D’Ormea. (King Victor and King Charles.) He was the unscrupulous minister of King Victor. He became necessary to King Charles when he received the crown on his father’s abdication, and was active in defeating the attempt of the latter to recover his crown.

Dramas. For the Stage: A Blot in the ’Scutcheon, Colombe’s Birthday, Strafford, Luria, In a Balcony, The Return of the Druses. For the Study: Pippa Passes, King Victor and King Charles, A Soul’s Tragedy, and Paracelsus. A Blot in the ’Scutcheon, Strafford, Colombe’s Birthday, and In a Balcony, have all been recently performed in London, under the direction of the Browning Society, greatly to the gratification of the spectators who were privileged to attend these special performances. Whether such dramas would be likely to attract audiences from the general public for any length of time is, however, extremely problematical. Mr. Browning’s poetry is of too subjective and psychological a character to be popular on the stage.

Dramatic Idyls (1879-80). Series I.: Martin Relph, Pheidippides, Halbert and Hob, Ivan Ivanovitch, Tray, Ned Bratts; Series II.: Proem, Echetlos, Clive, Muléykeh, Pietro of Abano, Doctor ——, Pan and Luna, Epilogue.

Dramatic Lyrics. (Bells and Pomegranates, No. III., 1842.) Cavalier Tunes: i., Marching Along; ii., Give a Rouse; iii., My Wife Gertrude. Italy and France: i., Italy; ii., France. Camp and Cloister: i., Camp (French); ii., Cloister (Spanish); In a Gondola, Artemis Prologizes, Waring. Queen Worship: i., Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli; ii., Cristina. Madhouse Cells: i., Johannes Agricola; ii., Porphyria. Through the Metidja, The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Dramatic Monologue. Mr. Browning has so excelled in this particular kind of poetry that it may be fitly called a novelty of his invention. The dramatic monologue is quite different from the soliloquy. In the latter case the speaker delivers his own thoughts, uninterrupted by objections or the propositions of other persons. “In the dramatic monologue the presence of a silent second person is supposed, to whom the arguments of the speaker are addressed. It is obvious that the dramatic monologue gains over the soliloquy, in that it allows the artist greater room in which to work out his conceptions of character. The thoughts of a man in self-communion are apt to run in a certain circle, and to assume a monotony” (Professor Johnson, M.A.). This supposed second person serves to “draw out” the speaker and to stimulate the imagination of the reader. Bishop Blougram’s Apology is an admirable example of this form of literature, where Mr. Gigadibs, the critic of Bishop Blougram, is the silent second person above referred to.

Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. (Bells and Pomegranates, No. VII.: 1845.) How they Brought the Good News, Pictor Ignotus, Italy in England, England in Italy, The Lost Leader, The Lost Mistress, Home Thoughts from Abroad, The Tomb at St. Praxed’s; Garden Fancies: i. The Flower’s Name; ii. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. France and Spain: i. The Laboratory; ii. The Confessional. The Flight of the Duchess, Earth’s Immortalities, Song, The Boy and the Angel, Night and Morning, Claret and Tokay, Saul, Time’s Revenges, The Glove.

Dramatis Personæ (1864). James Lee, Gold Hair, The Worst of it, Dîs Aliter Visum, Too Late, Abt Vogler, Rabbi Ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert, Caliban upon Setebos, Confessions, May and Death, Prospice, Youth and Art, A Face, A Likeness, Mr. Sludge, Apparent Failure, Epilogue.

Dubiety. (Asolando, 1889.) Richardson said that “a state of dubiety and suspense is ever accompanied with uneasiness.” Sleep, if sound, is restful; but the poet asks for comfort, and to be comfortable implies a certain amount of consciousness—a dreamy, hazy sense of being in “luxury’s sofa-lap.” An English lady once asked a British tar in the Bay of Malaga, one lovely November day, if he were not happy to think he was out of foggy England—at least in autumn? The sailor protested there was nothing he disliked so much as “the everlasting blue sky” of the Mediterranean, and there was nothing he longed for so much as “a good Thames fog.” So the poet here demands,

“Just a cloud,
Suffusing day too clear and bright.”

He does not wish to be shrouded, as the sailor did, but his idea of comfort is that the world’s busy thrust should be shaded by a “gauziness” at least. Vivid impressions are always more or less painful: they strike the senses too acutely, as “the eternal blue sky” of the south is too trying for English eyes. As such a light is sometimes too stimulating, so even too much intellectual light may be painful; a “gauziness,” a “dreaming’s vapour wreath” is to the overwrought brain of the thinker happiness “just for once.” In the dim musings, neither dream nor vision, but just a memory, comes the face of the woman he had loved and lost, the memory of her kiss, the impress of the lips of Truth, “for love is Truth.”

Eagle, The. (Ferishtah’s Fancies: I. “On Divine Providence.”) The story is taken from the fable of Pilpai (or Bidpai, as is the more correct form), called The Dervish, the Falcon and the Raven. A father told a young man that all effects have their causes, and he who relies upon Providence without considering these had need to be instructed by the following fable:—

“A certain dervish used to relate that, in his youth, once passing through a wood and admiring the works of the great Author of Nature, he spied a falcon that held a piece of flesh in his beak; and hovering about a tree, tore the flesh into bits, and gave it to a young raven that lay bald and featherless in its nest. The dervish, admiring the bounty of Providence, in a rapture of admiration cried out, ‘Behold, this poor bird, that is not able to seek out sustenance for himself, is not, however, forsaken of its Creator, who spreads the whole world like a table, where all creatures have their food ready provided for them! He extends His liberality so far, that the serpent finds wherewith to live upon the mountain of Gahen. Why, then, am I so greedy? wherefore do I run to the ends of the earth, and plough up the ocean for bread? Is it not better that I should henceforward confine myself in repose to some little corner, and abandon myself to fortune?’ Upon this he retired to his cell, where, without putting himself to any further trouble for anything in the world, he remained three days and three nights without victuals. At last, ‘Servant of mine,’ said the Creator to him in a dream, ‘know thou that all things in this world have their causes; and though my providence can never be limited, my wisdom requires that men shall make use of the means that I have ordained them. If thou wouldst imitate any one of the birds thou hast seen to my glory, use the talents I have given thee, and imitate the falcon that feeds the raven, and not the raven that lies a sluggard in his nest, and expects his food from another.’ This example shows us that we are not to lead idle and lazy lives upon the pretence of depending upon Providence.”—Fables of Pilpay (Chandos Classics), p. 53.

Ferishtah is in training for a dervish, and is anxious to feed hungry souls. Mr. Browning makes his charitable bird an eagle, and the moral is that man is not to play the helpless weakling, but to save the perishing by his helpful strength. The dervish, duly admonished, asks which lacks in him food the more—body or soul? He reflects that, as he starves in soul, so may mankind, wherefore he will go forth to help them; and this Mr. Browning proposes to do by the series of moral and philosophical lessons to be drawn from Ferishtah’s Fancies. The lyric teaches that, though a life with nature is good for meditation and for lovers of solitude, we are human souls and our proper place is “up and down amid men,” for God is soul, and it is the poet’s business to speak to the divine principle existing under every squalid exterior and harsh and hateful personality.

Earth’s Immortalities. (First published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics—Bells and Pomegranates No. VII.) The poet was famous, and not so very long since; but the gravestones above him are sinking, and the lichens are softening out his very name and date. So fades away his fame. And the lover who could be satisfied with nothing less than “for ever” has the fever of passion quenched in the snows that cover the tomb beside the poet’s. One demanded to be remembered, the other to be loved, for ever. Thus do “Earth’s immortalities” perish either under lichens or snows.

