47  A Death in the Desert

Text and publication

First publ. DP, 28 May 1864; repr. DP², 1868, 1880, 1888. The MS, part of the printer’s copy for DP, is at Morgan. It is a fairly clean copy, with some denser patches of re-drafting. The title page is misbound, coming between pp. 6 and 7 of the MS of the poem itself. There are very few variants between 1864 and subsequent editions, and none are of major significance except the omission of l. 213.

Composition and date

Critics have generally assumed that A Death represents a response to the views on the origins and authorship of the gospel of John put forward by Ernest Renan in his controversial and hugely influential Vie de Jésus (publ. 23 June 1863). This would place the composition of the poem in the period between early Nov. 1863, when B. told Isa Blagden that he had ‘just read’ Renan’s book (19 Nov. 1863; Dearest Isa 180), and 26 Apr. 1864, when he sent the proofs of DP to Moncure Conway (New Letters 160). (B.’s letter to Isa Blagden is discussed in more detail below; see Sources and influences.) In an influential discussion of the relation between the Vie de Jésus and A Death, Elinor Shaffer suggests that there is also ‘internal evidence’ in the poem itself which ‘points conclusively to the use of Renan’; but the evidence in question is in fact less than conclusive (see Sources and influences: (2) Contemporary religious history and controversy). The assumption that Renan prompted or influenced the poem was, moreover, directly contradicted by the Reverend J. Llewellyn Davies at a meeting of the Browning Society on 25 Feb. 1887, when he asserted that Browning ‘wrote the poem long prior to the publication of Renan’s work … [as] an answer to Strauss’ (cited in W.O. Raymond, The Infinite Moment (Toronto, 1950), p. 33). B. had been aware of Strauss’s Life of Jesus (1835) since the 1840s, if not earlier; it forms part of the background to CE & ED (see headnote to CE, III 43–4), and the German critic is mentioned by name in Bishop Blougram 577 (p. 317; see also Sources and influences below). If Llewellyn Davies is right – and, as Raymond notes, ‘one could wish that Mr. Davies had stated the source of his information’ (p. 34) – then the poem might have been written at any time during the 1850s or early 1860s. We know that some of the poems included in DP were written, or at least drafted, by the summer of 1860, and that B. had been working on a ‘long poem’ in the winter of 1859–60 (see Appendix C, p. 895). Moreover, A Death has affinities of theme and technique with a number of M & W poems, most notably An Epistle (p. 507) and Cleon (p. 563). Other evidence for a date in the 1850s is provided by the similarities between the poem and the episode in Sordello in which ‘John the Beloved’ says farewell to his ‘flock’ in Antioch at the house of Xanthus, a fictional follower (iii 963–94; I 592); B. was actively revising Sordello during 1855–6, and eventually published his revised version in the Poetical Works of 1863 (see headnote, I 354–55).

There are, however, other elements which link the poem to the early 1860s. In 1862 the German scholar Konstantin von Tischendorf published a facsimile of a Greek manuscript he had discovered in St. Catherine’s monastery on Mount Sinai. This Codex Sinaiticus, as it came to be known, contained very early texts of many books of the Old and New Testaments, as well as various annotations and commentaries from successive generations of interpreters. Some of these shed light on the process of the transmission of ancient texts, and attest to the culture of ‘prison scholarship’ amongst Christian martyrs: ‘A text of the Book of Esther cites its remarkable origin: “Copied and corrected against the Hexapla of Origen,” runs its subscription, “as corrected by Origen himself. The confessor Antoninus collated. I, Pamphilus, corrected the roll in prison”’ (Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians [Harmondsworth 1986] 471; Pamphilus was martyred in 309 at Caesarea). The Codex Sinaiticus also provides a good deal of information about the form of manuscripts in the ancient world; it is written on parchment, but each page contains four narrow columns which are believed to have been copied from earlier texts written on ‘rolls’ (see l. 2n.). Although there is no direct evidence that B. saw the Codex Sinaiticus, the poem’s account of the origins and transmission of the fictional document it contains might well have been influenced by von Tischendorf ’s discoveries. Additional evidence linking the poem to the 1860s has recently been put forward by Robert Inglesfield, who highlights an apparent reference to Herbert Spencer’s philosophical treatise First Principles (1862) in the poem (VP 41.3 [2003] 333–47; see ll. 393–401n.). If Inglesfield is correct, the poem must have been written, or at least redrafted, after 1862, which would make the suggestion of direct influence by Renan more plausible.

In the light of this evidence, we suggest that, though the poem may have been begun in the late 1850s, it was substantially revised and completed in 1862–3.

Setting

According to Revd G. U. Pope, who knew B. towards the end of the poet’s life, ‘[the] idea of the piece … is briefly this: – some Christian, whose name is not given (9, 10), is supposed to be examining his library – looking up and classifying his choice treasures. One imagines that he was an Ephesian (or perhaps an Alexandrian); that he may have lived in the beginning of the third century; that it was a time of hot persecution, when he was in daily peril of death; and that he is looking over a few of the more ancient Christian records to strengthen himself for coming trial, by the contemplation of the struggles of those that had gone before. He finds among others a parchment scroll attributed to Pamphylax of Antioch, who had died a martyr in Ephesus, just after the death of St John the Apostle. This MS. is described in a very minute and realistic way. It is No. 5 in his library; consists of three skins of parchment glued together; is in the Greek language; and is incomplete, since it ranges from Epsilon to Mu, so that four sections – pages we may call them – are missing in the beginning, and perhaps some at the end. This precious MS. is kept in a “select chest”, an ark containing the most precious part of his literary treasures’ (St. John in the Desert. An Introduction and Notes to Browning’s ‘A Death in the Desert’ [1897] 39–40). Pope adds that the first twelve lines of the poem – the ‘prologue’ – are ‘supposed to be written by this anonymous owner on the outer side of the parchment’, and that this prologue is followed by ‘the MS. itself of Pamphylax’ (p. 40).

There is some speculation and unsupported assertion in Pope’s account. The location of the document’s current owner is not specified in the poem, and nor is the place of martyrdom of Pamphylax. Pope’s assertion about the ‘prologue’ implies that the other sections in square brackets (ll. 82–104 and 666–88) are additions to the document by other hands, whereas it is equally possible to read them all as editorial insertions by the current owner, especially if lines 1–12 are read not as an annotation on the parchment itself, but as an introduction to a transcript of it being made by its owner for a third party. Pope’s account, however, does highlight the poem’s emphasis on the fragility of such early Christian documents, and on the dangers attending those who produced, owned or transmitted them; on this topic, see below, Sources.

Pamphylax’s narrative recounts the deathbed testimony of the Apostle John. The cave in which John, Pamphylax and the others are hiding from persecution must be just outside Ephesus, as the narrator returns to Ephesus after John’s death (l. 647). In placing John and his entourage in Ephesus, a city in modern-day Turkey, B. is following the tradition of the early church. Numerous sources place John in Ephesus at the end of his life; according to Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons at the end of the second century, ‘John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned on his breast … produced his gospel, while he was living at Ephesus in Asia’ (Adversus haereses III i 1; for Irenaeus’ story of John’s encounter at Ephesus with the heretic Cerinthus, see below, Sources). Perhaps the most striking parallel to the poem is provided by the so-called ‘Monarchian Prologue’ to John’s gospel, which dates from the fourth century. This Prologue is found in many of the MS versions of the Vulgate, and attempts to counteract speculation about its authenticity by providing information about the circumstances of its composition:

[John] wrote this gospel in Asia, after he had written the Apocalypse in the island of Patmos, in order that to whom the incorruptible beginning was ascribed in Genesis, to Him might also be ascribed the incorruptible end by a virgin in the Apocalypse, wherein Christ says: ‘I am Alpha and Omega.’ And it is this John, who knowing that the day of his retirement had come, having called together his disciples at Ephesus, and having proved Christ to them by many signs, descended into the place which had been dug for his sepulture, and after praying was gathered to his fathers, as free from the pain of death as he was from corruption of the flesh. (transl. John Chapman, Notes on the Early History of the Vulgate Gospels [1908] 228–9)

(For another possible allusion to the Monarchian Prologues, see l. 1n.) The precise date of John’s death is, however, rather less easy to pinpoint. B. adopts the tradition that John lived to a very old age; at l. 643 John speculates what might happen should he ‘tarry a new hundred years’. This would place the poem at the end of the first century of the Christian era. The narrator refers to ‘the decree’ (l. 23) and ‘the persecution’ (l. 41); this might, at first sight, appear to refer to the ‘second persecution’ of Christians during the reign of the Emperor Domitian (81–96 AD), but tradition links this persecution with John’s exile in Patmos and the composition of Revelation (see l. 140n.). There was, however, a widely held belief that the Emperor Trajan (ad 98–117) inaugurated a new persecution; Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, for instance, speaks of the ‘third persecution’ of Christians under Trajan, during which ‘many thousands of them [were] daily put to death, of which none did any thing contrary to the Roman laws worthy of persecution’ (ch. ii). The evidence for this persecution is a letter from Pliny the Younger to the Emperor, written in 112, asking for advice on how to deal with Christians. Trajan’s reply makes it clear that Christians are not to be actively ‘sought out’, and that anonymous denunciation is not acceptable, perhaps implying that these practices were widespread (Bettenson 6). The most likely explanation is that B. has inferred the existence of an ‘edict’ authorizing renewed persecution of Christians from this evidence and dated it to early in the reign of Trajan, around AD 98–100.

Sources and influences

(1) Biblical and patristic texts

Daniel Karlin (‘A Life in the Desert: Browning, Moses and St. John’, SBC xxv [Sept. 2003] 49–71) suggests that B. modelled the poem on the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, in which Moses, like B.’s St John in extreme old age, though unlike him in that ‘his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated’ (xxxiv 7), delivers a deathbed speech which sums up a lifetime’s service to God, admonishes the living, and forecasts the backsliding of future generations; like John he dies in the wilderness and ‘no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day’ (xxxiv 6). For B.’s interest in the figure of Moses as a type of the prophet-poet, see below, Parallels in B.

The words attributed to St John in the poem are imagined as reaching us through a complex and unstable process of textual transmission, analogous to that found in early ‘witnesses’ to the existence of John’s gospel. The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius (c. AD 260–341), for instance, makes reference to a five-volume work by Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, entitled Expositions of the Oracles of the Lord, written around 130: ‘Now Papias himself in the introduction to his writings makes no claim to be a hearer and eye-witness of the holy Apostles, but to have received the contents of the faith from those that were known to them. He tells us this in his own words: “I shall not hesitate to set down for you, along with my interpretations, all things which I learnt from the elders with care and recorded with care, being well assured of their truth.” ’ According to Eusebius, Papias goes on to record some of the observations of ‘John the Elder’ on the gospel of Mark: ‘He says: “The Elder used to say this also: Mark became the interpreter of Peter and he wrote down accurately, but not in order, as much as he remembered of the sayings and doings of Christ. For he was not a hearer or a follower of the Lord, but afterwards, as I said, of Peter, who adapted his teachings to the needs of the moment and did not make an ordered exposition of the sayings of the Lord” ’ (Bettenson 38, 39). The sayings of ‘John the Elder’ are, then, given at third hand by Eusebius, in a process with obvious analogies to the poem’s own procedures. The doubts introduced by this unstable process of transmission are underlined by the fact that the ‘John the Elder’ cited by Papias has been seen by many commentators as a different person from the Apostle John (on the controversy over the authenticity of the writings attributed to John, see below). B.’s fictional document is, therefore, intended to imitate the form of many lost early Christian documents, like Papias’s Expositions, and indeed like the Life of Pamphilus also written by Eusebius (see Composition and date). B. objects to Renan’s interpretation of the testimony of Papias in his letter to Isa Blagden; see below.

A Death also makes reference to the tradition that John’s gospel was written in response to the emerging Gnostic theology, later characterized by the church as heretical; see esp. ll. 327–33. John mentions two antagonists by name – Ebion and Cerinthus – and the anonymous commentator who adds the closing lines to the poem also mentions Cerinthus. Both are known about exclusively through the writings of the Church Fathers; the first mention of Cerinthus, for example, occurs in the writings of Irenaeus (c. AD 170). According to Irenaeus, Cerinthus was a contemporary of John; he tells the story of how ‘John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing, exclaiming, “Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within” ’ (Adversus haereses III iii 4). Both the Ebionites and Cerinthus attempted to separate the human and divine natures of Christ. The Ebionites ‘revered Jesus as the greatest of the prophets, endowed with supernatural virtue and power’ but ‘obstinately rejected the preceding existence and divine perfections of the Logos, or Son of God, which are so clearly defined in the Gospel of St. John’ (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxi). Cerinthus too ‘distinguished between Jesus and Christ’:

Jesus was mere man, though eminent in holiness. He suffered and died and was raised from the dead, or, as some say Cerinthus taught, He will be raised from the dead at the Last Day and all men will rise with Him. At the moment of baptism, Christ or the Holy Ghost was sent by the Highest God, and dwelt in Jesus teaching Him, what not even the angels knew, the Unknown God. This union between Jesus and Christ continues till the Passion, when Jesus suffers alone and Christ returns to heaven. (Catholic Encyclopaedia)

The first Epistle of John, written against the ‘many false prophets’ who have ‘gone out into the world’ has often been seen as an attempt to counteract these specific ‘heresies’: ‘Hereby know ye the Spirit of God; Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God; and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world’ (1 John iv 2–3).

