32  An Epistle

Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician

Text, publication and revision

First publ. M & W, 10 Nov. 1855; repr. 1863, 1863², 1868, 1872, 1888. Our text is 1855. Revision after 1855 was generally light, although B. made more substantive changes than usual in the two volumes of selections in which the poem appeared (1863² and 1872), perhaps indicating his continuing regard for it.

Composition

Sharp claims that part of this poem was written in Rome during 1853–54, although he does not say whether B. began or completed the poem at this time. DeVane connects the poem with B.’s speculations on religious matters in Christmas-Eve (III 34), which was written 1849–50, but agrees with Sharp in suggesting that it was written in Rome, placing it amongst the group of poems on subjects connected with Roman history (Protus [III 635], Holy-Cross Day [p. 540]) prompted by B.’s residence in the city.

Sources and influences

The story is based on John xi 1–46. Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, falls sick and his sisters send for Jesus, who arrives (possibly by design) too late. ‘Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.’ Jesus tells Martha ‘Thy brother shall rise again’, and when she mistakes this for a reference to ‘the resurrection at the last day’, Jesus utters his famous declaration: ‘I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whoseover liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ When Mary and a number of Jewish mourners come to meet Jesus, Mary says to him ‘Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died’:

When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled,

And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see.

Jesus wept.

Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!

And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?

Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.

Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.

Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?

Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.

And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.

And when he had thus spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.

And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.

Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.

But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.

This event is recounted in the poem from the point of view of an imaginary ‘Arab physician’, as EBB. explains in letters to her two sisters (see below, Criticism). Karshish is travelling in Palestine around ad 69 (see below, and ll. 26–8n.). He makes no mention of Martha and Mary, and has none of the circumstantial detail as to the place of burial, Jesus’s behaviour, or the divided response of the other witnesses. When Karshish meets Lazarus he is an isolated figure in Bethany, apparently regarded as crazy, and not part of an early Christian community; indeed Karshish seems unaware that Jesus, whom he calls a ‘Nazarene physician’, has any kind of following. The fact that Lazarus did not die suddenly, but after a period of sickness, allows Karshish to interpret events from the medical rather than the spiritual point of view; on the other hand he clearly grasps the potential theological force of Lazarus’s testimony, both as regards its implications for a belief in life after death—a belief which Lazarus holds with an unnatural certainty— and for the doctrine of God as the ‘all-Loving’ (l. 305). The double emphasis in John’s Gospel on Jesus’s human feelings of love, and on God as the principle of Love itself, made it B.’s favourite Gospel, and the one which most influenced both his theology and his poetics.

There were a number of attempts during the nineteenth century to explain the absence of the Lazarus story from the other three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the so-called ‘synoptic’ Gospels), with some biblical scholars arguing (as D. F. Strauss notes) that its inclusion in the synoptic Gospels would have been dangerous to Lazarus and his family, ‘the former of whom, according to John xii 10, was persecuted by the Jewish hierarchy on account of the miracle which had been performed in him; a caution for which there was no necessity at the later period at which John wrote his gospel’ (Life of Jesus, transl. Marian Evans [1846; rpt, 1892], p. 492). Strauss himself dismisses this suggestion, but B.’s poem lends it some support by alluding to the unsettled political circumstances of first-century Palestine. The action of the poem takes place at a particularly dangerous moment, during the Roman subjugation of the Jewish rebellion of ad 67–70; this may also help to explain Karshish’s suspicion of the Syrian ‘run-a-gate’ (l. 49) to whom he gives his message. (B.’s awareness of the critical issues surrounding John’s Gospel is discussed in more detail in the headnote to A Death in the Desert, pp. 718–24). Karshish’s attitude towards miracles resembles that of Matthew Arnold’s Empedocles—both see them as tricks or subterfuges designed to appeal to ordinary people of limited understanding (see ll. 257–9n)—and in this respect he reminds the reader that the miracles of Jesus took place in a comparatively ‘modern’ era; cp. Thomas Arnold’s critique of Strauss for putting forward ‘the idea of men writing mythic histories between the time of Livy and Tacitus, and of St. Paul mistaking such for realities!’ (A. P. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D.D. [1890] 291).

B. may have been prompted to make Karshish an Arab by the role of Arab writers in preserving and transmitting the heritage of classical Greek and Roman medicine during the Middle Ages; cp. Paracelsus iii 959–60n. (I 234–5). Karshish’s interest in leprosy, epilepsy and his method of classifying fevers are all consistent with surviving evidence of the understanding of these conditions in antiquity (see Vivian Nutton, Ancient Medicine [2005] and ll. 42–3n., 50–1n., 58–9n., 83n.).

The subject of the raising of Lazarus was treated in a number of mid-nineteenth-century poems. Like B., Tennyson (In Memoriam xxxi) emphasizes the inability or unwillingness of both Lazarus and the Gospel writer to give any details about Lazarus’s experience between his death and resurrection: ‘Behold a man raised up by Christ! / The rest remaineth unreveal’d; / He told it not; or something seal’d / The lips of that evangelist’. Cp. also William Lisle Bowles, St. John in Patmos ii 443–7: ‘I spurred my horse; we passed the sepulchre / Of Lazarus, restored from the dark grave, / So those who own the faith of Christ affirm, / With eyeballs ghastly glaring in the light, / At the loud voice of Him who cried, Come forth!’ EBB. uses an image that may be indebted to this poem in Aurora Leigh (1856): ‘My father, who through love had suddenly / Thrown off the old conventions, broken loose / From chin-bands of the soul, like Lazarus, / Yet had no time to learn to talk and walk / Or grow anew familiar with the sun’ (i 176–80). A possible reminiscence of Felicia Hemans’s sonnet ‘The Sisters of Bethany after the Death of Lazarus’ is noted at l. 305.

