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

Jacopo (Luria) was the faithful secretary of the Moorish mercenary who led the army of Florence.

Jacynth. (Flight of the Duchess.) The maid of the Duchess, who went to sleep while the gipsy woman held the interview with her mistress, and induced her to leave her husband’s home.

James Lee’s Wife. (Dramatis Personæ, 1864; originally entitled James Lee.) This is a story of an unfortunate marriage, told in a series of meditations by the wife. Mr. Symons describes the psychological processes detailed in the poem as “the development of disillusion, change, alienation, severance and parting.” The key-notes of the nine divisions of the work are: I. Anxiety; II. Apprehension; III. Expostulation; IV. Despair; V. Reflection; VI. Change; VII. Self-denial; VIII. Resignation; IX. Self-Sacrifice.

I. At the Window. – The wife reflects that summer has departed. The chill, which settles upon the earth as the sun’s warm rays are withheld, falls heavily on her heart. Her husband has been absent but a day, and as she thinks of the changing year, she asks, with apprehension, “Will he change too?”

II. By the Fireside. – He has returned, but not the sun to her heart. As they sit by the fire in their seaside home, she reflects that the fire is built of “shipwreck wood.” Are her hopes to be shipwrecked too? Sailors on the stormy waters may envy their security as they behold the ruddy light from their fire over the sea, and “gnash their teeth for hate” as they reflect on their warm safe home; but ships rot and rust and get worm-eaten in port, as well as break up on rocks. She wonders who lived in that home before them. Did a woman watch the man with whom she began a happy voyage – see the planks start, and hell yawn beneath her?

III. In the Doorway. – The steps of coming winter hasten; the trees are bare; soon the swallows will forsake them. The wind, with its infinite wail, sings the dirge of the departed summer. Her heart shrivels, her spirit shrinks; yet, as she stands in the doorway, she reflects that they have every material comfort. They have neither cold nor want to fear in any shape, only the heart-chill, only the soul-hunger for the love that is gone. God meant that love should warm the human heart when material things without were cold and drear. She will

“live and love worthily, bear and be bold.”

IV. Along the Beach. – The storm has burst; it is no longer misgiving, fear, apprehension: it is certainty. She meditates, as she watches him, that he wanted her love; she gave him all her heart He has it still: she had taken him “for a world and more.” For love turns dull earth to the glow of God. She had taken the weak earth with many weeds, but with “a little good grain too.” She had watched for flowers and longed for harvest, but all was dead earth still, and the glow of God had never transfigured his soul to her. But she did love, did watch, did wait and weary and wear, was fault in his eyes. Her love had become irksome to him.

V. On the Cliff. – It is summer, and she is leaning on the dead burnt turf, looking at a rock left dry by the retiring waters. The deadness of the one and the barrenness of the other suit her melancholy; they are symbols of her position, and as she muses, a gay, blithe grasshopper springs on the turf, and a wonderful blue-and-red butterfly settles on the rock. So love settles on minds dead and bare; so love brightens all! So could her love brighten even his dead soul.

VI. Reading a Book, under the Cliff. – She is reading the poetry of “some young man” (Mr. Browning himself, who published these “Lines to the Wind” when twenty-six years old). The poet asks if the ailing wind is a dumb winged thing, entrusting its cause to him; and as she reads on she grows angry at the young man’s inexperience of the mystery of life. He knows nothing of the meaning of the moaning wind: it is not suffering, not distress; it is change. That is what the wind is trying to say, and trying above all to teach: we are to

“Rejoice that man is hurledFrom change to change unceasingly,His soul’s wings never furled!”

“Nothing endures,” says the wind. “There’s life’s pact – perhaps, too, its probation; but man might at least, as he grasps ‘one fair, good, wise thing,’ – the love of a loving woman – grave it on his soul’s hands’ palms to be his for ever.”

VII. Among the Rocks. – Earth sets his bones to bask in the sun, and smiles in the beauty with which the rippling water adorns him; and so she comforts herself by reflecting that we may make the low earth-nature better by suffusing it with our love-tides. Love is gain if we love only what is worth our love. How much more to make the low nature better by our throes!

