20. See note above on Charles Albert. 41. crypt. Place of concealment; commonly used of a place for burial. 46. My fears were not for myself, but for my country; on me Rested the hopes of Italy.' 35, 75. duomo. (Italian) Cathedral. 76. Tenebra. A service of the Roman Catholic Church, which involves the gradual extinction of the lights on the altar. The Latin word literally means 'darkness.' 81. It was not unusual for a priest to render service to the cause of Italian liberty. 790. 125-7. Charles Albert became King of Sardinia in 1831 and resigned the crown to his son, Victor Emmanuel, in 1849. He retired to Portugal, where he died in the same year, 'broken-hearted and misunderstood.' The patriot's wish as expressed by Browning was, therefore, fulfilled four years after the poem was published. Charles Albert's position was a very difficult one, and historians generally take a ricr favorable view of his conduct than is here given. Browning has merely given characteristic exprction to the sentiment of the ardent Italian patriots of the time. 138-44. These lines forcefully represent the divi sion of opinion in Italy during the apparently fruitless struggles for independence. THE LOST LEADER The suggestion for this early poem was undoubtedly Wordsworth's abandonment of the Liberal principles of his youth for the reactionary Conservatism of his old age; but it was only a sugges tion. 'Once call my fancy portrait Wordsworth,' Browning wrote, and how much more ought one to say.' In another letter he speaks of Wordsworth's 'moral and intellectual superiority,' and protests against taking this poem as an attempt to draw his real likeness. It is really a character study from Browning's own imagination, and should be so regarded, in justice to both poets. 791. 29-30. It is best for him to fight for the side he has chosen as well as he can, to fight so well indeed as to threaten us with defeat before the hour of our final triumph. Then let him receive,' etc. HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD It is interesting to contrast Browning's preference for English birds and flowers, expressed in this poem after his earlier visits to the Continent, with the love of Italy breathed in De Gustibus' p. 802, which was written after his settlement with his wife in Florence. HOME THOUGHTS FROM THE SEA Written off Gibraltar during Browning's first voyage to Italy in 1838. 1-7. Cape St. Vincent, Cadiz Bay, Trafalgar are all associated with English victories. Gibraltar, the famous rock-fortress which guards the entrance to the Mediterranean, has been held by Great Britain since its capture in 1704. These glorious memories inspire the poet with a sense of his duty to his country, and he mingles prayer for the fu Browning found the suggestion for this, one of his finest religious poems, in the Old Testament narrative of Saul's depression and its relief by the harping of David, the shepherd boy 1 Samuel xvi, 14-23, which the teacher would do well to read to the class in order to show how the poet has filled with life and color the mere hints of the original. Browning has read into the ancient story not only doctrines and ideas taken from the New Testament, but modern religious views and sentiments. 1. Abner. The son of Ner, captain of Saul's host. See Samuel xxvi, 5. 792. 36-41. Professor Albert S. Cook suggests that Browning obtained his hints for these tunes from Longus's romance of Dephnis and Chloe. The first is found on pp. 303-4 (Smith's Translation, Bohn ed.), 'He ran through all variations of pastorai melody, he played the tune which the oxen obey, and which attracts the goats that in which the sheep delight,' etc.; pp. 332-4, . standing under the shade of a beech-tree, he took his pipe from his scrip and breathed into it very gently. The goats stood still, merely lifting up their heads. Next he played the pasture tune, upon which they all put down their heads and began to graze. Now he produced some notes soft and sweet in tone; at once his herd lay down. After this he piped in a sharp key, and they ran off to the wood, as if a wolf were in sight.' In answer to the question as to whether there is any historical foundation for David's songs, Rabbi Charles Fleischer of Boston replied in a letter to the editors: I believe that David's songs in Browning's poem Saul are the inspired melodies of our nineteenth century David rather than the songs of Israel's poetic shepherdking. While, then, I believe that these melodies in Saul were not current among the Jews of old, I know that they would serve well to express beliefs and ideals characteristic of the best minds among the Jews of to-day.'- Porter and Clarke. 45. Jerboa. The jumping hare. 795. 203. Hebron was one of the cities of refuge. but Browning evidently takes it as the name of a mountain. 