Robert Browning: Selected Poems

First publ. M W, 10 Nov. 1855; repr. 1863, 1863², 1868, 1880, 1888. Our text is 1855.

The poem seems to have been conceived in 1850–51; it is clearly linked to the controversy surrounding the ‘Papal Aggression’ (see below, Background), and includes references to two people (A. W. N. Pugin [l. 6] and Count D’Orsay [l. 53]) who died in 1852. The apparent allusion to the Crimean War (which broke out in 1854) at l. 938, and the possible allusion to the projected edition of Balzac’s novels advertised in 1855 and published in 1856 (l. 108n.), would suggest that B. was still working on the poem in 1854–55.

Like many of the other speakers of B.’s lengthy ‘casuistical’ monologues (such as Sludge and Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau), Blougram is based on a particular individual: Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster (1802–1865).

In a conversation at the house of John Forster in 1865, B. took issue with Sir Charles Gavan Duffy’s suggestion that his poetry ‘habitually disparaged’ the Roman Catholic Church:

Again, in a letter to F. J. Furnivall of 1881 B. wrote that ‘[the] most curious notice [he] ever had was from Cardinal Wiseman on Blougram—i.e. himself’ (LH 195). The review in question was not, however, by Wiseman, but by Richard Simpson; see Esther Roades Houghton, VN xxxiii [1968] 46. Simpson calls the poem ‘impertinent and satirical’, and notes that it is ‘probably supposed by ninety-nine readers out of a hundred to be a squib on Cardinal Wiseman’:

No more wine? Then we’ll push back chairs and talk.

A final glass for me, tho’; cool, i’faith!

We ought to have our Abbey back, you see.

It’s different, preaching in basilicas,

5 And doing duty in some masterpiece

Like this of brother Pugin’s, bless his heart!

I doubt if they’re half baked, those chalk rosettes,

Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere;

It’s just like breathing in a lime-kiln: eh?

10 These hot long ceremonies of our church

Cost us a little—oh, they pay the price,

You take me—amply pay it! Now, we’ll talk.

So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs.

No deprecation,—nay, I beg you, sir!

15 Beside’tis our engagement: don’t you know,

I promised, if you’d watch a dinner out,

We’d see truth dawn together?—truth that peeps

Over the glass’s edge when dinner’s done,

And body gets its sop and holds its noise

20 And leaves soul free a little. Now’s the time—

’Tis break of day! You do despise me then.

And if I say, “despise me,”—never fear—

I know you do not in a certain sense—

Not in my arm-chair for example: here,

25 I well imagine you respect my place

(Status, entourage, worldly circumstance)

Quite to its value—very much indeed

—Are up to the protesting eyes of you

In pride at being seated here for once—

30 You’ll turn it to such capital account!

When somebody, through years and years to come,

Hints of the bishop,—names me—that’s enough—

“Blougram? I knew him”—(into it you slide)

“Dined with him once, a Corpus Christi Day,

35 All alone, we two—he’s a clever man—

And after dinner,—why, the wine you know,—

Oh, there was wine, and good!—what with the wine …

’Faith, we began upon all sorts of talk!

He’s no bad fellow, Blougram—he had seen

40 Something of mine he relished—some review—

He’s quite above their humbug in his heart,

Half-said as much, indeed—the thing’s his trade—

I warrant, Blougram’s sceptical at times—

How otherwise? I liked him, I confess!”

45 Che ch’é, my dear sir, as we say at Rome,

Don’t you protest now! It’s fair give and take;

You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths—

The hand’s mine now, and here you follow suit.

Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays—

50 You do despise me; your ideal of life

Is not the bishop’s—you would not be I—

You would like better to be Goethe, now,

Or Buonaparte—or, bless me, lower still,

Count D’Orsay,—so you did what you preferred,

55 Spoke as you thought, and, as you cannot help,

Believed or disbelieved, no matter what,

So long as on that point, whate’er it was,

You loosed your mind, were whole and sole yourself.

—That, my ideal never can include,

60 Upon that element of truth and worth

Never be based! for say they make me Pope

(They can’t—suppose it for our argument)

Why, there I’m at my tether’s end—I’ve reached

My height, and not a height which pleases you.

65 An unbelieving Pope won’t do, you say.

It’s like those eerie stories nurses tell,

Of how some actor played Death on a stage

With pasteboard crown, sham orb, and tinselled dart,

And called himself the monarch of the world,

70 Then going in the tire-room afterward

Because the play was done, to shift himself,

Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly

The moment he had shut the closet door

By Death himself. Thus God might touch a Pope

75 At unawares, ask what his baubles mean,

And whose part he presumed to play just now?

Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true!

So, drawing comfortable breath again,

You weigh and find whatever more or less

80 I boast of my ideal realised

Is nothing in the balance when opposed

To your ideal, your grand simple life,

Of which you will not realise one jot.

I am much, you are nothing; you would be all,

85 I would be merely much—you beat me there.

No, friend, you do not beat me,—hearken why.

The common problem, yours, mine, every one’s,

Is not to fancy what were fair in life

Provided it could be,—but, finding first

90 What may be, then find how to make it fair

Up to our means—a very different thing!

No abstract intellectual plan of life

Quite irrespective of life’s plainest laws,

But one, a man, who is man and nothing more,

95 May lead within a world which (by your leave)

Is Rome or London—not Fool’s-paradise.

Embellish Rome, idealise away,

Make Paradise of London if you can,

You’re welcome, nay, you’re wise.

A simile!

100 We mortals cross the ocean of this world

Each in his average cabin of a life—

The best’s not big, the worst yields elbow-room.

Now for our six months’ voyage—how prepare?

You come on shipboard with a landsman’s list

105 Of things he calls convenient—so they are!

An India screen is pretty furniture,

A piano-forte is a fine resource,

All Balzac’s novels occupy one shelf,

The new edition fifty volumes long;

110 And little Greek books with the funny type

They get up well at Leipsic fill the next—

Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes!

And Parma’s pride, the Jerome, let us add!

’Twere pleasant could Correggio’s fleeting glow

115 Hang full in face of one where’er one roams,

Since he more than the others brings with him

Italy’s self,—the marvellous Modenese!

Yet ’twas not on your list before, perhaps.

—Alas! friend, here’s the agent … is’t the name?

120 The captain, or whoever’s master here—

You see him screw his face up; what’s his cry

Ere you set foot on shipboard? “Six feet square!”

If you won’t understand what six feet mean,

Compute and purchase stores accordingly—

125 And if in pique because he overhauls

Your Jerome, piano and bath, you come on board

Bare—why you cut a figure at the first

While sympathetic landsmen see you off;

Not afterwards, when, long ere half seas o’er,

130 You peep up from your utterly naked boards

Into some snug and well-appointed berth

Like mine, for instance (try the cooler jug—

Put back the other, but don’t jog the ice)

And mortified you mutter “Well and good—

135 He sits enjoying his sea-furniture—

’Tis stout and proper, and there’s store of it,

Though I’ve the better notion, all agree,

Of fitting rooms up! hang the carpenter,

Neat ship-shape fixings and contrivances—

140 I would have brought my Jerome, frame and all!”

And meantime you bring nothing: never mind—

You’ve proved your artist-nature: what you don’t,

You might bring, so despise me, as I say.

Now come, let’s backward to the starting place.

145 See my way: we’re two college friends, suppose—

Prepare together for our voyage, then,

Each note and check the other in his work,—

Here’s mine, a bishop’s outfit; criticise!

What’s wrong? why won’t you be a bishop too?

150 Why, first, you don’t believe, you don’t and can’t,

(Not statedly, that is, and fixedly

And absolutely and exclusively)

In any revelation called divine.

No dogmas nail your faith—and what remains

155 But say so, like the honest man you are?

First, therefore, overhaul theology!

Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,

Must find believing every whit as hard,

And if I do not frankly say as much,

160 The ugly consequence is clear enough.

Now, wait, my friend: well, I do not believe—

If you’ll accept no faith that is not fixed,

Absolute and exclusive, as you say.

(You’re wrong—I mean to prove it in due time)

165 Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie

I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,

So give up hope accordingly to solve—

(To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then

With both of us, tho’ in unlike degree,

170 Missing full credence—overboard with them!

I mean to meet you on your own premise—

Good, there go mine in company with yours!

And now what are we? unbelievers both,

Calm and complete, determinately fixed

175 To-day, to-morrow, and for ever, pray?

You’ll guarantee me that? Not so, I think.

In no-wise! all we’ve gained is, that belief,

As unbelief before, shakes us by fits,

Confounds us like its predecessor. Where’s

180 The gain? how can we guard our unbelief,

Make it bear fruit to us?—the problem here.

Just when we are safest, there’s a sunset-touch,

A fancy from a flower-bell, some one’s death,

A chorus-ending from Euripides,—

185 And that’s enough for fifty hopes and fears

As old and new at once as Nature’s self,

To rap and knock and enter in our soul,

Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,

Round the ancient idol, on his base again,—

190 The grand Perhaps! we look on helplessly,—

There the old misgivings, crooked questions are—

This good God,—what he could do, if he would,

Would, if he could—then must have done long since:

If so, when, where, and how? some way must be,—

195 Once feel about, and soon or late you hit

Some sense, in which it might be, after all.

Why not, “The Way, the Truth, the Life?”

—That way

Over the mountain, which who stands upon

Is apt to doubt if it’s indeed a road;

200 While if he views it from the waste itself,

Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,

Not vague, mistakeable! what’s a break or two

Seen from the unbroken desert either side?

And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)

205 What if the breaks themselves should prove at last

The most consummate of contrivances

To train a man’s eye, teach him what is faith,—

And so we stumble at truth’s very test?

What have we gained then by our unbelief

210 But a life of doubt diversified by faith,

For one of faith diversified by doubt.

We called the chess-board white,—we call it black.

“Well,” you rejoin, “the end’s no worse, at least,

We’ve reason for both colours on the board.

215 Why not confess, then, where I drop the faith

And you the doubt, that I’m as right as you?”

Because, friend, in the next place, this being so,

And both things even,—faith and unbelief

Left to a man’s choice,—we’ll proceed a step,

220 Returning to our image, which I like.

A man’s choice, yes—but a cabin-passenger’s—

The man made for the special life of the world—

Do you forget him? I remember though!

Consult our ship’s conditions and you find

225 One and but one choice suitable to all,

The choice that you unluckily prefer

Turning things topsy-turvy—they or it

Going to the ground. Belief or unbelief

Bears upon life, determines its whole course,

230 Begins at its beginning. See the world

Such as it is,—you made it not, nor I;

I mean to take it as it is,—and you

Not so you’ll take it,—though you get nought else.

I know the special kind of life I like,

235 What suits the most my idiosyncrasy,

Brings out the best of me and bears me fruit

In power, peace, pleasantness, and length of days.

I find that positive belief does this

For me, and unbelief, no whit of this.

240 —For you, it does, however—that we’ll try!

’Tis clear, I cannot lead my life, at least

Induce the world to let me peaceably,

Without declaring at the outset, “Friends,

I absolutely and peremptorily

245 Believe!”—I say faith is my waking life.

One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals,

We know, but waking’s the main point with us,

And my provision’s for life’s waking part.

