The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 15

"The dear Fleshly perfection of the human shape,"

as a gospel for mankind. When Mr. Browning writes on art we have, as Mr.

Symons expresses it, "painting refined into song." The lines in the seventh canto beginning--

"Bounteous G.o.d, Deviser and dispenser of all gifts To soul through sense,--in art the soul uplifts Man's best of thanks!"

aptly define the poet's position in the pa.s.sionate defence of the nude as his art-gospel. As we are intended to admire G.o.d's handiwork in the "naked star," so is "the naked female form" declared to be--

"G.o.d's best of bounteous and magnificent, Revealed to earth."

Should any object that "the naked female form," however beautiful, is not perhaps the best thing to display in the shop windows of the Rue de Rivoli or Regent Street, he is set down as "a grubber for pig-nuts," like Filippo Baldinucci, who praises the painter-priest for ordering his pictures of the nude to be destroyed. Mr. Browning deals very severely with those who think that pictures of the nude have a deleterious influence on the public character, and who endeavour to prevent their exhibition. It is instructive, however, to notice the fact that the Paris police are adopting even severer measures than our own against shopkeepers and others who exhibit pictures of the nude. Where the governing bodies of the two greatest cities of the world take the same view of this serious moral question, we must take leave to hold that if "the gospel of art" has no better means whereby to elevate the race than those of familiarising our youth of both s.e.xes with--

"The dear Fleshly perfection of the human shape,"

we can very well afford to dispense with it "Omnia non omnibus," concludes the poet. What is perfectly innocent for the artist is not expedient for the general public, just as the dissecting room, though an excellent school for doctors, is not a suitable place for the people in the street below.

NOTES.--_Baldinucci_, author of the Italian _History of Art_,--he was a friend of Furini, and it is from his biography that Browning has derived the facts recorded in his poem. _Quicherat, J._, edited the _Proces de cond.a.m.nation et de rehabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc_, in five vols., 1841-9. _D'Alencon--Percival de Cagny_, a retainer of the Duke D'Alencon, who wrote an account of Joan of Arc, which is to be found in the fourth volume of Quicherat.

=Fuseli.= See MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT AND FUSELI.

=Fust and his Friends.= (The Epilogue _to Parleyings_.) The scene is laid "_Inside the home of Fust, Mayence, 1457_." Johann Fust is often considered the inventor, or at least one of the inventors of printing. He was born at Mayence, in Germany, in the early part of the fifteenth century (date uncertain). The name ultimately became Faust. It has been said that Fust was a goldsmith, but there is no evidence of this. He was a money-lender or speculator, and was connected with Gutenberg, who is now considered to have been the real inventor of printing. Some however, say that Fust invented typography, and was the partner of Gutenberg, to whom he advanced the means to carry out his invention. On Fust first showing his printed books he was suspected of magic, as he appears to have concealed the method by which he turned them out. There is no proof that the monks were hostile to printing, or that they resented the new process of multiplying books on the ground of interference with their business as copyists. Fust and Gutenberg were on good terms with several monasteries, and the early printers often set up their presses in religious houses of various orders. It is exceedingly probable that the whole magic story arose from the similarity between the names Fust and Faust, the pupil of the devil. Browning in this poem accepts the Fust story of the invention of printing. Fust is visited by some monks, who, having heard confused accounts of his work, have come to the conclusion that he has made a compact with Satan, and is in danger of losing his soul; they prepare to exorcise the demon, but cannot remember the proper formula, and make amusing mistakes in their repeated attempts to capture the appropriate Latin terms of the exorcism. They find the inventor melancholy and depressed: he has not succeeded in perfecting his machinery; but while they argue with him the right process suddenly dawns upon him, and invoking the aid of Archimedes (thought by the monks to be a devil of some sort), he runs to his printing room, and in five minutes returns with the psalm which they could not remember accurately printed on slips of paper, one of which he hands to each of the friars. Fust then shows them the printing press, and explains the use of the types and blocks, bursting out into a n.o.ble hymn of praise to G.o.d for having enabled him to bless mankind with his invention. The monks find it exceedingly simple, and perceive there is no miracle at all. They doubt whether the invention will prove an unmixed blessing for the Church, and dread the trash which will come flying from Jew, Moor and Turk. Huss declared in dying that a swan would succeed the goose they were burning. Fust says he foresees such a man. (_Huss_ means goose in the dialect he spoke. The swan of whom he prophesied was Luther.)

