The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 12

NOTES.--viii., _Robert Schumann_, musical critic and composer: was born 1810, died 1856. _Jean August Dominique Ingres_ (born 1780, died 1867).

"The modern man that paints," a celebrated historical painter, a pupil of David. He was opposed to the Romantic School, and depended for success on form and line. "His paintings, with all their cleverness, appear to English eyes deficient in originality of conception, coa.r.s.e, hard and artificial in manner, and untrue in colour" (_Imp. Dict. Biog._), xii., "_The Fortieth spare Arm-chair_." This refers to the French Academy, founded by Richelieu in 1635. When one of the forty members dies a new one is elected to fill his place.

=Djabal.= (_Return of the Druses._) The son of the Emir, who seeks revenge for the murder of his family, and declares himself to be the Hakim--who is to set the Druse people free. He loves the maiden Anael, and when she dies stabs himself on her dead body.

=Doctor ----.= (_Dramatic Idyls_, Second Series, 1880.) A Rabbinical story. Satan, as in the opening scene of Job, stands with the angels before G.o.d to make his complaints. Asked "What is the fault now?" he declares that he has found something on earth which interferes with his prerogatives:--

"Death is the strongest-born of h.e.l.l, and yet Stronger than Death is a Bad Wife, we know."

Satan protests that this robs him of his rights, as he claims to be Strongest. He is commanded to descend to earth in mortal shape and get married, and so try for himself the bitter draught. It was Solomon who said that "a woman whose heart is snares and nets is more bitter than death" (Ecclesiastes vii. 27), and some commentators on the poem have thought the Rabbinical legend was suggested by this verse. Satan, married, in due time has a son who arrives at maturity, and then the question arises of a profession for him: "I needs must teach my son a trade." Shall he be a soldier? That is too cowardly. A lawyer would be better, but there is too much hard work for the sluggard. There's divinity, but that is Satan's own special line, and that be far from his poor offspring! At last he thinks of the profession of medicine. Physic is the very thing! So _Medicus_ he is appointed; and it is arranged that a special power shall be given to the young doctor's eyes, so that when on his rounds he shall behold the spirit-person of his father at his side. Doctor once dubbed, ignorance shall be no barrier to his success; cash shall follow, whatever the treatment, and fees shall pour in. Satan tells his son that the reason he has endowed him with power to recognise his spirit-form is that he may judge by Death's position in the sick room what are the prospects of the patient's recovery. If he perceive his father lingering by the door, whatever the nature of the illness recovery will be speedy; if higher up the room, death will not be the sufferer's doom; but if he is discovered standing by the head of the bed's the patient's doom is sealed. It happened that of a sudden the emperor himself was smitten with sore disease. Of course Dr. ---- was called in and promised large rewards if he saved the imperial life. As he entered the room he saw at once that all was lost: there stood his father Death as sentry at the bed's head. Gold was offered in abundance; the doctor begged his father to go away and let him win his fee. "No inch I budge!" is the response. Then honours are offered him whom apparently wealth failed to tempt. The result is the same. Then Love: "Take my daughter as thy bride--save me for this reward!"

The Doctor again implores a respite from his father, who is obdurate as ever. A thought strikes the physician: "Reverse the bed, so that Death no longer stands at the head;" but "the Antic pa.s.sed from couch-foot back to pillow," and is master of the situation again. The son now curses his father, and declares that he will go over to the other side. He sends to his home for the mystic Jacob's-staff--a k.n.o.bstick of proved efficacy in such cases. "Go, bid my mother (Satan's wife, be it remembered) bring the stick herself." The servant rushes off to do his errand, and all the anxious while the emperor sinks lower and lower, as the icy breath of Death freezes him to the marrow. All at once the door of the sick room opens, and there enters to Satan "Who but his Wife the Bad?" The devil goes off through the ceiling, leaving a sulphury smell behind; and, "Hail to the Doctor!" the imperial patient straightway recovers. In grat.i.tude he offers him the promised daughter and her dowry; but the Doctor refuses the fee--"No dowry, no bad wife!" If this Talmudic legend has any relation to Solomon, it is well to bear in mind that his bitter experience, as St.

Jerome says, was due to the fact that no one ever fell a victim to impurer loves than he. He married strange women, was deluded by them, and erected temples to their respective idols. His opinion, therefore, on marriage as we understand it is of little importance to us.

=Dominus Hyacinthus De Archangelis.= (_The Ring and the Book._) The procurator or counsel for the poor, who defends Count Guido in the eighth book of the poem.

