The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 24

=Optimism.= Browning's optimism is that which perhaps more than anything else distinguishes his whole work from first to last. Most eloquently has this been acknowledged by James Thomson, a pessimist of the pessimists.

Unhappily he could not himself feel this confidence in "everything being for the best in the best of all possible worlds," but he could admire it in another. "Browning," he said, "has conquered life, instead of being conquered by it: a victory so rare as to be almost unique, especially among poets in these latter days." It would be easy to give examples of Browning's optimism, which would fill many pages of this work. The following will suffice:--

"G.o.d's in His heaven--all's right with the world!"

_Song in "Pippa Pa.s.ses."_

"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round."

_Abt Vogler._

"Let us cry 'All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!'"

_Rabbi Ben Ezra._

"My own hope is, a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That, after Last, returns the First, Though a wide compa.s.s round be fetched That what began best, can't end worst, Nor what G.o.d blessed once, prove accurst."

_Apparent Failure._

=Orchestrion.= The musical instrument invented by Abt Vogler (_q.v._).

=Ottima.= (_Pippa Pa.s.ses._) The woman who, with her paramour Sebald, murdered her husband Luca.

="Overhead the Tree-Tops meet."= (_Pippa Pa.s.ses._) Pippa sings these words as she pa.s.ses the Bishop's house.

="Over the Sea our Galleys went."= (_Paracelsus._) The hero sings the song of which these are the opening words in Part IV., _Paracelsus Aspires_.

=Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in Distemper.= (Published July 1876, in a volume with _Other Poems_.) They were: "At the Mermaid," "Home," "s.h.i.+p,"

"Pisgah-Sights," "Fears and Scruples," "Natural Magic," "Magical Nature,"

"Bifurcation," "Numpholeptos," "Appearances," "St. Martin's Summer,"

"Herve Riel," "A Forgiveness," "Cenciaja," "Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial," "Epilogue."

=Pacchiarotto= (or =Pacchiarotti=) =Jacopo=, has been confused in history with =Girolamo del Pacchia=, and this fact is referred to in the beginning of the poem. The following account of these painters, who lived about the same time, from the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, will help to clear the way for the comprehension of this rather difficult poem,--difficult not on account of the story, which is told clearly enough, but for the extraneous matter with which it is intermingled.

[THE MAN.] "Pacchia, Girolamo Del, and Pacchiarotto (or Pacchiarotti) Jacopo. These are two painters of the Sienese school, whose career and art-work have been much mis-stated till late years. One or other of them produced some good pictures, which used to pa.s.s as the performance of Perugino; reclaimed from Perugino, they were a.s.signed to Pacchiarotto; now it is sufficiently settled that the good works are by G. del Pacchia, while nothing of Pacchiarotto's own doing transcends mediocrity. The mythical Pacchiarotto, who worked actively at Fontainebleau, has no authenticity. Girolamo del Pacchia, son of a Hungarian cannon-founder, was born probably in Siena, in 1477. Having joined a turbulent club named the Bardotti, he disappeared from Siena in 1535, when the club was dispersed, and nothing of a later date is known of him. His most celebrated work is a fresco of the Nativity of the Virgin, in the chapel of St. Bernardino, Siena: graceful and tender, with a certain artificiality. Another renowned fresco, in the church of St. Catherine, represents that saint on her visit to St. Agnes of Montepulciano, who, having just expired, raises her foot by miracle. In the National Gallery of London there is a Virgin and Child.

The forms of G. del Pacchia are fuller than those of Perugino (his princ.i.p.al model of style appears to have been in reality Francialigio); the drawing is not always unexceptionable. The female heads have sweetness and beauty of feature, and some of the colouring has noticeable force.

Pacchiarotto was born in Siena in 1474. In 1530 he took part in the conspiracy of the Libertini and Popolani, and in 1533 he joined the Bardotti. He had to hide for his life in 1535, and was concealed by the Observantine fathers in a tomb in the church of St. John. He was stuffed in close to a new-buried corpse, and got covered with vermin and dreadfully exhausted by the close of the second day. After a while he resumed work. He was exiled in 1539, but recalled in the following year; and in that year, or soon afterwards, he died. Among the few extant works with which he is still credited is an a.s.sumption of the Virgin, in the Carmine of Siena."

[THE POEM.] Pacchiarotto must needs take up "Reform." He thought it was his vocation to set things in general to rights. The world he considered needed reforming, and he was quite ready to undertake the task. He found mankind stubborn, however, and not much inclined to listen to him. So he constructed himself a workshop, and painted its walls in fresco with all sorts and conditions of men, from beggar to n.o.ble. He drew kings, clowns, popes, emperors, priests, and ladies; then washed his brushes, cleaned his pallet, took off his working dress, and began to lecture his figures which he had painted. He put arguments into their mouths, and of course readily refuted them. He found his figures very meek and complaisant, and he had no trouble at all in disposing of their replies to his own satisfaction.

