"'There, there, there! All I seem to somehow understand

Is--that, if I reached home, 't was through the guiding hand

Of his blind girl which led and led me through the streets

And out of town and up to door again. What greets

First thing my eye, as limbs recover from their swoon?

A book--this Book she gave at parting. "Father's boon--

The Book he wrote: it reads as if he spoke himself:

He cannot preach in bonds, so,--take it down from shelf

When you want counsel,--think you hear his very voice!"

"'Wicked dear Husband, first despair and then rejoice!

Dear wicked Husband, waste no tick of moment more,

Be saved like me, bald trunk! There's greenness yet at core,

Sap under slough! Read, read!'

"Let me take breath, my lords!

I'd like to know, are these--hers, mine, or Bunyan's words?

I'm 'wildered--scarce with drink,--nowise with drink alone!

You'll say, with heat: but heat's no stuff to split a stone

Like this black boulder--this flint heart of mine: the Book--

That dealt the crashing blow! Sirs, here's the fist that shook

His beard till Wrestler Jem howled like a just-lugged bear!

You had brained me with a feather: at once I grew aware

Christmas was meant for me. A burden at your back,

Good Master Christmas? Nay,--yours was that Joseph's sack,

--Or whose it was,--which held the cup,--compared with mine!

Robbery loads my loins, perjury cracks my chine,

Adultery ... nay, Tab, you pitched me as I flung!

One word, I'll up with fist.... No, sweet spouse, hold your tongue!

"I'm hasting to the end. The Book, sirs--take and read!

You have my history in a nutshell,--ay, indeed!

It must off, my burden! See,--slack straps and into pit,

Roll, reach, the bottom, rest, rot there--a plague on it!

For a mountain's sure to fall and bury Bedford Town,

'Destruction'--that's the name, and fire shall burn it down!

O 'scape the wrath in time! Time's now, if not too late.

How can I pilgrimage up to the wicket-gate?

Next comes Despond the slough: not that I fear to pull

Through mud, and dry my clothes at brave House Beautiful--

But it's late in the day, I reckon: had I left years ago

Town, wife, and children dear.... Well, Christmas did, you know!--

Soon I had met in the valley and tried my cudgel's strength

On the enemy horned and winged, a-straddle across its length!

Have at his horns, thwick--thwack: they snap, see! Hoof and hoof--

Bang, break the fetlock-bones! For love's sake, keep aloof

Angels! I'm man and match,--this cudgel for my flail,--

To thresh him, hoofs and horns, bat's wing and serpent's tail!

A chance gone by! But then, what else does Hopeful ding

Into the deafest ear except--hope, hope's the thing?

Too late i' the day for me to thrid the windings: but

There's still a way to win the race by death's short cut!

Did Master Faithful need climb the Delightful Mounts?

No, straight to Vanity Fair,--a fair, by all accounts,

Such as is held outside,--lords, ladies, grand and gay,--

Says he in the face of them, just what you hear me say.

And the Judges brought him in guilty, and brought him out

To die in the market-place--St. Peter's Green's about

The same thing: there they flogged, flayed, buffeted, lanced with

knives,

Pricked him with swords,--I'll swear, he'd full a cat's nine lives,--

So to his end at last came Faithful,--ha, ha, he!

Who holds the highest card? for there stands hid, you see,

Behind the rabble-rout, a chariot, pair and all:

He's in, he's off, he's up, through clouds, at trumpet-call,

Carried the nearest way to Heaven-gate! Odds my life--

Has nobody a sword to spare? not even a knife?

Then hang me, draw and quarter! Tab--do the same by her!

O Master Worldly-Wiseman ... that's Master Interpreter,

Take the will, not the deed! Our gibbet's handy close:

Forestall Last Judgment-Day! Be kindly, not morose!

There wants no earthly judge-and-jurying: here we stand--

Sentence our guilty selves: so, hang us out of hand!

Make haste for pity's sake! A single moment's loss

Means--Satan's lord once more: his whisper shoots across

All singing in my heart, all praying in my brain,

'It comes of heat and beer!'--hark how he guffaws plain!

'To-morrow you'll wake bright, and, in a safe skin, hug

Your sound selves, Tab and you, over a foaming jug!

You've had such qualms before, time out of mind!' He's right!

Did not we kick and cuff and curse away, that night,

When home we blindly reeled, and left poor humpback Joe

I' the lurch to pay for what ... somebody did, you know!

Both of us maundered then 'Lame humpback,--never more

Will he come limping, drain his tankard at our door!

He'll swing, while--somebody....' Says Tab, 'No, for I'll peach!'

'I'm for you, Tab,' cries I, 'there's rope enough for each!'

So blubbered we, and bussed, and went to bed upon

The grace of Tab's good thought: by morning, all was gone!

We laughed--'What's life to him, a cripple of no account?'

Oh, waves increase around--I feel them mount and mount!

Hang us! To-morrow brings Tom Bearward with his bears:

One new black-muzzled brute beats Sackerson, he swears:

(Sackerson, for my money!) And, baiting o'er, the Brawl

They lead on Turner's Patch,--lads, lasses, up tails all,--

I'm i' the thick o' the throng! That means the Iron Cage,

--Means the Lost Man inside! Where's hope for such as wage

War against light? Light's left, light's here, I hold light still,

So does Tab--make but haste to hang us both! You will?"

I promise, when he stopped you might have heard a mouse

Squeak, such a death-like hush sealed up the old Mote House.

But when the mass of man sank meek upon his knees,

While Tab, alongside, wheezed a hoarse "Do hang us, please!"

Why, then the waters rose, no eye but ran with tears,

Hearts heaved, heads thumped, until, paying all past arrears

Of pity and sorrow, at last a regular scream outbroke

Of triumph, joy and praise.

My Lord Chief Justice spoke,

First mopping brow and cheek, where still, for one that budged,

Another bead broke fresh: "What Judge, that ever judged

Since first the world began, judged such a case as this?

Why, Master Bratts, long since, folk smelt you out, I wis!

I had my doubts, i' faith, each time you played the fox

Convicting geese of crime in yonder witness-box--

Yea, much did I misdoubt, the thief that stole her eggs

Was hardly goosey's self at Reynard's game, i' feggs!

Yet thus much was to praise--you spoke to point, direct--

Swore you heard, saw the theft: no jury could suspect--

Dared to suspect,--I'll say,--a spot in white so clear:

Goosey was throttled, true: but thereof godly fear

Came of example set, much as our laws intend;

And, though a fox confessed, you proved the Judge's friend.

What if I had my doubts? Suppose I gave them breath,

Brought you to bar: what work to do, ere 'Guilty, Death,'--

Had paid our pains! What heaps of witnesses to drag

From holes and corners, paid from out the County's bag!

Trial three dog-days long! _Amicus CuriÊ_--that's

Your title, no dispute--truth-telling Master Bratts!

Thank you, too, Mistress Tab! Why doubt one word you say?

Hanging you both deserve, hanged both shall be this day!

The tinker needs must be a proper man. I've heard

He lies in Jail long since: if Quality's good word

Warrants me letting loose,--some householder, I mean--

Freeholder, better still,--I don't say but--between

Now and next Sessions.... Well! Consider of his case,

I promise to, at least: we owe him so much grace.

Not that--no, God forbid!--I lean to think, as you,

The grace that such repent is any jail-bird's due:

I rather see the fruit of twelve years' pious reign--

AstrÊa Redux, Charles restored his rights again!

--Of which, another time! I somehow feel a peace

Stealing across the world. May deeds like this increase!

So, Master Sheriff, stay that sentence I pronounced

On those two dozen odd: deserving to be trounced

Soundly, and yet ... well, well, at all events despatch

This pair of--shall I say, sinner-saints?--ere we catch

Their jail-distemper too. Stop tears, or I'll indite

All weeping Bedfordshire for turning Bunyanite!"

So, forms were galloped through. If Justice, on the spur,

Proved somewhat expeditious, would Quality demur?

And happily hanged were they,--why lengthen out my tale?--

Where Bunyan's Statue stands facing where stood his Jail.

The effect which "Pilgrim's Progress" had on these two miserable beings,

may be taken as typical of the enormous influence wielded by Bunyan in

his own time. The most innocent among us had overwhelming qualms in

regard to our sins, as children when we listened to our mothers read the

book. I remember having confessed some childish peccadillo that was

weighing on my small mind as the first result of my thoroughly aroused

sense of guilt. In these early years of the Twentieth Century, such a

feeling seems almost as far removed as the days of Bunyan. A sense of

guilt is not a distinguishing characteristic of the child of the present

day, and it may also be doubted whether such reprobates as Ned and his

wife would to-day be affected much if at all by the "Pilgrim's

Progress." There was probably great personal magnetism in Bunyan

himself. We are told that after his discharge from prison, his

popularity as a preacher widened rapidly. Such vast crowds of people

flocked to hear him that his place of worship had to be enlarged. He

went frequently to London on week days to deliver addresses in the large

chapel in Southwark which was invariably thronged with eager worshipers.

Browning's picture of Bunyan shows the instant effect of his personality

upon Tab.

"There sat the man, the father. He looked up: what one feels

When heart that leapt to mouth drops down again to heels!

He raised his hand.... Hast seen, when drinking out the night,

And in the day, earth grow another something quite

Under the sun's first stare? I stood a very stone."

And again

"Then all at once rose he:

His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see:

Up went his hands."

It is like a clever bit of stage business to make Ned and Tab use the

shoe laces to tie up the hands of their victims, and to bring on by this

means the meeting between Tab and Bunyan. Of course, the blind

daughter's part is imaginary, but yet it seems to bring very vividly

before us this well loved child. Another touch, quite in keeping with

the time, is the decision of the Judge that the remarkable change of

heart in Ned and Tab was due to the piety of King Charles. Like every

one else, however, he was impressed by what he heard of the Tinker, and

inclined to see what he could do to give him his freedom. It seems that

Bunyan's life in jail was a good deal lightened by the favor he always

inspired. The story goes that from the first he was in favor with the

jailor, who nearly lost his place for permitting him on one occasion to

go as far as London. After this he was more strictly confined, but at

last he was often allowed to visit his family, and remain with them all

night. One night, however, when he was allowed this liberty Bunyan felt

resistlessly impressed with the propriety of returning to the prison. He

arrived after the keeper had shut up for the night, much to the

official's surprise. But his impatience at being untimely disturbed was

changed to thankfulness, when a little after a messenger came from a

neighboring clerical magistrate to see that the prisoner was safe. "You

may go now when you will" said the jailer; "for you know better than I

can tell you when to come in again."

[Illustration: John Bunyan

Statue by J. E. Boehm]

Though Bunyan is not primarily the subject of this poem, it is an

appreciative tribute to his genius and to his force of character,

only to be paralleled by Dowden's sympathetic critique in his "Puritan

and Anglican Studies." What Browning makes Ned and Tab see through

suddenly aroused feeling--namely that it is no book but

"plays,

Songs, ballads and the like: here's no such strawy blaze,

But sky wide ope, sun, moon, and seven stars out full-flare,"

Dowden puts in the colder language of criticism.

"The 'Pilgrim's Progress' is a gallery of portraits, admirably

discriminated, and as convincing in their self-verification as those of

Holbein. His personages live for us as few figures outside the drama of

Shakespeare live.... All his powers cooperated harmoniously in creating

this book--his religious ardor, his human tenderness, his sense of

beauty, nourished by the Scriptures, his strong common sense, even his

gift of humor. Through his deep seriousness play the lighter faculties.

The whole man presses into this small volume."

"Halbert and Hob" belongs here merely for its wild North of England

setting. We may imagine, if we choose, that this wild father and son

dwelt in the beautiful country of Northumberland, in the North of

England, but descriptions of the scenery could add nothing to the

atmosphere of the poem, for Northumberland is surpassingly lovely.

Doubtless, human beings of this type have existed in all parts of the

globe. At any rate, these particular human beings were transported by

Browning from Aristotle's "Ethics" to the North of England. The incident

is told by Aristotle in illustration of the contention that anger and

asperity are more natural than excessive and unnecessary desires. "Thus

one who was accused of striking his father said, as an apology for it,

that his own father, and even his grandfather, had struck his; 'and he

also (pointing to his child) will strike me, when he becomes a man; for

it runs in our family.' A certain person, also, being dragged by his

son, bid him stop at the door, for he himself had dragged his father as

far as that." The dryness of "Aristotle's cheeks" is as usual so

enlivened by Browning that the fate of Halbert and Hob grows pathetic

and comes close to our sympathies.

HALBERT AND HOB

Here is a thing that happened. Like wild beasts whelped, for den,

In a wild part of North England, there lived once two wild men

Inhabiting one homestead, neither a hovel nor hut,

Time out of mind their birthright: father and son, these--but--

Such a son, such a father! Most wildness by degrees

Softens away: yet, last of their line, the wildest and worst were

these.

Criminals, then? Why, no: they did not murder and rob;

But, give them a word, they returned a blow--old Halbert as young Hob:

Harsh and fierce of word, rough and savage of deed,

Hated or feared the more--who knows?--the genuine wild-beast breed.

