The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 10

=Christmas Eve.= (_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_: London, 1850.) Two poems on the same subject from different points of view. The scene is a country chapel, a barnlike structure, from which ornament has been rigorously excluded, not so much on account of want of funds as horror of anything which should detract from "Gospel simplicity." The night is stormy, and Christmas Day must have fallen on a Monday that year, or surely no worshippers in that building would have troubled themselves about keeping the vigil of such a "Popish feast" as Christmas. It must have been Sunday night as well as Christmas Eve, that year of '49. The congregation eyed the stranger "much as some wild beast," for "not many wise" were called to worship in their particular way, and the stranger was evidently not of their faith or cla.s.s. In came the flock: the fat woman with a wreck of an umbrella; the little old-faced, battered woman with the baby, wringing the ends of her poor shawl soaking with the rain; then a "female something" in dingy satins; next a tall, yellow man, like the Penitent Thief; and from him, as from all, the interloper got the same surprised glance. "What, you, Gallio, here!" it expressed. And so, after a shoemaker's lad, with a wet ap.r.o.n round his body and a bad cough inside it, had pa.s.sed in, the interloper followed and took his place, waiting for his portion of New Testament meat, like the rest of them. What with the hot smell of greasy coats and frowsy gowns, combined with the preacher's stupidity, the visitor soon had enough of it, and he "flung out of the little chapel" in disgust. As he pa.s.sed out he found there was a lull in the rain and wind.

The moon was up, and he walked on, glad to be in the open air, his mind full of the scene he had left. After all, why should he be hard on this case? In many modes the same thing was going on everywhere--the endeavour to make you believe--and with much about the same effect. He had his own church; Nature had early led him to its door; he had found G.o.d visibly present in the immensities, and with the power had recognised his love too as the n.o.bler dower. Quite true was it that G.o.d stood apart from man--apart, that he might have room to act and use his gifts of brain and heart. Man was not perfect, not a machine, not unaware of his fitness to pray and praise. He looked up to G.o.d, recognised how infinitely He surpa.s.sed man in power and wisdom, and was convinced He would never in His love bestow less than man requires. In this great way _he_ would seek to press towards G.o.d; let men seek Him in a narrow shrine if they would. And as he mused thus, suddenly the rain ceased and the moon shone out, the black clouds falling beneath her feet; a moon rainbow, vast and perfect, rose in its chorded colours. Then from out the world of men the worshipper of G.o.d in Nature was called, and at once and with terror he saw Him with His human air, the back of Him--no more. He had been present in the poor chapel--He, with His sweeping garment, vast and white, whose hem could just be recognised by the awed beholder, He who had promised to be where two or three should meet to pray--and He had been present as the friend of these poor folk! He was leaving him who had despised the friends of the Human-Divine. Then he clung to the salvation of His vesture, and told Him how he had thought it best He should be worshipped in spirit and becoming beauty; the uncouth worship he had just left was scarcely fitted for Him.

Then the Lord turned His whole face upon him, and he was caught up in the whirl of the vestment, and was up-borne through the darkness and the cold, and held awful converse with his G.o.d; and then he came to know who registers the cup of cold water given for His sake, and who disdains not to slake His Divine thirst for love at the poorest love ever offered--came to know it was for this he was permitted to cling to the vesture himself.

And so they crossed the world till they stopped at the miraculous dome of G.o.d, St. Peter's Church at Rome, with its colonnade like outstretched arms, as if desiring to embrace all mankind. The whole interior of the vast basilica is alive with worshippers this Christmas Eve. It is the midnight ma.s.s of the Feast of the Nativity under Rome's great dome. The incense rises in clouds; the organ holds its breath and grovels latent, as if hushed by the touch of G.o.d's finger. The silence is broken only by the shrill tinkling of a silver bell. Very man and Very G.o.d upon the altar lies, and Christ has entered, and the man whom He brought clinging to His garment's fold is left outside the door, for He must be within, where so much of love remains, though the man without is to wait till He return:

"He will not bid me enter too, But rather sit as I now do."

