A Death in the Desert
Published Dramatis Personae, 1864. Browning’s account of the deathbed testament of St John responds to the ‘Higher Criticism’ of the Bible, specifically to attacks on the historicity of the Gospels, the divinity of Jesus, and the authenticity of miracles in Renan’s Vie de Jésus (1863) and Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu (first publ. 1835–6; transl. George Eliot 1846; revised and re-issued 1864). Browning may also have drawn on Feuerbach’s Das Wesen des Christentums (also transl. George Eliot, The Essence of Religion, 1854). St John, Browning’s favourite Gospel, concludes with an assertion of historical accuracy: ‘This is the disciple which testified! of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true’ (21:24). The poem accepts the traditional identification (challenged by the ‘Higher Criticism’) of the disciple John with the author of the Gospel, the three epistles of John, and Revelation, the final apocalyptic book of the New Testament (all these texts are extensively quoted in the poem). Browning was especially attracted by John’s emphasis on love as the primary Christian value. According to tradition John died in extreme old age c. A.D. 100 near Ephesus in Asia Minor; however, no exact indications of place or time are given in the poem, and all the circumstances and characters (apart from those mentioned in the Bible, and the heretic Cerinthus) are imaginary. 1–12. The sections in square brackets at the beginning and end of the poem, and at 11.82–104, contain the comments of the owner of the manuscript, who is presumably making a copy of it for someone else or for posterity. 1. Antiochene There were two Antiochs, one in Syria and one in Asia Minor; it is not clear which Pamphylax was from. The manuscript is supposed to be ‘of’ Pamphylax but not ‘by’ him, since, as we learn later (11.651–3), the actual scribe was not Pamphylax himself, but Phoebas, to whom Pamphylax related the story before his martyrdom. 4. The Greek letters, the fifth and twelfth in the alphabet, stand for the writer’s name (see l.9), and are also numbers, here indicating sections of the manuscript (from 5 to 40); since the poem opens in the midst of the story, the first four sections are presumably missing. 5. Chosen Chest A chest in which the writer keeps documents relating to the ‘chosen’ (i.e., the elect, the members of the early Christian sect to which he belongs). 6. juice of terebinth Turpentine. 7. Xi Fourteenth Greek letter. 14. plantain-leaf Mentioned (comically) as a restorative in Romeo and Juliet I ii 51–2. The plantain is a low herb with broad flat leaves. 18. a brother Not literal; ‘comrade’. 23. the decree A decree of persecution against the Christians by Trajan (Roman Emperor A.D. 98–117). 36. Bactrian Bactria was an ancient country of central Asia, lying between the Hindu-Kush and the Oxus. 39. quitch A coarse grass. 50. nard Spikenard, an aromatic balsam or ointment. Mary Magdalene anoints the feet of Jesus with ‘ointment of spikenard’, John 12:3. 64. John 11:25. 69. F. B. Pinion, in his edition of Dramatis Personae (London and Glasgow: Collins, 1969) suggests that this is the griffon falcon, ‘which has a distinctive white ruff of projecting feathers’. 73. James and Peter Fellow disciples of John (see ll.114–15). 82–104. Adapting and expanding two passages, one from John 1:13, which speaks of believers ‘born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God’ and the other from I John 5:7: ‘there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one’. 104. glossa Gloss, explanation. 114–15. it is long … death James was martyred c. A.D. 43 (Acts 12:2); Peter was crucified c. A.D. 67 in Rome (foretold in John 21:18–19). 121. He Christ; the following two lines allude to John’s vision of him in Revelation 11:14–16. 131–2. I John 1:1. 140. Patmos In the Aegean; scene of John’s vision in Revelation. 141. take a book and write Revelation 1:11. 148–51. Note (among many other passages in St John’s Gospel and Epistles) I John 4:7–8: ‘Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God … He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.’ 158. ‘And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world’ (I John 4:3). 163–5. Jesus rebukes James and John for suggesting ‘that we command fire to come down from heaven’ and destroy their enemies (Luke 9:51–6); he gives his followers ‘power to tread on serpents and scorpions’ (Luke 10:19; see also Mark 16:18). 177. ‘Where is the promise of His coming?’ II Peter 3:4, attributed not, as here, to the impatient young, but to ‘scoffers’ in the ‘last days’. 186–7. ‘And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life’ (I John 5:19–20). 