Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"
The emotion and the measure of _Rabbi ben Ezra_ have the chastened,
sweet gravity of wise old age. _Prospice_ has all the impetuous blood
and fierce lyric fire of militant manhood. It is a cry of passionate
exultation and exaltation in the very face of death: a war-cry of
triumph over the last of foes. I would like to connect it with the
quotation from Dante which Browning, in a published letter, tells us
that he wrote in his wife's Testament after her death: "Thus I believe,
thus I affirm, thus I am certain it is, that from this life I shall
pass to another better, there, where that lady lives, of whom my soul
was enamoured." If _Rabbi ben Ezra_ has been excelled as a Song of Life,
then _Prospice_ may have been excelled as a Hymn of Death.
"PROSPICE.
Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go;
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!"
Last of all comes the final word, the summary or conclusion of the whole
matter, in the threefold speech of the _Epilogue_, a comprehensive and
suggestive vision of the religious life of humanity.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 36: The first six stanzas of the sixth section of this poem,
the splendid song of the wind, were published in a magazine, as _Lines_,
in 1836. Parts II. & III., of Section VIII. (except the last two lines)
were added to the poem in 1868.]
[Footnote 37: The poem was originally preceded by the text, "Thou
thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself" (_Ps._ 1. 21).]
[Footnote 38: _Browning Society's Papers_, Part V., p. 493.]
[Footnote 39: The Abt or Abbé George Joseph Vogler (born at Würzburg,
Bavaria, in 1749, died at Darmstadt, 1824) was a composer, professor,
kapelmeister and writer on music. Among his pupils were Weber and
Meyerbeer. The "musical instrument of his invention" was called an
orchestrion. "It was," says Sir G. Grove, "a very compact organ, in
which four keyboards of five octaves each, and a pedal board of
thirty-six keys, with swell complete, were packed into a cube of nine
feet."--(See Miss Marx's "Account of Abbé Vogler," in the _Browning
Society's Papers_, Part III., p. 339).]
17. THE RING AND THE BOOK.
[Published, in 4 vols., in 1868-9: Vol. I., November, 1868;
Vol. II., December, 1868; Vol. III., January, 1869; Vol. IV.,
February, 1869. In 12 Books: 1., The Ring and the Book; II.,
Half-Rome; III., The Other Half-Rome; IV., Tertium Quid; V.,
Count Guido Franceschini; VI., Giuseppe Caponsacchi; VII.,
Pompilia; VIII., Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum
Procurator; IX., Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius,
Fisci et Rev. Cam. Apostol. Advocatus; X., The Pope; XI.,
Guido; XII., The Book and the Ring. (_Poetical Works_, 1889;
Vols. VIII.-X.)]
_The Ring and the Book_ is at once the largest and the greatest of
Browning's works, the culmination of his dramatic method, and the
turning-point, more decisively than _Dramatis Personæ_, of his style. It
consists of twelve books, the first and last being of the nature of
Preface and Appendix. It embodies a single story, told ten times, each
time from an individual standpoint, by nine different persons (one of
them speaking twice), besides a summary of the story by the poet in the
first book, and some additional particulars in the last. The method thus
adopted is at once absolutely original and supremely difficult. To tell
the same story, without mere repetition, no less than ten times over, to
make each telling at once the same and new, a record of the same facts
but of independent impressions, to convey by means of each monologue a
sense of the speaker not less vivid and life-like than by the ordinary
dramatic method, with a yet more profound measure of analytic and
psychological truth, and finally to group all these figures with
unerring effect of prominence and subordination, to fuse and mould all
these parts into one living whole is, as a _tour de force_, unique, and
it is not only a _tour de force_. _The Ring and the Book_, besides being
the longest poetical work of the century, must be ranked among the
greatest poems in our literature: it has a spiritual insight, human
science, dramatic and intellectual and moral force, a strength and grip,
a subtlety, a range and variety of genius and of knowledge, hardly to be
paralleled outside Shakespeare.
