1821 ^ Brouunin^s Rin c\nd The BooK i I I i The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN OCT OCT 11 1974 L161 — O-1096 Prof. ail|arlP0 H. fd&fU J uBRAmr OF THE •miVERSITY OF 1LUN0I$ An Essay ON ROBERT BROWNING'S THE RING AND THE BOOK BY Prof. Charles W. Hodell Published by The Boston Browning Society 1911 Gipyrighted Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/essayonrobertbroOOhode THE RING AND THE BOOK Ten years ago a party of Americans were detained a fortnight in Venice by the illness of one of their number. A nurse was summoned from a neighboring convent to care for the sufferer. One day this nurse told the story of an English Signor to whom she had ministered in final illness several years before — how each night, just before composing himself to rest, he kissed tenderly a gold ring that hung from his watch chain. In a moment of what she afterward seemed to feel was unpardonable confidence, she let slip the name of the Signor — it was the poet Browning. The Ring thus held in all affection had been purchased for Mrs. Browning as a marriage-ring during their early wed- ded life. It bears inscribed as a motto the Greek word aei, ''ever- more". For fifteen years it clasped the finger of Mrs. Browning as the symbol of their union in spirit. At her death, it took its place on the poet's watch chain. It was probably regarded as the dearest relic of life's best bles- sing to him. This ring he chose as the symbol for the fin- ished work of poetic art, and it is named in the very title of The Ring and the Book. Such is the Ring. What then is the Book ? In the open- ing book of the poem Browning himself has partly answered 'Tis Rome-work, made to match (By Castellani's imitative craft) Etrurian circlets. [3] the query, and it is my pleasure to answer it more fully to- day. One June morning of 1860 still fierce mid many a day struck calm Robert Browning after a word of goodbye to his invalid wife on her sofa, passed into the living streets of Florence. Like the man Up at a Villa he revelled in the busy life of the workaday world. Like his poet in How It Strikes A Contemporary he seemed to see everything as he passed along. Through the marketplace of San Lorenzo, thronged with hucksters and second-hand dealers driving a busy trade— a scene represented by the poet in one of the most remarkable pieces of literary photography in the EngHsh language — he passed, (Mark the predestination!) when a Hand, Always above my shoulder, pushed me once, to the finding of the old yellow book. "One glance at the lettered back * * * And, 'Stall,' cried I: a lira made it mine." When Browning told this story to Professor Cor- son, he added the gloss, ''If I had only shaken my head and replied 'too much, too much', I might have had it for half a lira." Thus by an apparent chance and at the ex- pense of "eight pence English just". Browning secured this book which was to be the occasion and center of his crea- tive activity for several of the maturest years of his artistic mastery. Sixteen years ago I first heard my honored master. Prof. Corson, read the account of the Book in the first few hun- dred lines of the poem. At the time, I took the story as a literary hoax, parallel to the Custom House Papers of the Scarlet Letter and to the convenient old manuscripts [4] which were continually falling in the way of DeFoe. But when Dr. Corson told me how he himself had handled the book in the poet's presence, I grew curious to know its contents. All I could find was Mrs. Orr's brief and inac- curate account. After momentary glimpses of the volume in Balliol library in 1895 and 1899, I was at last permitted by the courtesy of the college to make a complete transcript in 1902. Subsequent years have shown more fully the im- portance of the study of book and poem side by side as a revelation of the creative genius of Robert Browning. At last through the generous aid of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, I have had the privilege of making the old yellow book accessible to all who care to see it. This old yellow book is a soiled and bloody page from the long forgotten criminal annals of Rome two centuries ago, a crime kindred to those exploited by flamboyant yel- low journalism for a day, but giving way ere long to other sensations and at last fading into the forgotten. Yet on January 3, 1698, all Rome was athrill with the ghastly gos- sip concerning the murder of the night before, and San Lo- renzo in Lucina was filled with a gaping crowd pushing in to have their gaze at the mutilated Comparini, lying there at the altar. And toward evening when word flashed through the City that the police officers had brought back the five assassins, the throng surged around Guido and the detail of police as they moved toward the New Prisons. For six weeks winehouse and street corner gossip were busied with the procedure of the criminal courts against the Five. Then on February 22, another stirring day, the five were headed or hanged, "decently and in order", before one of the largest crowds (according to a contemporary) that had ever witnessed an execution in Rome. Preceding and leading up to this assassination and ex- ecution there were four years of domestic turmoil between [5] the bourgeois Comparini and the impoverished decadent but noble Franceschini, two houses brought into alHance through the barter and sale in marriage of the child Pom- pilia. A sordid story showing human nature in its mean- est selfishness, a malicious and crafty squabble over some ten thousand scudi, without regard to the child-wife whose position was pitiable and desperate. In the counterplay of trick against trick and of hate and greed against each other no one spared her. Her foster-parents and her hus- band fought through the law courts and by infamous libel to overcome each other. When the seventeen year old wife made her escape from the Franceschini palace in company with a twenty-four year old priest, some semblance of truth seemed to be given to Guido's complaints; the subsequent adultery trial was savory gossip in the Rome of that day. You may thus see that the names of Guido and Abate Paolo, of the Comparini, of Pompilia and Caponsacchi were flung cynically about Rome with sneer and innuendo. Yet after a few weeks, or months at the most, all of them were thrust into the background. They were soon forgotten. Long ere the flight of 160 years when Browning at last found the book, these persons and their story had faded utterly from human memory. The sole record which lay between them and the utter extinction that overtakes the memory of almost all things human, was the time-stained, vellum-covered book that fell into Browning's hands. "^This old yellow book is not at all an ordinary published volume, nor is it the record of an historian or a fictionist preserving a true story. l( It Js^^w^^er's file of documents — a case, assembled as a legal precedenlTon the still much disputed point of murder by reason of an injured sense of honor. The twenty and more single parts thus assembled were of course never duplicated as a collection. The vol- ume was always essentially unique. The collector wa§ [6] ' ' probably the Signer Cencini, a Florentine lawyer, who seems to have been an attorney for the Franceschini. In his library the volume probably first gathered dust. No one can now tell its history during the silent century and a half before Robert Browning found it on a market barrow.''