E600505A. Poems Before Congress.
The Leader, 5 May 1860, pp. 425–426.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 397–399.
In the days of the War of Independence, when Germany rang to the clank of the sword and the rhythm of Körner’s melodies, when every voice was raised to swell the chorus of execration against Napoleon and Napoleon’s country, the greatest and wisest of German poets alone was silent. A cry of treachery to his Fatherland was raised against him, and elicited no answer. It was only long years afterwards, when Göethe was sinking into his grave, full of days and full of honours, that he thus explained his silence:—“I never wavered in my love to this dear German land of mine; but I loved then and love now so truly, all that is great and noble in France; I feel so deeply that French and German are all members of one family, that I could not join my voice to those who set one country against the other. It was not in my heart to write patriotic war songs, and therefore I was silent, and bore blame silently.”
Writing as we do, at a distance from books and libraries, we know not if we quote correctly the words of this speech, which are to be found in the “Conversations of Eckermann;” but the sense thereof we remember well. Somewhat after this fashion, we think, would be the justification of a true English poet, who has lately sinned in like manner against her country’s creed. In this day, when all England is arming against France, when every county and every town is full of volunteer corps and amateur militiamen, when in Parliament, in the pulpit, and in the press, one voice is raised against the greed of France and the designs of another Napoleon, when Poet Laureates write war songs to order, and even Martin Tuppers blow a blast upon their penny trumpets, when every one who utters a word in palliation of the Imperial policy is accused of want of patriotism—at such a time,
I cry aloud in my poet passion,
Viewing my England o’er alp and sea;
I loved her more in her ancient fashion—
She carries her rifles too thick for me.
So sings the authoress of “Aurora Leigh,” and the burden of her song throughout is that France is right and England wrong. The confession is a bold one, and requires a bold spirit for its utterance. The German poet was wiser than the English one. He knew, in his own words, that those who
Thöricht genug ihr volles Herz nicht wahrten
Dem Pobel ihr Gefühl, ihr Schauen offenbarten,
Hat man von je gekreuzigt und verbrannt,
and kept silence in his own heart. Out of the fulness of her heart Mrs. Browning has spoken, and must answer for her speech.
Still, before we condemn utterly the “Poems before Congress,” before we write them down in the Index Expurgatorious, and consign their writer to moral flames, let us hear what she has to say. We have few real poets enough amongst us to abjure at once communion with one who can write even as this little book is written. Stop one moment, reader of ours, volunteer though you be, and mark the wondrous beauty of this passage. There is nothing in it to offend your patriotic principles; and having read it, you will judge perhaps more kindly of the authoress:—
But Italy, my Italy,
Can it last this gleam—
Can she live and be strong,
Or is it another dream
Like the rest we have dreamed so long?
And shall it be, must it be,
That after the battle-cloud has broken
She will die off again
Like the rain,
Or like a poet’s song
Sung of her—sad at the end,
Because her name is Italy—
Die and count no friend?
Is it true, may it be spoken,
That she who has lain so still,
With a wound in her breast
And a flower in her hand,
And a gravestone under her head,
While every nation at will
Beside her has dared to stand
And flout her with pity and scorn,
Saying, “She is at rest,
She is fair, she is dead,
And leaving room in her stead
To us, who are later born:
This is certainly best.”
Saying, alas! “she is fair,
Very fair, but dead,
And so we have room for the race.”
* * * * * *
Is it true
That she has not moved in a trance,
As in Forty-eight,
When her eyes were troubled with blood
Till she knew not friend from foe,
Till her hand was caught in a strait
Of her cerement, and baffled so
From doing the deed she would—
And her weak foot stumbled across
The grave of a king,
And down she dropt at heavy loss,
And we gloomily covered her face, and said,
“We have dreamed the thing—
She is not alive, but dead.”
Such words could not be written save by one to whom Italy was something more living than a name, something dearer than a sentiment. It is so, we believe, with Mrs. Browning. Though her heart is sound English still, yet Italy has been for many years the land of her adoption. Having thus two countries, she feels, we fancy, much as a mother might who having two children, one of whom was strong, healthy, and prosperous, while the other was poor, sickly, and oppressed, though she might esteem the elder-born the most, yet in her heart of hearts could pine and yearn after the wayward and the suffering one. However unpleasing the fact may be to us, there is no use denying the simple truth, that Louis Napoleon has made Italy free. The deed, we ourselves say boldly, was a noble one; and even if we do not agree in her conclusion, we cannot wonder that one who loves Italy so well would fain believe herself, and lead others to believe, that the doer of the noble deed was himself noble also.
