The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 21

He begs him to adopt their cause, and let Florence perish in her perfidy.

Here was temptation indeed to Luria: his own victorious troops would not have turned their arms against him, and Pisa would have eagerly accepted him. But Luria dismisses Tiburzio, thanks him, bids him go: he is free,--"join Lucca!" And then, he reflects, he has still time before his sentence comes; he has it in his power to ruin Florence. Would it console him that his Florentines walked with a sadder step? He has one way of escape left him: he has brought poison from his own land for use in an emergency such as this; he drinks,--

"Florence is saved: I drink this, and ere night,--die!"

=Madhouse Cells.= The two poems _Johannes Agricola in Meditation_ and _Porphyria's Lover_ were published in _Dramatic Lyrics, Bells and Pomegranates_, No. III., under the general t.i.tle MADHOUSE CELLS. In the _Poetical Works_ of 1863 the general t.i.tle was given up.

=Magical Nature.= (_Pacchiarotto, with other Poems_: 1876.) The beauty of a flower is at the mercy of the destroying hand of time; the beauty of a jewel is independent of it. The petals drop off one by one, the flower perishes; every facet of the jewel may laugh at time. Mere fleshly graces are those of the flower; the soul's beauty is best symbolised by the gem.

=Malcrais.= (_Two Poets of Croisic._) Paul Desforges Maillard a.s.sumed the name of Malcrais when he sent his poems to the Paris _Mercure_, pretending they were the work of a lady.

="Man I am and man would be, Love."= The fourth lyric in _Ferishtah's Fancies_ begins with this line.

=Marching Along.= (No. I. of _Cavalier Tunes_.) Originally appeared in _Bells and Pomegranates_, 1842.

=Martin Relph.= (_Dramatic Idyls_, First Series: 1879.) This poem deals with a profound psychological problem. How far do we understand the mystery of our own heart? How far can we a.n.a.lyse our own motives? Out of two powerful motives, either of which may equally move us to do or leave undone a certain thing, can we infallibly tell which one has ultimately prompted our action? Are we less an enigma to ourselves than to others?

The Scripture warns us that we may not trust our imaginations, by reason of the deceit which is within our breast. All his life the old man Martin Relph had been trying to solve a mystery of this kind. He wants to know whether he is a murderer or only a coward; and every year, till his beard is as white as snow, has he gone to a hill outside the town where he lived to ask this question, and to protest with all his power of speech--despite the misgiving at his heart--that he was a coward. And this was his story.

When a youth he, with the rest of the villagers, had been crowded up in this spot by the soldiers who held the place, that they might see, for a terrible warning, the execution of a young woman for playing the spy, and so interfering in the King's military concerns. It was in the reign of King George, and there had been a rebellion, and the rebels had learned the strength of the troops sent against them by means of some spy. A letter had been intercepted written by a girl to her lover, and the poor creature had told him such news of the movements of the troops as she thought would interest him, not knowing she was doing any harm. In all this the authorities smelt treason. Her lover was Vincent Parkes, one of the clerks of the King, "a sort of lawyer," and therefore dangerous. To give the girl a chance of clearing herself from suspicion, the commander of the troops sent for this Parkes, who was in a distant part of the country, bidding him come and dispel the cloud hanging over the girl if he could, and giving him a week for the journey. The week is up. Parkes has taken no notice of the letter; and the girl, tried by court-martial, is to be shot that day. And now poor Rosamund Page, with pinioned arms and bandaged face, is left to die. Her faithless lover, who could have saved her, has not appeared, and there is no help for her but in G.o.d. The villagers are a.s.sembled to see the sight; and Martin Relph, who also loved the girl, is there also. The word is given: up go the guns in a line, and the paralysed spectators close their eyes and kneel in prayer,--all except Martin, who stands in the highest part of the hill and sees a man running madly, falling, rising, struggling on, waving something white above his head; and no one in all the crowd sees the messenger but Martin Relph. And he is speechless, makes no sign, for h.e.l.l-fire boils in his brain; and the volley is fired and the woman dead, while stretched on the field, half a mile off, is Vincent Parkes, dead also, with the King's letter in his hand that proclaims his sweetheart's innocence. He had been hampered and hindered at every turn by formalities and frivolous delays on the part of the authorities, and so was too late. Martin Relph, had he called out, could have stayed the execution. Why did he remain silent? The thought had flashed through his mind, as he recognised the position, "She were better dead than his!" and so he had not spoken; but he has told his heart a thousand times that fear kept him silent, and he has pa.s.sed his life in trying to convince himself it was so indeed. But, deceitful as the human heart may be, deep down in its recesses he knew he was a murderer.

=Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli.= (_Jocoseria_, 1883.) Mary Wollstonecraft was the foundress of the Women's Rights movement. She was born in 1759, and early gave evidence of the possession of superior mental powers and of bold ideas of her own. Her first attempt in literature was a pamphlet ent.i.tled _Thoughts on the Education of Daughters_. She was of a very energetic spirit, with considerable confidence in her own powers. "I am going to be the first of a new genus," she wrote to her sister Everina in 1788. "I tremble at the attempt; yet if I fail, I only suffer. Freedom, even uncertain freedom, is dear. This project has long floated in my mind.

You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track; the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on." At this time she had secured employment as literary adviser to Mr. Johnson, the publisher of her pamphlet. At this gentleman's house she met many interesting people; amongst others the author, William G.o.dwin, and the artist, Henry Fuseli. She now began to attack the established order of society in the most violent manner. She heartily sympathised with the French Revolution, and denounced Lords and Commons, the clergy and the game laws, with great violence. She will be best remembered by her book _A Vindication of the Rights of Woman_. Her idea was that the women of her time were fools, and that men kept women in ignorance that they might retain their authority over them. "Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it," she pleads: her idea being that men kept women either as slaves or playthings. She now became greatly interested in Fuseli, who did not in the least reciprocate her affection, but was annoyed by it. He was a married man, and though, no doubt, he could see that at first her love for him was platonic, it was rapidly a.s.suming a more ardent character. She wrote him many letters full of affection, and actually ventured to ask Mrs. Fuseli to accept her as an inmate in her family. Finding that Fuseli remained impervious to her attacks upon his heart, she went to Paris, sending him a letter asking his pardon "for having disturbed the quiet tenor of his life." In Paris she soon consoled herself with a gentleman named Gilbert Imlay, with whom she lived without taking what she termed the "vulgar precaution" of marriage. Shortly after forming this connection Imlay cruelly deserted her. She left Paris, hurried to London, found her worst fears confirmed, and attempted to commit suicide by throwing herself from Putney Bridge. She was picked up, living to regret the "inhumanity" which had rescued her from death. She heard no more of Imlay; but five years after meeting William G.o.dwin for the first time at Mr. Johnson's she met him again by chance at the house of a mutual friend. As Mary's opinion about the "vulgar formality" of marriage remained unchanged, and as G.o.dwin held with her on the subject, the formality was once more dispensed with; but ultimately it was considered advisable so far to conciliate the prejudices of society as to go through the ceremony, which was performed at Old St. Pancras Church, and Mary Wollstonecraft became Mrs. G.o.dwin in due form. In September 1797 her troubled life came to a premature close. She died before completing her thirty-ninth year. Mary left two children; the younger of these, her daughter by G.o.dwin, became the wife of the poet Sh.e.l.ley. The elder, Imlay's daughter, poisoned herself, leaving a slip of paper stating that she had done so "to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate." The auth.o.r.ess of the _Rights of Woman_ had neglected to consider the rights of Mrs. Fuseli and of the fruit of her illicit connection with Imlay when she devoted herself to the emanc.i.p.ation of her s.e.x. In the poem Mary prates vainly of what she would do if only she were loved; and as the Rev. John Sharpe, M.A., says in his paper on _Jocoseria_ with reference to the question, "Wanting is----what?" (a question which seems to preside over all the poems in the volume to which it is a prologue): "Deeds, not words, are wanted. Perfect love awakens love in the indifferent by perfect deeds of loving self-sacrifice."

=Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha.= (_Men and Women_, 1855; _Lyrics_, 1863; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) An organist in a church where they have just concluded the evening service determines to have a colloquy with the old dead composer Master Hugues as to the meaning of the compositions known as fugues for which he was celebrated. They were mountainous in their structure--the ideas were piled one upon another till their meaning was lost in cloudland. So, while the church is emptying and the altar ministrants are putting things to rights, he will look into the matter of the old quaint arithmetical music in fas.h.i.+on before Palestrina brought back music to the service of melody. There is but one inch of candle left in the socket, so the composer must tell him what he has to say quickly.

First he delivers his phrase; he gives but a clause. He a.s.serts nothing, puts forward no proposition; nevertheless there is an answer, though a needless one, and the two start off together. (It will be seen that the poet suggests five impersonations of characters taking part in the discussion or mangle of the composition.) A third interposes, and volunteers his help; a fourth must have his say, and a fifth must needs interfere. So the disputation is like that of a knot of angry politicians, who all want to speak at once, and will scarcely allow each other to utter a complete sentence. This is a perfect description of a fugue, which even to the uninstructed listener is a musical wrangle plainly enough. In the fugue the organist sees a moral of life, with its zigzags, dodges, and ins and outs. Truth and Nature are over our heads. G.o.d's gold here and there s.h.i.+nes out in our soul-manifestations, if we would but let truth and Nature have their way with us, the gold would be all the plainer to see; but with our evasions, our pretences, shams and subterfuges we have all but obliterated it, just as the inventor of the fugue has buried his melody under a mountain of musical tricks and pedantic finger puzzles.

The organist pauses; he will have no more of it as a moral of life. The Jesuit's casuistry, which went to prove that all sorts of evil things might under certain circ.u.mstances and under such and such restrictions become actual virtues, was swept away by Pascal's clear-sighted common sense. So Master Hugues and his fugues shall vanish before the full organ blaring out the _mode Palestrina_--the grave, pure, truthful music of the Church. As Pascal to Escobar, so is Palestrina to Master Hugues; quibbles, shams, fencings with truth, overlay G.o.d's gold with the cobwebs of tradition, and must be brushed away. "Roch.e.l.l has quite correctly perceived that the approximate best symbol of the uncreated heaven is music. In the evolution of harmonies in the upper and lower notes, and their mutual conflict; in the solution of strife and tension into blessed calm; in the trans.m.u.tation of the ever-recurring theme into new phrases; in the constant reappearance of the _motif_, of the question which seeks a reply through every evolution of the notes, and which leads the reply into a new process--in this we see the temporal symbol of the eternal rhythm, the eternal circular movement in G.o.d's heaven, where melodious colours and radiant notes are interwoven with each other; where nothing lies in stagnant repose, but all is in motion; where unity and harmony are eternally effected by means of the contrasted, movements and action."

(Martensen's _Jacob Boehme_, page 167.)

NOTES.--_Hugues_ is a purely imaginary composer. Verse i. "_mountainous fugues_": "A fugue is a short, complete melody, which _flies_ (hence the name) from one part to another, while the original part is continued in counterpoint against it. The beginning of this art-form dates from very primitive times" (Sir G. Macfarren). Probably Bach's fugues are meant in the poem, vi., _Aloys and Jurien and Just_, sacristan's a.s.sistants; "_darn the sacrament lace_": the lace on the altar linen. The actual sacrament linen is washed by the clergy in the Roman Catholic Church. The church plate (_i.e._, chalice, paten, etc.) is cleaned by the clergy also, viii., _claviers_, the keyboard of the organ ix., "_great breves as they wrote them of yore_": a breve is the longest note in music, and was formerly square in shape. In the old Spanish cathedrals I have seen the music-books used in the services of such a size that it required two men to carry them. The notes in such books are very large, xvi., "_O Danaides, O Sieve!_" the Danaides were the daughters of Danaus, who were condemned for their crimes to pour water for ever in the regions below into a vessel with holes in the bottom. xvii., _Escobar_, y Mendoza, was a Spanish casuist, the general tendency of whose writings was to find excuses for human frailties. Pascal severely criticised him in his _Provincial Letters_. His doctrines were disapproved at Rome. Escobar himself was a most excellent man. He died in 1669. xviii., "_Est fuga, volvitur rota_"

== it is a flight, the wheel rolls itself round. xix., _risposting_ == riposting, a term in fencing; in this case equal to making a repartee.

xx., _ticken_ == ticking, a twill fabric very closely woven. xxviii., _mea pna_ == at my risk of punishment; _Gorgon_, a monster with a terrible head, with hair and girdle of snakes; "_mode Palestrina_": Giovanni P. da Palestrina (1524-1594), now universally distinguished as the Prince of Music, emanc.i.p.ated his art from the trammels of pedantry, which, ignoring beauty as the most necessary element of music, was tending to reduce it to mere arithmetical problems.