Easter-Day. (Christmas Eve and Easter Day: Florence, 1850.) The poem is a dialogue. The first speaker exclaims, “How very hard it is to be a Christian!” and says the difficulty does not so much consist in living up to the Christ-ideal,—hard enough, by the very terms, but hard to realise it with the moderate success with which we realise the ordinary aims of life. Of course the aim is greater, consequently the required effort harder: may it not be God’s intention that the difficulty of being a Christian should seem unduly great? “Of course the chief difficulty is belief,” says the second speaker: “once thoroughly believe, the rest is simple. Prove to me that the least command of God is really and truly God’s command, and martyrdom itself is easy.” Joint the finite into the infinite life, and fix yourself safely inside, no doubt all external things you would safely despise. The second speaker says, “But faith may be God’s touchstone: God does not reward us with heaven because we see the sun shining, nor crown a man victor because he draws his breath duly. If you would have faith exist at all, there must perforce be some uncertainty with it. We love or hate people because either they do or do not believe in us. But the Creator’s reign, we are apt to think, should be based on exacter laws: we desire God should geometrise.” The first speaker says, “You would grow as a tree, stand as a rock, soar up like fire, be above faith. But creation groans, and out of its pains we have to make our music.” The second speaker replies, “I confess a scientific faith is absurd; the end which it was meant to serve would be lost if faith were certainty. We may grant that, but may we not require at least probability? We do not hang a curtain flat along a wall; we prefer it to hang in folds from point to point. We would not mind the gaps and intervals, if at point and point we could pin our life upon God. It would be no hardship then to renounce the world. There are men who live merely to collect beetles, giving up all the pleasures of life to make a completer collection than has been hitherto formed. Another set lives to collect snuff-boxes, or in learning to play chess blindfold. It would not be hard to renounce the world if we had as much certainty as these hermits obtain in their pleasures to inspire them in renouncing the vanities of life. Of course, as some will say, there is evidence enough of a sort: as is your turn of mind, so is your search—you will find just what you look for, and so you get your Christian evidences in a sense; you may comfort yourself in having found a scrap of papyrus in a mummy-case which declares there really was a living Moses, and you may even get over the difficulty of Jonah and the whale by turning the whale into an island or a rock and set your faith to clap her wings and crow accordingly. You may do better: you may make the human heart the minister of truth, and prove by its wants and needs and hopes and fears how aptly the creeds meet these:

“You wanted to believe; your pains
Are crowned—you do!”

If once in the believing mood, the renunciation of pleasures adds a spice to life. Do you say that the Eternal became incarnate—

“Only to give our joys a zest,
And prove our sorrows for the best?”

The believing man is convinced that to be a Christian the world’s gain is to be accounted loss, and he asks the sceptic what he counsels in that case? The answer is, he would take the safe side—deny himself. The believer does not relish the idea of renouncing life for the sake of death. The collectors of curiosities at least had something for their pains, and the believer gets—well, hope! The sceptic claims that he lives in trusting ease. “Yes,” says the believer, “blind hopes wherewith to flavour life—that is all;” and he proceeds to relate an incident which happened in his life one Easter night, three years ago. He was crossing the common near the chapel (spoken of in Christmas Eve), when he fell to musing on what was his personal relationship to Christianity, how it would be with him were he to fall dead that moment—would he lie faithful or faithless? It was always so with him from childhood; he always desired to know the worst of everything. “Common-sense” told him he had nothing to fear: if he were not a Christian, who was? All at once he had this vision. “Burn it!” was written in lines of fire across the sky; the dome of heaven was one vast rack of ripples, infinite and black; the whole earth was lit with the flames of the Judgment Day. In a moment he realised that he stood before the seat of Judgment, choosing the world—his naked choice, with all the disguises of old and all his trifling with conscience stripped away. A Voice beside him spoke:—

“Life is done,
Time ends, Eternity’s begun,
And thou art judged for evermore.”

The Christ stood before him, told him that, as he had deliberately chosen the world, the finite life in opposition to God, it should be his:—

“’Tis thine
For ever—take it!”

For the world he had lived, for the things of time and sense he had fought and sighed; the ideal life, the truth of God, the best and noblest things, had interested him noway. His sentence, his awful doom—which at first he was so far from realising that he was thrilled with pleasure at the words—was that he should take and for ever keep the partial beauty for which he had struggled. Wedded for ever to the gross material life, in that he imagined he saw his highest happiness! “Mine—the World?” he cried, in transport. “Yes,” said the awful Judge: “if you are satisfied with one rose, thrown to you over the Eden-barrier which excludes you from its glory—take it!” Our greatest punishment would be the gratification of our lowest aims. “All the world!” and the sense of infinite possession of all the beauty of earth, from fern leaf to Alpine heights, brought the warmth to the man’s heart and extinguished the terror inspired by the Judgment-seat of God. And the great Judge saw the thought, told him he was welcome so to rate the mere hangings of the vestibule of the Palace of the Supreme; and in the scorn of the awful gift the man read his error, and asked for Art in place of Nature. And that, too, was conceded: he should obtain the one form the sculptors laboured to abstract, the one face the painters tried to draw, the perfection in their soul which these only hinted at. But “very good” as God pronounced earth to be, earth can only serve earth’s ends; its completeness transferred to a future state would be the dreariest deficiency. The good, tried once, were bad retried. Then the judged man, seeing the World and the World of Art insufficient to satisfy his new condition, cried in anguish, “Mind is best—I will seize mind—forego the rest!” And again it was answered to him that all the best of mind on earth—the intuition, the grasps of guess, the efforts of the finite to comprehend the infinite, the gleams of heaven which come to sting with hunger for the full light of God, the inspiration of poetry, the truth hidden in fable,—all these were God’s part, and in no wise to be considered as inherent to the mind of man. Losing God, he loses His inspirations; bereft of them in the world he had chosen, mind would not avail to light the cloud he had entered. And the bleeding spirit of the humbled man prays for love alone. And God said, “Is this thy final choice: Love is best? ’Tis somewhat late! Love was all about thee, curled in its mightiness around all thou hadst to do with. Take the show of love for the name’s sake; but remember Who created thee to love, died for love of thee, and thou didst refuse to believe the story, on the ground that the love was too much.” Cowering deprecatingly, the man, who now saw the whole truth of God, cried, “Thou Love of God! Let me not know that all is lost! Let me go on hoping to reach one eve the Better Land!” And the man awoke, and rejoiced that he was not left apart in God’s contempt; thanking God that it is hard to be a Christian, and that he is not condemned to earth and ease for ever.

