book I

have ever read--as Mildred's recurrence to that "I was so young--I had no mother!" I know no love like it, no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception like it. And I swear it is a tragedy that MUST be played; and must be played, moreover, by Macready. There are some things I would have changed if I could (they are very slight, mostly broken lines); and I assuredly would have the old servant _begin his tale upon the scene_, and be taken by the throat, or drawn upon, by his master in its commencement. But the tragedy I never shall forget, or less vividly remember, than I do now. And if you tell Browning that I have seen it, tell him that I believe from my soul there is no man living (and not many dead) who could produce such a work.'" Mr. Browning wrote the play in five days, at the suggestion of Macready, who read it with delight. The poet had been led to expect that Macready would play in it himself, but was annoyed to hear that he had given the part he had intended to take to Mr. Phelps, then an actor quite unknown. Evidently Macready expected that Mr. Browning would withdraw the play. On the contrary, he accepted Phelps, who, however, was taken seriously ill before the rehearsal began. The consequence was (though there was clearly some shuffling on Macready's part) that the great tragedian himself consented to take the part at the last moment. It is evident that Macready had changed his mind. He had, however, done more: he had changed the title to _The Sisters_, and had changed a good deal of the play, even to the extent of inserting some lines of his own. Meanwhile, Phelps having recovered, and being anxious to take his part, Mr. Browning insisted that he should do so; and, to Macready's annoyance, the old arrangement had to stand. The play was vociferously applauded, and Mr. Phelps was again and again called before the curtain. Mr. Browning was much displeased at the treatment he had received, but his play continued to be performed to crowded houses. It was a great success also when Phelps revived it at Sadlers Wells. Miss Helen Faucit (who afterwards became Lady Martin) played the part of Mildred Tresham on the first appearance of _The Blot_ in 1843. The Browning Society brought it out at St. George's Hall on May 2nd, 1885; and again at the Olympic Theatre on March 15th, 1888, when Miss Alma Murray played Mildred Tresham in an ideally perfect manner. It was, as the _Era_ said, "a thing to be remembered. From every point of view it was admirable. Its passion was highly pitched, its elocution pure and finished, and its expression, by feature and gesture, of a quality akin to genius. The agonising emotions which in turn thrill the girl's sensitive frame were depicted with intense truth and keen and delicate art, and an excellent discretion defeated any temptation to extravagance." It cannot be seriously held by any unprejudiced person that _A Blot in the 'Scutcheon_ has within it the elements of success as an acting play. The subject is unpleasant, the conduct of Thorold monomaniacal and improbable, the wholesale dying in the last scene "transpontine." The characters philosophise too much, and dissect themselves even as they die. They come to life again under the stimulation of the process, only to perish still more, and to make us speculate on the nature of the poison which permitted such self-analysis, and on the nature of the heart disease which was so subservient to the patient's necessities. An analytic poet, we feel, is for the study, not for the boards.

=Bluphocks.= (_Pippa Passes._) The vagabond Englishman of the poem. "The name means _Blue-Fox_, and is a skit on the _Edinburgh Review_, which is bound in a cover of blue and fox." (Dr. Furnivall.)

=Bombast.= The proper name of _Paracelsus_; "probably acquired," says Mr. Browning in a note to _Paracelsus_, "from the characteristic phraseology of his lectures, that unlucky signification which it has ever since retained." This is not correct. Bombast, in German _bombast_, cognate with Latin _bombyx_ in the sense of cotton. "Bombast, the cotton-plant growing in Asia" (Phillips, _The New World of Words_). It was applied also to the cotton wadding with which garments were lined and stuffed in Elizabeth's time; hence inflated speech, fustian. (See Stubbes, _The Anatomy of Abuses_, p. 23; Trench, _Encyc. Dict._, etc.)

=Boot and Saddle.= No. III. of the "Cavalier Songs," published in _Bells and Pomegranates_ in 1842, under the title "Cavalier Tunes."

