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

Tray. (Dramatic Idyls, 1879.) Three bards sing each a song of a hero; but the bard who sings of Olaf the Dane, and he who tells of the hero standing unflinching on the precipice, have not their song rewarded here: the place of honour is reserved by the poet for a dog story. Tray was the poet’s hero of the three. A beggar child fell into the Seine in Paris. The bystanders prudently bethought themselves of their families ere risking their lives to save her. While the people were wondering how the child was to be extricated, “a mere instinctive dog” jumped over the balustrade and brought her to land. The people applauded the dog, who had no sooner deposited his burden on the shore than he was off again, apparently to save another child whom nobody had seen fall. The dog was so long under the water that he was thought to have been carried away by the current; but in a few minutes he was seen swimming to land with the child’s doll in his mouth. The people began to pride themselves on man’s possession of reason, and to vaunt the superiority of our race over that of the dog. Meanwhile Tray trotted off; till one of the crowd, with a larger share of “reason” than the rest, bade his servant go and catch the animal for him, that, by expenditure “of half an hour and eighteen-pence,” he might vivisect it at the physiological laboratory and see “how brain secretes dog’s soul.” This was poor Tray’s reward at the hands of humanity, endowed with the “reason” which had been denied to the brave and faithful little brain of the “lower animal.” (See Vivisection.)

Twins, The. (Originally published in a little volume with a poem of Mrs. Browning’s, on behalf of the Ragged Schools of London, 1854; then in Men and Women, 1855; Romances, 1863; Dramatic Romances, 1868.) In Martin Luther’s Table Talk there is a story which is the foundation of this poem. In the talk “On Justification” (No. 316), he says: “Give, and it shall be given unto you: this is a fine maxim, and makes people poor and rich… There is in Austria a monastery which, in former times, was very rich, and remained rich so long as it was charitable to the poor; but when it ceased to give, then it became indigent, and is so to this day. Not long since, a poor man went there and solicited alms, which were denied him; he demanded the cause why they refused to give for God’s sake? The porter of the monastery answered, ‘We are become poor’; whereupon the mendicant said, ‘The cause of your poverty is this: ye had formerly in this monastery two brethren – the one named Date (give), and the other Dabitur (it shall be given to you): the former ye thrust out, and the other went away of himself.’… Beloved, he that desires to have anything must also give: a liberal hand was never in want or empty.” (Mr. Browning’s poem is simply the above narrative in verse.)

Two Camels. (Ferishtah’s Fancies, 8: “Self-mortification.”) Is self-mortification necessary for the attainment of wisdom? Two camels started on a long journey with their loads of merchandise. One, desiring to please his master, refused to eat the food which was provided for him: he died of exhaustion on the road, and thieves secured his burden. The other ate his provender thankfully, and safely reached his destination with his load. Which beast pleased his master? We are here to do our day’s work: help refused is hindrance sought. We are to desire joy and thank God for it. The Creator wills that we should recognise our creatureship and call upon Him in our need. As we are God’s sons, He cannot be indifferent to our needs and sorrows. Neither work nor the spirit of self-dependence are antagonistic to prayer. The “ear, hungry for music,” is a more intelligible phrase when we know that the organ of Corti in the human ear has three thousand arches, with keys ranged like those of a piano, marvellously adapted for the appreciation of every tone-shade. The “seven-stringed instrument” refers to light and the seven colours of the spectrum. – In the lyric, the chemical combination of two harmless substances produces an effect which either by itself would have been powerless to produce. How know we what God intends to work in us by the influences by which we are surrounded? We are not to reject the joys of earth, the bliss produced by slight and transient mental stimuli; they suffice to move the heart. There is earth-bliss which heaven itself cannot improve, but may make permanent: why despise it?

