Edward Berdoe
The Browning Cyclopædia: A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning
“Where the salt marshes stagnate, crystals branch;
Blood dries to crimson; Evil’s beautified
In every shape.”
“The paludiers, and their assistants, called saulniers, inhabit Batz, Pouliguen, Saillié, and other villages, and form a most peculiar class. Their usual dress is an enormous black flapped hat, a long white frock or waistcoat, huge baggy white breeches, white gaiters and white shoes. The men of Batz are a magnificent race of large, stalwart, evident Saxons.” – The opening stanzas of the poem are descriptive of a scene in winter, round a good log-fire of old shipwood. As the flames ascend, they are tinted with various brilliant colours, due to the chemicals with which the old timber is impregnated and the metals which are attached to it. Sodium salts from the sea brine account for the yellow and crimson flames; the greenish flame owes its tint to the copper; the flake brilliance is due to the zinc; and so forth. All this flame splendour suggests the flash of fame – brilliant for a few minutes, and then subsiding into darkness. At the eleventh stanza begins a description of Croisic, Guérande, and Batz, and the salt industry as described above. An island opposite was the Druids’ chosen chief of homes; where their women were employed, building a temple to the sun, destroying it and rebuilding it every May. Even at the present day women steal to the sole menhir standing and the rude stone pillars, with or without still ruder inscriptions, found in many parts of Brittany. But Croisic has had its men of note: two poets must be remembered who lived there. René Gentilhomme, in the year 1610, flamed forth a liquid ruby; he was of noble birth, and page to the Prince of Condé, whom men called “the Duke.” His cousin the King had no heir, so men began to call him “Next King,” and he to expect the dignity. His page René was a poet, and had written many sonnets and madrigals. One day, when he sat a-rhyming, a storm came on; and, struck by lightning, a ducal crown, emblem of the Prince, was dashed to atoms. René ceased his sonnets, and, considering the destruction as an omen of the ruined hopes of the Duke, wrote forty lines, which he gave to the man, who asked how it came his ducal crown was wrecked – “Sir, God’s word to you!” It happened as the poet foresaw: at the year’s end was born the Dauphin, who wrecked the Prince’s hopes. King Louis honoured René with the title “Royal Poet,” inasmuch as he not only poetised, but prophesied. The other famous poet of Croisic, represented by the green flame, was a dapper gentleman, Paul Desforges Maillard, who lived in Voltaire’s time, and did something which made Voltaire ridiculous. He wrote a poem, which he submitted to the Academy, but which the Forty ignominiously rejected. When the poet’s rage subsided, he made bold to offer his work to the Chevalier La Roque, editor of the Paris Mercury, who rejected it with the polite excuse that he could not offend the Forty. Flattered, though enraged at this excuse, the poet abused the editor till he explained that his poetry was execrable, but he had sought to conceal the truth in his rejection. Maillard had a sister, who determined to help him by strategy. Copying out some of her brother’s verses, she sent them as the efforts of a young girl, who threw herself on the great editor’s mercy, and begged his introduction to a literary career under the name of Malcrais. The editor fell into the trap, and published the poems from time to time till she grew famous. He even went so far as to fall in love with the authoress, and to offer her marriage. Voltaire moreover was deceived, and wrote “a stomach-moving tribute” in her honour. Naturally the brother, finding that his poetry had such value, was unwilling that he should be any longer deprived of the glory attaching to it; so he determined to go to Paris and confront the editor who had insulted him with the proofs of his incapability, by explaining who the real Malcrais was. This step was his ruin: the world does not like to be convicted of its foolishness. Voltaire was not the man to enjoy a jibe at his own expense. Maillard’s literary career was over. Piron wrote a famous play on this subject, entitled Métromanie.
Up at a Villa – Down in the City. As distinguished by an Italian person of quality. (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) The speaker likes city life: it is expensive, he admits, but one has something for one’s money there. The whole day long life is a perfect feast; but up in the villa on the mountain side the life is no better than a beast’s. In the city you can watch the gossips and the passers-by; whereas up in the villa there is nothing to see but the oxen dragging the plough. Even in summer it is no better, and it is actually cooler in the city square with the fountain playing. He hates fireflies, bees, and cicalas, about which folks talk so much poetry: what he prefers is the blessed church-bells, the rattle of the diligence, the ever succeeding news, the quack doctor, the fun at the post office, the execution of “liberals,” and the gay church procession in the streets on festivals, the drum, the fife, the noise and bustle. Of course it is dear; you cannot have all these luxuries without paying for them, and that is why he is compelled to live a country life; but oh, the pity of it, – the processions, the candles, the flags, the Duke’s guard, the drum, the fife! —
“Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!”
