"JOCOSERIA."

The volume so christened (grave and gay), published 1883, shows a greater variety of subject and treatment than do the Dramatic Idyls, and its contents might be still more easily broken up; but they are also best given in their original form. They are—

"WANTING IS—WHAT?" is an invocation to Love, as the necessary supplement to whatever is beautiful in life. It may equally be addressed to the spirit of Love, or to its realization in the form of a beloved person.

"DONALD" is a true story, repeated to Mr. Browning by one who had heard it from its hero the so-called Donald, himself. This man, a fearless sportsman in the flush of youth and strength, found himself one day on a narrow mountain ledge—a wall of rock above, a precipice below, and the way barred by a magnificent stag approaching from the opposite side. Neither could retrace his steps. There was not space enough for them to pass each other. One expedient alone presented itself: that the man should lie flat, and the stag (if it would) step over him. And so it might have been. Donald slipped sideways on to his back. The stag, gently, cautiously, not grazing him with the tip of a hoof, commenced the difficult transit; the feat was already half accomplished. But the lifted hind legs laid bare the stomach of the stag; and Donald, who was sportsman first, and man long afterwards, raised himself on his elbow, and stabbed it. The two rolled over into the abyss. The stag, for the second time, saved its murderer's life; for it broke his fall. He came out of the hospital into which he had been carried, a crippled, patched-up wretch, but able to crawl on hands and knees to wherever his "pluck" might be appreciated, and earn a beggar's livelihood by telling how it was last displayed.

These facts are supposed to be related in a Scotch bothie, to a group of young men already fired by the attractions of sport; and are the narrator's comment on the theory, that moral soundness as well as physical strength, is promoted by it.

"SOLOMON AND BALKIS" is the Talmudic version[[109]] of the dialogue, which took place between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, on the occasion of her visit to the wise King. They begin by talking for effect: and when questioned by each other as to the kind of persons they most readily admit to their respective courts, Solomon answers that he welcomes the Wise, whatever be their social condition; and Balkis declares that her sympathies are all with the Good. But a chance (?) movement on her part jostles the hand of Solomon; and the ring it bears slips round, so that the truth-compelling Name is turned outwards instead of in. Then he confesses that he loves the Wise just so long as he is the object of their appreciation; she that she loves the Good so long as they bear the form of young and handsome men. He acknowledges, with a sigh, that the soul, which will soar in heaven, must crawl while confined to earth; she owns, with a laugh and a blush, that she has not travelled thus far to hold mental communion with him.[[110]]

"CRISTINA[[111]] AND MONALDESCHI" gives the closing scene of the life of Monaldeschi, in what might be Cristina's own words. She is addressing the man whom she has convicted of betraying her, and at whose murder she is about to assist; and the monologue reflects the outward circumstance of this murder, as well as the queen's deliberate cruelty, and her victim's cowardice. They are in the palace of Fontainebleau. Its internal decorations record the loves of Diane de Poitiers and the French king, in their frequent repetition of the crescent and the salamander,[[112]] and of the accompanying motto, "Quis separabit;" and Cristina, with ghastly irony, calls her listener's attention to the appropriateness of these emblems to their own case. Then she plays with the idea that his symbol is the changing moon, hers the fire-fed salamander, dangerous to those only who come too close. Changing the metaphor, she speaks of herself as a peak, which Monaldeschi has chosen to scale, and which he wrongly hoped to descend when he should be weary of the position, by the same ladder by which he climbed; and her half-playful words assume a still more sinister import, as she depicts the whirling waters, the frightful rocky abyss, into which a moment's giddiness on his part, a touch from her, might precipitate him. She bids him cure the dizziness, ward off the danger, by kneeling, even crouching, at her feet; act the lover, though he no longer is one. And all the while she is drawing him towards the door of that "Gallery of the Deer," where the priest who is to confess, the soldiers who are to slay, are waiting for him.

Cristina's last words are addressed, in vindication of her deed, to the priest (Lebel), who is aghast at its ferocity. He, she says, has received the culprit's confession, and would not divulge it for a crown. The church at Avon[[113]] must tell how her secrets have been guarded by him to whom she had entrusted them.

"MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT AND FUSELI" is the mournful yet impassioned expression of an unrequited love.

"ADAM, LILITH, AND EVE" illustrates the manner in which the typical man and woman will proceed towards each other: the latter committing herself by imprudent disclosures when under the influence of fear, and turning them into a joke as soon as the fear is past; the former pretending that he never regarded them as serious.

