The anecdote which forms the basis of "CLIVE," was told to Mr. Browning in 1846 by Mrs. Jameson, who had shortly before heard it at Lansdowne House, from Macaulay. It is cursorily mentioned in Macaulay's "Essays."
When Robert Clive was first in India, a boy of fifteen, clerk in a merchant's office at St. David's, he accused an officer with whom he was playing, of cheating at cards, and was challenged by him in consequence. Clive fired, as it seems, prematurely, and missed his aim. The officer, at whose mercy he had thus placed himself, advanced to within arm's length, held the muzzle of his pistol to the youth's forehead, and summoned him to repeat his accusation. Clive did repeat it, and with such defiant courage that his adversary was unnerved. He threw down the weapon, confessed that he had cheated, and rushed out of the room. A chorus of indignation then broke forth among those who had witnessed the scene. They declared that the "wronged civilian" should be righted; and that he who had thus disgraced Her Majesty's Service should be drummed—if needs be, kicked—out of the regiment. But here Clive interposed. Not one, he said, of the eleven, whom he addressed by name and title, had raised a finger to save his life. He would clear scores with any or all among them who breathed a word against the man who had spared it. Nor, as the narrative continues, and as the event proved, was such a word ever spoken.
Clive is supposed to relate this experience, a week before his self-inflicted death, to a friend who is dining with him; and who, struck by his depressed mental state, strives to arouse him from it by the question: which of his past achievements constitutes, in his own judgment, the greatest proof of courage. He gives the moment in which the pistol was levelled at his head, as that in which he felt, not most courage, but most fear. But, as he explains to his astonished listener, it was not the almost certainty of death, which, for one awful minute, made a coward of him; it was the bare possibility of a reprieve, which would have left no appeal from its dishonour. His opponent refused to fire. He might have done so with words like these:
What course would have remained to him but to seize the pistol, and himself send the bullet into his brain? This tremendous mental situation is, we need hardly say, Mr. Browning's addition to the episode.
The poem contains also some striking reflections on the risks and responsibilities of power; and concludes with an expression of reverent pity for the "great unhappy hero" for whom they proved too great.
"MULÉYKEH" is an old Arabian story. The name which heads it is that of a swift, beautiful mare, who was Hóseyn—her owner's, "Pearl." He loved her so dearly, that, though a very poor man, no price would tempt him to sell her; and in his fear of her being stolen, he slept always with her head-stall thrice wound round his wrist: and Buhéyseh, her sister, saddled for instantaneous pursuit. One night she was stolen; and Duhl, the thief, galloped away on her and felt himself secure: for the Pearl's speed was such that even her sister had never overtaken her. She chafed, however, under the strange rider, and slackened her pace. Buhéyseh, bearing Hóseyn, gained fast upon them; the two mares were already "neck by croup." Then the thought of his darling's humiliation flashed on Hóseyn's mind. He shouted angrily to Duhl in what manner he ought to urge her. And the Pearl, obeying her master's voice, no less than the familiar signal prescribed by him, bounded forward, and was lost to him forever. Hóseyn returned home, weeping sorely, and the neighbours told him he had been a fool. Why not have kept silence and got his treasure back?
The man who gives his name to "PIETRO OF ABANO" was the greatest Italian philosopher and physician of the thirteenth century.[106] He was also an astrologer, pretending to magical knowledge, and persecuted, as Mr. Browning relates. But the special story he tells of him has been told of others also.