=Bottinius.= (_The Ring and the Book._) Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius was the Fisc or Public Prosecutor and Advocate of the Apostolic Chamber at Rome. The ninth book of the poem contains his speech as prosecutor of Count Guido.

=Boy and the Angel, The.= (_Hood's Magazine_, vol. ii., 1844, pp. 140-42.) Reprinted, revised, and with five fresh couplets, in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics" (1845), No. VII. _Bells and Pomegranates._ Theocrite was a poor Italian boy who, morning, evening, noon and night, ever sang "Praise God!" As he prayed well and loved God, so he worked well and served his master faithfully and cheerfully. Blaise, the monk, heard him sing his _Laudate_, and said: "I doubt not thou art heard, my son, as well as if thou wert the Pope, praising God from Peter's dome this Easter day"; but Theocrite said: "Would God I might praise Him that great way and die!" That night there was no more Theocrite, and God missed the boy's innocent praise. Gabriel the archangel came to the earth, took Theocrite's humble place, and praised God as did the boy, only with angelic song,--playing well, moreover, the craftsman's part, content at his poor work, doing God's will on earth as he had done it in heaven. But God said: "There is neither doubt nor fear in this praise; it is perfect as the song of my new-born worlds; I miss my little human praise." Then the flesh disguise fell from the angel, and his wings sprang forth again. He flew to Rome: it was Easter Day, and the new pope Theocrite, once the poor work-lad, stood in the tiring room by the great gallery from which the popes are wont to bless the people on Easter morning, and he saw the angel before him, who told him he had made a mistake in bringing him from his trade to set him in that high place; he had done wrong, too, in leaving his angel-sphere: the stopping of that infant praise marred creation's chorus; he must go back, and once more that early way praise God--"back to the cell and poor employ"; and so Theocrite grew to old age at his former home, and Rome had a new pope, and the angel's error was rectified. Legends and stories of saints, angels, and our Lord Himself, are common in all Catholic countries, where these heavenly beings are far more real to the minds of the people than they are to the colder intelligence of Protestant and more logical lands. In southern Europe, hosts of such stories as these cluster round our Lady and the Saints. The Holy Virgin does not disdain to take her needle and sew buttons on the clothing of her worshippers, and the angels and saints think nothing of a little domestic or trade employment if it will assist their devout clients.

In _Notes and Queries_, 3rd Series, xii. 6, July 6, 1867, there appeared two queries on this poem by "John Addis, Jun.": "1. What is the precise inner meaning? 2. On what legend is it founded? With regard to my first question, I see dimly in the poem a comparison of three kinds of praise--viz., human, ceremonial, and angelic. Further, I see dimly a contrasting of Gabriel's humility with Theocrite's ambition.... The poem ... has been recalled to me by reading 'Kyng Roberd of Cysillé' (Hazlitt's _Early Popular Poetry_, vol. i., p. 264). There is a general analogy (by contrast perhaps rather than likeness) between the two poems, which points, I think, to the existence of a legend kindred to 'Kyng Roberd' as the prototype of Browning's poem, rather than to 'Kyng Roberd' itself as that prototype.... To 'Sir Gowghter' and the Jovinianus story of _Gesta Romanorum_, I have not present access; but both I fancy (while akin to 'Kyng Roberd of Cysillé') have nothing in common with 'The Boy and the Angel.'" At page 55 another correspondent says that according to Warton (ii. 22), "'Sir Gowghter' is only another version of 'Robert the Devil,' and therefore of 'King Roberd of Cysillé.' He goes on to say that Longfellow has closely followed the old poem in 'King Robert of Sicily' printed in _Tales of a Wayside Inn_; but no answer is given to Mr. Addis' queries about 'The Boy and the Angel'" (_Browning Notes and Queries_, No. 13, Pt. I., vol. ii.) Leigh Hunt, in his _Jar of Honey_, chap. vi., gives the story of King Robert of Sicily. We can only include the following abbreviation here of the beautiful legend told so delightfully by the great essayist.

