Essays on Robert Browning

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PAGE BROWNING’S PUBLIC . . . . . . . I PARACELSUS . . . . . . . . «© 4! CAPONSACCHI . . . . . eee OQ

Two POEMS ON PAINTERS AND THEIR ART .. 140 ANDREA DEL SARTO . . . . . —S:sC«C62

CHRISTMAS EVE . . . 1. «ee OQ

II. Paracelsus At Basil

** Love’s undoing taught me the worth of love in man’s estate.”

PARACELSUS met Aprile at a turning-point in his life. He stood then where two ways met, and Aprile it was who determined his course. Nine years had passed since he set out with such indomitable confidence,—nine years, and the way had been long and stubborn. Now, though still young, he found himself with “grey hair, faded hands, and furrowed brow.” He had gone on with his eyes so intent upon the distant goal that he had not noticed before how little progress he had made, and how time was passing. The accident of his going to the house of the Greek astrologer at Constantinople first awoke him to the consciousness of _ this.

For this man required of Paracelsus, as of all who came to him for help, that he should note down in a book especially kept for such records, all that he had attained to up to this, the plain hard facts, just the knowledge, practical, tangible, that he had acquired. There was to be no filling up of the blanks by

‘© A brilliant future to supply and perfect All half-gains and conjectures and crude hopes ;”

nothing was to be recorded except that actually gained. And what had he written? A few blurred characters sufficed to record— practically nothing. He had wandered through many lands, and had made a few isolated discoveries, valueless in themselves, mere fragments of truth; and there they lay, all in “a dim heap, fact and surmise together confusedly massed ;”

** And yet these blottings chronicle a life— A whole life, and my life !”

He now stood face to face with a fact that in his confident youth he must indeed have known, but that he had not taken into account, and yet the most obvious and universal of all facts ;—life on earth is limited, and man’s physical powers are limited. There it was, facing him, standing and blocking the way. He had nothing to reproach himself with in his pursuit of the end which he had set before him. He had not “gone slightingly through his task;” he had subdued his life beyond the obligation of his strictest vow, given his nature up,

+6

Consenting fully

All passionate impulses its soil was formed

To rear, should wither ;” his renunciation of love and all the softer elements in life was now more complete than it had been nine years before; for his pursuit of knowledge had developed in him still further a “wolfish hunger after knowledge” much more absorbing than even the craving of his youth had been; and yet he had not reached the goal; he had made no appreciable advance towards it; and his physical powers were failing. And now a miserable doubt comes. Has he been wholly right in this fruitless renunication of all human joys? Thoughts of Festus, of Michal and the loves of his youth, crowd in upon him, caressingly, appealingly. Surely, if God’s sun has shone on his pursuit of knowledge, “o'er that happy strip a sun shone too;”

‘© And fainter gleams it as the «waves grow rough, And still more faint as the sea widens; last I sicken on a dead gulf streaked with light From its own putrefying depths alone. Then, God was pledged to take me by the hand ; Now, any miserable juggle can bid My pride depart.”

And there is a lower depth still which opens out under his feet, a deeper curse. Worse than failure, worse than the weariness of the baffled fighter, the loss of youth and his brave hopes, is the horrible suggestion—have his aims remained pure as ever? has he kept his primal light from waning? why is it that he cannot wish that, though he sink, some other may succeed ? ,

*°O God, the despicable heart of us! Shut out this hideous mockery from my heart !”

Thus, exhausted, perplexed, doubting, despairing, what can he do next? First the idea of rest holds him, and, once entertained, quickly gains ground. How good to dare let down the high-strung brain, to unnerve the harassed, over-taxed frame. But soon he_ gathers strength, and casts the thought from him :—

‘No, no, there needs not this; no, after all, At worst I have performed my share of the task ; The rest is God’s concern ; mine, merely this, To know that I have obstinately held By my own work. The mortal, whose brave foot Has trod, unscathed, the temple court so far That he descries at length the shrine of shrines, Must Jet no sneering of the demons’ eyes, Whom he could pass, unquailing, fasten now Upon him, fairly past their power; no, no He must not stagger, faint, fall down at last, Having a charm to baffle them ; behold, He bares his front: a mortal ventures thus Serene amid the echoes, beams, and glooms ! If he be priest henceforth, if he wake up The god of the place to ban and blast him there, Both well! What’s failure or success to me? I have subdued my life to the one purpose Whereto I ordained it; there alone I spy; No doubt, that way I may be satisfied.”

