The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 28

24. Love among the Ruins.

25. Apparent Failure.

A Forgiveness.

27. A Death in the Desert.

A Woman's Last Word.

29. Count Gismond.

30. In a Gondola.

31. The Patriot.

32. A Toccata of Galuppi's.

33. My Last d.u.c.h.ess.

34. The Worst of It.

Truth and Art.

36. The Statue and the Bust.

37. The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's Church.

38. Cristina.

39. Clive.

40. Confessions.

41. Two in the Campagna.

42. Summum Bonum.

43. After.

44. Holy Cross Day.

The Italian in England.

46. Up at a Villa.

47. Before.

48. James Lee's Wife.

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.

50. Old Pictures in Florence.

=Prologue to Dramatic Idyls.= (_Second Series._) When we are suffering from bodily illness, doctors often disagree as to the diagnosis of our complaint. We go from specialist to specialist, and each physician declares that we are suffering from that disorder which he makes his special study: the brain doctor says it is all brain trouble; the heart man, the liver and lung specialists, are all pretty certain to diagnose their own favourite malady. And so even the wisest are ignorant of man's body. But when we come to soul, there is no difficulty at all: they pounce on our malady in a trice. They can see the body, and cannot tell what is the matter with it; the soul, which they cannot see, presents no difficulties whatever to their wise heads! Mr. Sharp, in his paper on _Dramatic Idyls_ II., says this Epilogue is the key to the leading idea of each poem in the volume. _Echetlos_ deals with patriotic action. We think Miltiades and Themistocles true patriots, but history shows that they only served their own turn. _Clive_ dreaded death less than a lie, yet committed suicide: was this due to courage or fear? _Mulyekeh_ loved his mare, but sacrificed her to his pride. _Pietro of Abano_ did benevolent actions, yet had no love in his heart. _Doctor ----_ did good actions from a motive of hate. _Pan and Luna_: this poem deals with an act of love from opposite extremes--Pan gross and brutal, Luna pure and modest; yet she does not spurn Pan. This was not due to want of modesty, but to the power of love, and Pan was not actuated by brute pa.s.sion. _The Epilogue_ is to oppose the idea that poets sing spontaneously about anything. Browning says his rocks are hard and forbidding, yet they hold, like Alpine crags, pine seeds of truth.

=Prologue to Ferishtah's Fancies.= This is intended to describe the peculiar construction of the volume of poems. The poet tells his readers how ortolans are eaten in Italy: the birds are stuck on a skewer, some dozen or more, each having interposed between himself and his neighbour on the spit a bit of toast and a strong sage leaf; and the eater is intended to bite through crust, seasoning, and bird altogether, so the lusciousness is curbed and the full flavour of the delicacy is obtained. The poem, we are told, is dished up on the same principle. We have sense, sight and song here, and all is arranged to suit our digestion. We have the fancy or fable, then a dialogue, and a melodious lyric to conclude; so, in the twelve poems, we may see twelve ortolans, with their accompanying toast and sage leaf.

NOTES.--_Ortolans_ (_Emberiza hortulana_): the garden bunting, a native of Continental Europe and Western Asia. It is very much like the yellowhammer. They are netted, and fed in a darkened room with oats and other grain. They soon become very fat, and are then killed for the table; the birds are much prized by gourmands. _Gressoney_, a village in the valley of the Aosta. _Val d'Aosta_, valley of the Aosta, in northern Piedmont.

=Prologue to Pacchiarotto.= The poet is imprisoned on a long summer day with his feet on a gra.s.s plot and his eyes on a red brick wall. True, the wall is clothed with a luxuriant creeper through which the bricks laugh, and the robe of green pulsates with life, beautifying the barrier. He reflects that wall upon wall divide us from the subtle thing that is spirit: though cloistered here in the body-barrier, he will hope hard, and send his soul forth to the congenial spirit beyond the ring of neighbours which, like a fence of brick and stone, divides him from his love.

=Prospice= == "Look forward" (_Dramatis Personae_, 1864) was written in the autumn following Mrs. Browning's death. St. Paul speaks of those "who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage": the author of _Prospice_ and the Epilogue to _Asolando_ was not of this cla.s.s.

