Chapter IX: Preface (7)

=Clive.= (_Dramatic Idyls_, Series II., 1880.) The poem deals with a well-known incident in the life of Lord Clive, who founded the empire of British India and created for it a pure and strong administration. Robert Clive was born in 1725 at Styche, near Market Drayton, Shropshire. The Clives formed one of the oldest families in the county. Young Clive was negligent of his books, and devoted to boyish adventures of the wildest sort. However, he managed to acquire a good education, though probably by means which schoolmasters considered irregular. He was a born leader, and held death as nothing in comparison with loss of honour. He often suffered, even in youth, from fits of depression, and twice attempted his own life. He went out to Madras as a "writer" in the East India Company's civil service. Always in some trouble or other with his companions, he one day fought the duel which forms the subject of Mr. Browning's poem. In 1746 he became disgusted with a civilian's life, and obtained an ensign's commission. At this time a crisis in Indian affairs opened up to a man of high courage, daring and administrative ability, like Clive, a brilliant path to fortune. Clive seized his opportunity, and won India for us. His bold attack upon the city of Arcot terminated in a complete victory for our arms; and in 1753, when he sailed to England for the recovery of his health, his services were suitably rewarded by the East India Company. He won the battle of Plassey in 1757. Notwithstanding his great services to his country, his conduct in India was severely criticised, and he was impeached in consequence, but was acquitted in 1773. He committed suicide in 1774, his mind having been unhinged by the charges brought against him after the great things he had done for an ungrateful country. He was addicted to the use of opium; this is referred to in the poem in the line "noticed how the furtive fingers went where a drug-box skulked behind the honest liquor." Lord Macaulay in his Essay on Clive, says he had a "restless and intrepid spirit. His personal courage, of which he had, while still a writer, given signal proof by a desperate duel with a military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David, speedily made him conspicuous even among hundreds of brave men." The duel took place under the following circumstances. He lost money at cards to an officer who was proved to have cheated. Other losers were so in terror of this cheating bully that they paid. Clive refused to pay, and was challenged. They went out with pistols; no seconds were employed, and Clive missed his opponent, who, coming close up to him, held his pistol to his head and told him he would spare his life if he were asked to do so. Clive complied. He was next required to retract his charge of cheating. This demand being refused, his antagonist threatened to fire. "Fire, and be damned!" replied Clive. "I said you cheated; I say so still, and will never pay you!" The officer was so amazed at his bravery that he threw away his pistol. Chatting, with a friend, a week before he committed suicide, he tells the story of this duel as the one occasion when he felt fear, and that not of death, but lest his adversary should contemptuously permit him to keep his life. Under such circumstances he could have done nothing but use his weapon on himself. This part of the story is, of course, imaginary.

=Colombe of Ravenstein.= (_Colombe's Birthday._) Duchess of Juliers and Cleves. When in danger of losing her sovereignty by the operation of the Salic Law, she has an offer of marriage from Prince Berthold, who could have dispossessed her. Colombe loves Valence, an advocate, and he loves her. The prince does not even pretend that love has prompted his offer, and so Colombe sacrifices power at the shrine of love.

=Comparini, The.= (_The Ring and the Book._) Violatne and Pietro Comparini were the foster-parents of Pompilia, who, with her, were murdered by Count Guido Franceschini.

=Confessional, The.= (_Dramatic Romances_ in _Bells and Pomegranates_, 1845.) The scene is in Spain, in the time of the Inquisition. A girl has confessed to an aged priest some sinful conduct with her lover Bertram; as a penance, she has been desired to extract from him some secrets relating to matters of which he has been suspected. As a proof of his love, he tells the girl things which, if known, would imperil his life. The confidant, as requested, carries the story to the priest. She sees her lover no more till she beholds him under the executioner's hands on the scaffold. Passionately denouncing Church and priests, she is herself at the mercy of the Inquisition, and the poem opens with her exclamations against the system which has killed her lover and ruined her life.

=Confessions.= (_Dramatis Personæ_, 1864.) A man lies dying. A clergyman asks him if he has not found the world "a vale of tears"?--a suggestion which is indignantly repudiated. As the man looks at the row of medicine bottles ranged before him, he sees in his fancy the lane where lived the girl he loved, and where, in the June weather, she stood watching for him at that farther bottle labelled "Ether"--

"How sad and bad and mad it was!--
But then, how it was sweet!"

=Constance= (_In a Balcony_), a relative of the Queen in this dramatic fragment. She is loved by Norbert, and returns his love. The queen, however, loves the handsome young courtier herself, and her jealousy is the ruin of the young couple's happiness.

=Corregidor, The.= (_How it strikes a Contemporary._) In Spain the corregidor is the chief magistrate of a town; the name is derived from _corregir_, to correct--one who corrects. He is represented as going about the city, observing everything that takes place, and is consequently suspected as a spy in the employment of the Government. He is, in fact, but a harmless poet of very observant habits, and is exceedingly poor.

