Chapter XX: Preface (18)

=Pippa Passes: A Drama.= (_Bells and Pomegranates_, No. I., 1841.) Pippa is the name of a girl employed at the silk mills at Asolo, in the Trevisan, in Northern Italy. In the whole year she has but one holiday: it is New Year's day, and she determines to make the most of it. She springs out of bed as day is breaking, mapping out as she dresses herself what she will do with Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night. She thinks of the four persons whose lot is most to be envied in the little town, and will imagine herself each of these in turn. But she claims that the day will be fine and not ill-use her. There is the great, haughty Ottima, whose husband, old Luca, sleeps in his mansion while his wife makes love; her lover Sebald will be just as devoted, however the rain may beat on the home. Jules, the sculptor, will wed his Phene to-day: nothing can disturb their happiness, their sunbeams are in their own breasts. Evening may be misty, but Luigi and his lady mother will not heed it. Monsignor will be here from Rome to visit his brother's house: no storm will disturb his holy peace. But for Pippa, the silkwinder, a wet day would darken her whole next year. So her morning fancy starts her as Ottima: all the gardens and the great storehouse are hers. But this is not the kind of love she envies; there's better love, she knows. Her next choice shall give no cause for the scoffer--wedded love, like that of Jules and Phene, for example. But still improvement can be made even upon that: it is, after all, but new love; hers should have lapped her round from the beginning: "only parents' love can last our lives." She will be Luigi, communing with his mother in the turret. But if we come to that, God's love is better even than that of Monsignor the holy and beloved priest, for to-night Pippa will in fancy have her dwelling in the palace by the Dome.--I. MORNING. Ottima is with her paramour, the German Sebald, in the shrub-house. They have murdered Luca, and are talking calmly of their sin, and contrasting their present freedom with the restraint of last New Year's day. Ottima's husband can no longer fondle her before her lover's face. But there is the corpse to remove, and as Sebald reflects, he begins to regret his treachery to the man who fed and sheltered him. Ottima tells him she loves him better for the crime. They caress each other, and as Sebald fondles Ottima the voice of Pippa singing as she passes is heard from without: "God's in His heaven." Sebald starts, conscience-stricken; Ottima says it is only "that ragged little girl!" At once Sebald is disenchanted; he sees the woman in all the naked horror of her crimes; all her grace and beauty are gone; he hates and curses her. The woman takes the guilt all upon her own head, and prays for him, not for herself: forgetting self, she thinks only of Sebald. "Not me--to him, O God, be merciful!" To her guilty soul also comes the reflection, "God's in His heaven." In self-sacrifice begins her redemption. Pippa has converted both. While Pippa is passing to Orcana, some students from Venice are discussing a jest they have played off on Jules. They have, by means of sham letters which they have concocted between them and sent him as coming from the girl he loves, induced him to believe she was a cultivated woman, and he has been deceived into marrying her.--II. NOON. When the ceremony is over the truth is told him. He gives his bride gold, and is preparing to separate from her, when Pippa passes, singing "Give her but a least excuse to love me!" Jules reasons, Here is a woman with utter need of him. She has an awakening moral sense, a soul like his own sculptured Psyche, waiting his word to make it bright with life--he will evoke this woman's soul in some isle in far-off seas! He forgives her. Pippa's song has worked the reconciliation.--III. EVENING. Luigi and his mother are conversing in the turret on the hill above Asolo. Luigi is what has been termed a "patriot"; he is suspected of belonging to the secret society of the Carbonari, and is at the moment actually discussing with his mother a plot to kill the Emperor of Austria. His mother tells him that half the ills of Italy are feigned, that patriotism seems the easiest virtue for a selfish man to acquire. She urges him to delay his journey to Vienna till the morning. Endeavouring to dissuade him thus, he is on the point of yielding, when Pippa passes, singing "No need the king should ever die!" "Not that sort of king," says Luigi. "Such grace had kings when the world began!" continues the passing Pippa. Luigi says, "It is God's voice calls," and he goes away. He thereby escapes the police, who had just arranged that if he remained at the turret over the night, he was to be arrested at once. Pippa goes on from the turret to the Bishop's brother's home, near the Cathedral.--IV. NIGHT. And here we are shown how little we poor puppets know of the strings which prompt our movements. Pippa would be Ottima, the murderess; and as she, the poor but good and happy silkwinder, trudges on her way to make the holiday of the year, the voluptuous murderess is purifying her wicked soul in agony. She sings in the lightness of her heart, and a line of her morning hymn is the arrow of God to two sinful souls. She would be the bride of Jules--the bride who has just been detected in fraud, on the point of rejection, and who has been redeemed by the snatch of Pippa's innocent monition. She would be the happy Luigi, who would have failed in a purpose he deemed to be a noble one, and would have been a prisoner in the hands of the Austrian police if he had not been nerved by her careless eulogy of good kings. And now, as she approaches her ideally perfect persons, the holy Monsignor is actually engaged in taking steps for her ruin. His superintendent is explaining a plan he has elaborated for getting rid of Pippa, who is the child of his brother, and to whom the property he is holding rightfully belongs. The superintendent has found an English scoundrel named Bluphocks, residing in the locality, who will entrap the girl and take her to Rome to lead a vicious life, which will kill her in a few years. The bishop is listening to the tempter, when Pippa passes, singing one of her innocent little songs, ending with the line--

"Suddenly God took me."

