Chapter XIX: Book THE SIXTH (9)

The narrator, however, judges that this oblivion may not have been unsought, since one who had believed himself the object of a direct message from God, would have little taste for intercourse with his fellow men; and he suspends his story for a moment to ask himself how such a one would bear the weight of his experience; and how far the knowledge conveyed by it might be true. He decides (as we should expect) that a direct Revelation is forbidden by the laws of life; but that life is full of indirect messages from the unseen world; that all our "simulated thunder-claps," all our "counterfeited truths," all those glimpses of beauty which startle while they elude the soul, are messages of this kind: darts shot from the spirit world, which rebound as they touch, yet sting us to the consciousness of its existence. And so René Gentilhomme had had a true revelation, in what reminded him that there are things higher than rhyming and its rewards.

Paul Desforges Maillard was born nearly a century later, and wrote society verses till the age of thirty, when the desire for wider fame took possession of him. He competed for a prize which the Academy had offered to the poet who should best commemorate the progress made by the art of navigation during the last reign. His poem was returned. It was offered, through the agency of a friend, to a paper called "The Mercury." The editor, La Roque, praised the work in florid terms, but said he dared not offend the Academy; he, too, returned the MS. Paul, mistaking the polite fiction for truth, wrote back an angry tirade against the editor's cowardice; and the latter, retorting in as frank a fashion, told the writer that his poem was execrable, and that it was only consideration for his feelings which had hitherto prevented his hearing so.

At this juncture Paul's sister interposed. He was wrong, she declared, to proceed in such a point-blank manner. In cases like these, it was only wile which conquered. He must resume his incognito, and try, this time, the effect of a feminine disguise. She picked out and copied the feeblest of his songs or sonnets, and sent it to La Roque, as from a girl-novice who humbly sued for his literary protection. She was known by another name than her brother's (Mr. Browning explains why); the travesty was therefore complete. The poem was accepted; then another and another. The lady's fame grew. La Roque made her, by letter, a declaration of love. Voltaire also placed himself at her feet.

Paul now refused to efface himself any longer. The clever sister urged in vain that it was her petticoats which had conquered, and not his verse. He went to Paris to claim his honours, and introduce himself as the admired poetess to La Roque and Voltaire. Voltaire bitterly resented the joke; La Roque affected to enjoy it; but nevertheless advised its perpetrator to get out of Paris as fast as possible. The trick had answered for once. It would not be wise to repeat it. Again Paul disregarded his sister's advice, and reprinted the poems in his own name. "They had been praised and more than praised. The world could not eat its own printed words!"

He discovered, however, that the world _could_ eat its words; or, at least, forget them. The only fame--the speaker adds--which a great man cannot destroy, is that which he has had no hand in making. Paul's light, with his sister's, went out as did that of his predecessor.

Mr. Browning gives, in conclusion, a test by which the relative merit of any two real poets may be gauged. _The greater is he who leads the happier life_. To be a poet is to see and feel. To see and feel is to suffer. His is the truest poetic existence who enslaves his sufferings, and makes their strength his own. He who yokes them to his chariot shall win the race.[83]

"CENCIAJA" signifies matter relating to the "Cenci;"[84] and the poem describes an incident extraneous to the "Cenci" tragedy, but which strongly influenced its course. This incident was the murder of the widowed Marchesa dell' Oriolo, by her younger son, Paolo Santa Croce, who thus avenged her refusal to invest him with his elder brother's rights. He escaped the hands of justice, though only to perish in some other disastrous way. But the matricide had been committed on the very day which closed the trial of the Cenci family for the assassination of its Head; and it sealed Beatrice's fate. Her sentence seemed about to be remitted. The Pope now declared that she must die.

... "Paolo Santo Croce
Murdered his mother also yestereve,
And he is fled: she shall not flee at least!"
(vol. xiv. p. 104.)

The elder son of the Marchesa, Onofrio Marchese dell' Oriolo, was arrested on the strength of an ambiguous scrap of writing, which appeared to implicate him in his brother's guilt; and subjected in prison to such a daily and day-long examination on the subject of this letter, that his mind gave way, and the desired avowal was extracted from him. He confessed to having implied, under reserves and conditions which practically neutralized the confession, his assent to his mother's death. He was beheaded accordingly; and the Governor of Rome, Taverna, who had conducted the inquisition, was rewarded by a Cardinal's hat. Other motives were, however, involved in the proceeding than the Pope's quickened zeal for justice. He had entrusted the case to his nephew, Cardinal Aldobrandini; and it was known that the Cardinal and the Marchese had courted the same lady, and the latter unwisely flaunted the possession of a ring which was his pledge of victory.

This story, with other details which I have not space to give, was taken from a contemporary Italian chronicle, of which some lines are literally transcribed.

The heretic of "THE HERETIC'S TRAGEDY" was Jacques du Bourg-Molay, last Grand Master of the Order of Knights Templars, and against whom preposterous accusations had been brought. This "Jacques," whom the speaker erroneously calls "John," and who might stand for any victim of middle-age fanaticism, was burned in Paris in 1314; and the "Interlude," we are told, "would seem to be a reminiscence of this event, as distorted by two centuries of refraction from Flemish brain to brain." The scene is carried on by one singer, in a succession of verses, and by a chorus which takes up the last and most significant words of each verse; the organ accompanying in a plagal cadence,[85] which completes its effect. The chant is preceded by an admonition from the abbot, which lays down its text: that God is unchanging, and His justice as infinite as His mercy; and singer and chorus both denounce the impious heresy of "John:" who admitted only the love, and sinned the "Unknown Sin," in his confidence in it. How the logs are fired; how the victim roasts; amidst what hideous and fantastic torments the damned soul "flares forth into the dark" is quaintly and powerfully described.

