Edward Berdoe - The Browning Cyclopædia - A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning

Notes. – Sect. ii., “ a carer for none of it, a Gallio ”: “And Gallio cared for none of these things” (Acts xviii. 17). “ A Saint John’s candlestick ” (see Rev. i. 20). “ Christmas Eve of ’Forty-nine ”: Dissenters do not keep Christmas Eve, nor Christmas Day itself; they would not, therefore, have been found at chapel unless Christmas happened to fall on a Sunday. In 1849 Christmas Eve fell on a Monday. Sect. x., the baldachin : the canopy over the high altar of St. Peter’s at Rome is supported by magnificent twisted brazen columns, from designs by Bernini. It is 95 feet in height, and weighs about 93 tons. The high altar stands immediately over the tomb of St. Peter. Sect. xiv., “ Göttingen, most likely ”: a celebrated university of Germany, which has produced many eminent Biblical critics. Neander and Ewald were natives of Göttingen. Sect. xvi., —

The letter Aleph, in Hebrew, was suggested by an ox’s head and horns. Gimel, the Hebrew letter G, means camel. Sect. xviii., “ anapæsts in comic-trimeter ”: in prosody an anapæst is a foot consisting of three syllables; the first two short, and the third long. A trimeter is a division of verse consisting of three measures of two feet each. “ The halt and maimed ‘Iketides’ ”: The Suppliants , an incomplete play of Æschylus, called “maimed” because we have only a portion of it extant. Sect. xxii., breccia , a kind of marble.

Christopher Smart.( Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day. 1887.) [The Man.] (1722-1771.) It has only recently been discovered that Smart was anything more than a writer of second-rate eighteenth-century poetry. He was born at Shipbourne, in Kent, in 1722. He was a clever youth, and the Duchess of Cleveland sent him to Cambridge, and allowed him £40 a year till her death in 1742. He did well at college, and became a fellow of Pembroke, gaining the Seaton prize five times. When he came to London he mixed in the literary society adorned by Dr. Johnson, Garrick, Dr. James, and Dr. Burney – all of whom helped him in his constant difficulties. He married a daughter of Mr. Newbery, the publisher. He became a Bohemian man of letters, but the only work by which he will be remembered is the Song to David , the history of which is sufficiently remarkable. It was written while he was in confinement as a person of unsound mind, and was – it is said, though we know not if the fact be precisely as usually stated – written with a nail on the wall of the cell in which he was detained. The poem bears no evidence of the melancholy circumstances under which it was composed: it is powerful and healthy in every line, and is evidently the work of a sincerely religious mind. He was unfortunately a man of dissipated habits, and his insanity was probably largely due to intemperance. He died in 1771 from the effects of poverty and disease. His Song to David was published in 1763, and is quite unlike any other production of the century. The poem in full consists of eighty-six verses, of which Mr. Palgrave, in the Golden Treasury , gives the following: —

[The Poem.] “How did this happen?” asks Mr. Browning. He imagined that he was exploring a large house, had gone through the decently-furnished rooms, which exhibited in their arrangement good taste without extravagance, till, on pushing open a door, he found himself in a chapel which was

Prisoned glory in every niche, it glowed with colour and gleamed with carving: it was “Art’s response to earth’s despair.” He leaves the chapel big with expectation of what might be in store for him in other rooms in the mansion, but there was nothing but the same dead level of indifferent work everywhere, just as in the rooms which he had passed through on his way to the exquisite chapel: nothing anywhere but calm Common-Place. Browning says this is a diagnosis of Smart’s case: he was sound and sure at starting, then caught up in a fireball. Heaven let earth understand how heaven at need can operate; then the flame fell, and the untransfigured man resumed his wonted sobriety. But what Browning wants to know is, How was it this happened but once? Here was a poet who always could but never did but once! Once he saw Nature naked; once only Truth found vent in words from him. Once the veil was pulled back, then the world darkened into the repository of show and hide.

Clara de Millefleurs.( Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. ) The mistress of Miranda, the jeweller of Paris.

Claret.See “Nationality in Drinks”( Dramatic Lyrics ).

Classification.Mr. Nettleship’s classification of Browning is the best I know. It is no easy matter to table the poet’s works: they do not readily accommodate themselves to classification. Such poems as the great Art and Music works, the Dramas, Love, and Religious poems are to be found in this book under the respective subjects.

Cleon.( Men and Women , 1855.) The speculation of this poem may be compared with a picture in a magic lantern slowly dissolving into another view, and losing itself in that which is succeeding it. We have the latest utterances of the beautiful Greek thought, saddened as they were by the despairing note of the sense of hopelessness which marred the highest effort of man, and which was never so acutely felt as at the period when the Sun of Christianity was rising and about to fill the world with the Spirit of Eternal Hope. The old heathenism is dissolving away, the first faint outlines of the gospel glory are detected by the philosopher who has heard of the fame of Paul, and is not sure he is not the same as the Christ preached by some slaves whose doctrine “could be held by no sane man.” The quotation with which the poem is headed is from Acts of the Apostles, chap. xvii. 28: “As certain also of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’” The quotation is from the Phænomena of Aratus, a poet of Tarsus , in Cilicia, St. Paul’s own city. There is also a very similar passage in a hymn of the Stoic Cleanthes: “Zeus, thou crown of creation, Hail! – We are thy offspring.” The persons of the poem are not historical, though the thought expressed is highly characteristic of that of the Greek philosophers of the time. As the old national creeds disappeared under the advancing tide of Roman conquest, and as philosophers calmly discussed the truth or falsity of their dying religions, an easy tolerance arose, all religions were permitted because “indifference had eaten the heart out of them.” Four hundred years before our era Eastern philosophy, through the Greek conquests in Asia, had begun to influence European thinkers by its strange and subtle attempts to solve the mystery of existence. A spirit of inquiry, and a restless craving for some undefined faith which should take the place of that which was everywhere dying out, prepared the way for the progress of the simple, love-compelling religion of Christ, and made every one’s heart more or less suitable soil for the good seed. Cleon is a poet from the isles of Greece who has received a letter from his royal patron and many costly gifts, which crowd his court and portico. He writes to thank his king for his munificence, and in his reply says it is true that he has written that epic on the hundred plates of gold; true that he composed the chant which the mariners will learn to sing as they haul their nets; true that the image of the sun-god on the lighthouse is his also; that the Pœcile – the portico at Athens painted with battle pictures by Polygnotus the Thasian, has been adorned, too, with his own works. He knows the plastic anatomy of man and woman and their proportions, not observed before; he has moreover