H3I BROWNING STUDIES BY VERNON C. HARRINGTON ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED MCMXV Copyright, 1915, by Richard G. Badger All Rights Reserved THE GORHAM PRESS, BOSTON, U.S.A. BeMcatton TO THE STUDENTS WHO HAVE STUDIED BROWNING WITH ME IN OBERLIN AND MIDDLEBURY You must not mind if I dedicate these Studies to you, for most of them were prepared for you and your interest (may I venture to say enthusiasm ?) in them is responsible for their publication. Peradventure, if your eyes light on this book, its words may bring to your minds the course in Nineteenth Century Poetry, the gray classroom, and those long and forbidding lists of questions for written tests, to be answered without regard to floods of sunshine or of rain outside the windows. I hope this book may also bring keenly to your thoughts the good friends you found among the English Poets of the nineteenth century and, above all, the imperial soul of Robert Browning. You may be sure that working over these lectures, to re- vise them somewhat and to get them written out so that some one besides myself can understand the abbreviations, has brought you all many times before my mind's eye and has made more plain to me the eager and generous spirit which so many of you showed and has caused me to realize anew how your spirit helped me to put into orderly pres- entation something of what has come out of the years of my reading of Browning. And so I dedicate to you now these lectures, because, in a very real sense, they already belong to you. iii 331035 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/browningstudiesOOharrrich PREFACE These Browning Studies were given in Oberlin College, in the Department of English in the course on Nineteenth Century Poetry, in the second semester of the year 1908- 09, and were repeated in the corresponding semester of the year 1909-10. They constituted a course in the Sum- mer Session of Middlebury College in 191 3, and were given here again as a part of the study of Nineteenth Century Poetry in the second semester of the year 191 3- 14. It should be explained also that the greater part of the study of The Ring and the Book was written before those Oberlin days, and that since those days Bishop Blou- grams Apology^ A Death in the Desert^ and Reverie have been added to the list of poems taken up ; also that, be- sides being used in connection with the college classes mentioned above, several of the lectures have been given in various places. The interest taken by the students in these studies has suggested their publication. They are now printed as given in the classroom, with some revision. Abbrevia- tions are written out more than in the author's notes, but no attempt has been made to reproduce the extempora- neous elaboration and explanation given in the classroom. Lectures which occupied several classroom hours are here sometimes combined into a single chapter. These studies do not pretend to be exhaustive. They are simply an introduction to some of Browning's best work. They are intended now, as they were in the class- room, for those who have not read Browning at all before, or very little. The idea which people get, that they cannot Vi • PREFACE understand Browning, is one of those ** literary supersti- tions " which are passed from one to another. I remem- ber well my pleasure when I first seriously tried to read Browning and found that I could do it. A part of the pleasure of teaching Browning, in the courses already referred to, was enjoying the surprise of students, when they found they could read Browning and get something out of him. It is true, however, that in reading Browning a great deal depends on what sort of a start we get, i.e. what poems we read first. I do not wonder at the expe- rience of the Cincinnati gentleman (referred to in Chapter II) who began with Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. These studies for the classroom were planned with purpose that students might begin Browning right, as far as I could understand from my own experience what is the right way to begin, and, for the same reason, they are now given in printed form in the same order. I confess that I owe Robert Browning a debt which I can never pay, for it is hardly an exaggeration to say that Browning opened a new world to me. His optimism and his red-blooded joy in the intensity of struggle in the pres- ent hour and his stern facing of life have done me an immense good. The optimism of most people makes me more pessimistic and makes the whole situation seem hope- less, because most people's optimism is of a childish sort, due to their good digestion and agreeable experiences and to their ignorance of the evil in the world and their blind- ness to the beauty and the cruelty of human life. But Robert Browning's optimism is not that of a child, but of a f ullgrown man who realizes keenly the worst there is in the world, and yet, in the face of it all, believes in the existence of and the triumph of good. I hold that no man who has found a good thing should keep it for him- self alone. Therefore, if Browning has been good for me PREFACE vii and if I can encourage some one else to get acquainted with him, it is my duty and privilege to do so. A practical suggestion may not be amiss as to a way of using the present book. It should be used never apart from but only alongside a good edition of Browning. It will be well to read the introductory lectures first; then to take up the poems designated in the studies that follow, each poem in turn, reading the matter given in the lecture, then reading the poem, then referring again to the lecture and again to the poem as long as the lecture can be found of any assistance. I shall be glad if the notes and com- ments I have written down can be of service in some such way as this, but always the poem is the thing. V. C. H. MiDDLEBURY, VERMONT, December 12, 19 14. \ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning i II. Introduction (Continued) : Browning as a Lit- erary Artist 51 III. Introduction (Concluded) : Our Plan of Study in this Course 76 IV. Some of the Short Poems Published before Mrs. Browning's Death 78 V. Some of the Short Poems Published after Mrs. Browning's Death 104 VI. Three of the Longer Poems now Standing among the Dramatic Romances 114 VII. Four of the Major Poems in Men and Women . 136 VIII. Saul and In a Balcony . . . . . .168 IX. A Group of the Dramatis Person^e . . .182 X. Paracelsus 199 XI. PippA Passes 230 XII. A Blot in the 'Scutcheon 252 XIII. LuRiA 270 XIV. A Soul's Tragedy . 288 XV. The Ring and the Book 301 XVI. The Ring and the Book (Concluded) . . .330 XVII. Balaustion's Adventure 351 APPENDIX A 375 APPENDIX B 382 APPENDIX C 388 INDEX 391 BROWNING STUDIES AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF ROBERT BROWNING In all the world there is no place with greater store of associations than Westminster Abbey. It is crowded with graves. It seems almost like a vast tomb, instead of a church. Here in dust lie so many great and renowned. Where else can you find so many and famous names as along the walls and on the floor of Westminster Abbey ? And there is no place where the vanity of human life comes in upon your spirit so. In the gloom of that church, one feels very keenly the truth of St. James' words : " For what is your life ? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." Each time I visited Westminster Abbey, it had the same effect. It is a curious feeling to stand on the stones which cover the graves of those whose names and greatness have been famiHar to us from childhood up. Mouths stopped with dust, strong hands disintegrated, brave hearts the helpless prey of corruption, and mighty brain of one after another turned into a handful of earth ! "After life's fitful fever," they "sleep well." I know one day I left the church and went out into the cloisters, and walked while the winter sun went down, — and the nothingness of human Ufe, the pitifulness and absurdity of all our struggle, filled the hori- zon of my thoughts. Such desolate words as.the Psalmists 2 .BROWNING STUDIES wrote would keep coming into mind with fresh meaning: *' We spend our years as k tale that is told." "As for man, his days are as grass ; as a flower of the field, so he flour- isheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more." And in Westminster Abbey, I always paused a long time by two graves among the others so crowded in the Poets' Corner. There they lie, side by side, each under a plain slab in the floor,^ Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. As they lived, the two lights which outshone all their con- temporaries, so they lie there now, — side by side. There is at once a temptation to compare these two men, and partisan admirers are constantly praising one and dis- paraging the other. This is quite unnecessary. They are very different. There is room for both. Each supple- ments the other. Each has his mission and makes his contribution. We defraud ourselves, if we choose either Tennyson or Browning and neglect the other. How these two men felt toward each other may be judged from these two dedications : (i) Browning's volume of Selections, 1872, selected from his works and arranged by himself, with Preface, and "Dedicated to Alfred Tennyson in poetry — illustrious and consummate in friendship — noble and sincere." (2) Tennyson's volume Tiresias and Other Poems, 1885, "To my good friend Robert Browning whose genius and geniality will best appreciate what may be best and make most allowance for what may be worst." , \-' • ;.' } A bust of Tennyson stands not far off. INTRODUCTION 3 Nothing could show mutual appreciation and admiration better than these dedications. Then, let not the admirers of either Tennyson or Browning do an injustice to the other. We have given some weeks to the study of Tennyson. We come now to the study of Robert Browning. After many years of familiarity with Browning's poems, it is with a certain sense of reverence that I turn to them now. **Iwas not ever thus." In college, I sneered and jeered at Robert Browning. I repeated all the threadbare jokes about the obscurity of his style and nobody's knowing what he meant. I argued that enthusiasm for Browning was a fad and was pretended by men and women who couldn't imderstand Browning. In all these remarks, in which my college mates usually acquiesced, I thought I was smart. But the fact is that it was all because / didnH know any better. That is my only excuse. The day came when I read a statement of Browning's own,^ that he had never been wilfully obscure, that, if people couldn't imder- stand his poems, he was sorry, for he had tried to say what he meant. It occurred to me that the difficulty in under- standing Browning might be one of those ^'Uterary super- stitions" ^ which get afloat in the world, and I waded into the study of Browning for myself. ; I found a mine of wealth and beauty. I found a man who faces life unflinchingly, 1 This statement of Browning's I am not now able to locate. I give it in effect, and I remember it pretty well and especially the impression it made on me. The nearest I find is a statement in a letter written in 1868 to W. G. Kingsland, quoted by Griffin and Minchin, Life of Robert Browning, p. 302, where Browning says: "But I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed." 2 In those days, I did not know this fortunate phrase by which to call such things. The phrase is one of the Rev. A. J. Carlyle's, Fellow of Uni- versity College, Oxford, and Vicar of St. Martin's and All Saints', in his lectures on Some Common Characteristics of Mediaeval Literatures. 4 BROWNING STUDIES whose comprehensive sympathy has wrestled with more of life's problems than anyone in English Literature except, Shakespeare. After some years of putting him to the test, often in the night and the storm, I can only say in ^bluntest simplest manner, Robert Browning has helped me ^ live. I am not the only one — I have seen it in many others. Better acquaintance with Browning has won to his side many who opposed or laughed at him. A friend of mine told me that in his class in Princeton some of the men who seemed most unlikely to do so became enthusiastic for Browning in taking a course in which his works were studied. It seldom fails that the fondness for Browning grows with the years of acquaintance. He wears well. I am not a blind partisan of Browning. I see his defects. *> But I know also the soul-satisfying quality of his thoughts. Robert Browning will bring something into the life of any- one who sincerely studies his poems. When things get thick, you will find Robert Browning standing by you. He has been through it, and has not flinched. The fact that there could be such a man as he was makes me beHeve more in humanity. And the words which he has penned have been to many almost like food and drink in the desert. This confession I make for your sakes. Let me ask you, then, to put away your prejudices and to reserve your judgment until we are done with these weeks of Browning study, lest you be found pronouncing judgment on your- selves, as I did in my college days. I. About the Books I. Of Browning's Works, as far as one- volume editions are concerned, the Globe Edition^ edited by Augustine Birrell, New York, The Macmillan Co., is the best. No one-volume edition of Browning can be altogether satis- ABOUT THE BOOKS 5 factory, there is so much matter to put in. The Globe Edition was formerly (1896- 1907) published in two volumes, but by the use of thinner paper, from 1907 on, it has been put into one volume, of something over 1300 pages. This was the edition used by the students to whom these lectures were deHvered, and therefore the references in these lectures are to the pages and lines of this edition. 2. A good edition is the Camherwell Browning, with introductions and notes by Miss Charlotte Porter and Miss Helen A. Clarke, 12 vols.. New York, T. Y. Crowell & Co., 1898.^ The volumes are sold separately as well as in sets, and, on this account, the numbers are in small Arabic numerals at the bottom of the back. The notes are a great assistance, but unfortunately are not always accurate, and sometimes provoke dissent.^ This edition may be had also with Miss Porter and Miss Clarke's Brown- ing Study Programmes, two vols, uniform with the others, making 14 vols, in all. 3. The best biography of Browning is The Life of Robert Browning, with Notices of his Writings, his Family, and his Friends, by W. Hall Griffin, completed and edited by Harry Christopher Minchin, New York, The MacmiUan Co., 1 9 10. This is done with great care and thoroughness. 4. Any mention of important books for Browning study should include Edmund Gosse's Robert Browning: Per- sonalia, Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1890. These Personalia are from notes supplied by Robert Browning himself. 5. Mrs. Sutherland Orr's Life and Letters of Robert ^This is the same as the Arno Edition which was published by Geo. D. Sprovil, New York, 1899, (no longer issued). 2 For a case in which we are obliged to dissent, see our note on the word- "lathen," Appendix C of the present volume. 6 BROWNING STUDIES Browning, published in two vols., 1891, (and in a one- vol. edition the same year), has been esteemed an indispensable source of information, and so it is. The author of it, Mrs. Alexandra Leighton Orr, became an intimate friend of the Brownings, and had in hand much unusual material for a biography. But, because of haste and inaccuracy, the biography proved unsatisfactory to the poet's son and other relatives.^ There has been issued, however, a new and enlarged edition, revised by Frederic G. Kenyon, one vol., Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1908. 6. Mrs. Orr's Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning, pubHshed in 1885, is now in its eleventh edition and is very good. This Handbook was approved by Robert Browning himself, and his son's attitude toward it, in the same conversation with Prof. Phelps referred to in our footnote, confirms that approval. It is published by Geo. Bell & Sons of London ; The Macmillan Co., New York. 7. A very useful and reliable book is George Willis Cooke's Guide-Book to the Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning, Boston, HoUghton, Mifflin & Co., 1891. It will commend itself to anyone who refers to its pages to any extent. 8. One of the most valuable books for general reference is The Browning Cyclopcedia by Edward Berdoe, ist edi- tion 1 89 1, 7th edition 191 2, London, George Allen & Co. Ltd. ; New York, The MacmiUan Co. This book is some- times disappointing. Dr. Berdoe cannot avoid reading into Browning too much of his own Roman Catholic faith and his zeal against vivisection and such methods of re- ^ See article by Prof. Wm. Lyon Phelps, Robert Browning as Seen by his Son, in the Century Magazine, Jan., 1913, (vol. LXXXV, no. 3), pp. 417-420 — especially Mr. Barrett Browning's remarks about this biography, on p. 418. UFE OF BROWNING 7 search.* But the book is a vast collection of information on Browning's writings and things referred to by Browning, and is an exceedingly handy "business book" for Browning study. 9. A list of some of the other editions now in print of Browning's works, and of books about Browning, which would naturally stand here, has been transferred to the end of the present volume of lectures. For further details in this line, the reader is therefore referred to Appendix A. We have no desire to bury up Browning in books about him. Browning's own words are the main thing, and any books about him and his writings are useful only as they send readers to his own words with greater eager- ness and better understanding. It is a pitiful thing to be always reading "about it and about" and miss the thing itself. The placing of the list at the end of the volume instead of at this point does not, however, at all imply that books there mentioned fall short in value or in ability to lead the reader to Browning himself, but only that it is better that such a list should stand there. The list, although at the end of the book, is in the reader's hands, to be referred to at any time. II. Dates outlining Browning's Life The following dates ^ will serve as a sort of outline of Browning's life : 1 Cf. his attempt (7th ed., p. 105) 'to interpret a part of Childe Roland in some such way. Browning was against vivisection, but he was not arguing against anything of the sort in Childe Roland. 2 The dates have been checked up by GriflSn and Minchin's Life of Robert Browning. In revising the present lecture I have depended on the same biography also for accurate details. So many accounts of Browning's life are vague and deal so much in misleading generalities that it is an unalloyed pleasure to real the careful and painstaking work of GrijQ&n and Michin. 8 ^BROWNING STUDIES 1. i8i2, May 7, Robert Browning was born, in Camber- well, a suburb of London on its southern side. His sister Sarah Anna ^ was born Jan. 7, 1814. These were the only children in the family. The house in which they were born stood in Southampton St., near Dowlas Common which came to be called Cottage Green and is now built up although the name Cottage Green remains. While Sarah Anna was still an infant, the family moved into another house on the same street, and about 1824 they moved from that house to Hanover Cottage, also in South- ampton St., and this they occupied for 16 years. 2. 1820-26 (or 1821-26), from the time when he was eight or nine years old until he was fourteen, the boy attended the Rev. Thomas Ready's school, in Peckham about a mile from home. 3. 1828, Oct., Browning began study in London Uni- versity. ^ He was then 16 years old. His name was entered under date of June 30, 1828, but classes did not begin until the Fall Term. The studies were Greek, Latin, and German. He continued for one term, but left abruptly during the second term, some time after Christ- mas. This was his only college education. 4. 1 829 , in the spring, he decided on poetry for his life-work. ^ Her name stands Sarah Anna written by her father's hand in the family Bible (record copied by Grif&n and Minchin and printed at the beginning of their Life of Browning), but the two names became later combined into Sarianna. ' This institution from its inception in 1825 was known as London Uni- versity, but received a charter in 1836 as University College. Hence the confusion in references to Browning's studying there, — some saying he studied at London University, some saying at University College, London. It was called London University when Browning attended it. University College, London, still continues on the original site. The fact that up to 1836 it was called London University should not confuse it with the present University of London. ^ LIFE OF BROWNING 9 5. 1834, he travelled to St. Petersburg with Chevalier George de Benkhausen, the Russian Consul- General to England. Left London Saturday, Mch. i, and was back in England in three months. 6. 1838, first * visit to Italy. Sailed on the afternoon of Friday, April 13, landed at Trieste May 30, and arrived at Venice Wednesday morning, June i. Within the next three weeks he visited many of the cities in that part of Italy, and returned to Venice. Then went to Verona, and journeyed home by way of the Tyrol and the Rhine. 7. 1840, Dec, the Browning family left Camberwell and moved to Hatcham, another suburb. The poet made his home with his parents until his marriage. 8. 1844, his second Italian journey, leaving England in the summer and returning in December. 9. 1845, May 20, Robert Browning first met Elizabeth Barrett. She had received her first letter from him on Jan. 10, 1845, but it was some months before he could see her. 10. 1846, Sept. 12, Saturday, about noon or a little before, Robert Browning and Ehzabeth Barrett were married at St. Marylebone Church, London. It was a secret marriage, her two sisters knowing it, but her father not knowing. The only witnesses were Miss Barrett's maid and Browning's cousin James Silverthorne. 11. 1846, Sept. 19, Saturday afternoon (just a week later), she stole out of her father's house. No. 50 Wimpole St., London, with her maid and her spaniel. Flush, went around the comer to Hodgson's bookstore in Great Maryle- bone St. and met Robert Browning. They took the 5 : 00 ^ "This was Browning's first Italian visit; he did not, as has been re- peatedly stated, visit Italy in 1834." — Griffin and Minchin, Life, pp. 94, 95, footnote. 10 * BROWNING STUDIES P.M. train for Southampton, and so to Paris and from there to Italy. Her father never forgave her and never saw her again. 12. 1846-47, they spent the winter in Pisa. 13. 1847, April, they came to Florence. At first they took furnished apartments in the Via delle Belle Donne, close to the Piazza Santa Maria Novella. That summer, leaving those apartments to seek cooler quarters, they took a suite of rooms up one flight of stairs ^ in the Casa Guidi,^ south of the Arno, at the corner of the Via Maggio and the Via Mazetta, almost opposite the Pitti Palace. In October, they moved to other furnished rooms in the Piazza Pitti, to get more sunlight for the winter. 14. 1848, May, they leased the flat in the Casa Guidi which they had occupied the summer before, — seven rooms, the favorite suite of the last Count Guidi. They took the rooms unfurnished, paying an annual rental of 25 guineas (between $125 and $130). This was their home. They often travelled and sometimes rented their flat furnished, in their absence, but returned here when they came *'home." 15. 1848, summer, they travelled on the east side of Italy, visiting Fano, Ancona, Rimini, and Ravenna. 16. 1849, Mch. 9, their son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning,^ was born in the Casa Guidi. He was their only child. 17. 1849, Robert Browning's mother died this year, 1 The rooms are on what in Europe is called the first floor, i.e. the floor up one flight, not the street floor. In America, we usually call that the second floor. * So named from the fact that it was formerly the residence of the Counts Guidi. Casa signifies "house," or "home." ' Usually spoken of, in later years, as Mr. R. Barrett Browning, or Mr. Barrett Browning. UFE OF BROWNING II at the home of the family in Hatcham. Her death oc- curred soon after the poet's son was born. 1 8. 1849, July-Oct., Browning and his wife and their boy spent the summer at the Baths of Lucca. There are three villages in the narrow valley, — the lowest called Ponte, the next Alia Villa, and the third Bagni Caldi. The Brownings occupied a house in the third and highest village. 19. 1 85 1, after nearly five years' absence, they came to London, stopping a month in Venice, and stopping also at Padua and Milan, crossing the Alps by coach over the St. Gotthard Pass, and spending several weeks in Paris. They arrived in London late in July, and started back to Paris Sept. 25. 20. 1851-52, they spent the winter in Paris. In Nov. the poet's father and sister visited them there. In April the lease which his father had on the house at Hatcham expired, and he and his daughter settled in Paris that spring. This was their permanent residence from that time till the father's death. 21. 1852, end of June, the poet and his wife and son returned to London and spent the summer there, and set out for Italy again early in Nov. They arrived at the Casa Guidi in Florence after an absence of 16 months. 22. 1853, summer, again at the Baths of Lucca, this time in the middle village, Alia Villa. Returned to Flor- ence in Oct., but stayed only a short time. 23. 1853-54, their first winter in Rome. Returned to Florence near the end of May, 1854. 24. 1855, they returned to London, arriving there the second week in June. From there they went to Paris in October. 25. 1855-56, winter spent in Paris. 12 .BROWNING STUDIES 26. 1856, near the end of June, they went back to England again, and spent the summer in London, and at Ventnor and West Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, — starting back to Italy from London in October. 27. 1856-57, winter in Florence. In April, 1857, Mrs. Browning's father died in London. 28. 1857, July-Oct., spent again at Alia Villa, the middle village of the Baths of Lucca. 29. 1857-58, another winter in Florence. 30. 1858, in the spring, started for France, arriving in Paris on the birthday of the poet's father. Stayed two weeks in Paris, and then they all (Browning and his family, and his father and his sister) went to Normandy and stayed eight weeks by the seaside in the outskirts of Havre. Re- turned to Paris for four weeks more. Then started for Italy Oct. 12. Stayed only a month in Florence. 31. 1858-59, wintered in Rome. The winter climate of Rome was found to be better for Mrs. Browning's health than the winter climate of Florence. So three consecutive winters were spent in Rome. 32. 1859, May, returned to Florence. August, went to Siena for the rest of the summer; lived in the Villa Alberti at Marciano, two miles out of the city. Left there in the autumn and stopped briefly in Florence. 33. 1859-60, winter in Rome. 34. i860, summer was spent at the same house occupied the preceding summer, near Siena. Returned to Rome in Sept. 35. 1860-61, winter in Rome. 36. 1861, spring, Mrs. Browning, whose health had been growing more frail for several years, had a sharp and alarming attack and it seemed as if she would strangle. But she recovered sufficiently to travel to Florence. They LIFE OF BROWNING 13 arrived in Florence June 6. The last stage of her illness began on June 23, but she was not confined to her room until the 28th. Even then she thought she was better in the evening. 37. 1861, June 29, about four o'clock in the morning, Mrs. Browning died, in the Casa Guidi. There is a tablet on the house, placed there by the municipality of Florence, with an inscription by the Italian poet and patriot Tom- maseo : ^ "Here wrote and died Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who . . . made of her verse a golden link between Italy and England." 38. 1861, Aug., Browning came to Paris with his son. He never saw Florence again. That summer he spent some weeks, his father and sister with him, at St. Enoget. He came with his boy to London in October. After some months, he leased a house. No. 19 Warwick Crescent, — at first temporarily, but it proved satisfactory and he kept it. This was his home for the next 25 years. 39. 1862, spring, he was offered the editorship of the Corn hill Magazine ^ but decUned it. 40. 1862, smnmer at Cambo and Biarritz in France. 41. 1865, he visited Oxford to see Benjamin Jowett, Senior Tutor (afterwards Master) of Balliol, with a view to putting his son in College. Jowett's friendship meant much to Browning in the years that followed. 42. 1866, his father died in Paris, and Robert Browning took his sister Sarianna to London to make her home with him. She never married. They were constant compan- ions from that time. *The inscription is in Italian on the tablet, complete as follows: "Qui scrisse e mori Elizabetta Barrett Browning, che in cuore di donna conciliava scienza di dotto e spirito di poeta, e face del suo verso aureo anello fra Italia c Inghilterra. Pone questa lapide Firenze grata 1861," 14 BROWNING STUDIES 43. 1866, summer, spent at Croisic in Brittany, as was also the summer of the year following. Several other summers' were spent in Brittany (those of 1869 and '70 were at St. Aubin). On their summer holidays 1873-77, in France and Switzerland, Miss Anne Egerton Smith was with the Brownings. 44. 1867, Browning received from the University of Oxford the degree of M.A. The same year he was made Honorary Fellow of Balliol College. 45. 1868, he was offered the position of Lord Rector^ of St. Andrews University, but declined it. 46. 1875, the Lord Rectorship of the University of Glasgow was offered to him, but he declined it. He de- cHned it again in 1884. 47. 1878, Browning visited Venice and Asolo again, breaking the journey at the Spliigen Pass. He had not seen Italy for 17 years. He had not been in Asolo for 40 years. From 1878 on, his autumns were usually spent in north Italy, stopping somewhere on the way in the Alps during five or six of the warmer weeks preceding. Only three autumns was he prevented by circumstances from going to Italy — 1882, 1884, and 1886. He did not go further south than Venice. Venice held him by strong affection. 48. 1879, he received the degree of LL.D. from Cam- bridge University. 49. 1881, the Browning Society of London was founded. The chief movers were Dr. F. J. Furnivall and Miss Emily Hickey. There were soon branches in many parts of the United Kingdom. The forming of this Society was a great compliment to Robert Browning, and its discussions and publications increased materially the sale of his works. ^ i.e. President of the University, to use the title which goes with the similar office in the majority of American universities. LIFE OF BROWNING 1 5 50. 1882, Browning received the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford University. 51. 1884, he received the degree of LL.D. from the University of Edinburgh. 52. 1885, Browning's son went with him and his sister to Venice. He had not been there since he was a child. The idea of buying a palace in Venice took hold upon Browning and his son on this visit, and a purchase was almost concluded, but came to naught. 53. 1887, June, Browning gave up the house on War- wick Crescent, London, which had been his home for so many years, and took a better and roomier house in De Vere Gardens. 54. 1887, ^ct., his son married Fannie Coddington, of New York. 55. 1888, Aug., on his way to Venice this year. Brown- ing's stop was at Primiero in the Dolomite Alps. His son had bought the Rezzonico Palace (Palazzo Rezzonico) on the Grand Canal, although he had not yet moved in. But this was a special inducement to Browning to make the journey to Venice, and he stayed there unusually long. 56. 1889, Feb., he was again in London. 57. 1889, summer. Browning visited all his favorite haunts in England, not knowing that it was his last visit. 58. 1889, that summer, Mrs. Arthur Bronson, an American lady in whose house in Venice Browning and his sister had stayed so many times, urged them to come and visit her in Asolo. She had there a house, ^' La Mura," which was niched in one of the towers of the city wall and which she occupied when the weather was hot in Venice. To Asolo, then, on their way to Venice, the poet and his sister came, toward the end of the summer, and here they spent a number of weeks. j6 BROWNING STUDIES 59. 1889, Nov. I, Browning and his sister arrived at his son's house in Venice. Late in November, after his usual walk, it was noticed that Browning had a cold. He never would take much care of himself.^ The cold de- veloped into bronchitis and on Dec. i his son's physician was called. The bronchitis grew better, but symptoms developed, threatening heart-failure. On the evening of Dec. 12, he himself was aware that the end was near. 60. 1889, Dec. 12, Thursday, at 10:00 p.m., Robert Browning died without pain, in the Palazzo Rezzonico, his son's house in Venice. Upon this house the city of Venice has placed a tablet to Robert Browning, which contains two lines of his own : ^ "Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, 'Italy.' " 61. 1889, Dec. 15, Sunday, a private funeral service was held in the house, and then the body was taken, as the Venetian law requires, to the mortuary island San Michele and placed in the chapel there. The ceremony of transferring the body to this place was very impressive, — a great flotilla of gondolas following the funeral barge. 62. 1889, I^GC. 31, Robert Browning was buried in Westminster Abbey. 1 Cf . what Barrett Browning said to Prof. Phelps of his father's last illness in the article in the Century Magazine, Jan., 1913, already referred to. * The inscription reads : A Roberto Browning MORTO IN QUESTO PaLAZZO IL 12 DiCEMBRE 1 889 Venezia Pose The lines from Browning are below toward the right hand comer. They are from "De Gustibus — " Browning's Works, Globe Ed., p. 239, 11. 17, 18. It may be necessary to repeat that, throughout these lectures, the references to Browning's works are made to the Globe Edition, i vol., New York, 1907. LIFE OF BROWNING 1 7 III. A More Connected Account of Browning's Life Within the framework of these bare dates took place the earthly experience of the man who wrote at the age of twenty : ^ "I am made up of an intensest life." That intensity of life increased rather than diminished, as the years went by. As Stopford Brooke ^ well says : " It was a life lived fully, kindly, lovingly, at its just height, from the beginning to the end." I. Robert Browning's father, also named Robert Brown- ing, held a position in the Bank of England.* He was born in 1782, in Battersea, a suburb lying on the bank of the Thames, southwest of London. He was, on his father's side, of an old English family, the Brownings of Dorset- shire and Wiltshire. His mother was a West Indian lady ^ who owned a large estate at St. Kitt's. She died when he was seven years old. He was sent to the West Indies at the age of twelve, on account of his father's second marriage, but, when he grew older, refused to stay on the plantation because of his hatred of slavery, and returned to England at the age of twenty, and presently secured a clerkship in the Bank. With his position in the Bank, *InPaw/««e,p. 5,1. 3. ' Stopford A. Brooke, The Poetry of Robert Browning, New York, 1902, P 441. ' He was connected with the Bank nearly 50 years, 1803-185 2. * Many accounts of Browning's life speak of his father's mother as a '' Creole." The word is avoided here simply because it is so misunderstood. The word Creole correctly used does not at all imply that there is any ad- 1 nixture of African blood. It is properly applied to descendants of French or Spanish settlers in the vicinity of the Gulf of Mexico, as in Louisiana, Florida, t r the West Indies. l8 BROWNING STUDIES he had money enough and time enough for intellectual development and the accumulation of a fine collection of books. He had immense vitality, unusual skill in drawing, great intellectual keenness, and wide and various learning. Something of the ideals and moral fiber of the man may be seen in the fact that, because he could not tolerate slavery, he sacrificed the plantation inherited from his mother, which would have yielded him wealth. 2. His wife, Sarah Anna ^ Wiedemann, the mother of Robert Browning the poet, was of mixed Scotch-German blood, — daughter of a Scotch mother and a German father, William Wiedemann, a shipowner at Dundee, who had come from Hamburg. She was born in Dundee, but she and her sister resided for some time with an uncle in Camberwell. She did not have the vigorous health which her husband had and, in the latter part of her life especially, suffered much from neuralgia. She was gentle, deeply religious,^ and passionately fond of music. 3. We hear it said that ''blood will tell." It told in the case of the poet Robert Browning, (a) From his father he received splendid health and almost inexhaustible vitality, intellectual eagerness and capacity, and a taste for art. (b) From his mother, a thoroughly German metaphysical turn of mind, a fondness for music and ability in music, and a deeply reverent and sometimes mystical attitude toward the things invisible and eternal. ^ So stands the name in her husband's hand-writing in the family Bible : "Robert Browning married to Sarah Anna Wiedemann at Camberwell Feb 19 181 1." (Griffin and Minchin, Life, p. i). Her name and her daughter's are usually written Sarianna. 2 Browning's mother became a member of the Congregational Church in York St., Walworth, in 1806, and his father, though brought up in the Church of England, joined the Congregational Church inn 820. LIFE OF BROWNING 19 4. One of Browning's earliest recollections is of himself sitting on his father's knee before the fire in the Ubrary, Ustening with rapt attention as his father told him the tale of the siege of Troy, while he heard his mother in the next room singing a low GaeHc lament. It would not be strange, if that boy should amount to something. 5. Camberwell, where the boy was bom, though now really built up with London south of the Thames, was then a village, lying between the slopes of Denmark Hill, Heme Hill, and Champion Hill. Its church tower could be seen from the Thames bridges. Camberwell and its vicinity were well-known as a place of mral beauty,^ — with bright fields, hedgerows, and fine trees. The two strains of interest which gave such equilibrium to Brown- ing's hfe were both here at the beginning, — the world of Nature around him, the teeming city and the *' world of men" ^ just at hand. 6. Robert Browning was chiefly a self-educated man. (a) The beginning of his education was found in the store- house of his father's mind, and, as years went on, it was continued in his father's books, (b) He was sent to a day-school, taught by a woman near his home, but had to be removed because he was so much more proficient in reading and spelKng than the other pupils were that it aroused the jealousy of their parents, (c) He was very fond of outdoor life and sports, and of all living things. In the course of the years, his pets included owls, monkeys, magpies, hedgehogs, an eagle, a toad, and two snakes. ^ It is significant that a butterfly, the Vanessa antiopa, rare in England though common in central and southern Europe, was found in Camberwell so much more frequently than anywhere else that its common name is the Camberwell Beauty. ' Browning, Parting at Morning, p. 228, 1. 30 : "And the need of a world of men for me." 20 BROWNING STUDIES (d) From the age of eight or nine until he was fourteen he attended, as a weekly boarder, a school conducted by the Rev. Thomas Ready and his sisters in Peckham. He was first taught and looked after by the Misses Ready, and, as he grew older, he was taught by Mr. Ready him- self. It was a good school, as schools went in those days, but he was always impatient with the petty and mechanical teaching to which he was subjected, and got more from the days spent at home on the hill above the church or in the library with his father's books. When he was nearly thirty, passing Ready's school with Alfred Domett, he spoke of ''the disgust^ with which he always thought of the place," and fifty years after those schooldays he told Domett that ''they taught him nothing there." (e) From the age of 14 onward, he went on with his studies at home, — two years with a tutor in French, two teachers in music (one for theory and the other for technique), much reading, and lessons in dancing, riding, boxing, and fencing. (/) His only other attendance at school was at London University in Gower St., in the founding of which his father was a shareholder, subscribing £icx). The boy began there the fall after he was sixteen. It is usually said that his chief study was Greek. He continued less than two terms. This was the only college education he ever received, and with this his formal education stopped, although he attended, during the year following, some of Dr. Blundell's lectures at Guy's Hospital, (g) But though his formal education had ceased, he had just begun. All that vast education which makes him the most learned man that ever wrote EngHsh verse he accumulated for himself in the years that followed. 1 Commenting on this remark, Grifl&n and Minchin explain that what disgusted him was the restraint put upon his imaginative faculties. LIFE OF BROWNING 21 7. At the age of 17, in the spring following his college experience, Robert Browning dehberately looked life in the face and deliberately decided to make poetry his Kfe- work. He went at once into his preparation for it, one of his first moves being to read and digest the whole of Dr. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary. Then he plunged into reading, at his home in Camberwell and especially in the British Museum. 8. His first published literary work was Pauline, written when he was 20 years old. The date at the end of the poem, Oct. 22, 1832, is the date of the conception of the plan of which Pauline is a part. On that evening he had seen Edmund Kean play in Richard III at Richmond. The date of the Introduction, London, January, 1833, is the date of the completion of this fragment, — the only part of the work ever written. No publisher would take the risk on it. His aunt, Mrs. James Silverthorne, fur- nished the money ^ to pay for its publication. It was pub- lished, without the author's name, by Saunders and Otley, London, 1833. The poem is crude and amateurish but full of unusual promise. On the fly leaf of his own copy now in the Dyce and Forster Library at the South Kensington Museum, there is, in Browning's handwriting, this: *'The following poem was written in pursuance of a foolish plan which occupied me mightily for a time, and which had for its object the enabhng me to assume and realize I know not how many different characters. . . . Only this crab remains of the shapely Tree of Life in this Fool's Paradise of mine. — R. B." The poem was soon for- ^ Mrs. Silverthorne was his mother's sister Christiana. Griffin and Min- chin (p. 57) relate that she gave him £30 to defray the cost of pubhshing Pauline; the cost was £26 55., and the rest was spent for advertising. 22 BROWNING STUDIES gotten/ and Dante Gabriel Rossetti discovered a copy of it in the British Museum 20 years afterward and guessed it was by Browning who reluctantly acknowledged it. In the Preface to his Works, Edition of 1868, Browning says: ''The first piece in the series I acknowledge and retain with extreme repugnance, and indeed purely of necessity," and goes on to explain that he includes it in order to fore- stall unauthorized reprints of it. The poem is dominated entirely by the spirit of Shelley, who is frequently addressed as ''Sun-treader," e.g. "Sun-treader, life and light be thine for ever ! " ^ " Sun-treader, I believe in God and truth And love." ^ Shelley had come into Browning's Hfe with tremendous force near the end of Browning's sixteenth year,^ through a copy of a Httle pirated edition of Queen Mob displayed on a second-hand bookstall with a label attached: ''Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem; very scarce." This the boy bought and devoured. Under its influence,^ he professed himself an atheist. His mother bought Shelley's works, i.e. all of his books of which a copy could be obtained, and presented them to her son on his sixteenth birthday. He soon gave up his atheism, but didn't lose faith in Shelley, thinking he had simply misunderstood him, — which was the case : Shelley is no atheist. * At its publication the book received a long notice in the Monthly R pository and a notice also in The Athenaum. ^P. 3,1. 