Two in the Campagna. (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) The Campagna di Roma is that portion of the area almost coinciding with the ancient Latium, which lies round the city of Rome. Gregorovius says we might mark its circumference “by a series of well-known points: Civita Vecchia, Tolfa, Ronciglione, Soracte, Tivoli, Palestrina, Albano, and Ostia.” Anciently it was the seat of numerous cities, and is now dotted with ruins in its whole extent. In summer its vast expanse is little better than an arid steppe, and is very dangerous on account of the malaria almost everywhere prevalent. In winter and spring it is safer, and affords abundant pasture for sheep and cattle. There is a solemnity and beauty about the Campagna entirely its own. To the reflective mind, this ghost of old Rome is full of suggestion: its vast, almost limitless extent, as it seems to the traveller; its abundant herbage and floral wealth in early spring; its desolation, its crumbling monuments, and its evidences of a vanished civilisation, fill the mind with a sweet sadness, which readily awakens the longing for the infinite spoken of in the poem, the key-note of which is undoubtedly found in the lines —

“Only I discernInfinite passion, and the painOf finite hearts that yearn.”

Says Pascal: “This desire and this weakness cry aloud to us that there was once in man a true happiness, of which there now remains to him but the mark and the empty trace, which he vainly tries to fill from all that surround him; seeking from things absent the succour he finds not in things present; and these are all inadequate, because this infinite void can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object – that is to say, only by God Himself.” The speaker in the poem says to the woman, “I would that you were all to me.” As pleasure, learning, wealth, have failed to satisfy the soul of man, so not even Love, the holiest passion of the soul, can satisfy the human heart, which can rest in God alone. Dr. Martineau says that “all finite loves are only half-born, wandering in a poor twilight, unknowing of their peace and power, till they lie within the encompassing and glorifying love of God.” The restful music, the anodyne for the pain of yearning hearts, comes from no earth-born love, however pure.

Two Poets Of Croisic, The. (1878, with La Saisiaz.) Le Croisic is an old town in Brittany, in the department of Loire Inférieure. Murray describes it as “a popular watering-place. Croisic was formerly a place of some importance – was fortified, and had a castle, and reached its greatest prosperity in the sixteenth century, when it sent vessels to the cod-fishery, and had some six thousand inhabitants; but, like many other towns, was ruined by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. There is a chapel of St. Gourtan to the west of the town, with a miraculous well near it. When there is a storm from the south the sailors’ wives pray at St. Gourtan; when from the north, at the Chapel of the Crucifix, at the east of the town. About half a mile due north-west of the church is a menhir eight feet high, situated on a mound overlooking the sea. The rocky cliffs on the sea shore near it, for about a mile, have been worn by the waves and weather into the most extraordinary and fantastic shapes, and are well worth a visit.” Croisic is one of the principal ports of the sardine fishery. Guérande and Batz, also referred to in the poem, are close to Le Croisic, the former being “a very curious old town, still surrounded,” says Murray, “by the ditches and walls built by Duke John V. about 1431. On Sundays, the assemblage of Bretons from the north, peat-diggers from the east, and salt-makers from the west, is very striking. Soon after leaving Guérande the road descends into a wide plain covered with pits and salterns. This plain is of great extent, below the level of the sea, and protected by dykes. The water is admitted at high water, by channels or rivers, into reservoirs called vasières, from which it is passed into shallow, irregularly-formed receptacles called fares. In these a considerable portion of the water is evaporated, and the brine is allowed to run into square basins called œillets, where the sun finally evaporates the water and leaves a layer of salt. The salt is scraped off to square patches between the œillets, and is thence carried to a conical heap on the high ground, where it is left without protection from the rain until the autumn, when the heap is covered with wood, and so left until it can be sold. The men engaged in the work are called paludiers, and receive one-fourth of the salt, the owner of the salterns receiving the other three-fourths.” Mr. Browning refers to such a process in Sordello, to illustrate his theory of the necessity of evil: —

“Where the salt marshes stagnate, crystals branch;Blood dries to crimson; Evil’s beautifiedIn every shape.”

