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Updated: May 2, 2025
We stood at last on the utmost Finis terrae and looked over the Atlantic not only from the lighthouse, which, built three hundred feet above the sea level, is often, we were told, drenched by storm-driven spray, but from various points of the tremendous rocks also. They are tremendous, in truth. The scene is a much grander one than that at our own "Land's End," which I visited a month or two ago.
The young men themselves were probably unaware that they were the representatives of the "Filius Terrae." But the years during which Browning was thus reaping some of his late laurels began to be filled with incidents that reminded him how the years were passing over him.
Johnson says, that when he was a boy he was a lax TALKER, rather than a lax THINKER, against religion; "but lax talking against religion at Oxford would not be suffered." The author of Terrae Filius, however, never omits a chance of sneering at our faith, and at the Church of England as by law established.
I apprehend that nothing can be properly said to be a part of lex terrae, unless it can be shown either to have been of Saxon origin, or to have been recognized by Magna Carta. The trial by ordeal was of various kinds.
Raptores orbis, postquam cuncta vastantibus defuere terrae, et mare scrutantur: si locuples hostis est, avari; si pauper, ambitiosi: quos non Oriens, non Occidens, satiaverit. Soli omnium opes atque inopiam pari affectu concupiscunt. Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant."
IMPERIUM: so Verg. Georg. 1, 99 exercetque frequens tellurem atque imperat agris; ib. 2, 369 dura exerce imperia et ramos compesce fluentes; Tac. Germ. 26 sola terrae seges imperatur. SED ALIAS ... FAENORE: put for sed semper cum faenore, alias minore, plerumque maiore.
I called upon you two hours ago; but, like Antony, 'you revel long o' nights. Ah, that I could add with Shakspeare, that you were 'notwithstanding up. I have just come from Paris, that umbilicus terrae, and my adventures since I saw you, for your private satisfaction, 'because I love you, I will let you know; but you must satisfy me with a meeting. Till you do, 'the mighty gods defend you!
. . . You are far too hard on the very harmless drolleries of the young men, licensed as they are moreover by immemorial usage. Indeed there used to be a regularly appointed jester, 'Filius Terrae' he was called, whose business it was to jibe and jeer at the honoured ones, by way of reminder that all human glories are merely gilded bubbles and must not be fancied metal.
What lex terrae did authorize. The trial by jury was a part of legem terrae, and we have the means of knowing what the trial by jury was. The fact that the jury were to fix the sentence, implies that they were to try the accused; otherwise they could not know what sentence, or whether any sentence, ought to be inflicted upon him.
This is pretty plain speaking, and Terrae Filius enforces, by an historical example, the dangers of even political freethought. In 1714 the Constitution Club kept King George's birthday. The Constitutional Party was then the name which the Whigs took to themselves, though, thanks to the advance of civilisation, the Tories have fallen back upon the same.
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