=Count Gismond.= AIX IN PROVENCE. Published in _Dramatic Lyrics_ under the title "_France_," in 1842. An orphan maiden is to be queen of the tourney to-day. She lives at her uncle's home with her two girl cousins, each a queen by her beauty, not needing to be crowned. The maiden thought they loved her. They brought her to the canopy and complimented her as she took her place. The time came when she was to present the victor's crown. All eyes were bent upon her, when at that proud moment Count Gauthier thundered "Stay! Bring no crown! bring torches and a penance sheet; let her shun the chaste!" He accuses her of licentious behaviour with himself; and as the girl hears the horrible lie, paralysed at the baseness of the accusation, she never dreams that answer is possible to make. Then out strode Count Gismond. Never had she met him before, but in his face she saw God preparing to do battle with Satan. He strode to Gauthier, gave him the lie, and struck his mouth with his mailed hand: the lie was damned, truth upstanding in its place. They fought. Gismond flew at him, clove out the truth from his breast with his sword, then dragging him dying to the maiden's feet, said "Here die, but first say that thou hast lied." And the liar said, "To God and her I have lied," and gave up the ghost. Gismond knelt to the maiden and whispered in her ear; then rose, flung his arm over her head, and led her from the crowd. Soon they were married, and the happy bride cried:

"Christ God who savest man, save most
Of men Count Gismond who saved me!"

=Count Guido Franceschini.= (_The Ring and the Book._) The wicked nobleman of Arezzo who marries Pompilia for her dowry, and treats her so cruelly that she flies from his home to Rome, in company with Caponsacchi, who chivalrously and innocently devotes himself to her assistance. While they rest on the way they are overtaken by the Count, who eventually kills Pompilia and her foster-parents.

=Courts Of Love= (_Sordello_) "were judicial courts for deciding affairs of the heart, established in Provence during the palmy days of the Troubadours. The following is a case submitted to their judgment: A lady listened to one admirer, squeezed the hand of another, and touched with her toe the foot of a third. Query, Which of these three was the favoured suitor?" (_Dr. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable._) It was at a Court of Love at which Palma presided, that Sordello outdid Eglamour in song, and received the prize from the lady's hand. At these courts, Sismondi tells us, _tensons_ or _jeux partis_ were sung, which were dialogues between the speakers in which each interlocutor recited successively a stanza with the same rhymes. Sismondi introduces a translation of a _tenson_ between Sordello and Bertrand, adding that this "may, perhaps, give an idea of those poetical contests which were the great ornament of all festivals. When the haughty baron invited to his court the neighbouring lords and the knights his vassals, three days were devoted to jousts and tourneys, the mimicry of war. The youthful gentlemen, who, under the name of pages, exercised themselves in the profession of arms, combated the first day; the second was set apart for the newly-dubbed knights; and the third, for the old warriors. The lady of the castle, surrounded by youthful beauties, distributed crowns to those who were declared by the judges of the combat to be the conquerors. She then, in her turn, opened her court, constituted in imitation of the seignorial tribunals, and as her baron collected his peers around him when he dispensed justice, so did she form her Court of Love, consisting of young, beautiful, and lively women. A new career was opened to those who dared the combat--not of arms, but of verse; and the name of _tenson_, which was given to these dramatic skirmishes, in fact signified a contest. It frequently happened that the knights who had gained the prize of valour became candidates for the poetical honours. One of the two, with his harp upon his arm, after a prelude, proposed the subject of the dispute. The other then advancing, and singing to the same air, answered him in a stanza of the same measure, and very frequently having the same rhymes. This extempore composition was usually comprised in five stanzas. The Court of Love then entered upon a grave deliberation, and discussed not only the claims of the two poets, but the merits of the question; and a judgment or _arrêt d'amour_ was given, frequently in verse, by which the dispute was supposed to be decided. At the present day we feel inclined to believe that these dialogues, though little resembling those of Tityrus and Melibæus, were yet, like those, the production of the poet sitting at ease in his closet. But, besides the historical evidence which we possess of the troubadours having been gifted with those improvisatorial talents which the Italians have preserved to the present time, many of the _tensons_ extant bear evident traces of the rivalry and animosity of the two interlocutors. The mutual respect with which the refinements of civilisation have taught us to regard one another, was at this time little known. There existed not the same delicacy upon questions of honour, and injury returned for injury was supposed to cancel all insults. We have a _tenson_ extant between the Marquis Albert Malespina and Rambaud de Vaqueiras, two of the most powerful lords and valiant captains at the commencement of the thirteenth century, in which they mutually accuse one another of having robbed on the highway and deceived their allies by false oaths. We must charitably suppose that the perplexities of versification and the heat of their poetical inspiration compelled them to overlook sarcasms which they could never have suffered to pass in plain prose. Many of the ladies who sat in the Courts of Love were able to reply to the verses which they inspired. A few of their compositions only remain, but they have always the advantage over those of the Troubadours. Poetry, at that time, aspired neither to creative energy nor to sublimity of thought, nor to variety. Those powerful conceptions of genius which, at a later period, have given birth to the drama and the epic, were yet unknown; and, in the expression of sentiment, a tenderer and more delicate inspiration naturally endowed the productions of these poetesses with a more lyrical character." (Sismondi, _Lit. Mod. Europe_, vol. i., pp. 106-7.)

