(REFLECTIONS.)
To the second class of these poems, which are of the nature of
reflections, belong--taking them in the order of their importance:--
"Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day." (1850.)
"La Saisiaz." (1878.)
"Cleon." ("Men and Women.") (1855.)
"An Epistle containing the strange medical experience of Karshish,
the Arab physician." ("Men and Women.") (1855.)
"Caliban upon Setebos; or Natural Theology in the Island."
(Dramatis Personæ.) (1864.)
CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY are two distinct poems, printed under this
one head: and each describing a spiritual experience appropriate to the
day, and lived through in a vision of Christ. This vision presents
itself to the reader as a probable or obvious hallucination, or even a
simple dream; but its utterances are more or less dogmatic; they contain
much which is in harmony with Mr. Browning's known views; and it is
difficult at first sight to regard them in either case as proceeding
from an imaginary person who is only feeling his way to the truth. This,
however, they prove themselves to be.
The first poem is a narrative. Its various scenes are enacted on a
stormy Christmas Eve; and it opens with a humorous description of a
little dissenting chapel, supposed to stand at the edge of a common; and
of the various types of squalid but self-satisfied humanity which find
their spiritual pasture within its walls. The narrator has just "burst
out" of it. He never meant to go in. But the rain had forced him to take
shelter in its porch, as evening service was about to begin: and the
defiant looks of the elect as they pushed past him one by one, had
impelled him to assert his rights as a Christian, and push in too. The
stupid ranting irreverence of the pastor, and the snuffling satisfaction
of the flock, were soon, however, too much for him, and in a very short
time he was again--where we find him--out in the fresh night air.
Free from the constraint of the chapel, he takes a more tolerant view of
what he has seen and heard there. He gives the preacher credit for
having said a great deal that was true, and in the manner most
convincing to the already convinced who were assembled to hear him. For
his own part, he declares, Nature is his church, as she has been his
teacher; and he surrenders himself with a joyful sense of relief to the
religious influences of the solitude and the night: his heart glowing
with the consciousness of the unseen Love which everywhere appeals to
him in the visible power of the Creator. Suddenly a mighty spectacle
unfolds itself. The rain and wind have ceased. The barricade of cloud
which veiled the moon's passage up the western sky has sunk riven at her
feet. She herself shines forth in unbroken radiance, and a double lunar
rainbow, in all its spectral grandeur, spans the vault of heaven. There
is a sense as of a heavenly presence about to emerge upon the arc. Then
the rapture overflows the spectator's brain, and the Master, arrayed in
a serpentining garment, appears in the path before him.
But the Face is averted. "Has he despised the friends of Christ? and is
this his punishment?" He prostrates himself before Him; grasps the hem
of the garment; entreats forgiveness for what was only due to the
reverence of his love, to his desire that his Lord should be worshipped
in all spiritual beauty and truth.
The Face turns towards him in a flood of light. The vesture encloses him
in its folds, and he is borne onwards till he finds himself at Rome, and
in front of St. Peter's Church. He sees the interior without entering.
It swarms with worshippers, packed into it as in the hollow of a hive.
All there is breathless expectation, ecstatic awe; for the mystery of
the mass is in process of consummation, and in another moment the
tinkling of the silver bell will announce to the prostrate crowd the
actual presence of their Lord; will open to them the vision of the
coming heavenly day. Here, too, is faith, though obscured in a different
manner. Here, too, is _love_: the love which in bygone days hurled
intellect from its throne, and trampled on the glories of ancient
art--which instructed its votaries to feel blindly for its new and
all-sufficient life, as does the babe for its mother's breast--which
consecrates even now the deepest workings of the heart and mind to the
service of God. And Christ enters the Basilica, into which, after a
momentary doubt, he himself follows Him.
They float onwards again, and again he is left alone but for the hem of
the garment; for Christ has entered the lecture-hall of a rationalistic
German professor, and into this He will not bid His disciple follow Him;
but the interior of the building is open, as before, to the disciple's
mental sight. The lecturer is refreshing his hearers' convictions by an
inquiry into the origin of the Christian Myth and the foundation of fact
on which it rests; and he arrives at the conclusion that Christ was a
man, but whose work proved Him all but Divine; His Gospel quite other
than those who heard it believed, but in value nearly the same.
