Edward Berdoe
The Browning Cyclopædia: A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning
“Theory of Will-Power
“Axiom 1. Nothing can resist the will of man when he knows what is true and wills what is good. Axiom 2. To will evil is to will death. A perverse will is the beginning of suicide. Axiom 3. To will what is good with violence is to will evil, for violence produces disorder and disorder produces evil. Axiom 4. We can and should accept evil as the means to good; but we must never practise it, otherwise we should demolish with one hand what we erect with the other. A good intention never justifies bad means; when it submits to them it corrects them, and condemns them while it makes use of them. Axiom 5. To earn the right to possess permanently we must will long and patiently. Axiom 6. To pass one’s life in willing what it is impossible to retain for ever is to abdicate life and accept the eternity of death. Axiom 7. The more numerous the obstacles which are surmounted by the will, the stronger the will becomes. It is for this reason that Christ has exalted poverty and suffering. Axiom 8. When the will is devoted to what is absurd it is reprimanded by eternal reason. Axiom 9. The will of the just man is the will of God Himself, and it is the law of nature. Axiom 10. The understanding perceives through the medium of the will. If the will be healthy, the sight is accurate. God said, ‘Let there be light!’ and the light was. The will says: ‘Let the world be such as I wish to behold it!’ and the intelligence perceives it as the will has determined. This is the meaning of Amen, which confirms the acts of faith. Axiom 11. When we produce phantoms we give birth to vampires, and must nourish these children of nightmare with our own blood and life, with our own intelligence and reason, and still we shall never satiate them. Axiom 12. To affirm and will what ought to be is to create; to affirm and will what should not be is to destroy. Axiom 13. Light is an electric fire, which is placed by man at the disposition of the will; it illuminates those who know how to make use of it, and burns those who abuse it. Axiom 14. The empire of the world is the empire of light. Axiom 15. Great minds with wills badly equilibrated are like comets, which are abortive suns. Axiom 16. To do nothing is as fatal as to commit evil, and it is more cowardly. Sloth is the most unpardonable of the deadly sins. Axiom 17. To suffer is to labour. A great misfortune properly endured is a progress accomplished. Those who suffer much live more truly than those who undergo no trials. Axiom 18. The voluntary death of self-devotion is not a suicide, – it is the apotheosis of free-will. Axiom 19. Fear is only indolence of will; and for this reason public opinion brands the coward. Axiom 20. An iron chain is less difficult to burst than a chain of flowers. Axiom 21. Succeed in not fearing the lion, and the lion will be afraid of you. Say to suffering, ‘I will that thou shalt become a pleasure,’ and it will prove such, and more even than a pleasure, for it will be a blessing. Axiom 22. Before deciding that a man is happy or otherwise seek to ascertain the bent of his will. Tiberius died daily at Caprea, while Jesus proved His immortality, and even His divinity, upon Calvary and the Cross.”
“Wish no word unspoken.” (Ferishtah’s Fancies.) The first words of the lyric to the second poem.
Woman’s Last Word, A. (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) In the presence of perfect love words are often superfluous, wild, and hurtful; words lead to debate, debate to contention, striving, weeping. Even truth becomes falseness; for if the heart is consecrated by a pure affection, love is the only truth; and the chill of logic and the precision of a definition can be no other than harmful; therefore hush the talking, pry not after the apples of the knowledge of good and evil, or Eden will surely be in peril. The only knowledge is the charm of love’s protecting embrace, the only language is the speech of love, the only thought to think the loved one’s thought – the absolute sacrifice of the whole self on the altar of love; but before the altar can be approached sorrow must be buried, a little weeping has to be done; the morrow shall see the offering presented, – “the might of love” will drown alike both hopes and fears.
