Edward Berdoe
The Browning Cyclopædia: A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning
“So, let him wait God’s instant men call years;
Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,
Do out the duty! Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of His light
For us i’ the dark to rise by. And I rise!”
Notes. – Line 423, Master Malpichi: probably Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694), a great physician of Bologna. He was the founder of microscopic anatomy. In 1691 he removed to Rome to become physician to Pope Innocent XII. l. 427, “The lion’s mouth”: Via di Bocca di Leone – the name of a street near the Corso. l. 607, The square o’ the Spaniards: Piazza di Spagna is the centre of the strangers’ quarter in Rome. It derives its name from the palace of the Spanish Ambassador. l. 1153, Mirtillo, probably a minor poet of the period. l. 1303, The Augustinian: an order of monks following the rule of St. Augustine. l. 1377, The Ave Maria: the “Hail Mary” – an evening devotion, wherein the prayer occurs of which these are the first words.
Book VIII., Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum Procurator. – In this book we have the counsel on behalf of Count Guido at work in his study, preparing the defence which he is to make on behalf of his client. He is a family man, and his life is bound up in that of his son, whose birthday it is, the lad being eight years old. He will devote himself to his case, and when his work is done will enjoy the yearly lovesome frolic feast with little Cinuolo. “Commend me,” says the man of law, “to home joy, the family board, altar and hearth!” He is very anxious to make a good figure in the courts over this case, his opponent, old bachelor Bottinius, shall be made to bite his thumb; and he expresses his gratitude to God that he has Guido to defend just when his boy is eight years old, and needs a stimulus to study from his sire. He chuckles at his good fortune: a noble to defend, a man who has almost with parade killed three persons; it is really too much luck to befall him, and on his son’s birthday too! he prays God to keep him humble, and mutters “Non nobis Domine!” as he turns over his papers. He determines to beat the other side, if only for love, as a tribute to little Cinotto’s natal day (the boy was called by half a dozen pet names). He will astonish the Pope himself with his eloquence and skill; and the day shall be remembered when his son becomes of age. Then he bethinks himself of the night’s feast: the wine, the minced herbs with the liver, goose-foot, and cock’s-comb, cemented with cheese; he rubs his hands again, as he thinks of all the good things getting ready. But now to work: he must puzzle out this case. He is particular about the Latin he will use; he would like to bring in Vergil, but that will not do well in prose. His son shall attack him with Terence on the morrow. Then he curbs his ardour, and sets himself to deal in earnest with the case. Bottinius will deny that Pompilia wrote any letter at all. Anticipating what his opponent will say, he says he had rather lose his case than miss the chance of ridiculing his Latin and making the judge laugh, who will so enjoy the joke. If it comes to law, why, he is afraid he cannot “level the fellow”: he sees him even now in his study, working up thrusts that will be hard to parry, he is sure to deliver a bowl from some unguessed standpoint. And now he stops to rub some life into his frozen fingers, hopes his boy will take care of his throat this cold day, and reflects how chilly Guido must be in his dungeon, despite his straw. Carnival time too: what a providence, with the city full of strangers! He will do his best to edify and amuse them: they may remember Cintino some day! But to the case. “Where are we weak?” he asks. The killing is confessed: they tortured Guido, and so got it out of him, – he shall object to that; nobles are exempt from torture. A certain kind of torture like that called Vigiliarum, is excellent for extracting confession; he has never known any prisoner stand it for ten hours; they “touched their ten,” ’tis true, “but, bah! they died!” If the Count had not confessed, he should have set up the defence that Caponsacchi really murdered the three, and fled just as Guido, touched by grace, – consequent upon having been a good deal at church at the holy season – hastened to the house to pardon his wife, and so arrived just in time – to be charged with the murders. Yes, he could have done very well on this line, he thinks; but the confession has spoiled all that. Wonderful that a nobleman could not stand torture better! Why, he has known several brave young fellows keep a rack in their back garden, and take a turn at it for an hour or two at a time, just to see how much pain they could stand without flinching: he thinks men are degenerating. And so he meanders on, pulling himself up in the midst of a nice point to wonder whether his cook has remembered how excellently well some chopped fennel-root goes with fried liver. “But no; she cannot have been so obtuse as to forget!” He shall begin his speech with a pretty compliment to His Holiness, then he shall quote St. Jerome, St. Gregory, Solomon, and St. Bernard, who all say that a man must not be touched in his honour. Our Lord Himself said, “My honour I to nobody will give!” (He stops to reflect that a melon would have improved the soup, but that the boy wanted the rind to make a boat with.) He shall continue, that a husband who has a faithless wife must raise hue and cry, – the law is not for such cases, – these are for