E600600B. Poems (New York, 1860); Aurora Leigh (New York, 1859); and Napoleon III in Italy, and Other Poems.
The National Quarterly Review, June 1860, pp. 173–201.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 370–378.
Those who have read the works of Mrs. Browning, and have come to the conclusion that she is not a poet, would do well for their own sakes to keep their opinions to themselves. But it may well be doubted whether any such there really are. There are several of her poems which are not of a character to attract the general reader. At a first glance they are likely rather to repel. The language is not familiar; it is sometimes harsh, the rhythm is occasionally defective, the rhyme forced. In short, the external form is not what one is apt to associate beauty with. Many throw the book aside accordingly. But diamonds have been thrown away in a similar manner by the unskilful—those who cannot see beyond the surface. A poem more than a woman should not be judged according to its dress. The drapery of one as well as the other should, indeed, be graceful; much depends on it. With the casual observer it is everything. Mrs. Browning is often in the other extreme; she seems to take a pleasure in clothing the noblest thoughts in the most fantastic language.
That this is a defect, and a serious one, cannot be denied. But there are ample beauties to atone for it—beauties which no cultivated mind can fail to recognize and admire. We are alluding now to those poems which have most blemishes; there are others that are as nearly faultless as any in our language; while in either, there is not to be found a single passage of any extent which is not imbued, more or less, with true inspiration. Even where the author is most careless and whimsical in the choice of words, she seldom fails to present [p. 174→] agreeable images to the mind, to awaken new thoughts, and make the old run in a new current, to enlist our sympathies in behalf of suffering humanity, or to teach us to be more contented with our own lot. If among the lessons thus inculcated, she sometimes makes a suggestion, or gives an opinion which few will approve, we do not the less feel that she has the welfare of her fellow-creatures at heart. We see at every page that not only would she do all in her power to bring solace to the unfortunate, but that she is sad and grieved because such is impossible. Thus, while few men think more vigorously or profoundly, she never ceases to be a true woman in generosity and tenderness. All this is sufficiently evident throughout her writings, in her first as well as in her last poems, in those of her mature age as well as of her girlhood.
Though, taking it for granted that there are few if any of our readers who are not more or less acquainted with Mrs. Browning, as a poet, we will now proceed to cull such extracts as we think will fully bear us out in our estimate of her genius and character; nor shall we be blind to her faults in doing so. It matters little which of Mrs. Browning’s poems we turn to if we want to satisfy ourselves that she is a woman of superior culture. Her most careless efforts leave no doubt of this. As a scholar, she is at least equal to the most learned of her own sex among the moderns; and it may be safely doubted whether the countrywomen of Aristotle or Plato numbered any among them possessed of a larger amount of erudition. In this respect, perhaps, the only lady among the moderns worthy of comparison with her is the celebrated Madame Dacier. But even the learned Frenchwoman, whose criticisms on the principal classic authors, including Homer, have attracted so much attention throughout Europe, could not have attempted a translation of Æschylus’s Prometheus at the early age at which the task was undertaken by Mrs. Browning. Her version is, indeed, not a good one; it is neither harmonious in itself, nor faithful to the original; but as the performance of a young lady, it is unique. It was commenced simply as a recreation. [p. 175→] Most of it had been written before the author’s tutor knew anything of it; and, highly as he estimated her powers, he was astonished when first shown the manuscript. It seems that the teacher, to whose learning and abilities as an instructor she owes most, is Mr. H.S. Boyd. With him she read not only those classics usually studied in schools and colleges, but also the Greek romancists, the disquisitions of the schoolmen, and the most erudite of the Christian fathers. That she was not insensible to the aid thus afforded her, but, on the contrary, estimated it at its full value, and held it in grateful recollection, we have sufficient proof in the elegant verses by which she acknowledges the receipt of a present of wine of Cyprus, sent her from the East by the same gentleman, and which we transcribe as our first extract:
Very copious are my praises,
Though I sip it like a fly!
Ah—but sipping—times and places
Change before me suddenly.
As Ulysses’ old libation
Drew the ghosts from every part,
So your Cyprian wine, dear Grecian,
Stirs the Hades of my heart.
And I think of those long mornings,
Which my thought goes far to seek,
When, betwixt the folio’s turnings,
Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek.
Past the pane the mountain spreading,
Swept the sheep-bells’ twinkling noise,
While a girlish voice was reading
Somewhat low—for ai’s and oi’s!