He stripped them one by one of their "cant-clothed abuses," exposed the sophistry of their excuses, and left their vices without a leg to stand upon. Paint-bred men being so easily upset, he was now prepared to deal with those of flesh and blood, so he wished mortar and paint good-bye and descended to the streets. It happened just at this time that there fell upon Siena a famine. This public distress afforded our artist his opportunity: he blamed the authorities for the famine, and set himself to the task of teaching them to manage things better. Now, there was at that time a club of disaffected citizens, who called themselves _Bardotti_, or "spare-horses"--those which walk by the side of the waggon drawn by the working team--horses doing nothing to draw the load, but ready in case of emergency. Such were these gentry; they did not work, but they were ready for such an emergency as the present. And their advice to the authorities was simply to turn things upside down, make servant master, poverty wealth, and wealth poverty; then things would be righted. Pacchiarotto placed himself in the midst of these folk, and suggested that what they wanted was the right man in the right place, and he was the right man. The words were not out of his mouth ere the Spare-Horses flew at him, and he had to run for his life. Looking everywhere for some place of shelter, he found himself at the cemetery of a Franciscan monastery; and the only place where he could hide himself with safety from the pursuers was in a vault with a recently-buried corpse, so he was obliged to creep through a hole in the brickwork and habituate himself to the strange bedfellow. In this stinking atmosphere, and covered with vermin from the corpse, he lay in misery for two days, praying the saints to set him free, and promising for ever to abandon the attempt to preach change to his fellow-citizens.

When he was starved into sanity, he scrambled out of this loathsome hiding-place, looking like a spectre, only much more "alive." He then found his way to the superior of the brotherhood, who had him well cleansed and rubbed with odoriferous unguents. They fed him, clothed him, and then he told his story all unvarnished. Be sure the good monk gave him sound advice. He told him how he had had hopes of converting men by his own preaching, and how hard he had found the task. He had come to the conclusion that work for work's sake was the real need of men: let men work, but not dream, and they would succeed; if present success merely were intended, heaven would begin too soon. He advised him not to be a spare-horse, but a working-horse--to stick to his paint brush and work for his living. Pacchiarotto was mute; he had no need of conversion. He was reformed already, not by a live man's arguments, but by the dead thing--the clay-cold grinning corpse, that had asked him why he was in such a hurry to leave the warm light and join him in the grave. The corpse had told him how earth was a place of rehearsal, at which things seldom go smoothly. The Author, no doubt, had His reasons, which would come out when the play was produced. Meanwhile he advised him not to interfere with its production; he was suffering from a swelling called Vanity, which he would p.r.i.c.k and relieve him of. And so Pacchiarotto, having partaken of the monks' good cheer, was restored to sanity and said good-bye. Mr. Browning now addresses his critics. He has told them a plain story, and tried therewith to content them. He considers them as an a.s.sembly of May-day sweeps, with tongs and bellows, calling at his house and announcing themselves as

"We critics as sweeps out your chimbly!"

They relieve his flue of the soot, suggest that he burns a deal of coal in his kitchen, and the neighbours do say he ought to consume his own smoke!

Browning tells them that his housemaid says they bring more dirt into the house than they remove. But he will not be hard upon them: "'twas G.o.d made you dingy," he says. He will give them soap, however, and let them dance away and make a rattle with their brushes, which is a large share of their whole business, he thinks. He bids them not trample his gra.s.s, and flings out a liberal largess and bids them be off, or his housemaid will serve them as Xantippe served Socrates once; she will take the first thing that comes to her hand.

NOTES.--Verse 2, "_my Kirkup_": this was Baron Kirkup, an admirer of art and letters, who was on friendly terms with Browning at Florence. He received a t.i.tle of n.o.bility from the King of Italy for his services to literature. It was he who discovered Dante's portrait in the Bargello at Florence. _San Bernardino_: St. Bernardino of Siena became, at the age of twenty-three, one of the most celebrated and eloquent preachers among the Franciscans, but he refused all ecclesiastical honours. He founded the Order of the "_Observants_" (see note to v. 17). He was born 1380.

_Bazzi_: the Italian painter Giannantonio Bazzi (who, until recent years, was erroneously named _Razzi_) bore the name "_Sodona_" or "_Il Sodoma_,"

as a family name, and signed it upon some of his pictures. Bazzi was corrupted into Razzi, and "Sodona" into "Sodoma." He lived _c._ 1479-1549.

_Beccafumi_: a distinguished painter of the Siena school, who lived at the beginning of the sixteenth century. v. 3, _Sopra sotto_, topsy-turvy. v.

