Grammarian’s Funeral, A, shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe

( Men and Women , 1855; Romances , 1863; Dramatic Romances , 1868.) Mr. Browning often describes a man as a typical product of his age and environment, and invests him with its characteristics, making him figure as an historical personage. He has done so in this case, and we seem to know the grammarian in all his pedantry and exclusive devotion to a minute branch of human knowledge. The revival of learning, after the apparent death-blow which it received when the hordes of Northern barbarism overran Southern Europe and destroyed the civilisation of the Roman empire, began in the tenth century—that century which, as Hallam says ( Lit. Europe , i. 10), “used to be reckoned by med iæval historians the darkest part of this intellectual night.” In the twelfth century much greater improvement was made. The attention of Europe was drawn to literature in this century, says Hallam, by, “1st, the institution of universities; 2nd, the cultivation of the modern languages, followed by the multiplication of books and the extension of the art of writing; 3rd, the investigation of the Roman law; and lastly, the return to the study of the Latin language in its Ancient models of purity.” All these factors were at work and progre ing gradually down to the fifteenth century. A company of the grammarian’s disciples are bearing his coffin for burial on a tall mountain, the appropriate lofty place of sepulture for an elevated man. As they carry the body, one of them tells his story, and dilates on the praises of the departed scholar. They cannot fitly bury their master in the plain with the common herd. Nor will a lower peak suffice: he shall rest on a peak whose soaring excels the rest. This high-seeking man is for the morning land, and as they bear him up the rocky heights they step together to a tune with heads erect, proud of their noble burden. He was endowed with graces of face and form; but youth had been given to learning till he had become cramped and withered. This man would eat up the feast of learning even to its crumbs. He would live a great life when he had learned all that books had to teach; meanwhile he despised what other men termed life. Before living he would learn how to live:— “Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever.” Deeper he bent over his books, racked by the stone ( calculus ): bronchitis ( tu is ) attacked him; but still he refused to rest. He had a sacred thirst. He magnified the mind, and let the body decay uncared for. That he long lived namele , that he even failed, was nothing to him. He wanted no payment by instalment; he could afford to wait, and thus even in the death-struggle he “ground at grammar.” And so where the “Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go!” this lofty man was left “loftily lying.” Notes. — Hotis’ busine , Properly based Oun , Enclitic De , these are points in Greek grammar concerning which grammarians have written learned treatises.