Villains. Browning’s principal villains are the following:—Halbert and Hob; Ned Bratts; Count Guido Franceschini; the devil-like elder man of the Inn Album; Paolo and Girolamo in The Ring and the Book; Ottima and the Intendant of the Bishop, Uguccio, Stefano and Sebald, in Pippa Passes (Bluphocks, in the same poem, is rather a tool of others than a great villain on his own account); Louscha, the mother, in Ivan Ivanovitch; Chiappino in A Soul’s Tragedy.
Vincent Parkes. (Martin Relph.) He was Rosamund Page’s lover. The girl is accused of being a spy, and unless she can clear herself within a given time is to be shot. Parkes arrives at the place of execution with the proofs of the girl’s innocence just as the fatal volley is fired.
Violante Comparini. (The Ring and the Book.) The supposed mother of Pompilia. She was the wife of Pietro, and by him had no children; she bought Pompilia of a courtesan, and brought the child up as her own, and was murdered, with her husband and Pompilia, by Count Guido.
Vivisection, or the cutting into living animals for scientific purposes. Mr. Browning was to the last a Vice-President of the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals, and he always expressed the utmost abhorrence of the practices which it opposes. The following letter was written by Mr. Browning on the occasion of the presentation of the memorial to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1875:—“19, Warwick Crescent, W., December 28th, 1874.—Dear Miss Cobbe,—I return the petition unsigned, for the one good reason—that I have just signed its fellow forwarded to me by Mrs. Leslie Stephen. You have heard, ‘I take an equal interest with yourself in the effort to supress vivisection.’ I dare not so honour my mere wishes and prayers as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts; but this I know: I would rather submit to the worst of the deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two. I return the paper, because I shall be probably shut up here for the next week or more, and prevented from seeing my friends. Whoever would refuse to sign would certainly not be of the number.—Ever truly and gratefully yours, Robert Browning.”—In two of his poems the poet has expressed his emphatic opinion upon Vivisection: in Tray, and in Arcades Ambo. See my chapter “Browning and Vivisection” in Browning’s Message to his Time. In the recently published Life and Letters of Robert Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, there are many interesting incidents connected with the great poet’s love for animals, which characterised him from infancy till death. Mrs. Orr says (p. 27) this fondness for animals was conspicuous in his earliest days. “His urgent demand for ‘something to do’ would constantly include ‘something to be caught’ for him: ‘they were to catch him an eft’; ‘they were to catch him a frog.’” He would refuse to take his medicine unless bribed by the gift of a speckled frog from among the strawberries: and the maternal parasol, hovering above the strawberry bed during the search for this object of his desires, remained a standing picture in his remembrance. But the love of the uncommon was already asserting itself; and one of his very juvenile projects was a collection of rare creatures, the first contribution to which was a couple of lady-birds, picked up one winter’s day on a wall and immediately consigned to a box lined with cotton-wool, and labelled ‘Animals found Surviving in the Depths of a Severe Winter.’ Nor did curiosity in this case weaken the power of sympathy. His passion for beasts and birds was the counterpart of his father’s love of children, only displaying itself before the age at which child-love naturally appears. His mother used to read Croxall’s Fables to his little sister and him. The story contained in them of a lion who was kicked to death by an ass affected him so painfully that he could no longer endure the sight of the book; and as he dare not destroy it, he buried it between the stuffing and the woodwork of an old dining-room chair, where it stood for lost, at all events for the time being. When first he heard of the adventures of the parrot who insisted on leaving his cage, and who enjoyed himself for a little while and then died of hunger and cold, he—and his sister with him—cried so bitterly that it was found necessary to invent a different ending, according to which the parrot was rescued just in time and brought back to his cage to live peacefully in it ever after. As a boy he kept owls and monkeys, magpies and hedgehogs, an eagle, and even a couple of large snakes; constantly bringing home the more portable creatures in his pockets, and transferring them to his mother for immediate care. I have heard him speak admiringly of the skilful tenderness with which she took into her lap a lacerated cat, washed and sewed up its ghastly wound, and nursed it back to health. The great intimacy with the life and habits of animals which reveals itself in his works is readily explained by these facts.”