5, _Quiesco_, I rest; "_priest armed with bell, book, and candle_": in the major excommunication the bell is rung, the sentence read from the book, and the lighted candle extinguished. v. 6, _frescanti_, painters in fresco. v. 8, _Boanerges_: sons of Thunder--an appellation given by Jesus Christ to His disciples James and John. v. 9, _Juvenal_: the celebrated Roman satirist; flourished at Rome in the latter half of the first century. He severely chastised the follies and vices of his times. He was particularly outspoken concerning the licentiousness of the Roman ladies.

"_Quae nemo dixisset in toto, nisi (aedepol) ore illoto_": which things no one would have spoken about fully, unless (by Gad) he had a dirty mouth.

(Juvenal's satires about the Roman ladies are inconceivably filthy, and if the things were true it was ill to speak of them in this manner. St. Paul was equally severe, but adopted another method.) _Apage_: away! begone! v.

11, "_non verbis sed factis_": not by words but by deeds. v. 12, "_fetch grain out of Sicily_": Sicily has always been famous for its wheat. Even at the present day the best wheat for making Naples macaroni comes from this beautiful island, and the people take in return the inferior wheat of Italy. Sicily was in ancient times sacred to Ceres, the G.o.ddess of the corn-lands. v. 13, "_Freed Ones_," "_Bardotti_": a revolutionary club so called, which was broken up by the authorities in 1535. Pacchia and Pacchiarotto both seem to have had some connection with it; _bailiwick_: the precincts in which a bailiff has jurisdiction. v. 15, "_kai ta loipa_," ?a? ta ?e?p?e?a == and so forth; _kappas, taus, lambdas_ (?.t.?.): the initial letters of the above Greek words, commonly used in learned books. v. 16, "_per ignes incedis_": thou art treading upon fires.

Not quite correctly quoted, as to the order of the words, from Horace (_Od._ II. i. 6), "Et incedis per ignes, suppositos cineri doloso." v. 17, _St. John's Observance_: "The Italians call the Franciscans _Osservanti_, in France _Peres ou Freres de l'Observance_, because they observed the original rule as laid down by St. Francis, went barefoot, and professed absolute poverty. This order became very popular" (Mrs. Jameson's _Monastic Orders_). v. 18, "_haud in posse sed esse mens_": mind as it is, not as it might be. v. 21, _thill-horse_, a thiller horse, a horse which goes between the shafts, or thills. v. 22, _imposthume_, an abscess or boil. v. 23, "_saeculorum in saecula!_" for ever and ever; _Benedicite_: Bless ye! May you be blessed. v. 27, _aubade_ [Fr.], open-air music performed at daybreak before the window of the person whom it is intended to honour. v. 27, _skoramis_, a vessel of dishonour. v. 28, _karterotaton belos_, the strongest dart (see Pindar's 1st Olympic Ode). "_which Pindar declares the true melos_" == mode. _ad hoc_, hitherto. _os frontis_, the forehead. "_hebdome, hieron emar_," the seventh, the holy day. "_tei gar Apollona chrusaora, egeinato Leto_": on which the golden-sworded Apollo was born of Latona.

=Painting Poems.= The _great poems_ of this cla.s.s are _Andrea del Sarto_, _Pictor Ignotus_, and _Fra Lippo Lippi_. (Vasari's _Lives of the Painters_ should be read in connection with the poems which deal with the Italian artists.)

=Palma.= The heroine of _Sordello_. She was the daughter of Eccelino, the Ghibelline, by Agnes Este. The historical personage represented by Browning's Palma was Cunizza.

=Pambo.= (_Jocoseria_, 1883.) The poem is based upon a pa.s.sage in the _Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus_, Lib. iv., cap. xviii., "concerning Ammon the Monk, and divers religious men inhabiting the Desert." In the time of St. Antony, in the Nitrian desert, A.D. 373, there was a monk named "Pambo, a simple and an unlearned man, who came unto his friend to learn a Psalm; and hearing the first verse of the thirty-ninth Psalm, which is there read: 'I said, I will take heed unto my ways, that I offend not with my tongue'--would not hear the second, but went away saying, 'This one verse is enough for me, if I learn it as I ought to do.'

