E501200A. Poems (1850).
The English Review, December 1850, pp. 320–332.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 325–329.
Poetesses—Mrs. Browning and Miss Lowe
Female Poetry! this scarcely seems to us, ungallant as we are, a delightful theme, or a glorious memory; for is it not, generally speaking, mawkish, lackadaisical, and tedious? To us, at least, it is. Look at the “Literary Souvenir,” or “Book of Beauty,” if you want to see the kind of thing we mean: what people denominate poetry of the affections. Soft, mellifluous strains, in which some one generally religious thought is kept for the last verse; this kind of climax being repeated a thousand times, with a more than wearisome uniformity. Think of the endless twaddle perpetrated by L.E.L., with here and there something like a fresh flower peeping forth from amongst her sere and withered blossoms. That unhappy woman inflicted an almost irreparable injury on English literature, on English poetry at least; one from which the latter has taken many years to recover. She succeeded, supported, encouraged, and puffed as she was by silly and ignorant critics, in persuading the general public to identify poetry and mawkishness as one and the same thing; to regard the strains of the lyre as naturally and necessarily morbid, and frightfully sentimental; and, consequently, only adapted to the taste of very young gentlemen and ladies, and exceedingly mischievous for them. We know her unhappy fate, and have mourned over it, and have thereby been induced to keep silence for a time; but the truth must be told at last. She was one of the most utter nuisances the literature of the nineteenth century has been afflicted with! Here and there she really struck out a poetic thought, though it was almost always marred in the delivery; and some few of her shorter strains, for instance, the illustrations of modern pictures (we may mention “the Combat,” by Etty), have some real power and sweetness: but, O! the ocean of morbid common-place in which swim these waifs:—the wretched, intolerably wretched, versification, the bad rhymes, the careless grammar, the unpardonable profanation of the good and the beautiful! Consider this one fact.—This woman undertook [p. 321→] for years to fill a large annual with nothing but her poetry, in illustration of certain prints to be furnished her, whatever they might be! Now this fact alone expresses far more than any condemnation of ours could do. What a vista of dreary, morbid, boundless common-place does this disclose to us! And contemporary criticism could applaud, could think this annual undertaking perfectly natural, and rather sublime.
We repeat, that poetry has suffered amongst us from nothing more than from this unhallowed desecration. It became for a long time a valueless drug in the market. The very fact that L.E.L. did possess natural powers only rendered their exertion the more fatal to our poetic literature. The existence of and the praise lavished on this wordy trash formed one great barrier to the rising fame of Tennyson; and has impressed the majority of those now living with a conviction, not to be shaken, that English poets of the present day are second-rate, and little worthy of attention.
Mrs. Hemans was less sickening; and yet, looking over her vague, dreamy, wordy compositions, we almost feel inclined to recall that more favourable verdict. Here is a tiresome, mellifluous sweetness, an almost total absence of thought, a superabundance of morbid feeling always welling forth. But we admit that there is gentleness, and sometimes fancy, and even poetry also, to set off against all these defects.
There are moods in which certain of Mrs. Hemans’s strains are dear to us, as they are perhaps to many of our readers: only not too many at a time! Then there was another of this class, a Miss Jewsbury. To be sure she has passed away, and it may seem unkind to revive her memory: yet in all “Affection’s Gifts,” and “Friendship’s Keepsakes,” you will be sure to find one or two of her vague wandering—melodies we cannot call them, unless slow, dull, autumn breezes, whining through a keyhole, deserve that appellation. Always the same leafless gloom, amidst which, here and there, a little pale, frightened flower, colourless and marred, may perk its head up, and yield you a sickly smile, and smile itself to death again!
