575, at Old Seidenberg,
a village near Goerlitz; d. 1624. The 24th verse of the poem,
"He noticed all at once that plants could speak", may refer to
a remarkable experience of Boehme, related in Dr. Hans Lassen Martensen's
`Jacob Boehme: his life and teaching, or studies in theosophy:
translated from the Danish by T. Rhys Evans', London, 1885:
"Sitting one day in his room, his eye fell upon a burnished pewter dish,
which reflected the sunshine with such marvellous splendor
that he fell into an inward ecstasy, and it seemed to him as if
he could now look into the principles and deepest foundations of things.
He believed that it was only a fancy, and in order to banish it
from his mind he went out upon the green. But here he remarked
that he gazed into the very heart of things, the very herbs and grass,
and that actual nature harmonized with what he had inwardly seen."
Martensen, in his biography, follows that by Frankenberg,
in which the experience may be given more in detail.

37-40. him of Halberstadt, John: "It is not a thinker like Boehme,
who will compensate us for the lost summer of our life; but a magician
like John of Halberstadt, who can, at any moment, conjure roses up."

"The `magic' symbolized, is that of genuine poetry; but the magician,
or `Mage', is an historical person; and the special feat imputed to him
was recorded of other magicians in the Middle Ages, if not of himself.
`Johannes Teutonicus, a canon of Halberstadht in Germany,
after he had performed a number of prestigious feats almost incredible,
was transported by the Devil in the likeness of a black horse,
and was both seen and heard upon one and the same Christmas day,
to say mass in Halberstadht, in Mayntz, and in Cologne'
(`Heywood's Hierarchy', Bk. IV., p. 253). The `prestigious feat'
of causing flowers to appear in winter, was a common one."
--Mrs. Sutherland Orr's `Handbook to the works of Robert Browning',
p. 209.

It may be said that the advice given in this poem, Browning has not
sufficiently followed in his own poetry. On this point, a writer in
the `British Quarterly Review' (Vol. 23, p. 162) justly remarks:
"Browning's thought is always that of a poet. Subtle, nimble,
and powerful as is the intellect, and various as is the learning,
all is manifested through the imagination, and comes forth
shaped and tinted by it. Thus, even in the foregoing passages
{cited from `Transcendentalism' and `Bishop Blougram's Apology'},
where