Notes.—Stanza iv., “In all Gods acts (as Plato cries He doth) He should geometrise”: see Plutarch, Symposiacs, viii. 2. “Diogenianas began and said, ‘Let us admit Plato to the conference, and inquire upon what account he says—supposing it to be his sentence—that God always plays the geometer.’ I said: ‘This sentence was not plainly set down in any of his books; yet there are good arguments that it is his, and it is very much like his expression.’ Tyndares presently subjoined: ‘He praises geometry as a science that takes off men from sensible objects, and makes them apply themselves to the intelligible and Eternal Nature, the contemplation of which is the end of philosophy, as a view of the mysteries of initiation into holy rites.’” vi., “My list of coleoptera”: in entomology, an order of insects having four wings—the beetle tribe. “A Grignon with the Regent’s crest”: Grignon was a famous snuff-box maker, and his name was used for the fashionable boxes. vii., “Jonah’s whale”: The latest theory is that the great deity of Nineveh was a “fish-god.” Mr. Tylor considers the story to be a solar myth. Madame Blavatsky says (Isis Unveiled, vol. ii., p. 258), “‘Big Fish’ is Cetus, the latinised form of Keto—κητω, and Keto is Dagon, Poseidon.” She suggests that Jonah simply went into the cell within the body of Dagon, the fish-god. Orpheus, the mythical poet, whose mother was the Muse Calliope. His song could move the rocks and tame wild beasts (see Eurydice to Orpheus). Dionysius Zagrias. Zagreus was a name given to Dionysus by the Orphic poets. The conception of the Winter-Dionysus originated in Crete: sacrifice was offered to him at Delphi on the shortest day. This is quite evidently one of the myths of winter. xii., Æschylus: “the giving men blind hopes.” In the Prometheus Chained of Æschylus the chorus of ocean nymphs ask Prometheus—

“Chor. But had th’ offence no further aggravation?
Pro. I hid from men the foresight of their fate.
Chor. What couldst thou find to remedy that ill?
Pro. I sent blind Hope t’ inhabit in their hearts.
Chor. A blessing hast thou given to mortal man.”
Morley’s Plays of Æschylus, p. 18.

xiv., “The kingcraft of the Lucomons”: Heads of ancient Etruscan families, and combining both priest and patriarch. The kings were drawn from them. (Dr. Furnivall.) Fourier’s scheme: Fourierism was the system of Charles Fourier, a Frenchman, who recommended the reorganisation of society into small communities living in common. xx., “Flesh refine to nerve”: this is a remarkable instance of the poet’s scientific apprehension of the process of nerve formation five years before Herbert Spencer speculated on the evolution of the nervous system. (See my Browning’s Message to his Time: “Browning as a Scientific Poet.”) xxvi., Buonarrotti == Michael Angelo.

Eccelino da Romano III. (Sordello.) Known as Eccelin the Monk, or Ezzelin III. He was the Emperor Frederick’s chief in North Italy, and was a powerful noble. He was termed “the Monk” because of his religious austerity. He is described by Mr. Browning in the poem as “the thin, grey, wizened, dwarfish devil Ecelin.” He was the most prominent of Ghibelline leaders, was tyrant of Padua, and nicknamed “the Son of the Devil.” Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, iii. 33, describes him as

“Fierce Ezelin, that most inhuman lord,
Who shall be deemed by men a child of hell.”

“His story,” says Longfellow, in his notes to Dante’s Inferno, “may be found in Sismondi’s Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, chap. xix. He so outraged the religious sense of the people by his cruelties that a crusade was preached against him, and he died a prisoner in 1259, tearing the bandages from his wounds, and fierce and defiant to the last. ‘Ezzelino was small of stature,’ says Sismondi, ‘but the whole aspect of his person, all his movements, indicated the soldier. His language was bitter, his countenance proud, and by a single look he made the boldest tremble. His soul, so greedy of all crimes, felt no attraction for sensual pleasures. Never had Ezzelino loved women; and this, perhaps, is the reason why in his punishments he was as pitiless against them as men. He was in his sixty-sixth year when he died; and his reign of blood had lasted thirty-four years.’”

Eccelino IV. was the elder of the two sons of Eccelino III., surnamed the Monk, who divided his little principality between them in 1223, and died in 1235. In 1226, at the head of the Ghibellines, he got possession of Verona, and was appointed Podesta. He became one of the most faithful servants of the Emperor Frederick II. In 1236 he invited Frederick to enter Italy to his assistance, and in August met him at Trent. Eccelino was soon after besieged in Verona by the Guelfs, and the siege was raised by the Emperor. Vicenza was next stormed and the government given to Eccelino. In 1237 he marched against Padua, which capitulated, when he behaved towards the people with great cruelty. He then besieged Mantua, and mastered the Trevisa. In 1239 he was excommunicated by the Pope and deprived of his estates. He behaved with such terrible cruelty that the Emperor would have gladly been rid of him. Dante, in the Divina Commedia, Inferno xii., places Eccelino in the lake of blood in the seventh circle of hell.

Echetlos. (Dramatic Idyls, Second Series: 1880.) A Greek legend (of which there are many) about the battle of Marathon, in which the Athenians and Platæans, under Miltiades, defeated the Persians, 490 B.C. Wherever the Greeks were hardest pressed in the fight a figure driving a ploughshare was seen mowing down the enemy’s ranks. After the battle was over the Greeks were anxious to learn who was the man in the clown’s dress who had done them this great service. They demanded of the oracles his name. But the oracles declined to tell: “Call him Echetlos, the Ploughshare-wielder,” they said. “Let his deed be his name:

“The great deed ne’er grows small.”

Notes.—“Not so the great name—Woe for Miltiades, woe for Themistokles!” After the victory of Marathon, Miltiades sullied his honour by employing the fleet in an attempt to wreak a private grudge on the island of Paros. He was sentenced to a heavy fine, which he was unable to pay, and died in debt and dishonour. Themistocles was accused of having entered into a traitorous communication with the Persians in his own interest. He was banished from Greece, and died at Magnesia.

Elcorte (Sordello, Book ii.) was a poor archer who perished in saving a child of Eccelin’s. He was supposed to be Sordello’s father, but the poet discovered that he was not.

Eglamour. (Sordello.) The minstrel defeated by Sordello at the contest of song in the Court of Love. He was the chief troubadour of Count Richard of St. Bonifacio. He died of grief at his discomfiture in the art of song by Sordello. “He was a typical troubadour, who loved art for its own sake; thought more of his songs than of the things about which he sang, or of the soul whose passion song should express” (Fotheringham, Studies in Browning, p. 116). Mrs. James L. Bagg, in a comparative study of Eglamour and Sordello, gives the following as the chief characteristics of this poet:—“He was a poet not without effort and often faltering; he exhibits the beautiful as the natural outburst of a heart full of a sense of beauty that possesses it. He loses himself in his song,—it absorbs his life; his art ends with his art, and is its own reward. He understands and loves nature; they are bound up together. He loves all beauty for its own sake, asking no reward. He craves nothing, takes no thought for the morrow. He lacks character, and is dreamy, inactive; and attempting little, fails in little. His life is barren of results as men reckon; he lives and loves, and sings and dies. His life is almost one unbroken strain of harmony—he is pleased to please and to serve. His nature is simple and easily understood; Eglamour is born and dies a creature of perceptions, never conscious that beyond these there lies a world of thought. His life goes out in tragic giving up of love, hope and heart.”

Elvire. (Fifine at the Fair.) The wife of Don Juan, who discusses with her husband the nature of conjugal love, after he has been fascinated by the gipsy girl at Pornic fair. She is the Donna Elvira of Molière’s Don Juan, and the part she plays in this poem of Fifine is suggested by her speech in Act i., Scene 3:—

“Why don’t you arm your brow
With noble impudence?
Why don’t you swear and vow
No sort of change is come to any sentiment
You ever had for me?”

