R360300B. Paracelsus.
The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, March 1836, pp. 289–308.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 372–383.
evidences of a new genius for dramatic poetry.—no. i
The striking prerogative of Genius is its power over adverse circumstances. The most unpropitious fortunes, the most desperate calamities, are unavailing against it. Galileo continued to track the motions of the planets upon the walls of his dungeon; the imprisoned Cervantes, the wounded and neglected Camoens, never once despaired; we can still hear Tasso, from the darkness of his cell, cheerily asking his cat to lend him her lustrous eyes, that he may see to write his verses; and we behold Milton, in a more fatal darkness, with “no jot of heart or hope” abated. Genius is self-included; nothing outward can affect it; it is no more to be repressed by punishments than to be called into existence by rewards; its origin, as well as its protection, is in itself. It is a plethora—a fullness of the blood—a something which must be vented in self-relief, or it is nothing. In none of the remarkable eras of Genius do we hear of its having required a premium for its exertions. Hogarth had nothing to do with Royal Academies; nor did Handel receive silver claret-jugs for his music, nor Steele a gold medal for his wit. Men of genius do not wait to have a path pointed out for them by others. No one about the Court of Elizabeth ever dreamt of a taste so ridiculous as that of preferring a theatre to a bear-garden, until Shakspeare and his fellows suddenly started up, and drove the bears out of fashion. There is no instance on record of Genius being other than self-raised. It leads, it does not follow; it creates, it does not imitate; it opposes rather than flatters; it is not a means, but an end. Hence it is impossible that men of genius can fail, in the intellectual sense, to be men of courage. We can think of nothing that should quench their ardour; we can conceive of no “squint-eyed suspicion or grinning scorn” that should serve to abate the strength of their feelings, or weaken the force of their impressions. They can afford to wait. It is a wise and happy ordering, that those minds which are the most entitled to instant appreciation can best put up with the postponement of their claims to it.
These few remarks may possibly have prepared the reader to entertain seriously the title we have prefixed to this paper. We are going to prove, notwithstanding the adverse evidences of the play-bills of the day,* that a new genius for dramatic poetry is among us. Of the works which now lie on our table, and which, with reference to this object, we mean to notice in succession, we shall commence with the most recent, and possibly the least known:—Paracelsus. By Robert Browning.
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*Since this was written, after a long interval of melodrama and tinsel of various sorts, a new tragedy has been produced at Drury Lane. It possesses little merit, however, as a literary work, and is sustained solely by the noble acting of Macready.
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This is the simple and unaffected title of a small volume which was published some half-dozen months ago, and which opens a deeper vein of thought, of feeling, and of passion, than any poet has attempted for years. Without the slightest hesitation we name Mr. Robert Browning at once with Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth. He has entitled himself to a place among the acknowledged poets of the age. This opinion will pos- [p. 290→] sibly startle many persons; but it is most sincere. It is no practice of ours to think nothing of an author because all the world have not pronounced in his favour, any more than we would care to offer him our sympathy and concern on the score of the world’s indifference. A man of genius, we have already intimated, needs neither the one nor the other. He who is conscious of great powers can satisfy himself by their unwearied exercise alone. His day will come. He need never be afraid that truth and nature will wear out, or that Time will not eventually claim for its own all that is the handywork of Nature. Mr. Browning is a man of genius, he has in himself all the elements of a great poet, philosophical as well as dramatic,—
The youngest he
That sits in shadow of Apollo’s tree.
—but he sits there, and with as much right to his place as the greatest of the men that are around him have to theirs. For the reception that his book has met with he was doubtless already well prepared,—as well for the wondering ignorance that has scouted it, as for the condescending patronage which has sought to bring it forward, as one brings forward a bashful child to make a doubtful display of its wit and learning. “We hope the best; put a good face on the matter; but are sadly afraid the thing cannot answer.” We tell Mr. Browning, on the other hand, what we do not think he needs to be told, that the thing will answer. He has written a book that will live—he has scattered the seeds of much thought among his countrymen—he has communicated an impulse and increased activity to reason and inquiry, as well as a pure and high delight to every cultivated mind;—and this in the little and scantily-noticed volume of “Paracelsus!”
Before going farther, it may be as well to come to some understanding with the reader respecting the course of this article. In sitting down to write, we confess we had intended to limit ourselves to the matters strictly embraced in our title, and we took up Mr. Browning’s volume with the intention of waiving many new and striking points of philosophical suggestion contained in it, for the purpose of considering more emphatically the evidences it abundantly presents of a new genius for dramatic poetry. We find, however, on examination, that we cannot restrict ourselves to so narrow a view of the poem. Its subject-matter and treatment are both so startlingly original, and both so likely to be altogether misunderstood; it embraces in its development so many of the highest questions, and glances with such a masterly perception at some of the deepest problems, of man’s existence; that we feel, while to touch upon these various topics will not interfere with the object we first proposed, it is only in this way that a proper and just appreciation of the singular power and beauty, even of the dramatic portions of this poem, can be conveyed to the reader. We venture to promise him, in accompanying us through our criticism, that if, in its course, we do not break even a wholly new ground of philosophical inquiry into character, we shall at least suggest to him some valuable and very interesting trains of thought. It is the greatest glory of such labours as those of Mr. Browning, that they open up, on every side of us in the actual world, new sources of understanding and sympathy. The view we shall present, for instance, in the course of this notice, of the actual results of the life of Paracelsus, which, suggested by Mr. Browning’s imaginative [p. 291→] treatment of his character, we have ascertained to be borne out no less by all the tendencies of his writings, is, we believe, perfectly new, and will be found, in all general respects, a sufficient solution of one of the most extraordinary problems contained in the history of men of science and letters.
Mr. Browning’s poem is shaped in the general outline of a drama, but subjected to none of the dramatic restrictions. It is divided into five scenes, extending over thirty-four years of existence. Four persons are concerned, two of them exquisitely sketched, and the other two nobly and completely presented. In a few prefatory lines, Mr. Browning describes his work thus:—“It is an attempt, probably more novel than happy, to reverse the method usually adopted by writers whose aim it is to set forth any phenomenon of the mind or the passions, by the operation of persons and events. Instead of having recourse to an external machinery of incidents to create and evolve the crisis I desire to produce, I have ventured to display somewhat minutely the mood itself in its rise and progress, and have suffered the agency by which it is influenced and determined to be generally discernible in its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, if not altogether excluded.” Excluded, we must be allowed to observe, in so far as the essential dramatic characteristic is concerned, it certainly never is; for here lies one of the striking beauties of the poem. Passion is invariably displayed, and never merely analysed. Even at those moments when we seem most of all to be listening to its results alone, we are made most vividly sensible of the presence of the very agents by which the results have been determined. Mr. Browning has the power of a great dramatic poet; we never think of Mr. Browning while we read his poem; we are not identified with him, but with the persons into whom he has flung his genius. The objections to a dialogue of the French school do not apply. We get beyond conjecture and reasoning, beyond a general impression of the situation of the speakers, beyond general reflections on their passions, and hints as to their rise, continuance, and fall. We are upon the scene ourselves,—we hear, feel, and see,—we are face to face with the actors,—we are a party to the tears that are shed, to the feelings and passions that are undergone, to the “flushed cheek and intensely sparkling eye.” The same unrelaxing activity of thought and of emotion, by which the results of the poem are meant to be produced, is made to affect the reader in its progress; and he is as certain of the immediate presence of all that is going on, as in life he would be certain of any thing that made him laugh or weep. In the agitation of the feelings, sight is given to the imagination. This is an essential dramatic test, in which Mr. Browning is never found wanting.
