The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 23

=Numpholeptos.= (_Pacchiarotto, with other Poems_, 1876.) The word means "caught or entranced by a nymph." Primitive man always has invested natural objects with some form of life more or less resembling our own.

The Greeks and Romans believed the hills, the woods and the streams to be the peculiar dwelling-places of nymphs, the spirits of external Nature.

They were the maidens of heaven, daughters of Zeus. The nymphs of the rivers and fountains were called Naiads; those of the forests and mountains were Dryads, Hamadryads, and Oreades. Plutarch, in his _Life of Aristides_, says that "when the hero sent to Delphi to inquire of the oracle, he was told that the Athenians would be victorious if they addressed prayers to Jupiter, Juno, Pan, and the nymphs Sphragitides." The cave of these nymphs was "in one of the summits of Mount Cithaeron, opposite the quarter where the sun sets in the summer; and it is said in that cave there was formerly an oracle, by which many who dwelt in those parts were inspired, and therefore called Nympholepti." There was an unnatural idea about a human being enchained by a nymph, just as in the Rhine legends the connection of sailors with the water maidens always brought mischief to the human being so fascinated. It was thought by the Greeks that the Nympholepti lost their reason, though they gained superior wisdom of the inferior G.o.ds. See De Quincey on the Nympholeptoi. (Works, Ma.s.son's Ed., vol. viii., pp. 438, 442.) In Mr. Browning's poem the nymph is a pure, superhuman woman creature, who has entranced a young man enamoured of her heavenly perfections. She has set him an impossible task; from the centre of pure white light she bids him trace ray after ray of light, which is broken into rainbow tints; and she bids him return to her untinctured by the coloured beams he has been compelled to traverse. The poem is one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, of Mr.

Browning's works. It is his largest use of his favourite light metaphor--the breaking up of pure white light into the coloured rays of the solar spectrum. A ray of white light (it is unnecessary, perhaps, to explain) is composed of the seven primary colours--violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. A solar ray of light can be separated by a prism into these seven colours. These again, when painted side by side upon a disc which is rapidly revolved, are, as the poet says, "whirled into a white." The nymph dwells in a realm of this white light. Before the light reaches the young man the imperfection of the medium which conveys it, or of his soul which receives it, breaks up the white light into its const.i.tuent coloured rays. He is bidden by her to travel down each red and yellow ray line, and work in its tint, but return to her without a stain, as pure as the original beams which rayed forth from her dwelling-place.

This he is unable to do. He returns again and again, exciting her disgust at his appearance; and he starts off on another path, only to return coloured by the medium in which he has lived, as before. I have discussed this poem at length in my chapter on "Browning's Science, as shown in _Numpholeptos_," in my _Browning's Message to his Time_, second edition, 1891. The poem was debated at the Browning Society on May 31st, 1891; and so many different explanations were suggested, none of them in the least satisfactory, that the meeting requested Dr. Furnivall to ask Mr.

Browning's a.s.sistance in the matter. He did so, and received the following reply:--"Is not the key to the meaning of the poem in its t.i.tle, ??f???pt?? [caught or entranst by a nymph], not ???a??e?ast?? [a woman lover]? An allegory, that is, of an impossible ideal object of love, accepted conventionally as such by a man who, all the while, cannot quite blind himself to the demonstrable fact that the possessor of knowledge and purity obtained without the natural consequences of obtaining them by achievement--not inheritance,--such a being is imaginary, not real, a nymph and no woman; and only such an one would be ignorant of and surprised at the results of a lover's endeavour to emulate the qualities which the beloved is ent.i.tled to consider as pre-existent to earthly experience, and independent of its inevitable results. I had no particular woman in my mind; certainly never intended to personify wisdom, philosophy, or any other abstraction; and the orb, raying colour out of whiteness, was altogether a fancy of my own. The 'seven spirits' are in the Apocalypse, also in Coleridge and Byron,--a common image."

="Oh Love! Love!"= The lyric of Euripides in his _Hippolytus_ (B.C. 428).

Translated in J. P. Mahaffy's "Euripides," in Macmillan's _Cla.s.sical Writers_. After quoting Euripides' two stanzas, Mr. Mahaffy says (p.