"IXION" is an imaginary protest of this victim of the anger of Zeus, wrung from him by his torments, as he whirls on the fiery wheel.[[114]] He has been sentenced to this punishment for presuming on the privileges which Zeus had conferred upon him, and striving to win Heré's[[115]] love; and he declares that the punishment is undeserved: "he was encouraged to claim the love of Heré, together with the friendship of Zeus; he has erred only in his trust in their professions. And granting that it were otherwise—that he had sinned in arrogance—that, befriended by the gods, he had wrongly fancied himself their equal: one touch from them of pitying power would have sufficed to dispel the delusion, born of the false testimony of the flesh!" He asks, with indignant scorn, what need there is of accumulated torment, to prove to one who has recovered his sight, that he was once blind; and in this scorn and indignation he denounces the gods, whose futile vindictiveness would shame the very nature of man; he denounces them as hollow imitations of him whom they are supposed to create: as mere phantoms to which he imparts the light and warmth of his own life. Then rising from denunciation to prophecy, he bids his fellow-men take heart. "Let them struggle and fall! Let them press on the limits of their own existence, to find only human passions and human pettiness in the sphere beyond; let them expiate their striving in hell! The end is not yet come. Of his vapourized flesh, of the 'tears, sweat, and blood' of his agony, is born a rainbow of hope; of the whirling wreck of his existence, the pale light of a coming joy. Beyond the weakness of the god his tormenter he descries a Power, unobstructed, all-pure.

"Thither I rise, whilst thou—Zeus, keep the godship and sink!"

If any doubt were still possible as to Mr. Browning's attitude towards the doctrine of eternal punishment, this poem must dispel it.

"JOCHANAN HAKKADOSH" relates how a certain Rabbi was enabled to extend his life for a year and three months beyond its appointed term, and what knowledge came to him through the extension. Mr. Browning professes to rest his narrative on a Rabbinical work, of which the title, given by him in Hebrew, means "Collection of many lies;" and he adds, by way of supplement, three sonnets, supposed to fantastically illustrate the old Hebrew proverb, "From Moses to Moses[[116]] never was one like Moses," and embodying as many fables of wildly increasing audacity. The main story is nevertheless justified by traditional Jewish belief; and Mr. Browning has made it the vehicle of some poetical imagery and much serious thought.

Jochanan Hakkadosh was at the point of death. He had completed his seventy-ninth year. But his faculties were unimpaired; and his pupils had gathered round him to receive the last lessons of his experience; and to know with what feelings he regarded the impending change. Jochanan Hakkadosh had but one answer to give: his life had been a failure. He had loved, learned, and fought; and in every case his object had been ill-chosen, his energies ill-bestowed. He had shared the common lot, which gives power into the hand of folly, and places wisdom in command when no power is left to be commanded. With this desponding utterance he bade his "children" farewell.

But here a hubbub of protestation arose. "This must not be the Rabbi's last word. It need not be so;" for, as Tsaddik, one of the disciples, reminded his fellows, there existed a resource against such a case. Their "Targums" (commentaries) assured them that when one thus combining the Nine Points of perfection was overtaken by years before the fruits of his knowledge had been matured, respite might be gained for him by a gift from another man's life: the giver being rewarded for the wisdom to which he ministered by a corresponding remission of ill-spent time. The sacrifice was small, viewed side by side with the martyrdoms endured in Rome for the glory of the Jewish race.[[117]] "Who of those present was willing to make it?" Again a hubbub arose. The disciples within, the mixed crowd without, all clamoured for the privilege of lengthening the Rabbi's life from their own. Tsaddik deprecated so extensive a gift. "Their teacher's patience should not be overtaxed, like that of Perida (whose story he tells), by too long a spell of existence." He accepted from the general bounty exactly one year, to be recruited in equal portions from a married lover, a warrior, a poet, and a statesman; and, the matter thus settled, Jochanan Hakkadosh fell asleep.

Four times the Rabbi awoke, in renewed health and strength: and four times again he fell asleep: and at the close of each waking term Tsaddik revisited him as he sat in his garden—amidst the bloom or the languors, the threatenings or the chill, of the special period of the year—and questioned him of what he had learned. And each time the record was like that of the previous seventy-nine years, one of disappointment and failure. For the gift had been drawn in every case from a young life, and been neutralized by its contact with the old. As a lover, the Rabbi declares, he has dreamed young dreams, and his older self has seen through them. He has known beforehand that the special charms of his chosen one would prove transitory, and that the general attraction of her womanhood belonged to her sex and not to her. As a warrior, he has experienced the same process of disenchantment. For the young believe that the surest way to the Right and Good, is that, always, which is cut by the sword: and that the exercise of the sword is the surest training for those self-devoting impulses which mark the moral nature of man. The old have learned that the most just war involves, in its penalties, the innocent no less than the guilty; that violence rights no wrong which time and patience would not right more fully; and that for the purposes of self devotion, unassisted love is more effective than hate. (Picturesque illustrations are made to support this view.) As poet, he has recalled the glow of youthful fancy to feel it quenched by the experience of age: to see those soaring existences whose vital atmosphere is the future, frozen by their contact with a dead past. As statesman, he has looked out upon the forest of life, again seeing the noble trees by which the young trace their future path. And, seeing these, he has known, that the way leads, not by them, but among the brushwood and briars which fill the intervening space; that the statist's work is among the mindless many who will obstruct him at every step, not among the intellectual few by whom his progress would be assisted.