The spectator begins musing on the anomalies of this view. "Christ, only
a man, is to be reverenced as something more. On what ground?--The
ground of intellect?--Yet he teaches us only what a hundred others have
taught, without claiming to be worshipped on account of it--The ground
of goodness?--But goodness is due from each man to his fellows; it is no
title to sovereignty over them." And he thus sums up his own conviction.
"He may be called a _saint_ who best teaches us to keep our lives pure;
he a _poet_ whose insight dims that of his fellow-men. He is no less
than this, though guided by an instinct no higher than that of the bat;
no more, though inspired by God. All gifts are from God, and no
multiplying of gifts can convert the creature into the Creator. Between
Him who created goodness, and made it binding on the conscience of man:
and him who reduces it to a system, of which the merits may be judged by
man: lies the interval which separates Nature, who decrees the
circulation of the blood, from the observer Harvey, who discovered it.
One man is Christ, another Pilate; beyond their dust is the Divinity of
God."
"And the 'God-function' with regard to virtue was first to impress its
truths on every human breast; and secondly, to give a motive for
carrying them out; and this motive could be given only by one, who,
being life's Lord, died for the sake of men. Whoever conceives this
love, and takes this proof to his heart, has found a new motive, and has
also gained a truth."
But Christ lingers within the hall "Is there something after all in that
lecture which finds an echo in the Christian soul? Yes, even there.
There is the ghost of love, if nothing more, in the utterance of that
virgin-minded man, with the 'wan, pure look,' and the frail life burning
itself away in the striving after truth. For his critical tests have
reduced the pearl of price to ashes, and yet left it, in his judgment, a
pearl; and he bids his followers gather up their faith as an almost
perfect whole; go home and venerate the myth on which he has
experimented, adore the man whom he has proved to be one. And if his
learning itself be loveless, it may claim our respect when a tricksy
demon has let it loose on the Epistles of St. Paul, as it claims our
gratitude when expended on secular things. It is at least better than
the ignorance which hates the word of God, if it cannot wholly accept
it; while these, his disciples, who renounce the earth, and chain up the
natural man on a warrant no more divine than this, are by so much better
than he who at this moment judges them. Let them carry the doctrine by
which they think themselves carried, as does the child his toy-horse. He
will not deride nor disturb them."
The subject of these experiences has reached a state of restful
indifference. "He will adhere to his own belief, and be tolerant towards
his neighbour's: since the two only differ as do two different
refractions of a single ray of light. He will study, instead of
criticizing, the different creeds which are fused into one before the
universal Father's throne."
But this is not the lesson he has been intended to learn. The storm,
breaking out afresh, catches up and dashes him to the ground, while the
vesture, which he had let slip during his last musings, recedes swiftly
from his sight. Then he knows that there is one "way," and he knows also
that he may find it; and in this new conviction he regains his hold of
the garment, and at one bound has reentered the little chapel, which he
seems never indeed to have left. The sermon is ending, and he has heard
it all. He still appreciates its faults of matter and manner; but he no
longer rejects the draught of living water, because it comes to him with
some taste of earth. What the draught can do is evidenced by those
wrecks of humanity which are finding renewal there. There his choice
shall rest; for, nowhere else, so he seems to conclude, is the message
of Love so simply and so directly conveyed.
A great part of the narrative is written in a humorous tone, which shows
itself, not only in thought and word, but in a jolting measure, and even
grotesque rhymes. The speaker desires it to be understood that he is not
the less in earnest for this apparent "levity;" and the levity is quite
consistent with religious seriousness in such a person as the poem
depicts. But, as I have shown, it is alone enough to prove that the
author is not depicting himself. The poem reflects him more or less
truly in the doctrine of Divine Love, the belief in personal guidance,
and the half-contemptuous admiration with which the speaker regards
those who will mortify the flesh in obedience to a Christ-_man_. But it
belies the evidence of his whole work when, as in Section XVII., it
represents moral truth as either innate to the human spirit, or directly
revealed to it; and we shall presently notice a still greater
discrepancy which it shares with its companion poem.[59]
"_Easter-Day_"[60] deals with the deeper issues of scepticism and faith;
and opens with a dialogue in which the two opposite positions are
maintained. Both speakers start from the belief in God, and the
understanding that Christianity is unproved; but the one accepts it in
faith: the other regards it as, for the time being, negatived.
