"DRAMATIC IDYLS." "JOCOSERIA."

"DRAMATIC IDYLS."

The Dramatic Idyls form, like the Dramas, a natural group; and though, unlike these, they might be distributed under various heads, it would not be desirable to thus disconnect them; for their appearing together at this late period of Mr. Browning's career, constitutes them a landmark in it. They each consist of a nucleus of fact—supplied by history or by romance, as the case may be—and of material, and in most cases, mental circumstance, which Mr. Browning's fancy has engrafted on it; and in both their material and their mental aspect they display a concentrated power, which clearly indicates what I have spoken of as the "crystallizing" process Mr. Browning's genius has undergone. A comparison of these poems with "Pauline," "Paracelsus," or even "Pippa Passes," will be found to justify this assertion.

The Idyls consist of two series, occupying each a volume. The first, published 1879, contains:—

The hero of "MARTIN RELPH" is an old man, whose life is haunted by something which happened to him when little more than a boy. A girl of his own village had been falsely convicted of treason, and the guns were already levelled for her execution, when Martin Relph, who had stolen round on to some rising ground behind the soldiers and villagers who witnessed the scene, saw what no one else could see: a man, about a quarter of mile distant, rushing onwards in staggering haste, and waving a white object over his head. He knew this was Vincent Parkes, Rosamond Page's lover, bearing the expected proofs of her innocence. He knew also that by a shout he might avert her doom. But something paralyzed his tongue, and the girl fell. The man who would have rescued her but for delays and obstacles, which no power of his could overcome, was found dead where Martin Relph had seen him.

The remembrance of these two deaths leaves Martin Relph no rest; for conscience tells him that his part in them was far worse than it appeared. It tells him that what struck him dumb at that awful moment was not, as others said, the simple cowardice of a boy: he loved in secret the girl whom Vincent Parkes was coming to save; and if he had saved her, it would have been for that other man. But that thought could only flash on him in one second of fiery consciousness; he had no time to recognize it as a motive; and he clings madly to the hope that his conscience is mistaken, and it was not that which silenced him. Every year, at the same spot, he re-enacts the scene, striving to convince himself—with those who hear him—that he has been a coward, but not a murderer; and in the moral and physical reaction from the renewed agony, half-succeeds in doing so.

The story, thus told in Martin Relph's words, is supposed to have been repeated to the present narrator by a grandfather, who heard them. It embodies a vague remembrance of something read by Mr. Browning when he was himself a boy.

The facts related in "PHEIDIPPIDES" belong to Greek legendary history, and are told by Herodotus and other writers. When Athens was threatened by the invading Persians, she sent a running messenger to Sparta, to demand help against the foreign foe. The mission was unsuccessful. But the "runner," Pheidippides, fell in on his return, with the god Pan; and though alone among Greeks the Athenians had refused to honour him, he promised to fight with them in the coming battle. Pheidippides was present, when this battle—that of Marathon—was fought and won. He "ran" once more, to announce the victory at Athens; and fell, dead, with the words, "Rejoice, we conquer!" on his lips. This death followed naturally on the excessive physical strain; but Mr. Browning has used it as a connecting link between the historic and the imaginary parts of the idyl. According to this, Pheidippides himself tells his first adventure, to the assembled rulers of Athens: depicting, in vivid words, the emotions which winged his course, and bore him onwards over mountains and through valleys, with the smooth swiftness of running fire; and he also relates that Pan promised him a personal reward for his "toil," which was to consist in release from it. This release he interprets as freedom to return home, and to marry the girl he loves. It meant a termination to his labours, more tragic, but far more glorious: to die, proclaiming the victory which they had helped to secure.

Pan is also made to present him with a sprig of fennel—symbol of Marathon, or the "fennel-field"—as pledge of his promised assistance.

"HALBERT AND HOB" is the story of a fierce father and son who lived together in solitude, shunned by their fellow-men. One Christmas night they drifted into a quarrel, in the course of which the son seized his father, and was about to turn him out of doors: when the latter, with unaccustomed mildness, bade him stay his hand. Just so, he said, in his youth, had he proceeded against his own father; and at just this stage of the proceeding had a voice in his heart bidden him desist.... And the son thus appealed to desisted also.

