There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,Drew bitter and perilous breath;There torments laid hold on the treasureOf limbs too delicious for death;When thy gardens were lit with live torches;When the world was a steed for thy rein;When the nations lay prone in thy porches,Our Lady of Pain.When with flame all around him aspirant,Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands,The implacable beautiful tyrant,Rose-crowned, having death in his hands;And a sound as the sound of loud waterSmote far through the flight of the fires,And mixed with the lightning of slaughterA thunder of lyres.
The reference here in the third, fourth, and fifth lines of the first of the above stanzas is to the torture of the Christians by Nero in the amphitheatre. By "limbs too delicious for death" the poet refers to the torture of young girls. The "live torches" refers to Nero's cruelty in having hundreds of Christians wrapped about with combustible material, tied to lofty poles, and set on fire, to serve as torches during a great festival which he gave in the gardens of his palace. The second stanza represents him as the destroyer of Rome. It is said that he secretly had the city set on fire in a dozen different places, in order that he might be thereby enabled to imagine the scene of the burning of Troy, as described by Homer. He wanted to write a poem about it; and it is said that while the city was burning, he watched it from a high place, at the same time composing and singing a poem on the spectacle. The "flight of fires" refers of course to the spreading of fire through Rome. The "lightning of slaughter" meansthe flashing of swords in the work of killing, and is explained by the legend that Nero sent soldiers to kill anybody who tried to put out the fire. Anything was possible in the times of which Swinburne sings; for the world was then governed by emperors who were not simply wicked but mad. But what I wish to point out is that while a poet can write verses so splendid in sound and colour as those that I have quoted, even such a composition as "Dolores" must be preserved, with all its good and bad, among the treasures of English verse.
In spite of his radicalism in the matter of religion and of ethics, the Bible has had no more devoted student than Swinburne; he has not only appreciated all the beauties of its imagery and the strength of its wonderful English, but he has used for the subjects of not a few of his pieces, and his more daring pieces, Biblical subjects. The extraordinary composition "Aholibah" was inspired by a study of Ezekiel; unfortunately this is one of the pieces especially inappropriate to the classroom. "A Litany" will suit our purpose better. It consists of a number of Biblical prophecies, from Isaiah and other books of the Old Testament, arranged into a kind of dramatic chorus. God is made the chief speaker, and he is answered by his people. This is a kind of imitation of a certain part of the old church-service, in which one band of singers answers another, such singing being called "antiphonal," and the different parts, "antiphones." There is very little English verse written in the measure which Swinburne has adopted for this study, and I hope that you will notice the peculiar rhythmic force of the stanzas. We need quote only a few.
All the bright lights of heavenI will make dark over thee;One night shall be as sevenThat its skirts may cover thee;I will send on thy strong men a sword,On thy remnant a rod:Ye shall know that I am the Lord,Saith the Lord God.
And the people answer:
All the bright lights of heavenThou hast made dark over us;One night has been as seven,That its skirt might cover us;Thou hast sent on our strong men a sword,On our remnant a rod;We know that thou art the Lord,O Lord our God.
But this submission is not enough; for the Lord replies
As the tresses and wings of the windAre scattered and shaken,I will scatter all them that have sinned,There shall none be taken;As a sower that scattereth seed,So will I scatter them;As one breaketh and shattereth a reed,I will break and shatter them.
The antiphone is:
As the wings and the locks of the windAre scattered and shaken,Thou hast scattered all them that have sinned;There was no man taken;As a sower that scattereth seed,So hast thou scattered us;As one breaketh and shattereth a reed,Thou hast broken and shattered us.
Observe that, simple as this versification looks, there is nothing more difficult. With, the simplest possible words, the greatest possible amount of sound and force is here obtained. There are many other stanzas, and a noteworthy fact is that very few words of Latin origin are used. Most of the words are Anglo-Saxon; perhaps that is why the language is so sonorous and strong. But when the poet does use a word of Latin origin, the result is simply splendid:
Ye whom your lords loved well,Putting silver and gold on you,The inevitable hellShall surely take hold on you;Your gold shall be for a token,Your staff for a rod;With the breaking of bands ye are broken,Saith the Lord God.
The use of the Latin adjective "inevitable" here gives an extraordinary effect, the main accent of the line coming on the second syllable of the word. But, as if to show his power, in the antiphonal response the poet does not repeat this effect, but goes back to the simple Anglo-Saxon with astonishing success:
We whom the world loved well,Laying silver and gold on us,The kingdom of death and of hellRiseth up to take hold on us;Our gold is turned to a token,Our staff to a rod;Yet shalt thou bind them up that were broken,O Lord our God.
Here the substitution of these much simpler words gives nearly as fine an effect of sound and a grander effect of sense because of the grim power of the words themselves.
Besides studies in Biblical English, the poet has made a number of studies in the Old Anglo-Saxon poets, most of whom were religious men who liked sad and terrible subjects. In the poem entitled "After Death" we have an example of this Anglo-Saxon feeling combined with the plain strength of a later form of language, chiefly Middle English, with here and there a very quaint use of grammar. It was common in Anglo-Saxon poetry to depict the horrors of the grave. Here we have a dead man talking to his own coffin, and the coffin answers him horribly:
The four boards of the coffin lidHeard all the dead man did.. . . . . . ."I had fair coins red and white,And my name was as great light;"I had fair clothes green and red,And strong gold bound round my head."But no meat comes in my mouth,Now I fare as the worm doth;"And no gold binds in my hair,Now I fare as the blind fare."My live thews were of great strength,Now am I waxen a span's length;"My live sides were full of lust,Now are they dried with dust."The first board spake and said:"Is it best eating flesh or bread?"The second answered it:"Is wine or honey the more sweet?"The third board spake and said:"Is red gold worth a girl's gold head?"The fourth made answer thus:"All these things are as one with us."The dead man asked of them:"Is the green land stained brown with flame?"Have they hewn my son for beasts to eat,And my wife's body for beasts' meat?"Have they boiled my maid in a brass pan,And built a gallows to hang my man?"The boards said to him:"This is a lewd thing that ye deem."Your wife has gotten a golden bed;All the sheets are sewn with red."Your son has gotten a coat of silk,The sleeves are soft as curded milk."Your maid has gotten a kirtle new,All the skirt has braids of blue."Your man has gotten both ring and glove,Wrought well for eyes to love."The dead man answered thus:"What good gift shall God give us?"The boards answered anon:"Flesh to feed hell's worm upon."