But how go on? He has fed “a fire meant to hold out till morn arrived with inexhaustible light,” and “lo, I have heaped my last, and day dawns not.”

It is at this point, when to stop and when to go on seem alike impossible, that he meets Aprile; and Aprile pours into his ears his gospel of love—love—love. Aprile too has missed the goal; but his aim was not that of

Paracelsus, nor were their weak points the same. “I would love infinitely, and be loved,” is his own statement of his aim. He has in short seen only too well the exceeding value of all that Paracelsus has despised and neglected. He has bathed himself, lost himself, in “the loveliness of life.” The beauty of the robe, that wondrous garment in which truth clothes herself so as to be visible to ‘mortal eye, that robe which Paracelsus could not see for straining after the vision of the form which it clothed, was to Aprile all-sufficient. He had failed to learn that knowledge must go hand in hand with love; and that to realise in its fulness even the frailest joy, there must be earnest endeavour and patient toil. But unlike as he was to Paracelsus, and unlike as his aim had been, he nevertheless resembled Paracelsus in this, that he too failed to realise that he must work within life’s limitations, never satisfied, but never despairing. He had gazed presumptuously on the face of beauty herself, and nothing less could satisfy him. He could not carry out the petty task of embodying imperfectly one small fraction of beauty, and giving it to the world, while all around him G shapes innumerable pressed, dazzling him, blinding him, visions of beauty which no means within his reach could adequately represent. And now, in spite of his rich endowments, gifts bestowed on him to be used in the service of his fellow men, he is dying, having accomplished nothing. But at the last the primal light waxes only the brighter. Failure has begotten in him no doubt as to the value of that which he has aimed at. Too much love was his undoing ; and yet, with no uncertain voice, but unhesitatingly, emphatically, he asserts the end of life to be love.

And to Paracelsus love’s undoing, in the case of Aprile, first teaches “the use of love in man’s estate.” Thus must the years have thrown much light for him on the significance of failure. Aprile dying because blinded by love and the loveliness of life, only serves to show to Paracelsus the exceeding value of all the sensuous side of life, of all that he has neglected. Not that it shakes his faith in his own aim; rather they are the two parts of a dissevered world,—parts which God has joined together here on earth, in indissoluble union, and which Paracelsus and Aprile had both tried to rend asunder.

The direct result of the influence of Aprile upon Paracelsus was that he now determined to work while he had the light, “for the night cometh ;” and to give his gains, all meagre and imperfect as they were, to the world. Later he describes this passage in his life to Festus. Just at this time a passionate regret for youth and health and love so vainly lavished was foremost in his thoughts ;

“cs and this strange fact Humbled me wondrously, and had due force In rendering me the less averse to follow

A certain counsel, a mysterious warning— You will not understand—but ’t was a man With aims not mine and yet pursued like mine, With the same fervour and no more success, Perishing in my sight ; who summoned me As I would shun the ghastly fate I saw,

To serve my race at once; to wait no longer That God should interfere on my behalf,

But to distrust myself, put pride away,

And give my gains, imperfect as they were, To men.”

For this was the lesson that Aprile’s own wasted life had taught him :— cT7

Nay, listen, Knowing ourselves, our world, our task so great, Our time so brief, ’t is clear if we refuse

The means so limited, the tools so rude

To execute our purpose, life will fleet, Ard we shall fade, and leave our task undone. We will be wise in time:”

Paracelsus now determines to profit by this warning. Since he can never do all that he once hoped to do, he will at least do that which lies within his power. To this end he now accepts the chair of medicine at the University of Basil.

Here he enters upon a life entirely new, and one for which all that has gone before has in no .wise fitted him. For his real knowledge is vast, shadowy, incommunicable ; while the empirical knowledge, scraps, odds and ends, the few secrets that he has acquired by the way, form no consistent scheme, and yet they are all that he can give to the world. But just this knowledge was received with enthusiasm by his hearers. The age was not scientific ; and certain real discoveries in chemistry, as well as certain real cures effected by him, soon won for him a reputation that made him feel strong enough to attack openly all the systems of medicine that had preceded him. For this he was applauded both by those to whom his cures seemed marvellous and also by those in whom the spirit of revolt was strong; and soon we find the theatre at Basil thronged with eager students who press round the new master,—

‘* The wondrous Paracelsus, life’s dispenser, Fate’s commissary, idol of the schools And courts.”

