Chapter XV: Preface (13)

=King Victor and King Charles: A Tragedy.= (_Bells and Pomegranates_, II., 1842.) Victor Amadeus II., born in 1666, was Duke of Savoy. He obtained the kingdom of Sicily by treaty from Spain, which he afterwards exchanged with the Emperor for the island of Sardinia, with the title of King (1720). He was fierce, audacious, unscrupulous, and selfish, profound in dissimulation, prolific in resources, and a "breaker of vows both to God and man." He was, however, an able and warlike monarch, and had the interests of his kingdom at heart. He was, moreover, beloved by the people over whom he ruled, and under his reign the country made great progress in finances, education, and the development of its natural resources. His whole reign was one of unexampled prosperity, and his life was a continued career of happiness until, in 1715, his beloved son Victor died. His daughter, the Queen of Spain, died shortly after. Charles Emanuel, his second son, had never been a favourite with the King. He was ill-favoured in appearance, and weak and vacillating in his conduct. When the Queen died, in 1728, Victor married Anna Teresa Canali, a widowed countess, whom he created Marchioness of Spigno. For some reasons or other which have never been satisfactorily explained, the King now decided to abdicate in favour of his son Charles Emanuel. He gave out that he was weary of the world and disgusted with affairs of State, and desired to live in retirement for the remainder of his days. It is more probable that his fiery and audacious temper, and his deceitfulness, dissimulation, and persistent endeavours to overreach the other powers with which he had intercourse, had involved him in difficulties of State policy from which he could only extricate himself by this grave step. Mr. Browning implies, in the preface to his tragedy, that his investigations of the memoirs and correspondence of the period had enabled him to offer a more reasonable solution of the difficulties connected with this strange episode in Italian history than any previous account has offered. When the King announced his intention to resign his crown, he was entreated by his people, his ministers and his son, to forego a project which every one thought would be prejudicial to the interests of the kingdom; but nothing would induce him to reconsider his decision, which he carried out with the completest ceremonial. After taking this step he retired with his wife to his castle at Chambéry; and, as might have been expected, he speedily grew weary of his seclusion. He had an attack of apoplexy, and when he recovered it was with faculties impaired and a temper readily irritated to outbursts of violent behaviour. The marchioness now began to suggest to him that he had done unwisely by resigning his crown; and, day by day, urged him to recover it. This was probably due to the desire she felt of being queen. He still remained on good terms with his son, who visited him at Chambéry; but he gave him to understand that he was not satisfied with his management of affairs, and constantly intervened in their direction. In the summer of 1731 Charles, accompanied by his queen (Polyxena) visited his father at the baths of Eviano, and before his return home he received private intimation that his father was about to proceed to Turin to resume the crown he had resigned. He lost no time in returning home, which he reached just before his father and the marchioness. He visited the ex-king on the following day, when he was informed that his reason for returning to Turin was the necessity for seeking a climate more suitable to his present state of health. Charles was satisfied with the explanation, and placed the castle of Moncalieri at his father's service: here the ex-king received his son's ministers, and hints were dropped and threatening expressions used by Victor, which left little doubt as to his intentions on the minds of his audience. It now became necessary for King Charles to seriously consider the best means to secure himself and his queen from the effects of his father's change of mind. Victor lost little time in declaring himself: on September 25th, 1731, he sent for the Marquis del Borgo, and ordered him to deliver up the deed by which he had resigned his crown. The minister evaded in his reply, and of course informed the King of the demand. Now it was that Charles was inclined to waver between his duty to his realm and his duty to his father. He was a good, obedient son, and of upright and generous disposition, and was inclined to yield to his father's wishes. He called the chief officers of state around him, and laid the matter before them. They were not forgetful of the threats which the old king had recently used towards them, and the Archbishop of Turin had little difficulty in convincing them and the king that it was impossible to comply with his father's demands. If anything were wanting to confirm them in their decision, it was forthcoming in the shape of news that the old king had demanded at midnight admittance into the fortress of Turin, but had been refused by the commander. The council of Charles Emanuel readily concurred in the opinion that Victor should be arrested. The Marquis d'Ormea, who had been the old king's prime minister, was charged with the execution of the warrant of arrest. He proceeded, with assistance and appropriate military precautions, to carry out the order, entering the king's apartments at Moncalieri. They captured the marchioness, who was hurried away screaming to a state prison at Ceva, with many of her relatives and supporters; and then secured the person of the old king. He was asleep, and when aroused and made acquainted with the mission of the intruders, he became violently excited, and had to be wrapped in the bedclothes and forced into one of the court carriages, which conveyed him to the castle of Rivoli, situated in a small town of five thousand inhabitants, near Turin. His attendants and guards were strictly ordered to say nothing to him: if he addressed them, they maintained an inflexible silence, merely by way of reply making a very low and submissive bow. He was afterwards permitted to have the company of his wife and to remove to another prison, but on October 31st, 1732, he died.