Wall, A. The prologue to Pacchiarotto (q.v.) bears this title in the Selections, Series the Second (published in 1880).
Wanting is—what? (Prologue to Jocoseria, 1883.) In every phase of human life, and in every human action, there is imperfection—always something still to come. In the characters depicted and the incidents narrated in the volume called Jocoseria the poet asks us to say what is wanting to perfect them. His question “Wanting is—what?” governs the whole volume. In Solomon and Balkis what was wanting was not mere wisdom, but a sanctified nature. In Christina and Monaldeschi the woman was wanting in forgiveness. Here the love was not perfect. In Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli what was wanting was self-sacrifice. Had Mary really loved Fuseli, she would not have attempted to ruin his life by endeavouring to win him from his wife. In Adam, Lilith, and Eve, there was wanting, says Mr. Sharpe, “the union of perfect love with perfect holiness.” In Ixion was wanting a just conception of the Fatherhood of God. God is not the tyrannical Master of the world, but the Loving All-Father. In Jochanan Hakkadosh, Mr. Sharpe says, in answer to the question, “Wanting is—what?” “One who shall combine perfect wisdom with the full experience of life, and the completeness of these intuitions of the Spirit.” “Is not this the Christ?” In Never the Time and the Place, to completely develop our souls we need perfect conditions of existence. We shall not find them till we reach heaven. In Pambo the saint recognised that he could not perfectly fulfil the smallest of God’s commandments, nor can we perfectly keep God’s law. Wanting is the Atonement.
Note.—“Come, then, complete incompletion, O Comer, Pant through the blueness,”—i.e. descend from heaven. The Rev. J. Sharpe, M.A., thus explains the title “O Comer”: “ὁ ἐρχόμενος, in the New Testament, is one of the titles of the Messiah—the Future One, He who shall come (Matt. xi. 3, xxi. 9; Luke vii. 19, 20; John xii. 13; also John vi. 14, xi. 27). So in the periphrase of the name Jehovah, ὁ ων καὶ ὀ ὴν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος (Rev. i. 4, 8; iv. 8).—Robinson’s Greek Lexicon of the New Testament. The title hints at the connection between this preface and the stories from the Talmud which follow. The Incarnation, the union of God and man, of Creator and creation, supplies the solution of the problem raised by the incompleteness and death all around us. The beauty is no longer without meaning, for it is a revelation of God; the huge mass of death is no longer revolting, for ‘all things were created by Him, and for Him ... and by Him all things consist,’ and He will ‘reunite all things ... whether they be things on earth or things in heaven.’” In the character of Donald, what was wanting was the development of “the latent moral faculty.” He did not recognise the rights of the stag, which the commonest principles of justice, to say nothing of gratitude, should have made obvious to the sportsman.
Waring. Waring was the name given by the poet to his friend Mr. Alfred Domett, C.M.G., son of Mr. Nathaniel Domett, born at Camberwell, May 20th, 1811. He matriculated at Cambridge in 1829, as a member of St. John’s College. In 1832 he published a volume of poems. He then travelled in America for two years, and after his return to London, about 1836-7, he contributed some verses to Blackwood’s Magazine. Mr. Domett afterwards spent two years in Italy, Switzerland, and other continental countries. He was called to the bar in 1841. Having purchased some land of the New Zealand Company, he went as a settler to New Zealand in 1842. In 1851 he became Secretary for the whole of that country. He accepted posts as Commissioner of Crown Lands and Resident Magistrate at Hawke’s Bay. Subsequently he was elected to represent the town of Nelson in the House of Representatives. In 1862 Mr. Domett was called upon to form a Government, which he did. Having held various important offices in the Legislature, and rendered great services to the country, he was created a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (1880). He returned to England and published several volumes of poems. His chief work is Ranolf and Amohia, full of descriptions of New Zealand scenery, and paying a warm tribute to Mr. Browning, whom he calls