63. "P. 13, U. 81, 82. * Griffin and Minchin, Life, p. 51. ^ Shelley's long note in connection with his Queen Mob also converted Browning to vegetarianism, to which he stuck stubbornly for two years, until weakened eyesight caused him to abandon it. Through acquaintance with Shelley's writings, he came also to rei Keats. IS I LIFE OF BROWNING 23 Pauline, deep-dyed with Shelley's spirit, has both auto- biographical and literary value. And the potency is there of that splendid imagination and intensity of soul which mark the mature work of Browning. Surely, no boy who writes at twenty these lines ^ will fail to write well in later years : To Shelley — "Thou must be ever with me, most in gloom If such must come, but chiefly when I die. For I seem, dying, as one going in the dark To fight a giant : but live thou for ever And be to all what thou hast been to me!" 9. Browning's first long journey was taken when he was almost 22. Then he went to St. Petersburg on in- vitation of the Russian Consul- General who had to make a trip to his capital on a special mission. Browning went nominally as his Secretary. The packets of the General Steam Navigation Co. were running from London to Ostend and Rotterdam. Presumably these travellers landed at Rotterdam, but beyond that they were obhged to drive 1500 miles in mail coaches or by private con- veyances, to reach their destination. The journey to Russia contributed vastly to the eager mind of Browning, but did not strike the chord in him which Italy did. A visit to north Italy in 1838 brought him under the spell of that country, and he went again for a second visit six years later. He called Italy his university. 10. Returning late in 1844 from his second Italian travel. Browning took up a copy of the Poems of EHzabeth Barrett published that summer, and found himself, in Lady Geraldine's Courtship (Stanza xxi), classed with Wordsworth and Tennyson. He was much pleased, not only at what was said of himself, but pleased with the 1 P. 13, U. 85-89. 24 BROWNING STUDIES Poems in general. The book was meeting with great success, and many were writing to Miss Barrett to express their approval. Urged by John Kenyon, her cousin, Browning finally wrote to her. This began the corre- spondence which led to their meeting and falling in love. They had been interested in each other's writings for some years and in each other's treatment at the hands of the critics and the public, and each had known something of the attitude of the other. As early as 1841, Mr. Kenyon had desired to introduce Browning to his cousin, but she did not feel physically equal to meeting him. Elizabeth Barrett had a rare mind but frail health, and had been, when Browning met her, an invalid for seven years, following upon the rupturing of a bloodvessel in the lungs. The Barrett family Hved in Wimpole St., London, in a house which her father bought in 1838. After that, she had been in Torquay some time for her health, but it was even further shattered by grief at the drowning of her favorite brother, Edward, who was with her there, in July, 1840. She had gotten back to London and for lave years she hardly got out of the house, except for a few hours at rare intervals. Most of the time she did not leave her room, and seldom saw anyone but members of the family. As was inevitable, she was morbid and discouraged, and at the age of 39 (she was six years older than Browning) she considered that her life was over. Into her illness and gloom came the abounding vitality and love of Robert Browning. She felt keenly that she was unworthy ^ to be a mate for her princely lover. How much she felt the wonder and the beauty of the fact that he loved her may be gathered from her Sonnets from the Portuguese. Of course, these have nothing to do with 1 She speaks in this vein in many of the Sonnets from the Portuguese. LIFE OF BROWNING 2$ Portuguese.^ The name serves as a blind to conceal how they came out of her own life. No more exquisite sonnets are to be found in the English language. They stand undimmed beside Shakespeare's own. They were drawn from her ''heart's ground/' as she says, in those days when Browning was making love to her. She fought against it for a long time from a sense of duty. Her father was a strange man and very much opposed to any of his children's marrying.^ When they did so, he practically disowned them. On account of her ill-health, his attitude in her case would be even more severe than in the case of the others. But Robert Browning had found his affinity, and was not the man to be discouraged. The love-letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett have been published ^ by their son. It was a pitiful thing to do. Such letters should be destroyed. They are not for the cold critical public eye. Those letters meant much to the lovers, but they do not mean so much to us. There is in them too little restraint. In Browning's love-poems, no matter how intense the passion, there is splendid restraint. In these letters, one misses the fine element of restraint too much. It is too bad that ^ Browning never saw these Sonnets until the winter after they were married. She slipped the manuscript into his pocket one morning in Pisa. The Sonnets were privately printed at Reading in 1847 without title except " Sonnets by E. B. B." In 1850, they were pubhshed with the present title, suggested by Mr. Browning, apropos of his wife's poem Catarina to Camoens. What makes the name appropriate is the fact that one of the best sonnet- writers was the great Portuguese poet Camoens (c. 15 24-1 5 79). In a library of high rank, I have found these sonnets of Mrs. Browning's cata- logued as Translations ! ' Elizabeth Barrett was the eldest of eleven children. Her mother died in 1828. ' Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, 1845-1846, 2 vols. New York, Harper and Bros., 1899. 26 BROWNING STUDIES they were published. But Browning had carefully pre- served them, while he had destroyed a great number of other letters, and his son was not willing that they should fall into other hands and be pubHshed very likely in some garbled form. He could hardly bring himself to destroy them. So he gave them to the public in their entirety exactly as they were. It should be added that they con- tain much that is of biographical value, besides their reference to the years 1845-46. II. In the summer of 1845, Miss Barrett grew stronger, and her physician thought her able to travel to Italy and recommended that she should spend the following winter in Pisa, then a favorite climatic resort. Her father would not give his consent and continued rigid in his refusal. Such was the situation for a year. Meantime Robert Browning continued calling once or twice a week, writing many letters, and sending her flowers.^ It was learned from her father that her going to Italy under any circum- stances would be ^* under his heaviest displeasure," and it was plain that it would be worse than useless for Brown- ing to ask her father for her hand in marriage. It seemed to Browning and to her that the circumstances justified their taking affairs into their own hands. Therefore, they were secretly married at St. Marylebone Church on Sept. 12, 1846, and, just a week later, they left for Paris, where they joined Mrs. Jameson and her niece. After a week in Paris, they started for Italy, Mrs. Jameson and her niece with them. They went by way of Orleans and Lyons to Marseilles, and from there by sea to Leghorn, i and so to Pisa. * Cf . the sonnet beginning : "Beloved, thou hast sent me many flowers," No. xLiv, in Sonnets from the Portuguese as they now stand. UFE OF BROWNING 27 12. Mr. and Mrs. Browning stayed that winter in Pisa, and in the following April went to Florence. That summer, they occupied for the first time the rooms in the Casa Guidi which in May of the year 1848 became their head- quarters, and with which their married life from that time on is associated. They were away much of the time : One summer they visited the towns in the vicinity of the upper east coast of Italy, three sunmaers they were at the Baths of Lucca, four summers they were in England, one summer in France, two summers near Siena, two winters in Paris, four winters in Rome. But they always kept the apartments in the Casa Guidi. It was here that their boy was born Mch. 9, 1849. 13. Mrs. Browning's writings were very successful and brought in some income. But Robert Browning's works had no such experience. All his works before his marriage, except Strafford, had been published at the expense of his relatives: His aunt, as we have noted, furnished the money for the publication of Pauline; his father paid for the publication of Paracelsus, Sordello, and all the eight numbers of the Bells and Pomegranates. All these books had met with only a small sale at best. He had to borrow £100 from his father at the time of his marriage and jour- ney with his wife to Italy. The chief work of his married life, the two volumes of Men and Women, fared somewhat better, but even these volumes did not meet anything like the recognition they deserved. Fortunately Mr. and Mrs. Browning were not dependent on an income from their writings. Mrs. Browning had inherited quite an amount by the will of her uncle Samuel Barrett, and, at the time of her marriage, had £8000 so invested that it yielded £300 a year. Ever after the birth of their son, her cousin John Kenyon had allowed them £100 a year 28 BROWNING STUDIES (against Browning's wishes), and when Mr. Kenyon died in 1856, he left them £11000. So they were able to follow their ideals, without the bread and butter question staring them constantly in the face. 14. Mrs. Browning's health, for years after the marriage, was much improved. Of course, it is very hazardous to marry a sick woman, an invalid. But in this case, the event justified the marriage. Browning's love for her gave her a new lease of life, lifted her out of her melan- choly and morbid state, and thrilled her whole nature. Within the next few years she was better than she had ever hoped to be. Her son was strong and well, and be- came a successful painter. He died at Asolo, July 8, 191 2. The fact that it turned out well in Browning's case does not argue in favor of marrying a sick woman. But the fact remains that in this one instance, anyway, the marriage was an immeasurable blessing both to her and to him. But as years went on, her health declined again, with an occasional severe attack which left her weaker. Grad- ually travel ahd social life to which she had grown ac- customed became harder for her. Rome was chosen for winter quarters on account of its milder climate. Theij, came her acute and dangerous illness in Rome in the spring of 1 86 1, the slow and anxious journey to Florence, and her last illness in the Casa Guidi. But even in the last days she was not confined to her room except on June 28. And even on the evening of that day, when Miss Isa Blag- den left her, Mrs. Browning said she was better. Her sleep that night was broken and troubled. About day- break, she awoke and told her husband that she thought she felt stronger. Not knowing that it was the end, she expressed her love for him in words that always afterward lived in his memory. He supported her in his arms, and LIFE OF BROWNING 29 she grew drowsy and her head fell forward, and she was dead. It was June 29, 1861. The 15 years of their married life had been exceedingly beautiful, — a unity of soul which is seldom found so nearly complete in this world. There will probably be, in the final reckoning, very few periods of 15 years in any human lives so nearly a perfect union as the married life of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. 15. With her death Browning was overwhelmed. He could only with the greatest difficulty adjust his mind to life without her. He left Florence that summer and never returned. When he came to London, he could not at first think of keeping house, but finally took the house in War- wick Crescent where he lived for the next 25 years. He made arrangements for the education of his son. He would not surrender to despair, but his desolation was extreme, his life "as grey as the winter sky of London." He shrank from society; it was a year before he could accept invitations as he had done before. By and by, he took what he calls in a letter "a great read at Euripides." He lived in London, but went nearly every summer to France. His father died in 1866, and from that time on Browning and his sister lived together and travelled to- gether. Most of the autumns from 1878 on were spent in Venice. Four autumns Browning and his sister lodged at a quiet inn, the Albergo delF Universo. But after that they were always guests of Mrs. Arthur Bronson. 16. Beginning early after Mrs. Browning's death and developing with increasing force, was his realization that the power of her spirit was upon him still and that she might ''hearken from the realms of help." ^ And so he ^ Browning, The Ring and the Book, Invocation, p. 666, 1. 77 : " Hail then, and hearken from the reahns of help !" 30 BROWNING STUDIES began to weave for her that crown of his maturest and best work, — The Ring and the Book, his great Greek pieces (Balaustion's Adventure and Aristophanes' Apology, with his translation of a tragedy of Euripides contained in each, and then his translation of The Agamemnon of Mschylus) — and, beside these, a wealth of short poems, from Prospice} written the autumn after her death, to the words,2 "I shall pray^ 'Fugitive as precious — Minutes which passed, — return, remain ! Let earth's old life once more enmesh us, You with old pleasure, me — old pain, So we but meet nor part again ! ' " in the volume published on the day he died. Mrs. Brown- ing's face looks out through most of the work he did through- out those 28 years from 1861 to his death. At least, if her face does not look out, you know that it is there, — that there is some benediction anciently her smile.^ 17. All Browning's early writings were poorly received, but this never shook his devotion to his ideals. It took him more than 30 years to win any considerable amount of appreciation,^ but he kept on just the same. But as the last third of his life drew on, there began to be an awakening to the fact that a man of colossal intellect and power had been at work all these years. Then came Browning's election as Honorary Fellow of Balliol College and his degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, and his nomination for the office of Lord Rector of St. Andrews and then of Glasgow University. We cannot 1 Pp. 516, 517. 2 p J295, 11. 51-55, Speculative, in Asolando. ' The Ring and the Book, Invocation, p. 667, 1. 4 : "Some benediction anciently thy smile." * Of course, here and there one liked Browning's writings and recognized bis greatness ; but such were few for more than 30 years. LIFE OF BROWNING 3 1 cease to be glad that he lived long enough to see some fruit of his toil, to see of the travail of his soul and be, in some measure, satisfied. 18. Mrs. Bronson had a house, built partly on the very wall of Asolo, to which she went to escape the hot weather in Venice. To Asolo, then, on her urgent invitation, came Robert Browning and his sister late in the summer of 1889, on their way to Venice. Here he completed his last volume, which he named Asolando} Some of the poems were written here.^ Then, going to Venice the first of Novem- ber, Browning had time to read the proofs of the book, and to enjoy his son's home and the city to which he had so often come. There seems to be a singular sense of completeness about it all, as he drew near the end. His last illness was brief, hardly more than two weeks. After an intense and active life of something more than 77 years, he died at ten o'clock on Thursday evening, Dec. 12, 1889, — the very day on which his last volume was pubHshed in London. The last day of December that year saw his body laid in the earth under the floor of Westminster Abbey. 1 The title of the volume Browning explains in the graceful dedication to Mrs. Arthur Bronson, dated Asolo, October 15, 1889. He recalls that Pietro Bembo (made a cardinal in 1539), who had been much in Asolo in the earlier part of his life, is said to have invented a verb, playing upon the name of the town or seeking to find a derivation for it : A solar e — "to disport in the open air, amuse one's self at random." On the basis of such a verb, the name of the town, Asolo, (ist pers., sing., indie.) would mean "I disport, I amuse myself," and the title Asolando would be the gerund, in the dative, "for disporting, for amusing one's self," or more likely the abla- tive, "by disporting," i.e. "by way of disporting" or "by way of amusing one's self at random." The sub-title Fancies and Facts indicates the same vein. ^ See the first sentence in his dedication to Mrs. Bronson. A tablet, placed on the house by the city of Asolo, commemorates Browning's work on Asolando there: "In questa casa abito Roberto Browning summo poeta inglese, vi scrisse Asolando, 1889." 32 BROWNING STUDIES Better than any other critic Stopford Brooke has summed up ^ the life of Browning. Only some sentences can be quoted here : " No fear, no vanity, no complaint of the world, no anger at criti- cism, no villain fancies disturbed his soul. No laziness, no feebleness in effort injured his work ; , no desire for money, no faltering of aspiration, no pandering of his gift and genius to please the world, no surrender of art for the sake of fame or filthy lucre, no falseness to his ideal, no base pessimism, no slavery to science, yet no boastful ignorance of its good, no morbid natural- ism, no despair of man, no abandonment of the great ideas or disbeUef in their mastery, no enfeebiement of reason, no lack of joy and healthy vigor and keen inquiry and passionate inter- est in humanity. . . . Creative and therefore joyful, receptive and therefore thoughtful, at one with humanity and therefore loving; aspiring to God and believing in God, and therefore steeped to the lips in radiant hope ; at one with the past, pas- sionate with the present, and possessing by faith an endless and glorious future — this was a life lived on the top of the wave and moving with its motion from youth to manhood, from manhood to old age. . . . There is no need to mourn for his departure. Nothing feeble has been done, nothing which lowers the note of his life, nothing we can regret as less than his native strength. . . . The sea and sky and mountain glory of the city he loved so well encompassed him with her beauty; and their soft graciousness, their temperate power of joy and Hfe made his departure peaceful. His death added a new fairness to his life. Mankind is fortunate to have so noble a memory, so full and excellent a work, to rest upon and love." IV. Browning's Published Works In order to study Browning intelHgently, we shall need to bear in mind his chief works as they were published : I. 1833, Pauline, his first published work, — of which 1 Stopford A. Brooke, in his book The Poetry of Robert Browning^ last two pages. I BROWNING'S WORKS 33 we have already spoken sufficiently in our discussion of Browning's life. 2. 1835, Paracelsus, a thorough and wonderful philo- sophical discussion for a boy of 23, on the question : What is the chief end of life — Knowledge or Love ? 3. 1837, Strafford, a tragedy written at the request of the great actor William C. Macready, and first played by him at Covent Garden Theatre, May i, 1837. 4. 1840, Sordello, a tangled psychological study of the development of a poet's soul. 5. 1841-46, Bells and Pomegranates, eight pamphlets. The reason why they came into existence in this shape is interesting : Several pieces of Browning's work — Pippa Passes, King Victor and King Charles, The Return of the Druses — lay in his desk. No publisher would take them. Finally he succeeded in arranging with Edward Moxon to bring them out in pamphlet form, very poor type, very cheap paper, each issue to have only 16 pages, two columns to the page. This series Browning whimsically called Bells and Pomegranates (catching the words from Ex. 28 : 33, 34; cf. 39 : 24-26). And in this pitiful shape appeared the best work of the first half of Browning's life. The eight issues of Bells and Pomegranates contained as follows : No. I, 1841, Pippa Passes. No. 2, 1842, King Victor and King Charles. No. 3, 1842, Dramatic Lyrics. No. 4, 1843, ^^^ Return of the Druses. No. 5, 1843, ^ ^^^^ ^^ l^^ ^Scutcheon. No. 6, 1844, Colomhe's Birthday. No. 7, 1845, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. No. 8, 1846, Luria and A SouVs Tragedy. 6. An edition of Browning's collected works, so far, was published in 1849, i^ two volumes. 34 BROWNING STUDIES 7. 1850, Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, two religious poems. 8. 1855, Men and Women, 2 vols., 51 short poems in all, some of Browning's best. 9. Browning's Poetical Works were published in three vols, in 1863. 10. 1864, Dramatis Personce, short poems. 11. Browning's collected Works were published in six vols, in 1868. 12. 1868-69, ^^^ Ring and the Book, 4 vols., one month apart, Nov. and Dec. 1868, Jan. and Feb. 1869. 13. 1 87 1, Balaustion's Adventure, which has in it a translation of the Alkestis of Euripides. 14. 1871, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, sl monologue in the month of the Emperor Napoleon III, discussing his ambitions and his political and social philosophy. 15. 1872, Fifine at the Fair, a much more serious and far-reaching analysis of some phases of human nature than some Browning critics have realized. 16. 1873, ^^^ Cotton Night-Cap Country, a psycho- logical study founded on facts, i.e. on true incidents of a case of dissipation and immorality (''The Mellerio story"). The real names were used at first, but, on legal advice, were changed to fictitious names before publication. 17. 1875, Aristophanes^ Apology, containing a translation of the Eerakles of Euripides. 18. 1875, The Inn Album, a study of the mind of a woman who still loved the man who wrecked her Hfe. 19. 1876, Pacchiarotto, and How he Worked in Distemper, with other short poems. Pacchiarotto is an outburst of Browning against his critics. 20. 1877, a translation of The Agamemnon of Mschylus. BROWNING'S WORKS 35 '21. 1878, La Saisiaz, sl discussion of Immortality, apropos of the sudden death of their friend Miss Anne Egerton Smith who was spending the autumn with Brown- ing and his sister at a villa named La Saisiaz, four or five miles southwest of Geneva, — she died of heart disease on the morning of Sept. 14, 1877. In the same volume, The Two Poets of Croisic, an amusing account, based on historical facts, of how even the most astute hterary critics have been fooled. 22. 1879, Dramatic Idyls, First Series, short poems. 23. 1880, Dramatic Idyls, Second Series. 24. 1883, Jocoseria, short poems more or less semi- serious and jesting. 25. 1884, FerishtaKs Fancies, bits of philosophy, with lyrics strung between them, some being of great beauty and intensity. 26. 1887, Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day. They are dead, but Browning calls them up and talks with them. 27. 1889, (dated 1890 on title page, but published Dec, 1889), Asolando, short poems, some of them in Browning's very best vein. This volume was published on the day he died, Dec. 12, 1889. 28. The Poetical Works of Robert Browning, in 16 vols., appeared in 1888-89. Browning began making a revision of his poems in the spring of 1888. The edition came out in monthly volumes, completed July, 1889. The poems in his Asolando were later included in the i6th vol. of this set, making the whole complete. This is also spoken of as a 17-volume edition, because of having later, in addition to Browning's Works, a 17th volume containing historical notes. In 1894, the 17 volumes were issued also bound in 9 volumes. 36 BROWNING STUDIES It is a vast amount Browning has published, naturally falling into two groups of works : (i) those written before Mrs. Browning's death, and (2) those written after her death, — each with well marked characteristics. Emerson insists that a man's real biography is internal, the story of the development and unfolding of his own mind, and that all outward deeds are secondary. This is certainly true. And you will find the real biography of Robert Browning in his poems. He speaks there by many voices, but you reaUze after all that he has written down his own soul. These writings, extending over a space of almost 60 years, are one of the richest legacies the nineteenth century has left to the centuries that come after. V. Some of the Chief Characteristics of Browning's Personality ^-- . Browning was a little below medium height, strongly and compactly built, and walked with rapid step. He had bright gray eyes and a ruddy complexion. He talked easily and with vim and clearness. I look forward to a time when Browning will come into his own, when he will be the favorite poet with men of the world, — business men, engineers, statesmen — men of large affairs. He, of all the poets of the English language, is most of the stripe of the man who is plunged in the world's work. Not one of his portraits looks like the usual notion of a poet. From these portraits, you might judge him to be a prosperous banker, a vigorous member of the House of Commons, a minister of his government to another country, the president of a university, a leading physician, or even the most enthusiastic member of a golf-club. But poet? No. Where is the dreamy eye, the shrinking from the turmoil of the world, the face which tells that the CHARACTERISTICS OF BROWNING 37 possessor is devoid of common sense? This face belongs to a keen, logical, genial, practical man of the world. 1 . The first and most striking characteristic ^ of Robert Browning is his_^ full-blooded enjoymen^ of the crush and struggle of humanity. He could enjoy, as keenly as Words- worth, the solitudei of the woods and the sea. But he came back always with renewed zest for, and new interest in, the tangled struggle and tumult of cities, factories, business, politics, and the crowd. It was not to him a meaningless scramble, but he saw in it the working of great principles of good and evil, elemental laws which were to be discovered by their results. He saw in all the strife, in all the intrigue, in all the victory and defeat, in all the sin and shame, — he saw the furnace in which human character is made. Facing the furnace, or rather standing in the furnace himself, he declare^ : ^ "This world's no blot for «s Nor blank ; it means intensely and means good : To find its meaning is my meat an4 drink." The struggle and tumult of the world, its suffering and its sin, instead of repelling him, attracted him, and he rejoiced in it "as a strong man to run a race," or as in the old iron days a soldier exulted in the hour of battle, though it was "with confused noise and garments rolled in blood." 2. This resulted naturally from and was linked with Browning's second great characteristic, — his universal sympathy. Everything human was full of interest for him. The more broken and pitiful, the more it attracted * The characteristics here given are, of course, drawn from Browning's actions and writings — chiefly from his writings — not from his face, as one who heard this lecture supposed, because his portraits had been mentioned. No wonder that this listener said : " I can't see all that in his face." * P. 450, 11. 41-43, Fra Lippo Lippi. / 38 BROWNING STUDIES him. Himself a man of stainless character, he never drew back with *'I am holier than thou." I know no one who mingles justice and mercy so well in his attitude toward all sorts of sin and shame, except Jesus of Nazareth from whom Browning learned the way to do it. He shrinks never from the high and mighty. They also are but men. To Browning, human personalities are what they are, without regard to outward seeming, and must stand only on their own intrinsic worth. He lived for absolute values, not compromise nor expediency. And he estimates other personalities by these same absolute values. His sym pathy is more discerning and more universal than Shakespeare's ; lor Shakespeare despised_riie crowd of the common j)eQple, an d never touch es them except in ridicule. Browning loved the common people, the struggling masses, as well as he loved the great and cultured. A single example will suffice : a factory-girl from the silk mills of Asolo by her unconscious influence transforms the hfe and shapes the destiny of the rich and mighty, as she passes singing on her one holiday in the year. I refer, of course, to Pippa. 3. A third prominent characteristic is Browning's im- ■ patience with mediocrity and his contempt for indecision, irresolution, half-hearted endeavor, and fear. No one can read Browning's poems without feeling his intense virility. He is so full of red blood himself that the pale-blooded, white-livered, and passionless folks he cannot endure. With him, the programme of life is : decide, then act. He is fond of rich colors and extreme situations. Porphyria's lover who strangles her with her long string of yellow hair that he may keep her just as she is, because he loves her so, would appeal to few poets as he does to the intense mind of Robert Browning. If Wordsworth is the poet of the commonplace things of life, Browning is the poet CHARACTERISTICS OF BROWNING 39 of human nature wrought up to its uttermost. Browning, a man of unfaltering courage himself, wanted courage in others. He wants Caponsacchi to thank God for temp- tation.^ How else grow strong, except by resistance and overcoming ? " Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot ? " * Pray not only ^'Lead us not into temptation" — Browning does not stop there : "Yea, but, O Thou whose servants are the bold, Lead such temptations by the head and hair, Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, That so he may do battle and have praise ! " ^ Just like Robert Browning to look for men so strong in ideals and inner strength that temptations would be afraid of them. Ever5rwhere what he wants is no dallying, but decision, action. This has led some purblind critics to imagine that Browning approved of sin, just as some critics have supposed that Jesus approved of dishonesty because he ** commended the unjust steward'^ in the parable:^ it was only the steward's long-headedness and shrewdness which Jesus commended, not the acts by which he showed it. So Browning distinguishes the quality of soul shown in certain acts from the moral quality of those acts them- selves. The most familiar stumbling-stone is The Statue and the Bust, in which a man and woman plan an elope- 1 The Pope, in The Ring and the Book, p. 854, 11. 51-60. Robert Louis Stevenson {'' Virginibus Puerisque" and Other Papers, London, 1881, p. 43; Medallion Edition, New York, 1909, p. 37) calls this "the noblest passage in one of the noblest books of this century," — i.e. now, of course, the century that lately closed. 'Luke 16: 1-8. 40 BROWNING STUDIES ment, an adulterous affair, and cherish the plan for years, but never have the courage to carry it out. And Brown- ing condemns them for their failure. It is not that he approves their sinful scheme, but he feels that it was a thing to test their mettle just as much as a better thing would. He has stated this so plainly at the end that I marvel that anyone could miss it : ^ "I hear you reproach, ' But delay was best For their end was a crime.' — Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test, As a virtue golden through and through." "Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will !" This uncompromising view of human life runs through all Browning's works. When we once grasp it, we see the reason often for his choice of subject and manner of treat- ment. The kind of men Browning admires are men of splendid intensity and the courage to follow their con- victions, — Luria, who kills himself in stainless honor rather than submit even to being treated with suspicion; Ivan Ivanovitch, who takes instantly into his own hands the execution of the woman who has saved her own Hfe by the unnatural act of letting the wolves have her children ; Herakles, who meets all hardship and all sorrow with a victorious smile and holds *'his life out on his hand, for any man to take," ^ "As up he stepped, pursuing duty still 'Higher and harder,' as he laughed and said.'* ' Browning feels, as keenly as any man can, '' the old woe o' the world'' and the pitifulness of the fact that ** nothing endures," that "nothing can be as it has been before." ip.375,U. 1-4, 17, i8. ' Balaustian's Adventure, p. 554, 11. 47, 48 ; p. 556, 11. 74-76. CHARACTERISTICS OF BROWNING 41 But he has no idea that this should paralyze our efforts. The unstable quality of life, its constant changefulness, over which so many poets mourn, provokes exultation from Robert Browning : ^ "Rejoice that man is hurled From change to change unceasingly, His soul's wings never furled ! " To Robert Browning, the great men of the world are those who have sternly obeyed God's stern command (so stern that it "clangs"), no matter what the consequences and no matter how soon these men were to be cut off, — that was not their affair — the main point is that they were in the process of the doing, when they were cut off. As "the famous ones of old" throng his imagination, he hears them say : ^ " Each of us heard clang God's ' Come ! ' and each was coming." 4. A fourth very striking characteristic is Browning's kp,p.nn^s!i pf rifiqly^is In his examination of human actions, in his search for motives, he is a real psychologist who makes the technical psychology of the schools look poor and artificial. His psychology is pulsing with life and reckons all the tangled lines of hereditary tendency, fresh incentive, fear, hope, passion, which issue in a single act. Among all its scientific meri, the nineteenth century did not produce a keener psychologist than Robert Browning. But because his psychological studies were published in the form of live poetry, instead of dry scientific discussions, the scientists did not discover what he had done until many years after he had done it. It is a simple fact that * See James Lee^s Wife, VI, especially stanzas xi-xvi (pp. 489, 490). The three lines quoted are from p. 490, 11, 8-10. ' Epilogue to Ferishtah's Fancies, p. 1 240, 1. 38. 42 BROWNING STUDIES he preceded by 20 years the psychological analysis which the scientists finally arrived at, and then they discovered that he had done it better 20 years before. One of the chief reasons why he was so long in meeting with any appreciation is that he was 20 years ahead of the scientific movement of the century. We can have very little patience with this writing of the history of philosophy which reckons only those works that are written in prose and labelled *' philosophical dissertations" and ignores the acuter philosophical studies of Goethe, Shakespeare, and many others, simply because they are written more vividly and in metrical form. When the history of psychology shall some time be really written, it will have to take into con- sideration, not only the technical psychology of the uni- versities, but the work of such men as Robert Browning. 5. And his comprehensiveness is the fifth characteris tic. Involved in minute analysis as he was, he never lost sight of things in the large, which the scientific analyst almost always does. Browning kept clearly in mind the relation of these minute details to a great whole — he realized that no smallest thing can be isolated, but rather is indissolubly Hnkedwith universal laws. And so the sweep of Brown- ing's philosophy is as deep as human hfe and as wide as the universe to which our human hfe is everywhere related. There is hardly a phase of life but what Browning has sooner or later reckoned with it and its relations. There is hardly a problem of existence but what Browning has struggled with it, either in his own experience or in imagina- tion. For he had that unusual power of putting himself in another's place and meeting the situation in his imagina- tion almost as keenly as if it were his own life. As a great thinker and as a great philosopher, Browning will hold a first rank, when he comes to be estimated as he is. The CHARACTERISTICS OF BROWNING 43 fact is not strange, but a perfectly natural thing, that, when there was no course in Browning given in the English Department of Oberlin College, President King (then a professor — it was before he was made President) gave some study of Browning in the Department of Philosophy. 6. A sixth characteristic is Browning's faith. He wanted it to be said of him that at least he ''beHeved in Soul, was very sure of Qod.'' ^ The nineteenth century produced many great Christians, but Robert Browning was one of the greatest Christians of them all. At any rate, that is what his own writings show, whatever statements may be made to the contrary. ^ Digging about the roots and questioning the fundamentals of the Christian ReHgion, he beheved more and more in its essence. A man of universal charity toward all forms of rehgion, his own reUgious faith as we find it in his poems is singularly simple and beautiful. The proposition made some time ago by the Rev. Dr. John W. Bradshaw,^ that a course in Browning should be given in theological seminaries, is natural and ought to be carried out. Show me a theological writer who will give young men a vital grip on real religion and a vital message for humanity, equal to that of Robert Browning. 7. And this leads naturally to a seventh characteristic — Browning's optimism . We hear much about this, but few realize how deep and far-reaching Browning's optimism is. It is not the optimism of a child, who is optimistic because he knows nothing of life, nor the optimism of that great class who are optimistic because they are comfortable ^ Near the end of La Saisiaz, p. 1 132, 1. 23. ' Cf . discussion of Browning's religious belief in the last chapter of Griffin and Minchin's Life of Browning, pp. 294-298. ' Dr. Bradshaw was then Pastor of the First Congregational Church of Oberlin. He died in Peoria, 111., Sept. 2, 1912. 44 BROWNING STUDIES and prosperous and have a good digestion. Browning's is the optimism of a man who knows the worst there is in the world, has probed it to the bottom, and feels to the uttermost the cruelty and the tragedy of life, but who, in spite of all this, believes that God will not be defeated, but that good will triumph at the last. It is the optimism of a man whose eyes are open, who sees the disease and sin and putrefaction of humanity, but is not blind to the forces that make for righteousness, not blind to the reality of some altruism and self-sacrifice already achieved in the history of the world, some nobility of character, some victory of the soul. And these facts, linked with his faith in the Infinite Father, give him the foundations for his hope. Such a man's optimism may well reassure you and me, when we are bewildered and overwhelmed by the evil of the world. Andrew Lang prefixed to the Butcher-Lang translation (1879) of Homer's Odyssey a sonnet, in which he says that, just "As one who for a weary space has lain Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine" would, when he escaped, be "glad to know the brine Salt on his lips, and the large air again, — " ''So," he says, "gladly from the songs of modern speech Men turn, and see the stars and feel the free ShriU wind," and "Hear like ocean on a western beach The surge and thimder of the Odyssey." It has seemed to me so strikingly like the way we turn to Robert Browning. Out of the clamor of many voices INFLUENCES IN THE MAKING OF BROWNING 45 crying "Lo! here" and "Lo! there," out of the pettiness and sentimentalism of those who are writing in our day for a living, out of the cramping and dwarfing clutch of business, out of the arrogant claims of science, out of the specializing in our universities which is fast depriving men of any liberal education, — out of all that is partial and narrow and feeble, we turn to the greatness and serenity and universality and victoriousness of Robert Browning's soul, — "One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would tri- umph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake." ^ This brings us to the last main head of our present dis- cussion : V VI. The Influences which made Robert Browning WHAT HE WAS These influences are not far to seek : I. His heredity. On this we have already dwelt in speaking of his father and mother. He had from his parents a good constitution, and from his father especially an exuberant vitaUty. I have grown more and more to realize, as I look at the world, that sheer vitality is the most needful thing, the greatest source of efficiency, — indispensable to highest success. In a higher stage of civilization, the first essential of education will be the cultivation of physical vitaHty, and that is a work of more than one generation. Browning's splendid health is what made it possible for him to do the immense amount of * Epilogue to Asolando, p. 131 7, 11. 83-87. 46 BROWNING STUDIES intellectual work which he did, and it was this same health which made life so real to him. The fact is that some people actually live more than others do in the same length of time — I know of no other way to describe it, — they have more Ufe in their bodies, life more intense and of a higher potential. Browning had that plus condition of energy which, as Emerson teaches, is essential to power. He was, however, of a high-strung nervous temperament, which led him occasionally into outbursts of anger. And his intensity of feeling would have burned him out in early life, if it had not been for the constitution and vitality behind it. From his father. Browning had also great intellectual ability and the artistic instinct. From his mother, again, tenderness, musical taste, reverence, a tendency to mysticism, and yet with this a strain of the German philosophic mind. Such currents combining in Robert Browning gave him a richly endowed personality, unusually versatile and comprehensive. 2. His education. His was a real education : educere, to lead out ; educate, to lead out, to develop, the min^ of the man. The process of his education stands out in sharp contrast to the dreary artificial mechanism commonly employed and which is too often a system of stuffing, instead of drawing out and developing. Many very thoughtful men have serious misgivings about college education in our day, — each teacher bestirring himself to stuff the students' heads, and the students being mind- ful chiefly of the possibility of delivering some of the same material again in examination. A college education ought to be of great value to a man, and will be, if he gets from it high purposes, an enlarged area of consciousness, and a discipline of mind which will enable him to master any department of life upon which he may concentrate his INFLUENCES IN THE MAKING OF BROWNING 47 attention. But probably a majority of the students graduate from our colleges without knowing either how to study or how to think. If a man knows how to study and how to think, he can educate himself. The best the college can do for a man is to start him on his self-education. And the serious question is whether the colleges are really accomplishing this. Certain it is that many of the world's greatest minds were self-educated without the college experience. You will see in Stratford-on-Avon the gram- mar-school where William Shakespeare went to school; it is still used. But he never got any further. His real education was given him by himself, — a few old history books in English translation, a lot of current novels, the streets of London, the audience at the Globe Theatre, and the inner recesses of his own soul, — and the wisest men for 300 years have been trying to stretch their minds to the largeness of Shakespeare's grasp of man's Kfe and the universe. Sir William Herschel, the great astronomer, had a musical education, but instructed himself in mathe- matics and astronomy, and taught himself to build a tele- scope and discovered a new planet. Professor Thomas Henry Huxley, one of the most celebrated biologists of the nineteenth century, had a start in the lower schools and then in the hospitals, but chiefly taught the science of biology to himself and then taught it in the universities. Herbert Spencer never had a college education nor had anything to do with the colleges ; yet it has been claimed for him that he came nearer to covering the whole field of human knowledge than any man in his day. So with others by the score. Similarly in Robert Browning you have a man largely self-educated by books and travel, a man whose education makes the product of our universities look ignorant. He had, at most, less than two terms in London 48 BROWNING STUDIES University. Yet he reads Greek and Latin at sight for fun, speaks French and Italian and I know not how many other languages besides English, and reads Hebrew. He is, by all odds, the most widely educated man who has written English poetry. See his Greek pieces, Balaustion' s Adventure and Aristophanes^ Apology, a perfect maze of intimate knowledge of the classics. See his information as to history, science, philosophy, art, music, — all mar- vellously accurate. To read Robert Browning intelligently is a sort of university education in itself. One can hardly be surprised that hard-headed men of affairs have very little respect for the fact that a young man has completed a college education, with its separation from the real world, its artificial methods, and its refusal, in the majority of departments, to see things in the large. Higher education has to begin with the developing of certain qualities of mind. And Socrates talking with the young men in the streets of Athens was, in a sense, engaged in higher education. And Robert Browning on his horse, or with the fencing foils, or at his music, or studying with his tutors, or deep in the books of his father's Ubrary or the British Museum, or travelling on the Continent, was, all together, laying the founda- tions of a better education than any university in the world could give him. 3. The power of Elizabeth Barrett, his wife. The in- fluence of personaHties is the largest influence in our lives. I need not speak in detail of other personal influences in Browning's life — e.g. Shelley's which belongs to the domain of books, Macready's which belongs to the domain of opportunity — but turn at once to the supreme personal influence, that of Mrs. Browning. In his relation to her, he had both of the things which add most to human life, INFLUENCES IN THE MAKING OF BROWNING 49 viz. love and suffering, (a) It is useless to argue as to why love enriches and deepens the lives of men and women so much. The fact is that it does. No man need hope ever to be a great artist, a great musician, a great poet, unless he loves greatly. Somehow, that is what stirs the foundations of life, and opens the vistas of the mysteries of the universe. It is literally true that he lives most who loves most. Somewhere in the mystery of human existence, it is probably a fact that love and Hfe are one, and make humanity kindred of the Infinite, (b) And if to love be added the bitterness of bereavement, you have the most that can be done for a human personahty. It is useless to ask why it is that suffering so deepens our lives and so develops the soul. The fact is that it does. As long as we are comfortable and content, there is no hope of our knowing much about life. But when we are trodden down by the victorious feet of pain and death, then we begin to care for something besides material things, and think of things unseen and eternal. Some portion of such suffering must come to everyone, — to some more than to others. And life is never the same again. There remains nothing but to endure, to think it through, and to recon- struct once more our conception of human life and the universe. The richest influence in Robert Browning's life was Elizabeth Barrett. His deep reverence for all woman- hood became centred upon her. His splendid capacity for loving became utterly devoted to his passionate love for her. Fifteen years of such married life gave him the closest intellectual fellowship. And the loss of her height- ened and emphasized the power of her life over him, beyond what would have been possible if she had lived. No doubt he idealized her. She was only a frail woman in a world 50 BROWNING STUDIES of mystery, like all humanity, but to him she was the soul of his soul.