inadequately for his writings; and the explanations of English allusions are highly amusing. Then the organizing of readings, or courses of lectures, with reasonably competent lecturers. And a digest of Reviews, which are the queerest milestones along the course of Browning's popularity that a traveller on his own Rosinante could pass or imagine. These would be real helps, worthy of the dignity of a living poet free of all that emasculating popularity which Carlyle so vigorously deprecates, worthy of ourselves, and worthy of the sensible practical object we have in view.

There will still remain that which no such helps can impart, for

"Therein the patient must minister to himself;"

the soul's own intense sympathy with his teacher; his keen enjoyment and noblest pleasure under "love's intellectual law;" the enriching of his memory and ennobling of his moral being, the survey of life, and growth towards attaining the attitude of Prospice. No one can read Browning without being immensely benefited, both in his intellect and his heart. Coleridge was not the last to complain, "The indisposition, nay the angry aversion to think, even in persons who are most willing to attend, is the fact that ever forces itself on my notice afresh . ." So, after all our efforts, there will still remain a large number to whom we can wave the hand for farewell:

"Vex not thou the poet's mind

With thy shallow wit:

Vex not thou the poet's mind,

For thou canst not fathom it."

But not he more than Milton need disdain the condition to which all teachers a head taller than their fellows are subject,

"And fit audience find though few."

Were he shallow instead of subtle, and had he dabbled in summer pools instead of fathoming the depths of the soul and eternity, he would have had the sickening incense of steaming popularity in his nostrils. But

"I love him, on this side idolatry, as much as any ".

Or, to throw a last arrow feathered with his own words at him, we may reverentially contemplate him as

"Still loftier than the world suspects,

Living and dying."

V. ON "PIETRO OF ABANO"

AND THE LEADING IDEAS OF "DRAMATIC IDYLS," SECOND SERIES 1880.

BY THE REV. J. SHARPE, M.A.

(Read at the 2nd Meeting of the Browning Society. Friday, Nov. 25, 1881.)

Structure of the Poem. (Dram. Idyls, II, p. 63-111.)

1 Peter of A'bano-Petrus de A'pono or Aponensis, or Petrus de Padua—was an Italian physician and alchemist, born at Abano near Padua in 1246, died about 1320. He is said to have studied Greek at Constantinople, mathematics at Padua, and to have been made Doctor of Medicine and Philosophy at Paris. He then returnd to Padua, where he was Professor of medicine, and followed the Arabian physicians, especially Averroes. He got a great reputation, and charged enormous fees. He hated milk and cheese, and swoond at the sight of them. His enemies, jealous of his renown and wealth, denounst him to the Inquisition as a magician. They accused him of possessing the Philosopher's Stone, and of making, with the Devil's help, all money spent by him come back to his purse, &c. His trial was begun; and had he not died naturally in time, he would have been burnt. The Inquisitors orderd his corpse to be burnt; and as a friend had taken that away, they had his portrait publicly burnt by the executioner. In 1560 a Latin epitaph

in his memory was put up in the church of St. Augustin. The Duke of Urbino set his statue among those of illustrious men; and the Senate of Padua put one on the gate of its palace, beside those of Livy, &c. His best known work is his Conciliator differentiarum quæ inter philosophos et medicos versantur; Mantua, 1472, and Venice, 1476, fol., often reprinted. Other works are: 1. De venenis, eorumque remediis, tr. into French by L. Boet; Lyons, 1593, 12mo; 2. Geomantia; Venice, 1505, 1556, 8vo; 3. Expositio problematum Aristotelis; Mantua, 1475, 4to; 4. Hippocratis de medicorum astrologia libellus, in Gr. and Lat.; Venice, 1485, 4to; 5. Astrolabium planum in tabulis ascendens, continens qualibet hora atque minutæ æquationes domorum cæli, &c.; Venice, 1502, 4to; 6. Diocnides, digestus alphabetico ordine; Lyon, 1512, 4to; 7. Heptameron; Paris, 1474, 4to; 8. Textus Mesues noviter emendatus, &c.; Venice, 1505, 8vo; 9. Decisiones physionomica, 1548, 8vo; 10. Quæstiones de febribus; Padua, 1482; 11. Galeni tractatus varii a Petro Paduano, latinitate donati; MS. in S. Mark's Library, Venice; 12. Les éléments pour opérer dans les sciences magiques; MS. in the Arsenal Library, Paris —Nouvelle Biographie Universelle. Paris, 1855, i. 29-31. -F.

Part i, stanzas i-v. Description of Peter.

PETRUS APONENSIS is a magician. He has boundless power and knowledge; he uses both for the good of men: yet he not only fails to win gratitude, but is met with curses, insult, and persecution. If he works under some disguise in the hope of earning gratitude, the moment he is detected he is denounced as a wizard, and driven away by those whom he has benefited. Why is it that a man at once so powerful, wise, and beneficent, should yet fail to win in return even a little gratitude, not to say love? In the answer lies the idea which this poem is intended to illustrate.

'Si vis amari, ama,' said Hecaton. (Sen. Ep. i. 9.) Love is won only by love, and love involves self-sacrifice. Men cannot love Peter, for they see that he does not love them. Though his acts are beneficent, they are no proofs of love, for they cost him nothing; they are wrought by a word and by magic power, not by any sacrifice. Thus, as Democritus said, 'he who loves none, will be loved by none.'

Part ii, stanzas vi-xxii, p. 68. 'Now as on a certain evening.' The clever Greek.