NOTES.--_Faust_ and _Fust_: these names were often confounded, when people thought printing a diabolical art. _Palinodes_, songs repeated a second time. "_Barnabites and Dominican experts_": The Barnabites as a religious order were inferior in learning and theological attainments to the Dominicans, who were experts in matters of heresy. _Famulus_, a servant, an attendant. "_Ne pulvis et ignis_": Latin words misquoted from some monastic exorcism which the monks have half forgotten. "_Asmodeus inside of a Hussite_," the devil animating the heretic Hussite or follower of Huss. _"Pou sto," point d'appui_: Archimedes said, "Give me _pou sto_ ('a place to stand on'), and I could move the world."

=Future State, A.= Mr. Browning's belief in the doctrine of a future state of reward and punishment is expressed at great length and with much force in _La Saisiaz_.

=Garden Fancies.= (Published in _Hoods Magazine_, July 1844.) I. _The Flower's Name._ The poem describes a garden wherein to a lover's fancy every shrub and flower is hallowed by the looks and touch of the woman he loves. One flower in particular she named by its "soft meandering Spanish name." He bids the buds she touched to stay as they are, never to open, but to be loved for ever. Even the roses are not so fair after all, compared with the "shut pink mouth" her fingers have touched. In II., _Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis_, we have a garden without romance. A student takes amongst the flowers a pedantic old volume, a treatise as dry and crabbed as its t.i.tle. He read it; then, for his revenge, threw the book into the crevice of a plum tree, amongst the fungi, the moss, and creeping things. Solacing himself with bread and cheese and wine, he read the jolly Rabelais to rid his brain of cobwebs. In process of time the student came to think he had been too severe with the old author, so be fished him up with a rake and put him in an appropriate place on the library shelves, there to dry-rot at ease.

=Galuppi, Balda.s.sarre.= A musical composer (1706-85). See TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S, A.

=George Bubb Dodington, Parleyings with.= (_Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day_, 1887.) [THE MAN.] "George Bubb Dodington (born 1691, died 1726) was the son of a gentleman of good fortune named Bubb. He was educated at Oxford, elected member of Parliament for Winchelsea in 1715, and soon after sent as envoy to Madrid. In 1720 he inherited the estate of Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, and took the name of Dodington. On his entrance into public life he connected himself with Sir Robert Walpole, to whom he addressed a poetic epistle, which later on he made, by changing the name, to serve for Lord Bute. His career was full of political vicissitudes of the most discreditable kind, by which he managed to obtain a considerable share of the prizes of politics. He held various offices, chiefly in connection with the navy, to which he was more than once treasurer. It was from Lord Bute, with whom he was a great favourite, that he received the t.i.tle of Lord Melcombe. He loved to surround himself with the distinguished men of the day, whom he entertained at his country seat; and his interesting diary is a storehouse of information about the political intrigues and cabals of the time. Pope and Churchill both wrote in abuse of him, and Hogarth immortalised his wig in his _Orders of Periwigs_." (_Pall Mall Gazette_, Jan. 18th, 1887.)

[THE POEM.] Mr. Symons describes this as "a piece of sardonic irony long drawn out," and as a "Superior Rogues' Guide or Instructions for Knaves."

Browning satirically tells Dodington that he went the wrong way to work in his attempts to impose upon the world. Admitting the right of the statesman to "feather his own nest" while pretending to care only for the public weal, because even the birds build the kind of nests that suit their own convenience, without regard to other species, he yet declares there is a right and a wrong way even in deceiving people. "You say, my Lord, that the rabble will not believe and follow you unless you lie boldly, and pretend to be animated only by the desire to serve them; but the rabble tell lies for their own purposes daily, and understand the art as well as you do, and as no man obeys his equal, you must produce something which outdoes in this respect anything with which they are familiar." Browning offers him a hint: wit has replaced force, now intelligence in its turn must go. "You must have a touch of the supernatural, you must awe men--not by miracles, they will not be accepted--but still, you must pretend to some secret and mysterious power, pretend that, though you know you have fools to deal with, there are some wise men amongst them who are not to be deceived, and each man will flatter himself that he is one of these.... Persuade the people that your real character was merely an a.s.sumed one. Pretend to despise, not them, but yourself. That will make men think you obey some law, 'quite above man's--nay, G.o.d's!' Missing this secret, your name is greeted with scorn."

