The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 29

_Nov. 28th, 1883._ ROBERT BROWNING.

=Reason and Fancy.= The discussion between Reason and Fancy is in _La Saisiaz_.

=Red Cotton Night-cap Country, or Turf and Towers= (1873). This may be termed a pathological poem, a study of suicidal mania and religious insanity in a young man of dissipated habits whose "mind" was scarcely worthy of the poet's a.n.a.lysis. The t.i.tle given to the work was so bestowed in consequence of Mr. Browning having met Miss Thackeray in a part of Normandy which she jokingly christened "White Cotton Night-cap Country,"

on account of its sleepiness. Mr. Browning having heard the tragedy which his story tells, said "Red Cotton Night-cap Country" would be the more appropriate term. The alternative t.i.tle, "Turf and Towers," is much more likely to have been suggested by the scenery of the place than by the more fanciful reasons which have sometimes been imagined for it. The scene of the story is in the department of Calvados, close to the city of Caen. The whole country is very interesting, from its historical a.s.sociations and architectural remains, and the scenery is exceedingly beautiful. M. de Caumont, the distinguished archaeologist of Caen, enumerates nearly seventy specimens of the Norman architecture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries existing in it. Battlemented walls furnished with towers, picturesque chateaux, old churches and tall spires in a landscape of luxuriant pastures and grey and purple hills, justified the t.i.tle "Turf and Towers,"

even apart from the particular circ.u.mstances connected with the story. Mr.

Browning visited St. Aubin's in 1872, and was interested in the singular history of the family which owned Clairvaux, a restored priory in the locality. Leonce Miranda, the son and heir of a wealthy Paris jeweller, led a dissipated life in his times of leisure, but industriously pursued his calling in strictly business hours. After devoting his attentions to a number of light-o'-loves, he one day fell in love with an adventuress, one Clara Mulhausen, who succeeded in securing him in her toils. As she was already married, the connection was of a nature to be carried on in seclusion, and the jeweller accordingly left a manager in charge of his business, retiring with the woman to Clairvaux, where his father had already purchased property. For five years the couple lived together in what was considered to be happiness. Then Miranda was suddenly called to Paris to account to his mother for his extravagance: he had spent large sums in building operations, having amongst other things erected a Belvedere (a sort of tower above the roof built for viewing the scenery).

He so felt the reproaches of his mother that he attempted to commit suicide by throwing himself into the Seine. He was saved, however, and having been restored by Clara's nursing, was convalescent when he was again urgently summoned to his mother, only to find her dead. He was told that his conduct was responsible for his mother's death; and his relatives, careless of the consequences to a mind so unhinged as Miranda's, spared him none of their upbraidings. All this had the antic.i.p.ated effect: he gave up the bulk of his property to his relatives, reserving only enough for his decent support and that of Clara. When the day arrived for the legal arrangements to be completed, he was found in a room reading and burning in the fire a number of letters. He had afterwards, so it was discovered, placed a number of the papers in a bag and held it in the fire till his hands were destroyed, at the same time crying, "Burn, burn and purify my past." If anything more than what had already happened were necessary to prove the man's insanity, the fact that he inflicted this terrible injury upon himself was sufficient evidence on the point. He declared that he was working out his salvation, and had to be dragged from the room protesting that the sacrifice was incomplete: "I must have more hands to burn!" He lay in a fevered condition for three months, raving against the temptress. When he was sufficiently restored to health he took her back to his heart, saying however, "Her s.e.x is changed: this is my brother--he will tend me now." He disposed of the jeweller's shop to his relatives, and went back to Clairvaux with the woman. At this point Mr. Browning brings the would-be suicide under the influence of religion; the man devoted his substance liberally to the poor, and made many gifts to the Church: it was "ask and have" with this kind Miranda, who was striving to save his soul by acts of charity. It happened that there was a pilgrimage chapel of _La Deliverande_ near Clairvaux, called in the poem, rather oddly, "The Ravissante." The Norman sailors and peasants have resorted to this place of devotion for the last eight hundred years. Murray says: "It is a small Norman edifice. The statue of the Virgin, which now commands the veneration of the faithful, was resuscitated in the reign of Henry I. from the ruins of a previous chapel destroyed by the Northmen, through the agency of a lamb constantly grubbing up the earth over the spot where it lay. Such is the tenor of the legend. The reputation of the image for performing miracles, especially in behalf of sailors, has been maintained from that time to the present." Of course Miranda paid many visits to Our Lady's shrine; many prayers had been heard and answered there,--why should not La Deliverande help him?

One splendid day in spring he mounts the stairs of his view-tower, and, as the poet imagines, addresses the Virgin in exalted phrase. He declares that he burned his hands off because she had prompted, "Purchase now by pain pleasure hereafter in the world to come." He had lightened his purse even if his soul still retained forbidden treasure, and "Where is the reward?" He reproaches Our Lady that she has done nothing to help him. She is Queen of Angels: will she suspend for him the law of gravity if he casts himself from the tower? He tells her it will restore religion to France, to the world, if this miracle is worked. He sees Our Lady smile a.s.sent: he will trust himself. He springs from the bal.u.s.trade, and lies stone dead on the turf the next moment. "Mad!" exclaimed a gardener who saw him fall. "No! Sane," says Mr. Browning. "He put faith to the proof.

He believed in Christianity for its miracles, not for its moral influence on the heart of man; better test such faith at once--'kill or cure.'" By a later will Miranda had bequeathed all his property to the Church, reserving sufficient for the support of Clara. Of course the relatives interfered, with the idea of securing the property for themselves. This led to a trial, which was decided in the lady's favour, and she was chatelaine of Clairvaux where Browning saw her in 1872. The real names of the persons and places are not given in the poem, and there is no good purpose to be served by giving a key to them.