This awakens the conscience of the ecclesiastic, who calls his servants to arrest the villain. All unconscious, as night falls Pippa re-enters her chamber. She has been in fancy the holy Monsignor, Luigi's gentle mother, Luigi himself, Jules the sculptor's bride, and Ottima as well. Tired of fooling, she notices that the sun has dropped into a black cloud, and as night comes on she wonders how nearly she has approached these people of her fancy, to do them good or evil in some slight way; and as she falls asleep she murmurs--

"All service ranks the same with God--
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first."

The drama shows us how near God is to us in conscience. "God stands apart," as the poet says, "to give man room to work"; but in every great crisis of our life, if we listen we may hear Him warning, threatening, guiding, revealing. Not near to answer problems of existence, or to solve the mystery of life: this would interfere with our development of soul; but near to save us from the dangers that await us at every step. The drama shows us, too, our mutual interdependence. Pippa, the silk-girl, had a mission to convert Ottima, Sebald, Jules, and the Bishop. We look for great things to work for us: it is ever the unseen, unfelt influences which are the most potent. We are taught, also, that there is nothing we do or say but may be big with good or evil consequences to many of our fellows of whom we know nothing. People whom we have never seen, of whose very existence we are ignorant, are affected for good or evil eternally by our lightest words and our most thoughtless actions.

NOTES.--For an account of _Asolo_ see p. 49 of this work. Silk in large quantities is manufactured in this part of Italy. There is no historical foundation for any of the incidents of the poem. The song in Part II., which Jules and Phene hear, relates, however, to Caterina Carnaro, the exiled Queen of Cyprus. _Possagno_: an obscure village situated amongst the hills of Asolo, famous as the birthplace of Canova, the sculptor. _Cicala_: a grasshopper.--I. MORNING. "_The Capuchin with his brown hood_": the Capuchin monks are familiar to all travellers in Italy. They are a branch of the great Franciscan Order. The habit is brown. The Order was established by St. Francis in the thirteenth century. "Cappuccino" means playfully "little hooded fellow." "_Campanula chalice_": the bell of a flower, as of a Canterbury-bell. "_Bluphocks_": the name means "Blue Fox," and is a skit on the _Edinburgh Review_, which is bound in a cover of blue and fox. "_Et canibus nostris_," even to our dogs. _Canova, Antonio_ (1757-1822), one of the greatest sculptors of modern times. He was born at Passagno, near Asolo, the scene of Pippa's drama. "_Psiche-fanciulla_": Psyche as a young girl with a butterfly, the personification of man's immaterial part. This sculpture is considered as the most faultless and classical of Canova's works. _Pietà_: sculpture representing the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Christ on her knees. _Malamocco_: "The Lagoon, immediately opposite to Venice, is closed by a long shoaly island, Malamocco" (_Murray_). _Alciphron_: lived in the age of Alexander the Great. He was a philosopher of Magnesia. _Lire_: the lira is an Italian coin of the value of a franc (say, tenpence). _Tydeus_, a son of Oeneus, king of Colydon. He was one of the great heroes of the Theban war.--II. NOON. _Coluthus_, a native of Lycopolis, in Egypt, who wrote a poem on the rape of Helen of Troy. He lived probably about the beginning of the sixth century. _Bessarion_: Cardinal Bessarion discovered the poem of Coluthus in Lycopolis in the fifteenth century. _Odyssey_: Homer's poem which narrates the adventures of Ulysses. _Antinous_: One of the suitors of Penelope during the absence of Odysseus. He attempted to seize the kingdom and was killed by Odysseus on his return. _Almaign Kaiser_: the German Emperor. _Hippolyta_: a queen of the Amazons, who was conquered by Hercules, and by him given in marriage to Theseus. _Numidia_: a country of North Africa, now called Algiers. _Hipparchus_: a son of Pisistratus, and tyrant of Athens. He was a great patron of literature. His crimes led to his assassination by a band of conspirators, the leaders of which were Harmodius and Aristogiton. _Archetype_: the pattern or model of a work. _Dryad_: a wood-nymph. _Primordial_, original. _Cornaro_: Queen of Cyprus. Venice took her kingdom from her, and compelled her to resign, assigning her a palace at Asolo. _Ancona_: a city of central Italy, on the shores of the Adriatic. _Intendant_, a superintendent. "_Celarent, Darii, Ferio_": coined words used in logic. "_Bishop Beveridge_": there was a bishop of that name; but this is a pun, and means beverage (drink). _Zwanziger_: a twenty-kreuzer piece of money. "_Charon's wherry_": Charon was a god of hell, who conducted souls across the river Styx. _Lupine-seed_, in plant-lore "lupine" means wolfish, and is suggestive of the Evil One. (_Flower-lore_, by Friend, p. 59.) _Hecate_, a goddess of Hell, to whom offerings were made of eggs, fish, and onions. _Obolus_, a silver coin of the Greeks, worth 8_d._ They used to put it into the mouth of the corpse as Charon's fee. "_To pay the Stygian ferry_": the river Styx, in the infernal regions, across which Charon conducted the souls, and received an obolus for his fee. _Prince Metternich_ (1773-1859): a celebrated Austrian statesman. _Panurge_: a character of Rabelais'. He was a companion of Pantagruel's. He was an impecunious rake and dodger, a boon companion and licentious coward. _Hertrippa_: one of Rabelais' characters in his _Gargantua and Pantagruel_. _Carbonari_: the name of an Italian secret society which arose in 1820. _Spielberg_: the name of a hill near Brünn, in Moravia, on which stands the castle wherein Silvio Pellico the patriot was confined.--III. EVENING. _Lucius Junius Brutus_, whose example animated the Romans to rise against the tyranny of the infamous Tarquin. _Pellicos_: Silvio Pellico was an Italian dramatist and patriot (1788-1854). He was arrested as a member of a secret society by the Austrian Government, and imprisoned for fifteen years in Spielberg Castle, near Brünn. "_The Titian at Treviso_": Treviso is a town in Italy, seventeen miles from Venice. In the cathedral of San Pietro there is a fine Annunciation by Titian (1519). _Python_: the monster serpent slain by Apollo near Delphi. _Breganze wine_: of Breganza, a village north of Vicenza.--IV. NIGHT. _Benedicto benedicatur_: a form of blessing. _Assumption Day_: the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin into Heaven. It is kept on August 15th. _Correggio_: one of the great Italian painters (1494-1534). _Podere_, a manor. _Cesena_: an episcopal city lying between Bologna and Ancona. _Soldo_, a penny. "_Miserere mei, Domine_," "Have mercy on me, O God!" _Brenta_, a river of North Italy. _Polenta_, a pudding of chestnut flour, etc.

