Chapter IV: Studies in Browning (2)

The musician wishes that his architecture of sound could remain, as remained the magical palace that Solomon made the spirits build to please Queen Balkis. He remembers how beautiful his music was; he remembers how the different classes of notes combined to make it, just as the different classes of spirits combined to make the palace of Solomon. There the deep notes, the bass chords, sank down thundering like demon-spirits working to make the foundation in the very heart of the earth. And the treble notes seemed to soar up like angels to make the roof of gold, and to tip all the points of the building with glorious fires of illumination. Truly the palace of sounds was built, but it has vanished away like a mirage; the builder cannot reproduce it. Why not? Well, because great composition of any kind is not merely the work of man; it is an inspiration from God, and the mystery of such inspired composition is manifested in music as it is manifested in no other art. For the harmonies, the combinations of tones, are mysteries, and must remain mysterious even for the musician himself. Who can explain them?

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
Existent behind all laws, that made them, and lo, they
are!
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to
man,
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound,
but a star.
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:
It is everywhere in the world--loud, soft, and all is said:
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:
And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow
the head!

But for the same reason that they are mysteries and cannot be understood because they relate to the infinite, they are eternal. That is the consolation. The musician need not regret that the music composed in a moment of divine inspiration cannot be remembered; he need not regret that it has been forgotten. Forgotten it is by the man who made it; forgotten it is by the people who heard it; forgotten it is therefore by all mankind. Nevertheless it is eternal, because the Universal Soul that inspired it never forgets anything. I think that the verse in which this beautiful thought is expressed--the verse that contains the whole of Browning's religion, is the most beautiful thing in all his work. But you must judge for yourselves:

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor
power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the
melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too
hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by and by.

By the phrase "when eternity affirms the conception of an hour," the poet means when we ourselves, in a future and higher state of being, shall see the worth of our good acts and thoughts proved by the fact that they survive along with us. Eternity affirms them--that is, recognises them as worthy of immortality by suffering them to exist. This line gives us the key to the philosophy of the rest. It is quite in harmony with Buddhist philosophy. Browning holds that all good acts and thoughts are eternal, whether men in this world remember them or not. But what of the bad acts and thoughts? Are they also eternal? Not in the same sense. Evil acts and thoughts do indeed exert an influence reaching enormously into the future, but it is an influence that must gradually wane, it is a Karma that must become exhausted. As for regretting that nobody sees or knows the good that we do, that is very foolish. The good will never die; it will be seen again--perhaps only in millions of years, yet this should make no difference. To the dead the time of a million years and the time of a moment may be quite the same thing.

But you must not suppose that Browning lives much in the regions of abstract philosophy. He is human in the warmest way, and very much alive to impressions of sense. Not even Swinburne is at times more voluptuous, but the voluptuous in Browning is always natural and healthy as well as artistic. I must quote to you some passages from the wonderful little dramatic poem entitled "In a Gondola." You know that a gondola is a peculiar kind of boat which in Venice takes the place of carriages or vehicles of any kind. In the city of Venice there are no streets to speak of, but canals only, so that people go from one place to another only by boat. These boats or gondolas of Venice are not altogether unlike some of the old-fashioned Japanese pleasure-boats; they have a roof and windows and rooms, and it is possible to travel in them without being seen by anybody. In the old days of Venice, many secret meetings between lovers and many secret meetings of conspirators were held in such boats. The poet is telling us of the secret meeting of two lovers, at the risk of death, for if the man is seen he will certainly be killed. At the end of the poem he actually is killed; the moment he steps on shore he is stabbed, because he has been watched by the spies of a political faction that hates him. But this is not the essential part of the poem at all. The essential part of the poem is the description, of the feelings and thoughts of these two people, loving in the shadow of death; this is very beautiful and almost painfully true to nature. We get also not a few glimpses of the old life and luxury of Venice in the course of the narrative. As the boat glides down the long canals, between the high ranges of marble palaces rising from the water, the two watch the windows of the houses that they know, and talk about what is going on inside.

Past we glide, and past, and past!
What's that poor Agnese doing
Where they make the shutters fast?
Grey Zanobi's just a-wooing
To his couch the purchased bride:
Past we glide!

Past we glide, and past, and past!
Why's the Pucci Palace flaring
Like a beacon to the blast?
Guests by hundreds, not one caring
If the dear host's neck were wried:
Past we glide!