Englishman in Italy, The: Piano di Sorrento (the Plain of Sorrento). (Dramatic Romances, published in Bells and Pomegranates, VII. 1845.)—Sorrento, in the province of Naples, is situated on the north side of the peninsula that separates the Bay of Naples from the Bay of Salerno. In the time of Augustus it was a finer city than Naples itself. The neighbourhood of this delightful summer resort is the realm of the olive tree, and its plain is clothed with orange and lemon groves. A deep blue sky above and a deep blue sea below, coast scenery unequalled for loveliness even in Italy, and an atmosphere breathing perfume and intoxicating the senses with the soft delights of a land of romance and gaiety, combine to make a residence in this earthly paradise almost too luxurious for a phlegmatic Englishman. It has a drawback in the form of the Scirocco—a hot, oppressive and most relaxing wind, crossing from North Africa over the Mediterranean, and the “long, hot, dry autumn” referred to in the poem. The Englishman is seated by the side of a dark-complexioned tarantella-dancing girl, whom he is sheltering from the approaching storm, and who is timidly saying her rosary, and to whom he is describing the incidents of Italian life which have most interested him—the ripening grapes, the quails and the curious nets arranged to catch them, the pomegranates splitting with ripeness on the trees, the yellow rock-flower on the road side, all the landscape parched with the fierce Southern heat, which the sudden rain-storm was about to cool and moisten. The quail nets are rapidly taken down, for protection; on the flat roofs, where the split figs lie in sieves drying in the sun, the girls are busy putting them under cover; the blue sea has changed to black with the coming storm; the fishing boat from Amalfi—loveliest spot in all the lovely landscape—sends ashore its harvest of the sea, to the delight of the naked brown children awaiting it. The grape harvest has begun, and in the great vats they are treading the grapes, dancing madly to keep the bunches under, while the rich juice runs from beneath; and still the laden girls pour basket after basket of fresh vine plunder into the vat, and still the red stream flows on. And under the hedges of aloe, where the tomatoes lie, the children are picking up the snails tempted out by the rain, which will be cooked and eaten for supper, when the grape gleaners will feast on great ropes of macaroni and slices of purple gourds. And as he dwells on all the Southern wealth of the land, he tempts the timid little maid with grape bunches, whose heavy blue bloom entices the wasps, which follow the spoil to the very lips of the eater; with cheese-balls, white wine, and the red flesh of the prickly pear. Now the Scirocco is loose—down come the olives like hail; fig trees snap under the power of the storm; they must keep under shelter till the tempest is over: and now he amuses the girl by telling her how in a few days they will have stripped all the vines of their leaves to feed the cattle, and the vineyards will look so bare. He rode over the mountains the previous night with her brother the guide, who feasted on the fruit-balls of the myrtles and sorbs, and while he ate the mule plodded on, now and then neighing as he recognised his mates, laden with faggots and with barrels, on the paths below. Higher they ascended till the woods ceased; as they mounted the path grew wilder, the chasms and piles of loose stones showed but the growth of grey fume reed, the ever-dying rosemary, and the lentisks, till they reached the summit of Calvano; then he says—

“God’s own profound
Was above me, and round me the mountains, and under, the sea.”

The crystal of heaven and its blue solitudes; the “infinite movement” of the mountains, which seem, as they overlook the sensual landscape, to enslave it—filled him with a grave and solemn fear. And now he turns to the sea, wherein slumber the three isles of the siren, looking as they did in the days of Ulysses; he will sail among them, and visit with his companion their strangely coloured caves, and hear the secret sung to Ulysses ages ago. The sun breaks out over Calvano, the storm has passed; the gipsy tinker ventures out with his bellows and forge, and is hammering away there under the wall; the children watch him mischievously. He rouses his sleepy maiden, and bids her come with him to see the preparations at the church for the Feast of the Rosary; for the morrow is Rosary Sunday, and it was on that day the Catholic powers of Europe destroyed the Turkish fleet at the battle of Lepanto, and in every Catholic church the victory is annually commemorated by devotions to Our Lady of the Rosary, whose prayers, they say, won the contest for the Christian arms. The Dominican brother is to preach the sermon, and all the gay banners and decorations are being put up in the church. The altar will be ablaze with lights, the music is to be supplemented by a band, and the statue of the Virgin is to be borne in solemn procession through the plain. Bonfires, fireworks, and much trumpet-blowing will wind up the day; and the Englishman anticipates as great pleasure from the festival as any child, and more—for, “Such trifles!” says the girl. “Trifles!” he replies; “why, in England they are gravely debating if it be righteous to abolish the Corn Laws!”

Epilogue to “Asolando” (1889). The words of this poem have a peculiar significance: they are the last which the poet addressed to the world, and the volume in which they appeared was published in London on the very day on which he died in Venice. Had he known when he wrote them that these were the last lines of his message to the world—that he who had for so many years urged men to “strive and thrive—fight on!” would pass away as they were given to the world, would he have wished to close his life’s work with braver, better, nobler words than these? All Browning is here. From Pauline to this epilogue the message was ever the same, and the confidence in the ultimate and eternal triumph of right uniform throughout. In the Pall Mall Gazette of February 1st, 1890, there appeared the following reference to this poem: “One evening, just before his death illness, the poet was reading this (the third verse) from a proof to his daughter-in-law and sister. He said, ‘It almost looks like bragging to say this, and as if I ought to cancel it; but it’s the simple truth; and as it’s true, it shall stand.’ His faith knew no doubting. In all trouble, against all evil, he stood firm.”

Epilogue to “Dramatic Idyls” (Second Series). This poem combats the notion that a quick-receptive soil, on which no feather seed can fall without awakening vitalising virtue, is the hot-bed for a poet; rather must we hold that the real song-soil is the rock, hard and bare, exposed to sun and wind-storm, there in the clefts where few flowers awaken grows the pine tree—a nation’s heritage. (Compare on this Emerson’s Woodnotes II.)

Third Speaker is Mr. Browning himself, who offers us consolation in our bereavement; he asks us to see through his eyes. In head and heart every man differs utterly from his fellows; he asks how and why this difference arises; he bids us watch how even the heart of mankind may have some mysterious power of attracting Nature’s influences round himself as a centre. In Arctic seas the water gathers round some rock-point as though the waste of waves sought this centre alone; for a minute this rock-point is king of this whirlpool current, then the waves oversweep and destroy it, hastening off to choose another peak to find, and flatter, and finish in the same way. Thus does Nature dance about each man of us, acting as if she meant to enhance his worth; then, when her display of simulated homage is done with, rolls elsewhere for the same performance. Nature leaves him when she has gained from him his product, his contribution to the active life of the time. The time forces have utilised the man as their pivot, he has served for the axis round which have whirled the energies which Nature employed at the moment. His quota has been contributed; he has not been a force, but the central point of the forces’ revolution; as the play of waves demanded for their activity the rock-centre, so the mind forces required for their gyrations the passive man-centre; the rock stood still in the dance of the waves, but their dance could not have existed without its mysterious influence on their motion. The man was necessary to the mind-waves; the play of forces could not have been secured without just that soul-point standing idly as the centre of the dance of influences. The waves, having obtained the whirl they demanded, submerge the rock—the mind forces having gained such direction, such quality of rotation, dispense with the man; the force lives, however, and his contribution to its direction is not lost, hot husbanded. Now, there is no longer any use for the old Temple service of David, neither is the particular aspect of the Christ-face required as at first beheld. The face itself does not vanish, or but decomposes to recompose. The face grows; the Christ of to-day is a greater conception than that which Renan thinks he has decomposed. It is not the Christ of an idea that sufficed for old-world conception, but one which expands with the age and grows with the sentient universe.