Pietro of Abano had the reputation of being a wizard; and though his skill in curing sickness, as in building, star-reading, and yet other things, conferred invaluable services on his fellow-men, he received only kicks and curses for his reward. His power seemed, nevertheless, so enviable, that he was one day, in the archway of his door, accosted by a young Greek, who humbly and earnestly entreated that the secret of that power might be revealed to him. He promised to repay his master with loving gratitude; and hinted that the bargain might be worth the latter's consideration, since nature, in all else his slave, forbade his drinking milk (this is told of the true Pietro): in other words, denied him the affection which softens and sweetens the dry bread of human life. Pietro pretended to consent, and began, to utter, by way of preface, the word "benedicite." The young Greek lost consciousness at its second syllable; and awoke to find himself alone, and with a first instalment of Peter's secret in his mind. "Good is product of evil, and to be effected through it." Acting upon this doctrine, he traded on the weaknesses of his fellow-creatures wherever the opportunity occurred; and attained by this means, first, wealth; next temporal, and then spiritual, power; rising finally to the dignity of Pope. At each stage of this progress, Peter came to him in apparent destitution, and claimed the promised gratitude in an urgent, but very modest prayer for assistance. And each time Peter's presence infused into him a fresh power of unscrupulousness, and sent him a step farther on his way. But each time also the pupil postponed his obligation, till he at last disclaimed it; and—enthroned in the Lateran—was dismissing his benefactor with insult: when the closing syllables—"dicite"—sounded in his ear; and he became conscious of Peter's countenance smiling back at him over his shoulder, and Peter's door being banged in his face. And he then knew that he had lived a lifetime in the fraction of a minute, and that the magician, by means of whom he had done so, justly declined to trust him.
Mr. Browning, however, bids the young Greek persevere; since he might ransack Peter's books, without discovering a better secret for gaining power over the masses, than the "cleverness uncurbed by conscience," which he perhaps already possesses.[107]
"DOCTOR ——" is an old Hebrew legend, founded upon the saying that a bad wife is stronger than death. Satan complains, in his character of Death, that man has the advantage of him: since he may baffle him, whenever he will, by the aid of a bad woman; and he undertakes to show this in his own person. He comes to earth, marries, and has a son, who in due time must be supplied with a profession. This son is too cowardly to be a soldier, and too lazy to be a lawyer; Divinity is his father's sphere. So Satan decides that he shall be a doctor; and endows him with a faculty which will enable him to practise Medicine, without any knowledge of it at all. The moment he enters a sick room, he will see his father spiritually present there; and unless he finds him seated at the sick's man's head, that man is not yet doomed. Thus endowed, Doctor —— can cure a patient who was despaired of, with a dose of penny-royal, and justly predict death for one whose only ailment is a pimple. His success carries all before it. One day, however, he is summoned to the emperor, who lies sick; and the emperor offers gold, and power, and, lastly, his daughter's hand, as the price of his recovery. But this time Satan sits at the head of the bed, and not even such an appeal to his pride and greed will induce him to grant the patient even a temporary reprieve. The son, thus driven to bay, pretends to be struck by a sudden thought. "He will try the efficacy of the mystic Jacob's staff." He whispers to an attendant to bid his mother bring it; and as Satan's Bad Wife enters the room, Satan vanishes through the ceiling, leaving a smell of sulphur behind him. The Emperor gets well; but Doctor —— renounces the promised gold: for it was to be the Princess's dowry; and he is too wise to accept it on the condition of saddling himself with a wife.
"PAN AND LUNA" describes a mythical adventure of Luna—the moon, given by Virgil in the Georgics; and has for its text a line from them (III. 390):
According to the legend, Luna was one night entrapped by Pan who lay in wait for her in the form of a cloud, soft and snowy as the fleece of a certain breed of sheep; and, Virgil continues, followed him to the woodland, "by no means spurning him." But Mr. Browning tells the story in a manner more consonant with the traditional modesty of the "Girl-Moon." She was, he says, distressed by the exposure of her full-orbed charms, as she flew bare through the vault of heaven: the protecting darkness ever vanishing before her; and she took refuge for concealment in the cloud of which the fleecy billows were to close and contract about her, in the limbs of the goat-god. How little she accepted this her first eclipse, may be shown, he thinks, by the fact that she never now lingers within a cloud longer than is necessary to "rip" it through.