He muses as he remains in the night air, shut out from the glory and the worship within, and he desires to enter. He thinks he can see the error of the worshippers; but he is sure also that he can see the love, the power of the Crucified One, which swept away the poetry, rhetoric and art of old Rome and Greece, "till filthy saints rebuked the gust" which gave them the glimpse of a naked Aphrodite. Love shut the world's eyes, and love sufficed. Again he is caught up in the vesture's fold, and transferred this time to a lecture-hall in a university town in Germany, where a hawk-nosed, high-cheek-boned professor, with a hacking cough, is giving a Christmas Eve discourse on the Christ myth. He was just discussing the point whether there ever was a Christ or not, and the Saviour had entered here also; but He would not bid His companion enter "the exhausted air-bell of the critic." Where Papist with Dissenter struggles the air may become mephitic; but the German left no air to poison at all. He rejects Christ as known to Christians; yet he retains somewhat. Is it His intellect that we must reverence? But Christ taught nothing which other sages had not taught before, and who did not damage their claim by a.s.suming to be one with the Creator. Are we to worship Christ, then, for His goodness? But goodness is due from man to man, still more to G.o.d, and does not confer on its possessor the right to rule the race. Besides, the goodness of Christ was either self-gained or inspired by G.o.d. On neither ground could it substantiate His claim to put Himself above us. We praise Nature, not Harvey, for the circulation of the blood; so we look from the gift to the Giver--from man's dust to G.o.d's divinity. What is the point of stress in Christ's teaching? "Believe in goodness and truth, now understood for the first time"? or "Believe in Me, who lived and died, yet am Lord of Life"? And all the time Christ remains inside this lecture-room. Could it be that there was anything which a Christian could be in accord with there? The professor has pounded the pearl of price to dust and ashes, yet he does not bid his hearers sweep the dust away. No; he actually gives it back to his hearers, and bids them carefully treasure the precious remains, venerate the myth, adore the man as before! And so the listener resolved to value religion for itself, be very careless as to its sects, and thus cultivate a mild indifferentism; when, lo! the storm began afresh, and the black night caught him and whirled him up and flung him p.r.o.ne on the college-step. Christ was gone, and the vesture fast receding. It is borne in upon him then that there must be one best way of worship. This he will strive to find and make other men share, for man is linked with man, and no gain of his must remain unshared by the race. He caught at the vanishing robe, and, once more lapped in its fold, was seated in the little chapel again, as if he had never left it, never seen St. Peter's successor nor the professor's laboratory. The poor folk were all there as before--a disagreeable company, and the sermon had just reached its "tenthly and lastly." The English was ungrammatical; in a word, the water of life was being dispensed with a strong taint of the soil in a poor earthen vessel. This, he thinks, is his place; here, to his mind, is "Gospel simplicity"; he will criticise no more.

NOTES.--Sect. ii., "_a carer for none of it, a Gallio_": "And Gallio cared for none of these things" (Acts xviii. 17). "_A Saint John's candlestick_"

(see Rev. i. 20). "_Christmas Eve of 'Forty-nine_": Dissenters do not keep Christmas Eve, nor Christmas Day itself; they would not, therefore, have been found at chapel unless Christmas happened to fall on a Sunday. In 1849 Christmas Eve fell on a Monday. Sect. x., _the baldachin_: the canopy over the high altar of St. Peter's at Rome is supported by magnificent twisted brazen columns, from designs by Bernini. It is 95 feet in height, and weighs about 93 tons. The high altar stands immediately over the tomb of St. Peter. Sect. xiv., "_Gottingen, most likely_": a celebrated university of Germany, which has produced many eminent Biblical critics.

Neander and Ewald were natives of Gottingen. Sect. xvi.,--

"_When A got leave an Ox to be, No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G._"

The letter Aleph, in Hebrew, was suggested by an ox's head and horns.

Gimel, the Hebrew letter G, means camel. Sect. xviii., "_anapaests in comic-trimeter_": in prosody an _anapaest_ is a foot consisting of three syllables; the first two short, and the third long. A _trimeter_ is a division of verse consisting of three measures of two feet each. "_The halt and maimed 'Iketides'_": _The Suppliants_, an incomplete play of aeschylus, called "maimed" because we have only a portion of it extant.

Sect. xxii., _breccia_, a kind of marble.

