The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 5

1881. The Browning Society inaugurated, Oct. 28th.

1883. _Jocoseria_ published.

1884. _Ferishtah's Fancies_ published.

1887. _Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day_ published.

1889. _Asolando: Fancies and Facts_, published.

Robert Browning died in Venice, December 12th; buried in Westminster Abbey, December 31st.

BROWNING CYCLOPaeDIA.

=Abano=, a town of Northern Italy, 6 miles S.W. of Padua, the birthplace of PIETRO D'ABANO (_q.v._).

=Abate, Paolo= (or Paul), brother of Count Guido Franceschini. He was a priest residing in Rome. (_Ring and the Book._)

=Abbas I.=, surnamed THE GREAT. _See_ SHAH ABBAS.

=Abd-el-Kader=, a celebrated Algerian warrior, born in 1807, who in 1831 led the combined tribes in their attempt to resist the progress of the French in Algeria. He surrendered to the French in 1847, and was set at liberty by Louis Napoleon in 1852. (_Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kader._)

=Abt Vogler.= [THE MAN.] (_Dramatis Personae_, 1864.) George Joseph Vogler, usually known as Abbe Vogler, or, as Mr. Browning has called him, Abt Vogler, was an organist and composer, and was born at Wurzburg, June 15th, 1749. He was educated for the Church from his very early years, as is the custom with Catholics; but every opportunity was taken to develop his musical talents, which were so marked that at ten years old he could play the organ and the violin well. In 1769 he studied at Bamberg, removing thence in 1771 to Mannheim. In 1773 he was ordained priest in Rome, and was admitted to the famous Academy of Arcadia, was made a Knight of the Golden Spur, and was appointed protonotary and chamberlain to the Pope. He returned to Mannheim in 1775, and opened a School of Music. He published several works on music, composition, and the art of forming the voice. He was made chaplain and _Kapellmeister_ at Mannheim, and about this time composed a _Miserere_. In 1779 Vogler went to Munich. In 1780 he composed an opera, _The Merchant of Smyrna_, a ballet, and a melodrama. In 1781 his opera _Albert III._ was produced at the Court Theatre of Munich. As it was not very favourably received, he resigned his posts of chaplain and choirmaster. He was severely criticised by German musical critics, and Mozart spoke of him with much bitterness. Having thus failed in his own country, he went to Paris, and in 1783 brought out his comic opera, _La Kermesse_. It was so great a failure that it was not possible to conclude the performance. He then travelled in Spain, Greece, and the East. In 1786 he returned to Europe, and went to Sweden, and was appointed _Kapellmeister_ to the King. At Stockholm he founded his second School of Music, and became famous by his performances on an instrument which he had invented, called the "Orchestrion." This is described by Mr. G. Grove as a very compact organ, in which four keyboards of five octaves each, and a pedal board of thirty-six keys, with swell complete, were packed into a cube of nine feet. In 1789 Vogler performed without success at Amsterdam.

He then went with his organ to London, and gave a series of concerts at the Pantheon in January 1790. These proved eminently successful: Vogler realised over 1200, and made a name as an organist. He seems to have excelled in pedal playing, but it is not true that pedals were unknown in England until the Abbe introduced them. "His most popular pieces," says the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, "were a fugue on themes from the 'Hallelujah Chorus,' composed after a visit to the Handel festival at Westminster Abbey, and on 'A Musical Picture for the Organ,' by Knecht, containing the imitation of a storm. In 1790 Vogler returned to Germany, and met with the most brilliant receptions at Coblentz and Frankfort, and at Esslingen was presented with the 'wine of honour' reserved usually for royal personages. At Mannheim, in 1791, his opera _Castor and Pollux_ was performed, and became very popular. We find him henceforward travelling all over Europe. At Berlin he performed in 1800, at Vienna in 1804, and at Munich in 1806. Next year we find him at Darmstadt, accepting by the invitation of the Grand Duke Louis I. the post of _Kapellmeister_. He opened his third school of music at Darmstadt, one of his pupils being Weber, another Meyerbeer, a third Gansbacher. The affection of these three young students for their master was 'unbounded.' He was indefatigable in the pursuit of his art to the last, genial, kind and pleasant to all; he lived for music, and died in harness, of apoplexy, at Darmstadt, May 6th, 1814."

