in the poem 
 of that name. He has faith in Paracelsus and admires him 
 to the end. Michal is his wife, a true and faithful woman, 
 loving and wisely advising the seeker for knowledge. 
 
 File, trump, drum, sound ! The first words of the 
 song with which Parleyings with Certain People of Note 
 in Their Day ends. It was written for the music by 
 Charles Avison, which accompanies it, p. 364, vol. vi. of 
 Riverside edition of Works. 
 
 Fifine. The gypsy woman in Fifine at the Fair, whose 
 physical beauty and gifts as a dancer led to the discussion 
 between husband and wife which forms the poem. 
 
 Fifine at the Fair. Published in 1872, by Smith, 
 Elder and Co., London. Pages, i.-xii., 1-171. The pages 
 from i. to xii. consisted of a half-title, title, quotation from 
 Moliere's Don Juan, act i. scene 3, a translation of it into 
 verse by Browning, and a prologue, entitled Amphibian. 
 The poem closed with an epilogue, The Householder. 
 
 The quotation from Moliere's comedy of Don Juan, ou 
 Le Festin de Pierre or Feast with the Statue, is sugges- 
 tive as to the purpose of the poem. See Henri van Laun's 
 translation of Moliere's Dramatic Works, and especially the 
 introductory notice to this particular comedy. Don Juan 
 has been a favorite character with the dramatists, and it 
 originated in a Spanish legend of a Don Juan who ran 
 away with the daughter of a venerable commander, whom 
 he killed in a duel. A splendid tomb and statue were built
 
 Fifine at the Fair. 133 
 
 to the commander, which Don Jaan insulted, and for this 
 impiety was hurled to the infernal regions by some supernat- 
 ural power. Several Spanish, Itah'an, French, and English 
 dramatists have made use of this story, sometimes origi- 
 nally and sometimes copying from each other. 
 
 Van Laun's account of Moliere's Don Juan will give 
 some hints for the clearer understanding of Browning's 
 poem, though the latter had no purpose of drawing from 
 Moliere or depicting another Don Juan. " This play," says 
 Van Laun, " depicts the hero as a man who, rich, noble, 
 powerful, and bold, respects neither heaven nor earth, and 
 knows no bounds to the gratification of his desires or his 
 passions. He has excellent manners, but abominable prin- 
 ciples ; he is a whited sepulcre, and abuses the privileges of 
 nobility without acknowledging its obligations or its duties. 
 Moliere sketches no longer the nobleman as ridiculous [as 
 had been done by some who had previously made use of 
 Don Juan], but makes him terrible, and shows that his ex- 
 aggerated hatred of cant leads to the commission of the 
 greatest immoralities, and to atheism. After having se- 
 duced and abandoned many fair maids ; after having in- 
 sulted his father, and openly flaunted the most skeptical 
 doctrines, Don Juan turns hypocrite ; for hypocrisy is the 
 climax of all vices. But although the hero of the play is 
 young, elegant, and profligate, Moliere makes us feel all 
 the while that underneath the charming exterior lurks 
 something venomous. No doubt he is witty, but too sar- 
 castic to be pleasant. He is sensual, but less than is gener- 
 ally thought. He is not so much a libertine, as a man who 
 loves to set all rules of decency, order, and morality at de- 
 fiance. What attracts him is something eccentric, violent, 
 and scandalous. He likes to seduce a nun, or an innocent 
 country girl, who is already engaged ; and this not through 
 mere lust, but in order to prove that he can trample upon 
 all human laws ; just as he invites to supper the statue of a 
 man whom he has killed, and plays the hypocrite in order 
 to show his scorn for all divine laws. . . . But Moliere has 
 not made the hero coarse or ribald ; his language is always 
 well chosen; and although his morality may be offensive, 
 his manners are never so. The style of his speech is gen- 
 erally masterly, often eloquent, and not seldom character- 
 istic of his sneering, insolent, cruel, hypocritical feelings."
 
 134 Fifine at the Fair. 
 
 In Moliere's comedy Don Juan has married Elvira, the 
 daughter of a nobleman, and at the end of a month has de- 
 serted her; and he is planning the seduction of a young 
 bride. Suddenly Elvira comes upon the scene, and in the 
 conversation which follows, from which Browning quotes, 
 Don Juan makes it known to his wife that he has deserted 
 her. In that part of the conversation quoted, Don Juan 
 exhibits doubt as to the course to pursue towards Elvira, 
 and hesitates to declare to her the truth. Her admonition 
 causes him to make known his abandonment of her ; but 
 he gives a wholly false reason for his act. 
 
 It is probable that Browning found suggestions for this 
 poem in Byron's Don Juan, as well as in his Childe Har- 
 old, to this extent, at least, that, whereas Moliere and By- 
 ron had drawn Don Juan as essentially bad, it seemed to 
 him desirable to set forth one of another kind. In section 
 sixty-seven he quotes from the fourth canto of Byron's 
 Childe Harold. 
 
 Pornic is a small maritime town of France, situated di- 
 rectly on the ocean, at the bay of Bourgneuf, in the De- 
 partment of the Lower Loire in Brittany ; and is twenty- 
 seven miles southwest of Nantes. Its baths and mineral 
 springs are well known, and in the season are much fre- 
 quented. It has a large traffic in building ships and fitting 
 them out for cod-fishing. Public fairs are held every fif- 
 teenth of June, second of September, and fifteenth of De- 
 cember. The city itself is built on the side of a hill in the 
 shape of an amphitheatre, and is very quaint and irregular. 
 
 Pornic formerly was burned and razed to the ground by 
 the Vendean army of Charette. It is now divided into 
 two parts : npper and lower Pornic, and the Sands. These 
 two parts have communication with each other by means of 
 vast staircases hewn out of the solid rock. The port itself 
 is bounded by a large quay, from which juts out a mole 
 which has recently been decorated with a statue of Admiral 
 Leray. The old castle, built in the thirteenth century and 
 formerly in ruins, has lately been completely restored. 
 Among many other curiosities and features of interest to 
 be seen in the neighborhood may be mentioned cromlechs 
 and various Celtic monuments. It has also curious natural 
 grottoes, hollowed out by the dashing of the waves, which are
 
 Fifine at the Fair. 135 
 
 known by the name of " The Chimneys," because when the 
 sea is rough, the water spouts up with great force through 
 a hole in the top, resembling the smoke from a chimney. 
 
 Matilda Betham-Edwards, in her A Year in Western 
 France, gives the following description of Pornic : " A de- 
 licious little seaside resort, now crowded and fashionable, 
 but forty years ago a handful of fishermen's huts only, is 
 Pornic on the Bay of Biscay. Half Italian, half Algerian 
 in aspect, with its intense blue sea, emerald hills, and tiny 
 white town built terrace-wise above the small enclosed port, 
 Pornic is a place in which even the tropical heats of French 
 summers are bearable. Here are shady walks close to the 
 sea, little groves of silvery poplar and acacia, and long 
 winding walks along the rocks. I recollect nothing on a 
 small scale prettier or more gracious than this little port of 
 Pornic ; and one July evening during my stay, with a sil- 
 very crescent moon, a sky of mingled amber, pearl, rose, 
 and deep purple, as the fairy-like little fishing-boats glided 
 out one by one into the open sea, the scene was enchanting. 
 Beyond Poruic eastward are smooth stretches of golden 
 corn, reaching down to the rocky shore ; and when you 
 have got to the edge of the cliffs, you can walk for miles 
 between purslain hedges, having green hills on one side and 
 on the other shelving brown rocks and the lake-like, capti- 
 vating Southern sea. 
 
 "The glare of the July sun is terrible, in spite of the 
 green trees and shadow-giving rocks here ; but for all that 
 Pornic is a delicious, friendly little place, with beautiful 
 bits of luxuriant country close to the sea, and an intensity 
 of color in the purple sea and emerald verdure quite Italian. 
 
 " Sea-bathing at Pornic is a sociable and amusing pas- 
 time. Friends, neighbors, and young people given to flirta- 
 tion put on their coquettish bathing-dresses, and play about 
 in the water in company. In spite of the intense heat, Por- 
 nic is as crowded as it can be during the season, though 
 there seems to be no other attraction but the aforesaid con- 
 stitutional sea-walks. In September and in October it must 
 be delightful, though I believe few visit it then. An enter- 
 prising and philanthropic Frenchwoman, the popular author 
 of some admirable works of science, has lately founded a 
 popular library in Pornic the first effort of the kind
 
 136 Fifine at the Fair. 
 
 ever heard of in these picturesque but outlandish and be- 
 hindhand parts. The Pornic people have an amiable, indo- 
 lent look, and would, I should say, take to innovations un- 
 kindly." 
 
 It seems to have been only a second thought which caused 
 Browning to draw from Don Juan such suggestion as it gave 
 him ; and the primary motive came from his life at Pornic. 
 According to Mrs. Orr, " Mr. Browning was, with his fam- 
 ily, at Pornic many years ago, and there saw the gypsy 
 who is the original of Fifine. His fancy was evidently sent 
 roaming by her audacity, her strength, the contrast which 
 she presented to the more spiritual types of womanhood ; 
 and this contrast eventually found expression in a poetic 
 theory of life, in which these opposite types and their cor- 
 responding modes of attraction became the necessary com- 
 plement of each other. As he laid down the theory Mr. 
 Browning would be speaking in his own person. But he 
 would turn into some one else in the act of working it out, 
 for it insensibly carried with it a plea for yielding to those 
 opposite attractions, not only successively, but at the same 
 time, and a modified Don Juan would grow up under his 
 pen, thinking in some degree his thoughts, using in some 
 degree his language, and only standing out as a distinctive 
 character at the end of the poem." 
 
 The gypsy woman evidently suggested to the poet a 
 study of different types of womanhood, and their influence 
 on man for good or evil. Then came the thought of a man 
 like Don Juan, who should seek whatever help woman could 
 give, not in the sensual mariner of Don Juan, but in one re- 
 fined and intellectual. In his study of the poem, Mr. J. T. 
 Nettleship has given an outline of it, which is helpful as to 
 its meaning and the successive experiences it interprets. 
 
 In paragraphs one to fourteen the speaker with his wife 
 is walking through a fair at Pornic ; and the strolling actors 
 who exhibit before them suggest to him discourse on the 
 charms and advantages of a Bohemian life. 
 
 Paragraphs fifteen to thirty - four discuss the different 
 types of womanhood, beginning with Fifine, who suddenly 
 appears before the speaker in all her physical perfection. 
 He also shows how the spiritual beauty of Elvire is superior 
 to the physical beauty of Fifine, and why it has a greater 
 influence upon him.
 
 Fifine at the Fair. 137 
 
 Paragraphs thirty-five to forty-two indicate why he pre- 
 fers his own wife to any other woman, even though others 
 may for the moment attract and fascinate him. This de- 
 votion to the wife he compares to his possession of a great 
 picture of Raphael, which he cares for with zeal even though 
 he looks at a picture-book by Dore". 
 
 In paragraphs forty-three to fifty-three he shows why 
 men and women have need of each other, to supplement 
 unloveliness by love. The poet here gives his philosophy 
 of the married union of man and woman, that the nature of 
 each may be rounded and completed in the other. 
 
 In paragraphs fifty-four to fifty-nine the same thought is 
 continued, but carried up to a study of the philosophy of 
 life. The development of the soul by the means of love is 
 the theme. Here he works out an artistic illustration, that 
 of the creation of a beautiful statue, which exhibits life in 
 its higher capacities. The legend of Eidothe'e, the daughter 
 of Proteus, as told in the fourth book of the Odyssey, is 
 made use of to show how the soul may be brought out in the 
 artistic attempt to unfold it and make it a perfect thing. 
 
 In paragraphs sixty to sixty-three he indicates what Fifine 
 may be to him in this search for the purification and spir- 
 itual re-creation of the soul. 
 
 Paragraphs sixty-four to sixty-nine show how the sensual 
 or the false may become a help in the soul's search for 
 higher gain. This he illustrates by the swimmer, who is 
 upborne by whatever he touches in the sea. 
 
 In paragraphs seventy to eighty-eight he brings out again 
 his oft-repeated idea of the influence of woman in helping 
 man to secure his soul's growth, that she is essential to this 
 higher spiritual attainment. He also indicates that Fifine 
 in this way helps him, simply because she is a type to him 
 of the false and of the vain shows of the world. 
 
 In paragraphs eighty-nine to one hundred and twenty-six 
 he draws out his philosophy of life, his playing Schumann's 
 Carnival suggesting a starting point, and Fifine affording 
 illustration. The music gives him a dream of the world as 
 a masque ; and under this form he studies all its institutions 
 to see what they will afford for the development of the soul. 
 
 In paragraph one hundred and twenty-seven the speaker 
 trudges home with Elvire, and discusses through the next
 
 138 Fifine at the Fair. 
 
 four paragraphs what sense and falsehood do for man, in 
 view of death as the " final " of earth's opportunities. 
 
 In the last paragraph he slips away ; but the epilogue 
 continues the discussion with the declaration that " Love is 
 all, and Death is naught." 
 
 Mr. Nettleship outlines the purpose and meaning of the 
 poem in these words : " The poem is put into the form of 
 a monologue, spoken by a man ; throughout he introduces 
 observations and objections made by his wife, each of which 
 he discusses and answers. The whole poem is dramatic : 
 the speaker is any man you like, of high attainments, lofty 
 aspirations, strong emotions, and capricious will. Being 
 such a man, he deals partly with truth, somewhat with 
 sophism. His reasoning is good so far as his intellect and 
 aspiration direct it ; but the last section of the poem proves 
 the truth of his own philosophy (embodied in the swimmer 
 symbol), namely, that a man reaching after too high an 
 ideal is likely to fall the lower, the higher he has striven to 
 reach. The clearest way of showing where he uses truth, 
 sophism, or a mixture of both is to say that wherever he 
 speaks of Fifine (whether as type or not) in relation to him- 
 self and his own desire for truth, or right living with his 
 wife, he is sophistical ; wherever he speaks directly of his 
 wife's value to him (except in paragraphs thirty-eight and 
 thirty-nine) he speaks truth with an alloy of sophism ; and 
 wherever he speaks impersonally he speaks the truth. The 
 man and his wife are cultivated people of independent 
 means living at Pornic in Brittany. It is Pornic fair, and 
 the fair has tempted thither a company of strolling actors, 
 rope-dancers, and athletes. The husband takes the beauty 
 of this strolling company, Fifine, as a type, first, of woman- 
 hood, to point the moral of man's relations with women ; 
 second, as a symbol of any influence good or bad which a 
 wise man is bound to make use of for his soul's development 
 during its life in this world only. Using her for a text, he 
 moralizes on certain facts and ideas connected with the life 
 of any individual man, as a gregarious and progressive be- 
 ing, among collective men and women." 
 
 Prof. C. C. Everett, in the Old and New, for November, 
 1872, says: "The Don Juan who could justify his course 
 must be of a philosophic turn ; he must be able to play with
 
 Filippo Baldinucci. 139 
 
 the outsides of things. Then, too, the reader must not ex- 
 pect a clear, consistent, and satisfactory argument. The 
 poet-philosopher who would make the worse appear the bet- 
 ter reason must deal more or less in sophistries. He must 
 put forth pretensions in one place that he fails to satisfy in 
 another. He must sometimes wear a mask ; but this he 
 cannot wear always. Finally, the reader must remember 
 that this is poetry, and not prose. He must not expect an 
 argument that will follow its heads like a sermon." 
 
 An analysis and summary of the poem by Rev. J. Sharpe 
 is given in The Browning Society's Papers, 1 : 255. 
 
 In her " picture of constancy, " Miss Burt, in Brown- 
 ing's Women, gives a study of Elvire and Fifine. An 
 extended and keen analysis of the poem, entering fully into 
 its details, and also into its philosophy, is that by Mr. J. T. 
 Nettleship, published in the second number, 1 : 199 and 
 1 : 17*, of The Browning Society's Papers / reprinted in 
 Essays and Thoughts. Also Old and New, C. C. Everett, 
 6 : 609 ; Canadian Monthly, Goldwin Smith, 2 : 285 ; 
 Temple Bar, 37 : 315 ; The Browning Society's Papers, 
 2 : 240*; The Academy, Nov. 27, 1875. 
 
 Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial. 
 A Reminiscence of A. D. 1676. Pacchiarotto, with 
 Other Poems, 1876. 
 
 Filippo Baldinucci, a distinguished Italian writer on art, 
 was born in Florence in 1624, and died in 1696. His chief 
 work is his Notizie dei Professori del Disegno, or Notices of 
 Painters, from Cimabue, 1620 - 1670. This history of art 
 is a series of biographical sketches in six volumes, but it is 
 intensely Florentine in its purpose and method. The com- 
 plete works of Baldinucci were published at Milan in four- 
 teen volumes, 1808 - 1812. See further account of Baldi- 
 nucci in this volume under Pacchiarotto. 
 
 The incident related in the poem is contained in Baldi- 
 nucci's sketch of Lodovico Buti, as follows : 
 
 " He was given an order to make a figure of Christ cru- 
 cified, which is now seen in one of the corners on the side 
 of the wall just outside the gate at San Friano. It does 
 not seem out of place to relate here an interesting anecdote 
 of a little episode which took place concerning this picture, 
 and which was told to me in my early youth by an old and 
 venerable man, who lived at that time.
 
 140 Filippo Baldinucci. 
 
 " To begin, we will say that on the left of the above- 
 named gate, stretching out towards Monticelli, is a little 
 cemetery, the lateral terminations of which on the side of 
 the street are enclosed by mulberry trees and lead in the 
 direction of a little property at the foot of Monte Oliveto, 
 called Verzaia. This little cemetery, in the last century, 
 and even in the time of which we write, was used for a 
 burying ground for the Jews. In the upper part, it is 
 bounded by a very narrow road, which, diverging from the 
 highway, winds around a hill, contiguous to which is the 
 side of the aforesaid angle, where was already built a hand- 
 some chapel, the same one in which the above-mentioned 
 Crucifixion is now seen. In this chapel the patron of the 
 place had already had painted a handsome picture of the 
 Virgin Mary, with the end in view, that it could be seen the 
 first thing by anyone entering the city ; and thus, this figure 
 accidentally became the principal feature of this little ceme- 
 tery. The Jews were much annoyed to see our sacred 
 image in that place, and they held a meeting, in order to 
 decide upon some means of having it removed at any cost. 
 To this end they had an interview with the patron of the 
 place, and expressed to him their wishes, promising to make 
 him a present of one hundred ducats, whenever he would 
 consent to have this picture transferred to the other side, 
 which overlooked the public street. The bargain was made 
 and the money counted out. The place was hung with cur- 
 tains, and the new picture painted. As soon as it was dis- 
 covered the discontent of the Jews was revived ; for whilst 
 they thought the former ornament was being taken away 
 the work was still going on, and the figure of the Virgin 
 was transferred to the other side, but in its place was intro- 
 duced a handsome Crucifixion, which is the one we have 
 mentioned. 
 
 " Some of the Jews perceiving all at once in the dis- 
 tance these two pictures, when they returned home and re- 
 lated the fact to their companions, they rose in a body, and 
 such confusion and excitement ensued among these vicious 
 people, that it really appeared as if the Jewish quarter 
 would be destroyed. At last a meeting of the old men 
 took place, and one of the oldest and most incensed of the 
 rabbis was sent to call the person, who was the author of
 
 Fire is the Flint. Flight of the Duchess. 141 
 
 this joke, to account. The rabbi having delivered his mes- 
 sage and expressed his rage, and indeed having been allowed 
 every privilege of speech, the deputy arose, and with the 
 greatest calmness he spoke to them this : ' Tell me, good 
 people, why do you find fault with my patron ? Your 
 bargain has been fulfilled to the letter, and what else do 
 you want ? It is my opinion that you are very presumptu- 
 ous, that with your sordid money you wished to buy my 
 patron's liberty.' 
 
 " Then the rabbis dispersed, discontentedly, but tacitly 
 acknowledging they were wrong. They said no more about 
 it, and no longer tried with their ill-gotten riches to control 
 the piety of good Christians." 
 
 Fire is the Flint. The first words of the fifth lyric in 
 Ferishtah's Fancies. 
 
 Flight of the Duchess, The. This poem was first 
 printed in Hood's Magazine for April, 1845. See Nation- 
 ality in Drinks in this volume for reasons for this publica- 
 tion. The first nine sections only were thus printed ; the 
 whole poem first appeared in Dramatic Romances and 
 Lyrics, number seven of Sells and Pomegranates, 1845. 
 Poems, 1849 ; Romances, 1863 ; Dramatic Romances, 
 1868. 
 
 This poem took its rise from a line " Following the 
 Queen of the Gypsies, O ! " the burden of a song which the 
 poet, when a boy, heard a woman singing on a Guy Fawkes' 
 Day. As Browning was writing it, he was interrupted by 
 the arrival of a friend on some important business, which 
 drove all thoughts of the Duchess, and the scheme of her 
 story, out of the poet's head. But some months after the 
 publication of the first part, when he was staying at Bettis- 
 field Park, in Shropshire, a guest, speaking of early winter, 
 said, " The deer had already to break the ice in the pond." 
 On this a fancy struck the poet, and, on returning home, 
 he worked it up into the conclusion of the poem as it now 
 stands. 
 
 In stanza three merlin is a species of hawk ; falcon-lan- 
 ner is a long-tailed species of hawk. In stanza six urochs 
 is wild bull, and buffle is buffalo. In stanza ten St. Hubert 
 is the patron saint of huntsmen ; lacquer is yellowish varnish ; 
 venerers, prickers, and verderers are huntsmen, light-horse-
 
 142 The, Flower s Name. A Forgiveness. 
 
 men, and guardians of venison. In section eleven wind a 
 mart is to announce that the deer is taken ; sealed her eyes 
 means to close them, a term used in falconry ; fifty-part 
 canon is explained by Browning himself in a note published 
 by Corson : "A canon, in music, is a piece wherein the 
 subject is repeated, in various keys : and being strictly 
 obeyed in the repetition becomes the ' canon ' the impera- 
 tive law to what follows. Fifty of such parts would be 
 indeed a notable peal : to manage three is enough of an 
 achievement for a good musician." In section thirteen 
 helicat is hell-cat or witch ; imps the wing of the hawk 
 means to insert new feathers into the wing in place of those 
 which are broken. In section fourteen tomans are Persian 
 coins. In section seventeen morion is a helmet ; Orson 
 the wood-knight is described in the fifteenth century Ro- 
 mance of Valentine and Orson. Corson says that CJrson 
 was the twin brother of Valentine and son of Bellisant. 
 The brothers were born in a wood near Orleans, and Orson 
 was carried off by a bear (French ourson, a small bear), 
 which suckled him with her cubs. When he grew up, he 
 became the terror of France, and was called The Wild 
 Man of the Forest. Ultimately he was reclaimed by his 
 brother Valentine, overthrew the Green Knight, his rival in 
 love, and married Fezon, daughter of the Duke of Savary, 
 in Aquitaine. 
 
 See Corson's Introduction. Miss Burt's Browning's 
 Women discusses this poem in the chapter on " Lost 
 Chords." Mrs. Owen, in the fourth number of The Brown- 
 ing Society's Papers, 1 : 49*, analyses and interprets the 
 poem in an allegorical manner. Dr. Furnivall and others, 
 in the discussion following the paper, say that the poem is 
 simply a romance. John T. Nettleship, in Essays on 
 Browning's Poetry, gives a chapter to this poem, and it is 
 discussed in Kingsland's Chief Poet of the Age. 
 
 Flower's Name, The. See Garden Fancies. 
 
 Flute-Music, With an Accompaniment. A solan- 
 do, 1889. 
 
 Forgiveness, A. Pacchiarotto, with other Poems, 1876. 
 
 The speaker is a man who makes confession to his con- 
 fessor of the crime by which he had poisoned his wife in 
 jealousy of a supposed rival. She had told him the truth
 
 Founder of the Feast. Fra Lippo Lippi. 143 
 
 concerning her relations to another, but his jealousy made 
 her write in her own blood, with a dagger, the confession 
 she makes ; and the dagger is poisoned. The dagger de- 
 scribed was one possessed by Browning himself in a large 
 collection of similar deadly implements. 
 
 Founder of the Feast, The. A series of popular 
 concerts were held in London, at St. James' Hall, on Satur- 
 days and Mondays. They were managed by Mr. Arthur 
 Chappell ; and when the patrons presented him with an 
 album Browning wrote in it a poem addressed " To Arthur 
 Chappell." Printed in The World, April 16, 1884 ; The 
 Browning Society's Papers, number seven, 2 : 18* ; River- 
 side edition Browning's Works, 1889. 
 
 THE FOUNDER OF THE FEAST. 
 
 " Enter my palace," if a prince should say 
 
 ' ' Feast with the Painters ! See, in bounteous row, 
 They range from Titian up to Angelo ! ' ' 
 
 Could we be silent at the rich survey ? 
 
 A host so kindly, in as great a way 
 
 Invites to banquet, substitutes for show 
 Sound that 's diviner still, and bids us know 
 
 Bach like Beethoven ; are we thankless, pray ? 
 
 Thanks, then, to Arthur Chappell, thanks to him 
 Whose every guest henceforth not idly vaunts 
 " Sense has received the utmost Nature grants, 
 
 My cup was filled with rapture to the brim, 
 
 When, night by night, ah, memory, how it haunts ! 
 Music was poured by perfect ministrants, 
 
 By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim." 
 
 April 5th, 1884. 
 
 Fra Lippo Lippi. Men and Women, 1855, and has 
 since retained its place in that volume. Written at Rome 
 in the winter of 1853-1854. 
 
 Filippo Lippi was born at Florence, in 1406. He studied 
 art under Tommasaccio, who is usually known as Masaccio, 
 and who is called in the poem " hulking Tom." His pov- 
 erty in childhood carried him into a convent, but he was by 
 nature wholly unfitted for that kind of life. He escaped 
 from it, led a free and easy life of travel and adventure, 
 and finally settled in Florence under the patronage of 
 Cosimo de' Medici. He was a realist in art, painting life
 
 144 Fra Lippo Lippi. 
 
 as he saw it about him ; and even sacred subjects he treated 
 in the same manner. He was bold, fervid, naive, full of 
 delight in the natural, and not inclined to refine or idealize. 
 The coarseness of his life, as contrasted with the beauty 
 of his artistic work, is the subject of the poem. It was to 
 Vasari's Lives of the 'most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, 
 and Architects that Browning was indebted for his concep- 
 tion of this painter, and he has more or less fully versified 
 the account there given of him. He has added many 
 touches of his own, such as were needed to make the story 
 of Lippi's life fit for his poetic purposes. Vasari's account, 
 as translated by Mrs. Forster, contains some items of inter- 
 est about the life of this painter not made use of by Brown- 
 ing, but which help in securing a just estimate of his char- 
 acter. The narrative is as follows : 
 
 " The Carmelite monk, Fra Filippo di Tommaso Lippi, 
 was born at Florence in a bye street called Ardiglione, 
 under the Canto alia Cuculia, and behind the convent of 
 the Carmelites. By the death of his father he was left a 
 friendless orphan at the age of two years, his mother having 
 also died shortly after his birth. The child was for some 
 time under the care of a certain Mona Lapaccia. his aunt, 
 the sister of his father, who brought him up with very great 
 difficulty till he had attained his eighth year, when, being no 
 longer able to support the burden of his maintenance, she 
 placed him in the above-named convent of the Carmelites. 
 Here, in proportion as he showed himself dexterous and in- 
 genious in all works performed by hand, did he manifest 
 the utmost dullness and incapacity in letters, to which he 
 would never apply himself, nor would he take any pleasure 
 in learning of any kind. The boy continued to be called 
 by his worldly name of Filippo ; and, being placed with 
 others, who like himself were in the house of the novices, 
 under the care of the master, to the end that the latter 
 might see what could be done with him, in place of study- 
 ing, he never did anything but daub his own books, and 
 those of the other boys, with caricatures, whereupon the 
 prior determined to give him all means and every opportu- 
 nity for learning to draw. The chapel of the Carmine had 
 then been newly painted by Masaccio, and this being ex- 
 ceedingly beautiful pleased Fra Filippo greatly, wherefore
 
 Fra Lippo Lippi. 145 
 
 he frequented it daily for his recreation, and, continually 
 practising there in company with many other youths,- who 
 were constantly drawing in that place, he surpassed all the 
 others by very much in dexterity and knowledge : inasmuch 
 as he was considered certain to accomplish some marvelous 
 thing in the course of time. For not only in his youth, but 
 when almost in his childhood, he performed so many praise- 
 worthy labors, that it was truly wonderful. . . . 
 
 " It is said that Fra Filippo was much addicted to the 
 pleasures of sense, insomuch that he would give all that he 
 possessed to secure the gratification of whatever inclination 
 might at the moment be predominant ; but if he could by 
 no means accomplish his wishes, he would then depict the 
 object which had attracted his attention, in his paintings, 
 and endeavor by discoursing and reasoning with himself to 
 diminish the violence of his inclination. It was known that 
 while occupied in the pursuit of his pleasures, the works un- 
 dertaken by him received little or none of his attention ; 
 for which reason Cosimo de' Medici, wishing him to execute 
 a work in his own palace, shut him up, that he might not 
 waste his time in running about ; but having endured this 
 confinement for two days, he then made ropes with the 
 sheets of his bed, which he cut to pieces for that purpose, 
 and so having let himself down from a window, escaped, 
 and for several days gave himself up to his amusements. 
 When Cosimo found that the painter had disappeared, he 
 caused him to be sought, and Fra Filippo at last returned 
 to his work, but from that time forward Cosimo gave him 
 his liberty to go in and out at his pleasure, repenting greatly 
 of having previously shut him up when he considered the 
 danger that Fra Filippo -had incurred by his folly in de- 
 scending from the window ; and ever afterwards, laboring' 
 to keep him to his work by kindness only, he was by this 
 means much more promptly and effectually served by the 
 painter, and was wont to say that the excellencies of rare 
 genius were as forms of light and not beasts of burden. . . . 
 
 " In Florence, . . . having received a commission from the 
 nuns of Santa Margherita to paint a picture for the high 
 altar of their church, he one day chanced to see the daughter 
 of Francesco Buti, a citizen of Florence, who had been sent 
 to the Convent, either as a novice or boarder. Fra Filippo
 
 146 Fra Lippo Lippi. 
 
 having given a glance at Lucrezia, for such was the name 
 of the girl, who was exceedingly beautiful and graceful, so 
 persuaded the nuns, that he prevailed on them to permit 
 him to make a likeness of her for the figure of the Virgin 
 in the work he was executing for them. The result of this 
 was that the painter fell violently in love with Lucrezia, 
 and at length found means to influence her in such a man- 
 ner, that he led her away from the nuns, and on a certain 
 day, when she had gone forth to do honor to the Cintola of 
 our Lady. By this event the nuns were deeply disgraced, 
 and the father of Lucrezia was so grievously afflicted 
 thereat, that he nevermore recovered his cheerfulness, and 
 made every possible effort to regain his child. But Lucre- 
 zia, whether retained by fear or by some other cause, would 
 not return, but remained with Filippo, to whom she bore a 
 son, who was also called Filippo, and who eventually be- 
 came a most excellent and very famous painter like his 
 father. . . . 
 
 " Fra Filippo was indeed so highly estimated for his 
 great gifts, that many circumstances in his life which were 
 very blamable received pardon, and were partly placed out 
 of view, in consideration of his extraordinary abilities. . . . 
 He was an artist of such power, that in his own time he 
 was surpassed by none, and even in our days there are very 
 few superior to him ; therefore it is that he has not only 
 been always eulogized by Michael Angelo, but in many 
 things has been imitated by that master. . . . 
 
 " He lived creditably by his laboi-s, and expended very 
 large sums on the pleasures to which he continued to addict 
 himself, even to the end of his life. Fra Filippo was re- 
 quested by the commune of Spoleto to paint the chapel in 
 their principal church, and this work he was conducting to 
 a successful termination, when, being overtaken by death, 
 he was prevented from completing it. It was said that the 
 libertinism of his conduct occasioned this catastrophe, and 
 that he was poisoned by certain persons related to the ob- 
 ject of his love. . . . Pope Eugenius IV. offered in his 
 lifetime to give him a dispensation that he might make 
 Lucrezia di Francesco Buti his legitimate wife ; but Fra 
 Fih'ppo, desiring to retain the power of living after his own 
 fashion, and of indulging his love of pleasure as might seem 
 good to him, did not care to accept that offer."
 
 Fra Lippo Lippi. 147 
 
 In Richter's Commentaries on the Lives of Vasari the 
 errors of the Italian writer are corrected with reference to 
 Lippi. " The romantic story which Vasari tells is too ex- 
 citing not to arouse the suspicion that little in it may stand 
 the test of documentary evidence. In the interest of clear- 
 ing up all doubts in this matter, Signor Gaetano Milanesi 
 has of late undertaken to bring together all the documents 
 in which the artist is named, and he has thus been enabled 
 to re-write the whole life, the data of which may be summed 
 up in the following brief account. The date of his birth 
 is most probably the year 1406, not 1402 as Vasari has it 
 in his first edition, nor 1412 as we read in his second edi- 
 tion. When about eight years old he was sent to the con- 
 vent Del Carmine, where he received the ordinary monastic 
 instruction. At the age of fifteen he became a novice, and 
 in 1421 the holy orders were solemnly bestowed upon him. 
 The young friar seems to have studied painting not only 
 from the works of Masaccio, but also under the direction of 
 this master, who was at work in the church of the same mon- 
 astery until his death, which occurred in 1468. In 1430 
 and 1431 the account books of the monastery distinguish the 
 friar's name by adding the word 'painter.' After the last- 
 named year his name entirely disappears from the books. 
 Apparently he left the monastery in order to devote himself 
 entirely to painting. Vasari says that in so doing he threw 
 off the clerical habit, but this is improbable, since he con- 
 tinued to be on good terms with the friars of Del Carmine. 
 Probably he left the monastery with the approbation of his 
 superiors. . . . Documents inform us that in 1442, by a 
 papal bull, he became rector and abbot for life of the paro- 
 chial church of San Quirica a Legnaja, near Florence. 
 Soon after the year 1452, he settled at Prato, where he 
 bought a house, staying therein until about 1463. He 
 seems to have settled at Prato soon after the year 1452, on 
 account of the extensive wall-paintings which he had been 
 commissioned to paint there. In 1456, when fifty years 
 aid, he became the chaplain of the monastery of Santa 
 Margherita, where he fell in love with one of the nuns, 
 Lucrezia Buti, born in 1435, who had been forced to be- 
 come a nun in 1451, after the death of her father. The 
 nun served the artist as a model for the figure of a Virgin
 
 148 Fra Lippo Llppi. 
 
 in a picture. This seems to have given her the opportunity 
 of revealing to the artist her intention of escaping from in- 
 voluntary captivity. On the feast of Cintola, the renowned 
 relic of Prato Cathedral, Fra Filippo succeeded in bringing 
 her to his house, where she gave birth to a son, Filippo or 
 Filippino, the renowned painter (1457). Spinetta Buti, the 
 sister of Lucrezia (born 1434), with other nuns, followed 
 the example given them by Lucrezia, and fled from the 
 monastery, but in 1459 all had to return and to re-enter the 
 novitiate. In 1461 there were before the magistrate new 
 accusations against Fra Filippo and others for their disor- 
 derly intimacy with the nuns of Santa Margherita. But 
 before the end of the same year Pope Pius II., on the rec- 
 ommendation of Cosimo de' Medici, granted him a dispen- 
 sation, recognizing thereby the friar and the nun as a 
 married couple. Vasari unduly brings against the artist the 
 charge that he, desiring to retain the power of living after 
 his own fashion, and of indulging his love of pleasure as 
 might seem good to him, did not accept the pope's offer. 
 The truth is that he accepted it, and Lucrezia continued to 
 live in his house, where, in 1465, she was delivered of a 
 daughter, named Alessandra. The Pope's dispensation from 
 ecclesiastical duties caused him the loss of the income de- 
 rived from them, and he became thus forced to depend en- 
 tirely on his profession as a painter." 
 
 Cosimo of the Medici is Cosmo de' Medici, the Florentine 
 statesman, who lived from 1389 to 1464. Pilchards are a 
 kind of fish. The slave that holds John Baptist's head 
 a-dangle by the hair is an imaginary picture. The London 
 Browning Society publish a photograph of this picture in 
 the first part of their Illustrations to Browning's Poems, 
 accompanied by Mr. Ernest Radford's description of the 
 picture. Saint Laurence is the church of San Lorenzo 
 in Florence, containing the tombs of the Medici, and sev- 
 eral great sculptures by Michael Angelo. Old Aunt La- 
 paccia is Mona Lapaccia, the sister of Lippi's father. The 
 Eight consisted of a magistracy of that number of men 
 established in 1376, for the direction of the city government 
 of Florence. Camaldolese are the monks of the convent 
 of Camaldoli. Giotto is Giotto di Bordone, a painter, 
 sculptor, and architect, who lived from 1266 to 1337, one
 
 Fra Lippo Lippi. 149 
 
 of Dante's friends, and greatly influential in the revival of 
 art in Italy. 
 
 Brother Angelica is Fra Angelico, whose real name was 
 Giovanni da Fiesole, and who lived from 1387 to 1455. 
 He belonged to the mediaeval school of painters, kept up the 
 traditions of the past, and the idea that the soul was to be 
 painted and not the flesh. In her Memoirs of Italian 
 Painters Mrs. Jameson says : " To Angelico the art of 
 painting a picture devoted to religious purposes was an act 
 of religion, for which he prepared himself by fasting and 
 prayer, imploring on bended knees the benediction of heaven 
 on his work. He then, under the impression that he had 
 obtained the blessing he sought, and glowing with what 
 might truly be called inspiration, took up his pencil, and, 
 mingling with his earnest and pious humility a singular 
 species of self-uplifted enthusiasm, he could never be per- 
 suaded to alter his first draught or composition, believing 
 that which he had done was according to the will of God, 
 and could not be changed for the better by any afterthought 
 of his own or suggestion from others." 
 
 Brother Lorenzo is Lorenzo Monaca, a Camaldoli monk, 
 who had the same tendencies with Fra Angelico in paint- 
 ing. Guidi is Tommaso Guidi, called Masaccio or Tom- 
 masaccio, Slovenly or Hulking Tom. Browning makes 
 Guidi one of Lippi's pupils, in this following good authori- 
 ties. It now is probably decided that Lippi was the pupil 
 of Guidi. The Saint Laurence whose picture was painted 
 at Prato suffered martyrdom in the time of Valerian, A. D. 
 258, by being broiled to death on a gridiron. Sant' Am- 
 brogio's (Ambrose's), is a convent in Florence. The saint 
 is the great archbishop of Milan, one of the most influential 
 of the Christian leaders of the fourth century. A pretty 
 picture gained is that of The Coronation of the Virgin) in 
 the Accademia delle Belle Arti, Florence. 
 
 Fra Lippo Lippi died at Spoleto in 1469. Many of his 
 pictures are at Spoleto and Prato, but the largest number 
 and the best are in Florence. His Madonnas are in the 
 Pitti, Uffizi, Louvre, and Berlin Galleries. In the Cathe- 
 dral of Prato, near Florence, are frescoes from his hand; 
 and in the National Gallery, London, are panels. For far- 
 ther information about Lippi see Ltlbke, Mrs. Jameson's
 
 150 Francesco Romanelli. Francis Furini. 
 
 Memoirs of Italian Painters, and other works on the his- 
 tory of art. Vasari has much to say about his pictures. 
 
 The story of Lippo Lippi's life, as told by Vasari, has 
 been made the subject of a romance by Margaret Vere Far- 
 rington, under the title of Fra Lippo Lippi. Readers of 
 the poem will find this novel of much interest. Of special 
 value are the fourteen full-page illustrations of persons and 
 scenes mentioned in the poem. These include a portrait of 
 the painter, one of Fra Lippo Lippi and Lucrezia Buti, and 
 another of the Abbess Margherita. Lippo Lippi's Annun- 
 ciation^ Virgin and Child, Madonna and Child, and Coro- 
 nation are reproduced. The other illustrations include two 
 of the pictures of Fra Angelico, and views of Florence, 
 Ancona, and Spoleto. 
 
 Francesco Romanelli. A painter of Rome, in Sea- 
 trice Signorini, who paints a portrait of a woman painter, 
 Artemisia, which is destroyed by his wife, whose name is 
 given to the poem. 
 
 Francis Furini, Parleyings "with. Parleyings with 
 Certain People of Importance in Their Day, 1883. 
 
 Francesco Furini was born in 1604, and died in 1649. His 
 father Filippo, called Sciameroni, a painter of considerable 
 ability, was his teacher in art. He also studied under 
 Passignano and Rpsselli. Then he went to Rome. He 
 took up the methods of Guido and Albani, and painted arti- 
 ficial and mythological subjects. He earnestly continued 
 his studies, however, acquired ability in design, and worked 
 with the able artist Giovanni di San Giovanni. He was 
 especially fond of designing nude figures, and in these he 
 showed great delicacy ; and he chose out those subjects in 
 which the human form could be treated with propriety and 
 elegance, such as Adam and Eve, Lot and his daughters, 
 Noah's drunkenness ; or similar subjects from mythology, 
 such as the death of Adonis, Diana and the other nymphs 
 bathing, and the judgment of Paris. Fuseli says that " his 
 works are excessively praised, and allowed to possess abun- 
 dance of grace in the contours of his figures, as well as in 
 the airs of his heads. Many of his paintings are in Florence, 
 which are deemed to add honor to the valuable collections 
 of the nobility of that city." While Furini was graceful in 
 drawing, he was defective in color. He tried to be proper
 
 Fust and his Friends. 151 
 
 in dealing with the nude, but he was sometimes wanting in 
 refinement. On his death - bed he asked that all his un- 
 draped pictures might be collected and destroyed ; but this 
 was not done. The change in sentiment thus expressed 
 had led him at the age of about forty to become a priest ; 
 and he was until his death an exemplary parish curate, hav- 
 ing charge of the parish of St. Ansano in the Magello. He 
 did not, however, entirely abandon his work as a painter. 
 
 Nettleship says " this poem contains a splendid attack on 
 the prurient modesty which finds lust to be the chief motive 
 power in the production of all great statues or pictures from 
 the nude. But its main purpose, with which indeed the bulk 
 of the poem is occupied, lies in a closely reasoned argument, 
 designed to prove the absolute necessity for understanding 
 the bodily life of man before you can penetrate to his soul, 
 and thence to deduce by reasonable inference the existence, 
 outside but not within man, though ever in touch with him, 
 of an infinitely wise, strong, and loving First Cause, or 
 God." 
 
 Baldinucci is the author of an Italian History of Art 
 from which Browning drew his account of Furini ; and he 
 was also Furini's friend. Quicherat published in 1849 a 
 five-volume history of the trial of Joan d'Arc. D'Alenqon 
 wrote an account of her personal life. 
 
 See Nettleship, and a paper by Arthur Symous in number 
 nine of The Browning Society's Papers. 
 
 Fust and his Friends. (Inside the house of 
 Fust, Mayence, 1457.) The epilogue to Parleyings 
 with Certain People of Importance in their Day, 1887. 
 
 Johann Fust was born of a rich burgher family of 
 Mainz or Mayence, but the year is not known. He became 
 a banker, but his brother Jacob was a goldsmith. He was 
 a money-lender and speculator, and it was as such he first 
 came into connection with Gutenberg, the real inventor of 
 printing. It was about 1440 that Gutenberg began his ex- 
 periments which led to the invention of printing ; but in 
 1448 he had exhausted his financial resources, and borrowed 
 money of Fust. In 1449 Fust loaned Gutenberg a large 
 sum, and agreed to give him three hundred florins a year, 
 and was to receive half profits. Fust did not keep his part 
 of the agreement, but in 1455 brought suit against Guten-
 
 152 Fust and his Friends. 
 
 berg, which resulted in a verdict in his favor. Fust moved 
 his part of the printing materials to his house called Zum 
 Humbreicht in Mainz, and there began to do printing with 
 the aid of Peter Schoeffer. He first printed the Psalter, 
 which came from the press August 14, 1 157, a folio of 350 
 pages, which was the first printed book with a complete date. 
 It is now believed that Gutenberg did a part of the work 
 on this book, before his separation from Fust, and that its 
 beauty of workmanship was owing to this fact. 
 
 Trithemius, writing in 1514, says of the event which is 
 described in the poem : " Peter Schoeffer, at that time a 
 workman, but afterward son-in-law, of the first inventor, 
 John Fust, a man skillful and ingenious, devised a more 
 easy method of founding types, and thus gave the art its 
 present perfection. And the three men [Gutenberg, Fust, 
 and Schoeffer] kept secret among themselves, for a while, 
 this method of printing, up to the time when their work- 
 men were deprived of the work, without which they were 
 unable to practise their trade, by whom it was divulged, 
 first in Strasburg, and afterward in other cities." 
 
 Another writer, said to be Jo. Frid. Faustus, a nephew 
 of Fust, gave this account of the invention : " Fust had 
 many workmen, among whom was Peter Schoeffer of 
 Gernsheim, who, when he perceived the difficulties and de- 
 lays of his master, was seized with an ardent desire to ac- 
 complish the success of the new art. Through the special 
 inspiration of God, he discovered the secret by which types 
 of the matrix, as they are called, could be cut, and types 
 could be founded from them, which, for this purpose, could 
 be composed in frequent combinations, and not be singly 
 cut as they had been before. Schoeffer secretly cut matrices 
 of the alphabet, and showed types cast therefrom to his 
 master, John Fust, who was so greatly pleased with them, 
 and rejoiced so greatly, that he immediately promised to 
 him his only daughter, and soon after he gave her to him in 
 marriage. But even with this kind of type, great difficulty 
 was experienced. The metal was soft and did not with- 
 stand pressure, until they invented an alloy which gave it 
 proper strength. As they had happily succeeded in this 
 undertaking, Fust and Schoeffer bound their workmen by 
 oath to conceal the process with the greatest secrecy ; but
 
 Fust and his Friends. 153 
 
 they showed to friends, whenever it pleased them, the first 
 experimental types of wood, which they tied up with a 
 string and preserved." 
 
 These accounts, however, have been proved to be full of 
 misstatements, and probably with the aim of glorifying 
 Fust and Schoeffer at the expense of Gutenberg. The lat- 
 ter had before this date invented and used metal types ; 
 and many copies of his books had been put in circulation. 
 See a full history of the subject in De Viime's Invention of 
 Printing, where the book printed by Fust in 1457 is fully 
 described, with reproductions. Also Humphrey's History 
 of the Art of Printing, London, published by Bernard 
 Qaai-itch, which gives very full illustrations of Gutenberg's 
 and Fust's books. 
 
 Browning has accepted the Fust account of the invention 
 of printing, as told by Trithemius and the anonymous 
 Faustus, as being a correct one. At least, it answered his 
 poetical purpose. He describes the secret printing of the 
 Psalter, and the sensation produced by the rapid multipli- 
 cation of copies of the printed page. The early printers at 
 first imitated, as far as possible, the manuscript books ; 
 and this was the case with Fust's Psalter. Later members 
 of the Fust family wrote the name Faustus, which led to 
 the confounding of it with the name of the magician who 
 has held so large a place in legend and poetry. 
 
 The statement was made by Durr, a professor at Altdorf, 
 that when Fust showed his books he was suspected of magic 
 because he could produce them so rapidly and with such 
 uniformity. He also says the monks opposed Fust, because 
 he took from them the opportunity of making books. 
 Other similar statements were made, with as little founda- 
 tion in truth ; but they have been too often accepted as a 
 part of the genuine history of printing. 
 
 " The first book published by Fust, after his separation 
 from Gutenberg," says De Vinne, " was the Psalter of 
 1457, a folio of 175 leaves. Only seven copies of the 
 edition of 1457 are known, and all of them are on vellum. 
 The leaves of this book are nearly square, and they are 
 made up, for the most part, in sections of ten nested leaves. 
 The size of the printed page is irregular, but most pages 
 are about eight inches wide, and twelve inches high. . .
 
 154 Garden Fancies. George Bubb Dodington. 
 
 It is obviously an imitation not only of the copyist's but of 
 the illuminator's work upon a fine manuscript. It was in- 
 tended that the book should show the full capacity of the 
 newly discovered art. Letters and lines in red ink are to 
 be found on every page, and there are many very large and 
 profusely ornamented initials in red and blue inks. . . . 
 Schoeffer was compelled to brighten the colors by painting. 
 Although sold as a printed book, the Psalter was the joint 
 work of the printer and the illuminator, and the features 
 which 'the modern bibliographer most admires are those 
 made by the illuminator." 
 
 See Nettleship, and paper by Arthur Symons in The 
 Browning Society's Papers, number nine. 
 
 Garden Fancies. The poems published under this 
 general title first appeared in Hood's Magazine, July, 1844. 
 See Nationality in Drinks for an account of the circum- 
 stances of their publication. The two poems were, I. The 
 Flower's Name ; II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. They 
 were reprinted in the Poems of 1849 ; in the Poetical 
 Works of 1863 they were put among the Lyrics, which in 
 1868 became Dramatic Lyrics. 
 
 George Bubb Dodington, Parleyings with. Par- 
 leyings with Certain People of Importance in Their Day, 
 1887. 
 
 George Bubb was born in 1691, took the name of Dod- 
 ington on the death of an uncle who left him a large estate, 
 and entered Parliament at the age of twenty-four. He 
 held various positions of importance under government, es- 
 pecially in connection with the navy, was two or three times 
 in the ministry, was intimately connected with Frederic, 
 Prince of Wales, and was made Baron Melcombe in 1761. 
 He controlled five votes in Parliament, because of the position 
 of his family, and these he used in whatever way would be 
 the most to his own advantage. He changed sides in poli- 
 tics whenever advancement could be secured by so doing. 
 He was given to intrigue and political servility. The editor 
 of his Diary says that his political conduct was " wholly 
 directed by the base motives of avarice, vanity, and selfish- 
 ness." Another writer says that " never was such a compo- 
 sition of vanity, versatility, and servility." He did not 
 follow principle or consistency ; his whole aim in life was
 
 George Bubb Dodington. 155 
 
 political preferment and the securing of a title. So well 
 was this understood that, when he appeared at Court, 
 George II. said : " I see Dodington here sometimes ; what 
 does he come for ? " On one occasion, when Horace Wai- 
 pole was discussing the majority in Parliament, he said : " I 
 do not count Dodington, who must now always be in the 
 minority, for no majority will accept him." Pope called 
 him Bubo, Churchill satirized him, and the wits made him 
 the butt of their sharpest gibes. Yet he had many to praise 
 him ; but that praise is explained in the line of Young's : 
 
 " You give protection la worthless strain." 
 
 Warton probably praised him from the same cause, his 
 patronage : 
 
 " To praise a Dodington, rash bard, forbear ! 
 
 What can thy weak and ill-tuned voice avail, 
 
 When on that theme both Young and Thomson fail ? " 
 
 Fielding and Bentley also condescended to flatter him, for he 
 aspired to become a patron of literature and literary men ; 
 and he left no means unused to secure the praise which his 
 vanity and his ambition found helpful to his political pros- 
 perity. He was a writer of versas, and he had a high repu- 
 tation as a wit. He lived in luxury and made a great dis- 
 play of his wealth. His private life, however, was as mean 
 and treacherous as was his public career. After living 
 with Mrs. Behan for seventeen years he acknowledged that 
 he had been married to her all the time, but that he was un- 
 able to acknowledge his marriage, because he had given a 
 large bond to another lady that he would marry no one else. 
 In fact, his sole aim in life was to push his own interests, 
 and " to make some figure in the world." His character is 
 very correctly described by Browning in his poem. He se- 
 cured the height of his ambition when he was made Baron 
 Melcombe ; but he died the next year, in 1762. See his 
 own^Diary, Walpole's Letters, Chesterfield's Letters, Wai- 
 pole's Memoirs of George II., Coxe's Pelham Adminis- 
 tration, Edgeworth's Education; and Hawkins' Life of 
 Johnson. 
 
 See Nettleship's Essays and Thoughts, and The Brown- 
 ing Society's Papers, number nine, paper by Arthur 
 Symons.
 
 156 Gerard. Gerard de Lairesse. 
 
 Gerard. The leading servant of Lord Tresham in A 
 Blot on the 'Scutcheon. 
 
 Gerard de Lairesse, Parleyings with. Parleylngs 
 with Certain People of Importance in their Day, 1887. 
 
 Gerard de Lairesse was born at Lifege, in 1640. He 
 studied the art of painting with his father and with Bartolet, 
 acquiring from the latter his taste for the antique. He be- 
 gan his career as a painter in Utrecht, but, meeting with 
 little success, he went to Amsterdam, one of his pictures, 
 which he had sent to that city, securing him a welcome and 
 patronage. He soon gained fame and wealth, for he was 
 an industrious and rapid painter, while his social qualities 
 attracted to him many friends and admirers. By the Dutch 
 he was highly esteemed, for they ranked him as their 
 " second Raphael, " Hemskirk being the first. His work 
 was unequal in merit, being executed too rapidly ; but in 
 expression and color he had much merit. His pictures were 
 largely of an allegorical and mythological nature, unreal in 
 spirit and manner, and too fanciful to convey much of truth. 
 It is this tendency toward the unreal which Browning dis- 
 cusses and condemns in his poem. " In every one of his 
 pictures, " says one who has written of him, " there are 
 great appearances of a masterly genius, for his expression 
 is generally lively, his coloring good, true, and glowing ; and 
 a light, firm touch gives a beauty and value to everything 
 he painted." Towards the end of his life he became blind: 
 but he had his friends about him, and many artists. To 
 these he talked with great freedom and vivacity, discoursing 
 to them of painting and of the ideal in art. His sayings 
 were noted down by his companions, and after his death, 
 which took place in 1711, these discourses were made into 
 a volume, by a society of artists, and published as his 
 Treatise on the Art of Painting. This work was trans- 
 lated into English by J. F. Fritsch, and published in 1778. 
 Lairesse was deformed, extravagant in his habits and tastes, 
 fond of dress, and led a dissipated life. His picture called 
 the History of Heliodorus was accounted his masterpiece, 
 while his Young Moses trampling on the Crown of Pharaoh, 
 Poli/xena, Germanicus, and Anthony and Cleopatra were 
 highly esteemed. 
 
 The English translation of Lairesse Browning read with
 
 Give a Rouse. TJie Glove. 157 
 
 great interest and satisfaction when a boy, and it was his 
 memory of this book which caused him to write the poem. 
 The eighth stanza was suggested by ^schylus and the myth 
 of Prometheus, while the tenth stanza draws upon Moschus. 
 
 The song at the end of this poem was first printed in a 
 small volume called the New Amphion, and published for 
 the Edinburgh University Union Fancy Fair, 1886. 
 
 See Nettleship, and Arthur Symons in number nine of 
 The Browning Society's Papers. 
 
 Give a Rouse. First published in Dramatic Lyrics, 
 third number of Bells and Pomegranates, 1842, as II. of 
 the Cavalier Tunes, which see. Poems, 1849 ; Lyrics, 
 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Give her but a least excuse to love me. Pippa's 
 song in Pippa Passes, as she goes along the street in front 
 of the house of Jules, vol. i. p. 348, Riverside edition of 
 Browning's Works. 
 
 Glove, The. (Peter Ronsard loquitur). First pub- 
 lished in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, number seven of 
 Bells and Pomegranates, 1845. Poems, 1849 ; Romances, 
 1863 ; Dramatic Romances, 1868. 
 
 The story related in this poem is one well known in liter- 
 ature, but was first told by St. Foix in his Essai sur Paris. 
 The incident occurred in the reign of Francis I., of France, 
 who was King during the first half of the sixteenth century. 
 Schiller made use of this story, and his poem will be found 
 in Bulwer Lytton's translation of his Poems and Ballads. 
 In this translation the name of the lady is Cunigonde. 
 Leigh Hunt tells the same story in his Rimini and Other 
 Poems, where he calls it 
 
 THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS. 
 
 King Francis was a hearty king, and lov'd a royal sport, 
 
 And one day, as his lions fought, sat looking on the Court ; 
 
 The nobles fill'd the benches round, the ladies by their side, 
 
 And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he 
 
 sigh'd: 
 
 And truly 't was a gallant thing to see that crowning show, 
 Valor and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below. 
 
 Ramp'd and roar'd the lions, with horrid laughing jaws ; 
 They bit, they glar'd, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their 
 paws;
 
 158 Gold Hair : a Legend of Pornic. 
 
 With swallowing might and stifl'd roar, they roll'd on one another, 
 Till all the pit, with sand and mane, was in a thunderous smother ; 
 The bloody foam above the bars came whizzing through the air : 
 Said Francis, then, " Faith, gentlemen, we 're better here than there." 
 
 De Lorge's love o'erheard the king, a beauteous, lively dame, 
 
 With smiling lips and sharp bright eyes, which always seem'd the 
 
 same ; 
 
 She thought, The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be 
 He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me : 
 King, ladies, lovers, all look on ; the occasion is divine, 
 I'll drop my glove, to prove his love, then look at him and smile. 
 
 She dropp'd her glove, to prove his love, then look'd at him and 
 
 smil'd; 
 
 He bow'd, and in a moment leap'd among the lions wild : 
 The leap was quick, quick was return, he has regaiu'd the place, 
 Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face. 
 " By God ! " cried Francis, " rightly done ! " and he rose from where 
 
 he sat ; 
 " No love, " quoth he, " but vanity, sets love a task like that ! " 
 
 Browning was not satisfied with this account of the action 
 of the lady ; and he gives the story a quite different ending, 
 keeping the legendary form of the narrative hy putting it 
 into the mouth of Peter Ronsard, the founder of the classi- 
 cal school of French poets, who lived in the time of King 
 Francis. Clement Marot was another poet of the same 
 period, who, at the court of Margaret of Navarre, translated 
 the Psalms in a spirit so liberal they had much to do in 
 spreading Protestantism. Most of his poems were of a 
 lyrical and amorous nature. 
 
 Gold Hair : a Legend of Pornic. Dramatis Per- 
 sonce, 1864. 
 
 This poem was written in Normandy, where the poet 
 spent several months for Mrs. Browning's health, in the 
 autumn of 1858. 
 
 According to Mrs. Orr this is " a true story of Pornic, 
 which may be read in guide-books to the place. A young 
 girl of good family died there in odor of sanctity ; she 
 seemed too pure and fragile for earth. But she had one 
 earthly charm, that of glorious golden hair; and one earthly 
 feeling, which was her apparent pride in it. As she lay on 
 her deathbed, she entreated that it might not be disturbed ; 
 and she was buried near the high altar of the church of St. 
 Gilles, a picturesque old church which has since been d3-
 
 Goldoni. Good to Forgive. 159 
 
 stroyed, with the golden tresses closely swathed about her. 
 Years afterwards, the church needed repair. A loose coin 
 drew attention to the spot in which the coffin lay. Its 
 boards had burst, and scattered about lay thirty double 
 louis, which had been hidden in the golden hair. So the 
 saint-like maiden was a miser." For an acount of Pornic 
 see Fifine at the Fair in this volume. 
 
 " This poem, " according to Mr. Sharp, " was printed for 
 private limited circulation, though primarily for the purpose 
 of securing American copyright. Browning several times 
 printed single poems thus, and for the same reasons that 
 is, either for transatlantic copyright, or when the verses 
 were not likely to be included in any volume for a prolonged 
 period. These leaflets or half-sheetlets of Gold Hair and 
 Prospice, of Cleon and The Statue and the Bust are 
 among the rarest finds for the collector." 
 
 See Miss Burt's Browning's Women for a study of this 
 poem. 
 
 Goldoni. Goldoni was the father of modern Italian 
 comedy, and lived from 1707 to 1793. He was a Venetian 
 by birth, and wrote largely in the dialect of that city. A 
 monument to his memory was erected at Venice in 1883. 
 Browning wrote for the album of the Committee of the 
 Goldoni Monument a stanza which so pleased its members 
 that they gave it the first place. It was published in the 
 Pall Mall Gazette for December 8, 1883, and in the fifth 
 number of The Browning Society's Papers. 
 
 " Goldoni good, gay, sunniest of souls, 
 
 Glassing half Venice in that verse of thine, 
 
 What though it just reflect the shade and shine 
 Of common life, nor render, as it rolls, 
 Grandeur and gloom ? Sufficient for thy shoals 
 
 Was Carnival : Parini's depths enshrine 
 
 Secrets unsuited to that opaline 
 Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls. 
 There throng the People : how they come and go, 
 
 Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb, see, 
 On Piazza, Calle, under Portico 
 
 And over Bridge ! Dear king of Comedy, 
 Be honored ! Thou that didst love Venice so, 
 
 Venice, and we who love her, all love thee ! 
 "Venice, Nov. 27, 1883." 
 
 Good to forgive. The opening words of the prologue
 
 160 Grammarians Funeral. Guardian- Angel. 
 
 to La Saisiaz. In the second series of Selections from his 
 poems made by Browning, 1880, this poem is published as 
 III. under the general title of Pisgah- Sights. 
 
 Grammarian's Funeral, A, Shortly after the Re- 
 vival of Learning in Europe. Men and Women, 1855. 
 Romances, 1863 ; Dramatic Romances, 1868. 
 
 This poem is not based on any historical incident, though 
 it gives a faithful description of the love of learning of the 
 time mentioned in the title, as manifested in the pioneers of 
 the Renaissance. Such men were Cyriac of Ancona, Filelfo, 
 Pierre de Maricourt, and many other scholars. The word 
 " grammarian " then had a larger meaning than now, for it 
 signified a student in the wider sense, one devoted to letters 
 or general learning. The aim of this poem, says R. H. 
 Hutton in his Literary Essays, " is to bring out the strong 
 implicit faith in an eternal career, which there must be in 
 any man who devotes his life wholly to the preliminary toil 
 of mastering the rudiments of language." 
 
 The speaker is the leader of the company who are bear- 
 ing the Grammarian to his grave. The parts in parenthesis 
 are the directions of the leader to his companions as they 
 pass up the mountain with the corpse. His diseases are 
 mentioned as Calculus, the stone ; Tussis, a cough ; hy- 
 droptic, dropsical. Hoti is the Greek particle on, that, 
 etc. Oun is the Greek particle ovv, then, now then, etc. 
 The enclitic De is the Greek Se, which Browning refers to 
 in a letter to the London Daily News of Nov. 21, 1874 : 
 " To the Editor : Sir, In a clever article this morning you 
 speak of ' the doctrine of enclitic De' ' which, with all def- 
 erence to Mr. Browning, in point of fact does not exist.' 
 No, not to Mr. Browning : but pray defer to Herr Buttmann, 
 whose fifth list of ' enclitics ' ends with ' the inseparable De ' 
 or to Curtius, whose fifth list ends also with ' De (mean- 
 ing ' towards ' and as a demonstrative appendage).' That 
 this is not to be confounded with the accentuated ' De, 
 meaning but ' was the ' doctrine ' which the Grammarian 
 bequeathed to those capable of receiving it. I am, sir, 
 yours obediently, R. B." 
 
 Guardian- Angel, The. A Picture at Fano. Men 
 and Women, 1855. Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Fano is a town of about twenty thousand inhabitants,
 
 The Guardian- Angel. 161 
 
 situated on the Adriatic, in Italy, thirty miles to the north 
 of Ancona, and in the province known as the Marches. It 
 has a cathedral, several churches, in which are many fine 
 paintings, an opera - house, a library, an academy, and it 
 manufactures silk ribbon extensively. Many of the best 
 pictures of Guido and Domenichino are to be found in Fano. 
 
 Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino, be- 
 cause of a squint, was born at Cento, near Bologna, in 1590. 
 He early showed a great capacity for art, and followed the 
 manner of Michel Angelo da Caravaggio, which he after- 
 wards changed for one more natural and powerful. He 
 founded an academy at Cento, and many disciples collected 
 about him. He traveled through every part of Italy in 
 the exercise of his profession, and as he worked with rapid- 
 ity and skill, he left in nearly every city some product of 
 his genius. After the death of his friend Guido, he moved 
 from Cento to Bologna, where he died in 1666. He was a 
 man of noble character, and beloved by those who knew 
 him. His best pictures are in Rome, but others are to be 
 found at Modena, Parma, and in other cities. His best 
 pictures show striking effects of light and shade, as well as 
 dignity and force. 
 
 The poem was written at Ancona, the capital of the 
 Marches, which is situated on the Adriatic. It has a popu- 
 lation of about fifty thousand, and is the principal com- 
 mercial city on the eastern coast of Italy. The poem is 
 addressed to Alfred Domett, who was then in New Zealand. 
 For an account of this friend of Browning's see Waring, in 
 this volume. 
 
 The picture which Browning describes, called IS Angelo 
 Custode, is in the church of St. Augustine at Fano ; and it 
 " represents an angel standing with outstretched wings by a 
 little child. The child is half-kneeling on a kind of pedestal, 
 while the angel joins its hands in prayer ; its gaze is 
 directed upwards towards the sky, from which cherubs are 
 looking down." It is not regarded as one of his chief pic- 
 tures, but it interested Browning because of the subject, and 
 its simple pathos. 
 
 Tairie, in his Italy : Home and Naples, thus describes 
 two of the pictures of Guercino which are in Rome : " The 
 principal one, " he says, " is an enormous picture of Saint
 
 162 Guendolen Tresham. Halbert and Hob. 
 
 Petronia. The body is being taken out of the ground while 
 the soul is rising into Paradise. This is a composite work ; 
 the artist, according to the practice of schools not primitive, 
 having assembled together three or four kinds of effect. He 
 addresses the eye with powerful contrasts of light and dark, 
 and with the rich draperies of the saint and her betrothed. 
 He imitates so literally as to produce illusion : the little boy 
 holding the taper is of striking fidelity you have met him 
 somewhere in the streets ; the two powerful men raising the 
 body have all the vulgarity and masculine energy of their 
 profession. He is dramatic : the humble attitude of the 
 saint in heaven is charming, and the head crowned with 
 roses furnishes a contrast to the tragic heaviness of the 
 corpse envolved in its winding-sheet ; the aspect of Christ 
 is tender and affectionate, and not, as elsewhere, a simple 
 form. The entire subject death, cold and lugubrious, 
 contrasted with a happy triumphant resurrection serves 
 to arrest the attention of the multitude and excite its emo- 
 tion." 
 
 This poem was written during the first summer the 
 Brownings spent in Italy. They found the summer of 1847 
 too hot in Florence for their comfort, and they journeyed 
 to Ancona. They did not find the heat less, but a happy 
 summer was spent. With his wife by his side Browning 
 went three times to see Guercino's picture ; and the poem 
 grew out of these studies. 
 
 Guendolen Tresham. The cousin and devoted friend 
 of Mildred Tresham, in A Blot on the 'Scutcheon. 
 
 Guiseppe Caponsacchi. The young and noble canon 
 of Arezzo who aids Pompilia, in The Ring and the Book, 
 to escape from the house of Count Guido her husband, and 
 conducts her to the home of her parents in Rome. His 
 statement forms the sixth book of the poem. 
 
 Gypsy. The woman, in The Flight of the Duchess, 
 who has a secret interview with the Duchess, fascinates her, 
 gives her some secret communication, and causes her to take 
 her flight. 
 
 Halbert and Hob. Dramatic Idyls, First Series, 
 1879. 
 
 The basis of this story is an anecdote related by Aristo- 
 tle in his Ethics, Book VII. chap. vi. section 5, where he
 
 Helen's Tower. 163 
 
 is discoursing of anger and its hereditary manifestations. 
 " Anger and asperity," he says, " are more natural than ex- 
 cessive and unnecessary desires. It is like the case of the 
 man who defended himself for beating his father, and he 
 again beat his ; and he also (pointing to his child) will beat 
 me, when he becomes a man ; for it runs in our family. 
 And he that was dragged by his son, bid him stop at the 
 door, for that he himself had dragged his father so far." 
 " The style of this idyl," says Mr. R. H. Hutton, " seems 
 expressly made to reflect the passing ferocity of the York- 
 shire boors." 
 
 Heap cassia, sandal-buds, and stripes. The open- 
 ing words of the second song in Paracelsus, vol. i. p. 90, 
 Riverside edition of Browning's Works. 
 
 Helen's Tower. At the request of the Earl of Dufferin 
 and Clandeboye, Browning wrote this poem. When the 
 Earl reached the age of twenty-one he erected on a rock 
 situated on his estate at Clandeboye, Ireland, a tower in 
 memory of his mother, Helen, Countess of Giffard. The 
 poem was printed in the Pall Mall Gazette of December 
 28, 1883 ; in the fifth number of the Browning Society's 
 Papers, 1 : 97* ; and in an appendix to volume six of the 
 Riverside edition of Browning's Works, 1889. 
 
 HELEN'S TOWER. 
 EAei/77 7rt Trvpyov. 
 
 Who hears of Helen's Tower, may dream perchance 
 How the Greek Beauty from the Scaean Gate 
 Gazed on old friends unanimous in hate, 
 
 Death-doom'd because of her fair countenance. 
 
 Hearts would leap otherwise, at thy advance, 
 Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate I 
 Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate, 
 
 Yet, unlike hers, was bless' d by every glance. 
 
 The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange : 
 A transitory shame of long ago, 
 
 It dies into the sand from which it sprang ; 
 But thine, Love's rock-built Tower, shalt fear no change : 
 God's self laid stable earth's foundations so, 
 When all the morning-stars together sang. 
 April 26, 1870
 
 164 Henry, Earl Mertoun. Heretic's Tragedy. 
 
 Henry, Earl Mertoun. The lover of Mildred Tres- 
 1 1:1111. in A Blot on the 'Scutcheon, who is stabbed by her 
 brother, Earl Tresham, when he is discovered escaping from 
 her window. 
 
 Here's to Nelson's Memory. See Nationality in 
 Drinks. 
 
 Heretic's Tragedy, The ; A Middle-Age Interlude. 
 Men and Women, 1855. Romances, 1863 ; Dramatic Ro- 
 mances, 1868. 
 
 In the note following the title the author says this poem 
 is " a glimpse from the burning of Jacques du Bourg-Molay 
 at Paris, A. D. 1314, as distorted by the refraction from 
 Flemish brain to brain, during the course of a couple of 
 centuries." Molay was the last Grand Master of the 
 Knights Templars, one of the most powerful and popular of 
 Middle-Age military organizations. The Knights Templars, 
 or " Poor Fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ," or " the Knight- 
 hood of the Temple of Solomon," as they called themselves, 
 were organized very early in the twelfth century, as a result 
 of the crusades and the conquest of Jerusalem. They 
 were a secular order intimately bound to the Church, and 
 devoted to service in rescuing the Holy Land from the infi- 
 del. So long as the crusades continued they grew in wealth 
 and honor, came to have much influence in the countries 
 of Western Europe, and governed Jerusalem or Cyprus. 
 When the crusading spirit ended a strong feeling arose 
 against them, partly because they lost Jerusalem, and partly 
 because the Western monarchs coveted their vast wealth. 
 Philip IV. of France and Pope Clement V. joined to over- 
 throw them, which they did by bringing many false charges 
 against them, accusing them of the basest crimes. Many 
 of them were burned, and their property was confiscated. 
 Without doubt many of them had become very corrupt, 
 though base motives influenced their enemies. 
 
 Molay and three other officers of the order were im- 
 prisoned in Paris for many months. Two of them ac- 
 knowledged that their order was in the wrong, and were 
 pardoned ; but Molay and another nobleman, the Grand 
 Preceptor of the order, were burned. In March, 1314, the 
 four were taken from their prisons, loaded with chains, and 
 brought to the place of execution. A confession was read,
 
 Herve Kiel. 165 
 
 to which they were asked to assent. When the Grand 
 Master was called upon to make confession, he refused so 
 to do. " I do," he said, " confess my guilt, which consists 
 in having to my shame and dishonor, suffered myself, 
 through the pain of torture and the fear of death, to give 
 utterance to falsehoods, imputing scandalous sins and ini- 
 quities to an illustrious order, which hath nobly served the 
 cause of Christianity. I disdain to seek a wretched and 
 disgraceful existence by engrafting another lie upon the 
 original falsehood." Here he was interrupted, and, with 
 his faithful companion, the Grand Preceptor, who also de- 
 clared his own innocence, he was hurried back to prison. 
 The same day King Philip ordered their execution, and 
 they were burned to death in a slow and lingering man- 
 ner upon small fires of charcoal. Further particulars may 
 be found in Woodhouse's Military Religious Orders of 
 the Middle Ages, and in C. G. Addison's Knights Tem- 
 plars. Browning tells this history through the medium of 
 two hundred years of legend and bitter prejudice ; and he 
 thus makes it one of the most remarkable of his studies in 
 the grotesque. 
 
 Herve Kiel. Written at Le Croisic, France, September 
 30, 1867, and published in Cornhill Magazine, March, 
 1871. The poet was paid 100 for it, which sum he con- 
 tributed to the Paris Relief Fund, to send food to Paris 
 after that city was besieged by the Germans. In 1876 it 
 was reprinted in Pacchiarotto, with other Poems. 
 
 Le Croisic is a small fishing village near the mouth of 
 the Loire, and it was the home of Herve' Kiel. See Two 
 Poets of Croisic, in this volume, for a description of the 
 village. The poem correctly tells the story of this hero, 
 with the one exception that his holiday to see his wife was 
 for the remainder of his life, instead of for one day. Dr. 
 Furnivall says that " the facts of the story had been for- 
 gotten and were denied at St. Malo, but the reports of the 
 French Admiralty at the time were looked up, and the facts 
 established." This report says of the recompense asked by 
 Herve' Riel : " Ce brave homme ne demanda pour re'com- 
 pense d'un service aussi signal^, qu'un conge' absolu pour 
 rejoindre sa femme, qu'il nommait la belle Aurore." The 
 battle of La Hogue was fought on May 19, 1692, in the
 
 166 Holy-Cross Day. 
 
 war begun by Louis XIV. to secure his succession to the 
 Palatinate. Several nations combined against France un- 
 der the name of the " Grand Alliance " ; and the battle of 
 X<a Hogue was fought by two of these, England and Hol- 
 land, their combined fleet being under the command of Ad- 
 miral Russell. This battle was one of very great impor- 
 tance, because it took the mastery of the sea from France 
 and gave it to Holland and England. 
 
 Louis XIV. fitted out a large expedition under Admiral 
 Tourville for a descent upon England, with the purpose of 
 restoring James II. to the English throne. The battle was 
 fought between the Isle of Wight and the peninsula of La 
 Manche, and was witnessed from the Normandy shore by 
 James. The English were victorious, destroying a large 
 part of the French fleet. The incident of the poem is that 
 of the saving of a number of vessels by nerve" Kiel, by 
 piloting them through the shallows of the river Ranee as 
 they were flying to St. Malo. It was thought impossible to 
 sail the ships up the river, even by those most familiar with 
 it, but Herv^ Riel, a Breton sailor, was able to do it, and 
 thus to save the fleet from destruction. Damfreville was 
 the commander of the largest of these ships. St. Malo and 
 La Hogue are on the north coast of Normandy, St. Malo 
 being almost directly across the peninsula from Le Croisic. 
 
 See the account of Hervd Riel in the Promenade au 
 Croisic, by Gustave Grandprd, iii. 186, and Notes sur le 
 Croisic, a " Croisic Guide-book," by Caillo Jeune, p. 67. 
 
 Holy - Cross Day. On -which the Jews were 
 forced to attend an annual Christian Sermon in 
 Rome. Men and Women, 1855 ; Romances, 1863 ; 
 Dramatic Romances, 1868. Written in Rome in the winter 
 of 1853-1854. 
 
 One of the Jews attending the sermon is the speaker. 
 The extract from the " Diary by the Bishop's Secretary, 
 1600," is a part of the satire of the piece, and was written 
 by Browning. The special incidents of the poem are not 
 historical ; but it is historical that such a sermon was 
 preached. Browning says in. a note at the end of the poem 
 that " Pope Gregory XVI. abolished this bad business of 
 the sermon." George S. Hillard, in his Six Months in 
 Italy, written in 1853, says : " By a bull of Gregory XIII.,
 
 Home Thoughts. The Householder. 167 
 
 in the year 1584, all Jews above the age of twelve years 
 were compelled to listen every week to a sermon from a 
 Christian priest ; usually an exposition of some passage of 
 the Old Testament, and especially those relating to the 
 Messiah, from the Christian point of view. This burden is 
 not yet wholly removed from them ; and to this day, several 
 times in the course of a year, a Jewish congregation is 
 gathered together in the church of St. Angelo in Pescheria, 
 and constrained to listen to a homily from a Dominican friar, 
 to whom, unless his zeal have eaten up his good feelings 
 and his good taste, the ceremony must be as painful as to 
 his hearers." The Ghetto is the name given to the Jews' 
 quarter in Rome and other cities. 
 
 Home Thoughts, from Abroad. Published in Dra- 
 matic Romances and Lyrics, the seventh number of Bells 
 and Pomegranates, 1845. As there published three poems 
 were included under this title: I. "Oh, to be in England " ; 
 II. " Here 's to Nelson's Memory " ; III. " Nobly Cape 
 St. Vincent." In the Poems of 1849 the first of these pieces 
 only appeared under the title of Home Thoughts from 
 Abroad ; and in all subsequent editions it has been so pub- 
 lished. In the Poetical Works of 1863 it was put among 
 the Lyrics, which in 1868 became Dramatic Lyrics. 
 
 Home Thoughts, from the Sea. Published in 
 Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, seventh number of Bells 
 and Pomegranates, 1845. It there appeared as the third 
 part of Home Thoughts, from Abroad. In the Poems of 
 1849 it was published by itself, under its present title. In 
 the Poetical Works of 1863 it was classed under the head 
 of Lyrics, but in 1868 it took its place among the Dramatic 
 Lyrics, which it has since held. 
 
 The poem was suggested by Cape Trafalgar and Gibral- 
 tar, and the victory of Nelson over the combined fleets of 
 Spain and France. 
 
 House. Pacchiarotto, with Other Poems, 1876. 
 
 An answer to those critics who ask that the poet should 
 make his poems reflect his own personal life. It contains 
 the same idea as Wordsworth's sonnet on the sonnet, though 
 probably not suggested by it. Mrs. Orr, Fotheringham, and 
 Symons have brief interpretations. 
 
 Householder, The. This poem is the epilogue to
 
 168 How it strikes a Contemporary. 
 
 Fifine at the Fair, and sums up the teaching of what has 
 preceded. 
 
 How it strides a Contemporary. Men and Wo- 
 men, 1855. 
 
 The speaker is a Spanish gentleman, while the names and 
 the scenery are Spanish. This is the earliest of Browning's 
 poems in which he interprets his poetical ideas or his con- 
 ception of poetry as an art. He treats the same subject in 
 Transcendentalism, Memorabilia, and Popularity, which 
 were also published in Men and Women. Later, he re- 
 turned to the same theme in the epilogue to Dramatic 
 Idyls, the epilogue to Pacchiarotto, and in At the Mer- 
 maid. The Two Poets of Croisic is a quite thorough dis- 
 cussion of the functions of the poetic art. His introductory 
 essay to the letters of Shelley interprets his own poetical 
 ideas, and especially his desire to reconcile the objective and 
 the subjective phases of the poetic art. The essays in Cor- 
 son's Introduction to Browning, and the chapter on his 
 theory of art in Alexander's Introduction to Browning's 
 Poetry, clearly interpret the poetical theories of our poet. 
 The two essays in Mr. Edward Dowel en's Studies in Lit- 
 erature which treat of Browning give a good idea of his 
 philosophy of poetry. 
 
 In the Shelley essay Browning puts his theory of poetry 
 into these words : " The whole poet's function [is thatj of 
 beholding with an understanding keenness the universe, 
 nature, and man, in their actual state of perfection in im- 
 perfection being untempted, by the manifold partial de- 
 velopments of beauty and good on every side, into leaving 
 them the ultimates he found them, induced by the facility 
 of the gratification of his own sense of those qualities, or 
 by the pleasure of acquiescence in the short-comings of his 
 predecessors in art, and the pain of disturbing their con- 
 ventionalisms, the whole poet's virtue, I repeat, [is thatj 
 of looking higher than any manifestation yet made of both 
 beauty and good, in order to suggest from the utmost actual 
 realization of the one a corresponding capability in the 
 other, and out of the calm, purity, and energy of nature, to 
 reconstitute and store up for the forthcoming stage of man's 
 being, a gift in repayment of that former gift, in which 
 man's own thought and passion had been lavished by the
 
 / go to prove my Soul. 169 
 
 poet on the else-incompleted magnificence of the sunrise, the 
 else uninterpreted mystery of the lake, so drawing out, 
 lifting up, and assimilating this ideal of a future man, thus 
 descried as possible, to the present reality of the poet's soul 
 already arrived at the higher state of development, and still 
 . aspirant to elevate and extend itself in conformity with its 
 still-improving perceptions of, no longer the eventual Hu- 
 man, but the actual Divine." 
 
 How they brought the Good News from Ghent 
 to Aix. In a letter published in the Literary World, 
 March 12, 1881, vol. 12, p. 104, Browning says to an 
 American inquirer about this poem : " There is no sort of 
 historical foundation for the poem about ' Good News from 
 Ghent.' I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel, off the 
 African coast, after I had been at sea long enough to appre- 
 ciate even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain 
 good horse ' York, ' then in my stable at home. It was 
 written In pencil on the fly-leaf of Bartoli's Simboli, I re- 
 member." It was published in 1845, in Dramatic Ro- 
 mances and Lyrics, the seventh number of Bells and Pome- 
 granates. In 1863 it appeared in the Lyrics, and in 1868 
 it was put under the head of Dramatic Lyrics. 
 
 Although there is no historical foundation for this ride 
 from Ghent to Aix, there was probably in the mind of 
 Browning, when he wrote the poem, that event in the his- 
 tory of the Netherlands known as the " Pacification of 
 Ghent, " which took place in 1576. This was a union of 
 Holland, Zealand, and the southern Netherlands, under the 
 leadership of William of Orange, in order that they might 
 carry on more successfully their struggle against Philip II. 
 of Spain. See Motley's Rise of the United Netherlands, 
 vol. iii. For notes on the places passed through on the 
 ride see Rolf e's Select Poems of Robert Browning, p. 164. 
 Set to music by Helen J. Ormerod ; London, Forsyth 
 Brothers. 
 
 Humility. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 I am a painter who cannot paint. The opening 
 words of the speech of Lutwyche in Pippa Passes, vol. i. 
 p. 347, Riverside edition of Browning's Works. 
 
 I go to prove my soul. These words are spoken by 
 Paracelsus in the poem by that name, part I. p. 40, 1. 1. 
 Set to music by Ethel Harraden ; London, C. Jeffreys.
 
 170 " Imperante Augusto Natus Est ." 
 
 " Imperante Augusto Natus Est " Asolando, 
 1889. 
 
 Two Romans of the time of Augustus, the first emperor, 
 are about to enter the bath. One of them relates to his 
 friend Publius how the poet Varius praised Augustus as a 
 god, and how he once met the emperor when he was dis- 
 guised as a beggar. 
 
 Gains Octavius succeeded Julius Caesar, whose nephew 
 he was, as the ruler of Rome, though he had to conquer the 
 right to supreme authority. He was made Augustus in 27 
 B. c., and died in A. D. 14. He was a great ruler, gave 
 peace to Rome, built great public works, and was a man of 
 intellectual tastes. 
 
 Lucius Varius Rufus was perhaps born in 64 B. c. and 
 died in A. D. 9. He was for a few years regarded as 
 the chief epic poet of Rome, but when Virgil began to 
 write he turned his attention to tragedy. He was jealously 
 devoted to Julius Caesar, and became popular as a poet on 
 account of the epic poem he wrote on Caesar's death. 
 When Augustus triumphed at the battle of Actium over his 
 powerful enemies the Thyestes of Varius was acted, and 
 the poet received for it one million sesterces. This 
 tragedy was highly praised by Quintilian, who said it would 
 bear comparison with the works of the Greek tragic poets. 
 He wrote a Panegyric on Augustus, which is lost, but two 
 lines of which are quoted by Horace in the first of his 
 Epistles. It is this poem, full of praise and adulation, to 
 which Browning alludes. Varius is principally known as 
 having been the editor of the jEneid after the death of 
 Virgil, in company with Plotius Lucca. 
 
 The little Flaccus who laughed at the panegyric by 
 Varius was probably Horace, whose name was Horatius 
 Flaccus. Mcecenas was the chief adviser of Augustus, 
 who ruled Rome and Italy whenever Augustus was absent, 
 a man skillful in business, a capable ruler, immensely rich, 
 and the patron of literary men. He loved pleasure and 
 luxury, cultivated literature, and devoted himself to matters 
 of taste and refinement. Among his intimate friends were 
 Virgil, Horace, and Varius. 
 
 The poem outlines the events in the life of Augustus, and 
 describes his great services to Rome. It also describes his
 
 In a Balcony. 171 
 
 habit of going about the city disguised as a beggar. At the 
 end the poem refers to the story told in the Lexicon of 
 Suidas, who describes a visit which Augustus made to the 
 oracle of Apollo at Delphos. " Augustus having sacrificed," 
 says Suidas, " asked Pythia who should reign after him ; 
 and the oracle answered : 
 
 " ' A Hebrew slave, holding control over the blessed gods, 
 Orders me to leave this house, and return to the underworld. 
 Depart in silence, therefore, from our altars.' " 
 
 What is thus told by Suidas was sometimes expressed by 
 the Christians as referring to the birth of a child who 
 should overthrow the power of Augustus. Nicephorus re- 
 lates that when Augustus returned to Rome after receiving 
 this response from the oracle he erected an altar in the 
 Capitol with the inscription, " Ara Primogeniti Dei." 
 
 The oracle at Delphi bore the name of Sibyl on some oc- 
 casions. Virgil says Sibylla was a priestess of Apollo. 
 Polyhistor says that she wrote hymns to Apollo, and that 
 she called herself the wife or sister of that god. 
 
 In a Balcony. This drama was begun at Bagni di 
 Lucca, or the baths of Lucca, while the poet was walking 
 alone through the forest glades, in the summer of 1853, and 
 brought to its present state the following winter in Rome. 
 It was the last of the dramatic works written by Brown- 
 ing, and was not fully completed. Published in Men and 
 Women, 1855. In the Poetical Works of 1863 it was put 
 among the plays with the title, In a Balcony A Scene. 
 The present title was restored in the Poetical Works of 1868. 
 
 This play was put upon the stage by the London Brown- 
 ing Society, at the Prince's Hall, on Friday evening, Nov. 
 28, 1884, with Miss Alma Murray as Constance, Miss Nora 
 Gerstenberg as the Queen, and Mr. Philip Beck as Norbert. 
 In the Academy of Dec. 6, Mr. Frederick Wedmore gave 
 an account of the performance. He said : " The audience 
 included many of the most intelligent and a few of the most 
 sympathetic people in London, and so the piece not only in- 
 terested but -charmed. In a Balcony, on the stage as in the 
 study, is for the few, not for the many. It was thoroughly 
 worth doing, however, on Friday night. It was an im- 
 mense pleasure to those to whom it was a pleasure at all. 
 . . . Miss Murray's Constance was nothing less than a
 
 172 In a Gondola. 
 
 great performance, instinct with intelligence, grace, and fire. 
 The more exacting was the situation, the more evident be- 
 came the capacity of the actress to grapple with it. It was 
 the performance of an artist who had thought of all the 
 part contained, and had understood it who knew how to 
 compose a role as a whole, and how to execute it, alike in 
 its least and in its most important detail. It is long since 
 our stage has seen an interpretation more picturesque or 
 more moving." The Pall Mall Gazette of Dec. 1, and 
 The Academy of Dec. 6, contained notices of the perform- 
 ance. The Browning Society's Papers, number seven, 
 2 : 5*, contains several of the newspaper accounts. 
 
 The plot of In a Balcony is entirely original, no place 
 or time being indicated. The first part of the play was not 
 written ; and it evidently begins at about the middle of the 
 plot. The queen who loved a poet hump-backed and 
 dwarfed may perhaps refer to Frangoise d'Aubigne", who 
 married the poet Scarron, and who afterwards became the 
 wife and the all but queen of Louis XIV. 
 
 The Browning Society's Papers, number five, 1 : 499 
 and 1 : 130*, has an analysis and interpretation of the play, 
 by Mrs. Turnbull. Miss Burt's chapter on brave women, 
 in her Browning's Women, is in part devoted to Constance 
 and the Queen. 
 
 In a Gondola. John Forster, Browning's intimate 
 friend, reported to him a picture by Daniel Maclise which 
 he had seen, called The Serenade, and which he described 
 to Browning. As a result of this description Browning 
 wrote the first stanza of this poem impromptu. When he 
 had seen the picture he thought it deserved a more com- 
 plete treatment, and wrote the poem as we now have it. 
 Dickens mentions the poem in one of his letters written in 
 1844, printed in Forster's Life, from which it would appear 
 that it was written in Lincoln's Inn Fields. See Brown- 
 ing Bibliography, and Forster's Life of Charles Dickens, 
 vol. ii. p. 365. 
 
 This poem was first published in Dramatic Lyrics, num- 
 ber three of Bells and Pomegranates, 1842, was classed 
 under the head of Romances in the Poetical Works of 
 1863, and in 1868 was put among the Dramatic Romances, 
 where it has since remained.
 
 Inapprehensiveness. 173 
 
 The poem is wholly imaginary, as are several of the per- 
 sons in it. Schidone's eager Duke, Castelfranco' s Magda- 
 len, and Tizian (Titian) are paintings. Schidone was an 
 Italian painter of the sixteenth century, who worked in 
 the manner of Correggio, and died in 1616. Haste-thee- 
 Luke, called by the Italians Luca-fa-presto, is Luca Gior- 
 dano, a famous painter of the seventeenth century, 1632 
 1705. He worked very rapidly, painted a great number 
 of pictures, and amassed wealth and fame. Castelfranco 
 is Giorgio Barbarelli, born in 1478, at Castelfranco. One 
 or two incidents in his life, as described by Vasari, may 
 have had some suggestion for the poet in the writing of 
 this poem. " Giorgio was," says Vasari, " at a later period 
 called Giorgione [big George], as well from the character 
 of his person as from the exaltation of his mind ; he was 
 of extremely humble origin, but was nevertheless very pleas- 
 ing in manner, and most estimable in character, through 
 the whole course of his life. Brought up in Venice, he 
 took no small delight in love-passages, and in the sound of 
 the lute, to which he was so cordially devoted, and which he 
 practised so constantly, that he played and sang with the 
 most exquisite perfection, insomuch that he was, for this 
 cause, frequently invited to musical assemblies and festivals 
 by the most distinguished personages. . . . At this time he 
 fell in love with a lady, who returned his affection with 
 equal warmth, and they were immeasurably devoted to 
 each other. But in the year 1511 it happened that the 
 lady was attacked by the plague, when Giorgione also, not 
 aware of this circumstance and continuing his accustomed 
 visits, was also infected by the disease, and that with so 
 much violence that in a very short time he passed to another 
 life. This event happened in the thirty-fourth year of his 
 age." Titian's real name was Tiziano yecellio, 1477-1516. 
 
