Loe raamatut: «The Browning Cyclopædia: A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning», lehekülg 11
Notes. – vi., Pari passu: with equal pace, together. xv., “Saint Scholastica … in Paynimrie”: she lived about the year 543. She was sister to St. Benedict, and consecrated herself to God from her earliest youth. The legend referred to is not given, either in Butler’s Lives of the Saints, or Mrs. Jameson’s Legends of the Monastic Orders. Paynimrie means the land of the infidel. xvi., Trogalia: sweetmeats and candies.
Dante is magnificently described in Sordello (Book I., lines 374-80): —
“Dante, pacer of the shore
Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom,
Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume —
Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope
Into a darkness quieted by hope;
Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God’s eye
In gracious twilights where His chosen lie.”
Date et Dabitur. “Give, and it shall be given unto you.” (See The Twins.)
David. (See Saul, and Epilogue to Dramatis Personæ: First Speaker).
Deaf and Dumb. A group by Woolner (1862). How a glory may arise from a defect is the keynote of this poem. A prism interposed in the course of a ray of sunlight breaks it into the glory of the seven colours of the spectrum; the prism is an obstruction to the white light, but the rainbow tints which are seen in consequence of the obstacle reveal to us the secret of the sunbeam. So the obstruction of deafness or dumbness often greatly enhances the beauty of the features, as in the group of statuary which forms the subject of the poem, and which was exhibited at the International Exhibition of 1862. The children were Constance and Arthur, the son and daughter of Sir Thomas Fairbairn.
Death in the Desert, A. (Dramatis Personæ, 1864.) John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who lay on His breast at the last sad paschal supper, who stood by the cross, and received from the lips of his Lord His only earthly possession – His mother; John, the writer of the Gospel which bears his name, and of the letters which breathe the spirit of the incarnated love which was to transform a world lying in wickedness; the seer of the awful visions of Patmos – the tremendous Apocalypse which closes the Christian revelation – lay dying in the desert; recalled from exile after the death of Domitian from the isle of the Sporades, the volcanic formation of which, with its daily scenes of smoke, brimstone, fire, and streams of molten lava, had aided the apostle to imagine the day of doom, when the angel should cry, “Time shall be no longer.” The beloved disciple, who had borne the message of Divine love through the cities of Asia Minor, had founded churches, established bishoprics, and had laboured by spoken and written word, and even more effectually by his beautiful and gentle life, to extend the kingdom of God and of His Christ, now worn out with incessant labours, and bent with the weight of well-nigh a hundred years, the last of the men who had seen the Lord, the final link which bound the youthful Church to its apostolic days, lies dying in a cave, hiding from the bloody hands of those who breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the followers of Christ. Companioned by five converts who tenderly nursed the dying saint, he had been brought from the secret recess in the rock where they had hidden him from the pursuers into the midmost grotto, where the light of noon just reached a little, and enabled them to watch
“The last of what might happen on his face.”
And at the entrance of the cave there kept faithful watch the Bactrian convert, pretending to graze a goat, so that if thief or soldier passed they might have booty without prying into the cave. The dying man lies unconscious, but his attendants think it possible to rouse him that he may speak to them before he departs: they wet his lips with wine, cool his forehead with water, chafe his hands, diffuse the aromatic odour of the spikenard through the cave, and pray; but still he sleeps. Then the boy, inspired by a happy thought, brings the plate of graven lead on which are the words of John’s gospel, “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” and having found the place, he presses the aged man’s finger on the line, and repeats it in his ear. Then he opened his eyes, sat up, and looked at them; and no one spoke, save the watcher without, signalling from time to time that they were safe. And first, the beloved one said, “If one told me there were James and Peter, I could believe! So is my soul withdrawn into its depths.” – “Let be awhile!” – And then —
“It is long
Since James and Peter had release by death,
And I am only he, your brother John,
Who saw and heard, and could remember all.”
