E570100F. Aurora Leigh (New York, 1857).
The Monthly Religious Magazine and Independent Journal, January 1857, p. 65.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 348.
One feels a certain incongruity between a book-notice of a dozen lines, and one of the grandest works of human art. But that phrase serves to indicate our estimate of this wonderful poem. There are only a few creations of the imaginative genius of the age belonging in the same lordly rank. It is only in the strictly human character of the theme and the incidents, in the absence of the supernatural element, in the familiarity of the fortunes through which the personages of the story are led, and perhaps in some defect of the majesty of proportions, that “Aurora Leigh” falls short of the epic dignity. How far these traits ought to remove it may be a question. As the canons of criticism stand, it falls into the class of metrical romances. But how little does that designation convey of the animated world of thought, life, fancy, philosophy, criticism, learning, passion, prophecy, which here sweeps, in robes of splendor, and with the solemn march of an imperial purpose, before the reader’s soul! Not that there are no faults. They are there,—anybody that seeks can find them. Sometimes they thrust themselves forward,—old faults and new;—a little mannerism here,—all the more provoking for spotting such splendor; a little involution and obscurity there; some breadth of language farther on; and occasionally a violation of the laws of gradation in disposing light and shade. But, we should say, that must be a very unsusceptible nature indeed which would not feel these defects to be quite lost in the matchless beauty of the parts, and the commanding power of the whole. At least, if any one, after following the thrilling legend through, line by line, pausing over the separate images of perfect grace, or pondering the solemn intimations of living mysteries too deep by far for words, and ending there on the starry heights with John of Patmos himself,—
Jasper first, I said,
And second, sapphire; third, chalcedony;
The rest in order, . . . . . last, an amethyst,”—
should contradict our judgment, there certainly would not be enough in common between us to furnish the ground of an argument. What woman, what man, of these later days, has looked farther into the abysses of suffering and faith and love and worship, or reported the awful vision with holier fidelity, than Elizabeth Barrett Browning?
Reviewed:
Aurora Leigh (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis & Co., 1857.
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