As Peter is entering his house he is stopped by a young man, a Greek, clever, and imbued with the spirit of Greek philosophy. He tells Peter that he does not believe the vulgar stories current concerning him. He has a boon to beg, that Peter will gratify the purest of ambitions, to make him a great poet, so that he may make his kind wise, free, and happy. This he purposes to do by fictions suited to the ignorant crowd, by apparent truths which to them seem good; by gratifying their low aims, he will use them for his own ends.

He illustrates his meaning by reference to architecture. The king who has the palace built seeks his own glory, the workmen seek merely for wages, but the architect uses the low aims of both to display his own power, and has in the end all the credit. Human fame, however, is nothing compared with the consciousness of power; nay, even persecution is nothing to the sage who is conscious that he and he only is the real ruler of the world.

The clever Greek anticipates an objection which Peter might raise: 'If I grant your wish how can I be sure that you will not turn out ungrateful like the rest?' He replies, "The vulgar story that you cannot touch milk means that you cannot win 'the milk of human kindness,' human love now touch my heart and love is yours; the higher you lift me the more I shall love you.' Peter replies that he has often been deceived by such promises; no one yet has ventured to risk anything to save him from persecution. Still he will try again. He throws the

Greek into a trance by magic art, and shows him in three scenes what the future would be, if he were to give the Greek the power he asks.

Peter evidently represents the wise man of the Platonic philosophy. Plato omitted the benevolent affections from his psychological analysis, and Peter has no love for the men whom he benefits. Plato said that the just man will be scourged, racked, and finally crucified, and all because he preferred being to seeming. So Peter, who does not condescend to disguise his want of feeling, is met with insult and persecution. The clever Greek is the very opposite. He chooses to seem rather than to be, and prospers accordingly. (See Plato, Republic, book i.)

The clever Greek addressed Peter on the ground of the Platonic philosophy, 'dosed him with the fair and good.' He assumed a fundamental principle of Greek philosophy, viz. truth for the few wise, fiction for the ignorant many. Greek philosophy was vicious at the core: it was based upon pride; self-love was its leading motive. In Peter, selflove took the form of the pride of intellect and conscious power; his reward was that he 'knew himself the mighty man he was.' He is satisfied with the judgment, 'admirationem incutit.' In the Greek, selflove takes a coarser form.

Peter

In neither case is self-love inconsistent with benevolence. exemplifies this in a private station, the Greek in public life. (See Butler, sermon xi.) But how different is his conduct from that of true love. He would raise men by being raised above them; true love sinks that it may raise. He would make men happy by indulging their delusions, while he uses them for his own ends; true love imparts truth, and raises others to its own level.

Part iii, stanzas xxiii-li, p. 82. 'Presently the young man.'

The Parasite, the Councillor, and the Pope.

In the visions, the Greek is seen in three stages of his upwarddownward career; first he wins wealth, next political power, and lastly spiritual power. At each stage Peter appears and asks for his reward, gradually diminishing his demands. First he asks for a home with the Greek; next for a remote and hidden sanctuary; lastly, that the Greek will edit his literary remains. On the two former occasions the Greek puts off his request upon the plea that his ambition is not yet fully gratified, he acknowledges the debt; but at last as Pope he can rise no higher, and then he refuses to pay. As the Greek has risen higher in the world, he has sunk morally lower; when Peter has raised him to the full height of his ambition, the very acknowledgment of a debt of gratitude is withheld.

Thus the career of the Greek exemplifies the truth, that love is won

its value. I do not know its proper name, or recognized value, in English Grammar; in Browning it is but dust amidst gold. However, it affronts one scores of times daily, in the outrageous, senseless profusion of employment, in books, in the daily press, in notice bills, before a name, after a complete sentence, anywhere, everywhere; a plague that has worried me in correcting print till I have made a pact that it shall not be used for me: fretting one sometimes,

"As its mates do, the midge and the nit,

Through minuteness to wit. The gravamen's in that!" Instans Tyrannus. 2. Art. It is an omission hitherto that no art-critic has given us a fit notice of, or more than slight allusions to, Browning's poetry on Art. Browning's Italian soul in his "myriad-minded" genius could not but throw itself much into Art. And his Art-poems are as great contributions to our understanding of the moral principles, and the religious. principles, of Art, as Ruskin's poetical prose is. His business is, as Fra Painting, Music, Verse, are Lippo says, " to paint the souls of men." but three cognate languages, of which the last may even be sometimes most inadequate to its high object. Art covers the three.

"Poet and painter are proud in the artist list enrolled."

In the sketch of the Florentine monk not only do we have most powerfully conceived the religious obligations of art, and the desperate attempt at compromise between the highest efforts of genius and the irregularities of the lower nature, as if the one could pay off arrears with God for the other, or as if every artist were a double personality, doomed to the Mezentian punishment that S. Paul takes as the type of the two laws striving within but also, because of these features, one great inward contradiction of spirit traces so sad an account of all that highly overstrung humanity which includes so many bright names; suns darkened with sunspots on their discs; Bacon, Turner, Byron, Handel; painters, musicians, poets, philosophers. I mention this, because the essential Browning in the art-poems is not only, nor so much, the art-critic, but the exponent of the religious aspect of art, the conscience in discord or harmony, of the relation to God in his art as well as in his life, in Rafael, Giotto, Andrea del Sarto, and in the Florentine painters all, as truly as in Paracelsus. As to judging of pictures, "Poets, and men of strong feeling in general, are apt to be among the very worst judges of painting. The slightest hint is enough for them... Thus Wordsworth writes many sonnets to Sir G. Beaumont and Haydon, none to Sir Joshua or to Turner." (Ruskin. 'M. P.' iii. 138-9.) But "Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages; always vital, right, and profound: so that in the matter of art, there is hardly a principle connected with the medieval temper that he has not struck upon,