^ She lies buried in thelquiet cemetery at Florence. He lies under the feet of the tourists and sightseers who throng Westminster Abbey, — a constant stream of the light, the flippant, and the vain. So much vitality, such keen- ness for life, such zest in living as Robert Browning had — such love and devotion as Elizabeth Barrett bore toward him — has it all come to dust and ashes? Somehow, it is not easy to think of them as dead. If they are dead, then all the world is an *' insubstantial pageant" and may as well dissolve; for there will be none more fit for im- mortality than Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. But what if they are not dead? What if their passionate intensity of living has its fulfillment otherwhere? What if, as Robert Browning himself confidently expected, they have found "the finite love Blent and embalmed with the eternal life." * * Prospice, p. 517, 1. 25 : "O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again." 2 The Pope, in The Ring and the Book, p. 862, 11. 17, 18. II INTRODUCTION (CONTINUED) : BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST We turn now to an examination of the Literary Art of Browning. I. Difficulties in the Way of Understanding Browning We hear a great deal about the difficulties in understand- ing Browning. I am sure the obscurity of Browning's writing has been greatly exaggerated, but we may as well discuss at the beginning the real difficulties which the reader of Browning at first meets. These difficulties arise out of five things : I. The first difficulty which a reader of Browning meets is the vast amount Browning has written and its very unequal quality. As we saw, in running over the dates of his pub- Hshed volumes, he has been very industrious from the age of 20 to the age of 77 and has produced an immense amount.^ The reader hardly knows where to begin and has no idea when he will get through, {a) This matter which Browning has published has immense variety. (6) Its quality covers wide range, — from the very highest point of poetic imagination to some of the dullest and ^ It is interesting to notice the distribution of the matter produced — the large amount published in the 12 or 13 years preceding Browning's marriage, the small amount during his married life, and the great amount after Mrs. Browning's death. Cf. the dates of the volimaes to see this. SI 52 BROWNING STUDIES prosiest matter ever strung out in metrical form, (c) There- fore, the fate of the reader is often decided by where he begins on Browning. If I may give an illustration: A business man in Cincinnati had heard me say that Brown- ing was the poet for men of affairs, and he made up his mind to try Browning. But next time I saw him he said : *'I thought you said Browning was good reading. I couldn't make much out of it." I asked: *'What did you read?" He answered: ''That Red Cotton Night-Cap Country.^' ''Well," I said, "if I told you there was fine scenery in the state of Colorado, and you began in some swamp in a corner of the state and saw only that, could you say you had given Colorado scenery a fair chance?" No doubt, this gentleman's experience illustrates that of many, (d) Like so many poets (Wordsworth is a striking example). Browning would have fared better, if he had written less. If he had written less, or at least had pub- lished less, and that had been his best, he would have met with more success. Browning is more responsible than anyone else for the feeling against him. He has done much to defeat himself, because he could not form a just critical estimate of what he had written, and so failed to suppress a large number of poems, good as exercises in philosophy and composition but not such as the public has patience to wrestle with, (e) But this has inevitably come about from Browning's indifference as to whether the public approved of him or not. We ought not to say indifference, because he did care and once in a while breaks out in indignation against his treatment at the hands of the critics. But he was a poet for poetry's sake, and the attitude of his readers toward him was a secondary matter. The public gave him a cold shoulder from the start. He went on calmly and persistently, and knowing that the BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST 53 public were giving no better reception to his best produc- tions than to his worst, he had no standard of public approval or disapproval to judge by, and so published everything which had been born in his own thoughts and had gotten itself written down in poetic form. Meantime, he bore the public no ill feeling and greets them with the jovial words, "Such, British Public, ye who like me not, (God love you!) —"1 and in another place, "So, British Public, who may like me yet, (Marry and amen !) " ^ But it is a fact that Browning published too much and of too unequal worth. This is a real difficulty for the be- ginner. 2. A second difficulty is the colloquial nature of his writing. Browning is at once more informal and colloquial in style than any of the English poets of first rank. The result is that often what we would imderstand without hesitation if spoken by a friend we find difficult to understand when we see it on the printed page, (a) With the spoken words, the meaning is made evident by emphasis and inflection. But in t3^e, there is no help except in pimctuation. Con- sequently the punctuation of Browning's poems is a matter of extreme difficulty. There is a good story of one occasion when Browning was calling on Thomas Carlyle. And Carlyle was shaving, or something of the sort, and kept his caller waiting a long time. When at last he came in straightening his collar and tie, he said in his gruff way : ''Well, Browning, you've taught the English people one ^ The Ring and the Book, p. 666, 11. 54, 55. Notice the rest of the sentence. 2 The Ring and the Book, p. 906, 11. 44, 45. The rest of the sentence is good too. 54 BROWNING STUDIES thing anyway — you Ve taught them the value of punctua- tion.'' {b) The colloquial nature of Browning's writing results often in the omission of conjunctions. In con- versation we say: "Our hope is we shall find a boat," — but how to punctuate that little sentence when it is set up ? So we take refuge in printing it in the stilted form : *'Our hope is that we shall find a boat." (c) More notice- able is the fact that the colloquial style results in the omission of the relative pronoun. We say, "The man I met on the street was John Smith," and it goes all right. But when we write it, it looks queer and we make it read : "The man whom I met on the street." Browning didn't care how it looked ; he wrote it down as he would speak it. Consequently, relative pronouns are omitted ruthlessly. I venture to estimate that a large per cent of the difficulty which one has at first with Browning's sentences grows out of the omission of the relative pronoun. There is one solvent which will make plain two- thirds of such cases : Inasmuch as the style is extremely colloquial, read the passage out loud, in a natural conversational way, and you will be surprised to find that what was thick as mud on the printed page is plain and easy when conveyed by the living voice. There is no poet whose writings insist upon being read out loud to be understood, to such an extent as Browning's do. 3. A third source of difficulty in Browning is the frequent long sentences, of loose structure, with a large number of subordinate clauses, sometimes with a considerable amount of parenthetical matter, sometimes even with changes of construction, — and always with a picturesque accumu- lation of all sorts of punctuation marks. Browning can write marvellous short sentences, and has written a host of them. But he has written also a host of long onesj BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST 55 which bear a striking resemblance to the old-fashioned German sentence which is now losing its hold on German authors and lecturers. In dealing with a long sentence of Browning's there is no rule, except to keep a level head, bear in mind what is the chief point he is talking about, and mark the subordinate relation of other parts of the sentence. One presently becomes accustomed to Brown- ing's long sentences and finds Httle difficulty in them. 4. The fourth source of difficulty is more serious : It is Browning's vast learning. a. Browning is surely the most learned man who ever wrote Enghsh verse. That position has been sometimes accorded to John Milton, but you will find Browning's erudition greater than Milton's. Browning's knowledge of the classics is as wide and as minute as Milton's, and he has a vast knowledge of art and mediaeval lore which Milton lacks. Browning's knowledge is various and curious, and reaches into a large number of subjects which Milton never touched. I have no fears that Browning's right to the position as the most learned English poet can be chal- lenged. b. But the trouble is: Browning overestimates his reader's learning. He proceeds upon the assumption that his reader is as familiar with all this varied information as he himself is. Probably Browning never thought any- thing about it, but simply goes ahead, disregards the reader, and puts down what is plain to Browning and would be, he supposes, plain to anyone. But alas! we are not Browning ; our education has been in the narrow channel of American schools and colleges, and Robert Browning has the better of us. Consequently, what is a matter of course to him has to be dug out by us, with searching. 56 BROWNING STUDIES c. This everyday familiarity which Browning has with a wide range of learning is the reason why his allusions are sometimes so obscure. A few illustrations out of hundreds : (i) He is very fond of the Latin poet Horace, — quotes him and alludes to him often, but is more likely to call him Flaccus ^ than Horace. Who of us, unless one just out of the Latin class, remembers that that poet's name is Quintus Horatius Flaccus, or knows who Flaccus is? (2) An obscure artist, whose "name and fame'' Browning himself says "none of you know," is spoken of as "the imaginative Sienese great in the scenic backgrounds." ^ Fortunately in his second reference^ to this "etcher of those prints," he gives the man's name, AdemoUo. (3) The Summa Theologies of St. Thomas Aquinas is mentioned familiarly as the "Summa." ^ That work is the standard of theology in the Roman Catholic Church, but who, except the Latin clergy and those outside of that communion who make a special study of theology, would know what book is meant? (4) Browning puts into the mouth of Count Guido's brother the Hne : "There's a sors, there's a right Virgilian dip !" ^ How many who read Virgil in high school or college ever know that it was once a custom to dip into Virgil at random for guidance, just as some very pious people nowadays open their Bible believing that they will be directed to the verse that will make plain to them what to do ? 1 e.g. p. 803, 1. 13 ; p. 824, 1. 56 ; p. 826, 1. 11. * P. 650, 11. 42-48, especially 11. 46-48. 3P. 654, 11. 37-40. 4 e.g. p. 743, 1. 6s ; p. 758, U. 50, 66. 6?. 731,1. 70. BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST 57 (5) Again, we read : "AU Glories that met upon the tragic stage When the Third Poet's tread surprised the Two." » To whom does this refer? ''The Two'' are ^Eschylus and Sophocles. "The Third Poet" is Euripides. (6) A point is made^ of the Jewish scribe's treatment of the ineffable name ^ of the God of the Hebrews, when he came to it in his reading in the synagogue. Who, except Old Testament students, knows that the scribe was not allowed to pronounce the name, but substituted for it another word — Adonai, Lord? And so on in hundreds of cases with no effort to make the allusion clear. The illustrations we have chosen are simpler than many others and take less time to explain. Browning often writes with a perfect tangle of allusions to mythology, history, Hterature, and science. We do not mean to imply that the majority of such allusions are obscure, but unfortunately, to most of us, many of them are. d. Browning's knowledge of the history of painting makes him sometimes write so that hardly any but those who have been educated specially in that line can get the full benefit of the poem, e.g. Old Pictures in Florence. One must have something of Browning's own artistic instinct to appreciate fully such interpretations of artists' struggles and ideals as he has given in Pictor Ignotus, 1 P. 860, 11. 65-67. '^P-7S5,l.83-p.756,1.9. 3 The consonants of the name are known — JHVH, or YHWH, according to what scheme of transliteration you adopt, — pronounced probably Yahweh, certainly not Jehovah, which is a word no ancient Hebrew ever heard of ; that word was invented about the time of the Protestant Reforma- tion in the i6th century a.d. 58 BROWNING STUDIES Fra Lippo Lip pi, and Andrea del Sarto, or to realize how fine a thing is a little poem like that one called A Face. e. Browning is so thoroughly at home in music that one needs a course in that subject to comprehend fully his frequent references to it ^ and similes drawn from it, or to get the full force of such poems as A Toccata of Ga- luppi's, Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha, AM Vogler, or his parleying With Charles Avison, the great organist. /. Browning's knowledge of so many languages creates a difficulty for us who have so few languages at command. It is not that Browning likes to parade them, but he very naturally ffings in phrases from other languages familiar to him, especially if they give atmosphere and local color. So the reader of Browning must be prepared for Greek — we need Greek even in reading his translations from Greek into English, they keep the Greek idiom so much — Latin in abundance, plenty of French of course, some German (not many German words used), and in all poems laid in Italy a great number of Italian expressions. Browning is fond of Hebrew and Aramaic, and in two poems. The Melon-Seller and Two Camels, he has had the audacity to put the Hebrew expressions in the Hebrew characters. ^ Usually a writer, if he quotes Hebrew words for the general reader, transliterates into the Roman alphabet ; so few, except those who study the Old Testament in the original, or read rabbinic writings, or are familiar with Yiddish, can be supposed to read the Hebrew characters. * e.g. in Fifine at the Fair, p. 944, 11. 19-24. 'P. 1219, 11. 2, 3; p. 1229, 1. 28, — see also the Hebrew word in 1. 34. Cf. Browning's note in connection with another poem, p. 1214, where he quotes the title of a rabbinic treatise and also a proverb, both in Hebrew letters. Browning writes only the consonants, which is the more general usage. The vowel-points when written are placed under the consonants. Hebrew reads from right to left. BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST 59 g. It is Browning's wide and varied learning and his great number of interests that makes his style diffuse. Browning lacks critical judgment. He does not know how to reject. His mind is so well stored that, when he starts to write, his head is full of similes, metaphors, analo- gies, associations, suggested trains of thought. All of these are more or less related to the subject in hand, and a good critical judgment would dictate which should be kept and which rejected. But as they crowd upon Brown- ing, he puts them all down on paper. The result is often distracting and confusing. He would have gained much if he had left out much. The poems are often too long, twice as long as need be — twice as long as they would be, if he had left out the more irrelevant parts. Browning himself does not lose the connection of thought, but the reader often does. Often one might drop out a page, two pages, three pages, — and the next line joins right on and goes on just as if nothing had happened. It was only one of those little excursions of Browning's into a field which was suggested at that point by something he was saying. Browning is constantly under the tempta- tion to wander off into philosophizing — excellent philos- ophizing it often is, but aside from his story. He enjoys searching out motives and seeing how small acts are re- lated to the universe. He has great intellectual keenness in doing this. But the story has to wait, and the general style of the whole is often made too discursive. It is true that, as one grows familiar with Browning's poems, this easy meandering style grows to have a certain pleasure in it, but it is often confusing for the reader at first. 5. A fifth source of difficulty is the monologue form in which so many of the poems are cast. It is true that Browning has narratives told in the third person, also that 6o BROWNING STUDIES he has a large amount written in dialogue form. But all his best poems are in monologue, i.e. he speaks through the mouth of the man or woman whose deeds or thoughts are being told and the narrative is, therefore, in the first person. I remember that this seemed queer to me at first, — so many voices telling, in their own person, their ad- ventures and their thoughts. Yet, as soon as you get accustomed to it, this form of presentation does not even attract your attention. The narrative in the first person is far more vivid than any in the third person can be. Browning is not a successful dramatist, but he is the most successful writer of monologues. What Shakespeare has done for the drama Browning has done for the monologue, — has brought it to the highest point it has reached in English Literature. ^^•" The difficulties in reading Browning, though usually exaggerated, are real: The vast amount and unequal quality of Browning's work, the colloquial nature of his style, the frequent long and involved sentences, his own great learning and overestimate of the reader's learning, and the monologue form in which many of the poems are cast. II. Excellences in Browning as a Literary ArjTist I have grown more and more doubtful about all the statements usually made about Browning's literary ability. Nothing is more full of superstitions than the world of literary criticism. Some man succeeds in getting before the pubHc a number of statements in regard to an* author and these become accepted, and then are repeated ad infinitum by those who come after, because it is easier to do that than to read the author and see for one's self. Thus there become settled literary superstitions, — that such and such an author has such and such failings and BROWNING AS A UTERARY ARTIST 6l only such and such points in his favor. It is the old trick of the average critic — he has not read the book. Some- times when a man looks for himself, he is surprised. The usual estimate of Browning's skill is simply one of the ruts of criticism. Has it occurred to you that it may be partly due to the fact that the critics who first estabHshed it may not have been widely enough acquainted with Literature and so condemned as inartistic what was simply unfamiliar to them ? ^ Not long ago, in studying for another course without regard to Browning, it fell to me to go through a good number of books on English metre. And I found, in books written from different standpoints and following different methods of inquiry, that, when it came to discussing rare and difl&cult metres, often metres imported from other languages, they frequently had to cite Robert Browning for examples.^ It is quite probable that Browning's literary reputation has suffered because many of his metres are unfamiliar. But we must say that it is not fair to suppose a man unskilled and lawless, when he is working often in metres too difficult for most poets to use. Anyway, I have come more and more to doubt the sweeping statements made in many books and periodicals, about the literary skill shown in Browning's poems. There are a few points of excellence in Browning from the standpoint of his craftsmanship in English poetry, and these I would like to mention now. ^ Cf. the musical critics' treatment of Richard Wagner when his operas first appeared. 2 e.g.¥. B. Gummere, A Handbook of Poetics, Boston, 1898, pp. 203, 207, 209 ; T. S. Omond, A Study of Metre, London, 1903, p. 64 ; J. B. Mayor, A Handbook of Modern English Metre, Cambridge, 1903, pp. 27, 81, 142, 145. For a thorough discussion of Browning's metres, see Geo. Saintsbury, A History of English Prosody, London, 1906-10, vol. Ill, pp. 216-240; cf. pp. 296-301, especially pp. 299, 300. 62 BROWNING STUDIES I. His choice of words, I don't know anyone in English Literature who chooses words that give so much in one word as Robert Browning does, — a whole picture in one word. It seems unnecessary to point out single examples. It is his habit when writing at his best. But I will cite a few instances out of hundreds. The Italics in the illus- trations are our own, to call attention to the words under discussion. a. In the poem entitled By the Fire-side, the man who speaks the lines imagines what he will do when he gets to be old — he will sit there by the fire ''deep in Greek" — but his mind will run away from the Greek up irfto the Apennines, back to that day with the sweetheart of his youth. Then he gives us details of the picture in which every stanza is a work of art. But we pause at the first two lines of stanza viii : ^ "A turn, and we stand in the heart of things; The woods are round us, heaped and dim." Anyone who has been in the Alps or Apennines knows how accurately these words tell the tale. In a tramp of six weeks in the higher valleys of Switzerland, not less than a hundred times where valleys narrowed down these words came and no others would cover it — mountains on every side — ''we stand in the heart of things" — "woods heaped and dim." Nothing but that word heaped could describe the woods on the steep slopes and spurs and knolls — heaped, that's how they look. h. The poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'' was written in one day and not afterward revised. It has some stanzas that are not ppetry at all and some that are of the most consummate poetry to be found. The I P. 246, U. I, 2. BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST 63 knight, Sir "Roland, walks across the dreariest plain which imagination can devise and is surprised by coming upon ^'a, sudden little river." Notice this part of the description of the stream : ^ "All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it." Have you ever heard any expression which could convey that picture like the words ^^ kneeled down over it"? You have seen it — you know how a brook cuts across a level pasture or meadow, and the steep banks are three or four feet high, and how the alders grow out from the bank near the water-line and then bend sharply to grow upright. How often we have noticed that bend in the stock of the bush, six or eight inches from where it comes out of the ground, almost exactly like the crook of a knee, — so that, glancing at it from the side, not bothering our minds as to how it came to be so, we see the alder kneel down over the water. c. In the same poem, stanza xxx, when at last suddenly the knight realizes that he has reached the place he has been years searching for : ^ "Burningly it came on me all at once, This was the place ! " ^'Burningly it came" — Any of us who have noticed what comes with a sudden realization of something that con- cerns us deeply — the flush of heat which goes over the whole body, often making one break out in a perspiration even in a cold day — will know that all that is told, sharply and conclusively, in ' "Burningly it came on me all at once." ^ P. 377, 11. 34, 35, in stanza xx. ' P. 378, U. 25, 26. 64 BROWNING STUDIES d. Or take the line from In a Balcony: ^ "As yonder mists curdling before the moon." Could any other word create in the mind the picture created by that word curdling? We have all seen the thing, but I doubt if any man in literature has described it so accurately as Browning has in the words "yonder mists curdling before the moon." e. This facility in using the most expressive word or phrase to convey the picture vividly is one of the com- monest things in Browning's writing, and the expression is so apt that, once you get it in mind, the thing itself always calls up Browning's words. (i) How many times every autumn a day comes that brings to my mind the lines from poem vii of James Lee's Wife:'' "Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth, This autumn morning !" (2) How often on days when the breeze pours over the hills and plains have the words come, from Browning's Two in the Campagna : ^ "An everlasting wash of air." (3) By the seaside, over and over again come the lines from Balaustion's Adventure: ^ "Beside The sea, which somehow tempts the life in us To come trip over its white waste of waves, And try escape from earth, and fleet as free." 1 P. 481, 1. 78. 2 P. 490, U. 21, 22. 3 p. 251, 1. 9. * P. 574, 11. 1-4. In line 4, "and fleet as free," i.e. as free as the foam itself. FROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST 65 Most of US feel the drawing of the sea, but I do not know where to find anything that gets at the very essence of it as Browning does when he writes that the sea '^somehow tempts the life in us." (4) Or take a summer day with keen breeze and unusually clear air, and dark blue sky with only now and then some deep fragment of white cloud voyaging across it, and the words of the same Greek girl in Aristophanes* Apology will haunt your memory : ^ " Greed and strife, Hatred and cark and care, what place have they In yon blue liberality of heaven?" You will go far before you find words that tell what you're looking at on such a day, as do the words ''yon bltie liberality of heaven." But an unusual skill in the choice of words is really a habit with Robert Browning. So we need not dwell on it any more. 2. His wealth of diction. Of this only a few observations : a. Browning's vocabulary is astonishingly large and varied. I don't believe it is exceeded by any except Shakespeare's. Unfortunately, as already noticed, it con- tains much besides a strictly EngHsh vocabulary. It is a sort of cosmopolitan vocabulary. But fortunately, what is strictly English in it is of very wide range. b. Browning does not hesitate to coin words when he needs them, or thinks he needs them, e.g. (i) ''malleolable" 2 — From Latin malleus, a hammer, we have malleable^ capable of being shaped by the blows of a hammer. But Browning wants a more discriminating word. So from malleolus, the diminutive of malleus, he 1 P. 576, U. 1-3. ' In The Ring and the Book, p. 658, 1. 44. 66 BROWNING STUDIES gets malleolable, capable of being shaped by blows of a little hammer. (2) "unstridulosity" ^ — We have the adjective slridu- lous, making a sharp creaking sound, the verb stridulate, the noun stridulation, and so on. But we do not find in any of the dictionaries either stridulosity or unstridulosity. Browning, however, supposes from stridulous sl noun stridulosity which would mean the act, or quality, of being stridulous, i.e. the giving of a creaking sound (but a sense somewhat different from that of stridulation), and then he uses a negative prefix and makes unstridulosity, the ab- sence of such an act, or quality. He uses the word figura- tively in the connection, meaning simply the quietness of the man, while the others ^' creak, creak, creak." (See 11. following.) (3) ^'un-mouse-colours" 2 — This is a compilation, of course. From the verb to color and the noun mouse- color, Browning supposes a verb to mouse-color and then prefixes un- and gets a verb to un-mouse-color , i.e. to take the mouse-color off from the skin of the oxen referred to in the passage. But these coinings are mentioned here chiefly as curiosi- ties. The main point has to do with words that are stand- ard English. c. Browning knows how to use words so as to give an impression of great wealth and beauty of diction, perhaps surpassed only by Shelley at his best (as e.g. in Adonais). By way of illustration : (i) In The Last Ride Together, stanza iii, the description of a sunset : ^ "Hush ! if you saw some western cloud All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed 1 In Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, p. 922, 1. 78. ' In Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, p. 930, 1. 12. ^ P. 352, 11. 43-46. BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST 67 By many benedictions — sun's And moon's and evening-star's at once — " (2) The beginning of Johannes Agricola in Meditation: ^ "There's heaven above, and night by night I look right through its gorgeous roof ; No suns and moons though e'er so bright Avail to stop me ; splendour-proof I keep the broods of stars aloof : For I intend to get to God, For 'tis to God I speed so fast, For in God's breast, my own abode, Those shoals of dazzUng glory passed, I lay my spirit down at last." And so in an immense number of instances. 3. And in the drawing of pictures on a larger scale than in single words and phrases, Browning excels. This is related, of course, both to his choice of words and to his wealth of diction. His poems abound in vividness, — scenes cut out like cameos and quite unforgettable — some humorous, some serious, but all showing this skill. In that little poem By the Fire-side are a dozen word-pictures, any one of them worth transferring to canvas in crayon. In Love among the Ruins, you can see just how the country looks,^ " Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles Miles and miles." In Evelyn Hope, you can see the darkened room and the streaming in of the "two long rays thro' the hinge's chink." ' In his longer poems there is a lavish abundance of word- pictures, e.g. the autumn evening in Sordello:^ 1 P. 445,11.10-19. 2p 229, 11. 6s, 66. » P. 229, 1. 16. * p. 104, U. 37-41. 68 BROWNING STUDIES "A last remains of sunset dimly burned O'er the far forests, like a torch-flame turned By the wind back upon its bearer's hand In one long flare of crimson ; as a brand, The woods beneath lay black." You will find this quality in Browning's writings almost anywhere, but perhaps more strikingly in Paracelsus and The Ring and the Book. 4. And a fourth excellence is the beauty and melody of his lines. a. It is usually charged that Robert Browning cannot write musical lines. This charge has been passed from mouth to mouth until it is widely believed. But the fact that once everybody believed that the world was flat didn't make it so. And the repetition of the statement that Browning's verses are not musical doesn't make it so. The longer I have read Browning the more I have come to doubt such statements. There's music and music — there's the Jew's harp and there's the pipe-organ. b. Now, Browning did write a large number of harsh lines of blank verse and usually did it on purpose, because the harsh line conveyed an impression of the condition described ; e.g. in the beginning of The Ring and the Book, a line which can be cited as unusually harsh : he speaks of a ring found "After a dropping April ; found alive Spark-like 'mid unearthed slope-side figtree-roots That roof old tombs at Chiusi." That line ^ "Spark-like 'mid unearthed slope-side figtree-roots" is certainly rough enough. But, bless you, would smooth lines convey the impression of the torn up condition of 1 P. 640, 1. 5. BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST 69 the ground where the ring is found after the rain? It seems to me that the harsh torn Hne goes with the torn soil. So with a host of illustrations. It is true that Browning did not poHsh his blank verse so much as Tennyson did, but he has the stronger vigor of lines on that account. And the harshness of his Hues has been grossly exaggerated. If you'll pardon the reference to myself : I repeated, some time ago, a mass of The Ring and the Book (three-quarters of Caponsacchi's monologue), an hour and a half of it, in a college town in Michigan. And students in the Senior Class went to their Professor of English and said: *' How's this? We understood that Browning's Hues are rough and harsh. We couldn't see it in that hour and a half of them." On the contrary, you will look long to find anything superior in melody to great blocks of Browning's blank verse in The Ring and the Book, not simply in Caponsacchi's speech but also in Pompilia's monologue or the Pope's. There is not time to quote, but I may start a few : (i) P. 783, 11. 43 sqq., "There was a fancy came." (2) P. 796, 11. 44 sqq., "And, all day, I sent prayer like incense up." (3) Almost anywhere on pp. 798-802, the closing part of Pompilia's monologue. Begin e.g. with p. 798, 1. 5, "Forme *Tis otherwise ; let men take, sift my thoughts," or p. 800, 1. 55, "For that most woeful man my husband once," or p. 801, 1. 47, "O lover of my life, O soldier-saint." 70 BROWNING STUDIES (4) The Pope, p. 852, 11. 37 sqq., "First of the first, Such I pronounce Pompilia." You will notice the melody also in many other monologues of The Ring and the Book, and in Cleon, Andrea del SartOj A Death in the Desert, and other blank verse pieces. I might add the lines from Balaustion's Adventure: ^ "Whereat the softened eyes Of the lost maidenhood that lingered still Straying among the flowers in Sicily." But there is no use in multiplying illustrations to sub- stantiate a fact that is perfectly obvious. c. And in short poems Browning has abundance of melody. (i) We have only to think of the long vibrating lines of Aht Vogler, flexible as a whiplash, e.g.^ "Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name? Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands !" or the beauty of the long line and short line combination in Love among the Ruins, or the effect of many of his lyrics, such as ^'I send my heart up to thee, all my heart," ^ or "Dance, yellows and whites and reds." ^ (2) And Browning has done what they've all been trying to do — make the movement of the lines themselves reflect the thing described or narrated. Thus, e.g. in the little poem Meeting at Night. ^ The picture in the first stanza is what some of you have seen when coming in at evening on the coast. Now start to read the stanza out loud : 1 p. 573, U. 32-34. « P. 500, 11. 25, 26. 3 The first song of In a Gondola, p. 346, 11. 21-27. * At end of the parleying with Gerard de Lairesse, p. 1276, 11. 67-75. 6 P. 228, 11. 15-26. BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST 71 "The grey sea and the long black land ; And the yellow half -moon large and low ;" and the long vowels and liquid consonants make these two lines move slowly in spite of you. But the rapidity of the third and fourth Hnes is very evident, the voice quickening involuntarily with the sharp consonants and the increased proportion of short vowels : "And the startled Uttle waves that leap In fiery ringlets from their sleep." This all corresponds exactly to the scene — sea and land and moon all serene, and then our attention suddenly attracted by the dancing waves at the bow of the boat — these more noticeable in the shallow water just as the boat strikes the sand. The second stanza accompHshes much the same thing: Lines i and 2 move slowly and serenely, as the man crosses "a. mile of warm sea-scented beach" and '^ three fields," — both are lines in which long vowels prevail, — but lines 3 and 4, describing what happens at the house, move quickly with an accumulation of such words as ''tap," ''quick," "scratch," "spurt," "match," — all with short vowels and crisp consonants. The poem is a masterly piece of work, but the technique with which it is done nowhere obtrudes. Of course, in any such work, the finer the technique the more it serves the thought, but the less attention it attracts to itself, — and perfect technique would attract no attention at all. Such is the irony of art. (3) Browning's short poems, again, are not so polished as Tennyson's. But often they are very effective by reason of sheer ruggedness. d. I am sure that many of Browning's harsh and curious rhymes are made in fun. They always occur in some 72 BROWNING STUDIES serio-comic thing like The Heretic's Tragedy or A Gram- marian's Funeral, or in some jovial thing Hke Old Pictures in Florence or A Likeness or the Prologue to Ferishtah's Fancies, or in some sarcastic thing like Pacchiarotto. Some- one ought to get out a book on Browning's humorous vein.^ He was so human that he couldn't help seeing the funny side to some things which are really very serious and many things which have serious pretensions. The mixture of humor and seriousness in many of his poems, just as it exists in human life, is very interesting. And it is quite plain that in some poems he purposely exaggerates the funny side; and some poems, of course, are altogether jocular in tone. But many critics have not had the saving grace of humor themselves and so have taken in downright earnest what Browning means as a humorous exercise. So they are incKned to think him a poor artist when what he is drawing is intended to be nothing but a caricature. The ridiculous rhymes in A Grammarian's Funeral are simply to help out the grotesqueness of the whole thing. To understand them so is altogether in keeping with the pedantic tone of the man in whose mouth the poem is put. And the grotesqueness is, no doubt, quite true to the extravagances of these first students in the Revival of Learning. So we get "cock-crow . . . rock-row," ^ "overcome it . . . summit,"^ "fabric . . . dab brick," ^ " far gain . . . bargain," ^ "failure . . . pale lure," ^ ''loosened . . . dew send." ^ And the rhymes in A Likeness are atrocious, e.g.^ 1 Vida Dutton Scudder has done something of this in her book The Life of the Spirit in the Modern English Poets, Boston, 1895, pp. 201-238. 2 P. 366, U. 56-58. 3 P. 366, U. 68-70. 4 P. 367, U. 36-38. 6 p. 367^ u. 64-66. 6 P. 367, U. 76-78. 7 P. 368, U. 1 2-14, 8P.si8,U. 75-78. BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST 73 "That hair's not so bad, where the gloss is, But they've made the girl's nose a proboscis : Jane Lamb, that we danced with at Vichy ! What, is not she Jane? Then, who is she?" So are the performances in the Prologue to Ferishtah^s Fancies, ^' Italy" rhyming '^spit ally," ^ ''unpalatable" — ''each who's able," ^ "masticate" — "peptics' state." ^ Now, no one with common sense can suppose that these things were done otherwise than on purpose to be in keep- ing with the spirit of these poems. Whether that's wit or not is another question, but it is not to be charged up to awkwardness and careless workmanship. 5. Browning's great use of alliteration ought to be mentioned. Examples are hardly needed : "Or, August's hair afloat in filmy fire." * "I see the same stone strength of white despair." ^ "Some dervish desert-spectre, swordsman, saint." * Referring again to presenting Caponsacchi before an audience, — on more than one occasion people have spoken to me of noticing the immense prevalence of aUiteration as they Hstened. If illustrations from Caponsacchi are desired : ''In glided a masked muflSed mystery, Laid lightly a letter on the opened book." ^ "Out of the coach into the inn I bore The motionless and breathless pure and pale Pomp^lia." ^ "Still breathless, motionless, sleep's self, Wax-white, seraphic, saturate with the sun." * 1 P. 1217, 11. 2-4. 2 P. 1217,11. 22-24. « P. 1217, 11. 29-31. * P. 666, 1. 30. B P. 882, 1.66. «P. 911, 1. 29. 'P. 758, 11. 72, 73. 8 P. 770, U. 31-33. »P. 77i,U. 66, 67. 74 BROWNING STUDIES In the last two illustrations we have not only initial allitera- tion, but, in '' breathless" and ^'motionless,'' we have final alliteration in -less. There is such a thing as overdoing alliteration, and Browning may be in danger of that, although his allitera- tion seldom produces anything except a pleasant effect — a sense of melody and harmony.^ 6. One more point must be spoken of among the ex- cellences of Browning's literary art, and that is cadence of lines. In his blank verse, he manages cadence with great skill. Cadence (hterally, falling) is a thing that can't be taught. It must He in the soul of the poet. It is not so much in the words as in the atmosphere of the line. It is that which makes you realize that things are coming to a conclusion. In single lines, it is that which causes the voice to drop in spite of you and creates in your thoughts a sense that the poet has written something ultimate. For a case of prolonged cadence, one should be familiar with the last 50 lines of Pompilia's monologue in The Ring and the Book. For the finest cadence Brown- ing ever wrote in a single line, take this from Cleon: ^ "Within the eventual element of calm." Few poets have been able to handle cadence, and the greatest poets have written only a few such lines. The two most famous lines for cadence are probably Milton's, in Sampson Agonistes, ^ 1 Prof. John B. Nykerk, in conversation, has raised the question whether Browning was influenced by Old English alliterative verse, or, leaving the O. E. literature out of account, whether it may not be possible that certain elements of personality and tendency to grapple with life, which developed the alliterative verse-form in Anglo-Saxon days, may be the same that produce in Browning's poems such a high degree of alliteration. 2P. 468, 1.32. 3 Sampson Agonistes, 1. 598, (Cambridge Ed., Boston, 1899, p. 301). BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST 75 "And I shall shortly be with them that rest," and Tennyson's, in Guinevere,^ "To where beyond these voices there is peace." But it seems to me the cadence in this line of Browning's is fully equal to that in the others. "And I shall shortly be with them that rest." "To where beyond these voices there is peace." "Within the eventual element of calm." Surely Browning's line is as good as the best. 7. Poetic imagination is closely related to craftsmanship in the art of verse. The first essential is that a man have somewhat to write, and fundamental to this is poetic imagination. But the subject is too large to be discussed here. It may be added, however, that in extent, daring, and vividness, Browning's imagination is equal to that of the greatest poets of the world. This is plain in the whole conception and handling of his work. Even those who grudge to concede to Browning a firstclass skill in versification are obliged to pay their tribute to his mind. Certainly his works show on every page the vast power of an imagination which is creative and life-giving in the highest degree. In choice of words, then, in wealth of diction, in ability to draw word-pictures, in beauty and melody of lines, in use of alliteration, and in the producing of cadence, we find Browning a literary artist of high rank. And in poetic imagination, he is without a superior. ^ The last line of Guinevere in the Idylls of the King, (Globe Ed., New York 1892, p. 458). m INTRODUCTION (CONCLUDED) : OUR PLAN OF STUDY IN THIS COURSE A WORD about our plan of study in this course. 