The volume so christened (grave and gay), published 1883, shows a greater variety of subject and treatment than do the Dramatic Idyls, and its contents might be still more easily broken up; but they are also best given in their original form. They are—
"WANTING IS—WHAT?" is an invocation to Love, as the necessary supplement to whatever is beautiful in life. It may equally be addressed to the spirit of Love, or to its realization in the form of a beloved person.
"DONALD" is a true story, repeated to Mr. Browning by one who had heard it from its hero the so-called Donald, himself. This man, a fearless sportsman in the flush of youth and strength, found himself one day on a narrow mountain ledge—a wall of rock above, a precipice below, and the way barred by a magnificent stag approaching from the opposite side. Neither could retrace his steps. There was not space enough for them to pass each other. One expedient alone presented itself: that the man should lie flat, and the stag (if it would) step over him. And so it might have been. Donald slipped sideways on to his back. The stag, gently, cautiously, not grazing him with the tip of a hoof, commenced the difficult transit; the feat was already half accomplished. But the lifted hind legs laid bare the stomach of the stag; and Donald, who was sportsman first, and man long afterwards, raised himself on his elbow, and stabbed it. The two rolled over into the abyss. The stag, for the second time, saved its murderer's life; for it broke his fall. He came out of the hospital into which he had been carried, a crippled, patched-up wretch, but able to crawl on hands and knees to wherever his "pluck" might be appreciated, and earn a beggar's livelihood by telling how it was last displayed.
These facts are supposed to be related in a Scotch bothie, to a group of young men already fired by the attractions of sport; and are the narrator's comment on the theory, that moral soundness as well as physical strength, is promoted by it.
"SOLOMON AND BALKIS" is the Talmudic version[109] of the dialogue, which took place between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, on the occasion of her visit to the wise King. They begin by talking for effect: and when questioned by each other as to the kind of persons they most readily admit to their respective courts, Solomon answers that he welcomes the Wise, whatever be their social condition; and Balkis declares that her sympathies are all with the Good. But a chance (?) movement on her part jostles the hand of Solomon; and the ring it bears slips round, so that the truth-compelling Name is turned outwards instead of in. Then he confesses that he loves the Wise just so long as he is the object of their appreciation; she that she loves the Good so long as they bear the form of young and handsome men. He acknowledges, with a sigh, that the soul, which will soar in heaven, must crawl while confined to earth; she owns, with a laugh and a blush, that she has not travelled thus far to hold mental communion with him.[110]
"CRISTINA[111] AND MONALDESCHI" gives the closing scene of the life of Monaldeschi, in what might be Cristina's own words. She is addressing the man whom she has convicted of betraying her, and at whose murder she is about to assist; and the monologue reflects the outward circumstance of this murder, as well as the queen's deliberate cruelty, and her victim's cowardice. They are in the palace of Fontainebleau. Its internal decorations record the loves of Diane de Poitiers and the French king, in their frequent repetition of the crescent and the salamander,[112] and of the accompanying motto, "Quis separabit;" and Cristina, with ghastly irony, calls her listener's attention to the appropriateness of these emblems to their own case. Then she plays with the idea that his symbol is the changing moon, hers the fire-fed salamander, dangerous to those only who come too close. Changing the metaphor, she speaks of herself as a peak, which Monaldeschi has chosen to scale, and which he wrongly hoped to descend when he should be weary of the position, by the same ladder by which he climbed; and her half-playful words assume a still more sinister import, as she depicts the whirling waters, the frightful rocky abyss, into which a moment's giddiness on his part, a touch from her, might precipitate him. She bids him cure the dizziness, ward off the danger, by kneeling, even crouching, at her feet; act the lover, though he no longer is one. And all the while she is drawing him towards the door of that "Gallery of the Deer," where the priest who is to confess, the soldiers who are to slay, are waiting for him.
Cristina's last words are addressed, in vindication of her deed, to the priest (Lebel), who is aghast at its ferocity. He, she says, has received the culprit's confession, and would not divulge it for a crown. The church at Avon[113] must tell how her secrets have been guarded by him to whom she had entrusted them.
"MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT AND FUSELI" is the mournful yet impassioned expression of an unrequited love.
"ADAM, LILITH, AND EVE" illustrates the manner in which the typical man and woman will proceed towards each other: the latter committing herself by imprudent disclosures when under the influence of fear, and turning them into a joke as soon as the fear is past; the former pretending that he never regarded them as serious.
"IXION" is an imaginary protest of this victim of the anger of Zeus, wrung from him by his torments, as he whirls on the fiery wheel.[114] He has been sentenced to this punishment for presuming on the privileges which Zeus had conferred upon him, and striving to win Heré's[115] love; and he declares that the punishment is undeserved: "he was encouraged to claim the love of Heré, together with the friendship of Zeus; he has erred only in his trust in their professions. And granting that it were otherwise—that he had sinned in arrogance—that, befriended by the gods, he had wrongly fancied himself their equal: one touch from them of pitying power would have sufficed to dispel the delusion, born of the false testimony of the flesh!" He asks, with indignant scorn, what need there is of accumulated torment, to prove to one who has recovered his sight, that he was once blind; and in this scorn and indignation he denounces the gods, whose futile vindictiveness would shame the very nature of man; he denounces them as hollow imitations of him whom they are supposed to create: as mere phantoms to which he imparts the light and warmth of his own life. Then rising from denunciation to prophecy, he bids his fellow-men take heart. "Let them struggle and fall! Let them press on the limits of their own existence, to find only human passions and human pettiness in the sphere beyond; let them expiate their striving in hell! The end is not yet come. Of his vapourized flesh, of the 'tears, sweat, and blood' of his agony, is born a rainbow of hope; of the whirling wreck of his existence, the pale light of a coming joy. Beyond the weakness of the god his tormenter he descries a Power, unobstructed, all-pure.
If any doubt were still possible as to Mr. Browning's attitude towards the doctrine of eternal punishment, this poem must dispel it.
"JOCHANAN HAKKADOSH" relates how a certain Rabbi was enabled to extend his life for a year and three months beyond its appointed term, and what knowledge came to him through the extension. Mr. Browning professes to rest his narrative on a Rabbinical work, of which the title, given by him in Hebrew, means "Collection of many lies;" and he adds, by way of supplement, three sonnets, supposed to fantastically illustrate the old Hebrew proverb, "From Moses to Moses[116] never was one like Moses," and embodying as many fables of wildly increasing audacity. The main story is nevertheless justified by traditional Jewish belief; and Mr. Browning has made it the vehicle of some poetical imagery and much serious thought.
Jochanan Hakkadosh was at the point of death. He had completed his seventy-ninth year. But his faculties were unimpaired; and his pupils had gathered round him to receive the last lessons of his experience; and to know with what feelings he regarded the impending change. Jochanan Hakkadosh had but one answer to give: his life had been a failure. He had loved, learned, and fought; and in every case his object had been ill-chosen, his energies ill-bestowed. He had shared the common lot, which gives power into the hand of folly, and places wisdom in command when no power is left to be commanded. With this desponding utterance he bade his "children" farewell.
But here a hubbub of protestation arose. "This must not be the Rabbi's last word. It need not be so;" for, as Tsaddik, one of the disciples, reminded his fellows, there existed a resource against such a case. Their "Targums" (commentaries) assured them that when one thus combining the Nine Points of perfection was overtaken by years before the fruits of his knowledge had been matured, respite might be gained for him by a gift from another man's life: the giver being rewarded for the wisdom to which he ministered by a corresponding remission of ill-spent time. The sacrifice was small, viewed side by side with the martyrdoms endured in Rome for the glory of the Jewish race.[117] "Who of those present was willing to make it?" Again a hubbub arose. The disciples within, the mixed crowd without, all clamoured for the privilege of lengthening the Rabbi's life from their own. Tsaddik deprecated so extensive a gift. "Their teacher's patience should not be overtaxed, like that of Perida (whose story he tells), by too long a spell of existence." He accepted from the general bounty exactly one year, to be recruited in equal portions from a married lover, a warrior, a poet, and a statesman; and, the matter thus settled, Jochanan Hakkadosh fell asleep.