gentlemen to deal with themselves. Of course the other side will object that Guido allowed too long an interval to elapse between the capture of the fugitives and the killing; but he shall show that there really was no interval between the inn and the Comparinis’ villa at Rome: Pompilia was inaccessible between these places. If they object that Guido, when he arrived at Rome on Christmas Eve, should have sought his vengeance at once, he shall ask, “Is no religion left?” A man with all those Feasts of the Nativity to occupy his mind could not be expected to go about his private business. (He pauses to reflect that a little lamb’s fry will be very toothsome in an hour’s time.) The charge is that “we killed three innocents”; as to the manner of the killing, that matters nothing, granted we had the right to kill. Eight months since they would have been held to blame if they had let this bad pair escape: true, that was the time to have killed them, but the Count had not the proper weapons handy. He shall say, too, that he did not instruct his confederates to kill any one of the three, but merely to disfigure them; they had been too zealous. He next proceeds to dispose of a number of points in which it is charged the offence was aggravated, – such as slaying the family in their own house, and lastly that the majesty of the sovereign has received a wound. (Here he fervently hopes the devil will not instigate his cook to stew the rabbit instead of roasting him: he will have to go and see after things himself – he really must.) But, if the end be lawful, the means are allowed. (The Cardinal has promised to go and read the speech to the Pope, and point its beauties out, so he must be adroit in his words.) As he stands forth as the advocate of the poor, he must put in a word or two for the four assassins who did the deed. On their behalf he pleads that, as the husband was in the right in what he did, those who helped him could not be in the wrong. (On which more Latin and neat phrases.) He will be reminded that Guido went off without paying the men the stipulated fee for the murders. “What fact,” he shall ask, “could better illustrate the perfect rectitude of the Count?” The men were not actuated by malice, but by a simple desire to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. As for the Count, so absorbed was he in vindicating his honour, that paltry, vulgar questions of money wholly escaped him; “he spared them the pollution of the pay.” In conclusion, he shall urge that Guido killed his wife in defence of the marriage vow, that he might creditably live. “There’s my speech,” he cries, as he dashes down the pen; “where’s my fry, and family, and friends? What an evening have I earned to-day!” And off he goes to supper, singing “Tra-la-la, lambkins, we must live!”
Notes. – Line 8, “And chews Corderius with his morning crust”: the Colloquies of Corderius were used in every school of any consequence in the time of Shakespeare’s boyhood. It was the most popular Latin book for boys of the time. l. 14, Papinianian pulp: Papinian was the most celebrated of Roman jurists, and an intimate friend of the Emperor Septimius Severus. l. 58, Flaccus: Horace, whose full name was Quintus Horatius Flaccus. l. 94, “Non nobis, Domine, sed Tibi laus”: “Not unto us, Lord, but to Thee be the praise!” l. 101, Pro Milone: the celebrated oration of Cicero on behalf of Milo, a friend of his. l. 115, Hortensius Redivivus: Hortensius, the Roman orator. l. 117, “The Est-est”: a wine so called because a nobleman once sent his servant in advance to write “Est,” it is! on any inn where the wine was particularly good; at one place the man wrote “Est-est,” It is! it is! in token of its superlative excellence, and the vintage has ever since gone by this designation. l. 329, “Questions,” tortures; Vigiliarum: torture by incessant jerking of the body and limbs. l. 482, Theodoric: king of the Ostrogoths (c. A.D. 454-526); he caused the celebrated Boethius to be put to death. l. 483, Cassiodorus: a Roman historian, statesman, and monk, who lived about 468 A.D.; he was raised by Theodoric to the highest offices. He was one of the first of literary monks, and his books were much used in the middle ages. l. 498, Scaliger: Julius Cæsar Scaliger (1484-1558), a man of the greatest eminence in the world of letters, and as a man of science, and a philosopher. He had a son, Joseph Justus Scaliger, not less eminent, who wrote the work referred to. l. 503, The Idyllist is Theocritus, the Sicilian poet. l. 513, Ælian: a Roman, in the reign of Adrian, surnamed the honey-tongued, from the sweetness of his style; he wrote seventeen treatises on animals. l. 948, Valerius Maximus, a Latin writer, who made a collection of historical anecdotes, and published his work in the reign of Tiberius. It was called Books of Memorable Deeds and Utterances. Most of the tales are from Roman history. Cyriacus: patriarch of the Jacobites, monk of the convent of Bizona, in Syria; died at Mosul in 817 A.D. He wrote homilies, canons, and epistles. l. 1542, Castrensis: a distinguished professor of civil and canon law; he died in 1441. He was a professor at Vienna, Avignon, Padua, Florence, Bologna, and Perugia. His most complete work is his readings on the Digest. Butringarius: a jurisconsult (1274-1348). [I have not considered it necessary to translate the many Latin lines in this and the following section of the work, because in nearly every case their sense is given in the context, and therefore those who do not read Latin will lose nothing, as practically they have it all englished in the text.]
