Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  We say perforce of that poor wight,

  “He lived in vain!” and if aright,

  It is not the worst word we might.

  Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, was beloved and much appreciated by Gregory, and often mentioned in his writings. Few of the works of Amphilochius are extant, and of these only one is a poem. It is a didactic epistle to Seleucus, ‘On the Right Direction of his Studies and Life,’ and has been attributed to Gregory Nazianzen by some writers upon very inadequate evidence, – that adduced (the similar phraseology which conveys, in this poem and a poem of Gregory’s, the catalogue of canonical scriptures) being as easily explained by the imitation of one poet, as by the identity of two. They differ, moreover, upon ground more important than phraseology: Amphilochius appearing to reject, or, at least, to receive doubtfully, Jude’s epistle, and the Second of Peter. And there is a harsh force in the whole poem, which does not remind us of our Nazianzen, while it becomes, in the course of dissuading Seleucus from the amusements of the amphitheatre, graphic and effective. We hear, through the description, the grinding of the tigers’ teeth, the sympathy of the people with the tigers showing still more savage.

  They sit unknowing of these agonies,

  Spectators at a show. When a man flies

  From a beast’s jaw, they groan, as if at least

  They missed the ravenous pleasure, like the beast,

  And sate there vainly. When, in the next spring,

  The victim is attained, and, uttering

  The deep roar or quick shriek between the fangs,

  Beats on the dust the passion of his pangs,

  All pity dieth in their glaring look –

  They clap to see the blood run like a brook:

  They stare with hungry eyes, which tears should fill,

  And cheer the beasts on with their soul’s good will;

  And wish more victims to their maw, and urge

  And lash their fury, as they shared the surge,

  Gnashing their teeth, like beasts, on flesh of men.

  There is an appalling reality in this picture. The epistle consists of 333 lines, which we mention specifically, because the poet takes advantage of the circumstance to illustrate or enforce an important theological doctrine: –

  Three hundred lines, three decads, monads three,

  Comprise my poem. Love the Trinity.

  It would be almost a pain, and quite a regret, to pass from this fourth century, without speaking a word which belongs to it – a word which rises to our lips, a word worthy of honour – HELIODORUS. Though a bishop and an imaginative writer, his ‘ÆTHIOPICA’ has no claim on our attention, either by right of Christianity or poetry; and yet we may be pardoned on our part for love’s sake, and on account of the false position into which, by negligence of readers or insufficiency of translators, his beautiful romance has fallen, if we praise it heartily and faithfully even here. Our tears praised it long ago – our recollection does so now – and its own pathetic eloquence and picturesque descriptiveness are ripe for any praise. It has, besides, a vivid Arabian Night charm, almost as charming as Scheherazade herself, suggestive of an Arabian Night story drawn out “in many a winding bout,” and not merely on the ground of extemporaneous loving and methodical (must we say it?) lying. In good sooth – no, not in good sooth, but in evil leasing – every hero and heroine of them all, from Abou Hassan to “the divine Chariclæa,” does lie most vehemently and abundantly by gift of nature and choice of author, whether bishop or sultana. “It is,” as Pepys observes philosophically of the comparative destruction of gin-shops and churches in the Great Fire of London, “pretty to observe” how they all lie. And although the dearest of story-tellers, our own Chaucer, has told us that “some leasing is, of which there cometh none advauntage to no wight,” even that species is used by them magnanimously in its turn, for the bare glory’s sake, and without caring for the “advauntage.” With equal liberality, but more truth, we write down the bishop of Tricca’s romance charming, and wish the charm of it (however we may be out of place in naming him among poets,) upon any poet who has not yet felt it, and whose eyes, giving honour, may wander over these Remarks. The poor bishop thought as well of his book as we do, perhaps better; for when commanded, under ecclesiastical censure, to burn it or give up his bishopric, he gave up the bishopric. And who blames Heliodorus? He thought well of his romance; he was angry with those who did not; he was weak with the love of it. Let whosoever blames, speak low. Romance-writers are not educated for martyrs, and the exacted martyrdom was very very hard. Think of that English bishop who burnt his hand by an act of volition – only his hand, and which was sure to be burnt afterwards; and how he was praised for it! Heliodorus had to do with a dearer thing – handwriting, not hands. Authors will pardon him, if bishops do not.