B.’s other main source in the poem is the writing attributed to John himself. In addition to the gospel, B.’s John alludes to the Epistles which bear his name (e.g. ll. 131–2n.) and to Revelation (e.g. l. 141n.). There are also quotations from the other gospels, most notably in John’s discussion of his demeanour during the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus, when he uses an expression found in both Matthew and Mark.

(2) Contemporary religious history and controversy

(i) The background to the debate

The poem’s fidelity to the traditions surrounding the life of St John, and its frequent use of the words of the five books attributed to John in the New Testament, constitute an implicit rejoinder to some of the scepticism about the authenticity of John’s gospel expressed by biblical critics during the nineteenth century. By the time of the poem’s publication the so-called Higher Criticism of the Bible, which subjected it to rigorous textual and historical scrutiny, had placed the gospel of John under suspicion for a number of reasons. (On the Higher Criticism see headnote to CE & ED, III 43–4). The account of the life of Jesus given in John differs markedly from that contained in the other three (‘synoptic’) gospels; as Philip Harwood puts it in his lectures on Strauss, the New Testament contains ‘two versions of Christ and Christianity … one in the first three gospels taken collectively, and the other in the fourth gospel’ (German Anti-Supernaturalism [1841] 35). A number of incidents – most famously, the resurrection of Lazarus – occur only in John’s gospel (see headnote to An Epistle, pp. 507–9); and many of the incidents narrated by the synoptics are absent from John. The language of the fourth gospel is, moreover, very different from that of the other three gospels, and seems to anticipate, or to have been influenced by, the theological debates and heresies of the second century; the Jesus of John’s gospel ‘is a mystic, a theologian of the Alexandrine school, discoursing of his divine sonship, his coming down from heaven, the need of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and other things of that kind … We have got far away from the old gospel of the kingdom, to a new gospel of the Logos and the Paraclete’ (Harwood, German Anti-Supernaturalism 35–36). In addition, the five books of the New Testament which carry the name of John (the gospel, Revelation and the three epistles) contain little or no internal evidence of his authorship: ‘Only the Apocalypse [Revelation] mentions the name “John” in the text, and it does not say that this John was one of the sons of Zebedee and an Apostle; the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle claim to be by people who knew Jesus intimately, but neither actually claims to be written by John’ ( J.C. O’Neill, ‘The Study of the New Testament’, in Nineteenth Century Religious Thought in the West, 3 vols [Cambridge, 1988], vol. iii, p. 153). There are also significant differences of style and tone between these various books, leading to speculation that they might not in fact have been written by the same author. Finally, the references to and quotations from John’s gospel in the work of his immediate contemporaries and successors are relatively few in number, and date from the latter part of the second century; this would imply that the gospel was not written (as it claims to be) by an intimate associate of Jesus who witnessed the events depicted, but by someone writing during the second century of the Christian era.

(ii) Strauss’s Life of Jesus

In 1820 Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider’s Probabilia de evangelii et epistolarum Ioannis apostoli indole et origine (1820) amassed the evidence against the traditional ascription of authorship of the fourth gospel to the Apostle; Bretschneider published his book in Latin to shield the public from his findings, but still, according to a modern historian of the period, managed to ‘[stir] up a storm of attention over the authorship of John’ (Sean P. Kealy, John’s Gospel and the History of Biblical Interpretation [Lewiston 2002] 379). It was, however, David Friedrich Strauss who first confronted the public, not just of Germany but of Europe as a whole, with an analysis which cast considerable doubt on the authenticity of John’s gospel and indeed of all the gospel narratives. Strauss’s approach was to see the gospels not as historical accounts of the life of Jesus written by eye-witnesses, but as poetic or mythological expressions of the beliefs and ideas about the Messiah prevalent amongst Jews and early Christians. His reading of John’s gospel convinced him that it was the least historical and the most overtly mythological of the four gospels. In his examination of the fifth chapter of John, for instance, concerning a cure wrought by Jesus on the Sabbath, Strauss notes the differences between ‘the practical spirit’ of Jesus’ discourse in the synoptics and the metaphysical quality of his teaching in John:

The fourth Evangelist … makes him argue from the uninterrupted activity of God, and reminds us by the expression which he puts into the mouth of Jesus, My Father worketh hitherto … of a principle in the Alexandrian metaphysics, viz. God never ceases to act … a metaphysical proposition more likely to be familiar to the author of the fourth gospel than to Jesus. (Life of Jesus, tr. Marian Evans [George Eliot], 1846, rpt. 1892, p. 372)

Such infiltrations of ‘Alexandrian metaphysics’ are to be found everywhere in John, and lead Strauss to conclude that most of the speeches attributed to Jesus in this book are ‘free compositions of the Evangelist written in the spirit of Alexandrian or Hellenic philosophy’ (O’Neill, ‘Study’, p. 157). External evidence – ‘[the] earliest quotation expressly stated to be from the Gospel of John is found in Theophilus of Antioch, about the year 172’ (Life of Jesus 73) – also leads to the conclusion that the gospel is a product of the latter part of that century, and has no genuine connection with the Apostle John.

Earlier writers who had arrived at a similar conclusion (most notably Lessing in the Wölfenbuttel Fragments) had suggested that the gospels, which take the form of first-hand accounts of the life of Jesus, were a deliberate attempt to deceive the public, but Strauss sees them as the result of an inevitable and entirely natural process:

According to all the rules of probability, the Apostles were all dead before the close of the first century; not excepting John, who is said to have lived till A.D. 100; concerning whose age and death, however, many fables were invented. What an ample scope for attributing to the Apostles manuscripts they never wrote! The Apostles, dispersed abroad, had died in the latter half of the first century; the Gospel became more widely preached throughout the Roman Empire, and by degrees acquired a fixed form … It was doubtless from this orally circulated Gospel that the many passages agreeing accurately with passages in our Gospels, which occur without any indication of their source in the earliest ecclesiastical writers, were actually derived. Before long this oral traditionary Gospel became deposited in different manuscripts; this person or that, possibly an apostle, furnishing the principal features of the history … It appears that these manuscripts did not originally bear the names of their compilers … Nothing however was more natural than the supposition which arose among the early Christians, that the histories concerning Jesus which were circulated and used by the churches had been written by his immediate disciples. (Life of Jesus 73–4)

Although Strauss denies the historical accuracy and authenticity of John’s gospel, he does not impute dishonesty either to the Apostle or to the anonymous gospel writer. The former is innocent of things that were later done in his name; and the latter is merely setting down what he and others like him believe the Messiah must have done, according to canons of evidence and verisimilitude very different from those prevailing in the nineteenth century.

Strauss’s work was translated into English by Marian Evans (the future George Eliot) in 1846; but there is extensive evidence of its circulation in what Timothy Larsen calls ‘plebeian, infidel circles’ before this date (Contested Christianity: The Political and Social Contexts of Victorian Theology [Waco, TX 2004] 44). Although it was neither plebeian nor infidel, the Unitarian South Place Chapel in London was open to radical new ideas emanating from Germany; and in 1841 Philip Harwood published his series of six lectures given there on Strauss’s Life of Jesus under the title German Anti-Supernaturalism. B. knew South Place Chapel well; it was set up by his early mentor W. J. Fox, and his childhood friend Eliza Flower was choirmaster there (Maynard 183). It is, under these circumstances, possible that he might have heard Harwood’s elegant and lucid exposition of Strauss’s doctrines; but, even if he did not, Harwood’s lectures indicate the way in which Strauss was received and understood in the advanced and liberal dissenting circles to which B. belonged.

At the end of his first lecture, in which he describes the principal features of Strauss’s ‘mythological’ approach to the gospels, Harwood offers his own opinion that such a view is not ‘antecedently improbable’:

[The gospels] are not, in any sense, the beginning, the cause of Christianity, but an effect of it. Christianity, in its beginning, was traditionary; communicated orally from the living heart to the living heart, in words that were spirit and life. It was not at all a thing of books. It did not grow up among a writing and reading people, but among a speaking and hearing people. Men would not begin with writing about Christ; they would leave that till they found themselves beginning to forget him, and would then take pen and parchment as helps to feeble and fading memories. […] It seems altogether a likely thing … that [Christianity’s] gospels should be of this mixed, indefinite, second-hand sort; half poetry and half tradition; mere offshoots and collateral results and expressions of the Gospel … a growth from the roots, not of facts scrupulously collected, rigidly tested and carefully arranged, and discourses taken down in shorthand as from the lips of a theological lecturer – but of ideas, impulses, memories and hopes, to which past, present and future, things visible and things invisible, furnished their several contributions, in proportions which neither they who wrote nor we who read can scientifically analyse. (German Anti-Supernaturalism 13–14)

The idea of taking ‘pen and parchment as helps to feeble and fading memories’ anticipates the poem’s description both of the fictional document itself and of the gospel of John (which is already in semi-permanent form at the time of John’s death, according to the poem; see l. 60n.). Harwood also emphasizes the way in which the perception of Jesus changed as the prospects of the Second Coming receded, leading to a greater willingness to impute messianic miracles (such as the raising of Lazarus from the dead) to Jesus: ‘as the Second Coming went further and further off into the remoteness of uncertainty, the church would make more and more of the First Coming; would turn to the past rather than the future, and incorporate the Messianic idea there, with growing distinctness and fulness. See a suggestion to this effect in Schnitzer’s Review of the German translation of Mr. Hennell’s “Inquiry;” Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung, May 1840’ (German Anti-Supernaturalism 68n.). The supreme miracle – the resurrection of Jesus himself – would have had the strongest effect, gradually transforming Christians’ understanding of the life of Jesus through a natural process of growth and ‘accretion’: ‘And, this faith [in the resurrection] once gained, we may think how it would react on all their recollections of the past; how the whole history of Jesus would shape itself more and more into poetry and mythus … Every text would have a new interpretation; every recollected fact would take a new shape and meaning; tradition would grow fast and freely, accumulating ever fresh and varied supernaturalism … And so it would go on, gaining fresh accretions day by day, till the time came for fixing the whole in writing’ (pp. 88–9; cp. esp. ll. 168–75; and for another parallel with Harwood, see ll. 393–401n.)

(iii) Renan’s Vie de Jésus

B.’s longstanding interest in questions connected with the Higher Criticism of the Bible, attested to by both CE & ED and Bishop Blougram, seems to have been revived by the publication of Ernest Renan’s Vie de Jésus. Renan’s novelistic rewriting of the life of Jesus attracted a great deal of interest throughout Europe, and particularly in Britain. Along with controversial publications such as Essays and Reviews (1860), a volume of essays by various authors who held liberal theological views, and Bishop John Colenso’s The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined (1862), Renan’s book helped to prompt what was felt by many British intellectuals to be a long overdue discussion of the status of the foundations of Christianity; see, for instance, James Anthony Froude’s ‘Plea for the Free Discussion of Theological Difficulties’ (1863). B. himself, in another of the DP poems, Gold Hair, alluded to this climate of opinion:

The candid incline to surmise of late

   That the Christian faith may be false, I find;

For our Essays-and-Reviews debate

   Begins to tell on the public mind,

And Colenso’s words have weight … (ll. 126–30)

In his letter to Isa Blagden (see Composition and date), B. focuses on Renan’s interpretation of the evidence for the authenticity of the gospel narratives:

I have just read Renan’s book, and find it weaker and less honest than I was led to expect. I am glad it is written: if he thinks he can prove what he says, he has fewer doubts on the subject than I—but mine are none of his. As to the Strauss school, I don’t understand their complacency about the book—he admits many points they have thought it essential to dispute—and substitutes his explanation, which I think impossible. The want of candour is remarkable: you could no more deduce the character of his text from the substance of his notes, than rewrite a novel from simply reading the mottoes at the head of each chapter: they often mean quite another thing,—unless he cuts away the awkward part—as in the parable of the Rich Man & Lazarus. His admissions & criticisms on S^t John are curious. I make no doubt he imagines himself stating a fact, with the inevitable license—so must John have done. His argument against the genuineness of Matthew—from the reference to what Papias says of the λογία—is altogether too gross a blunder to be believed in a Scholar,— and is yet repeated half a dozen times throughout the book … [miracles] were cheats, and their author a cheat! What do you think of the figure he cuts who makes his hero participate in the wretched affair with Lazarus, and then calls him all the pretty names that follow? Take away every claim to man’s respect from Christ and then give him a wreath of gum-roses and calico-lilies—or as Constance says to Arthur in King John—“Give Grannam kingdom, and it grannam will Give it a plum, an apple and a fig”. (Dearest Isa 180)

Renan differs from Strauss, at least in the earlier editions of the Vie de Jésus, in attempting to argue that all four of the gospels have a basis in historical fact: ‘En somme, j’admets comme authentiques les quatre évangiles canoniques. Tous, selon moi, remontent au premier siècle, et ils sont à peu près des auteurs à qui on les attribue; mais leur valeur historique est fort diverse’ [To sum up, I accept the four canonical gospels as authentic. For me, all of them have their origins in the first century, and are more or less by the authors to whom they have been attributed; but their historical value differs considerably.] Renan admits the ‘serious problems’ caused by this assumption in the case of John, and goes on to offer the following explanation:

On est tenté de croire que Jean, dans sa vieillesse, ayant lu les récits évangéliques qui circulaient, d’une part, y remarqua diverses inexactitudes, de l’autre, fut froissé de voir qu’on ne lui accordait pas dans l’histoire du Christ une assez grande place; qu’alors il commença à dicter une foule de choses qu’il savait mieux que les autres, avec l’intention de montrer que, dans beaucoup de cas où on ne parlait que de Pierre, il avait figuré avec et avant lui. Déjà, du vivant de Jésus, ces légers sentiments de jalousie s’étaient trahis entre les fils de Zébédée et les autres disciples. Depuis la mort de Jacques, son frère, Jean restait seul héritier des souvenirs intimes dont ces deux apôtres, de l’aveu de tous, étaient dépositaires. De là sa perpétuelle attention à rappeler qu’il est le dernier survivant des témoins oculaires, et le plaisir qu’il prend à raconter des circonstances que lui seul pouvait connaître. De là, tant de petits traits de précision qui semblent comme des scolies d’un annotateur: «Il était six heures;» «il était nuit;» «cet homme s’appelait Malchus;» «ils avaient allumé un réchaud, car il faisait froid;» «cette tunique était sans couture.» De là, enfin, le désordre de la rédaction, l’irrégularité de la marche, le décousu des premiers chapitres; autant de traits inexplicables dans la supposition où notre évangile ne serait qu’une thèse de théologie sans valeur historique, et qui, au contraire, se comprennent parfaitement, si l’on y voit, conformément à la tradition, des souvenirs de vieil-lard, tantôt d’une prodigieuse fraîcheur, tantôt ayant subi d’étranges altérations. (Vie de Jésus [Paris, 1863], pp. xxvii–xxix).

