Chapter 24

"HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD" is a longing reminiscence of an English April and May, with their young leaves and their blossoms, their sunshine and their dew, their song of the chaffinch and their rapturous music of the thrush. Appreciation is heightened by contrast; and the buttercup--England's gift to her little children--is pronounced far brighter than the "gaudy melon-flower" which the exiled Englishman has at this moment before him.

"THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY" is a vivid picture of Italian peasant-life on the plain of Sorrento: the occasion being an outbreak of the well-known hot wind--the "scirocco"--which, in this case, has brought with it a storm of rain. A little frightened peasant girl has taken refuge by the side of the Englishman, who is apparently lodging in her mother's cottage. And he is diverting her attention by describing his impressions of the last twenty-four hours: how everything looked before the rain; how he knew while yet in bed that the rain had come, by the rattling down of the quail-nets,[93] which were to be tugged into shelter, while girls ran on to the housetops to fetch the drying figs; how the black churning waters forbade the fishermen to go to sea (what strange creatures they bring home when they do go, and how the brown naked children, who look like so many shrimps, cling screaming about them at the sight); how all hands are now employed at the wine-making, and her brother is at this moment dancing bare-legged in a vat half as high as the house; how the bigger girls bring baskets of grapes, with eyes closed to keep out the rain; and how the smaller ones gather snails in the wet grass, which will appear with fried pumpkin at the labourer's supper; how, yesterday, he climbed Mount Calvano--that very brother of hers for his guide--his mule carrying him with dainty steps through the plain--past the woods--up a path ever wilder and stonier, where sorb and myrtle fall away, but lentisk and rosemary still cling to the face of the rock--the head and shoulders of some new mountain ever coming into view; how he emerged, at last, where there were mountains all around; below, the green sea; above, the crystal solitudes of heaven; and, down in that green sea, the slumbering Siren islands: the three which stand together, and the one which swam to meet them, but has always remained half-way. These, and other reminiscences, beguile the time till the storm has passed, and the sun breaks over the great mountain which the Englishman has just described. He and little "Fortú" can now go into the village, and see the preparations being made for to-morrow's feast--that of the Virgin of the Rosary--which primitive solemnity he also (by anticipation) describes. He concludes with a brief allusion to the political scirocco which is blackening the English sky, and will not vanish so quickly as this has done; and thus hints at a reason, if the reader desires one, for his temporary rustication in a foreign land.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 72: First in "Hood's Magazine."]

[Footnote 73: Two of these are now in the National Gallery; one presented to it by Sir Charles Eastlake, the other after his death by Lady Eastlake.]

[Footnote 74: Mr. Browning thus skilfully accounts for the discrepancy between the coarseness of his life and the refined beauty of much of his work.]

[Footnote 75: The painter spoken of as "hulking Tom" is the celebrated one known as "Masaccio" (Tommasaccio), who learned in the convent from Lippo Lippi, and has been wrongly supposed to be his teacher. He is also one of those who were credited with the work of Lippino, Lippo Lippi's son.]

[Footnote 76: The Bishop's tomb is entirely fictitious; but something which is made to stand for it is now shown to credulous sight-seers in St. Praxed's Church.]

[Footnote 77: First in "Hood's Magazine."]

[Footnote 78: These were correctly given in the MS., and appeared so in the first proofs of the book; but were changed from considerations of prudence.]

[Footnote 79: A feigned name for one of the three wonder working images which are worshipped in France.]

[Footnote 80: Mr. Browning allows me to give the true names of the persons and places concerned in the story.

Vol. xii. page 5. The Firm Miranda--Mellerio, Brothers. " " 7. St Rambert--St. Aubin. " " 7. Joyeux, Joyous-Gard--Lion, Lionesse. " " 8. Vire-Caen. " " 19. St. Rambertese--St. Aubinese " " 22. Londres--Douvres. " " 22. London--Dover. " " 22. La Roche--Courcelle. " " 22. Monlieu--Bernières. " " 22. Villeneuve--Langrune. " " 22. Pons--Luc. " " 22. La Ravissante--La Délivrande. " " 25. Raimbaux--Bayeux. " " 25. Morillon--Hugonin. " " 25. Mirecourt--Bonnechose. " " 25. Miranda--Mellerio. " " 26. New York--Madrid. " " 30. Clairvaux--Tailleville. " " 31. Gonthier--Bény. " " 31. Rousseau--Voltaire. " " 31. Léonce--Antoine. " " 36. Of "Firm Miranda, London and New York"--"Mellerio Brothers"--Meller, people say. " " 53. Rare Vissante--Dell Yvrande. " " 53. Aldabert--Regnobert. " " 53. Eldebert--Ragnebert. " " 54. Mailleville--Beaudoin. " " 54. Chaumont--Quelen. " " 54. Vertgalant--Talleyrand. " " 59. Ravissantish--Delivrandish. " " 66. Clara de Millefleurs--Anna de Beaupré. " " 67. Coliseum Street--Miromesnil Street. " " 72. Sterner--Mayer. " " 72. Commercy--Larocy. " " 72. Sierck--Metz. " " 73. Muhlhausen--Debacker. " " 73. Carlino Centofanti--Miranda di Mongino. " " 73. Portugal--Italy. " " 88. Vaillant-Mériel. " " 96. Thirty-three--Twenty-five. " " 97. Beaumont--Pasquier. " " 107. Sceaux--Garges. " " 128. Luc de la Maison Rouge--Jean de la Becquetière. " " 128. Claise--Vire. " " 129. Maude--Anne. " " 129. Dionysius--Eliezer. " " 129. Scolastica--Elizabeth. " " 136. Twentieth--Thirteenth. " " 152. Fricquot--Picot. ]