I doubt very much whether a more terrible effect could be produced by any change of language. The poem is an excellent illustration of the force of the Old English, without admixture of any sort. Do not think that this is simple and easy work; perhaps no other living man could have done it equally well. It is not only in these simple forms, however, that Swinburne shows us the results of his Old English studies. Two of the most celebrated among his early poems, "The Triumph of Time" and the poem on the swallow, "Itylus," are imitations of very old forms of English verse, though the language is luxurious and new. I have already given you a quotation from the former poem, describing the poet's love of the sea. I now cite a single stanza of "Itylus."
Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,How can thine heart be full of the spring?A thousand summers are over and dead.What hast thou found in the spring to follow?What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?
Probably Swinburne found this measure in early Middle English poetry; it was used by the old poet Hampole in his "Prick of Conscience." After it had been forgottenfor five hundred years, Swinburne brought it to life again. Something very close to it forms the splendid and beautiful chorus of "Atalanta in Calydon":
When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,The mother of months in meadow or plainFills the shadows and windy placesWith lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;And the brown bright nightingale amorousIs half assuaged for Itylus,For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.
Here as in all other cases, however, the poet has far surpassed his model. The measures which he revived take new life only because of the extraordinary charm which he has put into them.
Passing suddenly from these lighter structures, let us observe the great power which Swinburne manifests in another kind of revival, the sixteen syllable line. This is not a modern measure at all. It was used long ago, but was practically-abandoned and almost forgotten except by scholars when Swinburne revived it. Nor has he revived it only in one shape, but in a great many shapes, sometimes using single lines, sometimes double, or again varying the accent so as to make four or five different kinds of verse with the same number of syllables. The poem "The Armada" is a rich example of this re-animation and variation of the long dead form. In this poem Swinburne describes the god of Spain as opposed to the god of England, and the most forceful lines are those devoted to these conceptions. Observe the double rhymes.
Ay, butwethat the wind andseagird round with shelterof storms andwaves,Know nothimthat ye worship,grimas dreams that quickenfrom dead men'sgraves:God isonewith the sea, thesun, the land that nursed us,the love thatsaves.Love whoseheartis in ours, andpartof all things nobleand all thingsfair:Sweet andfreeas the circlingsea, sublime and kind as thefosteringair:Pure ofshameas is England'sname, whose crowns to comeare as crowns thatwere.
Now we have, quite easily, a change in the measure. We have sixteen syllables still, but the whole music is changed.
But the Lord of darkness, the God whose love is a flaming fire,The master whose mercy fulfils wide hell till its torturers tire,He shall surely have heed of his servants who serve him for love, not hire.
The double rhymes are not used here. Later on, after the English victory and the storm, they are used again, for the purpose of additional force. The address is to the Spaniards and to their gods.
Lords ofnight, who would breathe yourblighton April'smorning and August'snoon,God yourLord, the condemned, theabhorred, sinks hell-ward,smitten with deathlikeswoon,Death's owndartin his hatefulheartnow thrills, and nightshall receive himsoon.God theDevil, thy reign ofrevelis here forever eclipsedandfled;God theLiar, everlastingfirelays hold at last on thee, handandhead.
Page after page of constantly varying measures of this kind will be found in the poem—a poem which notwithstanding its strong violence at times, represents the power of the verse-maker better than almost any other single piece in the work of his later years.
From what extracts we have already made, I think you will see enough of the value and beauty of Swinburne's diction to take in it such interest as it really deserves. We might continue the study of this author for a much longer time. But the year is waning, the third term, which is very short, will soon be upon us; and I wish to turn with you next week to the study of Browning.
Robert Browning very much reminds us in some respects of the American thinker, Emerson. The main doctrine of Emerson is Individualism; and this happens also to be the main doctrine of Browning. By Individualism, Emerson and Browning mean self-cultivation. Both thought that the highest possible duty of every man was to develop the best powers of his mind and body to the utmost possible degree. Make yourself strong—that, is the teaching. You are only a man, not a god; therefore it is very likely that you will do many things which are very wrong or very foolish. But whatever you do, even if it be wrong, do it well—do it with all your strength. Even a strong sin may be better than a cowardly virtue. Weakness is of all things the worst. When we do wrong, experience soon, teaches us our mistake. And the stronger the mistake has been, the more quickly will the experience come which corrects and purifies. Now you understand what I mean by Individualism—the cultivation by untiring exercise of all our best faculties, and especially of the force and courage to act.
This Individualism in Emerson was founded upon a vague Unitarian pantheism. The same fact is true ofBrowning's system. According to both thinkers, all of us are parts of one infinite life, and it is by cultivating our powers that we can best serve the purpose of the Infinite Mind. Leaving out the words "mind" and "purpose," which are anthropomorphisms, this doctrine accords fairly well with evolutional philosophy; and both writers were, to a certain degree, evolutionists. But neither yielded much to the melancholy of nineteenth century doubt. Both were optimists. We may say that Browning's philosophy is an optimistic pantheism, inculcating effort as the very first and highest duty of life. But Browning is not especially a philosophical poet. We find his philosophy flashing out only at long intervals. Knowing this, we know what he is likely to think under certain circumstances; but his mission was of another special kind.
His message to the world was that of an interpreter of life. His art is, from first to last, a faithful reflection of human nature, the human nature of hundreds of different characters, good and bad, but in a large proportion of case's, decidedly bad. Why? Because, as a great artist, Browning understood very well that you can draw quite as good a moral from bad actions as from good ones, and his unconscious purpose is always moral. Such art of picturing character, to be really great, must be dramatic; and all of Browning's work is dramatic. He does not say to us, "This man has such and such a character"; he makes the man himself act and speak so as to show his nature. The second fact, therefore, to remember about Browning is that artistically he is a dramatic poet, whose subject is human nature. No other English poet so closelyresembled Shakespeare in this kind of representation as Browning.
