LECTURE II
CLEON

Between Caliban and Cleon a wide gulf is fixed: between the savage sprawling in “the pit’s much mire,” gloating over his powers of inflicting suffering, at once cowering before and insulting his god: and the cultured Greek, inhabitant of “the sprinkled isles,” poet, philosopher, artist, musician, sitting in his “portico, royal with sunset,” reflecting on the purposes of life, his own achievements and the design of Zeus in creation, which, though inscrutable, he yet must hold to have been beneficent. Could contrast be anywhere more striking than that suggested by these two scenes? And yet amidst outward dissimilarity there is a point towards which all their lines converge. On one subject of reflection alone, this man, the product of Greek intellectual life and culture, has hardly passed beyond that of the savage awakening to a “sense of sense.” To both alike death means the end of life, to neither does any glimpse of light reveal itself beyond the grave. And death to the Greek is infinitely more terrible than to the son of Sycorax. To Caliban the belief that “with the life the pain will stop,” affords a feeling akin to relief in the present, when the mental discomfort arising from fear of Setebos temporarily over-powers the physical satisfaction to be derived from basking in the sun. To Cleon, possessed of the capacity for “loving life so over-much,” the idea of death affords so terrible a suggestion that its very horror forces upon him at times the necessity of the acceptance of some theory involving belief in the immortality of the soul. Thus we have moved onwards one step, though one step only, in the ladder of thought, of which Caliban’s soliloquy constitutes the lowest rung. The inert conjectures, the vague surmises of the savage are succeeded by the reflections and subsequent logical deductions of the man of intellectual culture, culminating in the anguished cry:

I, I the feeling, thinking, acting man.
······
Sleep in my urn. It is so horrible,
I dare at times imagine to my need
Some future state revealed to us by Zeus.
······
... But no!
Zeus has not yet revealed it, and alas,
He must have done so, were it possible! (Cleon, 11. 321-335.)

Different as are the modes of contemplating death, differing as the character and environment of the soliloquist, one is yet in a sense the outcome of the other, an exemplification of Cleon’s own assertion:

In man there’s failure, only since he left
The lower and inconscious forms of life. (ll. 125-126.)
······
Most progress is most failure. (l. 272.)

With the opening out of wider possibilities to the mind comes the consciousness of the gulf between actuality and ideality. To Caliban, whose pleasurable conceptions of life are bounded by the prospect of defrauding Prospero of his services, lying in the mire

Drinking the mash, with brain become alive,
Making and marring clay at will; (Caliban, 11. 96-97.)

to such a being not long endowed with a capacity for the realization of his own individuality, with the “sense of sense,” the Greek appreciation of life is a sheer impossibility. By the mind capable of entering into sympathy with Homer, Terpander, Phidias, the joys of life are felt too keenly to be relinquished without a struggle, and that a bitter one. Death and the grave cast a chilling shadow over the brightness of the present.

Before analysing the arguments contained in the reflections of Cleon, it may be well to inquire what were the influences to which the poet had been subjected, and which resulted in the condition of mind in which the messengers of Protus found him. The Greece in which Cleon lived was the Greece to which S. Paul addressed himself from the Areopagus, the character of which is sufficiently indicated by the circumstances leading to the assembly on that memorable occasion. The Athenians, we are told by the writer of the Acts, “spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.”[17] The age was then, it would appear, not one of action or of practical thought. All had been done in the past that could be done in the departments of artistic achievement, of poetry, of philosophy. Now creative power would seem to have disappeared from amongst Greek thinkers, all that remained being the natural restlessness which ultimately succeeds satiety. Much had been accomplished in the past: What remained to the future? It is in accordance with this spirit of the age that Cleon writes to Protus:

We of these latter days, with greater mind
Than our forerunners, since more composite,
Look not so great, beside their simple way,
To a judge who only sees one way at once,
One mind-point and no other at a time,—
Compares the small part of a man of us
With some whole man of the heroic age,
Great in his way—not ours, nor meant for ours. (ll. 64-71.)

Hence the poet of modern times, though he has left the “epos on [the] hundred plates of gold,” the property of the tyrant Protus, and the little popular song

So sure to rise from every fishing-bark
When, lights at prow, the seamen haul their net; (ll. 49, 50.)