This fact is told by Aristotle[[104]] as an instance of the hereditary nature of anger. But Mr. Browning sees more in it than that. If, he declares, Nature creates hard hearts, it is a power beyond hers which softens them; and in his version of "Halbert and Hob" this supernatural power completes the work it has begun. The two return in silence to their fireside. The next morning the father is found dead. The son has become a harmless idiot, to remain so till the end of his life.

"IVAN IVANOVITCH" is the reproduction, with fictitious names and imaginary circumstances, of a popular Russian story, known as "The Judgment of God." A young woman travelling through the forest on a winter's night, is attacked by wolves, and saves her own life by throwing her children to them. But when she reaches her village, and either confesses the deed or stands convicted of it, one of its inhabitants, by trade a carpenter and the Ivàn Ivànovitch of the idyl, lifts the axe which he is plying, and strikes off her head: this informal retribution being accepted, by those present, as in conformity with the higher law.

Mr. Browning has raised the mother's act out of the sphere of vulgar crime, by the characteristic method of making her tell her story: and show herself, as she may easily have been, not altogether bad; though a woman of weak maternal instincts, and one whose nature was powerless against the fear of pain, and the impulse to self-preservation. She describes with appalling vividness the experiences of the night: the moonlit forest—the snow-covered ground—the wolves approaching with a whispering tread, which seems at first but the soughing of a gentle wind—the wedge-like, ever-widening mass, which emerges from the trees; then the flight, and the pursuit: the latter arrested for one moment by the sacrifice of each victim; to be renewed the next, till none is left to sacrifice: one child dragged from the mother's arms; another shielded by her whole body, till the wolf's teeth have fastened in her flesh; and though she betrays, in the very effort to conceal it, how little she has done to protect her children's lives, we realize the horror of her situation, and pity even while we condemn, her. But some words of selfish rejoicing at her own deliverance precede the fatal stroke, and in some degree challenge it. And Mr. Browning farther preserves the spirit of the tradition, by giving to her sentence the sanction of the village priest or "pope," into whose presence the decapitated body has been conveyed. The secular authorities are also on the spot, and condemn the murder as contrary both to justice and to law. But the pope declares that the act of Ivàn Ivànovitch has been one of the higher justice which is above law. He himself is an aged man—so aged, he says, that he has passed through the clouds of human convention, and stands on the firm basis of eternal truth. Looking down upon the world from this vantage-ground, he sees that no gift of God is equal to that of life; no privilege so high as that of reproducing its "miracle;" and that the mother who has cast away her maternal crown, and given over to destruction the creatures which she has borne, has sinned an "unexampled sin," for which a "novel punishment" was required. No otherwise than did Moses of old, has Ivàn Ivànovitch interpreted the will—shown himself the servant—of God.

How Mr. Browning's Ivàn Ivànovitch himself judges the case, is evidenced by this fact, that after wiping the blood from his axe, he betakes himself to playing with his children; and that when the lord of the village has—reluctantly—sent a deputation to inform him that he is free, the words, "how otherwise?" are his only answer.

"TRAY" describes an instance of animal courage and devotion which a friend of Mr. Browning's actually witnessed in Paris. A little girl had fallen into the river. None of the bystanders attempted to rescue her. But a dog, bouncing over the balustrade, brought the child to land; dived again, no one could guess why; and after battling with a dangerous current, emerged with the child's doll; then trotted away as if nothing had occurred.

This "Tray" is made to illustrate Mr. Browning's ideal of a hero, in opposition to certain showy and conventional human types; and the little narrative contains some scathing reflections on those who talk of such a creature as merely led by instinct, or would dissect its brain alive to discover how the "soul" is secreted there.

