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The Browning Cyclopædia: A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning
He tells the story of the manner in which the succession of priests was maintained at an old Roman temple. Each priest obtained his predecessor’s office by springing from ambush and slaying him, – his initiative rite was simply murder under a religious sanction; so he says it is, and ever shall be with genius and its priesthood in the world, the new power slays the old. Thus did the Prince refute Sagacity, always whispering in his ear that Fortune alternates with Providence, and he must not reckon on a happy hit occurring twice. But he will trust nothing to right divine and luck of the pillow; rulers should be selected by supremacy of brains; a blunder may ensue; it cannot be worse than the rule of the legitimate blockhead. By this time poor Lais has gone to sleep (little wonder!). The Prince leaves off imagining what the historian of the Thiers-Hugo school might have written, of the life he might have led, and the things he might have done. All this was in cloud-land. In the inner chamber of the soul the silent truth fights the battle out with the lie, truth which unarmed pits herself against the armoury of the tongue. We must use words though; and somehow – as even do the best rifled cannon – words will deflect the shot.
Notes. —Œdipus, son of Laius, king of Thebes, and Jocasta. He was exposed to the persecutions of Juno from his birth. He murdered his father and committed incest with his mother. Riddle of the Sphinx: Œdipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx, a terrible monster which devoured all those who attempted its solution and failed. The enigma was this: “What animal in the morning walks upon four feet, at noon upon two, and in the evening upon three?” Œdipus said: “Man, in the morning of his life, goes on all fours; when grown to manhood, he walks erect; and in old age, the evening of life, supports himself with a stick.” “Home’s stilts”: the spirit-rapper, D. D. Home, is here referred to. (See, for Mr. Browning’s opinion of Spiritualism, his poem Mr. Sludge the Medium. Sludge is really Home.) Corinth, an ancient city of Greece, celebrated for its wealth and the luxury of its inhabitants. Thebes: the Sphinx resorted to the neighbourhood of this city. It was the capital of Bœotia, and one of the most ancient cities of Greece. Laïs, a celebrated courtesan who lived at Corinth, and ridiculed the philosophers. Thrace, an extensive country between the Ægean, Euxine and Danube. Residenz (Ger.): the residence of a prince and count. Pradier Magdalen: the statue of St. Mary Magdalen by James Pradier, in the Louvre. Pradier was born at Geneva in 1790, and died in Paris 1852. He was a brilliant and popular sculptor. His chief works are the Son of Niobe, Atalanta, Psyche, Sappho (all in the Louvre), a bas-relief on the triumphal arch of the Carousel, the figures of Fame on the Arc de l’Etoile, and Rousseau’s statue at Geneva. Fourier: Charles Fourier was a Frenchman who recommended the reorganisation of society into small communities, living in common. Comte, Auguste: the author of the Positive Philosophy, the key to which is “the Law of the Three States” – that is to say, there are three different ways in which the human mind explains phenomena, each way succeeding the other. These three stages are the Theological, the Metaphysical, and the Positive. The Positive stage is that in which the relation is established between the given fact and some more general fact. “But, God, what a Geometer art Thou!” This is Plato’s. Browning uses the same idea in Easter Day (see the notes to that poem). Hercules, substituting his shoulder for that of Atlas: Atlas was one of the Titans, and was fabled to support the world on his shoulders. Hercules was said to have eased for some time the labours of Atlas by taking upon his shoulders the weight of the heavens. Œta, a