=Cristina= (or =Christina=). _Dramatic Lyrics_ (_Bells and Pomegranates_ No. III.), 1842.--Maria Christina of Naples is the lady of the poem. She was born in 1806, and in 1829 became the fourth wife of Ferdinand VII., King of Spain. She became Regent of Spain on the death of her husband, in 1833. Her daughter was Queen Isabella II. She was the dissolute mother of a still more dissolute daughter. Lord Malmesbury's _Memoirs of an Ex-Minister_, 1884, vol. i., p. 30, have the following reference to the Christina of the poem: "Mr. Hill presented me at Court before I left Naples [in 1829].... The Queen [Maria Isabella, second wife of Francis I., King of the Two Sicilies] and the young and handsome Princess Christina, afterwards Queen of Spain, were present. The latter was said at the time to be the cause of more than one inflammable victim languishing in prison for having too openly admired this royal coquette, whose manners with men foretold her future life after her marriage to old Ferdinand [VII., King of Spain]. When she came up to me in the circle, walking behind her mother, she stopped, and took hold of one of the buttons of my uniform--to see, as she said, the inscription upon it, the Queen indignantly calling to her to come on." The passion of love, throughout Mr. Browning's works, is treated as the most sacred thing in the human soul. We are here for the chance of loving and of being loved; nothing on earth is dearer than this; to trifle with love is, in Browning's eyes, the sin against that Divine Emanation which sanctifies the heart of man. The man or woman who dissipates the capacity for love is the destroyer of his or her own soul; the flirt and the coquette are the losers,--the forsaken one has saved his own soul and gained the other's as well.

=Cristina and Monaldeschi.= (_Jocoseria_, 1883.)--I am indebted to the valuable paper which Mrs. Alexander Ireland contributed to the Browning Society on Feb. 27th, 1891, for the facts relating to the subject of this poem. Queen Cristina of Sweden was the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. She was born in 1626, and came to the throne on the death of her father, in 1632. She was highly educated and brilliantly accomplished. She was perfectly acquainted with Greek, Latin, French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish. In due time she had batches of royal suitors, but she refused to bind herself by the marriage tie; rather than marry, she decided to abdicate, choosing as her successor her cousin Charles Gustavus. The formal and unusual ceremony of abdication took place in the cathedral of Upsala, in June 1654. Proceeding to Rome, she renounced the Protestant religion, and publicly embraced that of the Catholic Church. The officers of her household were exclusively Italian. Among these was the Marquis Monaldeschi, nominated "Master of the Horse," described by Cristina in her own memoirs as "a gentleman of most handsome person and fine manners, who from the first moment reigned exclusively over my heart." Cristina abandoned herself to this man, who proved a traitor and a scoundrel. He took every advantage of his position as favourite, and having reaped honour and riches, Monaldeschi wearied of his royal mistress and sought new attractions. The closing scene of Queen Cristina's _liaison_ with the Grand Equerry inspired Mr. Browning's poem. He has chosen the moment when all the treachery of Monaldeschi has revealed itself to the Queen. The scene is at Fontainebleau, whither Cristina has removed from Rome; here the letters came into her hands which broke her life. A Cardinal Azzolino had obtained possession of a wretched and dangerous correspondence. The packet included the Queen's own letters to her lover--letters written in the fulness of perfect trust, telling much that the unhappy lady could have told to no other living being. Monaldeschi's letters to his young Roman beauty made a jest, a mockery of the Queen's exceeding fondness for him. They were letters of unsparing and wounding ridicule; and, while acting thus, Monaldeschi had steadily adhered to the show of unaltered attachment to the Queen and deep respect for his royal mistress. Cristina's emotions on seeing the whole hateful, cowardly treachery laid bare were doubtless maddening. She arranged an interview with the Marquis in the picture gallery in the Palace of Fontainebleau. She was accompanied by an official of her Court, and had at hand a priest from the neighbouring convent of the Maturins, armed with copies of the letters which were to serve as the death-warrant of the Marquis. They had been placed by Cardinal Azzolino in Cristina's hands through the medium of her "Major-Domo," with the knowledge that the Cardinal had already seen their infamous contents. The _originals_ she had on her own person. Added to this, she had in the background her Captain of the Guard, Sentinelli, with two other officers. In the Galerie des Cerfs hung a picture of François I. and Diane de Poictiers. To this picture the Queen now led the Marquis, pointing out the motto on the frame--"Quis separabit?" The Queen reminds her lover how they were vowed to each other. The Marquis had vowed, at a tomb in the park of Fontainebleau, that, as the grave kept a silence over the corpse beneath, so would his love and trust hold fast the secret of Cristina's love to all eternity. Now the woman's spirit was wounded to death. She was scorned, her pride outraged; but she was a queen, and the man a subject, and she felt she must assert her dignity at least once more. The Marquis doubtless tottered as he stood. "Kneel," she says. This was the final scene of the tragedy. Cristina now calls forth the priest and the assassins, having granted herself the bitter pleasure of such personal revenge as was possible for her, poor woman!

"Friends, my four! You, Priest, confess him!
I have judged the culprit there:
my sentence! Care
For no mail such cowards wear!
Done, Priest? Then, absolve and bless him!
Now--you three, stab thick and fast,
Deep and deeper! Dead at last?"

In October 1657 Cristina already felt suspicious of Monaldeschi. Keenly watching his actions, she had found him guilty of a double perfidy, and had led him on to a conversation touching a similar unfaithfulness. "What," the Queen had said, "does the man deserve who should so have betrayed a woman?" "Instant death," said Monaldeschi; "'twould be an act of justice." "It is well," said she; "I will remember your words." As to the right of the Queen to execute Monaldeschi, it must be remembered that, by a special clause in the Act of Abdication, she retained absolute and sovereign jurisdiction over her servants of all kinds. The only objection made by the French Court was, that she ought not to have permitted the murder to take place at Fontainebleau. After this crime Cristina was compelled to leave France, and finally retired to Rome, giving herself up to her artistic tastes, science, chemistry and idleness. She died on April 19th, 1689; her epitaph on her tomb in St. Peter's at Rome was chosen by herself--"Cristina lived sixty-three years."