"NED BRATTS" was suggested by the remembrance of a passage in John Bunyan's "Life and Death of Mr. Badman." Bunyan relates there that some twenty years ago, "at a summer assizes holden at Hertford, while the judge was sitting on the Bench," a certain old Tod came into the Court, and declared himself "the veriest rogue that breathes upon the earth"—a thief from childhood, &c., &c.; that the judge first thought him mad, but after conferring with some of the justices, agreed to indict him "of several felonious actions;" and that as he heartily confessed to all of these, he was hanged, with his wife, at the same time. Mr. Browning has turned Hertford into Bedford; made the time of the occurrence coincide with that of Bunyan's imprisonment; and supposed the evident conversion of this man and woman to be among the many which he effected there. The blind daughter of Bunyan, who plays an important part in "Ned Bratts," is affectingly spoken of in her father's work; and the tag-laces, which have subserved the criminal purposes of Bratts and his wife, represent an industry by which he is known to have supported himself in prison. Mr. Browning, finally, has used the indications Bunyan gives, of the incident taking place on a very hot day, so as to combine the sense of spiritual stirring with one of unwholesome and grotesque physical excitement; and this, as he describes it, is the genuine key-note of the situation.

The character of Ned Bratts is made a perfect vehicle for these impressions. His "Tab" (Tabitha) has had an interview with John Bunyan, and been really moved by his majestic presence, and warning, yet hope-inspiring words. But he himself has been principally worked upon by the reading of the "Pilgrim's Progress;" and we see in him throughout, an unregenerate ruffian, whose carnal energies have merely transferred themselves to another field; and whose blood is fired to this act of martyrdom both by yesterday's potations, and to-day's virtuously endured thirst. "A mug," he cries, in the midst of his confessions; or, "no (addressing his wife), a prayer!"

"Dip for one out of the Book!..." (vol. xv. p. 67.)

The precarious nature of his conversion is, indeed, vividly present to his own mind. It is borne in upon him that he is "Christmas," and must escape from the City of Destruction. He would like nothing better, in his present mood, than to undertake the whole Pilgrimage, and, as it were, cudgel his way through; and since it is late in the day for this, he chooses the short cut by the gallows, as the next best thing. But he is, above all, desirous to be taken while the penitent fit is on him: and urgently sets forth those past misdeeds, which constitute his and his wife's claim to a speedy despatch, such as will place them beyond the danger of backsliding. Already, he declares, Satan is whispering to him of the pleasures he is leaving behind; and the seductions of to-morrow's brawl and bear-baiting are threatening to turn the scale. Another moment, and instead of going up to heaven, like Faithful, in a chariot and pair, he will be the Lost Man in the Iron Cage!

When the two have had their wish, and been hanged "out of hand," the bystanders are edified to tears. But the loyalty of the Chief Justice forbids any imputing of the act of grace to the influence of John Bunyan. Its cause lies rather, he asserts, in the twelve years' pious reign of the restored Charles.

The second series of the "Dramatic Idyls" was published in 1880, and contains:—

It has also a little prologue and epilogue: the former satirizing the pretension to understand the Soul, which we cannot see, while we are baffled by the workings of the bodily organs, which we can see; the latter directed against the popular idea that the more impressible and more quickly responsive natures are the soil of which "song" is born. The true poet, it declares, is as the pine tree which has grown out of a rock.

"ECHETLOS" (holder of the ploughshare) is another legend of the battle of Marathon. It tells, in Mr. Browning's words, how one with the goat-skin garment, and the broad bare limbs of a "clown," was seen on the battle-field ploughing down the enemy's ranks: the ploughshare flashing now here, now there, wherever the Grecian lines needed strengthening; how he vanished when the battle was won; and how the oracle, of which his name was asked, bade the inquirers not care for it:

"Say but just this: We praise one helpful whom we call

The Holder of the Ploughshare. The great deed ne'er grows small."

(vol. xv. p. 87.)

Miltiades and Themistocles had shown that a great name could do so.[[105]]

The anecdote which forms the basis of "CLIVE," was told to Mr. Browning in 1846 by Mrs. Jameson, who had shortly before heard it at Lansdowne House, from Macaulay. It is cursorily mentioned in Macaulay's "Essays."