^ A few words then in description of its contents. ^There is a set of fourteen pamphlets, containing the official record of the Franceschini murder trial as it passed from attor- neys to judges in 1698. These pamphlets were probably printed over night or between sessions of the court, and bear the imprint of the official Papal Press. Like our own briefs today they were printed in but few copies and had no circulation j^utside of the court. In the eleven argu- ments by feur lawyers we have al Lbut the complete plead - ings for andag ainst the accused during the mo nth of the murder tria l. They present in the crabbed Xatin of the law courts the technical, sophistical argumentation of the case. There is cunning accumulation of precedent and search for the technical loophole of escape, the shrewd give-and-take of a masterly intellectual game. One em- inent criminal judge who has read them through declares them^tojbe masterpieces of shrewd practice. ^ut_juch human assets as pity , j ustice, jrevereiirp^ mhl^--ffl^ignatioa'"' arejitterly wanting. These lawyers had no concern with the equity of the proceedings and were evidently interested in the case as a chance to show their own skill. Three other pamphlets of the book present, in part, the testimony of the trial. We have here the fragments of evi- dence presented to Guido's Judges on which they were to base their final sentence. There are letters of the Gover- nor, and of the Bishop, and of several citizens of Arezzo, two letters from Pompilia to Abate Paolo, the forged love letters which Guido claimed to have found at the Inn of Castelnuovo, the birth record of Pompilia, the order for [7] her transfer from prison to the home of her foster-parents, and, of far more importance, the sworn testimony of Pom- pilia, of Caponsacchi, and of the witnesses of PompiHa's four days' dying. Here is crude fact and misstatement with- out explanation or interpretation, and subject to countless fluctuations under the stress of conflicting interpretations. The closing pamphlet is the final decree of court eight months after the murder, which asserts that Pompilia was absolutely innocent from the incriminating charges brought against her. Browning refers to this specifically in Book XII and paraphrases its opening lines closely. / Beside these sixteen oflicial documents, the book in- cludes two anonymous Italian narratives, evidently put forth for and against Guido before the bar of current opin- ion in the streets. They were written either by the law- yers or their hacks and were an appeal from the courts to public sentiment. In their strong controlling prejudices for or against Guido they distort fact and motive freely and contain a very distinct suggestion of Half Rome and Other Half Rome. To this printed material the lawyer Cencini added cer- tain manuscript contributions bearing on the case — three personal letters from Rome with fresh news of Guido's ex- ecution, a transcript of the sentence in the Tuscan courts against Pompilia, for her flight from her husband's home, and a title-page and index.'l^ Browning pasted on the front inside cover a drawing of the Franceschini arms sent him by his friend Kirkup, and on the flyleaf placed his signature and a motto from Pindar: "Now for me the Muse keeps her mightiest shaft in store," a motto significant of Browning's own opinion that he found here the greatest of all his opportunities as an artist. Injhis faith he gave to the volume some of the best years of his life. " / ^ [8] ^As will be seen readily from the account given above, the record of the murder is confused, contradictory, hidden by sophistry; it is without form and void from the standpoint of literary art; it might seem essentially revolting to the artistic instincts. Why then did it appeal so immediately and so powerfully to Browning? That it did so is plainly evident from the author's own words in the poem. Scarcely had the lira passed to the dealer when Browning rivet- ted his eyes on his newfound treasure as he stood there by the fountain. With unbroken attention he passed out of the busy market and along the well known streets to Casa Guidi. There all afternoon he *'read and read" until at last The book was shut and done with'^nd laid by On the cream-coloured massive agate, * * * And from the reading * * * I turned, to free myself and find the world, And stepped out on the narrow terrace.^ As he stood beneath the flash of the June lightning out of a black sky, he recreated by power of imagination the long- forgotten tragedy. The life in me abolished the death of things. Deep calling unto deep: as then and there Acted itself over again once more The tragic piece. I saw with my own eyes In Florence as I trod the terrace, * * * How it had run, this round from Rome to Rome. By that one moment of insight the poet recreated at least potentially the tragedy which he was to give to the world eight years later. Why did Browning respond with this immediate inter- est to a book which would have been dull and lifeless to many a reader? For there can be little doubt that this [9] 4 unique volume, in spite of the apparent chance in its find- ing, could hardly have fallen to a man in all western Eu- rope as capable of responding to it, and there is none in whom such an interest would have transcended mere legal and antiquarian curiosity and would have effloresced in a great work of art. The very call of this volume to the per- sonality of Robert Browning is significant, and like all se- crets of personality, lies beyond analysis and the scalpel. Yet we may well consider the question for the light it will throw on Robert Browning. We learn in the Memories of Mr. Herbert Paul that frowning was interested in all the sensational murder tri- als of his day, not the hideous blood-and-bones curiosity which drives thousands through ghastly journalistic records of calamity and crime, we may be sure. But this deep Vsearcher of the soul turned again and again to the problem bf human evil, not merely in the villain's own personality, /but in the total scheme of things. What do these bad hearts mean? Wh at is the placg of evil in a world ruled by a \ benevolent^T)eity ? How is the soul of man thwarted into such deformity and depravity? The problem-poet of the human soul had necessarily to face this greatest of all prob- lems — the