It has sometimes been said that the style of Browning is essentially
undramatic, that Pompilia, Guido, and the lawyers all talk in the same
way, that is, like Browning. As a matter of fact nothing is more
remarkable than the variety of style, the cunning adjustment of language
and of rhythm to the requirements of every speaker. From the general
construction of the rhythm to the mere similies and figures of speech
employed in passing, each monologue is absolutely individual, and,
though each monologue contains a highly finished portrait of the
character whose name it bears, these portraits, so far from being
disconnected or independent, are linked together in as close an
interdependence as the personages of a regularly constructed drama. The
effect of the reiterated story, told in some new fashion by each new
teller of it, has been compared with that of a great fugue, blending,
with the threads of its crossing and recrossing voices, a single web of
harmony. The "theme" is Pompilia; around her the whole action circles.
As, in _Pippa Passes_, the mere passing of an innocent child, her
unconscious influence on those on whom her song breaks in at a moment
of crisis, draws together the threads of many stories, so Pompilia, with
hardly more consciousness of herself, makes and unmakes the lives and
characters of those about her. The same sweet rectitude and purity of
nature serve to call out the latent malignity of Guido and the
slumbering chivalry of Caponsacchi. Without her, the one might have
remained a "_petit mâitre_ priestling;" the other merely a soured,
cross-grained, impecunious country squire: Rome would have had no
tragedy to talk about, nor we this book to read. It is in Pompilia that
all the threads of action meet: she is the heroine, as neither Guido nor
Caponsacchi can be called the hero.
The story of _The Ring and the Book_, like those of so many of the
greatest works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, comes to us from
Italy. Unlike Shakespeare's, however, but like one at least of Webster's
two masterpieces, it is no legend, but the true story of a Roman
murder-case, found (in all its main facts and outlines) in a square old
yellow book, small-quarto size, part print, part manuscript, which
Browning picked up for eightpence on a second-hand stall in the Piazza
San Lorenzo at Florence, one day in June, 1865. The book was entitled
(in Latin which Browning thus translates):--
"A Roman murder-case:
Position of the entire criminal cause
Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman,
With certain Four the cut-throats in his pay,
Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death
By heading or hanging as befitted ranks,
At Rome on February Twenty Two,
Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety Eight:
Wherein it is disputed if, and when,
Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet 'scape
The customary forfeit."
The book proved to be one of those contemporary records of famous trials
which were not uncommon in Italy, and which are said to be still
preserved in many Italian libraries. It contained the printed pleadings
for and against the accused, the judicial sentence, and certain
manuscript letters describing the efforts made on Guido's behalf and his
final execution. This book (with a contemporary pamphlet which Browning
afterwards met with in London) supplied the outlines of the poem to
which it helped to give a name.
The story itself is a tragic one, rich in material for artistic
handling, though not for the handling of every artist. But its
importance is relatively inconsiderable. "I fused my live soul and that
inert stuff," says the poet, and
"Thence bit by bit I dug
The ingot truth, that memorable day,
Assayed and knew my piecemeal gain was gold,--
Yes; but from something else surpassing that,
Something of mine which, mixed up with the mass,
Makes it bear hammer and be firm to file.
Fancy with fact is just one fact the more;
To-wit, that fancy has informed, transpierced,
Thridded and so thrown fast the facts else free,
As right through ring and ring runs the djereed
And binds the loose, one bar without a break."