There is one more remarkable fact about the poet. He always, or nearly always, writes in the first person. Every one of his poems, with few exceptions, is a soliloquy. It is not he who speaks, of course; it is the "I" of some other person's soul. This kind of literary form is called "monologue." Even the enormous poem of "The Ring and the Book" is nothing but a gigantic collection of monologues, grouped and ordered so as to produce one great dramatic effect.
In the case of Browning, I shall not attempt much illustration by way of texts, because a great deal of Browning's form could be not only of no use to you, but would even be mischievous in its influence upon your use of language. In Browning every rule of rhetoric, of arrangement, is likely to be broken. The adjective is separated by vast distances from the noun; the preposition is tumbled after the word to which it refers; the verb is found at the end of a sentence of which it should have been the first word. When Carlyle first read the poem called "Sordello," he said that he could not tell whether "Sordello" was a man or a town or a book. And the obscurity of "Sordello" is in some places so atrocious that I do not think anybody in the world can unravel it. Now, most of Browning's long poems are written in this amazing style. The text is, therefore, not a good subject for literary study. But it is an admirable subject for psychological study, emotional study, dramatic study, and sometimes for philosophic study. Instead of giving extracts, therefore, from very long poems, I shall give only a summary ofthe meaning of the poem itself. If such summary should tempt you to the terrible labour of studying the original, I am sure that you would be very tired, but after the weariness, you would be very much surprised and pleased.
Providing, of course, that you would understand; and I very much doubt whether you could understand. I doubt because I cannot always understand it myself, no matter how hard I try.
One reason is the suppression of words. Browning leaves out all the articles, prepositions, and verbs that he can. I met some years ago a Japanese scholar who had mastered almost every difficulty of the English language except the articles and prepositions; he had never been abroad long enough to acquire the habit of using them properly. But it was his business to write many letters upon technical subjects, and these letters were always perfectly correct, except for the extraordinary fact that they contained no articles and very few prepositions. Much of Browning's poetry reads just in that way. You cannot say that there is anything wrong; but too much is left to the imagination. Therefore he has been spoken of as writing in telegraph language.
Not to make Browning too formidable at first, let us begin with a few of his lighter studies, in very simple verse. I will take as the first example the poem called "A Light Woman." This is a polite word for courtesan, "light" referring to the moral character. The story, told in monologue, is the most ordinary story imaginable. It happens in every great city of the world almost every day, among that class of young men whoplay with fire. But there are two classes among these, the strong and the weak. The strong take life as half a joke, a very pleasant thing, and pass through many dangers unscathed simply because they know that what they are doing is foolish; they never consider it in a serious way. The other class of young men take life seriously. They are foolish rather through affection and pity than through anything else. They want a woman's love, and they foolishly ask it from women who cannot love at all—not, at least, in ninety cases out of a hundred. They get what seems to them affection, however, and this deludes them. Then they become bewitched; and the result is much sorrow, perhaps ruin, perhaps crime, perhaps suicide. In Browning's poem we have a representative of each type. A strong man, strong in character, has a young friend who has been fascinated by a woman of a dangerous class. He says to himself, "My friend will be ruined; he is bewitched; it is no use to talk to him. I will save him by taking that woman away from him. I know the kind of man that she would like; she would like such a man as I." And the rest of the cruel story is told in Browning's verses too well to need further explanation.
So far as our story approaches the end,Which do you pity the most of us three?—My friend, or the mistress of my friendWith her wanton eyes, or me?My friend was already too good to lose,And seemed in the way of improvement yet,When she crossed his path with her hunting-noose,And over him drew her net.When I saw him tangled in her toils,A shame, said I, if she adds just himTo her nine-and-ninety other spoils,The hundredth for a whim!And before my friend be wholly hers,How easy to prove to him, I said,An eagle's the game her pride prefers,Though she snaps at a wren instead!So I gave her eyes my own eyes to take,My hand sought hers as in earnest need,And round she turned for my noble sake,And gave me herself indeed.The eagle am I, with my fame in the world,The wren is he, with his maiden face.You look away, and your lip is curled?Patience, a moment's space!For see, my friend goes shaking and white;He eyes me as the basilisk:I have turned, it appears, his day to night,Eclipsing his sun's disk.And I did it, he thinks, as a very thief:"Though I love her—that, he comprehends—One should master one's passions (love, in chief),And be loyal to one's friends!"And she—she lies in my hand as tameAs a pear late basking over a wall;Just a touch to try, and off it came;'Tis mine,—can I let it fall?With no mind to eat it, that's the worst!Were it thrown in the road, would the case assist?'Twas quenching a dozen blue-flies' thirstWhen I gave its stalk a twist.And I,—what I seem to my friend, you see:What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess:What I seem to myself, do you ask of me?No hero, I confess.'Tis an awkward thing to play with souls,And matter enough to save one's own:Yet think of my friend, and the burning coalsHe played with for bits of stone!One likes to show the truth for the truth;That the woman was light is very true:But suppose she says,—Never mind that youth!What wrong have I done to you?Well, anyhow, here the story stays,So far at least as I understand;And, Robert Browning, you writer of plays,Here's a subject made to your hand!
Now let us see how much there is to study in this simple-seeming poem. It will give us an easy and an excellent example of the way in which Browning must be read; and it will require at least an hour's chat to explain properly. For, really, Browning never writes simply.
Here we have a monologue. It is uttered to the poet by a young man with whom he has been passing an hour in conversation. We can guess from the story something about the young man; we can almost seehim. We know that he must be handsome, tall, graceful, and strong; and full of that formidable coolness which the sense of great strength gives—great strength of mind and will rather than of body, but probably both. Let us hear him talk. "You see that friend of mine over there?" he says to the poet. "He hates me now. When he looks at me his lips turn white. I can't say that he is wrong to hate me, but really I wanted to do him a service. He got fascinated by that woman of whom I was speaking; she was playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse or with a bird before killing it. Well, I thought to myself that my friend was in great danger, and that it was better for me to try to save him. You see, he is not the kind of man that a woman of that class could fancy; he is too small, too feeble, too gentle; they like strong men only, men they are afraid of. So, just for my friend's sake, I made love to her one day, and she left him immediately and came to me. I have to take care of her now, and I do not like the trouble at all. I never cared about the woman herself; she is not the kind of woman that I admire; I did all this only to save my friend. And my friend does not understand. He thinks that I took the woman from him because I was in love with her; he thinks it quite natural that I should love her (which I don't); but he says that even in love a man ought to be true to his friends."