ROMANTIC POEMS.

The prevalence of thought in Mr. Browning's poetry has created in many minds an impression that he is more a thinker than a poet: that his poems not only are each inspired by some leading idea, but have grown up in subservience to it; and those who hold this view both do him injustice as a poet, and underrate, however unconsciously, the intellectual value of what his work conveys. For in a poet's imagination, the thought and the thing--the idea and its image--grow up at the same time; each being a different aspect of the other.[86] He sees, therefore, the truths of Nature, as Nature herself gives them; while the thinker, who conceives an idea first, and finds an illustration for it afterwards, gives truth only as it presents itself to the human mind--in a more definite, but much narrower form. Mr. Browning often _treats_ his subject as a pure thinker might, but he has always _conceived_ it as a poet; he has always seen in one flash, everything, whether moral or physical, visible or invisible, which the given situation could contain.[87] This fact may be recognized in many of the smaller poems, which, for that reason, I shall find it impossible to class; but it is best displayed in a couple of longer ones, which I have placed under the head "Romantic." They are distinct from the majority of the "Dramatic Romances," although included in them. For with these the word "romantic" denotes an imaginary experience, which may be frankly supernatural, as in "The Boy and the Angel;" or only improbable, as in "Mesmerism;" or semi-historical and local, as in "In a Gondola;" or simply human, and possible anywhere and anywhen, as in "The Last Ride Together;" or in "Dîs aliter Visum," and "James Lee's Wife," which might be classed with them. I am now using it to mark certain cases, in which the author's imagination has not brought itself to the test of _any_ consistent experience, but simply presents us with certain groups of material and mental--of real and ideal possibilities, which we may each interpret for ourselves. They occur in

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." ("Dramatic Romances."
Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"The Flight of the Duchess." ("Dramatic Romances." Published
in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)[88]

The first of these has been taken by some intelligent critics to be a moralizing allegory; the second, a moralizing fairy-tale. They are, therefore, a useful type both of Mr. Browning's poetic genius, and of the misunderstanding, to which its constantly intellectual employment has exposed him.

"CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME," describes a brave knight performing a pilgrimage, in which hitherto all who attempted it have failed. The way through which he struggles is unknown to him; its features are hideous; a deadly sense of difficulty and danger hangs over every step; and though Childe Roland's courage is pledged to the undertaking, the thought of failure at last comes to him as a relief. He reaches the goal just as failure appears inevitable. The plain has suddenly closed in; weird and unsightly eminences encompass him on every side. In one flash he perceives that he is in a trap; in another, that the tower stands before him; while round it, against the hill-sides, are ranged the "lost adventurers" who have preceded him--their names and story clanging loudly and more loudly in his ears--their forms revealed with ghastly clearness in the last fires of the setting sun.

So far the picture is consistent; but if we look below its surface discrepancies appear. The Tower is much nearer and more accessible than Childe Roland has thought; a sinister-looking man, of whom he asked the way, and who, as he believed, was deceiving him, has really put him on the right track; and as he describes the country through which he passes, it becomes clear that half its horrors are created by his own heated imagination, or by some undefined influence in the place itself. We are left in doubt whether those who have found failure in this quest, have not done so through the very act of attainment in it; and when, dauntless, Childe Roland sounds his slughorn and announces that he has come, we should not know, but that he lives to tell the tale, whether in doing this he incurs, or is escaping, the general doom. We can connect no idea of definite pursuit or attainment with a series of facts so dreamlike and so disjointed: still less extract from it a definite moral; and we are reduced to taking the poem as a simple work of fancy, built up of picturesque impressions which have, separately or collectively, produced themselves in the author's mind.[89]

But these picturesque impressions had, also, their ideal side, which Mr. Browning as spontaneously reproduced; and we may all recognize under the semblance of the enchanted country and the adventurous knight, a poetic vision of life: with its conflicts, contradictions, and mockeries; its difficulties which give way when they seem most insuperable; its successes which look like failures, and its failures which look like success. The thing we may not do is to imagine that an intended lesson is conveyed by it.

"THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS" is the adventure of a young girl, who was brought out of a convent to marry a certain Duke. The Duke was narrow-hearted, pompous, and self-sufficient; the mother who shared his home, a sickly woman, as ungenial as himself. The young wife, on the other hand, was a bright, stirring creature, who would have been the sunshine of a labourer's home. She pined amidst the dreariness and the formality of her conjugal existence, and seized the first opportunity of escape from it. A retainer of the Duke's, whose chivalry her position had aroused, connived at her escape, and tells the story of it.

The Duke had decreed a hunt. Custom prescribed that his wife should attend it. She had excused herself on the plea of her ill-health; and he was riding forth in no amiable mood, when an old gipsy woman, well known in the neighbourhood, accosted him with the usual prayer for alms. He was curtly dismissing her, when she mentioned her desire to pay her respects to the young Duchess. It then occurred to him that the sight of this ragged crone, and the chronicle of her woes, might be an excellent medicine for his "froward," ungrateful wife, and teach her to know when she was well off; and after speaking in confidence with the old woman, he bade him who recounts the adventure escort her into the lady's presence. The interview took place. The Duchess accompanied her visitor to the castle gate, ordered her palfrey to be saddled, mounted it with the gipsy behind her, and bounded away, never to return. The attendant had watched and obeyed her as in a dream. She left in his hand, in gratitude for what she knew he felt for her, a little plait of hair.