Thus were they found by the few sparse folk of the countryside;

But how fared each with other? E'en beasts couch, hide by hide,

In a growling, grudged agreement: so, father and son aye curled

The closelier up in their den because the last of their kind in the

world.

Still, beast irks beast on occasion. One Christmas night of snow,

Came father and son to words--such words! more cruel because the blow

To crown each word was wanting, while taunt matched gibe, and curse

Completed with oath in wager, like pastime in hell,--nay, worse:

For pastime turned to earnest, as up there sprang at last

The son at the throat of the father, seized him and held him fast.

"Out of this house you go!"--(there followed a hideous oath)--

"This oven where now we bake, too hot to hold us both!

If there's snow outside, there's coolness: out with you, bide a spell

In the drift and save the sexton the charge of a parish shell!"

Now, the old trunk was tough, was solid as stump of oak

Untouched at the core by a thousand years: much less had its

seventy broke

One whipcord nerve in the muscly mass from neck to shoulder-blade

Of the mountainous man, whereon his child's rash hand like a

feather weighed.

Nevertheless at once did the mammoth shut his eyes,

Drop chin to breast, drop hands to sides, stand stiffened--arms

and thighs

All of a piece--struck mute, much as a sentry stands,

Patient to take the enemy's fire: his captain so commands.

Whereat the son's wrath flew to fury at such sheer scorn

Of his puny strength by the giant eld thus acting the babe new-born:

And "Neither will this turn serve!" yelled he. "Out with you!

Trundle, log!

If you cannot tramp and trudge like a man, try all-fours like a dog!"

Still the old man stood mute. So, logwise,--down to floor

Pulled from his fireside place, dragged on from hearth to door,--

Was he pushed, a very log, staircase along, until

A certain turn in the steps was reached, a yard from the

house-door-sill.

Then the father opened eyes--each spark of their rage extinct,--

Temples, late black, dead-blanched,--right-hand with left-hand

linked,--

He faced his son submissive; when slow the accents came,

They were strangely mild though his son's rash hand on his neck

lay all the same.

"Hob, on just such a night of a Christmas long ago,

For such a cause, with such a gesture, did I drag--so--

My father down thus far: but, softening here, I heard

A voice in my heart, and stopped: you wait for an outer word.

"For your own sake, not mine, soften you too! Untrod

Leave this last step we reach, nor brave the finger of God!

I dared not pass its lifting: I did well. I nor blame

Nor praise you. I stopped here: and, Hob, do you the same!"

Straightway the son relaxed his hold of the father's throat.

They mounted, side by side, to the room again: no note

Took either of each, no sign made each to either: last

As first, in absolute silence, their Christmas-night they passed.

At dawn, the father sate on, dead, in the self-same place,

With an outburst blackening still the old bad fighting-face:

But the son crouched all a-tremble like any lamb new-yeaned.

When he went to the burial, someone's staff he borrowed--tottered

and leaned.

But his lips were loose, not locked,--kept muttering, mumbling.

"There!

At his cursing and swearing!" the youngsters cried: but the elders

thought "In prayer."

A boy threw stones: he picked them up and stored them in his vest.

So tottered, muttered, mumbled he, till he died, perhaps found rest.

"Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts?" O Lear,

That a reason out of nature must turn them soft, seems clear!

In the "Inn Album," a degenerate type of Nineteenth-Century Englishman

is dissected with the keen knife of a surgeon, which Browning knows so

well how to wield. The villain of this poem was a real personage, a Lord

de Ros, a friend of the Duke of Wellington. The story belongs to the

annals of crime and is necessarily unpleasant, but in order to see how

Browning has worked up the episode it is interesting to know the bare

facts as Furnivall gives them in "Notes and Queries" March 25, 1876. He

says "that the gambling lord showed the portrait of the lady he had

seduced and abandoned and offered his dupe an introduction to her, as a

bribe to induce him to wait for payment of the money he had won; that

the young gambler eagerly accepted the offer; and that the lady

committed suicide on hearing of the bargain between them." Dr. Furnivall

heard the story from some one who well remembered the sensation it had

made in London years ago. In his management of the story, Browning has

intensified the villainy of the Lord at the same time that he has shown

a possible streak of goodness in him. The young man, on the other hand,

he has made to be of very good stuff, indeed, notwithstanding his year

of tutelage from the older man. He makes one radical change in the story

as well as several minor ones. In the poem the younger man had been in

love with the girl whom the older man had dishonorably treated, and had

never ceased to love her. Of course, the two men do not know this. By

the advice of the elder man, the younger one has decided to settle down

and marry his cousin, a charming young girl, who is also brought upon

the scene. The other girl is represented as having married an old

country parson, who sought a wife simply as a helpmeet in his work. By

thus complicating the situations, room has been given for subtle psychic

development. The action is all concentrated into one morning in the

parlor of the old inn, reminding one much of the method of Ibsen in his

plays of grouping his action about a final catastrophe. At the inn one

is introduced first to the two gamblers in talk, the young man having

won his ten thousand pounds from the older man, who had intended to

fleece him. The inn album plays an important part in the action,

innocent as its first appearance upon the scene seems to be. The

description of this and the inn parlor opens the poem.

THE INN ALBUM

I

"That oblong book's the Album; hand it here!

Exactly! page on page of gratitude

For breakfast, dinner, supper, and the view!

I praise these poets: they leave margin-space;

Each stanza seems to gather skirts around,

And primly, trimly, keep the foot's confine,

Modest and maidlike; lubber prose o'er-sprawls

And straddling stops the path from left to right.

Since I want space to do my cipher-work,

Which poem spares a corner? What comes first?

'_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!_'

(Open the window, we burn daylight, boy!)

Or see--succincter beauty, brief and bold--

'_If a fellow can dine On rumpsteaks and port wine,

He needs not despair Of dining well here_--'

'_Here!_' I myself could find a better rhyme!

That bard's a Browning; he neglects the form:

But ah, the sense, ye gods, the weighty sense!

Still, I prefer this classic. Ay, throw wide!

I'll quench the bits of candle yet unburnt.

A minute's fresh air, then to cipher-work!

Three little columns hold the whole account:

_EcartÈ_, after which Blind Hookey, then

Cutting-the-Pack, five hundred pounds the cut.

'Tis easy reckoning: I have lost, I think."

Two personages occupy this room

Shabby-genteel, that's parlor to the inn

Perched on a view-commanding eminence;

--Inn which may be a veritable house

Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste

Till tourists found his coign of vantage out,

And fingered blunt the individual mark

And vulgarized things comfortably smooth.

On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays

Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag;

His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds;

They face the Huguenot and Light o' the World.

Grim o'er the mirror on the mantlepiece,

Varnished and coffined, _Salmo ferox_ glares

--Possibly at the List of Wines which, framed

And glazed, hangs somewhat prominent on peg.

So much describes the stuffy little room--

Vulgar flat smooth respectability:

Not so the burst of landscape surging in,

Sunrise and all, as he who of the pair

Is, plain enough, the younger personage

Draws sharp the shrieking curtain, sends aloft

The sash, spreads wide and fastens back to wall

Shutter and shutter, shows you England's best.

He leans into a living glory-bath

Of air and light where seems to float and move

The wooded watered country, hill and dale

And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist,

A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift

O' the sun-touched dew. Except the red-roofed patch

Of half a dozen dwellings that, crept close

For hill-side shelter, make the village-clump

This inn is perched above to dominate--

Except such sign of human neighborhood,

(And this surmised rather than sensible)

There's nothing to disturb absolute peace,

The reign of English nature--which mean art

And civilized existence. Wildness' self

Is just the cultured triumph. Presently

Deep solitude, be sure, reveals a Place

That knows the right way to defend itself:

Silence hems round a burning spot of life.

Now, where a Place burns, must a village brood,

And where a village broods, an inn should boast--

Close and convenient: here you have them both.

This inn, the Something-arms--the family's--

(Don't trouble Guillim; heralds leave our half!)

Is dear to lovers of the picturesque,

And epics have been planned here; but who plan

Take holy orders and find work to do.

Painters are more productive, stop a week,

Declare the prospect quite a Corot,--ay,

For tender sentiment,--themselves incline

Rather to handsweep large and liberal;

Then go, but not without success achieved

--Haply some pencil-drawing, oak or beech,

Ferns at the base and ivies up the bole,

On this a slug, on that a butterfly.

Nay, he who hooked the _salmo_ pendent here,

Also exhibited, this same May-month,

'_Foxgloves: a study_'--so inspires the scene,

The air, which now the younger personage

Inflates him with till lungs o'erfraught are fain

Sigh forth a satisfaction might bestir

Even those tufts of tree-tops to the South

I' the distance where the green dies off to grey,

Which, easy of conjecture, front the Place;

He eyes them, elbows wide, each hand to cheek.

His fellow, the much older--either say

A youngish-old man or man oldish-young--

Sits at the table: wicks are noisome-deep

In wax, to detriment of plated ware;

Above--piled, strewn--is store of playing-cards,

Counters and all that's proper for a game.

Circumstantial as the description of this parlor and the situation of

the inn is, it is impossible to say which out of the many English inns

Browning had in mind. Inns date back to the days of the Romans, who had

ale-houses along the roads, the most interesting feature of which was

the ivy garland or wreath of vine-leaves in honor of Bacchus, wreathed

around a hoop at the end of a long pole to point out the way where good

drink could be had. A curious survival of this in early English times

was the "ale-stake," a tavern so called because it had a long pole

projecting from the house front wreathed like the old Roman poles with

furze, a garland of flowers or an ivy wreath. This decoration was called

the "bush," and in time the London taverners so vied with each other in

their attempt to attract attention by very long poles and very prominent

bushes that in 1375 a law was passed according to which all taverners

in the city of London owning ale-stakes projecting or extending over the

King's highway more than seven feet in length, at the utmost, should be

fined forty pence, and compelled to remove the sign. Here is the origin,

too, of the proverb, "good wine needs no bush." In the later development

of the inn the signs lost their Bacchic character and became most

elaborate, often being painted by artists.

The poet says this inn was the "Something-arms," and had perhaps once

been a house. Many inns were the "Something (?) arms" and certainly many

inns had been houses. One such is the Pounds Bridge Inn on a secluded

road between Speldhurst and Penshurst in Kent. It was built by the

rector of Penshurst, William Darkenoll, who lived in it only three

years, when it became an inn. The inn of the poem might have been a

combination in Browning's memory of this and the "White Horse" at

Woolstone, which is described as a queerly pretty little inn with a

front distantly resembling a Chippendale bureau-bookcase. "It is tucked

away under the mighty sides of White Horse Hill, Berkshire, and

additionally overhung with trees and encircled with shrubberies and

under-woods, and is finally situated on a narrow road that presently

leads, as it would seem, to the end of the known world." So writes the

enthusiastic lover of inns, Charles Harper. Or, perhaps, since there is

a river to be seen from the inn of the poem the "Swan" at Sandleford

Water, where a foot bridge and a water splash on the river Enborne mark

the boundaries of Hampshire and Berkshire. Here "You have the place

wholly to yourself, or share it only with the squirrels and the birds of

the overarching trees." The illustration given of the Black Bear Inn,

Tewksbury, is a quite typical example of inn architecture, and may have

helped the picture in Browning's mind, though its situation is not so

rural as that described in the poem.

Inns have, from time immemorial, been the scenes of romances and

tragedies and crimes. There have been inns like the "Castle" where the

"quality" loved to congregate. The "inn album" of this establishment had

inscribed in it almost every eighteenth-century name of any distinction.

There have been inns which were noted as the resort of the wits of the

day. Ben Jonson loved to take "mine ease in mine inn," and Dr. Johnson

declared that a seat in a tavern chair was the height of human felicity.

"He was thinking," as it has been pertinently put, "not only of a

comfortable sanded parlor, a roaring fire, and plenty of good cheer and

good company, but also of the circle of humbly appreciative auditors who

gathered round an accepted wit, hung upon his words, offered themselves

as butts for his ironic or satiric humor, and--stood treat." Or there

was the inn of sinister aspect where highwaymen might congregate, or

inns with hosts who let their guests down through trap-doors in the

middle of the night to rob and murder them--or is this only a vague

remembrance of a fanciful inn of Dickens? Then there was the pilgrim's

inn in the days when Chaucerian folks loved to go on pilgrimages, and in

the last century the cyclists inn, and to-day the inn of the

automobilist. The particular inn in the poem belongs to the class, rural

inn, and in spite of its pictures by noted masters was "stuffy" as to

the atmosphere.