=May and Death.= (Published first in _The Keepsake_, 1857; in 1864 published in _Dramatis Personae_.) Mrs. Orr, in her _Life and Letters of Robert Browning_, says that the poet wrote this poem in remembrance of one of his boy companions, the eldest of "the three Silverthornes, his neighbours at Camberwell, and cousins on the maternal side." The name of Charles in the poem stands for the old familiar Jim. Mrs. Silverthorne was the aunt who paid for the printing of _Pauline_. The verses express the wish that all the delights of spring had died with his friend; yet he would have spared one plant of the woods in May which has in its leaves a streak of spring's blood. Where'er the leaf grows in a wood they know the red drop comes from the poet's heart. The question has often been asked "What is the plant referred to in the fourth stanza?" The following reply was given in the _Browning Society's Papers_:--"Surely the _Polygonum Persicaria_ or Spotted Persicaria is the plant referred to. It is a common weed, with purple stains upon its rather large leaves; these spots varying in size and vividness of colour according to the nature of the soil where it grows." The Rev. H. Friend, in _Flowers and Flower Lore_ (p. 5), says:--"Respecting the Virgin, I have recently found the country folk in one part of Oxfords.h.i.+re retaining an interesting legend which connects the name of her ladys.h.i.+p with the _Spotted Persicaria_. It will be remembered that, in consequence of the dark spot which marks the centre of every leaf belonging to this plant, popular tradition a.s.serts that it grew beneath the Cross, and received this distinction through the drops of blood which fell from the Saviour's wounds touching its leaves. The _Oxonian_ however, says that the Virgin was wont of old to use its leaves for the manufacture of a valuable ointment, but that on one occasion she sought it in vain. Finding it afterwards, when the need had pa.s.sed away, she condemned it, and gave it the rank of an ordinary weed. This is expressed in the local rhyme:--

'She could not find in time of need, And so she pinched it for a weed.'

The mark on the leaf is the impression of the Virgin's finger, and the persicaria is now the _only_ weed that is not useful for something." Again (p. 191) he says, "We are told that in some parts of England the arum, commonly called lords and ladies, cows and calves, parson in the pulpit, or parson and clerk, is known as Gethsemane, because it is said to have been growing at the foot of the cross, and to have received on its leaves some of the blood:--

'Those deep unwrought marks, The villager will tell you, Are the flower's portion from the atoning blood On Calvary shed. Beneath the Cross it grew.'

The same tradition clings to the purple orchis and the spotted persicaria.

We have already seen how many plants are supposed to have gained their purple hue or ruddy colour from blood of hero, G.o.d, or martyr. A similar legend seems to have been at one time attached to the purple-stained flowers of the wood-sorrel, which is by Italian painters, including Fra Angelico, occasionally placed in the foreground of their pictures representing the Crucifixion. This plant is called Alleluia in Italian, which may have had something to do, however, with its a.s.sociation with the Cross of Christ, 'as if the very flowers round the Cross were giving glory to G.o.d.' The wallflower, that 'scents the dewy air,' is in Palestine called 'the blood-drops of Christ'; and its deep hue has led to its being called by a similar name in the West of England. The rose-coloured lotus, or melilot, was said to have sprung in like manner from the blood of the lion slain by the Emperor Adrian. It is probable that the story was the modification of some earlier myth. Mr. Conway tells us he has somewhere met with a legend telling that the thorn-crown of Christ was made from rose-briar, and that the drops of blood that started under it and fell to the ground blossomed to roses. Mrs. Howe, the American poetess, beautifully alludes to this in the lines--

'Men saw the thorns on Jesus' brow, But angels saw the Roses.'"