 Inapprehensiveness. Asolando, 1887. 
 
 This poem, the result of a conversation with a friend, was 
 written at Asolo. The ruin is the palace of the queen of 
 Cyprus, Caterina Cornaro ; in regard to which see Aso- 
 lando. The subject is the incapacity of one soul to read 
 the inmost thoughts of another. Vernon Lee is the pseu- 
 donym of Violet Paget, author of Studies of the Eighteenth 
 Century in Italy, Belcaro, Ottilie, Euphorion, and other 
 works.
 
 174 In a Year. The Inn Album. 
 
 In a Year. Men and Women, 1855. Lyrics, 1863 ; 
 Dramatic. Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Incident of the French Camp. Published in Dra- 
 matic Lyrics, third number of Bells and Pomegranates, 
 1842. It was printed with the Soliloquy of a Spanish 
 Cloister, under the general title of Camp and Cloister. In 
 the Poems of 1849 it was printed by itself under its present 
 title. In the Poetical Works of 1863 it was classed among 
 the Romances, which in 1868 became Dramatic Romances ; 
 and this place it has since held. 
 
 Mrs. Orr says the poem was founded on the following 
 incident : " A boy soldier of the Army of Napoleon has re- 
 ceived his death wound in planting the imperial flag within 
 the walls of Ratisbon. He contrives by a supreme effort to 
 gallop out to the Emperor who has watched the storming 
 of the city from a mound a mile or two away fling him- 
 self from the horse, and, holding himself erect by its mane, 
 announce the victory. No sign pf pain escapes him. But 
 when Napoleon suddenly exclaims : ' You are wounded,' the 
 soldier's pride in him is touched. * I am killed, Sire/ he 
 replies ; and, smiling, falls dead at the Emperor's feet. 
 The story is true ; but its actual hero was a man." 
 
 A careful and extended search has not elicited any other 
 information concerning this incident. Ratisbon is a city of 
 Bavaria, on the right bank of the Danube ; also called 
 Regensburg. The storming of Ratisbon took place in May, 
 1809, during Napoleon's Austrian campaign. 
 
 Inn Album, The. Published in 1875, by Smith, Elder 
 and Co., London. Pages, i.-iv., 1-211. 
 
 The form of this poem is dialogue, with intervals of de- 
 scription. The main features of the story told are historical ; 
 but the poet has treated his materials in an independent 
 manner, as best suited his poetic purpose. In Notes and 
 Queries, for March 25, 1876, Dr. F. J. Furnivall thus 
 mentions the incidents on which the poem is based : " The 
 story told by Mr. Browning in this poem is, in its main out- 
 lines, a real one, that of Lord De Ros, once a friend of the 
 great Duke of Wellington, and about whom there is much 
 in the Greville Memoirs. The original story was, of course, 
 too repulsive to be adhered to in all its details, of, first, 
 the gambling lord producing the portrait of the lady he
 
 The Inn Album. 175 
 
 had seduced and abandoned, and offering his expected 
 dupe, but real beater, an introduction to the lady, as a bribe 
 to induce him to wait for payment of the money he had 
 won ; secondly, the eager acceptance of the bribe by the 
 young gambler and the suicide of the lady from horror at 
 the base proposal of her old seducer. The story made a 
 great sensation in London over thirty years ago. 
 
 " Readers of The Inn Album know how grandly Mr. Brown- 
 ing has lifted the base young gambler, through the renewal 
 of that old love which the poet has invented, into one of the 
 most pathetic creations of modern time, and has spared the 
 base old roue* the degradation of the attempt to sell the love 
 which was once his delight, and which, in the poem, he 
 seeks to regain, with feelings one must hope are real, as the 
 most prized possession of his life. As to the lady, the poet 
 has covered her with no false glory or claim on our sympa- 
 thy. From the first, she was a law unto herself ; she grati- 
 fied her own impulses, and she reaped the fruit of this. 
 Her seducer has made his confession of his punishment, and 
 has attributed, instead of misery, comfort and ease to her. 
 She has to tell him, and the young man who has given her 
 his whole heart, that the supposed comfort and ease have 
 been to her simply hell ; and tell, too, why she cannot ac- 
 cept the true love that, under other conditions, would have 
 been her way back to heaven and life. What, then, can be 
 her end ? No higher power has she ever sought. Self- 
 contained, she has sinned and suffered. She can no more. 
 By her own hand she ends her life, and the curtain falls on 
 the most profoundly touching and most powerful poem of 
 modern times." 
 
 The young girl of the poem is the invention of the poet ; 
 the other characters took part in the actual tragedy. In his 
 Memoirs, first series, Greville mentions Lord De Ros from 
 time to time, and they traveled together in Italy. Under 
 date of " Newmarket, March 29th, " 1839, Greville makes 
 the following entry, in the first volume of the second series 
 of his Memoirs, concerning the death of his friend : 
 
 " Poor De Ros expired last night soon after twelve, after a 
 confinement of two or three months from the time he re- 
 turned to England. His end was enviably tranquil, and he 
 bore his protracted sufferings with astonishing fortitude and
 
 176 Instans Tyrannus. 
 
 composure. Nothing ruffled his temper or disturbed his 
 serenity. His faculties were unclouded, his memory reten- 
 tive, his perceptions clear to the last ; no murmur of impa- 
 tience ever escaped him, no querulous word, no ebullition 
 of anger or peevishness ; he was uniformly patient, mild, 
 indulgent, deeply sensible of kindness and attention, exacting 
 nothing, considerate of others and apparently regardless of 
 self, overflowing with affection and kindness of manner and 
 language to all around him, and exerting all his moral and 
 intellectual energies with a spirit and resolution that never 
 flagged till within a few hours of his dissolution, when nature 
 gave way and he sank into a tranquil unconsciousness in 
 which life gently ebbed away. Whatever may have been 
 the error of his life, he closed the scene with a philosophical 
 dignity not unworthy of a sage, and with a serenity and 
 sweetness of disposition of which Christianity itself could 
 afford no more shining or delightful example. In him I 
 have lost (half lost before) the last and greatest of the 
 friends of my youth, and I am left a more solitary and a 
 sadder man." 
 
 In a review of this poem published in the Athenaeum Mr. 
 J. A. Symonds said of it : " The raw material of a penny 
 dreadful, such as the theme here is, requires more artistic 
 manipulation than Mr. Browning has given it before it can 
 be called a poem. Beauty of any kind is what he has care- 
 fully excluded. Vulgarity, therefore, is stamped upon The 
 Inn Album,, in spite of the ingenuity with which, by sup- 
 pressing name and place and superfluous circumstances, the 
 writer succeeds in presenting only the spiritual actions of 
 his characters upon each other in spite of the marvelous 
 scalpel-exercise of analysis which bares the most recondite 
 motives, in spite of the intellectual brilliancy which gives a 
 value to everything he has to say." 
 
 Mrs. Orr gives a careful analysis of the poem. The 
 purpose of the author is discussed by Symons. See Mac- 
 millan's Monthly, 33 : 347 ; The Nation, Henry James, 
 22 : 49 ; International Review, Bayard Taylor, 3 : 402. 
 
 Instans Tyrannus. Men and Women, 1855. Ro- 
 mances, 1863 ; Dramatic Romances, 1868. 
 
 The instans tyrannus (threatening tyrant) of this poem 
 was suggested by the opening verse of the third ode of the
 
 In Three Days. Ivan Ivitnovitch. 177 
 
 third book of the Odes of Horace. In the translation of 
 Sir Theodore Martin the first two stanzas read thus, the 
 subject of the ode being the apotheosis of Romulus : 
 
 " He that is just, and firm of will, 
 
 Doth not before the fury quake 
 Of mobs that instigate to ill, 
 Nor hath the tyrant's menace skill 
 His fixed resolve to shake ; 
 
 " Nor Auster, at whose wild command 
 
 The Adriatic billows dash, 
 Nor Jove's dread thunder-launching hand; 
 Yea, if the globe should fall, he '11 stand 
 Serene amidst the crash." 
 
 In Three Days. Men and Women, 1855. Lyrics, 
 1845 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Italian in England, The. First published in Dramatic 
 Romances and Lyrics, seventh number of Bells and Pome- 
 granates, 1845, under the title " Italy in England." In 
 Poetical Works of 1863 it was classed with the Romances 
 under the present title ; Dramatic Romances, 1868. 
 
 This story is wholly imaginary, but it describes with his- 
 torical fidelity the struggle of Italian liberals against Aus- 
 trian oppression. The speaker is a prominent Italian leader 
 who describes how he was hunted by the Austrians, and 
 how he was saved by a peasant girl. He had reached Eng- 
 land when he relates the adventure. Mrs. Orr says that 
 Browning was proud to remember that Mazzini informed 
 him he had read this poem to certain of his fellow-exiles in 
 England to show how an Englishman could sympathize with 
 them. 
 
 Ivan Ivanovitch. Dramatic Idyls, First Series, 1879. 
 
 The startling incident of this poem is told in The Eng- 
 lishwoman in Russia, by a lady, London, 1855. She thus 
 graphically relates it : ''A dreadful anecdote was told me 
 of a peasant woman and her children, who were crossing 
 the forest that stretched for many miles between her isba 
 and the neighboring village. They were in one of those 
 small country sledges, in shape something like a boat, 
 drawn by a single horse. Suddenly they heard a rustling 
 sound among the trees ; it was but faint at first, but it rap- 
 idly approached ; the instinct of the affrighted steed told
 
 178 Ivan Ivanovitch. 
 
 him that danger was near at hand ; he rushed on with re- 
 doubled speed. Presently the short yelp of a wolf aroused 
 the mother ; she started up and gazed around ; to her hor- 
 ror she beheld a mighty pack of wolves sweeping across the 
 frozen snow, in full cry upon their traces. She seized the 
 whip, and endeavored by repeated blows to urge on the 
 fear-stricken horse to even greater swiftness. The poor 
 animal needed no incentive to hasten his steps, but his force 
 was well-nigh spent ; his convulsive gasping showed how 
 painfully his utmost energies were exerted. But courage ! 
 there is hope ! the village is in sight ! far off, it is true, but 
 we shall gain it yet ! So thought the unhappy mother, as 
 she cast a look of horror on the hungry savage beasts that 
 were following in the rear, and saw that they were rapidly 
 gaining upon her. Now they are near enough for her to 
 see their open mouths and hanging tongues, their fiery eyes 
 and bristling hair, as they rush on with unrelenting speed, 
 turning neither to the right nor to the left, but steadily pur- 
 suing their horrible chase. At last they came near enough 
 for their eager breathing to be heard, and the foremost was 
 within a few yards of the sledge ; the overspent horse 
 flagged in his speed ; all hope seemed lost, when the 
 wretched woman, frantic with despair, caught up one of her 
 three children and threw him into the midst of the pack, 
 trusting by this means to gain a little time by which the 
 others might be saved. He was devoured in an instant ; 
 and the famished wolves, whose appetites it had only served 
 to whet, again rushed after the retreating family. The sec- 
 ond and third infant were sacrificed in the same dreadful 
 manner ; but now the village was gained. A peasant came 
 out of an isba, at sight of whom the wolves fell back. The 
 almost insensible woman threw herself out of the sledge, 
 and, when she could find sufficient strength to speak, she 
 related the fearful danger in which she had been, and the 
 horrible means she had employed to escape from it. 
 
 " ' And did you throw them all to the wolves, even the 
 little baby you held in your arms ? ' exclaimed the horror- 
 stricken peasant. 
 
 " ' Yes, all ! ' was the reply. 
 
 " The words had scarcely escaped from the white lips of 
 the miserable mother, when the man laid her dead at his
 
 Ivan Ivanovitch. 179 
 
 feet with a single blow of the axe with which he was cleav- 
 ing wood when she arrived. He was arrested for the mur- 
 der, and the case was decided by the Emperor, who par- 
 doned him, wisely making allowance for his agitation and 
 the sudden impulse with which horror and indignation at 
 the unnatural act had inspired him." 
 
 Mr. Nathan Haskell Dole, the author of a History of 
 Russia, and the translator of Tolstoi and other Russian 
 authors, furnishes for this work the following notes : 
 
 " A verst is about .66 of a mile (3500 feet). I take it 
 the highway broad and straight from the Neva's mouth 
 to Moscow's gates of gold must refer to the legend that 
 when the first railroad was built from one city to the other, 
 the Emperor Nicholas ordered that it should run absolutely 
 straight, himself marking it with a ruler on the map. I do 
 not think the old highway ran straight. Ivan Ivanovitch 
 is equivalent to John Johnson, or more correctly Jack Jack- 
 son, Ivan being the familiar of loann, John. The ending 
 vitch, however, is not exactly an equivalent to son ; it really 
 means father. Droug^ more correctly spelt druk (pro- 
 nounced drook), means friend. Browning's motherkin 
 corresponds to the Russian matushka, and is an endearing 
 diminutive of mat, mother ; it is always applied to any old 
 peasant woman ; it is a familiar form of address, often ap- 
 plied to any woman or even girl. Vassili (accented by 
 Browning incorrectly on the first syllable) should be spelt 
 Vasili : it is our Basil. Lukeria is a colloquial form of 
 Glikeria, Glycera ; the proper diminutive is Lusha and 
 also Lushka. Browning makes one odd mistake in the 
 poem ; it would be impossible for the breath to go up 
 straight when the people were riding fast in a Russian 
 sledge. He speaks of twin pigeons ; the most familiar 
 term of endearment in Russian is golubchik, which is the 
 diminutive of the word for pigeon. Stibpka is the proper 
 diminutive of Stepan, Stephen ; the io merely represents the 
 sound of the e (as in yelk) with which it is written in Rus- 
 sian. Pope should not be with a capital ; it simply means 
 priest. MarpJia should be spelt Marfa ; it is our Martha, 
 but the Russians cannot pronounce th ; they represent it by 
 f. Pomeschlk should be pomyeschik ; it means merely a 
 landed proprietor. Starosta is correctly accented ; it is
 
 180 Ixion. 
 
 the bailiff of a village, also overseer, inspector ; it merely 
 means old man (from starost, old age, star, old.) Krem- 
 lin is better kreml ; it is any fortress, but especially the 
 fortress of Moscow. Katia is the diminutive of Yekate- 
 rlna, Katherine. Kblokol is pronounced as though it were 
 two syllables, accent on the first. I am not certain about 
 the correctness of Teribscha. It should have no c : nor 
 should Stescha." 
 
 See The Browning Society's Papers, number seven, 
 2 : 29*. 
 
 Ixion. Jocoseria. 1883. 
 
 Ixion, one of the Greek mythological personages, is de- 
 scribed in the Odyssey of Homer, and in the Georgics of 
 Virgil, as well as by other classic authors. According to 
 the common tradition he was the son of Phlegyas ; his 
 wife was a daughter of Deianeus. He was king of the La- 
 pithae or Phlegyae, and the father of Peirithous. When 
 Deianeus demanded of Ixion the bridal gifts he had prom- 
 ised, Ixion treacherously invited him as if to a banquet, 
 and then contrived to make him fall into a pit filled with 
 fire. All the gods were indignant at Ixion for this cruel 
 murder, and no one of them would purify him until Zeus 
 did so. Then Zeus invited Ixion to his table ; but the latter 
 was ungrateful, and attempted to secure the love of Hera. 
 When Zeus knew of this he made an apparition resembling 
 his wife, who became the mother of a centaur. This cen- 
 taur became the father of the hippocentaurs by the Magne- 
 sian mares. In order that Ixion might be punished for his 
 crime, and for his want of gratitude, Hermes chained him 
 by his hands and feet to a wheel that was fiery or winged. 
 This wheel constantly rolled through the air in the lower 
 world. Ixion was also scourged, and compelled constantly 
 to repeat these words, " Benefactors should be honored." 
 
 Browning has used this myth in a manner of his own, 
 for he makes Ixion represent man's righteous revolt, in the 
 spirit of Prometheus, against the tyranny of an unjust God. 
 He becomes the expounder of defeat as the true means to 
 the highest success, when the defeat results from spiritual 
 heroism. 
 
 See Nettleship's Essays and Thoughts, which gives an 
 extended interpretation of the poem.
 
 Jacopo. Jochanan Hakkadosh. 181 
 
 Jacopo. The devoted secretary of the Moorish com- 
 mander of the Florentine army, in Luria. 
 
 Jacynth. The attendant of the Duchess, in The Flight 
 of the Duchess, whose sleep enables the old gypsy woman 
 to fascinate her mistress and secure her flight. 
 
 James Lee's Wife. Dramatis Personce, 1864; but 
 with the title James Lee. Section VI. was first printed in 
 1836, as Lines, signed " Z," in The Monthly Repository, 
 edited by W. J. Fox. In the Poetical Works, 1868, the 
 present title was adopted, probably because it is the wife 
 who is the speaker throughout. The sub-titles were also 
 changed, and additions were made to the poem. In 1864 
 the title of section one was At the Window, and section six 
 was called Under the Cliff. The whole of parts two and 
 three of the eighth section were added in 1868, with the 
 exception of the last two lines of the third part. In the 
 Selections of 1872 slight changes were made. 
 
 See an analysis and interpretation of the poem by Rev. 
 H. J. Bulkeley, The Browning Society's Papers, part four, 
 1 : 455 and 1 : 74*. Each section of the poem is analyzed, 
 and the whole poem is explained in a helpful way. Miss 
 Mary E. Burt's Browning's Women, second chapter, dis- 
 cusses the intellectual characteristics of this woman. Set 
 to music by E. C. Gregory : London, Novello, Ewer & Co. 
 Section first, under the title of Wilt Thou change too? 
 has been set to music by Ethel Harraden ; London, C. Jef- 
 freys. 
 
 Jochanan Hakkadosh. Jocoseria, 1883. 
 
 This poem is a piece of poetic invention, although it has 
 the appearance of having been drawn from the Talmud. 
 Browning has given various realistic touches to the poem 
 by means of quotations, historic references, and the biogra- 
 phic details. Mrs. Orr says : " Mr. Browning professes to 
 rest his narrative on a Rabbinical work, of which the title, 
 given by him in Hebrew, means ' Collection of many lies ; ' 
 and he adds, by way of supplement, three sonnets, supposed 
 to fantastically illustrate the old Hebrew proverb, ' from 
 Moses to Moses [Moses Maimonides] never was one like 
 Moses,' and embodying as many fables of wildly increasing 
 audacity. The main story is nevertheless justified by tradi- 
 tional Jewish belief ; and Mr. Browning has made it the
 
 182 Jochanan Hakkadosh. 
 
 vehicle of some poetical imagery and much serious thought." 
 See the letter from Browning under Jocoseria in this vol- 
 ume. 
 
 During the first and second centuries after the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem several Rabbis bore the name of Jocha- 
 nan, which is variously spelled, Johanan, Jochanan, and 
 Yochanan. Hakkadosh means " The Holy," and in the 
 Talmud it is especially applied to Rabbi Judah II., the 
 patriarch or president of the Sanhedrin at the beginning 
 of the third century after Christ. 
 
 Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai was a pupil of Hillel. He 
 was a member of the Sanhedrin, and had an academy in 
 Jerusalem. After the destruction of the city he went to 
 Jabne", near Joppa, and there opened a great school. He 
 was the leader of the Jews at this time, and the president 
 of the Sanhedrin. He severed Judaism from the sacrificial 
 worship and gave it an independent spiritual signification. 
 He introduced nine regulations for its better guidance, ac- 
 cording to tradition. He was the founder of Talmudic 
 Judaism. 
 
 Rabbi Jochanan ben Napaha lived from 199 to 279^ and 
 he was one of the leading teachers of his time. Many 
 legends, according to Graetz, are told of his death, in a 
 special treatise. He was one of the principal teachers whose 
 sayings are embodied in the Talmud. 
 
 Jochanan ben Shabathai is fictitious. 
 
 Page 211. Mishna means " doctrine," and is applied to 
 those ordinances or regulations which became necessary 
 under the new conditions which grew up after the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem. See McClintock and Strong. 
 
 211. Schiphaz. An imaginary city, as Tsaddik is an 
 imaginary individual. 
 
 214. Targum. A paraphrase or translation of the He- 
 brew Scriptures into Aramaic, with the Talmudic interpreta- 
 tions. 
 
 215. The Bier and Three Daughters. Jewish names for 
 the constellation of the Great Bear. In Jami's Saldmdn 
 and Absdl there is a mention of "Mourners of the Bier," 
 which Fitzgerald explains as the Pleiades and the Great 
 Bear. 
 
 216. Akiba. A rabbi of the generation following the
 
 Jochanan Hakkadosh. 183 
 
 destruction of Jerusalem, who first established the princi- 
 ples on which the Mishna was formed. He was the lead- 
 ing teacher of Judaism at the time of the revolt under Bar- 
 cokheba ; and after its close he was made a prisoner, treated 
 with great severity, and was flayed with iron pincers. Dur- 
 ing this horrible torture he repeated the words of his faith, 
 the " Shema " or declaration of the unity of God. 
 216. Jisehab. Another martyr of the same period. 
 
 215. Salem. The new and mystical Jerusalem, which, 
 according to the teachings of Judaism, was being formed by 
 the spirits of the pure and holy. Ruach. Spirit or soul. 
 
 213. Khubbezleh. A name invented by the poet. 
 
 216. The Ten. Ten martyrs under Hadrian. See 
 Graetz, p. 132. 
 
 219. Verse five is taken from The Ethics of the Fathers. 
 
 222. Djinn. The Arabic original of " genie," a super- 
 natural creature. 
 
 223. Edom. The Talmudic name for Rome or Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 228. Mizraim. The Hebrew name for Egypt. 
 
 230. Shushan. The Hebrew for " Lily." 
 
 231. Tohu-bohu. Void and waste ; Genesis i. 2. 
 
 233. Halafta. The name of several Talmudic teachers. 
 See Jewish Quarterly Review, 2 : 249. 
 
 234. Og's thiyh-bone. Described in Baring-Gould's 
 Myths of the Patriarchs and Prophets. Joseph Jacobs, 
 in the Jewish Quarterly Magazine, has this to say : " At- 
 tached to Jochanan Hakkadosh are three sonnets on the 
 well-known Talmudic Liigenmarchen, to use the folk-lore 
 term, of the legend of Og's bones and bedstead. They are 
 said to be from a work which I need scarcely say neither ex- 
 ists nor could exist under such a title. Much heart-break- 
 ing has been caused by the bad Hebrew of the title, but 
 Browning would probably have given the Johnsonian ex- 
 planation : ' Ignorance, madam, ignorance.' As some indi- 
 cation of the slightness of his acquaintance with Hebrew 
 idiom, I may mention that he was going to call his Jocha- 
 nan ' Hakkadosh Jochanan ' (= John Saint). Through a 
 common friend I pointed out the error of the poet, and the 
 adjective was put in its proper position. The fact seems to 
 me that Browning could read his Hebrew Bible, and that
 
 184 Jochanan Hakkadosh. 
 
 was about the extent of his Hebrew learning, though it was 
 a foible of his to give an impression of recondite learning." 
 Professor Toy, Harvard University, has furnished the 
 author with the following notes : 
 
 214. Nine Points of Perfection. The Mishna (tract 
 Pirke Aboth, 5) speaks of 7 things which belong to perfec- 
 tion, and also lays stress on the numbers 10, 4, and 3. I 
 know nothing of 9. 
 
 215. Dob. Hebrew word for " bear " (the animal) here 
 used of the constellation of that name, but not so used in 
 Old Testament or Talmud. Aish (and so, p. 229, Aisch, 
 which is the German spelling) is the Hebrew name for the 
 Great Sear. The Arabic name is na'sh, " bier," and the tail- 
 stars are called the " daughters of the bier," the mourners ; 
 so in Job xxxviii. 32 we have " the Bear and her children." 
 Some scholars think that Hebrew Aish (or Ash) has the 
 same meaning as Arabic na'sh, and so thinks Tsaddik here, 
 with reference to Jochanan's illness. Banoth means 
 " daughters " in Hebrew ; in Job xxxviii. 32, the mascu- 
 line is used, banim ; Arabic use the feminine, banat. 
 
 216. Akiba. A famous rabbi, who took part in the insur- 
 rection of the false Messiah, Barcokheba, under Hadrian (A. 
 D. 132-135), and was captured ; according to the Mishna his 
 flesh was scraped from his bones by the Romans with an 
 iron comb. Jischab. The Talmud (Gemara of the tract 
 Aboda Zara, fol. 18) reports the burning of Rabbi Chanina 
 ben Teradion (somewhat after A. D. 130). There is no 
 Yishab ; but next to Chanina in the list of great teachers 
 stands Yoshobeb, for which Yishab may here be put; in 
 Hebrew these differ by a single consonant (2212^ an( i 
 
 2l7. Perida. The Talmud relates that he repeated his 
 teaching to a dull pupil 400 times ; and, he not then under- 
 standing, again 400 times ; whereupon a Bathkol (super- 
 natural voice literally " daughter of the voice ") declared 
 that 400 (not 500) years should be added to his life. 
 
 219. Tsaddik. A Hebrew name = Just. Apparently 
 not a historical person, but a name adopted by the poet for 
 one of the pupils of Jochanan. 
 
 227. The sons of Shimei. An expression for " mockers," 
 after David's enemy, 2 Sam. xvi. 5-3.
 
 Jbcoseria. 185 
 
 The basis of the poem is the Judaic belief that the niach 
 or spirit of saintly men survives three days after the time 
 when death naturally takes place. This survival is accorded 
 to them because of the holy lives which they have lived. 
 
 The Talmud has not been translated into English. Some 
 knowledge of it may be acquired from Hershon's Talmudic 
 Miscellany ; Pick's The Talmud : What is it ? Hurwitz's 
 Hebrew Tales ; and Graetz's History of the Jews, fourth 
 volume. 
 
 Jocoseria. Published in March, 1883, by Smith, Elder 
 and Co., London. Pages, 1-143. The Contents were as 
 follows : Wanting is What ? Donald ; Solomon and 
 Balkis ; Cristina and Monaldeschi ; Mary Wollstonecraft 
 and Fuseli ; Adam, Lilith, and Eve ; Ixion ; Jochanan 
 Hakkadosh ; Never the Time and the Place ; Pambo. 
 
 The title of this volume is mentioned in a foot-note to the 
 Note at the end of Paracelsus, where the poet speaks of 
 " such rubbish as Melander's Jocoseria." In a letter, ac- 
 companying a copy of the volume, sent to a friend, Brown- 
 ing wrote : " The title is taken from the work of Melander 
 (Schwartzmann), reviewed, by a curious coincidence, in the 
 Blackwood of this month [Feb. 1883]. I referred to it in 
 a note to Paracelsus. The two Hebrew quotations (put in 
 to give a grave look to what is mere fun and invention) 
 being translated amount to (1) ' A Collection of Lies ' [p. 
 233] ; and (2), an old saying, ' From Moses to Moses arose 
 none like Moses ' [p. 234]." 
 
 Otho Schwartzmann (Graecised into Melander, according to 
 the fashion of the age) was born in 1571, and died in 1640. 
 Otho was the son of a Lutheran clergyman, graduated at 
 Marbourg, and became a lawyer. In 1594 he published 
 Centuria Controversarum juris feudalis ; and in 1599 
 Exegesis totius Studii PoliticL His Joco - Seria was a 
 collection of stories both grave and gay. He drew from 
 many sources ancient and modern, and from all countries. 
 He had read much, and into his book he put all the good 
 stories and anecdotes he could find. In telling some of 
 these stories he was very grave, in others he tried to be very 
 jocose and amusing, which accounts for his title. " Mel- 
 ander's Joco-Seria is a favorable specimen of a class of 
 humorous divertissement with which scholars occasionally
 
 186 Johannes Agricola in Meditation. 
 
 entertained themselves in the days before Latin ceased to 
 be the common language of literary intercourse. Melander's 
 book, which, with large augmentations, was reissued three 
 or four times in different forms, has happily varied the 
 monotony of endless jests and comicalities by freely inter- 
 spersing among them anecdotes of a graver kind. Outside 
 the bounds of his professional studies as a lawyer, he seems 
 to have been an extensive reader of miscellaneous literature, 
 ranging from Italian romances to sermons and Biblical com- 
 mentaries. In all his reading he certainly kept an eye open 
 for an entertaining story. We are reminded of the Percy 
 Anecdotes, by the numerous specimens given of the sayings 
 and doings of princes and heroes of the world and of the 
 Church. Thus we find Dionysius of Syracuse, Charlemagne, 
 St. Anthony, Luther, The Grand Turk Solyman, St. Maoa- 
 rius, Charles V., Popes Leo X. and Julius III., Philip of 
 Macedon, Henry VIII. of England, and scores of others, 
 figuring in his pages. Another feature of the Percy Anec- 
 dotes we find anticipated in several stories illustrative of 
 the intelligence and affection of animals." Melander also 
 illustrated clerical life, the follies of women, the peculiarities 
 of various professions, told old stories and jests in a new 
 form, and had many anecdotes of witchcraft; He even 
 wrote a book on the criminal process against witchcraft and 
 the inadequacy of the water test. See Blackwood' s Maga- 
 zine, 133 : 267, for an interesting article on Melander's 
 Joco-Seria. 
 
 See The Brmvning Society's Palters, 1 : 93* ; National 
 Review, W. J. Courthope, 1 : 548 ; The Atlantic Monthly, 
 51 : 840 ; The Gentleman's Magazine, R. H. Shepherd, 
 254:624; The Academy, J. A. Symonds, 23:213; The 
 Athenceum, March 24, 1883 ; The Saturday Review, 
 55 : 376 ; The Spectator, March 17, 1883. 
 
 Johannes Agricola in Meditation. First printed in 
 The Monthly Repository, London, 1836, edited by W. J. 
 Fox, with the title Johannes Agricola. It was signed " Z." 
 Reprinted in Dramatic Lyrics, third number of Bells and 
 Pomegranates, 1842, as I. under the general title Madhouse 
 Cells. In Poetical Works, 1863, classed under Romances, 
 and with present title ; Dramatic Romances, 1868. On its 
 first publication, after the title, appeared the following:
 
 Johannes Agricola in Meditation. 187 
 
 " ' Antinomians, so denominated for rejecting the Law as 
 a thing of no use under the Gospel dispensation : they say, 
 that good works do not further, nor evil works hinder sal- 
 vation ; that the child of God cannot sin, that God never 
 chastiseth him, that murder, drunkenness, etc., are sins in 
 the wicked but not in him, that the child of grace being 
 once assured of salvation, afterwards never doubteth, . . . 
 that God doth not love any man for his holiness, that sancti- 
 fication is no evidence of justification, etc. Pontanus, in his 
 Catalogue of Heresies, says John Agricola was the author 
 of this sect, A. D. 1535.' Dictionary of all Religions, 
 1704." 
 
 Johannes Agricola (originally Schnitter or Schneider) 
 was born at Eisleben, Germany, April 20, 1492, studied at 
 Wittenberg, was Luther's secretary at the Leipsic council of 
 1519, established reformed worship at Frankfort in 1525, 
 then was in Eisleben as teacher of the high school and as 
 preacher. In 1536, through Luther's influence, he was 
 made a professor at Wittenberg. Very soon after he be- 
 gan to give expression to opinions which he had previously 
 promulgated to some extent, and which brought him into 
 sharp collision with Luther. He taught, according to Ko'st- 
 lin, that " the proclamation of God's law was no necessary 
 part of Christianity, as such, nor of the way of salvation 
 prepared and revealed by Christ. The gospel of the Son 
 of God, our Saviour, this alone should be proclaimed, and 
 operate in touching the hearts of men and exposing the true 
 character of their sins as sinfulness against the Son of God. 
 In this way he sought to give full effect to the fundamental 
 evangelical doctrine, that the grace of God alone had power 
 to save through the joyful message of Christ. The personal 
 vanity, however, which was the chief weakness of this gifted, 
 intellectual, and fairly eloquent man displayed itself in his 
 eccentricities of dogma." A reconciliation was brought 
 about, but Luther withdrew his friendship from Agricola, 
 who left Wittenberg in 1540. He went to Berlin, where 
 he was made court preacher and supei-intendent of churches 
 in Brandenburg. He died in 1566. He was the author of 
 numerous theological works ; and he made the first collec- 
 tion of German proverbs, which he accompanied with a 
 commentary.
 
 188 King Victor and King Charles. 
 
 Browning does not correctly represent the teachings of 
 Agricola, though his poem is correct so far as many Anti- 
 nomians are concerned. Agricola held that the Law and 
 the Gospel are incompatible, that the Law is only for the 
 Jew, and that the spirit of Christ abolishes it for the Chris- 
 tian. The moral obligations, however, he held were for the 
 Christian as much as for any other person. In the New 
 Testament he found all the principles and motives necessary 
 to give true impulse and guidance to the Christian. It was 
 the use made of his teachings by fanatics which cast an 
 odium on the name of Antinomians ; and it is this fanatical 
 and sentimental religion which Browning has interpreted cor- 
 rectly in his poem. Many of the Antinomians taught what is 
 attributed to them in the Dictionary of all Religions, from 
 which Browning quoted when his poem was first published. 
 
 Joris. The companion in the ride which brought the 
 good news from Ghent to Aix. 
 
 Jules. The young French statuary who has been de- 
 luded into marrying Phene, in Pippa Passes. 
 
 Karshish. The Arab physician, in An Epistle, who 
 describes the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and the 
 change wrought in his character because of that experience. 
 
 King, The. This was the title given to a poem pub- 
 lished in The Monthly Repository, edited by W. J. Fox, 
 London, 1835. In 1841 it was incorporated into Pif)pa 
 Passes, Act III., being the song, " A king lived long ago." 
 
 King Victor and King Charles. A Tragedy. 
 Bells and Pomegranates, number two, 1842. The " adver- 
 tisement " prefixed to this play, on its first publication, jus- 
 tifying the manner of treating the historical events of which 
 it makes use, has been retained in all subsequent editions as 
 a preface. Poetical Works, 1863, in second volume, con- 
 taining " Tragedies and Other Plays." 
 
 Victor Amadeus II., Duke of Savoy, was born in 1666, 
 and succeeded his father, under the regency of his mother, 
 in 1675. He married a niece of Louis XIV. of France, 
 and his eldest daughter became the mother to Louis XV. 
 He was an ambitious ruler, joined his forces with those of 
 Austria, and built up for himself an independent kingdom. 
 During the long war at the end of the seventeenth century, 
 which Austria and Spain waged against France, he took the
 
 King Victor and King Charles. 189 
 
 side of Austria; his country was invaded by the French, 
 but he showed himself a capable general and drove out his 
 enemies. By the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, his territory 
 was added to, Savoy was recognized as an independent 
 state, and he was made the king of Sicily. Though 
 crowned in the same year, new arrangements with Austria 
 caused him to give up Sicily, and he was made the king of 
 Sardinia. He employed the peace which followed in pro- 
 moting the internal interests of his country, advancing its 
 agriculture, finances, and education. He was a great gen- 
 eral and an able statesman. Few of the rulers of the period 
 showed higher qualities of personal and political capacity. 
 Sismondi says he was " the ablest, the most warlike, and 
 the most ambitious monarch of his age." 
 
 Victor was a man of a liberal spirit, for he protected the 
 Waldenses, established a national system of education, and 
 was the first ruler to expel the Jesuits from his dominions. 
 He made the Turin University one of the most influential 
 in Italy, and he established under it thirty-two colleges, and 
 a system of popular education. He was admired and be- 
 loved by his people, who had unbounded confidence in him, 
 and the strongest attachment to his person and to his house. 
 
 The following account of his closing years, and of the 
 events made use of by Browning, is condensed from Anto- 
 nio Gallenga's History of Piedmont. The career of Victor 
 Amadeus was one of almost uninterrupted success, and his 
 later years were crowned with unprecedented prosperity. 
 At the close of a splendid day, however, came sorrow and 
 gloom. He beat the best generals of his age and baffled 
 the craftiest statesmen ; but he could not subdue his own 
 wayward impulses, morbid fancies, and strong passions. 
 The end of his career constitutes one of the most affecting 
 episodes in the annals of royalty. 
 
 In 1715. he lost his eldest son, Victor, in whom he had 
 great pride. His daughter, the queen of Spain, died soon 
 after. His heir was now Charles Emanuel, who had an un- 
 gainly exterior, and was never a favorite of the king. 
 After the death of his queen, in 1728, Victor married 
 Anna Teresa Canali, a widowed countess, and he made her 
 marchioness of Spigno. Weariness of the woiid and a 
 doting fondness for his new bride induced the king to abdi-
 
 190 King Victor and King Charles. 
 
 cate his throne in favor of his son. He observed the most 
 elaborate ceremonies in this act of resignation. His people 
 and his son supplicated him, even with tears, not to abdi- 
 cate ; but he adhered to his purpose. He was in the midst 
 of preparations for the war in which Austria and France 
 were the leaders ; and it was surmised that his complica- 
 tions with these powers led to his abdication ; but there was 
 no truth in these statements. 
 
 After leaving the throne Victor took up his abode in the 
 old castle of ChambeVv, with his marchioness. Here ennui 
 beset him, even the company of his lady not being sufficient 
 to overcome it. He had an attack of apoplexy, which 
 rendered his mental faculties feeble, and caused him to be 
 irritable, and subject to violent fits of passion. The inar- 
 chioness had set her heart on being a queen, no less than a 
 king's consort, and she had no rest till she had stirred up 
 Victor to seize again the crown he had voluntarily laid 
 aside. 
 
 The king, his son, twice visited Victor in his retirement ; 
 and in the second interview, which took place in the sum- 
 mer of 1731, as Charles Emanuel accompanied his queen, 
 Polyxena of Hesse, to the baths of Evian, he found his 
 father querulous, captious, and dissatisfied with the policy 
 pursued by the new government. Victor directed from 
 Chambe'ry the councils of his son, and he, apparently, com- 
 plained both that his instructions had not been literally fol- 
 lowed, and that during and after his illness the communica- 
 tions of the ministers with him had suffered interruption. 
 
 Charles Emanuel quitted his father after three days, and 
 proceeded to Evian ; but he had scarcely arrived at this 
 place when a young Savoyard priest, by name Michon, an- 
 nounced to him that, having been admitted to view the 
 royal apartments at Chambe'ry, he had, by the sheerest 
 chance, overheard a conversation between the old king and 
 the marchioness, from which it was clear that they contem- 
 plated a journey to Turin, with a view to possess themselves 
 of the royal authority. 
 
 Charles Emanuel lost no time in crossing the Alps, and 
 followed the less frequented path of the little St. Bernard 
 to avoid an encounter with his father on Mont Cenis. 
 Through this latter mountain, in fact, the old king had
 
 King Victor and King Charles. 191 
 
 traveled with his best speed, but he nevertheless only 
 reached Rivoli in time to hear the cannon announcing his 
 son's arrival at the royal palace in the capital. Charles did 
 not fail to pay his respects to his father on the morrow. 
 Victor pleaded, as a reason for his return, his desire to live 
 in a more genial climate than that of Savoy ; and the young 
 king, who had in reality advised such a removal at the 
 time of his stay in Chambe'ry, showed himself satisfied 
 with his father's resolution, however sudden, and placed the 
 castle of Moncalieri at Victor's disposal. 
 
 At Moncalieri the old king received the homage of his 
 son's ministers, and gave vent in their presence to his ill- 
 humor and dissatisfaction, and even allowed himself some 
 harsh and threatening expressions against them. The mar- 
 chioness, always by his side, gave herself queenly airs, and 
 her demeanor to the young queen, both at Chambe'ry and at 
 her new residence, gave Charles Emanuel the first hint of 
 his father's intentions, while at the same time it obliged 
 him, were it only out of regard to the royal lady who 
 shared his throne, to frustrate them. 
 
 On the twenty-fifth of September, 1731, in the evening, 
 Victor Amadeus sent for the Marquis del Borgo, and bade 
 him deliver up the deed of abdication. The minister in the 
 greatest perplexity gave some evasive answer, and hastened 
 to convey to the king the unexpected demand. Charles 
 Emanuel was a modest, submissive son ; a man of upright, 
 pious, generous nature. His first impulse was, it seems, 
 compliance with his father's wishes. Awakened from his 
 sleep by del Borgo, he summoned his ministers around him, 
 and with them the archbishop of Turin, Charles Arboreo 
 of Gattinara, and other conspicuous personages. To these 
 he communicated his father's desires, adding that he was 
 ready for his own part to give his consent, but that he did 
 not deem himself authorized to divest himself of the royal 
 dignity without at least the knowledge of those in whose 
 presence he had solemnly accepted it. 
 
 The king's lay advisors, not unmindful of Victor's threats, 
 were terrified at the prospect of his return to power ; they 
 dared not nevertheless too openly to propose a son's rebel- 
 lion against his father, and none of them ventured to 
 break silence. The archbishop, Gattinara, strongly and at
 
 192 King Victor and King Charles. 
 
 full length demonstrated the unreasonableness of Victor's 
 pretensions ; when, at his persuasion, it was unanimously re- 
 solved that the tranquillity of the country did not admit of 
 a repeal of the king's act of abdication. 
 
 Whilst they were yet deliberating, a note was handed to 
 the king, by which the baron of St. Remy, commander of 
 the citadel of Turin, announced that at midnight Victor had 
 come from Moncalieri, on horseback, followed by a single 
 aid-de-camp, and asked for admittance into the fortress. 
 The commander had firmly but respectfully answered that 
 the gates of the citadel could not be opened without an 
 order from the king, whereupon the 'old king, in a towering 
 passion, had turned his horse's head back to Moncalieri. 
 This last proof of Victor's readiness to resort to extreme 
 measures determined the still wavering minds in the king's 
 council. An order of arrest against Victor was drawn up, 
 which Charles Emanuel signed with trembling hand, with 
 tears in his eyes. 
 
 The marquis of Ormea, who had been raised to power by 
 the father, who now conducted the affairs of the son, and 
 was more than any other man implicated in these fatal differ- 
 ences between them, took the warrant from Charles's reluc- 
 tant hands, and on the night of the twenty-seventh and 
 twenty-eighth of September repaired to Moncalieri. He 
 had encompassed the castle with troops summoned from the 
 neighborhood of the capital, and charged four colonels with 
 the conduct of the dangerous expedition. These walked, 
 without resistance, into the old king's apartments, where he 
 was found plunged in one of his fits of lethargic sleep. 
 The marchioness awoke and bounded up with a scream, 
 but she was hurried away, and conveyed first to a nunnery 
 at Carignano, then to a state prison, at the castle of Ceva. 
 Not a few of her relatives and partisans were arrested in 
 the course of the same night. 
 
 The chevalier Solaro, one of the colonels, next proceeded 
 to possess himself of the king's sword, which lay on a table 
 by his bedside ; and at length succeeded, not without great 
 difficulty, in breaking the king's heavy slumbers. Victor 
 sat up in his bed ; he looked hard at the faces of his disturb- 
 ers, and inquired on what errand they came ; on hearing it 
 he burst into a paroxysm of fury ; he refused to accompany
 
 The Laboratory. 193 
 
 them, to dress, to rise from his bed. They had to wrap 
 him in his bedclothes, and thus to force him from the 
 chamber. The soldiers had been chosen for their character 
 of reliable steadiness and discipline, but were not proof 
 against the passionate appeals of the man who had so often 
 led them to victory. Murmurs were heard from the midst 
 of them, and a regiment of dragoons, addressed by Victor 
 in the courtyard, gave signs of open mutiny. The colonel, 
 count of Perosa, however, with great presence of mind, 
 ordered silence, in the king's name, and under penalty of 
 death, and drowned the old king's voice by a roll of the 
 drums. They thus shut him up in one of the court car- 
 riages, into which he would admit no companion, and fol- 
 lowed him on horseback, with a large escort, to the castle of 
 Rivoli. 
 
 Rivoli was for some time a very hard prison to Victor 
 Amadeus, with bars at the windows, a strong guard at the 
 doors, and unbroken silence and solitude within. His un- 
 governable rage made him like a maniac ; and he cracked a 
 marble table with his fist in a paroxysm of anguish and fury. 
 Melancholy followed, the rigor of his prison was relaxed, 
 books, papers, and friends were allowed him, and at last the 
 companionship of the marchioness. At his own request he 
 was returned to Moncalieri ; and he there began to prepare 
 for approaching death. Through his confessor he begged 
 for a last interview with his son. Charles Emanuel instantly 
 ordered his carriage ; but the ministers and the queen ad- 
 vised against the visit. The king shed tears, but the father 
 and son never met again. Charles Emanuel never alluded 
 to the final catastrophe of his father's life without visible 
 signs of the most painful emotion. Victor died at Monca- 
 lieri on the thirty-first of October, 1732, at the age of 
 sixty-six. 
 
 See Alexander. Polyxena, in this play, is put among 
 the " brave women " by Miss Burt in her Browning's 
 Women. 
 
 Laboratory, The. Ancien Regime. Published in 
 Hood's Magazine, June, 1844. For the reason for this 
 publication see Nationality in Drinks. In Dramatiq Ro- 
 mances and Lyrics, seventh number of Bells and Pome- 
 granates, 1845, this poem and The Confessional were
 
 194 The Last Ride Together. 
 
 printed under the general title of France and Spain. The 
 Poems of 1849 reprinted this poem as The Laboratory. 
 In the Poetical Works of 1863 it was put among the Lyrics, 
 which in 1868 hecame Dramatic Lyrics. 
 
 The speaker is a woman, the incident wholly imaginary. 
 For interpretations see Mrs. Orr, Symons, and Fothering- 
 ham. The first water-color picture painted hy D. G. Rossetti 
 was taken from the scene in this poem where the girl asks 
 the alchemist for poison. 
 
 Lady and the Painter, The. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 A defense of the nude, as against those who murder 
 God's creatures in order to cover the body and adorn it. 
 
 La Saisiaz. A. E. S. September 14, 1877. This 
 poem was published as the first part of the volume called 
 La Saisiaz : The Two Poets of Croisic, which was issued in 
 May, 1878, by Smith, Elder and Co., London. Pages, i. 
 viii., 1-201, the present poem occupying 5-82. The volume 
 was " Dedicated to Mrs. Sutherland Orr." The proem to 
 the whole volume begins " Good, to forgive," and is con- 
 nected with the dedication. La Saisiaz was dated " Nov. 
 9, 1877," the day of its completion. 
 
 Browning made a journey to Switzerland in the autumn 
 of 1877, accompanied by his sister and Miss Anne Egerton 
 Smith, the proprietor of the Liverpool Mercury, and a 
 great admirer of his poetry. They were spending a quiet 
 holiday in a little place in the mountains near Geneva, and 
 several delightful weeks had passed, when Miss Smith sud- 
 denly died in the manner described in the poem. This 
 sudden departure of a friend of many years' standing turned 
 the poet's thoughts towards the question of the future, and 
 the poem was written soon after. The villa in which their 
 vacation was spent bore the name of " La Saisiaz," which 
 is the Savoyard for " the sun ; " and thus the poem got its 
 name. The events connected with the death of Miss Smith 
 are fully described in the opening of the poem. 
 
 Mrs. Orr gives an excellent interpretation of the poem. 
 In number eleven of The Browning Society's Papers is a 
 long and thorough study of the poem by Rev. W. Robert- 
 son, who gives a careful analysis and interpretation. 
 
 Last Ride Together, The. Men and Women, 1855. 
 Romances, 1863 ; Dramatic Romances, 1868.
 
 Leonce Miranda. A Light Woman. 195 
 
 For interpretation, see Nettleship's Robert Browning : 
 Essays and Thoughts, essay on love poems. 
 
 Leonce Miranda. The Parisian jeweler, in Red Cot- 
 ton Night-Cap Country, who forms an illicit connection 
 with Clara de Millefleurs, and on this account lives at St. 
 Rambert, and finally throws himself from a tower on his 
 estate and dies. 
 
 Levi Lincoln Thaxter. Mrs. Celia Thaxter wrote of 
 her husband's admiration for Browning's poetry : " Mr. 
 Thaxter's great admiration of Browning's genius developed 
 in early youth, and he was already a devoted student of his 
 poetry long before Browning's name had become familiar in 
 this country. His enthusiasm was something beautiful, and 
 it grew and strengthened with every year of his life. To 
 his clear mind the poet's meaning was always perfectly in- 
 telligible, and he had the power of making others under- 
 stand without an effort the subtleties of the master's most 
 mystic utterances." Thaxter gave readings from Brown- 
 ing in Boston which were regarded as quite remarkable in 
 the way of subtle interpretation. A boulder on the Maine 
 seacoast marks his grave, and for this monument Browning 
 wrote the following lines : 
 
 " Levi Lincoln Thaxter. Born in Watertown, Massachu- 
 setts, February 1, 1824. Died May 31, 1884. 
 
 " Thou, whom these eyes saw never ! Say friends true 
 Who say my soul, helped onward by my song, 
 Though all unwittingly, has helped thee too ? 
 I gave of but the little that I knew : 
 How were the gift requited, while along 
 Life's path I pace, couldst thou make weakness strong ! 
 Help me with knowledge for Life 's Old Death 's New I 
 " R. B. to L. L. T., April, 1885." 
 
 This poem was first printed in Poet-Lore for August, 
 1889, 1 : 398, an accurate copy being furnished for publica- 
 tion by Mrs. Thaxter. 
 
 Life in a Love. Men and Women, 1855. Lyrics, 
 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Light Woman, A. Men and Women, 1855. Ro- 
 mances, 1863 ; Dramatic Romances, 1868. 
 
 Mrs. Orr gives a brief comment. The poem is mainly of 
 interest for the poet's description of himself in the last 
 stanza as " a writer of plays."
 
 196 A Likeness. The Lost Leader. 
 
 Likeness, A. Dramatis Personce, 1864. 
 
 Lines. Under this title a poem, signed " Z," was printed 
 in The Monthly Repository, edited "by W. J. Fox, 1836. 
 See James Lee's Wife, into which it was incorporated, 
 1864. 
 
 Lost Leader, The. Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 
 seventh number of Bells and Pomegranates, 1845. Poems, 
 1849 ; Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 It has been asserted that Wordsworth, Southey, or 
 Charles Kingsley was meant by the poet, each of these 
 men having become conservative in old age, after a youth 
 of radical propagandism. According to Notes and Queries, 
 fifth series, 1 : 213, Browning told Walter Thornbury and 
 Jonathan Bouchier that Wordsworth was the lost leader. 
 Browning said that the portrait was " purposely disguised 
 a little, used in short as an artist uses a model, retaining 
 certain characteristic traits, and discarding the rest." The 
 question is finally set at rest, however, by a letter published 
 in Grosart's edition of Wordsworth's Prose Works, which 
 settles it beyond doubt that Wordsworth was the original of 
 the poem : 
 
 " 19 Warwick-Crescent, W., Feb. 24, '75. 
 
 " Dear Mr. Grosart, I have been asked the question 
 you now address me with, and as duly answered it, I can't 
 remember how many times ; there is no sort of objection to 
 one more assurance or rather confession, on my part, that I 
 did in my hasty youth presume to use the great and vener- 
 ated personality of Wordsworth as a sort of painter's model ; 
 one from which this or the other particular feature may be 
 selected and turned to account ; had I intended more, above 
 all, such a boldness as portraying the entire man, I should 
 not have talked about ' handfuls of silver and bits of ribbon.' 
 These never influenced the change of politics in the great 
 poet, whose defection, nevertheless, accompanied as it was 
 by a regular face-about of his special party, was to my 
 juvenile apprehension, and even mature consideration, an 
 event to deplore. But just as in the tapestry on my wall I 
 can recognize figures which have struck out a fancy, on 
 occasion, that though truly enough thus derived, yet would 
 be preposterous as a copy, so, though I dare not deny the 
 original of my little poem, I altogether refuse to have it
 
 Lost, Lost ! yet come. Luitolfo- 197 
 
 considered as the ' very effigies ' of such, a moral and intel- 
 lectual superiority. 
 
 " Faithfully yours, ROBERT BKOWNTXG." 
 
 Mr. Furnivall says, in his Browning Bibliography : 
 " Wordsworth, having turned Tory, was chiefly aimed at 
 here ; but other men and incidents were mixed up with him 
 and his career." As Mr. Furnivall says, the poem very 
 fully depicts the feelings of those Liberals who were left be- 
 hind when Wordsworth and the others deserted the com- 
 panions of their youth. 
 
 Lost, lost ! yet come. The opening words of the 
 first song in Paracelsus, sung by Aprile, vol. i. p. 53, 
 Riverside edition of Browning's Works. 
 
 Lost Mistress, The. Dramatic Romances and 
 Lyrics, seventh number of Bells and Pomegranates, 1845. 
 Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 The title of this poem was probably suggested by The 
 Lost Leader, published in the same volume. For interpre- 
 tations, see Mrs. Orr and Fotheringham. 
 
 Love among the Ruins. Men and Women, 1855. 
 Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. Written at Rome 
 in the winter of 1853-1854. 
 
 Love in a Life. Men and Women, 1855. Lyrics, 
 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Lovers' Quarrel, A. Men and Women, 1855. Ly- 
 rics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 This poem has been set to music by E. C. Gregory ; Lon- 
 don, Novello, Ewer & Co. 
 
 Lucrezia. The wife of Andrea del Sarto, in the poem 
 with that title, to whom her husband is speaking in the 
 poem, and who compares his own painting with that of 
 Raphael, declaring that he might have done as good work 
 had she given him the inspiration for its accomplishment. 
 
 Lucy Percy, Countess of Carlisle. The devoted 
 friend and admirer of Wentworth in Strafford, who even 
 tries to save his life. She appears frequently throughout 
 the play. 
 
 Luigi. The young Italian who is about to betray his 
 country, in Pippa Passes. 
 
 Luitolfo. The friend of Chiappino and the lover of
 
 198 Luria. 
 
 Eulalia, in A Soul's Tragedy, who defends Chiappino only 
 to be betrayed by him. 
 
 Luria. A Tragedy. Published first in number eight 
 of Sells and Pomegranates, 1846, when the title was Luria. 
 A Tragedy in Five Acts. Time 14 In Poetical Works, 
 1863, in second volume, with Tragedies and Other Plays. 
 See Bells and Pomegranates for other particulars of the 
 publication of this play. 
 
 The struggle between Florence and Pisa, by which, in 
 1406, Pisa came under the dominion of her rival, is the his- 
 torical subject of this play. The historical events are not 
 closely followed, and are merely a framework for the poem. 
 Located at the mouth of the Arno, Pisa controlled the com- 
 merce of Florence in a measure, and became a formidable 
 rival of that city. During the fierce war between Florence 
 and Milan, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, Pisa 
 came under the control of Milan. In 1406 Milan sold Pisa 
 to Florence, thus withdrawing its own support from the city 
 at the mouth of the Arno. Then Florence made a vigorous 
 effort to reduce its new possession to submission. 
 
 In his Florentine History Napier gives an extended ac- 
 count of the capture of Pisa, which may be condensed in 
 this way : " The acquisition of Pisa was a serious affair at 
 Florence, and great efforts were made to secure it. ... 
 Her army was first commanded by Jacopo Salviati, a Flor- 
 entine citizen, who after some useful and active service was 
 superseded by Bertoldo degli Orsini ; but this general show- 
 ing more rapacity than soldiership displeased the Floren- 
 tines, and was ordered to resign his command to Obizzo da 
 Monte Carelli. Active military operations had continued 
 through the autumn of 1405, and when the camp was 
 pitched before Pisa, almost all its territory had been sub- 
 dued. . . . After this the growing rivalry of Sforza and 
 Tartaglia began to trouble the camp so much that they 
 were placed by order of the Seigniory in distinct and dis- 
 tant commands, with their separate forces, for in those days 
 armies were like a piece of patchwork, composed of man}' 
 small independent bands, with but little subordination 
 amongst any who were strong enough to be troublesome, 
 unless awed by high rank or the acknowledged fame of 
 some able chieftain. . . . As famine was still eating on its
 
 Lurid. 199 
 
 silent way Gambacorta [one of the Pisan leaders] secretly 
 renewed the negotiations with Gino Capponi and finally 
 consented to a capitulation. . . . After this resolute con- 
 duct Gino repaired to Florence and explained all to the 
 Seigniory. . . . Gino Capponi and Bartolommeo Corbinelli 
 were appointed public syndics to complete the transac- 
 tion. . . . Gino then took possession of the public palace 
 and commenced Florentine rule." 
 
 It will be seen that not one of the leaders of the Floren- 
 tine forces was a Moor, though mercenaries were employed 
 by the Italian cities at this time. The play is based on cer- 
 tain historical details, however, for in Sapio Amminato's 
 Florentine History it is related : " And when all was ready, 
 the expedition marched to the gates of Pisa, under the com- 
 mand of Conte Bartoldo Orsini, a Ventusian captain, in the 
 Florentine service, accompanied by Filippo di Megalotti, 
 Rinaldo di Gian Figliazzi, and Maso degli Albizzi, in the 
 character of commissaries of the commonwealth. For al- 
 though we have every confidence in the honor and fidelity 
 of our general, you see it is always well to be on the safe side. 
 And in the matter of receiving possession of a city . . . 
 these nobles with the old feudal names ! We know the ways 
 of them ! An Orsini might be as bad in Pisa as a Visconti, 
 so we might as well send some of our own people to be on 
 the spot. The three commissaries, therefore, accompanied 
 the Florentine general to Pisa." 
 
 The intriguing spirit which constantly hindered Luria, 
 and the secret attack upon him even when he was victo- 
 rious, and in order that he might gain no personal benefit 
 from success, were of the essence of the political life of the 
 period. In these general characteristics the play is histori- 
 cal, but not in its use of names and particular events. 
 
 In Act I. of the play, at the bottom of page 364 in the 
 Riverside edition, Braccio and the secretary discuss the 
 front of the Duomo in Florence, and the secretary says : 
 
 " Lady Domizia 
 
 Spoke of the unfinished Duomo, you remember ; 
 That is his [Luria' s] fancy how a Moorish front 
 Might join to, and complete the body." 
 
 Browning appears to have been struck, in studying the 
 Dnomo, with an idea that a Moorish front would best com-
 
 200 Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli. 
 
 plete it. It has been discovered by Mr. Earnest Radford, 
 in exploring a small museum in Florence, that one design 
 offered had actually thus planned the completion of the 
 building. See Browning Bibliography, and number two 
 of The Browning Society's Papers, 1 : 251. 
 
 See Alexander. In Poet-Lore, 1 : 553 and 2 : 19, is a 
 valuable historical and analytical study of the poem, by 
 Prof. Henry S. Pancoast, from which the above extract 
 from Amminato is taken. In his Stories from Robert 
 Browning, Mr. F. M. Holland tells the story of the play in 
 prose. The Browning Society's Papers, 1 : 125*. 
 
 Madhouse Cells. This was the general title given in 
 Dramatic Lyrics, third number of Bells and Pomegran- 
 ates, 1842, to I. Johannes Agricola. II. Porphyria. The 
 first of these was printed in the Poetical Works of 1863 as 
 Johannes Agricola in Meditation, and the second as Por- 
 phyria's Lover. 
 
 Magical Nature. Pacchiarotto, with other Poems, 
 1876. 
 
 Malcrais. The name of Paul Desforges Maillard in Two 
 Poets of Croisic, when he assumed the character of his sis- 
 ter in sending poems to the Mercure. 
 
 Man I am and man would be, Love. The opening 
 words of the fourth lyric in Ferishtah's Fancies. 
 
 Marching Along. First published in Dramatic Ly- 
 rics, third number of Bells and Pomegranates, 1842, as 
 I. of Cavalier Tunes, which see. Poems, 1849 ; Lyrics, 
 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Martin Relph. Dramatic Idyls, First Series, 1879. 
 
 An indistinct remembrance, of something heard by the 
 poet when a boy, gave origin to this story in verse. The 
 speaker is a grandson of a man who saw Martin Relph as 
 an old man, and he tells the story as it was repeated to him 
 by his grandfather. 
 
 Mary "Wollstonecraft and Fuseli. Jocoseria, 1883. 
 
 Mary Wollstonecraft was the author of the Rights of 
 Woman, the wife of William Godwin, and the mother of 
 Shelley's second wife. She was born in 1759 and died in 
 1797. Fuseli was born in Switzerland in 1741, but he lived 
 in England after 1761. He was a mediocre painter, but he 
 gave lectures on art which were published as Lectures on
 
 Mary Wolistonecraft and Fuseli. 201 
 
 Painting, and gained him some reputation. He also pub- 
 lished a History of Arts, and other works. He died in 
 1825. 
 
 In the poem Mary Wolistonecraft is addressing Fuseli, 
 and pouring out to him her passionate and unrequited love. 
 This scene is probably based on the biography of Fuseli 
 written by Knowles, or on Godwin's Memoirs of his wife. 
 This incident is thus described by Godwin : " She saw Mr. 
 Fuseli frequently ; he amu&ed, delighted, and instructed 
 her. As a painter, it was impossible she should not wish 
 to see his works, and consequently to frequent his house. 
 She visited him ; her visits were returned. Notwithstand- 
 ing the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper 
 to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit 
 and genius, without loving him. The delight she enjoyed 
 in his society, she transferred by association to his person. 
 What she experienced in this respect, was no doubt height- 
 ened by the state of celibacy and restraint in which she had 
 hitherto lived. She conceived a personal and ardent affec- 
 tion for him. Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife 
 the acquaintance of Mary. She readily perceived the re- 
 strictions which this circumstance seemed to impose upon 
 her ; but she made light of any difficulty that might arise 
 out of them. . . . There is no reason to doubt that, if Mr. 
 Fuseli had been disengaged at the period of their acquaint- 
 ance, he would have been the man of her choice. As it was, 
 she conceived it both practicable and eligible to cultivate a 
 distinguishing affection for him, and to foster it by the en- 
 dearments of personal intercourse and a reciprocation of 
 kindness." 
 
 Knowles, in his Life of Fuseli, goes even farther than 
 this, and represents Mary as being importunate in her love, 
 and passionately so. She wrote to Fuseli frequently, she 
 pursued him with her affection, and when he was cold and 
 indifferent, she boldly went to Mrs. Fuseli, and asked to be- 
 come a member of the family, that she might be constantly 
 near the man whom she loved, and whose* presence was 
 necessary to her existence. Mrs. Fuseli drove her from the 
 house ; and then it was Maiy Wolistonecraft went to France. 
 
 The recent students of the life of Mary Wolistonecraft 
 deny the truthfulness of these stories of Godwin and
 
 202 Master Hugues. May and Death. 
 
 Knowles. Mr. C. Kegan Paul, in his William Godwin: 
 His Friends and Contemporaries, entirely repudiates them. 
 He says that Knowles " is so extremely inaccurate in regard 
 to all else he says of her, that his testimony may be wholly 
 set aside," and that " the correspondence and the uninter- 
 rupted friendship with Mrs. Fuseli would seem wholly to 
 clear Mary Wollstonecraft's memory from the imputation 
 of any feeling for Fuseli in which there is reason for blame 
 even by the most censorious." In her Life of Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft Mrs. Elizabeth Robins Pennell says : " Her char- 
 acter is the best refutation of Knowles's charges. She was 
 too proud to demean herself to any man. She was too 
 sensitive to slights to risk the repulses he says she accepted. 
 And since always before and after this period she had no- 
 thing more at heart than the happiness of others, it is not 
 likely that she would have deliberately tried to step in be- 
 tween Fuseli and his wife, and gain at the latter's expense 
 her own ends. She could not have changed her character 
 in a day. She never played fast and loose with her princi- 
 ples. The testimony of her actions is her acquittal." 
 
 Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha. Men and Women, 
 1855. Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Hugues is an imaginary composer. Saxe-Gotha is a 
 duchy in the central part of the German Empire. Pales- 
 trina was a great Italian composer of the sixteenth century, 
 who produced a revolution in the character of church music, 
 and gave to the music of the Catholic church its tone and 
 character. 
 
 May and Death. First printed in The Keepsake, 
 1857, published in London by David Bogue, and edited by 
 Miss Power. Reprinted in Dramatis Personce, 1864, with 
 new readings. 
 
 Mrs. Orr says : " This poem was a personal utterance, 
 provoked by the death of a relative whom Mr. Browning 
 dearly loved." The plant described in the fourth stanza 
 is commented upon "in The Browning Society's Papers. 
 " Surely the Polygonum Persicaria, or Spotted Persicaria, 
 is the plant alluded to. It is a common weed with purple 
 stains upon its rather large leaves ; these spots varying in 
 size and vividness of color, according to the nature of the 
 soil where it grows. A legend attaches to this plant and
 
 Meeting at Night. Memorabilia. 203 
 
 attributes these stains to the blood of Christ having fallen 
 on its leaves, growing below the cross." 
 
 Meeting at Night. This poem and its sequel, Parting 
 at Morning, were published in Dramatic Romances and 
 Lyrics, the seventh number of Bells and Pomegranates, in 
 1845 ; and they appeared there under the general title of 
 Night and Morning, while the first was called Night, and 
 the second Morning. In the Poetical Works of 1863 the 
 present titles were assigned to these poems. 
 
 In each of these short poems the speaker is a man, who 
 goes at night from his daily duties among men, to the love 
 and the quiet peace of his home and the woman he loves. 
 In the morning he returns to the tasks of the day, and to 
 take part in the world's work, because he feels the need 
 of contact with men. If the poem has any didactic mean- 
 ing, it is that the love which the home gives, and the tasks 
 which come through contact with men, mutually sustain 
 each other. 
 
 Melon-Seller, The. Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884. 
 
 The Prime Minister of the Shah become a seller of 
 melons is probably borrowed from Job. The sentence in 
 Hebrew, which is given in English immediately after as a 
 " Persian phrase," is taken from Job, and is a summing up 
 of the philosophy of that ancient thinker on the problem of 
 evil. Ispahan is a leading city of Persia. Nishapur 
 (Nishapoor) is a small city in the province of Khorassan. 
 Elbruz is a mountain in the range of the same name, which 
 runs parallel with the southern shore of the Caspian sea. 
 
 Memorabilia. Men and Women, 1855, where the title 
 was Memorabilia (on seeing Shelley). Lyrics, 1863, with 
 that part of title in parenthesis omitted ; Dramatic Lyrics, 
 1868. Composed on the Campagna in the winter of 1853-54. 
 It was about 1825 that Browning became acquainted with 
 the poetry of Shelley, and it had a remarkable effect upon 
 him. It quickened his poetical life, and gave him new con- 
 ceptions of beauty. From that time he was an ardent ad- 
 mirer of Shelley, Pauline being written under the influence 
 of this inspiration. Shelley is also mentioned in Sordello, 
 Cenciaja, and the Introductory Essay to what proved to 
 be spurious letters. In his paper on the early writings of 
 Browning, now published in Personalia, Mr. Gosse, after
 
 204 Memorabilia. 
 
 speaking of his earliest poem, says : " At the time they were 
 written he was entirely under the influence of Byron, and 
 his verse was so full and melodious that Mr. Fox confessed, 
 long afterward, that he had thought that his snare would be 
 a too gorgeous scale of language and tenuity of thought, 
 concealed by metrical audacity. But about a year after 
 this, an event revolutionized Robert Browning's whole con- 
 ception of poetic art. There came into his hands a miser- 
 able pirated edition of part of Shelley's works ; the window 
 was dull, but he looked through it into an enchanted garden. 
 He was impatient to walk there himself, but, in 1825, it 
 was by no means easy to obtain the books of Shelley. No 
 bookseller that was applied to knew the name, although 
 Shelley had been dead three years. At last, inquiry was 
 made of the editor of the Literary Gazette, and it was re- 
 plied that the books in question could be obtained of C. & 
 J. Oilier, of Vere street. To Vere street, accordingly, Mrs. 
 Browning proceeded, and brought back as a present for her 
 son, not only all the works of Shelley, but three volumes 
 written by a Mr. John Keats, which were recommended to 
 her as being very much in the spirit of Mr. Shelley. A 
 bibliophile of to-day is almost dazed in thinking of the prize 
 which the unconscious lady brought back with her to Cam- 
 berwell. There was the Pisa Adonais in its purple paper 
 cover ; there was Epipsychidion, in short, all the books 
 she bought were still in their first edition, except The Cenci, 
 which professed to be in the second. . . . Well, the dust of 
 the dead Keats and Shelley turned to flower-seed in the 
 brain of the young poet, and very soon wrought a change 
 in the whole of his ambition." 
 
 In a letter written in 1886, and quoted by Kingsland, 
 Browning says : " As for the early editions of Shelley, they 
 were obtained for me sometime before 1830 (or even 
 earlier), in the regular way, from Hunt and Clarke, in con- 
 sequence of a direction I obtained from the Literary Ga- 
 zette. I still possess Posthumous Poems, but have long 
 since parted with Prometheus Bound, Rosalind and Helen, 
 Six Weeks' Tour, Cenci, and the Adonais. I got at the 
 same time, nearly, Endymion, and Lamia, etc., as if they 
 had been published a week before, and not years after the 
 death of Keats." 
 
 See Corson, Kingsland, and Sharp.
 
 Men and Women. 205 
 
 i 
 
 Men and Women. Published by Chapman and Hall, 
 193, Picadilly, London, 1855, in two volumes. The poems 
 were written during the years from 1848 to the time of pub- 
 lication in London and Florence. The contents were as 
 follows : 
 
 Volume I. Love among the Ruins ; A Lover's Quarrel ; 
 Evelyn Hope ; Up at a Villa Down in the City ; A 
 Woman's Last Word ; Fra Lippo Lippi ; A Toccata of 
 Galuppi's ; By the Fire-Side ; Any Wife to any Husband ; 
 An Epistle concerning the Strange Medical Experience of 
 Karshish, the Arab Physician ; Mesmerism ; A Serenade 
 at the Villa ; My Star ; Instans Tyrannus ; A Pretty Wo- 
 man ; Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came ; Respecta- 
 bility ; A Light Woman ; The Statue and the Bust ; Love 
 in a Life ; Life in a Love ; How it strikes a Contemporary ; 
 The Last Ride Together ; The Patriot ; Master Hugues of 
 Saxe-Gotha ; Bishop Blougram's Apology ; Memorabilia. 
 Pages i.-iv., 1-260. 
 
 Volume II. Andrea del Sarto (Called the Faultless 
 Painter) ; Before ; After ; In Three Days ; In a Year ; 
 Old Pictures in Florence ; In a Balcony ; Saul ; " De 
 Gustibus " ; Women and Roses ; Protus ; Holy -Cross Day ; 
 The Guardian Angel, a Picture at Fano ; Cleon ; The 
 Twins ; Popularity ; The Heretic's Tragedy ; A Middle- 
 Age Interlude ; Two in the Campagna ; A Grammarian's 
 Funeral ; One Way of Love ; Another Way of Love ; 
 " Transcendentalism : a Poem in Twelve Books " ; Miscon- 
 ceptions ; One Word More : To E. B. B. Pages, i.-iv., 1 
 241. 
 
 When Browning published his Poetical Works, in 1863, 
 he made a new distribution of his poems, and only the fol- 
 lowing were classed under the head of Men and Women. 
 
 Transcendentalism ; How it Strikes a Contemporary ; 
 Artemis Prologizes ; An Epistle containing the Strange 
 Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician ; Pic- 
 tor Ignotus ; Fra Lippo Lippi ; Andrea del Sarto ; The 
 Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's Church ; Bishop 
 Blougram's Apology ; Cleon ; Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli ; 
 One Word More. 
 
 Some of these poems did not belong to the original edition 
 of Men and Women, and in 1863 were classed under this
 
 206 Mesmerism. Mihrab /Shah. 
 
 head for the first time. In the Poetical Works of 1868 
 Johannes Agricola in Meditation was added to the above ; 
 and in all later editions these thirteen poems have been 
 classed under the head of Men and Women. 
 
 See Bentley's Magazine, 39 : 64 ; The British Quar- 
 terly Review, 23 : 151 ; The Dublin University Review, 
 47 : 673 ; Fraser's Magazine, 53 : 105 ; The Westminster 
 Review, 65 : 920. 
 
 Mesmerism. Men and Women, 1855. See Mrs. Orr 
 for a brief interpretation. Mr. Symons says that " the in- 
 tense absorption, the breathless eagerness of the mesmerist, 
 are rendered, in a manner truly marvelous, by the breath- 
 less and yet measured race of the verses." 
 
 Mihrab Shah. Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884. 
 
 Mihrab Sliah is an invention of the poet's. He directly 
 refers in this poem to Firdusi, and questions the truthfulness 
 of his tales. Like all the true epics, such as the Iliad and 
 the Nibelungen, the Shah Nameh is based on legend, but 
 legend that has in it an element of truth. Most of its char- 
 acters are historical, but their deeds have become distorted 
 and exaggerated through the process of legendary growth. 
 On this point Miss Zimmern says, in the introduction to 
 her Heroic Tales : " Adumbrated by poetical and popular 
 legends, we learn in the Shah Nameh the wars of the 
 peoples that succeeded each other in the Persian Empire. 
 Thus the history of Zohak probably represents the invasion 
 of some Semitic people into Iran ; the combat of the de- 
 scendants of Tur against those of Irij signifies the long wars 
 waged by the Persian kings against the Tartar and Scythian 
 peoples of the north, wars signalized by many vicissitudes. 
 And this Zohak is held by some to be the Nimrod of the 
 Hebrews ; Hai Khosrau is identified as the Cyrus of the 
 Greeks ; Gushtasp, the Darius Hystaspes ; Isfendiyar, the 
 Xerxes ; while the fabulous lengths of the reigns of the 
 various kings are held to represent periods in the history of 
 Persia. This may be so, but it is best to regard the Shah 
 Rameh once for all as history clouded by fable, and to dis- 
 miss its earlier half as being as historically obscure as the 
 time that preceded the Trojan war." 
 
 The Simorgh (Simurgh) is a fabulous creature of Persian 
 mythology, noted for its benevolence and its ability to be-
 
 Mr. Sludge, " The Medium." 207 
 
 stow magical powers. It is supposed to have been the 
 origin of the griffin, which found its way into Europe 
 through the Arabs of Spain, but got transformed from a 
 beneficent being to a terrible beast. Atkinson says of this 
 being : " The sex of this fabulous animal is not clearly made 
 out. It tells Zal [in the Shah NartieJi} that it had nursed 
 him like a father, though the preserver of young ones might 
 authorize its being considered a female. The Simurgh is 
 probably neither one nor the other, or both. Some have 
 likened the Sirnurgh to the Hippogriff or Griffin, but the 
 Simurgh is plainly a biped ; others again have supposed 
 that the fable simply meant a holy recluse of the mountains, 
 who nourished and educated the poor child which had been 
 abandoned by its father." The reference here is to the 
 abandonment of Zal by his father Sam, and to his being 
 nourished and brought up by the Simorgh. He was aban- 
 doned because of his white hair, white being the color of 
 evil to the Persians. 
 
 Mildred Tresham. The young girl in A Blot on The 
 'Scutcheon who is beloved by Lord Henry Mertoun, who 
 secretly receives his visits. When discovered he is stabbed 
 by her brother Earl Tresham, and she dies heart-broken. 
 
 Misconceptions. Men and Women, 1855. In Poet- 
 ical Works of 1863 classed under Lyrics ; in 1868 Dra- 
 matic Lyrics. Set to music by E. C. Gregory ; London, 
 Novello, Ewer & Co. Also by Georgiana Schuyler, under 
 the title This is a Spray the Bird clung to ; New York, 
 G. Schirmer. 
 
 Mr. Gigadibs. The young literary man in Bishop 
 Blougram's Apology, to whom the bishop is speaking, and 
 who has questioned his honesty and consistency in being a 
 Churchman. 
 
 Mr. Sludge, " The Medium." Dramatis Personce, 
 1864. 
 
 An interpretation of American spiritualism on one side 
 of it, that of imposture and credulity. It was probably 
 suggested by the career of D. D. Home. Browning gave 
 much attention to spiritualism during several years, his 
 wife being a strong believer in it. Miss M. R. Mitford 
 wrote that " Mrs. Browning believes in every spirit-rapping 
 story ; " and that she " is positively crazy about the spirit-
 
 208 Muckle-Mbuth Meg. 
 
 rappings." Her cousin, Henry Chorley, said that " she 
 lent an ear as credulous as her trust was sincere and her 
 heart high-minded " to the claims of mesmerism and clair- 
 voyance. See Mr. John H. Ingram's Biography of Mrs. 
 Browning, page 207, for an account of her interest in these 
 subjects. Browning was much less interested in spiritual- 
 ism than was his wife, and he was inclined to doubt. 
 
 This is clearly shown in Hawthorne's French and Ital- 
 ian Note-Books, where, under date of June 9, 1858, record 
 is made of a conversation very significant with reference to 
 this poem, which was written not long after that time : 
 
 " There was no very noteworthy conversation ; the most 
 interesting topic being that disagreeable and now wearisome 
 one of spiritual communications, as regards which Mrs. 
 Browning is a believer, and her husband an infidel. Brown- 
 ing and his wife had both been present at a spiritual ses- 
 sion held by Mr. Home, and had seen and felt the unearthly 
 hands, one of which had placed a laurel wreath on Mrs. 
 Browning's head. Browning, however, avowed his belief 
 that these hands were affixed to the feet of Mr. Home, who 
 lay extended in his chair, with his legs stretched far under 
 the table. The marvelousness of the fact, as I have read 
 of it, and heard it from other eye-witnesses, melted strangely 
 away in his hearty gripe, and at the sharp touch of his 
 logic ; while his wife, ever and anon, put in a little gentle 
 word of expostulation." See The Browning Society's Pa- 
 pers, number seven, 2:13 and 2 : 45* : for an extended study 
 of the poem, by Edwin Johnson. 
 
 Muckle-mouth Meg. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 The story told in this poem is to be found in Sir Thomas 
 Dick Lauder's .Scottish Rivers, and probably in other 
 works. It is there told as follows : " A feud had for some 
 time existed between the Murray s and the Scotts. In pros- 
 ecution of this, William Scott, son of the head of the family 
 of Harden, stole, with his followers, from his Border 
 strength of Oakwood Tower on the river Ettrick, to lead 
 them on a foray against Sir Gideon [Murray] of Elibank. 
 But Sir Gideon was too much on his guard for his enemies, 
 and having fallen on them as they were driving off the 
 cattle, he defeated them, took them prisoners, and recov- 
 ered the spoil. His lady having met him on his return,
 
 Muleykeh. 209 
 
 and congratulated him on his success, ventured to ask him 
 what he was going to do with young Harden. ' Why, strap 
 him up to the gallows-tree, to be sure,' replied Sir Gideon. 
 ' Hout na, Sir Gideon,' said the considerate matron, ' would 
 you hang the winsome young Laird of Harden, when you 
 have three ill-favored daughters to marry ? ' ' Right,' an- 
 swered the baron, ' he shall either marry our daughter 
 mickle-mouthed Meg, or he shall strap for it.' When this 
 alternative was proposed to the prisoner, he at first stoutly 
 preferred the gibbet to the lady ; but as he was led out to 
 the fatal tree for immediate execution, the question began 
 to wear a different aspect, and life, even with mickle- 
 mouthed Meg, seemed to have a certain sunshine about it 
 very different from the darkness of the tomb to which the 
 gallows would have so immediately assigned him. He mar- 
 ried Meg, and an excellent wife she made him, and they 
 lived for many years a happy couple, and Sir Walter Scott 
 came by descent from this marriage. Would we could 
 transfer to these pages the animated sketch of this scene 
 made by Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, which, we be- 
 lieve, hangs at Abbotsford, where a few bold lines so per- 
 fectly convey the whole humor, not only of the subject, but 
 of the individual characters, as to leave all verbal descrip- 
 tion quite in the background." Muclde and mickle have 
 the same meaning, that of magnitude. 
 
 Muleykeh. Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, 1880. 
 
 This story is told in The Horse and his Rider ; or 
 Sketches and Anecdotes of the Noble Quadruped, by 
 Hollo Springfield ; but no reference is made to its source. 
 It is undoubtedly this anecdote of the Bedouins which 
 Browning has made the basis of his poem, changing the 
 names, and retelling the story in a manner to secure the 
 best dramatic effect. 
 
 " A Bedouin, named Jabal, possessed a mare of great 
 celebrity. Hassad Pacha, then governor of Damascus, 
 wished to buy the animal, and repeatedly made the owner 
 the most liberal offers, which Jabal steadily refused. The 
 pacha then had recourse to threats, but with no better suc- 
 cess. At length one Gafar, a Bedouin of another tribe, 
 presented himself to the pacha, and asked what he would 
 give the man who should make him master of Jabal's mare.
 
 210 Muleykeh. 
 
 1 1 would fill his horse's nose-bag with gold,' replied Has- 
 sad, whose pride and covetousness had been irritated to the 
 highest degree by the obstinacy of the mare's owner. The 
 result of this interview having gone abroad, Jabal became 
 more watchful than ever ; and always secured his mare at 
 night with an iron chain, one end of which was fastened 
 round her hind fetlock, whilst the other, after passing 
 through the tent cloth, was attached to a picket driven into 
 the ground under the felt that served himself and his wife 
 for a bed. But one midnight Gafar crept into the tent, and, 
 insinuating his body between Jabal and his wife, he pressed 
 gently now against the one, now against the other, so that 
 the sleepers made room for him right and left, neither of 
 them doubting that the pressure came from the other. 
 This being done, Gafar slit the felt with a sharp knife, 
 drew out the picket, loosed the mare, and sprang on her 
 back. Just before starting off with his prize, he caught up 
 Jabal's lance, and poking him with the butt end, cried out, 
 4 1 am Gafar ! I have stolen your noble mare, and I give 
 you notice in time.' This warning, be it observed, was in 
 accordance with the usual practice of the desert on such 
 occasions ; to rob a hostile tribe is considered an honorable 
 exploit, and the man who accomplishes it is desirous of all 
 the glory that may flow from the deed. Poor Jabal, when 
 he heard the words, rushed out of the tent and gave the 
 alarm ; then mounting his brother's mare, and accompanied 
 by some of his tribe, he pursued the robber for four hours. 
 The brother's mare was of the same stock as Jabal's, but 
 was not equal to her ; nevertheless, she outstripped those of 
 all the other pursuers, and was even on the point of over- 
 taking the robber, when Jabal shouted to him, ' Pinch her 
 right ear, and give her a touch of the heel.' Gafar did so, 
 and away went the mare like lightning, speedily rendering 
 all farther pursuit hopeless. The pinch in the ear and the 
 touch with the heel were the secret signs by which Jabal 
 had been used to urge the mare to her utmost speed. Every 
 Bedouin trains the animals he rides to obey some sign of 
 this kind, to which he has recourse only on urgent occasions, 
 not to be divulged even to his son. Jabal's comrades were 
 amazed and indignant at this strange conduct ; ' O thou 
 father of a jackass ! ' they cried, ' thou hast helped the
 
 My Last Duchess. The Names. 211 
 
 thief to rob thee of thy jewel ! ' But he silenced their up- 
 hraidings by saying, ' I would rather lose her than sully her 
 reputation. Would you have me suffer it to be said among 
 the tribes, that another mare had proved fleeter than mine ? 
 I have at least this comfort left me, that I can say she 
 never met with her match.' " 
 
 My Last Duchess Perrara. First printed in Dra- 
 matic Lyrics, third number of Bells and Pomegranates, 
 1842, where it was called Italy, being I. under the gen- 
 eral title of Italy and France. In the Poetical Works of 
 1863 it appeared among the Romances with the present 
 title ; Dramatic Romances, 1868. 
 
 Fra Pandolf and his picture, Glaus of Innsb'.'uck, and 
 the bronze Neptune taming a sea-horse are creations of the 
 poet. 
 
 My Star. Men and Women, 1855. Lyrics, 1863 ; 
 Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 This poem is said to be a tribute to Mrs. Browning. 
 Professor Corson has pointed out its resemblance to a part 
 of the fifty-fifth section of Fifine at the Fair, which ex- 
 pands the same idea. See Rolfe's Select Poems for notes. 
 This poem has been set to music by Helen A. Clarke ; pub- 
 lished in Poet-Lore for July, 1889 ; also separately by 
 Poet-Lore Publishing Company, Philadelphia. 
 
 My Wife Gertrude. See Boot and Saddle. 
 
 Names, The. At Dr. F. J. Furnivall's suggestion, 
 Browning was asked to contribute a sonnet to the Shakes- 
 perean Show-Book of the " Shakesperean Show " held 
 in Albert Hall, London, on May 29-31, 1884, to pay off 
 the debt on the Hospital for Women, in Fulham Road. 
 The poet sent to the committee a sonnet on the names of 
 Jehovah and Shakespeare. It was printed as the first arti- 
 cle in the Show-Book ; it was reprinted in The Pall Mall 
 Gazette for May 29, 1884 ; and it was published in the 
 fifth number of The Browning Society's Papers, 1 : 105*. 
 
 THE NAMES. 
 
 Shakespeare ! to such name's sounding, what succeeds 
 Fitly as silence ? Falter forth the spell, 
 Act follows word, the speaker knows full well, 
 
 Nor tampers with its magic more than needs.
 
 212 Nationality in Drinks. 
 
 Two names there are : That which the Hebrew reads 
 
 With his soul only : if from lips it fell, 
 
 Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven and hell, 
 Would own " Thou did'st create us ! " Nought impedes 
 We voice the other name, man's most of might, 
 
 Awesomely, lovingly : let awe and love 
 Mutely await their working, leave to sight 
 
 All of the issue as below above 
 
 Shakespeare's creation rises : one remove, 
 Though dread this finite from that infinite. 
 March 12, '84. 
 
 Nationality in Drinks. Three poems, as originally 
 published, have been joined together under this title. The 
 first of these poems was called Claret, and consisted of two 
 stanzas of six lines each. The second was published first 
 as Tokay, and contained seventeen lines. These two poems, 
 under the general title of Claret and Tokay, were published 
 in Hood's Magazine, edited by Thomas Hood, and at the 
 request of Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton, 
 because of the illness of the editor. This explanation of 
 his illness was made in the magazine itself : " A severe at- 
 tack of the disorder to which he has long been subject 
 hemorrhage from the lungs, occasioned by the enlargement 
 of the heart (itself brought on by the wearing excitement of 
 ceaseless and excessive literary toil) has, in the course of 
 a few weeks, reduced Mr. Hood to a state of such extreme 
 debility and exhaustion, that during several days fears were 
 entertained for his life." These two poems, with The Lab- 
 oratory, appeared in the magazine for June, 1844. In 
 Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845, they were reprinted 
 in the same form. 
 
 The third of these poems was published in 1845, in Dra- 
 matic Romances and Lyrics, the seventh part of Bells and 
 Pomegranates. It there appeared as the second poem 
 under the general title of Home Thoughts from Abroad, 
 itself bearing the title of Here 's to Nelson's Memory, and 
 contained fifteen lines. 
 
 In the Poetical Works of 1863 these three poems were 
 brought together under the present title, but each had its 
 own sub-title, as follows : I. Claret. II. Tokay. III. Beer. 
 The edition of 1868 retained the numbering, but omitted 
 the sub-titles ; but that of 1888 omitted even the numbering. 
 
 The anecdote about Nelson at Trafalgar, with which the
 
 Natural Magic. Ned JBratts. 213 
 
 poem concludes, was the occasion of its being written. It 
 is a tribute to his memory, and to the superior prowess of 
 Englishmen as represented by him. 
 
 Natural Magic. Pacchiarotto, with other Poems, 1876. 
 
 Ned Bratts. Written at Spltigen, and published in 
 Dramatic Idyls, First Series, 1879. 
 
 This poem is taken from Bunyan's story of old Tod, as 
 told in his Mr. Badman. It was Bunyan's purpose in this 
 book to describe " the life and death of the ungodly, and 
 their travel from this world to Hell." This story was heard 
 by Browning in his boyhood, and it was from memory that 
 he produced the poem, for it was written at a place far 
 away from books. Bunyan drew upon current Midland 
 stories, often told by the fireside and impressed upon his 
 youthful imagination, for his account of old Tod. The title 
 page of the book as printed in 1680, and the story of old 
 Tod, are here given verbatim : 
 
 " The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, Presented To the 
 World in a familiar Dialogue Between Mr. Wiseman, 
 And Mr. Attentive. By John Bunyan, the Author of 
 the Pilgrims Progress. London, Printed by J. A. for 
 Nath. Ponder at the Peacock in the Poultrey, near the 
 Church. 1680. 
 
 " Wife[man]. Since you are entred upon Storyes, The story 
 I alfo will tell you one, the which, though I heard of old Tod - 
 it not with mine own Ears, yet my author I dare Y ounir 
 believe. It is concerning one old Tod, that was Thieves 
 hanged about Twenty years agoe, or more, at taken ' tlce> 
 Hartford, for being a Thief. The Story is this : 
 
 '"At a Summer Affixes holden at Hartfort, while the 
 Judge was fitting upon the Bench, comes this old Tod into 
 the Court, cloathed in a green Suit, with his Leathern Gir- 
 dle in his hand, his bofom open, and all on a dung fweat, 
 as if he had run for his Life ; and being come in, he fpake 
 aloud as follows : My Lord, faid he, Here is the 
 
 a r> -._? ..I. J.T. . j.< jf J.T. OldTWbe- 
 
 veryejt Jzogue that breaths upon the jace oj the g an hisway 
 earth. I have been a Thief from a Child : When ^the ^^_ 
 / was but a little one, I gave my felf to rob Or- wng of Or- 
 chards, and to do other fuch like wicked things, ^ e ir ] ^ e ^ nd 
 and I have continued a Thief ever fence. My 
 Lord, there has not been a Bobbery committed thus many
 
 214 Never the Time and the Place. Now. 
 
 years, within fo many miles of this place, but I have either 
 been at it, or privy to it. 
 
 " ' The Judge thought the fellow was mad, but after fome 
 conference with fome of the Juftices, they agreed to Indict 
 him ; and fo they did, of feveral felonious Actions ; to *all 
 which he heartily confeffed Guilty, and fo was hanged with 
 his wife at the fame time.' 
 
 " Atten[tive~]. This is a remarkable ftory indeed, and 
 you think it is a true one. 
 
 " Wife. It is not only remarkable, but pat to our pur- 
 pofe. This Thief, like Mr. Badman, began his Trade be- 
 times ; he began too where Mr. Badman began, even at 
 robbing of Orchards, and other fuch things, which brought 
 him, as you may perceive, from fin to fin, till at laft it 
 brought him to the publick fhame of fin, which is the Gal- 
 lows. 
 
 " As for the truth of this Story, the Relator told me that 
 he was at the fame time hirnfelf in the Court, and ftood 
 within lefs than two yards of old Tod, when he heard him 
 aloud to utter the words." 
 