=Laboratory, The=: ANCIEN REGIME. First appeared in _Hood's Magazine_, June 1844, to which it was contributed to help Hood in his illness; afterwards published in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ (_Bells and Pomegranates_, VII.) This poem and _The Confessional_ were printed together, and entitled _France and Spain_. Mr. Arthur Symons reminds us that Rossetti's first water-colour was an illustration of this poem, and has for subject and title the line "Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?" The keynote of the poem is jealousy, a distorted love-frenzy that impels to the rival's extinction. The story is told in the most powerful and concentrated manner. The jealous woman's whole soul is compressed into her words and actions; her emotion is visible; her voice, subdued yet full of energy, is audible in every line. The woman is a Brinvilliers, who has secured an interview with an alchemist in his laboratory, that she may purchase a deadly poison for her rival. We gather from the first verse that the poison consisted principally of arsenic. The "faint smokes curling whitely," to protect the chemist from which it was necessary to wear a glass mask, sufficiently supplement our knowledge of the old poisoner's art to enable us to indicate its nature. The patience of the woman, who in her eagerness for her rival's death has no desire to hurry the manufacture of the means of it, is powerfully described. She is content to watch the chemist at his deadly work, asking questions in a dainty manner about the secrets of his art. She has all the ideas of "a big dose" which the uninitiated think requisite for big patients. "She's not little--no minion like me!" "What, only a drop?" she asks. She is anxious to know if it hurts the victim. Is it likely to injure herself too? Reassured on that point, the glass mask is removed, and for reward the old man has all her jewels and gold to his fill. He may kiss her besides, and on the mouth if he will. There is a very remarkable instance in the second verse of the use made of antithesis by the poet. The proper emphasis can only be given when we rightly apprehend the ideas which oppose each other in the lines--

"_He_ is with _her_, and _they_ know that _I_ know
Where they are, what they do: they believe _my tears_ flow
While _they laugh_, laugh at _me_, at me fled to the _drear
Empty church_, to pray God in, for _them_!--I am _here_."

The antithesis of the several sets of ideas is the only safe guide to the emphasis--_he_ as opposed to _her_, _tears_ to _laughter_, _me_ to _them_, the _church_ to the _laboratory_.[1] Although the effects of some of the deadliest poisons were well known to the ancients, their detection and recovery from the body by chemical means is a branch of science of only modern discovery. The Greeks and Romans were well acquainted with mercury, arsenic, henbane, aconite and hemlock. The art of poisoning was brought to great perfection in India; but, though dissection of the living and the dead was practised by the Alexandrian School in the third century B.C., the Greek and Roman physicians were quite incapable of such a knowledge of pathology as would enable them to detect any but the coarsest signs of poisoning in a dead body. Much less were they able to detect or recover by analysis the particular poison used by the criminal. It is not surprising that, under such circumstances, professional poisoners usually escaped punishment. In the fourteenth century arsenic was generally employed. Of the great schools of poisoners which flourished in Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Venice was the earliest. Troublesome people were removed by the Council of Ten by means of convenient poisons. Toffana and others combined poisoning with the art of cookery; and T. Baptist Porta, in his book on "Natural Magic," under the section of cooking, shows that the trades of poisoner and cook were often combined. Toffana was the greatest of all the seventeenth-century poisoners. She made solutions of arsenic of various strengths, and sold them in phials under the name of "Naples Water" or "Acquetta di Napol." It is said that she poisoned six hundred persons, including Popes Pius III. and Clement XIV. There was practically no fear of detection, and the liquid was sold openly to any one willing to pay the price for a deadly compound; the purpose for which it could alone be employed being perfectly well understood. Mr. Browning's poem introduces us to a laboratory, where an arsenical preparation is being prepared. The glass mask refered to in the first line was used to protect the purchaser from the white, deadly smoke which the mineral gave off. The poison for which the lady paid so lavishly could be prepared nowadays by any chemist's apprentice for a few pence; but, plentiful as it is, it is comparatively rarely used by criminals, as the same apprentice could infallibly detect it in the body after death, and reproduce in a test tube the very same poison used by the criminal.

=Lady and the Painter, The.= (_Asolando_: 1889.) A lady visiting an artist who has a picture on his easel of a nude female figure, protests against the irreverence to womanhood involved in his inducing a young woman to strip and stand stark-naked as his model. Before replying, he asks the lady what it is that clings half-savage-like around her hat. She, thinking he is admiring her headgear, tells him they are "wild-bird wings, and that the Paris fashion-books say that next year the skirts of women's dresses are to be feathered too. Owls, hawks, jays and swallows are most in vogue." Asking if he may speak plainly, and having been answered that he may, he tells Lady Blanche that it would be more to her credit to strip off all her bird-spoils and stand naked to help art, like his poor model, as a type of purest womanhood. "_You_, clothed with murder of His best of harmless beings, what have you to teach?" The poem is directed against the savage and wicked custom of wearing the plumage of birds, by which millions of God's beautiful creatures are doomed annually to slaughter; by wearing gloves made of skins stripped from the living bodies of animals (if report be true); and by the use of sealskin and other animal coverings, which necessitates the wholesale slaughter of countless thousands of happy creatures in Arctic seas. I recently asked Miss Frances Power Cobbe--the noble lady who was a friend of Mr. Browning, and who has devoted her life and splendid literary talents to befriending dumb animals and protesting against cruelty in high places--to furnish me with some account of the agitation against the foolish habit of wearing bird-plumage in women's bonnets. I have received from Miss Cobbe the following particulars: "The Plumage League began December 1885. It started with a letter in the _Times_, December 18th, 1885 (quoted _in extenso_ in the _Zoophilist_, January 1886, p. 164), by the Rev. F. O. Morris, embodying one from Lady Mount Temple. Before May 1886 a long list of names (given in the _Zoophilist_) were given as patrons of the League, including Lady Mount Temple, Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Londesborough, Lady Sudeley, Hon. Mrs. R. C. Boyle, Louisa Marchioness of Waterford, Princess Christian, Lady Burdett Coutts, Lady Eastlake, Lady John Manners, Lady Tennyson, Lady Herbert of Lea, and about forty other ladies of rank. I should say that the League was originated by Lady Mount Temple and the Rev. F. O. Morris. There is another society in existence for the same purpose, working in London--the Birds' Protection Society--one of whose local secretaries lately applied to me for a subscription."

