Chapter 11

So, we were left galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"

"How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone; And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall, Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer; Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is--friends flocking round As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground; And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine, Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

The monologue of the dying Bishop is as great a masterpiece as _My Last Duchess_; it has not a superfluous word, and in only a few lines gives us the spirit of the Italian Renaissance. Ruskin said that Browning is "unerring in every sentence he writes about the Middle Ages, always vital, right, and profound." He added, "I know no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit." Yet Browning had never seen Rome until a few months before this poem was published. It is an example, not of careful study, but of the inexplicable divination of genius. Browning permits a delirious old Bishop to talk a few lines, and a whole period of history is written.

The church of Saint Prassede is in a dirty little alley in Rome, hard by the great church of Saint Maria Maggiore. You push through the group of filthy, importunate beggars, open a leather door, and you drop from the twentieth to the sixteenth century. It is one of the most ornate churches in Rome; the mosaic angels in the choir are precisely as the poet describes them. The tomb of the imaginary Gandolf may be identified with a Bishop's tomb on the south side of the church, and the Latin inscription under it, while it does not contain the form "elucescebat," is not pure Tully, but rather belongs to the Latin of Ulpian's time. The recumbent figure is in exact accord with the description by Browning.

Skeptics are essential to the welfare of the Church; it is only in periods of sharp, skilful hostility that the Church becomes pure. In the Middle Ages, when it ran riot with power, there were plenty of churchmen as corrupt as our dying man. His love for a Greek manuscript is as sensual as his love for his mistress; and having lived a life of physical delight, it is natural that his last thoughts should concern themselves with the abode of his body rather than with the destination of his soul. Of course his mind is wandering, or he would not speak with quite such shameless cynicism. Browning has made him talk of Saint Praxed at _his_ sermon on the mount, in order to prove the delirium. S. Praxed was a female saint.

The constant confusion of Greek mythology with the ritual of the Christian church is a characteristic feature both of this poem and of the period of history it represents.

Kipling is particularly fond of this work, and it will be remembered what use he makes of it in _Stalky and Co_.

THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED'S CHURCH

ROME, 15--

1845

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity! Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back? Nephews--sons mine ... ah God, I know not! Well-- She, men would have to be your mother once, Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was! What's done is done, and she is dead beside, Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since, And as she died so must we die ourselves, And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream. Life, how and what is it? As here I lie In this state-chamber, dying by degrees, Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask "Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all. Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace; And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: --Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South He graced his carrion with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. --Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! Draw close: that conflagration of my church --What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye find ... Ah God, I know not, I! ... Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, And corded up in a tight olive-frail, Some lump, ah God, of _lapis lazuli_, Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast ... Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, That brave Frascati villa with its bath, So, let the blue lump poise between my knees, Like God the Father's globe on both his hands Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay, For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years: Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black-- 'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath? The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables ... but I know Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope To revel down my villas while I gasp Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! Nay, boys, ye love me--all of jasper, then! Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve. My bath must needs be left behind, alas! One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut, There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world-- And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? --That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line-- Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, Dying in state and by such slow degrees, I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work: And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts Grow, with a certain humming in my ears, About the life before I lived this life, And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests, Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount, Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes, And new-found agate urns as fresh as day, And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet, --Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend? No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. All _lapis_, all, sons! Else I give the Pope My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart? Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick, They glitter like your mother's for my soul, Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze, Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term, And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, To comfort me on my entablature Whereon I am to lie till I must ask "Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there! For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude To death--ye wish it--God, ye wish it! Stone-- Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat As if the corpse they keep were oozing through-- And no more _lapis_ to delight the world! Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there, But in a row: and, going, turn your backs --Ay, like departing altar-ministrants, And leave me in my church, the church for peace, That I may watch at leisure if he leers-- Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone, As still he envied me, so fair she was!

