"DRAMATIC IDYLS." "JOCOSERIA."
"DRAMATIC IDYLS."
The Dramatic Idyls form, like the Dramas, a natural group; and though,
unlike these, they might be distributed under various heads, it would
not be desirable to thus disconnect them; for their appearing together
at this late period of Mr. Browning's career, constitutes them a
landmark in it. They each consist of a nucleus of fact--supplied by
history or by romance, as the case may be--and of material, and in most
cases, mental circumstance, which Mr. Browning's fancy has engrafted on
it; and in both their material and their mental aspect they display a
concentrated power, which clearly indicates what I have spoken of as the
"crystallizing" process Mr. Browning's genius has undergone. A
comparison of these poems with "Pauline," "Paracelsus," or even "Pippa
Passes," will be found to justify this assertion.
The Idyls consist of two series, occupying each a volume. The first,
published 1879, contains:--
"Martin Relph."
"Pheidippides."
"Halbert and Hob."
"Ivàn Ivànovitch."
"Tray."
"Ned Bratts."
The hero of "MARTIN RELPH" is an old man, whose life is haunted by
something which happened to him when little more than a boy. A girl of
his own village had been falsely convicted of treason, and the guns were
already levelled for her execution, when Martin Relph, who had stolen
round on to some rising ground behind the soldiers and villagers who
witnessed the scene, saw what no one else could see: a man, about a
quarter of mile distant, rushing onwards in staggering haste, and waving
a white object over his head. He knew this was Vincent Parkes, Rosamond
Page's lover, bearing the expected proofs of her innocence. He knew also
that by a shout he might avert her doom. But something paralyzed his
tongue, and the girl fell. The man who would have rescued her but for
delays and obstacles, which no power of his could overcome, was found
dead where Martin Relph had seen him.
The remembrance of these two deaths leaves Martin Relph no rest; for
conscience tells him that his part in them was far worse than it
appeared. It tells him that what struck him dumb at that awful moment
was not, as others said, the simple cowardice of a boy: he loved in
secret the girl whom Vincent Parkes was coming to save; and if _he_ had
saved her, it would have been for that other man. But that thought could
only flash on him in one second of fiery consciousness; he had no time
to recognize it as a motive; and he clings madly to the hope that his
conscience is mistaken, and it was not that which silenced him. Every
year, at the same spot, he re-enacts the scene, striving to convince
himself--with those who hear him--that he has been a coward, but not a
murderer; and in the moral and physical reaction from the renewed agony,
half-succeeds in doing so.
The story, thus told in Martin Relph's words, is supposed to have been
repeated to the present narrator by a grandfather, who heard them. It
embodies a vague remembrance of something read by Mr. Browning when he
was himself a boy.
The facts related in "PHEIDIPPIDES" belong to Greek legendary history,
and are told by Herodotus and other writers. When Athens was threatened
by the invading Persians, she sent a running messenger to Sparta, to
demand help against the foreign foe. The mission was unsuccessful. But
the "runner," Pheidippides, fell in on his return, with the god Pan; and
though alone among Greeks the Athenians had refused to honour him, he
promised to fight with them in the coming battle. Pheidippides was
present, when this battle--that of Marathon--was fought and won. He
"ran" once more, to announce the victory at Athens; and fell, dead, with
the words, "Rejoice, we conquer!" on his lips. This death followed
naturally on the excessive physical strain; but Mr. Browning has used it
as a connecting link between the historic and the imaginary parts of the
idyl. According to this, Pheidippides himself tells his first adventure,
to the assembled rulers of Athens: depicting, in vivid words, the
emotions which winged his course, and bore him onwards over mountains
and through valleys, with the smooth swiftness of running fire; and he
also relates that Pan promised him a personal reward for his "toil,"
which was to consist in release from it. This release he interprets as
freedom to return home, and to marry the girl he loves. It meant a
termination to his labours, more tragic, but far more glorious: to die,
proclaiming the victory which they had helped to secure.
Pan is also made to present him with a sprig of fennel--symbol of
Marathon, or the "fennel-field"--as pledge of his promised assistance.