1. There is no way to understand Browning except by reading Browning and reading a large amount of Browning. This brings our minds into harmony with his, and we understand him easily. Nothing can ever take the place of this. 2. The surest rule for dealing with a passage which is difficult to understand is the rule already in vogue among Browning students: Read it. If you don't understand it, read it again. If you don't understand it then, read it again. If still you don't understand it, read it again. And read it until you do understand it. This is scientific. The trouble is that either the thought or the method of expressing it is unusual. Therefore, we need to have our minds tuned up to it. By reading it we are tuning our minds up to Browning's when he wrote it, — and presently it is plain and easy to us. 3. These principles, that the only way to under- stand Browning is to read much of him and to read till we understand, will govern our study in this course. 4. Our general plan will be to go from short poems to the longer and more complex ones. Sometimes I shall 76 OUR PLAN OF STUDY 77 have to assign more than we can discuss in class. We will begin with some of the short poems next time.^ 1 In the college classes, at the close of each lecture, the poems to be dis- cussed at the next meeting of the class have been assigned. The assignment has grouped the shorter poems and could usually be read in two hours, though sometimes it would take more. Reading once the assignments has been required. Students have been also advised to read twice, if possible, all assignments, i.e. before the lecture dealing with them and after the lecture. Twice reading could not, of course, be required, because of time consumed in once reading the Browning assignment and in attending to the outside reading. In examination, each student has had to answer whether he has done all the reading assigned in Browning's works and outside of Browning's works. IV SOME OF THE SHORT POEMS PUBLISHED BEFORE MRS. BROWNING'S DEATH The titles of Browning's volumes as they appeared have been preserved as headings of the divisions in his collected works, with only one modification.^ But many short poems are not now found under the general heading which corresponds to the volume in which they first ap- peared. This is on account of the redistribution made by Browning in his collected works of 1863 and 1868. Thus, e.g. Men and Women, 2 vols., when published in 1855, contained 51 poems. Now only 13 are left standing in that division of his works, and of these only eight were in the original Men and Women, the other five being three that appeared in Dramatic Lyrics, 1842, and two from Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845. At the same time, 43 poems that appeared in Men and Women in 1855 ^^^ now distributed under several different divisions of the collected works. This was done, of course, simply because Browning, having his works before him, saw that these poems, by reason of subject and treatment, belong more appropriately under other general heads. Men and Women is cited simply as an illustration of the shaking up which took place in all the volumes of short poems.^ The matter * Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845, has been shortened to simply Dramatic Romances. 2 The short poems published in volumes subsequent to 1868 stand now in the works under the titles of those volumes, and in the same order in which they first appeared. 78 CAVALIER TUNES 79 is mentioned here to avoid confusion in the mind of the reader, when he notices that, in the following comment on some of the short poems, a poem is said to have been pubHshed in a certain volume, and then finds the poem now in an entirely different division of Browning's works. I. Cavalier Tunes, pp. 219, 220 Published in Dramatic Lyrics ^ 1842. 1 . These songs are set in the war between King Charles I, of England, and the Parliament, 1642-45. The cavaliers who sing them are on the King's side. 2. The songs are full of references to the men of the time: King Charles (bom 1600, crowned 1625, beheaded 1649) and his opponents — Oliver Cromwell (i 599-1 658), John Pym (1584-1643), John Hampden (1594-1643), Sir Arthur Hazelrig (died 1661), Nathaniel Fiennes (1608- 1669), *' Young Harry" (beheaded 1662) son of Sir Henry Vane. Prince Rupert of Bavaria (1619-1682), grandson of James I, went to England at the beginning of the Civil War to help the cause of his uncle, King Charles. His coming appears in the first song, encouraging the cavaliers. *' Kentish Sir Byng" is some knight from Kent, no his- torical person. 3. These are real soldier-songs. Songs in Literature put into the mouths of soldiers are usually too literary, and too soft and musical. These are rough songs such as real soldiers might sing. The historical names men- tioned are names that were in everyone's mouth in those days. The songs have plenty of rough soldier-spirit, with sneers at the Puritans on account of their short hair ("crop-headed Parliament" in the first song, *' Round- heads" in the third song), with Cromwell's nickname "Noll" (for Oliver), and with the use of such words as 8o BROWNING STUDIES "the devil" and "hell" without which a soldier's song would be feeble, and even a stronger word when Crom- well's troopers are mentioned in the second song. The word "carles" (twice in first song) means churls — the two words are doublets from Old' English ceorl. 4. Browning has given to the chorus of the third song the movement of galloping horses, i.e. it certainly seems as if the line "Boot, saddle, to horse, and away !" gallops as you read it. II. The Lost Leader, p. 220 Published 1845, ^^ Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. The poem refers to one who deserts the people's cause. The poem is a severe one. From the fact that it mentions Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Shelley, as being on the people's side, it is natural to suppose that the recreant is a literary man. Wordsworth fills the bill, — a liberal in his youth and intensely moved by the French Revolu- tion — in later years opposing innovations and progressive legislation. In 1875, Browning was asked if he referred to Wordsworth in the poem and answered : ^ "I have been asked the question you now address me with, and as duly answered, I can't remember how many times. There is no sort of objection to one more assurance, or rather con- fession, on my part, that I did in my hasty youth presume to use the great and venerable personality of Wordsworth as a sort of painter's model; one from which this or the other particular feature may be selected and turned to account." 1 We quote only a part of the letter. It was printed in Grosart's Edition of Wordsworth's Prose Worksy and is reprinted in Berdoe, Browning Cyclo- pedia, pp. 256, 257. GARDEN FANCIES 8l III. Gajiden Fancies, pp. 222-224 These were first printed in Hood's Magazine, July, 1844, and then were included in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics y 1845. 1. The first one, The Flower's Name, is made up of the thoughts of a lover as he walks again where he walked in the garden with his sweetheart, where so many things are associated with her, but especially the flower whose name she told him. The poem is gentle and delicate. 2. The second, Sihrandus Schafnaburgensis, is full of exuberant humor, drawing the contrast between a dead book of philosophy and the real world of Kving things. a. The title is the name of the author of the old book supposed to be brought into the garden. Grifiin and Minchin, in their Life of Browning, point out that he met such names in reading as a boy Nathaniel Wanley's Wonders of the Little World ^ in his father's library. Schafnaburgensis means a native of the city of Aschaffenburg, on the river Main in the province of Lower Franconia in Bavaria. h. The poem is so fine a thing that we are justified in adding these notes : P. 223, 1. 44. The punctuation at the end of this line in the Globe Edition should be a comma instead of a period. The sentence runs on into the next stanza. 1. 46, arbute, arbutus, a genus of evergreen shrubs, of the heath family. There are several species. This is probably the most common one, called the "strawberry tree" from its fruit which outwardly resembles the straw- berry. Not to be confused with the "trailing arbutus" of the U. S. A. * Wanley's book was published in 1678. There are also editions of 1774 and 1806-0.7. 82 BROWNING STUDIES laurustine, (also spelled laurestine), Viburnum tinuSj an evergreen shrub or tree of the south of Europe; it flowers during the winter months. 1. 50, Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain eight miles north of Salisbury. The remains, supposed to be of Druid origin, consist of upright stones and some horizontal slabs. The original plan of the whole can be made out. A traveller might well be tempted to count the stones. 1. 55, pont-levis, drawbridge (literally, light bridge). 1. 66, Chablis, a town in France in the department of Yonne, famous for its wines — hence Chablis, wine from this place. Not to be confused with Chablais ^ in Savoy. 1. 67, oaf, a repulsive elf, used here figuratively for the book. 1. 68, Rabelais, Francois Rabelais (1495-1553), great scholar and humorist of the Renaissance, evidently a favorite with Browning.^ 1. 70, limbo, a supposed border land somewhere between Heaven and Hell, where certain souls have to await judg- ment. Hence any place apart from the world, place of confinement. 1. 72, akimbo, with elbows sticking out and hands on hips. ^ 11. 74, 75, de profundis, accentibus loetis, cantate!, out of the depths sing with joyful tones, (or accents). P. 224, 1. 2, right of trover, right to a thing that is found. Laws of trover refer to possession of things one finds in highways and such places. 1. II, John Knox, 1505-157 2, Scottish reformer, severe Presbyterian, very Puritanical, e.g. his volume, 1558, 1 Cf . A Likeness, p. 518, 1. 67, "And the chamois-homs ('shot in the Chablais')." ' Cf. A Likeness, p. 518, 1. 70, "And the little edition of Rabelais." GARDEN FANCIES 83 entitled Blasts of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regi- ment of Women. Of course, nothing could be more ludicrous than John Knox fastened into the front row in an opera house and obliged to witness a ballet. 1. 17, sufficit, it is enough. c. According to the poem, Browning (or whoever is speaker of the lines) reads the old dry book conscientiously "From title-page to closing line," and then proceeds to his revenge. This consists in dump- ing the book down the hollow trunk of an old plum-tree. That was ''last month." Some days have passed, and meantime the book has lain there among the rain-drippings and all the wild creatures that inhabit the decaying inside of the old tree. The buoyant fancy of Browning revels in the contrast between the dead book and the Hving things. This morning, he fishes up the book with a rake and prom- ises it a return to his shelf where it can "Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day." d. The poem abounds in gentle irony. This dreary book is called "our friend," "my bookshelf's magnate," "his delectable treatise." e. The poem should be read many times. It will be found highly rejuvenating to drooping spirits. Only a few Hues need be quoted as samples : (i) The spider whose web had been woven across the hole in the tree : "Now, this morning, betwixt the moss And gum that locked our friend in limbo, A spider had spun his web across, And sat in the midst with arms akimbo." (2) Everyone knows how disastrous to the appearance 84 BROWNING STUDIES of a book a wetting is, but no one has ever told it more skilfully than Browning here : "Here you have it, dry in the sun, With all the binding all of a blister, And great blue spots where the ink has run, And reddish streaks that wink and glister O'er the page so beautifully yellow : Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks !" Then comes a very funny turn — did this dfy-as-dust philosopher of long ago know anything about things that have become associated with his book? "Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow? Here's one stuck in his chapter six ! " (3) Then follows that turning loose of the poet's imagina- tion as to the incongruous experiences of the old book, "when the live creatures Tickled and toused and browsed him all over," in the midst of "All that life and fun and romping. All that frisking and twisting and coupling." It partakes of Browning's sympathy with all forms of life. IV. Meeting at Night, Parting at Morning, p. 228 Published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845. 1. These are certainly two exquisite bits of scenery, and something be?vies. 2. Browning has the courage to make them true and vivid, where a poet given to more poHshing would have removed them from reality. Thus, if the over-nice object to such phrases as ''the slushy sand" and the "blue spurt" of the match, they must remember that the sand at the water's edge is simply slushy and that the ''blue spurt" MEETING AT NIGHT, PARTING AT MORNING 85 of the phosphorus and sulphur match (the kind of match everybody used to have) is what we saw evening after evening. I am reminded of a discussion between some theological students, objecting to the preacher's having said in an illustration that the tide was out and the boats were "stuck in the mud/' — the discussion being chiefly how to say the boats were stuck in the mud without say- ing they were stuck in the mud. There's too much of that nonsense, and Robert Browning would have none of it. He used the words that convey accurately what he was describing. 3. The remarkable quality of Meeting at Night has been referred to in our discussion of Browning's Uterary art. We might call attention to how true to Ufe is the woman's sitting in the dusk waiting for the man to come and Hght- ing the lamp at his tap on the window-pane. The pas- sionate greeting in the last two lines should not be over- looked, her voice less loud than the beating of their hearts. 4. Parting at Morning is not such a piece of art as Meet- ing at Night, but it is a worthwhile bit nevertheless. The tide is coming in rapidly — it seems as if the sea comes round the cape of a sudden. The sun comes up over the mountains to the eastward, making a path of gold across the water toward the observer — it is "a path of gold for him," i.e. for the sun, as if he were going to travel across the world on the path of gold that is on the water, {straight, probably the adjective, predicate after was, , but maybe the adverb, straightway). With the coming of the tide and the sun, the man must hasten back to his business and struggle in the city. 5. Both poems are in the mouth of the man, not the second one in the mouth of the woman as Dr. Berdoe ^ * Berdoe, Browning Cyclopadia, ed. 191 2, p. 270. 86 BROWNING STUDIES supposes. "Him" means the sun. The point is that even as the sun goes forth for the day along his golden path, so the man must needs go forth into the ''world of men." No wonder that, with such a start, Berdoe finds the fourth line ''slightly obscure." V. Evelyn Hope, p. 229 Published in 1855 in Men and Women, vol. I. 1. It is a poem of great intensity. The lover asks us to come and sit by the side of this sixteen-year-old girl where she lies dead, and he succeeds in speaking to us for two stanzas about her, but the rest of the poem is ad- dressed to her. Though he was "thrice as old" as she and though their " paths in the world diverged so wide," he loved her and will love her forever. 2. Stanzas v, vi, and vii would be plainer to us if the punctuation were such as we are accustomed to, i.e. with what he intends to say at last to Evelyn Hope enclosed in quotation marks, thus e.g. When, " Evelyn Hope, what meant," I shill say. The quotation ends with the fourth line of stanza v, and he goes on to say what he will learn. Then the quotation is resumed with stanza vi, "I have lived," I shall say, and continues to the middle of stanza vii.' The remaining four lines are addressed to her now, and would be outside the quotation. 3. We are not to understand from stanzas iv, v, and vi that Browning believes in metempsychosis. He does not give in his support to that doctrine. But the point is that even if it is so and he has to be reincarnated over and over again — give himself up and live the life of different men in different ages and different lands — even if that is LOVE AMONG THE RUINS 87 true, one thing will persist through all his various exist- ences, and that will be his love for Evelyn Hope. And throughout all his existences he will want her, and when he finds her at last, he will refer to "the years long still" "in the lower earth" when his "heart seemed full as it could hold." But it was not full without her : "There was place and to spare for the frank young smile, And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold." And he will tell her : "I loved you, Evelyn, all the while." 4. The reader is not to suppose that he has autobiography here. We are in contact with Browning's intense per- sonality, but poets in writing love-poems do not necessarily draw on their own definite experience. Such is the poet's imagination. 5. The more this poem is read the more its extraordinary vividness strikes us. Perhaps no detail contributes more than does the piece of geranium picked by her own hand, still standing in the glass of water but beginning to die too. The geranium is not a poetic and romantic flower, and most poets would avoid it. But Robert Browning is writing of life as it is, and knowing how common gera- niums are (or used to be) as house-plants, he puts in a piece of one of Evelyn Hope's geraniums as a true bit of the setting. For this sort of thing we honor him. VI. Love among the Ruins, pp. 229, 230 PubUshed in 1855, the first poem in vol. I of Men and Women. I. It contrasts the glory and power and ostentation that have been with the love of a girl — the love that 88 BROWNING STUDIES now is, — and finds ^'love is best." It is a singularly graceful and attractive poem. 2. A few notes may be of use : a. Consideration shifts alternately from what was when the scene was a populous city to what is now — just a few ruins ^ and a girl. The emphasis should be strong upon then and now and ^11 words which distinguish the past from the present, e.g. ^'he looked," ^'she looks now," ^^they sent," — so that the two parts will not be confused but each will furnish background for the other. b. Browning, of course, always scorns the pedantic rules set down in rhetoric books, about prepositions at the end of clauses and sentences. So in this poem (stanzas I and ii) he has (i) ''its prince . . . held his court in," where elaborately written prose would go : in which its prince held his court; (2) ''slopes of verdure, certain rills . . . intersect and give a name to," — slopes of verdure which certain rills intersect and to which they give a name ; and (3) "a wall . . . made of marble, men might march on," — a wall on which men might march. c. The latter half of stanza iii — Browning expects that men in the old days were as now, — with hearts pricked up by desire for glory, struck tame by dread of shame, and susceptible to the power of gold — having their price, as cynics say every man has now. d. Stanza v— fleece, meaning that which is covered by fleece viz. the flock of sheep ; girl with eager eyes and yellow hair, Browning seems fond of yellow-haired girls, cf. Porphyria.^ e. Stanza vi — There should be no mistake about the third and fourth lines. Many editions do not print cor- * In fact, only the basement of the great tower remains (stanza iv). * In Porphyria's Lover, p. 375, 11. 43, 45, 64. WYE AMONG THE RUINS 89 rectly glades\ possessive plural — the colonnades of the glades. There were temples on the mountains in the distance (none near, stanza 11) and there were colonnades in the glades. Causeys^ causeways. In the latter half of the stanza — notice that there will be two kinds of embraces : (i) first her eyes will embrace his face, (2) then the lover and the girl will embrace each other. /. Stanza vii — As to the pillar built to their gods by the ancient inhabitants: (i) The pillar was made of the brass of captured chariots (chariots captured by these million fighters sent out in a single year), and yet in spite of using so many they were able to reserve a thousand chariots which were specially fine, being ornamented with gold. This makes ''Gold, of course" apply to these 1000 chariots. (2) It may be, however, that ''Gold, of course" has nothing to do with "chariots," but means simply an additional item as to the wealth of the city: "Of course there was plenty of gold," even though a million men were sent to war in a single year. (3) Further, it may be that the brazen pillar has nothing to do with captured chariots (although such use of such spoils would be quite consistent with ancient customs), and that the 1000 chariots reserved are a thousand of the king's own, i.e. although he sent 1,000,000 men to war that year, he could still reserve 1000 chariots at home. The words "in full force" favor this interpretation. " As to the latter part of this stanza : (i) It may be that "Earth's returns etc." is in apposition with "blood that freezes etc." i.e. "blood that freezes etc." is all there really is of the wealth and glory. (2) Or it may more likely be that "Oh heart! oh blood that freezes etc." is this lover's own heart and blood, and that the exclamation "Earth's returns etc." is independent and means : such are earth's QO BROWNING STUDIES returns — these ruins here. (3) In either case, " Shut them in " is addressed to nobody in particular, exactly as ^' let them go '' might be, and ip^ans practically " let them be," ^' let them alone," -^he ''theM" being those who struggled in those ^'centuries of folly, noise and sin." '^How he esteems what they struggled for is shown by his mentioning a couple of items and then dismissing it with the words "and the rest." In contrast to it £tif,'. love in the present hour is best. 3. This belief in the beauty of life in the present hour and this doctrine that love is best are very like so much of Browning. This is a good love-poem. Of course, if people don't want love-poems, they mustn't read them. But if we're going to have love-poems at all, let's have them red-blooded and intense. No pale-blooded lov,e-poem is worth writing or worth reading. VII. "De Gustibus— " pp. 238, 239 Published in vol. II of Men and Women, 1855. 1 . The title is a part of the Latin proverb '' De gustibus non disputandum est," there should be no dispute concerning tastes (literally, concerning tastes it must not be disputed). 2. This is a bit of humor. The point is : if the soul after death keeps the same tastes it had while in the body, then the ghost of each will walk in the places he used to like most. Thus the ghost of the lovf r of trees will walk in an Enghsh lane — and then with' fiiat alertness which is always in Browning's best work, he sees the ghost of such a tree-lov€r walking in the lane, "By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies," and urges him to get out of the way, so as not to frighten the boy and girl making love in the hazel coppice. Any- one accustomed to walking in English lanes knows how often you come upon the boy and girl making love. We "DE GUSTIBUS—" - 91 should not miss Browning's sympathy with them nor the sadness of the fact that youth is so soon over : "And let them pass, as they will too soon, With the bean-flowers' boon, And the blackbird's tune, And May, and June ! " r 3. Every ghost to the spot he liked best before he became a ghost. Therefore, Robert Browning's ghost will go to Italy, for "What I love best in all the world Is a castle, preclpice-encurled, j^ In^a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine." So his ghost will very likely be around a place like that, or else "In a sea-side house to the farther South." We hardly need to call attention to the picturesqueness of the gash in the mountain and the precipice curling about the castle, and of each of the details of the scene ^further south, each detail chosen not for elegance but to be exactly true to Browning's memory of such places, and ending with the bare-footed girl and her melons and her anarchistic sympathies, true to what Browning knew so well of many of the Italian peasants. 4. Apropos of this confession, as to whither his tastes turn, Browning breaks out, "Italy, my Italy !'» And catching at Queen Mary's ^ words about Calais, he writes : "Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, 'Italy.' Such lovers old are I and she r So it always was, so shall ever be !" » Mary Tudor, Queen of England from 1553 to 1558. 92 BROWNING STUDIES VIII. Home-Thoughts, from Abroad ; Home-Thoughts, FROM the Sea, p. 239 "^" Published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845. They were at that time arranged under one heading Home Thoughts from Abroad, the first as "Oh, to be in England" and the other as ''Nobly Cape St. Vincent," and between them was another, ''Here's to Nelson's Memory," which is now placed as the third poem under Nationality in Drinks (p. 222). 1. Home-Thoughts from Abroad are the thoughts of an Englishman, who is away where the "gaudy melon-flower" is (probably in Italy), as the English spring comes up before his mind's eye. He describes it beautifully. If there is one thing in the poem finer than the rest, it is the reference to the thrush and the exquisite fancy as to why he sings as he does : "That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture !" 2. Home-Thoughts from the Sea are the thoughts of an Englishman at sight of Trafalgar, where Lord Nelson won the great victory over the combined fleets of France and Spain on Oct. 21, 1805, and Gibraltar, which has been held since 1704 as one of the bulwarks of the British Empire. With fresh realization of what Trafalgar and Gibraltar mean, he says : "Here and here did England help me : how can I help England ? " He wants everyone to ask that question — everyone who turns as he turns, this evening, to God, "to praise and pray." Any normal Englishman ought to have his patriot- ism and his religious thinking stirred by passing Trafalgar and Gibraltar. BY THE FIRE-SIDE 93 "The first four lines of Home-Thoughts from the Sea are an exact transcript of the scene which he [Browning] beheld from the deck of the Norham Castle on the evening of Friday, 27 April, 1838, on his first voyage to Italy." ^ IX. By the Fire-side, pp. 245-248 Published in vol. I of Men and Women, 1855. 1. The situation is just this: T^e man looks forward to "life's November" — what will he be doing then? Why, he will be sitting by the fire "deep in Greek." And "the young ones" (probably grandchildren), seeing him so absorbed will slip away to cut "from the hazels" a mainmast for their "ship." He will forget his book, hov/ever, and his thoughts will go back to that day in the Apennines with the woman he loved, when their two lives were poured together into one life forevermore. His mind goes over again each detail of the scene and each incident of their walk. The poem is really addressed to the same woman, his wife, who sits opposite him at the fireside. So, at the end, his thoughts come back from that event of the past and gather about her now. He reiterates his intention of having that crowning evening to think about in the autumn of his life. 2. It is hardly too much to say that the poem, from first to last, is altogether delightful and wonderful. It is useless to try to make quotations from it, because there is no good place to stop. 3. The place described is probably a ggrge near the Baths of Lucca. The Brownings had spent the summer at the Baths of Lucca in 1849 ^^^ again in 1853. The wife sits yonder, (stanza lii), "Musing by fire-light, that great brow And the spirit-small hand propping it." 1 Griffin and Minchin, Life of Browning, p. 1 2 7. 94 BROWNING STUDIES This describes Mrs. Browning. That is a curious fancy — a "spirit-small hand," i.e. a hand as small as a spirit has. It is true, of course, that Browning proposed to his wife in London, not in a gorge in the Apennines. But it is also undoubtedly true that we have here a confession of his love for her and how much it has meant to him. It is simply a case of putting the truth of his own love into a natural setting of which he was fond, viz. this mountain gorge. X. The Guardian-Angel, pp. 257, 258 Published in vol. II of Men and Women, 1855. 1. Subtitle, A Picture at Fano. (a) Fano is a city at the mouth of the river Metauro, in the province of Urbino- and-Pesaro, on the east coast of Italy, {b) Robert Brown- ing and his wife visited Fano in the summer of 1848 — stayed three days there and then went to Ancona. (c) The painting referred to is by an artist of Bologna, named Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1590- 1666), called Guercino ("squint-eyed"), and by this nickname he is generally known, — " Guercino drew this angel " (stanza vi) . (d) The picture is on a tomb in the church of St. Augustine. It represents a little child at prayer, while an angel stands over him, with wings outspread, the left arm around the child, the right hand closing over the child's clasped hands, (e) Three times Mr. and Mrs. Browning went to this church to sit and look at this picture (stanza vii). (/) The poem was evidently written at Ancona (stanza viii, last line). 2. Protestants have discarded the doctrine that there is a guardian angel for each one of us, but Catholics devoutly hold it. Browning feels keenly how beautiful a thing it would be to have that angel, when done with the child, step out of the picture over to him and do for him what THE PATRIOT 95 is being done for the child. Only Browning needs it more, world-worn as he is. 3. The poem goes to pieces toward the end. The friend spoken of in stanza vi is Alfred Domett, who went to New Zealand and settled in 1842. He is the man called Waring in the poem of that title (pp. 348-351). The Wairoa (stanza viii) is a river in New Zealand. The last three stanzas are distracted between Mrs. Browning and Alfred Domett, and are a poor ending, diverting attention from the point. 4. But the first five stanzas are addressed directly to the angel on the tomb, and are very discerning. They come to a good conclusion and should be read as a poem by themselves. There will come times in any tired man's life when he will deeply appreciate them. XI. TSee Patmot^^„. 333 Published in vol. I of Men and Women, 1855. 1. The subtitle is ^w Old Story. And it certainly is an old and oft-repeated story how men have done their utmost to help their country and have come to the hang- man's rope or the headsman's axe. The leaders of the American Revolution of 1776 knew what they were facing ; it is related that they said grimly: ^'We must hang to- gether or we'll hang separately." Of course, George Washington was a traitor to the British crown. But, being successful in leading the American colonists, he became "the father of his country." Furthermore, there are plenty of examples of the fickleness of the populace, — on a man's side when he's winning, deserting him when he fails. This also is an old story. 2. In the case described in the poem, a man has in whole- souled devotion given himself for his country, — at first 96 BROWNING STUDIES successfully, attended by great applause at his entry into the city, but later the tide has turned against him and now he is on his way out to be hanged. Very naturally the contrast is bitter in his thoughts, between how he entered exactly a year ago and how he goes out to-day. And the contrast could not easily be better described than Browning does it. A year ago, "It was roses, roses, all the way, With myrtle mixed in my path like mad," and house-roofs loaded with people, church-spires flaming with flags, the sound of so many bells that they filled the air like a mist, and the old walls rocking with the crowd and their cheering. If he had asked them to give him the sun from the skies, they would have agreed at once to take it down and give it to him, and immediately would have asked him what else he wanted. He realizes now that it was he who leaped at the sun to get it and give it to the people, i.e. he tried to do for them a great thing, tried to bring great blessing to their Hves, and was' not able to reach it. Now, a year to the very day from that temporary triumph, he is walking through the streets to his execution. The crowd are on their way to the scaffold at the Shambles' Gate. A few with palsy cannot go, but sit at the windows to see him pass. It rains, and the rope cuts his wrists tied behind him. Anyone who cares to flings a stone at him. He thinks by the feeling that he is bleeding at a wound in the forehead, where a stone has hit him. Sharply the two scenes come to his mind — a year ago and now : "Thus I entered, and thus I go !" "Well," he thinks, "cases have been known where a man in a triumph, overcome by the excitement, has dropped dead. If I had died that day a year ago and had gone THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER 97 up before God fresh from the approbation of men, I might have been told by God that I had been paid by the world and might have been questioned by God: 'What dost thou owe me?' Now surely I have not been paid by the world. I have done the best I could for my countrymen and what I get is a hanging." The balance is on the other side of the account : " 'Tis God shall repay : I am safer so." ''So," i.e. safer trusting God's award than men's. This paraphrase purposely avoids quoting more com- pletely the phrases in the poem. They are full of extraor- dinary vividness. This patriot is a fine figure of a man who has held unfalteringly to his ideal and is therefore ready to stand unashamed before God. XII. The Last Ride Together, pp. 352, 353 Published in vol. I of Men and Women, 1855. I. The circumstances are plain: The lover has been rejected. He accepts it philosophically, and asks the lady to take just one more ride with him, which she agrees to do. He helps her on her horse, (this is the point in stanza iii, cf. the last two lines when he is helping her on), and they begin to -ride. He doesn't worry about the fact that she has rejected his suit, nor about the fact that he's never going to ride with her again. Enough that he's riding with her now, and he makes the most of it. What's the use in spoiHng the present hour by thinking about what has been and what is to be. The main point is that he's riding with her, and that's better for him than soldiers' glory or artists' fame. He has this one chance, and (stanza n) /'Who knows but the world may end to-night ? " 98 BROWNING STUDIES And as they ride, it seems to him that Heaven may be only (stanza x) . "The instant made eternity." Such a perpetuation of this instant would be quite satisfac- tory to him. The poem is one of Browning^s best e^rressions of his belief in making the most of the hour that now is. It is also one of the richest of his short poems in melody and beauty. XIII. A Grammarian's Funeral, pp. 366-368 PubUshed in vol. II of Men and Women, 1855. 1. This is a piece of rare and curious humor. 2. The circumstances are plain : a. The time is indicated by the words Browning has put under the title : ''Shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe," b. A Renaissance scholar, whose study has run chiefly to Greek, is now dead, and is borne on the shoulders of his students to burial on a high mountain, the only fit place for burying a man of such high thinking and such high aspirations. The poem is spoken by the leader of the students, as they go on: he begins while they are still on the plain, continues as they come into a city on the mountain-side and march through its market-place, still continues as they wind up the narrow way beyond, and ceases speaking soon after they reach "the platform" ^ on the summit. c. The poem consists of eulogy of their dead teacher, 1 p. 368, 1. 3, " Well, here's the platform." What is this platform ? Is it something built up on which the body is to rest permanently, in a sarcoph- agus? Or is it a temporary structure on, which they are to hold a funeral service? Or does it mean simply the level spot on top of the mountain? A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 99 wise and pithy sayings about life (chiefly suggested by his attitude toward life), and parenthetical directions and exhortations to the bearers and other students. 3. The poem gives an accurate reflection of the interest- ing mixture of pedantry, real sense, and grotesque exaggera- tion among these first students in the Revival of Learning. Throughout the poem the realization is keen of the pitiful disproportion between the work a scholar puts in and the visible results achieved. This must always be so. 4. Notice some words : a. Academic terms : P. 367, 1. 16, he gomned him, became a student, put on a scholar's gown. Such was the custom in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Whatever use of distinctive academic dress survives in our day owes its origin in some sort to this old custom. 1. 26, the comment, commentary written in the margin of manuscripts. Learning is spoken of here figuratively as a book, and to go thoroughly one must read not only the text but the marginal comment. h. Medical terms : P. 367, 1. 30, queasy, nauseated, — used of his mind's devouring everything nor ever getting too much — never getting sick of it. (Not a strictly medical term as the next one is.) 1. 52, Calculus, regular medical term for stone, whether in the liver, kidney, bladder, or any other organ of the body. The word is more commonly met in the plural calculi. 1. 54, Tussis, a cough. 1. 61, soul-hydr optic. The more common word is hydropic (direct from Latin hydropicus, which in turn comes directly from the Greek), but hydr optic is found (made from English ICX) BROWNING STUDIES hydropsy, erroneously following epilepsy, epileptic, and the like). Hydroptic, dropsical. The point is that in some dropsical conditions there is much thirst, and this man's soul is as thirsty as if it had the dropsy. c, Greek words : P. 367, 1. 95, Hoti, OTL, conjunction, that, because. 1. 96, Oun, ow, conjunction, then, therefore. P. 368, 1. I, the enclitic De, ^e, inseparable unaccented particle, — not to be confused with the word Se which means but. d. Why does Browning use such words as these weVe been speaking of ? Of course, to give atmosphere and color to the poem. -^^ 5. According to the poem, the reason why the dead scholar gave himself so unreservedly to his work and denied himself the immediate comfort and good of life was because he wanted the greater good, the ''far gain.'* And he believed that he would not fail of that, because he had confidence that death would not be the end : "Others mistrust and say, 'But time escapes: Live now or never ! ' He said, 'What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes ! Man has Forever. ' " XIV. Porphyria's Lover, p. 375 First printed in The Monthly Repository ^ in 1836,^ under the title Porphyria and over the signature "Z." In the same number of The Monthly Repository appeared Johannes Agricola (now called Johannes Agricola in Medi- tation). In Dramatic Lyrics, 1842, these two poems were 1 Edited by Browning's friend the Rev. W. J. Fox, who had hailed Pauline with a long notice in 1833. 2 New series, vol. X, pp. 43, 44. PORFHYRIA'S LOVER ' lOI yoked together, without individual titles, under one head- ing Madhouse Cells; Johannes Agricola was No I, and Porphyria No. II. In the edition of his works in 1863, Browning abandoned the heading Madhouse Cells. Jo- hannes Agricola in Meditation now stands among Men and Women, p. 445. I. Porphyria's lover loves her desperately, but is evi- dently not her social equal (11. 46-50) and is not sure that his love is requited (11. 57-60) and is sullen and morbid. But on this evening she has left the gay feast (1. 52) and has come to him through the rain, has stirred up the fire, ' and then has laid aside her wet cloak and shawl and gloves and has untied her hat and let her damp hair fall, and then has sat down beside him and called him, but he wouldn't answer (1. 40). So she put his arm about her waist and then made her shoulder bare and put her yellow hair out of the way and made his cheek lie on her shoulder, ^er hair falKng again over his face, she meantime murmur- ing how she loved him. This was too much for his dis- tracted brain. He goes *'out of his head." This moment is the fulfillment of everything to him, and the insane thought occurs to him that he can keep it perpetually so by killing her and keeping her there in that position. ^ So he carries out the plan by twisting her long yellow hair into a string and strangling her with it. Only he finds that positions have to be reversed somewhat and his shoulder now supports her head. It is next morning when he tells about it (1. 84), but he has no sense that he has committed a crime.^ The only thing that bothers him is the possibility that she may have suffered, and he repeats that she felt no pain (U. 66, 67). The last line of the poem, quoted by some as if so full of meaning, is noth- ing more nor less than an addition to show ^tlio shattered . I02 ♦ BROWNING STUDIES condition of his mind — he wonders that God hasn't said anything about it. 2. This poem may not be a pleasant thing nor of comfort to any reader. But as a bit of literary art it is remarkable, to say the least. Its chief importance, however, is as a study comprehending much in little, in the line of abnormal psy- chology. XV. May and Death, p. 516 First pubUshed in The Keepsake, 1857. Then included in Dramatis Personce, 1864. 1. The friend ''Charles'' in the poem is Browning's cousin James Silverthorne. 2. To read the poem, one would at first suppose that the matter involved was not simply the death of a man who had been a friend from childhood up, but rather a matter of desperate love between man and woman, so extreme are the statements. In stanza i, the poet wishes that, when his friend died, three-quarters of the dehghtful things of spring had died too, and, as far as he is con- cerned, he wouldn't mind if the other quarter had died also — nothing of the beauty of spring left. He rebukes himself in stanza 11, and realizes that there are many who ought to have opportunity to enjoy what he and Charles enjoyed together. So, amending his wholesale wish in the succeeding stanzas, he is in favor of having the spring at its best for the sake of others, only he thinks they wouldn't miss one plant which was so much in the woods where he walked with Charles, if that grew no more again. That plant reminds him so of his friend's death that the spot of red on its leaves comes from his heart, that's all. 3. The plant referred to is the spotted persicaria, Poly- gonum persicaria, which has purple stains, varying in size f •. and.yiy5i^4s% on its leaves. MAY AND DEATH 103 4. The expression in the early part of the poem, so disproportionate to the grief which we would naturally expect in the poet at loss of his cousin and friend, is consistent with Browning's impulsive nature. So also is that at the end, as to how much the sight of this plant pains him. SOME OF THE SHORT POEMS PUBLISHED AFTER MRS. BROWNING'S DEATH I. Confessions, p. 516 Published in Dramatis PersoncB, 1864. 1. The poem is very human and very ^'Browningesque." The man is dying, and the clergyman is by him with the conventional line of talk. But to the dying man Hfe is good and the world is no vale of tears. Instead of being in a properly solemn frame of mind, he finds his memory running back to light and color in the days gone by, to stolen interviews with the girl he loved. His dying fancy makes up a picture of the scene from the curtain and the medicine bottles. 2. The poem is exceedingly refreshing. Moreover, it is full of the subtle thirst for life and love. II. Prospice, pp. 516, 517 First printed in The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1864.^ The poem appeared in Browning's volume Dramatis PersoncB the same year. I. The poem was written in the autumn of 1861, — _tiie_ autumn following Mrs. Browning's death. It is out oi_ the innermost of Browning's soul. He looks upon death as the climax, the best and crowning chance to prove 1 Vol. XIII, p. 694. Cf. Dowden, Robert Browning, London, 1904, pp. 274, 275. 104 PROSPICE 105 what he's made of, — one splendid consummate fight at the last, and then the peace, the light, and clasping Elizabeth Barrett Browning's soul — that will be enough. 