 As will be seen, Browning has improved upon this story 
 as told by Bunyan. He has invented the conversion of Tod 
 and his wife through the influence of the reading of Bun- 
 yan ; and he has embellished the narrative in other par- 
 ticulars. Mr. R. H. Hutton says of this poem, in his Liter- 
 ary Essays, that " nothing could illustrate better the savage 
 conciseness with which Mr. Browning loves to dash in his 
 sketches in black and white, to signalize rather than to paint 
 what strikes his eye." 
 
 See The Browning Society's Papers, part two, 1 : 254, 
 and Froude's Bunyan, p. 5. 
 
 Never the Time and the Place. Jocoseria, 1883. 
 
 An expression of love and longing, with some memory in 
 it of Mrs. Browning. 
 
 Norbert. The lover of Constance, in In a Balcony, and 
 the diplomatic agent of the Queen. The Queen believes 
 that he loves her, and the tragedy of the play arises from 
 the cross-purposes thus produced. 
 
 Not with my Soul, Love ! The first words of the 
 tenth lyric in FerislitalCs Fancies. 
 
 Now. Asolando, 1889.
 
 Numpholeptos. 215 
 
 Numpholeptos. Pacchiarotto, with other Poems, 1876. 
 
 The title of this poem means, caught by a nymph or en- 
 tranced by a nymph. Nymphs were inferior gods or the 
 gods of the groves, rivers, mountains, and other natural ob- 
 jects. They were supposed to have prophetic or oracular 
 powers, which they communicated to springs, wells, trees, 
 etc., thus endowing them with curative powers. Inspired 
 soothsayers or priests were called numpholeptoi. In his 
 life of Aristides Plutarch says : " The cave of the nymphs 
 Spragitides was on the top of the Mount Cithaeron, on the 
 side facing the setting sun of summer time ; in which place, 
 as the story goes, there was formerly an oracle, and many 
 that lived in the district were inspired with it, whom they 
 called Nympholepti, possessed with the nymphs." 
 
 See Numpholeptos and Broiuning's Women, by Mrs. Glaze- 
 brook, Browning Society's Papers, number eleven. Mrs. 
 Glazebrook analyzes and interprets the poem, and says : 
 " The nymph is the ideal woman a modern Beatrice or 
 Laura a being endowed with all beauty, all knowledge, 
 all purity and virtue, who was born centuries ago, in the 
 days of mediaeval chivalry, in whose honor many songs 
 have been sung, and many lances have been broken. 
 Dante describes her beautifully for us in his Vita Nuova, 
 the book which tells the story of his early love. She is 
 ' that most gentle lady, the destroyer of all vices and the 
 queen of all virtues,' in whose presence evil is abashed and 
 all gracious sentiments are aroused." Miss Mary E. Burt's 
 Browning's Women discusses this character in the chapter 
 on intellectual women. 
 
 In reporting the meeting of the Browning Society at 
 which Mrs. Glazebrook's paper was read, the London Liter- 
 ary World said : " The poem of Numpholeptos was con- 
 sidered in two papers, one by Mrs. Glazebrook and the 
 other by Dr. Berdoe. The poem is remarkable for its 
 many beautiful lines, but is one of the most obscure of 
 Browning's works. A lover adores a Nymph of ' quintes- 
 sential whiteness,' who stands in the center of a wheel of 
 dazzling white light, which, like a diamond, rays forth col- 
 ored beams, forming the spokes of a mystic wheel. The 
 light metaphor is a favorite of Mr. Browning's. The figure 
 of the breaking up of pyre white light into the component
 
 216 Ogniben. Oh Love! Love. 
 
 rays of the solar spectrum and their reconstruction to form 
 again pure white light is constantly used throughout the 
 poet's works, and is one of the instances given by Dr. Ber- 
 doe of his eminence as the poet of science. The trouble at 
 the Browning debate was to make out who was the Nymph. 
 4 Philosophy,' ' Divine Wisdom,' ' The Virgin Mary, ' 
 ' Dante's Beatrice,' ' Pervenient Grace,' ' Truth,' ' Ideal 
 Woman,' ' Goethe's Woman-Soul,' were all suggested at the 
 meeting, but all in some point or other failed, even to the 
 suggesters themselves, to meet all the conditions of the 
 poem. Mrs. Glazebrook thought the poem meant to symbol- 
 ize 'Ideal Woman.' Dr. Berdoe, though he felt there was 
 much to be said for the idea of ' Our Lady,' and in a lesser 
 degree ' Beatrice,' as symbols of grace, was most inclined to 
 the notion of the ' Woman-Soul,' not the ideally-perfect 
 woman, but the generalized living and working every-day 
 woman, the savior of man, as the solution of the mys- 
 tery. Many speakers, among whom was Dr. Furnivall (the 
 president, who was in the chair), confessed that it was 
 impossible to make any of the suggested interpretations 
 ' run on all-fours,' and it was resolved to ask Mr. Browning 
 to be good enough to explain the poem to the Society. The 
 secret of the difficulty seems largely to consist in the inver- 
 sion of Dante's metaphor and description of the light of 
 heaven in the Paradiso. In that poem ' the listed rays ' 
 combine to form the glorious white light of the throne of 
 God, treating the light rays as centripetal. Mr. Brown- 
 ing's use of the metaphor is centrifugal, the resolution 
 of perfection into imperfection ; and hence the difficulty 
 of the recombination which the pilgrim ever discovers." 
 
 Ogniben. The Pope's Legate in A Soul's Tragedy, 
 who rides into Faenza on his mule to suppress an insurrec- 
 tion, who finally advises Chiappino to leave the town for a 
 short time, and who rides out of the city declaring that he 
 had " known Four-and-twenty leaders of revolt." 
 
 Oh Love ! Love. This is a translation of a lyric in 
 the Hippolytus of Euripides, and it was made by Browning, 
 at the request of Prof. J. P. Mahaffy, for his little book 
 on Euripides, published in the series of Classical Writers, 
 edited by John Richard Green, 1879. Prof. Mahaffy pre- 
 faced it with these words : " Mr. Browning has honored 
 me (Dec. 18, 1878) with the following translation of these
 
 Old Gandolf. Old Pictures in Florence. 217 
 
 stanzas, so that the general reader may not miss the mean- 
 ing or the spirit of the ode. The English meter, though 
 not a strict reproduction, gives an excellent idea of the 
 original." This poem is printed in a supplement to volume 
 vi. of the Riverside edition, 1889. See Appendix. 
 
 Old Gandolf. The enemy of the bishop in The Bishop 
 at St. Praxed's Church. 
 
 Old Pictures in Florence. Men and Women, 1855. 
 Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 In this poem Browning presents some of his theories of 
 art. He compares the old painters and the new ; especially 
 the art of Greece, with its physical perfection, and the more 
 spiritual art of Christian Italy. The poem was suggested 
 by Giotto's campanile or bell-tower of the cathedral or 
 duorno in Florence. Giotto was born in 1276, was edu- 
 cated in art by Cimabue, was the friend of Dante, and in- 
 troduced into art a love for what is natural and simple. He 
 worked in many Italian cities, and left behind him many 
 remarkable productions. Boccaccio says that " Giotto was 
 a man of such genius that nothing was ever created that he 
 did not reproduce with the stile, the pen, or the pencil, so 
 as not merely to imitate but to appear nature itself." Per- 
 haps no one of his productions has excited more interest 
 than the campanile, of which Ruskin has said : " The char- 
 acteristics of power and beauty occur more or less in differ- 
 ent buildings, some in one and some in another. But alto- 
 gether, and all in their highest possible relative degrees, 
 they exist, as far as I know, only in one building of the 
 world, the campanile of Giotto." 
 
 The comparison which Browning makes between Giotto's 
 perfect O and his uncompleted campanile was drawn from 
 the reading of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the most eminent 
 Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Vasari was born in 
 Tuscany in 1512, studied art with Michael Angelo, did 
 much good work as an architect and painter, and died at 
 Florence in 1574. His fame rests on his Vite de' piu ec- 
 cellenti Pittori, Scidtori ed Architetti, which was published 
 in 1550. He revised and enlarged it three or four times ; 
 and it has been edited again and again in more recent 
 years. It is one of the most interesting works connected 
 with the history of art. When Browning went to Italy in
 
 218 Old Pictures in Florence. 
 
 1846, with his newly married wife, he lived at Pisa for 
 some months in a house built by Vasari. Early in 1847, 
 Mrs. Browning wrote from there to her friend Home, the 
 poet : " We live here in the most secluded manner, eschew- 
 ing English visitors, and reading Vasari, and dreaming 
 dreams of seeing Venice in the summer." The same year 
 the two poets settled in Florence, and then Browning stud- 
 ied Giotto and his work, as well as the other masters, old 
 and new. Much of this study was done by the help of 
 Vasari, who describes as follows the incidents referred to in 
 the poem. 
 
 " Giotto repaired to Pisa, and on one of the walls of the 
 Campo Santo he painted the history of Job, in six large 
 frescos. . . . The figures of these paintings, and the heads 
 are exceedingly beautiful ; the draperies are also painted 
 witli exceeding grace ; nor is it at all surprising that this 
 work acquired so much fame for its author as to induce 
 Pope Benedict IX. to send one of his courtiers from Tre- 
 viso to Tuscany for the purpose of ascertaining what kind 
 of man Giotto might be, and what were his works : the 
 pontiff then proposing to have certain paintings executed 
 in the church of St. Peter. The messenger, when on his 
 way to visit Giotto, and to inquire what other masters 
 there were in Florence, spoke first with many artists in 
 Siena then, having received designs from them, he pro- 
 ceeded to Florence, and repaired one morning to the work- 
 shop where Giotto was occupied with his labors. He de- 
 clared the purpose of the pope, and the manner in which 
 that pontiff desired to avail himself of his assistance, and 
 finally, requested to have a drawing, that he might send it 
 to his holiness. Giotto, who was very courteous, took a 
 sheet of paper, and a pencil dipped in red color ; then, 
 resting his elbow on his side, to form a sort of compass, 
 with one turn of the hand he drew a circle, so perfect and 
 exact that it was a marvel to behold- This done, he turned 
 smiling to the courtier, saying, ' Here is your drawing.' 
 ' Am I to have nothing more than this ? ' inquired the latter, 
 conceiving himself to he jested with. ' That is enough and 
 to spare,' returned Giotto ; ' send it with the rest, and you 
 will see if it will be recognized.' The messenger, unable to 
 obtain anything more, went away very ill-satisfied, and fear-
 
 Old Pictures in Florence. 219 
 
 ing that he had been fooled. Nevertheless, having dis- 
 patched the other drawings to the pope, with the names of 
 those who had done them, he sent that of Giotto also, relating 
 the mode in which he had made his circle, without moving 
 his arm and without compasses ; from which the pope, and 
 such of the courtiers as were well versed in the subject, per- 
 ceived how far Giotto surpassed all the other painters of 
 the time. This incident, becoming known, gave rise to the 
 proverb, still used in relation to people of dull wits Tu 
 sei piu tondo che VO di Giotto [Thou art rounder than the 
 O of Giotto] the significance of which consists in the 
 double meaning of the word tondo, which is used in the 
 Tuscan for slowness of intellect and heaviness of compre- 
 hension, as well as for an exact circle. 
 
 " After completing these works, and on the 9th of July, 
 1334, Giotto commenced the campanile of Santa Maria del 
 Fiore ; the foundations were laid on massive stone. . . . 
 The edifice then proceeded on the plan before mentioned, 
 and in the Gothic manner of those times ; all the historical 
 repi'esentations, which were to be the ornaments, being de- 
 signed with infinite care and diligence by Giotto himself, 
 who marked out on the model all the compartments where 
 the friezes and sculptures were to be placed, in colors of 
 white, black, and red. . . . And if that which Lorenzo di 
 Clone Ghiberti has written be true, as I fully believe it is, 
 Giotto not only made the model of the campanile, but even 
 executed a part of the sculptures and reliefs, those repre- 
 sentations in marble, namely, which exhibit the origin of 
 all the arts. Lorenzo also affirms that he saw models in re- 
 lief from the hand of Giotto, and more particularly those 
 used in these works. . . . This campanile, according to the 
 design of Giotto, was to have been crowned by a spire or 
 pyramid, of the height of fifty braccia ; but as this was in 
 the old Gothic manner, the modern architects have always 
 advised its omission, the building appearing to them better 
 as it is. For all these works, Giotto was not only made a 
 citizen of Florence, but also received a pension of a hun- 
 dred golden florins yearly a large sum in those times 
 from the commune of Florence. He was also appointed 
 superintendent of the work, which he did not live to see 
 finished, but which was continued after his death by Tad-
 
 220 Old Pictures in Florence. 
 
 deo Gaddi. . . . Finally, and no long time after he had re- 
 turned from Milan, having passed his life in the production 
 of so many admirable works, and having proved himself a 
 good Christian, as well as an excellent painter, Giotto re- 
 signed his soul to God in the year 1336, not only to the 
 great regret of his fellow citizens, but of all who had known 
 him, or even heard his name." 
 
 The last line of the eighth stanza refers to Leonardo da 
 Vinci, and to Dello di Niccolo Delli, a painter and sculptor 
 of the first half of the fifteenth century. The Stefano of 
 the ninth stanza was a disciple of Giotto, and a Florentine 
 painter. He was called the " Ape of Nature " because of the 
 accuracy of his representations of the human body. Vasari 
 says : " It is obvious Stefano approached closely to the man- 
 ner of the moderns, surpassing his master Giotto consider- 
 ably, whether in design or other artistic qualities." Vasari 
 gives biographies of all the artists mentioned in the poem. 
 
 In the thirteenth stanza the allusions are to celebrated 
 pieces of sculpture. Theseus is a reclining statue from the 
 eastern pediment of the Parthenon, now in the British Mu- 
 seum. The Son of Priam is probably the Paris of the 
 jEginetan sculptures, which is kneeling and drawing a bow ; 
 now in the Glyptothek in Munich. Apollo is thus dis- 
 cussed by Browning himself : 
 
 " A word on the line about Apollo the snake-slayer, -which my friend 
 Professor Colvin condemns, believing that the god of the Belvedere 
 grasps no bow, but the aegis, as described in the 15th Iliad. Surely 
 the text represents that portentoiis object (Bovpiv, Stiff)?, afjupiSdfffiav, 
 apnrpfire ' /mapfjiaperiv) as 'shaken violently' or 'held immovably' 
 by both hands, not a single one, and that the left hand : 
 
 aAAa <rv *y* ev ^et'peo'a't Aa/3* aiyt&a 0v<Tav6e<7<Ta.v 
 TTIV fid\ ' fTrio<rei<av <oe'eip rjpwa? 'A^aious. 
 
 and so on, T^V &p t> y' eV x f tp fff<Jlv fX wv x f P ff ^ v ^X* " T P 6 V> K.T.\. 
 Moreover, while he shook it he ' shouted enormously,' ffe'tff', firl 5' au- 
 rbs atffft /j.d\a fj.tya, which the statue does not. Presently when Teu- 
 kros, on the other side, plies the bow, it is r6ov fx <av >I/ X (1 P^ "fi-^-iv- 
 rovov. Besides, by the act of discharging an arrow, the right arm 
 and hand are thrown back as we see, a quite gratuitous and theat- 
 rical display in the case supposed. The conjecture of Flaxman that 
 the statue was suggested by the bronze Apollo Alexikakos of Kala- 
 mis, mentioned by Pausanias, remains probable ; though the ' hard- 
 ness ' which Cicero considers to distinguish the artist's workmanship 
 from that of Muron is not by any means apparent in our marble copy, 
 if it be one. Feb. 16, 1880."
 
 Old Pictures in Florence. 221 
 
 This note Browning added to the poem in his volume of 
 Selections. 
 
 Niobe is a statue of that unfortunate mother mourning 
 the death of her children, in a group of ancient sculpture 
 in the Uffizi Palace, Florence. The Racers' frieze refers 
 to the frieze of the Parthenon. The dying Alexander is 
 a head by that name at Florence, one of the- finest pieces of 
 ancient Greek sculpture. It has been thought to represent 
 Alexander or Lysippus ; but the best authorities think it 
 was not intended for either. 
 
 In the twenty-third stanza Nicolo the Pisan is Nicolo Pi- 
 sano, an architect and sculptor, who lived from 1207 to 
 1278. Cimabue was the patron and teacher of Giotto, and 
 lived from 1240 to 1302. He began the reform in art 
 which Giotto developed, especially in his greater natural- 
 ness in design and expression. Lorenzo Ghiberti lived 
 from 1381 to 1455 ; and of his great work, the eastern doors 
 of the Baptistery at Florence, Michael Angelo said they 
 were worthy to be the gates of Paradise. Ghirlandajo is 
 the popular name of Domenico Bigordi, a great fresco 
 painter of Florence who lived from 1449 to 1494. 
 
 In the twenty-sixth stanza Sandro Filipepi, usually called 
 Botticelli, was a disciple of Savonarola, and painted mytho- 
 logical subjects. Lippino is the popular name of Filippino 
 Lippi, the son of Fra Lippo Lippi, and a successful Floren- 
 tine painter who lived from 1460 to 1505. He was wronged 
 because others were credited with his work. Fra Ange- 
 lica, the artistic name of Giovanni da Fiesole, the greatest 
 of the distinctly Christian painters, who lived from 1387 to 
 1455. Taddeo Gaddi, the godson and pupil of Giotto, was 
 a painter and architect who carried on the building of the 
 campanile after the death of his master ; he lived from 1300 
 to 1366. Lorenzo Monaco was a monk and painter, who 
 followed the manner of Gaddi, and was more severe in man- 
 ner than Fra Angelico. 
 
 In the twenty-seventh stanza, Antonio Pollajolo was a 
 painter, sculptor, and goldsmith, who lived from 1430 to 
 1498. He was one of the first artists to study anatomy by 
 dissection, and this knowledge he displayed in the muscular 
 character of his portraits. Alesso Baldovinetti was a Flor- 
 entine painter of the fifteenth century, of little prominence.
 
 222 Old Pictures in Florence. 
 
 In the twenty-eighth stanza Margheritone was a painter, 
 sculptor, and architect of Arezzo, who lived from 1236 to 
 1313. He represented the ascetic and supernatural ; and 
 his chief subject was the crucifixion. His chief Madonna, 
 now in the London National Gallery, is grim and weird. 
 The Browning Society's Papers report that Browning pos- 
 sessed the Crucifixion here described, as well as the pictures 
 by Alesso Baldovinetti, Taddeo Gaddi, and Pollajolo which 
 he has described in the poem. Margheritone is depicted as 
 in funeral garb because deeply annoyed at the success of 
 Giotto. 
 
 In the thirtieth stanza a certain precious little tablet is 
 thus mentioned in a letter written by Browning to Professor 
 Corson : " The little tablet was a famous Last Supper, 
 mentioned by Vasari, and gone astray long ago from the 
 Church of S. Spirito ; it turned up, according to report, in 
 some obscure corner, while I was in Florence, and was at 
 once acquired by a stranger. I saw it, genuine or no, a 
 work of great beauty." Buonarotti is Michael Angelo. 
 
 In the thirty-first stanza San Spirito is a fourteenth- 
 century church in Florence. Ognissanti is " All Saints " 
 church of the same city. The Kohinoor and Giamschid 
 are among the largest diamonds ; one owned by Queen 
 Victoria, and the other by the Shah of Persia. 
 
 In the thirty-second stanza a certain dotard refers to 
 Radetzky, then ninety-two years old, who governed the 
 Austrian possessions in Italy. The Orgagna of the thirty- 
 third stanza, a Florentine painter of the school of Giotto, 
 lived from 1315 to 1376. 
 
 The thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth stanzas refer to the un- 
 completed campanile. In his II Penseroso Milton refers 
 to the unfinished Squire's Tale of Chaucer, 
 
 " Or call up him that left half -told 
 The story of Cambuscan bold." 
 
 Browning compares with it the uncompleted campanile. 
 Giotto's plan of raising the campanile to the height of fifty 
 braccia, or about one hundred feet, Browning hopes will be 
 completed. In her Casa Guidi Windows Mrs. Browning 
 refers to the campanile in the same spirit as the last stanza. 
 For further information about Giotto see Vasari as trans-
 
 O Lyric Love. 
 
 223 
 
 lated by Mrs. Jonathan Foster in Bohn's Library, Mrs. Oli- 
 phant's Makers of Florence, Mrs. Jameson's Memoirs of 
 Italian Painters, Woltmann and "VVoermann's History of 
 Painting, Heaton's History of Painting and Liibke's His- 
 tory of Art. 
 
 In his Introduction to Browning Corson gives extended 
 notes, covering every allusion, historical or artistic, con- 
 tained in the poem, and also two important notes contrib- 
 uted by Browning himself. 
 
 O lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird. The first 
 line of the last stanza of Book I. of The Ring and the Book, 
 addressed to Mrs. Browning. In the ninth number of The 
 Browning Society's Papers, 2 : 165, Dr. F. J. Furnivall, 
 the president of the Society, gives a grammatical analysis of 
 this stanza. As it exemplifies the often complicated nature 
 of Browning's grammatical constructions, this analysis is 
 quoted entire, as follows : 
 
 [To Elizabeth Browning in Heaven."] 
 
 (1) O lyric Love, (2) half -angel and half -bird, 1391 
 
 (3) And all a wonder and a wild desire, 
 
 (4) Boldest of hearts (a) that ever braved the 
 
 sun, 
 
 (6) Took sanctuary within the holier blue, 
 (c) And sang a kindred soul out to his face ; 1395 
 
 (5) Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart 
 (x) When the first summons from the darkling 
 
 earth 1397 
 
 Reached thee amid thy chambers, (y) blanched 
 
 their blue, 
 (z) And bared thfcm of the glory (m) to drop 
 
 down, 
 
 To toil for man, (o) to suffer, (p) or to die, 1400 
 (I) [R. B.'s] This is the same voice: (II) can thy soul 
 
 know change ? 
 (Ill) Hail then, and (IV) hearken from the realms 
 
 of help ! 
 
 (V) Never may I commence my song, (/) my due 
 To God who best taught song by gift of thee, 
 (w) Except with bent head and beseeching hand 1405 
 That still, (u) despite the distance and the 
 
 dark, 
 
 Adverb to J What was, again may be ; (g) some inter- 
 commence. ' change 1407 
 
 Of grace, (h) some splendour, once thy very 
 
 thought, 
 (i) Some benediction, anciently thy smile : 
 
 Voca. 
 tive. 
 
 Adverb 
 
 to 
 human.
 
 1410 
 
 Adverb 
 to 
 
 conclude. 
 
 1413 
 
 Adverb 
 
 to 
 raising. 
 
 224 O Lyric Love. 
 
 (VI) Never conclude, (v) but raising hand and 
 
 head 
 f Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, 
 
 yet yearn 
 
 Adverb to raising. -| Yot all hope, all sustaiument, all reward, 
 Their utmost up and on, (t) so bless- 
 [ ing back 
 
 Adverb to blessing. \ In those th y realms of help, that heaven 
 ( thy home, 
 
 (Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face 
 makes proud, 
 Some wanness where, I think, thy foot 
 may fall ! J 1416 
 
 " The two difficulties of the analysis lie in the 4-line adverb 
 of time, line 1397-1400, (a;) ' When the first summons,' 
 etc., and the S^-line adverb of purpose, 1. 1413-16, (t) ' so 
 blessing back,' etc. 
 
 " As to the 4-line adverb of time (x), tho it looks like an 
 adverb to ' Took' (1. 1394) and 'sang' (1. 1395), it is really 
 one to ' human ' (1. 1396), thus contrasting the Poetess's hu- 
 manity at her death, with the ' half-angel and half-bird ' 
 metaphor of line 1. So also (m, o,p), 'for the purpose of 
 dropping down,' &c., are in like manner adverbs to ' human.' 1 
 
 " In the 3j-line adverb of purpose (t), ' so ' means ' by 
 that act of raising hand and head.' 
 
 " The Poem thus starts with a Vocative of ten lines, 
 1. 1391-1400, and is completed by six principal sentences, 
 (I) to (VI). _ 
 
 " The 10-line Vocative consists of its nucleus-noun ' 
 Love,' qualified by the one-worded adjective ' lyric ' and the 
 4 many-worded adjectives 2 (1) ' who wast half-angel and 
 half-bird,' (2) ' and who wast all a wonder and a wild 
 desire,' (3) ' who wast the Boldest of hearts ' (with its 
 own adjectives (a, b, c). (4) ' Yet human at the red-ripe 
 of the heart.' These 4 many-worded adjectives take up 5 \ 
 lines, 1. 1391-96. Then comes the 4-line many-worded ad- 
 verb of time (x) already noticed. Its hook to its adjective 
 ' hitman' is the conjunction ' When ' ; and its subject ' sum- 
 mons ' has 3 predicates, ' Reached' ' blanched,' ' bared,' with 
 their respective complements. The infinitives (m, n. o, p) 
 ' to drop,' &c., are also adverbs to ' Jmman,' as stated above. 
 
 " We come then to the principal sentences, of which the 
 
 1 The Poet himself decided this for me. 
 
 2 The 3d, Boldest of hearts, may well be made a Vocative.
 
 O Lyric Love. 225 
 
 short (I, II, HI, IV), offer no difficulty. In (V), (f) ' my 
 due,' &c., can be taken either as a many-worded noun in 
 apposition to ' song,' or as an adjective (' which is my due ') 
 to it. Lines 1405 - 9 are a 5-line adverb of condition to 
 ' commence ' in 1. 1403, the clause ' TJiat still ' to ' may-be' 
 being the complement of ' beseeching ' : ' despite the dis- 
 tance and the dark ' is an adverb of condition to ' may 
 be ' ; and ' What was ' is a noun, with which, as above 
 said, 'interchange' (1. 1407), 'splendour' (1. 1408), and 
 ' benediction ' (1. 1409), are in apposition. Each of the last 
 two nouns has its adjective, ' which was once thy very 
 thought,' &c., ' which was anciently thy smile.' 
 
 " The 6th and last principal sentence, ' Never may I 
 conclude,' is followed by its 3-line adverb of condition ' but 
 . . . reward ', 1. 1410-12, of which the last 1\ lines are an 
 adverb of place to ' raising' The clause ' where eyes . . . 
 on ' is an adjective to ' Thither ' = to that place. Line 1412, 
 ' For all hope ' is an adverb of purpose to ' yearn,' whose 
 object is ' Their utmost,' 1. 1413. 
 
 " Then comes, in 1. 1413, the adverb of purpose (t) to 
 ' raising ' already discussed. Its hook ' so,' means ' by that 
 act of raising.' In 1. 1414, ' In those thy realms' is an 
 adverb of place to ' blessing,' 1 whose two objects are ' white- 
 ness ' and ' wanness,' with their adjectives single- and many- 
 worded. The ' whiteness ' is the glorified person, halo- 
 robed, of the Poetess, with, perchance, white-clad angels 
 and saints in Heaven 2 ; the ' wanness,' Heaven's lucent 
 floor : and well may all and any Beings, create and increate, 
 be proud of such a soul as Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
 " The only other difficulty of interpretation is in line 5 of 
 the Lyric, or 1395 of The Ring and the Book, ' And sang 
 a kindred soul out to his face' This is part of the bird-, 
 the lark-metaphor, and means that the dead Poetess, when 
 she soared into the blue, sang out to the Sun, her soul which 
 was akin to his, as life-giving, as pure, as bright." 
 
 On the subject of grammatical usage, Mrs. Orr says of 
 Browning, in her Handbook : " He eschews many vulgar- 
 
 1 That heaven thy home is a many-worded noun in apposition to 
 Those thy realms of help. 
 
 2 Miss Hervey says it is " the representation or reflex of Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's face."
 
 226 One Way of Love. 
 
 isms or inaccuracies which custom has sanctioned, both in 
 prose and verse, such as, ' thou wert ' ; ' better than them 
 all ' ; 'he need not ' ; ' he dare not.' The universal ' I had 
 better ' ; ' I had rather,' is abhorrent to him." Mrs. Orr 
 having been criticized for this statement, and Browning's 
 own usage quoted against her, she asked the poet if she had 
 misrepresented him ; and in reply he wrote her : 
 
 " I make use of ' wast ' for the second person of the per- 
 fect indicative, and ' wert ' for the present potential, simply 
 to be understood ; as I should hardly be if I substituted the 
 latter for the former, and therewith ended my phrase. 
 ' Where wert thou, brother, those three days, had He not 
 raised thee ? ' means one thing, and ' Where wast thou when 
 He did so ? ' means another. That there is precedent in 
 plenty for this and many similar locutions ambiguous, 
 or archaic, or vicious, I am well aware, and that, on 
 their authority, I be wrong, the illustrious poet be right, and 
 you, our critic, was and shall continue to be my instructor 
 as to ' everything that pretty bin' As regards my objec- 
 tions to the slovenly ' I had ' for ' I 'd,' instead of the proper 
 ' I would,' I shall not venture to supplement what Landor 
 has magisterially spoken on the subject. An adverb adds 
 to, and does not by its omission alter into nonsense, the verb 
 it qualifies. ' I would rather speak than be silent, better 
 criticize than learn,' are forms structurally regular : what 
 meaning is in ' I had speak,' ' had criticize ? ' Then, I am 
 blamed for preferring the indicative to what I suppose may 
 be the potential mood in the case of ' need ' and ' dare ' 
 just that unlucky couple ; by all means go on and say ' He 
 need help, he dare me to fight,' and so pair off with 'He 
 need not beg, he dare not reply,' forms which may be ex- 
 pected to pullulate in this morning's paper. 
 
 " Venice, Oct. 25, 1885. R. B." 
 
 Once I saw a chemist take a pinch of powder. 
 The first line of the eighth lyric in Ferishtah's Fan- 
 cies. 
 
 One "Way of Love. Men and Women, 1855. Lyrics, 
 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 A sequel to this poem is to be found in Another Way of 
 Love. This poem has been set to music by E. C. Gregory ; 
 London, Novello, Ewer & Co.
 
 One Word More. 227 
 
 One Word More. Men and Women, 1855. 
 
 This poem was written in London, September, 1855, and 
 was addressed to Mrs. Browning. It is the counterpart to 
 her Portuguese Sonnets, and proves that Browning's affec- 
 tion was quite as strong as hers. Although published as 
 the last poem in Men and Women, it is in reality a dedica- 
 tion of the whole volume to her, as an expression of the 
 new interest in men and women which their affection had 
 awakened in him. 
 
 The biographers of Raphael do not mention his having 
 written " a century of sonnets," though they say that he 
 wrote four. Guido Reni purchased in Rome a book of 
 Raphael's containing a hundred designs drawn by his hand, 
 and this book Reni left to his heir, Signorini. Is it possible 
 that Browning has substituted " sonnets " for " drawings " 
 in his poem, in order to make his allusion more in harmony 
 with his purpose ? In his Raphael of Urbino, Passavant 
 has this to say of Raphael's sonnets : 
 
 " During the early part of his residence at Rome, in the 
 flower of youth, and full of the brightest hopes, when he 
 was occupied with the frescoes for the first Stanza of the 
 Vatican, Raphael fell in love, and even endeavored to ex- 
 press his passion in three sonnets. The rough copies of 
 these poems are written on several of the studies for the 
 Disputa, preserved in the collections of Vienna, London, 
 Oxford, and Montpellier. 
 
 " These sonnets do not possess a high poetic value. How- 
 ever, a certain grace may be perceived in them, especially 
 in the following, the original of which is in the British 
 Museum [spelling, indentation, etc., are as in Passavant] : 
 
 " ' Un pensier dolce e rimembrare e godo 
 
 Di quello asalto, ma piu gravo el danno 
 
 Del partir, ch' io restai como quei c' anno 
 
 In mar perso la st.ella, s' el ver odo. 
 O lingua di parlar disogli el nodo 
 
 A dir di questo inusitato inganno 
 Ch' amor mi f ece per mio grave afanno 
 
 Ma lui piu ne ringratio, e lei ne lodo. 
 L' ora sesta era, che 1' ocaso un sole 
 
 Aveva fatto, e 1' altro surce in locho 
 
 Ati piu da far fati, che parole. 
 Ma io restai pur vinto al mio gran focho 
 
 Che mi tormenta, che dove 1' on sole 
 
 Diserar di parlar, piu riman fiocho.'
 
 228 One Word More. 
 
 " But who could this young girl have been whom Raphael 
 loved ? All that we can say with any certainty is that she 
 was named Margarita, for she is mentioned by this name, 
 in a note written in the sixteenth century on the margin of 
 an edition of Vasari of 1568, which belongs to the barrister 
 Giuceppe Vannutelli at Rome. This note is written by the 
 side of the passage in which Riviera, who served Raphael's 
 mistress, is spoken of : JRitratto di Margarita donna di 
 Raffaello ; and by -the side of these words, die pareva viva, 
 the name Margarita is repeated. 
 
 " She has also been given the name of the Fornarina, 
 and according to Missirini she was the daughter of a soda 
 manufacturer, who lived near Santa Cecilia, on the other 
 side of the Tiber. A small house, No. 20, in the street of 
 Santa Dorotea, the windows of which are decorated with 
 a pretty framework of earthenware, is pointed out as the 
 house where she was born. 
 
 " The beautiful young girl was very frequently in a little 
 garden adjoining the house, where, the wall not being very 
 high, it was easy to see her from the outside. So the young 
 men, especially the artists always passionate admirers of 
 beauty did not fail to come and look at her, by climbing 
 up above the wall. 
 
 " Raphael is said to have seen her for the first time as 
 she was bathing her pretty feet in a little fountain in the 
 garden. Struck by her perfect beauty, he fell deeply in 
 love with her, and after having made acquaintance with her, 
 and discovered that her mind was as beautiful as her body, 
 he became so much attached as to be unable to live without 
 her. 
 
 " This story is certainly very attractive, and it is sup- 
 ported by a small picture, attributed to Sebastiano del 
 Piombo, in which Raphael is seated near the fountain in the 
 garden, with his lady-love. But recent investigations have 
 proved that this story is a pure invention, and even that the 
 name of the Fornarina was only invented about the middle 
 of the eighteenth century. We must, then, content our- 
 selves with the very simple statement of Vasari that 
 Raphael loved a young girl, who lived with him. and to 
 whom he was devotedly attached to the last moment of his 
 life. . . . Two sentences of Vasari's and two portraits, are
 
 One Word More. 229 
 
 all the authentic information we have as to the mistress of 
 Raphael." 
 
 One of these portraits is in the Barherini palace in Rome, 
 and the other is in the Pitti palace in Florence. The latter 
 bears a strong resemblance to the Madonna di San Sisto, 
 though the features of the Virgin are idealized. " Her form 
 is powerful, " says Herr Passavant, " her costume sump- 
 tuous, her beautiful black eyes flash, her mouth is refined 
 and full of grace." In describing the picture itself, he says : 
 " This remarkable portrait, preserved in the Pitti Gallery, 
 Florence, represents a beautiful Roman maiden, seen three- 
 quarters face, and turning to the left. Her hair is parted 
 on the forehead, and put back behind her ears, leaving the 
 perfect oval of her face completely visible. Her lustrous 
 black eyes are full of life and fire, her complexion is pale, 
 her nose rather short, and her well-formed lips are parted 
 by a pleasing smile. A veil, fastened behind her head, falls 
 gracefully on either side, completely covering the right arm, 
 a necklace of black stones encircles her throat, her shoulders 
 are covered with a white chemise, of which even the small 
 plaits are distinctly visible, and a bodice trimmed with gold, 
 with a sleeve of white damask, completes her costume. The 
 first thing which strikes us in looking at this portrait is its 
 singular resemblance to the Madonna di San Sisto, at Dres- 
 den ; of course it is understood that this is a likeness from 
 nature, and the Madonna an ideal creation, but at the same 
 time it is evident that the woman here represented was 
 Raphael's model for the Virgin in his famous work." 
 
 Grimm and Wolzogen do not agree with Passavant as to 
 the portrait in the Pitti Gallery, that it is a picture of the 
 Fornarina. Grimm is of the opinion that the portrait was 
 not wholly painted by Raphael, and that it was not the 
 original of the Sistine Madonna. Of Raphael's mistress, 
 Wolzogen says : " Soon after his arrival in Rome, he ap- 
 pears to have formed an affection which only terminated 
 with his death, though it cannot be considered quite certain 
 whether it was always one and the same maiden whom he 
 loved during this period. . . . She may have been the same 
 maiden who, according to Vasari, was in Raphael's house at 
 the time of his death, and upon whom he settled a -comfort- 
 able maintenance in his will, but suppositions of this kind
 
 230 One Word More. 
 
 belong rather to the treasures of fable than of truth. . . . 
 Certain it is, that ever the same female figure appears in 
 many of Raphael's studies and sketches ; also a portrait 
 painted by him in oils may lay decided claim to be a like- 
 ness of his beloved, even if not of her whom we designate 
 the Fornarina. This picture, probably belonging to an 
 earlier period, is not in the Barberini Palace in Rome ; it 
 represents a young maiden, not completely dressed, having 
 only shortly before left her bath ; she is sitting in a grove 
 of myrtles and laurel-trees, her head encircled with a turban- 
 like yellow-striped handkerchief ; her right hand presses a 
 transparent linen garment to her bosom, while her lap, on 
 which her left hand rests, is covered with red drapery. Her 
 left hand is adorned with a gold bracelet, and on this 
 Raphael has written his own name. . . . 
 
 " But whether the una sua Donna, who, according to 
 Vasari, at one time so completely drew away the master 
 from his work, that his friend Chigi at length could devise 
 no other means than to bring the beautiful woman to him 
 on his painter's scaffold, where she sat the whole day by his 
 side, and he could carry on his work without being deprived 
 of her company whether this charmer was identical with 
 the so-called Fornarina, and whether the four sonnets which 
 were written in Raphael's handwriting on the back of some 
 studies for the wall painting of the Disjmta, and which are 
 still in preservation, were addressed to this same beloved 
 one or to some other, is not at all certain. So far alone we 
 can safely assert, that these ardent poems were written 
 during the artist's residence in Rome (probably in 1508), 
 and that he finished them off with great care, in spite of the 
 overwhelming passion to which they certainly owe their 
 origin. And I confess that this latter circumstance is to me 
 far more interesting than all the investigations for details of 
 Raphael's amours ; for they excite the imagination tenfold 
 on account of the obscurity in which they are wrapped. We 
 perceive again, moreover, from this fact, that the master 
 ever endeavored to make everything which he undertook as 
 perfe.ct as possible, and we thus gain a valuable addition to 
 the completion of that portrait of his noble character which 
 it is our object to delineate." 
 
 The four sonnets written by Raphael are all given in the
 
 One Word More. 231 
 
 original Italian in Baron Alfred von Wolzogen's Raphael 
 Santi: His Life and his Works, as translated into English 
 by F. E. Bunnett. The translations given in the same 
 work are here reproduced : 
 
 I. 
 
 'Tis sweet in thought to embrace thee once again! 
 
 But waking from my dream, thy loss comes back 
 
 And like some mariner who has lost his track, 
 
 And finds a starless heaven, I remain. 
 Let my tongue burst its fetters, and disclose 
 
 How Love destroyed me with his cunning ways, 
 
 And drew me down to my own loss and woes ; 
 
 But, yet I thank his wiles, and her I praise. 
 Twas even, and one sun had long declined, 
 
 When in its place that other sun arose 
 
 With speechless action, utterance to find. 
 Thus have I been by cruel thoughts assailed 
 
 With their tormenting power ; for when I pined 
 
 To vent my grief in words, all utterance failed. 
 
 II. 
 
 Love, that ensnar'st me with thy magic light 
 
 From eyes that melt me into hope and fears ; 
 
 Like snow on roses lying she appears 
 
 From word and actions to inspire delight. 
 Until so warm my flame, that no sea wave 
 
 Could quench the burning ardor that I know ; 
 
 Yet revelling in the flame I feel its glow, 
 
 Nor wish from its consuming power to save. 
 How sweetly passive was she when controll'd ; 
 
 Throwing her white arms as a chain around, 
 
 Until it seemed like death to loose their hold. 
 Yet pause I here, tho' still my thoughts abound ; 
 
 For joys excessive, fatal powers enfold ; 
 
 Yet while I cease, to thee my thoughts are bound. 
 
 III. 
 
 As Paul from mortal ear those words withheld 
 
 Which he had heard in Paradise above, 
 
 So round my heart is drawn a veil of love, 
 
 By which my thoughts in secrecy are held. 
 Hence all I did and all that sight revealed, 
 
 From my own bosom none shall dare to know ; 
 
 And my dark locks to silvery white shall grow, 
 
 Ere night shall open all that lies concealed. 
 Yet see my passion, and vouchsafe this grace, 
 
 That being thine, it may be granted me, 
 
 That thou wouldst burn a little for my flame ;
 
 232 One Word More. 
 
 And if my prayers with thee may find a place, 
 Ne'er would I pause thy piteous help to claim 
 Until the powers of utterance silent be. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Sad thought ! that unto thee I gave my heart, 
 Seeking for peace, and finding nought but pain ; 
 Seest thou the bitter anguish and the smart 
 With which life's fairest years are from me ta'en ? 
 
 But ye, my efforts, and thou, aching grief, 
 Waken the thought that had in slumber lain, 
 And point to paths, ascending which I gain 
 Sublimer heights that may afford relief. 
 
 The last sonnet is not complete ; but it expresses a differ- 
 ent spirit than the completed ones, no less of passion, but a 
 passion more moral in purpose, and deeply conscious of the 
 need to use genius for the sake of true artistic accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 Raphael painted as many as fifty Madonnas, several of 
 which are mentioned in the poem. The Sistine Madonna 
 is in the Dresden Gallery. The Madonna di Foligno is in 
 the Vatican. In a note to Mr. W. J. Rolfe, Browning 
 wrote : " The Madonna at Florence is that called del 
 Grandrica, which represents her as ' appearing to a votary 
 in a vision ' so say the describers ; it is in the earlier 
 manner, and very beautiful. I think I meant La Belle 
 Jardiniere but am not sure for the picture in the 
 Louvre." Of the Madonna del Granduca, Passavant says : 
 " The bold, commanding, and luminous style in which the 
 painting stands out from the background makes the figure 
 and divine expression of the head impressive. Thanks to 
 all these qualities united, this Madonna produces the effect 
 of a supernatural apparition. In short, it is one of the 
 masterpieces of Raphael." The Louvre Madonna is seated 
 in the midst of a garden, in which there are lilies hence 
 the name. 
 
 Dante's love for Beatrice, as celebrated in his La Vita 
 Nuova and Divina Commedia, is the subject of the second 
 reference in the poem. Perhaps no woman has ever been 
 celebrated with a more perfect affection than that which 
 Dante gave to Beatrice, and yet it is difficult to say how 
 much of it is real and how much the idealization of the poet.
 
 One Word More. 233 
 
 The pen corroded refers to the manner in which Dante 
 punishes in his great poem those who were his personal 
 enemies. The live mans flesh for parchment refers to 
 no special incident either in the life of Dante or in the 
 Commedia. 
 
 Lionardo Aretino said : " Dante was an excellent 
 draughtsman." Giotto was his intimate friend ; and it is 
 said that Dante suggested many of the finest of Giotto's 
 pictures. Giotto tried to do in art what Dante did in poetry, 
 
 open it to the understanding of the people. Dante un- 
 doubtedly shared in the artistic spirit of his time, and was 
 fully capable of appreciating it. On this point of Dante's 
 interest in painting we have the testimony of Boccaccio, in 
 his biography of the poet. " He loved passionately the fine 
 arts, " wrote Boccaccio, " even those which like painting 
 
 were not immediately connected with poetry. In his 
 youth he had taken lessons of Cimabue, the last and the 
 most celebrated of the painters who composed in what is 
 called the Greek manner ; he was afterwards very intimate 
 with Giotto, the successor of Cimabue, whom he eclipsed, and 
 the real creator of modern painting. Dante had intimate 
 relations with the celebrated singers and musicians of his 
 time ; being gifted with a fine voice, he sang agreeably, and 
 with much enthusiasm ; it was his favorite way of express- 
 ing the emotions of his soul, more especially when they were 
 of a gentle and happy nature." The reference in the poem 
 is to the thirty-fifth section of Dante's La Vita Nuova, 
 which was written on the first anniversary of the death of 
 Beatrice, June 9, 1291. As translated by Prof. C. E. 
 Norton, Dante said of his effort to paint a picture : 
 
 " On that day on which the year was complete since this 
 lady was made one of the denizens of life eternal, I was 
 seated in a place where, having her in mind, I was drawing 
 an angel upon certain tablets. And while I was drawing 
 it, I turned mine eyes and saw at my side men to whom it 
 was meet to do honor. They were looking on what I did, 
 and, as was afterwards told me, they had been there already 
 some time before L became aware of it. When I saw them 
 I rose, and, saluting them, said, ' Another was just now with 
 me, and on that account I was in thought.' And when 
 they had gone away, I returned unto my work, namely,
 
 234 On the Poet. 
 
 that of drawing figures of angels ; and while doing this a 
 thought came to me of saying words in rhyme, as if for an 
 anniversary poem of her, and of addressing those persons 
 who had come to me." 
 
 " Men to whom it was meet to do honor " Browning 
 translates as " certain people of importance." It does not 
 appear from the Vita Nuova that these men of importance 
 had any design against Dante, as Browning seems to in- 
 dicate. 
 
 Browning next compares himself with Moses, as he is 
 described in Numbers xx. and elsewhere in the Pentateuch. 
 
 The Samminiato of the fifteenth section is the church 
 of San Miniato, Florence, a conspicuous object in that city. 
 "Samminiato" gives the proper pronunciation of the name. 
 Zoroaster was the founder of the Persian religion, of which 
 the Zend Avesta is the sacred book. He was in the habit 
 of pacing a terrace when meditating on the wonders of the 
 heavens, which are so important in his religion. Galileo 
 had a turret for his astronomical observations. Browning 
 was a very great admirer of Keats, as may be seen by 
 tracing out the references to him in the present volume. 
 
 See Rolfe, Sharp, and Nettleship. 
 
 On the Poet : Objective and Subjective. In 1852, 
 Moxon, London, published Letters of Percy Bysshe Shel- 
 ley, which purported to be a series of twenty-five newly 
 discovered letters of Shelley's, which had never before been 
 in print. For this volume Browning was asked by Moxon 
 to write an introductory essay, which he did, and dated it 
 " Dec., 1851," having written it in Paris. 
 
 After the volume was ready for publication, it was dis- 
 covered that the letters were forgeries. This discovery was 
 accidentally made by Francis Turner Palgrave, who found 
 in one of these letters a portion of an article which his 
 father, Sir Francis Palgrave, had contributed to the Quar- 
 terly Review, in 1840, the subject being Florence. Moxon 
 thereupon withheld the edition and began to make inquiries 
 about the letters. The post-office authorities after examina- 
 tion pronounced them genuine. A more careful examination 
 showed that the post-marks were not the same as genuine 
 letters mailed in Italian cities at the time indicated on the 
 Shelley letters. So far, however, as concerned the seals of the
 
 Ottima. Over the Sea our Galleys went. 235 
 
 letters, the handwriting, their manner and matter, they ap- 
 peared to be genuine. The letters were bought of a well- 
 dressed, lady-like young person, who gave no account of 
 herself. It was clearly proved, however, that the letters 
 were forgeries. Moxoii at once suppressed the edition, half 
 a dozen copies only having passed out of the publishers' 
 hands. The letters have disappeared from Shelley litera- 
 ture, the essay written by Browning, on the functions of the 
 poet, alone remaining ; it was reprinted in 1881, as the 
 first number of The Browning Society's Papers, with the 
 consent of the poet. In a second edition it was printed 
 with A Bibliography of Robert Browning, compiled by 
 Frederick J. Furnivall, 1882. In his "foretalk" to the 
 essay Mr. Furnivall said : " The main subject of the essay 
 is Shelley, his life, his nature, work, and art. And to any 
 reader of Pauline and Memorabilia, it will be no surprise 
 to find that it was the dream of Browning's boyhood to 
 render some signal service to Shelley's fame and memory ; 
 while to the student and lover of Shelley, what can be more 
 worthful than the criticism and loving tribute of a mind 
 and spirit like Browning's ? But it was not the praise or 
 estimate of Shelley that drew me to this essay ; it was 
 Browning's statement of his own aim in his own work, both 
 as objective and subjective poet, that so much interested me 
 and that makes the essay a necessity to every student of 
 Browning who would understand him," 
 
 The title given to the -essay in the reprint is Mr. Furni- 
 vall's. In the Shelley letters it was called Introductory 
 Essay. 
 
 See Browning Bibliography, and Poet-Lore, 1 : 592, for 
 an account of the Shell&y Letters, the detection of the 
 forgery, and the writing of the essay by Browning. 
 
 Ottima. The wife of Luca, who has, with her para- 
 mour Sebald, just murdered her husband, in Pippa Passes. 
 
 Overhead the tree-tops meet. The song of Pippa 
 in Pippa Passes, as she nears the house of the bishop, vol. 
 i. p. 364, Riverside edition of Browning's Works. 
 
 Over the sea our galleys went. The third song in 
 Paracelsus, sung by Paracelsus himself, vol. i. p. 96, Riv- 
 erside edition of Browning's Works. This song has been 
 set to music by Ethel Harraden ; London, C. Jeffreys.
 
 236 Pacchiarotto. 
 
 Pacchiarotto and how he worked in Distemper : 
 with other Poems. London. July, 1876 : Smith, Elder 
 and Co. Pages, i. - viii., 1-241 ; Pacchiarotto occupied 
 pages 4-46. The " other poems " were : At the Mermaid ; 
 House ; Shop ; Pisgah-Sights ; Fears and Scruples ; Nat- 
 ural Magic ; Magical Nature ; Bifurcation ; Numpholeptos ; 
 Appearances ; St. Martin's Summer ; Hei-ye" Kiel ; A For- 
 giveness ; Cenciaja ; Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of 
 Burial ; Epilogue. 
 
 Jacopo Pacchiarotto is often mistaken for Girolamo del 
 Pacchia ; and it is this mistaken identity which the poet 
 discusses in the opening part of the poem. Pacchia was 
 the son of an Hungarian cannon-founder, and was born in 
 Siena, in 1477. He became a member of the revolution- 
 ary club called " Bardotti," and when the club was broken 
 up by the authorities in 1535, he disappeared. Nothing is 
 known of him after that date. He did some good work as 
 a painter, his best piece being the Nativity of the Virgin 
 in the chapel of Saint Bernardino, Siena. His pictures 
 were at one time ascribed to Perugino, and then to Pacchia- 
 rotto. It is only quite recently that more careful researches 
 have served to identify him as a separate individuality. 
 
 Pacchiarotto was born in Siena in 1474. He became a 
 painter and worked in the manner of Perugino ; but no 
 anthenticated work of his has any merit. In 1530 he joined 
 the " Libertini " and " Popolani," which sought a greater 
 measure of popular liberty by revolutionary methods. To 
 the same ends he connected himself with the " Bardotti," 
 in 1534 ; and when this organization was suppressed, the 
 following year, he was obliged to go into hiding. The Ob- 
 servantine Fathers concealed him in a tomb in the church 
 of St. John ; but the space was narrow, he had to lie by the 
 side of a recently buried corpse, he became covered with 
 vermin, and by the second day he was little better than a 
 corpse himself. Quietly he went back to his work, after the 
 excitement of the moment had passed by. In 1539 he was 
 banished from the city, but he was recalled the following 
 year, and soon after died. 
 
 The old accounts of Pacchiarotto say that he fled to 
 France in 1535, where he joined II Rossi ; and there these 
 accounts say he died. Also various works are falsely at-
 
 Pacchiarotto. 237 
 
 tributed to him, which are really the productions of Pacchia. 
 Some accounts make Pacchia another name for Pacchia- 
 rotto. 
 
 Contemporary with Pacchiarotto lived Gianantonio Bazzi, 
 who as a painter was called II Sodoraa. The family name 
 of this painter was for a long time known as Razzi, owing 
 to the misreading of a document. It is now proved to have 
 been Bazzi. It is to this misnamed painter, and his rival 
 Beccafumi, that the poet refers at the end of the second 
 section of the poem. 
 
 The commentary added to the Florence edition of 
 Vasari's Lives, 1855, gives an account of Pacchiarotto. It 
 is this which Browning followed in writing his poem. 
 What is there said of his connection with political affairs is 
 here reproduced. 
 
 " Tumults and bloodshed were spread throughout the 
 land, principally from the deeds of certain renegades 
 called the Venturieri, with whom our Paechiarotto having 
 been identified, it happened that one night whilst, as was 
 their custom, they were scouring the streets with loud cries 
 and defying the Nine, the foi'mer were assaulted by the lat- 
 ter unawares, and threatened with immediate death unless 
 they left the city. . . . 
 
 "II Pacchiarotto, leading his company of Stalloreggi 
 within the gates, had comported himself very bravely in all 
 these factions. But, being of an excitable and uneasy 
 disposition, easy to take offense, and ready to pick a quar- 
 rel at any moment, it ill suited him to rest with his hands in 
 his pockets.' There were also some reckless and discon- 
 tented men among the poorer classes, who were his com- 
 panions, and they went about secretly trying tor produce 
 disturbances, which having reached the knowledge of the 
 government they caught dal Bargello, and confined him in 
 his palace with the admonition not to leave it under pen- 
 alty of one hundred golden ducats. II Pacchiarotto was so 
 angry that he made use of very disrespectful language 
 against the State, for which he was confined six months at 
 Talamone, and put on soldier's stipends in the company 
 of Captain Bartolommeo Peretti. But at the instigation of 
 Achille Salvi, five months of his imprisonment were revoked, 
 and he was sent at the end of his sentence to his estates 
 in Viteccio.
 
 238 Pacchiarotto. 
 
 " During the exile of Fabio and the murder of Alessan- 
 dro Bichi, a new sect of people sprung up in Siena, who 
 from their open avowals of lawless principles were called the 
 Libertines. These, having become arrogant, on account of 
 success having been on their side in every faction against 
 the tyrants of the city, as they called them, and even 
 against foreign enemies, these Libertines therefore med- 
 dled with every important scheme of the Republic, and tried 
 to gain all the honors and high offices for themselves. . . . 
 
 " They called upon the common people to aid them, mak- 
 ing many promises to help them in return, which was the 
 occasion that the common people and artisans of lowest ex- 
 traction were turned aside from their daily life, and their 
 time occupied in attending meetings where they listened to 
 incendiary language against the affairs of the State. . . . 
 
 " Out of these meetings sprung the Congregation or 
 Academy called the Bardotti, a name which really had no 
 other significance than that which they chose to give it : an 
 easy life at the public expense. This Academy had its laws 
 and statutes. .' . . They kept, as their principal festival, the 
 feast of Saint Catherine of Siena, and every new member 
 paid ten soldi as an entrance fee and three soldi every 
 month. In the reunions which the Bardotti held, they used 
 to read the works of Livy, Vegetius, and Machiavelli, on the 
 arts of war, or sometimes they exercised with the broad- 
 sword or drilled, in order to be quick and dexterous in 
 assaults and battle. To this effect, they had engaged at a 
 high price two of the most skillful fencing masters in the 
 city. At certain seasons of the year, they had representa- 
 tions of some Greek or Roman story, in order better to set 
 forth their achievements in this direction. To any one, 
 whom they heard had in any way spoken unfavorably of the 
 Academy or its associates, they sent circulars and an open 
 challenge, asserting themselves ready to maintain their 
 honor and their rights. If any of the associates by ill luck 
 were sick, in exile, or in any other dire necessity, they 
 promptly and tenderly succored them with money and in 
 person. 
 
 " Among the principal and most ardent of the Bardotti 
 was our Giacomo, whose head was so turned by the whims 
 and vagaries of the State, that among many of his foolish
 
 Pacchiarotto. 239 
 
 pranks, it is related, that in a room of his house which was 
 situated on the Via Laterino, he had painted many faces, 
 so that, standing in the midst of them, he appeared to be 
 holding a long discussion, as if they in turn replied, and as 
 their lord revered and honored him. These meetings of 
 the Bardotti and their intentions caused great distrust and 
 anxiety to the government, which feared lest their words 
 and their counsels should produce some bad effect ; which, 
 in fact, was not long in coming to pass. In 1533 the city 
 was reduced to famine. . . . The Bardotti held a large 
 gathering in the church of San Francesco, and there con- 
 sulted what to do. They issued forth, having held mass in 
 the square of the Duomo, and resolved to scour the city, and 
 to kill every citizen whom they should meet. But not being 
 able to decide upon any one to be their head and guide of 
 this undertaking, they suddenly took fright and disbanded 
 quietly. 
 
 "In consequence of the magistrates giving little impor- 
 tance to this proceeding, the Bardotti grew more insolent and 
 bold, and no longer concealed their animosity against the 
 nobles and the government. Therefore several influential 
 citizens, whom the existing state of affairs much displeased, 
 had an interview with the rulers of the city. . . . They 
 resolved that, owing to the great and impending danger, 
 summary remedies must be applied, that having vainly used 
 clemency, they now had to apply severity. To give proper 
 effect to these intentions, they only awaited an opportunity ; 
 it was not long in presenting itself. A butcher having 
 wounded one of the magistrates of the Quattro del Sale, 
 was suddenly seized by the sheriff, and without formal pro- 
 ceeding, fastened by the neck to the window of the palace. 
 And the same condign punishment was administered a few 
 days afterwards to another one of the common people. 
 
 " The Bardotti, believing circumstances to be of bad 
 augury for them, had recourse to the aid and counsels of a 
 few citizens who formerly had favored them ; but receiving 
 from them only reproofs for their misdeeds, and no promises 
 to protect them from justice, and terrified by their im- 
 pending fate, they fled and hid themselves. II Pacchiarotto, 
 likewise, seized with great terror, wandered about like 
 one demented throughout the city, thinking the sheriff was
 
 240 Pacchiarotto. 
 
 always dogging his footsteps in order to seize him and take 
 him to prison. Finally he went into the parish church of 
 San Giovanni, and saw a tomb where but recently had been 
 covered a dead body ; he pushed it aside, and fixed himself 
 there, as best he could, and covered the tomb over with the 
 stone. Here he remained in intense suffering of mind and 
 body during two days, at the end of which time, half dead 
 with hunger and the insupportable stench of the corpse, and 
 covered with vermin, he fled through one of the gates of 
 the city, which leads to the house of refuge of the brothers 
 of the Observance. La Balia, learning the good effects 
 that had been produced by the prompt and severe justice 
 which befell the people of the lower classes, wished to pro- 
 ceed to at once extirpate to the very roots the cause of the 
 evil. He therefore ordered that the Bardotti, under penalty 
 of his wrath, must desist from holding their assemblies, and 
 the Academy by that name be dissolved. . . . 
 
 " II Pacchiarotto, when he thought the storm had passed, 
 quietly returned to Siena, and, having been made aware 
 by bitter experience what his follies had cost him, he re- 
 solved to apply himself to his work and no longer meddle 
 with the affairs of State. But after a few years discords 
 arose, not only between the people and the rulers, but 
 among the people themselves. The rulers, who trembled 
 lest their severities should give birth to new disorders, be- 
 gan to diligently look into the lives of those, who, in the 
 past tumults, had shown themselves the most unruly and in- 
 solent. Among others II Pacchiarotto, on account of his 
 misdeeds, was found to merit chastisement, and therefore he 
 was put under perpetual banishment, and deprived of all 
 rights in the city and in the dominion, the 17th November, 
 1539, pardon being promised to whomever should kill him. 
 
 " Our painter was now forced to wander in foreign lands. 
 But when nine months had elapsed, Girolamo's wife, who 
 was poor and burdened with two daughters, applied to La 
 Balia, who was touched with compassion and remitted his 
 sentence on the 17th August, 1540, giving him strict orders 
 not to reenter the city without permission, under penalty of 
 his pardon being revoked. Thus, shattered in mind and 
 body, and with the weight of years beginning to oppress 
 him, he was conducted to his estates in Viteccio, where,
 
 Pacchiarotto. 241 
 
 after so many perils and hardships, only a few years were 
 left for him to pass from this life to the next ! " 
 
 The same work gives a sketch of the life of Girolamo 
 del Pacchia, to whom Browning frequently refers through- 
 out the poem. Many of the poet's allusions will be best 
 understood by reading in full the Vasari account of this 
 painter's life : 
 
 " There lived and worked in Siena, at the same time as 
 Giacomo Pacchiarotto, another painter whose name was 
 Girolamo del Pacchia, whose memory, through the injustice 
 of fate, has remained until now so confused and uncertain, 
 enveloped in clouds as it were, that for that very reason we 
 seek to bring it to light, to celebrate it in the most suitable 
 manner that his virtues justly demand. The principal 
 reason of this mistake has been occasioned by the similarity 
 of his surname with that of Giacomo, of whom we have been 
 talking. Because students reading in Vasari that a Giro- 
 lamo del Pacchia painted in competition with Sodoma in 
 the oratory of San Bernardino di Siena, they would natu- 
 rally conjecture that Giacomo Pacchiarotto alone was meant, 
 to whom without any discernment would be in consequence 
 assigned not only all those works that were his, but besides 
 other and better ones, and those which had been much 
 more carefully painted by the hand of our Girolamo : there- 
 fore, out of two workmen they would only make one. 
 
 " The subject of our sketch was born in Agram, a city 
 of Hungary. His father was Giovanni di Giovanni, a 
 cannon maker, who, having come to live in Siena, married 
 there a woman by the name of Apollonia di Antonio del 
 Zazzera, and this son was born to them in Januaiy, 1477. 
 His father died when he was about a year old. Girolamo 
 remained with his mother, who, being very poor, had great 
 difficulty in educating her son. When a young man he 
 was apprenticed to the best painter in the city, in order to 
 leai-n drawing ; he remained several years and became quite 
 proficient in drawing and painting. Then he went to 
 Florence, where he visited and studied the works of the 
 masters then in the best repute. From that time until 1500 
 he was at Rome, where he remained some time studying 
 and working. Among the works which he made in that 
 city is a painting of the Transfiguration, in the church at
 
 242 Pacchiarotto. 
 
 Araceli. Although some assert it to be by Girolamo da 
 Sermoneta, nevertheless we, following more readily the 
 opinions of Padre Ugurgieri, proclaim it to be by our Giro- 
 lamo. It appears to us that a work called Raphaelesque by 
 Lanzi cannot be by the hand of Sermoneta, who began to 
 work and be known when Pacchia was dead ; therefore it 
 is reasonable that, in the works of the Sienese painter, 
 rather than in those of Sermoneta, who was the scholar of 
 Perino del Vaga and lived long after him, is sometimes met 
 the manner of dell' Urbinate. 
 
 " Girolamo returned after a few years to Siena, and in 
 1508 he painted for the monks of Certosa di Pontignano 
 a picture of Our Lady, to whom Saint Bruno and Saint 
 Catherine are being presented by Saint Peter. . . . 
 
 " There are still to be seen in the oratory of the aforesaid 
 San Bernardino works of Girolamo, painted about the year 
 1518, in the form of three frescoes. In one of these, which 
 extends on both sides of the altar, is represented the Annun- 
 ciation and the Angel ; in another, which is on the walls 
 at the left, as you look when you enter the church, is the 
 Nativity of the Virgin Mary. In the third is depicted 
 Saint Bernardino of Siena. And although he had for rivals 
 II Sodoma and II Beccafumi, who were painting at the 
 same time, he was in no wise inferior to them ; he undoubt- 
 edly excelled Beccafumi, who in his designs showed very 
 poor and meagre work, whilst the figures of Girolamo are 
 treated in a broad manner, with glowing robes, and expres- 
 sion, particularly noticeable in his female faces, of great 
 gentleness and naturalness. 11 Pacchia painted in the same 
 year for the Frati Predicatori di San Spirito an altar-piece 
 representing the Annunciation, in which the perspective of 
 columns and arches is so fine, and the little cherubs sitting 
 on the supports of the arches so natural and life-like, that it 
 is most delightful to see. This picture is no longer to be 
 seen in its place, having been transported to the gallery of 
 the Institute of Fine Arts. Likewise in the same church is 
 another picture, in which may be seen Mary ascended to 
 heaven and crowned by her Divine Son, with a halo of most 
 lovely angels, while underneath are kneeling Saint Peter 
 and Saint Paul. In the church of Saint Christopher, at the 
 altar of the Bandinelli, there is a Madonna with the infant
 
 Palma. Pambo. 243 
 
 in her arms seated on a throne, with, at the sides, directly 
 under her feet, Saint Luke the Evangelist, and the blessed 
 Raimondo of the Order of Camaldoli, who has chained up 
 the devil. This work is much prized, and is truly very 
 beautiful in all its details. It is one of the best that he 
 ever did. He also painted a picture for the high altar of 
 the Society of San Sebastian in Camollia, in 1519. . . . 
 
 " Girolamo joined the Society of Rozzi with the name of 
 Dondolone ; and he became a member of the Bardotti in 
 the year 1533. When and where he died is not known, but 
 it is certain that after 1535 all traces of him in Siena are 
 lost. Therefore the opinion of Julius Mancini, a Sienese 
 author, does not seem unlikely, when he affirms that II 
 Pacchia, after the dispersion and overthrow of the Bardotti, 
 fled to France, and painted for King Francis at Fontaine- 
 bleau some pictures which are signed Rosso, painter from 
 Florence." 
 
 The word Bardotti means spare or freed horses, and is 
 applied to those reformers of the time of Pacchiarotto who 
 wished to correct social and political abuses, but without 
 themselves bearing the burdens of service to the city. 
 
 The Kirkup mentioned at the beginning of the poem was 
 Baron Kirkup, a connoisseur in literature and art, who was 
 numbered among Browning's Florentine friends. He was 
 ennobled by the King of Italy, because of his literary and 
 patriotic services to his country. He discovered a portrait 
 of Dante in the Bargello at Florence. 
 
 The Epilogue, which is an attack upon the critics of the 
 poet, begins with a quotation from Mrs. Browning's poem 
 entitled Wine of Cyprus. 
 
 See Academy, Edward Dowden, July 29, 1876 ; Athe- 
 nceum, July 22, 1876. 
 
 Palma. The leading woman character in Sordello, the 
 patron of the poet of that name, and about to assume a 
 nearer relation. See under Sordello. 
 
 Pambo. Jocoseria, 1883. 
 
 This poem is based on a story told in The Wonders of the 
 Little World ; or, A General History of Man, written by 
 Nathaniel Wanley, vicar of Trinity Parish, Coventry, and 
 filled with every kind of curious information about men and 
 their ways. Chapter four of the third book is " Of the
 
 244 Pambo. 
 
 Veracity of some Persons, and their great Love of Truth : 
 and Hatred of Flattery and Falsehood." In this chapter 
 is the following : 
 
 " Pambo came to a learned man, and desired him to 
 teach him some Psalm ; he began to read to him the thirty- 
 ninth, and the first verse, which is : ' I said, I will look to 
 my ways, that I offend not with my tongue.' Pambo shut 
 the book, and took his leave, saying, ' he would go learn 
 that point.' And having absented himself for some months 
 he was demanded by his teacher, ' when he would go for- 
 ward ? ' He answered, ' That he had not yet learned his 
 old lesson, to speak in such a manner as not to offend with 
 his tongue.' Chetw. Hist. cent. I. p. 17." 
 
 The story of Pambo is first told in the Ecclesiastical His- 
 tory of Socrates, Book IV. chap, xxiii., which contains " A 
 list of holy monks who devoted themselves to a solitary life." 
 In this chapter Socrates gives an account of the monks of 
 Egypt, as they existed in the year 373, and relates many 
 anecdotes of them. Of Pambo he says, as translated in 
 Bohn's Ecclesiastical Library : " Pambos, being an illiter- 
 ate man, went to some one for the purpose of being taught 
 a psalm ; and having heard the first verse of the thirty- 
 eighth, ' I said I will take heed to my ways that I offend 
 not with my tongue,' he departed without staying to hear 
 the second verse, saying this one would suffice if he could 
 practically acquire it. And when the person who had given 
 him the verse reproved him because he had not seen him 
 for the space oi six months, he answered that he had not 
 yet learnt to practice the verse of the psalm. After a con- 
 siderable lapse of time, being asked by one of his friends 
 whether he had made himself master of the verse, his an- 
 swer was, ' I have scarcely succeeded in accomplishing it 
 during nineteen years.' A certain individual having placed 
 gold in his hands for distribution to the poor, requested 
 him to reckon what he had given him. ' There is no need 
 of counting,' said he, ' but of integrity of mind.' The 
 same Pambos, at the desire of Athanasius the bishop, came 
 out of the desert to Alexandria ; and on beholding an 
 actress there, he wept. When those pi-esent asked him the 
 reason of his doing so he replied, ' Two causes have af- 
 fected me : one is, the destruction of this woman ; the other
 
 Pan and Luna. Paracelsus. 245 
 
 is, that I exert myself less to please my God, than she does 
 to please wanton characters.' " 
 
 Pan and Luna. Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, 1880. 
 
 Pan was the Greek god of flocks and shepherds, the chief 
 place of his worship being in Arcadia. He had charge of 
 pastoral life, and was intimately associated with it in my- 
 thology and poetry. He had a terrific voice, was of a coarse 
 and rude appearance, was fond of noise and riot, slumbered 
 at midday, and was fond of music. Luna was the Roman 
 goddess of the moon, fair, delicate, and beautiful. The 
 basis of the poem is an allusion in the third of the Georgics 
 of Virgil. The motto is from the same, and means, "If it 
 is proper to be credited," or, " If no disrespect is implied." 
 Probus says that Pan, being in love with Luna, made her 
 a present of his whitest sheep, thus deceiving her, as the 
 whitest fleeces were not unfailing indications of the best 
 sheep. Virgil said, in the translation of Wilstach: 
 
 " Is wool thy care ? See, first, that bushes rough 
 And burs and thorns find in thy field no place ; 
 Nor let the food be rich, and always sheep 
 With fleeces soft and white do thou select. 
 The ram, although he may a white fleece show, 
 Yet 'neath his palate moist may have a tongue 
 That 's black ; if so, reject thou him, lest spots 
 Of darkish hue may stain the lambs' pure coats, 
 And round the field look for a better choice. 
 Thus (if the tale to credit to the Gods 
 No disrespect implies) thee, Luna, Pan, 
 Arcadia's God, deceived, and prisoner made, 
 Thee in the deep groves wooing with a gift 
 Of snowy fleeces soft, thou not at all 
 Thy wooer spurning from thy silvery arms." 
 
 Browning has taken the brief hint of these last lines from 
 Virgil and expanded them into his poem, giving to Luna a 
 modesty not suggested by the older poet. This is a good 
 illustration of how the slightest hint was turned by Brown- 
 ing into a fruitful source of poetic creation. 
 
 Paracelsus. In the poem of that name, one who as- 
 pires to know, who desires truth, and who cares for naught 
 else. He represents the aspiring, seeking intellect, or the 
 spirit of reason and science. Browning indicates that his 
 failure comes because he is too exclusively wedded to know- 
 ledge, because he has not the " enthusiasm of Humanity," 
 as it has been called.
 
 246 Paracelsus. 
 
 Paracelsus. Published by Effingham Wilson, Royal 
 Exchange, London, 1835. Pages, i.-xi., 1-216, post 8vo. 
 " Inscribed to the Comte A. de Ripert-Monclar, by his af- 
 fectionate friend, Robert Browning," which was changed to 
 " Inscribed to Ame'de'e de Ripert-Monclar by his affection- 
 onate friend. R. B. London, March 15, 1835." Reprinted 
 as the first work in Poems, 1849. The original MS. is in 
 the Forster Library at South Kensington. 
 
 Paracelsus was begun about the close of October or the 
 first of November, 1834, was written during the follow- 
 ing winter, and was completed in March, 1835. In his 
 Personalia Mr. Gosse says of the writing of this poem : 
 " This work has had so many admirers that it needs, per- 
 haps, a little courage to say that it was surely not so impor- 
 tant as a sign of its author's genius as the little pieces just 
 mentioned. ... It is a drama of a shapeless kind, parent 
 in this sort of a monstrous family of Festuses, and Balders, 
 and Life Dramas, only quite lately extirpated, and never any 
 more, it is hoped, to flourish above ground. . . . We can- 
 not forget that it is a drama in which one of the characters, 
 more than once, expresses himself in upward of three hun- 
 dred lines of unbroken soliloquy. The precedent was bad, 
 as all disregard of the canons of poetic form is apt to be ; 
 and in the hands of his imitators Mr. Browning must often 
 have shuddered at his own contorted reflection. The public 
 refused to have anything to say to so strange a poem ; very 
 few copies sold, and the reviews were contemptuously ad- 
 verse. The Athenceum, even, which had received Pauline 
 so warmly, dismissed Paracelsus with a warning to the 
 author that it was useless to reproduce the obscurity of 
 Shelley minus his poetic beauty. But certain finer minds 
 here and there recognized the treasury of power and genius 
 concealed in this crabbed shape. The Examiner, in par- 
 ticular, contained a review of the poem at great length, in 
 which full justice was done to Mr. Browning's genius. 
 This, again, was the commencement of a memorable inti- 
 macy. But in the mean time the young poet formed the 
 acquaintance of one of the most striking personages of that 
 generation Macready, the tragedian. This happened at 
 a dinner at the house of W. J. Fox on the 27th of Novem- 
 ber, 1835. The actor was exceedingly charmed with the
 
 Paracelsus. 247 
 
 young and ardent writer, who, he said, looked more like a 
 poet than any man he had ever met. He read Paracelsus 
 with a sort of ecstasy, and cultivated Mr. Browning's ac- 
 quaintance on every occasion. He asked him to spend 
 New Year's Day with him at his country-house at Elstree, 
 and on the last day of 1835 Mr. Browning found himself 
 at ' The Blue Posts ' waiting for the coach, in company 
 with two or three other persons, who looked at him with 
 curiosity. One of these, a tall, ardent, noticeable young 
 fellow, constantly caught his eye, but no conversation passed 
 as they drove northward. It turned out that they were all 
 Macready's guests, while the noticeable youth was no other 
 than John Forster. He, on being introduced to Mr. Brown- 
 ing said : ' Did you see a little notice of you I wrote in 
 the Examiner ? ' The friendship so begun lasted, with a 
 certain interval, until the end of Forster's life." 
 
 The preface to the first edition of Paracelsus has since 
 been omitted, but it is very important to the understanding 
 of Browning's purpose in the writing of the poem, and is 
 here reproduced as a part of the history of the work : 
 
 " I am anxious that the reader should not, at the very 
 outset, mistaking my performance for one of a class with 
 which it has nothing in common, judge it by principles 
 on which it was never moulded, and subject it to a stand- 
 ard to which it was never meant to conform. I there- 
 fore anticipate his discovery, that it is an attempt, probably 
 more novel than happy, to reverse the method usually 
 adopted by writers whose aim it is to set forth any phenom- 
 enon of the mind or the passions, by the operation of per- 
 sons and events ; and that, instead of having recourse to an 
 external machinery of incidents to create and evolve the 
 crisis I desire to produce, I have ventured to display some- 
 what minutely the mood itself in its rise and progress, and 
 have suffered the agency by which it is influenced and de- 
 termined to be generally discernible in its effects alone, 
 and subordinate throughout, if not altogether excluded : 
 and this for a reason. I have endeavored to write a poem, 
 not a drama : the canons of the drama are well known, and 
 I cannot but think that, inasmuch as they have immediate 
 regard to stage representation, the peculiar advantages they
 
 248 Paracelsus. 
 
 hold out are really such only so long as the purpose for 
 which they were at first instituted is kept in view. I do not 
 very well understand what is called a Dramatic Poem, 
 wherein all those restrictions only submitted to on account 
 of compensating good in the original scheme are scrupu- 
 lously retained, as though for some special fitness in them- 
 selves, and all new facilities placed at an author's dis- 
 posal by the vehicle he selects, as pertinaciously rejected. 
 It is certain, however, that a work like mine depends on the 
 intelligence and sympathy of the reader for its success, 
 indeed, were my scenes stars, it must be his cooperating 
 fancy which, supplying all chasms, shall connect the scat- 
 tered lights into one constellation a Lyre or a Crown. I 
 trust for his indulgence towards a poem which had not been 
 imagined six months ago ; and that even should he think 
 slightingly of the present (an experiment I am in no case 
 likely to repeat) he will not be prejudiced against other pro- 
 ductions which may follow in a more popular, and perhaps 
 less difficult form. 
 " 15th March, 1835." 
 
 The selection of Paracelsus for the subject of a poem 
 indicated on the part of Browning a very considerable inter- 
 est in the form of thought which that strange character rep- 
 resents. Other poems indicate a like interest in Ibn Ezra, 
 Cornelius Agrippa, Jacob Boehme, and other mystical or 
 transcendental thinkers, many traces of whose thought are 
 to be found in this particular poem. It was not by accident 
 he selected these men for the subjects of his poems, or 
 merely because of an interest in mediaeval topics. In these 
 men he found something congenial to his own thinking, for 
 their intense belief in the spiritual world and in man's 
 capacity to control it with reference to his own destiny, had 
 a special charm for him. The daring speculations of Para- 
 celsus afforded him an opportunity for bringing forward his 
 own conceptions of life and destiny, and gave him a con- 
 genial and fitting subject. 
 
 Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim was born in 1493, 
 or perhaps in 1490 or 1491, different authorities giving dif- 
 ferent dates. He was the natural son of Wilhelm Bombast 
 von Hohenheim, who was a grand master of the Teutonic
 
 Paracelsus. 249 
 
 order, and his mother was the matron of a hospital in Ein- 
 siedeln. The place of the birth of Theophrastus was 
 Einsiedeln, in the canton of Schwyz, and only a short dis- 
 tance from the city of Zurich. The family moved about the 
 year 1502 to Villach in Carinthia, and there the father dis- 
 charged his duties as a physician until his death in 1534. 
 
 When Theophrastus began his career he adopted the 
 name of Paracelsus, which was of his own origination, his 
 purpose being, according to one interpretation, to express 
 his own superiority to Celsus. Another explanation of the 
 word is that it is a Latin translation of Ho'hener, or per- 
 haps of Hohenheim. His first teacher was his father. At 
 sixteen he became a student of the University of Basel or 
 Basle, but he soon left because not satisfied with the teach- 
 ing. " In his early youth," says Hartmann, " Paracelsus 
 obtained instructions in science from his father, who taught 
 him the rudiments of alchemy, surgery, and medicine. He 
 always honored the memory of his father, and always spoke 
 in the kindest terms of him, who was not only his father, 
 but also his friend and instructor. He afterwards continued 
 his studies under the tuition of the monks of the convent of 
 St. Andrew, situated in the valley of Savon, under the 
 guidance of the learned bishops, Eberhardt Baumgartner, 
 Mathias Scheydt of Rottgach, and Mathias Schacht of 
 Freisingin. After leaving the university he was instructed 
 by the celebrated Johann Trithemius of Spanheim, abbot of 
 St. Jacob at Wurzburg (1461-1516), one of the greatest 
 adepts of magic, alchemy, and astrology, and it was under 
 this teacher that his talents for the study of occultism were 
 especially cultivated and brought into practical use." 
 
 " Trithemius," says Professor John Ferguson, " is the re- 
 puted author of some obscure tracts on the great elixir, and 
 as there was no other chemistry going, Paracelsus would 
 have to devote himself to the reiterated operations so char- 
 acteristic of the notions of that time. But the confection 
 of the stone of the philosophers was too remote a possibility 
 to gratify the fiery spirit of a youth like Paracelsus, eager 
 to innke what he knew or could learn at once available for 
 practical medicine. So he left school chemistry as he had 
 forsaken university culture, and started for the mines in 
 Tyrol owned by the wealthy family of the Fuggers. The
 
 250 Paracelsus. 
 
 sort of knowledge he got there pleased him much more. 
 There, at least, he was in contact with reality. The strug- 
 gle with nature before the precious metals could be made 
 of use impressed upon him more and more the importance 
 of actual personal observation. He saw all the mechanical 
 difficulties that had to be overcome in mining ; he learned 
 the nature and succession of rocks, the physical properties 
 of minerals, ores, and metals ; he got a notion of mineral 
 waters ; he was an eye-witness of the accidents which befell 
 the miners, and studied the diseases which attacked them ; 
 he had proof that positive knowledge of Nature was not to 
 be got in schools and universities, but only by going to 
 Nature herself, and to those who were constantly engaged 
 with her. Hence came Paracelsus's peculiar method of 
 study. He attached no value to mere scholarship ; scholas- 
 tic disputations he utterly ignored and despised and espe- 
 cially the discussions on medical topics, which turned more 
 upon theories and definitions than upon actual practice. He 
 therefore went wandering over a great part of Europe to 
 learn all that he could." 
 
 It is not to be understood that Paracelsus carried on the 
 study of nature in the modern scientific spirit, for he was 
 too much a man of his time to accomplish anything so un- 
 usual. He had not wholly freed himself from the occult- 
 ism of the Middle Ages or from the love of astrology. He 
 became a student of Neo-Platonism, and he adopted many 
 of its most characteristic ideas. He held that man is in 
 miniature a reproduction of the whole of nature, and that 
 when we would know man we can do so by the study of 
 nature in its several parts and relations. Along with teach- 
 ings of this kind he went to the Kabbalah, and drew from 
 it that which was satisfactory to his manner of thinking. 
 He did not emancipate himself from belief in alchemy and 
 astrology, or rather these became in his hands the means of 
 chemical and physical study. Mackay classes him among 
 the alchemists, as others have done ; but his interest in 
 alchemy lay in the direction of what has since grown into 
 the science of chemistry and the use of chemicals in the 
 curing of disease. The reputation which Paracelsus gained 
 as a magician and alchemist clung to him, and has until our 
 own day kept the world from a just recognition of his real
 
 Paracelsus. 251 
 
 merits in laying the foundations of modern medicine and 
 chemistry. 
 
 About 1512 Paracelsus set out on his scientific travels, 
 his purpose being his own education, and the gaining of 
 whatever knowledge was to be found anywhere. He went 
 through Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Den- 
 mark, Sweden, Russia, and probably some parts of Asia. 
 He is said to have gone through Prussia, Austria, Turkey, 
 Egypt, Tartary, and back again to Constantinople, where 
 he is said to have spent some time. He is even reported to 
 have been a captive in Tartary, and to have learned valuable 
 medical secrets there ; and it is stated that he settled in 
 Constantinople for some years as a physician. Waite says 
 that in Muscovy he was brought before the great Cham. 
 " His knowledge of medicine and chemistry made him a 
 favorite at the court of this potentate, who sent him in 
 company with his son on an embassy to Constantinople. It 
 was here, according to Helmont, that he was taught the 
 supreme secret of alchemistry by a generous Arabian, who 
 gave him the universal dissolvent, the Azoth of Western 
 adepts, the alcohect or sophic fire." 
 
 Very little is really known about the travels of Paracel- 
 sus, and it is by no means certain that he was ever in the 
 East. The supposition of Hartmann, that he must have 
 acquired some of his teachings by contact with Indian or 
 other Asiatic believers in occultism, has little to support it ; 
 and Neo-Platonism could have given him everything of this 
 kind which he expressed in his books. Hartmann's account 
 of his method of acquiring knowledge is much more to the 
 point : " Paracelsus traveled through the countries along 
 the Danube, and came into Italy, where he served as an 
 army surgeon in the imperial army, and participated in 
 many of the warlike expeditions of these times. On these 
 occasions he collected a great deal of useful information, 
 not only from physicians, surgeons, and alchemists, but also 
 by his personal intercourse with executioners, barbers, shep- 
 herds, Jews, gypsies, midwives, and fortune - tellers. He 
 collected useful information from the high and low, from 
 the learned and from the vulgar, and it was nothing un- 
 usual to see him in the company of teamsters and vaga- 
 bonds, on the highways and at public inns a circumstance
 
 252 Paracelsus. 
 
 on account of which his narrow - minded enemies heaped 
 upon him bitter reproach and vilifications." 
 
 Having spent something more than ten years on his 
 travels, Paracelsus returned home, and began his career 
 as a physician and teacher. In 1526 or 1527 Paracelsus 
 returned to Basle, and was almost at once made the town 
 physician. He performed some remarkable cures, which 
 brought him into notice as possessed of great knowledge 
 and remarkable skill. One of the cures he wrought was 
 that of Froben, who was cured by him of gout by the means 
 of laudanum. Froben was one of the earliest of the great 
 printers, a man of learning and skill, the intimate friend of 
 Erasmus, and the publisher of his many works, and of the 
 editions of the classic and Christian writers which he edited. 
 On the recommendation of CEcolampadius, and other leaders 
 among the Protestant reformers, Paracelsus was soon ap- 
 pointed by the city council of Basle to the post of professor 
 of physic, medicine, and surgery in the university, and with 
 a considerable salary. 
 
 Learned as Paracelsus undoubtedly was, and skillful as 
 he must have been, he seems not to have had the discretion 
 and sound judgment which are a better part of all wisdom. 
 That he was a man of much originality we may admit, and 
 that he had the boldness of the true reformer ; but he was 
 wanting in tact, and in capacity for wisely guiding other 
 men. Very soon after he was established in Basle he came 
 into collision with the city authorities and with the people. 
 He asked the town council to make the apothecaries subject 
 to him as the city physician, and that they should not be 
 allowed to sell any medicines except at his order. This 
 was probably a just request from the point of view of a 
 wise physician ; but the apothecaries would not submit to 
 the control of Paracelsus, and they excited the people 
 against the reformer. This action was construed as a direct 
 attack upon the business of all the druggists and apothe- 
 caries in the city ; and it excited the jealousy of the other 
 physicians, who likewise turned against the innovator. 
 
 As a professor and lecturer in the university Paracelsus 
 carried his spirit of innovation still farther than lie had done 
 as the city physician. From the very first the method of 
 Paracelsus was boldly original, not to say egotistical. He
 
 Paracelsus. 253 
 
 did what had not before been undertaken in connection with 
 university teaching, he discarded Latin in his lectures, 
 and spoke in the vernacular, which was Swiss - German. 
 Then he did not reproduce the teachings of the books, did 
 not go to Galen, Celsus, or any of the masters of the past ; 
 but he drew from his own observations, and presented 
 theories and methods of his own. This was doing in medi- 
 cine what Erasmus had done as a scholar and what Luther 
 had done as a religious teacher. In Paracelsus, however, 
 there was not the gravity and solidity which marked the 
 careers of Luther and Erasmus ; and he laid himself open 
 to the charge of being a charlatan. In his lectures he de- 
 nounced the teachings of Galen and Avicenna, then the 
 great masters of medical science, and he burned their works 
 before his pupils in a dramatic manner. . He said that the 
 physicians educated in the old way were quacks and im- 
 postors, and that in his own shoe-strings was more knowledge 
 than in the men whose writings had been the standards of 
 medicine for centuries. He proposed to cut wholly loose 
 from the old medical system, and to establish this science 
 upon a bas4s of its own, which he was ready to supply. 
 
 Paracelsus seems to have had an egotism which was re- 
 pellent to others, rather than an aid to his own success. He 
 said in the preface to one of his books : " I know that the 
 monarchy of mind will belong to me, that mine will be the 
 honor. I do not praise myself, but Nature praises me, for 
 I am born of Nature, and follow her. She knows me and 
 I know her." In another preface he wrote in the manner 
 of his lectures at Basle : " After me, ye, Avicenna, Galen, 
 Rhases, Montagnana, and others ! You after me, not I 
 after you, ye of Paris, Montpellier, Suevia, Meissen, and 
 Cologne, ye of Vienna, and all that come from the countries 
 along the Danube and Rhine and from the islands of the 
 ocean ! You Italy, you Dalmatia, you Sarrnatia, Athens, 
 Greece, Arabia, and Israelita ! Follow me ! It is not for 
 me to follow you, because mine is the monarchy. Come out 
 of the night of the mind ! The time will come when none 
 of you shall remain in this dark corner who will not be an 
 object of contempt to the world, because I shall be the 
 monarch, and the monarchy will be mine." He made the 
 same boasts in his lectures, so confident was he of his own 
 ^osition, and of the superiority of his methods.
 
 254 Paracelsus. 
 
 The immediate cause of the departure of Paracelsus from 
 Basle was the failure of the city council to sustain him in 
 his rights as a physician. A certain Canon Cornelius of 
 Lichtenfels became very ill and lay at the point of death 
 with the gout. He called Paracelsus to his aid, who gave 
 him two small pills, which caused his speedy recovery. 
 When the canon was awaiting death he promised Paracel- 
 sus a large remuneration ; but when he returned to health 
 so easily he refused to pay what at first he had promised. 
 Paracelsus brought suit against him, but failed to recover 
 his fee. A complication of causes, however, led to the fail- 
 ure of Paracelsus in Basle ; this was only the last straw. Of 
 these causes Professor Ferguson gives a clear statement : 
 
 " The truth of Paracelsus's doctrines was apparently con- 
 firmed by his success in curing or mitigating diseases for 
 which the regular physicians could do nothing. For about 
 a couple of years his reputation and practice increased to a 
 surprising extent. But at the end of that time people be- 
 gan to recover themselves. Paracelsus had burst upon the 
 schools with such novel views and methods, with such irre- 
 sistible criticism, that all opposition was at first crushed flat. 
 Gradually the sea began to rise. His enemies watched for 
 slips and failures ; the physicians maintained that he had 
 no degree, and insisted that he should give proof of his 
 qualifications. His manner of life was brought up against 
 him. It was insinuated that he was a profane person, that 
 he was a conjurer, a necromancer, that, in fact, he was to be 
 got rid of at any cost as a troubler of the peace and of the 
 time-honored traditions of the medical corporations. More- 
 over, he had a pharmaceutical system of his own which did 
 not harmonize with the commercial arrangements of the 
 apothecaries, and he not only did not use their drugs like the 
 Galenists, but in the exercise of his functions as town physi- 
 cian urged the authorities to keep a sharp eye on the purity of 
 their wares, upon their knowledge of their art, and upon their 
 transactions with their friends the physicians. The growing 
 jealousy and enmity culminated in the Lichtenfels dispute ; 
 and as the judges sided with the canon, to their everlasting 
 discredit, Paracelsus had no alternative but to tell them his 
 opinion of the whole case and of their notions of justice. 
 So little doubt left he on the subject that his friends judged
 
 Paracelsus. 255 
 
 it prudent for him to leave Basle at once, as it had been 
 resolved to punish him for the attack on the authorities of 
 which he had been guilty. He departed from Basle in such 
 haste that he carried nothing with him, and some chemical 
 apparatus and other property were taken charge of by 
 Oporinus, his pupil and amanuensis. He went first to 
 Esslingen, where he remained for a brief period, but had 
 soon to leave from absolute want. Then began his wander- 
 ing life, the course of which can be traced by the dates of 
 his various writings. He thus visited in succession Colmar, 
 Nuremberg, Appenzell, Zurich, Pfaffers, Augsburg, Villach, 
 Meran, Middelheim, and other places, seldom staying a 
 twelvemonth in any of them. In this way he spent some 
 dozen years, till 1541, when he was invited by Archbishop 
 Ernst to settle at Salzburg, under his protection." 
 