NOTE.--_The Bower-bird_: the name given to certain birds of the genera Ptilorhynchus and Chlamydera, which are ranked under the starling family.

They are found in Australia. They are called bower-birds because they build bowers as well as nests.

=Gerard.= (_A Blot in the 'Scutcheon._) Lord Tresham's faithful and trusted man-servant.

=Gerard de Lairesse, Parleyings with.= (_Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day_: 1877, No. VI.) [THE MAN.] "Gerard de Lairesse, a Flemish painter, was born at Liege in 1640. He early began his career, and produced portraits and historical pictures at the age of fifteen. He was of dissipated life, extravagant, and fond of dress, notwithstanding that he was of deformed figure. The Dutch admired him very much, and modestly called him their 'second Raphael,' Heemskirk being the first. He painted for many years at Amsterdam, and towards the close of his life was much troubled by his eyesight, which several times left him. He died in 1711.

Very fond of teaching, he was always ready to communicate his method to students, and his name is a.s.sociated with a _Treatise on the Art of Painting_, which it is not, however, thought that he wrote. His execution was very rapid, and there is a story told that he made a wager that he would paint, in one day, a large picture of Apollo and the Muses, and that he not only gained the wager, but painted into the picture a capital portrait of a curious bystander. His method of work was eccentric: he would prepare his canvas, and, sitting down before it, take up his violin and play for some time; then, putting down the instrument, he would rapidly sketch in the picture, and again resuming the fiddle, would derive fresh inspiration from the music." (_Pall Mall Gazette_, Jan. 18th, 1887.)

[THE POEM.] Browning rejoices that, though Gerard had lost his sight, his mouth was unsealed and "talked all brain's yearning into birth." He prizes his saying that the artist should discern abundant worth in commonplace, and not despise the vulgar things of town and country as unworthy of his art. Beyond the actual, he taught there was ever "Imagination's limitless domain": even dull Holland to him became Dreamland. And so in that great "Walk" of his, written after his blindness, he could evolve greater things than we with all our sight. Perhaps his sealed sight-sense left his mind free from obstruction to indulge fancies "worth all facts denied by fate."

But though we cannot see what the poets of old saw in nature when they invested trees with human attributes, and yet lost no gain of the tree, "we see deeper." "You," says Browning, "saw the body,--'tis the soul we see." We can fancy, too, though fact unseen has taken the place of fancy somehow. Poets never go back at all: if the past become more precious than the present, then blame the Creator! But it can never be so. He invites Gerard to 'walk with him and see what a poet of the present time discerns in the face of Nature, in her varying moods from daybreak till the shades of night.' Then follows a series of magnificent descriptions of a thunderstorm in the mountains, the defiant pine tree daring all the outrage of the lightning. Then the laugh of morning, the baffled tempest, the trees shaking off the night stupor from their strangled branches.

Diana, with her bow and unerring shaft; for gentle creatures, even on a morn so blithe, must writhe in pain--so pitiless is Nature still! And then the conquering noon: the mist ascends to heaven, and the filmy haze soothes the sun's sharp glare till tyrannous noon reigns supreme. And when at last the long day dies, clouds like hosts confronting each other for battle come trooping silent. Two shapes from out the ma.s.s show prominent, as if the Macedonian flung his purple mantle on the dead Darius. And now the darkness gathers, the human heroes tread the world of cloud no longer.

'Tis a ghost appears on earth:

"There he stands, Voiceless, scarce strives with deprecating hands."

But, says Browning, though we to-day could paint Nature in this manner in the colours of the Past, we rather prefer "the all-including, the all-reconciling Future:

'Let things be--not seem, Do, and nowise dream.'

Sad school was Hades! Let it be granted that death is the last and worst of man's calamities: come what come will--what once lives never dies."