Accordingly, I use heart, head and hands

250 All day, I build, scheme, study and make friends;

And when night overtakes me, down I lie,

Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it,

The sooner the better, to begin afresh.

What’s midnight’s doubt before the dayspring’s faith?

255 You, the philosopher, that disbelieve,

That recognise the night, give dreams their weight—

To be consistent you should keep your bed,

Abstain from healthy acts that prove you a man,

For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares!

260 And certainly at night you’ll sleep and dream,

Live through the day and bustle as you please.

And so you live to sleep as I to wake,

To unbelieve as I to still believe?

Well, and the common sense of the world calls you

265 Bed-ridden,—and its good things come to me.

Its estimation, which is half the fight,

That’s the first cabin-comfort I secure—

The next … but you perceive with half an eye!

Come, come, it’s best believing, if we can—

You can’t but own that.

270 Next, concede again—

If once we choose belief, on all accounts

We can’t be too decisive in our faith,

Conclusive and exclusive in its terms,

To suit the world which gives us the good things.

275 In every man’s career are certain points

Whereon he dares not be indifferent;

The world detects him clearly, if he is,

As baffled at the game, and losing life.

He may care little or he may care much

280 For riches, honour, pleasure, work, repose,

Since various theories of life and life’s

Success are extant which might easily

Comport with either estimate of these,

And whoso chooses wealth or poverty,

285 Labour or quiet, is not judged a fool

Because his fellows would choose otherwise.

We let him choose upon his own account

So long as he’s consistent with his choice.

But certain points, left wholly to himself,

290 When once a man has arbitrated on,

We say he must succed there or go hang.

Thus, he should wed the woman he loves most

Or needs most, whatsoe’er the love or need—

For he can’t wed twice. Then, he must avouch

295 Or follow, at the least, sufficiently,

The form of faith his conscience holds the best,

Whate’er the process of conviction was.

For nothing can compensate his mistake

On such a point, the man himself being judge—

300 He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul.

Well now—there’s one great form of Christian faith

I happen to be born in—which to teach

Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,

As best and readiest means of living by;

305 The same on examination being proved

The most pronounced, moreover, fixed, precise

And absolute form of faith in the whole world—

Accordingly, most potent of all forms

For working on the world. Observe, my friend,

310 Such as you know me, I am free to say,

In these hard latter days which hamper one,

Myself, by no immoderate exercise

Of intellect and learning, and the tact

To let external forces work for me,

315 Bid the street’s stones be bread and they are bread,

Bid Peter’s creed, or, rather, Hildebrand’s,

Exalt me o’er my fellows in the world

And make my life an ease and joy and pride,

It does so,—which for me’s a great point gained,

320 Who have a soul and body that exact

A comfortable care in many ways.

There’s power in me and will to dominate

Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:

In many ways I need mankind’s respect,

325 Obedience, and the love that’s born of fear:

While at the same time, there’s a taste I have,

A toy of soul, a titillating thing,

Refuses to digest these dainties crude.

The naked life is gross till clothed upon:

330 I must take what men offer, with a grace

As though I would not, could I help it, take!

A uniform to wear though over-rich—

Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;

No fancy-dress worn for pure fashion’s sake

335 And despicable therefore! now men kneel

And kiss my hand—of course the Church’s hand.

Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,

And thus that it should be I have procured;

And thus it could not be another way,

I venture to imagine.

340 You’ll reply—

So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;

But were I made of better elements,

With nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,

I hardly would account the thing success

Though it do all for me I say.

345 But, friend,

We speak of what is—not of what might be,

And how’twere better if’twere otherwise.

I am the man you see here plain enough—

Grant I’m a beast, why beasts must lead beasts’ lives!

350 Suppose I own at once to tail and claws—

The tailless man exceeds me; but being tailed

I’ll lash out lion-fashion, and leave apes

To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.

My business is not to remake myself,

355 But make the absolute best of what God made.

Or—our first simile—though you proved me doomed

To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole,

The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should strive

To make what use of each were possible;

360 And as this cabin gets upholstery,

That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw.

But, friend, I don’t acknowledge quite so fast

I fail of all your manhood’s lofty tastes

Enumerated so complacently,

365 On the mere ground that you forsooth can find

In this particular life I choose to lead

No fit provision for them. Can you not?

Say you, my fault is I address myself

To grosser estimators than I need,

370 And that’s no way of holding up the soul—

Which, nobler, needs men’s praise perhaps, yet knows

One wise man’s verdict outweighs all the fools’,—

Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that?

I pine among my million imbeciles

375 (You think) aware some dozen men of sense

Eye me and know me, whether I believe

In the last winking Virgin, as I vow,

And am a fool, or disbelieve in her

And am a knave,—approve in neither case,

380 Withhold their voices though I look their way:

Like Verdi when, at his worst opera’s end

(The thing they gave at Florence,—what’s its name?)

While the mad houseful’s plaudits near out-bang

His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,

385 He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths

Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.

Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here—

For even your prime men who appraise their kind

Are men still, catch a thing within a thing,

390 See more in a truth than the truth’s simple self,

Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street

Sixty the minute; what’s to note in that?

You see one lad o’erstride a chimney-stack;

Him you must watch—he’s sure to fall, yet stands!

395 Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things.

The honest thief, the tender murderer,

The superstitious atheist, demireps

That love and save their souls in new French books—

We watch while these in equilibrium keep

400 The giddy line midway: one step aside,

They’re classed and done with. I, then, keep the line

Before your sages,—just the men to shrink

From the gross weights, coarse scales, and labels broad

You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?

405 Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave

When there’s a thousand diamond weights between?

So I enlist them. Your picked Twelve, you’ll find,

Profess themselves indignant, scandalised

At thus being held unable to explain

410 How a superior man who disbelieves

May not believe as well: that’s Schelling’s way!

It’s through my coming in the tail of time,

Nicking the minute with a happy tact.

Had I been born three hundred years ago

415 They’d say, “What’s strange? Blougram of course believes;”

And, seventy years since, “disbelieves of course.”

But now, “He may believe; and yet, and yet

How can he?”—All eyes turn with interest.

Whereas, step off the line on either side—

420 You, for example, clever to a fault,

The rough and ready man that write apace,

Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less—

You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares?

Lord So-and-So—his coat bedropt with wax,

425 All Peter’s chains about his waist, his back

Brave with the needlework of Noodledom,

Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares?

But I, the man of sense and learning too,

The able to think yet act, the this, the that,

430 I, to believe at this late time of day!

Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.

—Except it’s yours! admire me as these may,

You don’t. But what at least do you admire?

Present your own perfections, your ideal,

435 Your pattern man for a minute—oh, make haste!

Is it Napoleon you would have us grow?

Concede the means; allow his head and hand,

(A large concession, clever as you are)

Good!—In our common primal element

440 Of unbelief (we can’t believe, you know—

We’re still at that admission, recollect)

Where do you find—apart from, towering-o’er

The secondary temporary aims

Which satisfy the gross tastes you despise—

445 Where do you find his star?—his crazy trust

God knows through what or in what? it’s alive

And shines and leads him and that’s all we want.

Have we aught in our sober night shall point

Such ends as his were, and direct the means

450 Of working out our purpose straight as his,

Nor bring a moment’s trouble on success

With after-care to justify the same?

—Be a Napoleon and yet disbelieve!

Why, the man’s mad, friend, take his light away.

455 What’s the vague good of the world for which you’d dare

With comfort to yourself blow millions up?

We neither of us see it! we do see

The blown-up millions—spatter of their brains

And writhing of their bowels and so forth,

460 In that bewildering entanglement

Of horrible eventualities

Past calculation to the end of time!

Can I mistake for some clear word of God

(Which were my ample warrant for it all)

465 His puff of hazy instincts, idle talk,

“The state, that’s I,” quack-nonsense about kings,

And (when one beats the man to his last hold)

The vague idea of setting things to rights,

Policing people efficaciously,

470 More to their profit, most of all to his own;

The whole to end that dismallest of ends

By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the church,

And resurrection of the old régime.

Would I, who hope to live a dozen years,

475 Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such?

No: for, concede me but the merest chance

Doubt may be wrong—there’s judgment, life to come!

With just that chance, I dare not. Doubt proves right?

This present life is all? you offer me

480 Its dozen noisy years with not a chance

That wedding an Arch-Duchess, wearing lace,

And getting called by divers new-coined names,

Will drive off ugly thoughts and let me dine,

Sleep, read and chat in quiet as I like!

Therefore, I will not.

485 Take another case;

Fit up the cabin yet another way.

What say you to the poet’s? shall we write

Hamlets, Othellos—make the world our own,

Without a risk to run of either sort?

490 I can’t!—to put the strongest reason first.

“But try,” you urge, “the trying shall suffice:

The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life.

Try to be Shakspeare, leave the rest to fate!”

Spare my self-knowledge—there’s no fooling me!

495 If I prefer remaining my poor self,

I say so not in self-dispraise but praise.

If I’m a Shakspeare, let the well alone—

Why should I try to be what now I am?

If I’m no Shakspeare, as too probable,—

500 His power and consciousness and self-delight

And all we want in common, shall I find—

Trying for ever? while on points of taste

Wherewith, to speak it humbly, he and I

Are dowered alike—I’ll ask you, I or he,

505 Which in our two lives realises most?

Much, he imagined—somewhat, I possess.

He had the imagination; stick to that!

Let him say “In the face of my soul’s works

Your world is worthless and I touch it not

510 Lest I should wrong them”—I withdraw my plea.

But does he say so? look upon his life!

Himself, who only can, gives judgment there.

He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces

To build the trimmest house in Stratford town;

515 Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of things,

Guilio Romano’s pictures, Dowland’s lute;

Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too,

And none more, had he seen its entry once,

Than “Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal.”

520 Why then should I who play that personage,

The very Pandulph Shakspeare’s fancy made,

Be told that had the poet chanced to start

From where I stand now (some degree like mine

Being just the goal he ran his race to reach)

525 He would have run the whole race back, forsooth,

And left being Pandulph, to begin write plays?

Ah, the earth’s best can be but the earth’s best!

Did Shakspeare live, he could but sit at home

And get himself in dreams the Vatican,

530 Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls,

And English books, none equal to his own,

Which I read, bound in gold, (he never did).

—Terni and Naples’ bay and Gothard’s top—

Eh, friend? I could not fancy one of these—

535 But, as I pour this claret, there they are—

I’ve gained them—crossed St. Gothard last July

With ten mules to the carriage and a bed

Slung inside; is my hap the worse for that?

We want the same things, Shakspeare and myself,

540 And what I want, I have: he, gifted more,

Could fancy he too had it when he liked,

But not so thoroughly that if fate allowed

He would not have it also in my sense.

We play one game. I send the ball aloft

545 No less adroitly that of fifty strokes

Scarce five go o’er the wall so wide and high

Which sends them back to me: I wish and get.

He struck balls higher and with better skill,

But at a poor fence level with his head,

550 And hit—his Stratford house, a coat of arms,

Successful dealings in his grain and wool,—

While I receive heaven’s incense in my nose

And style myself the cousin of Queen Bess.

Ask him, if this life’s all, who wins the game?

555 Believe—and our whole argument breaks up.

Enthusiasm’s the best thing, I repeat;

Only, we can’t command it; fire and life

Are all, dead matter’s nothing, we agree:

And be it a mad dream or God’s very breath,

560 The fact’s the same,—belief’s fire once in us,

Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself.

We penetrate our life with such a glow

As fire lends wood and iron—this turns steel,

That burns to ash—all’s one, fire proves its power

565 For good or ill, since men call flare success.

But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn.

Light one in me, I’ll find it food enough!

Why, to be Luther—that’s a life to lead,

Incomparably better than my own.

570 He comes, reclaims God’s earth for God, he says,

Sets up God’s rule again by simple means,

Re-opens a shut book, and all is done.

He flared out in the flaring of mankind;

Such Luther’s luck was—how shall such be mine?

575 If he suceeded, nothing’s left to do:

And if he did not altogether—well,

Strauss is the next advance. All Strauss should be

I might be also. But to what result?

He looks upon no future: Luther did.

580 What can I gain on the denying side?

Ice makes no conflagration. State the facts,

Read the text right, emancipate the world—

The emancipated world enjoys itself

With scarce a thank-you—Blougram told it first

585 It could not owe a farthing,—not to him

More than St. Paul!’twould press its pay, you think?

Then add there’s still that plaguey hundredth chance

Strauss may be wrong. And so a risk is run—

For what gain? not for Luther’s, who secured

590 A real heaven in his heart throughout his life,

Supposing death a little altered things!

“Ay, but since really I lack faith,” you cry,

“I run the same risk really on all sides,

In cool indifference as bold unbelief.

595 As well be Strauss as swing ’twixt Paul and him.

It’s not worth having, such imperfect faith,

Nor more available to do faith’s work

Than unbelief like yours. Whole faith, or none!”

Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point.

600 Once own the use of faith, I’ll find you faith.

We’re back on Christian ground. You call for faith:

I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.

The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,

If faith o’ercomes doubt. How I know it does?

605 By life and man’s free will, God gave for that!

To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice:

That’s our one act, the previous work’s His own.

You criticise the soil? it reared this tree—

This broad life and whatever fruit it bears!

610 What matter though I doubt at every pore,

Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my fingers’ ends,

Doubts in the trivial work of every day,

Doubts at the very bases of my soul

In the grand moments when she probes herself—

615 If finally I have a life to show,

The thing I did, brought out in evidence

Against the thing done to me underground

By Hell and all its brood, for aught I know?

I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt?

620 All’s doubt in me; where’s break of faith in this?

It is the idea, the feeling and the love

God means mankind should strive for and show forth,

Whatever be the process to that end,—

And not historic knowledge, logic sound,

625 And metaphysical acumen, sure!

“What think ye of Christ,” friend? when all’s done and said,

You like this Christianity or not?

It may be false, but will you wish it true?

Has it your vote to be so if it can?

630 Trust you an instinct silenced long ago

That will break silence and enjoin you love

What mortified philosophy is hoarse,

And all in vain, with bidding you despise?

If you desire faith—then you’ve faith enough.

635 What else seeks God—nay, what else seek ourselves?

You form a notion of me, we’ll suppose,

On hearsay; it’s a favourable one:

“But still” (you add), “there was no such good man,

Because of contradictions in the facts.

640 One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome,

This Blougram—yet throughout the tales of him

I see he figures as an Englishman.”

Well, the two things are reconcileable.

But would I rather you discovered that,

645 Subjoining—“Still, what matter though they be?

Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there.”

Pure faith indeed—you know not what you ask!

Naked belief in God the Omnipotent, Omniscient,

Omnipresent, sears too much

650 The sense of conscious creatures to be borne.

It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare.

Some think, Creation’s meant to show him forth:

I say, it’s meant to hide him all it can,

And that’s what all the blessed Evil’s for.

655 Its use in time is to environ us,

Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough

Against that sight till we can bear its stress.

Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain

And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart

660 Less certainly would wither up at once

Than mind, confronted with the truth of Him.

But time and earth case-harden us to live;

The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child

Feels God a moment, ichors o’er the place,

655 Plays on and grows to be a man like us.

With me, faith means perpetual unbelief

Kept quiet like the snake’neath Michael’s foot

Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.

Or, if that’s too ambitious,—here’s my box—

670 I need the excitation of a pinch

Threatening the torpor of the inside-nose

Nigh on the imminent sneeze that never comes.

“Leave it in peace” advise the simple folk—

Make it aware of peace by itching-fits,

675 Say I—let doubt occasion still more faith!

You’ll say, once all believed, man, woman, child,

In that dear middle-age these noodles praise.

How you’d exult if I could put you back

Six hundred years, blot out cosmogony,

680 Geology, ethnology, what not,

(Greek endings with the little passing-bell

That signifies some faith’s about to die)

And set you square with Genesis again,—

When such a traveller told you his last news,

685 He saw the ark a-top of Ararat

But did not climb there since ’twas getting dusk

And robber-bands infest the mountain’s foot!

How should you feel, I ask, in such an age,

How act? As other people felt and did;

690 With soul more blank than this decanter’s knob,

Believe—and yet lie, kill, rob, fornicate

Full in belief’s face, like the beast you’d be!

No, when the fight begins within himself

A man’s worth something. God stoops o’er his head,

Satan looks up between his feet—both tug—

He’s left, himself, in the middle: the soul wakes

And grows. Prolong that battle through his life!

Never leave growing till the life to come!

Here, we’ve got callous to the Virgin’s winks

700 That used to puzzle people wholesomely—

Men have outgrown the shame of being fools.

What are the laws of Nature, not to bend

If the Church bid them, brother Newman asks.

Up with the Immaculate Conception, then—

705 On to the rack with faith—is my advice!

Will not that hurry us upon our knees

Knocking our breasts, “It can’t be—yet it shall!

Who am I, the worm, to argue with my Pope?

Low things confound the high things!” and so forth.

710 That’s better than acquitting God with grace

As some folks do. He’s tried—no case is proved,

Philosophy is lenient—He may go!

You’ll say—the old system’s not so obsolete

But men believe still: ay, but who and where?

715 King Bomba’s lazzaroni foster yet

The sacred flame, so Antonelli writes;

But even of these, what ragamuffin-saint

Believes God watches him continually,

As he believes in fire that it will burn,

720 Or rain that it will drench him? Break fire’s law,

Sin against rain, although the penalty

Be just a singe or soaking? No, he smiles;

Those laws are laws that can enforce themselves.

The sum of all is—yes, my doubt is great,

725 My faith’s the greater—then my faith’s enough.

I have read much, thought much, experienced much,

Yet would die rather than avow my fear

The Naples’ liquefaction may be false,

When set to happen by the palace-clock

730 According to the clouds or dinner-time.

I hear you recommend, I might at least

Eliminate, decrassify my faith

Since I adopt it; keeping what I must

And leaving what I can—such points as this!

735 I won’t—that is, I can’t throw one away.

Supposing there’s no truth in what I said

About the need of trials to man’s faith,

Still, when you bid me purify the same,

To such a process I discern no end,

740 Clearing off one excrescence to see two;

There’s ever a next in size, now grown as big,

That meets the knife—I cut and cut again!

First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last

But Fichte’s clever cut at God himself?

745 Experimentalize on sacred things?

I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain

To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.

The first step, I am master not to take.

You’d find the cutting-process to your taste

750 As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned,

Nor see more danger in it, you retort.

Your taste’s worth mine; but my taste proves more wise

When we consider that the steadfast hold

On the extreme end of the chain of faith

755 Gives all the advantage, makes the difference,

With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule.

We are their lords, or they are free of us

Just as we tighten or relax that hold.

So, other matters equal, we’ll revert

760 To the first problem—which if solved my way

And thrown into the balance turns the scale—

How we may lead a comfortable life,

How suit our luggage to the cabin’s size.

Of course you are remarking all this time

765 How narrowly and grossly I view life,

Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule

The masses, and regard complacently

“The cabin,” in our old phrase! Well, I do.

I act for, talk for, live for this world now,

770 As this world calls for action, life and talk—

No prejudice to what next world may prove,

Whose new laws and requirements my best pledge

To observe then, is that I observe these now,

Doing hereafter what I do meanwhile.

775 Let us concede (gratuitously though)

Next life relieves the soul of body, yields

Pure spiritual enjoyments: well, my friend,

Why lose this life in the meantime, since its use

May be to make the next life more intense?

780 Do you know, I have often had a dream

(Work it up in your next month’s article)

Of man’s poor spirit in its progress still

Losing true life for ever and a day

Through ever trying to be and ever being

785 In the evolution of successive spheres,

Before its actual sphere and place of life,

Halfway into the next, which having reached,

It shoots with corresponding foolery

Halfway into the next still, on and off!

790 As when a traveller, bound from north to south,

Scouts fur in Russia—what’s its use in France?

In France spurns flannel—where’s its need in Spain?

In Spain drops cloth—too cumbrous for Algiers!

Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,

795 A superfluity at Timbuctoo.

When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?

I’m at ease now, friend—worldly in this world

I take and like its way of life; I think

My brothers who administer the means

800 Live better for my comfort—that’s good too;

And God, if he pronounce upon it all,

Approves my service, which is better still.

If He keep silence,—why for you or me

Or that brute-beast pulled-up in to-day’s “Times,”

805 What odds is’t, save to ourselves, what life we lead?

You meet me at this issue—you declare,

All special pleading done with, truth is truth,

And justifies itself by undreamed ways.

You don’t fear but it’s better, if we doubt,

810 To say so, acting up to our truth perceived

However feebly. Do then,—act away!

’Tis there I’m on the watch for you! How one acts

Is, both of us agree, our chief concern:

And how you’ll act is what I fain would see

815 If, like the candid person you appear,

You dare to make the most of your life’s scheme

As I of mine, live up to its full law

Since there’s no higher law that counterchecks.

Put natural religion to the test

820 You’ve just demolished the revealed with—quick,

Down to the root of all that checks your will,

All prohibition to lie, kill, and thieve

Or even to be an atheistic priest!

Suppose a pricking to incontinence—

825 Philosophers deduce you chastity

Or shame, from just the fact that at the first

Whoso embraced a woman in the plain,

Threw club down, and forewent his brains beside,

So stood a ready victim in the reach

830 Of any brother-savage club in hand—

Hence saw the use of going out of sight

In wood or cave to prosecute his loves—

I read this in a French book t’other day.

Does law so analyzed coerce you much?

835 Oh, men spin clouds of fuzz where matters end,

But you who reach where the first thread begins,

You’ll soon cut that!—which means you can, but won’t

Through certain instincts, blind, unreasoned-out,

You dare not set aside, you can’t tell why,

840 But there they are, and so you let them rule.

Then, friend, you seem as much a slave as I,

A liar, conscious coward and hypocrite,

Without the good the slave expects to get,

Suppose he has a master after all!

845 You own your instincts—why what else do I,

Who want, am made for, and must have a God

Ere I can be aught, do aught?—no mere name

Want, but the true thing with what proves its truth,

To wit, a relation from that thing to me,

850 Touching from head to foot—which touch I feel,

And with it take the rest, this life of ours!

I live my life here; yours you dare not live.

