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

[For a complete study of the life and work of Paracelsus, and Mr. Browning’s poem thereon, see the chapter “Paracelsus, the Reformer of Medicine,” in my Browning’s Message to his Time (Sonnenschein).]

Notes to Book I. —Würzburg is one of the most ancient and historically important towns of Germany. Its bishops were made dukes of Franconia in 1120. Its university was founded in 1582. Trithemius of Spanheim was abbot of Würzburg, and was a great astrologer and alchemist. Einsiedeln, in Canton Schwyz, Switzerland, is a noted place of pilgrimage on the Alpbach, thirty miles from Zurich, under the Herrenberg, with an abbey founded in 861, containing a black statue of the Virgin. Immense quantities of missals, rosaries, etc., are produced there. Zwingle was a priest here 1515-19; and not far from the town is the house where Paracelsus was born. Population now about 7650. Gier-eagle: supposed to be a small vulture (Lev. xi. 18). Black arts: Black magic == sorcery, as opposed to white magic == science. The Stagirite: Aristotle, who was born at Stagira, in Macedon.

Notes to Book II. —Constantinople, the city of the East where many astrologers practised their art. “A Turk verse along a scimitar”: the Arabs use verses of the Koran in the decoration of their walls, pottery, arms, etc. The Alhambra at Granada is profusely decorated in this way. The Arabic, Persian, and Turkish letters lend themselves admirably to ornamental purposes. Arch-genethliac: a genethliac is a calculator of nativities – an astrologer.

Notes to Book III. —Pansies: if these flowers were, as is said, favourites with Paracelsus, the choice was appropriate. Pensées for “the thinker, the explorer,” and “heartsease” for the anxious and overworked man. Rhasis, or Rhazes, was a distinguished physician of Bagdad (925-6). Basil == Basel, Basle. Œcolampadius, a Reformer of Basle, friend of Erasmus. Castellanus was Pierre Duchatel, a French prelate. When at Basle, Erasmus procured him employment as a corrector of the press with Frobenius. He was bishop of Tulle in 1539, of Maçon in 1544, and in 1551 of Orleans. He was a tolerant man in an intolerant age. Munsterus, a Christian Socialist, connected with the Peasants’ War; executed 1525. Frobenius, the friend of Erasmus, cured by Paracelsus. He was a famous printer at Basle. Rear mice: probably a device in the arms on the gate. Lachen, a village of 1200 inhabitants, on the margin of the lake of Zurich. The holy hermit Meinrad, the founder of Einsiedeln, originally lived on the top of the Etzel, near here. “Cross-grained devil in my sword”: the long sword of Paracelsus is famous: —

“Bumbastus kept a devil’s birdShut in the pummel of his sword,That taught him all the cunning pranksOf past and future mountebanks.”(Hudibras, Part II., Cant. 3.)

Naudæus (in his “History of Magic”) observes of this familiar spirit, “that though the alchymists maintain that it was the secret of the philosopher’s stone, yet it were more rational to believe that, if there was anything in it, it was certainly two or three doses of his laudanum, which he never went without, because he did strange things with it, and used it as a medicine to cure almost all diseases.” “Sudary of the Virgin”: a handkerchief, a relic of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Suffumigation, a medical fumigation, such as was used by Hippocrates. Erasmus was born at Rotterdam in 1466. The home of his old age was Basel, to which place he was attracted by the fame of the printing press of Frobenius. Here he made the acquaintance of Zwingle and Holbein, and other men full of the desire for learning. “Ape at the bed’s foot”: patients who suffer from delirium frequently see apes, rats, cats, and other animals and figures, mocking them at the foot of the bed. “Spain’s cork-groves”: cork is the bark of the cork-oak (Quercus suber). It grows in Spain, and is most abundant in Catalonia and Valencia. “Præclare! Optime!” == Bravo! well done! “I precede my age”: it has only recently been discovered how much our modern science owes to the labours and researches of Paracelsus. Aëtius was an Arian doctor, who was very skilful in medical disputation. He died at Constantinople in 367. Oribasius was the court physician of Julian the Apostate (326-403). Galen was a great anatomist and a physiological physician. Rhasis (see note, p. 324). Serapion, an Alexandrian physician, “a great name in antiquity.” Avicenna, an Arabian philosopher and physician, born about A.D. 980, who presented to his countrymen the doctrines of Galen blended with those of Aristotle. Averröes, an Arabian philosopher and physician, born at Cordova in 1126, the interpreter of the Aristotelian philosophy to the Mohammedans. Zuinglius == Zwingle the Reformer, of Zurich. Carolstadius, or Carlstadt, one of the first Reformers. He was professor of divinity at Wittemberg, and early joined Luther in the new religion. He became the leader of the fanatical sect of iconoclasts at Wittemberg, and excited them to excesses. He was banished, and died at Basle in 1541. Suabia, the name of an ancient duchy in the south-west part of Germany. Oporinus: lived two years in close intimacy with Paracelsus as his secretary, and has been suspected of defaming his memory. “Sic itur ad astra”: such is the way to immortality. Liechtenfels, a canon who was cured by Paracelsus when he was in danger of death, and refused afterwards to pay the stipulated fee.