The story, in brief, is this. Pompilia, the supposed daughter of Pietro
and Violante Comparini, an aged burgher couple of Rome, has been
married, at the age of thirteen, to Count Guido Franceschini, an
impoverished middle-aged nobleman of Arezzo. The arrangement, in which
Pompilia is, of course, quite passive, has been made with the
expectation, on the part of Guido, of a large dowry; on the part of the
Comparini of an aristocratic alliance, and a princely board at Guido's
palace. No sooner has the marriage taken place than both parties find
that they have been tricked. Guido, disappointed of his money, and
unable to reach the pair who have deceived him, vents his spite on the
innocent victim, Pompilia. At length Pompilia, knowing that she is about
to become a mother, escapes from her husband, aided by a good young
priest, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, a canon of Arezzo; and a few months
afterwards, at the house of her supposed parents, she gives birth to a
son. A fortnight after the birth of his heir, Guido, who has been
waiting till his hold on the dowry is thus secured, takes with him four
cut-throats, steals by night to Rome, and kills his wife and the aged
Comparini, leaving the child alive. He is captured the same night, and
brought to judgment at Rome. When the poem opens, the case is being
tried before the civil courts. No attempt is made to dispute the fact of
Guido's actual committal of the deed; he has been caught red-handed, and
Pompilia, preserved almost by miracle, has survived her wounds long
enough to tell the whole story. The sole question is, whether the act
had any justification; it being pretended by Guido that his wife had
been guilty of adultery with the priest Caponsacchi, and that his deed
was a simple act of justice. He was found guilty by the legal tribunal,
and condemned to death; Pompilia's innocence being confirmed beyond a
doubt. Guido then appealed to the Pope, who confirmed the judicial
sentence. The whole of the poem takes place between the arrest and
trial of Guido, and the final sentence of the Pope; at the time, that
is, when the hopes and fears of the actors, and the curiosity of the
spectators, would be at their highest pitch.
The first book, entitled _The Ring and the Book_, gives the facts of the
story, some hint of the author's interpretation of them, and the
outlines of his plan. We are not permitted any of the interest of
suspense. Browning shows us clearly from the first the whole bearing and
consequence of events, as well as the right and wrong of them. He has
written few finer passages than the swift and fiery narrative of the
story, lived through in vision on the night of his purchase of the
original documents. But complete and elaborate as this is, it is merely
introductory, a prologue before the curtain rises on the drama. First we
have three representative specimens of public opinion: _Half-Rome_, _The
Other Half-Rome_, and _Tertium Quid_; each speaker presenting the
complete case from his own point of view. "Half-Rome" takes the side of
Guido. We are allowed to see that the speaker is a jealous husband, and
that his judgment is biased by an instinctive sympathy with the
presumably jealous husband, Guido. "The Other Half-Rome" takes the side
of the wife, "Little Pompilia with the patient eyes," now lying in the
hospital, mortally wounded, and waiting for death. This speaker is a
bachelor, probably a young man, and his judgment is swayed by the beauty
and the piteousness of the dying girl. The speech of "Half-Rome," being
as it is an attempt to make light of the murder, and the utterance of a
somewhat ridiculous personage, is exceedingly humorous and colloquial;
that of the "Other Half-Rome" is serious, earnest, sometimes eloquent.
No contrast could be more complete than that presented by these two
"sample-speeches." The objects remain the same, but we see them through
different ends of the telescope. Either account taken by itself is so
plausible as to seem almost morally conclusive. But in both instances we
have down-right apology and condemnation, partiality bred of prejudice.
_Tertium Quid_ presents us with a reasoned and judicial judgment,
impartiality bred of contempt or indifference; this being--
"What the superior social section thinks,
In person of some man of quality
Who,--breathing musk from lace-work and brocade,
His solitaire amid the flow of frill,
Powdered peruke on nose, and bag at back,
And cane dependent from the ruffled wrist--
Harangues in silvery and selectest phrase,
'Neath waxlight in a glorified saloon
Where mirrors multiply the girandole:
Courting the approbation of no mob,
But Eminence This and All-Illustrious That,
Who take snuff softly, range in well-bred ring,
Card-table-quitters for observance' sake,
Around the argument, the rational word ...
How quality dissertated on the case."
"Tertium Quid" deals with the case very gently, mindful of his audience,
to whom, at each point of the argument calling for judgment, he politely
refers the matter, and passes on. He speaks in a tone of light and
well-bred irony, with the aristocratic contempt for the _plebs_, the
burgesses, Society's assumption of Exclusive Information. He gives the
general view of things, clearly, neutrally, with no vulgar emphasis of
black and white. "I simply take the facts, ask what they mean."