[Footnote 81: Le Croisic is in the Loire Inférieure, at the south-east corner of Brittany. It has now a good bathing establishment, and is much frequented by French people; but sardine-fishing and the crystallizing of sea-salt are still its standing occupations.]

[Footnote 82: The details of this worship as carried on in the island opposite Le Croisic, and which Mr. Browning describes, are mentioned by Strabo.]

[Footnote 83: The story of Paul Desforges Maillard forms the subject of a famous play, Piron's "Métromanie."]

[Footnote 84: It is also, and perhaps chiefly, in this case, a pun on the meaning of the plural noun "cenci," "rags," or "old rags." The cry of this, frequent in Rome, was at first mistaken by Shelley for a voice urging him to go on with his play. Mr. Browning has used it to indicate the comparative unimportance of his contribution to the Cenci story. The quoted Italian proverb means something to the same effect: that every trifle will press in for notice among worthier matters.]

[Footnote 85: That of the Gregorian chant: a cadence concluding on the dominant instead of the key-note.]

[Footnote 86: We have a conspicuous instance of this in "Pippa Passes."]

[Footnote 87: This spontaneous mode of conception may seem incompatible with the systematic adherence to a fixed class of subjects referred to in an earlier chapter. But it by no means is so. With Mr. Browning the spontaneous creative impulse conforms to the fixed rule.

The present remarks properly belong to that earlier chapter. But it was difficult to divide them from their illustrations.]

[Footnote 88: First in "Hood's Magazine."]

[Footnote 89: I may venture to state that these picturesque materials included a tower which Mr. Browning once saw in the Carrara Mountains, a painting which caught his eye years later in Paris; and the figure of a horse in the tapestry in his own drawing-room--welded together in the remembrance of the line from "King Lear" which forms the heading of the poem.]

[Footnote 90: Instances of it occur in the "Dramatic Idyls" and "Jocoseria;" and will be noticed later.]

[Footnote 91: Generally confounded with his contemporary and fellow-citizen, Girolamo del Pacchia.]

[Footnote 92: The (Baron) Kirkup mentioned at vol. xiv. page 5 was a Florence friend of Mr. Browning's, and a connoisseur in literature and art. He was ennobled by the King of Italy for his liberal views and for his services to Italian literature. It was he who discovered the portrait of Dante in the Bargello at Florence.]

[Footnote 93: Nets spread to catch quails as they fly to or from the other side of the Mediterranean. They are slung by rings on to poles, and stand sufficiently high for the quails to fly into them. This, and every other detail of the poem, are given from personal observation.]

NON-CLASSIFIED POEMS (CONTINUED).

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

Even so imperfect, not to say arbitrary, a classification as I have been able to attempt, excludes a number of Mr. Browning's minor poems; for its necessary condition was the presence of some distinctive mood of thought or feeling by which the poem could be classed; and in many, even of the most striking and most characteristic, this condition does not exist. In one group, for instance, the prevailing mood is either too slightly indicated, or too fugitive, or too complex, or even too fantastic, to be designated by any term but "poetic." Others, again, such as songs and legends, depict human emotion in too simple or too general a form, to be thought of as anything but "popular;" and a third group may be formed of dramatic pictures or episodes, which unite the qualities of the other two.

In the first of these groups we must place--

"The Lost Leader." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Nationality in Drinks." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published as "Claret and Tokay," without 3rd Part, in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Garden Fancies. I. The Flower's Name." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)[94]

"Earth's Immortalities." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Home-Thoughts, from the Sea." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Bells and Pomegranates." 1842 or 1845.)

