Chapter 6 CLASSIC SURVIVALS

Before passing in review Browning's treatment of classical subjects as compared with the other great poets of the nineteenth century, it will be interesting to take a glimpse at his choice of subject-matter in general.

To compare Browning's choice of subject-matter with that of other English poets is to strike at the very root of his position in the chain of literary development. Subject-matter is by no means simple in its nature, but as a musical sound is composed of vibrations within vibrations, so it is made up of the complex relations of body and spirit-the mere external facts of the story are blended with such philosophical undercurrent, or dramatic motif, or unfolding of the hidden springs of action as the poet is able to insinuate into it.

However far back one penetrates in the history of poetry, poets will be found depending largely upon previous sources, rather than upon their own creative genius, for the body of their subject-matter, until the question presents itself with considerable force as to who could have been the mysterious first poet who supplied plots to the rest of mankind. Conjecture is obliged to play a part here, as it does wherever human origins are in question. Doubtless, this first poet was no separate individual, but simply the elements man and nature, through whose action and reaction upon each other grew up story-forms, evidently compounded of human customs, and observed natural phenomena such as those we find in the great Hindu, Greek, and Teutonic classics, and which thus crystallized became great well-springs of inspiration for future generations of poets.

Each new poet, however, who is worthy of the name, sets up his own particular interplay with man and nature; and however much he may be indebted for his inspiration to past products of this universal law of action and reaction, he is bound to use them or interpret them in a manner colored by his own personal and peculiar relations with the universe.

In so doing he supplies the more important spiritual side of subject-matter and becomes in very truth the poet or maker, to that extent at least which Browning himself lays down as the province of art-namely, to arrange,

"Dissociate, redistribute, interchange

Part with part: lengthen, broaden

... simply what lay loose

At first lies firmly after, what design

Was faintly traced in hesitating line

Once on a time grows firmly resolute

Henceforth and evermore."

Sometimes the poet's power of arranging and redistributing and interchanging carries him upward into the realm of ideas alone, among which his imagination plays in absolute freedom; he throws over the results of man's past dallyings with Nature and makes his own terms with her, and the result is an approach to absolute creation.

Except in the case of lyric poetry the instances where there have been no suggestions as to subject-matter are rare in comparison with those where the subject-matter has been derived from some source.

Look, for instance, at the father of English poetry, Chaucer, how he ransacked French, Italian and Latin literature for his subject-matter, most conscientiously carrying out his own saying, that

"Out of olde feldys as men sey

Comyth all this newe corn from yere to yere,

And out of olde books in good fey

Cometh all this new science that men alere."

How external a way he had of working over old materials, especially in his earlier work, is well illustrated in "The Parliament of Fowls," which he opens by relating the dream of Scipio, originally contained in Cicero's treatise on the "Republic," and preserved by Macrobius. This dream, which tells how Africanus appears to Scipio, and carries him up among the stars of the night, shows him Carthage, and prophesies to him of his future greatness, tells him of the blissful immortal life that is in store for those who have served their country, points out to him the brilliant celestial fires, and how insignificant the earth is in comparison with them, and opens his ears to the wondrous harmony of the spheres-this dream is as far removed from the main argument of the poem as anything well could be a contest between three falcons for the hand of a formel. The bringing together of such diverse elements presents no difficulties to the childlike stage of literary development that depends upon surface analogies for the linking together of its thoughts. Just as talking about his ancestor, the great Scipio Africanus, with the old King Masinissa caused Scipio to dream of him, so reading about this dream caused Chaucer, who has to close his book and go to bed for want of a light, to dream of Scipio Africanus also, who "was come and stood right at his bedis syde."

Africanus then plays the part of conductor to Chaucer in a manner suggestive not only of his relations to Scipio, but of Virgil's relation to Dante, and brings him to the great gateway and through it into the garden of love. The description is of the temple of Venus in Boccaccio's "La Teseide." There Nature and the "Fowls" are introduced and described, and at last the point is reached. Nature proclaims that it is St. Valentine's day, and all the fowls may choose them mates. The royal falcon is given first choice, and chooses the lovely formel that sits upon Nature's hand. Two other ardent falcons declare their devotion to the same fowl, and Nature, when the formel declares that she will serve neither Venus nor Cupid and asks a respite for a year, decides that the three shall serve their lady another year-a pretty allegory supposed to refer to the wooing of Blanche of Lancaster by John of Gaunt.

The main argument of this poem, when it finally is reached by artificially welding together rich links borrowed from other poets, is one of the few examples in Chaucer of subject-matter derived direct from a real event, but the putting of it in an allegorical form at once lays him under obligations to his poetic predecessors, not only on Anglo-Saxon soil, but in France and Italy.

His most important contributions as an inventor are, of course, his descriptions of the Canterbury Pilgrims, which are the pure outcome of a keen observation of men and women at first hand. So lifelike are they that in them he has made the England of the fourteenth century live again. But how small a proportion of the bulk of the "Canterbury Tales" is contained in these glimpses of English life and manners. It is but the framework upon which luxuriate vines of fancy transplanted from many another garden, and even in its place resembling, if not borrowed from, Boccaccio.

The thoroughly human instincts of the poet assert themselves, however, in the choice of the tales which he puts into the mouths of his pilgrims. He allows a place to the crudities and even the vulgarities of common stories as well as to culture-lore. The magic of the East, the love tales of Italy, the wisdom of philosophers, the common stories of the people, all give up their wealth to his gentle touch. With a keen sense of propriety he, with few exceptions, gives each one of his pilgrims a tale suited in its general tendency to the character of its narrator, and in the critical chatter of the pilgrims about the tales, reflects not only his own tastes, but that of the times, the opinions expressed frequently being most uncomplimentary in their tenor.

In fine, the life of reality and the life of books is spread out before Chaucer, and his observation of both is keen and interested; and this it is which makes him much more than the "great translator" that Eustace Les Champs called him, and settles the nature of the "subtle thing" called spirit contributed by the individuality of the poet to his subject-matter. He brings everything within the reach of human sympathy, because his way of putting a story into his own words is sympathetic. He was a combination of the story-teller, the scholar, the poet, and the critic. As a scholar he brings in learned allusions that are entirely extraneous to the action in hand; as the story-teller, he takes delight in the tales that both the poet and the people have told; as the poet, his imagination dresses up a story with a fresh environment, often anachronous, and sometimes he alters the moral tone of the characters. Cressida is an interesting example of this. But instead of the characters suggesting by their own action and speech all the needed moral, Chaucer himself appears ever at hand to analyze and criticise and moralize, though he does it so delightfully that one hesitates to call him didactic. The result of all this is that the external form and the underlying essence of his subject-matter are not completely fused. We often see a sort of guileless working of the machinery of art, yet it is true, no doubt, though perhaps not to the extent insisted on by Morley, that he has something of the Shakespearian quality which enables him to show men as they really are, "wholly developed as if from within, not as described from without by an imperfect and prejudiced observer."

In his great work, Spenser is no less dependent upon sources for his inspiration, but there is a marked difference in his use of them. Although his range of observation is much narrower than Chaucer's, hardly extending at all into the realm of actual human effort, yet he makes an advance in so far as his powers of redistribution are much greater than Chaucer's.

The various knights of the "Fairy Queen" and their exploits are not modeled directly upon any previous stories, but they are made up of incidents similar to those found scattered all through classic lore; and as his inspirations were drawn in most cases directly from the fountain-head of story in the Greek writers-instead of as they filtered through the Latin, Italian, and French, with the inevitable accretions that result from migrations,-and from the comparatively unalloyed Arthurian legends, there is a clearer reflection in them of the cosmic elements that shine through both the Greek and Arthurian originals than is found in Chaucer.

