Chapter I

of James Lane Allen's _The Reign of Law_ is the following passage on the odor of the hemp-field: "And now borne far through the steaming air floats an odor, balsamic, startling: the odor of those plumes and stalks and blossoms from which is exuding freely the narcotic resin of the great nettle." When the long swaths of cut hemp lies across the field, the smell is represented as strongest, "impregnating the clothing of the men, spreading far throughout the air." To many this odor is essentially unpleasant.

42. _Pulcinello-trumpet._ Pulcinello was originally the clown in the Neapolitan comedy. Later he became the Punch in Punch and Judy shows. The trumpet announces that one of these puppet plays is to be given in the public square.

43. _Scene-picture._ A picture advertising the new play.

44. _Liberal thieves._ Members of the liberal party, the party striving for Italian independence. The Person of Quality is, of course, of the aristocratic party.

47. _A sonnet._ Laudatory poetical tributes with ornamental borders were posted in public places as a method of doing homage. In this case the unknown "Reverend Don So-and-so" is ranked by his admirer with Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, the greatest Italian poets; with St. Jerome, one of the most celebrated Fathers of the Latin Church; with Cicero, one of the greatest of Roman orators; and with St. Paul, the greatest of Christian preachers.

51. _Our Lady._ The seven swords represent symbolically the seven sorrows of the Virgin Mary, but this Person of Quality regards the gilt swords and the smart pink gowns merely as gay decorations. Religious processions of the sort described here and in lines 60-64 are frequent in European countries.

55. _It's dear._ According to the system of taxation in Italy, town dues must be paid on all provisions brought into the city.

60. _Yellow candles._ Used at funerals and in penitential processions in the Roman Church.

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S

Mrs. Ireland says of this poem: "The Toccata as a form of composition is not the measured, deliberate working-out of some central musical theme as is the Sonata or _sound_-piece. The _Toccata_, in its early and pure form, possessed no decided subject, made such by repetition, but bore rather the form of a capricious Improvisation, or 'Impromptu.'" ("A Toccata of Galuppi's" by Mrs. Alexander Ireland, published in _London Browning Society Papers_.)

1. _Galuppi._ Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1784) was an Italian composer born near Venice. He spent many years in England and Russia. In 1768 he became organist at St. Mark's, Venice.

4. _Your old music._ At the sound of the music Browning imaginatively re-creates the Venetian social life of the eighteenth century.

6. _St. Mark's._ The great cathedral. The Doge of Venice used to throw a ring into the sea from the ship _Bucentaur_ to "denote that the Adriatic was subject to the republic of Venice as a wife is subject to her husband."

8. _Shylock's bridge._ The Rialto, a bridge over the Grand Canal. It has two rows of shops under arcades.

18. _Clavichord._ An instrument with keys and strings, something like a piano.

19-30. The musical terms in these lines show Browning's knowledge of the technicalities of the art. To one without such expert knowledge the exact musical connotation is doubtless obscure. But the epithets and phrases are in themselves sufficient to suggest the varying moods of the Venetian merrymakers. The plaintiveness, the sighs, the sense of death, the trembling hope that life may last, the renewed love-making, the new round of futile pleasures or evil deeds, the end of it all in the grave, are clearly brought forth. An elaborate explanation of the musical terms is given in the notes to the Camberwell edition of Browning's poems.

31. _But when I sit down to reason._ The first thirty lines of the poem have recorded the effect of the music in re-creating in the poet's imagination the gay, careless life of eighteenth century Venice, and its close in death. Now when the poet endeavors to turn from that picture of death lurking under smiles, he finds that the cold music has filled his mind with an inescapable sense of the futility of life, and even his own chosen mental activities seem to him, along with the rest, hardly more than dust and ashes. Ambition and enthusiasm fade before the spell of the music.

OLD PICTURES IN FLORENCE

3. _Aloed arch._ The genus aloe includes trees, shrubs, and herbs. The American variety is the century-plant. Browning's hill-side villa evidently had aloes trained to grow in an arch.

