Of the verses in this fine poem which speak for the various British Dominions I take only the one that represents my own country. At the time Kipling wrote, the inhabitants of our beloved mother-country did not seem to fully realize that we were their kindred—that our fern and clematis made English posies—but no doubt their feeling has altered since we have fought side by side in mutual defence. However, to us England was always “home,” and when Kipling wrote this poem he entered straight into our hearts.

My notes tell me nothing of Hardinge, except that he was the “Leslie” in Mallock’s New Republic. Another version of Plato’s beautiful epigram (which was addressed to “Aster,” or “Star”) is the following by Professor Darnley Naylor:

The Greek Anthology is a collection of about 4,500 short poems by about 300 Greek writers, extending over a period of one thousand seven hundred years, from, say, 700 B.C. to 1000 A.D. At first these poems were epigrams—using the word “epigram” in its original sense, as a verse intended to be inscribed on a tomb or tablet in memory of some dead person or important event. Later they included poems on any subject, so long as they contained one fine thought couched in concise language. Still later any short lyric was included.

This wonderful collection forms a great treasure-house of poetry, which gives much insight into the Greek life of the time, and it also largely influenced English and European literature. For instance, the first verse of Ben Jonson’s “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” is taken direct from the Anthology (Agathias, Anth. Pal., V., 261). I may add that the second verse, in which the poet sends the wreath, not as a compliment to the lady but as a kindness to the roses which could not wither if worn by her, is also borrowed from a Greek source. (Philostratus, Epistolai Erotikai.)

Numberless English and European scholars have attempted the difficult task of translating or paraphrasing these little poetic gems into correspondingly poetic and concise language, but the beauty of the original can never be fully retained.

Although there cannot be absolute certainty, this Ptolemy is no doubt the great Greek astronomer; and the epigram would date from about 140 A.D.

This is a paraphrase of verses written by Callimachus on hearing of the death of his friend, the poet Heracleitus (not the philosopher of that name).

Francis Thompson (Sister Songs) hoped that his “nightingales” would continue to sing after his death, just as light would come from a star long after it had ceased to exist:

See also Seneca (Hipp.), Curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent, “Light sorrows speak, but deeper ones are dumb.”

Hugues of Saxe-Gotha is an imaginary name, but it probably indicates the great Sebastian Bach, who came from that part of Germany. The “masterpiece, hard number twelve,” referred to in the poem, may be (Dr. E. Harold Davies tells me) the great Organ Fugue in F Minor, which is in “five part” counter-point.

This very interesting poem is written in a half-humorous fashion, but its intention is quite serious. In a wonderfully imitative manner,[8] it describes the wrangling and disputing in a five-voiced fugue (where five persons appear to be taking part):

(For killing their husbands the fifty Danaïdes were doomed to pour water everlastingly into a sieve.)

“Where in all this is the music?” asks Browning. And, although he is writing humorously, yet, however rank the heresy, he finds that the fugue, with its elaborate counterpoint, is wanting in the essentials of true art. He prefers Palestrina’s simpler and more emotional mode of expression:

In the poem, where occurs the passage quoted, one can vividly follow the poet’s thought. Music is essentially the language of feeling, of emotion; the fugue is a triumph of invention, and, therefore, the result of intellect. Feeling is elemental, simple, and unanalysable. The subtleties of pure harmony are the expression of deepness and richness of feeling; the intricacies of the fugue are artificially constructed and, therefore, unsuited to the expression of pure emotion. They represent intellect as against feeling. And essentially in the moral world, but also in our general outlook upon truth and nature, the spiritual perception is derived from simple human emotion rather than intellect; “Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” (The whole of Browning’s poetry teaches that love, not intellect, is the solution of all moral problems, and the goal of the universe.)