=Meeting at Night and Parting at Morning.= (Originally published as NIGHT AND MORNING in _Dramatic Romances and Lyrics_, _Bells and Pomegranates_, VII.: 1845.) The speaker is a man who joyfully seeks his happy seaside home at night, where he rejoins the wife from whom the demands of his daily work have separated him. In the sequel (_Parting at Morning_) the rising sun calls men to work: the man of the poem to work of a lucrative character; and excites in the woman (if we interpret the slightly obscure line correctly) a desire for more society than the seaside home affords.

Commentators on these poems have evidently "jumped the difficulty."

=Melander.= The author whose work "Joco-Seria" suggested the t.i.tle of Mr.

Browning's volume of poems _Jocoseria_ (_q.v._).

=Melon-Seller, The.= (_Ferishtah's Fancies_, II.) The second of the lessons learned by Ferishtah on his way to dervishhood. He sees a well-remembered face in a melon-seller near a bridge. He was once the Shah's Prime Minister: he peculated, and was disgraced. Shocked at the contrast between what the man was and has now become, Ferishtah asks him if he did not curse G.o.d for the twelve years' bliss he enjoyed only to end in misery like that? The beggar contemptuously asked his questioner if he were unwise enough to think him such a fool as to repine at G.o.d's just punishment on sin, and to reproach Him with the happiness he had tasted in the past? Job said: "Shall we receive good at the hand of G.o.d, and evil not receive?" This was just what the melon-seller said. "But great wits jump"; and Ferishtah, having learned the great lesson, went his way to dervishhood. The Lyric asks for a little severity from Love: so much undeserved bliss has been imparted, that a little injustice seems requisite to balance things.

=Memorabilia.= (_Men and Women_, 1855--when the t.i.tle was _Memorabilia (on Seeing Sh.e.l.ley)_; _Lyrics_, 1863; _Dramatic Lyrics_, 1868.) A man with a soul crosses a vast moor, a blankness of miles, but on one hand-breadth spot he spies an eagle's feather, which he cherishes. An eagle's feather meant something to the man with the soul, the miles of blank moor had nothing to say to him; and so once he saw Sh.e.l.ley plain, and even spoke to him. The man had lived long before and had lived long after, but the sight of Sh.e.l.ley and the words he spoke made just that hand-breadth of his life something different from all the colourless remainder. [Some there are who love to say the same of Robert Browning!] Mr. Browning early in his youth (1825) fell under the influence of Sh.e.l.ley. Mr. Sharp, in his _Life of Browning_, says that, as he was one day pa.s.sing a bookstall, "he saw, in a box of second-hand volumes, a little book advertised as 'Mr. Sh.e.l.ley's Atheistical Poem,--very scarce.' He had never heard of Sh.e.l.ley, nor did he learn for a long time that the _Daemon of the World_ and the miscellaneous poems appended thereto const.i.tuted a literary piracy." He discovered that there was such a poet as Sh.e.l.ley; that he had written several volumes, and was dead. He begged his mother to procure him Sh.e.l.ley's works, which she had some difficulty in doing, as several booksellers to whom she applied knew nothing of them. The books were ultimately purchased at Ollier's shop, in Vere Street. Sh.e.l.ley, as Mr. Sharp says, "enthralled" Browning.

His first work, _Pauline_, was written under the dominance of the Sh.e.l.ley pa.s.sion. He refers to Sh.e.l.ley in _Sordello_. _Memorabilia_ was composed in the Roman Campagna in the winter of 1853-54.

=Men and Women.= (Published in 1855, in two vols.; now dispersed in vols.

iii., iv. and v. of _Poetical Works_, 1868.) The poems included under this general t.i.tle were fifty-one in number.

Vol. 1. contained the following:--"Love among the Ruins," "A Lovers'

Quarrel," "Evelyn Hope," "Up at a Villa--Down in the City," "A Woman's Last Word," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "A Toccata of Galuppi's," "By the Fireside," "Any Wife to any Husband," "An Epistle of Kars.h.i.+sh,"

"Mesmerism," "A Serenade at the Villa," "My Star," "Instans Tyrannus," "A Pretty Woman," "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," "Respectability,"

"A Light Woman," "The Statue and the Bust," "Love in a Life," "Life in a Love," "How it Strikes a Contemporary," "The Last Ride Together," "The Patriot," "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," "Bishop Blougram's Apology,"

"Memorabilia."