He reminds them how in Patmos isle he had seen the Lord in His awful splendour; how in his early life he saw and handled with his hands the Word of Life. Soon it will be that none will say “I saw.” And already – for the years were long – men had disputed, murmured and misbelieved, or had set up antichrists; and remembering what had happened to the faith in his own days, he could well foresee that unborn people in strange lands would one day ask —
“Was John at all, and did he say he saw?”
“What can I say to assure them?” he asks; the story of Christ’s life and death was not mere history to him: “It is,” he cries, – “is, here and now.” Not only are the events of the gospel history present before his eyes, so that he apprehends nought else; but not less plainly, not less firmly printed on his soul, are the more mysterious truths of God’s eternal presence in the world visibly contending with wrong and sin; and, as the wrong and sin are manifest to his soul-sight, so equally does he see the need, yet transiency of both. But matters, which to his spiritualised vision were clear, must be placed before his followers through some medium which shall, like an optic glass, segregate them, diminish them into clearness; and so he bids them stand before that fact, that Life and Death of Jesus Christ, till it spreads apart like a star, growing and opening out on all sides till it becomes their only world, as it is his. “For all of life,” he says, “is summed up in the prize of learning love, and having learnt it, to hold it and truth, despite the world in arms against the holder. We can need no second proof of God’s love for man. Man having once learned the use of fire, would not part with the gift for purple or for gold. Were the worth of Christ as plain, he could not give up Christ. To test man, the proofs of Christianity shift; he cannot grasp that fact as he grasps the fact of fire and its worth.” He asks his disciples why they say it was easier to believe in Christ once than now – easier when He walked the earth with those He loved? “But,” says John, who had seen all, – the transfiguration, the walking on the sea, the raising of the dead to life, – “could it be possible the man who had seen these things should ever part from them?” Yes, it was! The torchlight, the noise, the sudden inrush of the Roman soldiers, on the night of the betrayal, caused even him, John, the beloved disciple, to forsake Him and fly. Yet he had gained the truth, and the truth grew in his soul, so that he was enabled to impress it so indelibly on others, that children and women who had never seen the least of the sights he had seen would clasp their cross with a light laugh, and wrap the burning robe of martyrdom round them, giving thanks to God the while. But in the mind of man the laws of development are ever at work, and questioners of the truth arose, and it was necessary that he should re-state the Lord’s life and work in various ways, to rectify mistakes. God has operated in the way of Power, later in the way of Love, and last of all in Influence on Soul: men do not ask now, “Where is the promise of His coming?” but —
“Was He revealed in any of His lives,
As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul?”
“Miracles, to prove doctrine,” John says, “go for nought, but love remains.” Then men ask, “Did not we ourselves imagine and make this love?” (That is to say, love having been discovered by mankind to be the noblest thing on earth, have not men created a God of Infinite Love, out of their own passionate imagining of what man’s love would be if perfectly developed?) “The mind of man can only receive what it holds – no more.” Man projects his own love heavenward, it falls back upon him in another shape – with another name and story added; this, he straightway says, is a gift from heaven. Man of old peopled heaven with gods, all of whom possessed man’s attributes; horses drew the sun from east to west. Now, we say the sun rises and sets as if impelled by a hand and will, and it is only thought of as so impelled because we ourselves have hands and wills. But the sun must be driven by some force which we do not understand; will and love we do understand. As man grows wiser the passions and faculties with which he adorned his deities are taken away: Jove of old had a brow, Juno had eyes; gradually there remained only Jove’s wrath and Juno’s pride; in process of time these went also, till now we recognise will and power and love alone. All these are at bottom the same – mere projections from the mind of the man himself. Having then stated the objections brought against the faith of Christ, St. John proceeds to meet them. “Man,” he says, “was made to grow, not stop; the help he needed in the earlier stages, being no longer required, is withdrawn; his new needs require new helps. When we plant seed