Style" (page 386), is a dramatic monologue spoken by a dying person to a single listener.

(394.) 6. down: a bare hill; here, near the

sea.

7. creak of the chain: See line 35. (395.) 34. the mail: the mail-coach.

50. the creatures: See line 39. (396.) 65-66. He'll never put on the black cap etc. Alluding at once to the Judgment Day and to an English court of justice, where the judge puts on a black cap before sentencing a prisoner to death.

72. The wind etc.: Cf. lines 1-2.

73. Election and Reprobation: the Calvinistic doctrine of God's election (choice) of certain individuals to be saved, while the majority suffer reprobation (are consigned to eternal punishment). The lady has continued the theme she opened in line 60.

79. I have been with God in the dark: Cf. line 17; and "In Memoriam," XCVI, lines 17-21 (page 350). - The theme of darkness that runs through the poem culminates in this line; but it is reechoed in the next stanza.

83. he used but to call in the dark: Cf. lines 3-6.

"FRATER AVE ATQUE VALE"

For the title, see the note on "In Memoriam," LVII, page 726, above.-Desenzano is a town on Lake Garda, Italy, not far from the narrow peninsula of Sermione (Latin: Sirmio) where Catullus had his country-house.

2. venusta: lovely. The quoted phrase is from Catullus.

8. Lydian: alluding to luxurious Lydia in Asia Minor, whence were supposed to have come the ancient Etruscans of the Lake Garda district. Lines 8-9 are modelled on Catullus.

TO VIRGIL

"Written at the request of the Mantuans for the nineteenth centenary of Virgil's death" (Tennyson). - Virgil was born in Mantua and is here addressed as "Mantovano" (line 19), i.e., Mantuan.

"The whole poem is very personal. The passages about 'Faith' and the 'Passion of the Past' were more especially my own personal feelings. This 'Passion of the Past' I used to feel when a boy" (From Tennyson's note. See Memoir, II, 319). — By commenting, through the mouth of a supposed ancient philosopher, upon successive passages of a lyric that renders the skeptic and hedonistic view of life alluringly, Tennyson succeeds in presenting his matured wisdom with fine charm and catholicity.

17-18. Some death-song for the Ghouls etc.: Cf. lines 4-5, 195-198.

31-39. If thou wouldst hear the Nameless etc.: This passage is like an after-meditation upon the experience given in "In Memoriam," CXXIV (page 358). (398.) 45-46. more mystic etc.: The unaccountable phenomenon just described, since it belongs to the realm of knowledge and speculation, seems stranger to the Sage than self and God (the Nameless), of whom he can have direct experience (lines 32-34).

49. seest: in distinction from the hearing implied above (line 34). The same sort of distinction is made in "The Higher Pantheism" (page 390).

83-90. That none but gods etc.: A firmer expression of the idea rendered in "The Passing of Arthur," lines 13-21 (page 378).

(399.) 106-110. My words are like the babblings etc.: In this "dream-world" of ours, we cannot talk coherently of the eternal; but we can act in harmony with it. 131. had: would have. 178-182. and we, the poor earth's dying race etc.: Cf. "In Memoriam," CXVIII, 1-7 (page 357).

(400.) 212-213. the silent Word etc.: silent but universal intimations of eternity in the human spirit (as distinguished from external revelations; cf. in "In Memoriam," XXXIV-XXXVI, page 331).

229-239. For more than once etc.: Another account of this mystic experience of Tennyson's boyhood is given in a short poem called "The Mystic" (1830). Later experience of the same sort is reflected in "Sir Galahad" (page 319), and "In Memoriam," XCV (page 348). A penetrating treatment of the subject will be found in Paul Elmer More's essay on Tennyson (Shelburne Essays, vol. VII).

231. The word etc.: his name.

BY AN EVOLUTIONIST

Compare the close of the preceding poem (lines 276-285). — Observe the reason for having the man, instead of "Old Age," do all the speaking in the last stanza.

FAR-FAR-AWAY

Compare "The Ancient Sage," lines 214228 (page 400). The idea has something. in common with that of Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" (page 40); but Tennyson's tone and emphasis are different.

THE MAKING OF MAN

The same idea as in "In Memoriam," CXVIII (page 357); but with a different emphasis.

DOUBT AND PRAYER

(403.) 10-12. Let blow the trumpet etc.: alluding to the taking of Jericho (Joshua, Chapter vi).

CROSSING THE BAR

Tennyson requested that this be placed at the end of all editions of his works. It may profitably be compared with the other short poems of 1889-1892 (pages 401403) to which of them is it most closely related?