These are the real facts of the story. But we have also its ideal possibilities, as reflected by the imagination of the narrator. He had seen the gipsy metamorphosed as she received the Duke's command, from a ragged, decrepit crone into a stately woman, whose clothing bore the appearance of wealth; and as he mounted guard on the balcony which commanded the Duchess's room, he saw the wonder grow. A sound as of music first attracted his attention; and as he looked in at the window he saw the Duchess sitting at the feet of a real gipsy-queen: her head upturned--her whole being expanding--as the gipsy's hands waved over her, and the gipsy's eyes, preternaturally dilated, poured their floods of life into her own. Then the music broke up into words, and he knew what hope and promise that fainting spirit was drinking in: for he heard what the gipsy said. She was telling the young Duchess that she was one of themselves--that she bore their mystic mark in the two veins which met and parted on her brow--that after fiery trial she should return to her tribe, and be shielded by their devotion for evermore. She was telling her how good a thing is love--how strong and beautiful the double existence of those whom love has welded together--how full of restful memories the old age of those who have lived in and for it--how sure and gentle their awakening into the better world.... Here the words again lost themselves in music, and he understood no more. When the two appeared at the castle gate, the gipsy had shrunk back into her original character; but the Duchess remained transformed. She had become, in her turn, a queen.

The suggestion of her gipsy origin forms a connecting link between the real and the ideal aspects of the Duchess's flight. We might imagine her fervid nature as being affected by the message of deliverance precisely in the manner described: while the beautified image of her deliverer transferred itself through some magnetic influence to the spectator's mind from her own. He does not, however, present himself as a probable subject for such impressions. He is a jovial, matter-of-fact person, in spite of the vein of sentiment which runs through him; and the imaginative part of his narrative was more probably the result of a huntsman's breakfast which had found its way into his brain. As in the case of Childe Roland, the poetic truth of the Duchess's romance is incompatible with rational explanation, and independent of it. Various dramatic details complete the story.

SATIRICAL OR HUMOROUS POEMS.

Humour is a constant characteristic of Mr. Browning's work,[90] and it sometimes takes the form of direct and intentional satire; but his sympathy with human beings and his hopeful view of their future destiny, are opposed to any development of the satirical mood. The impression of sympathy will even neutralize the satire, in poems in which the latter is directly and conciously conveyed: as, for instance, in "Caliban upon Setebos," and "The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church." Of grim or serious satire, there is, I think, only one specimen among his works: the first part of

"Holy-Cross Day." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and
Women," 1855.)

We may class as playful satires (which I give in the order of their importance):

"Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in Distemper." (1876.)

"Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial."
("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems." 1876.)

"Up at a Villa--Down in the City." ("Dramatic Lyrics."
Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Another Way of Love." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men
and Women." 1855.)

We have a purely humorous picture in

"Garden Fancies, II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis." ("Dramatic
Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"HOLY-CROSS DAY" was the occasion of an "Annual Christian Sermon," which the Jews in Rome were forced to attend; and the poem which bears this title is prefaced by an extract from an imaginary "Diary by a Bishop's Secretary," dated 1600; and expatiating on the merciful purpose, and regenerating effect of this sermon. What the assembled Jews may have really felt about it, Mr. Browning sets forth in the words of one of the congregation.

This man describes the hustling and bustling, the crowding and packing--the suppressed stir as of human vermin imprisoned in a small space; the sham groans, and sham conversions which follow in their due course; and as he thus dwells on his national and personal degradation, his tone has the bitter irony of one who has both realized and accepted it. But the irony recoils on those who have inflicted the degradation--on the so-called Christians who would throttle the Jew's creed while they "gut" his purse, and make him the instrument of their own sins; and is soon lost in the emotion of a pathetic and solemn prayer; the supposed death-bed utterance of Rabbi Ben Ezra.

The prayer is an invocation to the justice, and to the sympathy of Christ. It claims His help against the enemies who are also His own. It concedes, as possible, that He was in truth the Messiah, crucified by the nation of which He claimed a crown. But it points to His Christian followers as inflicting on Him a still deeper outrage: a belief which the lips profess, and which the life derides and discredits. It urges, in the Jew's behalf, the ignorance, the fear, in which the deed was done; the bitter sufferings by which it has been expiated. It pleads his long endurance, as testimony to the fact, that he withstands Barabbas now, as he withstood Christ "then;" that he strives to wrest Christ's name from the "Devil's crew," though the shadow of His face be upon him. The invocation concludes with an expression of joyful confidence in God and the future.

(Giacomo) "PACCHIAROTTO" was a painter of Siena.[91] His story is told in the "Commentary on the Life of Sodoma" by the editors of Vasari; Florence, 1855; and this contains all, or nearly all, the incidents of Mr. Browning's "Pacchiarotto," as well as others of a similar kind but of later occurrence, which are not mentioned in it.

This painter was a restless, aggressive personage, with a craze for reform; and a conspicuous member of the "Bardotti:" a society of uncommissioned reformers, whose occupation was to cry down abuses, and prescribe wholesale theoretical measures for removing them. (Hence their title; which signifies "spare" horses or "freed" ones: they walk by the side of the waggon while others drudge at, and drag it along). But he discovered that men would not be reformed; and bethought himself, after a time, of a new manner of testifying to the truth. He selected a room in his own house, whitewashed it (we conclude); and, working in "distemper" or fresco, painted it with men and women of every condition and kind. He then harangued these on their various shortcomings. They answered him, as he imagined, in a humble and apologetic manner; and he then proceeded to denounce their excuses, and strip the mask from their sophistries and hypocrisies--doing so with every appearance of success.

But he presumed too much on his victory. A famine had broken out in Siena. The magistrates were, of course, held responsible for it. The Bardotti assembled, and prescribed the fitting remedies. Everything would come right if only the existing social order was turned topsy-turvy, and men were released from every tie. Pacchiarotto was conspicuous by his eloquence. But when he denounced the chief of the municipal force, and hinted that if the right man were in the right place, that officer would be he, all the other "spare horses" rushed upon him and he was obliged to run for his life. The first hiding-place which presented itself was a sepulchre, in which a corpse had just been laid. He squeezed himself into this, and crawled forth from it at at the end of two days, starving, covered with vermin, and thoroughly converted to the policy of living and letting live. The authentic part of the narrative concludes with his admission into a neighbouring convent (the Osservanza) where he was cleansed and fed. But Mr. Browning allows Fancy the just employment of telling how the Superior improved the occasion, and how his lesson was received.

"It is a great mistake," this reverend person assures his guest--though one from which his own youth has not been free--"to imagine that any one man can preach another out of his folly. If such endeavours could succeed, heaven would have begun on earth. Whereas, every man's task is to leaven earth with heaven, by working towards the end to which his Master points, without dreaming that he can ever attain it. Man, in short, is to be not the 'spare horse,' but the 'mill-horse' plodding patiently round and round on the same spot."

And Pacchiarotto replies that his monitor's arguments are, by his own account, doomed to be ineffectual: but that he is addressing himself to one already convinced. He (Pacchiarotto) never was so by living man; but he has been convinced by a dead one. That corpse has seemed to ask him by its grin, why he should join it before his time because men are not all made on the same pattern: "Because, above, one's Jack and one--John." And the same grin has reminded him that this life is the rehearsal, not the real performance: just an hour's trial of who is fit, and who isn't, to play his part; that the parts are distributed by the author, whose purpose will be explained in proper time; and that when his brother has been cast for a fool's part, he is no sage who would persuade him to give it up. He is now going back to his paint-pot, and will mind his own business in future.

By an easy transition, Mr. Browning turns the laugh against his own critics, whom he professes to recognize on this May morning, as flocking into his garden in the guise of sweeps. He does not, he says, grudge them their fun or their one holiday of the year, the less so that their rattling and drumming may give him some inkling how music sounds; and he flings them, by way of a gift, the story he has just told, bidding them dance, and "dust" his "jacket" for a little while. But that done, he bids them clear off, lest his housemaid should compel them to do so. He has her authority for suspecting that in their professional character they bring more dirt into the house than they remove from it[92].

"FILIPPO BALDINUCCI" was the author of a history of art ("Notizie dei Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in qua"); and the incident which Mr. Browning relates as "a reminiscence of A.D. 1670," appears there in a notice of the life of the painter Buti. (Vol. iii. p. 422.)

The Jewish burial ground in Florence was a small field at the foot of the Monte Oliveto. A path ascending the hill skirted its upper end, and at an angle of this stood a shrine with one side blank, the other adorned by a painting of the Virgin Mary. The painting was intended to catch the eye of all believers who approached from the neighbouring city-gate (Porta San Friano or Frediano); and was therefore so turned that it overlooked the Jewish cemetery at the same time. The Jews, objecting to this, negotiated for its removal with the owner of the ground; and his steward, acting in his name, received a hundred ducats as the price of his promise that the Virgin should be transferred to the opposite side of the shrine. The task was undertaken by Buti, but carried on in the privacy of a curtained scaffolding; and when the curtains were withdrawn, it was seen that the picture _had_ been transferred; but that a painting of the Crucifixion occupied its original place. Four Rabbis, the "sourest and ugliest" of the lot, were deputed to remonstrate with the steward; but this person coolly replied that they had no ground of complaint whatever. "His master had amply fulfilled his bond. Did they fancy their 'sordid' money had bought his freedom to do afterwards what he thought fit?" And he advised them to remove themselves before worse befell them. The Jews retired discomfited; and, as the writer hopes, took warning by what had happened, never again to tempt with their ill-earned wealth "the religious piety of good Christians."

Mr. Browning gives this story, with unimportant variations, in the manner of Baldinucci himself; and does full justice to the hostile and contemptuous spirit in which the attitude of the Jews is described by him. But he also heightens the unconscious self-satire of the narrative by infusing into this attitude a genuine dignity and pathos. He enlists all our sympathy by the Chief Rabbi's prayer that his people, so sorely tried in life, may be allowed rest from persecution in their graves; and he concludes with an imaginary incident which leaves them masters of the situation. On the day after what the historian calls this "pleasing occurrence," the son of the High Priest presented himself at Buti's shop, where he and the so-called "farmer" were still laughing over the event; and in tones of ominous mildness begged to purchase that pretty thing--the picture in oils, from which the fresco painting of the Virgin had been made. He was a Herculean young man, and Buti, who white and trembling had tried to slip out of his way, was so bewildered by the offer, that he asked only the proper price for his work. The farmer, however, broke forth in expressions of pious delight, "Mary had surely wrought a miracle, and _converted_ the Jew!"