yet admits freely that he has not “chanted verse like Homer.” What though he has “combined the moods” of music, “inventing one,” yet has he never “swept string like Terpander,” his predecessor by some seven centuries. What though he has moulded “the image of the sun-god on the phare,” or painted the Poecile its whole length, yet has he not “carved and painted men like Phidias and his friend”—his forerunners by something like four hundred years. With these mighty achievements in poetry and art of those giants amongst men to be contemplated in retrospect, what hope remains for the future? What greater attainments may be possible to the human intellect? Here again life—this mortal life—would seem to have become all that it is capable of becoming; the powers of mind and body have alike been developed to the full. Thus on this side too is satiety. The yearning for growth, for progress, inherent in human nature, seeks instinctively further heights of attainment. When for the time being all visible peaks appear to have been scaled, then, in the phraseology of S. John, “man [turns] round on himself and stands.”[18] And then arises the enquiry into the purposes of existence, an enquiry unheard in the earlier days of practical activity and struggle. Is this the end of all? No progress being possible along the old tracks, we must hear or see some new thing. The late Dr. Westcott in comparing the dramatic work of Euripides with that of Æschylus, and remarking that Euripides (only a generation younger) had to take account of all the novel influences under which he had grown up, adds, “Once again Asia had touched Europe and quickened there new powers. Greece had conquered Persia only that she might better receive from the East the inspiration of a wider energy.”[19] Once more in the days of Cleon might it be said that Asia had touched Europe and quickened there new powers. But this time the positions of conquered and conquerors were reversed. Asia was to conquer Europe, but the conquest effected by the sword of Alexander was to be avenged by weapons forged in another armoury. This time Asia invaded Europe when Paul of Tarsus responded to the appeal “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” So far that invasion had borne small fruit: “certain men” had believed, including Dionysius the Areopagite, whilst others, whose attitude Protus would appear to have shared, desired to hear further on the subject of the Resurrection.[20] Cleon is represented as ranking among the sceptics with reference to the new Christian teaching. The special influence of Greek thought upon his philosophy and creed, as expressed in the poem, may be best noticed in a closer consideration to which we now turn.

I. The opening lines (1-18) present, with Browning’s usual power of delineation, the environment of the speaker. Cleon, the poet, as well as his correspondent, Protus, the tyrant, seem alike to be imaginary personages. With lines 19-42 the soliloquist at once strikes the key-note of the poem. By the act of munificence which showers gifts upon the poet, “whose song gives life its joy,” the king evinces his “recognition of the use of life”: and by this recognition proves himself no mere materialist. He is ruling his people, not with exclusive attention to their material needs, though they may not themselves look beyond the gratification of these. Whilst he is building his tower, achieving his life’s work, the beauty of which is sufficient to the “vulgar” gaze, he, the builder, is looking “to the East”; and looking to the East in a sense not intended by the Greek when he makes enquiry through his messengers for the “mere barbarian Jew,” “one called Paulus.”

II. The following section of the poem (ll. 42-157) is an interesting elaboration of Cleon’s theory of the development, not only of the individual (Browning’s favourite theme), but of the growth of the race. The Greek holds that where individual members of humanity have attained in their several departments to the greatest heights, nothing further in that direction is possible of accomplishment. What then remains for the advancement of the race? When the “outside verge that rounds our faculties” has been reached, “these divine men of old” must remain unsurpassed by their successors in that particular department of work or thought.

Where they reached, who can do more than reach?

What then remains? How may the contemporary of Cleon excel “the grand simplicity” of Homer, of Terpander, and in later times of Phidias? It is to the growing complexity of the human mind that Cleon looks for an answer. Although in one intellectual department he may fall short of that which has been attained in the past, he is yet capable of appreciating all that his predecessors have achieved to a degree impossible to an earlier generation of mankind. All the faculties are developed, not one to the exclusion or limitation of the others; hence is obtained a more completely sympathetic union of the intellectual capacities. Thus the further development of the race is to be sought in a greater complexity of being rather than in an advance along any individual line of progress. Three several illustrations of his theory Cleon adduces (1) That suggested by the mosaic-work of the pavement before him: and (2) the more unusual one of the sphere with its contents of air and water: yet again (3) the comparison between the wild and cultivated plant. (1) Each individual section of the mosaic was in itself perfect—thus with the great ones of old. This perfection having been attained, all that should succeed would be at best but a reproduction of the already perfect forms, a repetition, a renewal of that which had gone before. A higher, because more complex beauty might, however, be created by a combination of these separate perfections, producing thus a new form, that, too, perfect in itself. And this synthetic labour must prove an advance on the almost exclusively analytic which had preceded it; since new and more complex forms should be thus evolved, “making at last a picture” of deeper meaning and finer interests than those offered by any number of individual chequers uncombined, however perfect in symmetry and colour. Hence there might still remain a goal towards which human energy should direct its efforts. Though man may have attained to perfection in part, to continue the simile, he has now to develop towards the attainment of a perfect complex whole, resulting from a composition and adjustment of perfect individual parts, united by a bond of sympathetic intellectual appreciation non-existent in past ages. When Cleon shall have “chanted verse like Homer,” “swept string like Terpander,” “carved and painted men like Phidias and his friend,” then, not only will the individual of recent times have surpassed each of his forerunners in the variety and comprehensiveness of his powers, but he will have attained in each individual department of his being to that greatness for the development of which man’s entire faculties were of old required. To this Cleon has by no means yet attained. Such growth, change, and expansion in the individual character is not, he would suggest, readily recognized by the world, and the second illustration here applies: (2) water, the more palpable, material element, is estimated at its worth, whilst air, with its subtler properties,