As he completes his testimony another change comes over him; and Tsaddik, kissing the closing eyelids, leaves his master to die.

The rumour of a persecution scatters the Jewish inhabitants of the city. Not till three months have expired do they venture to return to it; and when Tsaddik and the other disciples seek the cave where their master lies, they find him, to their astonishment, alive. Then Tsaddik remembers that even children urged their offering upon him, and concludes that some urchin or other contrived to make it "stick;" and he anxiously disclaims any share in the "foisting" this crude fragment of existence on the course of so great a life. Hereupon the Rabbi opens his eyes, and turns upon the bystanders a look of such absolute relief, such utter happiness, that, as Tsaddik declares, only a second miracle can explain it. It is a case of the three days' survival of the "Ruach" or spirit, conceded to those departed saints whose earthly life has anticipated the heavenly; who have died, as it were, half in the better world.[[118]]

Tsaddik has, however, missed the right solution of the problem. Jochanan Hakkadosh can only define his state as one of ignorance confirmed by knowledge; but he makes it very clear that it is precisely the gift of the child's consciousness, which has produced this ecstatic calm. The child's soul in him has reconciled the differing testimony of youth and manhood: solving their contradictions in its unquestioning faith and hope. It has lifted him into that region of harmonized good and evil, where bliss is greater than the human brain can bear. And this is how he feels himself to be dying; bearing with him a secret of perfect happiness, which he vainly wishes he could impart.[[119]]

"NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE" is a fanciful expression of love and longing, provoked by the opposition of circumstances.

The name of "PAMBO" or "Pambus" is known to literature,[[120]] as that of a foolish person, who spent months—Mr. Browning says years—in pondering a simple passage from Psalm xxxix.; and remained baffled by the difficulty of its application. The passage is an injunction that man look to his ways, so that he do not offend with his tongue. And Pambo finds it easy to practise the first part of this precept, but not at all so the second. Mr. Browning declares himself in the same case. "He also looks to his ways, and is guided along them by the critic's torch. But he offends with his tongue, notwithstanding."

FOOTNOTES:

[104]

Ethics, VII. vi. 2.

[105]

The story is told in Pausanias. A painting of Echetlos was to be seen in the Poecile at Athens.

[106]

Petrus Aponensis: author of a work quoted in the Idyl: Conciliator Differentiarum. Abano is a village near Padua.

[107]

Some expressions in this Idyl may require explaining. "Salomo si nôsset" (novisset) (p. 136). "Had Solomon but known this." "Teneo, vix" (p. 136). "I scarcely contain myself." "Hact[=e]nus" (p. 136). The "e" is purposely made long. "Hitherto." "Peason" (p. 138). The old English plural of "pea." "Pou sto" (p. 138). "Where I may stand:" The alleged saying of Archimedes—"I could move the world had I a place for my fulcrum—'where I might stand' to move it." "Tithon" (p. 141). Tithonus—Aurora's lover: for whom she procured the gift of eternal life. "Apage, Sathanas!" (p. 143). "Depart Satan." Customary adjuration.

The term "Venus," as employed in the postscript to the Idyl, signified in Roman phraseology, the highest throw of the dice. It signified, therefore the highest promise to him, who, in obedience to the oracle, had tested his fortunes at the fount at Abano, by throwing golden dice into it. The "crystal," to which Mr. Browning refers, is the water of the well or fount, at the bottom of which, as Suetonius declared, the dice thrown by Tiberius, and their numbers, were still visible. The little air which concludes the post-script reflects the careless or "lilting" mood in which Mr. Browning had thrown the "fancy dice" which cast themselves into the form of the poem.

[108]

"If it is proper to be credited."

[109]

This version is more crudely reproduced by the Persian poet Jami.

[110]

The word "conster," which rhymes in the poem with "monster," is Old English for "construe."

[111]

Daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, and Queen of Sweden.

[112]

Some confusion has here arisen between Francis I., whose emblem was the salamander, and Henry II., the historic lover of Diane de Poitiers. But Francis was also said to have been, for a short time, attached to her; and the poetic contrast of the frigid moon and the fiery salamander was perhaps worth the dramatic sacrifice of Cristina's accuracy.

[113]

A village close to Fontainebleau, in the church of which Monaldeschi was buried.

[114]

"Winged" or "fiery:" fiery from the rapidity of its motion.

[115]

Juno.

[116]

That is, to Moses Maimonides.

[117]

The names and instances given are, as well as the main fact, historical.

[118]

A Talmudic doctrine still held among the Jews. The "Halaphta," with whom Mr. Browning connects it, was a noted Rabbi.

[119]

The "Bier" and the "three daughters" was a received Jewish name for the Constellation of the Great Bear. Hence the simile derived from this (vol. xv. pp. 217-244).

The "Salem," mentioned at p. 218, is the mystical New Jerusalem to be built of the spirits of the great and good.

[120]

"Chetw. Hist. Collect.," cent. I., p. 17. Quoted by Nath. Wanley, "Wonders of the Little World," p. 138.