Epilogue to “Ferishtah’s Fancies” (Venice, December 1st, 1884). This poem brings into a focus the rays of the fancies which compose the volume: the famous ones of old, the heroes whose deeds are celebrated in the different poems, were not actors merely, but soldiers, and fought God’s battle; they were not cowards, because they had confidence in the supremacy of good, and fighting for the right knew they could leave results to the Leader. But a chill at the heart even in its supremest joy induces the question: What if all be error?—if love itself were responsible for a fallacy of vision?

Epilogue to “Pacchiaratto and other Poems” (1876). In this poem the author deals with his critics. “The poets pour us wine,” and as they pour we demand the impracticable feat of producing for us wine that shall be sweet, yet strong and pure. One poet gives the world his potent man’s draught; it is admitted to be strong and invigorating, yet is swallowed at a gulp, as evidently unpleasant to the taste. Another dispenses luscious sweetness, fragrant as a flower distillation; and men say contemptuously it is only fit for boys—is useless for nerving men to work. Now, it is easy to label a bottle as possessing body and bouquet both, but labels are not always absolute guarantees of that which they cover. Still there is wine to be had, by judicious blending, which combines these qualities of body and bouquet. How do we value such vintage when we do possess it? Go down to the vaults where stand the vats of Shakespeare and Milton wine: there in the cellar are forty barrels with Shakespeare’s brand—some five or six of his works are duly appreciated, the rest neglected; there are four big butts of Milton’s brew, and out of them we take a few drops, pretending that we highly esteem him the while! The fact is we hate our bard, or we should not leave him in the cellar. The critics say Browning brews stiff drink without any flavour of grape: would the public take more kindly to his wine if he gave it all the cowslip fragrance and bouquet of his meadow and hill side? The treatment received by Shakespeare and Milton proves that the public taste is vitiated, notwithstanding all the pretence of admiration of them. It is our furred tongue that is at fault; it is nettle-broth the world requires. Browning has some Thirty-four Port for those who can appreciate it; as for the multitude, let them stick to their nettle-broth till their taste improves.

Notes.—Verse i., “The Poets pour in wine”: the quotation is from Mrs. Browning’s “Wine of Cyprus.” V. 20, “Let them ‘lay, pray, bray’”: this in ridicule of Byron’s grammar in verse clxxx. of Canto IV. of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:—“And dashest him again to earth;—there let him lay.”

Epilogue to the “Two Poets of Croisic” (1878). (Published in the Selections, vol. ii., as A Tale). A bard had to sing for a prize before the judges, and to accompany his song on the lute. His listeners were so pleased with his melody that it seemed as though they would hasten to bestow the award even before the end of the song; when, just as the poet was at the climax of his trial, a string broke, and all would have been lost, had not a cricket “with its little heart on fire” alighted on the instrument, and flung its heart forth, sounding the missing note; and there the insect rested, ever at the right instant shrilling forth its F-sharp even more perfectly than the string could have done. The judges with one consent said, “Take the prize—we took your lyre for harp!” Did the conqueror despise the little creature who had helped him with all he had to offer? No: he had a statue of himself made in marble, life-size; on the lyre was “perched his partner in the prize.” The author of the volume of poems of which this story forms the epilogue, says that he tells it to acknowledge the love which played the cricket’s part, and gave the missing music; a girl’s love coming aptly in when his singing became gruff. Love is ever waiting to supply the missing notes in the arrested harmony of our lives.

Notes.—“Music’s Son”: Goethe. “Lotte,” of the Sorrows of Werther, was Charlotte Buff, who married Kestner, Goethe’s friend, the Albert of the novel. Goethe was in love with Charlotte Buff, and her marriage with Kestner roused the temper of his over-sensitive mind. (See Dr. Brewer’s Reader’s Handbook.)

Epistle, An, Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician. (Men and Women, vol. i., 1855.) [The subject of the poem is the raising of Lazarus from the dead.] Karshish, a wandering scholar-physician, writing to the sage Abib, from whom he has learned his art, gives him an account of certain matters of medical interest which he has discovered in the course of his travels, and which, like a good student, he communicates to his venerable teacher. After informing him that he has sent him some samples of rare pharmaceutical substances, he says that his journeyings brought him to Jericho, on the dangerous road from which city to Jerusalem he had met with sundry misadventures, and noted several cases of clinical interest, all of which he reports in the matter-of-fact way which betokens the scientific practitioner of the period. Amongst his plague, ague, epileptic, scalp-disease, and leprosy cures, he particularly describes “a case of mania subinduced by epilepsy,” which especially interested him. The disorder seemed to him of quite easy diagnosis: “Tis but a case of mania,” complicated by trance and epilepsy, but well within his powers as a physician to account for, except in the after circumstances and the means of cure. “Some spell, exorcisation or trick of art” had evidently been employed by a Nazarene physician of his tribe, who bade him, when he seemed dead, “Rise!” and he did rise. He was “one Lazarus, a Jew”—of good habit of body, and indeed quite beyond ordinary men in point of health; and his three days’ sleep had so brightened his body and soul that it would be a great thing if the medical art could always ensure such a result from the use of any drug. He has undergone such change of mental vision that he eyes the world now like a child, and puts all his old joys in the dust. He has lost his sense of the proportion of things: a great armament or a mule load of gourds are all the same to him, while some trifle will appear of infinite import; yet he is stupefied because his fellow-men do not view things with his opened eyes. He is so perplexed with impulses that his heart and brain seem occupied with another world while his feet stay here. He desires only perfectly to please God; he is entirely apathetic when told that Rome is on the march to destroy his town and tribe, yet he loves all things old and young, strong and weak, the flowers and birds, and is harmless as a lamb: only at ignorance and sin he is impatient, but promptly curbs himself. The physician would have sought out the Nazarene who worked the cure, and would have held a consultation with him on the case, but discovered that he perished in a tumult many years ago, accused of wizardry, rebellion, and of holding a prodigious creed. Lazarus—it is well, says the physician, to keep nothing back in writing to a brother in the craft—regards the curer as God the Creator and sustainer of the world, that dwelt in flesh amongst us for a while; but why write of trivial matters? He has more important things to tell.

“I noticed on the margin of a pool,
Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort
Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!”

He begs the sage’s pardon for troubling him with this man’s tedious case, but it has touched him with awe, it may be partly the effect of his weariness. But he cannot close his letter without returning to the tremendous suggestion once more. “Think, Abib! The very God!”—

“So the All-Great, were the All-Loving too,—
It is strange.”

Professor Corson says this poem “is one of Browning’s most remarkable psychological studies. It may be said to polarise the idea, so often presented in his poetry, that doubt is a condition of the vitality of faith. It is a subtle representation of a soul conceived with absolute spiritual standards, while obliged to live in a world where all standards are relative and determined by the circumstances and limitations of its situation.” Lazarus has seen things as they are. “This show of things,” so far as he is concerned, is done with. He now leads the actual life; his wonder and his sorrow are drawn from the reflection that his fellow-men remain in the region of phantasm. He lives really in the world to come. How infinitely little he found the things of time and sense in the presence of the eternal verities is grandly shown in the poem. The attitude of Lazarus under his altered conditions affords an answer to those who demand that an All-Wise Being should not leave men to struggle in a region of phenomena but exhibit the actual to us in the present life. Under such conditions our probation would be impossible. As Browning shows in La Saisiaz, a condition of certainty would destroy the school-time value of life; the highest truths are insusceptible of scientific demonstration. Lazarus is the hero of the poem, not Karshish. As the Bishop of Durham says in his paper “On Browning’s View of Life,” Lazarus “is not a man, but a sign: he stands among men as a patient witness of the overwhelming reality of the divine—a witness whose authority is confessed, even against his inclination, by the student of nature, who turns again and again to the phenomena which he affects to disparage. In this crucial example Browning shows how the exclusive dominance of the spirit destroys the fulness of human life, its uses and powers, while it leaves a passive life, crowned with an unearthly beauty.” The professional attitude of Karshish is drawn with marvellous fidelity. A paper in the Lancet on such a “case” would be precisely on the same lines to-day, though the wandering off into side details would not be quite so obvious, and there would be an entire absence of any trifling with the idea that “the All-Great were the All-Loving too.” This is “emotional,” and modern science has nothing but contempt for that.