Book IX., Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius (Fisci et Rev. Cam. Apostol. Advocatus). – Bottinius is the Public Prosecutor, and has to present the case against the Count and his confederates. He is not a family man, and seems to have but a low ideal of feminine virtue. He admires the sex, but from a superior masculine standpoint; their weaknesses are amiable. Of girls he says —
“Know one, you know all
Manners of maidenhood: mere maiden she.
And since all lambs are like in more than fleece,
Prepare to find that, lamb-like, she too frisks – ”
He mixes up references to the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, her Babe, Saint Anne and Herod; with whom he compares Pompilia, the Comparini family, and the Count; and all this with illustrations from the classics not greatly to the honour of women. The view of Bottinius, in short, is that of the bachelor man of the world, with no very lofty ideals about anything. His philosophy is summed up in his last words, “Still, it pays.” He says he feels his strength inadequate to paint Pompilia; but we know this is a professional way of speaking, for he soon relapses into “melting wiles, deliciousest deceits” – very incongruous with our ideas of what Pompilia really was. No doubt, he thinks, there were some friskings, for which Guido naturally threatened the whip, and considers Guido to have been impatient. He supposes that Pompilia smiled upon everybody, till, when three years of married life had run their course, she smiled on Caponsacchi; and as he was a priest, and the court was more or less ecclesiastical, Bottinius makes light of the affair. He will grant that the lady somewhat plied “arts that allure,” “the witchery of gesture,” and the like. This was within the right of beauty, for the purpose of securing a champion. He will grant, for argument’s sake, that she did write to Caponsacchi. What of it? – it was but to say her life was not worth an hour’s purchase. It was not likely that Caponsacchi fell in love – he who might be Pope some day – yet the lady, being in such a case, was bound to offer him nothing short of love, as his great service was to save her. What was she to offer him – money? To escape death she might well have feigned love, and offered such a reward as the Idyl of Moschus makes Venus promise to any who should bring back lost Cupid. As it was wiser to choose a priest for the rescue of her life, if the cleric were young, handsome, and strong, so much the better, surely. Suppose it were true that Pompilia administered an opiate to her husband the night before she left him? Well, that was to protect him from rough usage if he aroused and interfered. This, says Bottinius, is how he would argue if the things which are but fables had been true: of course Guido never slept a wink, and Pompilia, equally of course, knew nothing about opiates. Then, when she started with her rescuer on the road to Rome, even granting what the suborned coachman said about the kissing which he saw – the one long embrace which constituted the journey – a sage and sisterly kiss were surely allowable, and this is probably what was exaggerated by the drowsy, tired driver. Then, when the pale creature, exhausted with the long journey, fainted at the inn, and Caponsacchi carried her to the chamber, what if he “stole a balmy breath, perhaps”? “why curb ardour here?” He could but pity her, and “pity is so near to love!” As Pompilia was asleep, she could neither know nor care. Were he to concede that Pompilia did write the incriminating letters, she, for self-protection, might deny she did so. “Would that I had never learned to write!” said one; Pompilia, splendidly mendacious, merely out-distanced him with, “To read or write I never learned at all!” Bottinius cannot resist a thrust or two at his “fat opponent’s” love of good living; calls him “thou arch-angelic swine,” and reminds him that he had not invited him to last night’s birthday feast, when all sorts of good things were going. Turning to the action of Caponsacchi, he reminds the court that Archbishop and Governor, gentle and simple, did nothing to extricate Pompilia from her troubles; they all went their ways and left her to her fate; Caponsacchi alone, bursting through the impotent sympathy of Arezzo, caught Virtue up, and carried her off. He had not soiled her with the pitch alleged: the marks she bore were the evanescent black and blue of the necessary grasp. Then he must tell a tale how Peter, John, and Judas, being on a journey, were footsore and hungry; how they reached at night an inn for rest where there was but one room; for food but a solitary fowl, a wretched sparrow of a thing. Peter suggested they should all go to sleep till the fowl was ready, then he who had had the happiest dream should eat the entire fowl, as there was not enough for three; so each rested in his straw. When they awoke, John said he had dreamed he was the Lord’s favourite disciple, and claimed the meal. Peter had dreamed he had the keys of heaven and hell, and