 Paracelsus was evidently a man of fervid and erratic 
 character, full of great purposes, which he had not the 
 stability and persistence to realize. He had genius, was an 
 original investigator and thinker, but he was visionary, and 
 wanting in sound judgment. He was brave and fearless, 
 but also wrong-headed and vulgar. The inconsistent ele- 
 ments in his character are well described by Professor 
 Ferguson : " It is not difficult to criticise Paracelsus and to 
 represent him as so far below the level of his time as to be 
 utterly contemptible. It is difficult, but perhaps not im- 
 possible, to raise Paracelsus to a place among the great 
 spirits of mankind. It is most difficult of all to ascertain 
 what his true character really was, to appreciate aright this 
 man of fervid imagination, of powerful and persistent con- 
 victions, of unabated honesty and love of truth, of keen in- 
 sight into the errors (as he thought them) of his time, of a 
 merciless will to lay bare these errors and to reform the 
 abuses to which they gave rise, who in an instant offends us 
 by his boasting, his grossness, his want of self-respect. It 
 is a problem how to reconcile his ignorance, his weakness, 
 his .superstition, his crude notions, his erroneous observations, 
 his ridiculous inferences and theories, with his grasp of 
 method, his lofty views of the true scope of medicine, his 
 lucid statements, his incisive and epigrammatic criticisms of 
 men and motives." 
 
 His personal appearance and his portraits have been
 
 256 Paracelsus. 
 
 described by Hartmann : " Whether or not Paracelsus was 
 emasculated in his infancy, in consequence of an accident, 
 or by a drunken soldier, as an old tradition says, or whether 
 he was or was not emasculated at all, has not been ascer- 
 tained. It is, however, certain that no beard grew on his 
 face, and that his skull, which is still in existence, approxi- 
 mates the formation of a female rather than that of a male. 
 He is painted nowhere with a beard. His portrait, in life- 
 size, can still be seen at Salzburg, painted on the wall of his 
 residence. Other portraits of Paracelsus are to be found in 
 Huser's edition of his works, and in the first volume of 
 Hauber's Bibliotheca Magica. The head of Paracelsus, 
 painted by Kaulbach in his celebrated picture, at the Museum 
 at Berlin, called The Age of the Reformation, is idealized, 
 and bears little resemblance to the original." 
 
 Among the charges brought against Paracelsus in his 
 lifetime, and which have been repeated since his death, was 
 that of being a drunkard. It is said he often appeared on 
 the streets in a drunken condition, and that he was so fre- 
 quently intoxicated that he was unfitted for his duties as a 
 physician and lecturer. He was also charged with being a 
 magician, and with dealing with familiar spirits. It is said 
 he sought for the philosopher's stone, and that he tried to 
 produce gold by magical processes. He had the reputation 
 of holding communion with Galen in hell, and of being able 
 to bring Avicenna from the infernal regions to aid him in 
 his magical efforts. It is needless to say that these reports 
 have no foundation in truth, that they grew out of mis- 
 representations and misconceptions of his medical labors. 
 Even so late a writer as Mackay, in his Popular Delusions, 
 repeats these worthless stories. 
 
 Hartmann describes the last years of Paracelsus some- 
 what more in detail than has been done by Professor Fer- 
 guson, and with some differences of statement : " Paracelsus 
 resumed his strolling life, roaming, as he did in his youth, 
 over the country, living in village taverns and inns, and 
 traveling from place to place. Numerous disciples followed 
 him, attracted either by a desire for knowledge or by a wish 
 to acquire his art and to use it for their own purposes. The 
 most renowned of his followers was Johannes Oporinus, 
 who for three years served as a secretary and famulus to
 
 Paracelsus. 257 
 
 him, and who afterwards became a professor of the Greek 
 language, and a well - known publisher, bookseller, and 
 printer in Basle. Paracelsus was exceedingly reticent in 
 regard to his secrets, and Oporinus afterwards spoke very 
 bitterly against him on that account, and thereby served his 
 enemies. But after the death of Paracelsus he regretted 
 his own indiscretion, and expressed great veneration for 
 him. 
 
 " Paracelsus went to Colmar in 1528, and came to Ess- 
 lingen and Nuremberg in the years 1529 and 1530. The 
 regular physicians of Nuremberg denounced him as a quack, 
 charlatan, and impostor. To refute their accusations he 
 requested the City Council to put some patients that had 
 been declared incurable under his care. They sent him 
 some cases of elephantiasis, which he cured in a short time, 
 and without asking any fee. Testimonials to that effect 
 may be found in the archives of the city of Nuremberg. 
 
 " But this success did not change the fortune of Paracel- 
 sus, who seemed to be doomed to a life of continual wander- 
 ings. In 1530 we find him at Noerdlingen, Munich, 
 Regensburg, Amberg, and Meran ; in 1531 in St. Gall, and 
 in 1535 at Zurich. He then went to Maehren, Kaernthen, 
 Krain, and Hongary, and finally landed in Salzburg, to 
 which place he was invited by the Prince Palatine, Duke 
 Ernst of Bavaria, who was a great lover of the secret arts. 
 In that place Paracelsus obtained at last the fruit of his 
 long labors and of a widespread fame. 
 
 " But he was not destined to enjoy a long time the rest 
 he so richly deserved, because on the 24th of September, 
 1541, he died, after a short sickness (at the age of forty- 
 eight years and three days), in a small room of the inn 
 of the ' White Horse,' near the quay, and his body was 
 buried in the graveyard of St. Sebastian. There is still a 
 mystery in regard to his death, but the most recent investi- 
 gations go to confirm the statement made by his contempo- 
 raries, that Paracelsus during a banquet had been treach- 
 erously attacked by the hirelings of certain physicians who 
 were his enemies, and that in consequence of a fall upon a 
 rock, a fracture was produced on his skull, that after a few 
 days caused his death." 
 
 Paracelsus was a prolific writer, for he published fourteen
 
 258 Paracelsus. 
 
 works during his life-time, and many others came out after 
 his death. Many writings were attributed to him which 
 were not of his production, and it is now difficult to deter- 
 mine which are genuine. He wrote in Swiss-German, and 
 seems to have had no knowledge of Greek, and not a very 
 extended one of Latin. His works were edited in 1589-91 
 by Huser in eleven volumes ; and, though other editions 
 have been published, this is the best. They were trans- 
 lated into Latin by his disciples, and published in a com- 
 plete edition. About a dozen of his writings were trans- 
 lated into English during the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries. 
 
 Paracelsus was the first of the new race of alchemists, 
 who arose in the sixteenth century, who abandoned the 
 search for the philosopher's stone, and who sought for 
 chemical remedies for disease. He said that the true use 
 of chemistry is not to make gold, but to prepare medicines. 
 Though he was very far from being wholly emancipated 
 from the spirit or the fact of alchemy, yet he made many 
 remarkable discoveries in the direction of modern science, 
 and he anticipated in part so many modern facts and laws 
 that he can be regarded as no other than a genius, because 
 of his wonderful insight. 
 
 Paracelsus rejected all traditional and authoritative teach- 
 ings in medicine, and was noted for his revolutionary inde- 
 pendence of thought. He broke away from the humanists, 
 and sought to make medicine popular by discarding the use 
 of Latin. He rejected the study of anatomy, and sought 
 the source of disease in part in the spiritual nature of man. 
 His Neo-Platonism made him regard man not only as a mi- 
 crocosm, but as having the source of all his bodily qualities 
 in the soul. He sought for remedies that would act upon 
 the spiritual nature of disease ; and these he found in chemi- 
 cals, many of which he introduced as medicines, especially 
 antimony. He also made a large use of laudanum, which he 
 was the first to employ as a medicine. He originated the 
 chemical system of medicine, which was greatly influential 
 during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
 
 He made much of the doctrine of signatures, or the cor- 
 respondence of the microcosm with the macrocosm. This 
 led him to his theory of specifics, and to his arcana of med-
 
 Paracelsus. 259 
 
 icines. His positive services to medicine, says Professor 
 Ferguson, ave to be summed up in his wide application of 
 chemical ideas to pharmacy and therapeutics ; his indirect 
 and possibly greater services are to be found in the stim- 
 ulus, the revolutionary stimulus, of his ideas about method 
 and general theory. Paracelsus was also a reformer in 
 surgical practice, as well as in medicine. His merit here 
 was his observation of nature, and his faithfulness in the 
 description of diseases and injuries. His surgical writings 
 were of great value in their time. 
 
 It was not alone in medicine and chemistry that the influ- 
 ence of Paracelsus was felt, for his name appears in the his- 
 tory of philosophy as that of one of the men through whose 
 theories the modern conceptions of the universe have been 
 built up. Erdmann says that he was the first to make the 
 doctrine of the microcosm and macrocosm the central point 
 of the whole of philosophy. With him nature-philosophy 
 began, which reached its highest expression in Schelling, 
 and which has had so important an influence on modern 
 science. Brilliant were some of his ideas, and fruitful in 
 results for modern thought ; but he was also the victim of 
 fancy and fanaticism. He was a theosophist, and held to 
 many theories which have recently re-appeared under the 
 name of " Esoteric Buddhism." Very nearly all which has 
 of late years been taught as " Christian Science " is to be 
 found in his writings. Modern " Theosophy " adds nothing 
 to what he taught, and has less excuse for its existence. 
 He had not learned to separate these speculations from those 
 of legitimate science ; and in his writings they are almost 
 inextricably mixed with each other, the true scientific 
 method being employed to maintain the wildest theosophic 
 or cabalistic speculations. This strange mixture of good 
 and evil in his teachings is well described by Erdmann, 
 who is writing of his theory of the arcana. " Here, as in 
 general with Paracelsus, it is hard to tell where self-decep- 
 tion ceases and charlatanry begins. He cannot be acquitted 
 of either ; on the contrary, neither here nor in the case of 
 the famous recipe for the production of the homunculus, is 
 it possible to think of an ironical jest. That in all his 
 alchemistic works he demands that the stars and their con- 
 stellations should be observed, that the sun's crop and fal-
 
 260 Paracelsus. 
 
 low season, i. e., summer and winter, should be distin- 
 guished, is a necessary consequence of the interdependence 
 of all things which he asserts. Amid all the assertions 
 which appear so fantastic he is never tired of warning his 
 readers against fantasies, and of demanding that Nature 
 herself should be allowed to point out the way. But he not 
 only regards it as such guidance, that an accidental experi- 
 mentum teaches how an herb has once operated, but also 
 when Nature promises a certain definite effect by means of 
 the form of a plant taken as a signature ; and finally, when 
 from the fact that a beast can feed on, i. e., draw to itself, 
 that which is poison to us, we draw the inference that this 
 poison will draw away, i. e., to itself, our wounds, we fol- 
 low not our own conceit, but Nature. He is entirely in 
 earnest that our knowledge is only the self-revelation of 
 Nature, that our knowledge is but listening to her ; and 
 that he heard a great deal from her is proved by his for- 
 tunate cures, and by the fact that many of his fundamental 
 principles have maintained themselves to this day." 
 
 In his article on Alchemy M. Jules Andrieu speaks of 
 those who condemn Paracelsus because of his imperfect and 
 spiritualistic teachings as not judging him truly : " A far 
 truer estimate of Paracelsus has been given us by Mr. 
 Browning in the drama which bears his name." To the 
 same effect is the Cambridge lecture of Charles Kingsley, 
 published in his Historical Lectures and Essays, where he 
 says : " Paracelsus . . . has been immortalized in a poem 
 which you all ought to read, one of Robert Browning's ear- 
 liest and one of his best creations. I think we must accept 
 as true Mr. Browning's interpretation of Paracelsus's char- 
 acter. We must believe that he was at first an honest and 
 high-minded, as he was certainly a most gifted man ; that 
 he went forth into the world, with an intense sense of the 
 worthlessness of the sham knowledge of the pedants and 
 quacks of the schools ; an intense belief that some higher 
 and truer science might be discovered by which diseases 
 might be actually cured, and health, long life, happiness, 
 all but immortality, be conferred on man ; an intense be- 
 lief that he, Paracelsus, was called and chosen of God to 
 find out that great mystery, and be a benefactor to all fu- 
 ture ages. . . . He had one idea, to which if he had kept
 
 Paracelsus. 261 
 
 true, his life would have been a happier one the firm 
 belief that all pure science was a revelation from God ; that 
 it was not to be obtained at second or third hand, by 
 blindly adhering to the works of Galen or Hippocrates or 
 Aristotle, and putting them (as the scholastic philosophers 
 round him did) in the place of God ; but by going straight 
 to Nature at first hand, and listening to what Bacon calls 
 ' the voice of God revealed in facts.' " 
 
 Browning has interpreted Paracelsus as a believer in in- 
 tuition as a 'source of truth, and this he undoubtedly was. 
 He expected to arrive at the secrets of nature by direct 
 apprehension or by intuition. He thought that the soul 
 could see directly into nature, and read its truths by the 
 interior vision of the soul. Instead of keeping strictly to 
 the methods of the physical student, he sought to arrive at 
 truth by intellectual intuition or by the special activity of 
 the interior nature. In his De Natura Rerum he said : 
 " Hidden things of the soul which cannot be perceived by 
 the physical senses may be found through the sidereal 
 body, through whose organism we may look into nature in 
 the same way as the sun shines through a glass. The inner 
 nature of everything may therefore be known through 
 Magic in general, and through the powers of the inner or 
 second sight. These are the powers by which all the se- 
 crets of nature may be discovered, and it is necessary that 
 a physician should be instructed and become well versed in 
 this art, and that he should be able to find out a great deal 
 more about the patient's disease by his own inner percep- 
 tion than by questioning the patient. . . . That which gives 
 healing power to a medicine is its Spiritus (its ethereal es- 
 sence or principle), and it is only perceptible by the senses 
 of the sidereal man. It therefore follows that Magic is a 
 teacher of medicine far preferable to all written books. 
 Magic power alone (that can neither be conferred by the 
 universities nor created by the awarding of diplomas, but 
 which comes from God) is the true teacher, preceptor, and 
 pedagogue, to teach the art of curing the sick. As the 
 physical forms and colors of objects or as the letters of a 
 book can be seen with the physical eye, likewise the essence 
 and character of all things may be recognized and become 
 known by the inner sense of the soul."
 
 262 Paracelsus. 
 
 Paracelsus gives quite another meaning to magic than 
 that which is now given to it, for he says : " Magic and 
 Sorcery are two entirely different things, and there is as 
 much difference between them as there is between light and 
 darkness, and between white and black. Magic is the 
 greatest wisdom and the knowledge of supernatural powers. 
 A knowledge of spiritual things cannot be obtained by 
 merely reasoning logically from external appearances exist- 
 ing on the physical plane, but it may be acquired by obtain- 
 ing more spirituality, and making one's self capable of seeing 
 and feeling the things of the spirit." Again, he says : " The 
 exercise of true magic does not require any ceremonies or 
 conjurations, or the making of circles or signs ; it requires 
 neither benedictions nor maledictions in words, neither 
 verbal blessings nor curses ; it only requires a strong faith 
 in the omnipotent power of all good, that can accomplish 
 everything if it acts through a human mind who is in har- 
 mony with it, and without which nothing useful can be ac- 
 complished. True magic power consists in true faith, but 
 true faith rests in knowledge, and without knowledge there 
 can be no faith." 
 
 " Another great spiritual power, " he says, " is contained 
 in faith. Faith stimulates and elevates the power of the 
 spirit. A person who has strong faith feels as if he were 
 lifted up, and were living independent of the body. By the 
 power of faith the Apostles and Patriarchs accomplished 
 great things, that were above the ordinary run of nature ; 
 and the saints performed their miracles by the power of 
 faith. ... A dead saint cannot cure anybody. A living 
 saint may cure the sick by virtue of the divine power that 
 acts through him." " Faith accomplishes that which the 
 body would accomplish if it had the power. Man is created 
 with great powers ; he is greater than heaven and greater 
 than the earth. He possesses faith, and faith is a light more 
 powerful than and superior to natural light, and stronger 
 than all creatures. All magic processes are based on faith. 
 By faith, imagination, and will we may accomplish whatever 
 we may desire. The power of faith overcomes all spirits of 
 nature, because it is a spiritual power, and spirit is higher 
 than nature. Whatever is grown in the realm of nature 
 maybe changed by the power of faith." "If any one
 
 Paracelsus. 263 
 
 thinks that he can cure a disease or accomplish anything 
 else, because he believes that he is able to accomplish it, he 
 believes in a superstition ; but if he knows that he can per- 
 form such a thing, because he is conscious of having the 
 power to do so, he will then be able to accomplish it by the 
 power of that consciousness, which is the true faith. Such 
 a faith is knowledge and gives power. True faith is spirit- 
 ual consciousness, but a belief based upon mere opinions and 
 creeds is the product of ignorance and is superstitious." 
 
 In his account of the relations of the animal and the 
 spiritual nature Paracelsus presents ideas which have been 
 adopted by Browning, not only in the present poem, but in 
 many others. " Man," says Paracelsus, " need not be sur- 
 prised that animals have animal instincts that are so much 
 like his own ; it might rather be surprising for the animals 
 to see that their son resembles them so much. Animals fol- 
 low their animal instincts, and in doing so they act as nobly 
 and stand as high in nature as their position in it permits 
 them, and they do not sink thereby below that position ; it is 
 only animal man who may sink below the brute. . . . Man 
 may learn from the animals, for they are his parents ; but 
 the animals can learn nothing useful to them from man. . . . 
 A man who loves to lead an animal life is an animal ruled 
 by his interior animal heaven. The same heavenly influ- 
 ences that cause a wolf to murder, a dog to steal, a cat to 
 kill, a bird to sing, make a man a singer, an eater, a talker, 
 a lover, a murderer, a robber, or a thief. These are animal 
 attributes, and they die with the animal elements to which 
 they belong ; but the divine principle in man, which consti- 
 tutes him a human being, and by which he is eminently 
 distinguished from the animals, is not a product of the earth, 
 nor is it generated by the animal kingdom, but it comes 
 from God ; it is God, and it is immortal, because, coming 
 from a divine source, it cannot be otherwise than divine. 
 Man should therefore live in harmony with his divine 
 parent, and not in the animal elements of his soul. Man 
 has an Paternal Father who sent him to reside and gain ex- 
 perience in the animal principles, but not for the purpose of 
 being absorbed by them." 
 
 One of the best sources of information about Paracelsus 
 is the JEncyclopcedia Britannica, especially with reference
 
 264 Paracelsus. 
 
 to his historic importance and his contributions to chemistry 
 and medicine. See articles on Paracelsus, alchemy, chem- 
 istry, medicine, surgery, pathology, and mysticism. Erd- 
 mann's History of Philosophy gives th<j best account in 
 English of his philosophical position. The fullest source of 
 information is Hartmann's Life of Paracelsus, which trans- 
 lates many passages from his writings ; but this work has 
 little critical insight or soundness of judgment. The author 
 takes the good and the bad of Paracelsus with equal readiness, 
 and defends his magic and his occultism with an astonish- 
 ing credulity. The lecture of Kingsley, already mentioned, 
 may be consulted with profit. The contribution of Dr. Ber- 
 doe on Paracelsus to The Browning Society's Papers, part 
 eleven, reprinted in his Browning's Message to His Time, 
 will be found of value. Mrs. Fanny Holy, St. Louis, Mo., 
 has published a very helpful Outline Study of Browning's 
 Paracelsus : for sale by Charles H. Kerr, Chicago. This 
 is the fullest and most satisfactory study of the poem yet 
 published. Not least important are Browning's own notes 
 to the poem, which contain much valuable matter. 
 
 For interpretations see Alexander, and Sharp. Also see 
 New Monthly Magazine, John Forster, 46 : 289 ; The Ex- 
 aminer, John Forster, Sept. 6, 1835 ; Monthly Repository, 
 W. J. Fox, 9 : 716 ; Leigh Hunt's Journal, 2 : 405 ; TJie 
 Browning Society's Papers, 1 : 101* ; Poet-Lore, 1 : 117 ; 
 Kingsland's Chief Poet of the Age. 
 
 Many emendations have been made in Paracelsus in the 
 form of omissions, additions, and revisions. Nearly a third 
 of the lines have been changed since the poem was first 
 printed. The first and last editions have been carefully col- 
 lated with each other, and the result is given below. In the 
 first book every change has been noted, except those of the 
 slightest character, such as the substitution of one conjunc- 
 tion or preposition for another, like and for but. In the 
 other books only the emendations of considerable importance 
 have been indicated. A few omissions of foot-notes may 
 also be mentioned. Riverside edition, p. 105, 1. 46, had 
 this foot-note : " He did in effect affirm that he had dis- 
 puted with Galen in the vestibule of hell." P. 116, 1. 25, 
 had this : " ' Paracelse faisait profession du Panthelsme le 
 plus grossier.' Renauldin. "
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 265 
 
 CHANGED READINGS, ADDITIONS, AND OMISSIONS. 
 I. PARACELSUS ASPIRES. 
 
 1835. 
 p. 1. Scene. Wurzburg. A garden in 
 
 the environs. 1507. 
 p. 3, 1. 1. Those creaking trees bent 
 
 with their fruit and see 
 1. 4. And for the winds 
 1. 5. Shall vex that ash that overlooks 
 
 the rest, 
 
 1. 12. All families 
 1. 18. The painted snail 
 p. 4, 1. 2. For where beside this nook 
 1. 8. predict some great 
 
 1. 18. and all that they contain 
 
 1. 21. best love so well shut in 
 
 p. 5, 1. 2. That, far from them, 
 1. 8. Even to frame a wish 
 1. 11. well they are. 
 
 1. 12. This Festus knows ; beside, 
 1. 14. joys he quits ; 
 
 1. 18. That 's beautiful is one ! And 
 
 when he learns 
 That every common sight he can 
 
 enjoy 
 
 1. 21. joys derived 
 
 p. 6, 1. 1. and which a rash pursuit of 
 
 aims 
 
 That it affords not 
 
 1. 3. knowing this 
 
 1. 19. Will be between us ... 
 p. 7, 1. 9. Oh, you shall 
 
 Be very proud one day ! . . . 
 1. 11. Talk volumes, I shall still be in 
 
 arrear. 
 
 1. 13. for vain it looks to seek 
 
 1. 14. the last hopes I conceived 
 
 Are fading even now. Old stories 
 
 tell 
 
 1. 18. The gifts it proffer'd were 
 p. 8, 1. 1. and still desist 
 
 No whit from projects where they 
 
 have no part. 
 
 1. 3. Alas ! as I forbode, this weighty 
 
 talk 
 Has for its end no other than to 
 
 revive . . . 
 
 1. 11. And still I listen 
 1. 14. a mother should hope 
 
 1. 19. and striven their strife 
 
 Eluding Destiny, if that might 
 
 be 
 p. 9, 1. 1. And taught me to know them 
 
 and know myself ; 
 1. 3. That I can from my soul 
 1. 8. When you shall 
 
 Have learn'd my purpose . . . 
 
 Learn 'd it ? I can say 
 Beforehand all this conference 
 
 will produce. 
 
 1. 13. Of our belief in what ia man's 
 true end 
 
 1888. 
 p. 27. Scene, Wurzburg ; a garden in 
 
 the environs. 1512. 
 p. 28, 1. 9. Nor blame those creaking 
 
 trees bent with their fruit, 
 1. 12. Then for the winds 
 1. 13. Shall vex that ash which over- 
 looks you both, 
 1. 20. Each family 
 1. 26. Yon painted snail 
 1. 32. For where save In this nook 
 
 1. 38. predict to me 
 
 p. 29, 1. 3. and all things they contain 
 1. 6. love best, shut in so well 
 
 1. 8. That, when afar, 
 1. 14. And fashion even a wish 
 1. 17. well they fare. 
 
 1. 18. Beside, this Festus knows 
 1. 20. joys I quit, 
 
 1. 24. That 's beauteous proves alike ! 
 
 When Festus learns 
 That every common pleasure of 
 
 the world 
 
 1. 27. joy derived 
 
 1. 28. a stake which rash pursuit of 
 
 aims 
 
 That life affords not, 
 1. 30. this in view 
 
 p. 30, 1. 2. Will rise between us : 
 1. 13. Oh, one day 
 
 You shall be very proud ! 
 [after 1. 14.] 
 
 1. 16. for vain all projects seem 
 
 1. 17. I said my latest hope 
 
 Is fading even now. A story tella 
 
 1. 21. The gifts they offered proved 
 
 1. 25. and yet desist 
 
 No whit from projects where re- 
 pose nor love 
 
 Have part. 
 1. 27. Once more ? Alas ! As I foretold. 
 
 I. 34. You bid me listen 
 1. 37. a mother hoped 
 
 1. 42. and died their death, 
 
 Lost in their ranks, eluding des- 
 tiny : 
 p. 31, 1. 1. Taught me to know mankind 
 
 and know myself ; 
 1. 3. That, from my soul, I can 
 1. 8. When you deign 
 
 To hear my purpose . . . 
 
 Hear it ? I can oay 
 Beforehand all this evening's con- 
 ference ! 
 
 1. 13. Of our best scheme of life, what 
 ia man's end,
 
 266 
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 And God's apparent will no 
 
 two faiths ever 
 Agreed as ours agree : next, each 
 
 allows 
 
 These points are no mere vision- 
 ary truths : 
 But, once determin'd, it remains 
 
 alone 
 To act upon them straight as best 
 
 we may : 
 
 p. 10, 1. 2. authorize 
 
 A broad plan, vague and ill de- 
 fined enough, 
 
 But courting censure and implor- 
 ing aid : 
 Well 
 L 9. Our minds go every way together 
 
 all good 
 1. 18. wholly to God 
 
 Is in a life 
 
 p. 11, 1. 6. that he should send 
 
 L 7. or find out 
 
 How else they may be satiated : 
 
 but this 
 
 Ambiguous warfare wearies . . . 
 . . . Not so much 
 
 1. 11. And for his own sake, not for 
 
 yours ? 
 
 1. 16. Choose your party : 
 
 p. 12, 1. 1. nor spy out 
 
 1. 5. that all you covet 
 
 1. 7. That the strange course 
 1. 9. And count the minutes 
 L 21. heart has long 
 
 Nourish'd, and has at length ma- 
 tured, a plan 
 To give yourself up wholly to one 
 
 end. 
 I will not speak of Einsiedeln ; 
 
 't was as 
 I had been born 
 p. 13, 1. 8. As you had your own soul : 
 
 accordingly 
 I could go further back, and trace 
 
 each bough 
 Of this wide-branching tree even 
 
 to its birth ; 
 Each full-grown passion to its 
 
 outspring faint ; 
 But I shall only dwell upon the 
 
 intents 
 
 Which fill'd you when, 
 L 16. Whom famed Tritheinius 
 1. 17. and not the dullest 
 
 ]. 19. Was earnest as you were ; 
 L 22. Now, just as well have I descried 
 
 the growth 
 Of this new ardor which supplants 
 
 the old : 
 I watch 'd it 
 p. 14, 1. 15. Secured 
 p. 15, L 1. But after-signs disclosed, and 
 you confirm 'd, 
 
 And what God's will ; no two 
 
 faiths e'er agreed 
 As his with mine. Next, each of 
 
 us allows 
 Faith should be acted on aa best 
 
 we may : 
 
 1. 19. authorize. 
 
 1. 20. Well, 
 
 1. 24. Our two minds go together all 
 
 the good 
 1. 37. to God, is seen 
 
 In living just 
 
 1. 46. that God should send 
 
 1. 47. say how soon 
 
 Power satiates these, or lust, or 
 
 gold ; I know 
 The world's cry well, and how to 
 
 answer it. 
 
 But this ambiguous warfare . . . 
 
 . . . Wearies so 
 
 p. 32. 1.5. To urge it? for his sake, 
 
 not yours ? 
 
 .. 10. Choose your side, 
 
 . 13. nor espy 
 
 . 17. prove, all you covet 
 
 . 19. Prove the strange course 
 . 21. Nay, count the minutes 
 . 33. long since 
 
 Gave birth to, nourished and at 
 
 length matures 
 This scheme. I will not speak of 
 
 Einsiedelen, 
 Where I was born 
 
 1. 40. As you had your own soul and 
 
 those intents 
 Which filled it when, 
 
 1. 44. Whom, here, Trithemiug 
 p. 33, 1. 1. and not one youth, 
 
 1. 3. Came earnest as you came, 
 [after 1. 5.] 
 
 1. 6. Now, this new ardor which sup- 
 plants the old 
 
 1. 7. I watched, too; 
 
 1. 20. Maintained 
 
 1. 28. For after - signs disclosed, what 
 you confirmed,
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 267 
 
 1. 10. That you, not nursing as a lovely 
 
 dream 
 This purpose, with the sages of 
 
 old Time, 
 1. 21. Devotion shall sustain or shall 
 
 undo you : 
 This you intend. 
 p. 16, 1. 5. Who summons me to be his 
 
 organ : he 
 Whose innate strength supports 
 
 him 
 1. 13. And that such praise seems best 
 
 attain'd when he 
 1. 15. Yet, that, the instrument, is not 
 
 the end. 
 There is a curse upon the earth ; 
 
 let man 
 
 Presume not to serve God 
 p. 17, 1. 2. Though I doubt much if he 
 
 consent that we 
 Discover this great secret I know 
 
 well 
 
 You will allege no other compre- 
 hends 
 The work in question save its 
 
 laborer : 
 I shall assume the aim improved ; 
 
 and you 
 
 That I am implicated in the issue 
 Not simply as your friend, but as 
 
 yourself 
 As though it were my task that 
 
 you perform, 
 And some plague dogg'd my heels 
 
 till it were done. 
 Suppose this own'd then ; you 
 
 are born to KNOW. 
 (You will heed well your answers, 
 
 for my faith 
 Shall meet implicitly what they 
 
 affirm) 
 I cannot think you have annex'd 
 
 to such 
 L 16. An intense purpose gifts that 
 
 would induce 
 1. 18. And instruments of success: no 
 
 destiny 
 
 Dispenses with endeavor. 
 1. 22. than a full assurance 
 
 That it exists ; 
 p. 18, 1. 5. For its possessor. 
 1. 1C. Where error is not, but success is 
 
 sure. 
 
 p. 19, 1. 12. Thus for the faith 
 1. 14. These pedants strive to learn 
 
 the magic they 
 So reverence. I shall scarcely 
 
 seek to know 
 If it exist : 
 I. 20. God every where, sustaining and 
 
 directing, 
 1. 22. And every object shall be charged 
 
 to strike, 
 
 To teach, to gratify, and to sug- 
 gest? 
 
 1. 37. That you, not nursing as a 
 
 mere vague dream 
 This purpose, with the sages of 
 the past, 
 
 p. 34, 1. 2. Devotion to sustain you or 
 
 betray : 
 Thus you aspire. 
 
 1. 9. Who summons me to be his organ. 
 
 All 
 
 Whose innate strength supports 
 them 
 
 1. 17. And hold such praise is best at- 
 tained when man 
 
 1. 19. Yet this, the end, is not the in- 
 strument. 
 
 1. 20. Presume not to serve God 
 [after 1. 24.] 
 
 1. 25. Suppose this, then ; that God se- 
 lected you 
 To KNOW (heed well your answers, 
 
 for my faith 
 Shall meet implicitly what they 
 
 affirm), 
 I cannot think you dare annex to 
 
 such 
 1. 30. An intense hope ; nor let your 
 
 gifts create 
 
 1. 32. Conducive to success, make des- 
 tiny 
 
 Dispense with man's endeavor. 
 1. 36. than security 
 
 Of its existence ? 
 1. 41. For its pursuer, 
 p. 35, 1. 8. Without success forever in 
 
 its eyes ! 
 
 1. 25. This for the faith 
 1. 27. These pedants strive to learn and 
 
 teach ; Black Arts, 
 Great Works, the Secret and Sub- 
 lime, forsooth 
 Let others prize : 
 
 1. 33. God helping, God directing every- 
 where, 
 1. 35. And every object there be charged 
 
 to strike, 
 
 Teach, gratify her master, God 
 appoints ?
 
 268 
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 1. 2. And I am young, Festus. 
 
 I. I. I, who am singled out for 
 
 this. 
 
 1. 6. the populous north, 
 
 L 17. I renounce 
 
 All hope of learning further on 
 
 this head ; 
 And what I next advance holds 
 
 good as well 
 With one assured that all these 
 
 things are true ; 
 For might not such seek out a 
 
 fast retreat 
 
 1. 22. there to have 
 
 p. 21, 1. 3. To lift himself 
 1. 4. To fill out full their unf ulfill'd ca- 
 reers, 
 1. 6. Pronounced inextricable, but surely 
 
 left 
 
 1. 9. and untried force 
 
 1. 11. From runner still? Such one 
 
 might well do this. 
 But you have link'd to this, your 
 
 enterprize, 
 An arbitrary and most perplexing 
 
 scheme 
 [after t 14.] 
 
 1. 15. Rejecting past example, practise, 
 precept 
 
 That so you may stand aidless and 
 alone : 
 
 If in this wild rejection you re- 
 gard 
 
 Mankind and their award of fame 
 't is clear, 
 
 1. 37. And I am young, my Festus, 
 
 1. 39. I, singled out for this, the 
 
 One! 
 
 1. 41. the hopeful North, 
 
 p. 36, 1. 6. Call this, truth 
 
 Why not pursue it in a fast re- 
 treat, 
 
 Some one of Learning's many 
 palaces, 
 
 1. 9. seeking there 
 
 1. 12. So lift yourself 
 
 1. 23. And fill out full their unfulfilled 
 
 careers, 
 1. 15. Pronounced inextricable, true ! 
 
 but left 
 
 1. 18. new-hearted force, 
 
 1. 20. From runner still : this way suc- 
 cess might be. 
 But you have coupled with your 
 
 enterprise 
 An arbitrary self-repugnant 
 
 scheme 
 1. 24. What books are in the desert ? 
 
 Writes the sea 
 The secret of her yearning hi vast 
 
 caves 
 Where yours will fall the first of 
 
 human feet ? 
 
 Has wisdom sat there and re- 
 corded aught 
 You press to read ? Why turn 
 
 aside from her 
 To visit, where her vesture never 
 
 glanced, 
 Now solitudes consigned to 
 
 barrenness 
 By God's decree, which who shall 
 
 dare impugn ? 
 Now ruins where she paused 
 
 but would not stay, 
 Old ravaged cities that, renoun- 
 cing her, 
 She called an endless curse on, so 
 
 it came : 
 Or worst of all, now men you 
 
 visit, men, 
 Ignoblest troops who never heard 
 
 her voice 
 Or hate it, men without one gift 
 
 from Rome 
 Or Athens these shall Aureole's 
 
 teachers be ! 
 Rejecting past example, practice, 
 
 precept, 
 Aidless 'mid these he thinks to 
 
 stand alone : 
 Thick like a glory round the 
 
 Stagirite 
 Tour rivals throng, the sages: 
 
 here stand you !
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 269 
 
 1. 22. Friend, foe, assistant, rival, 
 
 p. 22, 1. 14. until 
 
 p. 23, 1. 3. its hills, and lakes, and 
 
 plains 
 
 1. 6. The ever-moving, 
 1. 9. Consign'd to me within its ranks 
 
 while yet 
 
 1. 17. what seem'd a longing 
 
 To trample on yet save mankind 
 
 at once 
 
 p. 24, 1. 4. with them so much 
 
 1. 21. I would but analyse 
 
 p. 25, 1. 18. well content, 
 
 And stagger'd only at his own 
 
 strong wits ; 
 p. 26, 1. 7. Know better : hast thou 
 
 gazed 
 
 Presumptuous 
 [after 1. 9.] 
 
 1. 10. Pursue as well the toil their ear- 
 nest blinking, 
 Whom radiance ne'er distracts, so 
 
 dear descries ? 
 p. 27, 1. 4. With our own mind ; and 
 
 how such show'd beside 
 1. 9. With weakness 
 1. 10. Have ripen'd inborn sins to 
 
 strength : wilt thou 
 Adventure for my sake and for thy 
 
 kind's, 
 
 Apart from all reward ? 
 p. 28, 1. 5. Demanding life to be explored 
 
 alone 
 
 1. 14. Just thus you answer ever 
 1. 17. Of many a mighty spirit 
 1. 18. for aught I know ; 
 
 1. 22. They labour'd after their own 
 
 fashion ; the fruits 
 p. 29, 1. 3. With evils their best lore 
 
 cannot abate. 
 
 1. 18. I well nigh dream 
 
 I too have spent a life the self- 
 same way 
 Tread once again an old life's 
 
 course. 
 
 -p. 30, 1. 1. An age ago ; 
 1. 3. Imbued with better light let in by 
 
 Death 
 So free from all past sin that it 
 
 was heard . . . 
 
 1. 6. But scatter'd wrecks enough re- 
 main to wake 
 
 1. 8. all which is foolish 
 
 Indeed, and only means the 
 
 form I bear, 
 
 The earth I tread, are not more 
 clear to me. 
 
 p. 31, 1. 4. I know 
 
 1. 10. you shall 
 
 Go forth 
 
 1. 14. Some one to trust your glory to ; 
 to share 
 
 1. 46. Rival, assistant, friend, foe, 
 
 p. 37, 1. 14. till dawned 
 
 1. 24. its mountains, lakes and woods 
 
 1. 27. The everlasting 
 
 1. 30. Consigned me in its ranks 
 
 while, just awake, 
 
 1. 39. I seemed to long 
 
 At once to trample on yet save 
 
 mankind, 
 
 p. 38, 1. 2. with men so much 
 
 1. 19. these words but analyze 
 
 1. 37. strong, 
 
 Or staggered only at his own vast 
 
 wits ; 
 
 p. 39, 1. 3. Consider : hast thou gazed 
 Presumptuously 
 
 1. 6. Unguided by the brain the sight 
 absorbs, 
 
 !. 3. Pursue their task as earnest blink- 
 ers do 
 
 Whom radiance ne'er distracted ? 
 Live their life 
 
 1. 25. With the human mind ; I under- 
 stand, no less, 
 
 1. 30. With frailty 
 
 1. 31. Have ripened inborn germs of sin 
 
 to strength : 
 Wilt thou adventure for my sake 
 
 and man's, 
 Apart from all reward ? 
 
 1. 46. Asking a life to pass exploring 
 thus, 
 
 p. 40, 1. 9. Just thus you help me ever. 
 
 1. 12. Of many a mighty marcher 
 
 1. 13. than theirs, perhaps, 
 
 1. 17. They labored and grew famous, 
 and the fruits 
 
 1. 20. With evils, what of all their lore 
 abates ? 
 
 1. 35. I almost dream 
 
 I too have spent a life the sages' 
 
 way, 
 
 And tread once more familiar 
 paths. 
 
 1. 39. Ages ago ; 
 
 1. 41. Instinct with better light let in by 
 death, 
 
 1. 43. But scattered wrecks enough of 
 
 it remain, 
 
 1. 46. All which, indeed, 
 
 p. 41, 1. 1. Is foolish, and only means 
 
 ^he flesh I wear, 
 The earth I tread, are not more 
 
 clear to me 
 Than my belief, explained to you 
 
 or no. 
 
 1. 18. It seems 
 1. 24. alone 
 
 You shall go forth 
 
 1. 28. Some one to cast your glory on, to 
 share
 
 270 
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 Your rapture with. Had I been 
 
 chosen like you 
 I should encircle me with love 
 
 should raise 
 
 A rampart of kind wit lies ; 
 1. 20. the great boon, 
 
 p. 32, 1. 1. If ease seduced or danger 
 
 daunted me, 
 1. 10. Once more (since I am forced to 
 
 speak as one 
 
 Who has full liberty at his discre- 
 tion) 
 
 1. 20. And I regret it ; there 's no sacri- 
 fice 
 To make ; the sages threw so 
 
 much away 
 While I must be content with 
 
 gaining all. 
 
 p. 33, 1. 6. although 
 
 No visible good flow thence, give 
 
 up some part 
 Of your renown to another : so 
 
 you shall 
 Hide from yourself that all is for 
 
 yourself. 
 
 1. 12. And who but late 
 
 L 14. Whom should I love but you ? 
 
 p. 34, 1. 1. faculties which have 
 
 L 5. which they can never feel 
 
 Passionless midst 
 
 1. 8. live wholly 
 
 On objects you so lightly prize, 
 
 which make 
 Their heart's sole wealth : the soft 
 
 affections seem 
 
 1. 14. though in another it were 
 
 1. 15. I dare not blame you : 
 
 1. 17. I judge you one 
 
 p. 35, 1. 6. first fruits I should fear ? 
 1. 8. How many years of hate 
 1. 11. Well to deserve that love 
 1. 14. I should have made all sure 
 
 For my departure that remains 
 
 to do ; 
 So answer not, while I run lightly 
 
 o'er 
 
 The topics you have urged to- 
 night. It seems 
 We acquiesce at last in all, save 
 
 only 
 
 p. 36, 1. 1. will offer joys 
 
 1. 5. precepts of old sages, 
 
 1. 6. But then 
 
 Truth is within ourselves ; 
 1. 11. Wall within wall, 
 1. 12. Perfect and true perception 
 1. 14. Which blinds it, and makes error : 
 
 and, ''to knou- " 
 Rather consists in opening out a 
 
 way 
 Whence the imprison'd splendor 
 
 may dart forth, 
 L 20. And you shall trace 
 p. 37, 1. 1. for hitherto, 
 
 Tour rapture with. Were I elect 
 
 like you 
 I would encircle me with love, 
 
 and raise 
 
 A rampart of my fellows ; 
 1. 34. the great gift, 
 
 I. 37. If danger daunted me or ease se- 
 duced, 
 [after 1. 45.] 
 
 p. 42, 1. 9. Would there were some real 
 
 sacrifice to make ! 
 Your friends the sages threw their 
 
 joys away, 
 While I must be content with 
 
 keeping mine. 
 
 1. 17. Give up 
 
 (Although no visible good flow 
 
 thence) some part 
 Of the glory to another ; hiding 
 
 thus 
 Even from yourself, that all is for 
 
 yourself. 
 
 1. 22. And who but lately 
 
 1. 24. Whom should I love but both of 
 
 you? 
 
 1. 32. faculties which bear 
 
 1. 36. themselves can never feel, 
 
 Passionless 'mid 
 
 1. 39. can live 
 
 On objects you prize lightly, but 
 
 which make 
 Their hearts sole treasure : the 
 
 affections seem 
 
 p. 43, 1. 1. though in another it scowls 
 1. 2. I dare not judge you. 
 
 1. 4. I own you one 
 
 1. 15. first fruits of my quest? 
 
 1. 17. How many years of pain 
 1. 20. To justify your love ; 
 [after 1. 22.] 
 
 1. 23. I was to go. It seems 
 
 You acquiesce at last in all save 
 
 this 
 
 1. 28. will yet retain 
 
 1. 32. precepts of old time, 
 
 1. 33. But, friends, 
 
 Truth is within ourselves ; 
 1. 38. Wall upon wall, 
 1. 39. This perfect, clear perception 
 1. 41. Binds it, and makes all error : 
 
 and, to KNOW, 
 Bather consists in opening out a 
 
 way 
 Whence the imprisoned splendor 
 
 may escape, 
 
 p. 44, 1. 2. And you trace back 
 1. 5. for hitherto, your sage
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 271 
 
 Even as we know not how those 
 
 beams are born, 
 As little know we what unlocks 
 
 their lair ; 
 For men 
 1. 5. And died 
 1. 10. has oft brought forth 
 
 A truth 
 
 1. 12. invisible mist. 
 
 1. 15. The interposing bar which binds a 
 soul? 
 
 1. 16. Some film removed the happy 
 
 outlet whence 
 It issues proudly ? seeing that the 
 
 soul 
 Is deathless (we know well) but 
 
 oftener coop'd 
 A prisoner and a thrall, than a 
 
 throned power ; 
 
 That it strives weakly in the child, 
 [after 1. 22.] 
 
 p. 38, 1. 1. That not alone 
 
 1. 3. Affects its current ; 
 
 L 11. Seeing all this why should I pine 
 
 in vain 
 Attempts to win some day the 
 
 august form 
 Of Truth to stand before me, and 
 
 compel 
 My dark unvalued frame to 
 
 change its nature, 
 And straight become suffused 
 
 with light at best 
 For my sole good leaving the 
 
 world to seek 
 Salvation out as it best may, or 
 
 follow 
 The same long thorny course ? 
 
 No, I will learn 
 How to set free the soul alike in 
 
 all, 
 
 By searching out the laws 
 p. 39, 1. 3. But to put forth our strength, 
 1. 5. Gifted alike, and eagle-eyed, 
 1. 8. Mysterious knowledge 
 1. 9. long lost or ever-hidden ; 
 
 1. 18. And beauteous fancies, hopes, and 
 
 aspirations, 
 Were born only to wither in this 
 
 life, 
 Refused to curb or moderate their 
 
 longings, 
 Or fit them to this narrow sphere, 
 
 but chose 
 To figure and conceive another 
 
 world 
 
 p. 40, 1. 6. Like theirs 
 1. 14. Yonder, Is mingled and involv'd 
 
 a mass 
 
 Of schistous particles of ore. 
 And even 
 
 Even as he knows not hew those 
 
 beams are born, 
 As little knows he what uiuoeks 
 
 their fouut, 
 And men 
 To die 
 1. 14. gives birth at last 
 
 To truth 
 
 1. 16. invisible air. 
 
 1. 19. The interposing bar which binds a 
 
 soul 
 And makes the idiot, just as 
 
 makes the sage 
 Some film removed, the happy 
 
 outlet whence 
 
 Truth issues proudly? See this 
 soul of ours I 
 
 1. 23. How it strives weakly in the child, 
 1. 26. Why is it, flesh enthralls it or en- 
 thrones ? 
 What is this flesh we have to 
 
 penetrate ? 
 Oh, not alone 
 1. 30. Ruffles its current: 
 [after 1. 37.] 
 
 L 38. Therefore, set free the soul alike 
 
 in all, 
 
 Discovering the true laws 
 1. 44. To put forth just our strength, 
 1. 46. Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, 
 p. 45, 1. 3. The sacred knowledge, 
 1. 4. long lost or never found 
 
 [after 1. 12.] 
 
 1. 13. Were only born to vanish in this 
 
 life, 
 Refused to fit them to its narrow 
 
 sphere, 
 But chose to figure forth another 
 
 world 
 
 1. 21. Like those 
 
 1. 29. Yonder, is mixed its mass of schis- 
 tous ore.
 
 272 
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 p. 41, 1. 3. Tell me, Festus, Michal, but 1. 39. But one thing, Festus, Michal '. 
 
 one thing I have told I have told 
 
 All I shall e'er disclose to mor- All I shall e'er disclose to mortal : 
 
 tal . . . now, say 
 
 1. 6. And I, dear Aureole ! 1. 42. I ever did believe ! 
 
 [after 1. 13.] p. 46, 1. 4. We wait you when you rise ! 
 
 II. PABACELSUS ATTAINS. 
 
 Scene. 
 
 Constantinople. " The House 
 of the Greek." 
 [p. 42, after 1. 3.] 
 
 p. 43, 1. 6. Within his roll : 
 
 [p. 45, after 1. 7.] 
 
 p. 4G, 1. 1. 'Tis little wonder truly; 
 
 things go on 
 And at their worst they end or 
 
 mend 't is time 
 To look about, with matters at 
 
 this pass : 
 Have I insensibly sunk as deep 
 
 has all 
 1. 11. To flounder through the scrape 
 
 I could not chuse 
 
 p. 60, 1. 3. Yet all was then o'erlook'd, 
 though noted now 
 
 p. 54, 1. 12. To mould them, and com- 
 plete them, and pursue them t 
 
 (After a pause.) 
 Yet God is good : 
 [p. 55, after 1. 10.] 
 
 [p. 55, after 1.14.1 
 
 Scene, Constantinople ; the house of a 
 
 Greek conjurer, 
 p. 46, 1. 4. With all that length of domes 
 
 and minarets ; 
 1. 21. Their previous life's attainment, 
 
 in his roll, 
 Before his promised secret, as he 
 
 vaunts, 
 
 Make up the sum : 
 p. 47, 1. 33. Was it the light wind sang 
 
 it o'er the sea ? 
 [p. 48, in 1. 5.] 
 
 1. 5. I hoped that once t 
 
 What, sunk insensibly so deep? 
 
 Has all 
 1. 13. End things or mend them, why, 
 
 I could not choose 
 p. 50, 1. 2. And all the beauty, all the 
 
 wonder fell 
 On either side the truth, as its 
 
 mere robe ; 
 I see the robe now then I saw 
 
 the form. 
 
 p. 52, 1. 11. To mould them, and com- 
 pleting them, possess ! 
 
 1. 12. Yet God is good : 
 1. 31. I hear a voice, perchance I heard 
 Long ago, but all too low 
 So that scarce a care it stirred 
 If the voice were real or no : 
 I heard it in my youth when first 
 The waters of my life outburst : 
 But, now their stream ebbs faint, 
 
 I hear 
 
 That voice, still low, but fatal- 
 clear 
 
 As if all poets, God ever meant 
 Should save the world, and there- 
 fore lent 
 
 Great gifts to, but who, proud, re- 
 fused 
 
 To do his work, or lightly used 
 Those gifts, or failed through 
 
 weak endeavor, 
 p. 53, 1. 1. So, mourn cast off by him 
 
 forever, 
 
 As if these leaned in airy ring 
 To take me ; this the song they 
 
 sing. 
 
 L 9. Knowing what thousink'st beneath. 
 So sank we in those old years,
 
 Paracelsus. 273 
 
 L 16. Lost one, come ! the last We who bid thee, come ! thou last, 
 
 Who, living, hast life o'erpast, Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast. 
 
 And altogether we And altogether we, thy peers, 
 
 Will ask for us and ask for thee, Will pardon crave for thee, the 
 
 last, 
 [p. 56, after L 2.] L 18. Yet we trusted thou shouldst 
 
 speak 
 The message which our lips, too 
 
 weak, 
 
 Refused to utter, shouldst re- 
 deem 
 Our fault : such trust, and all a 
 
 dream I 
 [p. 57, after 1. 1.] p. 54, 1. 2. Art thou the poet who shall 
 
 save the world ? 
 
 1. 7. Ay, look on me I shall I be king 1. 8. Art thou the sage I only seemed to 
 or no ? be, 
 
 Myself of after-time, my very self 
 With sight a little clearer, strength 
 
 more firm, 
 Who robes him in my robe and 
 
 grasps my crown 
 
 For just a fault, a weakness, a neg- 
 lect? 
 
 [p. 58, after 1. 2.] L 29. Thou art the sober searcher, cau- 
 
 tious striver, 
 As if, except through me, thou 
 
 hast searched or striven ! 
 1. 3. I am to be degraded, after all, Ay, tell the world 1 Degrade me 
 
 after all, 
 [p. 59, after 1. 13.] p. 65, 1. 18. Oh, ye who armed me at 
 
 such cost, 
 [after 1. 18.] L 23. They spread contagion, doubtless : 
 
 yet he seemed 
 
 To echo one foreboding of my heart 
 So truly, that ... no matter I 
 
 How he stands 
 With eve's last sunbeam staying 
 
 on his hair 
 Which turns to it as if they were 
 
 akin: 
 And those clear smiling eyes of 
 
 saddest blue 
 Nearly set free, so far they rise 
 
 above 
 The painful fruitless striving of 
 
 the brow 
 And enforced knowledge of the 
 
 lips, firm-set 
 In slow despondency's eternal 
 
 sigh! 
 Has he, too, missed life's end, and 
 
 learned the cause ?) 
 p. 68, 1. 13. Did'st not perceive, spoil'd [p. 59, after 1. 42.] 
 
 by the subtle ways 
 Of intricate but instantaneous 
 
 thought, 
 That common speech was useless 
 
 to its ends 
 That language, wedded from the 
 
 first to thought, 
 Will strengthen as it strengthens ; 
 
 but, divorced, 
 
 Will dwindle, while thought 
 widens more and more ? . . .
 
 274 
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 HI. PARACELSUS. 
 
 Scene. A chamber in the house of 
 
 Paracelsus at Basil, 
 p. 85, 1. 10. Nor was this the 
 
 scheme of one 
 Enamour'd of a lot unlike the 
 
 world's, 
 And thus far sure from common 
 
 casualty 
 (Folly of follies !) in that, thus, 
 
 the mind, 
 
 Became the only arbiter of fate. 
 No; what I term'd and might 
 
 conceive my choice, 
 Already had been rooted in my 
 
 soul 
 Had long been part and portion 
 
 of myself. 
 [p. 90, alter 1. 23.] 
 
 p. 92, 1. 4. I spoke not of my labors 
 
 here past doubt 
 I am quite competent to answer 
 
 all 
 
 Demands, in any such capacity 
 p. 99, 1. 9. Nay, was assured no such 
 
 could be for me, 
 [after line 19.] 
 
 p. 100, 1. 19. Whatever that may be 
 
 but not tell then. 
 
 p. 102, 1. 21. the hate between us 
 
 Is on one side. Should it prove 
 
 otherwise 
 p. 103, 1. 7. It is, I fancy, some slight 
 
 proof niy old 
 Devotion suffer'd not a looking- 
 
 off, 
 p. 104, 1. 9. Its nature in the next career 
 
 they try 
 p. 108, 1. 4. As calmly, as sincerely, as I 
 
 may; 
 p. 113, 1. 13. I know your unexampled 
 
 sins, 
 But I know too what sort of soul 
 
 is prone 
 
 Scene, Basel ; a chamber In the house 
 
 of Paracelsus, 
 p. 67, 1. 28. That was in those Wiirzburg 
 
 days! 
 
 p. 70, 1. 5. To judge by any good their 
 prayers effect. 
 
 I knew you would have helped 
 me why not he, 
 
 My strange competitor in enter* 
 prise, 
 
 Bound for the same end by an- 
 other path, 
 
 Arrived, or ill or well, before the 
 time, 
 
 At our disastrous journey's doubt- 
 ful close ? 
 
 How goes it with Aprile ? Ah, 
 they miss 
 
 Your lone sad sunny idleness of 
 heaven, 
 
 Our martyrs for the world's 
 
 sake ; heaven shuts fast : 
 [after 1. 39.] 
 
 [p. 74, after 1. 10.] 
 
 1. 21. With aims not mine and yet pur- 
 sued like mine, 
 
 With the same fervor and no 
 more success, 
 
 [after 1. 43.] 
 
 p. 75, 1. 43. but if I fail, 
 
 [p. 76, after 1. 4.] 
 
 1. 5. These old aims suffered not a look- 
 
 ing-off 
 I. 28. The nature of the hated task I 
 
 quit, 
 [p. 78, after L 18.] 
 
 P- 
 
 0, 1. 43. I call your sin excep- 
 
 tional;
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 275 
 
 To errors of that stamp sins 
 
 like to spring 
 From one alone whose life 
 p. 114, 1. 3. And that his flittering words 
 
 should soothe me better 
 Than fulsome tributes : not that 
 
 that is strange : 
 Come, I will show you where my 
 
 merit lies. 
 I ne'er supposed that since Jfail'd 
 
 no other 
 Needs hope success : I act as 
 
 though each one 
 Who hears me may aspire : now 
 
 mark me well : 
 
 p. 115, 1. 4. free to make 
 
 That use of me which I disdain'd 
 
 to make 
 
 Of my forerunners (vanity, per- 
 chance ; 
 But had I deem'd their learning 
 
 wonder-worth, 
 I had been other than I am) to 
 
 mount 
 
 Those labors as a platform, 
 p. 116, 1. 6. With Hercules' club, 
 
 Achilles' shield, Ulysses' 
 Bow a choice sight to scare the 
 
 crows away ! 
 
 p. 117, 1. 7. 
 
 I have abjured. 1. 25. 
 
 1. 8. And, for the principles, 
 
 p. 81, 1. 1. It springs from one whose life 
 [after 1. 8.] 
 
 1. 9. Come, I will show you where my 
 merit lies. 
 
 1. 27. free to mount 
 
 These labors as a platform, 
 
 p. 82, 1. 1. Graced with Ulysses' bow, 
 
 Achilles' shield 
 Flash on us, all in armor, thou 
 
 Achilles ! 
 Make our hearts dance to thy 
 
 resounding step ! 
 A proper sight to scare the crows 
 
 away ! 
 
 just abjured : 
 I must go find them scattered 
 
 through the world, 
 Then, for the principles, 
 
 IV. PARACELSUS ASPIRES. 
 
 p. 124. Scene. A house at Colmar, in 
 Alsatia. 
 
 p. 125, 1. 13. So well but there the hid- 
 eous stamp shall stay, 
 To teach the man they fawn on 
 who they are 
 
 p. 126, 1. 12. Once more I aspire ! And 
 you are here ! All this 
 
 Is strange, and strange my mes- 
 sage. 
 
 p. 128, 1. 9. I had huge praise, and 
 doubtless might have grown 
 
 Grey in the exposition of such 
 antics, 
 
 Had my stock lasted long enough ; 
 but such 
 
 Was not my purpose : one can 
 ne'er keep down 
 
 Our foolish nature's weakness . . . 
 L 22. Of truth. Forthwith a mighty 
 squadron straight 
 
 p. 85. Scene, Colmar in Alsatia ; an inn. 
 
 p. 86, 1. 16. Out of the furrow ; there 
 
 that stamp shall stay 
 To show the next they fawn on, 
 
 what they are, 
 This Basil with its magnates, 
 
 fill my cup, 
 p. 86, 1. 38. Once more I aspire. I call 
 
 you to my side : 
 
 You come. You thought my mes- 
 sage strange ? 
 p. 87, 1. 33. I got huge praise : but one 
 
 can ne'er keep down 
 Our foolish nature's weakness. 
 
 L 43. Of truth," just what you bade me I 
 
 I spoke out. 
 
 Forthwith a mighty squadron, in 
 disgust,
 
 276 
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 p. 129, 1. 9. This doctor set a school up 
 
 to revive 
 
 The good old ways which could 
 content our sires, 
 
 p. 133, 1. 11. From tall trees where tired 
 
 winds are fain, 
 Spent with the vast and howling 
 
 main, 
 
 [p. 134, after 1. 10.] 
 
 p. 135, 1. 10. which lately seem'd 
 
 The mere persuasion of fantastic 
 
 dreams : 
 [in 1. 13.] 
 
 1. 13. Well then 
 
 For all my cause should seem the 
 
 cause of God 
 [in 1. 18.] 
 
 1. 18. nor should, 
 
 On the other hand, those honey'd 
 
 pleasures follow 
 p. 136, 1. 16. nor shall sad days 
 
 p. 137,1. 15. I ne'er sought to domineer ; 
 
 The mere asserting my supremacy 
 
 Has little mortified their self-con- 
 ceit ; 
 
 I took my natural station and no 
 
 more ; 
 p. 138, 1. 6. and, had I been but wise, 
 
 Had ne'er concern'd myself with 
 scruples, nor 
 
 Communicated aught to such a 
 race; 
 
 1. 9. But been content to own myself a 
 man, 
 
 [after 1. 18.] 
 
 1. 19. Your tenets' soundness in his per- 
 son. 
 
 [p. 143, after 1. 6.] 
 
 p. 143, 1. 7. Shall make as though my 
 
 ardent words should find 
 [p. 144, after 1. 13.] 
 
 p. 88, 1. 10. That fiery doctor who had 
 
 hailed me friend, 
 Did it because my by-paths, once 
 
 proved wrong 
 Aud beaconed properly, would 
 
 commend again 
 The good old ways our sires 
 
 jogged safely o'er, 
 p. 90, 1. 10. Down sea - side mountain 
 
 pedestals, 
 From tree-tops where tired winds 
 
 are fain, 
 
 1. 40. Aprile was a poet, I make songs 
 
 p. 91, 1. 12. late years have quenched : 
 
 I have tried each way singly : 
 
 now for both ! 
 
 1. 15. at once, 
 
 Not one without the other as be- 
 fore. 
 Suppose my labor should seem 
 
 God's own cause 
 
 L 21. My soul 
 
 Can die then, nor be taunted 
 
 " What was gained ? " 
 Nor, on the other hand, should 
 
 pleasure follow 
 
 L 41. Nor shall the present 
 
 A few dull hours, a passing shame 
 
 or two, 
 
 p. 92, 1. 18. I would spare their self- 
 conceit 
 
 1. 26. what idle scruples, then, 
 
 Were those that ever bade me 
 
 soften it, 
 Communicate it gently to the 
 
 world, 
 
 Instead of proving my supremacy, 
 Taking my natural station o'er 
 
 their head, 
 Then owning all the glory was a 
 
 man's ! 
 1. 41. (Fiat experientia corpore vili) 
 
 Your medicine's soundness in his 
 
 person, 
 p. 95, 1. 5. Why do you start? I say, 
 
 she listening here, 
 (For yonder Wurzburg through 
 
 the orchard-bough !) 
 Mot'ons as though such ardent 
 
 words should find 
 
 L 32. Have I, you ask ? 
 
 Often at midnight, when most 
 
 fancies come, 
 Would some such airy project 
 
 visit me : 
 But ever at the end ... or will 
 
 you hear 
 
 The same thing in a tale, a par- 
 able? 
 You and I, wandering over the 
 
 wide world,
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 277 
 
 p. 144, 1. 16. Cleaving prows In order 
 
 brave, 
 
 With speeding wind and a bound- 
 ing wave 
 [p. 145, after 1. 2.] 
 1. 6. Cedar-pales in scented row 
 
 Kept out the flakes of dancing 
 
 brine : 
 
 An awning droop'd the mast be- 
 low, 
 
 L 11. When the sun dawn'd, gay and 
 
 glad, 
 1. 21. Lay stretch'd each weary crew 
 
 [p. 146, after 1. 2.] 
 
 1. 3. At morn we started 
 
 1. 6. Not so the isles our voyage must 
 
 find 
 
 Should meet our longing eye ; 
 1. 10. Many a night and many a day, 
 
 And land, though but a rock, 
 
 was nigh ; 
 1. 13. And let the purple flap in the 
 
 wind : 
 p. 147, 1. 4. A loaded raft, and happy 
 
 throngs 
 L 11. Then we awoke with sudden start 
 
 Chance to set foot upon a desert 
 
 coast. 
 Just as we cry, " No human voice 
 
 before 
 Broke the inveterate silence of 
 
 these rocks ! " 
 Their querulous echo startles 
 
 us ; we turn : 
 What ravaged structure still looks 
 
 o'er the sea ? 
 Some characters remain, too t 
 
 While we read, 
 The sharp salt wind, impatient for 
 
 the last 
 Of even this record, wistfully 
 
 comes and goes, 
 
 Or sings that we recover, mock- 
 ing it. 
 
 This is the record ; and my voice, 
 
 the wind's. [He sings. 
 
 p. 96, 1. 7. With cleaving prows in order 
 
 brave 
 
 To a speeding wind and a bound- 
 ing wave, 
 
 L 15. To bear the playful billows' game: 
 
 L 19. Where cedar poles in scented row 
 
 Kept out the flakes of the dancing 
 
 brine, 
 And an awning drooped the mast 
 
 below, 
 
 In fold on fold of the purple fine, 
 1. 26. When the sun dawned, oh, gay 
 
 and glad 
 1. 36. Lay stretched along, each weary 
 
 crew 
 L 40. So the stars wheeled round, and 
 
 the darkness past, 
 And at morn we started 
 p. 97, 1. 1. " Avoid it, " cried our pilot, 
 
 " check 
 
 The shout, restrain the eager eye !" 
 
 1. 4. For many a night and many a day, 
 
 And land, though but a rock, drew 
 
 nigh; 
 L 7. Let the purple awning flap in the 
 
 wind, 
 1. 20. A loaded raft with happy throngs 
 
 L. 27. Oh, then we awoke with sadden 
 start 
 
 V. PARACELSUS ATTAINS. 
 
 Scene. A cell in the Hospital of St. 
 
 Sebastian, at Salzburg. 
 p. 159, 1. 14. Other provision is for him 
 
 you seek. 
 
 p. 165, 1. 2. By them : and what had yon 
 to do, wise peers ? 
 
 Scene, Salzburg ; a cell in the Hospital 
 
 of St. Sebastian. 
 p. 102, L 41. Higher provision is for him 
 
 you seek 
 Amid our pomps and glories : see 
 
 it here ! 
 p. 105, 1. 24. By the others ! What had 
 
 you to do, sage peers ? 
 Here stand my rivals ; Latin, 
 
 Arab, Jew, 
 
 Greek, join dead names against 
 me : all I ask
 
 278 
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 L 3. Only observe: why fiends may 
 
 learn from them ! 
 L 10. Their dead names brow-beating 
 
 me. Wretched crew 1 
 
 L18. 
 
 how we met face to face . 
 
 [in L 190 
 
 1. 20. In troth my delicate witch, 
 
 p. 173, L 7. white-hair'd Jews . . . 
 
 p. 177, 1. 17. In and out the soft and 
 wet 
 
 Clay that breeds them, brown as 
 
 they. 
 
 p. 178, 1. 2. "Arouses . . . 
 p. 181, 1. 7. It is not fair. Your own 
 turn will arrive 
 
 Borne day. Dear Festus, you will 
 die like me 
 
 Your turn will come so that you 
 
 do but wait ! 
 
 p. 186, L 22. though the lion heart re- 
 pines not 
 
 At working through such lets its 
 
 purpose out. 
 
 p. 190, 1. 3. (So would a spirit deem, in- 
 tent on watching 
 
 The purpose of the world from its 
 faint rise 
 
 To its mature development) 
 some point 
 
 Whereto those wandering rays 
 should all converge 
 
 Might : neither put forth blindly, 
 L 20. Anticipations, hints of these and 
 more 
 
 Are strewn confusedly every- 
 where all seek 
 
 An object to possess and stamp 
 their own; 
 
 IB, that the world enroll my name 
 with theirs, 
 
 And even this poor privilege, it 
 seems, 
 
 They range themselves, prepared 
 to disallow. 
 
 Only observe ! why, fiends may 
 
 learn from them ! 
 
 L 37. And their dead names browbeat- 
 ing me ! Gray crew, 
 
 Yet steeped in fresh malevolence 
 
 from hell, 
 L 46. We met here face to face : 
 
 I said the crown should fall from 
 thee. Once more 
 
 We meet as in that ghastly vesti- 
 bule: 
 
 Look to my brow ! Have I re- 
 deemed my pledge ? 
 p. 106, 1. 4. Oh, emptiness of fame ! 
 
 O Persic Zoroaster, lord of stars ! 
 
 Who said these old renowns, 
 dead long ago, 
 
 Could make me overlook the liv- 
 ing worM 
 
 To gaze through gloom at where 
 they stood, indeed, 
 
 But stand no longer ? What a 
 warm light life 
 
 After the shade ! In truth, my 
 
 delicate witch, 
 p. 109, 1. 32. white-haired Jews 
 
 Bound for their own land where 
 
 redemption dawns. 
 
 p. Ill, 1. 35. In and out the marl and 
 grit 
 
 That seems to breed them, brown 
 
 as they : 
 
 L 41. Rouses, creep he ne'er so still. 
 p. 113, 1. 22. It is not lawful. Your 
 own turn will come 
 
 One day. Wait, Festus! You 
 will die like me. 
 
 p. 116, 1. 10. thus I entered on my 
 
 course. 
 
 [p. 117, after line 27.] 
 
 1. 28. Some point where all those scat- 
 tered rays should meet 
 
 Convergent hi the faculties of 
 man. 
 
 Power neither put forth blindly, 
 1. 43. Hints and previsions of which 
 faculties, 
 
 Are strewn confusedly every, 
 where about 
 
 The inferior natures, and all lead 
 up higher
 
 The Patriot. 279 
 
 p. 196, 1. 4. Although my own name led [p. 120, after L 20.] 
 
 the brightness in : 
 
 p. 197, 1. 5. remain'd alone [in 1. 44.] 
 
 Of all the company, and, even the 
 
 least, 1. 44. seemed, even the least, 
 
 More than a match for my con- Itself a match for my concentred 
 
 centred strength .... strength 
 
 L 12. from its uprise ; p. 121, 1. 4. from its uprise : 
 
 I saw Aprile my Aprile there I 
 
 p. 199, 1. 19. But 'tis but for a time ; p. 122, 1. 8. It is but for a time ; 
 
 Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in 
 Their Day : To wit : Bernard de Mandeville, Daniel Bar- 
 toli, Christopher Smart, George Bubb Dodington, Francis 
 Fiirini, Gerard de Lairesse, and Charles Avison. Intro- 
 duced by A Dialogue between Apollo and the Fates ; con- 
 cluded by Another between John Fust and his Friends. 
 Smith, Elder & Co., London. This was the full title- 
 page of the poem ; and on the next page was the following 
 dedication : In Memoriam J. Milsand. Obiit iv. Sept. 
 MDCCCLXXXVI. Absens absentum auditgue videt- 
 que. Pages, 1-268. Published in 1887. 
 
 M. Milsand was one of Browning's earliest friends. 
 To him was dedicated the revised Sordello. He was the 
 first Frenchman to recognize the poetical work of Brown- 
 ing, and he wrote an essay on that subject in 1851, which 
 was published in the Revue des deux Mondes, 11 : 6ol. 
 He also reviewed Men and Women in the same periodical 
 in 1856, 16 : 511. For several summers the two friends 
 spent some months near each other in Normandy. In a 
 letter written immediately after the death of M. Milsand, 
 in September, 1886, Browning called him " my belovedest 
 of friends." " The relationship between Browning and Mil- 
 sand was a very beautiful one," says Mr. Kingsland ; " and 
 it was truly delightful to see these old and staunch friends 
 together." 
 
 See The Browning Society's Papers, number nine, 
 2 : 169, Arthur Symons ; also 2 : 211* and 2 : 187* ; Net- 
 tleship's Essays and Thoughts, 
 
 Parting at Morning. See Meeting at Night, of which 
 this poem is the sequel. 
 
 Patriot, The. An Old Story. Men and Women. 
 1855. Romances, 1863 ; Dramatic Romances, 1868. 
 
 Browning has distinctly stated that this poem does not 
 refer to Arnold or Arnaldo of Brescia, though in the first
 
 280 Paul Desforges Maillard. Pauline. 
 
 edition Brescia was mentioned in the poem as the scene of 
 the adventure described. No particular historical event is 
 indicated ; the aim of the poem is not historical, but drama- 
 tic. Brescia is an important city of Lombardy, about mid- 
 way between Milan and Verona, with a population of nearly 
 fifty thousand. It has had a long and eventful history, 
 and might well have been the scene of the patriot's success 
 and failure. 
 
 Paul Desforges Maillard. The second of the poets 
 in Two Poets of Croisic, which see. 
 
 Pauline : a Fragment of a Confession. Written 
 in 1832, and published by Saunders & Otley in 1833, 
 price five shillings. At the end the poem was dated, 
 " Richmond, October 22, 1832 ; " but the poet never lived 
 in that, place. The extract from H. Cor. Agrippa, De 
 Occult. Phil., which was printed as a preface, was dated 
 "London, January, 1833." Pages, 1-71. 
 
 In his article on The Early Writings of Robert Brown- 
 ing, printed in the Century Magazine, republished in Per- 
 sonalia^ Mr. Edmund Gosse gives the following account of 
 this poem : " At Richmond, on the 22d of October, 1832, 
 Mr. Browning finished a poem which he named, from the 
 sbject, not the subject, Pauline. This piece was read and 
 admired at home, and one day his aunt said to the young 
 man : ' I hear, Robert, that you have written a poem ; here 
 is the money to print it.' 
 
 "Accordingly, in January, 1833, there went to press, 
 anonymously, a little book of seventy pages, which re- 
 mained virtually unrecognized until the author, to preserve 
 it from piracy, unwillingly received it among the acknow- 
 ledged children of his muse, in 1867." 
 
 Sharp, in his Life, adds an item or two in his account of 
 the writing of this poem : " When he read the poem to his 
 parents, upon its conclusion, both were much impressed by 
 it, though his father made severe strictures upon its lack of 
 polish, its terminal inconcision, and its vagueness of thought. 
 That he was not more severe was accepted by his son as 
 high praise. The author had, however, little hope of seeing 
 it in print. Mr. Browning was not anxious to provide a 
 publisher with a present. So one day the poet was grati- 
 fied when his aunt, handing him the requisite sum, re-
 
 Pauline : A Fragment of a Confession. 281 
 
 marked that she had heard he had written a fine poem, and 
 that she wished to have the pleasure of seeing it in print." 
 
 Some phases of the subsequent history of the poem are 
 well told by Mr. Gosse. " But, although Pauline was ex- 
 cluded from recognition by its author for more than thirty 
 years, he has to confess that its production was attended 
 with circumstances of no little importance to him. It was 
 the intention and desire of Mr. Browning that the author- 
 ship should remain entirely unknown, but Miss Flower told 
 the secret to Mr. Fox, who reviewed the poem with great 
 warmth and fullness in the Monthly Repository. But a 
 more curious incident was that a copy fell into the hands of 
 John Stuart Mill, who was only six years the senior of the 
 poet. It delighted him in the highest degree, and he im- 
 mediately wrote to the editor of Tait's Magazine, the only 
 periodical in which he was at that time free to express him- 
 self, for leave to review Pauline at length. The reply was 
 that nothing would have been more welcome, but that, un- 
 fortunately, in the preceding number the poem had been 
 dismissed with one line of contemptuous neglect. Mr. 
 Mill's opportunities extended no further than this one maga- 
 zine, but at his death there came into Mr. Browning's pos- 
 session this identical copy, the blank pages of which were 
 crowded with Mill's annotations and remarks. 
 
 " The late John Forster took such an interest in this 
 volume that he borrowed it, ' convey, the wise it call,' 
 and when he died, it passed with his library into the pos- 
 session of the South Kensington Museum, where the curious 
 relic of the youth of two eminent men has at last found a 
 resting-place. Nor was this the only instance in which the 
 poem, despite its anonymity and its rawness, touched a kin- 
 dred chord in a man of genius. There was much in it 
 that was new, forcible, and fine, such passages of de- 
 scription as that of the wood where Pauline and her lover 
 met, or such fine bursts of versification as that about An- 
 dromeda. 
 
 " Such beauties as these were not likely to escape the 
 notice of curious lovers of poetry. Many years after, when 
 Mr. Browning was living in Florence, he received a letter 
 from a young painter whose name was quite unknown to 
 him, asking whether he were the author of a poem called
 
 282 Pauline : A Fragment of a Confession. 
 
 Pauline, which was somewhat in his manner, and which 
 the writer had so greatly admired that he had transcribed 
 the whole of it in the British Museum reading-room. The 
 letter was signed D. G. Rossetti, and thus began Mr. 
 Browning's acquaintance with this eminent man. But to 
 the world at large Pauline was a sealed book, read by no- 
 body, and the reviewers simply ignored it." 
 
 In a letter addressed from Isere, France, to Mr. William 
 Sharp, Browning gave an account of Rossetti's interest in 
 Pauline, and of their subsequent acquaintance : " Ros 
 setti's Pauline letter was addressed to me at Florence more 
 than thirty years ago. I have preserved it, but, even were 
 I at home, should be unable to find it without troublesome 
 searching. It was to the effect that the writer, personally 
 and altogether unknown to me, had come upon a poem in 
 the British Museum, wliich he copied the whole of, from its 
 being not otherwise procurable that he judged it to be 
 mine, but could not be sure, and wished me to pronounce in 
 the matter which I did. A year or two after, I had a 
 visit in London from Mr. (William) Allingham and a 
 friend who proved to be Rossetti. When I heard he 
 was a painter I insisted on calling on him, though he de- 
 clared he had nothing to show me which was far enough 
 from the case. Subsequently, on another of my returns to 
 London, he painted my portrait, not, I fancy, in oils, but 
 watercolors, and finished it in Paris shortly after. This 
 must have been in the year when Tennyson published Maud, 
 for I remember Tennyson reading the poem one evening 
 while Rossetti made a rapid pen-and-ink sketch of him, 
 very good, from one obscure corner of vantage, which I 
 still possess, and duly value. This was before Rossetti's 
 marriage." 
 
 The review of Pauline by W. J. Fox opens with a dis- 
 cussion of the importance of recognizing the soul in litera- 
 ture, and then continues : " These thoughts have been sug- 
 gested by the work before us, which, though evidently a 
 hasty and imperfect sketch, has truth and life in it, which 
 gave us the thrill, and laid hold of us with the power, the 
 sensation of which has never failed us as a test of genius. 
 Whoever the anonymous author may be, he is a poet. A 
 pretender to science cannot always be safely judged of by
 
 Pauline : A Fragment of a Confession. 283 
 
 a brief publication, for the knowledge of some facts does 
 not imply the knowledge of other facts ; but the claimant 
 of poetic honors may generally be appreciated by a few 
 pages, often but a few lines, for if they be poetry, he is a 
 poet. We cannot judge of the house by the brick, but we 
 can judge of the statue of Hercules by its foot. We felt 
 certain of Tennyson, before we saw the book, by a few 
 verses which had straggled into a newspaper ; we are not 
 less certain of the author of Pauline. 
 
 " Pauline is the recipient of the confessions : the hero is 
 as anonymous as the author, and this is no matter ; for 
 poet is the title both of the one and the other. The con- 
 fessions have nothing in them which needs names : the ex- 
 ternal world is only reflected in them in the faintest shades ; 
 its influences are only described after they have penetrated 
 into the intellect. We have never read anything more 
 purely confessional. The whole composition is of the spirit, 
 spiritual. The scenery is in the chambers of thought ; the 
 agencies are powers and passions ; the events are transi- 
 tions from one state of spiritual existence to another. And 
 yet the composition is not dreamy ; there is on it a deep 
 stamp of reality. Still less is it characterized by coldness. 
 It has visions that we love to look upon, and tones that 
 touch the inmost heart till it responds." 
 
 " The poet's confessions are introduced with an analysis 
 of his spiritual constitution, in which he is described as 
 having an intense consciousness of individuality, combined 
 with a sense of power, a self-supremacy, and a ' principle of 
 restlessness which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel 
 all ' of this essential self ; an imagination, steady and un- 
 failing in its power, is described as the characteristic 
 quality. A ' yearning after God ' or supreme and univer- 
 sal good, unconsciously cherished through the earlier stages 
 of the history, keeps this mind from utterly dissipating 
 itself ; there is added an unaptness for love, a mere percep- 
 tion of the beautiful, the perception being felt more pre- 
 cious than its object. In the progress and development of 
 the being thus constituted, we first see a solitary boy, whose 
 mind neither parent, teacher, nor friend seems to be in 
 communion with, or influencing ; untutored by any one, un- 
 attracted towards any one, shut up by himself in a library,
 
 284 Pauline : A Fragment of a Confession. 
 
 and spontaneously intent on the great classic writers. But 
 the ideal, though thus strongly infused into his being, did 
 not wholly pervade or permanently elevate it. A vague 
 sense of power was generated, but the pressure of circum- 
 stances kept the spirit down ; restraint humbled and cor- 
 rupted the soul ; and the mental and moral degradation 
 which had commenced would have proceeded rapidly and 
 fatally, but that a purity of taste had been produced which 
 interposed to check the downward progress ; and in music 
 a ministry was found which was one of preservation, till 
 the soul was ripened for higher aspirations. 
 
 " Dissatisfied with his own acquirements and achieve- 
 ments, the young minstrel now seeks to know what has been 
 done by the master-spirits of the earth ; he gazes on the 
 works of mighty bards and sages ; he looks unappalled, for 
 he finds his own thoughts recorded and his own powers ex- 
 emplified ; he turns from them to self-study and analysis ; 
 his sight is sharpened and his powers excited by introspec- 
 tion ; he feels the misgivings felt of old, and would make 
 or recognize the discovery desired of old : he, too, would 
 solve the world's enigma. 
 
 " He enters the world, and the bright theories which at 
 first spread their lustre over the affairs of real life are soon 
 darkened and dissipated by his nearer observance. A cor- 
 responding change in himself follows. This state is de- 
 scribed through several pages, with its various incidents, 
 fluctuations, and modifications, until the moral power 
 shows its returning life by a feeling of irritable dissatisfac- 
 tion, a longing after higher good, and a sense of capacity 
 for its enjoyment. 
 
 " And now, when he has run the whole toilsome yet 
 giddy round and arrived at the goal, there arises, even 
 though that goal be religion, or because it is religion, a 
 yearning after human sympathies and affections. The 
 poem is addressed to Pauline ; with her it begins and ends ; 
 and her presence is felt throughout as that of a second con- 
 science, wounded by evil, but never stern, and incorporate 
 in a form of beauty which blends and softens the strong 
 contrasts of different portions of the poem, so that all 
 might be murmured by the breath of affection." 
 
 The first of the mottoes to the poem has been trans- 
 lated in this manner :
 
 Pauline : A Fragment of a Confession. 285 
 
 " Not now am I what I have been, 
 Nor know how I may be again." 
 
 The author was the Norman-French poet, Cle'ment Marot> 
 who lived from 1497 to 1544, and who was noted for hi& 
 satire and his Protestant spirit. The other prefatory motto 
 is from the preface to the Occult Philosophy of Henry 
 Cornelius Agrippa, a French physician and astrologer, who 
 lived from 1486 to 1535, and has been put into English in 
 this form : " I douht not but the title of our book by its 
 rarity may entice very many to the perusal of it. Among 
 whom many of hostile opinions, with weak minds, many 
 even malignant and ungrateful will assail our genius, who 
 in their rash ignorance, hardly before the title is before 
 their eyes, will make a clamor. We are forbidden to teach, 
 to scatter abroad the seeds of philosophy, pious ears being 
 offended, clear-seeing minds having arisen. I, as a coun- 
 selor, assail their consciences, but neither Apollo, nor all 
 the muses, nor an angel from heaven, would be able to save 
 me from their execrations, whom now I counsel that they 
 may not read our books, that they may not understand 
 them, that they may not remember them, for they are nox- 
 ious, they are poisonous. The mouth of Acheron is in this 
 book : it speaks often of stones ; beware, lest by these it 
 shake the understanding. You, also, who with fair mind 
 shall come to the reading, if you will apply so much of the 
 discernment of prudence as bees in gathering honey, then 
 read with security. For, indeed, I believe you about to 
 receive many things not a little both for instruction and en- 
 joyment. But if you find anything that pleases you not, let 
 it go that you may not use it, for I do not declare these 
 things good for you, but merely relate them. Therefore if 
 any freer word may be, forgive our youth ; I, who am less 
 than a youth, have composed this work." 
 
 The note on page 20, explaining line 811, written in 
 French, and signed " Pauline," is also important as a 
 means of interpreting the poem ; and especially is it help- 
 ful in trying to get at the purpose of the poet in this work : 
 " I much fear that my poor friend will not be always per- 
 fectly understood in what remains to be read of this strange 
 fragment, and it is less appropriate than any other part 
 to illustrate what of its nature can never be anything but
 
 286 Pauline : A Fragment of a Confession. 
 
 dream and confusion. Moreover, I do not very well know 
 whether in seeking to connect certain parts better one would 
 not run the risk of obstructing the only merit to which so 
 singular a production can pretend, that of giving a close 
 enough idea of the kind of nature of which it has made 
 merely a sketch. This unpretending opening, this stir of 
 passions which go on at first increasing and then by de- 
 grees subside, these outbursts of the soul, this sudden re- 
 turn upon himself, and above all, the turn of mind quite 
 peculiar to my friend, have made alterations almost impos- 
 sible. The reasons he urges elsewhere, with others more 
 powerful still, have found grace in my eyes for this work, 
 which otherwise I should have advised him to throw into 
 the fire. I believe none the less in the great principle of 
 all composition, in the great principle of Shakespeare, 
 Raphael, and Beethoven, from whence it follows that 
 concentration of ideas is due much more to their concep- 
 tion than to their manner of execution : I have every rea- 
 son to fear that the first of these qualities is still foreign 
 enough to my friend, and I doubt very much if redoubled 
 labor would enable him to acquire the second. It would 
 be best to burn this ; but what can I do ? 
 
 " I think that in what follows lie refers to a certain in- 
 vestigation he has made elsewhere of the soul, or rather of 
 his soul, in order to discover the connection of the objects 
 which it might be possible for him to attain, and from 
 each of which, once obtained, a kind of platform could be 
 formed from whence one could perceive other ends, other 
 plans, other joys, which, in their turn, could be surmounted. 
 Thence it would result that oblivion and sleep should come 
 to end all. This idea, which I seize imperfectly, is perhaps 
 as unintelligible to him as to me." 
 
 Only five years after the publication of Pauline Brown- 
 ing had come to feel its imperfections, as he indicated on 
 the fly-leaf of a copy of the book, according to the report in 
 the Browning Bibliography, page 38 : 
 
 " Pauline . . . written in pursuance of a foolish plan I 
 forget, or have no wish to remember ; involving the assump- 
 tion of several distinct characters : the world was never to 
 guess that such an opera, such a comedy, such a speech 
 proceeded from the same notable person. Mr. V. A. (see
 
 Pauline : A Fragment of a Confession. 287 
 
 page second) was Poet of the party, and predestined to cut 
 no inconsiderable figure. ' Only this crab ' (I find set 
 down in my copy) ' remains of the shapely Tree of Life in 
 my fools' Paradise.' 
 
 " (I cannot muster resolution to deal with the printers' 
 blunders after the American fashion, and bid people ' for 
 jocularity ' read ' synthesis,' to the end of the chapter). 
 
 " December 14, 1838." 
 
 In 1868, when Browning was publishing an edition of his 
 Poetical Works, he included Pauline, in order to prevent 
 its publication by other hands ; and the preface to this edi- 
 tion was a special defense of this act. This preface, to- 
 gether with an addition to it written for the edition of 1888, 
 are of value in the study of the poem. They are both 
 given in the Riverside edition of 1888. The poem was re- 
 vised for the edition of 1888. Pauline was edited from the 
 original edition in 1886, by Thomas J. Wise, and pub- 
 lished in London by R. Clay & Sons ; pages, 71. 
 
 In a note sent to Mr. Thomas J. Wise, in 1886, the poet 
 explained some passages in the poem : " The King is 
 Agamemnon, in the tragedy of that name by Aeschylus 
 whose treading the purple carpets spread before him by his 
 wife, preparatory to his murder, is a notable passage. The 
 boy is Orestes, as described at the end of the Choephoroi by 
 the same author. V. A. XX. is the Latin abbreviation 
 of vixi annos, I was twenty years old, that is, the imagi- 
 nary subject of the poem was of that age." 
 
 Some of the allusions in the poem make it obscure until 
 they are understood. A part of them are here explained. 
 
 Page 4, lines 38 and 40, and page 5, line 2, refer to 
 Shelley. 
 
 Page 8, line 38. The god wandering after beauty is 
 Apollo seeking Daphnis. See King's Metamorphoses of 
 Ovid, i. 554. 
 
 Page 8, line 39. The giant is Atlas as described by Ovid 
 in his Metamorphoses. See King's translation, iv. 744. 
 
 Page 8, line 41. The high-crested chief is Nestor, who 
 at the close of the Trojan war sails to Tenedos, as related 
 in Homer's Odyssey. See Bryant's translation, iii. 200. 
 
 Page 9, line 6. The isles of the blue sea are those of 
 the Aegean. Line 9. The swift-footed is Hermes, the 

 
 288 Pauline : A Fragment of a Confession. 
 
 herald of the gods, who with Proserpine is connected with 
 death. See Aeschylus' Choephorae, i. 136 ; Ovid's Meta- 
 morpJwses, ii. 862 ; Homer's Odyssey, x. 608. 
 
 Page 10, line 36. The man preferred to a system is 
 said by Mrs. Orr to refer to Plato. The editor of Poet- 
 Lore is of the opinion that the man is Shelley, who is 
 several times referred to in the poem. 
 
 Page 12, line 27. The Arab bird is the pelican, which 
 often goes far from land, and continues its flight all night, 
 floating on the wind, without moving its wings, for a long 
 time. 
 
 Page 14, line 26. The king treading the purple is Aga- 
 memnon, as described in the play of Aeschylus by that 
 name. See Potter's translation, line 1017 ; also Brown- 
 ing's translation, page 28, line 22. 
 
 Page 14, line 32. The boy with white breast and brow 
 is Orestes, as described in the Choephorae of Aeschylus. 
 See Potter's translation, line 1073. 
 
 Page 16, line 27. The Andromeda described is that of 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses, iv. 792. Also that of a picture by 
 Polidoro di Caravaggio, an engraving of which Brown- 
 ing had always before his eyes while he was writing this 
 and his other earlier poem. Of this Sharp says in his 
 Life : " It is strange that among all his father's collec- 
 tion of drawings and engravings nothing had such fascina- 
 tion for him as an engraving of a picture of Andromeda 
 and Perseus by Caravaggio. The story of the innocent 
 victim and the divine deliverer was one of which in his 
 boyhood he never tired of hearing : and as he grew older 
 the charm of its pictorial presentment had for him a deeper 
 and more complex significance." 
 
 Page 23, line 44. The fair pale sister is the Antigone 
 described by Sophocles in his play by that name, line 760. 
 
 See Kingsland and Sharp, The Monthly Repository, W. 
 J. Fox, 7 : 252. The Athenaeum, April 6, 1833. The 
 allusions in the poem are explained in Poet-Lore, 
 January and February, 1889. The early criticisms are 
 given in The Browning Society's Papers, number nine, 
 2 : 194*. 
 
 The question of a reprint is discussed in The Atlantic 
 Monthly, 49 : 570.
 
 A Pearl, a Girl. Pheidippides. 289 
 
 Pearl, A, a Girl. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 Peter Ronsard. The speaker in The Glove, who tells 
 the story of how Sir De Lorge snatched a glove from amidst 
 the lions. 
 
 Pheidippides. Dramatic Idyls, First Series, 1879. 
 
 This poem is based on an incident related in Herodotus, 
 History, vi. 105, 106 ; Pausanias, Description of Greece, 
 i. 28, viii. 54 ; Cornelius Nepos, Miltiades, 4. In Pausa- 
 nias and Cornelius Nepos the name of the hero is Philippi- 
 des ; and in Herodotus both forms are given in different 
 manuscripts. In the year 490 B. c., when the Persians were 
 invading Greece, the former landed on the coast of Attica, 
 and camped on the shore near the plain of Marathon. Word 
 of this having been received in Athens a consultation was 
 held by the generals, who sent a swift runner to Sparta to 
 beg for aid. His adventures are described by Herodotus in 
 his History, as translated by Rawlinson : 
 
 " And first, before they left the city, the generals sent off 
 to Sparta a herald, one Pheidippides, who was by birth an 
 Athenian, and by birth and practice a trained runner. This 
 man, according to the account which he gave to the Athe- 
 nians on his return, when he was near Mount Parthenium, 
 above Tegea, fell in with the god Pan, who called him by 
 his name, and bade him ask the Athenians ' wherefore they 
 neglected him so entirely, when he was kindly disposed to- 
 wards them, and had often helped them in times past, and 
 would do so again in time to come ? ' The Athenians, en- 
 tirely believing in the truth of this report, as soon as their 
 affairs were once more in good order, set up a temple to Pan 
 under the Acropolis, and, in return for the message which I 
 have recorded, established in his honor yearly sacrifices and 
 a torch-race. 
 