mountain range in the south of Thessaly. Proudhon was a revolutionary writer (1809-65). His answer to the question, “Qu’est ce-que la Propriété?” is famous: “La Propriété, c’est le vol,” he replied. His greatest work was the “Système des Contradictions économiques, ou Philosophie de la Misère.” His violent utterances led to his imprisonment for three years. Great Nation: to the French their country is “La Grande Nation.” Leicester Square: all the foreign refugees in England gravitate towards Leicester Square. Cayenne: the capital of French Guiana, and a penal settlement for political offenders. It is anything but “cool,” the temperature throughout the year being from 76° to 88° Fahr. It is fever-stricken, and very unhealthy generally. Xerxes and the Plane-tree: Xerxes going from Phrygia into Lydia, observed a plane-tree, which on account of its beauty, he presented with golden ornaments. (Herodotus vii. 31.) Kant: Emmanuel Kant, author of the Critique of Pure Reason (1724-1804). He was the greatest philosopher of the eighteenth century. This celebrated work of Kant’s penetrated to all the leading universities, and its author was hailed by some as a second Messiah. The falls of Terni, on the route from Perugia to Orte, in Central Italy, have few rivals in Europe in point of beauty and volume of water. They are the celebrated falls of the Velino (which here empties itself into the Nera) called the Cascate delle Marmore, and are about 650 feet in height. Laocoön, a Trojan, priest of Apollo, who was killed at the altar by two serpents. The famous group of sculpture called by this name is in the Vatican Museum, in the Cortile del Belvedere. According to Pliny, it was executed by three Rhodians, and was placed in the palace of Titus. It was discovered in 1506, and was termed by Michael Angelo a marvel of art. Thiers, Louis Adolphe (1797-1877), “liberator of the territory,” as France calls him. He wrote the History of the French Revolution. Victor Hugo, born 1802, a famous politician and novelist of France, was exiled by Louis Napoleon after the coup d’état. He fulminated against the Emperor from Jersey his book Napoleon the Little. He was detested almost fanatically by Napoleon III. “Brennus in the Capitol”: Brennus was a leader of the Gauls, and conqueror at the Allia, a small river eleven miles north of Rome, on the banks of which the Gauls inflicted a terrible defeat on the Romans on July 16th, B.C. 390. After this defeat the Romans, terrified by this sudden invasion, fled into the Capitol and left the whole city in the possession of the enemy. The Gauls climbed the Tarpeian rock in the night, and the Capitol would have been taken if the Romans had not been alarmed by the cackling of some geese near the doors, when they attacked and defeated the Gauls. Salvatore, == Salvator Rosa, a renowned painter of the Neapolitan school. Clitumnus, a river of Italy, the waters of which, when drunk, were said to render oxen white. Nemi: the lake of Nemi, in the Alban mountains, near Rome, was anciently called the Lacus Nemorensis, and sometimes the Mirror of Diana, from its extreme beauty. Remains have been discovered of a temple to that goddess in the neighbourhood, and from her sacred grove, or nemus, the present name is derived.
“Prize Poems.” Dining one day last year at Trinity College, Cambridge, with that enthusiastic young Browning scholar, Mr. E. H. Blakeney (himself a poet of great promise), we discussed the question of the comparative popularity of Browning’s shorter poems, and it was decided that he should ask the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette to put it to the vote in his columns. A prize was offered for the list of fifty poems which came nearest to the standard list obtained by collating the lists of all the competitors. The fifty “prize poems” selected by the plébiscite as Browning’s best, arranged in the order of the votes they severally received, were the following: —