NOTES.--[The pages are those of the first edition of the Poem.] Page 2, "_Un-Murrayed_": unfrequented by tourists who carry Murray's or Baedeker's guide-books. p. 4, _Saint-Rambert_ == St. Aubin, a pretty bathing-place in Calvados, Normandy; _Joyous-Gard_: the estate given by King Arthur to Sir Launcelot of the Lake for defending Guinevere. p. 6, _Rome's Corso_: the princ.i.p.al modern thoroughfare of Rome is the Corso. p. 18, _Guarnerius_, Andreas, and his son Giuseppe, early Italian violin makers; _Straduarius_, Antonio: a famous violin maker of Cremona (1649-1737). p. 19, _Corelli_ (1653-1713): a celebrated violin player and composer; _cushat-dove_ == the ring-dove or wood-pigeon; _giga_ == _gigg_: a jig, a dance; _Saraband_: a grave Spanish dance in triple time. p. 23, "_Quod semel, semper, et ubique_": what was once, and is always and everywhere. This would seem to be intended for the celebrated rule of St. Vincent of Lerins as to the Catholic Faith--"Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ad omnibus creditum est. Hoc est etenim vere proprieque catholic.u.m" (_Comm._, c.

3)--that is to say, the Catholic doctrine is that which has been believed in all places, at all times, and by all the faithful. p. 24, _Rahab-thread_: see Joshua ii. 18. p. 25, _Octroi_: a tax levied at the gate of Continental cities on food, etc., brought within the walls. p. 29, _The Conqueror's country_: Normandy, the native country of William the Conqueror. p. 30, _Lourdes_ and _La Salette_: celebrated places of pilgrimage in France. p. 37, _Abaris_: a priest of Apollo; he rode through the air, invisible, on a golden arrow, curing diseases and giving oracles.

p. 42, _Madrilene_, of Madrid. p. 73, _Father Secchi_: the great Jesuit astronomer of Rome. p. 83, _Acromia_: in anatomy, the outer extremities of the shoulder-blades. p. 84, _Sganarelle_: the hero of Moliere's comedy _Le Mariage Force_. A man aged about fifty-four proposes to marry a fashionable young woman, but he has certain scruples which, however, are allayed by the cudgel of the lady's brother. p. 87, _Caen_: an ancient and celebrated city of Normandy. p. 88, "_Inveni ovem [meam] quae perierat_": "I have found my sheep which was lost" (St. Luke xv. 6). p. 108, _Favonian breeze_: the west wind, favourable to vegetation; _Auster_: an unhealthy wind, the same as the Sirocco. p. 140, _L'Ingegno_, Andrea Luigi. p. 141, _Boileau_: the great French poet, born at Paris 1636; _Louis Quatorze_: Louis XIV., king of France; _Pierre Corneille_: the great dramatic poet (1606-84), born at Rouen. p. 177, "_Religio Medici_": a doctor's religion; the t.i.tle of the celebrated book of Sir Thomas Browne, a devout Christian writer; the new religion of the hyper-scientific school of doctors is mere materialism. p. 193, _Rouher_, Eugene: French politician (1814-84); _c.u.menical a.s.semblage at Rome_: a general or universal council of the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. p. 202, _fons et origo_: the fount and origin. p. 203, "_On Christmas morn--three Ma.s.ses_": the first is the midnight ma.s.s, the second at break of day, the third is the Christmas morning ma.s.s. p. 204, _Cistercian monk_: of an Order established at Citeaux, in France, by Robert, abbot of Moleme. The Order is very severe; but its rule is similar to that of the Benedictines; _Capucin_: a monk of the Order of St. Francis; _Benedict_: St. Benedict, "the most ill.u.s.trious name in the history of Western monasticism": he was born at Nursia, in Umbria, about the year 480; _Scholastica_: St. Scholastica was the sister of St. Benedict: she established a convent near Monte Ca.s.sino. p. 210, _Star of Sea_: Stella Maris, one of the t.i.tles of Our Lady, because _mare_ means "the sea" in Latin. p. 229, _Commines_ (more correctly Comines): Philippe de Comines (1445-1509), called "the father of modern history."

Hallam says that his _Memoirs_ "almost make an epoch in modern history."

p. 234, "_Queen of Angels_": one of the t.i.tles of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

p. 235, "_Legations to the Pope_": amba.s.sadors or envoys to the Pope of Rome. p. 238, _Alacoque_: the Ven. Margaret Mary Alacoque, who founded the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in France; "_Renan burns his book_": Ernest Renan, born 1823, the famous French philologist and historian, author of the Rationalistic _Life of Jesus_, which of course he did not burn! "_Veuillot burns Renan_": Louis Veuillot (1813-83), a celebrated French writer of the Ultramontane school, who would gladly have suppressed Renan if he had had the opportunity; "_The Universe_": the famous Catholic journal edited by Veuillot. p. 245, _Lignum vitae_: Guaiac.u.m wood, used in rheumatism, etc.; _grains of Paradise_: an aromatic drug with carminative properties, like ginger. p. 268, "_Painted Peac.o.c.k_": the b.u.t.terfly whose scientific name is the _Vanessa io_; _Brimstone-wing_: the species of b.u.t.terfly so called from its bright yellow colour. Its scientific name is the _Rhodocera Rhamna_.

=Religious Belief of Browning.= There was little or no dogmatism in Browning's religious faith. He was at least a Theist. "He believed in Soul, and was very sure of G.o.d." Whether the orthodox would consider him a Christian in the sense of the old churches is a matter we cannot discuss here; in the widest sense, however, he has given abundant evidence that he was a Christian. Those who maintain him to be a believer in the Divinity of Christ ground their opinion on such poems as _A Death in the Desert_ and _The Epistle of Karshish_--which, nevertheless, it is objected, are merely dramatic utterances, and cannot fairly be held to set forth the poet's own convictions; to such an opponent I should be content to point to the following letter, published just after the poet's death in _The Nonconformist_, and reprinted in the Transactions of the Browning Society.