"HALBERT AND HOB" is the story of a fierce father and son who lived
together in solitude, shunned by their fellow-men. One Christmas night
they drifted into a quarrel, in the course of which the son seized his
father, and was about to turn him out of doors: when the latter, with
unaccustomed mildness, bade him stay his hand. Just so, he said, in his
youth, had he proceeded against his own father; and at just this stage
of the proceeding had a voice in his heart bidden him desist.... And the
son thus appealed to desisted also.
This fact is told by Aristotle[104] as an instance of the hereditary
nature of anger. But Mr. Browning sees more in it than that. If, he
declares, Nature creates hard hearts, it is a power beyond hers which
softens them; and in his version of "Halbert and Hob" this supernatural
power completes the work it has begun. The two return in silence to
their fireside. The next morning the father is found dead. The son has
become a harmless idiot, to remain so till the end of his life.
"IVAN IVANOVITCH" is the reproduction, with fictitious names and
imaginary circumstances, of a popular Russian story, known as "The
Judgment of God." A young woman travelling through the forest on a
winter's night, is attacked by wolves, and saves her own life by
throwing her children to them. But when she reaches her village, and
either confesses the deed or stands convicted of it, one of its
inhabitants, by trade a carpenter and the Ivàn Ivànovitch of the idyl,
lifts the axe which he is plying, and strikes off her head: this
informal retribution being accepted, by those present, as in conformity
with the higher law.
Mr. Browning has raised the mother's act out of the sphere of vulgar
crime, by the characteristic method of making her tell her story: and
show herself, as she may easily have been, not altogether bad; though a
woman of weak maternal instincts, and one whose nature was powerless
against the fear of pain, and the impulse to self-preservation. She
describes with appalling vividness the experiences of the night: the
moonlit forest--the snow-covered ground--the wolves approaching with a
whispering tread, which seems at first but the soughing of a gentle
wind--the wedge-like, ever-widening mass, which emerges from the trees;
then the flight, and the pursuit: the latter arrested for one moment by
the sacrifice of each victim; to be renewed the next, till none is left
to sacrifice: one child dragged from the mother's arms; another shielded
by her whole body, till the wolf's teeth have fastened in her flesh; and
though she betrays, in the very effort to conceal it, how little she has
done to protect her children's lives, we realize the horror of her
situation, and pity even while we condemn, her. But some words of
selfish rejoicing at her own deliverance precede the fatal stroke, and
in some degree challenge it. And Mr. Browning farther preserves the
spirit of the tradition, by giving to her sentence the sanction of the
village priest or "pope," into whose presence the decapitated body has
been conveyed. The secular authorities are also on the spot, and condemn
the murder as contrary both to justice and to law. But the pope declares
that the act of Ivàn Ivànovitch has been one of the higher justice which
is above law. He himself is an aged man--so aged, he says, that he has
passed through the clouds of human convention, and stands on the firm
basis of eternal truth. Looking down upon the world from this
vantage-ground, he sees that no gift of God is equal to that of life; no
privilege so high as that of reproducing its "miracle;" and that the
mother who has cast away her maternal crown, and given over to
destruction the creatures which she has borne, has sinned an "unexampled
sin," for which a "novel punishment" was required. No otherwise than did
Moses of old, has Ivàn Ivànovitch interpreted the will--shown himself
the servant--of God.
How Mr. Browning's Ivàn Ivànovitch himself judges the case, is evidenced
by this fact, that after wiping the blood from his axe, he betakes
himself to playing with his children; and that when the lord of the
village has--reluctantly--sent a deputation to inform him that he is
free, the words, "how otherwise?" are his only answer.
"TRAY" describes an instance of animal courage and devotion which a
friend of Mr. Browning's actually witnessed in Paris. A little girl had
fallen into the river. None of the bystanders attempted to rescue her.
But a dog, bouncing over the balustrade, brought the child to land;
dived again, no one could guess why; and after battling with a dangerous
current, emerged with the child's doll; then trotted away as if nothing
had occurred.
This "Tray" is made to illustrate Mr. Browning's ideal of a hero, in
opposition to certain showy and conventional human types; and the little
narrative contains some scathing reflections on those who talk of such a
creature as merely led by instinct, or would dissect its brain alive to
discover how the "soul" is secreted there.