NOTES.--2. "_The Walk_": this was the t.i.tle of a part of Gerard's work ent.i.tled _The Art of Painting_, by Gerard de Lairesse, translated by J. S.

Fritsch, 1778. 5. _Dryope_: the fable of Dryope turned into a tree is told in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, book ix. 9. _Artemis_, Diana, the huntress G.o.ddess. 10. _Lyda_, a nymph beloved by Pan, but who disdained his uncouth pathos. 11. _Macedonian_: Alexander, king of Macedonia, invaded Persia, and was met by Darius with an army of 600,000 men. Alexander defeated them, and Darius was slain by the traitor Bessus. Alexander covered the dead body with his own royal mantle, and honoured it with a magnificent funeral.

=Gigadibs, Mr.= (_Bishop Blougram's Apology._) He is a young man of thirty--immature, desultory, and impulsive--who criticises Bishop Blougram's life, and serves to draw out his ideas on his religion and the honesty of his religious conduct.

=Give a Rouse.= (_Cavalier Tunes_, No. II.)

="Give her but the least excuse to love me."= (_Pippa Pa.s.ses_.) The song which Pippa sings as she pa.s.ses the house of Jules.

=Glove, The.= [PETER RONSARD _loquitur_.] (_Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_ in _Bells and Pomegranates_, VII., 1845.) This is an old French story of the time of Francis I. It is familiar in various forms to students of literature, and may be found in Schiller, Leigh Hunt, and St. Foix. Mr.

Browning, as is his wont, does not tell the story for the sake of telling it, but that he may give a new turn to it and point out something which has been overlooked, but which, on reflection, will always prove to be the precise truth to be conveyed by the narration. The Peter Ronsard who tells the tale was born in 1524, and was called the "prince of poets" by his own generation. He was educated at the College de Navarre at Paris, and was page to the Duke of Orleans. He was afterwards attached to the suite of Cardinal du Bellay-Langey. He became deaf, and in consequence gave up diplomacy for literature. He published his _Amours_ and some odes in 1552. Charles IX. gave him rooms in his palace. He died in 1585. The story of the poem is as follows. King Francis I. was one day amusing himself by viewing the lions in his courtyard, in company with the lords and ladies of the palace. The king bade his keeper make sport with an old lion, which was let out of his den to fight in the pit, the spectators being secured by a barrier. The king said, "Faith, gentlemen, we are better here than there." De Lorge's lady-love overheard this, and she thought it a good opportunity to test the courage of her lover, so she dropped her glove over the barrier amongst the lions, at the same time smiling to De Lorge the command to jump down and recover it. This was speedily done, but the lover threw the glove in the lady's face. The king approved this course, and said, "So should I: 'twas mere vanity, not love, which set that task to humanity!" Mr. Browning brings his a.n.a.lysis to bear on this exploit, and shows that the test was not the outcome of mere idle trifling with a man's life to flatter a woman's vanity. She desired to try as in a crucible the real meaning of the protestations made by De Lorge; it was necessary for her to know if her lover was going to serve her alone or many. He had offered to brave endless descriptions of death for her sake. When she saw the lions, for whose capture many poor men had dared death with no spectators to applaud, she felt justified in asking this of her lover before she trusted herself in his hands for life. A youth led her away from the scene. She carried her shame from the court, and married the man who protected her from further mockery. Of course De Lorge was at once the favourite both of women and men. He married a beauty. The Clement Marot referred to in the poem was a famous poet of France (1496-1544), and greatly distinguished in her literary history.

=G.o.d.= Browning's n.o.blest utterances on G.o.d are to be found in _Christmas Eve_, _Easter Day_, "The Pope" in _The Ring and the Book_, and _Paracelsus_.

=Goito Castle= (_Sordello_), near Mantua, where Sordello was brought up by Adelaide, wife of Ecelin, with Palma, daughter of Ecelin by a former wife.

Sordello lived at Goito in seclusion and boyish pleasures till he was nearly twenty years old.

=Gold Hair: A Legend of p.o.r.nic.= (_Dramatis Personae_, 1864.) The poem is said by Mr. Orr to be founded on facts well known at p.o.r.nic, a seaside town in Brittany. A young girl well connected died with a great reputation for holiness. She had beautiful golden hair, of which she was very proud.