=Christopher Smart.= (_Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day._ 1887.) [THE MAN.] (1722-1771.) It has only recently been discovered that Smart was anything more than a writer of second-rate eighteenth-century poetry. He was born at Shipbourne, in Kent, in 1722. He was a clever youth, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland sent him to Cambridge, and allowed him 40 a year till her death in 1742. He did well at college, and became a fellow of Pembroke, gaining the Seaton prize five times. When he came to London he mixed in the literary society adorned by Dr. Johnson, Garrick, Dr. James, and Dr. Burney--all of whom helped him in his constant difficulties. He married a daughter of Mr. Newbery, the publisher. He became a Bohemian man of letters, but the only work by which he will be remembered is the _Song to David_, the history of which is sufficiently remarkable. It was written while he was in confinement as a person of unsound mind, and was--it is said, though we know not if the fact be precisely as usually stated--written with a nail on the wall of the cell in which he was detained. The poem bears no evidence of the melancholy circ.u.mstances under which it was composed: it is powerful and healthy in every line, and is evidently the work of a sincerely religious mind. He was unfortunately a man of dissipated habits, and his insanity was probably largely due to intemperance. He died in 1771 from the effects of poverty and disease. His _Song to David_ was published in 1763, and is quite unlike any other production of the century. The poem in full consists of eighty-six verses, of which Mr. Palgrave, in the _Golden Treasury_, gives the following:--

"He sang of G.o.d--the mighty Source Of all things, the stupendous force On which all strength depends; From Whose right arm, beneath Whose eyes, All period, power, and enterprise Commences, reigns, and ends.

"The world,--the cl.u.s.tering spheres, He made, The glorious light, the soothing shade, Dale, champaign, grove, and hill: The mult.i.tudinous abyss.

Where Secrecy remains in bliss, And Wisdom hides her skill.

"Tell them, I AM, Jehovah said To Moses, while earth heard in dread, And, smitten to the heart, At once above, beneath, around, All Nature, without voice or sound, Replied, O LORD, THOU ART."

[THE POEM.] "How did this happen?" asks Mr. Browning. He imagined that he was exploring a large house, had gone through the decently-furnished rooms, which exhibited in their arrangement good taste without extravagance, till, on pushing open a door, he found himself in a chapel which was

"From floor to roof one evidence Of how far earth may rival heaven."

Prisoned glory in every niche, it glowed with colour and gleamed with carving: it was "Art's response to earth's despair." He leaves the chapel big with expectation of what might be in store for him in other rooms in the mansion, but there was nothing but the same dead level of indifferent work everywhere, just as in the rooms which he had pa.s.sed through on his way to the exquisite chapel: nothing anywhere but calm Common-Place.

Browning says this is a diagnosis of Smart's case: he was sound and sure at starting, then caught up in a fireball. Heaven let earth understand how heaven at need can operate; then the flame fell, and the untransfigured man resumed his wonted sobriety. But what Browning wants to know is, How was it this happened but once? Here was a poet who always could but never did but once! Once he saw Nature naked; once only Truth found vent in words from him. Once the veil was pulled back, then the world darkened into the repository of show and hide.

=Clara de Millefleurs.= (_Red Cotton Night-Cap Country._) The mistress of Miranda, the jeweller of Paris.

=Claret.= See "Nationality in Drinks" (_Dramatic Lyrics_).

=Cla.s.sification.= Mr. Nettleship's cla.s.sification of Browning is the best I know. It is no easy matter to table the poet's works: they do not readily accommodate themselves to cla.s.sification. Such poems as the great Art and Music works, the Dramas, Love, and Religious poems are to be found in this book under the respective subjects.

=Cleon.= (_Men and Women_, 1855.) The speculation of this poem may be compared with a picture in a magic lantern slowly dissolving into another view, and losing itself in that which is succeeding it. We have the latest utterances of the beautiful Greek thought, saddened as they were by the despairing note of the sense of hopelessness which marred the highest effort of man, and which was never so acutely felt as at the period when the Sun of Christianity was rising and about to fill the world with the Spirit of Eternal Hope. The old heathenism is dissolving away, the first faint outlines of the gospel glory are detected by the philosopher who has heard of the fame of Paul, and is not sure he is not the same as the Christ preached by some slaves whose doctrine "could be held by no sane man." The quotation with which the poem is headed is from Acts of the Apostles, chap. xvii. 28: "As certain also of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.'" The quotation is from the _Phaenomena_ of Aratus, a poet of _Tarsus_, in Cilicia, St. Paul's own city. There is also a very similar pa.s.sage in a hymn of the Stoic Cleanthes: "Zeus, thou crown of creation, Hail!--We are thy offspring." The persons of the poem are not historical, though the thought expressed is highly characteristic of that of the Greek philosophers of the time. As the old national creeds disappeared under the advancing tide of Roman conquest, and as philosophers calmly discussed the truth or falsity of their dying religions, an easy tolerance arose, all religions were permitted because "indifference had eaten the heart out of them." Four hundred years before our era Eastern philosophy, through the Greek conquests in Asia, had begun to influence European thinkers by its strange and subtle attempts to solve the mystery of existence. A spirit of inquiry, and a restless craving for some undefined faith which should take the place of that which was everywhere dying out, prepared the way for the progress of the simple, love-compelling religion of Christ, and made every one's heart more or less suitable soil for the good seed. Cleon is a poet from the isles of Greece who has received a letter from his royal patron and many costly gifts, which crowd his court and portico. He writes to thank his king for his munificence, and in his reply says it is true that he has written that epic on the hundred plates of gold; true that he composed the chant which the mariners will learn to sing as they haul their nets; true that the image of the sun-G.o.d on the lighthouse is his also; that the Pcile--the portico at Athens painted with battle pictures by Polygnotus the Thasian, has been adorned, too, with his own works. He knows the plastic anatomy of man and woman and their proportions, not observed before; he has moreover