Vol. II.: "Andrea del Sarto," "Before," "After," "In Three Days," "In a Year," "Old Pictures in Florence," "In a Balcony," "Saul," "De Gustibus----," "Women and Roses," "Protus," "Holy-Cross Day," "The Guardian Angel," "Cleon," "The Twins," "Popularity," "The Heretic's Tragedy," "Two in the Campagna," "A Grammarian's Funeral," "One Way of Love," "Another Way of Love," "Transcendentalism," "Misconceptions," "One Word More."

In the six-volume edition of _Poetical Works_ the poems comprised under the t.i.tle of _Men and Women_ are the following, and it is these which are generally understood now by the _Men and Women_ poems:--"Transcendentalism," "How it Strikes a Contemporary," "Artemis Prologuises," "An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of Kars.h.i.+sh the Arab Physician," "Pictor Ignotus," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto," "The Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's Church," "Bishop Blougram's Apology," "Cleon," "Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli," "One Word More."

Unquestionably in these works we have the very flower of Mr. Browning's genius. There is not one of them which the world will willingly let die.

As Mr. Symons says, their distinguis.h.i.+ng feature is "the monologue brought to perfection. Such monologues as _Andrea del Sarto_, or _The Epistle of Kars.h.i.+sh_, never have been, and probably never will be, surpa.s.sed, on their own ground, after their own order."

=Mesmerism.= (_Dramatic Romances_: 1855.) A description of an influence of one mind upon another, which would in modern medical parlance be termed hypnotism. When an operator has this power, and has frequently exercised it upon his subject, it is undoubtedly true that what is here described in so lifelike a manner may actually take place. The subject may have been led to expect that she would be required to undertake the journey in question, and the mind in that case would contribute to the success of the operation. Hypnosis and somnambulism are not produced by any fluid which escapes from the mesmeriser's body, but by the fact that the subject has been induced to form a fixed idea that he is being hypnotised. Braid a.s.serts that the imagination of the subject is an indispensable element in the success of the experiment; he declares that the most expert hypnotiser will exert himself in vain unless the subject is aware of what is pa.s.sing and surrenders himself body and soul. Binet and Frere, in their valuable work on _Animal Magnetism_, p. 96, say that "a whole series of purely physical agents exist, which prove that sleep can be induced without the aid of the subject's imagination, against his will, and without his knowledge." The incidents of the poem may all be accounted for by the doctrine of expectant attention. The use of hypnotic suggestion for criminal purposes is referred to in stanzas xxvi. and xxvii.--a very real danger from a medico-legal point of view, as some think. At night, when all is quiet but the noises peculiar to the hours of darkness, the mesmeriser of the poem desires that the woman under the influence of his will-power shall forthwith make her way to him through the rain and mud straight to his house. In due time she enters without a word. Recognising the wonderful influence which one mind may exercise upon another, the operator prays that he may never abuse it, and he reflects that one day G.o.d will call him to account for its exercise.

=Mihrab Shah.= (_Ferishtah's Fancies_, 6.) THE MYSTERY OF EVIL AND PAIN.

An inquirer, while culling herbs, has had his thumb nipped by a scorpion.

He wishes to know "Why needs a scorpion be? Why, in fact, needs any evil or pain happen to man if G.o.d be wholly good and omnipotent?" Ferishtah replies that when he awoke in the morning he was thankful that his head did not tumble off his neck. "But," says the inquirer, "heads do not fall unchopped." Says the dervish, "They might do so by natural law; why might not a staff loosed from the hand spring skyward as naturally as it falls to the ground?" What would be the bond 'twixt man and man if pain were abolished? Take away from man thanks to G.o.d and love to man, what is he worth? The lyric explains the compensations of existence. The ardent soul is enshrined in feeble flesh, the sluggish soul in a robust frame. What one person lacks is found in another, and this creates a bond of sympathy between our spirits. No one has everything. What we lack we admire when present in another, and so our own defects are pardoned for what in us is excellent.

