The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 25

PARACELSUS: BOOK III. At Basle, 1526. Paracelsus meets his friend Festus, who has come to the famous university town to see the wondrous physician, whom they call "life's dispenser, idol of the courts and schools." He has heard him lecture from his Professor's chair; has seen the benches thronged with eager students; has gathered from their approving murmurs full corroboration of his hopes: his pupils wors.h.i.+p him. Paracelsus admits his outward success, but confides to his friend that he is indeed most miserable at heart. The hopes which fed his youth have not been realised.

He aspired to know G.o.d: he has attained--a professors.h.i.+p at Basle! He has wrought certain cures by means of drugs whose uses he has discovered; he has a pile of diplomas and licences; he has received (what he values most) a generous acknowledgment of his merit from Erasmus; and he has a crowded cla.s.s-room, and, in place of his high aims, there have sprung up in his soul like fungi at the roots of a n.o.ble tree, a host of petty, vile delights. As for his eager following, mere novelty and ignorant amazement, coupled with innate dulness and the opposition to the regular system of the schools, will account for it. Seeing all this, and feeling that the work to which he has addressed himself is too hard for him, he has sunk in his own esteem, fallen from his ambition, and has become brutal, half-stupid and half-mad. He feels that he precedes his age in his contempt and scorn for all who worked before him on the same path. He has in public burned the books of Aetius, Oribasius, Galen, Rhasis, Serapion, Avicenna, and Averroes.

PARACELSUS ASPIRES. BOOK IV. The scene is at Colmar, in Alsatia, at an inn, 1528. Yet once more Paracelsus aspires. He has sent for his friend Festus to tell him that he is exposed to the world as a quack, that he is cast off by those who erstwhile wors.h.i.+pped him, and denounced by those whom he has served. He has saved the life of a church dignitary, who not only refused afterwards to pay his fee, but made Basle impossible for him.

His pupils grew tired of him when he attempted to teach them and gave up amusing them. The faculty drew off from him when their old methods were interfered with; and so he turned his back on the university. And once more the philosopher has started on his travels, seeking to know with all the enthusiasm of his youth--with the old aims, but not by the same means.

No longer the lean ascetic, debarring his soul of her rightful pleasures; but embracing all the joys of life, and combining pleasure with knowledge.

This is to be his new method. His appet.i.tes, he must own, are degraded--his joys impure. Festus warns him that the base pleasures which have superseded his n.o.bler aims will never content him. Paracelsus declares he lives to enjoy all he can and to know all he can. He has cast off his remorseless care, is hardened in his fault; and as he sings the song of--

"The men who proudly clung To their first fault, and perished in their pride,"

his friend Festus, alarmed at this impiety, urges him to renounce the past, to wait death's summons amid holy sights, and return with him to Einsiedeln. Paracelsus declares this to be impossible: his baser life forbids; a sneering devil is within him; he is weary; the wine-cup, in which he has long tried to drown his disappointment, fails him now; he can hardly sink deeper. Festus attempts to comfort and advise: he too has felt sorrow: sweet Michal is dead. This rouses Paracelsus to endeavour on his part to comfort Festus by declaring his faith in the soul's immortality.

PARACELSUS ATTAINS. BOOK V. In a cell in the hospital of Salzburg, in 1541, Paracelsus lies dying. His faithful friend is by his side, watching through the weary night; and as he watches the patient, he prays for the tortured champion of man. He has sinned, but surely he has sought G.o.d's praise. Had G.o.d granted him success, it must have been to His honour. Say he erred, G.o.d fas.h.i.+oned him and knew how he was made. Festus could have sat quietly at the feet of G.o.d. He could never have erred in this great way. G.o.d is not made like us. It will be like Him to save him! Now Paracelsus awakes; his failing strength struggles like the flame of an expiring taper. At first, in half-delirious phrases, he tells of the hissing and contempt which struck at his heart at Basle--the measureless scorn heaped on him, as they called him quack and cheat and liar. And now he cries that human love is gone; he dreams of Aprile; he calls on G.o.d for one hour of strength to set his heart on Him and love. And then, with a clearer consciousness, he recognises Festus, who tells him that G.o.d will take him to His breast, and on earth splendour shall rest upon his name for ever,--the name of the master-mind, the thinker, the explorer. He sings of the gliding Mayne they knew so well; and the simple words loose the dying man's heart, for he knows he is dying, and his varied life drifts by him. There is time yet to speak; but he will rise and speak standing, as becomes a teacher of men. He has sinned, he feels his need for mercy, and he can trust G.o.d. It was meant to be with him as had fallen out. His fevered thirst for knowledge was born in him. He has learned so much of G.o.d: His joy in creation; His intentions with regard to man. His final work the product of the world's remotest ages; its aeons of preparation; the love mingling with everything that tended towards the highest work of creation; the progress which is the law of life. The tendency to G.o.d he can descry even in man's present imperfection. He sees now where his error lay: how he overlooked the good in man; how he had failed to note the good in evil, and to detect the love beneath the mask of hate; how he had denied the half-reasons, the faint aspirings, the struggles for truth; the littleness in man, despite his errors; the upward tendency in all his weakness. All this he knew not, and he failed. Yet if he