When Robert Clive was first in India, a boy of fifteen, clerk in a merchant's office at St. David's, he accused an officer with whom he was playing, of cheating at cards, and was challenged by him in consequence. Clive fired, as it seems, prematurely, and missed his aim. The officer, at whose mercy he had thus placed himself, advanced to within arm's length, held the muzzle of his pistol to the youth's forehead, and summoned him to repeat his accusation. Clive did repeat it, and with such defiant courage that his adversary was unnerved. He threw down the weapon, confessed that he had cheated, and rushed out of the room. A chorus of indignation then broke forth among those who had witnessed the scene. They declared that the "wronged civilian" should be righted; and that he who had thus disgraced Her Majesty's Service should be drummed—if needs be, kicked—out of the regiment. But here Clive interposed. Not one, he said, of the eleven, whom he addressed by name and title, had raised a finger to save his life. He would clear scores with any or all among them who breathed a word against the man who had spared it. Nor, as the narrative continues, and as the event proved, was such a word ever spoken.

Clive is supposed to relate this experience, a week before his self-inflicted death, to a friend who is dining with him; and who, struck by his depressed mental state, strives to arouse him from it by the question: which of his past achievements constitutes, in his own judgment, the greatest proof of courage. He gives the moment in which the pistol was levelled at his head, as that in which he felt, not most courage, but most fear. But, as he explains to his astonished listener, it was not the almost certainty of death, which, for one awful minute, made a coward of him; it was the bare possibility of a reprieve, which would have left no appeal from its dishonour. His opponent refused to fire. He might have done so with words like these:

"Keep your life, calumniator!—worthless life I freely spare:

Mine you freely would have taken—murdered me and my good fame

Both at once—and all the better! Go, and thank your own bad aim

Which permits me to forgive you!..." (vol. xv. p. 105.)

What course would have remained to him but to seize the pistol, and himself send the bullet into his brain? This tremendous mental situation is, we need hardly say, Mr. Browning's addition to the episode.

The poem contains also some striking reflections on the risks and responsibilities of power; and concludes with an expression of reverent pity for the "great unhappy hero" for whom they proved too great.

"MULÉYKEH" is an old Arabian story. The name which heads it is that of a swift, beautiful mare, who was Hóseyn—her owner's, "Pearl." He loved her so dearly, that, though a very poor man, no price would tempt him to sell her; and in his fear of her being stolen, he slept always with her head-stall thrice wound round his wrist: and Buhéyseh, her sister, saddled for instantaneous pursuit. One night she was stolen; and Duhl, the thief, galloped away on her and felt himself secure: for the Pearl's speed was such that even her sister had never overtaken her. She chafed, however, under the strange rider, and slackened her pace. Buhéyseh, bearing Hóseyn, gained fast upon them; the two mares were already "neck by croup." Then the thought of his darling's humiliation flashed on Hóseyn's mind. He shouted angrily to Duhl in what manner he ought to urge her. And the Pearl, obeying her master's voice, no less than the familiar signal prescribed by him, bounded forward, and was lost to him forever. Hóseyn returned home, weeping sorely, and the neighbours told him he had been a fool. Why not have kept silence and got his treasure back?

"'And—beaten in speed!' wept Hóseyn: 'You never have loved my Pearl.'"

(vol. xv. p. 116.)

The man who gives his name to "PIETRO OF ABANO" was the greatest Italian philosopher and physician of the thirteenth century.[[106]] He was also an astrologer, pretending to magical knowledge, and persecuted, as Mr. Browning relates. But the special story he tells of him has been told of others also.