"Written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again."

He has combined the moods for music, and invented one:--

"In brief, all arts are mine."

All this is known; it is not so marvellous either, because men's minds in these latter days are greater than those of olden time because more composite. Life, he finds reason to believe, is intended to be viewed eventually as a great whole, not a.n.a.lysed to parts, but each having reference to all: the true judge of man's life must see the whole, not merely one way of it at once; the artist who designed the chequered pavement did not superimpose the figures, putting the last design over the old and blotting it out,--he made a picture and used every stone, whatever its figure, in the composition of his work. So he conceives that perfect, separate forms which make the portions of mankind were created at first, afterwards these were combined, and so came progress. Mankind is a synthesis--a putting together of all the single men. Zeus had a plan in all, and our souls know this, and cry to him--

"To vindicate his purpose in our life."

As for himself he is not a poet like Homer, such a musician as Terpander, nor a sculptor like Phidias; point by point he fails to reach their height, but in sympathy he is the equal of them all. So much for the first part of the king's letter: it is all true which has been reported of him.

Next he addresses himself to the questions asked by the king: "has he not attained the very crown and proper end of life?" and having so abundantly succeeded, does he fear death as do lower men? Cleon replies that if his questioner could have been present on the earth before the advent of man, and seen all its tenantry, from worm to bird, he would have seen them perfect. Had Zeus asked him if he should do more for creatures than he had done, he would have replied, "Yes, make each grow conscious in himself"; he chooses then for man, his last premeditated work, that a quality may arise within his soul which may view itself and so be happy. "Let him learn how he lives." Cleon would, however, tell the king it would have been better had man made no step beyond the better beast. Man is the only creature in whom there is failure; it is called advance that man should climb to a height which overlooks lower forms of creation simply that he may perish there. Our vast capabilities for joy, our craving souls, our struggles, only serve to show us that man is inadequate to joy, as the soul sees joy. "Man can use but a man's joy while he sees G.o.d's." He agrees with the king in his profound discouragement: most progress is most failure. As to the next question which the letter asks: "Does he, the poet, artist, musician, fear death as common men? Will it not comfort him to know that his works will live, though he may perish?" Not at all, he protests--he, sleeping in his urn while men sing his songs and tell his praise! "It is so horrible." And so he sometimes imagines Zeus may intend for us some future state where the capability for joy is as unlimited as is our present desire for joy. But no: "Zeus has not yet revealed it. He would have done so were it possible!" Nothing can more faithfully portray the desolation of the soul "without G.o.d," the sense of loss in man, whose soul, emanating from the Divine, refuses to be satisfied with anything short of G.o.d Himself. Art, wealth, learning, honours, serve not to dissipate for a moment the infinite sadness of this soul "without G.o.d and without hope in the world." And, as he wrote, Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, had turned to the Pagan world with the Gospel which the Jews had rejected. To the very island in the Grecian sea whence arose this sad wail of despair the echo of the angel-song of Bethlehem had been borne, "Peace on earth, good-will towards men." Round the coasts of the aegean Sea, through Philippi, Troas, Mitylene, Chios, and Miletus, "the mere barbarian Jew Paulus" had sown the seeds of a faith which should grow up and shelter under its branches the weary truth-seekers who knew too well what was the utter hopelessness of "art for art's sake" for satisfying the infinite yearning of the human heart. In the crypt of the church of San Marziano at Syracuse is the primitive church of Sicily, constructed on the spot where St. Paul is said to have preached during his three days' sojourn on the island. Here is shown the rude stone altar where St. Paul broke the bread of life; and as we stand on this sacred spot and recall the past in this strange city of a hundred memorials of antiquity--the temples of the G.o.ds, the amphitheatre, the vast altar, the Greek theatre, the walls of Epipolae, the aqueducts, the forts, the harbour, the quarries, the Ear of Dionysius, the tombs, the streams and fountains famed in cla.s.sic story and sung by poets--all fade into insignificance before the hallowed spot whence issued the fertilising influences of the Gospel preached by this same Paulus to a few poor slaves. The time would come, and not so far distant either, when the doctrines of Christ and Paul would be rejected "by no sane man."