depravity of the evil will. It was natural for Browning to inquire: Whence came Guido? Why this greed and brutality? How came it that Guido was finally seized within hairbreadth of escape and punished? Why all the mesh of greed in the society surrounding victim and villain alike in the tragedy? Why all that calling of right wrong and of wrong right? Why the Bishop sealing with official stamp of approval Guido's course of brutality? Why Pompilia's saintliness stained by the hideous doubt of criminal liaison ? Surely the problem of human evil pre- sented itself most interestingly in the record of the Book. \Browning had previously created many a fictitious picture [lo] of evil. But here in authentic documents was the positive \ record of ignoble, brutal crime, — crime which had shown a j good face to the world and had made good effort to escape [ punishment. And around the central splash of blood could be descried a sordid, heartless world, which had shown no sign of pity for Pompilia. The "subtlest assertor of the . soul" had here a problem of the human soul as difficult to/ understand as any he had ever offered his readers. Still further the record of the Book did in its crude and technica l way ju sjt. what Browning had often done in art. ^|Tf searched intently the outward and obvious inci^ dent and act for the secret motive, j These lawyers are Imsied professionally ki interrogating and interpreting the fact before them. What, they ask, did Pompilia mean by the sword thrust at her husband's life? Why was the street door opened to the assassins at the mention of Ca- ponsacchi's name? The mere succession of narrative in the book gives place to detailed analysis of motive. This is what Browning had done repeatedly in his art. The ma- terial, crude as it was, came aptly to his peculiar bent of mind. H^wo ald lay emphasis not on fact, but on the soul- t^ meaning of fact. Such had been his task in Paracelsus, and m FrnJ^^ y and thus he was still to do in Ivan Ivanovitch and Pheidippides. Nor is it improbable that Shelley's poetic handling of the similar story of the Cenci may have served in part to ar- rest Browning's attention, though Browning owes nothing to Shelley in treatment and interpretation. But while there are probably a number of different sources for Browning's peculiar interest in the Book, I feel J convinced that Pompilia was the chief attraction of theL book to him. Although the facts of her pitiable life are] strewn all through the Book, the chief testimony to her/ personality is found in the affidavit of Fra Celestino mad^ ["] four days after the death of Pompilia. The good priest had ministered to the wounded and dying wife for four days, and he bore the following sworn testimony to her character : I, the undersigned, barefooted Augustinian priest, pledge my faith that inasmuch as I was present, helping Signora Francesca Comparini from the first instant of her pitiable case, even to the very end of her life, I say and attest on my priestly oath, in the presence of the God who must judge me, that to my own confusion I have discovered and marveled at an innocent and saintly conscience in that ever-blessed child. During the four days she survived, when exhorted by me to pardon her husband, she replied with tears in her eyes and with a placid and com- passionate voice : "May Jesus pardon him, as I have already done with all my heart." But what is more to be wondered at is that, although she suffered great pain, I never heard her speak an offensive or impatient word, nor show the slightest outward vexation either toward God or those near by. But ever sub- missive to the Divine Will, she said: "May God have pity on me," in such a way, indeed, as would have been incompatible with a soul that was not at one with God. To such a union one does not attain in a moment, but rather by the habit of years. I say further that I have always seen her self-restrained, and especially during medical treatment. On these occasions, if her habit of life had not been good, she would not have minded certain details around her with a modesty well-noted and mar- veled at by me ; nor otherwise could a young girl have been in the presence of so many men with such modesty and calm as that in which the blessed child remained while dying. And you may well believe what the Holy Spirit speaks by the mouth of the Evangelist, in the words of St. Matthew, chapter 7 : " An evil tree can not bring forth good fruit." Note that he says "can not," and not " does not " ; that is, making it impossible to infer the ability to do perfect deeds when oneself is imperfect and tainted with vice. You should therefore say that this girl was all goodness and modesty, since with all ease and all gladness she performed virtuous and modest deeds even at the very end of her life. Moreover she has died with strong love for God, with great composure, with all the sacred sacraments of the [.2] Church, and with the admiration of all bystanders, who blessed her as a saint. I do not say more lest I be taxed with partiality. I know very well that God alone is the searcher of hearts, but I also know that from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks; and that my great St Augustine says: "As the life, so its end." Therefore, having noted in that ever blessed child saintly words, virtuous deeds, most modest acts, and the death of a soul in great fear of God, for the relief of my conscience I am com- pelled to say, and can not do otherwise, that necessarily she has ever been a good, modest, and honorable girl, etc. This tenth of January, 1698. I, Fra Celestino Angelo of St. Anna, barefooted Augustinian, affirm as I have said above, with my • own hand. We can imagine the thrill of pity and indignation which Browning felt as he read on, from the sordid record which had preceded, into this convincing word of vindication. B rowning w asaman^ of stron gl y chivalrous natur e. _ H£ had rebelled already a gainst the ordinary v ersion of The G/oz^gTandjnJiis own yersioiLJiad^un g the glove back in De Corge^s f ac e with no small em phasjs. He had created Count Gismond andTiis gallant rescue of the lady, as an example of the best chivalry of the olden day. He is warm in his admiration of the plebeian chivalry of the threadbare attorney Valence who championed first, starving Cleves and then his Duchess Colombe. With e ven mo re_spirit he drew the humble but gallant adoration of the old huntsman_whq had assisted the flight of the Duchess. Such flashes .of „ BFowfuhg^s chivalrous insti nct had forerug^his gallant re^ cue of Pompilia. In the rS^brd of "the book' he found a wronged and murdered child wife, who had passed from a \ vicious birth through a cruel and depraved nightmare of wedded life into a flight which seemed to compromise her character and brought on her innuendo and shame, and who after suffering brutal assassination had passed into