It is the man who is here looking and talking and criticising. The woman is less curious; she is thinking only of love, and what she says in reply has become famous in English literature; we might say that this is the very best we have in what might be called the "literature of kissing."

The moth's kiss, first!
Kiss me as if you made believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
Its petals up; so, here and there
You brush it, till I grow aware
Who wants me, and wide ope I burst.

The bee's kiss, now!
Kiss me as if you entered gay
My heart at some noonday,
A bud that dares not disallow
The claim, so all is rendered up,
And passively its shattered cup
Over your head to sleep I bow.

Of course you know all about the relation of insects to flowers--how moths, beetles, butterflies, and other little creatures, by entering flowers in order to suck the honey, really act as fertilisers, carrying the pollen from the male flower to the female flower. It is the use of this fact from natural history that makes these verses so exquisite. The woman's mouth is the flower; the lips of the man, the visiting insect. "Moth" is the name which we give to night butterflies, that visit flowers in the dark. What the woman says is this in substance: "Kiss me with my mouth shut first, like a night moth coming to a flower all shut up, and not knowing where the opening is." The second comparison of the bee suggests another interesting fact in the relation between insects and flowers. A bee or wasp, on finding it difficult to enter a flower from the top, so as to get at the honey, will cut open the side of the flower, and break its way in. The woman is asking simply, "Now give me a rough kiss after the gentle one." All this is mere play, of course, but by reason of the language used it rises far above the merely trifling into the zones of supreme literary art. Later on, we have another comparison, made by the man, which I think very beautiful. The thought, the comparison itself, is not new; from very ancient times it has been the custom of lovers to call the woman they loved an angel. I fancy this custom is reflected in the amatory literature of all countries; it exists even in Japanese poetry. But really it does not matter whether a comparison be new or old; its value depends upon the way that a poet utters it. Browning's lover says:

Lie back; could thought of mine improve you?
From this shoulder let there spring
A wing; from this, another wing;
Wings, not legs and feet, shall move you!
Snow-white must they spring, to blend
With your flesh, but I intend
They shall deepen to the end,
Broader, into burning gold,
Till both wings crescent-wise enfold
Your perfect self, from 'neath your feet
To o'er your head, where, lo, they meet
As if a million sword-blades hurled
Defiance from you to the world!

This is a picture painted after the manner of the Venetian school; we seem to be looking at something created, by the brush of Titian or Tintoretto. I am not sure that it will seem to you as beautiful as it really is, for it is intended to appeal to the imagination of persons who have actually seen the paintings of the Italian masters, or at least engravings of them. Angels were frequently represented by those great artists as clothed with their own wings, the wings, white below, gold above, meeting over the head like two new moons joining their shining tips. What the poet means by "sword-blades" are the long narrow flashing feathers of the angel-wings, which, joined all together, look like a cluster of sword-blades. But one must have seen the pictures of the Italian masters to appreciate the skill of this drawing in words. Here I may remind you that Dante, in his vision of Paradise, uses colours of a very similar sort--blinding white and dazzling gold appear in the wings of his angels also.

The above examples of the merely artistic power of Browning will suffice for the moment; great as he always is when he descends to earth, he is most noteworthy in those other directions which I have already pointed out, and which are chiefly psychological. I want to give you more examples from the poems of the psychological kind, partly because they are of universally recognised value in themselves, and partly because it is these that make the distinction between Browning and his great contemporaries. One of these pieces, now quoted through the whole English-speaking world, is "A Grammarian's Funeral." This poem is intended to give us the enthusiasm which the students of the later Middle Ages felt for scholarship, the delight in learning which revived shortly before the Renaissance. I suppose that many of you recollect the first enthusiasm for Western studies in Japan; people then studied too hard, tried to do even more than they could do. So it was in Europe at the time of the revival of learning; men killed themselves by overstudy. In this poem Browning makes us listen to the song sung by a company of university students burying their dead teacher; they are carrying him up to the top of a high mountain above the mediæval city, there to let him sleep forever above the clouds and above the vulgarities of mankind. The philosophy in it is very noble and strong, though it be only the philosophy of young men.

Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser,
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
Seek we sepulture
On a tall mountain, citied to the top,
Crowded with culture!
All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels,
Clouds overcome it;
No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's
Circling its summit.
Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights;
Wait ye the warning?
Our low life was the level's and the night's;
He's for the morning.
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
'Ware the beholders!
This is our master, famous, calm and dead,
Borne on our shoulders.

Some little description will be necessary before we can go further with the poem. It was dark, before daybreak, when the students assembled for the funeral, and it is still rather dark when the funeral procession starts up the mountain. This appears from the lines, "Look out if yonder be not day again rimming the rock-row"--meaning, see if that is not daylight up there at the top of the mountains. It is not full day, but they can see, far up, the lights of the citadel. The poet wants to give us the feeling of a fortified city of the Middle Ages. You must understand that multitudes of cities, especially in France and in Germany, were then built upon mountain tops, so that they could be better fortified and defended against attack. Part of such a city would be of course on sloping ground. But the very highest place was always reserved, inside the city, for military purposes. Outside the city were walls and ditches and towers. Inside the city there was a smaller city or citadel, also surrounded by ditches and walls and towers, and occupying the highest place possible. An enemy, after capturing the city proper, would still have the citadel to capture, always a very difficult military feat. Now you will understand better the suggestions of immense height in the poem. The students are going up above the citadel to bury their teacher. They say that the place is appropriate because the air at that height is, like intellectual thought, cold and pure and full of electricity, the symbol of mental energy and moral effort. You may notice that the students are still somewhat rough in their ways. It was a rough age; they do not intend to submit to any interference on the way, nor even to any curiosity, so the ignorant "beholders" are bidden to be very careful.

At this point the poem gives us the students' account of their teacher's life. They are singing a song about it, and you must understand that all the lines in parentheses do not necessarily mean interruptions of the narrative, though some of them do. A little careful reading will make everything clear; then you will perceive how very fine the spirit of the whole thing is.

Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,
Safe from the weather!
He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft,
Singing together,
He was a man born with thy face and throat,
Lyric Apollo!
Long he lived nameless: how should Spring take note
Winter would follow?
Till lo! the little touch, and youth was gone!
Cramped and diminished,
Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon!
My dance is finished?"
No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side,
Make for the city!)
He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride
Over men's pity;
Left play for work, and grappled with the world
Bent on escaping:
"What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled?
Show me their shaping,
Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,--
Give!"--So he gowned him,
Straight got by heart that book to its last page:
Learned, we found him.

When his first students met him, they met him as a youthful and a learned man; these latest students found him old, bald, scarcely able to see--and yet he had not allowed himself any rest. In spite of the fact that he felt death was coming, he continued to study day and night, he read all the books then existing, and when he had read them all, he said only, "Now I have got to the beginning of my real studies. The material is in my hands; now I shall use it." Sickness or health made no difference to him. This life he thought of only as the commencement of eternity.

He said, "What's Time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!
Man has Forever!"
Back to his books then; deeper drooped his head:
_Calculus_ racked him:
Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead:
_Tussis_ attacked him.

In vain did his friends and pupils beg him to take a little rest, but he never would; he said that he must learn everything he could before dying.

So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,
Ground he at grammar;
Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife:
While he could stammer
He settled _Hoti's_ business--let it be!--
Properly based _Oun_--
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic _De_,
Dead from the waist down.

"Hoti" is the Greek word "that"; "Oun" is the word "then," also "now"; it has other kindred meanings. "De" has the meaning of "toward" when enclitic; but there is another Greek word "de" meaning "but." The reference in the poem is to the rule for distinguishing the Greek "de" meaning "toward" from the Greek "de" meaning "but." "Calculus" is the disease commonly called "stone in the bladder." "Tussis" is a cough.

And now the singers have brought the body to the burial-place at the top of the mountain, and their song ends with this glorious burst:

Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place:
Hail to your purlieus,
All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
Swallows and curlews!
Here's the top-peak; the multitude below
Live, for they can, there;
This man decided not to Live but Know--
Bury this man there?
Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
Peace let the dew send!
Lofty designs must close in like effects:
Loftily lying,
Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,
Living and dying.

We may turn from this fine poem without further comment to a piece entitled "The Patriot." There is a bit, and a very bitter bit, of the true philosophy of life in it. Nothing is so fickle, so uncertain, so treacherous as popularity. Thousands of men who tried to get the applause of the multitude, the love of the millions, and thought that they had succeeded, found out at a later day how quickly that applause could be turned into roars of hate, how quickly that seeming admiration could be changed into scorn. This fact about the instability of human favour is well known to every clear headed person who enters into what is called the social struggle; but it is more often illustrated in politics. The political aspect of the matter is the most remarkable, and has therefore been chosen by Browning. I do not know to what particular person he may be making reference--perhaps he was thinking of Rienzi. But in all periods of history the fact has been about the same. You will remember, no doubt, the case of Pericles in the history of Athens, and of many others. You may remember also how the French Revolution devoured its own children, how the men that were one day almost worshipped by the people like gods, would be dragged to the guillotine the day after. And even in the history of this country I think you must remember not a few examples of how uncertain popular favour must always be. In this case the victim speaks, some man who once had been regarded as the saviour of the people, but who is now regarded as their enemy, and who is going to be executed as a common criminal, simply because he happened to be unfortunate. He remembers the past, and contrasts it with the cruel present:

It was roses, roses, all the way,
With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.

The air broke into a mist with bells,
The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
Had I said: "Good folk, mere noise repels--
But give me your sun from yonder skies!"
They had answered, "And afterward, what else?"

Here I may say that in Western countries from very ancient times it has been the custom to cover with flowers the road along which some great conqueror or other honoured person was to come. The ancients used especially roses and myrtles, but even to-day it is often the custom to throw flowers on the ground before the passing of a sovereign or other great person. "Like mad" is an idiom used to express extreme action of any sort; "to laugh like mad," would be to laugh unreasonably and extravagantly. The reference to the apparent movement of the roofs of the houses pictures the crowding of people on the house-tops to see the hero, a custom still kept up. And the reference to the effect of the bells as making "mist," indicates the excessive volume of sound; for it is said that the firing of cannon or the making of any other great noise will often cause rain to fall. The idea is that the people rang the bells so hard that the rain fell, and these were what we call "joy-bells."

"If on that day of my triumph," he says, "I had asked them to give me the sun, they would have answered out of their hearts, Certainly--and what else?" Now it is very different indeed.

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
To give it my loving friends to keep!
Nought man could do, have I left undone:
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.

There's nobody on the house-tops now--
Just a palsied few at the windows set;
For the best of the sight is, all allow,
At the Shambles' Gate--or, better yet,
By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.

I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
For they fling, whoever has a mind,
Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.

What he says is this: "I did not ask them for anything for myself; it was I who wanted to give them the sun, or anything else that they wished for. Every possible sacrifice that any man could make I made for these people, and you see what my reward is to-day--just one year from the time when they honoured and revered me. Nobody now stands on the house tops to look at me; all have gone to the execution ground to see me die, except a few old people who cannot walk, and who stay at the windows to see me pass, with my hands tied behind my back. People are throwing stones at me, and I think my face is bleeding." The last allusion is to a very cruel custom only of late years abolished in England by better police regulations. In the old times, when a prisoner was being taken to the gallows, people would often strike him, or throw stones at him as he went by, and nobody attempted to protect him. To-day this is not done, simply because the police do not allow it, but the natural cruelty of a mob is perhaps just as great as it ever was.

Thus I entered, and thus I go!
In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.
"Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
Me?"--God might question; now instead,
'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.

These are the man's last thoughts. "I came into this city a hero, as I told you; now I am going out of it, to be executed like a vulgar criminal. How much better would it have been if I had died on the day when all the people were honouring me! I have heard that men have fallen dead from joy in the middle of such a triumph as I then had. But would it have been better if I had died happy like that? Perhaps it would not. God is said to demand a strict account in the next World from any human being who has been too happy in this. If I had died that day, God might have said to me, You have had your reward from the world; have you paid to me what you owed in love and duty? But now the world kills me; it is from God only that I can hope for justice. He is terrible, but I can trust him better than this people; I am safer with him!"

I am not sure what Browning refers to in speaking of those who have been known to drop dead in the middle of a triumph. But perhaps he is referring to the story of the Sicilian, Diagoras, which is one of the most beautiful of all Greek stories, and is fortunately quite true. Diagoras had been the greatest wrestler among the Greeks, the greatest athlete of his time, and was loved and honoured by all men of Greek blood. He had seven sons. When he was a very old man these seven sons went to contend at the great Olympic games (if I remember correctly). There were but seven prizes for all the feats of strength and skill; and these seven prizes were all won by the seven sons of Diagoras--that is to say, they had proved themselves the best men of the whole world at that time, even the boy son winning the prize given only to boys. Then the people demanded to know the name of the father of those young men, and the sons lifted him upon their shoulders to show him to all the people. The people shouted so that birds flying above them, fell down; and the old man in the same moment died of joy, as he was thus supported upon the shoulders of his sons. The Greeks said that this was the happiest death that any man ever died. Perhaps Browning was referring to this story; but I am not sure.

Kings have sometimes been accused of ingratitude, but on the whole, kings have shown more gratitude than mobs; a sovereign is apt to remember that it is good policy to repay loyalty and to encourage affection. Browning gives us a few magnificent specimens of loyal feeling toward sovereigns, feeling which it is pleasant to know was not repaid with ingratitude. I am referring to his "Cavalier Tunes," little songs into which he has managed to put all the fiery love and devotion of the English gentlemen who fought for the king against Cromwell and his Puritans, and who fought, luckily for England, in vain at that time. Right or wrong as we may think their cause, it is impossible not to admire the feeling here expressed. I shall quote the second song first. You must imagine that all these gentlemen are drinking the health of the king, with songs and cheers, even at the time when the king's cause seems hopeless.

GIVE A ROUSE!

King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
King Charles!
(_Single voice_)
Who gave me the goods that went since?
Who raised me the house that sank once?
Who helped me to gold I spent since?
Who found me in wine you drank once?
(_Chorus, answering_)
King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
King Charles!
(_Single voice_)
To whom used my hoy George quaff else,
By the old fool's side that begot him?
For whom did he cheer and laugh else,
While Noll's damned troopers shot him?
(_Chorus, answering_)
King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
King Charles!

The father is reminding his friends of the brave death of his own son, who died shouting for the king and laughing at his executioners. I do not think that there is a more spirited song in English literature than this. Perhaps you may observe that the measure in the third stanza does not run smoothly like the measure of the other stanzas; it hesitates a little. But this is a great stroke of art, for it indicates the suppressed emotion of the father speaking of his dead son. The other song, the first of the three given by Browning, represents the feeling of an earlier time in the civil war, probably the time when the aristocracy and gentry first gathered together to defend the king. There is a splendid swing in it. Both songs are a little rough, because the spirit of the age was rough; the finest gentleman used to swear in those days, and to use words which we now consider rather violent. I may remark, however, that even to-day in the upper ranks of the English army and navy, something of the same scorn of conventions still remains; generals and admirals will swear occasionally in battle, just as these gentlemen of an older school swore as they advanced against the Puritan armies.

MARCHING ALONG

Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King,
Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing:
And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
Marched them along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

God for King Charles! Pym and such carles
To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!
Cavaliers, up! Lips from the cup,
Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup
Till you're--
(_Chorus_) Marching along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell
Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well!
England, good cheer! Rupert is near!
Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here,
(_Chorus_) Marching along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls
To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles!
Hold by the right, you double your might;
So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight,
(_Chorus_) March we along, fifty-score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

The names in this poem are all of them great names of the Civil War. Hampden, you know, was Parliamentary leader in the movement against the king. He was killed in battle, and his place as leader was taken by Pym. The other names are of members of the Long Parliament--except Rupert. Rupert, or Prince Rupert, as he is more generally known, was the leader of the Royal cavalry, one of the most brilliant cavalry leaders of history. He was never beaten seriously until he met Cromwell's Puritan cavalry. A reference may be necessary in regard to Nottingham. There was no fight exactly at Nottingham; but it was at Nottingham that the cavalry gathered round the king's standard before the battle of Edgehill, near Banbury, a drawn battle, not decided either way.

So much for the references. As for the song itself, something remains to be said. I think that the two songs are about the most spirited in English literature. They are so for many reasons, especially because of the fiery emotion which the poet has flung into them, and because of their absolute truth to the feeling of the seventeenth century, both as to form and as to tone. But I wonder whether any of you have noticed what it is that gives such uncommon force to the verses. To a great degree, it is the use of triple rhymes. In both songs the rhymes are triple, while the measure is short, and the result is something of that rough strength which characterises the old Northern poetry. For instance:

Hold by the _right_, you double your _might_,
So onward to Nottingham, fresh for the _fight._

King Charles, and who'll do him _right_ now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for _fight_ now?
Give a rouse: here's, in hell's _despite_ now,
King Charles!

You see that very great effects may be produced by very simple means. In "Marching Along," the "swing" or "lilt" is partly due to the fact that the three rhymes follow each other not in regular but in irregular succession, a rhymeless measure alternating between the second and the third rhymes, as will be plainly seen if we write the verses in another form:

Kentish Sir _Byng_
Stood for his _king_,
Bidding the crop-headed
Parliament _swing._

But I want to explain the spirit rather than the workmanship of Browning; and I have turned aside here to the subject of measure only because the instances happened to be very extraordinary. The beauty of the work is really in the glow and strength of the loyal feeling that peals through it.