=Clive.= (_Dramatic Idyls_, Series II., 1880.) The poem deals with a well-known incident in the life of Lord Clive, who founded the empire of British India and created for it a pure and strong administration. Robert Clive was born in 1725 at Styche, near Market Drayton, Shropshire. The Clives formed one of the oldest families in the county. Young Clive was negligent of his books, and devoted to boyish adventures of the wildest sort. However, he managed to acquire a good education, though probably by means which schoolmasters considered irregular. He was a born leader, and held death as nothing in comparison with loss of honour. He often suffered, even in youth, from fits of depression, and twice attempted his own life. He went out to Madras as a "writer" in the East India Company's civil service. Always in some trouble or other with his companions, he one day fought the duel which forms the subject of Mr. Browning's poem. In 1746 he became disgusted with a civilian's life, and obtained an ensign's commission. At this time a crisis in Indian affairs opened up to a man of high courage, daring and administrative ability, like Clive, a brilliant path to fortune. Clive seized his opportunity, and won India for us. His bold attack upon the city of Arcot terminated in a complete victory for our arms; and in 1753, when he sailed to England for the recovery of his health, his services were suitably rewarded by the East India Company. He won the battle of Pla.s.sey in 1757. Notwithstanding his great services to his country, his conduct in India was severely criticised, and he was impeached in consequence, but was acquitted in 1773. He committed suicide in 1774, his mind having been unhinged by the charges brought against him after the great things he had done for an ungrateful country. He was addicted to the use of opium; this is referred to in the poem in the line "noticed how the furtive fingers went where a drug-box skulked behind the honest liquor." Lord Macaulay in his Essay on Clive, says he had a "restless and intrepid spirit. His personal courage, of which he had, while still a writer, given signal proof by a desperate duel with a military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David, speedily made him conspicuous even among hundreds of brave men." The duel took place under the following circ.u.mstances. He lost money at cards to an officer who was proved to have cheated. Other losers were so in terror of this cheating bully that they paid. Clive refused to pay, and was challenged. They went out with pistols; no seconds were employed, and Clive missed his opponent, who, coming close up to him, held his pistol to his head and told him he would spare his life if he were asked to do so. Clive complied. He was next required to retract his charge of cheating. This demand being refused, his antagonist threatened to fire. "Fire, and be d.a.m.ned!" replied Clive. "I said you cheated; I say so still, and will never pay you!" The officer was so amazed at his bravery that he threw away his pistol.

Chatting, with a friend, a week before he committed suicide, he tells the story of this duel as the one occasion when he felt fear, and that not of death, but lest his adversary should contemptuously permit him to keep his life. Under such circ.u.mstances he could have done nothing but use his weapon on himself. This part of the story is, of course, imaginary.

=Colombe of Ravenstein.= (_Colombe's Birthday._) d.u.c.h.ess of Juliers and Cleves. When in danger of losing her sovereignty by the operation of the Salic Law, she has an offer of marriage from Prince Berthold, who could have dispossessed her. Colombe loves Valence, an advocate, and he loves her. The prince does not even pretend that love has prompted his offer, and so Colombe sacrifices power at the shrine of love.

=Comparini, The.= (_The Ring and the Book._) Violatne and Pietro Comparini were the foster-parents of Pompilia, who, with her, were murdered by Count Guido Franceschini.

=Confessional, The.= (_Dramatic Romances_ in _Bells and Pomegranates_, 1845.) The scene is in Spain, in the time of the Inquisition. A girl has confessed to an aged priest some sinful conduct with her lover Bertram; as a penance, she has been desired to extract from him some secrets relating to matters of which he has been suspected. As a proof of his love, he tells the girl things which, if known, would imperil his life. The confidant, as requested, carries the story to the priest. She sees her lover no more till she beholds him under the executioner's hands on the scaffold. Pa.s.sionately denouncing Church and priests, she is herself at the mercy of the Inquisition, and the poem opens with her exclamations against the system which has killed her lover and ruined her life.

