The Latin proverb 'De gustibus non est disputandum,' corresponds to the English one 'There's no accounting for tastes.' Browning says that if our preferences persist after death, his will be, not for England, but for Italy.

802. 22. cicala, the tree-cricket, often heard in Italy in the heat of summer.

36. liver-wing, right arm. The Bourbon rule in Southern Italy was exceedingly unpopular, and numerous attempts were made to cast it off; the king here referred to was Ferdinand II, whose cruelties were denounced by Gladstone in 1851. He was succeeded by his son, who was expelled in 1860, and Naples was incorporated with the new kingdom of Italy. Browning sympathized with all the Italians' attempts to regain their liberty and independence, even when they went the length of assassination.

ANDREA DEL SARTO

This is one of the most remarkable of Browning's shorter poems, whether regarded as a study of character or of art. It was written when he was living in Florence, in answer to a request from a friend in England for a copy of the portrait of Andrea del Sarto and his wife in the Pitti Palace. Browning could not get one, and sent the poem instead. Mr. Ernest Radford thus describes the picture: The artist and his wife are presented at half length. Andrea turns towards her with a pleading expression on his face. His right

arm is round her; he leans forward as if searching her face for the strength that has gone from himself. She holds the letter in her hand, and looks neither at that nor at him, but straight out of the canvas. And the beautiful face with the redbrown hair is passive and unruffled, and awfully expressionless. There is silent thunder in this face if there ever was, but there is no anger. gests only a very mild, and at the same time immutable determination to have her own way.'

It sug

Browning develops, in his favorite form of the

dramatic monologue, the suggestion given by Andrea's portrait of himself; for the details he is chiefly indebted to Vasari's Life of Andrea del Sarto, as will be seen from the following extracts (translation by Blashfield and Hopkins, with Mrs. Foster's notes): - Had this master possessed a somewhat bolder and more elevated mind, had he been as much distinguished for higher qualifications as he was for genius and depth of judgment in the art he practised, he would, beyond all doubt, have been without an equal. But there was a certain timidity of mind, a sort of diffidence and want of force in his nature, which rendered it impossible that those evidences of ardor and animation, which are proper to the more exalted character, should ever appear in him; nor did he at any time display one particle of that elevation which, could it but have been added to the advantages wherewith he was endowed, would have rendered him a truly divine painter. At that time there was

a most beautiful girl in the Via di San Gallo, who was married to a cap-maker, and who, though born of a poor and vicious father, carried about her as much pride and haughtiness as beauty and fascination. She delighted in trapping the hearts of men, and among others ensnared the unlucky Andrea, whose immoderate love for her soon caused him to neglect the studies demanded by his art, and in great measure to discontinue the assistance which he had given his parents. Now it chanced that a sudden and grievous illness seized the husband of this woman, who rose no more from his bed, but died thereof. Without taking counsel of his friends therefore; without regard to the dignity of his art or the consideration due to his genius, and to the eminence he had attained with so much labor; without a word, in short, to any of his kindred, Andrea took this Lucrezia di Baccio del Fede, such was the name of the woman, to be his wife; her beauty appearing to him to merit thus much at his hands, and his love for her having more influence over him than the glory and honor towards which he had begun to make such hopeful advances. But when this news became known in Florence the respect and affection which his friends had previously borne to Andrea changed to contempt and disgust, since it appeared to them that the darkness of this disgrace had obscured for a time all the glory and renown obtained by his talents. But he destroyed his own peace as well as estranged his friends by this act, seeing that he soon became jealous, and found that he had besides fallen into the hands of an artful woman, who made him do as she pleased in all things. He abandoned his own poor father and mother, for example, and adopted the father and sisters of his wife in their stead; insomuch that all who knew the facts mourned over him, and he soon began to be as much avoided as he had previously been sought after.' Andrea found this mode of life so oppressive that, on the advice of his friends, he put his wife in safe keeping and went to Paris, where he was richly rewarded by the King of France for his work. But a pitiful letter from his wife induced him to return. Taking the money which the king confided to him for the purchase

of pictures, statues and other fine things, he set off, therefore, having first sworn on the gospels to return in a few months. Arrived happily in Florence, he lived joyously with his wife for some time, making large presents to her father and sisters, but doing nothing for his own parents, whom he would not even see, and who, at the end of a certain period, ended their lives in great poverty and misery.' Having spent the money entrusted to him in building a house and indulging himself in various other pleasures, Andrea was afraid to return to France, and remained in Florence in the very lowest position, procuring a livelihood and passing his time as he best might.'