204. Kidron. A brook near Jerusalem. The first nine stanzas of this poem (to line 96) were published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics in 1845; the later stanzas were written after his marriage, and published in Men and Women (1855). The latter part shows a marked advance in intensity of religious conviction, probably due to Mrs. Browning's influence. The student should note that David first played on his harp (36-60); then sang (68-190); and finally spoke (237-312). The inner structure of the poem should be carefully studied so as to bring out the gradual rise of theme from external nature to human activities and sympathies. from the glory of kingship to the glory of fame, and so to the culmination of Divine Love as manifested in the Incarnation. LOVE AMONG THE RUINS This poem was written when Browning was in Rome in the winter of 1853-4, and is said to have been suggested by the contrast between the present desolation of the Campagna and its former magnificence; but the scene is imaginatively treated, and cannot be identified with any place in particular. The living love, even of an obscure boy and girl, counted for more with Browning than all the dead glories of the earth. A WOMAN'S LAST WORD The title refers to the old proverb, a woman will always have the last word in a quarrel.' This 'woman's last word,' however, is not one of recrimination, but of reconciliation and submission. She will even sacrifice what she believes to be true (st. iv), lest she should lose her domestic peace as Eve lost Paradise. A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S Baldassare Galuppi (1706-85), a musical composer of some note in his day, who was for the last years of his life organist at St. Mark's Cathedral, Venice, is here taken by Browning as an exponent and critic of the frivolous, empty life with which the name of this Italian city has long been associated. But the toccata speaks to the man who plays it a student of science not only of the emptiness of life at Venice in the eighteenth century, but of the emptiness of life in general, for st. xiii is, of course, to be taken ironically; as he thinks of the beauty and gaiety of Venice all turned to dust and ashes,' he feels chilly and grown old,' for even so all human activities seem to pass away into nothingness. The toccata is marked by the repetition of phrases calculated to display a peculiar facility of touch (It. toccare, to touch) on the musician's part. 799. 6. The ceremony of wedding the Adriatic was instituted in 1174 by Pope Alexander III, who gave the Doge a gold ring from his own finger in token of the victory achieved by the Venetian fleet at Istria over Frederick Barbarossa, in defense of the Pope's quarrel. When his Holiness gave the ring, he desired the Doge to throw a similar ring into the sea annually, in commemoration of the event.' (Brewer.) 8. Shylock's bridge. The Rialto. 18. clavichord. An old-fashioned instrument, with keys and strings, the predecessor of the modern pianoforte. The musical technicalities made use of are thus elucidated by Porter and Clarke, Poems of Robert Browning: 'The technical musical allusions in the poem are all to be found in the 7th, 8th, and 9th stanzas. The lesser thirds (line 19) are minor thirds (intervals containing three semitones), and are of common occurrence, but the diminished sixth is an interval rarely used. Ordinarily a diminished sixth (seven semitones), exactly the same interval as a perfect fifth, instead of giving a plaintive, mournful, or minor impression, would suggest a feeling of rest and satisfaction. There is one way, however, in which it can be used as a suspension, in which the root of the chord on the lowered supertonic of the scale is suspended from above into the chord with added seventh on the super-tonic, making a diminished sixth between the root of the first and third of the second chord. The effect of this progression is most dismal, and possibly Brown. ing had it in mind. Suspensions (line 20) are notes which are held over from one chord into another, and must be made according to certain strict musical rules. This holding over of a note always produces a dissonance, and must be followed by a concord in other words, a solution. Sevenths are very important dissonances in music, and a commiserating seventh (line 21) is most likely the variety called a minor seventh. Being a somewhat less mournful interval than the lesser thirds and the diminished sixths, whether real or imaginary, yet not so final as "those solutions" which seem to put an end to all uncertainty, and therefore to life, they arouse in the listeners to Galuppi's play. ing a hope that life may last, although in a sort of dissonantal, Wagnerian fashion. The commiserating sevenths" are closely connected with the "dominant's persistence (line 24). The domi nant chord in music is the chord written on the fifth degree of the scale, and it almost always has a seventh added to it, and in a large percentage of cases is followed by the tonic, the chord on the first degree of the scale. Now, in fugue form a theme is first presented in the tonic key, then the same theme is repeated in the dominant key, the latter being called the answer; after some development of the theme the fugue comes to what is called an episode, after which the theme is presented first, in the dominant. "Hark! the dominant's persistence" al. ludes to this musical fact; but according to rule this dominant must be answered in the tonic an octave above the first presentation of the theme, and "So an octave struck the answer." Thus the inexorable solution comes in after the dominant's persistence. Although life seemed possible with commiserating sevenths, the tonic, a resistless fate, strikes the answer that all must end.' MY STAR This poem has been interpreted as having personal reference to Mrs. Browning; but there is no reason to set it apart from the other poems described by Browning as always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons.' 600. 