At this point of the story the young man sees that the poet is disgusted by what he has heard, but this does not embarrass him; he is too strong a character to be embarrassed at all, and he resumes: "Don't be impatient—I want to tell you the whole thing. Yousee, I have destroyed all the happiness of my friend merely through my desire to do him a service. He hates me, and he does not understand. He thinks that I was moved by lust; and everybody else thinks the same thing. Of course it is not true. But now there is another trouble. The woman does not understand. She thinks that I was really in love with her; and I must get rid of her as soon as I can. If I tell her that I made love to her only in order to save my friend, she will say, 'What had that to do with your treatment of me? I did not do you any harm; why should you have amused yourself by trying to injure and to deceive me?' If she says that, I don't know how I shall be able to answer. So it seems that I have made a serious mistake; I have lost my friend, I have wantonly wronged a woman whose only fault toward me was to love me, and I have made for myself a bad reputation in society. People cannot understand the truth of the thing."
This is the language of the man, and he perhaps thinks that he is telling the truth. But is he telling the truth? Does any man in this world ever tell the exact truth about himself? Probably not. No man really understands himself so well as to be able to tell the exact truth about himself. It is possible that this man believes himself to be speaking truthfully, but he is certainly telling a lie, a half-truth only. We have his exact words, but the exact language of the speaker in any one of Browning's monologues does not tell the truth; it only suggests the truth. We must find out the real character of the person, and the real facts of the case, from our own experience of human nature.And to understand the real meaning behind this man's words, you must ask yourselves whether you would believe such a story if it were told to you in exactly the same way by some one whom you know. I shall answer for you that you certainly would not.
And now we come to the real meaning. The young man saw his friend desperately in love with a woman who did not love that friend. The woman was beautiful. Looking at her, he thought to himself, "How easily I could take her away from my friend!" Then he thought to himself that not only would this be a cause of enmity between himself and his friend, but such an action would be severely judged by all his acquaintances. Could he be justified? When a man wishes to do what is wrong, he can nearly always invent a moral reason for doing it. So this young man finds a moral reason. He says, "My friend is in danger; therefore I will sacrifice myself for him. It will be quite gratifying both to my pride and to my pleasure to take that woman from him; then I shall tell everybody why I did it. My friend would like to kill me, of course, but he is too weak to avenge himself." He follows this course, and really tries to persuade himself that he is justified in following it. When he says that he did not care for the woman, he only means that he is now tired of her. He has indulged his lust and his vanity by the most treacherous and brutal conduct; yet he tries to tell the world that he is a moral man, a martyr, a calumniated person. Such is the real meaning of his apology.
Nevertheless we cannot altogether dislike this young man. He is selfish and proud and not quite truthful,but these are faults of youth. On the other hand we can feel that he is very gifted, very intelligent, and very brave, and, what is still better, that he is ashamed of himself. He has done wrong, and the very fact that he lies about what he has done shows us that he is ashamed. He is not all bad. If he does not tell us the whole truth, he tells a great deal of it; and we feel that as he becomes older he will become better. He has abused his power, and he feels sorry for having abused it; some day he will probably become a very fine man. We feel this; and, curiously, we like him better than we like the man whom he has wronged. We like him because of his force; we despise the other man because of his weakness. It would be a mistake to do this if we did not feel that the man who has done wrong is really the better man of the two. What he has done is not at all to be excused, but we believe that he will redeem his fault later on. This type is an English or American type—perhaps it might be a German type. There is nothing Latin about it. Its faults are of the Northern race.
But now let us take an unredeemable type, the purely bad, the hopelessly wicked, a type not of the North this time, but purely Latin. As the Latin races have been civilised for a very much longer time than the Northern races, they have higher capacities in certain directions. They are physically and emotionally much more attractive to us. The beauty of an Italian or French or Spanish woman is incomparably more delicate, more exquisite, than the beauty of the Northern women. The social intelligence of the Italian or Spaniard or Frenchman is something immeasurably superior to the same capacity in the Englishman, the Scandinavian, orthe German. The Latins have much less moral stamina, but imaginatively, æsthetically, emotionally, they have centuries of superiority. The Northern races were savages when these were lords of the world. But the vices of civilisation are likely to be developed in them to a degree impossible to the Northern character. If their good qualities are older and finer than ours, so their bad qualities will be older and stronger and deeper. At no time was the worst side of man more terribly shown than during the Renaissance. Here is an illustration. We know that for this man there is no hope; the evil predominates in his nature to such an extent that we can see nothing at all of the good except his fine sense of beauty. And even this sense becomes a curse to him.
MY LAST DUCHESSThat's my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.Will't please you sit and look at her? I said"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance,The depth and passion of its earnest glance,But to myself they turned (since none puts byThe curtain I have drawn for you, but I)And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,How such a glance came there; so, not the firstAre you to turn and ask thus.
Let us paraphrase the above. It is a duke of Ferrara who speaks. The person to whom he is speaking is amarriage-maker, anakodoemployed by the prince of a neighbouring state. For the duke wishes to marry the daughter of that prince. When the match-maker comes, the duke draws a curtain from a part of the wall of the room in which the two men meet, and shows him, painted upon the wall, the picture of a wonderfully beautiful woman. Then the duke says to the messenger: "That is a picture of my last wife. It is a beautiful picture, is it not? Well, it was painted by that wonderful monk, Frà Pandolf. I mention his name on purpose, because everybody who sees that picture for the first time wants to know why it is so beautiful, and would ask me questions if they were not afraid. I have shown it to several other people; but nobody, except myself, dares draw the curtain that covers it. Yes, Frà Pandolf painted it all in one day; and the expression of the smiling face still makes everybody wonder. You wonder; you want to know why that woman looks so charming, so bewitching in the picture."
Now listen to the explanation. It is worthy of the greatest of the villains of Shakespeare:
Sir, 'twas notHer husband's presence only, called that spotOf joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhapsFrà Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle lapsOver my lady's wrist too much," or, "PaintMust never hope to reproduce the faintHalf-flush that dies along her throat:" such stuffWas courtesy, she thought, and cause enoughFor calling up that spot of joy. She hadA heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,Too easily impressed: she liked whate'erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere.Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,The dropping of the daylight in the West,The bough of cherries some officious foolBroke in the orchard for her, the white muleShe rode with round the terrace—all and eachWould draw from her alike the approving speech,Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thankedSomehow—I know not how—as if she rankedMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody's gift.
