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

On the Poet, Objective and Subjective; on the latter’s Aim; on Shelley as Man and Poet. By Robert Browning. (The introductory essay to Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Moxon: 1852.) Dr. Furnivall says: “The cause of Browning’s writing this essay was (I believe) as follows: – In or before 1851, a forger clever enough to take in the publishers wrote some ‘letters of Shelley and Byron.’ Moxon bought the forged Shelley letters, and John Murray the Byron ones. Before they were proved spurious, Moxon printed the Shelley letters, and got Browning to write an introductory essay to them. Murray was slower, and, by the discovery of the forgery, was saved the exposure and annoyance that Moxon incurred in publishing, and then having to suppress, his book. The spurious Shelley letters were, as might have been expected, nugatory, barren of any new revelations of Shelley’s character. Browning could actually make nothing of them, and therefore wrote his Essay, not on the Letters, but on the two classes of poets, objective and subjective, and on Shelley. He wanted a chance of writing on the poet he admired; the Letters gave him the chance; and, being told that they were genuine, he accepted them as such without inquiry. Moreover, being in Paris at the time, he had no opportunity of consulting English experts, had even any suspicion of forgery crossed his mind. The worth of his Essay is no way weakened by its having been set before spurious letters.” A brief extract from Mr. Browning’s Essay will indicate his estimate of the poetic method which he selected as his own. Speaking of the subjective poet, he says: “He, gifted like the objective poet with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many below, as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their absolute truth – an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially attained by the poet’s own soul. Not what man sees, but what God sees – the Ideas of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly in the Divine Hand – it is toward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements of humanity he has to do; and he digs where he stands – preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak. Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and tempestuous tossings of the forest-trees, but with their roots and fibres naked to the chalk and stone. He does not paint pictures and hang them on the walls, but rather carries them on the retina of his own eyes: we must look deep into his human eyes to see those pictures on them. He is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner; and what he produces will be less a work than an effluence. That effluence cannot be easily considered in abstraction from his personality, – being indeed the very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it but not separated.” In these words we have not only Mr. Browning’s defence of his work (if any could be needed), but an explanation of the reason why he seems as much interested in dissecting the soul of a villain or a scamp as of a saint and hero. Count Guido in his complex wickedness, brooding in his prison cell, is more interesting to such an analyst than Pompilia fluttering her wings on the borders of heaven. The old roué in the Inn Album, has root fibres worth tracing till they grip the stones. Simple old Rabbi Ben Ezra has nothing to dissect; his innocent soul lies basking in the smile of God. He has nothing to do with him but sit at his feet and listen. This “Essay on Shelley” has been reprinted and published in Part I. of the Browning Society’s Papers.

Optimism. Browning’s optimism is that which perhaps more than anything else distinguishes his whole work from first to last. Most eloquently has this been acknowledged by James Thomson, a pessimist of the pessimists. Unhappily he could not himself feel this confidence in “everything being for the best in the best of all possible worlds,” but he could admire it in another. “Browning,” he said, “has conquered life, instead of being conquered by it: a victory so rare as to be almost unique, especially among poets in these latter days.” It would be easy to give examples of Browning’s optimism, which would fill many pages of this work. The following will suffice: —

“God’s in His heaven – all’s right with the world!”Song in “Pippa Passes.”“There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.”Abt Vogler.“Let us cry ‘All good thingsAre ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!’”Rabbi Ben Ezra.“My own hope is, a sun will pierceThe thickest cloud earth ever stretched;That, after Last, returns the First,Though a wide compass round be fetchedThat what began best, can’t end worst,Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.”Apparent Failure.

Orchestrion. The musical instrument invented by Abt Vogler (q. v.).

Ottima. (Pippa Passes.) The woman who, with her paramour Sebald, murdered her husband Luca.

“Overhead the Tree-Tops meet.” (Pippa Passes.) Pippa sings these words as she passes the Bishop’s house.

“Over the Sea our Galleys went.” (Paracelsus.) The hero sings the song of which these are the opening words in Part IV., Paracelsus Aspires.

Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in Distemper. (Published July 1876, in a volume with Other Poems.) They were: “At the Mermaid,” “Home,” “Ship,” “Pisgah-Sights,” “Fears and Scruples,” “Natural Magic,” “Magical Nature,” “Bifurcation,” “Numpholeptos,” “Appearances,” “St. Martin’s Summer,” “Hervé Riel,” “A Forgiveness,” “Cenciaja,” “Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial,” “Epilogue.”

Pacchiarotto (or Pacchiarotti) Jacopo, has been confused in history with Girolamo del Pacchia, and this fact is referred to in the beginning of the poem. The following account of these painters, who lived about the same time, from the Encyclopædia Britannica, will help to clear the way for the comprehension of this rather difficult poem, – difficult not on account of the story, which is told clearly enough, but for the extraneous matter with which it is intermingled.

[The Man.] “Pacchia, Girolamo Del, and Pacchiarotto (or Pacchiarotti) Jacopo. These are two painters of the Sienese school, whose career and art-work have been much mis-stated till late years. One or other of them produced some good pictures, which used to pass as the performance of Perugino; reclaimed from Perugino, they were assigned to Pacchiarotto; now it is sufficiently settled that the good works are by G. del Pacchia, while nothing of Pacchiarotto’s own doing transcends mediocrity. The mythical Pacchiarotto, who worked actively at Fontainebleau, has no authenticity. Girolamo del Pacchia, son of a Hungarian cannon-founder, was born probably in Siena, in 1477. Having joined a turbulent club named the Bardotti, he disappeared from Siena in 1535, when the club was dispersed, and nothing of a later date is known of him. His most celebrated work is a fresco of the Nativity of the Virgin, in the chapel of St. Bernardino, Siena: graceful and tender, with a certain artificiality. Another renowned fresco, in the church of St. Catherine, represents that saint on her visit to St. Agnes of Montepulciano, who, having just expired, raises her foot by miracle. In the National Gallery of London there is a Virgin and Child. The forms of G. del Pacchia are fuller than those of Perugino (his principal model of style appears to have been in reality Francialigio); the drawing is not always unexceptionable. The female heads have sweetness and beauty of feature, and some of the colouring has noticeable force. Pacchiarotto was born in Siena in 1474. In 1530 he took part in the conspiracy of the Libertini and Popolani, and in 1533 he joined the Bardotti. He had to hide for his life in 1535, and was concealed by the Observantine fathers in a tomb in the church of St. John. He was stuffed in close to a new-buried corpse, and got covered with vermin and dreadfully exhausted by the close of the second day. After a while he resumed work. He was exiled in 1539, but recalled in the following year; and in that year, or soon afterwards, he died. Among the few extant works with which he is still credited is an Assumption of the Virgin, in the Carmine of Siena.”

