Humour is a constant characteristic of Mr. Browning's work,[[90]] and it sometimes takes the form of direct and intentional satire; but his sympathy with human beings and his hopeful view of their future destiny, are opposed to any development of the satirical mood. The impression of sympathy will even neutralize the satire, in poems in which the latter is directly and conciously conveyed: as, for instance, in "Caliban upon Setebos," and "The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church." Of grim or serious satire, there is, I think, only one specimen among his works: the first part of
"Holy-Cross Day." ("Dramatic Romances." Published in "Men and Women," 1855.)
We may class as playful satires (which I give in the order of their importance):
"Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in Distemper." (1876.)
"Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial." ("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems." 1876.)
"Up at a Villa—Down in the City." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)
"Another Way of Love." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)
We have a purely humorous picture in
"Garden Fancies, II. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)
"HOLY-CROSS DAY" was the occasion of an "Annual Christian Sermon," which the Jews in Rome were forced to attend; and the poem which bears this title is prefaced by an extract from an imaginary "Diary by a Bishop's Secretary," dated 1600; and expatiating on the merciful purpose, and regenerating effect of this sermon. What the assembled Jews may have really felt about it, Mr. Browning sets forth in the words of one of the congregation.
This man describes the hustling and bustling, the crowding and packing—the suppressed stir as of human vermin imprisoned in a small space; the sham groans, and sham conversions which follow in their due course; and as he thus dwells on his national and personal degradation, his tone has the bitter irony of one who has both realized and accepted it. But the irony recoils on those who have inflicted the degradation—on the so-called Christians who would throttle the Jew's creed while they "gut" his purse, and make him the instrument of their own sins; and is soon lost in the emotion of a pathetic and solemn prayer; the supposed death-bed utterance of Rabbi Ben Ezra.
The prayer is an invocation to the justice, and to the sympathy of Christ. It claims His help against the enemies who are also His own. It concedes, as possible, that He was in truth the Messiah, crucified by the nation of which He claimed a crown. But it points to His Christian followers as inflicting on Him a still deeper outrage: a belief which the lips profess, and which the life derides and discredits. It urges, in the Jew's behalf, the ignorance, the fear, in which the deed was done; the bitter sufferings by which it has been expiated. It pleads his long endurance, as testimony to the fact, that he withstands Barabbas now, as he withstood Christ "then;" that he strives to wrest Christ's name from the "Devil's crew," though the shadow of His face be upon him. The invocation concludes with an expression of joyful confidence in God and the future.
(Giacomo) "PACCHIAROTTO" was a painter of Siena.[[91]] His story is told in the "Commentary on the Life of Sodoma" by the editors of Vasari; Florence, 1855; and this contains all, or nearly all, the incidents of Mr. Browning's "Pacchiarotto," as well as others of a similar kind but of later occurrence, which are not mentioned in it.