[THE POEM.] The musician has been extemporising on his organ, and as the performance in its beauty and completeness impresses his mind with wonderful and mysterious imagery, he wishes it could be permanent. He has created something, but it has vanished. He compares it to a palace built of sweet sounds, such a structure as angels or demons might have reared for Solomon, a magic building wherein to lodge some loved princess, a palace more beautiful than anything which human architect could plan or power of man construct. His music structure has been real to him, it took shape in his brain, it was his creation: surely, somewhere, somehow, it might be permanent. It was too beautiful, too perfect to be lost. Only the evil perishes, only good is permanent; and this music was so true, so good, so beautiful, it could not be that it was lost, as false, bad, ugly things are lost! But Vogler was but an extemporiser, and such musicians cannot give permanence to their performances. He has reached a state almost of ecstasy, and the spiritual has a.s.serted its power over the material, raising the soul to heaven and bringing down heaven to earth. In the words of Milton, he had become--

"All ear, And took in strains that might create a soul Under the ribs of death,"

and in this heavenly rapture he saw strange presences, the forms of the better to come, or "the wonderful Dead who have pa.s.sed through the body and gone." The other arts are inferior to music, they are more human, more material than music,--"here is the finger of G.o.d." And this was all to go--"Never to be again!" This reflection starts the poet on a familiar train of thought--the permanence of good, the impermanence, the nullity of evil. The Cabbalists taught that evil was only the shadow of the Light; Maimonides, Spinoza, Hegel and Emerson taught the doctrine which Mr.

Browning here inculcates. Leibnitz speaks of "evil as a mere set-off to the good in the world, which it increases by contrast, and at other times reduces moral to metaphysical evil by giving it a merely negative existence." "G.o.d," argued Aquinas (_Sum. Theol._, i., -- 49), "created everything that exists, but Sin was _nothing_; so G.o.d was not the Author of it." So, Augustine and Peter Lombard maintained likewise the negative nature of moral evil:--

"Evil is more frail than nonent.i.ty."

(Proclus, _De Prov._, in Cory's _Fragm._)

"Let no one therefore say that there are precedaneous productive principles of evil in the nature of intellectual paradigms of evil in the same manner as there are of good, or that there is a malefic soul or an evil-producing cause in the G.o.ds, nor let him introduce sedition or eternal war against the First G.o.d" (Proclus, _Six Books_, trans. Thomas Taylor, B. i., c. 27). In heaven, then, we are to find "the perfect round," "the broken arcs" are all we can discover here. Rising in the tenth stanza to the highest stature of the philosophical truth, the poet proclaims his faith in the existence of a home of pure ideals. The harmony of a few bars of music on earth suggests the eternal harmonies of the Author of order; the rays of goodness which brighten our path here suggest a Sun of Righteousness from which they emanate. The lover and the bard send up to G.o.d their feeble aspirations after the beautiful and the true, and these aspirations are stored in His treasury. Failure? It is but the pause in the music, the discords that set off the harmony. To the musician this is not something to be reasoned about mathematically; it is knowledge, it is a revelation which, however informing and consoling while it lasts, must not too long divert a man from the common things of life; patient to bear and suffer because strengthened by the beautiful vision of the Mount of Transfiguration, proud that he has been permitted to have part and lot with such high matters, he can solemnly acquiesce in the common round and daily task. He feels for the common chord, descends the mount, gliding by semitones, glancing back at the heights he is leaving, till at last, finding his true resting-place in the C Major of this life, soothed and sweetly lulled by the heavenly harmonies, he falls asleep. The Esoteric system of the Cabbalah was largely the outcome of Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism, and from these have sprung the theosophy of Meister Eckhart and Jacob Boehme. It is certain that Mr. Browning was a student of the latter "theosophist" _par excellence_. In his poem _Transcendentalism_ he refers to the philosopher by name, and there are evidences that the poet's mind was deeply tinctured with his ideas. The influence of Paracelsus on Boehme's mind is conspicuous in his works, and the sympathy with that great medical reformer which the poem of _Paracelsus_ betrays on every page was no doubt largely due to Boehme's teaching. The curious blending of theosophy and science which is found in the poem of _Paracelsus_ is not a less faithful picture of Mr. Browning's philosophical system than of that of his hero. Professor Andrew Seth, in the article on theosophy in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, thus expounds Boehme's speculation on evil: it turns "upon the necessity of reconciling the existence and the might of evil with the existence of an all-embracing and all-powerful G.o.d.... He faces the difficulty boldly--he insists on the necessity of the Nay to the Yea, of the negative to the positive." Eckhart seems to have largely influenced Boehme. We have in this poem what has been aptly called "the richest, deepest, fullest poem on music in the language." (Symons.) Mr. Browning was a thorough musician himself, and no poet ever wrote what the musician felt till he penned the wonderful music-poems _Abt Vogler_, _Master Hugues of Saxe Gotha_ and _A Toccata of Galuppi's_. The comparison between music and architecture is as old as it is beautiful. Amphion built the walls of Thebes to the sound of his lyre--fitting the stones together by the power of his music, and "Ilion's towers," they say, "rose with life to Apollo's song." The "Keeley Motor"