“The paludiers, and their assistants, called saulniers, inhabit Batz, Pouliguen, Saillié, and other villages, and form a most peculiar class. Their usual dress is an enormous black flapped hat, a long white frock or waistcoat, huge baggy white breeches, white gaiters and white shoes. The men of Batz are a magnificent race of large, stalwart, evident Saxons.” – The opening stanzas of the poem are descriptive of a scene in winter, round a good log-fire of old shipwood. As the flames ascend, they are tinted with various brilliant colours, due to the chemicals with which the old timber is impregnated and the metals which are attached to it. Sodium salts from the sea brine account for the yellow and crimson flames; the greenish flame owes its tint to the copper; the flake brilliance is due to the zinc; and so forth. All this flame splendour suggests the flash of fame – brilliant for a few minutes, and then subsiding into darkness. At the eleventh stanza begins a description of Croisic, Guérande, and Batz, and the salt industry as described above. An island opposite was the Druids’ chosen chief of homes; where their women were employed, building a temple to the sun, destroying it and rebuilding it every May. Even at the present day women steal to the sole menhir standing and the rude stone pillars, with or without still ruder inscriptions, found in many parts of Brittany. But Croisic has had its men of note: two poets must be remembered who lived there. René Gentilhomme, in the year 1610, flamed forth a liquid ruby; he was of noble birth, and page to the Prince of Condé, whom men called “the Duke.” His cousin the King had no heir, so men began to call him “Next King,” and he to expect the dignity. His page René was a poet, and had written many sonnets and madrigals. One day, when he sat a-rhyming, a storm came on; and, struck by lightning, a ducal crown, emblem of the Prince, was dashed to atoms. René ceased his sonnets, and, considering the destruction as an omen of the ruined hopes of the Duke, wrote forty lines, which he gave to the man, who asked how it came his ducal crown was wrecked – “Sir, God’s word to you!” It happened as the poet foresaw: at the year’s end was born the Dauphin, who wrecked the Prince’s hopes. King Louis honoured René with the title “Royal Poet,” inasmuch as he not only poetised, but prophesied. The other famous poet of Croisic, represented by the green flame, was a dapper gentleman, Paul Desforges Maillard, who lived in Voltaire’s time, and did something which made Voltaire ridiculous. He wrote a poem, which he submitted to the Academy, but which the Forty ignominiously rejected. When the poet’s rage subsided, he made bold to offer his work to the Chevalier La Roque, editor of the Paris Mercury, who rejected it with the polite excuse that he could not offend the Forty. Flattered, though enraged at this excuse, the poet abused the editor till he explained that his poetry was execrable, but he had sought to conceal the truth in his rejection. Maillard had a sister, who determined to help him by strategy. Copying out some of her brother’s verses, she sent them as the efforts of a young girl, who threw herself on the great editor’s mercy, and begged his introduction to a literary career under the name of Malcrais. The editor fell into the trap, and published the poems from time to time till she grew famous. He even went so far as to fall in love with the authoress, and to offer her marriage. Voltaire moreover was deceived, and wrote “a stomach-moving tribute” in her honour. Naturally the brother, finding that his poetry had such value, was unwilling that he should be any longer deprived of the glory attaching to it; so he determined to go to Paris and confront the editor who had insulted him with the proofs of his incapability, by explaining who the real Malcrais was. This step was his ruin: the world does not like to be convicted of its foolishness. Voltaire was not the man to enjoy a jibe at his own expense. Maillard’s literary career was over. Piron wrote a famous play on this subject, entitled Métromanie.

Up at a Villa – Down in the City. As distinguished by an Italian person of quality. (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) The speaker likes city life: it is expensive, he admits, but one has something for one’s money there. The whole day long life is a perfect feast; but up in the villa on the mountain side the life is no better than a beast’s. In the city you can watch the gossips and the passers-by; whereas up in the villa there is nothing to see but the oxen dragging the plough. Even in summer it is no better, and it is actually cooler in the city square with the fountain playing. He hates fireflies, bees, and cicalas, about which folks talk so much poetry: what he prefers is the blessed church-bells, the rattle of the diligence, the ever succeeding news, the quack doctor, the fun at the post office, the execution of “liberals,” and the gay church procession in the streets on festivals, the drum, the fife, the noise and bustle. Of course it is dear; you cannot have all these luxuries without paying for them, and that is why he is compelled to live a country life; but oh, the pity of it, – the processions, the candles, the flags, the Duke’s guard, the drum, the fife! —

“Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!”