The Jew turned like a trodden worm. "Truly," he replied, "a miracle has been wrought, by a power which no canvas yet possessed, in that I have resisted the desire to throttle you. But my purchase of your picture is not due to a miracle. It means simply that I have been cured of my prejudices in respect to art. Christians hang up pictures of heathen gods. Their 'Titians' paint them. A cardinal will value his Leda or his Ganymede beyond everything else which he possesses. If I express wonder at this sacrifice of the truth, I am told that the truth of a picture is in its drawing and painting, and that these are valued precisely because they _are_ true. Why then should not your Mary take her place among my Ledas and the rest; be judged as a picture, and, since--as I fear--Master Buti is not a Titian, laughed at accordingly?"

"So now," the speaker concludes, "Jews buy what pictures they like, and hang them up where they please, and,"--with an inward groan--"no, boy, you must not pelt them." This warning, which is supposed to be addressed by the historian in his old age to a nephew with a turn for throwing stones, reveals the motive of the story: a sudden remembrance of the good old pious time, when Jews _might_ be pelted.

"UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN THE CITY" is a lively description of the amusements of the city, and the dulness of villa life, as contrasted by an Italian of quality, who is bored to death in his country residence, but cannot afford the town. His account of the former gives a genuine impression of dreariness and monotony, for the villa is stuck on a mountain edge, where the summer is scorching and the winter bleak, where a "lean cypress" is the most conspicuous object in the foreground, and hills "smoked over" with "faint grey olive trees" fill in the back; where on hot days the silence is only broken by the shrill chirp of the cicala, and the whining of bees around some adjacent firs. But the other side of the picture, though sympathetically drawn, is a perfect parody of what it is meant to convey. For the speaker's ideal "city" might be a big village, with its primitive customs, and its life all concentrated in the market-place or square; and it is precisely in the square that he is ambitious to live. There the church-bells sound, and the diligence rattles in, and the travelling doctor draws teeth or gives pills; there the punch-show or the church procession displays itself, and the last proclamation of duke or archbishop is posted up. It is never too hot, because of the fountain always plashing in the centre; and the bright white houses, and green blinds, and painted shop-signs are a perpetual diversion to the eye.... But alas! the price of food is prohibitive; and a man must live where he can.

"ANOTHER WAY OF LOVE" is the complement to "One Way of Love," and displays the opposite mood. The one lover patiently gathers June roses in case they may catch his lady's eye. The other grows tired of such patience even when devoted to himself; he tires of June roses, which are always red and sweet. His lady-love is bantering him on this frame of mind. It is true, she says, that such monotony is trying to a man's temper: there is no comfort in anything that can't be quarrelled with; and the person she addresses is free to "go." She reminds him, however, that June may repair her bower which his hand has rifled, and the next time "consider" which of two courses she prefers: to bestow her flowers on one who will accept their sweetness, or use her lightnings to kill the spider who is weaving his films about them.

"SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS" is apparently the name of an old pedant who has written a tiresome book; and the adventures of this book form the subject of the poem. Some wag relates how he read it a month ago, having come into the garden for that purpose; and then revenged himself by dropping it through a crevice in a tree, and enjoying a picnic lunch and a chapter of "Rabelais" on the grass close by. To-day, in a fit of compunction, he has raked the "treatise" out; but meanwhile it has blistered in the sun, and run all colours in the rain. Toadstools have grown in it; and all the creatures that creep have towzed it and browsed on it, and devoted bits of it to their different domestic use. It is altogether a melancholy sight. So the wag thinks his victim has sufficiently suffered, and carries it back to his book-shelf, to "dry-rot" there in all the comfort it deserves.

DESCRIPTIVE POEMS.

Mr. Browning's poems abound in descriptive passages, and his power of word-painting is very vivid, as well as frequently employed. But we have here another instance of a quality diffused throughout his work, yet scarcely ever asserting itself in a distinct form. The reason is, that he deals with men and women first--with nature afterwards; and that the details of a landscape have little meaning for him, except in reference to the mental or dramatic situation of which they form a part. This is very apparent in such lyrics or romances as: "By the Fire-side," "In a Gondola," and "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." We find three poems only which might have been written for the sake of the picturesque impressions which they convey:

"De Gustibus--" ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and
Women." 1855.)

"Home-Thoughts, from Abroad." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in
"Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"The Englishman in Italy." ("Dramatic Romances." Published as
"England in Italy" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)
And even here we receive the picture with a lyric and dramatic
colouring, which makes it much less one of facts than of
associations. It is also to be remarked that, in these poems,
the associations are of two opposite kinds, and Mr. Browning
is in equal sympathy with both. He feels English scenery as an
Englishman does: Italian, as an Italian might be supposed to,
feel it.

"DE GUSTIBUS--" illustrates the difference of tastes by the respective attractions of these two kinds of scenery, and of the ideas and images connected with them. Some one is apostrophizing a friend, whose ghost he is convinced will be found haunting an English lane, with its adjoining corn-field and hazel coppice: where in the early summer the blackbird sings, and the bean-flower scents the air. And he declares at the same time that Italy is the land of his own love, whether his home there be a castle in the Apennine, or some house on its southern shore; among "wind-grieved" heights, or on the edge of an opaque blue sea: amidst a drought and stillness in which the very cicala dies, and the cypress seems to rust; and scorpions drop and crawl from the peeling walls ... and where "a bare-footed girl tumbles green melons on to the ground before you, as she gives news of the last attack on the Bourbon king."

"HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD" is a longing reminiscence of an English April and May, with their young leaves and their blossoms, their sunshine and their dew, their song of the chaffinch and their rapturous music of the thrush. Appreciation is heightened by contrast; and the buttercup--England's gift to her little children--is pronounced far brighter than the "gaudy melon-flower" which the exiled Englishman has at this moment before him.

"THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY" is a vivid picture of Italian peasant-life on the plain of Sorrento: the occasion being an outbreak of the well-known hot wind--the "scirocco"--which, in this case, has brought with it a storm of rain. A little frightened peasant girl has taken refuge by the side of the Englishman, who is apparently lodging in her mother's cottage. And he is diverting her attention by describing his impressions of the last twenty-four hours: how everything looked before the rain; how he knew while yet in bed that the rain had come, by the rattling down of the quail-nets,[93] which were to be tugged into shelter, while girls ran on to the housetops to fetch the drying figs; how the black churning waters forbade the fishermen to go to sea (what strange creatures they bring home when they do go, and how the brown naked children, who look like so many shrimps, cling screaming about them at the sight); how all hands are now employed at the wine-making, and her brother is at this moment dancing bare-legged in a vat half as high as the house; how the bigger girls bring baskets of grapes, with eyes closed to keep out the rain; and how the smaller ones gather snails in the wet grass, which will appear with fried pumpkin at the labourer's supper; how, yesterday, he climbed Mount Calvano--that very brother of hers for his guide--his mule carrying him with dainty steps through the plain--past the woods--up a path ever wilder and stonier, where sorb and myrtle fall away, but lentisk and rosemary still cling to the face of the rock--the head and shoulders of some new mountain ever coming into view; how he emerged, at last, where there were mountains all around; below, the green sea; above, the crystal solitudes of heaven; and, down in that green sea, the slumbering Siren islands: the three which stand together, and the one which swam to meet them, but has always remained half-way. These, and other reminiscences, beguile the time till the storm has passed, and the sun breaks over the great mountain which the Englishman has just described. He and little "Fortú" can now go into the village, and see the preparations being made for to-morrow's feast--that of the Virgin of the Rosary--which primitive solemnity he also (by anticipation) describes. He concludes with a brief allusion to the political scirocco which is blackening the English sky, and will not vanish so quickly as this has done; and thus hints at a reason, if the reader desires one, for his temporary rustication in a foreign land.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 72: First in "Hood's Magazine."]

[Footnote 73: Two of these are now in the National Gallery; one presented to it by Sir Charles Eastlake, the other after his death by Lady Eastlake.]

[Footnote 74: Mr. Browning thus skilfully accounts for the discrepancy between the coarseness of his life and the refined beauty of much of his work.]

[Footnote 75: The painter spoken of as "hulking Tom" is the celebrated one known as "Masaccio" (Tommasaccio), who learned in the convent from Lippo Lippi, and has been wrongly supposed to be his teacher. He is also one of those who were credited with the work of Lippino, Lippo Lippi's son.]

[Footnote 76: The Bishop's tomb is entirely fictitious; but something which is made to stand for it is now shown to credulous sight-seers in St. Praxed's Church.]

[Footnote 77: First in "Hood's Magazine."]

[Footnote 78: These were correctly given in the MS., and appeared so in the first proofs of the book; but were changed from considerations of prudence.]

[Footnote 79: A feigned name for one of the three wonder working images which are worshipped in France.]

[Footnote 80: Mr. Browning allows me to give the true names of the persons and places concerned in the story.

Vol. xii. page 5. The Firm Miranda--Mellerio, Brothers.
" " 7. St Rambert--St. Aubin.
" " 7. Joyeux, Joyous-Gard--Lion, Lionesse.
" " 8. Vire-Caen.
" " 19. St. Rambertese--St. Aubinese
" " 22. Londres--Douvres.
" " 22. London--Dover.
" " 22. La Roche--Courcelle.
" " 22. Monlieu--Bernières.
" " 22. Villeneuve--Langrune.
" " 22. Pons--Luc.
" " 22. La Ravissante--La Délivrande.
" " 25. Raimbaux--Bayeux.
" " 25. Morillon--Hugonin.
" " 25. Mirecourt--Bonnechose.
" " 25. Miranda--Mellerio.
" " 26. New York--Madrid.
" " 30. Clairvaux--Tailleville.
" " 31. Gonthier--Bény.
" " 31. Rousseau--Voltaire.
" " 31. Léonce--Antoine.
" " 36. Of "Firm Miranda, London and New York"--"Mellerio
Brothers"--Meller, people say.
" " 53. Rare Vissante--Dell Yvrande.
" " 53. Aldabert--Regnobert.
" " 53. Eldebert--Ragnebert.
" " 54. Mailleville--Beaudoin.
" " 54. Chaumont--Quelen.
" " 54. Vertgalant--Talleyrand.
" " 59. Ravissantish--Delivrandish.
" " 66. Clara de Millefleurs--Anna de Beaupré.
" " 67. Coliseum Street--Miromesnil Street.
" " 72. Sterner--Mayer.
" " 72. Commercy--Larocy.
" " 72. Sierck--Metz.
" " 73. Muhlhausen--Debacker.
" " 73. Carlino Centofanti--Miranda di Mongino.
" " 73. Portugal--Italy.
" " 88. Vaillant-Mériel.
" " 96. Thirty-three--Twenty-five.
" " 97. Beaumont--Pasquier.
" " 107. Sceaux--Garges.
" " 128. Luc de la Maison Rouge--Jean de la Becquetière.
" " 128. Claise--Vire.
" " 129. Maude--Anne.
" " 129. Dionysius--Eliezer.
" " 129. Scolastica--Elizabeth.
" " 136. Twentieth--Thirteenth.
" " 152. Fricquot--Picot.
]

[Footnote 81: Le Croisic is in the Loire Inférieure, at the south-east corner of Brittany. It has now a good bathing establishment, and is much frequented by French people; but sardine-fishing and the crystallizing of sea-salt are still its standing occupations.]