The man of faith begins by exclaiming, how hard it is to be
(practically) a Christian; and how disproportionate to our endeavour is
our success in becoming so. The sceptic replies that to his mind the
only difficulty is belief. "Let the least of God's commands be proved
authentic: and only an idiot would shrink from martyrdom itself, with
the certain bliss that would reward it." The man of faith, who is
clearly the greater pessimist of the two, thinks the world too full of
suffering to be placed, by any knowledge, beyond the reach of
faith--beyond the necessity of being taken upon trust. And his adversary
concedes that absolute knowledge would--where it was applicable--destroy
its own end. In social life, for instance, it would do away with all
those acts of faith, those instinctive judgments and feelings, which are
the essence _of_ life. But he thinks one may fairly desire a better
touchstone for the purposes of God than human judgment or feeling; and
that, if we cannot know them with scientific certainty, one must wish
the balance of probability to lie clearly on one side.
The man of faith is of opinion that this much of proof exists for
everyone who chooses to seek it. "The burning question is how we are to
shape our lives. For himself he is impelled to follow the Christian
precept, and renounce the world." The sceptic denies that God demands
such a sacrifice, and sees only man's ingratitude in the impression
that He does so. The man of faith admits that it would be hard to have
made the sacrifice, and be rewarded only by death; while the many
unbelievers who have virtually made it for one or other of the hobbies
which he describes, have at least its success to repay them. But even
so, he continues, he would have chosen the better part; for he would
have chosen Hope,--the hope which aspires to a loftier end. "His
opponent, it is true, hopes also; but _his_ hopes are blind. They are
not those of St. Paul, but those which, according to Æschylus, the Titan
gave to men, to spice therewith the meal of life, and prevent their
devouring it in too bitter haste; and if hope--or faith--is meant to be
something more than a relish...!"
The opponent protests against this attack upon the "trusting ease" of
his existence, and declares that his interlocutor is not doing as he
would be done by. Whereupon the first speaker relates something which
befell him on the Easter-Eve of three years ago, and which startled him
out of precisely such a condition.
He was crossing the common, lately spoken of by their friend, and musing
on life and the last judgment: when the following question occured to
him: what would be his case if he died and were judged at that very
moment? "From childhood," he continues, "I have always insisted on
knowing the worst; and I now plunged straight into the recesses of my
conscience, prepared for what spectre might be hidden there. But all I
encountered was _common sense_, which did its best to assure me that I
had nothing to fear: that, considering all the difficulties of life, I
had kept my course through it as straight, and advanced as rapidly as
could be expected." (More reflections, half serious half playful ensue.)
"Suddenly I threw back my head, and saw the midnight sky on fire. It was
a _sea_ of fire, now writhing and surging; now sucked back into the
darkness, now overflowing it till its rays poured downwards on to the
earth. I felt that the Judgment Day had come. I felt also, in that
supreme moment of consciousness, that I had chosen the world, and must
take my stand upon the choice. I defended it with the courage of
despair. 'God had framed me to appreciate the beauties of life; I could
not put the cup untasted aside; He had not plainly commanded me to do
so; He knew how I had struggled to resign myself to leaving it half
full; Hell could be no just punishment for such a mood as that.'"
"Another burst of fire. A brief ecstasy which confounded earth and
heaven. Then ashes everywhere. And amid the wreck--like the smoke
pillared over Sodom--mantled in darkness as in a magnific pall which
turned to grey the blackness of the night--pity mingled with judgment in
the intense meditation in which his gaze was fixed--HE stood before me.
I fell helpless at His feet. He spoke:
'The judgment is past; dispensed to every man as though he alone were
its object. _Thy_ sin has been the love of earth. Thou hast preferred
the finite to the infinite--the fleshly joys to the spiritual. Be this
choice thy punishment. Thou art shut out from the heaven of spirit. The
earth is thine for ever.'"
"My first impulse was one of delighted gratitude. 'All the wonders--the
treasures of the natural world, are _mine_?'"
"'Thine,' the Vision replied,'if such shows suffice thee; if thou wilt
exchange eternity for the equivalent of a single rose, flung to thee
over the barrier of that Eden from which thou art for ever excluded.'"
"'Not so,' I answered. 'If the beauties of nature are thus deceptive, my
choice shall be with Art--art which imparts to nature the value of human
life. I will seek man's impress in statuary, in painting....'"