Women and Roses. (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) The singer dreams of a red rose tree with three roses on its branches; one is a faded rose whose petals are about to fall, – the bees do not notice it as they pass; the second is a rose in its perfection, its cup “ruby-rimmed,” its heart “nectar-brimmed,” – the bee revels in its nectar; the third is a baby rosebud. And in these flowers the poet sees types of the women of the ages, – the past, the present, and the future: the shadows of the noble and beautiful, or wicked women in history and poetry dance round the dead rose; round the perfect rose of the present dance the spirits of the women of to-day; round the bud troop the little feet of maidens yet unborn; and all dance to one cadence round the dreamer’s tree. The dance will go on as before when the dreamer has departed, roses will bloom then for other beholders, and other dreamers will see and remember their loveliness; the creations of the poet even must join the dance. As the love of the past, so the love to come, must link hands and trip to the measure.
Women of Browning. The best are Pompilia, in The Ring and the Book, the lady in the Inn Album, and the heroine in Colombe’s Birthday; the others, good and bad, are the wife in Any Wife to any Husband; James Lee’s Wife, Michal, Pippa, Mildred, Gwendolen, Polixena, Colombe, Anael, Domizia, “The Queen,” Constance; and the heroines of The Laboratory, The Confessional, A Woman’s Last Word, In a Year, A Light Woman, and A Forgiveness.
Works of Robert Browning. The new and uniform edition of the works of Robert Browning is published in sixteen volumes, small crown 8vo. This edition contains three portraits of Mr. Browning, at different periods of life, and a few illustrations. Contents of the volumes: —
Also Mr. Browning’s last volume, Asolando, Fancies and Facts.
Worst of it, The. (Dramatis Personæ, 1864.) A fleck on a swan is beauty spoiled; a speck on a mottled hide is nought. A man had angel fellowship with a young wife who proved false to him; he loves her still, and mourns that she ruined her soul in stooping to save his; he made her sin by fettering with a gold ring a soul which could not blend with his. He sorrows, not for his own loss, but that his swan must take the crow’s rebuff. He desires her good, and hopes she may work out her penance, and reach heaven’s purity at last. He will love on, but if they meet in Paradise, will pass nor turn his face.
Xanthus. (A Death in the Desert.) One of the disciples of St. John in attendance upon the dying apostle in the cave.
“You groped your way across my room.” (Ferishtah’s Fancies.) The first line of the third lyric.
“You’ll love me yet.” (Pippa Passes.) A song.
Youth and Art. (Dramatis Personæ, 1864.) A meditation on what might have been, had two young people who had the chance not missed it and lost it for ever. They lodged in the same street in Rome. The man was a sculptor who had dreams of demolishing Gibson some day, and putting up Smith to reign in his stead; the woman was a singer who hoped to trill bitterness into the cup of Grisi, and make her envious of Kate Brown. The warbler earned in those days as little by her voice as the chiseller by his work. They were poor, lived on a crust apiece, and for fun watched each other from their respective windows. She was evidently dying for an introduction to him; she fidgeted about with the window plants, and did her best to attract his attention in a quiet sort of way; she did not like his models always tripping up his stairs, which she could not ascend, and was glad to have the opportunity of showing off the foreign fellow who came to tune the piano. But life passed, he made no advances, and so in process of time she married a rich old lord, and he is a knight, R.A., and dines with the Prince. With all this show of success neither life is complete, neither soul has achieved the sole good of its earth wanderings. Their lives hang patchy and scrappy; they have not sighed, starved, feasted, despaired, and been happy. There was once the chance of these things; they were missed, and eternity cannot make good the loss. As for life “Love,” as Browning is always telling us, “is the sole good of it.” This poem may be compared with the moral of The Statue and the Bust. In the one case reasons of prudence and the restrictions of religion and society prevented the duke and the lady from following the inclinations of their hearts; in the other case mere worldly motives operated to the same end – the missing of the union of the actors’ souls. In both cases the lives were spoiled. In Youth and Art the woman’s character cuts a very poor figure: love is subordinated to her art, and that to the mere worldly advantage of a rich marriage and the opportunity of becoming “queen at bals-parés.” The man was cold, not because his art made him so, but because of his overwhelming prudence, which we may be sure did not make him a Gibson after all.
