E600329A. Poems Before Congress.
The Daily News, 29 March 1860, p. 2.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 364–365.
What is there in that wonderful Italian peninsula which excites the interest and sympathy of all minds capable of passing beyond the boundary of self? How is it that Englishmen, who reside there, become as devoted to the Italian cause as the race itself—that Shelley and Byron sang in their most rapturous manner when singing of the land of Dante and Raphael—that Walter Savage Landor has devoted the service of his genius to the same country—that Leigh Hunt, when within an hour of his death, mingled thoughts of his own relatives with inquiries as to the progress of the work of liberation—that Americans, such as Margaret Fuller Ossoli, William Story, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, partake of the same fascination—and that Mrs. Barrett Browning now dedicates to the country of her adoption a handful of passionate verses, of which her enemies will probably say, that it proves her love of Italy to be greater than her love of England? We do not say this ourselves, while regretting certain expressions in the course of the volume; for we are of those who think that love of country does not necessitate indifference to the sorrows and hopes of other nations, but is rather heightened and purified by growing out of that sacred affection which includes the whole of humanity. Mrs. Browning profoundly sympathises with the movement of the Italian mind against Austria, against the Pope, and against the sectional disruptions which have wasted the strength of Italy, and made her what she is. She regards Victor Emmanuel as the man of the present and of the future; she applauds, in an ecstasy of delight and admiration, the conduct of the Emperor Napoleon in going to war on behalf of an oppressed nationality; and she upbraids England for standing aside, and carping at France for not doing the same. The result is a work of considerable power—rough, wild, savage even in parts, yet all a-glow with enthusiasm, from the first page to the last. Indeed, the quality of enthusiasm is the central characteristic of the poems before us, and at once explains their fiery beauty, and excuses their defects. These rugged verses, these strange and wilful rhymes, these abrupt transitions of emotion, this crowding of metaphors, this tangle of wild and beautiful, of fierce and tender, of rapturous and denunciatory thoughts, are born of the exaltation of a mind vibrating under the influence of a sustained excitement, and are not to be estimated by the ordinary rules of criticism. Nor, for the same reason, should Mrs. Browning’s opinions be judged with too rigid a literality. The first poem—“Napoleon III. in Italy”—was evidently written during the progress of the war, and reflects the heat and brightness of the enthusiasm naturally prevalent in Italy in the days of May and June, when the Austrian shadow was moving backward towards the frontiers before the light of the battles which France and Piedmont were fighting side by side. That excitement was not confined to the Peninsula; it was shared by many Englishmen; and though we cannot in these columns adopt Mrs. Browning’s Napoleonic fervours, we can at any rate appreciate the motives which suggest her eulogy. The poetess does not admire the successful dictator because of his power, but because, as it seems to her, he represents the new ideas of nationality, disinterestedness, and popular rule, which she thinks are destined to lead the world into a wiser and a holier future. What she would say to the annexation of Nice we know not; we accept the principles which underlie her panegyric, because—whether the application be right or wrong—they are in themselves pure, generous, and noble. So with the final poem—“A Curse for a Nation.” Mrs. Browning thinks we are to blame for not drawing the sword on behalf of Italy; so she gets an angel to dictate “a curse” to her. In other words, she scolds us rather sharply; but it is the privilege of a lady to make rebuke itself one of the forms of love.
The most finished poem in the volume is that entitled “Italy and the World.” The poetess sees, in the coalescing of the various Italian States into one nationality, a type of the coming fusion of all nationalities into a brotherly league, “distinct yet dependent”—a vision like that of the Laureate in “Locksley Hall,” when he prophesies the arrival of the day.
When the war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle-flag is furl’d
In the Parliament of men, the Federation of the world.
Addressing the leading Italian statesmen of the present day, Mrs. Browning exclaims:
Earth shall bless you, oh noble emenders
On egotist nations! Ye shall lead
The plough of the world, and sow new splendours
Into the furrow of things, for seed,—
Ever the richer for what ye have given.
Lead us and teach us, till earth and heaven
Grow larger around us, and higher above.
Our sacrament bread has a bitter leaven;
We bait our traps with the name of love,
Till hate itself has a kinder meaning.
Oh, this world: this cheating, and screening
Of cheats! this conscience for candle-wicks,
Not beacon-fires! this over-weening
Of underhand, diplomatical tricks,
Dared for the country while scorned for the counter!
* * * * * *
For certain virtues have dropped to zero,
Left by the sun on the mountain’s dewy side;
Churchman’s charities, tender as Nero,
Indian suttee, heathen suicide,
Service to rights divine, proved hollow:
And Heptarchy patriotisms must follow.
National voices, distinct yet dependent,
Ensphering each other, as swallow does swallow,
With circles still widening and ever ascendant,
In multiform life to united progression,—
These shall remain. And when, in the session
Of nations, the separate language is heard,
Each shall aspire, in sublime indiscretion,
To help with a thought or exalt with a word
Less her own than her rival’s honour.
Let us hope that this dream of poetry will prove the forerunner of the fact it contemplates, howsoever distant the day may be.
Reviewed:
Poems Before Congress (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1860.
___________________