It was written by Browning in 1876 to a lady, who, believing herself to be dying, wrote to thank him for the help she had derived from his poems, mentioning particularly _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ and _Abt Vogler_, and giving expression to the deep satisfaction of her mind that one so highly gifted with genius should hold, as Browning held, to the great truths of our religion, and to a belief in the glorious unfolding and crowning of life in the world beyond the grave:--"_19, Warwick Crescent, W., May 11th, 1876._ Dear Friend,--It would ill become me to waste a word on my own feelings, except inasmuch as they can be common to us both in such a situation as you described yours to be--and which, by sympathy, I can make mine by the antic.i.p.ation of a few years at most. It is a great thing--the greatest--that a human being should have pa.s.sed the probation of life, and sum up its experience in a witness to the power and love of G.o.d. I dare congratulate you. All the help I can offer, in my poor degree, is the a.s.surance that I see ever more reason to hold by the same hope--and that, by no means in ignorance of what has been advanced to the contrary; and for your sake I would wish it to be true that I had so much of 'genius' as to permit the testimony of an especially privileged insight to come in aid of the ordinary argument. For I know I myself have been aware of the communication of something more subtle than a ratiocinative process, when the convictions of 'genius' have thrilled my soul to its depth, as when Napoleon, shutting up the New Testament, said of Christ--'Do you know that I am an understander of men? Well, He was no man!' ('Savez-vous que je me connais en hommes? Eh bien, celui-la ne fut pas un homme.') Or as when Charles Lamb, in a gay fancy with some friends as to how he and they would feel if the greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in flesh and blood once more--on the final suggestion, 'And if Christ entered this room?' changed his manner at once, and stuttered out--as his manner was when moved, 'You see--if Shakespeare entered, we should all rise; if _He_ appeared, we must kneel.' Or, not to multiply instances, as when Dante wrote what I will transcribe from my wife's Testament--wherein I recorded it fourteen years ago--'Thus I believe, thus I affirm, thus I am certain it is, that from this life I shall pa.s.s to another better, there, where that lady lives, of whom my soul was enamoured.' Dear Friend, I may have wearied you in spite of your good will. G.o.d bless you, sustain, and receive you! Reciprocate this blessing with yours affectionately, ROBERT BROWNING." The Agnostic school is indefatigable in endeavouring to secure Browning as a great representative of their "know-nothingism," whatever that may be. They might as reasonably claim Robert Browning on the side of Agnosticism as John Henry Newman on the side of Atheism, which also certain wiseacres in their cra.s.s hebetude or vain affectation have pretended to do.

=Religious Poems.= (1) More or less expressions of the poet's own faith are "La Saisiaz," "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," "The Epistle of Karshish," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," "The Pope" (in _The Ring and the Book_), and "Prospice." (2) Dramatic utterances concerning religion may be found in "Caliban upon Setebos," "A Death in the Desert," "Saul," and "Johannes Agricola," amongst many others.

=Renan= (Epilogue to _Dramatis Personae_). The "second speaker" in the Epilogue is described as Renan. Joseph Ernest Renan, philologist, member of the Inst.i.tute of France, was born Feb. 27th, 1823. He is best known by his _Life of Jesus_.

=Rephan= (_Asolando_, 1889). "Suggested," as the poet says in a note prefixed to the poem, "by a very early recollection of a pure story by the n.o.ble woman and imaginative writer, Jane Taylor, of Norwich."[3] It will a.s.sist the reader to understand the poem if I give an outline of the story which lived so long in Browning's memory and suggested these verses.

"Rephan" is the star mentioned in Jane Taylor's beautiful story "How it Strikes a Stranger," contained in the first volume of her work ent.i.tled _The Contributions of Q. Q._ Mrs. Oliphant, in her _Literary History of the Nineteenth Century_, vol. ii., p. 351, thus describes "How it Strikes a Stranger." "A little epilogue in which the supposed impression made upon the mind of an angel whose curiosity has tempted him, even at the cost of sharing their mortality, to descend among men, is the theme, recurs to our mind from the recollections of youth with considerable force." In one of the most ancient and magnificent cities of the East there appeared, in a remote period of antiquity, a stranger of extraordinary aspect. He had no knowledge of the language of the country, and was ignorant of its customs.

One day, when residing with one of the n.o.bles of the city, after having been taught the language of the people and having learned something of their modes of thought, he was seen to be gazing with fixed attention upon a certain star in the heavens. He explained that this was his home: he was lately an inhabitant of that tranquil planet, from whence a vain curiosity had tempted him to wander. When the first idea of death was explained to him, he was but slightly moved; but when he was informed that the happiness or misery of the immortal life depended upon a man's conduct in the present stage of existence, he was deeply moved, and demanded that he should be at once minutely instructed in all that was necessary to prepare himself for death. He lost all interest in wealth and pleasures, and astonished his friends by his absorption in the thoughts which concerned another life. Soon, people treated him with contempt, and even enmity; but this did not annoy him,--he was always kind and compa.s.sionate to those about him. To every invitation to do anything inconsistent with his real interests, his one answer was, "I am to die! I am to die!" As we might expect, Mr. Browning takes this simple and beautiful story, and imbues it with his own philosophy till he has made it his own. In the poem the wanderer from the star (Rephan), in compliance with the request of his friends, gives some account of the manner of his life before his human existence began upon our planet. In the land he has left--his native realm--all is at most, nowhere deficiency or excess; on this planet we but guess at a mean. In "Rephan" there is no want; whatever should be, _is_.

There is no growth, for that is change; nothing begins and nothing ends; it fell short in nothing at first, no change was required to mend anything. The stranger explains that, to convey his thoughts, he has to use our language: his own no one who heard him could understand. In "Rephan" better and worse could not be contrasted; all was perfection.