Although Spenser was certainly unaware of any such modern refinement of the mythologist as a solar myth, yet the "Fairy Queen" forms a curious and interesting study on account of the survivals everywhere evident of solar characteristics in his characters and plots. Indeed it could hardly be otherwise, considering his intention, and his method of carrying it out, which he, himself, explains in his quaint letter to Sir Walter Raleigh-namely, "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline." He goes on:

"I close the history of King Arthur as most fit for the excellency of his person, being made famous by many men's former works, and also further from danger and envy of suspicion of present time. In which I have followed all the antique poets historical; first Homer, who in the person of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governor and a virtuous man, the one in his 'Iliad,' the other in his 'Odyssey'; then Virgil, whose like intention was to do in the person of ?neas: After him, Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando, and lately Tasso dissevered them again, and formed both parts in two persons, the part which they in Philosophy call Ethice or virtues of a private man, colored in his Rinaldo, the other, named Politice, in his Godfieldo. By example of which excellent poets, I labor to portray in Arthur before he was King, the image of a brave Knight perfected in the twelve private moral virtues as Aristotle hath devised, the which is the purpose of these first twelve books."

In the fashioning of his knight he took Arthur, a hero whose life as it appears in the early romances is inextricably mingled with solar elements, and has built up his virtues upon other ancient solar heroes. Here are all the paraphernalia of solar mythology: invincible knights with marvelous weapons, brazen castles guarded by dragons, marriage with a beautiful maiden and parting from the bride to engage in new quests, an enchantress who turns men into animals, even the outcast child; but none of the incidents appear intact. It is as if there had been a great explosion in the ancient land of romance and that in the mending up of things the separate pieces are all recognizable, although all joined together in a different pattern, while under all is the allegory. A gentle knight is no longer a solar hero as set forth by Max Müller or Cox, but Holiness; his invincible armor is not the all-powerful rays of the sun, but truth; the enchantress not night casting a spell over mortals, but sensuous pleasure entangling them.

These two poets, Chaucer and Spenser, are prototypes of two poet types of two poetical tendencies that have gone on developing side by side in English literature: Chaucer, democratic, interested supremely in the personalities of men and women, portraying the real, and Spenser, aristocratic, interested in imaging forth an ideal of manhood, choosing his subject-matter from sources that will lend themselves to such a purpose; Chaucer drawing his lessons out of the real actions of humanity; Spenser framing his story so that it will illustrate the moral he wishes to inculcate.

Shakespeare, of course, ranges himself in line with Chaucer. His interest centered on character, and wherever a story capable of character development presented itself, that he chose, altered it in outline comparatively little, and when he did so it was in order to carry forward the dramatic motif which he infused into his subject. The dramatic form in which he wrote furnished him a better medium for reaching a complete welding together of the external and spiritual side of his subject-matter. Where Chaucer hinted at the possibilities of an artistic development of character that would cause the events of the story to appear as the inevitable outcome of the hidden springs of action, Shakespeare accomplished it, and peopled the world of imagination with group after group of living, acting characters.

In the nineteenth century Tennyson and Browning have represented, broadly speaking, these two tendencies. As with Spenser, the classics and the Arthurian legends have been the sources from which Tennyson has drawn most largely; but although a philosophical undercurrent is this poet's spiritual addition to the subject-matter, his method of putting his soul inside his work is very different from Spenser's. He does not tear the old myths to pieces and join them together again after a pattern of his own to fit his allegorical situation, but keeps the events of his stories almost unchanged, in this particular resembling Chaucer and Shakespeare, and-except in a few instances, such as Tithonus and Lucretius, where the classic spirit of the originals is preserved-he infuses in his subject a vein of philosophy, illustrating those modern tendencies of English thought of which Tennyson, himself, was the exemplar. Even when inventing subjects, founded upon the experiences of everyday life, he so manipulates the story as to make it illustrate some of his favorite moral maxims. His characters do not act from motives which are the inherent necessities of their natures, but they act in accordance with Tennyson's preconceived notions of how they ought to act. He manipulates the elements of character to suit his own view of development, just as Spenser manipulated the elements of the story to suit his own allegorical purpose.

Browning is the nineteenth-century heir of Chaucer; but it is doubtful whether Chaucer would recognize his own offspring, so remarkable has the development been in those five centuries. With Chaucer's keen interest in human nature deepened to a profound insight into the very soul of humanity, and the added wealth of these centuries of human history, Browning not only had a far wider range of choice in subject-matter, but he was enabled to instil into it greater intellectual and emotional complexities.

Rarely has he treated any subject that has already been treated poetically unless we except the transcripts from the classics soon to be considered. Wherever he saw an interesting historical personage, interesting, not on account of his brilliant achievements in the eyes of the world, but on account of potentialities of character, such a one he has set before us to reveal himself. There are between twenty and thirty portraits of this nature in his work, chosen from all sorts and conditions of men-men who stand for some phase of growth in human thought; and always in developing a personality he gives the kernel of truth upon which their peculiar point of view is based. Thus, among the musical poems, Abt Vogler speaks for the intuitionalist-he who is blessed by a glimpse of the absolute truth. Charles Avison, on the other hand, is the philosopher of the relative in music and the arts generally. Among the art poems, Fra Lippo Lippi is the apostle of beauty in realism, Andrea del Sarto the attainer of perfection in form. In the religious poems the Jewish standpoint is illustrated in "Saul" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," the Christian in the portrait of John in "The Death in the Desert"; the empirical reasoner in "Paracelsus."

This is only one of Browning's methods in the choice and use of subject-matter. The characters and incidents in his stories are frequently the result of pure invention, but he sets them in an environment recreated from history, developing their individualities in harmony with the environment, thus giving at one stroke the spirit of the time and the individual qualities of special representatives of the time. Examples of this are: "My Last Duchess," where the Duke is an entirely imaginary person and the particular incident is invented, but he is made to act and talk in a way perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the time-medi?val Italy. "Hugues of Saxe-Gotha" is another being of Browning's fancy, who yet represents to perfection the spirit of the old fugue writers. "Luria," "The Soul's Tragedy," "In a Balcony," all represent the same method.

Another plan pursued by the poet is either to invent or borrow a historical personage into whose mouth he puts the defence of some course of action or ethical standard that may or may not be founded upon the highest ideals. Sludge, the hero of "Fifine at the Fair," Bishop Blougram, Hohenstiel-Schwangau, range themselves in this group.

There are comparatively few cases where he has taken a complete story and developed its spiritual possibilities without much change in external detail, but how adequate his art was to such ends, "The Ring and the Book," "Inn Album," "Two Poets of Croisic," "Red Cotton Nightcap Country," the historical dramas of "Strafford," and "King Victor and King Charles" fully prove, including, as they do, some of his finest masterpieces.

History and story have furnished many of the incidents which he has worked up in his dramatic lyrics and romances like "Clive," "Hervé Riel," "Donald," etc. There remains, however, a large number of poems containing some of Browning's loveliest work in which the subject-matter is, as far as we know, the creation of pure, unadulterated fancy. "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon," "In a Balcony," "Colombe's Birthday," "Childe Roland," "James Lee's Wife" are some of them. Even in this rapid survey of the field the fact is patent that Browning's range of subject-matter is infinitely wider and his method of developing it far more varied than has been that of any other English poet. He seems the first to have completely shaken himself free from the trammels of classic or medi?val literature. There are no echoes of Arthur and his Knights in his poetry, the shadows of the Greek gods and goddesses exert no spell-except in the few instances when he deliberately chose a Greek subject.

The fact that Browning was so free from classical influence in the great body of his work as compared with the other chief poets of the nineteenth century gives an especial interest to those poems in which he chose classical themes for his subjects. There are not more than ten all told, and one of these is a translation, yet they represent some of his finest and most original work, for Browning could not touch a classical theme without infusing into it that grasp and insight peculiar to his own genius.

His first and most conventionally classical poem is the fragment in "Men and Women," "Artemis Prologizes," written in 1842. It was to have been the introduction to a long poem telling of the mad love of Hippolytus for a nymph of Artemis, after that goddess had brought about his resuscitation. It has been suggested by Mr. Boynton in an interesting paper that Browning shows traces of the influence of Landor in his poetry. This fragment certainly furnishes argument for this opinion, though it has a strength of diction along with its Greek severity and terseness of style which leads to the conclusion that the influence came from the fountain head of Greek poetry itself rather than through the lesser muse of this nineteenth-century Greek.