Notes. – Stanza ii., “By Bacchus”: Per Bacco – Italians still swear by the wine-god. Stanza ix., “with a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!” The “seven sorrows of Our Lady” are referred to here. They are (1) Her grief at the prophecy of Simeon; (2) Her affliction during the flight into Egypt; (3) Her distress at the loss of her Son before finding Him in the Temple; (4) Her sorrow when she met her Son bearing His cross; (5) Her martyrdom at the sight of His agony; (6) The wound to her heart when His was pierced; and (7) Her agony at His burial. The contrast of these sorrows with the pink gown, the spangles, and the smiles, is an exquisite satire on some peculiarities in Continental devotions, very distasteful to English people. Stanza x., “Tax on salt”: salt is taxed in Italy; the salt monopoly, the lottery, the grist tax and an octroi are the more important items of Italy’s immoral system of taxation. “what oil pays passing the gate”: the octroi or town-dues have to be paid on all provisions entering the cities of Italy. yellow candles: these are used at funerals, and in penitential processions in the Roman Church.
Valence. (Colombe’s Birthday.) The advocate of Cleves who marries Colombe.
“Verse-making was the least of my Virtues.” (Ferishtah’s Fancies.) The first line of the ninth lyric.
Villains. Browning’s principal villains are the following: – Halbert and Hob; Ned Bratts; Count Guido Franceschini; the devil-like elder man of the Inn Album; Paolo and Girolamo in The Ring and the Book; Ottima and the Intendant of the Bishop, Uguccio, Stefano and Sebald, in Pippa Passes (Bluphocks, in the same poem, is rather a tool of others than a great villain on his own account); Louscha, the mother, in Ivan Ivanovitch; Chiappino in A Soul’s Tragedy.
Vincent Parkes. (Martin Relph.) He was Rosamund Page’s lover. The girl is accused of being a spy, and unless she can clear herself within a given time is to be shot. Parkes arrives at the place of execution with the proofs of the girl’s innocence just as the fatal volley is fired.
Violante Comparini. (The Ring and the Book.) The supposed mother of Pompilia. She was the wife of Pietro, and by him had no children; she bought Pompilia of a courtesan, and brought the child up as her own, and was murdered, with her husband and Pompilia, by Count Guido.
Vivisection, or the cutting into living animals for scientific purposes. Mr. Browning was to the last a Vice-President of the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals, and he always expressed the utmost abhorrence of the practices which it opposes. The following letter was written by Mr. Browning on the occasion of the presentation of the memorial to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1875: – “19, Warwick Crescent, W., December 28th, 1874. – Dear Miss Cobbe, – I return the petition unsigned, for the one good reason – that I have just signed its fellow forwarded to me by Mrs. Leslie Stephen. You have heard, ‘I take an equal interest with yourself in the effort to supress vivisection.’ I dare not so honour my mere wishes and prayers as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts; but this I know: I would rather submit to the worst of the deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two. I return the paper, because I shall be probably shut up here for the next week or more, and prevented from seeing my friends. Whoever would refuse to sign would certainly not be of the number. – Ever truly and gratefully yours, Robert Browning.” – In two of his poems the poet has expressed his emphatic opinion upon Vivisection: in Tray, and in Arcades Ambo. See my chapter “Browning and Vivisection” in Browning’s Message to his Time. In the recently published Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, there are many interesting incidents connected with the great poet’s love for animals, which characterised him from infancy till death. Mrs. Orr says (p. 27) this fondness for animals was conspicuous in his earliest days. “His urgent demand for ‘something to do’ would constantly include ‘something to be caught’ for him: ‘they were to catch him an eft’; ‘they were to catch him a frog.’” He would refuse to take his medicine unless bribed by the gift of a speckled frog from among the strawberries: and the maternal parasol, hovering above the strawberry bed during the search for this object of his desires, remained a standing picture in his remembrance. But the love of the uncommon was already asserting itself; and one of his very juvenile projects was a collection of rare creatures, the first contribution to which was a couple of lady-birds, picked up one winter’s day on a wall and immediately consigned to a box lined with cotton-wool, and labelled ‘Animals found Surviving in the Depths of a Severe Winter.’ Nor did curiosity in this case weaken the power of sympathy. His passion for beasts and birds was the counterpart of his father’s love of children, only displaying itself before the age at which child-love naturally appears. His mother used to read Croxall’s Fables to his little sister and him. The story contained in them of a lion who was kicked to death by an ass affected him so painfully that he could no longer endure the sight of the book; and as he dare not destroy it, he buried it between the stuffing and the woodwork of an old dining-room chair, where it stood for lost, at all events for the time being. When first he heard of the adventures of the parrot who insisted on leaving his cage, and who enjoyed himself for a little while and then died of hunger and cold, he – and his sister with him – cried so bitterly that it was found necessary to invent a different ending, according to which the parrot was rescued just in time and brought back to his cage to live peacefully in it ever after. As a boy he kept owls and monkeys, magpies and hedgehogs, an eagle, and even a couple of large snakes; constantly bringing home the more portable creatures in his pockets, and transferring them to his mother for immediate care. I have heard him speak admiringly of the skilful tenderness with which she took into her lap a lacerated cat, washed and sewed up its ghastly wound, and nursed it back to health. The great intimacy with the life and habits of animals which reveals itself in his works is readily explained by these facts.”
