Men and Women

106

Paulus; we have have heard his fame: Paul's mission to the Gentiles carried him to many of the islands in the AEgean Sea as well as to Athens and Corinth (Acts 13-21).

107

Century of sonnets: Rafael is known to have written four love sonnets on the back of sketches for his wall painting, the "Disputa," which are still preserved in collections, one of them in the British Museum. The Italian text of these sonnets with English translations are given in Wolzogen's Life of him translated by F. E. Bunntt. Did he ever write a hundred? It is supposed that the lost book once owned by Guido Reni, apparently the one referred to in stanza iv, was a book of drawings. Perhaps these also bore sonnets on their backs, or Browning guessed they did.

108

Who that one: Margarita, a girl Rafael met and loved in Rome, two portraits of whom exist—one in the Barberini Palace, Rome, the other in the Pitti, in Florence. They resemble the Sistine and other Madonnas by Rafael.

109

Madonnas, etc.: "San Sisto," now in Dresden; "Foligno," in the Vatican, Rome; the one in Florence is called "del Granduca," and represents her appearing in a vision; the one in the Louvre, called "La Belle Jardinire," is seated in a garden among lilies.

110

Dante once, etc.: "On that day," writes Dante, "Vita Nuova," xxxv, "which fulfilled the year since my lady had been made of the citizens of eternal life, remembering of her as I sat alone, I betook myself to draw the resemblance of an angel upon certain tablets." That this lady was Beatrice Portinari, as Browning supposes, Dante's devotion to her, in both "The New Life" and "The Divine Comedy," should leave no doubt. Yet the literalness of Mr. W. M. Rossetti makes him obtuse here, as he and other commentators seem to be in their understanding of Browning throughout this stanza. Browning evidently contrasts Dante's tenderness here towards Beatrice with the remorselessness of his pen in the "Inferno" (see Cantos 32 and 33), where he stigmatized his enemies as if using their very flesh for his parchment, so that ever after in the eyes of all Florence they seemed to bear the marks of the poet's hate of their wickedness. It was people of this sort, grandees of the town, Browning fancies, who again "hinder loving," breaking in upon the poet and seizing him unawares forsooth at this intimate moment of loving artistry. "Chancing to turn my head," Dante continues, "I perceived that some were standing beside me to whom I should have given courteous greeting, and that they were observing what I did: also I learned afterwards that they had been there a while before I perceived them." The tender moment was over. He stopped the painting, simply saying, "Another was with me."

111

He who smites the rock: Moses, whose experience in smiting the rock for water (Exodus 17.1-7; Numbers 20.1-11) is likened to the sorrow of the artist, serving a reckless world.

112

Sinai-forehead's . . . brilliance: Exodus 19.9, 16; 34.30.

113

Jethro's daughter: Moses' wife, Zipporah (Exodus 2.16, 21).

114

AEthiopian bondslave: Numbers 12.1.

115

Liberal hand: the free hand of the fresco-painter cramped to do the exquisite little designs fit for the missal marge = margin of a Prayer-book.

116

Samminiato: San Miniato, a church in Florence.

117

Turn a new side, etc.: the side turned away from the earth which our world never sees.

118

Zoroaster: (589-513 B. C.), founder of the Persian religion, and worshipper of light, whose habit it was to observe the heavens from his terrace.

119

Galileo: (1564-1642), constructor of the first telescope, leading him to discover that the Milky Way was an assemblage of starry worlds, and the earth a planet revolving on its axis and about an orbit, for which opinion he was tried and condemned. When forced to retire from his professorship at Padua, he continued his observations from his own house in Florence.

120

Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats: Homer celebrates the moon in the "Hymn to Diana" (see Shelley's translation), and makes Artemis upbraid her brother Phoebus when he claims that it is not meet for gods to concern themselves with mortals (Iliad, xxi. 470). Keats, in "Endymion," sings of her love for a mortal.

121

Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, etc.: Exodus 24.1, 10.