Few men have written as n.o.bly as he on the awful "minute of night," and its fight with the "Arch Fear." Estimating it at its fullest import, as only a great imaginative mind can do, he is in face of "the black minute"

and "the power of the night"--the Mr. Greatheart of the pilgrims to the dark river. Nothing grander has been written on the subject than the poems we have named. In the short poem _Prospice_ is concentrated the strength of a great soul and the courage of one who is prepared for the worst, with eyes unbandaged. As an example of the poet's power nothing can be finer.

The dramatic intensity of the opening lines--the fog, the mist, the snow, and the blasts which indicate the journey's end, "the post of the foe"--is unsurpa.s.sed even by Shakespeare himself. It is a defiance of death, a challenge to battle.

=Protus.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Romances_, 1863; _Dramatic Romances_, 1868.) There is no historical foundation for the poem. In the declining years of the Roman Empire such rapid transitions of power were not uncommon. A baby Emperor Protus is described in some ancient work as absorbing the interest of the whole empire: queens ministered at his cradle. The world rose in war till he was presented at a balcony to pacify it. Greek sculptors and great artists strove to impress his graces on their work, his subjects learned to love the letters of his name; and on the same page of the history it was recorded how the same year a blacksmith's b.a.s.t.a.r.d, by name John the Pannonian, arose and took the crown and wore it for six years, till his sons poisoned him. What became of the young Emperor Protus was then but mere hearsay: perhaps he was permitted to escape; he may have become a tutor at some foreign court, or, as others say, he may have died in Thrace a monk. "Take what I say," wrote the annotator, "at its worth."

=Puccio.= (_Luria._) The officer in the Florentine army who was superseded by the Moorish leader Luria.

=Queen, The.= (_In a Balcony._) The middle-aged woman who, though married, falls in love with Norbert, the lover of Constance. She prepares to divorce her husband and marry her officer. When, however, she discovers the truth about the young lovers, she is the prey of jealousy and offended dignity, and the drama closes with ominous prospects for the unfortunate couple.

=Queen Wors.h.i.+p.= Under this t.i.tle were originally published two poems: i., _Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli_; and ii., _Cristina_.

=Quietism.= See MOLINISTS.

=Rabbi Ben Ezra.= (_Dramatis Personae_, 1864.) The character is historical.

The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ gives the name as Abenezra, or Ibn Ezra, the full name being Abraham Ben Meir Ben Ezra; he was also called Abenare or Evenare. "He was one of the most eminent of the Jewish literati of the Middle Ages. He was born at Toledo about 1090, left Spain for Rome about 1140, resided afterwards at Mantua in 1145, at Rhodes in 1155 and 1166, in England in 1159, and died probably in 1168. He was distinguished as a philosopher, astronomer, physician, and poet; but especially as a grammarian and commentator. The works by which he is best known form a series of _Commentaries_ on the books of the Old Testament, which have nearly all been printed in the great Rabbinic Bibles of Bomberg (1525-26), Buxtorf (1618-19), and Frankfurter (1724-27). Abenezra's commentaries are acknowledged to be of very great value. He was the first who raised biblical exegesis to the rank of a science, interpreting the text according to its literal sense, and ill.u.s.trating it from cognate languages. His style is elegant, but is so concise as to be sometimes obscure; and he occasionally indulges in epigram. In addition to the commentaries, he wrote several treatises on astronomy or astrology, and a number of grammatical works." He appears to have possessed extraordinary natural talents; to these he added "indefatigable ardour and industry in the pursuit of knowledge, and he enjoyed besides, in his youth, the advantage of the best teachers, among whom was the Karaite, j.a.phet Hallevi or Levita, to whom he is believed to have owed his taste for etymological and grammatical investigation, and his preference for the literal to the allegorical and cabalistic interpretation of Scripture. He was afterwards married to Levita's daughter." He did not consider his life a fortunate one as men look upon life. "I strive to grow rich," he said; "but the stars are against me. If I sold shrouds, none would die. If candles were my wares the sun would not set till the day of my death." The cause of his leaving Spain was an outbreak against the Jews. Hitherto, he said of himself, he had been "as a withered leaf; I roved far away from my native land, from Spain, and went to Rome with a troubled soul." He seems to have written no books until after his exile, and then he actively engaged in literary work. The most complete catalogue of his works is contained in Furst's _Bibliotheca Judaica_ (Leipzig, 1849). "Maimonides, his great contemporary, esteemed his writings so highly for learning, judgment, and elegance, that he recommended his son to make them for some time the exclusive object of his study. By Jewish scholars he is preferred, as a commentator, even to Raschi in point of judiciousness and good sense; and in the judgment of Richard Simon, confirmed by De Rossi, he is the most successful of all the rabbinical commentators in the grammatical and literal interpretation of the Scriptures" (_Imp. Dict. Biog._). According to Rabbi Ben Ezra, man's life is to be viewed as a whole. G.o.d's plan in our creation has arranged for youth and age, and no view of life is consistent with it which ignores the work of either. Man is not a bird or a beast, to find joy solely in feasting; care and doubt are the life stimuli of his soul: the Divine spark within us is nearer to G.o.d than are the recipients of His inferior gifts. So our rebuffs, our stings to urge us on, our strivings, are the measure of our ultimate success: aspiration, not achievement, divides us from the brute. The body is intended to subserve the highest aims of the soul: it will do so if we live and learn.