How beautiful is the opening of his poem! We are in a garden in the environs of Würzburg, with two youths and a gentle girl:—Paracelsus; his dear friend and fellow-student, Festus; and Michal, with calm sweet countenance, the more than sister to Paracelsus, the promised wife of Festus. The opening line is a picture, and observe into what a vivid and natural effect the emotion at once rises:—
Par. Come close to me, dear friends; still closer—thus:
Close to the heart, which, though long time roll by
Ere it again beat quicker, press’d to yours,
As now it beats—perchance a long, long time—
At least henceforth your memories shall make
Quiet and fragrant, as befits their home.
Nor shall my memory want a home in yours.
Alas! that it requires too well such free
Forgiving love as shall embalm it there!
For if you would remember me aright—
As I was born to be—you must forget
All fitful, strange, and moody waywardness,
Which e’er confused my better spirit, to dwell
Only on moments such as these, dear friends; [p. 292→]
My heart no truer, but my words and ways
More true to it: as Michal, some months hence,
Will say, this autumn was a pleasant time
For some few sunny days; and overlook
Its bleak wind hankering after pining leaves.
Autumn would fain be sunny—I would look
Liker my nature’s truth; and both are frail,
And both beloved for all their frailty.
Mich. Aureole! . . .
Par. Drop by drop!—she is weeping like a child!
Not so … I am content—more than content—
Nay, Autumn wins you best by this its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay …
Look up, sweet Michal—
—and he ceases not his affectionate re-assurings till the “old smile” again returns; nay, he will have her laugh, as he points out to her the little tenants of the garden, and bids her fancy the crickets, each one in his house, “looking out, and wondering at the world.”
Mich. In truth, we have lived carelessly and well!
Par. And shall, my perfect pair—each, trust me, born
For the other—nay, your very hair, when mixed,
Is of one hue. For where beside this nook
Shall you two walk, when I am far away,
And wish me prosperous fortune? … Stay! that plant
Shall never wave its tangles lightly and softly,
As a queen’s languid and imperial arm,
Which scatters crowns among her lovers, but you
Shall be reminded to predict some great
Success to me. Ah, see! the sun sinks broad
Behind St. Saviour’s … wholly gone, at last!
Fest. Now, Aureole, stay those wandering eyes awhile:
You are ours to-night at least; and while you spoke
Of Michal and her tears, I thought that none
Could willing leave what he so seem’d to love;
But that last look destroys my dream—that look!
As if where’er you gazed there stood a star!
How far was Würzburg, with its church and spire,
And garden walls, and all that they contain,
From that look’s far alighting?
Par. I but spoke
And look’d alike from simple joy—
Believe it not! It was not “simple joy.” But the reader will have his memory recalled to that deep gaze. With the sun that has just set closes the last day of the residence of Paracelsus at Würzburg—the last day, as it were, of his youth and its untroubled time. On the morrow he sets out on a wide search, and with vast aims. The time, it will be recollected, trembles on the dawn of the Reformation, when liberty of thought was rising in the world, and men’s brains were busy, and their spirits stirring with curiosity and zeal. A great time! Paracelsus has devoted himself to the acquisition of knowledge, and prompted by a fierce and self-confident energy to despise the teaching of the Schoolmen, has resolved to task his own unaided strength in the accomplishment of his vast longings; he fancies he has already struck out the way to this; he sees in the distance the secret of the world, of man, and man’s true purpose, path, and fate; and on the morrow he sets forth alone, to travel till he attains it. Festus is beset by a thousand fears. His childhood and his youth, to the present hour, have been passed with Paracelsus, and he knows the weakness as well as the strength of his friend; he thinks his aspirations great and valuable, but he fears that they are pursued too much for success alone; he would have the divine object more prominent; moreover, he would have the affections more immediately brought forward to assist the attainment, seeing not what the subtler intellect of Paracelsus sees, though it is afterwards foiled by his pride, that in the course of the attainment the rest would follow, with the knowledge of “how much our sense of all that’s beautiful is one.” Festus is intellectual and thoroughly amiable; he is a noble and tender creation; he stands for much that is good in the world, and for nothing that can ever be evil; what there is of weakness in his character is sustained by the strength of his affections; he has too much knowledge and imagination not to aspire, but he has too much “stuff of the conscience” to achieve; and he would rather have Paracelsus rest quiet in Würzburg, than risk the chance of one fatal step, in the course of his great journey. All this they have discussed often before this [p. 293→] last interview; but it is not now revived for our sakes only; it is evolved with the utmost nature and beauty. Paracelsus begins by assuring the lovers, smilingly, of the many reasons he has to act well-advised in what he purposes—
and last, because
Though heaven and earth, and all things, were at stake,
Sweet Michal must not weep our parting eve.
The last ominous words rouse Festus, he sees the evening darkening over them, fancies he has a thousand things still to say, and asks leave to tell his inmost mind.
We have been brothers, and henceforth the world
Will be between us.... all my freest mind? …
’Tis the last night, dear Aureole!
Par. Oh, say on;
Devise some test of love—some arduous feat
To be performed for you—say on; if night
Be spent the while, the better: recall how oft
My wondrous plans, and dreams, and hopes, and fears
Have—never wearied you … oh, no! … as I
Recall, and never vividly as now,
Your true affection, born when Einsiedeln
And its green hills were all the world to us,
And still increasing to this night, which ends
My further stay at Würzburg … Oh, you shall
Be very proud one day! … say on, dear friend!
—But what can Festus say of the value of repose and love, for such were the themes he was about to urge, to one who feels them already—thus! It was a vain embassy that sought to win the favour of the eastern king, by gifts,
Which were but dazzling dust
Shed from the ore-beds native to the clime!
He changes his theme, and urges weak points of pride, and overweening aims, as the germs of failure. Through the course of the dialogue Michal plays a slight but perfect part, which can only be properly felt in a perusal of the whole. Sometimes Paracelsus turns to her with a happy earnestness and sweetness—
’Tis this way, Michal, that he uses—
and disposes her to think that even her Festus may be inconsistent, though she will only believe it from his own lips—
Mich. Is it so, Festus?
He speaks so calmly and kindly,—is it so?
And beautiful it is, when Festus so confuses himself with the matter he has to urge, that it all seems leaving him, to see the simplicity and directness with which the innocent and loving mind of Michal seeks to recall him to his object—
Mich. Ask at once, Festus, wherefore he should scorn—
Fest. Stay, Michal: Aureole, I speak guardedly
And gravely, knowing well, &c.
Poor Festus! Little chance has his guarded and grave words against the glowing periods of Paracelsus! What avails the warning of uninstructed confidence? The Enthusiast answers—
Be sure that God
Ne’er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart.
Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once
Into the vast and unexplored abyss!
What full-grown power informs her from the first!
Why she not marvels, strenuously beating
The silent boundless regions of the sky!
Be sure they sleep not whom God needs.
Equally vain are the endeavours Festus makes to induce his friend not to disregard the labours of old scholars, to accept at least the light they lend. Paracelsus urges a higher teacher, “God everywhere, sustaining and directing,” and points to the Earth as the mistress that shall be made to yield her secrets up— [p. 294→]
And I am young, Festus, happy and free!
I can devote myself; I have a life
To give: I, who am singled out for this.
Think, think; the wide east, where old Wisdom sprung;
The bright south, where she dwelt; the populous north,
All are pass’d o’er—it lights on me. ’Tis time
New hopes should animate the world—new light
Should dawn from new revealings to a race
Weigh’d down so long, forgotten so long; so shall
The heaven reserved for us at last receive
No creatures whom unwonted splendours blind,
But ardent to confront the unclouded blaze
Whose beams not seldom lit their pilgrimage,
Not seldom glorified their life below.
Yet how finely Festus again urges him on this point, to avail himself of the labours of the sages of old time—
To lift himself into their airy place,
To fill out full their unfulfilled careers,
Unravelling the knots their baffled skill
Pronounced inextricable, but surely left
Far less confused. A fresh eye, a fresh hand,
Might do much at their vigour’s waning-point.