=Lady Carlisle, Lucy Percy.= (_Strafford._) She was the daughter of the ninth Earl of Northumberland, and did her utmost to save Strafford's life.

=Lapaccia.= Mona Lapaccia was Fra Lippo Lippi's aunt, the sister of his father, who brought him up till he was eight years old, when, being no longer able to maintain him, she took him to the Carmelite Convent.

=La Saisiaz= (A. E. S., Sept. 14th, 1877).--Mr. Browning was staying during the autumn of 1877, with his sister, amongst the mountains near Geneva, at a villa called "La Saisiaz," which in the Savoyard dialect means "The Sun." They were accompanied on this occasion by Miss Ann Egerton Smith. The happiness of the visit to this beautiful spot was marred by the sudden death of Miss Smith, from heart disease, on the night of September 14th. The poem is the result of the poet's musings on death, God, the soul, and the future state. It is one of Mr. Browning's noblest and most beautiful utterances on the great questions of the Supreme Being and the ultimate destiny of the soul of man. It is Theism of the loftiest kind, and the grounds on which it is based are as philosophical as they are poetically expressed. The work has often been compared with the _In Memoriam_ of Tennyson. The powerful optimism, the robust confidence and devout faith in the infinite love and wisdom of the Supreme Being, are in each poem emphasized again and again. After several pages of description of the scenery of the locality, Mr. Browning imagines that a spirit of the place bade him question, and promised answer, of the problems of existence--

"Does the soul survive the body? Is there God's self--no or yes?"

He is weak, but "weakness never needs be falseness." He will go to the foundations of his faith; he will take stock--see how he stands in the matter of belief and doubt; will fight the question out without fence or self-deception. It shall not satisfy him to say that a second life is necessary to give value to the present, or that pleasure, if not permanent, turns to pain; in the presence of that recent death there must be rigid honesty, and it does not satisfy him to know there's ever some one lives though we be dead. Such a thought is repugnant to him,--not that repugnance matters if it be all the truth. He must, however, ask if there be any prospect of supplemental happiness? In the face of the strong bodies yoked to stunted souls, and the spirits that would soar were they not tethered by a fleshly chain; of the hindering helps, and the hindrances which are really helps in disguise,--the fact remains that hindered we are. However the fact be explained, life is a burthen; at best, more or less, in its whole amount is it curse or blessing? He thinks he has courage enough to fairly ask this question, and accept the answer of reason. He has questioned, and has been answered. Now, a question presupposes two things: that which questions and answers must exist. "I think, therefore I am" (_Cogito, ergo sum_), said Descartes. (And this is about the only thing in life of which we can be certain. Matter may be all illusion; as Bishop Berkeley said, we may be living in one long dream. But at least it takes a mind to do that. We therefore are; soul _is_, whatever else is not.) The second thing presupposed is, that the fact of being answered is proof that there must be a force outside itself:

"Actual ere its own beginning, operative through its course,
Unaffected by its end,--that this thing likewise needs must be."

Here, then, are two facts: the last we may call God; the first, Soul. If an objector demands that he shall _prove_ these facts his answer is that, recognising they surpass his power of proving these facts, proves them such to him:

"Ask the rush if it suspects
Whence and how the stream which floats it had a rise, and where and how
Falls or flows on still!"

If the rush could think and speak, it would say it only knows that it floats and is, and that an external stream bears it onward. What may happen to it the rush knows not: it may be wrecked, or it may land on shore and take root again; but this is mere surmise, not knowledge. Can we have better foundation for believing that, because we doubtless are, we shall as doubtless be? Men say we have, "because God seems good and wise." But there reigns wrong in life. "God seems powerful," they say; "why, then, are right and wrong at strife?" "Anyhow, we want a future life," say men; "without it life would be brutish." But wanting a thing, and hoping for it, are not proofs that our aspirations will be gratified; out of all our hopes, how many have had complete fulfilment? None. But "we believe," men sigh. So far as others are concerned the poet will not speak--he knows not. But he knows not what he is himself, which nevertheless is an ignorance which is no barrier to his knowing that he exists and can recognise what gives him pain or pleasure. What others are or are not is surmise; his own experience is knowledge. To his own experience, then, he appeals. He has lived, done, suffered, loved, hated, learned and taught this: there is no reconciling wisdom with a distracted world, no reconciling goodness with evil if it is to finally triumph, no reconciling power if the aim is to fail; if--and he only speaks for himself, his own convictions, and not for any other man's--if you hinder him from assuming that earth is a school-time and life a place of probation, all is chaos to him; he cannot say how these arguments and reasons may affect other men; he reiterates that he speaks for himself alone, because to colour-blind men the grass which is green to him may be red,--who is to decide which uses the proper term, supposing only two men existed, and one called grass green, the other red? So God must be the referee in His own case. The earth, as a school, is perhaps different for each individual; our pains and pleasures no more tally than our colour-sense. The poet, therefore, recognises that for him the world is his world, and no other man's; he is to judge what it means for himself. He will therefore proceed to estimate the world as it seems to him, exactly as he would judge of an artisan's work,--is it a success or a failure? Was God's will or His power in fault when the vapours shrouded the blue heaven, and the flowers fell at the breath of the dragon? Death waits on every rose-bloom, pain upon every pleasure, shadow on every brightness. We cannot love, but death lurks hard by; cannot learn sympathy unless men suffer pain. If he is told that all this is necessity, he will bear it as best he can; if, on the other hand, you say it has been ordained by a Cause all-good, all-wise, all-potent, he protests as a man he will not acquiesce if, at the same time, you tell him that this life is all:

"No, as I am man, I mourn the poverty I must impute:
Goodness, wisdom, power, all bounded, each a human attribute!"

Speaking for himself he counts this show of things a failure if after this life there be no other; if the school is not to educate for another sphere, all its lessons are fruitless pain and toil. But, grant a second life, he heartily acquiesces; he sees triumph in misfortune's worst assaults, and gain in all the loss. When was he so near to knowledge as when hampered by his recognised ignorance? Was not beauty made more precious by the deformities surrounding him? Did he not learn to love truth better when he contemplated the reign of falsehood? And for love, who knows what its value is till he has suffered by the death-pang? The poet here breaks off the argument to address the spirit of the lost friend, and express his hope that one day they may meet again:--

"Can it be, and must, and will it?"

Then he recalls his thoughts from the region of surmise, to which they have wandered, home to stern and sober fact. He needs not the old plausibilities of the "misery done to man" and the "injustice of God," if another life compensate not for the ills of the present; he is prepared to take his stand as umpire to the champions Fancy and Reason, as they dispute the case between them. FANCY begins the amicable war by conceding that the surmise of life after death is as plain as a certainty, and acknowledges that there are now three facts--God, the soul, and the future life. REASON assents, sees there is definite advantage in the acknowledgment, admits the good of evil in the present life, detects the progress of everything towards good, and, as the next life must be an advance upon this one, suggests that, at the first cloud athwart man's sky, he should not hesitate, but die. FANCY then increases its concession, and sees the necessity of a hell for the punishment of those who would act the butterfly before they have played out the worm. Thus we have five facts now--God, soul, earth, heaven and hell. REASON declares that more is required: are we to shut our eyes, stop our ears, and live here in a state of nescience, simply waiting for the life to come, which is to do everything for the soul? FANCY protests that this present stage of our existence has worth incalculable--that every moment spent here means so much loss or gain for that next life which on this life depends. We have now six plain facts established. REASON points out that FANCY has proved too much by appending a definite reward to every good action and a fixed punishment to every bad one. We lay down laws as stringent in the moral as the material world. If we say, "Would you live again, be just," it is to put a necessity upon man as determined as the law of respiration--"Would you live now, regularly draw your breath." If immortality were anything more than surmise, if heaven and hell were as plainly the consequences of our course of life here as a fall of a breach of the laws of gravity, then men would be compelled to do right and avoid evil. Probation would be gone, our freedom would be destroyed, neither merit nor discipline would remain--

"Thus have we come back full circle."

The poet says he hopes,--he has no more than hope, but hope--no less than hope. Standing on the mountain, looking down upon the Lake of Geneva, his eye falls on the places where dwelt four great men: _Rousseau_, who lived at Geneva; _Byron_, lived at the villa called "Diodati," at Geneva; and wrote the _Prisoner of Chillon_ at Ouchy, on the Lake; _Voltaire_, who built himself a château at Fernex; _Gibbon_, who wrote the concluding portion of his great work at Lausanne. The somewhat obscure reference to the "pine tree of Makistos," near the close of the poem, has caused considerable puzzling of brains amongst Browning students, none of whom have been able to assist me in solving the problem. So far as I am able to understand it, the solution seems to be this: The reference to Makistos is from the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus. The town of Makistos had a watch-tower on a neighbouring eminence, from which the beacon lights flashed the news of the fall of Troy to Greece. Clytemnestra says:

"sending a bright blaze from Ide,
_Beacon did beacon send_,
Pass on--the pine-tree--to Makistos' watch-place."

So the famous writers named as connected with that part of the Lake of Geneva contemplated by Mr. Browning, who were all Theists, passed on the pine-tree torch of Theism from age to age--Diodati, Rousseau, Gibbon, Byron, Voltaire, who--

"at least believed in Soul, was very sure of God."

(Voltaire built a church at Ferney, over the portal of which he affixed the ostentatious inscription, "_Deo erexit Voltaire_.") Many writers (Canon Cheyne for one, in the _Origin of the Psalter_, p. 410) have thought that by the lines beginning, "He there with the brand flamboyant," etc., the poet referred to himself. Of course, any such idea is preposterous; the reference was to Voltaire. Mr. Browning, apart from the question of the egotism involved, could not say of himself, "he at least believed in soul." There was no minimising of religious faith in the poet Still less could he speak of himself as "crowned by prose and verse."

NOTES.--_Python_, the Rock-snake, the typical genus of Pythonidæ; "_Athanasius contra mundum_" == Athanasius against the world. St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, and one of the most illustrious defenders of the Christian faith, was born about the year 297. In defending the Nicene Creed he had so much opposition to contend with from the Arian heretics that, in the words of Hooker, it was "the whole world against Athanasius, and Athanasius against it."

=Last Ride Together, The.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Romances_, 1863; _Dramatic Romances_, 1868.) This poem is considered by many critics to be the noblest of all Browning's love poems; for dramatic intensity, for power, for its exhibition of what Mr. Raleigh has aptly termed Browning's "tremendous concentration of his power in excluding the object world and its relations," the poem is certainly unequalled. It is a poem of unrequited love, in which there is nothing but the noblest resignation; a compliance with the decrees of fate, but with neither a shadow of disloyalty to the ideal, nor despair of the result of the dismissal to the lover's own soul development. The woman may reject him,--there is no wounded pride; she does not love him,--he is not angry with her, nor annoyed that she fails to estimate him as highly as he estimates himself. He has the ideal in his heart; it shall be cherished as the occupant of his heart's throne for ever--of the ideal he, at least, can never be deprived. This ideal shall be used to elevate and sublimate his desires, to expand his soul to the fruition of his boundless aspiration for human love, used till it transfigures the human in the man till it almost becomes Divine. And so--as he knows his fate--since all his life seemed meant for, fails--his whole heart rises up to bless the woman, to whom he gives back the hope she gave; he asks only its memory and her leave for one more last ride with him. It is granted:

"Who knows but the world may end to-night?"

(a line which no poet but Browning ever could have written. The force of the hour, the value of the quintessential moment as factors in the development of the soul, have never been set forth, even by Browning, with such startling power.) She lay for a moment on his breast, and then the ride began. He will not question how he might have succeeded better had he said this or that, done this or the other. She might not only not have loved him, she might have hated. He reflects that all men strive, but few succeed. He contrasts the petty done with the vast undone,

"What hand and brain went ever paired?
What heart alike conceived and dared?
What act proved all its thought had been?
What will but felt the fleshly screen?"

And the meaning of it all, the reason of the struggle, the outcome of the effort? The poet alone can tell: he _says_ what we _feel_. "But, poet," he asks, "are you nearer your own sublime than we rhymeless ones? You sculptor, you man of music, have you attained your aims?" Then he consoles himself that if here we had perfect bliss, still there is the life beyond, and it is better to have a bliss to die with dim-descried--

"Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?"

What if for ever he rode on with her as now, "The instant made eternity"?

=Lazarus=, who was raised from the dead, is the real hero of the poem _An Epistle_.

=Léonce Miranda.= (_Red Cotton Night-Cap Country._) The principal actor in the drama was the son and heir of a wealthy Paris jeweller. He formed an illicit connection with Clara de Millefleurs, and lived with her at St. Rambert, finally committing suicide from the tower on his estate. It is said that the real name of the firm of jewellers was "Meller Brothers," and that Clara de Millefleurs was Anna de Beaupré.

=Levi Lincoln Thaxter.= _Poet Lore_, vol. i., p. 598 (1889), states that Mr. Browning wrote an inscription for the grave of Levi Lincoln Thaxter, a well known American Browning reader, on the Maine sea-coast. The inscription runs thus:--"Levi Lincoln Thaxter. Born in Watertown, Massachusetts, Feb. 1st, 1824. Died May 31st, 1884.

"Thou, whom these eyes saw never! Say friends true
Who say my soul, helped onward by my song,
Though all unwittingly, has helped thee too?
I gave of but the little that I knew;
How were the gift requited, while along
Life's path I pace, couldst thou make weakness strong!
Help me with knowledge--for Life's Old----Death's New!"
R. B. to L. L. T., _April 1885_.

=Life in a Love.= (_Men and Women_, 1855, _Lyrics_, 1863; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) A man is content to spend his whole life on the chance that the woman whose heart he pursues will one day cease to elude him. When the old hope is dashed to the ground, a new one springs up and flies straight to the same mark. And what if he fail of his purpose here? How can life be better expended than in devotion to one worthy ideal?

=Light Woman, A.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Romances_, 1863; _Dramatic Romances_, 1868.) A wanton-eyed woman ensnares a man in her toils just to add him to the hundred others she has captured. The victim has a friend who feels equal to conquering the victor. It is a question which is the stronger soul; the woman of a hundred conquests lies in the strong man's hand as tame as a pear from the wall. But the game turns out to be a serious one: the light woman recognises her conqueror as the higher soul, and loves him accordingly. What is he to do? He does not wish to eat the pear; is he to cast it away? It is an awkward thing to play with souls. Light as she was, she had a heart, though the hundred others could not discover a way to it; this man did, and broke it. The question for the breaker is What does he seem to himself? The last lines of the poem are interesting. The author says of himself:--

"And Robert Browning, you writer of plays,
Here's a subject made to your hand."