Tho’ filling more fully than the water did;

though holding

Thrice the weight of water in itself. (ll. 106-107.)

is yet accounted a negligible quantity, and the sphere is pronounced empty. Of the deeper, more subtle, thoughts and workings of the soul in Cleon and his fellows, the outcome of the labours of humanity in past generations, thoughts too deep for expression, ideas only destined to bear fruit in the years to come; of all these, and such as these, the contemporary world takes little heed. To the gods alone Cleon would refer for his appreciation. With David he would exclaim:

’Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do![21]

With Ben Ezra he would triumph

All, the world’s coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s amount:
········
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped:
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me;

(“ignored” because incapable of the understanding essential to appreciation);

This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.[22]

For Cleon, equally with the Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, accepts the entire subserviency of man to his creator. Both alike recognize the value of life, human life; its unity, its perfection in itself: both alike realize that this life means growth. “Why stay we on the earth unless to grow?” asks the Greek. “It was better,” writes the Jew as age approaches,

It was better, youth
Should strive, through acts uncouth,
Towards making, than repose on aught found made.[23]

Thus progress! Nevertheless, the Rabbi, whilst recognizing to the full the value of the present life as a thing per se, bearing its peculiar uses, its perfect development advancing from youth through manhood until age shall “approve of youth, and death complete the same!” with the unity yet recognizes also continuity; and at the close of the old life can stand upon the threshold of the new “fearless and unperplexed,” “what weapons to select, what armour to indue,” for use in the renewed struggle he foresees awaiting him. To the Greek life was equally, nay, surpassingly beautiful, the human faculties equally worthy of cultivation. As in Nature, so with man (and here is employed the third of his illustrations): (3) the wild flower, i.e., according to his interpretation, the possessor of the single artistic faculty—Homer, Terpander, Phidias—

Was the larger; I have dashed
Rose-blood upon its petals, pricked its cup’s
Honey with wine, and driven its seed to fruit,
And show a better flower if not so large:
I stand myself. (ll. 147-151.)

Whilst the Rabbi esteems himself as clay in the hands of the potter, the Greek admits no personal pride in the multiplicity or magnitude of his gifts. All alike he refers to “the gods whose gift alone it is,” continuing the reflection—

Which, shall I dare
(All pride apart) upon the absurd pretext
That such a gift by chance lay in my hand,
Discourse of lightly, or depreciate?
It might have fallen to another’s hand: what then? (ll. 152-156.)

So far with Ben Ezra. But where the Rabbi can say with confidence

Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute: a god though in the germ. (xiii.)

With Arthur

I pass but shall not die,

merely shall I

Thereupon
Take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new (xiv.)

for the Greek is no such confidence possible. He, too, shall pass—“I pass too surely.” His hope, if hope it be, lies in the development of a humanity of the future which shall have profited by the experience of its individual members in the past—“Let at least truth stay!”Incidentally is introduced in this section of the poem a reference to the yearning of the correspondent of Protus for some revelation of the gods to be made through man to men. Through an Incarnation alone can the purposes of Zeus in creation be fully and comprehensibly revealed to man. Truth may indeed stay, but its revelation is progressive in character; according thus with the nature of the human intelligence (a favourite theme with Browning). For any more complete realization of Truth absolute, a direct revelation of the Deity is essential. God, in man, may show that which it is possible for men to become, hence the design of Zeus in placing him upon earth. So had Cleon “imaged,” and “written out the fiction,”

That he or other god descended here
And, once for all, showed simultaneously
What, in its nature, never can be shown,
Piecemeal or in succession;—showed, I say,
The worth both absolute and relative
Of all his children from the birth of time,
His instruments for all appointed work. (ll. 115-122.)

Through this revelation, too, may be proved the immanence of the Deity, a doctrine even now accepted by the Greek. The speaker on the Areopagus[24] needed only to remind his hearers of this their belief, when he assured them that the God of whom he preached was not one who dwelt in temples made with hands—but is “not far from every one of us,” since “in him we live and move and have our being.” Even, in the words of Aratus, “we are his offspring.” But this theory of an incarnation which “certain slaves” were teaching in a fuller, more satisfying form, than that presented by the imagination of the Greek philosopher, might be to him but “a dream”: his sole hope rested, as we have seen, on an advance of the race through the higher development of individual members.

No dream, let us hope,
That years and days, the summers and the springs,
Follow each other with unwaning powers. (ll. 127-129.)