2._The dramatic intensity of the poem should have a first place in speaking of it. The description of the near approach to the last struggle and of the coming of the calm after the struggle is very dramatic. 3. The following notes may not come amiss : a. The title Prospice means Look forward, or strictly, Look thou forward, — imperative singular of the verb prospicere. b. P. 516, 1. 71, to feel the fog in my throat — one needs to spend a winter in England to appreciate this expression fully. It accurately describes the sensation you sometimes have in London or Oxford — you certainly feel the fog in your throat. c. V. $iy,l. 2,the place, the place where he must struggle with Death, — the whole being an old figure, the journey of life. When the time comes, he must approach the place where Death waits in the fog and mist and snow, where the storm is thickest. ''The foe," "the Arch Fear" (chief Fear, greatest Fear), is Death, but there is no es- cape, the strong man must pass that way. d. But Browning has no thought of escape nor of defeat. There stands between him and ''the reward of it all" only "one fight more, the best and the last." Guerdon (1. 9), requital, reward. e. He has no wish to die an easy painless death, e.g. to die in his sleep as so many wish. He would hate to have Death spare him — bandage his eyes and let him creep past (11. 13, 14). /. No, he wants to die splendidly in the fiercest struggle like the heroes of old. And if he hasn't suffered enough Io6 BROWNING STUDIES in his life, if he hasn't had enough of pain, darkness, and cold, let them pile it on now and he'll take it, so that the account will be square. He wants to endure *'all that's coming to him." This is the meaning of ''pay glad life's arrears of pain, darkness and cold." g. *'For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave," (but only to the brave). For "the black minute," the intensest of the strife, comes to an end, and he passes out on the other side of storm and night. And all the rage of the elements and the raving of fiend-voices around him "shall dwindle, shall blend," — note how they grad- ually die down and are transformed and then gradually come out again — "Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul ! " And he cares not what comes after that — he can leave the rest with God : "I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest !" 4. You will look far before you find a finer piece of work than Browning's Prospice, in so few lines, with such dra- matic power, such courage, such love, such confidence in ImmortaHty. We suggest that you commit this poem to memory, whether you commit anything else of Brown- ing's or not. III. A Face, p. 518 Published in Dramatis Personce, 1864. 1. It is a girl's face as the poet would have it done on canvas. Both the drawing and the coloring are with care and artistic taste. 2. CorreggiOj born 1494, died 1534, eminent Italian painter. A LIKENESS 107 IV. A Likeness, pp. 518, 519 Published in Dramatis Personce, 1864. I. A Likeness is a genial poem, the point being how little a visitor knows the associations that go with things he notices when he's calling. In describing how a visitor acts toward these things and how he blunders and how we "squirm,'' it is brisk and incisive. a. The first example is a portrait hanging in a room where tea is taken — "And the wife clinks tea-things under." Her cousin's innocent remark as he looks at the portrait, the wife's spiteful rejoinder, her cousin's further remark, while her husband is extremely self-conscious and aware of the discomfort of his corns ! — all this is a pretty good reflection of human nature. b. The next example is a picture in a bachelor's quarters, with all the things a sporty bachelor accumulates — in- cluding a cast of the fist of the boxer from whom he has taken lessons, "the Tipton Slasher"^ (a man known to the history of fistic sport), pla3dng-cards which have been used to shoot at and are preserved as records of marks- manship, a satin shoe (with a history!) irreverently used for a cigar-case, the horns of a chamois shot in the Chablais in Savoy, a print of Rarey (a famous horse-trainer. Cruiser being probably one of his horses), and one of Sayers (a real boxing champion), and a set of Rabelais in small volumes. But the* main thing that concerns us is that there's also a portrait of some girl. The visitor guesses it's Jane Lamb, and guesses wrong. His remarks are * The parenthetical quotations with which Browning accompanies many of the things mentioned are, of course, explanatory remarks by the owner of the "spoils." Io8 BROWNING STUDIES only in careless jest and exaggeration, but we can readily imagine how with every word he's ''getting in wrong." c. The third example is an etching which the speaker owns. He tells, in a breezy way, of his friend's visit and of his emotions when the visitor admires this etching, and how he puts him off and presents him a piece of Volpato's (eminent engraver, 1 738-1803). He realizes that if his visitor only knew — if he would only say the right thing to meet what he himself thinks in connection with the etching, he'd be so carried away he might give it to him, making a ''bluff" that it is only a duplicate. Marc An- tonios, etchings by the famous engraver Marc Antonio Raymondi (1487 or '88-1539). Festina lente, literally hasten slowly, make haste slowly, i.e. ''hold on." 2 . The interest in the poem is not only literary but psycho- logical. V. SUMMUM BONUM, p. 1 295 Published in Asolando, Browning's last volume, which appeared on the day he died, Dec. 12, 1889. The remain- ing short poems discussed here were in the same volume. 1. Summum Bonum means the chief good, the greatest or ultimate good. It is a matter much discussed from classical times — what is the Summum Bonum? 2. Browning's poem is an intense love-poem, con- centrating the excellence and beauty of things into the smallest compass and then putting forward something that beats all that, viz. love — the truth and trust "In the kiss of one girl." 3. "The bag of one bee" is, of course, the bag in which the bee carries the honey to his hive. 4. The poem is a good example of climax, everything in it culminating upon the last line, "In the kiss of one girl." SPECULATIVE IO9 VI. Speculative, p. 1295 Published in Asolando, Dec. 12, 1889. 1. There's always speculation as to the question: If the personalities of human beings do (endure beyond death, what are the conditions under which they exist? If, say, the good are in Heaven, what is that place or state like? 2. Browning answers that for him a piece of the old life on earth will be good enough, exactly as it was. It will be Heaven if only he and Mrs. Browning can meet and part no more. 3. It seems as if the meaning of the lines would be plainer with a different punctuation. Yet as they stand no one will miss their meaning. The language is very condensed. The first stanza says that "others^may need new Ufe in Heaven" — everything new — Man with new mind. Na- ture with new light. Art with new opportunity and new fulfillment. In sharp contrast to all this desire for new- ness is Browning's prayer that past minutes of the earth may return and remain, that the old earth-life may come back ("enmesh us'' — notice the word), even as it was before with him and Mrs. Browning. For the last lines are addressed to her, and this poem is out of the depths of Browning's love for her. 4. It is better not to begin to say what I think of this poem, lest I say too much. I do not want to say extreme things. The poem focuses in one point of Kght several of the fundamental thoughts which we see so often in Browning's writings. You will not find many things of ten Hnes quite equal to it in your rummaging the litera- tures of the world. Just for the sheer joy of going over the words again, here it is : no BROWNING STUDIES Others may need new life in Heaven — Man, Nature, Art — made new, assume ! Man with new mind old sense to leaven, Nature — new light to clear old gloom, Art that breaks bounds, gets soaring-room. I shall pray : "Fugitive as precious — Minutes which passed, — return, remain ! Let earth's old life once more enmesh us. You with old pleasure, me — old pain, So we but meet nor part again ! " VII. Rephan, pp. 1314, 1315 Published in the same volume with the two poems just discussed. 1. The matter of the poem is very akin to the centre of Browning's way of looking at things. His belief in the good of imperfection and the good of struggle makes him keenly sympathize with the being on whom all the per- fection of the star of the god Rephan grows stale and cloying and who is stirred by a desire to struggle through failure, suffering, and sin toward higher things and is therefore told by a voice, "Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth !" 2. Browning himself says in a note (printed at bottom of first column, p. 13 14) that the poem was "suggested by a very early recollection of a prose story by the noble woman and imaginative writer, Jane Taylor, of Norwich." As Dr. Berdoe ^ and the editors of the Globe Edition point out, Jane Taylor lived at Ongar, not Norwich. Her story was entitled How it Strikes a Stranger and was in vol. I of her work entitled The Contributions of Q. Q. Naturally enough, Browning's poem bears very little resemblance to Jane ^Browning Cyclopadia, ed. 191 2, p. 383. REVERIE III Taylor's story which he recalled across so many years. He got from it only the word Rephan and a suggestion. VIII. Reverie, pp. 13 15-13 17 Published in the same volume as the preceding. I. The poem is a Confession of Faith that somewhere, sometime, we shall come to self-fulfillment in harmony with the universe, — strong buoyant faith that when rightly seen Power and Love are one. a. The life of the race is repeated in epitome in the life of the individual. Therefore, the life of the individual and the life of the race shall both find fulfillment according to the same law : ^ ' "I for my race and me Shall apprehend life's law : In the legend of man shall see Writ large what small I saw In my life's tale : both agree." b. Naturally progress will be from near to far, from within outward, — this is the key to the fulfillment : ^ "How but from near to far Should knowledge proceed, increase? Try the clod ere test the star ! Bring our inside strife to peace Ere we wage, on the outside, war !" So he looks into his own life which has been lived in the presence of infinite Power which seems at strife with Love. c. Anyway, life is a great becoming, a splendid adventure : ' "Then life is — to wake not sleep, Rise and not rest, but press From earth's level where blindly creep Things perfected, more or less, To the heaven's height, far and steep." 1 P. 1315, U. 74-78. * P. 131S, 11. 84-88. ' P. 1317, U. 53-57. 112 BROWNING STUDIES d. And Browning believes that, although Power in the universe is so evident and Love dimly shown, yet at last we shall find that ^' Power is Love :" ^ "I have faith such end shall be : From the first, Power was — I knew. Life has made clear to me That, strive but for closer view, Love were as plain to see." 2. The poem opens and closes with the same high note, that "there shall dawn a day," no matter when, no matter where — a day when Power shall have its way in him and he will find life's fulfillment. IX. Epilogue, p. 13 17 This is the Epilogue to AsolandOj the volume published the day Browning died. 1 . It has been well said that even if Browning had known that these were to be his last words to the world, he could not have given a more intimate and more vital message than in Reverie and in this Epilogue. 2. The Epilogue especially is a pointblank confession of what he is and how he wishes to be esteemed. When he is dead, people will very likely mistake him, as is usually the case. How will his friends think of him, when they are thinking in the night? Are they going to think of him as lying low, imprisoned by Death, and pity him? In life he was none of " the slothful, the mawkish, the un- manly " — he was not like " the aimless, helpless, hope- less.'' Nay rather, he was "One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, ip.i3i7,U. 63-67. EPILOGUE TO ASOLANDO "3 Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better. Sleep to wake." And he wants them to think of him "in the bustle of man's work time," as not dead but alive, — struggling and pro- gressing in the unseen world as he did here. Notice the contrast between thinking of him "at the midnight" and "at noonday," in the "sleep time" and in the "work time." 3. A word is needed as to the last stanza: "the un- seen" to be greeted with a cheer is Browning after death. This is plain from the pronoun "him" which refers to "the unseen." "Breast and back as either should be," breast and back each in its place, not with breast where back should be, i.e. not turned to retreat. "Strive and thrive ! . . . Speed, — fight on etc." all after cry. 4. The poem is quite beyond praise. It has too much reaHty in it to be subject to treatment as literature. It provokes the finest admiration for the man who wrote it. One evening just before his last illness Browning was reading the proofs of Asolando with his sister and daughter- in-law. And when he read the third stanza of the Epilogue, he stopped and 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." ^ It will be a sad day for any of us when we do not feel like bowing in the presence of such a personality as speaks through this Epilogue. 1 Substance of incident related in the Pall Mall Gazette of Feb. i, 1890. Browning's words are quoted exactly as reprinted from the Gazette by Berdoe, Browning Cyclopadia, ed. 191 2, pp. 153, 154. VI THREE OF THE LONGER POEMS NOW STAND- ING AMONG THE DRAMATIC ROMANCES Though now standing under the head of Dramatic Romances, no one of these three poems was originally published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics of 1845.^ I. The Pied Piper of Hamelin, pp. 353-356 Published in Dramatic Lyrics, 1842. 1. Its subtitle is A Child's Story, and there is added Written for, and inscribed to, W. M. the Younger, i.e. written for Wilham Macready, Jr., son of the great actor William Macready. 2. People who think Browning is so hard have never read The Pied Piper of Hamelin, or, if they've read it, don't know it is Browning's. Children read it and enjoy it hugely, know it by heart and repeat it with gusto.^ But when I say, "Well, Browning's not so hard — see how the children enjoy his Pie J Piper,'' then comes the exclamation, "Oh! did Browning write The Pied Piper?" 3. A few notes : a. Pied, variegated with spots of different colors. See description of his coat (v) and his scarf (vi). h. Hamelin (German Hameln) is a town of 20,000 people (1905), in the province of Hanover, 33 miles by * See explanation at the beginning of Chapter IV. 2 It has been a pleasure to the writer to hear it. No doubt some of the children of the reader's acquaintance can repeat it. 114 THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN I15 the railroad southwest of the city of Hanover, in Prussia. It is situated on the river Weser, at the point where the Hamel flows in. Browning is mistaken when he says, "Hamelin Town's in Brunswick." It is not far from the borders of Brunswick and has been at times in its history under the protection of the dukes of Brunswick, but it is in Hanover. c. The legend is found in various works, ^.g. (i) Richard Verstegen, Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiqui- ties concerning the English Nation, 1605,^ (2) Nathaniel Wanley, The Wonders of the Little World, or a General History of Man, 1678.^ d. A piper named Bunting, for the promise of a sum of money, freed the town from rats, by playing on his pipe while they followed until he led them into the Weser and they were drowned. The townsmen then refused to pay him. So he went away again, playing, followed by the children, 130 in all. He led them to a hill called the Koppel- berg (or Koppenberg, as some spell it) whose side opened and they entered and disappeared. The event is recorded in inscriptions in the town, and was long regarded as his- torical. *'For a considerable time the town dated its public documents from the event." ^ e. The year was 1284 (June 26). Browning has July 22, 1376 (p. 356, 11. 31-33). How he got the date wrong by almost lob years, no one seems to explain. 1 Published, Antwerp, 1605 ; reprinted, London, 1673. Its author's real name was Richard Rowlands and he was bom near the Tower of London, but many of his works were published under the name or initials of Richard Verstegen. ' Also eds. 1774, with revision and index, 1806-07, 2 vols., with additions by Wm. Johnston. * Encyclopcedia Britannica, nth ed., Cambridge, 1910, vol. XII, p. 876, art. Hameln. Il6 DROWNING STUDIES f. The town of Brandenburg, some 37 miles southwest of Berlin, and the town of Lorch in Wiirtemberg have tales of such an event as having taken place at each of them. There are similar Persian and Chinese legends. We recognize a widely diffused legend, fastened upon different locaHties.^ g. P. 354, 1. 35, Cham, now usually written khan, — word for prince, chief, governor — here used for the head ruler of Tartary. 1. 37, Nizam (Nizam-ul-Mulk, Regulator of the State), the title of the native sovereigns who, since 17 19, have ruled Hyderabad, an extensive territory in the interior of southern India. The territory is often called Nizam^s Dominions. 4. The versification of the poem is rapid and full of variety. There are many of those grotesque rhymes with which Browning likes to decorate his humorous pieces. The drollest of them are: ''Trump of Doom's tone" and "painted tombstone" (p. 354, 11. 14, 15), ''river Weser" and "Julius Caesar" (11. 67, 69), "pickle-tub-boards" and "conserve-cupboards" (11. 77, 78), "by psaltery" and "drysaltery" (11. 82, 84), ''rare havoc" and "Vin-de- Grave, Hock"2(p. 355, 11. 5, 6). 5. The humor is very rich. It is all so good that it seems out of order to quote a sample, but the Mayor's eye is per- haps a little better than any of the other droll descriptions : "Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster." ' * Some trace the origin of the legend to the Children's Crusade of 121 2. This might be the thing which led to the legend's being adapted and attached to various places in Germany, but not the origin of the legend itself. In favor of there being some basis of fact in the case of Hameln, the article in the Encyclopadia Britannica points out that the Koppelberg is not one of the imposing elevations by which the town is surrounded, but a low hill barely enough to hide the children from sight as they left the town. 2 Two kinds of wine arrayed at the end of the list, to make the rhyme. »P. 353, 11. 90,91. THE STATUE AND TEE BUST I17 II. The Statue and the Bust, pp. 372-375 Published in vol. I of Men and Women, 1855. 1. In the Piazza delP Annunziata in Florence stands an equestrian statue of Grand Duke Ferdinand I (Fer- dinand de' Medici, born about 1549, succeeded his brother Francesco I as Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1587, died 1609. He was a younger son of Cosimo the Great, 1519- 1574) . The statue is by the great sculptor John of Douay ^ (i 524-1608), one of his finest works. It faces the old Riccardi Palace, now called the Antinori Palace. This is, of course, the palace mentioned in the first line of the poem and was where the Riccardi lived whose bride looked out and saw Duke Ferdinand ride by. It should not be confused with the palace (p. 372, 11. 54-74, especially 11. 57-62) 2 in the Via Larga (now called the Via Cavour), where the feast was held that night, at which the bridal pair were guests. (Lines 63-71 describe the Duke receiv- ing them.) That was Duke Ferdinand's own residence. 2. The story is that Ferdinand had the statue so placed because in that palace of the Riccardi lived the lady he loved, kept a prisoner by a jealous husband. 3. The bust seems to be Browning's invention. He admits there's none there now (p. 374, 1. 48). 4. The crime (p. 372, 1. 59) was the usurpation of the authority of the Republic by Cosimo de' Medici (Cosimo the Elder, 1389-1464), referred to in lines 61 and 62 as the murder of the Republic. Rohhia's craft (p. 374, 1. 28, cf. 1. 46), the kind of work in enamelled terra-cotta origi- 1 P . 3 74, 1. 6 1 . He is usually called Giovanni da Bologna, John of Bologna. 2 That was the Medici Palace and was sold in 1659 to the Riccardi, and so is now called the Riccardi Palace. But in the days of Ferdinand I, of course, the Medici lived there and the Riccardi lived in what was then the Palazzo Riccardi, viz. the palace toward which this statue faces. Il8 BROWNING STUDIES nated by Luca della Robbia (who died in 1463) and carried on by the family for a hundred years. The last well-known artist of the family, Girolamo della Robbia, died in 1566. In the last line, De te, fabulal Hterally, concerning thee, the story! i.e. the story is concerning you, it hits your case, there's a moral in it for you. 5. The verse-form is Terza Rima, which originated with the Troubadours, and was first extensively used by Dante (i 265-1321) in the Divine Comedy and to some extent by Boccaccio (131 3- 137 5) after him. It was introduced into England by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503- 1542) or by the Earl of Surrey (15 16-1547, their poems published together in TotteFs Miscellany, 1557), and has been variously adapted and experimented with by Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Daniel, Lord Byron, and others. Mrs. Browning has used it for her Casa Guidi Windows. The finest piece of Terza Rima in EngHsh is Shelley's Ode to the West Wind. Browning does not handle it nearly so well as Shelley. 6. The point in this poem has been already referred to in our discussion of Browning's characteristics. The Duke and Riccardi's wife had decided to elope, to commit the sin. According to the teaching of Jesus (Matt. 5 : 27, 28), they were already guilty of it, having formed the purpose in their thoughts. But instead of carrying it out, they delayed days, weeks, years, still cherishing those desires. And their souls shrivelled. They were put to the test and failed. It tested them as surely as if it had been -a good thing they delayed to do. Whatever has become of them. Browning is sure they do not see God nor have any place with those who "have dared and done :" "Only they see not God, I know, «, \ Nor all that chivalry of his, "CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME" 119 The soldier-saints who, row on row, Burn upward each to his point of bliss Since, the end of life being manifest. He had burned his way thro' the world to this." * III. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," PP- 375-378 Published in vol. I of Men and Women, 1855. 1. This poem was written in Paris in one day, Jan. 3, 1852, and was not revised after that. 2. It was suggested, as Browning's note at the head of the poem indicates, by a line of Edgar's . song in Shake- speare's King Lear. a. As you remember, Edgar, to save his life, is disguised as a madman and acts the part. Pouring out a mass of incoherent nonsense in Act III scene iv, he sings at the end of the scene this snatch of a song : " Child Rowland to the dark tower came, His word was still, — Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man." The great dissimilarity between the first line and what follows has suggested to several critics that Edgar, in his pretending to be crack-brained, throws together bits of two different songs. This is probably the case. The first line is evidently from a ballad older than Shakespeare's time and probably famihar to his audience, but it has not yet been elsewhere discovered. Traces of the other two lines, or rather of the "Fie, foh, and fum, etc.," have been found. ^ 1 P. 374, U. 79-84. ' See Furness, Variorum Shakespeare, King Lear, Philadelphia, 1880, pp. 201, 202 (same pp. in loth ed. 1908). In spelling Child Rowland most editors follow the early editions, but I have seen one or two recent editions jvith the spelling Childe Roland. 120 BROWNING STUDIES h. The first line of Edgar^s song caught Browning^s imagination. Undoubtedly what struck Browning was the word "came" — arrived ^ accomplished what he set out to do. This chimed in with Browning^s nature and his doctrine of sticking, with iron determination, to what you undertake. So he let his fancy loose on conditions preced- ing and attending the knight's arrival at the Tower. c. Browning's poem, then, should be weaned entirely from Shakespeare's King Lear and Edgar's pretended madness, except for the slightest contact, viz. this: the line of an old song in Edgar's mouth fired Browning's imagination. d. "Child," when used as in this song (and generally spelled Childe when so used), was applied to young knights and young men of noble birth. See Spenser's use of it in The Faerie Queene. Cf. Byron's styling himself "Childe Harold" in Childe Harold^ s Pilgrimage. 3. "Childe Roland" is Sir Roland, the strongest and bravest of Charlemagne's paladins. a. Charlemagne (Charles, the Great), King of the Franks, was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, in St. Peter's Church in Rome, on Christmas day, in the year 800. h. Around him and his knights has grown up a mass of legend, (as aroimd King Arthur and his knights, only with very much more historical basis). c. Most famous of all Charlemagne's knights is Roland, who commanded the rear guard of the army in the retreat from Spain in the year 778 and, when the rear guard was cut off, lost his life in battle at Roncesvalles (French, Roncevaux), in Navarre. So much is historical. The legends gathering about the event have made an epic, the famous Chanson de Roland, or Song of Roland, pre- "CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME" 121 served in Old French, — immensely enlarging, of course, his actual prowess. d. The adventure referred to in the ballad from which Edgar sings a scrap is some one of the other legends which became attached to the name of Roland — some adventure of his earlier years, the quest of the Dark Tower. 4. Browning's poem has to be considered entirely apart from any historical basis. It is sheer imagination. The poem is in the mouth of the knight whose adventure is related. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that Brown- ing meant to imply that the adventure came to a successful issue, for if reaching the Dark Tower brought him into something which was the last of him, how could he be relating thus much of what befell him? We get the im- pression from the poem that it is some time afterward, perhaps years after, that Roland is relating how he finally reached the Tower. He does not go on with any account of what happened after he blew his horn. "That," as Kipling would say, '4s another story." The thing on which Browning's imagination works is simply the last afternoon of the journey and the arrival before the Tower. The earlier wandering is referred to, but only because of its bearing on this last afternoon. 5. The circumstances are quite plain : a. The quest of the Dark Tower was a quest to which knights, one generation after another, had devoted them- selves (stanzas vii, xxxiii, xxxiv). (For a famous ex- ample of such quests, compare the quest of the Holy Grail.) b. There existed some information as to the general marks of the region in which the Tower was situated and a description of the immediate surroundings of the Tower (stanza ni, stanza xxx), also a description of the Tower 122 BROWNING STUDIES itself by which it could be recognized (stanza xxxi). But the direction in which to search seems to have been lost, for the knight in the present adventure had wandered world- wide (stanza iv). c. Knights who devoted themselves to the quest of the Tower were called ^Hhe Band" (stanza vii), i.e. when a knight had sworn to take up this quest, he had joined "the Band." d. Why some knights so devotedly gave themselves to this quest is not explained. The aspect of things as the poem closes would seem, however, to justify the idea that it was with purpose to avenge some great wrong. (We will discuss the close of the poem later.) 6. The following comment may be of use in reading the poem: Stanza i — on mine, my eye — his eye watching the working of his He on my eye ; pursed, puckered up ; scored, made notches in (derived from keeping the score by cutting notches in a stick) ; one more victim, Roland thinks this fellow's business is simply to send men astray. Stanza ii — ^gin write, begin to write ; dusty thoroughfare, the cripple sits at the edge of the travelled road, from which the knight turns off. Stanza iii — The knight has reached the region in which the Dark Tower is situated. Stanza rv — what with, somewhat with, partly with {what used adverbially), — rather old-fashioned but still heard occasionally. Stanzas v, vi, and vii are really all one sentence. There is no conclusion to the sentence until stanza vii. So there should be something other than a period at the end of stanza vi. Stanza vi — scarves (plural of scarf), staves (plural of ''CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME" 123 staff), to be used at the funeral, a part of the ceremony and display of the old days. Stanza viii — Us estray, viz. the knight himself, now turned astray on the plain. Stanza ix — pledged to the plain ^ having decided to travel the plain and having begun to do so, having com- mitted himself to it. Stanza x — ignoble nature, natural things of such poor quality ; cockle, common name for several different weeds, growing in such a place as this it would be darnel (genus Lolium) or cockle-bur (genus Xanthium) ; spurge, harsh weeds of the genus Euphorbia; treasure-trove, money or other valuables found hidden in the earth or anywhere, the owner not being known, — talk about weeds' growing, a bur would have been Hke finding a treasure. Stanza xi — It nothing skills, it makes no difference, there's no use trying ; calcine, to convert into powder by heat or into a substance that can be readily crushed (for the idea of heat connected with the end of the world, see 2 Peter 3 : 10). Stanza xii — bents, spears of stiff wiry grass ; pashing, striking, crushing. Stanza xiii — devil's stud, devil's stable, — stud, a col- lection of horses, also the place where they are kept. Stanza xiv — colloped neck, a collop is a chunk of flesh, — this horse's neck is made up of bunches or lumps as if of collops put together, or as if an effort had been made to chop it up into collops. Stanza xvi — Not it, it can't do what he expected of it (cf . preceding line) . Stanza xvii — durst, archaic for dared, still used to some extent; faugh! exclamation of disgust; a parchment, on which is written the crime for which he is hanged ; his 124 BROWNING STUDIES own hands, the men who had supported him in his insur- rection, bands of revolutionists or malcontents. Stanza xviii — a howlet, an owlet. Stanza xix — hespate, spattered ; spumes j bits of foam or froth. Stanza xxi — which, the river. Stanza xxii — a plash, puddle. Stanza xxiii — cirque, circle ; mews, enclosure, place of confinement (plural of mew, a cage for hawks, a coop for fowls) ; brewage, anything produced by brewing, a malt drink as beer or ale. Stanza xxiv — furlong, 40 rods, one-eighth of a mile ; Tophet^s tool, tool from hell. Tophet was in the valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, — the valley where the sewage and filth of the city were dumped and where fires were kept burning to consume offal and carcasses. In its earlier history, this valley was a place of altars to Molech and of abominable rites.^ The Greek word Gehenna (the only word in the New Testament which is properly translated hell) is from the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom, valley of Hinnom. Naturally enough, Tophet and Gehenna came to be sym- bolic of torment or destruction. ^ The word Tophet is not often heard in conversation among us except in such expressions as *' hotter than Tophet." Stanza xxv — stubbed, covered with stubs, i.e. stumps left from broken trees. The same piece of ground is described in these three lines. Its history is plain from its appearance : once it was a piece of woods, next it became 1 See Jer. 7:31; 32:35; 2 Chron. 28 : 3 ; 33 : 6, and Josiah's action in regard to the matter 2 Kings 23 : 10. ' Cf . Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk. 1, 11. 404, 405 : "The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna called, the type of hell." ''CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME'' 125 a marsh, and now it is ''mere earth desperate and done with." The same ground is described in the last two Hnes of this stanza : within a rood, a quarter of an acre ; rubbkj rough broken stones. Stanza xxvii — Apollyon, the angel of the bottomless pit (Rev. 9: 11) ; dragon-penned (Latin penna, a feather), having feathers like those on a dragon's wing. Cf., in The Ring and the Book : ^ "Twitch out five pens where plucking one would serve." Stanza xxvni — with such name to grace, if one may call the ''ugly heights and heaps" by such a name as mountains. Stanza xxx — scalped mountain, mountain having a bare top, Hke the head of a man who has been scalped by an Indian ; nonce, the once, the one occasion, (chiefly in for the nonce) , — at the very nonce, at the very moment, at the critical moment. Stanza xxxii — Not see ? repeating someone's suggestion or a thought which he knows may be in his Hsteners' minds : ''Maybe it was getting so dark that you couldn't see the Tower until you were almost on it;" heft, same as haft (both from O. E. hceft), hilt, handle. Stanza xxxiii — Not hear? similar to not see? in stanza XXXII. Stanza xxxrv — slug-horn: What Browning has in mind is a short crude sort of bugle, but the word slug-horn is really a corruption of slogan, rallying-cry, and the use of it (older than Browning) as if it signified a horn is en- tirely erroneous. Wright's English Dialect Dictionary has ^^ slug-horn, a short and ill-formed horn of an animal of the ox kind, turned downwards and stunted in growth," * Count Guido Franceschini, p. 736, 1. 17. 126 BROWNING STUDIES and one might argue that slug-horn to blow on is that word, with- a history similar to the use of horn. But the use of slug-horn for slogan (with no sense of horn) shows plainly that such use as Browning's here is a mistake. The punc- tuation which places anything except a period after blew in the last line is surely wrong and is prompted by a mis- interpretation. ^' Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came" is not what he blew, but simply a summing up of the ad- venture, up to this point. Of course, in a certain sense that blast on the horn was a summing up of the adventure, and in that sense only can it be argued that the horn seemed to say, *' Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." 7. The account, then, which the knight gives of his reaching the Tower : The knight relates that he had been for years on this quest, in a ''whole world-wide wandering," and now his hope had "dwindled into a ghost," when he came to where by the highway sat a repulsive cripple. The knight evi- dently had long ago lost his horse, for now he was on foot. Exhausted and discouraged, he asked the cripple the way to the Dark Tower, and the cripple indicated that it was in yonder ominous tract of country. The knight, nothing doubting that the cripple was lying, in fact was posted there to misdirect travellers and get them into trouble, nevertheless turned as directed. He had not hope enough left to bear the ''obstreperous joy success would bring." He does not care what comes next, only if there can be some end. He will go on and become one of that glorious company who have given themselves to this quest and have failed. He is Hke a sick man very near to death, who seems indeed dead and hears them speak of him as dead and hears the discussion of details about his funeral, and desires only that he may not come out of his trance ''CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME'' 127 and embarrass them. So this knight has so long been counted one of ''the Band" devoted to the quest of the Dark Tower, so long has it been prophesied that he will fail, that just to fail Hke the rest seems the best thing he can do. The only question with him is whether he is fit to join that company of those who, in spite of all high endeavor, failed. And so he turns, "quiet as despair," into the path across the dreary plain. The desolation is great, even at first, and increases in repulsiveness as he goes on. The sun of the late afternoon shoots out a ''grim red leer" at him. He loses sight of the highway whence he came, and could not go back. There is nothing to do but to go on. The plain is so barren that a bur on it would be finding a treasure. Nature seems to have given up as impossible making anything of this place. As he goes on, there are some thistle-stalks with chopped heads, some dry wiry grass, some dock-leaves all bruised up, — the whole as if trampled by a brute's hoofs. Further on, he comes where the ground has been flooded and now is left covered with a coating of mud which looks as if it were "kneaded up with blood" underneath and through which the thin dry blades of grass prick up "as scant as hair in leprosy." The only living creature in sight is a ghastly specimen of a horse, fit only to be turned out of the devil's stables as of no further use. So repulsive is everything external that the knight tries to get courage from his own heart by thinking of other days and his valiant friends. "One taste of the old time sets all to rights," — will help him now in spite of what is around him. So he thinks of Cuthbert, handsome fellow, and his affectionate way, — until he comes to Cuthbert's disgrace — one night, whatever it was he did, shattered 128 .BROWNING STUDIES the confidence and friendship. There is no comfort nor encouragement in thinking of Cuthbert. Well then, think of Giles, he was ^'the soul of honor.'' Think of him as standing there just as he stood ten years ago when knighted. A brave man and honorable, "What honest man should dare (he said) he durst." But just here the encouragement that was arising from thinking of Giles is dispelled by Giles' end: some revolt Giles had headed, some outlawry, — and the mental picture of the brave young fellow turns to the picture of him hanged as a crimi- nal. And so it goes on — no comfort in memories, as Roland plods on. He finds no encouragement within himself, and he brings his mind back to "this present," this dismal plain, on which the presence of an owlet or a bat would be something to be appreciated. He has gone on, thinking, not noticing much his sur- roundings for a while, and now is surprised by coming upon a little river flowing across the plain, not sluggishly as would seem fitting to the place (you see, he has drawn nearer the hills without noticing it and there is more reason for current than he supposes), but frothing and foaming spitefully as if fit for the hot hoof of the devil. There are alders and willows on its banks and dipping into it. The knight wades through, reaching his spear ahead of him to find holes and avoid getting in too deep. So grue- some is the whole thing, that he would not be surprised to find his spear tangled in a dead man's hair or beard, or even to set his foot upon a dead man's face. Once, when spearing ahead of himself thus, something cried or squealed, which he rigidly makes himself understand was probably a water-rat struck by his spear, but to his over- wrought nerves it seemed for the moment a baby's shriek. Reaching the other bank of the river, he thinks for a "CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME" 129 moment that it may prove better, but is disappointed. If possible, its grotesque hideousness exceeds what he saw before. And its hideousness is of another sort, showing evidence of human or fiendish cruelty : an awful struggle of some sort, human or bestial, has taken place, and passing by the marks of that, he comes to a torture-machine. Further on, he comes to land ** desperate and done with," and then to soil that is revolting to look on and to the one tree, a ^'palsied oak" which has a grinning cleft in it. This is all wearing hard on the man, exhausted as he is with wanderings and hardships. His eyes fixed on the hideousness immediately around him, he is convinced that he is arriving nowhere, that there is naught to point his footstep further. The thought has hardly formed itself in his mind, when he feels his cap brushed by the wing of a great black bird who looks as if he might be *'Apollyon's bosom-friend." Looking up and after the bird, the knight perceives that he is among the hills, or mountains if you may call them so. He is sur- prised at how they have stolen upon him, the fact being, of course, that he has been so absorbed in the desolation and the repulsive sights near at hand and so absorbed in his own thoughts that he has walked into the hilly part, not noticing it in the dusk of evening. He does not see how to get clear of these hills now (he has no idea of turn- ing back). But his mind is working as a mind does when half-recognizing something without conscious effort. What his mind is working over is the marks for identifying the location of the Dark Tower, coupling these that he has held in memory for years with what the eye takes in from these hills. Suddenly, with a flush of heat over his whole body, the reahzation comes upon him that this is the place he has been seeking. With that, instantly he recognizes I30 BROWNING STUDIES the marks, the two hills on the right like two bulls crouch- ing with locked horns, and the *'tall scalped mountain" on the left, — and in the middle the Dark Tower itself, answering exactly to the description treasured in the mind of every knight who has sought it. It must be the one, there is no other like it in the world. The recognition of the whole thing has come to him as he was almost running upon it, just as a sailor gets no warning of an unseen reef until his ship strikes it. To the suggestion that he didn't see because of the gathering darkness and so came close to the Tower before knowing it was there, the knight answers that the sunset kindled up again ^ *' through a cleft" in the hills (or perhaps a cleft in the clouds). And as that sunset brightened and showed him the scene, there lay the hills like giants at a hunting when the game is cornered and they look on to see the death — *'Now stab and end the creature" — only, in this case the knight himself being the creature in such desperate straits. Someone suggests that maybe he didn't hear anything to attract his attention. To this the knight answers that "noise was everywhere." This was, of course, the noise ^* in his own brain, the turmoil of the realization that he had reached what so many worthier than he had sought in vain. The tremendous excitement and nervous tension which came with that realization make him seem to hear tolled in his ears the names of all the lost adventurers who have gone on this quest, with praise of each one's strength and prowess, and success in other endeavors, — yet each was "lost, lost !" Of course, it is the history of the quest, brooded over so much, now rushing through his mind. It seems to him as if this moment, tolling the names of ^The writer has several times seen sCinsets die down and then kindle again so that they were very much brighter 15 or 20 minutes later. ''CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME'' 131 those knights and their fate, knells "the woe of years.'