Chapter 11

They are even outside my subject because they are literal; and therefore show Mr. Browning as a scholar, but not otherwise as a poet than in the technical power and indirect poetic judgments involved in the work. All I need say about this is, that its literalness detracts in no way from the beauty and transparency of "Alkestis" or "Herakles," while it makes "Agamemnon" very hard to read; and that Mr. Browning has probably intended his readers to draw their own conclusion, which is so far his, as to the relative quality of the two great classics. Some critics contend that a less literal translation of the "Agamemnon" would have been not only more pleasing, but more true; but Mr. Browning clearly thought otherwise. Had he not, he would certainly have given his author the benefit of the larger interpretation; and his principal motive for this indirect defence of Euripides would have disappeared.

Mr. Browning has also given us an original fragment in the classic manner:--

"ARTEMIS PROLOGIZES." ("Men and Women,"[30] published in "Dramatic Lyrics," in 1842.) This was suggested by the "Hippolytos" of Euripides; and destined to become part of a larger poem, which should continue its story. For, according to the legend, Hippolytos having perished through the anger of Aphrodité (Venus), was revived by Artemis (Diana), though only to disappoint her affection by falling in love with one of her nymphs, Aricia. Mr. Browning imagines that she has removed him in secret to her own forest retreat, and is nursing him back to life by the help of Asclepios; and the poem is a monologue in which she describes what has passed, from Phaedra's self-betrayal to the present time. Hippolytos still lies unconscious; but the power of the great healer has been brought to bear upon him, and the unconsciousness seems only that of sleep. Artemis is _awaiting the event_.

The ensuing chorus of nymphs, the awakening of Hippolytos, and with it the stir of the new passion within him, had already taken shape in Mr. Browning's mind. Unfortunately, something put the inspiration to flight, and it did not return.[31]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: The song professedly refers to Catherine Cornaro, the Venetian Queen of Cyprus, and is the only one in the poem that is based on any fact at all.]

[Footnote 22: This pamphlet has supplied Mr. Browning with some of his most curious facts. It fell into his hands in London.]

[Footnote 23: The first hour after sunset.]

[Footnote 24: "Villa" is often called "vineyard" or "vigna," on account of the vineyard attached to it.]

[Footnote 25: It is difficult to reconcile this explicit denial of Pompilia's statements with the belief in her implied in her merely nominal punishment: unless we look on it as part of the formal condemnation which circumstances seemed to exact.]

[Footnote 26: A letter written in this strain was also produced on the trial; and Pompilia owned to having written it, but only in the sense of writing over in ink what her husband had traced in pencil--being totally ignorant of its contents.]

[Footnote 27: Count Guido thought, or affected to think, that these had been thrown by Caponsacchi.]

[Footnote 28: The disciple of Michael de Molinos, not to be confounded with Louis Molina, who is especially known by his attempt to reconcile the theory of grace with that of free will. Molinos was the founder of an exaggerated Quietism. He held that the soul could detach itself from the body so as to become indifferent to its action, and therefore non-responsible for it; and it was natural that all who defied the received laws of conduct, or were suspected of doing so, should be stigmatized as his followers. Molinism was a favourite bugbear among the orthodox Romanists of Innocent the Twelfth's day.]

[Footnote 29: A passing allusion is made to this Gomez case in one of the manuscript letters, the writer of which begs Cencini (clearly also an advocate), to send him the papers concerning it. The place it occupies in the thoughts of the two lawyers, as Mr. Browning depicts them, is very characteristic of the manner in which his imagination has embraced and vivified every detail of the situation.]

[Footnote 30: The poems to which I refer as now included in "Men and Women" will be found so in the editions of 1868 and 1888-9; though the redistribution made in 1863 has much curtailed their number.]