Wall, A. The prologue to Pacchiarotto (q. v.) bears this title in the Selections, Series the Second (published in 1880).
Wanting is – what? (Prologue to Jocoseria, 1883.) In every phase of human life, and in every human action, there is imperfection – always something still to come. In the characters depicted and the incidents narrated in the volume called Jocoseria the poet asks us to say what is wanting to perfect them. His question “Wanting is – what?” governs the whole volume. In Solomon and Balkis what was wanting was not mere wisdom, but a sanctified nature. In Christina and Monaldeschi the woman was wanting in forgiveness. Here the love was not perfect. In Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli what was wanting was self-sacrifice. Had Mary really loved Fuseli, she would not have attempted to ruin his life by endeavouring to win him from his wife. In Adam, Lilith, and Eve, there was wanting, says Mr. Sharpe, “the union of perfect love with perfect holiness.” In Ixion was wanting a just conception of the Fatherhood of God. God is not the tyrannical Master of the world, but the Loving All-Father. In Jochanan Hakkadosh, Mr. Sharpe says, in answer to the question, “Wanting is – what?” “One who shall combine perfect wisdom with the full experience of life, and the completeness of these intuitions of the Spirit.” “Is not this the Christ?” In Never the Time and the Place, to completely develop our souls we need perfect conditions of existence. We shall not find them till we reach heaven. In Pambo the saint recognised that he could not perfectly fulfil the smallest of God’s commandments, nor can we perfectly keep God’s law. Wanting is the Atonement.
Note. – “Come, then, complete incompletion, O Comer, Pant through the blueness,” —i. e. descend from heaven. The Rev. J. Sharpe, M.A., thus explains the title “O Comer”: “ὁ ἐρχόμενος, in the New Testament, is one of the titles of the Messiah – the Future One, He who shall come (Matt. xi. 3, xxi. 9; Luke vii. 19, 20; John xii. 13; also John vi. 14, xi. 27). So in the periphrase of the name Jehovah, ὁ ων καὶ ὀ ὴν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος (Rev. i. 4, 8; iv. 8). – Robinson’s Greek Lexicon of the New Testament. The title hints at the connection between this preface and the stories from the Talmud which follow. The Incarnation, the union of God and man, of Creator and creation, supplies the solution of the problem raised by the incompleteness and death all around us. The beauty is no longer without meaning, for it is a revelation of God; the huge mass of death is no longer revolting, for ‘all things were created by Him, and for Him … and by Him all things consist,’ and He will ‘reunite all things … whether they be things on earth or things in heaven.’” In the character of Donald, what was wanting was the development of “the latent moral faculty.” He did not recognise the rights of the stag, which the commonest principles of justice, to say nothing of gratitude, should have made obvious to the sportsman.