And when his teacher blamed him for absenting himself a whole six months, he answered for himself that he had not well learned the first verse. Many years after that, when one of his acquaintances demanded of him whether he had learned the verse, he said again, that in nineteen years he had scarce learned in life to fulfil that one line." His life is taken from Palladius, in Lausiac and Rufin. _Hist. Patr. Sozomen._ Alban Butler, in his _Lives of the Saints_, under the date September 6th, gives the following interesting account of the character, whose history was apparently only partially known by Mr. Browning, as in the second verse of the poem he says he does not know who he was:--"St. Pambo betook himself in his youth to the great St. Antony in the desert, and, desiring to be admitted among his disciples, begged he would give him some lessons for his conduct. The great patriarch of the ancient monks told him he must take care always to live in a state of penance and compunction for his sins, must perfectly divest himself of all self-conceit, and never place the least confidence in himself or in his own righteousness; must watch continually over himself, and study to act in everything in such a manner as to have no occasion afterward to repent of what he had done; and that he must labour to put a restraint upon his tongue and his appet.i.te. The disciple set himself earnestly to learn the practice of all these lessons.

The mortification of gluttony was usually laid down by the fathers as one of the first steps towards bringing the senses and the pa.s.sions into subjection: this, consisting in something exterior and sensible, its practice is more obvious, yet of great importance towards the reduction of all the sensual appet.i.tes of the mind, whose revolt was begun by the intemperance and disobedience of our first parents. Fasting is also, by the Divine appointment, a duty of the exterior part of our penance. What a reproach are the austere lives which so many saints have led to those slothful and sensual Christians whose G.o.d is the belly, and who walk enemies to the Cross of Christ, or who have not courage, at least by frequent self-denials, to curb this appet.i.te! No man can govern himself who is a slave to this base gratification of sense. St. Pambo excelled most other ancient monks in the austerity of his continual fasts. The government of his tongue was no less an object of his watchfulness than that of his appet.i.te. A certain religious brother to whom he had applied for advice began to recite to him the thirty-ninth psalm: 'I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue.' Which words Pambo had no sooner heard, but, without waiting for the second verse, he returned to his cell, saying that was enough for one lesson, and that he would go and study to put it in practice. This he did by keeping almost perpetual silence, and by weighing well, when it was necessary to speak, every word before he gave any answer. He often took several days to recommend consultations to G.o.d, and to consider what answer he should give to those who addressed themselves to him. By his perpetual attention not to offend in his words, he arrived at so great a perfection in this particular that he was thought to have equalled, if not to have excelled, St. Antony himself; and his answers were seasoned with so much wisdom and spiritual prudence that they were received by all as if they had been oracles dictated by heaven. Abbot Poemen said of our saint: 'Three exterior practices are remarkable in Abbot Pambo: his fasting every day till evening, his silence, and his great diligence in manual labour.' St.

Antony inculcated to all his disciples the obligation of a.s.siduity in constant manual labour in a solitary life, both as a part of penance and a necessary means to expel sloth and entertain the vigour of the mind in spiritual exercises. This lesson was confirmed to him by his own experience, and by a heavenly vision related in the Lives of the Fathers as follows: 'Abbot Antony, as he was sitting in the wilderness, fell into a grievous temptation of spiritual darkness; and he said to G.o.d: "Lord, I desire to be saved; but my thoughts are a hindrance to me. What shall I do in my present affliction? How shall I be saved?" Soon after he rose up, and, going out of his cell, saw a man sitting and working, then rising from his work to pray; afterward sitting down again and twisting his cord, after this rising to pray. He understood this to be an angel sent by G.o.d to teach him what he was to do, and he heard the angel say to him: "Do so, and thou shalt be saved." Hereat the Abbot was filled with joy and confidence, and by this means he cheerfully persevered to the end.' St.

Pambo most rigorously observed this rule, and feared to lose one moment of his precious time. Out of love of humiliations, and a fear of the danger of vain-glory and pride, he made it his earnest prayer for three years that G.o.d would not give him glory before men, but rather contempt.

Nevertheless G.o.d glorified him in this life, but made him by His grace to learn more perfectly to humble himself amidst applause. The eminent grace which replenished his soul showed itself in his exterior by a certain air of majesty, and a kind of light which shone on his countenance, like what we read of Moses, so that a person could not look steadfastly on his face.

St. Antony, who admired the purity of his soul and his mastery over his pa.s.sions, used to say that his fear of G.o.d had moved the Divine Spirit to take up His resting-place in him. St. Pambo, after he left St. Antony, settled in the desert of Nitria, on a mountain, where he had a monastery.