death with such patience and serenity that the attendants blessed her as a saint. Yet Rome's courts and mobs had handled roughly and cynically this "lily-thing to frighten at a bruise". A Browning to the rescue! This was probably Browning's chief motive in writing The Ring and the Book, apart from the artist's inherent sense of a need to express himself. He felt almost passionately for her, and was a rival of his own Caponsacchi. This feeling carries him be- yond the artist's aloofness into open advocacy. Yet though Browning thus responded immediately to Pompilia's cry, he seems for the time to have had little thought of using the material artistically. For a period of several years before and after his wife's death, Browning wrote little. As he slowly recovered from the shock of her death, he prepared the Dramatis Personae, — 1864. During these years of literary silence he told the Franceschini story to many of his friends, with the persistency of the Ancient Mariner : I used to tell the tale, turn gay to grave, But lacked a listener seldom. First he turned the material over to Miss Ogle for a his- torical novel, and there was a novel in the making. Later he offered it in the same way to Trollope; and Allingham says the subject was offered to Tennyson also. "At last," as Browning remarked casually to Prof. Corson, "as they did nothing with it, I made The Ring and the Book". According to Wm. M. Rossetti, the plan of using the ma- terial came to Browning suddenly during the summer va- cation at Bayonne. He did not set himself continuously at the large work till 1864, though a letter of September, 1862, makes clear reference to it. He saw the full plan of the monologues from the beginning and wrote the poem con- secutively as it stands, devoting three hours each morning [h] regularly to his task. Allingham speaks of a 15,000 line poem in 1865, and at the beginning of 1868 saw the com- pleted manuscript. Browning published his work later in this year and in the beginning of 1869. Let us now turn back for a time to face with Browning the majojipiabkmLo f the choice of an art form. What lit- erary genre could best harmonize and embody" the material before him ? The artist's answer to this all-important prob- lem controls the whole future treatment of his subject. He may hamper his creative exercise with many forms of un- organic technical difficulties and may force himself into speaking with a voice unnatural to himself. He is peculiarly liable to this if he is devoted to classic models. On the other hand by free intelligent use of an accepted model, he may have leisure to spend his creative energies in other di- rections. Browning above all other important poets of the Victorian era was free in matters of form ; some have crit- icized him as lawless. He seldom used other men's succes- ses as patterns; he seldom attempted to repeat the formal lines of his own successes. He established new forms and new patterns. One of the causes of his unintelligibility to his critics was that they tried to measure him by the old patterns which he had rejected. They had not the critical originality to follow him in his significant new art forms. Much unintelligent criticism has been ^pent on The Ring and the Book by those who have criticized it as an attempted epic or narrative. I repeat, much that is fundamental in the understanding of the poem is involved in this question of the literary form chosen for the Franceschini story. Browning must have seen, at the very outset, the possibil- ity of a poetic tragedy, and Shelley's Cenci would point in that direction. But Browning, after fair trial, had long be- fore abandoned hope of a successful tragedy, and probably^ [■5] / felt that he could never go beyond A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. . Still further, the story was intricate, minute and subtle, . rather than large and catastrophic, — ^masses of the perplex- L4ng, ignoble truth could have no place in tragedy. The time scheme was too long, the motive was obscure, the action was seldom obvious and continuous. There were almost in- superable difficulties in the way of using the material closely in tragedy. There was also opportunity, as Browning felt, for a his- torical novel. The spaciousness, the freedom, the demo- cratic inclusiveness and analytic possibilities of the novel were all inviting to such a subject. But Browning was a poet and not a prose yyriter by native b^rirar^aF easily be **^enlriliis attenypts_al_^ro^^ He thought in the elliptical, impassioned style of the poet. Yet while Browning could hardly have written a good novel on the subject, his own knowledge of novelistic technique has entered into his art in this poem again and again. He might have turned to protracted poetic narrative, the versified romance. But Browning was little of a storyteller in verse, and has told few stories which will be approved "-■mer^iy-^as-storie^ Story fpr him was incidental, character wasessential. Great interspaces of story were quite negli- gible from his standpoint. So he could hardly have written a connected poetic narrative of the Franceschini crime. Browning did in fact what he had often done before. He made a ''strange art of an art familiar", that is, he reshaped his art of monologue writing after carefully studying the material he wished to present. He planned what we may well call, in lieu of an established critical term, the multi- monologue, or the work made up of successive monologues repeating the same material from a series of different standpoints. The regular drama tells a story from varying standpoints as it interprets successively the incident and [.6] motive through the lips of the dramatis personae ; but each speaker carries the story forward from his cue, rather than repeats what has already been said. Browning by his plan, however, could unfold the story at full length from one significant point of view after another. Browning had never employed this method previously in his monologue writ- ing, though it is easy to see that he might have told of the Flight of the Duchess from the lips of the Duke, of the old Duchess, of the Queen of the Gipsies, or of the young Duchess. He must often have faced thus a choice of one of several standpoints for a monologue story in the making. Why then did Browning decide to tell the story over and over again instead of choosing one significant point of view? Browning's fundamental reason, as I understand it, wa§\ his desire to tell the whole truth of the story, coupled with ^ his matured, philosophic sense of the relativity of truth to personality. Browning had before him a chaos of con- flicting data, incapable of being reduced to any of the for- mal limitations of continuous story. As he repeated the nar- rative from his own standpoint to his friends, he found they took diverse attitudes. Carlyle for example believed \ that Caponsacchi and