=Mildred Tresham.= (_A Blot in the 'Scutcheon._) The lady who is loved by Lord Henry Mertoun, and visited by him in secret at night. She dies when she learns that her brother has killed her lover.

=Misconceptions.= (_Men and Women_, 1855.) A beautiful fancy of a branch on which a bird has rested a moment bursting into bloom for pride and joy that it has been so honoured. The poet treats it as symbolical of a heart which has thrilled for a moment under the smiles of a queen ere she went on to her true-love throne.

=Mr. Sludge, "The Medium."= (_Dramatis Personae_: 1864.) Mr. Sludge is a "medium" who has been detected by his dupe in the act of cheating. He has worked upon his patron's love for his dead mother, has pretended that he has had communications with the spirit world, and has found it a profitable business. However, he is found out, the game is up, he is half throttled by the man whom he has swindled, and is about to be kicked out of his house. He admits the cheating, but tries to make out that it was prompted by a low species of spirit (_elementals_ as they are called). He offers, if liberally paid, to explain how the fraud has been carried out.

He pretends one moment that he is repentant, the next he proposes to increase his guilt by falsely accusing his too confiding benefactor. He is prepared to swear that he picked a quarrel with him to get back the presents he had given. The bargain is made; and the medium, seated again at the "dear old table" which has so often been the partner of his performances, proceeds to explain that it is much more the fault of the public that they are cheated, than that of the artful folk who are always ready to meet demand by supply. In many things, but especially in affairs relating to the unseen world, people are willing to be deceived; and, as Demosthenes said, "Nothing is more easy than to deceive ourselves, as our affections are subtle persuaders."

"It's all your fault, you curious gentlefolk!"

said Sludge. "Everybody is interested in ghosts, and everybody will listen to the ghost-seer. A poor lad, the son of a servant in your house, talks to you about money, and you immediately suspect him of having stolen some; if he talk to you about seeing spirits, you encourage him to tell his story, and you listen with open ears. You make allowances for the unexplained '_phenomena_,' and you are not disconcerted by his blunders.

So the boy is encouraged to try again, to see more, hear more and stranger things. You have patience with the primary manifestations,' always weak at first; you discourage doubts as always fatal to them, and thus educate the boy in his cheating. He is compelled to invent; you prompt him, your readiness to be deceived confirms him in his readiness to deceive. It is not that the boy starts as a liar; he will soon enough develop into that; at first however,

"'It's fancying, fable-making, nonsense-work-- What never meant to be so very bad.'

He brightens up his dull facts till they s.h.i.+ne, and you no longer recognise them as dull, but brilliant. He hears what other mediums have done, he estimates your demands of him; you push him to the brink, he is compelled to dive. Let him confess his deception, and he has to go back to the gutter from which you have taken him. Let him keep on, and he lives in clover. And so he manufactures for you all you demand. He has heard raps and seen a light. 'Shaped somewhat like a star?' you eagerly inquire.

