A Handbook to the Works of Browning Part 30

"CAVALIER TUNES" consists of three songs, with chorus, full of rousing enthusiasm for the cause of King Charles, and of contemptuous defiance for the Roundheads who are opposing him: I. "Marching Along." II. "Give a Rouse." III. "Boot and Saddle."

"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX" is an imaginary picture, which would gain nothing in force by being true. It is that of three hors.e.m.e.n galloping to save the life of their town; galloping without rest, from moonset to sunrise, from sunrise into the blaze of noon; one horse dropping dead on the way, the second, within sight of the goal; and the third, Roland, urged on by frantic exertions on his rider's part--the blood filling his nostrils, and starting in red circles round his eyes--galloping into the market-place of Aix; to rest there with his head between his master's knees: while the last measure of wine which the city contains is being poured down his throat.

"SONG" is a lover's a.s.sertion of his lady's transcendent charms, which he challenges those even to deny who do not love her.

"INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP." A boy soldier of the army of Napoleon has received his death wound in planting the Imperial flag within the walls of Ratisbon. He contrives by a supreme effort to gallop out to the Emperor--who has watched the storming of the city from a mound a mile or two away--fling himself from the horse, and, holding himself erect by its mane, announce the victory. No sign of pain escapes him. But when Napoleon suddenly exclaims: "You are wounded," the soldier's pride in him is touched. "I am killed, Sire," he replies; and, smiling, falls dead at the Emperor's feet. The story is true; but its actual hero was a man.

"COUNT GISMOND" is an imaginary episode of the days of chivalry. It relates how a young girl had been chosen queen of a tournament; and how a false knight, instigated by two cousins who were jealous of her beauty, accused her, in the open field, of being unfit to bestow a crown; how a true knight who loved her, killed the lie by a blow struck at the liar's mouth; and then, mortally wounding him in single combat, dragged him to retract it at the lady's feet; how he laid his protecting arm around her, and led her away to the southern home where she is now his proud and happy wife, with sons growing up to resemble him.

The fearless confidence with which she has awaited the result of the duel, as bearing G.o.d's testimony to the truth, is very characteristic of the time.

"THE BOY AND THE ANGEL" is an imaginary legend which presents one of Mr.

Browning's deepest convictions in a popular form. Theocrite was a poor boy, who worked diligently at his craft, and praised G.o.d as he did so.

He dearly wished to become Pope, that he might praise Him better, and G.o.d granted the wish. Theocrite sickened and seemed to die. And he awoke to find himself a priest, and also, in due time, Pope. But G.o.d missed the praise, which had gone up to Him from the boy craftsman's cell; and the angel Gabriel came down to earth, and took Theocrite's former place.

And G.o.d was again not satisfied; for the angelic praise could not replace for Him the human. "The silencing of that one weak voice had stopped the chorus of creation." So Theocrite returned to his old self; and the angel Gabriel became Pope instead of him.

"THE GLOVE" is the well-known story[98] of a lady of the Court of Francis I., who, in order to test the courage of her suitor, threw her glove into the enclosure in which a captive lion stood; and describes the suitor--one De Lorge--as calmly rescuing the glove, but only to fling it in the lady's face; this protest against her heartlessness and vanity being endorsed by both the King and Court. But at this point Mr.

Browning departs from the usual version: for he takes the woman's part.

The supposed witness and narrator of the incident, the poet Ronsard, sees a look in her face which seems to say that the experiment, if painful, has been worth making; and he gives her the opportunity of declaring so. She had too long, she explains, been expected to take words for deeds, and to believe on his mere a.s.sertion, that her admirer was prepared to die for her; and when the sight of this lion brought before her the men who had risked their lives in capturing it, without royal applause to sustain them, the moment seemed opportune for discovering what this one's courage was worth. She marries a youth, so the poet continues, whose love reveals itself at this moment of her disgrace; and (he is disposed to believe) will live happily, though away from the Court. De Lorge, rendered famous by the incident, woos and wins a beauty who is admired by the King, and acquires practice in seeking her gloves--where he is not meant to find them--at the moments in which his presence is superfluous.