=Confessions.= (_Dramatis Personae_, 1864.) A man lies dying. A clergyman asks him if he has not found the world "a vale of tears"?--a suggestion which is indignantly repudiated. As the man looks at the row of medicine bottles ranged before him, he sees in his fancy the lane where lived the girl he loved, and where, in the June weather, she stood watching for him at that farther bottle labelled "Ether"--

"How sad and bad and mad it was!-- But then, how it was sweet!"

=Constance= (_In a Balcony_), a relative of the Queen in this dramatic fragment. She is loved by Norbert, and returns his love. The queen, however, loves the handsome young courtier herself, and her jealousy is the ruin of the young couple's happiness.

=Corregidor, The.= (_How it strikes a Contemporary._) In Spain the corregidor is the chief magistrate of a town; the name is derived from _corregir_, to correct--one who corrects. He is represented as going about the city, observing everything that takes place, and is consequently suspected as a spy in the employment of the Government. He is, in fact, but a harmless poet of very observant habits, and is exceedingly poor.

=Count Gismond.= AIX IN PROVENCE. Published in _Dramatic Lyrics_ under the t.i.tle "_France_," in 1842. An orphan maiden is to be queen of the tourney to-day. She lives at her uncle's home with her two girl cousins, each a queen by her beauty, not needing to be crowned. The maiden thought they loved her. They brought her to the canopy and complimented her as she took her place. The time came when she was to present the victor's crown. All eyes were bent upon her, when at that proud moment Count Gauthier thundered "Stay! Bring no crown! bring torches and a penance sheet; let her shun the chaste!" He accuses her of licentious behaviour with himself; and as the girl hears the horrible lie, paralysed at the baseness of the accusation, she never dreams that answer is possible to make. Then out strode Count Gismond. Never had she met him before, but in his face she saw G.o.d preparing to do battle with Satan. He strode to Gauthier, gave him the lie, and struck his mouth with his mailed hand: the lie was d.a.m.ned, truth upstanding in its place. They fought. Gismond flew at him, clove out the truth from his breast with his sword, then dragging him dying to the maiden's feet, said "Here die, but first say that thou hast lied." And the liar said, "To G.o.d and her I have lied," and gave up the ghost. Gismond knelt to the maiden and whispered in her ear; then rose, flung his arm over her head, and led her from the crowd. Soon they were married, and the happy bride cried:

"Christ G.o.d who savest man, save most Of men Count Gismond who saved me!"

=Count Guido Franceschini.= (_The Ring and the Book._) The wicked n.o.bleman of Arezzo who marries Pompilia for her dowry, and treats her so cruelly that she flies from his home to Rome, in company with Caponsacchi, who chivalrously and innocently devotes himself to her a.s.sistance. While they rest on the way they are overtaken by the Count, who eventually kills Pompilia and her foster-parents.

=Courts Of Love= (_Sordello_) "were judicial courts for deciding affairs of the heart, established in Provence during the palmy days of the Troubadours. The following is a case submitted to their judgment: A lady listened to one admirer, squeezed the hand of another, and touched with her toe the foot of a third. Query, Which of these three was the favoured suitor?" (_Dr. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable._) It was at a Court of Love at which Palma presided, that Sordello outdid Eglamour in song, and received the prize from the lady's hand. At these courts, Sismondi tells us, _tensons_ or _jeux partis_ were sung, which were dialogues between the speakers in which each interlocutor recited successively a stanza with the same rhymes. Sismondi introduces a translation of a _tenson_ between Sordello and Bertrand, adding that this "may, perhaps, give an idea of those poetical contests which were the great ornament of all festivals. When the haughty baron invited to his court the neighbouring lords and the knights his va.s.sals, three days were devoted to jousts and tourneys, the mimicry of war. The youthful gentlemen, who, under the name of pages, exercised themselves in the profession of arms, combated the first day; the second was set apart for the newly-dubbed knights; and the third, for the old warriors. The lady of the castle, surrounded by youthful beauties, distributed crowns to those who were declared by the judges of the combat to be the conquerors. She then, in her turn, opened her court, const.i.tuted in imitation of the seignorial tribunals, and as her baron collected his peers around him when he dispensed justice, so did she form her Court of Love, consisting of young, beautiful, and lively women. A new career was opened to those who dared the combat--not of arms, but of verse; and the name of _tenson_, which was given to these dramatic skirmishes, in fact signified a contest.