III. With line 157 we pass to a consideration of the more intensely personal question, yet one involving in its answer much that has gone before; the question put by Protus in the letter accompanying his gifts: is death (which king and poet alike esteem the end of all things), is death to the man of thought so fearful a thing in contemplation as it must be to the man of action? To Protus, the man of action, who has enjoyed life to the full, whose portion has been wealth, honour, dignity, power, physical and mental appreciation of all the privileges attendant on his station and environment; to the possessor of life such as this death, as not an interruption merely, but as an end to all joy, all gratification, must perforce bring with it nothing but horror. The horror which Browning represents elsewhere as falling momentarily upon the Venetian audience listening to the weird strains of Galuppi’s music,[25] when an interpolated discord suggests to the onlooker the question, “What of soul is left, I wonder?” when the pleasures of life are ended? and the answer is given, with its note of hopeless finality, “Dust and ashes.” To Protus, too, recurs the answer, “Dust and ashes.” Although his work as a ruler has been of that character which has caused him to seek the intellectual and moral, as well as the material welfare of his people (so much we saw Cleon recognizing in his introductory message), yet he regretfully, and probably unjustly, in a moment of depression, estimates his legacy to posterity as “nought.”

My life,
Complete and whole now in its power and joy,
Dies altogether with my brain and arm,
Is lost indeed; since, what survives myself?
The brazen statue to o’erlook my grave,
Set on the promontory which I named.
And that—some supple courtier of my heir
Shall use its robed and sceptred arm, perhaps,
To fix the rope to, which best drags it down. (ll. 171-179.)

(An estimate suggesting a truth of practical experience: schemes of absolute government not infrequently bearing within themselves the seeds of their own decay: the “sceptred arm,” originally the symbol of its strength, becoming in good sooth the chief agent in the work of destruction.)

To Protus, whose life has been thus spent in activity, forgetfulness seems the one thing most terrible of contemplation. He must pass, and in the words of the dying Alcestis, “who is dead is nought”; of him shall it be said, “He who once was, now is nothing.” But for the man whose life “stays in the poems men shall sing, the pictures men shall study,” for him may not death prove triumph, since “thou dost not go”? Yet Cleon deals with the question as might have been anticipated. Genius, even in its highest form, culture, art, learning, alike fail to satisfy the restless soul, tossed upon the waves of uncertainty, unanchored by any reasonable hope for the future. All these fail where the satisfaction derivative from wealth and power honourably wielded has already failed. The genius ruling in the kingdom of intellectual life has no consolation to offer the sovereign ruling the outer life—the material and moral welfare—of his subjects. Poet and tyrant alike bow before the inevitable approach of death, taking “the tear-stained dust” as proof that “man—the whole man—cannot live again.”

The entire poem has been happily designated “the Ecclesiastes of pagan religion.” At the outset we have remarked Cleon admitting that Protus equally with himself has recognized, not only that joy is “the use of life,” but that joy may not be found in material gratification alone, but rather in the cultivation of the higher faculties of man.

For so shall men remark, in such an act [i.e., in the munificence displayed by the gifts bestowed upon the poet]
Of love for him whose song gives life its joy,
Thy recognition of the use of life. (ll. 20-22.)

The poet had so estimated “joy.” It is in truth a higher estimate than that based upon a recognition of material good. Nevertheless, he is now to confess that from this, too, but an empty and transitory satisfaction is obtainable. His answer to Protus affords an analysis of his own reflections on the subject, since the thoughts have clearly not arisen now for the first time. And in the arguments immediately following we cannot but recognize Browning’s own voice. The theory advanced is reiterated constantly throughout his writings, dramatic and otherwise. Cleon directs the attention of Protus to the perfections of animal life as created by Zeus in lines suggesting an interesting comparison with that remarkable and frequently quoted passage from the concluding Section of Paracelsus (ll. 655-694).

The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,
And the earth changes like a human face;
········
········
The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms
Like chrysalids impatient for the air,
The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run
Along the furrows, ants make their ado;
Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls
Flit where the sand is purple with its tribe
Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek
Their loves in wood and plain—and God renews
His ancient rapture. Thus he dwells in all,
From life’s minute beginnings, up at last
To man—the consummation of this scheme
Of being, the completion of this sphere
Of life: whose attributes had here and there
Been scattered o’er the visible world before,
Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant
To be united in some wondrous whole,
Imperfect qualities throughout creation,
Suggesting some one creature yet to make,
Some point where all those scattered rays should meet
Convergent in the faculties of man.

So writes Cleon:

If, in the morning of philosophy,
Ere aught had been recorded, nay perceived,
Thou, with the light now in thee, could’st have looked
On all earth’s tenantry, from worm to bird,
Ere man, her last, appeared upon the stage—
Thou would’st have seen them perfect, and deduced
The perfectness of others yet unseen.
Conceding which,—had Zeus then questioned thee
“Shall I go on a step, improve on this,
Do more for visible creatures than is done?”
Thou would’st have answered, “Ay, by making each
Grow conscious in himself—by that alone.
All’s perfect else: the shell sucks fast the rock,
The fish strikes through the sea, the snake both swims
And slides, forth range the beasts, the birds take flight,
Till life’s mechanics can no further go—
And all this joy in natural life is put
Like fire from off thy finger into each,
So exquisitely perfect is the same.” (ll. 187-205.)

