The Browning Cyclopædia: A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning

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, outstripsMan, 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 yetStronger than Death is a Bad Wife, we know.”

Satan protests that this robs him of his rights, as he claims to be Strongest. He is commanded to descend to earth in mortal shape and get married, and so try for himself the bitter draught. It was Solomon who said that “a woman whose heart is snares and nets is more bitter than death” (Ecclesiastes vii. 27), and some commentators on the poem have thought the Rabbinical legend was suggested by this verse. Satan, married, in due time has a son who arrives at maturity, and then the question arises of a profession for him: “I needs must teach my son a trade.” Shall he be a soldier? That is too cowardly. A lawyer would be better, but there is too much hard work for the sluggard. There’s divinity, but that is Satan’s own special line, and that be far from his poor offspring! At last he thinks of the profession of medicine. Physic is the very thing! So Medicus he is appointed; and it is arranged that a special power shall be given to the young doctor’s eyes, so that when on his rounds he shall behold the spirit-person of his father at his side. Doctor once dubbed, ignorance shall be no barrier to his success; cash shall follow, whatever the treatment, and fees shall pour in. Satan tells his son that the reason he has endowed him with power to recognise his spirit-form is that he may judge by Death’s position in the sick room what are the prospects of the patient’s recovery. If he perceive his father lingering by the door, whatever the nature of the illness recovery will be speedy; if higher up the room, death will not be the sufferer’s doom; but if he is discovered standing by the head of the bed’s the patient’s doom is sealed. It happened that of a sudden the emperor himself was smitten with sore disease. Of course Dr. – was called in and promised large rewards if he saved the imperial life. As he entered the room he saw at once that all was lost: there stood his father Death as sentry at the bed’s head. Gold was offered in abundance; the doctor begged his father to go away and let him win his fee. “No inch I budge!” is the response. Then honours are offered him whom apparently wealth failed to tempt. The result is the same. Then Love: “Take my daughter as thy bride – save me for this reward!” The Doctor again implores a respite from his father, who is obdurate as ever. A thought strikes the physician: “Reverse the bed, so that Death no longer stands at the head;” but “the Antic passed from couch-foot back to pillow,” and is master of the situation again. The son now curses his father, and declares that he will go over to the other side. He sends to his home for the mystic Jacob’s-staff – a knobstick of proved efficacy in such cases. “Go, bid my mother (Satan’s wife, be it remembered) bring the stick herself.” The servant rushes off to do his errand, and all the anxious while the emperor sinks lower and lower, as the icy breath of Death freezes him to the marrow. All at once the door of the sick room opens, and there enters to Satan “Who but his Wife the Bad?” The devil goes off through the ceiling, leaving a sulphury smell behind; and, “Hail to the Doctor!” the imperial patient straightway recovers. In gratitude he offers him the promised daughter and her dowry; but the Doctor refuses the fee – “No dowry, no bad wife!” If this Talmudic legend has any relation to Solomon, it is well to bear in mind that his bitter experience, as St. Jerome says, was due to the fact that no one ever fell a victim to impurer loves than he. He married strange women, was deluded by them, and erected temples to their respective idols. His opinion, therefore, on marriage as we understand it is of little importance to us.

Dominus Hyacinthus De Archangelis. (The Ring and the Book.) The procurator or counsel for the poor, who defends Count Guido in the eighth book of the poem.

Domizia (Luria), a noble lady of Florence. She is loved by the Moorish captain Luria, who commanded the army of the Florentines. Domizia was greatly embittered against the republic for its ingratitude to her two brothers – Porzio and Berto – and hoped to be revenged for their deaths.

Don Juan. (Fifine at the Fair.) The husband of the poem is a philosophical study of the Don Juan of Molière. He is full of sophistries, and an adept in the art of making the worse appear the better reason. In Molière’s play Juan’s valet thus describes his master: “You see in Don Juan the greatest scoundrel the earth has ever borne – a madman, a dog, a demon, a Turk, a heretic – who believes neither in heaven, hell, nor devil, who passes his life simply as a brute beast, a pig of an epicure, a true Sardanapalus; who closes his ear to every remonstrance which can be made to him, and treats as idle talk all that we hold sacred.”