=Domizia= (_Luria_), a n.o.ble lady of Florence. She is loved by the Moorish captain Luria, who commanded the army of the Florentines. Domizia was greatly embittered against the republic for its ingrat.i.tude to her two brothers--Porzio and Berto--and hoped to be revenged for their deaths.

=Don Juan.= (_Fifine at the Fair._) The husband of the poem is a philosophical study of the Don Juan of Moliere. He is full of sophistries, and an adept in the art of making the worse appear the better reason. In Moliere's play Juan's valet thus describes his master: "You see in Don Juan the greatest scoundrel the earth has ever borne--a madman, a dog, a demon, a Turk, a heretic--who believes neither in heaven, h.e.l.l, nor devil, who pa.s.ses his life simply as a brute beast, a pig of an epicure, a true Sardanapalus; who closes his ear to every remonstrance which can be made to him, and treats as idle talk all that we hold sacred."

=Donald.= (_Jocoseria_, 1883.) The story of the poem is a true one, and is told by Sir Walter Scott, in _The Keepsake_ for 1832, pp. 283-6. The following abridgement of the account is from the Browning Society's _Notes and Queries_, No. 209, p. 328: "... The story is an old but not an ancient one: the actor and sufferer was not a very aged man, when I heard the anecdote in my early youth. Duncan (for so I shall call him) had been engaged in the affair of 1746, with others of his clan; ... on the one side of his body he retained the proportions and firmness of an active mountaineer; on the other he was a disabled cripple, scarce able to limp along the streets. The cause which reduced him to this state of infirmity was singular. Twenty years or more before I knew Duncan he a.s.sisted his brothers in farming a large grazing in the Highlands.... It chanced that a sheep or goat was missed from the flock, and Duncan ... went himself in quest of the fugitive. In the course of his researches he was induced to ascend a small and narrow path, leading to the top of a high precipice....

It was not much more than two feet broad, so rugged and difficult, and at the same time so terrible, that it would have been impracticable to any but the light step and steady brain of the Highlander. The precipice on the right rose like a wall, and on the left sank to a depth which it was giddy to look down upon.... He had more than half ascended the precipice, when in midway ... he encountered a buck of the red-deer species coming down the cliff by the same path in an opposite direction.... Neither party had the power of retreating, for the stag had not room to turn himself in the narrow path, and if Duncan had turned his back to go down, he knew enough of the creature's habits to be certain that he would rush upon him while engaged in the difficulties of the retreat. They stood therefore perfectly still, and looked at each other in mutual embarra.s.sment for some s.p.a.ce. At length the deer, which was of the largest size, began to lower his formidable antlers, as they do when they are brought to bay.... Duncan saw the danger ... and, as a last resource, stretched himself on the little ledge of rock ... not making the least motion, for fear of alarming the animal. They remained in this posture for three or four hours.... At length the buck ... approached towards Duncan very slowly ... he came close to the Highlander ... when the devil, or the untameable love of sport, ... began to overcome Duncan's fears. Seeing the animal proceed so gently, he totally forgot not only the dangers of his position, but the implicit compact which certainly might have been inferred from the circ.u.mstances of the situation. With one hand Duncan seized the deer's horn, whilst with the other he drew his dirk. But in the same instant the buck bounded over the precipice, carrying the Highlander along with him.... Fortune ... ordered that the deer should fall undermost, and be killed on the spot, while Duncan escaped with life, but with the fracture of a leg, an arm, and three ribs.... I never could approve of Duncan's conduct towards the deer in a moral point of view, ... but the temptation of a hart of grease offering, as it were, his throat to the knife, would have subdued the virtue of almost any deer stalker.... I have given you the story exactly as I recollect it." As the practice of medicine does not necessarily make a man merciful, so neither does sport necessarily imply manliness and n.o.bility of soul. In both cases there is a strong tendency for the professional to be considered the right view. In the story we have the stag, after four hours' consideration, offering terms of agreement which Donald accepted and then treacherously broke. The animal broke Donald's fall, yet he has no grat.i.tude for its having thus saved his life.

As one of the poems covered by the question in the prologue, "_Wanting is----What?_" we should reply, Honour and humanity.

=D'Ormea.= (_King Victor and King Charles._) He was the unscrupulous minister of King Victor. He became necessary to King Charles when he received the crown on his father's abdication, and was active in defeating the attempt of the latter to recover his crown.