The form of the poem, and especially the title word ‘epistle’, link to the epistles of the New Testament, especially those of St Paul (see l. 1n.). Karshish’s rational, empirical stance (although mitigated by his adherence to an occult master: see ll. 167–8n.) sets him, like Cleon, in opposition to Paul, although from the standpoint of humility rather than overweening intellectual pride. His attitude also makes him resemble the corresponding member of a learned society of B.’s own day; and the poem may be read in the context of the extensive travel literature relating to the Holy Land in this period by British, French, and American authors. The Brownings owned Lamartine’s Souvenirs … pendant un Voyage en Orient (1832–33; Collections, A1381), and B. may have come across Harriet Martineau’s Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848), which EBB. mentions in letters before its publication (Letters of EBB i 352, 355). Martineau’s book includes a visit to Bethany and a visit to the supposed tomb of Lazarus (pt. iii, ch. 4; see also l. 32n.); a more general reflection in chapter 1 is also pertinent. Here Martineau inveighs against those who travel to the Holy Land seeking for literal traces of Christian history instead of attempting to evoke the spirit of the Gospel narratives; true travellers possess ‘the power of setting themselves back to the time when Christ lived and spoke, so as to see and hear him as if he spoke and lived at this day’.

Parallels in B.

As already indicated, the poem’s main ‘partner’ is Cleon. Like the Greek philosopher, the Arab physician finds it hard to accept Christian doctrine, and both resort to calling its adherents mad; but Karshish has been powerfully moved by his direct encounter with Lazarus, whereas Cleon has heard only second-hand accounts of Paul’s preaching. B. returned much later to the theme of a non-Christian perspective on the New Testament in Imperante Augusto Natus Est (Asolando, 1889). Arab characters and subjects appear in several poems and plays; see (e.g.) Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr (II 155–6), Return of the Druses (1842) and Muléykeh (DI², 1880). Lazarus’s experience in the poem highlights the incompatibility of human and divine knowledge, a common theme in B.’s work. Cp., e.g., Sordello i 523–66 (I 430–2), in which the inability of the ‘subjective’ poet to ‘[thrust] in time eternity’s concern’ is lamented, and Bishop Blougram 648–50 (pp. 320–1). See also B.’s letter to Julia Wedgwood of 27 June 1864 in which he questions the sincerity of Newman’s claim that he is certain of the existence of God: ‘I can see nothing that comes from absolute contact, so to speak, between man and God, but everything in all variety from the greater or less distance between the two’ (RB & JW 34). B. links this incompatibility to his own poetic method in his letter to Ruskin replying to Ruskin’s criticism of the obscurity of some of the poems in Men and Women: see Appendix B, p. 881. Ruskin in fact exempted Karshish from his general criticism of the collection, a fact EBB. was quick to notice and take advantage of (see next section).

Criticism

B. and EBB. were surprised by the reaction of EBB.’s younger sister Henrietta to the poem, as EBB. wrote to her older sister Arabella on 22 Nov. 1855: ‘what do you think she has taken into her head .. that his poem about Lazarus is written with irreverent and even blasphemous intentions against our Lord. Can you conceive of the poem striking any human being so? Here is a Gentile of that day giving his own impression of Lazarus!. The phenomenon of the raising of Lazarus is looked on from without? Can any one say rationally that the poem is not for the honor of the Lord? It seems to me wonderful that a dramatic intention should be so mistaken. People in general praise the poem as “sublime in conception,” which to my mind it is’ (EBB to Arabella ii 190). To Henrietta herself, EBB. wrote on 6 Dec.: ‘no want of reverence, much less blasphemy, was intended by that poem, the object of which is in the highest degree reverential and Christian. It is one of my great favourites—(and we have this morning a letter from Mr. Ruskin, author of the Stones of Venice, a most Christian man, calling it his favourite,) and among all the criticisms we have heard, private and public, such an idea as yours seems to have occurred to no one. The Arabian physician considers the case of Lazarus as “a case”— represents it as such a man would, who had never heard of Christ before, or conceived of the miracle. It is a view from without of the raising from the dead, &c—and shows how this must have impressed the thinkers of the day, who came upon it with wondering, unbelieving eyes, for the first time. The way in which Lazarus is described as living his life after his acquaintance with the life beyond death, strikes me as entirely sublime, I confess’ (EBB to Henrietta 235–6). For this letter from Ruskin, see prec. section. Note, however, that the long review-essay in the Edinburgh Review of October 1864 (a piece which particularly exasperated B. at the time) took up just this point: ‘The subject is treated with all Mr. Browning’s usual subtlety, quaintness, and ingenuity; but it seems to us irreverent in the highest degree to attempt to describe, through Karshish, the demeanour and mode of thought of Lazarus after his three days’ experience of the mysterious realms of death.’

Karshish, the picker-up of learning’s crumbs,

The not-incurious in God’s handiwork

(This man’s-flesh He hath admirably made,

Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,

5  To coop up and keep down on earth a space

That puff of vapour from his mouth, man’s soul)

—To Abib, all-sagacious in our art,

Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,

Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks

10  Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain,

Whereby the wily vapour fain would slip

Back and rejoin its source before the term,—

And aptest in contrivance, under God,

To baffle it by deftly stopping such:—

15  The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home

Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)

Three samples of true snake-stone—rarer still,

One of the other sort, the melon-shaped,

(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs)

20  And writeth now the twenty-second time.

   My journeyings were brought to Jericho,

Thus I resume. Who studious in our art

Shall count a little labour unrepaid?

I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone

25  On many a flinty furlong of this land.

Also the country-side is all on fire

With rumours of a marching hitherward—

Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son.

A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;

30  Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:

I cried and threw my staff and he was gone.

Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me,

And once a town declared me for a spy,

But at the end, I reach Jerusalem,

35  Since this poor covert where I pass the night,

This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence

A man with plague-sores at the third degree

Runs till be drops down dead. Thou laughest here!

’Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,

40  To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip

And share with thee whatever Jewry yields.

A viscid choler is observable

In tertians, I was nearly bold to say,

And falling-sickness hath a happier cure

45  Than our school wots of: there’s a spider here

Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs,

Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-grey back;

Take five and drop them … but who knows his mind,

The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to?

50  His service payeth me a sublimate

Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye.

Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn,

There set in order my experiences,

Gather what most deserves and give thee all—

55  Or I might add, Judea’s gum-tragacanth

Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,

Cracks ’twixt the pestle and the porphyry,

In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease

Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy—

60  Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar—

But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end.

   Yet stay: my Syrian blinketh gratefully,

Protesteth his devotion is my price—

Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal?

65  I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,

What set me off a-writing first of all.

An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang!