NOTES.--"_Quis separabit?_" who shall separate? _King Francis_--François I. The gallery of this king is the most striking one in the palace. _Diane_, the gallery of Diana, the goddess. _Primatice_ == Primaticcio, who designed some of the decorations of the _Galerie de François I._ _Salamander sign_: the emblem of Francis I., often repeated in the decorations. _Florentine Le Roux_ == Rossi, the Florentine artist. _Fontainebleau_: its Château Royal is very famous. "_Juno strikes Ixion_," who attempted to seduce her. _Avon_, a village near Fontainebleau.

=Croisic.= The scene of the _Two Poets of Croisic_. Le Croisic is a seaport on the southern coast of Brittany, with about 2500 inhabitants, and is a fashionable watering-place. It has a considerable industry in sardine fishing.

=Cunizza=, called Palma in _Sordello_, till, at the close of the poem the heroine's historical name is given. She was the sister of Ezzelino III. Dante places her in _Paradise_ (ix. 32). Longfellow, in his translation of the _Divine Comedy_, has the following note concerning her: "Cunizza was the sister of Azzolino di Romano. Her story is told by Rolandino, _Liber Chronicorum_, in Muratori (_Rer. Ital. Script._, viii. 173). He says that she was first married to Richard of St. Boniface; and soon after had an intrigue with Sordello--as already mentioned (_Purg._ vi., Note 74). Afterwards she wandered about the world with a soldier of Treviso, named Bonius, 'taking much solace,' says the old chronicler, 'and spending much money' (_multa habendo solatia, et maximas faciendo expensas_). After the death of Bonius, she was married to a nobleman of Braganza; and finally, and for a third time, to a gentleman of Verona. The _Ottimo_ alone among the commentators takes up the defence of Cunizza, and says: 'This lady lived lovingly in dress, song, and sport; but consented not to any impropriety or unlawful act; and she passed her life in enjoyment, as Solomon says in Ecclesiastes,' alluding probably to the first verse of the second chapter--"I said in my heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure; and behold, this is also vanity."

="Dance, Yellows and Whites and Reds."= A beautiful lyric at the end of "Gerard de Lairesse," in _Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day_, begins with this line. It originally appeared in a little book published for the Edinburgh University Union Fancy Fair, in 1886.

=Daniel Bartoli.= _Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day_: 1887. [THE MAN.] "Born at Ferrara in 1608, died at Rome in 1685. He was a learned Jesuit, and his great work was a history of his Order, in six volumes, published at various times. It is enriched with facts drawn from the Vatican records, from English colleges, and from memoirs sent him by friends in England; and is crowded with stories of miracles which are difficult of digestion by ordinary readers. His style is highly esteemed by Italians for its purity and precision, and his life was perfectly correct and virtuous" (_Pall Mall Gazette_, Jan. 18th, 1887). "His eloquence was wonderful, and his renown as a sacred orator became universal. He wrote many essays on scientific subjects; and although some of his theories have been refuted by Galileo, they are still cited as models of the didactic style, in which he excelled. His works on moral science and philology are numerous. Died 1684." (_Imp. Dict. Biog._)

[THE POEM.] The poet tells the narrator of saintly legends that he has a saint worth worshipping whose history is not legendary at all, but very plain fact. It is her story which is told in the poem, and not that of Bartoli. The minister of a certain king had managed to induce a certain duke to yield two of his dukedoms to the king at his death. The promise was a verbal one, but the duke was to sign the deed of gift which deprived him of his rights when it was duly prepared by the lawyers. While this was in progress the duke met at his sister's house a good and beautiful girl, the daughter of an apothecary. He proposed to marry her, and was accepted, notwithstanding the opposition of his family. The banns were duly published, and the marriage ceremony was soon to follow. Meanwhile this turn in the duke's affairs came to the ear of the crafty minister of the king, who promptly informed his royal master that the assignment of the dukedoms might not proceed so smoothly under the altered circumstances. "I bar the abomination--nuptial me no such nuptials!" exclaimed the king. The minister hinted that caution must be used, lest by offending the duke the dukedoms might be lost. The next day the preliminary banquet, at which all the lady's friends were present, took place; when lo--a thunderclap!--the king's minister was announced, and the lady was requested to meet him at a private interview. She was informed that the duke must at once sign the paper which the minister held in his hand, ceding to the king the promised estates, or the king would withhold his consent to the marriage and the lady would be placed in strict seclusion. Should he, however, sign the deed of gift without delay, the king would give his consent to the marriage, and accord the bride a high place at court; and the druggist's daughter would become not only the duke's wife but the king's favourite. They returned to the dining-room, and the lady, addressing the duke, who sat in mute bewilderment at the head of the table, made known the king's commands. She told him that she knew he loved her for herself alone, and was conscious that her own love was equal to his. She bade him read the shameful document which the king had sent, and begged him to bid her destroy it. She implored him not to part with his dukedoms, which had been given him by God, though by doing so he might make her his wife: if, however, he could so far forget his duty as to yield to these demands, he would, in doing so, forfeit her love. The duke was furious, but could not be brought to yield to the lady's request, and she left the place never to meet again. Next day she sent him back the jewellery he had given her. This story was told to a fervid, noble-hearted lord, who forthwith in a boyish way loved the lady. When he grew to be a man he married her, dropped from camp and court into obscurity, but was happy, till ere long his lady died. He would gladly have followed, but had to be content with turning saint, like those of whom Bartoli wrote. The poet next philosophises on the life which the duke might have led after this crisis in his history. He would sooner or later reflect sadly on the beautiful luminary which had once illumined his path: he could fancy her mocking him as false to Love; he would reflect how, with all his lineage and his bravery, he had failed at the test, but would recognise that it was not the true man who failed, not the ducal self which quailed before the monarch's frown while the more royal Love stood near him to inspire him;--some day that true self would, by the strength of that good woman's love, be raised from the grave of shame which covered it, and he would be hers once more.

