The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 13

"His story," says Longfellow, in his notes to Dante's _Inferno_, may be found in Sismondi's _Histoire des Republiques Italiennes_, chap. xix. He so outraged the religious sense of the people by his cruelties that a crusade was preached against him, and he died a prisoner in 1259, tearing the bandages from his wounds, and fierce and defiant to the last.

'Ezzelino was small of stature,' says Sismondi, 'but the whole aspect of his person, all his movements, indicated the soldier. His language was bitter, his countenance proud, and by a single look he made the boldest tremble. His soul, so greedy of all crimes, felt no attraction for sensual pleasures. Never had Ezzelino loved women; and this, perhaps, is the reason why in his punishments he was as pitiless against them as men. He was in his sixty-sixth year when he died; and his reign of blood had lasted thirty-four years.'"

=Eccelino IV.= was the elder of the two sons of Eccelino III., surnamed the Monk, who divided his little princ.i.p.ality between them in 1223, and died in 1235. In 1226, at the head of the Ghibellines, he got possession of Verona, and was appointed Podesta. He became one of the most faithful servants of the Emperor Frederick II. In 1236 he invited Frederick to enter Italy to his a.s.sistance, and in August met him at Trent. Eccelino was soon after besieged in Verona by the Guelfs, and the siege was raised by the Emperor. Vicenza was next stormed and the government given to Eccelino. In 1237 he marched against Padua, which capitulated, when he behaved towards the people with great cruelty. He then besieged Mantua, and mastered the Trevisa. In 1239 he was excommunicated by the Pope and deprived of his estates. He behaved with such terrible cruelty that the Emperor would have gladly been rid of him. Dante, in the _Divina Commedia_, Inferno xii., places Eccelino in the lake of blood in the seventh circle of h.e.l.l.

=Echetlos.= (_Dramatic Idyls_, Second Series: 1880.) A Greek legend (of which there are many) about the battle of Marathon, in which the Athenians and Plataeans, under Miltiades, defeated the Persians, 490 B.C. Wherever the Greeks were hardest pressed in the fight a figure driving a ploughshare was seen mowing down the enemy's ranks. After the battle was over the Greeks were anxious to learn who was the man in the clown's dress who had done them this great service. They demanded of the oracles his name. But the oracles declined to tell: "Call him Echetlos, the Ploughshare-wielder," they said. "Let his deed be his name:

"The great deed ne'er grows small."

NOTES.--"_Not so the great name--Woe for Miltiades, woe for Themistokles!_" After the victory of Marathon, Miltiades sullied his honour by employing the fleet in an attempt to wreak a private grudge on the island of Paros. He was sentenced to a heavy fine, which he was unable to pay, and died in debt and dishonour. Themistocles was accused of having entered into a traitorous communication with the Persians in his own interest. He was banished from Greece, and died at Magnesia.

=Elcorte= (_Sordello_, Book ii.) was a poor archer who perished in saving a child of Eccelin's. He was supposed to be Sordello's father, but the poet discovered that he was not.

=Eglamour.= (_Sordello._) The minstrel defeated by Sordello at the contest of song in the Court of Love. He was the chief troubadour of Count Richard of St. Bonifacio. He died of grief at his discomfiture in the art of song by Sordello. "He was a typical troubadour, who loved art for its own sake; thought more of his songs than of the things about which he sang, or of the soul whose pa.s.sion song should express" (Fotheringham, _Studies in Browning_, p. 116). Mrs. James L. Bagg, in a comparative study of Eglamour and Sordello, gives the following as the chief characteristics of this poet:--"He was a poet not without effort and often faltering; he exhibits the beautiful as the natural outburst of a heart full of a sense of beauty that possesses it. He loses himself in his song,--it absorbs his life; his art ends with his art, and is its own reward. He understands and loves nature; they are bound up together. He loves all beauty for its own sake, asking no reward. He craves nothing, takes no thought for the morrow. He lacks character, and is dreamy, inactive; and attempting little, fails in little. His life is barren of results as men reckon; he lives and loves, and sings and dies. His life is almost one unbroken strain of harmony--he is pleased to please and to serve. His nature is simple and easily understood; Eglamour is born and dies a creature of perceptions, never conscious that beyond these there lies a world of thought. His life goes out in tragic giving up of love, hope and heart."

