E570100D. Aurora Leigh.
The New Quarterly Review, January 1857, pp. 33–35.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 348–350.
We thank the authoress of “Aurora Leigh” for her Christmas gift to us—and with the less critical reserve, because a book of purpose so noble and elevated, bearing a name so known and honoured, rather commands our welcome than demands our sentence. For her who wrote the “Romaunt of Margaret” and “Lady Geraldine,” the laurel crown has long ago been woven. What, then, can the Charons of literature do, when such come to his river, but set them forthwith on their way to the Elysian fields. Not that he, who takes our poetess for guide, will wander in Elysian meadows or tread upon the asphodel. Her footsteps are on earth—often in earth’s darkest and commonest ways; her way lies through sorrows, and baffled efforts, and useless hopes. And yet, perhaps, he who reads “Aurora Leigh” as earnestly as “Aurora Leigh” was written, may in some degree pass, as did the Florentine and his leader, from the gloom of the Inferno to the pleasant daylight of upper air.
The story of “Aurora Leigh” is not original, in so far as love is not original, nor heroic struggle, nor disappointment, nor death. But it claims such merit in that the writer seems to draw her materials from a source open for such a purpose only to her—the records of her proper life. If this be so, much in the narrative which seems improbable, may be simply true. It is told, like the tale of an Æschylean drama, through the lips of some three or four speakers; but its pauses are filled with a fuller-toned chorus than the Athenian’s—an underwail of human music, with its strophe and antistrophe of suffering and hope. The incidents of the book would have thrilled in a novel—the loftiness of the philosophy would have allured in a treatise—together, they compose a poem, whose action criticism must allow to be as sustained as its scope is large and noble.
“Aurora Leigh,” the heroine, inherits, with the learning of her English father, the warm blood of an Italian mother, and with such natal antecedents, and some repression, becomes naturally a poetess. Her neighbour and cousin, Romney Leigh, is a poet also, but too practical for print; by no means one who—
Stands high upon the bank of theories,
Observes the swimmers, and cries—Very fine!
But keeps dry linen equally.
Rather a very earnest plunger into them, and one bent upon setting a wrong world right, by means of them. “Aurora” counts up, somewhat sarcastically, his ends; to
——Reform——
Make trade a Christian possibility,
And individual right no general wrong;
Wipe out earth’s furrows of the “mine” and “thine,”
And leave our green for men to play at bowls,
With innings for them all.
At which “game,” it is needless to say, that he must fail, and does accordingly fail. But “Aurora’s” enthusiasm for Art is at least as great as Romney’s for action—and between their keen intellects a fire is struck, which lights up many a dark dialectic corner. Let those who care to follow such a light (no ignis fatuus, be it said), turn to the volume, they will find what “Aurora” has to say for the followers of her art:—
The only truth-tellers now left to God:
The only speakers of essential truth
Opposed to relative, comparative,
And temporal truths—the only holders by
His sun-skirts, through constitutional grey glooms.
And how frequently she can praise her art itself:—
——O life—O poetry!
Which means life in life—cognizant of life
Beyond this blood-beat, passionate for truth
Beyond these senses—Poetry! my life,
My eagle, with both grappling feet still hot
From Zeus’ thunder, who has ravished me
Away from all the shepherds, sheep, and dogs,
And set me in th’ Olympian roar and round.
But our readers must believe that what we quote only excludes something worthier quotation. The nine books are full of brilliant [p. 34→] passages, and they must wonder for themselves at the writer’s tide of thought, running without an ebb—at her affluence of ideas, and opulence of illustration—golden treasures these, which never tempt her, like Atalanta’s apples, to swerve from the straight course to the goal of her meaning.
Yet sometimes, it must be confessed, this eagle of thought—though it be Jove’s own bird—sinks under Ganymede. His flight is high—still, absolute truth sits higher. But no tenderness can be more womanly and deep than Aurora Leigh’s—if her philosophy reaches now and then short. It can’t be denied that she is a “blue”—but, then,
She wears her blue so chiefly in her eyes,
It comforts you entirely for her fame.
And the reader will say as much, with Lady Waldemar, when the third book brings him to Marian Erle, and her piteous history. There the authoress with a woman’s right pleads against a woman’s wrong; and we acknowledge—many will with tears—the righeousness of the indignation, and the fitness of the compassion, which storms or sighs through her passionate language. Our limit will not permit us to dwell upon this episode—but we make room for a remark upon a subject that will doubtless call forth many a one. It is customary that virtuous women should preserve silence, nay, rather, profess ignorance of that great sin, whose innocent victim was the gentle Marian Erle. Through this Coan veil of conclusion, our authoress sternly strikes her hand. She declares the protest of silence not loud enough to daunt, the hand before the eyes not large enough to hide, and she bids them flash forth with a light too intense for those sons of darkness to endure. The subject is profoundly difficult and painful; but it must be a timid and selfish prudery that could condemn the example of fearless, ay, and feminine boldness which the writer has, in this respect, not shrunk, from setting.