15. _The startling bell-tower Giotto raised._ Giotto began the Campanile in 1334, and after his death in 1337 the work was continued by Andrea Pisano. Its striking beauty impresses the poet as he looks out over the city. But it does more than that, for it rouses in him reflections on the progress and meaning of art.

17-24. The address to Giotto, thrown in here as it is with conversational freedom, is partially explained in lines 184-248. See note on l. 236.

30. _By a gift God grants me._ The power to re-create vividly and minutely the past. The artists of bygone centuries are called back by his imagination to their old haunts in Florence.

44. _Stands One._ The "one" (l. 44), "a lion" (l. 47), "the wronged great soul" (l. 48), and "the wronged great souls" (l. 58), all refer to the unappreciated early artists.

50. _They._ That is, the famous great artists such as Michael Angelo and Raphael. Critics "hum and buzz" around them with praise to which they are indifferent.

59. _Where their work is all to do._ Their place in the development of art is not yet understood. It must be made clear, Browning thinks, that painters like Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) come in natural succession from earlier obscure artists like Dello, that art is a real and continuous record of the human mind and heart.

67. _The mastiff girns._ When some influential critic snarls, all the imitative inferior critics take the same tone. Cf. Shelley's "Adonais," stanzas 28, 37, 38.

69. _Stefano._ A pupil of Giotto and called "Nature's ape" because his accurate representations of the human body.

72. _Vasari._ Author of _Lives of the Most Eminent Painters and Sculptors_. (Published 1550. Translated by Mrs. Foster in _Bohn's Library_.) In his studies of art Browning made constant use of this book.

76. _Sic transit. Sic transit gloria mundi._ "So passes away the glory of the world."

84. _In fructu._ "As fruit." The fruit of Greek art at its best was that it presented in marble ideally perfect human bodies.

98. _Theseus._ The kingly statue of the reclining Theseus in the frieze of the Parthenon.

99. _Son of Priam._ In the sculptures of Æsina, Paris, the son of Priam, kneeling and drawing his bow, has a grace beyond that of any man who might think to pose as a model.

101. _Apollo._ At Delphi Apollo slew an enormous python.

102. _Niobe._ Through the vengeance of Apollo and Diana, Niobe's seven sons and seven daughters were all slain. In the Imperial Gallery of Florence there is a statue of Niobe clasping her last child.

103. _The Racer's frieze._ In the Parthenon.

104. _The dying Alexander._ A piece of ancient Greek sculpture at Florence.

108. _To submit is a mortal's duty._ The supreme beauty of the statues led men to content themselves with admiration and imitation.

113. _Growth came._ New life came to art when men ceased to rest in the perfect achievement of the past, and found a new realm opened up to them in representing the subtler activities of the soul. Lines 145-152 state the ideals that actuated the new art. The reference is to the religious art of the Italian Renaissance.

115-144. These lines sum up the reasons for the importance of the art that strives "to bring the invisible full into play" (l. 150). It may be rough-hewn and faulty; but it is greater and grander than Greek art because of its greater range, variety, and complexity, and because it reaches beyond any possible present perfection into eternity.

134. _Thy one work ... done at a stroke._ Giotto when asked for a proof of his skill to send to the Pope, drew with one stroke of his brush a perfect circle, whence the proverb, "Rounder than the O of Giotto."

156. _Quiddit._ Quibble. The humorous rhyme "did it--quiddit" is but one of the many whimsical rhyming effects in the poem. The use of a light, semi-jocose form to give the greater emphasis to serious subject-matter is characteristic of Browning. Lowell in "A Fable for Critics" employs the same device.

161-176. Not Browning's usual attitude. Even this poem is a deification of progress through effort, not through repose.

178. _Art's spring-birth._ Nicolo the Pisan and Cimabue lived in the second half of the thirteenth century. From them to Ghiberti (1381-1455), who made the famous bronze doors of the Baptistry at Florence, and Ghirlandajo (1449-1494), a Florentine fresco painter, was a period in which Browning was especially interested. Mrs. Orr says that he owned pictures by all the artists mentioned here.

192. _Italian quicklime._ Many of the fine old Italian fresco paintings have been whitewashed over.