The flesh is pleasant, and can help soul as that helps the body. Youth must seek its heritage in age; in the repose of age he is to take measures for his last adventure. This he can do with prospect of success proportionate to his use of the past. Wait death without fear, as you awaited age. Sentence will not be pa.s.sed on mere "work" done: our purposes, thoughts, fancies, all that the coa.r.s.e methods of human estimates failed to appreciate, these will be put in the diamond scales of G.o.d and credited to us. G.o.d is the Potter; we are clay, receiving our shape and form and ornament by every turn of the wheel and faintest touch of the Master's hand. The uses of a cup are not estimated by its foot or by its stem; but by the bowl which presses the Master's lips to slake the Divine thirst. We cannot see the meaning of the wheel and the touches of the potter's hand and instrument; we know this, and this only,--our times are in His hand who has planned a perfect cup.--I am indebted to Mr. A. J.

Campbell for the following notes, the result of his researches in endeavouring to trace the real Rabbi Ibn Ezra in the poem _Rabbi Ben Ezra_. His fellow-religionists say of the Rabbi that he was "a man of strongly marked individuality and independence of thought, keen in controversy, yet genial withal; and it is in words such as these that the final estimate of his own people is given. 'He was the wonder of his contemporaries and of those who came after him ... profoundly versed in every branch of knowledge, with unfailing judgment, a man of sharp tongue and keen wit' (Dr. J. M. Jost, _Geschichte des Judenthums_, 2nd Abth., p.

419). And again: 'This man possessed an immense erudition; but his masterly spirit is far more to be wondered at than the ma.s.s of knowledge he acquired' (Id., _Geschichte des Israeliten_, 6{te} Theil, p. 162)." Mr.

Campbell thinks that the distinctive features of the Rabbi of the poem were drawn by Mr. Browning from the writings of the real Rabbi, and that the philosophy which he puts into the mouth of Rabbi Ben Ezra was actually that of Rabbi Ibn Ezra. "It was no worldly success that gave peace to his age; but he had won a spiritual calm, no longer troubled by the doubts that at one time or another must come to all who think. 'While this remarkable man was roving about from east to west and from north to south, his mind remained firm in the principles he had once for all accepted as true.... His advocacy of freedom of thought and research, his views concerning angels, concerning the immortality of the soul, are the same in the earlier commentaries ... as with [those] which were written later; the same in his grammatical works as in his theological discourses'" (Dr. M.

Friedlander, _Essays on Ibn Ezra_, Preface and p. 139). "Our times are in His hand," says Browning's Rabbi; so, too, Ibn Ezra, in a poem quoted by Dr. Michael Sachs (_Die Religiose Poesie der Juden in Spanien_, p.

