The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 9

=Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island.= (_Dramatis Personae_, 1864.) The original of Caliban is the savage and deformed slave of Shakespeare's _Tempest_. The island may be identified with the Utopia (??t?p??, the nowhere) of Hythloday. Setebos was the Patagonian G.o.d (Settaboth in Pigafetta), which was by 1611 familiar to the hearers of _The Tempest_. Patagonia was discovered by Magellan in 1520. The new worlds which Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Gomara, Lane, Harriott and Raleigh described, should, according to the popular fancy of the time, be peopled by just such beings of b.e.s.t.i.a.l type as the Caliban of _The Tempest_. The ancients thought the inhabitants of strange and distant lands were half human, half brutal, and monstrous creatures, ogres, and "anthropophagi, men who each other eat." The famous traveller Sir John Mandeville, in the fourteenth century, describes "the land of Bacharie, where be full evil folk and full cruel. In that country been many Ipotaynes, that dwell sometimes in the water and sometimes on the land; half-man and half-horse, and they eat men when they may take them." Marco Polo (1254-1324) represents the Andaman Islanders as a most brutish savage race, having heads, eyes and teeth resembling the canine species, who ate human flesh raw and devoured every one on whom they could lay their hands.

The islander as monster was therefore familiar enough to English readers in Shakespeare's time, and the date of the old book of travels "Purchas his Pilgrimage," very nearly corresponding with the probable date of the production of _The Tempest_, affords reasonable proof that the poet has embodied the story given in that work of the pongo, the huge brute-man seen by Andrew Battle in the kingdom of Congo, where he lived some nine months. This pongo slept in the trees, building a roof to shelter himself from the rain, and living wholly on nuts and fruits. Mr. Browning has taken the Caliban of Shakespeare, "the strange fish legged like a man, and his fins like arms," yet "no fish, but an islander that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt," and has evolved him into "a savage with the introspective powers of a Hamlet and the theology of an evangelical churchman." Shakespeare's monster did not speculate at all; he liked his dinner, liked to be stroked and made much of, and was willing to be taught how to name the bigger light and how the less. He could curse, and he could worship the man in the moon; he could work for those who were kind to him, and had a doglike attachment to Prospero. Mr. Browning's Caliban has become a metaphysician; he talks Browningese, and reasons high

"Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute."

He has studied Calvin's _Inst.i.tutes of Theology_, and knows enough of St.

Augustine to caricature his teaching. Considered from the anthropologist's point of view, the poem is not a scientific success; Caliban is a degradation from a higher type, not a brute becoming slowly developed into a man. Mr. Browning's early training amongst the Nonconformists of the Calvinistic type had familiarised him with a theology which, up to fifty years ago, was that of a very large proportion of the Independents, the Baptists, and a considerable part of the Evangelical school in the Church of England. Without some acquaintance with this theological system it is impossible to understand the poem. At the head is a quotation from Psalm l. 21, where G.o.d says to the wicked, "thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself," and the object of the poem is to rebuke the anthropomorphic idea of G.o.d as it exists in minds of a narrow and unloving type. It is not a satire upon Christianity, as has been sometimes declared, but is an attempt to trace the evolution of the concrete idea of G.o.d in a coa.r.s.e and brutal type of mind. Man from his advent on the earth has everywhere occupied himself in creating G.o.d in his own image and likeness:

"Make us a G.o.d, said man: Power first the voice obeyed; And soon a monstrous form Its worshippers dismayed."