She begged that it might not be disturbed after her death, and she was buried with it intact near the high altar of the church of St. Gilles.

Some years after it became necessary to repair the floor of the church in the proximity of the maiden's tomb. It was found that the coffin had fallen to pieces, and a gold coin was noticed, which led to a more careful examination of the spot. Thirty double louis-d'or were discovered, which had been hidden by the girl in her hair, thus proving that the supposed saint was at heart a miser. "Gold goes through all doors except heaven's doors"; and for this the girl had lost her heaven. In Stanza xxviii. Mr.

Browning teaches a lesson of which he is never weary:--

"Evil or good may be better or worse In the human heart, but the mixture of each Is a marvel and a curse."

Original sin, the innate corruption of man's heart, is ill.u.s.trated says the poet, by this girl's avarice. The priest built a new altar with the discovered money.

=Goldoni.= (Published first in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, Dec. 8th, 1883; then in the _Browning Society's Papers_.) Carlo Goldoni (1707-93) was the most ill.u.s.trious of the Italian comedy-writers, and the real founder of modern Italian comedy. He had a pension from the French King Louis XVI., which he lost at the Revolution, and he was reduced to the extremest misery. A monument was erected to him at Venice in 1883, and Browning wrote for the alb.u.m of the Goldoni monument the following lines:--

"Goldoni,--good, gay, sunniest of souls,-- Gla.s.sing half Venice in that verse of thine.-- What though it just reflect the shade and shine Of common life, nor render, as it rolls, Grandeur and gloom? Sufficient for thy shoals Was Carnival: Parini's depths enshrine Secrets unsuited to that opaline Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls.

There throng the People: how they come and go, Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb,--see,-- On Piazza, Calle, under Portico And over Bridge! Dear king of Comedy, Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so-- Venice, and we who love her, all love thee!

(VENICE, _Nov. 27th, 1883_.)

="Good to Forgive."= (_La Saisiaz._) The epilogue to _La Saisiaz_ begins with these words. In Vol. II. of the _Selections_ the poem forms No. 3 of _Pisgah Sights_.

=Gottingen.= The university town in Germany to a lecture hall in which Christ went in the vision on _Christmas Eve_. Here a consumptive lecturer was "demolishing the Christ-myth," but advising the audience to lose nothing of the Christ idea.

=Grammarian's Funeral, A, shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Romances_, 1863; _Dramatic Romances_, 1868.) Mr. Browning often describes a man as a typical product of his age and environment, and invests him with its characteristics, making him figure as an historical personage. He has done so in this case, and we seem to know the grammarian in all his pedantry and exclusive devotion to a minute branch of human knowledge. The revival of learning, after the apparent death-blow which it received when the hordes of Northern barbarism overran Southern Europe and destroyed the civilisation of the Roman empire, began in the tenth century--that century which, as Hallam says (_Lit. Europe_, i. 10), "used to be reckoned by mediaeval historians the darkest part of this intellectual night." In the twelfth century much greater improvement was made. The attention of Europe was drawn to literature in this century, says Hallam, by, "1st, the inst.i.tution of universities; 2nd, the cultivation of the modern languages, followed by the multiplication of books and the extension of the art of writing; 3rd, the investigation of the Roman law; and lastly, the return to the study of the Latin language in its Ancient models of purity." All these factors were at work and progressing gradually down to the fifteenth century. A company of the grammarian's disciples are bearing his coffin for burial on a tall mountain, the appropriate lofty place of sepulture for an elevated man. As they carry the body, one of them tells his story, and dilates on the praises of the departed scholar. They cannot fitly bury their master in the plain with the common herd. Nor will a lower peak suffice: he shall rest on a peak whose soaring excels the rest. This high-seeking man is for the morning land, and as they bear him up the rocky heights they step together to a tune with heads erect, proud of their n.o.ble burden. He was endowed with graces of face and form; but youth had been given to learning till he had become cramped and withered. This man would eat up the feast of learning even to its crumbs. He would live a great life when he had learned all that books had to teach; meanwhile he despised what other men termed life. Before living he would learn how to live:--

"Leave Now for dogs and apes!