=Elvire.= (_Fifine at the Fair._) The wife of Don Juan, who discusses with her husband the nature of conjugal love, after he has been fascinated by the gipsy girl at p.o.r.nic fair. She is the Donna Elvira of Moliere's _Don Juan_, and the part she plays in this poem of _Fifine_ is suggested by her speech in Act i., Scene 3:--

"Why don't you arm your brow With n.o.ble impudence?

Why don't you swear and vow No sort of change is come to any sentiment You ever had for me?"

=Englishman in Italy, The: Piano di Sorrento= (the Plain of Sorrento).

(_Dramatic Romances_, published in _Bells and Pomegranates_, VII.

1845.)--Sorrento, in the province of Naples, is situated on the north side of the peninsula that separates the Bay of Naples from the Bay of Salerno.

In the time of Augustus it was a finer city than Naples itself. The neighbourhood of this delightful summer resort is the realm of the olive tree, and its plain is clothed with orange and lemon groves. A deep blue sky above and a deep blue sea below, coast scenery unequalled for loveliness even in Italy, and an atmosphere breathing perfume and intoxicating the senses with the soft delights of a land of romance and gaiety, combine to make a residence in this earthly paradise almost too luxurious for a phlegmatic Englishman. It has a drawback in the form of the Scirocco--a hot, oppressive and most relaxing wind, crossing from North Africa over the Mediterranean, and the "long, hot, dry autumn"

referred to in the poem. The Englishman is seated by the side of a dark-complexioned tarantella-dancing girl, whom he is sheltering from the approaching storm, and who is timidly saying her rosary, and to whom he is describing the incidents of Italian life which have most interested him--the ripening grapes, the quails and the curious nets arranged to catch them, the pomegranates splitting with ripeness on the trees, the yellow rock-flower on the road side, all the landscape parched with the fierce Southern heat, which the sudden rain-storm was about to cool and moisten. The quail nets are rapidly taken down, for protection; on the flat roofs, where the split figs lie in sieves drying in the sun, the girls are busy putting them under cover; the blue sea has changed to black with the coming storm; the fishing boat from Amalfi--loveliest spot in all the lovely landscape--sends ash.o.r.e its harvest of the sea, to the delight of the naked brown children awaiting it. The grape harvest has begun, and in the great vats they are treading the grapes, dancing madly to keep the bunches under, while the rich juice runs from beneath; and still the laden girls pour basket after basket of fresh vine plunder into the vat, and still the red stream flows on. And under the hedges of aloe, where the tomatoes lie, the children are picking up the snails tempted out by the rain, which will be cooked and eaten for supper, when the grape gleaners will feast on great ropes of macaroni and slices of purple gourds. And as he dwells on all the Southern wealth of the land, he tempts the timid little maid with grape bunches, whose heavy blue bloom entices the wasps, which follow the spoil to the very lips of the eater; with cheese-b.a.l.l.s, white wine, and the red flesh of the p.r.i.c.kly pear. Now the Scirocco is loose--down come the olives like hail; fig trees snap under the power of the storm; they must keep under shelter till the tempest is over: and now he amuses the girl by telling her how in a few days they will have stripped all the vines of their leaves to feed the cattle, and the vineyards will look so bare. He rode over the mountains the previous night with her brother the guide, who feasted on the fruit-b.a.l.l.s of the myrtles and sorbs, and while he ate the mule plodded on, now and then neighing as he recognised his mates, laden with f.a.ggots and with barrels, on the paths below. Higher they ascended till the woods ceased; as they mounted the path grew wilder, the chasms and piles of loose stones showed but the growth of grey fume reed, the ever-dying rosemary, and the lentisks, till they reached the summit of Calvano; then he says--

"G.o.d's own profound Was above me, and round me the mountains, and under, the sea."