Notes to Book IV. – “Quid multa?” why say more? Cassia, an inferior kind of cinnamon. “Sandal-buds”: the sandal is a low tree, like a privet, and has a great fragrance. “Stripes of labdanum” or ladanum: a fragrant, resinous exudation from the plants Cystus creticus and Cystus ladaniferus. Aloes: the fragrant resin of the agalloch or lign-aloe of Scripture. Nard == spikenard; very fragrant. “Sweetness from Egyptian shroud”: the faint odour from the spices used to embalm the mummy. “Fiat experientia corpore vili,” or fiat experimentum in corpore vili: Let the experiment be made on a body of no value (a hospital patient, e. g.!)

Notes to Book V. —Salzburg: the beautifully situated old city of Austria, eighty-seven miles S.E. of Munich. “Jove and the Titans”: the Titans were the sons of Saturn, who made war against Jupiter; and though they were of gigantic size, they were subdued. Phæton, the son of Phœbus and Clymene, who requested his father to give him leave to drive his chariot. The rash youth was unable to bear the light and heat, and dropped the reins. To prevent a general conflagration Jupiter struck him with thunder, and he dropped into the river Eridanus. Galen of Pergamos: an eminent physician of the time of Trajan. Persic Zoroaster “was one of the greatest teachers of the East, the founder of what was the national religion of the Perso-Iranian people from the time of the Achæmenidæ to the close of the Sassanian period.” He founded the wisdom of the Magi. The Zend-Avesta is the great Zoroastrian bible. “Thus he dwells in all,” etc., down to “Man begins anew a tendency to God,” is a faithful representation of the teaching of the Kabbalah (see Encyc. Brit., vol. xiii., p. 812, last ed.): “The whole universe, however, was incomplete, and did not receive its finishing stroke till man was formed, who is the acme of the creation and the microcosm. ‘Man is both the import and the highest degree of creation, for which reason he was formed on the sixth day. As soon as man was created everything was complete, including the upper and nether worlds, for everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all forms’” (Zohar, iii., 48).

Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day. To wit: Bernard de Mandeville, Daniel Bartoli, Christopher Smart, George Bubb Dodington, Francis Furini, Gerard de Lairesse, and Charles Avison. Introduced by A Dialogue between Apollo and the Fates; concluded by Another between John Fust and his Friends. The title-page stands thus, and the following dedication is on the next page: “In Memoriam J. Milsand. Obiit iv. Sept. MDCCCLXXXVI. Absens absentem auditque videtque.” Published 1887. M. Milsand was a well-known French critic, and was an early admirer of Mr. Browning’s works. Sordello was dedicated to M. Milsand in its revised edition. The Parleyings volume is dealt with in a lucid and sympathetic manner in Mr. Nettleship’s Essays and Thoughts.

Parting at Morning. See Meeting at Night, to which this poem is the sequel.

Patriot, The. An Old Story. (Men and Women, 1855; Romances, 1863; Dramatic Romances, 1868.) A patriot who has been the people’s idol, and now, having fallen from his pedestal, is on his way to execution. A year ago that very day they would have given him the sun from their skies had he asked it in that city whose air was a mist of joy bells. He strove his hardest to pluck down that sun to give them, and to-day the year is run out, and he goes bound, with bleeding forehead from the pelting stones, to the shambles. But God will repay, and he feels safe with that. It has been thought that this poem refers to Arnold of Brescia. Mr. Browning contradicted this.