The motto of the poem shows us how much n.o.bler was the Hebrew conception of G.o.d than that of the nations who knew Him not. The poem opens with Caliban talking to himself in the third person, while he sprawls in the mire and is cheating Prospero and Miranda, who think he is at work for them. He begins to speculate on the Supreme Being--Setebos: he thinks His dwelling-place is the moon, thinks He made the sun and moon, but not the stars--the clouds and the island on which he dwells; he has no idea of any land beyond that which is bounded by the sea. He thinks creation was the result of G.o.d being ill at ease. The cold which He hated and which He was powerless to change impelled Him. So He made the trees, the birds and beasts and creeping things, and made everything in spite. He could not make a second self to be His mate, but made in envy, listlessness or sport all the things which filled the island as playthings. If Caliban could make a live bird out of clay, he would laugh if the creature broke his brittle clay leg; he would play with him, being his and merely clay. So he (Setebos). It would neither be right nor wrong in him, neither kind nor cruel--merely an act of the Divine Sovereignty. If Caliban saw a procession of crabs marching to the sea, in mere indifferent playfulness he might feel inclined to let twenty pa.s.s and then stone the twenty-first, pull off a claw from one with purple spots, give a worm to a third fellow, and two to another whose nippers end in red, all the while "Loving not, hating not, just choosing so!" [Apart from revelation, mankind has not reached the conception of the Fatherhood of G.o.d, whose tender mercies are over all His works. The G.o.ds of the heathen are G.o.ds of caprice, of malice and purposeless interference with creatures who are not the sheep of their pastures, but the playthings of unloving Lords.] But he will suppose G.o.d is good in the main; He has even made things which are better than Himself, and is envious that they are so, but consoles Himself that they can do nothing without Him. If the pipe which, blown through, makes a scream like a bird, were to boast that it caught the birds, and made the cry the maker could not make, he would smash it with his foot. That is just what G.o.d Setebos does; so Caliban must be humble, or pretend to be.

But why is Setebos cold and ill at ease? Well, Caliban thinks there may be a something over Setebos, that made Him, something quiet, impa.s.sible--call it The Quiet. Beyond the stars he imagines The Quiet to reside, but is not much concerned about It. He plays at being simple in his way--makes believe: so does Setebos. His mother, Sycorax, thought The Quiet made all things, and Setebos only troubled what The Quiet made. Caliban does not agree with that. If things were made weak and subject to pain they were made by a devil, not by a good or indifferent being. No! weakness and pain meant sport to Him who created creatures subject to them. Setebos makes things to amuse himself, just as Caliban does; makes a pile of turfs and knocks it over again. So Setebos. But He is a terrible as well as a malicious being; His hurricanes, His high waves, His lightnings are destructive, and Caliban cannot contend with His force, neither can he tell that what pleases Him to-day will do so to-morrow. We must all live in fear of Him therefore, till haply The Quiet may conquer Him. All at once a storm comes, and Caliban feels that he was a fool to gibe at Setebos. He will lie flat and love Him, will do penance, will eat no whelks for a month to appease Him.

There are few, if any, systems of theology which escape one or other of the arrows of this satire. Anthropomorphism in greater or less degree is inseparable from our conceptions of the Supreme. The abstract idea of G.o.d is impossible to us, the concrete conception is certain to err in making G.o.d to be like ourselves. That the Almighty must in Himself include all that is highest and n.o.blest in the soul of man is a right conception, when we attribute to Him our weaknesses and failings we are but as Caliban. The doctrine of election, and the hideous doctrine of reprobation, are most certainly aimed at in the line--

"Loving not, hating not, just choosing so."

The doctrine of reprobation is thus stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, iii. 7. "The rest of mankind [_i.e._ all but the elect] G.o.d was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures to pa.s.s by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious grace."

Calvin, in his _Inst.i.tutes of the Christian Religion_, taught that "G.o.d has predestinated some to eternal life, while the rest of mankind are predestinated to condemnation and eternal death" (_Encyc. Brit._ iv., art.

"Calvin," p. 720).

=Camel Driver, A.= (Punishment by Man and by G.o.d: _Ferishtah's Fancies_, 7.) A murderer had been executed, the criminal acknowledging the justice of his punishment, but lamenting that the man who prompted him to evil had escaped; the murderer reflected with satisfaction that G.o.d had reserved a h.e.l.l for him. But punishment is only man's trick to teach; if he could see true repentance in the sinner's soul, the fault would not be repeated.

G.o.d's process in teaching or punishing nowise resembles man's. Man lumps his kind in the ma.s.s, G.o.d deals with each individual soul as though they two were alone in the universe, "Ask thy lone soul what laws are plain to thee," said Ferishtah, "then stand or fall by them!" Ignorance that sins is safe,--our greatest punishment is knowledge. No other h.e.l.l will be needed for any man than the reflection that he deliberately spurned the steps which would have raised him to the regard of the Supreme. In the Lyric it is complained that mankind is over-severe with mere imperfections, which it magnifies into crimes; but the greater faults, which should have been crushed in the egg, are either not suspected at all or actually praised as virtues.

=Caponsacchi= (_The Ring and the Book_), the chivalrous priest, Canon of Arezzo, who aided Pompilia in her flight to Rome from the tyranny of Count Guido.

