The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 39

" 15. _Dramatic Idyls_, first series; _Dramatic Idyls_, second series, and _Jocoseria_.

" 16. _Ferishtah's Fancies_, and _Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day_, with a portrait of Mr. Browning.

Also Mr. Browning's last volume, _Asolando_, _Fancies and Facts_.

=Worst of it, The.= (_Dramatis Personae_, 1864.) A fleck on a swan is beauty spoiled; a speck on a mottled hide is nought. A man had angel fellowship with a young wife who proved false to him; he loves her still, and mourns that she ruined her soul in stooping to save his; he made her sin by fettering with a gold ring a soul which could not blend with his.

He sorrows, not for his own loss, but that his swan must take the crow's rebuff. He desires her good, and hopes she may work out her penance, and reach heaven's purity at last. He will love on, but if they meet in Paradise, will pa.s.s nor turn his face.

=Xanthus.= (_A Death in the Desert._) One of the disciples of St. John in attendance upon the dying apostle in the cave.

="You groped your way across my room."= (_Ferishtah's Fancies._) The first line of the third lyric.

="You'll love me yet."= (_Pippa Pa.s.ses._) A song.

=Youth and Art.= (_Dramatis Personae_, 1864.) A meditation on what might have been, had two young people who had the chance not missed it and lost it for ever. They lodged in the same street in Rome. The man was a sculptor who had dreams of demolishing Gibson some day, and putting up Smith to reign in his stead; the woman was a singer who hoped to trill bitterness into the cup of Grisi, and make her envious of Kate Brown. The warbler earned in those days as little by her voice as the chiseller by his work. They were poor, lived on a crust apiece, and for fun watched each other from their respective windows. She was evidently dying for an introduction to him; she fidgeted about with the window plants, and did her best to attract his attention in a quiet sort of way; she did not like his models always tripping up his stairs, which she could not ascend, and was glad to have the opportunity of showing off the foreign fellow who came to tune the piano. But life pa.s.sed, he made no advances, and so in process of time she married a rich old lord, and he is a knight, R.A., and dines with the Prince. With all this show of success neither life is complete, neither soul has achieved the sole good of its earth wanderings.

Their lives hang patchy and sc.r.a.ppy; they have not sighed, starved, feasted, despaired, and been happy. There was once the chance of these things; they were missed, and eternity cannot make good the loss. As for life "_Love_," as Browning is always telling us, "_is the sole good of it_." This poem may be compared with the moral of _The Statue and the Bust_. In the one case reasons of prudence and the restrictions of religion and society prevented the duke and the lady from following the inclinations of their hearts; in the other case mere worldly motives operated to the same end--the missing of the union of the actors' souls.

In both cases the lives were spoiled. In _Youth and Art_ the woman's character cuts a very poor figure: love is subordinated to her art, and that to the mere worldly advantage of a rich marriage and the opportunity of becoming "queen at bals-pares." The man was cold, not because his art made him so, but because of his overwhelming prudence, which we may be sure did not make him a Gibson after all.

NOTE.--Verse ii., _Gibson, John_ (1790-1866), the sculptor, best known to fame by his "Tinted Venus." He died at Rome. Verse iii., _Grisi, Giulietta_ (born in Milan, 1812), one of the most distinguished singers of our time She came to London in 1834, and at once took a leading position in the operatic world. Verse xv., _bals-pares_ == dress-b.a.l.l.s.

APPENDIX.

=Epistle Of Karshish.= Dr. R. Garnett published the following note on this poem in the _Academy_ of 10th October, 1896:--

"BRITISH MUSEUM, "_16th Sept., 1896_.

"Browning, in his 'Epistle of Karshish,' commits an oversight, as it seems to me, in making Lazarus fifty years of age at the eve of the siege of Jerusalem, _circa_ 68 A.D. The miracle of which he was the subject is supposed to have been wrought about 33 A.D. He would consequently have been only about fifteen at the time, which is quite inconsistent with the general tenor of the narrative. According to tradition, Lazarus was thirty at the time, and lived thirty years longer, not surviving, therefore, to the date intimated in Browning's poem.

'A black lynx snarled and p.r.i.c.ked a tufted ear.'

If I do not mistake, there is no such thing as a black lynx, except as a _lusus naturae_. It is easy to see how the generally accurate Browning fell into this error. The Syrian lynx, which he is describing, has black tufted ears--the whole outer surface of the ear is black--and the Turkish name by which it is commonly known, _cara-cal_, means 'black ear.' Browning, intent on the creature's special characteristic, has extended the blackness from the ear to the entire body."

=Pietro of Abano.= Verse 10.

"ALPHABET ON A MAN'S EYES.

"In Alonzo Lee, of Atlanta, Galveston, the Americans have found a singular phenomenon, nothing less than the alphabet marked quite plainly on the edge of the iris of each of his eyes similar to the figures on a watch. This wonder is said to have been caused by his mother, who was an illiterate woman, desiring to educate herself. In each eye the entire alphabet is plainly marked in capital letters, not, however, in regular order. The 'W' is in the lower part of the iris and 'X' at the top. They appear to be made if white fibre wove cord, being connected at the top by another cord seemingly linked to the upper extremity of each letter. The eye itself is blue, with white lines radiating from the centre almost to the letters themselves: these letters do not slope exactly in the direction that the radials extend from the centre. Beginning at the bottom with 'W' and following the letters like the hands of a watch they can be more readily distinguished. So too, the irregularity is a striking feature, showing how the mother learned her letters in broken patches, as a child learns when beginning to read. Lee, who has been three times divorced, has a son whose eyes are similar to his father's."

_Echo_, 23rd March, 1896.