Notes. – Stanza ii., “By Bacchus”: Per Bacco – Italians still swear by the wine-god. Stanza ix., “with a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!” The “seven sorrows of Our Lady” are referred to here. They are (1) Her grief at the prophecy of Simeon; (2) Her affliction during the flight into Egypt; (3) Her distress at the loss of her Son before finding Him in the Temple; (4) Her sorrow when she met her Son bearing His cross; (5) Her martyrdom at the sight of His agony; (6) The wound to her heart when His was pierced; and (7) Her agony at His burial. The contrast of these sorrows with the pink gown, the spangles, and the smiles, is an exquisite satire on some peculiarities in Continental devotions, very distasteful to English people. Stanza x., “Tax on salt”: salt is taxed in Italy; the salt monopoly, the lottery, the grist tax and an octroi are the more important items of Italy’s immoral system of taxation. “what oil pays passing the gate”: the octroi or town-dues have to be paid on all provisions entering the cities of Italy. yellow candles: these are used at funerals, and in penitential processions in the Roman Church.

Valence. (Colombe’s Birthday.) The advocate of Cleves who marries Colombe.

“Verse-making was the least of my Virtues.” (Ferishtah’s Fancies.) The first line of the ninth lyric.

Villains. Browning’s principal villains are the following: – Halbert and Hob; Ned Bratts; Count Guido Franceschini; the devil-like elder man of the Inn Album; Paolo and Girolamo in The Ring and the Book; Ottima and the Intendant of the Bishop, Uguccio, Stefano and Sebald, in Pippa Passes (Bluphocks, in the same poem, is rather a tool of others than a great villain on his own account); Louscha, the mother, in Ivan Ivanovitch; Chiappino in A Soul’s Tragedy.

Vincent Parkes. (Martin Relph.) He was Rosamund Page’s lover. The girl is accused of being a spy, and unless she can clear herself within a given time is to be shot. Parkes arrives at the place of execution with the proofs of the girl’s innocence just as the fatal volley is fired.

Violante Comparini. (The Ring and the Book.) The supposed mother of Pompilia. She was the wife of Pietro, and by him had no children; she bought Pompilia of a courtesan, and brought the child up as her own, and was murdered, with her husband and Pompilia, by Count Guido.

Vivisection, or the cutting into living animals for scientific purposes. Mr. Browning was to the last a Vice-President of the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals, and he always expressed the utmost abhorrence of the practices which it opposes. The following letter was written by Mr. Browning on the occasion of the presentation of the memorial to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1875: – “19, Warwick Crescent, W., December 28th, 1874. – Dear Miss Cobbe, – I return the petition unsigned, for the one good reason – that I have just signed its fellow forwarded to me by Mrs. Leslie Stephen. You have heard, ‘I take an equal interest with yourself in the effort to supress vivisection.’ I dare not so honour my mere wishes and prayers as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts; but this I know: I would rather submit to the worst of the deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two. I return the paper, because I shall be probably shut up here for the next week or more, and prevented from seeing my friends. Whoever would refuse to sign would certainly not be of the number. – Ever truly and gratefully yours, Robert Browning.” – In two of his poems the poet has expressed his emphatic opinion upon Vivisection: in Tray, and in Arcades Ambo. See my chapter “Browning and Vivisection” in Browning’s Message to his Time. In the recently published Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, there are many interesting incidents connected with the great poet’s love for animals, which characterised him from infancy till death. Mrs. Orr says (p. 27) this fondness for animals was conspicuous in his earliest days. “His urgent demand for ‘something to do’ would constantly include ‘something to be caught’ for him: ‘they were to catch him an eft’; ‘they were to catch him a frog.’” He would refuse to take his medicine unless bribed by the gift of a speckled frog from among the strawberries: and the maternal parasol, hovering above the strawberry bed during the search for this object of his desires, remained a standing picture in his remembrance. But the love of the uncommon was already asserting itself; and one of his very juvenile projects was a collection of rare creatures, the first contribution to which was a couple of lady-birds, picked up one winter’s day on a wall and immediately consigned to a box lined with cotton-wool, and labelled ‘Animals found Surviving in the Depths of a Severe Winter.’ Nor did curiosity in this case weaken the power of sympathy. His passion for beasts and birds was the counterpart of his father’s love of children, only displaying itself before the age at which child-love naturally appears. His mother used to read Croxall’s Fables to his little sister and him. The story contained in them of a lion who was kicked to death by an ass affected him so painfully that he could no longer endure the sight of the book; and as he dare not destroy it, he buried it between the stuffing and the woodwork of an old dining-room chair, where it stood for lost, at all events for the time being. When first he heard of the adventures of the parrot who insisted on leaving his cage, and who enjoyed himself for a little while and then died of hunger and cold, he – and his sister with him – cried so bitterly that it was found necessary to invent a different ending, according to which the parrot was rescued just in time and brought back to his cage to live peacefully in it ever after. As a boy he kept owls and monkeys, magpies and hedgehogs, an eagle, and even a couple of large snakes; constantly bringing home the more portable creatures in his pockets, and transferring them to his mother for immediate care. I have heard him speak admiringly of the skilful tenderness with which she took into her lap a lacerated cat, washed and sewed up its ghastly wound, and nursed it back to health. The great intimacy with the life and habits of animals which reveals itself in his works is readily explained by these facts.”