in the ground we place twigs to show the spots where the germs lie hidden, so that they may not be trodden upon by careless steps. When the plants spring up we take the twigs away; they no longer have any use. It was thus with the growth of the gospel seed: miracles were required at first, but, when the plant had sprung up and borne fruit, had produced martyrs and heroes of the faith, what was the use of miracles any more? The fruit itself was surely sufficient testimony to the vitality of the seed. Minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth, as babes with milk; a boy we bid feed himself, or starve. So, at first, I wrought miracles that men might believe in Christ, because no faith were otherwise possible; miracles now would compel, not help. I say the way to solve all questions is to accept by the reason the Christ of God; the sole death is when a man’s loss comes to him from his gain, when – from the light given to him – he extracts darkness; from the knowledge poured upon him he produces ignorance; and from the manifestation of love elaborates the lack of love. Too much oil is the lamp’s death; it chokes with what would otherwise feed the flame. An overcharged stomach starves. The man who rejects Christ because he thinks the love of Christ is only a projection of his own is like a lamp that overswims with oil, a stomach overloaded with nurture; that man’s soul dies.” “But,” the objector may say, “You told your Christ-story incorrectly: what is the good of giving knowledge at all if you give it in a manner which will not stop the after-doubt? Why breed in us perplexity? why not tell the whole truth in proper words?” To this St. John replies, “Man of necessity must pass from mistake to fact; he is not perfect as God is, nor as is the beast; lower than God, he is higher than the beast, and higher because he progresses, – he yearns to gain truth, catching at mistake. The statuary has the idea in his mind, aspires to produce it, and so calls his shape from out the clay:
“Cries ever, ‘Now I have the thing I see’:
Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought,
From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself.”
Suppose he had complained, ‘I see no face, no breast, no feet’? It is only God who makes the live shape at a jet. Striving to reach his ideals, man grows; ceasing to strive, he forfeits his highest privileges, and entails the certainty of destruction. Progress is the essential law of man’s being, and progress by mistake, by failure, by unceasing effort, will lead him,
“Where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!”
Such is the difficulty of the latest time; so does the aged saint answer it. He would remain on earth another hundred years, he says, to lend his struggling brothers his help to save them from the abyss. But even as he utters the loving desire, he is dead,
“Breast to breast with God, as once he lay.”
They buried him that night, and the teller of the story returned, disguised, to Ephesus. St. John is said to have been banished into the Isle of Patmos, A.D. 97, by the order of Domitian. After this emperor had reigned fifteen years Nerva succeeded him (A.D. 99), and historians of the period wrote that “the Roman senate decreed that the honours paid to Domitian should cease, and such as were injuriously exiled should return to their native land and receive their substance again. It is also among the ancient traditions, that then John the Apostle returned from banishment and dwelt again at Ephesus.” Eusebius, quoting from Irenæus, says that John after his return from Patmos governed the churches in Asia, and remained with them in the time of Trajan. Irenæus also says that the Apostle carried on at Ephesus the work begun by Paul; Clement of Alexandria records the same thing. It is said that St. John died in peace at Ephesus in the third year of Trajan – that is, the hundredth of the Christian era, or the sixty-sixth from our Lord’s crucifixion, the saint being then about ninety-four years old; he was buried on a mountain without the town. A stately church stood formerly over this tomb, which is at present a Turkish mosque. The sojourn of the Apostle in Asia, a country governed by Magi and imbued with Zoroastrian ideas, and in those days full of Buddhist missionaries, may account for many things found in the Book of Revelation. Mr. Browning refers to this in the bracketed portion of the poem, commencing: —
“This is the doctrine he was wont to teach,
How divers persons witness in each man,
Three souls which make up one soul.”
They are described by Theosophists as “(1) The fluidic perisoul or astral body; (2) The soul or individual; and (3) The spirit, or Divine Father and life of his system.” (See The Perfect Way, Lecture I., 9.) These three souls make up, with the material body, the fourfold nature of man.