1. How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.
2. Evelyn Hope.
3. Abt Vogler. Saul.
5. Rabbi Ben Ezra.
6. The Lost Leader.
7. The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
8. Prospice.
9. Hervé Riel.
10. Andrea del Sarto.
11. The Last Ride Together.
12. A Grammarian’s Funeral.
13. Home Thoughts from Abroad.
14. The Boy and the Angel.
15. Epilogue to Asolando.
16. By the Fireside. Fra Lippo Lippi.
18. Caliban upon Setebos.
19. One Word More.
20. Any Wife to Any Husband.
21. An Epistle of Karshish.
22. Incident of the French Camp.
23. The Guardian Angel.
24. Love among the Ruins.
25. Apparent Failure. A Forgiveness.
27. A Death in the Desert. A Woman’s Last Word.
29. Count Gismond.
30. In a Gondola.
31. The Patriot.
32. A Toccata of Galuppi’s.
33. My Last Duchess.
34. The Worst of It. Truth and Art.
36. The Statue and the Bust.
37. The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church.
38. Cristina.
39. Clive.
40. Confessions.
41. Two in the Campagna.
42. Summum Bonum.
43. After.
44. Holy Cross Day. The Italian in England.
46. Up at a Villa.
47. Before.
48. James Lee’s Wife. Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.
50. Old Pictures in Florence.
Prologue to Dramatic Idyls. (Second Series.) When we are suffering from bodily illness, doctors often disagree as to the diagnosis of our complaint. We go from specialist to specialist, and each physician declares that we are suffering from that disorder which he makes his special study: the brain doctor says it is all brain trouble; the heart man, the liver and lung specialists, are all pretty certain to diagnose their own favourite malady. And so even the wisest are ignorant of man’s body. But when we come to soul, there is no difficulty at all: they pounce on our malady in a trice. They can see the body, and cannot tell what is the matter with it; the soul, which they cannot see, presents no difficulties whatever to their wise heads! Mr. Sharp, in his paper on Dramatic Idyls II., says this Epilogue is the key to the leading idea of each poem in the volume. Echetlos deals with patriotic action. We think Miltiades and Themistocles true patriots, but history shows that they only served their own turn. Clive dreaded death less than a lie, yet committed suicide: was this due to courage or fear? Mulyekeh loved his mare, but sacrificed her to his pride. Pietro of Abano did benevolent actions, yet had no love in his heart. Doctor — did good actions from a motive of hate. Pan and Luna: this poem deals with an act of love from opposite extremes – Pan gross and brutal, Luna pure and modest; yet she does not spurn Pan. This was not due to want of modesty, but to the power of love, and Pan was not actuated by brute passion. The Epilogue is to oppose the idea that poets sing spontaneously about anything. Browning says his rocks are hard and forbidding, yet they hold, like Alpine crags, pine seeds of truth.
Prologue to Ferishtah’s Fancies. This is intended to describe the peculiar construction of the volume of poems. The poet tells his readers how ortolans are eaten in Italy: the birds are stuck on a skewer, some dozen or more, each having interposed between himself and his neighbour on the spit a bit of toast and a strong sage leaf; and the eater is intended to bite through crust, seasoning, and bird altogether, so the lusciousness is curbed and the full flavour of the delicacy is obtained. The poem, we are told, is dished up on the same principle. We have sense, sight and song here, and all is arranged to suit our digestion. We have the fancy or fable, then a dialogue, and a melodious lyric to conclude; so, in the twelve poems, we may see twelve ortolans, with their accompanying toast and sage leaf.
Notes. —Ortolans (Emberiza hortulana): the garden bunting, a native of Continental Europe and Western Asia. It is very much like the yellowhammer. They are netted, and fed in a darkened room with oats and other grain. They soon become very fat, and are then killed for the table; the birds are much prized by gourmands. Gressoney, a village in the valley of the Aosta. Val d’Aosta, valley of the Aosta, in northern Piedmont.
Prologue to Pacchiarotto. The poet is imprisoned on a long summer day with his feet on a grass plot and his eyes on a red brick wall. True, the wall is clothed with a luxuriant creeper through which the bricks laugh, and the robe of green pulsates with life, beautifying the barrier. He reflects that wall upon wall divide us from the subtle thing that is spirit: though cloistered here in the body-barrier, he will hope hard, and send his soul forth to the congenial spirit beyond the ring of neighbours which, like a fence of brick and stone, divides him from his love.
Prospice == “Look forward” (Dramatis Personæ, 1864) was written in the autumn following Mrs. Browning’s death. St. Paul speaks of those “who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage”: the author of Prospice and the Epilogue to Asolando was not of this class. Few men have written as nobly as he on the awful “minute of night,” and its fight with the “Arch Fear.” Estimating it at its fullest import, as only a great imaginative mind can do, he is in face of “the black minute” and “the power of the night” – the Mr. Greatheart of the pilgrims to the dark river. Nothing grander has been written on the subject than the poems we have named. In the short poem Prospice is concentrated the strength of a great soul and the courage of one who is prepared for the worst, with eyes unbandaged. As an example of the poet’s power nothing can be finer. The dramatic intensity of the opening lines – the fog, the mist, the snow, and the blasts which indicate the journey’s end, “the post of the foe” – is unsurpassed even by Shakespeare himself. It is a defiance of death, a challenge to battle.
Protus. (Men and Women, 1855; Romances, 1863; Dramatic Romances, 1868.) There is no historical foundation for the poem. In the declining years of the Roman Empire such rapid transitions of power were not uncommon. A baby Emperor Protus is described in some ancient work as absorbing the interest of the whole empire: queens ministered at his cradle. The world rose in war till he was presented at a balcony to pacify it. Greek sculptors and great artists strove to impress his graces on their work, his subjects learned to love the letters of his name; and on the same page of the history it was recorded how the same year a blacksmith’s bastard, by name John the Pannonian, arose and took the crown and wore it for six years, till his sons poisoned him. What became of the young Emperor Protus was then but mere hearsay: perhaps he was permitted to escape; he may have become a tutor at some foreign court, or, as others say, he may have died in Thrace a monk. “Take what I say,” wrote the annotator, “at its worth.”