117)--"In deiner Hand liegt mein Geschichte." Says Dr. Friedlander, "He had very little money, and very much wit, and was a born foe to all superficiality. So he had spent his youth in preparing himself for his future career by collecting and storing up materials, in cultivating the garden of his mind so that it might at a later period produce the choicest and most precious fruits" (Ibn Ezra's _Comment., Isaiah_, Introduction by Dr. Friedlander). Mr. Campbell says that the keynote of Ibn Ezra's teaching is that the essential life of man is the life of the soul. "Man has the sole privilege of becoming superior to the beast and the fowl, according to the words 'He teacheth him to raise himself above the cattle of the earth'" (Ibn Ezra, _Comment., Job_ x.x.xv. 11). "He ascribes to man's soul a triple nature, or three faculties roughly corresponding to the division of St. Paul of man into body, soul and spirit. The soul of man, he holds, can exist with or without the body, and did, in fact, pre-exist"

(Friedlander, _Essays on Ibn Ezra_, pp. 27-8). This is Browning's theory in verse 27. In Browning's poem the Rabbi describes man's life as the _lone_ way of the soul (verse 8). Ibn Ezra, in his _Commentary, Psalm_ xxii. 22, says, "The soul of man is called lonely because it is separated during its union with the body from the universal soul, into which it is again received when it departs from its earthly companion." When Rabbi Ben Ezra, in Mr. Browning's poem, speaks of the body at its best projecting the soul on its way (verse 8), he is uttering the thought of Ibn Ezra, who says, "It is well known that, as long as the bodily desires are strong, the soul is weak and powerless against them, because they are supported by the body and all its powers: hence those who only think of eating and drinking will never be wise. By the alliance of the intellect with the animal soul [sensibility, the higher quality of the body] the desires [the lower quality or appet.i.te of the body] are subordinated, and the eyes of the soul are opened a little, so as to comprehend the knowledge of material bodies; but the soul is not yet prepared for pure knowledge, on account of the animal soul which seeks dominion and produces all kinds of pa.s.sion; therefore, after the victory gained with the support of the animal soul over the desires, it is necessary that the soul should devote itself to wisdom, and seek its support for the subjection of the pa.s.sions, in order to remain under the sole control of knowledge" (Ibn Ezra, _Comment., Eccl._ vii. 3). Mr. Campbell has shown how much Mr. Browning has a.s.similated Ibn Ezra's philosophy in many other points in the poem.

(For an extended explanation of the poem see my _Browning's Message to his Time_, pp. 157-72.)

=Rawdon Brown.= "Mr. Rawdon Brown, an Englishman of culture, well known to visitors in Venice, died in that city in the summer of 1883. He went to Venice for a short visit, with a definite object in view, and ended by staying forty years. During one of his rare runs to England, I met him at Ruskin's at Denmark Hill, somewhere about 1860. He englished, abstracted, and calendared for our Record Office, a large number of the reports of the Venetian Amba.s.sadors in England in the days of Elizabeth, etc. His love for Venice was so great, that some one invented about him the story which Browning told in the following sonnet, which was printed by Browning's permission, and that of Mrs. Bronson--at whose request it was written--in the _Century Magazine_ 'Bric-a-Brac' for February 1884" (Dr. Furnivall in _Browning Society's Papers_, vol. i., p. 132*).

"Tutti ga i so gusti, e mi go i mii."--_Venetian Saying._ (_Tr._ Everybody follows his taste, and I follow mine.)

Sighed Rawdon Brown: "Yes, I'm departing, Toni!

I needs must, just this once before I die, Revisit England: _Anglus_ Brown am I, Although my heart's Venetian. Yes, old crony-- Venice and London--London's 'Death the bony'

Compared with Life--that's Venice! What a sky, A sea, this morning! One last look! Good-bye.

Ca Pesaro! No, lion--I'm a coney To weep--I'm dazzled; 'tis that sun I view Rippling the--the--_Cospetto_, Toni! Down With carpet-bag, and off with valise-straps!

_Bella Venezia, non ti lascio piu!_"

Nor did Brown ever leave her: well, perhaps Browning, next week, may find himself quite Brown!