Waring. Waring was the name given by the poet to his friend Mr. Alfred Domett, C.M.G., son of Mr. Nathaniel Domett, born at Camberwell, May 20th, 1811. He matriculated at Cambridge in 1829, as a member of St. John’s College. In 1832 he published a volume of poems. He then travelled in America for two years, and after his return to London, about 1836-7, he contributed some verses to Blackwood’s Magazine. Mr. Domett afterwards spent two years in Italy, Switzerland, and other continental countries. He was called to the bar in 1841. Having purchased some land of the New Zealand Company, he went as a settler to New Zealand in 1842. In 1851 he became Secretary for the whole of that country. He accepted posts as Commissioner of Crown Lands and Resident Magistrate at Hawke’s Bay. Subsequently he was elected to represent the town of Nelson in the House of Representatives. In 1862 Mr. Domett was called upon to form a Government, which he did. Having held various important offices in the Legislature, and rendered great services to the country, he was created a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (1880). He returned to England and published several volumes of poems. His chief work is Ranolf and Amohia, full of descriptions of New Zealand scenery, and paying a warm tribute to Mr. Browning, whom he calls
“Subtlest assertor of the soul in song.”
Mr. Domett suddenly disappeared from London life in the manner described in the poem. He shook off, by an overpowering impulse, the restraints of conventional life, and without a word to his dearest friends, vanished into the unknown. As the story is told in the poem, we see a man with large ideas, ambitious, full of great thoughts, inspired by a passion for great things, a man born to rule, and fretting against the restraints of the petty conventionalities of civilised life. Those about him cannot understand, and if they did could in no wise help him; he chafes and longs to break his bonds and live the freer life in which his energies can expand. The poem tells of the cold and unsympathetic criticism he received amongst his friends; and now that he has disappeared, the poet’s spirit yearns for his society once more. He wonders where he has pitched his tent, and in fancy runs through the world to seek him. He has been heard of in a ghostly sort of way. A vision of him has been narrated by one who for a few moments caught sight of him and lost him again in the setting sun. The poet reflects that the stars which set here, rise in some distant heaven. The following obituary notice of Alfred Domett, by Dr. Furnivall, appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette of November 9th, 1887. It has had the advantage of being revised and corrected in a few small details by Mr. F. Young, “Waring’s” cousin. See also an article in Temple Bar, Feb., 1896, p. 253, entitled “A Queen’s Messenger.”
“What’s Become of Waring?”– In Memoriam. (By a Member of the Browning Society.) “What’s become of Waring?” is the first line of one of Mr. Browning’s poems of 1842 (Bells and Pomegranates, Part II.), which, from its dealing with his life in London in early manhood, is a great favourite with his readers. Alas! the handsome and brilliant hero of the Browning set in the thirties died last Wednesday, at the house in St. Charles’s Square, North Kensington, where he had for many years lived near his artist son. Alfred Domett was the son of one of Nelson’s middies, a gallant seaman. He was called to the bar, and lived in the Temple with his friend ‘Joe Arnold,’ a man of great ability, afterwards Sir Joseph, Chief Justice of Bombay, who ultimately settled at Naples, where he died. Having an independency, Alfred Domett lingered in London society for a time, – one of the handsomest and most attractive men there, – till he was induced to emigrate to New Zealand, to join his cousin, William Young, the son of the London shipowner, George Frederick Young, who had bought a large tract of land in the islands. Alfred Domett landed to find his cousin drowned. He was himself soon after appointed to a magistracy with £700 a year. He had a successful career in New Zealand, – where Mr. Browning alludes to him in The Guardian Angel– became Premier, married a handsome English lady, and then returned to England. He first lived at Phillimore Place or Terrace, Kensington, and while there saw a good deal of his old friend Mr. Browning; but after he moved to St. Charles’s Square, the former companions seldom met. On the foundation of the Browning Society, Alfred Domett declined any post of honour, but became an interested member of the body. His grand white head was to be seen at all the Society’s performances and at several of its meetings. He naturally preferred Mr. Browning’s early works to the later ones. He could not be persuaded to write any account of his early London days, but said he would try to find the letters in which his friend ‘Joe Arnold’ reported to him in New Zealand the doings of their London set. Mr. Domett produced with pride his sea-stained copy of Browning’s Bells and Pomegranates, now worth twenty or thirty times its original price. Before he left England, his poem on Venice was printed in Blackwood, and very highly praised by Christopher North. (The reprint is in the British Museum.) His longer and chief poem, Ranolf and Amohia (1872), full of New Zealand scenery, and paying a warm tribute to Mr. Browning, was reprinted by him in two volumes, revised and enlarged, some four or five years ago. A lucky accident to a leg, which permanently lamed him, soon after his arrival in New Zealand, saved his life; for it prevented his accepting the invitation of some treacherous native chiefs to a banquet at which all the English guests were killed. A sterling, manly, independent nature was Alfred Domett’s. He impressed every one with whom he came in contact, and is deeply regretted by his remaining friends. We hope that Mr. Browning will in his next volume give a few lines to the memory of his early friend. Not many of the old set remain, possibly not one save the poet himself; and all his readers will rejoice to hear again of Waring, “Alfred, dear friend.” The Guardian Angel question —
“Where are you, dear old friend?”
needs other answer now than that of 1855 —
“How rolls the Wairoa at your world’s far end?