 " On the occasion of which we speak, when Pheidippides 
 was sent by the Athenian generals, and, according to his 
 own account saw Pan on his journey, he reached Sparta on 
 the very next day after quitting the city of Athens. Upon 
 his arrival he went before the rulers, and said to them : 
 
 " ' Men of Lacedaemon, the Athenians beseech you to 
 hasten to their aid, and not allow that state, which is the 
 most ancient in all Greece, to be enslaved by the barbarians. 
 Eretria, look you, is already carried away captive, and 
 Greece weakened by the loss of no mean city.'
 
 290 Pictor Ignotus. 
 
 " Thus did Pheidippides deliver the message committed 
 to him. And the Spartans wished to help the Athenians, 
 but were unable to give them any present succor, as they 
 did not like to break their established law. It was the 
 ninth day of the first decade, and they could not march out 
 of Sparta on the ninth, when the moon had not reached the 
 full. So they waited for the full of the moon." 
 
 Pausanias, in his Description of Greece, gives the story 
 in a briefer form : " And as to Pan, they say that Philli- 
 pides (who was sent as a messenger to Lacedaemon when 
 the Persians landed) reported that the Lacedaemonians 
 were deferring their march : for it was their custom not to 
 go out on a campaign till the moon was at its full. But he 
 said that he had met with Pan near the Parthenian forest, 
 and he had said that he was friendly to the Athenians, and 
 would come out and help them at Marathon. Pan has been 
 honored therefore for this message." 
 
 The distance from Athens to Sparta is from 135 to 140 
 miles. Pheidippides evidently belonged to the trained run- 
 ners, who had great powers of endurance, and who were 
 employed on occasions like this. The Spartans were cele- 
 brating, on the arrival of Pheidippides, their great national 
 festival of Carneia, which lasted for nine days, and during 
 which they were not permitted to take the field against an 
 enemy. Grote thinks the act of the Spartans the result of 
 the " blind tenacity of ancient custom." Rawlinson is of 
 the opinion that it " may be explained on selfish grounds, 
 and that the excuse was no more than a subterfuge." The 
 Greek game of Lampadephoria, or torch-bearing, may have 
 been suggestive to Browning in the writing of this poem. 
 Neither Herodotus nor Plutarch gives any account of Phei- 
 dippides after the battle of Marathon, as related by Brown- 
 ing. This part of the poem is probably original, or sug- 
 gested by his general knowledge of Greek legend and custom. 
 See Mrs. Orr and Symons. 
 
 Pictor Ignotus. Florence, 15 . Dramatic Ro- 
 mances and Lyrics, seventh number of Bells and Pome- 
 granates, 1845. In Poetical Works, 1863, this poem was 
 placed among Men and Women without the second part of 
 the title ; also in 1868. In the Selections of 1865 the full 
 title is given ; and also in the Poetical Works of 1888.
 
 The Pied Piper of Hamelin. 291 
 
 The character is wholly an imaginary one, but the poem 
 gives a view of the mediaeval spirit which is truly historical. 
 See Corson's Introduction. 
 
 Pied Piper of Hamelin, The. According to Mr. Fur- 
 nivall this poem was written for the son of William Mac- 
 ready, whose name was the same as his father's ; and in 
 order that he might have something adapted to illustration. 
 Browning had written for the boy a poem on the death of 
 the Pope's legate at the Council of Trent, and this he illus- 
 trated with such clever drawings that the poet sought out 
 a more picturesque subject, and took up that of the Pied 
 Piper. The poet seems to have thought the poem of hut 
 little value ; and it was only when publishing his Dramatic 
 Lyrics, as the third number of Bells and Pomegranates, 
 that it was put in at the end, when the poems already fur- 
 nished did not fill out the sheet, and the printers called for 
 additional "copy." Mr. Gosse says the poem was "a,jeu 
 d'esprit which he had written to amuse little Willie Mac- 
 ready, and which he had no idea of publishing." 
 
 It is stated by Mr. Furnivall, in his Browning Bibli- 
 ography, that this story was. taken by the poet from The 
 Wonders of the Little World : or, A General History of 
 Man, by Nathaniel Wanley, published in folio in 1678. 
 Wanley's account of the Pied Piper, as given in a later edi- 
 tion of his work, is as follows : 
 
 " At Hammel, a town in the Duchy of Brunswick, in the 
 year of Christ, 1284, upon the twenty-sixth day of June, 
 the town being grieviously troubled with rats and mice, 
 there came to them a piper, who promised, upon a certain 
 rate, to free them from them all : it was agreed ; he went 
 from street to street, and playing upon his pipe, drew after 
 him out of the town all that kind of vermin, and then de- 
 manding his wages was denied it. Whereupon he began 
 another tune, and there followed him one hundred and 
 thirty boys to a hill called Koppen, situate on the north by 
 the road, where they perished, and were never seen after. 
 This piper was called the Pied Piper, because his clothes 
 vvere of several colors. This story is writ, and religiously 
 kept by them in their annals at Hammel, read in their 
 books, and painted in their windows and churches, of which 
 I am a witness by my own sight. Their elder magistrates.
 
 292 The Pied Piper of Hamelin. 
 
 for the confirmation of the truth of this, are wont to write 
 in conjunction, in their public books, such a year of Christ, 
 and such a year of the transmigration of the children, etc. 
 It is also observed in the memory of it, that in the street 
 he passed out of, no piper is admitted to this day. The 
 street is called Burgelosestrasse ; if a bride be in that street, 
 till she is gone out of it there is no dancing to be suffered. 
 Wier. de Prcestiy. Daemon. 1. 1, c. 16, p. 47. Schot. Phys. 
 Curios. \. 3, c. 24, p. 519. HoweVs Ep. vol. i. 6, epist. 
 59, p. 241." 
 
 Wanley's references to the sources of his account are 
 curious, but they do not include all which might have been 
 given. The story is told in Heylin's Microcnsmos and in 
 Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, as well as in numerous 
 more recent and many older works. The last of the refer- 
 ences given by Wanley is to James Howell's Epistolae Ho- 
 Elianae : Familiar Letters Domestic and Jforren, where 
 the story is told in these words : 
 
 *' The said Town of Hamelen was annoyed with Rats 
 and Mice ; and it chac'd, that a Pied-coated Piper came 
 thither, who covenanted with the chief Burgers for such a 
 reward, if he could free them quite from the said Vermin, 
 nor would he demand it, till a twelvemonth, and a day after ; 
 The agreement being made, he began to play on his Pipes, 
 and all the Rats, and the Mice, followed him to a great 
 Lough hard by, where they all perish'd ; so the Town was 
 infested no more. At the end of the yeer, the Pied Piper 
 return's for his reward, the Burgers put him off with 
 slightings, and neglect, offring him som small matter, 
 which he refusing, and staying som days in the Town, one 
 Sunday morning at High-Masse, when most people were at 
 Church, he fell to play on his Pipes, and all the children 
 up and down, follow'd him out of the Town, to a great Hill 
 not far off, which rent in two, and open'd, and let him and 
 the children in, and so clos'd up again : This happen'd a 
 matter of two hundred and fifty yeers since ; and in that 
 Town they date their Bills, and Bonds, and other instru- 
 ments in Law, to this day from the yeer of the going out of 
 their children : Besides, ther is a great piller of stone at 
 the foot of the said Hill, wheron this story is engraven." 
 
 The first English account of the Pied Piper is that given
 
 The Pied Piper of Hamelin. 293 
 
 by Richard Verstegan, in his Restitution of Decayed In- 
 telligence, published in 1605. In his quaint manner he 
 says : 
 
 " There came into the Towne of Hamel in the Country 
 of Brunswyicke an old kind of companion, who for the fan- 
 Casticall Coate which he wore, being wrought with sundry 
 colours, was called the pide piper ; for a piper he was, be- 
 sides his other qualities. This fellow forsooth offered the 
 towns-men for a certaine somme of money to rid the Towne 
 of all the Rats that were in it (for at that tyme the Burgers 
 were with that vermine greatly annoyed). The accord in 
 fine being made the pide Piper with a shrtl Pipe went 
 Piping thorow the streets, and forthwith the Rats came all 
 running out of the Houses in great numbers after him ; all 
 which hee led into the River of Weaser, and therein drowned 
 them. This done, and no one Rat more perceived to be left 
 in the Towne ; hee afterward came to demand his reward 
 according to his bargaine, but being told that the bargain 
 was not made with him in good earnest, to wit, with an 
 opinion that ever he could bee able to doe such a feat : they 
 cared not what they accorded unto, when they imagined it 
 could never be deserued, and so never to bee demanded : but 
 neverthelesse seeing hee had done such an unlikely thing in- 
 deed, they were content to give him a good reward ; and so 
 offred him farre lesse then he lookt for : but hee therewith 
 discontented, said he would have his full recompence ac- 
 cording to his bargain ; but they utterly denyed to give it 
 him, he threatened them with revenge ; they bad him doe 
 his worst ; whereupon he betakes him againe to his Pipe, and 
 going thorow the streets as before, was followed of a num- 
 ber of boyes out at one of the Gates of the City ; and com- 
 ming to a little Hill, there opened in the side thereof a 
 wid hole, into the which himself & all the children, being 
 in number one hundreth and thirty, did enter ; and being 
 entred, the Hill closed up againe, and become as before. A. 
 boy that being lame and came somewhat lagging behind the 
 rest, seeing this that hapned, returned presently backe and 
 told what he had seene ; forthwith began great lamentation 
 among the Parents for their Children, and men were sent out 
 withall diligence, both by land, and water to enquire if ought 
 could be heard of them, but with all the enquiry they could
 
 294 Pietro Comparini. Pietro of Abano. 
 
 possibly use, nothing more than is aforesaid could of them 
 be understood. In memory whereof it was then ordained, 
 that from thence-forth no Druinme, Pipe, or other instru- 
 ment, should be sounded in the street leading to the gate 
 thorow which they passed ; nor no Ostery to be there holden. 
 And it was also established, that from that time forward, 
 in all publike writings that should be made in that Towne, 
 after the date therein set downe of the yeere of our Lord, 
 the date of the yeere of the going forth of their Children 
 should be added, the which they have accordingly ever since 
 continued. And this great wonder hapned on the 22. day 
 of luly, in the yeere of our Lord, 1376." 
 
 We need not be concerned about the difference in the 
 dates of these accounts, for the story of the Pied Piper is 
 nothing more than a myth of the wind. Mr. Baring-Gould's 
 Curious Myths of the Middle Ages shows that the story is 
 a widespread one, and that it is related to the Bishop of 
 Hatto, which he also describes, to Goethe's Erlking, who 
 steals the soul of the child, and to many other similar le- 
 gends. Mr. John Fiske's Myths and Myth-Makers ex- 
 plains the story on mythological grounds, and its connection 
 with many other forms of folk-lore. He says that " as Tann- 
 hauser is the Northern Ulysses, so is Goethe's Erlking none 
 other than the Piper of Hainelin. And the piper, in turn, 
 is the classic Hermes or Orpheus, the counterpart of the 
 Finnish Wainamoinen, and the Sanskrit Gunadhya. His 
 wonderful pipe is the horn of Oberon, the lyre of Apollo 
 (who, like the piper, was a rat-killer), the harp stolen by 
 Jack when he climbed the bean-stalk to the ogre's castle. 
 And the father, in Goethe's ballad, is no more than right 
 when he assures his child that the siren voice which tempts 
 him is but the rustle of the wind among the dried leaves ; 
 for from such a simple class of phenomena arose this entire 
 family of charming legends." 
 
 Pietro Comparini. The reputed father of Pompilia, 
 in The Ring and the Book, who is murdered with her and 
 his wife by Count Guido. 
 
 Pietro of Abano. Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, 
 1880. 
 
 This poem is founded on the career of Peter of Abano, 
 a physician, alchemist, and magician of the thirteenth cen-
 
 Pietro of Abano. 295 
 
 tury. Pietro di Abano, known also as Petrus de Apono or 
 Aponensis, was born in 1250, took his name from the place 
 of his birth, which was located five and a half miles from 
 Padua. He left the village of Abano to study at Padua, 
 then went to Constantinople to acquire Greek, and after- 
 wards he continued his studies in Paris, where he became a 
 doctor of medicine and philosophy. Returning to Padua, 
 he became a professor of medicine, and acquired a great 
 reputation as a physician. He followed the Arabian physi- 
 cians both in his practice and in the medical works he wrote. 
 He charged enormous prices for his services,, and was 
 very avaricious, amassing large wealth. His personal ego- 
 tism, together with his dabblings in magic and astrology, 
 raised him up many enemies. He gained such a reputation 
 as a magician that he was cited before the Inquisition in 
 1306. One charge popularly made against him was that 
 his league with the devil enabled him to bring back into his 
 purse all the money he paid out ; and another was that he 
 possessed the philosopher's stone. He defended himself so 
 successfully before the Inquisition, where he was charged 
 with being a heretic and atheist, that he was acquitted. He 
 removed to Treviso in 1314, but the next year he was again 
 before the Inquisition on a charge similar to the first. He 
 died, however, before he could be brought to trial, in the 
 year 1315. The trial was continued, he was condemned, 
 and his body was ordered to be burnt. A friend had hid- 
 den the body, and the Inquisition burnt him in effigy, after 
 promulgating its sentence. He was a follower of Aver- 
 rhoes and the Arabian writers, he translated their medical 
 works, and he promulgated their philosophical opinions. 
 He was not an original thinker or investigator, but he skill- 
 fully used the knowledge he acquired from others. His 
 best work is his Conciliator different iarum quae inter phi- 
 losophos et medicos versantur. 
 
 It is said that Pietro hated milk and cheese, that he fell 
 into a swoon whenever he saw them ; and this report is 
 tnade use of by Browning. The lines given by Browning 
 in a note, and said to have been found in a well at Abano, 
 he translates ; and he also refers to a version by Father 
 Prout, who Englished them in fun ; see his Reliques, 
 p. 4:-
 
 296 Pietro of Abano. 
 
 "Studying my cyphers with the compass, 
 I find I shall soon be under the daisy ; 
 Because of my lore, folks make such a rumpus, 
 That every dull dog is thereat unaisy." 
 
 At Padua, in the wall of the vestibule of the Sacristy of 
 the Church of the Eremitani, is set a stone to the memory 
 of Pietro as follows : 
 
 PETRI APONI 
 
 Cineres 
 
 Ob. An. 1315 
 
 Aet. 66. 
 
 The popular conception of Pietro in his own time is well 
 set forth in Mackay's Popular Delusions : " Like his 
 friend Arnold de Villeneuve, he was an eminent physician, 
 and a pretender to the arts of astrology and alchemy. He 
 practiced for many years in Paris, and made great wealth 
 by killing and curing, and telling fortunes. In an evil day 
 for him, he returned to his own country, with the reputa- 
 tion of being a magician of the first order. It was univer- 
 sally believed that he had drawn seven evil spirits from the 
 infernal regions, whom he kept enclosed in seven crystal 
 vases until he required their services, when he sent them 
 forth to the ends of the earth to execute his pleasure. One 
 spirit excelled in philosophy ; a second, in alchemy ; a third, 
 in astrology ; a fourth, in physic ; a fifth, in poetry ; a sixth, 
 in music ; and the seventh, in painting ; and whenever 
 Pietro wished for information or instruction in any of these 
 arts, he had only to go to his crystal vase and liberate the 
 presiding spirit. Immediately all the secrets of the art 
 were revealed to him ; and he might, if it pleased him, ex- 
 cel Homer in poetry, Apelles in painting, or Pythagoras in 
 philosophy. Although he could make gold out of brass, it 
 was said of him that he was very sparing of his powers in 
 that respect, and kept himself constantly supplied with 
 money by other and less creditable means. Whenever he 
 disbursed gold, he muttered a certain charm, known only 
 to himself, and the next morning the gold was safe again in 
 his own possession. The trader to whom he gave it might
 
 Pietro of Abano. . 297 
 
 lock it in his strong box and have it guarded by a troop of 
 soldiers, but the charmed metal flew back to its old master. 
 Even if it were buried in the earth, or thrown into the sea, 
 the dawn of the next morning would behold it in the pock- 
 ets of Pietro. Few people, in consequence, liked to have 
 dealings with such a personage, especially for gold. Some, 
 bolder than the rest, thought that his power did not extend 
 over silver ; but, when they made the experiment, they 
 found themselves mistaken. Bolts and bars could not re- 
 strain it, and it sometimes became invisible in their very 
 hands, and was whisked through the air to the purse of the 
 magician. He necessarily acquired a very bad character ; 
 and having given utterance to some sentiments regarding 
 religion which were the very reverse of orthodox, he was 
 summoned before the tribunals of the Inquisition to answer 
 for his crimes as a heretic and sorcerer. He loudly pro- 
 tested his innocence, even upon the rack, where he suffered 
 more torture than nature could support. He died in prison 
 ere his trial was concluded, but was afterwards found 
 guilty." 
 
 The story of the young Greek calling upon Pietro is 
 taken from the legends of the time. A Spanish collection 
 of early stories, El Conde Lucanor, gives a similar legend, 
 and the poet Chamisso has put into German verse a similar 
 story. In Bishop Thirlwall's Letters to a Friend he relates 
 a story of a like character, picked up in Spain : " A 
 young student calls on Don Manuel at Seville, and asks 
 for a spell to get him along in life. Don Manuel calls to 
 his housekeeper, ' Jacinta, roast the partridges. Don Diego 
 will stay to dinner.' The student makes a grand career ; is 
 Dean, Bishop, and then Pope soon after he is forty. When 
 Don Manuel calls on him in Rome, he threatens the magi- 
 cian, who has made him, with the prisons of the Holy 
 Office. And then hears Don Manuel call out, ' Jacinta, 
 you need not put down the partridges. Don Diego will not 
 stay to dinner.' And lo ! Diego found himself at Don 
 Manuel's door, with his way yet to make in the world." 
 
 Salomo si nosset (noisset). Had Solomon but known 
 this. Teneor vix. I scarcely contain myself. Hactenus 
 (e made long). Hitherto. 
 
 Peason. Old English for peas. Pou sto. Where I
 
 298 A Pillar at Sebzevar. Pippa Passes. 
 
 may stand ; the reputed saying of Archimedes, that if he 
 had a place to stand he could move the world. 
 
 Tithon. Tithonus, the lover of Aurora, for whom she 
 obtained the gift of eternal life. Apage, Sathanas ! 
 dicam verbum Salomonis ! Depart, Satan ! I command 
 [thee] in the name of Solomon ! 
 
 The reference at the end of the poem to Tiberius is 
 taken from Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars ; in Alexander 
 Thomson's quaint translation, as follows : " Soon after, as 
 he was marching to Ilyricum, he called to consult the oracle 
 of Geryon, near Patuvium [Padua] ; and having drawn a 
 lot by which he was desired to throw golden tali into the 
 fountain of Aponus, for an answer to his enquiries, he did 
 so, and the highest numbers came up. And those very tali 
 are still to be seen at the bottom of the fountain." This 
 fountain, situated in the Euganian hills, near Padua, 
 famous for its mineral waters, is celebrated by Claudian in 
 one of his elegies. 
 
 Venus, in the postscript, was the Roman term for the 
 highest throw of the dice. " It signified, therefore," says 
 Mrs. Orr, " the highest promise to him, who, in obedience 
 to the oracle, had tested his fortunes at the fount of Abano, 
 by throwing golden dice into it. The ' crystal ' to which 
 Mr. Browning refers is the water of the well or fount, at 
 the bottom of which, as Suetonius declared, the dice thrown 
 by Tiberius, and their numbers, are still visible. The little 
 air which concludes the postscript reflects the careless or 
 ' lilting ' mood in which Mr. Browning had thrown the 
 ' fancy dice ' which cast themselves into the form of poem." 
 
 See The Browning Society's Papers, number two, 1 : 191, 
 for the Rev. J. Sharpe's careful analysis of the poem and 
 its teachings, also for a short sketch of Pietro of Abano. 
 
 Pillar at Sebzevar, A. Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884. 
 
 The Hudhud is the fabulous bird of Solomon, according 
 to Hebrew and Mohammedan legend, the lapwing, a 
 widely known bird in Asia and Europe. Sitara is the 
 Persian name for a star. 
 
 Pippa Passes : A Drama. The first number of 
 Bells and Pomegranates, 1841, was occupied by Pippa 
 Passes, which filled sixteen pages of the double-column 
 pamphlet, and was sold for sixpence. Mr. Gosse says the
 
 Pippa. Poems. 299 
 
 public was first won to Browning by this drama. First re- 
 printed in the Poems of 1849. 
 
 Of the origin of the play Mrs. Orr says : "Mr. Brown- 
 ing was walking alone, in a wood near Dulwich, when the 
 image flashed upon him of some one walking thus alone 
 through life ; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of 
 his or her passage, yet exercising a lasting though uncon- 
 scious influence at every step of it ; and the image shaped 
 itself into the little silk-winder of Asolo, Felippa, or Pip- 
 pa." 
 
 The scene of the drama is laid at Asolo, a small town 
 thirty miles northwest of the city of Venice, and in the 
 present province of Venice. See Asolando in this volume 
 for an account of Asolo. 
 
 The play has no historical foundation. Pippa's song in 
 the second part, heard by Jules and Phene, refers to Cate- 
 rina Cornaro, the Venetian queen of Cyprus ; and this is 
 the only historical fact in the play. See p. 39. 
 
 In his Select Poems Rolfe gives this drama with an 
 introduction and extended notes. In Browning's Women 
 Miss Burt devotes a part of her chapter on lyrical charac- 
 ters to Pippa. 
 
 Pippa. The young girl who works in the silk mills, and 
 who is the chief character in Pippa Passes. 
 
 Pisgah. - Sights. Pacchiarotto, with other Poems, 
 1876. Two poems, numbered as I. and II., were pub- 
 lished under this title. In the Selections from his poems 
 made by himself, Second Series, 1880, Browning put as III. 
 under this title the " Proem " to La Saislaz. 
 
 Plot-Culture. Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884. 
 
 Laila is one of the poet's own creations, just as Ferishtah 
 is also a fictitious personage. 
 
 Poems. Under this title Browning made in 1849 the 
 first collected edition of his poetry ; but it contained only 
 Paracelsus and Bells and Pomegranates. It was pub- 
 lished by Chapman & Hall, and was in two volumes. It 
 contained the following words of preface : 
 
 " Many of these pieces were out of print, the rest had 
 been withdrawn from circulation, when the corrected edi- 
 tion, now submitted to the reader, was prepared. The
 
 300 Poems. 
 
 various Poems and Dramas have received the author's most 
 careful revision. 
 
 " December, 1848." 
 
 The first volume contained : Paracelsus ; Pippa Passes ; 
 King Victor and King Charles ; Colombo's Birthday. The 
 second volume contained : A Blot in the 'Scutcheon ; The 
 Return of the Druses ; Luria ; A Soul's Tragedy ; 
 Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. 
 
 The first complete edition was published in 1863, hy 
 Chapman & Hall, in three volumes, with the title : The 
 Poetical Works of Robert Browning. Third Edition. 
 Vol. I. Lyrics ; Romances ; Men and Women. Vol. II. 
 Tragedies and other Plays. Vol. III. Paracelsus ; Christ- 
 mas-Eve and Easter-Day ; Sordello. In the first volume 
 appeared these words : 
 
 " I dedicate these Volumes to my old friend John Fors- 
 ter, glad and grateful that he who', from the first publica- 
 tion of the various poems they include, has been their 
 promptest and staunchest helper, should seem even nearer 
 to me now than thirty years ago. R. B." 
 
 " London, April 21, 1863." 
 
 The poems of the first volume were preceded by this note 
 of explanation as to the new arrangement of its contents : 
 
 " In this Volume are collected and redistributed the 
 pieces first published in 1842, 1845, and 1855, respectively, 
 under the titles of ' Dramatic Lyrics,' ' Dramatic Ro- 
 mances,' and ' Men and Women.' Part of these were in- 
 scribed to my dear friend John Kenyon : I hope the whole 
 may obtain the honor of an association with his memory. 
 
 "R. B." 
 
 The next complete edition was the Poetical Works of 
 1868, in six volumes, published by Smith, Elder & Co. 
 The poems were printed in the order of their publication, 
 with a few exceptions, as follows : Vol. I. Pauline ; Para- 
 celsus ; Strafford. Vol. II. Sordello ; Pippa Passes. Vol. 
 III. King Victor and King Charles ; Dramatic Lyrics ; The 
 Return of the Druses. Vol. IV. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon ; 
 Colombe's Birthday ; Dramatic Romances. Vol. V. A 
 Soul's Tragedy ; Luria : Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day ; 
 Men and Women. Vol. VI. In a Balcony; Dramatis 
 Personse.
 
 Poetics. The Pope. 301 
 
 In 1888 a revised and complete edition was begun, and 
 was finished the following year ; published by Smith, 
 Elder & Co., in sixteen volumes, as follows : I. Pauline ; 
 Sordello. II. Paracelsus ; Strafford. III. Pippa Passes ; 
 King Victor and King Charles ; The Return of the Druses ; 
 A Soul's Tragedy. IV. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon ; Cp- 
 lombe's Birthday ; Men and Women. V. Dramatic Ro- 
 mances ; Christmas-Eve and Easter - Day. VI. Dramatic 
 Lyrics ; Luria. VII. In a Balcony ; Dramatis Personse. 
 VIII. The Ring and the Book, books i. to vi. IX. The 
 Ring and the Book, books v. to viii. X. The Ring and 
 the Book, books ix. to xii. XI. Balaustion's Adventure ; 
 Prince Hohensteil ; Fifine at the Fair. XII. Red Cotton 
 Night-Cap Country ; The Inn Album. XIII. Aristopha- 
 nes' Apology ; The Agamemnon of JEschylus. XIV. Pac- 
 chiarotto ; La Saisiaz ; Two Poets of Croisic. XV. Dra- 
 matic Idyls, First and Second Series ; Jocoseria. XVI. Fe- 
 rishtah's Fancies ; Parleyings. 
 
 It is worthy of note fhat Browning's complete works to 
 date were published in the successive numbers of the Offi- 
 cial Guide of the Chicago and Alton Railroad, beginning 
 with December, 1872, and ending with October, 1874. 
 They were edited by James Charlton, the general passenger 
 agent of the road. 
 
 Poetics. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 Polyxena. The queen of Charles in King Victor and 
 Kin'/ Charles, a young and noble woman. 
 
 Pompilia. The young girl married to Count Guido, 
 in The Ring and the Book, who was brutally treated 
 by him, and when she escaped was murdered with her par- 
 ents at his hands. The story of her life, as she tells it in 
 the seventh book of the poem, is one of the most pathetic 
 of narratives. She takes rank as one of the purest and most 
 beautiful of imaginative creations known in any language. 
 Poet-Lore, 1 : 263, contains a study of this character. 
 
 Ponte dell' Angelo, Venice. Asolando, 1889. See 
 Appendix. 
 
 Pope, The, in The Ring and the Book, to whom is re- 
 ferred the final decision in the murder trial of Count Guido. 
 His summing up of the case and decision for capital pun- 
 ishment forms the tenth book of the poem. See Poet-
 
 302 The Pope and the Net. 
 
 Lore, 1 : 309, for an interpretation of this character, by Pro- 
 fessor C. C. Shackford. 
 
 Pope, The, and the Net. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 In its main intent this poem would apply to Sixtus V. 
 better than to any other pope, and especially so when the 
 legendary accounts of him are taken into view. His father 
 was not a fisherman, and he did not hang up in his palace 
 a net ; but tradition does make him a quite different man 
 before and after his election as pope. Leti's biography of 
 Sixtus represents him as dissembling before his election, and 
 as using a hand of power after he had gained the object of 
 his ambition. Dr. Furnivall is of the opinion that Browning 
 invented the story of the poem. 
 
 The father of Sixtus V. was very poor, and the son rose 
 step by step to the position of cardinal, by hard study and 
 zeal. Leti describes him as " very humble and as faithfully 
 discharging the duties of his office. He dissembled very 
 cunningly, appeared to be very aged and weak, scarcely able 
 to stand or walk, was obsequious to all, and appeared to 
 have no ambitions. 
 
 " He very seldom stirred out, and when he went to mass 
 appeared so little concerned that one would have thought he 
 had no manner of interest in anything that happened within 
 those walls. But he was nevertheless advancing his inter- 
 est at a great rate, whilst he seemed to give himself no 
 trouble about it. ... He had lived many years in a very 
 obscure manner, with an attendance suitable to the modesty 
 and humility he made profession of. When he went to any 
 consistory or congregation he put on an air of mildness and 
 submission, and never was obstinate in supporting his own 
 opinion in contradiction to any other cardinal, but giving up 
 his own sentiments, he always suffered himself to be guided 
 by somebody else. . . . 
 
 " He had foreseen that there would be great contests and 
 divisions, and that the chiefs of the parties would concur in 
 the election of some very old and infirm cardinal, which 
 would give them time to lay their schemes better against 
 another vacancy. This was the true reason of his sham- 
 ming the imbecile, affecting to appear like a dying man. . . . 
 
 " When he perceived there was a sufficient number of votes 
 to secure his election he threw the staff, with which he used
 
 Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. 303 
 
 to support himself, into the middle of the chapel, stretched 
 himself up, and appeared taller, by almost a foot, than he 
 had done for several years. . . . 
 
 "At the very moment the scrutiny was ended he bid adieu 
 to that appearance of humility he had so long worn. . . . 
 Fernese said to him, ' Your Holiness seems a quite different 
 sort of a man from what you were a few hours ago.' ' Yes,' 
 said he, ' I was then looking for the keys of Paradise, which 
 obliged me to stoop a little ; but now I have found them, it 
 is time to look upwards, as I am arrived at the summit of 
 all human glory, and can climb no higher in this world.' " 
 
 Pope Sixtus the Fifth goes out from his palace, in 
 The Bean-Feast, to see how his people fare, and sits down 
 to eat beans with a poor man and his family. 
 
 Popularity. See SUPPLEMENT. 
 
 Porphyria's Lover. First printed in 1836, in The 
 Monthly Repository, edited by W. J. Fox, and published 
 in London by Charles Fox (vol. x. p. 43), the title being 
 Porphyria. It was signed " Z." In the third number 
 of Bells and Pomegranates, called Dramatic Lyrics, 1842, 
 this poem was reprinted as II. of Madhouse Cells. In 
 the Poetical Works of 1863 it was printed by itself, and 
 with the present title. Romances, 1863 ; Dramatic Ro- 
 mances, 1868. This poem has an interest as being the first 
 monologue which Browning wrote. 
 
 Pretty "Woman, A. Men and Women, 1855. Poet- 
 ical Works, 1863, under Lyrics ; 1868, in Dramatic Lyrics. 
 
 Prince Berthold. The lawful claimant of the duchy 
 held by Colombe, in Colombe's Birthday. 
 
 Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. Savior of So- 
 ciety. Published in December, 1871, by Smith, Elder & 
 Co., London. Pages, i.-iv., 1-148. 
 
 In this poem Hohenstiel-Schwangau represents France ; 
 but the name is formed from Hohen Schwangau, one of the 
 castles of the king of Bavaria. The Prince is Louis Napo- 
 leon III., and it is he who is speaking throughout the poem, 
 addressing a woman who has asked about his career. The 
 poem was written immediately after the expulsion of Louis 
 Napoleon from France by the Germans, and his retirement 
 to England. It is a study of his character, and the means 
 by which he came to be the emperor of the French. The
 
 304 Prince ffohenstiel-Schwangau. 
 
 poet does not adhere strictly to history, and he often dis- 
 cusses quite other moral problems than those which rightly 
 belong to the character of Napoleon III. 
 
 A curious interest connected with this poem is that which 
 grows out of the fact of Mrs. Browning's great admira- 
 tion for Napoleon III. She really regarded him, at the 
 time when he became the president of the French republic, 
 as a savior of society, and one from whom the greatest 
 things could be expected. She had " a truly marvelous be- 
 lief in Louis Napoleon's goodness and genius," says Mr. 
 John H. Ingram, her biographer. She idealized him, made 
 him a hero, looked to him for the salvation of Italy, and be- 
 lieved that he would realize her own glowing convictions 
 concerning democracy. Writing to one of her friends in 
 1852, Miss Mary R. Mitford gave an account of Mrs. 
 Browning's faith in Louis Napoleon : ; ' Mrs. Browning 
 says that the courage and activity shown in the coup d'etat 
 have never been surpassed. She says that the Prince says 
 of himself, that his life will have four phases, one all 
 rashness and impudence, necessary to make his name 
 known, and to make his own faults known to himself ; the 
 next, to combat with and triumph over anarchy ; the third, 
 the consolidation of France and pacification of Europe ; 
 and last, un coup de pistolet. The passion of parties is so 
 excited, that the only thing which renders the last improb- 
 able is the sort of fate by which men of that high and calm 
 courage often escape dangers by braving them." In a letter 
 to Miss Mitford is to be found these words written by Mrs. 
 Browning : " I wonder if the Empress pleases you as well 
 as the Emperor. I approve altogether and none the less, 
 that he has offended Austria in the mode of announcement. 
 Every cut of the whip on the face of Austria is an especial 
 compliment to me, or so I feel it. Let him lead the De- 
 mocracy to do its duty to the world, and use to the utmost 
 his great opportunities." In her Poems before Congress, 
 and in other poems about Italian independence, especially 
 in her Napoleon III. in Italy, she expressed her un- 
 bounded faith in Louis Napoleon. She did not live long 
 enough to have that faith destroyed. 
 
 At first, Browning shared in a measure the faith of his 
 wife, for he too was a lover of Italy, and anxiously hoped
 
 Prologue. 305 
 
 for its independence and unity. That early faith doubtless 
 had much to do in causing him to write his subtle analysis 
 of the character and career of the man who so thoroughly 
 disappointed his hopes. Later events than those of 1852 
 showed that Louis Napoleon was in some degree an adven- 
 turer, that he did not believe in his own democratic utter- 
 ances, and that he cared more for personal success and 
 glory than for the liberation of oppressed peoples. The 
 contrast between what he seemed to be, and what he proved 
 to be, led the poet into his study of a character so well 
 adapted to his love of eccentric and complex personalities. 
 
 Of the description of the succession of Roman high priests 
 on page 375, Mrs. Orr says : " Mr. Browning desires me to 
 say that he has been wrong in associating this custom with 
 the little temple by the river Clitumnus, which he describes 
 from personal knowledge. That to which the tradition re- 
 fers stood by the lake of Nemi." 
 
 In number eight of The Browning Society's Papers, 
 2 : 119, is a study of this poem by C. H. Herford ; and in 
 number eleven is a study by Joseph King. Both of these 
 will be found very helpful in the analysis and interpretation 
 of the poem. Also The Neiv Englander, 33 : 493 ; The 
 Examiner, Dec. 23, 1871 ; The Academy, G. A. Simcox, 
 Jan. 15, 1872. 
 
 Prologue. Ferishtah's Fancies. The valley of the 
 Aosta, in which this poem was written, is in the northern 
 part of Piedmont. Gressony is a village in this valley. The 
 ortolan is a song bird of Europe, and here refers to the 
 Emberiza hortulana, or garden bunting, which is very com- 
 mon in Haly. This particular ortolan is not a songster, but 
 is greatly valued for food. These birds are captured in 
 great numbers, artificially fattened, and prepared for the 
 table in the manner described in the poem. When fattened 
 the ortolan is a mere lump of fat, of a luscious flavor, and 
 is highly prized by gourmands. 
 
 Prologue. Pacchiarotto. Given in the Second Series 
 of Selections, 1880, under the title, A Wall. Mrs. Orr 
 says it " is a fanciful expression of the ideas of impediment 
 visible and invisible, which may be raised by the aspect of 
 a brick wall ; such a one, perhaps, as projects at a right 
 angle to the window of Mr. Browning's study, and was be-
 
 306 Prospice. 
 
 fore him when he wrote." See Rolfe's Select Poems for 
 comments and notes. 
 
 Prospice. Dramatis Personce, 1864. 
 
 This title means " Looking forward." The poem was 
 written in the autumn succeeding the death of Mrs. Brown- 
 ing, and it is the poet's expression of his strong faith in a 
 personal immortality. His faith in a life beyond death ap- 
 pears in Apparent Failure, Pisgah Sights, Evelyn Hope, 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra, Jochanan Hakkadosh, La Saisiaz, Rev- 
 erie, and other poems. In these poems, as well as in Pro- 
 spice, his manner is dramatic and poetical, but the idea is 
 quite as distinct as and more emphatic than in plain prose. 
 
 He has also spoken in prose. To a friend, not long before 
 his death, he said : " Death, death ! It is this harping on 
 death I despise so much, this idle and often cowardly as 
 well as ignorant harping ! Why should we not change like 
 everything else ? In fiction, in poetry, French as well as 
 English, and, I am told, in American art and literature, the 
 shadow of death call it what you will, despair, negation, 
 indifference is upon us. But what fools who talk thus ! 
 Why, amico mio, you know as well as I that death is life, 
 just as our daily, our momentarily, dying body is none the 
 less alive and ever recruiting new forces of existence. With- 
 out death, which is our crape-like churchyardy word for 
 change, for growth, there could be no prolongation of that 
 which we call life. Pshaw ! it is foolish to argue upon such 
 a thing even. For myself, I deny death as an end of any- 
 thing. Never say of me that I am dead." 
 
 At an earlier period, and to another friend, he said : " If 
 there is anything I hold to, it is that : why, I know I shall 
 meet my dearest friends again ! " 
 
 In 1876 a lady who believed herself to be dying wrote 
 to the poet to thank him for the help she had found in his 
 poems, especially Rabbi Ben Ezra and Abt Vogler ; and 
 he sent her a reply which indicates how strong was his 
 faith : " It would ill become me to waste a word on my own 
 feelings, except inasmuch as they can be common to us both, 
 in such a situation as you describe yours to be, and which, 
 by sympathy, I can make mine by the anticipation of a few 
 years at most. It is a great thing, the greatest, that a hu- 
 man being should have passed the probation of life, and
 
 Protus. 307 
 
 sum up its experience in a witness to the power and love of 
 God. I dare congratulate you. All the help I can offer, 
 in my poor degree, is the assurance that I see ever more 
 reason to hold by the same hope and that by no means in 
 ignorance of what has been advanced to the contrary ; and 
 for your sake I would wish it to be true that I had so much 
 of genius as to permit the testimony of an especially privi- 
 leged insight to come in aid of the ordinary argument. For 
 I know I, myself, have been aware of the communication of 
 something more subtle than a ratiocinative process, when 
 the convictions of genius have thrilled my soul to its depths, 
 as when Napoleon, shutting up the New Testament, said of 
 Christ : ' Do you know that I am an understander of men ? 
 Well, He was no man ! (Savez-vous que je me connais en 
 hommes ? Eh bien, celui-la ne fut pas un homme /) ' Or 
 as when Charles Lamb, in a gay fancy with some friends, 
 as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead 
 were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more, on 
 the final suggestion, ' And if Christ entered this room ? ' 
 changed his manner at once, and stuttered out, as his man- 
 ner was when moved, ' You see, if Shakespeare entered we 
 should all rise ; if He appeared we must kneel.' Or, not to 
 multiply instances, as when Dante wrote what I will tran- 
 scribe from my wife's Testament, wherein I recorded it 
 fourteen years ago, ' Thus I believe, thus I affirm, thus I 
 am certain it is, that from this life I shall pass to another 
 better, there, where that lady lives of whom my soul was 
 enamored.' " 
 
 Reference is made to Mrs. Browning at the end of the 
 poem, which expresses the depth of his conviction that he 
 would pass to that life where lives the lady of whom his 
 soul was enamored. 
 
 See Corson, Rolfe, and Kingsland. This poem was set to 
 music by C. V. Stanford ; London, Stanley, Lucas & Webber. 
 
 Protus. Men and Women, 1855. Romances, 1863 ; 
 Dramatic Romances, 1868. 
 
 This poem is wholly imaginary, but it accurately de- 
 scribes the rapid changes in rulers in the later Roman Em- 
 pire. The bust of the " baby-face with violets in the hair " 
 is an imaginary one. 
 
 Protus. The Tyrant to whom Cleon, in the poem with 
 that title, addresses his letter on the imperfections of life.
 
 308 TJie Queen. Rabbi ben Ezra. 
 
 Queen. The. In In a Balcony, a woman of middle 
 age, who loves Norbert, the lover of Constance. Although 
 married, the Queen proposes to secure a divorce, and then 
 to wed Norbert. When she learns that he loves and will 
 only wed Constance her anger is great ; and under its omi- 
 nous shadow this fragmentary drama closes. 
 
 Rabbi ben Ezra. Dramatis Persona', 1864. 
 
 Rabbi ben Ezra is called by the Encyclopaedia Britannica 
 Abenezra or Ibn Ezra, and also Abenare or Evenare ; and 
 it says his real name was Abraham ben Meir ben Ezra. 
 According to Friedlander his family name was Ibn Ezra, 
 and his surname Abraham. The same authority says his 
 father's name was Meir Ibn Ezra. Abraham Ibn Ezra 
 was born in Toledo, then a city of more intellectual life than 
 any other in Europe, at the end of the eleventh century, 
 different authorities giving the year as 1092 and 1093. 
 His family was poor, and he passed through many hard- 
 ships in youth. He studied hard, having a genius for 
 learning, and he found many opportunities for acquiring 
 knowledge in the city of his birth. He had excellent 
 teachers, and books were at hand. He early showed a taste 
 for poetry, and he wrote both liturgical and secular poems. 
 In a poem written in later life he says : 
 
 " In former days, when I was young, 
 I poured forth my soul in song ; 
 For fain would I, with poesy's jewels 
 Adorn my own, my Hehrew nation." 
 
 His learning drew to him pupils from far and near, who 
 propounded to him questions on a great variety of subjects. 
 Among his intimate friends was the principal Hebrew poet 
 of the Middle Ages, Jehudah Hallevi. Tradition says that 
 Ibn Ezra was the son-in-law of Hallevi, and tells a romantic 
 tale of how the daughter was won. Friedlander tells this 
 story in his introduction to Ibn Ezra's Commentary on 
 Isaiah; and it is somewhat differently related in a paper 
 on Hallevi in the Papers of the Society of Hebrew Litera- 
 ture, for 1886. 
 
 Ibn Ezra evidently had no gift for prospering in worldly 
 matters ; he was too much the student. He found it diffi- 
 cult to provide for his family and to establish a home. He 
 was often discouraged and poured out his grief in poetry ;
 
 Rabbi ben Ezra. 309 
 
 but he was also full of trust in God, strong in love of liis 
 people, witty, lively, and alert in mind. The unsettled con- 
 dition of affairs in Toledo, owing to the contests between 
 Moors and Christians, caused him to leave that city. He 
 went with his son Isaac to Damascus, where they parted ; 
 but the Holy Land was probably the main object of his 
 Eastern travels. Little is definitely known of his travels, 
 but he seems to have been in Egypt, Arabia, possibly even 
 Persia and India. He also traveled in France, Italy, and 
 England, many of his works having been produced on his 
 journeys through those countries. Friedlander says, " It 
 would seem that he came to Africa together with Rabbi 
 Jehudah Halle vi, when the latter was on his way to the Holy 
 Land. An anecdote represents him as visiting Egypt at 
 the time when the great philosopher Maimonides was living 
 there. . . . But little is said in his commentaries on the 
 Bible of his observations and investigations in Africa. He 
 gives some interesting information about the Nile, the posi- 
 tion of Raamses, the Red Sea, etc. In Arabia he tasted 
 the so-called manna, and convinced himself by experiments 
 that it was quite different from that heavenly manna which 
 God gave the Israelites during their wanderings through the 
 Arabian desert. While staying in Tiberias in Palestine, he 
 devoted himself to the study of old manuscripts of the Bible, 
 and had conferences with the elders of the congregation on 
 that subject. Tiberias was certainly not the only town in 
 Palestine which he visited, but it is doubtful whether he ven- 
 tured upon entering the Holy City, which at the time when a 
 Christian sovereign ruled in it would not offer to the Jewish 
 pilgrim any protection or safety. There are some critics, 
 both of the old and modern school, who are of the opinion 
 that Ibn Ezra never was in Jerusalem, because his remarks 
 touching its topography are based on imagination rather 
 than on personal investigation, and appear to be in direct 
 opposition to the results of modern scientific researches. . . . 
 " Even from the scanty remarks which we find in his 
 commentaries, we may conclude how attentively he observed 
 everything in the countries through which he traveled. He 
 studied everywhere the character and customs of the people, 
 their dress, and food. . . . His remarks on the Nile, on the 
 Mediterranean, the difference of time between London or
 
 310 Rabli ben Ezra. 
 
 other places and Jerusalem, and similar interesting obser- 
 vations, show that he made himself well acquainted with 
 the physical, mathematical, and political geography of the 
 various countries through which he passed. It need hardly 
 be said, that the condition of the Jews, the opinion and 
 knowledge which other people had of his brethren, were 
 matters of great interest to Ibn Ezra. A few remarks on 
 that point tell us how strange and sorrowful the results of 
 his researches. are, and how much he himself must have 
 suffered as a Jewish traveler. 
 
 "A curious anecdote is related in connection with his 
 travels. It is said, that once when he was on board a vessel 
 with some of his pupils, a raging storm compelled the cap- 
 tain to throw every ninth man overboard ; by means of an 
 algebraical formula, which his mathematical knowledge had 
 discovered, he placed himself and his party in such a posi- 
 tion that the fatal number never reached one of them ; but 
 neither the plan of the captain nor the counter-plot of Ibn 
 Ezra is sufficiently known." 
 
 Ibn Ezra found a home for some years in Italy, and he 
 lived in Home, Lucca, Mantua, and Salerno. Rome disap- 
 pointed him with the ignorance of its inhabitants and the 
 incapacity of the pope. He devoted himself to his studies 
 and to literary production for some months in that city, his 
 commentaries on the Bible being commenced there. His 
 books on Ecclesiastes and Job were published while he was 
 there, and were well received by his people. Friedlander 
 says, " He worthily used the ample opportunities given in 
 these works for the display of his talents, experience, and 
 knowledge. His style and mode of witticism, his principles 
 and arguments, must have been entirely new to his brethren 
 in Italy, where the study of the Talmud and Midrash, and 
 the style of Kalir's poetry, seems to have obtained the vic- 
 tory over the exegetical, grammatical, philosophical, and 
 poetical works of the Spanish school. We are not informed 
 how far he succeeded in enlisting among the Italian Jewish 
 communities the attention and respect due to these branches 
 of learning ; but this is certain, that he found friends and 
 admirers, who eagerly listened to his instruction, and gladly 
 provided for his livelihood." 
 
 In Lucca Ibn Ezra remained for a longer period, and he
 
 Rabbi ben Ezra. 311 
 
 called it his residence. There he wrote on astronomy and 
 mathematics, and there he produced his commentary on 
 Isaiah. A severe illness came upon him, which caused him 
 to make a vow that if he recovered he would write a com- 
 mentary on the Pentateuch. This work he began at the 
 age of sixty-four, but he completed it, and then rewrote it. 
 This commentary is regarded as the most original and 
 learned of all his writings. 
 
 After this he visited England and lived for some time in 
 London. His fame had preceded him, and he was welcomed 
 by his brethren. While in London he wrote a pamphlet on 
 the study of the Law and the nature of the Divine Com- 
 mandments, and another on the time when the Sabbath day 
 commences. The first of these works was written for " a 
 certain Salomon," who is described by him as being " a 
 man of truth, upright, and God-fearing." After leaving 
 London he returned to France, where he had been for some 
 time previous to his visit to England ; and there he con- 
 tinued his literary labors. In the south of France, at 
 Bezieres and Rhodez, he lived honored and respected by 
 his people ; and under these happy auspices his commen- 
 taries were continued. Ibn Ezra died at the age of seventy- 
 five. One authority says he died at Rome, Jan. 23, 1167 ; 
 but the Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the date as 1168. 
 Friedlander says he died in Kalahorra, on the frontier of 
 Navarre, as some report, or in Rome according to other 
 authorities. 
 
 Through all the years of his wanderings he was very 
 busy as a writer, gaining a wide fame as a theologian, 
 philosopher, physician, astronomer, mathematician, and poet. 
 He wrote a work on astronomy, another on the Talmud, 
 and he was especially able as a writer on Hebrew grammar. 
 His great work was a series of Commentaries on the Old 
 Testament, including all its books, though a few of these do 
 not now exist. The writer in the Encyclopaedia Britannica 
 says his " commentaries are acknowledged to be of great 
 value ; he was the first who raised Biblical exegesis to the 
 rank of a science, interpreting the text according to its literal 
 sense, and illustrating it from cognate languages." He 
 usually wrote in the Jewish or vulgar dialect of the Hebrew, 
 but he was familiar with the classical Hebrew, as well as
 
 312 BabU ben Ezra. 
 
 with Aramaic and Arabic. His style was elegant, but con- 
 cise, occasionally epigrammatic, and sometimes obscure. 
 He was a strong thinker, his works show a philosophical 
 turn of mind ; and he was intimate with the natural sciences, 
 as they were taught in his day, and especially among the 
 Moors and Arabs. He had a leaning towards astrology, as 
 nearly all men interested in physical science then had, for 
 astronomy was then but another name for astrology ; but he 
 was an acute and inquiring observer. He was in the habit, 
 when on his travels, of lecturing at the places where he 
 stopped on grammar, theology, astronomy, and other sub- 
 jects. In England Joseph Mandeville was in this way one 
 of his pupils. 
 
 Ibn Ezra found in Platonism, as modified first by the 
 Neo-Platonists and then by the Arabian thinkers, the basis 
 of his philosophy. He believed that the universe contains 
 an ideal element, which never passes away ; and also a 
 material element, which is subject to constant change and 
 destruction. What to Plato was of the nature of reason or 
 mental activity was to Ibn Ezra of the nature of spiritual 
 existences. To him the ideals were purely spiritual, in- 
 visible, everlasting ; also they occupy the heaven of 
 heavens, and are the models after which the universe is 
 formed. In his cosmology these ideals or angelic creatures 
 create the universe and govern it, as the deputies of God. 
 Friedlander says that to Ibn Ezra "the ideals bear a strong 
 resemblance to the fixed, eternal laws of nature, by which 
 the Cosmos is regulated ; but on the other hand they seem 
 to participate in the properties of the Biblical angels, and to 
 be charged with executing the decrees of the Almighty." 
 God, the. ideals, and the material world, are related to each 
 other as genera, species and individua. In this way he 
 held to the immanence of God, for God creates and sustains 
 all things. 
 
 Man is a microcosm, created in the image of God, and 
 solely by the will of the Almighty. This makes man unlike 
 all other created beings, for he owes his supremacy to the 
 soul, to his being of like nature with God. Man has a 
 double nature ; he is spiritual and he is material. As a 
 spiritual being he has free will ; as a material being he has 
 desire, lust, and passion. Will is beset with many material
 
 Rabbi ben Ezra. 313 
 
 temptations, but through its freedom it is able to overcome 
 them. The following summary of Ibn Ezra's teachings 
 about the soul will be of interest in connection with Brown- 
 ing's poem : " In the presence of the claims of the divine 
 and immortal element of our existence, the well-being of the 
 earthly and mortal body cannot be the leading object of all 
 our thoughts and actions. The soul, only a stranger and 
 prisoner in the body, filled with a burning desire to return 
 home to its heavenly abode, certainly demands our principal 
 attention. If we succeed in securing for the soul its perfec- 
 tion and happiness, these will be enjoyed forever ; if we fail, 
 the loss is much more to be deplored than the forfeited well- 
 being of the body. 
 
 " The greatest happiness of the soul is said to consist in 
 the highest and most perfect knowledge of God. The soul 
 descends from heaven as a tabula rasa, a blank, which is 
 to be filled up with the knowledge gathered here on earth 
 during a sojourn in the body. On the attainment of this 
 object the soul's true happiness depends ; in case of success, 
 the soul is received into the chorus of angels which surround 
 the throne of the Almighty and delight in the splendor of 
 his everlasting glory. 
 
 " The power of determining the future of the soul is 
 entirely in the will of man. It must therefore be man's 
 primary duty to do everything by which his will may be 
 influenced in favor of his heavenly soul. . . . The know- 
 ledge of God cannot be attained by direct means ; it can 
 only indirectly be approached by the study of his works in 
 the universe, and especially in man, the microcosm. By 
 knowing ourselves, by considering how the invisible, incor- 
 poreal, immortal soul fills and governs the whole visible, 
 mutable body, we are by analogy enabled to conceive the 
 idea of an invisible, eternal Being, who fills and governs the 
 whole universe. The investigation of the origin, nature, and 
 aim of the soul is therefore indispensable to all who wish to 
 find the right path of life. . . . 
 
 " It is not so much the soul of the righteous that is to be 
 everlasting, as to use the figure of the tabula rasa applied 
 to the original state of the soul the divine writing in- 
 scribed thereon, that is to say, the knowledge acquired by 
 the soul during its connection with the body. ... So long as
 
 314 Rabbi ben Ezra. 
 
 the mind is on its road to perfection, gathering more and 
 more knowledge, subject and object are not identical ; but 
 when it arrives at the highest degree of perfection, it has 
 acquired that truth which includes all elements of human 
 knowledge. The soul is then like God, who in perceiving 
 anything, is the subject which perceives, the object per- 
 ceived, and the perception itself. When the mental faculties 
 of man reach this degree of perfection, they are no longer 
 a quality or action of the soul, they are the soul itself, in a 
 new form ; they are like an angel, ' cleaving unto the Most 
 High,' and participate, to some extent at least, in his divine 
 power. ... In the same way the soul which has acquired 
 a true knowledge of the Eternal, is believed to share in his 
 eternity, and to receive the reward which no eye except that 
 of the Eternal ever saw, but which ' he will bestow on those 
 who wait on him.' " 
 
 Dr. M. Friedlander has devoted five volumes to an expo- 
 sition of the writings of Ibn Ezra, and these are published 
 for The Society of Hebrew Literature, by Trubner & Co., 
 London. The first series of these volumes consists of three 
 works. The first contains The Commentary of Ibn Ezra 
 on Isaiah, edited from MSS., and translated, with notes, 
 introduction, and indexes. The introduction contains the 
 biography which has been condensed above. The second 
 volume contains the Anglican version of the book of the 
 Prophet Isaiah emended according to the commentary of 
 Ibn Ezra. The third volume contains the Hebrew text of 
 the commentary on Isaiah, edited according to manuscripts. 
 The second series consists of two volumes. The first volume 
 contains an account of the philosophy of Ibn Ezra, including 
 his cosmogony, anthropology, and theology ; also an essay 
 on the writings of Ibn Ezra, describing his commentaries, 
 where manuscripts of them may be found, the various 
 editions which have been printed, and much other rare 
 bibliographical information. It concludes with unedited 
 fragments of Ibn Ezra's commentaries, in Hebrew. The 
 second volume of this series treats of the connection of Ibn 
 Ezra's system of philosophy with that of his predecessors 
 and immediate successors. 
 
 Many of the manuscripts of Ibn Ezra's writings are con- 
 tained in English libraries. His commentaries have been
 
 Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. 315 
 
 frequently edited and quoted from by Biblical students 
 among the Hebrews. His commentary on Lamentations 
 was translated into English in 1615, that on Ruth in 1703, 
 and that on Shir hashshirim by H. J. Mathews, London, 
 1874. 
 
 The potter's wheel of 1. 26 is from Isaiah Ixiv. 8 and 
 Jeremiah xviii. 2-6. Francis Quarles, in his Emblems, 
 uses the same metaphor : 
 
 " Eternal Potter, whose blest hands did lay 
 My coarse foundation from a sod of clay 
 Thou know'st my slender vessel ' s apt to break : 
 Oh, mend what Thou hast made, what I have broke ; 
 Look, look, with gentle eyes, and in Thy day 
 Of vengeance, Lord, remember I am clay." 
 
 See Berdoe's Browning's Message to his Time ; Poet- 
 Lore, 1 : 57 ; Rolfe's Select Poems, and Corson's Introduc- 
 tion. Under the title Grow Old Along with Me the 
 first part of this poem has been set to music by Georgiana 
 Schuyler ; New York, G. Schirmer. 
 
 Rene Gentilhomme. The first of the poets in Two 
 Poets of Croisic, which see. 
 
 Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, or Turf and 
 Towers. Published by Smith, Elder & Co., London, 
 1873 ; at the end the poem is dated " January 23, 1873." 
 Pages, i.-vi., 1-282. Dedicated " To Miss Thackeray," who 
 has since become Mrs. Richmond Ritchie. 
 
 Mrs. Orr thus describes the manner in which the poem 
 came to have its name : " The narrative is addressed to 
 Miss Annie Thackeray [the novelist, and daughter of W. 
 M. Thackeray] ; and its supposed occasion is that of a 
 meeting which took place at St. Rambert actually St. 
 Aubin between her and Mr. Browning, in the summer of 
 1872. She had laughingly called the district " White Cot- 
 ton Night-Cap Country," from its sleepy appearance, and 
 the universal white cap of even its male inhabitants. Mr. 
 Browning, being acquainted with the tragedy of Clairvaux 
 [which gave origin to the poem], thought Red Cotton Night- 
 Cap Country would be more appropriate ; and adopted it 
 for his story, as Miss Thackeray had adopted hers for one 
 which she promised to write." 
 
 The story told in the poem' is one of actual occurrence,
 
 316 Red Cotton Night- Cap Country. 
 
 the particulars of which came to the knowledge of Brown- 
 ing during the summer of 1872, a part of which he spent in 
 that part of Normandy which lies south of the mouth of the 
 Seine, in the province of Calvados. The chief actor in this 
 bit of real life was one Antoine Mellerio, a Parisian jew- 
 eler. He formed an illicit connection with Anna de Beau- 
 pre* ; and between them there grew up a very strong and 
 persistent affection. He chose to live outside Paris rather 
 than abandon her, and became a resident of St. Aubin. 
 This illicit relation gradually unfolded itself into the tra- 
 gedy which is described by Browning, ending with the sui- 
 cide of Mellerio. 
 
 In the poem as written the names of the actors and 
 places were correctly given, but when the poem was being 
 revised in proof-sheets they were changed from prudential 
 reasons, because the last act in the tragedy occurred only a 
 brief period prior to the writing of the poem. 
 
 Browning submitted the proof-sheets of the poem to his 
 friend Lord Coleridge, then the English Attorney-General, 
 afterwards Chief Justice, who thought that a case of libel 
 might lie for what was said, however improbable such ac- 
 tion might be. He accordingly changed the names to 
 fictitious ones. It was the year following this, and the pub- 
 lication of the poem, that the appeal against the judgment 
 in favor of the will of Mellerio was dismissed, and the 
 case finally set at rest in harmony with the conclusion 
 reached by the poet. 
 
 In the second edition of her Hand-Book Mrs. Orr gives 
 the correct names, as furnished to her by Browning him- 
 self. These names will be found on the following pages of 
 the Riverside edition of 1889 : 
 
 1. The Firm Miranda = Mellerio Brothers. 
 
 2. St. Rambert = St. Aubin. Joyeux, Joyous-Gard = 
 Lion, Lionesse. 
 
 3. Vire = Caen. 
 
 9. St. Rambertese = St. Aubinese. 
 
 10. Londres = Douvres. 
 
 11. London = Dover. La Roche = Courcelle. Monlieu 
 = Bernieres. Villeneuve = Langrune. Pons = Luc. La 
 Ravissante = La Delivrande. 
 
 12. Raimbaux = Bayeux. Morillon = Hugonin. Mire- 
 court = Bonnechose.
 
 Red Cotton Night- Cap Country. 317 
 
 13. New York = Madrid. 
 
 15. Clairvaux = Tailleville. Gonthier = Be"ny. Rous- 
 seau = Voltaire. Le'once = Antoine. 
 
 19. Of "Firm Miranda, London and New York" = 
 " Mellerio Brothers " ; Meller, people say. 
 
 28. Bare Vissante = Dell Yvrande. Aldabert = Regno- 
 bert. Eldobert = Ragnobert. Mailleville = Beaudoin. 
 Chaumont = Quelen. Vertgalant = Talleyrand. 
 
 31. Ravissantish = Ddlivrandish. 
 
 35. Clara de Millefleurs = Anna de Beaupre*. Coliseum 
 Street = Miromesnil Street. 
 
 38. Steiner = Mayer. Commercy = Larocy. Sierck = 
 Metz. 
 
 39. Muhlhausen = Debacker. Carlino Centofanti = 
 Miranda di Mongino. 
 
 42. Portugal = Italy. 
 47. Vaillant = Muriel. 
 
 52. Thirty-three = Twenty-five. 
 
 53. Beaumont = Pasquier. 
 58. Sceaux = Garges. 
 
 66. The "guide " recommended to Miranda was M. 
 Joseph Milsand, who was always at St. Aubin during the 
 bathing season, and who was an old friend of Browning's. 
 
 70. Luc de la Maison Rouge = Jean de la Becquetiere. 
 Claise = Vire. Maude = Anne. 
 
 71. Dionysius = Eliezer. Scholastica ^ Elizabeth. 
 74. Twentieth = Thirteenth. 
 
 83. Fricquot = Picot. 
 
 In the edition of 1888 two of the names have been 
 changed to the correct ones. On page 15 Madrilene was 
 Turinese in the first edition. On page 43 Gustave was 
 Alfred in the first edition. 
 
 The conflict in the mind of Antoine Mellerio between 
 illicit love and Ultramontane Christianity is a part of the 
 actual history which is the basis of the poem. In a mea- 
 sure the poem may be regarded as a satire on the exagger- 
 ated religion then so much in vogue in France, which wor- 
 shiped images, made pilgi'images, and expected miracles. 
 What is ascribed to Miranda in this direction applies in a 
 large degree to that remarkable movement towards medise- 
 valism in religion.
 
 318 Red Cotton Night- Cap Country. 
 
 The home of Mellerio is St. Aubin, a small bathing vil- 
 lage in Calvados. Henry Blackburn, in his Normandy 
 Picturesque, says that " Nine or ten minor sea-bathing 
 places are situated north of Caen and Bayeux, in the fol- 
 lowing order : Lion, Luc, Langrune, St. Aubin, Courseulles, 
 Aramanches, Aruelles, Vurville, and Grandcamp, where ac- 
 commodation is more or less limited, and board and lodging 
 does not cost more than seven or eight francs a day in the 
 season. They are generally spoken of in the French guide- 
 books as ' fit only for fathers of families.' St. Aubin, 
 about twelve miles from Caen, is one of the best." 
 
 Mrs. Katherine S. Macquoid's Through Normandy de- 
 scribes several of the places mentioned in the poem. " Dili- 
 gences go several times a day [from Caen] to Courseulles 
 and Douvres where there is a very remarkable church, 
 and also close by the chapel of La Delivrande to Ber- 
 nieres, St. Aubin, Lion, Langrune, Trouville, Villers, Houl- 
 gate, Beuzeval, Cabourg-sur-Dives ; and many Caennais 
 go out to one or other of the smaller of these watering- 
 places several times in the week for bathing. . . . 
 
 " There are some very interesting Romanesque churches 
 in the small watering-places in the neighborhood of Caen. 
 At Luc there is a nave of the twelfth century, and at Lion- 
 sur-Mer a remarkable and lofty tower of the same date. 
 At Lion, too, there is a charming chateau of the Renais- 
 sance period : it is very elegant, with its tall slated roof 
 and picturesque tourelles, its bold staircase tower, and lofty 
 chimneys. 
 
 " The famous pilgrimage church of La Delivrande, at 
 Douvres [a little to the north of Caen], called Notre Dame 
 de la Delivrande, first built in the twelfth century, has 
 been mostly rebuilt, but there is a little of the old work left 
 in the arcades north and west. A quaint little book, dated 
 1642, says that ' Robert Cenalis, Bishop of Avranches, 
 affirms that the first chapel of Delivrande was built by St. 
 Regnobert, the disciple and successor of St. Exupere, the 
 first Bishop of Bayeux, to which city he was also the apos- 
 tle, being sent there by his master, St. Clement, disciple 
 and contemporary of St. Peter. But during the reign of 
 Louis I., King of France, Norman barbarians and idola- 
 ters came from Norway, accompanied by the Danes, and
 
 Red Cotton Night- Cap Country. 319 
 
 made a descent into Gaul in the year 830, and after this 
 made several other inroads, ravaging all Neustria. They 
 profaned and burned all churches. . . . 
 
 " ' Now the image of Notre-Dame, which was in the chapel 
 of La Delivrande, remained buried under the ruins of the 
 said chapel about two hundred years, that is to say, from 
 the year 830 till the time of William II. of this name, who 
 began to govern at the beginning of the eleventh century. 
 
 " ' There lived at that time a lord named Baldwin, Count 
 of the Bessin [Caen, Bayeux, and St. Lo], who held his 
 barony of Doiivres of the Bishop of Bayeux, the shepherd 
 of which lord perceived that one of his rams often retired 
 from the flock and ran to a place near the pasture, there 
 with its foot and its horns struck and scraped the earth, and 
 then, being tired, lay down on the place where is now the 
 image of the Virgin in the chapel of the Delivrande. This 
 ram never ate, and yet it was the fattest of the flock. The 
 count, thinking that this was a warning sent from heaven, 
 went to the spot, together with the nobility, with a holy 
 hermit, and with a great crowd of people who ran thither 
 from surrounding places. 
 
 " ' He commanded that the trench which the ram had be- 
 gun to make should be laid bare, and in it was found the 
 image of Notre-Dame, more than eight hundred years old. 
 This image was carried in solemn procession with universal 
 joy by all the people into the church of Doiivres, but was 
 soon taken back by an angel to the place where it had been 
 found. Then the Count, understanding the Divine will, 
 founded and caused to be built on the spot the chapel, which 
 now exists, and gave it to messieurs of Bayeux.' 
 
 " This little book goes on to narrate the miraculous cures 
 wrought by Notre-Dame de la Delivrande ; also gives rea- 
 sons for the presence of images in churches reasons why 
 they are venerable and how they are to be regarded rea- 
 sons why they are to be kissed and touched with devotion 
 reasons for pilgrimages, etc. 
 
 " La Delivrande is still a favorite shrine for pilgrimages, 
 and the church is filled with votive offerings and tablets. 
 
 " At Langrune there is an interesting church of the thir- 
 teenth century, with a lovely tapering spire ; and near Ber- 
 nieres there is a very curious sunken road."
 
 320 The Return of the Druses. 
 
 Caen is a prosperous city in the western part of Nor- 
 mandy, the capital of the department of Calvados. It is a 
 college town, and much resembles Oxford. 
 
 Blackburn's Normandy Picturesque, Macquoid's Through 
 Normandy, and CasselTs Normandy will give farther in- 
 formation as to the region described in the poem. It is one 
 of the most interesting localities in France. Mrs. Macquoid 
 gives many pages to the places mentioned in the poem, and 
 describes the country with much minuteness. 
 
 See Alexander. Also The Spectator, May, 1873 ; Penn 
 Monthly, 4 : 657 ; The Nation, 17 : 116 ; The Contem- 
 porary Review, Mrs. Orr, 22 : 87 ; The Athenceum, May 
 10, 1873. 
 
 Bephan. Asolando, 1889. See Appendix. 
 
 Respectability. Men and Women, 1855. Lyrics, 
 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 " These two unconventional Bohemian lovers," says Pro- 
 fessor Corson, " strolling together at night, at their own 
 sweet will, see down the court along which they are stroll- 
 ing, three lampions flare, which indicate some big place or 
 other where the respectables do congregate ; and the woman 
 says to the companion, with a humorous sarcasm, Put for- 
 ward your best foot ! that is, we must be very correct pass- 
 ing along here in this brilliant light. By the lovers are 
 evidently meant George Sand (the speaker) and Jules 
 Sandeau, with whom she lived in Paris, after she left her 
 husband, M. Dudevant. They took just such unconven- 
 tional night-strolls together, in the streets of Paris." 
 
 Nettleship's Robert Browning : Essays and Thoughts, 
 gives an interesting interpretation. 
 
 Return of the Druses, The. A Tragedy. Written 
 in 1840, in five days, and in manuscript was at first named 
 " Mansoor the Hierophant." Bells and Pomegranates, 
 number four, 1843. As first published the title was thus 
 given : The Return of the Druses. A Tragedy, in Five 
 Acts. By Robert Browning. Author of "Paracelsus." 
 Time 14 Poetical Works, 1863, in second volume, 
 with Tragedies and Other Plays. The action of the play 
 occupies but one day. 
 
 The Druses are a tribe or religious sect who inhabit the 
 Lebanon, Syria, to the northward of Palestine. They show
 
 The Return of the Druses. 321 
 
 a remarkable amalgamation of races Persian, Arab, 
 Koord, arid perhaps Crusader, together with other admix- 
 tures. Their religion is also a combination of many faiths, 
 including Mohammedanism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, 
 Judaism, and Gnosticism. 
 
 The Druse religion originated with Hakem Biamr Allah, 
 or Bemrillah, the sixth Fatimite Caliph of Egypt. He was 
 a cruel man, and given to deeds of the most fanatical char- 
 acter. He was of a persecuting nature, opposed to intem- 
 perance and licentiousness, and full of zeal for religious 
 reformation. When he had reigned twenty-one years, in 
 the year 407 of the Hegira, 1016 of the Christian era, he 
 announced himself as the tenth incarnation of the Spirit of 
 God. Associated with him in the promulgation of the new 
 faith were Hamze' and Darazi, Mohammedan mystics, who 
 are thought by some writers to have been the real founders 
 of the Druse religion. Bemrillah gave up his old religion, 
 proclaimed toleration, and began to disseminate the new 
 doctrines. Darazi set forth the Druse doctrines in the 
 mosque at Cairo, with all the power of the Caliph's sanction 
 and influence, but the people nearly mobbed him. The 
 faith was then secretly promulgated in Cairo, and many be- 
 came converts. Hamze', who was the vizier of Bemrillah, 
 zealously labored in its behalf, and with success. He de- 
 veloped the doctrinal and ritualistic features of the new 
 faith, and combined with its Mohammedan teachings many 
 doctrines from Moses, the Gospels, and the Sufi allegories. 
 
 In the meantime, Darazi was sent by Bemrillah to the 
 Lebanon, where he established the faith. It is said he 
 gave his name to the Druse people, but another origin for 
 the word is given by some writers. He attempted to act 
 for himself, as an independent prophet, but the people did 
 not favor this, and he perished in a religious quarrel. 
 
 Bemrillah was bitterly opposed in Cairo by those who 
 did not accept him as an incarnation of God, a doctrine 
 especially offensive to the Mohammedans. He was proba- 
 bly secretly assassinated ; at least, he suddenly disappeared, 
 and no trace of him could be found. His disappearance 
 takes a prominent place in the Druse conception of the in- 
 carnation. After his death the new faith made no headway 
 in Egypt, and was soon wholly transferred to the Lebanon.
 
 322 The Return of the Druses. 
 
 There it has maintained itself with a remarkable persist- 
 ence ever since. The Druse people now number between 
 fifty thousand and one hundred thousand people, and per- 
 haps have never exceeded the latter number. They are an 
 independent nation, speaking the Arabic language, and have 
 developed an extensive literature of their own, mostly reli- 
 gious and theological. Almost nothing was known about 
 them until their quarrel with the Maronites in 1843, which 
 was again renewed in 1860. The following summary of 
 the Druse faith is given by Colonel Churchill in the volume 
 which he devotes to that people : 
 
 " To acknowledge one only God, without endeavoring to 
 penetrate the nature of his being and attributes, (indeed the 
 Druses are so far from admitting attributes in God, that his 
 Intelligence, his Will, his Justice, his Word, are, in their 
 system, created beings and ministers of God, his first pro- 
 ductions ;) to confess that he can neither be comprehended 
 by the senses nor described by language ; to believe that the 
 Divinity has made itself manifest to men, at different 
 epochs, in the human form, without partaking of human 
 weakness and frailty ; and that the Divinity appeared for 
 the last time, in the fifth century of the Hegira of Moham- 
 med, under the figure of Hakem-biamar Allah, and that, 
 after that, no other manifestation is to be expected ; that 
 Hakem disappeared in the year 411 of the Hegira, or 1021 
 A. D., to prove the faith of his servants, and to give occa- 
 sion for the falling off of apostates, who had only embraced 
 the true religion from worldly motives ; that he will re- 
 appear in due time in glory and majesty, to triumph over all 
 his enemies, to extend his empire over the whole earth, and 
 to give the kingdom to his faithful worshipers. 
 
 " To believe the Universal Intelligence is the first of 
 God's creations, the only direct and immediate produc- 
 tion of his Almighty power ; that he has appeared on earth 
 simultaneously with each manifestation of the Divinity ; 
 and that, lastly, in the time of Hakem, he took the figure 
 of Hamze*, the son of Ali, the son of Ahmed ; that it is by 
 his ministry and agency that all things have been produced ; 
 that he alone possesses the knowledge of all truths ; that he 
 is the first Minister of the true religion ; that it is he who 
 communicates, directly or indirectly, to other ministers, and
 
 The Return of the Druses. 323 
 
 to simple believers, but in different degrees and proportions, 
 the knowledge and the grace which he receives immediately 
 from the Divinity, and of which he is the sole medium ; 
 that he alone has direct access to the Deity, standing as 
 Mediator between the Supreme Being and the great family 
 of mankind. 
 
 " To acknowledge that Hamze it is to whom Hakem will 
 intrust his sword, in the last day, to smite all his adversa- 
 ries, to make his religion triumphant, and to distribute re- 
 wards and punishments to every one according to his 
 deserts ; to know the other ministers of the Unitarian reli- 
 gion, and the rank and offices which belong to each of them 
 individually, and to render them that obedience and sub- 
 mission which is due. 
 
 " To confess that all souls were created by the Universal 
 Intelligence ; that the number of human beings is always 
 the same, neither increasing nor decreasing ; but that 
 souls pass from one body to another ; that they rise and be- 
 come perfected in excellence, or deteriorate and become 
 lost and degraded, according to their love and attachment 
 to the truth, or their neglect and disregard of it ; to prac- 
 tice the seven commandments which the religion of Hamze' 
 imposes on his followers, and 'more especially those which in- 
 culcate a strict regard to truth in words, charity towards the 
 brethren, entire renunciation of all former modes of belief, 
 and complete and unreserved submission to the will of God. 
 
 " And, finally, to confess that all preceding religions what- 
 ever were but types, more or less complete, of the only true 
 religion, all their legal and ceremonial precepts and in- 
 junctions, but allegories ; and that the revelation of the 
 true religion necessarily induces the complete abolition of 
 all anterior ones. Such is an abridgment of the principal 
 points of belief laid down in the religion of the Druses, of 
 which Hamze' is the founder, and the followers of which 
 are called Unitarians." 
 
 The doctrine of incarnation is a cardinal one with the 
 Druses, and they teach that ten such manifestations have 
 appeared. These have been AH, Albar, Alya, Moill, Kaim, 
 Moezz, Aziz, Abou Zechariah, Mansour, and Hakem ; but 
 it is Hakem who has taken all these forms. At the end 
 of things he will come again to conquer the world and to
 
 324 The Return of the Druses. 
 
 establish the Druse faith. " These personifications," says 
 Churchill, " are called apparitions, joined to the epithets 
 Divine, Human, Royal, Celestial, and Sublime ; for in the 
 style of the Druses, the kingdom is the sublime doctrine of 
 the Unitarian religion, the same as in the Gospel the king- 
 dom of heaven is the doctrine of Jesus Christ, and the chil- 
 dren of the kingdom the disciples of that doctrine. The 
 human figures under which the Lord appeared are some- 
 times called ' places and envelopes,' but it is essential to ob- 
 serve, that these figures must not be confounded with the 
 Humanity of the Lord, which amidst all these changes is 
 always the same, and inseparably participates in all the 
 majesty and immutability of the Divinity. 
 
 " The idea of the Druses is, that the Lord's Humanity is 
 coeval with his Divinity ; and though for a time it was clothed 
 upon with the flesh, its incomprehensible and ineffable es- 
 sence remained ever the same ; and thus, if a Druse Ockal 
 be asked whether he believes that God became flesh, he 
 scouts the idea as impious and absurd, because in his mind 
 he draws this nice distinction, that God did not become 
 flesh, but assumed the veil of the flesh, in the same way as 
 a man putting on a robe does not become the robe." 
 
 Under the name of " Day "of Resurrection " the Druses 
 teach that a time will come when their faith will be publicly 
 manifested in the sight of all men, that all apostates and 
 unbelievers will be punished, and that they will enter into 
 glorious reward. Hakem will then enter upon a period of 
 triumph, when he will reign on the earth, and the Saints 
 will share in his kingdom. It is thought he will first appear 
 in China, but his triumph will be complete throughout the 
 earth. In this new order of things Hakem will appear as 
 the Lord God, and Hamze' will be manifested as his Mes- 
 siah or Word. A Druse book, as quoted by Churchill, thus 
 describes the coming of Hakem : 
 
 " As for us, we belong to the Lord, we put all our trust 
 in him, we keep ourselves firmly and immovably attached 
 to the Messiah (Hamze'), to be protected against the terrors 
 of that day, which the tongue must fail to describe ; of that 
 day when our hearts and our eyes will receive their perfect 
 recompense ; when our Lord Hakem will reveal himself to 
 his creatures, in a creature's form ; of that day when all
 
 The Return of the Druses. 325 
 
 spirits and souls will tremble for fear, and when our Lord 
 will show himself in his Glorified Humanity in great glory, 
 surrounded by an innumerable company of angels and arch- 
 angels, and will cause his Unity to be adored. All the ends 
 of the earth shall be submitted to him ; all heads shall bow 
 in humble submission before him ; all created substances 
 shall confess that he is Lord God, most holy, unto whom 
 belong Might, Majesty and Dominion, for ever and ever ! 
 Then a voice shall cry, To whom belongs the kingdom ? 
 and it shall be answered, It belongs to Hakem, who can 
 neither slumber nor sleep. The balances will be set, all 
 actions shall be judged, all resources shall be taken away 
 from liars and impostors ; the evil and shameful things 
 which were hidden shall be brought to light and exposed 
 before all eyes, and the true Messiah will render to each 
 soul the reward of its deeds. The upright and just will 
 enter into joy and felicity, as the price of their faith. 
 Then unbelievers will repent of the calumnies which they 
 have uttered against the Saints. For the Almighty power 
 shall have been made visible ; Truth shall have been mani- 
 fested ; discernment effected amongst men ; the days of 
 trial and tribulation shall have ended ; and those who be- 
 lieved shall hasten to enter into the Sanctuary of everlast- 
 ing joy, peace, and felicity." 
 
 None of the works consulted indicate that the Druses 
 were ever at any time located on an islet of the southern 
 Sporades, or that the faith has ever been accepted outside 
 of Egypt, Arabia, and Syria. The fierce conflict in 1843 
 between the Druses and the Maronites doubtless led to the 
 writing of this drama. 
 
 The following works are authorities on the Druses and 
 their religion : Druses of the Lebanon, G. W. Chasseaud ; 
 Recollections of the Druses of Lebanon, and Notes on their 
 Religion, H. H. M. Herbert, Earl of Caernarvon ; Mount 
 Lebanon : a Ten Years' Residence, Colonel C. H. Church- 
 ill; Researches into the Religions of Syria, Rev. John 
 Wortabet ; La Theoganie des Druses, H. Guys ; Expose de 
 la Religion des Druses, Silvestre de Sacy. It is quite 
 probable Browning drew from the last work for his know- 
 ledge of the Druses, as it was published in 1828. The best 
 and fullest exposition in English of the religion of the
 
 326 Reverie. Tlie Ring and the Book. 
 
 Druses is contained in the second volume of Colonel 
 Churchill's work, which is wholly devoted to their doctrines, 
 rites, and morality. A more recent work is that by the 
 Earl of Caernarvon. 
 
 See Alexander. In his Stories from Robert Browning, 
 Mr. F. M. Holland gives a brief account of the Druses, and 
 turns the drama into a prose story. In Miss Burt's Brown- 
 ing's Women Anael is discussed in the chapter headed 
 " The Picture of Faith." 
 
 Reverie. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 King and the Book, The. Published in London by 
 Smith, Elder & Co., with the author's name given as 
 " Robert Browning, M. A., Honorary Fellow of Balliol 
 College, Oxford." Vol. I., November, 1868; Vol. II., 
 December, 1868; Vol. III., January, 1869; Vol. IV., 
 February, 1869. Each volume contained three books. 
 
 A book found in Florence was the basis of this poem. 
 From personal information furnished by the poet, and from 
 a careful study of the book from which Browning drew his 
 information, Mrs. Orr wrote her account of the murder 
 trial which this poem describes. Her Hand-Book must be 
 drawn upon because of its accuracy, and because it gives 
 details important to an understanding of the poem, and not 
 elsewhere obtainable. 
 
 " Mr. Browning was strolling one day through a square 
 in Florence, the Piazza San Lorenzo, which is a standing 
 market for old clothes, old furniture, and old curiosities of 
 every kind, when a parchment-covered book attracted his 
 eye, from amidst the artistic or nondescript rubbish of one 
 of the stalls. It was the record of a murder which had 
 taken place in Rome, and bore inside it an inscription [in 
 Latin] which Mr. Browning thus transcribes [page 3] : 
 
 ' A Roman Murder-case : 
 Position of the entire criminal cause 
 Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman, 
 With certain Fonr the cut-throats in his pay, 
 Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death 
 By heading or hanging as befitted ranks, 
 At Rome on February Twenty-Two, 
 Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety-Eight : 
 Wherein it is disputed if, and when, 
 Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet 'scape 
 The customary forfeit.'
 
 The Ring and the Boole. 327 
 
 " The book proved, on examination, to contain the whole 
 history of the case, as carried on in writing, after the fashion 
 of those days : pleadings and counter-pleadings, the depo- 
 sitions of defendants and witnesses ; manuscript letters an- 
 nouncing the execution of the murderer, and the ' instru- 
 ment of the Definitive Sentence ' which established the 
 perfect innocence of the murdered wife : these various 
 documents having been collected and bound together by 
 some person interested in the trial, possibly the very Cen- 
 cini, friend of the Franceschini family, to whom the manu- 
 script letters are addressed. Mr. Browning bought the 
 whole for the value of eightpence, and it became the raw 
 material of what appeared four years later as The Ring 
 and the Book. 
 
 " This name is explained as follows : The stoiy of the 
 Franceschini case, as Mr. Browning relates it, forms a circle 
 of evidence to its one central truth ; and this circle was 
 constructed in the manner in which the worker in Etruscan 
 gold prepares the ornamental circlet which will be worn as 
 a ring. The pure metal is too soft to bear hammer or file ; 
 it must be mixed with alloy to gain the necessary power of 
 resistance. The ring once formed and embossed, the alloy 
 is disengaged, and a pure gold ornament remains. Mr. 
 Browning's material was also inadequate to his purpose, 
 though from a different cause. It was too hard. It was 
 ' pure crude fact,' secreted from the fluid being of the men 
 and women whose experience it had formed. In its existing 
 state it would have broken up under the artistic attempt 
 to weld and round it. He supplied an alloy, the alloy of 
 fancy, or as he also calls it of one fact more : this fact 
 being the echo of those past existences awakened within his 
 own. He breathed into the dead record the breath of his 
 own life ; and when his ring of evidence had re-formed, 
 first in elastic then in solid strength, here delicately incised, 
 there broadly stamped with human thought and passion, he 
 could cast fancy aside, and bid his readers recognize in 
 what he set before them unadulterated human truth. 
 
 " All this was not effected at once. The separate scenes 
 of the Franceschini tragedy .sprang to life in Mr. Brown- 
 ing's imagination within a few hours of his reading the book. 
 He saw them reenacted from his terrace at Casa Guidi on
 
 328 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 a sultry summer night every place and person projected, 
 as it seemed, against the thundery sky but his mind did 
 not yet weave them into a whole. The drama lay by him 
 and in him till the unconscious inspiration was complete ; 
 and then, one day in London, he felt what he thus de- 
 scribes [page 18] : 
 
 ' A spirit laughs and leaps through every limb, 
 And lights my eye, and lifts me by the hair, 
 Letting me have my will again with these,' 
 
 and The Ring and the Book was born. All this is told in 
 an introductory chapter, which bears the title of the whole 
 work ; and here also Mr. Browning reviews those broad 
 facts of the Franceschini case which are beyond dispute, 
 and which constitute, so far as they go, the crude metal of 
 his ring. He has worked into this almost every incident 
 which the chronicle supplies, and his book requires no 
 supplement ; but the fragmentary view of its contents which 
 I am reduced to giving can only be held together by a pre- 
 vious outline of the story. 
 
 " There lived in Rome in 1679 Pietro and Violante Com- 
 parini, an elderly couple of the middle class, fond of show 
 and good living, and who in spite of a fair income had run 
 considerably into debt. They were, indeed, at the period 
 in question in receipt of a papal bounty, employed in the 
 relief of the needy who did not like to beg. Creditors were 
 pressing, and only one expedient suggested itself: they 
 must have a child ; and thus enable themselves to draw on 
 their capital, now tied up for the benefit of an unknown 
 heir-at-law. The wife conceived this plan, and also carried 
 it out without taking her husband into her confidence. She 
 secured beforehand the infant of a poor and not very repu- 
 table woman, announced her expectation, half miraculous, 
 at her past fifty years, and became to all appearance the 
 mother of a girl, the Francesca Pompilia of the story. 
 
 " When Pompilia had reached the age of thirteen, there 
 was also in Rome Count Guido Franceschini, an impover- 
 ished nobleman of Arezzo, and the elder of three brothers, 
 of whom the second, Abate Paolo, and the third, Canon 
 Girolamo, also play some part in the story. Count Guido 
 himself belonged to the minor ranks of the priesthood and 
 had spent his best years in seeking preferment in it. Pre-
 
 The Ring and the Boole. 329 
 
 ferment had not come, and the only means of building up 
 the family fortunes in his own person was now a moneyed 
 wife. He was poor, fifty years old, and personally unat- 
 tractive. A contemporary chronicle describes him as short, 
 thin, and pale, and with a projecting nose. He had nothing 
 to offer but his rank ; but in the case of a very obscure 
 heiress, this might suffice, and such a one seemed to present 
 herself in Pompilia Comparini. He heard of her at the 
 local centre of gossip, the barber's shop ; received an exag- 
 gerated estimate of her dowry ; and made proposals for her 
 hand ; being supported in his suit by the Abate Paul. They 
 did not on their side understate the advantages of the con- 
 nection. They are, indeed, said to have given as their 
 yearly income a sum exceeding their capital, and Violante 
 was soon dazzled into consenting to it. Old Pietro was 
 more wary. He made inquiries as to the state of the Count's 
 fortune and declined, under plea of his daughter's extreme 
 youth, to think of him as a son-in-law. 
 
 " Violante pretended submission, secretly led Pompilia to 
 a church, the very church of San Lorenzo in Lucina where 
 four years later the murdered bodies of all three were to be 
 displayed, and brought her back as Count Guido's wife. 
 Pietro could only accept the accomplished fact ; and he so 
 far resigned himself to it, that he paid down an installment 
 of his daughter's dowry, and made up the deficiency by 
 transferring to the newly married couple all that he actually 
 possessed. This left him no choice but to live under their 
 roof, and the four removed together to the Franceschini 
 abode at Arezzo. The arrangement proved disastrous, and 
 at the end of a few months Pietro and Violante were glad 
 to return to Rome, though with empty pockets, and on 
 money lent them for the journey by their son-in-law. 
 
 " We have conflicting testimony as to the cause of this 
 rupture. The Governor of Arezzo, writing to the Abate 
 Paul in Rome, lays all the blame of it on the Comparini, 
 whom he taxes with vulgar and aggressive behavior ; and 
 Mr. Browning readily admits that at the beginning there 
 may have been faults on their side. But popular judgment 
 as well as the balance of evidence were in favor of the op- 
 posite view ; and curious details are given by Pompilia and 
 by a servant of the family, a sworn witness on Pompilia' 8
 
 330 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 trial, of the petty cruelties and privations to which both 
 parents and child were subjected. 
 
 " So much, at all events, was clear ; Violante's sin had 
 overtaken her ; and it now occurred to her, apparently for 
 the first time, to cast off its burden by confession. The 
 moment was propitious, for the pope had proclaimed a 
 jubilee in honor of his eightieth year, and absolution was to 
 be had for the asking. But the Church in this case made 
 conditions. Absolution must be preceded by atonement. 
 Violante must restore to her legal heirs that of which her 
 pretended motherhood had defrauded them. The first step 
 towards this was to reveal the fraud to her husband ; and 
 Pietro lost no time in making use of the revelation. He 
 repudiated Pompilia, and with her all claims on her hus- 
 band's part. The case was carried into court. The Court 
 decreed a compromise. Pietro appealed from the decree, 
 and the question remained unsettled. 
 
 " The chief sufferer by these proceedings was Pompilia 
 herself. She already had reason to dread her husband as a 
 tyrant he to dislike her as a victim ; and his discovery of 
 her base birth, with the threatened loss of the greater part 
 of her dowry, could only result with such a man in in- 
 creased aversion towards her. From this moment his one 
 aim seems to have been to get rid of his wife, but in such a 
 manner as not to forfeit any pecuniary advantage he might 
 still derive from their union. This could only be done by 
 convicting her of infidelity ; and he attacked her so furi- 
 ously, and so persistently, on the subject of a certain Canon 
 Giuseppe Caponsacchi, whom she barely knew, but whose 
 attentions he declared her to have challenged, that at last 
 she fled from Arezzo, with this very man. 
 
 " She had appealed for protection against her husband's 
 violence to the Archbishop and to the Governor. She had 
 striven to enlist the aid of his brother-in-law, Conti. She 
 had implored a priest in confession to write for her to her 
 parents, and induce them to fetch her away. But the 
 whole town was in the interest of the Franceschini, or in 
 dread of them. Her prayers were useless, and Caponsac- 
 chi, whom she had heard of as a ' resolute man,' appeared 
 her last resource. He was, as she knew, contemplating a 
 journey to Rome ; an opportunity presented itself for speak-
 
 The Ring and the Book. 331 
 
 ing to him from her window, or her balcony ; and she per- 
 suaded him, though not without difficulty, to assist her es- 
 cape, and conduct her to her old home. On a given night 
 she slipped away from her husband's side, and joined the 
 Canon where he awaited her with a carriage. They trav- 
 eled day and night till they reached Castelnuovo, a village 
 within four hours of the journey's end. There they were 
 compelled to rest, and there also the husband overtook 
 them. They were not together at the moment ; but the 
 fact of the elopement was patent ; and if Franceschini had 
 killed his wife there, in the supposed excitement of the dis- 
 covery, the law might have dealt leniently with him ; but it 
 suited him best for the time being to let her live. He pro- 
 cured the arrest of the fugitives, and after a short confine- 
 ment on the spot, they were conveyed to the New Prisons in 
 Rome (Carceri Nuove) and tried on the charge of adultery. 
 
