Browning's Shorter Poems Part 30

99. =Elucescebat=. Late Latin, from =elucesco=. The cla.s.sical or Ciceronian form would be =elucebat=, from =eluceo=. Here appears the Bishop's love of good Latin.

108. =Term=. A pillar, widening toward the top, upon which is placed a figure or a bust.

Who are grouped about the Bishop's bed? What does he desire? Why? What tastes does he show? Point out evidences of his crimes, his suspicion, his sensual ideals, his artistic tastes, his canting hypocrisy, his confusion of the material and the immaterial, and the persistency of his pa.s.sions and feelings. Note the subtlety with which these things are suggested, especially lines 18-19, 29-30, 33-44, 50-52, 59-62, 80-84, 122-125.

THE LABORATORY. (PAGE 113.)

This is a little masterpiece in its vividness and condensation. The pa.s.sions of hate and jealousy have seldom been so well portrayed. The time and place are probably France and the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Berdoe has called attention in his _Browning Cyclopaedia_, to the number of fine ant.i.theses in the second stanza.

Who are present in the scene? Who are to be the victims? Account for the speaker's _patience_ in stanza iii. Point out the things that show the intensity of her hate. Does she display any other feeling than hate and jealousy?

HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD. (PAGE 115.)

Where is the speaker? What scene is in his imagination? Trace the growth in his mind of this scene: in color effects, in the kind of life introduced, in the intensity of the feeling, in the vividness with which he enters into it. What is the charm in lines 12-14?

UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN THE CITY. (PAGE 116.)

4. =Bacchus=. The Roman G.o.d of wine, frequently invoked in the garnishment of Latin and Italian speech.

42. =Pulcinello= is the Italian for clown or puppet, and the prototype of the English Punch.

48, =Dante=, =Boccaccio=, and =Petrarch=. Italy's first three great authors. See a biographical dictionary or encyclopaedia for their dates and their works.

=St. Jerome= (340-420.) One of the fathers of the Roman, church.

He prepared the Latin translation of the Bible known as the _Vulgate_.

48. =the skirts of St. Paul has reached=. Has done almost as well as St. Paul.

51. =Our Lady=. The image of the Virgin Mary. Observe our hero's taste and his religions solemnity.

52. =seven swords=, etc. Representing the seven "legendary sorrows"

of the Virgin. See Berdoe's _Browning Cyclopaedia_, or Brewer's _Reader's Handbook_, or _Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_ for the list.

UP AT A VILLA is one of the best humorous poems in the language. The hero's desires and sorrows are so _nave_, his tastes so gravely held, that he provokes our sympathy as well as our laughter. One of the charms of the poem is the way in which he is made to testify, in spite of himself, to the beauties of the country (as in lines 7-9, 19-20, 22-25, 32-33, 36) and to the monotony or clanging emptiness of the city (as in lines 12-14, 38-54). Compare lines 8 and 82 with the picture in _De Gustibus_.

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S. (PAGE 122.)

=Toccata=. See an unabridged dictionary.

1. =Galuppi=. Balda.s.sare Galuppi, Venice, 1706-1785, a celebrated musician and prolific composer.

6. =St. Mark's=. The famous cathedral of Venice. =Doges ... rings=.

The Doge was chief magistrate of Venice. The annual ceremony of "wedding the Adriatic" by casting into it a gold ring was inst.i.tuted in 1174, in commemoration of the victory of the Venetian fleet over Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany.

8. =Shylock's bridge=. By the Rialto. A house by the bridge, said to be Shylock's, is still pointed out to visitors.

18. =clavichord=. An instrument of the type of the piano.

19 ff. =thirds=, =sixths=, etc. For the musical terms see an unabridged dictionary or a musical dictionary.

30. Compare the lines in Fitzgerald's translation of the _Rubaiyat_:--

"For some we loved, the loveliest and the best That from his vintage rolling Time hath prest, Have drunk their cup a round or two before, And one by one crept silently to rest."

This is the characteristic note of poetic melancholy, found again and again from Virgil to Tennyson.

37-39. Is the ironical tone of these lines in harmony with the spirit of the rest of the poem?

What does Galuppi's music mean to Browning? What does it recall of the life in Venice? Is the lightness of tone in the music itself or in the poet's idea of Venice? What emotions are aroused? What causes the poet's sadness? Is the verse musical? Does it suit the ideas it conveys?

ABT VOGLER. (PAGE 126.)

George Joseph Vogler, known also as Abbe (or Abt) Vogler (1748-1816), was a German musician. He composed operas and other musical pieces, became famous as an organist, and invented an organ with pedals and several keyboards. Browning seems to have in mind the complex musical harmonies of which the instrument was capable. See lines 10, 13, 52, 55, and 84 of the poem. See also the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

3. =Solomon=. Legends about Solomon and his power over the spirits of earth and air are common in Jewish and Arabic literature.

9 ff. =building=. The idea of building by music is an old one. See the cla.s.sical story of Amphion and the walls of Thebes, Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_, and Tennyson's _Gareth and Lynette_, lines 272-274.

19. =rampired=. Furnished with _ramparts_.

23. The reference is to St. Peter's in Rome.

The musician's imagination takes fire from his playing, and his music seems like a glorious palace which he is building. The notes are conceived as spirits doing his bidding (stanzas i-iii). As he proceeds the images change, and heaven and earth seem to unite with him in his creative activity: light flashes forth, and heaven and earth draw nearer together. Now he sees the past, the beginnings of things, and the future; even the dead are back again in his presence. His imagination has anulled time and s.p.a.ce. As he thinks of his art, it seems more glorious to him than painting and poetry: these work by laws that can be explained and followed, while music is a direct expression of the will, an act of higher creative power.

When the music ends he cannot be consoled by the thought that as good music will come again. So he turns to the one unchanging thing, "the ineffable Name." Thus he gains confidence to say, "there shall never be one lost good." All failure and all evil are but a prelude to the good that shall in the end prevail. So he returns in hope and patience to the C major, the common chord of life.

ART VOGLER is famous, not only for its confident optimism, but as an example of Browning's power of annexing a new domain--that of music--to poetry.

Where does the musician cease to speak of Solomon's building and begin to describe his own? Note, in stanza ii, how he speaks first of the "keys," and afterwards has in mind the notes; how he speaks of the ba.s.s notes as the foundation, and the upper notes as the structure.

Where is the climax of his creative vision? What does he mean in line 40? Is he right in saying music is less subject to laws than poetry and painting? Why is he sad when his music ceases? Why does he turn to G.o.d for consolation? Follow carefully the argument in stanza ix. Is it convincing? What a.n.a.logy does he find between music, and good and evil?

RABBI BEN EZRA. (PAGE 133.)

Abraham Ben Meir Ben Ezra, into whose mouth Browning puts the reflections in this poem, was born in Toledo, Spain, in 1090, and died about 1168. He was distinguished as philosopher, astronomer, physician, and poet. The ideas of the poem are drawn largely from the writings of Rabbi Ben Ezra. See Berdoe's _Browning Cyclopaedia_.

1. =Grow old along with me=. Come, and let us talk of old age.

7-15. =Not that=. Connect "not that" of lines 7 and 10, and the "not for, etc.," of 13, with "Do I remonstrate" in line 15.

29. =hold of=. Are like, share the nature of.

39-41. Compare _A Grammarian's Funeral_.