Notes. —Pamphylax the Antiochene, an imaginary person. Epsilon, Mu, Xi, letters of the Greek alphabet – e, m, and ch respectively. Xanthus and Valens, disciples of St. John. Bactrian, of Bactria, a province in Persia. “A ball of nard,” an unguent of spikenard, odorous and highly aromatic and restorative. Glossa, a commentary. Theotypas, a fictitious character. Prometheus, son of the Titan Iapetus and the Ocean-nymph Clymene, brother of Atlas, Menœtius, and Epimetheus, and father of Deucalion. When Zeus refused to mortals the use of fire, Prometheus stole it from Olympus, and brought it to men in a hollow reed. Zeus bound him to a pillar, with an eagle to consume in the daytime his liver, which grew again in the night. Æschylus, the earliest of the three great tragic poets of Greece, born at Eleusis, near Athens, B.C. 525. He wrote the Prometheus Bound. Ebion, the founder of the early sect of heretics called Ebionites. They held that the Mosaic law was binding on Christians, and believed Jesus to have been a mere man, though an ambassador from God and possessed of Divine power (Encyc. Dict.). Cerinthus raised great disturbances in obstinately defending an obligation of circumcision, and of abstaining from unclean meats in the New Law, and in extolling the angels as the authors of nature: this was before St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Colossians, etc. He pretended that the God of the Jews was only an angel; that Jesus was born of Joseph and Mary, like other men. He taught that Christ flew away at the time of the crucifixion, and that Jesus in the human part of His nature alone suffered and rose again, Christ continuing always immortal and impassible. St. Irenæus relates that on one occasion, when St. John went to the public baths, he found that this heretic was within, and he refused to remain lest the bath which contained Cerinthus should fall upon his head.
“De Gustibus – ” [De Gustibus non disputandum– “there is no accounting for tastes.”] (Men and Women, 1855; Lyrics, 1863; Dramatic Lyrics, 1868.) Every lover of Nature finds some particular kind of scenery which most appeals to his heart, and to which his thoughts revert in moments of reflection and meditation. The poet tells the lover of trees that after death (if loves persist) his ghost will be found wandering in an English lane by a hazel coppice in beanflower and blackbird time. For his own part, he loves best in all the world the scenery of his beloved Italy – a castle on a precipice in “the wind-grieved Apennine”; and if ever he gets his head out of the grave and his spirit soars free, he will be away to the sunny South, by the cypress guarding the seaside home, where scorpions sprawl on frescoed walls; in “Italy, my Italy,” – which beloved name he declares will be found graven on his heart.
De Lorge. (The Glove.) Sir de Lorge was the knight who recovered his lady’s glove from the lions, amongst which she had cast it to test his courage, and then threw it in her face.
Development. (Asolando, 1889.) Mr. Sharp, in his admirable Life of Browning, says that the poet’s father was a man of exceptional powers. He was a poet both in sentiment and expression; and he understood, as well as enjoyed, the excellent in art. He was a scholar, too, in a reputable fashion; not indifferent to what he had learnt in his youth, nor heedless of the high opinion generally entertained for the greatest writers of antiquity, but with a particular care himself for Horace and Anacreon. As his son once told a friend, “The old gentleman’s brain was a storehouse of literary and philosophical antiquities. He was completely versed in mediæval legend, and seemed to have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and even Talmudic personages, personally.” Development, indeed! That the embryonic mediæval lore of the banker’s clerk should have potentially contained the treasures of Paracelsus, Sordello, and Rabbi Ben Hakkadosh, is as wonderful as that the primary cell should contain the force which gathers to itself the man.