 " It is impossible not to believe that Count Guido had 
 been working towards this end. Pompilia's verbal com- 
 munications with Caponsacchi had been supplemented by 
 letters, now brought to him in her name, now thrown or let 
 down from her window as he passed the house. They were 
 written, as he said, on the subject of the flight, and as he 
 also said, he burned them as soon as read, not doubting 
 their authenticity. But Pompilia declared, on examination, 
 that she could neither write nor read ; and setting aside all 
 presumption of her veracity, this was more than probable. 
 The writer of the letters must, therefore, have been the 
 Count, or some one employed by him for the purpose. He 
 now completed the intrigue by producing eighteen or twenty 
 more of a very incriminating character which he declared 
 to have been left by the prisoners at Castelnuovo ; and these 
 were not only disclaimed with every appearance of sincerity 
 by both the persons accused, but bore the marks of forgery 
 within themselves. 
 
 " Pompilia and Caponsacchi answered all the questions 
 addressed to them simply and firmly ; and though their 
 statements did not always coincide, these were calculated on 
 the whole to create a moral conviction of their innocence ; 
 the facts on which they disagreed being of little weight. 
 But moral conviction was not legal proof ; the question of 
 false testimony does not seem to have been even raised ;
 
 332 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 and the Court found itself in a dilemma, which it acknow- 
 ledged in the following way : it was decreed that for his 
 complicity in ' the flight and deviation of Francesca Com- 
 parini,' and too great intimacy with her, Caponsacchi 
 should be banished for three years to Civita Vecchia ; and 
 that Pompilia, on her side, should be relegated, for the time 
 being, to a convent. That is to say : the prisoners were 
 pronounced guilty ; and a merely nominal punishment was 
 inflicted upon them. 
 
 " The records of this trial contain almost everything of 
 biographical or even dramatic interest in the original book. 
 They are, so far as they go, the complete histoiy of the 
 case ; and the result of the trial, ambiguous as it was, sup- 
 plied the only argument on which an even formal defense 
 of the subsequent murder could be based. The substance 
 of these records appears in full in Mr. Browning's work ; 
 and his readers can judge for themselves whether the letters 
 which were intended to substantiate Pompilia's guilt could, 
 even if she had possessed the power of writing, have been 
 written by a woman so young and so uncultured as herself. 
 They will also see that the Count's plot against his wife was 
 still more deeply laid than the above-mentioned circum- 
 stances attest. 
 
 " Count Guido was of course not satisfied. He wanted a 
 divorce ; and he continued to sue for it by means of his 
 brother, the Abate Paul, then residing in Rome ; but before 
 long he received news which was destined to change his 
 plans. Pompilia was about to become a mother ; and in 
 consideration of her state, she had been removed from the 
 convent to her paternal home, where she was still to be 
 ostensibly a prisoner. The Comparini then occupied a 
 small villa outside one of the city gates. A few months 
 later, in this secluded spot, the Countess Franceschini gave 
 birth to a son, whom her parents lost no time in conveying 
 to a place of concealment and safety. The murder took 
 place a fortnight after this event. I give the rest of the 
 story in an almost literal translation from a contemporary 
 narrative which was published immediately after the Count's 
 execution, in the form of a pamphlet the then current 
 substitute for a newspaper. [This pamphlet has supplied 
 Mr. Browning with some of his most curious facts. It fell 
 into his hands in London.]
 
 The Ring and the Book. 333 
 
 " ' Being oppressed by various feelings, and stimulated to 
 revenge, now by honor, now by self-interest, yielding to 
 his wicked thoughts, he [Count Guido] devised a plan for 
 killing his wife and her nominal parents ; and having en- 
 listed in his enterprise four other ruffians, laborers on his 
 property, started with them from Arezzo, and on Christmas- 
 eve arrived in Rome, and took up his abode at Ponte Milvio, 
 where there was a villa belonging to his brother, and where 
 he concealed himself with his followers till the fitting 
 moment for the execution of his design had arrived. Hav- 
 ing therefore watched from thence all the movements of the 
 Comparini family, he proceeded on Thursday, the 2nd of 
 January, at one o'clock of the night [the first hour after 
 sunset], with his companions to the Comparinis' house ; and 
 having left Biagio Agostinelli and Domenico Gambasini at 
 the gate, he instructed one of the others to knock at the 
 house-door, which was opened to him on his declaring that 
 he brought a letter from Canon Caponsacchi at Civita 
 Vecchia. The wicked Franceschini, supported by two 
 other of his assassins, instantly threw himself on Violante 
 Comparini, who had opened the door, and flung her dead 
 upon the ground. Pompilia, in this extremity, extinguished 
 the light, thinking thus to elude her assassins, and made for 
 the door of a neighboring blacksmith, crying for help ; see- 
 ing Franceschini provided with a lantern, she ran and hid 
 herself under the bed, but being dragged from under it, the 
 unhappy woman was barbarously put to death by twenty- 
 two wounds from the hand of her husband, who, not con- 
 tent with this, dragged her to the feet of Comparini, who, 
 being similarly wounded by another of the assassins, was 
 crying, " Confession." 
 
 " ' At the noise of this horrible massacre people rushed to 
 the spot ; but the villains succeeded in flying, leaving behind, 
 however, in their haste, one his cloak, and Franceschini his 
 cap, which was the means of betraying them. The unfor- 
 tunate Francesca Pompilia, in spite of all the wounds with 
 which she had been mangled, having implored of the Holy 
 Virgin the grace of being allowed to confess, obtained it, 
 since she was able to survive for a short time and describe 
 the horrible attack. She also related that after the deed 
 her husband asked the assassin who had helped him to uuir-
 
 334 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 der her if she were really dead ; and being assured that 
 she was, quickly rejoined, let us lose no time, but return to 
 the vineyard [villa] ; and so they escaped. Meanwhile the 
 police [Forza] having been called, it arrived with its chief 
 officer [Bargello], and a confessor was soon procured, to- 
 gether with a surgeon, who devoted himself to the treat- 
 ment of the unfortunate girl. 
 
 " ' Monsignore^ the Governor, being informed of the 
 event, immediately despatched Captain Patrizj to arrest the 
 culprits ; but on reaching the vineyard the police officers 
 discovered that they were no longer there, but had gone 
 towards the high road an hour before. Patrizj pursued his 
 journey without rest, and having arrived at the inn, was told 
 by the landlord that Franceschini had insisted upon obtain- 
 ing horses, which were refused to him because he was not 
 supplied with the necessary order ; and had proceeded there- 
 fore on foot with his companions towards Baccano. Con- 
 tinuing his march, and taking the necessary precautions, he 
 approached the Merluzza inn, and there discovered the 
 assassins, who were speedily arrested, their knives still 
 stained with blood, a hundred and fifty scudi in coin being 
 also found on Franceschini's person. The arrest, however, 
 cost Patrizj his life, for he had heated himself too mnch, 
 and having received a slight wound, died in a few days. 
 
 " ' The knife of Franceschini was on the Genoese pattern, 
 and triangular ; and was notched at the edge, so that it could 
 not be withdrawn from the wounded flesh without lacerating 
 it in such a manner as to render the wound incurable. 
 
 " ' The criminals being taken to Ponte Milvio, they went 
 through a first examination at the inn there at the hands of 
 the notaries and judges sent thither for the purpose, and 
 the chief points of a confession were obtained from them. 
 
 " ' When the capture of the delinquents was known in 
 Rome, a multitude of the people hastened to see them as 
 they were conveyed bound on horses into the city. It is re- 
 lated that Franceschini having asked one of the police officers 
 in the course of the journey however the crime had been 
 discovered, and being told that it had been revealed by his 
 wife, whom they had found still living, was almost stupe- 
 fied by the intelligence. Towards twenty-three o'clock [the 
 last hour before sunset] they arrived at the prisons. A cer-
 
 The Ring and the Book. 335 
 
 tain Francesco Pasquini, of Citta di Castello, and Alessan- 
 dro Baldeschi, of the city itself [probably Rome], both 
 twenty-two years of age, were the assistants of Guido 
 Franceschini in the murder of the Comparini ; and Gam- 
 basini and Agostinelli were those who stood on guard at the 
 gate. 
 
 " ' Meanwhile the corpses of the assassinated Comparini 
 were exposed at San Lorenzo, in Lucina, but so disfigured, 
 and especially Franceschini's wife, by their wounds in the 
 face, that they were no longer recognizable. The unhappy 
 Francesca, after taking the sacrament, forgiving her murder- 
 ers, under seventeen years of age, and after having made 
 her will, died on the sixth day of the month, which was that 
 of the Epiphany ; and was able to clear herself of all the 
 calumnies which her husband had brought against her. 
 The surprise of the people in seeing these corpses was 
 great, from the atrocity of the deed, which made one really 
 shudder, seeing two septuagenarians and a girl of seventeen 
 so miserably put to death. 
 
 " ' The trial proceeding meanwhile, many papers were 
 drawn up on the subject, bringing forward all the most in- 
 criminating circumstances of this horrible massacre ; and 
 others also were written for the defense with much erudi- 
 tion, especially by the advocate of the poor, a certain Mon- 
 signor Spreti, which had the effect of postponing the sen- 
 tence ; also because Baldeschi persisted in denial, though he 
 was tortured with the rope, and twice fainted under it. At 
 last he confessed, and so did the others, who also revealed 
 the fact that they had intended in due time to murder 
 Franceschini himself, and take his money, because he had 
 not kept his promise of paying them the moment they should 
 have left Rome. 
 
 " ' On the twenty-second of February there appeared on 
 the Piazza del Popolo a large platform with a guillotine 
 and two gibbets, on which the culprits were to be executed. 
 Many stands were constructed for the convenience of those 
 who were curious to witness such a terrible act of justice ; 
 and the concourse was so great that some windows fetched 
 as much as six dollars each. At eight o'clock Franceschini 
 and his companions were summoned to their death, and 
 having been placed in the consorteria, and there assisted by
 
 336 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 the Abate Panciatici and the Cardinal Acciajuoli, forthwith 
 disposed themselves to die well. At twenty o'clock the 
 Company of Death and the Misericordia reached the dun- 
 geons, and the condemned were let down, placed on separate 
 carts, and conveyed to the place of execution.' 
 
 " It is farther stated that Franceschini showed the most 
 intrepidity and cold blood of them all, and that he died 
 with the name of Jesus on his lips. He wore the same 
 clothes in which he had committed the crime : a close-fitting 
 garment [juste-a^^-corps^ of gray cloth, a loose black shirt 
 [camiciuola], a goat's hair cloak, a white hat, and a cotton 
 cap. 
 
 " The attempt made by him to defraud his accomplices, 
 poor and helpless as they were, has been accepted by Mr. 
 Browning as an indication of character which forbade any 
 lenient interpretation of his previous acts. Pompilia, on 
 the other hand, is absolved by all the circumstances of her 
 protracted death from any doubt of her innocence which 
 previous evidence might have raised. Ten different persons 
 attest not only her denial of any offense against her hus- 
 band, but what is of far more value, her Christian gentle- 
 ness, and absolute maiden modesty, under the sufferings of 
 her last days, and the medical treatment to which they sub- 
 jected her. Among the witnesses are a doctor of theology 
 (Abate Liberate Barberito), the apothecary and his assist- 
 ant, and a number of monks or priests ; the first and most 
 circumstantial deposition being that of an Augustine, Fra 
 Celestino Angelo di Sant' Anna, and concluding with these 
 words : ' I do not say more, for fear of being taxed with 
 partiality. I know well that God alone can examine the 
 heart. But I know also that from the abundance of the 
 heart the mouth speaks ; and that my great St. Augustine 
 says : " As the life was, so is its end." ' 
 
 " It needed all the evidence in Pompilia's favor to secure 
 the full punishment of her murderer, strengthened as he 
 was by social and ecclesiastical position, and by the acknow- 
 ledged rights of marital jealousy. We find curious proof 
 of the sympathies which might have prejudiced his wife's 
 cause in the marginal notes appended to her depositions, 
 and which repeatedly introduce them as lies. 
 
 " ' F. Lie concerning the arrival at Castelnuovo"
 
 The' Ring and the Book. 337 
 
 "' H. New lies to the effect that she did not receive the 
 lover's letters, and does not know how to write,' etc., etc. 
 
 " The significant question, Whether and when a husband 
 may kill his unfaithful wife, was in the present case not 
 thought to be finally answered, till an appeal had been made 
 from the ecclesiastical tribunal to the pope himself. It was 
 Innocent XII. who virtually sentenced Count Franceschini 
 and his four accomplices to death." 
 
 Some further details concerning the book which became 
 the basis of the poem are contained in an account of a visit 
 to Browning by Rev. John W. Chadwick, of Brooklyn, 
 which was published in The Christian Register for Jan- 
 uary 19, 1888, under the title, " An Eagle-Feather." Mr. 
 Chadwick asked the poet : 
 
 " And how about the book of The Ring and the Book ? 
 Had he made up that, too, or was there really such a book ? 
 There was, indeed ; and would we like to see it ? There 
 was little doubt of that ; and it was produced, and the story 
 of his buying it for ' eightpence English just ' was told, but 
 need not be retold here, for in The Ring and the Book it 
 is set down with literal truth. The appearance and charac- 
 ter of the book, moreover, are exactly what the poem rep- 
 resents. It is part print, part manuscript, ending with two 
 epistolary accounts, if I remember rightly, of Guide's exe- 
 cution, written by the lawyers in the case. It was an aston- 
 ishing ' find,' and it is passing strange that a book compiled 
 so carefully should have been brought to such a low estate. 
 Mr. Browning did not seem at all inclined to toss it in the 
 air and catch it, as he does in verse. He handled it very 
 carefully, and with very evident affection. I asked him if 
 it did not make him very happy to have created such a 
 woman as Pompilia ; and he said, ' I assure you .that I found 
 her just as she speaks and acts in my poem in that old 
 book.' There was that in his tone that made it evident 
 Caponsacchi had a rival lover, without blame. Of the old 
 pope of the poem, too, he spoke with real affection. He 
 told us how he had found a medal of him in a London anti- 
 quary's shop, had left it meaning to come back for it, came 
 back, and found that it had gone. But the shopman told 
 him Lady Houghton (Mrs. Richard Monckton Milnes) had 
 taken it. ' You will lend it to me,' said Mr. Browning to
 
 338 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 her, ' in case I want it some time to be copied for an illus- 
 tration ? ' She preferred giving it to him ; had most likely 
 intended doing so when she bought it. It was in a pretty 
 little box, and had a benignant expression, exactly suited to 
 the character of the good pope in the poem. As further 
 proof that all is grist that comes to some folks' mills there 
 was a picture of the miserable Count Guido Franceschini 
 on his execution day, which some one had come upon in a 
 London printshop, and sent to Mr. Browning." 
 
 The chief historical character in this poem is Innocent 
 XII., who was pope from 1691 to his death, in September, 
 1700. Antonio Pignatelli was born at Naples in 1615, and 
 was educated at the Jesuit College in Rome. At the age 
 of twenty he entered the papal service, and rose step by 
 step until he was a cardinal in 1681 ; and he was also the 
 archbishop of Naples. When he became pope he opposed 
 nepotism and simony, and he ruled with moderation and 
 justice. He built the harbor of Prato d' Anzo on the ruins 
 of ancient Antium, constructed an aqueduct for Civita Vec- 
 chia, and built the palace of Monte Citario for the courts of 
 justice in Rome. He also erected many other buildings, in- 
 cluding schools, asylums, and the penitentiary of San Mi- 
 chele. He made a law that no pope or cardinal should ever 
 indulge in nepotism ; but his main political act was that 
 connected with a quarrel of the popes with Louis XIV. and 
 the French church. Louis claimed the independence of the 
 French church, and that he was its head, practically. To 
 this assertion Innocent was strongly opposed, and the quar- 
 rel lasted throughout his reign. 
 
 The Encylopcedia Sritannica, in its article on Innocent 
 XL, says he is the Pope of Browning's poem ; but in this it 
 is in error, for the poem distinctly calls the Pope by his 
 name, " Antonio Pignatelli of Naples." Some reference is 
 made to Innocent XL, however, and especially in connection 
 with the Molinists. Benedetto Odescalchi was born at Como 
 in 1611, became a cardinal in 1647, and was elected pope 
 in September, 1676. He had courage and firmness, but 
 he was austere and obstinate. He reduced ecclesiastical 
 abuses, and broke up nepotism. He was opposed by the 
 Jesuits, but was very popular. Under him began the quarrel 
 with Louis XIV. He claimed the revenues of vacant eccle-
 
 The, Ring and the Book. 339 
 
 siastical offices in France, which Louis desired for himself. 
 The quarrel was also waged with reference to the right of 
 asylum of the foreign ambassadors in Rome, a right which 
 Innocent refused to have continued. An account of this 
 quarrel of diplomatists is to be found in the third volume of 
 Ranke's Ecclesiastical and Political History of the Popes 
 of Rome. Ranke says that " Innocent XI., of the house of 
 Odescalchi of Como, came to Rome in his twenty-fifth year, 
 with no other fortune than his sword and pistols, to seek 
 some secular employment there, or perhaps to take service 
 in the Neapolitan army. The advice of a cardinal, who 
 saw more deeply into his character than he did himself, in- 
 duced him to enter upon the career of the curia. This he 
 did with so much zeal and earnestness, and gradually se- 
 cured such a reputation for ability and good intentions, that 
 while the conclave was sitting the people shouted his name 
 under the porticoes of St. Peter's, and there was a general 
 feeling of satisfaction when his election was declared. He 
 was a man of such mildness and humility of manner that 
 when he called for any of his servants, it was with the res- 
 ervation, ' if it was convenient to them ; ' of such purity of 
 heart and life that his confessor declared that he never dis- 
 covered in him anything which could sever the soul from 
 God; meek and gentle, but impelled by the same conscien- 
 tiousness which governed his private life to fulfill the duties 
 of his office with inflexible integrity." 
 
 This account of Innocent XL agrees much better with 
 the character attributed by Browning to his Pope than any- 
 thing which is told of Innocent XII. It seems that the 
 poet confounded the two men with each other, or, what is 
 more probable, that he deliberately gave to Innocent XII. 
 qualities which belonged only to Innocent XL 
 
 Reference is frequently made throughout the poem to the 
 Molinists. As there have been two or three parties in the 
 Catholic Church bearing this name, it is necessary to keep in 
 mind that those to whom Browning refers are the followers 
 of Michel de Molinos, who was born of a noble Spanish fam- 
 ily in the diocese of Saragossa, Aragon, December 21, 1627. 
 He graduated at Coimbra, had a successful experience in his 
 own country, and then went to Rome. He very soon be- 
 came very popular as a spiritual adviser, and in 1675 he
 
 340 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 published a book entitled II Guida Spirituale. This book 
 rapidly attained a great success, going through with no less 
 than twenty editions in six years and in several languages. 
 The first English translation appeared in 1699 as The Spir- 
 itual Guide which disentangles the soul, and brings it by 
 the inward way to the getting of perfect contemplation and 
 the rich treasure of internal peace. Written by Dr. Mi- 
 chel Molinos, priest. Molinos had a genius for religious 
 instruction, and the ability to make spiritual things real to 
 those he influenced. His doctrine is known as Quietism, 
 and it is simply mysticism, with the peculiarities of his own 
 time, place, and religious surroundings. Mr. John Bigelow 
 says of his book : " The substance of its teachings was that 
 the soul of man is the temple and abode of God, which we 
 ought, therefore, to keep as clean and pure from worldli- 
 ness, and lusts of the flesh, and the pride of life, as possible. 
 The true end of human life ought to be, as far as possible, 
 the attainment of perfection. In the progress to this result, 
 Molinos distinguishes two principal stages or degrees, the 
 first attainable by meditation, the second, and highest, by 
 contemplation. In the first stage the attention is fixed upon 
 the capital truths of religion, upon all the circumstances 
 under which religion has been commended to us, objections 
 are wrestled with, and doubts which might trouble the soul 
 one by one are resolved and banished. In this stage it is 
 the reason, mainly, that acts, and often, if not altogether, in 
 opposition to the will or the natural man. One, however, 
 does not reach the higher stage of devotion till the soul 
 ceases to struggle, till it has no farther need of proofs or re- 
 flection, till it contemplates the truth in silence and re- 
 pose. This is what is termed retirement of the soul and 
 perfect contemplation, in which the soul does not reason nor 
 reflect, neither about God nor itself, but passively receives 
 the impressions of celestial light, undisturbed by the world 
 or its works. Whenever the soul can be lifted up to this 
 state, it desires nothing, not even its own salvation, and fears 
 nothing, not even hell. It becomes indifferent to the use of 
 the sacraments, and to all the practices of sensible devotion, 
 having transcended the sphere of their efficacy." 
 
 Such was the teaching of Molinos, which at first was re- 
 ceived with great favor, but which at last provoked the most
 
 The Ring and the Book. 341 
 
 bitter opposition and persecution. As Browning frequently 
 refers to the intense interest created in Rome by the teach- 
 ings of Molinos, Mr. Bigelow may be again drawn upon for 
 an account of his career. " There is nothing in these doc- 
 trines of passivity which had not been taught by many of 
 the most highly esteemed mystical writers of the Church, by 
 St. Bonaventura, St. Theresa, John of the Cross, the Baron- 
 ess de Chantal, St. Francis de Sales, and others, some of 
 whom had indeed been canonized as saints. The doctrines 
 were presented in a simple and unaffected style, and the 
 book, as well as its author, acquired a prompt and extraor- 
 dinary popularity. Its author's acquaintance and friend- 
 ship was sought by people in the greatest credit, not only at 
 Rome, but in other parts of Europe, by correspondence. 
 Among his followers were three fathers of the Oratoire, 
 who soon after received cardinal's hats, and even the popes 
 who successively occupied the pontifical chair during his 
 residence in Rome took particular notice of him. The Car- 
 dinal Odescalchi was no sooner raised to the pontificate as 
 Innocent XI. than he provided Molinos with lodgings at 
 the Vatican, and such was his esteem for him that he is 
 said to have formed the purpose of making him a cardinal, 
 and to have actually selected him for a time as his spiritual 
 director. 
 
 " With such evidence of protection in high quarters, and 
 with so much in his theology of unworldliness and devout- 
 ness to commend it to the understandings as well as to the 
 hearts of the faithful, the popularity of Molinos grew apace. 
 He seemed to them another St. Paul, sent to emancipate 
 them from the thrall of image-manufacturers and an idola- 
 trous and costly ceremonial ; to bring them nearer to God 
 and farther from priestcraft and obscurantism. He was 
 neither greedy nor ambitious. He sought no place, nor 
 would he accept any, not even a cardinal's hat. A priest 
 at Rome without ambition was such an unusual phenomenon 
 that it alone would have sufficed to make him famous. 
 Every one who was sincerely devout, or who wished to be 
 thought so, adopted ' the method of Molinos,' and many who 
 wished promotion at Rome saw no surer nor speedier way 
 to it than to establish good relations with him and his 
 friends. Queen Christine, of Sweden, then the lioness of
 
 342 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 Rome, was under his direction, and made his gifts and piety 
 a favorite theme of her extensive correspondence. Cardinal 
 d'Estre'es, who represented Louis XIV. and his government 
 at the pontifical court, and who was one of the most accom- 
 plished courtiers of his time, felt it to be worth his while to 
 identify himself with the new departure, and to put Molinos 
 in correspondence with important people in France." 
 
 Among other people in Rome at this time was Gilbert 
 Burnet, the English bishop and historian, who wrote in the 
 winter of 1685 this account of Quietism : " The new method 
 of Molinos doth so much prevail at Naples that it is be- 
 lieved he hath above twenty thousand followers in that city. 
 He hath writ a book which is intitled II Guida Spirituale, 
 which is a short abstract of the Mystical Divinity ; the sub- 
 stance of the whole is reduced to this, that, in our prayers 
 and other devotions, the best methods are to retire the mind 
 from all gross images, and so to form an act of Faith, and 
 thereby to present ourselves before God, and then to sink 
 into a silence and cessation of new acts, and to let God act 
 upon us, and so to follow his conduct. This way he prefers 
 to the multiplication of many new acts and different forms 
 of devotion, and he makes small account of corporal austeri- 
 ties, and reduces all the exercises of religion to this sim- 
 plicity of mind. He thinks this is not only to be proposed 
 to such as live in religious houses, but even to secular per- 
 sons, and by this he hath proposed a new reformation of 
 men's minds and manners. He hath many priests in Italy, 
 but chiefly in Naples, that dispose those who confess them- 
 selves to them to follow his methods. The Jesuits have set 
 themselves much against this conduct as forseeing it may 
 weaken the empire that superstition hath over the minds of 
 the people ; that it may make religion become a more plain 
 and simple thing, and may also open the door to enthusi- 
 asms. They also pretend that his conduct is factious and 
 seditious ; that this may breed a schism in the Church. 
 And because he saith in some places of his book that the 
 mind may rise up to such simplicity in its acts that it may 
 rise in some of its devotions to God immediately, without 
 contemplating the humanity of Christ, they have accused 
 him as intending to lay aside the doctrine of Christ's human- 
 ity, though it is plain that he speaks only of the purity of
 
 The Ring and the Book. 343 
 
 some single acts. Upon all those heads they have set them- 
 selves much against Molinos, and they have also pretended 
 that some of his disciples have infused it into their peni- , 
 tents that they may go and communicate as they find themr 
 selves disposed without going first to confession, which 
 they thought weakened much the yoke by which the priests 
 subdue the consciences of the people to their conduct. Yet 
 he was much supported, both in the kingdom of Naples and 
 Sicily. He hath also many friends and followers at Rome. 
 So the Jesuits, as a provincial of the Order assured me, find- 
 ing they could not ruin him by their own force, got a great 
 king, that is now extremely in the interests of their Order, 
 to interpose, and to represent to the Pope the danger of 
 such innovations. It is certain the Pope understands the 
 matter very little, and that he is possessed of a great opinion 
 of Molinos' sanctity ; yet, upon the complaints of some 
 cardinals that seconded the zeal of that king, he and some 
 of his followers were clapt into the Inquisition, where they 
 have been now for some months, but still they are well used, 
 which is believed to flow from the good opinion that the 
 Pope hath of him, who saith still that he may err, yet he 
 is still a good man." 
 
 In 1686 Molinos was brought to trial, but in opposition, 
 to the wishes of Innocent XI. Indeed, for months the 
 Jesuits had to labor before they could remove the opposition 
 which the pope alone interposed to the fulfillment of their 
 wishes. Innocent was accused of heresy and threatened 
 with the power of the Church before he would yield and 
 consent to the condemnation of a man in whom he saw no 
 evil. The trial was made as imposing and formidable as 
 possible ; and the condemnation of Molinos being prear- 
 ranged it was sought to make it the occasion of awing and 
 silencing his followers by putting upon his teachings the 
 terrible brand of the Church's disapproval. Molinos bore 
 up under his condemnation quietly and bravely. His trial 
 was a mockery, a farce from first to last, so far as justice 
 was concerned. He was condemned to perpetual solitude ; 
 and he was completely isolated from the world, and so effec- 
 tually that nothing more is known of him, except that he 
 died in September, 1696. 
 
 For an account of this remarkable man, see Molinos the
 
 344 The, Ring and the Boole. 
 
 Quietist, by John Bigelow, which gives the story of his 
 career in Rome and his trial ; and also the bull of condem- 
 nation issued by Innocent XI. The teachings of Molinos 
 are presented in that striking spiritual romance, John Ingle- 
 sant, by J. H. Shorthouse. Mr. Shorthouse has also edited 
 a volume called Golden Thoughts from the " Spiritual 
 Gruide " of Molinos. 
 
 The teachings of Molinos did not lose their power with 
 his condemnation and death. They were soon after taken 
 up in France by Madame Guyon, and they became the 
 source of her influence and of her many writings. Then 
 they passed on to Fe'nelon and the school of religious 
 thought of which he was the noblest representative. His 
 struggle with Bossuet over his Maxims of the Saints, in 
 which he had passed Molinism through the alembic of his 
 rare genius, forms one of the most interesting episodes in 
 religious history. Browning touches upon this when he 
 mentions the Jansenists, the name given to Fe'nelon and his 
 followers. Jansen was a Hollander, 1585-1638, who re- 
 vived the spirit of the theology of St. Augustine. His 
 teachings passed into France, and there gained the name of 
 Jansenism about the middle of the sixteenth century. This 
 was a liberal movement within the Catholic Church, based 
 on the same spiritual principles as Protestanism, and for 
 that reason opposed by the Jesuits, and finally condemned 
 by the Church. The Jansenist movement found its noblest 
 expression in Port Royal, the Arnaulds, Fe'nelon, and the 
 Provincial Letters of Pascal. 
 
 The journey of Caponsacchi and Pompilia was from 
 Arezzo to Rome, and we may follow them. Arezzo, situ- 
 ated in middle Italy, is the capital of the province of Arezzo. 
 It is fifty-five miles southeast of Florence, and about one 
 hundred north of Rome. It has two colleges, a cathedral, 
 an academy of arts and sciences, a school qf technology, and 
 extensive manufactories. Its population is about forty thou- 
 sand. In his Cities of Italy Hare gives this account of 
 Arezzo and the Pieve mentioned so often by Caponsacchi : 
 " Arezzo is a charming place with a bright Tuscan aspect, 
 and it will strike travelers coming from the south by the 
 cheerfulness of its broad pavements and the green shutters 
 of its houses. As Arretium, one of the twelve cities of the
 
 The Ring and the Book. 345 
 
 Etruscan confederation, it was celebrated for its vases of red 
 pottery. It was the headquarters of the Consul Flaminius 
 before the battle of Thrasymene. In the Middle Ages it 
 was chiefly held by the Ghibelline party. Among its fa- 
 mous citizens have been Maecenas ; Petrarch ; Pietro (Bacci) 
 Aretino, 1492 ; Margaritone ; Spinello, the artist, 1328 ; 
 Vasari, and many other distinguished citizens. The Via 
 Cavour leads immediately into the Corso. Here, on the 
 right, is the great Church of S. Maria della Pieve, founded 
 by Bishop Aribertus between 980 and 1000, but chiefly 
 built in 1216 by the native architect, Marchionne. The in- 
 terior has three aisles separated by tall pillars with richly 
 sculptured Corinthian capitals. It is very simple and se- 
 vere, and was restored in 1874-75. At the high altar is 
 a Saint George, by Vasari." In his Tuscan Sculptors Per- 
 kins says of this church : " Towards the end of the twelfth 
 or beginning of the thirteenth century, the taste for ex- 
 travagant or capricious ornament in architeotui'al sculpture 
 showed itself in the fagade of the Pieve, or parochial church 
 of Arezzo. It has three rows of columns, one above the 
 other, bound together in groups of two, three, and four, 
 varying in size, shape, and length, twisted like vines, or 
 fashioned into human forms, based upon extravagantly con- 
 ceived animals, and covered with capitals fantastically orna- 
 mented." Pieve is the Italian name for a parish church. 
 
 The cathedral of which Caponsacchi was a canon or as- 
 sistant to the bishop is in the Gothic style, and was begun in 
 1277, but is not yet completed. It is built of yellow stone 
 with an octangular campanile or bell tower, arid its statues 
 are crude and broken. It has a very beautiful interior, a 
 finely colored roof, and brilliant stained windows. The sim- 
 plicity of the lines, says Hare, is seldom broken, and only 
 by objects of the rarest beauty. This cathedral contains 
 several magnificent tombs by Margaritone, Pisano, and 
 other sculptors. 
 
 The city has statues of Ferdinand I. and Ferdinand III., 
 to one of which Caponsacchi refers. The vineyards of 
 Arezzo have been celebrated ever since the days of Pliny. 
 
 The first stopping place of Caponsacchi was Perugia, 
 about thirty-five miles southeast of Arezzo, one of the finest 
 and largest of the hill-towns of Italy. It has a university,
 
 346 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 and has been noted for centuries for its interest in art and 
 literature. It has many works of art in architecture, paint- 
 ing, sculpture, and antiquities. 
 
 At Foligno the travelers struck the great highway from 
 Ancona and eastern Italy to Rome. This is a small town, 
 not far from Perugia. It has a cathedral and a few impor- 
 tant works of art. 
 
 Castelnuovo, the place where the travelers are overtaken 
 by Guido, is a village, about fifteen miles from Rome, on the 
 Via Flaminia. It consists only of an inn and a small clus- 
 ter of houses. 
 
 Page 1. CastellanVs imitative craft. Castellani is a fa- 
 mous jeweler of Rome, whose shop is in the Palazzo Poli. 
 He is mentioned by About and Ampere in their works on 
 Rome. His shop contained a large collection of Etruscan 
 designs, remarkable for its beauty. In his Roba di Roma 
 Mr. W. W. Story speaks of his " admirable reproductions 
 of jewelry in the Etruscan and early Christian style, which 
 have won for him so just a celebrity, and who exercises his 
 profession in the true spirit of an antiquary and an artist." 
 Old tombs at Chiusi. In Chiusi, a city of central Italy, 
 are some remarkable Etruscan tombs. Hare, in his Cities 
 of Northern and Central Italy, says that " the most im- 
 portant of these tombs is that called Poggio Cajella, about 
 three miles north by northeast of the town. It is a tumu- 
 lus, containing a number of tombs arranged in groups on 
 three terraces one above the other and intersected by 
 labyrinthine passages of unknown intention." 
 
 2. Lira. An Italian coin, 19 cents. Baccio' s marble. 
 Baccio Bandinelli, a Florentine sculptor, 1497-1559. See 
 Leader Scott's Tuscan Studies and Sketches. This marble 
 is described in Hare's Cities of Italy : " The Borgo di 
 San Lorenzo, which opens opposite the Arcivescovado, leads 
 speedily to the Piazza San Lorenzo, in one corner of which 
 is a statue of Giovanni delle Bande Nere (father of Cosimo 
 I.) by Baccio Bandinelli. Like most of the works of this 
 conceited but indifferent master, it has been much ridi- 
 culed." John of the Black Bands. The Giovanni delle 
 Bande Nere just mentioned. Riccardi. The Palazzo 
 Riccardi, formerly the palace of the Medici. See page 
 402. San Lorenzo. The great church by that name in
 
 The Ring and the Boole. 347 
 
 Florence. Crazie. Coins worth one and one half cents 
 each. Lionard. Lionardo da Vinci, whose picture called 
 Joconde is in the Louvre gallery. 
 
 3. Lorenzo named the Square. The square in front of 
 the church of San Lorenzo, Florence. Strozzi. The 
 Strozzi palace. It was built near the end of the fifteenth 
 century, and is one of the most perfect structures of its 
 kind. 
 
 7. Presbyter. Priest. The names following give the suc- 
 cessive steps to full priesthood. Ghetto. The quarter 
 assigned to the Jews in Italian cities, especially during the 
 Middle Ages. Pope Paul IV. first instituted this quarter 
 in Rome, and confined the Jews within it. See Story's 
 Roba di Roma, and Castelar's Old Rome and New Italy, 
 for vivid accounts of it in recent years. 
 
 13. Abate. Abbot. Canon. A member of the chapter 
 or council of a bishop ; a priest attached to a cathedral or a 
 collegiate church. 
 
 21. The market-place of the Barberini. " Whoever has 
 been in Rome," says Christian Andersen, " is well ac- 
 quainted with the Piazza Barberini, in the great square, 
 with the beautiful fountain where the Tritons empty the 
 spouting conch-shell, from which the water springs upward 
 many feet." Bernini's creature. Giovanni Lorenzo Ber- 
 nini was born in Naples in 1598, went to Rome early, 
 worked for the popes and cardinals as an architect and 
 sculptor, spent some time in Paris, and died in 1680. He 
 built the palace of the Barberini, and the fountain in front 
 of it. 
 
 28. Corelli to young Haendel. Arcangelo Corelli, 1653- 
 1713, was a great violinist and composer. He lived in 
 Rome, where he gained a great reputation as a performer. 
 Herr Paul David says of his relations to Handel : " Handel 
 conducted some of his own cantatas, which were written in 
 a more complicated style than the music with which Corelli 
 and the Italian musicians of that period were familiar. 
 Handel tried in vain to explain to Corelli, who was leading 
 the band, how a certain passage ought to be executed, and 
 at last, losing his temper, snatched the violin from Corelli's 
 hands and played it himself, whereupon Corelli remarked in 
 the politest manner, ' But, my dear Saxon, this music is in
 
 348 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 the French style, of which I have no experience.' He had 
 a European reputation and wrote much. Corelli has a 
 double claim to a prominent place in the history of musical 
 art as a great violinist who laid a firm foundation for all 
 future development of technique and of a pure style of 
 playing ; and as a composer who materially advanced the 
 progress of composition." See the Musical Dictionaries of 
 Hawkins, Grove, and Apthorp. 
 
 29. New Prison. A reference to the prison built by In- 
 nocent XI. 
 
 33. Lorenzo in Lucina. This is the church of Pom- 
 pilia, and is situated in the small square of San Lorenzo, 
 which opens out of the Corso. " Here," says Hare in his 
 Walks in Rome, " is the Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, 
 founded in the fifth century, but rebuilt in its present form 
 by Paul V. in 1606. The campanile is of an older date, 
 and so are the lions in the portico. No one should omit 
 seeing the grand picture of Guido Reni over the high altar 
 of this church, the crucifixion, seen against a wild, 
 stormy sky. Niccolas Poussin is buried here, and one of 
 his best known Arcadian landscapes is reproduced in a bas- 
 relief upon his tomb, which was erected by Chateaubriand." 
 Corso. The principal street, the great thoroughfare, of 
 Rome, along which the Carnival passes. "The Corso," 
 said Dickens, " is a street a mile long ; a street of shops, 
 and palaces, and private houses, sometimes opening into a 
 broad piazza. There are verandas and balconies, of all 
 shapes and sizes, to almost every house." 
 
 37. Cardinal who book-made on the same. Cardinal 
 d'Estre'es published two or three books in connection with 
 the teachings of Molinos. Ruspoli. The Ruspoli palace 
 on the Corso. 
 
 54. Osteria. Tavern or inn. 
 
 56. Sbirri. Pontifical police. 
 
 59. Convertites. An order of nuns devoted to the rescue 
 of the fallen, having been rescued from the same fate them- 
 selves. 
 
 61. Canidian hate. A reference to the account given by 
 Horace in his poems of the hate and rage of Canidia, a witch. 
 
 69. Saint Anna's. The Monastery of Saint Anna in 
 Rome, in which Vittoria Colonna also waited for death.
 
 The Ring and the Boole. 349 
 
 Maratta. A painter of the school of Guido Reni, 1625- 
 1713, who painted numerous madonnas. 
 
 76. Square of Spain. The square in which the palace of 
 the Spanish ambassador is situated. On one side of it are 
 the buildings of the Propaganda, and on the other the 
 magnificent flight of steps leading to the church of La Tri- 
 nita de Monti. 
 
 110. Pauls. Old Italian silver coins worth about ten 
 cents. 
 
 116. Place Colonna. The Piazza Colonna is a square in 
 Rome fronting the Corso, and containing the Antonine 
 Column. Zecchines. Gold coins worth about two and 
 one half dollars. 
 
 126. Leda. A picture by Correggio, 1494-1534, now in 
 the Museum at Berlin. 
 
 130. Acquetta. A slow poison. 
 
 131. Paphos. A city of ancient Cyprus, containing the 
 temple of Aphrodite, who was said to have been born here 
 of the foam of the sea. The sensual rites of this goddess 
 are alluded to by the poet. 
 
 134. Place Navona. The Piazza Navona is a vast ob- 
 long square, containing three fountains. 
 
 139. Stinche. A prison. 
 
 153. Pietro of.Cortona. Pietro da Cortona, 1596-1669, 
 a painter who worked in Florence and Rome and decorated 
 the ceilings of the Palazzo Barberini, was mainly a scenic 
 painter, and a decorator of walls and ceilings. Ciro 
 Ferri. An historic painter, 1634-1689, a pupil of Cor- 
 tona, and worked mainly in his manner. 
 
 155. Ser Franco's merry Tales. The Novels and Tales 
 of Franco Saccheti, 1335-1400. They have something of 
 the quality of Boccaccio, but with more of purity. 
 
 161. Bilboa. A sword so named from the Spanish ad- 
 venturer and American discoverer. 
 
 165. Gate San Spirito. The Porta San Spirito of 
 Arezzo is on the side of the city towards Rome. 
 
 173. Ovid's art. The Art of Love of Ovid. "Summa." 
 The Summa Theologice of Thomas Aquinas, the chief of 
 the scholastic thinkers. His summary of theology was the 
 principal book of theologians in the Middle Ages. 
 
 198. Facchini. A porter or base fellow.
 
 350 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 199. Marino. Probably Giovanni Battista Marini is 
 meant. He lived from 1569 to 1625, and was the leading 
 poet of his time. He broke away from the classical style. 
 His own manner was affected and unreal, leaning towards 
 the romantic. His Adonis was a very popular poem in its 
 day. 
 
 210. Saint Thomas. Thomas Aquinas. 
 
 226. Pasquin. A rough, unfinished, and mutilated statue 
 in the Piazza di Pasquino, at the angle of the Braschi 
 Palace, near the Piazza Navona. It was found in the six- 
 teenth century, and is thought to represent Menelaus sup- 
 porting the dead body of Patroclus. It has been greatly 
 admired by some artists, and Bernini even thought it the 
 finest fragment of antiquity. A tailor by the name of 
 Pasquino, near whose shop it was, entertained his customers 
 with the gossip of the day. At the same time the statue 
 was used for pasting squibs and satires upon in the vein of 
 Pasquino's tattle. Hence these writings came to be called 
 pasquinades. Jibes, satires, rhymed wit, posted in some 
 public place, have for centuries been a peculiar and popular 
 institution in Rome under the name of Pasquin. See 
 Story's Roba di Roma, and Hare's Walks in Rome, for 
 accounts of this form of satire. Bembo. Pietro Bembo, 
 1470-1547, cardinal, scholar, grammai-ian, and restorer of 
 Latin. See Asolando in this volume. 
 
 246. Master Malpichi. Probably Malpighi, 1628- 
 1694, a professor of medicine in Bologna university, who 
 was in 1691 summoned to Rome and appointed chief phy- 
 sician and chamberlain of Innocent XII. 
 
 290. Theodoric. The king of the Ostrogoths in the fifth 
 century. Cassiodorus. The prime minister of Theodoric, 
 and a Latin writer on rhetoric and grammar, who wrote a 
 history of the Goths. Scaliger. The name of father and 
 son, two famous scholars of the fifteenth century. The 
 Scaligerana of the son, Joseph Justus Scaliger, is referred 
 to by the poet. Idyllist. Theocritus. Aelian. A 
 Latin writer of the third century, who wrote a miscella- 
 neous history, and a work on the peculiarities of animals. 
 Some critics have thought these works were written by dif- 
 ferent authors, and the poet refers to this discussion. 
 
 292. Saint Jerome. The great bishop of the fifth cen-
 
 The Ring and the Book. 351 
 
 tury, the organizer of the Roman Church. Gregory smiles 
 in his First Dialogue. Gregory I., pope from 590 to 
 604, wrote dialogues which contained many accounts of 
 miracles. 
 
 293. St. Bernard. Abbot of Clairvaux, 1091-1153. 
 
 390. Valerius Maximus. A Latin writer of the first 
 century, whose Exemplorum Memorabilium Libri Novem 
 ad Tiberium Ccesarem Augustum was devoted to auspi- 
 cies, omens, prodigies, dreams, and miracles. Cyriacus. 
 An early Latin writer on law. 
 
 301. Brazen Head. In the Middle Ages there was a cur- 
 rent belief that a brazen head could be made which would 
 speak. It is said that Roger Bacon was occupied for seven 
 years in the construction of such a head, which he ex- 
 pected would tell him how to put a wall of brass around 
 Britain. It was expected that this head would speak 
 within a month of its completion, but as no particular time 
 was given Bacon set his man to watch. At the end of a 
 half hour the head said ' Time is ; ' after another half hour, 
 ( Time was ; ' and in still another, ' Time 's past,' when it 
 fell down with a crash and was shivered in pieces. 
 
 358. Formosus. Pope from 891 to 895. Stephen VI. 
 or VII., who soon after succeeded him, was his political 
 opponent, owing to a difference of opinion as to whether 
 Arnulph or Lambert should be the emperor. Formosus 
 favored Arnulph, and Stephen was on the side of Lambert. 
 Stephen dug up the body of Formosus, put on his pontifical 
 robes, seated him in the papal chair, addressed him as if 
 he were alive, had him tried, and condemned him for un- 
 lawfully holding the papal chair. Romanus became pope 
 in September, 897, and held the place for three months and 
 twenty-two days. One writer says he annulled the acts of 
 Stephen with reference to Formosus, and declared his pro- 
 ceedings unjust and illegal. The early writers do not make 
 this statement. Stephen seems to have been driven from 
 Rome and strangled in 896, for he was a bad and unjust 
 man. Theodoric II. became pope in 898, and held the 
 office for twenty days. He took the body of Stephen from 
 the Tiber, where it had been thrown, declared his acts legal 
 and valid, and had his body interred in the Vatican. John 
 IX. followed Theodore in 898. He called a council at
 
 352 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 Ravenna of seventy-four bishops, with Lambert, who de- 
 clared legal a council previously held in Rome, that had 
 annulled Stephen's acts against Formosus. Then came 
 Sergius III. in 904-911, who had been kept from the 
 papal chair for many years by John IX. This struggle of 
 the popes grew out of a fierce effort to make the emperors 
 their tools. Luitprand. A chronicler of the period, who 
 wrote of this conflict of the popes and emperors, and who 
 said that " upon the dead body of Stephen being carried 
 into the church it was saluted, as many Romans informed 
 him, by all the Images of the Saints there." 
 
 391. Tien. The Chinese name for Heaven, in the sense 
 of creator and revealer. Sliang-ti. An identical name 
 with the Chinese for God, or the divine source of things. 
 
 395. Paul answered Seneca. A reference to the legend 
 that Paul met Seneca in Rome, and that they corresponded 
 with each other. 
 
 399. Loyola. The founder of the Jesuits or Society of 
 Jesus. 
 
 424. Vallombrosa. The name of a famous convent and 
 sanctuary near Florence. See Hare's Cities of Italy and 
 Jameson's Legends of the Monastic Orders. 
 
 428. Etruscan monster. Browning frequently refers to 
 the antiquities of ancient Etruria, which are scattered all 
 through the region described in his poem. The region be- 
 tween Rome and Florence was the site of the race who 
 preceded and were conquered by the Romans, and the re- 
 mains of whose artistic genius are numerous and remark- 
 able. They are described in many special works, and they 
 have been curiously and systematically studied by recent 
 antiquarians. Among the best books on the subject are 
 Dennis's Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, and Burton's 
 Etruscan Bologna. 
 
 458. Wormwood Star. The star which the superstition 
 of the Middle Ages thought appeared when death ap- 
 proached. Mentioned in Revelation viii. 11. 
 
 460. Dogana. Custom house. Palchetto (plural, pal- 
 chetti). Stage or scaffold. 
 
 In his Stories from Browning Mr. F. M. Holland turns 
 the poem into a prose story. In her Browning's Women 
 Miss Burt discusses the women of the poem in her seventh
 
 Roland. Rosny. 353 
 
 and eighth chapters. The Browning Society's Papers give' 
 an essay by John Todhunter and discussion thereon, 1 : 85* ; 
 Kingsland's Robert Browning : Chief Poet of the Age, 
 devotes some pages to this poem. 
 
 The following magazine articles are worthy of attention : 
 The Athenaeum, Dec. 26, 1868, and March 20, 1869, 
 Robert Buchanan, revised and published in his Master- 
 Spirits^ 1873 ; The Christian Examiner, John W. Chad- 
 wick, 86 : 295 ; Gentleman's Magazine, James Thomson, 
 251 : 682 ; St. Paul's Magazine, E. J. Hasell, 7 : 257, 377 ; 
 the same in LittelVs Living Age, 108 : 771 ; Macmillan's 
 Magazine, J. A. Symonds, 19 : 258, J. R. Mozley, 19 : 544 ; 
 North American Review, 109 : 279 ; The Nation, 8 : 135 ; 
 St. James Magazine, 23 : 460 ; The Fortnightly Review, 
 John Morley, 11 : 331 ; The Dublin Review, 65 : 48 ; The 
 Edinburgh Review, 130 : 164; Poet-Lore, 1 : 263, 309. 
 
 Roland. The horse in How they brought the Good 
 Neius from Ghent to Aix. 
 
 Rosny. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 Rosny is a chateau on the river Loire, a little below 
 Mantes, in western France. Although it is just outside of 
 Normandy, it is described in Cassell's Normandy : Its His- 
 tory, Antiquities, and Topography. " Rosny is a little 
 way out of Mantes to the west, down the river, and the his- 
 toric chateau, built close to the stream, is one of the most 
 interesting objects between Paris and Rouen. It is men- 
 tioned as early as 1080, when Raoul de Mauvoisin was 
 seigneur of the domain. It afterwards passed into the house 
 of the counts of Melun, and then, in 1529, to Jean de Be- 
 thune, grandfather of the great Sully. It continued in the 
 family of this minister and his descendants till 1729, when 
 it was purchased by the comte de Senozan. The larger 
 part of the mansion was built by Courtin, a counselor of the 
 Parliament in the reign of Henri III. ; but Sully added to 
 it, and he had not finished it in 1610, when his royal master 
 and friend was assassinated. Many apartments are shown 
 as connected with Henri IV. ; in particular his bedroom. 
 The whole is a grand and interesting specimen of the seven- 
 teenth century." 
 
 In Sully's Memoirs, of which there is an English transla- 
 tion, much is told about the chateau, for he lived in it dur-
 
 354 Rosamund Page. Rudel. 
 
 ing his younger life, and his family occupied it during the 
 civil wars. Here he was carried after the battle of Ivry, 
 which was fought in the immediate neighborhood, severely 
 wounded. He was met by Henri, who spent the night suc- 
 ceeding the battle at the chateau ; and as he lay on his litter 
 Henri dubbed him a knight for his faithful service. Dr. 
 Furnivall, president of the London Browning Society, is of 
 the opinion that Browning invented both the story and the 
 location of the poem. 
 
 Rosamund Page. The young girl in Martin Relph, 
 sentenced and shot for treason, whose innocence would have 
 been proved by Vincent Parkes, her lover, had Martin but 
 shouted to the soldiers to stay their guns until he could 
 arrive on the scene. 
 
 Round us the -wild creatures. The lyric following 
 the first poem in Ferisktah's Fancies begins with these 
 words. 
 
 Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli. Dramatic Lyrics, 
 third number of Bells and Pomegranates, 1842, appeared 
 as I. under the general title of Queen- Worship, being called 
 Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli. Poems, 1849, with pres- 
 ent title ; transferred to Men and Women, in Poetical 
 Works, 1863. 
 
 Rudel was a Provencal troubadour, and lived in the 
 twelfth century. He was a gentleman of Blieux in Pro- 
 vence, and was presented to Frederick Barbarossa in 1154. 
 His early life was spent with Agoult, lord of Sault, a great 
 Provencal lord, who patronized him as a poet of ability, 
 though he is himself represented as being a prince by one 
 of the old writers. Count Geoffrey, brother of Richard the 
 Lion-hearted, was much pleased with Rudel. This was seen 
 by Agoult, who transferred the poet to Geoffrey ; and Ru- 
 del henceforth sang the praises of his two lords and masters, 
 as one biographer expresses it. Rudel accompanied Geof- 
 frey to England ; but he left that Court in 1162 for the 
 Holy Land. 
 
 The Crusaders who had returned from the East spread 
 abroad wonderful reports of the beauty, learning, and wit of 
 the countess of Tripoli, a small duchy lying on the Mediter- 
 ranean, to the north of Palestine. The countess was of the 
 house of Toulouse, and ruled her small country with success.
 
 Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli. 355 
 
 In the spirit of the time Rudel became enamored of this 
 lady, although he had never seen her ; and he sang of his 
 love and her beauty in some of his best songs. The stories 
 told of the hospitality, grace, and virtue of the countess in- 
 spired these songs, and made the poet indifferent to every 
 other interest than his love for her. Before he started for 
 the East he wrote a poem marked by refinement, simplicity, 
 a slight obscurity, and frequent repetitions, which Sismondi 
 prints in his Literature of Southern Europe, and which 
 Thomas Roscoe translates into English. 
 
 ON DISTANT LOVE. 
 
 Angry and sad shall be my way, 
 
 If I behold not her afar, 
 And yet I know not when that day 
 
 Shall rise, for still she dwells afar. 
 
 God ! who hast formed this fair array 
 Of worlds, and placed my love afar, 
 
 Strengthen my heart with hope, I pray, 
 Of seeing her I love afar. 
 
 O Lord ! believe my faithful lay, 
 
 For well I love her though afar, 
 Though but one blessing may repay 
 
 The thousand griefs I feel afar. 
 
 No other love shall shed its ray 
 
 On me, if not this love afar, 
 A brighter one, where'er I stray 
 
 I shall not see, or near, or far. 
 
 Another poem to the countess is given in Rutherford's 
 Troubadours, but without the original Provengal. This 
 poem was written by Rudel immediately before setting out 
 for the East. 
 
 ' ' I love a stranger to mine eyes, 
 
 One to mine ears unknown ; 
 
 Who cannot listen to my sighs, 
 
 Nor breathe to me her own ; 
 
 Yet do I feel, and would I swear, 
 
 That she is lovely, past compare. 
 
 " Beside my couch each night she seems 
 
 A blessed watch to keep ; 
 Then I admire her in my dreams, 
 
 And love her in my sleep. 
 The morning comes and she takes flight ; 
 A world divides her from my sight.
 
 356 Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli. 
 
 " That world I '11 cross to reach her gate, 
 
 And kneel her chair beside. 
 The journey must be fortunate 
 
 Since Love will be my guide. 
 And she shall know that, for her sake, 
 The pilgrim's staff and gown I take. 
 
 " Thrice happy if within her hall 
 
 She yield me shelter then ! 
 Yea, I 'd content me as a thrall 
 
 Among the Saracen 
 To breathe the air that round her spreads, 
 And tread the blessed ground she treads ! 
 
 " It is resolved ; I cross the tide, 
 
 I leave my native place ; 
 O God, transport me to her side, 
 
 And let me see her face ! 
 Grant me but life that I may tell 
 My tale to her I love so well ! 
 
 " There shall the minstrels sing my song, 
 
 And some its sense explain ; 
 A tale of love so strange and strong 
 
 She cannot hear in vain ! 
 Ah, should her heart prove obdurate, 
 The fairies must have warped my fate ! ' ' 
 
 Geoffrey tried to persuade the poet not to undertake the 
 journey to the East ; but Rudel set out in a pilgrim's garb, 
 taking with him as his companion an intimate friend and 
 fellow troubadour, Bertrand d'Alamanon. On the voyage 
 Rudel was attacked with a grievous malady, so that he was 
 thought to be dead, and was near being thrown overboard. 
 He revived, however, so that he reached the port of Tripoli. 
 Then it was reported to the countess that he had arrived, 
 and as his songs addressed to her had preceded him, she 
 went on board the vessel where he was. When Rudel was 
 told of her coining he revived, thanked her for her kindness, 
 said she had restored him to life by her coming, and that he 
 was willing to die having seen her. He died in her arms ; 
 she gave him a rich and honorable burial in a sepulchre of 
 porphyry, on which she had verses engraved in the Arabic 
 language. One account says the countess was never cheerful 
 afterwards, and another that she became a nun. Rudel's 
 companion told her of all the virtues of that poet, who left 
 her his poems and romances, which she caused to be written 
 out in fair gilt letters.
 
 St. John. Saul. 357 
 
 Another story is told of Rudel by Hueffer and Ruther- 
 ford, in their books on the troubadours, which is much in 
 the same spirit as this in connection with the countess of 
 Tripoli. He went one day with two other troubadours to 
 visit a great lady, who was much of a coquette, and who 
 contrived to make each of the three believe that he had won 
 her special favor. She looked Rudel sweetly in the face, 
 another she gave a tender grasp of the hand, and the third 
 she pressed gently on the foot. When they accidentally dis- 
 covered the reception given them a long debate ensued as 
 to who had received the highest favor ; and this important 
 question was referred to a great master of etiquette for set- 
 tlement. This adventure is told in one of the best and 
 longest of the poems of the troubadours. 
 
 See Der Troubadour Jaufre Rudel, sein Leben und 
 seine Werke, by A. Stimming, Keil, 1873 ; also the French 
 and German writers on the troubadours and Provencal po- 
 etry ; in English, Sismondi, Fauriel, Hueffer, and Ruther- 
 ford, but the last is not to be followed too closely; also 
 W. C. Bryant's Prose Works, vol. i., essay on " Nostra- 
 damus's Provencal Poets." One of the most interesting 
 accounts of Rudel is in Mrs. Jameson's Loves of the 
 Poets. 
 
 St. John. Described in his last years, and in the 
 manner of his death, in A Death in the Desert. In a 
 cave in the desert St. John lies dying, hid in a time of ter- 
 rible persecution, and surrounded by several of his faithful 
 disciples. He rouses from a condition of lethargy and 
 talks to his friends of Christ and the true faith. 
 
 St. Martin's Summer. Pacchiarotto, with other 
 Poems, 1876. 
 
 Saul. The first nine stanzas were published in number 
 seven of Sells and Pomegranates, called Dramatic Ro- 
 mances and Lyrics, 1845 ; and concluded with " (End of 
 Part the First.) " The same appeared in the Poems of 
 1849. The last part was written in Rome in 1853-54. The 
 second volume of Men and Women, 1855, contained the 
 completed poem. Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 This poem is based on 1 Samuel xvi. 14 23, where 
 Saul is described as being troubled with an evil spirit, which 
 David drives away by playing on his harp. David pre-
 
 358 Selald. 
 
 bents, in the poem, three series of motives to Saul, each 
 series rising higher than the preceding. 
 I. Tunes played to the brutes. 
 
 1. To the sheep, in v. 
 
 2. To the quail, in vi. 
 
 3. To the crickets, in vi. 
 
 4. To the jerboa, in vi. 
 
 IL The help-tunes of the great epochs in human life. 
 
 1. Reapers, in vii. 
 
 2. Burial, in vii. 
 
 3. Marriage, in vii. 
 
 4. Soldiers, in vii. 
 
 5. Priests, in vii. 
 
 IH. Songs of human aspiration. 
 
 1. The wild joys of living, in ix. 
 
 2. The fame crowning ambition and deeds, in ix. 
 
 3. The praise of unborn generations, in xiii. 
 
 4. The next world's reward and repose, in xvii. 
 
 5. The Love which is the Christ, in xviii. 
 
 Miss H. E. Hersey, in her edition of Christinas Eve and 
 Easter Day and Other Poems, provides this poem with an 
 introduction, notes, and a list of first readings. A chapter 
 is devoted to the poem in J. T. Nettleship's Robert Broum- 
 ing : Essays and Thoughts. Corson, in his Introduction, 
 gives brief comments and notes. The Browning Society's 
 Papers gives an interpretation by Anna M. Stoddart, 
 2 : 264 ; discussion thereon, 2 : 264* ; also paper and discus- 
 sion, 1 : 80*. Saul was published by L. Prang & Co., 
 Boston, 1890, with twenty full-page illustrations in the 
 form of photogravures, by Frank O. Small. 
 
 The last four lines of the ninth section, which ended the 
 first part in Bells and Pomegranates, were as follows, 
 1845: 
 
 " On one head the joy and the pride, even rage like the throe 
 That opes the rock, helps its glad labor, and lets the gold go 
 And ambition that sees a man lead it oh, all of these all 
 Combine to unite in one creature Saul ! " 
 
 Sebald. The German, who has become the lover of 
 Ottima, and with her has killed her husband, in Pippa 
 Passes.
 
 Selections. 359 
 
 Selections. Browning made two series of selections 
 from his own poems, and one from those of Mrs. Brown- 
 ing, that deserve to be noticed as indications of his own 
 judgment on his minor poems, and because of the prefaces. 
 
 In 1866 Browning made a selection of the minor poems 
 of Mrs. Browning, which was published by Chapman & 
 Hall as A Selection from the Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett 
 Browning. He wrote for it the following preface : 
 
 " It has been attempted to retain and to dispose the 
 characteristics of the general poetry, whence this is an ab- 
 stract, according to an order which should allow them the 
 prominency and effect they seem to possess when considered 
 in the larger, not exclusively the lesser works of the poet. 
 A musician might say, such and such chords are repeated, 
 others made subordinate by distribution, so that a single 
 movement may imitate the progress of the whole symphony. 
 But there are various ways of modulating up to and con- 
 necting any given harmonies ; and it will be neither a sur- 
 prise nor a pain to find that better could have been done, as 
 to both selection and sequence, than, in the present case, all 
 care and the profoundest veneration were able to do. 
 
 " London, November, 1865. R. B." 
 
 The first of the two volumes of selections from his own 
 poems bore this title-page : Selections from the Poetwal 
 Works of Robert Browning. London : Smith, Elder & 
 Co., 15, Waterloo Place. 1872. Pages, i.-xii., 1-348. 
 Dedicated to Alfred Tennyson. In Poetry Illustrious 
 and consummate : In Friendship Noble and sincere. 
 
 The preface is an interesting indication of Browning's 
 f eeling about his own poetry : 
 
 " In the present selection from my poetry, there is an 
 attempt to escape from the embarrassment of appearing to 
 pronounce upon what myself may consider the best of it. 
 I adopt another principle ; and by simply stringing together 
 certain pieces on the thread of an imagined personality, I 
 present them in succession, rather as the natural develop- 
 ment of a particular experience than because I account them 
 the most noteworthy portion of my work. Such an attempt 
 was made in the volume of selections from the poetry of
 
 360 Selections. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning : to which in outward uni- 
 formity, at least nay own would venture to become a 
 companion. 
 
 " A few years ago, had such an opportunity presented 
 itself, I might have been tempted to say a word in reply to 
 the objections my poetry was used to encounter. Time has 
 kindly cooperated with my disinclination to write the poetry 
 and the criticism besides. The readers I am at last priv- 
 ileged to expect, meet me fully half-way ; and if, from the 
 fitting stand-point, they must still ' censure me in their 
 wisdom,' they have previously ' awakened their senses 
 that they may the better judge.' Nor do I apprehend any 
 more charges of being willfully obscure, unconscientiously 
 careless, or perversely harsh. Having hitherto done my 
 utmost in the art to which my life is a devotion, I cannot 
 engage to increase the effort ; but I conceive that there may 
 be helpful light, as well as reassuring warmth, in the atten- 
 tion and sympathy I gratefully acknowledge. 
 
 London, May 14, 1872. R. B." 
 
 The contents of this volume are mainly the same as a 
 volume of selections published in Moxom's Miniature 
 Poets, 1865, which was probably made by Browning him- 
 self. They are as follows : My Star ; A Face ; My Last 
 Duchess ; Song from Pippa Passes (Give her but a least 
 excuse) ; Cristina ; Count Gismond ; Eurydice to Orpheus ; 
 The Glove ; Song (Nay but you) ; A Serenade at the 
 Villa ; Youth and Art ; The Flight of the Duchess ; Song 
 from Pippa Passes (The year 's at the Spring) ; How 
 they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix ; Song 
 from Paracelsus (Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes) ; 
 Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kader ; Incident of the 
 French Camp ; The Lost Leader ; In a Gondola ; A Lov- 
 er's Quarrel ; Earth's Immortalities ; The Last Ride To- 
 gether ; Mesmerism ; By the Fireside ; Any Wife to Any 
 Husband ; In a Year ; Song from James Lee (VII.) ; A 
 Woman's Last Word ; Meeting at Night ; Parting at Morn- 
 ing ; Women and Roses ; Misconceptions ; A Pretty Wo- 
 man ; A Light Woman ; Love in a Life ; Life in a Love ; 
 The Laboratory ; Gold Hair ; The Statue and the Bust ; 
 Love among the Ruins ; Time's Revenges ; Waring ; Home
 
 Selections. 361 
 
 Thoughts, from Abroad ; The Italian in England ; The 
 Englishman in Italy ; Up at a Villa Down in the City ; 
 Pictor Ignotus ; Fra Lippo Lippi ; Andrea del Sarto ; The 
 Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church ; A Toc- 
 cata of Galuppi's ; How it strikes a Contemporary ; Protus ; 
 Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha ; Abt Vogler ; Two in the 
 Campagna ; " De Gustibus " ; The Guardian- An gel ; Ev- 
 elyn Hope ; Memorabilia ; Apparent Failure ; Prospice ; 
 " Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came " ; A Grammari- 
 an's Funeral ; Cleon ; Instans Tyrannus ; An Epistle (Kar- 
 shish) ; Caliban upon Setebos ; Saul ; Rabbi ben Ezra ; 
 Epilogue (to Dramatis Personce). 
 
 The Second Series appeared with the following title- 
 page : Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert Brown- 
 ing. Second Series. London : Smith, Elder & Co., 15, 
 Waterloo Place. 1880. Contents : A Wall ; Apparitions ; 
 Natural Magic ; Magical Nature ; Garden Fancies, I., II. ; 
 In Three Days ; The Lost Mistress ; One Way of Love ; 
 Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli ; Numpholeptos ; Appear- 
 ances ; The Worst of it ; Too Late ; Bifurcation ; A Like- 
 ness ; May and Death ; A Forgiveness ; Cenciaja ; Porphy- 
 ria's Lover ; Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial ; 
 Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister (G-r-r) ; The Heretic's 
 Tragedy ; Holy-Cross Day ; Amphibian ; Saint Martin's 
 Summer ; James Lee's Wife ; Respectability ; Dis Alitur 
 Visum ; Confessions ; The Householder ; Tray ; Cavalier 
 Tunes, I., II., III. ; Before ; After ; Herve" Riel ; In a 
 Balcony ; Old Pictures in Florence ; Bishop Blougram's 
 Apology ; Mr. Sludge, " The Medium " ; The Boy and the 
 Angel ; A Death in the Desert ; Fears and Scruples ; Arte- 
 mis Prologizes ; Pheidippides ; The Patriot ; Pisgah-Sights, 
 1, 2, 3 ; At the " Mermaid " ; House ; Shop ; A Tale. 
 
 At about the time Browning wrote, in the preface to the 
 First Series of Selections, that he did not apprehend any 
 more charges of being willfully obscure, he wrote to a 
 friend : " I can have little doubt that my writing has been 
 in the main too hard for many I should have been pleased 
 to communicate with ; but I never designedly tried to 
 puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed. On 
 the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature 
 as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at domi-
 
 362 A Serenade at the Villa. Shop. 
 
 noes to an idle man. So perhaps, on the whole, I get my 
 deserts, and something over not a crowd, but a few I 
 value more." 
 
 Much to the same effect is the letter which Browning 
 wrote to Mr. Edmund Yates, on the occasion of the forma- 
 tion of the Browning Society in London : " The Browning 
 Society, I need not say, as well as Browning himself, are 
 fair game for criticism. I had no more to do with the 
 founding of it than the babe unborn ; and, as Wilkes was 
 no Wilkesite, I am quite other than a Browningite. But I 
 cannot wish harm to a society of, with a few exceptions, 
 names unknown to me, who are busied about my books so 
 disinterestedly. The exaggerations probably come of the 
 fifty-years'-long charge of unintelligibility against my books ; 
 such reactions are possible, though I never looked for the 
 beginning of one so soon. That there is a grotesque side 
 to the thing is certain ; but I have been surprised and 
 touched by what cannot but have been well intentioned, I 
 think. Anyhow, as I never felt inconvenienced by hard 
 words, you will not expect me to wax bumptious because 
 of undue compliment : so enough of ' Browning,' except 
 that he is yours very truly, ' while this machine is to him.' " 
 
 Serenade at the Villa, A. Men and Women, 1855. 
 Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Setebos. The god of Caliban, in Caliban upon Setebos, 
 " who dwelleth in the cold of the moon," and who is subordi- 
 nate to the great Quiet. 
 
 Shah Abbas. Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884. 
 
 Shah Abbas, called The Great, was the ruler of Persia 
 from 1584 until his death in 1628. He conquered the Turks 
 in 1605, and thereby added to his possessions. He was a 
 man of ability and great energy of character. In this poem 
 his name is used fictitiously, for it is not historical that he 
 did what is here attributed to him. Zal is a character in 
 the Shah Nameh, as is also Tahmasp ; but the story told 
 of the latter is fictitious. Ishak son of Absal is a ficti- 
 tious character, the invention of the poet. A Mubid is a 
 Persian magician. These men are frequently mentioned in 
 the Shah Nameh. 
 
 Shop. Pacchiarotto, with other Poems, 1876. 
 
 Intended as a companion poem to House, and shows why 
 literature should not be pursued for money-making.
 
 Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister. 363 
 
 Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. See Garden Flowers. 
 
 Sighed Rawdon Brown. Mr. Ravvdon Brown was 
 an Englishman who went to Venice on some temporary 
 errand, and lived there for forty years, dying in that city 
 in the summer of 1883. He had an enthusiastic love for 
 Venice, and is mentioned in books of travel as one who 
 knew the city thoroughly. His love was described in a 
 sonnet written by Browning at the request of Mrs. Brown- 
 son, who published it in The Century for February, 1884, 
 with Browning's permission. It was reprinted in number 
 five of The Browning Society's Papers, 1 : 132*. The 
 Venetian saying means that " everybody follows his taste 
 and I follow mine." Toni was the gondolier and attendant 
 of Brown. The inscription on Brown's tomb is given in the 
 third and fourth lines. 
 
 " Tutti ga i 80 gusti, e mi go i mii." 
 
 (Venetian saying.) 
 
 Sighed Rawdon Brown : ' ' Yes, I 'm departing, Toni ! 
 I needs must, just this once before I die, 
 Revisit England : Anglus Brown am I, 
 Although my heart 's Venetian. Yes, old crony 
 Venice and London London 's ' Death the bony ' 
 Compared with Life that 's Venice ! What a sky, 
 A sea, this morning ! One last look ! Good-bye, 
 Ca Pesaro ! No, lion I 'm a coney 
 
 To weep ! I 'm dazzled ; 't is that sun I view 
 
 Rippling the . . . the . . . Cospetto, Toni ! Down 
 
 With carpet-bag, and off with valise-straps ! 
 Bella Venezia, non ti lascio piu ! " 
 
 Nor did Brown ever leave her : well, perhaps 
 Browning, next week, may find himself quite Brown ! 
 Nov. 28, '83. 
 
 Sir De Lorge. In The Glove, the knight in the Court 
 of Francis I. of France, who, when his lady drops her 
 glove among the lions, risks his life to hand it back to her, 
 and then rejects her love. 
 
 Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister. Published in 
 Dramatic Lyrics, third number of Bells and Pomegran- 
 ates, 1842. It there appeared as follows : " Camp and 
 Cloister. I. Camp (French). II. Cloister (Spanish)." The 
 first of these poems was subsequently published as Incident 
 of the French Camp; and the second as the Soliloquy of 
 the Spanish Cloister ; they so appeared in the Poems of
 
 364 Song. Solomon and Balkis. 
 
 1849. In the Poetical Works of 1863 the Soliloquy was 
 printed as III. of Garden Fancies, among the Lyrics. In 
 the Poetical Works of 1868 it appeared by itself among the 
 Dramatic Lyrics ; and it has held that place since. 
 
 The poem is based on no special incident ; but it gives a 
 very correct picture of cloister life as Browning must have 
 come to know of it in his extensive reading, especially of 
 cloister life in the Middle Ages. The Great text in Ga- 
 latians refers to chapter v. 19-21, which mentions " the 
 works of the flesh," which are seventeen as Paul enumerates 
 them. The French use trente-six for any moderately large 
 number, and Browning uses " twenty-nine " in this sense. 
 
 Song : Nay but you who do not love her. First 
 published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, seventh num- 
 ber of Bells and Pomegranates, 1845. Lyrics, 1863 ; 
 Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. This song has been set to music 
 by E. C. Gregory ; London, Novello, Ewer & Co. 
 
 Solomon and Balkis. Jocoseria, 1883. 
 
 The Balkis of Arabian and Mohammedan legend is the 
 Queen of Sheba, described in 1 Kings x. 2, and 2 Chron- 
 icles ix. 1. One set of legends say the queen who visited 
 Solomon from the south was from Abyssinia, that she came 
 from Meroe', that her name was Makeda, and that she bore 
 a son to Solomon. The Arabic legends make Sheba to be 
 Sabaea, they call the queen Balkis, and they make her a 
 woman of great wit and wisdom. She was quite the equal 
 of Solomon in the answering of riddles, for that comprised 
 a large pait of his great wisdom. The dark sayings of the 
 wise, as the writer of Proverbs calls them, formed a favorite 
 amusement of Solomon, and fame has given him the greatest 
 skill in untangling them. It is said by legend that he car- 
 ried on these contests with the riddle daily with Hiram of 
 Tyre, and that he was the victor until Hiram found a Tyr- 
 ian boy who could outwit even the wise Solomon. 
 
 The legend of Balkis has been drawn out to great length 
 in the Rabbinical writings and in Mohammedan story. Es- 
 pecially in the Mohammedan legends which have grown up 
 out of the Old Testament narratives has Balkis found a 
 prominent place. As she is there found she is a person 
 of much importance, and marvelous are the tales told of 
 her. These accounts have been collected by Weil in his
 
 Solomon and Balkis. 365 
 
 Biblische Legende. Some idea of them may be had from 
 Baring-Gould's Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets, 
 and Stanley's History of the Jewish Church. 
 
 According to legend, when Balkis sent five hundred boys 
 and girls to Solomon dressed exactly alike, he guessed 
 their sex by the manner in which they washed their hands. 
 When she asked for water that came neither from heaven 
 nor earth he sent a huge slave to race a horse about the 
 court until the perspiration poured from him, and this the 
 slave collected in the goblet to be filled. When she sent 
 him natural and artificial flowers so nearly alike no one 
 could detect the true flowers, Solomon opened the window 
 to permit the bees to come in to decide for him. 
 
 Browning attempts to report what maybe "supposed" to 
 have been the conversation between these two when Solomon 
 answered "all the questions" of Balkis, as he is said to 
 have done by the writer of the Book of Kings. The con- 
 versation is not historical, and it is not even drawn from the 
 legends. 
 
 In Polano's Selections from the Talmud is the following 
 account of the visit of the queen of Sheba to Solomon : 
 
 " All the kingdoms congratulated Solomon as the worthy 
 successor of his father, David, whose fame was great among 
 the nations ; all save one, the kingdom of Sheba, the capital 
 of which was called Kitore. To this kingdom Solomon 
 sent a letter : ' From me, King Solomon, peace to thee 
 and to thy government. Let it be known to thee that the 
 Almighty God has made me to reign over the whole earth, 
 the kingdoms of the North, the South, the East, and the 
 West. Lo, they have come to me with their congratulations, 
 all save thee alone. Come thou also, I pray thee, and sub- 
 mit to my authority, and much honor shall be done thee ; 
 but if thou refusest, behold, I shall by force compel thy 
 acknowledgment. To thee, Queen Sheba, is addressed this 
 letter in peace from me, King Solomon, the son of David.' 
 
 " Now when Queen Sheba received this letter, she sent in 
 haste for her elders and counselors to ask their advice as 
 to the nature of her reply. They spoke but lightly of the 
 message and of the one who sent it ; but the queen did not 
 regard their words. She sent a vessel carrying many 
 presents of different metals, minerals, and precious stones,
 
 366 Solomon and Balkis. 
 
 to Solomon. It was after a voyage of two years' time that 
 these presents arrived at Jerusalem, and in a letter intrusted 
 to the captain the queen said, ' After thou hast received the 
 message then I myself will come to thee.' [In the Moham- 
 medan legends the- account of this embassy is much more 
 extended ; and it was in pursuance of the instructions of 
 the queen that Solomon was tested at this time, in the man- 
 ner already mentioned, as to the sex of five hundred boys 
 and girls, and as to whether he could procure water that 
 came neither from heaven nor earth.] And in two years 
 after this time Queen Sheba arrived at Jerusalem. 
 
 " When Solomon heard that the queen was coming he sent 
 Benayahu, the son of Yehoyadah, the general of his army, 
 to meet her. When the queen saw him she thought he was 
 the king, and she alighted from her carriage. Then Bena- 
 yahu asked, ' Why alightest thou from thy carriage ? ' And 
 she answered, ' Art thou not his majesty, the king ? ' ' No,' 
 replied Benayahu, ' I am but one of his officers.' Then the 
 queen turned back and said to her ladies in attendance, ' If 
 this is but one of the officers, and he is so noble and im- 
 posing in appearance, how great must be his superior, the 
 king.' And Benayahu, the son of Yehoyadah, conducted 
 Queen Sheba to the palace of the king. 
 
 " Solomon prepared to receive his visitor in an apartment 
 laid and lined with glass, and the queen at first was so de- 
 ceived by the appearance that she imagined the king to be 
 sitting in water. And when the queen had tested Solomon's 
 wisdom [by means of riddles and display of wit], and wit- 
 nessed his magnificence, she said : ' I believed not what I 
 heard, but now I have come, and my eyes have seen it all ; 
 behold, the half has not been told me. Happy are thy 
 servants who stand before thee continually to listen to thy 
 words of wisdom. Blessed be the Lord thy God, who hath 
 placed thee on a throne to rule righteously and in justice.' 
 When other kingdoms heard the words of the queen of 
 Sheba they feared Solomon exceedingly, and he became 
 greater than all the other kings of the earth in wisdom and 
 in wealth." 
 
 In Jami's Salamdn and Absal, as translated by Edward 
 Fitzgerald, the legend of Solomon and Balkis is treated as 
 follows :
 
 Sonnet. Sordello. 367 
 
 " Once upon the Throne together 
 Telling one another Secrets 
 Sate Sulayman and Balkis ; 
 The Hearts of both were turn'd to Truth, 
 Unsullied by Deception. 
 First the King of Faith Sulayman 
 
 Spoke ' However just and wise 
 Reported, none of all the many 
 Suitors to my palace thronging 
 
 But afar I scrutinize ; 
 And He who comes not empty-handed 
 
 Grows to Honor in mine Eyes. ' 
 After this, Balkis a Secret 
 From her hidden bosom utter' d, 
 Saying ' Never night or morning 
 Comely Youth before me passes 
 Whom I look not after, longing.' " 
 
 There is no reason for supposing that Solomon spoke 
 Greek, as Browning makes him do. The word conster 
 means construe, and is frequently to be found in Shake- 
 speare and early English writers. The conversation of the 
 poem contains an amount of humor such as does not appear 
 in the Talmudic or other legends. 
 
 Sonnet. The several poems contributed by Browning 
 to The Monthly Repository, edited by W. J. Fox, were all 
 reprinted by him with one exception, which appeared in 
 1834, New Series, vol. viii. p. 712. This sonnet is reprinted 
 verbatim in The Browning Society's Papers, part xii. : 
 
 "Eyes, calm beside thee, (Lady could'st thou know!) 
 
 May turn away thick with fast-gathering tears : 
 I glance not where all gaze : thrilling and low 
 
 Their passionate praises reach thee my cheek wears 
 Alone no wonder when thou passest by ; 
 Thy tremulous lids bent and suffused reply 
 To the irrepressible homage which doth glow 
 
 On every lip but mine : if in thine ears 
 Their accents linger and thou dost recall 
 
 Me as I stood, still, guarded, very pale, 
 Beside each votarist whose lighted brow 
 Wore worship like an aureole, ' O'er them all 
 
 ' My beauty, ' thou wilt murmur, ' did prevail 
 ' Save that one only : ' Lady could'st thou know ! 
 August 17, 1834. Z." 
 
 Bordello. This poem was begun in 1836, and was then 
 laid aside in order to write Strafford. It was published by 
 Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1840. Pages, i.-iv., 1-253,
 
 368 ' Sordello. 
 
 post 8vo. Reprinted in Poetical Works, 1863, in revised 
 form, with dedication to J. Milsand, which has been retained 
 in all subsequent editions. 
 
 The severest charges of obscurity were brought against 
 the poem as at first published. One of these is given in 
 Thomas Powell's Living Authors of England in the follow- 
 ing form : " Douglas Jerrold was recruiting himself at 
 Brighton after a long illness. In the progress of his con- 
 valescence a parcel arrived from London, which contained, 
 among other things, this new volume of Sordello ; the med- 
 ical attendant had forbidden Mr. Jerrold the luxury of read- 
 ing, but owing to the absence of his conjugal ' life guards ' 
 he indulged in the illicit enjoyment. A few lines put Jer- 
 rold in a state of alarm. Sentence after sentence brought 
 no consecutive thought to his brain. At last the idea crossed 
 his mind that in his illness his mental faculties had been 
 wrecked. The perspiration rolled from his forehead, and 
 smiting his head, he sat down in his sofa, crying, ' O God, I 
 am an idiot ! ' When his wife and sister came, they were 
 amused by his pushing the volume into their hands, and 
 demanding what they thought of it. He watched them 
 intently while they read at last his wife said : ' I don't 
 understand what the man means ; it is gibberish.' The de- 
 lighted humorist sank in his seat again : ' Thank God, I am 
 not an idiot.' Mr. Browning, to whom we told this, has 
 often laughed over it, and then endeavored to show that 
 Sordello was the clearest and most simple poem in the Eng- 
 lish language." This experience it was, perhaps, which 
 made Jerrold say of Browning's style, that he " wrote 
 Greek in shorthand." 
 
 It has been reported that Tennyson said that he could 
 understand only the first and last lines of the poem, and 
 that they were both lies. " My wife," wrote Carlyle, "has 
 read through Sordello without being able to make out 
 whether Sordello was a man, or a city, or a book." 
 
 Such criticisms as these, and others of a similar charac- 
 ter, which were put into print, led Browning to consider the 
 advisability of rewriting the poem, with the object of mak- 
 ing it more comprehensible. He finally decided that this 
 could not be done to his own satisfaction ; but he carefully 
 revised it, rewriting lines here and there, and he summa-
 
 Bordello. 369 
 
 rized the contents of the poem in a continuous series of head- 
 lines, which give the main thread of the story. In the 
 dedication to the revised edition Browning refers to the 
 criticisms, and to his thought of rewriting the poem : " I 
 wrote it twenty-five years ago for only a few, counting even 
 in these on somewhat more care about its subject than they 
 really had. My own faults of expression were many ; but 
 with care for a man or book such would be surmounted, and 
 without it what avails the faultlessness of either ? I blame 
 nobody, least of all myself, who did my best then and since ; 
 for I lately gave time and pains to turn my work into what 
 the many might instead of what the few must like ; but 
 after all, I imagined another thing at first, and therefore 
 leave as I find it." Concerning the revised edition Brown- 
 ing wrote to a friend, protesting against the statement that 
 he had rewritten the poem, or that he had made any essen- 
 tial change in it : 
 
 " I do not understand what can mean by saying 
 
 that Sordello has been ' rewritten.' I did certainly at one 
 time intend to rewrite much of it, but changed my mind, 
 and the edition which I reprinted was the same in all re- 
 spects as its predecessors only with an elucidatory head- 
 ing to each page, and some few alterations, presumably for 
 the better, in the text, such as occur in most of my works. 
 I cannot remember a single instance of any importance that 
 is rewritten, and I only suppose that has taken pro- 
 ject for performance, and set down as ' done ' what was for 
 a while intended to be done." 
 
 In the sixth canto of Dante's Purgatorio Sordello ap- 
 pears, and is made the guide of Virgil and his companion. 
 The shade of Sordello is described as being silent and 
 watchful : 
 
 " Nothing whatever did it say to us, 
 
 But let us go our way, eyeing us only 
 
 After the manner of a couchant lion ; 
 Still near to it Virgilius drew, entreating 
 
 That it would point us out the best ascent ; 
 
 And it replied not unto his demand, 
 But of our native land and of our life 
 
 It questioned us ; and the sweet Guide began : 
 
 ' Mantua,' and the shade, all in itself recluse, 
 Rose tow'rds him from the place where first it was,
 
 370 Sordello. 
 
 Saying : ' Mantuan, I am Sordello 
 
 Of thine own land ! ' and one embraced the other. 
 
 That noble soul was so impatient, only 
 
 At the sweet sound of his own native land, 
 To make its citizen glad welcome there." 
 
 Dante thus honors Sordello because that poet had pre- 
 ceded him in the attempt to establish a vernacular Italian 
 speech as a medium of literary expression. For the same 
 cause he described Sordello in his De Vulyari Eloquio as 
 " a man so choice in his language, that not only in his poems, 
 but in whatever way he spoke, he abandoned the dialect of 
 his province." Sordello lived during the first part of the 
 thirteenth century, and he was a poet, a troubadour, a sol- 
 dier by profession, and a politician of some ability. Little 
 is now known about him, and that little is much obscured 
 by tradition and legend. It is probable that two persons 
 have in some way been mixed together in the accounts 
 given of him. One of these persons was a poet, and the 
 other was a man of action and political intrigue. 
 
 Browning evidently studied whatever was written about 
 Sordello by the chroniclers ; but he has not undertaken to un- 
 riddle the biographical difficulties which surround his name. 
 Whatever would best serve his purpose in the traditions he 
 has used ; but he has not tried to be consistent with histor- 
 ical probability. He makes Sordello the supposed son of 
 an archer, El Corte by name, and he has been brought up 
 at the castle of Goito, by Adelaide, the wife of Eccelin of 
 Romano. In the first book the life of Sordello at Goito is 
 described ; and his failure as a troubadour is set forth in 
 the second. In the third book Sordello journeys to Verona, 
 and Palma declares her love for him. He then becomes her 
 minstrel and her devoted lover. In the fourth book the hor- 
 rors of civil war are described, and their effect on Sordello 
 in making him desert the Ghibelline cause, which had the 
 devotion of his lady love. The fifth book discloses the true 
 birth of Sordello, and he finds his father in Salinguerra, 
 the great Ghibelline chief and politician. Through his con- 
 nection with Palma it is now made possible for Sordello to 
 become the head of all of Northern Italy. The last book 
 shows him struggling between the ambition of leadership, 
 which he can now gratify, and the conviction of his heart
 
 Sordello. 371 
 
 that the popular cause is the true one and the one he ought 
 to support. At last he makes the sacrifice ; but the attempt 
 is too much for him, and he dies before it is fairly accom- 
 plished. 
 
 In her little book on Sordello, Mrs. Caroline H. Dall has 
 given the fullest account yet published in English of what 
 there is that may be known about the poet, as his history is 
 told by Italian writers. Her historical account of Sordello 
 is founded on materials discovered by her in the library of 
 the Canadian Parliament, both printed books and manu- 
 scripts. These have since been burned, and are said to 
 have belonged to one of the early Jesuit explorers. 
 
 " In Aliprando's fabulous History of Milan we find long 
 stories of Sordello, borrowed, doubtless, from still older 
 sources, and stealing out of his verses into the solemn Latin 
 prose of Platina's History of Mantua. There we are told 
 that Sordello was born into the Visconti family, at Goito, in 
 Mantua, in 1189. A mere boy, he startled the world of let- 
 ters by a poem, called Tresor. That of arms did not open to 
 him till he was twenty-five, when he distinguished himself, 
 not only by bravery and address, but by a dignity and grace 
 of manner the first glimpse of his slight figure hardly prom- 
 ised. He was conqueror in scores of tilts, and vanquished 
 foreigners went back to France to proclaim his chivalry to 
 that court. 
 
 " Then Louis wanted him, and Sordello was hastening 
 across the Alps, when Eccelin da Romano called him to 
 Verona. Here his young life was made wretched by Bea- 
 trice, sister of Eccelin. Prayers, tears, and swoons, how- 
 ever, did not prevent him from seeking in Mantua a refuge 
 from an intrigue unworthy of his honor. She followed him 
 to Mantua, disguised as a page, and in the end became his 
 wife. A few days after the wedding, to which it can hardly 
 be said that he consented, the Troubadour very naturally 
 remembered that King Louis needed him. Partly at court, 
 and partly at the ancient French city of Troyes, his valor, his 
 gallantry, and his sweet verses won all hearts. Louis made 
 him a chevalier, and gave him three thousand francs and a 
 golden falcon. On his return, the Italian cities met him, 
 one after the other, with stately congratulation, the Mantu- 
 ans coming in a crowd to greet him. In 1229 he joined
 
 372 Sordello. 
 
 his wife at Padua, and that city celebrated his return by a 
 whole week of festivity. From 1250 to 1253 the brother 
 of Beatrice, Eccelin da Romano, besieged Mantua. At the 
 last the unwilling husband led the people out, and in the 
 fray that followed Eccelin perished. 
 
 " But this graceful story could not have been true. At 
 the time when it asserts that Sordello went into France, 
 there was no Louis only a Philip Augustus on the 
 throne. The siege of Mantua did not begin till 1256, and 
 Eccelin died in 1259. His sister's real name was Cuniza. 
 Perhaps Sordello told some such story of himself in one of 
 the dancing rhymes he sung by the camp-fire. Very soon 
 did such songs turn into history. 
 
 ' Rolandino, a Latin historian, born in Padua in the year 
 1200, and therefore a contemporary, mentions the matter 
 differently. ' Cuniza, wife of Richard of St. Boniface, and 
 sister of Eccelin da Romano, was stolen from her husband,' 
 he says, ' by one Sordello, who was of the same family.' 
 The ambiguity of this last phrase perplexed Tiraboschi, but 
 would hardly deserve our attention if it had not furnished 
 a hint for the modern poem. In Browning's hands, Sor- 
 dello is no guilty troubadour, but the unwitting victim of 
 political schemers, held as a hostage by his ambitious enemy, 
 and that enemy a woman. Palma takes the place of Cuniza, 
 but with no dishonor to her family. Rolandino adds that 
 the pair took refuge with the father of Cuniza, who finally 
 drove them forth in disgrace. 
 
 " Dante, however, had something to say of Sordello which 
 Browning has remembered. At the entrance of Purgatory, 
 in a spot where the impenitent mingle with those who have 
 died a violent death, Virgil meets Sordello. ' O Mantuan ! ' 
 he cries, ' I am Sordello, born in thy land.' Dante here 
 attributes to him ' the lion's glance and port,' and in his 
 treatise De Vulgari Eloquio, says that Sordello excelled 
 in all kinds of composition, and that he helped to fqrm the 
 Tuscan tongue by some happy attempts which he made in 
 the dialects of Cremona, Brescia, and Verona, cities not far 
 removed from Mantua. He also speaks of a ' Goito Man- 
 tuan,' who was the author of many good songs, and who left 
 in every stanza an unmatched line which he called the key ; 
 and this singer Tiraboschi thinks is our Troubadour.
 