The crystal of heaven and its blue solitudes; the "infinite movement" of the mountains, which seem, as they overlook the sensual landscape, to enslave it--filled him with a grave and solemn fear. And now he turns to the sea, wherein slumber the three isles of the siren, looking as they did in the days of Ulysses; he will sail among them, and visit with his companion their strangely coloured caves, and hear the secret sung to Ulysses ages ago. The sun breaks out over Calvano, the storm has pa.s.sed; the gipsy tinker ventures out with his bellows and forge, and is hammering away there under the wall; the children watch him mischievously. He rouses his sleepy maiden, and bids her come with him to see the preparations at the church for the Feast of the Rosary; for the morrow is Rosary Sunday, and it was on that day the Catholic powers of Europe destroyed the Turkish fleet at the battle of Lepanto, and in every Catholic church the victory is annually commemorated by devotions to Our Lady of the Rosary, whose prayers, they say, won the contest for the Christian arms. The Dominican brother is to preach the sermon, and all the gay banners and decorations are being put up in the church. The altar will be ablaze with lights, the music is to be supplemented by a band, and the statue of the Virgin is to be borne in solemn procession through the plain. Bonfires, fireworks, and much trumpet-blowing will wind up the day; and the Englishman antic.i.p.ates as great pleasure from the festival as any child, and more--for, "Such trifles!" says the girl. "Trifles!" he replies; "why, in England they are gravely debating if it be righteous to abolish the Corn Laws!"

=Epilogue to "Asolando"= (1889). The words of this poem have a peculiar significance: they are the last which the poet addressed to the world, and the volume in which they appeared was published in London on the very day on which he died in Venice. Had he known when he wrote them that these were the last lines of his message to the world--that he who had for so many years urged men to "strive and thrive--fight on!" would pa.s.s away as they were given to the world, would he have wished to close his life's work with braver, better, n.o.bler words than these? All Browning is here.

From _Pauline_ to this epilogue the message was ever the same, and the confidence in the ultimate and eternal triumph of right uniform throughout. In the _Pall Mall Gazette_ of February 1st, 1890, there appeared the following reference to this poem: "One evening, just before his death illness, the poet was reading this (the third verse) from a proof to his daughter-in-law and sister. He said, 'It almost looks like bragging to say this, and as if I ought to cancel it; but it's the simple truth; and as it's true, it shall stand.' His faith knew no doubting. In all trouble, against all evil, he stood firm."

=Epilogue to "Dramatic Idyls"= (Second Series). This poem combats the notion that a quick-receptive soil, on which no feather seed can fall without awakening vitalising virtue, is the hot-bed for a poet; rather must we hold that the real song-soil is the rock, hard and bare, exposed to sun and wind-storm, there in the clefts where few flowers awaken grows the pine tree--a nation's heritage. (Compare on this Emerson's _Woodnotes_ II.)

=Epilogue to "Dramatis Personae."=--FIRST SPEAKER, as _David_. At the Feast of the Dedication of Solomon's Temple, when Priests and Levites in sacrificial robes attended with the mult.i.tude praising the Lord as a single man; when singers and trumpets sound and say, "Rejoice in G.o.d, whose mercy endureth for ever," then the presence of the Lord filled the house with the glory of His cloud. This is the highest point reached by the purest Theism of the Hebrew people.

SECOND SPEAKER, as _Renan_. A star had beamed from heaven's vault upon our world, then sharpened to a point in the dark, and died. We had loved and worshipped, and slowly we discovered it was vanishing from us. A face had looked from out the centuries upon our souls, had seemed to look upon and love us. We vainly searched the darkling sky for the dwindling star, faded from us now and gone from keenest sight. And so the face--the Christ-face--we had seen in the old records, the Gospels which had seemed to dower us with the Divine-human Friend, and which warmed our souls with love, has faded out, and we search the records and sadly fail to find the face at all, and our hope is vanished and the Friend is gone. The record searchers tell us we shall never more know ourselves are seen, never more speak and know that we are heard, never more hear response to our aspirations and our love. The searcher finds no G.o.d but himself, none higher than his own nature, no love but the reflection of his own, and realises that he is an orphan, and turning to his brethren cries, with Jean Paul, "There is no G.o.d! We are all orphans!"