[Illustration: An English Inn]

The "inn album" or visitors' book is a feature of inns. In this country

we simply sign our names in the visitors' book, but the "album" feature

of the visitors' book of an English inn is its glory and too often its

shame, for as Mr. Harper says, "Bathos, ineptitude, and lines that

refuse to scan are the stigmata of visitors' book verse. There is no

worse poetry on earth than that which lurks between those covers, or in

the pages of young ladies' albums." He declares that "The interesting

pages of visitors' books are generally those that are not there, as an

Irishman might say; for the world is populated very densely with those

appreciative people who, whether from a love of literature, or with an

instinct for collecting autographs that may have a realizable value,

remove the signatures of distinguished men, and with them anything

original they may have written."

Browning pokes fun at the poetry of his inn album, but at the same time

uses it as an important part of the machinery in the action. His English

"Iago" writes in it the final damnation of his own character--the threat

by means of which he hopes to ruin his victims, but which, instead,

causes the lady to take poison and the young man to murder "Iago."

The presence of the two men at this particular inn is explained in the

following bit of conversation between them.

"You wrong your poor disciple. Oh, no airs!

Because you happen to be twice my age

And twenty times my master, must perforce

No blink of daylight struggle through the web

There's no unwinding? You entoil my legs,

And welcome, for I like it: blind me,--no!

A very pretty piece of shuttle-work

Was that--your mere chance question at the club--

'_Do you go anywhere this Whitsuntide?

I'm off for Paris, there's the Opera--there's

The Salon, there's a china-sale,--beside

Chantilly; and, for good companionship,

There's Such-and-such and So-and-so. Suppose

We start together?_' '_No such holiday!_'

I told you: '_Paris and the rest be hanged!

Why plague me who am pledged to home-delights?

I'm the engaged now; through whose fault but yours?

On duty. As you well know. Don't I drowse

The week away down with the Aunt and Niece?

No help: it's leisure, loneliness and love.

Wish I could take you; but fame travels fast,--

A man of much newspaper-paragraph,

You scare domestic circles; and beside

Would not you like your lot, that second taste

Of nature and approval of the grounds!

You might walk early or lie late, so shirk

Week-day devotions: but stay Sunday o'er,

And morning church is obligatory:

No mundane garb permissible, or dread

The butler's privileged monition! No!

Pack off to Paris, nor wipe tear away!_'

Whereon how artlessly the happy flash

Followed, by inspiration! '_Tell you what--

Let's turn their flank, try things on t'other side!

Inns for my money! Liberty's the life!

We'll lie in hiding: there's the crow-nest nook,

The tourist's joy, the Inn they rave about,

Inn that's out--out of sight and out of mind

And out of mischief to all four of us--

Aunt and niece, you and me. At night arrive;

At morn, find time for just a Pisgah-view

Of my friend's Land of Promise; then depart.

And while I'm whizzing onward by first train,

Bound for our own place (since my Brother sulks

And says I shun him like the plague) yourself--

Why, you have stepped thence, start from platform, gay

Despite the sleepless journey,--love lends wings,--

Hug aunt and niece who, none the wiser, wait

The faithful advent! Eh?_' '_With all my heart_,'

Said I to you; said I to mine own self:

'_Does he believe I fail to comprehend

He wants just one more final friendly snack

At friend's exchequer ere friend runs to earth,

Marries, renounces yielding friends such sport?_'

And did I spoil sport, pull face grim,--nay, grave?

Your pupil does you better credit! No!

I parleyed with my pass-book,--rubbed my pair

At the big balance in my banker's hands,--

Folded a cheque cigar-case-shape,--just wants

Filling and signing,--and took train, resolved

To execute myself with decency

And let you win--if not Ten thousand quite,

Something by way of wind-up-farewell burst

Of firework-nosegay! Where's your fortune fled?

Or is not fortune constant after all?

You lose ten thousand pounds: had I lost half

Or half that, I should bite my lips, I think.

You man of marble! Strut and stretch my best

On tiptoe, I shall never reach your height.

How does the loss feel! Just one lesson more!"

The more refined man smiles a frown away.

On the way to the station where the older man is to take the train they

have another talk, in which each tells the other of his experience, but

they do not find out yet that they have both loved the same woman.

"Stop, my boy!

Don't think I'm stingy of experience! Life

--It's like this wood we leave. Should you and I

Go wandering about there, though the gaps

We went in and came out by were opposed

As the two poles, still, somehow, all the same,

By nightfall we should probably have chanced

On much the same main points of interest--

Both of us measured girth of mossy trunk,

Stript ivy from its strangled prey, clapped hands

At squirrel, sent a fir-cone after crow,

And so forth,--never mind what time betwixt.

So in our lives; allow I entered mine

Another way than you: 't is possible

I ended just by knocking head against

That plaguy low-hung branch yourself began

By getting bump from; as at last you too

May stumble o'er that stump which first of all

Bade me walk circumspectly. Head and feet

Are vulnerable both, and I, foot-sure,

Forgot that ducking down saves brow from bruise.

I, early old, played young man four years since

And failed confoundedly: so, hate alike

Failure and who caused failure,--curse her cant!"

"Oh, I see! You, though somewhat past the prime,

Were taken with a rosebud beauty! Ah--

But how should chits distinguish? She admired

Your marvel of a mind, I'll undertake!

But as to body ... nay, I mean ... that is,

When years have told on face and figure...."

"Thanks,

Mister _Sufficiently-Instructed_! Such

No doubt was bound to be the consequence

To suit your self-complacency: she liked

My head enough, but loved some heart beneath

Some head with plenty of brown hair a-top

After my young friend's fashion! What becomes

Of that fine speech you made a minute since

About the man of middle age you found

A formidable peer at twenty-one?

So much for your mock-modesty! and yet

I back your first against this second sprout

Of observation, insight, what you please.

My middle age, Sir, had too much success!

It's odd: my case occurred four years ago--

I finished just while you commenced that turn

I' the wood of life that takes us to the wealth

Of honeysuckle, heaped for who can reach.

Now, I don't boast: it's bad style, and beside,

The feat proves easier than it looks: I plucked

Full many a flower unnamed in that bouquet

(Mostly of peonies and poppies, though!)

Good nature sticks into my button-hole.

Therefore it was with nose in want of snuff

Rather than Ess or Psidium, that I chanced

On what--so far from '_rosebud beauty_'.... Well--

She's dead: at least you never heard her name;

She was no courtly creature, had nor birth

Nor breeding--mere fine-lady-breeding; but

Oh, such a wonder of a woman! Grand

As a Greek statue! Stick fine clothes on that,

Style that a Duchess or a Queen,--you know,

Artists would make an outcry: all the more,

That she had just a statue's sleepy grace

Which broods o'er its own beauty. Nay, her fault

(Don't laugh!) was just perfection: for suppose

Only the little flaw, and I had peeped

Inside it, learned what soul inside was like.

At Rome some tourist raised the grit beneath

A Venus' forehead with his whittling-knife--

I wish,--now,--I had played that brute, brought blood

To surface from the depths I fancied chalk!

As it was, her mere face surprised so much

That I stopped short there, struck on heap, as stares

The cockney stranger at a certain bust

With drooped eyes,--she's the thing I have in mind,--

Down at my Brother's. All sufficient prize--

Such outside! Now,--confound me for a prig!--

Who cares? I'll make a clean breast once for all!

Beside, you've heard the gossip. My life long

I've been a woman-liker,--liking means

Loving and so on. There's a lengthy list

By this time I shall have to answer for--

So say the good folk: and they don't guess half--

For the worst is, let once collecting-itch

Possess you, and, with perspicacity,

Keeps growing such a greediness that theft

Follows at no long distance,--there's the fact!

I knew that on my Leporello-list

Might figure this, that, and the other name

Of feminine desirability,

But if I happened to desire inscribe,

Along with these, the only Beautiful--

Here was the unique specimen to snatch

Or now or never. 'Beautiful' I said--

'Beautiful' say in cold blood,--boiling then

To tune of '_Haste, secure whate'er the cost

This rarity, die in the act, be damned,

So you complete collection, crown your list!_'

It seemed as though the whole world, once aroused

By the first notice of such wonder's birth,

Would break bounds to contest my prize with me

The first discoverer, should she but emerge

From that safe den of darkness where she dozed

Till I stole in, that country-parsonage

Where, country-parson's daughter, motherless,

Brotherless, sisterless, for eighteen years

She had been vegetating lily-like.

Her father was my brother's tutor, got

The living that way: him I chanced to see--

Her I saw--her the world would grow one eye

To see, I felt no sort of doubt at all!

'_Secure her!_' cried the devil: '_afterward

Arrange for the disposal of the prize!_'

The devil's doing! yet I seem to think--

Now, when all's done,--think with '_a head reposed_'

In French phrase--hope I think I meant to do

All requisite for such a rarity

When I should be at leisure, have due time

To learn requirement. But in evil day--

Bless me, at week's end, long as any year,

The father must begin '_Young Somebody,

Much recommended--for I break a rule--

Comes here to read, next Long Vacation_.' '_Young!_'

That did it. Had the epithet been '_rich_,'

'_Noble_,' '_a genius_,' even '_handsome_,'--but

--'_Young!_'"

"I say--just a word! I want to know--

You are not married?"

"I?"

"Nor ever were?"

"Never! Why?"

"Oh, then--never mind! Go on!

I had a reason for the question."

"Come,--

You could not be the young man?"

"No, indeed!

Certainly--if you never married her!"

"That I did not: and there's the curse, you'll see!

Nay, all of it's one curse, my life's mistake

Which, nourished with manure that's warranted

To make the plant bear wisdom, blew out full

In folly beyond field-flower-foolishness!

The lies I used to tell my womankind,

Knowing they disbelieved me all the time

Though they required my lies, their decent due,

This woman--not so much believed, I'll say,

As just anticipated from my mouth:

Since being true, devoted, constant--she

Found constancy, devotion, truth, the plain

And easy commonplace of character.

No mock-heroics but seemed natural

To her who underneath the face, I knew

Was fairness' self, possessed a heart, I judged

Must correspond in folly just as far

Beyond the common,--and a mind to match,--

Not made to puzzle conjurers like me

Who, therein, proved the fool who fronts you, Sir,

And begs leave to cut short the ugly rest!

'_Trust me!_' I said: she trusted. '_Marry me!_'

Or rather, '_We are married: when, the rite?_'

That brought on the collector's next-day qualm

At counting acquisition's cost. There lay

My marvel, there my purse more light by much

Because of its late lie-expenditure:

Ill-judged such moment to make fresh demand--

To cage as well as catch my rarity!

So, I began explaining. At first word

Outbroke the horror. '_Then, my truths were lies!_'

I tell you, such an outbreak, such new strange

All-unsuspected revelation--soul

As supernaturally grand as face

Was fair beyond example--that at once

Either I lost--or, if it please you, found

My senses,--stammered somehow--'_Jest! and now,

Earnest! Forget all else but--heart has loved,

Does love, shall love you ever! take the hand!_'

Not she! no marriage for superb disdain,

Contempt incarnate!"

"Yes, it's different,--

It's only like in being four years since.

I see now!"

"Well, what did disdain do next,

Think you?"

"That's past me: did not marry you!--

That's the main thing I care for, I suppose.

Turned nun, or what?"

"Why, married in a month

Some parson, some smug crop-haired smooth-chinned sort

Of curate-creature, I suspect,--dived down,

Down, deeper still, and came up somewhere else--

I don't know where--I've not tried much to know,--

In short, she's happy: what the clodpoles call

'Countrified' with a vengeance! leads the life

Respectable and all that drives you mad:

Still--where, I don't know, and that's best for both."

"Well, that she did not like you, I conceive.

But why should you hate her, I want to know?"

"My good young friend,--because or her or else

Malicious Providence I have to hate.

For, what I tell you proved the turning-point

Of my whole life and fortune toward success

Or failure. If I drown, I lay the fault

Much on myself who caught at reed not rope,

But more on reed which, with a packthread's pith,

Had buoyed me till the minute's cramp could thaw

And I strike out afresh and so be saved.

It's easy saying--I had sunk before,

Disqualified myself by idle days

And busy nights, long since, from holding hard

On cable, even, had fate cast me such!

You boys don't know how many times men fail

Perforce o' the little to succeed i' the large,

Husband their strength, let slip the petty prey,

Collect the whole power for the final pounce.

My fault was the mistaking man's main prize

For intermediate boy's diversion; clap

Of boyish hands here frightened game away

Which, once gone, goes forever. Oh, at first

I took the anger easily, nor much

Minded the anguish--having learned that storms

Subside, and teapot-tempests are akin.

Time would arrange things, mend whate'er might be

Somewhat amiss; precipitation, eh?

Reason and rhyme prompt--reparation! Tiffs

End properly in marriage and a dance!

I said 'We'll marry, make the past a blank'--

And never was such damnable mistake!

That interview, that laying bare my soul,

As it was first, so was it last chance--one

And only. Did I write? Back letter came

Unopened as it went. Inexorable

She fled, I don't know where, consoled herself

With the smug curate-creature: chop and change!

Sure am I, when she told her shaveling all

His Magdalen's adventure, tears were shed,

Forgiveness evangelically shown,

'Loose hair and lifted eye,'--as some one says.

And now, he's worshipped for his pains, the sneak!"