NOTES.--vi., _Pari passu_: with equal pace, together. xv., "_Saint Scholastica ... in Paynimrie_": she lived about the year 543. She was sister to St. Benedict, and consecrated herself to God from her earliest youth. The legend referred to is not given, either in Butler's _Lives of the Saints_, or Mrs. Jameson's _Legends of the Monastic Orders_. _Paynimrie_ means the land of the infidel. xvi., _Trogalia_: sweetmeats and candies.

=Dante= is magnificently described in _Sordello_ (Book I., lines 374-80):--

"Dante, pacer of the shore
Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom,
Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume--
Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope
Into a darkness quieted by hope;
Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye
In gracious twilights where His chosen lie."

=Date et Dabitur.= "Give, and it shall be given unto you." (See _The Twins_.)

=David.= (See _Saul_, and Epilogue to _Dramatis Personæ_: First Speaker).

=Deaf and Dumb.= A group by Woolner (1862). How a glory may arise from a defect is the keynote of this poem. A prism interposed in the course of a ray of sunlight breaks it into the glory of the seven colours of the spectrum; the prism is an obstruction to the white light, but the rainbow tints which are seen in consequence of the obstacle reveal to us the secret of the sunbeam. So the obstruction of deafness or dumbness often greatly enhances the beauty of the features, as in the group of statuary which forms the subject of the poem, and which was exhibited at the International Exhibition of 1862. The children were Constance and Arthur, the son and daughter of Sir Thomas Fairbairn.

=Death in the Desert, A.= (_Dramatis Personæ_, 1864.) John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who lay on His breast at the last sad paschal supper, who stood by the cross, and received from the lips of his Lord His only earthly possession--His mother; John, the writer of the Gospel which bears his name, and of the letters which breathe the spirit of the incarnated love which was to transform a world lying in wickedness; the seer of the awful visions of Patmos--the tremendous Apocalypse which closes the Christian revelation--lay dying in the desert; recalled from exile after the death of Domitian from the isle of the Sporades, the volcanic formation of which, with its daily scenes of smoke, brimstone, fire, and streams of molten lava, had aided the apostle to imagine the day of doom, when the angel should cry, "Time shall be no longer." The beloved disciple, who had borne the message of Divine love through the cities of Asia Minor, had founded churches, established bishoprics, and had laboured by spoken and written word, and even more effectually by his beautiful and gentle life, to extend the kingdom of God and of His Christ, now worn out with incessant labours, and bent with the weight of well-nigh a hundred years, the last of the men who had seen the Lord, the final link which bound the youthful Church to its apostolic days, lies dying in a cave, hiding from the bloody hands of those who breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the followers of Christ. Companioned by five converts who tenderly nursed the dying saint, he had been brought from the secret recess in the rock where they had hidden him from the pursuers into the midmost grotto, where the light of noon just reached a little, and enabled them to watch

"The last of what might happen on his face."

And at the entrance of the cave there kept faithful watch the Bactrian convert, pretending to graze a goat, so that if thief or soldier passed they might have booty without prying into the cave. The dying man lies unconscious, but his attendants think it possible to rouse him that he may speak to them before he departs: they wet his lips with wine, cool his forehead with water, chafe his hands, diffuse the aromatic odour of the spikenard through the cave, and pray; but still he sleeps. Then the boy, inspired by a happy thought, brings the plate of graven lead on which are the words of John's gospel, "I am the Resurrection and the Life," and having found the place, he presses the aged man's finger on the line, and repeats it in his ear. Then he opened his eyes, sat up, and looked at them; and no one spoke, save the watcher without, signalling from time to time that they were safe. And first, the beloved one said, "If one told me there were James and Peter, I could believe! So is my soul withdrawn into its depths."--"Let be awhile!"--And then--

"It is long
Since James and Peter had release by death,
And I am only he, your brother John,
Who saw and heard, and could remember all."

He reminds them how in Patmos isle he had seen the Lord in His awful splendour; how in his early life he saw and handled with his hands the Word of Life. Soon it will be that none will say "I saw." And already--for the years were long--men had disputed, murmured and misbelieved, or had set up antichrists; and remembering what had happened to the faith in his own days, he could well foresee that unborn people in strange lands would one day ask--

"Was John at all, and did he say he saw?"

