The anecdote which forms the basis of "CLIVE," was told to Mr. Browning
in 1846 by Mrs. Jameson, who had shortly before heard it at Lansdowne
House, from Macaulay. It is cursorily mentioned in Macaulay's "Essays."
When Robert Clive was first in India, a boy of fifteen, clerk in a
merchant's office at St. David's, he accused an officer with whom he was
playing, of cheating at cards, and was challenged by him in consequence.
Clive fired, as it seems, prematurely, and missed his aim. The officer,
at whose mercy he had thus placed himself, advanced to within arm's
length, held the muzzle of his pistol to the youth's forehead, and
summoned him to repeat his accusation. Clive did repeat it, and with
such defiant courage that his adversary was unnerved. He threw down the
weapon, confessed that he had cheated, and rushed out of the room. A
chorus of indignation then broke forth among those who had witnessed the
scene. They declared that the "wronged civilian" should be righted; and
that he who had thus disgraced Her Majesty's Service should be
drummed--if needs be, kicked--out of the regiment. But here Clive
interposed. Not one, he said, of the eleven, whom he addressed by name
and title, had raised a finger to save his life. He would clear scores
with any or all among them who breathed a word against the man who had
spared it. Nor, as the narrative continues, and as the event proved, was
such a word ever spoken.
Clive is supposed to relate this experience, a week before his
self-inflicted death, to a friend who is dining with him; and who,
struck by his depressed mental state, strives to arouse him from it by
the question: which of his past achievements constitutes, in his own
judgment, the greatest proof of courage. He gives the moment in which
the pistol was levelled at his head, as that in which he felt, not most
courage, but most fear. But, as he explains to his astonished listener,
it was not the almost certainty of death, which, for one awful minute,
made a coward of him; it was the bare possibility of a reprieve, which
would have left no appeal from its dishonour. His opponent refused to
fire. He might have done so with words like these:
"Keep your life, calumniator!--worthless life I freely spare:
Mine you freely would have taken--murdered me and my good fame
Both at once--and all the better! Go, and thank your own bad aim
Which permits me to forgive you!..." (vol. xv. p. 105.)
What course would have remained to him but to seize the pistol, and
himself send the bullet into his brain? This tremendous mental situation
is, we need hardly say, Mr. Browning's addition to the episode.
The poem contains also some striking reflections on the risks and
responsibilities of power; and concludes with an expression of reverent
pity for the "great unhappy hero" for whom they proved too great.
"MULÉYKEH" is an old Arabian story. The name which heads it is that of a
swift, beautiful mare, who was Hóseyn--her owner's, "Pearl." He loved
her so dearly, that, though a very poor man, no price would tempt him to
sell her; and in his fear of her being stolen, he slept always with her
head-stall thrice wound round his wrist: and Buhéyseh, her sister,
saddled for instantaneous pursuit. One night she was stolen; and Duhl,
the thief, galloped away on her and felt himself secure: for the Pearl's
speed was such that even her sister had never overtaken her. She chafed,
however, under the strange rider, and slackened her pace. Buhéyseh,
bearing Hóseyn, gained fast upon them; the two mares were already "neck
by croup." Then the thought of his darling's humiliation flashed on
Hóseyn's mind. He shouted angrily to Duhl in what manner he ought to
urge her. And the Pearl, obeying her master's voice, no less than the
familiar signal prescribed by him, bounded forward, and was lost to him
forever. Hóseyn returned home, weeping sorely, and the neighbours told
him he had been a fool. Why not have kept silence and got his treasure
back?
"'And--beaten in speed!' wept Hóseyn: 'You never have loved
my Pearl.'"
(vol. xv. p. 116.)
The man who gives his name to "PIETRO OF ABANO" was the greatest Italian
philosopher and physician of the thirteenth century.[106] He was also an
astrologer, pretending to magical knowledge, and persecuted, as Mr.
Browning relates. But the special story he tells of him has been told of
others also.