Puccio. (Luria.) The officer in the Florentine army who was superseded by the Moorish leader Luria.
Queen, The. (In a Balcony.) The middle-aged woman who, though married, falls in love with Norbert, the lover of Constance. She prepares to divorce her husband and marry her officer. When, however, she discovers the truth about the young lovers, she is the prey of jealousy and offended dignity, and the drama closes with ominous prospects for the unfortunate couple.
Queen Worship. Under this title were originally published two poems: i., Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli; and ii., Cristina.
Quietism. See Molinists.
Rabbi Ben Ezra. (Dramatis Personæ, 1864.) The character is historical. The Encyclopædia Britannica gives the name as Abenezra, or Ibn Ezra, the full name being Abraham Ben Meir Ben Ezra; he was also called Abenare or Evenare. “He was one of the most eminent of the Jewish literati of the Middle Ages. He was born at Toledo about 1090, left Spain for Rome about 1140, resided afterwards at Mantua in 1145, at Rhodes in 1155 and 1166, in England in 1159, and died probably in 1168. He was distinguished as a philosopher, astronomer, physician, and poet; but especially as a grammarian and commentator. The works by which he is best known form a series of Commentaries on the books of the Old Testament, which have nearly all been printed in the great Rabbinic Bibles of Bomberg (1525-26), Buxtorf (1618-19), and Frankfurter (1724-27). Abenezra’s commentaries are acknowledged to be of very great value. He was the first who raised biblical exegesis to the rank of a science, interpreting the text according to its literal sense, and illustrating it from cognate languages. His style is elegant, but is so concise as to be sometimes obscure; and he occasionally indulges in epigram. In addition to the commentaries, he wrote several treatises on astronomy or astrology, and a number of grammatical works.” He appears to have possessed extraordinary natural talents; to these he added “indefatigable ardour and industry in the pursuit of knowledge, and he enjoyed besides, in his youth, the advantage of the best teachers, among whom was the Karaite, Japhet Hallevi or Levita, to whom he is believed to have owed his taste for etymological and grammatical investigation, and his preference for the literal to the allegorical and cabalistic interpretation of Scripture. He was afterwards married to Levita’s daughter.” He did not consider his life a fortunate one as men look upon life. “I strive to grow rich,” he said; “but the stars are against me. If I sold shrouds, none would die. If candles were my wares the sun would not set till the day of my death.” The cause of his leaving Spain was an outbreak against the Jews. Hitherto, he said of himself, he had been “as a withered leaf; I roved far away from my native land, from Spain, and went to Rome with a troubled soul.” He seems to have written no books until after his exile, and then he actively engaged in literary work. The most complete catalogue of his works is contained in Furst’s Bibliotheca Judaica (Leipzig, 1849). “Maimonides, his great contemporary, esteemed his writings so highly for learning, judgment, and elegance, that he recommended his son to make them for some time the exclusive object of his study. By Jewish scholars he is preferred, as a commentator, even to Raschi in point of judiciousness and good sense; and in the judgment of Richard Simon, confirmed by De Rossi, he is the most successful of all the rabbinical commentators in the grammatical and literal interpretation of the Scriptures” (Imp. Dict. Biog.). According to Rabbi Ben Ezra, man’s life is to be viewed as a whole. God’s plan in our creation has arranged for youth and age, and no view of life is consistent with it which ignores the work of either. Man is not a bird or a beast, to find joy solely in feasting; care and doubt are the life stimuli of his soul: the Divine spark within us is nearer to God than are the recipients of His inferior gifts. So our rebuffs, our stings to urge us on, our strivings, are the measure of our ultimate success: aspiration, not achievement, divides us from the brute. The body is intended to subserve the highest aims of the soul: it will do so if we live and learn. The flesh is pleasant, and can help soul as that helps the body. Youth must seek its heritage in age; in the repose of age he is to take measures for his last adventure. This he can do with prospect of success proportionate to his use of the past. Wait death without fear, as you awaited age. Sentence will not be passed on mere “work” done: our purposes, thoughts, fancies, all that the coarse methods of human estimates failed to appreciate, these will be put in the diamond scales of God and credited to us. God is the Potter; we are clay, receiving our shape and form and ornament by every turn of the wheel and faintest touch of the Master’s hand. The uses of a cup are not estimated