—So earnest, indeed, is Festus here, and so startling is his warning to the aspirer, that in rejecting thus any help from any source, “friend, foe, assistant, rival,” in such objects as his, he leaves doubt whether it is knowledge which is paramount in his love—that Paracelsus is driven back on the excuse that what he feels is a divine and spiritual prompting, not to be resisted. He tells of what “whispered in the evening, and spoke out at midnight.” He speaks of “the breath so light upon his eyelids, and the fingers light among his hair.” He describes the influences of these visitations as possessing him with an oppressive joy to benefit mankind, while it had rendered to him a matter of indifference, “a station with the brightest of the crowd, a portion with the proudest of them all,”—
And from the tumult in my breast, this only
Could I collect—that I must thenceforth die,
Or elevate myself far, far above
The gorgeous spectacle; what seem’d a longing
To trample on yet save mankind at once—
To make some unexampled sacrifice
In their behalf—to wring some wondrous good
From heaven or earth for them—to perish, winning
Eternal weal in the act; as who should dare
Pluck out the angry thunder from its cloud,
That, all its gather’d flame discharged on him,
No storm might threaten summer’s azure weather—
Yet never to be mix’d with them so much
As to have part even in my own work—share
In my own largess. Once the feat achiev’d,
I would withdraw from their officious praise,
Would gently put aside their profuse thanks,
Like some knight traversing a wilderness,
Who, on his way, may chance to free a tribe
Of desert-people from their dragon-foe;
When all the swarthy race press round to kiss
His feet, and choose him for their king, and yield
Their poor tents, pitch’d among the sand-hills, for
His realm; and he points, smiling, to his scarf,
Heavy with rivel’d gold—his burgonet,
Gay set with twinkling stones—and to the East,
Where these must be display’d.
We should be tasked to point out in the entire range of dramatic poetry a more striking or more vividly expressed passage than that. With glorious eloquence the ardent enthusiast bursts forth again: the vision presses upon him—
I go to prove my soul!
I see my way as birds their trackless way—
I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first,
I ask not; but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet, or stifling snow,
In some time—his good time—I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time!
Mich. Vex him no further, Festus; It is so!
Fest. Just thus you answer ever. This would hold
Were it the trackless air and not a path
Inviting you, distinct with footprints yet
Of many a mighty spirit gone that way.
Exquisite is that yielding of Michal, and soon Festus yields—
Fest. And who am I to challenge and dispute
That clear belief? … I will devest all fear.
Mich. Then Aureole is God’s commissary! he shall
Be great and grand—and all for us!
Par. No, sweet!
Not great or grand. If I can serve mankind,
’Tis well—but there our intercourse must end:
I never will be served by those I serve.
Fest. Look well to this; here is a plague-spot, veil it,
Disguise it how you will: ’tis true, you utter
This scorn while by our side and loving us—
’Tis but a spot as yet; but it will break
Into a hideous blotch if overlooked.
How can that course be safe, which from the first
Produces carelessness to human love?
With the truest and most gentle feeling is the following conceived—Festus still speaks:— [p. 295→]
Had I been chosen like you,
I should encircle me with love—should raise
A rampart of kind wishes, it should seem
Impossible for me to fail, so watch’d
By gentle friends who made my cause their own;
They should ward off Fate’s envy—the great boon,
Extravagant when claim’d by me alone,
Being a gift to them as well as me.
If ease seduced or danger daunted me,
How calmly their sad eyes should gaze reproach!
Mich. O, Aureole, can I sing though all alone,
Without first calling, in my fancy, both
To listen by my side—even I! And you!
Do you not feel this?—say that you feel this!
Slowly but resolvedly Paracelsus repeats to himself, “my course allures for its own sake,” when Festus—striving to be re-assured with the thought—
That there would be
A monstrous spectacle upon the earth,
Beneath the pleasant sun, among the trees,
A being knowing not what love is—
—is suddenly interrupted by Michal’s cry, “Stay with us, Aureole!” This is a fine conception. The angel of her sweet nature has whispered her that man should be humble, and that, where he is not so, quick repulse is not to be dreaded so much as a complete success. “You will find all you seek, and perish so!” The destiny of the poem here presses sensibly upon the scene, and gives even Paracelsus pause. It is only for a moment. He recovers himself—
Are these the barren first-fruits I should fear?
Is love like this the natural lot of all?
How many years of hate might one such hour
O’erbalance! Dearest Michal, dearest Festus,
What shall I say, if not that I desire
Well to deserve that love; and will, dear friends,
In swerving nothing from my high resolves.
See the great moon!
Calmly he now presents to them (a parting gift) the outline of his scheme of enterprise more mildly and affectionately designed. He permits himself, subdued by the emotion of their last hour together, even to console Festus with the assurance that he has not slightly disesteemed the precepts and labours of old sages—
But then
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate’er you may believe:
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness; and around,
Wall within wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
Perfect and true perception—which is truth;
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Which blinds it, and makes error; and ‘to know’
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprison’d splendour may dart forth,
Than in effecting entry for the light
Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly
The demonstration of a truth, its birth,
And you shall trace the effluence to its spring
And source within us, where broods radiance vast,
To be elicited ray by ray, as chance
Shall favour; chance—for hitherto,
Even as we know not how those beams are born,
As little know we what unlocks their lair;
For men have oft grown old among their books
And died, case-harden’d in their ignorance,
Whose careless youth had promised what long years
Of unremitted labour ne’er performed;
While, contrary, it has chanced some idle day,
To autumn-loiterers, just as fancy-free
As the midges in the sun, has oft brought forth
A truth—produced mysteriously as cape
Of cloud grown out of the invisible mist.
Hence may not truth be lodged alike in all,
The lowest as the highest? some slight film
The interposing bar which binds a soul?
Some film removed the happy outlet whence
It issues proudly? seeing that the soul
Is deathless (we know well), but oftener coop’d
A prisoner and a thrall, than a throned power;
That it strives weakly in the child, is loosed
In manhood, clogged by sickness, back compelled
By age and waste, set free at last by death;
That not alone when life flows still do truth
And power emerge, but also when strange chance
Affects its current; in unused conjuncture,
Where sickness breaks the body—hunger, watching,
Excess, or languor—oftenest death’s approach—
Peril, deep joy, or woe. One man shall crawl
Through life, surrounded with all stirring things,
Unmoved—and he goes mad; and from the wreck
Of what he was, by his wild talk alone,
You first collect how great a spirit he hid.
Seeing all this, why should I pine in vain
Attempts to win some day the august form
Of Truth to stand before me, and compel
My dark unvalued frame to change its nature,
And straight become suffused with light—at best
For my sole good—leaving the world to seek
Salvation out as it best may, or follow
The same long thorny course? No, I will learn
How to set free the soul alike in all,
By searching out the laws by which the flesh
Accloys the spirit. We may not be doom’d
To cope with seraphs, but at least the rest
Shall cope with us. Make no more giants, God!
But elevate the race at once! We ask
But to put forth our strength, our human strength,
All starting fairly, all equipp’d alike,
Gifted alike, and eagle-eyed, true-hearted,
See if we cannot beat thy angels yet! [p. 296→]
A great task nobly expressed! We feel with Paracelsus on the verge of this gorgeous enterprise, our breasts heave with his enthusiasm, throb faster with his hopes! Three hundred years have leapt back, and out of that little garden of Würzburg we emerge with the Great Reformer, thirsting to know the truth, that the truth may set us free, and willing to accompany him through the world in search of the mysterious knowledge which is thereafter to identify with the present life the most beauteous hopes and fancies, which is to elevate God here, and not leave all to the world to come.
Thus was life scorn’d; but life
Shall yet be crown’d: twine amaranth! I am priest!