  Nonnus of Panopolis, the poet of the Dionysiaca, a work of some twenty-two thousand verses, on some twenty-two thousand subjects, shaken together, flourished, as people say of many a dry-rooted soul, at the commencement of the fifth century. He was converted from paganism, but we are sorry to make the melancholy addition, that he never was converted from the ‘Dionysiaca.’ The only Christian poem we owe to him – a paraphrase, in hexameters, of the apostle John’s gospel – does all that a bald verbosity and an obscure tautology can do or undo, to quench the divinity of that divine narrative. The two well-known words, bearing on their brief vibration the whole passion of a world saved through pain from pain, are thus traduced: –

  They answered him,

  “Come and behold.” Then Jesus himself groaned,

  Dropping strange tears from eyes unused to weep.

  “Unused to weep!” Was it so of the man of sorrows? O, obtuse poet! We had translated the opening passage of the Paraphrase, and laid it by for transcription, but are repelled. Enough is said. Nonnus was never converted from the DIONYSIACA.

  PART III.

  SYNESIUS, of Cyrene, learnt Plato’s philosophy so well of Hypatia of Alexandria at the commencement of the fifth century, or rather before, that, to the obvious honour of that fair and learned teacher, he never, as bishop of Ptolemais, could attain to un-learning it. He did not wish to be bishop of Ptolemais; he had divers objections to the throne and the domination. He loved his dogs, he loved his wife; he loved Hypatia and Plato as well as he loved truth; and he loved beyond all things, under the womanly instruction of the former, to have his own way. He was a poet, too; the chief poet, we do not hesitate to record our opinion, – the chief, for true and natural gifts, of all our Greek Christian poets; and it was his choice to pray lyrically between the dew and the cloud rather than preach dogmatically between the doxies. If Gregory shrank from the episcopal office through a meek self-distrust and a yearning for solitude, Synesius repulsed the invitation to it through an impatience of control over heart and life, and for the earnest joy’s sake of thinking out his own thought in the hunting-grounds, with no deacon or disciple astuter than his dog to watch the thought in his face, and trace it backward or forward, as the case might be, into something more or less than what was orthodox. Therefore he, a man of many and wandering thoughts, refused the bishopric, – not weepingly, indeed, as Gregory did, nor feigning madness with another of the “nolentes episcopari” of that earnest period, – but with a sturdy enunciation of resolve, more likely to be effectual, of keeping his wife by his side as long as he lived, and of doubting as long as he pleased to doubt upon the resurrection of the body. But Synesius was a man of genius, and of all such true energies as are taken for granted in the name; and the very sullenness of his “nay” being expressive to grave judges of the faithfulness of his “yea and amen,” he was considered too noble a man not to be made a bishop of in his own despite and on his own terms. The fact proves the latitude of discipline, and even of doctrine, permitted to the churches of that age; and it does not appear that the church at Ptolemais suffered any wrong as its result, seeing that Synesius, recovering from the shock militant of his ordination, in the course of whi
ch his ecclesiastical friends had “laid hands upon him” in the roughest sense of the word, performed his new duties willingly, – was no sporting bishop otherwise than as a “fisher of men” – sent his bow to the dogs, and his dogs to Jericho, that nearest Coventry to Ptolemais, silencing his “staunch hound’s authentic voice” as soon as ever any importance became attached to the authenticity of his own. And if, according to the bond, he retained his wife and his Platonisms, we may honour him by the inference, that he did so for conscience sake still more than love’s, – since the love was inoperative in other matters. For spiritual fervour and exaltation, he has honour among men and angels; and however intent upon spiritualizing away the most glorified material body from “the heaven of his invention,” he held fast and earnestly, as any body’s clenched hand could an horn of the altar, the Homoousion doctrine of the Christian heaven, and other chief doctrines emphasizing the divine sacrifice. But this poet has a higher place among poets than this bishop among bishops; the highest, we must repeat our conviction, of all yet named or to be named by us as “Greek Christian poets.” Little, indeed, of his poetry has reached us, but this little is great in a nobler sense than that of quantity; and when of his odes, anacreontic for the most part, we cannot say praisefully that “they smell of Anacreon,” it is because their fragrance is holier and more abiding, – it is because the human soul burning in the censer, effaces from our spiritual perceptions the attar of a thousand rose trees whose roots are in Teos. These odes have, in fact, a wonderful rapture and ecstasy. And if we find in them the phraseology of Plato or Plotinus, for he leant lovingly to the later Platonists, – nay, if we find in them oblique references to the out-worn mythology of paganism, even so have we beheld the mixed multitude of unconnected motes wheeling, rising in a great sunshine, as the sunshine were a motive energy, – and even so the burning, adoring poet-spirit sweeps upward the motes of world-fancies (as if being in the world their tendency was God-ward) upward in a strong stream of sunny light, while she rushes into the presence of “The Alone.” We say the spirit significantly in speaking of this poet’s aspiration. His is an ecstasy of abstract intellect, of pure spirit, cold though impetuous; the heart does not beat in it, nor is the human voice heard; the poet is true to the heresy of the ecclesiastic, and there is no resurrection of the body. We shall attempt a translation of the ninth ode, closer if less graceful and polished than Mr. Boyd’s, helping our hand to courage by the persuasion that the genius of its poetry must look through the thickest blanket of our dark.