The explanation at least shows us the sweet and childish character of the woman, which the speaker tries to describe as folly: "It was not her gladness at seeing me, her husband, that made her smile so beautifully, that brought the rosy dimple to her cheek. Probably the painter said something to flatter her, and she smiled at him. She was ready to smile at anything, at anybody, she was altogether too easily pleased; she liked everything and everybody that she saw, and she took a pleasure in looking at everything and at everybody. Nothing made any difference to her. She would smile at the jewel which I gave her, but she would also smile at the sunset, at a bunch of cherries, at her mule, at anything or anybody. Any matter would bring the dimple to her cheek, or the blush of joy. I do not blame her for thanking people, but she had a way of thanking people that seemed to show that she was just as much pleased by what a stranger did for her, as by the fact that she had become the wife of a man like myself, head of a family nine hundred years old." Noticehow the speaker calls the man who gave his wife a bough with cherries upon it "an officious fool." We can begin to perceive what was the matter. He was insanely jealous of her, without any cause; and she, poor little soul! did not know anything about it. She was too innocent to know. The duke does not want anybody else to know, either; he is trying to give quite a different explanation of what happened:
Who'd stoop to blameThis sort of trifling? Even had you skillIn speech—(which I have not)—to make your willQuite clear to such an one, and say, "Just thisOr that in you disgusts me; here you miss,Or there exceed the mark"—and if she letHerself be lessoned so, nor plainly setHer wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,—E'en then would be some stooping; and I chooseNever to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,Whene'er I passed her; but who passed withoutMuch the same smile?
This means, "A man like me cannot afford to degrade himself by showing what he feels under such circumstances; a man like me cannot say to a woman, 'I am greatly vexed and pained when I see you smile at any one except myself.' If I were to speak to her about the matter at all, she might think I was jealous. Of course she would insult me by making excuses, by saying that she did not know, which would be nothing less than daring to oppose her judgment to mine. To speak about my feelings in any case would require a skill in the use of language such as only poets or such vulgar people possess. I am a prince, not a poet, and I shallnever disgrace myself by telling anybody, especially a woman, that I do not like this or I do not like that. So I said nothing. Perhaps you think that she did not smile when she saw me. That would be a mistake; she always smiled when I passed. But she smiled at everybody else in exactly the same way." He found the smile unbearable at last, and the poet lets him tell us the rest in a very few words:
This grew; I gave commands;Then all smiles stopped together.
In other words, he caused her to be killed; told somebody to cut her throat, probably, or to give her a drink of poison, all without having ever allowed her to know how or why he had been displeased with her. And he is not a bit sorry. No, looking at the dead woman's picture, in company with the marriage-maker, he coolly expresses his admiration for it as a word of realistic art—as much as to say, "You can see for yourself how beautiful she was; but that did not prevent me from killing her." Listen to his atrocious chatter:
There she standsAs if alive. Will't please you rise? Well meetThe company below, then. I repeat,The Count your master's known munificenceIs ample warrant that no just pretenceOf mine for dowry will be disallowed;Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowedAt starting, is my object. Nay, we'll goTogether down, sir.... Notice Neptune, though,Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Evidently both had seated themselves in front of the picture. The count says, "Now she is as if alive; and we shall go downstairs together. As for the matter of the new marriage, you can tell your master that I am quite sure so generous a man will not make any objection to my just demands for a dowry—though, of course, it is his daughter that I principally want." Here the messenger bows, to allow the duke to go first downstairs. He answers: "No, we can go down together this time." On the way, probably at a turn of the grand staircase, the count points to a fine bronze statue, representing the god of the sea, and asks the man to admire it. That is all.
This is a Renaissance character, and a very terrible one. But it is also very complicated. We must think a little before we can even guess the whole range and depth of this man's wickedness. Even then we can only guess, because he lets us know only so much about him as he wishes us to know. Every word that he says is carefully measured in its pride, in its falsehood, in its cruelty, in its cunning. Just this much he tells us: "I had a beautiful wife, but you must not think that I can be influenced by beauty. Look at the picture of her. You would worship a woman like that. But I cut her throat. Why did I do it? Just because I did not like her way of smiling; she was too tender-hearted to love. And I would do the same thing to-morrow to any one who displeased me. Some people will think that I am jealous; let them think so. But you had better tell the girl who now expects to become my wife what kind of person I am."
How much of this is the truth? Probably more than half. Undoubtedly the man was jealous, and he wishes to deceive us in regard to the whole extent of that jealousy. He has no shame or remorse for crime, but he has shame of appearing to be weak. Jealousy is a weakness; therefore he does not like to be suspected of being weak in that way. He gives a strong suggestion, that he must not have future cause for jealousy—nothing more. But the fact that he most wishes to have understood is that his wife must be a wicked woman, a vulture among vultures. He does not want a dove. And he hated his first wife much more because she was good and gentle and loving, than because she smiled at other people. You may ask, why should he hate a woman for being good? The answer is simple. In the courts of such princes as the Borgias, a good woman could only do mischief. She could not be used for cunning and wicked purposes. She would have refused to poison a guest, or to entice a man to make love to her only in order to get that man killed; and as you will discover if you read the terrible history of the Italian republics, all these things had to be done. Morality was a hindrance to such men. Power remained only to cunning and strength; all kind-heartedness was regarded as criminal weakness. When you have become familiar with the real history of Ferrara, you will perceive the terrible truth of this poem.