"'Obtain that,' the Vision again rebuked me, 'the one form with its
single act, the one face with its single look: the failure and the shame
of all true artists who felt the whole while they could only reproduce
the part.'"
And again the Vision expatiates on the limited nature of the earthly
existence--the limited horizon which reduces man to the condition of the
lizard pent up in a chamber in the rock--the destined shattering of the
prison wall which will quicken the stagnant sense to the impressions of
a hitherto unknown world--the spiritual hunger with which the saints,
content in their earthly prison, still hail the certainty of
deliverance.
"'Let me grasp at Mind,' I then entreated,--'whirl enraptured through
its various spheres. Yet no. I know what thou wilt say. Mind, too, is of
the earth; and all its higher inspirations proceed from another
world--are recognized as doing so by those who receive them. I will
catch no more at broken reeds. I will relinquish the world, and take
Love for my portion. I will love on, though love too may deceive me,
remembering its consolations in the past, struggling for its rewards in
the future.'"
"'AT LAST,' the Vision exclaimed, 'thou choosest LOVE. And hast thou not
seen that the mightiness of Love was curled inextricably about the power
and the beauty which attached thee to the world--that through them it
has vainly striven to clasp thee? Abide by thy choice. Take the show for
the name's sake. Reject the reality as manifested in Him who created,
and then died for thee. Reject that Tale, as more fitly invented by the
sons of Cain--as proving too much love on the part of God.'"
"Terrified and despairing, I cowered before Him, imploring the remission
of the sentence, praying that the old life might be restored to me, with
its trials, its limitations; but with their accompanying hope that it
might lead to the life everlasting."
"When I 'lived' again, the plain was silvered over with dew; the dawn
had broken."
Looking back on this experience, the narrator is disposed to regard it
as having been a dream. It has nevertheless been a turning-point in his
existence; for it has taught him to hear in every blessing which
attaches him to the earth, a voice which bids him renounce it. And
though he still finds it hard to be a Christian, and is often
discouraged by the fact, he welcomes his consciousness of this: since it
proves that he is not spiritually stagnating--not cut off from the hope
of heaven.
Mr. Browning is, for the time being, outside the discussion. His own
feelings might equally have dictated some of the arguments on either
side; and although he silences the second speaker, he does not mean to
prove him in the wrong. He is at one with the first speaker, when he
suggests that certainty in matters of belief is no more to be desired
than to be attained; but that personage regards uncertainty as
justifying presumptions of a dogmatic kind; while its value to Mr.
Browning lies precisely in its right to exclude them. And, again; while
the value of spiritual conflict is largely emphasized in his works, he
disagrees with the man of faith in "Easter-Day" as with the dogmatic
believer in "Christmas-Eve," as to the manner in which it is to be
carried on. According to these the spirit fights against life: according
to him it fights in, and by means of, its opportunities. From his point
of view human experience is an education: from theirs it is a snare.
So much of personal truth as these poems contain will be found re-stated
in "La Saisiaz," written twenty-eight years later, and which impresses
on it the seal of maturer thought and more direct expression.
"LA SAISIAZ" (Savoyard for "The Sun") is the name of a villa among the
mountains near Geneva, where Mr. Browning, with his sister and a friend
of many years standing, spent part of the summer of 1877. The poem so
christened is addressed to this friend, and was inspired by her death:
which took place with appalling suddenness while they were there
together. The shock of the event re-opened the great questions which had
long before been solved by Mr. Browning's mind: and within sight of the
new-made grave, he re-laid the foundations of his faith, that there is
another life for the soul.
The argument is marked by a strong sense of the personal and therefore
relative character of human experience and knowledge. It accepts the
"subjective synthesis" of some non-theistic thinkers, though excluding,
of course, the negations on which this rests; and its greater maturity
is shown by the philosophic form in which the author's old religious
doctrine of personal (or subjective) truth has been re-cast. He assumes
here, it is true, that God and the soul exist. He considers their
existence as given, in the double fact that there is something in us
which thinks or perceives,[61] and something outside and beyond us,
which is perceived by it; and this subject and object, which he names
the Soul and God, are to him beyond the necessity of farther proof,
because beyond the reach of it. He might therefore challenge for his
conclusions something more than an optional belief. He guards himself,
nevertheless, against imposing the verdict of his own experience on any
other man: and both the question and the answer into which the poem
resolves itself begin for his own spirit and end so.