But he lived some time in the wilderness of the Cells, where Rufinus says he went to receive his blessing in the year 374. St. Melania the Elder, in the visit she made to the holy solitaries who inhabited the deserts of Egypt, coming to St. Pambo's monastery on Mount Nitria, found the holy abbot sitting at his work, making mats. She gave him three hundred pounds weight of silver, desiring him to accept that part of her store for the necessities of the poor among the brethren. St. Pambo, without interrupting his work, or looking at her or her present, said to her that G.o.d would reward her charity. Then, turning to his disciple, he bade him take the silver and distribute it among all the brethren in Lybia and the isles who were most needy, but charged him to give nothing to those of Egypt, that country being rich and plentiful. Melania continued some time standing, and at length said: 'Father, do you know that here is three hundred pounds weight of silver?' The Abbot, without casting his eye upon the chest of silver, replied: 'Daughter, He to whom you made this offering very well knows how much it weighs without being told. If you give it to G.o.d, who did not despise the widow's two mites, and even preferred them to the great presents of the rich, say no more about it.' This Melania herself related to Palladius. St. Athanasius once desired St. Pambo to come out of the desert to Alexandria, to confound the Arians by giving testimony to the divinity of Jesus Christ. Our saint, seeing in that city an actress dressed up for the stage, wept bitterly; and being asked the reason of his tears, said he wept for the sinful condition of that unhappy woman, also for his own sloth in the Divine service, because he did not take so much pains to please G.o.d as she did to ensnare men. When Abbot Theodore begged of St. Pambo some words of instruction: 'Go,' said he, 'and exercise mercy and charity toward all men. Mercy finds confidence before G.o.d.' To the priest of Nitria who asked him how the brethren ought to live, he said: 'They must live in constant labour and the exercise of all virtues, watching to preserve their conscience free from stain, especially from giving scandal or offence to any neighbour.' St. Pambo said, a little before his death: 'From the time that I came into this desert, and built myself a cell in it, I do not remember that I have ever ate any bread but what I had earned by my own labour, nor that I ever spoke any word of which I afterward repented. Nevertheless, I go to G.o.d as one who has not yet begun to serve Him.' He died seventy years old, without any sickness, pain, or agony, as he was making a basket, which he bequeathed to Palladius, who was at that time his disciple, the holy man having nothing else to give him. Melania took care of his burial, and having obtained this basket, kept it to her dying day. St. Pambo is commemorated by the Greeks on several days. It was a usual saying of this great director of souls in the rules of Christian perfection, 'If you have a heart, you may be saved.' The extraordinary austerities and solitude of a St. Antony or a St. Pambo are not suitable to persons engaged in the world,--they are even inconsistent with their obligations; but all are capable of disengaging their affections from inordinate pa.s.sions and attachment to creatures, and of attaining to a pure and holy love of G.o.d, which may be made the principle of their thoughts and ordinary actions, and sanctify the whole circle of their lives. Of this all who have a heart are, through the Divine grace, capable. In whatever circ.u.mstances we are placed, we have opportunities of subduing our pa.s.sions and subjecting our senses by frequent denials, of watching over our hearts by self-examination, of purifying our affections by a.s.siduous recollection and prayer, and of uniting our souls to G.o.d by continual exterior and interior acts of holy love. Thus may the gentleman, the husbandman, or the shopkeeper, become an eminent saint, and make the employments of his state an exercise of all heroic virtues, and so many steps to perfection and to eternal glory."--Mr. Browning, in the last verse, addresses his critics in a jocular manner. He owns he is very much like Pambo,--he has spent much time in _looking to his ways_; yet, as he is so often reminded by his reviewers and critics, he still feels, he says, that he _offends with his tongue_!

NOTE.--"_Arcades sumus ambo_": "we are both alike eccentric." From Vergil's _Eclogues_ (vii.), where Corydon and Thyrsis are described as _both Arcadians_.

=Pan and Luna.= (_Dramatic Idyls_, Second Series, 1880.) Pan was the G.o.d of shepherds, of huntsmen, and of all the inhabitants of the country. He was a monster in appearance, had two small horns on his head, his complexion was ruddy, his nose flat, and his legs, thighs, and feet and tail, were those of a goat. The G.o.d of shepherds lived chiefly in Arcadia, and he is described by the poets as frequently occupied in deceiving and entrapping the nymphs of the neighbourhood. Luna was the same as Diana or Cynthia--names given to the moon. Mr. Browning quotes from Vergil, _Georgics_, iii., 390, at the head of the poem the words, "Si credere dignum est" (if we may trust report), the context giving the account according to Vergil--

"'Twas thou, with fleeces milky-white, (if we May trust report) Pan, G.o.d of Arcady, Did bribe thee, Cynthia; nor didst thou disdain, When called in woody shades, to cure a lover's pain."

The legend was the poetical way of accounting for an eclipse of the moon.

The naked maid-moon flying through the night sought shelter in a fleecy cloud ma.s.s caught on some pine-tree top. "Shamed she plunged into its shroud," when she was grasped by rough red Pan, the G.o.d of all that tract, who had made a billowy wrappage of wool tufts to simulate a cloud. Vergil says that Luna was a not unwilling conquest; Mr. Browning does more justice to the supposed austerity of the G.o.ddess of night. It is evident, however, that the moral of the poem is that she yielded herself to the love of Pan out of compa.s.sion. Pan exalted himself in aspiring to her austere purity; Luna voluntarily subjected herself to the lower nature out of sympathy, thus preserving her modesty by sanctifying it with sacrifice.