Notes. —Philip Karl Buttmann was a distinguished German philologist, born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1764, and died at Berlin, 1829. He studied at Göttingen, and in 1796 was appointed secretary of the Royal Library at Berlin. His fame rests on his Griechische Grammatik, the Ausführliche Griechische Sprachlehre, and the Lexilogus oder Beiträge zur Griechischen Worterklärung. These works are ranked highly for their exact criticism. He brought out valuable editions of Plato’s Dialogues and the Meidias of Demosthenes. Friedrich August Wolf, the great critic, was born at Haynrode, near Nordhausen, in 1759; he died in 1824. He studied philology at Göttingen, and published an edition of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with notes, in 1778. He filled the chair of philology and pedagogial science at Halle for twenty-three years. In 1806 he repaired to Berlin. His fame chiefly rests on his Prolegomena in Homerum, which was devoted to the argument that the Iliad and the Odyssey are not the work of one single and individual Homer, but a much later compilation of hymns sung and handed down by oral tradition. Its effect was overwhelming. Stagirite == Aristotle. “The Ethics” == the Nicomachean Ethics, the great work of Aristotle. “Battle of the Frogs and Mice,” a mock epic attributed to Homer. “The Margites,” a humorous poem, which kept its ground down to the time of Aristotle as the work of Homer; it began with the words, “There came to Colophon an old man, a divine singer, servant of the Muses and Apollo.”
Dîs Aliter Visum; or, Le Byron de Nos Jours. “Dîs aliter visum” is from Virgil, Æn. ii. 428, and means “Heaven thought not so.” (Dramatis Personæ, 1864.) The poem describes a meeting of two friends after a parting of ten years. They should have been more than friends: they were made for each other’s love; but love came in a guise which was not acceptable, and the heart which the man might have won, and the love which would have blessed him and ennobled his life, was for reasons of prudence disregarded, and both lovers went their way, having missed their life’s chance. It is the woman who speaks – the “poor, pretty, thoughtful thing” of other days; a woman who tried to love and understand art and literature – to love all, at any rate, that was great and good and beautiful. She wonders if he – the man who might have completed his partial life with a great love – ever for a moment valued her rightly, and determined that “love found, gained and kept,” was for him beyond art and sense and fame? She was young and inexperienced in the world’s ways; he was old and full of wisdom: too wise, perhaps, to see where his best interests lay. It would never do, he thought – a match “’twixt one bent, wigged and lamed – and this young beauty, round and sound as a mountain apple.” And so they parted. He chose a lower ideal, she married where she could not love; so the devil laughed in his sleeve, for not two only, but four souls were in jeopardy.
The poem is a good example of the poet’s way of drawing from a half-serious, half-bantering and indifferent confession of thoughts and feelings one of his great moral lessons. It has been compared to what is termed vers de société, and as such, up to stanza xxiii., it may be fitly described; then comes Mr. Browning’s sudden uprising to his highest power. It is as though he had lightly touched on the ways of men, and discussed them half-playfully with some light-hearted, not to say frivolous, audience in a drawing-room. The listeners stand smiling, and speculating as to his real meaning, when all at once he rises from his chair and brings in a moment before the thoughtless group of listeners the great and awful import of life, and the real meaning of the things which men call trifles, but which in God’s sight are big with the interests of Eternity. So, in this poem he leads us from pretty talk of “Heine for songs and kisses,” “gout, glory, and love freaks, love’s dues, and consols,” to one of his grandest life-lessons – the necessary incompleteness of all human existence here, because heaven must finish what earth can never complete, – the supreme evolution of the soul of man. Earth completes her star-fishes; Heaven itself could make no more perfect or more beautiful star-fish:
“He, whole in body and soul, outstrips
Man, found with either in default.”
The star-fish is whole. What is whole can increase no more. It has nothing to do but waste and die, and there is an end of it.
“Leave Now for dogs and apes!
Man has Forever.”
On the side of the man in the poem it could be fairly argued that a more unreasonable match could hardly be imagined than one between a “bent, wigged and lame” old gentleman and a “poor, pretty, thoughtful” young beauty, notwithstanding her offer of body and soul.
Notes. – viii., Robert Schumann, musical critic and composer: was born 1810, died 1856. Jean August Dominique Ingres (born 1780, died 1867). “The modern man that paints,” a celebrated historical painter, a pupil of David. He was opposed to the Romantic School, and depended for success on form and line. “His paintings, with all their cleverness, appear to English eyes deficient in originality of conception, coarse, hard and artificial in manner, and untrue in colour” (Imp. Dict. Biog.), xii., “The Fortieth spare Arm-chair.” This refers to the French Academy, founded by Richelieu in 1635. When one of the forty members dies a new one is elected to fill his place.