This conclusion is what the English public will most object to. To speak the plain, honest truth amongst ourselves we, as a nation, do not care much about Italy. If the French retired to-morrow from their self-imposed task, and the Austrians reconquered Italy, we might and should protest; but most certainly we should not go to war to hinder them. Things might have gone on for centuries as they went on for the last half-century in Italy, and we should have done nothing except recommend moderation to all parties concerned. We did nothing for Italy; we never should have done anything; and we don’t intend to do anything. Poor Cuffey and the Chartists, if they did nothing else, exploded the old imposture of “moral force,” and deserve some gratitude for their services in this respect. We don’t really believe that by our moral support we have done much good to Italy, and we should not care much if we had; and if the French like the credit they deserve it, as they had the work. This, or something like this, is our English feeling; and we don’t know that it is not a right one after all. What we cannot get over is Louis Napoleon. We have made up our minds so completely about him, we have written him down so confidently as a scamp and an adventurer, that we don’t like anybody to assert the contrary. Supposing he is not the man we take him for, we have been wrong all along. The mere hypothesis upsets all our received doctrines about constitutional rights, and middle class legislation and general respectability. Coups d’état and universal suffrage, and wars for an idea, and regard for facts in preference to laws, are all equally antipathetic to us. Given that the Emperor Napoleon is a mere vulgar tyrant, something more crafty and far more successful than most of his class, then we are at liberty to pursue our present policy, without hesitation to arm against him, to make use of him while we can, to discard him when we can get an opportunity, and to hold him up always to reprobation. If, however—mind, we only say if—this should all rest on a false conception, to speak of no other consequences, we should feel small, very small indeed. We should feel much as an old Spartan might if some one had shown him that the Helot whom he had been used to see reel drunk before him was a being of another and a higher order to himself.
For our own part, we know not what to say about Mrs. Browning’s version of the Napoleonic character. We are of our own generation, and our generation has no great faith in the existence of modern heroes or of modern prophets. When Mormonism first came before the world, we all felt an unalterable conviction that the whole thing was a humbug, not from any intrinsic inconsistencies in the revelation, but from the simple fact that the prophet was called “Joe Smith.” The thing could not be. There was an inherent impossibility in a new faith being revealed by a Mr. Joseph Smith, which at once settled the question. Just in the same way, we cannot credit a “heaven-born” ruler turning up in the present degenerate times, more especially when he first hails from the slums of Leicester-square. Still we plead guilty to a lurking qualm as to whether the wider may not be also the wiser view. Indeed, we defy any one, laying but for the time his principles and his prejudices aside, to read through Mrs. Browning’s poems and not feel something of a like qualm, something also of a suspicion that, after all, there may be a higher creed than that of non-interference, and that even the wrongs of a strange people may be worth fighting for. When we read that:—
He stood sad before the sun!
(The peoples felt their fate!)
“The world is many. I am one:
My great deed was too great:
God’s fruit of justice ripens slow:
Men’s souls are narrow; let them grow.
My brothers, we must wait!”—
we cannot but doubt whether our souls may not be narrow also.
We have spoken first of the political aspect of the book because it is the most important one, and the one most liable to censure. Mrs. Browning’s fame is too well established to require us to say much more than that the poetry is worthy of her past. For us, indeed, it has a peculiar charm. We are somewhat weary of poems about King Arthur, or other ideal personages, and feel as if poetry were a new thing to us when it sings in living passion of a living time. There is every now and then a carelessness about Mrs. Browning’s rhymes, such as making “passion” rhyme with “domination,” and we wish that a poem on America at the end of the collection were omitted in another edition, not from any intrinsic inferiority to the rest of the volume, but as marring the unity of the work. This, however, is all that, as critics, we could suggest. The book, indeed, is full of beauties. We have not space to quote more than one out of many passages, which we have chosen rather as possessing a peculiar charm for ourselves, than as better than its fellows:—
The Pope on Christmas day
Sits in St. Peter’s chair;
But the peoples murmur and say:—
“Our souls are sick and forlorn,
And who will show us where
Is the stable where Christ was born?” [p. 426→]
The star is lost in the dark;
The manger is lost in the straw;
The Christ cries faintly—hark!
Through bands that swaddle and strangle—
But the Pope in the chair of awe
Looks down the great quadrangle.
The Magi kneel at his feet,
Kings of the East and the West;
But, instead of the angels (mute
Is the “peace on earth” of their song),
The peoples, perplexed and oppressed,
Are sighing, “How long, how long!”
Cardinals left and right of him,
Worshippers round and beneath,
The silver trumpets at sight of him
Thrill with a musical blast:
But the people say through their teeth,
“Trumpets!—we wait for the Last!”
Single hand, Mrs. Browning has to fight an up-hill fight; but while she writes like this she will not be worsted.
Reviewed:
Poems Before Congress (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1860.
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