DESCRIPTIVE POEMS.
Mr. Browning's poems abound in descriptive passages, and his power of word-painting is very vivid, as well as frequently employed. But we have here another instance of a quality diffused throughout his work, yet scarcely ever asserting itself in a distinct form. The reason is, that he deals with men and women first—with nature afterwards; and that the details of a landscape have little meaning for him, except in reference to the mental or dramatic situation of which they form a part. This is very apparent in such lyrics or romances as: "By the Fire-side," "In a Gondola," and "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." We find three poems only which might have been written for the sake of the picturesque impressions which they convey:
"De Gustibus—" ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)
"Home-Thoughts, from Abroad." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)
"The Englishman in Italy." ("Dramatic Romances." Published as "England in Italy" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.) And even here we receive the picture with a lyric and dramatic colouring, which makes it much less one of facts than of associations. It is also to be remarked that, in these poems, the associations are of two opposite kinds, and Mr. Browning is in equal sympathy with both. He feels English scenery as an Englishman does: Italian, as an Italian might be supposed to, feel it.
"DE GUSTIBUS—" illustrates the difference of tastes by the respective attractions of these two kinds of scenery, and of the ideas and images connected with them. Some one is apostrophizing a friend, whose ghost he is convinced will be found haunting an English lane, with its adjoining corn-field and hazel coppice: where in the early summer the blackbird sings, and the bean-flower scents the air. And he declares at the same time that Italy is the land of his own love, whether his home there be a castle in the Apennine, or some house on its southern shore; among "wind-grieved" heights, or on the edge of an opaque blue sea: amidst a drought and stillness in which the very cicala dies, and the cypress seems to rust; and scorpions drop and crawl from the peeling walls ... and where "a bare-footed girl tumbles green melons on to the ground before you, as she gives news of the last attack on the Bourbon king."
"HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD" is a longing reminiscence of an English April and May, with their young leaves and their blossoms, their sunshine and their dew, their song of the chaffinch and their rapturous music of the thrush. Appreciation is heightened by contrast; and the buttercup—England's gift to her little children—is pronounced far brighter than the "gaudy melon-flower" which the exiled Englishman has at this moment before him.
"THE ENGLISHMAN IN ITALY" is a vivid picture of Italian peasant-life on the plain of Sorrento: the occasion being an outbreak of the well-known hot wind—the "scirocco"—which, in this case, has brought with it a storm of rain. A little frightened peasant girl has taken refuge by the side of the Englishman, who is apparently lodging in her mother's cottage. And he is diverting her attention by describing his impressions of the last twenty-four hours: how everything looked before the rain; how he knew while yet in bed that the rain had come, by the rattling down of the quail-nets,[[93]] which were to be tugged into shelter, while girls ran on to the housetops to fetch the drying figs; how the black churning waters forbade the fishermen to go to sea (what strange creatures they bring home when they do go, and how the brown naked children, who look like so many shrimps, cling screaming about them at the sight); how all hands are now employed at the wine-making, and her brother is at this moment dancing bare-legged in a vat half as high as the house; how the bigger girls bring baskets of grapes, with eyes closed to keep out the rain; and how the smaller ones gather snails in the wet grass, which will appear with fried pumpkin at the labourer's supper; how, yesterday, he climbed Mount Calvano—that very brother of hers for his guide—his mule carrying him with dainty steps through the plain—past the woods—up a path ever wilder and stonier, where sorb and myrtle fall away, but lentisk and rosemary still cling to the face of the rock—the head and shoulders of some new mountain ever coming into view; how he emerged, at last, where there were mountains all around; below, the green sea; above, the crystal solitudes of heaven; and, down in that green sea, the slumbering Siren islands: the three which stand together, and the one which swam to meet them, but has always remained half-way. These, and other reminiscences, beguile the time till the storm has passed, and the sun breaks over the great mountain which the Englishman has just described. He and little "Fortú" can now go into the village, and see the preparations being made for to-morrow's feast—that of the Virgin of the Rosary—which primitive solemnity he also (by anticipation) describes. He concludes with a brief allusion to the political scirocco which is blackening the English sky, and will not vanish so quickly as this has done; and thus hints at a reason, if the reader desires one, for his temporary rustication in a foreign land.
FOOTNOTES:
First in "Hood's Magazine."
Two of these are now in the National Gallery; one presented to it by Sir Charles Eastlake, the other after his death by Lady Eastlake.
Mr. Browning thus skilfully accounts for the discrepancy between the coarseness of his life and the refined beauty of much of his work.
The painter spoken of as "hulking Tom" is the celebrated one known as "Masaccio" (Tommasaccio), who learned in the convent from Lippo Lippi, and has been wrongly supposed to be his teacher. He is also one of those who were credited with the work of Lippino, Lippo Lippi's son.
The Bishop's tomb is entirely fictitious; but something which is made to stand for it is now shown to credulous sight-seers in St. Praxed's Church.
First in "Hood's Magazine."
These were correctly given in the MS., and appeared so in the first proofs of the book; but were changed from considerations of prudence.
A feigned name for one of the three wonder working images which are worshipped in France.