[It is tempting to believe that John, in his old age, having read the evangelical stories in circulation, on the one hand noticed various inaccuracies, and on the other was offended to see that he had not been accorded a sufficiently important place in the story of Christ; that he then began to dictate a mass of things he knew better than the others, with the intention of showing that, in numerous instances where Peter alone was spoken of, he had figured alongside and ahead of him. Already, during Jesus’ lifetime, these small traces of jealousy between the sons of Zebedee and the other disciples had manifested themselves. Since the death of his brother James, John was the sole inheritor of intimate memories of which these two Apostles were, according to the testimony of all, the beneficiaries. Hence his habit of continually drawing attention to the fact that he is the last surviving eye-witness, and the pleasure he takes in recounting circumstances only he could have known: ‘It was six o’clock’; ‘it was night’; ‘this man was called Malchus’; ‘they had lit a brazier, because it was cold’; ‘this tunic was seamless’. Hence, finally, the lack of order in the redaction, the irregularity of the movement, the disjointedness of the early chapters; all are inexplicable features on the assumption that our gospel is a theological treatise without historical value, but are perfectly comprehensible if one sees in it (in accordance with tradition) the memories of an old man, at times of an astounding freshness, at times having undergone strange alterations.]

Like Harwood, then, Renan rejects the Straussian understanding of the fourth gospel as ‘a theological treatise’, and prefers to see it as the result of a natural process; John’s memories, varying in precision and accuracy, form the basis of the narrative constructed by his followers. This is, presumably, one of the points B. was referring to in his comments on the ‘complacency’ of the Straussians.

As B.’s letter to Isa Blagden indicates, he had doubts about the intellectual honesty of Renan’s procedure in the Vie de Jésus. Some of Renan’s difficulties arise from his attempt to see John and the other evangelists as sources of genuine historical information about the life of Jesus, while citing in support of this view the work of Strauss and the Tübingen School which, as we have seen, represents the gospels as more or less devoid of factual content. (Renan in fact resolved this difficulty in later editions of the Vie de Jésus by removing the claim that the gospels were written by the first-century followers of Jesus whose names they bear.) This means, as Elinor Shaffer points out in ‘Kubla Khan’ and The Fall of Jerusalem (Cambridge 1980), that he was forced to find psychological explanations where Strauss and his followers had offered textual or mythological ones. Thus, for instance, what B. calls ‘the wretched affair with Lazarus’ is explained by Strauss as a later projection of messianic attributes onto Jesus, but by Renan as a demonstration of Jesus’ power thought up by Lazarus’s family at Bethany and half-willingly participated in by Jesus. Shaffer is, however, guilty of overstating the extent to which Renan ‘[attacks] John as dishonest and Jesus as duplicitous’ (p. 194). One of the key differences between John and the Synoptics concerns the crucifixion; John represents ‘the disciple … whom [ Jesus] loved’ as standing alongside Mary at the foot of the cross, while the other gospels fail to mention this fact. Shaffer suggests that this episode epitomizes for Renan the self-aggrandisement apparent throughout John’s gospel, citing in evidence one of Renan’s footnotes on the passage in question ( John xix 25–27):

This is, in my opinion, one of those features in which John betrays his personality and the desire he has of giving himself importance[.] John, after the death of Jesus, appears in fact to have received the mother of his master into his house, and to have adopted her … The great consideration which Mary enjoyed in the early church, doubtless led John to pretend that Jesus, whose favourite disciple he wished to be regarded [sic], had, when dying, recommended to his care all that was dearest to him. (‘Kubla Khan’ 196–7)

Shaffer, however, mistranslates the French word ‘prétendre’ (it does not mean ‘pretend’ but ‘claim’); there is no suggestion of deception in the original. Moreover, there is no warrant in the poem or elsewhere for Shaffer’s assertion that ‘Browning fully accepted the basic position of the Tübingen school as to the lateness and philosophical gnosticism of the Fourth Gospel’ (p. 209); B.’s poem, with its dependence on tradition and the words attributed to John in the New Testament, in fact implies a more conservative position than either Strauss’s or Renan’s on the question of apostolic authorship of the fourth gospel.

3 Literary and artistic sources

The modern (post-medieval) tradition of writing narrative or dramatic poems set in biblical times reaches back to Milton’s Samson Agonistes (publ. 1671), which like A Death relates the last hours of its protagonist, but there is almost no precedent for a poem which claims to reproduce the voice of one of Jesus’ disciples, but in which what is spoken goes beyond a paraphrase of the biblical text. B. will have known works by Romantic writers such as Byron’s Cain (1821) and Coleridge’s ‘The Wanderings of Cain’ (publ. 1828), as well as EBB.’s The Seraphim (1837) and A Drama of Exile (1844); note that EBB. herself had turned in the 1850s to contemporary political and social settings. Painting may also be of importance in the poem’s conception, not just the long tradition of religious genre painting depicting the deathbed of a saint surrounded by disciples, or saints who famously lived and died in deserts (e.g. St Paul the Hermit, often represented in the cave where he lived and died) but the more modern work of the Pre-Raphaelite school whose treatment of biblical subjects emphasized the symbolic function of realistic, ‘historical’ detail, as in John Everett Millais’s Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) or William Holman Hunt’s The Scapegoat (1856).

Parallels in B.

As has been mentioned in Composition, the poem forms a kind of trilogy, with An Epistle and Cleon, of works set in the years immediately following Jesus’ death; the late poem Imperante Augusto Natus Est (Asolando, 1889) is set just before Jesus’ birth. Like A Death, An Epistle and Cleon are primarily concerned, in terms of their religious thought, with the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, the transcendent ‘event’ which, whether ‘historically’ true or not, B. believed offered mankind the perfect conjunction of absolute power with absolute love: the clearest statement of this belief is in another poem with a biblical subject, Saul (III 491).

St John makes an appearance at the end of bk iii of Sordello (see Composition and date). The figure of the prophet in the wilderness is principally associated with Moses, again in Sordello (iii 790–804, I 580–2) and in One Word More (see ll. 73–108, pp. 606–9). Deathbed utterances in B. include Tomb at St. Praxed’s (p. 232), Rabbi Ben Ezra’s ‘Song of Death’ in Holy-Cross Day (p. 549), and Guido’s second monologue in bk. xi of Ring; the Pope’s monologue in bk. x comes close to being a deathbed speech, and the Pope resembles St John in being old, wise and full of foreboding about the future of the Christian faith. Ring is the poem’s most significant parallel for another reason, namely its preoccupation with the transmission of stories, both orally and by writing, and with the problem of determining ‘truth’ by reference to a document, however ‘authentic’ it may appear.

[Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene:

It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth,

Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek,

And goeth from Epsilon down to Mu:

5  Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest,

Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth,

Covered with cloth of hair, and lettered Xi,

From Xanthus, my wife’s uncle, now at peace:

Mu and Epsilon stand for my own name,

10  I may not write it, but I make a cross

To show I wait His coming, with the rest,

And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.]

I said, “If one should wet his lips with wine,

And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find,

15  Or else the lappet of a linen robe,

Into the water-vessel, lay it right,

And cool his forehead just above the eyes,

The while a brother, kneeling either side,

Should chafe each hand and try to make it warm,—

20  He is not so far gone but he might speak.”

This did not happen in the outer cave,

Nor in the secret chamber of the rock,

Where, sixty days since the decree was out,

We had him, bedded on a camel-skin,

25  And waited for his dying all the while;

But in the midmost grotto: since noon’s light

Reached there a little, and we would not lose

The last of what might happen on his face.

I at the head, and Xanthus at the feet,

30  With Valens and the Boy, had lifted him,

And brought him from the chamber in the depths,

And laid him in the light where we might see:

For certain smiles began about his mouth,

And his lids moved, presageful of the end.

35  Beyond, and half way up the mouth o’ the cave,

The Bactrian convert, having his desire,

Kept watch, and made pretence to graze a goat

That gave us milk, on rags of various herb,

Plantain and quitch, the rocks’ shade keeps alive:

40  So that if any thief or soldier passed,

(Because the persecution was aware)

Yielding the goat up promptly with his life,

Such man might pass on, joyful at a prize,

Nor care to pry into the cool o’ the cave.

45  Outside was all noon and the burning blue.

“Here is wine,” answered Xanthus,—dropped a drop;

I stooped and placed the lap of cloth aright,

Then chafed his right hand, and the Boy his left:

But Valens had bethought him, and produced

50  And broke a ball of nard, and made perfume.

Only, he did—not so much wake, as—turn

And smile a little, as a sleeper does

If any dear one call him, touch his face—

And smiles and loves, but will not be disturbed.

55  Then Xanthus said a prayer, but still he slept:

It is the Xanthus that escaped to Rome,

Was burned, and could not write the chronicle.

Then the Boy sprang up from his knees, and ran,

Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought,

60  And fetched the seventh plate of graven lead

Out of the secret chamber, found a place,

Pressing with finger on the deeper dints,

And spoke, as ’twere his mouth proclaiming first,

“I am the Resurrection and the Life.”

65  Whereat he opened his eyes wide at once,

And sat up of himself, and looked at us;

And thenceforth nobody pronounced a word:

Only, outside, the Bactrian cried his cry

Like the lone desert-bird that wears the ruff,

70  As signal we were safe, from time to time.

First he said, “If a friend declared to me,

This my son Valens, this my other son,

Were James and Peter,—nay, declared as well

This lad was very John,—I could believe!

75  —Could, for a moment, doubtlessly believe:

So is myself withdrawn into my depths,

The soul retreated from the perished brain

Whence it was wont to feel and use the world

Through these dull members, done with long ago.

80  Yet I myself remain; I feel myself:

And there is nothing lost. Let be, awhile!”

[This is the doctrine he was wont to teach,

How divers persons witness in each man,

Three souls which make up one soul: first, to wit,

85  A soul of each and all the bodily parts,

Seated therein, which works, and is what Does,

And has the use of earth, and ends the man

Downward: but, tending upward for advice,

Grows into, and again is grown into

90  By the next soul, which, seated in the brain,

Useth the first with its collected use,

And feeleth, thinketh, willeth,—is what Knows:

Which, duly tending upward in its turn,

Grows into, and again is grown into

95  By the last soul, that uses both the first,

Subsisting whether they assist or no,

And, constituting man’s self, is what Is—

And leans upon the former, makes it play,

As that played off the first: and, tending up,

100  Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man

Upward in that dread point of intercourse,

Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him.

What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls, one man.

I give the glossa of Theotypas.]

105  And then, “A stick, once fire from end to end;

Now, ashes save the tip that holds a spark!

Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itself

A little where the fire was: thus I urge

The soul that served me, till it task once more

110  What ashes of my brain have kept their shape,

And these make effort on the last o’ the flesh,

Trying to taste again the truth of things—”

(He smiled)—“their very superficial truth;

As that ye are my sons, that it is long

115  Since James and Peter had release by death,

And I am only he, your brother John,

Who saw and heard, and could remember all.

Remember all! It is not much to say.

What if the truth broke on me from above

120  As once and oft-times? Such might hap again:

Doubtlessly He might stand in presence here,

With head wool-white, eyes flame, and feet like brass,

The sword and the seven stars, as I have seen—

I who now shudder only and surmise

125  ‘How did your brother bear that sight and live?’

“If I live yet, it is for good, more love

Through me to men: be nought but ashes here

That keep awhile my semblance, who was John,—

Still, when they scatter, there is left on earth

130  No one alive who knew (consider this!)

—Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands

That which was from the first, the Word of Life.

How will it be when none more saith ‘I saw?’

“Such ever was love’s way: to rise, it stoops.

135  Since I, whom Christ’s mouth taught, was bidden teach,

I went, for many years, about the world,

Saying ‘It was so; so I heard and saw,’

Speaking as the case asked: and men believed.