=Dramas.= For the Stage: _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_, _Colombe's Birthday_, _Strafford_, _Luria_, _In a Balcony_, _The Return of the Druses_. For the Study: _Pippa Pa.s.ses_, _King Victor and King Charles_, _A Soul's Tragedy_, and _Paracelsus_. _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_, _Strafford_, _Colombe's Birthday_, and _In a Balcony_, have all been recently performed in London, under the direction of the Browning Society, greatly to the gratification of the spectators who were privileged to attend these special performances. Whether such dramas would be likely to attract audiences from the general public for any length of time is, however, extremely problematical. Mr. Browning's poetry is of too subjective and psychological a character to be popular on the stage.

=Dramatic Idyls= (1879-80). _Series I._: Martin Relph, Pheidippides, Halbert and Hob, Ivan Ivanovitch, Tray, Ned Bratts; _Series II._: Proem, Echetlos, Clive, Muleykeh, Pietro of Abano, Doctor ----, Pan and Luna, Epilogue.

=Dramatic Lyrics.= (_Bells and Pomegranates_, No. III., 1842.) Cavalier Tunes: i., Marching Along; ii., Give a Rouse; iii., My Wife Gertrude.

Italy and France: i., Italy; ii., France. Camp and Cloister: i., Camp (French); ii., Cloister (Spanish); In a Gondola, Artemis Prologizes, Waring. Queen Wors.h.i.+p: i., Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli; ii., Cristina.

Madhouse Cells: i., Johannes Agricola; ii., Porphyria. Through the Metidja, The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

=Dramatic Monologue.= Mr. Browning has so excelled in this particular kind of poetry that it may be fitly called a novelty of his invention. The dramatic monologue is quite different from the soliloquy. In the latter case the speaker delivers his own thoughts, uninterrupted by objections or the propositions of other persons. "In the dramatic monologue the presence of a silent second person is supposed, to whom the arguments of the speaker are addressed. It is obvious that the dramatic monologue gains over the soliloquy, in that it allows the artist greater room in which to work out his conceptions of character. The thoughts of a man in self-communion are apt to run in a certain circle, and to a.s.sume a monotony" (Professor Johnson, M.A.). This supposed second person serves to "draw out" the speaker and to stimulate the imagination of the reader.

_Bishop Blougram's Apology_ is an admirable example of this form of literature, where Mr. Gigadibs, the critic of Bishop Blougram, is the silent second person above referred to.

=Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.= (_Bells and Pomegranates_, No. VII.: 1845.) How they Brought the Good News, Pictor Ignotus, Italy in England, England in Italy, The Lost Leader, The Lost Mistress, Home Thoughts from Abroad, The Tomb at St. Praxed's; Garden Fancies: i. The Flower's Name; ii. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. France and Spain: i. The Laboratory; ii.

The Confessional. The Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess, Earth's Immortalities, Song, The Boy and the Angel, Night and Morning, Claret and Tokay, Saul, Time's Revenges, The Glove.

=Dramatis Personae= (1864). James Lee, Gold Hair, The Worst of it, Dis Aliter Visum, Too Late, Abt Vogler, Rabbi Ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert, Caliban upon Setebos, Confessions, May and Death, Prospice, Youth and Art, A Face, A Likeness, Mr. Sludge, Apparent Failure, Epilogue.

=Dubiety.= (_Asolando_, 1889.) Richardson said that "a state of dubiety and suspense is ever accompanied with uneasiness." Sleep, if sound, is restful; but the poet asks for comfort, and to be comfortable implies a certain amount of consciousness--a dreamy, hazy sense of being in "luxury's sofa-lap." An English lady once asked a British tar in the Bay of Malaga, one lovely November day, if he were not happy to think he was out of foggy England--at least in autumn? The sailor protested there was nothing he disliked so much as "the everlasting blue sky" of the Mediterranean, and there was nothing he longed for so much as "a good Thames fog." So the poet here demands,

"Just a cloud, Suffusing day too clear and bright."

He does not wish to be shrouded, as the sailor did, but his idea of comfort is that the world's busy thrust should be shaded by a "gauziness"

at least. Vivid impressions are always more or less painful: they strike the senses too acutely, as "the eternal blue sky" of the south is too trying for English eyes. As such a light is sometimes too stimulating, so even too much intellectual light may be painful; a "gauziness," a "dreaming's vapour wreath" is to the overwrought brain of the thinker happiness "just for once." In the dim musings, neither dream nor vision, but just a memory, comes the face of the woman he had loved and lost, the memory of her kiss, the impress of the lips of Truth, "for love is Truth."