But the Teuton of the Renascence passes beyond the Greek in his history of the evolution of man—as the outcome, the union, the consummation of all that has gone before. In his description of human nature so evolved, he continues by enumerating power controlled by will, knowledge and love as characteristics, hints and previsions of which

Strewn confusedly about
The inferior natures—all lead up higher,
All shape out dimly the superior race,
The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,
And man appears at last.[26]

To Cleon such hopes, but vaguely suggested, leading upwards and onwards towards a recognition of the soul’s immortality, are too fair for truth, their very beauty leads him to question their reality.

Admitted then that in “all earth’s tenantry, from worm to bird,” perfection is to be found, in what direction may advance be made? Impossible in degree, it must, therefore, be in kind: some new faculty shall be added to those which man, the latest born of the creatures, shall share in common with his predecessors in the world of animal life—the knowledge and realization of his own individuality.

In due time [after leading the purely animal life] let him critically learn
How he lives.

And what shall be the result of the new gift? To him who, inexperienced in its uses, lives “in the morning of philosophy,” it must be indicative of an increase of happiness. With the greater fulness of life, resultant from extended knowledge, must surely follow also an extension of enjoyment. But such a belief, says Cleon, living in the eve of philosophy, could have existed only in its morning “ere aught had been recorded.” Experience, that prosaic but infallible instructor, has taught man otherwise. The simplicity of mere animal life, though involving not the conscious happiness of a reasoning being (if indeed happiness there be for such) served to impart “the wild joy of living, mere living.” A joy from which Caliban was to be found awakening to a realization of his own individuality, and also to a realization that joy and grief are relative terms: that joy, equally with grief, was impossible to the Quiet, the possessor of supreme power, as it was impossible to

Yonder crabs
That march now from the mountain to the sea.[27]

To Cleon, oppressed by a profound sense of discouragement in life, the cynical suggestion presents itself that the semi-conscious vegetating existence of the animal may be more desirable than the yearnings and aspirations inevitably attendant on human life, with its joys keen and intensified, but, alas! all too brief.

Thou king, hadst more reasonably said:
“Let progress end at once,—man make no step
Beyond the natural man, the better beast,
Using his senses, not the sense of sense.” (ll. 221-224.)

It is a purely pagan view of life.

In man there’s failure, only since he left
The lower and inconscious forms of life. (ll. 225-226.)

So man grew, and his widening intelligence opened out vast and ever-increasing possibilities of joy. But with the realization of possibilities came also the consciousness of his limitations. So long as the flesh had remained absolutely paramount, the restrictions it was capable of imposing upon the workings of the soul had been unfelt. Now, when the soul has climbed its watch-tower and perceives

A world of capability
For joy, spread round about us, meant for us,
Inviting us.

When at this moment the soul in its yearning “craves all,” then is the time of the flesh to reply,

Take no jot more
Than ere thou clombst the tower to look abroad!
Nay, so much less as that fatigue has brought
Deduction to it. (ll. 239-245.)

In other words, the ever-recurring conflict between flesh and spirit. In human nature, as at present constituted, one is bound to suffer at the expense of the other; the sound mind in the sound body is unfortunately a counsel of perfection too rarely attainable in practical life. The poet is conscious of the growing vitality of the spirit as well as that of the intellect (although he does not admittedly recognize that this is so, his use of the term “soul” being seemingly synonymous with “intellect”), the decreasing power of the flesh. In vain the struggle to

Supply fresh oil to life,
Repair the waste of age and sickness. (ll. 248-249.)

Thus the fate of the man of genius, of keener perceptions, of wider capacities for enjoyment, becomes proportionately more grievous than that of the less complex nature of the man of action.

Say rather that my fate is deadlier still,
In this, that every day my sense of joy
Grows more acute, my soul (intensified
By power and insight) more enlarged, more keen;
While every day my hairs fall more and more,
My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase—
The horror quickening still from year to year,
The consummation coming past escape
When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy. (ll. 309-317.)A recognition of the emptiness of life, necessarily hopeless when thus viewed in relation to its sensuous and intellectual possibilities only. To these things the end must come. Thus Browning leads us on, as so frequently elsewhere, to an admission of the inevitableness of immortality.

An estimate of life curiously opposed to this simple pagan aspect is that afforded by the conception of Paracelsus, a poem containing no small element of the mysticism which offered so powerful an attraction to its author. In a familiar passage at the close of the First Section we find Paracelsus describing the methods he proposes to pursue in his search for truth; truth which he deems existent within the soul of man, and acquired by no external influence.