"Well, but your turning-point of life,--what's here

To hinder you contesting Finsbury

With Orton, next election? I don't see...."

"Not you! But _I_ see. Slowly, surely, creeps

Day by day o'er me the conviction--here

Was life's prize grasped at, gained, and then let go!

--That with her--may be, for her--I had felt

Ice in me melt, grow steam, drive to effect

Any or all the fancies sluggish here

I' the head that needs the hand she would not take

And I shall never lift now. Lo, your wood--

Its turnings which I likened life to! Well,--

There she stands, ending every avenue,

Her visionary presence on each goal

I might have gained had we kept side by side!

Still string nerve and strike foot? Her frown forbids:

The steam congeals once more: I'm old again!

Therefore I hate myself--but how much worse

Do not I hate who would not understand,

Let me repair things--no, but sent a-slide

My folly falteringly, stumblingly

Down, down and deeper down until I drop

Upon--the need of your ten thousand pounds

And consequently loss of mine! I lose

Character, cash, nay, common-sense itself

Recounting such a lengthy cock-and-bull

Adventure--lose my temper in the act...."

"And lose beside,--if I may supplement

The list of losses,--train and ten-o'clock!

Hark, pant and puff, there travels the swart sign!

So much the better! You're my captive now!

I'm glad you trust a fellow: friends grow thick

This way--that's twice said; we were thickish, though,

Even last night, and, ere night comes again,

I prophesy good luck to both of us!

For see now!--back to '_balmy eminence_'

Or '_calm acclivity_,' or what's the word!

Bestow you there an hour, concoct at ease

A sonnet for the Album, while I put

Bold face on, best foot forward, make for house,

March in to aunt and niece, and tell the truth--

(Even white-lying goes against my taste

After your little story). Oh, the niece

Is rationality itself! The aunt--

If she's amenable to reason too--

Why, you stooped short to pay her due respect,

And let the Duke wait (I'll work well the Duke).

If she grows gracious, I return for you;

If thunder's in the air, why--bear your doom,

Dine on rump-steaks and port, and shake the dust

Of aunty from your shoes as off you go

By evening-train, nor give the thing a thought

How you shall pay me--that's as sure as fate,

Old fellow! Off with you, face left about!

Yonder's the path I have to pad. You see,

I'm in good spirits, God knows why! Perhaps

Because the woman did not marry you

--Who look so hard at me,--and have the right,

One must be fair and own."

The two stand still

Under an oak.

"Look here!" resumes the youth.

"I never quite knew how I came to like

You--so much--whom I ought not court at all;

Nor how you had a leaning just to me

Who am assuredly not worth your pains.

For there must needs be plenty such as you

Somewhere about,--although I can't say where,--

Able and willing to teach all you know;

While--how can you have missed a score like me

With money and no wit, precisely each

A pupil for your purpose, were it--ease

Fool's poke of tutor's _honorarium_-fee?

And yet, howe'er it came about, I felt

At once my master: you as prompt descried

Your man, I warrant, so was bargain struck.

Now, these same lines of liking, loving, run

Sometimes so close together they converge--

Life's great adventures--you know what I mean--

In people. Do you know, as you advanced,

It got to be uncommonly like fact

We two had fallen in with--liked and loved

Just the same woman in our different ways?

I began life--poor groundling as I prove--

Winged and ambitious to fly high: why not?

There's something in 'Don Quixote' to the point,

My shrewd old father used to quote and praise--

'_Am I born man?_' asks Sancho: '_being man,

By possibility I may be Pope!_'

So, Pope I meant to make myself, by step

And step, whereof the first should be to find

A perfect woman; and I tell you this--

If what I fixed on, in the order due

Of undertakings, as next step, had first

Of all disposed itself to suit my tread,

And I had been, the day I came of age,

Returned at head of poll for Westminster

--Nay, and moreover summoned by the Queen

At week's end, when my maiden-speech bore fruit,

To form and head a Tory ministry--

It would not have seemed stranger, no, nor been

More strange to me, as now I estimate,

Than what did happen--sober truth, no dream.

I saw my wonder of a woman,--laugh,

I'm past that!--in Commemoration-week.

A plenty have I seen since, fair and foul,--

With eyes, too, helped by your sagacious wink;

But one to match that marvel--no least trace,

Least touch of kinship and community!

The end was--I did somehow state the fact,

Did, with no matter what imperfect words,

One way or other give to understand

That woman, soul and body were her slave

Would she but take, but try them--any test

Of will, and some poor test of power beside:

So did the strings within my brain grow tense

And capable of ... hang similitudes!

She answered kindly but beyond appeal.

'_No sort of hope for me, who came too late.

She was another's. Love went--mine to her,

Hers just as loyally to some one else._'

Of course! I might expect it! Nature's law--

Given the peerless woman, certainly

Somewhere shall be the peerless man to match!

I acquiesced at once, submitted me

In something of a stupor, went my way.

I fancy there had been some talk before

Of somebody--her father or the like--

To coach me in the holidays,--that's how

I came to get the sight and speech of her,--

But I had sense enough to break off sharp,

Save both of us the pain."

"Quite right there!"

"Eh?

Quite wrong, it happens! Now comes worst of all!

Yes, I did sulk aloof and let alone

The lovers--_I_ disturb the angel-mates?"

"Seraph paired off with cherub!"

"Thank you! While

I never plucked up courage to inquire

Who he was, even,--certain-sure of this,

That nobody I knew of had blue wings

And wore a star-crown as he needs must do,--

Some little lady,--plainish, pock-marked girl,--

Finds out my secret in my woful face,

Comes up to me at the Apollo Ball,

And pityingly pours her wine and oil

This way into the wound: '_Dear f-f-friend,

Why waste affection thus on--must I say,

A somewhat worthless object? Who's her choice--

Irrevocable as deliberate--

Out of the wide world? I shall name no names--

But there's a person in society,

Who, blessed with rank and talent, has grown gray

In idleness and sin of every sort

Except hypocrisy: he's thrice her age,

A by-word for "successes with the sex"

As the French say--and, as we ought to say,

Consummately a liar and a rogue,

Since--show me where's the woman won without

The help of this one lie which she believes--

That--never mind how things have come to pass,

And let who loves have loved a thousand times--

All the same he now loves her only, loves

Her ever! if by "won" you just mean "sold,"

That's quite another compact. Well, this scamp,

Continuing descent from bad to worse,

Must leave his fine and fashionable prey

(Who--fathered, brothered, husbanded,--are hedged

About with thorny danger) and apply

His arts to this poor country ignorance

Who sees forthwith in the first rag of man

Her model hero! Why continue waste

On such a woman treasures of a heart

Would yet find solace,--yes, my f-f-friend--

In some congenial_--fiddle-diddle-dee?'"

"Pray, is the pleasant gentleman described

Exact the portrait which my '_f-f-friends_'

Recognize as so like? 'T is evident

You half surmised the sweet original

Could be no other than myself, just now!

Your stop and start were flattering!"

"Of course

Caricature's allowed for in a sketch!

The longish nose becomes a foot in length,

The swarthy cheek gets copper-colored,--still,

Prominent beak and dark-hued skin are facts:

And '_parson's daughter_'--'_young man coachable_'--

'_Elderly party_'--'_four years since_'--were facts

To fasten on, a moment! Marriage, though--

That made the difference, I hope."

"All right!

I never married; wish I had--and then

Unwish it: people kill their wives, sometimes!

I hate my mistress, but I'm murder-free.

In your case, where's the grievance? You came last,

The earlier bird picked up the worm. Suppose

You, in the glory of your twenty-one,

Had happened to precede myself! 't is odds

But this gigantic juvenility,

This offering of a big arm's bony hand--

I'd rather shake than feel shake me, I know--

Had moved _my_ dainty mistress to admire

An altogether new Ideal--deem

Idolatry less due to life's decline

Productive of experience, powers mature

By dint of usage, the made man--no boy

That's all to make! I was the earlier bird--

And what I found, I let fall: what you missed

Who is the fool that blames you for?"

They become so deeply interested in this talk that the train is missed,

and, in the meantime, the lady who now lives in the neighborhood as the

wife of the hard-working country parson meets the young girl at the inn.

They are great friends and have come there, at the girl's invitation, to

talk over her prospective husband. She desires her friend to come to her

home and meet her fiancÈ, but the lady, who is in constant fear of

meeting "Iago," never goes anywhere, and proposes a meeting with him at

the inn. While she waits, "Iago" comes in upon her. There is a terrible

scene of recrimination between these two, the man again daring to prefer

his love. The lady scorns him. Horror is added to horror when the young

man appears at the door, and recognizes the woman he really loves. His

faith in her and his love are shaken for a moment, but return

immediately and he stands her true friend and lover. The complete

despicableness of "Iago's" nature finally reveals itself in the lines he

writes in the album and gives to the lady to read. The poem is too long

to quote in full. The closing scene, however, will give the reader a

good idea of the poet's handling of this nineteenth-century tragedy.

The true nobility of soul of the younger man links him with Mertoun

among Browning's heroes and represents the Englishman or the man of any

country for that matter at his highest. Whether redemption for the older

man would have been possible had the lady believed him in the inn parlor

is doubtful. Such natures are like Ibsen's "Peer Gynt." They need to be

put into a button mould and moulded over again.

"Here's the lady back!

So, Madam, you have conned the Album-page

And come to thank its last contributor?

How kind and condescending! I retire

A moment, lest I spoil the interview,

And mar my own endeavor to make friends--

You with him, him with you, and both with me!

If I succeed--permit me to inquire

Five minutes hence! Friends bid good-by, you know."

And out he goes.

VII

She, face, form, bearing, one

Superb composure--

"He has told you all?

Yes, he has told you all, your silence says--

What gives him, as he thinks the mastery

Over my body and my soul!--has told

That instance, even, of their servitude

He now exacts of me? A silent blush!

That's well, though better would white ignorance

Beseem your brow, undesecrate before--

Ay, when I left you! I too learn at last

--Hideously learned as I seemed so late--

What sin may swell to. Yes,--I needed learn

That, when my prophet's rod became the snake

I fled from, it would, one day, swallow up

--Incorporate whatever serpentine

Falsehood and treason and unmanliness

Beslime earth's pavement: such the power of Hell,

And so beginning, ends no otherwise

The Adversary! I was ignorant,

Blameworthy--if you will; but blame I take

Nowise upon me as I ask myself

--_You_--how can you, whose soul I seemed to read

The limpid eyes through, have declined so deep

Even with him for consort? I revolve

Much memory, pry into the looks and words

Of that day's walk beneath the College wall,

And nowhere can distinguish, in what gleams

Only pure marble through my dusky past,

A dubious cranny where such poison-seed

Might harbor, nourish what should yield to-day

This dread ingredient for the cup I drink.

Do not I recognize and honor truth

In seeming?--take your truth and for return,

Give you my truth, a no less precious gift?

You loved me: I believed you. I replied

--How could I other? '_I was not my own_,'

--No longer had the eyes to see, the ears

To hear, the mind to judge, since heart and soul

Now were another's. My own right in me,

For well or ill, consigned away--my face

Fronted the honest path, deflection whence

Had shamed me in the furtive backward look

At the late bargain--fit such chapman's phrase!--

As though--less hasty and more provident--

Waiting had brought advantage. Not for me

The chapman's chance! Yet while thus much was true,

I spared you--as I knew you then--one more

Concluding word which, truth no less, seemed best

Buried away forever. Take it now

Its power to pain is past! Four years--that day--

Those lines that make the College avenue!

I would that--friend and foe--by miracle,

I had, that moment, seen into the heart

Of either, as I now am taught to see!

I do believe I should have straight assumed

My proper function, and sustained a soul,

Nor aimed at being just sustained myself

By some man's soul--the weaker woman's-want!

So had I missed the momentary thrill

Of finding me in presence of a god,

But gained the god's own feeling when he gives

Such thrill to what turns life from death before.

'_Gods many and Lords many_,' says the Book:

You would have yielded up your soul to me

--Not to the false god who has burned its clay

In his own image. I had shed my love

Like Spring dew on the clod all flowery thence,

Not sent up a wild vapor to the sun

that drinks and then disperses. Both of us

Blameworthy,--I first meet my punishment--

And not so hard to bear. I breathe again!

Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy

At last I struggle--uncontaminate:

Why must I leave _you_ pressing to the breast

That's all one plague-spot? Did you love me once?

Then take love's last and best return! I think,

Womanliness means only motherhood;

All love begins and ends there,--roams enough,

But, having run the circle, rests at home.

Why is your expiation yet to make?

Pull shame with your own hands from your own head

Now,--never wait the slow envelopment

Submitted to by unelastic age!

One fierce throe frees the sapling: flake on flake

Lull till they leave the oak snow-stupefied.

Your heart retains its vital warmth--or why

That blushing reassurance? Blush, young blood!

Break from beneath this icy premature

Captivity of wickedness--I warn

Back, in God's name! No fresh encroachment here!

This May breaks all to bud--No Winter now!

