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

Templars. The poem The Heretic’s Tragedy deals with the suppression of the order of the Knights Templars.

Theocrite. (The Boy and the Angel.) The boy who wishes to praise God “the Pope’s great way,” and who leaves his common task, and is replaced by the angel Gabriel. As neither boy nor angel please God in their changed positions, each returns to his appropriate sphere.

“The Poets pour us wine.” (Epilogue to Pacchiarotto.) These words are the beginning of the Epilogue named, and are quoted from a poem of Mr. Browning’s entitled Wine of Cyprus, the last verse but one, the last line of which is “And the poets poured us wine.”

“There’s a Woman like a Dewdrop.” (A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.) The song in Act I., Scene iii., begins with this line. It is sung by Earl Mertoun as he climbs to Mildred Tresham’s chamber.

“The Year’s at the Spring.” (Pippa Passes.) The song which Pippa sings as she passes the house of Ottima, and thereby brings conviction to her lover Sebald.

Thorold, Earl Tresham. (A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.) The brother of Mildred Tresham, who challenges Mertoun, her lover, on his way to a stolen interview with his sister, and kills him, thinking he has disgraced the family.

Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kader. (1842.) The Metidja is an extensive plain near the coast of Algeria, “commencing on the eastern side of the Bay of Algiers, and stretching thence inland to the south and west. It is about sixty miles in length by ten or twelve in breadth” (Encyc. Brit.). Algiers was conquered by the French in 1830; but, after the conquest, constant outbreaks of hostilities on the part of the natives occurred, and in 1831 General Bertherene was despatched to chastise the rebels. Later in the same year General Savary was sent with an additional force of 16,000 men for the same purpose. He attempted to suppress the outbreaks of hostilities with the greatest cruelty and treachery. These acts so exasperated the people against their new ruler that such tribes as had acquiesced in the new order of things now armed themselves against the French. It was at this time that the world first heard of Abd-el-Kader. He was born in 1807, and was a learned and pious man, greatly distinguished amongst his people for his skill in horsemanship and athletic sports. He now rapidly collected an army of ten thousand men, marched to Oran and attacked the French, who had taken possession of the town; but was repulsed with great loss. He was so popular with his people that he had little difficulty in recruiting his forces, and he made himself so dangerous to the French that they found it expedient to offer him terms of peace, and he was recognised as emir of the province of Mascara. The peace did not last long, and hostilities broke out, leading to a defeat of the French in 1835. Constant troubles were caused the French by the opposition of Abd-el-Kader, and reinforcements on a large scale were sent against him from France. After varying fortunes, Abd-el-Kader was at last reduced to extremities, and was compelled to hide in the mountains with a few followers; at length he gave himself up to the French, and was imprisoned at Pau, and afterwards at Amboise. He afterwards obtained permission to remove to Constantinople, and from thence to remove to Damascus. The poem describes an incident of the war which took place in 1842, when the Duke d’Aumale fell upon the emir’s camp and took several thousand prisoners, Abd-el-Kader escaping with difficulty.

“Thus the Mayne glideth.” (Paracelsus.) The song which Festus sings to Paracelsus in the closing scene in his cell in the Hospital of St. Sebastian.

Tiburzio. (Luria.) The general of the army of the Pisans, who exposes to Luria the treachery of the Florentines, and whose letter the Moor destroys without reading it.

Time’s Revenges. A Soliloquy. (Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, in Bells and Pomegranates, VII., 1845; Romances, 1863; Dramatic Romances, 1868.) “Love begets love,” they say: probably this is not much truer than proverbs usually are. The speaker in the poem has a friend who would do anything in the world for him; in return, he barely likes him. As a compensation, inasmuch as “human love is not the growth of human will,” the lady to whom the soliloquiser is passionately devoted, the woman for whom he is prepared to sacrifice body, soul, everything he holds dear, cares nothing at all for him; she would roast him before a slow fire for a coveted ball-ticket. And why not? if love be what the poet says it is – the merging by affinity of one soul in another – where no affinity exists no union can result. Lovers should study the elements of chemistry, and the laws which govern the affinities of the elementary bodies; or, if they are not inclined to so serious a task, let them take to heart the Spanish proverb, “Love one that does not love you, answer one that does not call you, and you will run a fruitless race.”