"What can I say to assure them?" he asks; the story of Christ's life and death was not mere history to him: "_It is_," he cries,--"_is, here and now_." Not only are the events of the gospel history present before his eyes, so that he apprehends nought else; but not less plainly, not less firmly printed on his soul, are the more mysterious truths of God's eternal presence in the world visibly contending with wrong and sin; and, as the wrong and sin are manifest to his soul-sight, so equally does he see the need, yet transiency of both. But matters, which to his spiritualised vision were clear, must be placed before his followers through some medium which shall, like an optic glass, segregate them, diminish them into clearness; and so he bids them stand before that fact, that Life and Death of Jesus Christ, till it spreads apart like a star, growing and opening out on all sides till it becomes their only world, as it is his. "For all of life," he says, "is summed up in the prize of learning love, and having learnt it, to hold it and truth, despite the world in arms against the holder. We can need no second proof of God's love for man. Man having once learned the use of fire, would not part with the gift for purple or for gold. Were the worth of Christ as plain, he could not give up Christ. To test man, the proofs of Christianity shift; he cannot grasp that fact as he grasps the fact of fire and its worth." He asks his disciples why they say it was easier to believe in Christ once than now--easier when He walked the earth with those He loved? "But," says John, who had seen all,--the transfiguration, the walking on the sea, the raising of the dead to life,--"could it be possible the man who had seen these things should ever part from them?" Yes, it was! The torchlight, the noise, the sudden inrush of the Roman soldiers, on the night of the betrayal, caused even him, John, the beloved disciple, to forsake Him and fly. Yet he had gained the truth, and the truth grew in his soul, so that he was enabled to impress it so indelibly on others, that children and women who had never seen the least of the sights he had seen would clasp their cross with a light laugh, and wrap the burning robe of martyrdom round them, giving thanks to God the while. But in the mind of man the laws of development are ever at work, and questioners of the truth arose, and it was necessary that he should re-state the Lord's life and work in various ways, to rectify mistakes. God has operated in the way of Power, later in the way of Love, and last of all in Influence on Soul: men do not ask now, "Where is the promise of His coming?" but--

"Was He revealed in any of His lives,
As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul?"

"Miracles, to prove doctrine," John says, "go for nought, but love remains." Then men ask, "Did not we ourselves imagine and make this love?" (That is to say, love having been discovered by mankind to be the noblest thing on earth, have not men created a God of Infinite Love, out of their own passionate imagining of what man's love would be if perfectly developed?) "The mind of man can only receive what it holds--no more." Man projects his own love heavenward, it falls back upon him in another shape--with another name and story added; this, he straightway says, is a gift from heaven. Man of old peopled heaven with gods, all of whom possessed man's attributes; horses drew the sun from east to west. Now, we say the sun rises and sets as if impelled by a hand and will, and it is only thought of as so impelled because we ourselves have hands and wills. But the sun must be driven by some force which we do not understand; will and love we do understand. As man grows wiser the passions and faculties with which he adorned his deities are taken away: Jove of old had a brow, Juno had eyes; gradually there remained only Jove's wrath and Juno's pride; in process of time these went also, till now we recognise will and power and love alone. All these are at bottom the same--mere projections from the mind of the man himself. Having then stated the objections brought against the faith of Christ, St. John proceeds to meet them. "Man," he says, "was made to grow, not stop; the help he needed in the earlier stages, being no longer required, is withdrawn; his new needs require new helps. When we plant seed in the ground we place twigs to show the spots where the germs lie hidden, so that they may not be trodden upon by careless steps. When the plants spring up we take the twigs away; they no longer have any use. It was thus with the growth of the gospel seed: miracles were required at first, but, when the plant had sprung up and borne fruit, had produced martyrs and heroes of the faith, what was the use of miracles any more? The fruit itself was surely sufficient testimony to the vitality of the seed. Minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth, as babes with milk; a boy we bid feed himself, or starve. So, at first, I wrought miracles that men might believe in Christ, because no faith were otherwise possible; miracles now would compel, not help. I say the way to solve all questions is to accept by the reason the Christ of God; the sole death is when a man's loss comes to him from his gain, when--from the light given to him--he extracts darkness; from the knowledge poured upon him he produces ignorance; and from the manifestation of love elaborates the lack of love. Too much oil is the lamp's death; it chokes with what would otherwise feed the flame. An overcharged stomach starves. The man who rejects Christ because he thinks the love of Christ is only a projection of his own is like a lamp that overswims with oil, a stomach overloaded with nurture; that man's soul dies." "But," the objector may say, "You told your Christ-story incorrectly: what is the good of giving knowledge at all if you give it in a manner which will not stop the after-doubt? Why breed in us perplexity? why not tell the whole truth in proper words?" To this St. John replies, "Man of necessity must pass from mistake to fact; he is not perfect as God is, nor as is the beast; lower than God, he is higher than the beast, and higher because he progresses,--he yearns to gain truth, catching at mistake. The statuary has the idea in his mind, aspires to produce it, and so calls his shape from out the clay:

"Cries ever, 'Now I have the thing I see':
Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought,
From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself."

Suppose he had complained, 'I see no face, no breast, no feet'? It is only God who makes the live shape at a jet. Striving to reach his ideals, man grows; ceasing to strive, he forfeits his highest privileges, and entails the certainty of destruction. Progress is the essential law of man's being, and progress by mistake, by failure, by unceasing effort, will lead him,

"Where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!"

Such is the difficulty of the latest time; so does the aged saint answer it. He would remain on earth another hundred years, he says, to lend his struggling brothers his help to save them from the abyss. But even as he utters the loving desire, he is dead,

"Breast to breast with God, as once he lay."