Afterward came the message to myself

140  In Patmos isle; I was not bidden teach,

But simply listen, take a book and write,

Nor set down other than the given word,

With nothing left to my arbitrament

To choose or change: I wrote, and men believed.

145  Then, for my time grew brief, no message more,

No call to write again, I found a way,

And, reasoning from my knowledge, merely taught

Men should, for love’s sake, in love’s strength, believe;

Or I would pen a letter to a friend

150  And urge the same as friend, nor less nor more:

Friends said I reasoned rightly, and believed.

But at the last, why, I seemed left alive

Like a sea-jelly weak on Patmos strand,

To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I fared

155  When there was mid-sea, and the mighty things;

Left to repeat, ‘I saw, I heard, I knew,’

And go all over the old ground again,

With Antichrist already in the world,

And many Antichrists, who answered prompt

160  ‘Am I not Jasper as thyself art John?

Nay, young, whereas through age thou mayest forget:

Wherefore, explain, or how shall we believe?’

I never thought to call down fire on such,

Or, as in wonderful and early days,

165  Pick up the scorpion, tread the serpent dumb;

But patient stated much of the Lord’s life

Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work:

Since much that at the first, in deed and word, Lay simply and sufficiently exposed,

170  Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match,

Fed through such years, familiar with such light,

Guarded and guided still to see and speak)

Of new significance and fresh result;

What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars,

175  And named them in the Gospel I have writ.

For men said, ‘It is getting long ago:’

‘Where is the promise of His coming?’—asked

These young ones in their strength, as loth to wait,

Of me who, when their sires were born, was old.

180  I, for I loved them, answered, joyfully,

Since I was there, and helpful in my age;

And, in the main, I think such men believed.

Finally, thus endeavouring, I fell sick,

Ye brought me here, and I supposed the end,

185  And went to sleep with one thought that, at least,

Though the whole earth should lie in wickedness,

We had the truth, might leave the rest to God.

Yet now I wake in such decrepitude

As I had slidden down and fallen afar,

190  Past even the presence of my former self,

Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap,

Till I am found away from my own world,

Feeling for foot-hold through a blank profound,

Along with unborn people in strange lands,

195  Who say—I hear said or conceive they say—

‘Was John at all, and did he say he saw?

Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!’

“And how shall I assure them? Can they share

—They, who have flesh, a veil of youth and strength

200  About each spirit, that needs must bide its time,

Living and learning still as years assist

which wear the thickness thin, and let man see—

With me who hardly am withheld at all,

But shudderingly, scarce a shred between,

205  Lie bare to the universal prick of light?

Is it for nothing we grow old and weak,

We whom God loves? When pain ends, gain ends too.

To me, that story—ay, that Life and Death

Of which I wrote ‘it was’—to me, it is;

210  —Is, here and now: I apprehend nought else.

Is not God now i’ the world His power first made?

Is not His love at issue still with sin,

Closed with and cast and conquered, crucified

Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?

215  Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?

Yea, and the Resurrection and Uprise

To the right hand of the throne—what is it beside,

When such truth, breaking bounds, o’erfloods my soul,

And, as I saw the sin and death, even so

220  See I the need yet transiency of both,

The good and glory consummated thence?

I saw the Power; I see the Love, once weak,

Resume the Power: and in this word ‘I see,’

Lo, there is recognized the Spirit of both

225  That, moving o’er the spirit of man, unblinds

His eye and bids him look. These are, I see;

But ye, the children, His beloved ones too,

Ye need,—as I should use an optic glass

I wondered at erewhile, somewhere i’ the world,

230  It had been given a crafty smith to make;

A tube, he turned on objects brought too close,

Lying confusedly insubordinate

For the unassisted eye to master once:

Look through his tube, at distance now they lay,

235  Become succinct, distinct, so small, so clear!

Just thus, ye needs must apprehend what truth

I see, reduced to plain historic fact,

Diminished into clearness, proved a point

And far away: ye would withdraw your sense

240  From out eternity, strain it upon time,

Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death,

Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,

As though a star should open out, all sides,

And grow the world on you, as it is my world.

245  “For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,

And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,—

Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love,

How love might be, hath been indeed, and is;

And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost

250  Such prize despite the envy of the world,

And, having gained truth, keep truth: that is all.

But see the double way wherein we are led,

How the soul learns diversely from the flesh!

With flesh, that hath so little time to stay,

255  And yields mere basement for the soul’s emprise,

Expect prompt teaching. Helpful was the light,

And warmth was cherishing and food was choice

To every man’s flesh, thousand years ago,

As now to yours and mine; the body sprang

260  At once to the height, and stayed: but the soul,—no!

Since sages who, this noontide, meditate

In Rome or Athens, may descry some point

Of the eternal power, hid yestereve;

And as thereby the power’s whole mass extends,

265  So much extends the æther floating o’er,

The love that tops the might, the Christ in God.

Then, as new lessons shall be learned in these

Till earth’s work stop and useless time run out,

So duly, daily, needs provision be

270  For keeping the soul’s prowess possible,

Building new barriers as the old decay,

Saving us from evasion of life’s proof,

Putting the question ever, ‘Does God love,

And will ye hold that truth against the world?’

275  Ye know there needs no second proof with good

Gained for our flesh from any earthly source:

We might go freezing, ages,—give us fire,

Thereafter we judge fire at its full worth,

And guard it safe through every chance, ye know!

280  That fable of Prometheus and his theft,

How mortals gained Jove’s fiery flower, grows old

(I have been used to hear the pagans own)

And out of mind; but fire, howe’er its birth,

Here is it, precious to the sophist now

285  Who laughs the myth of Æschylus to scorn,

As precious to those satyrs of his play,

Who touched it in gay wonder at the thing.

While were it so with the soul,—this gift of truth

Once grasped, were this our soul’s gain safe, and sure

290  To prosper as the body’s gain is wont,—

Why, man’s probation would conclude, his earth

Crumble; for he both reasons and decides,

Weighs first, then chooses: will he give up fire

For gold or purple once he knows its worth?

295  Could he give Christ up were His worth as plain?

Therefore, I say, to test man, shift the proofs,

Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact,

And straightway in his life acknowledge it,

As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire.

300  Sigh ye, ‘It had been easier once than now?’

To give you answer I am left alive;

Look at me who was present from the first!

Ye know what things I saw; then came a test,

My first, befitting me who so had seen:

305  ‘Forsake the Christ thou sawest transfigured, Him

Who trod the sea and brought the dead to life?

What should wring this from thee?’—ye laugh and ask.

What wrung it? Even a torchlight and a noise,

The sudden Roman faces, violent hands,

310  And fear of what the Jews might do! Just that,

And, it is written, ‘I forsook and fled’:

There was my trial, and it ended thus.

Ay, but my soul had gained its truth, could grow:

Another year or two,—what little child,

315  What tender woman that had seen no least

Of all my sights, but barely heard them told,

Who did not clasp the cross with a light laugh,

Or wrap the burning robe round, thanking God?

Well, was truth safe for ever, then? Not so.

320  Already had begun the silent work

Whereby truth, deadened of its absolute blaze,

Might need love’s eye to pierce the o’erstretched doubt:

Teachers were busy, whispering ‘All is true

As the aged ones report; but youth can reach

325  Where age gropes dimly, weak with stir and strain,

And the full doctrine slumbers till to-day.’

Thus, what the Roman’s lowered spear was found,

A bar to me who touched and handled truth,

Now proved the glozing of some new shrewd tongue,

330  This Ebion, this Cerinthus or their mates,

Till imminent was the outcry ‘Save us Christ!’

Whereon I stated much of the Lord’s life

Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work.

Such work done, as it will be, what comes next?

335  What do I hear say, or conceive men say,

‘Was John at all, and did he say he saw?

Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!’

“Is this indeed a burthen for late days,

And may I help to bear it with you all,

340  Using my weakness which becomes your strength?

For if a babe were born inside this grot,

Grew to a boy here, heard us praise the sun,

Yet had but yon sole glimmer in light’s place,—

One loving him and wishful he should learn,

345  Would much rejoice himself was blinded first

Month by month here, so made to understand

How eyes, born darkling, apprehend amiss:

I think I could explain to such a child

There was more glow outside than gleams he caught,

350  Ay, nor need urge ‘I saw it, so believe!’

It is a heavy burthen you shall bear

In latter days, new lands, or old grown strange,

Left without me, which must be very soon.

What is the doubt, my brothers? Quick with it!

355  I see you stand conversing, each new face,

Either in fields, of yellow summer eves,

On islets yet unnamed amid the sea;

Or pace for shelter ’neath a portico

Out of the crowd in some enormous town

360  Where now the larks sing in a solitude;

Or muse upon blank heaps of stone and sand

Idly conjectured to be Ephesus:

And no one asks his fellow any more

‘Where is the promise of His coming?’ but

365  ‘Was He revealed in any of His lives,

As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul?’

“Quick, for time presses, tell the whole mind out,

And let us ask and answer and be saved!

My book speaks on, because it cannot pass;

370  One listens quietly, nor scoffs but pleads

‘Here is a tale of things done ages since;

What truth was ever told the second day?

Wonders, that would prove doctrine, go for nought.

Remains the doctrine, love; well, we must love,

375  And what we love most, power and love in one,

Let us acknowledge on the record here,

Accepting these in Christ: must Christ then be?

Has He been? Did not we ourselves make Him?

Our mind receives but what it holds, no more.

380  First of the love, then; we acknowledge Christ—

A proof we comprehend His love, a proof

We had such love already in ourselves,

Knew first what else we should not recognize.

’Tis mere projection from man’s inmost mind,

385  And, what he loves, thus falls reflected back,

Becomes accounted somewhat out of him;

He throws it up in air, it drops down earth’s,

With shape, name, story added, man’s old way.

How prove you Christ came otherwise at least?

390  Next try the power: He made and rules the world:

Certes there is a world once made, now ruled,

Unless things have been ever as we see.

Our sires declared a charioteer’s yoked steeds

Brought the sun up the east and down the west,

395  Which only of itself now rises, sets,

As if a hand impelled it and a will,—

Thus they long thought, they who had will and hands:

But the new question’s whisper is distinct,

‘Wherefore must all force needs be like ourselves?

400  We have the hands, the will; what made and drives

The sun is force, is law, is named, not known,

While will and love we do know; marks of these,

Eye-witnesses attest, so books declare—

As that, to punish or reward our race,

405  The sun at undue times arose or set

Or else stood still: what do not men affirm?

But earth requires as urgently reward

Or punishment to-day as years ago,

And none expects the sun will interpose:

410  Therefore it was mere passion and mistake,

Or erring zeal for right, which changed the truth.

Go back, far, farther, to the birth of things;

Ever the will, the intelligence, the love,

Man’s!—which he gives, supposing he but finds,

415  As late he gave head, body, hands and feet,

To help these in what forms he called his gods.

First, Jove’s brow, Juno’s eyes were swept away,

But Jove’s wrath, Juno’s pride continued long;

As last, will, power, and love discarded these,

420  So law in turn discards power, love, and will.

What proveth God is otherwise at least?

All else, projection from the mind of man!’

“Nay, do not give me wine, for I am strong,

But place my gospel where I put my hands.

425  “I say that man was made to grow, not stop;

That help, he needed once, and needs no more,

Having grown up but an inch by, is withdrawn:

For he hath new needs, and new helps to these.

This imports solely, man should mount on each

430  New height in view; the help whereby he mounts,

The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall,

Since all things suffer change save God the Truth.

Man apprehends Him newly at each stage

Whereat earth’s ladder drops, its service done;

435  And nothing shall prove twice what once was proved.

You stick a garden-plot with ordered twigs

To show inside lie germs of herbs unborn,

And check the careless step would spoil their birth;

But when herbs wave, the guardian twigs may go,

440  Since should ye doubt of virtues, question kinds,

It is no longer for old twigs ye look,

Which proved once underneath lay store of seed,

But to the herb’s self, by what light ye boast,

For what fruit’s signs are. This book’s fruit is plain,

445  Nor miracles need prove it any more.

Doth the fruit show? Then miracles bade ’ware

At first of root and stem, saved both till now

From trampling ox, rough boar and wanton goat.

What? Was man made a wheelwork to wind up,

450  And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?

No!—grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne’er forgets:

May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.

“This might be pagan teaching: now hear mine.

“I say, that as the babe, you feed awhile,

455  Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself,

So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth:

When they can eat, babe’s nurture is withdrawn.

I fed the babe whether it would or no:

I bid the boy or feed himself or starve.

460  I cried once, ‘That ye may believe in Christ,

Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!’

I cry now, ‘Urgest thou, for I am shrewd

And smile at stories how John’s word could cure—

Repeat that miracle and take my faith?’

465  I say, that miracle was duly wrought

When, save for it, no faith was possible.

Whether a change were wrought i’ the shows o’ the world,

Whether the change came from our minds which see

Of the shows o’ the world so much as and no more

470  Than God wills for His purpose,—(what do I

See now, suppose you, there where you see rock

Round us?)—I know not; such was the effect,

So faith grew, making void more miracles

Because too much: they would compel, not help.

475  I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ

Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee

All questions in the earth and out of it,

And has so far advanced thee to be wise.

Wouldst thou unprove this to re-prove the proved?

480  In life’s mere minute, with power to use that proof,

Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung?

Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die!