=Paracelsus.= [THE MAN.] Paracelsus was the son of a physician, William Bombast von Hohenheim, who taught him the rudiments of alchemy, surgery, and medicine; he studied philosophy under several learned masters, chief of whom was Trithemius, of Spanheim, Abbot of Wurzburg, a great adept in magic, alchemy, and astrology. Under this teacher he acquired a taste for occult studies, and formed a determination to use them for the welfare of mankind. He could hardly have studied under a better man in those dark days. Tritheim himself was well in advance of most of the teachers of his time; he was of the Theosophists or Mystics, for they are of the same cla.s.s, and probably, in their German form, derived their origin from the labours of Tauler of Strasburg, who afterwards, with "the Friends of G.o.d,"

made their headquarters at Basle. The mysticism which is so dear to Mr.

Browning, and which perhaps finds its highest expression in the poem which we are considering, is not therefore out of place. When he left his home he went to study in the mines of the Tyrol. There, we are told, he learned mining and geology, and the use of metals in the practice of medicine. "I see," he says, "the true use of chemistry is not to make gold, but to prepare medicines." Paracelsus is rightly termed "the father of modern chemistry." He discovered the metals zinc and bis.m.u.th, hydrogen gas, and the medical uses of many minerals, the most important of which were mercury and antimony. He gave to medicine the greatest weapon in her armoury--the tincture of opium. His celebrated _azoth_ some say was magnetised electricity, and others that his _magnum opus_ was the science of fire. He acted as army surgeon to several princes in Italy, Belgium, and Denmark. He travelled in Portugal and Sweden, and came to England; going thence to Transylvania, he was carried prisoner to Tartary, visiting the famous colleges of Samarcand, and went thence with the son of the Khan on an emba.s.sy to Constantinople. All this time he had no books. His only book was Nature; he interrogated her at first-hand. He mixed with the common people, and drank with boors, shepherds, Jews, gipsies, and tramps, so gaining sc.r.a.ps of knowledge wherever he could, and giving colourable cause to his enemies to say he was nothing but a drunken vagabond fond of low company. He would rather learn medicine and surgery from an old country nurse than from a university lecturer, and was denounced accordingly and--naturally. If there was one thing he detested more than another, it was the principle of authority. He bent his head to no man.

Paracelsus, as we find him in his works, was full of love for humanity, and it is much more probable that he learned his lessons while travelling, and mixing amongst the poor and wretched, and while a prisoner in Tartary, where he doubtless imbibed much Buddhist and occult lore from the philosophers of Samarcand, than that anything like the Constantinople drama was enacted. Be this as it may, we have abundant evidence in the many extant works of Paracelsus that he was thoroughly imbued with the spirit and doctrines of the Eastern occultism, and was full of love for humanity. A quotation from his _De Fundamento Sapientiae_ must suffice: "He who foolishly believes is foolish; without knowledge there can be no faith. G.o.d does not desire that we should remain in darkness and ignorance. We should be all recipients of the Divine wisdom. We can learn to know G.o.d only by becoming wise. To become like G.o.d we must become attracted to G.o.d, and the power that attracts us is love. Love to G.o.d will be kindled in our hearts by an ardent love for humanity, and a love for humanity will be caused by a love to G.o.d." In the year 1525 Paracelsus went to Basle, where he was fortunate in curing Froben, the great printer, by his laudanum, when he had the gout. Froben was the friend of Erasmus, who was a.s.sociated with colampadius; and soon after, upon the recommendation of colampadius, he was appointed by the city magnates a professor of physics, medicine and surgery, with a considerable salary; at the same time they made him city physician, to the duties of which office he requested might be added inspector of drug shops. This examination made the druggists his bitterest enemies, as he detected their fraudulent practices: they combined to set the other doctors of the city against him, and as these were exceedingly jealous of his skill and success, poor Paracelsus found himself in a hornet's nest. We find him then at Basle University in 1526, the earliest teacher of science on record. He has become famous as a physician, the medicines which he has discovered he has successfully used in his practice; he was now in the eyes of his patients at least,

"The wondrous Paracelsus, life's dispenser, Fate's commissary, idol of the schools and courts."