"Stoop Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud, It is but for a time."

He "shall emerge one day." And so he sinks to rest. And this is Browning's _Paracelsus_.

It is in _Paracelsus_ (the work that posterity will probably estimate as Browning's greatest) that we must look for the strongest proof of his sympathy with man's desire to know and bend the forces of Nature to his service. To some students this magnificent work will appear only the string of pearls and precious stones that some of us consider _Sordello_ to be. To others it is a drama ill.u.s.trating the contending forces of love and knowledge; others, again, find in it only an elaborate discussion on the Aristotelian and Platonic systems of philosophy. It is none of these alone: rather, if a single sentence could describe it, it is the Epic of the Healer, not of the hero who stole from heaven a jealously-guarded fire, but of him who won from heaven what was waiting for a worthy recipient to take and help us to. In so far as _Paracelsus_ came short, it was deficiency of love that hindered him; of his striving after knowledge, and what he won for man, the epic tells in words and music that, to me at least, have no equal in the whole range of literature. It is most remarkable that long before the scientific men of our time had given Paracelsus credit for the n.o.ble work he did for mankind, and the lasting boon many of his discoveries conferred upon the race, Mr. Browning, in this wonderful poem, recognised both his labours and their results at their true value, and raising his reputation at this late hour from the infamy with which his enemies and biographers had covered it, set him in his proper place amongst the heroes and martyrs of science. We owe the poet a debt of grat.i.tude for this rehabilitation. No man could have written this transcendent poem who had less than Browning's power of thrusting aside the accidents and accretions of a character, and getting at the naked germ from which springs the life of the real man. That no follower of medicine, no chemist, no disciple of science, did this for Paracelsus is, in the splendid light of Mr. Browning's research and penetration, a remarkable instance of the fact that the unjust verdicts of a time and a cla.s.s need to be reversed in a clearer atmosphere, and in freedom from cla.s.s prejudices not often accorded to contemporary biographers. A poet alone could never have done us this service; and a single attentive perusal of this work is enough to show that the intimate blending of the scientific with the poetic faculty could alone have effected the restoration. How lovingly the poet has taken this world-benefactor's remains from the ditch into which his profession had cast them, and laid them in his own beautiful sepulchre, gemmed, chiselled, and arabesqued by all the lovely imagery of his fancy, no reader of Browning's _Paracelsus_ needs to be told.

[For a complete study of the life and work of Paracelsus, and Mr.

Browning's poem thereon, see the chapter "Paracelsus, the Reformer of Medicine," in my _Browning's Message to his Time_ (Sonnenschein).]

NOTES TO BOOK I.--_Wurzburg_ is one of the most ancient and historically important towns of Germany. Its bishops were made dukes of Franconia in 1120. Its university was founded in 1582. _Trithemius_ of Spanheim was abbot of Wurzburg, and was a great astrologer and alchemist. _Einsiedeln_, in Canton Schwyz, Switzerland, is a noted place of pilgrimage on the Alpbach, thirty miles from Zurich, under the Herrenberg, with an abbey founded in 861, containing a black statue of the Virgin. Immense quant.i.ties of missals, rosaries, etc., are produced there. Zwingle was a priest here 1515-19; and not far from the town is the house where Paracelsus was born. Population now about 7650. _Gier-eagle_: supposed to be a small vulture (Lev. xi. 18). _Black arts_: Black magic == sorcery, as opposed to white magic == science. _The Stagirite_: Aristotle, who was born at Stagira, in Macedon.