* And in the tremendous tension and excitement of the moment, not only does he seem to hear their names and their fate tolled in his ears, but his heightened imagination pictures them all as ranged along the hills (^* There they stood,'' — they being the lost adventurers), looking at him now, at him who has reached the Tower, to see how he will conclude the quest, — grimly he puts it "to view the last of me," i.e. to see how he will behave himself in the last struggle, which he thinks will very likely cost him all. They form in his imagination "a living frame for one more picture" ("Uving frame" in apposition with "they . . . ranged along the hill-sides"). The "one more pic- ture" is to be the knight himself doing what he is about to do, the picture of what's going to happen when he blows his horn. How great the strain and how heightened his imagination may be judged from the fact that he not only sees the adventurers lost on this quest watching what he will do, but it is "in a sheet of flame" he sees them and knows them all. And yet, under such circumstances, exhausted as he is and with all those of the past who have tried and failed looking down upon him, with all that may come to pass in the next minute, dauntless he sets the slug- horn to his lips and blows. "What happened then?" is the question so many ask. Why, but one thing could happen. Sir Roland has sought so long, and now has found the Tower and will do what he came to do. That blast on his horn is a challenge, — not simply a blast blown to celebrate his having found the Tower. The setting for the whole — those faces along the hillsides "a living frame" — for what? For the picture of the battle which takes place when, in answer to his horn, the inhabitants of the Tower rush out on him. He is 132 BROWNING STUDIES "dauntless^* — in view of what? Dauntlessly faces what's going to happen the next minute after he sets that horn to his lips. Exhausted in body, worn and harassed in soul, with a consciousness of all that is at stake, he does not delay nor hesitate, but dauntless blows his challenge. This is exactly in the spirit of Robert Browning. But to tell what comes after would be ^'another story." Brown- ing started to describe Roland's reaching the Dark Tower. And having seen him reach it. Browning leaves the story with the simple summary which started him to writing it : ^'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came^ 8. The poem as a work of art : a. The poem is fascinating. This fascination is due to (i) the wonderful descriptions in it, (2) the constant sense that the story corresponds to something in our lives, and (3) the desperate determination and perseverance of the knight. h. The poem contains many stanzas of exquisite poetry, and some stanzas which cannot by any stretching of the word be said to be poetry at all. (i) To justify our remark as to exquisite poetry, we have only to cite such phrases as (in stanza iv) "my hope Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With the obstreperous joy success would bring," the details of the simile wrought out in stanzas v, vi, and VII, the ''quiet as despair" in stanza viii, the whole of stanza xv, the lines in stanza xx "Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it ; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair," and those in stanza xxvii "And just as far as ever from the end ! Nought in the distance but the evening, nought To point my footstep further ! " ''CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME'' 133 and in stanza xxx "Burningly it came on me all at once, This was the place !" and the whole of stanzas xxxn, xxxni, and xxxiv. (2) To justify the other part of the remark, i.e. as to the unpoetic passages in the poem, we need only appeal to such a weak and ineffective line as that at the end of stanza xrv, "He must be wicked to deserve such pain," very evidently put in simply to finish out the stanza, and to such things as, in stanza xxi, "It may have been a water-rat I speared, But, ugh ! it sounded like a baby's shriek," and in stanza xxii, "Toads in a poisoned tank. Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage." This last example is an extreme one, — bare, realistic, with no touch of idealism. And without idealism there is no art of any kind — no poetry, of course. There are many other passages in the poem not so extreme as this but belonging in the same category. In stanza xni we read " As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy," and in stanza xxvi, "Now patches where some leanness of the soil's Broke into moss or substances like boils." These are almost as extreme and as lacking in any possible claim to be considered poetry. (3) It should be added, however, that these extremely realistic descriptions do, whether poetry or not, accomplish what Browning wanted 134 BROWNING STUDIES to do, viz. give us a vivid sense of the repulsiveness and hideousness of the plain over which the knight goes.^ 9. The poem would well repay study from the stand- point of psychology. The working of the exhausted knight's mind, in view of the whole situation as he starts across the plain, is interesting, and especially the state of mind he has gotten into by the time he fords the river. But still more significant is his account of his experience before the Tower. Natural enough is the fact that the crucial moment brings vividly before his mind the whole history of the quest, — a phenomenon to be classed with that reported of persons drowning, that sometimes a man's whole life rushes past his mind's eye in a brief space of time. 10. What did Browning mean by the poem? a. First of all he meant to write a piece of dramatic narrative, and he certainly did it. Anyone ^«^o reads the poem a few times will not soon forget it. b. And Browning did. wo^jm^ana^, detailed allegory. All such interpretations are unjustifiable. Browning's own statement made to Dr. F. J. Furnivall ^ was that the poem is not an allegory. Nothing could be more absurd and further from Browning's poem than Dr. Berdoe's undertaking to say^ that it is ^'a picture of the Age of ^To the remark as to the unpoetic passages in "Childe Roland" Prof. Charles B. Wright and Mrs. John H. McCrackan have, in conversation with me, made strong objections. Prof. Wright's argument is that the passages cited as unpoetic are necessary to the artistic effect of the whole, and that therefore the poem as an artistic unit justifies these passages, and that it is unjust to isolate them and say that they are lacking in poetic art. Mrs. McCrackan's argument is that these passages represent sublimated hideous- ness, and that this is as truly a form of idealism as is sublimated beauty, and that therefore these are examples of poetic art. Both these arguments should be given due weight in connection with the above paragraph. 2 The London Browning Society's Papers, Part III, p. 21, quoted by Berdoe, Browning Cydopcedia, ed. 191 2, p. 103. 3 Berdoe, Browning Cydopcedia, w- 104, 105. ''CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME" 135 Materialistic Science/' ^ and in particular a condemnation of medical research by means of inoculating lower animals. ^ Nor is the blast of the horn *^a warning to others." ^ All the best words in the last stanza lose their meaning unless the blowing of the horn is a defiance. (See our discussion earlier in this lecture.) c. But Browning is not a man who could put forward a thing so graphic and stirring as this without some mean- ing below the mere words. And the meaning is plain: it is unfaltering loyalty to an ideal. (Read Prof. Royce's Philosophy of Loyalty and see how loyalty to something, anything, gives Hfe a meaning.) Unfaltering loyalty to an ideal and iron determination to do what we undertake to do — these will carry us through. The desperate tenacity of the knight in going on and the desperate valor, no matter how extreme his exhaustion, at the end — these are of the soul of Robert Browning. d. While the poem, then, is in no sense an allegory, it is a vivid story of a man's sticking to his quest in the midst of all dismal and repulsive surroundings and meeting the climax of hardship and suffering undismayed. It is very like human life at its hardest and blackest, — nothing to cheer us inside or outside of ourselves — nothing to do but to face it grimly and go on — and like enough on top of all that is hard and dismal will come the most desperate struggle — yet to meet it with a dauntless soul. That is what is in Childe Roland's coming to the Dark Tower. ^ Called by Berdoe, p. 105, also "Atheistic Science." 2 This latter part Berdoe hangs upon the words, "Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage." It seems to be inoculation rather than vivisection he means by ph; "gloat over their animal victims" and "experimental torturer." 3 Berdoe, Browning Cyclopcedia, p. 105 end. VII FOUR OF THE MAJOR POEMS IN MEN AND WOMEN These four poems were published in Men and Women, 2 vols., 1855, and still stand in that division of Browning's works. An Epistle and Bishop Blougrani's Apology were originally in vol. I, Cleon and One Word More in vol. II. I. An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician, pp. 441-445 Browning had the rare ability to think outside of the atmosphere in which he lived, i.e. to set himself outside of Christian civilization, free himself from it to an unusual degree, and see how things look to one brought up in a different environment. This ability is much needed. In our estimate of pagan customs, e.g. the holding of gladia- torial shows in the arena, we are too quick. ''Put your- self in his place" and see. In our estimate of other re- ligions we need the same quality. A little realization of their point of view would save us from many an absurd snap- judgment. Browning's ability to do this is strikingly shown in several poems: e.g. in Caliban upon Setehos, a primitive intelligence trying to think out the mysteries of things; in Cleon, a Greek pagan poet and his attitude toward Hfe and toward St. Paul's preaching of the Christian faith ; but most strikingly of all in An Epistle. I. In the eleventh chapter of the Fourth Gospel (usually called the Gospel according to St. John) is an account of 136 AN EPISTLE 137 the death of Lazarus of Bethany, near Jerusalem, and his being raised from the dead by Jesus of Nazareth. That is all. 2. Now one of the strongest desires of humanity is to know something about what becomes of a man when he is dead. Is he extinct? If not, is he unconscious and will wake some day? Or is he conscious? If so, where is he ? what does he see ? what does he hear ? what does he do ? does he know what's taking place on earth ? and so on. 3. Now, in the case of Lazarus, here was a man supposed to have lain dead four days. He could answer these ques- tions, if he was really dead and raised to life again. Yet not a solitary syllable is related as to anything he said about his condition or experience between his death and his resurrection, nor how this affected his view of life. The questions have been asked thousands of times — everyone of you have heard some of them : How did he act? What did he say? How did life look to him? 4. Robert Browning is the only one I know of who has had the audacity to imagine how Lazarus acted and how he looked at life.^ Browning has done it with great skill. a. His observer is Karshish, an Arab physician, skilled in the science of the time. And Browning, with absolute consistency, does not impute to him any of the medical science of our time, but the medical science of centuries gone by, — with charms, queer dosage, and so on. The date is consistently laid just before the siege of Jerusalem which ended in its destruction in the year 70 a.d.^ * Browning does not undertake to imagine what Lazarus said about his experience while his body lay in the tomb, but somewhat of Lazarus' experi- ence is implied in his estimate of values after his resurrection. 2 P. 442, 11. 1-3 ; p. 444, 11. 10-14. The Jews revolted in 66 a.d. Vespasian began the siege of Jerusalem, but was made Emperor in 69, and his son Titus concluded the siege in the year 70. 138 BROWNING STUDIES b. The Arab physician is travelling for information — so common a way to learn when books were scarce — one of the best means of education anyway. He writes letters to an older physician named Abib, his teacher/ telling of his observations. This is now the twenty-second letter since he started on his travels : ^ "And writeth now the twenty-second time." c. With great naturalness his adventures and especially many curious observations, such as would be interesting to Abib, are woven in, — his hardships in travel, his being beaten by robbers, his being treated as a spy, his observation of fevers, epilepsy, scalp-disease, his information as to gums, herbs, charms, extract^ of spiders, and so on. If Browning, from a sense of delicacy, had left out these, we'd have no such atmosphere of reality as hangs round this Arab doctor's letter. It is a source of considerable wonder that this effect can be produced. It is accomplished partly by the technical na- ture of the details given, partly by the touching on his ad- ventures showing the troubled condition and dangers of the country, and partly by the informal style of the writing. d. It soon becomes evident that Karshish has something on his mind which interests him more than these other professional observations. This finally comes out apolo- getically, and he frequently tries to switch off from it to his other observations, but cannot let it alone. e. The thing that interests him is a case he has found here in Bethany, "one Lazarus a Jew," ^ who believes that 1 P. 441, 11. 66 sqq. 2 p. ^^^^ 1. ^g. 3 When Karshish breaks off (p. 442, 1. 23) it is not plain whether he meant to drop the spiders into wine (his most available form of anything alcoholic) and make a tincture, or boil them in water and make a decoction. ^ P. 442, 1, 83. The name is not given for some time after Karshish begins to tell of the case. This is in keeping with the informal style of his letter and also with his attitude toward this case. AN EPISTLE 139 he was dead and raised to life again. Karshish looks at the case from the medical standpoint — the medical science of his time: (i) He considers it "a case of mania — sub- induced by epilepsy." ^ (2) The one who brought him out of his trance was "a Nazarene physician of his tribe." ^ (3) This was accomplished "by the exhibition of some drug Or spell, exorcization, stroke of art," ' unknown to Karshish. (4) This Nazarene physician un- fortunately has been put to death many years ago at the instigation of a mob,^ and so Karshish cannot talk the matter over with him. So far, so good. No cause for reticence in writing of such a matter. /. But that is not all. Karshish, in spite of himself, is interested in Lazarus^ way of looking at life. Of this he cannot help giving some details,^ and these are very striking. g. But the thing he most hesitates to report is Lazarus' view of his countryman who, he believes, raised him from the dead. It seems to the man of science almost profane.^ This Lazarus believes^ that Jesus of Nazareth was God dwelling in human flesh, who bade him "Rise" and he did rise. h. Karshish apologizes again for giving this case, throws 1 p. 442, U. 54-56. 2 p. 442, 1. 75. 3 p. 442, U. 57, 58. * P. 444, 11. 33-49, especially 11. 37, 38. Karshish (11. 42, 49) explains that the death of the Nazarene took place at the time of the earthquake and supposes that his inability to stop the earthquake was what brought to a climax the anger of the people against him. Cf . Karshish's own explana- tion of the portent of that earthquake (11. 43-45) with the circumstances as related in Matt. 27: 50-53. Nothing could better show Browning's ability to keep the standpoint of his observer. ^ P. 442, 1. 82-p. 444, 1. 32, the main part of the letter. 6 P. 444, U. 57, 58, 64. ' P. 444, 11. 51-67. 140 BROWNING STUDIES in a few other medical observations, explains the circum- stances under which he met the man, and closes his letter. i. Then in a postscript, the conception Lazarus has of Jesus burning in the physician's mind, the new world of thought opened by it staring him in the face, he adds the statement of what the Incarnation according to the terms stated by Lazarus would mean to mankind if it could be true, what it does mean if it is true : ^ "The very God ! think, Abib ; dost thou think? So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too — So, through the thunder comes a human voice Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here ! Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine, But love I gave thee, with myself to love. And thou must love me who have died for thee !-*" 5. An Epistle is altogether a remarkable piece of imagina- tion, giving very truly (i) how Christ's deeds must have struck a man of education when he first came in contact with the report of them, and (2) how the claims made for him by his followers must have struck the educated men of those days outside of that circle. 1 P. 445, 11. 1-8. Mayor's general remark should be quoted here, because he cites this passage as an illustration of the quality to which he refers. Joseph B. Mayor, Chapters on English Metre, 2d ed., Cambridge, 1901, pp. 217, 218: "I hardly know whether it is fancy or not, but to me there is no poetry which has such an instantaneous solemnizing power as that of Browning. We seem to be in the company of some rough rollicking Silenus, and all of a sudden the spirit descends upon him, the tone of his voice changes, and he pours out strains of sublimest prophecy. To use his own figure, a sudden breeze dispels the smoky haze of the crowded city, and in a moment we are conscious of the 'crystal silentness' of snow-crowned Alps towering over our heads. I will close with the concluding lines of a poem which has always seemed to me to have this effect in a remarkable degree, The Strange Experi- ence of Karshish, the Arab Physician" AN EPISTLE 141 6. The point of the whole poem is too evident to need discussion : a. We say we believe in things unseen and eternal. We say we believe that spiritual things are worth while and that material things are not of so great consequence. We say we believe this life is a part of an endless life and that death can- not destroy us. But do we live as if we believed these things ? b. Taking Lazarus, a man supposed to have seen behind the veil, and who therefore is taken as one who knows, realizes, all these things which we profess to believe, Brown- ing shows how this man looks at life — how any man would look at life, if things unseen and eternal were actually real to him. This Lazarus has a different scale of values from that which most of us have. To Lazarus, things that so disturb others are of small consequence : the coming of a Roman army to destroy Jerusalem, the passing of a mule with a load of gourds — all the same to him.^ Nothing is of consequence to him except what pertains to personality : a look from his child, showing something of the child^s soul, stirs him deeply.^ This Lazarus knows what eternal Kfe means, and says ' "he will wait patient to the last For that same death which must restore his being To equilibrium." Knowing the reality of the unseen and eternal around the seen and transient, "He holds on firmly to some thread of Hfe Which runs across some vast distracting orb Of glory on either side that meagre thread, Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet — The spiritual Hfe around the earthly life." * 1 P. 443, 11- 31-34. ' P- 443, 11- 34-50. ' P. 443 , 11. 90-92. His experience has done its work on his soul. * P. 443, 11. 63, 65-68. 142 BROWNING STUDIES 7. A few notes : P. 441, 11. 59 sqq. The salutation is after the manner of Greek and Latin letters, familiar to us, but is confused a little by the large number of phrases arrayed in apposition. It runs: (1. 59) ''Karshish ... to Abib" (1. 65), and exactly parallel to that is (1. 73) "The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home." The verb of the first part of the paragraph, if any is needed, is *' sends greeting" which appears in the second part. *' Sends" governs also "three samples etc." The subject of ''writeth" (1. 78) is "the vagrant Scholar." 1. 60, not-incurious: curious, having an inquiring mind, eager for knowledge — incurious, not curious — not-in- curious, not not-curious; he makes a very modest claim for himself. Cf. also the preceding line. 1. 75, snakestone, any hard substance used as a remedy for snake-bites, whether applied externally or pounded up and taken internally. Samples of snakestone from Ceylon, examined by Prof. Michael Faraday (born 1791, died 1867), were found one of them to be of animal char- coal, one of chalk, one of some vegetable substance.^ 1. 79, were brought, in his last letter before this. P. 442, 1. 3, Vespasian, born 9 a.d., made Roman Emperor 69, died 79 ; his son, Titus, who took Jerusalem and de- stroyed it 70 A.D. I. 5, balls, eyeballs. II. 10-14, the description of the distance from Jerusalem to Bethany is not elegant, but it is very like a physician, probably quite Uke a physician of 1800 years ago. 1. 15, travel-scrip, travelling-bag: scrip, sl small bag, *See Berdoe, Browning Cyclopedia, ed. 191 2, p. 160. Berdoe cites Tennant, Ceylon, 3d ed., I, 200, AN EPISTLE - 143 wallet, satchel (cf. Matt. 10 : 10 and often in the Gospels, version of 161 1). 1. 16, Jewry, place where Jews live, here the Jews' country, Judaea, — used with a touch of contempt. 1. 17, viscid, sticky; choler, bile. 1. 18, tertians, intermittent fevers occurring every other day, — called tertian (from Latin tertianus, of, or pertain- ing to, the third — tertius), because in the days when the name arose it was the custom to count both ends of a period of time. Cf. the N. T. writers' counting Fri. after- noon to Sun. morning as three days and using the phrase *'on the third day" in referring to the resurrection of Christ. Cf. also "after eight days" (Jn. 20: 26), meaning a week later. I. 19, falling-sickness, epilepsy. II. 20 sqq., there^s a spider here etc. The use of spiders to some extent in medical practice is ancient and had a long vogue. It is not nearly so revolting as many things in the therapeutics of bygone centuries. What Karshish was about to say was how to make a tincture, or else a decoction, of these spiders as a remedy for epilepsy, but it is too valuable a secret to risk. The particular spider referred to is probably the Zebra spider (Epiblemum scenicum). It belongs to the tribe of SaltigradcB, or leaping spiders (including especially those that lie in wait and leap on their prey). This tribe is of the Wandering group} See Dr. H. McCook, in Poet-Lore, vol. I, p. 518. I. 24, runagate, fugitive, vagabond ; this, the letter he is writing. II. 25, 26, Eis service, in carrying the letter, is to pay me for treatment I've given him, viz. blowing a sublimate up * Walcknaer divides spiders into five principal groups, distinguished by their habits. 144 BROWNING STUDIES his nose to help his ailing eye ; a sublimate is any substance" refined by melting, vaporizing, and then condensing, as is done e.g. with sulphur, iodine, camphor, or in the pro- duction of benzoic acid. 1. 30, gum-tragacanth, sold usually in dry flakes and employed for mucilage and similar uses in place of gum- arabic. It is procured from several species of shrubs of the genus Astragalus. 1. 32, porphyry y hard fine-grained rock, some varieties red, some purple, some green — usually with crystals of feldspar or quartz interspersed, — used, on account of its hardness, for such things as mortars. 1- 33 > ^^ fi^^f literally in the endj i.e. in conclusion, to sum it up. 1. 35, Zoarj a city near the south end of the Dead Sea. 1. 42, tang, a point, projection, sting ; also, a flavor, taste. 1. 44, the Man, Lazarus, as presently comes out. 1. 53, wit, in the earlier and broader sense — mind, intellect, understanding. 1. 54, suhinduced, literally under-induced, i.e. caused or started indirectly. I. 57, exhibition, in the medical sense — " the act of ad- ministering as a remedy." II. 60 sqq. The idea that disease is due to possession by an evil spirit is ancient and widespread. Cf . the healing miracles in many instances in the New Testament. 1. 64, conceit, in the more general sense — concept, idea. 1. 71, or . . . or, either ... or. 1. 76, ^Sayeth, he sayeth. Cf. our use of says without a subject, in reporting a man's remarks. 1. 77, diurnal, daily — in the sense here of being daily met with. 1. 78, figmentj something invented or imagined. AN EPISTLE 145 1. 82, after-life y the life which Karshish finds Lazarus living, after his experience of death and resurrection, or after this "figment" got fastened in his mind. 1. 84, sanguine^ in the literal sense — full-blooded, (Latin sanguis, gen. sanguinis , blood). 1. 87, as, as if. P. 443, 1. 3, premise, present as introduction, explain beforehand. I. 5, inquisition, keen searching inquiry. II. 28-50. The condemnation of Lazarus^ point of view and actions is entirely from Karshish's point of view and comes from his testing those actions by his own scale of values. This he admits when he adds in 1. 37 paren- thetically "Far as I see." All the words "witless," "pre- posterously," "wrongly," are to be taken with the quali- fication — as far as Karshish understands. 1. 61, a match cannot, of course, be in our everyday sense or Browning has made an absurd slip. It must be taken in a more general sense of any means of starting a fire or setting off an explosion. 1. 62, Greek fire, the use of liquid fire is as ancient as Assyria (as is shown by representations on the monuments), i.e. such inflammable things as sulphur, tar, petroleum, nitre, were thrown on the enemy. The mixtures used later were no doubt more carefully made and more effective. Regular Greek fire is not known until the siege of Constan- tinople 673 A.D. Although something of the sort was undoubtedly known in the first centur>% the particular combination which became famous as Greek fire was not known then and Browning has made a mistake in having Karshish write the phrase. 1. 63, He, Lazarus. 1. 69, that, the spiritual life ; this, the earthly life. 146 BROWNING STUDIES P. 444, 1. 37, leech, physician. 1. 71, blue-flowering borage, the common borage {Borago officinalis), a plant which was for many centuries highly esteemed and supposed to possess qualities producing cordial and exhilarating effects; Aleppo, a city in north Syria, now capital of the Turkish vilayet of Aleppo. 1. 72, nitrous, containing nitre, i.e. potassium nitrate, saltpeter; // is strange, his thoughts slipping back to Lazarus. 1. 89, ambiguous, there's doubt as to what the Syrian may do with the letter — three things are mentioned, all of which are equally likely. P. 445, 1. 2, so, if God has become incarnate; were, subjunctive would be. 1. 3, so, same as in 1. 2 ; voice, typographical error in this word in Globe Ed. 1. 5, it, a face like yours : the words of the line are really addressed to "Face, my hands fashioned," so we ought to say a face like yourself. 1. 6, conceive, misprinted in Globe Ed. 1. 9, He, the one who, Lazarus says, raised him from the dead. II. Bishop Blougram's Apology, pp. 456-467 Browning gives us here a very interesting discussion. Much that is said, however, in the vein of defending super- ficial success and compromise with convictions and lack of out and out frankness with the public, is unlike Browning's genuine attitude. Browning himself has safeguarded this point by entering a caveat at the end : ^ * The appendix (p. 467, 11. 30 sqq.) to the monologue is added on purpose to guard against our thinking that Browning supposed he had really justified a man in Bishop Blougram's attitude. Notice chiefly 11. 39-64. BISHOP BLOVGRAM'S APOLOGY I47 "For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke. The other portion, as he shaped it thus For argumentatory purposes, He felt his foe was foohsh to dispute." And so on. The chief excellence of the poem is the dis- cussion of Faith and Doubt, and all this smacks of deep sincerity and is evidently a statement of considerations which have been of comfort in Browning's own life. 1. His speaker in Sylvester Blougram^ (no historical person), a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church ^ in Eng- land^ in Browning's own day.^ Browning purposely chooses a Roman Catholic to be his mouthpiece in this philosophizing about Faith, because in demands for sheer Faith all branches of the Catholic Church so far exceed any Protestant Church — in all the Catholic systems there is so much more which the faithful are expected to believe, and some of it {e.g. Transubstantiation) is more staggering to Faith than is almost any Protestant doctrine. 2. The reader of the poem understands the circumstances quickly. The Bishop has had a literary chap named Gigadibs ^ to dine with him on Corpus Christi Day,^ and over the wine the Bishop speaks frankly about his faith * P. 467, 1. 31 gives his full name. 2 There are many passages which prove that Bp. Blougram is a Roman Catholic, e.g. p. 456, 1. 80 ; p. 459, 11. 64-70, 79, 80 ; p. 460, 11. 45, 46 ; p. 461, 11. 5-7; p. 464,11. 21,43-47. 3 P. 456, U. 22-25 ; P- 46s, 1- 34; P- 467, 11- 3-19, 31, 32, 69-71 ; and the whole atmosphere of the monologue. Blougram has, of course, been much in Rome (p. 456, 1. 64). ^ As is shown by references to contemporary men and events, e.g. p. 456, 1. 71 ; p. 460, 11. 49-54, 79 ; P- 462, 1. 67 ; p. 464, U- 20, 21, 60, 61. 6 P. 456, 1. 32 ; p. 467, 11. 3, 34. « P. 456, 1. S3. Corpus Christi Qiterally, the Body of Christ) is a festival in honor of the holy Eucharist and is observed on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. Trinity is the next Sunday after Whitsunday, or Pentecost, which is 50 days after Easter. 148 BROWNING STUDIES and his doubts and makes an apologia for his position in life. Browning has frequently thrown in remarks to be in keeping with these circumstances, e.g. the parenthesis on p. 457 (11, 67, '68) : " (try the cooler jug — Put back the other, but don't jog the ice !) " 3. Browning's Bishop speaks well, with wealth of fancy and precision of expression. His wit is keen, and has exactly the ring of a prelate wearied with the pomp and show of the Church, yet knowing the worth of all this and speaking of it in genial terms, though sometimes not very seriously. Some of his characterizations of things will be long remembered by the reader: e.g. anyone acquainted with the struggle between science and theology will ap- preciate this : ^ "cosmogony, Geology, ethnology, what not, (Greek endings, each the little passing-bell That signifies some faith's about to die)." 4. Gigadibs represents the man of the world, with his self-satisfied air and his patronizing, if not condemnatory, attitude toward the clergy. The Bishop goes right to the centre of this attitude at once ^ and very discriminatingly, in pointing out that, while Gigadibs despises Bishop Blou- gram, he feels none the less highly honored to have dined with him and will have it to boast of years afterward. Gigadibs does not speak in the poem, but his reception of Blougram's remarks is frequently shown in what Blougram next says. Gigadibs is rather bored with Blougram's talk and does not feel its full import. This also is true to life. The description of how Gigadibs acted is good : ^ 1 p. 463, 11. 84-87. 2 p^ 456^ 11. 32-70, especially 11. 40 sqq. • P. 467, U. 30, 31, 34-36. BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY 149 "Over his wine so smiled and talked his hour Sylvester Blougram, . . . With Gigadibs the literary man, Who played with spoons, explored his plate's design, And ranged the olive-stones about its edge." 5. Browning's sympathy with the Roman Catholic Church is one of the most interesting things in his nature. Extreme Protestant as he was, the mystic in him responded profoundly to much that he found in the Catholic Church, his aesthetic sense felt strongly the appeal of the artistic side of the Church's worship, and he honored the genuine piety which he knew in so many members of the Roman Communion. Protestant cavillers and controversialists should remember that Robert Browning, after many years in Italy in the midst of the Roman Catholic Church, makes the finest figure of nobility and self-sacrifice in his poems a young Roman Catholic priest, Giuseppe Caponsacchi in The Ring and the Book. It is not surprising, then, that in Bishop Blougram^ s Apology we find Browning stating the case of a doubting Roman Catholic Bishop and defending his view of life and his accepting the honors and emolu- ments of his ofiice as well as a genuine ecclesiastic could do it, — and probably much in the same line in which a bishop of such mental make-up would have to speak, if he "made a clean breast of it" like this. 6. The figure that runs through the poem, often recurring, is of life as a voyage and our adapting our luggage to our cabin-space. 7. But the chief interest in Bishop Blougram' s Apology is the discussion of Faith, and the principles laid down affect Protestantism as much as Catholicism — are, in- deed, universal and apply inside or outside of any form and all forms of church organization. It is hard to begin I^O BROWNING STUDIES to quote without quoting great sections of the poem. Some of the points in the argument are these : a. Sheer unbelief is as hard to keep as sheer belief is. Blougram proposes that we throw faith overboard: now being sheer unbelievers what have we? We now have unbelief disturbed by belief, just as we had belief shaken by unbelief : ^ "All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt." Half a page preceding these lines should be quoted in con- nection with them. b. If you begin to believe, there's no drawing the line : ^ "some way must be, — Once feel about, and soon or late you hit Some sense in which it might be, after all. Why not 'The Way, the Truth, the Life?'" c. On the other hand, if you begin to cut away things which you count non-essential as matters of faith, begin to clear off "excrescences," it is difficult to stop : ^ "First cut the Liquefaction,^ what comes last But Fichte's clever cut at God himself?" d. Faith is the positive attitude of mind without which nothing is accomplished. Faith is constructive and dynamic, and the great things done in the world have 1 P. 4S8, U. 59-61. 2 P. 458, 11. 44-47. ^ P- 464, U. 60, 61. * The Liquefaction of that portion of the blood of St. Januarius preserved in a crystal phial in the cathedral of Naples. The miracle is alleged to take place on special occasions, and regularly in public on St. Januarius' Day, Sept. 19th. Cf. p. 464, 11. 43-47. See discussion of the miracle in art. Januarius by Herbert Thurston, S. J., of London, in theCatholic Encyclopedia, New York, 1910, vol. VIII, pp. 295-297. Browning here uses belief in it as an illustration of crass credulity. BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY 151 been due to faith — faith in something. Browning gives many illustrations : e.g. sl man is crazy who thinks unbelief can make a Napoleon : ^ "Be a Napoleon, and yet disbelieve — Why, the man's mad, friend, take his Ught away !" Faith is the fire : ^ "fire and life Are all, dead matter's nothing, we agree : And be it a mad dream or God's very breath. The fact's the same, — belief's fire, once in us, Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself." e. Morality is rooted in faith in some sort of invisible things. Morality cannot be accounted for solely as having been an evolution from expediency. And few who put themselves down as sheer unbelievers are willing to live consistently with that profession.^ /. Faith is a sound instinct : ^ "You own your instincts? why, what else do I, Who want, am made for, and must have a God Ere I can be aught, do aught?" g. We are not altogether helpless in the matter of whether we believe or not. Will and desire have some part in it. And Bishop Blougram considers that a man may choose to such an extreme as to say : ^ "I absolutely and peremptorily BeUeve!" h. But doubts will come. And doubt is not wrong nor inconsistent with faith : "If you desire faith — then you've faith enough." « 1 P. 461, 11. 34, 35. « P. 462, 11. 47-51. » P. 46s, 11. 44-70. « P. 46s, 11. 75-77. » P. 459, 11. 7,8. « P. 463, 1.39. 152 BROWNING STUDIES Faith unmixed with doubt is impossible : ^ "Pure faith indeed — you know not what you ask !" It could not be borne. " With me, faith means perpetual unbeHef Kept quiet hke the snake 'neath Michael's foot Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe." ^ 8. The poem has woven into it some of the threads of Browning's best philosophy : a. The good service done by evil in the world : ^ "And that's what all the blessed evil's for." b. The main thing — *'to wake, not sleep :" * "I say, faith is my waking life : One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals, We know, but waking's the main point with us, And my provision's for life's waking part. Accordingly, I use heart, head, and hand All day, I build, scheme, study, and make friends ; And when night overtakes me, down I lie, Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it. The sooner the better, to begin afresh. What's midnight doubt before the dayspring's faith?" c. The good of the struggle within a man, set forward in the grotesque and quite unforgettable picture of God pulling upward on the man and Satan pulling downward — and so he grows (we might almost say they stretch him by their pulling) : ^ "No, when the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head, Satan looks up between his feet — both tug — ■ He's left, himself, i' the middle : the soul wakes And grows. Prolong that battle through his Hfe ! Never leave ^ growing till the life to come ! " 1 P. 463, U. 52 sqq. 2 P. 463, 11. 71-73. 3 P. 463, 1. 59. * P. 459, 11. 8-17; 11. 18-28 should also be quoted, they continue the same line of thought. ^ p^ ^5^^ ii_ 10-15. a leave off. CLEON 153 9. If I may quote just one passage more, — this time to illustrate the picturesqueness with which Bishop Blou- gram carries forward his argument, let it be this one. After proposing that we divest ourselves of faith and see how we come out, he goes on : ^ "How can we guard our unbelief? , Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus-ending from Euripides, — And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as nature's self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, Round the ancient idol, on his base again, — The grand Perhaps ! " III. Cleon, pp. 467-471 We were speaking of Browning's ability to put himself in the place of one who had grown up in an entirely different civilization, and oi An Epistle as an illustration of this. Another illustration of the same power is found in Cleon. I. This also is a letter. a. It is written by an imaginary poet (who is not only poet, but sculptor, painter, philosopher, and musician) .^ Browning, at the head of the poem, begins a quotation from St. Paul's address on the Areopagus in Athens (Acts 17 : 28) : *'As certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also nis offspring." The words given by Paul, **For we are also his offspring," ^ are from the Phmnomena of Aratus, 1 P. 458, 11. 30, 32-40. ^ P. 468, U. 33-53. 'The words in a slightly different form are found in Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus (4th century B.C.), where we read: "For thine offspring are we; therefore will I hymn thy praises and sing thy might forever." Paul's using the phrase "As certain also of your own poets have said" may easily 154 BROWNING STUDIES a Stoic poet of Soli ^ in Cilicia, in the third century B.C. It is not likely that Browning means to imply that he thought Paul quoted from an unknown poet for whom Browning invents the name Cleon. But Browning takes this phrase to introduce a letter purporting to be from a Greek poet, just as Paul uses the words to introduce his quotation from Aratus : i.e. Paul cites one poet, Browning cites another, who writes this letter. b. This letter from the poet Cleon is to a king Protus **in his Tyranny.'' This is in the earlier Greek sense :^ Tvpavpo9 (turannos), an absolute ruler of one of the Greek states, kind and good very likely, but king in an unlimited monarchy ; thus we read of Pisistratus (born about 612 B.C., died 527 B.C.), "tyrant of Athens," a mild and beneficent ruler, and of the "tyrants" of other Greek cities; "his Tyranny," then, means his absolute sovereignty, or it may mean the territory ruled by such a king. Browning's poem does not indicate in what part of Greece his king Protus rules .^ c. This king is a patron of art and has sent Cleon rich gifts and a congratulatory letter, and has asked him certain questions. The nature of his congratulations and the nature of his questions we readily learn from the poet's answer. imply that he knew the sentiment to have been expressed by more than one Greek poet. It is possible that the name Cleon for his poet was suggested to Browning by the name Cleanthes. * Not a native of Paul's own city Tarsus, as is so often stated, but of Soli (or Pompeiopolis, as it was called after being rebuilt by Pompey the Great), a city on the coast southwest of Tarsus, in the same province of Cilicia in Asia Minor. ' The use of tyrant, however, meaning a ruler unjust and despotic, arose already in the later days of the ancient Greek civilization. •The reference to the phare (p. 468, 1. 41) proves nothing, because it is only a general word for lighthouse. The reference to the Poecile of Athens proves nothing except that Protus had never seen it (see 11. 43, 44). CLEON 155 d. The king's letter has just been handed to Cleon, and he is writing his reply as the master of the king's galley un- loads the gifts.^ e. The time is in the first Christian century, during the missionary preaching of Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ. This is evident from the close of the letter ^ which shows that the king has asked Cleon about Paul and that Cleon knows Paul has preached somewhere in the vicinity of his island. Paul was undoubtedly martyred near the close of the reign of Nero Caesar, who committed suicide June gth, in the year 68. Paul's death was some time 64 to 67 a.d. This letter belongs to a time at least ten years earHer, i.e. when Paul was in Greece and neighboring parts of the Em- pire, in the years 50-55 a.d.^ /. Cleon is a pagan Greek, with all the learning, sense of art, and contempt for the Jews^ which a cultured Greek would have. g. He is writing "from the sprinkled isles" of Greece,^ "that o'erlace the sea" like lilies, — probably the Cyclades, a group in the ^gean Sea, east of the southern end of Greece. 2. The only words that need explanation are : P. 468, 1. 37, epos (Gk. €7ro9), an epic poem. 1. 41, the pharej lighthouse. The word is derived from * P. 467, 11. 78-83. Notice the description (p. 468, 11. 1-8) of how one of the slaves brings to Cleon wine in a cup which the king himself has used. 2 P. 471, 11. 55-71. Paul himself has not preached on that island, but has been near enough so that some of his converts have preached there. ' In having Cleon at this period address a letter "to Protus in his Tyr- anny," Browning forgets the historical situation. As a matter of fact there were no sovereigns in any part of Greece in the first century a.d., but the whole coimtry was a province of the Roman Empire, — the province of Achaia. * P. 471, 11. 61-67. Paul is to him "a mere barbarian Jew," 6 P. 467, U. 74-76. 156 BROWNING STUDIES Pharos J the name of a rocky island off the city of Alexandria, Egypt. Alexander the Great, who founded the city 332 B.C., connected the island with the mainland by a mole ^ (called the Heptastadium, because it was seven stadia long — about four-fifths of a mile), thus providing two harbors. Along this mole a street was later constructed, making Pharos a suburb of Alexandria. On the northeast point of the island the famous lighthouse stood for 1600 years. It was built chiefly by Ptolemy I (died 283 B.C., founder of the Greek dynasty in Egypt) and completed by his son Ptolemy Philadelphus (Ptolemy II, born 309, died 247 B.C.). It was hardly a lighthouse in our modern sense, but a great beacon- tower, with a fire kept constantly burning on it. The Greek word pharos {(fxipo^)^ then, came to be used for any such tower. 1. 43, Poecile (also in English Stoa Poscile, and Poicile; Gk. ttoiklXt), many-colored, or in full ?5 aroa ttoikCXtj^ or rj ttolklXtj arod, the many-colored portico), the famous *' porch," or covered colonnade, in Athens, where Zeno, founder of the Stoics, taught and from which the Stoics derived their name. It was decorated with paintings,^ one of the artists being Polygnotus of Thasos (5th century B.C.). It cannot be that Browning is ignorant of Polygnotus' work in the Poecile and accredits the whole to Cleon. He probably means that there were paintings there by artists whose names we do not know, among whom he places his Cleon. But the language (11. 43, 44) "The Poecile ... is mine too" sounds as if Cleon claimed all the paintings there as his work. * This mole still remains and has been increased by alluvial deposits until it is a broad neck of land. 2 P. 468,11.43,44: "o'er-storied its whole length . . . with painting," i.e. covered its whole length with stories told in pictures. CLEON 157 1. 50, combined the moods. The various sequences of tones and semitones in the diatonic scale — the variety depending upon where you begin — are called moods, or modes (usually modes). Thus, e.g., on a piano key-board, taking the key of C {i.e. omitting the black keys), if we begin with D, the octave D to D gives the Dorian mode, E to E the Phrygian, F to F the Lydian, G to G the Mixolydian. The modes furnish great variety in the rela- tive position of the tones and semitones, and a correspond- ing variety in the effect of the music, some being bright, some sombre, and therefore different modes being suitable for different subjects and occasions. The Greek music was the basis on which the music of the Christian Church was developed, and the principles of Greek music have persisted in the music of the Church. In the earlier history of Church music, four modes were recognized, called authentic modes, and these are thought to have been adopted directly from Greek music. Later, four plagal modes were added, and still later others have been added and some made by combining some already accepted. The develop- ment of Church music was gradual and never the work of one man nor of a few, but the chief stages in it are associated with the names of Ambrose (born about 340, died 397), Bishop of Milan, and Pope Gregory the Great (born 542, made Pope 590, died 604). The Gregorian music is still extensively used — is, indeed, now officially the music of the Latin Church. The modes in it are usually desig- nated by numbers, as e.g. the first mode, the second mode, the sixth mode. In modem music only two modes are recognized, the Major and the Minor.