That such writings should be difficult, that they should frequently need a clue, is almost a condition of their existence. Yet we venture to affirm that careful students of these poems will seldom be found at variance as to their main drift and intention; and that the key, once supplied by the more deeply to the less deeply read, will in most cases be felt and acknowledged for the true one. And unless he be of maturer age than to be capable of deriving pleasure from a style of poetry so different from that to which his earlier years were accustomed, or be disinclined to mysticism in every shape and form, we would certainly recommend the lover of poetry not to be daunted by the first blush of difficulty, but to persevere. He will probably ere long be surprised at his own indifference, when he comes to perceive the richness, variety, and nutriveness of the feast which is spread before him. We commence with Paracelsus;' partly because it stands first in order of time, partly because it is the most difficult,1 and may thus be accepted by the reader as a kind of test of his capability of taking interest in Mr. Browning's creations. If he is not repelled by the obscurities of Paracelsus,' we may safely reckon upon his acceptance of subsequent works of equal interest, and far less difficulty. Let us first glance at the actual history of this aspirant after knowledge. Paracelsus was born A.D. 1493, at the little town of Einsiedeln, in Switzerland, a place not unknown to our summer tourists. His names at length were, Philip Aureole Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim, the surname being Grecised into Paracelsus, according to the fashion of the day, as exhibited by Melancthon, colampadius, and others. His name of Bombast, or Bumbastus, has passed into an unhappy celebrity; the bombastic phraseology of his lectures having stamped the word with the signification which it has ever since retained. Believed by his admirers to be a successful alchemist, and almost infallible healer of disease, he was reviled by his enemies as a mere quack, a drunkard, a dealer in magic, possessing a bird of evil incantations in the handle of the long sword usually worn by him. (Mr. Browning, whose notes supply us with materials for this sketch, here reminds us of the lines from Hudibras: ' 'Bumbastus kept a devil's bird, Shut in the pummel of his sword; That taught him all the cunning pranks Of past and future mountebanks).' 1 These remarks apply only to our author's acknowledged and extant works. We have heard that a small volume entitled 'Pauline' is by Mr Browning, and prior to 'Paracelsus' in date of publication; likewise that 'Sordello,' which is now withdrawn from circulation, is still more difficult to understand than 'Paracelsus.' After long wanderings in the East, and over a great part of Europe, he was appointed, through the interest of the Reformer Ecolampadius, to the Professorship of Physic in the University of Basle (or, as Mr. Browning more correctly terms it, Basil). He commenced by publicly burning the works of Galen and Avicenna, and announcing his own sovereignty over the healing art. A quarrel with a magistrate compelled him to fly from Basle, and after many changes of residence (some being compulsory), he died in a hospital at Salzburg, at the age of forty-eight, in the autumn of 1541. An unpromising subject this, at first sight, for the hero of a poem! But we must first consider the merits of Paracelsus, and the many palliations for his faults. He was liberal and uncovetous; he did perform many wonderful cures, and may fairly, in Mr. Browning's judgment, claim to be the father of modern chemistry. It is curious that in France, since the publication of the poem, and, perhaps, in consequence of it, the fame of Paracelsus as a savant has been renewed. If Paracelsus paid too little respect to the memory of his predecessors in his own department of science, he shares this fault with many a reformer; witness Aristotle, Luther, Bacon. If he displayed temper, it was under great provocation. If his theological tenets were wild and pantheistic, it must be remembered that he lived in an age of great religious excitement, and numbered Zuinglius as well as Ecolampadius, among his acquaintance. Mr. Browning's poem is dramatic in its form. But in the preface to the original edition he explained, correctly enough, that it differed from the ordinary drama, inasmuch as there was no 'recourse to the external machinery of incidents to create and evolve the crisis.' If we take a drama, as for instance, 'Hamlet,' we see at once that the character of the hero is brought out by the events which befal him; the discovery of his father's murder, the usurpation of his uncle, the marriage of his mother to the murderer. And thus Goethe's celebrated critique upon this play commences with the inquiry, What 'sort of person would Hamlet have been, if the tenor of his life 'had been unbroken by the shock of these calamities?' But if the central figure in a poem be that of a thinker whose course has been comparatively uneventful, the development must be represented as occasioned (in Miltonic language) by the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's heart from within, rather than by the changes of that which is called fortune from without. Such was the task attempted by our poet at (we believe) the early age of three-and-twenty. He has not taken up the position of a mere defender of the fame of Paracelsus; he does not simply point out that this supposed quack and magician had discovered the circulation of the blood and the sanguification of the heart; that he has been recognised by Vossius as a great chemist, and by Lavater as a forerunner in the cultivation of practical physiognomy; that he has probably hinted many things in his neglected books, which have since been cleverly appropriated, and thus enabled other men to obtain reputation and applause. But admitting, along with these merits, a certain decadence in the morale of Paracelsus as he proceeds in life, the poet forms a conception of his character which shall