The poem is said to have been begun on a sick-bed and when the poet recovered he had forgotten or lost interest in his plans. This is to be regretted for if he had continued as he began, the poem would have stood unique in his work as a true survival of Greek subject wedded with classical form and style, and would certainly have challenged comparison with the best work done in this field by Landor or Swinburne, who tell over the classical stories or even invent new episodes, but, when all is said, do not write as if they were actually themselves Greeks.

There is no other instance in Browning of such a survival. In his other poems on Greek subjects it is Browning bringing Greek life to our ken with wonderful distinctness, but doing it according to his own accustomed poetical methods, or, as in "Ixion," a Greek story has been used as a symbol for the inculcating of a philosophy which is largely Browning's own.

In spite of the fact that he has turned to Greece so seldom for inspiration, his Greek poems range from such stirring pictures of Greek life and feeling as one gets in the splendid dramatic idyl "Pheidippides," based on a historical incident, through the imaginary "Cleon," in which is found the sublimated essence of Greek philosophical thought at the time of Christ-thought, weary of law and beauty, longing for a fresh inspiration, knowing not what, and unable to perceive it in the new ideal of love being taught by the Christians-to "Aristophanes' Apology," in which the Athens of his day, with its literary and political factions, is presented with a force and analysis which place it second only to "The Ring and the Book."

This poem taken, with Balaustion, gives the reader not only a comprehensive view of the historical atmosphere of the time but indirectly shows the poet's own attitude toward the literary war between Euripides and Aristophanes. So different are Browning's Greek poems from all other poems upon classical subjects that it will be interesting to dwell upon the most important of them at greater length than has been deemed necessary in the case of the more widely known and read of the poems.

"Cleon" links itself with the nineteenth century, because of its dealing with the problem of immortality, a problem which has been ever present in the mind of the century. Cleon has, beside that type of synthetic mind which belongs to a ripe phase of civilization. Though he is a Greek and a pagan, he stretches hands across the centuries to men of the type of Morris or Matthew Arnold. He is the latest child of his own time, the heir of all the ages during which Greece had developed its ?sthetic perfection, discovered the inadequacy of its established religion, come through its philosophers and poets to a perception of the immortality of the soul, and sunk again to a skepticism which had no vision of personal immortality at least, though among the stoics there were some who believed in an absorption into divine being. Cleon would fain believe in personal immortality but cannot, and, like Matthew Arnold, believes in facing death imperturbably.

In "Balaustion's Adventure" a historical tradition is used as the central episode of the poem, but life and romance are given to it by the creation of the heroine, Balaustion, a young Greek woman whose fascinating personality dominates the whole poem. She was a Rhodian, else her freedom of action and speech might seem too modern, but among the islands of Greece, at least at the time of Euripides, there still survived that attitude toward woman which we see reflected in the Homeric epics. Away from Athens, too, Euripides was a power; hence his defence is put into the mouth of one not an Athenian. She had saved a shipload of Athenian sympathizers by reciting Euripides when they were in danger from the hostile Syracusans.

Euripides

Besides the romantic touch which is given the story by the creation of the lyric girl, there is an especial fitness in making the enthusiastic devotee of this poet a woman, for no one among the ancients has so fully and sympathetically portrayed woman in all her human possibilities of goodness and badness as Euripides, yet he has been called a woman-hater-because some of his men have railed against women-but one Alkestis is enough to offset any dramatic utterances of his men about women. The poet's attitude should be looked for in his power of portraying women of fine traits, not in any opinions expressed by his men. Furthermore, Browning had before him a model of Balaustion in her enthusiasm for Euripides, in Mrs. Browning. These circumstances are certainly sufficient to prove the appropriateness of making a Rhodian girl the defender of Euripides.

There is nothing more delicious in Browning than Balaustion's relation of "Alkestis," as she had seen it acted, to her three friends. Her woman's comment and criticisms combine a Browning's penetration of the fine points in the play with a girl's idealism. Such a combination of masculine intellectualism and feminine charm has been known in women of all centuries. As the translation of the beautiful play of "Alkestis" proceeds, Balaustion interprets its art and moral, defending her favorite poet, not with the ponderousness of a grave critic weighing the influences which may have molded his genius, or calculating the pros and cons of his style, but with the swift appreciation of a mind and spirit full of the ardor of sympathy. Moreover, her talk of the play being a recollection of how it appeared to her as she saw it acted, the mere text is constantly enlarged upon and made vital with flashing glimpses of the action, as, for example, in the passage just after the funeral of Alkestis:

"So, to the struggle off strode Herakles,

When silence closed behind the lion-garb,

Back came our dull fact settling in its place,

Though heartiness and passion half-dispersed

The inevitable fate. And presently

In came the mourners from the funeral,

One after one, until we hoped the last

Would be Alkestis, and so end our dream.

Could they have really left Alkestis lone

I' the wayside sepulchre! Home, all save she!

And when Admetos felt that it was so,

By the stand-still: when he lifted head and face

From the two hiding hands and peplos' fold,

And looked forth, knew the palace, knew the hills,

Knew the plains, knew the friendly frequence there,

And no Alkestis any more again,

Why, the whole woe billow-like broke on him."

Again, her criticism of Admetos gives at once the natural feeling of a girl who could not be satisfied with what seemed to her his selfish action, and Browning's feeling that Euripides saw its selfishness just as surely as Balaustion, despite the fact that it was in keeping, as numerous critics declare, with the customs of the age, and would not by any of his contemporaries be regarded as selfish on his part:

"So he stood sobbing: nowise insincere,

But somehow child-like, like his children, like

Childishness the world over. What was new

In this announcement that his wife must die?

What particle of pain beyond the pact

He made with his eyes wide open, long ago-

Made and was, if not glad, content to make?

Now that the sorrow, he had called for, came,

He sorrowed to the height: none heard him say,

However, what would seem so pertinent,

'To keep this pact, I find surpass my power;

Rescind it, Moirai! Give me back her life,

And take the life I kept by base exchange!

Or, failing that, here stands your laughing-stock

Fooled by you, worthy just the fate o' the fool

Who makes a pother to escape the best

And gain the worst you wiser Powers allot!'

No, not one word of this; nor did his wife

Despite the sobbing, and the silence soon

To follow, judge so much was in his thought-

Fancy that, should the Moirai acquiesce,

He would relinquish life nor let her die.

The man was like some merchant who in storm,

Throws the freight over to redeem the ship;

No question, saving both were better still,

As it was,-why, he sorrowed, which sufficed.

So, all she seemed to notice in his speech

Was what concerned her children."

Among modern critics who take the conventional ground in regard to Admetos may be cited Churton Collins, whose opinion is, of course, weighty. He writes:

"Alcestis would be considered fortunate for having had an opportunity of displaying so conspicuously the fidelity to a wife's first and capital duty. Had Admetus prevented such a sacrifice he would have robbed Alcestis of an honor which every nobly ambitious woman in Hellas would have coveted. This is so much taken for granted by the poet that all that he lays stress on in the drama is the virtue rewarded by the return of Alcestis to life, the virtue characteristic of Admetus, the virtue of hospitality; to this duty in all the agony of his sorrow Admetus had been nobly true, and as a reward for what he had thus earned, the wife who had been equally true to woman's obligations was restored all-glorified to home and children and mutual love."

Most readers, however, will find it difficult to put themselves into the appropriate Greek frame of mind, and will sympathize with Browning's supposition that after all Euripides had transcended current ideas on the subject and deliberately intended to convey such an interpretation of the character of Admetos as Balaustion gives.