^ * These, although spoken of as the Major and Minor key and Major and Minor scales y and although they may involve sharps and flats, are essentially modes. 158 BROWNING STUDIES P. 471, 1. 58, PauluSj Paul. I. 59, Christus, Christ. II. 59, 69. This echo of rumors in regard to Paul, con- fusing him with Christ, gives, no doubt, a faithful rep- resentation of the confusion in the minds of most of the people of Achaia and other provinces, — knowing only vaguely and indififerently of the new doctrine and its chief promulgator. 3. The poem is very gracefully written. It is not necessary to choose illustrations out of its almost uniform excellence, but perhaps these lines are the best : P. 467, 1. 83, "Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee." P. 468, 1. 32, " Within the eventual element of calm." P. 471, 1. 49, " Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death." 4. The main points in the poem, in answer to the king's congratulations and questions: a. P. 468, 11. 33 sqq. The king has congratulated Cle©n on how much he has accompHshed. Cleon's answer is : It is even so. He has done all these things. Cleon's mind represents the growth of culture. He is superior to the ancients, his mind is more composite and therefore greater than the simpler minds of the past. They were each great in one Une and in his own line each of the great in the past may have easily exceeded Cleon. But he is capable of appreciating the best each one of them has done. At the same time he has wider interests and more varied activity. b. P. 469, 11. 53 sqq. Has not Cleon therefore attained the crown and proper end of Hfe? How does he face death ? Having gained so much and having given so much to enrich the Hfe of the world, can it not be said of him that he does not die? No, says Cleon. He sees that rekntless progress is a law in all around him. But the CLEON 159 individual is lost. The progress is accomplished by the individual's adding himself, his life and work, to the world's life and losing himself. But to say that this is immortality is juggling with words. There is small comfort for the individual in the progress of the race, if the individual soul perishes. The individual has not really achieved immortality. To survive incorporate with the life of humanity, even to live as an individual in the memory of men, is not really to be alive, — and Cleon shrinks from it, he loves life so much. c. P. 470, 11. 77 sqq. But, insists the king in his letter, such a poet or artist lives in his works. Cleon repeats that this is not life. The king has tripped upon a word. Knowing how and showing how to live are very different from actually Hving. Knowing what joy is is different from feeling joy. Writing of love is not the same as loving and being loved. If Sappho and iEschylus live still, as the king says they do, let them come and do what a living man can do. No, no, the idea which the king has so generously expressed,^ that he cannot face death as cheer- fully as Cleon can because he leaves no works in which to live as Cleon does — this is exactly contrary to the case. Cleon's ''fate is deadher still." For Cleon, after all his intensity of life out of which these works were made, himself will be dead, while his works will be alive to mock him.2 Cleon says he has thought of the possibility of personal immortality, a future state with joy enough to satisfy the "joy-hunger" which we have here. Then — T_ 1 See quotation from his letter, p. 469, 11. 63-75. Cf. p. 471, 1- 26. 2 The mockery consists in this situation : that the works will still have their part in the life of men, while the personality which gave them being will be extinct. This passage (p. 471, 11. 27-41) is the most poignant in the poem. Surely it is out of Browning's own love of life and his recoil from being blotted out. l6o BROWNING STUDIES death would be only emancipation. But he judges it is not a fact, or else Zeus would have revealed it to us. d. P. 471, 11. 54 sqq. Farewell and postscript. The postscript refers to the king's question as to Paul and his preaching. It gives the cultured Greek's attitude. The king's servant has a letter for Paulus, if he can find him,— doubtless to ask the same old questions mankind has always been asking. IV. One Word Mom:, pp. 472-474 This was the epilogue to Men and Women. Those two volumes contained, as published, 50 other poems ^ and this epilogue — hence usually spoken of as 51 poems. One Word More is really a dedication of the two volumes to Mrs. Browning. At its head stands To E. B. B. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning) 18 j^. It is signed R. B. at the end. I. The Metre. a. One Word More is written in trochaic pentameter, i.e. five-foot lines, the normal foot being of two syllables with the accent on the first syllable. Thus e.g. the first line is regular : There they 1 4re, my | fif-ty | men and | w6m-en. h. The usual English blank verse, or ^^ heroic" verse, is iambic pentameter, i.e. each line of five feet, the normal foot being of two syllables, accented on the second syllable. Thus e.g. a regular line from Clean : ^ They give | thy let | ter to | me e | ven n6w. (i) The five-foot iambic blank verse is that in which the greatest poetry in the English language is written, — the ^ The larger part of them now distributed in the collected works under other headings, as we have already pointed out. See Browning's note, p. 472, bottom of I St column. » P. 467, 1. 78. ONE WORD MORE l6l major works of Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, Browning, and many others. (2) But the regular line, with five feet and every other syllable stressed, would become intolerably mechanical and monotonous. Hence there have arisen, for the sake of melody and flexibility, a great variety of sub- stitutions ^ in the Hne. c. Similarly, in handling five-foot trochaic. Browning practices some substitution, but not with anywhere near the freedom which he and other masters use in handling five-foot iambic. d. One Word More is the largest piece of five-foot trochaic in the English language. Lines of five-foot trochaic are found : e.g. in Tennyson's Vision of Sin and his Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. But this of Browning's is the only piece of any considerable length in this metre in English. Perhaps p. 473, 1. 76, may refer to the unique- ness of the metre : ^ "Lines I write the first time and the last time." e. It appears that in Bohemian poetry, the usual five-foot line is trochaic, just as in English the usual is iambic. At least that is what I understand Omond to mean when he says :^ "In Bohemian literature, I understand, falling rhj^thm is as natural as rising with us ; the metre of One Word More is nor- mal, that of Paradise Lost exotic." 1 This matter of the substitution of other feet for the iambic, along with the other technicahties of this verse, is too long to discuss here. The reader is referred to any standard works on English Metre, but especially to Mayor's Chapters on English Metre (2d ed. 1901), where there is a careful inquiry into the usage of the best masters. 2 The whole passage (section xrn), however, probably refers to the nature and general style of the poem. ' T. S. Omond, A Study of Metre, London, 1903, p. 64. Omond through- out discards the usual terminology, and calls feet "periods" — those accented on the first part "falling rhythm," accented on the latter part "rising rhythm." l62 BROWNING STUDIES 2. Notes. a. Two of the footnotes in the Globe Edition need a little modification. Both refer to RafaeFs sonnets : P. 472, 1. 33, "Rafael made a century of sonnets." Note 2, "There is no reason to believe this to be the fact.'' P. 472, 1. 54, "You and I will never read that volume." Note 8, "Really a book of drawings, not sonnets." The Editor's assertions are too sweeping : (i) It is supposed that the book of Rafael's kept by Guido Reni and lost after his death contained drawings. (2) But it is known that Rafael wrote some three or four love-sonnets on the back of sketches, and these are still preserved. One of them is in the British Museum. (3) It may be that similarly the 100 drawings in the book lost had each one a sonnet on the back, — that Browning had some information that this was the case, or guessed that it might be so. b. The following notes in addition to, or in completion of, those in the Globe Edition : P. 472, 1. 33, Rafael (in EngUsh more often Raphael) j famous painter, born 1483, died 1520 ; century, 100, — now narrowed down to a measure of time but formerly used for 100 of anything.^ 1. 37, these, the Madonnas ; but one, supply might view. 1. 38, Who that one ? Browning refers to the story popu- larly told of Rafael's attachment for a baker's daughter in Rome. The story rests on slight foundations, if any. Her name is given as Margherita, and the painting of which she is supposed to be the original is in the Barberini Palace 1 Thus a Roman legion was divided into centuries of soldiers, Shakespeare (Cymbeline, IV. ii. 391) has "a century of prayers," and we still say "a century-run" made e.g. on a bicycle. ONE WORD MORE 163 in Rome. It is signed by Rafael on a bracelet worn by the figure. Since about 1750, the picture has been called La Fornarina {i.e. *'The Bakeress"). The portrait also named La Fornarina, in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, is not by Rafael but by Sebastian del Piombo (1485-1547), and does not resemble the face in Rafael's painting in the Barberini Palace. The same should be said of another La Fornarina by the same Sebastian in the Old Museum, Berlin. 1. 50, San SistOj Saint Sixtus the Martyr (Sixtus II, elected Bishop of Rome Aug. 31st, 257, beheaded Aug. 6th, 258, in the persecution under the Emperor Valerian) ; he names sl Madonna, i.e. it is named from him the Madonna di San Sisto, the Sistine Madonna, because it was painted as an altarpiece for the Church of San Sisto at Piacenza and has in it a figure representing St. Sixtus in an attitude of adoration (at the left as you face the picture), — it is now in the Royal Gallery in Dresden ; Foligno, sl town in Central Italy, — the Madonna of Foligno is now in the Vatican. 1. 51. The picture referred to is in the Pitti Palace at Florence and represents the Madonna appearing to a votary in a vision. It is called the Madonna del Granduca. 1. 52. The picture called La Belle Jardiniere, in the Louvre in Paris, shows the Madonna seated in a garden among lilies. 1. 55, Guido Reni, eminent Italian painter, born 1575, died 1642. 1. 60, Dante (born 1265, died 132 1) gives an account of this incident in the Vita Nuova, xxxv. 1. 61, Beatrice, Beatrice Portinari, who was idealized by Dante until she became the centre of his poetic inspiration. P. 473, 1. 13, Bice, contraction for Beatrice, used affec- tionately as a diminutive or nickname. l64 BROWNING STUDIES I. 29, Heaven's gift etc. — earth mars Heaven's gift, takes something away from it. II. 30 sqq. refer to Moses' smiting the rock for water (Ex. 17 : 1-7, Num. 20 : i-ii), and the implied comparison is to an artist's serving an ungrateful world. 1. 51, Egypt's flesh-pots, in the murmuring of the Hebrews against Moses (Ex. 16 : 2, 3). 1. 53, Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance, when Moses received the Law, may refer to the lightning on the fore- head of the mountain (Ex. 19 : 9, 16, 18) or to the shining of Moses' face when he came down (Ex. 34 : 29, 30). 1. 57, Jethro's daughter, Moses' wife Zipporah (Ex. 2 : 16, 21, cf. 3: i). I. 58, The ^Ethiopian bondslave, another wife of Moses (Num. 12 : i), not so well known as Zipporah. P. 474, 1. 4, missal-marge, margin on the page of a missal, i.e. a book containing the Mass for regular and for special occasions. II. 23-35. They saw the new moon in Florence, saw it grow into a full moon ; then they came to London, and see it now in the last quarter there. 1. 27, Fiesole, a town on a hill near Florence, readily seen from the city. This is why the new moon came "Drifted^ over Fiesole by twilight." I. 29, Samminiato, San Miniato, a famous church in Florence. Cf . Giovambattista,^ i.e. Giovanni Battista (John Baptist). II. 36 sqq. This myth in many forms is woven into Literature. Cf. Keats' Endymion. * Passive participle modifying she (1. 28), — in the same construction as the active participle curving (1. 26). ' The Ring and the Book, p. 664, 1. 13. ONE WORD MORE 165 1. 39, mythos (Gk. tiv6o between 11. 75 and 76. A DEATH IN THE DESERT 193 it should be said that the Apostle has a right to look forward and anticipate how his testimony as to Christ's life and teaching will be received in future centuries. The philos- ophy, however, in St. John's speech is exceedingly modem. Yet to this it may be answered that the great problems of Kfe and faith are much the same in all centuries, and so the speech may, in a certain way, be justified in its setting. But after all it is impossible to escape a sense of dramatic infelicity in this poem. 4. Browning has taken pains to weave into the d3dng Apostle's speech many allusions to give it an atmosphere of reality. Such are the references to the speaker's extreme age and his having outlived the others,^ the references to events in which he had a part,^ and the reminiscences of New Testament writings associated with St. John's name.' Yet what Browning accomplishes in this line he undoes in large measure by references to ^schylus and the Prome- theus-myth,^ Jove,^ Juno,^ and Atlas,^ — all of which sound very strange from the lips of the Apostle John, if he is the author of any of the New Testament writings with which his name has been connected. 5. The argument, though undoubtedly provoked by Renan's work, is aimed not only at him but at several phases of modern doubt. The following is a rough outline of the progress of it : a. The Apostle reviews how he taught about Christ's life and how he wrote the works (the Fourth Gospel, i, 2, and 3 John, Revelation) associated with his name."' 1 p. 511, 1. 56 ; p. 504, 11. 65-68. * e.g. p. 507, 11. 20-24. « e.g. p. 504, 11. 71-74 (cf. Rev. i : 10-16) ; p. 505, 11. 1-5 (cf. i Jn. i : 1-3) ; p. S05) 11- 30, 31 (cf- I Jn. 2 : 18). * P. 506, 11. 70-77 ; p. 510, 11. 21-30. ^ P. 508, 11. SI, 52. «P. sio, 1. 56. ' P. 505, 11. 7-59. 194 DROWNING STUDIES b. But he foresees the rise of doubts and questionings, extending in far-off generations so far as to deny the genuine- ness of his testimony and even to dispute his own existence : " Was John at all, and did he say he saw ? " ^ c. The life and death of Christ are to him a matter of perpetual present reality : "To me, that story — ay, that Life and Death Of which I wrote 'it was' — to me, it is ; — Is, here and now: I apprehend nought else." ^ And he goes on to explain why this is so.^ d. Yet not as they are to him will seem Christ's life and death to coming generations. If the Apostle could use a telescope, wrong end to, on these events, he would see them look removed to a distance, as future centuries must see them. So he tries to see from that point of view.^ e. He founds his general argument on Love as the chief thing of worth in life : "For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear, — believe the aged friend, — ^ Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love. How love might be, hath been indeed, and is ; And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost Such prize despite the envy of the world. And, having gained truth, keep truth : that is all." '^ f. This leads to the question : "Does God love. And will ye hold that truth against the world ? " « The answer ^ is along the line that the final test of things is in our own experience : things proven there we can never 1 P. SOS, 1. 68. 2 p. ^o^^ u, 8o^ 8i ; p. 506, 1. i. 3 P. 506, 11. 2-16. * P. S06, 11. 17 sqq. 6 P. S06, U. 35-41. « P. 506, 11. 63, 64. ' P. S06, 1. 6s-p. S07, 1. II. A DEATH IN THE DESERT I95 disown. If a man has really experienced the worth of Christ, he could no more give Him up than he could give up fire after he has proven its warmth ; the worth of one would be as real as the worth of the other. Experience is the proof of "The love that tops the might, the Christ in God." » g. Presently the Apostle proceeds to state at some length the doubt whose burden will press upon men's thoughts in the latter days.^ He will try to speak to those of future centuries as he would explain about the glow of Kght outside to a boy growing up in this cave and seeing only yon glimmer. He imagines those men standing "On islets yet unnamed amid the sea," or in great cities "Where now the larks sing in a solitude," or musing "upon blank heaps of stone and sand Idly conjectured to be Ephesus," — and the questioners to Christ is not "Where is the promise of His coming?" ' which was the doubt that perplexed the Apostolic Age, but "Was He revealed in any of His lives. As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul?" * This is the great question, whether the view of Christ's person and power held by the Church is true to the facts — 1 P. 506, 1. 56. « P. 507, 1. 50-p. 508, 1. 56. 3 p. 507, 1. 76* cf. p. 505, 1. 49. In the first age of the Church, they expected the Second Coming of Christ within a generation. See Matt. 24 : 34; iThess. 4:16, 17; I Cor. 15:51, 52; and often. Cf. Browning, p. 512, 11. 9, 10. *P.507,11. 77, 78. 196 BROWNING STUDIES whether Christ as pictured is not the product of human idealizing. The modern argument against our conception of God is considerably elaborated in St. John's statement of the doubt to which he is to reply, — that argument being that what we think we find in the universe is really some- thing we have projected from our own minds.^ Is it not so with the conception the Church has of Christ? h. The Apostle answers that he believes in perpetual progress : "I say that man was made to grow, not stop; That help, he needed once, and needs no more, Having grown but an inch by, is withdrawn : For he hath new needs, and new helps to these." ^ But God and Truth suffer no change ; man's apprehension of God changes, and then whatever helped him to that new apprehension falls away no longer needed.^ Minds develop, being at first '' spoon-fed with truth." At one stage, miracles are an aid to faith, but the mind goes on to a point where it needs no such crude and elementary help.^ The acceptance of the truth as to Christ's Person is the way into the solution of the questions that beset our thoughts : "I say, the acknowledgement of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee to be wise." ^ i. Now, argues the Apostle : "I say, this is death and the sole death, When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest." ^ 1 P. 508, U. 4-56. 2 P. 508, U. 59-62. » P. 508, U. 64-69. « p. 509, 11. 16-44. » P. 509, U. 37-40. a P. S09, U. 45-48. A DEATH IN THE DESERT 197 He then traces step by step man's progressive recognition of God : First the recognition of might, then will behind the might, then love behind the will and might. And each of these realities which are in God has a correspondent in human nature. Turning back into any stage of the process passed is death, i.e. life may be said to be only corre- spondence with present reality and any measure of failure of such correspondence is, in just that measure, death : "That man has turned round on himself and stands, Which in the course of nature is, to die." ^ Now Christ is the Love of God, and the man who rejects Christ is caught in this illogical position, viz. that he " knows himself , That he must love and would be loved again, Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ, Rejecteth Christ through very need of Him." ^ j. The imaginary objector against whom St. John is arguing asks : ^ Why didn't you tell the story of Christ's hf e in such a way as to preclude doubt ? Why all this lack of exactness and scientific proof? Doesn't your work allow room for the conviction that the story is simply the vehicle for a doctrine which you want to teach,^ as is ad- mittedly the case with the story of Prometheus? St. John answers^ that no man's work is perfect. Man is neither God nor beast, but a creature who is struggling "from old to new. From vain to real, from mistake to fact, From what once seemed good to what now proves best." • 1 P. 509, 11. 61, 62. 2 P. 509, 1. 71-p. 510, 1. 2. » P. 510, 11. s-30. * The Fourth Gospel is written confessedly with purpose to convince men of a view of Christ's Person and to lead them into faith in Him. With this purpose the incidents are chosen. See Jn. 20-: 30, 31 . 6 P. sio, U. 31 sqq. » P. 510, 11. 36-38. iqS browning studies The only attitude that befits man is for him in humility to do what he can to see things aright and to follow the truth. So the Apostle has sincerely done what he could, shaping his story of Christ to "pluck the blind ones back from the abyss." ^ * See p. SI 1, 1. 55, in which he describes his life-service. PARACELSUS Pp. 15-69 Paracelsus was published in 1835. Browning was then 23 years oldj. — i.e. his dedication of the book is dated March 15, 1835, and his twenty- third birthday was the May 7th following. The poem is remarkable for its maturity of thought, coming from so young a man. It contains a thorough discussion of the question : What makes Ufe worth while ? what is the chief end of existence ? what should a man's great life-purpose be ? The poem was considerably revised in later editions,^ and many changes in wording were introduced, but no modification in the philosophy. Once for all, Browning settled his philosophy of life. He has worked out the whole problem in the conversations between Paracelsus and his friends. I. The Historical Paracelsus I. At the end of the poem,^ Browning has himself fur- nished a sketch of the life of Paracelsus, which he has translated from the Biographie Universelkj Paris, 1822, ^ See Geo. Willis Cooke, Guide-Book to the Works of Browning, Boston, 1893, pp. 264-279. Mr. Cooke gives a table of changed readings, additions, and omissions, compiled from a comparison of the text of 1835 with that of 1888. He does not indicate at what time the various changes were intro- duced. » Pp. 65-69. 199 2O0 BROWNING STUDIES and has, with keen historical instinct, added six notes,' besides several footnotes. Browning's notes are to cor- roborate statements in that article or to correct them. He appeals to some of the sources of information as to Paracelsus' life, which sources he quotes in the original Latin, and estimates their reliability. We thus see how early in his life-work the sound historical scholarship of Browning had its foundations. 2. Moreover, the Editor of our Globe Edition has pre- fixed an account of Paracelsus' life at the opening of the poem. This agrees as to dates usually with the Encyclo- paedia of Biography quoted by Browning except for the date of birth, which in Browning's authority is put 1493, while in our editorial introduction it is put broadly "about 1490." 3. An inquiry as to Paracelsus' life^ develops the follow- ing facts : a. It is not necessary to say "about 1490." The day of * Some of Browning's notes are wrong, as e.g. note i, in which he discusses the name Bombast. 2 See Franz Hartmann, M.D., The Life of Paracelsus and the Substance of his Teaching, London, 1886, New York, 1891 ; same, second edition re- vised and enlarged. New York, no date, — in this 2d ed. the life of Paracel- sus covers pp. 1-23, and is followed by a list of his works, and then by a discussion of his science and philosophy; Rudolph Steiner, Ph.D., Mystics of the Renaissance and their Relation to Modern Thought, tr. by Bertram Keightley, M.A., New York, 1911, pp. 196-222; A. E. Waite, The Her- metic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus now for the first time translated into English, edited with Biographical Preface &c., 2 vols., London, 1894; same, new and limited ed., 2 vols., edited by Dr. L. W. de Laurence, Chicago, 1910; Franz Strunz, Ph.D., Theophrastus Paracelsus, sein Lebcn und seine Personlichkeit, Leipzig, 1903. This last mentioned book is by far the best thing I have found for the life of Paracelsus. It is careful and exact, and contains several portraits and facsimiles. Of encyclopaedia articles the best are: Paracelsus in Enc. Brit., nth ed. (article not signed) ; Paracelsus in Catholic Enc. (article signed by Leopold Senf elder, Teacher of the History of Medicine in the University of Vienna). PARACELSUS 20I Paracelsus' birth is exactly known — Nov. lo, 1493} And the day of his death is exactly known — Sept. 24, 1541.^ b. His name is given in a great variety of forms, — most commonly nowadays as Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus.^ It was originally Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim.* The usual explanation is that he took the name Paracelsus {i.e. beside Celsus, or the equal of Celsus) because of his opinion of his own ability.^ He is familiarly called in Browning's poem "Aureole." c. He was born at the SiMbrucke^ near Einsiedeln, in the 1 So Strunz, Theophrastus Paracelsus, p. 27. Senf elder, Cath. Enc., follows Strunz. Hartmann, p. 2, gives birthdate Nov. 26, 1493. Many give Dec. 1 7, 1493. The question is not about the year, but about the month and day. Strunz in his footnote appeals to Sudhoff's article "Zu Hohen- heims Geburtstag" and adds : "Die Annahme des 17. Dez. als Geburtstag ist nach Sudhoffs Forschungen unwahrscheinlich. Vielfach wird aber dieses Datum noch nachgedruckt." 2 Strunz, p. 76. The day frequently given is Sept. 23, but on Paracelsus' tombstone the date is plainly Sept. 24. Strunz prints the inscription on this page. 3 An engraving of Paracelsus (reproduced by Strunz, opposite p. 74) signed with monogram A H (Augustin Hirschvogel, see Strunz, p. 126) and with date 1 540, gives the name as A ureolus Theophrastus ab Hohenheim. The inscription on the oil-painting (Strunz, frontispiece), date and painter un- known (Strunz, p. 126), now in the Royal Gallery at Schleissheim near Munich, gives the name as Theophrastus Paracelsus. The epitaph at Salzburg reads Philippus Theophrastus (Strunz, pp. 27, 76). And so on. * Or as it was often Latinized, Theophrastus Bomhastus ah (or ex) Hohen- heim. 5 But his letter to Erasmus (reproduced in autograph facsimile by Strunz between pp. 46 and 47 and printed on pp. 117 and 118) is signed simply Theophrastus. In many other places he puts himself down as Theophrastus von Hohenheim or Theophrastus ex Hohenheim (see Strunz, pp. 42, 51, 55), ' Literally the Sihlhridge, i.e. a village so named because it is at a bridge over the river Sihl. Baedeker, Switzerland, 4th English ed., p. 297, calls it "the TeufelsbrUcke which spans the Sihl," and adds: "The celebrated em- piric and alchemist Paracelsus is said to have been bom here." He reckons it at 3I miles from Einsiedeln. 202 BROWNING STUDIES canton of Schwyz, Switzerland.^ Schwyz is one of the "four Forest Cantons," and has altogether a population of about 50,000. Einsiedeln, its largest town, has now (census of 1900) a population of about 8,500. It is 22 miles northeast of the city of Lucerne and 25 miles by the railroad southeast of Zurich. d. Paracelsus died in the city of Salzburg, in Austria. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Sebastian, but in 1752 his bones were removed to the tomb where they now lie, in the porch of St. Sebastian's Church. e. His father was the learned Wilhelm Bombast von Hohenheim, physician to the monastery at Einsiedeln. He moved to Villach in Carinthia, Austria, about 1502, where later he became City-physician. It is almost certain that he was of the noble family of Bombast ^ whose ancestral seat was the castle Hohenheim near Stuttgart, in Wiirtem- berg. Hence the family name Bombast von Hohenheim. This castle was in the possession of the family up to 1409. His wife (whom he married in 1491 or 1492) was of the Ochsener family of Einsiedeln. /. Paracelsus' first teacher was his father.' He men- tions a number of other early teachers.' He studied at the University of Basel ^ from the age of sixteen on, but not long. He studied chemistry under the renowned Johannes Trithemius,^ who was at that time Abbot of the Monastery 1 Strunz, p. 27 : " Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim wurde am 10. November des Jahres 1493 an der Sihlbriicke bei Einsiedeln in dem Kanton Schwyz geboren." 2 Strunz, p. 28. ^ Strunz, p. 29, quotes Paracelsus' words on these points. * French B&le. The city is on the northern edge of Switzerland. Its university was founded in 1460. ^ Johannes Trithemius (German, Tritheim or Trittenheim) , born Feb. i, 1462, died Dec. 13, 1516. In 1485 he became Abbot of the Monastery of Sponheim, near Kreuznach. This position he resigned in 1506, and was soon PARACELSUS 203 of St. Jakob at Wiirzburg, in Bavaria. Paracelsus gained his knowledge of metallurgy at the mines owned, or rather operated by the Fugger family^ in the Tyrol. He became a physician. He travelled widely and visited most of the universities of Europe. At one time or another, he went over all parts of Germany and the Netherlands, as far north as Denmark, east to Hungary, south to Italy, and west to Spain, Portugal, France, and England.^ Some believe that he went to Constantinople and even to Turkestan.^ g. In 1526 he was appointed City-physician and Pro- fessor in the University of Basel, but left the town two years later and resumed his wanderings. He was practically driven from Basel by the physicians whom he had antag- onized.^ h. Of course, as was inevitable in that age, Paracelsus* chemistry was mixed up with alchemy, his astronomy with astrology, his medicine accompanied by magic, and so on. after appointed Abbot of the Monastery of St. Jakob at Wiirzburg. See art. Trithemius in Enc. Brit., nth ed. 1 This family, with its headquarters in Augsburg, became, from 1367 on, a financial power in Europe. Their business interests were developed in many directions. It was Jakob Fugger (bom 1459, died 1525) who made so much money in mining. Paracelsus' experience at the mines was at Schwaz, some twenty miles northeast of Innsbruck, with Sigmund Fugger. 2 Thus much is sure from Paracelsus' own references to his wanderings, quoted by Strunz, pp. 31-33. 3 The way it is usually told is tkat Paracelsus was carried into Tartary as a prisoner, and that from Samarkand he went with the son of the Khan on an embassy to Constantinople. * Things came to a crisis at the time of his quarrel with Canon Cornelius von Lichtenfels. The Canon, after being cured by Paracelsus, refused to pay the fee. Whereupon Paracelsus sued him. But the magistrate who heard the case held with the Canon, which so incensed Paracelsus that he expressed his mind freely as to such a perversion of justice. The resulting disturbance was, however, simply "the last straw." He had met already much jealousy and opposition. 204 BROWNING STUDIES It was commonly supposed that a dcemon, or familiar spirit, dwelt in the handle of his long sword. His system of philos- ophy was visionary and theosophical. He was intolerant and conceited. i. But when all has been said against him, these things in his favor remain : He had something of the modern scientific spirit, viz. that of investigating for himself rather than being bound by tradition. He was in a certain sense "the father of modern chemistry." He holds an important place in medicine because of the impetus he gave to pharma- ceutical science.^ He did perform some remarkable cures. As the Editor of our Globe Edition points out, " It is asserted on his behalf that he discovered zinc, hydrogen gas, and the tincture of opium," but it is not certain that any one of these great discoveries is his. But in contrast to all the methods of studying in the line of chemistry and medicine in his day, he introduced the method of studying Nature at first hand. And this method is what has brought to Science her triumphs.^ 4. Paracelsus was, of course, a contemporary of Martin Luther, Zwingli, and the struggle of the Protestant Refor- mation, and these men and events are reflected somewhat in Browning's poem. * Senfelder's estimate (art. Paracelsus in Cath. Enc.) is just and temperate : " He may be taken as the founder of the modern materia medica, and pioneer of scientific chemistry." 2 The Enc. Brit., nth ed., article on Paracelsus says : "Probably, there- fore, his positive services are to be summed up in this wide application of chemical ideas to pharmacy and therapeutics; his indirect and possibly greater services are to be found in the stimulus, the revolutionary stimulus, of his ideas about method and general theory." PARACELSUS 205 II. The Scenes Presented in Browning's Poem 1. Browning's treatment of Paracelsus he himself ex- plains in his note at the end of the poem : ^ "The liberties I have taken with my subject are very trifling ; and the reader may slip the foregoing scenes between the leaves of any memoir of Paracelsus he pleases, by way of commentary." Few writers of this sort of a poem would propose to have their work subjected to such a test. 2. The poem is made up of dialogue presented in five scenes, i.e. five glimpses of Paracelsus in the course of his life. The date of each scene is carefully given by Browning. Scene I. Paracelsus Aspires. He is sitting and talking with his friends Festus and Michal, in a garden at Wurz- burg, Bavaria. It is the evening before he starts on his travels. The year is 151 2. Paracelsus is hardly twenty years old, full of hope, courage, and devotion to the search for Knowledge. To know shall be the great purpose of his life. Scene 11. Paracelsus Attains. Nine years have passed, spent in his eager search for knowledge. It is now the year 1521. He sits in the house of a Greek conjurer in the city of Constantinople. Paracelsus has sacrificed every- thing to the acquiring of knowledge and he has attained. He has amassed great knowledge, but is entirely unsatisfied. He feels that his life has failed, and the old adage runs in his head : ^ "Time fleets, youth fades, Hfe is an empty dream." It is in this house that he meets Aprile, a poet, who has set Love as the goal of his ambitions : "I would LOVE infinitely, and be loved !" ' His life, too, has failed and he dies here to-day. » P. 6s, ist col. 2 p. 26, 1. 19. ' P. 30, 1. 3. Cf. Paracelsus' words, 1. 2 : "I am he that aspired to know." 2o6 BROWNING STUDIES Scene III. Paracelsus. The bare word is significant — the pause in the midst of his life, 1526, five years after he was in Constantinople. Now he is the new professor in Basel, and his old friend Festus stops to see him. Their conversation shows us Paracelsus entirely unsatisfied, scorning his popularity, knowing how hollow it is, and finding no comfort in his knowledge, but gathering his strength for another effort to find satisfaction. Scene IV, Paracelsus Aspires again, is two years later, at an inn at Colmar, in Alsace. Paracelsus has just fled from Basel and now has sent for Festus. The conversation shows a new aspiration in Paracelsus : He burns with his old thirst for knowledge, but he will not scorn joy as he has done, but will drink his fill of that. Scene V. Paracelsus Attains again, — 1541, thirteen years after the preceding scene. He lies unconscious in the Hospital of St. Sebastian in Salzburg, in Austria. His old friend Festus is beside him. And when Paracelsus at last rouses up, when at last he speaks of the years of his life, he tells Festus that not in knowledge alone, and not in love alone, is found life's fulfillment, but in knowledge and love together. This truth has grown upon him ever since he met Aprile in Constantinople ; it finds now its fullest expression in the hour of his death. III. The Literary Quality of the Poem 1. The style is remarkably simple and easy, and the poem abounds in what Tennyson would have called "large, divine, and comfortable words." ^ 2. One of the best of the literary characteristics is the * Tennyson, The Coming of Arthur, {Works, Globe Ed., 1907, p. 307) : "With large, divine, and comfortable words, Beyond my tongue to tell thee." PARACELSUS 207 beauty of expression in regard to Nature or of similes from Nature, — all set forth with extraordinary vividness. Hardly less striking are the figures of speech derived from human life. Since '' seeing is believing," let me repeat a hundred lines from almost as many different parts of the poem, — a hundred lines which it would be difficult to match in any single piece of English Literature.^ a. In Scene I, in the garden at Wiirzburg : P. 16, 1. I, Autumn — "Its bleak wind, hankering after pining leaves." 1. II, "Nor blame those creaking trees bent with their fruit." 1. 28, "Yon painted snail with his gay shell of dew." P. 17, 11. 4, 5, referring to Trithemius' lecture room — "In that dim chamber where the noon-streaks peer. Half -frightened by the awful tomes around." U. 36, 37, "A soUtary brier the bank puts forth To save our swan's nest floating out to sea." P. 18, 11. 75-77, just Uke Browning^s spirit — " the letting go His shivered sword, of one about to spring Upon his foe's throat." P. 20, 11. 41-43, "Writes the sea The secret of her yearning in vast caves Where yours will fall the first of human feet?" *The fact, already pointed out, of Browning's revision of this poem should be borne in mind. 2o8 BROWNING STUDIES P. 20, 11. 80-82, the spirit that stirred Paracelsus — "the breath so light Upon my eyelids, and the fingers Ught Among my hair." P. 21, 11. 22, 23, very forceful — "as who should dare Pluck out the angry thunder from its cloud." 11. 31-33, "Like some knight traversing a wilderness, Who, on his way, may chance to free a tribe Of desert-people from their dragon-foe." 11. 46, 47, as he looked at the world — "I soon distinguished here and there a shape Palm-wreathed and radiant." 11- 58, 59, "Then came a slow ' And strangling failure." 11. 68, 69, "A mighty power was brooding, taking shape Within me." P. 22, 11. 51, 52, "a dark and groaning earth Given over to a blind and endless strife." 11. 63-65, persisting to the end — "Nay, Festus, when but as the pilgrims faint Through the drear way, do you expect to see Their city dawn amid the clouds afar?" P. 23, 11. 23, 24, Festus says : "I would encircle me with love, and raise A rampart of my fellows." PARACELSUS 209 P. 24, 11. 16, 17, it is the evening before Paracelsus starts out — " See, the great moon ! and ere the mottled owls Were wide awake, I was to go." P. 25, 11. 13, 14, '"Thus was life scorned ; but life Shall yet be crowned." 11. 41-45, as Paracelsus is about to go — "Are there not . . . Two points in the adventure of the diver, One — when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge, One — when, a prince, he rises with his pearl? Festus, I plunge ! " b. In Scene II, in Constantinople : P. 25, 11. 46, 47, "Over the waters in the vaporous West The sun goes down as in a sphere of gold." 11. 55-57, " 'Tis as yon cloud Should voyage unwrecked o'er many a mountain-top And break upon a molehill." P. 26, 1. 31, "Was it the Ught wind sang it o'er the sea?" P. 27, 11. 8-10, "There was a time When yet this wolfish hunger after knowledge Set not remorselessly love's claims aside." 1-35, "And since that morn all life has been forgotten." 11- 74, 75, "Let me weep My youth and its brave hopes, all dead and gone." 210 BROWNING STUDIES P. 28, 11. 16, 17, "And I am left with gray hair, faded hands, And furrowed brow." * 11. 46, 47, addressed to God, expressing the splen- did audacity of Paracelsus' ambition : "To crown my mortal forehead with a beam From thine own blinding crown." P. 30, 11. 27, 28, soon after Aprile enters, Paracelsus says : "How he stands With eve's last sunbeam staying on his hair ! " 11. 32-34, "The painful fruitless striving of the brow And enforced knowledge of the Ups, firm-set In slow despondency's eternal sigh." 11. 70, 71, from Aprile's part in the conversation, as are also the next five passages quoted : "Lakes which, when morn breaks on their quivering bed, Blaze like a wyvern flying round the sun." p. 31, 1- ", "Even as a luminous haze links star to star." 1. 79, in life's search, journeying sometimes "Past tracts of milk-white minute bUnding sand." ^ P. 32, 11. 20, 21, "As one spring wind unbinds the mountain snow And comforts violets in their hermitage." * Notice the " faded hands." Could any word tell the story like that word faded? 2 This line reads " tracts " in the author's text of 1835 and 1888; mis- printed " tracks " in the Globe Ed. PARACELSUS 211 P. 32, 11- 55, 56, "As whirling snow-drifts blind a man who treads A mountain ridge, with guiding spear, through storm." P. 33, 11. 24, 25, "God is the perfect poet, Who in his person acts his own creations." c. In Scene III, at Basel : P. 33, 11. 60-62, Paracelsus inquires about Michal : "And Michal's face « Still wears that quiet and peculiar light Like the dim circlet floating round a pearl ? " p. 34, 1. 17, " Shutting Qut fear with all the strength of hope." p- 37, 1. 63, "As in a flying sphere of turbulent Hght." P. 40, 1. 8, a curious simile but very accurate — "Chill mushrooms coloured like a corpse*s cheek." 1. 72, Festus assures Paracelsus : "The cloud that wraps you will have disappeared." P. 42, 11. 53, 54, 57, 61, Paracelsus says: "You know not what temptation is, nor how 'Tis like to ply man in the sickHest part. There is not one sharp volley shot at us : We are assailed to life's extremest verge." 1. 70, the splendid grit of Paracelsus — "But though I cannot soar, I do not crawl." P- 43, 1. 23, "Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts." 212 BROWNING STUDIES P. 45, 11. 27, 28, "'Tis the melancholy wind astir Within the trees." "The night, late strewn with clouds and flying stars, Is blank and motionless." 11.60,61, "gone, shut from me for ever. Like a dead friend safe from unkindness more." U. 62, 63, "See, morn at length. The heavy darkness seems Diluted, grey and dear without the stars." 11. 66-68, "and from the East, fuller and fuller, Day, like a mighty river, flowing in ; But clouded, wintry, desolate and cold." d. In Scene IV, at the inn in Colmar : P. 49, 11. 19-21, Paracelsus speaks of his spirit's "rapt communion With the tumultuous past, the teeming future, Glorious with visions of a full success." 11. 35-37, " nor shall the present — A few dull hours, a passing shame or two. Destroy the vivid memories of the past." P. 54, 1. 20, Michal, whom Festus married, has died, and Paracelsus says : "And Michal sleeps among the roots and dews." e. In Scene V, when Paracelsus is dying in Salzburg : P. 54, 11. 30, 31, "The lamp bums low, and through the casement-bars Grey morning glimmers feebly." PARACELSUS 213 P. 54, 11. 34, 35, Festus speaking of Paracelsus' condition : "Those fixed eyes, . . . Like torch-flame choked in dust." P. 55, 11. 72-74, Paracelsus imagining that he has heard Aprile there ; "If they have filled him full With magical music, as they freight a star With light." P. 57, 11. 7-10, Festus referring to Paracelsus' mind : "A light Will struggle through these thronging words at last, As in the angry and tumultuous West A soft star trembles through the drifting clouds." 11. 40, 41, Paracelsus referring to the possibility of content : "Just as some stream foams long among the rocks But after ghdeth glassy to the sea." P. 58, 11. 18-20, "It makes my heart sick to behold you crouch Beside your desolate fane : the arches dim. The crumbling columns grand against the moon." 1-47, "Where the blood leaps like an imprisoned thing." P. 62, 11. 42, 43, "The wroth sea's waves are edged With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate." 11. 50-53, "Rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face." 214 BROWNING STUDIES P. 62, U. 58, 59, "The lark Soars up and up, shivering for very joy." * P. 63, 11. 13, 14, "The winds Are henceforth voices." 1. 17, "The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts." ^ 11. 27-30, "The morn hath enterprise, deep quiet droops With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour, Voluptuous transport ripens with the corn Beneath a warm moon Hke a happy face." P. 65, 11. 14-18, as Paracelsus dies : "If I stoop Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, It is but for a time ; I press God's lamp Close to my breast ; its splendour, soon or late, Will pierce the gloom : I shall emerge one day." These passages illustrate the beauty of thought and felicity of expression in Paracelsus, The poem has these qualities to an extent hard to find equalled anywhere except in Browning's own later writings.^ ^ Nothing could describe the lark's movement and song so well as shivering for very joy. 2 Anyone who recalls the group of pines on top of a knoll, how they look as if they had been "rounded up" at that spot, will see the whole picture in the phrase "the herded pines." ^ We need to remind ourselves again of Browning's extensive revision of the wording of Paracelsus in later editions, so that we shall not fall into the error of crediting all the literary excellence of the poem to its author at the age of twenty-three. PARACELSUS 2IS IV. The Philosophy of Browning in Paracelsus Our study of Browning's Philosophy in Paracelsus will be under four heads : 1. The Unconquerable Soul. 2 . The Secret of Human Life — Is it Knowledge or Love ? 