Blessing and cursing were alike impossible. There are neither springs nor winters. Time brings no hope and no fear: as is to-day so shall to-morrow be. All were happy, all serene. None were better than he: that would have proved that he lacked somewhat; none worse, for he was faultless. How came it that his perfection grew irksome? How was it his desire arose to become a mortal on our earth? How did soul's quietude burst into discontent? How long had he stagnated there, where weak and strong, wise and foolish, right and wrong are merged in a neutral Best? He could not say, neither could he tell how the pa.s.sion arose in his breast. He knew not how he came to learn love by hate, to aspire yet never reach, to suffer that one whom he loved might be happy, to wing knowledge for ignorance. He tells his hearers that they fear, they agonise and die, and he asks them have they no a.s.surance that after this earth-life wrong will prove right? Do they not expect that making shall be mending in the sphere to which their yearnings tend? And so when in his pregnant breast the yearnings grew, a voice said to him: "Wouldst thou strive, not rest? burn and not smoulder? win by contest; no longer be content with wealth, which is but death? Then you have outlived "Rephan," you are beyond this sphere.

There is a higher plane for you. Thy place now is Earth!" It is the old Browning story, the true mark of his highest teaching: the necessity of evil to evoke the highest good, the need of struggle for development, of contest for strength and victory. Simple, good Jane Taylor would not recognise her pretty fable as it comes from Browning's alembic in the form of _Rephan_.

=Respectability.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Lyrics_, 1863; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) The world will let us do just what we like, provided only we take out its licence; import what we like, only we must pay the customs duty; bring into the place what we please, only we must not omit the _octroi_. Defy or evade these, and the stamp of respectability being withheld, we lose caste. Everything depends on the Government stamp which the officers chalk-mark on our baggage. By conforming we gain the guinea stamp, but run a risk of losing the gold itself. The world proscribes not love, allows the caress, provided only we buy of it our gloves. What the world fears is our contempt for its licence. It is, however, exceedingly placable, and is quite ready to license anything if we pay it the fee and do it the homage. At the Inst.i.tute, for example, Guizot, hating Montalembert (as Liberalism hates Ultramontanism in theory), will receive him with courtesy, not to say affection. "We are pa.s.sing the lamps: put your best foot foremost!"

=Return of the Druses, The.= A TRAGEDY. (_Bells and Pomegranates_, IV., 1843.) [THE HISTORICAL FACTS.] The Syrian Druses occupy the mountainous region of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. They are found also in the Auranitis and in Palestine proper, to the north-west of the Sea of Tiberias. Crypto-Druses--Druses not by race, but by religion--are believed to dwell in Egypt, near Cairo. It is said that the Syrian Druses number over eighty thousand warriors. They covet no proselytes, and are an exceedingly mysterious, uncommunicative people, though they keep on good terms, as far as possible, with their Christian and Mahometan neighbours.

They respect the religion of others, but never disclose the secrets of their own. Of their origin very little has with certainty been ascertained. They do not accept the name of Druses, and regard the term as insulting. They call themselves "disciples of Hamsa," who was their Messiah, who came to them in the tenth century from the Land of the word of G.o.d. Next in rank to Hamsa are the four throne-angels. One of these was the missionary Bohaeddin. Mr. Browning probably refers to him under the name of Bahumid the Renovator. Moktana Bohaeddin committed the Word to writing and intrusted it to a few initiates. They speak Arabic; but the Druses are not considered by ethnologists to belong to the Semitic family.

They have a tradition that they belonged originally to China. Whatever may have been the origin of this people, it is evident that they are now a very mixed race, as their religion also is compounded of Judaism, Christianity, and Mahometanism. Mackenzie says: "They have a regular order of priesthood, and a kind of hierarchy. There is a regular system of pa.s.swords and signs." It is certain that there are to be found in their religion traces of Gnosticism and Magianism. One theory of their origin, to which the poet refers in the drama, is to the effect that the Druses are the descendants of a crusader, Count Dreux, who left G.o.dfrey de Bouillon's army to settle in the Lebanon. "The rise and progress of the religion which gives unity to the race," according to the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 9th edition, vol. vii., p. 484, "can be stated with considerable precision. As a system of thought it may be traced back in some of its leading principles to the Shiite sect of the Batenians, or Batiniya, whose main doctrine was that every outer has its inner, and every pa.s.sage in the Koran an allegorical sense; and to the Karamatians, or Karamita, who pushed this method to its furthest limits; as a creed it is somewhat more recent. In the year 386 A.H. (996 A.D.) Hakim Biamrillahi (_i.e._, he who judges by the command of G.o.d), the sixth of the Fatimite caliphs, began to reign; and during the next twenty-five years he indulged in a tyranny at once so terrible and so fantastic, that little doubt can be entertained of his insanity. As madmen sometimes do, he believed that he held direct intercourse with the Deity, or even that he was an incarnation of the Divine intelligence; and in 407 A.H., or 1016 A.D., his claims were made known in the mosque at Cairo, and supported by the testimony of Ismael Darazi.[4] The people showed such bitter hostility to the new gospel that Darazi was compelled to seek safety in flight; but even in absence he was faithful to his G.o.d, and succeeded in winning over the ignorant inhabitants of Lebanon. According to Druse authority this great conversion took place in the year 410 A.H. Meanwhile, the endeavours of the caliph to get his divinity acknowledged by the people of Cairo continued. The advocacy of Hasan ben Haidara Fergani was without avail; but in 408 A.H. the new religion found a more successful apostle in the person of Hamze ben Ali ben Ahmed, a Persian mystic, feltmaker by trade, who became Hakim's vizier, gave form and substance to his creed, and by his ingenious adaptation of its various dogmas to the prejudices of existing sects, finally enlisted an extensive body of adherents. In 411 the caliph was a.s.sa.s.sinated by contrivance of his sister Sitt Almulk; but it was given out by Hamze that he had only withdrawn for a season, and his followers were encouraged to look forward with confidence to his triumphant return. Darazi, who had acted independently in his apostolate, was branded by Hamze as a heretic; and thus, by a curious anomaly, he is actually held in detestation by the very sect which probably bears his name. The propagation of the faith, in accordance with Hamze's initiation, was undertaken by Ismael ben Muhammed _Temins_, Muhammed ben _Wahab_, Abulkhair _Selama_, ben Abdalwahab ben Samurri, and Moktana Bohaeddin, the last of whom was known by his writings from Constantinople to the borders of India. In two letters addressed to the Emperor Constantine VIII. and Michael the Paphlagonian, he endeavours to prove that the Christian Messiah reappeared in the person of Hamze (or Hasam)." The Druses call themselves Unitarians or Muahhidin, and believe in the absolute unity of G.o.d. He is the essence of life, and although incomprehensible and invisible, is to be known through occasional manifestations in human form.