Four times the Rabbi awoke, in renewed health and strength: and four times again he fell asleep: and at the close of each waking term Tsaddik revisited him as he sat in his garden—amidst the bloom or the languors, the threatenings or the chill, of the special period of the year—and questioned him of what he had learned. And each time the record was like that of the previous seventy-nine years, one of disappointment and failure. For the gift had been drawn in every case from a young life, and been neutralized by its contact with the old. As a lover, the Rabbi declares, he has dreamed young dreams, and his older self has seen through them. He has known beforehand that the special charms of his chosen one would prove transitory, and that the general attraction of her womanhood belonged to her sex and not to her. As a warrior, he has experienced the same process of disenchantment. For the young believe that the surest way to the Right and Good, is that, always, which is cut by the sword: and that the exercise of the sword is the surest training for those self-devoting impulses which mark the moral nature of man. The old have learned that the most just war involves, in its penalties, the innocent no less than the guilty; that violence rights no wrong which time and patience would not right more fully; and that for the purposes of self devotion, unassisted love is more effective than hate. (Picturesque illustrations are made to support this view.) As poet, he has recalled the glow of youthful fancy to feel it quenched by the experience of age: to see those soaring existences whose vital atmosphere is the future, frozen by their contact with a dead past. As statesman, he has looked out upon the forest of life, again seeing the noble trees by which the young trace their future path. And, seeing these, he has known, that the way leads, not by them, but among the brushwood and briars which fill the intervening space; that the statist's work is among the mindless many who will obstruct him at every step, not among the intellectual few by whom his progress would be assisted.
As he completes his testimony another change comes over him; and Tsaddik, kissing the closing eyelids, leaves his master to die.
The rumour of a persecution scatters the Jewish inhabitants of the city. Not till three months have expired do they venture to return to it; and when Tsaddik and the other disciples seek the cave where their master lies, they find him, to their astonishment, alive. Then Tsaddik remembers that even children urged their offering upon him, and concludes that some urchin or other contrived to make it "stick;" and he anxiously disclaims any share in the "foisting" this crude fragment of existence on the course of so great a life. Hereupon the Rabbi opens his eyes, and turns upon the bystanders a look of such absolute relief, such utter happiness, that, as Tsaddik declares, only a second miracle can explain it. It is a case of the three days' survival of the "Ruach" or spirit, conceded to those departed saints whose earthly life has anticipated the heavenly; who have died, as it were, half in the better world.[118]
Tsaddik has, however, missed the right solution of the problem. Jochanan Hakkadosh can only define his state as one of ignorance confirmed by knowledge; but he makes it very clear that it is precisely the gift of the child's consciousness, which has produced this ecstatic calm. The child's soul in him has reconciled the differing testimony of youth and manhood: solving their contradictions in its unquestioning faith and hope. It has lifted him into that region of harmonized good and evil, where bliss is greater than the human brain can bear. And this is how he feels himself to be dying; bearing with him a secret of perfect happiness, which he vainly wishes he could impart.[119]
"NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE" is a fanciful expression of love and longing, provoked by the opposition of circumstances.
The name of "PAMBO" or "Pambus" is known to literature,[120] as that of a foolish person, who spent months—Mr. Browning says years—in pondering a simple passage from Psalm xxxix.; and remained baffled by the difficulty of its application. The passage is an injunction that man look to his ways, so that he do not offend with his tongue. And Pambo finds it easy to practise the first part of this precept, but not at all so the second. Mr. Browning declares himself in the same case. "He also looks to his ways, and is guided along them by the critic's torch. But he offends with his tongue, notwithstanding."
FOOTNOTES:
Ethics, VII. vi. 2.