3. The Realization of God's Part in Human Affairs. 4. "The Power of an Endless Life." I. First, then, the unconquerable soul of Paracelsus, — which is, of course, the unconquerable soul of Robert Brown- ing, — which is, of course, the unconquerable soul that all of us ought to have. a. Paracelsus begins with a high purpose — " God's great commission," ^ "The path which God's will seems to authorise." * It is the devotion to the pursuit of knowledge alone: he dares aspire to know? h. For this purpose, he left "with a tumultuous heart" his "childhood's home" and came to Wiirzburg to study under Trithemius.* c. But now he feels the time is come for him to strike out for himself, and he will not allow himself to be dissuaded from it. He is " strong and full of hope." ^ He is " young, happy and free." ® (i) He scorns the past and its teachers. Urged by Festus, "At least accept the light they lend," ^ he answers : "Shalll still sit beside Their dry wells, with a white lip and filmed eye?" ^ ip. 17,1. 41. »P. 17, 1.71. » P. 19, 1. 12 ; cf. p. 30, 1. 2. * P. 18, 11. 49-52- 6 P. 17,1.54. »P. 20,1.8. 'P. 22, 1. 48. 8p.22,U.SS,S6. 2i6 BROWNING STUDIES "The labours and the precepts of old time, I have not lightly disesteemed. But, friends. Truth is within ourselves ; it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in us all, Where truth abides in fulness." ^ (2) He has a great interest in humanity. He remembers : "what oppressive joy was mine When Ufe grew plain, and I first viewed the thronged. The everlasting concourse of mankind ! " ^ He wants to see the race elevated as a whole : "Make no more giants, God, But elevate the race at once ! We ask To put forth just our strength, our himian strength, All starting fairly, all equipped alike. Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted — See if we cannot beat thine angels yet !" ^ This agrees with what he feels at the close of his life : "So glorious is our nature, so august Man's inborn uninstructed impulses. His naked spirit so majestical ! " ^ And his expectation then, likening the progress of the race to the coming out of the stars, that there will be a time "when the host Is out at once to the despair of night, When all mankind alike is perfected." ^ (3) But in the beginning of his life-plan he has no idea of being "lost in the ranks" of common humanity, "eluding destiny."^ He sets his heart on something other than attaining "the general welfare of his kind." ^ He says: 1 P. 24, U. 26-31. 2 p. 21, 11. 4-6. « P. 24, 11. 81-86. * P. 62, U. 2-4. » P. 63, U. 41-43. "P. 17, 1- SI. 'P. 19,1.34- PARACELSUS 217 "If I can serve mankind 'Tis well ; but there our intercourse must end : I never will be served by those I serve." * He will leave love out of account and follow only knowledge. He is warned : "How can that course be safe which from the first Produces carelessness to human love?" ^ He is warned of the danger of becoming "A monstrous spectacle upon the earth: A being knowing not what love is." ^ But he does not fear. He has from childhood been "pos- sessed by a fire." ^ He has within him a "fierce energy," ^ a "restless irresistible force." ^ He believes that he can bring "new hopes," "new light." ^ He goes without thought of reward: "My course allures for its own sake, its sole Intrinsic worth." ^ A voice has spoken to him and called him to knoWj "not for knowing's sake, But to become a star to men for ever." • He is ready, brave, unflinching : "I go to prove my soul! I see my way as birds their trackless way. I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first, I ask not ; but unless God send his hail Or bhnding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, In some time, his good time, I sh^l arrive : He guides me and the bird. In his good time ! " ^° 1 P. 23, U. 1-3. » P. 23, U. 9, 10. « P. 23, 11. 67, 69. * P. 20, 11. 66, 67. 6 p, jg^ I 65. • P. 19, 1. 70- ' P. 20, 11. 9-16. « P. 23, 11. 39, 40. » P. 22, U. I, 2. " P. 22, 11. 34-40. 2i8 BROWNING STUDIES d. But sitting in Constantinople and reviewing the nine years of struggle, he knows that he has attained and failed. His soul is not satisfied. But does he give up? Not he. His soul is unconquerable. He has done the thing he planned to do: "I have subdued my life to the one purpose Whereto I ordained it ; " ^ "I have made my life consist of one idea." ^ True, this has brought him naught but disappointment, "grey hair, faded hands, And furrowed brow." * His life is a "parched sand-waste.** ^ He exclaims : "Oh, bitter; very bitter ! And more bitter. To fear a deeper curse, an inner ruin." ^ But he is not giving up. The alluring thought of rest,^ of being lost among his fellows,^ he puts away,^ and prays God only to keep him from madness : " Spare my mind alone I All else I will endure. . . . Crush not my mind, dear God, though I be crushed ! " ^ He has no idea of giving up. He prays for strength whereby to fight : "Give but one hour of my first energy, Of that invincible faith, but only one \" ^^ e. Five years later, in Basel, his failure he feels still more keenly. So long he had followed the quest of knowledge that, when he tried to find love and joy, he could not : » P. 26, u. 72, 73, ^ 2 p. 27, 1. 25. 8P. 28, 11. 16, 17. -»?. 27,1. 3. " P. 27, 11. 71, 72. « p. 26, 11. 32-40. ' P. 26, ll. 40 sqq. 8 P. 26, 11. 46 sqq. 9 P. 28, u. 26, 27, 37. 10 P. 28, 11. ss> 54. PARACELSUS 219 " God ! how I essayed To live like that mad poet, for a while, To love alone ; and how I felt too warped And twisted and deformed!" ^ He cries out : "How can I change my soul?" ^ "I still must hoard and heap and class all truths With one ulterior purpose : I must know!" ' It is too late to change the bent of his mind. But there is no satisfaction in it. He disparages what men might call his success. Michal had told him in the beginning that he would ''succeed . . . and yet be wretched." He declares now: "I have not been successful, and yet am Most miserable." ^ He says : "You may have it told in broken sobs one day, And scalding tears ere long." ^ He says : "You know my hopes ; I am, assured, at length, those hopes were vain ; That truth is just as far from me as ever ; That I have thrown my life away." ® "Love, hope, fear, faith — these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character, And these I have lost ! — gone, shut from me for ever, Like a dead friend safe from unkindness more!" ^ But does he give up? Not he. Note his unconquerable soul: "lam A man yet : I need never humble me. I would have been — something, I know not what ; But though I cannot soar, I do not crawl." ^ 1 P. 41, U. 72-75. 2 p. 41^165, » P. 41, 11. 83, 84. * P. 35, 11. 74 sqq. ; p. 36, 11. 64, 65. 5 P. 37, U. 36, 37. 8P. 39, 11.48-si. ' P, 45, U. 58-61. 8 P. 42, U. 67-70. 220 BROWNING STUDIES He is but pausing to take breath. The professor's chair in Basel is not his goal.^ His soul must be satisfied. /. Two years later, out of the chair in the University, he is ready to begin life again, with iron determination, with his old purposes but with new methods of pursuing them: "I Am merely setting out once more, embracing My earliest aims again! . . . The aims — not the old means." ^ "I will fight the battle out ; a little spent Perhaps, but still an able combatant. You look at my grey hair and furrowed brow? But I can turn even weakness to account." ^ Even though he foresees that there will be no satisfaction in it, that the morn will dawn and show the discovery in his night's toil worthless — the passage beginning "for night is come, And I betake myself to study again," * one of the most remarkable passages in the poem — still he will not give up : "This life of mine Must be lived out and a grave thoroughly earned." ^ He is Hke a gladiator ready for the fight, and with bitter sarcasm he taunts the rabble to take "the snug back-seats And leave a clear arena for the brave About to perish for your sport." ® * In speaking of Paracelsus' movements as indicated in the poem, we must, of course, adopt the plan of Paracelsus' life which Browning has in mind. And Browning associates with Paracelsus at Basel his lecturing in the University more than his being also city-physician. See e.g. p. 35, 11. 31-49; p. 47, 11. 12-67. 2 P. 48, 11. 30-32, 35. 3 p. 49^ u. 38_4i, 4 p, 30^ 11^ 62-79. 6 P. SO, 11. 38, 39- «P. 54,11. 25-28. PARACELSUS 221 g. Thirteen years more, and Paracelsus is dying; and his mind wanders at first, but always with the same im- quenchable aspirations, — he is no nearer surrender than in his youth: "Rather give The supernatural consciousness of strength Which fed my youth! Only one hour of that, With thee to help." * "Well, onward though alone! Small time remains, And much to do." ^ And then as his wandering mind clears and he realizes that the end is come, he struggles to his feet and makes Festus put on him his gown and sword again,^ and there he gives his summary about htmian life and destiny, the fruit- age of all his struggle, and dies without surrender. The same invincible courage: "If I stoop Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, • It is but for a time : I shall emerge one day." * h. Such is the human soul as Robert Browning would have it — the unconquerable soul. 2. The Secret of Human Life — 7^ it Knowledge or Love ? a. The quotations already made have set before us clearly Paracelsus' life-purpose. We need not repeat them nor quote others like them. Paracelsus devotes his life to knowledge and leaves love out. And knowledge could not satisfy his soul. It is too late when he sees his mistake. His mental habits are formed. He has missed life where he thought he would find it. And the realization of how he has failed of life's fulfillment haunts him all his days, and runs 1 P. 57, 11. 70-74. * P. 57, 1. 82-p. 58, 1. 1. » P. 61, 11. 10-24. « P. 65, U. 14-15, 18. 222 BROWNING STUDIES in his deKrium on his death-bed. His broken words there show the thought which has tortured him all the years since he saw Aprile die in Constantinople and learned too late that his putting love out of his life had starved his soul. On his death-bed he cries: " Cruel ! I seek her * now — I kneel — I shriek — I clasp her vesture — but she fades, still fades ; And she is gone ; sweet human love is gone! " ^ It is significant that his mind constantly reverts to Aprile and he thinks Aprile is there with him. This shows how much Aprile has been in his thoughts throughout the years. He imagines now that he has heard Aprile all night ; he has tried to get to Aprile but could not for a cold hand on his breast.^ "Ask him if Aprile Knows as he Loves — if I shall Love and Know." * h. For Aprile, the poet, had for his great life-purpos j love, and left knowledge out : "I would LOVE infinitely and be loved." ^ He would live in the lives of others and make their joy his own. But he too failed, and died years ago in Constan- tinople. c. These two are the only great life-purposes with which Browning deals in the poem. The two key- words know and LOVE he frequently prints in small capitals in scenes I and II, to indicate to the reader their nature.^ Browning shows how much these two involve : love leading to joy, knowledge leading to power. It is well to bear this in mind, 1 i.e. Love, as is plain from the third line quoted. 2 P. 57,11.15-17. 3 p. 55^ 11. 67-70, 78. < p. 55, U. 76, 77. « P. 30, 1.3; cf.1.38. « e.g. p. 19, 1. 12 ; p. 24, 1. 35 ; p. 30, 11. 2, 3 ; p. 32, 1. 74. PARACELSUS 223 for Browning, having once shown that joy comes from love and that power comes from knowledge, sometimes speaks of Aprile's life-purpose as joy and Paracelsus' life-purpose as power. It is love bringing joy, knowledge bringing power. d. And finding that each has failed. Browning puts his resultant conclusion that Paracelsus and Aprile are "halves of one dissevered world" and that the lover must know and the knower must love, before they can be saved.^ The true poise of Ufe is an equilibrimn between knowledge and love. Browning speaks through the dying lips of Para- celsus : "love preceding Power, and with much power, always much more love." * "Let men Regard me, and the poet dead long ago Who loved too rashly ; and shape forth a third And better-tempered spirit, warned by both." ^ That is, from the experience of one who followed knowledge and power too much and the experience of one who followed love and joy too much, we gather that the true Hfe is the Ufe poised with its just measure of knowledge and power balanced by its just measure of love and joy. 3. The Realization of God's Part in Human Affairs. a. This is evident to even the most casual reader of the poem. The poem is saturated with the recognition of God. The appeal to Him in all moments of crisis is very striking, taking the form of sudden prayers. b. Paracelsus' life-plans are begun, carried on, and ended in God, as far as he can understand what God's will is. This is the source of his confidence. (i) He feels that a voice from ''the Eternal Not Our- 1 P. 33, 11. 10-13. * P. 64, U. 61, 62. 3 P. 64, 1. 89-p. 6s, 1. 3. 224 BROWNING STUDIES selves" has whispered to him and given him this thirst for knowledge/ and has promised him : "Be happy, my good soldier ; I am by thee, Be sure, even to the end! "^ And Paracelsus will live his Hfe feeling that an intimate tie connects him with our God,^ " God helping, God directing everywhere." * "Be sure that God Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart ! " ^ "Be sure they sleep not whom (jod needs! " ® It is in God's guidance that he goes : "I go to prove my soul! I see my way as birds their trackless way. I shall arrive! what tirne, what circuit first, I ask not : but unless God send his hail Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow. In some time, his good time, I shall arrive : He guides me and the bird. In his good time ! " ^ (2) In his disappointment and bitterness of soul, still it is to God that Paracelsus turns : "Yet God is good : I started sure of that, And why dispute it now?" ^ "God, that created all things, can renew!" • At Basel, in his bitterness, he almost loses confidence. He speaks to Festus impatiently about "The constant talk men of your stamp keep up Of God's will, as they style it," 10 1 P. 21, 1. 68-p. 22, 1. 23. 2 P. 22, 11. 19, 20. 8 P. 19, 1. 89-p. 20, 1. 1. 4 P. 20, 1. 4. ^ P. 19, 11. 75, 76. 'P. 19,1.82. ' P. 22, 11. 34-40. 8 p, 28, 11. 58, 59. 9P. 28,1. 69. " P. 39, U. 59,60. PARACELSUS 22$ and says : "I know as much of any will of God As knows some dumb and tortured brute what Man, His stern lord, wills from the perplexing blows That plague him every way." ^ But he soon recovers his old realization that God*s will is the thing on which he must rely. Two years later he says: "I . . . take again My fluttering pulse for evidence that God Means good to me, will make my cause his own." * He holds that each man doing his work, finding his self- fulfillment, filling his place in the world, is glorifying God : " 'Tis vain to talk of forwarding God's glory otherwise ; We are his glory ; and if we be glorious, Is not the thing achieved?" ' (3) And in the closing scene, Paracelsus feels that his last speech is "God's message;" ^ and his "wretched cell" becomes "a shrine, for here God speaks to men" through him.^ And when he dies, it is but going "joyous back to God." • Paracelsus' summary of the destiny of humanity and of God's joy in His universe is so complete that it is hard to quote it in fragments. With the eye of a seer, he comprehends "what God is, what we are, What Ufe is — how God tastes an infinite joy In infinite ways — one everlasting bUss, From whom all being emanates, all power Proceeds, in whom is life for evermore." ' 1 P. 39, U. 65-68. « P. so, U. 81-83. • P. S3, 11. 16, 17, 20, 21. * P. 60, 11. 10, II. » P. 61, 11. 21-23. "P. 61,1. 49. ' P. 62, 11. 25-29. 226 BROWNING STUDIES In each change of Nature, "God renews His ancient rapture." * But when Man appears, a new meaning is in all Nature. Man is still in the process of developing, of coming into his own. "But in completed man begins anew A tendency to God." ^ "For God is glorified in man." ' And as Paracelsus passes into the unknown Country, his triumphant words are : "I press God's lamp Close to my breast ; its splendour, soon or late, Will pierce the gloom." * c. Festus' faith in God is hardly less strong than that of Paracelsus, and is even more beautiful. Notice Festus as he watches by Paracelsus' death-bed before Paracelsus rouses : " God ! Thou art love ! I build my faith an that. So doth thy right hand guide us through the world Wherein we stumble." ^ "Save him, dear God ; it will be like thee : bathe him In light and Hfe." « "I know thee, who hast kept my path, and made Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow So that it reached me like a solemn joy ; It were too strange that I should doubt thy love." ^ "The quiet place beside thy feet, Reserved for me, was ever in my thoughts." * »P. 62, 11. 63, 64. « P. 63, U. 65, 66. "P- 64, 1.8. * P. 6s, 11. 16-18. 6 P. 55, 11. 9, 12, 13. 6 p. 55^ u, 24, 25. » P. 55, 11. 29-32. « P. 55, 11. 35, 36. PARACELSUS 227 When he tries to stimulate Paracelsus to say something, he rebukes himself : "Better be mute and see what God shall send." * And when Paracelsus does speak, Festus assures him : "God shall take thee to his breast, dear spirit." ^ And as the end draws near, then Festus' soul flames up in a cry to God for mercy on Paracelsus, — perhaps the finest devotion to a friend you'll find in Literature, and such a faith that he dares to challenge God in his friend's behalf : "I am for noble Aureole, God! I am upon his side, come weal or woe. His portion shall be mine. I Reward him or I waive Reward! If thou canst find no place for him, He shall be king elsewhere, and I will be His slave for ever. There are two of us." ' d. It should be added that both the faith of Paracelsus and the faith of Festus are simply Browning's own faith as to God's part in human affairs. 4. *' The Power of an Endless Life^ The confidence in Immortality shines out through the poem in every stage of Paracelsus' experience. In scene I, he says : "See this soul of ours! How it strives weakly in the child, is loosed In manhood, clogged by sickness, back compelled By age and waste, set free at last by death." * Even in the bitter disappointment of later years, he ex-" claims : "I had immortal feelings ; such shall never Be wholly quenched : no, no!" *» * P. 55,1.64. «P. 59,1. 23. » P. 59, U. 47-49, SI-S4. * P. 24, IL 61-64. » P. 42, U. 83, 84. 228 BROWNING STUDIES Festus says, in Paracelsus' disappointment : "It is our trust That there is yet another world to mend All error and mischance." ^ And Paracelsus hardly feels then the comfort of that thought. But two years later, when he learns that Michal, who had become Festus' wife, is dead and buried, Para- celsus says : "Know, then, you did not ill to trust your love To the cold earth : I have thought much of it : For I believe we do not wholly die. I think the soul can never Taste death. Take it as my trust, she is not dead." ^ And on his own death-bed, Paracelsus realizes : "Truly there needs another life to come ! " ' and argues that, without its fulfillment beyond death, this life is "a poor cheat, a stupid bungle, A wretched failure." * And Festus says to the dying man : "I bid thee enter gloriously thy rest." ^ Paracelsus finds that it is only that *'the storm of life subsides." ^ He says : "And this is death : I understand it all. New being waits me ; new perceptions must Be born in me before I plunge therein ; Which last is Death's affair ; and while I speak, Minute by minute he is filling me With powei:: . . . my foot is on the threshold Of boundless life." ' » P. 45, 11- 39-41. 2 P. 54, U. 9-11, 13, 14, 17. ' P- 57, L 76. * P. 57, U. 79, 80. 6 P. 59, 1. 46. •P. 60,1.21. ''P. 60, U. 48-54. PARACELSUS 229 And as his eyes close in death : "If I stoop Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, It is but for a time ; I press God's lamp Close to my breast ; its splendour, soon or late, Will pierce the gloom : I shall emerge one day." * ip. 6s, U. 14-18. XI PIPPA PASSES Pp. 174-195 Pippa Passes was published in 1841, when Browning was 29 years old. It was the first in the series of eight pam- phlets known as Bells and Pomegranates. When Pippa Passes was written, Browning was living in England but had made a journey to Italy in 1838, — a journey which contributed so much to Sordello, published in 1840. Pippa Passes, when it was finished, lay for some time in Browning's desk without a pubHsher. But he finally arranged with Edward Moxon to bring it out in pamphlet form, very cheap, sixteen pages, two columns to the page. The poem attracted little attention: few cared either to find fault with it or to commend it. And yet it is one of the daintiest and one of the most artistic works of the first half of the nineteenth century. As one of the best critics of Browning has said : "Pippa Passes will be an enduring strength and pleasure to all who love tenderly and think widely." ^ I. The Place and the Date of the Action I. The poem concerns itself with Asolo, a little walled city of 5000 people at the base of a hill in the province of Treviso, north Italy, 33 miles northwest of Venice. North Italy is famous for its silk industry. There was a silk mill 1 Stopford A. Brooke, The Poetry of Robert Browning, New York, 1902, p. 241. 230 PIPPA PASSES 231 at Asolo when Browning wrote the poem, but it is no longer in operation. Browning visited the town in his first Italian travel and calls it ''our delicious Asolo." ^ Forty years later he returned to it, and was very fond of the place to the end. He spent some weeks there the last autumn of his life. It is from the town of Asolo that he derives the name of his last volume of poems, AsolandOj published on the day he died. 2. The date when the events in Pippa Passes take place can be approximately fixed : a. The north of Italy is under Austrian rule, as is very evident from the presence of Austrian police at the end of Noon, and the conversation between Luigi and his mother in Evening. Note especially Luigi's reference to "How first the Austrians got these provinces, — Never by conquest but by cunning." ^ In 1797 by the treaty of Campo-Formio, Austria gained possession of Venetia,^ a large division of north Italy, but lost it to France in 1805. But by act of the Congress of Vienna (its final act dated June 9, 181 5), Austria received all the Italian territory she had held and Lombardy^ in addition. This gave her most of the provinces north of the Po, and made her the dominating power in all Italy. This position she continued to hold until she lost Lombardy in 1859 and Venetia in 1866.^ b. Prince Metternich-Winneburg is living : "Says he should like to be Prince Metternich." ^ 1 In Sordello, p. 134, I. 55. 2 p_ jgg^ u, 23, 25. 3 Venetia comprises now eight provinces. * Lombardy, lying to the west of Venetia, covers also eight provinces. ^Luigi's words, p. 189, 1. 26, "That treaty whereby . . . "probably refer to the treaty of 1797, but may refer to the act of the Congress of Vienna : i.e. he may be far enough from 181 5 so that his language in line 29 is appro- priate, « P. 187, 11. 23, 24. 232 BROWNING STUDIES This statesman, so hated by Italian patriots, was Minister of Foreign Afifairs for the Austrian government from 1809 to 1848, and also Chancellor 1821-48. He died in Vienna in 1859. The fact that Browning's poem was written before 1841 narrows the possible range of date. c. Francis I, Emperor of Austria, is the oppressor against whom Luigi is so stirred : "Old Franz, Come down and meet your fate." ^ He became Emperor in 1792 and died in 1835. His death establishes the superior limit. That the date of the action falls in the closing years of his reign is plain from the fact that Luigi calls him old Franz ^ and Luigi's mother also speaks of him as old.^ d. Luigi is suspected of being connected with the Car- bonari.^ The Carbonari were a secret society of patriotic Italians, organized for the purpose of throwing off foreign domination. The society originated in Naples not long before 1814,^ against the rule of the French there,^ but soon spread all over Italy. The Carbonari movement was partly crushed by Austria, and was gradually absorbed into or superseded by Mazzini's ''Young Italy" society organized in 183 1. 1 P. 187, 11. 83, 84. 2 It cannot be another Francis meant. Franz Joseph I did not come to the throne till 1848. 3 P. 187,11.93,94. * P. 187, 61-66. ^ It was in 1 8 14 that the Carbonari became known as an important revolu- tionary element in the kingdom of Naples. The edict issued Aug. 15, 1814, by Cardinals Consalvi and Pacca, against secret societies, was especially directed against this society. ' Joachim Murat, a French marshal, conspicuous for ability as a cavalry commander, brother-in-law of Napoleon Bonaparte, was king of Naples 1808-1815. PIPPA PASSES 233 « e. Silvio Pellico is considered by Luigi's mother as typical of the writers who are stirring up the people : "Your Pellicos and writers for effect." ^ Pellico was arrested by the Austrian govemmenjt in 1820 and imprisoned till 1830. He died in 1854. -^a /. We gain no assistance from Luigi's mention of former conspirators against Austria : "Andrea from his exile, Pier from his dungeon, Gualtier from his grave!" ^ Luigi gives the names famiharly, and it is difficult to identify them, and even if this could be done, it would hardly help to fix the date more closely. g. The marks of time of most account are those touching the Emperor and Prince Metternich. These do not abso- lutely determine the date but they define it pretty narrowly, and the other more general indications are in harmony with them. We may say unhesitatingly that the scene of Pippa Passes is laid near the end of the reign of the Austrian Emperor Francis I. Probably some time 1830- 3 5 is what Browning had in mind. Much of the information as to local conditions came from his visit of 1838, when things were, no doubt, in practically the same shape as a few years earlier. II. The Structure of the Poem 1. Browning calls it, in the heading, "A Drama." This it can be called in a general way. It is made up of frag- ments, or scenes, whose only bond of unity is Pippa ^ her- self, — glimpses of human lives touched by her passing. 2. There is an Introduction, four Scenes, and an Epilogue. »P. 187,1. 88. 2p.ig9 11,10 11' ' Pippa, "short for Felippa." See p. 187, 11. 32, 33 ; cf, p. 193, 11. 87-89. ^34 BROWNING STUDIES a. It is New Year's day. Pippa springs out of bed, resolved to make the most of this her one holiday. She has to work in the silk mills all the rest of the year. She thinks of those whom she considers the happiest in Asolo. There is no reason why she cannot imagine herself in their place, each in turn, this New Year's holiday. b. She goes out into the city, and in the course of the day, unknown to herself, her life, her presence, touches, one after another, the lives of these very men and women she had had in mind, and at critical moments her songs, as she passes where they are, bring them to momentous decisions or waken in them tremendous revulsions. c. She comes back to her room at night, unconscious of what she has done and half dissatisfied with her holiday. 3. A curious, yet very reasonable, feature of the poem's construction is what we might call interludes between the scenes. Browning has placed such interludes at the end of scenes I, II, and III, to prepare us in each case for an understanding of the scene that follows. They are in the nature of conversations which we overhear as Pippa is passing from the point where her presence has come de- cisively into the lives of others to where its power is felt in another group. How these interludes help we quickly appreciate : a. After Scene I, while Pippa is walking out toward a house that "looks over Orcana valley," we hear the art- students from Venice talking of the trick they are playing on Jules, who has been one of their number. Thus we understand the condition of affairs in Scene II, where Pippa's song as she passes at the critical moment brings Jules to a decision which defeats his fellow-students' plot and opens to him and Phene a new life. b. And at the end of Scene II, as Pippa goes on from PIPPA PASSES 235 this house to the ruined castle on the hill above Asolo, we hear the Austrian police talking with an English vagabond, Bluphocks, and get some hints not only of the police^s attitude toward Luigi, which help us understand Scene III, but also a hint of certain designs on Pippa herself. c. After Pippa' s song in passing in Scene III has sealed Luigi's decision to do a bloody self-sacrificing deed, she passes on toward the Cathedral and the Bishop's brother's house, and we hear the poor outcast girls who are sitting on the Cathedral steps talking and giving us further inklings of the plot in which Pippa herself is unconsciously involved, — thus preparing us to understand Scene IV. d. And in the fourth scene, as the Monsignor wavers before the dastardly suggestion of the Intendant, who plots to have Pippa seduced and ruined, she herself passes singing, and the Monsignor springs up and calls his attendants to gag and bind the villain. And so Pippa goes on homeward, never knowing that she has been the decisive influence in several lives that day and has saved herself. It should be added that in each of the interludes, Pippa is naturally introduced : some of the speakers see her near or have noticed her as she went by a few minutes ago.^ III. The Songs in the Poem I. There are only a few songs in the poem except Pippa's own. a. There is a little snatch which Sebald sings at the beginning of Scene I : ^ "Let the watching Uds wink ! Day's a-blaze with eyes, think ! Deep into the night, drink ! " 1 P. 182, 11. 71-73 ; p. 186, 11. 56, 57 ; p. 191, 11. 26-29, 46-51. * P. 177, between 11. 9 and 10. 236 'BROWNING STUDIES b. There is what Phene repeats to Jules in Scene II : ^ "I am a painter who cannot paint," and so on. But this, although unlike the metre of the body of the poem, is not meant for a song. c. And there is the sweet pitiful song sung by one of the poor girls sitting on the Cathedral steps — ''You'll love me yet": 2 "You'll love me yet ! — and I can tarry Your love's protracted growing : June reared that bunch of flowers you carry, From seeds of April's sowing. I plant a heart! ul now : some seed At least is sure to strike, And yield — what you'll not pluck indeed, Not love, but, may be, like. You'll look at least on love's remains, A grave's one violet : Your look? — that pays a thousand pains. What's death ? You'll love me yet ! " 2. But the famous songs in the poem are Pippa's own. a. As she dresses herself in the morning, she sings the New Year's hymn : ^ "All service ranks the same with God." 1 P. 184, 11. 71-82; p. i8s, 11. 1-7, 13-45. 2 P. 191,11.34-45. ' P. 176, 11. 79-90. In these two stanzas the main idea is that it is the quality of the service that counts, not what men call its littleness or great- ness; that with God there is only one standard, viz. goodness; that what we call "a small event" often costs as much pain to bring to pass as a so-called "great event"; that in a single deed, whether called "great" or "small," power is put to the proof. Along with this goes the idea that, if God's presence "fills our earth," each of us can work "only as God wills" — we are "God's puppets." This is predestination with a vengeance. PIPPA PASSES 237 h. This same hymn comes again into her mind as she lies down at night, and the lines of it are running in her thoughts as she goes to sleep : ^ "All service ranks the same with God — With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first." So her New Year's day is begun and ended with the thought of our relation to the great Father. c. In Scene I, Mornings the song which smites the sinful Sebald is "The year's at the spring" : ^ "The year's at the spring And day's at the morn ; Morning's at seven ; The hill-side's dew-pearled ; The lark's on the wing ; The snail's on the thorn : God's in his heaven — All's right with the world!" d. In Scene II, Noon, Pippa's song ^ is the one referring to Queen Caterina Comaro ("Kate the Queen"). She was a Venetian lady, born in 1454 and married in 1472 to James of Lusignan, King of Cyprus. Upon his death in 1473 she succeeded to the throne, but in 1489 abdicated in favor of the Republic of Venice, which formally annexed the island. She returned to Venice, and the government conferred upon her for Ufe the castle whose ruins now stand on the hill above Asolo. Here she lived in affluence, sur- rounded by her servants and a briUiant court. She died 1 P. 19s, U. 16-18. 2 P. 180, between 11. 3 and 4. The song is consistently in every detail a spring song. No one is disturbed by the fact that it does not fit north Italy on Jan. i. Its freshness and cheer make it very appropriate for New Year's day. It is a familiar sonjg to Pippa, and now runs in her head. 3 P. 185, U. 61-78. , 238^ BROWNING STUDIES in Venice in 15 10. She was exceedingly kind to the people of Asolo, and they in turn loved her. It is altogether natural, therefore, that there should be, supposedly, a famiHar song in Asolo in which the Queen's name comes in as the people perhaps liked to have it, and that Pippa should be singing the song on her hoHday. This song, however, has little reference to Queen Caterina, except bringing her in in a sort of refrain. But the point of the song hits exactly the circumstances in which Jules and Phene are when they hear it : "Give her but a least excuse to love me!'* And the name of ''Kate the Queen" has a power over Jules who knows her history and incidents which have been, in popular tradition, connected with her life here.^ e. In Scene III, Evening, Pippa's song^ about a king who lived long ago, "In the morning of the world," so different from the king who oppresses the people of north Italy now, steels Liugi's heart in his purpose to kill the king that now is. /. In Scene IV, Night, Pippa's song ^ which saves herself from the plot which the Intendant is unfolding to the Monsignor is an exquisite appreciation of Nature, beginning "Overhead the tree-tops meet." It is full of the joy of innocence, and ends with God's sud- denly putting forth His hand into a human life. 1 See Jules' words p. 185, 1, 79-p. 186, 1. 7. 2 P. 189, 1. 52-p. 190, 1. 28. This song was first published, signed "Z," in The Monthly Repository, vol. ix, N. S., pp. 707, 708, in 1835. It was re- vised and a few lines were added before it was included in Pippa Passes. 3 P. 193, u. 98-113. PIPPA PASSES 239 IV. The Scenes more in Detail We are ready now to study more in detail the different divisions of the poem. I. The Introdmtiofiy which is Pippa's meditation or soliloquy before she goes out, begins with a gorgeous sun- rise. In a description starting with a line of one word, **Day," the sun comes up with a flood of gold which over- flows in a long rippling line at the end of the first paragraph : ^ "Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world." Notice the gradual up-flooding of the light : "Day! Faster and more fast. O'er night's brim, day boils at last : Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim Where spurting and suppressed it lay, For not a froth-flake touched the rim Of yonder gap in the solid gray Of the eastern cloud, an hour away ; ^ But forth one wavelet, then another, curled, Till the whole simrise, not to be suppressed. Rose, reddened, and its seething breast FUckered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world." ' Pippa, who has to toil the rest of the days,^ is bound to make the most of this day of liberty : "Oh, Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee, Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me!" ^ ip. 174, 1. 12. ^i.e. an hour ago. ^ Some time ago a young man told me he had noticed a sunrise which behaved in exactly this way, i.e. the gold boiled up as here described. * That this is Pippa's only holiday is plain from half a dozen places in the Introduction, and from Ottima's words p. 180, 11. 5-7. 5 P. 174, U. 13, 20; cf. the intervening lines. 240 DROWNING STUDIES "Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing, Whence earth, we feel, gets steady help and good — Thy fitful sunshine-minutes, coming, going, As if earth turned from work in gamesome mood — All shall be mine!" ^ She thinks of those who seem to her the most happy in Asolo.2 There is Ottima, the wife of Luca Gaddi who owns the silk mills. ^ To be sure, Luca is old, but Ottima has a paramour, the German Sebald, who pays her homage. Then there are Jules and Phene, who, Pippa hears, are to be married to-day. Then there are Luigi and his mother, whom she has seen going into the turret of the ruined castle so often at evening and talking so earnestly together ; she thinks they must be very fond of each other. And there is the Monsignor expected from Rome to-day to see about the affairs of his brother who has recently died and to say masses for his brother's soul. Pippa is to-day free to let her fancy run riot: as the day goes on she will imagine she is Ottima, Phene, Luigi, the Monsignor, and try to get as much out of the day in her way, aided by her imagina- tion, as they themselves can get. Thus, in the opening part of the poem, the persons who are to be the actors in the scenes of the day are introduced to us — skilfully and naturally.^ iP. 174,11. 21-25. 2 Naturally enough, Pippa goes twice over the list of "Asolo's Four Happiest Ones," the second time being after she had decided to let her fancy run and put herself in the place of each of them to-day. Notice how dif- ferently they are handled the second time. Following are the parallel passages : a. Ottima and Sebald— (i) p. 175, 11. 15-20; (2) p. 176, 11. 3-15. b. Jules and Phene — (i) p. 175, 11. 21-26; (2) p. 176, 11. 16-45. c. Luigi and his mother — (i) p. 175, 11. 27-33 ; (2) p. 176, 11. 46-67. d. The Monsignor — (i) p. 175, U. 33-40; (2) p. 176, U. 68-75. 3 Cf. also p. 180, 11. 8, 9 ; p. 187, 11. 21, 22. * Of the actors who take part in the scenes, the only one who is not men- PIP PA PASSES 241 2. The main Scenes. a. Scene I, Morning, shows us a shrub-house in the gardens of Luca Gaddi's mansion on the hill-side. Sebald, the German, and Ottima, Luca's wife, have murdered Luca the night before : "Luca Gaddi's murdered corpse Within there, at his couch-foot, covered close — You cannot rid your eyes of it." ^ They could not feel like spending the night in the house after the murder, and have spent it in this shrub-house. Ottima suggests : "There's one thing must be done ; you know what thing. Come in and help to carry. We may sleep Anywhere in the whole wide house to-night." ^ But Sebald answers : "Let him He there until The angels take him ! He is turned by this Off from his face beside, as you will see," ^ referring to the superstitious idea that murdered persons will turn over with faces toward Heaven — in mute appeal for vengeance. Sebald's conscience is awake,'* and he begins to turn from tioned in the Introductian is the Intendant. The reason for this is plain : Pippa knows nothing of his relation to the affairs of the Monsignor's brother — she has no idea that he wiU talk with the Monsignor to-night. It is, therefore, impossible that the Intendant should be mentioned in the Intro- ductimt. He is naturally introduced in the second interlude (p. 186, 11. 57- 59) and in the third (p. 191, 11. 26-29), — just enough to prepare us for his appearing in Scene IV. The actors in the interludes are not mentioned in the Introduction^ — be- cause the interludes are themselves of an introductory nature. 1 P. 178, 11. 43, 44, 48. Cf. the whole passage, 11. 36-52. 2P. 178,11. 54-56. »P. 178, U. 58-60. * As is plain already from his tone in the conversation p. 177, 11. 37-63, although he affects to be reckless and hardened. 242 BROWNING STUDIES Ottima ^ for whose sake he has done this murder. He would recoil from her, but she wraps him about again in the old mesh of blind infatuation by recalling to his memory the earlier crises of their sinful love.^ This she does with tremendous intensity and subtlety. And Sebald is lost, — absorbed again in a blind passion for her which makes him forget the enormity of adultery and murder.^ She sets him to knot up her hair, which has fallen down, and commands him : "Bind it thrice about my brow ; Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress, Magnificent in sin. Say that ! " ^ All but lost ; for just as he binds the hair about Ottima's brow, repeating "I crown you My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress, Magnificent . . ." ^ Pippa passes, singing "The year's at the spring And day's at the morn ; Morning's at seven ; The hill-side's dew-pearled ; The lark's on the wing ; The snail's on the thorn : God's in his heaven — All's right with the world!" The words are like a dagger to Sebald's soul. He exclaims in confusion : "God's in his heaven! Do you hear that ? Who spoke ? You, you spoke!" ^ * See the conversation p. 178, 1, 32-p. 179, 1. 14. 2 P. 179, 11. 24-73. ' P. 179, 11. 62-65, 69, 70, 74-76. " P. 180, 11. 2-4. < P. 179, 1. 76-p. 180, 1. 2. 8 p. 180, II. 4, 5. PIPPA PASSES 243 He is disillusioned by Pippa's words. The charm of Ottima is gone ; he sees just what she is.^ He sees just what he has done : "That little peasant's voice Has righted all again. Though I be lost, I know which is the better, never fear, Of vice or virtue, purity or lust, Nature or trick ! I see what I have done. Entirely now ! Oh I am glad to feel Such torments — let the world take credit thence — I, having done my deed, pay too its price ! I hate, hate — curse you ! God's in his heaven ! " * And seeing "entirely now," he draws his dagger and kills himself.^ His last words are : "My brain is drowned now — quite drowned : all I feel Is . . . is, at swift-recurring intervals, A hurry-down within me, as of waters Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit : There they go — whirls from a black fiery sea ! " ^ h. At the beginning of Scene II, Noon, the situation is peculiar, but is explained in the preceding interlude. Cer- tain foreign art-students of Venice are jealous of one who has been of their number,^ a young French sculptor, Jules, ip. 180,11. 11-36. 2 p. 180, 11. 36-44- ' It is plain in 11. 41-43 that he is about to stab himself. It is plain also that Ottima (p. 180, 11. 44-51) is trying to prevent him from stabbing him- self, or to delay him. But a stage- direction [Stahs himself], put in at the proper moment, would have been of assistance to the reader. *P. 180,11.52-56. ^ Browning's words in the stage-direction (p. 180, between 11. 57 and 58), "opposite the house 0/ Jules, a young French statuary, at Possagno," mean that Jules is a maker of statues and is working at Possagno, a short distance from Asolo. Possagno is the birthplace of Canova, the great sculptor, (bom 1757, died 1822), and his tomb is there. His house there is used as a museum and contains models and casts of his works. It is among these that 244 BROWNING STUDIES — jealous perhaps because of his superior ability. Any- way, they charge him with being conceited and supercilious. Under their ringleader, Lutwyche, they have gotten up what they think is a good joke on Jules. They have written him letters purporting to be from a young lady of high posi- tion who has admired a piece of his work ^ exhibited at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. They have kept up the deception, using the name and describing the appearance of a Greek girl named Phene, an artists* model furnished them by a woman named Natalia. On the strength of the correspondence, Jules has fallen in love with the young lady, and has proposed marriage. They have put Phene forward to marry him, and the upshot of it all has come to be the wedding this New Year's noon. The last and most adroit piece of trickery has 'been their getting Jules to consent, on plausible grounds, to a stipulation that he shall not speak to the lady until after they are married. Phene has been taught what she is to say to Jules as soon as they get back from the wedding.^ This speech,^ which Natalia has compelled her to learn and has told her she must say,^ is in ridicule of Jules' love and gives the whole Jules is studying (see p. i8i, U. 67-73, 102-126). It is plain from the students' talk that Jules has been with them in Venice (e.g. p. 181, U. 36-44). It is evident also that he has lived some time in Asolo, for Pippa knows where his house stands and knows of his marriage to-day. 1 The work specified (p. 182, 11. 19-21) is a statue of Tydeus, one of the heroes who, according to Greek legend, lost their lives in the expedition of the "Seven against Thebes." yEschylus used the legend for the materials of a tragedy which was first played in 467 B.C., at Athens. 'The wedding, according to Roman Catholic custom, would naturally be in church. Pippa (Introduction, p. 176, 11. 19, 20) understands it is to be in the church at Possagno (cf. note 5 on the preceding page). » P. 184, 1. 71-p. 185, 1. 45.