Epilogue to the “Two Poets of Croisic”

(1878). (Published in the Selections , vol. ii., as A Tale ). A bard had to sing for a prize before the judges, and to accompany his song on the lute. His listeners were so pleased with his melody that it seemed as though they would hasten to bestow the award even before the end of the song; when, just as the poet was at the climax of his trial, a string broke, and all would have been lost, had not a cricket “with its little heart on fire” alighted on the instrument, and flung its heart forth, sounding the mi ing note; and there the insect rested, ever at the right instant shrilling forth its F-sharp even more perfectly than the string could have done. The judges with one consent said, “Take the prize—we took your lyre for harp!” Did the conqueror despise the little creature who had helped him with all he had to offer? No: he had a statue of himself made in marble, life-size; on the lyre was “perched his partner in the prize.” The author of the volume of poems of which this story forms the epilogue, says that he tells it to acknowledge the love which played the cricket’s part, and gave the mi ing music; a girl’s love coming aptly in when his singing became gruff. Love is ever waiting to supply the mi ing notes in the arrested harmony of our lives. Notes. —“ Music’s Son ”: Goethe. “ Lotte ,” of the Sorrows of Werther , was Charlotte Buff, who married Kestner, Goethe’s friend, the Albert of the novel. Goethe was in love with Charlotte Buff, and her marriage with Kestner roused the temper of his over-sensitive mind. (See Dr. Brewer’s Reader’s Handbook .) Epistle, An, Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician. ( Men and Women , vol. i., 1855.) [The subject of the poem is the raising of Lazarus from the dead.] Karshish, a wandering scholar-physician, writing to the sage Abib, from whom he has learned his art, gives him an account of certain matters of medical interest which he has discovered in the course of his travels, and which, like a good student, he communicates to his venerable teacher. After informing him that he has sent him some samples of rare pharmaceutical substances, he says that his journey ings brought him to Jericho, on the dangerous road from which city to Jerusalem he had met with sundry misadventures, and noted several cases of clinical interest, all of which he reports in the matter-of-fact way which betokens the scientific practitioner of the period. Amongst his plague, ague, epileptic, scalp-disease, and leprosy cures, he particularly describes “a case of mania sub induced by epilepsy,” which especially interested him. The disorder seemed to him of quite easy diagnosis: “Tis but a case of mania,” complicated by trance and epilepsy, but well within his powers as a physician to account for, except in the after circumstances and the means of cure. “Some spell, exorcisation or trick of art” had evidently been employed by a Nazarene physician of his tribe, who bade him, when he seemed dead, “Rise!” and he did rise. He was “one Lazarus, a Jew”—of good habit of body, and indeed quite beyond ordinary men in point of health; and his three days’ sleep had so brightened his body and soul that it would be a great thing if the medical art could always ensure such a result from the use of any drug. He has undergone such change of mental vision that he eyes the world now like a child, and puts all his old joys in the dust. He has lost his sense of the proportion of things: a great armament or a mule load of gourds are all the same to him, while some trifle will appear of infinite import; yet he is stupefied because his fellow-men do not view things with his opened eyes. He is so perplexed with impulses that his heart and brain seem occupied with another world while his feet stay here. He desires only perfectly to please God; he is entirely apathetic when told that Rome is on the march to destroy his town and tribe, yet he loves all things old and young, strong and weak, the flowers and birds, and is harmle as a lamb: only at ignorance and sin he is impatient, but promptly curbs himself. The physician would have sought out the Nazarene who worked the cure, and would have held a consultation with him on the case, but discovered that he perished in a tumult many years ago, accused of wizardry, rebellion, and of holding a prodigious creed. Lazarus—it is well, says the physician, to keep nothing back in writing to a brother in the craft—regards the curer as God the Creator and sustainer of the world, that dwelt in flesh amongst us for a while; but why write of trivial matters? He has more important things to tell. “I noticed on the margin of a pool, Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort A bound eth, very nitrous. It is strange!” He begs the sage’s pardon for troubling him with this man’s tedious case, but it has touched him with awe, it may be partly the effect of his wearine . But he cannot close his letter without returning to the tremendous suggestion once more. “Think, Abib! The very God!”— “So the All-Great, were the All-Loving too,— It is strange.” Profe or Corson says this poem “is one of Browning’s most remarkable psychological studies. It may be said to polarise the idea, so often presented in his poetry, that doubt is a condition of the vitality of faith. It is a subtle representation of a soul conceived with absolute spiritual standards, while obliged to live in a world where all standards are relative and determined by the circumstances and limitations of its situation.” Lazarus has seen things as they are. “This show of things,” so far as he is concerned, is done with. He now leads the actual life; his wonder and his sorrow are drawn from the reflection that his fellow-men remain in the region of phantasm. He lives really in the world to come. How infinitely little he found the things of time and sense in the presence of the eternal verities is grandly shown in the poem. The attitude of Lazarus under his altered conditions affords an answer to those who demand that an All-Wise Being should not leave men to struggle in a region of phenomena but exhibit the actual to us in the present life. Under such conditions our probation would be impo ible. As Browning shows in La Saisiaz , a condition of certainty would destroy the school-time value of life; the highest truths are insusceptible of scientific demonstration. Lazarus is the hero of the poem, not Karshish. As the Bishop of Durham says in his paper “On Browning’s View of Life,” Lazarus “is not a man, but a sign: he stands among men as a patient witne of the overwhelming reality of the divine—a witne whose authority is confe ed, even against his inclination, by the student of nature, who turns again and again to the phenomena which he affects to disparage. In this crucial example Browning shows how the exclusive dominance of the spirit destroys the fulne of human life, its uses and powers, while it leaves a pa ive life, crowned with an unearthly beauty.” The profe ional attitude of Karshish is drawn with marvellous fidelity. A paper in the Lancet on such a “case” would be precisely on the same lines to-day, though the wandering off into side details would not be quite so obvious, and there would be an entire absence of any trifling with the idea that “the All-Great were the All-Loving too.” This is “emotional,” and modern science has nothing but contempt for that. Notes. — Snake-stone , a name applied to any substance used as a remedy for snake-bites. Profe or Faraday once analysed several which had been used for this purpose in Ceylon. One turned out to be a piece of animal charcoal, another was chalk, and a third a vegetable substance like a bezoar. The animal charcoal might po ibly have been useful if applied immediately. The others were valuele for the purpose. (Tennant, Ceylon , third ed., i., 200.) “ A spider that weaves no web. ” Dr. H. McCook, a specialist in spider lore, has explained this pa age in Poet-Lore , vol. i., p. 518. He says the spider referred to belongs to the Wandering group: they stalk their prey in the open field, or in divers lurking places, and are quite different in their habits from the web-spinners. The spider sprinkled with mottles he thinks is the Zebra spider ( Epiblemum scenicum ). It belongs to the Saltigrade tribe. The use of spiders in medicine is very ancient. Pliny describes many diseases for which they were used. Spiders were boiled in water and distilled for wounds by Sir Walter Raleigh. Greek-fire was the precursor of gunpowder; it was the oleum inc end i arum of the Romans. Probably petroleum, tar, sulphur, and nitre were its chief ingredients. Blue flowering borage ( Borago officinal is ). The ancients deemed this plant one of the four “cordial flowers” for cheering the spirits, the others being the rose, violet, and alkanet. Pliny says it produces very exhilarating effects. The stem contains nitre, and the whole plant readily gives its flavour even to cold water. (See Anne Pratt’s Flowering Plants , vol. iv., p. 75.)