Pietro of Abano had the reputation of being a wizard; and though his
skill in curing sickness, as in building, star-reading, and yet other
things, conferred invaluable services on his fellow-men, he received
only kicks and curses for his reward. His power seemed, nevertheless, so
enviable, that he was one day, in the archway of his door, accosted by a
young Greek, who humbly and earnestly entreated that the secret of that
power might be revealed to him. He promised to repay his master with
loving gratitude; and hinted that the bargain might be worth the
latter's consideration, since nature, in all else his slave, forbade his
drinking milk (this is told of the true Pietro): in other words, denied
him the affection which softens and sweetens the dry bread of human
life. Pietro pretended to consent, and began, to utter, by way of
preface, the word "benedicite." The young Greek lost consciousness at
its second syllable; and awoke to find himself alone, and with a first
instalment of Peter's secret in his mind. "Good is product of evil, and
to be effected through it." Acting upon this doctrine, he traded on the
weaknesses of his fellow-creatures wherever the opportunity occurred;
and attained by this means, first, wealth; next temporal, and then
spiritual, power; rising finally to the dignity of Pope. At each stage
of this progress, Peter came to him in apparent destitution, and claimed
the promised gratitude in an urgent, but very modest prayer for
assistance. And each time Peter's presence infused into him a fresh
power of unscrupulousness, and sent him a step farther on his way. But
each time also the pupil postponed his obligation, till he at last
disclaimed it; and--enthroned in the Lateran--was dismissing his
benefactor with insult: when the closing syllables--"dicite"--sounded in
his ear; and he became conscious of Peter's countenance smiling back at
him over his shoulder, and Peter's door being banged in his face. And he
then knew that he had lived a lifetime in the fraction of a minute, and
that the magician, by means of whom he had done so, justly declined to
trust him.
Mr. Browning, however, bids the young Greek persevere; since he might
ransack Peter's books, without discovering a better secret for gaining
power over the masses, than the "cleverness uncurbed by conscience,"
which he perhaps already possesses.[107]
"DOCTOR ----" is an old Hebrew legend, founded upon the saying that a
bad wife is stronger than death. Satan complains, in his character of
Death, that man has the advantage of him: since he may baffle him,
whenever he will, by the aid of a bad woman; and he undertakes to show
this in his own person. He comes to earth, marries, and has a son, who
in due time must be supplied with a profession. This son is too cowardly
to be a soldier, and too lazy to be a lawyer; Divinity is his father's
sphere. So Satan decides that he shall be a doctor; and endows him with
a faculty which will enable him to practise Medicine, without any
knowledge of it at all. The moment he enters a sick room, he will see
his father spiritually present there; and unless he finds him seated at
the sick's man's head, that man is not yet doomed. Thus endowed, Doctor
----can cure a patient who was despaired of, with a dose of penny-royal,
and justly predict death for one whose only ailment is a pimple. His
success carries all before it. One day, however, he is summoned to the
emperor, who lies sick; and the emperor offers gold, and power, and,
lastly, his daughter's hand, as the price of his recovery. But this time
Satan sits at the head of the bed, and not even such an appeal to his
pride and greed will induce him to grant the patient even a temporary
reprieve. The son, thus driven to bay, pretends to be struck by a sudden
thought. "He will try the efficacy of the mystic Jacob's staff." He
whispers to an attendant to bid his mother bring it; and as Satan's Bad
Wife enters the room, Satan vanishes through the ceiling, leaving a
smell of sulphur behind him. The Emperor gets well; but Doctor
----renounces the promised gold: for it was to be the Princess's dowry;
and he is too wise to accept it on the condition of saddling himself
with a wife.
"PAN AND LUNA" describes a mythical adventure of Luna--the moon, given
by Virgil in the Georgics; and has for its text a line from them (III.
390):
"Si credere dignum est."[108]
According to the legend, Luna was one night entrapped by Pan who lay in
wait for her in the form of a cloud, soft and snowy as the fleece of a
certain breed of sheep; and, Virgil continues, followed him to the
woodland, "by no means spurning him." But Mr. Browning tells the story
in a manner more consonant with the traditional modesty of the
"Girl-Moon." She was, he says, distressed by the exposure of her
full-orbed charms, as she flew bare through the vault of heaven: the
protecting darkness ever vanishing before her; and she took refuge for
concealment in the cloud of which the fleecy billows were to close and
contract about her, in the limbs of the goat-god. How little she
accepted this her first eclipse, may be shown, he thinks, by the fact
that she never now lingers within a cloud longer than is necessary to
"rip" it through.