So says Vasari, who at one time was Andrea's pupil, and published his Lives of the Painters while Andrea's widow was still in Florence; but recent investigation has failed to reveal the slightest evidence in support of the charge of embezzlement made by Vasari against Andrea, and it has been generaly discredited.

803. 15. Fiesolé. The village on the top of the ridge overlooking the quarter of Florence in which Andrea lived.

25. It saves a model. 'Andrea rarely painted the countenance of a woman in any place that he did not avail himself of the features of his wife; and if at any time he took his model from any other face there was always a resemblance to hers in the painting, not only because he had this woman constantly before him and depicted her so frequently but also and what is still more, because he had her lineaments engraven on his heart; it thus happens that almost all his female heads have a certain something which recalls that of his wife.' (Vasari.) 32. no one's. Not even his.

36-45. Lucrezia has lost only her first pride in her husband; he has lost all his youthful ambitions and aspirations, as the day loses its noontide splendor, and the glory of summer changes to the decay of autumn.

43. huddled more inside. The trees are huddled together within the convent wall, and have no room to grow; but they are, perhaps, safer -so, perhaps, too, is the painter in his own home, though he misses the inspiration and development that come from contact with the world. Andrea acquiesces in his seclusion, but he cannot help regretting his lost opportunities.

93. Morello. A mountain near Florence. 804. 105. the Urbinate. Raphael of Urbino, the most famous of Italian painters; he died in 1520, ten years before Andrea. Vasari says that Andrea copied a portrait by Raphael with such exactness that Raphael's own pupils, who had helped in the painting, could not tell the copy from the original.

130. Agnolo. The great Italian painter usually called Michael Angelo in English; he was doubtless theSomeone' of line 76; Andrea refers to him again in line 184.

174. ere the triumph. Of my genius in art. 805. 189-193. Bocchi, in his Beauties of Florence, states that Michael Angelo said to Raphael, referring to Andrea: There is a little man in Florence, who, if he were employed upon such great works as have been given to you, would bring the sweat to your brow.'

199. Lucrezia has interrupted

to ask Andrea about whom and what he is talking. She is evidently paying no attention.

209-10. Mount Morello can no longer be seen, the lights on the city wall are lit, and the little owls, named in Italy from their call, Chiu, are crying; darkness is falling on the house, as on Andrea's life.

212-18. See above for the charge against Andrea of building a house for himself with the money entrusted to him by King Francis to buy pictures with.

220. The cousin (or lover) who waits outside is the third character in the little drama - silent and unseen, but profoundly affecting the situation. 806. 263. Leonard. Leonardo da Vinci, the third great Italian painter of the time; he died the year before Raphael.

266. Andrea at last acknowledges to himself that his wife has been a hindrance instead of a help, a drag preventing his ascent from the second rank to the first: but he prefers this to the sacrifice of giv ing her up.

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

In the Church of St. Augustine at Fano, on the Adriatic, there is a picture called 'The Guardian Angel,' by Guercino, an Italian painter of the seventeenth century. It represents an angel with outspread wings embracing a kneeling child, whose hands he folds in prayer.

6. another child. The poet himself.

7. retrieve. Bring back to the right way. 14-16. In the picture cherubs point to the opened heaven, and the child looks upward past the angel's head.

18. bird of God. This beautiful expression is translated from Dante's Purgatorio.

20-21. The angel seems to be enfolding the child with the skirt of his robe, held in his left hand. 39-40. The angel's head is turned away, but the reason given is Browning's o.vn.

46. My angel with me, too. His wife. See line 54.

307. 54. dear old friend. Alfred Domett, a muchprized friend of Browning's youth, who in 1842 settled in New Zealand.

56. Ancona. On the Italian coast, near Fano. Browning and his wife visited both places soon after their first settlement in Italy in 1846, and the poem was doubtless written at the time. Mrs. Browning writes of the visit to her friend, Miss Mitford: So we went to Ancona - a striking sea city, holding up against the brown rocks, and elbowing out the purple tides beautiful to look upon. An exfoliation of the rock itself you would call the houses that seem to grow there - so identical is the color and character.'

A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL

This poem 'exhibits something of the life of the Scaligers and the Casaubons, of many an early scholar, like Roger Bacon's friend Pierre Maricourt, working at some region of knowledge, and content to labor without fame so long as he mastered thoroughly whatever he undertook.' (Contemporary Review, IV, 135.)

