E600505B. Poems Before Congress.
The Illustrated Times, 5 May 1860, p. 281.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 27, 397.
It is not without hesitation that we notice this book at all. Criticism it is scarcely open to; at all events, neither author nor public would care for that in detail; so that it only remains to say that the “Poems before Congress” are very unpleasant reading. We cannot, for our own part, question the right of the authoress to say and to sing whatever she pleases; what is more, we cannot feel any resentment, say or sing what she may, having, as we have, a robust, honest, unreserving faith in freedom of thought and speech. We are, of course, at liberty to say we dislike this, that, or the other; but what is gained by it? The poetess replies, and may so reply with perfect nobleness and singleness of heart, “I said the thing which it was in me to say, and have no further care about the matter. I am sorry for your pain, but I had my task to do, and could not help the pain.” And this is a fair answer, and closes the case, as we apprehend it.
But if we were to attempt the criticism of “Poems before Congress” our labour would serve to illustrate the absurdity of the conventional law of literary etiquette against what is called “personality”—a law, by the way, which, like the parallel law understood at public meetings, is never fairly applied in both directions, for you may, in print or otherwise, be as “personal” as you please in praise though not in blame. These “poems” are, in fact, hysterical sobs and interjections which could never have come from a man or woman in sound bodily health. They contain oversights and inconsequences which are nothing short of childish. We are told in one place (for instance) that “all” wanted to crush the new Italian movement); and, in the very same verse, that “some” said it should be allowed to run itself out. We are not going to be guilty of the ridiculous affectation (of which an example or two has been set) of saying that, if it were not for the respectability of the publishers, we should think a trick had been played in the lady’s name; but we will say what we hope will hit the exact truth—that certain very bad qualities of Mrs. Browning’s style, hysterical in their character, have come to a “head” in these poems, and that we shall now expect to see her get the better of them. “Aurora Leigh” had precisely the same faults, though in less degree; the ugliest (though not, perhaps, the most dangerous—that quality distinguishing a trick of verbal sophistry which belongs to both the Brownings) being a certain defiant nastiness, which is not inconsistent always with purity and loftiness of soul, but which must bring its own undeniable justification with it if it is to be accepted. If it occurs too often (as it does, in this case, in the writings of both husband and wife)—if it raises a question in the reader’s mind—it is a mistake. With our dearly beloved and honoured postess it is a mere hysterical affectation:—
Maim the soul’s complete,
To fit the hole of a toad,
And filch the dogman’s meat,
To feed the offspring of God.
What does an intelligent physician think of that for a “symptom” in an English lady’s writing? Our prescription would be simple: a course of hydropathic treatment in some lovely English county, followed by a course of back-slum philanthropy in London. But we would rather draw to a close.
We have, of course, no quarrel with Mrs. Browning for her Napoleonic sympathies. Let her believe in whom she will; it is all fair, and nothing to us or to anybody. Nor should we fret if she were to “curse” England as heartily as she has done America: it amuses her, and doesn’t hurt us; and it may be, as she says, that
A curse from the depths of womanhood
Is very bitter, and salt, and good;
though tastes differ about the “good,” while agreeing wonderfully about the pepper—we beg pardon, “salt.” No—we stand up for entire liberty of prophesying, and will even go a step farther, and say that Mrs. Browning, Mr. Browning, Mr. Carlyle, and the entire army of malcontents of all classes must not be allowed to bear the whole blame of their extravagances. Let some of it—much of it—rest upon the shoulders of the blessed “masses” of imbeciles, fools, hypocrites, and thieves, that from the armchairs of modern respectability breathe out the poisonous cants which turn genius into gall, and, with the twopenny-halfpenny snobbishness of their feeble lives, “aggravate” strong, bright souls into blundering force-worship, and “curses,” that read like nightmares of desperation, put into metrical slang.
Reviewed:
Poems Before Congress (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1860.
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