"JOCOSERIA."
The volume so christened (grave and gay), published 1883, shows a
greater variety of subject and treatment than do the Dramatic Idyls, and
its contents might be still more easily broken up; but they are also
best given in their original form. They are--
"Wanting is--what?"
"Donald."
"Solomon and Balkis."
"Cristina and Monaldeschi."
"Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli."
"Adam, Lilith, and Eve."
"Ixion."
"Jochanan Hakkadosh."
"Never the Time and the Place."
"Pambo."
"WANTING IS--WHAT?" is an invocation to Love, as the necessary
supplement to whatever is beautiful in life. It may equally be addressed
to the spirit of Love, or to its realization in the form of a beloved
person.
"DONALD" is a true story, repeated to Mr. Browning by one who had heard
it from its hero the so-called Donald, himself. This man, a fearless
sportsman in the flush of youth and strength, found himself one day on a
narrow mountain ledge--a wall of rock above, a precipice below, and the
way barred by a magnificent stag approaching from the opposite side.
Neither could retrace his steps. There was not space enough for them to
pass each other. One expedient alone presented itself: that the man
should lie flat, and the stag (if it would) step over him. And so it
might have been. Donald slipped sideways on to his back. The stag,
gently, cautiously, not grazing him with the tip of a hoof, commenced
the difficult transit; the feat was already half accomplished. But the
lifted hind legs laid bare the stomach of the stag; and Donald, who was
sportsman first, and man long afterwards, raised himself on his elbow,
and stabbed it. The two rolled over into the abyss. The stag, for the
second time, saved its murderer's life; for it broke his fall. He came
out of the hospital into which he had been carried, a crippled,
patched-up wretch, but able to crawl on hands and knees to wherever his
"pluck" might be appreciated, and earn a beggar's livelihood by telling
how it was last displayed.
These facts are supposed to be related in a Scotch bothie, to a group of
young men already fired by the attractions of sport; and are the
narrator's comment on the theory, that moral soundness as well as
physical strength, is promoted by it.
"SOLOMON AND BALKIS" is the Talmudic version[109] of the dialogue, which
took place between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, on the occasion of
her visit to the wise King. They begin by talking for effect: and when
questioned by each other as to the kind of persons they most readily
admit to their respective courts, Solomon answers that he welcomes the
Wise, whatever be their social condition; and Balkis declares that her
sympathies are all with the Good. But a chance (?) movement on her part
jostles the hand of Solomon; and the ring it bears slips round, so that
the truth-compelling Name is turned outwards instead of in. Then he
confesses that he loves the Wise just so long as he is the object of
their appreciation; she that she loves the Good so long as they bear the
form of young and handsome men.
He acknowledges, with a sigh, that the soul, which will soar in heaven,
must crawl while confined to earth; she owns, with a laugh and a blush,
that she has not travelled thus far to hold mental communion with
him.[110]
"CRISTINA[111] AND MONALDESCHI" gives the closing scene of the life of
Monaldeschi, in what might be Cristina's own words. She is addressing
the man whom she has convicted of betraying her, and at whose murder she
is about to assist; and the monologue reflects the outward circumstance
of this murder, as well as the queen's deliberate cruelty, and her
victim's cowardice. They are in the palace of Fontainebleau. Its
internal decorations record the loves of Diane de Poitiers and the
French king, in their frequent repetition of the crescent and the
salamander,[112] and of the accompanying motto, "Quis separabit;" and
Cristina, with ghastly irony, calls her listener's attention to the
appropriateness of these emblems to their own case. Then she plays with
the idea that his symbol is the changing moon, hers the fire-fed
salamander, dangerous to those only who come too close. Changing the
metaphor, she speaks of herself as a peak, which Monaldeschi has chosen
to scale, and which he wrongly hoped to descend when he should be weary
of the position, by the same ladder by which he climbed; and her
half-playful words assume a still more sinister import, as she depicts
the whirling waters, the frightful rocky abyss, into which a moment's
giddiness on his part, a touch from her, might precipitate him. She bids
him cure the dizziness, ward off the danger, by kneeling, even
crouching, at her feet; act the lover, though he no longer is one. And
all the while she is drawing him towards the door of that "Gallery of
the Deer," where the priest who is to confess, the soldiers who are to
slay, are waiting for him.
