A Handbook to the Works of Browning Part 31

[Footnote 97: This poem was a personal utterance, provoked by the death of a relative whom Mr. Browning dearly loved.]

[Footnote 98: Told by Schiller and Leigh Hunt.]

[Footnote 99: Written for and inscribed to a little son of the actor, William Macready.]

[Footnote 100: A picturesque old church which has since been destroyed.]

[Footnote 101: The "Threatening Tyrant." Suggested by some words in Horace: 8th Ode, ii. Book.]

[Footnote 102: Mr. Browning is proud to remember that Mazzini informed him he had read this poem to certain of his fellow-exiles in England to show how an Englishman could sympathize with them.]

[Footnote 103: A small, square building on one of the quays, in which the bodies of drowned persons were placed for identification.]

CONCLUDING GROUP.

"DRAMATIC IDYLS." "JOCOSERIA."

"DRAMATIC IDYLS."

The Dramatic Idyls form, like the Dramas, a natural group; and though, unlike these, they might be distributed under various heads, it would not be desirable to thus disconnect them; for their appearing together at this late period of Mr. Browning's career, const.i.tutes them a landmark in it. They each consist of a nucleus of fact--supplied by history or by romance, as the case may be--and of material, and in most cases, mental circ.u.mstance, which Mr. Browning's fancy has engrafted on it; and in both their material and their mental aspect they display a concentrated power, which clearly indicates what I have spoken of as the "crystallizing" process Mr. Browning's genius has undergone. A comparison of these poems with "Pauline," "Paracelsus," or even "Pippa Pa.s.ses," will be found to justify this a.s.sertion.

The Idyls consist of two series, occupying each a volume. The first, published 1879, contains:--

"Martin Relph."

"Pheidippides."

"Halbert and Hob."

"Ivan Ivanovitch."

"Tray."

"Ned Bratts."

The hero of "MARTIN RELPH" is an old man, whose life is haunted by something which happened to him when little more than a boy. A girl of his own village had been falsely convicted of treason, and the guns were already levelled for her execution, when Martin Relph, who had stolen round on to some rising ground behind the soldiers and villagers who witnessed the scene, saw what no one else could see: a man, about a quarter of mile distant, rus.h.i.+ng onwards in staggering haste, and waving a white object over his head. He knew this was Vincent Parkes, Rosamond Page's lover, bearing the expected proofs of her innocence. He knew also that by a shout he might avert her doom. But something paralyzed his tongue, and the girl fell. The man who would have rescued her but for delays and obstacles, which no power of his could overcome, was found dead where Martin Relph had seen him.

The remembrance of these two deaths leaves Martin Relph no rest; for conscience tells him that his part in them was far worse than it appeared. It tells him that what struck him dumb at that awful moment was not, as others said, the simple cowardice of a boy: he loved in secret the girl whom Vincent Parkes was coming to save; and if _he_ had saved her, it would have been for that other man. But that thought could only flash on him in one second of fiery consciousness; he had no time to recognize it as a motive; and he clings madly to the hope that his conscience is mistaken, and it was not that which silenced him. Every year, at the same spot, he re-enacts the scene, striving to convince himself--with those who hear him--that he has been a coward, but not a murderer; and in the moral and physical reaction from the renewed agony, half-succeeds in doing so.

The story, thus told in Martin Relph's words, is supposed to have been repeated to the present narrator by a grandfather, who heard them. It embodies a vague remembrance of something read by Mr. Browning when he was himself a boy.

The facts related in "PHEIDIPPIDES" belong to Greek legendary history, and are told by Herodotus and other writers. When Athens was threatened by the invading Persians, she sent a running messenger to Sparta, to demand help against the foreign foe. The mission was unsuccessful. But the "runner," Pheidippides, fell in on his return, with the G.o.d Pan; and though alone among Greeks the Athenians had refused to honour him, he promised to fight with them in the coming battle. Pheidippides was present, when this battle--that of Marathon--was fought and won. He "ran" once more, to announce the victory at Athens; and fell, dead, with the words, "Rejoice, we conquer!" on his lips. This death followed naturally on the excessive physical strain; but Mr. Browning has used it as a connecting link between the historic and the imaginary parts of the idyl. According to this, Pheidippides himself tells his first adventure, to the a.s.sembled rulers of Athens: depicting, in vivid words, the emotions which winged his course, and bore him onwards over mountains and through valleys, with the smooth swiftness of running fire; and he also relates that Pan promised him a personal reward for his "toil,"

which was to consist in release from it. This release he interprets as freedom to return home, and to marry the girl he loves. It meant a termination to his labours, more tragic, but far more glorious: to die, proclaiming the victory which they had helped to secure.