Browning gives us a terrible study of jealousy in _The Laboratory_. The chemist says nothing, but the contrast between the placid face of the old scientist, intent only upon his work, and the wildly passionate countenance of the little woman with him, is sufficiently impressive. Those were the days when murder was a fine art. She plans the public death of the woman she hates so that the lover will never be able to forget the dying face. Radiant in queenly beauty, with the smile of satisfaction that accompanies the inner assurance of beauty and power--in a moment she will be convulsively rolling on the floor, her swollen face purplish-black with the poison, her mouth emitting foam like a mad dog. There is no doubt that the little murderess intends to follow her rival to the tomb. She has given the chemist her entire fortune as pay for the drop of poison; he may kiss her, if he likes! All shame, all womanly reserve are gone: what does anything matter now? It is a true study of jealousy, because the little creature does not dream of attacking the _man_ who deserted her; all her hellish energy is directed against the woman. Indeed the poison that she buys will not transform her rival more completely than the dreadful poison of jealousy has already transformed her from what she was to what she is.

The language and metre fit the thought. Tennyson passed a severe judgment on the first line

Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly

saying that it lacked smoothness, that it was a very difficult mouthful. But is this not intentional and absolutely right? The woman is speaking slowly with compressed lips, her voice convulsed with terrible hatred and the terrible resolution for revenge.

THE LABORATORY

ANCIEN REGIME

1844

I

Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, May gaze thro' these faint smokes curling whitely, As thou pliest thy trade in this devil's-smithy-- Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?

II

He is with her, and they know that I know Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church, to pray God in, for them!--I am here.

III

Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste, Pound at thy powder,--I am not in haste! Better sit thus, and observe thy strange things, Than go where men wait me and dance at the King's.

IV

That in the mortar--you call it a gum? Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come! And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue, Sure to taste sweetly,--is that poison too?

V

Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures, What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures! To carry pure death in an earring, a casket, A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!

VI

Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give, And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live! But to light a pastile, and Elise, with her head And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!

VII

Quick--is it finished? The colour's too grim! Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim? Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir, And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!

VIII

What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me! That's why she ensnared him: this never will free The soul from those masculine eyes,--say, "no!" To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go.

IX

For only last night, as they whispered, I brought My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!

X

Not that I bid you spare her the pain; Let death be felt and the proof remain: Brand, burn up, bite into its grace-- He is sure to remember her dying face!

XI

Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose; It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close: The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee! If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?

XII

Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill, You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will! But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings Ere I know it--next moment I dance at the King's!

_Fra Lippo Lippi_ and _Andrea del Sarto_ are both great art poems, and both in striking contrast. The former is dynamic, the latter static. The tumultuous vivacity of the gamin who became a painter contrasts finely with the great technician, a fellow almost damned in a fair wife. Fra Lippo Lippi was a street mucker, like Gavroche; he unconsciously learned to paint portraits by the absolute necessity of studying human faces on the street. Nothing sharpens observation like this. He had to be able to tell at a glance whether the man he accosted would give him food or a kick. When they took him to the cloister, he obtained a quite new idea about religion. He naturally judged that, as he judged everything else in life, from the practical point of view. Heretofore, like many small boys, he had rather despised religion, and thought the monks were fools. "Don't you believe it," he cries: "there is a lot in religion. You get free clothes, free shelter, three meals a day, and you don't have to work! Why, it's the easiest thing I know." The monks discovered his talent with pencil and brush, and they made him decorate the chapel. When the work was done, he called them in. To their amazement and horror, the saints and angels, instead of being ideal faces, were the living portraits of the familiar figures about the cloister. "Why, there's the iceman! there's the laundress!" He rebelled when they told him this was wicked: he said it was all a part of God's world, that the business of the artist was to interpret life; he wished they would let him enter the pulpit, take the Prior's place, and preach a sermon that would make them all sit up.

The philosophy of æsthetics has never been more truly or more succinctly stated than in these lines:

Or say there's beauty with no soul at all-- (I never saw it--put the case the same--) If you get simple beauty and nought else, You get about the best thing God invents: That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed, Within yourself, when you return him thanks.