And all for yielding with a lively spirit
A poor existence—parting with a youth
Like theirs who squander every energy
Convertible to good on painted toys,
Breath-bubbles, gilded dust! And though I spurn
All adventitious aims, from empty praise
To love’s award, yet whoso deems such helps
Important, and concerns himself for me,
May know even these will follow with the rest—
As in the steady rolling Mayne, asleep
Yonder, is mingled and involved a mass
Of schistous particles of ore. And even
My own affections,—laid to rest awhile—
Will waken purified, subdued alone
By all I have achieved; till then—till then …
Ah! the time-wiling loitering of a page
Through bower and over lawn, till eve shall bring
The stately lady’s presence whom he loves—
The broken sleep of the fisher whose rough coat
Enwraps the queenly pearl—these are faint types!
See, see, they look on me—I triumph now!
Tell me, Festus, Michal, but one thing—I have told
All I shall e’er disclose to mortal … now,
Do you believe I shall accomplish this?
Fest. I do believe!
Mich. And I, dear Aureole!
Par. Those words shall never fade from out my brain.
’Tis earnest of the end—shall never fade!
Are there not, Festus, are there not, dear Michal,
Two points in the adventure of the diver:
One—when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge?
One—when, a prince, he rises with his pearl?
Festus, I plunge!
Here the first scene of the poem, which is entitled “Paracelsus Aspires,” is closed. Is the writing not new, bold, vigorous, and beautiful? Is there not sound understanding in it, and subtle judgment, united with the highest imaginative faculty, as well as the most finely impassioned temperament? Is there not prodigious strength and energy, as well as the most natural grace, the most touching delicacy? Has not the reader already, even in these extracts of ours from this first scene, enlarged materially his stock of “permanent impressions, recurring thoughts, pregnant recollections?” Wait till we advance. We will take him through four scenes more, each transcending the other in power and passion, in the laying open of the inmost folds of the heart, in the expression of hard-earned knowledge, in the suggestion of profound results, till, from the death-bed of Paracelsus, a final strain of wisdom issues, melodious, full-voiced and supreme!
Meanwhile, let us take advantage of this pause in Mr. Browning’s work, to review briefly the actual life of Paracelsus, in the new view which is suggested by this imaginative treatment of his youth. There will not be a better opportunity than we have now. We stand between the aspirer and his destiny, between the brave hopes of a glorious ambition, and the ragged achievements of an inglorious quackery. For who knows not, from whose lip does it not trip off with a flippant confidence, that the real Paracelsus turned out to be a quack? O yes! a most egregious quack was Paracelsus. Nevertheless we will venture, prompted by Mr. Browning’s genius, to suggest that there was something in such quackery as his, which knowledge may be taught to reverence; we will use the imagination of this young poet, to break the spell of misbegotten disdain that has held bound for centuries the fame of a great Destroyer and Discoverer; we will advance from that scene in the little garden of Würzburg, and reconcile its purest aspirations even with the most bitter and debased records of the actual life of Paracelsus, with the un- [p. 297→] grateful slanders of Oporinus, with the base envy of Erastus;—and open up, for the generous consideration of men of science, a vindication, which they may render nobly complete, of the strange destiny of the man, who, during life, achieved in the world of medicine something nearly analogous to what Luther achieved in the religious world, and Bacon in the philosophical, but whose only reward, since death, from the men for whom he toiled, from the professors of that science for whose advancement he struck out the road, has been the scornful imputation of empiricism, or the more charitable one of madness! In showing how it has gone with the actual Paracelsus in that matter, we will assist the reader to a deeper sympathy with Mr. Browning’s poem, and to a readier appreciation, as we trust, of the singular union of reason and imagination which is presented in its treatment.
In Bacon’s “Advancement of Learning,” there is a masterly passage descriptive of the character of the Schoolmen. “Surely,” he says, “like as many substances in nature, which are solid, do putrefy and corrupt into worms: so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term them) vermiculate questions; which have indeed a kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the Schoolmen, who having sharp and strong wits and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading; but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors, (chiefly Aristotle, their dictator,) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges; and knowing little history either of nature or time,—did, out of no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit.” Now all this was seen by Paracelsus. While yet in extreme youth, a schoolboy of the Abbot Tritheim at Würzburg, he had evinced his disregard of the then prevalent doctrines of the Schoolmen, by directing his wit and mind to the consideration of matter, the “contemplation of the creatures of God.”
Shall I sit beside
Their dry wells, with white lips and filmed eye,
While in the distance heaven is blue above
Mountains where sleep the unsunn’d tarns?
We have it on excellent authority* that he had already, at this early time, plunged himself into the mysticism and mysteries of chemistry, or alchymy, as it was then called; that he had even overcome the greater difficulties, and arrived at the knowledge of many secret virtues and hidden things of nature. Suddenly he left Würzburg and remained abroad, travelling all the regions of the world, for fourteen or fifteen years. The story of his travel would be a strange one. In a treatise which is extant he alludes to it in simple and unaffected terms. He tells his students that he “had turned over the leaves of Europe, Asia, and Africa; and in [p. 298→] so doing had suffered much hardship; that he had been in captivity, and borne arms as a soldier.” In further descriptions we learn that he had travelled among the mountains of Bohemia, in the East, and in Sweden, in order to inspect the labours of the miners, to be initiated in the mysteries of the Oriental adepts, and to observe the secrets of nature and the famous mountain of loadstone. He professes also to have visited Spain, Portugal, Prussia, Poland, and Transylvania, where he communicated freely, not merely with the physicians, but with the old women, charlatans, and conjurers, of these several lands. No living source appeared to him too humble for the satisfaction of his thirst of knowledge. Jews, quacks, wizards, bath-men, beggars, old witches, their secrets and characters, were all explored. His captivity is described by Van Helmont as having been incurred while on a mining excursion on the borders of Muscovy, where he was taken prisoner by the Tartars, and carried before the Khan, whose son he afterwards accompanied to Constantinople, for the purpose of obtaining the secret of Trismegistus from a Greek who inhabited that capital. Nobly does Paracelsus himself vindicate this passion for travel! “Ecce amatorem adolescentem difficillimi itineris haud piget, ut venustam saltem puellam vel fœminam aspiciat: quanto minus nobilissimarum artium amore laboris ac cujuslibet tædii pigebit?”**
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*Melchior Adam.
**Defensiones septem adversus Æmulos suos 1573. Def. 4ta. “De Peregrinationibus et Exilio.” Out of many authorities which corroborate this account of his travels and attainments, we may quote the following:—“Inexplebilis illa aviditas naturæ perscrutandi secreta et reconditarum supellectile scientiarum animum locupletandi, uno eodemque loco, diu persistere non patiebatur, sed mercurii instar, omnes terras, nationes et urbes perlustrandi igniculos supponebat et cum viris naturæ scrutatoribus, chymicis præsertim, ore tenus conferret, et quæ diuterius laboribus nocturnisque vigiliis invenerant una vel altera communicatione obtineret.”—Bitiskius in Præfal. “Patris auxilio primùm, deinde proprâ industrià doctissimos viros in Germaniâ, Italiâ, Galliâ, Hispaniâ, aliisque Europæ regionibus, nactus est præceptores; quorum liberali doctrinâ, et potissimùm propriâ inquisitione ut qui esset ingenio acutissimo ac fere divino, tantùm profecit, ut multi testati sint, in universa philosophiâ, tam ardua, tam arcana et abdita eruisse mortalium neminem.”—Melch. Adam. in Vit. Germ. Medic. “Paracelsus qui in intima naturæ viscera sic penitùs introierit, metallorum stirpiumque vires et facultates tam incredibili ingenii acumine exploraverit ac perviderit; ad morbos omnes vel desperatos et opinione hominum insanabiles percurandum; ut cum Theophrasto nata primùm medicina perfectaque videtur.”—Petri Rami Orat, de Basileâ.