115):--"Mr. Browning has honoured me (Dec. 18th, 1878), with the following translation of these stanzas, so that the general reader may not miss the meaning or the spirit of the ode. The English metre, though not a strict reproduction, gives an excellent idea of the original one":--

I.

"Oh Love! Love, thou that from the eyes diffusest Yearning, and on the soul sweet grace inducest-- Souls against whom thy hostile march is made-- Never to me be manifest in ire, Nor, out of time and tune, my peace invade!

Since neither from the fire-- No, nor the stars--is launched a bolt more mighty Than that of Aphrodite Hurled from the hands of Love, the boy with Zeus for sire.

II.

"Idly, how idly, by the Alpherian river, And in the Pythian shrines of Phbus, quiver Blood-offering from the bull, which h.e.l.las heaps: While Love we wors.h.i.+p not--the Lord of men!

Wors.h.i.+p not him, the very key who keeps Of Aphrodite when She closes up her dearest chamber-portals: Love, when he comes to mortals, Wide-wasting, through those deeps of woes beyond the deep!"

=Og.= See note to _Jochanan Hakkadosh_ in the Sonnets on the Talmudic legend of the giant Og's bones and bedstead. Jewish scholars say the Hebrew work quoted has no existence, and that Mr. Browning's stock of Hebrew was very small.[2]

=Ogniben.= (_A Soul's Tragedy._) He was the astute Pope's legate who went to Faenza to suppress the insurrection. He smoothed matters by getting Chiappino to leave the city, and he then complacently went away, saying he had known "_four_-and-twenty leaders of revolt."

=Old Gandolf.= (_The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's Church._) The Bishop's predecessor in his see, and the man whose tomb he desires to outdo.

=Old Pictures in Florence.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Lyrics_, 1863; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) On a warm March morning the poet from a height looks down upon Florence, gleaming in the translucent air, with all the glory of the beautiful city lying on the mountain side; and of all he saw the startling bell-tower of Giotto was the best to see. But he reproaches Giotto because he has played him false. This was unkind, as he loved him so. And this reflection, in its turn, leads him to think upon Giotto's brother artists. He recalls the ancient masters, and sees them haunting the churches and cloisters where their work was done, and lamenting the decay and neglect of their frescoes. In particular, he reflects on the wronged great soul of a painter whose work is peeling from the walls,--"a lion who dies of an a.s.s's kick." The world wrongs its forgotten great souls, and hums round its famous Michael Angelos and its Raphaels; but perhaps they do not regard it, safe in heaven seeing G.o.d face to face, and all, as Browning hopes, attained to be poets. He thinks they can hardly be "quit of a world where their work is all to do," where the little wits have no ability to understand the relations.h.i.+p of artist to artist, and how one whom the world is pleased to honour derives in direct line from another who is forgotten. Not a word is heard now of men who in their day were as famous as the rest--Stefano, for example,--

"Called Nature's Ape and the world's despair For his peerless painting."

He then reflects on the development of the artist Greek art reuttered the truth of man, and Soul and Limbs, each betokened by the other, were made new in marble. Our weakness is tested by the strength, our meagre charms by the beauty of the matchless forms of Greek sculpture. This taught us the perfection of the body, but the artists one day awoke to the beauty and perfection of Soul, and then they worked for eternity, as the Greeks for time. This Greek art was perfect; these bodies could be no more beautiful. Consequently, so far there was arrest of development; they could never change, being whole and complete. Having learned all they have to teach, we shall see their work abolished. But in painting Souls, the artificer's hand can never be arrested, for soul develops eternally, and things learned on earth are practised in heaven. This is ill.u.s.trated by the case of Giotto. At a stroke he drew a perfect ?. This could be done no better: it was perfect, complete, not to be surpa.s.sed. But Giotto planned a bell-tower, wonderful for beauty, but not even yet completed.