=Likeness, A.= (_Dramatis Personæ_, 1864.) As no two faces are exactly alike in every particular, so no two souls are ever cast in one mould. The very markings of our finger tips differ in every hand, and so each soul has its own language, which must be learned by whomsoever would discover its secret. And here science avails not; soul grammars and lexicons are not written for its tongue. A face, a glance, a word will do; but it must be the right glance, and the true open-sesame. The face which has spoken to us, the soul visitant who has penetrated to our solitude, the book, the deed which has formed the bond between us, speaks not to others as it spoke to us; and the face which is enshrined in our heart of hearts, to them is "the daub John bought at a sale." "Is not she Jane? Then who is she?" asks the stranger who intermeddleth not with our joys. But when that face is confessed to be one to lose youth for, to occupy age with the dream of, to meet death with; then, half in rapture, half in rage, we say, "Take it, I pray; it is only a duplicate!"

=Lilith.= (_Adam, Lilith, and Eve._) "According to the Gnostic and Rosicrucian mediæval doctrine, the creation of woman was not originally intended. She is the offspring of man's own impure fancy, and, as the Hermetists say, 'an obtrusion.'... First 'Virgo,' the celestial virgin of the Zodiac, she became 'Virgo-Scorpio.' But in evolving his second companion, man had unwittingly endowed her with his own share of spirituality; and the new being whom his 'imagination' had called into life became his 'saviour' from the snares of Eve-Lilith, the first Eve, who had a greater share of matter in her composition than the primitive 'spiritual man.'"--Madame Blavatsky's _Isis Unveiled_, vol. ii., p. 445.

=Lost Leader, The.= (_Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates_, No. VII., 1845; _Poems_, 1849; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) A great leader of a party has deserted the cause, fallen away from his early ideals and forsaken the teaching which has inspired disciples who loved and honoured him. They are sorrowful not so much for their own loss as for the moral deterioration he has himself suffered. The poem is a very popular one, and is generally considered to refer to Wordsworth, who in his youth had strong Liberal sympathies, but lost them, as Mr. John Morley says in his introduction to Wordsworth's poems:--"As years began to dull the old penetration of a mind which had once approached, like other youths, the shield of human nature from the golden side, and had been eager to 'clear a passage for just government,' Wordsworth lost his interest in progress. Waterloo may be taken for the date at which his social grasp began to fail, and with it his poetic glow. He opposed Catholic emancipation as stubbornly as Eldon, and the Reform Bill as bitterly as Croker. For the practical reform of his day, even in education, for which he had always spoken up, Wordsworth was not a force." Browning used to see a good deal of Wordsworth when he was a young man, but there was no friendship between them. Wordsworth treated with contempt Browning's republican sympathies--a contempt heightened, as is usually the case with those who have lapsed from their former ideals, by the remembrance that he had once professed to follow them. But, though the poem has undoubted reference to Wordsworth, it has a certain application also to Southey, Charles Kingsley, and others, who in youth were Radicals and in old age became rigidly Conservative. Browning told Walter Thornbury that Wordsworth was "the lost leader," though he said "the portrait was purposely disguised a little; used, in short, as an artist uses a model, retaining certain characteristic traits and discarding the rest" (_Notes and Queries_, 5th series, vol. i., p. 213.) There is a letter published in Mr. Grosart's edition of Wordsworth's _Prose Works_, which is conclusive on this point:--

"19, WARWICK CRESCENT, W., _February 24th, 1875_.

"DEAR MR. GROSART,--I have been asked the question you now address me
with, and as duly answered, I can't remember how many times. There is
no sort of objection to one more assurance, or rather confession, on
my part, that I _did_ in my hasty youth presume to use the great and
venerable personality of Wordsworth as a sort of painter's model; one
from which this or the other particular feature may be selected and
turned to account. Had I intended more--above all, such a boldness as
portraying the entire man--I should not have talked about 'handfuls
of silver and bits of ribbon,' These never influenced the change of
politics in the great poet--whose defection, nevertheless, accompanied
as it was by a regular face-about of his special party, was, to my
private apprehension, and even mature consideration, an event to
deplore. But, just as in the tapestry on my wall I can recognise
figures which have _struck out_ a fancy, on occasion, that though
truly enough thus derived, yet would be preposterous as a copy; so,
though I dare not deny the original of my little poem, I altogether
refuse to have it considered as the 'very effigies' of such a moral
and intellectual superiority.

"Faithfully yours,
"ROBERT BROWNING."

="Lost, lost! yet come."= The first line of the "Song of April" in _Paracelsus_, Part II.

=Lost Mistress, The.= (_Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_, in _Bells and Pomegranates_, VII., 1845; _Lyrics_, 1863; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) A calm suppression of intensest feeling, the quiet resignation of a great love in a spirit of humility and sacrifice, by a man who has complete control over himself. The pretence of not feeling the blow is exquisitely represented, and the spirit which underlies it is that of the strong-souled contender with the trials of life who wrote the poem. The life's current frozen, the sun sunk in the heart to rise no more, the joy gone out of life, are summed up in "All's over, then!" He remarks the sparrow's twitter and the leaf buds on the vine; the snowdrops appear, but there is no spring in his heart; her voice will stay in his soul for ever, yet he may hold her hand "so very little longer" than may a mere friend.

