E510815A. Prometheus Bound, and Other Poems; Including Sonnets from the Portuguese, Casa Guidi Windows, etc. (New York, 1851).
Liberator, 15 August 1851, p. 131.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 330–331.
Another and most welcome volume from the profoundest poet of the age; for such we esteem Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Mr. Francis has given in this volume all the additions made in the recent republication of Mrs. Browning’s works in England; hence this, with his lately printed New York edition of two volumes, forms a complete collection of her poems, with the exception of a rare volume, seldom found in this country, the first fruits of her genius.
The Sonnets, professedly from the Portuguese, are understood to be a transcript of her own feelings after her engagement to Browning; and some of the shorter pieces seem written by the same inspiration. They are all matchless—most touching expressions of the profoundest feeling; and he must be a vain man who attempts, after this, to write on love.
The Casa Guidi Windows tell the story of the Rising at Florence; and reformers among us will recognise, in the graphic portrait of the Pope, Pius IX., and the sketch of his position and purposes, the portrait of many a Pope nearer home most strikingly painted; while they will be startled at finding some of the most valued results of their anti-slavery experience married to immortal verse of rare energy and point. The only wonder is, that a woman, housed by illness so many years, and writing of a strange people, should be able to look, with such relentless insight, into the heart of Italian strength and weakness, and comprehend so fully the cardinal principles of all reform.
Mrs. Browning has another claim on the gratitude of abolitionists, since she is the only poet of the first rank in England, except Campbell, who has made a direct offering on the altar of American Anti-Slavery—her beautiful lines, ‘The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim Rock,’ sent to the Liberty Bell some years ago—and reprinted, we are glad to find, in this volume.
W.P. [Wendell Phillips]
Reviewed:
Prometheus Bound, and Other Poems (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis, 1851.
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