“Alphabet on a Man’s Eyes.
“In Alonzo Lee, of Atlanta, Galveston, the Americans have found a singular phenomenon, nothing less than the alphabet marked quite plainly on the edge of the iris of each of his eyes similar to the figures on a watch. This wonder is said to have been caused by his mother, who was an illiterate woman, desiring to educate herself. In each eye the entire alphabet is plainly marked in capital letters, not, however, in regular order. The ‘W’ is in the lower part of the iris and ‘X’ at the top. They appear to be made if white fibre wove cord, being connected at the top by another cord seemingly linked to the upper extremity of each letter. The eye itself is blue, with white lines radiating from the centre almost to the letters themselves: these letters do not slope exactly in the direction that the radials extend from the centre. Beginning at the bottom with ‘W’ and following the letters like the hands of a watch they can be more readily distinguished. So too, the irregularity is a striking feature, showing how the mother learned her letters in broken patches, as a child learns when beginning to read. Lee, who has been three times divorced, has a son whose eyes are similar to his father’s.”
Echo, 23rd March, 1896.
The Ring and the Book. Book I., l. 902. “Caritellas,” evidently for “carretellas.” “A kind of drosky with a single pony harnessed to the near side of the pole.” See The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton, vol. ii., p. 538.
Book I. “O Lyric Love,” etc. The following letter was sent to me as likely to be interesting on account of Mr. Browning’s own explanation of his terms Whiteness and Wanness. My correspondent says: “I happen to have an original letter from R. Browning in which he says, ‘The greater and lesser lights indicate the greater and less proximity of the person,’” etc. Wanness should be taken as meaning simply less bright than absolute whiteness, as Keats speaks of “wannish fire,” etc.
Book VIII., l. 329. The torture referred to by De Archangelis as the Vigiliarum, is evidently identical with that called the “Vigilia” and which is described in Hare’s Walks in Rome. “Upon a high joint-stool, the seat about a span large, and, instead of being flat, cut in the form of pointed diamonds, the victim was seated; the legs were fastened together and without support; the hands bound behind the back, and with a running knot attached to a cord descending from the ceiling; the body was loosely attached to the back of the chair, cut also into angular points. A wretch stood near pushing the victim from side to side; and now and then, by pulling the rope from the ceiling, gave the arms most painful jerks. In this horrible position the sufferer remained forty hours, the assistants being changed every fifth hour.
Book IX., l. 1109. “The sole joke of Thucydides.” Mr. F. C. Snow, writing from Oxford to the Daily News, says: “Browning was misled by a scholiast. The ancient critics said, ‘Here the lion laughs,’ with reference to the passage of Thucydides where the story of Cylon is told (l. 126, see also the Scholia). But they did not mean that the passage contained any joke, only that the narrative style was unusually genial. There are other passages of Thucydides where his grim humour comes much nearer to the modern idea of pleasantry.”
“The lion, lo, hath laughed!” in the context, proves the correctness of Mr. Snow’s explanation.
Sordello. Book III., l. 975. In the Athenæum, 12th December, 1896, Mr. Alfred Forman published a letter on this passage which is an important contribution to our commentary on Sordello.
“In a review of Dr. Berdoe’s Browning Cyclopædia, I have seen it asked: ‘In what form did Empedocles put up with Ætna for a stimulant?’ In what form indeed! But I think a more pertinent question would have been: How can either Empedocles or, as is usually alleged, Landor have anything to do with the passage referred to? To me it has always appeared to be Æschylus whom Browning (vol. i, pp. 169-70, of the seventeen-volume edition, 1888-94, Smith, Elder & Co.) addresses as