'Well, like some sort of stars, ma'am.' 'So we thought!' you say. 'And any voice?' 'Not yet.' 'Try hard next time!' Next time you have the voice. The medium is launched in the rapids. The falls are hard by: nothing can hinder but he must go over. He becomes the medium which has been required of him. The spirits forthwith speak up and become familiar and confidential. If any complain that the spirits do not fulfil our expectation of what the ghosts of Bacon, Cromwell, or Beethoven should be and do, the answer is ready and a.s.sumes two forms. If Bacon is deficient in spelling, does not know where he was born or in what year he died, this is no argument against spiritualism. The spirits are of all orders; and many, perhaps most, are tricksy, undeveloped, and delight to deceive. Or, again, the explanation is put in this way:--What is a medium? He is the means, and the only means, by which the spirits can hold converse with mortals. They have no organs; they must use ours. The medium holding converse with the spirit of Beethoven, not being much of a musician, is, of course, only able very imperfectly to express the composer's musical soul. He pours in--to Sludge's soul--a sonata. If it comes out the Shakers' Hymn in G, that is the defect of the means or medium by which the master has been driven to express himself." Sludge tells his dupe that it was thus he helped him out of every sc.r.a.pe; and the fools who attended every seance did not criticise. Why should they? They did not criticise his wine or his furniture--why should they criticise his medium? Of course they sometimes doubted. "Ah!" says the host, "it was just this spirit of doubt pervading the circle which confused the medium and accounted for his errors!" Sludge often got out of his difficulties that way. Sometimes, however the awful aspect of truth would present itself so sternly before him as to spoil all the c.o.c.kering and cosseting he received, and he would gnash his teeth at the thought of the ruin of his soul by the humbug forced upon him. The cheating was nursed out of the lying. He would have stopped, but his dupes were for progress; they always demanded fresh and more striking "phenomena"--from talking to writing, from writing to flowers from the spirit world. If he actually were detected in jogging the table, or making squeaks with his toes, he would be accused of joking; if he pretended he was not, then he was at once in the dupe's power. Then the cheating is so easy! A master of an ordinary trade can perform miracles to the untaught. The gla.s.s-blower, pipe maker, even the baker, by long practice, can puzzle the uninitiated; practise table-tilting, joint-cracking, playing tricks in the dark, and the phenomena of the medium's business become easy as an old shoe. But, apart from this actual trickery, can the hardest head detect where the cheating begins, even if he is on his guard? There is a real love of a lie, and liars have no difficulty in attracting those who are only waiting to be deceived, and the most sceptical are just the most likely to be caught. Then the Solomon of saloons, the philosophic diner-out,--these were his patrons. They "wanted a doctrine for a chopping-block." They had to be singular, and hack and hew common sense to show their skill in dialectics. These had Sludge injured. Then he reminds his patrons that the Bible teaches spiritualism. We all start with a stock of it; and stars even, we are taught, are not only worlds and suns, but stand for signs when we should set about our proper business. Sludge declares he has taught himself to live by signs: he is broken to the way of nods and winks. He has not waited for the tingle of the bell, but has obeyed the tap of knuckles on the wall. Suppose he blunders nine times out of ten as to the meaning of the knuckle summons, is he not a gainer if the tenth time he guesses right? Everybody blunders even as he. The thing is to imitate the ant-eater, and keep his tongue out to catch all nature's motes for food.

It is wisdom to respect the infinitely little, for G.o.d comes close behind the animalcule, life simplified to a mere cell. All was not cheating either: he has told his lie and seen truth follow. He knows not why he did what he never tried to do, described what he never saw, spoke more than he ever intended; and though he believes everybody can and does cheat, he is not less sure that every cheat's every inspired lie contains a germ of truth. Pervade this world by an influx from the next, and all the dead, dry, dull facts of existence spring into life and freshness, as at the touch of harlequin's wand; and harlequin's wand is Sludge's lie, for which the inanimate world was waiting. You see the real world through the false, and so you have the golden age all by the help of a little lying. At most, Sludge is only a poet who acts the books which poets write. The more to his honour! But all his specious reasoning fails to rea.s.sure his awakened dupe, who gives him the notes he promised and dismisses him. No sooner is the medium out of the presence of the man whom he has deceived than he pours out a volley of abuse, and wishes he dare burn down the house; he will declare that he throttled his "sainted mother"--the old hag--in such a fit of pa.s.sion as his throat had just felt the effects of; he reproaches himself for not having prophesied he would die within a year; but he consoles himself with counting his money, and reflecting that his awakened dupe is not the only fool in the world. "Sludge" is D. D. Home, the American medium. Mrs. Browning was an ardent spiritualist, and Mr.

Browning, in consequence, had considerable experience of the ways of mediums and the talk and arguments of their followers. Although no medium ever reasoned with such skill and subtlety as Sludge, the main arguments used by this impostor are precisely those put forward by spiritualists.

The mediums are a wretchedly weak, invertebrate order of beings, quite incapable of any such virile processes of thought as those expressed in the poem. There could be no greater mistake than to suppose that Mr.

Browning intended to make any defence for any phase of spiritualism whatever: he has simply gathered into a poem the best which could be put forward for spiritualism, and directed it upon the personality of Sludge.