Like the Hindus, they hold that he was incarnated more than once on earth.

Hamsa was the _precursor_ of the last manifestation to be (the tenth _avatar_), not the inheritor of Hakem, who is yet to come. Hamsa was the personification of the "universal wisdom." Bohaeddin, in his writings, calls him the Messiah. They hold ideas on transmigration which are Pythagorean and cabalistic. They have seven great commandments, which are imparted equally to all the initiated. These would seem to be incorrectly given by most of the encyclopaedias. Professor A. L. Rawson, of New York, who is an initiate into the mysteries of the religion of the Druses, gives the following as the actual tenets of the faith. (They are termed the seven "tablets").--1. The unity of G.o.d, or the infinite oneness of Deity; 2. The essential excellence of truth; 3. The law of toleration as to all men and women in opinion; 4. Respect for all men and women as to character and conduct; 5. Entire submission to G.o.d's decrees as to fate; 6. Chast.i.ty of body and mind and soul; 7. Mutual help under all conditions. The Druses believe that all other religions were merely intended to prepare the way for their own, and that allegorically it may be discovered in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. They treat with the utmost reverence what are called the Four Books on Mount Lebanon. These are the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Koran. All are bound to keep the seven commandments of Hamsa above mentioned. [THE DRAMA.] Mr. Browning's drama does not appear to be founded upon any historical facts. The time occupied by the tragedy is one day. Djabal is an initiated Druse, a son of the last Emir, who, when his family was ma.s.sacred in the island which is the scene of the drama, had made his escape to Europe. He has resolved to return to this islet of the southern Sporades, colonised by the Lebanon Druses and garrisoned by the Knights Hospitallers of Rhodes. He has felt within him a Divine call to liberate his country and restore them to the land from which they are exiled. He dwells upon the wrongs which the people have suffered at the hands of their oppressors, and in his pa.s.sionate love for his country, and a desire to gratify his revenge for the slaughter of his kindred, has determined to become their liberator. The tragedy opens with the deliberations of the Druse initiates, who are expecting the manifestation of the Hakeem, the incarnation of the vanished Khalif who is to free their people, and who is believed by them to have appeared in the person of Djabal, now returned to the oppressed tribe. The island is governed by a prefect appointed by the Knights of Rhodes in Europe. This prefect has used his authority in a cruel and oppressive manner. Djabal has taken upon himself the redemption of his people, and during his stay in Europe has made a firm friend of a young n.o.bleman, Lois de Dreux, who is about to join the Order of the Knights of Rhodes. His period of probation is to be pa.s.sed in the island, and for this purpose he has accompanied Djabal on his return. Djabal has secretly resolved that upon his return to his people the cruel prefect, who has almost extirpated the sheikhs, shall be slain. He has secured also the alliance of the Venetians, who have promised that a fleet of their ships shall be prepared to transport the Druses to their home in the Lebanon, and shall be in readiness to receive them when the murder of the prefect shall have liberated his countrymen. The complicated part of the story now begins.

Anael is a Druse maiden whose devotion to her nation is the strongest pa.s.sion of her soul, and who has vowed to wed no one but the man who has delivered her people from the tyranny which oppresses them. That he may win her heart Djabal has declared himself to be the Hakeem, who has become incarnate for the salvation of the Druse nation. He has declared himself to be the long hoped and prayed for divinity, and offered himself to the people in that character. His plan has perfectly succeeded. Anael and her tribe believe that Djabal is the real Hakeem, and that he will liberate the people, show himself as Divine, and exalt her with himself when the work is perfected. He has decreed the death of the tyrant, and Anael knows this. To Anael, Djabal is her G.o.d as well as her lover; yet she cannot worship him as Divine. "'Oh, why is it,' she asks,

'I cannot kneel to you?

Never seem you--shall I speak the truth?-- Never a G.o.d to me!

'Tis the man's hand, Eye, voice!'"