"NED BRATTS" was suggested by the remembrance of a passage in John
Bunyan's "Life and Death of Mr. Badman." Bunyan relates there that some
twenty years ago, "at a summer assizes holden at Hertford, while the
judge was sitting on the Bench," a certain old Tod came into the Court,
and declared himself "the veriest rogue that breathes upon the earth"--a
thief from childhood, &c., &c.; that the judge first thought him mad,
but after conferring with some of the justices, agreed to indict him "of
several felonious actions;" and that as he heartily confessed to all of
these, he was hanged, with his wife, at the same time. Mr. Browning has
turned Hertford into Bedford; made the time of the occurrence coincide
with that of Bunyan's imprisonment; and supposed the evident conversion
of this man and woman to be among the many which he effected there. The
blind daughter of Bunyan, who plays an important part in "Ned Bratts,"
is affectingly spoken of in her father's work; and the tag-laces, which
have subserved the criminal purposes of Bratts and his wife, represent
an industry by which he is known to have supported himself in prison.
Mr. Browning, finally, has used the indications Bunyan gives, of the
incident taking place on a very hot day, so as to combine the sense of
spiritual stirring with one of unwholesome and grotesque physical
excitement; and this, as he describes it, is the genuine key-note of the
situation.
The character of Ned Bratts is made a perfect vehicle for these
impressions. His "Tab" (Tabitha) has had an interview with John Bunyan,
and been really moved by his majestic presence, and warning, yet
hope-inspiring words. But he himself has been principally worked upon by
the reading of the "Pilgrim's Progress;" and we see in him throughout,
an unregenerate ruffian, whose carnal energies have merely transferred
themselves to another field; and whose blood is fired to this act of
martyrdom both by yesterday's potations, and to-day's virtuously endured
thirst. "A mug," he cries, in the midst of his confessions; or, "no
(addressing his wife), a prayer!"
"Dip for one out of the Book!..." (vol. xv. p. 67.)
The precarious nature of his conversion is, indeed, vividly present to
his own mind. It is borne in upon him that he is "Christmas," and must
escape from the City of Destruction. He would like nothing better, in
his present mood, than to undertake the whole Pilgrimage, and, as it
were, cudgel his way through; and since it is late in the day for this,
he chooses the short cut by the gallows, as the next best thing. But he
is, above all, desirous to be taken while the penitent fit is on him:
and urgently sets forth those past misdeeds, which constitute his and
his wife's claim to a speedy despatch, such as will place them beyond
the danger of backsliding. Already, he declares, Satan is whispering to
him of the pleasures he is leaving behind; and the seductions of
to-morrow's brawl and bear-baiting are threatening to turn the scale.
Another moment, and instead of going up to heaven, like Faithful, in a
chariot and pair, he will be the Lost Man in the Iron Cage!
When the two have had their wish, and been hanged "out of hand," the
bystanders are edified to tears. But the loyalty of the Chief Justice
forbids any imputing of the act of grace to the influence of John
Bunyan. Its cause lies rather, he asserts, in the twelve years' pious
reign of the restored Charles.
The second series of the "Dramatic Idyls" was published in 1880, and
contains:--
"Echetlos."
"Clive."
"Muléykeh."
"Pietro of Abano."
"Doctor ----"
"Pan and Luna."
It has also a little prologue and epilogue: the former satirizing the
pretension to understand the Soul, which we cannot see, while we are
baffled by the workings of the bodily organs, which we can see; the
latter directed against the popular idea that the more impressible and
more quickly responsive natures are the soil of which "song" is born.
The true poet, it declares, is as the pine tree which has grown out of a
rock.
"ECHETLOS" (holder of the ploughshare) is another legend of the battle
of Marathon. It tells, in Mr. Browning's words, how one with the
goat-skin garment, and the broad bare limbs of a "clown," was seen on
the battle-field ploughing down the enemy's ranks: the ploughshare
flashing now here, now there, wherever the Grecian lines needed
strengthening; how he vanished when the battle was won; and how the
oracle, of which his name was asked, bade the inquirers not care for it:
"Say but just this: We praise one helpful whom we call
The Holder of the Ploughshare. The great deed ne'er grows small."
(vol. xv. p. 87.)