One Word More

(To E. B. B. [Elizabeth Barrett Browning], 1855.) This poem was originally appended to the collection of poems called Men and Women ( q.v. ) Browning’s Men and Women , containing amongst other noble poems his Epistle to Karshish , Cleon , Fra Lippo Lippi , and Andrea del Sarto , were fifty in number, and the concluding poem, One Word More , formed the dedication to his wife. The volume was in one sense a return for her Sonnets from the Portuguese , in which she poured out her love to Mr. Browning. In this poem he not le warmly declares his love for his wife, his “moon of poets.” The dedication is happy, because his interest in men and women had been quickened and deepened by his marriage. They had studied human nature together, and each poetic soul had reacted upon the other. He explains why he has desired to give something of his best, some gift which is not a gift to the world but to the woman he loves; and as the meanest of God’s creatures— “Boasts two soul-sides: one to face the world with One to show a woman when he loves her!” The poor workman, the most unskilful artisan, will strive to do something which shall expre his utmost effort, to present to his love, and the greatest geniuses of the world have been actuated by a similar motive. Raphael, not content with painting, must pour out his soul in poetry for the woman of his heart (did she love the volume of a hundred sonnets all her life?), and Mr. Browning says he and his poet-wife would rather read that volume than wonder at the Madonnas by which his name will be ever known. But that volume will never be read. Guido Reni treasured it, but, as treasures do disappear, it vanished. Dante once proposed to paint for Be at rice an angel—traced it perchance with the corroded pen with which he pricked the stigma in the brow of the wicked—“Dante, who loved well because he hated”: hating only wickedne , and that because it hinders loving. Mr. Browning would rather study that angel than read a fresh Inferno , but that picture we shall never see. No artist lives and loves who desires not for once and for one to expre himself in a language natural to him and the occasion, but which to others is but an art; and so the painter will forgo his painting and write a poem, the writer will try to paint a picture “once and for one only”— “So to be the man and leave the artist.” Why is this? When a man comes before the world as leader, teacher, prophet, artist or poet, in any capacity which is his proper busine , he is open to the unsympathetic criticism of a world which is ever exacting and always ungrateful in exact proportion to the magnitude of the work done for it. Under these circumstances the real self in the man seldom appears; when, however, he presents himself before the sympathetic soul of the woman who loves him, he no longer works for the critic, no longer acts a part, no longer appears in a character distasteful to himself. When Moses smote the rock and saved the Israeli tes, he had mocking and sneering for his reward: the ungrateful and unbelieving multitude behaved after their manner. Could Moses forget the ancient wrong he bore about him? Dare the man ever put off the prophet? But were there in all that crowd a woman’s face—a woman he could love—he would for her sake lay down the wonder-working rod, for he would be as the camel giving up its store of water with its life. But the poet says he shall never paint pictures, carve statues, nor expre himself in music: for his wife he stands on his power of verse alone, and so he bids her take the lines of this love poem, which he has written for her, as the artist in fresco will steal a hair-pencil and cramp his spirit into mi al painting for his lady, and the musician who sounds the martial strain will breathe his love through silver to serenade his prince ; so he—the Browning men knew for other work—may this once whisper a love song to the ear of his wife. He will speak to her not dramatically, as he spoke in the poems in his book, but in his own true person. She knows him under both aspects, as the moon of Florence is the same which shines in London, though she has put off her Italian glory, and hurries dispiritedly through the gloomy skies of England. Could the moon really love a mortal, she has a side she could turn towards him, unseen as yet by herdsman or astronomer on his turret. Dumb to Homer, to Keats even, she would speak to him . And so the poet has for his love “A side the world has never seen,” the novel “Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of.” Notes. —Verse 2, Century of Sonnets . I can find no evidence that Raphael wrote a hundred sonnets. Some three, or at most four, are all about which I can find anything. Michael Angelo wrote many impa ioned sonnets, and was undoubtedly a fine poet; but if Raphael wrote many sonnets, they are, as Mr. Browning says, lost. Probably the whole story is an example of poetical licence. There is a very mediocre sonnet (as Mr. Samuel Wadding ton describes it in the notes to his Sonnets of Europe ) by Raphael, which he has inscribed on one of his drawings now exhibited