We do not wish to upbraid more of these doleful lady-singers, and truly their number is countless. “Breezes sigh,” they may answer us, “why should not we? rain-drops weep, why are tears denied us? night mourns, why should we be gay? True, there is heaven above: when we go thither, we will sing more gladly with the angels!” Now, this is a very pretty lady-poetess’s speech: only, unfortunately, she would have condemned us to listen to as many stanzas of eight lines each, as there are thoughts or rather fancies in our answer: any one of the class in [p. 322→] question could do it, and their compositions would be as like as two T’s; a little better or a little worse to be sure, as far as rhyme and language are concerned, but all “so very sweet,” “so charming really.” Well, is this a true count, or is it not? Do we exaggerate? Now, all poetesses are not of this order and calibre, witness the two names at the head of this article. Besides, there is Mrs. Southey, of whom we take shame to ourselves for knowing so little; but what we do know has seemed to us of sterling quality; and, again, there is Mary Howitt, some of whose sweet, fresh, cheerful strains are really pure, as the dewdrops of the morn, not like the tears of an autumn mist: and, no doubt, there are others who ought to be mentioned (we beg any lady poetess who reads this, and has published, to take for granted she is included amongst the number), and still one general verdict must stand against the lady-singers. We know not whether there is essentially or necessarily an absence of concentration in female thought: judging from many novels we have seen, and many letters also, we should say, No! The memory of Miss Edgeworth only forbids the thought. Women are not necessarily or usually thus morbid in their ordinary talk: were they so, they would by no means be the queens of creation we consider them. It is only female poetry which is thus deficient in healthfulness, cheerfulness, and sound sense. With regard to the latter quality, it is our mature opinion that women are usually more sensible than men; but you certainly would not guess it from their poetry, where they seem to think it necessary to be weak and foolish. Of course this dictum is to be taken with a due degree of allowance for its sweepingness.
Foreign poetesses are not a whit better than English; think of Madame Desbordes-Valmont (we think that is the way she spells her name), think of her pitiful wails and lamentations, “Mes Pleurs” and “Mes Larmes” innumerable, enough to fill an ocean. As for Germany’s songstresses, though she has several, they are all unknown to fame, save “Betty Paoli,” whom we admire greatly, and should rank upon a level with Mrs. Browning and Miss Lowe, for artistic power; that is, we recognise her’s as a kindred spirit with those of Germany’s greatest bards, one who may justly claim equality with them; but then we have always called her “the female Byron,” so sad is she, so bitter, so painfully passionate; nevertheless, she is great. We recommend Betty Paoli’s poems to the study of every lover of German poetry; they are pure and noble artistic creations, earnest-hearted and earnest-minded, and above all, not diffuse (wonderful to relate); her words rarely or never outrun the thoughts they represent. [p. 323→]
Still, in every country, female poetry is doleful or morbid, and generally speaking it is weak and diffuse, and therefore, as we said at starting, it does not present a too delightful theme.
But it is far otherwise with the strains of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Helen Lowe, who, though widely different, are both true poets; not poetesses only; each taking a high rank amongst her bardic peers, and one which, if we mistake not, she is destined long to keep. We cannot aver that either is wholly free from that shade or tinge of morbid sorrow from which no female poetess has ever yet escaped; but in neither of them is this the predominant feature: it rather forms the background in both instances (if we may consider their poetry as two great master-pieces by some illustrious artist), from which the main subject stands out in bold and bright relief, commanding our hearty admiration. As a lyric poet, Mrs. Browning takes high rank among the bards of England: there are few to surpass her; perhaps none in her especial beauties,—in the combination of romantic wildness with deep, true tenderness and most singular power.
[The review continues with remarks on Helen Lowe, which are omitted here.] [p. 324→]
But to our more general theme:—Mrs. Browning is not exclusively lyric, nor Miss Lowe dramatic; for the former’s “Drama of Exile” is an exquisite work of its kind, and some of Miss Lowe’s poems, though we do not like them as well as her plays, have much real merit, merit of a quiet and somewhat sombre character, like the beauties of an autumn twilight, sinking down on a fair landscape, fringed with dark and leafy woods. We cannot hope to do justice to both of these ladies, or perhaps to either of them, on the present occasion: perhaps we have acted wrongly in stringing their names together.