Toccata of Galuppi’s, A. (Men and Women, 1855.) Baldassare Galuppi (1706-85) was a celebrated Italian composer, who was born in 1706 near Venice. His father was a barber with a taste for music, and he taught his son sufficient of the elements of music to enable him to enter the Conservatorio degli Incurabile, where Lotti was a teacher. He produced an opera at the age of sixteen, but it was a failure; seven years after, however, he produced a comic opera Dorinda, which was a great success. The young composer’s great abilities were now everywhere recognised, and his fame assured. He was a most industrious writer, and left no less than seventy operas; which, however, have not survived to our time. Galuppi resided and worked in London from 1741 to 1744. He went to Russia, where he lived at the court of the Empress Catherine II. (at whose invitation he went) in great honour, and did much for the improvement of musical taste in that country. In 1768 he left Russia, and became organist of St. Mark’s, Venice. He died in 1785, and left fifty thousand lire to the poor of that city. His best comic opera is his Il Mondo della Luna. A Toccata is a “Touch-piece,” a prelude or overture. “It does but touch its theme rapidly, even superficially, for the most part; so that the interpolation of solemn chords and emotional phrases, inconsistent with its traditional character, may naturally, by force of contrast, lead to some suggestion or recognition of the many irregularities of life” (Mrs. Alexander Ireland). In the admirable paper on this poem written by Mrs. Alexander Ireland for the Browning Society, she continues: “A Toccata of Galuppi’s touches on deep subjects with a mere feather-touch of light and capricious suggestiveness, interwoven with the graver mood, with the heart-searching questionings of man’s deep nature and mysterious spirit. The Toccata as a form of composition is not the measured, deliberate working-out of some central musical thought, as is the Sonata or sound-piece, where the trained ear can follow out the whole process to its delightful and orderly consummation, where the student marks the introduction and development of the subject, its extension, through various forms, and its whole sequence of movement and meaning, to its glorious rounding-off and culmination, spiritually noting each stage of the climbing structure and acknowledging its perfection with the inward silent verdict, ‘It is well.’ The Toccata, in its early and pure form, possessed no decided subject, made such by repetition, but bore rather the form of a capricious Improvisation or “Impromptu.” It was a very flowing movement, in notes of equal length, and a homophonous character, the earliest examples of any importance being those by Gabrieli (1557-1613), and those by Merulo (1533-1604); while Galuppi, who was born in 1706 and died in 1785, produced a further advanced development of this particular form of musical composition, with chords freely introduced and other important innovations.” Vernon Lee, in her Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (III. “The Musical Life”) says of the Venetian, Baldassare Galuppi, surnamed Buranello, that he was “an immensely prolific composer, and abounded in melody, tender, pathetic and brilliant, which in its extreme simplicity and slightness occasionally rose to the highest beauty… He defined the requisites of his art to Burney in very moderate terms: ‘Chiarezza, vaghezza, e buona modulazione’ – clearness, beauty, and good modulation, without troubling himself much about any others… Galuppi was a model of the respectable, modest artist, living quietly on a moderate fortune, busy with his art and the education of his numerous children, beloved and revered by his fellow-artists; and when some fifteen years later [than 1770] he died, honoured by them with a splendid funeral, at which all the Venetian musicians performed; the great Pacchiarotti writing to Burney that he had sung with much devotion to obtain a rest for Buranello’s (Galuppi’s) soul” (p. 101). In a note Vernon Lee adds: “Mr. Browning’s fine poem, ‘A Toccata of Galuppi’s,’ has made at least his name familiar to many English readers.” Ritter, in his History of Music (p. 245), has a concise but expressive notice of Galuppi. “Balthasar Galuppi, called Buranello (1706-85), a pupil of Lotti, also composed many comic operas. The main features of his operas are melodic elegance and lively and spirited comic forms; but they are rather thin and weak in their execution. He was a great favourite during his lifetime.” The poem deals with two classes of human beings – the mere pleasure-takers with their balls and masks (Stanza iv.), and the scientists (Stanza xiii.) with their research and their ’ologies. The Venetians – who seemed to the poet merely born to blow and droop, who lived frivolous lives of gaiety and love-making – lived lives which came to nothing, and did deeds better left undone – heard the music which dreamily told them they must die, but went on with their kissing and their dancing till death took them where they never see the sun. The other class, immersed in the passion for knowledge, the class which despises the vanities and frivolities of the butterfly’s life, and consecrates itself to science, not the less surely dissipates its energies and misses the true end of life if it has nothing higher to live for than “physics and geology.”

