“’Tis thine
For ever—take it!”
For the world he had lived, for the things of time and sense he had fought and sighed; the ideal life, the truth of God, the best and noblest things, had interested him noway. His sentence, his awful doom—which at first he was so far from realising that he was thrilled with pleasure at the words—was that he should take and for ever keep the partial beauty for which he had struggled. Wedded for ever to the gross material life, in that he imagined he saw his highest happiness! “Mine—the World?” he cried, in transport. “Yes,” said the awful Judge: “if you are satisfied with one rose, thrown to you over the Eden-barrier which excludes you from its glory—take it!” Our greatest punishment would be the gratification of our lowest aims. “All the world!” and the sense of infinite possession of all the beauty of earth, from fern leaf to Alpine heights, brought the warmth to the man’s heart and extinguished the terror inspired by the Judgment-seat of God. And the great Judge saw the thought, told him he was welcome so to rate the mere hangings of the vestibule of the Palace of the Supreme; and in the scorn of the awful gift the man read his error, and asked for Art in place of Nature. And that, too, was conceded: he should obtain the one form the sculptors laboured to abstract, the one face the painters tried to draw, the perfection in their soul which these only hinted at. But “very good” as God pronounced earth to be, earth can only serve earth’s ends; its completeness transferred to a future state would be the dreariest deficiency. The good, tried once, were bad retried. Then the judged man, seeing the World and the World of Art insufficient to satisfy his new condition, cried in anguish, “Mind is best—I will seize mind—forego the rest!” And again it was answered to him that all the best of mind on earth—the intuition, the grasps of guess, the efforts of the finite to comprehend the infinite, the gleams of heaven which come to sting with hunger for the full light of God, the inspiration of poetry, the truth hidden in fable,—all these were God’s part, and in no wise to be considered as inherent to the mind of man. Losing God, he loses His inspirations; bereft of them in the world he had chosen, mind would not avail to light the cloud he had entered. And the bleeding spirit of the humbled man prays for love alone. And God said, “Is this thy final choice: Love is best? ’Tis somewhat late! Love was all about thee, curled in its mightiness around all thou hadst to do with. Take the show of love for the name’s sake; but remember Who created thee to love, died for love of thee, and thou didst refuse to believe the story, on the ground that the love was too much.” Cowering deprecatingly, the man, who now saw the whole truth of God, cried, “Thou Love of God! Let me not know that all is lost! Let me go on hoping to reach one eve the Better Land!” And the man awoke, and rejoiced that he was not left apart in God’s contempt; thanking God that it is hard to be a Christian, and that he is not condemned to earth and ease for ever.
Notes.—Stanza iv., “In all Gods acts (as Plato cries He doth) He should geometrise”: see Plutarch, Symposiacs, viii. 2. “Diogenianas began and said, ‘Let us admit Plato to the conference, and inquire upon what account he says—supposing it to be his sentence—that God always plays the geometer.’ I said: ‘This sentence was not plainly set down in any of his books; yet there are good arguments that it is his, and it is very much like his expression.’ Tyndares presently subjoined: ‘He praises geometry as a science that takes off men from sensible objects, and makes them apply themselves to the intelligible and Eternal Nature, the contemplation of which is the end of philosophy, as a view of the mysteries of initiation into holy rites.’” vi., “My list of coleoptera”: in entomology, an order of insects having four wings—the beetle tribe. “A Grignon with the Regent’s crest”: Grignon was a famous snuff-box maker, and his name was used for the fashionable boxes. vii., “Jonah’s whale”: The latest theory is that the great deity of Nineveh was a “fish-god.” Mr. Tylor considers the story to be a solar myth. Madame Blavatsky says (Isis Unveiled, vol. ii., p. 258), “‘Big Fish’ is Cetus, the latinised form of Keto—κητω, and Keto is Dagon, Poseidon.” She suggests that Jonah simply went into the cell within the body of Dagon, the fish-god. Orpheus, the mythical poet, whose mother was the Muse Calliope. His song could move the rocks and tame wild beasts (see [Eurydice to Orpheus]). Dionysius Zagrias. Zagreus was a name given to Dionysus by the Orphic poets. The conception of the Winter-Dionysus originated in Crete: sacrifice was offered to him at Delphi on the shortest day. This is quite evidently one of the myths of winter. xii., Æschylus: “the giving men blind hopes.” In the Prometheus Chained of Æschylus the chorus of ocean nymphs ask Prometheus—
“Chor. But had th’ offence no further aggravation?