Not as I state it, who (you please subjoin)

Disfigure such a life and call it names,

855 While, in your mind, remains another way

For simple men: knowledge and power have rights,

But ignorance and weakness have rights too.

There needs no crucial effort to find truth

If here or there or anywhere about—

860 We ought to turn each side, try hard and see,

And if we can’t, be glad we’ve earned at least

The right, by one laborious proof the more,

To graze in peace earth’s pleasant pasturage.

Men are not gods, but, properly, are brutes.

865 Something we may see, all we cannot see—

What need of lying? I say, I see all,

And swear to each detail the most minute

In what I think a man’s face—you, mere cloud:

I swear I hear him speak and see him wink,

870 For fear, if once I drop the emphasis,

Mankind may doubt if there’s a cloud at all.

You take the simpler life—ready to see,

Willing to see—for no cloud’s worth a face—

And leaving quiet what no strength can move,

875 And which, who bids you move? who has the right?

I bid you; but you are God’s sheep, not mine—

“Pastor est tui Dominus.” You find

In these the pleasant pastures of this life

Much you may eat without the least offence,

880 Much you don’t eat because your maw objects,

Much you would eat but that your fellow-flock

Open great eyes at you and even butt,

And thereupon you like your friends so much

You cannot please yourself, offending them—

885 Though when they seem exorbitantly sheep,

You weigh your pleasure with their butts and kicks

And strike the balance. Sometimes certain fears

Restrain you—real checks since you find them so—

Sometimes you please yourself and nothing checks;

890 And thus you graze through life with not one lie,

And like it best.

But do you, in truth’s name?

If so, you beat—which means—you are not I—

Who needs must make earth mine and feed my fill

Not simply unbutted at, unbickered with,

895 But motioned to the velvet of the sward

By those obsequious wethers’ very selves.

Look at me, sir; my age is double yours.

At yours, I knew beforehand, so enjoyed,

What now I should be—as, permit the word,

900 I pretty well imagine your whole range

And stretch of tether twenty years to come.

We both have minds and bodies much alike.

In truth’s name, don’t you want my bishopric,

My daily bread, my influence and my state?

905 You’re young, I’m old, you must be old one day;

Will you find then, as I do hour by hour,

Women their lovers kneel to, that cut curls

From your fat lap-dog’s ears to grace a brooch—

Dukes, that petition just to kiss your ring—

910 With much beside you know or may conceive?

Suppose we die to-night: well, here am I,

Such were my gains, life bore this fruit to me,

While writing all the same my articles

On music, poetry, the fictile vase

915 Found at Albano, or Anacreon’s Greek.

But you—the highest honour in your life,

The thing you’ll crown yourself with, all your days,

Is—dining here and drinking this last glass

I pour you out in sign of amity

920 Before we part for ever. Of your power

And social influence, worldly worth in short,

Judge what’s my estimation by the fact—

I do not condescend to enjoin, beseech,

Hint secresy on one of all these words!

925 You’re shrewd and know that should you publish it

The world would brand the lie—my enemies first,

Who’d sneer—“the bishop’s an arch-hypocrite,

And knave perhaps, but not so frank a fool.”

Whereas I should not dare for both my ears

930 Breathe one such syllable, smile one such smile,

Before my chaplain who reflects myself—

My shade’s so much more potent than your flesh.

What’s your reward, self-abnegating friend?

Stood you confessed of those exceptional

935 And privileged great natures that dwarf mine—

A zealot with a mad ideal in reach,

A poet just about to print his ode,

A statesman with a scheme to stop this war,

An artist whose religion is his art,

940 I should have nothing to object! such men

Carry the fire, all things grow warm to them,

Their drugget’s worth my purple, they beat me.

But you,—you’re just as little those as I—

You, Gigadibs, who, thirty years of age,

945 Write statedly for Blackwood’s Magazine,

Believe you see two points in Hamlet’s soul

Unseized by the Germans yet—which view you’ll print—

Meantime the best you have to show being still

That lively lightsome article we took

950 Almost for the true Dickens,—what’s the name?

“The Slum and Cellar—or Whitechapel life

Limned after dark!” it made me laugh, I know,

And pleased a month and brought you in ten pounds.

—Success I recognise and compliment,

955 And therefore give you, if you please, three words

(The card and pencil-scratch is quite enough)

Which whether here, in Dublin, or New York,

Will get you, prompt as at my eyebrow’s wink,

Such terms as never you aspired to get

960 In all our own reviews and some not ours.

Go write your lively sketches—be the first

“Blougram, or The Eccentric Confidence”—

Or better simply say, “The Outward-bound.”

Why, men as soon would throw it in my teeth

965 As copy and quote the infamy chalked broad

About me on the church-door opposite.

You will not wait for that experience though,

I fancy, howsoever you decide,

To discontinue—not detesting, not

970 Defaming, but at least—despising me!

______________

Over his wine so smiled and talked his hour

Sylvester Blougram, styled in partibus

Episcopus, nec non—(the deuce knows what

It’s changed to by our novel hierarchy)

975 With Gigadibs the literary man,

Who played with spoons, explored his plate’s design,

And ranged the olive stones about its edge,

While the great bishop rolled him out his mind.

For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke.

980 The other portion, as he shaped it thus

For argumentatory purposes,

He felt his foe was foolish to dispute.

Some arbitrary accidental thoughts

That crossed his mind, amusing because new,

985 He chose to represent as fixtures there,

Invariable convictions (such they seemed

Beside his interlocutor’s loose cards

Flung daily down, and not the same way twice)

While certain hell-deep instincts, man’s weak tongue

990 Is never bold to utter in their truth

Because styled hell-deep (’tis an old mistake

To place hell at the bottom of the earth)

He ignored these,—not having in readiness

Their nomenclature and philosophy:

995 He said true things, but called them by wrong names.

“On the whole,” he thought, “I justify myself

On every point where cavillers like this

Oppugn my life: he tries one kind of fence—

I close—he’s worsted, that’s enough for him;

1000 He’s on the ground! if the ground should break away

I take my stand on, there’s a firmer yet

Beneath it, both of us may sink and reach.

His ground was over mine and broke the first.

So let him sit with me this many a year!”

1005 He did not sit five minutes. Just a week

Sufficed his sudden healthy vehemence.

(Something had struck him in the “Outward-bound”

Another way than Blougram’s purpose was)

And having bought, not cabin-furniture

1010 But settler’s-implements (enough for three)

And started for Australia—there, I hope,

By this time he has tested his first plough,

And studied his last chapter of St. John.

406. diamond weights: i.e. carats, the measure of weight used in jewellery, equivalent to a tiny fraction of an ounce.

407. Your picked Twelve] Your picked twelve (1868–88); the ‘dozen men of sense’ of l. 375, although the phrase here also glances at the twelve disciples of Christ and the twelve members of a jury. Cp. Sludge 377–8 (p. 799).

411. Schelling’s way!] Schelling’s way— (H proof). Blougram suggests that the ability to negotiate between contrary positions is characteristic of the philosophy of Schelling. For B.’s probable knowledge of Schelling’s philosophy, see head-note, Sources.

412. my coming] one’s coming (H proof, but not H proof ²). the tail of time: i.e. in latter days; Blougram’s concept of belatedness may be seen in one sense as traditional (the Christian belief that most of the time allotted to human history had already expired) and in another as highly modern (the critical self-consciousness which Carlyle and Matthew Arnold regarded as characteristic of the age). See also the headnote to Cleon (p. 612).

414. three hundred years ago: according to Blougram, in the mid-16th century there would have been no question of a bishop being an atheist; B.’s own Renaissance bishop, in Tomb at St. Praxed’s (p. 232), sees no contradiction between his adherence to Christianity and his pagan sensualism. Note however that in Ring, which is set in the Rome of 1697, B. has the anti-hero Guido scoff at the notion that anyone really subscribes to the doctrines of Christianity (see, e.g., xi 557–80).

416. seventy years since: if it were not for ‘tail of time’ (see l. 412n.) this might be taken as a forecast of the future: ‘seventy years from now no one will believe in Christianity any more’; but if the allusion is to the past, it refers to the intellectual fashion for free-thinking and religious scepticism in the late 18th century, stimulated by the writings of Hume, Voltaire, and Gibbon. Cp. the subtitle to Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley: ‘’Tis Sixty Years Since’.

424. bedropt with wax: from carrying candles in Catholic church services and religious processions; cp. Fra Lippo Lippi’s description of the gentlemen ‘processional and fine’ from whom he begs candle-droppings (ll. 117–21, p. 491), and Guido Franceschini’s chagrin at being rewarded by his cardinal-patron with ‘The unburnt end o’ the very candle, Sirs, / Purfled with paint so prettily round and round, / He carried in such state last Peter’s-day’ (Ring v 317–19).

424–6. The church of San Pietro in Vincoli (in Latin ‘ad Vincula’, i.e. ‘in Chains’) in Rome is a basilica (see l. 4), originally built in the 5th century to house the relic of the two chains with which St Peter was bound in Jerusalem (Acts xii 6); when these chains were delivered to Pope Leo I they fused miraculously with those which had bound St Peter in Rome. Markus (headnote, Background) suggests an allusion to Lord Fielding, a convert whose devotion to his new faith was highlighted by Mahony (Father Prout) in The Globe of 29 Jan. 1851: ‘“Lord Fielding is making his round of devotional pilgrimages here. Yesterday he visited the church of St. Peter ad vincula, and at his request the chains of the Apostle were placed on his neck”’ (cited p. 192). Cp. also W. E. Aytoun’s review of George Borrow’s Lavengro in Blackwood’s (see Sources): ‘Pious young noblemen, whose perversion is only of a few weeks’ standing, have already laid in such a stock of exuberant faith, that all Europe rings with the fame of their pilgrimages; and the chain in the church of St Peter ad Vincula has already been suspended around more than one English neck, in token of the entire submission of the proselytes to the spiritual yoke of Rome’ (Blackwood’s lxix [1851] 322). Note also that the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula is the parish church of the Tower of London.

426. needlework of Noodledom: the ‘needlework’ would be an ornamented livery connected with a sacred office; Blougram associates the supporters of traditional Catholic belief and forms of worship with ‘Noodledom’, the social compound of silly, unthinking, or superstitious believers; cp. Two Poets of Croisic (1878) 854–5: ‘“Ninnies stock Noodledom, but folk more sage / Resist contagious folly, never fear!”’ ‘Noodle’ and its variants had been popular terms of abuse since the Regency period, and the ‘House of Noodles’ was a slang term for the House of Lords. 431^432.] no line space in 1868.

435. a minute] a moment (1863²), a rare example of a substantive variant unique to this ed.

442. towering-o’er] towering o’er (1863–88, except 1863², which agrees with 1855); the reading is in H proof, and B. is fond of compound words.

445. his star: his guiding destiny; combining the sense that Napoleon had been born under a particular astrological sign with the concept of a personal inspiration leading to great deeds or achievements. Cp. the ‘star’ or ‘orb’ for which Palma yearns in Sordello (iii 309–22, I 544). For a different use of the ‘star’ image, and for its general importance in B.’s work, see headnote to My Star (III 386).