For, be it this town’s barrenness—or else

The Man had something in the look of him—

70  His case has struck me far more than ’tis worth.

So, pardon if—(lest presently I lose

In the great press of novelty at hand

The care and pains this somehow stole from me)

I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind,

75  Almost in sight—for, wilt thou have the truth?

The very man is gone from me but now,

Whose ailment is the subject of discourse.

Thus then, and let thy better wit help all.

   ’Tis but a case of mania—subinduced

80  By epilepsy, at the turning-point

Of trance prolonged unduly some three days,

When by the exhibition of some drug

Or spell, exorcisation, stroke of art

Unknown to me and which ’twere well to know,

85  The evil thing out-breaking all at once

Left the man whole and sound of body indeed,—

But, flinging, so to speak, life’s gates too wide,

Making a clear house of it too suddenly,

The first conceit that entered pleased to write

90  Whatever it was minded on the wall

So plainly at that vantage, as it were,

(First come, first served) that nothing subsequent

Attaineth to erase the fancy-scrawls

Which the returned and new-established soul

95  Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart

That henceforth she will read or these or none.

And first—the man’s own firm conviction rests

That he was dead (in fact they buried him)

That he was dead and then restored to life

100  By a Nazarene physician of his tribe:

—’Sayeth, the same bade “Rise,” and he did rise.

“Such cases are diurnal,” thou wilt cry.

Not so this figment!—not, that such a fume,

Instead of giving way to time and health,

105  Should eat itself into the life of life,

As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all!

For see, how he takes up the after-life.

The man—it is one Lazarus a Jew,

Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age,

110  The body’s habit wholly laudable,

As much, indeed, beyond the common health

As he were made and put aside to shew.

Think, could we penetrate by any drug

And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh,

115  And bring it clear and fair, by three days sleep!

Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?

This grown man eyes the world now like a child.

Some elders of his tribe, I should premise,

Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep,

120  To bear my inquisition. While they spoke,

Now sharply, now with sorrow,—told the case,—

He listened not except I spoke to him,

But folded his two hands and let them talk,

Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool.

125  And that’s a sample how his years must go.

Look if a beggar, in fixed middle-life,

Should find a treasure, can he use the same

With straightened habits and with tastes starved small,

And take at once to his impoverished brain

130  The sudden element that changes things,

—That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand,

And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust?

Is he not such an one as moves to mirth—

Warily parsimonious, when’s no need,

135  Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times?

All prudent counsel as to what befits

The golden mean, is lost on such an one.

The man’s fantastic will is the man’s law.

So here—we’ll call the treasure knowledge, say—

140  Increased beyond the fleshly faculty—

Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,

Earth forced on a soul’s use while seeing Heaven.

The man is witless of the size, the sum,

The value in proportion of all things,

145  Or whether it be little or be much.

Discourse to him of prodigious armaments

Assembled to besiege his city now,

And of the passing of a mule with gourds—

’Tis one! Then take it on the other side,

150  Speak of some trifling fact—he will gaze rapt

With stupor at its very littleness—

(Far as I see) as if in that indeed

He caught prodigious import, whole results;

And so will turn to us the bystanders

155  In ever the same stupor (note this point)

That we too see not with his opened eyes!

Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,

Preposterously, at cross purposes.

Should his child sicken unto death,—why, look

160  For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,

Or pretermission of his daily craft—

While a word, gesture, glance, from that same child

At play or in the school or laid asleep,

Will start him to an agony of fear,

165  Exasperation, just as like! demand

The reason why—“’tis but a word”, object—

“A gesture”—he regards thee as our lord

Who lived there in the pyramid alone,

Looked at us, dost thou mind, when being young

170  We both would unadvisedly recite

Some charm’s beginning, from that book of his,

Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst

All into stars, as suns grown old are wont.

Thou and the child have each a veil alike

175  Thrown o’er your heads from under which ye both

Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match

Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know!

He holds on firmly to some thread of life—

(It is the life to lead perforcedly)

180  Which runs across some vast distracting orb

Of glory on either side that meagre thread,

Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet—

The spiritual life around the earthly life!

The law of that is known to him as this—

185  His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.

So is the man perplext with impulses

Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,

Proclaiming what is Right and Wrong across—

And not along—this black thread through the blaze—

190  “It should be” baulked by “here it cannot be.”

And oft the man’s soul springs into his face

As if he saw again and heard again

His sage that bade him “Rise” and he did rise.

Something—a word, a tick of the blood within

195  Admonishes—then back he sinks at once

To ashes, that was very fire before,

In sedulous recurrence to his trade

Whereby he earneth him the daily bread—

And studiously the humbler for that pride,

200  Professedly the faultier that he knows

God’s secret, while he holds the thread of life.

Indeed the especial marking of the man

Is prone submission to the Heavenly will—

Seeing it, what it is, and why it is.

205  ’Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last

For that same death which will restore his being

To equilibrium, body loosening soul

Divorced even now by premature full growth:

He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live

210  So long as God please, and just how God please.

He even seeketh not to please God more

(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.

Hence I perceive not he affects to preach

The doctrine of his sect whate’er it be—

215  Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do.

How can he give his neighbour the real ground,

His own conviction? ardent as he is—

Call his great truth a lie, why still the old

“Be it as God please” reassureth him.

220  I probed the sore as thy disciple should—

“How, beast,” said I, “this stolid carelessness

Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march

To stamp out like a little spark thy town,

Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?”

225  He merely looked with his large eyes on me.

The man is apathetic, you deduce?

Contrariwise he loves both old and young,

Able and weak—affects the very brutes

And birds—how say I? flowers of the field—

230  As a wise workman recognises tools

In a master’s workshop, loving what they make.

Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:

Only impatient, let him do his best,

At ignorance and carelessness and sin—

235  An indignation which is promptly curbed.

As when in certain travels I have feigned

To be an ignoramus in our art

According to some preconceived design,

And happed to hear the land’s practitioners

240  Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,

Prattle fantastically on disease,

Its cause and cure—and I must hold my peace!

Thou wilt object—why have I not ere this

Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene

245  Who wrought this cure, enquiring at the source,

Conferring with the frankness that befits?

Alas ! it grieveth me, the learned leech

Perished in a tumult many years ago,

Accused,—our learning’s fate,—of wizardry,

250  Rebellion, to the setting up a rule

And creed prodigious as described to me.