THIRD SPEAKER is Mr. Browning himself, who offers us consolation in our bereavement; he asks us to see through his eyes. In head and heart every man differs utterly from his fellows; he asks how and why this difference arises; he bids us watch how even the heart of mankind may have some mysterious power of attracting Nature's influences round himself as a centre. In Arctic seas the water gathers round some rock-point as though the waste of waves sought this centre alone; for a minute this rock-point is king of this whirlpool current, then the waves oversweep and destroy it, hastening off to choose another peak to find, and flatter, and finish in the same way. Thus does Nature dance about each man of us, acting as if she meant to enhance his worth; then, when her display of simulated homage is done with, rolls elsewhere for the same performance. Nature leaves him when she has gained from him his product, his contribution to the active life of the time. The time forces have utilised the man as their pivot, he has served for the axis round which have whirled the energies which Nature employed at the moment. His quota has been contributed; he has not been a force, but the central point of the forces' revolution; as the play of waves demanded for their activity the rock-centre, so the mind forces required for their gyrations the pa.s.sive man-centre; the rock stood still in the dance of the waves, but their dance could not have existed without its mysterious influence on their motion. The man was necessary to the mind-waves; the play of forces could not have been secured without just that soul-point standing idly as the centre of the dance of influences.

The waves, having obtained the whirl they demanded, submerge the rock--the mind forces having gained such direction, such quality of rotation, dispense with the man; the force lives, however, and his contribution to its direction is not lost, hot husbanded. Now, there is no longer any use for the old Temple service of David, neither is the particular aspect of the Christ-face required as at first beheld. The face itself does not vanish, or but decomposes to recompose. The face grows; the Christ of to-day is a greater conception than that which Renan thinks he has decomposed. It is not the Christ of an idea that sufficed for old-world conception, but one which expands with the age and grows with the sentient universe.

=Epilogue to "Ferishtah's Fancies"= (VENICE, _December 1st, 1884_). This poem brings into a focus the rays of the fancies which compose the volume: the famous ones of old, the heroes whose deeds are celebrated in the different poems, were not actors merely, but soldiers, and fought G.o.d's battle; they were not cowards, because they had confidence in the supremacy of good, and fighting for the right knew they could leave results to the Leader. But a chill at the heart even in its supremest joy induces the question: What if all be error?--if love itself were responsible for a fallacy of vision?

=Epilogue to "Pacchiaratto and other Poems"= (1876). In this poem the author deals with his critics. "The poets pour us wine," and as they pour we demand the impracticable feat of producing for us wine that shall be sweet, yet strong and pure. One poet gives the world his potent man's draught; it is admitted to be strong and invigorating, yet is swallowed at a gulp, as evidently unpleasant to the taste. Another dispenses luscious sweetness, fragrant as a flower distillation; and men say contemptuously it is only fit for boys--is useless for nerving men to work. Now, it is easy to label a bottle as possessing body and bouquet both, but labels are not always absolute guarantees of that which they cover. Still there is wine to be had, by judicious blending, which combines these qualities of body and bouquet. How do we value such vintage when we do possess it? Go down to the vaults where stand the vats of Shakespeare and Milton wine: there in the cellar are forty barrels with Shakespeare's brand--some five or six of his works are duly appreciated, the rest neglected; there are four big b.u.t.ts of Milton's brew, and out of them we take a few drops, pretending that we highly esteem him the while! The fact is we hate our bard, or we should not leave him in the cellar. The critics say Browning brews stiff drink without any flavour of grape: would the public take more kindly to his wine if he gave it all the cowslip fragrance and bouquet of his meadow and hill side? The treatment received by Shakespeare and Milton proves that the public taste is vitiated, notwithstanding all the pretence of admiration of them. It is our furred tongue that is at fault; it is nettle-broth the world requires. Browning has some Thirty-four Port for those who can appreciate it; as for the mult.i.tude, let them stick to their nettle-broth till their taste improves.