  Well-beloved and glory-laden,

  Born of Solyma’s pure maiden!

  I would hymn thee, blessed Warden,

  Driving from thy Father’s garden

  Blinking serpent’s crafty lust,

  With his bruised head in the dust!

  Down thou camest, low as earth,

  Bound to those of mortal-birth;

  Down thou camest, low as hell,

  Where shepherd-Death did tend and keep

  A thousand nations like to sheep,

  While weak with age old Hades fell

  Shivering through his dark to view thee,

  And the Dog did backward yell

  With jaws all gory to let through thee!

  So redeeming from their pain,

  Choirs of disembodied ones,

  Thou didst lead whom thou didst gather,

  Upward in ascent again,

  With a great hymn to the Father,

  Upward to the pure white thrones!

  King, the dæmon tribes of air

  Shuddered back to feel thee there!

  And the holy stars stood breathless,

  Trembling in their chorus deathless;

  A low laughter fillèd æther –

  Harmony’s most subtle sire

  From the seven strings of his lyre,

  Stroked a measured music hither –

  Io pæan! victory!

  Smiled the star of morning – he

  Who smileth to foreshow the day!

  Smilèd Hesperus the golden,

  Who smileth soft for Venus gay!

  While that hornèd glory holden

  Brimful from the fount of fire,

  The white moon, was leading higher

  In a gentle pastoral wise

  All the nightly deities!

  Yea, and Titan threw abroad

  The far shining of his hair

  ‘Neath thy footsteps holy-fair,

  Owning thee the Son of God;

  The Mind artificer of all,

  And his own fire’s original!

  And THOU upon thy wing of will

  Mounting, – thy God-foot uptill

  The neck of the blue firmament;

  Soaring, didst alight content

  Where the spirit-spheres were singing,

  And the fount of good was springing,

  In the silent heaven!

  Where Time is not with his tide

  Ever running, never weary,

  Drawing earth-born things aside

  Against the rocks; nor yet are given

  The plagues death-bold that ride the dreary

  Tost matter-depths. Eternity

  Assumes the places which they yield!

  Not aged, howsoe’er she held

  Her crown from everlastingly –

  At once of youth, at once of eld,

  While in that mansion which is hers,

  To God and gods she ministers!

  How the poet rises in his “singing clothes” embroidered all over with the mythos and the philosophy! Yet his eye is to the Throne: and we must not call him half a heathen by reason of a Platonic idiosyncrasy, seeing that the esoteric of the most suspicious turnings of his phraseology, is “Glory to the true God.” For another ode Paris should be here to choose it – we are puzzled among the beautiful. Here is one with a thought in it from Gregory’s prose, which belongs to Synesius by right of conquest: –

  O my deathless, O my blessèd,

  Maid-born, glorious son confessèd,

  O my Christ of Solyma!

  I who earliest learnt to play

  This measure for thee, fain would bring

  Its new sweet tune to citern-string –

  Be propitious, O my King!

  Take this music which is mine

  Anthem’d from the songs divine!

  We will sing thee deathless One,

  God himself, and God’s great Son –

  Of sire of endless generations,

  Son of manifold creations!

  Nature mutually endued,

  Wisdom in infinitude!