One day, when King Robert of Sicily was hearing vespers on St. John's Eve, he was struck by the words of the _Magnificat_--"Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles" ("He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble"). He asked a chaplain near him what the words meant; and when they were explained to him, scoffingly replied that men like himself were not so easily put down, much less supplanted by those contemptible poor folk. The chaplain was horrified, and made no reply, and the king relieved his annoyance by going to sleep. After some time the king awoke and found himself in the church with no creature present except an old deaf woman who was dusting it. When the old lady saw the man who was trying to make her hear, she cried "Thieves!" and scuttled off to the door, closing it behind her. King Robert looked at the door, then at the empty church, then at himself. His ermine robe was gone, his coronet, his jewels, all the insignia of his royalty had disappeared. Raging at the door, he demanded that it should be opened; but they only mocked him through the keyhole and threatened him with the constable; but as the sexton mocked the captive king the great door was burst open in his face, for the king was a powerful man and had dashed it down with his foot. He strode towards his palace, but they would not admit him, and to all his raving replied "Madman!" Then the king caught sight of his face in a glass, which he tore from the hands of one of his captains who was admiring himself, and saw that he was changed: it was not his own face. Fear came upon him: he knew it was witchcraft, and his violence was increased when the bystanders laughed to hear him declare he was his majesty changed. Next the attendants came from the palace to say the king wanted to see the madman they had caught; and so he was taken to the presence chamber, where he found himself face to face with another King Robert, whom the changed king called "hideous impostor," which made the court laugh consumedly, because the king on the throne was very handsome, and the man who fell asleep in the church was very coarse and vulgar. And now the latter could see that it was an angel who had taken his place, and hated him accordingly. He was still more disgusted when the king told him he would make him his court fool, because he was so amusing in his violence; and he had to submit while they cut his hair and crowned the king of fools with the cap and bells. King Robert then gave way, for he felt he was in the power of the devil and it was no use to resist; and so went out to sup with the dogs, as he was ordered. Matters went on in this way for two years. The new king was good and kind to everybody except the degraded monarch, whom he never tired of humiliating in every possible way. At the end of two years the king went to visit his brother the Pope and his brother the Emperor, and he dressed all his court magnificently, except the fool, whom he arrayed in fox-tails and placed beside an ape. The crowds of people who came out to see the grand procession laughed heartily at the sorry figure cut by the poor fool. He, however, was glad he was going to see the Pope, as he trusted the meeting would dispel the magic by which he was enchained; but he was disappointed, for neither Pope nor Emperor took the slightest notice of him. Now, it happened that day it was again St. John's Eve, and again they were all at vespers singing: "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and exalted the humble." And now with what different feelings he heard those words! The crowded church was astonished to see the poor fool in his ridiculous disguise bathed in tears, meekly kneeling in prayer, his head bowed in penitence and sorrow. Somehow every one felt a little holier that day: Pope and Emperor wished to be kinder and more sympathetic to their people, and the sermon went to every one's heart, for it was all about charity and humility. After service they told the angel-king of the singular behaviour of the fool. Of course he knew all about it, though he did not say so; but he sent for the fool, and, when he had him in private (except that the ape was there, to whom the fool had become much attached), he asked him, "Art thou still a king?" "I am a fool, and no king." "What wouldst thou, Robert?" asked the angel gently. "What thou wouldst," replied poor King Robert. Then the angel touched him, and he felt an inexpressible calm diffuse itself through his whole being. He knelt, and began to thank the angel. "Not to me," the heavenly being said--"not to me! Let us pray." They knelt in prayer; and when the King rose from his knees the angel was gone, the ermine was once more on the King's shoulder and the crown upon his brow; his humiliation was over, but his pride never returned. He lived long and reigned nobly, and died in the odour of sanctity. Mr. Browning may have drawn upon some Italian legend for his story of Theocrite: it may even have been suggested by the legend of King Robert; but he must have been so familiar with the Catholic idea of the interest in human affairs taken by angels and saints, that he might readily have invented the story. Nothing can be easier to understand than its lesson. With God there is no great or small, no lofty or mean, nothing common or unclean. To do the will of God in the work lying nearest us, to praise God in our daily task and the common things of life as they arise, this is better for us and more acceptable service to Him than doing some great thing, as we, with our false estimates of things, may be led to apprise it.