Mr. Browning knows himself a single point in the creative series of
effect and cause: at the same moment one and the other: all behind and
before him a blank. Or, more helpless still, he is the rush, floated by
a current, of which the whence and whither are independent of it, and
which may land it to strike root again, or cast it ashore a wreck. He
asks himself, as he is whirled on his "brief, blind voyage" down the
stream of life, which of these fates it has in store for him. Knowing
this, that God and the soul exist--no less than this, and no more--he
asks himself whether he is justified in believing that, because his
present existence is beyond a doubt, its renewal is beyond doubt also:
that the current, which has brought him thus far, will land him, not in
destruction, but in another life.
"Everything," he declares, "in my experience--and I speak only of my
own--testifies to the incompleteness of life, nay, even to its
preponderating unhappiness. The strong body is found allied to a stunted
soul. The soaring soul is chained by bodily weakness to the ground. Help
turns to hindrance, or discloses itself too late in what we have taken
for such. Every sweet brings its bitter, every light its shade; love is
cut short by death:"--
"I must say--or choke in silence--'Howsoever came my fate,
Sorrow did and joy did nowise,--life well-weighed,--preponderate.'
By necessity ordained thus? I shall bear as best I can;
By a cause all-good, all-wise, all-potent? No, as I am man!
Such were God: and was it goodness that the good within my range
Or had evil in admixture or grew evil's self by change?
Wisdom--that becoming wise meant making slow and sure advance
From a knowledge proved in error to acknowledged ignorance?
Power? 'tis just the main assumption reason most revolts at! power
Unavailing for bestowment on its creature of an hour,
Man, of so much proper action rightly aimed and reaching aim,
So much passion,--no defect there, no excess, but still the same,--
As what constitutes existence, pure perfection bright as brief
For yon worm, man's fellow-creature, on yon happier world--its leaf!
No, as I am man, I mourn the poverty I must impute:
Goodness, wisdom, power, all bounded, each a human attribute!"
(vol. xiv. p. 183.)
"If we regard this life as final, we must relinquish our conception of
the power of God: for His work is then open to human judgment, in the
light of which it yields only imperfect results."
"But let us once assume that our present state is one of probation,
intended by God as such: and every difficulty is solved. Evil is no
longer a mark of failure in the execution of the Divine Scheme: it
becomes essential to it; my experience indeed represents it as such. I
cannot conceive evil as abolished without abrogation of the laws of
life. For it is not only bound up with all the good of life; it is often
its vehicle. Gain is enhanced by recent loss. Ignorance places us
nearest to knowledge. Beauty is most precious, truth most potent, where
ugliness and falsehood prevail; and what but the loss of Love teaches us
what its true value has been?"
"May I then accept the conclusion that this life will be supplemented by
a better one?"
Mr. Browning initiates his final inquiry by declaring that he will
accept only the testimony of fact. He rejects surmise, he seeks no
answer in the beauties or in the voices of nature; none in the minds of
his fellow-men; none even in the depths of his sentient self with its
"aspiration" and "reminiscence:" its plausible assurances that God would
be "unjust," and man "wronged," if a second life were not granted to us.
And here he seems for a moment to deny, what he has elsewhere stated,
and everywhere implied, in the poem: that his own spirit must be to him,
despite its isolation and weakness, the one messenger of Divine truth.
But he is only saying the same thing in a different way. He rejects the
spontaneous utterance of his own spirit; but relies on its conclusions.
He rejects it as pleader; but constitutes it judge. And this distinction
is carried out in a dialogue, in which Fancy speaks for the spontaneous
self; Reason for the judicial--the one making its _thrusts_, and the
other _parrying_ them. The question at issue has, however, slightly
shifted its ground; and we find ourselves asking: not, "is the Soul
immortal?" but "what would be the consequence to life of its being
proved so?"
FANCY. "The soul exists after death. I accept the surmise as certainty:
and would see it put to use during life."
REASON. "The 'use' of it will be that the wise man will die at once:
since death, in the absence of any supernatural law to the contrary,
must be clear gain. The soul must fare better when it has ceased to be
thwarted by the body; and we have no reason to suppose that the
obstructions which have their purpose in this life would be renewed in a
future one. Are we happy? death rescues our happiness from its otherwise
certain decay. Are we sad? death cures the sadness. Is life simply for
us a weary compromise between hope and fear, between failure and
attainment? death is still the deliverer. It must come some day. Why not
invoke it in a painless form when the first cloud appears upon our sky?"