Contemplation of beautiful objects in nature, art, and literature, which perhaps at first sight have no significance, gradually awakens in our own hearts a dawning sense of what Beauty may mean; and thus enlarges and develops our minds, and makes them susceptible to the wonder and glory of life. The relation of art to life--art being the teacher that makes us understand life--is perfectly well understood by Fra Lippo Lippi.

For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see.

If one stands to-day in the Ancient and Modern Gallery in Florence, and contemplates Fra Lippo Lippi's masterpiece, _The Coronation of the Virgin_, and reads the lines about it in this poem, one will get a new idea of the picture. It is a representation of the painter's whole nature, half genius, half mucker--the painting is a glory of form and color, and then in the corner the artist had the assurance to place himself in his monk's dress among the saints and angels, where he looks as much out of place as a Bowery Boy in a Fifth Avenue drawing-room. Not content with putting himself in the picture, he stuck a Latin tag on himself, which means, "This fellow did the job."

Browning loves Fra Lippo Lippi, in spite of the man's impudence and debauchery; because the painter loved life, had a tremendous zest for it, and was not ashamed of his enthusiasm. The words he speaks came from the poet's own heart:

The world and life's too big to pass for a dream.... It makes me mad to see what men shall do And we in our graves! This world's no blot for us, Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good: To find its meaning is my meat and drink.

The change from _Fra Lippo Lippi_ to _Andrea del Sarto_ is the change from a blustering March day to a mild autumn twilight. The original picture in Florence which inspired the poem represents Andrea and his wife sitting together, while she is holding the letter from King Francis. This is a poem of acquiescence, as the other is a poem of protest, and never was language more fittingly adapted to the mood in each instance. One can usually recognise Andrea's pictures clear across the gallery rooms; he has enveloped them all in a silver-grey gossamer mist, and in some extraordinary manner Browning has contrived to clothe his poem in the same diaphanous garment. It is a poem of twilight, of calm, of failure in success. Andrea's pictures are superior technically to those of his great contemporaries--Rafael, Michel Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci--but their imperfect works have a celestial glory, the glory of aspiration, absent from his perfect productions. His work indeed is,

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, Dead perfection, no more.

It is natural, that he, whose paintings show perfection of form without spirit, should have married a woman of physical beauty devoid of soul. She has ruined him, but she could not have ruined him had he been a different man. He understands her, however, in the quiet light of his own failure. He tells her she must not treat him so badly that he can not paint at all; and adds the necessary explanation that his ceasing to paint would stop her supplies of cash. For although it is incomprehensible to her, people are willing to give large sums of money for her ridiculous husband's ridiculous daubs. His mind, sensitive to beauty, is drunk with his wife's loveliness of face and form; and like all confirmed drunkards, he can not conquer himself now, though otherwise he knows it means death and damnation. He has a complete knowledge of the whole range of his powers, and of his limitations. He can not help feeling pride in his marvellous technique, that he can do what other men dream of doing; but he knows that without aspiration the soul is dead.

Poor Andrea! History has treated him harshly. He is known throughout all time as "the tailor's son," and Browning has given him in this immortal poem a condemnation that much of his work does not really deserve. For there is inspiration in many of Andrea's Madonnas. Browning, with his fixed idea of the glory of the imperfect, the divine evidence of perpetual development, could not forgive Andrea for being called the "faultless painter." Thus Browning has made of him a horrible example, has used him merely as the text for a sermon.

There was just enough truth to give Browning his opportunity. The superiority of Rafael over Andrea lies precisely in the aspiration of the former's work. Schopenhauer says the whole Christian religion is in the face of Rafael's _Saint Cecilia_, "an entire and certain gospel." Andrea's virgins have more of the beauty of this world: Rafael's have the beauty of holiness.

ANDREA DEL SARTO (CALLED "THE FAULTLESS PAINTER")

1855