[The Poem.] Pacchiarotto must needs take up “Reform.” He thought it was his vocation to set things in general to rights. The world he considered needed reforming, and he was quite ready to undertake the task. He found mankind stubborn, however, and not much inclined to listen to him. So he constructed himself a workshop, and painted its walls in fresco with all sorts and conditions of men, from beggar to noble. He drew kings, clowns, popes, emperors, priests, and ladies; then washed his brushes, cleaned his pallet, took off his working dress, and began to lecture his figures which he had painted. He put arguments into their mouths, and of course readily refuted them. He found his figures very meek and complaisant, and he had no trouble at all in disposing of their replies to his own satisfaction. He stripped them one by one of their “cant-clothed abuses,” exposed the sophistry of their excuses, and left their vices without a leg to stand upon. Paint-bred men being so easily upset, he was now prepared to deal with those of flesh and blood, so he wished mortar and paint good-bye and descended to the streets. It happened just at this time that there fell upon Siena a famine. This public distress afforded our artist his opportunity: he blamed the authorities for the famine, and set himself to the task of teaching them to manage things better. Now, there was at that time a club of disaffected citizens, who called themselves Bardotti, or “spare-horses” – those which walk by the side of the waggon drawn by the working team – horses doing nothing to draw the load, but ready in case of emergency. Such were these gentry; they did not work, but they were ready for such an emergency as the present. And their advice to the authorities was simply to turn things upside down, make servant master, poverty wealth, and wealth poverty; then things would be righted. Pacchiarotto placed himself in the midst of these folk, and suggested that what they wanted was the right man in the right place, and he was the right man. The words were not out of his mouth ere the Spare-Horses flew at him, and he had to run for his life. Looking everywhere for some place of shelter, he found himself at the cemetery of a Franciscan monastery; and the only place where he could hide himself with safety from the pursuers was in a vault with a recently-buried corpse, so he was obliged to creep through a hole in the brickwork and habituate himself to the strange bedfellow. In this stinking atmosphere, and covered with vermin from the corpse, he lay in misery for two days, praying the saints to set him free, and promising for ever to abandon the attempt to preach change to his fellow-citizens. When he was starved into sanity, he scrambled out of this loathsome hiding-place, looking like a spectre, only much more “alive.” He then found his way to the superior of the brotherhood, who had him well cleansed and rubbed with odoriferous unguents. They fed him, clothed him, and then he told his story all unvarnished. Be sure the good monk gave him sound advice. He told him how he had had hopes of converting men by his own preaching, and how hard he had found the task. He had come to the conclusion that work for work’s sake was the real need of men: let men work, but not dream, and they would succeed; if present success merely were intended, heaven would begin too soon. He advised him not to be a spare-horse, but a working-horse – to stick to his paint brush and work for his living. Pacchiarotto was mute; he had no need of conversion. He was reformed already, not by a live man’s arguments, but by the dead thing – the clay-cold grinning corpse, that had asked him why he was in such a hurry to leave the warm light and join him in the grave. The corpse had told him how earth was a place of rehearsal, at which things seldom go smoothly. The Author, no doubt, had His reasons, which would come out when the play was produced. Meanwhile he advised him not to interfere with its production; he was suffering from a swelling called Vanity, which he would prick and relieve him of. And so Pacchiarotto, having partaken of the monks’ good cheer, was restored to sanity and said good-bye. Mr. Browning now addresses his critics. He has told them a plain story, and tried therewith to content them. He considers them as an assembly of May-day sweeps, with tongs and bellows, calling at his house and announcing themselves as

“We critics as sweeps out your chimbly!”

They relieve his flue of the soot, suggest that he burns a deal of coal in his kitchen, and the neighbours do say he ought to consume his own smoke! Browning tells them that his housemaid says they bring more dirt into the house than they remove. But he will not be hard upon them: “’twas God made you dingy,” he says. He will give them soap, however, and let them dance away and make a rattle with their brushes, which is a large share of their whole business, he thinks. He bids them not trample his grass, and flings out a liberal largess and bids them be off, or his housemaid will serve them as Xantippe served Socrates once; she will take the first thing that comes to her hand.