=Eagle, The.= (_Ferishtah's Fancies_: I. "On Divine Providence.") The story is taken from the fable of Pilpai (or Bidpai, as is the more correct form), called _The Dervish, the Falcon and the Raven_. A father told a young man that all effects have their causes, and he who relies upon Providence without considering these had need to be instructed by the following fable:--

"A certain dervish used to relate that, in his youth, once pa.s.sing through a wood and admiring the works of the great Author of Nature, he spied a falcon that held a piece of flesh in his beak; and hovering about a tree, tore the flesh into bits, and gave it to a young raven that lay bald and featherless in its nest. The dervish, admiring the bounty of Providence, in a rapture of admiration cried out, 'Behold, this poor bird, that is not able to seek out sustenance for himself, is not, however, forsaken of its Creator, who spreads the whole world like a table, where all creatures have their food ready provided for them! He extends His liberality so far, that the serpent finds wherewith to live upon the mountain of Gahen. Why, then, am I so greedy? wherefore do I run to the ends of the earth, and plough up the ocean for bread? Is it not better that I should henceforward confine myself in repose to some little corner, and abandon myself to fortune?' Upon this he retired to his cell, where, without putting himself to any further trouble for anything in the world, he remained three days and three nights without victuals. At last, 'Servant of mine,' said the Creator to him in a dream, 'know thou that all things in this world have their causes; and though my providence can never be limited, my wisdom requires that men shall make use of the means that I have ordained them.

If thou wouldst imitate any one of the birds thou hast seen to my glory, use the talents I have given thee, and imitate the falcon that feeds the raven, and not the raven that lies a sluggard in his nest, and expects his food from another.' This example shows us that we are not to lead idle and lazy lives upon the pretence of depending upon Providence."--_Fables of Pilpay_ (Chandos Cla.s.sics), p. 53.

Ferishtah is in training for a dervish, and is anxious to feed hungry souls. Mr. Browning makes his charitable bird an eagle, and the moral is that man is not to play the helpless weakling, but to save the peris.h.i.+ng by his helpful strength. The dervish, duly admonished, asks which lacks in him food the more--body or soul? He reflects that, as he starves in soul, so may mankind, wherefore he will go forth to help them; and this Mr.

Browning proposes to do by the series of moral and philosophical lessons to be drawn from _Ferishtah's Fancies_. The lyric teaches that, though a life with nature is good for meditation and for lovers of solitude, we are human souls and our proper place is "up and down amid men," for G.o.d is soul, and it is the poet's business to speak to the divine principle existing under every squalid exterior and harsh and hateful personality.

=Earth's Immortalities.= (First published in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics--Bells and Pomegranates_ No. VII.) The poet was famous, and not so very long since; but the gravestones above him are sinking, and the lichens are softening out his very name and date. So fades away his fame.

And the lover who could be satisfied with nothing less than "for ever" has the fever of pa.s.sion quenched in the snows that cover the tomb beside the poet's. One demanded to be remembered, the other to be loved, for ever.

Thus do "Earth's immortalities" perish either under lichens or snows.

=Easter-Day.= (_Christmas Eve and Easter Day_: Florence, 1850.) The poem is a dialogue. The first speaker exclaims, "How very hard it is to be a Christian!" and says the difficulty does not so much consist in living up to the Christ-ideal,--hard enough, by the very terms, but hard to realise it with the moderate success with which we realise the ordinary aims of life. Of course the aim is greater, consequently the required effort harder: may it not be G.o.d's intention that the difficulty of being a Christian should seem unduly great? "Of course the chief difficulty is belief," says the second speaker: "once thoroughly believe, the rest is simple. Prove to me that the least command of G.o.d is really and truly G.o.d's command, and martyrdom itself is easy." Joint the finite into the infinite life, and fix yourself safely inside, no doubt all external things you would safely despise. The second speaker says, "But faith may be G.o.d's touchstone: G.o.d does not reward us with heaven because we see the sun s.h.i.+ning, nor crown a man victor because he draws his breath duly. If you would have faith exist at all, there must perforce be some uncertainty with it. We love or hate people because either they do or do not believe in us. But the Creator's reign, we are apt to think, should be based on exacter laws: we desire G.o.d should geometrise." The first speaker says, "You would grow as a tree, stand as a rock, soar up like fire, be above faith. But creation groans, and out of its pains we have to make our music." The second speaker replies, "I confess a scientific faith is absurd; the end which it was meant to serve would be lost if faith were certainty. We may grant that, but may we not require at least probability?