Djabal. (Return of the Druses.) The son of the Emir, who seeks revenge for the murder of his family, and declares himself to be the Hakim – who is to set the Druse people free. He loves the maiden Anael, and when she dies stabs himself on her dead body.
Doctor – . (Dramatic Idyls, Second Series, 1880.) A Rabbinical story. Satan, as in the opening scene of Job, stands with the angels before God to make his complaints. Asked “What is the fault now?” he declares that he has found something on earth which interferes with his prerogatives: —
“Death is the strongest-born of Hell, and yet
Stronger than Death is a Bad Wife, we know.”
Satan protests that this robs him of his rights, as he claims to be Strongest. He is commanded to descend to earth in mortal shape and get married, and so try for himself the bitter draught. It was Solomon who said that “a woman whose heart is snares and nets is more bitter than death” (Ecclesiastes vii. 27), and some commentators on the poem have thought the Rabbinical legend was suggested by this verse. Satan, married, in due time has a son who arrives at maturity, and then the question arises of a profession for him: “I needs must teach my son a trade.” Shall he be a soldier? That is too cowardly. A lawyer would be better, but there is too much hard work for the sluggard. There’s divinity, but that is Satan’s own special line, and that be far from his poor offspring! At last he thinks of the profession of medicine. Physic is the very thing! So Medicus he is appointed; and it is arranged that a special power shall be given to the young doctor’s eyes, so that when on his rounds he shall behold the spirit-person of his father at his side. Doctor once dubbed, ignorance shall be no barrier to his success; cash shall follow, whatever the treatment, and fees shall pour in. Satan tells his son that the reason he has endowed him with power to recognise his spirit-form is that he may judge by Death’s position in the sick room what are the prospects of the patient’s recovery. If he perceive his father lingering by the door, whatever the nature of the illness recovery will be speedy; if higher up the room, death will not be the sufferer’s doom; but if he is discovered standing by the head of the bed’s the patient’s doom is sealed. It happened that of a sudden the emperor himself was smitten with sore disease. Of course Dr. – was called in and promised large rewards if he saved the imperial life. As he entered the room he saw at once that all was lost: there stood his father Death as sentry at the bed’s head. Gold was offered in abundance; the doctor begged his father to go away and let him win his fee. “No inch I budge!” is the response. Then honours are offered him whom apparently wealth failed to tempt. The result is the same. Then Love: “Take my daughter as thy bride – save me for this reward!” The Doctor again implores a respite from his father, who is obdurate as ever. A thought strikes the physician: “Reverse the bed, so that Death no longer stands at the head;” but “the Antic passed from couch-foot back to pillow,” and is master of the situation again. The son now curses his father, and declares that he will go over to the other side. He sends to his home for the mystic Jacob’s-staff – a knobstick of proved efficacy in such cases. “Go, bid my mother (Satan’s wife, be it remembered) bring the stick herself.” The servant rushes off to do his errand, and all the anxious while the emperor sinks lower and lower, as the icy breath of Death freezes him to the marrow. All at once the door of the sick room opens, and there enters to Satan “Who but his Wife the Bad?” The devil goes off through the ceiling, leaving a sulphury smell behind; and, “Hail to the Doctor!” the imperial patient straightway recovers. In gratitude he offers him the promised daughter and her dowry; but the Doctor refuses the fee – “No dowry, no bad wife!” If this Talmudic legend has any relation to Solomon, it is well to bear in mind that his bitter experience, as St. Jerome says, was due to the fact that no one ever fell a victim to impurer loves than he. He married strange women, was deluded by them, and erected temples to their respective idols. His opinion, therefore, on marriage as we understand it is of little importance to us.
Dominus Hyacinthus De Archangelis. (The Ring and the Book.) The procurator or counsel for the poor, who defends Count Guido in the eighth book of the poem.
