A Handbook to the Works of Browning Part 36

The musical transformation is for a moment followed back to the days of Elizabethan plain-song, and then arrested at those of Avison, where he may be imagined as joining chorus with Bach in celebrating the struggle for English liberty. The closing stanzas are written to the music of Avison's March, which is also given[138] at the end of the poem, and throws a helpful light on its more technical parts.

FUST AND HIS FRIENDS is based on a version of the Faust legend which identifies the inventor of printing with Dr. Faust, and contains allusions to some of the incidents of Goethe's double poem: the magical drinking bout of the first part, and the appearance of the Grecian Helen in the second; but whereas the popular tradition makes Fust's great discovery the fruit of his alliance with the powers of Evil, Mr.

Browning represents it as an act of atonement for the figurative devil-worship which was involved in a disorderly and ostentatious life.

Fust has by his own admission sinned to this extent.[139] He has obeyed the father of lies. He has also accepted with thankfulness the chance of redeeming his soul by a signal service rendered to the cause of Truth.

The process of engraving on gold, furtively witnessed in a Tuscan workshop, has suggested to him the manufacture of metallic types, and he has been for years secluded with the conception of his printing-press, and glowing visions of that winged word which should one day fly forth at his command. Complacent ignorance and stupidity have buzzed freely about him as he sat unaided and alone in what Mr. Browning poetically depicts as the prolonged travail of a portentous mental birth; and, as we are led to imagine, much well-meant remonstrance and advice rebounded from his closed door. But at the moment in question the door is open, for the work of Fust is complete. Seven "Friends" present themselves prepared to lecture him for his good and for that of their city (Mayence) which is endangered by his compact with the Devil; and the ensuing intensely humorous colloquy supplies him with the fitting occasion for distributing specimens of his new art and displaying the mechanism through which its apparent magic is achieved. He then pours forth his soul in an impa.s.sioned utterance, half soliloquy, half prayer, in which grat.i.tude for his own redemption tempers the sense of triumph in the world-wide intellectual deliverance he has been privileged to effect, and becomes a tribute of adoration to that Absolute of Creative Knowledge, the law of which he has obeyed; which stirs in the unconsciousness of the ore and plant, and impels man to Its realization step by step in the ever-receding, ever-present vision of his own ignorance.

He owns, however, when the talk is resumed, that his happiness is not free from cloud: since the wings which he has given to truth will also aid the diffusion of falsehood; and the note of humour returns to the situation when this contingency a.s.serts itself in the mind of some of the "friends." These worthies have pa.s.sed through the descending scale of feeling proper to such persons on such an occasion. They have received Fust's invention as diabolical--as wonderful--as very simple after all; and now the fact stares them in the face that, printing being so simple, the Hussite may publish his heresies as well as the Churchman his truth, and the old sure remedy of burning him and his talk together will no longer avail. One of the two Divines on whom this impresses itself had indeed "been struck by it from the first."

The poem concludes with a joke on the name of Huss, which (I am told) is the Bohemian equivalent for "goose," and his reported prophecy of the advent and the triumph of Luther: which prophecy Fust re-echoes.[140]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 121: We must remark that these arguments are not directed against Atheism and its naturalistic philosophy, which supplies, in Mr.

Browning's judgment, a consistent, if erroneous, solution of the problem. They only attack the position of those who would retain the belief in a personal G.o.d, and yet divest Him of every quality which makes such a Being thinkable.]

[Footnote 122: It has been wrongly inferred from the pa.s.sage in question that Mr. Browning admits the pretensions of science to solve the problems of the universe.]

[Footnote 123: The "G.o.ddess-sent plague" woven by Lachesis into the destiny of Admetus was a vengeance of Artemis which befell him on the day of his marriage. He had slighted her by omitting the usual sacrifice, and in punishment of this she sent a crowd of serpents to meet him in the nuptial chamber; but Apollo effected a reconciliation between them.]

[Footnote 124: He had, as a young man, so great an admiration for one of Bartoli's works, "De' Simboli trasportati al Morale," that when he travelled he always carried it with him.]

[Footnote 125: Her reply was that if she possessed any influence over M.

de Lorraine she would never use it to make him do anything so contrary to his honour and to his interests; she already sufficiently reproached herself for the marriage to which his friendship for her had impelled him; and would rather be "Marianne" to the end of her days than become d.u.c.h.ess on such conditions The reply has been necessarily modified in Mr. Browning's more poetic rendering of the scene]

[Footnote 126: Indented,--for want of writing materials,--with a key on the wainscot of his cell.]

[Footnote 127: Created Lord Melcombe a year before his death: sufficiently known by his diary from March, 1748, to Feb., 1761. See its character in the Preface to the original edition by his relation, Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, 1784. Other notices will be found in "Edgeworth on Education," Belsham's "George II.," and Hawkins' "Life of Johnson."]

[Footnote 128: Furini is also honourably mentioned in Pilkington's "Dictionary of Painters," revised by Fuseli, and till the middle of the present century the authoritative work on the subject. It is stated in the edition of 1805 that "many of his paintings are in Florence, which are deemed to add honour to the valuable collections of the n.o.bility of that city."]

[Footnote 129: The allusion in vol. xvi. p. 195, to the old artificer who could make men "believe" instead of merely "fancy" that what he presented to them was real, refers especially to the Greek painter Zeuxis; but it is suggested by the generally realistic character of Greek art.]

[Footnote 130: Described at p. 253 and onwards under the heading "Painter-like Beauty in the Open Air."]

[Footnote 131: The last line and a half of the eighth stanza was directly suggested by the tragedy of aeschylus; the thunderstorm by another version of the Promethean myth.]

[Footnote 132: See Sh.e.l.ley's translation from Moschus.]