We do not hang a curtain flat along a wall; we prefer it to hang in folds from point to point. We would not mind the gaps and intervals, if at point and point we could pin our life upon G.o.d. It would be no hards.h.i.+p then to renounce the world. There are men who live merely to collect beetles, giving up all the pleasures of life to make a completer collection than has been hitherto formed. Another set lives to collect snuff-boxes, or in learning to play chess blindfold. It would not be hard to renounce the world if we had as much _certainty_ as these hermits obtain in their pleasures to inspire them in renouncing the vanities of life. Of course, as some will say, there is evidence enough of a sort: as is your turn of mind, so is your search--you will find just what you look for, and so you get your Christian evidences in a sense; you may comfort yourself in having found a sc.r.a.p of papyrus in a mummy-case which declares there really was a living Moses, and you may even get over the difficulty of Jonah and the whale by turning the whale into an island or a rock and set your faith to clap her wings and crow accordingly. You may do better: you may make the human heart the minister of truth, and prove by its wants and needs and hopes and fears how aptly the creeds meet these:

"You wanted to believe; your pains Are crowned--you do!"

If once in the believing mood, the renunciation of pleasures adds a spice to life. Do you say that the Eternal became incarnate--

"Only to give our joys a zest, And prove our sorrows for the best?"

The believing man is convinced that to be a Christian the world's gain is to be accounted loss, and he asks the sceptic what he counsels in that case? The answer is, he would take the safe side--deny himself. The believer does not relish the idea of renouncing life for the sake of death. The collectors of curiosities at least had something for their pains, and the believer gets--well, hope! The sceptic claims that he lives in trusting ease. "Yes," says the believer, "blind hopes wherewith to flavour life--that is all;" and he proceeds to relate an incident which happened in his life one Easter night, three years ago. He was crossing the common near the chapel (spoken of in _Christmas Eve_), when he fell to musing on what was his personal relations.h.i.+p to Christianity, how it would be with him were he to fall dead that moment--would he lie faithful or faithless? It was always so with him from childhood; he always desired to know the worst of everything. "Common-sense" told him he had nothing to fear: if he were not a Christian, who was? All at once he had this vision. "Burn it!" was written in lines of fire across the sky; the dome of heaven was one vast rack of ripples, infinite and black; the whole earth was lit with the flames of the Judgment Day. In a moment he realised that he stood before the seat of Judgment, choosing the world--his naked choice, with all the disguises of old and all his trifling with conscience stripped away. A Voice beside him spoke:--

"Life is done, Time ends, Eternity's begun, And thou art judged for evermore."

The Christ stood before him, told him that, as he had deliberately chosen the world, the finite life in opposition to G.o.d, it should be his:--

"'Tis thine For ever--take it!"

For the world he had lived, for the things of time and sense he had fought and sighed; the ideal life, the truth of G.o.d, the best and n.o.blest things, had interested him noway. His sentence, his awful doom--which at first he was so far from realising that he was thrilled with pleasure at the words--was that he should take and for ever keep the partial beauty for which he had struggled. Wedded for ever to the gross material life, in that he imagined he saw his highest happiness! "Mine--the World?" he cried, in transport. "Yes," said the awful Judge: "if you are satisfied with one rose, thrown to you over the Eden-barrier which excludes you from its glory--take it!" Our greatest punishment would be the gratification of our lowest aims. "All the world!" and the sense of infinite possession of all the beauty of earth, from fern leaf to Alpine heights, brought the warmth to the man's heart and extinguished the terror inspired by the Judgment-seat of G.o.d. And the great Judge saw the thought, told him he was welcome so to rate the mere hangings of the vestibule of the Palace of the Supreme; and in the scorn of the awful gift the man read his error, and asked for Art in place of Nature. And that, too, was conceded: he should obtain the one form the sculptors laboured to abstract, the one face the painters tried to draw, the perfection in their soul which these only hinted at. But "very good" as G.o.d p.r.o.nounced earth to be, earth can only serve earth's ends; its completeness transferred to a future state would be the dreariest deficiency. The good, tried once, were bad retried. Then the judged man, seeing the World and the World of Art insufficient to satisfy his new condition, cried in anguish, "Mind is best--I will seize mind--forego the rest!" And again it was answered to him that all the best of mind on earth--the intuition, the grasps of guess, the efforts of the finite to comprehend the infinite, the gleams of heaven which come to sting with hunger for the full light of G.o.d, the inspiration of poetry, the truth hidden in fable,--all these were G.o.d's part, and in no wise to be considered as inherent to the mind of man. Losing G.o.d, he loses His inspirations; bereft of them in the world he had chosen, mind would not avail to light the cloud he had entered. And the bleeding spirit of the humbled man prays for love alone. And G.o.d said, "Is this thy final choice: Love is best? 'Tis somewhat late! Love was all about thee, curled in its mightiness around all thou hadst to do with. Take the show of love for the name's sake; but remember Who created thee to love, died for love of thee, and thou didst refuse to believe the story, on the ground that the love was too much." Cowering deprecatingly, the man, who now saw the whole truth of G.o.d, cried, "Thou Love of G.o.d! Let me not know that all is lost!