446–7. it’s alive / And shines] it’s alive, / It shines (H proof; H proof ² has the punctuation variant in l. 446, but not the verbal variant in l. 447).

451–2. Blougram suggests that one’s ‘success’ would be compromised by any retrospective anxiety to justify the means used to achieve it, an anxiety from which Napoleon was free.

454. take his light away: with ‘if’ understood, i.e. if you discount Napoleon’s guiding ‘star’, the only explanation for his conduct would be madness.

455–75. The argument here anticipates that deployed by Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau (a fictitious portrait of Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon) to justify his career of compromise. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau was publ. in 1871, after Napoleon III’s abdication; at the time of writing of Bishop Blougram, Napoleon III had taken power in a coup d’état witnessed by the Brownings during a period of residence in Paris in 1851, and made himself Emperor in 1852. Cp. headnote to Lovers’ Quarrel (p. 376).

455. of the world] o’ the world (1888). you’d dare] you dare (1868–88).

463. some clear word of God: the notion that a person can be directly inspired by God is common in B. in both positive and negative forms. Paracelsus satirizes the facile readiness of religious people to claim knowledge of God’s will, as if it were ‘character’d / On the heaven’s vault’, whereas the truth is that God’s purpose is inscrutable, and human ‘doubts are many and faith is weak’ (iii 511–24, I 214–15); Caponsacchi’s reliance on divine inspiration to justify his unorthox behaviour is a matter of debate in Ring, impugned by sceptics but half-endorsed by the Pope (see Ring x 1912–42).

464. ample warrant: a phrase used by the Duke in My Last Duchess (l. 50, II 160).

466. The state, that’s I: ‘L’État c’est moi’, said not by Napoleon but (allegedly) by his equally autocratic predecessor Louis XIV before the Parlement de Paris, 13 Apr. 1655. The mistake is almost certainly Blougram’s and not B.’s. “The state] “The State (1863–88). about kings] about Fate (H proof); about crowns (1863–88, except 1863² which agrees with 1855).

471. to end: with ‘in’ understood, i.e. after all Napoleon’s talk of radical change, he reverted to traditional monarchical and clerical ideas (see next note).

472. After his divorce from Josephine in 1809, Napoleon married the Archduchess Marie-Louise, daughter of the Emperor of Austria, thus allying himself with the Habsburgs, the pre-eminent European dynasty. Napoleon’s rapprochement with the Catholic Church (in contrast to the strong anti-clericalism of the French Revolution) was symbolized by the presence of Pope Pius VII at his coronation as Emperor in 1804; Blougram’s sarcastic phrase ‘cant to us the Church’ implies that he thought Napoleon’s motives less than spiritual. us the church] us the Church (1863–88).

473. Alluding to Napoleon’s re-establishment of the hereditary principle for the monarchy, and his creation of an aristocratic order, although Blougram is not quite correct in saying that the latter was equivalent to the pre-Revolutionary nobility; the legitimacy of Napoleonic titles remained a matter of dispute in France.

475. Austerlitz: battle in which Napoleon defeated the Austrians and Russians on 2 Dec. 1805; there were nearly 7,000 French, and over 12,000 allied casualties.

480.] Its dozen years with not a chance at all (H proof). with not a chance] without a chance (1863–88).

482. divers new-coined names] half a dozen names (H proof); Napoleon was successively First Consul (1798), Consul for Life (1802), and Emperor (1804).

487–8. shall we write / Hamlets, Othellos: cp. B. to EBB., 6 May 1846, remembering an incident from 1837: ‘But of all accusations in the world .. what do you say to my having been asked if I was not the author of Romeo Juliet, and Othello? A man actually asked me that, as I sate in Covent Garden Pit to see the second representation of “Strafford”—I supposed he had been set on by somebody .. but the simple face looked too quiet for that impertinence—I was muffled up in a cloak, too,—so I said “no—so far as I am aware”. (His question was, “is not this Mr Browning the author of &c &c”) After the play, all was made clear by somebody in Macready’s dressing room—two burlesques on Shakespeare were in the course of performance at some minor theatre by a Mr Brown, or Brownley, or something Brown-like—and to these my friend had alluded. So is begot, so nourished “il mondan rumore”—I, author of Othello!’ (Correspondence xii 305). The phrase ‘il mondan romore’ [sic; ‘worldly fame’] appears in Dante’s Purgatorio xi 100; for another allusion to this passage, see Old Pictures 180n. (p. 423).

493. Shakspeare] Shakespeare (1863–88); also ll. 497, 499, 521, 528, 539. The 1855 spelling was common in the period: it occurs in Hazlitt’s essay cited below.

495–6. Cp. Hazlitt, ‘On Personal Identity’ (The Plain Speaker, 1826): ‘In thinking of those one might wish to have been, many people will exclaim, “Surely, you would like to have been Shakspeare?” Would Garrick have consented to the change? No, nor should he.’ See also ll. 528–32n.

501. all we want in common: i.e. everything that you (Gigadibs) and I share the lack of (in comparison with Shakespeare).

505. realises: in J.’s sense of ‘bring into being or act’, i.e. converting the taste for something into the possession of it. For the Carlylean echo of ‘realised ideals’, see l. 80n.

510. I withdraw my plea] I should yield my cause (H proof); I’ll withdraw my plea (1863–88).

511. look upon his life: B. owned a copy of Charles Knight’s Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere (see headnote, Sources), the last volume of which consists of a biography of Shakespeare, upon which B. drew for the details of Shakespeare’s life (see ll. 514n., 550n., 551n.).

513. towers and gorgeous palaces: from Prospero’s speech in The Tempest: ‘The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces, / The solemn temples, the great globe itself, / Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve’ (IV i 152–4).

514. the trimmest house: New Place, Shakespeare’s house in Stratford, purchased in 1597. According to Knight, Shakespeare ‘[invested] the gains of his profession in the purchase of property at Stratford’ between 1597 and 1605: ‘he improved his worldly advantages with that rare good sense which formed so striking a feature in the whole character of his mind’ (viii 477, 481–2).

516. Giulio Romano’s pictures: Giulio Romano (?1499–1546) was a pupil of Raphael who became one of the foremost painters and architects of the Mannerist school. Shakespeare praises him, not as a painter but as a sculptor, in The Winter’s Tale as ‘that rare Italian master’ (V ii 97); he may have influenced the character of Jules in Pippa (see headnote, p. 88). Dowland’s lute: John Dowland (1562–1626) was the greatest lutanist of his day. Poem viii of The Passionate Pilgrim (1599), a collection which used to be ascribed to Shakespeare, contains the lines: ‘Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch / Upon the lute doth ravish human sense’; this poem is actually by Richard Barnfield (1574–1627). Blougram’s allusions may have a hint of salaciousness: Giulio Romano was forced to flee from Rome after designing pornographic prints, and some of the verses in The Passionate Pilgrim would have been thought obscene in B.’s day. Cp. ll. 907–8n.

518–19. And none more … Than “Pandulph] None more than … “I, Pandulph (H proof). On the significance of Pandulph and the play in which he appears, King John, see headnote, Sources.

522–4. Cp. the metaphor in Old Pictures: ‘When mankind ran and reached the goal / This much had the earth to show in fructu’ (ll. 83–4, p. 415).

528–32. Cp. another passage from Hazlitt’s essay ‘On Personal Identity’ (see ll. 495–6n.): ‘By becoming Shakspeare in reality we cut ourselves out of reading Milton, Pope, Dryden, and a thousand more—all of whom we have in our possession, enjoy and are, by turns, in the best part of them, their thoughts, without any metamorphosis or miracle at all.’ Blougram’s argument vulgarizes Hazlitt by replacing the pleasure of reading literature produced after Shakespeare’s time with the enjoyment of material wealth (including the reading of luxury editions of Shakespeare’s own work). There is also an analogy with Cleon’s praise of his own belatedness (ll. 64–72, p. 572).

533. Well-known European beauty-spots, which Blougram will have visited either in his official capacity or as a wealthy tourist. Terni: a town in Umbria, still at this period part of the Papal States, which the Brownings visited in Nov. 1853. Naples’ bay: B. had visited Naples in 1844 and would also have known the poems by Byron and Shelley (‘Ode to Naples’) in which the bay is celebrated; Naples is the home of Monsignor in Pippa Passes iv (pp. 158–67). Gothard’s top: the alpine pass of Mont St Gothard (between Switzerland and Italy); the Brownings travelled from Venice to Lucerne via this pass in June 1851: ‘[We] talk of seeing Como, and of passing into Switzerland by St Goatherd [sic] rather than the Splugen. People tell us that we shall see more of the glory of the Swiss lakes that way’ (EBB to Arabella i 378).

535. as I pour this claret: see ll. 1–2n. Claret was not definitively identified with red wine from Bordeaux at this period; OED cites a history of wine publ. in 1836 to the effect that in England claret ‘is a mixture of Bordeaux with Benicarlo, or with some full wine of France’. The fact that the worldly and successful Bishop mentions Keats’s favourite drink in the context of a disparaging reflection on the rewards of a literary life points to an analogy with the closing lines of Popularity, in which ‘claret crowns [the] cup’ of one of the true poet’s derivative successors (l. 62n., p. 455).

541. Could fancy he too] Can fancy that he (H proof). had it] had them (1888).

542–3. That is, Shakespeare’s imaginative possession of material things would not have been so satisfying as to prevent him from taking real possession of them if he had had the chance.

542. that if fate] that when fate (H proof, but not H proof ²). allowed] allows (H proof).

544–54. The ‘game’ is not a recognized sport, although it clearly relates to fives or racquets, the ancestors of squash. Blougram’s point is that, although a less skilful player at the game of life than Shakespeare (cp. l. 540), he plays for more substantial rewards and so can afford to be profligate with his efforts. The argument resembles that of A Grammarian (e.g. ll. 113–20, pp. 595–6). As Blougram goes on to emphasize, he and Shakespeare can only be thought to ‘play one game’ on the assumption that ‘this life’s all’, i.e. that worldly success is the chief good of life.

550. his Stratford house … a coat of arms: B.’s information comes from Knight’s Pictorial Edition (see headnote, Sources); for the Stratford house, see above, l. 514n. According to Knight, John Shakspere [sic], the playwright’s father, was granted a coat of arms in 1568 or 1569, ‘which shield or coat of arms was confirmed by William Dethick, Garter, principal King of Arms, in 1596’ (viii 6).

551. grain and wool: Knight mentions a ‘plea of debt’ entered by Shakespeare in 1604 ‘against Philip Rogers, for the sum of thirty-five shillings and ten-pence, for corn delivered’, and concludes that ‘William Shakspere [sic], at the very period when his dramas were calling forth the rapturous applause of the new Sovereign and his Court, and when he himself, as it would seem, was ambitious of a courtly office, did not disdain to pursue the humble though honourable occupation of a farmer in Stratford, and to exercise his just rights of property in connexion with that occupation’ (viii 479).

552. Cp. Tomb at St. Praxed’s 83–4: ‘And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste / Good strong thick stupifying incense-smoke!’ (p. 242).

553. Ohio suggests that Blougram would have been able to ‘style himself’ the ‘cousin’ of Queen Bess [Queen Elizabeth I] ‘because he would have represented a fellow-sovereign, the Pope.’ Cp. OED sense 5 a: ‘Used by a sovereign in addressing or formally naming another sovereign’.