The most unpleasant fact still remains to-be noticed. The wickedness of this man is not a wickedness of ignorance. It is a wickedness of highly cultivated intelligence. The man is an artist, a judge of beauty, a connoisseur.To suppose that cultivation makes a naturally wicked man better is a great educational mistake, as Herbert Spencer showed long ago. Education does not make a man more moral; it may give him power to be more immoral. Italian history furnishes us with the most extraordinary illustrations of this fact. Some of the wickedest of the Italian princes were great poets, great artists, great scholars, and great patrons of learning. Among the monsters, we have, for example, the terrible Malatesta of Rimini, whose life was given to us some years ago by the French antiquarian Yriarte. He wrote the most delicate and tender poetry, and he committed crimes so terrible that they cannot be named. When he laid his hand, however lightly, upon a horse, the animal began to tremble from head to foot. Yet he could love, and be the most devoted of gallants. Again, you know the case of Benvenuto Cellini, a splendid artist and an atrocious murderer, who actually tells us the pleasure that he felt in killing. And there were the Borgias, all of them, father, daughter, and brothers, who committed every crime and never knew remorse, yet who were beautiful and gifted lovers of art and poetry. So in this case Browning is true to life when he shows us the duke pointing out the beauty of pictures and statues, even in the same moment that he is uttering horrors. There is a strange mixture of the extremes of the bad and of the good in the higher types of the Italian race—a mingling that gives us much to think about in regard to moral problems. Probably that is why a very large number of Browning's studies are of the dark side of Italian character.
Now we can take a lighter subject. It is not black,it is only gloomy, and the interest of it will chiefly be found in the extraordinary moral comment made by Browning. This is one of the few studies which is not all written in the first person. It is called "The Statue and the Bust." It is a tale or tradition of Florence.
The legend is that a certain duke of Florence, by name Ferdinand, attempted to captivate the young bride of a Florentine nobleman named Riccardi. But Riccardi, a very keen man, observed what was going on; and he said to his wife very quietly and firmly, "This is your room in my house; you shall stay in this room and never leave it during the rest of your life, never leave it until you are carried to the graveyard." So she had to live in that room. But the duke, who was a very handsome man, got a splendid bronze statue of himself on horseback erected in the public street opposite the window of the lady's room, so that she could always look at him. Then she had a bust of herself made and placed above the window, so that the duke could see the bust whenever he rode by. That is all the story—but not all the story as Browning tells it. Browning tells us the secret thoughts and feelings of the imprisoned wife and of the duke. At first the two intended to run away together. It would have been an easy matter. The woman would only have had to dress herself like a boy, and drop from the window, and get help from the duke to reach his palace. The duke thought to himself, "I can get this woman whenever I wish; but it will be better to wait a little while; then we can manage to live as we please without making too much trouble." So they both waited till they became old. Then the woman called an artist and said:
"Make me a face on the window there,Waiting as ever, mute the while,My love pass below in the square!"And let me think that it may beguileDreary days which the dead must spendDown in their darkness under the aisle,"To say, 'What matters it at the end?I did no more while my heart was warmThan does that image, my pale-faced friend.'"
She thinks to console herself a moment by saying, "What is life worth? When I was young and beautiful and impulsive, I did no more harm or good, no more right or wrong, than the bust that resembles me. It is a comfort to think that I did nothing wrong." But is that enough?
"Where is the use of the lip's red charm,The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,And the blood that blues the inside arm—"Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,The earthly gift to an end divine?A lady of clay is as good, I trow."
Somehow or other she feels that it is no consolation not to have done wrong. She wonders what was the use of being so beautiful, if she could not make use of that beauty. The bust itself lived just as much as she did. And all this is true; but she is nearer to living than the duke. What does he say?
"Set me on horseback here aloft,Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,"In the very square I have crossed so oft:That men may admire, when future sunsShall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,"While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze—Admire and say, 'When he was aliveHow he would take his pleasure once!'"
Nothing else; he only wants to be admired after his death, to have people say, looking at his statue, "What a splendid looking man he must have been, how the women must have loved him!" And they both died, and were buried in the church near where they lived; and the English poet Browning went to that church, and heard the story, and thought about it, and gives us the moral of it. It is a startling moral and needs explanation. I think you will be shocked when you first hear it, but you will not be shocked if you think about it. The following verses are the poet's own reflections:
So! While these wait the trump of doom,How do their spirits pass, I wonder,Nights and days in the narrow room?Still, I suppose, they sit and ponderWhat a gift life was, ages ago,Six steps out of the chapel yonder.Only they see not God, I know,Nor all that chivalry of his,The soldier-saints who, row on row,Burn upward each to his point of bliss—
He condemns them. Why? Because they did not do anything. Anything? You do not mean to say that they ought to have committed adultery?
I hear you reproach—"But delay was best,For their end was a crime,"—Oh, a crime will doAs well, I reply, to serve for a test,As a virtue golden through and through,Sufficient to vindicate itselfAnd prove its worth at a moment's view!Must a game be played for the sake of pelf?. . . . . . . .The true has no value beyond the sham:As well the counter as coin, I submit,When your table's a hat, and your prize, a dram.Stake your counter as boldly every whit,Venture as warily, use the same skill,Do your best, whether winning or losing it,If you choose to play!—is my principle.Let a man contend to the uttermostFor his life's set prize, be it what it will!The counter our lovers staked was lostAs surely as if it were lawful coin;And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghostIs the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
In order to understand the full force of this strange ethical philosophy, you must remember that the word "counter" is here a gambling term; it is used for theround buttons or disks of bone or ivory, not in themselves money, but representing money to be eventually received or paid. Remembering this, we can simplify Browning; this is what he says:
"These people were the most contemptible of sinners; they deliberately threw their lives away. They were afraid to commit a sin. To wish to commit a sin and to be afraid to commit it, is much worse than committing it. All their lives those two dreamed and purposed and desired a sin; they wanted to commit adultery. If they had committed the crime, there would have been some hope for them; there is always hope for the persons who are not afraid. When a young man begins to doubt what his parents and teachers tell him about virtue, it is sometimes a good thing for him to test this teaching by disobeying it. Human experience has proclaimed in all ages that theft and murder and adultery and a few other things can never give good results. It is not easy to explain the whole why and wherefore to a young person who is both self-willed and ignorant. But let him try for himself what murder means, or theft means, or adultery means, and after he has experienced the consequences, he will begin to perceive what moral teaching signifies. If he is not killed, or imprisoned for life, he will very possibly become wise and good at a later time. Now in regard to those two lovers, they wanted to have an experience; and the experience might have been so valuable to them that it would have given them a new soul—but they were afraid; they were criminals without profit; and their great sin was that of being too cowardly to commit sin. Never will God forgive such weakness as that!" Ofcourse all great religions teach that the man who wishes to do wrong does the wrong in wishing as truly as if he did it with his body; there is only a difference of degree. Now Browning goes a little further than such religious teaching; he tells us that only wishing under certain circumstances may be incomparably worse than doing, because the doing brings about its punishment in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and the punishment becomes a moral lesson, forcing the sufferer to think about the moral aspect of what he has done. That is why Browning says, "A sin will do to serve for a test." But only to wish to do, and not do, leaves a person in a state of inexperience. There is an old proverb, which is quite true: "Any man can become rich who is willing to pay the price." With equal truth it might be said, "You can do anything that you please in this world, if you are willing to pay the price, but the price of acts and thoughts is fixed by the Eternal Powers, and you must not try to cheat them."