Mrs. Browning may well feel that she had a right to an article for herself alone, as much as her great poet-husband, to whom we strove to do tardy justice but lately. He and she are kindred spirits; and yet there is vast difference between them. His genius is essentially, we might almost say exclusively, dramatic. The simplest line that falls from him, no matter in what shape, is a strong dramatic utterance. He has an instinctive knowledge of the hearts of men, a power of identifying himself with the passions of others, and of realising them in their most fiery outbursts, making them his own. Thus far he is impulsive, most impulsive, dramatically so; but there his impulse, comparatively, ends: free lyric power is not his characteristic. A contemporary has said this but lately, and it is true: yet, it is not from lack of impulsive power that Browning fails here; nay, he does not fail, for he never makes the attempt: he is too exclusively dramatic, as we have said. His earnestness of passion forbids all lyrical redundancies. It is utterly false that—as the same critic asserts, as it is not unfashionable to say,—he is devoid of beauty. He has the highest beauty, the highest grace: witness “Paracelsus,” “Pippa Passes,” “Colombe’s Birthday.” But he never seeks beauty for beauty’s sake: his aim is the reality of passion, good or bad: if beauty is consistent with the truth, then it will be certain to be there: but the passion may so arrest your sight as to blind your eyes to the beauty! your heart is too strongly appealed to, to allow of your stopping to admire!—A mere love of words for their own sake, this he does not seem to possess. Now a true lyric poet must! He sings because he loves singing: true, he must have something to sing about, but this need not be much: the nightingale sings, no doubt, of the beauty of the early spring, but not over distinctly. Now Mrs. Browning is oftentimes possessed with the fine lyrical “afflatus,” the passion of song, and pours herself forth in verse. This is what Browning seldom or never does, in the [p. 325→] same sense or way; yet he is not a made poet, but a born one: it is his instinct to be dramatic, “voilà tout!” Both he and Mrs. Browning feel intensely: he thinks perhaps most deeply, yet she is a thinker too: both have a wild imagination and a potent fancy: he has a genuine vein of humour; she has a pleasant, genial, meditative lofty strain, such as inspired her “Wine of Cyprus.” Upon the whole, we think Browning’s the higher and the master spirit; her’s the more tender, and the more musical also.
But to the volumes before us, which we must deal with, we fear, very summarily. “The Drama of Exile” is a fervid and yet a sacred strain. At the gate of Paradise, where Milton left our first parents, the spirit of the poetess has met them, has listened to their wails of fond regret, and recorded their first wandering out into the sterile earth, thenceforth to yield man bread by the sweat of his brow. It is a grand and a solemn composition; somewhat too diffuse perhaps, and shadowy, and mixing up ideal conceptions, abstract ideas personified, such as the Spirits of the Earth and of the Creatures, with real actual sentient beings, in a manner we can scarcely approve. This, unintentionally, gives an unreal effect to much that would be otherwise very beautiful, and even holy. And even if we admit of these twain impersonations of the powers of nature, what shall we say to those shadows of shadows, the signs of the Zodiac—vast spectral forms representing these signs being made to form a circle round the exile wanderers? We do not see the meaning of this; and we are sure that its effect is unhappy. Again, we must blame the almost ludicrous and hopeless pertinacity with which the chief of fallen angels is represented as troubling those with his presence who incessantly request him “to go.” There is something even comic in this, and we beg Mrs. Browning to believe that we do not make the remark irreverently; the opening discourse between Gabriel and Lucifer is almost entirely, on the former’s part, a series of first commands, and then entreaties, to the latter to retire: it is obvious that Gabriel should not be made to speak so forcibly at first, if he has no power to enforce his commands; and his entering into long reasonings afterwards, on the same theme, is a token of weakness we should not have expected from an angel. We almost fear we are waxing irreverent, which it is certainly far from our intention to be, firmly as we believe in angelic agency, and strongly as we desire to do honour to those blessed spirits which stand in the presence of our God around the throne. This first scene, very fine in parts, is followed by an exquisite chorus of Eden spirits, while Adam and Eve fly across the track traced for them by the glare of the sword of fire, self- [p. 326→] moved, for many miles along the waste. There are seven lines in this chorus which seem to us particularly beautiful, and which recur oftentimes in their mournful sweetness, with slight changes, adapting them to the various singers, from the Spirits of the trees, rivers, flowers, &c. Take the second of these:—
Fare ye well, farewell!
The river-sounds, no longer audible,
Expire at Eden’s door!
Each footstep of your treading
Treads out some murmur which ye heard before:
Farewell! the streams of Eden
Ye shall hear nevermore.