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate’er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception—which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and to KNOW
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.[28]
········
See this soul of ours!
How it strives weakly in the child, is loosed
In manhood, clogged by sickness, back compelled
By age and waste, set free at last by death.[29]

In S. John’s reflections in A Death in the Desert, a similar suggestion of mysticism is modified by the medium through which it has passed. The Christian teacher who wrote that “God is Love,” and that in the knowledge of this truth immortality itself consists, propounds for himself a question similar to that which has so hopeless a ring when issuing from the mouth of the Greek.

Is it for nothing we grow old and weak?

A suggestion of the character of the answer is found in the conclusion of the question, “We whom God loves.”

Can they share
—They, who have flesh, a veil of youth and strength
About each spirit, that needs must bide its time,
Living and learning still as years assist
Which wear the thickness thin, and let man see—
With me who hardly am withheld at all,
But shudderingly, scarce a shred between,
Lie bare to the universal prick of light?[30]

True is the lament of the reply to Protus.

We struggle, fain to enlarge
Our bounded physical recipiency,
Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life,
Repair the waste of age and sickness. (ll. 244-247.)

All too true. But if, as we are assured, there is no waste in Nature, whence comes the apparent destruction wrought by age and sickness? What the design of which it is the evidence? In the words of the Christian mystic, but to admit “the universal prick of light,” to effect the union of the individual soul with that central fire of which it is an emanation; when the training and development inseparable from suffering shall have done their work, since “when pain ends, gain ends too.”

Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?[31]

The decay, it must be, of its temporal habitation which shall bring to the soul eternal freedom. To the Greek, on the other hand, with the decay of the body, passed not only all that made life worth living, but the life itself. The keener the appreciation of life, the harder, therefore, the parting of soul from body. He, indeed,

Sees the wider but to sigh the more.

“Most progress is most failure.” Failure absolute if death is the end of life; failure relative and indicative of higher, vaster potentialities of being, if that dream of a moment’s yearning might be true, if death prove itself but “the throbbing impulse” to a fuller life; if, freed by it, man bursts “as the worm into the fly,” becoming a creature of that future state

Unlimited in capability
For joy, as this is in desire for joy.

But to the Greek the door of actuality remains fast closed.

Before concluding an examination of this section of the poem which has suggested, as was inevitable, a comparison between the pagan and the Christian conception of life; between an estimate into which physical and intellectual considerations alone enter, and that in which spiritual also find place, it may not be unprofitable to recall the method by which Browning has treated the same subject elsewhere, in a different connection. Old Pictures in Florence, published originally in the volume of the Men and Women Series, which likewise contained Cleon, is one of the few poems in which the author may be assumed to speak in his own person. The contrast there drawn is that between the products of Greek Art which “ran and reached its goal,” and the works of the mediaeval Italian artists. Having pointed to the Greek statuary, to the figures of Theseus, of Apollo, of Niobe, and Alexander, the speaker recognizes therein a re-utterance of

The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken,
Which the actual generations garble,
... Soul (which Limbs betoken)
And Limbs (Soul informs) made new in marble.[32]

Here all is perfection, man sees himself as he wishes he were, as he “might have been,” as he “cannot be.” In such finished work no room is left for “man’s distinctive mark,” progress,—growth. When, then, according to Browning, did growth once more begin? When was the depression of Cleon’s day out-lived? Vitality, he asserts, once more became apparent when the eye of the artist was turned from externals to that which externals may denote or conceal, not outwards but inwards, from the form betokening the existence of Soul to Soul itself. The mediaeval painters started on a new and endless path of progress when in answer to the cry of

Greek Art, and what more wish you?

they replied,

To become now self-acquainters,
And paint man man, whatever the issue!
Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,
New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:
To bring the invisible full into play!
Let the visible go to the dogs—what matters?[33]

Browning’s estimate of Art, as of all departments of work, was necessarily one which would lead him to sympathize with that form which strives, however imperfectly, to bring “the invisible full into play,” though the achievement must be effected, not by neglect of, but rather by the fullest treatment of the visible. The avowed function of Art, in the most comprehensive acceptation of the term, was with him to achieve “no mere imagery on the wall,” but to present something, whether in Music, Poetry, or Painting, which should

Mean beyond the facts,
Suffice the eye and save the soul beside.[34]

The more distinctive artistic function (commonly so accepted) of gratifying the senses is not to be neglected, although it may not—as with the Greek—be cultivated to the exclusion, whole or partial, of that which is in its essence more enduring. The monkish painter (1412-69), whilst defending his realistic methods, yet perceives in vision the immensity of possible achievement if he “drew higher things with the same truth.” To work thus were “to take the Prior’s pulpit-place, interpret God to all of you.”[35] In so far, then, as he strives towards this realization of the spiritual, the early Italian painter holds, according to Browning, higher place in the ranks of the artistic hierarchy than the Greek who had attained already to perfection in his particular department, feeling that “where he had reached who could do more than reach?” No such perfection of attainment was possible to him who would “bring the invisible full into play.” His glory lay rather “in daring so much before he well did it.” Thus