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Consider this account in connexion with Mr. Browning’s picture of the ardent and intrepid student, and is the latter not perfectly borne out? We cannot doubt the truth of the poem. We cannot doubt that Paracelsus had conceived some vast scheme of setting free the soul of man, by a discovery of those laws “by which the flesh accloys the spirit.” He sought to “elevate the race at once.” He formed to himself a gigantic plan for something like the general emancipation of the mind through the perfecting of his corporeal organs, and all the travel and exertions of his youth were obviously devoted to an elucidation of the laws of matter, with reference to the accomplishment of the first grand portion of this scheme, the de Emendatione Intellectûs. It may be very fashionable now to talk of the fantastic extravagance of such projects, but the age of great conceptions and discoveries had not then passed, it was only dawning, and with it rose the magnificent purpose of Paracelsus, which it is no proof of a philosophic mind to treat with disregard. The true philosophy, we firmly believe, is yet far behind, and will remain so, till the [p. 299→] mystery of matter is rendered more intelligible. For what is known of it now, but in its relation to mind, or as an assemblage of powers to awaken certain sensations? The greater knowledge will dawn upon us one day of its relation to the Creator himself. Hear what the divine Milton said, in a passage which he seems to have derived from this very project of Paracelsus, a passage which Mr. Browning might have used as a motto to his great work, and which only expresses in the highest strain of poetry what Milton had strenuously insisted on in his prose treatise on “Christian Doctrine.”* The “Wing’d Hierarch” speaks—
O Adam, One Almighty is, from whom
All things proceed, and up to him return,
If not depraved from good, created all
Such to perfection, one first matter all,
Indued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and, in things that live, of life:
But more refined, more spirituous, and pure,
As nearer to him placed or nearer tending,
Each in their several active spheres assign’d,
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds
Proportion’d to each kind. So, from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
More aery, last the bright consummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes; flowers and their fruit,
Man’s nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed,
To vital spirits aspire, to animal,
To intellectual;—give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding; whence the soul
Reason receives, and reason is her being,
Discursive or intuitive; discourse
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,
Differing but in degree, of kind the same.
Wonder not then, what God for you saw good
If I refuse not, but convert, as you,
To proper substance: time may come, when men
With angels may participate, and find
No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare;
And from these corporal nutriments perhaps
Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
Improv’d by tract of time, and wing’d ascend
Ethereal.— Par. Lost, Book. V.
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*See Bishop Sumner’s recent edition of that work.
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In exact purpose with this noble ascending series of Milton was the design of Paracelsus. To the spiritual, his bold and enterprising genius prompted him to advance, in the very teeth of the habits of his age, through the material alone. His design, as he projected it, was that of a great philosopher. He saw, as from a tower, the end of all. He had no detached projects, but one immortal scheme. From the high vantage ground of genius he had, from the first, traced, “as in a map the voyager, his course,” and with a strong and gallant spirit he set forward to attain it. The first of his achievements was a very grand one, for the first difficulty he stumbled on he turned into a triumph. His project of elucidating the laws of matter had included the necessity of reviving chemistry, and chemistry, quasi ab orco*, Paracelsus revived. Here was the augury of a more complete success, and thus far all was well.
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*Nobilem hanc medicinæ partem, diu sepultam avorum ætate quasi ab orco revocavit Th. Paracelsus. Gerard. Vossius De Chymiâ.
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Suddenly, however, after his long absence, Paracelsus re-appeared in Germany. Basil rung with the repute of cures performed upon some of her most eminent citizens. The noblest of mankind, “broken in body, yet untired in spirit,” had been able, by the skill of a wonderful physician, to renew their vigour, and bid death retire. It was Paracelsus!
Reader! have you ever been interrupted in the course of an inquiry, in the progress of a story, by the sudden blurting out, from some half-informed but ingenious listener, of the result or the catastrophe, before its causes were explained, or its natural time had come? Have you undergone that feeling of hot and irritable impatience? Then judge the feeling of Paracelsus, when, in the midst of his lonely travels and labours, while wringing forth slow results one by one, while pursuing, it might be, through all the laws of matter, some single truth—which first from mountains “rough with pines” had dimly beaconed him, which over [p. 300→] dazzling wastes of frozen snow had flitted and winked before him, and which only at last he saw tremble
“Into assured light in some branching mine,
Where ripens swathed in fire, the liquid gold—”
—judge, we say, what must have been the feeling of Paracelsus, thus strenuously engaged in his chosen task, forcing out truths from their material prison, but never losing sight of the more brilliant sphere, the spiritual nature, which he was as yet merely qualifying himself to approach and explore—when suddenly the voice of Luther reached him, declaring that now the time had already come for the exaltation of the spiritual nature, announcing its escape and freedom, and so precipitately anticipating the result which Paracelsus was still far from being prepared for! This, we venture to suggest, irritated Paracelsus into a premature return to Europe. He felt that the world might be thrown back for the purposes of his vast plan, unless immediately taught, in opposition to Luther’s process of reaching the material through the spiritual, that the spiritual was to be effectually reached through the material alone. “Oporinus dicit se (Paracelsum) aliquando Lutherum et Papam, non minùs quam nunc Galenum et Hippocratem redacturum in ordinem minabatur, neque enim eorum qui hactenus in scripturam sacram scripsissent, sive veteres, sive recentiores, quenquam scripturæ nucleum recté eruisse, sed circa corticem et quasi membranam tantùm hærere,”—are the words of his bitter assailant, Erastus. One eagle-glance over the truths he had already won, and back he resolved to come, to give his gains, imperfect as they were, to men, and wait some brighter and more distant day “to mould them, and complete them, and pursue them.” Is it not probable, too, that with that voice of Luther, the sense visited Paracelsus first, of a body in danger of fading, and of energies in danger of flagging; for with subtle truth is it said in Mr. Browning’s poem, that long seasons may pass over a man—
Until one hour’s experience shows what nothing
It seem’d could clearer show, and ever after
An alter’d brow, and eye, and gait, and speech
Attest that now he knows this adage true—
“Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream.”
—We feel that that bitter dread may now have suddenly struck upon the soul of Paracelsus, and that the very truths he had achieved, and the anticipation of those to come, would only serve to make the blow more fatal—
Do not they seem to laugh, as who should say—
“Great master, we are here indeed; dragg’d forth
To light: this hast thou done; be glad! now, seek
The strength to use which thou hast spent in getting!”
What wonder, then, if we seem to hear Paracelsus, in a desperate endeavour to silence such warnings, reason thus—
Knowing ourselves, our world, our task so great,
Our time so brief; ’tis clear if we refuse
The means so limited, the tools so rude
To execute our purpose, life will fleet,
And we shall face, and nothing will be done.
We will be wise in time; what though our work
Be fashion’d in despite of their ill-service,
Be crippled every way? ’Twere little praise
Did full resources wait on our good-will
At every turn. Let all be as it is.
Some say the earth is even so contrived
That tree, and flower, a vesture gay, conceal
A bare and skeleton framework!* [p. 301→]
What wonder, next, that we behold him, before his time, returned to Basil!
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*We need scarcely observe that all our extracts are from Mr. Browning’s work, though we do not at present use them in immediate illustration of it, but to further this new view of the actual life of Paracelsus, which has been suggested to us by the poet’s treatment. These words are given to Aprile in the poem.
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Installed, almost instantly, into the chair of a chemical professorship, founded for him by the magistrates of Basil—the first chair of chemistry known to Europe, but whose duties embraced not merely the Spagyric art, as chemistry proper was named by Paracelsus, but medical chemistry also, surgery, and the practice of physic—Paracelsus found himself, as it were, tied to the stake. He had now no course but one. Combining in his genius, to a most extraordinary degree, the principles of pulling down and of building up, but tasking his strength, as we have explained, prematurely, he was now obliged to let the destructive spirit do its fell work, while the materials for rebuilding were yet seen but in dim perspective. He did not begin by arguments, he burnt in the public amphitheatre the works of Avicenna and Galen! Hear him, as from his distant grave, to one who questions this—
Pray, does Luther dream
His arguments convince by their own force
The crowds that own his doctrine? No, indeed:
His plain denial of establish’d points
Ages had sanctified and none supposed
Could be oppugn’d while earth was under him
And heaven above—which chance, or change, or time
Affected not—did more than the array
Of argument which follow’d. Boldly deny!
