103. God's task, etc. He neglected the body, magnified the mind, and believed that the full realization of his aspirations would come in "the heavenly period."
113. That low man. This comparison between the "low man" and the "high man" could be effectively illustrated from "Andrea del Sarto." Andrea is the "low man" who with his skillful hand "goes on adding one to one" till he attains his "hundred," or excellence of technique. But the other painters, the ones with the "truer light of God" in them, reach the heaven above and take their place there although what they see transcends the power of their art to tell. They miss the "unit" of an adequate technique, but they gain the "million" of spiritual insight.
129. Hoti ... Oun ... De. Points in Greek grammar concerning which there was much learned discussion.
["CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME"]
Mrs. Orr (Handbook of Browning's Works, p. 274) says of this poem: "We can connect no idea of definite pursuit or attainment with a series of facts so dream-like and so disjointed: still less extract from it a definite moral; and we are reduced to taking the poem as a simple work of fancy, built up of picturesque impressions which have, separately or collectively, produced themselves in the author's mind." And she adds in a note: "I may venture to state that these picturesque materials included a tower which Mr. Browning once saw in the Carrara Mountains, a painting which caught his eye years later in Paris; and the figure of a horse in the tapestry in his own drawing-room—welded together in the remembrance of the line from 'King Lear,' which forms the heading of the poem." The possible allegorical signification of the poem has been the subject of much, and often of singularly futile discussion. Dr. Furnivall said he had asked Browning if it was an allegory, and in answer had on three separate occasions received an emphatic statement that it was simply a dramatic creation called forth by a line of Shakspere's. (Porter-Clarke, Study Programmes, p. 406.) Yet allegorical interpretations continue to be made. According to one line of interpretation the pilgrim is a "truth-seeker, misdirected by the lying spirit" (the hoary cripple), and when he blows the slug-horn it is as a warning to others that he has failed in his quest, and that the way to the dark tower is the way of destruction and death. (Berdoe, Browning Cyclopædia, p. 105) According to other readings of the tale the blast which the pilgrim blows at the end of his quest is one of "spiritual victory and incitement to others." When the Rev. John S. Chadwick visited the poet and asked him if constancy to an ideal—"He that endureth to the end shall be saved"—was not a sufficient understanding of the central purpose of the poem, Browning said: "Yes, just about that." With constancy to an ideal as the central purpose, the details of this poem, without being minutely interpreted, may yet serve as a representation of the depression, the hopelessness, the dullness and deadness of soul, the doubt and terror even of the man who travels the last stages of a difficult journey to a long-sought but unknown goal. His victory consists in the unfaltering persistence of his search. The "squat tower," when he reaches it, is prosaic and ugly, but finding it is after all not the essential point. The essential element of his success is that, encircled by the last temptations to despair, he holds heart and brain steady, and carries out his quest to its last detail. (See an article in The Critic, May 3, 1886, by Mr. Arlo Bates, in opposition to any definite allegory. Mr. Nettleship in Robert Browning [p. 89] devotes a chapter to a paraphrase and an allegorical explanation.)
Mr. Herford (Life of Browning, p. 94) calls the poem "a great romantic legend" and emphasizes its intensity and boldness of invention. He compares its "horror-world" with that of Coleridge in "The Ancient Mariner." "What 'The Ancient Mariner' is in the poetry of the mysterious terrors and splendors of the sea, that 'Childe Roland' is in the poetry of bodeful horror, of haunted desolation, of waste and plague, ragged distortion, and rotting ugliness in landscape. The Childe, like the Mariner, advances through an atmosphere and scenery of steadily gathering menace."
Mr. Chesterton says of the scenery: "It is ... the poetry of the shabby and hungry aspect of the earth itself. Daring poets who wished to escape from the conventional gardens and orchards had long been in the habit of celebrating the poetry of rugged and gloomy landscapes, but Browning is not content with this. He insists on celebrating the poetry of mean landscapes. That sense of scrubbiness in nature, as of a man unshaved, had never been conveyed with this enthusiasm and primeval gusto before." (Robert Browning, p. 159.)
[HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY]
This poem is the story of an obscure poet in the Spanish city of Valladolid. It brings out his actual life and the townfolk's misinterpretations of it. Reports multiply upon themselves and take new meanings till the harmless poet is generally accounted the King's spy and the real agent of all royal edicts, the town's master, in fact. The interest which, as a poet, he takes in all manifestations of life is popularly supposed to be the alertness of a secret agent of the government. The reams of poetry he writes are transformed into letters of information to the King. Rumor translates the poet's perfectly decent, regular, meager life into secret sybaritic extravagances.