Pompilia were guilty of criminal in- / trigue. One of my friends has been strongly moved by the I sense of Guido's rights in the matter, and has found him ] hardly blameworthy. Browning realized that such a story was capable of numberless interpretations, which would be based on the interpreter's personal treasury of memory and ideal. He determined therefore, instead of resting satisfied | with a single interpretation of the story, to do what was far / more difficult, to reproduce the story in all the seething, j changing, vital interplay of action, motive, and character./ This is life and not art, life as intricate as it is revealed by/ the subtlest novelists. To present it thus, alt previous poet^ [■7] ( ical forms were inadequate. As it is, in the poem the reader J sits almost as a spectator of real life, forced to judge of / the current of life from his own standpoint, and he must j finally, by a sweeping synthesis of imagination, grasp the \ meaning borne home to himself. This challenge to the reader's active, creative participation is one of the most in- teresting features of the genre thus established. Let me call your attention to the figure of the landscape and of the glass ball given in the latter part of the first book of the \poem. But it is worth noting that the multi-monologue form was suggested by the very book itself. In it you may read op- posing versions of the story in whole or in part, each of them tinged and partly falsified by the personal equation. The Governor, the Bishop, the serving maid, the neighbors in Arezzo give account of the domestic broils in the Fran- ceschini palace. Pompilia and Caponsacchi make parallel affidavits as to their reasons for flight, and these are inter- preted by the lawyers. Each brief presented in the trial is a biassed account. Above all the Book contains two anti- , thetical Italian narratives, the basis of Half Rome and Other Half Rome, and Browning had before him still a third account from a different source. Truth thus lay brok- enly and chaotically in the Book, subject to many shades of personal modification. How strongly this must have brought home to Browning the line of Merlin The truth is this to thee and that to me. Browning may be said to have invented the multi-monologue form to give adequate presentation to the variety of view he found in the book. I have spoken thus at length of Browning's art form, as it illustrates the high plastic adaptiveness which leads the master-artist to abandon the mere patterns of literature to [.8] i- create new and significant types. I should like to develop and illustrate the masterly skill with which Browning creates the countless details which fill in the plan he had wrought. But we must pass on to other matters. We proceed now to consider Browning's way of using the chaotic, but veritable fact of the book which chance had thrown in his way. This may be summarized as scrupulous, painstaking regard for fact, lifted and illuminated by imagi- nation, in vitalizing and interpreting fact as he found it. '^'Y^is accuracy to the matter of fact in the Book can hardly be overstated. Mrs. Orr says he had read the old volume through eight times before he set to writing the poem. This means of course that he had mastered every significant de- tail, no matter how small. No historian could have been more painstaking and conscientious as to his matters of fact. He tells in the poem of his unsuccessful search at Rome for -more light on the case. He evidently did not make such search at Arezzo, or he might have found a few additional fragments — that Caponsacchi was 24 years of age and Guido about forty at the time of the actual incidents. He did find in London one additional pamphlet of somewhat questionable historical authenticity; but he accepted its in- teresting details of additional fact and interwove them into the poem. This secondary source, which Browning does not mention in the poem, was given in part by Mrs. Orr in her Handbook, but I have now offered it in full to the read- ers of Browning. Having gained his facts he was more scrupulously truth- ful in his adherence to them than most artists feel obliged to be. He took no such capital liberties with fact as Scott and Shakespeare continually and advisedly do in their sto- ries of history. He told his own story according to ascer- tained fact before him. He shirked no fact, he juggled with no fact, nor would he shut eyes to inconvenient [•9] and troublesome fact. He took advantage of his. artistic method to give variant versions of fact from the lips of the various speakers. I repeat it, his method is that of the historian, frugal and conscientious of the fact before him. But all of this matter needs more specific illustration. Thirty-three names of persons in the poem are taken un- modified from the Book. These include every important person in the Poem. Even Pompilia's long name on which she dwells for a moment at the beginning of her monologue is real, not fictitious. Likewise every locality in the story in its round "from^ Rome to Rome" is part of the documentary record. Such are the two homes of the Comparini in Via Vittoria and Via Paolina, the church of San Lorenzo, the barbershop in Pi- azza Colonna, the theatre in Arezzo, Caponsacchi's church of the Pieve and all the rest. These localities were merely named, not described in the book; Browning in many cases amplified the locality descriptively from his own observa- tion of the place. Again all dates and the whole time-scheme of the story are taken with scrupulous accuracy. Instead of stating Pompilia's age approximately. Browning makes her say I am just seventeen years and five months old, And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks. This is a simple problem in mathematics between her birth- day, July 17, 1680, and the day of her monologue, Jan. 6, 1698. Pompilia speaks of her happy two weeks between the birth of her babe and her assassination — that is from Dec. 18 to Jan. 2. Caponsacchi in arranging the flight from Arezzo for the night of April 22 says : "There's new moon this eve," implying that the latter part of the night will be dark and suitable for their escape. This date was indeed new moon and Browning had taken pains to have an as- tronomer friend verify the matter. This sort of accuracy [20] I is almost unprecedented among the poets. One significant and interesting change of the actual date must be mentioned : the flight took place in fact about midnight, April 28-9, which the poet changes to 22-23. He also modifies adjacent dates and days of the week to correspond. In thus placing the rescue of Pompilia on St. George's day, the poet has plainly paralleled the story with that of the famous knight of old England. This interpretation is assured by the fact that Browning refers to Caponsacchi five times as St. George. In like manner the remaining facts and incidents of the