With all this a new pitfall opened out under his feet, one least expected by him, and against which he was least on his guard. Who could have dreamed that he, who despised anything which fell short of the one. true knowledge, absolute and complete, could be flattered by this homage paid to knowledge which he knew was in itself valueless ? He, who had gazed at the true wisdom full in the face, how could he have foreseen that he could ever descend to posing as a wonderworker, because he was in possession of a few chemical secrets which so far the rest of the world knew nothing of? It was a profound student of human nature who once said —‘* Be on your guard against that fault which you think you are most free from.” Paracelsus seems to have succumbed to the unexpectedness and the suddenness of the onslaught. The transition from the weary, fruitless searching for the unattainable to rest —a resting upon that gained, however small, —from the constant, grinding sense of failure to the atmosphere of eager recognition, must have brought balm to the weary spirit; and the flowery path in the valley once entered upon, it was hard to return to the arid desert or the rugged mountain side. But the man who “ pressed God’s lamp close to his breast” could not rest upon this. He might sink, but he could not sink and be happy. The picture of Paracelsus at Basil presents a psychological study of the deepest interest, crowded with apparent inconsistencies, but for this reason all the more true to human nature, a study in which cross lights meet and seem to clash, while now this, now that side of a many-sided nature presents itself. One prominent point to notice is that the influence of Aprile in urging upon him the part which love ought to play, and does in fact play, in human life, has acted only partially and ineffectively. He had seen with a sudden flash his own deep error in ignoring all this side of life, and had quickly determined to live differently. But to give one’s life an entirely new bent is a thing easier to resolve upon than to carry through ; nor is it always a safe or a wise thing to endeavour to sortir de son gente. Paracelsus and Aprile had each of them a distinct individuality, which neither could escape from. God speaks with many voices to many men. He had spoken to Aprile through the loveliness of life; he had spoken to Paracelsus in visions of the night. The voice was one, but the form in which each heard it bore the impress of the personality of each. There is an indescribable pathos in the words with which Paracelsus describes his efforts to give his life this new bent :—

**God ! how I essayed To live like that mad poet, for a while, To love alone; and how I felt too warped And twisted and deformed !

I cannot feed on beauty for the sake Of beauty only, nor can drink in balm From lovely objects for their loveliness ; My nature cannot lose her first imprint ; I must still hoard and heap and class all truths With one ulterior purpose: J must know ! Would God translate me to his throne, believe That I should only listen to his word

To further my own aim! For other men,

Beauty is prodigally strewn around,

And I were happy could I quench as they

This mad and thriveless longing, and content me

With beauty for itself alone: alas!

I have addressed a frock of heavy mail,

Yet may not join the troop of sacred knights ;

And now the forest creatures fly from me,

The grass-banks cool, the sunbeams warm no more.” He feels that he has lived for knowledge and failed ; that he has tried to live for love, and failed ; thus he is betrayed by both. He is experiencing all the worse effects of following the advice of Aprile, and none of the better. He has curbed his spirit’s flight, and consented to fill “the petty circle lotted out of infinite space,” which is all that life here at Basil offers to him, and yet he cannot live the ordinary life of ordinary men and women— loving, fearing, hoping, trusting ; and he cannot love these men whom he feels to be so far beneath him, and in whom love shows itself in a form so different from his conception of what it ought to be. For he has entered upon the thought of Aprile with the same headlong impetuosity which has always characterised him. He understands no compromise.

If love is all, love must be pure and strong, or it is worthless; and because he cannot see that it is this in any of his fellow-men, he rejects it utterly in them.

And now the lower consolations incident to such a life become clamorous, and he is not deaf to their voices. While despising the adulation which he received, he yet likes it and encourages it, having so far fallen away from his once proud attitude as to feel that, since he can no longer look for the true recompense, he may at least accept those crumbs by the way, due to him from a world that he has used himself up in serving. And there is a lower depth still; for the claims of the flesh which he seems to have crucified in vain, now become urgent. Now that he has found out that that for which he has foregone all youthful appetites is unattainable, the low thought suggests itself,—at least why not enjoy? If the highest satisfaction, if true happiness is impossible, pleasure, at least, is always within one’s reach:

** Vet, I deny not, there is made provision Of joys which tastes less jaded might affect ; Nay, some which please me too, for all my pride— Pleasures that once were pains: the iron ring Festering about a slave's neck grows at length Into the flesh it eats, I no longer hate go ESSAYS ON BROWNING.