“For I say, this is death and the sole death,

When a man’s loss comes to him from his gain,

485  Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,

And lack of love from love made manifest;

A lamp’s death when, replete with oil, it chokes;

A stomach’s when, surcharged with food, it starves.

With ignorance was surety of a cure.

490  When man, appalled at nature, questioned first

‘What if there lurk a might behind this might?’

He needed satisfaction God could give,

And did give, as ye have the written word:

But when he finds might still redouble might,

495  Yet asks, ‘Since all is might, what use of will?’

—Will, the one source of might,—he being man

With a man’s will and a man’s might, to teach

In little how the two combine in large,—

That man has turned round on himself and stands,

500  Which in the course of nature is, to die.

“And when man questioned, ‘What if there be love

Behind the will and might, as real as they?’—

He needed satisfaction God could give,

And did give, as ye have the written word:

505  But when, beholding that love everywhere,

He reasons, ‘Since such love is everywhere,

And since ourselves can love and would be loved,

We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not,’—

How shall ye help this man who knows himself,

510  That he must love and would be loved again,

Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ,

Rejecteth Christ through very need of Him?

The lamp o’erswims with oil, the stomach flags

Loaded with nurture, and that man’s soul dies.

515  “If he rejoin, ‘But this was all the while

A trick; the fault was, first of all, in thee,

Thy story of the places, names and dates,

Where, when and how the ultimate truth had rise,

—Thy prior truth, at last discovered none,

520  Whence now the second suffers detriment.

What good of giving knowledge if, because

Of the manner of the gift, its profit fail?

And why refuse what modicum of help

Had stopped the after-doubt, impossible

525  I’ the face of truth—truth absolute, uniform?

Why must I hit of this and miss of that,

Distinguish just as I be weak or strong,

And not ask of thee and have answer prompt,

Was this once, was it not once?—then and now

530  And evermore, plain truth from man to man.

Is John’s procedure just the heathen bard’s?

Put question of his famous play again

How for the ephemerals’ sake, Jove’s fire was filched,

And carried in a cane and brought to earth:

535  The fact is in the fable, cry the wise,

Mortals obtained the boon, so much is fact,

Though fire be spirit and produced on earth.

As with the Titan’s, so now with thy tale:

Why breed in us perplexity, mistake,

540  Nor tell the whole truth in the proper words?’

“I answer, Have ye yet to argue out

The very primal thesis, plainest law,

—Man is not God but hath God’s end to serve,

A master to obey, a course to take,

545  Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become?

Grant this, then man must pass from old to new,

From vain to real, from mistake to fact,

From what once seemed good, to what now proves best.

How could man have progression otherwise?

550  Before the point was mooted ‘What is God?’

No savage man inquired ‘What am myself ?’

Much less replied, ‘First, last, and best of things.’

Man takes that title now if he believes

Might can exist with neither will nor love,

555  In God’s case—what he names now Nature’s Law—

While in himself he recognizes love

No less than might and will: and rightly takes.

Since if man prove the sole existent thing

Where these combine, whatever their degree,

560  However weak the might or will or love,

So they be found there, put in evidence,—

He is as surely higher in the scale

Than any might with neither love nor will,

As life, apparent in the poorest midge,

565  When the faint dust-speck flits, ye guess its wing,

Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas’ self:

I give such to the midge for resting-place!

Thus, man proves best and highest—God, in fine,

And thus the victory leads but to defeat,

570  The gain to loss, best rise to the worst fall,

His life becomes impossible, which is death.

“But if, appealing thence, he cower, avouch

He is mere man, and in humility

Neither may know God nor mistake himself;

575  I point to the immediate consequence

And say, by such confession straight he falls

Into man’s place, a thing nor God nor beast,

Made to know that he can know and not more:

Lower than God who knows all and can all,

580  Higher than beasts which know and can so far

As each beast’s limit, perfect to an end,

Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more;

While man knows partly but conceives beside,

Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact,

585  And in this striving, this converting air

Into a solid he may grasp and use,

Finds progress, man’s distinctive mark alone,

Not God’s, and not the beasts’: God is, they are,

Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.

590  Such progress could no more attend his soul

Were all it struggles after found at first

And guesses changed to knowledge absolute,

Than motion wait his body, were all else

Than it the solid earth on every side,

595  Where now through space he moves from rest to rest.

Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect

He could not, what he knows now, know at first;

What he considers that he knows to-day,

Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown;

600  Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns

Because he lives, which is to be a man,

Set to instruct himself by his past self:

First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,

Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,

605  Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.

God’s gift was that man should conceive of truth

And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,

As midway help till he reach fact indeed.

The statuary ere he mould a shape

610  Boasts a like gift, the shape’s idea, and next

The aspiration to produce the same;

So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout,

Cries ever ‘Now I have the thing I see’:

Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought,

615  From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself.

How were it had he cried ‘I see no face,

No breast, no feet i’ the ineffectual clay?’

Rather commend him that he clapped his hands,

And laughed ‘It is my shape and lives again!’

620  Enjoyed the falsehood, touched it on to truth,

Until yourselves applaud the flesh indeed

In what is still flesh-imitating clay.

Right in you, right in him, such way be man’s!

God only makes the live shape at a jet.

625  Will ye renounce this pact of creatureship?

The pattern on the Mount subsists no more,

Seemed awhile, then returned to nothingness;

But copies, Moses strove to make thereby,

Serve still and are replaced as time requires:

630  By these, make newest vessels, reach the type!

If ye demur, this judgment on your head,

Never to reach the ultimate, angels’ law,

Indulging every instinct of the soul

There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!

635  “Such is the burthen of the latest time.

I have survived to hear it with my ears,

Answer it with my lips: does this suffice?

For if there be a further woe than such,

Wherein my brothers struggling need a hand,

640  So long as any pulse is left in mine,

May I be absent even longer yet,

Plucking the blind ones back from the abyss,

Though I should tarry a new hundred years!”

But he was dead: ’twas about noon, the day

645  Somewhat declining: we five buried him

That eve, and then, dividing, went five ways,

And I, disguised, returned to Ephesus.

By this, the cave’s mouth must be filled with sand.

Valens is lost, I know not of his trace;

650  The Bactrian was but a wild, childish man,

And could not write nor speak, but only loved:

So, lest the memory of this go quite,

Seeing that I to-morrow fight the beasts,

I tell the same to Phœbas, whom believe!

655  For many look again to find that face,

Beloved John’s to whom I ministered,

Somewhere in life about the world; they err:

Either mistaking what was darkly spoke

At ending of his book, as he relates,

660  Or misconceiving somewhat of this speech

Scattered from mouth to mouth, as I suppose.

Believe ye will not see him any more

About the world with his divine regard!

For all was as I say, and now the man

665  Lies as he lay once, breast to breast with God.

[Cerinthus read and mused; one added this:

“If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of men

Mere man, the first and best but nothing more,—

Account Him, for reward of what He was,

670  Now and for ever, wretchedest of all.

For see; Himself conceived of life as love,

Conceived of love as what must enter in,

Fill up, make one with His each soul He loved:

Thus much for man’s joy, all men’s joy for Him.

675  Well, He is gone, thou sayest, to fit reward.

But by this time are many souls set free,

And very many still retained alive:

Nay, should His coming be delayed awhile,

Say, ten years longer (twelve years, some compute)

680  See if, for every finger of thy hands,

There be not found, that day the world shall end,

Hundreds of souls, each holding by Christ’s word

That He will grow incorporate with all,

With me as Pamphylax, with him as John,

685  Groom for each bride! Can a mere man do this?

Yet Christ saith, this He lived and died to do.

Call Christ, then, the illimitable God,

Or lost!”

                    But ’twas Cerinthus that is lost.]

1–12. A description of the ensuing manuscript by an unnamed commentator: see headnote, Setting. With the use of square brackets to distinguish comment from utterance, cp. Caliban (p. 625), though in that poem commentator and speaker are one and the same.

1. Pamphylax the Antiochene: The name Pamphylax seems to be B.’s invention; a lost Life of Pamphilus, detailing the life of a martyr who died in 309, was written by the early church historian Eusebius (see headnote, Composition and date and Setting). The Greek-speaking city of Antioch in Syria plays an important part in the early history of Christianity; it was there that ‘the disciples were called Christians first’ (Acts xi 26), and Luke is described as ‘Antiochensis’ (from Antioch) in both the Anti-Marcionite and Monarchian Prologues (see headnote, Sources and influneces). 2. parchment: an animal skin prepared for writing. rolls: the normal form in which books were kept in antiquity; the roll usually consisted of a number of sheets of papyrus glued together and wound around a stick, but this ‘roll’ is made from three pieces of parchment (see l. 3).

3. all Greek: the four gospels were written in Greek, the common language of intellectual life throughout the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire. The commentator’s statement implies that some of his other ‘rolls’ contain a mixture of languages; Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic, and one theory of the synoptic gospels suggested that they emerged from a set of ‘logia’ or sayings of Jesus in Aramaic.

4. Epsilon … Mu: Letters were used for numbers in ancient Greece: ‘Epsilon’ is five, and ‘Mu’ forty. As Pope (headnote, Setting) points out, this indicates that the text is incomplete, as sections 1–4 are missing.

5. surnamed: ‘designated, known by the name of ’ (it does not mean ‘marked with the owner’s surname’: see ll. 9–10). This chest is clearly a repository for the commentator’s most treasured documents, implying that he is the keeper of an archive of sacred texts in an early Christian community: see ll. 9–10n.

6. juice of terebinth: the resin of the terebinth or turpentine tree (Pistacia Terebinthus), used here to protect the parchment from insects.

7. Xi: the fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet.

8. Xanthus: see headnote, Composition and date. It is unclear whether or not this ‘Xanthus’ is the one mentioned by ‘Pamphylax’ as present at John’s death (see ll. 29–30).

9–10. The commentator conceals his identity beneath a cipher, suggesting that he is living during one of the periods of persecution of the early church; see headnote, Setting. It was not until the edict of the Emperor Decius in 249 that persecution of Christians became widespread and received official sanction; see Fox (headnote, Setting), ch. 9.

11. His coming: i.e. the Second Coming of Christ. An active belief in the imminence of the Second Coming is apparent in a number of early Christian writings; see, e.g., Matthew xxiv 34: ‘Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled’. John’s Epistles make frequent reference to the ‘Antichrist’, whose arrival heralds the Second Coming (e.g. 1 John iv 3); and Revelation, traditionally attributed to John, contains a vision of the event itself. On the relation between the disappointment of these hopes and the form of John’s gospel, see headnote, Sources and influences. The commentator’s reference to the Second Coming indicates the persistence of the literal form of this belief well beyond the lifetime of the first Christians.

13. ‘I’ is the person believed by the commentator to be Pamphylax. For the other (equally fictional) members of John’s entourage, see ll. 29–30.

14. plantain-leaf: the Greater Plantain, Plantago major, ‘a low herb with broad flat leaves spread out close to the ground, and close spikes of inconspicuous flowers’; its medicinal properties are recorded in English literature since medieval times. ‘Plantain’ is also a term for the plane-tree (Platanus orientalis), a native of the Middle East which was also thought to have healing properties (OED 1, quot. 1398).

15. lappet: ‘A loose or overlapping part of a garment, forming a flap or fold’ (OED).

21–8. John and his followers are hiding in a group of caves to escape persecution (see l. 23n.); the action of the poem takes place not in the ‘outer cave’ (too risky) nor the ‘secret chamber’ (too dark), but in the ‘midmost’ cave which admits some light and therefore allows his followers to see his face. Cp. the allegory of the cave in book vii of Plato’s Republic, and the mysterious Empedoclean fragment, ‘We have come under this roofed cave’ (transl. M. R. Wright, Empedocles: the Extant Fragments [1981] 280), usually taken as an allegory of human, as opposed to divine existence.

23. the decree: the supposed persecution inaugurated by the Emperor Trajan; on the evidence for this see headnote, Setting.

27. we would not: ‘we did not wish to’.

29–30. Xanthus … Valens … the Boy: fictional members of John’s entourage. Pope (headnote, Setting) suggests that Pamphylax (Greek), Valens (Roman), and the Bactrian (barbarian) (see l. 36n.) symbolize ‘the world-wide diffusion of Christianity’.

36. Bactrian: an inhabitant of an area of what is now eastern Iran which was for a time a Greek colony; the ‘convert’ might well therefore have been Greek-speaking. 39. quitch: another name for couch-grass; see Sordello iv 23n. (I 595). the rocks’ shade keeps alive: ‘[which] the rocks’ shade keeps alive’.

41. persecution: see l. 23 above and note. aware: in the obsolete sense of ‘Watchful, vigilant, cautious, on one’s guard’ (OED).

42. promptly with his life: although the syntax is ambiguous, this probably means that the Bactrian is willing to give both the goat and his own life, as the ‘prize’ of the goat (l. 43) will prevent any thieves or soldiers from probing further.

50. nard: ‘A fragrant ointment or perfume prepared from the rhizome of the plant of the same name … and much prized by the ancients’ (OED); referred to as ‘spikenard’ in John xii 3: ‘Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.’

56–7. An imaginary martyrology; burning to death was a typical method of execution for persecuted Christians; see, e.g., the account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, in 155 in Bettenson 12–16.

57. the chronicle: perhaps suggesting that Xanthus was originally supposed to write the document.