"My Star." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Misconceptions." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"A Pretty Woman." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"In a Year." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Women and Roses." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Before." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"After." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Memorabilia." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"The Last Ride Together." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"A Grammarian's Funeral." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Johannes Agricola in Meditation." ("Men and Women." Published in "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)

"Confessions." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"May and Death." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"Youth and Art." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"A Likeness." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"Appearances." ("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems." 1876.)

"St. Martin's Summer." ("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems." 1876.)

"Prologue to 'La Saisiaz.'" 1878.

In the second group:--

"Cavalier Tunes." ("Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)

"How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Song." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Incident of the French Camp." ("Dramatic Romances." Published as first part of "Camp and Cloister," in "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)

"Count Gismond." ("Dramatic Romances." Published as "France" in "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)

"The Boy and the Angel." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)[95]

"The Glove." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"The Twins." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"The Pied Piper of Hamelin; A Child's Story." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)

"Gold Hair: A Story of Pornic." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"Hervé Riel." ("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems," written at Croisic, 1867. Published in the "Cornhill Magazine." 1871.)

In the third group:--

"Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr." ("Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)

"Meeting at Night." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published as "Night" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Parting at Morning." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published as "Morning" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.")

"The Patriot. An old Story." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Instans Tyrannus." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Mesmerism." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Time's Revenges." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"The Italian in England." ("Dramatic Romances." Published as "Italy in England" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

"Protus." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Apparent Failure." ("Dramatis Personæ." 1864.)

"Waring." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.) This poem is a personal effusion of feeling and reminiscence, which can stand for nothing but itself.

_First Group._

"THE LOST LEADER" is a lament over the defection of a loved and honoured chief. It breathes a tender regret for the moral injury he has inflicted on himself; and a high courage, saddened by the thought of lost support and lost illusions, but not shaken by it. The language of the poem shows the lost "leader" to have been a poet. It was suggested by Wordsworth, in his abandonment (with Southey and others) of the liberal cause.

"NATIONALITY IN DRINKS." A fantastic little comment on the distinctive national drinks--Claret, Tokay, and Beer. The beer is being drunk off Cape Trafalgar to the health of Nelson, and introduces an authentic and appropriate anecdote of him. But the laughing little claret flask, which the speaker has on another occasion seen plunged for cooling into a black-faced pond, suggests to him the image of a "gay French lady," dropped, with straightened limbs, into the silent ocean of death; while the Hungarian Tokay (Tokayer Ausbruch), in its concentrated strength, seems to jump on to the table as a stout pigmy castle-warder, strutting and swaggering in his historic costume, and ready to defy twenty men at once if the occasion requires.

"THE FLOWER'S NAME. Garden Fancies," I. A lover's reminiscence of a garden in which he and his lady-love have walked together, and of a flower which she has consecrated by her touch and voice: its dreamy Spanish name, which she has breathed upon it, becoming part of the charm.

"EARTH'S IMMORTALITIES." A sad and subtle little satire on the vaunted permanence of love and fame. The poet's grave falls to pieces. The words: "love me for ever," appeal to us from a tombstone which records how Spring garlands are severed by the hand of June, and June's fever is quenched in winter's snow.

"HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA." An utterance of patriotic pride and gratitude, aroused in the mind of an Englishman, by the sudden appearance of Trafalgar in the blood-red glow of the southern setting sun.

"MY STAR" may be taken as a tribute to the personal element in love: the bright peculiar light in which the sympathetic soul reveals itself to the object of its sympathy.

"MISCONCEPTIONS" illustrates the false hopes which may be aroused in the breast of any devoted creature by an incidental and momentary acceptance of its devotion.

"A PRETTY WOMAN" is the picture of a simple, compliant, exquisitely pretty, and hopelessly shallow woman: incapable of love, though a mere nothing will win her liking. And the question is raised, whether such a creature is not perfect in itself, and would not be marred by any attempt to improve it, or extract from it a different use. The author decides in the affirmative. A rose is best "graced," not by reproducing its petals in precious stones for a king to preserve; not by plucking it to "smell, kiss, wear," and throw away; but by simply leaving it where it grows. A "pretty" woman is most appropriately treated when nothing is asked of her, but to be so.

"IN A YEAR" is a wondering and sorrowful little comment on a man's shallowness and inconstancy.

"WOMEN AND ROSES" is the impression of a dream, and both vague and vivid, as such impressions are. The author _dreams_ of a "red rose-tree," with three roses upon it: one withered, the second full-blown, the third still in the bud; and, floating round each, a generation of women: those famed in the past; the loved and loving of the present; the "beauties yet unborn." He casts his passion at the feet of the dead; but they float past him unmoved. He enfolds in it the glowing forms of the living; but these also elude him. He pours it into the budding life, which may thus respond to his own; but the procession of maidens drifts past him too. They all circle unceasingly round their own rose.

