E600500A. Poems Before Congress.
Bentley’s Miscellany, May 1860, pp. 445–446.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 395.
[The following appears in a general review article on English art and literature (in the form of a letter to a friend), the greater part of which we omit.]
Of literary intemperance there has recently been a remarkable example in the “Poems before Congress” of Mrs. Browning, a lady who has established many claims to celebrity, though her last work—in any sense that is agreeable—will not add to their number. Avowing herself in all her writings one of the most ardent lovers of liberty, it is amusing to see whom she has hit upon as its latest incarnation. What do you say when I mention the name of “notre maître?” Yes: the Emperor Louis Napoleon is Mrs. Browning’s beau idéal of a hero. A proof, you will reply, that she possesses one of the attributes of a poet: the vates, which may be inspiration—when it does not happen to be frenzy. But I am sorry to observe that this is the only sign of poetry in the volume: the verse—if verse it can be called—is harsh and tuneless; its substance—to be charitable—is unintelligible rant. Independence of mind, which sometimes means a tendency to run counter to every received opinion, has always characterised Mrs. Browning, and of this quality she gave the world a striking example in “Aurora Leigh.” That bold and original versified novel had much in it to repel, had more, however, to attract, and one attraction—not its least—that which lay in the style, has tempted another writer of genius to follow in the same track—so far as his efforts have resulted in producing a novel in rhyme. In other respects there is a wide difference between the author of “Aurora Leigh” and the author of “Lucile,” and the impartial reader will give the full benefit of that difference to the younger poet, who, with equal command of language and equal powers of versification, has a far deeper knowledge of the human heart, and a truer instinct of what is best and holiest in human nature. Yet the praise which I accord to “Lucile” is not unmingled with censure, applicable, however, to the form only in which the story is written. The colloquialism of “Aurora Leigh” has been only too successfully imitated: intended to relieve the serious parts of the poem, it only produces the effect of a coarse and common-place interpolation.
[The article continues with extracts from Robert Bulwer Lytton’s Lucile (1860), which we omit.]
Reviewed:
Poems Before Congress (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1860.
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