was an attempt in this direction. Coleridge, too, in _Kubla Khan_, with "music loud and long would build that dome in air." In the May 1891 number of the _Century Magazine_ there is a very curious and a very interesting account by Mrs. Watts Hughes of certain "Voice-figures" which have lately excited so much interest in scientific and musical circles. "By a simple method figures of sounds are produced which remain permanent. On a thin indiarubber membrane, stretched across the bottom of a tube of sufficient diameter for the purpose, is poured a small quant.i.ty of water or some denser liquid, such as glycerine; and into this liquid are sprinkled a few grains of some ordinary solid pigment. A note of music is then sung down the tube by Mrs. Watts Hughes, and immediately the atoms of suspended pigment arrange themselves in a definite form, many of the forms bearing a curious resemblance to some of the most beautiful objects in Nature--flowers, sh.e.l.ls, or trees. After the note has ceased to sound the forms remain, and the pictorial representations given in the _Century_ show how wonderfully accurate is the lovely mimicry of the image-making music." (_Spectator_, May 16th, 1891.) The thought of some soul of permanence behind the transience of music, provided the motive of Adelaide Procter's _Lost Chord_. In the _Idylls of the King_ Lord Tennyson says--

"The city is built To music, therefore never built at all, And therefore built for ever."

Cardinal Newman, too, as the writer in the _Spectator_ points out, expresses the same thought in his Oxford sermon, "The Theory of Development in Christian Doctrine." The preacher said: "Take another example of an outward and earthly form of economy, under which great wonders unknown seem to be typified--I mean musical sounds, as they are exhibited most perfectly in instrumental harmony. There are seven notes in the scale: make them fourteen; yet what a slender outfit for so vast an enterprise! What science brings so much out of so little? Out of what poor elements does some great master create his new world! Shall we say that all this exuberant inventiveness is a mere ingenuity or trick of art, like some fashion of the day, without reality, without meaning?... Is it possible that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound which is gone and perishes? Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself? It is not so! It cannot be."

NOTES.--STANZA I. "_Solomon willed._" Jewish legend gave Solomon sovereignty over the demons and a lordship over the powers of Nature. In the Moslem East these fables have found a resting-place in much of its literature, from the Koran onwards. Solomon was thought to have owed his power over the spiritual world to the possession of a seal on which the "most great name of G.o.d was engraved" (see Lane, _Arabian Nights_, Introd., note 21, and chap. i., note 15). In Eastern philosophy, the "Upadana" or the intense desire produces WILL, and it is the _will_ which develops _force_, and the latter generates _matter_, or an object having form (see _Isis Unveiled_, Blavatsky, vol. ii., p. 320). "_Pile him a palace._" Goethe called architecture "petrified music." "_The ineffable Name_": the unspeakable name of G.o.d. Jehovah is the European transcription of the sacred tetragrammaton [Hebrew: YHWH]. The later Jews subst.i.tuted the word Adonai in reading the ineffable Name in their law and prayers. Mysterious names of the Deity are common in other religions than the Jewish. In the Egyptian _Funeral Ritual_, and in a hymn of the Soul, the Word and the Name are referred to in connection with hidden secrets.

The Jewish enemies of Christ said that the miracles were wrought by the power of the ineffable Name, which had been stolen from the Sanctuary.

(See _Isis Unveiled_, vol. ii, p. 387.)--STANZA III. _Rampired_: an old form of ramparted. "_The Illumination of Rome's Dome._" One of the great sights of Rome used to be the illumination of the dome of St. Peter's on great festivals, such as that of Easter. Since the occupation of Rome by the Italian Government such spectacles, if not wholly discontinued, have been shorn of most of their splendour.--STANZA IV. "_No more near nor far._" Hegel says that "Music frees us from the phenomena of time and s.p.a.ce," and shows that they are not essentials, but accidents of our condition here.--STANZA V. "_Protoplast._" The thing first formed, as a copy to be imitated.--STANZA VII. "_That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star._" "A star is perfect and beautiful, and rays of light come from it." STANZA XII. "_Common chord._" A chord consisting of the fundamental tone with its third and fifth. "_Blunt it into a ninth._" A ninth is (_a_) An interval containing an octave and a second; (_b_) a chord consisting of the common chord, with the eighth advanced one note. "_C Major of this life._" Miss Helen Ormerod, in a paper read to the Browning Society of London, November 30th, 1888, has explained these musical terms and expressions. "C Major is what may be called the natural scale, having no sharps or flats in its signature. A Minor, with A (a third below C) for its keynote, has the same signature, but sharps are introduced for the formation of correct intervals. Pauer says that minor keys are chosen for expressing 'intense seriousness, soft melancholy, longing, sadness, and pa.s.sionate grief'; whilst major keys with sharps and flats in their signatures are said to have distinctive qualities;--perhaps Browning chose C major for the key, as the one most allied to matters of everyday life, including rest and sleep. The common chord, as it is called, the keynote with its third and fifth, contains the rudiments of all music."

