aptly define the poet’s position in the passionate defence of the nude as his art-gospel. As we are intended to admire God’s handiwork in the “naked star,” so is “the naked female form” declared to be—
“God’s best of bounteous and magnificent,
Revealed to earth.”
Should any object that “the naked female form,” however beautiful, is not perhaps the best thing to display in the shop windows of the Rue de Rivoli or Regent Street, he is set down as “a grubber for pig-nuts,” like Filippo Baldinucci, who praises the painter-priest for ordering his pictures of the nude to be destroyed. Mr. Browning deals very severely with those who think that pictures of the nude have a deleterious influence on the public character, and who endeavour to prevent their exhibition. It is instructive, however, to notice the fact that the Paris police are adopting even severer measures than our own against shopkeepers and others who exhibit pictures of the nude. Where the governing bodies of the two greatest cities of the world take the same view of this serious moral question, we must take leave to hold that if “the gospel of art” has no better means whereby to elevate the race than those of familiarising our youth of both sexes with—
“The dear
Fleshly perfection of the human shape,”
we can very well afford to dispense with it “Omnia non omnibus,” concludes the poet. What is perfectly innocent for the artist is not expedient for the general public, just as the dissecting room, though an excellent school for doctors, is not a suitable place for the people in the street below.
Notes.—Baldinucci, author of the Italian History of Art,—he was a friend of Furini, and it is from his biography that Browning has derived the facts recorded in his poem. Quicherat, J., edited the Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc, in five vols., 1841-9. D’Alençon—Percival de Cagny, a retainer of the Duke D’Alençon, who wrote an account of Joan of Arc, which is to be found in the fourth volume of Quicherat.
Fuseli. See [Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli].
Fust and his Friends. (The Epilogue to Parleyings.) The scene is laid “Inside the home of Fust, Mayence, 1457.” Johann Fust is often considered the inventor, or at least one of the inventors of printing. He was born at Mayence, in Germany, in the early part of the fifteenth century (date uncertain). The name ultimately became Faust. It has been said that Fust was a goldsmith, but there is no evidence of this. He was a money-lender or speculator, and was connected with Gutenberg, who is now considered to have been the real inventor of printing. Some however, say that Fust invented typography, and was the partner of Gutenberg, to whom he advanced the means to carry out his invention. On Fust first showing his printed books he was suspected of magic, as he appears to have concealed the method by which he turned them out. There is no proof that the monks were hostile to printing, or that they resented the new process of multiplying books on the ground of interference with their business as copyists. Fust and Gutenberg were on good terms with several monasteries, and the early printers often set up their presses in religious houses of various orders. It is exceedingly probable that the whole magic story arose from the similarity between the names Fust and Faust, the pupil of the devil. Browning in this poem accepts the Fust story of the invention of printing. Fust is visited by some monks, who, having heard confused accounts of his work, have come to the conclusion that he has made a compact with Satan, and is in danger of losing his soul; they prepare to exorcise the demon, but cannot remember the proper formula, and make amusing mistakes in their repeated attempts to capture the appropriate Latin terms of the exorcism. They find the inventor melancholy and depressed: he has not succeeded in perfecting his machinery; but while they argue with him the right process suddenly dawns upon him, and invoking the aid of Archimedes (thought by the monks to be a devil of some sort), he runs to his printing room, and in five minutes returns with the psalm which they could not remember accurately printed on slips of paper, one of which he hands to each of the friars. Fust then shows them the printing press, and explains the use of the types and blocks, bursting out into a noble hymn of praise to God for having enabled him to bless mankind with his invention. The monks find it exceedingly simple, and perceive there is no miracle at all. They doubt whether the invention will prove an unmixed blessing for the Church, and dread the trash which will come flying from Jew, Moor and Turk. Huss declared in dying that a swan would succeed the goose they were burning. Fust says he foresees such a man. (Huss means goose in the dialect he spoke. The swan of whom he prophesied was Luther.)
Notes.—Faust and Fust: these names were often confounded, when people thought printing a diabolical art. Palinodes, songs repeated a second time. “Barnabites and Dominican experts”: The Barnabites as a religious order were inferior in learning and theological attainments to the Dominicans, who were experts in matters of heresy. Famulus, a servant, an attendant. “Ne pulvis et ignis”: Latin words misquoted from some monastic exorcism which the monks have half forgotten. “Asmodeus inside of a Hussite,” the devil animating the heretic Hussite or follower of Huss. “Pou sto,” point d’appui: Archimedes said, “Give me pou sto (‘a place to stand on’), and I could move the world.”
Future State, A. Mr. Browning’s belief in the doctrine of a future state of reward and punishment is expressed at great length and with much force in La Saisiaz.