=Love among the Ruins.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Lyrics_, 1863; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) While Mrs. Browning was staying with Mr. Browning in Rome, in the winter of 1853-54, she was writing _Aurora Leigh_, and he was busy with _Men and Women_, including this exquisite poem. It is a landscape by Poussin in words, and is melodious and soothing, as befits the subject. It is evening in the Roman Campagna, amid the ruins of cities once great and famous. The landscape cannot fail to touch the soul with deepest melancholy, as we reflect on the evanescence of all human things. A vast city, whose memorials have dwindled to a "so they say"; "the domed and daring palaces" represented by a few blocks of half-buried marble and the shaft of a column, overrun by a vegetation which is the symbol of eternal beauty, lovingly covering the decaying handiwork of a long vanished people. And amid the colonnades and temples, the turrets and the bridges, the spirit of the observer dwells with the mournful reflection that the hand of death and the devouring tooth of time reduce all earthly things to ruin, and the shadows of oblivion fall on the world of spirit and cover the deeds alike of glory and of shame. But from the wreck of the ages, and the scattered memorials of a forgotten metropolis, there came a golden-haired girl with eager eyes of love, and the sad-reflecting contemplator of the past learns, by the glance of her eye and the embrace which extinguishes sight and speech, that whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin, are not to be weighed against that moment when we recognise that Love is best.

=Love in a Life.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Lyrics_, 1863; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) A lover inhabiting the same house as his love, is constantly eluded by the charmed object of his pursuit. The perfume of her presence is in every room, and he is always promising his heart that she shall soon be found, yet the day wanes with the fruitless quest, for as he enters she goes out, and twilight comes with--

"Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!"

Thus do our ideals ever evade us.

=Love Poems.=--"One Word More," "Evelyn Hope," "A Serenade at the Villa," "In Three Days," "The Last Ride Together," "Numpholeptos," "Cristina," "Love among the Ruins," "By the Fire Side," "Any Wife to any Husband," "A Lovers' Quarrel," "Two in the Campagna," "Love in a Life," "Life in a Love," "The Lost Mistress," "A Woman's Last Word," "In a Gondola," "James Lee's Wife," "Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli," "O Lyric Love!" (in the first volume of the _Ring and the Book_), "Count Gismond," "Confessions," "The Flower's Name," "Women and Roses," "My Star," "Mesmerism." (These are by no means all, but are, perhaps, some of the best.)

=Lover's Quarrel, A.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Lyrics_, 1863; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) "A shaft from the devil's bow," in the shape of a bitter word, has divided two lovers who before were all the world to each other. It seems to him so amazing that the tongue can have power to sever such fond hearts as theirs. He comforts himself with the assurance that though in summertide's warmth heart can dispense with heart, the first chills of winter and the first approach of the storms of life will drive the loved one to his arms.

=Lucrezia.= (_Andrea del Sarto._) She was the wife of the artist--cold, unsympathetic, but beautiful--and was the model for much of his work. In the poem Andrea is conversing with her, and indicating the causes which have arrested his power as an artist.

=Luigi.= (_Pippa Passes._) The conspiring young patriot who meets his mother at evening in the turret on the hillside near Asolo. He believes he has a mission to kill the Emperor of Austria. His mother is trying to dissuade him, and he is about to yield, when Pippa's song as she passes re-inspires him, and he leaves the tower, and so escapes from the police who are on his track.

=Luitolfo.= (_A Soul's Tragedy._) Chiappino's false friend, and Eulalia's lover.