59. Cp. Keats, Eve of St Agnes 136–7: ‘Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose, / Flushing his brow’.

60. plate of graven lead: lead tablets were used for writing instead of papyrus on occasion in the ancient world; the strong suggestion here is that John or one of his entourage has already written down all or part of his life of Jesus. Cp. Cleon 47n. (pp. 568–9).

63. as ’twere his mouth proclaiming first: ‘as if he were Jesus saying [these words] for the first time’.

64. Jesus’ words as recorded in John xi 25, but not in any of the other gospels; the implication is that this is one of the sayings of Jesus that John has shared with his followers; see headnote, Sources.

66. of himself: by himself.

69. lone desert-bird that wears the ruff: according to Thomas P. Harrison, this is either the Egyptian Vulture or the Hermit Ibis; Harrison adds: ‘It is unlikely that Browning knew either’ (‘Birds in the Poetry of Browning’, RES vii 28 (1956), 393–405). But B.’s knowledge of wildlife was wide and eclectic, and included other desert creatures such as the jerboa (Saul 45, III 499).

70.] From time to time, as signal we were safe. (MS original reading, marked for transposition).

82–104. The ‘glossa [commentary] of Theotypas’ (a fictitious commentator) illustrates the ways in which the original impulse of Christianity is already turning into dogma. Pope (headnote, Setting) suggests that this section might be a commentary on a passage in one of St John’s epistles: ‘For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one’ (1 John v 7–8), and also points out the trilogy of terms ‘spirit and soul and body’ in 1 Thessalonians v 23. Cp. also John i 13, where the ‘sons of God’ are said to be ‘born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God’.

83. witness: ‘[bear] witness [to the presence of ]’.

115. James and Peter had release by death: there are several uses of the name James in the New Testament; John is here referring to his brother, also known as St James the Greater (to distinguish him from St James the Less, the brother of Jesus), martyred in ad 44 by Herod Agrippa I (Acts xii 1–2). St Peter was martyred in Rome towards the end of the reign of the Emperor Nero (c. AD 67); there is an implicit anticipation of his death in John’s gospel (xxi 18–19).

116. your brother John: Pope (headnote, Setting) compares Revelation i 9: ‘I, John, who also am your brother’. For the significance of such references in the context of nineteenth-century biblical criticism, see headnote, Sources.

122–3. Cp. the description of the ‘Son of man’ in Revelation i 14–16: ‘His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.’

125. Pope (headnote, Setting) compares Revelation i 17: ‘And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.’

127–8. Continuing the metaphor begun at ll. 105–8 above.

129. when they scatter: i.e. ‘when these ashes scatter’.

131–2. Cp. 1 John i 1: ‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life.’

139–44. The fictional John’s account of the composition of the Book of Revelation.

140. Patmos: the island in the Aegean Sea where John claims to have had the vision recorded in Revelation (see i 9).

141. Cp. Revelation i 11: ‘What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia.’

143. arbitrament: ‘Will; determination; choice’ ( J.).

145–62. ‘His epistles. Antichrists.’ (Pope; headnote, Setting).

149–51. The three epistles attributed to John are brief, and the third is addressed to a named individual (Gaius). It is described by the Catholic Encyclopaedia as ‘entirely a personal affair’.

152–5. For a different treatment of the contrast between those who keep to the shore and those who have knowledge of the deep ocean, cp. Dîs Aliter Visum 18–23 (p. 691).

153. sea-jelly: jellyfish.

158–9. Antichrist: John’s first and second Epistles introduce the term ‘antichrist’, and imply that the proliferation of ‘antichrists’ is one of the signs of the impending Apocalypse: see, e.g., 1 John ii 18 – ‘Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time’ – and cp. 1 John iv 2–3 and 2 John vii. 160. Echoing Matthew xiv 55, in which the Nazarenes express scepticism that Jesus, whose family they know, can be the Messiah: ‘Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?’ Jasper: a fictitious figure; the name does not appear in the Bible, though the variant ‘Gaspar’ was the traditional name of one of the Magi; as a precious stone it is mentioned in Revelation (e.g. iv 3; xxi 11).

162. Wherefore] Therefore (MS).

163. to call down fire: in Luke ix 54–6 John and his brother James (see l. 115n.) ask Jesus if he wants them to ‘command fire to come down from heaven, and consume’ a Samaritan village which would not receive him; Jesus replied that ‘the Son of man is not come to destroy lives, but to save them’.

165. Cp. Luke x 19: ‘Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.’

167. forgotten or misdelivered: alerting his auditors to the possibility that his account of events might, at this distance of time, contain errors; see headnote, Sources and influences.

168–75. An attempt to explain the differences between John and the synoptic gospels; although the passage of time has made John’s memories less reliable, it has enabled certain features of Jesus’ life and sayings to acquire ‘new significance and fresh result’; see headnote, Sources.

169. simply and sufficiently: cp. One Word More 62 (p. 605).

172. guided still] guided on (MS canc.).

175. named them] named so (MS canc.). the Gospel I have writ: an emphatic implicit rejection of Strauss’s position that the Gospel of John was written after the Apostle’s death; see l. 60 above, and headnote.

176. For] Since (MS canc.).

177. “Where is the promise of His coming?”: the words of the ‘scoffers’ who doubt the second coming of the Lord in 2 Peter iii 4.

181. Since] That (MS).

183. thus] so (MS, written over ‘thus’; a rare example of 1864 reverting to a reading cancelled in MS).

186. Cp. 1 John v 19: ‘And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.’

189–92. The image of a man falling and grasping desperately for a ‘foothold’ recurs in Caponsacchi’s prediction of Guido’s fate in Ring vi 1913–18: ‘left o’ the very ledge of things, / I seem to see him catch convulsively / One by one at all honest forms of life, / At reason, order, decency and use— / To cramp him and get foothold by at least; / And still they disengage them from his clutch’; Guido slides down to ‘the horizontal line, creation’s verge, / From what just is to absolute nothingness’ (ll. 1930–1) where he meets his soul-mate, Judas. 193. a blank] the blank (MS).

196–7. Another anticipation of John’s nineteenth-century critics; see headnote, Sources (2).

199. who have flesh, a veil] with the flesh, the veil (MS). a veil of youth and strength: in 2 Corinthians iii 13–18 Paul speaks of the ‘veil’ between human beings and God under the old law, ‘which veil is done away in Christ’; however, John’s metaphor here refers not to this distinction between Judaism and Christianity but to a theory of human development by which we become more conscious of the spiritual world as we grow older. B. expounds this theory in several other poems; cp., e.g., Rabbi Ben Ezra (p. 649).

200. that needs must] that must (MS).

203. withheld: i.e. from the divine presence.

207. we] men (MS canc.).

209. it is] still is (MS, canc.).

211–21. A concise statement of John’s theology: God’s presence in the world is not limited to the historical moment of the Incarnation, but manifests itself in the continuing struggle between Sin and Love. On the significance of the Incarnation in B. see headnote, Parallels.

211.] Is not God in the world His power once made? (MS, altering an earlier draft of the first part of the line: ‘For is not God i’ this world’).

212. at issue still] at struggle here (MS).

213.] not 1868–88. It is rare for whole lines to be either added or deleted in editions after 1864. B. may have thought twice about giving the impression that God’s love could be defeated, even if temporarily.

214. on earth] on it (MS, written over ‘earth’). 1864 rarely reverts to a cancelled MS reading; B. may have thought on reflection that the antecedent of ‘it’, namely ‘world’ in l. 211, was too distant.

216–17. Resurrection and Uprise / To the right hand of the throne: Cp. Mark xvi 19: ‘So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.’

223. Resume: ‘re-assume’, ‘take back’; OED records a special sense of this word (1b) in relation to ‘strength, power, influence, etc.’, citing, e.g., Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity (1597): ‘They which have once received this power may not think … to take it, reject, and resume it as often as they themselves list’. in this word ‘I see’: in answering his imaginary future critics, John emphasizes the visionary dimension of ‘seeing’ (which enables him to perceive Christ’s death and resurrection as an ongoing spiritual reality) rather than his physical presence at the events in question.

224. there is] I have (MS canc.).

226. look. These are] look: this is (MS, canc.; B. omitted to change the colon after ‘look’ to a full stop in MS; this was done in proof ).

227. beloved ones too] beloved too (MS).

228–35. The instrument John describes, with its ‘tube’, seems more akin to a reverse telescope than a microscope. The telescope was unknown in antiquity, but primitive magnifying lenses were known to have been used by Near Eastern civilizations: in 1853 Sir Austen Layard brought back to England lenses made of rock crystal found during the excavation of Nimrud in ancient Assyria (modern Iraq).

228. an] the (MS canc.).

233. to master once:] to master thus: (MS).

234. at distance now they lay] they lay at distance now (MS original reading, marked for transposition).

236–44. Cp. Epilogue (DP, 1864), in which the ‘Second Speaker’, identified in 1864² as Renan, laments the loss of faith in Christianity: ‘Gone now! All gone across the dark so far, / Sharpening fast, shuddering ever, shutting still, / Dwindling into the distance, dies that star / Which came, stood, opened once! / We gazed our fill / With upturned faces on as real a Face …’ (ll. 22–6). He is answered by the ‘Third Speaker’ (B. himself ): ‘That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, / Or decomposes but to recompose, / Becomes my universe that feels and knows’ (ll. 99–101). Contrast also My Star 12–13 (III 387): ‘What matter to me if their star is a world? / Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.’

236. Just thus] Just so (MS). ye needs must] ye need to (MS, canc.).

237. Pope (headnote, Setting) compares Tennyson, In Memoriam, xxv: ‘The past will always win / A glory from its being far; / And orb into the perfect star / We saw not, when we moved therein.’

238. proved a point: cp. l. 174 above, and ll. 243–4 below; John accuses those who doubt him of attempting to reverse the process of ‘growth’ set in motion by the original revelation.

242. dispart, dispread: cp. Sordello i 881–3 (I 452): ‘songs go up exulting, then dispread, dispart, disperse, lingering overhead / Like an escape of angels’. J. defines ‘dispart’ as ‘To divide in two; to separate; to break; to burst; to rive’. Cp. also Abt Vogler 11 (p. 763).

244. And grow] Grow (1870 [rev. ed. of 1868]–1888) on you, as it is] on you: it is (MS; ‘on’ is written over ‘to’).

244^245.] no line-space in MS; B. wrote ‘New par.’ in the l. margin and added quotation marks at the start of l. 246.

248. How love] How it (MS).

251.] Having gained truth, dare keep truth—that is all. (MS).

252–99. The argument is that, if we were able to acquire knowledge of spiritual reality with the same certainty that we acquire knowledge about the physical world, faith would cease to have any value; in metaphysical terms, the human condition is defined by a constant struggle against doubt, and by the affirmation of belief against, not with, the tide of the ‘world’s’ opinion. The necessity of doubt is a defining principle of B.’s religious philosophy: major treatments of the theme include Bishop Blougram (see esp. ll. 599–605, p. 318) and, in DP, Mr Sludge; spiritualism’s claim to prove the existence of a spiritual world and an afterlife was one of the reasons B. was so hostile to it: see headnote, p. 779.

253. diversely: differently.

254. With] From (MS, canc.).

255. basement: groundwork; OED 2 cites Isaac Taylor, Natural History of Enthusiasm (1829): ‘This belief [in God as creator and sustainer of all life] constitutes the basement-principle of all religion’ (p. 64). emprise: ‘Attempt of danger; undertaking of hazard; enterprise’ ( J.).

261. sages who, this] men who, this same (MS, canc.).

262. In Rome or Athens, may descry] In Rome, in Athens, shall descry] (MS, canc.). descry: ‘To detect; to find out any thing concealed’ ( J.).

263. yestereve] yesterday (MS canc.).

265. extends] hath waxed (MS). æther floating o’er] fiery floating sea (MS canc.). ‘Æther’ (more usually ‘ether’) has a range of meanings: literally it is a poeticism for ‘the clear upper sky’ (Pope’s transl. of Iliad xvi 361: ‘All the unmeasured æther flames with light’); it has associations with the ‘diviner air’ breathed by the classical gods, as in Arthur Hugh Clough’s description of Italy as ‘a land wherein gods of the old time wandered, / Where every breath even now changes to ether divine’ (Amours de Voyage i 3–4); in ancient cosmology it was conceived of as ‘an element filling all space beyond the sphere of the moon, and as the constituent substance of the stars and planets’; from this sense it passed into seventeenth-and eighteenth-century physics as a substance ‘believed to permeate the whole of planetary and stellar space, not only filling the interplanetary spaces, but also the interstices between the particles of air and other matter on earth; the medium through which the waves of light are propagated’. This theory was still maintained in B.’s day (OED cites Huxley, 1872); its figurative sense is illustrated by Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1831): ‘We are—we know not what;—light-sparkles floating in the æther of Deity!’

267. Then, as] And as (MS).

272. proof: test.

276. our flesh] man’s flesh (MS).

277. We … us] He … him (MS).

278. we … its full worth] he will … worth (MS).