It frequently happened that the knights who had gained the prize of valour became candidates for the poetical honours. One of the two, with his harp upon his arm, after a prelude, proposed the subject of the dispute. The other then advancing, and singing to the same air, answered him in a stanza of the same measure, and very frequently having the same rhymes.

This extempore composition was usually comprised in five stanzas. The Court of Love then entered upon a grave deliberation, and discussed not only the claims of the two poets, but the merits of the question; and a judgment or _arret d'amour_ was given, frequently in verse, by which the dispute was supposed to be decided. At the present day we feel inclined to believe that these dialogues, though little resembling those of t.i.tyrus and Melibaeus, were yet, like those, the production of the poet sitting at ease in his closet. But, besides the historical evidence which we possess of the troubadours having been gifted with those improvisatorial talents which the Italians have preserved to the present time, many of the _tensons_ extant bear evident traces of the rivalry and animosity of the two interlocutors. The mutual respect with which the refinements of civilisation have taught us to regard one another, was at this time little known. There existed not the same delicacy upon questions of honour, and injury returned for injury was supposed to cancel all insults. We have a _tenson_ extant between the Marquis Albert Malespina and Rambaud de Vaqueiras, two of the most powerful lords and valiant captains at the commencement of the thirteenth century, in which they mutually accuse one another of having robbed on the highway and deceived their allies by false oaths. We must charitably suppose that the perplexities of versification and the heat of their poetical inspiration compelled them to overlook sarcasms which they could never have suffered to pa.s.s in plain prose. Many of the ladies who sat in the Courts of Love were able to reply to the verses which they inspired. A few of their compositions only remain, but they have always the advantage over those of the Troubadours. Poetry, at that time, aspired neither to creative energy nor to sublimity of thought, nor to variety. Those powerful conceptions of genius which, at a later period, have given birth to the drama and the epic, were yet unknown; and, in the expression of sentiment, a tenderer and more delicate inspiration naturally endowed the productions of these poetesses with a more lyrical character." (Sismondi, _Lit. Mod. Europe_, vol. i., pp. 106-7.)

=Cristina= (or =Christina=). _Dramatic Lyrics_ (_Bells and Pomegranates_ No. III.), 1842.--Maria Christina of Naples is the lady of the poem. She was born in 1806, and in 1829 became the fourth wife of Ferdinand VII., King of Spain. She became Regent of Spain on the death of her husband, in 1833. Her daughter was Queen Isabella II. She was the dissolute mother of a still more dissolute daughter. Lord Malmesbury's _Memoirs of an Ex-Minister_, 1884, vol. i., p. 30, have the following reference to the Christina of the poem: "Mr. Hill presented me at Court before I left Naples [in 1829].... The Queen [Maria Isabella, second wife of Francis I., King of the Two Sicilies] and the young and handsome Princess Christina, afterwards Queen of Spain, were present. The latter was said at the time to be the cause of more than one inflammable victim languishing in prison for having too openly admired this royal coquette, whose manners with men foretold her future life after her marriage to old Ferdinand [VII., King of Spain]. When she came up to me in the circle, walking behind her mother, she stopped, and took hold of one of the b.u.t.tons of my uniform--to see, as she said, the inscription upon it, the Queen indignantly calling to her to come on." The pa.s.sion of love, throughout Mr. Browning's works, is treated as the most sacred thing in the human soul. We are here for the chance of loving and of being loved; nothing on earth is dearer than this; to trifle with love is, in Browning's eyes, the sin against that Divine Emanation which sanctifies the heart of man. The man or woman who dissipates the capacity for love is the destroyer of his or her own soul; the flirt and the coquette are the losers,--the forsaken one has saved his own soul and gained the other's as well.

