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

shadow is cast over present pleasure. Ferishtah strews beans, blackish and whitish, figuring man’s sum of moments good and bad; in companionship the black grow less black and the white less white: both are modified – grey prevails. So joys are embittered by sorrows gone before and sobered by a sense of sorrow that may come; thus deepest in black means white most imminent. Pain’s shade enhances the shine of pleasure, the blacks and whites of a lifetime whirl into a white. But to the objector the world is so black, no speck of white will unblacken it. Ferishtah bids his pupil contemplate the insect on a palm frond: what knows he of the uses of a palm tree? It has other uses than such as strike the aphis. It may be so with us: our place in the world may, in the eye of God, be no greater than is to us the inch of green which is cradle, pasture and grave of the palm insect. The aphis feeds quite unconcerned, even if lightning sear the moss beneath his home. The philosopher sees a world of woe all round him; his own life is white, his fellows’ black. God’s care be God’s: for his own part the sorrows of his kind serve to sober with shade his own shining life. There is no sort of black which white has not power to disintensify. His philosophy, he admits, may be wrecked to-morrow, but he speaks from past experience. He cannot live the life of his fellow, yet he knows of those who are not so blessed as to live in Persia, yet it would not be wise to say: “No sun, no grapes, – then no subsistence!” There are lands where snow falls; he will not trouble about cold till it comes to Persia. But the Indian sage, the Buddha, concluded that the best thing of Life was that it led to Death! The dervish replied that though Sakya Muni said so he did not believe it, as he lived out his seventy years and liked his dinner to the last – he lied, in fact. The pupil demands truth at any cost, and is told to take this: God is all-good, all-wise, all-powerful. What is man? Not God, yet he is a creature, with a creature’s qualities. You cannot make these two conceptions agree: God, that only can, does not; man, that would, cannot. A carpet web may illustrate the meaning: the sage has asked the weaver how it is that apart the fiery-coloured silk, and the other of watery dimness, when combined, produce a medium profitable to the sight. The artificer replies that the medium was what he aimed at. So the quality of man blended with the quality of God assists the human sight to understand Life’s mystery. Man can only know of and think about, he cannot understand, earth’s least atom. He cannot know fire thoroughly, still less the mystery of gravitation. But, it is objected, force has not mind; man does not thank gravitation when an apple drops, nor summer for the apple: why thank God for teeth to bite it? Forces are the slaves of supreme power. The sense that we owe a debt to somebody behind these forces assures us there is somebody to take it. We eat an apple without thanking it. We thank Him but for whose work orchards might grow gall-nuts.

      Ferishtah in the Lyric asks no praise for his work on behalf of mankind. He who works for the world’s approval, or even for its love, must not be surprised if both are withheld. He has sought, found and done his duty. For the rest he looks beyond.

Beatrice Signorini (Asolando, 1889) was a noble Roman lady who married Francesco Romanelli, a painter, a native of Viterbo, in the time of Pope Urban VIII. He was a favourite of the Barberini family. Soon after his marriage he became attached to Artemisia Gentileschi, a celebrated lady painter. One day he proposed to her that she should paint him a picture filled with fruit, except a space in the centre for her own portrait, which he would himself insert. He kept this work amongst his treasures; and one day, wishing to make his wife jealous, he unveiled it in her presence, dilating on the graces and beauty of the original. His wife was a very beautiful woman also, and was not inclined to tolerate this rivalry for her husband’s affections; she therefore destroyed the face of the fair artist in the picture, so that it could not be recognised. Her husband was not angry at this, but admired and loved his wife all the more for this outburst of natural wrath, and soon ceased to think further of his quondam love. Artemisia Gentileschi, daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, lived 1590-1642. She was a pupil of Guido, and acquired great fame as a portrait painter. She was a beautiful woman; her portrait painted by herself is in Hampton Court. Her greatest work is the picture of Judith and Holofernes, in the Pitti Palace, Florence. She came to England with her father in the reign of Charles I., and painted for him David with the head of Goliath. She soon returned to Italy, and passed the remainder of her life at Naples. Baldinucci tells the story of Romanelli.

      Beer. See Nationality in Drinks (Dramatic Lyrics).

“Before and After.” (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) Two men have quarrelled, and a duel is proposed. It is urged that the injured man should forgive his enemy, but a philosophical adviser considers that Christianity is hardly equal to this particular matter: “Things have gone too far.” Forgiveness is all very well in good books, but these men are sunk in a slough where they must not be left to “stick and stink.” As the offender never pardons, and the offended in this case will not, there is nothing for it but to fight. Besides, “while God’s champion lives” (the just man), “wrong shall be resisted” and the wrong-doer punished. These two men have quarrelled, and it is impossible to say which of them is the injured and which the injurer. Wrong has been done – this much is certain; beyond that human judgment is at fault, and the Divine must be invoked. Let them fight it out, then! Of course the poet is speaking dramatically, and not laying down the principle that where we see evil done, especially in our own concerns, we are bound to avenge the wrong. This sentiment is that of the philosophical observer of the feud, though there are phrases here and there quite in accord with Mr. Browning’s axioms: “Better sin the whole sin”; “Go, live his life out”; “Life will try his nerves.” [This teaching is much in the way of that in the concluding verses of The Statue and the Bust (q. v.)] For the culprit there, the speaker says, it is better he should add daring courage to face the consequences of his crime, than by running away from them be coward as well as criminal. He may come off victor, but his future life, his garden of pleasure, will have a warder, a leopard-dog thing (his sin), ever at his side. This leering presence, this “sly, mute thing,” crouching under every “rose wall” and “grape-tree,” will exact the penalty of past sin, and mayhap sting the sinner to repentance. “So much for the culprit.” The injured, “the martyred man,” has borne so much, he can at least bear another stroke – “give his blood and get his heaven.” If death end it, well for him – “he forgives”; if he be victor he has punished sin as God’s minister of justice. In “After,” what is not said is more powerful than any words which could have filled the intervening space between these two poems. The imagination here is all-sufficient. The chill presence of death has altered the aspect of everything. The rush of thought, the casuistry, the intensity of the preceding poem, is all hushed and silent here. Death makes things so real in its presence, masks drop off from souls’ faces, and truth can make her voice heard above the contentions of sophistry. The victor speaks – he has no desire to masquerade here as God’s avenging angel; he recognises that even his foe has the rights of a man, and as the spirit of the dead man wanders, absorbed in his new life, he heeds not his wrongs nor the vengeance of his slayer; the great realities of the other world make those of this world trivial, and the victor estimates at its true value the worthlessness of his conquest. If they could be as they were of old! So forgiveness would have been better and Christ’s command is vindicated – “I say unto you that ye resist not evil.” There are some victories which are always the worst of defeats.

      “Bells and Pomegranates.” Under this title Mr. Browning published a cheap edition, in serial form, of his poems in 1841. The following works appeared in this manner: —Pippa Passes; King Victor and King Charles; Dramatic Lyrics; The Return of the Druses; A Blot in the ’Scutcheon; Colombe’s Birthday; Dramatic Romances and Lyrics; Luria; and A Soul’s Tragedy. (“A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about.” – Exod. xxviii. 34, 35.) “The reason supposed in the Targum for the directions given to the priest is that the priest’s approach should be cautious to the innermost ‘Holy of Holies,’ or Sanctuary of the Tabernacle. The sound of the small bells upon his robe was intended to announce his approach before his actual appearance.” Philo says the bells were to denote the harmony of the universe. St. Jerome says they also indicated that every movement of the priest should be for edification. Mr. Browning, however, intimated that he had no such symbolical