NOTES.--Verse i., "_The Poets pour in wine_": the quotation is from Mrs.

Browning's "Wine of Cyprus." V. 20, "_Let them 'lay, pray, bray'_": this in ridicule of Byron's grammar in verse clx.x.x. of Canto IV. of _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_:--"And dashest him again to earth;--there let him lay."

=Epilogue to the "Two Poets of Croisic"= (1878). (Published in the _Selections_, vol. ii., as A TALE). A bard had to sing for a prize before the judges, and to accompany his song on the lute. His listeners were so pleased with his melody that it seemed as though they would hasten to bestow the award even before the end of the song; when, just as the poet was at the climax of his trial, a string broke, and all would have been lost, had not a cricket "with its little heart on fire" alighted on the instrument, and flung its heart forth, sounding the missing note; and there the insect rested, ever at the right instant shrilling forth its F-sharp even more perfectly than the string could have done. The judges with one consent said, "Take the prize--we took your lyre for harp!" Did the conqueror despise the little creature who had helped him with all he had to offer? No: he had a statue of himself made in marble, life-size; on the lyre was "perched his partner in the prize." The author of the volume of poems of which this story forms the epilogue, says that he tells it to acknowledge the love which played the cricket's part, and gave the missing music; a girl's love coming aptly in when his singing became gruff. Love is ever waiting to supply the missing notes in the arrested harmony of our lives.

NOTES.--"_Music's Son_": Goethe. "_Lotte_," of the _Sorrows of Werther_, was Charlotte Buff, who married Kestner, Goethe's friend, the Albert of the novel. Goethe was in love with Charlotte Buff, and her marriage with Kestner roused the temper of his over-sensitive mind. (See _Dr. Brewer's Reader's Handbook_.)

=Epistle, An, Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician.= (_Men and Women_, vol. i., 1855.) [The subject of the poem is the raising of Lazarus from the dead.] Karshish, a wandering scholar-physician, writing to the sage Abib, from whom he has learned his art, gives him an account of certain matters of medical interest which he has discovered in the course of his travels, and which, like a good student, he communicates to his venerable teacher. After informing him that he has sent him some samples of rare pharmaceutical substances, he says that his journeyings brought him to Jericho, on the dangerous road from which city to Jerusalem he had met with sundry misadventures, and noted several cases of clinical interest, all of which he reports in the matter-of-fact way which betokens the scientific pract.i.tioner of the period. Amongst his plague, ague, epileptic, scalp-disease, and leprosy cures, he particularly describes "a case of mania subinduced by epilepsy,"

which especially interested him. The disorder seemed to him of quite easy diagnosis: "Tis but a case of mania," complicated by trance and epilepsy, but well within his powers as a physician to account for, except in the after circ.u.mstances and the means of cure. "Some spell, exorcisation or trick of art" had evidently been employed by a Nazarene physician of his tribe, who bade him, when he seemed dead, "Rise!" and he did rise. He was "one Lazarus, a Jew"--of good habit of body, and indeed quite beyond ordinary men in point of health; and his three days' sleep had so brightened his body and soul that it would be a great thing if the medical art could always ensure such a result from the use of any drug. He has undergone such change of mental vision that he eyes the world now like a child, and puts all his old joys in the dust. He has lost his sense of the proportion of things: a great armament or a mule load of gourds are all the same to him, while some trifle will appear of infinite import; yet he is stupefied because his fellow-men do not view things with his opened eyes. He is so perplexed with impulses that his heart and brain seem occupied with another world while his feet stay here. He desires only perfectly to please G.o.d; he is entirely apathetic when told that Rome is on the march to destroy his town and tribe, yet he loves all things old and young, strong and weak, the flowers and birds, and is harmless as a lamb: only at ignorance and sin he is impatient, but promptly curbs himself. The physician would have sought out the Nazarene who worked the cure, and would have held a consultation with him on the case, but discovered that he perished in a tumult many years ago, accused of wizardry, rebellion, and of holding a prodigious creed. Lazarus--it is well, says the physician, to keep nothing back in writing to a brother in the craft--regards the curer as G.o.d the Creator and sustainer of the world, that dwelt in flesh amongst us for a while; but why write of trivial matters? He has more important things to tell.