"BEFORE" and "AFTER" are companion poems, which show how differently an act may present itself in prospect and in remembrance, whether regarded in its abstract justification, or in its actual results. The question is that of a duel; and "BEFORE" is the utterance of a third person to whom the propriety of fighting it seems beyond a doubt. "A great wrong has been done. The wronged man, who is also the better one, is bound to assert himself in defence of the right. If he is killed, he will have gained his heaven. For his slayer, hell will have begun: for he will feel the impending judgment, in the earth which still offers its fruits; in the sky, which makes no sign; in the leopard-like conscience[96] which leers in mock obeisance at his side, ready to spring on him whenever the moment comes. There has been enough of delay and extenuation. Let the culprit acknowledge his guilt, or take its final consequences."

The duel is fought, but it is the guilty one who falls; and "AFTER" gives the words of his adversary--his boyhood's friend--struck with bitter remorse for what he has done. As the man who wronged him lies wrapped in the majesty of death, his offence dwindles into insignificance; and the survivor can only feel how disproportionate has been the punishment, and above all, how unavailing. "Would," he exclaims, "that the past could be recalled, and they were boys again together! It would be so easy then to endure!"

"MEMORABILIA" shows the perspective of memory in a tribute to the poet Shelley. His fugitive contact with a commonplace life, like the trace of an eagle's passage across the moor, leaves an illumined spot amidst blankness.

"THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER" depicts the emotions of a ride, which a finally dismissed lover has been allowed to take with his beloved. He has vainly passed his youth in loving her. But as this boon is granted, she lies for a moment on his breast. "She might have loved him more; she might also have liked him less." As they ride away side by side, a sense of resignation comes over him. His life is not alone in its failure. Every one strives. Few or none succeed. The best success proves itself to be shallow. And if it were otherwise--if the goal could be reached on earth--what care would one take for heaven? Then the peace which is in him absorbs the consciousness of reality. He fancies himself riding with the loved one till the end of time; and he asks himself if his destined heaven may not prove to be this.

"A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL" describes the rendering of the last honours to one whose life has consumed itself in the pursuit of knowledge. The knowledge pursued has been pedantic and minute, but for him it represented a mighty truth; and he has refused to live, in the world's sense, till he had mastered that truth, co-extensive, as he believed it, with life everlasting. Like Sordello, though in a different way, he would KNOW before he allowed himself to BE. He would realize the Whole; he would not discount it. His disciples are bearing him to a mountain-top, that the loftiness of his endeavour may be symbolized by his last resting-place. He is to lie

"where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened." (vol. v. p. 159.)

where the new morning for which he waited will figuratively first break upon him.

"JOHANNES AGRICOLA IN MEDITATION" is a glowing and fantastic description of the privileges of the "elect," cast in the form of a monologue, and illustrated in the person of the speaker. Johannes Agricola was a German reformer of the sixteenth century, and alleged founder of the sect of the Antinomians: a class of Christians who extended the Low Church doctrine of the insufficiency of good works, and declared the children of God to be exempt from the necessity of performing them; absolved from doing right, because unable to do wrong; because no sin would be accounted to them as such. Some authorities contend that he personally rejected only the Mosaic, not the moral law; but Mr. Browning has credited him with the full measure of Antinomian belief, and makes him specially exult in the Divine assurance that the concentrated venom of the worst committed sins can only work in him for salvation. He also comments wonderingly on the state of the virtuous man and woman, and of the blameless child, "undone," as he was saved, before the world began; whose very striving is turned to sin; whose life-long prayer and sacrifice can only end in damnation. But, as he declares, he praises God the more that he cannot understand Him; that His ways are inscrutable, that His love may not be bought.

"CONFESSIONS" is the answer of a dying man to the clergyman's question: does he "view the world as a vale of tears?" His fancy is living through a romance of past days, of which the scene comes back to him in the arrangement of physic-bottles on a table beside him, while the curtain, which may be green, but to his dying eyes is blue, makes the June weather about it all. He is seeing the girl he loved, as watching for him from a terrace near the stopper of that last and tallest bottle in the row; and he is retracing the path by which he could creep, unseen by any eyes but hers, to the "rose-wreathed" gate which was their trysting-place. "No, reverend sir," is the first and last word of his reply, "the world has been no vale of tears to me."

"MAY AND DEATH" expresses a mourner's wish, so natural to the egotism of a deep sorrow, that the season which robbed him of his friend's life should bury all its sweetness with him. The speaker retracts this wish, in justice to the many pairs of friends who have each their right to happiness. But there is, he says, one red-streaked plant which their May might spare, since one wood alone would miss it. For its leaf is dashed as with the blood of Spring; and whenever henceforth it grows in that same place, the drop will have been drawn from his heart.[97]