They buried him that night, and the teller of the story returned, disguised, to Ephesus. St. John is said to have been banished into the Isle of Patmos, A.D. 97, by the order of Domitian. After this emperor had reigned fifteen years Nerva succeeded him (A.D. 99), and historians of the period wrote that "the Roman senate decreed that the honours paid to Domitian should cease, and such as were injuriously exiled should return to their native land and receive their substance again. It is also among the ancient traditions, that then John the Apostle returned from banishment and dwelt again at Ephesus." Eusebius, quoting from Irenæus, says that John after his return from Patmos governed the churches in Asia, and remained with them in the time of Trajan. Irenæus also says that the Apostle carried on at Ephesus the work begun by Paul; Clement of Alexandria records the same thing. It is said that St. John died in peace at Ephesus in the third year of Trajan--that is, the hundredth of the Christian era, or the sixty-sixth from our Lord's crucifixion, the saint being then about ninety-four years old; he was buried on a mountain without the town. A stately church stood formerly over this tomb, which is at present a Turkish mosque. The sojourn of the Apostle in Asia, a country governed by Magi and imbued with Zoroastrian ideas, and in those days full of Buddhist missionaries, may account for many things found in the Book of Revelation. Mr. Browning refers to this in the bracketed portion of the poem, commencing:--

"This is the doctrine he was wont to teach,
How divers persons witness in each man,
Three souls which make up one soul."

They are described by Theosophists as "(1) The fluidic perisoul or astral body; (2) The soul or individual; and (3) The spirit, or Divine Father and life of his system." (See _The Perfect Way_, Lecture I., 9.) These three souls make up, with the material body, the fourfold nature of man.

NOTES.--_Pamphylax the Antiochene_, an imaginary person. _Epsilon_, _Mu_, _Xi_, letters of the Greek alphabet--e, m, and ch respectively. _Xanthus_ and _Valens_, disciples of St. John. _Bactrian_, of Bactria, a province in Persia. "_A ball of nard_," an unguent of spikenard, odorous and highly aromatic and restorative. _Glossa_, a commentary. _Theotypas_, a fictitious character. _Prometheus_, son of the Titan Iapetus and the Ocean-nymph Clymene, brother of Atlas, Menoetius, and Epimetheus, and father of Deucalion. When Zeus refused to mortals the use of fire, Prometheus stole it from Olympus, and brought it to men in a hollow reed. Zeus bound him to a pillar, with an eagle to consume in the daytime his liver, which grew again in the night. _Æschylus_, the earliest of the three great tragic poets of Greece, born at Eleusis, near Athens, B.C. 525. He wrote the _Prometheus Bound_. _Ebion_, the founder of the early sect of heretics called Ebionites. They held that the Mosaic law was binding on Christians, and believed Jesus to have been a mere man, though an ambassador from God and possessed of Divine power (_Encyc. Dict._). _Cerinthus_ raised great disturbances in obstinately defending an obligation of circumcision, and of abstaining from unclean meats in the New Law, and in extolling the angels as the authors of nature: this was before St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Colossians, etc. He pretended that the God of the Jews was only an angel; that Jesus was born of Joseph and Mary, like other men. He taught that Christ flew away at the time of the crucifixion, and that Jesus in the human part of His nature alone suffered and rose again, Christ continuing always immortal and impassible. St. Irenæus relates that on one occasion, when St. John went to the public baths, he found that this heretic was within, and he refused to remain lest the bath which contained Cerinthus should fall upon his head.

="De Gustibus----"= [_De Gustibus non disputandum_--"there is no accounting for tastes."] (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Lyrics_, 1863; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) Every lover of Nature finds some particular kind of scenery which most appeals to his heart, and to which his thoughts revert in moments of reflection and meditation. The poet tells the lover of trees that after death (if loves persist) his ghost will be found wandering in an English lane by a hazel coppice in beanflower and blackbird time. For his own part, he loves best in all the world the scenery of his beloved Italy--a castle on a precipice in "the wind-grieved Apennine"; and if ever he gets his head out of the grave and his spirit soars free, he will be away to the sunny South, by the cypress guarding the seaside home, where scorpions sprawl on frescoed walls; in "Italy, my Italy,"--which beloved name he declares will be found graven on his heart.

=De Lorge.= (_The Glove._) Sir de Lorge was the knight who recovered his lady's glove from the lions, amongst which she had cast it to test his courage, and then threw it in her face.

=Development.= (_Asolando_, 1889.) Mr. Sharp, in his admirable _Life of Browning_, says that the poet's father was a man of exceptional powers. He was a poet both in sentiment and expression; and he understood, as well as enjoyed, the excellent in art. He was a scholar, too, in a reputable fashion; not indifferent to what he had learnt in his youth, nor heedless of the high opinion generally entertained for the greatest writers of antiquity, but with a particular care himself for Horace and Anacreon. As his son once told a friend, "The old gentleman's brain was a storehouse of literary and philosophical antiquities. He was completely versed in mediæval legend, and seemed to have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and even Talmudic personages, personally." Development, indeed! That the embryonic mediæval lore of the banker's clerk should have potentially contained the treasures of _Paracelsus_, _Sordello_, and _Rabbi Ben Hakkadosh_, is as wonderful as that the primary cell should contain the force which gathers to itself the man.