A host of petty vile delights, undreamed of

Or spurned before; such now supply the place

Of my dead aims: as in the autumn woods

Where tall trees used to flourish, from their roots

Springs up a fungus brood sickly and pale,

Chill mushrooms coloured like a corpse’s cheek.” Thus he is incapable of sharing in the higher joys of actual flesh and blood existence, while the lower hold him in thrall.

And through all this the light burns bright. He never deceives himself. He knows that all his outward success is degradation: |“ As though here did not signify defeat!” he retorts with impatience to Festus, good, simple Festus, who sees in the high position of Paracelsus at Basil just all that he has longed for and dreamed of for him; and who, when Paracelsus talks of defeat, urges—‘ Still I find you here!’ as an incontrovertible proof of success. Paracelsus has no such illusions; no apparent success blinds him for a moment. It is not so much that these people praise him for powers that he does not really possess, it is that, even if he possessed them, there is still the break-down of his general aims, a failure in him to reach that for which God intended him. It is the ever-present sense of this, the

PARACELSUS. gI imperishable power of his boyhood’s vision, that keeps him from the lowest depth of all :—

“* After ali, Festus, you say well: I am A man yet: I need never humble me. I would have been—something, I know not what; But though I cannot soar, I do not crawl. There are worse portions than this one of mine. You say well! . . and deeper degradation ! If the mean stimulants of vulgar praise, If vanity should become the chosen food Of a sunk mind, should stifle even the wish To find its early aspirations true, Should teach it to breathe falsehood like life-breath— An atmosphere of craft and trick and lies ; Should make it proud to emulate, surpass Base natures in the practices which woke Its most indignant loathing once . . . No, no! Utter damnation is reserved for hell! I had immortal feelings ; such shall never Be wholly quenched : no, no!”

Why then does he remain at Basil? one asks with Festus. For many different, almost conflicting’ reasons. It is really a counsel of despair, His earliest aims are unattainable; the new life for love has proved itself impossible; here, at worst, he does “most good and least harm;” and here he is not wholly cut off from his old dreams; “their faint ghosts can sit and flatter him, and send him back content to his dull round.” He cannot, it is true, join the band of sacred knights; but still he may “follow, dreaming that ere night arrive he will o’ertake the company, and ride glittering as they.” It is this hope, the hope that he may one day aspire again, may one day enter again upon the life he has left which alone sustains him now, alone saves him from sinking beyond recall. And here he is doing, if not all that he hoped when he first adopted Aprile’s advice, at least something ; he is teaching what he can, meagre as it is. He is not doing it well, because his life’s training has not taught him how to impart knowledge; and his “uncouth habits,” his “ small skill to speak,” his “impatient spirit” render him ill-fitted to be a teacher ; but, well or ill, he is working for other men, Even this, however, affords him but little satisfaction, while it is a continual occasion of stumbling to him. For the only knowledge which he can impart is not his best :—

**T possess Two kinds of knowledge ;—one—vast, shadowy, Hints of the unbounded aim I once possessed ; The other consists of many secrets, caught While bent on nobler prize, perhaps a few Prime principles which may conduct to much. These last I offer to my followers here.”

But just these secrets are what the vulgar voice exaggerates into miraculous powers ; hence the temptation to vanity, deceit, and all the degrading depths that follow.

Thus is the tortured soul torn asunder by conflicting forces ;—his old aims ever beckoning to him in the distance; the flagging body ever present with its monotonous, iron-tongued rejoinder,—“ Thus far shalt thou go, and no further ;” the lower gratifications both of mind and body ever within his reach ; and the lower impulses within him too strong to be continually repressed, since repression avails nothing towards his old ends; and through it all the consciousness that he has missed much in life that can never be regained for the sake of that which he will never attain to.

And yet what an incalculable advance in insight he kas made since, a boy of nineteen, he first looked out upon the world. The pain and turmoil of the last few years have wrested some secrets from life which the boy’s keen eyes, gazing far afield, had overlooked. He is slowly but inevitably learning this lesson, that no man lives to himself,—learning how a man may best live his life in a world where “we see through a glass, darkly.” His first proud impulse was to see all, to know all. Well, he has gone out, he has striven his bravest; and yet he does not see; and the power that is stronger than he is none the less strong for that. Further, he now realises that he will never know with that perfect knowledge which alone can be a sure guide, if knowledge is to be the guide at all; and with this conviction comes, as it must come, a realisation that not knowledge is the especial mark of man at his highest ; that man, being imperfect, and living in a world where perfect knowledge is impossible, must seek his being’s true harmony some other way :

‘*Were man all mind, he gains A station little enviable. From God Down to the lowest spirit ministrant, Intelligence exists which casts our mind Into immeasurable shade.”