=Cardinal and the Dog, The.= (_Asolando_, 1889.) The Papal Legate, at the later sessions of the Council of Trent in 1551 and 1552, was Marcel Crescenzio, who came of a n.o.ble Roman family. At the fifteenth session of the Council (March 20th, 1552) he was writing to the Pope nearly the whole night, although he was ill at the time; and as he rose from his seat he saw a black dog of great size, with flaming eyes and ears hanging down to the ground, which sprang into the chamber, making straight for him, and then stretched himself under the table where Crescenzio wrote. He called his servants and ordered them to turn out the beast, but they found none.

Then the Cardinal fell melancholy, took to his bed and died. As he lay on his death-bed at Verona he cried aloud to every one to drive away the dog that leapt on his bed, and so pa.s.sed away in horror. The poem was written at the request of William Macready, the eldest son of the great actor. He asked the poet to write something which he might ill.u.s.trate. This was in 1840, but the work was only published in the _Asolando_ volume in 1889.

Howling dogs have from remote times been connected with death. In Ossian we have: "The mother of Culmin remains in the hall--his dogs are howling in their place--'Art thou fallen, my fair-haired son, in Erin's dismal war?'" There is no doubt that the howling of the wind suggested the idea of a great dog of death. The wind itself was a magnified dog, heard but not seen. Burton, in _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, says (Part I., sect ii., mem. 1, subs. 2): "Spirits often foretell men's death by several signs, as knockings, groanings, etc., though Rich. Argentine, c. 18, _De praestigiis daemonum_, will ascribe these predictions to good angels, out of the authority of Ficinus and others; prodigies frequently occur at the deaths of ill.u.s.trious men, as in the Lateran Church in Rome the popes'

deaths are foretold by Sylvester's tomb. Many families in Europe are so put in mind of their last by such predictions; and many men are forewarned (if we may believe Paracelsus) by familiar spirits in divers shapes--as c.o.c.ks, crows, owls--which often hover about sick men's chambers." The dog is such a faithful friend of man that we are unwilling to believe him, even in spirit-form, the harbinger of evil to any one. Cardinal Crescenzio, had he been a vivisector, would have been very appropriately summoned to his doom in the manner described in the poem. If the men who, like Professor Rutherford of Edinburgh University, boast of their ruthless torturing of dogs by hundreds, should ever find themselves in Cardinal Crescenzio's plight, there would be a fitness in things we could readily appreciate. The devil in the form of a great black dog is a familiar subject with mediaeval historians. Not all black dogs were evil, though--for example, the black dog which St. Dominic's mother saw before the birth of the saint. Some of the animals called dogs were probably wolves; but even these appeared not entirely past redemption, such as the one of which we read in the _Golden Legend_, who was converted by the preaching of St. Francis, and shed tears of repentance, and became as meek as a lamb, following the saint to every town where he preached! Such is the power of love. In May 1551 the eleventh session of the Council of Trent was held, under the presidency of Cardinal Crescenzio, sole legate in t.i.tle, but with two nuncios--Pighini and Lippomani. It was merely formal, as was also the twelfth session, in September 1551. It was Crescenzio who refused all concession, even going so far as to abstract the Conciliar seal, lest the safe-conduct to the Protestant theologians should be granted. He was, however, forced to yield to pressure, and had to receive the Protestant envoys in a private session at his own house.

The legate in April 1552 was compelled to suspend the Council for two years, in consequence of the perils of war. There was a general stampede from Trent at once, and the legate Crescenzio, then very ill, had just strength to reach Verona, where he died three days after his arrival (_Encyc. Brit._, art. "Trent," vol. xxiii.). Moreri (_Dict. Hist._) tells the story in almost the same way as Mr. Browning has given it, and adds: "It could have been invented only by ill-meaning people, who lacked respect for the Council."

=Carlisle, Lady.= (_Strafford._) Mr. Browning says: "The character of Lady Carlisle in the play is wholly imaginary," but history points clearly enough to the truth of Mr. Browning's conception.

=Cavalier Tunes.= (Published first in _Bells and Pomegranates_ in 1842.) Their t.i.tles are: "Marching Along," "Give a Rouse," and "Boot and Saddle."

Villiers Stanford set them to music.

=Cenciaja.= (_Pacchiarotto, with other Poems_, London, 1876.)

"Ogni cencio vuol entrare in bucato."

