An Introduction to the Study of Browning Part 18

"So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word of salute Is still 'Rejoice!'--his word which brought rejoicing indeed.

So is Pheidippides happy for ever,--the n.o.ble strong man Who could race like a G.o.d, bear the face of a G.o.d, whom a G.o.d loved so well He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began, So to end gloriously--once to shout, thereafter be mute: 'Athens is saved!' Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 55: At a summer a.s.sizes holden at _Hartfort_, while the Judge was sitting upon the Bench, comes this old _Tod_ into the Court, cloathed in a green Suit with his Leathern Girdle in his hand, his bosom open, and all on a dung sweat, as if he had run for his Life; and, being come in, he spake aloud as follows: _My Lord_, said he, _Here is the veryest Rogue that breaths upon the face of the earth, ... My Lord, there has not been a Robbery committed this many years, within so many miles of this place but I have either been at it or privy to it._

"The Judge thought the fellow was mad, but after some conference with some of the Justices, they agreed to Indict him; and so they did, of several felonious Actions; to all of which he heartily confessed Guilty, and so was hanged with his wife at the same time....

"As for the truth of this Story, the Relator told me that he was at the same time himself in the Court, and stood within less than two yards of old _Tod_, when he heard him aloud to utter the words."--Bunyan's _Life and Death of Mr. Badman_, 1680.]

28. DRAMATIC IDYLS. Second Series.

[Published in July, 1880. _Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. XV.

pp. 81-163.]

The second series of _Dramatic Idyls_ is bound together, like the first, though somewhat less closely, by a leading idea, which, whether consciously or not, is hinted at in a pointed little prologue: the idea of the paradox of human action, and the apparent antagonism between motive and result. The volume differs considerably from its precursor, and it contains nothing quite equal to the best of the earlier poems.

There is more variety, perhaps, but the human interest is less intense, the stories less moving and absorbing. With less humour, there is a much more p.r.o.nounced element of the grotesque. And most prominent of all is that characteristic of Browning which a great critic has called agility of intellect.

The first poem, _Echetlos_, is full of heroical ardour and firm, manly vigour of movement. Like _Pheidippides_, it is a legend of Marathon. It sings of the mysterious helper who appeared to the Greeks, in rustic garb and armed with a plough.

"But one man kept no rank and his sole arm plied no spear, As a flas.h.i.+ng came and went, and a form i' the van, the rear, Brightened the battle up, for he blazed now there, now here.

Did the steady phalanx falter? To the rescue, at the need, The clown was ploughing Persia, clearing Greek earth of weed, As he routed through the Sakian and rooted up the Mede."

After the battle, the man was nowhere to be seen, and inquiry was made of the oracle.

"How spake the Oracle? 'Care for no name at all!

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

With _Echetlos_ may be mentioned the Virgilian legend of _Pan and Luna_, a piece of graceful fancy, with its exquisite burden, that

"Verse of five words, each a boon: Arcadia, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon."

_Clive_, the most popular in style, and certainly one of the finest poems in the volume, is a dramatic monologue very much akin, in subject, treatment and form, to the narratives in the first series. The story deals with an episode in the life of Clive, when, as a young man, he first proved his courage in the face of a bully whom he had caught cheating at cards. The poem is full of fire and brilliance, and is a subtle a.n.a.lysis and presentation of the character of Clive. Its structure is quite in Browning's best manner: a central situation, illumined by "what double and treble reflection and refraction!" Like Balzac (whose _Honorine_, for instance, is constructed on precisely similar lines) Browning often increases the effect of his picture by setting it in a framework, more or less elaborate, by placing the central narrative in the midst of another slighter and secondary one, related to it in some subtle way. The story of _Clive_ obtains emphasis, and is rendered more impressive, by the lightly but strongly sketched-in figure of the old veteran who tells the tale. Scarcely anything in the poem seems to me so fine as this pathetic portrait of the lonely old man, sitting, like Colonel Newcome, solitary in his house among his memories, with his boy away: "I and Clive were friends."

The Arabian tale of _Muleykeh_ is the most perfect and pathetic piece in the volume. It is told in singularly fine verse, and in remarkably clear, simple, yet elevated style. The end is among the great heroic things in poetry. Hoseyn, though he has neither herds nor flocks, is the richest and happiest of men, for he possesses the peerless mare, Muleykeh the Pearl, whose speed has never been outstripped. Duhl, the son of Sheyban, who envies Hoseyn and has endeavoured by every means, but without success, to obtain the mare, determines at last to steal her. He enters Hoseyn's tent noiselessly by night, saddles Muleykeh, and gallops away. In an instant Hoseyn is on the back of Buheyseh, the Pearl's sister, only less fleet than herself, and in pursuit.

"And Hoseyn--his blood turns flame, he has learned long since to ride, And Buheyseh does her part,--they gain--they are gaining fast On the fugitive pair, and Duhl has Ed-Darraj to cross and quit, And to reach the ridge El-Saban,--no safety till that be spied!

And Buheyseh is, bound by bound, but a horse-length off at last, For the Pearl has missed the tap of the heel, the touch of the bit.

She shortens her stride, she chafes at her rider the strange and queer: Buheyseh is mad with hope--beat sister she shall and must, Though Duhl, of the hand and heel so clumsy, she has to thank.

She is near now, nose by tail--they are neck by croup--joy! fear!

What folly makes Hoseyn shout 'Dog Duhl, d.a.m.ned son of the Dust, Touch the right ear and press with your foot my Pearl's left flank!'

And Duhl was wise at the word, and Muleykeh as prompt perceived Who was urging redoubled pace, and to hear him was to obey, And a leap indeed gave she, and evanished for evermore.