=Adam, Lilith, and Eve= (_Jocoseria_, 1883). The Talmudists, in their fanciful commentaries on the Old Testament, say that Adam had a wife before he married Eve, who was called Lilith; she was the mother of demons, and flew away from Adam, and the Lord then created Eve from one of his ribs. Lilith had been formed of clay, and was sensual and disobedient; the more spiritual Eve became his saviour from the snares of his first wife. Mr. Browning in this poem merely uses the names, and makes no reference to the Talmudic or Gnostic legends connected with them. Under the terror inspired by a thunderstorm, two women begin a confession of which they make light when the danger has pa.s.sed away. The man says he saw through the joke, and the episode was over. It is a powerful and suggestive story of falsehood, fear, and a forgiveness too readily accorded by a man who makes a joke of guilt when he has lost nothing by it.

=Adelaide, The Tuscan= (_Sordello_), was the second wife of Eccelino da Romano, of the party of the Ghibellines.

=Admetus= (_Balaustion's Adventure_). King of Pherae, in Thessaly. Apollo tended his flocks for one year, and obtained the favour that Admetus should never die if another person could be found to lay down his life for him: his wife, Alcestis, in consequence cheerfully devoted herself to death for him.

=aeschylus.= The Greek tragic poet who wrote the _Agamemnon_ translated by Mr. Browning. aeschylus was born in the year 525 before Christ, at Eleusis, a town of Attica opposite the island of Salamis. When thirty-five years old aeschylus not only fought at Marathon, but distinguished himself for his valour. He was fifty-three years old when he gained the prize at Athens, B.C. 472, for his trilogy or set of three connected plays. He wrote some seventy pieces, but only seven have come down to our times: they are _Prometheus Chained_, _The Suppliants_, _The Seven Chiefs against Thebes_, _Agamemnon_, _The Choephorae_, _The Furies_, and _The Persians_.

The _Agamemnon_, which Mr. Browning has translated, is one of the plays of the Oresteia, the _Choephorae_ and the _Eumenides_ or Furies completing the trilogy. The poet died at Gela, in Sicily, B.C. 456. aeschylus both in order of time and power was the first of the three great tragic poets of ancient Greece. Euripides and Sophocles were the other two.

=After.= See BEFORE and AFTER.

=Agamemnon of aeschylus, The.= A translation published in London, 1877. The scene of the play is laid by aeschylus at Argos, before the palace of Agamemnon, Mycenae, however, really being his seat. Agamemnon was a son of Atreus according to Homer, and was the brother of Menelaus. In a later account he is described as the son of Pleisthenes, who was the son of Atreus. He was king over Argolis, Corinth, Achaia, and many islands. He married Clytemnestra, daughter of Tyndarus, king of Sparta, by whom he had three daughters Chrysothemis, Iphigenia and Electra, and one son Orestes.

When Helen was carried off by Paris, Agamemnon was chosen to be commander-in-chief of the expedition sent against Troy by the Greeks, as he was the mightiest prince in Greece. He contributed one hundred ships manned with warriors, besides lending sixty more to the Arcadians. The fleet being detained at Aulis by a storm, it was declared that Agamemnon had offended Diana by slaying a deer sacred to her, and by boasting that he was a better hunter than the G.o.ddess; and he was compelled to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to appease her anger. Diana is said by some to have accepted a stag in her place. Homer describes Agamemnon as one of the bravest warriors before Troy, but having received Chryseis, the daughter of Chryses, priest of Apollo, as a prize of war, he arrogantly refused to allow her father to ransom her. This brought a plague on the Grecian host, and their ruin was almost completed by his carrying off Briseis, who was the prize of Achilles--who refused in consequence to fight, remaining sulking in his tent. After the fall of Troy the beautiful princess Ca.s.sandra fell to Agamemnon as his share of the spoils. She was endowed with the gift of prophecy, and warned him not to return home. The warning, however, was disregarded, although he was a.s.sured that his wife would put him to death. During the absence of Agamemnon Clytemnestra had formed an adulterous connection with aegisthus, the son of Thyestes and Pelopia; and when he returned, the watchman having announced his approach to his palace, Clytemnestra killed Ca.s.sandra, and her lover murdered Agamemnon and his comrades. The tragic poets, however, make Clytemnestra throw a net over her husband while he was in his bath, and kill him with the a.s.sistance of aegisthus, in revenge for the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia. In the introduction to the translation of the Agamemnon in _Morley's Universal Library_ we have an excellent description of the great play. "In this tragedy the reader will find the strongest traces of the genius of aeschylus, and the most distinguishing proofs of his skill. Great in his conceptions, bold and daring in his metaphors, strong in his pa.s.sion, he here touches the heart with uncommon emotions. The odes are particularly sublime, and the oracular spirit that breathes through them adds a wonderful elevation and dignity to them. Short as the part of Agamemnon is, the poet has the address to throw such an amiable dignity around him that we soon become interested in his favour, and are predisposed to lament his fate. The character of Clytemnestra is finely marked--a high-spirited, artful, close, determined, dangerous woman. But the poet has nowhere exerted such efforts of his genius as in the scene where Ca.s.sandra appears: as a prophetess, she gives every mark of the divine inspiration, from the dark and distant hint, through all the n.o.ble imagery of the prophetic enthusiasm; till, as the catastrophe advances, she more and more plainly declares it; as a suffering princess, her grief is plaintive, lively, and piercing; yet she goes to meet her death, which she clearly foretells, with a firmness worthy the daughter of Priam and the sister of Hector; nothing can be more animated or more interesting than this scene. The conduct of the poet through this play is exquisitely judicious: every scene gives us some obscure hint or ominous presage, enough to keep our attention always raised, and to prepare us for the event; even the studied caution of Clytemnestra is finely managed to produce that effect; whilst the secrecy with which she conducts her design keeps us in suspense, and prevents a discovery till we hear the dying groans of her murdered husband." As Mr. Browning announces in his preface to his translation of the tragedy, he has aimed at being literal at every cost, and has everywhere reproduced the peculiarities of the original. He has also made an attempt to reproduce the Greek spelling in English, which has made the poem more difficult than some other translations to the non-cla.s.sical reader. We have ample recompense for this peculiarity by the way in which he has imbibed the spirit of his author, and so faithfully reproduced, not alone his phraseology, but his mind. It required a rugged poet to interpret for us correctly the ruggedness of an aeschylus. Line for line and word for word we have the tragedy in English as the Greeks had it in their own tongue. If there are obscurities, we must not in the present instance blame Mr. Browning: a reference to the original, so authorities tell us, will prove that Greek poets were at times obscure.