[Footnote 31: It was in this poem that Mr. Browning first adopted the plan of spelling Greek names in the Greek manner. He did so, as he tells us in the preface to his "Agamemnon," "innocently enough;" because the change commended itself to his own eye and ear. He has even assured his friends that if the innovation had been rationally opposed, or simply not accepted, he would probably himself have abandoned it. But when, years later, in "Balaustion's Adventure," the new spelling became the subject of attacks which all but ignored the existence of the work from any other point of view, the thought of yielding was no longer admissible. The majority of our best scholars now follow Mr. Browning's example.]

CLASSIFIED GROUPS.

ARGUMENTATIVE POEMS. SPECIAL PLEADINGS.

The isolated monologues have a special significance, which is almost implied in their form, but is also distinct from it. Mr. Browning has made them the vehicle for most of the reasonings and reflections which make up so large a part of his imaginative life: whether presented in his own person, or, as is most often the case, in that of his men and women. As such, they are among those of his works which lend themselves to a rough kind of classification; and may be called "argumentative."

They divide themselves into two classes: those in which the speaker is defending a preconceived judgment, and an antagonist is implied; and those in which he is trying to form a judgment or to accept one: and the supposed listener, if there be such, is only a confidant. The first kind of argument or discussion is carried on--apparently--as much for victory as for truth; and employs the weapons of satire, or the tactics of special-pleading, as the case demands. The second is an often pathetic and always single-minded endeavour to get at the truth. Those monologues in which the human spirit is represented as communing with itself, contain some of Mr. Browning's noblest dramatic work; but those in which the militant attitude is more pronounced throw the strongest light on what I have indicated as his distinctive intellectual quality: the rejection of all general and dogmatic points of view. His casuistic utterances are often only a vindication of the personal, and therefore indefinite quality of human truth; and their apparent trifling with it is often only the seeking after a larger truth, in which all seeming contradictions are resolved. It was inevitable, however, that this mental quality should play into the hands of his dramatic imagination, and be sometimes carried away by it; so that when he means to tell us what a given person under given circumstances would be justified in saying, he sometimes finds himself including in the statement something which the given person so situated would be only likely to say.

The first of these classes, or groups, which we may distinguish as SPECIAL PLEADINGS, contains poems very different in length, and in literary character; and to avoid the appearance of confusion, I shall reverse the order of their publication, and place the most important first:--

"Aristophanes' Apology;[32] or The Last Adventure of Balaustion." (1875.)

"Fifine at the Fair." (1872.)

"Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society." (1871.)

"Bishop Blougram's Apology" (Men and Women). (1855.)

"Mr. Sludge, the Medium." (Dramatis Personæ.) (1864.)

"ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY" is, as its second title shows, a sequel to "Balaustion's Adventure" (1871). Both turn on the historical fact that Euripides was reverenced far more by the non-Athenian Greeks than by the Athenians; and both contain a transcript from him. But the interest of "Aristophanes' Apology" is independent of its "Herakles," while that of "Balaustion's Adventure" is altogether bound up with its Alkestis; and in so far as the "adventure" places Balaustion herself before us, it will be best treated as an introduction to her appearance in the later and more important work.

Balaustion is a Rhodian girl, brought up in a worship for Euripides, which does not, however, exclude the appreciation of other great Greek poets. The Peloponnesian War has entered on its second stage. The Athenian fleet has been defeated at Syracuse. And Rhodes, resenting this disgrace, has determined to take part against Athens, and join the Peloponnesian league. But Balaustion will not forsake the mother-city, the life and light of her whole known world; and she persuades her kinsmen to migrate with her to it, and, with her, to share its fate. They accordingly take ship at Kaunus, a Carian sea-port belonging to Rhodes. But the wind turns them from their course, and when it abates, they find themselves in strange waters, pursued by a pirate bark. They fly before it towards what they hope will prove a friendly shore--Balaustion heartening the rowers by a song from Æschylus, which was sung at the battle of Salamis--and run straight into the hostile harbour of Syracuse, where shelter is denied them.