4. angled spar. A prism of Iceland spar Las the property of polarizing or dividing a ray of light into two parts. Suppose this polarized ray be passed through a plate of Iceland spar, at a certain angle, and a second prism of Iceland spar be rotated in front of it, different colors will be given out, complementary tints being ninety degrees apart, and four times during the rotation the light will vanish completely. Some such experiment as this was probably in the poet's mind when he made the comparison with the angled spar.' (Por. ter and Clarke.) THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER The utter devotion of this poem is, in Brown. ing's view, characteristic of true love. 801. 62. Ten lines. Of history or biography. 65. the Abbey. Westminster Abbey, where England's heroes are commemorated. 67-88. Cf. In a Balcony, 664-7: 'We live, and they experiment on life- MEMORABILIA Things worth remembering.' This poem is said to have been suggested to Browning by overhearing a man say in a shop that he had met and spoken to Shelley. By the metaphor of the eagle's feather, Browning conveys to the reader that if such a piece of good fortune had happened to him, it would have been enough to blot out all other incidents. 'DE GUSTIBUS' The Latin proverb ' De gustibus non est disputandum,' corresponds to the English one There's no accounting for tastes.' Browning says that if our preferences persist after death, his will be, not for England, but for Italy. 802. 22. cicala, the tree-cricket, often heard in Italy in the heat of summer. 36. liver-wing, right arm. The Bourbon rule in Southern Italy was exceedingly unpopular, and numerous attempts were made to cast it off; the king here referred to was Ferdinand II, whose cruelties were denounced by Gladstone in 1851. He was succeeded by his son, who was expelled in 1860, and Naples was incorporated with the new king. dom of Italy. Browning sympathized with all the Italians' attempts to regain their liberty and independence, even when they went the length of assassination. ANDREA DEL SARTO This is one of the most remarkable of Browning's shorter poems, whether regarded as a study of character or of art. It was written when he was living in Florence, in answer to a request from a friend in England for a copy of the portrait of Andrea del Sarto and his wife in the Pitti Palace. Browning could not get one, and sent the poem instead. Mr. Ernest Radford thus describes the picture: The artist and his wife are presented at half length. Andrea turns towards her with a pleading expression on his face. His right arm is round her; he leans forward as if searching her face for the strength that has gone from himself. She holds the letter in her hand, and looks neither at that nor at him, but straight out of the canvas. And the beautiful face with the redbrown hair is passive and unruffled, and awfully expressionless. There is silent thunder in this face if there ever was, but there is no anger. gests only a very mild, and at the same time immutable determination to have her own way.' It sug Browning develops, in his favorite form of the dramatic monologue, the suggestion given by Andrea's portrait of himself; for the details he is chiefly indebted to Vasari's Life of Andrea del Sarto, as will be seen from the following extracts (translation by Blashfield and Hopkins, with Mrs. Foster's notes): -Had this master possessed a somewhat bolder and more elevated mind, had he been as much distinguished for higher qualifications as he was for genius and depth of judgment in the art he practised, he would, beyond all doubt, have been without an equal. But there was a certain timidity of mind, a sort of diffidence and want of force in his nature, which rendered it impossible that those evidences of ardor and animation, which are proper to the more exalted character, should ever appear in him; nor did he at any time. display one particle of that elevation which, could it but have been added to the advantages wherewith he was endowed, would have rendered him a truly divine painter. At that time there was a most beautiful girl in the Via di San Gallo, who was married to a cap-maker, and who, though born of a poor and vicious father, carried about her as much pride and haughtiness as beauty and fascination. She delighted in trapping the hearts of men, and among others ensnared the unlucky Andrea, whose immoderate love for her soon caused him to neglect the studies demanded by his art, and in great measure to discontinue the assistance which he had given his parents. Now it chanced that a sudden and grievous illness seized the husband of this woman, who rose no more from his bed, but died thereof. Without taking counsel of his friends therefore; without regard to the dignity of his art or the consideration due to his genius, and to the eminence he had attained with so much labor; without a word, in short, to any of his kindred, Andrea took this Lucrezia di Baccio del Fede, such was the name of the woman, to be his wife; her beauty appearing to him to merit thus much at his hands, and his love for her having more influence over him than the glory and honor towards which he had begun to make such hopeful advances. But when this news became known in Florence the respect and affection which his friends had previously borne to Andrea changed to contempt and disgust, since it appeared to them that the darkness of this disgrace had obscured for a time all the glory and renown obtained by his talents. But he destroyed his own peace as well as estranged his friends by this act, seeing that he soon became jealous, and found that he had besides fallen into the hands of an artful woman, who made him do as she pleased in all things. He abandoned his own