212. Following this line, in the first and second editions of Dramatis Personae, Browning wrote: ‘Closed with and cast and conquered, crucified’. Whether by accident or design, the deletion of this line in Poetical Works (1868) and subsequent editions removed a numerological pun from 1.666 (see below). 216. the right hand of the throne After the Resurrection and his appearance to his disciples, Jesus ‘was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God’ (Mark 16:19). 222. Resume Regain, re-assume control of. 226. the children John in his first epistle calls his readers ‘little children’. 231–2. insubordinate … once Objects too close to the eye resist its ordering glance and require the assistance of the artificer’s ‘optic glass’. 241. dispart, dispread Part asunder and spread out. 254. emprise Enterprise. 283. sophist Philosopher (implying a modern, sophisticated sceptic). 284–6. The Prometheus trilogy attributed to Aeschylus tells of the Titan Prometheus’s theft of fire from Olympus and gift of it to mankind, and of his punishment and eventual release by Zeus (Jove or Jupiter). Only the second play of the trilogy, Prometheus Bound, survives today; the ‘satyrs’ come from a fragment assigned to the lost first play, Prometheus Firebearer, which Browning represents as still extant in John’s time. There is a further allusion to this play in II.530–33. 304–10. John, James and Peter see Jesus transfigured, Luke 9:28–36; Jesus walks on the sea of Galilee, John 6:15–21, and raises Lazarus from the dead, John 11; John and the other disciples forsake Jesus at his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, Mark 14:50.329. Ebion Apocryphal founder of the Ebionites, an early Christian sect who denied the divinity of Jesus. Cerinthus A theologian of the first century, said to have lived in Ephesus at the same time as John; like the Ebionites he denied the divinity of Jesus, and introduced elements of Gnosticism and Judaism into his teaching. See also below. 355–65. This vision of future doubt is influenced by doubts recorded in the Gospels themselves, e.g., (noting ‘portico’, I.357) John 10:22–4: ‘And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch. Then came the Jews round about him, and said, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.’ 364. any of His lives Any of the Gospel stories. 365. Corresponding to the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 368. it cannot pass ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away’ (Jesus in Matthew 24:35). 372. Wonders Miracles. 390. Certes Certainly (archaic). 405. stood still As in Joshua 10:12–14. 439. virtues Qualities (what the herb is good for). 532. ephemerals’ Mortals, i.e, mankind. 533. In the legend, Prometheus carries a live coal from Olympus inside a stalk of giant fennel. 565. Atlas The Atlas mountains are in north-west Africa; the name derives from one of the Titans who in legend held up the sky on his shoulders. 577. that That which. 608. statuary Sculptor. 623. at a jet In a single act (of will and execution combined); from French ‘d’un seul jet’. 625. The pattern on the Mount The original stone tables on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed, given to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 32:15–16). 652. fight the beasts Pamphylax is to be martyred; cf. St Paul, I Corinthians 15:32: ‘If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die’. 657–8. When the risen Jesus ap
pears to die disciples at die end of St John’s Gospel, Peter asks him what ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ (i.e., John himself) is to do: ‘Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?’ (21:22–3). John is denying that Jesus promised him that he would be alive to witness the Second Coming (see above, I.11, and below, II.677–8). 659. this speech The deathbed speech recorded in the poem. 664. breast to breast with God John leans on Jesus’s breast at the Last Supper (John 13:23–5). 665–87. The owner of the document resumes here, transcribing a comment addressed to Cerinthus (see I.329 above) by an unnamed person who holds the orthodox doctrine that Christ was, indeed, the son of God. For the doctrine of incorporation, see John 17:20–23; for the metaphor of Christ as the bridegroom, see (among others) John 3:29 and II Corinthians 11:2: ‘I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ’. Cerinthus had apparently studied the manuscript without altering his opinion that Jesus was ‘Mere man’, going against John’s specific injunction that the ‘acknowledgment of God in Christ’ was the way of salvation (II.474–81). The owner of the manuscript, in the last words of the poem, pronounces on Cerinthus the judgement of spiritual death which John described (II.482–513). In the first and second editions of the poem, which have an extra line (see above, I.212), Cerinthus is named at 1.666, not 665; ‘Six Hundred threescore and six’ is the ‘number of the beast’ in Revelation 13:18.
Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island
Published Dramatis Personae, 1864. The epigraph is from Psalm 50:21; the context of the surrounding verses is also relevant: ‘Offer unto God thanks-giving; and pay thy vows unto the most High: and call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shall glorify me. But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? … Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver. Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.’ Browning’s Caliban, who is represented in the poem at a time before the action of The Tempest begins, resembles Shakespeare’s creation in being both monstrous and sensitive, especially in his close observation of the natural world. See e.g., The Tempest II ii 157–62: ‘I prithee let me bring thee where crabs grow; / And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts; / Show thee a jay’s nest, and instruct thee how / To snare the nimble marmoset; I’ll bring thee / To clust’ring filberts, and sometimes I’ll get thee / Young scammels from the rock.’ Caliban mentions Setebos, the god worshipped by his ‘dam’ (mother), the witch Sycorax, at I ii 372–3, but does not speculate about his nature; the ‘Quiet’, the divinity above Setebos, is Browning’s invention. The poem’s intellectual sources are those of contemporary debates about evolution and the ‘missing link’ (Darwin, Origin of Species, 1859) and, as the title suggests, of older attempts to prove the existence or benevolence of God by reference to the design of the natural world (William Paley, Natural Theology, 1802; see also the note on the ‘Bridgewater Treatises’ in ‘Mr Sludge, “The Medium” ’, I.1140). Caliban, by contrast, deduces a cruel, jealous and capricious God from his own experience and observation; his notion of Setebos combines pagan and Old Testament ideas of sacrifice and propitiation with Calvinist ideas about predestination and God’s arbitrary selection of saved and damned. Caliban refers to himself in the third person in some parts of the poem (often eliding the pronoun and putting an apostrophe before the verb, so that ‘’Will’ in I.1 means ‘He will’, ‘’Thinketh’ in I.25 means ‘He thinketh’ etc.). As in The Tempest, the plants and creatures described in the poem are an eclectic mixture of English and exotic species (as befits an imaginary and magical landscape). 7. pompion-plant Pumpkin. 20–21. Prospero, magician and ruler of the island in The Tempest; Miranda, his daughter. Caliban, who inherited the island from Sycorax, is now Prospero’s ‘slave’: ‘he does make our fire, / Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices / That profit us’ (I ii 308, 311–13). Caliban says of Prospero, ‘’tis a custom with him / I’ th’ afternoon to sleep’ (III iii 83–4). 22–3. gibe … speech ‘[Caliban] You taught me language, and my profit on’t / Is, I know how to curse’ (I ii 363–4). 50. pie Woodpecker. 51. oakwarts Oak-apple galls, growths produced on oak-trees by the larvae of a species of gall wasp. 83. grigs Crickets. 92. mankin Puny creature; ‘manakin’ is also the name of a small, brightly coloured tropical species of bird. 142. The cuttlefish, a cephalopod, has eight arms and two longer tentacles. 156. oncelot Ocelot, a leopard-like cat, grey with fawn spots edged with black. 157. ounce Lynx. 160. In The Tempest, Caliban attempted to rape Miranda; it was after this that Prospero enslaved him (I ii 344–50). 161. Ariel The spirit who carries out Prospero’s magic commands in The Tempest. 163–6. Caliban in The Tempest is compared to a fish (II ii 18f.), and kept in a hole in a rock (I ii 342–3). 177. orc The killer whale; but Caliban probably means an unspecified sea-monster (so used by Browning in The Ring and the Book ix 970). 211. ball Meteorite. 214–15. The allusion is to a fossil. 229. urchin Hedgehog. 258. films Membranes.
Confessions
Published Dramatis Personae, 1864. 1. buzzing in my ears Marlowe, Doctor Faustus II i 12–14: ‘[Good Angel] Faustus, repent. Yet God will pity thee. [Evil Angel] Thou art a spirit. God cannot pity thee. [Faustus] Who buzzeth in my ears I am a spirit?’ 3. vale of tears Book of Common Prayer, Psalm 84:6 (‘vale of misery’).