Let me go on hoping to reach one eve the Better Land!" And the man awoke, and rejoiced that he was not left apart in G.o.d's contempt; thanking G.o.d that it is hard to be a Christian, and that he is not condemned to earth and ease for ever.

NOTES.--Stanza iv., "_In all G.o.ds acts (as Plato cries He doth) He should geometrise_": see Plutarch, _Symposiacs_, viii. 2. "Diogenianas began and said, 'Let us admit Plato to the conference, and inquire upon what account he says--supposing it to be his sentence--that _G.o.d always plays the geometer_.' I said: 'This sentence was not plainly set down in any of his books; yet there are good arguments that it is his, and it is very much like his expression.' Tyndares presently subjoined: 'He praises geometry as a science that takes off men from sensible objects, and makes them apply themselves to the intelligible and Eternal Nature, the contemplation of which is the end of philosophy, as a view of the mysteries of initiation into holy rites.'" vi., "_My list of coleoptera_": in entomology, an order of insects having four wings--the beetle tribe. "_A Grignon with the Regent's crest_": Grignon was a famous snuff-box maker, and his name was used for the fas.h.i.+onable boxes. vii., "_Jonah's whale_": The latest theory is that the great deity of Nineveh was a "fish-G.o.d." Mr.

Tylor considers the story to be a solar myth. Madame Blavatsky says (_Isis Unveiled_, vol. ii., p. 258), "'Big Fish' is Cetus, the latinised form of Keto--??t?, and Keto is Dagon, Poseidon." She suggests that Jonah simply went into the cell within the body of Dagon, the fish-G.o.d. _Orpheus_, the mythical poet, whose mother was the Muse Calliope. His song could move the rocks and tame wild beasts (see EURYDICE TO ORPHEUS). _Dionysius Zagrias._ Zagreus was a name given to Dionysus by the Orphic poets. The conception of the Winter-Dionysus originated in Crete: sacrifice was offered to him at Delphi on the shortest day. This is quite evidently one of the myths of winter. xii., _aeschylus_: "_the giving men blind hopes_." In the _Prometheus Chained_ of aeschylus the chorus of ocean nymphs ask Prometheus--

"_Chor._ But had th' offence no further aggravation?

_Pro._ I hid from men the foresight of their fate.

_Chor._ What couldst thou find to remedy that ill?

_Pro._ I sent blind Hope t' inhabit in their hearts.

_Chor._ A blessing hast thou given to mortal man."

Morley's _Plays of aeschylus_, p. 18.

xiv., "_The kingcraft of the Lucomons_": Heads of ancient Etruscan families, and combining both priest and patriarch. The kings were drawn from them. (Dr. Furnivall.) _Fourier's scheme_: Fourierism was the system of Charles Fourier, a Frenchman, who recommended the reorganisation of society into small communities living in common. xx., "_Flesh refine to nerve_": this is a remarkable instance of the poet's scientific apprehension of the process of nerve formation five years before Herbert Spencer speculated on the evolution of the nervous system. (See my _Browning's Message to his Time_: "Browning as a Scientific Poet.") xxvi., _Buonarrotti_ == Michael Angelo.

=Eccelino da Romano III.= (_Sordello._) Known as Eccelin the Monk, or Ezzelin III. He was the Emperor Frederick's chief in North Italy, and was a powerful n.o.ble. He was termed "the Monk" because of his religious austerity. He is described by Mr. Browning in the poem as "the thin, grey, wizened, dwarfish devil Ecelin." He was the most prominent of Ghibelline leaders, was tyrant of Padua, and nicknamed "the Son of the Devil."

Ariosto, _Orlando Furioso_, iii. 33, describes him as

"Fierce Ezelin, that most inhuman lord, Who shall be deemed by men a child of h.e.l.l."