=By the Fireside.= (First published in vol. i. of _Men and Women_, 1855.) A man of middle life and very learned is addressing his wife. He looks forward to his old age, and prophesies how it will be passed. He will pursue his studies; but, deep as he will be in Greek, his soul will have no difficulty in finding its way back to youth and Italy, and he will delight to reconstruct the scene in his imagination where he first made all his own the heart of the woman who blessed him with her love and became his wife. Once more he will be found on that mountain path, again he will conjure from the past the Alpine scene by the ruined chapel in the gorge, the poor little building where on feast days the priest comes to minister to the few folk who live on the mountain-side. The bit of fresco over the porch, the date of its erection, the bird which sings there, and the stray sheep which drinks at the pond, the very midges dancing over the water, and the lichens clinging to the walls,--all will be present, for it was there heart was fused with heart, and two souls were blent in one. "With whom else," he asks his wife, "dare he look backward or dare pursue the path grey heads abhor?" Old age is dreaded by the young and middle-aged, none care to think of it; but the speaker dreads it not, he has a soul-companion from whom not even death can separate him, and with the memory of this moment of irrevocable union he can face the bounds of life undaunted. "The moment one and infinite," to which both their lives had tended, had wrought this happiness for him that it could never cease to bear fruit, never cease to hallow and bless his spirit; the mountain stream had sought the lake below, and had lost itself in its bosom; two lives were joined in one without a scar. "How the world is made for each of us!" everything tending to a moment's product, with its infinite consequences--the completion, in this case, of his own small life, whereby Nature won her best from him in fitting him to love his wife. The

"great brow And the spirit small hand propping it,"

refer to Mrs. Browning, and the whole poem, though the incidents are imaginary, is without doubt a confession of his love for her, and its influence on his own spiritual development.

=Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island.= (_Dramatis Personæ_, 1864.) The original of Caliban is the savage and deformed slave of Shakespeare's _Tempest_. The island may be identified with the Utopia ([Greek: outopos], the nowhere) of Hythloday. Setebos was the Patagonian god (Settaboth in Pigafetta), which was by 1611 familiar to the hearers of _The Tempest_. Patagonia was discovered by Magellan in 1520. The new worlds which Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Gomara, Lane, Harriott and Raleigh described, should, according to the popular fancy of the time, be peopled by just such beings of bestial type as the Caliban of _The Tempest_. The ancients thought the inhabitants of strange and distant lands were half human, half brutal, and monstrous creatures, ogres, and "anthropophagi, men who each other eat." The famous traveller Sir John Mandeville, in the fourteenth century, describes "the land of Bacharie, where be full evil folk and full cruel. In that country been many Ipotaynes, that dwell sometimes in the water and sometimes on the land; half-man and half-horse, and they eat men when they may take them." Marco Polo (1254-1324) represents the Andaman Islanders as a most brutish savage race, having heads, eyes and teeth resembling the canine species, who ate human flesh raw and devoured every one on whom they could lay their hands. The islander as monster was therefore familiar enough to English readers in Shakespeare's time, and the date of the old book of travels "Purchas his Pilgrimage," very nearly corresponding with the probable date of the production of _The Tempest_, affords reasonable proof that the poet has embodied the story given in that work of the pongo, the huge brute-man seen by Andrew Battle in the kingdom of Congo, where he lived some nine months. This pongo slept in the trees, building a roof to shelter himself from the rain, and living wholly on nuts and fruits. Mr. Browning has taken the Caliban of Shakespeare, "the strange fish legged like a man, and his fins like arms," yet "no fish, but an islander that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt," and has evolved him into "a savage with the introspective powers of a Hamlet and the theology of an evangelical churchman." Shakespeare's monster did not speculate at all; he liked his dinner, liked to be stroked and made much of, and was willing to be taught how to name the bigger light and how the less. He could curse, and he could worship the man in the moon; he could work for those who were kind to him, and had a doglike attachment to Prospero. Mr. Browning's Caliban has become a metaphysician; he talks Browningese, and reasons high

"Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute."

