E600421B. Napoleon III in Italy, and Other Poems.
The Saturday Evening Post, 21 April 1860, p. 2.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 392–393.
We think that every judicious friend of Mrs. Browning, must regret the publication of certain recent poetical productions of hers, in eulogy of Louis Napoleon. We have no very high admiration, as a general thing, of the class of female politicians—and Mrs. Browning’s judgments are calculated to confirm us even more strongly in our “anti-progressive” and “woman’s peculiar sphere” principles.—That a woman of her brilliant intellect should be dazzled by mere success, and misled by mere sounding professions, into the championship of a man beneath whose iron sway no opposing thought is tolerated, unless it is dungeoned in the silence of the thinker’s breast, and who has regularly broken behind him every liberal promise upon which he mounted to power, is a fact not peculiarly calculated to awaken in us a sense of “woman’s political mission.”
For one thing, however, we must confess our thankfulness. Mrs. Browning, with all her willingness, or perhaps more correctly, wilfulness—has not been able to bring her high genius unfalteringly to the support of falsehood and tyranny. Her poetical power—as if conscious that poetry has always been the natural ally of truth and freedom—seems to labor and falter in its efforts to throw a halo of glory around the head of the most unscrupulous ruler, and probably one of the most unscrupulous men, in Europe. Read the following, for instance:—
He holds that, consenting or dissident,
Nations must move with the time;
Assumes that crime with a precedent
Doubles the guilt of the crime;
Denies that a slaver’s bond,
Or a treaty signed by knaves
(Quorum magna pars and beyond
Was one of an honest name)
Gives an inexpugnable claim
To abolishing men into slaves.
Emperor
Evermore.
He will not swagger nor boast
Of his country’s meeds, in a tone
Missuiting a great man most
If such should speak of his own;
Nor will he act, on her side,
From motives baser, indeed,
Than a man of a noble pride
Can avow for himself at need;
Never for lucre or laurels,
Or custom, though such should be rife,
Adapting the smaller morals
To measure the larger life.
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 honor
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.
An uphill work, the above justification seems to be—as if the muse were conscious of a bad cause, and wished to be done with it. A bad cause indeed. Let us repeat the justification:—“Nations must move with the time!” We suppose that France, when liberty of speech and of the press was abolished, and the Republican President became, through force of his soldiery, the Absolute Emperor, was simply “moving with the time,” according to Mrs. Browning! A “slaver’s bond,” or “a treaty,” may not give an “inexpugnable” claim “to abolish (French)men into slaves,” but a soldier’s bayonet, if Mrs. Browning be correct, is a claim perfectly “inexpugnable.”
If Louis Napoleon, according to our poetess, does not “swagger” or “boast”—who does? Certainly he has done far more that is open to such a charge than any other ruler in Europe. And as to acting not for “lucre” or “laurels”—but “unselfishly” shivering his lance—surely Mrs. Browning must have written that when the rumor relative to the proposed annexation of Savoy and Nice was denounced as a base slander upon the magnanimity of the French Emperor.
But the greatest defects of Mrs. Browning, as of other eulogists of Louis Napoleon, seem to be simply a weakness of memory, and an inability to see more than a single object. By looking steadily at Italy alone, and forgetting all the past, they manage to surround Louis Napoleon with the attributes of a Liberator and a Hero. France, with freedom of speech and of the press under the iron heel of a despot, they cannot see. France, liable at any moment to be plunged into the most sanguinary and expensive war, without the consent of her people being even asked, is entirely out of the range of their vision. England—which, if the French Emperor had his way, would enjoy as little freedom of speech as France, and would not many months longer be a refuge for European exiles—also is hidden from their view. Italy is all they can behold—and even of Italy, Savoy and Nice are beheld with exceeding dimness, and are rapidly fading into total obscurity.
But time, in the cases of these unfortunate gentlemen and ladies, may work one of its natural miracles some day. A sudden clap of unexpected political thunder, a rapid plunge into an unexpected political cold-bath, may restore them, one of these years, to the full enjoyment of all their faculties. They may then be able to remember the early as well as the latter days of Louis Napoleon’s reign, and be competent to perceive and sympathize with prostrate Frenchmen, as well as with prostrate Italians. Whether the tidings that Switzerland was occupied by French armies, would work any such miracles as we have described, is doubtful;—but certainly the news that a private citizen whose first name was Louis, had just made his escape to England under the assumed cognomen of Jones, and was
Emperor
Nevermore,
would at once restore all such apologists to the entire command of their faculties. Then they would be able to remember a certain thinness in the old ring of this Louis-d’or, and a certain brazenness in its appearance, which “always” left a doubt in their minds whether it was not a counterfeit!
Reviewed:
Napoleon III in Italy, and Other Poems (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis & Co., 1860.
___________________