The story is told in Pausanias. A painting of Echetlos was to be seen in the Poecile at Athens.
Petrus Aponensis: author of a work quoted in the Idyl: Conciliator Differentiarum. Abano is a village near Padua.
Some expressions in this Idyl may require explaining. "Salomo si nôsset" (novisset) (p. 136). "Had Solomon but known this." "Teneo, vix" (p. 136). "I scarcely contain myself." "Hact[=e]nus" (p. 136). The "e" is purposely made long. "Hitherto." "Peason" (p. 138). The old English plural of "pea." "Pou sto" (p. 138). "Where I may stand:" The alleged saying of Archimedes—"I could move the world had I a place for my fulcrum—'where I might stand' to move it." "Tithon" (p. 141). Tithonus—Aurora's lover: for whom she procured the gift of eternal life. "Apage, Sathanas!" (p. 143). "Depart Satan." Customary adjuration.
The term "Venus," as employed in the postscript to the Idyl, signified in Roman phraseology, the highest throw of the dice. It signified, therefore the highest promise to him, who, in obedience to the oracle, had tested his fortunes at the fount at Abano, by throwing golden dice into it. The "crystal," to which Mr. Browning refers, is the water of the well or fount, at the bottom of which, as Suetonius declared, the dice thrown by Tiberius, and their numbers, were still visible. The little air which concludes the post-script reflects the careless or "lilting" mood in which Mr. Browning had thrown the "fancy dice" which cast themselves into the form of the poem.
"If it is proper to be credited."
This version is more crudely reproduced by the Persian poet Jami.
The word "conster," which rhymes in the poem with "monster," is Old English for "construe."
Daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, and Queen of Sweden.
Some confusion has here arisen between Francis I., whose emblem was the salamander, and Henry II., the historic lover of Diane de Poitiers. But Francis was also said to have been, for a short time, attached to her; and the poetic contrast of the frigid moon and the fiery salamander was perhaps worth the dramatic sacrifice of Cristina's accuracy.
A village close to Fontainebleau, in the church of which Monaldeschi was buried.
"Winged" or "fiery:" fiery from the rapidity of its motion.
Juno.
That is, to Moses Maimonides.
The names and instances given are, as well as the main fact, historical.
A Talmudic doctrine still held among the Jews. The "Halaphta," with whom Mr. Browning connects it, was a noted Rabbi.
The "Bier" and the "three daughters" was a received Jewish name for the Constellation of the Great Bear. Hence the simile derived from this (vol. xv. pp. 217-244).
The "Salem," mentioned at p. 218, is the mystical New Jerusalem to be built of the spirits of the great and good.
"Chetw. Hist. Collect.," cent. I., p. 17. Quoted by Nath. Wanley, "Wonders of the Little World," p. 138.
The idea of "FERISHTAH'S FANCIES" grew out of a fable by Pilpay, which Mr. Browning read when a boy. He lately put this into verse; and it then occurred to him to make the poem the beginning of a series, in which the Dervish, who is first introduced as a learner, should reappear in the character of a teacher. Ferishtah's "fancies" are the familiar illustrations, by which his teachings are enforced. Each fancy or fable, with its accompanying dialogue, is followed by a Lyric, in which the same or cognate ideas are expressed in an emotional form; and the effect produced by this combination of moods is itself illustrated in a Prologue by the blended flavours of a favourite Italian dish, which is fully described there. An introductory passage from "King Lear" seems to tell us what we soon find out for ourselves, that Ferishtah's opinions are in the main Mr. Browning's own.
Fancy 1. "THE EAGLE," contains the lesson which determined Ferishtah, not yet a Dervish, to become one. He has learned from the experience which it describes, that it is man's mission to feed those hungry ones who are unable to feed themselves. "The soul often starves as well as the body. He will minister to the hunger of the soul. And to this end he will leave the solitude of the woods in which the lesson came to him, and seek the haunts of men."
The Lyric deprecates the solitude which united souls may enjoy, by a selfish or fastidious seclusion from the haunts of men.