Pan is also made to present him with a sprig of fennel--symbol of Marathon, or the "fennel-field"--as pledge of his promised a.s.sistance.

"HALBERT AND HOB" is the story of a fierce father and son who lived together in solitude, shunned by their fellow-men. One Christmas night they drifted into a quarrel, in the course of which the son seized his father, and was about to turn him out of doors: when the latter, with unaccustomed mildness, bade him stay his hand. Just so, he said, in his youth, had he proceeded against his own father; and at just this stage of the proceeding had a voice in his heart bidden him desist.... And the son thus appealed to desisted also.

This fact is told by Aristotle[104] as an instance of the hereditary nature of anger. But Mr. Browning sees more in it than that. If, he declares, Nature creates hard hearts, it is a power beyond hers which softens them; and in his version of "Halbert and Hob" this supernatural power completes the work it has begun. The two return in silence to their fireside. The next morning the father is found dead. The son has become a harmless idiot, to remain so till the end of his life.

"IVAN IVANOVITCH" is the reproduction, with fict.i.tious names and imaginary circ.u.mstances, of a popular Russian story, known as "The Judgment of G.o.d." A young woman travelling through the forest on a winter's night, is attacked by wolves, and saves her own life by throwing her children to them. But when she reaches her village, and either confesses the deed or stands convicted of it, one of its inhabitants, by trade a carpenter and the Ivan Ivanovitch of the idyl, lifts the axe which he is plying, and strikes off her head: this informal retribution being accepted, by those present, as in conformity with the higher law.

Mr. Browning has raised the mother's act out of the sphere of vulgar crime, by the characteristic method of making her tell her story: and show herself, as she may easily have been, not altogether bad; though a woman of weak maternal instincts, and one whose nature was powerless against the fear of pain, and the impulse to self-preservation. She describes with appalling vividness the experiences of the night: the moonlit forest--the snow-covered ground--the wolves approaching with a whispering tread, which seems at first but the soughing of a gentle wind--the wedge-like, ever-widening ma.s.s, which emerges from the trees; then the flight, and the pursuit: the latter arrested for one moment by the sacrifice of each victim; to be renewed the next, till none is left to sacrifice: one child dragged from the mother's arms; another s.h.i.+elded by her whole body, till the wolf's teeth have fastened in her flesh; and though she betrays, in the very effort to conceal it, how little she has done to protect her children's lives, we realize the horror of her situation, and pity even while we condemn, her. But some words of selfish rejoicing at her own deliverance precede the fatal stroke, and in some degree challenge it. And Mr. Browning farther preserves the spirit of the tradition, by giving to her sentence the sanction of the village priest or "pope," into whose presence the decapitated body has been conveyed. The secular authorities are also on the spot, and condemn the murder as contrary both to justice and to law. But the pope declares that the act of Ivan Ivanovitch has been one of the higher justice which is above law. He himself is an aged man--so aged, he says, that he has pa.s.sed through the clouds of human convention, and stands on the firm basis of eternal truth. Looking down upon the world from this vantage-ground, he sees that no gift of G.o.d is equal to that of life; no privilege so high as that of reproducing its "miracle;" and that the mother who has cast away her maternal crown, and given over to destruction the creatures which she has borne, has sinned an "unexampled sin," for which a "novel punishment" was required. No otherwise than did Moses of old, has Ivan Ivanovitch interpreted the will--shown himself the servant--of G.o.d.

How Mr. Browning's Ivan Ivanovitch himself judges the case, is evidenced by this fact, that after wiping the blood from his axe, he betakes himself to playing with his children; and that when the lord of the village has--reluctantly--sent a deputation to inform him that he is free, the words, "how otherwise?" are his only answer.

"TRAY" describes an instance of animal courage and devotion which a friend of Mr. Browning's actually witnessed in Paris. A little girl had fallen into the river. None of the bystanders attempted to rescue her.

But a dog, bouncing over the bal.u.s.trade, brought the child to land; dived again, no one could guess why; and after battling with a dangerous current, emerged with the child's doll; then trotted away as if nothing had occurred.