Do not suppose, however, that the poet picks out by preference the noble or the attractive side of human feeling in any form of society, for his subject. Quite the contrary. Most often he paints the ugly side, even in speaking of kings and courts, nobles and princes. In the splendid poem "Count Gismond," which I dictated last year, you may have seen one very beautiful side of knightly character, but there were horrible phases of human nature exhibited in the story. Browning made the shadows very heavy, with the result that the lights appeared more dazzling. Sometimes we have no lights--all is shadow, and sometimes a shadow of hell. Such is the case in the horrible poem called "The Laboratory," depicting the feelings of a jealous court-lady, as she stands in the laboratory of a chemist who is selling her a poison with which she intends to poison her rival in the favour of the king. The story is laid in the time of Louis XIV, probably, when such things did actually occur in France. A still blacker shadow, a still more infernal picture of humanity's dark side, is "The Heretic's Tragedy," portraying the wicked feelings of a superstitious person while watching a heretic being burned alive. Another frightful thing is "The Confessional," a story of the Inquisition in Spain, showing how the inquisitors succeeded in seizing, convicting, and burning alive a young man, by taking advantage of the innocence of his sweetheart, who was made to betray him through confession without knowing it. Another piece that is ugly psychologically, is "Cristina and Monaldeschi." Cristina was a queen of Sweden, and one of the most learned women of her time, but very masculine; she liked to wear men's clothes and to follow the amusements of men. She abdicated her throne, merely in order to feel more free in her habits. It is believed that she secretly loved her private secretary, and that he was dishonourable enough to tell other people of his relation to her. At all events, one day she ordered him to come into her room, and after upbraiding him with treachery to her, she had him killed in her presence. The fact shocked Europe a great deal at the time. Browning tries to make us understand Cristina's feeling, and he forces us to sympathise a little with her anger. There are multitudes of poems of this class in Browning. He wants us to know all the strange possibilities of the human soul, bad or good, and he never hesitates because a subject may be shocking to weak nerves. It is just because he does not care about public feeling, ignorant public opinion, upon these matters, that he manages to give us such exact truth; he is not afraid. For a little bit of truth thus exemplified--this is not ugly--let us take a little piece entitled "Which?" Here is another picture of the manners of the old French court, a very corrupt court and very luxurious. You must read Taine's "Ancien Régime" to understand what its morals were. But let us turn to the little picture. Three great ladies are talking with a priest about love--a fashionable priest, a priest of the old age, ready to make love or to say mass just according as it suited his private interest. A very good priest could scarcely have existed in the court; one had to be very clever and very subtle to live there. The conversation of these four persons gives us a hint of the feeling of the age. Only one woman really seems to say what she thinks; and she says what she thinks only because she is the most clever of the three.

So, the three Court-ladies began
Their trial of who judged best
In esteeming the love of a man:
Who preferred with most reason was thereby confessed
Boy-Cupid's exemplary catcher and eager;
An Abbé crossed legs to decide on the wager.

First the Duchesse: "Mine for me--
Who were it but God's for Him,
And the King's for--who but he?
Both faithful and loyal, one grace more shall brim
His cup with perfection: a lady's true lover,
He holds--save his God and his king--none above her."

"I require"--outspoke the Marquise--
"Pure thoughts, ay, but also fine deeds:
Play the paladin must he, to please
My whim, and--to prove my knight's service exceeds
Your saint's and your loyalist's praying and kneeling--
Show wounds, each wide mouth to my mercy appealing."

Then the Comtesse: "My choice be a wretch,
Mere losel in body and soul,
Thrice accurst! What care I, so he stretch
Arms to me his sole saviour, love's ultimate goal,
Out of earth and men's noise--names of 'infidel,' 'traitor,'
Cast up at him? Crown me, crown's adjudicator!"

And the Abbé uncrossed his legs,
Took snuff, a reflective pinch,
Broke silence: "The question begs
Much pondering ere I pronounce. Shall I flinch?
The love which to one and one only has reference
Seems terribly like what perhaps gains God's preference."