So far we have had rumour alone, the opinions of outsiders; next come
the three great monologues in which the persons of the drama, Count
Guido, Caponsacchi, and Pompilia, bear witness of themselves.
"The imaginary occasion," says Mrs. Orr, "is that of Count
Guido's trial, and all the depositions which were made on the
previous one are transferred to this. The author has been
obliged in every case to build up the character from the
evidence, and to re-mould and expand the evidence in
conformity with the character. The motive, feeling, and
circumstance set forth by each separate speaker, are thus in
some degree fictitious; but they are always founded upon
fact, and the literal fact of a vast number of details is
self-evident."[40]
These three monologues (with the second of Guido) are by far the most
important in the book.
First comes _Count Guido Franceschini_. The two monologues spoken by him
are, for sheer depth of human science, the most marvellous of all:
"every nerve of the mind is touched by the patient scalpel, every vein
and joint of the subtle and intricate spirit divided and laid bare."[41]
Under torture, he has confessed to the murder of his wife. He is now
permitted to defend himself before the judges.
"Soft-cushioned sits he; yet shifts seat, shirks touch,
As, with a twitchy brow and wincing lip,
And cheek that changes to all kinds of white,
He proffers his defence, in tones subdued
Near to mock-mildness now, so mournful seems
The obtuser sense truth fails to satisfy;
Now, moved, from pathos at the wrong endured,
To passion....
Also his tongue at times is hard to curb;
Incisive, nigh satiric bites the phrase.
* * * * *
And never once does he detach his eye
From those ranged there to slay him or to save,
But does his best man's-service for himself."
His speech is a tissue of falsehoods and prevarications: if he uses a
fact, it is only to twist it into a form of self-justification. He knows
it is useless to deny the murder; his aim, then, is to explain and
excuse it. Every device attainable by the instinct and the brain of
hunted humanity he finds and uses. Now he slurs rapidly over an
inconvenient fact; now, with the frank audacity of innocence, proclaims
and blazons it abroad; now he is rhetorically eloquent, now ironically
pathetic; always contriving to shift the blame upon others, and to make
his own course appear the only one plausible or possible, the only one
possible, at least, to a high-born, law-abiding son of the Church. Every
shift and twist is subtly adapted to his audience of Churchmen, and the
gradation of his pleading no less subtly contrived. No keener and
subtler special pleading has ever been written, in verse certainly, and
possibly in lawyers' prose; and it is poetry of the highest order of
dramatic art.
Covering a narrower range, but still more significant within its own
limits, the speech of _Giuseppe Caponsacchi_, the priest who assisted
Pompilia in her flight to Rome (given now in her defence before the
judges who have heard the defence of Guido) is perhaps the most
passionate and thrilling piece of blank verse ever written by Browning.
Indeed, I doubt if it be an exaggeration to say that such fire, such
pathos, such splendour of human speech, has never been heard or seen in
English verse since Webster. In tone and colour the monologue is quite
new, exquisitely modulated to a surprising music. The lighter passages
are brilliant: the eloquent passages full of a fine austerity; but it is
in those passages directly relating to Pompilia that the chief greatness
of the work lies. There is in these appeals a quivering,
thrilling, searching quality of fervid pathetic directness: I can give no
notion of it in words; but here are a few lines, torn roughly out of
their context, which may serve in some degree to illustrate my
meaning:--
"Pompilia's face, then and thus, looked on me
The last time in this life: not one sight since,
Never another sight to be! And yet
I thought I had saved her. I appealed to Rome:
It seems I simply sent her to her death.
You tell me she is dying now, or dead;
I cannot bring myself to quite believe
This is a place you torture people in:
What if this your intelligence were just
A subtlety, an honest wile to work
On a man at unawares? 'Twere worthy you.
No, Sirs, I cannot have the lady dead!
That erect form, flashing brow, fulgurant eye,
That voice immortal (oh, that voice of hers!)
That vision of the pale electric sword
Angels go armed with,--that was not the last
O' the lady! Come, I see through it, you find--
Know the manoeuvre! Also herself said
I had saved her: do you dare say she spoke false?