Paul Desforges Maillard. (Two Poets of Croisic.) He is the second of the Poets, René Gentilhomme being the first. He competed for a prize at the French Academy, and was unsuccessful. The poem tells how he made his name known through his sister’s influence.

Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1832). The first work of the poet, and his embryonic work, because it contains in their rudiments all the peculiarities and powers of his genius. He wrote nothing which was not the legitimate development of the forces which we see in this inchoate work. It is nebulous, but it is a nebula which has within itself the potentiality of worlds of thought. Misty and vague as it everywhere seems, it is influenced by laws which will concentrate its thought into stars and planets, such as Paracelsus, and the Ring and the Book. It is autobiographical, and admits us into the laboratory of the writer’s thought; it is marvellously consistent with the latest utterances of the poet on the subjects nearest to his heart. High thoughts, which through the years of a long life will live in royal splendour in his brain, are born here in travail, as regal things are wont to be. It was a boy’s work, – the poet was only twenty years old when he wrote it, – but a competent critic could have detected evidence that in the anonymous author of Pauline a psychological poet had arisen, one who determined to probe to their depths the mysteries of the human soul. From Mr. Gosse’s article in The Century Magazine we learn that the young poet had produced a quantity of verses while a mere child, and had planned a number of soul-studies of a similar character to Pauline. He published the poem anonymously in 1833, when he was twenty years old. It was reprinted in 1867, with the following note: “The first piece in the series (Pauline) I acknowledge and retain with extreme repugnance, indeed purely of necessity; for not long ago I inspected one, and am certified of the existence of other transcripts, intended sooner or later to be published abroad: by forestalling these I can at least correct some misprints (no syllable is changed), and introduce a boyish work by an exculpatory word. The thing was my earliest attempt at ‘poetry, always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine,’ which I have written since according to a scheme less extravagant and scale less impracticable than were ventured upon in this crude preliminary sketch – a sketch that, on reviewal, appears not altogether wide of some hint of the characteristic features of that particular dramatis persona it would fain have reproduced; good draughtsmanship, however, and right handling were far beyond the artist at that time.” With the “good draughtsmanship” and “right handling” of the work we need not concern ourselves; what is of paramount importance is the fact that in Pauline we have “the god, though in the germ.” If the mature artist was ashamed of his puerile performance, his disciples have always loved and admired it, and his deeper students have delighted to trace in its pages the nuclei of principles which have in his maturer works dowered the world with a priceless treasure. The poem is a fragment of a confession from a young man to a young woman whom he loves. It concerns Pauline very little, but is the revelation of the man as a study of the poet’s own naked soul. It is not a confession of deeds, but of moods and mental attitudes. He who could unpack his own heart so completely would be likely to reveal the innermost recesses of the characters with which he should deal in the future. It is the revelation of a soul all self-centred. A soul’s awakening, a soul in terror at its own capabilities, desires and forces too hard to be controlled – “made up of an intensest life” – imbued with “a principle of restlessness which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel all” – a soul terrified at its own vast shadow, fearing to face its own spectres, and instinctively “building up a screen” of woman’s love to be shut in with from a brood of fancies with which he dare not wrestle. Had he never left her side he had been spared this shame. He is sure of her love, though ghosts of the past haunt them. He has not the love to offer which befits her; but he has faith, and he trusts her as we trust the east for morning light. He has communed with her, but she knew not the shame which lurked behind his words and smiles, and she drove away despair from him. He has fallen, is ruined; he has felt in dreams he was a fiend chained in darkness, till, after ages had passed came a white swan to remain with him, and it contented him. And again, he had seemed to be a young witch who drew down a god to sing of heaven, and as he sang he perished grinning, but murmuring “I am still a god to thee.” He has thought that his early life, his songs and wild imaginings, were the only worthy things standing out distinct amid the fever of the after years. And this was his (Shelley’s) award. He, the Sun-treader, had drawn out from his worshipper the one spark of love remaining in his soul, and in his tears he praises him. He loved Shelley in his shame, and now he is renowned he watches him as a star, as one altered and worn and full of tears looks to heaven. He strips his mind bare, has a most clear consciousness of self, and recognises that of all his powers an imagination which has been an angel to him is the one which saves his soul from utter death. He feels a need, a trust, a yearning after God, which somehow is reconciled with a neglect of all he deemed His laws. He sees God everywhere, yet can love nothing; has had high dreams and low aims, and so lost himself. Then he turned to song, he gazed without fear on the works of mighty bards, for in them he recognised thoughts his own heart had also borne; then came the outburst of the soul’s power, a key to a new world, a sound as of angelic mutterings. He vowed himself to liberty. Men should be gods, earth, – heaven. His soul rose to meet the new life. As one watches for a fair girl that comes forth a withered hag, so all these high-born fancies dwindled into nothing; faith in man, freedom, virtue, motives, power, human loves, all vanished. They were not missed, for wit and mockery and pleasure came in their stead. His powers grew, his soul became as a temple; only God was gone, and a dark spirit sat in His seat, and mocking shadows cried “Hail!” to him. He resolved to wear himself out with joy, then to win men’s praise by undying song, and the mockery laughed out again. Then he met Pauline and knew she loved him; he looked in his heart for a love to return, and love and faith were gone, and selfishness wears him as a flame, and hunger for pleasure has become pain. Then came a craving after knowledge, as a sleepless harpy. He begins now to know what hate is. Yet with it all he has learned the great truth that his restless longings, his all encompassing selfishness, only prove that earth is not his sphere, because he cannot so narrow himself but he exceeds it. Hateful as his selfishness has grown to be, he can pass from such thoughts. Andromeda, rock-chained, awaiting the snake, causes you no fear for her safety: God will come in thunder from the stars to save her, so he will triumph over his decay; when the calm comes again after the fever has subsided, he will do something equal to his conjecture. He can project himself into all forms of Nature, live the life of plants, mount bird-like, breathe in a fish the morning air in the sun-warm water. He will build a thought-world; he is inspired. Pauline shall come with him to the world of fancy through the ghostly night and sun-warmed morning; he is concentrated, he drinks in the life of all, yet cannot be immortal for all these struggling aims. What is this passionate hunger for the All – this insatiable thirst for utmost pleasure? It is man’s cry for the satisfying presence of God in his soul. The alone to the Alone; nothing intervening can give peace and rest to the spirit of man; flame-like it tends upwards to its source. The only One, the Crucified, the Risen Christ – “Christus Consolator” is recognised as the remedy for his sense of infinite loss; and as he recognises the Divine love he is united with the purest earthly soul he knows: – “Pauline, I am thine for ever.” “Love me, Pauline – leave me not.” And so the hideous past shall be the past, and he will go forward with her —