The captain pleads in vain that they are Kaunians, subjects of Rhodes, and that Rhodes is henceforward on Sparta's side. "Kaunian the ship may be: but Athenians are on board. All Athens echoed in that song from Æschylus which has been ringing across the sea. The voyagers may retire unhurt. But if ten pirate ships were pursuing them, they should not bring those memories of Salamis to the Athenian captives whom the defeat of Nicias has left in Syracusan hands." The case is desperate. The Rhodians turn to go.

Suddenly a voice cries, "Wait. Do they know any verses from Euripides?" "More than that, they answer, Balaustion can recite a whole play--that strangest, saddest, sweetest song--the 'Alkestis.' It does honour to Herakles, their god. Let them place her on the steps of their temple of Herakles, and she will recite it there." The Rhodians are brought in, amidst joyous loving laughter, among shouts of "Herakles" and "Euripides." The recital takes place;[33] it is repeated a second day and a third; and Balaustion and her kinsmen are dismissed with good words and wishes, for, as she declares:

"... Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts, And poetry is power,...." (vol. xi. p. 14.)

The story of Alkestis scarcely needs repeating. Apollo had incurred the anger of Jupiter by avenging the death of his son Æsculapius on the Cyclops whose thunder-bolt had slain him; and been condemned to play the part of a common mortal, and serve Admetus, King of Thessaly, as herdsman. The kind treatment of Admetus had made him his friend: and Apollo had deceived the Fate sisters into promising that whenever the king's life should become their due, they would renounce it on condition of some other person dying in his stead. When the play opens, the fatal moment has come. Alkestis, wife of Admetus, has offered herself to save him; and Admetus, though he does so with a heavy heart, has been weak enough to accept the sacrifice. Death enters the palace, from which even Apollo can no longer turn him away.

But just as Alkestis has breathed her last, Herakles appears; and his great cheery voice is heard on the threshold of the house of mourning, inquiring if the master be within. Admetus suppresses all signs of emotion, that he may receive him as hospitality demands; and Herakles, hearing what has happened from a servant of the house, is moved to gratitude and pity. He wrestles with Death; conquers him; and brings back Alkestis into her husband's presence, veiled, and in the guise of a second companion. Admetus will at first neither touch nor look at her. He has promised his dying wife to give her no successor; and her memory is even dearer to him than she herself has been. The god however reasons, persuades, and insists; and at length, very reluctantly, Admetus gives his hand to the stranger, whom he is then told to unveil. Herakles has delayed the recognition, that Alkestis might be enabled to probe her husband's fidelity, and convince herself that sorrow had made him worthier of her.

Balaustion half recites the play, half describes it, "as she has seen it at Kameiros this very year," occasionally compressing an unimportant scene, but always closely adhering to the original. She knows that she is open to the reproach of describing more than the masked faces of the actors could allow her to see; but she meets it in these words:--

"What's poetry except a power that makes? And, speaking to one sense, inspires the rest, Pressing them all into its service:" (vol. xi. pp. 17, 18.)

The whole work is a vindication of the power of poetry, as exerted in itself, and as reproduced in those who have received its fruits (pages 110, 111); and Balaustion herself displays it in this secondary form, by suggesting a version of the story of Alkestis, more subtly, if less simply, beautiful than the original. She makes _Love_ the conqueror of Death. According to her, the music made by Apollo among Admetus's flocks has tamed every selfish passion in the King's soul; and when the time comes for his wife to die, he refuses the sacrifice. "Zeus has decreed that their two lives shall be one; and if they must be severed, he must go who was the body, not she, who was the soul, of their joint existence." But Alkestis declares that the reality of that existence lies not in her but in him, and she bids him look at her once more before his decision is made. In this look, her soul enters into his; and, thus subduing him, she expires. But when she reaches the nether world she is rejected as a deceiver. "The death she brings to it is a mockery, since it doubles the life she has left behind." Proserpine sends her back to her husband's side; and the "lost eyes" re-open beneath his gaze, while it still embraces her.