Donald. (Jocoseria, 1883.) The story of the poem is a true one, and is told by Sir Walter Scott, in The Keepsake for 1832, pp. 283-6. The following abridgement of the account is from the Browning Society’s Notes and Queries, No. 209, p. 328: “… The story is an old but not an ancient one: the actor and sufferer was not a very aged man, when I heard the anecdote in my early youth. Duncan (for so I shall call him) had been engaged in the affair of 1746, with others of his clan; … on the one side of his body he retained the proportions and firmness of an active mountaineer; on the other he was a disabled cripple, scarce able to limp along the streets. The cause which reduced him to this state of infirmity was singular. Twenty years or more before I knew Duncan he assisted his brothers in farming a large grazing in the Highlands… It chanced that a sheep or goat was missed from the flock, and Duncan … went himself in quest of the fugitive. In the course of his researches he was induced to ascend a small and narrow path, leading to the top of a high precipice… It was not much more than two feet broad, so rugged and difficult, and at the same time so terrible, that it would have been impracticable to any but the light step and steady brain of the Highlander. The precipice on the right rose like a wall, and on the left sank to a depth which it was giddy to look down upon… He had more than half ascended the precipice, when in midway … he encountered a buck of the red-deer species coming down the cliff by the same path in an opposite direction… Neither party had the power of retreating, for the stag had not room to turn himself in the narrow path, and if Duncan had turned his back to go down, he knew enough of the creature’s habits to be certain that he would rush upon him while engaged in the difficulties of the retreat. They stood therefore perfectly still, and looked at each other in mutual embarrassment for some space. At length the deer, which was of the largest size, began to lower his formidable antlers, as they do when they are brought to bay… Duncan saw the danger … and, as a last resource, stretched himself on the little ledge of rock … not making the least motion, for fear of alarming the animal. They remained in this posture for three or four hours… At length the buck … approached towards Duncan very slowly … he came close to the Highlander … when the devil, or the untameable love of sport, … began to overcome Duncan’s fears. Seeing the animal proceed so gently, he totally forgot not only the dangers of his position, but the implicit compact which certainly might have been inferred from the circumstances of the situation. With one hand Duncan seized the deer’s horn, whilst with the other he drew his dirk. But in the same instant the buck bounded over the precipice, carrying the Highlander along with him… Fortune … ordered that the deer should fall undermost, and be killed on the spot, while Duncan escaped with life, but with the fracture of a leg, an arm, and three ribs… I never could approve of Duncan’s conduct towards the deer in a moral point of view, … but the temptation of a hart of grease offering, as it were, his throat to the knife, would have subdued the virtue of almost any deer stalker… I have given you the story exactly as I recollect it.” As the practice of medicine does not necessarily make a man merciful, so neither does sport necessarily imply manliness and nobility of soul. In both cases there is a strong tendency for the professional to be considered the right view. In the story we have the stag, after four hours’ consideration, offering terms of agreement which Donald accepted and then treacherously broke. The animal broke Donald’s fall, yet he has no gratitude for its having thus saved his life. As one of the poems covered by the question in the prologue, “Wanting is – What?” we should reply, Honour and humanity.

D’Ormea. (King Victor and King Charles.) He was the unscrupulous minister of King Victor. He became necessary to King Charles when he received the crown on his father’s abdication, and was active in defeating the attempt of the latter to recover his crown.

Dramas. For the Stage: A Blot in the ’Scutcheon, Colombe’s Birthday, Strafford, Luria, In a Balcony, The Return of the Druses. For the Study: Pippa Passes, King Victor and King Charles, A Soul’s Tragedy, and Paracelsus. A Blot in the ’Scutcheon, Strafford, Colombe’s Birthday, and In a Balcony, have all been recently performed in London, under the direction of the Browning Society, greatly to the gratification of the spectators who were privileged to attend these special performances. Whether such dramas would be likely to attract audiences from the general public for any length of time is, however, extremely problematical. Mr. Browning’s poetry is of too subjective and psychological a character to be popular on the stage.

Dramatic Idyls (1879-80). Series I.: Martin Relph, Pheidippides, Halbert and Hob, Ivan Ivanovitch, Tray, Ned Bratts; Series II.: Proem, Echetlos, Clive, Muléykeh, Pietro of Abano, Doctor – , Pan and Luna, Epilogue.

Dramatic Lyrics. (Bells and Pomegranates, No. III., 1842.) Cavalier Tunes: i., Marching Along; ii., Give a Rouse; iii., My Wife Gertrude. Italy and France: i., Italy; ii., France. Camp and Cloister: i., Camp (French); ii., Cloister (Spanish); In a Gondola, Artemis Prologizes, Waring. Queen Worship: i., Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli; ii., Cristina. Madhouse Cells: i., Johannes Agricola; ii., Porphyria. Through the Metidja, The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Dramatic Monologue. Mr. Browning has so excelled in this particular kind of poetry that it may be fitly called a novelty of his invention. The dramatic monologue is quite different from the soliloquy. In the latter case the speaker delivers his own thoughts, uninterrupted by objections or the propositions of other persons. “In the dramatic monologue the presence of a silent second person is supposed, to whom the arguments of the speaker are addressed. It is obvious that the dramatic monologue gains over the soliloquy, in that it allows the artist greater room in which to work out his conceptions of character. The thoughts of a man in self-communion are apt to run in a certain circle, and to assume a monotony” (Professor Johnson, M.A.). This supposed second person serves to “draw out” the speaker and to stimulate the imagination of the reader. Bishop Blougram’s Apology is an admirable example of this form of literature, where Mr. Gigadibs, the critic of Bishop Blougram, is the silent second person above referred to.

Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. (Bells and Pomegranates, No. VII.: 1845.) How they Brought the Good News, Pictor Ignotus, Italy in England, England in Italy, The Lost Leader, The Lost Mistress, Home Thoughts from Abroad, The Tomb at St. Praxed’s; Garden Fancies: i. The Flower’s Name; ii. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. France and Spain: i. The Laboratory; ii. The Confessional. The Flight of the Duchess, Earth’s Immortalities, Song, The Boy and the Angel, Night and Morning, Claret and Tokay, Saul, Time’s Revenges, The Glove.

Dramatis Personæ (1864). James Lee, Gold Hair, The Worst of it, Dîs Aliter Visum, Too Late, Abt Vogler, Rabbi Ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert, Caliban upon Setebos, Confessions, May and Death, Prospice, Youth and Art, A Face, A Likeness, Mr. Sludge, Apparent Failure, Epilogue.

Dubiety. (Asolando, 1889.) Richardson said that “a state of dubiety and suspense is ever accompanied with uneasiness.” Sleep, if sound, is restful; but the poet asks for comfort, and to be comfortable implies a certain amount of consciousness – a dreamy, hazy sense of being in “luxury’s sofa-lap.” An English lady once asked a British tar in the Bay of Malaga, one lovely November day, if he were not happy to think he was out of foggy England – at least in autumn? The sailor protested there was nothing he disliked so much as “the everlasting blue sky” of the Mediterranean, and there was nothing he longed for so much as “a good Thames fog.” So the poet here demands,

“Just a cloud,Suffusing day too clear and bright.”

He does not wish to be shrouded, as the sailor did, but his idea of comfort is that the world’s busy thrust should be shaded by a “gauziness” at least. Vivid impressions are always more or less painful: they strike the senses too acutely, as “the eternal blue sky” of the south is too trying for English eyes. As such a light is sometimes too stimulating, so even too much intellectual light may be painful; a “gauziness,” a “dreaming’s vapour wreath” is to the overwrought brain of the thinker happiness “just for once.” In the dim musings, neither dream nor vision, but just a memory, comes the face of the woman he had loved and lost, the memory of her kiss, the impress of the lips of Truth, “for love is Truth.”

Eagle, The. (Ferishtah’s Fancies: I. “On Divine Providence.”) The story is taken from the fable of Pilpai (or Bidpai, as is the more correct form), called The Dervish, the Falcon and the Raven. A father told a young man that all effects have their causes, and he who relies upon Providence without considering these had need to be instructed by the following fable: —

“A certain dervish used to relate that, in his youth, once passing through a wood and admiring the works of the great Author of Nature, he spied a falcon that held a piece of flesh in his beak; and hovering about a tree, tore the flesh into bits, and gave it to a young raven that lay bald and featherless in its nest. The dervish, admiring the bounty of Providence, in a rapture of admiration cried out, ‘Behold, this poor bird, that is not able to seek out sustenance for himself, is not, however, forsaken of its Creator, who spreads the whole world like a table, where all creatures have their food ready provided for them! He extends His liberality so far, that the serpent finds wherewith to live upon the mountain of Gahen. Why, then, am I so greedy? wherefore do I run to the ends of the earth, and plough up the ocean for bread? Is it not better that I should henceforward confine myself in repose to some little corner, and abandon myself to fortune?’ Upon this he retired to his cell, where, without putting himself to any further trouble for anything in the world, he remained three days and three nights without victuals. At last, ‘Servant of mine,’ said the Creator to him in a dream, ‘know thou that all things in this world have their causes; and though my providence can never be limited, my wisdom requires that men shall make use of the means that I have ordained them. If thou wouldst imitate any one of the birds thou hast seen to my glory, use the talents I have given thee, and imitate the falcon that feeds the raven, and not the raven that lies a sluggard in his nest, and expects his food from another.’ This example shows us that we are not to lead idle and lazy lives upon the pretence of depending upon Providence.” —Fables of Pilpay (Chandos Classics), p. 53.

Ferishtah is in training for a dervish, and is anxious to feed hungry souls. Mr. Browning makes his charitable bird an eagle, and the moral is that man is not to play the helpless weakling, but to save the perishing by his helpful strength. The dervish, duly admonished, asks which lacks in him food the more – body or soul? He reflects that, as he starves in soul, so may mankind, wherefore he will go forth to help them; and this Mr. Browning proposes to do by the series of moral and philosophical lessons to be drawn from Ferishtah’s Fancies. The lyric teaches that, though a life with nature is good for meditation and for lovers of solitude, we are human souls and our proper place is “up and down amid men,” for God is soul, and it is the poet’s business to speak to the divine principle existing under every squalid exterior and harsh and hateful personality.

Earth’s Immortalities. (First published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics – Bells and Pomegranates No. VII.) The poet was famous, and not so very long since; but the gravestones above him are sinking, and the lichens are softening out his very name and date. So fades away his fame. And the lover who could be satisfied with nothing less than “for ever” has the fever of passion quenched in the snows that cover the tomb beside the poet’s. One demanded to be remembered, the other to be loved, for ever. Thus do “Earth’s immortalities” perish either under lichens or snows.