The scholars are bearing their master to his tomb in one of the Italian hill-cities, perched on the top of the rocks, like Orvieto or Perugia.

3. croft. Enclosed tilled or pasture land. thorpe. Little village.

34. Apollo. The classical ideal of manly beauty. His statues usually represent him holding the lyre. 39. Moaned he. Did he moan? 45. the world.

on escaping.

56. the curtain. 68. Sooner.

to give.

Of classical lore, which was bent

Of the play of life.

Before he had gathered all books had

808. 86. Calculus. The stone. 88. Tussis. Cough.

95. soul-hydroptic. Every lust is a kind of hydropic distemper, and the more we drink the more we shall thirst.' (Tillotson, quoted by Webster.) hydroptic, dropsical.

96-100. Cf. Abt Vogler, 72, p. 812.

113-124. Cf. Rabbi ben Ezra, stanzas xxiii-xxv, p. 815.

129-131. Hoti, Oun, De. Greek particles, meaning respectively that,' therefore,' 'towards.' As to the last, Browning wrote to the editor of the London Daily News on Nov. 20, 1874, as follows: In a clever article you speak of 66 the doctrine of the enclitic De "-" which with all deference to Mr. Browning, in point of fact, does not exist." No, not to Mr. Browning: but pray defer to Herr Buttmann, whose fifth list of "enclitics' ends "with the inseparable De "- or to Curtius, whose fifth list ends also with De (meaning towards, and as a demonstrative appendage)." That this is not to be confounded with the accentuated " De, meaning but," was the "Doctrine" which the Grammarian bequeathed to those capable of receiving it.'

ONE WORD MORE

A special interest attaches to this poem because it is the only one addressed by Browning, directly and avowedly, to his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It was originally appended to the collection of poems, called Men and Women (1855). Browning uses the sonnets written by Raphael and a portrait painted by Dante to illustrate the desire of the artist to show his personal affection in some other way than that of his familiar craft, which has become professional and belongs to the world, so that everybody feels entitled to criticize. But as the poet cannot paint pictures, or carve statues, or make music to show his love, a semblance of resource remains in the use of a slightly different form of art from that which he commonly practises. Instead of writing dramatically, he may write, for once in his own person; for just as, according to the ancient myth,

the moon would turn to her lover a side unseen by other mortals, so the poet has two soul-sides, one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her.' While he says this of himself, he likes to think it of her, his 'moon of poets.' Her poetry is the world's side, and he too admires her from that point of view; but the best is when he leaves the standpoint of literary appreciation for the more intimate relation of personal knowledge and affection. Then it is that he realizes the love that Raphael sought to express by his sonnets and Dante by his picture.

5. a century of sonnets. Guido Reni had a book of 100 drawings of Raphael's, but Raphael is only known to have made four sonnets. Raphael never married, but he was very much in love with a certain lady, who has been identified, not very convinc ingly, with the original of one or other of the portraits attributed to his hand.

809. 22-24. The Sistine Madonna is now in the Dresden Art Gallery, the Madonna di Foligno is in the Vatican at Rome. 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. I think I meant La Belle Jardinière but am not sure for the picture in the Louvre. (Browning to W. J. Rolfe.) The Louvre Madonna is seated in the midst of a garden, in which there are lilies. All these are among the most famous works of Raphael.

27. Guido Reni. A celebrated Italian painter about a century later than Raphael. See note on line 5.

32. Dante. The first great Italian poet (12651321), who in The Divine Comedy attached eternal opprobrium to his enemies by assigning to them conspicuous places in Hell. Stanzas v, vi, and vii refer to a passage in his Vita Nuova, in which he has idealized his love for Beatrice, whom he had known as a young girl: 'On that day which fulfilled the year since my lady had been made of the citizens of eternal life; remembering me of her as I sat alone, I betook myself to draw the resemblance of an angel upon certain tablets. And while I did thus, chancing to turn my head, I perceived that some were standing beside me to whom I should have given courteous welcome, and that they were observing what I did: also I learned afterwards that they had been there a while before I perceived them. Perceiving whom, I rose for salutation and said: "Another was with me." Afterwards, when they had left me, I set myself again to the same occupation, to wit, to the drawing figures of angels.' (Section 35, Rossetti's translation.) It will be noticed that Browning's interpretation of the incident goes somewhat beyond the original, which gives no indication that those who interrupted Dante were people he scarified in the Inferno.