6. Too full for sound: Cf. line 3. 7. drew: For the verb "draw" in similar context, see "In Memoriam," CIII, 38.

8. Turns: suggests the turning of the tide, as well as the soul, seaward.

13. bourne: a bounded territory, in contrast with "boundless deep" (line 7). — And "our" is in contrast with the singular pronoun of the context.

15. my Pilot: "that Divine and Unseen who is always guiding us" (Tennyson).—face to face: in contrast with the dim reflections seen in this life; cf. First Corinthians, XIII, 12.

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889)

Most of his life, Browning's environment was that of the city, and of men and women. Three years after Tennyson was born amid the gently undulating wolds of Lincolnshire, the other great Victorian poet was born in a suburb of London. Of formal schooling he had little in his early years, nor did he attend either of the two chief universities. The most telling part of his education he acquired at home, largely through his remarkable father, a clerk in the Bank of England, who was a devoted reader in both classical and modern literature, a maker of eighteenthcentury verse and of fantastic rhymes, an amateur draughtsman skilled in portraiture and caricature, a collector of prints and of old and curious books. Browsing in his father's library, the young Browning acquired a large and irregular fund of learning, upon which he was to draw freely in the years of his poetic apprenticeship and later. To the influence of his mother, we may partly ascribe his life-long love of music. His love of the art of painting, also life-long, was encouraged and trained by visits to the Dulwich Gallery, then the

leading public gallery in England - "the gallery I so love and am so grateful to, having been used to going there when a child far under the age allowed by the regulations." The effects of this early urging of his artistic instincts, and of his unsystematic education through books, are written plain throughout his poetry.

In his first poems, the dominant spirit was that of Byron; but presently chancing upon a volume of Shelley, he devoted himself to that "Sun-Treader" (as he styled him in his first published work, Pauline) with unreserved ardor, avowing himself an atheist and vegetarian, and emulating his soaring idealism and eager, prismatic diction. With Pauline (1833) the obvious influence of Shelley ends; but Browning ever retained his veneration for his early master (as the poem "Memorabilia," page 430, suggests), and doubtless continued to feel his influence as an ingredient in his own art and outlook on life. Two years after Pauline, he already stood before the world in his own right: in Paracelsus, 1835, the Browning that we know is fully present.

Though Browning's reputation grew more slowly than Tennyson's, it began with Paracelsus, published when he was but twenty-three. The poem was admired by the actor Macready, who urged Browning to write a play. Possessing dramatic talent without being a born playwright, Browning now gave some eight years mainly to the composition of dramas, of which the first was Stafford and the most successful, for the stage, The Blot on the 'Scutcheon. Meanwhile, he was engaged on Sordello, a long and obscure study of the forgotten Italian poet of that name, and writing short poems that he labelled "dramatic lyrics" and "dramatic romances." These short poems showed where his strength really lay: in the form now commonly known as the dramatic monologue, a form in which one person speaks, not to himself, as in soliloquy, but to one or more other persons, and in the course of which he tells a story, more or less allusively, and reveals his own character and that of others. A typical instance is "My Last Duchess" (page 410). In 1845 Browning made the acquaint

ance of the poetess Elizabeth Barrett, engaging in a vivid correspondence (Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, 1845-46) that later became famous. In 1846 they were married, and proceeded to Italy, which was to be their home for the fifteen years that ended in Mrs. Browning's death. It was during these years that Browning produced his best work, the volume of Men and Women (1855), dedicated to his wife in an epilogue called "One Word More." It was followed, three years after his bereavement, by Dramatis Personae (1864); and presently he completed his extraordinary narrative poem of over 21,000 lines, The Ring and the Book (1868-69), — consisting of a series of long dramatic monologues, in which the same story, an obscure old Roman murder story, is represented as interpreted by the participants and various outsiders, each seeing the truth in his own refracting way. Though uneven in interest and excellence, it contains some of Browning's most notable achievements, the monologues of Caponsacchi, Pompilia, and the Pope.

After The Ring and the Book, — from 1870 to his death, Browning pushed to the extreme his inclination for the minutely psychological and the perversely rough and unmusical. Yet his lyrical gift, which had early displayed itself in the songs of "Paracelsus" and "Pippa Passes," and had run in a recurrent thread of lovely melody through the series of dramatic monologues, never deserted him wholly: he was still capable of fine lyric jets that carry us back to Shelley and the Elizabethans. He was also, in these last years, paying his tribute not to be expected from one of his temperament and turn of mind the classics, translating, into difficult English, plays by Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes. At least one quality, however, he shared with his Greeks: he was eagerly delighted in the world; and he was unafraid to leave it ("Epilogue," page 472).