The _Agamemnon_ is part of the Oresteian Trilogy or group of three plays; this trilogy of aeschylus is our only example extant, and it is necessary to say something of the other parts. Atreus, the son of Pelops, was king of Mycenae. By his wife aerope were born to him Pleisthenes, Menelaus, and Agamemnon. Thyestes, the brother of Atreus, had followed him to Argos, and there seduced his wife, by whom he had two, or according to some, three children. Thyestes was banished from court on account of this, but was soon afterwards recalled by his brother that he might be revenged upon him. He prepared a banquet where Thyestes was served with the flesh of the children who were the offspring of his incestuous connection with his sister-in-law the queen. When the feast was concluded, the heads of the murdered children were produced, that Thyestes might see of what he had been partaking. It was fabled that the sun in horror shrank back in his course at the horrible sight. Thyestes fled. The crime brought the most terrible evils upon the family of which Agamemnon was a member. When this hero was murdered by his wife and her paramour, young Orestes was saved from his mother's dagger by his sister Electra. When he reached the years of manhood, he visited his ancestral home, and a.s.sa.s.sinated both his mother and her lover aegisthus. In consequence of this he was tormented by the Furies, and he exiled himself to Athens, where Apollo purified him.

The murder of Clytemnestra by her son is described in the second play of the Trilogy, called the _Choephorae or the Libation Pourers_. _The Furies_ is the t.i.tle of the third and concluding play of the Trilogy. (For an account of aeschylus see p. 8.)

NOTES.--[N.B. The references here are to the pages of the poem in the last edition of the complete works in sixteen vols.]--P. 269, _Atreidai_, a patronymic given by Homer to Agamemnon and Menelaus, as being the sons of Atreus; _Troia_, the capital of Troas == Troy. p. 270, _Ilion_, a citadel of Troy; _Menelaos_, a king of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon. p. 271, _Argives_, the inhabitants of Argos and surrounding country; _Alexandros_, the name of Paris in the Iliad: _Atreus_, son of Pelops, was king of Mycenae; _Danaoi_, a name given to the people of Argos and to all the Greeks; _Troes_ == Trojans. p. 272, _Tundareus_, king of Lacedaemon, who married Leda; _Klutaimnestra_ == Clytemnestra, daughter of Tyndarus by Leda. p. 273, _Teukris land_, the land of the Trojans--from Teucer, their king; "_Achaians' two-throned empery_": the brother kings Agamemnon and Menelaos. p. 274, _Linos_, the personification of a dirge or lamentation; _Priamos_, the last king of Troy, made prisoner by Hercules when he took the city. p. 275, _Icos Paian_, an epithet of Apollo; _Kalchas_, a soothsayer who accompanied the Greeks to Troy. p. 277, _Kalchis_, the chief city of Euba, founded by an Athenian colony; _Aulis_, a town of Botia, near Kalchis; _Strumon_, a river which separates Thrace from Macedonia. p. 282, _Hephaistos_, the G.o.d of fire, according to Homer the son of Zeus and Hera. The Romans called the Greek Hephaistos Vulcan, though Vulcan was an Italian deity. The news of the fall of Troy was brought to Mycenae by means of beacon fires, so fire was the messenger.