"I noticed on the margin of a pool, Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!"

He begs the sage's pardon for troubling him with this man's tedious case, but it has touched him with awe, it may be partly the effect of his weariness. But he cannot close his letter without returning to the tremendous suggestion once more. "Think, Abib! The very G.o.d!"--

"So the All-Great, were the All-Loving too,-- It is strange."

Professor Corson says this poem "is one of Browning's most remarkable psychological studies. It may be said to polarise the idea, so often presented in his poetry, that doubt is a condition of the vitality of faith. It is a subtle representation of a soul conceived with absolute spiritual standards, while obliged to live in a world where all standards are relative and determined by the circ.u.mstances and limitations of its situation." Lazarus has seen things as they are. "This show of things," so far as he is concerned, is done with. He now leads the _actual_ life; his wonder and his sorrow are drawn from the reflection that his fellow-men remain in the region of phantasm. He lives really in the world to come.

How infinitely little he found the things of time and sense in the presence of the eternal verities is grandly shown in the poem. The att.i.tude of Lazarus under his altered conditions affords an answer to those who demand that an All-Wise Being should not leave men to struggle in a region of phenomena but exhibit the actual to us in the present life.

Under such conditions our probation would be impossible. As Browning shows in _La Saisiaz_, a condition of certainty would destroy the school-time value of life; the highest truths are insusceptible of scientific demonstration. Lazarus is the hero of the poem, not Karshish. As the Bishop of Durham says in his paper "On Browning's View of Life," Lazarus "is not a man, but a sign: he stands among men as a patient witness of the overwhelming reality of the divine--a witness whose authority is confessed, even against his inclination, by the student of nature, who turns again and again to the phenomena which he affects to disparage. In this crucial example Browning shows how the exclusive dominance of the spirit destroys the fulness of human life, its uses and powers, while it leaves a pa.s.sive life, crowned with an unearthly beauty." The professional att.i.tude of Karshish is drawn with marvellous fidelity. A paper in the _Lancet_ on such a "case" would be precisely on the same lines to-day, though the wandering off into side details would not be quite so obvious, and there would be an entire absence of any trifling with the idea that "the All-Great were the All-Loving too." This is "emotional," and modern science has nothing but contempt for that.

NOTES.--_Snake-stone_, a name applied to any substance used as a remedy for snake-bites. Professor Faraday once a.n.a.lysed several which had been used for this purpose in Ceylon. One turned out to be a piece of animal charcoal, another was chalk, and a third a vegetable substance like a bezoar. The animal charcoal might possibly have been useful if applied immediately. The others were valueless for the purpose. (Tennant, _Ceylon_, third ed., i., 200.) "_A spider that weaves no web._" Dr. H.

McCook, a specialist in spider lore, has explained this pa.s.sage in _Poet-Lore_, vol. i., p. 518. He says the spider referred to belongs to the Wandering group: they stalk their prey in the open field, or in divers lurking places, and are quite different in their habits from the web-spinners. The spider sprinkled with mottles he thinks is the Zebra spider (_Epiblemum scenic.u.m_). It belongs to the Saltigrade tribe. The use of spiders in medicine is very ancient. Pliny describes many diseases for which they were used. Spiders were boiled in water and distilled for wounds by Sir Walter Raleigh. _Greek-fire_ was the precursor of gunpowder; it was the _oleum incendiarum_ of the Romans. Probably petroleum, tar, sulphur, and nitre were its chief ingredients. _Blue flowering borage_ (_Borago officinalis_). The ancients deemed this plant one of the four "cordial flowers" for cheering the spirits, the others being the rose, violet, and alkanet. Pliny says it produces very exhilarating effects. The stem contains nitre, and the whole plant readily gives its flavour even to cold water. (See Anne Pratt's _Flowering Plants_, vol. iv., p. 75.)