NOTES TO BOOK II.--_Constantinople_, the city of the East where many astrologers practised their art. "_A Turk verse along a scimitar_": the Arabs use verses of the Koran in the decoration of their walls, pottery, arms, etc. The Alhambra at Granada is profusely decorated in this way. The Arabic, Persian, and Turkish letters lend themselves admirably to ornamental purposes. _Arch-genethliac_: a _genethliac_ is a calculator of nativities--an astrologer.

NOTES TO BOOK III.--_Pansies_: if these flowers were, as is said, favourites with Paracelsus, the choice was appropriate. _Pensees_ for "the thinker, the explorer," and "heartsease" for the anxious and overworked man. _Rhasis_, or _Rhazes_, was a distinguished physician of Bagdad (925-6). _Basil_ == Basel, Basle. _colampadius_, a Reformer of Basle, friend of Erasmus. _Castella.n.u.s_ was Pierre Duchatel, a French prelate.

When at Basle, Erasmus procured him employment as a corrector of the press with Frobenius. He was bishop of Tulle in 1539, of Macon in 1544, and in 1551 of Orleans. He was a tolerant man in an intolerant age. _Munsterus_, a Christian Socialist, connected with the Peasants' War; executed 1525.

_Frobenius_, the friend of Erasmus, cured by Paracelsus. He was a famous printer at Basle. _Rear mice_: probably a device in the arms on the gate.

_Lachen_, a village of 1200 inhabitants, on the margin of the lake of Zurich. The holy hermit Meinrad, the founder of Einsiedeln, originally lived on the top of the Etzel, near here. "_Cross-grained devil in my sword_": the long sword of Paracelsus is famous:--

"b.u.mbastus kept a devil's bird Shut in the pummel of his sword, That taught him all the cunning pranks Of past and future mountebanks."

(HUDIBRAS, Part II., Cant. 3.)

Naudaeus (in his "History of Magic") observes of this familiar spirit, "that though the alchymists maintain that it was the secret of the philosopher's stone, yet it were more rational to believe that, if there was anything in it, it was certainly two or three doses of his laudanum, which he never went without, because he did strange things with it, and used it as a medicine to cure almost all diseases." "_Sudary of the Virgin_": a handkerchief, a relic of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

_Suffumigation_, a medical fumigation, such as was used by Hippocrates.

_Erasmus_ was born at Rotterdam in 1466. The home of his old age was Basel, to which place he was attracted by the fame of the printing press of Frobenius. Here he made the acquaintance of Zwingle and Holbein, and other men full of the desire for learning. "_Ape at the bed's foot_": patients who suffer from delirium frequently see apes, rats, cats, and other animals and figures, mocking them at the foot of the bed. "_Spain's cork-groves_": cork is the bark of the cork-oak (_Quercus suber_). It grows in Spain, and is most abundant in Catalonia and Valencia.

"_Praeclare! Optime!_" == Bravo! well done! "_I precede my age_": it has only recently been discovered how much our modern science owes to the labours and researches of Paracelsus. _Aetius_ was an Arian doctor, who was very skilful in medical disputation. He died at Constantinople in 367.

_Oribasius_ was the court physician of Julian the Apostate (326-403).

_Galen_ was a great anatomist and a physiological physician. _Rhasis_ (see note, p. 324). _Serapion_, an Alexandrian physician, "a great name in antiquity." _Avicenna_, an Arabian philosopher and physician, born about A.D. 980, who presented to his countrymen the doctrines of Galen blended with those of Aristotle. _Averroes_, an Arabian philosopher and physician, born at Cordova in 1126, the interpreter of the Aristotelian philosophy to the Mohammedans. _Zuinglius_ == Zwingle the Reformer, of Zurich.

_Carolstadius_, or _Carlstadt_, one of the first Reformers. He was professor of divinity at Wittemberg, and early joined Luther in the new religion. He became the leader of the fanatical sect of iconoclasts at Wittemberg, and excited them to excesses. He was banished, and died at Basle in 1541. _Suabia_, the name of an ancient duchy in the south-west part of Germany. _Oporinus_: lived two years in close intimacy with Paracelsus as his secretary, and has been suspected of defaming his memory. "_Sic itur ad astra_": such is the way to immortality.