The answer of the priest, giving the victory to the Comtesse, is clever and double-edged. He probably knows everything that goes on in the court: he knows how many lovers the Duchesse has had, and the Marquise. He knows that their talk about religion and loyalty as the perfections of man, are not quite sincere. Indeed, the Marquise is much more sincere than the Duchesse; but if she were altogether sincere, she would have recognised that her wish--her expressed wish, at least--must appear as pure pride, not anything else. But the Comtesse tells a bitter truth by pointing out that if it is a question of real love, the place and station of the man can signify nothing at all; love should be a thing of the heart, not a thing of rank and fashion. And the priest, in supporting her claim and in saying that a true love can have reference only to one person, really suggests to his audience, whose love relations have doubtless been very numerous, what he thinks to be the opinion of God on the subject. But "perhaps," as the priest utters the word, is terrible irony. "Perhaps gains God's preference," means "I know, of course, that in the society to which we belong, love only for one's husband is not considered fashionable; yet the opinions of God may not be the same as the opinions of our society. It would not be polite of me to say directly that your opinions and God's opinions are different, but I just hint it." It was a very queer age. Taine, in his history of the time, tells a story about a nobleman who, on entering his wife's room suddenly and finding her making love to another man, took off his hat and saluted her, saying, "Oh, my dear, how can you be so careless! Suppose it had not been your husband who opened the door!" You must understand all this, to understand the mockery of the poem. Then, again, you must understand the desire of the Comtesse even for the love of a "wretch," a mere losel, as meaning that here is a woman who deserves to be loved, but is not loved by her husband, and who has learned that real love has a value in this world beyond all value of rank or money or influence.

If you ask me why I have talked so much about so short a poem, the answer is that nearly all of Browning's short poems mean a great deal, and force us to think and to talk about them. The reason is that the characters in these poems are really alive; they impress us exactly as living persons do, and excite our curiosity in precisely the same way. Accordingly, notwithstanding their many faults of construction and obscure English, they have something of the greatness of Shakespeare's dramas.

It is now time to turn to the study of the greatest of all Browning's poems. Perhaps I should not call it a poem. It is rather an immense poetic drama. As printed in this single volume it represents four hundred and seventy-seven pages of closely printed small text. It is, therefore, even considered as a dramatic composition, many times larger than any true drama. But no true drama, except Shakespeare's, is more real or more terrible. Besides, it is a purely psychological drama. There is no scenery, no narrative in the ordinary sense. Everything is related in the first person. The whole is divided into twelve parts, each of which is a monologue. Nearly all of the monologues are spoken by different persons. The first monologue is the author's own, in which he tells us the meaning of the title and the story of the drama.

It is a true story of Italian life in the seventeenth century, the chief incident having really occurred in the year 1698. The poet one day found in an old Italian book shop a little book for sale, which was the history of a celebrated criminal trial. Besides the book, which included the speeches of the lawyers on both sides, and the evidence given before the court, there was a good deal of old manuscript--papers probably prepared by some lawyer of the time in connection with the case. Browning was able to buy the whole thing for eight pence; that small sum furnished him with material for the most enormous poem in the English language. When he read the facts of the trial, he said he could actually see all the characters as plainly as if they were alive, and could even hear them speak. He soon formed in his mind the plan for his poem; but it was a peculiar plan. The plan is indicated by the title of "The Ring and the Book." In Italy there is a great deal of beautiful light gold work made--for rings especially, which looks so delicate that at first sight you cannot understand how it was made. In a gold ring there are leaves and flowers and fruits and insects, so lightly made that even if you let the ring fall they would be injured and destroyed. Gold is very soft. In order to cut the gold in this way, the goldsmith uses a hard composition with which he covers the gold work, and after the carving and engraving have been done, this composition is melted off, so that only the pure gold is left, with all the work upon it. Browning says that he made his book somewhat in the same way that the Italian goldsmith makes his ring--by the use of an alloy. The facts of history and of law represent the gold in this case, and the poet mixes them with an alloy of imagination, emotion, sympathy, which helps him to make the whole story into a perfectly rounded drama, a complete circle, a Ring. This is the meaning of the title.

I shall first tell you the story briefly, according to the historical facts. About the year 1679 there was a family in Rome of the name of Comparini. The family consisted only of husband and wife; but it happened that the fact of their being without children proved a legal obstacle in the way of obtaining some money which they greatly desired. The wife, Violante, knew that her husband was too honest to wish to cheat the law, so she determined to try to get the money without letting him know her deceit in the matter. She pretended to have given birth, unexpectedly, to a child, but the child had really been bought from a woman of loose life--it was a very pretty female child, and was called Francesca Pompilia. Little Pompilia was supposed to be the real child of the Comparini; and the much desired money thus passed into their hands. This is the first act of the tragedy.