_Ide_ == Mount Ida; _of Lemnos_, an island in the aegean Sea. p. 283, _Athoan_, of Mount Athos; _Makistos_ == Macistos, a city of Tryphylia; _Euripos_, a narrow strait separating Euba from Botia; _Messapios_, a name of Botia; _Asopos_, a river of Thessaly; _Mount Kitharion_, sacred to the Muses and Jupiter. Hercules killed the great lion there; _Mount Aigiplanktos_ was in Megaris; _Strait Saronic_: Saronicus Sinus was a bay of the aegean Sea; _Mount Arachnaios_, in Argolis. p. 286, _Ate_, the G.o.ddess of revenge; _Ares_, the Greek name of the war-G.o.d Mars. p. 288, _Aphrodite_, a name of Venus. p. 290, _Erinues_ == the Furies. p. 292, _Puthian_ == Delphic; _Skamandros_, a river of Troas. p. 293, _Priamidai_, the patronymic of the descendants of Priam. p.

300, _Threkian breezes_ == Thracian breezes; _Aigaian Sea_, the aegean Sea; _Achaian_, pertaining to Achaia, in Greece. p. 301, _Meneleos_, son of Atreus, brother to Agamemnon and husband of Helen; _water-Haides_, the engulfing sea. p. 302, _Zephuros_, the west wind; _Simois_, a river in Troas which rises in Mount Ida and falls into the Xanthus. p. 304, _Erinus_, an avenging deity. p. 307, _the Argeian monster_ == the company of Argives concealed in the wooden horse; _Pleiads_, a name given to seven of the daughters of Atlas by Pleione, one of the Oceanides. They became a constellation in the heavens after death. p. 309, "_triple-bodied Geruon the Second_," Geryon, king of the Balearic Isles, fabled to have three bodies and three heads: Hercules slew him; _Strophios the Phokian_, at whose house Orestes was brought up with Pylades son of Strophios. p. 316, _Ka.s.sandra_, daughter of Priam, slain by Clytemnestra. p. 317, "_Alkmene's child_"--Hercules was the son of Alkmene. p. 319, _Ototoi_--alas!; _Loxias_, a surname of Apollo. p. 322, _papai, papai_ == O strange!

wonderful! p. 324, _Itus_, or _Itys_, son of Tereus, killed by his mother.

p. 325, "_Orthian style_," in a shrill tone. p. 332, _Lukeion Apollon_--Lyceus was a surname of Apollo. p. 335, _Surian_ == Syrian. p.

343, _Chruseids_, the patronymic of the descendants of Astynome, the daughter of Chryses. p. 348, _Iphigeneia_, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; her father offered to sacrifice her to appease the wrath of Diana. p. 350, _The Daimon of the Pleisthenidai_, the genius of Agamemnon's family. p. 351, _Thuestes_, son of Pelops, brother of Atreus; _Pelopidai_, descendants of Pelops, son of Tantalus.

=Agricola, Johannes=, (_Johannes Agricola in Meditation_,) was one of the foremost of the German Reformers. He was born at Eisleben, April 20th, 1492. He met Luther whilst a student at Wittenberg, and became attached to him, accompanying him to the Leipsic a.s.sembly of Divines, where he acted as recording secretary. He established the reformed religion at Frankfort.

In 1536 he was called to fill a professorial chair at Wittenberg. Here he first taught the views which Luther termed _Antinomian_. He held that Christians were entirely free from the Divine law, being under the Gospel alone. He denied that Christians were under any obligations to keep the ten commandments. Mr. Browning has quite accurately, though unsparingly, exposed his impious teaching in his poem _Johannes Agricola in Meditation_ (_q.v._).

=Agrippa, Henry Cornelius=, the mediaeval doctor and magician, was born at Cologne in 1486, and was educated at the university of that city. He was denounced in 1509 by the monks, who called him an "impious cabalist"; in 1531 he published his treatise _De Occulta Philosophia_, written by the advice and with the a.s.sistance of the Abbot Trithemius of Wurzburg, the preceptor of Paracelsus. In 1510 he came to London on a diplomatic mission, and was the guest of Dean Colet at Stepney. He afterwards fought at the battle of Ravenna. In 1511 he attended the schismatic council of Pisa as a theologian. In 1515 he lectured at the university of Pavia. We afterwards find him at Metz, Geneva, and Freiburg, where he practised as a physician. In 1529 he was appointed historiographer to Charles V. He died at Gren.o.ble in 1535. A man of such vast and varied learning could hardly in those days have avoided being accused of diabolical practices and heretical opinions; the only wonder is that he was not burned alive for his scientific attainments, which were looked upon as dangerous in the highest degree. (_Pauline_ in the Latin prefatory note.)

="A King lived long ago."= Song in _Pippa Pa.s.ses_, which is sung by the girl as she pa.s.ses the house of Luigi. Mr. Browning first published the song in the _Monthly Repository_, in 1835 (vol ix., N.S., pp. 707-8), it was reprinted with added lines, and was revised throughout, in _Pippa Pa.s.ses_ 1841.