Djabal has deceived himself into a half belief in the sanct.i.ty of his mission; but as the day approaches when he is to fulfil his promises his heart fails him, and he loses faith in himself. He struggles with his own heart, and endeavours to be true to himself and people; but he has gone too far, the circ.u.mstances in which he is placed are too strong for him, and he is driven forward on the course on which he has entered. He now resolves to solve the difficulty by flight. He will make his escape, but before he does so will kill the prefect with his own hands. He is on his way to the tyrant's chamber when he meets Anael, and learns from her that she has slain the prefect. He now tells her everything. At first she declines to believe in his falseness; but when a conviction of the truth is forced upon her she refuses to drive him from her heart. The Divine nature of Djabal has been in a sense an obstacle to her love in his character as Hakeem. He has seemed too remote for her merely human affection, and she has never deemed herself worthy to be a.s.sociated with him in his exaltation. In her determination to kill the tyrant, and in the accomplishment of that act of patriotism, she has been actuated princ.i.p.ally by her desire to elevate herself to his level, so that she might have a princ.i.p.al share in the liberation of her nation. They now discover that the murder need not have been committed. Lois de Dreux, the young n.o.bleman who has accompanied Djabal from Europe, has fallen in love with Anael also; and though prohibited by the rules of the Order of knighthood of which he is a postulant, to entangle himself with women, he has aspired to win her love. Lois has represented to the chapter of the Order the cruelties inflicted by their prefect on the people, and has succeeded in obtaining an order for his removal. The young Frankish knight has been elevated by the Order to the position occupied by the deposed governor, so that the liberation of the Druses is now close at hand. Anael urges Djabal to confess his deception and own his imposition to his people. This he refuses to do. She cannot forgive him. When she finds him false and cowardly she takes upon herself to denounce him to the European rulers of the island. Djabal is brought to trial. His accuser is Anael, who is closely veiled till the appropriate moment, when the veil drops, and he is confronted by his lover. His life hangs upon her words. He urges her to speak them; but this she cannot do. Djabal is now man, and man only: he is not separated from her by his Divine nature. She could hardly hope to be one with him in his glory: she can at least be united with him in his degradation and disgrace. All her love for him rises within her, and she hails him "Hakeem!" and falls dead at his feet. The human heart has proved victorious, and the man has conquered the G.o.d. Djabal, committing the care of the Druses to his friend Lois, and bidding him guard his people home again and win their blessing for the deed, stabs himself as he bends over the body of the faithful Anael. As he dies the Venetians enter the place and plant the Lion of St. Mark. Djabal's last cry mingles with their shouts, "On to the mountain! At the mountain, Druses!"

NOTES--Act i., _Rhodian cross_: that of the Knights of St. John (see below). _Osman_, who founded the Ottoman empire in Asia. _White-cross knights_: the Knights Hospitallers. They wore a white cross of eight points on a black ground. From 1278 till 1289, when engaged on military duties, they wore a plain straight white cross on a red ground.

_Patriarch_: in Eastern churches a dignitary superior to an archbishop, as the Patriarch of Constantinople, Alexandria, etc. _Nuncio_: an amba.s.sador from the Pope to an emperor or king. _Hospitallers_: an order of knights who built a hospital at Jerusalem, in A.D. 1042, for pilgrims. They were called _Knights of St. John_, and after the removal of the order to Malta _Knights of Malta_. _Candia_: the ancient Crete. It was sold to the Venetians in 1194. _Rhodes_: an island of the Mediterranean. "_pro fide_": for the faith. "_Bouillon's war_": the crusade of G.o.dfrey de Bouillon.--Act ii., "_sweet cane_": Acorus calamus. It grows in the Levant and in this country; is very aromatic, having a smell when trodden on like incense. Miss Pratt says it has been used from time immemorial for strewing the floors of Norwich Cathedral. _Lilith_: Adam's first wife (see note to ADAM, LILITH and EVE, and art. LILITH). "_incense from a mage-king's tomb_": students of occult science say that sweet odours have been known to issue from the tombs of magicians, and lamps have been found burning therein when broken open. _khandjar_: an Eastern weapon.--Act.

iii., _The venerable chapter_: the meeting of an order or community.

_Bezants_: gold coins of Byzantium. "_Red-cross rivals of the Temple_": the order of the "Knights Templars" (see notes to _The Heretics'

Tragedy_). They wore a red cross of eight points.--Act iv., _Tiar_: a tiara.--Act v., _Biamrallah_: Hakem Biamr Allah, sixth Fatimite Caliph of Egypt. _Fatemite_, or _Fatimite_: named from Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed and wife of Ali, from whom the founder of the dynasty of Fatimites professed to have sprung. "_Romaioi, Ioudaioite kai proselutoi_"

(_Gr._, Acts ii. 10, 11): "Strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes."

=Reverie.= (_Asolando_, 1889.) In Mr. Browning's last volume, published in London as he lay dying in Venice, the two closing poems seem strangely and n.o.bly intended to gather into a focus his whole philosophy of life, and give to the world, in two of his most exquisite poems, his fullest and clearest expressions of the faith of his heart and the quintessence of his teaching. Had the poet known they were the last lines he should write, had he foreseen that these were the last accents of his message, it is impossible to imagine that he could have risen higher than he has done in _Reverie_ and the "Epilogue." The purport of _Reverie_ is to reconcile the ideas of Power and Love--to reconcile by proving them indeed to be one.

"Power is Love." When power is no longer limited, then is the reign of love. As Mr. Browning says in _Paracelsus_, "with much power always much more love." That "The All-Great" is "The All-Loving too," is the teaching of Christianity. That power, in its perfection, must _necessarily_ be love, is a point in Mr. Browning's philosophical system arrived at independently of dogma. It is the monistic conception of the forces that mould life, as opposed to the dualistic conception. The Power everywhere visible in the universe, pervading everything, in all things from the atom to the sun, making man feel his utter helplessness and insignificance, requires no further demonstration. We are a.s.sured that Power is dominant.

Our only difficulty is about Love. In face of the evil in the world, the inequalities in life, the dominance of evil, can we say with truth that the All-Powerful is the All-Loving too? Browning in _Reverie_ says that truth comes before us here "fitful and half guessed, half seen, grasped at, not gained, held fast." Notwithstanding this defect, a single page of the world's wide book, properly deciphered, explains the whole. We must try the clod ere we test the star; know all our earth elements ere we apply the spectroscope to Mars. It is true that good struggles but evil reigns; yet earth's good is proved good and incontrovertibly worth loving, and evil can be nothing but a cloud stretched across good's...o...b..-no orb itself. There is no doubt whatever about the infinity of the power. There is equally no doubt about the value of the good so far as it goes. Let power "but enlarge good's strait confine," and perfection stands revealed. "Let on Power devolve Good's right to co-equal reign!" What is wanted is some law which abolishes everywhere that which thwarts good. And the poet avows his confidence that somewhen Good will praise G.o.d unisonous with Power.