Notes.—Snake-stone, a name applied to any substance used as a remedy for snake-bites. Professor Faraday once analysed several which had been used for this purpose in Ceylon. One turned out to be a piece of animal charcoal, another was chalk, and a third a vegetable substance like a bezoar. The animal charcoal might possibly have been useful if applied immediately. The others were valueless for the purpose. (Tennant, Ceylon, third ed., i., 200.) “A spider that weaves no web.” Dr. H. McCook, a specialist in spider lore, has explained this passage in Poet-Lore, vol. i., p. 518. He says the spider referred to belongs to the Wandering group: they stalk their prey in the open field, or in divers lurking places, and are quite different in their habits from the web-spinners. The spider sprinkled with mottles he thinks is the Zebra spider (Epiblemum scenicum). It belongs to the Saltigrade tribe. The use of spiders in medicine is very ancient. Pliny describes many diseases for which they were used. Spiders were boiled in water and distilled for wounds by Sir Walter Raleigh. Greek-fire was the precursor of gunpowder; it was the oleum incendiarum of the Romans. Probably petroleum, tar, sulphur, and nitre were its chief ingredients. Blue flowering borage (Borago officinalis). The ancients deemed this plant one of the four “cordial flowers” for cheering the spirits, the others being the rose, violet, and alkanet. Pliny says it produces very exhilarating effects. The stem contains nitre, and the whole plant readily gives its flavour even to cold water. (See Anne Pratt’s Flowering Plants, vol. iv., p. 75.)

Este. (Sordello.) A town of Lombardy, in the delegation of Padua, situated at the southern extremity of the Euganean hills. The Rocca or castle is a donjon tower occupying the site of the original fortress of Este.

Este, The House of. (Sordello.) One of the oldest princely houses of Italy, called Este after the name of the town above mentioned. Albert Azzo II. first bore the title of Marquis of Este; he married a sister of Guelph III., who was duke of Carinthia. The Italian title and estates were inherited by Fulco I. (1060-1135), son of Albert Azzo II. In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries the history of the house of Este is mixed up with that of the other noble houses of Italy in the struggles of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. The Estena were the head of the Guelph party, and at different times were princes of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. “Obizzo I., son of Folco I., entered into a league against Frederick Barbarossa, and was comprehended in the Venetian treaty of 1177, by which municipal podestas (chief magistrates of great cities) were instituted” (Encyc. Brit.). Strife existed between this house and that of the Torelli, which raged for two centuries, in consequence of Obizzo I. carrying off Marchesella, heiress of the Adelardi family, of Ferrara, and marrying her to his son Azzo V.

Eulalia. (A Soul’s Tragedy.) The shrewd woman who was betrothed to Luitolfo.

Euripides. The Greek tragic poet, who was born of Athenian parents in 480 B.C. He brought out his first play—The Peliades—at the age of twenty-five. At thirty-nine he gained the first prize, which honour he received only five times in his long career of fifty years. He was the mediator between the ancient and modern drama, and was regarded at Athens as an innovator. Aristophanes was an exceedingly hostile and witty critic of Euripides, and from his point of view his conduct was justified, taking as he did the standard of Æschylus and Sophocles as the only right model of tragedy. He is variously said to have written seventy-five, seventy-eight and ninety-two tragedies. Eighteen only have come down to us: The Alcestis, Andromache, Bacchæ, Hecuba, Helena, Electra, Heraclidæ, Heracles in Madness, The Suppliants, Hippolytus, Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia among the Tauri, Ion, Medea, Orestes, Rhesus, the Troades, the Phœnissæ, and a satiric play, the Cyclops. “Aristophanes calls Euripides ‘meteoric,’ because he was always rising into the air; he was famous for allusions to the stars, the sea and the elements. Aristophanes uses the epithet sneeringly: Browning, praisingly” (Br. P. iii. 43).

Eurydice to Orpheus. A Picture by Leighton. (Published for the first time in the Royal Academy Catalogue, 1864. It was reprinted in the first volume of the Selections in 1865.) Orpheus was a famous mythical poet, who was so powerful in song that he could move trees and rocks and tame wild beasts by the charms of his voice. His wife (the nymph Eurydice) died from the bite of a serpent, and Orpheus descended to the lower regions in search of her. He so influenced Persephone by his music that she gave him permission to take back his wife on the condition that he should not look round during his passage from the nether world to the regions above. In his impatience he disregarded the condition, and having turned his head to gaze back, Eurydice had to return for ever to Hades (Vergil, Geor. iv., v. 457, etc.). The poet has represented Eurydice speaking to Orpheus the passionate words of love which made him forget the commands of Pluto and Persephone not to look back on pain of losing his wife again.

Euthukles. (Balaustion’s Adventure; Aristophanes’ Apology.) He was the man of Phokis who heard Balaustion recite Alcestis at Syracuse, and who followed her when she returned to Athens, and married her. On their voyage to Rhodes, after the fall of Athens, Balaustion dictated to him the Apology of Aristophanes, which he wrote down on board the vessel. It was Euthukles, according to Browning, who saved Athens from destruction by reciting at a critical moment the lines from Euripides’ Electra and Agamemnon.

Evelyn Hope. (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) The lament of a man who loved a young girl who died before she was old enough to appreciate his love. The maiden was sixteen, the man “thrice as old.” He contemplates her as she lies in the beauty of death, and asks: “Is it too late then? Because you were so young and I so old, were we fellow-mortals and nought beside? Not so: God creates the love to reward the love,” and he will claim her not in the next life alone, but, if need be, through lives and worlds many yet to come. His love will not be lost, for his gains of the ages and the climes will not satisfy him without his Evelyn Hope. He can wait. He will be more worthy of her in the worlds to come. Modern science has taught us that no atom of matter can ever be lost to the world, no infinitesimal measure of energy but is conserved, and the poet holds that there shall never be one lost good. The eternal atoms, the vibrations that cease not through the eternal years, shall not mock at the evanescence of human love.

Face, A. (Dramatis Personæ, 1864.) A portrait of a beautiful girl painted in words by a poet who had all the sympathies of an artist.

Family, The. (Ferishtah’s Fancies, 4: “On the Lawfulness of Prayer.”) Ferishtah has prayed for a dying man that he might recover. An objector asks why he does this: if God is all-wise and good, what He does must be right: “Two best wills cannot be.” Man has only to acquiesce and be thankful. The dervish tells a tale. A man had three sons, and a wife who was bitten by a serpent. The husband called in a doctor, who said he must amputate the injured part. The husband assented. The eldest son said, “Pause, take a gentler way.” The next in age said, “The doctor must and should save the limb.” The youngest said, “The doctor knows best: let him operate!” He agreed with the doctor. Let God be the doctor; let us call the husband’s acquiescence wise understanding, call the first son’s opinion a wise humanity. In the second son we see rash but kind humanity; in the youngest one who apes wisdom above his years. “Let us be man and nothing more,” says Ferishtah.—man hoping, fearing, loving and bidding God help him till he dies. The lyric bids us while on earth be content to be men. The wider sense of the angel cannot be expected while we remain under human conditions.