The conception outran the power to bring to perfection. Round O's can be completed; campaniles are still to finish. And so the Greeks finished their bodies. The early masters who began by depicting souls have their work still to finish. Their work is not completed--can, in fact, never be finished--because the soul is infinite. No doubt, he says, the early painters had to meet the objection, "What more can you want than Greek art?" They answered, "To paint man--to make his new hopes s.h.i.+ne through his flesh." New fears glorify his rags. To bring the invisible full into daylight, what matters if the visible go to the dogs? How much they dared, these early masters! The first of this new development, however imperfect, beats the best of the old. Then he reflects that there is a fancy which some lean to (it is an Eastern fancy, now popularised by the Theosophists), that when this life is over we shall begin a fresh succession of lives--lives wherein we shall repeat in large what here we practise in little; and so through an infinite series of lives on a scale that is to be changed. But this is not at all to the poet's mind. He thinks he has learned his lesson here. He has seen

"By the means of evil that good is best,"

and considers that the uses of labour may consequently be garnered. He hopes there is rest; he has had troubles enough. And now he turns away from abstract conceptions on this deep problem to concrete matters--to the actual men who have carved and painted the forms he loves; and he brings up the memories of Nicolo the Pisan sculptor, and of the painter Cimabue, and goes on to speak of Ghiberti and Ghirlandajo. Alas! their ghosts are watching their peeling frescoes, their blistered or whitewashed works. He recalls the names of many a draughtsman and craftsman whose works are left to stealers and dealers. Suddenly the poet remembers the grudge he has against Giotto. There was a precious little picture, which Michael Angelo eyed like a lover, which was lost, but which has just turned up; and Browning wanted it, he thinks that he ought to have been prompted by the spirit of Giotto to go to the right quarter for it, and now it is sold--to whom?--he cannot discover. But he shall have it yet, his jewel! Then he expresses his hope that Italy may soon see the last of the hated Austrian; and then what will not the new Italian republic accomplish for man and art. The Bell-tower of Giotto shall soar up to its proper stature,

"Completing Florence, as Florence Italy."

He wonders if he will be alive the morning the scaffold is taken down, and the golden hope of the world springs from its sleep.