Wall, A. The prologue to Pacchiarotto (q. v.) bears this title in the Selections, Series the Second (published in 1880).

Wanting is – what? (Prologue to Jocoseria, 1883.) In every phase of human life, and in every human action, there is imperfection – always something still to come. In the characters depicted and the incidents narrated in the volume called Jocoseria the poet asks us to say what is wanting to perfect them. His question “Wanting is – what?” governs the whole volume. In Solomon and Balkis what was wanting was not mere wisdom, but a sanctified nature. In Christina and Monaldeschi the woman was wanting in forgiveness. Here the love was not perfect. In Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli what was wanting was self-sacrifice. Had Mary really loved Fuseli, she would not have attempted to ruin his life by endeavouring to win him from his wife. In Adam, Lilith, and Eve, there was wanting, says Mr. Sharpe, “the union of perfect love with perfect holiness.” In Ixion was wanting a just conception of the Fatherhood of God. God is not the tyrannical Master of the world, but the Loving All-Father. In Jochanan Hakkadosh, Mr. Sharpe says, in answer to the question, “Wanting is – what?” “One who shall combine perfect wisdom with the full experience of life, and the completeness of these intuitions of the Spirit.” “Is not this the Christ?” In Never the Time and the Place, to completely develop our souls we need perfect conditions of existence. We shall not find them till we reach heaven. In Pambo the saint recognised that he could not perfectly fulfil the smallest of God’s commandments, nor can we perfectly keep God’s law. Wanting is the Atonement.

Note. – “Come, then, complete incompletion, O Comer, Pant through the blueness,” —i. e. descend from heaven. The Rev. J. Sharpe, M.A., thus explains the title “O Comer”: “ὁ ἐρχόμενος, in the New Testament, is one of the titles of the Messiah – the Future One, He who shall come (Matt. xi. 3, xxi. 9; Luke vii. 19, 20; John xii. 13; also John vi. 14, xi. 27). So in the periphrase of the name Jehovah, ὁ ων καὶ ὀ ὴν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος (Rev. i. 4, 8; iv. 8). – Robinson’s Greek Lexicon of the New Testament. The title hints at the connection between this preface and the stories from the Talmud which follow. The Incarnation, the union of God and man, of Creator and creation, supplies the solution of the problem raised by the incompleteness and death all around us. The beauty is no longer without meaning, for it is a revelation of God; the huge mass of death is no longer revolting, for ‘all things were created by Him, and for Him … and by Him all things consist,’ and He will ‘reunite all things … whether they be things on earth or things in heaven.’” In the character of Donald, what was wanting was the development of “the latent moral faculty.” He did not recognise the rights of the stag, which the commonest principles of justice, to say nothing of gratitude, should have made obvious to the sportsman.