His death which happened when the earthquake fell

(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss

To occult learning in our lord the sage

255  That lived there in the pyramid alone)

Was wrought by the mad people—that’s their wont—

On vain recourse, as I conjecture it,

To his tried virtue, for miraculous help—

How could he stop the earthquake? That’s their way!

260  The other imputations must be lies:

But take one—though I loathe to give it thee,

In mere respect to any good man’s fame!

(And after all our patient Lazarus

Is stark mad—should we count on what he says?

265  Perhaps not—though in writing to a leech

’Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.)

This man so cured regards the curer then,

As—God forgive me—who but God himself,

Creater and Sustainer of the world,

270  That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile!

—’Sayeth that such an One was born and lived,

Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,

Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,

And yet was … what I said nor choose repeat,

275  And must have so avouched himself, in fact,

In hearing of this very Lazarus

Who saith—but why all this of what he saith?

Why write of trivial matters, things of price

Calling at every moment for remark?

280  I noticed on the margin of a pool

Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort,

Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!

   Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,

Which, now that I review it, needs must seem

285  Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth.

Nor I myself discern in what is writ

Good cause for the peculiar interest

And awe indeed this man has touched me with.

Perhaps the journey’s end, the weariness

290  Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus—

I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills

Like an old lion’s cheek-teeth. Out there came

A moon made like a face with certain spots

Multiform, manifold, and menacing:

295  Then a wind rose behind me. So we met

In this old sleepy town at unaware,

The man and I. I send thee what is writ.

Regard it as a chance, a matter risked

To this ambiguous Syrian—he may lose,

300  Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.

Jerusalem’s repose shall make amends

For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine,

Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!

   The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?

305  So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too—

So, through the thunder comes a human voice

Saying, “O heart I made, a heart beats here!

Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself.

Thou hast no power nor may’st conceive of mine,

310  But love I gave thee, with Myself to love,

And thou must love me who have died for thee!”

The madman saith He said so: it is strange.

Title. the strange medical experience of karshish] the medical experience of ben karshish (H proof, but not H proof²). The appearance of ‘Ben’ in the original title may help to explain B.’s confusion between ‘Karshish’ and ‘Karshook’ in One Word More (see l. 136, p. 611).

1–20. The grammatical structure is ‘Karshish [l. 1] sends greeting [l. 16] to Abib

[l. 7]’; this elaborate rhetorical device may be designed to imitate the openings of St Paul’s epistles in the New Testament; see for example Romans i 1–7; and cp. the opening of Cleon (p. 563).

1. Karshish: The name ‘Karshish’ means ‘one who gathers’ in Arabic (M. Wright, TLS 1 May 1953, p. 285). the picker-up of learning’s crumbs: cp. Mark vii 24–30, where Jesus at first refuses to heal the daughter of a non-Jewish woman, but then relents: ‘Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the children’s crumbs.’ The story is also in Matthew xv 21–8. Cp. also the story of Dives and Lazarus (not the Lazarus of the poem) in Luke xvi 19–31, where the beggar Lazarus desires ‘to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table’.

2–6. Characteristically ‘Oriental’ imagery: cp. Psalms xix 1: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork’; Genesis ii 7: ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul’; Job xxxiv 19–20: ‘they are all the work of his hands. In a moment shall they die’; James iv 14: ‘For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.’ To these biblical references may be added an allusion to the myth of Prometheus creating man out of clay: cp. Dryden’s translation of Ovid, Metamorphoses i 101–6, which J. cites under ‘paste’: ‘[With] particles of heav’nly fire / The God of Nature did his soul inspire … Which wise Prometheus temper’d into paste, / And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast’. Cp., in B., Lovers’ Quarrel 86n. (p. 381), Fra Lippo 184–7 (p. 495) and Caliban 75–97 (pp. 629–30).

7–15. Karshish’s deferential manner here and at l. 220 may be an elaborately courteous compliment, since at ll. 169–73 he implies that both he and Abib were tutored by an older sage; cp., however, the relations between Festus, Paracelsus, and Trithemius in Paracelsus i 238–52 (I 125): both Festus and Paracelsus are pupils of Trithemius, but Festus is also Paracelsus’s elder and mentor.

11–12. Cp. Marvell, ‘On a Drop of Dew’, where the soul is compared to a dewdrop which yearns to return to its source, ‘the clear Fountain of Eternal Day’, and (noting ‘slip’) Wordsworth, ‘To H. C., Six Years Old’, ll. 27–33: ‘Thou art a dew-drop, which the morn brings forth … [and which] Slips in a moment out of life’. Cp. also Bishop Blougram 656n. (p. 321).

12. before the term: i.e. before the natural end of human life (seventy years, or eighty at most, according to the Bible: Psalms xc 10).

13. aptest in contrivance: ‘most skilful at contriving (remedies or cures)’.

14. it: the ‘wily vapour’. stopping such: blocking up the ‘pricks and cracks’.

15. The vagrant Scholar: Arnold’s ‘The Scholar-Gipsy’ was published in 1853. B.’s Karshish may be an antithetical reply to Arnold’s pensive and withdrawing figure; for another such possible reply, see James Lee 212–21 (p. 678).

17–18. true snake-stone: snake-stone is a name given to any porous stone (or compound) supposed to cure snake-bite, either by absorbing the venom or as an antidote.

21–34. Jericho … Jerusalem: Karshish journeys from Jericho towards Jerusalem, reversing the direction of the man who falls among thieves in the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke x 30–7), but suffering the same fate (see l. 32n.).

26–8. Vespasian (Titus Flavius Vespasianus, ad 9–79, Emperor ad 69–79) commanded the Roman forces against the Jewish rebellion in 67–68, and subdued most of Judaea apart from Jerusalem itself, which was captured by his son Titus in 70. The allusion to a coming siege at ll. 146–7 indicates that the action of the poem takes place around ad 69; see also l. 109n.

29. Black lynx: ‘the Syrian lynx is distinguished by black ears’ (Florentine).

30. balls: eyeballs.