Balaustion shows her penetration again in her appreciation of Herakles. He distinguishes clearly between evil that is inherent in the nature as the selfishness of Admetos, and evil which is more or less external, growing out of conditions incident to the time rather than from any real trait of nature. Herakles' delight in the hospitality accorded him, his drinking and feasting in the interim of his labors, did not touch the genuine, large-hearted helpfulness of the demigod, who became sober the moment he learned there was sorrow in the house and need of his aid.

In her proposed version of the story, Balaustion is surely the romantic girl, who would have her hero a hero indeed and in every way the equal of his spouse. Yet if we delve below this romanticism of Balaustion we shall find the poet's own belief in the almost omniscient power of human love the basis of the relation between Admetos and Alkestis.

The soul of Alkestis in one look entered into that of Admetos; she died, but he is entirely guiltless of agreeing to her death. Alkestis herself had made the pact with Apollo to die for her husband. He, when he learns it, refuses to accept the sacrifice, and unable to persuade him that his duty to humanity demands that he accept it, Alkestis asks him to look at her. Then her soul enters his, but when she goes to Hades and demands to become a ghost, the Queen of Hades replies:

"Hence, thou deceiver! This is not to die,

If, by the very death which mocks me now,

The life, that's left behind and past my power,

Is formidably doubled-Say, there fight

Two athletes, side by side, each athlete armed

With only half the weapons, and no more,

Adequate to a contest with their foes.

If one of these should fling helm, sword and shield

To fellow-shieldless, swordless, helmless late-

And so leap naked o'er the barrier, leave

A combatant equipped from head to heel,

Yet cry to the other side, 'Receive a friend

Who fights no longer!' 'Back, friend, to the fray!'

Would be the prompt rebuff; I echo it.

Two souls in one were formidable odds:

Admetos must not be himself and thou!

"And so, before the embrace relaxed a whit,

The lost eyes opened, still beneath the look;

And lo, Alkestis was alive again,

And of Admetos' rapture who shall speak?"

How unique a treatment of a classical subject this poem is, is self-evident. Not content with making a superb translation of the play, remarkable both for its literalness and for its poetic beauty, the poet has dared to present that translation indirectly through the mouth of another speaker, and to incorporate with it a running commentary of criticism in blank verse. Still more daring was it to make play and criticism an episode in a dramatic monologue in which we learn not only the story of the rescue of the shipload of Athenian sympathizers, but the story of Balaustion's love. Along with all this complexity of interest there is still room for a lifelike portrayal of Balaustion herself, one of the loveliest conceptions of womanhood in literature.

To reiterate what I have upon another occasion expressed in regard to her, she is a girl about whom the fancy loves to cling-she is so joyous, so brave, and so beautiful, and possessed of so rare a mind scintillating with wit, wisdom and critical insight, not Browning's own mind either except in so far as his sympathies were with Euripides. Her ardor for purity and perfection is perhaps peculiarly feminine. It is quite different from that of the mind tormented by the problem of evil and taking refuge in a partisanship of evil as a force which works for good and without which the world would be a waste of insipidity. Her suggested version of the Alkestis story converts Admetos into as much of a saint as Alkestis, and makes an exquisite and soul-stirring romance of their perfect union, though it must be admitted that it would do away with all the intensity and dramatic force of the play as it is presented by Euripides. Like the angels who rejoice more over one sinner returned than over the ninety and nine that did not go astray, an artist prefers the contrast and movement of a sinning and regenerated Admetos to an Admetos more suited from the first to be the consort of Alkestis. This is the touch, however, which preserves Balaustion's feminine charm and makes her truly her own self-an ardent soul very far from being simply Browning's mouthpiece.

"Aristophanes' Apology" is a still more remarkable play in its complexity. Again, Balaustion is the speaker, and Browning has set himself the task in this monologue of relating the fall of Athens, of presenting the personality of Aristophanes, of defending Euripides, a translation of whose play, "Herakles," is included, and incidentally sketching the history of Greek comedy, all through the mouth of the one speaker, Balaustion. Not until one has grasped the law by which the poet has accomplished this, and has moreover freshly in his mind the facts of Greek history at the time of Athens' fall, and Greek literature, especially the plays of Aristophanes and Euripides, can the poem be thoroughly enjoyed.

In the very first line the suggestion of the scene setting is given, and such suggestions occur from time to time all through the poem. It should be observed that they are never brought in for themselves alone, but are always used in connection with some mood of Balaustion's or as imagery in relation to some thought. While the reader is thus kept conscious of the background of wind and wave, as Balaustion and her husband voyage toward Rhodes, it is not until the end of the poem that we learn with a pleasant surprise that the boat on which they are sailing is the same one saved once by Balaustion when she recited Euripides' "sweetest, saddest song." Thus there is a dramatic denouement in connection with the scene setting.

Through the expression of a mood of despair on the part of Balaustion at the opening of the poem the reader is put in possession not only of the scene setting but of the occasion of the voyage, which is the overthrow of Athens. From the mood of despair Balaustion passes to one in which she describes how she could better have borne to see Athens perish. This carries her on to a more hopeful frame of mind, in which she can foresee the spiritual influence of Athens persisting. The peace of mind ensuing upon this consideration makes it possible for her calmly to survey the events connected with its downfall, among which the picturesque episode of the dancing of the flute girls to the demolition of the walls of the Pir?us is conspicuous. She then sees the vision of the immortal Athens while Sparta the victorious in arms will die. Then comes a mood in which she declares it will be better to face the grief than to brood over it, which leads to her proposing to Euthukles that they treat the fall of Athens as a tragic theme, as the poet might do, and enact it on the voyage. Then grief over the recent events takes possession of her again, and now with the feminine privilege of changing her mind, she thinks it would be better to rehearse an event which happened to herself a year ago as a prologue. Speaking of adventures causes her very naturally to drop into reminiscences about her first adventure, when she recited Euripides and met the man who was to become her husband.

Aristophanes

Thus, through this perfectly natural transition from one mood to another, Balaustion leads up to the real subject-matter of the poem, Aristophanes' defence of himself, which, however, is preceded by an account of the effect of the death of Euripides upon the Athenians as witnessed by Euthukles, his death being the occasion of Aristophanes' call on Balaustion. What she calls the prologue is really the main theme of the poem, while all her talk up to this point is truly the prologue. The actual account of the fall of Athens does not come until the conclusion, and is related in comparatively few words.

What seems, then, to be the chief theme of the poem with its setting of wind and wave and bark bears somewhat the same relation to the real theme as incidental music does to a play. Upon first thoughts it may seem like a clumsy contrivance for introducing Aristophanes upon the scene, but in the end it will be perceived, I think, that it serves the artistic purpose of placing Aristophanes in proper perspective. Balaustion with her exquisitely human moods and progressive spirit forms the right complement to the decaying ideals of Aristophanes, and gives him the proper flavor of antiquity. Instead of seeing him in the broad light of a direct dramatic presentation we see him indirectly through Balaustion's thoughts and moods, who, though permitting him to do full justice to himself, yet surrounds him all the time with the subtle influence of her sympathy for Euripides.

As the better way to follow the development of the preliminary part of the poem is by regarding every step as the outcome of a mood on the part of Balaustion, so the better way of following Aristophanes through what seems his interminable defence of himself is again by tracing the moods through which his arguments express themselves.

Aristophanes comes in half drunk to make his call on Balaustion, and his first mood is one of graciousness toward her whose beauty has impressed his artistic perceptions, but noticing her dignity and its effect in routing the chorus, he immediately begins to be on the defensive. The disappearance of his chorus, however, takes him off on a little excursion about the moves which are being made by the city to cut down the expense of dramatic performances by curtailing the chorus. In a spirit of bravado he declares that he does not care so long as he has his actors left. A coarse reference causes Balaustion to turn and he changes his mood. He acknowledges he is drunk and rushes off into a defence of drunkenness in general for playwrights and for himself, which on this occasion came about on account of the supper he and his players have attended. He rattles on about the supper, telling how the merriment increased until something happened. The thought of this something changes his mood completely. Balaustion notices it, he reads her expression, and characteristically explains the change in himself as due to her fixed regard. The reader is left in suspense as to the something which happened, yet it haunts the memory, and he feels convinced that some time he is to know what it was.