_Liechtenfels_, a canon who was cured by Paracelsus when he was in danger of death, and refused afterwards to pay the stipulated fee.

NOTES TO BOOK IV.--"_Quid multa?_" why say more? _Ca.s.sia_, an inferior kind of cinnamon. "_Sandal-buds_": the sandal is a low tree, like a privet, and has a great fragrance. "_Stripes of labdanum_" or _ladanum_: a fragrant, resinous exudation from the plants _Cystus creticus_ and _Cystus ladaniferus_. _Aloes_: the fragrant resin of the _agalloch_ or _lign-aloe_ of Scripture. _Nard_ == spikenard; very fragrant. "_Sweetness from Egyptian shroud_": the faint odour from the spices used to embalm the mummy. "_Fiat experientia corpore vili_," or _fiat experimentum in corpore vili_: Let the experiment be made on a body of no value (a hospital patient, _e.g._!)

NOTES TO BOOK V.--_Salzburg_: the beautifully situated old city of Austria, eighty-seven miles S.E. of Munich. "_Jove and the t.i.tans_": the t.i.tans were the sons of Saturn, who made war against Jupiter; and though they were of gigantic size, they were subdued. _Phaeton_, the son of Phbus and Clymene, who requested his father to give him leave to drive his chariot. The rash youth was unable to bear the light and heat, and dropped the reins. To prevent a general conflagration Jupiter struck him with thunder, and he dropped into the river Erida.n.u.s. _Galen of Pergamos_: an eminent physician of the time of Trajan. _Persic Zoroaster_ "was one of the greatest teachers of the East, the founder of what was the national religion of the Perso-Iranian people from the time of the Achaemenidae to the close of the Sa.s.sanian period." He founded the wisdom of the Magi. The _Zend-Avesta_ is the great Zoroastrian bible. "_Thus he dwells in all_,"

etc., down to "_Man begins anew a tendency to G.o.d_," is a faithful representation of the teaching of the Kabbalah (see _Encyc. Brit._, vol.

xiii., p. 812, last ed.): "The whole universe, however, was incomplete, and did not receive its finis.h.i.+ng stroke till man was formed, who is the acme of the creation and the microcosm. 'Man is both the import and the highest degree of creation, for which reason he was formed on the sixth day. As soon as man was created everything was complete, including the upper and nether worlds, for everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all forms'" (_Zohar_, iii., 48).

=Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day.= To wit: Bernard de Mandeville, Daniel Bartoli, Christopher Smart, George Bubb Dodington, Francis Furini, Gerard de Lairesse, and Charles Avison.

Introduced by A Dialogue between Apollo and the Fates; concluded by Another between John Fust and his Friends. The t.i.tle-page stands thus, and the following dedication is on the next page: "In Memoriam J. Milsand.

Obiit iv. Sept. MDCCCLx.x.xVI. _Absens absentem auditque videtque._"

Published 1887. M. Milsand was a well-known French critic, and was an early admirer of Mr. Browning's works. _Sordello_ was dedicated to M.

Milsand in its revised edition. The _Parleyings_ volume is dealt with in a lucid and sympathetic manner in Mr. Nettles.h.i.+p's _Essays and Thoughts_.

=Parting at Morning.= See MEETING AT NIGHT, to which this poem is the sequel.

=Patriot, The.= AN OLD STORY. (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Romances_, 1863; _Dramatic Romances_, 1868.) A patriot who has been the people's idol, and now, having fallen from his pedestal, is on his way to execution. A year ago that very day they would have given him the sun from their skies had he asked it in that city whose air was a mist of joy bells. He strove his hardest to pluck down that sun to give them, and to-day the year is run out, and he goes bound, with bleeding forehead from the pelting stones, to the shambles. But G.o.d will repay, and he feels safe with that. It has been thought that this poem refers to Arnold of Brescia. Mr. Browning contradicted this.

=Paul Desforges Maillard.= (_Two Poets of Croisic._) He is the second of the Poets, Rene Gentilhomme being the first. He competed for a prize at the French Academy, and was unsuccessful. The poem tells how he made his name known through his sister's influence.

=Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession= (1832). The first work of the poet, and his embryonic work, because it contains in their rudiments all the peculiarities and powers of his genius. He wrote nothing which was not the legitimate development of the forces which we see in this inchoate work.

It is nebulous, but it is a nebula which has within itself the potentiality of worlds of thought. Misty and vague as it everywhere seems, it is influenced by laws which will concentrate its thought into stars and planets, such as _Paracelsus_, and the _Ring and the Book_. It is autobiographical, and admits us into the laboratory of the writer's thought; it is marvellously consistent with the latest utterances of the poet on the subjects nearest to his heart. High thoughts, which through the years of a long life will live in royal splendour in his brain, are born here in travail, as regal things are wont to be. It was a boy's work,--the poet was only twenty years old when he wrote it,--but a competent critic could have detected evidence that in the anonymous author of _Pauline_ a psychological poet had arisen, one who determined to probe to their depths the mysteries of the human soul. From Mr. Gosse's article in _The Century Magazine_ we learn that the young poet had produced a quant.i.ty of verses while a mere child, and had planned a number of soul-studies of a similar character to _Pauline_. He published the poem anonymously in 1833, when he was twenty years old. It was reprinted in 1867, with the following note: "The first piece in the series (_Pauline_) I acknowledge and retain with extreme repugnance, indeed purely of necessity; for not long ago I inspected one, and am certified of the existence of other transcripts, intended sooner or later to be published abroad: by forestalling these I can at least correct some misprints (no syllable is changed), and introduce a boyish work by an exculpatory word.

The thing was my earliest attempt at 'poetry, always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine,'

which I have written since according to a scheme less extravagant and scale less impracticable than were ventured upon in this crude preliminary sketch--a sketch that, on reviewal, appears not altogether wide of some hint of the characteristic features of that particular _dramatis persona_ it would fain have reproduced; good draughtsmans.h.i.+p, however, and right handling were far beyond the artist at that time." With the "good draughtsmans.h.i.+p" and "right handling" of the work we need not concern ourselves; what is of paramount importance is the fact that in _Pauline_ we have "the G.o.d, though in the germ." If the mature artist was ashamed of his puerile performance, his disciples have always loved and admired it, and his deeper students have delighted to trace in its pages the nuclei of principles which have in his maturer works dowered the world with a priceless treasure. The poem is a fragment of a confession from a young man to a young woman whom he loves. It concerns Pauline very little, but is the revelation of the man as a study of the poet's own naked soul. It is not a confession of deeds, but of moods and mental att.i.tudes. He who could unpack his own heart so completely would be likely to reveal the innermost recesses of the characters with which he should deal in the future. It is the revelation of a soul all self-centred. A soul's awakening, a soul in terror at its own capabilities, desires and forces too hard to be controlled--"made up of an intensest life"--imbued with "a principle of restlessness which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel all"--a soul terrified at its own vast shadow, fearing to face its own spectres, and instinctively "building up a screen" of woman's love to be shut in with from a brood of fancies with which he dare not wrestle. Had he never left her side he had been spared this shame. He is sure of her love, though ghosts of the past haunt them. He has not the love to offer which befits her; but he has faith, and he trusts her as we trust the east for morning light. He has communed with her, but she knew not the shame which lurked behind his words and smiles, and she drove away despair from him. He has fallen, is ruined; he has felt in dreams he was a fiend chained in darkness, till, after ages had pa.s.sed came a white swan to remain with him, and it contented him. And again, he had seemed to be a young witch who drew down a G.o.d to sing of heaven, and as he sang he perished grinning, but murmuring "I am still a G.o.d to thee." He has thought that his early life, his songs and wild imaginings, were the only worthy things standing out distinct amid the fever of the after years. And this was his (Sh.e.l.ley's) award. He, the Sun-treader, had drawn out from his wors.h.i.+pper the one spark of love remaining in his soul, and in his tears he praises him. He loved Sh.e.l.ley in his shame, and now he is renowned he watches him as a star, as one altered and worn and full of tears looks to heaven. He strips his mind bare, has a most clear consciousness of self, and recognises that of all his powers an imagination which has been an angel to him is the one which saves his soul from utter death. He feels a need, a trust, a yearning after G.o.d, which somehow is reconciled with a neglect of all he deemed His laws. He sees G.o.d everywhere, yet can love nothing; has had high dreams and low aims, and so lost himself. Then he turned to song, he gazed without fear on the works of mighty bards, for in them he recognised thoughts his own heart had also borne; then came the outburst of the soul's power, a key to a new world, a sound as of angelic mutterings. He vowed himself to liberty. Men should be G.o.ds, earth,--heaven. His soul rose to meet the new life. As one watches for a fair girl that comes forth a withered hag, so all these high-born fancies dwindled into nothing; faith in man, freedom, virtue, motives, power, human loves, all vanished. They were not missed, for wit and mockery and pleasure came in their stead. His powers grew, his soul became as a temple; only G.o.d was gone, and a dark spirit sat in His seat, and mocking shadows cried "Hail!" to him. He resolved to wear himself out with joy, then to win men's praise by undying song, and the mockery laughed out again. Then he met Pauline and knew she loved him; he looked in his heart for a love to return, and love and faith were gone, and selfishness wears him as a flame, and hunger for pleasure has become pain.