32. The Good Samaritan rescues a man who ‘fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead’ (Luke x 30). Harriet Martineau (see headnote, Sources), following her visit to Bethany, comments on the dangers of the Jerusalem–Jericho road and cites the case of Sir Frederick Henniker who was ‘stripped and left for dead by robbers in 1820’. 35. covert: shelter.

36. Bethany: the town in which Lazarus and his sisters live. thence: i.e. from Jerusalem.

39. ’Sooth: ‘in sooth’, i.e. ‘in truth’, ‘indeed’.

40. ‘To empty my travel-bag of its contents’.

41. Jewry: apparently both the people and the land. For another meaning of the term, see How It Strikes 74 (p. 443).

42–3. A viscid choler: ‘viscid’ is defined in J. as ‘glutinous’ or ‘tenacious’, and ‘choler’ as ‘bile’ or ‘[the] humour, which, by its super-abundance, is supposed to produce irascibility’. tertians: a tertian is defined in J. as ‘an ague intermitting but one day, so that there are two fits in three days’; cp. Byron, Don Juan i 271. Nutton (see headnote, Sources) points out that ‘[the] largest group of conditions mentioned in our ancient medical texts is that of fevers, puretoi or febres, a broad term deriving from the feeling of fiery heat … the most common taxonomy depended on their periodicity, whether the high temperature was constant or waned and then returned after one, two, three or more days’ (p. 32). This is the only occurrence of the word in B.’s poetry.

43. I was nearly bold to say: Karshish doubts whether he should go into details because the messenger who is to deliver his letter may be untrustworthy: see head-note, and cp. ll. 48–9, 61–4, 297–300.

44. falling-sickness: epilepsy, which is what Karshish diagnoses in Lazarus (l. 80). The term was already archaic in B.’s day, and belongs to 16th/17th-century English (cp. e.g. Julius Caesar I ii 256). Epilepsy was often regarded as having a divine origin in classical antiquity; this, and the fact that it has a ‘happier cure’, suggests a play on the idea of ‘felix culpa’, the ‘fortunate fall’: in this sense, ‘falling-sickness’ is original sin, the sickness caused by the Fall of Man.

45–8. a spider … drop them: as Florentine states: ‘It was long a prevalent idea that the spider in various forms possessed some occult power of healing, and men administered it internally or applied it externally as a cure for many diseases.’

49. run-a-gate: the primary sense is ‘vagabond’, with the implication that the Syrian might be a fugitive or deserter; OED cites a 1737 translation of Josephus’s History of the Jewish War: ‘two thousand Syrian runagates’ as well as ‘the runagate Jews’ (this is the same war, waged by Vespasian, to which Karshish refers at l. 28). Note also that the word was originally a variant form of ‘renegade’; OED cites Nashe, Martin Marprelate (1589): ‘Lucian the Atheist, was neuer so irreligious; nor euer Iulian the runnagate so blasphemous’. Finally, although this is less likely, B. may have connected the unreliable messenger with St Paul’s servant Onesimus, who is the subject of the Epistle to Philemon; OED cites a 1612 commentary in which it is asserted that ‘Paul hauing converted Onesimus a runnagate servant … sent him to Philemon againe’.

50–1. Nutton (headnote, Sources) states that ‘[eye] diseases are … well represented in ancient art, and were sufficiently common to justify their own speciality’ (31). Karshish’s healing of the Syrian’s ‘ailing eye’ is a medical counterpart to Jesus’s curing of two blind men on his way from Jericho to Jerusalem; see Matthew xx 29–34.

50. sublimate: sublimation is a chemical process in which a solid is heated to a vapour, then cooled; the residue, often in crystalline form, is the ‘sublimate’. The composition of Karshish’s ‘sublimate’, which is here probably, as Oxford suggests, a powder meant to be inhaled, is not specified; the term was also a synonym for ‘mercury sublimate’ or mercuric chloride, a powerful poison (OED cites Ben Jonson, Epicoene, or The Silent Woman: ‘Take a little sublimate and go out of the world like a rat’ [II ii]), but one which could also be used medicinally.

55. gum-tragacanth: a gum obtained from several species of Astragalus, a low-growing spiny shrub native to the Near East, used in medicine mainly as a vehicle for drugs; OED cites it (as simply ‘tragacanth’) in Holland’s translation of Pliny, which B. certainly knew, and in a context where its value is emphasized: ‘A pound of Tragacanth is worth thirteen deniers Romane’.

57. porphyry: i.e. the mortar (made of a hard polished substance such as porphyry) in which the ‘gum-tragacanth’ would be pounded.

58–9. Scalp-disease … leprosy: according to Nutton (headnote, Sources) there is good evidence that leprosy had entered the Mediterranean world by 250 bc; she also notes that the Hebrew word za’arath, translated as ‘leprosy’ in the Authorized Version, might well refer to a ‘scaly disease’ like psoriasis rather than leprosy itself. The frequent mentions of this disease in the Bible, and the story of Christ’s meeting with the ten lepers on the way to Jerusalem (Luke xvii 11–19) ‘gave this disease a special prominence in Christian literature’ (p. 30).

60. Zoar: Lot’s place of refuge; the only one of the five ‘cities of the plain’ not to be destroyed; Genesis xix 22–4.

62. blinketh gratefully: proving that his ‘ailing eye’ is healed.

67. Cp. How It Strikes 47–8 (p. 441).

65. yet I blush] though I blush (H proof ).

70. ’tis worth] it’s worth (H proof ).

79–101. For the story of Lazarus as related in John, see headnote, pp. 507–8. Karshish’s account resembles the ‘rationalistic’ accounts of the gospel miracles proposed by various critics during the early nineteenth century, some of whom suggested that Jesus effected the ‘resurrection’ after realizing that Lazarus was not dead but merely ill. Strauss paraphrases one such critic, Paulus, thus: ‘[From] the messenger whom the sisters had sent with news of their brother’s illness, Jesus had obtained accurate information of the circumstances of the disease; and the answer which he gave to the messenger, This sickness is not unto death (v. 4), is said to express, merely as an inference which he had drawn from the report of the messenger, his conviction that the disease was not fatal’ (Life of Jesus 481).

79. subinduced: produced as a by-product; OED cites this as the only use of the word in this sense.

80. epilepsy: see l. 44n.