He has studied Calvin's _Institutes of Theology_, and knows enough of St. Augustine to caricature his teaching. Considered from the anthropologist's point of view, the poem is not a scientific success; Caliban is a degradation from a higher type, not a brute becoming slowly developed into a man. Mr. Browning's early training amongst the Nonconformists of the Calvinistic type had familiarised him with a theology which, up to fifty years ago, was that of a very large proportion of the Independents, the Baptists, and a considerable part of the Evangelical school in the Church of England. Without some acquaintance with this theological system it is impossible to understand the poem. At the head is a quotation from Psalm l. 21, where God says to the wicked, "thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself," and the object of the poem is to rebuke the anthropomorphic idea of God as it exists in minds of a narrow and unloving type. It is not a satire upon Christianity, as has been sometimes declared, but is an attempt to trace the evolution of the concrete idea of God in a coarse and brutal type of mind. Man from his advent on the earth has everywhere occupied himself in creating God in his own image and likeness:

"Make us a god, said man: Power first the voice obeyed; And soon a monstrous form Its worshippers dismayed."

The motto of the poem shows us how much nobler was the Hebrew conception of God than that of the nations who knew Him not. The poem opens with Caliban talking to himself in the third person, while he sprawls in the mire and is cheating Prospero and Miranda, who think he is at work for them. He begins to speculate on the Supreme Being--Setebos: he thinks His dwelling-place is the moon, thinks He made the sun and moon, but not the stars--the clouds and the island on which he dwells; he has no idea of any land beyond that which is bounded by the sea. He thinks creation was the result of God being ill at ease. The cold which He hated and which He was powerless to change impelled Him. So He made the trees, the birds and beasts and creeping things, and made everything in spite. He could not make a second self to be His mate, but made in envy, listlessness or sport all the things which filled the island as playthings. If Caliban could make a live bird out of clay, he would laugh if the creature broke his brittle clay leg; he would play with him, being his and merely clay. So he (Setebos). It would neither be right nor wrong in him, neither kind nor cruel--merely an act of the Divine Sovereignty. If Caliban saw a procession of crabs marching to the sea, in mere indifferent playfulness he might feel inclined to let twenty pass and then stone the twenty-first, pull off a claw from one with purple spots, give a worm to a third fellow, and two to another whose nippers end in red, all the while "Loving not, hating not, just choosing so!" [Apart from revelation, mankind has not reached the conception of the Fatherhood of God, whose tender mercies are over all His works. The gods of the heathen are gods of caprice, of malice and purposeless interference with creatures who are not the sheep of their pastures, but the playthings of unloving Lords.] But he will suppose God is good in the main; He has even made things which are better than Himself, and is envious that they are so, but consoles Himself that they can do nothing without Him. If the pipe which, blown through, makes a scream like a bird, were to boast that it caught the birds, and made the cry the maker could not make, he would smash it with his foot. That is just what God Setebos does; so Caliban must be humble, or pretend to be. But why is Setebos cold and ill at ease? Well, Caliban thinks there may be a something over Setebos, that made Him, something quiet, impassible--call it The Quiet. Beyond the stars he imagines The Quiet to reside, but is not much concerned about It. He plays at being simple in his way--makes believe: so does Setebos. His mother, Sycorax, thought The Quiet made all things, and Setebos only troubled what The Quiet made. Caliban does not agree with that. If things were made weak and subject to pain they were made by a devil, not by a good or indifferent being. No! weakness and pain meant sport to Him who created creatures subject to them. Setebos makes things to amuse himself, just as Caliban does; makes a pile of turfs and knocks it over again. So Setebos. But He is a terrible as well as a malicious being; His hurricanes, His high waves, His lightnings are destructive, and Caliban cannot contend with His force, neither can he tell that what pleases Him to-day will do so to-morrow. We must all live in fear of Him therefore, till haply The Quiet may conquer Him. All at once a storm comes, and Caliban feels that he was a fool to gibe at Setebos. He will lie flat and love Him, will do penance, will eat no whelks for a month to appease Him.