Then came a craving after knowledge, as a sleepless harpy. He begins now to know what hate is. Yet with it all he has learned the great truth that his restless longings, his all encompa.s.sing selfishness, only prove that earth is not his sphere, because he cannot so narrow himself but he exceeds it. Hateful as his selfishness has grown to be, he can pa.s.s from such thoughts. Andromeda, rock-chained, awaiting the snake, causes you no fear for her safety: G.o.d will come in thunder from the stars to save her, so he will triumph over his decay; when the calm comes again after the fever has subsided, he will do something equal to his conjecture. He can project himself into all forms of Nature, live the life of plants, mount bird-like, breathe in a fish the morning air in the sun-warm water. He will build a thought-world; he is inspired. Pauline shall come with him to the world of fancy through the ghostly night and sun-warmed morning; he is concentrated, he drinks in the life of all, yet cannot be immortal for all these struggling aims. What is this pa.s.sionate hunger for the All--this insatiable thirst for utmost pleasure? It is man's cry for the satisfying presence of G.o.d in his soul. The alone to the Alone; nothing intervening can give peace and rest to the spirit of man; flame-like it tends upwards to its source. The only One, the Crucified, the Risen Christ--"Christus Consolator" is recognised as the remedy for his sense of infinite loss; and as he recognises the Divine love he is united with the purest earthly soul he knows:--"Pauline, I am thine for ever." "Love me, Pauline--leave me not." And so the hideous past shall be the past, and he will go forward with her--

"Feeling G.o.d loves us, and that all that errs, Is a strange dream which death will dissipate."

Again he will go o'er the tracts of thought, again will beauteous shapes come to him and unknown secrets be divulged,--priest and lover as of old--"Sh.e.l.ley, Sun-treader," he cries, "I believe in G.o.d, and truth, love--I would lean on thee." Professor Johnson, in his paper on "Conscience and Art in Browning," gives the following as the theme of the poem:--"The Divine call and anointing of the poet, so to speak; his sin, which consists in a self-divorce; his decline and degradation as he sinks into the 'dim orb of self'; finally, his redemption and restoration by Divine love, mediated to him by human love."

NOTES.--"_His award_," "_Him whom all honour_," "_Thou didst smile, poet_," "_Sun-treader_" (lines 142, 144, 151, 1020): all these refer to Sh.e.l.ley. "_A G.o.d wandering after beauty_" (line 321): Apollo seeking Daphne. Apollo pursued Daphne, who fled from him, seeking the aid of the G.o.ds, who changed her into a laurel. "_A giant standing vast in the sunset_" (line 322): Atlas, one of the t.i.tans, is referred to here.

"_A high-crested chief Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos_" (line 324):

"After the fall of Troy, many of the Greek chiefs, among them Nestor, set sail for home, while others, at the desire of Agamemnon, remained behind to sacrifice to Pallas. Those who set sail went to the island of Tenedos, where they made offerings to the G.o.ds" (_Poet Lore_, vol. i., p. 244; Homer, _Odyssey_, iii.). "_The dim cl.u.s.tered isles in the blue sea_" (line 321): the islands of the aegean Sea, east of Greece.