82. exhibition: a medical term meaning ‘application’ (OED 2.4).

83. exorcisation: casting out of an evil spirit; Nutton (headnote, Sources) notes that prayers and incantations were often used to ‘cure’ epilepsy in antiquity. Karshish’s willingness to countenance the possibility of both ‘exhibition’ and ‘exorcisation’ of the condition parallels the attitude of the author of The Sacred Disease, a text formerly attributed to Hippocrates, who ‘is prepared to allow sacrifice, prayer and supplication to the gods’ despite being convinced by his investigations into ‘epilepsy and mania’ that ‘these conditions have a purely natural cause’.

84. ’twere well to know] were fit to know (H proof, but not H proof²).

85–96. Cp. Luke xi 24–6: ‘When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.’

85.] The evil thing, out-breaking, all at once, (1872).

87–8. Cp. Transcendentalism 45 (III 646).

89–90. inscribe … on the wall: cp. Daniel v, in which a disembodied hand writes mysterious words on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace, prophesying the end of his kingdom.

89. conceit: idea. pleased to write] might inscribe (1863–88).

91. at that vantage: ‘having that advantage’.

92. First come, first served: proverbial.

93. the fancy-scrawls] her fancy-scrawls (H proof, but not H proof²); those fancy-scrawls (1863–88).

94. Which the returned] And the returned (H proof, but not H proof²); The just-returned (1863–88).

95. Hath gotten] Hath got them (H proof, but not H proof²).

96. or these or none: ‘either these or none’. or these] or those (1863²), possibly a misprint, as substantive variants unique to this ed. are rare; but see also ll. 133, 137.

98. (in fact they buried him): an emphasis derived from the gospel account: see headnote.

100. Nazarene: from Nazareth, Jesus’s home town (Matthew ii 23).

101. ’Sayeth: the apostrophe stands for an elided pronoun: ‘He sayeth’. The purpose here is colloquial, as in Fra Lippo 43 (p. 487); B.’s most extensive use of elided pronouns is in Caliban upon Setebos (p. 616).

102. diurnal: daily.

103. fume: ‘Idle conceit; vain imagination’ ( J.). Cp. PL viii 188–97 ‘But apt the mind or fancy is to rove / Uncheck’d, and of her roving is no end, / ’Till warn’d, or by experience taught, she learn, / That not to know at large of things remote / From use, obscure and subtle, but to know / That which before us lies in daily life, / Is the prime wisdom; what is more, is fume / Or emptiness, or fond impertinence, / And renders us in things that most concern / Unpractis’d, unprepar’d, and still to seek’.

105. life of life: cp. Shelley, ‘Hymn to the Spirit of Nature’, ll. 1–2: ‘Life of Life! thy lips enkindle / With their love the breath between them’; the phrase is used by Matthew Arnold in Empedocles on Etna ii 357, which may have influenced another poem set in the early Christian period, Cleon (see headnote, pp. 563–4).

107. after-life: Karshish means the life which Lazarus led after his cure, but the phrase also suggests that this life is like life after death.

109. Sanguine: cheerful or confident, from the idea that this was characteristic of people ‘[abounding] with blood more than any other humour’ ( J.); on the poem’s medical vocabulary see headnote. fifty years of age: there is an apparent inconsistency here; the poem is set around ad 69 (see headnote), in which case Lazarus, who was brought back from the dead by Jesus in ad 33, should be around sixty-five years of age. It might, however, be the case that Lazarus is understood to have retained his youthful appearance due to his experience (see l. 117).

112. As: as if.

117. Cp. Matthew xviii 3: ‘Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’

128. straightened] straitened (1863–88, except 1863² which agrees with 1855). habits and with tastes] habitude and tastes (1872), a rare example of a substantive variant unique to this ed.

133. such an one] such a one (1863²); less likely to be a mispr. than ‘those’ in l. 96, because it is repeated at l. 137.

134. when’s no need] when no need (1863–88). Radical contractions such as this (‘when’s’ = ‘when there is’) are very rare in B. and disappear entirely from 1863.

137. golden mean: Aristotle’s idea that ‘moral virtue … is a mean between two vices, one of excess and the other of deficiency’; the story of the rich beggar illustrates his inability to shake off the habit of ‘illiberality’ (analeutheria) in spite of his good fortune (Nicomachean Ethics, transl. J. A. K. Thomson [1986], pp. 104, 108). Cp. also Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sonnets III xi: ‘As if a church, though sprung from heaven, must owe / To opposites and fierce extremes her life,— / Not to the golden mean, and quiet flow / Of truths that soften hatred, temper strife’ (11–14). such an one] such a one (1863²).

139–42. For B.’s preoccupation with the incompatibility between divine and human knowledge, see headnote.

139. we’ll call] we call (1865–88).

146–7. See ll. 26–8n.

146. Discourse to him: i.e. ‘If you speak to him’.

148. gourds: the hollowed rinds of large cucumber-like plants often used to carry water.

149. ’Tis one! ‘It is all the same.’

150–6. Cp. the extended treatment of this idea in Mr Sludge 1068–1122 (pp. 829– 32).

151. With stupor at] With stupor from (H proof, but not H proof²).

156. Cp. Jesus to the disciples: ‘Having eyes, see ye not?’ (Mark viii 18). Cp. also Paul’s blinding on the road to Damascus and subsequent conversion: ‘And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man … And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized’ (Acts ix 8–18). opened eyes!] opened eyes— (H proof ); altered eyes. (1863–88, except 1863² which agrees with 1855). The dash in H proof goes with ‘brought’ in l. 157.

157. come wrongly] brought wrongly (H proof ), a reading which makes this and the following line in apposition to the main sentence beginning at l. 149. 159–83. Lazarus is unconcerned at the mere prospect of his child’s death (since that would lead to eternal life, of which Lazarus is assured), but he is afraid at even the most trifling sign that his child might be damned and go to hell. Cp. the reaction of Charles Tulk, a Swedenborgian friend of the Brownings, to the death of his daughter: ‘Mr. Tulk’s most singular letter on his daughter’s death, which his sister read to me at the time, was worth hearing read. With great tenderness for his “dear blessed Louisa” … he expressed the most absolute satisfaction in the event, free from a single drawback—“It was altogether impossible for him even for the sake of what was called decency by the world, to pretend to feel regret on account of the consummated happiness of his child— He had not felt so well for years! He seemed to be running over in his heart with thoughts of felicity” ’ (19–22 Jan. 1849, EBB to Arabella i 220–1).