280–7. The value of fire is apparent even to those who no longer believe in the literal truth of the myth of Prometheus, who is reputed to have been punished by Zeus (or Jove) for stealing fire and giving it to humanity. The ‘myth of Aeschylus’ (l. 285) alludes to the first part of his Prometheus trilogy, Prometheus Firebearer, now lost, but which was still extant at the time the poem is set. In one of his early letters to EBB., who had translated the only surviving part of the trilogy, Prometheus Bound, B. urged her to ‘restore’ this lost play, thus making a new trilogy along with Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound (11 March 1845: Correspondence x 119–20). The satyrs, however, come not from the tragic drama but from the comic piece which traditionally followed the performance of a tragic trilogy: this piece is also lost, but as Pope (headnote, Setting) points out, B. would have found the detail he records in a fragment cited by Plutarch: ‘The Satyr would have kissed and embraced the fire the first time he saw it; but Prometheus bids him take heed, else he might have cause to lament the loss of his beard if he came too near that which burns all it touches’ (‘How a Man May Receive Advantage and Profit from His Enemies’, Moralia, transl. William W. Goodwin [Boston 1878], §555).

280. That … the theft] The … his theft (MS).

281. Pope (headnote, Setting) compares Prometheus Bound, l. 7: ‘thine own bright flower’ (EBB.’s transl.). Cp. also ll. 280–7n. Jove’s] the (MS, canc.).

282. own: admit.

283. out of mind: ‘no longer active in people’s minds’.

284. sophist: originally ‘A professor of philosophy’, but John’s use also glances at its later meaning of ‘an artful but insidious logician’ ( J.).

285. myth] tale (MS).

286. those satyrs of ] the satyrs in (MS, canc). his play] your bard (MS).

288. While] But (MS).

291. probation: ‘Trial; examination’ ( J.).

293. Weighs first, then] Weighs worth, and (MS).

294. gold or purple: money or power; ‘purple’ is the traditional colour of royalty: cp. Protus 10n., III 637.

295. Could] Would (MS, canc.).

296. shift the proofs] the proofs shift (1868–88); the revision indicates more clearly that John is describing an objective (and providential) process.

299. As, say, the] As the (MS first draft).

300. “It had been easier”: ‘would it have been easier’ (i.e. when Christ was still present on the earth).

301. give you answer] give that answer (MS).

304. My … me] The … him (MS).

305–6. The three incidents mentioned by John include one narrated only in his gospel, one narrated by the synoptics only, and one shared by John and the syn-optics (see below).

305. transfigured: Christ took three of his disciples – Peter, James and John – with him to a ‘high mountain’ where he was ‘transfigured’: ‘his raiment became shining exceeding white as snow … And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses; and they were talking with Jesus’ (Mark ix 2–4). The incident figures in the other synoptic gospels (Matthew xvii 2; Luke ix 28–30) but is not mentioned in John. 306. trod the sea: John vi 19–20; cp. Matthew xiv 26; Mark vi 49. brought the dead to life: the story of the resurrection of Lazarus occurs only in John’s gospel (xi 1–45); see headnote to Karshish (p. 507).

307–8. wring this from thee? … wrung it?] do this with thee? … did it? (MS).

308–10. Describing Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane; cp. John xviii 3: ‘Judas, then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons.’

311. Cp. Matthew xxvi 56: ‘Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled’; see also Mark xiv 50. John’s statement implies that the other gospels were already in existence during his lifetime. There is no suggestion in John’s gospel that John and the other disciples forsook Jesus and fled.

312. ended thus] issued thus (MS, with ‘thus’ written over ‘so’).

313. my soul] the soul (MS).

314–18. what little child … thanking God? cp. the description of St John’s flock in Sordello iii 967–77 (I 592).

315. woman that] woman who (MS).

316. heard them told] heard of them (MS, canc.).

318. wrap the burning robe round: i.e. embrace being burned alive.

322. Might need] Should need (MS).

323. whispering] saying (MS).

325. gropes] feels (MS, canc.). weak with stir] through its stir (MS).

326.] So the full doctrine slumbered until now (MS canc.). the full doctrine: the ideas advanced by Ebion, Cerinthus and others; see l. 330n.

327. Roman’s lowered spear: John compares the physical impediment which led him to forsake Jesus with the intellectual impediments placed in the way of truth by false teachers of the younger generation of Christians.

329. glozing] comment (MS). To ‘gloze’ combines the senses ‘To flatter; to wheedle; to insinuate; to fawn’ and the (erroneous) use ‘to gloss’ (both J.) to suggest that the new ‘teachers’ offer versions of Christ’s message designed to appeal to their audience. Cp. Milton, PL ix 549–50: ‘So glozed the tempter … Into the heart of Eve his words made way’.

330. For the doctrines of Ebion and Cerinthus see headnote, Sources and influences.

331. Till imminent was the outcry] Till the outcry was imminent (MS, replacing the original reading: ‘And so the cry came to me’).

332–3. John claims to have given his account of the life and teachings of Jesus as a way of countering the spread of false doctrine; this tallies with the traditional notion that John’s gospel was written to counter the heresies of Cerinthus. See headnote, Sources and influences.

334. Such work done] This done with (MS canc.).

335. do … men say] did … men said (MS).

336–7. The clearest anticipation of John’s nineteenth-century critics in the poem; cp. ll. 196–7n.

341–8. Another version of Plato’s parable of the Cave in the seventh book of the Republic; see headnote, Sources and influences.

341. grot: grotto or cave.

346. so made] and made (MS); ‘so’ was the original reading; it is rare for 1864 to revert to a reading cancelled in MS.

347. darkling: ‘Being in the dark; being without light’ ( J.).

354. John’s question is addressed not just to his immediate audience, but to all future Christians.

355. each new face] you new men (MS canc.).

361–2. Cp. Macaulay’s image of the ‘New Zealander’ sketching the ruins of St Paul’s, made famous by Doré’s engraving; imagining one’s own civilization as a ruin is a variant on the ‘fallen empire’ topos so popular in this period: see headnote to Love Among the Ruins, p. 528. Ephesus was one of the great cities of antiquity, located in modern-day Turkey; its population in the second century bc has been estimated at 150,000 (Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, p. 46). For the tradition of John’s residence and death there, see headnote, Setting. As Ohio notes, the archaeologist J. T. Wood, sponsored by the British Museum, began excavating the ruins of Ephesus in 1863. He was searching for traces not of the Christian community but of the Temple of Diana, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

362. Idly] Barely (MS).

364. Cp. l. 177n.

365. His lives: the different ‘lives’ of Jesus in circulation (including John’s own).

366^367.] no line-space in MS; B. wrote ‘New par.’ in the l. margin and added quotation marks at the start of l. 367.

367–422. For the resemblance between the ideas of this imaginary future critic and some of the strands of the ‘Higher Criticism’ of the nineteenth century see headnote, Sources and influences (2).

370. One listens] One reads it (MS canc.).

373. Wonders: miraculous occurrences; in saying that these ‘go for nought’ John’s imaginary critic suggests that they are no longer a stable basis for religious belief. Both Renan and Strauss (see headnote, Sources 2) rejected the authenticity of miracles; cp. earlier attacks on supernaturalism, e.g. Hume’s ‘Essay on Miracles’ (1748).

Wonders, that] Then, wonders that (MS).

374–5. we must love … we love] man must love … he loves (MS canc.).

379. Cp. Coleridge, Dejection: an Ode 47–8: ‘O Lady! we receive but what we give, / And in our life alone does Nature live’. Coleridge goes on to state that perception of ‘higher worth … from the soul itself must issue forth’ (ll. 50–3). The sceptic whom St John imagines extends this argument from ‘Nature’ to the spiritual world. what it holds: ‘what it is capable of holding’.

384. projection: ‘a mental figure or image visualized and regarded as an objective reality’ (OED); the earliest examples given are from Emerson.

385. thus falls] so falls (MS).

389. ‘How can you prove that this is not how the idea of Christ was developed by humanity?’

391. Certes: ‘It is certain that’ (obs.).

392. as we see] as you see (MS canc.).

393–401. In Greek mythology, Phaeton drove the sun in a chariot. As Robert Inglesfield (see headnote, Composition and date) points out, Herbert Spencer uses a remarkably similar example to illustrate the mental progress of humanity in his First Principles (1862; rpt. 1867, p. 103): ‘Of old the Sun was regarded as the chariot of a god, drawn by horses. How far the idea thus grossly expressed, was idealized, we need not inquire. It suffices to remark that this accounting for the apparent motion of the Sun by an agency like certain visible terrestrial agencies, reduced a daily wonder to the level of the commonest intellect. When, many centuries after, Kepler discovered that the planets moved round the Sun in ellipses and described equal areas in equal times, he concluded that in each planet there must exist a spirit to guide its movements. Here we see that with the progress of Science, there had disappeared the idea of a gross mechanical traction, such as was first assigned in the case of the Sun; but that while for this there was substituted an indefinite and less-easily conceivable force, it was still thought needful to assume a special personal agent as a cause of the regular irregularity of motion. When, finally, it was proved that these planetary revolutions with all their variations and disturbances, conformed to one universal law — when the presiding spirits which Kepler conceived were set aside, and the force of gravitation put in their place; the change was really the abolition of an imaginable agency, and the substitution of an unimaginable one.’

393. Our sires: ‘our forefathers’.

397. they … they who had] we … we who have (MS).

402–11. The critic’s point is that, since we now reject miraculous and anthropomorphic stories about the sun as being mere projections of human desire and agency, we ought logically to do the same in the case of Christ.

403.] Eye-witnesses, it is affirmed, attest (MS).

404–6. There are numerous examples of the sun moving erratically at someone’s behest in the Bible; see, e.g., Joshua x 12, Isaiah xxxviii 8, Amos viii 9 and Luke xxiii 45.

405.] The sun arose or set at undue times (MS, marked for transposition).

416. what forms the forms (MS canc.).

417–20. Pagan religion incarnates emotions such as ‘wrath’ or ‘pride’ in the physical attributes of the gods (‘Jove’s brow, Juno’s eyes’); a more advanced philosophy conceives of the gods as representing or symbolizing ‘wrath’ or ‘pride’ in the abstract; this way of thinking is superseded by Christianity (with ‘power’ as the Father, ‘love’ as the Son, and ‘will’ as the Holy Spirit); this in turn is finally displaced by the concept of ‘law’, i.e. universal, impersonal forces that determine the nature of existence, and thus our own human nature.

417. First … were swept] Now … are swept (MS).

418. continued] lingered (MS).

419. As last] At last (MS canc.).

420.] Power shall in turn discard Power, Love and Will. (MS).

422. All else,] All is (MS canc.).

423–4. John asks to feel the ‘plates’ containing his gospel again; see l. 60n.

424. I put] I rest (MS canc.).

427. grown up but] grown but (1870 [rev. edn of 1868]–1888).

429–32: Cp. Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850): ‘I held it truth, with him who sings / To one clear harp in divers tones, / That men may rise on stepping-stones / Of their dead selves to higher things’ (ll. 1–4). See also l. 602. For B.’s knowledge of and admiration for In Memoriam, see headnote to “De Gustibus—” (III 25). With the general sentiment of this passage, cp. Christmas-Eve 313–17 (III 60).

429. imports: matters.

431. The] What (MS, written over ‘The’; one of the rare instances in which 1864 reverts to a reading cancelled in MS).

435. ‘It is impossible to prove the same thing twice’ (because the original circumstances in which it was first proved have changed). This bears some resemblance to the paradox put forward by the Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, who argued that it is impossible to step into the same river twice; see also l. 452 and l. 479. John is clearly familiar with some of the canons of philosophical debate in the Hellenistic world.

437. germs of herbs] herbs as yet (MS).

440. virtues … kinds] virtue … kind (MS); healing or other medicinal properties.

442. proved once] proved that (MS). underneath lay store of seed] there lay store of seed to save (MS canc.).

444. Cp. Matthew vii 15–20: ‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 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. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good 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.’

445. need prove it] shall prove it (MS).

446–8. Working out the analogy with the herb garden: Christ’s miracles are the ‘ordered twigs’ which identified and protected the seed of his teaching until it could bear fruit and make itself known.

449–50. a wheelwork to wind up: cp. Carlyle’s rejection of the analogy between human beings and machines in ‘Signs of the Times’ (1829); B. had, however, used the image of human civilization as an engine with ‘strange wheelwork’ in Sordello iii 810–35 (I 582).

451–2. Pope (headnote, Setting) notes a similarity to Fifine at the Fair (1872) 817–22: ‘I search but cannot see / What purpose serves the soul that strives, or world it tries / Conclusions with, unless the fruit of victories / Stay, one and all, stored up and guaranteed its own / For ever, by some mode whereby shall be made known / The gain of every life’.

452^453.] no line-space in MS.

453. This might be pagan teaching: ‘This could just as well be pagan teaching’. “This might be] This is a (MS).

453^454.] no line-space in MS; B. wrote ‘New par.’ in the l. margin and added quotation marks at the start of l. 454.

456. So, minds] The mind (MS canc.).

457. When they] When he (MS).

459. or … or: a Gallicism for ‘either … or’, also common in early modern writers (e.g. Dryden).

460–1. John seems to imply that he was able to perform miracles in the period immediately following the death of Christ; Acts contains a number of references to apostolic miracles (e.g. vi 8; viii 6).

462–4. ‘Do you urge me (since you are too shrewd to believe in mere stories of miracles) to repeat my miracles in order to procure your faith?’

464. faith?’] emended in agreement with all other eds; 1864 lacks the necessary closing quotation mark.

467. were wrought] was wrought (MS). shows: appearances.

469–70. so much as … Than] just so much … As (MS).