Friend, we are both forgiven! Sin no more!

I am past sin now, so shall you become!

Meanwhile I testify that, lying once,

My foe lied ever, most lied last of all.

He, waking, whispered to your sense asleep

The wicked counsel,--and assent might seem;

But, roused, your healthy indignation breaks

The idle dream-pact. You would die--not dare

Confirm your dream-resolve,--nay, find the word

That fits the deed to bear the light of day!

Say I have justly judged you! then farewell

To blushing--nay, it ends in smiles, not tears!

Why tears now? I have justly judged, thank God!"

He does blush boy-like, but the man speaks out,

--Makes the due effort to surmount himself.

"I don't know what he wrote--how should I? Nor

How he could read my purpose which, it seems,

He chose to somehow write--mistakenly

Or else for mischief's sake. I scarce believe

My purpose put before you fair and plain

Would need annoy so much; but there's my luck--

From first to last I blunder. Still, one more

Turn at the target, try to speak my thought!

Since he could guess my purpose, won't you read

Right what he set down wrong? He said--let's think!

Ay, so!--he did begin by telling heaps

Of tales about you. Now, you see--suppose

Any one told me--my own mother died

Before I knew her--told me--to his cost!--

Such tales about my own dead mother: why,

You would not wonder surely if I knew,

By nothing but my own heart's help, he lied,

Would you? No reason's wanted in the case.

So with you! In they burnt on me, his tales,

Much as when madhouse-inmates crowd around,

Make captive any visitor and scream

All sorts of stories of their keeper--he's

Both dwarf and giant, vulture, wolf, dog, cat,

Serpent and scorpion, yet man all the same;

Sane people soon see through the gibberish!

I just made out, you somehow lived somewhere

A life of shame--I can't distinguish more--

Married or single--how, don't matter much:

Shame which himself had caused--that point was clear,

That fact confessed--that thing to hold and keep.

Oh, and he added some absurdity

--That you were here to make me--ha, ha, ha!--

Still love you, still of mind to die for you,

Ha, ha--as if that needed mighty pains!

Now, foolish as ... but never mind myself

--What I am, what I am not, in the eye

Of the world, is what I never cared for much.

Fool then or no fool, not one single word

In the whole string of lies did I believe,

But this--this only--if I choke, who cares?--

I believe somehow in your purity

Perfect as ever! Else what use is God?

He is God, and work miracles He can!

Then, what shall I do? Quite as clear, my course!

They've got a thing they call their Labyrinth

I' the garden yonder: and my cousin played

A pretty trick once, led and lost me deep

Inside the briery maze of hedge round hedge;

And there might I be staying now, stock-still,

But that I laughing bade eyes follow nose

And so straight pushed my path through let and stop

And soon was out in the open, face all scratched,

But well behind my back the prison-bars

In sorry plight enough, I promise you!

So here: I won my way to truth through lies--

Said, as I saw light,--if her shame be shame

I'll rescue and redeem her,--shame's no shame?

Then, I'll avenge, protect--redeem myself

The stupidest of sinners! Here I stand!

Dear,--let me once dare call you so,--you said

Thus ought you to have done, four years ago,

Such things and such! Ay, dear, and what ought I?

You were revealed to me: where's gratitude,

Where's memory even, where the gain of you

Discernible in my low after-life

Of fancied consolation? why, no horse

Once fed on corn, will, missing corn, go munch

Mere thistles like a donkey! I missed you,

And in your place found--him, made him my love,

Ay, did I,--by this token, that he taught

So much beast-nature that I meant ... God knows

Whether I bow me to the dust enough!...

To marry--yes, my cousin here! I hope

That was a master-stroke! Take heart of hers,

And give her hand of mine with no more heart

Than now you see upon this brow I strike!

What atom of a heart do I retain

Not all yours? Dear, you know it! Easily

May she accord me pardon when I place

My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign,

Since uttermost indignity is spared--

Mere marriage and no love! And all this time

Not one word to the purpose! Are you free?

Only wait! only let me serve--deserve

Where you appoint and how you see the good!

I have the will--perhaps the power--at least

Means that have power against the world. For time--

Take my whole life for your experiment!

If you are bound--in marriage, say--why, still,

Still, sure, there's something for a friend to do,

Outside? A mere well-wisher, understand!

I'll sit, my life long, at your gate, you know,

Swing it wide open to let you and him

Pass freely,--and you need not look, much less

Fling me a '_Thank you--are you there, old friend_?'

Don't say that even: I should drop like shot!

So I feel now at least: some day, who knows?

After no end of weeks and months and years

You might smile '_I believe you did your best_!'

And that shall make my heart leap--leap such leap

As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there!

Ah, there's just one thing more! How pale you look!

Why? Are you angry? If there's, after all,

Worst come to worst--if still there somehow be

The shame--I said was no shame,--none! I swear!--

In that case, if my hand and what it holds,--

My name,--might be your safeguard now--at once--

Why, here's the hand--you have the heart! Of course--

No cheat, no binding you, because I'm bound,

To let me off probation by one day,

Week, month, year, lifetime! Prove as you propose!

Here's the hand with the name to take or leave!

That's all--and no great piece of news, I hope!"

"Give me the hand, then!" she cries hastily.

"Quick, now! I hear his footstep!"

Hand in hand

The couple face him as he enters, stops

Short, stands surprised a moment, laughs away

Surprise, resumes the much-experienced man.

"So, you accept him?"

"Till us death do part!"

"No longer? Come, that's right and rational!

I fancied there was power in common sense,

But did not know it worked thus promptly. Well--

At last each understands the other, then?

Each drops disguise, then? So, at supper-time

These masquerading people doff their gear,

Grand Turk his pompous turban, Quakeress

Her stiff-starched bib and tucker,--make-believe

That only bothers when, ball-business done,

Nature demands champagne and _mayonnaise_.

Just so has each of us sage three abjured

His and her moral pet particular

Pretension to superiority,

And, cheek by jowl, we henceforth munch and joke!

Go, happy pair, paternally dismissed

To live and die together--for a month,

Discretion can award no more! Depart

From whatsoe'er the calm sweet solitude

Selected--Paris not improbably--

At month's end, when the honeycomb's left wax,

--You, daughter, with a pocketful of gold

Enough to find your village boys and girls

In duffel cloaks and hobnailed shoes from May

To--what's the phrase?--Christmas-come-never-mas!

You, son and heir of mine, shall re-appear

Ere Spring-time, that's the ring-time, lose one leaf,

And--not without regretful smack of lip

The while you wipe it free of honey-smear--

Marry the cousin, play the magistrate,

Stand for the country, prove perfection's pink--

Master of hounds, gay-coated dine--nor die

Sooner than needs of gout, obesity,

And sons at Christ Church! As for me,--ah me,

I abdicate--retire on my success,

Four years well occupied in teaching youth

--My son and daughter the exemplary!

Time for me to retire now, having placed

Proud on their pedestal the pair: in turn,

Let them do homage to their master! You,--

Well, your flushed cheek and flashing eye proclaim

Sufficiently your gratitude: you paid

The _honorarium_, the ten thousand pounds

To purpose, did you not? I told you so!

And you, but, bless me, why so pale--so faint

At influx of good fortune? Certainly,

No matter how or why or whose the fault,

I save your life--save it, nor less nor more!

You blindly were resolved to welcome death

In that black boor-and-bumpkin-haunted hole

Of his, the prig with all the preachments! _You_

Installed as nurse and matron to the crones

And wenches, while there lay a world outside

Like Paris (which again I recommend)

In company and guidance of--first, this,

Then--all in good time--some new friend as fit--

What if I were to say, some fresh myself,

As I once figured? Each dog has his day,

And mine's at sunset: what should old dog do

But eye young litters' frisky puppyhood?

Oh I shall watch this beauty and this youth

Frisk it in brilliance! But don't fear! Discreet,

I shall pretend to no more recognize

My quondam pupils than the doctor nods

When certain old acquaintances may cross

His path in Park, or sit down prim beside

His plate at dinner-table: tip nor wink

Scares patients he has put, for reason good,

Under restriction,--maybe, talked sometimes

Of douche or horsewhip to,--for why? because

The gentleman would crazily declare

His best friend was--Iago! Ay, and worse--

The lady, all at once grown lunatic,

In suicidal monomania vowed,

To save her soul, she needs must starve herself!

They're cured now, both, and I tell nobody.

Why don't you speak? Nay, speechless, each of you

Can spare,--without unclasping plighted troth,--

At least one hand to shake! Left-hands will do--

Yours first, my daughter! Ah, it guards--it gripes

The precious Album fast--and prudently!

As well obliterate the record there

On page the last: allow me tear the leaf!

Pray, now! And afterward, to make amends,

What if all three of us contribute each

A line to that prelusive fragment,--help

The embarrassed bard who broke out to break down

Dumbfoundered at such unforeseen success?

'_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot_'

You begin--_place aux dames_! I'll prompt you then!

'_Here do I take the good the gods allot!_'

Next you, Sir! What, still sulky? Sing, O Muse!

'_Here does my lord in full discharge his shot!_'

Now for the crowning flourish! mine shall be...."

"Nothing to match your first effusion, mar

What was, is, shall remain your masterpiece!

Authorship has the alteration-itch!

No, I protest against erasure. Read,

My friend!" (she gasps out). "Read and quickly read

'_Before us death do part_,' what made you mine

And made me yours--the marriage-license here!

Decide if he is like to mend the same!"

And so the lady, white to ghastliness,

Manages somehow to display the page

With left-hand only, while the right retains

The other hand, the young man's,--dreaming-drunk

He, with this drench of stupefying stuff,

Eyes wide, mouth open,--half the idiot's stare

And half the prophet's insight,--holding tight,

All the same, by his one fact in the world--

The lady's right-hand: he but seems to read--

Does not, for certain; yet, how understand

Unless he reads?

So, understand he does,

For certain. Slowly, word by word, _she_ reads

Aloud that license--or that warrant, say.

"'_One against two--and two that urge their odds

To uttermost--I needs must try resource!

Madam, I laid me prostrate, bade you spurn

Body and soul: you spurned and safely spurned

So you had spared me the superfluous taunt

"Prostration means no power to stand erect,

Stand, trampling on who trampled--prostrate now!"

So, with my other fool-foe: I was fain

Let the boy touch me with the buttoned foil,

And him the infection gains, he too must needs

Catch up the butcher's cleaver. Be it so!

Since play turns earnest, here's my serious fence.

He loves you; he demands your love: both know

What love means in my language. Love him then!

Pursuant to a pact, love pays my debt:

Therefore, deliver me from him, thereby

Likewise delivering from me yourself!

For, hesitate--much more, refuse consent--

I tell the whole truth to your husband. Flat

Cards lie on table, in our gamester-phrase!

Consent--you stop my mouth, the only way._'

"I did well, trusting instinct: knew your hand

Had never joined with his in fellowship

Over this pact of infamy. You known--

As he was known through every nerve of me.

Therefore I '_stopped his mouth the only way_'

But _my_ way! none was left for you, my friend--

The loyal--near, the loved one! No--no--no!

Threaten? Chastise? The coward would but quail.

Conquer who can, the cunning of the snake!

Stamp out his slimy strength from tail to head,

And still you leave vibration of the tongue.

His malice had redoubled--not on me

Who, myself, choose my own refining fire--

But on poor unsuspicious innocence;

And,--victim,--to turn executioner

Also--that feat effected, forky tongue

Had done indeed its office! One snake's 'mouth'

Thus '_open_'--how could mortal '_stop it_'?

"So!"

A tiger-flash--yell, spring, and scream: halloo!

Death's out and on him, has and holds him--ugh!

But _ne trucidet coram populo

Juvenis senem_! Right the Horatian rule!

There, see how soon a quiet comes to pass!

The youth is somehow by the lady's side.

His right-hand grasps her right-hand once again.

Both gaze on the dead body. Hers the word.

"And that was good but useless. Had I lived

The danger was to dread: but, dying now--

Himself would hardly become talkative,

Since talk no more means torture. Fools--what fools

These wicked men are! Had I borne four years,

Four years of weeks and months and days and nights,

Inured me to the consciousness of life

Coiled round by his life, with the tongue to ply,--

But that I bore about me, for prompt use

At urgent need, the thing that '_stops the mouth_'

And stays the venom? Since such need was now

Or never,--how should use not follow need?

Bear witness for me, I withdraw from life

By virtue of the license--warrant, say,

That blackens yet this Album--white again,

Thanks still to my one friend who tears the page!

Now, let me write the line of supplement,

As counselled by my foe there: '_each a line_!'"

And she does falteringly write to end.

"_I die now through the villain who lies dead,

Righteously slain. He would have outraged me,

So, my defender slew him. God protect

The right! Where wrong lay, I bear witness now.

Let man believe me, whose last breath is spent

In blessing my defender from my soul!_"

And so ends the Inn Album.

As she dies,

Begins outside a voice that sounds like song,

And is indeed half song though meant for speech

Muttered in time to motion--stir of heart

That unsubduably must bubble forth

To match the fawn-step as it mounts the stair.