161. pretermission: interruption. his daily] the daily (H proof [but not H proof²],

1868–88), a rare example of a return to a proof reading in eds. after 1855.

164. Will start him] Will startle him (1863–88). OED last records the transitive sense of ‘start’ (‘To cause to start or flinch; to startle’) in 1871; it also cites instances in Shakespeare, e.g. All’s Well That Ends Well: ‘You boggle shrewdly, every feather starts you’ (V iii 232). B.’s usage is influenced by the intransitive sense ‘To undergo a sudden involuntary movement of the body, resulting from surprise, fright, sudden pain, etc.’; OED again cites Shakespeare, Henry VIII: ‘My lord, we have / Stood here observing him; some strange commotion / Is in his brain: he bites his lip, and starts’ (III ii 112–14).

167–8. our lord … alone: the sage who taught both Karshish and Abib; he seems to have been a practitioner of the occult as well as a physician.

171. beginning, from] beginning in (H proof, but not H proof²).

174.] Thou and this man’s child have a veil alike (H proof, but not H proof²),

which records only ‘this man’s’ but not the deletion of ‘each’). ‘Thou’ refers back to ‘thee’ in l. 167; Karshish is projecting how Lazarus might explain his apparently irrational behaviour to an onlooker.

177. a mine of Greek fire: a tunnel under a fortification which is filled with explosive; ‘Greek fire’ is inaccurate for this purpose, however, since it refers to a weapon invented by the Greeks of Constantinople to set fire to ships. Here, a metaphor for hellfire.

178–90. Lazarus’s knowledge of the reality of the spiritual world tempts him to apply its absolute values prematurely to the normal conditions of human life. The image is of him holding onto a ‘thread’ which guides him along the path of ordinary life; he is impelled to ‘start off crosswise’, to judge things not according to what normal people can see, but according to his supernatural awareness of the ‘vast distracting orb / Of glory on either side’ (ll. 180–1). For B.’s belief in progressive spiritual growth as opposed to transcendent revelation, see his letter to Julia Wedgwood, 27 June 1864: ‘you should live, step by step, up to the proper place where the pin-point of light is visible: nothing is to be overleaped, the joy no more than the sorrow, and then, your part done, God’s may follow, and will, I trust’ (RB & JW 36); for another passage from this letter, see headnote, Parallels. Although Lazarus did not seek the transcendent knowledge he has gained, he cannot disavow it.

178. With the image of the ‘thread of life’, cp. Sordello iii 697–700 (I 574).

179.] (Perforcedly it is the life to lead) (H proof ). ‘Perforcedly’ may be a new coinage based on the Italian ‘per forza’ (‘necessarily’ or ‘of course’); this is the only instance cited in OED.

183.] The universal life, the earthly life, (H proof ).

184. as this: meaning both that Lazarus is as aware of the spiritual life as he is of the earthly, and that he experiences the spiritual life in the same way as the earthly, that is with the same concreteness; with the latter sense, cp. St John’s argument in A Death 267–99 (pp. 738–9).

190. baulked] emended from ‘balked’ in 1855 and all other eds.; this correction appears in the list of ‘Errata’ B. sent to James T. Fields, his American publisher (B to Fields 192); note, however, that he did not implement the change in 1863. ‘Baulk’ was not changed by the printers in Childe Roland 70 (p. 358) or Master Hugues 15 (III 391). It clearly remained B.’s preferred spelling: ‘No Briton’s to be baulked!’ appears in Apparent Failure 18 (p. 710).

191–3. Cp. A Death in the Desert 58–66 (p. 728), where St John is similarly aroused by a recollection of Jesus’s words, also to do with resurrection.

194. tick of the blood: pulse; cp. Old Pictures 44 (p. 412). of the blood] o’ the blood (1870–88).

195–6. then back … fire before: cp. A Death in the Desert 105–8 (p. 730).

196. that was] who was (1868–88).

197–8. Cp. The Boy and the Angel 3–4 (II 235).

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

199. And studiously] Most studiously (H proof, but not H proof²).

205. ’Sayeth: see l. 101 above and note.

206. which will restore] which must restore (1863–88).

209–12. The terminology here is strongly Pauline, but Lazarus does not obey Paul’s injunction to despise earthly life in order to ‘please God’, e.g. Romans viii 6–9: ‘For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.’ Although the ‘Spirit’ does dwell in Lazarus, he is enjoined to accept earthly conditions; cp. the development of this argument in Rabbi Ben Ezra 67–72 (p. 656).

213–15. With Karshish’s incredulity at the claims made by Christianity, here and at ll. 249–51, 260–2, cp. the concluding lines of Cleon (pp. 584–5).

213. affects: aims at, endeavours to (sense 3 in J.), as opposed to the sense in l. 228.

215. proselytes: converts.

221. carelessness: lack of care, indifference; see also l. 234n.

222–4. when Rome … at once: see ll. 26–8n.

226. apathetic: passionless, in a state of detachment from either joy or suffering. In this sense, apathy is a philosophy associated with the Stoics: OED cites Pope, Essay on Man ii 101–3: ‘In lazy Apathy let Stoics boast / Their Virtue fix’d; ’tis fix’d as in a frost, / Contracted all, retiring to the breast’.

228. affects: is fond of, pleased with, loves (sense 5 in J.); see l. 213n. the very brutes] the very beasts (H proof ).

229. flowers of the field: cp. Psalms ciii 15: ‘As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.’

230–1. The ‘tools’ are the processes of divine creation by which God, the ‘master workman’, makes the world of nature and man; Lazarus, whose revelation has given him a privileged insight into these processes, knows that the visible world expresses its divine origin. This extends the 18th century ‘argument from design’ in which God’s existence and benevolence were deduced from the coherence and beauty of the natural order. For a more sceptical treatment of such ‘natural theology’, see Caliban upon Setebos (p. 616), and cp. l. 306n.