We have touched but lightly on the plot, and we cannot much dilate upon the purpose of the volume. Both deserve a separate and careful notice. The conclusion, that
——Where we disavow
Being keeper to our brother—we’re his Cain,
is illogical; but Romney’s efforts are generous if extravagant, well intended if futile. The key-note of the book is struck in the constant protest against his modern fashion, by which
——We talk by aggregates,
And think by systems—and, being used to face
Our evils in statistics, are inclined
To cap them with unreal remedies.
Drawn out in haste on th’ other side o’ the state, these reformers say:—
——I have a pattern on my nail,
And I will carve the world new after it,
And “Aurora” is mainly right in reiterating that
——’Tis impossible
To get at men, excepting through their souls.
She exalts with great force the efficacy of Art in such work, in many a passage which presses for our mention. We must leave the reader to learn how Romney’s failure, Marian’s fate, and her lover’s suffering, teach Aurora that—
Art is much, but Love is more;
and the reader must for himself appreciate how splendidly, and with what pathos, the ninth book brings the volume to a close in a flow of unbroken beauty.
Thus far we have not stinted our praise of this remarkable production. Justice and the dignity of our craft, demand that we should find fault with the occasional extravagance of epithet and simile in which our authoress indulges. It is harsh—especially at this chilly season—to blame the general world for being
A full-veined, heaving, double-breasted age;
and she must forgive our wandering fancy for connecting with such a passage as the following—
The cruel, yellow morning pecked at her
Upon the straw inside—
the unavoidable idea of a hugeous “buff cochin-china,” breakfasting voraciously. We have said that “Aurora” is now and then indistinct, and seems not only to “fly too high,” but to fly on sometimes with a tired wing. In the story, too, there is an omission, which seems unintentional, and which the interest excited makes unpardonable—an omission of any mention of Marian Erle’s subsequent fortunes. We cannot help also saying, that Romney Leigh acts throughout in very decided defiance to the adage which tells us—
It’s best to be off with the old love,
Before you get on with the new.
We present our readers with one or two final brilliancies, taken with a hasty hand, and of which the setting is frequently costlier than the gem. The elegance of Mrs. Browning’s scholarship is conspicuous in the following:
——In the hollow by the stream,
The beech-tree leaneth down—of which you said;
The bread in it hath a naiad’s heart,
And pines for waters.
——Beware
Of tragic masks, we lie before the glass,
Uplifted on the column half a yard
Above the natural stature;—we would play
Heroic parts to ourselves, and end, perhaps,
As impotently as Athenians’ wives,
Who shrieked in fits at the Eumenides! [p. 35→]
How fine is this, too, describing the hills of the Riviera, seen by night!
The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,
One straining past another along the shore,
The way of grand old Odyssean ghosts
Athirst to drink the cool blue wine of seas
And stare on voyagers.
Speaking of a mother, she calls her,
——A better woman, after all,
With chubby children hanging on her neck
To keep her low and wise. Ah, me! the vines
That bear such fruit are proud to stoop with it,
The palm stands upright in a realm of sand!
There is “matter for midsummer thinking” in these also:
——What is Art
But life upon the larger scale, the higher
Which pushes toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
——Good love, howe’er ill-placed,
Is better for a man’s soul in the end
Than if he loved ill, what deserves love well.
——Earth’s crammed with Heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unawares
More and more, from the first similitude!
We have quoted enough, in the course of this brief notice, to show how various are the strings, how clear the tones, of our gifted authoress. If she says truly, that—
When God shall help the workers for his world
The singers shall have help of him, not last—
certainly not last—in such a roll-call, will be heard the name of her who gave us “Aurora Leigh.” In dismissing our subject, we would linger especially on the fearless loyalty to her race, and love of truth, conspicuous in her writings. Her heroes, if noble,
Are all called noble for their nobleness.
Mrs. Browning has long sat highest of her sisterhood—but she may challenge a wider competition than that of one sex or age. An irresistible comparison rises in our mind between the vague Æolian vibrations of “Maud,” and the steady organ-music of “Aurora Leigh.” Let the Laureate look to it. “Poeta.” we learned at school, is epicene; nor will the Salic law operate to his favour in the wide and unbiassed realms of poetry.
Reviewed:
Aurora Leigh (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1857.
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