=The Ring and the Book.= Book I., l. 902. "_Caritellas_," evidently for "carretellas." "A kind of drosky with a single pony harnessed to the near side of the pole." See _The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton_, vol. ii., p.

538.

Book I. "_O Lyric Love_," etc. The following letter was sent to me as likely to be interesting on account of Mr. Browning's own explanation of his terms _Whiteness_ and _Wanness_. My correspondent says: "I happen to have an original letter from R. Browning in which he says, 'The greater and lesser lights indicate the greater and less proximity of the person,'"

etc. Wanness should be taken as meaning simply less bright than absolute whiteness, as Keats speaks of "wannish fire," etc.

Book VIII., l. 329. The torture referred to by De Archangelis as the _Vigiliarum_, is evidently identical with that called the "Vigilia" and which is described in Hare's _Walks in Rome_. "Upon a high joint-stool, the seat about a span large, and, instead of being flat, cut in the form of pointed diamonds, the victim was seated; the legs were fastened together and without support; the hands bound behind the back, and with a running knot attached to a cord descending from the ceiling; the body was loosely attached to the back of the chair, cut also into angular points. A wretch stood near pushing the victim from side to side; and now and then, by pulling the rope from the ceiling, gave the arms most painful jerks. In this horrible position the sufferer remained forty hours, the a.s.sistants being changed every fifth hour.

Book IX., l. 1109. "_The sole joke of Thucydides._" Mr. F. C. Snow, writing from Oxford to the _Daily News_, says: "Browning was misled by a scholiast. The ancient critics said, 'Here the lion laughs,' with reference to the pa.s.sage of Thucydides where the story of Cylon is told (l. 126, see also the Scholia). But they did not mean that the pa.s.sage contained any joke, only that the narrative style was unusually genial.

There are other pa.s.sages of Thucydides where his grim humour comes much nearer to the modern idea of pleasantry."

"The lion, lo, hath laughed!" in the context, proves the correctness of Mr. Snow's explanation.

=Sordello.= Book III., l. 975. In the _Athenaeum_, 12th December, 1896, Mr.

Alfred Forman published a letter on this pa.s.sage which is an important contribution to our commentary on _Sordello_.

"In a review of Dr. Berdoe's _Browning Cyclopaedia_, I have seen it asked: 'In what form did Empedocles put up with aetna for a stimulant?'

In what form indeed! But I think a more pertinent question would have been: How can either Empedocles or, as is usually alleged, Landor have anything to do with the pa.s.sage referred to? To me it has always appeared to be aeschylus whom Browning (vol. i, pp. 169-70, of the seventeen-volume edition, 1888-94, Smith, Elder & Co.) addresses as

'Yours, my patron-friend, Whose great verse blares unintermittent on Like your own trumpeter at Marathon,-- You who, Plataea and Salamis being scant, Put up with aetna for a stimulant.

I need not recall the legend of the Greek tragedian having fought at Marathon as well as at Salamis and Plataea (the 'stimulants' to his 'Persae'), but his ancient biographer further says: 'Having arrived in Sicily, as Hiero was then engaged in founding the city of aetna, he exhibited his "Women of aetna" by way of predicting a prosperous life to those who contributed to colonise the city.' After a perusal of pp.

52-53, we may imagine that aeschylus was one of Browning's audience ('few living, many dead'), and not unlikely, as coming from the realm where Browning says he had 'many lovers' (p. 53), to be designated a 'patron-friend,' while the 'great verse' that 'blares unintermittent on,' etc., is surely identical (pp. 53-4) with

'The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown Up out of memories of Marathon.

"I have not been able to discover any substantiating facts in the life, or pa.s.sages in the works, of Landor; but possibly some correspondent of yours may be able to lay me under an obligation by pointing such out. A simple statement to the effect that 'Browning said so' could not, I think, in such a case as the one in question, be deemed satisfactory. Dr. Garnett writes to me on the matter as follows:--

"'Could the poet alluded to in _Sordello_ possibly be R. H. Horne?

Horne was, I think, an intimate friend of Browning's; he was more aeschylean than any other contemporary; he had served as soldier and sailor in the Mexican War; and, having given up arms for letters, might be said to have forsaken Marathon and Salamis for aetna, although the introduction of aetna would be quite incomprehensible but for the historical fact of aeschylus's secession thither. I do not feel convinced that the identification of Horne with Browning's "patron-friend" is the correct interpretation, but it seems to me to deserve attention.'

"While on the subject of _Sordello_, may I ask how (as I have seen it a.s.sumed in 'Browning' books) the 'child barefoot and rosy' of p. 288 can be Sordello himself? In the first place, are not the words he is singing taken from Sordello's own 'Goito lay' (cf. pp. 97, 249, 289), with which he vanquished Eglamor, long after he had ceased to be, if he ever was, a rosy and barefoot child? And, in the second place, is there any indication in the whole poem that Sordello was ever 'by sparkling Asolo,' where the aforesaid child is described as being?

"ALFRED FORMAN."

Book VI., l. 614:--

"_The old fable of the two eagles._" They--

"Went two ways About the world: where, in the midst, they met, Though on a shifting waste of sand, men set Jove's temple."

The story is referred to in Pindar's "Fourth Pythian Ode," where he speaks of "Jove's golden eagles." These were placed near the Delphic tripod, and probably gave rise to the story of the two birds sent by Jupiter, one from the east and the other from the west, and which met at Pytho or Delphi.

Mr. Browning seems to be in error here. Delphi was not "on a shifting waste of sand," but on a mountain; and the temple was not that of Jove, but of Apollo. The poet appears to have sent the eagles to the oasis of Ammon, which was in the middle of a sandy desert and had a most famous oracle of Zeus.

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