"All's ended and all's over! Verdict found

'_Not guilty_'--prisoner forthwith set free,

Mid cheers the Court pretends to disregard!

Now Portia, now for Daniel, late severe,

At last appeased, benignant! '_This young man--

Hem--has the young man's foibles but no fault.

He's virgin soil--a friend must cultivate.

I think no plant called "love" grows wild--a friend

May introduce, and name the bloom, the fruit!_'

Here somebody dares wave a handkerchief--

She'll want to hide her face with presently!

Good-by then! '_Cigno fedel, cigno fedel,

Addio!_' Now, was ever such mistake--

Ever such foolish ugly omen? Pshaw!

Wagner, beside! '_Amo te solo, te

Solo amai!_' That's worth fifty such!

But, mum, the grave face at the opened door!"

And so the good gay girl, with eyes and cheeks

Diamond and damask,--cheeks so white erewhile

Because of a vague fancy, idle fear

Chased on reflection!--pausing, taps discreet;

And then, to give herself a countenance,

Before she comes upon the pair inside,

Loud--the oft-quoted, long-laughed-over line--

"'_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!_'

Open the door!"

No: let the curtain fall!

CHAPTER V

RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In "Bishop Blougram's Apology" and "Christmas-Eve and Easter Day,"

Browning has covered the main tendencies in religious thought of the

nineteenth century in England; and possibly "Caliban" might be included

as representative of Calvinistic survivals of the century.

The two most strongly marked of these tendencies have been shown in the

Tractarian Movement which took Anglican in the direction of High

Churchism and Catholicism, and in the Scientific Movement which led in

the direction of Agnosticism.

The battle between the Church of Rome and the Church of England was

waged the latter part of the first half of the century, and the greater

battle between science and religion came on in its full strength the

middle of the century when the influence of Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall,

Huxley and other men of science began to make itself felt, as well as

that of such critics of historical Christianity as Strauss in Germany

and Renan in France. The influence of the dissenting bodies,--the

Presbyterians and the Methodists--also became a power during the

century. Broadly speaking, it may be said that the development has been

in the direction of the utmost freedom of conscience in the matter of

religion, though the struggles of humanity to arrive there even during

this century are distressing to look back upon; and occasionally one is

held up even in America to-day by the ghost of religious persecution.

It is an open secret that in Bishop Blougram, Browning meant to portray

Cardinal Wiseman, whose connection with the Tractarian Movement is of

great interest in the history of this movement. Browning enjoyed hugely

the joke that Cardinal Wiseman himself reviewed the poem. The Cardinal

praised it as a poem, though he did not consider the attitude of a

priest of Rome to be properly interpreted. A comparison of the poem with

opinions expressed by the Cardinal as well as a glimpse into his

activities will show how far Browning has done him justice.

It is well to remember at the outset that the poet's own view is neither

that of Blougram nor of the literary man Gigadibs, with whom Blougram

talks over his wine. Gigadibs is an agnostic and cannot understand how a

man of Blougram's fine intellectual and artistic perceptions is able so

implicitly to believe in Catholic doctrine. Blougram's apology for

himself amounts to this,--that he does not believe with absolute

certainty any more than does Gigadibs; but, on the other hand, Gigadibs

does not disbelieve with absolute certainty, so Blougram's state is one

of belief shaken occasionally by doubt, while Gigadibs is one of

unbelief shaken by fits of belief.

BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY

. . . . . . .

Now come, let's backward to the starting place.

See my way: we're two college friends, suppose.

Prepare together for our voyage, then;

Each note and check the other in his work,--

There's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticize!

What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?

What first, you don't believe, you don't, and can't,

(Not statedly, that is, and fixedly

And absolutely and exclusively)

In any revelation called divine.

No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains

But say so, like the honest man you are?

First, therefore, overhaul theology!

Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,

Must find believing every whit as hard:

And if I do not frankly say as much,

The ugly consequence is clear enough.

Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe--

If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed,

Absolute and exclusive, as you say.

You're wrong--I mean to prove it in due time.

Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie

I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,

So give up hope accordingly to solve--

(To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then

With both of us, though in unlike degree,

Missing full credence--overboard with them!

I mean to meet you on your own premise:

Good, there go mine in company with yours!

And now what are we? unbelievers both,

Calm and complete, determinately fixed

To-day, to-morrow and forever, pray?

You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think!

In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief.

As unbelief before, shakes us by fits,

Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's

The gain? how can we guard our unbelief,

Make it bear fruit to us?--the problem here.

Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch,

A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,

A chorus-ending from Euripides,--

And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears

As old and new at once as nature's self,

To rap and knock and enter in our soul,

Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,

Round the ancient idol, on his base again,--

The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.

There the old misgivings, crooked questions are--

This good God,--what he could do, if he would,

Would, if he could--then must have done long since:

If so, when, where and how? some way must be,--

Once feel about, and soon or late you hit

Some sense, in which it might be, after all.

Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"

The advantage of making belief instead of unbelief the starting point

is, Blougram contends, that he lives by what he finds the most to his

taste; giving him as it does, power, distinction and beauty in life as

well as hope in the life to come.

Well, now, there's one great form of Christian faith

I happened to be born in--which to teach

Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,

As best and readiest means of living by;

The same on examination being proved

The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise

And absolute form of faith in the whole world--

Accordingly, most potent of all forms

For working on the world. Observe, my friend!

Such as you know me, I am free to say,

In these hard latter days which hamper one,

Myself--by no immoderate exercise

Of intellect and learning, but the tact

To let external forces work for me,

--Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread;

Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's,

Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world

And make my life an ease and joy and pride;

It does so,--which for me's a great point gained,

Who have a soul and body that exact

A comfortable care in many ways.

There's power in me and will to dominate

Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:

In many ways I need mankind's respect,

Obedience, and the love that's born of fear:

While at the same time, there's a taste I have,

A toy of soul, a titillating thing,

Refuses to digest these dainties crude.

The naked life is gross till clothed upon:

I must take what men offer, with a grace

As though I would not, could I help it, take!

An uniform I wear though over-rich--

Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;

No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake

And despicable therefore! now folk kneel

And kiss my hand--of course the Church's hand.

Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,

And thus that it should be I have procured;

And thus it could not be another way,

I venture to imagine.

You'll reply,

So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;

But were I made of better elements,

with nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,

I hardly would account the thing success

Though it did all for me I say.

But, friend,

We speak of what is; not of what might be,

And how 'twere better if 'twere otherwise.

I am the man you see here plain enough:

Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives!

Suppose I own at once to tail and claws;

The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed

I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes

To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.

My business is not to remake myself,

But make the absolute best of what God made.

But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast

I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes

Enumerated so complacently,

On the mere ground that you forsooth can find

In this particular life I choose to lead

No fit provision for them. Can you not?

Say you, my fault is I address myself

To grosser estimators than should judge?

And that's no way of holding up the soul,

Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows

One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'--

Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that.

I pine among my million imbeciles

(You think) aware some dozen men of sense

Eye me and know me, whether I believe

In the last winking Virgin, as I vow,

And am a fool, or disbelieve in her

And am a knave,--approve in neither case,

Withhold their voices though I look their way:

Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end

(The thing they gave at Florence,--what's its name?)

While the mad houseful's plaudits near outbang

His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,

He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths

Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.

Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here--

That even your prime men who appraise their kind

Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,

See more in a truth than the truth's simple self,

Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street

Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?

You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;

Him you must watch--he's sure to fall, yet stands!

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.

The honest thief, the tender murderer,

The superstitious atheist, demirep

That loves and saves her soul in new French books--

We watch while these in equilibrium keep

The giddy line midway: one step aside,

They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line

Before your sages,--just the men to shrink

From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad

You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?

Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave

When there's a thousand diamond weights between?

So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find,

Profess themselves indignant, scandalized

At thus being held unable to explain

How a superior man who disbelieves

May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way!

It's through my coming in the tail of time,

Nicking the minute with a happy tact.

Had I been born three hundred years ago

They'd say, "what's strange? Blougram of course believes;"

And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course."

But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet

How can he?" All eyes turn with interest.

Whereas, step off the line on either side--

You, for example, clever to a fault,

The rough and ready man who write apace,

Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less--

You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares?

Lord So-and-so--his coat bedropped with wax,

All Peter's chains about his waist, his back

Brave with the needlework of Noodledom--

Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares?

But I, the man of sense and learning too,

The able to think yet act, the this, the that,

I, to believe at this late time of day!

Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.

. . . . . . .

"Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry,

"You run the same risk really on all sides,

In cool indifference as bold unbelief.

As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him.

It's not worth having, such imperfect faith,

No more available to do faith's work

Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"

Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point.

Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith.

We're back on Christian ground. You call for faith:

I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.

The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,

If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does?

By life and man's free will, God gave for that!

To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice:

That's our one act, the previous work's his own.

You criticize the soul? it reared this tree--

This broad life and whatever fruit it bears!

What matter though I doubt at every pore,

Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my finger's ends,

Doubts in the trivial work of every day,

Doubts at the very bases of my soul

In the grand moments when she probes herself--

If finally I have a life to show,

The thing I did, brought out in evidence

Against the thing done to me underground

By hell and all its brood, for aught I know?

I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt?

All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this?

It is the idea, the feeling and the love,

God means mankind should strive for and show forth

Whatever be the process to that end,--

And not historic knowledge, logic sound,

And metaphysical acumen, sure!

"What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said,

Like you this Christianity or not?

It may be false, but will you wish it true?

Has it your vote to be so if it can?

Trust you an instinct silenced long ago

That will break silence and enjoin you love

What mortified philosophy is hoarse,

And all in vain, with bidding you despise?

If you desire faith--then you've faith enough:

What else seeks God--nay, what else seek ourselves?

You form a notion of me, we'll suppose,

On hearsay; it's a favourable one:

"But still" (you add), "there was no such good man,

Because of contradiction in the facts.

One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome,

This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him

I see he figures as an Englishman."

Well, the two things are reconcilable.

But would I rather you discovered that,

Subjoining--"Still, what matter though they be?

Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there."

Pure faith indeed--you know not what you ask!

Naked belief in God the Omnipotent,

Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much

The sense of conscious creatures to be borne.

It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare.

Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth:

I say it's meant to hide him all it can,

And that's what all the blessed evil's for.

Its use in Time is to environ us,

Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough

Against that sight till we can bear its stress.

Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain

And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart

Less certainly would wither up at once

Than mind, confronted with the truth of him.

But time and earth case-harden us to live;

The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child

Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,

Plays on and grows to be a man like us.

With me, faith means perpetual unbelief

Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot

Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.

. . . . . . .

The sum of all is--yes, my doubt is great,

My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough.

I have read much, thought much, experienced much,

Yet would die rather than avow my fear

The Naples' liquefaction may be false,

When set to happen by the palace-clock

According to the clouds or dinner-time.

I hear you recommend, I might at least

Eliminate, decrassify my faith

Since I adopt it; keeping what I must

And leaving what I can--such points as this.

I won't--that is, I can't throw one away.

Supposing there's no truth in what I hold

About the need of trial to man's faith,

Still, when you bid me purify the same,

To such a process I discern no end.

Clearing off one excrescence to see two,

There's ever a next in size, now grown as big,

That meets the knife: I cut and cut again!

First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last

But Fichte's clever cut at God himself?

Experimentalize on sacred things!

I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain

To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.

The first step, I am master not to take.

You'd find the cutting-process to your taste

As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned,

Nor see more danger in it,--you retort.

Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise

When we consider that the steadfast hold

On the extreme end of the chain of faith

Gives all the advantage, makes the difference

With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule:

We are their lords, or they are free of us,

Just as we tighten or relax our hold.

So, other matters equal, we'll revert

To the first problem--which, if solved my way

And thrown into the balance, turns the scale--

How we may lead a comfortable life,

How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.

Of course you are remarking all this time

How narrowly and grossly I view life,

Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule

The masses, and regard complacently

"The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do.

I act for, talk for, live for this world now,

As this world prizes action, life and talk:

No prejudice to what next world may prove,

Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge

To observe then, is that I observe these now,

Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile.

Let us concede (gratuitously though)

Next life relieves the soul of body, yields

Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend,

Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use

May be to make the next life more intense?

Do you know, I have often had a dream

(Work it up in your next month's article)

Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still

Losing true life for ever and a day

Through ever trying to be and ever being--

In the evolution of successive spheres--

_Before_ its actual sphere and place of life,

Halfway into the next, which having reached,

It shoots with corresponding foolery

Halfway into the next still, on and off!

As when a traveller, bound from North to South,

Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?

In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?

In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!

Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,

A superfluity at Timbuctoo.

When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?

I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,

I take and like its way of life; I think

My brothers, who administer the means,

Live better for my comfort--that's good too;

And God, if he pronounce upon such life,

Approves my service, which is better still.

If he keep silence,--why, for you or me

Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times,"

What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?