This "Tray" is made to ill.u.s.trate Mr. Browning's ideal of a hero, in opposition to certain showy and conventional human types; and the little narrative contains some scathing reflections on those who talk of such a creature as merely led by instinct, or would dissect its brain alive to discover how the "soul" is secreted there.

"NED BRATTS" was suggested by the remembrance of a pa.s.sage in John Bunyan's "Life and Death of Mr. Badman." Bunyan relates there that some twenty years ago, "at a summer a.s.sizes holden at Hertford, while the judge was sitting on the Bench," a certain old Tod came into the Court, and declared himself "the veriest rogue that breathes upon the earth"--a thief from childhood, &c., &c.; that the judge first thought him mad, but after conferring with some of the justices, agreed to indict him "of several felonious actions;" and that as he heartily confessed to all of these, he was hanged, with his wife, at the same time. Mr. Browning has turned Hertford into Bedford; made the time of the occurrence coincide with that of Bunyan's imprisonment; and supposed the evident conversion of this man and woman to be among the many which he effected there. The blind daughter of Bunyan, who plays an important part in "Ned Bratts,"

is affectingly spoken of in her father's work; and the tag-laces, which have subserved the criminal purposes of Bratts and his wife, represent an industry by which he is known to have supported himself in prison.

Mr. Browning, finally, has used the indications Bunyan gives, of the incident taking place on a very hot day, so as to combine the sense of spiritual stirring with one of unwholesome and grotesque physical excitement; and this, as he describes it, is the genuine key-note of the situation.

The character of Ned Bratts is made a perfect vehicle for these impressions. His "Tab" (Tabitha) has had an interview with John Bunyan, and been really moved by his majestic presence, and warning, yet hope-inspiring words. But he himself has been princ.i.p.ally worked upon by the reading of the "Pilgrim's Progress;" and we see in him throughout, an unregenerate ruffian, whose carnal energies have merely transferred themselves to another field; and whose blood is fired to this act of martyrdom both by yesterday's potations, and to-day's virtuously endured thirst. "A mug," he cries, in the midst of his confessions; or, "no (addressing his wife), a prayer!"

"Dip for one out of the Book!..." (vol. xv. p. 67.)

The precarious nature of his conversion is, indeed, vividly present to his own mind. It is borne in upon him that he is "Christmas," and must escape from the City of Destruction. He would like nothing better, in his present mood, than to undertake the whole Pilgrimage, and, as it were, cudgel his way through; and since it is late in the day for this, he chooses the short cut by the gallows, as the next best thing. But he is, above all, desirous to be taken while the penitent fit is on him: and urgently sets forth those past misdeeds, which const.i.tute his and his wife's claim to a speedy despatch, such as will place them beyond the danger of backsliding. Already, he declares, Satan is whispering to him of the pleasures he is leaving behind; and the seductions of to-morrow's brawl and bear-baiting are threatening to turn the scale.

Another moment, and instead of going up to heaven, like Faithful, in a chariot and pair, he will be the Lost Man in the Iron Cage!

When the two have had their wish, and been hanged "out of hand," the bystanders are edified to tears. But the loyalty of the Chief Justice forbids any imputing of the act of grace to the influence of John Bunyan. Its cause lies rather, he a.s.serts, in the twelve years' pious reign of the restored Charles.

The second series of the "Dramatic Idyls" was published in 1880, and contains:--

"Echetlos."

"Clive."

"Muleykeh."

"Pietro of Abano."

"Doctor ----"

"Pan and Luna."

It has also a little prologue and epilogue: the former satirizing the pretension to understand the Soul, which we cannot see, while we are baffled by the workings of the bodily organs, which we can see; the latter directed against the popular idea that the more impressible and more quickly responsive natures are the soil of which "song" is born.

The true poet, it declares, is as the pine tree which has grown out of a rock.

"ECHETLOS" (holder of the ploughshare) is another legend of the battle of Marathon. It tells, in Mr. Browning's words, how one with the goat-skin garment, and the broad bare limbs of a "clown," was seen on the battle-field ploughing down the enemy's ranks: the ploughshare flas.h.i.+ng now here, now there, wherever the Grecian lines needed strengthening; how he vanished when the battle was won; and how the oracle, of which his name was asked, bade the inquirers not care for it:

"Say but just this: We praise one helpful whom we call The Holder of the Ploughshare. The great deed ne'er grows small."

(vol. xv. p. 87.)

Miltiades and Themistocles had shown that a great name could do so.[105]