Notes. – ii., St. Mark’s. The great cathedral of Venice, named after St. Mark, because it is said that the body of that Evangelist was brought to Venice and enshrined there. “where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings”: the Doge was the chief magistrate of Venice when it was a republic. “The ceremony of wedding the Adriatic was instituted in 1174 by Pope Alexander III., who gave the Doge a gold ring from off his own finger in token of the victory achieved by the Venetian fleet at Istria over Frederick Barbarossa, in defence of the Pope’s quarrel. When his Holiness gave the ring, he desired the Doge to throw a similar ring into the sea annually, in commemoration of the event” (Dr. Brewer). iii., “the sea’s the street there”: there are neither horses nor carriages in Venice; you go everywhere by gondola – to church, to theatre, to market; your gondola meets you at the railway station; in a word, the sea is the street. Shylock’s Bridge: they show you Shylock’s house in the old market place by the Rialto Bridge. vi., clavichord, a keyed and stringed instrument, not now in use, being superseded by the pianoforte. viii., dominant’s persistence. The dominant in music is the name given to the fifth note of the scale of any key, counting upwards. The dominant plays a most important part in cadences, in which it is indispensable that the key should be strongly marked (Grove). “dear dead women”: the ladies of Venice are celebrated for their beauty. An article in Poet Lore, October 1890, p. 546, thus explains the technical musical allusions in A Toccata of Galuppi’s. These are all to be found in the seventh, eighth, and ninth verses. “The lesser thirds are, of course, minor thirds, and are of common occurrence; but the diminished sixth is an interval rarely used. So rare is it, that I have seen it stated by good authorities that it is never used harmonically. Ordinarily a diminished sixth (seven semitones), exactly the same interval as a perfect fifth, instead of giving a plaintive, mournful, or minor impression, would suggest a feeling of rest and satisfaction. As I have said, however, there is one way in which it can be used – as a suspension, in which the root of the chord on the lowered super-tonic of the scale is suspended from above into the chord with added seventh on the super-tonic, making a diminished sixth between the root of the first and the third of the second chord. The effect of this progression is most dismal, and possibly Browning had it in mind, though it is doubtful almost to certainty if Galuppi knew anything of it. Whether it be an anachronism or not, or whether it is used in a scientifically accurate way or not, the figure is true enough poetically, for a diminished interval – namely, something less than normal – would naturally suggest an effect of sadness. Suspensions, as may already have been guessed by the preceding example, are notes which are held over from one chord into another, and must be made according to certain musical rules as strict as the laws of the Medes and Persians. This holding over of a note always produces a dissonance, and must be followed by a concord, – in other words, a solution. Sevenths are very important dissonances in music, and a commiserating seventh is most likely the variety called a minor seventh. Being a somewhat less mournful interval than the lesser thirds and the diminished sixths, whether real or imaginary, yet not so final as ‘those solutions’ which seem to put an end to all uncertainty, and therefore to life, they arouse in the listeners to Galuppi’s playing a hope that life may last, although in a sort of dissonantal, Wagnerian fashion. The ‘commiserating sevenths’ are closely connected with the ‘dominant’s persistence’ in the next verse: —

‘Hark! the dominant’s persistence till it must be answered to:So an octave struck the answer.’

The dominant chord in music is the chord written on the fifth degree of the scale, and it almost always has a seventh added to it, and in a large percentage of cases is followed by the tonic, the chord on the first degree of the scale. Now, in fugue form a theme is repeated in the dominant key, the latter being called the answer. After further contrapuntal wanderings of the theme, the fugue comes to what is called an episode, after which the theme is presented first, in the dominant. ‘Hark! the dominant’s persistence’ alludes to this musical fact; but, according to rule, this dominant must be answered in the tonic an octave above the first presentation of the theme; and ‘so an octave struck the answer.’ Thus the inexorable solution comes in after the dominant’s persistence. Although life seemed possible with commiserating sevenths, the tonic, a resistless fate, strikes the answer that all must end – an answer which the frivolous people of Venice failed to perceive, and went on with their kissing. The notion of the tonic key as a relentless fate seems to suit well with the formal music of the days of Galuppi: while the more hopeful tonic key of Abt Vogler, the C major of this life, indicates that fate and the tonic key have both fallen more under man’s control.” – Miss Helen Ormerod’s paper, read before the Browning Society, May 27th, 1887, throws additional light on some of the difficulties of this poem. “That the minor predominated in this quaint old piece (Toccata, by the way, means a touch piece, and probably was written to display the delicacy of the composer’s touch) is evident from the mention of —

“Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions, – ‘Must we die?’Those commiserating sevenths – ‘Life might last! we can but try!’”

The interval of the third is one of the most important; the signature of a piece may mislead one, the same signature standing for a major key and its relative minor; but the third of the opening chord decides the question, a lesser ‘plaintive’ third (composed of a tone and a semitone) showing the key to be minor; the greater third (composed of two whole tones) showing the key to be major. Pauer tells us that ‘the minor third gives the idea of tenderness, grief and romantic feeling.’ Next come the ‘diminished sixths’: these are sixths possessing a semitone less than a minor sixth, – for instance, from C sharp to A flat: this interval in a different key would stand as a perfect fifth. ‘Those suspensions, those solutions’ – a suspension is the stoppage of one or more parts for a moment, while the others move on; this produces a dissonance, which is only resolved by the parts which produced it moving on to the position which would have been theirs had the parts moved simultaneously. We can understand that ‘those suspensions, those solutions’ might teach the Venetians, as they teach us, lessons of experience and hope; light after darkness, joy after sorrow, smiles after tears. ‘Those commiserating sevenths,’ of all dissonances, none is so pleasing to the ear, or so attractive to musicians, as that of minor and diminished sevenths, that of the major seventh being crude and harsh; in fact, the minor seventh is so charming in its discord as to suggest concord. Again, to quote from Pauer: ‘It is the antithesis of discord and concord which fascinates and charms the ear; it is the necessary solution and return to unity which delights us.’ After all this, the love-making begins again; but kisses are interrupted by the ‘dominant’s persistence till it must be answered to.’ This seems to indicate the close of the piece, the dominant being answered by an octave which suggests the perfect authentic cadence, in which the chord of the dominant is followed by that of the tonic. The Toccata is ended, and the gay gathering dispersed. I cannot help the thought that this old music of Galuppi’s was more of the head than the heart – more formal than fiery, suggestive rather of the chill of death than the heat of passion. The temporary silence into which the dancers were surprised by the playing of the Maestro is over, and the impressions caused by it are passed away, just as the silence of death was to follow the warmth and brightness of the glad Venetian life.”

To Edward Fitzgerald. In the Athenæum of July 13th, 1889, appeared this sonnet: —

“To Edward Fitzgerald“I chanced upon a new book yesterday;I opened it, and, where my finger lay’Twixt page and uncut page, these words I read —Some six or seven at most – and learned therebyThat you, Fitzgerald, whom by ear and eyeShe never knew, ‘thanked God my wife was dead.’Ay, dead! and were yourself alive, good Fitz,How to return you thanks would task my wits.Kicking you seems the common lot of curs —While more appropriate greeting lends you grace,Surely to spit there glorifies your face —Spitting from lips once sanctified by hers.“Robert Browning.“July 8th, 1889.”

The passage referred to is as follows: “Mrs. Browning’s death is rather a relief to me, I must say: no more Aurora Leighs, thank God! A woman of real genius, I know; but what is the upshot of it all! She and her sex had better mind the kitchen and the children; and perhaps the poor. Except in such things as little novels, they only devote themselves to what men do much better, leaving that which men do worse or not at all.” (Life and Letters of Edward Fitzgerald. Edited by Aldis Wright.) —Browning Society Papers, Notes, 229.

Tokay. See Nationality in Drinks. (Dramatic Lyrics, III.)