=Richard, Count of St. Bonifacio= (father and son). (_Sordello._) Guelfs.

In a secret chamber in his palace Palma and Sordello hold earnest conference with each other in the first book of the poem.

=Ring and the Book, The.= In twelve books. Published in four volumes, each consisting of three books, from 1868 to 1869.

BOOK I.--When a Roman jeweller makes a ring, he mingles his pure gold with a certain amount of alloy, so as to enable it to bear file and hammer; but, the ring having been fashioned, the alloy is dissolved out with acid, and the ring in all its purity and beauty of pure gold remains perfect. So much for the Ring. For the Book it happened thus:--Mr. Browning was one day wandering about the Square of St. Lorenzo, in Florence, which on that occasion was crammed with booths where odd things of all sorts were for sale; and in one of them he purchased for eightpence an old square yellow book, part print, part ma.n.u.script, with this summary of its contents:--

"A Roman murder case; Position of the entire criminal cause Of Guido Franceschini, n.o.bleman, With certain Four the cut-throats in his pay.

Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death By heading or hanging as befitted ranks, At Rome, on February Twenty-Two, Since our Salvation Sixteen Ninety-Eight: Wherein it is disputed if, and when, Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet 'scape The customary forfeit."

As before the ring was fashioned the pure gold lay in the ingot, so the pure virgin truth of the murder case lay in this book; but it was not in a presentable form and such as a poet could use. As the jeweller adds a little alloy to permit the artistic working of the Ring, so the poet must mix his poetic fancy with the simple legal evidence contained in the Book, and in this manner work up the history for popular edification. And thus we have _The Ring and the Book_. The simple, hard, legal doc.u.ments opened the story thus. The accuser and the accused said, in the persons of their advocates, as follows:--The Public Prosecutor demands the punishment of Count Guido Franceschini and his accomplices, for the murder of his wife.

Then the Patron of the Poor--the counsel acting on behalf of the accused--protests that Count Guido ought rather to be rewarded, with his four conscientious friends, as sustainers of law and society. It is true, he says, that he killed his wife, but he did it laudably. Then the case was postponed. It was argued that the woman slaughtered was a saint and martyr. More postponement. Then it was argued that she was a miracle of l.u.s.t and impudence. More witnesses, precedents, and authorities called and quoted on both sides:

"Thus wrangled, brangled, jangled they a month,"--

only on paper--all the pleadings were in print. The Court p.r.o.nounced Count Guido guilty, his murdered wife Pompilia pure in thought, word and deed; and signed sentence of death against the whole five accused. But Guido's counsel had a reserve shot. The Count, as was the frequent custom in those days, was in one of the minor orders of the priesthood, and claimed clerical privilege. Appeal was therefore made to the Pope. Roman society began to talk, the quality took the husband's part, the Pope was benevolent and unwilling to take life: Guido stood a chance of getting off. But the Pope was shrewd and conscientious; and having mastered the whole matter, said, "Cut off Guido's head to-morrow, and hang up his mates." And it was so done. Thus much was untempered gold, as discovered in the little old book. But we want to know more of the matter, and in four volumes (of the original edition) Mr. Browning satisfies us. Who was the handsome young priest, Canon Caponsacchi, who carried off the wife?

Who were the old couple, the Comparini, Pietro and his spouse, who, on a Christmas night in a lonely villa, were murdered with Pompilia? Mr.

Browning has ferreted it out for us mixed his fancy with the facts to bring them home to us the better. He has been to Arezzo, the Count's city--the wife's "trap and cage and torture place." He stopped at Castelnuovo, where husband and wife and priest for first and last time met face to face. He pa.s.sed on to Rome the goal, to the home of Pompilia's foster-parents. He conjures up the vision of the dreadful night when Guido and his wolves cried to the escaped wife, "Open to Caponsacchi!" and the door was opened, showing the mother of the two-weeks'-old babe and her parents the Comparini. He ponders all the story in his soul in Italy, and in London when he returns home; till the ideas take clear shape in his mind, and the whole story lives again in his brain, and he can reproduce for us the facts as they must have occurred. Count Guido Franceschini was descended of an ancient though poor family. He was

"A beak-nosed, bushy-bearded, black-haired lord, Lean, pallid, low of stature, yet robust, Fifty years old."

He married Pompilia Comparini--young, good, beautiful--at Rome, where she was born; and brought her to his home at Arezzo, where they lived miserable lives. That she might find peace, the wife had run away, in company of the priest Giuseppe Caponsacchi, to her parents at Rome; and the husband had followed with four accomplices, and catching her in a villa on a Christmas night with her parents (putative parents really), had killed the three; the wife being seventeen years old, and the Comparini, husband and wife, seventy. There was Pompilia's infant, Guido's firstborn son, but he had previously put it in a place of safety.

NOTES.--Line 7, _Castellani_: a celebrated Roman jeweller (Piazza di Trevi 86), who executes admirable imitations from Greek, Etruscan, and Byzantine models. _Chiusi_: a very ancient Etruscan city, full of antiquities and famous for its tombs. l. 27, _rondure_, a round. l. 45, _Baccio Bandinelli_, a sculptor of Florence (1497-1559). l. 47, "_John of the Black Bands_": Father of Cosimo I., Giovanni delle Bande Neri. l. 48, _Riccardi_: the palace of one of the great families of Florence. l. 49, _San Lorenzo_, the great church so named in Florence. l. 77, _Spicilegium_, a collection made from the best writers. l. 114, "_Casa Guidi, by Felice Church_": this was the residence of the Brownings at Florence when he bought the little book. l. 223, _Justinian_, Emperor of the East A.D. 527. His name is immortalised by his code of laws; _Baldo_, an eminent professor of the civil law, and also of canon law, born in 1327; _Bartolo_ of Perugia, a professor of civil law, under whom Baldo studied; _Dolabella_, the name of a Roman family; _Theodoric_, king of the Ostrogoths (_c._ A.D. 454-526); _aelian_, a writer on natural history in the time of Adrian. l. 263, _Presbyter, Primae tonsurae, Subdiaconus, Sacerdos_: these are some of the different steps to the priesthood in the Roman Church--that is to say, First tonsure, subdeacon, deacon, priest. l.