The first of the new, in our race’s story,
Beats the last of the old.[36]

As with the artist, so with the spectator, growth had only begun when

Looking [his] last on them all,
[He] turned [his] eyes inwardly one fine day
And cried with a start—What if we so small
Be greater and grander the while than they?
Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
In both, of such lower types are we
Precisely because of our wider nature;
For time, theirs—ours, for eternity.[37]
········
They are perfect—how else? they shall never change:
We are faulty—why not? we have time in store.
The Artificer’s hand is not arrested
With us; we are rough-hewn, nowise polished.[38]

Bitter as is to Cleon the realization that “What’s come to perfection perishes,” to the Christian artist the same axiom serves but as incentive to more strenuous effort. In imperfection he recognizes the germ of future progress.

The help whereby he mounts,
The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall,
Since all things suffer change save God the Truth.[39]

As imperfection suggests progress, so to “the heir of immortality” is failure but a step towards ultimate attainment. With confidence he may inquire

What is our failure here but a triumph’s evidence[40]
For the fulness of the days?

The Greek, with his bounded horizon, realizes but the first aspect of the truth: that

In man there’s failure, only since he left
The lower and inconscious forms of life.

That

Most progress is most failure.

The horizon being bounded by the grave, progress cut short by the approach of death, failure may become failure absolute, irremediable. What wonder, then, that the horror should “quicken still from year to year”; until the very terror itself demands relief in the imaginative creation of a future state. But for this there is no warrant; for the Greek all attainable satisfaction must be sought through the present phase of existence alone.

IV. Cleon’s answer to the question of Protus with regard to Death’s aspect to the man of thought, whose works outlast his personal existence (ll. 274-335), is but an utterance of the cry of human nature in all times and in all places. Individuality must be preserved! In a moment of artistic fervour the poet may acquiesce in the fate by which his friend has become “a portion of the loveliness which once he made more lovely,”[41] but such acquiescence can only hold good where poetic imagination has overborne human affection. The soul of the man first, the poet afterwards, demands that

Eternal form shall still divide
Eternal soul from all beside,

and that

I shall know him when we meet.[42]

And what he claims for his friend, man requires also for himself. The individual soul, as at present constituted, cannot conceive of divesting itself of its own individuality, of becoming “merged in the general whole.” As easy almost is it to conceive of annihilation. In hours of abstract thought such theories may be evolved, and in accordance with the mental constitution of the thinker, be rejected or honestly accepted; but when brought face to face with the issues of Life and Death, the heart, freeing itself from the trammels of intellectual sophistries, cries out, “I have felt”; and yearns for a creed which shall allow acceptance of a tenet involving future recognition and reunion, hence, by implication, preservation of individuality, and identity. Whatever his nominal creed, experience teaches us that man at supreme moments of life craves for some such satisfaction as this.

It is, indeed, the Greek, materialist here rather than artist, who points out to Protus that, in his estimate of the joy of leaving “living works behind,” he confounds “the accurate view of what joy is with feeling joy.” Confounds

The knowing how
And showing how to live (my faculty)
With actually living. Otherwise
Where is the artist’s vantage o’er the king?
Because in my great epos I display
How divers men young, strong, fair, wise, can act—
Is this as though I acted? If I paint,
Carve the young Phoebus, am I therefore young?
Methinks I’m older that I bowed myself
The many years of pain that taught me art!
········
········
I know the joy of kingship: well, thou art king! (ll. 281-300.)

All the Greek love of life, of physical beauty is here, intensified by the consciousness of the brief and transitory character of its existence. If death ends all things, then the poet and philosopher, whilst acquiring the knowledge “how to live,” has sacrificed the power of living. Yet a sacrifice even greater than this is enthusiastically welcomed by the Grammarian of the Revival of Learning, greater since in this case the devotion of a lifetime leaves behind it no monument of fame. Yet, having counted the cost,

Oh! such a life as he resolved to live,
When he had learned it.
······
Sooner, he spurned it.[43]

We can almost detect the voice of Cleon in the urgency of the student’s contemporaries. “Live now or never,” since “time escapes.” In the reply lies the clue to the immensity of difference between the two positions—

Leave Now for dogs and apes!
Man has Forever.[44]

In the one instance, life being lived in the light of the “Forever,” it is possible to perceive with Pompilia that “No work begun shall ever pause for death”:[45] and life, whatever its trials and limitations, becomes to the believer in immortality very well worth the living. Thus the Christian conception of human life transcends the pagan as the designs of the Italian painters surpass in their suggestive inspiration the perfection of the more purely technical achievements of Greek art. The whole discussion is so peculiarly characteristic of Browning’s work that it seemed impossible to omit this comparison in the present connection, even though we shall be again obliged to revert to the Grammarian, and the theory exemplified in his history, in analyzing the defence of Bishop Blougram.