=Alberic= (_Sordello_). Son of Eccelino the monk, described in the poem as "many-muscled, big-boned Alberic."

=Alcestis= (_Balaustion's Adventure_), the daughter of Pelias, was the wife of Admetus, son of Pheres, who was king of Pherae in Thessaly. Apollo, when--for an offence against Jupiter--he was banished from heaven, had been kindly received by Pheres, and had obtained from the Fates a promise that his benefactor should never die if he could find another person willing to lay down his life for him. The story how this promise was obtained is set forth with great dramatic force in Mr. Browning's _Apollo and the Fates_ (_q.v._). Alcestis volunteered to die in the place of her husband when he lay sick unto death. Her sacrifice was accepted, and she died. But Hercules, who had been hospitably entertained by Pheres, hearing of the tragic circ.u.mstance, brought Alcestis from Hades out of grat.i.tude to his host, and presented her to her grief-stricken husband. Euripides has used these circ.u.mstances as the basis of his tragedy of _Alcestis_.

="All Service ranks the same with G.o.d."= A song in _Pippa Pa.s.ses_.

=Amphibian.= The Prologue to _Fifine at the Fair_ is headed "Amphibian,"

under which t.i.tle it is included in the _Selections_.

=Anael.= A Druse girl who loves Djabal and believes him to be divine (_The Return of the Druses_).

=Andrea del Sarto= [THE MAN] _Men and Women_, 1855, called "the faultless painter," also Andrea senza Errori (Andrew the Unerring) was a great painter of the Florentine School. His father was a tailor (_sarto_), so the Italians, with their pa.s.sion for nicknames, dubbed him "The Tailor's Andrew." He was born in Gualfonda, Florence, in 1487. It is not certain what was his real name: Vannuchi has been constantly given, but without authority. He was at first put to work with a goldsmith, but he disliked the business, and preferred drawing his master's models. He was next placed with a wood-carver and painter, one Gian Barill, with whom he remained till 1498. He then went to the draughtsman and colourist, Piero di Cosimo, under whom he studied the cartoons of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. We next find him opening a shop in partnership with his friend Francia Bigio, but the arrangement did not last long. The brotherhood of the Servi employed Andrea from 1509 to 1514 in adorning their church of the Annunziata at Florence. Mrs. Jameson, in her _Legends of the Monastic Orders_, thus describes the church and cloisters identified with the work of this painter at Florence: "Every one who has been at Florence must remember the Church of the 'Annunziata'; every one who remembers that glorious church, who has lingered in the cloisters and the cortile where Andrea del Sarto put forth all his power--where the _Madonna del Sacco_ and the _Birth of the Virgin_ attest what he could _do_ and _be_ as a painter--will feel interested in the Order of the SERVI. Among the extraordinary outbreaks of religious enthusiasm in the thirteenth century, this was in its origin one of the most singular. Seven Florentines, rich, n.o.ble, and in the prime of life, whom a similarity of taste and feeling had drawn together, used to meet every day in a chapel dedicated to the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin (then outside the walls of Florence), there to sing the _Ave_ or evening service in honour of the Madonna, for whom they had an especial love and veneration. They became known and remarked in their neighbourhood for those acts of piety, so that the women and children used to point at them as they pa.s.sed through the streets and exclaim, _Guardate i Servi di Maria_ (Behold the _Servants_ of the Virgin!) Hence the t.i.tle afterwards a.s.sumed by the Order." These seven gentlemen at length forsook the world, sold all their possessions and distributed their money to the poor, and retired to a solitary spot in the mountains about six miles out of Florence; here they built themselves huts of boughs and stones, and devoted themselves to the service of the Virgin. It was for the cloisters of the church of the Servi at Florence that Andrea del Sarto painted the _Riposo_. His _Nativity of the B.V. Mary_ is a grand fresco, the characters are n.o.ble and dignified, and "draped in the magnificent taste which distinguished Andrea." The following account of the artist's life is summarised from the article on Del Sarto by Mr. W. M. Rossetti in the _Encyc. Brit._ He was an easy-going plebeian, to whom a modest position in life and scanty gains were no grievances. As an artist he must have known his own value; but he probably rested content in the sense of his superlative powers as an executant, and did not aspire to the rank of a great inventor or leader, for which, indeed, he had no vocation. He led a social sort of life among his compeers of the art. He fell in love with Lucrezia del Fede, wife of a hatter named Carlo Recanati; the latter dying opportunely, the tailor's son married her on December 26th, 1512. She was a very handsome woman, and has come down to us treated with great suavity in many a picture of her lover-husband, who constantly painted her as a Madonna or otherwise; and even in painting other women he made them resemble Lucrezia in general type. Vasari, who was at one time a pupil of Andrea, describes her as faithless, jealous, overbearing, and vixenish with the apprentices. She lived to a great age, surviving her second husband forty years. Before the end of 1516, a Pieta of his composition, and afterwards a Madonna, were sent to the French Court. These were received with applause; and the art-loving monarch Francis I. suggested in 1518 that Andrea should come to Paris. He left his wife in Florence and went accordingly, and was very cordially received, and moreover for the first time in his life handsomely remunerated. His wife urged him to return to Italy. The king a.s.sented, on the understanding that his absence was to be short; and he entrusted Andrea with a sum of money to be expended in purchasing works of art for the king. Andrea could not resist temptation, and spent the king's money and some of his own in building a house for himself in Florence. He fell into disgrace with the king, but no serious punishment followed. In 1520 he resumed work in Florence, and painted many pictures for the cloisters of Lo Scalzo. He dwelt in Florence throughout the memorable siege, which was followed by an infectious pestilence. He caught the malady, struggled against it with little or no tending from his wife, who held aloof, and died, no one knowing much about it at the moment, on January 22nd, 1531, at the early age of forty-three. He was buried unceremoniously in the church of the Servi. Mr. Rossetti gives the following criticisms on his work as an artist. "Andrea had true pictorial style, a very high standard of correctness, and an enviable balance of executive endowments. The point of technique in which he excelled least was perhaps that of discriminating the varying textures of different objects and surfaces. There is not much elevation or ideality in his works--much more of reality." He lacked invention notwithstanding his great technical skill. He had no inward impulse toward the high and n.o.ble; he was a man without fervour, and had no enthusiasm for the true and good. It is said that Michelangelo once remarked that if he had attempted greater things he might have rivalled Rafael, but Andrea was not a man for the mountain-top--the plains sufficed for him.