2. "THE MELON-SELLER," records an incident referred to in a letter from the "Times'" correspondent, written many years ago. It illustrates the text—given by Mr. Browning in Hebrew—"Shall we receive good at the hands of God, and shall we not receive evil?" and marks the second stage in Ferishtah's progress towards Dervish-hood.
The Lyric bids the loved one be unjust for once if she will. "The lover's heart preserves so many looks and words, in which she gave him more than justice."
3. "SHAH ABBAS" shows Ferishtah, now full Dervish, expounding the relative character of belief. "We wrongly give the name of belief to the easy acquiescence in those reported facts, to the truth of which we are indifferent; or the name of unbelief to that doubting attitude towards reported facts, which is born of our anxious desire that they may be true. It is the assent of the heart, not that of the head, which is valued by the Creator."
Lyric. Love will guide us smoothly through the recesses of another's heart. Without it, as in a darkened room, we stumble at every step, wrongly fancying the objects misplaced, against which we are stumbling.
4. "THE FAMILY" again defends the heart against the head. It defends the impulse to pray for the health and safety of those we love, though such prayer may imply rebellion to the will of God. "He, in whom anxiety for those he loves cannot for the moment sweep all before it, will sometimes be more than man, but will much more often be less."
Lyric. "Let me love, as man may, content with such perfection as may fill a human heart; not looking beyond it for that which only an angel's sense can apprehend."
5. "THE SUN" justifies the tendency to think of God as in human form. Life moves us to many feelings of love and praise. These embrace in an ascending scale all its beneficent agencies, unconscious and conscious, and cannot stop short of the first and greatest of all. This First Cause must be thought of as competent to appreciate our praise and love, and as moved by a beneficent purpose to the acts which have inspired them. The sun is a symbol of this creative power—by many even imagined to be its reality. But that mighty orb is unconscious of the feelings it may inspire; and the Divine Omnipotence, which it symbolizes, must be no less incompetent to earn them. For purpose is the negation of power, implying something which power has not attained; and would imply deficiency in an existence which presents itself to our intelligence as complete. Reason therefore tells us that God can have no resemblance with man; but it tells us, as plainly, that, without a fiction of resemblance, the proper relation between Creator and creature, between God and man, is unattainable.[121] If one exists, for whom the fiction or fancy has been converted into fact—for whom the Unknowable has proved itself to contain the Knowable: the ball of fire to hold within it an earthly substance unconsumed; he deserves credit for the magnitude, not scorn for the extravagance, of his conception.
Lyric. "Fire has been cradled in the flint, though its Ethereal splendours may disclaim the association."
6. "MIHRAB SHAH" vindicates the existence of physical suffering as necessary to the consciousness of well-being; and also, and most especially, as neutralizing the differences, and thus creating the one complete bond of sympathy, between man and man.
Lyric. "Your soul is weighed down by a feeble body. In me a strong body is allied to a sluggish soul. You would fitly leave me behind. Impeded as you also are, I may yet overtake you."
7. "A CAMEL-DRIVER" declares the injustice of punishment, in regard to all cases in which the offence has been committed in ignorance; and shows also that, while a timely warning would always have obviated such an offence, it is often sufficiently punished by the culprit's too tardy recognition of it. "God's justice distinguishes itself from that of man in the acknowledgment of this fact."
The Lyric deals specially with the imperfections of human judgment. "You have overrated my small faults, you have failed to detect the greater ones."
8. "TWO CAMELS" is directed against asceticism. "An ill-fed animal breaks down in the fulfilment of its task. A man who deprives himself of natural joys, not for the sake of his fellow-men, but for his own, is also unfitted for the obligations of Life. For he cannot instruct others in its use and abuse. Nor, being thus ignorant of earth, can he conceive of heaven."
The Lyric shows how the Finite may prefigure the Infinite, by illustrations derived from science and from love.