Domizia (Luria), a noble lady of Florence. She is loved by the Moorish captain Luria, who commanded the army of the Florentines. Domizia was greatly embittered against the republic for its ingratitude to her two brothers – Porzio and Berto – and hoped to be revenged for their deaths.
Don Juan. (Fifine at the Fair.) The husband of the poem is a philosophical study of the Don Juan of Molière. He is full of sophistries, and an adept in the art of making the worse appear the better reason. In Molière’s play Juan’s valet thus describes his master: “You see in Don Juan the greatest scoundrel the earth has ever borne – a madman, a dog, a demon, a Turk, a heretic – who believes neither in heaven, hell, nor devil, who passes his life simply as a brute beast, a pig of an epicure, a true Sardanapalus; who closes his ear to every remonstrance which can be made to him, and treats as idle talk all that we hold sacred.”
Donald. (Jocoseria, 1883.) The story of the poem is a true one, and is told by Sir Walter Scott, in The Keepsake for 1832, pp. 283-6. The following abridgement of the account is from the Browning Society’s Notes and Queries, No. 209, p. 328: “… The story is an old but not an ancient one: the actor and sufferer was not a very aged man, when I heard the anecdote in my early youth. Duncan (for so I shall call him) had been engaged in the affair of 1746, with others of his clan; … on the one side of his body he retained the proportions and firmness of an active mountaineer; on the other he was a disabled cripple, scarce able to limp along the streets. The cause which reduced him to this state of infirmity was singular. Twenty years or more before I knew Duncan he assisted his brothers in farming a large grazing in the Highlands… It chanced that a sheep or goat was missed from the flock, and Duncan … went himself in quest of the fugitive. In the course of his researches he was induced to ascend a small and narrow path, leading to the top of a high precipice… It was not much more than two feet broad, so rugged and difficult, and at the same time so terrible, that it would have been impracticable to any but the light step and steady brain of the Highlander. The precipice on the right rose like a wall, and on the left sank to a depth which it was giddy to look down upon… He had more than half ascended the precipice, when in midway … he encountered a buck of the red-deer species coming down the cliff by the same path in an opposite direction… Neither party had the power of retreating, for the stag had not room to turn himself in the narrow path, and if Duncan had turned his back to go down, he knew enough of the creature’s habits to be certain that he would rush upon him while engaged in the difficulties of the retreat. They stood therefore perfectly still, and looked at each other in mutual embarrassment for some space. At length the deer, which was of the largest size, began to lower his formidable antlers, as they do when they are brought to bay… Duncan saw the danger … and, as a last resource, stretched himself on the little ledge of rock … not making the least motion, for fear of alarming the animal. They remained in this posture for three or four hours… At length the buck … approached towards Duncan very slowly … he came close to the Highlander … when the devil, or the untameable love of sport, … began to overcome Duncan’s fears. Seeing the animal proceed so gently, he totally forgot not only the dangers of his position, but the implicit compact which certainly might have been inferred from the circumstances of the situation. With one hand Duncan seized the deer’s horn, whilst with the other he drew his dirk. But in the same instant the buck bounded over the precipice, carrying the Highlander along with him… Fortune … ordered that the deer should fall undermost, and be killed on the spot, while Duncan escaped with life, but with the fracture of a leg, an arm, and three ribs… I never could approve of Duncan’s conduct towards the deer in a moral point of view, … but the temptation of a hart of grease offering, as it were, his throat to the knife, would have subdued the virtue of almost any deer stalker… I have given you the story exactly as I recollect it.” As the practice of medicine does not necessarily make a man merciful, so neither does sport necessarily imply manliness and nobility of soul. In both cases there is a strong tendency for the professional to be considered the right view. In the story we have the stag, after four hours’ consideration, offering terms of agreement which Donald accepted and then treacherously broke. The animal broke Donald’s fall, yet he has no gratitude for its having thus saved his life. As one of the poems covered by the question in the prologue, “Wanting is – What?” we should reply, Honour and humanity.