VIII. Beside the Drawing-Board. – She has been drawing a hand. A clay cast of a perfect thing is before her. She has learned something of the infinite beauty of the human hand – has studied it, has praised God, its Maker, for it; and as she contemplates the world of wonders to be discovered therein, she is fain to efface her work and begin anew, for somehow grace slips from soulless finger-tips. The cast is that of a hand by Leonardo da Vinci. She has passionately longed to copy its perfection, but as the great master could not copy the perfection of the dead hand, so she has failed to draw the cast. And so she turns to the peasant girl model who is by her side that day, “a little girl with the poor coarse hand,” and as she contemplates it she begins to understand the worth of flesh and blood, and that there is a great deal more than beauty in a hand. She has read Bell on the human hand, and she knows something of the infinite uses of the mechanism which is hidden beneath the flesh. She knows what use survives the beauty in the peasant hand that spins and bakes. The living woman is better than the dead cast. She has learned the lesson that all this craving for what can never be hers – for the love she cannot gain, any more than the perfection she cannot draw – is wasting her life. She will be up and doing, no longer dreaming and sighing.

IX. On Deck. – It was better to leave him! She will set him free. She had no beauty, no grace; nothing in her deserved any place in his mind. She was harsh and ill-favoured (and perhaps this was the secret of the trouble). Still, had he loved her, love could and would have made her beautiful. Some day it may be even so; and in the years to come a face, a form – her own – may rise before his mental vision, his eyes be opened, his liberated soul leap forth in a passionate “’Tis she!”

Jesus Christ. That Mr. Browning was something more than a Theist, a Unitarian, or a Broad Churchman, may be gathered from several passages in his works, as well as from direct statements to individuals. Three lines in the Death in the Desert (though often said to be used only dramatically), when taken in connection with the whole drift and purpose of the poem, seem to indicate a faith which is more than mere Theism:

“The acknowledgment of God in Christ, accepted by thy reason,Solves for thee all questions in the earth and out of it,And has so far advanced thee to be wise.”

In the Epistle of Karshish, the Arab physician says concerning Jesus, who had raised Lazarus from the dead: —

“The very God! think, Abib, dost thou think?So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too —So, through the thunder comes a loving voiceSaying, ‘O heart I made, a heart beats here!Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!Thou hast no power nor may’st conceive of mine.But love I gave thee, with myself to love,And thou must love me who have died for thee!’The madman saith He said so: it is strange.”

Christmas Eve and Easter Day seem to be meaningless if they do not express the author’s faith in the divinity of our Lord. Just as every believer in Him can detect the true ring of the Christian believer and lover of his Lord in the lines quoted from the Epistle of Karshish, so will his touchstone detect the Christian in many other passages of the poet’s work.

In Saul, canto xviii., David says: —

“My flesh, that I seekIn the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall beA Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this handShall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!”

David – to whom Christendom attributes the Psalms, even were he only the editor of that wonderful body of prayer and praise – as the utterer of sentiments like these, is permitted to express the orthodox opinion that he prophesied of the Christ who was to come. Mr. Browning would have hardly done this “dramatically.” (What are termed “the Messianic Psalms” are ii., xxi., xxii., xlv., lxxii., cx.) Pompilia, in The Ring and the Book, a character which is built up of the purest and warmest faith of the poet’s heart, says: —

“I never realised God’s truth before —How He grew likest God in being born.”

The poem entitled “The Sun,” in Ferishtah’s Fancies, No. 5, may be studied in this connection.

Jews. Browning had great sympathy with the Jewish spirit. See Rabbi Ben Ezra, Jochanan Hakkadosh, Ben Karshook, Holy Cross Day, and Filippo Baldinucci.