Now Aristophanes bids Balaustion speak to him without fear. She does so, conveying in her welcome both her disapproval and her admiration. Aristophanes, evidently piqued, does not answer, but makes personal remarks upon the manner of her speech, asking her if she learned tragedy from him-Euripides. This starts him off on dreams of a new comedy in which women shall act, but he concludes that his mission is to ornament comedy as he finds it, not invent a new comedy.

This gives Balaustion a chance to ask if in his last play, later than the one Euthukles had seen, he had smoothed this ancient club of comedy he speaks of into a more human and less brutal implement of warfare, and was it a conviction of this new method he might use in comedy which was the something that happened at the feast. Aristophanes, as usual when he is cornered, makes no direct reply, but asks if Euthukles saw his last play, to which Balaustion frankly replies that having seen the first he never cared to see the following. Aristophanes avows he can show cause why he wrote them, but glances off in a sarcastic reference to Euripides, whose art he says belongs to the closet or the cave, not to the world. He prefers to stick to the old forms of art and make Athens happy in what coarse way she desires. He then proceeds to enlarge upon what that is. Then he changes again and asks with various excursions into side issues (for example: the rise of comedy; how it is now being regarded by the government, which favors tragedy, giving him another chance for a dig at Euripides) if he is the man likely to be satisfied to be classed merely a comic poet since he wrote the "Birds?" Balaustion encourages him a little here, and, cheered up, he goes on to tell how he gave the people draught divine in "Wasps" and "Grasshoppers," and how he praised peace by showing the kind of pleasures one may have when peace reigns-and still at every opportunity casting slurs at the tragic muse, especially Euripides.

He goes on describing his play until he touches on some of the sarcasms which make Balaustion wince.

Then he turns about and declares he loathes as much as she does the things of which he tells, but his attempts at bringing comedy up to a high level having failed, he is obliged to give the Athenians what they want, a smartened up version of the "Thesmaphoriazousai," which had failed the year before. He describes his triumph with this which was being celebrated at the supper when the something happened which is now at last described-namely, the entrance of Sophocles, who announces that he intends to commemorate the death of Euripides by having his chorus clothed in black and ungarlanded at the performance of his play next month.

This startling scene, being prepared for and not brought in until Aristophanes has done much talking, seems to throw a sudden flash of reality into the poem. Ill-natured criticism, Aristophanes shows, follows on the part of the feasters, though Aristophanes' mood is one of sudden recognition of the value of Euripides. But when he, sobered for the time being, proposes a toast to the Tragic Muse, the feasters consider it a joke. He quickly accepts the situation, and comes off triumphant by proposing a toast to both muses.

After this Balaustion asks Aristophanes if he will commemorate Euripides with them. But his sober mood is gone. He looks about the room, sees things that belong to Euripides, and immediately begins stabbing at him. Balaustion objects, and upon the theme of respect to the dead he begins his usual invective against his rivals, but finally ends by giving respect to Euripides, him whose serenity, he declares, could never with his gibes be disturbed.

After venting this mood of animosity he begins soberly to discuss the origin of comedy. He traces its growth to the point where he found it, and enlarges on the improvements he has made, touching, as always, upon the criticisms of his opposers, and finally arriving at the chief point of difference between himself and Euripides, which he enlarges upon at great length. Here the incidental music breaks in with talk between Balaustion and Euthukles, in which the former rather tries to excuse herself from relating her reply to Aristophanes.

However, she does give her reply, which is conducted in a more truly argumentative fashion than the defence of Aristophanes. She picks up his points and makes her points against him usually by denying the truth of what he has said. Her supreme defence is, however, the reading of the play "Herakles."

Aristophanes, touched but not convinced, finally insists that he is Athens' best friend. He is no Thamuris to be punished for seeing beyond human vision. The last characteristic touch is when Aristophanes catches up the psalterion and sings the lyric of Thamuris. Then he departs, and Balaustion rehearses the last days of Athens, with Euthukles' part in delaying the tragedy of the doomed city.

By threading one's way thus through the apology, not from the point of view of Aristophanes' arguments, but from the point of view of his moods, one experiences a tremendous sense of the personality of the man. Repetitions which are not required for the full presentation of his case take their place as natural to a man who is not only inordinately vain but is immediately swayed by every suggestion and emotion that comes to him. Owing to his volatile temperament the argument is varied by now a bit of vivid description like that of the archon's feast when Sophocles appeared, now by some merely personal remark to Balaustion.

The criticism in this play, as in that of "Balaustion's Adventure," may be considered either as representing some phase of contemporary opinion about Aristophanes or as expressing the opinion of the poet himself. Balaustion's indignation is especially aroused by the two plays, "The Lusistrata" and the "Thesmophoriazousai," both of which she finds utterly detestable. It is interesting to compare with this entirely unfavorable criticism the feeling of such distinguished classical scholars as Gilbert Murray and J. A. Symonds. The first Murray describes as a play "full of daring indecency, it is true, but the curious thing is that Aristophanes, while professing to ridicule the women, is all through on their side. The jokes made by the superior sex at the expense of the inferior-to give them their Roman names-are seldom remarkable either for generosity or refinement, and it is our author's pleasant humor to accuse everybody of every vice he can think of at the moment. Yet with the single exception that he credits women with an inordinate fondness for wine parties-the equivalent it would seem of afternoon tea-he makes them on the whole perceptibly more sensible and more sympathetic than his men."

Of the second play Symonds speaks with actual enthusiasm. "It has a regular plot-an intrigue and a solution-and its persons are not allegorical but real. Thus it approaches the standard of modern comedy. But the plot, though gigantic in its scale, and prodigious in its wealth of wit and satire, is farcical. The artifices by which Euripides endeavors to win Agathon to undertake his cause, the disguise of Muesilochus in female attire, the oratory of the old man against the women in the midst of their assembly, his detection, the momentary suspension of the dramatic action by his seizure of the supposed baby, his slaughter of the swaddled wine jar, his apprehension by Cleisthenes, the devices and disguises by which Euripides endeavors to extricate his father-in-law from the scrape, and the final ruse by which he eludes the Scythian bowmen, and carries off Muesilochus in triumph-all these form a series of highly diverting comic scenes." Again, "There is no passage in Aristophanes more amusing than the harangue of Muesilochus. The portrait, too, of Agathon in the act of composition is exquisitely comic. But the crowning sport of the 'Thesmophoriazousai' is in the last scene when Muesilochus adapts the Palamedes and the Helen of Euripides to his own forlorn condition, jumbling up the well-known verses of these tragedies with coarse-flavored, rustical remarks; and when at last Euripides, himself, acts Echo and Perseus to the Andromeda of his father-in-law, and both together mystify the policeman by their ludicrous utterance of antiphonal lamentation."

In her welcome of him, Balaustion expresses rather what she thinks he might be than what she really thinks he is. She welcomes him:

"Good Genius! Glory of the poet, glow

O' the humorist who castigates his kind,

Suave summer-lightning lambency which plays

On stag-horned tree, misshapen crag askew,

Then vanishes with unvindictive smile

After a moment's laying black earth bare.

Splendor of wit that springs a thunder ball-

Satire-to burn and purify the world,

True aim, fair purpose: just wit justly strikes

Injustice,-right, as rightly quells the wrong,

Finds out in knaves', fools', cowards', armory

The tricky tinselled place fire flashes through.

No damage else, sagacious of true ore;

Wit learned in the laurel, leaves each wreath

O'er lyric shell or tragic barbiton,-

Though alien gauds be singed,-undesecrate."

Her attitude here is very like that of criticism in general, except that she is more or less sarcastic, meaning to imply that such Aristophanes might be but is not. Symonds, on the other hand, thinks him really what Balaustion thinks he might be.