FANCY. "Then I concede this much: the certainty of the future life shall
be saddled with the injunction to live out the present, or accept a
proportionate penalty."
REASON. "In that case the wise man will live. But whether the part he
chooses in it be that of actor or of looker-on, he will endure his life
with indifference. Relying on the promises of the future, he will take
success or failure as it comes, and accept ignorance as a matter of
course."
FANCY. "I concede more still. Man shall not only be compelled to live:
he shall know the value of life. He shall know that every moment he
spends in it is gain or loss for the life to come--that every act he
performs involves reward or punishment in it."
REASON. "Then you abolish good and evil in their relation to man; for
you abolish freedom of choice. No man is good because he obeys a law so
obvious and so stringent as to leave him no choice; and such would be
the moral law, if punishment were _demonstrated_ as following upon the
breach of it; reward on its fulfilment. Man is free, in his present
state, to choose between good and evil--free therefore to be good;
because he may believe, but has no demonstrated _certainty_, that his
future welfare depends on it."
It is thus made clear that only in man's present state of limited
knowledge is a life of probation conceivable; while only on the
hypothesis that this life is one of probation, can that of a future
existence be maintained. Mr. Browning ends where he began, with a
_hope_, which is practically a _belief_, because to his mind the only
thinkable approach to it.
A vivid description of the scenes amidst which the tragedy took place
accompanies this discussion.
"CLEON" is a protest against the inadequacy of the earthly life; and the
writer is supposed to be one of those Greek poets or thinkers to whom
St. Paul alludes, in a line quoted from Aratus in the Acts, and which
stands at the head of the poem. Cleon believes in Zeus under the
attributes of the one God; but he sees nothing in his belief to warrant
the hope of immortality; and his love of life is so intense and so
untiring that this fact is very grievous to him.
He is stating his case to an imaginary king--Protus--his patron and
friend; whose convictions are much the same as his own, but who thinks
him in some degree removed from the common lot: since his achievements
in philosophy and in art must procure him not only a more perfect
existence, but in one sense a more lasting one. Cleon protests against
this idea.
"He has," he admits, "done all which the King imputes to him. If he has
not been a Homer, a Pheidias, or a Terpander, his creative sympathies
have united all three; and in thus passing from the simple to the
complex, he has obeyed the law of progress, though at the risk perhaps
of appearing a smaller man."
"But his life has not been the more perfect on that account. Perfection
exists only in those more mechanical grades of being, in which joy is
unconscious, but also self-sufficing. To grow in consciousness is to
grow in the capability and in the desire for joy; to decline rather
than advance, in the physical power of attaining it. Man's soul
expands; his 'physical recipiency' remains for ever bounded."
"Nor are his works a source of life to him either now or for the future.
The conception of youth and strength and wisdom is not its reality: the
knowing (and depicting) what joy is, is not the possession of it. And
the surviving of his work, when he himself is dead, is but a mockery the
more."
It is all so horrible that he sometimes imagines another life, as
unlimited in capability, as this in the desire, for joy, and dreams that
Zeus has revealed it. "But he has not revealed it, and therefore it will
not be." St. Paul is preaching at this very time, and Protus sends a
letter to be forwarded to him; but Cleon does not admit that knowledge
can reside in a "barbarian Jew;" and gently rebukes his royal friend for
inclining to such doctrine, which, as he has gathered from one who heard
it, "can be held by no sane man."
Cleon constantly uses the word soul as antithesis to body: but he uses
it in its ancient rather than its modern sense, as expressing the
sentient life, not the spiritual; and this perhaps explains the anomaly
of his believing that it is independent of the lower physical powers,
and yet not destined to survive them.