Is not that melancholy music, recalling the sweet songs of our own early childhood? Mark the lingering sweetness of the last two lines, where the cadence falls and rests. There is a plaintive tenderness in this, rarely surpassed. The song of the Bird-spirit should be quoted, but we have no space for it. Then follows a beautiful colloquy between Adam and Eve, held on the verge of the sword-glare: both characters are nobly conceived. We find no trace of selfishness in what falls from either of them; only the love of God seems no longer to tenant their hearts; intense love of each other has taken its place. We have not space to go through the drama seriatim; it is grand throughout. To our mind it is very questionable whether Lucifer should be represented as fraught with love for any thing, even for his own morning-star. Scripture represents hate and scorn as his essence, and in these consist his enmity to God. However, the song of the Morning-Star to Lucifer is exceedingly wild and glowing; we regret that we have not space to enrich our pages with it; all the lyrics introduced in this poem are noble; but most intense, perhaps, is the power displayed in that song of the Earth-spirits, when they curse our first parents for having brought the curse on them (p. 59). Its wildness is great, but is exceeded by its power:—
And we scorn you! There’s no pardon
Which can lean to you aright.
When your bodies take the guerdon
Of the death-curse in our sight,
Then the bee that hummeth lowest shall transcend you:
Then ye shall not move an eyelid,
Though the stars look down your eyes;
And the earth, which ye defiled,
She shall show you to the skies,—
“Lo! these kings of ours—who sought to comprehend you!” [p. 327→]
First Spirit.
And the elements shall boldly
All your dust to dust constrain;
Unresistedly and coldly,
I will smite you with my rain!
From the slowest of my frosts is no receding.
Second Spirit.
And my little worm, appointed
To assume a royal part,
He shall reign, crowned and anointed,
O’er the noble human heart!
Give him counsel against losing of that Eden!
What a magnificent rhythm for scorn and irony! The final apparition of our Lord is calmly and grandly treated. Altogether, the “Drama of Exile” is a great, though somewhat sad, creation: it is like the eyrie of the eagle, built high and near the stars, but rather cold and lonely. We cannot speak as favourably of “The Seraphim,” also dramatic in its form, and, upon the whole, only an ambitious failure: it should have been excluded from the volumes before us. Its “Part the First,” is peculiarly meaningless; in which all the myriads of the angel-host having departed to gaze on the Crucifixion, two only, the interlocutors, Ador and Zerah, remain at the gate of heaven, also intending to follow their brethren, but stopping in the first instance for the bare purpose of talk-talk-talk, as dreary as it is meaningless. We are sorry to speak thus harshly, but the theme of the Crucifixion is too awful and too blessed not to have forbidden such a desecration as this, however unintentional. The whole poem labours under a painful sense of unreality, and that in treating of the greatest of all realities. There is an irreverence to our feelings in the stage-directions, so to speak, respecting the shut heavenly gate, which shocked us even at starting. The everlasting gates, which rolled aside when He, our Lord, ascended to His glory, were not “a gate:” rather were they intervening spheres, or worlds of darkness and of majesty. Does not Mrs. Browning feel that the glories of heaven are too great for her earthly grasp? that it far rather becomes her on such a subject to tremble and adore? Let her pardon our frankness; but we confess this poem (if so we must call it, where we see few poetic sparks from first to last) shocks us, and forms, in our judgment, a most unworthy sequel to her “Drama of Exile!” As critics, and as Christians, we entreat that “The Seraphim” may be removed from the next edition!
The translation of “Prometheus,” which follows, has great merit; but we do not wholly like it. It displays Mrs. Browning’s [p. 328→] usual power, especially towards the close, as in the mad song of “Io;” but Prometheus’s complaints are rather too rhetorically rendered, without sufficient dramatic earnestness. Pass we to the lyrics. First come two long strains, both noble, yet not amongst our favourites. “A Vision of Poets” reminds us of Tennyson’s “Two Voices;” but it is far less thoughtful and more indistinct. It is emphatically a vision, and possesses only visionary beauties; and yet it is neither devoid of sublimity nor tenderness of heart. We object to what seems suggested by some expressions,—that every great poet must be unhappy; that he must be earnest, we believe. The portraits of the poets, drawn with a few bold lines, are sometimes very striking. Take, for instance,—
Here, Homer, with the broad suspense
Of thunderous brows, and lips intense,
With garrulous god-innocence.