Turning to the life of Cardinal Wiseman, it is of especial interest in

connection with Browning's portrayal of him to observe his earlier

years. He was born in Spain, having a Spanish father of English descent

and an English mother, all Catholics, as Blougram says, "There's one

great form of Christian faith I happened to be born in." His mother took

him as an infant, and laid him upon the altar of the Cathedral of

Seville, and consecrated him to the service of the Church.

[Illustration: Cardinal Wiseman]

His father having died when he was a tiny boy, his mother took him and

his brother to England where he was trained at the Catholic college of

Ushaw. From there he went to Rome to study at the English Catholic

College there. Later he became Rector of this College. The sketch of

Wiseman at this period given by his biographer, Wilfred Ward, is most

attractive. "Scattered through his 'Recollections' are interesting

impressions left by his student life. While mastering the regular course

of scholastic philosophy and theology sufficiently to take his degree

with credit, his tastes were not primarily in this direction. The study

of Roman antiquities, Christian and Pagan, was congenial to him, as was

also the study of Italian art--in which he ultimately became

proficient--and of music: and he early devoted himself to the Syriac and

Arabic languages. In all these pursuits the enthusiasm and eminence of

men living in Rome itself at this era of renaissance was a potent

stimulus to work. The hours he set aside for reading were many more than

the rule demanded. But the daily walk and the occasional expedition to

places of historic interest outside of Rome helped also to store his

mind and to fire his imagination." Wiseman writes, himself, of this

period, "The life of the student in Rome should be one of unblended

enjoyment. His very relaxations become at once subsidiary to his work

and yet most delightfully recreative. His daily walks may be through the

field of art ... his wanderings along the stream of time ... a thousand

memories, a thousand associations accompany him." From this letter and

from accounts of him he would seem to have been possessed of a highly

imaginative temperament, possibly more artistic than religious.

Scholars, linguists, or historians, artists or antiquarians interested

him far more than thinkers or theologians. In noting the effects on

Wiseman's character of the thoughts and sights of Rome, "it must be

observed," writes Ward, "that even the action of directly religious

influences brought out his excessive impressionableness. His own inner

life was as vivid a pageant to him as the history of the Church. He was

liable at this time to the periods of spiritual exaltation--matched, as

we shall see later on, by fits of intense despondency--which marked him

through life."

This remarkable intellectual activity brought with it doubts of

religious truth. "The imaginative delight in Rome as a living witness to

the faith entirely left him, and at the same time he was attacked by

mental disturbances and doubts of the truth of Christianity. There are

contemporary indications, and still plainer accounts in the letters of

his later life, of acute suffering from these trials. The study of

Biblical criticism, even in the early stages it had then reached, seems

immediately to have occasioned them; and the suffering they caused him

was aggravated into intense and almost alarming depression by the

feebleness of his bodily health." He says, speaking of this phase in his

life, "Many and many an hour have I passed, alone, in bitter tears, on

the _loggia_ of the English College, when every one was reposing in the

afternoon, and I was fighting with subtle thoughts and venomous

suggestions of a fiendlike infidelity which I durst not confide to any

one, for there was no one that could have sympathized with me. This

lasted for years; but it made me study and think, to conquer the

plague--for I can hardly call it danger--both for myself and for others.

But during the actual struggle the simple submission of faith is the

only remedy. Thoughts against faith must be treated at the time like

temptations against any other virtue--put away; though in cooler moments

they may be safely analyzed and unraveled." Again he wrote of these

years as, "Years of solitude, of desolation, years of shattered nerves,

dread often of instant insanity, consumptive weakness, of sleepless

nights and weary days, and hours of tears which no one witnessed."

"Of the effect of these years of desolation on his character he speaks

as being simply invaluable. It completed what Ushaw had begun, the

training in patience, self-reliance, and concentration in spite of

mental depression. It was amid these trials, he adds, 'that I wrote my

"HorÊ SyriacÊ" and collected my notes for the lectures on the

"Connection between Science and Revealed Religion" and the "Eucharist."

Without this training I should not have thrown myself into the Puseyite

controversy at a later period.' Any usefulness which discovered itself

in later years he considers the 'result of self-discipline' during his

inner conflict. The struggle so absorbed his energies that his early

life was passed almost wholly free from the special trials to which that

period is liable. He speaks of his youth as in that respect 'almost

temptationless.'" This state of mind seemed to last about five years and

then he writes in a letter:

"I have felt myself for some months gradually passing into a new state

of mind and heart which I can hardly describe, but which I trust is the

last stage of mental progress, in which I hope I may much improve, but

out of which I trust I may never pass. I could hardly express the calm

mild frame of mind in which I have lived; company and society I have

almost entirely shunned, or have moved through it as a stranger; hardly

a disturbing thought, hardly a grating sensation has crossed my being,

of which a great feeling of love seems to have been the principle.

Whither, I am inclined to ask myself, does all this tend? Whence does it

proceed? I think I could make an interesting history of my mind's

religious progress, if I may use a word shockingly perverted by modern

fanatics, from the hard dry struggles I used to have when first I

commenced to study on my own account, to the settling down into a state

of stern conviction, and so after some years to the nobler and more

soothing evidences furnished by the grand harmonies and beautiful

features of religion, whether considered in contact with lower objects

or viewed in her own crystal mirror. I find it curious, too, and

interesting to trace the workings of those varied feelings upon my

relations to the outward world. I remember how for years I lost all

relish for the glorious ceremonies of the Church. I heeded not its

venerable monuments and sacred records scattered over the city; or I

studied them all with the dry eye of an antiquarian, looking in them for

proofs, not for sensations, being ever actively alive to the collection

of evidences and demonstrations of religious truth. But now that the

time of my probation as I hope it was, is past, I feel as though the

freshness of childhood's thoughts had once more returned to me, my

heart expands with renewed delight and delicious feelings every time I

see the holy objects and practices around me, and I might almost say

that I am leading a life of spiritual epicureanism, opening all my

senses to a rich draught of religious sensations."

From these glimpses it would appear that Wiseman was a much more sincere

man in his religious feeling than he is given credit for by Browning.

His belief is with him not a matter of cold, hard calculation as to the

attitude which will be, so to speak, the most politic from both a

worldly and a spiritual point of view. The beautiful passage beginning

"Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch" etc., comes nearer to

the genuine enthusiasm of a Wiseman than any other in the poem. There is

an essential difference between the minds of the poet and the man he

portrays, which perhaps made it impossible for Browning fully to

interpret Wiseman's attitude. Both have religious fervor, but Browning's

is born of a consciousness of God revealed directly to himself, while

Wiseman's consciousness of God comes to him primarily through the

authority of the Church, that is through generations of authoritative

believers the first of whom experienced the actuality of Revelation.

Hundreds and thousands of people have minds of this caliber. They cannot

see a truth direct for themselves, they must be told by some person

clothed in authority that this or that is true or false. To Wiseman the

beauty of his own form of religion with its special dogmas made so

strong an appeal, that, since he could only believe through authority,

under any circumstances, it was natural to him to adopt the particular

form that gave him the most satisfaction. Proofs detrimental to belief

do not worry long with doubts such a mind, because the authority they

depend on is not the authority of knowledge, but the authority of

belief. This comes out clearly enough in one of Wiseman's letters in

which after enumerating a number of proofs brought forward by various

scholars tending to cast discredit on the dogmas of the Church, he

triumphantly exclaims, "And yet, who that has an understanding to judge,

is driven for a moment from the holdings of faith by such comparisons as

these!"

[Illustration: Sacred Heart _F. Utenbach_]

Upon looking through his writings there will always be found in his

expression of belief, I think, that ring of true sincerity as well as

what I should call an intense artistic delight in the essential beauty

of his religion.

As to Blougram's argument that he believed in living in the world while

he was in it, Wiseman's life was certainly not that of a worldling

alone, though he is described by one person as being "a genuine priest,

very good looking and able bodied, and with much apparent practice in

the world." He was far too much of a student and worker to be altogether

so worldly-minded as Browning represents him.

His chief interest for Englishmen is his connection with the Tractarian

Movement. The wish of his soul was to aid the Catholic Revival in

England, and with that end in view he visited England in 1835. Two years

before, the movement at Oxford, known as the Tractarian Movement had

begun. The opinions of the men in this movement were, as every one

knows, printed in a series of ninety tracts of which Newman wrote

twenty-four. It was an outgrowth of the conditions of the time. To sum

up in the words of Withrow,[3] "The Church of England had distinctly

lost ground as a directing and controlling force in the nation. The most

thoughtful and earnest minds in the Church felt the need of a great

religious awakening and an aggressive movement to regain its lost

influence." As Dean Church describes them, the two characteristic forms

of Christianity in the Church of England were the High Church, and the

Evangelicals, or Low Church." Of the former he says: "Its better

members were highly cultivated, benevolent men, intolerant of

irregularities both of doctrine and life, whose lives were governed by

an unostentatious but solid and unfaltering piety, ready to burst forth

on occasion into fervid devotion. Its worse members were jobbers and

hunters after preferment, pluralists who built fortunes and endowed

families out of the Church, or country gentlemen in orders, who rode to

hounds and shot and danced and farmed, and often did worse things."

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Religious Progress of the Century.

But at Oxford was a group of men of intense moral earnestness including

Newman, Pusey, Keble, Arnold, Maurice, Kingsley, and others, who began

an active propaganda of the new or revised doctrines of the Oxford

Movement.

"The success of the Tracts," says Molesworth, "was much greater, and the

outcry against them far louder and fiercer, than their authors had

expected. The Tracts were at first small and simple, but became large

and learned theological treatises. Changes, too, came over the views of

some of the writers. Doctrines which probably would have shocked them at

first were put forward with a recklessness which success had increased.

Alarm was excited, remonstrances stronger and stronger were addressed to

them. They were attacked as Romanizing in their tendency."

"The effect of such writing was two-fold[4]--the public were dismayed

and certain members of the Tractarian party avowed their intention of

becoming Romanists. So decided was the setting of the tide towards Rome

that Newman made a vigorous effort to turn it by his famous Tract No.

90. In this he endeavored to show that it was possible to interpret the

Thirty-nine Articles in the interest of Roman Catholicism. This tract

aroused a storm of indignation. The violent controversy which it

occasioned led to the discontinuance of the series."

FOOTNOTES:

[4] See Withrow.

Such in little was this remarkable movement. When Tract No. 90 appeared

Wiseman had been in England for some time, and had been a strong

influence in taking many thinking men in the direction of Rome. His

lectures and discourses upon his first visit to England had attracted

remarkable attention. The account runs by one who attended his lectures

to Catholics and Protestants: "Society in this country was impressed,

and listened almost against its will, and listened not displeased. Here

was a young Roman priest, fresh from the center of Catholicism, who

showed himself master, not only of the intricacies of polemical

discussion but of the amenities of civilized life. The spacious church

of Moorfields was thronged on every evening of Dr. Wiseman's appearance.

Many persons of position and education were converted, and all departed

with abated prejudice, and with very different notions about Catholicism

from those with which they had been prepossessed by their education."

Wiseman, himself, wrote, "I had the consolation of witnessing the

patient and edifying attention of a crowded audience, many of whom stood

for two hours without any symptom of impatience."

The great triumph for Wiseman, however, was when, shortly after Tract

90, Newman, "a man," described "in many ways, the most remarkable that

England has seen during the century, perhaps the most remarkable whom

the English Church has produced in any century," went over to the Church

of Rome and was confirmed by Wiseman. Others followed his example and by

1853 as many as four hundred clergymen and laity had become Roman

Catholics.

The controversies and discussions of that time, it must be remembered,

were more upon the dogmas of the church than upon what we should call

to-day the essential truths of religion. Yet, to a certain order of mind

dogmas seem important truths. There are those whose religious attitude

cannot be preserved without belief in dogmas, and the advantage of the

Catholic Church is that it holds firmly to its dogmas, come what may. It

was expected, however, that this Romeward Movement would arouse intense

antipathy. "The arguments by which it was justified were considered, in

many cases, disingenuous, if not Jesuitical."

In opposition of this sort we come nearer to Browning's attitude of

mind. Because such arguments as Wiseman and the Tractarians used could

not convince him, he takes the ordinary ground of the opposition, that

in using such arguments they must be insincere, and they must be

perfectly conscious of their insincerity. Still, in spite of the fact

that Browning's mind could not get inside of Blougram's, he shows that

he has some sympathy for the Bishop in the close of the poem where he

says, "He said true things but called them by wrong names." Raise

Blougram's philosophy to the plane of the mysticism of a Browning, and

the arguments for belief would be much the same but the _counters_ in

the arguments would become symbols instead of dogmas.

In "Christmas-Eve and Easter Day," Browning becomes the true critic of

the nineteenth-century religious movements. He passes in review in a

series of dramatic pictures the three most diverse modes of religious

thought of the century. The dissenter's view is symbolized by a scene in

a very humble chapel in England, the Catholic view by a vision of high

mass at St. Peter's and the Agnostic view by a vision of a lecture by a

learned German professor,--while the view of the modern mystic who

remains religious in the face of all destructive criticism is shown in

the speaker of the poem. The intuitional, aspiring side of his nature is

symbolized by the vision of Christ that appears to him, while the

intensity of its power fluctuates as he either holds fast or lets go the

garment of Christ. Opposed to his intuitional side is his reasoning

side.

