A Handbook to the Works of Browning Part 22

The pathos of "TOO LATE" is all conveyed in its t.i.tle. The loved woman is dead. She was the wife of another man than he who mourns for her. But so long as there was life there was hope. The lover might, he feels, have learned to compromise with the obstacles to his happiness. Some shock of circ.u.mstance might have rolled them away. If the loved one spurned him once, he had of late been earning her friendship. She might in time have discovered that the so-called poet whom she had preferred to him was a mere lay-figure whom her fancy had draped. But all this is at an end. Hope and opportunity are alike gone. He remains to condemn his own quiescence in what was perhaps not inevitable; in what proved no more for her happiness than for his. The husband is probably writing her epitaph.

"Too Late" expresses an attachment as individual as it is complete.

"Edith" was not considered a beauty. She was not one even in her lover's eyes. This fact, and the manner in which he shows it, give a characteristic force to the situation.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 32: The cla.s.sification of this poem is open to the obvious objection that it is not a monologue; but a dialogue or alternation of monologues, in which the second speaker, Balaustion (who is also the narrator), is, for the time being, as real as the first. Its conception is, however, expressed in the first t.i.tle; and the arguments and descriptions which Balaustion supplies only contribute to the vividness with which Aristophanes and his defence are brought before us.

"Aristophanes' Apology" is identical in spirit with the other poems of this group.]

[Footnote 33: This incident is founded on fact. It is related in Plutarch's Lives, that after the defeat of Nicias, all those of the captives who could recite something from Euripides were kindly treated by the Syracusans.]

[Footnote 34: The name signifies celebration of the festival of the Thesmophoria. This was held by women only, in honour of Ceres and Proserpine.]

[Footnote 35: The chorus of each new play was supplied to its author by the Government, when considered worth the outlay. Sketches of this and other plays alluded to in the course of the work may be read in the first volume of Mahaffy's "History of Cla.s.sical Greek Literature."]

[Footnote 36: The plays were performed at the lesser and greater festivals of Bacchus; this, the Lenaia, being the smaller one. Hence, the presence of priest as well as archon at the ensuing banquet]

[Footnote 37: The failure here alluded to is his Ploutos or Plutus--an inoffensive but tame comedy written when Aristophanes was advanced in years, and of which the ill-success has been imputed to this fact. Mr.

Browning, however, treats it as a proof that the author's ingrained habit of coa.r.s.e fun had unfitted him for the more serious treatment of human life.]

[Footnote 38: Figures placed above the entrance of Athenian houses, and symbolizing the double life. It was held as sacrilege to deface them, as had been recently and mysteriously done.]

[Footnote 39: Introducing him into the play, as in the disguise of a disreputable woman.]

[Footnote 40: Aristophanes' comedy of the "Clouds" was written especially at Socrates, who stood up unconcernedly in the theatre that the many strangers present might understand what was intended.]

[Footnote 41: Mr. Mahaffy's description of the "Clouds" contains an account of this defeat, which sets forth the amusing conceit and sophistry of Aristophanes' explanation of it. He alludes here to the prevailing custom of several dramatic writers competing for a prize.]

[Footnote 42: Whirligig is a parody of the word "vortex." Vortex itself is used in derision of Socrates, who is represented in the "Clouds" as setting up this non-rational force in the place of Zeus--the clouds themselves being subordinate divinities.]

[Footnote 43: Saperdion was a famous Hetaira, the Empousa, a mythological monster. Kimberic or Cimberic means transparent.]

[Footnote 44: A pure libel on this play, which is noted for its novel and successful attempt to represent humour without indecency.

Aristophanes here alludes to the prevailing custom of concluding every group of three tragedies with a play in which the chorus consisted of Satyrs: a custom which Euripides broke through.]

[Footnote 45: The inverted commas include here, as elsewhere in the Apology, only the very condensed substance of Mr. Browning's words.]

[Footnote 46: Tin-islands. Scilly Islands, loosely speaking, Great Britain.]

[Footnote 47: A demagogue of bad character attacked by Aristophanes: a big fellow and great coward.]

[Footnote 48: White was the Greek colour of victory. This pa.s.sage, not easily paraphrased, is a poetic recognition of the latent sympathy of Aristophanes with the good cause.]

[Footnote 49: A game said to be of Sicilian origin and played in many ways. Details of it may be found in Becker's "Charikles," vol. ii.]

[Footnote 50: Thamyris of Thrace, said to have been blinded by the Muses for contending with them in song. The incident is given in the "Iliad,"

and was treated again by Sophocles, as Aristophanes also relates.]

[Footnote 51: This also is historical.]

[Footnote 52: Grote's "History of Greece," vol. iii. p. 265.]