"If," he says, "Coleridge was justified in claiming the German word Lustspiel for the so-called comedies of Shakespeare, we have a far greater right to appropriate this wide and pregnant title to the plays of Aristophanes. The brazen mask which crowns his theatre smiles indeed broadly, serenely, as if its mirth embraced the universe; but its hollow eye-sockets suggest infinite possibilities of profoundest irony. Buffoonery carried to the point of paradox, wisdom disguised as insanity, and gaiety concealing the whole sum of human disappointment, sorrow and disgust, seem ready to escape from its open but rigid lips, which are molded to a proud perpetual laughter. It is a laughter which spares neither God nor man-which climbs Olympus only to drag down the immortals to its scorn, and trails the pall of august humanity in the mire; but which, amid its mockery and blasphemy, seems everlastingly asserting, as by paradox, that reverence of the soul which bends our knees to heaven and makes us respect our brothers."

One cannot help feeling, in view of these very diverse opinions, that both are exaggerated. The enthusiasm of Symonds seems almost fanatic. Though no one of penetration can fail to see the wit and wisdom, and at times, in such lyrics as those in "The Clouds," the poetic charm of Aristophanes, the person of fastidious taste, whether a Greek girl of his own day, or a man of these latter days, must sometimes feel that his buffoonery oversteps the bounds of true wit, even when it is not shadowed by a coarseness not to be borne at the present day. When Balaustion asks him "in plain words,"

"Have you exchanged brute blows, which teach the brute

Man may surpass him in brutality,-

For human fighting, or true god-like force

Which breeds persuasion nor needs fight at all?"

Aristophanes replies that it had not been his intention to turn art's fabric upside down and invent an entirely new species of comedy. That sort of thing can be done by one who has turned his back on life, friendly faces, sympathetic cheer, as Euripides had done in his Salaminian cave.

This may be regarded, on the whole, as a good bit of defence on Aristophanes' part. It is equivalent to his saying that there was no use in his trying to be anything for which his genius had not fitted him. This chimes in, again, with such authoritative criticism as Murray's, who declares: "The general value of his view of life, and, above all, his treatment of his opponent's alleged vices, may well be questioned. Yet admitting that he often opposed what was best in his age, or advocated it on the lowest grounds, admitting that his slanders are beyond description and that, as a rule, he only attacks the poor and the leaders of the poor, nevertheless he does it all with such exhuberant high spirits, such an air of its all being nonsense together, such insight and swiftness, such incomparable directness and charm of style, that even if some Archelaus had handed him over to Euripides to scourge, he would probably have escaped his well-earned whipping."

Much of Aristophanes' defence consists in slurring at Euripides, against whom he waxes more and more fierce as he goes on. His plays furnish numerous illustrations of his rivalry with Euripides, yet curiously enough, as critics have pointed out, Aristophanes imitates Euripides to a noteworthy extent, so much so that the dramatist Cratinus invented a word to describe the style of the two-Euripid-Aristophanize. Judging from his parodies on Euripides, he must certainly have read and reread his plays until he knew them practically by heart.

Balaustion, as Browning has portrayed her in this poem, is the lyric girl developed into splendid womanhood. She has a large heart and a large brain, as well as imagination and strong ethical fervor. Her intense feeling at the fall of Athens, which had been the ideal to her of greatness, and her reverential love for Euripides, her charity toward Aristophanes the man, if not toward his work, show how deep and far-reaching her sympathies were. Again, her imagination flashes forth in her picturesque descriptions of the ruined Athens and her prophetic picture of the new Athens, of the spirit which will arise in its place, in her telling portraiture of Aristophanes and his entrance into her house, as well as in many another passage. Her intellect shines out in her clever management of the argument with Aristophanes, and her ethical fervor in her denunciations of the moral depravity of certain of the plays.

As to the question of whether a young Greek woman would be likely to criticise Aristophanes in this way, opinion certainly differs. History is, for the most part, silent about women. As Mahaffy says, it is only in the dramatists and the philosophers that we can get any glimpses of the woman of the time.

Mahaffy's opinions are worth quoting as an example of the pessimism growing out of a bias in favor of a particular type of woman which he idealized in his own mind. He seems utterly incapable of appreciating the humanness of the women in the Greek dramatists, especially those in Euripides. "Sadder than the condition of the aged was that of women," he writes, "at this remarkable period. The days of the noble and high-principled Penelope, of the refined and intellectual Helen, of the innocent and spirited Nausikaa, of the gentle and patient Andromache, had passed away. Men no longer sought and respected the society of the gentler sex. Would that Euripides had even been familiar, as Homer was, with the sound of women brawling in the streets! For in these days they were confined to Asiatic silence and seclusion, while the whole life of the men, both in business and recreation, was essentially public. Just as the feverish excitement of political life nowadays prompts men to spend even their leisure in the clubs, where they meet companions of like passions and interests with themselves, so the Athenian gentleman only came home to eat and sleep. His leisure as well as his business kept him in the market place. His wife and daughters, ignorant of philosophy and politics, were strangers to his real life, and took no interest in his pursuits.

"The results were fatal to Athenian society. The women, uninstructed, neglected, and enslaved, soon punished their oppressors with their own keen and bitter weapons, and with none keener than their vices. For, of course, all the grace and delicacy of female character disappeared. Intellectual power in women was distinctly associated with moral depravity, so that excessive ignorance and stupidity was considered the only guarantee of virtue. The qualifications for society became incompatible with the qualifications for home duties, so that the outcasts from society, as we call them, were not the immoral and the profligate but the honorable and the virtuous."

Such is the view to be gleaned from history, and in Mahaffy's opinion the literature of the time tells the same story. He goes on: "When we consult the literature of the day, we find women treated either with contemptuous ridicule in comedy, or with still more contemptuous silence in history. In tragedy or in the social theories of the philosophers alone can we hope for a glimpse into the average character and position of Athenian women. Here at least we might have expected that the portraits drawn with such consummate skill by Homer would have been easily transferred to the Athenian stage. But to our astonishment we find the higher social feelings toward women so weak that the Athenian tragic poets seem quite unable to appreciate, or even to understand, the more delicate features in Homeric characters. They are painted so coarsely and ignorantly by Euripides that we should never recognize them but for their names. Base motives and unseemly wrangling take the place of chivalrous honor and graceful politeness.

"But the critics of the day complained that Euripides degraded the ideal character of tragedy by painting human nature as he found it: in fact as it was, and not as it ought to be. Let us turn, then, to Sophokles, who painted the most ideal women which the imagination of a refined Athenian could conceive, and consider his most celebrated characters, his Antigone and his Elektra. A calm, dispassionate survey will, I think, pronounce them harsh and masculine. They act rightly, no doubt, and even nobly, but they do it in the most disagreeable way. Except in their external circumstances they differ in no respect from men."

Certainly, the opinion expressed of the women of Euripides is tainted by the feeling that they ought to act like English matrons and their daughters.

Quite a different impression is given by Symonds, who, in regard to some of the sentences occurring in Euripides which are uncomplimentary to women, says: "It is impossible to weigh occasional sententious sarcasms against such careful studies of heroic virtue in women as the Iphigenia, the Elektra, the Polyxena, the Alkestis."

But the complete vindication of the fact that Balaustion and Mrs. Browning and our own women of to-day are on the right side in their appreciation of Euripides as the great woman's poet of antiquity is found in the opinion of our contemporary critic, Gilbert Murray, who more than thirty years after these poems were written writes of the "wonderful women-studies by which Euripides dazzled and aggrieved his contemporaries. They called him a hater of women; and Aristophanes makes the women of Athens conspire for revenge against him. Of course he was really the reverse. He loved and studied and expressed the women whom the Socratics ignored and Pericles advised to stay in their rooms. Crime, however, is always more striking and palpable than virtue. Heroines like Medea, Phaedra, Stheneboia, A?rope, Clytemnestra, perhaps fill the imagination more than those of the angelic or devoted type-Alcestis, who died to save her husband, Evadne and Laodamia, who could not survive theirs, and all the great list of virgin-martyrs. But the significant fact is that, like Ibsen, Euripides refuses to idealize any man, and does idealize women. There is one youth-martyr, Menoikeus in the 'Ph?nissae,' but his martyrdom is a masculine, businesslike performance-he gets rid of his prosaic father by a pretext about traveling money without that shimmer of loveliness that hangs over the virgins."