There is much breath-stopping, hair-stiffening
Awhile, amazed glances, mute awaiting
The thunderbolt which does not come—and next
Reproachful wonder and inquiry; those
Who else had never stirr’d are able now
To find the rest out for themselves—perhaps
To outstrip him who set the whole at work,
As never will my wise class its instructor.
Bold, indeed, was the denial of Paracelsus! He took his astonished auditors by storm! Feebly an opponent or two were at the first heard, and they sneered at him as “Luther alter.” “And why not,” he exclaimed; “Luther is abundantly learned, and therefore you hate him and me; but we are at least a match for you.” “Nam et contra vos et vestros universos principes Avicennam, Galenum, Aristotelem, Hippocratem, Celsum, me satis superque munitum esse novi. Et vertex iste meus calvus ac depilis multò plura et sublimiora novit quàm vester vel Avicenna vel unversæ academiæ. Prodite, et signum date, qui viri sitis, quid roboris habeatis? quid autem sitis? Doctores et magistri, pediculos pectentes, et fricantes podicem.” “The meanest hair on my head knows more than all your writers put together; the very buckles of my shoes are more learned than your Galen and your Avicenna, and my beard has more experience than all your academies.” Nothing could withstand the torrent of his destructive genius. The old rulers and the tyrants of philosophy and medicine sank before him, and over the tomb of their already-buried doctrines he crowned himself the true philosopher of nature, the monarch of physicians! “You shall follow me,” he cried, “you, Avicenna, Galen, Rhasis, Montagnana, Mesue; you, gentlemen of Paris, Montpellier, Germany, Cologne, Vienna, and all soever whom the Rhine and the Danube nourish; you who inhabit the isles of the sea; you, likewise, Dalmatians, Athenians; thou, Arab; thou, Greek; thou, Jew; all shall follow me, and the monarchy shall be mine!”*
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*Erastus, who relates this, subjoins a remark which is not meant as an extraordinary compliment to Englishmen—“Mirùm quod non et Garamantos, Indos, et Anglos adjunxit.” Cool, certainly!
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Amazed admiration hailed and hounded on Paracelsus, and in the novel stimulus of the staring and shouting audiences in the crowded amphitheatre of Basil, no wonder his better thoughts, his nobler aspirations, began to get obscured. He was now, for the hour, the wondrous Paracelsus, the dispenser of life, the commissary of fate, the idol of princes! It is to be observed, however, that though all this vulgar [p. 302→] applause, purchased as it were by the break down of the general aims of his ambition, excited and pleased him for the time, he had still the secret consciousness that he would not after all be exposed to the reproach of achieving it under false pretences; since—though the materials for rebuilding what he was now throwing down on all sides were, as we have said, yet only seen by him in the dim perspective—he had, nevertheless, a stock in hand of recent, and most undoubtedly brilliant, discoveries which would serve, as it were, for him to eke out en attendant, while by the time they were fairly deposited, and sufficient space cleared away for the new building, he flattered and consoled himself that he would be ready with all the rest.
These are new suggestions towards the character of Paracelsus, but certain are we that they are not inconsistent with a just, considerate, and patient view of all the circumstances. We have examined them in this spirit. Paracelsus, let men of science believe, was no sturdy Destructive, whose mission is accomplished in the mere levelling of his predecessors’ edifice. Paracelsus was rather an Augustus, who only pulls down the Rome he finds “all brick,” for the purpose of reconstructing it “all marble.”
Why, then, did he so egregiously fail? We answer at once—he failed, because, in his case, the pulling down was effected while as yet the marble was unhewn in the quarry, and the bystanders would not wait beyond the upheaving of a block or two! He failed, because his first process was too successful, and because for his first audience he had a vulgar, noisy, impatient crowd. Before he had rubbed his eyes clear of the dust and smother of the first magnificent tumble down of the old fabric, he was surprised by a peremptory demand on all sides for his own contrivance in its stead. He gave up the samples he had, and was at once asked how far they would go to the building a new Rome, and by some of his more scornful audience, a batch of that numerous set
Who bitterly hate established schools, and help
A teacher that oppugns them, till he once
Have planted his own doctrine, when the teacher
May reckon on their rancour in his turn—
he was even asked if they were other than common brick. This was the beginning of the end! All might even have gone well with Paracelsus but for this! He might have recovered his ground, and gathered up the treasures whose possession had been for a time prematurely foiled, and held on his course till he achieved his fit destination. The grand result of all, it is to be recollected, had already beamed upon his mind, with a light, whose reflux, supposing it steadily kept up by the ministering help of the Known, by the genuine knowledge he had already discovered, might yet have itself achieved the Unknown, might have illustrated all the inferior grades in the process of inquiry, and explained “each back step in the circle.” But alas! in the vulgar vanity of his listeners, assisted by the labours of a few sagacious knaves among them,
Whose cunning runs not counter to the vogue,
But seeks by flattery and crafty nursing
To force a system to a premature
Short-lived development—
this chance was effectually destroyed. If Paracelsus, in short, had had endless Galens and Avicennas to burn, it would have been quite another matter. The stupid starers of Basil would have continued their loud huzzas. They would have let Paracelsus grow grey in the exposition of [p. 303→] all sorts of antics, if the stock had lasted long enough; they would still have flocked to the amphitheatre,
Poor devils! jostling, swearing, and perspiring,
Till the walls rang again,
if he could still have supplied them with new marvels. But alas for Paracelsus! he thought them capable of being taught no less than of being amazed, and when their clamorous voices asked for his new invention, (expecting no less a wonder than the first!) he simply produced the materials we have alluded to, those brilliant discoveries which, patiently pursued, were sure to have led to more, which, though imperfect as a system, yet contained in themselves the spirit which should have instigated search to the entire truth. He had made a bitter mistake—
Forthwith a mighty squadron straight
Filed off—“the sifted chaff of the sack,” I said,
Redoubling my endeavours to secure
The rest; when lo! one man had tarried so long
Only to ascertain if I supported
This tenet or the other; another loved
To hear impartially before he judged,
And now was satisfied; one had all along
Spied error where his neighbours marvell’d most:
This doctor set a school up to revive
The good old ways which could content our sires,
Though not their squeamish sons; the other worthy
Discover’d divers verses of St. John,
Which read successively refresh’d the soul,
But mutter’d backwards cured the gout, the stone,
The cholic, and what not——
—Quid multa? The end was a clear class room, and quiet leers, and reproachful looks, from the grave authorities, who, cap in hand, had scarcely a year before triumphantly installed him in his chair!
His audience, however, did not leave Paracelsus unchanged. Though, almost instantly upon this, (having paid back with blasting scorn a disgraceful attempt of the magistrates of Basil to withhold from him his just reward for saving one of their brethren from the gripe of a hopeless disease,) he was driven out of the city,—he left it an altered man. The stimulants of vulgar praise, mean as they were, were yet stimulants; the presence of an audience, vain and noisy as they had proved, was yet inspiring; and these he could no longer dispense with, bitter as the price was at which alone they were purchaseable. Here, then, Paracelsus, as we believe, first began a compromise with his principles. The obstacles he had encountered suggested tricks to him that were foreign to his nature; the recollection of the envy and the hate, the blind opposition, the brutal prejudice, the bald ignorance, the misbegotten admiration, burnt into him at Basil, all tended to sink him to the level of humouring new audiences thereafter “the way they most approved.” His first fault had been recoverable, but now he clung to it and clenched it. The very resources of his character, at all times brilliant, tended to bring this more directly about. From his defeat, he sought to wring out consolation; from its ugliness, he set to work to derive a beauty. His conscience, which it is not to be supposed rested all this while, he quieted with the promise of some bright hereafter, that should yet legitimately complete his schemes. Unfortunately this was not the only thing which, in the course of this compromise, he fatally tampered with. The present objects of his soul, as it were, losing their elevated and sustaining aspect, his body—
worthless, save when tasked
Under that soul’s dominion—used to care
For its bright master’s cares, and to subdue
Its proper cravings—not to ail, nor pine,
So he but prosper—
—this tried and patient body of Paracelsus, lost to its first self-supporting [p. 304→] destiny, demanded new excitements now to supply the place of his dead aims. Those aims themselves supplied them!