284, _Ghetto_, the Jewish quarter in Rome. l. 300, _Pope Innocent XII._ was _Antonio Pignatelli_. He reigned from 1691 to 1700. He introduced many reforms into the Church, and, after a holy and self-abnegating life, died on September 27th, 1700; _Jansenists_, followers of Jansen, who taught Calvinism in the Catholic Church; _Molinists_, followers of Molinos, who taught Arminianism in the Catholic Church; _Nepotism_, favouritism to relations. l. 435, _temporality_: the material interests of the Catholic Church. l. 490, "_gold snow Jove rained on Rhodes_": as the Rhodians were the first who offered sacrifices to Minerva, Jupiter rewarded them by covering the island with a golden cloud, from which he sent showers of treasures on the people. l. 495, _Datura_: the thorn apple--stramonium. l.

496, _lamp-fly_ == a fire-fly. l. 868, _aeacus_, son of Jupiter; on account of his just government made judge in the lower regions with Minos and Rhadamanthus. l. 898, "_Bernini's Triton fountain_:" in the great square of the Barberini Palace, the Tritons blowing the water from a conch-sh.e.l.l.

l. 1028, "_chrism and consecrative work_": Chrism is the oil used in ordination, etc., in the Roman and Greek Catholic Churches. l. 1030, _lutanist_, one who plays on the lute. l. 1128, "_Procurator of the Poor_": a proctor, an attorney who acts on behalf of the poor. l. 1161, _Fisc_, a king's solicitor, an attorney-general. l. 1209, _clavicinist_, one who plays on the clavichord. l. 1212, _rondo_ == rondeau, a species of lively melody with a recurring refrain; _suite_, a connected series of musical compositions. l. 1214, _Corelli, Arcangelo_, Italian musical composer; _Haendel_, Handel the musician. l. 1311, "_Brotherhood of Death_": the Confraternity of the Misericordia, or Brothers of Mercy, who prepare criminals for death and attend funerals as an act of charity. l.

1328, _Mannai_, a sort of guillotine.--This seems a fitting place in which to insert the following note, which serves to explain the origin of the great poem:--

In _The Christian Register_ of Boston for Jan. 19th, 1888, there is an article ent.i.tled "An Eagle Feather," by the Rev. John W. Chadwick, of Brooklyn. This clergyman visited Mr. Browning and asked him, "And how about the book of _The Ring and the Book_? Had he made up that, too, or was there really such a book? There was indeed; and would we like to see it? There was little doubt of that; and it was produced, and the story of his buying it for 'eightpence English just' was told, but need not be retold here, for in _The Ring and the Book_ it is set down with literal truth. The appearance and character of the book, moreover, are exactly what the poem represents. It is part print, part ma.n.u.script, ending with two epistolary accounts, if I remember rightly, of Guido's execution, written by the lawyers in the case. It was an astonishing 'find,' and it is pa.s.sing strange that a book compiled so carefully should have been brought to such a low estate. Mr. Browning did not seem at all inclined to toss it in the air and catch it, as he does in verse. He handled it very carefully, and with evident affection. I asked him if it did not make him very happy to have created such a woman as Pompilia; and he said, 'I a.s.sure you that I found her just as she speaks and acts in my poem, in that old book.' There was that in his tone that made it evident Caponsacchi had a rival lover without blame. Of the old pope of the poem, too, he spoke with real affection. He told us how he had found a medal of him in a London antiquary's shop, had left it meaning to come back for it; came back, and found that it had gone. But the shopman told him Lady Houghton (Mrs. Richard Monckton Milnes) had taken it. 'You will lend it to me,' said Mr. Browning to her, 'in case I want it some time to be copied for an ill.u.s.tration?' She preferred giving it to him; had most likely intended doing so when she bought it. It was in a pretty little box, and had a benignant expression, exactly suited to the character of the good pope in the poem. As a further proof that all is grist that comes to some folks' mills, there was a picture of the miserable Count Guido Franceschini on his execution day, which some one had come upon in a London printshop and sent to Mr. Browning."

Mr. Browning having told the incidents of the story in all their princ.i.p.al details, might, in the ordinary way, have considered this sufficient. He has reserved nothing till the last, and in the usual way would have destroyed the interest of his remaining volumes had he been a mere story-teller. His purpose, however, was different. He will now take the princ.i.p.al actors in the tragedy, and separately and at length let them give their account of it in their own language and according to their own view of the case. He will, moreover, give his readers the opposing views of the two halves into which the Roman populace have been divided on the murders. He will introduce us to the Pope considering the course of action he is called upon to pursue as supreme judge of the matter; and the very lawyers, who are preparing their briefs and getting up their speeches, will also have their say. We shall thus have this many-sided subject put before us in every possible way; and we shall be enabled to follow the windings of the human mind on such a subject as though we were centred in the breast, in turn, of each of the actors in the dreadful drama. We have, therefore, in

Book I., The dry facts of the case in brief;

Book II., HALF ROME (the view of those antagonistic to the wife);

Book III., THE OTHER HALF ROME (representing the opinion of those who take her part);

Book IV., TERTIUM QUID (a third party, neither wholly on one side nor the other);