 Sordello. 373 
 
 " Benvenuto d' Imola, a commentator on Dante, of the 
 fourteenth century, says, in a note to the sixth canto of the 
 Purgatorio : ' Sordello was a native of Mantua, an illustrious 
 and skillful warrior, and an accomplished courtier. This 
 chevalier lived in the time of Eccelin da Romano, whose sis- 
 ter conceived for him so violent a passion that she often had 
 him brought to her apartments by a private way. Informed 
 of this intrigue, Eccelin disguised himself as a servant, .and 
 surprised the unfortunate poet, who promised on his knees 
 not to repeat the offense. But,' continues Benvenuto in 
 forcible Latin, ' the cursed Cuniza dragged him anew into 
 perdition. He was naturally grave, virtuous, and prudent. 
 To withdraw himself from Eccelin he fled, but was pursued 
 and assassinated.' 
 
 '' Benvenuto attributes to Sordello a Latin work, Thesau- 
 rus Thesaurorum ; and if such a work ever existed we un- 
 derstand the sympathy with which the Troubadour embraced 
 the knees of Virgil, ' O Glory of the Latins,' etc. Dante, at 
 all events, thought of him as a patriot, and his outburst over 
 the meeting colors the modern poem. That his poems were 
 more philosophical than amatory was a still further appeal 
 to the sympathy of the Florentine." 
 
 Still another account of Sordello is that given by Quadrio, 
 in his Storia d' ogni Poesia, who says : " Sordello, native 
 of Go'ito (Sordelde Goi), a village in the Mantuan territory, 
 was born in 1184, and was the son of a poor knight named 
 Elcort. . . . Having afterwards returned to Italy, he gov- 
 erned Mantua with the title of regent and captain-general, 
 and was opposed to the tyrant Ezzelino, being a great lover 
 of justice, as Agnelli writes. Finally he died, very old and 
 full of honor, about 1280. He wrote not only in Provencal, 
 but also in our own common Italian tongue ; and he was 
 one of those poets who avoided the dialect of his own prov- 
 ince, and used the good, choice language, as Dante affirms 
 in his book of De Vulgari Eloquw" 
 
 Commenting on the accounts given of Sordello, Millot, in 
 his History of the Literature of ike Troubadours, says : 
 " According to Agnelli and Platina, historians of Mantua, 
 he was of the house of Visconti of that city ; valiant in 
 deeds of arms, famous in jousts and tournaments, he won 
 the love of Beatrice, daughter of Ezzelin de Romano, Lord
 
 374 Bordello. 
 
 of the Marca Trevigiana, and married her ; he governed 
 Mantua as podesta and captain-general, and though son- 
 in-law of the tyrant Ezzelin, he always opposed him, being 
 a great lover of justice. We find these facts cited by Cre- 
 scimbeni, who says that Sordello was the lord of Goito ; but 
 as they are not applicable to our poet, we presume they re- 
 fer to a warrior of the same name, and perhaps of a differ- 
 ent, family. Among the pieces of Sordello, thirty- four in 
 number, there are some fifteen songs of gallantry, though 
 Nostradamus says that all his pieces turn only upon philo- 
 sophical subjects." 
 
 The French historians give a somewhat different account 
 of Sordello, and they especially dwell upon his character as 
 a troubadour. Nostradamus, in his Lives of the Provencal 
 Poets, says : " Sordello was a Mantuan poet, who surpassed 
 in Provencal song Calvo, Folchetto of Marseilles, Lan- 
 franco Cicala, Percival Doria, and all the other Genoese 
 and Tuscan poets, who took far greater delight in our Pro- 
 vencal tongue, on account of its sweetness, than in their own 
 maternal language. This poet was very studious, and ex- 
 ceedingly eager to know all things, and as much as any one 
 of his nation excellent in learning as well as in understand- 
 ing and in prudence. He wrote several beautiful songs, not 
 indeed of love, for not one of that kind is found among his 
 works, but on philosophic subjects. Raymond Belinghieri, 
 the last Count of Provence of that name, in the last days 
 of his life (the poet being then but fifteen years of age) on 
 account of the excellence of his poetry and the rare inven- 
 tion shown in his productions took him into his service, as 
 Pietro di Castelnuovo, himself a Proven gal poet, informs 
 us. He also wrote various satires in the same language, and 
 among others one in which he reproves all the Christian 
 princes ; and it is composed in the form of a funeral song 
 on the death of Blancasso." 
 
 The poem thus mentioned by Nostradamus is translated 
 by William Cullen Bryant in his article on " Nostradamus's 
 Provencal Poets," now published in the first volume of his 
 Prose Works : 
 
 " I mourn for my Lord Blaehas, I weep that he is dead, 
 That the nohlest, hravest spirit of this coward age is fled ; 
 We cannot call it back, but will keep his g-enerous heart, 
 And the craven lords of Europe shall each receive a part.
 
 Sordello. 375 
 
 Let the Emperor partake, if he would triumph o'er 
 
 The Pope and the Milanese, whose armies press him sore, 
 
 And give the King of France, that youthful king, his share, 
 
 That he may get Castile again, the gem he used to wear. 
 
 But since, within the Council, another rules than he, 
 
 Let him take especial care his mother does not see. 
 
 Give largely to the English King, and he may think, perchance, 
 
 Of winning hack the fair, broad lands that he has lost in France. 
 
 The monarch of Castile, let him take enough for two, 
 
 For to keep the remnant of his realm is what he scarce can do ; 
 
 But secretly and slyly let him receive his share, 
 
 Lest Portugal should come in wrath and pull his royal hair. 
 
 Let him of Aragon partake as largely as he will, 
 
 That he may clear from foul disgrace his courage and his skill, 
 
 When leading all his hosts, he came, with furious heat, 
 
 To seize Marseilles and storm Milan, and shamefully was heat. 
 
 " Give freely to Navarre, that lily-livered thing, 
 
 Who was a tolerable count, but makes a sorry king. 
 
 And to the Count of Toulouse, that he may see at length 
 
 How warlike hands have lopped his realm and hewn away his strength, 
 
 How at the very sacred hour, when tolled the vesper-bell, 
 
 By thousands, in the bloody streets, the sons of Provence fell." 
 
 Raynouard, in his Poetry of the Troubadours, tells the 
 story of Sordello's life in a way of his own : " Sordello was 
 a Mantuan of Sirier, son of a poor knight whose name was 
 Sir El Cort. And he delighted in learning songs and in 
 making them, and wrote love-songs and satires. And he 
 came to the court of the Count of Saint Boniface, and the 
 Count honored him greatly, and by way of pastime he fell 
 in love with the wife of the Count, and she with him. And 
 it happened that the Count quarreled with her brothers, 
 and became estranged from her ; and her brothers, Sir Icel- 
 lis and Sir Albrics, persuaded Sir Sordello to run away with 
 her, and he came to live with them in great content. And 
 afterwards he went into Provence and received great honor 
 from all good men, and from the Count and Countess, who 
 gave him a good castle and a gentlewoman for his wife." 
 
 In his History of French Literature, Emeric-David comes 
 to the conclusion that Sordello was not a troubadour, and 
 that in reality he was the old podesta of Mantua of whom 
 Dante sang. In his History of Italian Literature, Tira- 
 boschi devotes sixteen solid pages to Sordello, but is not able 
 to decide who he was. 
 
 Mrs. Dall continues her account of Sordello by saying
 
 376 Sordello. 
 
 that " Giambattista d' Arco attributes to Sordello several 
 historical translations out of Latin into the vulgar tongue, 
 and an original treatise on The Defense of Walled Towns. 
 Tiraboschi, who had access to a very large number of manu- 
 scripts, rejects most of these splendid stories. According to 
 him, Sordello was a Mantuan, born in Goito, at the very 
 close of the twelfth century. He went into Provence, but 
 not when a boy. . He eloped with the wife of his friend, 
 Count Boniface ; he was of noble family, and a warrior, but 
 never a captain-general nor a governor of Mantua. He died 
 a violent death, about the middle of the thirteenth century, 
 but in 1281 he would have been a hundred years old ! . . . 
 " None of the prose translations, nor any poems written 
 by Sordello in the Tuscan tongue, survive. His verses in 
 the Provencal are all that remain to vindicate his genius. 
 Thirty-four pieces, for the most part gallant songs, chal- 
 lenge the statement of Nostradamus, that he was devoted to 
 philosophy. Two have been translated by Millot. The re- 
 frain of the first is 
 
 ' ' Alas ! of what use to have eyes 
 
 If they gaze not on her I desire ? ' 
 
 It is written in very pure taste. The second is a more or- 
 dinary affair. Three of the pieces are of the sort called 
 tensons, that is, dialogues. One discusses the duty of a be- 
 reaved lover. The second compares the pursuit of knightly- 
 feats with the delights of love, and weighs the satisfactions 
 of each. The third discusses ' the bad faith of princes ; ' a 
 subject which he renews in an epistle addressed to St. Boni- 
 face. We should have had but a poor opinion of his mettle 
 were this epistle the only testimony to it ; for he begs to be 
 excused from joining the crusaders ! He is in no haste, he 
 says, to enter on eternal life. 
 
 " His other poems are sirventes. Many of them attack 
 the troubadour Vidal. In these, threats mingle with insults, 
 which become gross as soon as they are translated. Some, 
 which relate to the moral and political aspects of his own 
 time, merit our attention, and doubtless have furnished 
 Browning with more than one pungent line. In one the 
 poet scoffs at those who, under pretext of extirpating hereti- 
 cal Albigenses, have banded together to despoil Raymond, 
 count of Toulouse. The satire in which he entreats this
 
 Sordello. 377 
 
 prince not to submit to insult or rapine must have been writ- 
 ten in 1228 ; because it speaks of the absolution just re- 
 ceived by Raymond VII. 
 
 " His best poem is his lament for Blacas, a Spanish 
 troubadour of remarkable personal courage. It is a satire, 
 and sovereign princes are urged to share between them the 
 heart of the hero. ' Let the emperor eat first of it,' says 
 the song, ' that he may recover what the Milanese have 
 taken ! Let the noble king of France eat of it, that he 
 may regain Castile ! but it must be when his mother is not 
 looking ! ' This king of France was probably Louis IX., 
 and the verses must have been written in the ten years pre- 
 ceding 1236. 
 
 " The best of Sordello's verses show a dignity of compo- 
 sition and purity of taste which put him in the very front 
 rank of the Provencals. His great hold on posterity con- 
 sists in the fact that he preceded Dante in the classic use of 
 the vulgar tongue." 
 
 Rutherford, in his book on the Troubadours, translates 
 two or three of the poems of Sordello. One of these is a 
 sirvente, in which the poet expressed his dislike of the clois- 
 tral life. 
 
 " To whom shall now our songs be sung ? 
 
 Our passion now be said ? 
 As if their funeral knell were rung, 
 We count them with the dead. 
 
 " Alas ! and must we, Count of mine, 
 
 Our souls to sorrow give ! 
 Since wanting those yon cells confine, 
 It is not life to live. 
 
 " Ah ! never more shall their sweet tones, 
 
 My Count, delight our ears ; 
 They now are chanting orisons, 
 While we are shedding tears ! 
 
 " But, wherefore do we mourning stand ? 
 
 And what do tears avail ? 
 'T were better far, with armed hand, 
 Their prison to assail. 
 
 " My Count, let 's fire the place at once, 
 
 And burn it, cells and towers, 
 And thus unshrine the vile St. Pons, 
 Who robs us of our flowers.
 
 378 Sordello. 
 
 " In vain ! in vain ! No human hand 
 May snatch them from their fate ! 
 They pine among the cloistered band, 
 And we are desolate." 
 
 Another of these poems is a tenson, in which Sordello 
 holds a poetic discussion with Montan on the importance of 
 truthfulness in princes. 
 
 SOBDEL. 
 
 I marvel that a prince's hand can contradict his tongue, 
 And that his words shall all be right, while all his deeds are wrong. 
 To noble promises should deeds as noble still accord, 
 Or men may stigmatize who speaks with one short, ugly word. 
 
 MONTAN. 
 
 I marvel not, too much it costs generous to be and j ust, 
 For princely praise to swell the speech of those who princes trust ; 
 Yet would the folly me amaze in any but a prince, 
 That thinks a handsome falsehood may good service recompense. 
 
 SOKDEL. 
 
 I would, my Montan, that to all this maxim we could teach, 
 Never to promise aught but that which lies within their reach 
 Who ready shows to promise all, that man his honor slights ; 
 And lies should be accounted shame in princes as in knights. 
 
 A passage from one of Sordello's poems is translated by 
 Mr. Holland, in his Stories from Browning : 
 
 " I love a lady, fair without a peer, 
 Serve her I 'd rather, though she ne'er requite 
 My love, than give myself to other dames, 
 However richly they might pay their knight. 
 Requite me not ? Nay. He who serves a dame 
 Whose honor, grace, and virtue shine like day, 
 Can do no service which the very joy 
 Of doing doth not bounteously repay. 
 For other recompense I will not pine, 
 But should it come, her pleasure still is mine." 
 
 A tenson rendered remarkable by the way in which one 
 of the disputants contradicted his own arguments by his sub- 
 sequent action was held between Guilhelm de la Tor and 
 Sordello. " There is a lover," said the former, " who has 
 a cherished mistress ; he sees her expire before his face ; 
 should he die with her or survive her ? " Sordello replied 
 that " when death had divided a loving couple, it was better 
 for the one who had been so bereaved to follow the other to 
 the tomb than to remain on earth in agony and despair."
 
 Sordello. 379 
 
 To this la Tor responded, that " the dead could gain nothing 
 by the sacrifice of the living, and that it could not be right 
 to do that from which no good, but much evil, would re- 
 sult." La Tor did, however, as Sordel had advised when 
 he came to lose the mistress of his heart. Guilhelm de la 
 Tor fell in love with the wife of a barber, who deserted her 
 husband for him ; but she died of a pestilence a few months 
 later. He remained on her tomb day and night, which he 
 opened every night to see if she were not feigning, until his 
 strange conduct caused the people to turn him out of the 
 city. When some prescribed a hard remedy which it was 
 promised would restore his wife to him, la Tor tried it faith- 
 fully for a year, and then died of grief. 
 
 In his Literature of Southern Europe Sismondi says 
 that the poet has always been a hero to his biographer. 
 " No one has experienced this good fortune in an equal de- 
 gree with Sordello of Mantua, whose real merit consists in 
 the harmony and sensibility of his verses. He was among 
 the first to adopt the ballad-form of writing, and in one of 
 those, which has been translated by Millot (into French) 
 he beautifully contrasts, in the burden of his ballad, the 
 gayeties of Nature and the ever-reviving grief of a heart 
 devoted to love. Sordel, or Sordello, was born at Go'ito, 
 near Mantua, and was, for some time, attached to the house 
 of Count St. Boniface, the chief of the Guelph party, in 
 the March of Trevise. He afterwards passed into the ser- 
 vice of Raymond Berenger, the last Count of Provence of 
 the house of Barcelona. Although a Lombard, he had 
 adopted, in his compositions, the Provencal language, and 
 many of his countrymen imitated him. It was not, at that 
 time, believed that the Italian was capable of becoming a 
 polished language. The age of Sordello was that of the 
 most brilliant chivalric virtues and the most atrocious 
 crimes. He lived in the midst of heroes and monsters. 
 The imagination of the people was still haunted by the rec- 
 ollection of the ferocious Ezzelino, tyrant of Verona, with 
 whom Sordello is said to have had a contest, and who 
 was probably often mentioned in his verses. The histori- 
 cal monuments of this reign of blood were, however, little 
 known, and the people mingled the name of their favorite 
 with every revolution which excited their terror. It was
 
 380 Sordello. 
 
 said that he had carried off the wife of the Count of St. 
 Boniface, the sovereign of Mantua, that he had married 
 the daughter or sister of Ezzelino, and that he had fought 
 this monster with glory to himself. He united, according 
 to popular report, the most brilliant military exploits to the 
 most distinguished poetical genius. By the voice of St. 
 Louis himself, he had been recognized, at a tourney, as the 
 most valiant and gallant of knights; and at last the sov- 
 ereignty of Mantua had been bestowed upon this noblest 
 of the poets and warriors of his age. Histories of credit 
 have collected, three centuries after Sordello's death, these 
 brilliant fictions, which are, however, disproved by the testi- 
 mony of contemporary writers. The reputation of Sordello 
 is owing, very materially, to the admiration which has been 
 expressed for him by Dante. . . . Sainte-Palaye has col- 
 lected thirty-four poems of Sordello's ; fifteen of these are 
 love-songs, and some of them are written in a pure and 
 delicate style. Amongst the other pieces is a funeral eulo- 
 gium on the Chevalier de Blacas, an Aragonese troubadour, 
 whose heart, Sordello says, shouldst be divided amongst all 
 the monarchs in Christendom, to supply them with the 
 courage of which they stand in need. At the same time 
 we find among the compositions of Sordello some pieces 
 little worthy of the admiration which has been bestowed 
 upon his personal character, and not altogether in accord- 
 ance with the delicacy of a knight and a troubadour. In 
 one he speaks of his success in his amours with a kind of 
 coarse complacency, very far removed from the devotion 
 which was due to the sex from every cavalier." 
 
 The suggestion of Sismondi, that Sordello gained what- 
 ever reputation he possesses because of the notice given 
 him by Dante, is confirmed by Church, in his Dante and 
 Other Essays, where he says of the Mantuan poet : " He 
 was plainly a distinguished person in his time, a cunning 
 craftsman in the choice and use of language ; but if this 
 was all, his name would only rank with a number of others, 
 famous in their time, but under the cloud of greater suc- 
 cessors. He may have been something more than a writer 
 and speaker ; he may have been a ruler, though that is 
 doubtful. But we know him, because in the ante-chamber 
 of Purgatory he was so much to Dante. Through three
 
 Sordello. 381 
 
 cantos he is the companion and guide of the two great 
 pilgrims. He is shown to us, as it were, in picture his 
 solitariness, his lofty faith, his melancholy majesty. His 
 presence calls forth some of Dante's deepest and most 
 memorable laments over the miseries of Italy, and the 
 responsibilities of her indolent and incapable rulers. He 
 leads his compa'nions to the secret and guarded valley where 
 kings and princes of the earth, who have meant to do their 
 duty, but in the end have not fulfilled their trust, must wait 
 outside of Purgatory the hour of mercy ; when Dante sees 
 their still sadness, and learns their names, and hears their 
 evening hymns. And here we learn Dante's judgment on 
 Sordello himself : he is placed by himself, more self-centred 
 and in guise haughtier than even the rulers and judges in 
 whose company he waits to begin his cleansing ; and he is 
 placed among those who had great opportunities and great 
 thoughts the men of great chances and great failures." 
 
 Of the use which Browning makes of such facts as can 
 be gathered about Sordello, Church has also spoken what is 
 undoubtedly true : " He does what was a common practice 
 at a certain period of classical literature, and to which our 
 critical days have given, often very unjustly, the name of 
 intentional forgery : the practice of taking up famous or 
 well-known names into the sphere of imagination, and 
 making them speak as it is thought they ought to speak 
 making them speak what is believed to be true in the spirit 
 though feigned in the letter, like the speeches of generals 
 and statesmen in Thucydides or Livy. Mr. Browning takes 
 great liberties : much greater than our historical dramatists 
 and novelists, when they present a Richard the Second or a 
 Savonarola, perhaps no more than Dante has taken with 
 some of his great names, perhaps with his Sordello and his 
 Cunizza. Sordello, like Hamlet, comes from the poet's in- 
 ner consciousness ; the scraps that we do possess about him 
 Dante's magnificent picture in Purgatory, the scant no- 
 tices collected in troubadour histories, or the fuller but more 
 mythical accounts, like Platina's, Mr. Browning haughtily 
 passes by. He has a Sordello of his own, utterly unlike 
 anything written of him elsewhere, and of him he knows 
 the innermost secret." 
 
 The period in which Sordello lived was a remarkable one.
 
 382 Sorddlo. 
 
 The Crusades were drawing to a close, in failure. They 
 had given a new life to Europe, however, and out of them 
 had grown feudalism and chivalry. In the South of France 
 the spirit of chivalry was beginning to express itself, and it 
 especially found utterance in Provencal poetry. Sordello 
 was a troubadour, if we may believe some of those who 
 have written of him ; and he had some of the finer, as well 
 as some of the coarser qualities which were associated with 
 chivalry. 
 
 We see in the life of Sordello another remarkable move- 
 ment of his time finding expression, that of the origin of 
 the modern European languages and literatures. Until his 
 time Latin had been the sole language of literature, science, 
 and theology, for a period of several centuries. The new 
 life that was springing up found utterance in the use of 
 the common or vulgar language of the people as a medium 
 of literary expression. The troubadours developed this 
 movement in France, as the minnesingers did in Germany. 
 A little later Dante wrote his great poem in Italian, and for 
 the first time in modern history made the language in which 
 the people spoke the medium of great and vital ideas. One 
 of the predecessors of Dante in this work, by whose aid it 
 became possible for him to accomplish what he did, was 
 Sordello. This Mantuan poet wrote either in the speech 
 of his own province or in Provencal, in either case discard- 
 ing Latin, and singing of love, honor, and philosophy in a 
 speech the people could understand. 
 
 In another direction Sordello was an actor in a great 
 movement of his time. The struggle between the Church 
 and the Empire the struggle between religious and secu- 
 lar authority had begun long before, and at one time 
 appeared to have been settled in the victory of Hildebrand 
 over Henry IV. It had been revived before the time of 
 Sordello, and was in full activity in his day, as a fierce 
 struggle between Guelf and Ghibelline. The Guelfs were 
 on the side of the Church and the popes, and desired that 
 the pope should exercise a spiritual authority extending 
 over all countries, and superior to all secular rulers. Singu- 
 larly enough to those who judge the Catholic Church from 
 more recent standards, the Guelfs were the democrats of 
 ihe time, and were on the side of the people as against the
 
 Bordello. 383 
 
 hard and oppressive rule of the secular authorities, from 
 duke to emperor. It was this fact which made the cities 
 of Northern Italy incline to the side of the Guelfs, for the 
 cities were developing an independent life, and were as 
 democratic as was then possible. 
 
 The Ghibellines took the side of the emperor of the 
 German Empire, which had been known as the Holy Roman 
 Empire. They desired that the Church should rule in all 
 spiritual matters, and that the Empire or the state should 
 rule through the emperor in all secular matters. On their 
 side were the beginnings of the modern idea of the state, 
 and of its entire separation from the church. 
 
 The names Guelf and Ghibelline originated in Germany 
 in the twelfth century, in a contest of rival families for the 
 title of emperor. During the siege of Weinsberg the fol- 
 lowers of Count Welf shouted the name of their leader, 
 while the other party took up the cry of Waiblings, Waib- 
 lingen having been the birth-place of Frederick, the brother 
 of the Emperor Conrad. These names came to represent 
 principles as well as families, and as such were carried to 
 Italy, where they were corrupted into Guelf and Ghibelline. 
 
 According to Giovanni Fiorentino, in Roscoe's Italian 
 Novelists, 1 : 322, the words Guelf and Ghibelline origi- 
 nated in the time of Bordello, in the quarrel of two German 
 families who bore these names. He tells how they were 
 taken up in Florence, and there became the expressions 
 of bitter hatred between two great families. This account 
 may be found in Longfellow's Divine Comedy, 1 : 224. 
 From Florence the names spread to all Italy, and finally 
 came to designate the parties of the pope and the em- 
 peror. The leaders in this fierce struggle, in the time of 
 Bordello, were Frederick II., the German .emperor, and 
 Pope Gregory IX. Frederick ruled from 1214 to 1250, 
 thus covering by his rule the whole period of the active 
 life of Sordello. Opposed to him during that period were 
 three popes, Honorius III., 1216 - 1227 ; Gregory IX., 
 1227-1241; and Innocent IV., 1243-1264. The story 
 of the struggle between these popes and Frederick has 
 been well told in Milman's History of Latin Christianity, 
 vol. iv. It is also told by Sismondi, in his History of the 
 Italian Republics.
 
 384 Sordello. 
 
 Frederick was one of the greatest rulers of the Middle 
 Ages. He was liberal, broad-minded, a ripe scholar, a 
 troubadour of no mean ability, and a man of great personal 
 capacities. Though almost continuously under the ban of 
 the Church, being repeatedly excommunicated, he held his 
 empire in a condition of loyalty to himself, and he was 
 very popular among his subjects. He was generous to- 
 wards the Saracens, when he conducted the fifth crusade to 
 Jerusalem ; he zealously promoted learning and literature ; 
 he devised a remarkable law code for his own kingdom in 
 Southern Italy, and he ruled with a powerful hand, that 
 was felt for order and growth throughout his empire. He 
 was passionate, ambitious, obstinate, luxurious in his tastes, 
 and of a skeptical mind. He had no care for human life 
 when his purpose was to be carried out. 
 
 Frederick's chief in Northern Italy was Eccelin or 
 Ezzelino III., a powerful noble, called the Monk, because of 
 his austere religious habits. He was fierce, hard, selfish, 
 and oppressive. He became one of the Paterini, a sect akin 
 to the Albigenses, and retired from the world. His first 
 wife was the sister of Azzo of Este, and was the mother of 
 Cunizza. Browning calls the latter Palma, which was the 
 name of a younger sister of Cunizza. The second wife of 
 Eccelin the Monk was Adelaide, the mother of Eccelin IV., 
 called the Tyrant ; and of Alberic, who became the suc- 
 cessor to his father in Lombardy. She practiced magic 
 and astrology. 
 
 The account given of Eccelin the Monk in Mrs. William 
 Busk's Mediaeval Popes, Emperors, Kings, and Crusaders 
 opens up the characteristics of the age in which lived Sor- 
 dello. and gives hint of how far Browning is faithful to 
 the spirit of the time he represents. " It was Ezzelino 
 III. who raised the family of Romano nearly to the zenith 
 of its grandeur. He is no unimportant person of the age ; 
 and some incidents of his life are highly characteristic of 
 the state of morals, manners, and public opinion in Italy 
 at the period in question. This third Ezzelino married 
 Agnes, a daughter of the rival house of Este ; she died in 
 childbed, and he took for his second wife Speronella Dales- 
 mannini. This lady had previously four times pronounced 
 the nuptial vow ; and for aught that appears to the con-
 
 Sordello. 385 
 
 trary, three, if not all four, of the husbands might still be 
 alive to claim her. Of these four matrimonial engage- 
 ments, only the first, with Giacopino di Carrara, was of the 
 commonplace, orderly kind, and it is but justice to Spero- 
 nella to say that not by her voluntary act was it broken. 
 Her beauty so fired the passions of Conte Pagano, then im- 
 perial governor of Padua, that, abusing the too arbitrary 
 power which in this capacity he possessed, he tore her from 
 her lawful husband and made her the perplexing part of 
 the story not his paramour, but his wife. From this 
 compulsory state of sinful bigamy Speronella effected her 
 own liberation ; but, in lieu of returning to her proper hus- 
 band, who might, indeed, refuse to take her back, she wed- 
 ded a third spouse, named Traversario. This gentleman 
 may possibly have left her a widow, for of him nothing 
 more is heard ; and she is soon afterwards found as the 
 wife of a fourth husband, Pietro di Zaussano, from whom 
 she eloped, to espouse the heir of the mighty Ezzeh'no da 
 Romano. But she had now acquired, if innate it were not, 
 a taste for change. Her new lord, upon his return from 
 a visit to Olderico di Fontana, indiscreetly expatiated upon 
 his host's hospitality, wealth, and personal beauty, the 
 sculpture-like perfection of which had impressed him while 
 bathing together. Speronella was enamored through her 
 ears ; and now, reckless of the power of the Romanos, 
 which she had been so ambitious to share, she fled from her 
 fifth consort to plight her brittle faith to a sixth in Olde- 
 rico, who seems to have unhesitatingly married the wife of 
 his friend. Of this polyandrian lady no further mention 
 occurs ; it may therefore be hoped that as Olderico's wife 
 or widow she ended her eccentric matrimonial career. But 
 her deserted lord's third marriage exhibits a picture of the 
 tone of Italian morality in the Middle Ages as loathsome if 
 not as surprising as Speronella's matrimonial freaks. 
 
 " Ezzelino the Monk's sister, Cunizza, countess of Cainpo- 
 sanpietro, communicated to her father, Ezzelino the Stam- 
 merer, the very satisfactory intelligence that the hand of the 
 great heiress of the province, Cecilia di Abano, or Baone, 
 was promised to her eldest son, Gerardo. The information 
 was not received as his daughter anticipated. The know- 
 ledge that the Abano fiefs were to be brought into the
 
 386 Sordello. 
 
 family suggested to the Signer di Romano the idea that 
 they might better add to the power of the house of Romano 
 instead of enriching the heir of Camposanpietro through 
 his own grandchild. And Speronella's flight having left 
 his son and heir again a single man, he at once acted upon 
 the suggestion. He caused the heiress of Ahano to be 
 waylaid, seized, and brought to Bassano, where she was in- 
 stantly married to Ezzelino the son. But the disappointed 
 suitor, Gerardo di Camposanpietro, did not tamely submit 
 to the loss of his bride and her broad lands. If compensa- 
 tion he could not, vengeance he was resolute to have ; and 
 setting spies on the movements of his new aunt, he sur- 
 prised her upon a journey, by superiority of numbers over- 
 powered her escort, and forcibly compelled her to submit to 
 embraces, which but for his grandfather's act of violence 
 would have been lawful. Thus publicly dishonored he sent 
 her home to her husband. Ezzelino immediately repudi- 
 ated this victim to the unbridled passions of the age, and 
 what became of her does not appear. 
 
 " As his fourth wife, Ezzelino the Monk espoused Adela- 
 ida di Mangone, which proved a more lasting and a more 
 fruitful union than the others ; Adelaida presenting him 
 with two sons and four daughters. But his domestic feli- 
 city in the marriage, for which the outrage perpetrated 
 upon Cecilia di Abano had made room, did not soften the 
 offended husband's resentment against the Camposanpietros 
 for to the whole family he imputed the scheme or 
 shake his determination not to be insulted with impunity, 
 even by his nephew. He took vengeance in kind. He se- 
 duced or forcibly carried off Maria di Camposanpietro, a 
 near relative of Gerardo, and kept her openly as a concu- 
 bine in one of his castles, until she had borne him a daugh- 
 ter. Then, retaining the child, he dismissed the helplessly 
 wretched mother to the infamy and misery he had design- 
 edly brought upon her. The enmity between the two fam- 
 ilies, so near akin in disposition and blood, necessarily 
 continued for many years, ever generating fresh crimes, 
 and ever increasing in virulence. But one nefarious attempt, 
 of which they might fairly be suspected, is more generally 
 imputed to the Marquess of Este. In the winter of the 
 year 1206, Ezzelino, visiting Venice to enjoy the pleasures
 
 Sordello. 387 
 
 of the Carnival, was disporting himself in the Piazza di San 
 Marco, with eleven of his knights, clad exactly like himself, 
 and all masked, when they were suddenly attacked by 
 assassins ; and one of the party, Buonaccorsio di Treviso, 
 being mistaken for Ezzelino, was slain. The professional 
 murderers who had struck the fatal blow, presently discov- 
 ering their blunder, returned in haste to remedy it, by kill- 
 ing as well the prescribed as the unintended. The Mar- 
 quess of Este, who whether casually, or as one of his 
 friend and brother-in-law Ezzelino's party was present, 
 endeavored, by throwing his arms about Ezzelino with a 
 show of protecting him, really so to fetter his movements as 
 to baffle his efforts to defend himself. But Ezzelino broke 
 from the treacherous embrace, his friends gathered around 
 him, and the bravoes were overpowered." 
 
 Eccelin IV., something of whose career has already been 
 indicated, was for a long period the chief ruler in North- 
 eastern Italy, nearly the whole of which was under his 
 powerful sway. The brutality he displayed in the treat- 
 ment of his wives was characteristic of the man, for he was 
 one of the most cruel and bloodthirsty men of whom history 
 informs us. He and his brother Alberico belonged to the 
 Ghibelline party, and were among the most devoted sup- 
 porters of the cause of the emperor. In 1225 he was 
 elected the podesta of Verona, and soon after he enter- 
 tained Frederick splendidly in that city. He fought the 
 battles of the emperor against the Guelfs led by Este, and 
 from him took the city of Padua. As a reward for his 
 zealous service Frederick gave Eccelin in marriage his nat- 
 ural daughter Selvaggia, and knighted him with the imperial 
 hand. He became the podesta of Padua, and there in 1239 
 a costly and magnificent display was made when Frederick 
 visited the city. Step by step Eccelin built up his power, 
 sometimes fairly, more often by treachery, and frequently 
 by sanguinary conflict and cruelty. He ruled for the good 
 of the cities under him, however, established order, and pro- 
 duced a general prosperity. By 1254 he was the ruler of 
 the whole of the Northeast of Italy, and he even aspired to 
 make himself free of the emperor, and to establish for him- 
 self an independent kingdom. " He was Lord of almost a'l 
 that subsequently constituted the continental dominions of
 
 388 Sordello. 
 
 Venice, with the Southern or Italian part of the Tyrol. 
 But as his power increased, his character seems gradually 
 to have deteriorated ; a desire for despotic authority keep- 
 ing pace with that increase. His despotism provoked re- 
 bellions, or rather plots for the assassination of the dreaded 
 despot, the form rebellion was apt to take in early times 
 and in small states ; whilst the severity, with which such 
 plots, when detected, were punished, provoked new plots, 
 till despotism became tyranny. Yet worse, perhaps, the 
 base adulation resorted to by many, in the hope of averting 
 suspicion or winning favor, inspired a contempt for man- 
 kind, that hardened Eccelin's heart. And now his strict 
 and vigorous administration of justice, especially against 
 robbery, and his absence from the sensual excesses, then so 
 prevalent, are said to have been the only good qualities left 
 to balance the ruthlessly sanguinary cruelty, staining the 
 once gallant, clement, magnificent, and cheerful husband 
 of a glorious Emperor's beautiful daughter. But Eccelin 
 himself appears, even upon the testimony of his enemies, to 
 have been convinced that his cruelty was simply inexorable 
 justice. He held himself a second Attila, ' the scourge of 
 God ; ' saying : ' The sins of the people call for the ven- 
 geance of Heaven, and to inflict it are we sent into the 
 world.' Again, hearing that in a satire he had been called 
 a hawk, whom doves had made their king, he observed : * I 
 am no hawk who devours his doves, but the father of a 
 family, who must clear his house of serpents, scorpions, 
 and other noxious reptiles.' He was steadily loyal to his 
 brother-in-law, Conrad ; but, after his death, persevering in 
 the refusal to acknowledge William of Holland, and no 
 scion of the Swabian dynasty then claiming the Empire, he 
 felt that he had no sovereign, and assumed independence." 
 This claim of independent authority was the occasion of 
 the downfall of Eccelin. His tyranny became oppressive ; 
 lie put his nephews over the cities of his kingdom, and they 
 imitated his worst faults, with none of his virtues. His 
 enemies organized against him ; one city after another was 
 captured or fell away from him. In a hard-fought battle 
 in 1259 he was made a prisoner, tore the bandages from 
 his wounds, and died. His brother Alberico suffered an 
 even worse death, for he saw all his many children slain in
 
 Sorddlo. 389 
 
 the most cruel manner, and then was brutally killed him- 
 self. Thus fell the powerful house of the Romanos. 
 
 Eccelin was called by his enemies the Son of the Devil, 
 and the designation was wholly just. Dark and dreadful 
 stories are told of his cruelty, his fierce tyranny, and his 
 love of shedding human blood. Ariosto called him 
 
 " Fierce Eccelin, that most unhuman lord, 
 Who shall be deemed by men a child of hell." 
 
 Sismondi, in the nineteenth chapter of his History of the 
 Italian Republics, has given an account of the life of 
 Eccelin. His character is also described in the first volume 
 of Symonds' Renaissance in Italy. Sismondi says he 
 " was small of stature, but the whole aspect of his person, 
 all his movements, indicated the soldier. His language was 
 bitter, his countenance proud ; and by a single look he made 
 the proudest tremble. His soul, so greedy of all crimes, 
 felt no attraction for sensual pleasures. He was as pitiless 
 against women as against men. He was in his sixty-sixth 
 year when he died ; and his reign of blood had lasted 
 thirty-four years." He died, as he had lived, a hater of 
 men, defiant, and fierce. Dante puts him, along with his 
 relative, Azzo of Este, among the tyrants who in Purgatory 
 expiate their crimes in a river of boiling blood. It is this 
 terrible Eccelin who is made by Browning to take up the 
 work which Sordello ought to have undertaken ; and be- 
 cause Sordello failed to accomplish it the tyrant had his 
 opportunity. 
 
 Browning changes the name of Cunizza to Palma for 
 some unexplained reason. Very curiously Dante places 
 her in Paradise, because she had loved much. In Canto 
 IX. she appears to Beatrice and Dante, and explains how 
 it was possible for her to be in heaven, who had been so far 
 from good on earth. Her love placed her in the heaven of 
 Venus, 
 
 " Because the splendor of the star o'ercame me." 
 
 Roland ino, one of the early chroniclers, says that she was 
 first married to Richard, Count of St. Boniface, and that 
 soon after she had an intrigue with Sordello. This simply 
 means that he was Cunizza's cavalier, after the fashion of 
 this age of chivalry and troubadours, or her lover according
 
 390 Sordello. 
 
 to the forms of gallantry. Then she wandered about the 
 world with Bonius, a soldier of Treviso, and spent much 
 money. When Bonius died she married a nobleman of 
 Braganza ; and later on she became the wife of a gentleman 
 of Verona. An early commentator on Dante says that 
 " this lady lived lovingly in dress, song, and sport ; but 
 consented not to impropriety or any unlawful act ; and she 
 passed her life in enjoyment." 
 
 One of the leading followers of Eccelin III., and also of 
 his son, was Taurello Salinguerra. One legend indicates 
 that he was the father of Sordello, and this has been adopted 
 by Browning. 
 
 Salinguerra belonged to the family of the Torelli, one of 
 the two leading families of Ferrara. He married a daughter 
 of Eccelin the Monk, and he became the ruler of his native 
 city. Under his mild and beneficent rule it rose to great 
 prosperity, its fairs were attended from every part of 
 Europe, and it grew rapidly in wealth. Salinguerra was 
 liberal, opened his granaries to the poor, and was beloved 
 by his people. The people of Ferrara became so prosperous 
 they grew impatient of the rule of Venice, which claimed 
 sovereignty over them, and they asked for various conces- 
 sions. Venice thereupon made war on Ferrara, laid siege 
 to it, and when Salinguerra went out to surrender the city 
 made him a prisoner. He was sent to Venice, and placed in 
 prison, where he remained for four years. He had already 
 become very aged when imprisoned ; and he died in 1244. 
 He appears to have been as noble a man, and as kindly a 
 ruler, as the times produced, showing a remarkable contrast 
 to his brother-in-law, Eccelin the Tyrant. See the third vol- 
 ume of The Browning Society's Papers, number twelve, for 
 a paper by Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in which he translates Mura- 
 tori's contemporary account of Taurello Salinguerra. 
 
 These persons of the poem belonged to the Ghibelline 
 party. Of the Guelfs Browning mentions Pope Honorius 
 III., and also the Lombard nobles Azzo, marquis of Este, 
 and Richard, count of St. Boniface. Both these lords were 
 connected with the Romanos by marriage, but neverthe- 
 less they were of the Guelf party ; arid their enmity seems 
 to have been all the more bitter because of their relation- 
 ship.
 
 Bordello. 391 
 
 Page 193. Pentapolin of the Naked Arm. See Don 
 Quixote, 1 : 11 ; Antiquary, b. 2, chap. 30 ; St. Ronaris 
 Well chap. 30. 
 
 197. John of Brienne. King of Jerusalem and leader 
 of the fifth crusade. Frederick II. married his daughter. 
 See Gibhon, chap. 61. John was elected emperor of Con- 
 stantinople in 1229. 
 
 206. Nicolo. The sculptor of Pisa ; see Old Pictures 
 in Florence, in this volume. Guid,one. A Sienese painter 
 of the beginning of the thirteenth century. His Virgin 
 was painted in 1221. See Mrs. Jameson's Legends of the 
 Madonna. See Mrs. Clement's Christian Symbols for an 
 account of Saint Eufemia, who was a Greek martyr of the 
 fourth century. Mad Lucius and sage Antonine. Lucius 
 Verus and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus were joint emperors 
 of Rome in the second century. Verus was as bad as An- 
 toninus was noble. 
 
 208. The adventurous spider belongs to some species of 
 Orbweaver, Orbitelarice. It is called by the various names 
 of garden, geometric, diadem, and cross-spider. This spider 
 swathes his prey rojund and round with his web, and it 
 makes a long bridge with its web on which it goes from 
 point to point. The poet is wrong, however, in supposing 
 that the spider can shoot its web to great distances. See 
 Poet-Lore, 1 : 486. 
 
 209. Naddo. The typical critic or Philistine ; wholly 
 imaginary. " The personification of general common-sense 
 and average public opinion," says Miss Wall. He is Sor- 
 dello's friend and adviser, but " he is employed as the rep- 
 resentative of the Philistines, and in his mouth are put the 
 comments of superficial wisdom," says Alexander. Other 
 imaginary names are associated with his on page 218. 
 
 212. Miramoline. A Moslem prince, whos'e territory was 
 situated in Northern Africa. 
 
 217. Court of Love. A poetical contest between several 
 troubadours, to see which could produce the best poem. 
 The decision was rendered by some lady of beauty and 
 rank, who presided over the contest and made its laws. 
 See Rutherford's Troubadours, and Hueffer's Troubadours. 
 Hueffer proves that the court of love never had an existence. 
 Elys. " Any woman of the then prevailing type of Italian
 
 392 Sordello. 
 
 beauty, having fair hair, and a ' pear-shaped ' face." [Mrs. 
 Orr.] 
 
 218. Naddo, Squarcilupe, etc. See, in this book, note 
 in regard to page 209 of Sordello. 
 
 227. Rondel, tenzon, virlai or sirvent. Forms of verse 
 used by the jongleurs and troubadours. See Hueffer's 
 Troubadours, in which several chapters are devoted to 
 these forms of verse. 
 
 230. Will. " In this passage the word ' will ' is used in a 
 peculiar and somewhat undefinable sense, in which it reap- 
 pears throughout the poem. It means the power in virtue 
 of which we feel potentially an experience or quality ; i. e., 
 while one may not actually realize a thing, he feels that he 
 has the spiritual capacity to realize it." [Alexander.] " In 
 this, as in other places in this poem, Browning seems to use 
 the word will ' as equivalent to imagination and the capa- 
 city to realize in himself all his images." [Wall.] 
 
 231. Pierre Vidal. A troubadour whose behavior was 
 very remarkable, and who followed Richard the Lion-Heart 
 on the third crusade. See Hueffer and Rutherford. 
 
 233. Bocafoli and Plara. " Purely supposititious poets. 
 Browning chooses to invent them as types of two opposite 
 poetic defects ; Bocafoli as the writer of stark-naked or 
 totally jejune and inartistic psalms ; Plara as the writer of 
 petted and over-finikin sonnets." [W. M. Rossetti.] 
 
 233. Almug tree. See 2 Chronicles ix. 10, 11. 
 
 241. Enrico Dandolo. Doge of Venice. With Baldwin 
 of Flanders he led the fourth crusade and conquered Con- 
 stantinople, and Baldwin was placed on the throne. 
 
 249. Adelaide of Susa. A great baroness of Lombardy, 
 and one of the chief supporters of the pope. 
 
 249. Matilda. Countess of Tuscany, the friend of Hilde- 
 brand or Gregory VII. , at whose castle of Canossa Henry 
 IV. obtained, on his knees and after the deepest degrada- 
 tion, the forgiveness of the pope. 
 
 259. Patron-friend. Walter Savage Landor. 
 
 260. Eyebright. " Stands for ' Euphrasia,' its Greek 
 equivalent, and refers to one of Mr. Browning's oldest 
 friends." [Mrs. Orr. ] 
 
 261. Xanthus. See A Death in the Desert and the 
 notes thereon.
 
 Sordello. 393 
 
 262. Carroch. The wagon which bore the war-standard 
 into battle ; it was very large, zealously guarded, and con- 
 tained a cross and a great bell. 
 
 266. Misery. See legend of Misery and her apple tree, 
 in Mrs. Palliser's Brittany and its Byways, and Crane's 
 Italian Popular Tales. 
 
 272. Heinrich. Henry, son of Frederick I., who mar- 
 ried Constance, queen of the Norman kingdom of Lower 
 Italy and Sicily. 
 
 273. Podesta. Title of the ruler of a city. 
 279. Lentisk. The mastich tree. 
 
 282. Crescentius Nomentanus. In 998 " Rome made 
 a bold attempt to shake off the Saxon yoke, and the consul 
 Crescentius was the Brutus of the Republic. From the 
 condition of a subject and an exile, he twice rose to the 
 command of the city, oppressed, expelled, and created the 
 popes, and formed a conspiracy for restoring the authority 
 of the Greek emperors. In the fortress of St. Angelo, he 
 maintained an obstinate siege, till the unfortunate consul 
 was betrayed by a promise of safety ; his body was sus- 
 pended on a gibbet, and his head was exposed on the battle- 
 ments of the castle." [Gibbon, chap. 49.] 
 
 285. Tables of the Mauritanian tree. Tables of citrus- 
 wood were very costly articles of luxury in Rome. 
 
 287. Alcamo and Nina. " Names connected with early 
 Italian poetry in Sicily ; but Nina the poetess, in Crescim- 
 beni and Sismondi, becomes Nina the poet in Mr. Brown- 
 ing." [Church.] 
 
 288. Three Imperial crowns. " The crown of the Ger- 
 man kingdom taken at Aachen, of Lombardy at Milan, 
 and of the Empire at Rome. They were said to be respec- 
 tively of silver, iron, and gold. Not quite in the order of 
 the text. The terms were probably employed symbolically, 
 as indicating the estimation in which each was held at that 
 time." [Wall.] 
 
 298. The all-transmuting Triad. See Ruskin's Stones 
 of Venice, vol. ii. chap. 4, for an account of St. Mark's. 
 Browning has evidently combined the several symbols in 
 St. Mark's to suit his own purposes. 
 
 306. Swooning-sphere. " Why is Cunizza's sphere the 
 ' swooning - sphere '?" asks Church; but he furnishes no
 
 394 Sordello. 
 
 answer. The reference is to Dante's account of Cunizza in 
 his Paradiso. 
 
 310. Cydippe and Agathon. See Ovid. Browning has 
 changed Acantius into Agathon. 
 
 311. Dularete. An imaginary bard. 
 
 325. Sordello, Prince Visconti. "The chronicles of 
 Mantua tell how Sordello, Prince Visconti, saved that city 
 and elsewhere distinguished himself greatly ; that he was 
 famous as a minstrel and fortunate as a lover ; he was 
 praised for the very things he never did and never could 
 have done." [Wall.] 
 
 Sordello's Story retold in Prose, by Annie Wall, gives 
 an excellent historical introduction to the poem, a skillfully 
 told outline of the story and a study of the character of 
 Sordello. For students this is the most helpful book on the 
 poem. Holland's Stories from Browniny gives a brief but 
 clear historical outline ; this was first printed in separate 
 form. Mrs. C. H. Dall's little book gives the fullest infor- 
 mation about the poet Sordello, as well as a good analysis 
 of the poem. 
 
 The study of the poem in Dean Church's Dante and 
 Other Essays is one of the best. That by Edward Dow- 
 den, in Fraser's Magazine, 76 : 518, reprinted in his Re- 
 scripts and Studies, is the best for an exposition of the pur- 
 pose had in view by the poet. The chapter on the poem in 
 Alexander's Introduction to Browning is thoroughly good, 
 and has been reprinted in separate form by the London 
 Browning Society. The studies of the poem by Nettleship, 
 in his Essays and Thoughts; by Mrs. Orr, in her Hand- 
 book ; by Jeanie Morison, in her Analysis of Sordello, are 
 of value. Also see Macmillan's Magazine, R. W. Church, 
 55 : 241 ; The Academy, J. A. Blaikie, 22 : 287 ; The 
 Browning Society's Papers, M. D. Conway, 2:1*; A. C. 
 Swinburne's introduction to his Works of George Chap- 
 man ; Kingsland's Chief Poet of the Age. 
 
 VARIOUS READINGS. 
 
 Under the heading, " Changed rhymes and fresh lines in 
 Sordello," Furnivall's Bibliography of Robert Browning 
 gives a full list of the changes made in the revised form of 
 Sordello, and they are here reproduced word for word.
 
 Sordello. 
 
 395 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 ed. 1840. 
 
 p. 13 
 
 . . . men's flesh is meant 
 Ecelin lifts two writhen hands to pray 
 
 ed. 18C3, vol. iii. ed. 1868, vol. ii. 
 
 p. 262 p. 13 
 
 . . the man's flesh went 
 While his lord lifted writhen hands to 
 
 pray, 
 Lost at Oliero s convent. 
 
 Hill-cats, face 
 With ['68 Our'} Azzo, our Guelf-Lion I 
 
 chants 
 Ere Richard storms Ferrara. 
 
 At Oliero's convent now : so place 
 For Azzo, Lion of the 
 
 BOOK II. 
 No changes of rhyme were made in this book, and no fresh lines were added. 
 
 BOOK HI. 
 
 ed. 1840. ed. 1863, vol. iii. ed. 1868, vol. ii. 
 
 p. 97 p. 332-33 
 
 A week since at Verona : and she wants and they want 
 
 You doubtless to contrive the marriage- You doubtless to contrive the marriage- 
 chant 
 
 Ere Richard storms Ferrara." 
 [New in 1863] Here ['68 Then] was 
 told p. 83 
 
 The tale from the beginning how, 
 
 made bold 
 By Salinguerra's absence, Guelfs had 
 
 burned 
 
 And pillaged till he unawares returned 
 To take revenge : how Azzo and his 
 
 friend 
 
 Were doing their endeavour, how the end 
 Of the siege was nigh, and now the 
 
 Count, released 
 
 From further care, would with his mar- 
 riage-feast 
 
 Inaugurate a new and better rule, 
 Absorbing thus Romano. 
 
 " Shall I school 
 
 p. 84 
 
 My master," added Naddo, "and sug- 
 gest 
 
 How you may clothe in a poetic vest 
 These doings at Verona ? 
 
 p. 337 p. 88 
 
 Mine and Romano's ? Break the first 
 
 wall through, 
 
 Tread o'er the ruins of the Chief, sup- 
 plant 
 His sons beside, still, vainest were the 
 
 vaunt : 
 p. 342 p. 93 
 
 A month since at Oliero s?unk 
 All that was Ecelin into a monk ; 
 
 p. 346 p. 97 
 
 In " Charlemague," (his poem, dreamed 
 
 divine 
 In every point except one silly line 
 
 p. 102 
 
 Romano's lord ! That Chief her chil- 
 dren too 1868, ii. 88. 
 
 p. 108 
 
 ... A month since Oliero sunk 
 All Ecelin that was into a Monk ; 
 
 p. 113 
 In " Charlemagne," for instance, 
 
 dreamed divine 
 In every point except one restive line 
 
 (Those daughters !) what significance About the restiff daughters) what may 
 
 may lurk lurk 
 
 In that? My life commenced before In that?" " My life commenced before 
 that work, this work," 
 
 (So I interpret the significance 
 Of the bard's start aside and look a- 
 skance)
 
 396 
 
 Sordello. 
 
 ed. 1840. 
 
 p. 113-14 
 
 Continues after it, as on I fare 
 To meditate with us eternal rest ? 
 Strike sail, slip cable ! here the galley's 
 moored. 
 
 p. 116 
 
 (at home we dizen scholars, chiefs and 
 kings, 
 
 ed. 1863, vol. iii. ed. 1868, vol. ii. 
 
 p. 347 p. 98 
 
 My life, continues after : on I fare 
 To meditate with us eternal rest, 
 And partnership in all his life has 
 
 found ? " 
 'Tis but a sailor's promise, weather- 
 
 bound 
 ' Strike sail, slip cable, here the bark be 
 
 moored. 
 
 p. 349 p. 100 
 
 For, these in evidence, you clearlier 
 
 claim 
 
 But in this magic weather hardly clings A like garb for the rest, grace all, the 
 
 The old garb gracefully : Venice, a type 
 
 p. 116-17 
 
 same 
 As these my peasants. I ask youth and 
 
 strength 
 And health for each of you, not more 
 
 at length 
 Grown wise, who asked at home that the 
 
 whole race 
 Might add the spirit's to the body's 
 
 grace, 
 And all be dizened out as chiefs and 
 
 bards. 
 
 But in this magic weather one discards 
 Much old requirement. Venice seems a 
 
 type 
 p. 349-50 p. 101 
 
 Or slay me, thrid her cross canals alone, Or keep me to the unchoked canals alone, 
 As hinder Life what seems the single As hinder Life the evil with the good 
 
 good 
 Sole purpose, one thing to be understood 
 
 Which make up Living, rightly under- 
 stood. 
 
 Of Life) best, be they Peasants, be they Only, do finish something ! Peasants, 
 
 Queens, 
 
 queens, 
 
 Take them, I say, made happy any Take them, made happy by whatever 
 
 means, 
 
 p. 120 
 A hungry sun above us, sands among 
 
 p. 127 
 
 In unexpanded infancy, assure 
 Yourself nor misconceive my portraiture 
 
 means, 
 p. 353 
 
 p. 1041 
 
 A hungry sun above us, sands that bung 
 p. 358 p. 109 
 
 In unexpanded infancy, unless . . . 
 But that 's the story, dull enough, con- 
 
 fess .' 
 
 There might be fitter subjects to allure; 
 Still, neither misconceive my portraiture 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 ed. 1840. 
 p. 141 
 What booted scattered brilliances? the 
 
 mind 
 Of any number he might hope to bind 
 
 And stamp with his own thought, how- 
 e'er august 
 
 ed. 1863, vol. iii. ed. 1868, vol. ii. 
 
 p. 370 p. 120 
 
 What booted scattered units? here a 
 
 mind 
 And there, which might repay his own 
 
 to find 
 And stamp and use f a few, howe'er 
 
 august 
 
 If all the rest should grovel in the dust ? If all the rest were grovelling in the 
 
 p. 142 
 
 With good to them as well, and he 
 should be 
 
 dust? 
 
 p. 370 p. 121 
 
 With incidental good to them as well 
 And that mankind's delight would help 
 
 to swell 
 His own. So if he sighed, as formerly 
 
 Rejoiced thereat, and if, as formerly 
 
 1 On p. 106 is a misprint in a rhyme : ' She shut[s]
 
 Sordello. 
 
 397 
 
 ed. 1840. 
 
 He sighed the merry time of life must 
 fleet, 
 
 else why are 
 The great ado 
 p. 146 
 
 A drear vast presence-chamber roughly 
 
 set 
 In order for this morning's use; you 
 
 met 
 
 The grim black twy-necked eagle 
 
 p. 149 
 
 Therefore he smiled 
 p. 150 
 
 Straight a meeting of old men : 
 [t 1868, Salinguerra'sJ 
 
 The Lombard eagle of the azure sphere 
 With Italy to build in, builds he here ? 
 This deemed the other owned upon 
 
 advice 
 
 A third reflected on the matter twice 
 p. 152 
 
 When, as Us Podesta 
 Regaled him at Vicenza, Este, there 
 
 With Boniface beforehand, each aware 
 p. 152 
 
 deep sunk, 
 A very pollard mortised in a trunk 
 
 Which Arabs out of wantonness contrive 
 Shall dwindle, that the alien stock may 
 thrive 
 
 ed. 18R3, vol. iii. ed. 1868, vol. ii. 
 
 p. 371 
 
 Because the merry time of life must 
 fleet 
 
 p. 122 
 why the jar 
 Else the ado 
 
 p. 374 p. 125 
 
 These spokesmen for the Kaiser and the 
 
 Pope 
 
 This incarnation of the People's hope, 
 Sordello, all the say of each was said 
 And Salinguerra sat, himself instead 
 Of these to talk with, lingered musing 
 
 yet. 
 'T was a drear vast presence-chamber 
 
 roughly set 
 In order for the morning's use ; full face 
 
 The Kaiser's ominous sign-mark had 
 
 first place, 
 The crowned grim twy-necked eagle 
 
 p. 376-77 p. 127-28 
 
 How his life-streams rolling arrived at 
 
 last 
 At the barrier, whence, were it once 
 
 overpast 
 
 They would emerge, a river to the end, 
 Gathered themselves up, paused, bade 
 
 fate befriend, 
 Took the leap, hung a minute at the 
 
 height, 
 
 Then fell back to oblivion infinite : 
 Therefore he smiled 
 p. 378 p. 129 
 
 Straight a meeting of old meu : 
 " Old Salinguerra^ dead, his heir a boy, 
 " What if we change our ruler and decoy 
 The Lombard eagle of the azure sphero, 
 With Italy to build in, fix him here 
 Settle the city's troubles in a trice f 
 for private wrong, let public good 
 
 suffice ! " 
 p. 379 p. 130 
 
 When the Podesta 
 
 TScelin, at Vicenza, called his friend 
 Tourello thither, what could be their 
 
 end 
 
 But to restore the GhibelMns' late Head, 
 The Kaiser helping f He with most to 
 
 dread 
 From vengeance and reprisal, Azzo, 
 
 there 
 
 With Boniface beforehand, as aware 
 p. 380 p. 131 
 
 which shrunk 
 As the other prospered mortised in his 
 
 trunk ; 
 Like a dwarf palm which wanton Arabs 
 
 foil 
 
 Of bearing its own proper wine and oil, 
 By grafting into it the stranger-vine, 
 Which sucks its heart out, sly and ser' 
 
 pentine
 
 398 
 
 Sordello. 
 
 ed. 1840. 
 p. 153 
 Only, Roman Salinguerra screens. 
 
 Heinrich was somewhat of the tardiest 
 
 To comprehend, 
 p. 154 
 
 ed. 1863, vol. iii. ed. 1868, vol. ii. 
 
 p. 381 p. 132 
 
 "Only, why is it Salinguerra screens 
 Himself behind Romano t him we 
 
 bade 
 Enjoy our shine V the front, nor seek 
 
 the shade!' 1 '' 
 Asked Heinrich, somewhat of the 
 
 tardiest 
 
 To comprehend, 
 p. 382 p. 133 
 
 In contracts, while through Arab lore, In contracts with him, while, since 
 
 deter 
 
 p. 156 
 now cringe, sue peace, but peace 
 
 Arab lore 
 Holds the stars' 1 secret take one trouble 
 
 more 
 And master it ! 'T is done, and now 
 
 deter 
 p. 383 p. 134 
 
 now cringe for peace, sue peace 
 
 At price of all advantage; therefore At price of past gain, bar of fresh in 
 
 cease 
 The fortunes of Romano ! 
 
 p. 158 
 'T was leaned in the embrasure presently 
 
 p. 165 
 Enormous water current, his sole track 
 
 p. 167 
 
 crease 
 To the fortunes of Romano. 
 
 p. 385 p. 136 
 
 'T was leaned in the embrasure absently 
 
 p. 391 p. 142 
 
 Enormous watercourse which guides him 
 
 back 
 p. 393 p. 144 
 
 As though it bore a burden, which could As though it bore up, helped some half- 
 
 tame 
 p. 171 
 And structures that inordinately glov 
 
 orbed flame 
 p. 3% p. 147 
 
 New structures, that inordinately glow, 
 Subdued, brought back to harmony, made 
 
 ripe 
 
 By many a relic of the archetype 
 Extant for wonder; every upstart 
 
 church 
 That hoped to leave old temples in the 
 
 lurch 
 
 BOOK V (collated by the Rev. T. W. Carson). 
 
 ed. 1840. 
 p. 173-74 
 
 He that sprawls 
 
 ed. 1863, vol. iii. 
 p. 398 
 
 He that sprawls 
 
 On aught but a stibadium suffers . . . On aught but a stibadium . . . u-hnt his 
 
 goose, 
 Pattest our lustral vase to such an use ? 
 
 p. 175 
 And Rome 's accomplished! Better 
 
 (say you) merge 
 
 At once all workmen in the demiurge, 
 All epochs in a life-time, and all task* 
 In one : undoubtedly the city basks 
 
 p. 176 
 
 Sordello, wake ! 
 
 dues 
 
 Who puts the lustral vase to such an 
 
 use ? 
 p. 400 
 
 That way was Rome built. "Better, 
 (say you) merge 
 
 At once all workmen in the demiurge, 
 
 All epochs in a life-time, every task 
 
 In one ! " So should the sudden city 
 
 bask 
 p. 401 " Sordello, wake ! 
 
 God has conceded two sights to a man 
 
 One, of men's whole work, time's com- 
 pleted plan, 
 
 The other of the minute' 1 f work, man's 
 first 
 
 Step to the plan's completeness : what J s 
 dispersed 
 
 Save hope of that supreme step which, 
 descried 
 
 Earliest, was meant still to remain un- 
 tried
 
 Sordello. 
 
 399 
 
 ed. 1840. 
 
 p. 177-78 
 
 Where is the Vanity? 
 
 An elder poet 's in the younger's place 
 
 Take Nina's strength but lose Alca- 
 mffl's grace ? 
 
 Each neutralizes each then ! gaze your 
 fill; 
 
 Search further, and the past presents 
 you still 
 
 New Ninas, new Alcamas, time's mid- 
 night 
 
 Concluding, better say its evenlight 
 
 Of yesterday. You, now, in this respect 
 Of benefiting people (to reject 
 The favour of your fearful ignorance 
 A thousand phantasms eager to advance, 
 
 Refer you but to those within your 
 
 reach) 
 Were you the first who got, to use plain 
 
 speech, 
 The Multitude to be materialized ? 
 
 p. 180 
 The couple there alone help Gregory ? 
 
 Hark from the hermit Peter's thin 
 
 sad cry 
 p. 181 
 
 trail plenteous o'er the ground 
 Fine-like, produced by joy and sorrow, 
 whence 
 
 Unfeeling and yet feeling, strongest 
 
 thence : 
 p. 183 
 Rather than doing these : now fancy's 
 
 trade 
 [Is ended, mind, nor one half may 
 
 evade] 
 
 p. 191 
 
 And round those three the People 
 formed a ring, 
 
 Suspended their own vengeance, chose 
 await 
 
 ed. 1863, vol. iii. 
 
 Only to give you heart to take your own 
 
 Step, and there stay leaving the rets 
 
 alone ? 
 p. 402 
 
 Where is the Vanity ? 
 
 An elder poet in the younger's place. 
 
 Nina's the strength but Alcamo's the 
 grace: 
 
 Each neutralizes each then ! Search 
 your fill ; 
 
 You get no whole and perfect Poet 
 still 
 
 New Ninas, Alcamos, till time's mid- 
 night 
 
 Shrouds all or better say, the shutting 
 light 
 
 Of a forgotten yesterday. Dissect 
 
 Every ideal workman (to reject 
 
 In favour of your fearful ignorance 
 
 The thousand phantasms eager to ad- 
 vance, 
 
 And point you but to those within your 
 reach) 
 
 Were you the first who brought (in 
 modern speech) 
 
 The Multitude to be materialized ? 
 p. 404 
 
 Do the popes coupled there help Gre- 
 gory 
 
 Alone? Hark from the hermit Peter's 
 
 cry 
 p. 405 
 
 trail o'er the ground 
 
 Shall I say, gourd - like ? not the 
 flower's display 
 
 Nor the roofs prowess, but the plenteous 
 way 
 
 O' the plant produced by joy and sor- 
 row, whence 
 
 Unfeeling and yet feeling, strongest 
 
 thence ? 
 p. 406 
 
 Rather than doing these, in days gone 
 by. 
 
 But all is changed the moment you des- 
 cry 
 
 Mankind as half yourself, then 
 
 fancy's trade [&c.] 
 p. 414 
 
 And round those three the people 
 formed a ring, 
 
 Of visionary judges whose award 
 
 He recognized in full faces that 
 barred 
 
 Henceforth return to the old careless 
 life, 
 
 In whose great presence, therefore, his 
 first strife 
 
 For their sake must not be ignobly 
 fought, 
 
 All these at once approved of him, he 
 thought, 
 
 Suspended their own vengeance, chose 
 await
 
 400 
 
 Bordello. 
 
 ed. 1840. 
 p. 194 
 
 Now, whether he came near or kept 
 aloof, 
 
 Those forms unalterable first to last 
 Proved him her copy, not the protoplast 
 
 p. 196 
 
 Will dawns above us. But so much to 
 win 
 
 Ere that ! A lesser round of steps with- 
 in 
 
 The last. 
 
 p. 197 
 
 Which evil is, which good, if I allot 
 Your Hell, the Purgatory, Heaven ye 
 wot, 
 
 p. 201 
 Say there 's a thing in prospect, must 
 
 Betide competitors ? An obscure place 
 
 p. 202 this badge alone 
 
 Makes you Romano's Head the Lom- 
 bard' 1 s Curb 
 
 Turns on your neck which would, on 
 
 mine, disturb 
 p. 204 
 
 From wandering after his heritage 
 
 Lost once and lost for aye what could 
 engage 
 
 That deprecating glance ? 
 p. 212 a spark 
 
 I' the stone, and whirl of some loose 
 embossed thong 
 
 That crashed against the angle aye so 
 long 
 
 ed. 1863, vol. iii. 
 
 p. 416 
 Now whether he came near or kept 
 
 aloof 
 
 The several forms he longed to imitate, 
 Not there the kingship lay, he sees too 
 
 late, 
 
 Those forms, unalterable first as last, 
 Proved him her copier, not the proto- 
 plast. 
 p. 418 
 Will dawns above us ! All then is to 
 
 win 
 Save that ! How much for me, then f 
 
 Where begin 
 My work t 
 
 p. 418 
 
 Which sinner is, which saint, if I allot 
 Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, a blaze or blot 
 
 p. 422 
 Say there 's a prize in prospect, must 
 
 disgrace 
 
 Betide competitors, unless they style 
 Themselves Romano t Were it worth 
 
 my while 
 To try my own luck ! But an obscure 
 
 place 
 
 p. 423 " This badge alone 
 
 Makes you Romano's Head becomes 
 
 superb 
 On your bare neck, which would, on 
 
 mine, disturb 
 p. 425 
 
 From wandering after his heritage 
 Lost once and lost for aye and why 
 
 that rage, 
 That deprecating glance ? 
 
 p. 431 a spark 
 
 I' the stone, and whirl of some loose 
 
 embossed throng 
 That crashed against the angle aye so 
 
 long. 
 
 ed. 1840. 
 p. 221 
 That buckler 's lined with many a 
 
 Giant's beard 
 Ere long, Porphyrio, be the lance but 
 
 reared, 
 p. 222 
 Lames barefoot Agathon. 
 
 BOOK VI (collated by the Rev. T. W. Carson). 
 
 ed. 1863, vol. iii. 
 
 p. 438 
 That buckler 's lined with many a giant's 
 
 beard 
 Ere long, champion, be the lance up- 
 
 reared, 
 p. 439 
 Lames barefoot Agathon : this felled, 
 
 we 'II try 
 The picturesque achievements by and 
 
 Next life .' " 
 
 Ay, rally, mock, oh People, urge 
 Tour claims ! for thus he ventured, to 
 
 the verge 
 p. 440 
 Buds blasted, but of breath more like 
 
 perfume 
 
 Than Naddo's staring nosegay's carrion 
 bloom: 
 
 Oh, people, urge 
 Tour claims! for thus he ventured to 
 
 the verge 
 p. 223 
 Buds blasted, but of breath more 
 
 like perfume,? 
 
 Than Naddo's staring nosegay's carrion 
 bloom*.
 
 So, the head aches. /Spring Song. 401 
 
 ed. 1840. ed. 1863, vol. iii. 
 
 p. 225 p. 441 
 
 Or might impede that Guelf rule, it Or might impede the Guelf rule, must 
 
 behoved be moved 
 
 You, for the Then's sake, hate what n ow Now, for the Then's sake, hattre^ what 
 
 you loved, you loved, 
 
 p. 240 p. 454 
 
 Exciting discontent, had surerf quelled Exciting discontent, or smelier quell 
 The Body if aspiring it rebelled. 1 The body if, aspiring, it rebel? 
 
 p. 248-49 p. 461 
 
 You hear its one tower left, a belfry, You hear its one tower left, a belfry, 
 toll toll 
 
 The earthquake spared it last year, lay- 
 ing flat 
 The modern church beneath, no harm 
 
 in that ! 
 Cherups the contumacious grasshopper, Cherups the contumacious grasshopper. 
 
 1 In p. 246, as occasionally elsewhere, Browning treats the inflectional * as no- 
 thing in his rhymes : 
 
 The life-cord prompt enough whose last fine threads 
 You fritter : so, presiding his board-head .... 
 p. 251 A tree that covets fruitage and yet tastes 
 
 Never itself, itself had he embraced .... 
 
 They are not changed in the Works of 18G3, p. 459, p. 4G3, or in the Works of 
 1868, p. 211, p. 215. 
 
 So, the head aches and the limbs are faint ! The 
 first line of the sixth lyric in Ferishtah's Fancies. 
 
 Soul's Tragedy, A. This drama was published in the 
 eighth number of Bells and Pomegranates, which was issued 
 in April, 1846. It followed Lurid ; and after it came the 
 concluding words in regard to the series. First reprinted 
 in Poetical Works, 1863. 
 
 The scene of the story is laid at Faenza, an Italian city, 
 situated about half - way between Bologna and Ravenna, 
 which at present has a population of about forty thousand. 
 The earthenware called faience is named from this city, 
 and it is manufactured there. The time of the drama is 
 the sixteenth century, but the story of the book is not his- 
 torical. 
 
 Rolfe gives, in his annotated edition of three of the 
 dramas, an introduction and full notes. Miss Burt puts 
 Eulalia among the shrewd women, in her Browning's Wo- 
 men. 
 
 Speculative. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 Spring Song. In the New Amphion, a small book 
 published for the Edinburgh University Union Fancy Fair, 
 1886, was a short poem from Browning's pen, reprinted in 
 The Browning Society's Papers, number seven :
 
 402 The Statue and the Bust. 
 
 SPRING SONG. 
 
 Dance, yellows and whites and reds ! 
 
 Lead your gay orgy, leaves, stalks, heads, 
 
 Astir with the wind in the tulip-beds ! 
 
 There 's sunshine : scarcely a wind at all 
 Disturbs starved grass and daisies small 
 On a certain mound by a churchyard wall. 
 
 Daisies and grass be my heart's bedfellows 
 
 On the mound wind spares and sunshine mellows 
 
 Dance you, reds and whites and yellows ! 
 
 Statue and the Bust, The. Men and Women, 1855 ; 
 Romances, 1863 ; Dramatic Romances, 1868. 
 
 The Piazza della Santa Annunziata is . only a few steps 
 from the Academy of Fine Arts, Florence. The church 
 from which the Piazza is named was huilt by the Servite 
 Monks in 1250, but has been modernized. The square 
 contains an equestrian statue of Ferdinand I., the younger 
 son of Cosimo L, who was a cardinal, and then a grand 
 duke. Ferdinand is represented with his face directed to- 
 wards the Riecardi palace at the corner of the Via de' Servi. 
 This palace, which was built in 1565, must not be confounded 
 with the Riccardi palace of The Ring and the Book (p. 
 346). The latter was built in 1430 by Cosimo dei Medici, 
 and from designs by Michelozzo Michelozzi. In that palace 
 the Medici entertained kings and great people. In 1659 
 it was sold by Ferdinand II. to Marchese Riccardi ; and 
 it has since been known as the Riccardi Palace. 
 
 Duke Ferdinand loved the wife of Riccardi, according to 
 tradition. The result is described in the poem. The Ric- 
 cardi kept his young wife closely a prisoner when he found 
 that she conversed with the grand duke. There she could 
 see and be seen of her lover only when she gazed from the 
 windows. In revenge, Ferdinand erected his statue, that 
 he might always appear to watch for the fair one. This 
 tradition is expanded by Browning, and embellished to 
 bring out certain dramatic effects. 
 
 Browning confounds the two Riccardi palaces, as it is the 
 Medicean one which is on the Via Larga, now the Via 
 Cavour, and which is associated with the crime committed 
 by Cosimo dei Medici and his son Piero in destroying the
 
 Stra/ord. 403 
 
 liberties of Florence. Petraja is a villa a short distance 
 out of Florence. Robbia is the artist by whom the bust 
 was made ; but neither Luca nor Andrea della Robbia was 
 living at the date of the story. John of Douay or Bologna 
 is the artist who executed the statue in 1608, and it was his 
 last, though not his best work. 
 
 These questions were once sent to Browning : " 1. When, 
 how, and where did it happen ? Browning's divine vague- 
 ness lets one gather only that the lady's husband was a Ric- 
 cardi. 2. Who was the lady ? who the duke ? 3. The 
 magnificent house wherein Florence lodges her preset is 
 known to all Florentine ball-goers as the Palazzo Riccardi. 
 It was bought by the Riccardi from the Medici in 1659. 
 From none of its windows did the lady gaze at her more 
 than royal lover. From what window, then, if from any ? 
 Are the statue and the bust still in their original positions ? " 
 
 Browning made answer under date of January 8, 1887 : 
 " I have seldom met with such a strange inability to under- 
 stand what seems the plainest matter possible : ' ball-goers ' 
 are probably not history-readers, but any guide-book would 
 confirm what is sufficiently stated in the poem. I will ap- 
 pend a note or two, however. 1. ' This story the townsmen 
 tell ; ' ' when, how, and where,' constitutes the subject of the 
 poem. 2. The lady was the wife of Riccardi ; and the 
 duke, Ferdinand, just as the poem says. 3. As it was 
 built by, and inhabited by, the Medici till sold, long after, to 
 the Riccardi, it was not from the duke's palace, but a win- 
 dow in that of the Riccardi, that the lady gazed at her lover 
 riding by. The statue is still in its place, looking at the 
 window under which ' now is the empty shrine.' 'Can any- 
 thing be clearer ? My ' vagueness ' leaves what to be 
 ' gathered ' when all these things are put down in black and 
 white ? Oh, ' ball-goers ' ! " But Browning was wrong, 
 and the querist was right, in assuming that the statue could 
 not be seen from any window of the palace sold to the 
 Riccardi in 1659. 
 
 Strafford. The idea of writing a drama for the stage 
 was suggested to Browning by William Macready, one of 
 the most popular and successful actors of his day. Mac- 
 ready read Paracelsus soon after its publication, and was 
 much impressed with its power and the genius it manifested.
 
 404 Stra/ord. 
 
 In his journal he described it as " a work of great daring, 
 starred with poetry of thought, feeling, and diction, but 
 occasionally obscure ; the writer can scarcely fail to be a 
 leading spirit of his time." In February, 1836, Macready 
 made this entry in his journal : 
 
 " Forster and Browning called, and talked over the plot 
 of a tragedy which Browning had begun to think of ; the 
 subject, Narses. He said that I had bit him by my per- 
 formance of Othello, and I told him I hoped I should make 
 the blood come. It would indeed be some recompense for 
 the miseries, the humiliations, the heart-sickening disgusts, 
 which I have endured in my profession, if, by its exercise, 
 I had awakened a spirit of poetry whose influence would 
 elevate, ennoble, and adorn our degraded drama. May it 
 be ! " 
 
 In May of the same year, when a tragedy written by 
 Sergeant Talfourd was played, a supper followed, when 
 Wordsworth, Landor, Miss Mitford, Macready, Talfourd, 
 Browning, and others sat down together. When the guests 
 were leaving, Macready came behind Browning on the 
 stairs, and laying his hand on his arm said to him, " Write 
 a play, Browning, and keep me from going to America." 
 The tone of earnestness with which these words were 
 uttered was such as to impress the poet with their sincerity, 
 and he replied : " Shall it be historical and English ? 
 What do you say to a drama on Strafford ? " Browning at 
 once took up the subject thus suggested, and spent several 
 months in studying it in its historical aspects. His intimate 
 friend, John Forster, had just published in his British 
 Statesmen an account of Strafford, and this Browning made 
 the basis of his drama. 
 
 In August Macready recorded in his journal that Forster 
 had mentioned to him Browning's choice of Strafford as 
 the subject for his drama, and the actor added : " He could 
 not have hit upon one that I could have more readily con- 
 curred to." In November Browning brought the tragedy 
 to Macready Complete, except in the fourth act ; and he 
 was requested to finish it. In March, 1837, the tragedy 
 was ready for the stage, and Macready records going to 
 the theatre with it, and adds : " Read to Mr. Osbaldiston 
 the play of Strafford ; he caught at it with avidity, agreed
 
 Stra/ord. 405 
 
 to produce it without delay on his part, and to give the 
 author 12 per night for twenty-five nights, and 10 per 
 night for ten nights beyond. He also promised to offer 
 Mr. Elton an engagement to strengthen the play." 
 
 In April Macready spent an evening in reading the play, 
 and in its careful study. The next day he recorded in his 
 journal the results of his study of the tragedy : 
 
 " Thought over some scenes of Strafford, before I rose, 
 and went out very soon to the rehearsal of it. There is no 
 chance, in my opinion, for the play, but in the acting, 
 which by possibility might carry it to the end without dis- 
 approbation ; but that the curtain can fall without consider- 
 able opposition, I cannot venture to anticipate under the 
 most advantageous circumstances. In all the historical 
 plays of Shakespeare, the great poet has only introduced 
 such events as act on the individuals concerned, and of 
 which they are themselves a part ; the persons are all in 
 direct relation to each other, and the facts are present to 
 the audience. But in Browning's play, we have a long 
 scene of passion r- upon what ? A plan destroyed, by 
 whom or for what we know not, and a parliament dis- 
 solved, which merely seems to inconvenience Strafford in 
 his arrangements." 
 
 The tragedy was presented for the first time at Covent 
 Garden Theatre, May 1, 1837. The following account of 
 the play appeared in The Examiner, written by John 
 Forster : " The tragedy was produced with all the evi- 
 dences of a decided success ; though we confess that we do 
 not think it will take permanent hold of the stage. It 
 should be stated, however, that it was most infamously got 
 up ; that even Mr. Macready was not near so fine as he is 
 wont to be ; and that for the rest of the performers, with 
 the exception of Miss Faucit, they were a born wonder to 
 look at." 
 
 In her edition of Strafford Miss Emily H. Hickey men- 
 tions this interesting fact in- connection with the first pro- 
 duction of the play on the stage : " When the play was 
 rehearsing, Mr. Browning gave Macready a lilt which he 
 had composed for the children's song in Act V. His object 
 was just to give the children a thing children would croon ; 
 but the two little professed singers, Master and Miss
 
 406 Stratford. 
 
 Walker, preferred something that should exhibit their 
 jx)wers more effectually, and a regular song was substituted, 
 scarcely, it will be thought, to the improvement of the 
 play." By permission of Mr. Browning this lilt is pub- 
 lished in Miss Hickey's preface. It is also printed in Poet- 
 L&re, 1 : 236, May, 1889. 
 
 In his paper on " The Early Writings of Robert Brown- 
 ing," published in The Century for December, 1881, Mr. 
 Edmund Gosse gives Browning's view of the stage presen- 
 tation of the tragedy. " It is time now to deny a state- 
 ment," says Mr. Gosse, "that has been repeated ad nau- 
 seam, in every notice that professes to give an account of 
 Mr. Browning's career. Whatever is said or not said, it is 
 always remarked that his plays have failed on the stage. In 
 point of fact, the three plays which he has brought out have 
 all succeeded, and have owed it to fortuitous circumstances 
 that their tenure on the boards has been comparatively 
 short. Straffard was produced when the finances of Covent 
 Garden Theatre were at their lowest ebb, and nothing 
 was done to give dignity or splendor to the performance. 
 'Not a rag for the new tragedy,' said Mr. Osbaldiston. 
 The King was taken by Mr. Dale, who was stone-deaf, 
 and who acted so badly that, as one of the critics said, 
 it was a pity that the pit did not rise as one man and push 
 him off the stage. All sorts of alterations were made in 
 the text ; where the poet spoke of ' grave gray eyes,' the 
 manager corrected it in rehearsal to ' black eyes.' But at 
 last Macready appeared, in the second scene of the second 
 act, in more than his wonted majesty, crossing and recross- 
 ing the stage like one of Vandyke's courtly personages 
 come to life again ; and Miss Helen Faucit threw such 
 tenderness and passion into the part of Lady Carlisle as 
 surpassed all that she had previously displayed of histrionic 
 powers. Under these circumstances, and in spite of the 
 dull acting of Vanderhoff, who played Pym without any 
 care or interest, the play was well received on the first 
 night, and on the second night was applauded with enthu- 
 siasm by a crowded house. There was every expectation 
 that the tragedy would have no less favorable a run than 
 Ion [Sergeant Talfourd's play, which had been brought out 
 at the same theatre the year before, and with great success]
 
 Strafford. 407 
 
 had enjoyed, but after five nights Vanderhoff suddenly 
 withdrew, and though Elton volunteered to take his place, 
 the financial condition of the theatre, in spite of the un- 
 diminished popularity of the piece, put an end to its repre- 
 sentation. 
 
 " Mr. Browning, the elder, had paid for the cost of Para- 
 celsus ; Strafford was taken by Longmans, and brought 
 out, at their expense, as a little volume, not, like most of 
 the tragedies of the day, in dark-gray paper covers, with a 
 white label. However, at that time the public absolutely 
 declined to buy Mr. Browning's books, and Strafford, al- 
 though more respectfully received by the press, was as 
 great a financial failure as Paracelsus. It was part of Mr. 
 Browning's essentially masculine order of mind to be in 
 no wise disheartened or detached from his purpose by this 
 indifference of the public. He was silent for three years, 
 but all the time busy with copious production." 
 
 When published, Strafford was dedicated to Macready, 
 and it had a preface, not afterwards reprinted with the 
 tragedy. It is here reproduced word for word and letter 
 for letter : 
 
 " I had for some time been engaged in a Poem of a very 
 different nature, when induced to make the present at- 
 tempt ; and am not without apprehension that my eager- 
 ness to freshen a jaded mind by diverting it to the healthy 
 natures of a grand epoch, may have operated unfavorably 
 on the represented play, which is one of Action in Character, 
 rather than Character in Action. To remedy this, in some 
 degree, considerable curtailment will be necessary, and, in 
 a few instances, the supplying details not required, I sup- 
 pose, by the mere reader. While a trifling success would 
 much gratify, failure will not wholly discourage me from 
 another effort : experience is to come ; and earnest endeavor 
 may yet remove many disadvantages. 
 
 " The portraits are, I think, faithful ; and I am exceed- 
 ingly fortunate in being able, in proof of this, to refer to the 
 subtle and eloquent exposition of the characters of Eliot and 
 Strafford, in the Lives of Eminent British Statesmen, now 
 in the course of publication in Lardner's Cyclopedia, by a 
 writer [John Forster] whom I am proud to call my friend ; 
 and whose biographies of Hampden, Pym and Vane, will, I
 
 408 Stratford. 
 
 am sure, fitly illustrate the present year the Second Cen- 
 tenary of the Trial concerning Ship-Money. My Carlisle, 
 however, is purely imaginary : I at first sketched her sin- 
 gular likeness roughly in, as suggested by Matthews and the 
 memoir-writers but it was too artificial, and the substi- 
 tuted outline is exclusively from Voiture and Waller. 
 
 " The Italian boat-song in the last scene is from Redi's 
 ' Bacco,' long since naturalized in the joyous and delicate 
 version of Leigh Hunt." 
 
 Browning followed the conception of Strafford given by 
 Forster in the biography of that statesman, published un- 
 der the title of Eminent British Statesmen in Lardner's 
 Cabinet Cyclopaedia. New facts have since come to light ; 
 and Strafford's life has been presented by later historians in 
 a manner nearer to the truth of historic detail. In the in- 
 troduction to Miss Emily H. Hickey's edition of Strafford, 
 Professor Samuel R. Gardiner carefully discusses the his- 
 toric truthfulness of the tragedy. His statements are of so 
 much value that they may be given at some length. " We 
 may be sure," says Professor Gardiner, " that it was not by 
 accident that Mr. Browning, in writing this play, decisively 
 abandoned all attempt to be historically accurate. Only 
 here arid there does anything in the course of the drama 
 take place as it could have taken place at the actual Court 
 of Charles I. Not merely are there frequent minor inaccu- 
 racies, but the very roots of the situation are untrue to fact. 
 The real Strafford was far from opposing the war with the 
 Scots at the time when the Short Parliament was sum- 
 moned. Pym never had such a friendship for Strafford as 
 he is represented as having, and, to any one who knows 
 anything of the habits of Charles, the idea of Pym or his 
 friends entering into colloquies with Strafford, and even 
 bursting in unannounced into Charles's presence, is, from 
 the historical point of view, simply ludicrous. 
 
 " So completely does the drama proceed irrespectively of 
 historical truth, that the critic may dispense with the thank- 
 less task of pointing out discrepancies. He will be better 
 employed in asking what ends those discrepancies were in- 
 tended to serve, and whether the neglect of truth of fact has 
 resulted in the highest truth of character. 
 
 " There is not much difficulty in answering the first
 
 Strafford. 409 
 
 question. From the beginning to the end of the play the 
 personal relations between the actors are exaggerated at 
 the expense of the political. To make that dramatic which 
 would otherwise not be dramatic, Mr. Browning has been 
 utterly regardless even of historical probability. Whatever 
 personal feeling may have entwined itself in the political 
 attachment between Strafford and Charles, is strengthened 
 until it becomes the very basis of Strafford's life, and the 
 key-note of his character. Having thus brought out the 
 moral qualities of his hero, it remained for Mr. Browning 
 to impress his readers with Strafford's intellectual great- 
 ness. The historian who tries to do that will have much 
 to say on his constitutional views and his Irish government, 
 but a dramatist who tried to follow in such a path would 
 only make himself ridiculous. Mr. Browning understood 
 the force of the remark of the Greek philosopher, that 
 Homer makes us realize Helen's beauty most by speaking 
 of the impression which it made upon the old men who 
 looked on her. Mr. Browning brings out Strafford's great- 
 ness by showing the impression which he made on Pym and 
 Lady Carlisle. 
 
 " Mr. Browning took a hint from the old story, which is 
 without any satisfactory evidence, and which is indirectly 
 contradicted by all the evidence which has reached us, that 
 Pym and Strafford were once intimate friends. In carry- 
 ing on Pym's feeling of admiration for Charles's minister 
 to the days of the Short and even of the Long Parliament, 
 the dramatist has filled his- play with scenes which are more 
 hopelessly impossible than anything else in it ; but they all 
 conduce to his main object, the creation of the impression 
 about Strafford which he wished to convey. He pursues the 
 same object in dealing with Lady Carlisle. What he needs 
 is her admiration of Strafford, not Strafford's admiration of 
 her. He takes care to show that she was not, as vulgar 
 rumor supposed, Strafford's mistress. The impression of 
 Strafford's greatness is brought more completely home to 
 the spectator or the reader, because of the effect which it 
 produces upon one who has given her heart without return. 
 
 " Having thus noted the means employed in creating the 
 impression desired, we have still to ask how far the im- 
 pression is a correct one. On this point each reader must
 
 410 Stratford. 
 
 judge for himself. For myself, I can only say that, every 
 time that I read the play, I feel more certain that Mr. 
 Browning has seized the real Strafford, the man of critical 
 brain, of rapid decision, and tender heart, who strove for 
 the good of his nation without sympathy for the generation 
 in which he lived. Charles, too, with his faults perhaps 
 exaggerated, is nevertheless the real Charles. Of Lady 
 Carlisle we know too little to speak with anything like cer- 
 tainty, but, in spite of Mr. Browning's statement that his 
 character of her is purely imaginary, there is a wonderful 
 parallelism between the Lady Carlisle of the play and the 
 less noble Lady Carlisle which history conjectures rather 
 than describes. There is the same tendency to fix the 
 heart upon the truly great man, and to labor for him with- 
 out the requital of human affection, though in the play no 
 part is played by that vanity which seems to have been the 
 main motive with the real personage. 
 
 " On the other hand, Pym is the most unsatisfactory, 
 from an historical point of view, of the leading personages. 
 It was perhaps necessary for dramatic purposes that he 
 should appear to be larger-hearted than he was, but it im- 
 parts an unreality to his character. It must be remem- 
 bered, however, that the aim of the dramatist was to place 
 Strafford before the eyes of men, not to produce an exact 
 representation of the statesmen of the Long Parliament." 
 
 In a communication published in The Pall Mall Ga- 
 zette during April, 1890, Mr. F. J. Furnivall says that 
 the biography of Strafford, which has borne the name of 
 John Forster as the author, was in reality written by 
 Browning ; and that this accounts for its close resemblance 
 to the tragedy of Strafford. He says : 
 
 " This volume was published in 1836. John Forster 
 wrote the Life of Eliot, the first in the volume, and began 
 that of Strafford. He then fell ill ; and as he was anxious 
 to produce the book in the time agreed on, Browning offered 
 to finish Strafford for him on his handing over all the 
 material he had accumulated for it. Forster was greatly 
 relieved by Browning's kindness. The poet set to work, 
 completed Strafford's life on his own lines, in accordance 
 with his own conception of Strafford's character, but gen- 
 erously said nothing about it until after Forster's death.
 
 Straff ord. 411 
 
 Then he told a few of his friends me among them of 
 how he had helped Forster. On my telling Professor 
 Gardiner this, I found that he knew it, and had been long 
 convinced that the conception of Strafford in this Lardner 
 Life was not John Forster's, but was Robert Browning's. 
 The other day Professor Gardiner urged me to make the 
 fact of Browning's authorship public ; and I do so now, 
 though I have frequently mentioned it to friends in private ; 
 and at the Browning Society, when a member has said ' It 
 is curious how closely Browning has followed his authority, 
 Forster's Life of Strafford,' I have answered ' Yes, because 
 he wrote it himself.' We must understand why, when 
 Macready asked Browning, on May 26, 1836, to write him 
 a play, the poet suggested Strafford as its subject ; and why, 
 the Life being finished in 1836, the play was printed and 
 played in 1837. The internal evidence will satisfy any in- 
 telligent reader that almost all the prose Life is the poet's." 
 
 Mr. Furnivall is of the opinion that Browning wrote the 
 whole of the Life of Strafford after the first seven para- 
 graphs. It is a strongly written biography, keen in analysis, 
 clear in its outlining of leading events, and masterful in its 
 thorough understanding of Strafford's life. It will be 
 found worthy of attention as an indication of what Brown- 
 ing could do in the way of writing clear and vigorous prose. 
 It is not less interesting as a study of a great historic char- 
 acter by this master of psychological analysis. 
 