=Pisgah-Sights.= (_Pacchiarotto_ volume, 1876.) 1. From a high mountain the roughness and smoothness of the distant landscape seem to blend into a harmonious picture, the uncouthness is hidden by the grace, the angles are blunted into roundness, its harshness is reconciled into a beautiful whole. If we could be taken by angelic hands and be borne a few miles beyond the surface of the earth, all her mountains would dwindle down till the rough, scarred and furrowed earth would become a perfect orb. A little nearer heaven, and a little farther away from the scene of our pilgrimage here, and evil and sorrow and pain and want will all soften down and be lost in good and joy and blessedness. We are too close to things here to get the right view of their proportions; a handbreadth off, and things which are mysteries to us now will be clear as the daylight. All will be seen as lend and borrow, good will be recognised as the brother of evil, and joy will be seen to demand sorrow for its completion. Why man's existence must so be mixed we cannot say; the majority only begin to see the round orb of things as they near the end of their journey. 2. If we could live our life over again, would we strive any longer? Would we exercise greed and ambition, burrow for earth's treasures, soar for the sun's rights, or not rather be content with turf and foliage--just plain learners of life's lessons, with no attempt to teach, with no desire to rearrange anything at all? Should we not be stationary while the march of hurrying men defiling past us, made us complacent at our post, reflecting that the only possibility of fearing, wondering at, or loving anything at all, lay in our keeping, at a respectful distance from everything which men were hurrying to seek? 3. If it be better to forget than to forgive, so is it better than living to die, to let body slumber while soul, as Indian sages tell, wanders at large, fretless and free, encumbered nevermore by body's grossness, soul in sunshine and love, body under mosses and ferns.

NOTE.--V. 2, _Deniers_, small copper French coins of insignificant value.

=Plot-Culture.= (_Ferishtah's Fancies_, 10: "God's All-Seeing Eye.") "If all we do or think or say be marked minute by minute by the Supreme, may not our very making prove offence to the Maker's eye and ear?" Thus argued a disciple. The Dervish answers, "There is a limit-line rounding us, severing us from the immensity, cutting us from the illimitable. All of us is for the Maker; all the produce we can within the circle produce for the Master's use is His in autumn. He wants to know nothing of the manure which fertilises the soil--of this we are masters absolute; but we must remember doomsday." In the lyric the singer indicates the uses of Sense as distinguished from Soul. "Soul, travel-worn, toil-weary," is not for love-making; for that let Sense quench Soul!

=Poetics.= (_Asolando_, 1889.) The singer says the foolish call their Love "My rose," "My swan," or they compare her to the maid-moon blessing the earth below. He will have none of this: he tells the rose there is no balm like breath; bids the swan bend its neck its best,--his love's is the whiter curve. Let the moon be the moon,--he is not afraid to place his Love beside it. She is her human self, and no lower words will describe her.

=Polyxena.= (_King Victor and King Charles._) The wife of King Charles: full of resolution, and instinctively sees the right thing, and does it at the appropriate moment. Her "noble and right woman's manliness," as Mr. Browning calls it, enables her to counteract her husband's weakness and to clear his mental vision. Magnanimous and loyal to all, especially to herself and truth, she is one of the poet's finest female characters.

=Pompilia.= (_The Ring and the Book._) She was the wife of Count Guido Franceschini, and he killed her, with her foster-parents, when she escaped from his cruel treatment and fled to Rome with the good priest Caponsacchi. She is Browning's noblest and most beautiful female character. There is an excellent study of Pompilia in _Poet Lore_, vol. i., p. 263. The keynote of her character is found in the line of the poem--

"I knew the right place by foot's feel;
I took it, and tread firm there."