Youth and Art
Published Dramatis Personae, 1864. In Rome in the winter of 1859–60 Browning did a lot of modelling in clay, and the sculptor John Gibson (1790–1866), mentioned in 1.8, was an admired friend. ‘Smith’ the sculptor and ‘Kate Brown’ the singer, are, as their names suggest, invented characters. 12. Grisi Giulia Grisi (1811–69), Italian soprano. 31. shook upon E in alt Trilled a high E (above the treble stave); trilling or ‘shaking’ a note is a technical term and does not imply poor control. 32. chromatic scale A musical scale which uses nothing but semitones (as distinct from the diatonic scales). 34. gave guesses Gossiped about who was in love with whom. 57. The ‘Prince’ may be Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert (d. 1861), or the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII whom Browning met in Rome in 1859. The ‘Board’ may be that of a grand dinner (e.g., the Royal Academy Dinner of 1851, attended by Prince Albert), or the Board of a public or charitable institution; in either case, this mark of social success and public importance, like his knighthood and membership of the Royal Academy (I.60), denotes Smith’s sacrifice of his youthful ambition to be a great artist, as does Kate Brown’s mercenary marriage. 58. bals-paré Full-dress evening balls.
A Likeness
Published Dramatis Personae, 1864. 10. John’s corns ail. The insensitive comments of his wife and her cousin make John wince. 14. masks, gloves and foils Equipment for fencing. 16. A tandem is a two-wheeled carriage with two horses harnessed one before the other, hence the need for the long whip. 18. the Tipton Slasher William Perry, from Tipton in Staffordshire, English boxing champion 1850–57; he lost the title to Tom Sayers (see below). 21 Chablais A district in the French Alps, east of Geneva. 22. Rarey drumming on Cruiser In John S. Rarey’s Art of Taming Horses, which Browning bought in 1858, there is a picture of Rarey whipping his horse, Cruiser. 23. Tom Sayers was English boxing champion, 1857–60. See ‘Mr Sludge, “The Medium” ’, I.1269n. 34. mezzotint Engraving by a method in which part of a roughened plate is scraped to give lights and half lights, the rest left to
give shadows. 49. pencil and lyre Art and music. 54. Marc Antonios Marcantonio Raimondi, early-sixteenth century engraver, famous for his prints from Raphael. 55. Festina lentè! ‘Hasten slowly!’, a tag from the Roman historian Suetonius. 61. Volpato’s Giovanni Volpato (1733–1803), renowned engraver.
Mr Sludge, ‘The Medium’
Published Dramatis Personae, 1864. A craze for spiritualism swept England and America in the 1850s; Elizabeth Barrett strongly believed in it, while Browning was a resolute sceptic. Sludge is modelled on the American medium Daniel Dunglass Home (1833–86) whom Browning had denounced after attending a seance in London in 1855, later claiming that he had detected Home in the act of cheating. In a letter of 1863 Browning referred to Home as a ‘dung-ball’. After the publication of the poem, Home retaliated by claiming that Browning was jealous of the fact that the ‘spirits’ had crowned his wife with a wreath during the seance and passed him over; Browning mentions this in a letter of 1871, adding: ‘If I ever cross the fellow’s path I shall probably be silly enough to soil my shoe by kicking him … Indeed, I have got to consider such a beast as the proper associate and punishment of those who choose to shut their eyes and open their arms to bestiality incarnate.’ The character of Sludge’s patron, Hiram H. Horsefall, is imaginary. The setting of the poem in Boston reflects the fact that New England was the centre of American intellectual life and in particular of Transcendentalist philosophy, many of whose adherents were also believers in spiritualism. Sludge is Browning’s only American mono-loguist; though neither of the Brownings ever visited America, they had many American friends in Italy. 9. Catawba A light sparkling wine, from a variety of grape named after the Catawba River in South Carolina where it was first discovered. Browning may have taken it from Longfellow’s poem ‘Catawba Wine’ (publ. 1858); see l.1440. 31. undeveloped Spiritualist jargon: the spirit has not passed through the stages of purification and refinement in the afterlife. 35–7. Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), first Postmaster-General of the new United States, which, with his reputation for practical business sense and his association with electricity, makes him a suitable figure for Sludge to call on. American spiritualist circles claimed Franklin as head of the ‘College of Spirits’, a posthumous reversal of his rationalism and scepticism about supernatural phenomena during his lifetime. Thomas Paine (1737–1809), radical and rationalist, author of The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason; Franklin helped him to settle in America in 1774. 54. Greeley’s newspaper Horace Greeley (1811–72) founded the New-York Tribune in 1841 and was editor until his death. 65. Vs Five-dollar bills; see l.100, ‘V-notes’. 81. In his essay ‘Of Vicissitude of Things’, Bacon reports the opinion that were it not for the constancy of the fixed stars and the earth’s diurnal motion, ‘no individual would last one moment; certain it is, that the matter is in a perpetual flux, and never at a stay’. ‘Bacon came’ may refer to his historical existence, or to his ‘appearance’ at one of Sludge’s seances. 121–2. rare philosophers / In plaguy books Browning’s father’s library contained many such books on alchemy and the occult, on which Browning drew extensively for Paracelsus (1835). 132. signs and wonders A Biblical, and especially New Testament tag, e.g., Jesus’s words in John 4:48: ‘Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.’ 133. scouts Scorns. 136. Samuel Johnson (1709–84); John Wesley (1703–91), founder of Methodism. ‘Talking of ghosts, he [Johnson] said, “It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it” ’ (Boswell, Life of Johnson, Tue. 31 Mar. 1778). Immediately following this entry there is a reference to Wesley. Browning probably read in Southey’s Life of Wesley of the episode of the poltergeist in Wesley’s father’s parsonage. 158. Hamlet to the sceptical Horatio, Hamlet I v 166–7: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Sludge quotes twice more from this play (II.246–7, 461) as well as from another Shakespeare play with a supernatural element, Macbeth (see l.654n.). 168. Parson. Richard Person (1759–1808), Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge and one of the greatest classical scholars of his time. 218. the stranger in your gates A visitor who is not a family member; from Exodus 20:10, ‘thy stranger that is within thy gates’. 220. guest without the wedding-garb Expelled from the feast in Jesus’s parable, Matthew 22:11–14. 221. doubling Thomas The apostle Thomas doubted the reality of Jesus’s resurrection until convinced by touching his wounds, John 20:24–9. 233. Mexican War Between Mexico and the United States, 1846–8. 234. free of Free to enjoy (‘given the freedom of’). 246–7. gulling you / To the top o’ your bent Hamlet III ii 374–5: ‘They fool me to the top of my bent.’ 265. canvas-backs A variety of North American duck, famous for its flavour. 280. Pennsylvania was one of the early centres of the spiritualist movement in America, with reports of congregations speaking in tongues; see also below, I.417. 286. Horseshoe The Horseshoe Falls, the Canadian Falls at Niagara. 303–46. Sludge’s satirical account is close to Browning’s own opinion, written shortly after his encounter with Home, of the results of ‘a voluntary prostration of the intelligence before what is assumed to transcend all intelligence’: ‘Once arrived at this point, no trick is too gross; absurdities are referred to as “low spirits”, falsehoods to “personating spirits” – and the One, terribly apparent spirit – the father of lies – has it all his own way.’ 309–12. The correct version should be that Francis Bacon (1561–1626), on his elevation to the peerage took the title of Baron Verulam; he was born not at York but at York House in London, and died at St Albans, not Wales; the rule (not ‘reign’) of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) as Lord Protector during the Interregnum began in 1653, long after Bacon’s death. 328. Tread on their neighbour’s kibes Treat their neighbours unfeelingly (‘kibes’ are chilblains). 330. Barnum P. T. Barnum (1810–91), the American showman. 343. a Thirty-third Sonata For the piano, of which Beethoven wrote thirty-two. 345. The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming, founded by an Englishwoman, Ann Lee, who emigrated to America in 1774, were called ‘Shakers’ because of their physical response to spiritual influences in their services. G, with a natural F A musical impossibility; the scale of G demands F sharp. 346. the ‘Stars and Stripes’ Probably ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, the song by Francis Scott Key which became the American national anthem. If it were ‘set to consecutive fourths’ it would sound discordant. 