And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock? And the Lord spake unto

Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.' Here, again, Browning has allowed his imagination to play round the original record.

810. 94-5. When the children of Israel were rebellious against Moses, they cried, 'Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots' (Exodus xvi, 3).

97. Exodus xxxiv, 29-35. cloven, because, following the Latin translation of this passage, the early painters represented Moses with two horns on his forehead. The original means to shine out or dart forth like rays of light.

101-2. Moses married Zipporah, Jethro's daughter (Exodus ii, 16-21), and an Ethiopian woman (Numbers xii, 1).

121. fresco.

Painting in fresh plaster, usually

done on the inside wall of a church.

125. missal-marge. The margin of a prayer book. 136-8. Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, Lippo, Roland and Andrea were among the characters in Men and Women, originally fifty in number.

143. how I speak. The personal instead of the dramatic mode of expression.

145. Here in London. The poem was written in London in September, 1855.

150. Samminiato. The common pronunciation of San Miniato, an old church, surrounded by cypress trees, overlooking Florence.

160. mythos. The old myth or story of the love of Diana, the moon-goddess, for the mortal Endymion.

163. Zoroaster (589-513 B. C.), founder of the Persian religion and a famous astronomer.

164. Galile'o (1564-1642). Professor at Padua, and one of the founders of modern science. After being condemned by the church, he continued his studies in his house at Florence, which overlooks the city from the same side as San Miniato.

165. Homer. In allusion to the Hymn to the Moon.

Keats. The author of Endymion. Browning expressed special admiration for him in the poem entitled Popularity.

811. 172-9. Exodus xxiv, 9-11: 'Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness saw God, and did eat and drink.'

ABT VOGLER

also they

George Joseph Vogler (1749-1814), the priestmusician, composer, and teacher of Weber and Meyerbeer, was especially celebrated as an improviser, and traveled all over Europe giving performances on his orchestrion.

7. Name, Jehovah, used by Solomon as a talisman, according to oriental tradition.

22. festal night. Easter at St. Peter's, Rome. 812. 32. no more near nor far. 'Music frees us from the phenomena of time and space.'

34. Protoplast. The thing first formed as a model to be imitated.' The presences are either or the future or of the past.

70. The evil is null. The teaching of Spinoza, Hegel, and Emerson, as well as of the Kabbalists, founded on that of the Gnostics and Neo-Platonists. 813. 91. the common chord consists of the fundamental, with a major (four semitones), or minor (three semitones) third, and a perfect fifth (sever semitones) over it.'

93. a ninth if major, contains an octave and two semitones; if minor, an octave and one semitone. These last lines of the poem, stripped of their symbolic meaning, may be taken as an exact explanation of a simple harmonic modulation.' (Porter and Clarke.)

RABBI BEN EZRA

Ibn Ezra, or Abenezra (1092-1167), was a great Jewish scholar, poet, philosopher, and physician, who wandered over Europe, Asia, and Africa in pursuit of knowledge. As will be seen from the notes, his writings contain some of the views expressed by Browning's sage.

1. The Rabbi seems to be at the end of middle age, just where old age begins. He looks back to youth, forward to old age.

4. A poem of Abenezra's, quoted by Dr. Michael Sachs, has the same thought: In deiner Hand liegt mein Geschick.'

Stanzas ii and iii should be taken together. The sense is: I do not remonstrate because youth, amassing flowers, sighed He does not find

fault with the foolish ambitions of his youth, for these aspirations, though they are vain, are what distinguish man from the beasts. This thought is expressed by Abenezra in his Commentary on Job XXXV, II: 'Man has the sole privilege of becoming superior to the beast and the fowl.'

25-30. Stanza v expresses a favorite thought of Browning's. Cf. A Death in the Desert, 576-8:

Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's and not the beasts': God is, they are, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.

40-42. Cf. Saul, lines 160 and 295. 814. 48. soul on its lone way. The soul of man is called lonely because it is separated during its union with the body from the universal soul.' (Abenezra's Commentary on Psalm xxii, 22.)

57. Cf. Saul, line 242.

815. 151. Potter's wheel. Cf. Isaiah lxiv, 8: 'We are the clay and thou our Potter.' This is a favorite scriptural and oriental metaphor, used also by Quarles and in Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, but by no previous poet with such deep significance as here.

