E600407A. Poems Before Congress.
John Bull, 7 April 1860, pp. 218–219.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 379–381.
These poems, Mrs. Browning tells us in her preface, “were written under the pressure of the events they indicate.” We must make full allowance for that pressure, to the influence of which Mrs. Browning, present in Italy during this momentous crisis, has been more directly subject than we who have looked on from afar. England, like Athens of old, though somewhat indifferent to the quarrel between Sparta and Messene, has at least provided one of the combatants with a Tyrtæus. We cannot, however, quite say of Mrs. Browning mares animos in Martia bella exacuit, for the revolutionary party in Italy, whose cause she espouses, contrived in general to hang back and see the fighting done by others. But her own enthusiasm at all events has lent fire and energy to her verse, and for the sake of that burning sympathy so vividly expressed, we are bound to pardon both to woman and poet some impatience of strict justice and some blindness to historic truth.
Napoleon III. is the hero of this book, and that being so, it is not surprising that Mrs. Browning should be excessively disgusted at the part which England has taken in regard to the late Italian war. We know, of course, the comparison which she intends to suggest in such lines as the following:—
He, though the merchants persuade,
And the soldiers are eager for strife,
Finds not his country in quarrels
Only to find her in trade,—
While still he accords her such honour
As never to flinch for her sake
Where men put service upon her,
Found heavy to undertake
And scarcely like to be paid:
Believing a nation may act
Unselfishly—shiver a lance
(As the least of her sons may, in fact)
And not for a cause of finance.
Emperor
Evermore.
But Mrs. Browning, in her desire, we suppose, to reconcile her admiration of Italy’s hero-deliverer with her Sardinian partisanship in Central Italy, has in one of these poems endeavoured, it would seem, to represent Napoleon as playing a part of the blackest treachery. We can only interpret “An August Voice,” in this way. The worst suspicion that hangs about Napoleon’s name is that suggested by the question whether he was sincere in agreeing to the restoration of the Italian Princes at Villafranca. His worst enemies could do no more than accept Mrs. Browning’s interpretation of his views:—
You’ll take back your Grand Duke?
He is not pure altogether.
For instance, the oath which he took
(In the Forty-eight rough weather)
He’d “nail your flag to his mast,”
Then softly scuttled the boat you
Hoped to escape in at last,
And both by a “Proprio motu.”
You’ll call back the Grand Duke.
We should be very sorry to have so vile an opinion of Napoleon as to believe that Mrs. Browning has given anything like a true interpretation of the voce augusta to which she refers. And we should be [p. 219→] very sorry too, whichever side we might espouse, to debase such verse as Mrs. Browning can write for the purpose of giving force to the impudent calumnies which the hired tools of Cavour heaped on an unfortunate prince. Mrs. Browning knows as well as the rest of us that it was not the Grand Duke of Tuscany who broke faith in 1848;—that blame is due to the faction which clamoured most loudly for the constitution, and then made use of it to drive the rightful sovereign from his capital and throw the whole State into disorder.
We have said that Mrs. Browning is very angry with England and the English people for not intervening as France did in the affairs of Italy. There is no doubt a large class of talkers in this country who merit her wrathful denunciations. We have our own opinion, and perhaps more contemptuous than hers, of the hypocrites who twaddled about the identity of the revolutionary cause in Italy with all that was most essentially just and true, and yet would not lift a finger or spend a stiver to help that cause. Mrs. Browning says rightly “non-intervention in the affairs of neighbouring states is a high political virtue; but non-intervention does not mean passing by on the other side when your neighbour falls among thieves.” But which is the neighbour and which is the thief? Some of us thought that when the Court of Turin sent an agent to Florence in the sacred character of an ambassador, and that agent made use of his privileges to foment conspiracies against the Prince to whom he was accredited, such a course was rather that of a thief than one befitting a Gentleman King. Some thought too that when the secret societies at Parma placarded the walls with threats of assassination against all who should in any way espouse the cause of the exiled family—this also was the device of thieves, and thieves that do not stick at murder. In this diversity of opinion and sympathy no English Ministry would be likely to interfere on either side. Nor would they, notwithstanding Mrs. Browning’s indignation, have been justified in so doing.