Pro. I hid from men the foresight of their fate.
Chor. What couldst thou find to remedy that ill?
Pro. I sent blind Hope t’ inhabit in their hearts.
Chor. A blessing hast thou given to mortal man.”
Morley’s Plays of Æschylus, p. 18.
xiv., “The kingcraft of the Lucomons”: Heads of ancient Etruscan families, and combining both priest and patriarch. The kings were drawn from them. (Dr. Furnivall.) Fourier’s scheme: Fourierism was the system of Charles Fourier, a Frenchman, who recommended the reorganisation of society into small communities living in common. xx., “Flesh refine to nerve”: this is a remarkable instance of the poet’s scientific apprehension of the process of nerve formation five years before Herbert Spencer speculated on the evolution of the nervous system. (See my Browning’s Message to his Time: “Browning as a Scientific Poet.”) xxvi., Buonarrotti == Michael Angelo.
Eccelino da Romano III. (Sordello.) Known as Eccelin the Monk, or Ezzelin III. He was the Emperor Frederick’s chief in North Italy, and was a powerful noble. He was termed “the Monk” because of his religious austerity. He is described by Mr. Browning in the poem as “the thin, grey, wizened, dwarfish devil Ecelin.” He was the most prominent of Ghibelline leaders, was tyrant of Padua, and nicknamed “the Son of the Devil.” Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, iii. 33, describes him as
“Fierce Ezelin, that most inhuman lord,
Who shall be deemed by men a child of hell.”
“His story,” says Longfellow, in his notes to Dante’s Inferno, “may be found in Sismondi’s Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, chap. xix. He so outraged the religious sense of the people by his cruelties that a crusade was preached against him, and he died a prisoner in 1259, tearing the bandages from his wounds, and fierce and defiant to the last. ‘Ezzelino was small of stature,’ says Sismondi, ‘but the whole aspect of his person, all his movements, indicated the soldier. His language was bitter, his countenance proud, and by a single look he made the boldest tremble. His soul, so greedy of all crimes, felt no attraction for sensual pleasures. Never had Ezzelino loved women; and this, perhaps, is the reason why in his punishments he was as pitiless against them as men. He was in his sixty-sixth year when he died; and his reign of blood had lasted thirty-four years.’”
Eccelino IV. was the elder of the two sons of Eccelino III., surnamed the Monk, who divided his little principality between them in 1223, and died in 1235. In 1226, at the head of the Ghibellines, he got possession of Verona, and was appointed Podesta. He became one of the most faithful servants of the Emperor Frederick II. In 1236 he invited Frederick to enter Italy to his assistance, and in August met him at Trent. Eccelino was soon after besieged in Verona by the Guelfs, and the siege was raised by the Emperor. Vicenza was next stormed and the government given to Eccelino. In 1237 he marched against Padua, which capitulated, when he behaved towards the people with great cruelty. He then besieged Mantua, and mastered the Trevisa. In 1239 he was excommunicated by the Pope and deprived of his estates. He behaved with such terrible cruelty that the Emperor would have gladly been rid of him. Dante, in the Divina Commedia, Inferno xii., places Eccelino in the lake of blood in the seventh circle of hell.
Echetlos. (Dramatic Idyls, Second Series: 1880.) A Greek legend (of which there are many) about the battle of Marathon, in which the Athenians and Platæans, under Miltiades, defeated the Persians, 490 B.C. Wherever the Greeks were hardest pressed in the fight a figure driving a ploughshare was seen mowing down the enemy’s ranks. After the battle was over the Greeks were anxious to learn who was the man in the clown’s dress who had done them this great service. They demanded of the oracles his name. But the oracles declined to tell: “Call him Echetlos, the Ploughshare-wielder,” they said. “Let his deed be his name: