a beautiful spot on the Alban hills, near Rome; antique-black == Nero antico, a beautiful black stone; thyrsus, a Bacchanalian staff wrapped with ivy, or a spear stuck into a pine-cone; travertine, a cellular calc-tufa, abundant near Tivoli; Tully’s Latin == Cicero’s, the purest classic style; Ulpian, a Roman writer on law, chiefly engaged in literary work (A.D. 211-22). “Blessed mutter of the mass”; To devout Catholics the low monotone of the priest saying a low mass, in which there is no music and only simple ceremonies, is more devotional than the high mass, where there is much music and ritual to divert the attention from the most solemn act of Christian worship; mortcloth, a funeral pall; elucescebat, he was distinguished; vizor, that part of a helmet which defends the face; term, a bust terminating in a square block of stone, similar to those of the god Terminus; onion-stone == cippolino, cipoline, an Italian marble, white, with pale-green shadings.
Blot in the ’Scutcheon, A. (Part V. of Bells and Pomegranates, 1843.) A Tragedy. Time, 17 – . The story is exceedingly dramatic, though simple. Thorold, Earl Tresham, is a monomaniac to family pride and conventional morality: his ancestry and his own reputation absorb his whole attention, and the wreck of all things were a less evil to him than a stain on the family honour. He is the only protector of his motherless sister, Mildred Tresham, who has in her innocence allowed herself to be seduced by Henry, Earl Mertoun, whose estates are contiguous to those of the Treshams. He, too, has a noble name, and he could have lawfully possessed the girl he loved if he had not been deterred by a mysterious feeling of awe for Lord Tresham, and had asked her in marriage. But he is anxious to repair the wrong he has done, and the play opens with his visit to Thorold to formally present himself as the girl’s lover. Naturally the Earl, seeing no objection to the match, makes none. The difficulty seems at an end; but, unfortunately, Gerard, an old and faithful retainer, has seen a man, night after night, climb to the lady’s chamber, and has watched him leave. He has no idea who the visitor might be, and, after some struggles with contending emotions, decides to acquaint his master with the things which he has seen. Thorold is in the utmost mental distress and perturbation, and questions his sister in a manner that is as painful to him as to her. She does not deny the circumstances alleged against her. Her brother is overwhelmed with distress at the sudden disgrace brought upon his noble line, and confounded at the idea of the attempt which has been made to involve in his own disgrace the nobleman who has sought an alliance with his family. Mildred refuses to say who her lover is, and weakly – as it appears to her brother – determines to let things take the proposed course. Naturally Thorold looks upon his sister as a degraded being who is dead to shame and honour, and he rushes from her presence to wander in the grounds in the neighbourhood of the house, till at midnight he sees the lover Mertoun preparing to mount to his sister’s room. They fight, and the Earl falls mortally wounded. In the chamber above the signal-light in the window has been placed as usual by Mildred, who awaits Thorold in her room. He does not appear, and her heart tells her that her happiness is at an end. Now she sees all her guilt, and the consequences of her degradation to her family. In the midst of these agonising reflections her brother bursts into her room. She sees at once that he has killed Mertoun, sees also that he himself is dying of poison which he has swallowed. Her heart is broken, and she dies. Mildred’s cousin Gwendolen, betrothed to the next heir to the earldom, Austin Tresham, is a quick, intelligent woman, who saw how matters stood, and would have rectified them had it not been rendered impossible by the adventure in the grounds, when the unhappy young lover allowed Thorold to kill him. Mr. Forster, in his Life of Charles Dickens (Book iv. I), says: “This was the date [1842], too, of Mr. Browning’s tragedy of the Blot in the ’Scutcheon, which I took upon myself, after reading it in the manuscript, privately to impart to Dickens; and I was not mistaken in the belief that it would profoundly touch him. ‘Browning’s play,’ he wrote (November 25th), ‘has thrown me into a perfect passion of sorrow. To say that there is anything in its subject save what is lovely, true, deeply affecting, full of the best emotion, the most earnest feeling, and the most true and tender source of interest, is to say that there is no light in