Cristina's last words are addressed, in vindication of her deed, to the
priest (Lebel), who is aghast at its ferocity. He, she says, has
received the culprit's confession, and would not divulge it for a crown.
The church at Avon[113] must tell how _her_ secrets have been guarded by
him to whom she had entrusted them.
"MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT AND FUSELI" is the mournful yet impassioned
expression of an unrequited love.
"ADAM, LILITH, AND EVE" illustrates the manner in which the typical man
and woman will proceed towards each other: the latter committing herself
by imprudent disclosures when under the influence of fear, and turning
them into a joke as soon as the fear is past; the former pretending that
he never regarded them as serious.
"IXION" is an imaginary protest of this victim of the anger of Zeus,
wrung from him by his torments, as he whirls on the fiery wheel.[114] He
has been sentenced to this punishment for presuming on the privileges
which Zeus had conferred upon him, and striving to win Heré's[115] love;
and he declares that the punishment is undeserved: "he was encouraged to
claim the love of Heré, together with the friendship of Zeus; he has
erred only in his trust in their professions. And granting that it were
otherwise--that he had sinned in arrogance--that, befriended by the
gods, he had wrongly fancied himself their equal: one touch from them of
pitying power would have sufficed to dispel the delusion, born of the
false testimony of the flesh!" He asks, with indignant scorn, what need
there is of accumulated torment, to prove to one who has recovered his
sight, that he was once blind; and in this scorn and indignation he
denounces the gods, whose futile vindictiveness would shame the very
nature of man; he denounces them as hollow imitations of him whom they
are supposed to create: as mere phantoms to which he imparts the light
and warmth of his own life. Then rising from denunciation to prophecy,
he bids his fellow-men take heart. "Let them struggle and fall! Let them
press on the limits of their own existence, to find only human passions
and human pettiness in the sphere beyond; let them expiate their
striving in hell! The end is not yet come. Of his vapourized flesh, of
the 'tears, sweat, and blood' of his agony, is born a rainbow of hope;
of the whirling wreck of his existence, the pale light of a coming joy.
Beyond the weakness of the god his tormenter he descries a Power,
unobstructed, all-pure.
"Thither I rise, whilst thou--Zeus, keep the godship and sink!"
If any doubt were still possible as to Mr. Browning's attitude towards
the doctrine of eternal punishment, this poem must dispel it.
"JOCHANAN HAKKADOSH" relates how a certain Rabbi was enabled to extend
his life for a year and three months beyond its appointed term, and what
knowledge came to him through the extension. Mr. Browning professes to
rest his narrative on a Rabbinical work, of which the title, given by
him in Hebrew, means "Collection of many lies;" and he adds, by way of
supplement, three sonnets, supposed to fantastically illustrate the old
Hebrew proverb, "From Moses to Moses[116] never was one like Moses," and
embodying as many fables of wildly increasing audacity. The main story
is nevertheless justified by traditional Jewish belief; and Mr. Browning
has made it the vehicle of some poetical imagery and much serious
thought.
Jochanan Hakkadosh was at the point of death. He had completed his
seventy-ninth year. But his faculties were unimpaired; and his pupils
had gathered round him to receive the last lessons of his experience;
and to know with what feelings he regarded the impending change.
Jochanan Hakkadosh had but one answer to give: his life had been a
failure. He had loved, learned, and fought; and in every case his object
had been ill-chosen, his energies ill-bestowed. He had shared the common
lot, which gives power into the hand of folly, and places wisdom in
command when no power is left to be commanded. With this desponding
utterance he bade his "children" farewell.
But here a hubbub of protestation arose. "This must not be the Rabbi's
last word. It need not be so;" for, as Tsaddik, one of the disciples,
reminded his fellows, there existed a resource against such a case.
Their "Targums" (commentaries) assured them that when one thus combining
the Nine Points of perfection was overtaken by years before the fruits
of his knowledge had been matured, respite might be gained for him by a
gift from another man's life: the giver being rewarded for the wisdom to
which he ministered by a corresponding remission of ill-spent time. The
sacrifice was small, viewed side by side with the martyrdoms endured in
Rome for the glory of the Jewish race.[117] "Who of those present was
willing to make it?" Again a hubbub arose. The disciples within, the
mixed crowd without, all clamoured for the privilege of lengthening the
Rabbi's life from their own. Tsaddik deprecated so extensive a gift.