This is Ancona, yonder is the sea.”
Notes. – Canto iv., “Monstr’ – inform’ – ingens – horren-dous”: from Vergil’s Æn. iii. 657 – “Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademtum”: a horrid monster, misshapen, huge, from whom sight had been taken away. vi., Vishnu-land: India, where Vishnu is worshipped; the second person of the modern Hindu Trinity. He is regarded as a member of the Triad whose special function is to preserve. To do this he has nine times in succession become incarnate, and will do so once more. Avatar: the incarnation of a deity. The ten incarnations of Vishnu are – 1. Matsya-Avatar, as a fish; 2. Kurm-Avatar, as a tortoise; 3. Varaha, as a boar; 4. Nara-Sing, as a man-lion, last animal stage; 5. Vamuna, as a dwarf, first step toward the human form; 6. Parasu-Rama, as a hero, but yet an imperfect man; 7. Rama-Chandra, as the hero of Ramayána, physically a perfect man, his next of kin, friend and ally Hamouma, the monkey-god, the monkey endowed with speech; 8. Christna-Avatar, the son of the virgin Devanaguy, one formed by God; 9. Gautama-Buddha, Siddhârtha, or Sakya-muni; 10. This avatar has not yet occurred. It is expected in the future; when Vishnu appears for the last time he will come as a “saviour.” (Blavatzky, Isis Unveiled, vol. ii., p. 274.) Kremlin, the citadel of Moscow, Russia. serpentine: a rock, often of a dull green colour, mantled and mottled with red and purple. syenite: a stone named from Syene, in Egypt, where it was first found. “Dian’s fame”: Diana was worshipped by the inhabitants of Taurica Chersonesus. Taurica Chersonesus is now the country called the Crimea. Hellenic speech == Greek. Scythian strands: Taurica is joined by an isthmus to Scythia, and is bounded by the Bosphorus, the Euxine Sea, and the Palus Mæotis. Caldara Polidore da Caravaggio (1495-1543): he was a celebrated painter of frieze, etc., at the Vatican. Raphael discovered his talents when he was a mere mortar carrier to the other artists. The “Andromeda” picture, of which Browning speaks in Pauline, was an engraving from a work of this artist. “The heart of Hamlet’s Mystery”: few characters in literature have been more discussed than that of Hamlet. Schlegel thought he exhausted the power of action by calculating consideration. Goethe thought he possessed a noble nature without the strength of nerve which forms a hero. Many say he was mad, others that he was the founder of the pessimistic school. Junius: the mystery of the authorship of the famous letters of Junius is referred to. Chatterton, Thomas (1752-70): the boy poet who deceived the credulous scholars of his day by pretending that he had discovered some ancient poems in the parish chest of Redcliffe Church, Bristol. Rowley, Thomas: the hypothetical priest of Bristol, said by Chatterton to have lived in the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV., and to have written the poems of which Chatterton himself was the author. ii. 2, Triest: the principal seaport of the Austro-Hungarian empire, situated very picturesquely at the north-east angle of the Adriatic Sea, in the Gulf of Trieste. lateen sail: a triangular sail commonly used in the Mediterranean. “’long-shore thieves”: “along-shore men” are the low fellows who hang about quays and docks, generally of bad character.
“When I vexed you and you chid me.” (Ferishtah’s Fancies.) The first line of the seventh lyric.
Which? (Asolando, 1889.) Three court ladies make
“Trial of all who judged best
In esteeming the love of a man.”
An abbé sits to decide the wager and say who was to be considered the best Cupid catcher. First, the Duchesse maintains that it is the man who holds none above his lady-love save his God and his king. The Marquise does not care for saint and loyalist, so much as a man of pure thoughts and fine deeds who can play the paladin. The Comtesse chooses any wretch, any poor outcast, who would look to her as his sole saviour, and stretch his arms to her as love’s ultimate goal. The abbé had to reflect awhile. He took a pinch of snuff to clear his brain, and then, after deliberation, said —
“The love which to one, and one only, has reference,
Seems terribly like what perhaps gains God’s preference.”