In 1528 we find him at Colmar, in Alsatia. He has been driven by the priests and doctors from Basle. He had been called to the bedside of some rich cleric who was ill; he cured him, but so speedily that his fee was refused. Though not at all a mercenary man (for he always gave the poor his services gratuitously) he sued the priest, but the judge refused to interfere, and Paracelsus used strong language to him, and had to fly to escape punishment. The closing scene of the drama is laid in a cell in the hospital of Salzburg. It is the year 1541, his age but forty-eight, and the divine martyr of science lies dying. Recent investigations in contemporary records have proved that he had been attacked by the servants of certain physicians who were his jealous enemies, and that in consequence of a fall he sustained a fracture of the skull, which proved fatal in a few days. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Sebastian at Salzburg, but in 1752 his bones were removed to the porch of the church, and a monument was erected to his memory by the archbishop. When his body was exhumed it was discovered that his skull had been fractured during life. Writers on magic, of whom Dr. Hartmann is one, describe _azoth_ as being "the creative principle in Nature; the universal panacea or spiritual life-giving air--in its lowest aspects, ozone, oxygen, etc."

Much ridicule has been cast upon Paracelsus for his belief in the possibility of generating homunculi; but after all he may only mean that chemistry will succeed in bridging the gulf between the living and the not-living by the production of organic bodies from inorganic substances.

Paracelsus held that the const.i.tution of man consists of seven principles: (1) The elementary body; (2) The archaeus (vital force); (3) The sidereal body; (4) The animal soul; (5) The rational soul; (6) The spiritual soul; (7) The man of the new Olympus (the personal G.o.d). Those who are familiar with Indian philosophy will recognise this anthropology as identical with its own. Paracelsus, in his _De Natura Rerum_, says, "The external man is not the real man, but the real man is the soul in connection with the Divine Spirit." We understand now what Mr. Browning means when he says that "knowing is opening the way to let the imprisoned splendour escape."

His idea that all Nature was living, and that there is nothing which has not a soul hidden within it--a hidden principle of life--led him to the conclusion that, in place of the filthy concoctions and hideous messes that were in vogue with the doctors of his time, it was possible to give tinctures and quintessences of drugs, such as we now call active principles,--in a word, that it is more reasonable and pleasant to take a grain or two of quinine than a tablespoonful of timber. He set himself to study the causes and the symptoms of disease, and sought a remedy in common-sense methods. Mr. Browning is right when he makes him say he had a "wolfish hunger after knowledge"; and surely there never lived a man whose aim was to devote its fruits to the service of humanity more than his.

There are many hints in his works that he knew a great deal more than he cared to make known. Take this example. He said: "Every peasant has seen a magnet will attract iron. I have discovered that the magnet, besides this visible power, has another and a concealed power." Again: "A magnet may be prepared out of some vital substance that will attract vitality." Mesmer, who lived nearly three hundred years after him, reaped the glory of a discovery made, as Lessing says, by the martyred fire-philosopher who died in Salzburg hospital. "Matter is the visible body of the invisible G.o.d,"

says Paracelsus. Matter to him was not dead. "Matter is, so to say, coagulated vapour, and is connected with spirit by an intermediate principle which it receives from the spirit." We cannot understand Paracelsus and the science of his time without a little inquiry as to what was meant by the search for the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, and the universal medicine. It is very difficult to discern what was really intended by these phrases. Dr. Anna Kingsford, who paid considerable attention to the hermetic philosophy, says: "These are but terms to denote pure spirit and its essential correlative, a will absolutely firm, and inaccessible alike to weakness from within and a.s.sault from without." Another writer ingeniously tries to explain the universal solvent as really nothing but pure water, which has the property of more or less dissolving all the elements. His _alcahest_--as he termed it--as far as I can make out was nothing more than a preparation of lime; but writers of this school only desired to be understood by the initiated, and probably the words actually used meant something quite different.

There was a reason for using an incomprehensible style for fear of the persecutions of the Church, and these books, like the rolls in Ezekiel, were "written within and without." Many great truths, we know, were enshrouded in symbolic names and fanciful metaphors. It is certain that Paracelsus, like his predecessors, sought to possess the elixir of life.

It does not appear from his writings that he thought it possible to render the physical body immortal; but he held it to be the duty--as the medical profession holds it still--of the physician to preserve life as long as possible. A great deal of matter attributed to Paracelsus on this subject is spurious, but there are some of his authentic writings which are very curious and entertaining. He describes the process of making the _Primum Ens Melissae_, which after all turns out to be nothing but an alkaline tincture of the leaves of the common British plant known as the Balm or _Melissa officinalis_. Some very amusing stories are told of the virtues of this concoction by Lesebure, a physician to Louis XIV., and which speak volumes for the credulity of the doctors of those times.