=Ponte dell' Angelo= (Venice) == The Angel's Bridge. (_Asolando_, 1889.) Boverio, in his _Annals_, 1552, n. 69, relates this legend of Our Lady. It is recorded at length in _The Glories of Mary_, by St. Alphonsus Liguori (p. 192), a curious work which contains a great number of such stories, which have for their moral the efficacy of prayers to Our Lady as a protection from the devil. On one of the large canals at Venice is a house with the figure of an angel guarding it from harm. Once upon a time (says Father Boverio in his _Annals_) this house belonged to a lawyer, who was a cruel oppressor of all who sought his advice; never was such an extortionate rascal, though a devout one. On one occasion, after a particularly lucrative week, he determined to ask some holy man to dinner, as he could not get the memory of a widow whom he had wronged out of his mind; so he invited the chief of the Capucins to disinfect his house by his holy presence. The monk duly presented himself, and was informed that a most admirable helpmate in the house was an ape, who worked for him indefatigably. The host leaves his guest for awhile, that he may go below to see how the dinner progresses. No sooner had the lawyer left the room than the monk, by the instinct which saints possess for detecting the devil under every disguise, adjures the ape to come out of his hiding-place and show himself _in propriâ personâ_. Satan stands forth, and explains that he is there to convey to hell the lawyer who plagued the widows and orphans by his exactions. The monk asks how it came to pass that he had so long delayed God's commission by acting as servant where he should have been a minister of justice. The devil explains that the lawyer had placed himself under the Virgin's protection by the prayers which he never intermitted; thus the man is armed in mail, and cannot be lugged off to hell while saying, "Save me, Madonna!" If he should discontinue that prayer, Satan would pounce on him at once. He waits, therefore, hoping to catch him napping. The holy man adjures him to vanish. The fiend says he cannot leave the house without doing some damage to prove that his errand had been fulfilled. The saint bade him make his exit through the wall, and leave a gap in the stone for every one to see, which, having duly been done, the monk goes downstairs to dinner with a good appetite. The host asks what has become of the ape, whose assistance he requires, and is terrified to see his guest wringing blood from the table napkin. It is explained that the miracle is performed to show him how he has wrung blood from his clients, and the host is bidden to go down on his knees and swear to make restitution. The man consents, and absolution following, he is forthwith taken upstairs to see the hole in the wall left by the devil exorcised by his saintship. The lawyer fears that Satan may use the aperture of exit for an entry to his dwelling at a future time, when the Capucin bids him erect the figure of an angel and place it by the aperture, which holy sign will frighten the fiend away. And this is why the house by the bridge has the angel on the escutcheon, and why the bridge itself is called the Angel's Bridge, though Mr. Browning thinks the Devil's Bridge would have been as good a name for it.

=Pope, The.= (_The Ring and the Book._) The final appeal in the Franceschini murder case being to the Pope, he has to decide the fate of the Count. He reviews the whole case in the tenth book, and gives his decision for the execution of the murderers. Browning's old men are some of his greatest creations, and _The Pope_ is perhaps the finest of such conceptions. There is an excellent essay on _The Pope_ in _Poet Lore_, vol i., p. 309, by Professor Shackford.

=Pope, The, and the Net.= (_Asolando_, 1889.) It is generally supposed that this poem refers to Pope Sixtus V. Mr. Browning possibly obtained the idea from Leti's well-known biography of the Pope, which is full of fables. Dr. Furnivall, however, thinks that Mr. Browning invented the story. It is said that the character of Sixtus V. suits the poem better than any other. The pope in question--Felice Peretti--was born in 1521, of poor parents, but the story of his having been a swineherd in his youth seems to be mere legend. The _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (9th edition) says he was created cardinal in 1570, when he lived in strict retirement; affecting, it is said, to be in a precarious state of health. According to the usual story, which is probably at least exaggerated, this dissimulation greatly contributed to his unexpected elevation to the papacy on the next vacancy (April 24th, 1585). "Sixtus V. left the reputation of a zealous and austere pope--with the pernicious qualities inseparable from such a character in his age--of a stern and terrible, but just and magnanimous temporal magistrate, of a great sovereign in an age of great sovereigns, of a man always aiming at the highest things, and whose great faults were but the exaggerations of great virtues." The best view of his character is that given by Ranke. Mr. Browning makes his Pope to be the son of a fisherman, who, on his elevation to the cardinalate, kept his fisher-father's net in his palace-hall on a coat-of-arms, as token of his humility. When, however, he became Pope, the net was removed because it had caught the fish.

=Popularity.= (_Men and Women_, vol. ii., 1855.) This poem is a tribute to Keats. Shelley and Keats soon displaced Pope and Byron from the mind of the youthful poet who gave us _Pauline_: it is not difficult to trace in that first work of Browning's the influence of both. When, as a boy, he made acquaintance with the then little-known works of Keats, we can guess, even if biographers had not told us, how the author of _Endymion_ and _The Eve of St. Agnes_ would charm the young poet's soul. "Remember," he says here, "one man saw you, knew you, and named a star!" Then he fancies him as a fisherman on Tyrian seas, plundering the ocean of her purple dye: kings' houses shall be made glorious and their persons beautiful with the product of the coloured conchs. Then he sees merchants bottling the extract and selling it to the world. They eat turtle and drink claret, but who fished up the murex? How does he live? What mean food had John Keats all his struggling life? He taught men to paint their ideas in glowing word-tints and images luxuriant. These men gorge, while the man who ransacked the ocean of thought and the world of fancy is left to starve.