PARACELSUS

to

The extracts are from the dying speech of Paracelsus, the mystic and scientist. He

utters those ideas of joy, development, power, and love that run through Browning's subsequent poetry.

(404.) 661. cyclops-like: The The Cyclops were one-eyed giants, the eye being circular and in the middle of the forehead; they labored as smiths, sometimes in workshops under Mount Etna.

672. dorrs: beetles with a black, shiny surface.

(405.) 712-715. And from the grand result etc. From the nature of man, since it is the outcome of all, an illumination is shed upon the nature of the inferior creatures.

729. but: but that (i.e., without suggesting to the hearer that, etc.). (406.) 771-772. But in completed man

to God: This sentence sums up the thought of the context, which is as follows: (1) The first phase of human development is social and natural. It will be complete when the natural powers of all men, as members of a social organism, shall be "full-blown" (lines 747-764). (2) The second phase, which overlaps the first, is individual and, in a sense, supernatural. It means that great individuals shall follow splendid ideals not realizable in this world (lines 773-779); shall overtop the narrow conventions that regulate society (lines 779-782); and shall be the means of "saving" ordinary men (lines 783-785). (406.) 871-884. In my own heart etc.: See part (2) of the preceding note. Paracelsus explains why he, though a great individual, failed in his social function. Compare lines 697-704.

Ratisbon in Bavaria was captured by assault in 1809, after being obstinately defended by the Austrians. In the actual incident the hero was a man.

(408.) 29. flag-bird: Napoleon's standard was the tricolor with the figure of an eagle in the central stripe.

THE LOST LEADER

Suggested by Wordsworth's case; but the motives here assigned for the Leader's change of politics (lines 1-2) were not intended to apply to him. Even in advanced years Browning continued to deplore Wordsworth's conversion to Conservatism. See Wordsworth's "Protest against the Ballot" (page 56); and Shelley's "To Wordsworth" (page 173). (409.) 8. Rags were they purple etc.: explained by line 2.

SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH

CLOISTER

(409.) 8. Hell dry you up etc.: The metric stress is upon "you," which is thus thrown into contrast with "that rose" (line 6).

10. Salve tibi! Save you! (greeting before the meal).

39. Arian: a follower of Arius (256-336), whose doctrine, in contrast to orthodox Trinitarianism, was that the Son was created by and inferior to the Father. - How does the religiosity of lines 37-40, and elsewhere, agree with the rest of the speaker's character? (410.) 49. a great text in Browning had in mind such

Galatians III, 10, etc.

Galatians: passages as

(411.) 45. commands: A comment by Browning shows that he himself did not conceive the exact nature of these commands.

CRISTINA

The name was suggested by the Princess Christina of Naples (1806-1878), afterwards Queen of Spain, who was a handsome coquette. the sea

11-14. no vile cant feels: Certainly (he asserts) her look did not convey the following pretentious sentiment: "You are a bleak, lone shore, which I, the great sea, feel the need of enriching with my trivial favors" (seed-pearl).

15. such souls: such sea-like souls as mine (Cristina's).

32. That away etc.: Which the other impulses (toward honor, etc., lines 27-28) have trifled away.

39. It stops etc.: Supply "which" at the beginning of the line, and "by means of" before "this."

(412.) 44. if you choose it: if you choose the "prospect" (line 43); i.e., if you prefer the "ends" and "blisses" of life after death to those of this life.

49. next moment: in contrast to the great moment (lines 18-48).

IN A GONDOLA

27. Supply "which" before the day

33. cruce: crucible.

34. mage: magician. 47. wried: wrung.

5-6. I said plained by lines 16 ff.

16-17. "Her mantle laps" etc.: i.e., Her beautiful wrist should appear more so as to be copied in the picture.

21-24. She had A heart etc.: The Duke disparages in her personality that which he praises in her picture.

(413.) 72. sprite: spirit; in apposition with "I" (line 73).

75. ruddier ray: i.e., her beauty and love, which will give his spirit "full play" (line 74).

108. stylet: stiletto.

120. Go find the bottom: spoken to the jewel (line 122). The ensuing question is addressed to her lover, who has caught at her hand. - With the exclamation "There!" she flings the jewel. - The context indicates that the feel of the water and the nearness of the ribbon-grass inspired her with a sudden dislike for the artificial ornament.