Philosophers will tell you that our moral laws are not always perfect, that man cannot make a perfect code invariably applicable to all times and circumstances. This is true. But it is also true that there is a higher morality than human codes, and when human law fails to give justice, a larger law occasionally steps in to correct the failure. Browning delights in giving us examples of this kind, extraordinary moral situations, wrong by legal opinion, right by the larger law of nature, which is sometimes divine. A startling story which he tells us, entitled "Ivàn Ivànovitch," will show us how he treats such themes. Ivàn, the hero of the story, is a wood-cutter, who works all day in his nativevillage, to support a large family. He is the most highly respected of the young peasants, the strong man of the community, a good father and a good husband. One day, while he is working out of doors in the bitter cold, a sledge drawn by a maddened and dying horse enters the village, with a half dead woman on it. The woman is the wife of Ivàn's best friend, and she has come back alone, although she had taken her three children with her on the homeward journey. Ivàn helps her into the house, gives her something warm to drink, caresses her, comforts her, and asks at last for her story. The sledge had been pursued by wolves, and the wolves had eaten the three children, one after another. Ivàn listens very carefully to the mother's relation of how the three children were snatched out of the sledge by the wolves. As soon as she has told every one in her own way, Ivàn takes his sharp axe, and with one blow cuts the woman's head off. To the other peasants he simply observes, "God told me to do that; I could not help it." Of course Ivàn knew that the woman had lied. The wolves had not taken the children away from her: she had dropped one child after another out of the sledge in order to save her own miserable life.
At the news of the murder, the authorities of the village all hurry to the scene. There is the dead body without its head, and the blood flowing, or rather crawling like a great red snake over the floor. The lord of the village declares that Ivàn must be executed for this crime. The Stàrosta, or head man, takes the same view of the situation. But, just as Ivàn is about to be arrested, the old priest of the village, the Pope as the peasants call him, a man more than a hundred yearsof age, comes into the assembly and speaks. He is the only man who has a word to say on behalf of Ivàn, but what he says is extraordinary in its force and primitive wisdom. All of it would be too long to quote. I give you only the conclusion, which immediately results in Ivàn's being acquitted both by law and by public opinion.
"A mother bears a child: perfection is completeSo far in such a birth. Enabled to repeatThe miracle of life,—herself was born so justA type of womankind, that God sees fit to trustHer with the holy task of giving life in turn.. . . . . . . . .How say you, should the hand God trusted with life's torchKindled to light the word—aware of sparks that scorch,Let fall the same? Forsooth, her flesh a fire-flake stings:The mother drops the child! Among what monstrous thingsShall she be classed?"
Of course the old Pope is speaking from the Christian point of view when he says that perfection is complete in a birth; he refers to the orthodox belief that the soul of man is created a perfect thing of its kind, a perfect spiritual entity, to be further made or marred by its own acts and thoughts. The mother does not give birth only to a body, but to a soul also, expressly made by God to fit that body. She is allowed to repeat the miracle of creation thus far; as mother she is creator, but only in trust. She has made the vessel of the soul; her most sacred duty is to guard that little body fromall harm. A mother who would even let her child fall to escape pain herself would be incomparably more ignoble than the most savage of animals. The rule is that during motherhood even the animal-mother for the time being becomes the ruling power; the male animal then allows her to have her own way in all things.
"Because of motherhood, each maleYields to his partner place, sinks proudly in the scale:His strength owned weakness, wit—folly, and courage—fear,Beside the female proved male's mistress—only here.The fox-dam, hunger-pined, will slay the felon sireWho dares assault her whelp: the beaver, stretched on fire,Will die without a groan: no pang avails to wrestHer young from where they hide—her sanctuary breast.What's here then? Answer me, thou dead one, as, I trow,Standing at God's own bar, he bids thee answer now!Thrice crowned wast thou—each crown of pride, a child—thy charge!Where are they? Lost? Enough: no need that thouenlargeOn how or why the loss: life left to utter 'lost'Condemns itself beyond appeal. The soldier's postGuards from the foe's attack the camp he sentinels:That he no traitor proved, this and this only tells—Over the corpse of him trod foe to foe's success.Yet—one by one thy crowns torn from thee—thou no lessTo scare the world, shame God,—livedst! I hold he sawThe unexampled sin, ordained the novel law,Whereof first instrument was first intelligenceFound loyal here. I hold that, failing human sense,The very earth had oped, sky fallen, to effaceHumanity's new wrong, motherhood's first disgrace.Earth oped not, neither fell the sky, for prompt was foundA man and man enough, head-sober and heart-sound,Ready to hear God's voice, resolute to obey.. . . . . . . . .I proclaimIvàn Ivànovitch God's servant!"
On hearing this speech the peasantry are at once convinced; the Russian lord orders the proclamation to be made that the murderer is forgiven, and the head man of the village goes to Ivàn's house to bring the good news. He expects to find Ivàn on his knees at prayer, very much afraid of the police and coming punishment. But on opening the door the head man finds Ivàn playing with his five children, and making for them a toy-church out of little bits of wood. It has not even entered into the mind of Ivàn that he did anything wrong. And when they tell him, "You are free, you will not be punished," he answers them in surprise, "Why should I not be free? Why should you talk of my not being punished?" To this simple mind there is nothing to argue about. He has only done what God told him to do, punished a crime against Nature.