Another of his great secrets was his _Primum Ens Sanguinis_. This is extremely simple, being nothing more than the venous injection of blood from the arm of "a healthy young person." In this we see that he antic.i.p.ated our modern operation of transfusion. His doctrine of signatures was very curious and most absurd. He thought that "each plant was in a sympathetic relation with the Macrocosm and consequently with the Microcosm." "This signature," he says, "is often expressed even in the exterior forms of things." So he prescribed the plant we call euphrasy or "eye bright" for complaints of the eyes, because of the likeness to an eye in the flower; small-pox was treated with mulberries because their colour showed that they were proper for diseases of the blood. This sort of thing still lingers in country domestic medicine. _Pulmonaria officinalis_ or Lungwort, so called from its spotted leaves looking like diseased lungs, has long been used for chest complaints. (See my "Paracelsus the Reformer of Medicine" in _Browning's Message to his Time_.)

=Paracelsus.= [THE POEM, 1835.] PARACELSUS ASPIRES: BOOK I. (_Wurzburg_, 1512.) Paracelsus the student is talking with his friends Festus and Michal on the eve of his departure to seek knowledge of the deeper sort, that cannot be learned from books,--in the great world of men. It is a time to arouse young men. The dark night of ignorance yields to the rising sun of learning, for the art of printing and the glories of the Revival of Learning have liberated the minds of men. Authority no longer suffices: the men of Germany will see for themselves. So Paracelsus, pupil of the learned Abbot Trithemius, resolves to forsake the monastery cell and the ancient books, and go out to seek for himself knowledge in the byways of the world. His friends are timid. They mistrust his method; they call him proud and too self-confident, advise him to stick to the beaten ways of learning, nor venture into the tangled forests and pathless deserts which G.o.d has evidently closed against man's rash intrusion. Paracelsus, on the contrary, feels that he has a great commission from G.o.d: he dare not subdue the vast longings which fill his soul. G.o.d's command is laid upon him, and he must answer to His will. Festus objects that a man must not presume to serve G.o.d save in the appointed channels. G.o.d looks to means as well as ends, and Paracelsus ought not to scorn the ordinary means of learning. The impatient student suggests that his fierce energy, his striving instinct, the irresistible force which works within him, are proofs that he possesses a G.o.d-given strength never imparted in vain. He will abjure the idle arts of magic. New hopes animate him, new light dawns upon him: he is set apart for a great work. "Then," replies his friend, "pursue it in an approved retreat; turn not aside from the famed spots where Learning dwells. Rome and Athens shall teach you; leave seas and deserts to their desolation." Paracelsus declares his aspiration to be no less than a pa.s.sionate yearning to comprehend the works of G.o.d, G.o.d Himself, all G.o.d's intercourse with the human mind. He goes to prove his soul. G.o.d, who guides the bird in his trackless way, will guide him: he will arrive in G.o.d's good time. His friends think that all this may be but self-delusion; at least, he is selfish to attempt this work alone. Festus declares that were he elect for such a task he would encircle himself with the love of his fellows, and not cut himself off from human weal; for there is nothing so monstrous in the world as a being not knowing what love is. Michal, the tender woman friend, urges him to cast his hopes away--warns him that he is too proud. He will find what he seeks, but will perish so! Paracelsus protests that he does not lightly give up either the pleasures of life or the love they praise. Truth, he says, is within ourselves; knowing consists in opening a way where the splendour imprisoned within the soul may escape. It comes not from outward things.

He offers, therefore, no defiance to G.o.d in desiring to know. Humanity may beat the angels; yet, if once man rises to his true stature, Festus believes, and so does Michal, that Paracelsus will succeed. He plunges for the pearl; they wait his rise.

PARACELSUS ATTAINS: BOOK II. The scene is laid in a Greek conjuror's house at Constantinople, 1521. Paracelsus is mentally taking stock of his attainments--what gained, what lost. He has made discoveries, but the produce of his toil is fragmentary--a confused ma.s.s of fact and fancy. He can keep on the stretch no longer: he will learn by magic what he has failed to learn by labour. His overwrought brain demands rest; even in failure he will have rest. True, he had hoped for attainment once, but that is past. His heart was human once. He had loving friends in Wurzburg; but love has gone, and his life's one idea has absorbed him, to obtain at all costs his reward in the lump. G.o.d may take pleasure in confounding such pride. He may have been fighting sleep off for death's sake. Is his mind stricken? He believes that G.o.d would warn him before He struck. And now from within he hears a voice. It is that of Aprile, the spirit of a departed poet, who has aspired to love beauty only. As Paracelsus has sought knowledge alone, Aprile would love infinitely all forms of art and all the delights of Nature. Paracelsus demands he should do obeisance to him, the Knower. Aprile refuses to acknowledge the kings.h.i.+p of one who knows nothing of the loveliness of life. Paracelsus now sees the error into which both have fallen. He has excluded love, as Aprile has excluded knowledge. They are two halves of one dissevered world. Paracelsus, learning now wherein lies his defect, feels that he has attained.