=Cristina and Monaldeschi.= (_Jocoseria_, 1883.)--I am indebted to the valuable paper which Mrs. Alexander Ireland contributed to the Browning Society on Feb. 27th, 1891, for the facts relating to the subject of this poem. Queen Cristina of Sweden was the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. She was born in 1626, and came to the throne on the death of her father, in 1632. She was highly educated and brilliantly accomplished. She was perfectly acquainted with Greek, Latin, French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish. In due time she had batches of royal suitors, but she refused to bind herself by the marriage tie; rather than marry, she decided to abdicate, choosing as her successor her cousin Charles Gustavus. The formal and unusual ceremony of abdication took place in the cathedral of Upsala, in June 1654. Proceeding to Rome, she renounced the Protestant religion, and publicly embraced that of the Catholic Church. The officers of her household were exclusively Italian. Among these was the Marquis Monaldeschi, nominated "Master of the Horse," described by Cristina in her own memoirs as "a gentleman of most handsome person and fine manners, who from the first moment reigned exclusively over my heart." Cristina abandoned herself to this man, who proved a traitor and a scoundrel. He took every advantage of his position as favourite, and having reaped honour and riches, Monaldeschi wearied of his royal mistress and sought new attractions. The closing scene of Queen Cristina's _liaison_ with the Grand Equerry inspired Mr. Browning's poem. He has chosen the moment when all the treachery of Monaldeschi has revealed itself to the Queen. The scene is at Fontainebleau, whither Cristina has removed from Rome; here the letters came into her hands which broke her life. A Cardinal Azzolino had obtained possession of a wretched and dangerous correspondence. The packet included the Queen's own letters to her lover--letters written in the fulness of perfect trust, telling much that the unhappy lady could have told to no other living being. Monaldeschi's letters to his young Roman beauty made a jest, a mockery of the Queen's exceeding fondness for him. They were letters of unsparing and wounding ridicule; and, while acting thus, Monaldeschi had steadily adhered to the show of unaltered attachment to the Queen and deep respect for his royal mistress.

Cristina's emotions on seeing the whole hateful, cowardly treachery laid bare were doubtless maddening. She arranged an interview with the Marquis in the picture gallery in the Palace of Fontainebleau. She was accompanied by an official of her Court, and had at hand a priest from the neighbouring convent of the Maturins, armed with copies of the letters which were to serve as the death-warrant of the Marquis. They had been placed by Cardinal Azzolino in Cristina's hands through the medium of her "Major-Domo," with the knowledge that the Cardinal had already seen their infamous contents. The _originals_ she had on her own person. Added to this, she had in the background her Captain of the Guard, Sentinelli, with two other officers. In the Galerie des Cerfs hung a picture of Francois I.

and Diane de Poictiers. To this picture the Queen now led the Marquis, pointing out the motto on the frame--"Quis separabit?" The Queen reminds her lover how they were vowed to each other. The Marquis had vowed, at a tomb in the park of Fontainebleau, that, as the grave kept a silence over the corpse beneath, so would his love and trust hold fast the secret of Cristina's love to all eternity. Now the woman's spirit was wounded to death. She was scorned, her pride outraged; but she was a queen, and the man a subject, and she felt she must a.s.sert her dignity at least once more. The Marquis doubtless tottered as he stood. "Kneel," she says. This was the final scene of the tragedy. Cristina now calls forth the priest and the a.s.sa.s.sins, having granted herself the bitter pleasure of such personal revenge as was possible for her, poor woman!

"Friends, my four! You, Priest, confess him!

I have judged the culprit there: my sentence! Care For no mail such cowards wear!

Done, Priest? Then, absolve and bless him!

Now--you three, stab thick and fast, Deep and deeper! Dead at last?"

In October 1657 Cristina already felt suspicious of Monaldeschi. Keenly watching his actions, she had found him guilty of a double perfidy, and had led him on to a conversation touching a similar unfaithfulness.

"What," the Queen had said, "does the man deserve who should so have betrayed a woman?" "Instant death," said Monaldeschi; "'twould be an act of justice." "It is well," said she; "I will remember your words." As to the right of the Queen to execute Monaldeschi, it must be remembered that, by a special clause in the Act of Abdication, she retained absolute and sovereign jurisdiction over her servants of all kinds. The only objection made by the French Court was, that she ought not to have permitted the murder to take place at Fontainebleau. After this crime Cristina was compelled to leave France, and finally retired to Rome, giving herself up to her artistic tastes, science, chemistry and idleness. She died on April 19th, 1689; her epitaph on her tomb in St. Peter's at Rome was chosen by herself--"Cristina lived sixty-three years."

NOTES.--"_Quis separabit?_" who shall separate? _King Francis_--Francois I. The gallery of this king is the most striking one in the palace.

_Diane_, the gallery of Diana, the G.o.ddess. _Primatice_ == Primaticcio, who designed some of the decorations of the _Galerie de Francois I._ _Salamander sign_: the emblem of Francis I., often repeated in the decorations. _Florentine Le Roux_ == Rossi, the Florentine artist.

_Fontainebleau_: its Chateau Royal is very famous. "_Juno strikes Ixion_,"