And Hoseyn looked one long last look as who, all bereaved, Looks, fain to follow the dead so far as the living may: Then he turned Buheyseh's neck slow homeward, weeping sore.

And, lo, in the sunrise, still sat Hoseyn upon the ground Weeping: and neighbours came, the tribesmen of Benu-Asad In the vale of green Er-Ra.s.s, and they questioned him of his grief; And he told them from first to last how, serpent-like, Duhl had wound His way to the nest, and how Duhl rode like an ape, so bad!

And how Buheyseh did wonders, yet Pearl remained with the thief.

And they jeered him, one and all: 'Poor Hoseyn is crazed past hope!

How else had he wrought himself his ruin, in fortune's spite!

To have simply held the tongue were a task for a boy or girl, And here were Muleykeh again, the eyed like an antelope, The child of his heart by day, the wife of his breast by night!'

'And the beaten in speed!' wept Hoseyn: 'You never have loved my Pearl!'"

There remain _Pietro of Abano_[56] and _Doctor_ ----. The latter, a Talmudic legend, is probably the poorest of Browning's poems: it is rather farce than humour. The former is a fine piece of genuine grotesque art, full of pungent humour, acuteness, worldly wisdom, and clever phrasing and rhyming. It is written in an elaborate comic metre of Browning's invention, indicated at the end by eight bars of music.

The poem is one of the most characteristic examples of that "Teutonic grotesque, which lies in the expression of deep ideas through fantastic forms," a grotesque of n.o.ble and cultivated art, of which Browning is as great a master in poetry as Carlyle in prose.

The volume ends with a charming lyrical epilogue, not without its personal bearing, though it has sometimes, very unfairly, been represented as a piece of mere self-gratulation.

"Thus I wrote in London, musing on my betters,"

Browning tells us in some alb.u.m-verses which have found their way into print, and he naturally complains that what he wrote of Dante should be foisted upon himself. Indeed, he has quite as much the characteristics of the "spontaneous" as of the "brooding" poet of his parable.

"'Touch him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke: Soil so quick-receptive,--not one feather-seed, Not one flower-dust fell, but straight its fall awoke Vitalising virtue: song would song succeed Sudden as spontaneous--prove a poet soul!'

Indeed?

Rock's the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare: Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage Vainly both expend,--few flowers awaken there: Quiet in its cleft broods--what the after age Knows and names a pine, a nation's heritage."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 56: Pietro of Abano was an Italian physician, alchemist and philosopher, born at Abano, near Padua, in 1246, died about 1320. He had the reputation of a wizard, and was imprisoned by the Inquisition. He was condemned to be burnt; he died in prison, and his dead body was ordered to be burnt; but as that had been taken away by his friends, the Inquisition burnt his portrait. His reputed antipathy to milk and cheese, with its natural a.n.a.logy, suggested the motive of the poem. The book referred to in it is his princ.i.p.al work, _Conciliator differentiarum quae inter philosophos et medicos versantur_. Mantua, 1472.]

29. JOCOSERIA.

[Published in March, 1883 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, pp.

165-266).]

The name _Jocoseria_ (mentioned by Browning in its original connection, Melander's "Jocoseria," in the notes to _Paracelsus_) expresses very cleverly the particular nature of the volume, in its close union and fusion of grave and gay. The book is not, as a whole, so intense or so brilliant as the first and second series of _Dramatic Idyls_, but one or two of the shorter poems are, in their way, hardly excelled by anything in either volume.

The longest poem, though by no means the best is the imaginary Rabbinical legend of _Jochanan Hakkadosh_ (John the Saint), which Browning, with a touch of learned quizzicalness, states in his note[57]

"to have no better authority than that of the treatise, existing dispersedly, in fragments of Rabbinical writing, [the name, 'Collection of many Lies,' follows in Hebrew,] from which I might have helped myself more liberally." It is written in _terza rima_, like _Doctor_ ---- in the second series of _Dramatic Idyls_, and is supposed to be told by "the Jew aforesaid" in order to "make amends and justify our Mishna."

That it may to some extent do, but it seems to me that its effectiveness as an example of the serio-grotesque style would have been heightened by some metre less sober and placid than the _terza rima_; by rhythm and rhyme as audacious and characteristic as the rhythm and the rhymes of _Pietro of Abano_, for instance.

_Ixion_, a far finer poem than _Jochanan Hakkadosh_, is, no doubt, an equally sincere utterance of personal belief. The poem is a monologue, in unrhymed hexameters and pentameters. It presents the old myth in a new light. Ixion is represented as the Prometheus of man's righteous revolt against the tyranny of an unjust G.o.d. The poem is conceived in a spirit of intense earnestness, and worked out with great vigour and splendour of diction. For pa.s.sion and eloquence nothing in it surpa.s.ses the finely culminating last lines, of which I can but tear a few, only too barbarously, from their context:--

"What is the influence, high o'er h.e.l.l, that turns to a rapture Pain--and despair's murk mists blends in a rainbow of hope?

What is beyond the obstruction, stage by stage tho' it baffle?

Back must I fall, confess 'Ever the weakness I fled'?

No, for beyond, far, far is a Purity all-un.o.bstructed!

Zeus was Zeus--not Man: wrecked by his weakness I whirl.

Out of the wreck I rise--past Zeus to the Potency o'er him!

I--to have hailed him my friend! I--to have clasped her--my love!

Pallid birth of my pain,--where light, where light is, aspiring Thither I rise, whilst thou--Zeus, keep the G.o.ds.h.i.+p and sink!"