In the poem the organist has been playing on the organ in an old church; and Browning suddenly sees an illustration of his thought in the fine gilded ceiling covered by thick cobwebs. The cobwebs that obscure the gold of the ceiling are the intellectual wranglings that destroy music in the fugue—and both are symbolical of what occurs in our lives. Truth and Nature, “God’s gold”—the pure, simple truths of the higher life—are over us, bright and clear as the noon-day sun. But by doubts and disputations, warring philosophies and contending creeds, by strife over non-essentials, casuistries, self-deceptions, by questions of dogma (often as fine as any spider’s web), by endless “comments and glozes,” we lose sight of the elemental truths and clear principles that should guide our lives. The pure and simple-hearted reach the Mount of Vision: to them comes the clear sense of Love and Duty. Those of us who turn our intellects to a perverse use and exclude the spiritual perception of the soul are like the spiders who cover up “stars and roses, Cherub and trophy and garland.” We obscure and forget all noble ideals, abolish God’s high “legislature,” and follow a lawless life of selfish passion and sordid ambitions. The Good and Beautiful and True have been obliterated and forgotten; “God’s gold” is tarnished, His harmonies lost in discord; and we become morally dead.

In the Gorham case, which went on appeal to the Privy Council, it was decided that Mr. Gorham’s beliefs, although unusual, were not repugnant to the doctrines of the Church of England. His views were that baptism is generally necessary to salvation, that it is a sign of grace by which God works in us, but only in those who worthily receive it. In others it is not effectual. Infants baptized who die before actual sin are certainly saved, but regeneration does not necessarily follow on baptism.

In such matters one question stands out very prominently. The priest is consecrated to the high office of teaching the eternal truths of Christ—Love and Duty and Moral Aspiration. How can he keep those truths in due perspective when his intellect is engaged in warfare over miserable casuistries.

And as the strife waxes fiercer among the priests of the Most High, they call in the aid of hired mercenaries. Think of the lawyers paid by one side or the other to argue questions of baptism and prevenient grace! It was precisely this introduction into religion of legal formalism and technicality, the arguing from texts and ancient commentaries, the verbal quibbling and hair-splitting, the “letter” that “killeth” as against the “spirit” that “giveth life,” which led to Christ’s bitter invectives against the “Scribes” or lawyers of His day.

Seeley, in Ecce Homo, points out that when Christ summoned the disciples to him, he required from them only Faith, and not belief in any specific doctrines. As it was not until later that they learnt He was to suffer death and rise again, they could at first have held no belief in the Atonement or the Resurrection. “Nor,” says Seeley, “do we find Him frequently examining His followers in their creed, and rejecting one as a sceptic and another as an infidel.... Assuredly those who represent Christ as presenting to man an abstruse theology, and saying to them peremptorily: ‘Believe or be damned,’ have the coarsest conception of the Saviour of the world.”

As I have read somewhere, “From all barren Orthodoxy, good Lord, deliver us.”[10]

This is George MacDonald’s translation (but never can a translation of poetry reproduce the original). MacDonald says of the poem: “This is true concerning every form in which truth is embodied, whether it be sight or sound, geometric diagram or scientific formula. Unintelligible, it may be dismal enough regarded from the outside; prismatic in its revelation of truth from within.” Among the arts this statement is most applicable to poetry, and hence the reason why notes are often required to assist many persons to “come inside,” to enter into the heart of a poem—to reach the point of vision.

This parody on Bret Harte’s “Plain Language from Truthful James” was written at the time when the Browning Society at Keble College, Oxford, came to an end—apparently, according to these verses, because its funds had been exhausted in afternoon teas!

τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι (pronounced toe tee ane einai). In Oxford special attention is paid to Aristotle; and Quiller-Couch, being an Oxford man, assumes that his readers are familiar with this phrase. It means “the essential nature of a thing,” or, literally, “the question what a thing really is.” Such a Society would be engaged in discovering the true meaning of Browning’s difficult poems, so that the phrase is as appropriate as it is amusing in its application.

The title “De Tea fabula” is a pun on Horace’s “Quid rides? Mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur” (Sat. 1, 69). “Wherefore do you laugh? Change but the name, of thee the tale is told.” Oxford, which Matthew Arnold called the home of lost causes, still refuses to pronounce Latin correctly, and makes te rhyme with fee, see, bee. It ought of course to rhyme with fay, say, bay. Or possibly Sir Arthur has reverted to the pronunciation of ea which prevailed until the end of the Eighteenth Century. See Pope’s “Rape of the Lock”:

Dr. Furnivall (1825-1910), an eminent philologist, was the founder of the society, the first society ever formed to study the works of a living poet. From the context he may have specially admired, as he certainly threw special light upon, Browning’s Pippa Passes.

Scout at Oxford is a (male) college servant.

The “cheekiest” line I know.

These exquisite verses appear to be forgotten.