NOTES.--Verse 8, _Da Vinci_: Leonardo Da Vinci, born 1452, died 1519, artist, sculptor, architect, musician, and man of letters; in addition to these he was a scientist and explorer. 9, _Dello_, the Florentine painter, born towards the end of the fourteenth century, registered under the name of Dello di Niccolo Delli. He was a sculptor as well as a painter, and was employed by the king of Spain: _Stefano_: a celebrated Italian painter of Florence (1301?-1350?); his naturalism earned him the t.i.tle of "Scimia della Natura" (Ape of Nature). Vasari says, "He not only surpa.s.sed all those who preceded him in the art, but left even his master, Giotto himself, far behind. Thus he was considered, and with justice, to be the best of all the painters who had appeared down to that time." He excelled in perspective and foreshortening; _Nature's Ape_: Christofano Landino, in the Apology preceding his commentary on Dante, says, "Stefano is called 'The Ape of Nature' by every one, so accurately does he express whatever he designs to represent"; _Vasari, Georgio_, the author of the _Lives of the Painters_; _Theseus_, one of the statues of the Parthenon of Athens, now in the British Museum. 13, _Son of Priam_ == Paris; _Apollo_, the snake-slayer, the Belvedere as described in the _Iliad_; _Niobe_, chief figure of the celebrated group of statues "Niobe all tears for her children," in the Uffizi gallery at Florence; _the Racer's frieze_ of the Parthenon; _dying Alexander_, a fine piece of ancient Greek sculpture at Florence. 17, _Giotto and the "?"_: Pope Benedict XI. sent a messenger to Giotto to bring him a proof of the painter's power. Giotto refused to give him any further example of his talents than a ?, drawn with a free sweep of the brush from the elbow. The Pope was satisfied, and engaged Giotto at a great salary to adorn the palace at Avignon (Professor Colvin); _Campanile_, the bell-tower by the side of the Duomo at Florence. This is greatly praised by Ruskin, who says: "The characteristics of power and beauty occur more or less in different buildings, some in one and some in another. But altogether, and all in their highest possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, only in one building of the world--the Campanile of Giotto." 23, _Nicolo the Pisan_: born between 1205 and 1207, died 1278; a sculptor and architect; _Cimabue_, Giotto's teacher (1240-1302), the great art reformer; _Ghiberti, Lorenzo_ (1381-1455): he executed the wonderful bronze gates of the Baptistery at Florence, which were said by Michael Angelo to be worthy to have been the gates of Paradise; _Ghirlandajo, Domenico_, Florentine painter (1449-98), was the son of Tommaso del Ghirlandajo. 26, _Bigordi_: this is stated by some to have been the family name of Ghirlandajo, but it is disputed; _Sandro Botticelli_, born at Florence in 1457, died 1515; a celebrated Florentine painter; "_the wronged Lippino_," or Filippo Lippi, known as Filippino or Lippino (1460-1505), a Florentine painter, son of Fra Lippo Lippi. Some of his pictures were attributed to other artists, hence the expression "wronged"; _Fra Angelico_ (1387-1455)--Il Beato Fra Giovanni Angelico da Fiesole--was the great Dominican Friar-Painter of Florence, the greatest of all painters of sacred subjects. He was a most holy man, shunning all advancement, and devoted to the poor. He never painted without fervent prayer; _Taddeo Gaddi_: an Italian painter and architect of the Florentine school (1300-1366), son of Gaddo Gaddi; he was one of Giotto's a.s.sistants for twenty-four years; when Giotto died he carried on the work of the Campanile; _intonaco_, rough cast, plaster, paint; _Jerome_, St. Jerome, the translator of the Scriptures into Latin; _Lorenzo Monaco_, Don Lorenzo, painter and monk, of the Angeli of Florence. First noticed as a painter, 1410. He executed many works in the Camaldoline monastery of his order. He was highly esteemed for his goodness. Verse 27, _Pollajolo, Antonio_ (1433-98), a great painter and sculptor of Florence. He began life, as many of the great Italian artists did, as a goldsmith; _tempera_, a mixture of water and the yoke of eggs--used to give body to colours: the same as _distemper_; _Ales...o...b..ldovinetti_, a Florentine painter (1422-99): he worked in fresco and mosaic. 28, _Margheritone of Arezzo_, painter, sculptor, and architect (1236-1313); held in high estimation by painters who worked in the Greek manner. He was the first in painting on wood to cover the surface with canvas; _barret_, a cloak. 29, _Zeno_, the founder of the sect of the Stoics; _Carlino_, a painter. 30, "_a certain precious little tablet_," a lost picture which turned up while Mr.

Browning was in Florence; _Buonarroti_ == Michael Angelo. 31, _San Spirito_ == "Holy Spirit," a church in Florence, so named; _Ognissanti_ == "All Saints'," name of a church of Florence; "_Detur amanti_," let it be given to the lover; "_Jewel of Giamschid_": Byron calls it "the jewel of Giamschid," Beckford "the carbuncle of Giamschid" (see Brewer's _Reader's Handbook_); _Persian Sofi_, the name of a dynasty (1499-1736). 32, "_worst side of Mont St. Gothard_," the Swiss side; _Radetzky_, Count, field-marshal Austria (1766-1858), and famous in the wars against the insurrections against Austria by the Lombardians; _Morello_, a mountain near Florence; 33, _Witanagemot_, the great national council, the a.s.sent of which was necessary for all the laws of the Anglo-Saxon kings; so in Mrs. Browning's poem she refers to "a parliament of lovers of Italy"; _Ex_: "_Casa Guidi_": Mrs. Browning's n.o.ble poem on Italian liberty; "_quod videas ante_," the which see above; _Loraine's_, _i.e._, the Guises of unrivalled eminence in the sixteenth century; _Orgagna_ (1315-76), a painter of Florence. 34, _prologuize_, to introduce with a formal preface; _Chimaera_, a fabulous animal. 35, "_curt Tuscan_": Tuscan is the literary language of Italy, therefore more dignified and freer from colloquialisms and vulgarisms than more modern forms; _-issimo_, termination of the superlative degree; _Cambuscan_, king of Sarra, in Tartary, the model of all royal virtues (see Brewer's _Handbook_); "_alt to altissimo_," high to the highest; _beccaccia_, a woodc.o.c.k; "_Duomo's fit ally_": Giotto's lovely Bell-tower is a fit companion to the cathedral; _braccia_, a cubit.