thought the fowl must clearly be his. But Judas dreamed that he had descended from the chamber where they slept and had eaten the fowl. And so the traitor really had: he had left nothing but the drumstick and the merry-thought; and that is how the bone called merry-thought earned its name, to put us in mind that the best dream is to keep awake sometimes. So, said Bottinius, the great people of Arezzo never meant Innocence to starve while Authority sat at meat. They meant Pompilia to have something – in their dreams; they were willing to help her – in their sleep. Caponsacchi did wiser than dream or sleep: he brought a carriage, while the Archbishop and the Governor wondered what they could do. Then the Advocate bursts into a fit of admiration for the majesty and sanctity of the law, and what it would have done for Guido if only he had been content to wait. He comments on the penance which Pompilia had undergone; and though he cannot believe that Caponsacchi ever went near her when she left the convent, is inclined to ask, Suppose he did? Is it a matter for surprise that he would feel lonely at Civita, and pine a little for the feminine society to which he had been accustomed? And so he goes on denying all the accusations, but always adding, “And suppose it were otherwise?” He says, if he must speak his mind, it had been better that Pompilia had died upon the spot than lived to shame the law. Does he credit her story? – no! Did she lie? – still no! He explains it this way: She had made her confession at the point of death, and was absolved; it was only charity in her to spend her last breath by pretending utter innocence, and thus rehabilitate the character of Caponsacchi. Had she told the naked truth about him, it would have doubtless injured him, and she was not bound to do that; and as the Sacrament had obliterated the sin, she was justified in the course he believes she took.
Notes. – Line 115, The Urbinate: Rafael. l. 116, The Cortonese: Luca da Cortona, Italian painter. l. 117, Ciro Ferri, Italian painter (1634-1689). l. 170, Phryne, a celebrated beauty of Athens. She was the mistress of Praxiteles, who made a statue of her, which was one of his greatest works, and was placed in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. l. 226, The Teian: the Greek poet Anacreon was born at Teos, in Ionia. l. 284, The Mantuan == Vergil. l. 394, Commachian eels were anciently, and are still, very celebrated. l. 400, Lernæan snake, the famous hydra which Hercules slew. l. 530, Idyllium Moschi, the first Idyl of the Greek poet Moschus, entitled “Love a Runaway.” l. 541, Myrtilus, the son of Mercury and Phæthusa: for his perfidy he was thrown into the sea, where he perished; Amaryllis, the name of a countryman mentioned by Theocritus and Vergil. l. 873, Demodocus, a musician at the court of Alcinous: the gods gave him the power of song, but denied him the blessing of sight. l. 875, “foisted into that Eighth Odyssey”: see Pope’s Homer’s Odyssey, Book VIII., with the first note thereto. l. 887, Cornelius Tacitus, a celebrated Roman historian, born in the reign of Nero. l. 893, “Thalassian-pure”: Thalassius was a beautiful young Roman in the reign of Romulus. At the rape of the Sabines, a virgin captured by one of the ravishers was declared to be reserved for Thalassius, and all were eager to reserve her pure for him. l. 968, Hesione, a daughter of Laomedon, king of Troy. It fell to her lot to be exposed to a sea monster. Hercules killed the monster and delivered her, but Laomedon refused to give him the promised reward. l. 989, Hercules and Omphale: Omphale was queen of Lydia, and Hercules loved her so much that he used to spin by her side amongst her women, while she wore the lion’s skin and bore the club of the hero. l. 998, Anti-Fabius, i. e., opposed to the policy of Quintus Fabius Maximus, the Roman general who opposed the progress of Hannibal, not by fighting, but by harassing counter-marches and ambuscades; for which he received the name of the delayer. A Fabian policy, therefore, is a waiting policy. Caponsacchi acted promptly. l. 1030, “Sepher Toldoth Yeschu”: the Italians have an endless store of tales and legends of this character. See, for many such, Mr. Crane’s Italian Popular Stories (Macmillan). l. 1109, “Thucydides and his sole joke”: Thucydides was a celebrated Greek historian, born at Athens. He wrote the history of the Peloponnesian war, in which he tells the story of Cylon (l. 126). l. 1345, Maro == Vergil; Aristæus, a son of Apollo, said to have learnt from nymphs the art of the cultivation of olives and management of bees, which he communicated to mankind. l. 1494, Triarii, old soldiers that were kept in reserve to assist in case of hazard. l. 1573, “famed panegyric of Isocrates”: Isocrates was one of the ten Attic orators, and one of the most remarkable men in the literary history of Greece. He was born B.C. 436. His splendid panegyric was delivered B.C. 380, for the purpose of stimulating the people of Greece to unite against the power of Asia.