"THE TWINS" is a parable told by Luther in his "Table Talk," to show that charity and prosperity go hand in hand: and that to those who cease to give it will no longer be given. "Dabitur" only flourishes where "Date" is well-fed.

"THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN" (Hameln)[99] is the story of a mysterious piper who is said to have appeared at Hameln in the fourteenth century, at a moment when the city was infested by rats. According to the legend, he freed it from this nuisance, by shrill notes of his pipe which lured the rats after him to the edge of the river Weser, where they plunged in and were drowned; and then, to punish the corporation, which had refused him the promised pay, enticed away all its children, by sweet notes from his pipe; and disappeared with them into the Koppelberg, a neighbouring mountain, which opened and then closed on them for ever.

The legend also a.s.serts that these facts (to which Mr. Browning has made some imaginative additions), were recorded on a church window, and in the name of a street. But the a.s.sertion no longer finds belief.

"GOLD HAIR" is a true "Story of p.o.r.nic," which may be read in guide-books to the place. A young girl of good family died there in odour of sanct.i.ty; she seemed too pure and fragile for earth. But she had one earthly charm, that of glorious golden hair; and one earthly feeling, which was her apparent pride in it. As she lay on her deathbed, she entreated that it might not be disturbed; and she was buried near the high altar of the church of St. Gilles[100] with the golden tresses closely swathed about her. Years afterwards, the church needed repair.

Part of the pavement was taken up. A loose coin drew attention to the spot in which the coffin lay. Its boards had burst, and scattered about, lay thirty double louis, which had been hidden in the golden hair. So the saint-like maiden was a miser.

"HERVe RIEL" commemorates the skill, courage, and singleness of heart of a Breton sailor, who saved the French squadron when beaten at Cape la Hogue and flying before the English to St. Malo, by guiding it through the shallows of the river Rance, in a manner declared impracticable by the Maloese themselves; being all the while so unconscious of the service he was rendering, that, when desired to name his reward, he begged for a _whole day's holiday_, to run home and see his wife. His home was Le Croisic.

_Third Group._

"THROUGH THE METIDJA TO ABD-EL-KADR" represents a follower of Abd-el-Kadr hastening through the desert to join his chief. Mystic fancies crowd upon him as he "rides" and "rides": his pulses quickened by the end in view, and by the swift unresting motion of a horse which never needs the spur; and as he describes his experience in his own excited words, we receive not only the mental picture, but the physical impression of it. This poem is a strong instance of Mr. Browning's power of conveying sense by sound, when he sees occasion for doing so.

"MEETING AT NIGHT" is a glimpse of moonlight and repose; and of the appropriate seclusion in the company of the one woman loved.

"PARTING AT MORNING" a.s.serts the need of "men" and their "world," which is born again with the suns.h.i.+ne.

"THE PATRIOT" tells, as its second t.i.tle informs us, "an old story."

Only this day year, the "patriot" entered the city as its hero, amidst a frenzy of grat.i.tude and joy. To-day he pa.s.ses out of it through comparatively silent streets; for those for whom he has laboured last as first, are waiting for him at the foot of the scaffold. No infliction of physical pain or moral outrage is spared him as he goes. He is "safer so," he declares. The reward men have withheld awaits him at the hand of G.o.d.

"INSTANS TYRANNUS"[101] is the confession of a king, who has been possessed by an unreasoning and uncontrolled hatred for one man. This man was his subject, but so friendless and obscure that no hatred could touch, so stupid or so upright that no temptation could lure him into his enemy's power. The King became exasperated by the very smallness of the creature which thus kept him at bay; drew the line of persecution closer and closer; and at last ran his victim to earth. But, at the critical moment, the man so long pa.s.sive and cowering threw himself on the protection of G.o.d. The King saw, in a sudden revulsion of feeling, an Arm thrown out from the sky, and the "wretch" he had striven to crush, safely enfolded in it Then he in his turn--was "afraid."