In passing, then, to the concluding section of Cleon’s reply to Protus, we are met by no exclusively Greek utterance; the voice is the voice of humanity unfettered by limitations of race or mental training.

“But,” sayest thou ...
... “What
Thou writest, paintest, stays; that does not die:
Sappho survives, because we sing her songs,
And Æschylus, because we read his plays!”
Why, if they live still, let them come and take
Thy slave in my despite, drink from thy cup,
Speak in my place. Thou diest while I survive? (ll. 301-308.)

It is self-abnegation, carried to an extent rendering impossible the preservation of the race, which can look to happiness, or even to satisfaction, in the prospect of annihilation so long as posterity shall enjoy the fruits of a life of labour—which may express all its yearnings towards immortality in the petition:

O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: ...
·······
So to live is heaven:
·······
This is life to come
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven ...
·······
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense.

Yet the mind which originated these nobly philosophic lines found it impossible to continue literary work when severed from the human comradeship and sympathy, criticism and inspiration to which the heart, even more than the brain, had grown accustomed. After the death of Mr. G. H. Lewes we are told—in the author’s own words—that “The writing seems all trivial stuff,” ... and that work is resorted to as “a means of saving the mind from imbecility.”[46] We shall find Browning himself refusing, in the hour of bereavement, to admit the satisfaction to be derived from a contemplation of the progress of the race through individual sacrifice and loss of personal identity; the satisfaction of the knowledge that

Somewhere new existence led by men and women new,
Possibly attains perfection coveted by me and you;
·········
[Whilst we] working ne’er shall know if work bear fruit.
Others reap and garner—
We, creative thought, must cease
In created word, thought’s echo, due to impulse long since sped!

Poor is the comfort

There’s ever someone lives although ourselves be dead.[47]

Something more than this, more even than “the thought of what was” is demanded for the satisfaction of the soul, yet this is all the Greek has to offer to his correspondent.

Before leaving this section of the poem, one further comparison of striking interest claims at least a brief consideration—a comparison also of the life of the man of action with that of the man of thought: of Salinguerra, the Ghibelline leader and Sordello, the poet and dreamer, Ghibelline by antecedents, Guelph by conviction; the visionary and dreamer, but the dreamer whose dreams should remain a legacy to posterity, the visionary who held that “the poet must be earth’s essential king.” The comparison is especially interesting, since in this case also it is drawn (Bk. iv) by the poet himself. To Sordello, however, the recognition of a future existence has at times a very potent influence upon the present. For him, moreover, in his moments of insight, service not happiness, is the inspiration of life. Lofty as is the estimation in which he holds the office of poet, he yet deems Salinguerra

One of happier fate, and all I should have done,
He does; the people’s good being paramount
With him.[48]

Here is

A nature made to serve, excel
In serving, only feel by service well![49]

To the poet of the Middle Ages then, as to the Greek, though for different reasons, the man of action has the happier fate. But where the Greek shudders before the approach of death, the Italian issues triumphantly from the final struggle of life—the supreme temptation—through the realization

That death, I fly, revealed
So oft a better life this life concealed,
And which sage, champion, martyr, through each path
Have hunted fearlessly.[50]

Only he would crave the consciousness which served as inspiration to sage, champion, martyr, and he, too, will hunt death fearlessly, will demand, “Let what masters life disclose itself!”

V. The concluding lines of the poem (336-353) contain a curiously suggestive contrast between the influences of an effete pagan culture, and of Christianity in its infancy. On the one hand, the Greek philosopher surrounded by evidences of marvellous physical and intellectual achievements, admitting the experience of an overwhelming horror, in face of the approach of “a deadly fate.” On the other hand, “a mere barbarian Jew” and “certain slaves,” pioneers of that faith which should offer solution to the problems before which Greek learning shrank confessedly powerless. A contrast between two stages of that development in the life of man, indicated by the theory of St. John’s teaching, given in the interpolated note introductory to the main arguments of A Death in the Desert:

The doctrine he was wont to teach,
How divers persons witness in each man,
Three souls which make up one soul.

(1) The lower or animal life, distinguished as “What Does,” (2) The intellect inspiring which “useth the first with its collected use,” and is defined as “What Knows,” that which Cleon calls Soul. (3) Finally, the union of both for the service of the third and highest element, which is in itself capable of existence apart from either:

Subsisting whether they assist or no,

designated as “What Is,” that which Browning calls Soul in Old Pictures in Florence.

Life, in the person of Cleon, would appear to have reached the second of the stages thus distinguished—physical development, combined with intellectual pre-eminence, marking “an age of light, light without love.” With Paulus life has passed beyond, and the spiritual energy has attained to its position of predominance over the lower elements constituting this Trinity of human nature. The barbarian Jew heralds a new phase in the world’s history. The entire conclusion may well serve as commentary on the lines already quoted from Old Pictures in Florence:

The first of the new in our race’s story
Beats the last of the old.[51]