Goito Castle (Sordello), near Mantua, where Sordello was brought up by Adelaide, wife of Ecelin, with Palma, daughter of Ecelin by a former wife. Sordello lived at Goito in seclusion and boyish pleasures till he was nearly twenty years old.
Gold Hair: A Legend of Pornic. (Dramatis Personæ, 1864.) The poem is said by Mr. Orr to be founded on facts well known at Pornic, a seaside town in Brittany. A young girl well connected died with a great reputation for holiness. She had beautiful golden hair, of which she was very proud. She begged that it might not be disturbed after her death, and she was buried with it intact near the high altar of the church of St. Gilles. Some years after it became necessary to repair the floor of the church in the proximity of the maiden’s tomb. It was found that the coffin had fallen to pieces, and a gold coin was noticed, which led to a more careful examination of the spot. Thirty double louis-d’or were discovered, which had been hidden by the girl in her hair, thus proving that the supposed saint was at heart a miser. “Gold goes through all doors except heaven’s doors”; and for this the girl had lost her heaven. In Stanza xxviii. Mr. Browning teaches a lesson of which he is never weary:—
“Evil or good may be better or worse
In the human heart, but the mixture of each
Is a marvel and a curse.”
Original sin, the innate corruption of man’s heart, is illustrated says the poet, by this girl’s avarice. The priest built a new altar with the discovered money.
Goldoni. (Published first in the Pall Mall Gazette, Dec. 8th, 1883; then in the Browning Society’s Papers.) Carlo Goldoni (1707-93) was the most illustrious of the Italian comedy-writers, and the real founder of modern Italian comedy. He had a pension from the French King Louis XVI., which he lost at the Revolution, and he was reduced to the extremest misery. A monument was erected to him at Venice in 1883, and Browning wrote for the album of the Goldoni monument the following lines:—
“Goldoni,—good, gay, sunniest of souls,—
Glassing half Venice in that verse of thine.—
What though it just reflect the shade and shine
Of common life, nor render, as it rolls,
Grandeur and gloom? Sufficient for thy shoals
Was Carnival: Parini’s depths enshrine
Secrets unsuited to that opaline
Surface of things which laughs along thy scrolls.
There throng the People: how they come and go,
Lisp the soft language, flaunt the bright garb,—see,—
On Piazza, Calle, under Portico
And over Bridge! Dear king of Comedy,
Be honoured! Thou that didst love Venice so—
Venice, and we who love her, all love thee!
(Venice, Nov. 27th, 1883.)
“Good to Forgive.” (La Saisiaz.) The epilogue to La Saisiaz begins with these words. In Vol. II. of the Selections the poem forms No. 3 of Pisgah Sights.
Gottingen. The university town in Germany to a lecture hall in which Christ went in the vision on Christmas Eve. Here a consumptive lecturer was “demolishing the Christ-myth,” but advising the audience to lose nothing of the Christ idea.
Grammarian’s Funeral, A, shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe. (Men and Women, 1855; Romances, 1863; Dramatic Romances, 1868.) Mr. Browning often describes a man as a typical product of his age and environment, and invests him with its characteristics, making him figure as an historical personage. He has done so in this case, and we seem to know the grammarian in all his pedantry and exclusive devotion to a minute branch of human knowledge. The revival of learning, after the apparent death-blow which it received when the hordes of Northern barbarism overran Southern Europe and destroyed the civilisation of the Roman empire, began in the tenth century—that century which, as Hallam says (Lit. Europe, i. 10), “used to be reckoned by mediæval historians the darkest part of this intellectual night.” In the twelfth century much greater improvement was made. The attention of Europe was drawn to literature in this century, says Hallam, by, “1st, the institution of universities; 2nd, the cultivation of the modern languages, followed by the multiplication of books and the extension of the art of writing; 3rd, the investigation of the Roman law; and lastly, the return to the study of the Latin language in its Ancient models of purity.” All these factors were at work and progressing gradually down to the fifteenth century. A company of the grammarian’s disciples are bearing his coffin for burial on a tall mountain, the appropriate lofty place of sepulture for an elevated man. As they carry the body, one of them tells his story, and dilates on the praises of the departed scholar. They cannot fitly bury their master in the plain with the common herd. Nor will a lower peak suffice: he shall rest on a peak whose soaring excels the rest. This high-seeking man is for the morning land, and as they bear him up the rocky heights they step together to a tune with heads erect, proud of their noble burden. He was endowed with graces of face and form; but youth had been given to learning till he had become cramped and withered. This man would eat up the feast of learning even to its crumbs. He would live a great life when he had learned all that books had to teach; meanwhile he despised what other men termed life. Before living he would learn how to live:—
“Leave Now for dogs and apes!
Man has Forever.”