The explanation of the t.i.tle of this poem, as also of the Italian motto which stands at its head, is given in the following letter written by the poet to Mr. Buxton Forman:--

"19, WARWICK CRESCENT, W., _July 27th, '76_.

"DEAR MR. BUXTON FORMAN,--There can be no objection to such a simple statement as you have inserted, if it seems worth inserting. 'Fact,'

it is. Next: 'Aia' is generally an acc.u.mulative yet depreciative termination. 'Cenciaja,' a bundle of rags--a trifle. The proverb means 'every poor creature will be pressing into the company of his betters,' and I used it to deprecate the notion that I intended anything of the kind. Is it any contribution to 'all connected with Sh.e.l.ley,' if I mention that my 'Book' (_The Ring and the Book_) [rather the 'old square yellow book,' from which the details were taken] has a reference to the reason given by Farinacci, the advocate of the Cenci, of his failure in the defence of Beatrice? 'Fuisse punitam Beatricem' (he declares) 'pna ultimi supplicii, non quia ex intervallo occidi mandavit insidiantem suo honori, sed quia ejus exceptionem non probavi tibi. Prout, et idem firmiter sperabatur de sorore Beatrice si propositam excusationem proba.s.set, prout non probavit.' That is, she expected to avow the main outrage, and did not; in conformity with her words, 'That which I ought to confess, that will I confess; that to which I ought to a.s.sent, to that I a.s.sent; and that which I ought to deny, that will I deny.' Here is another Cenciaja!

"Yours very sincerely, ROBERT BROWNING."

The opening lines of the poem refer to Sh.e.l.ley's terrible tragedy, _The Cenci_, in the preface to which the story on which the work is founded, is briefly told as follows: "A ma.n.u.script was communicated to me during my travels in Italy, which was copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome, and contains a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the extinction of one of the n.o.blest and richest families of that city, during the pontificate of Clement VIII., in the year 1599. The story is, that an old man, having spent his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived at length an implacable hatred towards his children; which showed itself towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous pa.s.sion, aggravated by every circ.u.mstance of cruelty and violence. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she considered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind, at length plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their common tyrant. The young maiden, who was urged to this tremendous deed by an impulse which overpowered its horror, was evidently a most gentle and amiable being; a creature formed to adorn and be admired, and thus violently thwarted from her nature by the necessity of circ.u.mstances and opinion. The deed was quickly discovered; and, in spite of the most earnest prayers made to the Pope by the highest persons in Rome, the criminals were put to death. The old man had, during his life, repeatedly bought his pardon from the Pope for capital crimes of the most enormous and unspeakable kind, at the price of a hundred thousand crowns; the death, therefore, of his victims can scarcely be accounted for by the love of justice. The Pope, among other motives for severity, probably felt that whosoever killed the Count Cenci deprived his treasury of a certain and copious source of revenue." This explanation is exactly what might be expected from a priest-hater and religion-despiser like Sh.e.l.ley. The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, in the article on Clement VIII., says: "Clement was an able ruler and a sagacious statesman. He died in March 1605, leaving a high character for prudence, munificence, and capacity for business." Mr. Browning's contribution to the Cenci literature affords a more reasonable motive for refusing to spare the lives of the Cenci. Sir John Simeon lent the poet a copy of an old chronicle, of which he made liberal use in the poem we are considering. According to this account, the Pope would probably have pardoned Beatrice had not a case of matricide occurred in Rome at the time, which determined him to make an example of the Cenci. The Marchesa dell' Oriolo, a widow, had just been murdered by her younger son, Paolo Santa Croce. He had quarrelled with his mother about the family rights of his elder brother, and killed her because she refused to aid him in an act of injustice. Having made his escape, he endeavoured to involve his brother in the crime, and the unfortunate young man was beheaded, although he was perfectly innocent. In _Cenciaja_ Mr. Browning throws light on the tragic events of the Cenci story. When Clement was pet.i.tioned on behalf of the family, he said: "She must die. Paolo Santa Croce murdered his mother, and he is fled; she shall not flee at least!"

=Charles Avison.= [THE MAN.] (_Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day._ 1887. No. VII.) "Charles Avison, a musician, was born in Newcastle about 1710, and died in the same town in 1770. He studied in Italy, and on his return to England became a pupil of Geminiani. He was appointed organist of St. Nicholas' Church, Newcastle, in 1736. In 1752 appeared his celebrated _Essay on Musical Expression_, which startled the world by the boldness with which it put the French and Italian schools of music above the German, headed by Handel himself. This book led to a controversy with Dr. Hayes, in which, according to the _Dictionary of National Biography_, from which we take the facts, 'Hayes had the best of the argument, though Avison was superior from a literary point of view.' Avison, who is reported to have been a man of great culture and polish, published several sets of sonatas and concertos, but there are probably few persons at the present day who have ever heard any of his music." (_Pall Mall Gazette_, Jan. 18th, 1887.)

[THE POEM.] This is a criticism of the province and office of music in its influence on the mind of man.

"There is no truer truth obtainable By man, than comes of music,"

says Mr. Browning. Underneath Mind rolls the unsounded sea--the Soul.

Feeling from out its deeps emerges in flower and foam.

"Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of Soul?"

Music essays to solve how we feel, to match feeling with knowledge.

Manifest Soul's work on Mind's work, how and whence come the hates, loves, joys, hopes and fears that rise and sink ceaselessly within us? Of these things Music seeks to tell. Art may arrest some of the transient moods of Soul; Poetry discerns, Painting is aware of the seething within the gulf, but Music outdoes both: dredging deeper yet, it drags into day the abysmal bottom growths of Soul's deep sea.

NOTES.--ii., "_March_": Avison's _Grand March_ was possessed in MS. by Browning's father. The music of the march is added to the poem. iv., "_Great John Relfe_": Browning's music master--a celebrated contrapuntist.

_Buononcini, Giovanni Battista_, Italian musician. He was a gifted composer, declared by his clique to be infinitely superior to Handel, with whom he wrote at one time in conjunction. _Geminiani, Francesco_, Italian violinist (1680-1762). He came to London under the protection of the Earl of Ess.e.x in 1714. His musical opinions are said to have had no foundation in truth or principle. _Pepusch, John Christopher_, an eminent theoretical musician, born at Berlin about 1667. He performed at Drury Lane in about 1700. He took the degree of Mus. Doc. at Oxford at the same time with Croft, 1713. He was organist at the Charter-House, and died in 1752. v., _Hesperus_. The song to the Evening Star in _Tannhauser_, "O Du mein holder Abendstern," is referred to here (Mr. A. Symons). viii., "_Radamista_," the name of an opera by Handel, first performed at the Haymarket in 1720. "_Rinaldo_," the name of the opera composed by Handel, and performed under his direction at the Haymarket for the first time on Feb. 24th, 1711. xv., "_Little Ease_," an uncomfortable punishment similar to the stocks or the pillory.

=Charles I.= (_Strafford._) The character of this king, who basely sacrifices his best friend Strafford, is founded in fact, but his weakness and meanness are doubtless exaggerated by the poet--to show his meaning, as the artists say.

=Cherries.= (_Ferishtah's Fancies_, 9.) "On Praise and Thanksgiving." All things are great and small in their degree. A disciple objects to Ferishtah that man is too weak to praise worthily the All-mighty One; he is too mean to offer fit praise to Heaven,--let the stars do that! The dervish tells a little story of a subject of the Shah who came from a distant part of the realm, and wandered about the palace wonderingly, till all at once he was surprised to find a nest-like little chamber with his own name on the entry, and everything arranged exactly to his own peculiar taste. Yet to him it was as nothing: he had not faith enough to enter into the good things provided for him. He tells another story. Two beggars owed a great sum to the Shah. This one brought a few berries from his currant-bush, some heads of garlic, and five pippins from a seedling tree.

This was his whole wealth; he offered that in payment of his debt. It was graciously received; teaching us that if we offer G.o.d all the love and thanks we can, it will gratify the Giver of all good none the less because our offering is small, and lessened by admixture with lower human motives.

For the grateful flavour of the cherry let us lift up our thankful hearts to Him who made that, the stars, and us. We know why He made the cherry,--why He made Jupiter we do not know. The Lyric compares verse-making with love-making. Verse-making is praising G.o.d by the stars, too great a task for man's short life; but love-making has no depths to explore, no heights to ascend; love now will be love evermore: let us give thanks for love, if we cannot offer praise the poet's own great way.

=Chiappino.= (_A Soul's Tragedy._) The bragging friend of Luitolfo, who was compelled to be n.o.ble against his inclination, and who became "the twenty-fourth leader of a revolt" ridiculed by the legate.

="Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Romances_, 1863; _Dramatic Romances_, 1868.) The story of a knight who has undertaken a pilgrimage to a certain dark tower, the way to which was full of difficulties and dangers, and the right road quite unknown to the seeker. Those who had preceded him on the path had all failed, and he himself is no sooner fairly engaged in the quest than he is filled with despair, but is impelled to go on. At the stage of his journey which is described in the poem he meets a h.o.a.ry cripple, who gives him directions which he consents to follow, though with misgivings. The day was drawing to a close, the road by which he entered on the path to the tower was gone; when he looked back, nothing remained but to proceed. Nature all around was starved and ign.o.ble: flowers there were none; some weeds that seemed to thrive in the wilderness only added to its desolation; dock leaves with holes and rents, gra.s.s as hair in leprosy; and wandering on the gloomy plain, one stiff, blind horse, all starved and stupefied, looking as if he were thrust out of the devil's stud. The pilgrim tried to think of earlier, happier sights: of his friend Cuthbert--alas! one night's disgrace left him without that friend; of Giles, the soul of honour, who became a traitor, spit upon and curst. The present horror was better than these reflections on the past. And now he approached a petty, yet spiteful river, over which black scrubby alders hung, with willows that seemed suicidal. He forded the stream, fearing to set his foot on some dead man's cheek; the cry of the water-rat sounded as the shriek of a baby. And as he toiled on he saw that ugly heights (mountains seemed too good a name to give such hideous heaps) had given place to the plain, and two hills in particular, couched like two bulls in fight, seemed to indicate the place of the tower. Yes! in their midst was the round, squat turret, without a counterpart in the whole world. The sight was as that of the rock which the sailor sees too late to avoid the crash that wrecks his ship. The very hills seemed watching him; he seemed to hear them cry, "Stab and end the creature!" A noise was everywhere, tolling like a bell; he could hear the names of the lost adventurers who had preceded him.

There they stood to see the last of him. He saw and knew them all, yet dauntless set the horn to his lips and blew, "_Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came_."

NOTES.--At the head of the poem is a note: "See Edgar's song in _Lear_."

In Act III., scene iv., Edgar, disguised as a madman, says, while the storm rages: "Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, over bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge; made him proud of heart to ride on a bay trotting-horse over four-inched bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor.--Bless thy five wits! Tom's a-cold.--O do de, do de, do, de.----Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes." At the end of the scene Edgar sings:--

"Childe Rowland to the dark tower came, His word was still,--Fie, foh, and fum I smell the blood of a British man."

"Childe Roland was the youngest brother of Helen. Under the guidance of Merlin he undertook to bring back his sister from elf-land, whither the fairies had carried her, and he succeeded in his perilous exploit."--Dr.

Brewer. (See the ancient Ballade of _Burd Helen_.) _Childe_ was a term specially applied to the scions of knightly families before their admission to the degree of knighthood, as "Chyld Waweyn, Loty's Sone"

(_Robert of Gloucester_).

This wonderful poem, one of the grandest pieces of word-painting in our language, has exercised the ingenuity of Browning students more than any other of the poet's works. _Sordello_ is difficult to understand, but it was intended by the poet to convey a definite meaning and important lessons, but _Childe Roland_, we have been warned again and again, was written without any moral purpose whatever. "We may see in it," says Mrs.

Orr, "a poetic vision of life.... The thing we may not do is to imagine that we are meant to recognise it." A paper was read at the Browning Society on this poem by Mr. Kirkman (_Browning Society Papers_, Part iii., p. 21) suggesting an interpretation of the allegory. In the discussion which followed, Dr. Furnivall said "he had asked Browning if it was an allegory, and in answer had, on three separate occasions, received an emphatic 'no'; that it was simply a dramatic creation called forth by a line of Shakespeare's. Browning had written it one day in Paris, as a vivid picture suggested by Edgar's line; the horse was suggested by the figure of a red horse in a piece of tapestry in Browning's house....

Still, Dr. Furnivall thought, it was quite justifiable that any one should use the poem to signify whatever image it called up in his own mind. But he must not confuse the poet's mind with his. The poem was _not_ an allegory, and was never meant to be one." The Hon. Roden Noel, who was in the chair on this occasion, said "he himself had never regarded _Childe Roland_ as having any hidden meaning; nor had cared so to regard it. But words are mystic symbols: they mean more, very often, than the utterer of them, poet or puppet, intended." When some one asked Mendelssohn what he meant by his _Lieder ohne Worte_, the musician replied that "they meant what they said." A poem so consistent as a whole, with a narrative in which every detail follows in a perfectly regular and natural sequence, must inevitably convey to the thinking mind some great and powerful idea, suiting itself to his view of life considered as a journey or pilgrimage.

The wanderings of the children of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land may be considered simply as a historical event, like the migrations of the Tartars or the Northmen; or they may be viewed as an allegory of the Christian life, like Bunyan's immortal dream. The historian of the Exodus could never have had in his mind all the interpretations put upon the incidents which he recorded; yet we have the warrant of St. Paul for allegorising the story. Any narrative of a journey through a desert to a definite end held in view throughout the way, is certain to be pounced upon as an allegory; and it is impossible but that Mr. Browning must have had some notion of a "central purpose" in his poem. Indeed, when the Rev.

John W. Chadwick visited the poet, and asked him if constancy to an ideal--"He that endureth to the end shall be saved"--was not a sufficient understanding of the central purpose of the poem, he said, "Yes, just about that." Mr. Kirkman, in the paper already referred to, says, "There are overwhelming reasons for concluding that this poem describes, after the manner of an allegory, the sensations of a sick man very near to death--_Rabbi Ben Ezra_ and _Prospice_--are the two angels that lead on to _Childe Roland_." Mr. Nettleship, in his well-known essay on the poem, says the central idea is this: "Take some great end which men have proposed to themselves in life, which seemed to have truth in it, and power to spread freedom and happiness on others; but as it comes in sight, it falls strangely short of preconceived ideas, and stands up in hideous prosaicness." Mrs. James L. Bagg, in the _Interpretation of Childe Roland_, read to the Syracuse (U.S.) Browning Club, gives the following on the lesson of the poem:--"The secrets of the universe are not to be discovered by exercise of reason, nor are they to be reached by flights of fancy, nor are duties loyally done to be recompensed by revealment. A life of _becoming_, _being_, and _doing_, is not loss, nor failure, nor discomfiture, though the dark tower for ever tantalise and for ever withhold." Some have seen in the poem an allegory of _Love_, others of _the Search after Truth_. Others, again, understand the Dark Tower to represent Unfaith, and the obscure land that of Doubt--Doubting Castle and the By-Path Meadow of John Bunyan, in short. For my own part, I see in the allegory--for I can consider it no other--a picture of the Age of Materialistic Science, a "science falsely so called," which aims at the destruction of all our n.o.blest ideals of religion and faith in the unseen.

The pilgrim is a truth-seeker, misdirected by the lying spirit--the h.o.a.ry cripple, unable to be or do anything good or n.o.ble himself; in him I see the cynical, destructive critic, who sits at our universities and colleges, our medical schools and our firesides, to point our youth to the desolate path of Atheistic Science, a science which strews the ghastly landscape with wreck and ruthless ruin, with the blanching bones of animals tortured to death by its "engines and wheels, with rusty teeth of steel"--a science which has invaded the healing art, and is sending students of medicine daily down the road where surgeons become cancer-grafters (as the Paris and Berlin medical scandals have revealed), and where physicians gloat over their animal victims--

"Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage,"

in their pa.s.sion to reach the dark tower of Knowledge, which to them has neither door nor window. The lost adventurers are the men who, having followed this false path, have failed, and who look eagerly for the next fool who comes to join the band of the lost ones. "In the Paris School of Medicine," says Mr. Lilly in his _Right and Wrong_, "it has lately been prophesied that, 'when the rest of the world has risen to the intellectual level of France, the present crude and vulgar notions regarding morality, religion, Divine providence, and so forth, will be swept entirely away, and the dicta of science will remain the sole guide of sane and educated men.'" Had Mr. Browning intended to write for us an allegory in aid of our crusade, a sort of medical Pilgrim's Progress, he could scarcely have given the world a more faithful picture of the spiritual ruin and desolation which await the student of medicine who sets forth on the fatal course of an experimental torturer. I have good authority for saying that, had Mr. Browning seen this interpretation of his poem, he would have cordially accepted it as at least one legitimate explanation. Most of the commentators agree that when Childe Roland "dauntless set the slug horn to his lips and blew '_Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came_,'" he did so as a warning to others that he had failed in his quest, and that the way of the Dark Tower was the way of destruction and death.