Possibly the picture of the dissenting chapel is exaggeratedly humble,

though if we suppose it to be a Methodist Chapel, it may be true to

life, as Methodism was the form of religion which made its appeal to the

lowest classes. Indeed, at the time of its first successes, it was the

saving grace of England. "But for the moral antiseptic," writes Withrow,

"furnished by Methodism, and the revival of religion in all the churches

which it produced, the history of England would have been far other than

it was. It would probably have been swept into the maelstrom of

revolution and shared the political and religious convulsions of the

neighboring nation," that is the French Revolution.

"But Methodism had greatly changed the condition of the people. It had

rescued vast multitudes from ignorance and barbarism, and raised them

from almost the degradation of beasts to the condition of men and the

fellowship of saints. The habits of thrift and industry which it

fostered led to the accumulation, if not of wealth, at least to that of

a substantial competence; and built up that safeguard of the

Commonwealth, a great, intelligent, industrious, religious Middle-Class

in the community."

After the death of Wesley came various divisions in the Methodist

Church; it has so flexible a system that it may be adapted to very

varied needs of humanity, and in that has consisted its great power.

The mission of the church was originally to the poor and lowly, but "It

has won for itself in spite of scorn and persecution," says Dr. Schˆll,

"a place of power in the State and church of Great Britain."

[Illustration: The Nativity _Fra Lippo Lippi_]

A scornful attitude is vividly brought before us in the opening of this

poem, to be succeeded later by a more charitable point of view.

CHRISTMAS-EVE

I

Out of the little chapel I burst

Into the fresh night-air again.

Five minutes full, I waited first

In the doorway, to escape the rain

That drove in gusts down the common's centre

At the edge of which the chapel stands,

Before I plucked up heart to enter.

Heaven knows how many sorts of hands

Reached past me, groping for the latch

Of the inner door that hung on catch

More obstinate the more they fumbled,

Till, giving way at last with a scold

Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled

One sheep more to the rest in fold,

And left me irresolute, standing sentry

In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry,

Six feet long by three feet wide,

Partitioned off from the vast inside--

I blocked up half of it at least.

No remedy; the rain kept driving.

They eyed me much as some wild beast,

That congregation, still arriving,

Some of them by the main road, white

A long way past me into the night,

Skirting the common, then diverging;

Not a few suddenly emerging

From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps,

--They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,

Where the road stops short with its safeguard border

Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;--

But the most turned in yet more abruptly

From a certain squalid knot of alleys,

Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly,

Which now the little chapel rallies

And leads into day again,--its priestliness

Lending itself to hide their beastliness

So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),

And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on

Those neophytes too much in lack of it,

That, where you cross the common as I did,

And meet the party thus presided,

"Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it,

They front you as little disconcerted

As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,

And her wicked people made to mind him,

Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.

II

Well, from the road, the lanes or the common

In came the flock: the fat weary woman,

Panting and bewildered, down-clapping

Her umbrella with a mighty report,

Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,

A wreck of whalebones; then, with a snort,

Like a startled horse, at the interloper

(Who humbly knew himself improper,

But could not shrink up small enough)

--Round to the door, and in,--the gruff

Hinge's invariable scold

Making my very blood run cold.

Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered

On broken clogs, the many-tattered

Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother

Of the sickly babe she tried to smother

Somehow up, with its spotted face,

From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;

She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry

Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby

Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping

Already from my own clothes' dropping,

Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on:

Then, stooping down to take off her pattens,

She bore them defiantly, in each hand one,

Planted together before her breast

And its babe, as good as a lance in rest.

Close on her heels, the dingy satins

Of a female something, past me flitted,

With lips as much too white, as a streak

Lay far too red on each hollow cheek;

And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied

All that was left of a woman once,

Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.

Then a tall yellow man, like the _Penitent Thief_,

With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief,

And eyelids screwed together tight,

Led himself in by some inner light.

And, except from him, from each that entered,

I got the same interrogation--

"What, you the alien, you have ventured

To take with us, the elect, your station?

A carer for none of it, a _Gallio_!"--

Thus, plain as print, I read the glance

At a common prey, in each countenance

As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho.

And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder,

The draught, it always sent in shutting,

Made the flame of the single tallow candle

In the cracked square lantern I stood under,

Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting

As it were, the luckless cause of scandal:

I verily fancied the zealous light

(In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite

Would shudder itself clean off the wick,

With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick.

There was no standing it much longer.

"Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger,

"This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor

When the weather sends you a chance visitor?

You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you,

And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you!

But still, despite the pretty perfection

To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness,

And, taking God's word under wise protection,

Correct its tendency to diffusiveness,

And bid one reach it over hot plough-shares,--

Still, as I say, though you've found salvation,

If should choose to cry, as now, 'Shares!'--

See if the best of you bars me my ration!

I prefer, if you please, for my expounder

Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder;

Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest

Supposing I don the marriage vestiment:

So, shut your mouth and open your Testament,

And carve me my portion at your quickliest!"

Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad

With wizened face in want of soap,

And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope,

(After stopping outside, for his cough was bad,

To get the fit over, poor gentle creature,

And so avoid disturbing the preacher)

--Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise

At the shutting door, and entered likewise,

Received the hinge's accustomed greeting,

And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle,

And found myself in full conventicle,

--To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting,

On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine,

Which, calling its flock to their special clover,

Found all assembled and one sheep over,

Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.

III

I very soon had enough of it.

The hot smell and the human noises,

And my neighbor's coat, the greasy cuff of it,

Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises,

Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure

Of the preaching man's immense stupidity,

As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure,

To meet his audience's avidity.

You needed not the wit of the Sibyl

To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling:

No sooner our friend had got an inkling

Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible,

(Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him,

How death, at unawares, might duck him

Deeper than the grave, and quench

The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench)

Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence,

As to hug the book of books to pieces:

And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance,

Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases,

Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,--

So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures.

And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt:

Nay, had but a single face of my neighbors

Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labors

Were help which the world could be saved without,

'Tis odds but I might have borne in quiet

A qualm or two at my spiritual diet,

Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered

Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon:

But the flock sat on, divinely flustered,

Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon

With such content in every snuffle,

As the devil inside us loves to ruffle.

My old fat woman purred with pleasure,

And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,

While she, to his periods keeping measure,

Maternally devoured the pastor.

The man with the handkerchief untied it,

Showed us a horrible wen inside it,

Gave his eyelids yet another screwing,

And rocked himself as the woman was doing.

The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking,

Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking!

My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it;

So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple,

"I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it,"

I flung out of the little chapel.

IV

There was a lull in the rain, a lull

In the wind too; the moon was risen,

And would have shone out pure and full,

But for the ramparted cloud-prison,

Block on block built up in the West,

For what purpose the wind knows best,

Who changes his mind continually.

And the empty other half of the sky

Seemed in its silence as if it knew

What, any moment, might look through

A chance gap in that fortress massy:--

Through its fissures you got hints

Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints,

Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy

Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow,

Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow,

All a-simmer with intense strain

To let her through,--then blank again,

At the hope of her appearance failing.

Just by the chapel, a break in the railing

Shows a narrow path directly across;

'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss--

Besides, you go gently all the way uphill.

I stooped under and soon felt better;

My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple,

As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter.

My mind was full of the scene I had left,

That placid flock, that pastor vociferant,

--How this outside was pure and different!

The sermon, now--what a mingled weft

Of good and ill! Were either less,

Its fellow had colored the whole distinctly;

But alas for the excellent earnestness,

And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,

But as surely false, in their quaint presentment,

However to pastor and flock's contentment!

Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes,

With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,

Till how could you know them, grown double their size

In the natural fog of the good man's mind,

Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,

Haloed about with the common's damps?

Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover;

The zeal was good, and the aspiration;

And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over,

Pharaoh received no demonstration,

By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three,

Of the doctrine of the Trinity,--

Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,

Apparently his hearers relished it

With so unfeigned a gust--who knows if

They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?

But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!

These people have really felt, no doubt,

A something, the motion they style the _Call_ of them;

And this is their method of bringing about,

By a mechanism of words and tones,

(So many texts in so many groans)

A sort of reviving and reproducing,

More or less perfectly, (who can tell?)

The mood itself, which strengthens by using;

And how that happens, I understand well.

A tune was born in my head last week,

Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek

Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;

And when, next week, I take it back again.

My head will sing to the engine's clack again,

While it only makes my neighbor's haunches stir,

--Finding no dormant musical sprout

In him, as in me, to be jolted out.

'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching;

He gets no more from the railway's preaching

Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I:

Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on.

Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion,"

To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?

The reasoning which follows upon this is characteristic of Browning.

Perceiving everywhere in the world transcendent power, and knowing love

in little, from that transcendent love may be deduced. His reasoning

finally brings him to a state of vision. His subjective intuitions

become palpable objective symbols, a not infrequent occurrence in highly

wrought and sensitive minds.

V

But wherefore be harsh on a single case?

After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve,

Does the self-same weary thing take place?

The same endeavor to make you believe,

And with much the same effect, no more:

Each method abundantly convincing,

As I say, to those convinced before,

But scarce to be swallowed without wincing

By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,

I have my own church equally:

And in this church my faith sprang first!

(I said, as I reached the rising ground,

And the wind began again, with a burst

Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound

From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,

I entered his church-door, nature leading me)

--In youth I looked to these very skies,

And probing their immensities,

I found God there, his visible power;

Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense

Of the power, an equal evidence

That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.

For the loving worm within its clod,

Were diviner than a loveless god

Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.

You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought:

But also, God, whose pleasure brought

Man into being, stands away

As it were a handbreadth off, to give

Room for the newly-made to live,

And look at him from a place apart,

And use his gifts of brain and heart,

Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.

Who speaks of man, then, must not sever

Man's very elements from man,

Saying, "But all is God's"--whose plan

Was to create man and then leave him

Able, his own word saith, to grieve him,

But able to glorify him too,

As a mere machine could never do,

That prayed or praised, all unaware

Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,

Made perfect as a thing of course.

Man, therefore, stands on his own stock

Of love and power as a pin-point rock:

And, looking to God who ordained divorce

Of the rock from his boundless continent,

Sees, in his power made evident,

Only excess by a million-fold

O'er the power God gave man in the mould.

For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry

A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry

Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain,

--Advancing in power by one degree;

And why count steps through eternity?

But love is the ever-springing fountain:

Man may enlarge or narrow his bed

For the water's play, but the water-head--

How can he multiply or reduce it?

As easy create it, as cause it to cease;

He may profit by it, or abuse it,

But 'tis not a thing to bear increase

As power does: be love less or more

In the heart of man, he keeps it shut

Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but

Love's sum remains what it was before.

So, gazing up, in my youth, at love

As seen through power, ever above

All modes which make it manifest,

My soul brought all to a single test--

That he, the Eternal First and Last,

Who, in his power, had so surpassed

All man conceives of what is might,--

Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,

--Would prove as infinitely good;

Would never, (my soul understood,)

With power to work all love desires,

Bestow e'en less than man requires;

That he who endlessly was teaching,

Above my spirit's utmost reaching,

What love can do in the leaf or stone,

(So that to master this alone,

This done in the stone or leaf for me,

I must go on learning endlessly)

Would never need that I, in turn,

Should point him out defect unheeded,

And show that God had yet to learn

What the meanest human creature needed,

--Not life, to wit, for a few short years,

Tracking his way through doubts and fears,

While the stupid earth on which I stay

Suffers no change, but passive adds

Its myriad years to myriads,

Though I, he gave it to, decay,

Seeing death come and choose about me,

And my dearest ones depart without me.

No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,

Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,

The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,

Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.

And I shall behold thee, face to face,

O God, and in thy light retrace

How in all I loved here, still wast thou!

Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,

I shall find as able to satiate

The love, thy gift, as my spirit's wonder

Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,

With this sky of thine, that I now walk under,

And glory in thee for, as I gaze

Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways

Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine--

Be this my way! And this is mine!

VI

For lo, what think you? suddenly

The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky

Received at once the full fruition

Of the moon's consummate apparition.

The black cloud-barricade was riven,

Ruined beneath her feet, and driven

Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,

North and South and East lay ready

For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,

Sprang across them and stood steady.

'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,

From heaven to heaven extending, perfect

As the mother-moon's self, full in face.

It rose, distinctly at the base

With its seven proper colors chorded,

Which still, in the rising, were compressed,

Until at last they coalesced,

And supreme the spectral creature lorded

In a triumph of whitest white,--

Above which intervened the night.

But above night too, like only the next,

The second of a wondrous sequence,

Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,

Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed,

Another rainbow rose, a mightier,

Fainter, flushier and flightier,--

Rapture dying along its verge.

Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,

Whose, from the straining topmost dark,

On to the keystone of that arc?

VII