559–65. The ‘fire’ of belief may be divinely inspired and therefore creative, or delusory and therefore destructive, but either way its power is demonstrated (and, Blougram adds, people don’t distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ outcomes, since what they value is the ‘flare’, i.e. the excitement and energy which come from the display of power).

561. show itself.] show itself: (H proof, 1863–88). Although not of great significance in itself, this variant is a rare example of a return to the proof reading in eds. after 1855.

562. We penetrate] You penetrate (H proof, but not H proof ²); It penetrates (1863²). This is a rare example of a substantive variant unique to 1863²; it comes in a reading over which B. clearly hesitated in proof.

568–9. Blougram is being especially ‘daring’ and heterodox in expressing admiration for the instigator of the Protestant Reformation (but see below, ll. 920–32). For B.’s lifelong admiration for Martin Luther, see Paracelsus iii 994–7 (I 236); also Twins (III 656).

570–2. Blougram gives a summary of the programme of the Reformation, namely to deny the secular authority of the Church, to reform ecclesiastical hierarchy and abolish the mediating power of the priest, and to base faith on the Bible (‘a shut book’) translated into the vernacular.

573. He flared out in] He could enjoy (H proof); the sense is that Luther embodied the spirit of the age.

577. Strauss: David Friedrich Strauss (1808–74), author of Das Leben Jesu (The Life of Jesus), one of the leading texts of the ‘Higher Criticism’ of the Bible, which denied the supernatural element in Christianity and exposed contradictions in the gospel accounts; it had been translated by George Eliot in 1846. For details of B.’s knowledge of Strauss’s work, see headnotes to CE ED (III 43–4) and A Death (pp. 719–21).

579. Cp. the despair ascribed to the ‘Second Speaker’ of the Epilogue to DP (1864), named in later eds. as another of the foremost exponents of the ‘Higher Criticism’ of the Bible, Ernest Renan.

581–6. Blougram argues that if he adopted and promoted an enlightened, rational attitude to religion, he would be undermining his worldly position: if he informed people that they did not need the Church to mediate between themselves and God, they would have no reason to fund the Church (and his expensive lifestyle). 584. With scarce] With just (H proof, but not H proof ²). Blougram] since I (H proof; H proof ² has ‘Since I’).

591. I.e., ‘[even] supposing death a little altered things’. Blougram suggests a prudential calculation about the value of belief as opposed to rational scepticism: whether there is an afterlife or not, it is better to believe (or profess to believe) in one. Luther really believed, and his inner life was enriched by his belief; Blougram professes belief, and his material life is enriched. If death means oblivion, both Luther and Blougram will have had the benefit of their belief, whereas someone like Strauss will have made his life desolate for nothing. This argument recalls ‘le pari de Pascal’ (‘Pascal’s wager’), put forward in the Pensées (1670). ‘If God exists, then it is clearly better [to believe in Him]: infinitely better, given the prospect of eternal bliss for believers, and eternal damnation for non-believers. If God does not exist, we lose nothing … So belief is the dominant strategy. It can win, and cannot lose. The wager is “infini-rien”: infinity to nothing’ (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy). The entry cites a comment by Coleridge which B. may well have known, and which is pertinent to Blougram’s sectarian advocacy of Roman Catholicism and to his self-centredness: ‘He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and in the end loving himself better than all.’

592–8. The personal pronouns are centred on Blougram rather than Gigadibs, i.e. ‘I’ refers to Blougram while ‘you’ and ‘yours’ refer to Gigadibs. The inverted commas are somewhat misleading: what looks like a direct quotation is in fact indirect speech. B. evidently concluded that the syntax was awkward, as the revisions in 1863–88 show.

595. Paul: St Paul; here used as an emblem of ‘belief’ in opposition to the scepticism of Strauss.

597. Nor more] No more (H proof, but not H proof ², 1868–88), a rare example of a return to a proof reading in eds. after 1855.

603–4. Cp. Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850) xcvi 9–21: ‘Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, / At last he beat his music out. / There lives more faith in honest doubt, / Believe me, than in half the creeds. // He fought his doubts and gather’d strength, / He would not make his judgment blind, / He faced the spectres of the mind / And laid them: thus he came at length // To find a stronger faith his own; / And power was with him in the night, / Which makes the darkness and the light, / And dwells not in the light alone, // But in the darkness and the cloud’. The Brownings read In Memoriam together soon after its publication in 1850: ‘We have been reading together Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” in the evenings. Most beautiful and pathetic. I read aloud, Robert looking over the page—and we talked and admired and criticised every separate stanza’ (16–19 Dec. 1850; EBB to Arabella i 360).

606–7. Cp. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau (1871) 120–5: ‘I,—not He,— / Live, think, do human work here—no machine, / His will moves, but a being by myself, / His, and not He who made me for a work, / Watches my working, judges its effect, / But does not interpose’.

608–19. Cp. Matthew vii 16–20: ‘Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. … Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.’ Blougram argues that what matters in life is the result of belief in God, not the ‘process’ by which this has been brought about; his struggle against ‘Hell and all its brood’ remains hidden from view.

620. ‘In me’ means ‘inside me’, i.e. the internal struggle in Blougram’s mind or soul; ‘this’ refers to his actual life, ‘the thing I did’ (l. 616).

621–5. Cp. Wordsworth, ‘Tintern Abbey’, ll. 77–84: ‘The sounding cataract / Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock / The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, / Their colours and their forms, were then to me / An appetite: a feeling and a love, / That had no need of a remoter charm, / By thought supplied, or any interest / Unborrowed from the eye.’ Blougram argues that ‘the feeling and the love’ implied by Christianity are more important than defensible intellectual arguments in its favour.

625. acumen: the stress must fall on the second syllable to make the line metrical.

626. Cp. Matthew xxii 41–2: ‘While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, What think ye of Christ?’

630. an instinct silenced long ago: instinctive or unquestioning religious faith has been suppressed in the face of scientific rationalism (‘long ago’ is a relative term, referring here to the life of a typical modern individual, not to a particular historical period). 632. What: ‘That which’, i.e. Christianity. mortified philosophy: the primary sense is that philosophy is shamed and humiliated by its failure to eradicate faith; but the term also borrows ironically from the Christian vocabulary of asceticism and self-denial (the ‘mortification of the flesh’): philosophy is cold, austere, and life-denying in contrast to the ‘fire’ of faith. For an extended treatment of this opposition, see Christmas-Eve 649 ff. (III 73–5)

638–43. A pastiche of the Straussian method of analysis, which demonstrates (for example) that Jesus was almost certainly born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem, and suggests that the sequence of events described in the Bible is an unhistorical attempt to comply with mythological precepts about the Messiah’s lineage and place of birth. Blougram argues that such apparent discrepancies are ‘reconcileable’, but that they are less important than the imaginary speaker’s general attitude. There may also be an allusion here to Wiseman’s origins: he was born in Spain of Irish parents. 639. contradictions] contradiction (1868–88).

647–61. Compare Karshish’s account of Lazarus in An Epistle 126 ff. (pp. 518–19). Lazarus does not go mad, but is certainly unbalanced by his premature attainment of complete religious certainty.

651. Cp. God’s words to Moses in Exodus xxxiii 20: ‘Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.’ There is also an allusion to the myth of Semele, who asked her lover Zeus to reveal himself to her in his divine form, and was destroyed as a result; the story is in Ovid, Metamorphoses iii 254– 321. Sir John Hanmer, whose poems B. knew and admired, has the following couplet in ‘Proteus’, ll. 88–9: ‘The world would gaze on Reason face to face, / Then burns like Semele in Jove’s embrace’ (Fra Cipolla and Other Poems, 1839).

652. Alluding both to ancient belief (e.g. Psalms xix 1: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork’) and to the modern doctrine of ‘natural theology’, which held that the existence and beneficence of God could be inferred from the design of the universe and the natural world without the need for a special revelation.

654. blessed Evil’s: Blougram’s mild expletive produces a startling oxymoron, but one which also articulates the doctrine that evil has no independent existence, but is part of God’s providential design.

656. Our breath, our drop of dew: traditional images for human life, and also for the soul, as in Fra Lippo 184–6 (p. 495) and An Epistle 6 (p. 511); B. may have had in mind Marvell’s poem ‘On a Drop of Dew’, in which the human soul is compared to ‘the Orient Dew, / Shed from the Bosom of the Morn’ (1–2).

658–61. One’s mind would be even more certain to be destroyed by direct contact with God than one’s organs (brain, eye, heart) would be if exposed without a layer of skin to the full glare of the sun. Cp. EBB.’s poetic drama ‘The Seraphim’ (1837): ‘Or, brother, what if on thine eyes / In vision bare should rise / The life-fount whence his hand did gather / With solitary force / Our immortalities! / Straightway how thine own would wither, / Falter like a human breath, / By gazing on its source!’ (i 88–96). B. may also have recalled EBB.’s sonnet ‘Grief’ (1844): ‘Full desertness, / In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare / Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare / Of the absolute Heavens’ (ll. 5–8).

659.] The lidless eye, the disemprisoned heart, (H proof). disemprisoned: freed (from the ‘cage’ of the ribs).

662. time and earth] Time and Earth (H proof). case-harden us: harden us on the surface, develop a tough shell (enabling us to bear life). Cp. Fifine at the Fair (1872) 1777–8: ‘we must learn to live / Case-hardened at all points, not bare and sensitive’; the phrase is used more harshly by Paracelsus: ‘men have oft grown old among their books / And died, case-harden’d in their ignorance’ (i 757–8, I 147).

664. ichors o’er the place: ‘covers the wound with a healing balm (of forgetfulness or indifference)’; this sense of ‘ichor’, and its use as a verb, is B.’s invention (not rec. in OED); in classical myth, ‘ichor’ referred to the blood of the gods. Blougram may be implying that God himself supplies the means by which the ‘wound’ of direct contact with him is alleviated. The notion that children have a special faculty for apprehending the divine has Platonic, Christian, and Romantic associations, active here in the form of a glancing allusion to Wordsworth’s ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections in Early Childhood’.

667. The Archangel Michael is traditionally represented in art as trampling on Satan in the form of a serpent, an image from Revelation xii 7–9: ‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not … And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world’. Florentine suggests that B. might have had Raphael’s St Michael and the Dragon in mind (both versions of which are in the Louvre); Thomas in contrast argues that two paintings mentioned by Mrs Jameson in her Sacred and Legendary Art are closer to B.’s description: a St Michael by Innocenza da Imola in the Brera Gallery in Milan, and another by a Flemish artist in the Pinakothek (i 422).

669. box: snuff-box; in a letter to Julia Wedgwood of 31 Oct. 1864, B. wrote: ‘there happens to be a spice in me of the snuff-taker’s vice, love of sub-irritation,—mild pugnaciousness’ (RB JW 108).

677. The ‘noodles’ are the supporters of ‘Young England’ and other such groups whose medievalism embraced art, politics, and social policy: cp. l. 426n.

678–83. Blougram refers to advances in science and thought leading to religious scepticism, and in particular challenges to biblical ‘cosmogony’ (the account of creation). The most revolutionary of these changes before Darwin (whose Origin of Species had not been publ. when the poem was written) concerned geology and the age of the earth, which called into question the traditional chronology of Genesis: Blougram is probably thinking of such works as Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1839) and Robert Chambers’s Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844); cp. Saul 110n. (III 505). Ethnology or anthropology, another of the growth sciences of the period, also implicitly challenged orthodox Christianity by emphasizing common features in the belief systems of different peoples.

681.Greek endings with] Greek endings, each (1868–88). Words ending in ‘ology’ derive from the Greek λογια (logia, meaning ‘discourse’); the spread of modern, and implicitly anti-Christian, modes of knowledge is linked to the enquiring and sceptical spirit of classical Greek thought. The Bishop is right to imply that these terms are of recent date: OED records the first use of ‘geology’ as ‘the science which has for its object the investigation of the earth’s crust’ in James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth (1795), and of ‘ethnology’ in James Prichard’s Natural History of Man (1843). The three-syllabled ‘endings’ of the words punningly signify the ‘end’ of religious faith. In her letter to Eliza Ogilvy of 5 Aug. 1852, EBB. writes: ‘I send you a note upon babies, feeling instinctively that babyology will be more welcome to you just now than most other of the ologies’ (EBB to Ogilvy 82). passing-bell: the church peal rung for the death of a parishioner.

685. Noah’s ark is said in Genesis viii 3–4 to have grounded on ‘the mountains of Ararat’ (in modern Turkey) after the waters of the Flood receded.

690. this decanter’s knob: another reminder of the setting in which this monologue takes place; the knob is ‘blank’ because made of glass.

702–3. In the exchange of letters with the Bishop of Norwich printed in The Times (see l. 377n.), Newman attempts to defend himself from the charge of credulity by arguing that the miracles of Scripture have increased the ‘antecedent probability’ of an interruption of the laws of nature, and so added credibility to the disputed miracles of the early church: ‘Protestants find a difficulty in even listening to evidence adduced for ecclesiastical miracles. I have none. Why? Because the admitted fact of the scripture miracles has taken away whatever prima facie unlikelihood attaches to them as a violation of the laws of nature.’

704. Up with] Out with (H proof, but not H proof ²). Immaculate Conception: the belief that the Virgin Mary was conceived without the taint of original sin was a favourite notion of Pius IX’s, and became official Catholic doctrine by means of the bull Ineffabilis Deus, issued on 8 Dec. 1854. The author of the article on ‘The Papal Aggression Bill’ in Blackwood’s lxix (1851) uses the prospect of this addition to doctrine as a way of exposing the fraudulence of the notion of Papal Infallibility: ‘The Virgin Mary was, as the infallible present Pope decrees, born without sin; she was miraculously, immaculately conceived; and hence, what follows? Awful to contemplate is this most recently received dogma. She has an altar to her by the side of that to God the Father. The Roman Catholic Church is no longer Trinitarian—it is Quaternian’ (p. 586; cp. l. 708n.). The clear understanding of the doctrine here makes unlikely the suggestion in Turner and J. Britton (Explicator xvii [1959], Item 50) that ‘since the context requires something conflicting with “the laws of Nature” (not merely of theology), RB may have confused this doctrine with that of the Virgin Birth’.

705. the rack: an instrument of torture in which an individual is stretched, primarily associated in the English mind with the Inquisition.

708. The dogma of ‘Papal Infallibility’ (according to which the Pope cannot err when he pronounces ex cathedra on matters of doctrine) was formally promulgated at the First Vatican Council in 1870, but the concept was already current, and controversial (see l. 704n.); Blougram would be aware of debates within the Catholic Church on the issue, among others to do with the Pope’s authority. Cp. Ring x 150–1: ‘Which of the judgments was infallible? / Which of my predecessors spoke for God?’ Vol. IV of Ring, which contains bk. x, was publ. in Feb. 1869, two months after the opening of the Council. Cp. also B.’s skit, ‘The Dogma Triumphant: Epigram on the Voluntary Imprisonment of the Pope as Proving His Infallibility’, which alludes to the fact that the Council was ended in July 1870 by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent Italian occupation of the city by King Victor Emmanuel (Penguin ii 957).

709. Cp. Job v 11 where God is said ‘to set up on high those that be low’.

711. As some folks do. He’s] As folks do now—He’s (H proof); As folks do now He’s (H proof ²); As some folk do. He’s (1888). The lack of punctuation after ‘now’ in H proof ² is probably an error, though the sense ‘now that He’s tried’ is grammatically possible.

715–16. Ferdinand II of Naples (1810–59) was known as ‘Re Bomba’ (‘King Bomb’) because of his use of bombardment to suppress an uprising in Sicily in 1848. EBB. refers to him as ‘that wretch the King of Naples’ in a letter of Feb. 1852 (EBB to Arabella i 458). See De Gustibus 35–8n. (III 28). lazzaroni: a name given to the poor and the criminal classes of Naples by their Spanish rulers, from the Spanish word ‘Lazaro’ meaning Lazarus (the beggar in Luke xvi 20).

716. Antonelli: Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli (1806–76), secretary of state to Pope Pius IX, an enthusiastic supporter of the temporal power of the Papacy.

728. the Naples’ liquefaction: the miraculous liquefaction of the solidified blood of St Januarius, the patron saint of Naples, is supposed to take place when a silver bust believed to contain the head of the saint is placed near it. See l. 377n.

732. eliminate: in the sense of ‘purify, rid of waste matter’; B.’s use of the verb in a transitive mode is unusual, probably influenced by the transitive ‘decrassify’, which means ‘to divest of what is crass, gross, or material’ (OED, which cites this as the first occurrence).

744. Perhaps a reference to the controversy which followed the publication of Fichte’s 1798 essay ‘On the Foundation of our Belief in a Divine Government of the Universe’. Fichte’s suggestion that ‘the concept of God as a particular substance is impossible and contradictory’ resulted in accusations of atheism and the loss of his post at the University of Jena; see J. Heywood Thomas, ‘Fichte and Schelling’, Nineteenth-Century Religious Thought in the West [3 vols., Cambridge 1985] i 44. This is B.’s only mention of Fichte in his poetry; for his knowledge of Fichte’s work see headnote, Sources. The assumption that German critical philosophy was essentially irreligious was widespread in the nineteenth century: see for instance Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau (1871) 1149–50, where a ‘pastor’ is abjured not to ‘burn Kant’s self / Because Kant understands some books too well’.

749–51. Blougram imputes to Gigadibs the idea that the process of applying logic to sacred matters is preferable to allowing lies to proliferate.

752–8. Blougram acknowledges that superstition is necessary if the mass of people are to be kept in subjection to the Church. This was an argument often attributed by Protestant reformers to the Catholic Church, although it could also be deployed in attacks by rationalists on religion in general. Blougram’s vocabulary suggests a link between spiritual authority and reactionary political principles: see headnote to Old Pictures (p. 404).

769–74. For an earlier version of this argument, see Sordello vi 381 ff. (I 738). Blougram’s analogy between one’s behaviour in this life and the next assumes that the laws of both derive from the same source, and that God will therefore be pleased that a person has obeyed worldly laws on earth because they can be relied upon to obey divine ones in the afterlife. This assumption is categorically denied in the New Testament: ‘No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on’ (Matthew vi 24–5).

775–7. Let us concede … enjoyments: in orthodox Christian theology (both Catholic and Protestant) the resurrection of the body at the Last Judgement is an article of faith, although the nature of this ‘spiritual body’ was much debated. The relevant passage in the New Testament is 1 Corinthians xv.

780–9. Blougram’s argument that people are foolish to spoil their enjoyment of each stage of life’s journey by anticipating the next does not take into account the idea that such dissatisfaction is a necessary part of the process itself, providing the motive for change and growth: see Fifine at the Fair (1872) 2265–9: ‘For bodies sprouted legs, through a desire to run: / While hands, when fain to filch, got fingers one by one, / And nature, that’s ourself, accommodative brings / To bear that, tired of legs which walk, we now bud wings, / Since of a mind to fly’.

787. Halfway] emended from ‘half way’ in 1855; 1856 and 1863² have ‘half-way’ (in 1863² this word is also hyphenated in l. 789); all other eds. have ‘Halfway’.

790–5. Cp. the imaginary journey to Russia and Spain undertaken in Waring I vi (pp. 190–4).

799. administer: provide. The reference is to the laity whose contributions support the Church.

804. The Brownings read The Times regularly during their residence abroad; see 377n., 703–4n., and cp. Lovers’ Quarrel 29 (p. 378).

819. natural religion: a form of belief which does not depend on supernatural revelation, but can be evolved from human experience and knowledge of the world. Christianity is a ‘revealed’ religion in that the Incarnation constitutes a miraculous divine intervention in human history which reveals God’s nature and purpose. See headnote to Caliban, pp. 619–21.

824–33. R. E. Neil Dodge (TLS xxxiv [21 Mar. 1935] 176) suggests that Blougram has in mind Balzac’s Physiologie du Mariage, and in particular the following passage from ‘Méditation xvii, Théorie du lit’: ‘Quelque poètes voudront voir dans la pudeur, dans les prétendus mystères de l’amour, une cause à la réunion des époux dans un même lit; mais il est reconnu que si l’homme a primitivement cherché l’ombre des cavernes, la mousse des ravins, le toit silicieux des antres pour protéger ses plaisirs, c’est parce que l’amour le livre sans défense à ses ennemis’ [Some poets will want to see in ‘pudeur’ (‘chastity’ or ‘shame’) and the supposed mysteries of [sexual] love the origin of the fact that husbands and wives sleep in the same bed; but it is recognized that if man originally sought shady caves, mossy ravines, and flint-roofed dens to protect his pleasures, he did so because sexual intercourse renders him defenceless to his enemies]. Dodge’s suggestion is more plausible than C. R. Tracy’s identification of Stendhal’s De l’Amour as the likely source (ibid. [24 Jan. 1935] 48).

834. coerce: constrain, inhibit (a sense close to the Latin root coercere, to restrain or confine).

838. certain instincts: cp. the comment on ‘certain hell-deep instincts’ which Blougram himself ignores in his argument (ll. 989–95).

841–4. Having realized that the moral arguments derived from ‘natural religion’ are specious, Gigadibs will (Blougram argues) continue to be a ‘slave’ to them nonetheless out of mere cowardice.

862. the more,] the more. (H proof), a change dictated by the transposition of the following lines.

864.] Men are not Gods, but, if you like, are brutes (H proof); Men are not angels, neither are they brutes. (1863–88, except ‘brutes:’ 1865–88). properly: ‘strictly speaking’, i.e. according to ‘natural religion’; Blougram continues to argue on Gigadibs’s terms. The notion that human beings are simply a more highly developed kind of animal runs counter to Christian belief in man being made in the image of God (Genesis i 26–7).

877. Pastor est tui Dominus: ‘the Lord is your shepherd’, adapting the first line of Psalm xxiii, ‘The Lord is my shepherd’; Turner (p. 346) suggests that the Latin is B.’s own translation, since it does not correspond to that of the Vulgate, the traditional Latin text.