story are drawn from the same nondescript treasure-house. There the poet found the story of Pompilia's shameful birth, of Guido's failure and Abate Paolo's success at Rome, of the domestic broils at Arezzo, of the comfit- throwing at the theatre, of Pompilia's appeal to the Governor, the Bishop, and the old priest, of Conti's part in preparing the flight and of his death, possibly by poison at the hands of the Franceschini, of the arrest at Castelnuovo and of Pom- pilia's drawing the sword on her husband, with many other matters. The characterization of the minor characters and the more obvious play of motive are also taken essentially, though with suitable amplification, from the record. All the legal aspects of the intricate series of criminal and civil suits which are interwoven in the story are taken from the book. I can find no evidence that Browning went beyond the book to gain the recondite legal lore displayed in the poem, particularly in the monologues of the lawyers, save in one or two cases when he erroneously ascribed Eng- lish legal practice to the Roman procedure. All of Arcan- geli's law Latin, his points of law, his quotations and precedents, with trivial exceptions, are taken from the argu- ments of the real lawyers. We have here an illustration of [zi] 4> how readily a man of genius may acquire an adequate work- ing knowledge of some highly technical field for the pur- poses of his art. The raw material of fact Browning knew and used thus scrupulously. What then of such accuracy as a basis of creative art? Plainly with the example of Shakespeare be- fore us we can assert that such accuracy is a minor virtue in the artist. It is one way, but not necessarily the only or best way, of dealing with material. But it is true that mod- ern critical taste requires a far higher degree of accuracy than was asked in Shakespeare's day in dealing artistically with an ascertainable fact-basis. With books of reference easily accessible and with an accurate working knowledge becoming merely a matter of a very moderate effort on the part of the artist, he is less excusable in his errors of fact. Ben Jonson's great learning could not bring the Sejanus and Cataline on the level of Julius Caesar and Antony, but Jonson's learning without his pedantry might easily have been carried by Shakespeare's art to the improvement of his art. Stephen PhilHps even if he had Shakespeare's peerless insight into the human heart would not be permitted to take imperial liberties with history to-day. But whatever the general law of art in this matter, there can be no doubt that Browning's grip on the fact, his scrup- ulous truth-telling are important in estimating his mind and art. Now that word *^truth" is in fact a keyword in his own explanation of the making of his poem. Accuracy might indeed have made him a mere dull annalist, and scrupulosity has no wings. But as preparation for the final processes of imagination truth is distinctly valuable. We have dwelt at some length on the fact-basis of the Franceschini story; now we will turn to consider Brown- ing's creative and interpretative reaction thereupon — that power of personality whereby fact is transmuted into art, whereby the ingot becomes a ring "right to wear". But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are! And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, That out of the crude bare fact of life, he form not merely new fact and digest of fact, but living, breathing character and ac- tion. Browning himself had studied thoughtfully this mys- terious power — man in the exercise of Godlike creative will. And as he deliberated on the play of his own mind upon the old yellow book, he realized more fully than ever before the meaning of man's creative power. He accordingly took many lines in the opening book of the poem to set it forth to his readers. How much more significant this minute dwelling on the creative processes of his art is than the con- ventional invocation of the Muses! He has embodied his thought in the matter in a figure — an artificer producing an exquisitely chased gold ring by aid of an alloy. The figure of course breaks down if pushed too far. We dwell now only on its central thought — the mingling of alloy with gold. From the book, yes; thence bit by bit I dug The lingot truth, that memorable day, Assayed and knew my piecemeal gain was gold, — Yes; but from something else surpassing that, Something of mine which, mixed up with the mass, Made it bear hammer and be firm to file. I fused my live soul and that inert stuff. Before attempting smithcraft. Such substance of me interfused the gold. A spirit laughs and leaps through every limb, And lights my eye, and lifts me by the hair. Letting me have my will with these. The life in me abolished the death of things. Deep calling unto deep, [23] Such are Browning's various expressions of his own per- sonal power in the act of creation. It is '*my live soul", "such substance of me", and "the life in me", which, as Browning realized, had wrought thus creatively. All his varied power of passion, of intellect, of spirit with all his treasuries of memory in life, in art and in books, all that constituted Robert Browning the man he was, were in- volved in the transmutation of the lawyers' case into a poem. His attitude toward man and woman, his regard for society and institutions, his faith in God and in the moral order of the world cQme intg^play^We can well judge of Robert Browning the man, in his essential nature, as we see his re- action in spirit upon the array of fact he found in the old yellow book. This subject, however, is far too large for us to dwell on it here at length, and we must touch only cer- tain phases of the question as related to the characters of Guido, of Caponsacchi, and of Pompilia. What then of the personal power of Browning in the cre- ation of Guido? The facts of Guido's career are plain enough in the book, his marriage for dowry, his brutality to his wife, his trickery and forgery of evidence to get rid of her, his quailing before Caponsacchi at Castelnuovo, his ig- noble pushing of the adultery charge, and finally his ghastly deed of murder. In spite of all this, good society in Arezzo justified Guido, and the Bishop turned deaf ear to Pom- pilia's appeal. All this grew upon the spiritual vision of Robert Browning as he dwelt not sarcastically, nor satiri- cally, nor formally, but in grave earnest, on the scene. For the poet saw Guido not as a monster nor as an accidentally unfortunate man, but as the hideous outgrowth of a self- seeking, Christless society, in which nobility was no longer a spiritual attribute but a merchantable asset and a shield from the due reward of dishonorable acts; in which mar- riage was no longer a sacrament but a bargain ; in which re- ligion was no longer worship and aspiration but institution- alism built into selfish and self-gratifying power. Here as always Browning was ready to take issue with heartless re- spectability and conformity to the formal code. Guido tears the hypocritical mask from this respectability as he finally raves through his last self-disclosure, and sears as with a hot iron the very conditions which had made him. Brown- ing saw that Guido's associates took as a matter of course his debauched clerical ambitions. Nor did Guido's friends have any abhorrence of his wedding a thirteen year old child Jqr money and turning her away brutally when the^ money escaped him.