Pietro of Abano had the reputation of being a wizard; and though his skill in curing sickness, as in building, star-reading, and yet other things, conferred invaluable services on his fellow-men, he received only kicks and curses for his reward. His power seemed, nevertheless, so enviable, that he was one day, in the archway of his door, accosted by a young Greek, who humbly and earnestly entreated that the secret of that power might be revealed to him. He promised to repay his master with loving gratitude; and hinted that the bargain might be worth the latter's consideration, since nature, in all else his slave, forbade his drinking milk (this is told of the true Pietro): in other words, denied him the affection which softens and sweetens the dry bread of human life. Pietro pretended to consent, and began, to utter, by way of preface, the word "benedicite." The young Greek lost consciousness at its second syllable; and awoke to find himself alone, and with a first instalment of Peter's secret in his mind. "Good is product of evil, and to be effected through it." Acting upon this doctrine, he traded on the weaknesses of his fellow-creatures wherever the opportunity occurred; and attained by this means, first, wealth; next temporal, and then spiritual, power; rising finally to the dignity of Pope. At each stage of this progress, Peter came to him in apparent destitution, and claimed the promised gratitude in an urgent, but very modest prayer for assistance. And each time Peter's presence infused into him a fresh power of unscrupulousness, and sent him a step farther on his way. But each time also the pupil postponed his obligation, till he at last disclaimed it; and—enthroned in the Lateran—was dismissing his benefactor with insult: when the closing syllables—"dicite"—sounded in his ear; and he became conscious of Peter's countenance smiling back at him over his shoulder, and Peter's door being banged in his face. And he then knew that he had lived a lifetime in the fraction of a minute, and that the magician, by means of whom he had done so, justly declined to trust him.

Mr. Browning, however, bids the young Greek persevere; since he might ransack Peter's books, without discovering a better secret for gaining power over the masses, than the "cleverness uncurbed by conscience," which he perhaps already possesses.[[107]]

"DOCTOR ——" is an old Hebrew legend, founded upon the saying that a bad wife is stronger than death. Satan complains, in his character of Death, that man has the advantage of him: since he may baffle him, whenever he will, by the aid of a bad woman; and he undertakes to show this in his own person. He comes to earth, marries, and has a son, who in due time must be supplied with a profession. This son is too cowardly to be a soldier, and too lazy to be a lawyer; Divinity is his father's sphere. So Satan decides that he shall be a doctor; and endows him with a faculty which will enable him to practise Medicine, without any knowledge of it at all. The moment he enters a sick room, he will see his father spiritually present there; and unless he finds him seated at the sick's man's head, that man is not yet doomed. Thus endowed, Doctor —— can cure a patient who was despaired of, with a dose of penny-royal, and justly predict death for one whose only ailment is a pimple. His success carries all before it. One day, however, he is summoned to the emperor, who lies sick; and the emperor offers gold, and power, and, lastly, his daughter's hand, as the price of his recovery. But this time Satan sits at the head of the bed, and not even such an appeal to his pride and greed will induce him to grant the patient even a temporary reprieve. The son, thus driven to bay, pretends to be struck by a sudden thought. "He will try the efficacy of the mystic Jacob's staff." He whispers to an attendant to bid his mother bring it; and as Satan's Bad Wife enters the room, Satan vanishes through the ceiling, leaving a smell of sulphur behind him. The Emperor gets well; but Doctor —— renounces the promised gold: for it was to be the Princess's dowry; and he is too wise to accept it on the condition of saddling himself with a wife.

"PAN AND LUNA" describes a mythical adventure of Luna—the moon, given by Virgil in the Georgics; and has for its text a line from them (III. 390):

"Si credere dignum est."[[108]]

According to the legend, Luna was one night entrapped by Pan who lay in wait for her in the form of a cloud, soft and snowy as the fleece of a certain breed of sheep; and, Virgil continues, followed him to the woodland, "by no means spurning him." But Mr. Browning tells the story in a manner more consonant with the traditional modesty of the "Girl-Moon." She was, he says, distressed by the exposure of her full-orbed charms, as she flew bare through the vault of heaven: the protecting darkness ever vanishing before her; and she took refuge for concealment in the cloud of which the fleecy billows were to close and contract about her, in the limbs of the goat-god. How little she accepted this her first eclipse, may be shown, he thinks, by the fact that she never now lingers within a cloud longer than is necessary to "rip" it through.