explain, by the existence of a flaw from the beginning, the gradual failure of his schemes, and the ruin which overtook them in the end. It is obvious that with the correctness of this conception viewed biographically, we have little or nothing to do. A fair case might, no doubt, be made for its truthfulness as matter of fact. But all that we need ask in criticising a poet, is whether he has drawn a clear, intelligible, consistent portrait? And in proportion to the general ignorance surrounding the memory of any man is the smallness of the wrong effected by a representation not in accordance with literal truth. We do not inquire very critically as to the likeness of the picture of a medieval founder which graces the hall of a college, though we do require that he shall not be represented in vestments of a modern guise. If Shakspeare has overcharged the accusations against the character of Richard III.; if Schiller has misrepresented Wallenstein; if Mr. Henry Taylor has calumniated S. Dunstan, (we are only putting the case hypothetically,)—then a real wrong has been done, because these personages are all conspicuous in history, and in the last instance connected with questions which seriously affect our inward life. But as regards Paracelsus, if his poetic glorifier has overrated his merits, this can hardly be said to disturb any previously formed opinions, since most of us never had any; to say nothing of the fact, that of the two, undue praise is at least a more charitable excess than over-condemnation. The plan of the poem is as follows. In part the first Paracelsus expounds to his friends Festus and Michal (Festus's wife), in their garden at Würzburg, his aspirations after knowledge, after universal truth, and his desire to traverse the world in search of it. They try, but vainly, to retain him. This scene, headed 'Paracelsus aspires,' is supposed to take place in 1512. The next, wherein Paracelsus attains,' is fixed some nine years later. The knowledge-seeker is then at Constantinople. Despite his attainments, he is desponding and dissatisfied, and is only saved from utter despair by the entrance of a mysterious person, an Italian poet, named Aprile, who throws some light upon the probable causes of Paracelsus's ill-success. Five years pass, and we find our hero in his professorial chair at Basle. His sentiments have undergone some change. His yearnings after knowledge for its own sake have yielded to the more reasonable desire of imparting to others what he has already acquired. For this end he is content to relax in his endeavours after more knowledge, and to resign his search after absolute truth. The fourth part exhibits Paracelsus at Colmar, in Alsatia, after his forced flight from Basle, where men's misplaced admiration for his inferior gifts had been succeeded by a still more unreasonable opposition and undervaluation of his real powers. The injustice he has suffered has engendered a feeling of bitter contempt for his fellow-men, and (like too many others before and since, as e. g. Robert Burns) he has sought solace from the failure of his great and beneficent schemes in lower delights, the joys of earth and sense. And if men will honour him, not for his really important discoveries and lofty aspirations, but simply for showing off the mere marvels of his art, let the dupes be duped; in his contempt he will play the charlatan. The last book brings us to the death-bed of the philosopher, in the hospital of S. Sebastian, at Salzburg. He is humbled; he sees his errors, firstly, in the attempt to disregard his brother-men, and then, in expecting too much from them, making no allowance for their imperfections, and not perceiving the good frequently latent in their mistakes. Many are the questions incidentally discussed in this poem. Upon some of these we may touch as we proceed. And, firstly, as regards the original flaw in the designs of Paracelsus. His friend Festus maintains that Paracelsus is seeking knowledge too much for its own sake; that he had far better, instead of wild and desultory travel, study calmly in some retreat already dedicated to learning: And when Paracelsus objects to such a representation of his intention, and professes an earnest desire to serve God, who has directed the choice of his career, and summoned him to be his instrument, the reply of Festus contains the following remarkable lines: 'Presume not to serve God apart from such Young and ardent, the aspirant is not yet to be daunted. In the conviction that the consciousness of power is a proof that it was meant to be employed according to the yearnings of the possessor, he makes use of one of those fine comparisons which are scattered with liberal hand throughout these poems: 'Be sure that God Ne'er dooms to waste the strength He deigns impart! Into the vast and unexplored abyss, What full-grown power informs her from the first, The silent boundless regions of the sky! A like call is on him to travel in quest of truth; to bring new hopes to animate the world; new lights for the human race, lights whose glory shall be an anticipation of heaven. Festus urges, at least, a respectful attention to the footprints of the mighty dead, but the existing state of mankind is urged as a proof that the teaching of past would-be sages is contemptible, and Paracelsus again intimates that his service for mankind is a mere thing by the way, not by any means his main object. On this hint Festus utters his warning : 'Look well to this; here is a plague-spot, here, How can that course be safe which from the first (The reader may possibly be reminded of one of Mr. Tennyson's most didactic poems, 'The Palace of Art,' and its wellknown lines: 'And he that shuts Love out in turn shall be But though the lesson may be practically identical in both cases, the mode of treatment is entirely distinct.) We next, as has been said, find Paracelsus, nine years later, at Constantinople, in The House of the Greek Conjuror.' His course (as Festus feared) has been, as that of a man, downwards, although he may have made progress as a sarant. The mere |