There are few, if any, systems of theology which escape one or other of the arrows of this satire. Anthropomorphism in greater or less degree is inseparable from our conceptions of the Supreme. The abstract idea of God is impossible to us, the concrete conception is certain to err in making God to be like ourselves. That the Almighty must in Himself include all that is highest and noblest in the soul of man is a right conception, when we attribute to Him our weaknesses and failings we are but as Caliban. The doctrine of election, and the hideous doctrine of reprobation, are most certainly aimed at in the line--

"Loving not, hating not, just choosing so."

The doctrine of reprobation is thus stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith, iii. 7. "The rest of mankind [_i.e._ all but the elect] God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious grace." Calvin, in his _Institutes of the Christian Religion_, taught that "God has predestinated some to eternal life, while the rest of mankind are predestinated to condemnation and eternal death" (_Encyc. Brit._ iv., art. "Calvin," p. 720).

=Camel Driver, A.= (Punishment by Man and by God: _Ferishtah's Fancies_, 7.) A murderer had been executed, the criminal acknowledging the justice of his punishment, but lamenting that the man who prompted him to evil had escaped; the murderer reflected with satisfaction that God had reserved a hell for him. But punishment is only man's trick to teach; if he could see true repentance in the sinner's soul, the fault would not be repeated. God's process in teaching or punishing nowise resembles man's. Man lumps his kind in the mass, God deals with each individual soul as though they two were alone in the universe, "Ask thy lone soul what laws are plain to thee," said Ferishtah, "then stand or fall by them!" Ignorance that sins is safe,--our greatest punishment is knowledge. No other hell will be needed for any man than the reflection that he deliberately spurned the steps which would have raised him to the regard of the Supreme. In the Lyric it is complained that mankind is over-severe with mere imperfections, which it magnifies into crimes; but the greater faults, which should have been crushed in the egg, are either not suspected at all or actually praised as virtues.

=Caponsacchi= (_The Ring and the Book_), the chivalrous priest, Canon of Arezzo, who aided Pompilia in her flight to Rome from the tyranny of Count Guido.

=Cardinal and the Dog, The.= (_Asolando_, 1889.) The Papal Legate, at the later sessions of the Council of Trent in 1551 and 1552, was Marcel Crescenzio, who came of a noble Roman family. At the fifteenth session of the Council (March 20th, 1552) he was writing to the Pope nearly the whole night, although he was ill at the time; and as he rose from his seat he saw a black dog of great size, with flaming eyes and ears hanging down to the ground, which sprang into the chamber, making straight for him, and then stretched himself under the table where Crescenzio wrote. He called his servants and ordered them to turn out the beast, but they found none. Then the Cardinal fell melancholy, took to his bed and died. As he lay on his death-bed at Verona he cried aloud to every one to drive away the dog that leapt on his bed, and so passed away in horror. The poem was written at the request of William Macready, the eldest son of the great actor. He asked the poet to write something which he might illustrate. This was in 1840, but the work was only published in the _Asolando_ volume in 1889. Howling dogs have from remote times been connected with death. In Ossian we have: "The mother of Culmin remains in the hall--his dogs are howling in their place--'Art thou fallen, my fair-haired son, in Erin's dismal war?'" There is no doubt that the howling of the wind suggested the idea of a great dog of death. The wind itself was a magnified dog, heard but not seen. Burton, in _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, says (