Jochanan Hakkadosh. (Jocoseria: 1883.) The Hebrew which Mr. Browning quotes in the tale as the title of the work from which his incidents are derived, may be translated as “Collection of many Fables”; and the second Hebrew phrase means “from Moses to Moses [Moses Maimonides] there was never one like Moses.” Although the story of this poem is not historical, it is founded on characters and events which are familiar to students of Jewish literature and history. Hakkadosh means “The Holy.” Rabbi Yehudah Hannasi (the Prince) was the reputed author of the Mishnah, and was born before the year 140 of the Christian era. On account of his holy living he was surnamed Rabbenu Haḳkadosh. Jochanan means John. In the Jewish Messenger for March 4th, 1887, the poem is reviewed from a Jewish point of view by “Mary M. Cohen,” from which interesting study we extract the following particulars: – The scene of the poem is laid at Schiphaz, which is probably intended for Sheeraz, in Persia. “I think,” says the authoress, “that, with artistic licence, Mr. Browning does not here portray any individual man, but takes the names and characteristics of several rabbis, fusing all into a whole. Jochanan finds old age a continued disappointment. He is represented as almost overtaken by death; his loving scholars, as was usual in the days of rabbinism, cluster about him for some worthy word of parting advice. One of the pupils asks: ‘Say, does age acquiesce in vanished youth?’ The rabbi, groaning, answers grimly:

“Last as firstThe truth speak I – in boyhood who beganStriving to live an angel, and, amercedFor such presumption, die now hardly, man.What have I proved of life? To live, indeed,That much I learned.”

It was suggested to the dying rabbi that if compassionating folk would render him up a portion of their lives, Hakkadosh might attain his fourscore years. Tsaddik, the scholar, well versed in the Targums, was foremost in urging the adoption of this expedient. By yielding up part of their lives, the pupils of Jochanan hope to combine the lessons of perfect wisdom and varied experience of life. But experience proves fatal to all the hopes, the aspirations, the high ideals of youth. Experience paralyses action. Experience chills the aspirations which animate the generous mind of the lover, the soldier, the poet, the statesman. When the men of experience contributed their quota, ‘certain gamesome boys’ must needs throw some of theirs also. This accounts for the rabbi being found alive unexpectedly after a long interval:

“Trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.”

The rabbi utters heaven-sent intuitions, the gift of these lads. Under the influence of the Ruach, or spirit, Jochanan declares that happiness, here and hereafter, is found in acting on the generous impulses, the noble ideals which are sent into the mind, in spite of the testimony of experience that we shall fail to realise our aspirations. ‘There is no sin,’ says the rabbi, ‘except in doubting that the light which lured the unwary into darkness did no wrong, had I but marched on boldly.’ What we see here as antitheses, or as complementary truths, are reconciled hereafter. This reconciliation cannot be grasped by our present faculties. The rabbi seems to ‘babble’ when he tries to express in words the truth he sees. The pure white light of truth, seen through the medium of the flesh, is composed of many coloured rays. Evil is like the dark lines in the spectrum. The whole duty of man is to learn to love. If he fails, it matters not; he has learned the art: ‘so much for the attempt – anon performance.’ Love is the sum of our spiritual intuitions, the law of our practical conduct.”