Book X. [The Pope.] As to a court of final appeal, the case has now come before the Pope, Guido having claimed “benefit of clergy.” The Supreme Pontiff has made a prolonged study of the evidence adduced on the trials, and of the whole circumstances surrounding the case; now he has to decide the fate of the Count and his accomplices in the murder. And that he may give judgment without bias, in the sight of God and of the world, he nerves himself for the task by recalling the history of his predecessors in the Chair of Peter who have, from the Apostle up to Alexander, the last Pope, dared and suffered. How judged this one, how decided that? did he well or ill? He remembers that no infallibility attaches to such a decision as he must give in the case in which he is called upon to act: judgment must be given in his own behoof; so worked his predecessors. And now appeal is made from man’s assize to him acting, speaking in the place of God. He must be just, and dare not let the felon go scot free. It is not possible to reprieve both criminal and Pope. Guido was furnished for his life with all the help a Christian civilisation could bestow: he had intellect, wit, a healthy frame, and all the advantages of family and position. He accepted the law that man is not here to please himself, but God; placed himself under obedience to the Church, which is the embodiment of that principle, and then deliberately clothed himself with the protection of the Church that he might violate the law with impunity. Three-parts consecrate, he sought to do his murder in the Church’s pale. Such a man – religious parasite – proves “irreligiousest of all mankind.” His low instincts make him believe only in “the vile of life.” He is clothed in falsehood, scale on scale. The typical actuating principle of his life was plainly exhibited in his marriage. He was prompted to that by no single motive which should have suggested matrimony. In this he had sunk far below the level of the brute, “whose appetite, if brutish, is a truth.” This lust of money led him to lie, rob and murder; to pursue with insatiate malice the parents of his wife by punishing their child, putting day by day and hour by hour,
“The untried torture to the untouched place,”
goading her to death and bringing damnation by rebound to those who loved her. Ruining the three, he enjoyed luck and liberty, person, rights, fame, worth, all intact; while these poor souls must waste away, be blown about as dust. Such cruelty needed only as its complement, as a masterpiece of hell, the craft of this simulated love intrigue, – these false letters, false to body and soul they figure forth – as though the man had cut out some filthy shapes to fasten below the cherubs on a missal-page. But Pompilia’s ermine-like soul takes no pollution from all this craft. It arose that in the providence of God were born new attributes to two souls. Priest and wife – both champions of truth – developed new safeguards of their noble natures. Then does the law step in, secludes the wife and gives the oppressor a new probation. It only induces Guido to furbish up his tools for a fresh assault. He has a son. To other men the gift brings thankfulness; Guido saw in the babe but a money-bag. Even in the deepest degradation of his sinful career he has another grace vouchsafed from God. When he fled from the scene of the murders, he took with him the money which he had agreed to pay his confederates. They came near to his hiding-place, intending to kill him for the gold, but were too late: the agents of the law were too quick for them. He had another chance of repentance. So stands Guido; and this master of wickedness has for pupils his “fox-faced, horrible brother-brute the Abate,” and his younger brother, neither wolf nor fox, but the hybrid Girolamo, and
“The hag that gave these three abortions birth,
Unmotherly mother and unwomanly
Woman,”
and lastly the four companions in the murder, who acceded at once to the crime, as though they were set to dig a vineyard. Then the Pope recalls the only answer of the Governor to whom Pompilia appealed – a threat and a shrug of the shoulder. He has a severe word for the Archbishop, as a hireling who turned and fled when the wolf pressed on the panting lamb within his reach. It comforts him to turn to Pompilia, “perfect in whiteness,” as he pronounces. It makes him proud in the evening of his life as “gardener of the untoward ground,” that he is privileged to gather this “rose for the breast of God.”