White Witchcraft. (Asolando, 1889.) Magic is defined to be of two kinds – Divine and evil. Divine is white magic; black magic is of the devil. Amongst the ancients magic was considered a Divine science, which led to a participation in the attributes of Divinity itself. Philo-Judæus, De Specialibus Legibus, says: “It unveils the operations of Nature, and leads to the contemplation of celestial powers.” When magic became degraded into sorcery it was naturally abhorred by all the world, and the evil reputation attaching to the word, even at the present day, must be attributed to the fact that white witchcraft had a singular affinity for the black arts. Perhaps what is now termed “science” expresses all that was originally intended by the term white magic. The men of science of the past were not unacquainted with black arts, according to their enemies. Hence Pietro d’Abano, John of Halberstadt, Cornelius Agrippa, and other learned men of the middle ages, incurred the hatred of the clergy. Paracelsus is made expressly by Browning to abjure “black arts” in his struggles for knowledge. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, speaks of white witches. He says (Part II., sec. i.): “Sorcerers are too common: cunning men, wizards, and white-witches, as they call them, in every village, which, if they be sought to, will help almost all infirmities of body and mind —servatores, in Latin; and they have commonly St. Catherine’s wheel printed in the roof of their mouth, or in some part about them.”
[The Poem.] One says if he could play Jupiter for once, and had the power to turn his friend into an animal, he would decree that she should become a fox. The lady, if invested with the same power, would turn him into a toad. He bids Canidia say her worst about him when reduced to this condition. The Canidia referred to is the sorceress of Naples in Horace, who could bring the moon from heaven. The witch boasts of her power in this respect: —
“Meæque terra cedit insolentiæ.
(Ut ipse nosti curiosus) et Polo
An quæ movere cereas imagines,
Diripere Lunam.”
(Horat., Canid. Epod., xvii. 75, etc.)
Hudibras mentions this (Part II., 3); —
“Your ancient conjurors were wont
To make her (the moon) from her sphere dismount,
And to their incantations stoop.”
The Zoophilist for July 1891 gives the following, from Mrs. Orr’s Life of Browning, as the origin of the reference to the toad in the poem: “About the year 1835, when Mr. Browning’s parents removed to Hatcham, the young poet found a humble friend “in the form of a toad, which became so much attached to him that it would follow him as he walked. He visited it daily, where it burrowed under a white rose tree, announcing himself by a pinch of gravel dropped into its hole; and the creature would crawl forth, allow its head to be gently tickled, and reward the act with that loving glance of the soft, full eyes which Mr. Browning has recalled in one of the poems of Asolando.” The lines are: —
“He’s loathsome, I allow;
There may or may not lurk a pearl beneath his puckered brow;
But see his eyes that follow mine – love lasts there, anyhow.”
“Why from the World.” The first words of the twelfth lyric in Ferishtah’s Fancies.
Why I am a Liberal was a poem written for Cassell & Co. in 1885, who published a volume of replies by English men of letters, etc., to the question, “Why I am a Liberal?”
“Why I am a Liberal
“‘Why?’ Because all I haply can and do,
All that I am now, all I hope to be, —
Whence comes it save from future setting free
Body and soul the purpose to pursue
God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
These shall I bid men – each in his degree,
Also God-guided – bear, and gayly, too?
But little do or can, the best of us:
That little is achieved through Liberty.
Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus,
His fellow shall continue bound? Not I,
Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss
A brother’s right to freedom. That is ‘Why.’”
Will, The. (Sordello.) Mr. Browning uses the term “will” to express Sordello’s effort to “realise all his aspirations in his inner consciousness, in his imagination, in his feeling that he is potentially all these things.” See Professor Alexander’s Analysis of “Sordello,” lvii., p. 406 (Browning Society’s Papers); “The Body, the machine for acting Will” (Sordello, Book II., line 1014, and p. 477 of this work). Mr. Browning’s early opinions were so largely formed by his occult and theosophical studies that it is necessary for the full understanding of his theory of the will and its power, to study the following axioms from the work of an occult writer, Eliphas Levi, as a good summary of the teaching so largely imbibed by the poet.