473. So: And (MS canc.). void: either ‘empty and pointless’, ‘impossible’, or ‘unnecessary’.

474. Pope (headnote, Setting) compares Easter-Day 71–2 (III 50).

479. this to re-prove] just to re-prove (MS canc.).

481. sprung] grew (MS canc.). ‘Sprung’ may be a synonym of ‘grew’, but the likelihood is that B. preferred the sense of ‘began, originated’.

489. ‘The state of ignorance made it possible to provide a cure’ (by contrast with those who regress from knowledge to ignorance).

490–500. We begin by asking whether there is a power greater than that of Nature, and the answer is that God has revealed that there is such a power (the ‘written word’ of l. 493 probably refers to the Old Testament, specifically to Genesis). We must not however make the mistake of discarding the concept of a personal God as the source of this power over Nature. We ought to know from our own experience that ‘power’ has no agency in itself, but is the instrument of our ‘will’, our conscious purpose; if this is true of us, it must also be true of God, and the concept of a universe governed only by ‘natural laws’ is meaningless; to believe in such a universe is a form of spiritual death.

490–3. Contrast Caliban’s speculations about Setebos and the ‘Quiet’ (ll. 127–34, p. 632).

490. appalled: ‘To fright; to strike with sudden fear; to depress; to discourage’ ( J.).

491. might: power.

495. Yet] And (MS canc.).

499. stands: comes to a standstill.

501–14. The argument is similar to that in ll. 490–500: God has revealed the transcendent power of love (the ‘written word’ of l. 504 is here the New Testament), and we should not make the mistake of interpreting that love as a projection of our own nature.

513–14. Recurring to the metaphors in ll. 487–8.

515–40. Pope (headnote, Setting) suggests a reference to Strauss in this passage; Strauss, however, does not characterize John’s errors as a ‘trick’ to induce belief, but as the outcome of the dominant beliefs of the time; see headnote, Sources and influences.

517. Thy story] That story (MS canc.).

522. Of the] O’ the (1870 [rev. edn of 1868]–1888) its profit fail?] its profit pass,— (MS).

524. after-doubt: not in OED; the expression is also used by Wilkie Collins in Armadale (1866). Perhaps coined by analogy with ‘Aberglaube’ or ‘after-belief ’, the German term for superstition.

526. and miss] and fail (MS).

528. have answer] be answered (MS canc.).

531. just] but (MS canc.). heathen bard’s: Aeschylus’ (see l. 285 above).

532. play] tale (MS).

533: for the ephemerals’ sake] for ephemerals’ sake (MS), i.e. ‘for the sake of (ephemeral) human beings’; both Pope and Inglesfield (see headnote, Setting) note that the Chorus in Prometheus Bound refers to human beings as ἐήφµεροι (ephemeroi), which EBB. translates as ‘creatures of a day’ in her second version of the play (l. 299). 534. carried in a cane: ‘Because I stole / The secret fount of fire, whose bubbles went / Over the ferule’s brim’ (Prometheus Bound, tr. EBB., ll. 122–4).

535. The fact is in the fable: cp. Christmas-Eve 873 (III 81). cry the wise] cry his friends (MS canc.).

538. the Titan’s: Prometheus was one of the Titans, the race of gods overthrown by the Olympians in Greek myth. the Titan’s] the Titan (MS).

546–50. Pope (headnote, Setting) cites Fifine at the Fair (1872) 2182–3: ‘Truth inside, and outside, truth also; and between / Each, falsehood that is change, as truth is permanence.’

546. then man] and man (MS).

550–1. Cp. Caliban (p. 616), which explores the link between the idea of a deity and self-consciousness through the medium of a ‘savage’ or primitive being.

550. mooted: debated.

551. ‘What am] ‘What is (MS).

552. First, last, and best] first and last and best (MS, revising an earlier draft: ‘Man, first and last’. The revised MS line is unmetrical, an error which survived into 1864 proof; B. corrected it by hand in the two sets of proof he gave to his sister Sarianna and Moncure D. Conway: see headnote, Text. Cp. Revelation xxii 13: ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last’; and Wordsworth’s description of the Alps in The Prelude (1850) vi 638–40: ‘Characters of the great Apocalypse, / The types and symbols of Eternity, / Of first, and last, and midst, and without end’, itself quoting Milton, PL v 165. 553. that title: i.e. ‘First, last and best of things’. now] soon (MS canc.).

557. and rightly takes: ‘and rightly takes it’ (i.e. the title referred to at l. 553) if human beings exceed God by their capacity for love, which is otherwise absent from ‘Nature’s Law’.

565. faint] poor (MS). flits] soars (MS canc.).

566. dead Atlas’ self: the primary reference is to the Atlas mountain range, which is ‘dead’ because it is inanimate matter, and is thus, for all its gigantic size, lower in the scale of creation than the tiniest and most ephemeral living creature; but B. probably also intends an allusion to the Titan after whom the mountain is named, and who was given the task of holding up the heavens as a punishment for his rebellion against Zeus. As a pagan deity, he is ‘dead’ in another sense. 566–7. self: / I give such to the midge] self— / Given to the nobler midge (1870 [rev. ed. of 1868]–1888).

568–71. The predicament John describes is close to that of the philosopher Cleon: see ll. 214–172, pp. 578–81.

568. Thus, man proves best] Man proves the best (MS).

570. best rise] most rise (MS).

572. avouch] confess (MS).

573. He is] Himself (MS canc.).

574. Neither may know God: cp. Job xi 7–8: ‘Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?’ mistake himself: i.e. make the mistake of believing himself to be godlike.

578. A variant of the famous story in Plato’s Apology: the oracle at Delphi proclaimed Socrates the wisest of men; Socrates argued that this was because he was the only man who knew that he knew nothing.

579. can all: is capable of all.

580–9. Although B.’s St John is able to anticipate and counter the arguments of the ‘Higher Criticism’, he is not concerned with scientific arguments against religion: he takes for granted here the immutability of species which Darwin had recently challenged. On the question of B.’s knowledge of Darwin in this period, see headnote to Caliban, p. 621. B. evokes the ‘perfection’ of the creation before the advent of mankind in a number of other poems, e.g. Paracelsus v 638–70 (I 298–9) and Cleon 199–205 (p. 578).

580. beasts] brutes (MS canc.).

584. fancies to the fact: see A Likeness 35–6n. (p. 646). fancies] fancy (MS).

585. air: i.e. the ‘fancies’.

587. Man’s distinctive mark alone,] only Man’s distinctive mark (MS canc.).

590. attend his soul] be for his soul (MS).

591. at first: ‘immediately’, ‘at the first attempt’.

593–5. The physics of this argument are those of Epicurus, who postulated that the cosmos was made up of atoms of matter moving through the void; the example given by John, of the impossibility of movement were the universe made up of matter alone, is found in bk. i of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura.

593. wait his body] for his body (MS).

594. the solid] made solid (MS).

595. Where now] Whereas (MS).

596. conditioned: ‘situated’, ‘subject to these conditions’.

597.] What he knows now, he could not know at first; (MS).

598. considers] conceits him (MS canc.).

599. misknown: B.’s only other use of this word occurs in Cleon 112 (p. 573).

600. Getting] Bringing (MS canc.).

604. his own mind] his own soul (MS).

605. Bent: natural tendency. turned to law] grown his law (MS canc.).

609–22. B.’s use of sculpture as a means of thinking about human creativity in general goes back to the Jules-Phene episode of Pippa: see headnote (pp. 86–9), noting esp. the praise of the sculptor Canova for the life-likeness of his figures. Cp. also Fifine at the Fair (1872) 756–93.

609. statuary: sculptor.

613. Cries] Says (MS canc.).

617. i’ the] in the (MS canc.).

619. my shape] thy shape (MS canc.).

623. Right in you, right in him: ‘You are right to applaud the sculptor, just as he was right, for having realized his “idea” in clay.’ be man’s] is man’s (MS).

624. at a jet: more usually ‘at a single jet’, meaning ‘at a single effort of the mind’; unlike human beings, which have (like the sculptor) to struggle to embody their conceptions in material form, God is capable of instantaneous creation. Cp. (noting ll. 633–4 below) ED 799–807 (III 133–4) where Michelangelo is imagined creating perfect works of art in heaven.

626–30. God summons Moses to Mount Sinai in Exodus xix, and in the following chapters (xx–xxii) instructs him as to the mode of worship and ethical code the Israelites are to follow. The word ‘pattern’ occurs in ch. xxv: ‘According to all that I shew thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it … And look that thou make them [the ‘vessels’] after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount’ (vv. 9, 40). B. may also have been thinking of the stone tablets on which God himself originally wrote the Ten Commandments, and which Moses broke in anger when he descended from Mount Sinai to discover the Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf (xxxii 15–19). Moses subsequently made a copy of these tables in his own hand (xxxiv 1–4, 27–9).

630. type: in the sense both of the ‘pattern or model after which something is made’ and ‘a perfect example or specimen of something’ (OED 5a, 7a): to ‘reach the type’ is therefore simultaneously a return to the divine original and the attainment of perfection in the future. There is also an allusion to the habit of reading the Old Testament ‘typologically’ as a symbolic anticipation of events in the New Testament. On B.’s knowledge of biblical typology see headnote to Saul (III 491).

632. to reach] to have (MS canc.).

633. instinct] impulse (MS canc.).

635. burthen: leading idea or sentiment, with a possible reference to the sense of a musical undersong or accompaniment.

637. my lips] my tongue (MS canc.).

638–43. In a letter to Julia Wedgwood of 19 Aug. 1864, B. transcribed from a book he was reading an anecdote about the superhuman patience of Rabbi Perida, who would ‘read and explain the same thing four hundred times over’; on one occasion he did this twice running, ‘At which, a voice was heard from heaven, to the following purpose, “Perida, either live four hundred years, or obtain innocence and eternal life for thee and thy posterity!” Perida without hesitation chose the latter: but his scholars, out of cruel kindness, cried “No no no—but four hundred years for Perida!”’ (RB & JW 61–2). B. goes on to compare himself to Perida: ‘I keep trying to be quite intelligible, next poem: what if the Saturday Review should get me four hundred years more of rendering-intelligible, by general outcry to heaven?’ On the Saturday Review, see Appendix C, pp. 892–3.

638. than such] than this (MS canc.).

640. is left] be left (MS canc.).

641. absent: i.e. from heaven.

643. a new hundred years: for the tradition that John lived to extreme old age, see headnote, Setting.

645. we five: Pamphylax, Xanthus, Valens, the Boy and the Bactrian convert who kept guard outside the cave.

647. Ephesus: see above ll. 361–2n.

652. So, lest] I—lest (MS canc.).

653. I to-morrow fight the beasts: ‘In the early church, martyrdoms were exceptionally public events, because Christians coincided with a particular phase in the history of public entertainment: they were pitched into the cities’ arenas for unarmed combat with gladiators or bulls, leopards and the dreaded bears’ (Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, p. 420). Cp. Paul’s insistence on the truth of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians xv 32: ‘If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.’

656–9. Cp., noting l. 665 below, John’s description of himself at the Last Supper: ‘Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of the disciples, whom Jesus loved’ ( John xiii 23). The detail of his ‘lying on Jesus’ breast’ is repeated in v. 25, and again at the very end of the gospel, in the context of a rumour that John himself would be spared death: Peter asks the risen Christ what will happen to ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved … which also leaned on his breast at supper’, and receives an apparently ambiguous reply: ‘If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?’ John, however, denies that Jesus meant ‘that that disciple should not die’ (xxi 20–23).

658. spoke] said (MS, replacing ‘writ’).

665. See ll. 656–9n.

665^666.] no line-space in MS, where l. 665 ends the page and there is no indication of a new paragraph.

666–88. Cerinthus’s ‘musings’ on the document are not recorded, but it is implied that he continued to ‘affirm’ that Christ was ‘Mere man’; another commentator attempts to rebut him in ll. 667–88. The last comment in the poem is either by the owner of the document, or another annotator: see headnote, Setting.

666^667.] no line-space in MS; B. wrote ‘New par.’ in the l. margin and added quotation marks at the start of l. 667.

666. Cerinthus: on Cerinthus and his doctrines, see headnote. The argument used by the commentator to combat his doctrines in the following lines does not derive from John, and may itself be the subject of B.’s satire as over-literal and pedantic (e.g. l. 679).

671–4. Cp. 1 John iv 8: ‘God is love’, and the first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism: ‘Q. What is the chief end of man? A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever’.

674. Him] His (MS).

676.] By this time there be many souls set free, (MS). set free: i.e. released by death; cp. Paracelsus i 775 (I 148).

678–9. Another reference to the belief in the imminence of the Second Coming in some sections of the early church.

683. Cp. PL iii 341: ‘God shall be all in all’; and 1 Corinthians xv 28.

685. Groom for each bride: Jesus uses the metaphor of a wedding for the kingdom of heaven in several parables (e.g. Matthew xxv 1–13), and is named as the ‘bridegroom’ by John the Baptist ( John iii 19–20); the New Jerusalem is ‘prepared as a bride adorned for her husband’ in Revelation xxi 2. But Jesus himself nowhere claims that he will be the bridegroom of each saved soul; this image seems to derive from St Paul in 2 Corinthians xi 2: ‘I have espoused you [the Corinthians] to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ’, itself recalling Isaiah liv 5: ‘thy Maker is thy husband’.

688. The odd sequence of tenses here implies that Cerinthus is lost for ever, or still lost.