“Go past me
And get thy praise, – and be not far to seek
Presently when I follow if I may!”
Nor very much apart from her can be placed Caponsacchi, his “warrior-priest.” He finds much amiss in this freak of his. He disapproves the masquerade, the change of garb; but it was grandly done – that athlete’s leap amongst the uncaged beasts set upon the martyr-maid in the mid-cirque. Impulsively had he cast every rag to the winds; but he championed God at first blush, and answered ringingly, with his glove on ground, the challenge of the false knight. Where, then, were the Church’s men-at-arms, while this man in mask and motley has to do their work? When temptation came he had taken it by the head and hair, had done his battle, and has praise. Yet he must ruminate. “Work, be unhappy, but bear life, my son!” He turns to God, “reaches into the dark,” “feels what he cannot see”; renews his confidence in the Divine order of the universe, but not without a pause, a shudder, a breathing space while he collects his thoughts and reviews his grounds of faith. The mind of man is a convex glass, gathering to itself
“The scattered points
Picked out of the immensity of sky.”
He understands how this earth may have been chosen as the theatre of the plan of redemption; as he in turn represents God here, he can believe that man’s life on earth has been devised that he may wring from all his pain the pleasures of eternity. “This life is training and a passage,” and even Guido, in the world to come, may run the race and win the prize. It does not stagger him, receiving and trusting the plan of God as he does, that he sees other men rejecting and disbelieving it, any more than it surprises him to find fishers who might dive for pearls dredging for whelks and mud-worms. But, alas for the Christians! – how ill they figure in all this! The Archbishop of Arezzo – how he failed when the test came! The friar, who had forsaken the world, how he shrank from doing his duty, for fear of rebuke! Women of the convent to whom Pompilia was consigned, – their kiss turned bite, and they claimed the wealth of which she died possessed because the trial seemed to prove her of dishonest life: so issue writ, and the convent takes possession by the Fisc’s advice. Their fine speeches were all unsaid – their “saint was whore” when money was the prize. All this terrifies the aged Pope – not the wrangling of the Roman soldiers for the garments of the Lord, but the greed in His apostles. But are not mankind real? Is the petty circle in which he moves, after all, the world? The instincts of humanity have helped mankind in every age; they will do so still. If, because Christianity is old, and familiarity with its teachings has bred a confidence which is ill grounded, the Christian heroism of past times can no longer be looked for, yet the heroism of mankind springs up eternally, and will suffice for all its needs. And now he hears the whispers of the times to come. The approaching age (the eighteenth century) will shake this torpor of assurance; discarded doubts will be reintroduced; the earthquakes will try the towers of faith; the old reports will be discredited. Then what multitudes will sink from the plane of Christianity down to the next discoverable base, resting on the lust and pride of life! Some will stand firm. Pompilias will “know the right place by the foot’s feel”; Caponsacchis by their mere impulses will be guided aright; the vast majority will fall. But the Vicar of Christ has a duty to perform, whatever may be in store in the womb of the coming age. With Peter’s key he holds Peter’s sword:
“I smite
With my whole strength once more ere end my part,”
he says. Men pluck his sleeve, urge him to spare this barren tree awhile; others point out the privileges of the clergy, the right of the husband over the wife, the offence to the nobility involved in condemning one of their order, the danger to his own reputation for mercy. He brushes away with a sweep of his hand all these busy oppositions to his sense of duty, and signs the order for the execution of Guido and his companions. On the morrow the men shall die – not in the customary place, where die the common sort; but Guido, as a noble, shall be beheaded where the quality may see, and fear, and learn. He has no hope for Guido —
“Except in such a suddenness of fate.
I stood at Naples once, a night so dark
I could have scarce conjectured there was earth
Anywhere, sky or sea, or world at all:
But the night’s black was burst through by a blaze —
Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore,
Through her whole length of mountain visible:
There lay the city, thick and plain, with spires,
And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.