9. "CHERRIES" illustrates the axiom that a gift must be measured, not by itself, but by the faculty of the giver, and by the amount of loving care which he has bestowed upon it. Man's general performance is to be judged from the same point of view.
The Lyric connects itself with the argument less closely and less seriously in this case than in the foregoing ones. The speaker has striven to master the art of poetry, and found life too short for it. "He contents himself with doing little, only because doing nothing is worse. But when he turns from verse-making to making love, or, as the sense implies, seeks to express in love what he has failed to express in poetry, all limitations of time and power are suspended; every moment's realization is absolute and lasting."
10. "PLOT-CULTURE" is a distinct statement of the belief in a purely personal relation between God and man. It justifies every experience which bears moral fruit, however immoral from human points of view; and refers both the individual and his critic to the final harvest, on which alone the Divine judgment will be passed.
The Lyric repeats the image in which this idea is clothed, more directly than the idea itself. A lover pleads permission to love with his whole being—with Sense as well as with Soul.
11. "A PILLAR AT SEBZEVAR" lays down the proposition that the pursuit of knowledge is invariably disappointing: while love is always, and in itself, a gain.
The Lyric modifies this idea into the advocacy of a silent love: one which reveals itself without declaration.
12. "A BEAN-STRIPE: ALSO APPLE-EATING" is a summary of Mr. Browning's religious and practical beliefs. We cannot, it says, determine the prevailing colour of any human life, though we have before us a balanced record of its bright and dark days. For light or darkness is only absolute in so far as the human spirit can isolate or, as it were, stand still within, it. Every living experience, actual or remembered, takes something of its hue from those which precede or follow it: now catching the reflection of the adjoining lights and shades; now brighter or darker by contrast with them. The act of living fuses black and white into grey; and as we grasp the melting whole in one backward glance, its blackness strikes most on the sense of one man, its whiteness on that of another.
Ferishtah admits that there are lives which seem to be, perhaps are, stained with a black so deep that no intervening whiteness can affect it; and he declares that this possibility of absolute human suffering is a constant chastener to his own joys. But when called upon to reconcile the avowed optimism of his views with the actual as well as sympathetic experience of such suffering, he shows that he does not really believe in it. One race, he argues, will flourish under conditions which another would regard as incompatible with life; and the philosophers who most cry down the value of life are sometimes the least willing to renounce it. He cannot resist the conviction that the same compensating laws are at work everywhere.
In explanation of the fact, that nothing given in our experience affords a stable truth—that the black or white of one moment is always the darker or lighter grey of another—Ferishtah refers his disciples to the will of God. Our very scheme of goodness is a fiction, which man the impotent cannot, God the all-powerful does not, convert into reality. But it is a fiction created by God within the human mind, that it may work for truth there; so also is it with the fictitious conceptions which blend the qualities of man with those of God. To the objection
Ferishtah replies that to know the power by its operation, is all we need in the case of a human benefactor or lord: all we can in the case of those natural forces which we recognize in every act of our life. And when reminded that the sense of indebtedness implies a debtor—one ready to receive his due: and that we need look no farther for the recipient than the great men who have benefited our race: his answer is, that such gratitude to his fellow-men would be gratitude to himself, in whose perception half their greatness lies. "He might as well thank the starlight for the impressions of colour, which have been supplied by his own brain."
The Lyric disclaims, in the name of one of the world's workers, all excessive—i.e., loving recognition of his work. The speaker has not striven for the world's sake, nor sought his ideals there. "Those who have done so may claim its love. For himself he asks only a just judgment on what he has achieved."
Mr. Browning here expresses for the first time his feeling towards the "Religion of Humanity;" and though this was more or less to be inferred from his general religious views, it affords, as now stated, a new, as well as valuable, illustration of them. The Theistic philosophy which makes the individual the centre of the universe, is, perhaps, nowhere in his works, so distinctly set forth as in this latest of them. But nowhere either has he more distinctly declared that the fullest realization of the individual life is self-sacrifice.