NOTES.--Verse 6, _Tyrian shells_: the genera Murex and Purpura have a gland called the "adrectal gland, which secretes a colourless liquid, which turns purple upon exposure to the atmosphere, and was used by the ancients as a dye" (_Encyc. Brit._). It was a discovery of the Phoenicians, and was known to the Greeks in the Homeric age. The juice collected from the shells was placed in salt, and heated in metal vessels; then the wool or silk was dyed in it. Tyrian purple wool in Cæsar's time cost £43 10_s._ a pound. Purple robes were used from very early times as a mark of dignity. Tyre was a very ancient city of Phoenicia, with great harbours and very splendid buildings. _Astarte_: the Venus of the Greeks and Romans, a powerful Syrian divinity. She had a great temple at Hieropolis, in Syria, with three hundred priests. v. 12, _Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes, and Nokes_: fancy names, of course--meaning the men who profit by other men's labours. They bottle and sell the precious things for which the brave fisherman risks his life and spends his days and nights, after all receiving but a miserable fraction of the gain. v. 13, _Murex_: the genus of molluscs from which the Tyrian purple dye was obtained. It was of the class GASTROPODA, order AZYGOBRANCHIA, sub-order _Siphonochlamyda_, *_Rachiglossa_, family _Muricidæ_. _Purpura_ also was used (hence _purple_), of the same sub-order--family _Buccinidæ_. "_What porridge had John Keats?_" John Keats, the poet, was born Oct. 29th, 1795, and died of consumption in Rome, Feb. 23rd, 1821, when only twenty-six years old. His _Ode to a Nightingale_ will serve to immortalise him, even if he had written nothing else. After this his best poems are his _Endymion_, _Hyperion_, and the _Eve of St. Agnes_. His straitened circumstances and his ill-health made him hysterical and fretful; but though he was certainly cruelly used by his reviewers, it is only a ridiculous legend that he was killed by an article against him in the _Quarterly Review_. Bitter reviews of our books do not introduce to our lungs the microbes of tuberculosis.

=Porphyria's Lover.= (Published first in Mr. Fox's _Monthly Repository_ in 1836, over the signature "Z." Reprinted as II. "Madhouse Cells," in _Dramatic Lyrics, Bells and Pomegranates_, 1842.) In the midst of a storm at night, to a man sitting alone by a burnt-out fire in his room, enters the woman whom he loves, but of whose love he has never been sure in return. She glides in, shuts out the storm, kneels by the dull grate and makes a cheerful blaze, takes off her dripping cloak, lets down her damp hair, sits by his side, speaks to him, puts her arm around him, rests his cheek on her bosom, and murmuring that she loves him, gives herself to him for ever. At last, then, he knows it; his heart swells with joyful surprise, he realises the tremendous wealth of which he is thus suddenly possessed; and lest change should ever come, lest the wealth should ever be squandered, the possession ever be lost, he will kill her that moment: and so, as she reposes there, he winds her beautiful long hair in a cord thrice round her little throat, and she is strangled--painlessly, he knows, but his unalterably, because dead. And God, he says, has watched them as they sat the night through, and He has not said a word! This poem was Browning's first monologue.

=Potter's Wheel, The.= The figure of the potter's wheel in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ is taken from Isaiah lxiv. 8, Jeremiah xviii. 2-6, and Romans ix. 20, 21. See a similar use of the figure in Quarles' _Emblems_ (Book III., Emblem 5).

=Pretty Woman, A.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) Here is a beautiful woman--simply a beauty, nothing more. What, then, is not that enough? Why cannot we let her just adorn the world like a beautiful flower? Why do we demand more of her than to gladden us with her charms? So the craftsman makes a rose of gold petals with rubies in its cup, all his fine things merely effacing the rose which grew in the garden. The best way to grace a rose is to leave it; not gather it, smell it, kiss it, wear it, and then throw it away. Leave the pretty woman just to beautify the world,--it needs it!

=Prince Berthold.= (_Colombe's Birthday._) He claims, by right, the duchy which is held by Colombe.

=Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society= (1871). Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau represents the Emperor Napoleon III. Hohenstiel-Schwangau represents France. The name is formed from that of one of the Bavarian royal castles called Hohen-Schwangau. Visitors to the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play will remember the beautiful and luxurious castles which the mad king built and furnished in so costly a manner in the midst of the picturesque scenery of the Bavarian Alps. The poem deals with the subjective processes which Browning supposed animated Napoleon III. in his character as Saviour of Society. _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is not precisely a soul-portrait of the Emperor Napoleon III. Mr. Browning does not draw portraits--he analyses characters. He has therefore used the Emperor as a model is used by an artist. The artist does not simply paint the model's portrait, he uses him for a higher purpose of art. Mrs. Browning was greatly interested in Louis Napoleon, enthusiastically entered into the spirit of his ambitions, and considered him as "the Saviour of Society." She loved Italy so passionately that the destroyer of the power of Austria over the land which she loved could not fail to win her admiration; and this, probably, was the chief reason of her esteem for him. Her poem _Napoleon III. in Italy_ should be read in this connection; each verse ends "Emperor Evermore." She says:--

"We meet thee, O Napoleon, at this height
At last, and find thee great enough to praise.
Receive the poet's chrism, which smells beyond
The priest's, and pass thy ways!
An English poet warns thee to maintain
God's word, not England's;--let His truth be true,
And all men liars! with His truth respond
To all men's lie."

She goes on to call him "Sublime Deliverer," and praises him for that "he came to deliver Italy."