  God, before the angels burning –

  Corpse, among the mortals mourning!

  What time Thou wert pourèd mild

  From an earthy vase defiled,

  Magi with fair arts besprent,

  At thy new star’s orient,

  Trembled inly, wondered wild,

  Questioned with their thoughts abroad –

  “What then is the new-born child?

  WHO the hidden God?

  God, or corpse, or king? –

  Bring your gifts, oh hither bring

  Myrrh for rite, – for tribute, gold –

  Frankincense for sacrifice!

  God! thine incense take and hold!

  King! I bring thee gold of price!

  Myrrh with tomb will harmonize!”

  For Thou, entombed, hast purified

  Earthly ground and rolling tide,

  And the path of dæmon nations,

  And the free air’s fluctuations,

  And the depth below the deep!

  Thou God, helper of the dead,

  Low as Hades did’st thou tread!

  Thou King, gracious aspect keep!

  Take this music which is mine

  Anthem’d from the songs divine.

  Eudocia – in the twenty-first year of the fifth century – wife of Theodosius, and empress of the world, thought good to extend her sceptre –

&nbs
p; (Hac claritate gemina

  O gloriosa fœmina!)

  over Homer’s poems, and cento-ize them into an epic on the Saviour’s life. She was the third fair woman accused of sacrificing a world for an apple, having moved her husband to wrath, by giving away his imperial gift of a large one to her own philosophic friend Paulinus; and being unhappily more learned than her two predecessors in the sin, in the course of her exile to Jerusalem, she took ghostly comfort, by separating Homer’s ειδωλον from his φρενες. There she sate among the ruins of the holy city, addressing herself most unholily, with whatever good intentions and delicate fingers, to pulling Homer’s gold to pieces bit by bit, even as the ladies of France devoted what remained to them of virtuous energy “pour parfiler” under the benignant gaze of Louis Quinze. She, too, who had no right of the purple to literary ineptitude, – she, born no empress of Rome, but daughter of Leontius the Athenian, what had she to do with Homer, “parfilant”? Was it not enough for Homer that he was turned once, like her own cast imperial mantle, by Apolinarius into a Jewish epic, but that he must be unpicked again by Eudocia for a Christian epic? The reader, who has heard enough of centos, will not care to hear how she did it. That she did it was too much; and the deed recoiled. For mark the poetical justice of her destiny; let all readers mark it; and all writers, especially female writers, who may be half as learned, and not half as fair, – that although she wrote many poems, one “on the Persian war,” whose title and merit are recorded, not one, except this cento, has survived. The obliterative sponge, we hear of in Æschylus, has washed out every verse except this cento’s “damned spot.” This remains. This is called Eudocia! this stands for the daughter of Leontius, and this only in the world! O fair mischief ! she is punished by her hand.

  And yet, are we born critics any more than she was born an empress, that we should not have a heart? and is our heart stone, that it should not wax soft within us while the vision is stirred “between our eyelids and our eyes,” of this beautiful Athenais, baptized once by Christian waters, and once by human tears, into Eudocia, the imperial mourner? – this learned pupil of a learned father, crowned once by her golden hair, and once by her golden crown, yet praised more for poetry and learning than for beauty and greatness by such grave writers as Socrates and Evagrius, the ecclesiastical historians? – this world’s empress, pale with the purple of her palaces, an exile even on the throne from her Athens, and soon twice an exile, from father’s grave and husband’s bosom? We relent before such a vision. And what if, relentingly, we declare her innocent of the Homeric cento? – what if we find her “a whipping boy” to take the blame? – what if we write down a certain Proba “improba,” and bid her bear it? For Eudocia having been once a mark to slander, may have been so again; and Falconia Proba having committed centoism upon Virgil, must have been capable of anything. The Homeric cento has been actually attributed to her by certain critics, with whom we would join in all earnestness our most sour voices, gladly, for Eudocia’s sake, who is closely dear to us, and not malignly for Proba’s, who was “improba” without our help. So shall we impute evil to only one woman, and she not an Athenian; while our worst wish, even to her, assumes this innoxious shape, that she had used a distaff rather than a stylus, though herself and the yet more “Sleeping Beauty” had owned one horoscope between them! Amen to our wish! A busy distaff and a sound sleep to Proba!