Note. – Verse ii., Gibson, John (1790-1866), the sculptor, best known to fame by his “Tinted Venus.” He died at Rome. Verse iii., Grisi, Giulietta (born in Milan, 1812), one of the most distinguished singers of our time She came to London in 1834, and at once took a leading position in the operatic world. Verse xv., bals-parés == dress-balls.
APPENDIX
Epistle Of Karshish. Dr. R. Garnett published the following note on this poem in the Academy of 10th October, 1896: —
“British Museum,“16th Sept., 1896.
“Browning, in his ‘Epistle of Karshish,’ commits an oversight, as it seems to me, in making Lazarus fifty years of age at the eve of the siege of Jerusalem, circa 68 A.D. The miracle of which he was the subject is supposed to have been wrought about 33 A.D. He would consequently have been only about fifteen at the time, which is quite inconsistent with the general tenor of the narrative. According to tradition, Lazarus was thirty at the time, and lived thirty years longer, not surviving, therefore, to the date intimated in Browning’s poem.
‘A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear.’
If I do not mistake, there is no such thing as a black lynx, except as a lusus naturae. It is easy to see how the generally accurate Browning fell into this error. The Syrian lynx, which he is describing, has black tufted ears – the whole outer surface of the ear is black – and the Turkish name by which it is commonly known, cara-cal, means ‘black ear.’ Browning, intent on the creature’s special characteristic, has extended the blackness from the ear to the entire body.”
Pietro of Abano. Verse 10.
“Alphabet on a Man’s Eyes
“In Alonzo Lee, of Atlanta, Galveston, the Americans have found a singular phenomenon, nothing less than the alphabet marked quite plainly on the edge of the iris of each of his eyes similar to the figures on a watch. This wonder is said to have been caused by his mother, who was an illiterate woman, desiring to educate herself. In each eye the entire alphabet is plainly marked in capital letters, not, however, in regular order. The ‘W’ is in the lower part of the iris and ‘X’ at the top. They appear to be made if white fibre wove cord, being connected at the top by another cord seemingly linked to the upper extremity of each letter. The eye itself is blue, with white lines radiating from the centre almost to the letters themselves: these letters do not slope exactly in the direction that the radials extend from the centre. Beginning at the bottom with ‘W’ and following the letters like the hands of a watch they can be more readily distinguished. So too, the irregularity is a striking feature, showing how the mother learned her letters in broken patches, as a child learns when beginning to read. Lee, who has been three times divorced, has a son whose eyes are similar to his father’s.”
Echo, 23rd March, 1896.
The Ring and the Book. Book I., l. 902. “Caritellas,” evidently for “carretellas.” “A kind of drosky with a single pony harnessed to the near side of the pole.” See The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton, vol. ii., p. 538.
Book I. “O Lyric Love,” etc. The following letter was sent to me as likely to be interesting on account of Mr. Browning’s own explanation of his terms Whiteness and Wanness. My correspondent says: “I happen to have an original letter from R. Browning in which he says, ‘The greater and lesser lights indicate the greater and less proximity of the person,’” etc. Wanness should be taken as meaning simply less bright than absolute whiteness, as Keats speaks of “wannish fire,” etc.
Book VIII., l. 329. The torture referred to by De Archangelis as the Vigiliarum, is evidently identical with that called the “Vigilia” and which is described in Hare’s Walks in Rome. “Upon a high joint-stool, the seat about a span large, and, instead of being flat, cut in the form of pointed diamonds, the victim was seated; the legs were fastened together and without support; the hands bound behind the back, and with a running knot attached to a cord descending from the ceiling; the body was loosely attached to the back of the chair, cut also into angular points. A wretch stood near pushing the victim from side to side; and now and then, by pulling the rope from the ceiling, gave the arms most painful jerks. In this horrible position the sufferer remained forty hours, the assistants being changed every fifth hour.
Book IX., l. 1109. “The sole joke of Thucydides.” Mr. F. C. Snow, writing from Oxford to the Daily News, says: “Browning was misled by a scholiast. The ancient critics said, ‘Here the lion laughs,’ with reference to the passage of Thucydides where the story of Cylon is told (l. 126, see also the Scholia). But they did not mean that the passage contained any joke, only that the narrative style was unusually genial. There are other passages of Thucydides where his grim humour comes much nearer to the modern idea of pleasantry.”