[THE MAN.] For some of my younger readers, who may not be familiar with the career of the late Emperor of France, it may be necessary to remind them of the following facts in his history. He was born at Paris on April 20th, 1808. The revolution of 1830, which dethroned the Bourbons, first launched Louis Napoleon on his eventful career. With his elder brother he joined the Italian bands who were in revolt against the pope. This revolt was suppressed by Austrian soldiers. The law banishing the Bonapartes exiled him on his return to Paris, and he came to England at the age of twenty-three. In a few weeks he went to Switzerland, and wrote an essay on that country. Returning to France, he was arrested and sent to America by Louis Philippe in 1836. He returned to Switzerland next year, but shortly after left for England again, living this time in Carlton Terrace. In 1840 he made his descent upon France; his party were shot or imprisoned, Louis being condemned to perpetual imprisonment in the castle of Ham, on the Somme. He escaped after six years, and once more went to London, living at 10, King Street, St. James's. When Louis Philippe died, in 1848, Louis went to France and offered himself to the provisional government. He was ordered to withdraw from France, which he did. In April 1848 he acted as a special constable in London at the time of the Chartist disturbances. Soon after, he was elected in France to the Assembly, in three departments. In December 1848 he was elected president of the Republic by above five million votes. On the 2nd December, 1851, he executed the _coup d'état_, and soon after was made Emperor by the votes of nearly eight million persons. For eighteen years Louis Napoleon was sovereign of France. He married Eugénie de Montigo, Countess of Teba, Jan. 30th, 1853. On the 4th June was fought the battle of Magenta, for the liberation of Italy; and he entered Milan the next morning in company with Victor Emmanuel. He met the Emperor of Austria at Villafranca on July 11th, and the preliminaries of peace were arranged. He was hurried into the war with Germany by the clerical party at court in 1870, his advisers seeing no hope for the permanence of his dynasty but in a successful war. At the defeat of Sedan he was made prisoner, with ninety thousand men. He was incarcerated at Wilhelmshöhe, near Cassel, from which he subsequently retired to England. He lived with the Empress at Chislehurst, dying there on Jan. 9th, 1873.

[THE POEM.] The Prince is talking with Lais, an adventuress, in a room near Leicester Square. He is explaining that he has not been actuated in his past life by any desire to make anything new, but merely to conserve things, and carry on what he found ready for him: thus he has been a conserver, a saviour of society. He has lived to please himself, though he recognises God and considers himself as His instrument. God is not to every one the same; to the woman of the town with whom he is conversing, He is the Providence that helps her to pay her way. God is to all men just what they conceive him to be: a shopkeeper's God and a king's God differ,--it is just as they conceive Him. For his own part he has tried on a large scale to please himself; but he has an eye to another world also, so he must carry out God's wishes so far as he understands them,--he must preserve what he found established. He thinks himself a great man because a great conservator of order. There have been changes by God's acts, but he has held it his object in life to find out the good already existing, and preserve it. It is only the inspired man who can change society from round to square; he is himself only the man of the moment; if he succeeds, the inspired man will be the first to recognise the value of his work. He will touch nothing unless reverently; he has no higher hope than to reconcile good with hardly-quite-as-good; he will not risk a whiff of his cigar for Fourier and Comte, and all that ends in smoke. He thinks it best to be contented with what is bad but might be worse. For twenty years he has held the balance straight, and so has done good service to humanity; he has not trodden the world into a paste, that he might roll it out flat and smooth; it has been no part of his task to mend God's mistakes. All else but what a man feels is nothing, and the thing on which he congratulates himself as a ruler of men is that everything he knows, feels, or can conceive, he can make his own. He thinks that God made all things for him, and himself for Him. To learn how to set foot decidedly on some one path to heaven makes it worth while to handle things tenderly; we might mend them, but also we might mar them; meanwhile they help on so far, and therefore his end is to save society. He has no novelties to offer, he creates nothing, has no desire to renew the age,--his task is to cooperate, not to chop and change. All the good we know comes from order; he will not interfere with evil, because good is brought about by its means. When a chemist wants a white substance, and knows that the dye can be obtained from black ingredients, what a fool he would be if he were to insist that these also should be white! The Prince does not disapprove this bad world, and has no faith in a perfectly good one here. Is there any question as to the wisdom of saving society? Did he work aright with the powers appointed him for this end? On reviewing his work he finds more hope than discouragement: what he found he left, what was tottering he kept stable. It is God's part to work great changes. He discovered that a solitary great man was worth the world. It was his work to tend the cornfield, to feed the myriads of hungry men who sought for daily bread and nothing more. Was he to turn aside from that to play at horticulture, look after the cornflowers and rear the poppies? "I am Liberty, Philanthropy, Enlightenment, Patriotism," cried each: "flaunt my flag alone!" He objected, "What about the myriads who have no flag at all?" If he had to choose between faith and freedom, aristocracy and democracy, or effecting the freedom of an oppressed nation, he would ask, "How many years on an average do men live in the world?" "Some score," he is told. To this he replies, if he had a hundred years to live he might concentrate his energies on some great cause. But he has a cause, a flag and a faith: it is Italy. There was a time when he was voice and nothing more, but only like his censors; then he was full of great aims. Has he failed in promise or performance? He thinks in neither; he found that men wanted merely to be allowed to live, and so he consulted for his kind that have the eyes to see, the mouths to eat, the hands to work. Nature told him to care for himself alone in the conduct of his mind; he was to think as if man had never thought before, and act as if all creation watched him. Nature has evolved her man from the jelly-fish through various stages, till he has reached the headship of creation. He, too, the Prince, has been evolved, and can sympathise with all classes of men. Men in the main have little wants, not large; it was his duty to help the least wants first: if only he could live a hundred years instead of the average twenty, he could experiment at ease. Men want meat; they can't chew Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_ in exchange. Obstacles, he has discovered, are good for mankind; medicines are impeded in their action, and so are state remedies; it is not possible always to effect precisely what is intended, neither would it be always best in the long run. He illustrates this by a story of an artist's trick he saw in Rome once. An artist had covered up the sons and serpents of a Laocoön group, leaving only the central figure, with nothing to show the purpose of his gesture; then a crowd was called to give their opinion of the gesture of the figure. Every one thought it showed a man yawning, except one man, who said "I think the gesture strives against some obstacle we cannot see." Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau would like this far-sighted individual to write his history: he would be able to tell the world how he who was so misunderstood has tried to be a man. And here, he says, ends his autobiography. He will now give some idea to his companion (Lais, a not unsuitable auditor for his apologia) of what he might have been if his visions had become realities. Had his story been told by an historian of the Thiers-Hugo sort, he might have appeared thus. The nation chose the Assembly first to serve her, chose the President afterward chiefly to see that her servants did good service; when the time came that the head servant must vacate his place, and it was patent that his fellow-servants were all knaves or fools, seeing that everybody was working to serve his own purposes, that they were only waiting for the president's term of office to expire, to see their own longings crowned, he appealed to the Assembly, showed how his fellow-servants had been plotting and scheming while he alone had been faithful to the nation which had trusted him, and suggested that he should be made "master for the moment." Let him be entrusted with the utmost power they could confer upon him, he would use it faithfully. And the nation answered, with a shout,--