[Footnote 82: The details of this worship as carried on in the island opposite Le Croisic, and which Mr. Browning describes, are mentioned by Strabo.]

[Footnote 83: The story of Paul Desforges Maillard forms the subject of a famous play, Piron's "Métromanie."]

[Footnote 84: It is also, and perhaps chiefly, in this case, a pun on the meaning of the plural noun "cenci," "rags," or "old rags." The cry of this, frequent in Rome, was at first mistaken by Shelley for a voice urging him to go on with his play. Mr. Browning has used it to indicate the comparative unimportance of his contribution to the Cenci story. The quoted Italian proverb means something to the same effect: that every trifle will press in for notice among worthier matters.]

[Footnote 85: That of the Gregorian chant: a cadence concluding on the dominant instead of the key-note.]

[Footnote 86: We have a conspicuous instance of this in "Pippa Passes."]

[Footnote 87: This spontaneous mode of conception may seem incompatible with the systematic adherence to a fixed class of subjects referred to in an earlier chapter. But it by no means is so. With Mr. Browning the spontaneous creative impulse conforms to the fixed rule.

The present remarks properly belong to that earlier chapter. But it was difficult to divide them from their illustrations.]

[Footnote 88: First in "Hood's Magazine."]

[Footnote 89: I may venture to state that these picturesque materials included a tower which Mr. Browning once saw in the Carrara Mountains, a painting which caught his eye years later in Paris; and the figure of a horse in the tapestry in his own drawing-room--welded together in the remembrance of the line from "King Lear" which forms the heading of the poem.]

[Footnote 90: Instances of it occur in the "Dramatic Idyls" and "Jocoseria;" and will be noticed later.]

[Footnote 91: Generally confounded with his contemporary and fellow-citizen, Girolamo del Pacchia.]

[Footnote 92: The (Baron) Kirkup mentioned at vol. xiv. page 5 was a Florence friend of Mr. Browning's, and a connoisseur in literature and art. He was ennobled by the King of Italy for his liberal views and for his services to Italian literature. It was he who discovered the portrait of Dante in the Bargello at Florence.]

[Footnote 93: Nets spread to catch quails as they fly to or from the other side of the Mediterranean. They are slung by rings on to poles, and stand sufficiently high for the quails to fly into them. This, and every other detail of the poem, are given from personal observation.]

NON-CLASSIFIED POEMS (CONTINUED).

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

Even so imperfect, not to say arbitrary, a classification as I have been able to attempt, excludes a number of Mr. Browning's minor poems; for its necessary condition was the presence of some distinctive mood of thought or feeling by which the poem could be classed; and in many, even of the most striking and most characteristic, this condition does not exist. In one group, for instance, the prevailing mood is either too slightly indicated, or too fugitive, or too complex, or even too fantastic, to be designated by any term but "poetic." Others, again, such as songs and legends, depict human emotion in too simple or too general a form, to be thought of as anything but "popular;" and a third group may be formed of dramatic pictures or episodes, which unite the qualities of the other two.

In the first of these groups we must place--

"The Lost Leader." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic
Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Nationality in Drinks." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published as
"Claret and Tokay," without 3rd Part, in "Dramatic Romances
and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Garden Fancies. I. The Flower's Name." ("Dramatic Lyrics."
Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)[94]

"Earth's Immortalities." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in
"Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Home-Thoughts, from the Sea." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published
in "Bells and Pomegranates." 1842 or 1845.)

"My Star." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women."
1855.)

"Misconceptions." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and
Women." 1855.)

"A Pretty Woman." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and
Women." 1855.)

"In a Year." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women."
1855.)

"Women and Roses." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and
Women." 1855.)

"Before." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women."
1855.)

"After." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women."
1855.)

"Memorabilia." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and
Women." 1855.)

"The Last Ride Together." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in
"Men and Women." 1855.)

"A Grammarian's Funeral." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in
"Men and Women." 1855.)

"Johannes Agricola in Meditation." ("Men and Women." Published
in "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)

"Confessions." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"May and Death." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"Youth and Art." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"A Likeness." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"Appearances." ("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems." 1876.)

"St. Martin's Summer." ("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems."
1876.)

"Prologue to 'La Saisiaz.'" 1878.

In the second group:--

"Cavalier Tunes." ("Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)

"How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." ("Dramatic
Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Song." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic Romances
and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Incident of the French Camp." ("Dramatic Romances." Published
as first part of "Camp and Cloister," in "Dramatic Lyrics."
1842.)

"Count Gismond." ("Dramatic Romances." Published as "France"
in "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)

"The Boy and the Angel." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in
"Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)[95]

"The Glove." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic
Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"The Twins." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and
Women." 1855.)