"MESMERISM" is a fanciful but vivid description of an act of mesmeric power, which draws a woman, alone, in the darkness, and through every natural obstacle, to the presence of the man who loves her.

"TIME'S REVENGES" is also a confession made in the form of a soliloquy.

The speaker has a friend whose devotion is equal to any test, and whose love he barely repays with liking; and he has a lady-love by whom this friend is avenged; for he has given up to his pa.s.sion for her his body and his soul, his peace and his renown, every laudable ambition, every rational aim; and he knows she would let him roast by a slow fire if this would procure her an invitation to a certain ball.

"THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND" is the supposed adventure of a leading Italian patriot, told by himself in later years. He tells how he was hiding from the Austrians, who had put a price upon his head, and were scouring the country in pursuit of him; how, impelled by hunger, he disclosed his place of concealment to a peasant girl--the last of a troop of villagers who were pa.s.sing by; and how she saved his life at the risk of her own, and when she would have been paid in gold for betraying him. He relates also that his first thought was to guard himself against betrayal by not telling her who he was; but that her loyal eyes, her dignified form and carriage (perhaps too, the consummate tact with which she had responded to his signal) in another moment had put the thought to flight, and he fearlessly placed his own, and his country's destiny in her hands. He is an exile in England now. Friends and brothers have made terms with the oppressor, and his home is no longer theirs. But among the wishes which still draw him to his native land, is one, less acknowledged than the rest and which perhaps lies deeper, that he may see that n.o.ble woman once more; talk to her of the husband who was then her lover, of her children, and her home; and, once more, as he did in parting from her, kiss her hand in grat.i.tude, and lay his own in blessing on her head.[102]

"PROTUS" is a fragment of an imaginary chronicle: recording in the same page and under the head of the same year, how the child-Emperor, Protus, descended from a G.o.d, was growing in beauty and in grace, wors.h.i.+pped by the four quarters of the known world; and how John, the Pannonian blacksmith's b.a.s.t.a.r.d, came and took the Empire; but, as "some think,"

let Protus live--to be heard of later as dependent in a foreign court; or perhaps to become the monk, whom rumour speaks of as bearing his name, and who died at an advanced age in Thrace.

A fit comment on this Empire lost and won, is supplied by two busts, also imaginary, one showing a "rough hammered" coa.r.s.e-jawed head; the other, a baby face, crowned with a wreath of violets.

"APPARENT FAILURE" is Mr. Browning's verdict on three drowned men, whose bodies he saw exposed at the Morgue[103] in Paris, in the summer of 1856. He justly a.s.sumes that the death was suicide; and as he reads in each face its special story of struggle and disappointment,

"Poor men, G.o.d made, and all for that!" (vol. vii. p. 247)

the conviction lays hold of him that their doom is not final, that the life G.o.d blessed in the beginning cannot end accursed of Him; that even a despair and a death like these, record only a seeming failure.

The poem was professedly written to save the memory of the Morgue, then about to be destroyed.

The friend, to whom "WARING" refers, is a restless, aspiring, sensitive person, who has planned great works, though he has completed none: who feels his powers always in excess of his performance, and who is hurt if those he loves refuse them credit for being so. He is gone now, no one knows whither; and the speaker, who is conscious that his own friends.h.i.+p has often seemed critical or cold, vainly wishes that he could recall him. His fancy travels longingly to those distant lands, in one of which Waring may be playing some new and romantic part; and back again to England, where he tries to think that he is lying concealed, while preparing to surprise the world with some great achievement in literature or art. Then someone solves the problem by saying that he has seen him--for one moment--on the Illyrian coast; seated in a light bark, just bounding away into the sunset. And the speaker rejoins

"Oh, never star Was lost here but it rose afar!" (vol. v. p. 89.)

and, we conclude, takes comfort from the thought.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 94: Both of these first in "Hood's Magazine."]

[Footnote 95: First in "Hood's Magazine."]

[Footnote 96: I here use the word "conscience" in its intellectual rather than its moral sense; as signifying that _consciousness_ of a wrong done, which may, for a time, be evaded or pushed aside.]