"The trusty one! no tricksters any more!"

Up to the time when his term of office as president must expire he had let things go their own way, knowing all, seeing everything, but letting things develop. Not that this was unsuspected by his enemies: they guessed that he was meditating some stroke of state; they saw through him, as he through them, and were on their guard. He was re-elected, and there was uprising. "The knaves and fools, each trickster with his dupe," dropped their masks, unfurled their flags, and brandished their weapons. Then fell his fist on the head of craft and greed and impudence; the fancy patriot, and the night hawk prowling for his prey, all alike were reduced to order and obedience. Of course it was demurred that he was too prodigal of life and liberty, too swift, too thorough; and Sagacity complained that he had let things go on unnoticed till severe measures had been required: he should have frustrated villainy in the egg; so for want of the by-blow had to come the butcher's work. To all this he replies that his oath had restrained him; he had rather appealed to the people for the commission to act as he had done. And then began his sway; and his motto had been, Govern for the many first, think of the poor mean multitude, all mouths and eyes primarily, and then proceed to help the few, the better favoured. His aim had been to try to equalise things a little, and this by way of reverence. He did his work with might and main, and not a touch of fear, but with confidence in God who comes before and after; irresolute as he was at first, now that the cankers of society were laid bare before him, he wrenched them out without a touch of indecision. And so, when the Republic, violating its own highest principle, bade Hohenstiel-Schwangau (really France) fasten in the throat of a neighbour (Italy), and deprive her of liberty, in this he saw an infamy triumphant; and when he came into power, he saw, too, that it demanded his interference. Sagacity said, "Let the wrong stand over,--he was not to blame for the wrong, it was there before his time." But he was prompt to act. Out came the canker, root and branch, with much abuse for him from friend and foe. Sagacity said he had been precipitate, rash, and rude, though in the right: he should have blown a trumpet-blast to let the wrong-doers know they must set their house in order. He replies that he would have broken another generation's heart by the respite to the iniquity. And so the war came. "But France," said Sagacity, "had ever been a fighter, and would continue to be so till the weary world interfered." Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau recognises this, and says war for war's sake is damnable. He will prevent the growth of this madness. This, however, does not imply that there shall be no war at all, when the wickedness he denounces comes from the neighbour. He will deliver Italy from the rule of Austria, smite her oppressor hip and thigh till he leaves her free from the Adriatic to the Alps. Sagacity suggests that this should not be all for nought: "there ought to be some honorarium paid--Savoy and Nice, for example." But the Prince says "No; let there be war for the hate of war." So Italy was free. But there were other points noteworthy and commendable in the man's career: he was resolute, fearless, and true, and by his rule the world had proof a point was gained. He had shown he was the fittest man to rule; chance of birth and dice-throw had been outdone here. Sagacity often advised him to confirm the advance, and bade him wed the pick of the world; if he married a queen, he might tell the world that the old enthroned decrepitudes acknowledged that their knell had sounded, and that they were making peace with the new order. Or let him have a free wife for his free state. Sagacity desires to prop up the lie that the son derives his genius from the sire, but God does not work like this. He drops His seed of heavenly flame where He wills on earth; the rock all naked and unprepared is as likely to receive it as the accumulated store of faculties:

"The great Gardener grafts the excellence
On wildings where He will."

He tells the story of the manner in which the succession of priests was maintained at an old Roman temple. Each priest obtained his predecessor's office by springing from ambush and slaying him,--his initiative rite was simply murder under a religious sanction; so he says it is, and ever shall be with genius and its priesthood in the world, the new power slays the old. Thus did the Prince refute Sagacity, always whispering in his ear that Fortune alternates with Providence, and he must not reckon on a happy hit occurring twice. But he will trust nothing to right divine and luck of the pillow; rulers should be selected by supremacy of brains; a blunder may ensue; it cannot be worse than the rule of the legitimate blockhead. By this time poor Lais has gone to sleep (little wonder!). The Prince leaves off imagining what the historian of the Thiers-Hugo school might have written, of the life he might have led, and the things he might have done. All this was in cloud-land. In the inner chamber of the soul the silent truth fights the battle out with the lie, truth which unarmed pits herself against the armoury of the tongue. We must use words though; and somehow--as even do the best rifled cannon--words will deflect the shot.