Where then did Euripides find these splendid women of force and character? It seems quite impossible that he could have evolved them out of his own inner consciousness. He must have known women who served at least, in part, as models. Besides, there was undoubtedly a new woman movement in the air or Plato in his "Republic" would not have suggested a plan for educating men and women alike. The free women of Athens are known in some cases to have attained a high degree of culture. Aspasia, who became the wife of Pericles, is a shining example. There was Sappho, also, with her school of poetry attended by girls in Lesbos.

Taking all these facts into consideration, it would seem that Browning was sufficiently justified in drawing such a woman as Balaustion, and that a woman of her penetrating intellect and ardor of spirit would love Euripides, and dislike Aristophanes, seems absolutely certain.

Therefore, if the historical attitude is taken toward Balaustion and her criticism and appreciation, it can be on the whole accepted as reflecting what would probably be the feeling of an ardent woman-follower of Euripides in his own day.

But, on the other hand, if the criticism be taken as Browning's own, it is open to question whether it is partisan rather than entirely broad-minded. Take the consensus of opinion of modern critics and we find them all agreed in regard to the genius of Aristophanes, though admitting that his coarseness must, at times, detract from their enjoyment of him.

There is much truth in Symonds' criticism of the poem. He says of it: "As a sophist and a rhetorician of poetry, Mr. Browning proves himself unrivaled, and takes rank with the best writers of historical romances. Yet students may fairly accuse him of some special pleading in favor of his friends and against his foes. It is true that Aristophanes did not bring back again the golden days of Greece; true that his comedy revealed a corruption latent in Athenian life. But neither was Euripides in any sense a savior. Impartiality regards them both as equally destructive: Aristophanes, because he indulged animalism and praised ignorance in an age which ought to have outgrown both; Euripides, because he criticised the whole fabric of Greek thought and feeling in an age which had not yet distinguished between analysis and skepticism.

"What has just been said about Mr. Browning's special pleading indicates the chief fault to be found with his poem. The point of view is modern. The situation is strained. Aristophanes becomes the scapegoat of Athenian sins, while Euripides shines forth a saint as well as a sage. Balaustion, for her part, beautiful as her conception truly is, takes up a position which even Plato could not have assumed. Into her mouth Mr. Browning has put the views of the most searching and most sympathetic modern analyst. She judges Euripides not as he appeared to his own Greeks, but as he strikes the warmest of his admirers, who compare his work with that of all the poets who have ever lived."

It would seem that Mr. Symonds, himself, does some special pleading here. As we have seen, Euripides, though not a favorite in Athens, did have warm admirers in his own day; consequently there is nothing out of the way in portraying one of his contemporaries as an admirer. Furthermore, Balaustion does not represent him as a savior of his age. She sees only too clearly that in the narrow sense of convincing his age he has not been a success. What is her vision of the spiritual Athens which is to arise but a confession of this fact! Nor is it entirely improbable that she might be prophetic of a time when Euripides will be recognized as the true power. Any disciple of a poet ahead of his time perceives these things. One should be careful in judging of the poem as good modern criticism not to be entirely guided by the opinions of Balaustion. It should never be forgotten that it is a dramatic poem in which Aristophanes is allowed to speak for himself at great length, and whatever can be accepted as good argument for himself upon his own ground should be set over against the sweeping strictures of Balaustion. Indeed it may turn out that Browning has, after all, said for him the most exculpatory word of any critic, for he has so presented his case as to show that he considers him the outcome of the undeveloped phase of morals then existing for which he is hardly responsible because the higher light has not yet broken in upon him. This is evidenced especially in the strange combination in him of a frank belief in a life of the senses which goes along with a puritanical reverence for the gods, and a hatred of anything that falls within his own definition of vice.

To sum up, if I may again be forgiven for re-expressing an opinion elsewhere printed, which states as clearly as I am able to do my conviction of where the play stands as criticism, like all dramatic work, this poem aims to present the actual spirit of the time in which the actors moved upon the stage of life, and to reproduce something of their mental and emotional natures. Any criticism of the poets who figure in the poem, or of the larger question of the quarrel between tragedy and comedy, should be deduced indirectly, as implied in the sympathetic presentation of both sides, not based exclusively upon direct expressions of opinion on either side. So regarded it would seem that Browning was able to appreciate the genius of Aristophanes as well as that of Euripides, but that he considered Aristophanes to have value chiefly in relation to his age, as the artistic mouthpiece of its long-established usages, while Euripides had caught the breath of the future, and was the mirror of the prophetic impulses of his age rather than of its dominant civilization.

It is not improbable that Landor's fascinating portrayal of the brilliant Aspasia may have had some influence upon Browning's conception of Balaustion, upon the intellectual side at least. Alcibiades says that many people think her language as pure and elegant as Pericles, and Pericles says she was never seen out of temper or forgetful of what argument to urge first and most forcibly. When all is said, however, it may be that the "halo irised around" Balaustion's head was due, more than to any one else, to the influence of the memory of Mrs. Browning, of whom she is made to say with a sublime disregard of its anachronism:

"I know the poetess who graved in gold,

Among her glories that shall never fade,

This style and title for Euripides,

The Human with his droppings of warm tears."

After such a study of Greek life as this, wherein every available incident in history, every episode in the plays of Aristophanes bearing on the subject, every contemporary allusion are all woven together with such consummate skill that the very soul and body of the time is imaged forth, the classical poems of the other great names of the century seem almost like child's play. Landor's poems on Greek subjects sound like imitations in inferior material of antiquity. Arnold's are even duller. Swinburne tells his Greek tales in an endless flow of rhythmical, musical verse, which occasionally rises into the realm of having something to say. Morris tells his at equal length in a manner suggestive of Chaucer without Chaucer's snap, but where among them all is there such a bit of stinging life as in "Pheidippedes" or "Echetlos?"

Walter Savage Landor

Tennyson has, it is true, written some altogether exquisite verse, upon classical themes, and in every case the poems are not descriptive nor dramatic, but are dramatic soliloquies, thus approaching in form Browning's dramatic idyls. One of the most beautiful of these is "?none." There we have a mere tradition enlarged upon and the feelings of ?none upon the desertion of Paris expressed with a richness of emotional fervor in a setting of appropriate nature imagery which carries us back to the idyls of Theocritus. "Ulysses," again gives the psychology of a wanderer who has become so habituated to adventures that he is quite incapable of settling down with Penelope for the remainder of his life. One cannot quite forgive the poet for calling the ever youthful and beautiful Penelope, whose hand was sought by so many suitors, and who, although twenty years had passed, might still be quite young, an "aged wife." It has always seemed to the writer like a wholly unnecessary stab at a very beautiful story, and the poem would have been just as effective if Ulysses' hunger for lands beyond the sun had not been coupled with any scorn of Penelope, but with a feeling of pain that again Fate must take him away from her. Aside from this note of bad taste-bad, because it shadows a picture of faithfulness, cherished as an almost universal possession of humanity-the poem is fine. There is also, though not Greek, the remarkable study of Lucretius going mad from the effects of his wife's love philter, in which the most fascinating glimpses of his philosophy of atoms are caught amid his maniacal wanderings, and, last, the very beautiful Demeter and Persephone.

These are as unique in their way as Browning's Greek poems are in theirs, standing quite apart from such work as Morris', or Swinburne's, not only because of their haunting music, which even Swinburne cannot equal, but because of a deeper vein of thought running through them. As far as thought is concerned, however, all pale in significance the moment they are placed in juxtaposition with any of Browning's classical productions.