232. The lamb is a traditional image of Christ, the ‘Lamb of God’ ( John i 29 and Revelation); with ‘harmless’, cp. (noting ll. 218–19) Philippians ii 13–15: ‘For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Do all things without murmurings and disputings, that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world.’

234. carelessness: either ‘indifference’ (as in l. 221) or frivolity (as in the ‘careless women’ rebuked in Isaiah xxxii 9–11).

235. promptly curbed] curbed by fear (H proof ).

236. certain travels] certain travel (1868–88).

237. To be] Myself (1863²), a rare example of a substantive variant unique to this ed.

239. And happed] And happened (1872), a rare example of a substantive variant unique to this ed.

240. sublimed: made sublime (ironic); always used by B. in this sense: cp. Sordello ii 649 (I 504), Popularity 33 (p. 453).

241. fantastically: irrationally, with a sense of capriciousness or absurdity ( J.). 243. ere this] ere thus (H proof, a mispr. not rec. in H proof²).

247–59. Karshish’s version of the events of the Crucifixion, in contrast to the Gospel narratives, sees Christ as no different from other sages who have fallen victim to the irrational expectations of their followers; cp. the career of Paracelsus and the speaker of Patriot (p. 214), among many examples in B.’s work. For the idea that Christ was a mere man, see headnote to A Death, pp. 717–18.

247. leech: physician; the sense was already archaic in B.’s time, but occurs frequently in poetry. An even more archaic sense is of Christ as healer: OED cites Chaucer, Summoner’s Tale 184: ‘Hye God, that is oure lyves leche’.

249–51. In all Gospel accounts, Jesus is accused of blasphemy; in Luke only, of rebellion; in none, of ‘wizardry’. See also ll. 213–15n.

250. a rule] a crown, (H proof ).

251. prodigious: combining the senses of ‘unnatural, abnormal’ and ‘amazing’.

252. the earthquake: caused by the Crucifixion, according to Matthew xxvii 51. Like the story of Lazarus itself this event appears in just one of the gospels, and is not corroborated by contemporary evidence from non-Christian writers. Karshish’s suggestion that it was the earthquake that marked the passing of his ‘sage’

underlines Strauss’s point that such stories represent ‘a poetical or mythical embellishment of the death of a distinguished man; as, for example, on the death of Caesar, Virgil is not content with eclipsing the sun, but also makes the Alps tremble with unwonted commotion’ (Life of Jesus 693).

255. That lived] Who lived (1863–88).

256. the mad people: cp. Sordello iv 703 (I 636).

257–9. Karshish suggests that the people may have executed their ‘wizard’ for his failure to stop the earthquake; with this view of miracles as a concession to the limited understanding of the multitude cp. B.’s play Return of the Druses (1842) iv 63–7; see also Arnold, Empedocles on Etna I ii 102–11.

258. virtue: healing power (cp. Mark v 30, where Jesus is touched and ‘immediately know[s] in himself that virtue had gone out of him’).

261. But take one] Take but this one (H proof ).

262. respect to] respect for (1868–88).

265. though in writing] yet in writing (H proof, but not H proof²).

269–70. Cp. John i 3, 10, 14: ‘All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made … He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.’ The notion that God sustains the world he has created is present in the Bible (e.g. Nehemiah ix 6: ‘thou hast made … the earth, and all things that are therein … and thou preservest them all’) but B. may be alluding here to the philosophical debate about God’s active presence being necessary for the continuation of the material universe.

269. Sustainer] sustainer (1865–88).

271. ’Sayeth: See l. 101n. such an One] such a One (1863²); such an one (H proof, 1868–88).

272. his own: Lazarus’s.

273. Lazarus is not mentioned in the Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion.

275–6. Jesus suggests (rather than declares) his divinity in a dialogue with his disciples in Matthew xvi 13–20; he also instructs them ‘that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ’ (the episode also appears in Mark and Luke). In John x 30 ff., Jesus delares ‘I and my Father are one’ and is accused of blasphemy by the Jews: ‘because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God’. The following chapter in John contains the story of Lazarus, whose sister says to Jesus: ‘I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world’ (xi 27). See also John v 17 ff.

276–7. this very Lazarus / Who saith] this very Lazarus. / He saith (H proof; H proof² does not record the full stop at the end of l. 276).

279. for remark?] for record! (H proof ).

280. a pool] a lake (H proof ).

281. Blue-flowering borage: Borage was commonly ‘used in medicinal cordials’ ( J.), hence Karshish’s interest in it; it was (and still is) believed to have originated in Aleppo in Syria. ‘According to Pliny, this flower has a stimulating effect upon the spirits’ (Glazebrook, Selections from the Poems of Robert Browning [1909] 134). 282. nitrous: ‘The natrum or nitre of the ancients, is a genuine, native, and pure salt … About Smyrna and Ephesus, and through a great part of Asia Minor, this salt is extremely frequent on the surface of the earth’ ( J., citing John Hill’s History of Fossils, 1748).

291–2. I crossed … cheek-teeth: cp. England in Italy 151–6 (p. 263).

293–4. The idea of the man in the moon can be found in most traditions; according to the Revd Timothy Harley’s Moon Lore (1885), spots or marks on the moon were interpreted in Jewish tradition as the outline of a man placed there by Moses for gathering sticks on the sabbath (p. 21). This notion underlies the Christian tradition associating moonspots with Cain carrying his bundle of sticks as an offering to the Lord; see Dante, Paradiso ii 46–51.

304–11. With this understanding of the doctrine of the Incarnation, cp. Ring x 1347–71.

305. Cp. Felicia Hemans’s sonnet ‘The Sisters of Bethany after the Death of Lazarus’ in which God is described as ‘the All Seeing and All Just’.

306. through the thunder: thunder was habitually regarded as a divine phenomenon in the ancient world; fear of thunder is a sign of Caliban’s primitive ‘natural theology’: ‘His thunder follows! Fool to gibe at Him!’ (Caliban upon Setebos 291, p. 641), while in another poem from DP, Mr. Sludge, it is argued that such ‘evidence’ of God’s power has been superseded in the modern world: ‘Lightning, forsooth? No word more upon that!’ (l. 1123, p. 832). the thunder comes] the thunder came (H proof, but not H proof²).

307. “O heart] “Oh, heart (H proof, but not H proof²).