Apollo smiles sadly at the ingenuousness of mortals, who thus imagine that the chain of eternal circumstance could snap in one human life; at their blindness to those seeds of pity and tenderness which the crushed promise of human happiness sets free. Yet he seems to think they lose nothing by either. "They do well to value their little hour. They do well to treasure the warm heart's blood, of which no outpouring could tinge the paleness or fill the blank of eternity, the power of love which transforms their earthly homes, their

... hopes and fears, so blind and yet so sweet With death about them." (p. 115.)

"Balaustion" means wild pomegranate flower; and the girl has been so called on account of her lyric gifts. She recalls the pomegranate tree, because its leaves are cooling to the brow, its seed and blossom grateful to the sense, and because the nightingale is never distant from it. She will keep the name for life--so she tells her friends--and with it a better thing which her songs have gained her. One youth came daily to the temple-steps at Syracuse to hear her. He was at her side at Athens when she landed. They will be married at this next full moon.

"Alkestis" failed "to get the prize" when its author was competing with Sophocles. "But Euripides has had his reward: in the sympathies which he has stirred; in the genius which he has inspired. His crown came direct from Zeus."

We need not name the poetess whom Mr. Browning quotes at the close of this poem. The painter so generously eulogized is F. Leighton.

When we meet Balaustion again, in "Aristophanes' Apology," many things have happened. She has seen her poet in his retirement (this was mentioned in her "adventure"), kissed his hand, and received from it, together with other gifts, his tragedy of Herakles. Euripides has died; Athens has fallen; and Balaustion, with her memories in her heart, and her husband, Euthykles, by her side, is speeding back towards Rhodes. She is deeply shocked by the fate of her adoptive city, to which her fancy pays a tribute of impassioned reverence, too poetic to be given in any but Mr. Browning's words. Yet she has a growing belief that that fate was just. Sea and air and the blue expanse of heaven are full of suggestion of that spirit-life, with its larger struggles or its universal peace, which is above the world's crowd and noise. And she determines that sorrow for what is fleeting shall not gnaw at her heart.

But in order to overcome the sorrow, she must loosen it from her. The tragedy she has witnessed must enact itself once more for Euthykles and her, he writing as she dictates. It will have for prologue a second adventure of her own, which he also has witnessed; and this adventure will constitute the book. It is prefaced in its turn by a backward glance at the circumstances, (so different from the present) in which she related the first.

It was the night on which Athens received the news that Euripides was dead: Euthykles had brought this home to her from the theatre. They were pondering it gravely, but not sadly, for their poet was now at rest, in the companionship of Æschylus, safe from the petty spites which had frothed and fretted about his life. He had lived and worked, to the end, true to his own standard of right, heedless of the reproach that he was a man-hater and a recluse, without regard for civic duty, and with no object but his art. He had left it to Sophocles to play poet and commander at the same time, and be laughed at for the result. He had first taken the prize of "Contemplation" in his all but a hundred plays; then, grasping the one hand offered him which held a heart, had shown at the court of Archelaus of Macedon whether or not the power of active usefulness was in him. His last notes of music had also been struck for that one friend.

Even Athens did him justice now. The reaction had set in; one would have his statue erected in the theatre; another would have him buried in the Piræus; etc. etc. Not so Euthykles and Balaustion. His statue was in their hearts. Their concern was not with his mortal vesture, but with the liberated soul, which now watched over their world. They would hail this, they said, in the words of his own song, his "Herakles."

The reading was about to begin, when suddenly there was torch-light--a burst of comic singing--and a knocking at the door; Bacchus bade them open; they delayed. Then a name was uttered, of "authoritative" sound, of "immense significance;" and the door was opened to--Aristophanes. He was returning from the performance of his "Thesmophoriazusae,"[34] last year a failure, but this time, thanks to some new and audacious touches, a brilliant success. His chorus trooped before him--himself no more sober than was his wont--crowned, triumphant, and drunk; a group of flute-boys and dancing-girls making up the scene. All these, however, slunk away before Balaustion's glance, Aristophanes alone confronting her. And, as she declares, it was "no ignoble presence." For the broad brow, the flushed cheek, the commanding features, the defiant attitude, all betokened a mind, wantoning among the lower passions, but yet master of them.