"Their teacher's patience should not be overtaxed, like that of Perida
(whose story he tells), by too long a spell of existence." He accepted
from the general bounty exactly one year, to be recruited in equal
portions from a married lover, a warrior, a poet, and a statesman; and,
the matter thus settled, Jochanan Hakkadosh fell asleep.
Four times the Rabbi awoke, in renewed health and strength: and four
times again he fell asleep: and at the close of each waking term Tsaddik
revisited him as he sat in his garden--amidst the bloom or the languors,
the threatenings or the chill, of the special period of the year--and
questioned him of what he had learned. And each time the record was like
that of the previous seventy-nine years, one of disappointment and
failure. For the gift had been drawn in every case from a young life,
and been neutralized by its contact with the old. As a lover, the Rabbi
declares, he has dreamed young dreams, and his older self has seen
through them. He has known beforehand that the special charms of his
chosen one would prove transitory, and that the general attraction of
her womanhood belonged to her sex and not to her. As a warrior, he has
experienced the same process of disenchantment. For the young believe
that the surest way to the Right and Good, is that, always, which is cut
by the sword: and that the exercise of the sword is the surest training
for those self-devoting impulses which mark the moral nature of man. The
old have learned that the most just war involves, in its penalties, the
innocent no less than the guilty; that violence rights no wrong which
time and patience would not right more fully; and that for the purposes
of self devotion, unassisted love is more effective than hate.
(Picturesque illustrations are made to support this view.) As poet, he
has recalled the glow of youthful fancy to feel it quenched by the
experience of age: to see those soaring existences whose vital
atmosphere is the future, frozen by their contact with a dead past. As
statesman, he has looked out upon the forest of life, again seeing the
noble trees by which the young trace their future path. And, seeing
these, he has known, that the way leads, not by them, but among the
brushwood and briars which fill the intervening space; that the
statist's work is among the mindless many who will obstruct him at every
step, not among the intellectual few by whom his progress would be
assisted.
As he completes his testimony another change comes over him; and
Tsaddik, kissing the closing eyelids, leaves his master to die.
The rumour of a persecution scatters the Jewish inhabitants of the city.
Not till three months have expired do they venture to return to it; and
when Tsaddik and the other disciples seek the cave where their master
lies, they find him, to their astonishment, alive. Then Tsaddik
remembers that even children urged their offering upon him, and
concludes that some urchin or other contrived to make it "stick;" and he
anxiously disclaims any share in the "foisting" this crude fragment of
existence on the course of so great a life. Hereupon the Rabbi opens his
eyes, and turns upon the bystanders a look of such absolute relief, such
utter happiness, that, as Tsaddik declares, only a second miracle can
explain it. It is a case of the three days' survival of the "Ruach" or
spirit, conceded to those departed saints whose earthly life has
anticipated the heavenly; who have died, as it were, half in the better
world.[118]
Tsaddik has, however, missed the right solution of the problem. Jochanan
Hakkadosh can only define his state as one of _ignorance confirmed by
knowledge_; but he makes it very clear that it is precisely the gift of
the child's consciousness, which has produced this ecstatic calm. The
child's soul in him has reconciled the differing testimony of youth and
manhood: solving their contradictions in its unquestioning faith and
hope. It has lifted him into that region of harmonized good and evil,
where bliss is greater than the human brain can bear. And this is how he
feels himself to be dying; bearing with him a secret of perfect
happiness, which he vainly wishes he could impart.[119]
"NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE" is a fanciful expression of love and
longing, provoked by the opposition of circumstances.
The name of "PAMBO" or "Pambus" is known to literature,[120] as that of
a foolish person, who spent months--Mr. Browning says years--in
pondering a simple passage from Psalm xxxix.; and remained baffled by
the difficulty of its application. The passage is an injunction that man
look to his ways, so that he do not offend with his tongue. And Pambo
finds it easy to practise the first part of this precept, but not at all
so the second. Mr. Browning declares himself in the same case. "He also
looks to his ways, and is guided along them by the critic's torch. But
he offends with his tongue, notwithstanding."