the sun and no heat in blood. It is full of genius, natural and great thoughts, profound and yet simple and beautiful in its vigour. I know nothing that is so affecting – nothing in any book I have ever read – as Mildred’s recurrence to that “I was so young – I had no mother!” I know no love like it, no passion like it, no moulding of a splendid thing after its conception like it. And I swear it is a tragedy that MUST be played; and must be played, moreover, by Macready. There are some things I would have changed if I could (they are very slight, mostly broken lines); and I assuredly would have the old servant begin his tale upon the scene, and be taken by the throat, or drawn upon, by his master in its commencement. But the tragedy I never shall forget, or less vividly remember, than I do now. And if you tell Browning that I have seen it, tell him that I believe from my soul there is no man living (and not many dead) who could produce such a work.’” Mr. Browning wrote the play in five days, at the suggestion of Macready, who read it with delight. The poet had been led to expect that Macready would play in it himself, but was annoyed to hear that he had given the part he had intended to take to Mr. Phelps, then an actor quite unknown. Evidently Macready expected that Mr. Browning would withdraw the play. On the contrary, he accepted Phelps, who, however, was taken seriously ill before the rehearsal began. The consequence was (though there was clearly some shuffling on Macready’s part) that the great tragedian himself consented to take the part at the last moment. It is evident that Macready had changed his mind. He had, however, done more: he had changed the title to The Sisters, and had changed a good deal of the play, even to the extent of inserting some lines of his own. Meanwhile, Phelps having recovered, and being anxious to take his part, Mr. Browning insisted that he should do so; and, to Macready’s annoyance, the old arrangement had to stand. The play was vociferously applauded, and Mr. Phelps was again and again called before the curtain. Mr. Browning was much displeased at the treatment he had received, but his play continued to be performed to crowded houses. It was a great success also when Phelps revived it at Sadlers Wells. Miss Helen Faucit (who afterwards became Lady Martin) played the part of Mildred Tresham on the first appearance of The Blot in 1843. The Browning Society brought it out at St. George’s Hall on May 2nd, 1885; and again at the Olympic Theatre on March 15th, 1888, when Miss Alma Murray played Mildred Tresham in an ideally perfect manner. It was, as the Era said, “a thing to be remembered. From every point of view it was admirable. Its passion was highly pitched, its elocution pure and finished, and its expression, by feature and gesture, of a quality akin to genius. The agonising emotions which in turn thrill the girl’s sensitive frame were depicted with intense truth and keen and delicate art, and an excellent discretion defeated any temptation to extravagance.” It cannot be seriously held by any unprejudiced person that A Blot in the ’Scutcheon has within it the elements of success as an acting play. The subject is unpleasant, the conduct of Thorold monomaniacal and improbable, the wholesale dying in the last scene “transpontine.” The characters philosophise too much, and dissect themselves even as they die. They come to life again under the stimulation of the process, only to perish still more, and to make us speculate on the nature of the poison which permitted such self-analysis, and on the nature of the heart disease which was so subservient to the patient’s necessities. An analytic poet, we feel, is for the study, not for the boards.
Bluphocks. (Pippa Passes.) The vagabond Englishman of the poem. “The name means Blue-Fox, and is a skit on the Edinburgh Review, which is bound in a cover of blue and fox.” (Dr. Furnivall.)
Bombast. The proper name of Paracelsus; “probably acquired,” says Mr. Browning in a note to Paracelsus, “from the characteristic phraseology of his lectures, that unlucky signification which it has ever since retained.” This is not correct. Bombast, in German bombast, cognate with Latin bombyx in the sense of cotton. “Bombast, the cotton-plant growing in Asia” (Phillips, The New World of Words). It was applied also to the cotton wadding with which garments were lined and stuffed in Elizabeth’s time; hence inflated speech, fustian. (See Stubbes, The Anatomy of Abuses, p. 23; Trench, Encyc. Dict., etc.)
Boot and Saddle. No. III. of the “Cavalier Songs,” published in Bells and Pomegranates