353. gamboge Gum resin used as a yellow pigment. 387. cockered Pampered. 393 kennel Gutter. 431–3. Sludge compares his slide into cheating with that of an alcoholic who begins by putting a dash of brandy in his tea (‘souchong’) and ends up drinking brandy straight. 461. Very like a whale Polonius, mocked by Hamlet in Hamlet III ii 372.480. Saul and Jonathan The King of Israel before David, and his son, whom he attempts to kill at one point (I Samuel 18f.). 481. Pompey and Caesar Rivals for power in the last Roman republic; Pompey was Caesar’s son-in-law. 500. blow of blacks Coal-smuts blown by the wind, an image of gossip. 526. their Broadway Perhaps the Corso in Rome. 528. lapstone The stone that cobblers lay in their laps to beat leather upon. 576. prairie-dog A slip by Browning; the prairie-dog is a rodent, not, as intended, a wild dog. 589. Milton composing baby-rhymes A double irony: it would be absurd to imagine Milton writing ‘baby-rhymes’, yet Sludge (or Browning) may also be alluding to Milton’s ‘Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’, with its celebration of the infant Jesus. 589–90. Locke / Reasoning in gibberish The philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), whose major work was the Essay concerning Human Understanding. 591–2. Asaph setting psalms / To crotchet and quaver Another musical impossibility: Asaph, Biblical musician and singer in the time of King David, could not set his psalms in a musical notation developed centuries later. 595. pothooks Curved strokes in handwriting, associated with a learner’s hand. 654. strut and fret his hour Macbeth V v 24–5: ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor
player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.’ 655. spawl Spit copiously; target Shield. 659–60. Sludge has been forced to act a part, speaking the fustian lines and wearing the humiliating make-up imposed on him by his patrons. 667. Swedenborg Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), Swedish mystic whose visionary writings had a strong attraction for spiritualists (among them, as Browning was aware, Elizabeth Barrett). 678. Rahab was the prostitute who helped Joshua’s spies in Jericho (Joshua 2); ‘Miss Stokes’ stands for the respectable spiritualist who ‘prostitutes’ herself by telling lies in a good cause. 683. a live coal from the altar Isaiah 6:6–7: ‘Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.’ 690–93. This famous anecdote is told of Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen, 1801.694: a real love of a lie Bacon, in his essay ‘Of Truth’, speaks of ‘a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. 706–7. marching on / To the promised land A phrase from the hymn ‘Through the night of doubt and sorrow’ (number 274, Hymns Ancient and Modern). 740–45. Alluding to the episode in Acts 17, in which the frivolous Athenians invite Paul to preach to them on ‘Mars’ hill’, the Areopagus: ‘For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.’ 775. fribble Trifler. 784. The ‘greenhorn’ is the prostitute’s inexperienced young client; the ‘bully’ her ‘protector’. 788. Pasiphae In Greek myth, wife of Minos, King of Crete, whose union with a bull produced the Minotaur. 802. sympathetic ink Invisible ink. 803. odic lights Supposed to be emanations of a spiritual force called Od, ‘discovered’ by the German chemist Karl von Reichenbach in 1845. 805–6. though it seem to set / The crooked straight again In defiance of Ecclesiastes 1:15: ‘That which is crooked cannot be made straight.’ 832. delf Glazed earthenware, from Delft or Delf in Holland. 846. Samuel’s ghost appeared to Saul Conjured up by the help of a medium, I Samuel 28:7–25.910. raree-show A show carried in a box, such a peep-show or puppet-show, exhibited at markets and fairs. 919. The Bible says so Genesis 1:14: ‘And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven … and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.’ 921. Charles’s Wain The constellation of the Great Bear, or Big Dipper. 929. powder-plots prevented Referring to the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.995–1004. The informal ‘knocking’ represents the unorthodox summons to belief conveyed by intimations from the spirit-world, in contrast to the ‘bell’ of human reason, natural theology, or the ‘traditional peal’ of church bells, i.e., orthodox Christianity. 1035. canthus Corner of the eye, where the lids meet. 1074. the “Great and Terrible Name” Psalm 99:1–3: ‘The Lord reigneth; let the people tremble: he sitteth between the cherubims; let the earth be moved. The Lord is great in Zion; and he is high above all the people. Let them praise thy great and terrible name; for it is holy.’ Further on (I.1086f.) Sludge alludes to the refusal of orthodox Jews to pronounce the name of Jahweh (Jehovah). 1117. stomachcyst Apparently Browning’s coinage, meaning a minute primitive organism, such as the one described in the following lines. 1128–40. For the ‘natural theology’ outlined here, see note to ‘Caliban upon Setebos’ above. 1137. We are His children St Paul’s words to the Athenians (see ll.740–5n.), Acts 17:28, though the context is the reverse of the one Sludge alludes to here (that ‘all things minister / To man’): ‘in him [God] we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.’ See note to ‘Cleon’ above. 1140. the Bridgewater book The Reverend Francis, Earl of Bridgewater (1758–1829), left money in his will for the writing of essays ‘On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as Manifested in the Creation’. The ‘Bridgewater Treatises’ were published 1833–40; the first, by Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), was called ‘The Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man’. See note to ‘Caliban upon Setebos’, above. 1170. boblink Usually ‘bobolink’, a North American songbird. 1187. that same personage Sludge, who is using the metaphor of himself as ‘heir’ (see ll. 1140ff.), invokes the analogy of the literal heir to the English throne, the Prince of Wales (future Edward VII), whose entourage during his visit to America caused much comment in the American press. 1225. ‘Time’ with the foil in carte A technical term in fencing, meaning to judge the correct moment to parry an opponent’s thrust. 1227. Make the red hazard Pocket the red ball in billiards. 1268. the President At the time of publication, Lincoln. Jenny Lind The celebrated soprano (1820–87), known as the ‘Swedish Nightingale’. 1269. Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), poet, essayist, philosopher, and by this time the pre-eminent American man of letters. Browning had never met him, but knew and admired his work, the Benicia Boy The American boxing champion, John Heenan (from his birthplace, Benicia in California). On 17 April 1860 he fought a celebrated drawn bout with the English champion, John Sayers (see ‘A Likeness’, 1.23n.); in her letters of the time Elizabeth Barrett referred several times to the interest aroused by the contest. 1299. Beacon Street One of the principal streets in Boston. 1331–7. Sludge’s ‘hazy notion’ of a passage in the Greek (not Roman) historian Herodotus (fifth century B.C.); in book I of his History, Herodotus recounts that women in Babylon (not Egypt) prostituted themselves once in their lifetime at the temple of Aphrodite. 1381. cresset Fire-basket. 1392. harlequin’s pasteboard sceptre In traditional pantomime, a magic wand used by Harlequin against his rival, the Clown. 1439–41. Lowell, Longfellow, Hawthorne Prominent American writers, the first and third of whom were also personal friends of Browning’s: James Russell Lowell (1819–91), poet, essayist and critic; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82), poet; Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64), writer of fiction. 1450. the Lizard Age A book about dinosaurs. 1451. the Old Country War The American War of Independence, 1775–83. 1452 Jerome Napoleon Youngest brother of Napoleon Bonaparte (1784–1860). 1454. life in stones By the study of fossils. 1455. Fire into fog Probably alluding to the ‘fire-mist’, the primeval state of the universe in some contemporary theories; the term was coined by Robert Chambers in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844). 1465. The book is imaginary. Thebes, in Egypt, was fabled for wealth and power; it may have been one of the models for the city in ‘Love Among the Ruins’ (see ll.21n., 73–8n.). 1472–4. Both Lady Jane Grey, executed in 1553 by Mary Tudor after an abortive attempt to make her Queen, and Elizabeth I were Protestant heroines and enemies of the Catholic Mary; Sludge’s fantasy of them together in heaven would be calculated to please the (presumably Protestant) Horsefall. It is not clear whether this is the actual fraud whose detection precedes the opening of the poem, or whether Sludge is using it as an illustration. 1479. arnica Mountain tobacco (Arnica montana) is used in a tincture for relieving swelling and bruises. 1523. herring-pond The Atlantic (OED first records this colloquialism in 1686).
Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) Page 30