Notes. – Verse 2, “my Kirkup”: this was Baron Kirkup, an admirer of art and letters, who was on friendly terms with Browning at Florence. He received a title of nobility from the King of Italy for his services to literature. It was he who discovered Dante’s portrait in the Bargello at Florence. San Bernardino: St. Bernardino of Siena became, at the age of twenty-three, one of the most celebrated and eloquent preachers among the Franciscans, but he refused all ecclesiastical honours. He founded the Order of the “Observants” (see note to v. 17). He was born 1380. Bazzi: the Italian painter Giannantonio Bazzi (who, until recent years, was erroneously named Razzi) bore the name “Sodona” or “Il Sodoma,” as a family name, and signed it upon some of his pictures. Bazzi was corrupted into Razzi, and “Sodona” into “Sodoma.” He lived c. 1479-1549. Beccafumi: a distinguished painter of the Siena school, who lived at the beginning of the sixteenth century. v. 3, Sopra sotto, topsy-turvy. v. 5, Quiesco, I rest; “priest armed with bell, book, and candle”: in the major excommunication the bell is rung, the sentence read from the book, and the lighted candle extinguished. v. 6, frescanti, painters in fresco. v. 8, Boanerges: sons of Thunder – an appellation given by Jesus Christ to His disciples James and John. v. 9, Juvenal: the celebrated Roman satirist; flourished at Rome in the latter half of the first century. He severely chastised the follies and vices of his times. He was particularly outspoken concerning the licentiousness of the Roman ladies. “Quæ nemo dixisset in toto, nisi (ædepol) ore illoto”: which things no one would have spoken about fully, unless (by Gad) he had a dirty mouth. (Juvenal’s satires about the Roman ladies are inconceivably filthy, and if the things were true it was ill to speak of them in this manner. St. Paul was equally severe, but adopted another method.) Apage: away! begone! v. 11, “non verbis sed factis”: not by words but by deeds. v. 12, “fetch grain out of Sicily”: Sicily has always been famous for its wheat. Even at the present day the best wheat for making Naples macaroni comes from this beautiful island, and the people take in return the inferior wheat of Italy. Sicily was in ancient times sacred to Ceres, the goddess of the corn-lands. v. 13, “Freed Ones,” “Bardotti”: a revolutionary club so called, which was broken up by the authorities in 1535. Pacchia and Pacchiarotto both seem to have had some connection with it; bailiwick: the precincts in which a bailiff has jurisdiction. v. 15, “kai tà loipa,” Και τα λειπόμενα == and so forth; kappas, taus, lambdas (κ.τ.λ.): the initial letters of the above Greek words, commonly used in learned books. v. 16, “per ignes incedis”: thou art treading upon fires. Not quite correctly quoted, as to the order of the words, from Horace (Od. II. i. 6), “Et incedis per ignes, suppositos cineri doloso.” v. 17, St. John’s Observance: “The Italians call the Franciscans Osservanti, in France Pères ou Frères de l’Observance, because they observed the original rule as laid down by St. Francis, went barefoot, and professed absolute poverty. This order became very popular” (Mrs. Jameson’s Monastic Orders). v. 18, “haud in posse sed esse mens”: mind as it is, not as it might be. v. 21, thill-horse, a thiller horse, a horse which goes between the shafts, or thills. v. 22, imposthume, an abscess or boil. v. 23, “sæculorum in sæcula!” for ever and ever; Benedicite: Bless ye! May you be blessed. v. 27, aubade [Fr.], open-air music performed at daybreak before the window of the person whom it is intended to honour. v. 27, skoramis, a vessel of dishonour. v. 28, karterotaton belos, the strongest dart (see Pindar’s 1st Olympic Ode). “which Pindar declares the true melos” == mode. ad hoc, hitherto. os frontis, the forehead. “hebdome, hieron emar,” the seventh, the holy day. “tei gar Apollona chrusaora, egeinato Leto”: on which the golden-sworded Apollo was born of Latona.

Painting Poems. The great poems of this class are Andrea del Sarto, Pictor Ignotus, and Fra Lippo Lippi. (Vasari’s Lives of the Painters should be read in connection with the poems which deal with the Italian artists.)

Palma. The heroine of Sordello. She was the daughter of Eccelino, the Ghibelline, by Agnes Este. The historical personage represented by Browning’s Palma was Cunizza.