From their very roots
Springs up a fungous brood, sickly, and pale,
Chill mushrooms, coloured like a corpse’s cheek—
—in the very effort (born of the dregs as it were of his once grand system) to turn even his weakness to account, (for his hair was already grey and his brow furrowed,) it became necessary that Paracelsus should
Push the ruins of his frame, whereon
The fire of vigour trembled scarce alive,
Into a heap, and send the flame aloft!
We are now prepared for the worst slanders of Oporinus,* for those words, which, directed by the pen of a servant against the fame of the master who had raised him, cherished, and trusted him, have formed the convenient text for all slanderers since. On his flight from Basil, Paracelsus took refuge at Colmar, in Alsatia, whither Oporinus followed him with his chemical apparatus. For two years afterwards this very simple surgeon but most arch knave hung about him, in the hope of winning wonderful profit at last, dogging his every step “as a gaunt crow a gasping sheep.” Foiled in this hope, he afterwards vented his bitter disappointment, in the following description of his master’s habits during their intercourse. We seek to conceal nothing. Friends, as well as foes, have done their worst on Paracelsus, but his character will yet bear the truth. We quote the celebrated letter to Wier.
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*Oporinus thoroughly repented his treachery to Paracelsus, improved as he grew in years, and died an old and highly respected citizen of Basil.
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“Adeo erat totis diebus et noctibus, dum ego ipsi familiariter per biennium fere convixi, ebrietati et crapulæ deditus, ut vix unam atque alteram horam sobrium eum reperire licuerit: maxime postquam Basileâ discedens in Alsatiainter nobiles rusticos et rusticos nobiles, velut alter Æsculapius omnibus admirationi fuit. Atque interea tum cum maxime esset ebrius, domum reversus, dictare mihi aliquid suæ philosophiæ solebat. Noctu, toto quo ipsi convixi tempore, nunquam se exuit, plerunque enim non nisi ebrius ad extremam noctem ibat cubitum, atque ita ut erat indutus, adjuncto sibi gladio, quem carnificis cujusdam fuisse jactitabat, in stratum se conjiciebat; ac sæpe media nocte surgens per cubiculum nudo gladio ita insaniebat, ita crebris ictibus et pavimentum et parietes impetibat, ut ego non semel caput amputatum iri metuerem.”
The reader, we feel, is prepared for this, and few remarks are necessary. We do not seek to give a new face to error, or to extenuate the least impropriety in the case of Paracelsus. We have traced the course of his life, in its influences, physical as well as intellectual; and we now behold him, weakened by the first, misguided and betrayed, as it were, by the last—struggling with all the affecting frailties of our common nature—resorting to forced stimulants—and vainly hoping that, in this excitement, he is lapsing back into youth; and fancying he feels, in a pulse by such means made quick again and fluttering, that there is yet a hope for the realization of all his aims. Up to this day, there is the best authority for saying, not a single bodily excitement had been demanded by Paracelsus. But up to this day Paracelsus had been the follower of a great purpose, and was able to find joy or grief alone in its fulfilment, to rejoice only as it proceeded prosperously, and to sorrow only when mischance retarded it. Suddenly, as we have seen, a vulgar fate interposes itself before this plan, it is removed to a distance, and expedients, such as Oporinus tells of, are desperately called in to sustain the flagging body, till it is able to arrive again to where the diviner portion of its soul awaits it, and complete its destiny. The agony and sweat with which such excitements react upon the frame, we see also illustrated in this memorable extract: it only requires the following, [p. 305→] from Melchior Adam, to complete Oporinus’s account, in all its singular aspect of knavery and simplicity.
“Domi, quod Oporinus amanuensis ejus sæpè narravit, nunquam nisi potus ad explicanda sua accessit, atque in medio conclavi ad columnam τετυφωμένος adsistens, apprehenso manibus capulo ensis, cujus χοίλωμα hospitium præbuit ut aiunt spiritui familiari, imaginationes aut concepta sua protulit:—alii illud quod in capulo habuit, ab ipso Azoth appellatum Medicinam fuisse præstantissimam aut lapidem Philosophicum putant.”
In this it is impossible not to remark two or three striking and emphatic evidences of that intermediate state which we have attributed to Paracelsus as the result of the compromise of his principles.
His excitements, it is clear, were not resorted to for the sensual gratification. We see here that he drank deep only when preparing himself to dictate his various writings, or when called into the chamber of the sick, to practise a profession which (contrasted with his grander objects) he abhorred. “Quis quæso deinceps,” as he somewhere asks, “honorem deferat professione tali, quæ a tam facinorosis nebulonibus obitur et administratur?” He drank to elevate himself above the consciousness of the false pretences in the midst of which he was consenting to live; for, from this time forth, till he should get back to his old objects, and achieve them, he knew that his works must be false pretences. An Æsculapius, in all the potency and reverence of Godhead, among the “noble rustics and rustic nobles” of Alsace and the other places of his sojourn, he felt it as necessary to his existence to keep up his divinity with these, as it had been to fill the admiring eyes of the learned and the noble at Basil. And this he kept up by what must certainly be called quackery—by jumping conclusions—by asserting hypotheses to be proved hereafter, and, meanwhile, inventing all sorts of machinery to account for them. In this we describe the majority of his treatises; and we have evidence, in these extracts before us, if the Sword and Azoth fables are to be accepted, of still more extraordinary modes by which he riveted the wonder and admiration of the ignorant and simple. Still, let it be kept in mind, Paracelsus was never lost to the better prospect of the future, nor had forgotten his old hopes,—
No less, no less
Even now what humours me, fond fool, as when
Their faint ghosts sit with me, and flatter me,
And send me back content to my dull round;
and his writings, we feel certain, were never meant to reach posterity in their present condition, such as we have described it. The character of much of their language,—which is isoteric [sic], full of hidden meaning, written to be explained by properties yet latent,—sufficiently evidences this. We have likewise more direct proof of it in his having withheld all of them, with two exceptions, from publication. Only two appeared till death placed all at the mercy of his disciples; that death was premature, or they might never have been seen at all. For no wonder that Paracelsus, who had wrought himself up to the vain pitch of hoping that he should live to a vast age, and establish all his grand surmises, was unwilling to perpetuate his sad intermediate state. As if the poor struggler, who is to be rich one day, would take painful care to eternize the wretched coat he is wearing in his misery, into a perpetual record of ragged and humiliating memories!