=Este.= (_Sordello._) A town of Lombardy, in the delegation of Padua, situated at the southern extremity of the Euganean hills. The Rocca or castle is a donjon tower occupying the site of the original fortress of Este.

=Este, The House of.= (_Sordello._) One of the oldest princely houses of Italy, called Este after the name of the town above mentioned. Albert Azzo II. first bore the t.i.tle of Marquis of Este; he married a sister of Guelph III., who was duke of Carinthia. The Italian t.i.tle and estates were inherited by Fulco I. (1060-1135), son of Albert Azzo II. In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries the history of the house of Este is mixed up with that of the other n.o.ble houses of Italy in the struggles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. The Estena were the head of the Guelph party, and at different times were princes of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. "Obizzo I., son of Folco I., entered into a league against Frederick Barbarossa, and was comprehended in the Venetian treaty of 1177, by which munic.i.p.al podestas (chief magistrates of great cities) were inst.i.tuted" (_Encyc.

Brit._). Strife existed between this house and that of the Torelli, which raged for two centuries, in consequence of Obizzo I. carrying off Marchesella, heiress of the Adelardi family, of Ferrara, and marrying her to his son Azzo V.

=Eulalia.= (_A Soul's Tragedy._) The shrewd woman who was betrothed to Luitolfo.

=Euripides.= The Greek tragic poet, who was born of Athenian parents in 480 B.C. He brought out his first play--_The Peliades_--at the age of twenty-five. At thirty-nine he gained the first prize, which honour he received only five times in his long career of fifty years. He was the mediator between the ancient and modern drama, and was regarded at Athens as an innovator. Aristophanes was an exceedingly hostile and witty critic of Euripides, and from his point of view his conduct was justified, taking as he did the standard of aeschylus and Sophocles as the only right model of tragedy. He is variously said to have written seventy-five, seventy-eight and ninety-two tragedies. Eighteen only have come down to us: _The Alcestis_, _Andromache_, _Bacchae_, _Hecuba_, _Helena_, _Electra_, _Heraclidae_, _Heracles in Madness_, _The Suppliants_, _Hippolytus_, _Iphigenia at Aulis_, _Iphigenia among the Tauri_, _Ion_, _Medea_, _Orestes_, _Rhesus_, the _Troades_, the _Phnissae_, and a satiric play, the _Cyclops_. "Aristophanes calls Euripides 'meteoric,' because he was always rising into the air; he was famous for allusions to the stars, the sea and the elements. Aristophanes uses the epithet sneeringly: Browning, praisingly" (_Br. P._ iii. 43).

=Eurydice to Orpheus. A Picture by Leighton.= (Published for the first time in the Royal Academy Catalogue, 1864. It was reprinted in the first volume of the _Selections_ in 1865.) Orpheus was a famous mythical poet, who was so powerful in song that he could move trees and rocks and tame wild beasts by the charms of his voice. His wife (the nymph Eurydice) died from the bite of a serpent, and Orpheus descended to the lower regions in search of her. He so influenced Persephone by his music that she gave him permission to take back his wife on the condition that he should not look round during his pa.s.sage from the nether world to the regions above. In his impatience he disregarded the condition, and having turned his head to gaze back, Eurydice had to return for ever to Hades (Vergil, _Geor._ iv., v. 457, etc.). The poet has represented Eurydice speaking to Orpheus the pa.s.sionate words of love which made him forget the commands of Pluto and Persephone not to look back on pain of losing his wife again.