[THE POEM.] On the bare historical facts, as recorded by Vasari in his life of Andrea del Sarto, Mr. Browning has framed this wonderful art-poem.

He has taken Vasari's "notes" and framed "not another sound but a star,"

as he says in his _Abt Vogler_. Given the Vasari life, he has mixed it with his thought, and has transfigured it so that the sad, infinitely pathetic soul, in its stunted growth and wasted form, lives before us in Mr. Browning's lines. As _Abt Vogler_ is his greatest music-poem, so this is his greatest art-poem, and both are unique. No poet has ever given us such utterances on music and painting as we possess in these works: if all the poet's work were to perish save these, they would suffice to insure immortality for their author. It is said that the poem was suggested by a picture in the Pitti Palace at Florence. "Faultless but soulless" is the verdict of art critics on Andrea's works. Why is this? Mr. Browning's poem tells us in no hesitating phrase that the secret lay in the fact that Andrea was an immoral man, an infatuated man, pa.s.sionately demanding love from a woman who had neither heart nor intellect, a wife for whom he sacrificed his soul and the highest interests of his art. He knew and loved Lucrezia while she was another man's wife; he was content that she should also love other men when she was his. He robbed King Francis, his generous patron, that he might give the money to his unworthy spouse. He neglected his parents in their poverty and old age. Is there not in these facts the secret of his failure? To Mr. Browning there is, and his poem tells us why. But, it will be objected, many great geniuses have been immoral men. This is so, but we cannot argue the point here; the poet's purpose is to show how in this particular case the evil seed bore fruit after its kind. The poem opens with the artist's attempts to bribe his wife by money to accord him a little semblance of love: he promises to paint that he may win gold for her. The keynote of the poem is struck in these opening words. It is evening, and Andrea is weary with his work, but never weary of praising Lucrezia's beauty; sadly he owns that he is at best only a shareholder in his wife's affections, that even her pride in him is gone, that she neither understands nor cares to understand his art.

He tells her that he can do easily and perfectly what at the bottom of his heart he wishes for, deep as that might be; he could do what others agonise to do all their lives and fail in doing, yet he knows for all that there burns a truer light of G.o.d in them than in him. Their works drop groundward, though their souls have glimpses of heaven that are denied to him. He could have beaten Rafael had he possessed Rafael's soul; for the Urbinate's technical skill, as he half hesitatingly shows, is inferior to his own; and had his Lucrezia urged him, inspired him, to claim a seat by the side of Michelangelo and Rafael, he might for her sake have done it.

He sees he is but a half-man working in an atmosphere of silver-grey. He had his chance at Fontainebleau; there he sometimes seemed to leave the ground, but he had a chain which dragged him down. Lucrezia called him.

Not only for her did he forsake the higher art ambitions, but the common ground of honesty; he descended to cement his walls with the gold of King Francis which he had stolen, and for her. From dishonesty to connivance at his wife's infidelity is an easy step; and so, while in the act of expressing his remorse at his ingrat.i.tude to the king, we find him asking Lucrezia quite naturally, as a matter of ordinary occurrence--