NOTES.--_Philip Karl Buttmann_ was a distinguished German philologist, born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1764, and died at Berlin, 1829. He studied at Göttingen, and in 1796 was appointed secretary of the Royal Library at Berlin. His fame rests on his _Griechische Grammatik_, the _Ausführliche Griechische Sprachlehre_, and the _Lexilogus oder Beiträge zur Griechischen Worterklärung_. These works are ranked highly for their exact criticism. He brought out valuable editions of Plato's _Dialogues_ and the _Meidias_ of Demosthenes. _Friedrich August Wolf_, the great critic, was born at Haynrode, near Nordhausen, in 1759; he died in 1824. He studied philology at Göttingen, and published an edition of Shakespeare's _Macbeth_, with notes, in 1778. He filled the chair of philology and pedagogial science at Halle for twenty-three years. In 1806 he repaired to Berlin. His fame chiefly rests on his _Prolegomena in Homerum_, which was devoted to the argument that the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ are not the work of one single and individual Homer, but a much later compilation of _hymns_ sung and handed down by oral tradition. Its effect was overwhelming. _Stagirite_ == Aristotle. "_The Ethics_" == the _Nicomachean Ethics_, the great work of Aristotle. "_Battle of the Frogs and Mice_," a mock epic attributed to Homer. "_The Margites_," a humorous poem, which kept its ground down to the time of Aristotle as the work of Homer; it began with the words, "There came to Colophon an old man, a divine singer, servant of the Muses and Apollo."

=Dîs Aliter Visum=; or, =Le Byron de Nos Jours=. "Dîs aliter visum" is from Virgil, Æn. ii. 428, and means "Heaven thought not so." (_Dramatis Personæ_, 1864.) The poem describes a meeting of two friends after a parting of ten years. They should have been more than friends: they were made for each other's love; but love came in a guise which was not acceptable, and the heart which the man might have won, and the love which would have blessed him and ennobled his life, was for reasons of prudence disregarded, and both lovers went their way, having missed their life's chance. It is the woman who speaks--the "poor, pretty, thoughtful thing" of other days; a woman who tried to love and understand art and literature--to love all, at any rate, that was great and good and beautiful. She wonders if he--the man who might have completed his partial life with a great love--ever for a moment valued her rightly, and determined that "love found, gained and kept," was for him beyond art and sense and fame? She was young and inexperienced in the world's ways; he was old and full of wisdom: too wise, perhaps, to see where his best interests lay. It would never do, he thought--a match "'twixt one bent, wigged and lamed----and this young beauty, round and sound as a mountain apple." And so they parted. He chose a lower ideal, she married where she could not love; so the devil laughed in his sleeve, for not two only, but four souls were in jeopardy.

The poem is a good example of the poet's way of drawing from a half-serious, half-bantering and indifferent confession of thoughts and feelings one of his great moral lessons. It has been compared to what is termed _vers de société_, and as such, up to stanza xxiii., it may be fitly described; then comes Mr. Browning's sudden uprising to his highest power. It is as though he had lightly touched on the ways of men, and discussed them half-playfully with some light-hearted, not to say frivolous, audience in a drawing-room. The listeners stand smiling, and speculating as to his real meaning, when all at once he rises from his chair and brings in a moment before the thoughtless group of listeners the great and awful import of life, and the real meaning of the things which men call trifles, but which in God's sight are big with the interests of Eternity. So, in this poem he leads us from pretty talk of "Heine for songs and kisses," "gout, glory, and love freaks, love's dues, and consols," to one of his grandest life-lessons--the necessary incompleteness of all human existence here, because heaven must finish what earth can never complete,--the supreme evolution of the soul of man. Earth completes her star-fishes; Heaven itself could make no more perfect or more beautiful star-fish:

"He, whole in body and soul, outstrips
Man, found with either in default."

The star-fish is whole. What is whole can increase no more. It has nothing to do but waste and die, and there is an end of it.

"Leave Now for dogs and apes!
Man has Forever."

On the side of the man in the poem it could be fairly argued that a more unreasonable match could hardly be imagined than one between a "bent, wigged and lame" old gentleman and a "poor, pretty, thoughtful" young beauty, notwithstanding her offer of body and soul.

NOTES.--viii., _Robert Schumann_, musical critic and composer: was born 1810, died 1856. _Jean August Dominique Ingres_ (born 1780, died 1867). "The modern man that paints," a celebrated historical painter, a pupil of David. He was opposed to the Romantic School, and depended for success on form and line. "His paintings, with all their cleverness, appear to English eyes deficient in originality of conception, coarse, hard and artificial in manner, and untrue in colour" (_Imp. Dict. Biog._), xii., "_The Fortieth spare Arm-chair_." This refers to the French Academy, founded by Richelieu in 1635. When one of the forty members dies a new one is elected to fill his place.

=Djabal.= (_Return of the Druses._) The son of the Emir, who seeks revenge for the murder of his family, and declares himself to be the Hakim--who is to set the Druse people free. He loves the maiden Anael, and when she dies stabs himself on her dead body.

=Doctor ----.= (_Dramatic Idyls_, Second Series, 1880.) A Rabbinical story. Satan, as in the opening scene of Job, stands with the angels before God to make his complaints. Asked "What is the fault now?" he declares that he has found something on earth which interferes with his prerogatives:--

"Death is the strongest-born of Hell, and yet
Stronger than Death is a Bad Wife, we know."