Pambo. (Jocoseria, 1883.) The poem is based upon a passage in the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus, Lib. iv., cap. xviii., “concerning Ammon the Monk, and divers religious men inhabiting the Desert.” In the time of St. Antony, in the Nitrian desert, A.D. 373, there was a monk named “Pambo, a simple and an unlearned man, who came unto his friend to learn a Psalm; and hearing the first verse of the thirty-ninth Psalm, which is there read: ‘I said, I will take heed unto my ways, that I offend not with my tongue’ – would not hear the second, but went away saying, ‘This one verse is enough for me, if I learn it as I ought to do.’ And when his teacher blamed him for absenting himself a whole six months, he answered for himself that he had not well learned the first verse. Many years after that, when one of his acquaintances demanded of him whether he had learned the verse, he said again, that in nineteen years he had scarce learned in life to fulfil that one line.” His life is taken from Palladius, in Lausiac and Rufin. Hist. Patr. Sozomen. Alban Butler, in his Lives of the Saints, under the date September 6th, gives the following interesting account of the character, whose history was apparently only partially known by Mr. Browning, as in the second verse of the poem he says he does not know who he was: – “St. Pambo betook himself in his youth to the great St. Antony in the desert, and, desiring to be admitted among his disciples, begged he would give him some lessons for his conduct. The great patriarch of the ancient monks told him he must take care always to live in a state of penance and compunction for his sins, must perfectly divest himself of all self-conceit, and never place the least confidence in himself or in his own righteousness; must watch continually over himself, and study to act in everything in such a manner as to have no occasion afterward to repent of what he had done; and that he must labour to put a restraint upon his tongue and his appetite. The disciple set himself earnestly to learn the practice of all these lessons. The mortification of gluttony was usually laid down by the fathers as one of the first steps towards bringing the senses and the passions into subjection: this, consisting in something exterior and sensible, its practice is more obvious, yet of great importance towards the reduction of all the sensual appetites of the mind, whose revolt was begun by the intemperance and disobedience of our first parents. Fasting is also, by the Divine appointment, a duty of the exterior part of our penance. What a reproach are the austere lives which so many saints have led to those slothful and sensual Christians whose god is the belly, and who walk enemies to the Cross of Christ, or who have not courage, at least by frequent self-denials, to curb this appetite! No man can govern himself who is a slave to this base gratification of sense. St. Pambo excelled most other ancient monks in the austerity of his continual fasts. The government of his tongue was no less an object of his watchfulness than that of his appetite. A certain religious brother to whom he had applied for advice began to recite to him the thirty-ninth psalm: ‘I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue.’ Which words Pambo had no sooner heard, but, without waiting for the second verse, he returned to his cell, saying that was enough for one lesson, and that he would go and study to put it in practice. This he did by keeping almost perpetual silence, and by weighing well, when it was necessary to speak, every word before he gave any answer. He often took several days to recommend consultations to God, and to consider what answer he should give to those who addressed themselves to him. By his perpetual attention not to offend in his words, he arrived at so great a perfection in this particular that he was thought to have equalled, if not to have excelled, St. Antony himself; and his answers were seasoned with so much wisdom and spiritual prudence that they were received by all as if they had been oracles dictated by heaven. Abbot Poemen said of our saint: ‘Three exterior practices are remarkable in Abbot Pambo: his fasting every day till evening, his silence, and his great diligence in manual labour.’ St. Antony inculcated to all his disciples the obligation of assiduity in constant manual labour in a solitary life, both as a part of penance and a necessary means to expel sloth and entertain the vigour of the mind in spiritual exercises. This lesson was confirmed to him by his own experience, and by a heavenly vision related in the Lives of the Fathers as follows: ‘Abbot Antony, as he was sitting in the wilderness, fell into a grievous temptation of spiritual darkness; and he said to God: “Lord, I desire to be saved; but my thoughts are a hindrance to me. What shall I do in my present affliction? How shall I be saved?” Soon after he rose up, and, going out of his cell, saw a man sitting and working, then rising from his work to pray; afterward sitting down again and twisting his cord, after this rising to pray. He understood this to be an angel sent by God to teach him what he was to do, and he heard the angel say to him: “Do so, and thou shalt be saved.” Hereat the Abbot was filled with joy and confidence, and by this means he cheerfully persevered to the end.’ St. Pambo most rigorously observed this rule, and feared to lose one moment of his precious time. Out of love of humiliations, and a fear of the danger of vain-glory and pride, he made it his earnest prayer for three years that God would not give him glory before men, but rather contempt. Nevertheless God glorified him in this life, but made him by His grace to learn more perfectly to humble himself amidst applause. The eminent grace which replenished his soul showed itself in his exterior by a certain air of majesty, and a kind of light which shone on his countenance, like what we read of Moses, so that a person could not look steadfastly on his face. St. Antony, who admired the purity of his soul and his mastery over his passions, used to say that his fear of God had moved the Divine Spirit to take up His resting-place in him. St. Pambo, after he left St. Antony, settled in the desert of Nitria, on a mountain, where he had a monastery. But he lived some time in the wilderness of the Cells, where Rufinus says he went to receive his blessing in the year 374. St. Melania the Elder, in the visit she made to the holy solitaries who inhabited the deserts of Egypt, coming to St. Pambo’s monastery on Mount Nitria, found the holy abbot sitting at his work, making mats. She gave him three hundred pounds weight of silver, desiring him to accept that part of her store for the necessities of the poor among the brethren. St. Pambo, without interrupting his work, or looking at her or her present, said to her that God would reward her charity. Then, turning to his disciple, he bade him take the silver and distribute it among all the brethren in Lybia and the isles who were most needy, but charged him to give nothing to those of Egypt, that country being rich and plentiful. Melania continued some time standing, and at length said: ‘Father, do you know that here is three hundred pounds weight of silver?’ The Abbot, without casting his eye upon the chest of silver, replied: ‘Daughter, He to whom you made this offering very well knows how much it weighs without being told. If you give it to God, who did not despise the widow’s two mites, and even preferred them to the great presents of the rich, say no more about it.’ This Melania herself related to Palladius. St. Athanasius once desired St. Pambo to come out of the desert to Alexandria, to confound the Arians by giving testimony to the divinity of Jesus Christ. Our saint, seeing in that city an actress dressed up for the stage, wept bitterly; and being asked the reason of his tears, said he wept for the sinful condition of that unhappy woman, also for his own sloth in the Divine service, because he did not take so much pains to please God as she did to ensnare men. When Abbot Theodore begged of St. Pambo some words of instruction: ‘Go,’ said he, ‘and exercise mercy and charity toward all men. Mercy finds confidence before God.’ To the priest of Nitria who asked him how the brethren ought to live, he said: ‘They must live in constant labour and the exercise of all virtues, watching to preserve their conscience free from stain, especially from giving scandal or offence to any neighbour.’ St. Pambo said, a little before his death: ‘From the time that I came into this desert, and built myself a cell in it, I do not remember that I have ever ate any bread but what I had earned by my own labour, nor that I ever spoke any word of which I afterward repented. Nevertheless, I go to God as one who has not yet begun to serve Him.’ He died seventy years old, without any sickness, pain, or agony, as he was making a basket, which he bequeathed to Palladius, who was at that time his disciple, the holy man having nothing else to give him. Melania took care of his burial, and having obtained this basket, kept it to her dying day. St. Pambo is commemorated by the Greeks on several days. It was a usual saying of this great director of souls in the rules of Christian perfection, ‘If you have a heart, you may be saved.’ The extraordinary austerities and solitude of a St. Antony or a St. Pambo are not suitable to persons engaged in the world, – they are even inconsistent with their obligations; but all are capable of disengaging their affections from inordinate passions and attachment to creatures, and of attaining to a pure and holy love of God, which may be made the principle of their thoughts and ordinary actions, and sanctify the whole circle of their lives. Of this all who have a heart are, through the Divine grace, capable. In whatever circumstances we are placed, we have opportunities of subduing our passions and subjecting our senses by frequent denials, of watching over our hearts by self-examination, of purifying our affections by assiduous recollection and prayer, and of uniting our souls to God by continual exterior and interior acts of holy love. Thus may the gentleman, the husbandman, or the shopkeeper, become an eminent saint, and make the employments of his state an exercise of all heroic virtues, and so many steps to perfection and to eternal glory.” – Mr. Browning, in the last verse, addresses his critics in a jocular manner. He owns he is very much like Pambo, – he has spent much time in looking to his ways; yet, as he is so often reminded by his reviewers and critics, he still feels, he says, that he offends with his tongue!