198. _Dree._ The pictures "endure" the doom of captivity. But they might be ferreted out if the ghosts of the old painters would only indicate where the lost works are.

201-224. He does not hope to get pictures of the famous Florentine painters, Bigordi (probably another name for Ghirlandajo), Sandro, Botticelli, Lippino (son of Fra Lippo Lippi), or Fra Angelico. But he might hope for better success in finding pieces by the obscure painters mentioned in lines 205-224. These painters are so described that we know concerning each one, some characteristic quality or work.

206. _Intonaco._ The plaster that forms the ground for fresco work.

214. _Tempera._ A pigment mixed with some vehicle soluble in water instead of with oil as in oil paintings.

218. _Barret._ A kind of cap.

230. _Zeno._ The founder of the sect of Stoics, and hence supposedly not stirred by "naked High Art."

232. _Some clay-cold vile Carlino._ Commercial dealers in art are unmoved by true beauty, but they go into ecstasies over uninspired work like that of Carlino. (Carlo Dólci, 1616-1686.)

236. _A certain precious little tablet._ Mr. Browning wrote to Professor Corson that this was a lost "Last Supper" praised by Vasari. The stanza in which this line occurs explains ll. 17-24.

237. _Buonarroti._ Michael Angelo.

241. _San Spirito_, etc. "Holy Spirit" and "All Saints," old churches in Florence.

244. _Detur amanti._ "Let it be given to the one who loves it."

245. _Koh-i-noor._ A famous Indian diamond presented to Queen Victoria in 1850.

246. _Jewel of Giamschid._ The splendid fabulous ruby of Sultan Giamschid, sometimes called "The Cup of the Sun" and "The Torch of Night." Byron ("The Giaour") says that the dark eyes of Leila were "bright as the jewel of Giamschid." The carbuncle of Giamschid is one of the treasures sought by the Caliph in Beckford's _Caliph Vathek_.

246. _The Persian Sofi._ The Sufi or Sofi is a title or surname of the Shah of Persia.

249. _A certain dotard_, etc. Radetsky (1766-1858) was in 1849-1857 governor of the Austrian possessions in Upper Italy. "The worse side of the Mont St. Gothard" is the Swiss side. "Morello" is a mountain near Florence. There had been frequent insurrections against Austria, but they had been fruitless. Browning prophesies the time when there shall be a great national council (a Witanagemot) by which, when Freedom has been restored to Florence, a new and vigorous Art shall be brought in. It will then be perceived that a monarchy nourishes the false and monstrous in art, and that "Pure Art" must come from the people.

258. _The stone of Dante._ The stone where Dante used to draw his chair out to sit. For this and other references in stanza XXXIV see Mrs. Browning's "Casa Guidi Windows," Part I. In this poem she suggests "a parliament of the lovers of Italy."

260. _Quod videas ante_--"Which you may have seen before."

263. _Hated house._ The poet hates the rule of the House of Lorraine, and prefers the days of the painter Orgagna, in the fourteenth century, when Italy was free.

273. _Tuscan._ The literary language of Italy and not given to superlatives such as are indicated by "_issimo_."

275. _Cambuscan:_ a reference to "The Squire's Tale," left unfinished by Chaucer.

276. _Alt to altissimo._ "High to highest."

277. _Beccaccia._ A woodcock.

281. _Shall I be alive._ According to Giotto's plan the tower was to have had a spire fifty braccia or cubits (about 95 feet) high. This spire has never been built.

"DE GUSTIBUS--"

The whole phrase is _De gustibus non disputandum_--"there is no disputing about tastes." Browning is writing to a friend who prefers an English landscape while the poet himself declares in favor of Italy.

2. _If our loves remain._ If we have a life after death.

4. _A cornfield._ The picture is a field of wheat with red poppies scattered through the wheat.

23. _Cypress._ It is interesting to note how many of the trees, shrubs, flowers, and fruits in Browning's poems are those of southern Europe. His poetry of nature is almost as distinctively Italian as Tennyson's is English. "The Englishman in Italy" is especially rich in vivid, picturesque details of southern scenes.