Mrs. Browning admits that these rhymes of hers will “jar the national sentiment.” Indeed she seems panting to break down the bounds of nationality all over the world, and to be dreaming of a grand fraternal community embracing all mankind. She thinks our notions of “Heptarchy patriotisms” will soon break up, and she hopes that the recent proceedings by which the principalities of Central Italy are merging into the Piedmontese kingdom are the examples which will lead us more rapidly to this blessed consummation. In this spirit she calls on Italy—
Rise; prefigure the grand solution
Of earth’s municipal, insular schisms—
Statesmen draping self-love’s conclusion
In cheap, vernacular patriotisms,
Unable to give up Judæa for Jesus.
Bring us the higher example; release us
Into the larger coming time:
And into Christ’s broad garment piece us
Rags of virtue as poor as crime,
National selfishness, civic vaunting.
No more Jew nor Greek then—taunting
Nor taunted—no more England nor France!
But one confederate brotherhood planting
One flag only, to mark the advance,
Onward and upward, of all humanity.
* * * * *
Till Love’s one centre devour these centres
Of many self-loves; and the patriot’s trick
To better his land by egotist ventures,
Defamed from a virtue, shall make men sick,
As the scalp at the belt of some red hero.
* * * * *
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.
Each Christian nation shall take upon her
The law of the Christian man in vast:
The crown of the getter shall fall to the donor,
And last shall be first while first shall be last,
And to love best shall still be, to reign unsurpassed.
“Every man shift for all the rest, and let no man take care of himself,” says Stephano. What a rare time it will be, if we live to see it! However, we agree to a certain extent with Mrs. Browning that there is too much of this national egotism among us, that it is a growing vice among us, and that it is usurping on the bond of human brotherhood taught by Christianity. But we protest against her confounding this feeling with the true spirit of nationality. All these cants about universal fraternity were tried and found wanting half a century ago. One would suppose that Mrs. Browning had gone to sleep in the days of Marat and Danton, and had just now awoke with these specious chimeras fresh in her recollection. There never was a time when the national feeling was stronger than it is now; and we saw in 1848 how the democratic movement endeavoured to identify itself with the cry of nationalities. Without discussing the merits of Mrs. Browning’s vision of the coming time, we must say that it is flatly contradicted by the instincts of our age.
But though our poetess grasps at a phantom, there are ample evidences in the poem from which we have already quoted of her old power in wielding the English language and her wonderful gift of rhythmic melody. As witness such verses as the following, which ring like a silver trumpet:—
Modena, Parma, Bologna, Florence,
Open us out the wider way!
Dwarf in that chapel of old St. Lawrence
Your Michel Angelo’s giant Day,
With the grandeur of this day breaking o’er us!
Ye who, restrained as an ancient chorus,
Mute while the coryphæus spake,
Hush your separate voices before us,
Sink your separate lives for the sake
Of one sole Italy’s living for ever!
Givers of coat and cloak too—never
Grudging that purple of yours at the best—
By your heroic will and endeavour
Each sublimely dispossessed,
That all may inherit what each surrenders!
Only the praise here bestowed is not merely untrue but the direct contrary of the truth. The stipulations of Villafranca offered to the Italians the prospect of “one sole Italy,” which Ricasoli and his fellow-oligarchs marred for the sake of high place and power under a Piedmontese king.
The last poem in this volume contains a solemn curse which the writer is bidden by an angel to indite against the inhabitants of the United States. Jonathan, we suspect, will be inclined to grin at the harmless character of this malediction, which simply condemns him to do what he deliberately chooses to do, that is to pursue a prefectly neutral policy in the affairs of Europe:—
Ye shall watch while kings conspire
Round the people’s smouldering fire,
And, warm for your part,
Shall never dare—O shame!
To utter the thought into flame
Which burns at your heart.
This is the curse. Write.
As moreover acquiescence in these sad doings is to be the punishment which befalls the Americans for their own guilt in “bearing down with brand and thong on souls of others,” in “keeping calm footing on bond slaves,” and in “strangling martyrs”—it can hardly be supposed that that practical people will suffer much from seeing in the old world anything which approximates to their own doings. The consequence is that the curse falls rather flat.
Reviewed:
Poems Before Congress (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1860.
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