The EPISTLE of Karshish is addressed to a certain Abib, the writer's
master in the science of medicine. It is written from Bethany; and the
"strange medical experience" of which it treats, is the _case_ of
Lazarus, whom Karshish has seen there. Lazarus, as he relates, has been
the subject of a prolonged epileptic trance, and his reason impaired by
a too sudden awakening from it. He labours under the fixed idea that he
was raised from the dead; and that the Nazarene physician at whose
command he rose (and who has since perished in a popular tumult) was no
other than God: who for love's sake had taken human form, and worked
and died for men. Karshish regards the madness of this idea as beyond
rational doubt: but he is perplexed and haunted by its consistency: by
the manner in which this supposed vision of the Heavenly life has
transformed, even inverted the man's judgment of earthly things. He
combats the impression as best he can: recounts his scientific
discoveries--the new plants, minerals, sicknesses, or cures to which his
travels in Judea have introduced him; half apologizes for his digression
from these more important matters; tries to excuse the hold which
Lazarus has taken upon him by the circumstances in which they met; and
breaks out at last in this agitated appeal to Abib and the truth:--
"The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too--
* * * * *
The madman saith He said so: it is strange."
(vol. iv. p. 198.)
The solitary sage alluded to is of course imaginary. Like the doubtful
messenger to whom the letter will be entrusted, he helps to mark the
incidental character with which Karshish strives to invest his
"experience."
"CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS" carries us into an opposite sphere of thought. It
has for its text these words from Psalm 50: _Thou thoughtest that I was
altogether such an one as thyself_: and is the picture of an acute but
half savage mind, building up the Deity on its own pattern. Caliban is
much exercised by the government of the world, and by the probable
nature of its ruler; and he has niched an hour from his tasks, on a
summer noon, when Prospero and Miranda are taking his diligence upon
trust, to go and sprawl full length in the mud of some cave, and talk
the problem out. The attitude is described, as his reflections are
carried on, in his own words; but he speaks as children do, in the third
person.
Caliban worships Setebos, god of the Patagonians, as did his mother
before him; but her creed was the higher of the two, because it included
what his does not: the idea of a future life. He differs from her also
in a more original way. For she held that a greater power than Setebos
had made the world, leaving Setebos merely to "vex" it; while he
contends that whoever made the world and its weakness, did so for the
pleasure of vexing it himself; and that this greater power, the "Quiet,"
if it really exists, is above pain or pleasure, and had no motive for
such a proceeding.
Setebos is thus, according to Caliban, a secondary divinity. He may have
been created by the Quiet, or may have driven it off the field; but in
either case his position is the same. He is one step nearer to the human
nature which he cannot assume. He lives in the moon, Caliban thinks, and
dislikes its "cold," while he cannot escape from it. To relieve his
discomfort, half in impatience half in sport, he has made human beings;
thus giving himself the pleasure of seeing others do what he cannot, and
of mocking them as his playthings at the same time.
This theory of creation is derived from Caliban's own experience. In
like manner, when he has got drunk on fermented fruits, and feels he
would like to fly, he pinches up a clay bird, and sends it into the air;
and if its leg snaps off, and it entreats him to stop the smarting, or
make the leg grow again, he may give it two more, or he may break off
the remaining one; just to show the thing that he can do with it what he
likes.
He also presumes that Setebos is envious, because _he_ is so; as for
instance: if he made a pipe to catch birds with, and the pipe boasted:
"_I_ catch the birds. _I_ make a cry which my maker can't make unless he
blows through me," he would smash it on the spot.
For the rest he imagines that Setebos, like himself, is neither kind
nor cruel, but simply acts on all possible occasions as his fancy
prompts him. The one thing which would arouse his own hostility, and
therefore that of Setebos, would be that any creature should think he is
ever prompted by anything else; or that his adopting a certain course
one day would be a reason for following it on the next.
Guided by these analogies--which he illustrates with much quaintness and
variety--Caliban humours Setebos, always pretending to be envious of
him, and never allowing himself to seem too happy. He moans in the
sunlight, gets under holes to laugh, and only ventures to think aloud,
when out of sight and hearing, as he is at the present moment. Thus
sheltered, however, he makes too free with his tongue. He risks the
expression of a hope that old age, or the Quiet, will some day make an
end of his Creator, whom he loves none the better for being so like
himself. And in another moment he is crouching in abject fear: for an
awful thunderstorm has broken out. "That raven scudding away 'has told
him all.'"
"Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!" (vol. vii. p. 161.)
and will do anything to please him so that he escape this time.
The most impressive of the dramatic monologues, "A Death in the Desert,"
detaches itself from this double group. It is contemplative in tone, but
inspired by a formed conviction, and, dramatically at least, by an
instructive purpose; and thus becomes the centre of another small
division of Mr. Browning's poems, which for want of a less ugly and
hackneyed word we may call "didactic."