^y£ut Browning, clear-eyed to see what actually happened, was afire with moral indignation not merely at Guido but at the conventionally respectable world which firs^: made a Guido and then took him as a mat- ter of course>^Vhat next of Guido's act of murder and his defensive plea of injured honor? What of such conven- tional honor, which was a shibboleth in Guido's world as in certain circles to-day ? Browning saw each step of the crime and_uriderstood Guido from his own standpoint. He saw how the long suppressed rage and hatelmrst Torth at the ap- parently opportune moment to gain his crafty, cruel ends. He saw how Guido and his societ}^ understood_the plea of nC)Ble birth and wounded honor to be defense of^vicious- nesSljy subterfuge. This ruthless slaughter of his seven- teen year old wife, the two weeks mother of his own babe with all its accompaniment of craft and brutality is stripped by Browning of its false show of moral resentment. What then of the outcome for such a soul as Guido's ? What was there beyond ghastly mannaia forTiTm? Did Guido die with the compassion of gallant men, as the old letter writer says ? Browning's first feeling toward Guido was probably the imr, pulse of chivalrous indignation in CaponsaccHL^ ^5] i I think he will be found ... Not to die so much as slide out of life, Pushed by the general horror and common hate Low, lower . . . out of the ken of God. Or care of man, forever and evermore! But the feminine element in Browning spoke from the lips of Pompilia For that most woeful man my husband once, * * * I give him for his good the life he takes, iti * * We shall not meet in this world nor the next, But where will God be absent ? In His face Is light, but in His shadow healing too: Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed ! But Browning's earnest yearning in spirit over the black- ness of evil in Guido's soul expresses itself in the words of the Pope: So may the truth be flashed out by one blow. And Guido see one instant and be saved. And finally from all this Browning created that crowning moment — Guido, glaring in wild desperation at the Abate and Cardinal as they crouch in the prison straw, till as the Brotherhood of Death intone their awful Psalm of human supplication: "Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee'*, he shrieked in agony Abate, — Cardinal, — Christ, — Maria, — God, — Pompilia, will you let them murder me? All the masterpowers of Browning's spirit were involved in that close, so different from the tame priestly narrative of the Italian pamphlet. But Browning's live soul is even more manifest in his [a6] presentation of Caponsacchi. We know little of him from the book. His one act in the record is the escape with Pom- pilia — an act gravely reprehensible at the very best from the standpoint of conventional morality, and utterly lacking in due priestly discretion. Then there is his recorded dec- laration as he faced Guido "I am a gallant man, and have done what I have to save your wife from death." His own affidavit has a manly ring and there is an outburst of frank moral indignation when one of the lawyers seems to cast a suspicion upon Pompilia. And indeed the very act was too perilous a breach of both law and duty to have been under- taken in mere gallantry or bravado — we inevitably turn to his own word "it was the duty of a Christian." What then should Browning believe of the Caponsacchi thus recorded ? The cynical sneers of the lawyers, the genuine jealousy of Guido, the probable laughing assurance of criminal intrigue is sensed by the bystanders, face him. Carlyle felt sure that Caponsacchi had intrigued with Pompilia through passion. But Browning's attitude grew out of his own good faith in unselfish chivalry and unspotted puri^. This is far more convincing than the purity and chivalry of Tennyson's King Arthur. —Browning also knew very well that such a char- acter would be quite unintelligible to many who came near him, and they would interpret him according to their de- based ideals. Furthermore Caponsacchi was created in part as a parallel to St. George, the type of lofty Christian chiv- alry. He is a "soldier-saint", rescuing a distressed maiden, and it is "consistent with his priesthood, worthy Christ," that he endeavored to save Pompilia. ^ But still more re- markable is Browning's conception of how this saintliness came into being. It had not come mysteriously as in Ar- thur, nurtured by a Merlin and the fair Queens who em- body all virtue. But Caponsacchi had entered the same great Church as Abate Paolo and Guido, had, after a moment of. [^7] compunction, become an easy going, fashionable priest, de- voting himself to society and performing his religious du- ties perfunctorily. Suddenly on this gay, untroubled life dawned the "sad, beautiful, strange face" of Pompilia, and in a moment the undeveloped better nature was called forth. A new life was born within him, a new taste, a new motive. Browning has hardly attained a greater creative achieve- ment than this picture of the calling forth of the **soldier- saint" from the gallant, courtly priest. To this newborn Caponsacchi the rescuing of Pompilia became a transcen- dent duty, in spite of peril and disgrace for himself. But Browning shows himself again in his conception of the per- sonal attitude of this modern St. George toward the res- cued maiden. The easy conventional way would be to say he had loved her "as the world calls love", and had eloped to gain entire freedom with her. Such is the insinuation and charge of the lawyers in the Book. But there is in fact no evidence that Caponsacchi had any personal regard for / Pompilia other than highminded Christian pity for her des- perate plight. Browning might have rested on this. But he saw more truly. The austere purity of an Arthur might thus rescue a maiden in cold blood. But Browning knew that the gallant young priest, even if he were irreproachably pure, could not help being stirred deeply by the spiritual ef- fluence of Pompilia's character which is shown so plainly in the affidavit of Fra Celestino. She would become an em- bodiment of Madonna, long cherished in spiritual vision but now incarnate before him. He adored her as sacredly, as purely as he did the Virgin. Such a love in Spirit had noth- ing to do with the feeding passion of the body. This was the love which Browning in previous poems had pronounced "best" and the "prize of life". Pompilia and Caponsacchi, without a taint in the flesh, without a flaw in their duties [z8] as wife and priest, love as the angels love, putting forth their high spiritual natures in mutual responsiveness. Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of His light For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise. This becomes in fact the crowning creation of Browning's series of love poems. We must still add a few words as regards Browning, the creator, in his picture of Pompilia. Browning declared with feeling: ''She is just as I found her in the book." But this statement must be modified. Except for the affidavit I have read above, the book gives little of her character, though it tells her outward story plainly enough. Browning was right in holding fast to the significance of Fra Celestino's words. They are convincing in spite of the surprise on dis- covering a saint in such untoward circumstances. Heredity and environment will not explain Pompilia. In fact Brown- ing seldom pays any attention to these great laws of life. Pompilia was a flower blooming among the filth and shards of the world. Her shameful birth, her nurture by Violante, the awful misery of her wifehood, her ignorance — none of these can account for Pompilia, nor does Browning care to account for her. See how this mere chance-sown, cleft-nursed seed, That sprang up by the wayside 'neath the foot Of the enemy, this breaks all into blaze, Spreads itself, one wide glory of desire To incorporate the whole great sun it loves. * * * My rose, I gather for the breast of God. Still more significant is Browning's treatment of her moth- erhood. The book contains the bare fact of the birth of her little boy Gaetano and of his removal to a nurse. But Browning has endowed her with all the richer spiritual treasures of maternity, the first intimations, that "light his [^9] unborn face" sent ahead to illume her darkness, her sense of duty to escape from the hellish misery of the Frances- chini palace, the faith in God generated by the new sense of the value of life, the new sense of Christmas : I never realized God's birth before — How He grew likest God in being born. This time I felt like Mary, had my babe Lying a little on my breast like hers. And this culminates in the serene faith with which, when dying, she rests her babe in the arms of God. We have in Pompilia perhaps the finest study of maternity in English poetry. In several places she is compared with the Virgin, and Browning's conception of Mary the mother of Jesus along with his intimate and devoted sense of the maternal in his wife were foundation for this interpretation. Let me call your attention also to his fine words on the duties of motherhood in Ivan Ivanovitch. It is Browning again, rather than the mere data of the book, who lets us see Pom- pilia during the two cruel days of delay in the arrangement of the flight. What was the imperilled child-wife doing while Caponsacchi was rising through spiritual rebirth into new possibilities? She was putting forth that "Faith held fast despite the plucking fiend" And, all day, I sent prayer like incense up To God the strong, God the beneficent, God ever mindful in all strife and strait, Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme, Till at last he puts forth might and saves. How true this is to the spirit of Fra Celestino's affidavit! Let me add one more illustration of Browning's creative al- loy. Guido secured admission to assassinate the Comparini by using Caponsacchi's name? Were the parents conniving criminally in an intrigue between the lovers? Such is the interpretation of one of the real lawyers. Guido in mock [3°] righteousness declares it was a test to see if he might not finally get some vindication for his wife's innocence. But Pompilia in the poem declares It was the name of him I sprang to meet When came the knock, the summons and the end, "My great heart, my strong hand are back again!" I would have sprung to these beckoning across Murder and hell gigantic and distinct O' the threshold, posted to exclude me heaven: He is ordained to call and I to come! All Robert Browning knew of unstained womanhood, all he had learned of her essential spiritual nature in the fif- teen years of wedded life, came to flower in this Pompilia, the waif of a forgotten crime. And Browning himself speaks in tender benediction over her in the words of his Pope Everywhere I see in the world the intellect of man. That sword, the energy his subtle spear, The knowledge which defends him like a shield — Everywhere ; but they make not up, I think, The marvel of a soul like thine, earth's flower She holds up to the softened gaze of God! Finally a few words concerning the Pope. The book states that final appeal was made in Guido's case to Pope Innocent, who, after three days' deliberation, ordered the sentence to proceed. Browning had also learned from his- tory of the benevolence, the self-denial, the high purpose of this great Pope. But the poet saw, beyond all this fact, the possibility of introducing in him a final deciding voice among the many speakers. Over all this welter of sordid purpose and of cruel act, he presided as the living embodi- ment of Divine authority and justice. He was more than a wise old man, judging by the conventional canons of [31] his day. He saw in absolute vision, not merely the facts of the case in hand, but the church and the society which lay behind it all. Facing God and Eternity, he puts aside his official robes to test his own inner vision — can he see light through all this sin? can he judge unerringly at last? In this spirit the Pope stoops tenderly to Pompilia, he cheers the chivalrous, but unworldly-wise leap of Caponsacchi to the rescue. Last he faces the problem whether he, as a mortal man, dare give sentence against the cowering wretch before him, whom he may thrust into the blackness of dark- ness forever. Something like a cheer Leaves the lips free to be benevolent He bows the head while the lips move in prayer, Writes some three brief lines, signs and seals the same with the hope So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, And Guido see, one instant, and be saved. In conclusion I hardly need add that Browning's person- ality has given significance to all that is best in the poem. His assets within himself were far superior to any such chance gains. It is true he used his raw material with scrupulous accuracy as far as it went. But he knew, as ev- ery artist must, when to leave his materials behind and soar into the ideal. And perhaps the best value of the study of the book is to reassert the liberty and vitality of Robert Browning as a creative master. CHARLES W. HODELL, Goucher College, Baltimore. Delivered before the Boston Browning Society Jan. 19, 1909. [32]