[Footnote 53: Eidothee or Eidothea, is the daughter of Proteus--the old man of the sea. A legend concerning her is found in the 4th book of the Odyssey.]

[Footnote 54: There is such a monument at p.o.r.nic.]

[Footnote 55: These words are taken from a line in the Prometheus of aeschylus.]

[Footnote 56: Mr. Browning desires me to say that he has been wrong in a.s.sociating this custom with the little temple by the river c.l.i.tumnus which he describes from personal knowledge. That to which the tradition refers stood by the lake of Nemi.]

[Footnote 57: The Cardinal himself reviewed this poem, not disapprovingly, in a catholic publication of the time]

[Footnote 58: This refers to the popular Neapolitan belief that a crystallized drop of the blood of the patron saint, Januarius, is miraculously liquefied on given occasions.]

[Footnote 59: The "Iketides" (Suppliants), mentioned in Section XVIII., is a Tragedy by aeschylus, the earliest extant: and of which the text is especially incomplete: hence, halting, and "maimed."]

[Footnote 60: This poem, like "Aristophanes' Apology," belongs in spirit more than in form to its particular group. Each contains a dialogue, and in the present case we have a defence, though not a specious one of the judgment attained]

[Footnote 61: We recognize the _cogito ergo sum_ of Descartes.]

[Footnote 62: The narrator, in a parenthetic statement, imputes a doctrine to St. John, which is an unconscious approach on Mr. Browning's part to the "animism" of some ancient and mediaeval philosophies. It carries the idea of the Trinity into the individual life, by subjecting this to three souls, the lowest of which reigns over the body, and is that which "Does:" the second and third being respectively that which "Knows" and "Is." The reference to the "glossa of Theotypas" is part of the fiction.]

[Footnote 63: The present Riccardi palace in the Via Larga was built by Cosmo dei Medici in 1430; and remained in the possession of the Medici till 1659, when it was sold to Marchese Riccardi. The original Riccardi palace in the Piazza S. S. Annunziata is now (since 1870) Palazzo Antinori.

In my first edition, the "crime" is wrongly interpreted as the murder of Alexander, Duke of Florence, in 1536; and the confusion, I regret to find, increased by a wrong figure (8 for 5), which has slipped into the date.]

[Footnote 64: Mr. Browning possesses or possessed pictures by all the artists mentioned in this connection.]

[Footnote 65: (Verses 26, 27, 28.) "Bigordi" is the family name of Domenico called "Ghirlandajo," from the family trade of wreath-making.

"Sandro" stands for Alessandro Botticelli. "Lippino" was son of Fra Lippo Lippi. Mr. Browning alludes to him as "wronged," because others were credited with some of his best work. "Lorenzo Monaco" (the monk) was a contemporary, or nearly so, of Fra Angelico, but more severe in manner. "Pollajolo" was both painter and sculptor. "Margheritone of Arezzo" was one of the earlier Old Masters, and died, as Vasari states, "infastidito" (deeply annoyed), by the success of Giotto and the "new school." Hence the funeral garb in which Mr. Browning depicts him.]

[Footnote 66: The "magic" symbolized is that of genuine poetry; but the magician, or "mage," is an historical person; and the special feat imputed to him was recorded of other magicians in the Middle Ages, if not of himself.

"Johannes Teutonicus, a canon of Halberstadt in Germany, after he had performed a number of prestigious feats almost incredible, was transported by the Devil in the likeness of a black horse, and was both seen and heard upon one and the same Christmas day to say Ma.s.s in Halberstadt, in Mayntz, and in Cologne" ("Heywood's Hierarchy," bk. iv., p. 253).

The "prestigious feat" of causing flowers to appear in winter was a common one. "In the year 876, the Emperor Lewis then reigning, there was one Zedechias, by religion a Jew, by profession a physician, but indeed a magician. In the midst of winter, in the Emperor's palace, he suddenly caused a most pleasant and delightful garden to appear, with all sorts of trees, plants, herbs, and flowers, together with the singing of all sorts of birds, to be seen and heard." (Delrio, "Disquisitio Magicae,"

bk. i., chap, iv., and elsewhere; and many other authorities.)]

[Footnote 67: "Wine of Cyprus." The quotation heading the poem qualifies it as 'wine for the superiors in age and station.']

[Footnote 68: Such as Wordsworth a.s.sumed to have been in use with Shakespeare.]

[Footnote 69: This is told in the tales of the Troubadours.]

[Footnote 70: Published, simultaneously, in Mr. Fox's "Monthly Repository." The song in "Pippa Pa.s.ses" beginning "A king lived long ago," and the verses introduced in "James Lee's Wife," were also first published in this Magazine, edited by the generous and very earliest encourager of Mr. Browning's boyish attempts at poetry.]

[Footnote 71: These verses were written when Mr. Browning was twenty-three.]