“The lion, lo, hath laughed!” in the context, proves the correctness of Mr. Snow’s explanation.
Sordello. Book III., l. 975. In the Athenæum, 12th December, 1896, Mr. Alfred Forman published a letter on this passage which is an important contribution to our commentary on Sordello.
“In a review of Dr. Berdoe’s Browning Cyclopædia, I have seen it asked: ‘In what form did Empedocles put up with Ætna for a stimulant?’ In what form indeed! But I think a more pertinent question would have been: How can either Empedocles or, as is usually alleged, Landor have anything to do with the passage referred to? To me it has always appeared to be Æschylus whom Browning (vol. i, pp. 169-70, of the seventeen-volume edition, 1888-94, Smith, Elder & Co.) addresses as
‘Yours, my patron-friend,
Whose great verse blares unintermittent on
Like your own trumpeter at Marathon, —
You who, Platæa and Salamis being scant,
Put up with Ætna for a stimulant.
I need not recall the legend of the Greek tragedian having fought at Marathon as well as at Salamis and Platæa (the ‘stimulants’ to his ‘Persæ’), but his ancient biographer further says: ‘Having arrived in Sicily, as Hiero was then engaged in founding the city of Ætna, he exhibited his “Women of Ætna” by way of predicting a prosperous life to those who contributed to colonise the city.’ After a perusal of pp. 52-53, we may imagine that Æschylus was one of Browning’s audience (‘few living, many dead’), and not unlikely, as coming from the realm where Browning says he had ‘many lovers’ (p. 53), to be designated a ‘patron-friend,’ while the ‘great verse’ that ‘blares unintermittent on,’ etc., is surely identical (pp. 53-4) with
‘The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown
Up out of memories of Marathon.
“I have not been able to discover any substantiating facts in the life, or passages in the works, of Landor; but possibly some correspondent of yours may be able to lay me under an obligation by pointing such out. A simple statement to the effect that ‘Browning said so’ could not, I think, in such a case as the one in question, be deemed satisfactory. Dr. Garnett writes to me on the matter as follows: —
“‘Could the poet alluded to in Sordello possibly be R. H. Horne? Horne was, I think, an intimate friend of Browning’s; he was more Æschylean than any other contemporary; he had served as soldier and sailor in the Mexican War; and, having given up arms for letters, might be said to have forsaken Marathon and Salamis for Ætna, although the introduction of Ætna would be quite incomprehensible but for the historical fact of Æschylus’s secession thither. I do not feel convinced that the identification of Horne with Browning’s “patron-friend” is the correct interpretation, but it seems to me to deserve attention.’
“While on the subject of Sordello, may I ask how (as I have seen it assumed in ‘Browning’ books) the ‘child barefoot and rosy’ of p. 288 can be Sordello himself? In the first place, are not the words he is singing taken from Sordello’s own ‘Goito lay’ (cf. pp. 97, 249, 289), with which he vanquished Eglamor, long after he had ceased to be, if he ever was, a rosy and barefoot child? And, in the second place, is there any indication in the whole poem that Sordello was ever ‘by sparkling Asolo,’ where the aforesaid child is described as being?
“Alfred Forman.”
Book VI., l. 614: —
“The old fable of the two eagles.” They —
“Went two ways
About the world: where, in the midst, they met,
Though on a shifting waste of sand, men set
Jove’s temple.”
The story is referred to in Pindar’s “Fourth Pythian Ode,” where he speaks of “Jove’s golden eagles.” These were placed near the Delphic tripod, and probably gave rise to the story of the two birds sent by Jupiter, one from the east and the other from the west, and which met at Pytho or Delphi. Mr. Browning seems to be in error here. Delphi was not “on a shifting waste of sand,” but on a mountain; and the temple was not that of Jove, but of Apollo. The poet appears to have sent the eagles to the oasis of Ammon, which was in the middle of a sandy desert and had a most famous oracle of Zeus.