It is true that “the imperious thinking power’ still holds him in thrall, because he cannot free himself; but he knows that it is thraldom; and he knows that this way he can never be satisfied. He is realising in his own life the workings of a truth which he has always recognised. For he has always known that if God, for his own good purpose, does separate “man’s pin-point rock of love and power” from his own “boundless continent,” yet that the rock and the continent are one; but, in spite of this, he has isolated himself, and lived self-centred and self-dependent ; and instead of looking upon himself as one member of an innumerable company, all deriving a common life from the one eternal source of life, he has aspired to stand alone and in his own right to know. Such a man may indeed live in the world, but he has cut himself off from the springs of life. There is no truer truth than just this,—the meek shall inherit the earth. Those who have best realised their dependence, and who live their lives recognising their true relationship to God and to their fellow-men, to them does this life yield its best. For these two things go together. The higher a man rises towards the one eternal source of life, the more does he respect the weakest signs of life in his fellow-men, knowing well whence it springs. It is he who has separated his own light from the boundless sea of light around him who despises the half-lights of others. This Paracelsus now knows, although he cannot act upon it; and since knowledge is dethroned from its high place, all the other essentially human attributes assert their claim,—love, by which the being of a man goes out, reaches beyond itself, giving itself to, and thus possessing all things—that which binds all the world in one, as the calm ether binds the stars together; hope, which makes the darkness bright; fear, which warns a man at noon-day that the night comes; faith, which gives sight to the blind,—

‘* Love, hope, fear, faith,—these make humanity ; These are its sign and note and character.”

These, the essential conditions of a state of training and probation, are the faculties in the possession and exercise of which alone a man can place himself in harmony with the rest of the universe ; and he who attempts to lift himself above them runs counter to all the forces which are at work around him.

And the recognition of this carries with it for Paracelsus a juster estimate of his own work and that of others. He still knows that he is one of those especially dowered for an especial task ; but the conviction that he himself, in this short life, will never complete that task, causes him to look with new eyes upon the imperfect work of other men, and enables him to assign to himself his true place and rank among them :

** Come, I will show you where my merit lies. Tis in the advance of individual minds That the slow crowd should gain their expectation Eventually to follow ; as the sea Waits ages in its bed till some one wave Out of the multitudinous mass, extends The empire of the whole, some feet perhaps, Over the strip of sand which could confine Its fellows so long time : thenceforth the rest, Even to the meanest, hurry in at once, And so much is clear gained. I shall be glad If all my labours, failing of aught else, Suffice to make such inroad and procure A wider range for thought : nay, they do this ; For, whatsoe’er my notions of true knowledge And a legitimate success, may be, I am not blind to my undoubted rank When classed with others : I precede my age : And whoso wills is very free to mount These labours as a platform whence his own May have a prosperous outset.”

Thus far has he advanced since the time when he “rejected and spurned utterly” the work of other men; and when later, in the astrologer’s cell, he could not wish that, though he failed, some other might succeed. He does not deny his own rich endowments; he knows that he H can go further than other men, but only as one wave of the sea can go some feet further than its fellows; and he knows that an age which shall succeed him will go further than he.

But ali this knowledge gained by experience lies confusedly heaped together. It has not so far grouped itself into a consistent scheme of life that can be acted upon. To Paracelsus now one, now another aspect of the truth has presented itself, but the whole lacks cohesion and rounding off; and the lesson is not yet learned until all shall have been woven into a consistent whole, and applied to practical, every-day life. His state of mind when he was at last driven from Basil, exposed as a quack, followed by the scorn of those who a short time before had extolled him as a god, shows how little practical effect all this new light had upon him. The strongest and most absorbing feeling in his soul was hatred of those whose stupidity had failed to recognise all that was true in him. For it was when he tried to be true that they rejected him:

*¢Just so long as I was pleased

To play off the mere antics of my art, Fantastic gambols leading to no end,

I got huge praise: but one can ne’er keep down Our foolish nature’s weakness. There they flocked, Poor devils, jostling, swearing, and perspiring,

Till the walls rang again; and all for me!

I had a kindness for them, which was right;

But then I stopped not till I tacked to that

A trust in them and a respect—a sort

Of sympathy for them; I must needs begin

To teach them, not amaze them, ‘to impart

‘The spirit which should instigate the search

‘Of truth,’ just what you bade me! I spoke out. Forthwith a mighty squadron, in disgust,