="O Lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird."= The first line of the invocation to the spirit of Mrs. Browning in Book I. of _The Ring and the Book_. Some stupid readers have thought this poem an invocation to our Lord, catching at the words "to drop down, to toil for man, to suffer, or to die." They thought they detected some familiar words heard in church; and one incompetent critic went so far as to write, "Though Lyric Love is here a quality personified, it seems to be so interchangeably with Christ.... This is the interpretation we attach to the lines, though we have heard that some interpreters have actually considered them to be addressed to his wife!" (_The Religion of our Literature_, by George McCrie, p. 87.) There is really no difficulty about the lines until we come to pa.r.s.e them. Dr. Furnivall has done this in his grammatical a.n.a.lysis of the poem (_Browning Society's Papers_, No. IX., p. 165). An old lady who had read and profited by Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ was advised to read Dr. Cheever's _Lectures_ in explanation of the allegory; asked how she liked the latter work, she said she understood the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and hoped, before she died, to understand Dr.

Cheever's interpretation. I think I understand 'O Lyric Love': I can never hope to understand Dr. Furnivall's a.n.a.lysis. It was called, at the time he wrote it, "Furnivall's Jubilee Puzzle."

="Once I saw a Chemist take a Pinch of Powder"= (_Ferishtah's Fancies_).

The first line of the eighth lyric.

=One Way Of Love.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Lyrics_, 1863; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) A song of unrequited love. The lover has strewn the month's wealth of June roses on his lady's path: she pa.s.ses them without notice. For months he has striven to learn the lute: she will not listen to his music. His whole life long he has learned to love, and he has lost.

Let roses lie, let music's wing be folded: he will but say how blest are they who win her. A n.o.ble, dignified way of accepting defeat in love!

_Another Way of Love_ is a sequel to this poem. In this case the roses of June are actually tiresome to the man to whom they are offered. The woman in the first poem did not notice her roses, the man in the sequel confesses himself weary of their charms. His lady is satirical at his expense, and severely says he may go, and she will be recompensed if June mend the bower which his hand has rifled. June may also bestow her favours on a more appreciative recipient. She may also revenge herself by the lightning she uses to clear away insects and other rose-bower spoilers.

NOTE.--Verse 2, _Eadem semper_, always the same.

=One Word More.= (To E. B. B. [Elizabeth Barrett Browning], 1855.) This poem was originally appended to the collection of poems called _Men and Women_ (_q.v._) Browning's _Men and Women_, containing amongst other n.o.ble poems his _Epistle to Kars.h.i.+sh_, _Cleon_, _Fra Lippo Lippi_, and _Andrea del Sarto_, were fifty in number, and the concluding poem, _One Word More_, formed the dedication to his wife. The volume was in one sense a return for her _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, in which she poured out her love to Mr. Browning. In this poem he not less warmly declares his love for his wife, his "moon of poets." The dedication is happy, because his interest in men and women had been quickened and deepened by his marriage. They had studied human nature together, and each poetic soul had reacted upon the other. He explains why he has desired to give something of his best, some gift which is not a gift to the world but to the woman he loves; and as the meanest of G.o.d's creatures--

"Boasts two soul-sides: one to face the world with One to show a woman when he loves her!"

The poor workman, the most unskilful artisan, will strive to do something which shall express his utmost effort, to present to his love, and the greatest geniuses of the world have been actuated by a similar motive.

Raphael, not content with painting, must pour out his soul in poetry for the woman of his heart (did she love the volume of a hundred sonnets all her life?), and Mr. Browning says he and his poet-wife would rather read that volume than wonder at the Madonnas by which his name will be ever known. But that volume will never be read. Guido Reni treasured it, but, as treasures do disappear, it vanished. Dante once proposed to paint for Beatrice an angel--traced it perchance with the corroded pen with which he p.r.i.c.ked the stigma in the brow of the wicked--"Dante, who loved well because he hated": hating only wickedness, and that because it hinders loving. Mr. Browning would rather study that angel than read a fresh _Inferno_, but that picture we shall never see. No artist lives and loves who desires not for once and for one to express himself in a language natural to him and the occasion, but which to others is but an art; and so the painter will forgo his painting and write a poem, the writer will try to paint a picture "once and for one only"--

"So to be the man and leave the artist."