Too Late. (Dramatis Personæ, 1864.) A man addressing a dead woman whom he has loved and lost, tells how he feels that she needs help in her grave and finds none; wants warmth from a heart which longs to send it. She married another who did not love her “nor any one else in the world.” This great sorrow was the rock which stopped the even flow of his life current. Some devil must have hurled it into the stream, and so thwarted God, who had made these two souls for each other. Just a thread of water escaped from the obstacle, and that wandered “through the evening country” down to the great sea which absorbs all our life streams. He has hoped at times that some convulsion of nature might roll the stone from its place and let the stream flow undisturbed. But all is past hope now: Edith is dead that should have been his. What should he have done that he omitted? Had he not taken her “No” too readily? Men do more for trifling reasons than he had done for his life’s whole peace. Perhaps he was proud – perhaps helpless as a man paralysed by a great blow; anyway, she was gone from his life, and he was desolate henceforth. She was not handsome, – nobody said that. She had features which no artist would select for a model; but she was his life, and even now that she is dead he will be her slave while his soul endures. The poem is full of concentrated emotion, and is the expression of a strong man’s life passion for a woman’s soul; a passion unalloyed by any gross affection; such a love of one soul for another congenial soul as proves that man is more than matter.

Transcendentalism: a Poem in Twelve Books. (Men and Women, 1855.) This poem is probably intended by Mr. Browning as an answer to his critics. It has been said of Mr. Browning’s poetry by a hundred competent writers that he does not sing, but philosophises instead; that he gives the world his naked thoughts, his analyses of souls not draped in the beauty of the poet’s art, but in the form of “stark-naked thought.” There is no objection, says his interviewer, if he will but cast aside the harp which he does not play but only tunes and adjusts, and speak his prose to Europe through “the six-foot Swiss tube which helps the hunter’s voice from Alp to Alp.” The fault is, that he utters thoughts to men thinking they care little for form or melody, as boys do. It is quite otherwise he should interpret nature – which is full of mystery – to the soul of man: as Jacob Boehme heard the plants speak, and told men what they said; or as John of Halberstadt, the magician, who by his will-power could create the flowers Boehme thought about. The true poet is a poem himself, whatever be his utterance. Take back the harp again, and “pour heaven into this short home of life.” Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) was a German mystical writer, who began life as a shoemaker and developed into a “seer” of the highest order. He was a follower of the school of Paracelsus, and professed to know all mysteries by actually beholding them. He saw the origin of love and sorrow, heaven and hell. Nature lay unveiled to him; he saw into the being of God, and into the heart of things. Mr. Browning refers to this in the line of the poem, “He noticed all at once that plants could speak.” “William Law (1686-1761) was a follower of Boehme’s system of philosophy. The Quakers have been much influenced by the Boehmenists. The old magicians thought they had discovered in the ashes of plants their primitive forms, which were again raised up by the force of heat. Nothing, they say, perishes in Nature; all is but a continuation or a revival. The germina of resurrection are concealed in extinct bodies, as in the blood of men; the ashes of roses will again revive into roses, though smaller and paler than if they had been planted. The process of the Palingenesis– this picture of immortality – is described. These philosophers, having burnt a flower by calcination, disengaged the salts from its ashes, and deposited them in a glass phial; a chemical mixture acted on it till in the fermentation they assumed a bluish and spectral hue. This dust, thus excited by heat, shoots upwards into its primitive form; by sympathy the parts unite, and while each is returning to its destined place we see distinctly the stalk, the leaves, and the flower arise; it is the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its ashes.” (Disraeli’s Curiosities of Literature, art. “Dreams at the Dawn of Philosophy.”) John of Halberstadt was the magician who made the flowers on some such principles as is fabled above. He was an ecclesiastic, and had probably some knowledge of alchemy, often considered in those days as more or less a diabolical kind of learning. Transcendentalism is thus described by Webster: “Transcendental, Empirical. – These terms, with the corresponding nouns transcendentalism and empiricism, are of comparatively recent origin. Empirical refers to knowledge which is gained by the experience of actual phenomena, without reference to the principles or laws to which they are to be referred, or by which they are to be explained. Transcendental has reference to those beliefs or principles which are not derived from experience, and yet are absolutely necessary to make experience possible or useful. Such, in the better sense of the term, is the transcendental philosophy, or transcendentalism. The term has been applied to a kind of investigation, or a use of language which is vague, obscure, fantastic, or extravagant.” The reference in the title of the poem is purely imaginary: there is no such work.