Fancy and Reason, in La Saisiaz, discuss the pros and cons of the probabilities of the existence of God, the soul, and future life, etc.

Fears and Scruples. (Pacchiarotto and Other Poems, 1876: “The Spiritual Uses of Uncertainty.”) “Why does God never speak?” asks the doubter. The analogy of the poem compares this silence of the Divine Being with that of a man’s friend, who wrote him many valued letters, but otherwise kept aloof from him. It is suggested by experts that the letters are forgeries. The man loves on. It is then suggested that his friend is acting as a spy upon him, sees him readily enough and knows all he does, and some day will show himself to punish him. But this is to make the friend a monster! Hush!—“What if this friend happen to be—God?” In explanation of this poem, Mr. Kingsland received from the poet the following letter:—“I think that the point I wanted to illustrate in the poem you mention was this: Where there is a genuine love of the ‘letters’ and ‘actions’ of the invisible ‘friend,’ however these may be disadvantaged by an inability to meet the objections to their authenticity or historical value urged by ‘experts’ who assume the privilege of learning over ignorance, it would indeed be a wrong to the wisdom and goodness of the ‘friend’ if he were supposed capable of overlooking the actual ‘love’ and only considering the ‘ignorance’ which, failing to in any degree affect ‘love,’ is really the highest evidence that ‘love’ exists. So I meant, whether the result be clear or no.”

Ferishtah’s Fancies. A criticism of Life: Browning’s mellow wisdom. Published in 1884, with the following quotations as mottoes on the page facing the title:—

“His genius was jocular, but, when disposed, he could be very serious.”—Article Shakespeare, Jeremy Collier’s Historical, etc., Dictionary, 2nd edition, 1701. “You, sir, I entertain you for one of my Hundred; only, I do not like the fashion of your garments: you will say, they are Persian; but let them be changed.”—King Lear, Act III., sc. vi.

The work embraces the following collection of poems:—Prologue. 1. “The Eagle.” 2. “The Melon-seller.” 3. “Shah Abbas.” 4. “The Family.” 5. “The Sun.” 6. “Mihrab Shah.” 7. “A Camel-driver.” 8. “Two Camels.” 9. “Cherries.” 10. “Plot Culture.” 11. “A Pillar at Sebzevah.” 12. “A Bean Stripe: also Apple Eating.” Epilogue. There was a real personage named Ferishtah, a celebrated Persian historian, born about 1570. He is one of the most trustworthy of the Oriental historians. Several portions of his work have been translated into English. He has, however, no connection with the subject-matter of Mr. Browning’s book, but it is probable that his name suggested itself to the poet as a good one for his work. We have here Mr. Browning in a dervish’s robe, philosophising in a Persian atmosphere, yet talking the most perfect Browningese, just as do the Pope in the Ring and the Book and the rabbis in the Jewish poems. Age, experience, and the calm philosophy of a religious mind, are required for the poet’s highest teaching. It matters little, these being given, whether the philosophers wear the tiara of the pope, the robe of the dervish, or the gaberdine of the Jew: the philosophy is the same. The aim is “to justify the ways of God to men,” and to make reasonable an exalted Christian Theism. Three great Eastern classics—The Fables of Bidpai, Firdausi’s Sháh-Námeh, and the Book of Job—are the sources of the inspiration of the pages of Ferishtah’s Fancies. Both the Sháh-Náhmeh and the Fables of Bidpai, or Pilpay as they are commonly termed, are published in the Chandos Classics. Bidpai is supposed to be the author of a famous collection of Hindū fables. The name Bidpai occurs in their Arabic version. Their origin was doubtless the Pantcha Tantra, or “Five Sections,” a great collection of fables. The Hitopadesa is another such collection. The fables were translated into Pehlvi in the sixth century. Then the Persian fables were translated into Arabic, and were transmitted to Europe. They were translated into Greek in the eleventh century, then into Hebrew and Latin, afterwards into nearly every European tongue. We must go to Firdausi, the Persian author of that “standing wonder in poetic literature,” the Sháh Námeh, for an explanation of several allusions in the poem. This great chronicle, the Persian Book of Kings, is a history of Persia in sixty thousand verses. The poem is as familiar to every Persian as our own great epics to us, and the use Mr. Browning makes of it in this work is managed in the most natural manner. This we shall notice more particularly in dealing with the separate poems which compose the volume. In a letter to a friend, Browning wrote:—“I hope and believe that one or two careful readings of the poem will make its sense clear enough. Above all, pray allow for the poet’s inventiveness in any case, and do not suppose there is more than a thin disguise of a few Persian names and allusions. There was no such poet as Ferishtah—the stories are all inventions.... The Hebrew quotations are put in for a purpose, as a direct acknowledgment that certain doctrines may be found in the Old Book, which the concocters of novel schools of morality put forth as discoveries of their own.”

Festus. (Paracelsus.) The old and faithful friend of Paracelsus, who believes in him from the first. He is the husband of Michal, and both influence the mind of the hero of medicine for good at various stages of his career.