Paracelsus died amidst his struggles, as we have said, prematurely. After his flight out of Basil he lived only thirteen years, wandering from [p. 306→] place to place, leaving every community he visited in rapt admiration of his more than mortal skill, and ever and anon flattering himself into a few steps in his old course, as a learner and student of nature. His consideration he maintained to the last. The most exalted characters of the time continued to do him honour, and even the Emperor was gracious. His last known act was to dedicate his Chronicle to the States of Carinthia, in 1538, in gratitude for the many kindnesses with which they had honoured his father. In 1541, in Saltzburg, whose archbishop loved and honoured him, Paracelsus, probably at the very moment when feeling as if the time for accomplishment had come at last,—when
Glory dawned, and all was at the best,—
died, His property was very considerable, and he left it all to the poor. “Bona sua in pauperes distribuenda collocandaque erogavit.” We have no means of knowing to whom his library fell; but it was not extensive. It consisted of the Bible, the New Testament, the Commentaries of St. Jerome on the Gospels, a printed volume on medicine, and seven manuscripts. The works that were afterwards published in his name—the fruits of his lectures, as reported by pupils; the hurried offshoots of his over-fertile genius, as stolen by Oporinus; the various dictations of the moment, as designed for a more brilliant completion,—form in themselves a most prodigious library. According to Valentine de Rhetiis and Adam de Bodenstein, his writings, in Latin, German, and other tongues, consist of two hundred and thirty books on Philosophy, forty-six on Medicine, twelve on Politics, seven on Mathematics, three treatises entitled “Theophrastia,” and sixty-six treatises on occult and abstruse subjects!
And this was Paracelsus! We feel him, as we write these words, vanishing from the earth he might have exalted and ennobled, if he had proved strong enough to resist, in his own case, that portion of the earth’s grossness which he sought to purge out of his fellow-men. He was to the physical creation what Rousseau was to the moral. Nature intended them both, in their respective sphere, for heroes; the world made them both cowards. In the character of their minds there are many forcible resemblances. Rousseau differed from Voltaire and the other pullers down of his age, inasmuch as he was a builder up as well, which they were not; and in this is the distinction of Paracelsus. It is not to detract from it to ask with a sneer for the buildings they have erected. We have shown the way cleared, and the foundation laid. It is to be deeply regretted, certainly, that they felt the truth so strong in themselves, and have explained it so imperfectly to others; for here again, as with Paracelsus in the physical, was it with Rousseau in the moral. Much of their knowledge in both cases appears to have been intuitive; great results were arrived at in ignorance of any process; they inculcated duties where they were themselves the greatest delinquents; and seriously damaged their doctrines by their own extraordinary illustrations of them. The Secret they appear to have had, but in the shape of a vast perception unexpressed, uncomprehended by their narrow thought, but felt and known, even in every shift and change of the spirit they bore. Both of them, as was natural in such circumstances, were men of brilliant excuses; and the Theosophy of Paracelsus, so strikingly put forward in all his works, seems to us to have been only a famous expedient [p. 307→] to excuse his inability to work out thoroughly his perceptions. He would have smiled, if a glance into the future had shown him the Rosicrucians and Jacob Behmens building up their dainty philosophies in his name; for all these sects had their origin in Paracelsus. In behalf both of him and of Rousseau we must be permitted to remark, in conclusion of the parallel, that, at the period of their respective writings, nature was a puzzling theory, no less in her material than in her spiritual aspects; and if, since their time, we have been permitted to recognize the features of both made out with a profounder distinctness, let us not forget the Professor of Basil and the Citizen of Geneva. If it is necessary that we should dwell upon their vices, in remembering them let us not fail to correct them, and be thankful that, at the heels of these, follow many virtues to imitate, many blessings to be deeply mindful of. To Paracelsus, for instance—independent of all his giant reforms, among which—embracing, as they did, the highest equally with what a meaner genius would have considered the most unimportant matters—we should not forget his having restored his native language to that office it has since so nobly discharged, the exposition of enlightenment and learning, which thus, for the first time, were permitted to reach the poor and lowly—to Paracelsus we owe the discovery and the explication of the most powerful remedies that have yet been discovered for the pains and diseases of humanity. The use of opium, of mercury, and of some others of the most wonderful medicines known to the suffering world, are everlastingly identified with his name. To glance even at a few of the great hints of which he was the author, and which, since his death, have been wrought upon and developed by clever appropriators, would require much space, and a greater knowledge of his neglected books than we have had the opportunity of mastering. Let the reader suppose, however, from one or two, what the rest may be. Paracelsus discovered the circulation of the blood and the sanguification of the heart. He was master, too, of all the more valuable knowledge of practical physiognomy, and is alluded to by Lavater on this point as a man of prodigious genius. Prodigious indeed! And what should the failure of his general scheme avail, against all these deathless claims? Nobly does Mr. Browning say for him—
Come, I will show you where my merit lies.
I ne’er supposed that since I fail’d no other
Needs hope success. I act as though each one
Who hears me may aspire. Now mark me well:
’Tis in the advance of individual minds
That the slow crowd should ground their expectation
Eventually to follow—as the sea
Waits ages in its bed, till some one wave
Of all the multitudinous mass extends
The empire of the whole, some feet, perhaps,
Over the strip of sand which could confine
Its fellows so long time; thenceforth the rest,
Even to the meanest, hurry in at once,
And so much is clear gain’d. I shall be glad
If all my labours, failing of aught else,
Suffice to make such inroad—to procure
A wider range for thought; nay, they do this;
For whatsoe’er my notions of true knowledge
And a legitimate success may be,
I am not blind to my undoubted rank,
When class’d with others. I precede my age;
And whoso wills, is very free to make
That use of me which I disdain’d to make
Of my forerunners—(vanity, perchance;
But had I deem’d their learning wonder-worth,
I had been other than I am)—to mount
Those labours as a platform, whence their own
May have a prosperous outset.
Many, indeed, have already done this; but the platform still commands a wide prospect, which waits to be possessed. This glance at the philosophical claims of Paracelsus will therefore not have been made in vain, if it shall induce any man of letters or science to examine some few of his now neglected books. We will answer for it that unthought-of treasures may be found there. “There are more things still in heaven [p. 308→] and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy” (wonderfully perfect as, in our own conceit, we believe that to be); and it would not much surprise us if the light that shall reveal them, be found some day issuing even from the literary carcase of the great quack of Basil. Hence, we do not apologize for having been betrayed into a longer digression from the original purpose of our inquiry than we had dreamt of making, since it is possible we may have “done the state some service,” in presenting, after this fashion, the thoughts that have been suggested by Mr. Browning’s work.
In a future paper* we shall restrict ourselves to The poem, Paracelsus, and prove from that, and from other works we have had the pleasure of receiving lately, that dramatic genius,—perfectly new, born of our own age, the offspring of original thinking and original expression, grafted upon those noble points of universal character which only are enduring,—is now actually amongst us, and waits only the proper opportunity of exercise, to redeem the drama, and to elevate the literary repute, of England. The latter, it is to be admitted, has not been advancing lately.
We will conclude, for the present, with a friendly word or two to an esteemed contemporary. If our words were other than friendly, we should ill repay the thousand pleasures we owe to Mr. Christopher North. But what has that excellent critic just said, in a burst of pardonable self-enthusiasm, of the young poets of the present day? “They long for ‘a waking empire wide as dreams,’ and they find it in the most beneficent of perennials, whose smile is fame, and whose praise is immortality. Christopher North is the tutor, the guardian, and the patron of the young poets. As they reverence him, they prosper; wanting the light of his countenance, they sicken in the shade, and prematurely die. But none who deserve it want the light of the countenance of the old man benign.” Now, we truly believe that our venerable friend would have this so; for he is not churlish, nor would reserve his praise for the day which sees it to the poet valueless—“deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.” Why, then, has he not yet mentioned Mr. Browning? We will hope that it is an omission to be redeemed: for here is a young poet, or rather—for greatness takes no account of age—a great poet, and his book has been buzzed at by the critics, and Christopher North has remained silent. Have we suggested the reason, in our distinction between youth and greatness? Yes. The old man eloquent prepares himself for a discourse on greatness in poetry, as distinguished from the “small luminaries now in ascension;” and the illustration shall be “Robert Browning”! Meanwhile, we offer these humble acknowledgments of ours.
[John Forster]
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*Editors’ note: This projected paper was never issued.
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Reviewed:
Paracelsus (RB), London: Effingham Wilson, 1835.
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