So may the truth be flashed out by one blow,
And Guido see, one instant, and be saved.
······
“Carry this forthwith to the Governor!”
Notes. – Line 1, Ahasuerus: Esther vi. 1. l. 11, “Peter first to Alexander last”: St. Peter to Pope Alexander VIII., who died 1691. l. 25, Formosus Pope (891-6): he was bishop of Porto, and succeeded Stephen. He had formerly, from fear of Pope John, left his bishopric and fled to France. As he did not return when he was recalled, he was anathematised, and deprived of his preferments. He returned to the world, and put on the secular habit. Pope Martin (882-4) absolved him, and restored him to his former dignity; he then came to the popedom by bribery. (See Platina.) l. 32, Stephen VII. (The Pope, 896-7): “he persecuted the memory of Formosus with so much spite, that he abrogated his decrees and rescinded all he had done; though it was said that it was Formosus that conferred the bishopric of Anagni upon him. Stephen, because Formosus had hindered him before of this desired dignity, exercised his rage even upon his dead body; for Martin the historian says he hated him to that degree that, in a council which he held, he ordered the body of Formosus to be dragged out of the grave, to be stripped of his pontifical habit and put into that of a layman, and then to be buried among secular persons, having first cut off those two fingers of his right hand which are principally used by priests in consecration, and thrown into the Tiber, because, contrary to his oath, as he said, he had returned to Rome and exercised his sacerdotal function, from which Pope John had legally degraded him. This proved a great controversy, and of very ill example; for the succeeding popes made it almost a constant custom either to break or abrogate the acts of their predecessors, which was certainly far different from the practice of any of the good popes whose lives we have written.” (Platina’s Lives of the Popes, Dr. Benham’s edition, vol. i., p. 237.) l. 89, “ΙΧΘΥΣ, which means Fish”: the letters of this word, the Greek for fish, make the initials of the words Jesus, Christ, of God, Son, Saviour. The fish emblem for our Lord is common in the Roman catacombs, and is still used in ecclesiastical art. l. 91, “The Pope is Fisherman”: because he is the successor of St. Peter the fisherman, and Christ said He would make Peter a fisher of men (Mark i. 17). l. 108, Theodore II. (Pope 898) restored the decrees of Formosus, and preferred his friends. l. 122, Luitprand: a chronicler of Papal history. l. 128, Romanus (Pope 897-8): as soon as he received the pontificate he disavowed and rescinded all the acts and decrees of Stephen. Platina calls such men “popelings,” Pontificuli (ed. 1551). l. 132, Ravenna: Pope John IX. removed to Ravenna in consequence of the disturbances in Rome. He called a synod of seventy-four bishops, and condemned all that Stephen had done; he restored the decrees of Formosus, declaring it irregularly done of Stephen to re-ordain those on whom Formosus had conferred holy orders. (See Platina.) l. 138, De Ordinationibus == concerning Ordinations. l. 142, John IX. (Pope 898-900) reasserted the cause of Formosus, in consequence of which great disturbances arose in Rome. Sergius III. (Pope 904-11) “totally abolished all that Formosus had done before; so that priests, who had been by him admitted to holy orders, were forced to take new ordination. Nor was he content with thus dishonouring the dead pope; but he dragged his carcase again out of the grave, beheaded it as if it had been alive, and then threw it into the Tiber, as unworthy the honour of human burial. It is said that some fishermen, finding his body as they were fishing, brought it to St. Peter’s church; and while the funeral rites were performing, the images of the saints which stood in the church bowed in veneration of his body, which gave them occasion to believe that Formosus was not justly persecuted with so great ignominy. But whether the fishermen did thus, or no, is a great question; especially it is not likely to have been done in Sergius’ lifetime, who was a fierce persecutor of the favourers of Formosus, because he had hindered him before of obtaining the pontificate.” (Platina, Lives of the Popes.) l. 293, “The sagacious Swede”: this was Swedenborg, born at Stockholm 1688, died 1772: the mathematical theory of Probability is referred to here. (See Encyc. Brit., vol. xix., p. 768.) l. 297, “dip in Vergil here and there, and prick for such a verse”: just as people open the Bible at random to find a verse to foretell certain events, so scholars used Vergil for this purpose; sortes