Or again,
Hesiod old,
Who, somewhat blind and deaf and cold,
Cared most for gods and bulls.
Or,
And Ossian, dimly seen or guessed:
Once counted greater than the rest,
When mountain-winds blew out his vest.
Or, once more,
And Goethe—with that reaching eye,
His soul reached out from, far and high,
And fell from inner entity.
How true of that sublimest of egotists, who became so objective at last as to be no longer a human being; who from very selfishness lost self! There is beauty and majesty in this long poem, but we cannot moralise on its bearings. Pass we to the companion “Poet’s Vow,” which we like not much. It is poetically executed indeed, but sadly unreal. The hero gives up earthly happiness and a loving bride from mere unnatural misanthropy. He will not be happy, since so many of his fellow-men are not; and so shuts himself up, and lives and dies, useless to himself and others, a blot upon the face of nature. Such a song as this is like a picture of the desert: the leagues on leagues of weary sand may lie in the broiling sun before us, as white, as sterile, and as hideous as on the desert’s self, but where was the good of painting them? If there ever were such a misanthrope, surely it would have been better to leave him “to perish in his self-contempt.” Now follows one of the wildest romances in the English, or in any tongue, but it is also most beautiful. [p. 329→] The title is the “Romaunt of Margret.” It is a weird tale of woe and spectral horror; but how wonderfully told! and the clinging faith of the heroine through her terrific trial endears the poem to our hearts. We shall not quote it, or quote from it, but refer our readers to the volume. This, however, we may say: it is like some wild forest-scene at midnight, with just one break in the dark round of trees, where the silvery moon shines through, sadly, palely, and sweetly, while a woodland-brooklet murmurs by. Had Mrs. Browning written this alone, she had earned our most earnest admiration. “Isabel’s [sic] Child” is less perfect in its execution, we think; but very beautiful in conception. A mother, by her earnest prayers, (such prayers have power!) has prevailed on God to spare her infant, assailed by deadly fever; but as she is keeping watch over the reviving babe a strange apparition chances: it looks upon her with thoughtful eyes, through which gleams a spirit in maturity, and it finds a voice and speaks, imploring no longer to be stayed from the blessed joys of heaven. At morn the nurse finds the child dead on the mother’s knee, and that mother blesses God for having taken away her darling.—Then come the Sonnets, which, generally speaking, are very fine. Let us be pardoned for suggesting that the first, “The Soul’s Expression,” is a little, a very little, too self-asserting! But we pass that by. There is great power in these sonnets; a concentration of thought and expression, of which ordinary lady-poetesses could form no conception in their dreams. Perhaps we should cite one.—
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
That only men, incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air,
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blenching vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heav’ns. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death;
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go.
We thought of naming the more singularly beautiful sonnets, but there are so many beautiful that we must refrain. We pass to the second volume. Here come all our prime favourites, which we are unable to dwell on now as we should wish. Here is “the Romaunt of the Page,” sad and sweet: may not blue- [p. 330→] bells ring out such music to fairy ears when the summer-winds pass over them? Yet, no; there is too much of gloom and sorrow here: rather may the elfs of the woods list such wild strains, sung to them by autumn breezes rustling the green leaves of the old oak-tree. Then comes the magnificent “Onora, or Lay of the Brown Rosary,” as it is entitled. We should like to tell the story of this last; but we may not. A good and gentle girl, who abandons heaven to keep her life! Her lover is returning from the wars, yet she must die, unless she make her unhallowed compact: and she makes it; and her little brother suspects the terrible truth; and at the altar her lover——but no, we will tell no more. Only let us say, never was wilder, sweeter ballad sung or said! And for the second part, where Onora is sleeping, and the angels dare not draw too nigh her, since she has forsaken God, and the evil spirit bids her yield her good dream, in which she wanders with her dead father through the summer fields—What say you to this, reader our’s?—
Evil Spirit in a Nun’s garb by the bed.
Forbear that dream! forbear that dream! too near to heaven it leaned.
Onora in sleep.
Nay, leave me this—but only this! ’tis but a dream, sweet fiend!
Evil Spirit.
It is a thought.
Onora in sleep.
A sleeping thought—most innocent of good—
It doth the Devil no harm, sweet fiend! it cannot, if it would.