He addresses Balaustion in a tone of mock deference; banters her on her poetic name, her dignified mien, and the manner in which she has scared his chorus and its followers away; "not indeed that that matters, since the archon's economy and the world's squeamishness will soon abolish it altogether."[35] Then struck by a passing thought, he stands grave, silent--another man in short--awaiting what she has to say.

In this sober moment, Balaustion welcomes him to her house. She welcomes him as the Good Genius: as genius of the kindly, though purifying humour, which, like summer lighting, illumines, but does not destroy. She knows and implies that he is not only this. But she greets the light, no matter to what darkness it be allied. She reverences the god who forms one half of him, so long as the monster which constitutes the other, remains out of sight; a poetic myth is made to illustrate this feeling. The gravity, however, is short-lived. The lower self in Aristophanes springs up again, and his "apology" begins.

"Aristophanes' APOLOGY" is a defence of comedy, as understood and practised by himself: that is, as a broad expression of the natural life, and a broad satire upon those who directly or indirectly condemn it. It is addressed to Euripides in the person of his disciple. It is at the same time an attack upon him; and in either capacity it covers a great deal of ground. For the dispute does not lie simply between comedy and tragedy--which latter, with the old tragedians, was often only the naturalism of comedy on a larger scale--but between naturalism and humanity, as more advanced thinkers understood it; between the old ideas of human and divine conveyed by tragedy and comedy alike, and the new ones which Euripides, the friend of Socrates, had imported into them; and the question at issue involved, therefore, not only art and morals, but the entire philosophy of life. The "Apology" derives farther interest and significance from the varied emotions by which it is inspired. The speaker (as is the case in "Fifine at the Fair") is answering not only his opponent, but his own conscience. How the conscience of Aristophanes has been aroused he presently tells: first struggling a little with the false shame which the experience has left behind. This is the scene which he describes.

A festive supper had followed the successful play. Jollity was at its height. The cup was being crowned to Aristophanes as the "Triumphant," when a knock came to the door: and there entered no "asker of questions," no casual passer-by, but the pale, majestic, heavily-draped figure of Sophocles himself. Slowly, solemnly, and with bent head, he passed up the hall, between two ranks of spectators as silent as himself; raised his eyes as he confronted the priest,[36] and announced to him, that since Euripides was "dead to-day," and as a fitting spectacle for the god, his chorus would appear at the greater feast, next month, clothed in black and ungarlanded. Then silently, and amidst silence, he passed out again.

This, then, was the purport of the important news which was known to have arrived in port, but which every one had interpreted in his own way. Euripides was no more! But neither the news nor he who brought it could create more than a momentary stupor; and the tipsy fun soon renewed itself, at the expense of the living tragedian and the dead. Aristophanes alone remained grave. The value of the man whom he had aspersed and ridiculed stood out before him summed up by the hand of Death. He recalled the failure which had marked the now hopeless limitation of his own genius, and those last words addressed to him by Euripides which brought home its lesson.[37] The archon, "Master of the Feast," judging that its "glow" was "extinct," had risen to conclude it by crowning the parting cup. He had crowned it with judicious reserve to the "Good Genius;" and Strattis (the comic poet) had burst forth in an eulogium of the Comic Muse which claimed the title of Good Genius for her--when yielding to this new and over-mastering impulse, he (Aristophanes) checked the coming applause, and demanded that the Tragic Muse and her ministrant Euripides should receive the libation instead; justifying the demand by a noble and pathetic tribute to the memory of the dead poet, and to the great humanities which only the _tragic_ poet can represent.