Why is this? When a man comes before the world as leader, teacher, prophet, artist or poet, in any capacity which is his proper business, he is open to the unsympathetic criticism of a world which is ever exacting and always ungrateful in exact proportion to the magnitude of the work done for it. Under these circ.u.mstances the real self in the man seldom appears; when, however, he presents himself before the sympathetic soul of the woman who loves him, he no longer works for the critic, no longer acts a part, no longer appears in a character distasteful to himself. When Moses smote the rock and saved the Israelites, he had mocking and sneering for his reward: the ungrateful and unbelieving mult.i.tude behaved after their manner. Could Moses forget the ancient wrong he bore about him? Dare the man ever put off the prophet? But were there in all that crowd a woman's face--a woman he could love--he would for her sake lay down the wonder-working rod, for he would be as the camel giving up its store of water with its life. But the poet says he shall never paint pictures, carve statues, nor express himself in music: for his wife he stands on his power of verse alone, and so he bids her take the lines of this love poem, which he has written for her, as the artist in fresco will steal a hair-pencil and cramp his spirit into missal painting for his lady, and the musician who sounds the martial strain will breathe his love through silver to serenade his princess; so he--the Browning men knew for other work--may this once whisper a love song to the ear of his wife. He will speak to her not dramatically, as he spoke in the poems in his book, but in his own true person. She knows him under both aspects, as the moon of Florence is the same which s.h.i.+nes in London, though she has put off her Italian glory, and hurries dispiritedly through the gloomy skies of England. Could the moon really love a mortal, she has a side she could turn towards him, unseen as yet by herdsman or astronomer on his turret.

Dumb to Homer, to Keats even, she would speak to _him_. And so the poet has for his love

"A side the world has never seen,"

the novel

"Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of."

NOTES.--Verse 2, _Century of Sonnets_. I can find no evidence that Raphael wrote a hundred sonnets. Some three, or at most four, are all about which I can find anything. Michael Angelo wrote many impa.s.sioned sonnets, and was undoubtedly a fine poet; but if Raphael wrote many sonnets, they are, as Mr. Browning says, lost. Probably the whole story is an example of poetical licence. There is a very mediocre sonnet (as Mr. Samuel Waddington describes it in the notes to his _Sonnets of Europe_) by Raphael, which he has inscribed on one of his drawings now exhibited at the British Museum:--

SONNET.

BY RAPHAEL.

"Un pensier dolce erimembrare e G.o.do Di quello a.s.salto, ma piu gravo el danno Del partir, ch'io restai como quei c'anno In mar perso la stella, s'el ver odo.

Or lingua di parlar disogli el nodo A dir di questo inusitato inganno Ch' amor mi fece per mio grave afanno, Ma lui piu ne ringratio, e lei ne lodo.

L'ora sesta era, che l'ocaso un sole Aveva fatto, e l'altro sur se in locho Ati piu da far fati, che parole.

Ma io restai pur vinto al mio gran focho Che mi tormenta, che dove lon sole Desiar di parlar, piu riman fiocho."

"There are also two other sonnets," says Mr. Waddington, "attributed to Raphael, but they can hardly be considered worthy of his ill.u.s.trious name." Raphael's "_lady of the sonnets_" was Margherita (La Fornarina), the baker's daughter, of whom Raphael was devotedly fond, and whose likeness appears in several of his most celebrated pictures. "_Else he only used to draw Madonnas_:" Mrs. Jameson, in her _Legends of the Madonna_, gives the following list of Raphael's famous Madonnas: del Baldacchino, delle Candelabre, del Cardellino, della Famiglia Alva, di Foligno, de Giglio, del Pa.s.seggio, dell' Pesce, della Seggiola, di San Sisto. Verse 3, "_Her San Sisto names_": the Madonna di S. Sisto is the glory of the Dresden gallery. Little is known of its history; no studies or sketches of it exist. It much resembles the Madonna di Foligno, but is less injured by restoration. "_Her, Foligno_": the Madonna di Foligno was dedicated by Sigismund Corti, of Foligno, private secretary to Pope Julius II., and a distinguished patron of learning. Sigismund, having been in danger, vowed an offering to Our Lady, to whom he attributed his escape.