I say in it no holy hymn,—I do no holy work,
I scarcely hear the Sabbath-bell that chimeth from the kirk.
Evil Spirit.
Forbear that dream—forbear that dream!
Onora in sleep.
Nay, let me dream at least!
That far-off bell, it may be took for viol at a feast—
I only walk among the fields, beneath the autumn-sun,
With my dead father, hand in hand, as I have often done.
* * * * *
Evil Spirit.
Thou shalt do something harder still.—Stand up where thou dost stand,
Among the fields of dream land, with thy father hand in hand,
And clear and slow, repeat the vow,—declare its cause and kind,
Which, not to break in sleep or wake, thou bearest on thy mind.
Onora in sleep.
I bear a vow of wicked kind, a vow for mournful cause:
vowed it deep, I vowed it strong—the spirits laughed applause: [p. 331→]
The spirits trailed, along the pines, low laughter like a breeze,
While, high atween their swinging tops, the stars appeared to freeze.
Evil Spirit.
More calm and free,—speak out to me, why such a vow was made.
Onora in sleep.
Because that God decreed my death, and I shrank back afraid.—
Have patience, O dead father mine! I did not fear to die;
I wish I were a young dead child, and had thy company!
I wish I lay beside thy feet, a buried three-year child,
And wearing only a kiss of thine, upon my lips that smiled!
We break off abruptly, where it seems sacrilege to abbreviate; every word is so beautiful. We shall not tell the issue. Then follows the “Rhyme of the Duchess May,” most exquisite and withal most powerful; “The Romance of the Swan’s Nest,” with a kind of innocent infantine beauty; “Bertha in the Lane,” very sad, but still sweeter; “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” most noble, with a mighty sweep of verse, and a corresponding grandeur of feeling; the wild passionate outcry of “the Runaway Slave;” the deeply-pathetic “Cry of the Children,” never surpassed, and not to be surpassed for lyrical freedom, and exceeding tenderness, and still more exceeding power. We quote one verse; it is the factory children who are speaking: (we trust they are saved now:)—
“True,” say the young children, “it may happen
That we die before our time.
Little Alice died last year—the grave is shapen
Like a snowball, in the rime.
We looked into the pit prepared to take her—
Was no room for any work in the close clay:
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her.
Crying, “Get up, little Alice! it is day.”
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
With your ear down, little Alice never cries!—
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For the smile has time for growing in her eyes,—
And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in
The shroud, by the kirk-chime!
“It is good when it happens,” say the children,
“That we die before our time.”
Was there ever keener pathos? And one more verse:—
For, all day the wheels are droning, turning,—
Their wind comes in our faces,—
Till our hearts turn,—our hand, with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places— [p. 332→]
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling—
Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall—
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling—
All are turning, all the day, and me with all.—
And all day, the iron wheels are droning;
And sometimes we could pray,
“O ye wheels,” (breaking out in a mad moaning,)
Stop! be silent for to-day!
We have not even space to enumerate our favourites: “The Fourfold Aspect;” “The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus;” “To Flush my Dog,” sweet and tender, and cheerful-hearted; “The Cry of the Human,” passionate and powerful; “The Sleep,” mournfully holy; “Cowper’s Grave,” sublime in its deep tender pathos; “The Lady’s Yes,” “A Woman’s Short-comings,” “A Man’s Requirement,” all three happy strains; one of a higher order, “A Year’s Spinning,” rarely surpassed or equalled for its expression of deep grief; “Catarina to Camoens,” most tender of canzonets; and “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” the veil of which it behoves not us to rend away; suffice it to say, “they are beautiful exceedingly.” And that is all: all we can at least find a space for, and enough, in our judgment, to crown a lady Queen of Song; and that is Mrs. Browning. Certainly she is not a faultless poet; she deals too much in frequent double endings, some of which are strained and forced; she is apt to play Greek freaks with her English tongue; she is sometimes too weird; rarely too sentimental. And now, that we are about to leave her, we feel as if we had said nothing about her; nothing truly to the point. But necessity commands, and so we leave the theme.
[The review concludes with further remarks on Helen Lowe, omitted here.]
[Archer Thompson Gurney]
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1850.
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