Let me see for myself if it be so!
Though she were dying a priest might be of use,
The more when he's a friend too,--she called me
Far beyond 'friend.'"
Severed from its connection, much of the charm of the passage vanishes
away: always the test of the finest dramatic work; but enough remains to
give some faint shadow of the real beauty of the work. Observe how the
rhythm trembles in accord with the emotion of the speaker: now slow,
solemn, sad, with something of the quiet of despair; now strenuously
self-deluding and feverishly eager: "Let me see for myself if it be so!"
a line which has all the flush and gasp in it of broken sudden
utterance. And the monologue ends in a kind of desperate resignation:--
"Sirs, I am quiet again. You see, we are
So very pitiable, she and I,
Who had conceivably been otherwise.
Forget distemperature and idle heat;
Apart from truth's sake, what's to move so much?
Pompilia will be presently with God;
I am, on earth, as good as out of it,
A relegated priest; when exile ends,
I mean to do my duty and live long.
She and I are mere strangers now: but priests
Should study passion; how else cure mankind,
Who come for help in passionate extremes?
I do but play with an imagined life.
* * * * *
Mere delectation, fit for a minute's dream!--
Just as a drudging student trims his lamp,
Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place
Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close,
Dreams, 'Thus should I fight, save or rule the world!'--
Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes
To the old solitary nothingness.
So I, from such communion, pass content ...
O great, just, good God! Miserable me!"
From the passionate defence of Caponsacchi, we pass to the death-bed of
_Pompilia_. Like Shakespeare, Browning makes all his heroines young; and
this child of seventeen, who has so much of the wisdom of youth, tells
on her death-bed, to the kind people about her, the story of her life,
in a simple, child-like, dreamy, wondering way, which can be compared,
so far as I know, with nothing else ever written.
"Then a soul sighs its lowest and its last
After the loud ones;"
and we have here the whole heart of a woman, the whole heart and the
very speech and accent of the most womanly of women. No woman has ever
written anything so close to the nature of women, and I do not know what
other man has come near to this strange and profoundly manly intuition,
this "piercing and overpowering tenderness which glorifies," as Mr.
Swinburne has said, "the poet of Pompilia." All _The Ring and the Book_
is a leading up to this monologue, and a commentary round it. It is a
song of serene and quiet beauty, beautiful as evening-twilight. To
analyse it is to analyse a rose's perfume: to quote from it is to tear
off the petal of a rose. Here, however, for their mere colour and scent,
are a few lines. Pompilia is speaking of the birth of her child.
"A whole long fortnight: in a life like mine
A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much.
All women are not mothers of a boy,
Though they live twice the length of my whole life,
And, as they fancy, happily all the same.
There I lay, then, all my great fortnight long,
As if it would continue, broaden out
Happily more and more, and lead to heaven:
Christmas before me,--was not that a chance?
I never realized God's birth before--
How He grew likest God in being born.
This time I felt like Mary, had my babe
Lying a little on my breast like hers."
With a beautiful and holy confidence she now "lays away her babe with
God," secure for him in the future. She forgives the husband who has
slain her: "I could not love him, but his mother did." And with her last
breath she blesses the friend who has saved her:--
"O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,
No work begun shall ever pause for death.
* * * * *
So, let him wait God's instant men call years;
Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,
Do out the duty! Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of His light
For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise."
After _Pompilia_, we have the pleadings and counterpleadings of the
lawyers on either side: _Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis, Pauperum
Procurator_ (the counsel for the defendant), and _Juris Doctor
Johannes-Baptista Bottinius_, _Fisci et Rev. Cam. Apostol. Advocatus_
(public prosecutor). Arcangeli,--
"The jolly learned man of middle age,
Cheek and jowl all in laps with fat and law,
Mirthful as mighty, yet, as great hearts use,
Despite the name and fame that tempt our flesh,
Constant to the devotion of the hearth,
Still captive in those dear domestic ties!"--