by its foot or by its stem; but by the bowl which presses the Master’s lips to slake the Divine thirst. We cannot see the meaning of the wheel and the touches of the potter’s hand and instrument; we know this, and this only, – our times are in His hand who has planned a perfect cup. – I am indebted to Mr. A. J. Campbell for the following notes, the result of his researches in endeavouring to trace the real Rabbi Ibn Ezra in the poem Rabbi Ben Ezra. His fellow-religionists say of the Rabbi that he was “a man of strongly marked individuality and independence of thought, keen in controversy, yet genial withal; and it is in words such as these that the final estimate of his own people is given. ‘He was the wonder of his contemporaries and of those who came after him … profoundly versed in every branch of knowledge, with unfailing judgment, a man of sharp tongue and keen wit’ (Dr. J. M. Jost, Geschichte des Judenthums, 2nd Abth., p. 419). And again: ‘This man possessed an immense erudition; but his masterly spirit is far more to be wondered at than the mass of knowledge he acquired’ (Id., Geschichte des Israeliten, 6te Theil, p. 162).” Mr. Campbell thinks that the distinctive features of the Rabbi of the poem were drawn by Mr. Browning from the writings of the real Rabbi, and that the philosophy which he puts into the mouth of Rabbi Ben Ezra was actually that of Rabbi Ibn Ezra. “It was no worldly success that gave peace to his age; but he had won a spiritual calm, no longer troubled by the doubts that at one time or another must come to all who think. ‘While this remarkable man was roving about from east to west and from north to south, his mind remained firm in the principles he had once for all accepted as true… His advocacy of freedom of thought and research, his views concerning angels, concerning the immortality of the soul, are the same in the earlier commentaries … as with [those] which were written later; the same in his grammatical works as in his theological discourses’” (Dr. M. Friedlander, Essays on Ibn Ezra, Preface and p. 139). “Our times are in His hand,” says Browning’s Rabbi; so, too, Ibn Ezra, in a poem quoted by Dr. Michael Sachs (Die Religiose Poesie der Juden in Spanien, p. 117) – “In deiner Hand liegt mein Geschichte.” Says Dr. Friedlander, “He had very little money, and very much wit, and was a born foe to all superficiality. So he had spent his youth in preparing himself for his future career by collecting and storing up materials, in cultivating the garden of his mind so that it might at a later period produce the choicest and most precious fruits” (Ibn Ezra’s Comment., Isaiah, Introduction by Dr. Friedlander). Mr. Campbell says that the keynote of Ibn Ezra’s teaching is that the essential life of man is the life of the soul. “Man has the sole privilege of becoming superior to the beast and the fowl, according to the words ‘He teacheth him to raise himself above the cattle of the earth’” (Ibn Ezra, Comment., Job xxxv. 11). “He ascribes to man’s soul a triple nature, or three faculties roughly corresponding to the division of St. Paul of man into body, soul and spirit. The soul of man, he holds, can exist with or without the body, and did, in fact, pre-exist” (Friedlander, Essays on Ibn Ezra, pp. 27-8). This is Browning’s theory in verse 27. In Browning’s poem the Rabbi describes man’s life as the lone way of the soul (verse 8). Ibn Ezra, in his Commentary, Psalm xxii. 22, says, “The soul of man is called lonely because it is separated during its union with the body from the universal soul, into which it is again received when it departs from its earthly companion.” When Rabbi Ben Ezra, in Mr. Browning’s poem, speaks of the body at its best projecting the soul on its way (verse 8), he is uttering the thought of Ibn Ezra, who says, “It is well known that, as long as the bodily desires are strong, the soul is weak and powerless against them, because they are supported by the body and all its powers: hence those who only think of eating and drinking will never be wise. By the alliance of the intellect with the animal soul [sensibility, the higher quality of the body] the desires [the lower quality or appetite of the body] are subordinated, and the eyes of the soul are opened a little, so as to comprehend the knowledge of material bodies; but the soul is not yet prepared for pure knowledge, on account of the animal soul which seeks dominion and produces all kinds of passion; therefore, after the victory gained with the support of the animal soul over the desires, it is necessary that the soul should devote itself to wisdom, and seek its support for the subjection of the passions, in order to remain under the sole control of knowledge” (Ibn Ezra, Comment., Eccl. vii. 3). Mr. Campbell has shown how much Mr. Browning has assimilated Ibn Ezra’s philosophy in many other points in the poem. (For an extended explanation of the poem see my Browning’s Message to his Time, pp. 157-72.)