 Under the title of The Statesmen of the Commonwealth 
 of England, Forster's series of biographies, edited by J. O. 
 Choules, is published by Harpers. In the original edition 
 the Life of Strafford was the twenty-eighth volume of 
 Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopcedia, and the second of the Lives 
 of Eminent British Statesmen. 
 
 This volume has been republished by the Browning 
 Society of London, through Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 
 London, and Estes & Lauriat, Boston, 1891. It is edited 
 with an introduction by J. B. Firth, and a preface by Dr. F. 
 J. Furnivall. It bears the title of Robert Browning's Prose 
 Life of Strafford. 
 
 Poet-Lore, vol. i. pp. 236, 282, 332, 372, 426, 511, 562, 
 gives a full list of the historical allusions in Strafford, 
 and proves how implicitly the poet relied on the biography
 
 412 Stra/ord. 
 
 bearing the name of John Forster as the author for his pre- 
 sentation of the great statesmen he interpreted in his poem. 
 Passages are quoted from Forster's biography, and imme- 
 diately after them are printed the parts of the poem based 
 on them. The fact that Browning wrote the biography 
 makes these resemblances doubly interesting. 
 
 Mr. H. D. Traill, in his Lord Strafford, published in the 
 series of English Men of Action, has written what may be 
 regarded as a defense of that great political leader. His 
 book shows strong Tory sympathies, and it cannot be wholly 
 trusted as an historic interpretation of Straff ord's life ; but 
 it makes a strong effort to give consistency and an honest 
 purpose to his career. In Green's History of the English 
 People, book vii. chap, vii., is given a view of Straff ord's 
 life less favorable, but more accurate, than that presented 
 by Mr. Traill. In the same book of this history the work 
 of the Parliamentary leaders is described in a manner as 
 interesting as it is reliable. Also, Gardiner's History of 
 England, vol. vi. ; Macaulay's History, vol. i. chap. i. ; 
 Hume's History, vol. v., treat of Strafford, Pym, and the 
 other characters of the play. There is a good biography of 
 Hampden by Lord Nugent, of Pym in Mr. Gold win 
 Smith's Three English Statesmen, of Sir Henry Vane the 
 younger by Mr. James K. Hosmer, and of Eliot by John 
 Forster. 
 
 Strafford has been published in London, by George Bell 
 & Sons, in a small volume edited, with notes and preface, 
 by Miss Emily H. Hickey, and an introduction by Professor 
 Samuel R. Gardiner. The text was revised by Mr. Brown- 
 ing. The notes will be found helpful in explaining the his- 
 torical allusions. From the preface this item is taken : 
 " The historical Lady Carlisle was the daughter of the 
 ninth Earl of Northumberland. In 1639 she had been for 
 three years a widow. Her husband was James, Lord Hay, 
 created successively Viscount Doncaster and Earl of Car- 
 lisle." For a sketch of this strange woman, see Lodge's 
 Portraits of Illustrious Personages, vol. v., in Bohn's 
 Library. Sir Toby Matthews' ' character of the most excel- 
 lent Lady, Lucy, Countess of Carlisle," prefixed to a collec- 
 tion of letters which Donne edited in 1660, is of sufficient 
 interest to repay a perusal. Lodge has an engraving of
 
 Summum Bonum. 413 
 
 her portrait by Vandyke. The London Browning Society's 
 Bibliography, p. 117, reprints the notices of the first per- 
 formance of Straff or d, especially that by John Forster in 
 The Examiner. 
 
 See The Browning Society's Papers, number nine, 
 2 : 147, for John Todhunter's paper on " Strafford at the 
 Strand Theatre," December 21, 1886 ; 2 : 175*, notes on 
 this performance ; also 2 : 182* ; Edinburgh Review, 
 65 : 132. Also W. G. Kingsland's Robert Browning : 
 Chief Poet of the Age. 
 
 Summum Bonum. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 According to Krauth's Vocabulary of the Philosophical 
 Sciences, this phrase, which means the chief or supreme 
 good, was employed by ancient ethical philosophers to de- 
 note that in the prosecution and attainment of which the 
 progress, perfection and happiness of human beings consist. 
 Xenophanes was perhaps the first to use the term, and he con- 
 sidered the summum bonum to be a contented acquiescence 
 in the decrees of the Deity. The ancient thinkers thought 
 that happiness, or what is good, is the object to be sought for 
 by man ; and out of this ethical principle grew the belief 
 that there is some chief good which is supreme as a means 
 of happiness. Especially the Stoics made this a leading 
 principle ; and they discussed it with a high moral purpose. 
 Cicero wrote a book in which he fully discussed this subject 
 in all its phases ; it is his De Finibus, A Treatise on the 
 Chief Good and Evil. The fifth of his Tusculan Dispu- 
 tations treats of virtue as sufficient for happiness. In this 
 book he says : " The conclusion of the Stoics is indeed ob- 
 vious. Regarding it as the supreme good to live agreeably 
 to nature and in accordance with it, and considering the 
 wise man as not only bound in duty, but also able to live 
 thus, they necessarily infer that the life of him who has 
 the supreme good within his power must be happy. There- 
 fore the wise man's life is always happy." 
 
 In this book he enumerates the several opinions enter- 
 tained among philosophers as to the nature of the supreme 
 good. He says : " The following, I think, are all the opin- 
 ions held and defended concerning the supreme good and 
 the corresponding extreme of evil. In the first place, 
 there are four simple opinions, that there is no good but
 
 414 The Sun. A Tale. 
 
 the right, as the Stoics say ; that there is no good but plea- 
 sure, according to Epicurus ; that there is no good except 
 freedom from pain, as is the opinion of Hieronymus ; that 
 there is no good except the enjoyment of the chief, or all, 
 or the greatest goods of nature, as Carneades maintained 
 against the Stoics. These are simple. The others mingle 
 different elements in the good. Thus the Peripatetics, 
 from whom those of the Old Academy differ very little, 
 recognize three classes of goods, the greatest, those of 
 mind ; the second, those of the body ; in the third root, 
 external goods. Dinomachus and Calliphon coupled plea- 
 sure with the right, and Diodorus, the Peripatetic, annexed 
 painlessness to the right, as constituting the good." 
 
 Perhaps it would be truer to say that Epicurus found the 
 summum bonum in peace of mind ; and now Browning 
 finds it in love. Augustine wrote a treatise De Summo 
 Bono. In his Light of Nature Tucker has a chapter on 
 " ultimate good," which he says is the right translation of 
 summum, bonum. 
 
 Sun, The. Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884. 
 
 The third paragraph describes the period of fire-worship 
 in Persia, which preceded and was absorbed into the 
 religion of Zoroaster. In the Shah Nameh Firdusi de- 
 scribes how Husheng, the second king of the Peshdadian 
 dynasty, discovered the worship of fire, and! established that 
 sacred flame which was called the " Light of Divinity." 
 
 "Passing, one day, towards the mountain's side, 
 Attended by his train, surprised he saw 
 Something in aspect terrible, its eyes 
 Fountains of blood ; its dreadful mouth sent forth 
 Volumes of smoke that darkened all the air. 
 Fixing his gaze upon that hideous form, 
 He seized a stone, and with prodigious force 
 Hurling it, chanced to strike a jutting rock, 
 Whence sparks arose, and presently a fire 
 O'erspread the plain, in which the monster perished. 
 Thus Husheng found the element which shed 
 Light through the world. The monarch prostrate bowed, 
 Praising the great Creator for the good 
 Bestowed on man, and, pious, then he said, 
 This is the Light from Heaven, sent down from God ; 
 If ye be wise, adore and worship it ! " 
 
 Tale, A. In the second of the Selections made from his
 
 Through the Metidja to Abd-d-Kadr. 415 
 
 poems by Browning himself, the epilogue to the Two Poets 
 of Croisic bore this title. 
 
 Taurello Salinguerra. The reputed father of Sordello 
 in the poem of that name. See under Sordello. 
 
 Theocrite. The boy in The Boy and the Angel, who 
 becomes the Pope, with the help of the angel Gabriel, but 
 who finds that he has not served God in his true place, and 
 who takes up again his artisan tasks. 
 
 " The poets pour us wine " The epilogue to Pac- 
 chiarotto begins with these words, quoted from Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's Wine of Cyprus. A defense of the poets, and an 
 interpretation of their methods of work. 
 
 There 's a woman like a dewdrop. First words of 
 the song in A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. 
 
 The year's at the spring. The song of Pippa in 
 Pippa Passes, which she sings as she goes by the house of 
 Ottima, vol. i. p. 337, Riverside edition of Browning's Works. 
 This song has been set to music by Cdcile Hartog ; London, 
 Boosey & Co. 
 
 Thorold, Earl Tresham. The older brother of Mildred 
 Tresham, in A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, who stabs her lover, 
 Earl Mertoun, when he thinks that Mertoun has seduced his 
 sister. 
 
 Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr, 1842. Dra- 
 matic Lyrics, third number of Bells and Pomegranates, 
 1842. Poems, 1849 ; Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 
 1868. 
 
 Abd-el-Kader (" servant of God ") was born near Mas- 
 cara, Algeria, in 1807. He became known among the 
 Arabs for piety and wisdom, and in 1831 was chosen emir 
 of Mascara. He led the Arabs against the French invaders 
 of the country, who were driven back, and peace was con- 
 cluded in 1834. In 1839 the French renewed the war, 
 which continued in a desultory manner for some years ; but 
 in 1841 a large force invaded the country. Abd-el-Kader 
 showed skill, daring, and power of leadership, and united all 
 the Arab tribes ; but he was at last conquered, confined in 
 a French prison for several years, and permitted his free- 
 dom by Louis Napoleon, in 1852, on condition that he did 
 not return to Algeria. He then lived in Damascus and 
 Constantinople, and died in 1883. See his biography, by
 
 416 Thus the Mayne glideth. 
 
 Churchill, London, 1867. The interest which the exploits 
 of Abd-el-Kader were creating in Europe in 1842 led to 
 the writing of this poem, which represents one of his Arab 
 followers riding through the desert to join his leader. The 
 Horses of the Sahara and the Manners of the Desert, by 
 E. Daumas [Melchior Joseph Eugene], contains a series of 
 commentaries on the horse and desert life by Emir Abd- 
 el-Kader. Translated from the French by James Hutton, 
 London, 1863. Abd-el-Kadr in latest edition. 
 
 Thus the Mayne glideth. The fourth song in Para- 
 celsus, sung by Festus ; vol. i. p. 111. 
 
 Tiburzio. The commander of the Pisan army, in Luria, 
 who reveals to Luria the treachery of the Florentine Signo- 
 ria, and whose offer of service under Pisa is rejected. 
 
 Time's Revenges. First published in Dramatic Ro- 
 mances and Lyrics, seventh number of Bells and Pome- 
 granates, 1845. Romances, 1863 ; Dramatic Romances, 
 1868. See Mrs. Orr and Symons for brief interpretations. 
 
 Toccata of Galuppi's, A. An American author, visit- 
 ing Browning and his wife at Casa Guidi in 1847, wrote of 
 their occupations : " Mrs. Browning," he said, " was still 
 too much of an invalid to walk, but she sat under the great 
 trees upon the lawn-like hillsides near the convent, or in the 
 seats of the dusky convent chapel, while Robert Browning 
 at the organ chased a fugue, or dreamed out upon the twi- 
 light keys a faint throbbing toccata of Galuppi." Under such 
 circumstances the present poem was conceived and written. 
 It was published in 1855, in the first volume of Men and 
 Women. In the Poetical Works of 1863 it was put among 
 the Lyrics, which in 1868 became Dramatic Lyrics. 
 
 Baldassare Galuppi was born on the island of Burano, 
 near Venice, October 15, 1706, and for this reason was 
 called II Buranello. His father was a barber, but fond of 
 music, playing the violin at the theatre, and capable of be- 
 ginning the instruction of his son. At sixteen Galuppi 
 went to Venice and earned his bread by organ-playing, but 
 through the help of a musical friend he entered the music 
 school called Conservatorio degl' Incurabili. Here he had 
 the instruction of Lotti, one of the great musicians of the 
 day. He wrote an opera at sixteen, Gli miei Rivali, which 
 was so bad that it was hissed off the stage. In 1729 he
 
 A Toccata of Galuppi's. 417 
 
 produced his Dorinda, the libretto of which was written by 
 Marcello, who had started him on his musical career ; and 
 this piece was a great success. It established his fame, and 
 made every succeeding work of his a success wherever it 
 was presented in Italy. He became the maestro di capella 
 of St. Mark's in April, 1762 ; and at the same time became 
 director of the Incurabili. In 1766 he went to St. Peters- 
 burg, at the invitation of the Empress Catherine II., where 
 he did much for the improvement of music, and in produ- 
 cing a taste for this art. He brought out two operas, greatly 
 improving the orchestra for this purpose. One of these was 
 his Didone abbandonata, which met with remarkable suc- 
 cess. He returned to Venice in 1768, and continued his 
 work at the Incurabili. He produced no less than fifty-four 
 operas, five of which he composed in one year. These were 
 mostly comic, and he is regarded as the father of Italian 
 comic opera. His works have disappeared from the stage 
 since Rossini, though all of them are contained in various 
 libraries. His church music is still sometimes performed in 
 Venice. A sonata of his is printed in Pauer's Alte Clavier- 
 musik. Galuppi died at Venice, January 3, 1785. He left 
 fifty thousand lire to the poor of the city. 
 
 Galuppi was in England from 1741 to 1744, and wrote 
 several operas in London, which he put on the stage there. 
 He was received with much favor, and dramatic music was 
 much influenced by his style. Dr. Burney, the English his- 
 torian of music, was in Venice in 1770, and found Galuppi 
 respected and prosperous. He described the " novelty, 
 spirit, and delicacy " of Galuppi's music, and found that 
 " fire and imagination " were his chief characteristics. 
 
 " Galuppi, who was an immensely prolific composer," 
 says Vernon Lee in her Studies in the Eighteenth Century 
 in Italy, " abounded in melody, tender, pathetic, and bril- 
 liant, which in its extreme simplicity and slightness occa- 
 sionally rose to the highest beauty. He was not a very 
 learned composer, used instruments very sparingly, but 
 where, for instance, he introduced wind instruments, it was 
 with a delicate and delightful effect. The purely musical 
 qualities satisfied him, and he defined the qualities of his 
 art to Burney in very moderate terms, clearness, beauty, 
 and good modulation, qualities which he himself possessed
 
 418 A Toccata of Galuppi^s. 
 
 to a high degree, without troubling himself much about any 
 others. . . . Galuppi was a model of the respectable, modest 
 artist, living quietly on a moderate fortune, busy with his 
 art and the education of his numerous children ; beloved and 
 revered by his fellow-artists, and, when some fifteen years 
 later he died, honored by them with a splendid funeral, at 
 which all Venetian musicians performed ; the great Pac- 
 chiarotti writing to Burney that he had ' sung with much 
 devotion to obtain a rest for Buranello's soul.' " 
 
 In his History of Music, Hitter says that " the main fea- 
 tures of Galuppi's operas are melodic elegance, and lively and 
 spirited comic forms ; but they are rather thin and weak in 
 execution. He was a great favorite during his lifetime." 
 
 Miss Helen J. Ormerod's paper on Browning's poems re- 
 lating to music, published in the ninth number of the Brown- 
 ing Society's Papers, gives an account of the musical sig- 
 nificance of this poem. " What a scene rises before us," 
 she says," as Baldassare Galuppi plays his Toccata on the 
 tinkling clavichord of the day, and with what a master hand 
 the poet sketches in for us, so to speak, the dramatic back- 
 ground ! The beautiful Italian spring weather, the sea 
 warm in the May sunshine, but then, as now, balls and 
 masks proving more attractive to the fashionable throng 
 than the sweet spring-tide of Nature ; suddenly a couple of 
 dancers are singled out of the crowd, and we have a glimpse 
 of a Venetian beauty and her cavalier. . . . The old favor- 
 ite awed his listeners into silence by the magic of his touch ; 
 but some mighty reason must have existed to command si- 
 lence in that gay throng, for the hearing of a Toccata ! 
 
 " The minor predominated in this quaint old piece (Toc- 
 cata, by the way, means Touch-piece, and probably was 
 written to display the delicacy of the composer's touch) is 
 evident from the mention of ' those lesser thirds so plaint- 
 ive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh ; those commiserating 
 sevenths.' The interval of the third is one of the most im- 
 portant : the signature of a piece may mislead one, the same 
 signature standing for a major key and its relative minor ; 
 but the third of the opening chord decides the question, a 
 lesser ' plaintive ' third (composed of a tone and a semitone) 
 showing the key to be minor, the greater third (composed 
 of two whole tones) showing the key to be major. Pauer
 
 To Edward Fitzgerald. 419 
 
 tells that ' the minor third gives the idea of tenderness, grief, 
 and romantic feeling.' Next come the ' diminished sixths : ' 
 these are sixths possessing a semitone less than a minor 
 sixth, for instance from C sharp to A flat ; this interval in 
 a different key would stand as a perfect fifth. ' These sus- 
 pensions, these solutions,' a suspension is the stoppage of 
 one or more parts for a moment, while the others move on ; 
 this produces a dissonance, which is only resolved by the 
 parts which produced it, moving on to the position which 
 would have been theirs had the parts moved simultaneously. 
 We can understand that ' these suspensions, these solutions ' 
 might teach the Venetians, as they teach us, lessons of ex- 
 perience and hope ; light after darkness, joy after sorrow, 
 smiles after tears. ' These commiserating sevenths : ' of all 
 dissonances, none is so pleasing to the ear or so attractive to 
 musicians as that of minor and diminished sevenths, that of 
 the major seventh being crude and harsh ; in fact the minor 
 seventh is so charming in its discord as to suggest concord. 
 Again, to quote from Pauer : ' It is the antithesis of discord 
 and concord which fascinates and charms the ear ; it is the 
 necessary solution and return to unity which delights us.' 
 
 " After all this, the love-making begins again, but kisses 
 are interrupted by the 'dominant's persistence [the domi- 
 nant is the fifth, the most characteristic note of the scale] 
 till it must be answered to ; ' this seems to indicate the close 
 of the piece, the dominant being answered by an octave 
 which suggests the perfect authentic cadence, in which the 
 chord of the dominant is followed by that of the tonic." 
 
 The authorities on Galuppi are Grove's Dictionary of 
 Music and Musicians, Champlin and Apthorp's Cyclopce- 
 dia of Music and Musicians, Hogarth's Memoirs of the 
 Musical Drama, Fetis' Biographic Universelle des Musi- 
 dens, Burney's Present State of Music in France and 
 Italy (1771), and Vernon Lee's Studies. 
 
 See Corson's Introduction. In the eleventh number of 
 The Browning Society's Papers is a paper on this poem by 
 Mrs. Alexander Ireland, which contains an analysis of its 
 thought, and an account of Galuppi. 
 
 To Edward Fitzgerald. In 1889 was published Let- 
 ters and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald, edited by 
 William Aldis Wright. In a letter written by Fitzgerald,
 
 420 To Edward Fitzgerald. 
 
 July 15, 1861, to an intimate friend, he said : " Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's death is rather a relief to me, I must say. No more 
 ' Aurora Leighs,' thank God ! A woman of real Genius, 
 I know ; but what is the upshot of it all ? She and her 
 Sex had better mind the Kitchen and their Children and 
 perhaps the Poor. Except in such things as little Novels 
 they only devote themselves to what Men do much better, 
 leaving that which Men do worse or not at all." This 
 thoroughly Oriental conception of woman, probably bred in 
 Fitzgerald by his Eastern studies and expressed in the spirit 
 of the harem, when read by Browning provoked from him 
 a poetic reply. Browning's deep and profound love for his 
 wife could not brook the insult, and his reply was published 
 in The Athenaeum of July 13, 1889 : 
 
 TO EDWARD FITZGERALD. 
 
 I chanced upon a new book yesterday ; 
 I opened it, and, where nay finger lay 
 
 'Twixt page and uncut page, these words I read, 
 Some six or seven at most, and learned thereby 
 That you, Fitzgerald, whom by ear and eye 
 
 She never knew, " thanked God my wife was dead ! " 
 
 Ay, dead ! and were yourself alive, good Fitz, 
 How to return you thanks would task my wits : 
 Kicking you seems the common lot of curs 
 While more appropriate greeting lends you grace : 
 Surely to spit there glorifies your face 
 
 Spitting from lips once sanctified by Hers. 
 July 8, 1889. 
 
 The Athenaeum of July 20 contained a note from the 
 editor of Fitzgerald's Letters, apologizing for the publica- 
 tion of the offensive words : 
 
 " TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, July 16, 1889. 
 " I feel that by a grave oversight I have allowed a sen- 
 tence to stand in one of Edward Fitzgerald's letters which 
 has stirred the just resentment of Mr. Browning. Fitzge- 
 rald's expression was evidently thrown off with the freedom 
 that men permit themselves in correspondence with their in- 
 timate friends ; and I feel how great an injustice I have 
 done to Fitzgerald in making public what was but the care- 
 less outburst of a passing mood, and thus investing it with a 
 significance which was never designed. That I should have
 
 Tokay. Transcendentalism. 421 
 
 allowed a passage to remain which has so wronged the dead 
 and pained the living causes me, I need not say, extreme 
 vexation, and I can only beg publicly to express my sincere 
 regret. WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT." 
 
 Tokay. See Nationality in Drinks. 
 
 Too Late. Dramatis Personce, 1864. 
 
 Touch him ne'er so lightly. The epilogue to Dra- 
 matic Idyls, second series, begins with these words. It 
 shows how everything is the source of song to the poet soul. 
 This poem was added to by the poet in the manner de- 
 scribed in The Century for November, 1882 : 
 
 " The little book, some of whose pages we herewith re- 
 produce, is a tiny autograph album, whose blue plush covers 
 contain, not a mere list of names wrung from bored but com- 
 plaisant notabilities, but all sorts of willing and charming 
 tributes of friendship in verse, in prose, in picture. We can 
 no further tell who is the owner of this marvelous little al- 
 bum than that it is a young American. It is in the name 
 of charity that she lets us print (with the consent of the 
 authors and their representatives) two of its most notable 
 contributions. The Browning lines have a personal inter- 
 est ; the first ten appeared in one of his latest volumes ; the 
 last ten are new, and are in explanation (where none should 
 have been demanded) of one of his finest and most charac- 
 teristic utterances." 
 
 Thus I wrote in London, musing' on my betters, 
 Poets dead and gone ; and lo, the critics cried, 
 " Out on such a boast ! " as if I dreamed that fetters 
 Binding Dante bind up me ! as if true pride 
 Were not also humble I 
 
 So I smiled and sighed 
 
 As I oped your book in Venice this bright morning', 
 Sweet new friend of mine ! and felt the clay or sand, 
 Whatsoe'er my soil be, break for praise or scorning 
 Out in grateful fancies weeds ; but weeds expand 
 Almost into flowers, held by such a kindly hand. 
 VENICE, October, 1880. ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 " Transcendentalism : A Poem in Twelve 
 Books." Men and Women, 1855. 
 
 The poet speaks to a young realistic poet, who is writing 
 a poem in twelve books on transcendentalism, and advises 
 him not to make his song too naked, in its attempt to de-
 
 422 Transcendentalism. 
 
 scribe life as it is. In reality men want images and melody 
 in their poetry, not reason. As illustration the poet intro- 
 duces Boehnie and John of Halberstadt, to prove how 
 desirous men are for what appeals to the imagination. 
 
 Jacob Boehme was born at Altseidenberg, near Gbrlitz, 
 Prussia, in 1575, and died at Dresden, November 7, 1624. 
 He was one of the most remarkable of mystics, a man of 
 great originality, who wrote many books on the inner mean- 
 ings of religion, and who in many ways resembled Sweden- 
 borg. His book called Aurora is perhaps the best known 
 and most characteristic of his works. He saw hidden 
 meanings in all nature ; and the Bible he interpreted into 
 an elaborate system of symbolism. The best book on this 
 remarkable man is Martenson's Jacob Boehme : His Life 
 and Teaching. Something about him may be found in 
 Erdmann's History of Philosophy, and in Overtoil's William 
 Law, Non-juror and Mystic. The incident of Boehme's 
 hearing the plants speak is thus described by Martenson : 
 
 " Sitting one day in his room, his eye fell upon a burnished 
 pewter dish, which reflected the sunshine with such marvel- 
 ous splendor that he fell into an inward ecstasy, and it 
 seemed to him as if he could now look into the principles 
 and deepest foundations of things. He believed that it was 
 only a fancy, and in order to banish it from his mind he 
 went out upon the green. But here he remarked that he 
 gazed into the very heart of things, the very herbs and 
 grass, and that actual nature harmonized with what he had 
 inwardly seen." 
 
 Johann Semeca, known as Teutonicus, was a canonist and 
 ecclesiastical dignitary of Halberstadt, who wrote a com- 
 mentary on the Decretum Gratiani. He was also a magi- 
 cian and astrologer, and caused flowers to appear in winter. 
 The poet says he filled the room with roses by magic, a 
 feat not uncommon during the Middle Ages. In Thomas 
 Hey wood's Hierarchy, book iv. p. 253, another of his 
 magical tricks is described : " Johannes Teutonicus, a canon 
 of Halberstadt in Germany, after he had performed a num- 
 ber of prestigious feats almost incredible, was transported 
 by the Devil in the likeness of a black horse, and was both 
 seen and heard upon one and the same Christmas day to 
 say mass in Halberstadt, in Mayntz, and in Cologne."
 
 Tray. The Twins. 423 
 
 The poem in twelve books on transcendentalism had no 
 existence except in the imagination of the poet. It is the 
 work upon which the young poet is supposed to be engaged. 
 Tray. Dramatic Idyls, 1879. 
 
 This poem describes an actual incident witnessed in Paris 
 by a friend of Browning's, and with accuracy of detail. 
 The poem was written as a protest against vivisection, which 
 the poet called " an infamous practice." He was early asso- 
 ciated with Miss Frances Power Cobbe in her efforts to 
 prevent vivisection ; and he was a vice-president of the 
 " Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals." 
 Dr. Berdoe says, " He always expressed the utmost abhor- 
 rence of the practices which it opposes." To Miss Cobbe 
 he wrote in 1874 : " You have heard, ' I take an equal in- 
 terest with yourself in the effort to suppress vivisection.' I 
 dare not so honor my mere wishes and prayers as to put 
 them for a moment beside your noble acts ; but this I know, 
 I would rather sifbmit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain 
 goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretense 
 of sparing me a twinge or two." He goes even so far as to 
 say that the person not willing to sign the petition against 
 vivisection certainly could not be numbered among his 
 friends. To Miss Stackpoole he wrote in April, 1883 : " I 
 despise and abhor the pleas on behalf of that infamous 
 practice, vivisection." 
 
 Dr. Berdoe says of this poem : " The poet ridicules the 
 idea that the seat of the soul can be discovered by a more 
 intimate knowledge of the brain, and bitterly satirizes the 
 heartlessness and base ingratitude of our physiologists who 
 use the dog, notwithstanding his intimate relationship to 
 and friendship for man, as the material for the cruel experi- 
 ments in the physiological laboratory. Not only did Mr. 
 Browning think this to be useless and wicked, but he 
 denounced it as cowardly, even if it could be proved to be 
 useful." 
 
 See Browning's Message to his Time, by Edward Berdoe. 
 Twins, The. This poem first appeared in a little 
 volume published in 1854, which bore the title of Two 
 Poems by E. B. B. and R. B. It contained A Plea for 
 the Ragged Schools of London, by Mrs. Browning ; and 
 The Twins, by Robert Browning. The volume, of sixteen
 
 424 Two Camels. The, Two Poets of Croisic. 
 
 pages, was published by Chapman & Hall, London ; and 
 it was printed by Miss Arabella Barrett, Mrs. Browning's 
 sister, for a bazaar to benefit the " Refuge for Young Desti- 
 tute Girls," Which she started in or about the year 1854. 
 This refuge, if not the first of its kind, was one of the first, 
 and is still in existence. Men and Women, 1855 ; Ro- 
 mances, 1863 ; Dramatic Romances, 1868. 
 
 This poem is a poetical rendering of a passage in the 
 Table Talk of Martin Luther, which in William Hazlitt's 
 translation is numbered three hundred and sixteen, and is 
 among the sayings " Of Justification : " " Give and it shall 
 be given unto you ; this is a fine maxim, and makes people 
 poor and rich. . . . There is in Austria a monastery which, 
 in former times, was very rich, and remained rich so long 
 as it was charitable to the poor ; but when it ceased to give, 
 then it became indigent, and is so to this day. Not long 
 since, a poor man went there and solicited alms, which was 
 denied him ; he demanded the cause why they refused to 
 give for God's sake? The porter of the monastery an- 
 swered : ' We are become poor ; ' whereupon the mendicant 
 said : ' The cause of your poverty is this : Ye had formerly 
 in this monastery two brethren, the one named Date (give), 
 and the other Dabitur (it shall be given you). The former 
 ye thrust out ; and the other went away of himself. . . . Be- 
 loved, he that desires to have anything must also give ; a 
 liberal hand was never in want or empty.' " 
 
 Two Camels. Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884. 
 
 Nishapur and Sebzevar are two Persian towns. For 
 an account of Lilith see in this volume Adam,, Lilith, and 
 Eve. The first Hebrew quotation is translated as a " Per- 
 sian phrase " in the following line ; the second is " Me Elo- 
 him " (from Elohim), one of the names of God in Genesis. 
 
 Two in the Campagna. Men and Women, 1855. 
 Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. In his Life of 
 Browning, Sharp mentions this poem as having been based 
 on personal experience, during the residence of the poet 
 and his wife in Rome, in the spring of 1850. He attributes 
 no value to this experience, however, as an element in the 
 production of the poem. 
 
 Two Poets of Croisic, The. Published in 1878, by 
 Smith, Elder & Co., London, in La Saisiax : The Two
 
 The Two Poets of Croisic. 425 
 
 Poets of Croisic, pages, 87-191, with prologue and epi- 
 logue. 
 
 The scene of this poem is a village on the southern coast 
 of Brittany, France. It lies about half way between Nantes 
 and Vannes, but off the main route of travel, on a little 
 peninsula, which also bears the name of Le Croisic, that 
 projects into the Bay of Biscay. Baedeker's Northern 
 France describes the place in the concise manner of the 
 guide-book : " Le Croisic, a seaport with 2,460 inhabitants, 
 is one of the most fashionable watering-places in La Basse 
 Bretagne. It is finely situated on a small bay near the ex- 
 tremity of the peninsula, and contains a casino and many 
 pleasant villas. Its beach is not so sheltered as .that of the 
 places mentioned above, and the sea-water is strong ; but 
 there are many shady walks in and near it. The sardine 
 fishing occupies a large proportion of the inhabitants of Le 
 Croisic." 
 
 In her Through Brittany, Mrs. Katherine S. Macquoid 
 describes the place as having an hotel and e*tablissement des 
 bains, a hydropathic establishment, and in the town a small, 
 cheap boarding-house, Pension Jeanne. In describing her 
 visit to the village, of which her book gives an illustration, 
 Mrs. Macquoid says : " We drove on to Le Croisic through 
 the salt marshes. These perpetual long squares into which 
 the country is divided give a dull, monotonous effect ; but 
 before us, and indeed all around us, we could see the sea, 
 and very soon we reached Le Croisic. At first sight it 
 looks like a dull little fishing-village. The port is com 
 pletely enclosed by small islands, and a long artificial cause- 
 way, called the Chausse'e de Pembron, built to preserve the 
 salt marshes from the inroads of the sea, for there seems to 
 be little doubt that the whole of the peninsula, including Le 
 Croisic, Batz, and Le Pouliguen, was at one time an island, 
 and that by degrees the channel between it and the mainland 
 has transformed itself into salt-marshes. There are plenty 
 of fishing-boats and stalwart-looking fishermen ; but, follow- 
 ing the straggling line of granite houses which surrounds 
 the bay, we remarked that many of them were very curious, 
 and almost all were very ancient in appearance. Farther 
 on is some higher ground, grassed sand-hills with furze and 
 broom at intervals, and shaded by trees, and from this, at
 
 426 The Two Poets of Croisic. 
 
 some distance, we saw the pier stretching into the sea. 
 Near the pier are the ^tablissement des bains and the hotel. 
 . . . There is little to see in Le Croisic itself, though it is 
 a good plan to stay a few days there, so as to see some- 
 thing of the very original inhabitants of this peninsula. The 
 church Notre Dame de la Piti is not remarkable. An- 
 other chapel, St. Goustan, is now closed, but the women of 
 Croisic still pray there for those at sea. From the Mont 
 Esprit, at the end of the promenade called Le Mail, there 
 is an excellent view of the town and harbor of Le Croisic ; 
 the town surrounded by the sandy waste of salt pans, and 
 rising from these the church towers of Batz and of La 
 Gue"rande. Beyond the harbor is the Atlantic ; there is a 
 fine sea view from Mont Lenigo. The population seems to 
 be partly composed of fishermen and partly of salt-workers ; 
 but there is here, as well as in the Bourg de Batz, a certain 
 separateness and exclusiveness of both costume and ideas. 
 The people of Le Croisic call themselves Croisicais, in con- 
 tradistinction to Bretons, but they do not seem so fine a 
 race as the people of the Bourg de Batz. Alain Bouchart, 
 the historian, was born at Le Croisic ; and in the fifteenth 
 century this town seems to have been rich and prosperous, 
 the centre of the salt-trade." 
 
 Mrs. Bury Palliser, in her Brittany and its Byways, 
 gives an illustration of Le Croisic, and of the process of 
 making salt on the marshes, which is carried on extensively 
 in the neighborhood. She gives additional information 
 about the place : '' We drove on to Le Croisic, in Breton, 
 ' Little Cross,' so called from the small Chapel of the Cruci- 
 fix, built to commemorate the baptism by St. Felix, Bishop 
 of Nantes, in the sixth century, of the Saxon colony who 
 occupied the peninsula. Le Croisic was one of the first 
 towns in Brittany which received Christianity, and bears for 
 its arms a cross between four ermines. Along the roadside 
 are cisterns or wells dug in the sand, and girls were filling 
 with water the classical stone pitchers they carried upon 
 their heads, quite an Eastern picture, suggestive of Re- 
 becca and the damsels of her country. Le Croisic is almost 
 surrounded by the sea, low and without shelter, which ren- 
 ders it cold, damp, and exposed to the winds ; turf is almost 
 the only fuel used." Batz and La GueVande are villages on
 
 The Two Poets of Croisic. 427 
 
 the peninsula of Le Croisic and near the village of that 
 name. Herve Riel, the hero of Browning's poem with that 
 title, was a native of Le Croisic. 
 
 Le Croisic does a good business in salt, herrings, mack- 
 erel, and especially has a large market for sardines. The 
 town has a custom-house, justice of the peace, church, hos- 
 pital, and a convent. The freestone belfry of the church 
 Notre Dame de la Pitie' serves as a beacon for sailors. A 
 light-house is located at the entrance to the harbor. The 
 place was founded by the Saxons in the fifth century, and 
 it obtained many privileges during the reign of the Dukes 
 of Burgundy. 
 
 Mrs. Palliser describes in one of her chapters the Druidi- 
 cal monuments at Carnac in Morbihan, only a short distance 
 from Le Croisic, to which Browning refers in the poem. 
 This region was the seat of the Druids in the time of their 
 prosperity, and here they gathered from all the places of 
 their worship for conference and the most imposing rites. 
 The remarkable monuments at Carnac and elsewhere in this 
 region are described in both the books just mentioned, as 
 well as in other works. 
 
 Browning spent one or more summers in Le Croisic and 
 its neighborhood, and out of this actual acquaintance with 
 the village grew the poem. He heard the traditions con- 
 cerning two poets who once lived in the village, and these 
 he relates as they came to him on the spot. The first of 
 these is Rene 1 Gentilhomme, of whom little is known, so little 
 that his name does not appear in any of the usual sources 
 of information on biographical and literary subjects. He 
 was a native of Le Croisic, born in 1610. He was a maker 
 of verses, as was his father before him. Having become 
 the page of the prince of Conde", he spent his leisure in 
 writing complimentary verses. As Louis XIII. and his 
 brother were both childless, the prince of Conde*, usually 
 called the Duke, was the heir to the throne. One day a 
 ducal crown in the room where Rene* sat was shattered by 
 lightning. He took this as a sign from heaven that the 
 prince of Conde* was not to become king ; and he made a 
 bold poem, in which he declared that a dauphin would be 
 born the next year. When this came to the king's ears, he 
 made Rene* his royal poet. As a dauphin was born the next
 
 428 The Two Poets of Croisic. 
 
 year, Rene" was regarded as a seer, and got all the honors 
 due that kind of a personage. After this the poet wrote 
 no more poetry, and a thin volume of rhymes was all that 
 could be given to the public as the product of his muse. 
 
 A hundred years later, another poet was born in Le Croi- 
 sic, and he tried to find out all he could about Rene" Gen- 
 tilhomme ; but he found little information to reward his 
 search. This later poet was born in 1699, and his name 
 was Paul Desforges-Maillard. He was a man of some 
 importance in his neighborhood, for he was a member of 
 the academies of Rochelle, Caen, and Nancy. Almost 
 nothing is now known of him, except an incident which 
 occurred in connection with his competition for a prize on 
 the art of navigation, offered by the French Academy. He 
 did not obtain the prize, and his poem was returned to him. 
 At this he was indignant, and his indignation led him to 
 seek to prove to the public that he had not been justly dealt 
 with by the judges. To this end he sent his poems to Le 
 Mercure, but the editor, La Roque, respectfully declined 
 to print them. Desforges insisted upon their publication, 
 taking the editor's praise, and his declaration that he did 
 not wish to offend the Academy, as an expression of cow- 
 ardice. When he wrote La Roque an angry letter, taking him 
 to task for his want of bravery and justice, the editor threw 
 his poems into the fire, and wrote him that they were too poor 
 to print. Desforges, in despair at this cruel cutting short 
 of the fame he had hoped for, had recourse to a singular 
 artifice. He was living then at Brederac, close to a vine- 
 yard called Malcrais. Taking a sister into his confidence, 
 he had her copy out some of his poorest poems, which he 
 sent to La Roque as the poems of Mile. Malcrais de la 
 Vigne. With these the editor was greatly delighted, com- 
 ing to him as they did in a feminine handwriting, and per- 
 haps with a little feminine flattery added. La Roque not 
 only printed the poems, but wrote a most glowing letter to 
 the supposed poetess, and even conceived a violent passion 
 for the muse of Le Croisic. He took the liberty of writing 
 her : " I love you, my dear friend of Brittany. Pardon me 
 this confession, but the words have slipped from my pen." 
 La Roque was not the only one duped by this poetical de- 
 ception. One could not speak enough in Paris of the verses
 
 The Two Poets of Croisic. 429 
 
 of the divine Malcrais. There was not a poet who was not 
 eager to render her honor through the medium of Le 
 Mercure. Voltaire and Destouches, among the leading 
 authors, made themselves the most conspicuous ; and they 
 were for the moment jealous of each other because of the 
 answers, more or less tender, which they received from the 
 coquette. Voltaire wrote of her this line : " Thou whose 
 brilliant voice hast resounded upon our banks." This poem 
 was printed in the works of Voltaire, and of all the many 
 verses with which the false Malcrais inspired her lovers 
 these are the only ones which remain. Those of Destouches 
 had no value whatever, and have passed into oblivion. 
 
 When Desforges at last grew tired of his little comedy, 
 and revealed his true sex, most of his admirers were at first 
 not a little ashamed because of the public part he had made 
 them play as his admirers. As soon as they had recovered 
 from the first surprise and mortification, they saw that the 
 mystery he had created was more awkward for him than 
 for them. They sought to depreciate his verses and to ren- 
 der him ridiculous ; and this it was easy to accomplish, for 
 he had too little real merit to resist the reaction which his 
 own methods had created. 
 
 Some time after this occurrence Desforges, who was not 
 rich, begged of Voltaire to aid him in finding friends and a 
 position in Paris. The author of Zaire, who was too cun- 
 ning or too generous to harbor the least resentment, exerted 
 himself with a good grace to help the once famous writer of 
 Le Mercure. " I am reminded always," wrote Voltaire, 
 " of the coquetries of Mdlle. Malcrais, in spite of your 
 beard and of mine ; and if I cannot make love to you, I 
 
 will try and render you a service. I expect to see M. , 
 
 the controleur-ge'ne'ral, this summer. I shall look for a 
 good opportunity to serve you ; and I shall be very happy 
 if I can obtain something from the Plutus of Versailles in 
 favor of the Apollo of Brittany." It would appear, how- 
 ever, that the praises of Voltaire were greater than his prac- 
 tical helpfulness. 
 
 Very correct in his morals and upright in his character, 
 Desforges has not ranked high as a poet. He was destitute 
 of taste, and his style was flat and verbose. A few of his 
 poetical tales remind one in a distant way of the epigrams
 
 430 Up at a Villa Down in the City. 
 
 of Rousseau. The Poesies de Mile. Malcrais de la Vigne 
 were published in 1735, and a volume of Idyls by Des- 
 forges was published in 1751. His Works in Verse and 
 Prose were issued in two volumes at Amsterdam in 1759. 
 Paul Desforges-Maillard died December 10, 1772. The 
 incident which forms the chief event in the life of Des- 
 forges became the subject of a comedy by Piron, which he 
 called Metromanie. See Biographie Universelle for the 
 leading facts in the life of Desforges. 
 
 The Two Poets of Croisic was begun at the village from 
 which the poem takes its name in the autumn of 1868. 
 Browning was at Le Croisic with his sister during the month 
 of September of that year, and then it was he came into 
 possession of the facts he has used in the poem. The in- 
 cidents of which he makes use, as well as those connected 
 with the career of nerve* Kiel, he found in books devoted to 
 local history and traditions. See Supplement. 
 
 Up at a Villa Down in the City. (As distin- 
 guished by an Italian Person of Quality.) Men 
 and Women, 1855. Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Valence. In Colonibe's Birthday, an advocate of 
 Cleves. He is the representative of Prince Berthold, the 
 lawful claimant to the duchy held by Colombe. He loves 
 Colombe, and is finally accepted by her in preference to the 
 prince, who does not love her. See The Browning Soci- 
 ety's Papers, 2 : 87, for a study of this character. 
 
 Verse-making was the least of my virtues. The 
 first words of the ninth lyric in Ferishtah's Fancies. 
 
 Vincent Parkes. In Martin Relph, the lover of Rosa- 
 mund Page, a girl who is to be shot for treason unless he 
 brings proof of her innocence within a given time. At the 
 last moment Relph sees him coming, but gives no warning ; 
 Rosamund is shot, and Parkes, hearing the volley, falls 
 dead. 
 
 Violante Comparini. The reputed mother of Pompi- 
 lia, in The Ring and the Book. She had bought Pompilia 
 of a bad woman, palmed off the child on her husband as 
 her own, secured her marriage to Count Guido, confessed 
 her sin when she found it was the best policy, and was 
 murdered by the count in company with her husband and 
 Pompilia.
 
 A Wall Waring. 431 
 
 Wall, A. The prologue to Pacchiarotto was printed 
 under this title in the Second Series of Selections made from 
 his poems by Browning, 1880. See, in this work, Prologue 
 to Pacchiarotto. 
 
 "Wanting is What ? Jocoseria, 1883. 
 
 A lyrical plea for that love which perfects life, which 
 Browning describes, in the fifty-fifth section of Fifine at 
 the Fair, as " the beautiful." 
 
 Waring. Dramatic Lyrics, third number of Bells and 
 Pomegranates, 1842. Poems, 1849 ; Romances, 1863 ; 
 Dramatic Romances, 1868. 
 
 The Waring of this poem was Alfred Domett, the poet, 
 who was born in the same neighborhood as Browning, 
 grew up with him, and associated with him in his studies 
 and poetical labors. He is also mentioned in The Guar- 
 dian Angel, where he is called " Alfred, dear friend ! " 
 
 Alfred Domett, son of Nathaniel Domett, was born at 
 Camberwell Grove, Surrey, May 20, 1811. His father was 
 a seaman under Nelson, and a gallant sailor. Alfred en- 
 tered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1829 ; but after a 
 residence of three years he left without graduation. His 
 attention was early turned to literature, and in 1832 he 
 published a volume of poems. He also contributed to 
 Blackwood's Magazine various lyrics which attracted atten- 
 tion to him as a rising poet. One of these was A Christmas 
 Hymn, which is the best known of all his poems, and has 
 been highly praised. It may be found in several poetical 
 collections, and among them Festival Poems. In 1839, in 
 the same magazine, he published a poem on Venice. 
 
 Domett was called to the bar in 1841, and lived in the 
 Middle Temple with Joseph Arnold, who became Chief 
 Justice of Bombay. He was handsome and attractive, well 
 received in society, and a favorite with his literary friends. 
 Before this, however, he had spent two years in traveling 
 in America, including a winter in the backwoods of Can- 
 ada ; and then two years more in Switzerland, Italy, and 
 other Continental countries. In 1842 he was persuaded to 
 go to New Zealand by his cousin, William Young, whose 
 father was a large land owner there, in connection with the 
 New Zealand Company. In May, 1842, he went out to 
 that colony among the earliest settlers. It was immediately
 
 432 Waring. 
 
 after his departure that Browning wrote his Waring, 
 which describes his friend very accurately, and the circum- 
 stances of his sudden absence from London. On arriving 
 in New Zealand, Domett found that his cousin had just 
 been drowned. He settled in the county of Wairoa, on the 
 North Island. In The Guardian Angel Browning ad- 
 dressed him : 
 
 " Where are you, dear old friend ? 
 How rolls the Wairo at your world's far end ? " 
 
 Soon after his arrival Domett was made a magistrate 
 with a salary of 700 a year. Before leaving England 
 Domett was permanently lamed by an accident to one of 
 his legs, which saved his life soon after he reached the 
 colony, for it prevented his accepting the invitation of some 
 treacherous native chiefs to a banquet at which all the Eng- 
 lish guests were killed. In his Narrative of the Wairou 
 Massacre, 1843, he described this event. 
 
 In 1848 he was made the Colonial Secretary for the 
 southern part of the North Island ; and in 1851 he was 
 also appointed the Civil Secretary for the whole of New 
 Zealand, holding both offices until the introduction of the 
 new constitution, in 1853. Having resigned these offices, 
 he accepted one of more work and less remuneration, as 
 Commissioner of Crown Lands, and Resident Magistrate 
 at Hawke's Bay ; and of this district he had virtually the 
 sole official management. In 1859 he represented the town 
 of Nelson in the House of Representatives, and he was re- 
 elected the following year. 
 
 In 1862, at a critical moment in the affairs of New 
 Zealand, Domett was called upon to form a new govern- 
 ment, which he successfully accomplished, becoming the 
 Prime Minister. William Gisborne, who was a member of 
 the New Zealand House of Representatives, and a Minis- 
 ter, in his New Zealand Rulers and Statesmen, published 
 in London in 1886, says of the poet : " Mr. Domett is a 
 man of large mind, of intellect highly cultivated, and of 
 great literary accomplishments. His prose writings, con- 
 tained in leading newspaper articles known to come from 
 his pen, and in public documents, are remarkably well 
 written, and convey clear thoughts and close argument in
 
 Waring. 433 
 
 vigorous language. His poetry is of a high order. In 
 fact, he is more a poet than a politician. When I say 
 that he is more a poet than a political!, I do not mean to 
 convey the idea that his poetic qualities incapacitated him as 
 a public man. Far from it. He abounded in imaginative 
 and creative power, in tender sensibility, in fine taste, in 
 great aims, and in affluence of expression. But these 
 qualities are not repugnant to public capacity. What Mr. 
 Domett failed in was as a politician in the parliamentary 
 sense, namely, as a party man, and as a minister under re- 
 sponsible government. He was a law-worshiper, and ad- 
 mired splendid autocracy. The seamy side of political life, 
 as seen in the parliamentary system, was not congenial to 
 his taste, and he was not fit to work out what he regarded 
 as a lower level of public service. As a public man, how- 
 ever, apart from a politician in the foregoing sense, Mr. 
 Domett was, although a poet, greatly distinguished. Left 
 as it were to himself, he did great and good work. The 
 petition which he wrote in 1845 to Parliament for the re- 
 call of Governor Fitzroy was a most masterly document. 
 Mr. Charles Buller described it as a petition drawn with 
 singular ability and industry, and giving a sound and wise 
 view of the past history and actual condition of the colony. 
 In 1850 Mr. Domett compiled a classification of the laws 
 of New Zealand, a standard and most valuable work. As 
 chief government officer in the new district of Hawke's 
 Bay, 1854-56, left without instructions, and acting on his 
 own responsibility, he did admirable service in his official 
 capacity in maintaining the peace, and administering the 
 public lands of the district, and in generally promoting the 
 welfare of the community of both races. At Nelson, as 
 Commissioner of Crown Lands, he effected valuable re- 
 forms in the Land and Survey offices. As Prime Minister 
 of the colony in 1863, he devised and embodied, alone and 
 unassisted, as the document itself shows in a valuable 
 memorandum, a large scheme for the settlement and self- 
 defense of New Zealand. This scheme, owing to dissen- 
 sions in the Ministry, and other causes, was never carried 
 into effect. Its statesmanlike character is, I think, unim- 
 peachable. As Secretary for Crown Lands of the colony 
 from 1864 to 1871, Mr. Domett showed great capacity for
 
 434 Waring. 
 
 the fulfillment of very difficult duties. In 1870, when he 
 held a seat in the Legislative Council, he was specially ex- 
 cepted, during his tenure of the office of Secretary for 
 Crown Lands, from the law of- Parliamentary disqualifica- 
 tion. This was done for the avowed reason that, as Chair- 
 man of the Joint Committee on Waste Lands, his assist- 
 ance was so valuable. Mr. Domett was also for many years 
 the mainstay of the General Assembly Library. He was, 
 it may be said, the father of that institution, and it is 
 mainly owing to his love of literature, and to his great 
 ability in the organization and classification of a library, 
 that the success of the institution, with comparative small 
 means, was so marked at the date of his departure from the 
 colony in 1871. Mr. Domett was not a character which 
 those who run can read. His are not the qualities which at 
 once attract admiration and fascinate attention. He does 
 not put his best wares in his shop windows. Only those 
 who penetrate the inner chambers of his mind can see its 
 great powers, its wealth of information, and find themselves 
 in the presence of genius. Fluent in writing, he is embar- 
 rassed in speech, and his ability to give full utterance to 
 what he strongly feels leads to the impression that he is 
 somewhat dictatorial and irritable, though, in fact, beneath 
 the surface there is depth of gentleness and good nature. 
 Mr. Domett was made a Companion of the Order of St. 
 Michael and St. George in 1880." 
 
 In 1871, Domett returned to London, and took up his 
 residence at Phillimore Terrace, Kensington ; and after- 
 wards at St. Charles's Square, North Kensington. He had 
 married a handsome English lady while yet a resident in 
 New Zealand. He saw much of Browning ; he became an 
 interested member of the Browning Society, and one of its 
 vice-presidents. " His grand white head," says Mr. F. J. 
 Furnivall, " was to be seen at all the Society's performances 
 and at several of its meetings. He. naturally preferred 
 Mr. Browning's early works to the later ones. He could 
 not be persuaded to write any account of his early London 
 days. Mr. Domett produced with pride his sea-stained 
 copy of Browning's Sells and Pomegranates. A sterling, 
 manly, independent nature was Alfred Domett's. He im- 
 pressed every one with whom he came in contact, and is 
 deeply regretted by his remaining friends."
 
 Waring. 435 
 
 In 1872 Domett published in London his JRanolf and 
 Amohia, a South-Sea Day Dream, a poem descriptive of 
 New Zealand, its scenery, and the legends and habits of the 
 Maori inhabitants. This poem was afterwards revised, en- 
 larged, and published in two volumes. In 1877 appeared 
 a volume of his short poems, including those published be- 
 fore he went to New Zealand, under the title of Flotsam 
 and Jetsam, Rhymes Old and New. Stedman speaks of 
 the promise of his early poems, and of the brilliant future 
 they indicated. He describes his Jtanolf and Amohia as 
 " a poem justly praised by Browning for varied beauty and 
 power, but charged with the diffuseness, transcendentalism, 
 defects of art and action, that were current among Domett's 
 radical brethren so many years ago." In this South Sea 
 poem Domett gives the following characterization of Brown- 
 ing as a poet : 
 
 " Strange melodies 
 
 That lustrous Song-Child languished to impart, 
 Breathing his boundless Love through boundless Art 
 Impassioned Seraph, from his mint of gold 
 By our full-handed Master-Maker flung ; 
 By him, whose lays, like eagles, still upwheeling 
 To that shy Empyrean of high feeling, 
 Float steadfast in the luminous fold on fold 
 Of wonder-cloud around its sun-depths rolled. 
 Whether he paint, all patience and pure snow, 
 Pompilia's fluttering innocence unsoiled ; 
 In verse, though fresh as dew, one lava flow 
 In fervor with rich Titian-dyes aglow 
 Paint Paracelsus to grand frenzy stung, 
 Quixotic dreams and fiery quackeries foiled ; 
 Or of Sordello's delicate Spirit unstrung 
 For action, in its vast Ideal's glare 
 Blasting the Real to its own dumb despair, 
 On that Venetian water-lapped stair-flight, 
 In words condensed to diamond, indite 
 A lay dark splendid as star-spangled Night : 
 Still though the pulses of the world-wide throng 
 He wields, with racy life-blood beat so strong 
 Subtlest Assertor of the Soul in song ! " 
 
 In his Living Authors of England Thomas Powell de- 
 scribes the event which gave origin to the writing of War- 
 ing, the " young author " mentioned being himself : " We 
 have a vivid recollection of the last time we saw him. It 
 was at an evening party, a few days before he last sailed
 
 436 White Witchcraft. 
 
 from England ; his intimate friend, Mr. Browning, was also 
 present. It happened that the latter was introduced that 
 evening, for the first time, to a young author who had just 
 then appeared in the literary world. This, consequently, 
 prevented the two friends from conversation, and they 
 parted from each other without the slightest idea, on Mr. 
 Browning's part, that he was seeing his old friend Domett 
 for the last time. Some days after, when he found that 
 Domett had sailed, he expressed in strong terms, to the 
 writer of this sketch, the self-reproach he felt at having 
 preferred the conversation of a stranger to that of his old 
 associate." 
 
 The authorities for the biography of Domett are Ste- 
 phen's Dictionary of National Biography ; Men of the 
 Time, twelfth edition ; Gisborne's New Zealand Rulers and 
 Statesmen ; Powell's Living Authors of England, which 
 contains several selections from Domett's eai'ly poetry ; and 
 The Browning Society's Papers, number seven, 2 : 223*. 
 Gisborne's book contains a portrait. Stedman's Victorian 
 Poets gives a brief critical estimate of Domett's poetry. 
 
 See The Browning Society's Papers, 1 : 107*, and Net- 
 tleship's Essays and Thoughts. 
 
 When I vexed you and you chid me. The first 
 line of the seventh lyric in Ferishtah's Fancies. 
 
 Which ? Asolando, 1889. 
 
 White Witchcraft. Asolando, 1889. 
 
 In this poem there is probably some reminiscence of the 
 fifth and seventeenth epodes of Horace, which are addressed 
 to Canidia, the name which Horace gave to the sorceress 
 Gratidia. These odes describe the charms used by some of 
 the women of Rome ; and they represent Canidia as a crea- 
 ture devoted to the vilest arts. Nothing but the name 
 Canidia is drawn from Horace ; and a much later time gives 
 the other suggestions of the poem. 
 
 There were three kinds of witches, the black, the gray, 
 and the white. The black witches were wholly evil, and 
 were powerful to injure men. The white had the power to 
 help, but not to hurt. According to Viktor Rydberg, in his 
 Magic of the Middle Ages, " only among nations holding 
 dualistic views do we meet with magic in two forms : with 
 the priests,. a white and a black, the former as a good
 
 White Witchcraft. 437 
 
 gift of Ormuzd, the latter as the evil gift of Ahriman ; 
 with the Christians of the Middle Ages, a celestial magic 
 and a diabolical, the former a privilege of the church 
 and conferred by God as a weapon to aid in the conquest 
 of Satan ; the latter an infernal art to further unbelief and 
 wickedness." 
 
 The writer of a Short Discoverie of Unobserved Dangers, 
 published in 1612, said of white witchcraft : " The mention 
 of witchecraft doth now occasion the remembrance of a sort 
 of practitioners whom our custom and country doth call wise 
 men and women, reputed a kind of good and honest witches 
 or wizards, who, by good words, by hallowed herbs and 
 salves, and other superstitious ceremonies, promise to allay 
 and calm devils, practices of other witches, and the forces 
 of many diseases." 
 
 Cotter, in his Tryall of Witchcraft, says : " This kind is 
 not obscure at this day, swarming in this kingdom, whereof 
 no man can be ignorant who lusteth to observe the uncon- 
 trouled liberty and licence of open and ordinary resort in 
 all places unto wise men and wise women, so vulgarly 
 termed for their reputed knowledge concerning diseased 
 persons as are supposed to be bewitched." 
 
 Thomas Cooper, in his Mystery of Witchcraft, 1617, said 
 that there are good witches as well as bad ones, that the 
 good witches are called the unbinding ones, because they 
 undo what the bad ones do. Burton, in his Anatomy of 
 Melancholy, said " they can effect such cures ; the main 
 question is whether it be lawful in a desperate case to crave 
 their help or ask a wizard's advice. 'T is a common prac- 
 tice of some men to go first to a witch and then to a physi- 
 cian. If one cannot help the other shall." 
 
 The other allusion will be explained by a reference to the 
 Zoological Mythology of Angelo de Gubernatis. In many 
 places in Europe the toad is respected and venerated as a 
 sacred animal, because it is considered as a diabolical form 
 imposed by force upon a divine or princely being. A 
 Tuscan song records the transformation of a beautiful 
 maiden into a toad ; and various legends describe the 
 magical process of changing a beautiful youth or maiden 
 into the form of the same creature. The toad's-stone or 
 bufonite is widely regarded as a means of keeping its wearer
 
 438 Why I am a Liberal. Xanthus. 
 
 from being poisoned ; and it is supposed to be taken out of 
 a toad's head. " Out of the toad, the dark animal of the 
 night, the gloom or winter, the solar peai-1 comes ; thus 
 popular German stories regard the Schild-krote, or toad with 
 the shield, as sacred, on account of the pearl supposed to be 
 contained in its head." 
 
 Why I am a Liberal. In 1885 Cassell & Co., 
 London, published a volume edited by Andrew Reid, in 
 which a number of leaders of English thought answered the 
 question, " Why I am a Liberal ? " To this volume Brown- 
 ing contributed a poem, reprinted in the Riverside edition 
 of his poems, 1889, at the end of the sixth volume. 
 
 WHY I AM A LIBERAL. 
 
 "Why ? " Because all I haply can and do, 
 All that I am now, all I hope to be, 
 Whence comes it save from fortune setting free 
 
 Body and soul the purpose to pursue, 
 
 God traced for both ? If fetters, not a few, 
 Of prejudice, convention, fall from me, 
 These shall I bid men each in his degree 
 
 Also God-guided bear, and gayly, too ? 
 
 But little do or can the best of us : 
 
 That little is achieved through Liberty. 
 
 Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus, 
 His fellow shall continue bound ? Not I, 
 
 Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss 
 
 A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why." 
 
 "Wish no word unspoken. The first words of the 
 lyric following the second dialogue or poem in Ferishtah's 
 Fancies. 
 
 Woman's Last Word, A. Men and Women, 1855. 
 Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 This poem has been set to music by Leslie Johnson, and 
 published by the London Browning Society. Under the 
 title Only Sleep, the same composer and publisher have used 
 the poem with another setting. 
 
 W"omen and Roses. Men and Women, 1855. 
 Lyrics, 1863 ; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Worst of It, The. Dramatis Personce, 1864. 
 
 Xanthus. One of the attendants of St. John in A 
 Death in the Desert.
 
 You groped your way. Youth and Art. 439 
 
 You groped your way across my room. The first 
 words of the third lyric in Ferishtah's Fancies. 
 
 You '11 love me yet. The song of the second girl in 
 Plppa Passes, vol. i. p. 359, Riverside edition of Brown- 
 ing's Works. 
 
 Youth and Art. Dramatis Personce, 1864. 
 
 See Rolfe's Select Poems for a hrief interpretation. 
 Rolfe points out the resemblance of this poem in idea to 
 The Statue and the Bust.
 
 SUPPLEMENT. 
 
 Cardinal and the Dog, The. Asolando, 1889. An 
 account of Crescenzio has been discovered in Moreri's Dic- 
 tionnaire Historiqiie, which has been translated as follows : 
 
 " Marcel Crescentio, Cardinal Bishop of Marsico, in the 
 kingdom of Naples, was born in Rome, of one of the most 
 noble and ancient families. From his youth he made great 
 progress in letters, particularly in civil and canon law. He 
 had a canonship in the Church of St. Mary Major, and was 
 also given the office of the Auditor of the Rota. Then 
 Pope Clement VII. named him for the bishopric of Mar- 
 sico, and Pope Paul III. made him Cardinal, June 2, 1542. 
 
 " Crescentio was Protector of the Order of Citeaux, per- 
 petual Legate at Bologna, Bishop of Conserans, etc. Julius 
 III. named him Legate to preside at the Council of Trent, 
 and he presided there at the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, 
 fourteenth, and fifteenth sessions. The latter ended in 
 1552, and the Cardinal Crescentio, who was ill, remained 
 in Trent. Rumor said that his malady came upon him in 
 this way : After working almost the whole of the night of 
 March 20 to write to the Pope, as he arose from his seat he 
 imagined that he saw a dog that opened its jaws frightfully, 
 and appeared to him with its flaming eyes and low-hanging 
 ears as if mad, and about to attack him. 
 
 " Crescentio called his servants at once, and made them 
 bring lights, but the dog could not be found. The Cardi- 
 nal, terrified by this spectre, fell into a deep melancholy, 
 and then immediately into a sickness which made him de- 
 spair of recovery, although his friends and physicians as- 
 sured him that there was nothing to fear. This is the story 
 about the end of Cardinal Crescentio, who died at Verona 
 the first of June, 1552. It could have been invented only
 
 442 O Love ! Love ! One Word More. 
 
 by ill-meaning people, who lacked respect for the Council. 
 The Cardinal's body was carried to Rome." 
 
 O Love ! Love ! The lyric from Hippolytus, trans- 
 lated for Mahaffy's Euripides, is as follows : 
 
 O Love ! Love ! thou that from the eyes diffuses* 
 
 Yearning, and on the soul sweet grace inducest, 
 
 Souls against whom thy hostile march is made, 
 
 Never to me be manifest in ire, 
 
 Nor, out of time and tune, my peace invade ! 
 
 Since neither from the fire 
 
 No, nor from the stars is launched a bolt more mighty 
 
 Than that of Aphrodite* 
 
 Hurled from the hands of Love, the boy with Zeus for sire. 
 
 Idly, how idly, by the Alpheian river 
 
 And in the Pythian shrines of Phoebus, quiver 
 
 Blood-offerings from the bull, which Hellas heaps : 
 
 While Love we worship not the Lord of men ! 
 
 Worship not him, the very key who keeps 
 
 Of Aphrodite 1 , when 
 
 She closes up her dearest chamber-portals : 
 
 Love, when he conies to mortals, 
 
 Wide-wasting, through those deeps of woes beyond the deep ! 
 
 One Word More. Men and Women, 1855. In The 
 Academy for January 10, 1891, are printed Mr. W. M. Ros- 
 setti's explanations of some of the allusions in this poem : 
 
 " I understand the allusions, but Browning is far from 
 accurate in them. 
 
 " 1. Towards the end of the Vita Nuova, Dante says 
 that, on the first anniversary of the death of Beatrice, he 
 began drawing an angel, but was interrupted by certain 
 people of distinction, who entered on a visit. Browning is 
 therefore wrong in intimating that the angel was painted 
 ' to please Beatrice.' 
 
 " 2. Then Browning says that the pen with which Dante 
 drew the angel was, perhaps, corroded by the hot ink in 
 which it had previously been dipped for the purpose of de- 
 nouncing a certain wretch, i. e. one of the persons named 
 in his Inferno. This about the ink, as such, is Browning's 
 own figure of speech, not got out of Dante. 
 
 "3. Then Browning speaks of Dante's having 'his left
 
 Ponte delV Angela, Venice. Rephan. 443 
 
 hand i' the hair o' the wicked,' etc. This refers to Inferno, 
 Canto 32, where Dante meets (among the traitors to their 
 country) a certain Bocca degli Abati, a notorious Florentine 
 traitor, dead some years back, and Dante clutches and tears 
 at Bocca's hair to compel him to name himself, which Bocca 
 would much rather not do. 
 
 " 4. Next Browning speaks of this Bocca as being a ' live 
 man.' Here Browning confounds two separate incidents. 
 Bocca is not only damned, but also dead ; but further on 
 Canto 33 Dante meets another man, a traitor against 
 his familiar friend. This traitor is Frate Alberigo, one of 
 the Manfredi family of Faenza. This Frate Alberigo was, 
 though damned, not, in fact, dead ; he was still alive, and 
 Dante makes it out that traitors of this sort are liable to 
 have their souls sent to hell before the death of their bodies. 
 A certain Branca d' Oria, Genoese, is in like case damned, 
 but not dead. 
 
 "5. Browning proceeds to speak of 'the wretch going 
 festering through Florence.' This is a relapse into his mis- 
 take, the confounding of the dead Florentine Bocca degli 
 Abati with the living (though damned) Faentine and Geno- 
 ese traitors, Frate Alberigo and Branca d' Oria, who had 
 nothing to do with Florence." 
 
 Ponte dell' Angelo, Venice. Asolando, 1889. This 
 bridge and house are not described in any of the guide- 
 books. The story told is from the Annales of Father Bo- 
 verio, as the poet says. Moreri's Dictionnaire Historique 
 gives an account of this old chronicler. " Zaccaria Boverio, 
 an Italian Capuchin monk, was born at Saluzzo in 1568, and 
 taught philosophy and theology in his Order. He was a 
 faithful monk, and fond of the retired life thus afforded. 
 He occupied himself in the composition of various works, 
 such as Les Annales des Capucins, in two volumes ; De- 
 monstrationes symbolicce verce and falsce Religwnis adver- 
 sus Atheistas Judceas Hereticas ; Censura parvenetica in 
 Marcum-Antonium de Bominis, etc. Father Boverio died 
 at Genoa, May 31, 1638, aged seventy years." 
 
 Popularity. Men and Women, 1855 ; Lyrics, 1863 ; 
 Dramatic Lyrics, 1868. 
 
 Rephan. Asolando, 1889. In a foot-note Browning 
 says this poem was " suggested by a very early recollection
 
 444 Rephan. 
 
 of a prose story by the noble woman and imaginative writer, 
 Jane Taylor, of Norwich." This is a slip of pen or memory 
 for " Jane Taylor of Ongar." 
 
 Jane Taylor was one of the earliest writers of books for 
 children, and especially of religious books. She was the 
 second sister of Isaac Taylor, the author of The Natural 
 History of Enthusiasm, The Physical Theory of Another 
 Life, The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, and other works. She 
 was born in 1783. The greater part of her life was spent at 
 Ongar, and with her sister Ann she wrote Hymns for In- 
 fant Minds. She also wrote Display, a novel ; Essays in 
 Rhyme on Morals and Manners ; and The Contributions 
 f Q- Q- Her Twinkle, twinkle, little Star, and My 
 Mother, are now the best known of her poems. After her 
 death in 1824, at the age of forty, her Memoirs were 
 written by her brother Isaac, and they were published in 
 connection with her correspondence. Her complete works, 
 including the Memoirs, have been published in three vol- 
 umes. 
 
 Walter Scott spoke of Jane Taylor as " among the first 
 women of her time," and Mrs. Oliphant has praised her in 
 The Literary History of England in the Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury. The best articles about Jane Taylor are in Black- 
 wood's Magazine, 139 : 23, by Mrs. L. B. Walford ; and 
 another in The Living Age, 96 : 323. 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant mentions the fact that she early read, with 
 great appreciation, a prose sketch called How it Strikes a 
 Stranger, contained in Jane Taylor's The Contributions of 
 Q. Q., the first volume. Curiously, this is the prose story 
 which suggested to Browning the present poem. The story 
 is an attempt to show how a rational being would regard 
 death, if it were suddenly brought to his knowledge in con- 
 nection with the promise of immortality. Jane Taylor pre- 
 sents the conventional view of the subject. As indicating 
 how a mere hint or an indistinct recollection was used by 
 Browning, this story may be read with much profit : 
 
 HOW IT STRIKES A STRANGER. 
 
 In a remote period of antiquity, when the supernatural and the 
 marvelous obtained a readier credence than now, it was fahled that a
 
 Rephan. 445 
 
 stranger of extraordinary appearance was observed pacing the streets 
 of one of the magnificent cities of the East, remarking with an eye 
 of intelligent curiosity every surrounding object. Several individ- 
 uals, gathering around him, questioned him concerning his country 
 and his business ; but they presently perceived that he was unac- 
 quainted with their language, and he soon discovered himself to be 
 equally ignorant of the most common usages of society. . . . After a 
 time, it is said that the mysterious stranger accepted the hospitalities 
 of one of the nobles of the city, under whose roof he applied himself 
 with great diligence to the acquirement of the language. . . . 
 
 Suddenly raising his eyes to the starry firmament, he fixed them 
 with an expressive gaze on the beautiful evening star which was just 
 sinking behind a dark grove that surrounded one of the principal 
 temples of the city. " Marvel not," said he to his host, " that I am 
 wont to gaze with fond affection on yon silvery star. That was my 
 home ; yes, I was lately an inhabitant of that tranquil planet, from 
 whence a vain curiosity has tempted me to wander." . . . 
 
 The emotion which the stranger had betrayed, when he received the 
 first idea of death, was yet slight in comparison with that which he 
 experienced as soon as he gathered from the discourses of the priests 
 some notion of immortality, and of the alternative of happiness or 
 misery in a future state. But this agony of mind was exchanged for 
 transport when he learned that, by the performance of certain condi- 
 tions before death, the state of happiness mig'ht be secured ; his 
 eagerness to learn the nature of these terms excited the surprise and 
 even the contempt of his sacred teachers. They advised him to re- 
 main satisfied for the present with the instructions he had received, 
 and to defer the remainder of the discussion till the morrow. 
 
 " How !" exclaimed the novice ; " say you not that death may come 
 at any hour ? May it not, then, come this hour ? and what if it should 
 come before I have performed these conditions ! Oh ! withhold not 
 this excellent knowledge from me a single moment ! " 
 
 The priests, suppressing a smile at his simplicity, then proceeded to 
 explain their theology to their attentive auditor : but who shall de- 
 scribe the ecstasy of his happiness when he was given to understand 
 that the required conditions were, generally, of easy and pleasant 
 performance ; and that the occasional difficulties or inconveniences 
 which might attend them would entirely cease with the short term of 
 his earthly existence. "If, then, I understand you rightly," said he 
 to his instructors, "this event which you call death, and which seems 
 in itself strangely terrible, is most desirable and blissful. What a 
 favor is this which is granted to me, in being sent to inhabit a pla- 
 net in which I can die ! " The priests again exchanged smiles with 
 each other ; but their ridicule was wholly lost upon the enraptured 
 stranger. 
 
 When the first transports of his emotion had subsided, he began to 
 reflect with sore uneasiness on the time he had already lost since his 
 arrival. 
 
 " Alas, what have I been doing !" exclaimed he. " This gold which 
 I have been collecting, tell me, reverend priests, will it avail me 
 anything when the thirty or forty years are expired which, you say, I 
 may possibly sojourn in your planet ? "
 
 446 Two Poets of Croisic. 
 
 " Nay," replied the priests, " but verily you will find it of excellent 
 use so long as you remain in it." 
 
 '' A very little of it shall suffice me," replied he ; " for consider ho-v 
 soon this period will be past : -what avails it what my condition may 
 be for so short a season ? I -will betake myself, from this hour, to the 
 grand concerns of which you have charitably informed me." 
 
 Accordingly, from that period, continues the legend, the stranger 
 devoted himself to the performance of those conditions on which, he 
 was told, his future -welfare depended ; but in so doing, he had an 
 opposition to encounter wholly unexpected, and for which he was 
 even at a loss to account. By thus devoting his chief attention to 
 his chief interests, he excited the surprise, the contempt, and even 
 the enmity of most of the inhabitants of the city ; and they rarely 
 mentioned him but with a term of reproach, which has been vari- 
 ously rendered in all the modern languages. 
 
 Nothing could equal the stranger's surprise at this circumstance, as 
 well as that of his fellow-citizens appearing, generally, so extremely 
 indifferent as they did to their own interests. That they should have 
 so little prudence and forethought as to provide only for their neces- 
 sities and pleasures for that short part of their existence in which they 
 were to remain in this planet, he could consider only as the effect of 
 disordered intellect ; so that he even returned their incivilities to him- 
 self with affectionate expostulation, accompanied by lively emotions 
 of compassion and amazement. 
 
 If ever he was tempted for a moment to violate any of the con- 
 ditions of his future happiness, he bewailed his own madness with 
 agonizing emotions ; and to all the invitations he received from others 
 to do anything inconsistent with his real interests, he had but one an- 
 swer. " Oh," he would say, " I am to die ! I am to die ! " 
 
 Two Poets of Croisic, The. The story contained in 
 the Epilogue, as the poet suggests, is from the Greek, where 
 it is to be found in both verse and prose. It appears twice 
 in the Greek Anthology, once by an unknown poet, and 
 once in an epigram by Paulus Silentiarius. The first is in 
 the Palatine Anthology, IX. 584, where the opponent is 
 called Spartis ; the second in VI. 54. It will be found in 
 J. W. Mackail's Select Epigrams from Greek Anthology, 
 ii. 14, p. 127. It is given there in Greek, also in a prose 
 translation, as follows : 
 
 " Eunomus the Locrian hangs up this brazen grasshopper 
 to the Lycarean god, a memorial of the contest for the 
 crown. The strife was of the lyre, and Parthis stood up 
 against me ; but when the Locrian shell sounded under the 
 plectrum, a lyre-string rang and snapped jarringly ; but ere 
 ever the tune halted in its fair harmonies, a delicate-trilling 
 grasshopper seated itself on the lyre and took up the note
 
 Two Poets oj Craisic. 447 
 
 of the last string, and turned the rustic sound that till then 
 was vocal in the groves to the strain of our touch upon the 
 lyre ; and therefore, blessed son of Leto, he does honor to 
 thy grasshopper, seating the singer in brass upon his harp." 
 
 This story probably first appeared in Timaeus, from 
 whence it is quoted by Strabo in his Geography, VII. 10. 
 It is also given by the Emperor Julian, Epistle 41 ; and by 
 Clemens Alexandrinus. Strabo's account is in Bohn's trans- 
 lation, Vol. I. p. 390, as follows : 
 
 " There is a certain singular circumstance respecting 
 grasshoppers, worthy of note. The river Alece divides 
 Rhegium from Locris, flowing through a deep ravine ; those 
 which are in the territory of the Locrians sing, but those on 
 the other side are silent ; and it is thought probable that 
 this is caused by the region being woody, and their mem- 
 branes, being softened by dew, do not produce sound ; but 
 those on the Locrian side, being sunned, are dry and horny, 
 so that the sound is easily produced by them. The statue 
 of Eunomus the harper having a grasshopper seated on his 
 harp is shown at Locri. Timaeus says, that this Eunomus 
 was once contending at the Pythian games and disputed 
 with Aristo of Rhegium for the prize, and that Aristo de- 
 clared that the people of Delphi ought to take part .with 
 him, because his ancestors were consecrated to that God, 
 and sent out to found the colony ; but Eunomus said that 
 they could have no claim to contend for melody with any 
 one, because that among them even the grasshoppers, who 
 are the most gifted of all creatures, were mute. Neverthe- 
 less, Aristo was applauded, and had hopes of obtaining the 
 victory, but Eunomus was declared victorious, and dedicated 
 the said statue in his country, because that at the contest, 
 one of the chords of his harp having broken, a grasshopper, 
 taking his stand on it, supplied the sound."
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abd-l-Kadr, 415. 
 
 Abt Vogler, 1. 
 
 Adam and Eve, 5. 
 
 Adelaide, 370, 386, 392. 
 
 Admetus, 17, 44. 
 
 ^Eschylus, 6, 16. 
 
 Agamemnon, 6, 16. 
 
 Agathon, 32. 
 
 Agricola, Johannes, 186. 
 
 Agrippa, Cornelius, 248. 
 
 Alcestis, 16, 26, 42, 44. 
 
 Ancona, 161. 
 
 Andrea del Sarto, 8, 197. 
 
 Angelo, Michel, 9, 14, 48, 217. 
 
 Apollo, 16, 220. 
 
 Antinomians, 187. 
 
 Arezzo, 344. 
 
 Aristophanes, 19. 
 
 Aristotle, 162. 
 
 Arnold of Brescia, 279. 
 
 Artemis, 36. 
 
 Artemisia Genteleschi, 48. 
 
 Asolando, 38. 
 
 Asolo, 39, 173, 299. 
 
 Athens, 19, 21, 43, 289. 
 
 Avison, Charles, 77. 
 
 Augustus, 170. 
 
 Badman, Mr., 213. 
 
 Baldinucci, 13, 47, 139, 151. 
 
 Balatistion, 19, 24, 37, 42, 127. 
 
 Balkis, 365. 
 
 Barberini, 47, 229, 347. 
 
 Bartoli, Daniele, 111, 169. 
 
 Bates, Arlo, 81. 
 
 Beatrice, 215, 232. 
 
 Bedouin horseman, 209. 
 
 Bells and Pomegranates, 50, 62. 
 
 Bembo, Pietro, 40. 
 
 Ben Karshook's Wisdom, 52. 
 
 Bidpai, Fables of, 128. 
 
 Bishop Blougram's Apology, 56. 
 
 Bishop orders his Tomb, The, 56. 
 
 Blind Man to the Maiden, The, 60. 
 
 Blacas, 374, 377, 380. . 
 Blougram, Bishop, 56. 
 Boccaccio, 233. 
 Boehme, Jacob, 248, 422. 
 Bourg-Molay, Jacques du, 164. 
 Brazen head, 351. 
 Brittany, 165, 425. 
 Brown, Rawdon, 363. 
 Browning, biography, 115, 125, 162, 
 
 246, 280. 
 Browning, letters, 37, 76, 128, 131, 
 
 160, 196, 226, 282, 287, 361, 369, 
 
 403. 
 Browning, Mrs., 68, 207, 211, 218, 
 
 223, 227, 304, 306, 423. 
 Browning, plays acted, 60, 101, 
 
 171, 405. 
 Browning, prefaces, 51, 119, 247, 
 
 285, 299, 359. 407. 
 Browning, religion, 4, 55, 261, 306, 
 
 313. 
 
 Browning, Robert, senior, 115. 
 Browning, spelling of Greek words, 
 
 37. 
 Browning, theory of poetry, 168, 
 
 234. 
 
 Browning, translation, 7, 37. 
 Browning, unpublished poems, 53, 
 
 60, 143, 159, 163, 195, 211, 363, 
 
 367, 402, 420, 421, 438. 
 Bunyan, 213. 
 Byron, 134, 204. 
 
 Caponsacchi, 162, 330, 344. 
 
 Cardinal and the Dog, The, 72, 441. 
 
 Carlisle, Lady, 406, 412. 
 
 Cavour, 17. 
 
 Cenciaji, 73. 
 
 Cenci, Beatrice, 74. 
 
 Cerinthus, 114. 
 
 Chadwick, J. W., 79, 337. 
 
 Charles Emanuel, 189. 
 
 Childe Roland, 78. 
 
 Christ, 84, 307.
 
 Index. 
 
 449 
 
 Christina of Spain, 105. 
 
 Christina of Sweden, 105, 341. 
 
 Cicero, 32, 59, 413. 
 
 Clive, Robert, 99. 
 
 Colombe, 100. 
 
 Comedy, 20, 27. 
 
 Constance.lOS. 
 
 Cooke, J. E., 80. 
 
 Corelli, 347. 
 
 Cornaro, Caterina, 39, 173, 299. 
 
 Crescentio, Cardinal, 72, 291, 441. 
 
 Croisic, 165, 425. 
 
 Dante, 216, 232, 307, 369, 372, 381, 
 
 442. 
 
 David, Song to, 87. 
 De Lassay, Marquis, 112. 
 De Ros, Lord, 174. 
 Desforges-Maillard, Paul, 428. 
 Dickens, 65, 172, 348. 
 Doctor and Death, The, 116. 
 Dodington, George Bubb, 154. 
 Domett, Alfred, 161, 431. 
 Donald, 116. 
 Don Juan, 132, 136. 
 Dowden, Edward, 71, 168. 
 Dramatic poet, 42. 
 Druses, 320. 
 Duncan, 117. 
 
 Eagle, The, 122, 128. 
 
 Easter-day, 84. 
 
 Eccelin of Romano, 370, 384, 387. 
 
 Echetlos, 124. 
 
 Eden, Richard, 69. 
 
 Electra, 24. 
 
 Enclitic De, 160. 
 
 Etruria, 346, 352. 
 
 Eumenides, 16. 
 
 Euripides, 16, 19, 21, 23, 24, 36, 42, 
 
 44, 442. 
 Euthukles, 23, 127. 
 
 Fable of the Bees, The, 54. 
 Fables of Pilpay, 123, 128. 
 Fano. 160. 
 
 Faucit, Helen, 63, 101. 
 Ferishtah's Fancies, 128. 
 Fifine, 132. 
 Firdusi, 130, 206. 
 Fiske, John, 72, 294. 
 Fitzgerald, Edward, 419. 
 Flight of the Duchess, The, 141. 
 Florence, 9, 10, 15, 143, 162, 217, 
 
 346, 383, 402. 
 Fontainebleau, 106. 
 Formosus, 351. 
 
 Forster, John, 65, 172, 247, 281, 
 
 407, 410. 
 
 Founder of the Feast, The, 143. 
 Fox, W. J., 246, 281, 282. 
 Fra Angelicp, 149. 
 Franceschini, Count Guido, 104, 
 
 327. 
 
 Francis I., 9, 110, 157. 
 Furini, Francis, 150. 
 Fuseli, 200. 
 Fust, 151. 
 
 Gafar. 209. 
 Galuppi, 416. 
 
 Genteleschi, Artemisia, 48. 
 Gentilhomme, Rene", 427. 
 Ghent, 169. 
 Ghetto, 167. 
 Giotto, 148, 217, 233. 
 Glove, The, 157. 
 Godwin, William, 200. 
 Goldoni, 159. 
 
 Gosse, Edmund, 50, 61, 100, 203, 
 . 246, 280, 291, 298, 406. 
 Grammarian's Funeral, A, 160. 
 Greville Memoirs, 175. 
 Grote, 20, 290. 
 Guardian angel, 161. 
 Guelf and Ghibelline, 382. 
 G'uercino, 161. 
 Gutenberg, 151. j 
 
 Hakem. 321. 
 Hakkadosh, 182. 
 Hamelin, 291. 
 Hamz<5, 321. 
 Handel, 77. 
 
 Harrison, Frederic, 7, 37. 
 Hawthorne, 15, 208. 
 Helen's Tower, 163. 
 Herakles, 27, 44. 
 Heretic's Tragedy, The, 164. 
 Herodotus, 289. 
 nerve- Riel, 165. 
 Hillard, Geo. S., 14, 166. 
 Hippolytus, 36. 
 Honensteil-Schwangau, 303. 
 Holy-Cross Day, 166. 
 Home, D. D., 207. 
 Homer, 6, 16, 409. 
 Hood, Thomas, -212. 
 Horace, 170, 177. 
 Howell's Letters, 292. 
 Husheng, 414. 
 
 Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 248, 308. 
 Inn Album, The, 174.
 
 450 
 
 Index. 
 
 Innocent XII., 338. 
 Inquisition, 103, 295, 343. 
 Instans Tyrannus, 176. 
 Lxion, 180. 
 
 Jansenists, 344. 
 Jerrold, Douglas, 121. 
 Jews' sermon, 166. 
 Job, 131, 310. 
 Jocoseria, 185. 
 John of Halberstadt, 422. 
 Jonson, Ben, 41. 
 
 Komos, 29. 
 Kottabos, 24, 35. 
 Knights Templars, 164. 
 
 La Delivrande, 318. 
 
 La Hogue, 166. 
 
 Lairesse, Gerard de, 156. 
 
 Landor, 52, 404. 
 
 La Saisiaz, 194. 
 
 Lear, Edgar's song in, 78. 
 
 Lee, Vernon, 173. 
 
 Le Croisic, 165, 425. 
 
 Lilith, 5, 424. 
 
 Lippi, Fra Lippo, 143, 221. 
 
 London, 2, 42. 
 
 Lorenzo in Lucina, 348. 
 
 Lost Leader, The, 196. 
 
 Louis Napoleon III., 303, 415. 
 
 Lucca, 171, 310. 
 
 Lucius Varius Rufus, 170. 
 
 Lucrezia, wife of Lippi, 146. 
 
 Lucrezia, wife of Sarto, 9, 197. 
 
 Luria, 52, 198. 
 
 Luther, 424. 
 
 Macready, 61, 64, 72, 246, 291, 404. 
 
 Maecenas, 170, 251. 
 
 Magic, 262, 295, 422. 
 
 Mahaffy, J. P., 7, 21, 43, 45, 216. 
 
 Mandeville, Bernard de, 53. 
 
 Malcrais, Mile., 428. 
 
 Marot, Clement, 158, 285. 
 
 Mazzini, 177. 
 
 Medici, 143, 402. 
 
 Meg, Muckle-mouth, 208. 
 
 Melander, 185. 
 
 Mermaid tavern, 41. 
 
 Middle Ages, 58, 68, 164, 215, 250, 
 
 295, 308, 349, 352, 354, 364, 384. 
 MiU, J. S., 281. 
 Milsand, M., 279. 
 Molay, 164. 
 Moliere, 132. 
 Molinos, Michel de, 339. 
 
 Molinists, 339. 
 Monaldeschi, 105. 
 Morgue in Paris, 17. 
 Mozart, 1. 
 
 Names, 211. 
 
 Napoleon III., 17, 303, 415. 
 Napoleon Buonaparte, 174, 307. 
 Neo-Platonism, 250, 258. 
 New Amphion, 157. 
 Normandy, 166, 316, 353. 
 Nymphs, 215. 
 
 One Word More, 53, 227. 
 Orchestrion, 2. 
 Orestes, 6, 288. 
 Orpheus, 127. 
 Ortolan, 305. 
 
 Pacchia, 236, 241. 
 
 Pacchiarotto, 236. 
 
 Pajot, Marianne, 112. 
 
 Palma, 370, 380, 385. 
 
 Pambo, 243. 
 
 Pan, 245, 290. 
 
 Parabasis, 31. 
 
 Paracelsus, 18, 185, 245, 246, 407. 
 
 Pasquin, 350. 
 
 Pauline, 203, 280. 
 
 Pausanias, 124, 289. 
 
 Peter of Abano, 294. 
 
 Petrarch, 18, 345. 
 
 Phrunichas, 28. 
 
 Pied Piper, 72, 291. 
 
 Pieve, 345. 
 
 Pilpay (Bidpai), 123, 128. 
 
 Pignatelli, Antonio, 238. 
 
 Pippa, 39, 50, 298. 
 
 Plato, 22, 312. 
 
 Plutarch, 23, 44, 215, 290. 
 
 Pompilia, 301, 328, 344. 
 
 Pope's legate at Trent, 291. 
 
 Pornic, 134, 158. 
 
 Potter's wheel, 315. 
 
 Powell, Thomas, 104. 
 
 Prout, Father, 295. 
 
 Pythias, 171. 
 
 Quietism, 340, 342. 
 
 Radford, Ernest, 13, 200. 
 
 Raphael, 227. 
 
 Renaissance, 58. 
 
 Rephan, 443. 
 
 Romanelli, Giovanni Francesco, 47. 
 
 150. 
 Rome, 1, 311. 
 
 i ben
 
 Index. 
 
 451 
 
 Kiel, Henre*, 165, 427. 
 Ronsard, Peter, 158, 289. 
 Rosny, 353. 
 Rossetti, D. G., 282. 
 Rossetti, Wru., 86. 
 Rudel, 354. 
 Ruskin, 58. 
 
 St. Ambrose, 149. 
 
 St. Aubin, 315, 318. 
 
 St. John, 114. 
 
 St. Praxed's, 57. 
 
 Salinguerra, 370, 390. 
 
 Sand, George, 320. 
 
 Sarto, Andrea del, 8, 197. 
 
 Said, 357. 
 
 Scott, Walter, 116, 209. 
 
 Schubart, 4. 
 
 Setebos, 69. 
 
 Shah Nameh, 47, 72, 128, 130, 206, 
 
 362, 414. 
 
 Shakespeare, 41, 58, 70, 211, 405. 
 Shelley, 74, 168, 203, 235. 
 Signorini, Beatrice, 47. 
 Simonides, 32. 
 Simorgh, 206. 
 Sindokht, 47. 
 Sixtus V., 45, 302. 
 Smart, Christopher, 85. 
 Smith, Anne E., 194. 
 Solomon, 364. 
 Sordello, 39, 279, 369, 399. 
 Spiritualism, 207. 
 
 Stratford, 408. 
 Suetonius, 298. 
 Swinburne, 15. 
 Symonds, J. A., 10, 20, 21, 24, 176. 
 
 Taine, 161. 
 
 Talmud, 181, 310, 365. 
 Taylor, Jane, 444. 
 Tempest, The, 70. 
 Thaxter, Levi Lincoln, 195. 
 Tod, Old, 213. 
 Tragedy, 30. 
 Tripoli, 354. 
 
 Trithemius, Johann, 249. 
 Troubadours, 354, 371, 391. 
 
 Vasari, 9, 11, 144, 173, 217, 222, 
 
 237. 
 
 Venice, 40, 159, 363. 
 Venus, 36, 298. 
 Verstegan, Richard, 293. 
 Victor Amadeus II., 188. 
 Vidal, 376, 392. 
 Virgil, 127, 245, 369, 372. 
 Vivisection, 18, 423. 
 
 Wanley, Nathaniel, 243, 291. 
 Weber, 2. 
 
 Wiseman, Cardinal, 56. 
 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 200. 
 Wonders of the Little World, The, 
 
 243, 291. 
 Wordsworth, 167, 196, 404.
 
 WORKS OF 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 POETICAL AND DRAMATIC WORKS. New Riverside Edi- 
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