at the British Museum:— SONNET. By Raphael. “Un pensier dolce erimembrare e go do Di quello a alto, ma più gravo el dan no Del partir, ch’io restai como que i c’anno In mar per so la stella, s’el ver odo. Or lingua di parlar disogli el no do A dir di questo in us it a to ingan no Ch’ am or mi fece per mio grave afanno, Ma lui più ne ring ratio, e lei ne lodo. L’ora sesta era, che l’oca so un sole Aveva fat to, e l’altro sur se in locho Ati più da far fat i, che parole. Ma io restai pur vin to al mio gran focho Che mi tormenta, che dove lon sole Desiar di parlar, più rim an fiocho.” “There are also two other sonnets,” says Mr. Wadding ton, “attributed to Raphael, but they can hardly be considered worthy of his illustrious name.” Raphael’s “ lady of the sonnets ” was Marg her it a (La Fornarina), the baker’s daughter, of whom Raphael was devotedly fond, and whose likene appears in several of his most celebrated pictures. “ Else he only used to draw Madonnas :” Mrs. James on, in her Legends of the Madonna , gives the following list of Raphael’s famous Madonnas: del Bald acc hi no, delle Candelabre, del Car dell i no, dell a Famiglia Alva, di Foligno, de Giglio, del Pa eggio, dell’ Pesce, dell a Seggiola, di San Sisto. Verse 3, “ Her San Sisto names ”: the Madonna di S. Sisto is the glory of the Dresden gallery. Little is known of its history; no studies or sketches of it exist. It much resembles the Madonna di Foligno, but is le injured by restoration. “ Her, Foligno ”: the Madonna di Foligno was dedicated by Sigismund Corti, of Foligno, private secretary to Pope Julius II., and a distinguished patron of learning. Sigismund, having been in danger, vowed an offering to Our Lady, to whom he attributed his escape. The picture is in the Vatican. It was painted in 1511. “ Her that visits Florence in a Vision ”: Mr. Browning, in a letter to Mr. W. J. Rolfe, said: “The Madonna at Florence is that called del Granduca , which represents her ‘as appearing to a votary in a vision’—so say the describers; it is in the earlier manner, and very beautiful.” It is in the Pitti Palace, Florence. Painted about 1506. “ Her that’s left with lilies in the Louvre ” (Paris): on this Mr. Browning explained that, “I think I meant La Belle Jardinière —but am not sure—from the picture in the Louvre.” This is a group of three figures: the Mother and Child and St. John. Painted in 1508. Verse 4, “ That volume Guido Reni... guarded ”: this does not appear to have been a book of Sonnets, as Browning says, but a volume with a hundred designs drawn by Raphael. Reni left this book to his heir Signorini. Verse 5, “ Dante once prepared to paint an angel ”: Dante was master of all the science of his time. He was a skilful draughtsman, and tells us that on the anniversary of the death of Be at rice he drew an angel on a tablet. He was an intimate friend of Giotto, who has recorded that it was from him he drew the inspiration of the allegories of Virtue and Vice for the frescoes of the Scrovegni Palace at Padua. He was also a musician. Verse 7, Bice is Be at rice, Dante’s “gentle love.” Verse 9, “ Egypt’s flesh-pots ” (Exod. xvi. 3). Verse 10, “ Sinai-forehead’s cloven brilliance ” (Exod. xxxiv. 29, 30). Verse 11, Jethro , the father-in-law of Moses (Exod. iii. 1); “ Æthiopian bond-slave ” (Numb. xii. 1). Verse 14, “ Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the Fifty ”: there is a distinct caution here to those who seek for Browning’s real opinions on religion and the various subjects with which he deals, that he is speaking dramatically in these poems, and not “in his true person.” Verse 15, Sam mini a to == San Mini a to, a well-known church in Florence. Verse 16, “ Zoroaster on his terrace ”: the celebrated founder of the doctrine of the Persian Magi. Very little is known about him personally, but his religion is well understood. Ancient historians say he lived five you sand years before the Trojan War. His scriptures are the Zend Avesta . He studied at night the aspect of the heavens. “ Galileo on his turret ”: Galileo, as an astronomer, required an observatory. Keats : Browning was much influenced by “the human rhythm” of Keats. There is abundant trace of this in Pauline , and in the second of the Para cels us songs, “Heap ca ia, sandal-buds, etc.” “ Moonstruck mortal ”: see Keats’ poem Endymion , the fable of Endymion’s amours with Diana, or the Moon. The fable probably originated from Endymion’s study of astronomy requiring him to pa the night on a high mountain, to observe the heavenly bodies. “ Paved work of a sapphire ” (Exod. xxiv. 10). Mr. W. M. Ro etti explains some of the allusions in this poem in the Academy for January 10th, 1891:—“I understand the allusions, but Browning is far from accurate in them. 1. Towards the end of the Vita Nuova , Dante says that, on the first anniversary of the death of Be at rice, he began drawing an angel, but was interrupted by certain people of distinction, who entered on a visit. Browning is therefore wrong in intimating that the angel was painted ‘to please Be at rice.’ 2. Then Browning says that the pen with which Dante drew the angel was perhaps corroded by the hot ink in which it had previously been dipped for the purpose of denouncing a certain wretch— i.e. , one of the persons named in his Inferno . This about the ink, as such, is Browning’s own figure of speech not got out of Dante. 