878.] In this the pleasant pasture of our life (1865–88). pleasant pastures: cp. Psalms xxiii 2: ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures’ (and see prec. note); cp. also Psalms xvi 6: ‘The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.’

882–3. even butt, / And thereupon] even butt— / Well, in the main (H proof).

883. so much] so well (1863–88, except 1863², which agrees with 1855). This revision is in the list sent by B. to James T. Fields (see Appendix C, p. 889).

886. their butts and kicks] their kicks and butts (H proof); their butts and bleats (1863–88).

889. you please yourself] you sate yourself (1863²), a rare example of a substantive variant unique to this ed.

896. those obsequious wethers’] the obsequious short horns’ (H proof). The Bishop’s contempt for his flock is emphasized by the revision: a ‘wether’ is a castrated ram.

904. daily bread: From the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew vi 11): ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’

907–8. Blougram implies that his priestly power and status make him attractive to beautiful women; since they cannot acknowledge this directly, they find other ways of showing their feelings. Instead of asking for a lock of his hair as a love token, they take one from his lapdog. It is not certain whether Blougram intends this particular example to be taken seriously, or as a burlesque of popular anti-Catholic prejudice. The latter is made more likely by the knowing allusion in l. 910.

909. Dukes, that] Dukes who (H proof). your ring] my ring (H proof, but not H proof ²).

914–15. the fictile vase / Found at Albano: ‘fictile’ means ‘moulded into form by art’, so the sense here is that the vase has been made as an art object, not for utility; according to George Dennis in the introduction to his The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (2 vols., 1848): ‘Pliny states that in his time fictile vases, by which he probably means those that were painted, fetched more money than the celebrated Murrhine vases, the cost of which he records … and which are supposed to have been of porcelain’ (vol. i, p. lxxxv n.). Dennis also discusses ‘the curious urns of Albano, which are imitations of rude huts formed of boughs and covered with skins’ (vol. i, p. lxvi n.). Albano is a town in the Lazio region of Italy, near Rome; the Alban hills are frequently mentioned in classical poetry.

915. Albano, or] Albano, chess, or (1863); Albano, chess, (1865–88). Anacreon’s Greek: five editions of Anacreon are listed in Collections, one of which belonged to B.’s father (A0061); Mrs Orr notes as an example of Robert Browning Sr’s familiarity with classical literature that ‘he was wont, in later life, to soothe his little boy to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon’ (Orr Life 12). Anacreon’s epicurean subject matter makes him an ironically apt choice for Blougram.

927. Who’d sneer—“the bishop’s] emended in agreement with 1865–88 from ‘ “Who’d sneer—the bishop’s’. It is rare for B. to have missed such an obvious error not only in proof but in publ. texts; see also l. 963. sneer] laugh (H proof).

938. this war: the Crimean War, which began in Mar. 1854; B. was said by EBB. to be in ‘a frenzy of excitement’ about the siege of Sebastopol which began in October 1854 (EBB to Arabella ii 103).

942. drugget … purple: ‘drugget’ is a coarse woollen cloth; purple is the imperial and papal colour (as in Sordello i 78–9: ‘The Second Friedrich wore / The purple’ (I 398–400); see also Protus 10n. [III 637]). they beat me] these beat me (H proof, but not H proof ²).

945. statedly: regularly. Blackwood’s Magazine: this periodical began life in 1817; it was generally conservative in politics and tone, and consisted of a mixture of fiction, reviews and articles on cultural life and current affairs. Under the editor-ship of John Blackwood (1845–79) the magazine managed to attract many of the leading writers of the day; EBB. published some poems in it during the late 1840s, but became annoyed with its refusal to publish her poem ‘A Meditation in Tuscany’ (which later became the first part of Casa Guidi Windows); see l. 953n.

946–7. Believe … yet: Blougram suggests that Gigadibs is picking up the crumbs of German scholarship, at its apogee in this period; cp. Mr Casaubon, in George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1870, but set forty years before), whose scholarship is fatally flawed through his ignorance of German. German critics had been active in Shakespeare studies, and Hamlet was a particular favourite, in part because of Goethe’s use of it in Wilhelm Meister, which involves an extended analysis of ‘Hamlet’s soul’. B.’s own study of German involved looking at Tieck and Schlegel’s translation of Shakespeare (Maynard 277). Turner (p. 346) cites a recent four-volume commentary on Shakespeare publ. 1840–50 by the German critic Gervinus.

949–52. Blougram is referring not to Dickens’s fiction but to his journalism, and in particular to such pieces as ‘A Walk in a Workhouse’ (Household Words, 25 May 1850). Whitechapel workhouse was one of the places Dickens visited on his ‘night walks’; see John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens (1872; Everyman ed., 1980) ii 131. The Brownings were not at this stage friendly with Dickens, although they became so when they lived ‘nearly opposite’ one another in Paris during the winter of 1855–56.

951. Whitechapel: an area of London’s East End, synonymous with urban deprivation and crime for much of the nineteenth century.

953. ten pounds: cp. the payment EBB. received—‘five and twenty guineas!’—for a ‘few lyrics and sonnets’ published in Blackwood’s in 1846–47 (EBB to Arabella i 294). At ll. 959–60 Blougram implies that the payment to Gigadibs is relatively meagre.

957. Wiseman founded The Dublin Review, a Catholic journal, in 1836; New York by the date of the poem had a large Irish immigrant population.

960. our own reviews: i.e. journals either controlled by the Catholic Church or sympathetic to it, such as The Dublin Review.

963. “The Outward-bound”: alluding to the metaphor of the sea voyage through which Blougram has articulated his thoughts; see also ll. 1006–7.

965. the infamy … opposite: presumably an insult aimed at Blougram; Wiseman notes the existence of such expressions of popular anti-Catholic sentiment in ‘The Hierarchy’ (see headnote, Sources).

971. At this point in the poem an authorial voice takes over; see headnote, Parallels. 972. Sylvester: Allen (headnote, Background) notes that the middle name of Father Prout was Sylvester.

972–3. styled … nec non: the commentator’s garbled version of the phrase ‘Episcopus in partibus infidelium’, ‘Bishop in the lands of the unbelievers’. Wiseman became ‘Bishop of Melipotamus [in Crete] in partibus infidelium’ in June 1840, and retained this title until the establishment of the ‘novel hierarchy’ in 1850; thereafter he became Archbishop of Westminster and Cardinal. The poem’s reversion to Blougram’s earlier title may be a reflection of the legal position in 1855, by which time the title ‘Archbishop of Westminster’ had been declared unlawful (see headnote).

978.] While the great bishop rolled him out a mind / Long rumpled, till creased consciousness lay smooth. (1880, 1888, except 1888 has ‘crumpled’). It is exceptionally rare for a revision involving the addition of a whole line to appear first in a volume of selections, but cp. Andrea del Sarto 199^200n. (p. 400).

979–95. The difficulty in elucidating this passage is deliberate on B.’s part, since he does not specify which ‘half’ of his speech Blougram believed, or say which statements were ‘arbitrary accidental thoughts’ and which the (distorted) expression of ‘certain hell-deep instincts’. It is particularly hard to see why Blougram should feel that Gigadibs was ‘foolish to dispute’ the half of his speech which he did not believe, but merely put forward for the sake of the argument. What seems clear is that Blougram has constructed an argument designed to confound this particular opponent, and uses whatever materials come to hand, relying on the weight of his intellectual and social eminence. These materials include some ‘arbitrary accidental thoughts’ and some ‘hell-deep instincts’, which he himself does not fully articulate because he does not identify their true origin (see below, ll. 989–95.).

979. say, half] say half (H proof ², but not H proof), a very rare example of a unique reading in H proof ²; see Appendix C, III 742–3. he spoke] he said (H proof). 986–8. Cp. l. 48n.

991–2. Markus (p. 183; see Background) suggests an allusion to the anti-Copernican view of cosmology put forward by Dr Cullen, the Primate of Ireland, in an obscure Roman journal, and given publicity in The Globe by Father Prout thanks to B.: ‘How did the Globe discover the obscure and incriminating article? “On the original suggestion of a Florentine reader of the ‘review’, a distinguished English Writer, ROBERT BROWNING, Esq. (who reads everything)”’ (28 June 1851).

991.] Till one demonstrate it an old mistake (H proof, which consequently lacks the parenthesis at the end of the next line).

997. cavillers: a ‘caviller’ is ‘[a] man fond of making objections; an unfair adversary; a captious disputant’ (J.).

998–1000. he tries … on the ground! the metaphor is taken from wrestling: Gigadibs’s attempt at ‘fence’ (or self-defence) is ineffective when Blougram ‘closes’ with him and he ends up ‘on the ground’ in consequence.

1005–13. Gigadibs enacts or realizes (ironically) the ‘outward-bound’ metaphor of sea voyage employed by Blougram; his decision to emigrate to Australia reflects that country’s recent change in status from penal colony to settler colony. B.’s close friend Alfred Domett had emigrated to New Zealand in 1842 (see head-note to Waring, p. 185); B. wrote to Domett, 13 Dec. 1842: ‘We all talk of you, wish you well, and wonder all manner of ways. Arnould his wife came here last week, and we spoke irreverently of your ploughing, hopefully of your harvest, so on, just as if you were not in the thick of it, and victorious over it, too, by this time’ (Correspondence vi 221). The motif of emigration to the colonies was a frequent one in writing of this time; cp. Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton (1848), Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1849–50), and Arthur Hugh Clough, The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich (1848), a poem which the Brownings read and enjoyed, in which the hero Philip Hewson escapes from his difficulties by emigrating to New Zealand with his wife Elspie: ‘They are married, and gone to New Zealand. / Five hundred pounds in pocket, with books, and two or three pictures, / Tool-box, plough, and the rest, they rounded the sphere to New Zealand. / There he hewed, and dug; subdued the earth and his spirit’ (ix 222–5).

1012. Peter Ebbs suggests an allusion to Luke ix 62: ‘No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God’; see ‘Tipping the Scales: Contextual Clues in “Bishop Blougram’s Apology”‘, SBC xxiv (2001) 65.

1013. John xxi begins with Jesus, after his resurrection, appearing to his disciples on the seashore while they are fishing, and relates the miracle of the great haul of fish which they catch at his instigation. When they come to land, Jesus says to them: ‘Come and dine. And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise’ (vv. 12–13). This frugal meal contrasts with Blougram’s luxurious dinner (see ll. 16–19). As Florentine notes, Jesus then repeatedly enjoins Peter to ‘Feed my sheep!’ (vv. 15–17) and prophesies his martyrdom (vv. 18–19); contrast Blougram’s scornful reference to the ‘obsequious wethers’ of his flock (l. 896) and his emphasis on his own material comfort. The contrast with Peter would be esp. pointed because of his importance to the Catholic Church and the Papacy. B. may be turning the tables on Wiseman, who makes mocking reference to this verse in his account of the Bishop of Oxford’s attempt to formulate a response to the ‘Papal Aggression’: ‘The bishop is presiding over his clergy: he has himself composed an ecclesiastical document; he himself proposes it; and actually an amendment is carried against him, and he is compelled to admit the amendment. This is the most curious commentary we have ever seen on “Feed my sheep”‘ (‘The Hierarchy’, p. 519; see headnote, Sources, and l. 212n.).