=Euthukles.= (_Balaustion's Adventure_; _Aristophanes' Apology._) He was the man of Phokis who heard Balaustion recite _Alcestis_ at Syracuse, and who followed her when she returned to Athens, and married her. On their voyage to Rhodes, after the fall of Athens, Balaustion dictated to him the _Apology_ of Aristophanes, which he wrote down on board the vessel. It was Euthukles, according to Browning, who saved Athens from destruction by reciting at a critical moment the lines from Euripides' _Electra_ and _Agamemnon_.

=Evelyn Hope.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Lyrics_, 1863; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) The lament of a man who loved a young girl who died before she was old enough to appreciate his love. The maiden was sixteen, the man "thrice as old." He contemplates her as she lies in the beauty of death, and asks: "Is it too late then? Because you were so young and I so old, were we fellow-mortals and nought beside? Not so: G.o.d creates the love to reward the love," and he will claim her not in the next life alone, but, if need be, through lives and worlds many yet to come. His love will not be lost, for his gains of the ages and the climes will not satisfy him without his Evelyn Hope. He can wait. He will be more worthy of her in the worlds to come. Modern science has taught us that no atom of matter can ever be lost to the world, no infinitesimal measure of energy but is conserved, and the poet holds that there shall never be one lost good. The eternal atoms, the vibrations that cease not through the eternal years, shall not mock at the evanescence of human love.

=Face, A.= (_Dramatis Personae_, 1864.) A portrait of a beautiful girl painted in words by a poet who had all the sympathies of an artist.

=Family, The.= (_Ferishtah's Fancies_, 4: "On the Lawfulness of Prayer.") Ferishtah has prayed for a dying man that he might recover. An objector asks why he does this: if G.o.d is all-wise and good, what He does must be right: "Two best wills cannot be." Man has only to acquiesce and be thankful. The dervish tells a tale. A man had three sons, and a wife who was bitten by a serpent. The husband called in a doctor, who said he must amputate the injured part. The husband a.s.sented. The eldest son said, "Pause, take a gentler way." The next in age said, "The doctor must and should save the limb." The youngest said, "The doctor knows best: let him operate!" He agreed with the doctor. Let G.o.d be the doctor; let us call the husband's acquiescence wise understanding, call the first son's opinion a wise humanity. In the second son we see rash but kind humanity; in the youngest one who apes wisdom above his years. "Let us be man and nothing more," says Ferishtah.--man hoping, fearing, loving and bidding G.o.d help him till he dies. The lyric bids us while on earth be content to be men. The wider sense of the angel cannot be expected while we remain under human conditions.

=Fancy and Reason=, in _La Saisiaz_, discuss the _pros_ and _cons_ of the probabilities of the existence of G.o.d, the soul, and future life, etc.

=Fears and Scruples.= (_Pacchiarotto and Other Poems_, 1876: "The Spiritual Uses of Uncertainty.") "Why does G.o.d never speak?" asks the doubter. The a.n.a.logy of the poem compares this silence of the Divine Being with that of a man's friend, who wrote him many valued letters, but otherwise kept aloof from him. It is suggested by experts that the letters are forgeries. The man loves on. It is then suggested that his friend is acting as a spy upon him, sees him readily enough and knows all he does, and some day will show himself to punish him. But this is to make the friend a monster! Hush!--"What if this friend happen to be--G.o.d?" In explanation of this poem, Mr. Kingsland received from the poet the following letter:--"I think that the point I wanted to ill.u.s.trate in the poem you mention was this: Where there is a genuine love of the 'letters'

and 'actions' of the invisible 'friend,' however these may be disadvantaged by an inability to meet the objections to their authenticity or historical value urged by 'experts' who a.s.sume the privilege of learning over ignorance, it would indeed be a wrong to the wisdom and goodness of the 'friend' if he were supposed capable of overlooking the actual 'love' and only considering the 'ignorance' which, failing to in any degree affect 'love,' is really the highest evidence that 'love'

exists. So I _meant_, whether the result be clear or no."

=Ferishtah's Fancies.= A criticism of Life: Browning's mellow wisdom.

Published in 1884, with the following quotations as mottoes on the page facing the t.i.tle:--