Mr. Browning allows me to give the true names of the persons and places concerned in the story.
| Vol. xii. | page | 5. | The Firm Miranda—Mellerio, Brothers. |
| " | " | 7. | St Rambert—St. Aubin. |
| " | " | 7. | Joyeux, Joyous-Gard—Lion, Lionesse. |
| " | " | 8. | Vire-Caen. |
| " | " | 19. | St. Rambertese—St. Aubinese |
| " | " | 22. | Londres—Douvres. |
| " | " | 22. | London—Dover. |
| " | " | 22. | La Roche—Courcelle. |
| " | " | 22. | Monlieu—Bernières. |
| " | " | 22. | Villeneuve—Langrune. |
| " | " | 22. | Pons—Luc. |
| " | " | 22. | La Ravissante—La Délivrande. |
| " | " | 25. | Raimbaux—Bayeux. |
| " | " | 25. | Morillon—Hugonin. |
| " | " | 25. | Mirecourt—Bonnechose. |
| " | " | 25. | Miranda—Mellerio. |
| " | " | 26. | New York—Madrid. |
| " | " | 30. | Clairvaux—Tailleville. |
| " | " | 31. | Gonthier—Bény. |
| " | " | 31. | Rousseau—Voltaire. |
| " | " | 31. | Léonce—Antoine. |
| " | " | 36. | Of "Firm Miranda, London and New York"—"Mellerio |
| Brothers"—Meller, people say. | |||
| " | " | 53. | Rare Vissante—Dell Yvrande. |
| " | " | 53. | Aldabert—Regnobert. |
| " | " | 53. | Eldebert—Ragnebert. |
| " | " | 54. | Mailleville—Beaudoin. |
| " | " | 54. | Chaumont—Quelen. |
| " | " | 54. | Vertgalant—Talleyrand. |
| " | " | 59. | Ravissantish—Delivrandish. |
| " | " | 66. | Clara de Millefleurs—Anna de Beaupré. |
| " | " | 67. | Coliseum Street—Miromesnil Street. |
| " | " | 72. | Sterner—Mayer. |
| " | " | 72. | Commercy—Larocy. |
| " | " | 72. | Sierck—Metz. |
| " | " | 73. | Muhlhausen—Debacker. |
| " | " | 73. | Carlino Centofanti—Miranda di Mongino. |
| " | " | 73. | Portugal—Italy. |
| " | " | 88. | Vaillant-Mériel. |
| " | " | 96. | Thirty-three—Twenty-five. |
| " | " | 97. | Beaumont—Pasquier. |
| " | " | 107. | Sceaux—Garges. |
| " | " | 128. | Luc de la Maison Rouge—Jean de la Becquetière. |
| " | " | 128. | Claise—Vire. |
| " | " | 129. | Maude—Anne. |
| " | " | 129. | Dionysius—Eliezer. |
| " | " | 129. | Scolastica—Elizabeth. |
| " | " | 136. | Twentieth—Thirteenth. |
| " | " | 152. | Fricquot—Picot. |
Le Croisic is in the Loire Inférieure, at the south-east corner of Brittany. It has now a good bathing establishment, and is much frequented by French people; but sardine-fishing and the crystallizing of sea-salt are still its standing occupations.
The details of this worship as carried on in the island opposite Le Croisic, and which Mr. Browning describes, are mentioned by Strabo.
The story of Paul Desforges Maillard forms the subject of a famous play, Piron's "Métromanie."
It is also, and perhaps chiefly, in this case, a pun on the meaning of the plural noun "cenci," "rags," or "old rags." The cry of this, frequent in Rome, was at first mistaken by Shelley for a voice urging him to go on with his play. Mr. Browning has used it to indicate the comparative unimportance of his contribution to the Cenci story. The quoted Italian proverb means something to the same effect: that every trifle will press in for notice among worthier matters.
That of the Gregorian chant: a cadence concluding on the dominant instead of the key-note.
We have a conspicuous instance of this in "Pippa Passes."
This spontaneous mode of conception may seem incompatible with the systematic adherence to a fixed class of subjects referred to in an earlier chapter. But it by no means is so. With Mr. Browning the spontaneous creative impulse conforms to the fixed rule.
The present remarks properly belong to that earlier chapter. But it was difficult to divide them from their illustrations.
First in "Hood's Magazine."
I may venture to state that these picturesque materials included a tower which Mr. Browning once saw in the Carrara Mountains, a painting which caught his eye years later in Paris; and the figure of a horse in the tapestry in his own drawing-room—welded together in the remembrance of the line from "King Lear" which forms the heading of the poem.
Instances of it occur in the "Dramatic Idyls" and "Jocoseria;" and will be noticed later.
Generally confounded with his contemporary and fellow-citizen, Girolamo del Pacchia.
The (Baron) Kirkup mentioned at vol. xiv. page 5 was a Florence friend of Mr. Browning's, and a connoisseur in literature and art. He was ennobled by the King of Italy for his liberal views and for his services to Italian literature. It was he who discovered the portrait of Dante in the Bargello at Florence.
Nets spread to catch quails as they fly to or from the other side of the Mediterranean. They are slung by rings on to poles, and stand sufficiently high for the quails to fly into them. This, and every other detail of the poem, are given from personal observation.