"_Who stood beside the naked swift-footed, Who bound my forehead with Proserpine's hair_" (line 334):

the _swift-footed_ was Hermes, the name of Mercury among the Greeks. He was the messenger of the G.o.ds. He was presented by the King of Heaven with a winged cap, called _petasus_, and with wings for his feet, called _talaria_. _Proserpine_ was the daughter of Ceres by Jupiter. "_As Arab birds float sleeping in the wind_" (line 479): this is considered by some to refer to the pelican, by others to the Birds of Paradise.

"_The king Treading the purple calmly to his death_" (line 568):

Agamemnon, to whom his loved Ca.s.sandra foretells his doom in vain:--

"Well, sire, I yield me vanquished by thy voice; I go, treading on purple, to my house."

(Potter's "Agamemnon" of _aeschylus_, 1017.)

"_The boy with his white breast_," etc. (line 574): see Potter's "Choephorae" of _aeschylus_, 1073: Orestes avenged his father's death by a.s.sa.s.sinating his mother Clytemnestra and the adulterer aegisthus.

_Andromeda_ (line 656): Andromeda was ordered to be exposed to a sea-monster, and was tied naked to a rock; but Perseus delivered her, changed the monster into a rock, and married her. "_The fair pale sister went to her chill grave_" (line 963): Antigone interred by night the remains of her brother Polynices against the orders of Creon, who commanded her to be buried alive. She, however, killed herself before the sentence could be executed (see "Antigone" of _Sophocles_). The long Latin preface to _Pauline_ from the _Occult Philosophy_ of Cornelius-Agrippa is thus englished in Mr. Cooke's _Browning Guide-Book_:--"I doubt not but the t.i.tle of our book, by its rarity, may entice very many to the perusal of it. Among whom many of hostile opinions, with weak minds, many even malignant and ungrateful, will a.s.sail our genius, who in their rash ignorance, hardly before the t.i.tle is before their eyes, will make a clamour. We are forbidden to teach, to scatter abroad the seeds of philosophy, pious ears being offended, clear-seeing minds having arisen.

I, as a counsellor, a.s.sail their consciences; but neither Apollo nor all the Muses, nor an angel from heaven, would be able to save me from their execrations, whom now I counsel that they may not read our books, that they may not understand them, that they may not remember them, for they are noxious--they are poisonous. The mouth of Acheron is in this book: it speaks often of stones: beware, lest by these it shape the understanding.

You, also, who with fair wind shall come to the reading, if you will apply so much of the discernment of prudence as bees in gathering honey, then read with security. For, indeed, I believe you about to receive many things not a little both for instruction and enjoyment. But if you find anything that pleases you not, let it go that you may not use it, for I do not declare these things good for you, but merely relate them. Therefore, if any freer word may be, forgive our youth; I, who am less than a youth, have composed this work." The preface is dated London, January 1833. V.A.

XX. is the Latin abbreviation of _Vixi annos viginti_, I was twenty years old.

=Pearl, A, a Girl.= (_Asolando_, 1889.) According to Eastern fable there is a great power in a pearl: if you could speak the right word, you could call a spirit from the simple-looking stone which would make you lord of heaven and earth. Be this as it may, the poet says if you utter the right word, that evokes for you the love of a girl--held, perhaps, in little esteem by the world--her soul escapes to you, and you are creation's lord!

="Periods" of Browning.= It is usual with students to divide the poet's work into some four or five periods. Mr. Fotheringham's cla.s.sification is as good as any: he makes the periods five.--Period I., "_a time of youth and prelude_" (1832-1840), the time of _Pauline_, _Paracelsus_, and _Sordello_. During this time the poet was trying the nature and compa.s.s of his theme and forming his style.--Period II., "_the time of early manhood_" (1841-1846), the time of the dramas and early dramatic lyrics.

All the dramas except _Strafford_ belong to this time. In this period he was studying how best to use his poetical powers.--Period III. is "_the time of maturity_," his manhood and married life (1846-1869). Now he has found his standpoint; he is firm, vigorous, and confident. During this time he gave us _Christmas Eve_, _Men and Women_, _Dramatis Personae_, and _The Ring and the Book_.--Period IV. is "_the time of his later maturity_"