Notes. —Mishna, the second or oral Jewish law; the great collection of legal decisions by the ancient rabbis; and so the fundamental document of Jewish oral law. Schiphaz, an imaginary place; or perhaps Sheeraz, on the Bundemeer, referred to at end of poem. Jochanan Ben Sabbathai, not historical. Khubbezleh, a fanciful name of the poet’s invention. Targum, a Chaldee version or paraphrase of the Old Testament. Nine Points of Perfection: Nine is a trinity of trinities, and is a mystical number of perfection; the slang expression “dressed to the nines” means dressed to perfection. Tsaddik == just, not historical. Dob == Bear (the constellation). The Bear, the constellation. Aish, the Great Bear. The Bier: the Jews called the constellation of the Great Bear “The Bier.” Three Daughters, the tail stars of the Bear. Banoth == daughters. The Ten: Jewish martyrs under the Roman empire. Akiba, Rabbi, lived A.C. 117, and laid the groundwork of the Mishna. He was one of the greatest Jewish teachers, and was at the height of his popularity when the revolt of the Jews under Barcochab took place. (See for a history of the revolt, and of Akiba’s influence, Milman’s History of the Jews, Book xviii.) He was scraped to death with an iron comb. Perida: a Jewish teacher of such infinite patience that the Talmud records that he repeated his lesson to a dull pupil four hundred times, and as even then he could not understand, four hundred times more, on which the spirit declared that four hundred years should be added to his life. Uzzean: Job, the most patient man, was of the land of Uz. Djinn, a supernatural being. Edom: Rome and Christianity went by this name in the Talmud. “Sic Jesus vult,” so Jesus wills. The Statist == the statesman. Mizraim == Egypt. Shushan == lily. Tohu-bohu, void and waste. Halaphta, Talmudic teachers. Ruach, spirit. Bendimir: no doubt the Bundemeer, one of the chief rivers of Farzistan, a province in Persia. Og’s thigh bone: “Og was king of Bashan. The rabbis say that the height of his stature was 23,033 cubits (nearly six miles). He used to drink water from the clouds, and toast fish by holding them before the orb of the sun. He asked Noah to take him into the ark, but Noah would not. When the flood was at its deepest, it did not reach to the knees of this giant. Og lived 3000 years, and then he was slain by the hand of Moses. Moses was himself ten cubits in stature (15 feet), and he took a spear ten cubits long, and threw it ten cubits high, and yet it only reached the heel of Og… When dead, his body reached as far as the river Nile. Og’s mother was Enach, a daughter of Adam. Her fingers were two cubits long (one yard), and on each finger she had two sharp nails. She was devoured by wild beasts. —Maracci.”

Jocoseria. The volume of poems under this title was published in 1883. It contains the following works: “Wanting is – What?” “Donald,” “Solomon and Balkis,” “Cristina and Monaldeschi,” “Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli,” “Adam, Lilith and Eve,” “Ixion,” “Jochanan Hakkadosh,” “Never the Time and the Place,” “Pambo.” In a letter to a friend, along with an early copy of this work, the poet stated that “the title is taken from the work of Melander (Schwartzmann) – reviewed, by a curious coincidence, in the Blackwood of this month. I referred to it in a note to ‘Paracelsus.’ The two Hebrew quotations (put in to give a grave look to what is mere fun and invention), being translated, amount to: (1) “A Collection of Many Lies”; and (2) an old saying, ‘From Moses to Moses arose none like to Moses’ (i. e. Moses Maimonides)…” One of the notes to Paracelsus refers to Melander’s “Jocoseria” as “rubbish.” Melander, whose proper name was Otho Schwartzmann, was born in 1571. He published a work called “Joco-Seria,” because it was a collection of stories both grave and gay.