poor father and mother, for example, and adopted the father and sisters of his wife in their stead; insomuch that all who knew the facts mourned over him, and he soon began to be as much avoided as he had previously been sought after.' Andrea found this mode of life so oppressive that, on the advice of his friends, he put his wife in safe keeping and went to Paris, where he was richly rewarded by the King of France for his work. But a pitiful letter from his wife induced him to return. Taking the money which the king confided to him for the purchase of pictures, statues and other fine things, he set off, therefore, having first sworn on the gospels to return in a few months. Arrived happily in Florence, he lived joyously with his wife for some time, making large presents to her father and sisters, but doing nothing for his own parents, whom he would not even see, and who, at the end of a certain period, ended their lives in great poverty and misery.' Having spent the money entrusted to him in building a house and indulging himself in various other pleasures, Andrea was afraid to return to France, and remained in Florence in the very lowest position, procuring a livelihood and passing his time as he best might.' So says Vasari, who at one time was Andrea's pupil, and published his Lives of the Painters while Andrea's widow was still in Florence; but recent investigation has failed to reveal the slightest evidence in support of the charge of embezzlement made by Vasari against Andrea, and it has been generaly discredited. 803. 15. Fiesolé. The village on the top of the ridge overlooking the quarter of Florence in which Andrea lived. 25. It saves a model. 'Andrea rarely painted the countenance of a woman in any place that he did not avail himself of the features of his wife; and if at any time he took his model from any other face there was always a resemblance to hers in the painting, not only because he had this woman constantly before him and depicted her so frequently but also and what is still more, because he had her lineaments engraven on his heart; it thus happens that almost all his female heads have a certain something which recalls that of his wife.' 32. no one's. Not even his. (Vasari.) 36-45. Lucrezia has lost only her first pride in her husband; he has lost all his youthful ambitions and aspirations, as the day loses its noontide splendor, and the glory of summer changes to the decay of autumn. 43. huddled more inside. The trees are huddled together within the convent wall, and have no room to grow; but they are, perhaps, safer - so, perhaps, too, is the painter in his own home, though he misses the inspiration and development that come from contact with the world. Andrea acquiesces in his seclusion, but he cannot help regretting his lost opportunities. 93. Morello. A mountain near Florence. 804. 105. the Urbinate. Raphael of Urbino, the most famous of Italian painters; he died in 1520, ten years before Andrea. Vasari says that Andrea copied a portrait by Raphael with such exactnccs that Raphael's own pupils, who had helped in the painting, could not tell the copy from the original. 130. Agnolo. The great Italian painter usually called Michael Angelo in English; he was doubtless the Someone' of line 76; Andrea refers to him again in line 184. 174. ere the triumph. Of my genius in art. 805. 189-193. Bocchi, in his Beauties of Florence, states that Michael Angelo said to Raphael, referring to Andrea: There is a little man in Florence, who, if he were employed upon such great works as have been given to you, would bring the sweat to your brow.' 199. Lucrezia has interrupted to ask Andrea about whom and what he is talking. She is evidently paying no attention. 209-10. Mount Morello can no longer be seen, the lights on the city wall are lit, and the little owls, named in Italy from their call, Chiu, are crying; darkness is falling on the house, as on Andrea's life. 212-18. See above for the charge against Andrea of building a house for himself with the money entrusted to him by King Francis to buy pictures with. THE GUARDIAN ANGEL In the Church of St. Augustine at Fano, on the Adriatic, there is a picture called The Guardian Angel,' by Guercino, an Italian painter of the seventeenth century. It represents an angel with outspread wings embracing a kneeling child, whose hands he folds in prayer. 6. another child. The poet himself. 7. retrieve. Bring back to the right way. 14-16. In the picture cherubs point to the opened heaven, and the child looks upward past the angel's head. 18. bird of God. This beautiful expression is translated from Dante's Purgatorio. 20-21. The angel seems to be enfolding the child with the skirt of his robe, held in his left hand. 39-40. The angel's head is turned away, but the reason given is Browning's own. 54. 46. My angel with me, too. His wife. See line 307. 54. dear old friend. Alfred Domett, a muchprized friend of Browning's youth, who in 1842 settled in New Zealand. 56. Ancona. On the Italian coast, near Fano. Browning and his wife visited both places soon after their first settlement in Italy in 1846, and the poem was doubtless written at the time. Mrs. Browning writes of the visit to her friend, Miss Mitford: So we went to Ancona -a striking sea city, holding up against the brown rocks, and elbowing out the purple tides - beautiful to look upon. An exfoliation of the rock itself you would call the houses that seem to grow there - so identical is the color and character.' A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL This poem exhibits something of the life of the Scaligers and the Casaubons, of many an early scholar, like Roger Bacon's friend Pierre Maricourt, working at some region of knowledge, and content to labor without fame so long as he mastered thoroughly whatever he undertook.' (Contemporary Review, IV, 135.) The scholars are bearing their master to his tomb in one of the Italian hill-cities, perched on the top of the rocks, like Orvieto or Perugia. 