Not the least interesting of Browning's classical poems is "Ixion." In his treatment of the myth of Ixion he proves himself a true child of the Greeks, not that he makes any slavish attempt to reproduce a Greek atmosphere as it existed in the lifetime of Greek poetry, but he exercises that prerogative which the Greek poets always claimed, of interpreting a myth to suit their own ends.

It has become a sort of critical axiom to compare Browning's "Ixion" with the "Prometheus" of literature. This is one of those catching analogies which lay hold upon the mind, and cannot be shaken off again without considerable difficulty. Mr. Arthur Symons first spoke of the resemblance; and almost every other critic with the exception of Mr. Nettleship has dwelt mainly upon that aspect of the poem which bears out the comparison. But why, it might very well be asked, did Browning, if he intended to make another Prometheus, choose Ixion for his theme? And the answer is evident, because in the story of Ixion he found some quality different from any which existed in the story of Prometheus, and which was especially suited to the end he had in view.

The kernel of the myth of Prometheus as developed by ?schylus is proud, unflinching suffering of punishment, inflicted, not by a god justly angry for sin against himself, but by a god sternly mindful of his own prerogatives, whose only right is might, and jealous of any interference in behalf of the race which he detested-the race of man. Thus Prometheus stands out as a hero in Greek mythology, a mediator between man and the blind anger of a god of unconditional power; and Prometheus, with an equally blind belief in Fate, accepts while he defies the punishment inflicted by Zeus. He tacitly acknowledges the right of Zeus to punish him, since he confesses his deeds to be sins, but, nevertheless, he would do exactly the same thing over again:

"By my choice, my choice

I freely sinned-I will confess my sin-

And helping mortals found mine own despair."

On the other hand, Ixion never appears in classic lore as a hero. He has been called the "Cain" of Greece, because he was the first, as Pindar says, "to introduce to mortal men the murder of kin not unaccompanied by cunning." Zeus appears, however, to have shown more leniency to him for the crime of killing his father-in-law than he ever did to Prometheus, as he not only purified him from murder, but invited him to a seat among the gods. But to quote Pindar again, "he found his prosperity too great to bear, when with infatuate mind he became enamored of Hera.... Thus his conceit drave him to an act of enormous folly, but the man soon suffered his deserts, and received an exquisite torture." Ixion, then, in direct contrast to Prometheus, stands forth an embodiment of the most detestable of sins, perpetrated simply for personal ends. To depict such a man as this in an attitude of defiance, and yet to justify his defiance, is a far more difficult problem than to justify the already admired heroism of Prometheus. It is entirely characteristic of Browning that he should choose perhaps the most unprincipled character in the whole range of Greek mythology as his hero. He is not content, like Emerson, with simply telling us that "in the mud and scum of things there alway, alway something sings"; his aim is ever to bring us face to face with reality, and to open our ears that we may hear for ourselves this universal song. In fine, Browning chose Ixion and not another, because he wanted above all things an unquestioned sinner; and the task he set himself was to show the use of sin and at the same time exonerate the sinner from the eternal consequences of his act.

So mystical is the language of the poem that it is extremely difficult to trace behind it the subtle reasoning. Mr. Nettleship has given by far the best exposition of the poem, though even he does not seize all its suggestiveness.

Ixion, the sinner, suffering eternal torment, questions the justice of such torment. The first very important conclusion to which he comes, and it is one entirely in accord with science, is that sin is an aberration of sense, merely the result of external conditions in which the soul of man has no active part. The soul simply dreams, but once fully awakened, it would free itself from this bondage of sense if it were allowed to do so. Ixion argues that it is Zeus that hath made him and not he himself, and if he has sinned it is through the bodily senses which Zeus has conferred upon him, and if he were the friendly and all-powerful god which he claimed himself to be and which Ixion believed he was, why did he allow these distractions of sense to lead him (Ixion) into sin which could only be expiated by eternal punishment? Without body there would have been nothing to obstruct his soul's rush upon the real; and with one touch of pitying power Zeus might have dispersed "this film-work, eye's and ear's." It is entirely the fault of Zeus that he had sinned; and having done so will external torture make him repent any more who has repented already? This is the old, old problem that has taxed the brains of many a philosopher and the faith of many a theologian-the reconcilement of the existence of evil with an omnipotent God. Then follows a comparison between the actions of Zeus, a god, and of Ixion, the human king; and Ixion declares could he have known all, as Zeus does, he would have warded off evil from his subjects, would have seen that they were trained aright from the first-in fact, would not have allowed evil to exist, or failing this, could he have seen the heart of the criminals and realized how they repented he would have given them a chance to retrieve their past. Ixion now realizes that his human ideal is higher than that of Zeus. He had imagined him possessed of human qualities, and finds his qualities are less than human. What must be the inevitable result of arriving at such a conclusion? It means the dethronement of the god, and either a lapse into hopeless atheism or the recognition that the conception formed of the god was that of the human mind at an earlier stage of understanding. This conception becomes crystallized into an anthropomorphic god; but the mind of man goes onward on its way to higher heights, and lo! there comes a day when the god-ideal of the past is lower than the human ideal of the present. It is such a crisis as this that Ixion has arrived at, and his faith is equal to the strain. Since Zeus is man's own mind-made god, Ixion's tortures must be the natural consequences of his sin, and not the arbitrary punishment of a god; and what is Ixion's sin as Browning has interpreted the myth?

The sin is that of arrogance. Ixion, a mere man, strives to be on an equality with gods. In Lucian's dialogue between Hera and Zeus the stress is laid upon the arrogance of Ixion. Jupiter declares that Ixion shall pay the "penalty not of his love-for that surely is not so dreadful a crime-but of his loud boasting." Browning raises the sin into a rarer atmosphere than that of the Greek or Latin. Zeus and Hera may be taken to represent the attributes of power and love as conceived by man in Divinity; and Ixion, symbolic of man, arrogantly supposes that he is capable of putting himself on an equality with Divinity by conceiving the entire nature of Divinity, that out of his finite mind he can construct the absolute god, and this is the sin, or, better, the aberration of sense, which results in the crystallization of his former inadequate conceptions into an anthropomorphic god, and causes his own downfall. Ixion, now fully aroused to the fact that the god he has been defying is but his own miserable conception of God, realizes that the suffering caused by this conception of God is the very means through which man struggles toward higher ideals: through evil he is brought to a recognition of the good; from his agony is bred the rainbow of hope, which ever shines above him glorified by the light from a Purity far beyond, all-unobstructed. Successive conceptions of God must sink; but man, however misled by them, must finally burst through the obstructions of sense, freeing his spirit to aspire forever toward the light.

"Ixion," then, is not merely an argument against eternal punishment, nor a picture of heroic suffering, though he who will may draw these lessons from it, but it is a tremendous symbol of the spiritual development of man. Pure in its essence, the spirit learns through the obstructions of sense to yearn forever for higher attainment, and this constitutes the especial blessedness of man as contrasted with Zeus. He, like the Pythagorean Father of Number, is the conditioned one; but man is privileged through all ?ons of time to break through conditions, and thus Ixion, triumphant, exclaims:

"Where light, where light is, aspiring

Thither I rise, whilst thou-Zeus, keep the godship and sink."

In these poems, as in other phases of his work, Browning runs the gamut of life, of art, and of thought. He has set a new standard in regard to the handling of classic material, one which should open the field of classic lore afresh to future poets. Instead of trying to ape in more or less ineffectual imitations the style and thought of the great masters of antiquity, or simply use their mythology as a well-spring of romance to be clothed in whatever vagaries of style the individual poet might be able to invent, the aim of the future poet should be to reconstruct the life and thought of that wonderful civilization. One playwright, at least, has made a step in the right direction. I refer to Gilbert Murray, whose classical scholarship has thrown so much light upon the vexed questions of Browning's attitude toward Euripides, and who, in his "Andromache," has written a play, not in classical, but in modern form, which seems to bring us more into touch with the life of Homer's day than even Homer himself.

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