The picture is in the Vatican. It was painted in 1511. "_Her that visits Florence in a Vision_": Mr. Browning, in a letter to Mr. W. J. Rolfe, said: "The Madonna at Florence is that called _del Granduca_, which represents her 'as appearing to a votary in a vision'--so say the describers; it is in the earlier manner, and very beautiful." It is in the Pitti Palace, Florence. Painted about 1506. "_Her that's left with lilies in the Louvre_" (Paris): on this Mr. Browning explained that, "I think I meant _La Belle Jardiniere_--but am not sure--from the picture in the Louvre." This is a group of three figures: the Mother and Child and St.

John. Painted in 1508. Verse 4, "_That volume Guido Reni ... guarded_": this does not appear to have been a book of Sonnets, as Browning says, but a volume with a hundred designs drawn by Raphael. Reni left this book to his heir Signorini. Verse 5, "_Dante once prepared to paint an angel_": Dante was master of all the science of his time. He was a skilful draughtsman, and tells us that on the anniversary of the death of Beatrice he drew an angel on a tablet. He was an intimate friend of Giotto, who has recorded that it was from him he drew the inspiration of the allegories of Virtue and Vice for the frescoes of the Scrovegni Palace at Padua. He was also a musician. Verse 7, _Bice_ is Beatrice, Dante's "gentle love." Verse 9, "_Egypt's flesh-pots_" (Exod. xvi. 3). Verse 10, "_Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance_" (Exod. x.x.xiv. 29, 30). Verse 11, _Jethro_, the father-in-law of Moses (Exod. iii. 1); "_aethiopian bond-slave_" (Numb.

xii. 1). Verse 14, "_Kars.h.i.+sh, Cleon, Norbert, and the Fifty_": there is a distinct caution here to those who seek for Browning's real opinions on religion and the various subjects with which he deals, that he is speaking dramatically in these poems, and not "in his true person." Verse 15, _Samminiato_ == San Miniato, a well-known church in Florence. Verse 16, "_Zoroaster on his terrace_": the celebrated founder of the doctrine of the Persian Magi. Very little is known about him personally, but his religion is well understood. Ancient historians say he lived five thousand years before the Trojan War. His scriptures are the _Zend Avesta_. He studied at night the aspect of the heavens. "_Galileo on his turret_": Galileo, as an astronomer, required an observatory. _Keats_: Browning was much influenced by "the human rhythm" of Keats. There is abundant trace of this in _Pauline_, and in the second of the _Paracelsus_ songs, "Heap ca.s.sia, sandal-buds, etc." "_Moonstruck mortal_": see Keats' poem _Endymion_, the fable of Endymion's amours with Diana, or the Moon. The fable probably originated from Endymion's study of astronomy requiring him to pa.s.s the night on a high mountain, to observe the heavenly bodies.

"_Paved work of a sapphire_" (Exod. xxiv. 10). Mr. W. M. Rossetti explains some of the allusions in this poem in the _Academy_ for January 10th, 1891:--"I understand the allusions, but Browning is far from accurate in them. 1. Towards the end of the _Vita Nuova_, Dante says that, on the first anniversary of the death of Beatrice, he began drawing an angel, but was interrupted by certain people of distinction, who entered on a visit.

Browning is therefore wrong in intimating that the angel was painted 'to please Beatrice.' 2. Then Browning says that the pen with which Dante drew the angel was perhaps corroded by the hot ink in which it had previously been dipped for the purpose of denouncing a certain wretch--_i.e._, one of the persons named in his _Inferno_. This about the ink, as such, is Browning's own figure of speech not got out of Dante. 3. Then Browning speaks of Dante's having 'his left hand i' the hair o' the wicked,' etc.