3. croft. Enclosed tilled or pasture land. thorpe. Little village. 34. Apollo. The classical ideal of manly beauty. His statues usually represent him holding the lyre. 39. Moaned he. Did he moan? 45. the world. on escaping. 56. the curtain. 68. Sooner. to give. Of classical lore, which was bent Of the play of life. Before he had gathered all books had 808. 86. Calculus. The stone. 88. Tussis. Cough. 95. soul-hydroptic. Every lust is a kind of hydropic distemper, and the more we drink the more we shall thirst.' (Tillotson, quoted by Webster.) hydroptic, dropsical. 96-100. Cf. Abt Vogler, 1. 72, p. 812. 113-124. Cf. Rabbi ben Ezra, stanzas xxiii-xxv, p. 815. 129-131. Hoti, Oun, De. Greek particles, meaning respectively that,' 'therefore,' 'towards.' As to the last, Browning wrote to the editor of the London Daily News on Nov. 20, 1874, as follows: In a clever article you speak of "the doctrine of the enclitic De "-" which with all deference to Mr. Browning, in point of fact, does not exist." No, not to Mr. Browning: but pray defer to Herr Buttmann, whose fifth list of "enclitics ends "with the inseparable De "- or to Curtius, whose fifth list ends also with (meaning towards, and as a demonstrative appendage)." That this is not to be confounded with the accentuated "De, meaning but," was the "Doctrine" which the Grammarian bequeathed to those capable of receiving it.' ONE WORD MORE "De A special interest attaches to this poem because it is the only one addressed by Browning, directly and avowedly, to his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It was originally appended to the collection of poems, called Men and Women (1855). Browning uses the sonnets written by Raphael and a portrait painted by Dante to illustrate the desire of the artist to show his personal affection in some other way than that of his familiar craft, which has become professional and belongs to the world, so that everybody feels entitled to criticize. But as the poet cannot paint pictures, or carve statues, or make music to show his love, a semblance of resource remains in the use of a slightly different form of art from that which he commonly practises. Instead of writing dramatically, he may write, for once in his own person; for just as, according to the ancient myth, the moon would turn to her lover a side unseen by other mortals, so the poet has two soul-sides, one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her.' While he says this of himself, he likes to think it of her, his ⚫ moon of poets.' Her poetry is the world's side, and he too admires her from that point of view; but the best is when he leaves the standpoint of literary appreciation for the more intimate relation of personal knowledge and affection. Then it is that he realizes the love that Raphael sought to express by his sonnets and Dante by his picture. 5. a century of sonnets. Guido Reni had a book of 100 drawings of Raphael's, but Raphael is only known to have made four sonnets. Raphael never married, but he was very much in love with a certain lady, who has been identified, not very convincingly, with the original of one or other of the por traits attributed to his hand. 66 809. 22-24. The Sistine Madonna is now in the Dresden Art Gallery, the Madonna di Foligno is in the Vatican at Rome. The Madonna at Florence is that called del Granduca, which represents her as appearing to a votary in a vision "- so say the describers; it is in the earlier manner, and very beautiful. I think I meant La Belle Jardinière but am not sure- for the picture in the Louvre.' (Browning to W. J. Rolfe.) The Louvre Madonna is seated in the midst of a garden, in which there are lilies. All these are among the most famous works of Raphael. 27. Guido Reni. A celebrated Italian painter about a century later than Raphael. See note on line 5. 32. Dante. The first great Italian poet (12651321), who in The Divine Comedy attached eternal opprobrium to his enemies by assigning to them conspicuous places in Hell. Stanzas v, vi, and vii refer to a passage in his Vita Nuova, in which he has idealized his love for Beatrice, whom he had known as a young girl: 'On that day which ful filled the year since my lady had been made of the citizens of eternal life; remembering me of her as I sat alone, I betook myself to draw the resemblance of an angel upon certain tablets. And while I did thus, chancing to turn my head, I perceived that some were standing beside me to whom I should have given courteous welcome, and that they were observing what I did: also I learned afterwards that they had been there a while before I perceived them. Perceiving whom, I rose for salutation and said: "Another was with me." Afterwards, when they had left me, I set myself again to the same occupation, to wit, to the drawing fig ures of angels.' (Section 35, Rossetti's translation.) It will be noticed that Browning's interpretation of the incident goes somewhat beyond the original, which gives no indication that those who interrupted Dante were people he scarified in the Inferno. |