3. Then Browning speaks of Dante’s having ‘his left hand i’ the hair o’ the wicked,’ etc. This refers to Inferno , Canto 32, where Dante meets (among the traitors to their country) a certain Bocca degli Abati, a notorious Florentine traitor, dead some years back, and Dante clutches and tears at Bocca’s hair to compel him to name himself, which Bocca would much rather not do. 4. Next Browning speaks of this Bocca as being a ‘live man.’ Here Browning confounds two separate incidents. Bocca is not only damned, but also dead; but further on (Canto 33) Dante meets another man, a traitor against his familiar friend. This traitor is Frate Alberigo, one of the Manfredi family of Faenza. This Frate Alberigo was, though damned, not, in fact, dead; he was still alive, and Dante makes it out that traitors of this sort are liable to have their souls sent to hell before the death of their bodies. A certain Bianca d’Oria, Genoese, is in like case—damned but not dead. 5. Browning proceeds to speak of ‘the wretch going festering through Florence.’ This is a relapse into his mistake—the confounding of the dead Florentine Bocca degli Abati with the living (though damned) Faentine and Genoese traitors, Frate Alberigo and Bianca d’Oria, who had nothing to do with Florence.” On the Poet, Objective and Subjective; on the latter’s Aim; on Shelley as Man and Poet. By Robert Browning. (The introductory e ay to Letters of Percy By he Shelley . Moxon: 1852.) Dr. Furnivall says: “The cause of Browning’s writing this e ay was (I believe) as follows:—In or before 1851, a forger clever enough to take in the publishers wrote some ‘letters of Shelley and Byron.’ Moxon bought the forged Shelley letters, and John Murray the Byron ones. Before they were proved spurious, Moxon printed the Shelley letters, and got Browning to write an introductory e ay to them. Murray was slower, and, by the discovery of the forgery, was saved the exposure and annoyance that Moxon incurred in publishing, and then having to suppre , his book. The spurious Shelley letters were, as might have been expected, nugatory, barren of any new revelations of Shelley’s character. Browning could actually make nothing of them, and therefore wrote his E ay, not on the Letters, but on the two cla es of poets, objective and subjective, and on Shelley. He wanted a chance of writing on the poet he admired; the Letters gave him the chance; and, being told that they were genuine, he accepted them as such without inquiry. Moreover, being in Paris at the time, he had no opportunity of consulting English experts, had even any suspicion of forgery cro ed his mind. The worth of his E ay is no way weakened by its having been set before spurious letters.” A brief extract from Mr. Browning’s E ay will indicate his estimate of the poetic method which he selected as his own. Speaking of the subjective poet, he says: “He, gifted like the objective poet with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many below, as to the One above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their absolute truth—an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially attained by the poet’s own soul. Not what man sees, but what God sees—the Ideas of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly in the Divine Hand—it is toward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements of humanity he has to do; and he digs where he stands—preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak. Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and tempestuous to ings of the forest-trees, but with their roots and fibres naked to the chalk and stone. He does not paint pictures and hang them on the walls, but rather carries them on the retina of his own eyes: we must look deep into his human eyes to see those pictures on them. He is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner; and what he produces will be le a work than an effluence. That effluence cannot be easily considered in abstraction from his personality,—being indeed the very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it but not separated.” In these words we have not only Mr. Browning’s defence of his work (if any could be needed), but an explanation of the reason why he seems as much interested in di ecting the soul of a villain or a scamp as of a saint and hero. Count Guido in his complex wickedne , brooding in his prison cell, is more interesting to such an analyst than Pompilia fluttering her wings on the borders of heaven. The old roué in the Inn Album, has root fibres worth tracing till they grip the stones. Simple old Rabbi Ben Ezra has nothing to di ect; his innocent soul lies basking in the smile of God. He has nothing to do with him but sit at his feet and listen. This “E ay on Shelley” has been reprinted and published in Part I. of the Browning Society’s Papers .