This refers to _Inferno_, Canto 32, where Dante meets (among the traitors to their country) a certain Bocca degli Abati, a notorious Florentine traitor, dead some years back, and Dante clutches and tears at Bocca's hair to compel him to name himself, which Bocca would much rather not do.

4. Next Browning speaks of this Bocca as being a 'live man.' Here Browning confounds two separate incidents. Bocca is not only d.a.m.ned, but also dead; but further on (Canto 33) Dante meets another man, a traitor against his familiar friend. This traitor is Frate Alberigo, one of the Manfredi family of Faenza. This Frate Alberigo was, though d.a.m.ned, not, in fact, dead; he was still alive, and Dante makes it out that traitors of this sort are liable to have their souls sent to h.e.l.l before the death of their bodies. A certain Bianca d'Oria, Genoese, is in like case--d.a.m.ned but not dead. 5. Browning proceeds to speak of 'the wretch going festering through Florence.' This is a relapse into his mistake--the confounding of the dead Florentine Bocca degli Abati with the living (though d.a.m.ned) Faentine and Genoese traitors, Frate Alberigo and Bianca d'Oria, who had nothing to do with Florence."

=On the Poet, Objective and Subjective; on the latter's Aim; on Sh.e.l.ley as Man and Poet.= By Robert Browning. (The introductory essay to _Letters of Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley_. Moxon: 1852.) Dr. Furnivall says: "The cause of Browning's writing this essay was (I believe) as follows:--In or before 1851, a forger clever enough to take in the publishers wrote some 'letters of Sh.e.l.ley and Byron.' Moxon bought the forged Sh.e.l.ley letters, and John Murray the Byron ones. Before they were proved spurious, Moxon printed the Sh.e.l.ley letters, and got Browning to write an introductory essay to them.

Murray was slower, and, by the discovery of the forgery, was saved the exposure and annoyance that Moxon incurred in publis.h.i.+ng, and then having to suppress, his book. The spurious Sh.e.l.ley letters were, as might have been expected, nugatory, barren of any new revelations of Sh.e.l.ley's character. Browning could actually make nothing of them, and therefore wrote his Essay, not on the Letters, but on the two cla.s.ses of poets, objective and subjective, and on Sh.e.l.ley. He wanted a chance of writing on the poet he admired; the Letters gave him the chance; and, being told that they were genuine, he accepted them as such without inquiry. Moreover, being in Paris at the time, he had no opportunity of consulting English experts, had even any suspicion of forgery crossed his mind. The worth of his Essay is no way weakened by its having been set before spurious letters." A brief extract from Mr. Browning's Essay will indicate his estimate of the poetic method which he selected as his own. Speaking of the subjective poet, he says: "He, gifted like the objective poet with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many below, as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their absolute truth--an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially attained by the poet's own soul. Not what man sees, but what G.o.d sees--the _Ideas_ of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly in the Divine Hand--it is toward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements of humanity he has to do; and he digs where he stands--preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak. Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and tempestuous tossings of the forest-trees, but with their roots and fibres naked to the chalk and stone. He does not paint pictures and hang them on the walls, but rather carries them on the retina of his own eyes: we must look deep into his human eyes to see those pictures on them. He is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fas.h.i.+oner; and what he produces will be less a work than an effluence. That effluence cannot be easily considered in abstraction from his personality,--being indeed the very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it but not separated." In these words we have not only Mr. Browning's defence of his work (if any could be needed), but an explanation of the reason why he seems as much interested in dissecting the soul of a villain or a scamp as of a saint and hero. Count Guido in his complex wickedness, brooding in his prison cell, is more interesting to such an a.n.a.lyst than Pompilia fluttering her wings on the borders of heaven. The old _roue_ in the Inn Alb.u.m, has root fibres worth tracing till they grip the stones. Simple old Rabbi Ben Ezra has nothing to dissect; his innocent soul lies basking in the smile of G.o.d. He has nothing to do with him but sit at his feet and listen. This "Essay on Sh.e.l.ley" has been reprinted and published in Part I. of the _Browning Society's Papers_.