Pompilia grew up into a wonderfully beautiful girl; and when she was thirteen years old, many people wished to marry her. Guido Franceschini, Count of Arezzo, noticed the girl's beauty, and heard that she was rich. He determined to marry her if possible, chiefly for the sake of her money. He was a wicked old man, between fifty and sixty years of age, ugly, cunning, and poor. But he had immense influence, both among the nobility and among the church dignitaries, on account of his family relations; and he was himself of high rank. The marriage was negotiated successfully. Pompilia, a child of thirteen, could not naturally have wished to marry this horrible old man, but she had been taught to obey her parents as she obeyed Almighty God, and when she was told to marry him she married him without one word of complaint. By this marriage the wicked Count got into his hands all the property of the Comparini family, but it had been promised that the parents of the girl were to live in the palace of the Count, and to be taken care of for the rest of their lives. Nevertheless, as soon as the Count had everything in his hands, he turned the old parents out of his house, in a state of absolute destitution; he had taken from them their daughter and all their money, everything that they had in the world. This is the second act of the tragedy.

Naturally the Comparini family were very angry. The mother of the girl was so angry that she told her husband all about the trick which she had played in passing off Pompilia for her own child. Pompilia, you know, was not her real child at all. This changed the legal aspect of the matter. Old Comparini went to the Count and said, "You took our money, and thought that you were taking our daughter. But you must give back that money. The girl is not our daughter; the money does not belong to her: it will have to be given back to the government that we deceived." This is the third act of the tragedy.

The Count was equal to the occasion. He understood the law; but he understood it much better than the Comparini people. So long as he kept Pompilia as his wife, he knew that he could keep the money. If he divorced her, on the ground that she was of vulgar origin, then he would have to give up the money. But this was not the only alternative. There was a third possibility. If Pompilia committed adultery, then he could either kill her or get rid of her and keep the money notwithstanding. Pompilia was a weak child only thirteen years old. He was a wicked and terrible man, with half a century of experience, diabolical cunning, diabolical cruelty, and ferocious determination. He would make her commit adultery. That would be the simplest possible solution of the difficulty. But, strange to say, this terrible man could not conquer that delicate child of thirteen. First he tried to appeal to her passions, to excite her imagination in an immoral way. But her heart was too pure to be corrupted. There was in her no spur of lust. She was a simple good pure wife, too pure for any wicked ideas to be planted in her mind. Then he tried force, atrocious cruelty, horrible menace, always without letting her know what he really intended. What he really intended was to force her to run away from him. She could not run away except in the company of a protector. If she ran away with a protector, then he could kill both her and the man and claim that he had detected the two in adultery. After having tortured the girl hideously, in every moral and immoral way, he did succeed in getting her to ask for protection. She first asked protection from priests and bishops. The priests and bishops were afraid of the Count, and told her, like the cowards that they were, that they could not help her. She wanted to become a nun. The nuns were afraid of the Count, and refused her prayer. At last she did find one priest, a brave man, who was willing to save her if possible. He said, "You must run away with me, though it will look very bad; there is no other way to help you." She ran away with him. Within twenty-four hours the pair were overtaken by the Count and his company of armed men. The opportunity to kill Pompilia and her "lover" had come; but the so-called "lover," although only an honest poor priest, showed fight, and protected Pompilia against the Count and all his followers. The priest refused to surrender Pompilia except to the Church. The Church arrested both. Pompilia was put into a convent for safe keeping. The priest was tried for adultery, and acquitted. But he had done wrong by breaking the law of the Church even for a good purpose; therefore he was sentenced to banishment for a certain number of years. This is the fourth act of the tragedy.

The Count finds that all his plans have failed. He has not been able to convict his wife of adultery, although he has been able to injure her reputation in the opinion of the public. He cannot get rid of her, and keep her money too, except by killing her. But she is in the convent. While he is thinking what to do, another event happens which upsets all his calculations. Pompilia gives birth to a child of which he certainly is the father. The money question, the legal aspect of it, is still more complicated by the birth of the child. At once the Count determines to kill Pompilia and her parents, out of revenge. He knows that on certain days she goes to visit her parents. He watches for such an occasion, and with the help of some professional murderers, he kills the Comparini, and stabs Pompilia twenty-two times with a dagger. He imagined that this could be done so as to remain undiscovered; he thought that the crime could not be proved upon him. But poor Pompilia is very hard to kill. Although her slender body was thus stabbed through and through by a powerful man, she did not die at once; her wonderful youth kept her alive long enough to tell the police what had happened. The Count and his hired murderers were arrested and thrown into prison. This is the fifth act of the tragedy.