36. _Liver-wing._ The right wing. The shot hit the king in the right arm.

37. _Bourbon._ Mr. and Mrs. Browning were rejoicing at any indications that the people of Italy were awake to revolt against the Bourbons. See Mrs. Browning's "Casa Guidi Windows" and "First News from Villa Franca" and Mr. Browning's "The Italian in England."

40. _Queen Mary's saying._ For two hundred years Calais had been one of England's most important possessions. It was taken by the French in 1588, the last year of the reign of Queen Mary. What Queen Mary said of Calais, Browning says of Italy.

HOME-THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD

Compare the sentiment of this poem with that of "De Gustibus--" written ten years later. In "Home Thoughts from Abroad" we have one of Browning's rare uses of the scenery of his own country.

14. _That's the wise thrush._ The power of these lines in presenting both the musical and the emotional quality of the bird's song is rivaled only by Wilson Flagg's "The Bobolink" (quoted in John Burroughs's _Birds and Poets_) and Wordsworth's "To the Cuckoo."

HOME-THOUGHTS FROM THE SEA

This poem and the preceding one express two phases of the poet's love of country; his affection for the physical beauty of England, and his pride in her political freedom. In the first poem, he turns, in thought, from the glowing color of Italy, to the more delicate loveliness of England in April; in the second poem, he longs to repay the service his country has rendered him in defeating foreign foes.

"Home-Thoughts from the Sea" was written at the same time and under the same circumstances as "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix." The poet, aboard a vessel coasting along the shore of Africa, could see to the northwest the Portuguese Cape Vincent, near which, in 1797, England won a naval victory over Spain; southeast of Cape Vincent, on the Spanish coast, Cadiz Bay, where, in 1796, England defeated the second Spanish Armada; and southeast of Cadiz Bay, Cape Trafalgar, where, in 1805, Nelson won a famous victory over the allied fleets of France and Spain. To the northeast, the poet could see Gibraltar, the great fortress which England acquired from Spain by the Peace of Utrecht, 1713.

SAUL

1. _Abner._ The cousin of Saul and the commander of his army. _I Samuel_ xiv, 50.

9. _Saul and the Spirit._ For the conflict between Saul and the evil spirit, and the refreshment that came to him when David played, see _I Samuel_ xvi, 14-23.

12. _Gracious gold hair._ For the personal appearance of David, see _I Samuel_ xvi, 12, 18; xvii, 42.

12. _Those lilies ... blue._ Mrs. Coleridge wrote to Mr. Kenyon to know whether Mr. Browning had any authority for "blue lilies." Mr. Browning answered, "Lilies are of all colors in Palestine--one sort is

## particularized as _white_ with a dark blue spot and streak--the water

lily, lotus, which I think I meant, is _blue_ altogether." (_Letters of R. B. and E. B. B._, i, 523, 556.)

31. _The king-serpent._ Probably the boa-constrictor. In poetry the characteristic most often attributed to a snake is malignancy. But in this picture of the serpent lying dormant and waiting for the sloughing of its old skin in the springtime, when it will come forth with new beauty and power, the idea presented is that of tremendous force temporarily in abeyance.

42. _Then the tune._ The boy, alone in the field, tries all sorts of experiments in musical attraction on the animals about him. Professor Albert S. Cook suggests that Browning is here indebted to the Greek pastoral romance of _Daphnis and Chloe_. See Smith's translation in the Bohn edition. The passages read in part as follows: "He ran through all variations of pastoral melody; he played the tune which the oxen obey, and which attracts the goats--that in which the sheep delight.

"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 woods as if a wolf were in sight." These quotations serve at least to show how old is the fancy that animals are affected by music.

60. The service enjoined on the men of the House of Levi is described in _I Chronicles_ xxiii, 24-32.

65. _Male-sapphires._ The male sapphire exhibits, through some peculiarity of crystalline structure, a star of bright rays. It is also known as "the star sapphire" and "the asteriated sapphire." The ruby shows a clear red light at the center.

76. _Locust-flesh._ In _Leviticus_,