=Luria, A Tragedy.= (_Bells and Pomegranates_, VIII., 1846.) Time 14--. The historical incidents which are to some extent the basis of this play had their rise in the constant struggles between the Guelf and Ghibelline factions in Italy, which involved the various republics which arose in consequence of those wars in the most bitter internecine struggles for supremacy. One of the most important of these was the war between the Florentine and the Pisan republics. Wars between different Italian cities were frequent in the middle ages; according to Muratori, the first conflict was waged in 1003, when Pisa and Lucca contended for the mastery. In the eleventh century the military and real importance of Pisa was greatly developed, and was doubtless due to the necessity of constantly contending against Saracenic invasions. The chroniclers assert that the first war with Florence, which broke out in 1222, arose from a quarrel between the ambassadors of the rival states at Rome over a lapdog. When so trifling an occasion led to such a result, it is evident there were deeper grounds for hatred and mistrust at work. It is not within the scope of this work to trace the causes which led to the war between the two great Italian republics in the beginning of the fifteenth century. In the early part of the fourteenth century Castruccio became lord of Lucca and Pisa, and was victorious over the Florentines. In 1341 the Pisans besieged Lucca, in order to prevent the entry of the Florentines, to whom the city had been sold by Martino della Scala. The Florentines obtained Porto Talamone from Siena, and established a navy of their own. They attacked the harbour of Pisa, and carried away its chains, which they triumphantly bore to Florence, and suspended in front of the Baptistery, where they remained till 1848. As the war continued the Pisans suffered more and more. In 1369 they lost Lucca; in 1399 Visconti captured Pisa, and in 1406 the Florentines made another attack upon the city, besieging it both by sea and land. As the defenders were starving, they succeeded in entering the city on October 9th. The orders of the Ten of War at Florence were to crush every germ of rebellion and drive out its citizens by measures of the utmost harshness and cruelty. Mr. Browning's play has for its object to show how Pisa fell under the dominion of its powerful rival. The characters are Luria, a Moorish commander of the Florentine forces; Husain, a Moor, his friend; Puccio, the old Florentine commander, now Luria's chief officer; Braccio, commissary of the republic of Florence; Jacopo, his secretary; Tiburzio, commander of the Pisans; and Domizia, a noble Florentine lady. The scene is Luria's camp, between Florence and Pisa. The time extends only over one day, and the five Acts are named "Morning," "Noon," "Afternoon," "Evening," and "Night." A battle is about to take place which will decide the issue of the war. Luria is Browning's Othello, and one of the noblest of his characters. He is a simple, honest, whole-souled creature, incapable of guile, and devoted to the welfare of Florence. Puccio was formerly at the head of the Florentine army; he has been deposed for some state reason, and the Moorish mercenary substituted, he remaining as the subordinate of that general. The reasons which have induced the Seigniory to abstain from entrusting the command of its army to a Florentine are the most despicable that could influence any public body. They were understood to be afraid that they would have to reward the victorious general, or that he might use his power and influence with the people to make himself master of their city. So they choose a man whom they merely pay to fight for them--a Moor, who can have no friends amongst the citizens, and a stranger who can have no other claim upon them than his wages. They go further: they proceed to try him secretly for treason before he has committed it; they set spies to watch his every movement and to record his every word; they employ for this purpose unscrupulous men, well versed in the art of manufacturing evidence; they weave their toils so skilfully that by the time Luria has won their battle for them, they will have accumulated all the evidence which is required, and the death sentence will be pronounced as the victory is won. The appointment of the displaced Puccio to a secondary position in command was one of the steps taken for this end: he would naturally be discontented, and become a ready tool in the hands of the cold, skilful Braccio, all intellect, and practised in the most devious ways of statecraft. Professor Pancoast, in his valuable papers on _Luria_ in _Poet Lore_, vol. i, p. 555, and vol. ii., p. 19, says: "It is possible that Mr. Browning may have found the suggestion for this situation in a passage in Sapio Amminato's _Istoria Fiorentine_, relating to this expedition against Pisa. "And when all was ready, the expedition marched to the gates of Pisa, under the command of Conte Bartoldo Orsini, a Ventusian captain in the Florentine service, accompanied by Filippo di Megalotti, Rinaldo di Gian Figliazzi, and Maso degli Albizzi, in the character of commissaries of the commonwealth. For, although we have every confidence in the honour and fidelity of our general, you see it is always well to be on the safe side. And in the matter of receiving possession of a city, ... these nobles with the old feudal names! We know the ways of them! An Orsini might be as bad in Pisa as a Visconti, so we might as well send some of our own people to be on the spot. The three commissaries therefore accompanied the Florentine general to Pisa." (Am. xvii., Lib. Goup. 675.) These words throw an instructive light on Mr. Browning's drama, and seem to justify its motive. From this background of treachery and deceit the grand figure of Luria, honest, transparently ingenuous, generous, and true to the core, boldly stands forth to claim our admiration and our esteem. He knows nothing of their devious ways, can only go straightforward to his aim, and on this eve of the great battle he receives from Tiburzio, the commander of the Pisan forces, a letter which has been intercepted from Braccio to the Florentine Seigniory; he is desired to read it, as it exposes the plots which the Florentines are hatching against him. Luria declines to read the letter, tears it to pieces, and gives battle to the enemy. The victory is a great one: Pisa is in his hands; then he sends for Braccio, charges him with the treachery, and learns what the letter would have told him if he had read it. Braccio does not deny what Luria divines; charges have been prepared against him,--he will be tried that night. He maintains the absolute right of Florence to do as she has done. Domizia, whose brothers suffered shame and death in such manner at the hands of Florence, protests that Florence needs must mistrust a stranger's faith. At this moment Tiburzio, the Pisan general, enters, testifies to the faith of the man who has defeated him, and offers to resign to him his charge, the highest office, sword and shield, with the help which has just arrived from Lucca. He begs him to adopt their cause, and let Florence perish in her perfidy. Here was temptation indeed to Luria: his own victorious troops would not have turned their arms against him, and Pisa would have eagerly accepted him. But Luria dismisses Tiburzio, thanks him, bids him go: he is free,--"join Lucca!" And then, he reflects, he has still time before his sentence comes; he has it in his power to ruin Florence. Would it console him that his Florentines walked with a sadder step? He has one way of escape left him: he has brought poison from his own land for use in an emergency such as this; he drinks,--

"Florence is saved: I drink this, and ere night,--die!"

=Madhouse Cells.= The two poems _Johannes Agricola in Meditation_ and _Porphyria's Lover_ were published in _Dramatic Lyrics, Bells and Pomegranates_, No. III., under the general title MADHOUSE CELLS. In the _Poetical Works_ of 1863 the general title was given up.

=Magical Nature.= (_Pacchiarotto, with other Poems_: 1876.) The beauty of a flower is at the mercy of the destroying hand of time; the beauty of a jewel is independent of it. The petals drop off one by one, the flower perishes; every facet of the jewel may laugh at time. Mere fleshly graces are those of the flower; the soul's beauty is best symbolised by the gem.

=Malcrais.= (_Two Poets of Croisic._) Paul Desforges Maillard assumed the name of Malcrais when he sent his poems to the Paris _Mercure_, pretending they were the work of a lady.

="Man I am and man would be, Love."= The fourth lyric in _Ferishtah's Fancies_ begins with this line.

=Marching Along.= (No. I. of _Cavalier Tunes_.) Originally appeared in _Bells and Pomegranates_, 1842.