Vergilianæ: Vergilian lots. l. 466, paravent: Fr. a screen; ombrifuge: a place where one flies for shade. l. 510, soldier-crab: the same as hermit-crab. Named from their combativeness, or from their possessing themselves of the shells of other animals. l. 836, Rota: a tribunal within the Curia, formerly the supreme court of justice and the universal court of appeal. It consists of twelve members called auditors, presided over by a dean. The decisions of the Rota, which form precedents, have been frequently published (Encyc. Dict.). l. 917, she-pard: a female leopard. l. 1097, “The other rose, the gold”: this is “an ornament made of wrought gold and set with gems, which is blessed by the Pope on the fourth Sunday of Lent, and usually afterwards sent as a mark of special favour to some distinguished individual, church, or civil community” (Encyc. Brit., x. 758). l. 1188, “Lead us into no such temptations, Lord”: “It is lawful to pray God that we be not led into temptation, but not lawful to skulk from those that come to us. The noblest passage in one of the noblest books of this century is where the old Pope glories in the trial – nay, in the partial fall and but imperfect triumph – of the younger hero.” (R. L. Stevenson’s Virginibus Puerisque, p. 43.) l. 1596: Missionaries to China have always had great difficulty in expressing the word God with our idea of the Supreme Being in the Chinese language. l. 1619, Rosy cross: Dr. Brewer says this is “not rosa-crux == rose-cross; but ros crux, dew cross. Dew was considered by the ancient chemists as the most powerful solvent of gold; and cross in alchemy is the synonym of light, because any figure of a cross contains the three letters L V X (light). ‘Lux’ is the menstruum of the red dragon (i. e. corporeal light), and this sunlight properly digested produces gold, and dew is the digester. Hence the Rosicrucians are those who use dew for digesting lux or light for the purpose of coming at the philosopher’s stone.” (Brewer’s Dict. of Phrase and Fable, p. 765.) l. 1620, The great work == the magnum opus: “to find the absolute in the infinite, the indefinite, and the finite. Such is the magnum opus of the sages; such is the whole secret of Hermes; such is the stone of the philosophers. It is the great Arcanum.” (Mysteries of Magic, A. E. Waite, p. 196.) This is the “Azoth” of Paracelsus and the sages. Magnetised electricity is the first matter of the magnum opus. l. 1698, “Know-thyself”: e cœlo descendit Γνωθι σεαυτὸν – “Know thyself came down from heaven” (Juvenal, Sat. xi. 24); “Take the golden mean,” “Est modus in rebus”: “There is a mean in all things.” (Horace, Sat. i. 106.) l. 1707, “When the Third Poet’s tread surprised the two”: “the talents of Sophocles were looked upon by Euripides with jealousy, and the great enmity which unhappily prevailed between the two poets gave an opportunity to the comic muse of Aristophanes to ridicule them both on the stage with humour and success” (Lemprière, Eur.). l. 1760, schene or sheen == brightness or glitter. l. 1762, tenebrific: causing or producing darkness. l. 1792, “Paul, – ’tis a legend, – answered Seneca”: Butler, Lives of the Saints, under date June 30th, says: “That Seneca, the philosopher, was converted to the faith and held a correspondence with St. Paul, is a groundless fiction.” l. 1904, antimasque or anti-mask: a ridiculous interlude; kibe: a crack or chap in the flesh occasioned by cold. l. 1942, Loyola: St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Order of the Jesuits. l. 1986-7, “Nemini honorem trado”: Isaiah xlii. 8, xlviii. 11 – “I will not give mine honour to another,” or “my glory” (as A.V.). l. 2004, Farinacci: Farinaccius was procurator-general to Pope Paul V., and his work on torture in evidence, “Praxis et Theorica Criminalis (Frankfort, 1622),” is a standard authority. l. 2060, “the three little taps o’ the silver mallet”: when the Pope dies it is the duty of the camerlingo or chamberlain to give three taps with a silver mallet on the Pope’s forehead while he calls him; it is a similar ceremony to that used at the death of the kings of Spain; where the royal chamberlain calls the dead sovereign three times, “Señor! Señor! Señor!” l. 2088, Priam: the last king of Troy; Hecuba: the wife of Priam, by whom he had nineteen children according to Homer; “Non tali auxilio”: this is from Vergil’s Æneid, ii., 519 – “Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis tempus eget.” “The crisis requires not such aid nor such defenders as thou art.” l. 2111, The People’s Square: Piazza del Popolo, at the north entrance to Rome. It is reached from the Corso.