NOTES.--_Oedipus_, son of Laius, king of Thebes, and Jocasta. He was exposed to the persecutions of Juno from his birth. He murdered his father and committed incest with his mother. _Riddle of the Sphinx_: Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx, a terrible monster which devoured all those who attempted its solution and failed. The enigma was this: "What animal in the morning walks upon four feet, at noon upon two, and in the evening upon three?" Oedipus said: "Man, in the morning of his life, goes on all fours; when grown to manhood, he walks erect; and in old age, the evening of life, supports himself with a stick." "_Home's stilts_": the spirit-rapper, D. D. Home, is here referred to. (See, for Mr. Browning's opinion of Spiritualism, his poem _Mr. Sludge the Medium_. Sludge is really Home.) _Corinth_, an ancient city of Greece, celebrated for its wealth and the luxury of its inhabitants. _Thebes_: the Sphinx resorted to the neighbourhood of this city. It was the capital of Boeotia, and one of the most ancient cities of Greece. _Laïs_, a celebrated courtesan who lived at Corinth, and ridiculed the philosophers. _Thrace_, an extensive country between the Ægean, Euxine and Danube. _Residenz_ (Ger.): the residence of a prince and count. _Pradier Magdalen_: the statue of St. Mary Magdalen by James Pradier, in the Louvre. Pradier was born at Geneva in 1790, and died in Paris 1852. He was a brilliant and popular sculptor. His chief works are the Son of Niobe, Atalanta, Psyche, Sappho (all in the Louvre), a bas-relief on the triumphal arch of the Carousel, the figures of Fame on the Arc de l'Etoile, and Rousseau's statue at Geneva. _Fourier_: Charles Fourier was a Frenchman who recommended the reorganisation of society into small communities, living in common. _Comte, Auguste_: the author of the Positive Philosophy, the key to which is "the Law of the Three States'--that is to say, there are three different ways in which the human mind explains phenomena, each way succeeding the other. These three stages are the Theological, the Metaphysical, and the Positive. The Positive stage is that in which the relation is established between the given fact and some more general fact. "_But, God, what a Geometer art Thou!_" This is Plato's. Browning uses the same idea in _Easter Day_ (see the notes to that poem). _Hercules_, substituting his shoulder for that of Atlas: Atlas was one of the Titans, and was fabled to support the world on his shoulders. Hercules was said to have eased for some time the labours of Atlas by taking upon his shoulders the weight of the heavens. _Oeta_, a mountain range in the south of Thessaly. _Proudhon_ was a revolutionary writer (1809-65). His answer to the question, "Qu'est ce-que la Propriété?" is famous: "La Propriété, c'est le vol," he replied. His greatest work was the "_Système des Contradictions économiques, ou Philosophie de la Misère_." His violent utterances led to his imprisonment for three years. _Great Nation_: to the French their country is "La Grande Nation." _Leicester Square_: all the foreign refugees in England gravitate towards Leicester Square. _Cayenne_: the capital of French Guiana, and a penal settlement for political offenders. It is anything but "cool," the temperature throughout the year being from 76° to 88° Fahr. It is fever-stricken, and very unhealthy generally. _Xerxes and the Plane-tree_: Xerxes going from Phrygia into Lydia, observed a plane-tree, which on account of its beauty, he presented with golden ornaments. (_Herodotus_ vii. 31.) _Kant_: Emmanuel Kant, author of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ (1724-1804). He was the greatest philosopher of the eighteenth century. This celebrated work of Kant's penetrated to all the leading universities, and its author was hailed by some as a second Messiah. The falls of _Terni_, on the route from Perugia to Orte, in Central Italy, have few rivals in Europe in point of beauty and volume of water. They are the celebrated falls of the Velino (which here empties itself into the Nera) called the Cascate delle Marmore, and are about 650 feet in height. _Laocoön_, a Trojan, priest of Apollo, who was killed at the altar by two serpents. The famous group of sculpture called by this name is in the Vatican Museum, in the _Cortile del Belvedere_. According to Pliny, it was executed by three Rhodians, and was placed in the palace of Titus. It was discovered in 1506, and was termed by Michael Angelo a marvel of art. _Thiers, Louis Adolphe_ (1797-1877), "liberator of the territory," as France calls him. He wrote the _History of the French Revolution_. _Victor Hugo_, born 1802, a famous politician and novelist of France, was exiled by Louis Napoleon after the _coup d'état_. He fulminated against the Emperor from Jersey his book _Napoleon the Little_. He was detested almost fanatically by Napoleon III. "_Brennus in the Capitol_": Brennus was a leader of the Gauls, and conqueror at the Allia, a small river eleven miles north of Rome, on the banks of which the Gauls inflicted a terrible defeat on the Romans on July 16th, B.C. 390. After this defeat the Romans, terrified by this sudden invasion, fled into the Capitol and left the whole city in the possession of the enemy. The Gauls climbed the Tarpeian rock in the night, and the Capitol would have been taken if the Romans had not been alarmed by the cackling of some geese near the doors, when they attacked and defeated the Gauls. _Salvatore_, == Salvator Rosa, a renowned painter of the Neapolitan school. _Clitumnus_, a river of Italy, the waters of which, when drunk, were said to render oxen white. _Nemi_: the lake of Nemi, in the Alban mountains, near Rome, was anciently called the _Lacus Nemorensis_, and sometimes the Mirror of Diana, from its extreme beauty. Remains have been discovered of a temple to that goddess in the neighbourhood, and from her sacred grove, or _nemus_, the present name is derived.