[Footnote 133: Battle of Arbela.]

[Footnote 134: These lines were published in 1886 in the little volume ent.i.tled "The New Amphion."]

[Footnote 135: Organist of Newcastle about 1750; author of "An Essay on Musical Expression" and other works.]

[Footnote 136: The "Relfe" spoken of in this connection was Mr.

Browning's music-master: a learned contrapuntist.]

[Footnote 137: In interpreting this pa.s.sage I have somewhat exceeded the letter, but only to emphasize the spirit of Mr. Browning's words.]

[Footnote 138: From an MS. copy formerly in the possession of Mr.

Browning's father.]

[Footnote 139: The wealth to which he alludes was justly imputed to him, as the real Fust was a goldsmith's son.]

[Footnote 140: The relation of John Fust to the popular legend is pleasantly set forth in Mr. Sutherland Edwards' little book, "The Faust Legend: Its Origin and Development."]

NOTE.

The following note shows Mr. Browning in a more p.r.o.nounced att.i.tude towards the opponents of the new Greek spelling than does that which, by his desire, I inserted in my first edition; but the last mood was in this case only a natural development of the first:--

"I have just noticed in this month's 'Nineteenth Century' that it is inquired by a humorous objector to the practice of spelling (under exceptional conditions) Greek proper names as they are spelt in Greek literature, why the same principle should not be adopted by 'aegyptologists, Hebraists, Sanscrittists, Accadians, Moabites, Hitt.i.tes, and Cuneiformists?' Adopt it, by all means, whenever the particular language enjoyed by any fortunate possessor of these shall, like Greek, have been for about three hundred years insisted upon in England as an acquisition of paramount importance, at school and college, for every aspirant to distinction in learning, even at the cost of six or seven years' study--a sacrifice considered well worth making for even an imperfect acquaintance with 'the most perfect language in the world.'

Further, it will be adopted whenever the letters subst.i.tuted for those in ordinary English use shall do no more than represent to the unscholarly what the scholar accepts without scruple when, for the hundredth time, he reads the word which, for once, he has occasion to write in English, and which he concludes must be as euphonic as the rest of a language renowned for euphony. And, finally, the practice will be adopted whenever the subst.i.tuted letters effect no sort of organic change so as to jostle the word from its pride of place in English verse or prose. 'Themistokles' fits in quietly everywhere, with or without the _k_: but in a certain poetical translation I remember, by a young friend, of the Anabasis, beginning thus felicitously, '_Cyrus the Great and Artaxerxes (Whose temper bloodier than a Turk's is) Were children both of the mild, pious, And happy monarch, King Darius_,'--who fails to see that, although a correct 'Kuraush' may pa.s.s, yet 'Darayavush'

disturbs the metre as well as the rhyme? It seems, however, that 'Themistokles' may be winked at: not so the 'harsh and subversive Kirke.' But let the objector ask somebody with no knowledge to subvert, how he supposes 'Circe' is spelt in Greek, and the answer will be 'with a soft _c_.' Inform him that no such letter exists, and he guesses, 'Then with _s_, if there be anything like it' Tell him that, to eye and ear equally, his own _k_ answers the purpose, and you have, at all events, taught him that much, if little enough--and why does he live unless to learn a little?"

"R. B."

_Jan. 4, 1866._

A CHRONOLOGICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BROWNING'S WORKS.

1833. PAULINE; A FRAGMENT OF A CONFESSION. 8vo. Saunders and Otley, 1833. Dated at the end "Richmond, Oct. 22, 1832." Reprinted in the six vol. editions of the _Poetical Works_, 1868, and later. Also reprinted from the original edition and edited by T. J. Wise, 1886.

1834. SONNET, "Eyes calm beside thee (Lady couldst thou know!") Dated Aug. 17, 1834, and signed "Z." _Monthly Repository_, vol. viii., N.S., 1834, p. 712. Not reprinted by Mr. Browning.

1835. PARACELSUS. By Robert Browning. 8vo. Effingham Wilson, 1835.

Reprinted in _Poems_, 2 vols. 1849, and in _Poetical Works_ later, but without Preface, dated 15th March, 1835.

1835. THE KING. "A king lived long ago." 54 lines signed "Z," in the _Monthly Repository_, vol. ix., N.S., 1835, pp. 707-8. Afterwards given in _Pippa Pa.s.ses_ (sc. I, act iii.) with six additional lines.

1836. PORPHYRIA. "The rain set early in to-night." Sixty lines signed "Z," in _Monthly Repository_, vol. x., N.S., 1836, pp. 43-4. Afterwards appeared in _Bells and Pomegranates_ under the heading "Madhouse Cells II." Was called "Porphyria's Lover" in the _Works_, 1863 and after.

1836. JOHANNES AGRICOLA. "There's Heaven above; and night by night."

Sixty lines signed "Z," in _Monthly Repository_, vol. x., N.S., 1836, pp. 45-6. Reprinted in _Bells and Pomegranates_ under the heading "Madhouse Cells I."

1836. LINES. "Still ailing, wind? wilt be appeased or no?" Six stanzas signed "Z," in the _Monthly Repository_, vol. x., N.S., 1836, pp.

270-71. Reappeared in _Dramatis Personae_ (1864) as the first six stanzas of section vi. of "James Lee."

1837. STRAFFORD: AN HISTORICAL TRAGEDY. By Robert Browning. 8vo.

Longmans, 1837. Acted at Covent Garden Theatre, May 1, 1837. Reprinted without preface in _Poetical Works_, 863, and later. Acting edition, for the North London Collegiate School for Girls, 1882, 8vo. An edition (including preface of 1837) with notes and preface by Miss E. H. Hickey, and introduction by S. R. Gardiner, LL.D., 1884, 8vo.