"The Pied Piper of Hamelin; A Child's Story." ("Dramatic
Romances." Published in "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)

"Gold Hair: A Story of Pornic." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"Hervé Riel." ("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems," written at
Croisic, 1867. Published in the "Cornhill Magazine." 1871.)

In the third group:--

"Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr." ("Dramatic Lyrics."
1842.)

"Meeting at Night." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published as "Night"
in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Parting at Morning." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published as
"Morning" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.")

"The Patriot. An old Story." ("Dramatic Romances." Published
in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Instans Tyrannus." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men
and Women." 1855.)

"Mesmerism." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and
Women." 1855.)

"Time's Revenges." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in
"Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"The Italian in England." ("Dramatic Romances." Published as
"Italy in England" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Protus." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women."
1855.)

"Apparent Failure." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"Waring." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic
Lyrics." 1842.) This poem is a personal effusion of feeling
and reminiscence, which can stand for nothing but itself.

_First Group._

"THE LOST LEADER" is a lament over the defection of a loved and honoured chief. It breathes a tender regret for the moral injury he has inflicted on himself; and a high courage, saddened by the thought of lost support and lost illusions, but not shaken by it. The language of the poem shows the lost "leader" to have been a poet. It was suggested by Wordsworth, in his abandonment (with Southey and others) of the liberal cause.

"NATIONALITY IN DRINKS." A fantastic little comment on the distinctive national drinks--Claret, Tokay, and Beer. The beer is being drunk off Cape Trafalgar to the health of Nelson, and introduces an authentic and appropriate anecdote of him. But the laughing little claret flask, which the speaker has on another occasion seen plunged for cooling into a black-faced pond, suggests to him the image of a "gay French lady," dropped, with straightened limbs, into the silent ocean of death; while the Hungarian Tokay (Tokayer Ausbruch), in its concentrated strength, seems to jump on to the table as a stout pigmy castle-warder, strutting and swaggering in his historic costume, and ready to defy twenty men at once if the occasion requires.

"THE FLOWER'S NAME. Garden Fancies," I. A lover's reminiscence of a garden in which he and his lady-love have walked together, and of a flower which she has consecrated by her touch and voice: its dreamy Spanish name, which she has breathed upon it, becoming part of the charm.

"EARTH'S IMMORTALITIES." A sad and subtle little satire on the vaunted permanence of love and fame. The poet's grave falls to pieces. The words: "love me for ever," appeal to us from a tombstone which records how Spring garlands are severed by the hand of June, and June's fever is quenched in winter's snow.

"HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA." An utterance of patriotic pride and gratitude, aroused in the mind of an Englishman, by the sudden appearance of Trafalgar in the blood-red glow of the southern setting sun.

"MY STAR" may be taken as a tribute to the personal element in love: the bright peculiar light in which the sympathetic soul reveals itself to the object of its sympathy.

"MISCONCEPTIONS" illustrates the false hopes which may be aroused in the breast of any devoted creature by an incidental and momentary acceptance of its devotion.

"A PRETTY WOMAN" is the picture of a simple, compliant, exquisitely pretty, and hopelessly shallow woman: incapable of love, though a mere nothing will win her liking. And the question is raised, whether such a creature is not perfect in itself, and would not be marred by any attempt to improve it, or extract from it a different use. The author decides in the affirmative. A rose is best "graced," not by reproducing its petals in precious stones for a king to preserve; not by plucking it to "smell, kiss, wear," and throw away; but by simply leaving it where it grows. A "pretty" woman is most appropriately treated when nothing is asked of her, but to be so.

"IN A YEAR" is a wondering and sorrowful little comment on a man's shallowness and inconstancy.

"WOMEN AND ROSES" is the impression of a dream, and both vague and vivid, as such impressions are. The author _dreams_ of a "red rose-tree," with three roses upon it: one withered, the second full-blown, the third still in the bud; and, floating round each, a generation of women: those famed in the past; the loved and loving of the present; the "beauties yet unborn." He casts his passion at the feet of the dead; but they float past him unmoved. He enfolds in it the glowing forms of the living; but these also elude him. He pours it into the budding life, which may thus respond to his own; but the procession of maidens drifts past him too. They all circle unceasingly round their own rose.

"BEFORE" and "AFTER" are companion poems, which show how differently an act may present itself in prospect and in remembrance, whether regarded in its abstract justification, or in its actual results. The question is that of a duel; and "BEFORE" is the utterance of a third person to whom the propriety of fighting it seems beyond a doubt. "A great wrong has been done. The wronged man, who is also the better one, is bound to assert himself in defence of the right. If he is killed, he will have gained his heaven. For his slayer, hell will have begun: for he will feel the impending judgment, in the earth which still offers its fruits; in the sky, which makes no sign; in the leopard-like conscience[96] which leers in mock obeisance at his side, ready to spring on him whenever the moment comes. There has been enough of delay and extenuation. Let the culprit acknowledge his guilt, or take its final consequences."

The duel is fought, but it is the guilty one who falls; and "AFTER" gives the words of his adversary--his boyhood's friend--struck with bitter remorse for what he has done. As the man who wronged him lies wrapped in the majesty of death, his offence dwindles into insignificance; and the survivor can only feel how disproportionate has been the punishment, and above all, how unavailing. "Would," he exclaims, "that the past could be recalled, and they were boys again together! It would be so easy then to endure!"

"MEMORABILIA" shows the perspective of memory in a tribute to the poet Shelley. His fugitive contact with a commonplace life, like the trace of an eagle's passage across the moor, leaves an illumined spot amidst blankness.