Fifine at the Fair. (1872.) The key-note of the work is given in the quotation before the Prologue, which is the motto of the poem, from Molière’s Don Juan, Act I., Sc. 3. There is a certain historic basis for the character of the Don Juan of European legend. In Seville, in the time of Peter the Cruel, lived Don Juan Tenorio, the prince of libertines. He attempted to abduct Giralda, daughter of the governor of Seville: the consequence was a duel, in which the lady’s father was killed. The sensual excesses of Don Juan had destroyed his faith, and he defied the spirit-world so far as to visit the tomb of the murdered man and challenge his statue to follow him to supper. The statue accepted the invitation, and appeared amongst the guests at the meal, and carried the blaspheming sceptic to hell. “As a dramatic type,” says the author of the article “Don Juan,” in the Encyclopædia Britannica, “Don Juan is essentially the impersonation of the scepticism that results from sensuality, and is thus the complement of Faust, whose scepticism is the result of speculation.” The Prologue describes a swimmer far out at sea, disporting himself under the noon-sun; as he floats, a beautiful butterfly hovers above him, a creature of the sky, as he for the time a creature of the water; neither can unite with the other, for neither can exchange elements; still, if we cannot fly, the next best thing is to swim,—a half-way house, as it were, between the world of spirit and that of grosser earth. Poetry is in this sense, a substitute for heaven: whatever the heaven-dwellers are, the poets seem; what deeds they do, the poets dream. Does the soul of his departed wife hover over him in this way, and look with pity on the mimicry of her airy flight? he wonders. (Mrs. Browning died eleven years before Fifine was published.)—The scenery of the poem is that of the neighbourhood of Pornic, a seaside town in the department of the Loire, in Brittany, the little town being twenty-seven miles distant from Nantes. It is noted for its sea bathing and mineral waters, and, like many other places in Brittany, possesses some curious Druidical and other architectural remains. Mr. Browning, while staying at Pornic with his family, saw the gipsy woman who suggested to him the idea of Fifine. He selected her as a type of the sensual woman, in contrast to the spiritual type of womanhood. The poem deals with incidents connected with Pornic fair. Don Juan, addressing his wife Elvire, says: “Let us see the strolling players and the fun of the fair! Who would have supposed that the night could effect such a change? Yesterday all was rough and raw—mere tubs, poles and hoarding; now this morning all is gay as a butterfly, the scaffolding has burst out in colour like a flower-bed in full bloom. Nobody saw them enter the village, but that is the way of these tumblers, they like to steal a march and exhibit their spectacle only when the show is ready. Had any one wandered about the place at night he would have seen the sober caravan which was the bud that blossomed to-day into all this gaiety. An airy structure pitched beneath the tower appeared in the morning surmounted by a red pennon fluttering in the air, and frantic to be free. To be free!—the fever of the flag finds a response in my soul, my heart fires up for liberty from the restraints of law, I would lead the bohemian life these players lead. Why is it that disgraced people, those who have burst the bonds of conventional life, always seem to enjoy their existence more than others? They seem conscious of possessing a secret which sets them out of reach of our praise or blame; now and again they return to us because they must have our money, just as a bird must bear off a bit of rag filched from mankind to work up into his nest. But why need they do that? We think much of our reputation and family honour, but these people for a penny or two will display themselves undraped to any visitor. You may tell the showman that his six-legged sheep is an imposition,—he does not care, he values his good name at nothing. But offer to make these mountebanks respectable, promise them any reward you like to forsake their ways, to work and live as the rest of the world, and your offer will not tempt them. What is the compensatory unknown joy which turns dross to gold in their case? You sigh,” says the speaker to his wife, “you shake your head: what have I said to distress you? Fifine, the gipsy beauty of the show, will illustrate my meaning: this woman is to me a queen, a sexless, bloodless sprite; yet she has conquered me. I want to understand how. There is a honeyed intoxication in the Eastern lily, which lures insects to their death for its own nourishment: is that a flaw in the flower? Wiser are we not to be tempted by such dangerous delights; we may admire and keep clear of them: not poison lilies, but the rose, the daisy, or the violet, for me,—it is Elvire, not Fifine, I love. You ask how does this woman explain my thought? When Louis the Eleventh lay dying he had a procession of the famous women of all time made to pass before him: Helen of Troy, who magically brought men to acquiesce in their own destruction; next was Cleopatra, all the wonder of her body dominated by her high and haughty soul, and trampling on her lovers; then the saint of Pornic church who saves the shipwrecked sailors, and who thinks in her innocence that Cleopatra has given away her clothes to the poor; then comes my gipsy beauty Fifine, with her tambourine. Suppose you, Elvire, in spirit join this procession; then you confront yourself, and I will show you how you beat each personage there—even this Fifine, whom I will reward with a franc that you may study her. You draw back your skirts from such filth as you consider her to be; though, born perhaps as pure and sensitive as any other woman, she can afford to bear your scorn possibly,—we know such people often thus minister to age and the wants of sick parents. Her ogre husband, with his brute-beast face, takes the money she has earned by her exhibiting herself to us as she passes into the tent. I want to make you see the beauty of the mind underlying the form in all these women. No creature is made so mean but boasts an inward worth: this Fifine, a mere sand-grain on the shore, reflects some ray of sunshine. Say that there was no worst of degradation spared this woman, yet she makes no pretence—she is absolutely truthful, she assumes not to be Helen or the Pornic Saint, she only offers to exhibit herself to you for money.” The wife is not deceived by all this sophistry; Fifine’s attraction for the man lies in the fact, not that she possesses some hidden beauty of soul, but some unconcealed physical charms which awaken desire in him because they are not his own. What is one’s own is safe, and so despised; any waif which is a neighbour’s is for the time more desirable,—“Give you the sun to keep, you would want to steal a boor’s rushlight or a child’s squib.” He explains that this is always women’s way about such matters—they cannot be made to comprehend mental analysis. He reminds her how at great cost and a year’s anxiety he had purchased a Rafael; he gloated over his prize for a week, and then had more relish in turning over leaf by leaf Doré’s last picture-book. Suppose the picture reproached him with inconstancy, he would reply that he knew the picture was his own; anxiety had given place to confidence, and were the house on fire, he would risk his life to save it, though he were knee deep in Doré’s engravings. He tells his wife she is to him as the Rafael, the Fifines are as Doré’s wood engravings. Elvire is the precious wife, her face fits into the cleft in the heart of him, to him she is perfection; but is she perfect to her mirror? He thinks not. Where, then, is her beauty? In his soul. He cannot explain the reason, any more than naming the notes will explain a symphony or describing lines will call up the idea of a picture. Still there is reason in our choice of each other. It is principally the effort of one soul to seek its own completion—that which shall aid its development—in another’s. As the artist’s soul sees the form he is about to create in the marble block, so does the lover see in his choice that which will draw out his soul-picture into concrete perfection. The world of sense has no real value for any of us, save in so far as our souls can detect and appropriate it. It is the idea which gives worth to that on which it is exercised. The value of all externals to the soul is just in proportion to its own power of transmuting them into food for its own growth. The soul flame is maintained not only by gums and spices, but straw and rottenness may feed it; if the soul has power to extract from evil things that which supports its life, what matters the straw so long as the ash is left behind? and so of the conquests of the soul, its power to evoke the good from the ungainly and the partial, gives us courage to ignore the failures and the slips of our lives. The pupil does not all at once evoke the masterpiece from the marble—he puts his idea in plaster by the side of the Master’s statue. If the scholar at last evoke Eidotheé, the Master is to thank. “To love” in its intensest form means to yearn to invest another soul with the accumulated treasures of our own. The chemic force exerted by one soul in transmuting coarse things to beautiful is aided by another’s flame. Each may continue to supplement the other, till the red, green, blue and yellow imperfections may be fused into achromatic white, the perfect light-ray. Soul is discernible by soul, and soul is evoked by soul—Elvire by Don Juan. The wife objects that he abdicates soul’s empire and accepts the rule of sense: man has left the monarch’s throne, and lies in the kennel a brute. Searching for soul through all womankind, you find no face so vile but sense may extract from it some good for soul. This fine-spun theory, this elaborate sophistry, she declares, is merely an ingenious excuse for sensuality:—

“Be frank—who is it you deceive—
Yourself, or me, or God?”

Don Juan would reply by an illustration from music, which can penetrate more subtly than words: he would show how we may rise out of the false into the true, out of the dark into the brightness above the dense and dim regions where doubt is bred. Bathing in the sea that morning, out in mid-channel, he was standing in the water with head back, chin up, body and limbs below—he kept himself alive by breath in the nostrils, high and dry; ever and again a wavelet or a ripple would threaten life, then back went the head, and all was safe. But did he try to ascend breast high, wave arms free of tether, to be in the air and leave the water, under he went again; before he had mastered his lesson he had plenty of water in mouth and eyes. “I compare this,” he says, “to the spirit’s efforts to rise out of the medium which sustains it.” He was upborne by that which he beat against, too gross an element to live in, were it not for the dose of life-breath in the soul. Our business is with the sea, not with the air, so we must endure the false below while we bathe in this life. It is by practice with the false that we reach the true. We gain confidence, and learn the trick of doing what we will—sink or rise. His senses do not reel when a billow breaks over him; he grasps at a wave that will not be grasped at all, but glides through the fingers—still the failure to grasp the water sends the head above, far beyond the wave he tried to hold:—