“Feeling God loves us, and that all that errs,Is a strange dream which death will dissipate.”

Again he will go o’er the tracts of thought, again will beauteous shapes come to him and unknown secrets be divulged, – priest and lover as of old – “Shelley, Sun-treader,” he cries, “I believe in God, and truth, love – I would lean on thee.” Professor Johnson, in his paper on “Conscience and Art in Browning,” gives the following as the theme of the poem: – “The Divine call and anointing of the poet, so to speak; his sin, which consists in a self-divorce; his decline and degradation as he sinks into the ‘dim orb of self’; finally, his redemption and restoration by Divine love, mediated to him by human love.”

Notes. – “His award,” “Him whom all honour,” “Thou didst smile, poet,” “Sun-treader” (lines 142, 144, 151, 1020): all these refer to Shelley. “A god wandering after beauty” (line 321): Apollo seeking Daphne. Apollo pursued Daphne, who fled from him, seeking the aid of the gods, who changed her into a laurel. “A giant standing vast in the sunset” (line 322): Atlas, one of the Titans, is referred to here.

“A high-crested chiefSailing with troops of friends to Tenedos” (line 324):

“After the fall of Troy, many of the Greek chiefs, among them Nestor, set sail for home, while others, at the desire of Agamemnon, remained behind to sacrifice to Pallas. Those who set sail went to the island of Tenedos, where they made offerings to the gods” (Poet Lore, vol. i., p. 244; Homer, Odyssey, iii.). “The dim clustered isles in the blue sea” (line 321): the islands of the Ægean Sea, east of Greece.

“Who stood beside the naked swift-footed,Who bound my forehead with Proserpine’s hair” (line 334):

the swift-footed was Hermes, the name of Mercury among the Greeks. He was the messenger of the gods. He was presented by the King of Heaven with a winged cap, called petasus, and with wings for his feet, called talaria. Proserpine was the daughter of Ceres by Jupiter. “As Arab birds float sleeping in the wind” (line 479): this is considered by some to refer to the pelican, by others to the Birds of Paradise.

“The kingTreading the purple calmly to his death” (line 568):

Agamemnon, to whom his loved Cassandra foretells his doom in vain: —

“Well, sire, I yield me vanquished by thy voice;I go, treading on purple, to my house.”(Potter’s “Agamemnon” of Æschylus, 1017.)

“The boy with his white breast,” etc. (line 574): see Potter’s “Choephoræ” of Æschylus, 1073: Orestes avenged his father’s death by assassinating his mother Clytemnestra and the adulterer Ægisthus. Andromeda (line 656): Andromeda was ordered to be exposed to a sea-monster, and was tied naked to a rock; but Perseus delivered her, changed the monster into a rock, and married her. “The fair pale sister went to her chill grave” (line 963): Antigone interred by night the remains of her brother Polynices against the orders of Creon, who commanded her to be buried alive. She, however, killed herself before the sentence could be executed (see “Antigone” of Sophocles). The long Latin preface to Pauline from the Occult Philosophy of Cornelius-Agrippa is thus englished in Mr. Cooke’s Browning Guide-Book: – “I doubt not but the title of our book, by its rarity, may entice very many to the perusal of it. Among whom many of hostile opinions, with weak minds, many even malignant and ungrateful, will assail our genius, who in their rash ignorance, hardly before the title is before their eyes, will make a clamour. We are forbidden to teach, to scatter abroad the seeds of philosophy, pious ears being offended, clear-seeing minds having arisen. I, as a counsellor, assail their consciences; but neither Apollo nor all the Muses, nor an angel from heaven, would be able to save me from their execrations, whom now I counsel that they may not read our books, that they may not understand them, that they may not remember them, for they are noxious – they are poisonous. The mouth of Acheron is in this book: it speaks often of stones: beware, lest by these it shape the understanding. You, also, who with fair wind shall come to the reading, if you will apply so much of the discernment of prudence as bees in gathering honey, then read with security. For, indeed, I believe you about to receive many things not a little both for instruction and enjoyment. But if you find anything that pleases you not, let it go that you may not use it, for I do not declare these things good for you, but merely relate them. Therefore, if any freer word may be, forgive our youth; I, who am less than a youth, have composed this work.” The preface is dated London, January 1833. V.A. XX. is the Latin abbreviation of Vixi annos viginti, I was twenty years old.

Pearl, A, a Girl. (Asolando, 1889.) According to Eastern fable there is a great power in a pearl: if you could speak the right word, you could call a spirit from the simple-looking stone which would make you lord of heaven and earth. Be this as it may, the poet says if you utter the right word, that evokes for you the love of a girl – held, perhaps, in little esteem by the world – her soul escapes to you, and you are creation’s lord!

“Periods” of Browning. It is usual with students to divide the poet’s work into some four or five periods. Mr. Fotheringham’s classification is as good as any: he makes the periods five. – Period I., “a time of youth and prelude” (1832-1840), the time of Pauline, Paracelsus, and Sordello. During this time the poet was trying the nature and compass of his theme and forming his style. – Period II., “the time of early manhood” (1841-1846), the time of the dramas and early dramatic lyrics. All the dramas except Strafford belong to this time. In this period he was studying how best to use his poetical powers. – Period III. is “the time of maturity,” his manhood and married life (1846-1869). Now he has found his standpoint; he is firm, vigorous, and confident. During this time he gave us Christmas Eve, Men and Women, Dramatis Personæ, and The Ring and the Book. – Period IV. is “the time of his later maturity” (1870-1878). Now the casuistic and argumentative element becomes more prominent; the dramatic aspect retires into the background, the philosophical teacher advances. “His hardest and least poetic work,” it has been said, was put forth in this period: Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, etc. – Period V. (1879-1889), “the time of the latest works.” A period of criticism of life, as in Ferishtah and the Parleyings.