Johannes Agricola in Meditation. (First published in The Monthly Repository, and signed “Z.,” in 1836. Reprinted in Dramatic Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates, 1842.) Johannes Agricola meditates on the thought of his election or choice by the Supreme Being, who in His eternal counsels has before all worlds predestined him as an object of mercy and salvation. God thought of him before He thought of suns or moons, ordained every incident of his life for him, and mapped out its every circumstance. Totally irrespective of his conduct, God having chosen of His own sovereign grace, uninfluenced in the slightest degree by anything which Johannes has done or left undone, to consider him as a guiltless being, is pledged to save him of free mercy. It would make no difference to his ultimate salvation were he to mix all hideous sins in one draught, and drink it to the dregs. Predestined to be saved, nothing that he can do can unsave him; foreordained to heaven, nothing he could do could lead him hell-wards. As a corollary, those souls who are not so predestined in the counsels of God to eternal salvation may be as holy, as perfect, in the sight of men as he (Agricola) might be vile in their sight; yet they shall be tormented for ever in hell, simply because God has mysteriously left them out of His choice. They are reprobate, non-elect, and nothing that they could possibly do could avail to save them. When Adam sinned, he sinned not only for himself, but for the whole human race, and the whole species was forthwith condemned in him, excepting only those whom God in His Sovereign mercy had from all eternity elected to save, and that without regard to their merit or demerit. These reprobate persons might try to win God’s favour, might labour with all their might to please Him, and would only thereby add to their sin. Priest, doctor, hermit, monk, martyr, nun, or chorister, – all these, leading holy and before men beautiful lives, were eternally foreordained to be lost before God fashioned star or sun. For all this Johannes Agricola praises God, praises Him all the more that he cannot understand Him or His ways, praises Him especially that he has not to bargain for His love or pay a price for his salvation. Such is the terrible portrait which Mr. Browning has drawn of the teaching of a man who, as one of the Reformers, and as a friend of Luther, was the founder of what is known in religious history as Antinomianism. Hideous as is the perversion of gospel teaching which Agricola set forth, the doctrines of Antinomianism still linger on amongst certain sects of Calvinists in England and Scotland. The doctrine of reprobation is thus stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, iii. 7: “The rest of mankind (i. e. all but the elect), God was pleased … to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath, etc.” Mosheim, in his Ecclesiastical History (century xvii., Sect. II., Part II., chap, ii., 23), thus describes the Presbyterian Antinomians: “The Antinomians are over-rigid Calvinists, who are thought by the other Presbyterians to abuse Calvin’s doctrine of the absolute decrees of God, to the injury of the cause of piety. Some of them … deny that it is necessary for ministers to exhort Christians to holiness and obedience of the law, because those whom God from all eternity elected to salvation will themselves, and without being admonished and exhorted by any one, by a Divine influence, or the impulse of Almighty grace, perform holy and good deeds; while those who are destined by the Divine decrees to eternal punishment, though admonished and entreated ever so much, will not obey the Divine law, since Divine grace is denied them; and it is therefore sufficient, in preaching to the people, to hold up only the gospel and faith in Jesus Christ. But others merely hold that the elect, because they cannot lose the Divine favour, do not truly commit sin and break the Divine law, although they should go contrary to its precepts and do wicked actions, and therefore it is not necessary that they should confess their sins or grieve for them: that adultery for instance, in one of the elect appears to us indeed to be a sin or a violation of the law, yet it is no sin in the sight of God, because one who is elected to salvation can do nothing displeasing to God and forbidden by the law.” Very similar teaching may be discovered at the present day in the body of religionists known as Hyper-Calvinists or Strict Baptists. The professors are for the most part much better than their creed, and they are exceedingly reticent concerning their doctrines so far as they are represented by the term Antinomian; but the organs of their phase of religious belief, The Gospel Standard and The Earthen Vessel, frequently contain proofs of the vitality of Agricola’s doctrines in their pages. For example, in the Gospel Standard for July 1891, p. 288, we find the following: “No hope, nor salvation, can possibly arise out of the law or covenant of works. Every man’s works are sin, – his best works are polluted. Every page of the law unfolds his defects and shortcomings, nor will allow of a few shillings to the pound, – Pay the whole or die the death.” The tendency of Antinomianism is to become an esoteric doctrine, and it is seldom preached in any grosser form than this, however sweet it may be to the hearts of the initiated.

John of Halberstadt. The ecclesiastic in Transcendentalism who was also a magician and performed the “prestigious feat” of conjuring roses up in winter.

Joris. One of the riders in the poem “How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.”

Jules. (Pippa Passes). The young French artist who married Phene under a misunderstanding, the result of a practical joke played upon him by his companions.

Karshish. (An Epistle.) The Arab physician who wrote of the interesting cases which he had seen in his travels to his brother leech, and who described Lazarus, who was raised from the dead, as having been in a trance.

King, A. The song in Pippa Passes, beginning “A king lived long ago,” was originally published in The Monthly Repository (edited by W. J. Fox) in 1835.

King Charles I. of England. See Strafford.

King Charles Emanuel, of Savoy (King Victor and King Charles), was the son of Victor Amadeus II., Duke of Savoy. He became king when his father suddenly abdicated, in 1730.

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