The story is a strange one; but not stranger than many to be found in Browning. None of his moral teachings are at discord with any form of true religion, yet they are mostly larger than the teachings of any creed. Perhaps this is why he has never offended the religious element even while preaching doctrines over its head. The higher doctrines thus proclaimed might be anywhere accepted; they might be also questioned; but no one would deny their beauty and power. We mayassume that Browning usually considers all incidents in their relation to eternal law, not to one place or time, but to all places and to all times, because the results of every act and thought are infinite. This doctrine especially is quite in harmony with Oriental philosophy, even when given such a Christian shape as it takes in the beautiful verses of "Abt Vogler."
Abt Vogler was a great musician, a great improviser. Here let me explain the words "improvise" and "improvisation," as to some of you they are likely to be unfamiliar, at least in the special sense given to them in this connection. An improvisation in poetry means a composition made instantly, without preparation, at request or upon a sudden impulse. In Japanese literary history, I am told, there are some very interesting examples of improvisation. For example, the story of that poetess who, on being asked to compose a poem including the mention of something square, something round, and something triangular, wrote those celebrated lines about unfastening one corner of a mosquito-curtain in order to look at the moon. Among Europeans improvisation is now almost a lost art in poetry, except among the Italians. Some Italian families still exist in which the art of poetical improvisation has been cultivated for hundreds of years. But in music it is otherwise. Improvisation in music is greatly cultivated and esteemed. Most of our celebrated musicians have been great improvisers. Those who heard such music would regret that it could not be reproduced, not even by the musician himself. It was a beautiful creation, forgotten as soon as made, because never written down.
Now you know what Browning means by improvisation in his poem "Abt Vogler." The musician has been improvising, and the music, made only to be forgotten, is so beautiful that he himself bitterly regrets the evanescence of it. We may quote a few of the verses in which this regret is expressed; they are very fine and very strange, written in a measure which I think you have never seen before.
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as whenSolomon willedArmies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim,Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deepremoved,—Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffableName,And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princesshe loved!
The musician is comparing the music that he makes to magical architecture; he refers to the Mohammedan legends of Solomon. Solomon knew all magic; and all men, animals, angels, and demons obeyed him. God has ninety-nine names by which the faithful may speak of him, but the hundredth name is secret, the Name ineffable. He who knows it can do all things by the utterance of it. When Solomon pronounced it, all the spirits of the air and of heaven and of hell would rush to obey him. And if he wanted a palace or a city built, he had only to order the spirits to build it, and theywould build it immediately, finishing everything between the rising and the setting of the sun. That is the story which the musician refers to. He has the power of the master-musician over sounds; but the sounds will not stay.
Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.
The musician wishes that his architecture of sound could remain, as remained the magical palace that Solomon made the spirits build to please Queen Balkis. He remembers how beautiful his music was; he remembers how the different classes of notes combined to make it, just as the different classes of spirits combined to make the palace of Solomon. There the deep notes, the bass chords, sank down thundering like demon-spirits working to make the foundation in the very heart of the earth. And the treble notes seemed to soar up like angels to make the roof of gold, and to tip all the points of the building with glorious fires of illumination.Truly the palace of sounds was built, but it has vanished away like a mirage; the builder cannot reproduce it. Why not? Well, because great composition of any kind is not merely the work of man; it is an inspiration from God, and the mystery of such inspired composition is manifested in music as it is manifested in no other art. For the harmonies, the combinations of tones, are mysteries, and must remain mysterious even for the musician himself. Who can explain them?
But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,Existent behind all laws, that made them, and lo, they are!And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said:Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!
But for the same reason that they are mysteries and cannot be understood because they relate to the infinite, they are eternal. That is the consolation. The musician need not regret that the music composed in a moment of divine inspiration cannot be remembered; he need not regret that it has been forgotten. Forgotten it is by the man who made it; forgotten it is by the people who heard it; forgotten it is therefore by all mankind. Nevertheless it is eternal, because the Universal Soul that inspired it never forgets anything. Ithink that the verse in which this beautiful thought is expressed—the verse that contains the whole of Browning's religion, is the most beautiful thing in all his work. But you must judge for yourselves:
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor powerWhose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodistWhen eternity affirms the conception of an hour.The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by and by.
By the phrase "when eternity affirms the conception of an hour," the poet means when we ourselves, in a future and higher state of being, shall see the worth of our good acts and thoughts proved by the fact that they survive along with us. Eternity affirms them—that is, recognises them as worthy of immortality by suffering them to exist. This line gives us the key to the philosophy of the rest. It is quite in harmony with Buddhist philosophy. Browning holds that all good acts and thoughts are eternal, whether men in this world remember them or not. But what of the bad acts and thoughts? Are they also eternal? Not in the same sense. Evil acts and thoughts do indeed exert an influence reaching enormously into the future, but it is an influence that must gradually wane, it is a Karma that must become exhausted. As for regretting thatnobody sees or knows the good that we do, that is very foolish. The good will never die; it will be seen again—perhaps only in millions of years, yet this should make no difference. To the dead the time of a million years and the time of a moment may be quite the same thing.
But you must not suppose that Browning lives much in the regions of abstract philosophy. He is human in the warmest way, and very much alive to impressions of sense. Not even Swinburne is at times more voluptuous, but the voluptuous in Browning is always natural and healthy as well as artistic. I must quote to you some passages from the wonderful little dramatic poem entitled "In a Gondola." You know that a gondola is a peculiar kind of boat which in Venice takes the place of carriages or vehicles of any kind. In the city of Venice there are no streets to speak of, but canals only, so that people go from one place to another only by boat. These boats or gondolas of Venice are not altogether unlike some of the old-fashioned Japanese pleasure-boats; they have a roof and windows and rooms, and it is possible to travel in them without being seen by anybody. In the old days of Venice, many secret meetings between lovers and many secret meetings of conspirators were held in such boats. The poet is telling us of the secret meeting of two lovers, at the risk of death, for if the man is seen he will certainly be killed. At the end of the poem he actually is killed; the moment he steps on shore he is stabbed, because he has been watched by the spies of a political faction that hates him. But this is not the essential part of the poem at all. The essential part of the poem is the description, of the feelings and thoughts of these twopeople, loving in the shadow of death; this is very beautiful and almost painfully true to nature. We get also not a few glimpses of the old life and luxury of Venice in the course of the narrative. As the boat glides down the long canals, between the high ranges of marble palaces rising from the water, the two watch the windows of the houses that they know, and talk about what is going on inside.