PROSPICE

'Look forward.' This noble defiance of death was written in the autumn after Browning lost his wife, and appeared first in the Atlantic Monthly for June, 1864.

816. 19. life's arrears. All the pain that a man might fairly have expected to suffer in life, but missed.

23. fiend-voices. The ancient belief was that the soul at the moment of separation from the body is the object of a struggle between the angels, whose office is to bear away the freed spirit (Luke xvi, 22) and the powers of darkness who strive to snatch it from salvation. For this reason fervent prayers are offered for a soul on the point of departure.

27-28. Browning had a strong faith in immortality, and repeatedly expressed it in both prose and verse. He said: 'I know I shall meet my dearest friends again.'

HERVÉ RIEL

Browning was in France when it was invaded by Prussia in 1870, and escaped from the country with some difficulty before the outbreak of the disorders which followed the collapse of the French resist ance. Desiring to express his sympathy for the sufferers by the siege of Paris, he sold this poem to Cornhill Magazine for £100, which he gave as a subscription to the Relief Fund. It was written in 1867 and first published in 1871. The incident it relates was first denied in France, but the records of the admiralty of the time proved that Browning was correct, except in one small detail: the reward Hervé Riel asked and received was un congé absolu a holiday for the rest of his life.

1. the Hogue. Cap La Hogue, where the French fleet was attacked in 1692 by the English and Dutch, and forced to retire. The expedition aimed at the restoration of James II, who watched the defeat from the Norman coast.

5. St. Malo, at the mouth of the Rance River, in Brittany, has a harbor which is described as 'safe, but difficult of approach.' In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was a flourishing port, and from it Jacques Cartier sailed in 1535 to explore the River St. Lawrence. the Rance. A small stream with picturesque steep banks. The town is situated on a rock between the harbor and the mouth of the river.

18. twelve and eighty. French, douze.

quatre-vingt

817. 30. Plymouth Sound. In the West of England, an important harbor and naval station. 43. pressed. Forced to serve. Tourville. The French admiral.

44. Croisickese. Of Croisic, a little fishing vil lage of Brittany, where Browning liked to stay. See the title of the next poem in this selection. It was no doubt at Croisic that Browning picked up the story.

46. Malouins. Men of St. Malo. 49. Grève.

La Grande Grève, the sandy shallows of the coast about St. Malo, especially to the east. 53. Solidor. A small harbor near the mouth of the Rance, beside the town of St. Servan. A fort of the same name defends it.

art.

The Prologue and the Epilogue are connected with the main poem (which is here omitted) only by the thought, common to all three, that love is a necessary part of the poet's life and The Prologue may cause a little difficulty to begin with by its extraordinary conciseness, but this only adds to its charm when the meaning has been grasped. The grammatical construction and the relation of the stanzas to each other are indicated in the following prose rendering: 'As a bank of moss stands bare till some May morning it is made beautiful by the sudden growth of the violets; as the night sky is dark and louring till a bright star pierces the concealing clouds; so the world seemed to hem in my life with disgrace till your face appeared to brighten it with the smile of God the divine gift of love.'

In the Epilogue it is a young girl who repeats to the poet the 'pretty tale' he has once told her, and makes her own application of its significance. The story is found in Greek literature both in prose and in verse.

819. 50. Here, as in lines 15 and 21, the poet has attempted to interrupt.

77. Lotte. The pet name of Charlotte Buff, upon whom Goethe modelled the heroine of The Sorrows of Young Werther. The reference here, however, is rather to Goethe's way of treating women in general than to the particular case of Lotte, for she was already engaged to be married when he met her.

100-2. The sweet lilt of the treble was supplied by the chirping of the cricket, when its absence would have allowed the predominance of the sombre bass. Cf. lines 112-4.

120. (There, enough!) To what interruption of the poet's does this reply?

PHEIDIPPIDES

This is Browning's romantic setting of an incident of the Persian war which is thus recounted by the Greek historian Herodotus (VI, 105. Rawlinson's translation): —

'And first, before they left Athens, the generals sent off to Sparta a herald, one Pheidip'pides, who was by birth an Athenian, and by birth and prac. tice a trained runner. This man, according to the account which he gave to the Athenians on his return, when he was near Mount Parthenium, above Tegea, fell in with the god Pan, who called him by his name, and bade him ask the Athenians wherefore they neglected him so entirely, when he was kindly disposed towards them, and had often helped them in times past, and would do so again in time to come?' The Athenians, entirely believ