The principal of her early poems is The Drama of Exile, a title not very suggestive of the subject. The design of the authoress is to indicate the immediate effects of the transgression of our first parents. The dramatis personæ are nominally the same as those of Paradise Lost; but in their thoughts, feelings, and modes of action, they are entirely different. She loudly disclaims all intention of competing [p. 176→] with Milton. This is no affectation on her part, and it is equally true that she borrows little if anything from the great English epic. If she has a Lucifer to correspond with Milton’s Satan, a Gabriel for his Gabriel, etc., scarcely any characters are more dissimilar. Lucifer talks much, but he does little. As a plotter, he is anything but skilful. He lays his plans with great ostentation, and only in such a manner that they may be easily frustrated. He is far too careful about his looks for a warrior. The reverse of all this is true of Milton’s Satan. In short, Mrs. Browning’s Lucifer has too much of the woman in his character. He addresses Gabriel in much more gentle terms than does the Satan of Paradise Lost in similar circumstances. There is a corresponding difference between the two Gabriels. Mrs. Browning’s Gabriel is far from being as resolute as Milton’s. The former can brook disobedience much better than the latter, and is considerably less at ease in the presence of his infernal Majesty. The best thing Lucifer does is to act as sentinel. No sooner does the guardian angel descend to the gate of Eden than the arch-fiend is ready to address him, having just finished the soliloquy with which the Drama opens:
Lucifer. Hail, Gabriel, the keeper of the gate!
Now that the fruit is plucked, Prince Gabriel,
I hold that Eden is impregnable
Under thy keeping.
Gabriel. Angel of the sin
Such as thou standest—pale in the drear light
Which rounds the rebel’s work with maker’s wrath—
Thou shalt be an Idea to all souls;
A monumental melancholy gloom,
Seen down all ages; whence to mark despair
And measure out the distances from good!
Go from us straightway.
Lucifer. Wherefore?
Gabriel. Lucifer,
Thy last step in this place trod sorrow up.
Recoil before that sorrow, if not this sword.
Lucifer. Angels are in this world—wherefore not I?
Exiles are in the world—wherefore not I? [p. 177→]
The cursed are in this world—wherefore not I?
Gabriel. Depart.
Lucifer. And, where’s the logic of “depart?”
Our lady Eve had half been satisfied
To obey her Maker, if I had not learnt
To fix my postulate better. Dost thou dream
Of guarding some monopoly in heaven
Instead of earth? Why can I dream with thee
To the length of thy wings.
Gabriel. I do not dream.
This is not heaven, even in a dream, nor earth,
As earth was once—first breathed among the stars,
Articulate glory from the mouth divine,
To which the myriad spheres thrilled audibly,
Touched like a lute string—and the sons of God
Said Amen, singing it. I know that this
Is earth, not new created but new cursed—
This, Eden’s gate, not opened but built up
With a final cloud of sunset. Do I dream?
Alas, not so! this is the Eden lost
By Lucifer the serpent! this the sword
(This sword alive with justice and with fire!)
That smote upon the forehead Lucifer,
The angel! Wherefore, angel, go—depart—
Enough is sinned and suffered.
The evil one is not much concerned at all this. He attends as little to the commands, as he fears the sword of Gabriel. For either he does not move, but is rather inclined to make a jest of the whole affair. He says, somewhat banteringly,
Here’s a brave earth to sin and suffer on!
It holds fast still—it cracks not under curse;
It holds like mine immortal, &c.
Of a similar character is Mrs. Browning’s Seraphim. The latter, too, is a religious, mystic drama. There is some distant analogy between it and the Paradise Regained of Milton. The scene of the Drama of Exile is laid, as we have seen, at the gate of Eden, while that of the Seraphim is at the closed gate of Heaven. The only actors in the latter are two seraphs, Ador the Strong, and Zerah the Bright One, except [p. 178→] that during their dialogue voices are heard in the distance, sometimes from the good angels, sometimes from the bad, &c. It is no discredit to Mrs. Browning that she has failed in both these poems. Neither is artistic; both lack human interest; and in each rather much liberty is taken with the most sacred names. The angels sometimes forget that they are such, and talk rather like smart young girls leaving boarding school than seraphs. Adam is rather subtle in his logic for a shepherd or a gardener. Eve, too, is much more refined and metaphysical than the opportunities she appears to have had would lead one to expect. She is so much superior to Lucifer as a logician, and so earnest and determined in maintaining her opinions, that it is difficult to see how he could have so easily induced her to eat the forbidden fruit. But in spite of these inconsistencies, there is much to admire in each poem; quite enough to amply repay the thoughtful reader, and make amends for the defects we have alluded to. No greater injustice could be done Mrs. Browning, however, than to represent the Seraphim and the Drama of Exile as fair specimens of her efforts as a poet: they are, on the contrary, those in which she has been least successful. There are at least a dozen of other poems in the volumes before us, exclusive of Aurora Leigh, each one of which contains more genuine poetry than either of the mystic dramas. There is a deep and earnest feeling, that often rises to the sublime, even in her sonnets. It may be doubted whether any of her sex, from Sappho to Mrs. Hemans, has produced a finer specimen of the kind than the following:
patience taught by nature
“O dreary life!” we cry, “O dreary life!”
And still the generations of the birds
Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds
Serenely live while we are keeping strife
With Heaven’s true purpose in us, as a knife
Against which we may struggle. Ocean girds
Unslackened the dry land; savannah-swards
Unweary sweep; hills watch unworn; and rife
Meek leaves drop yearly from the forest trees,
To show above, the unwasted stars that pass [p. 179→]
In their old glory. O thou God of old!
Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these—
But so much patience as a blade of grass
Grows by, contented through the heat and cold.
Had our authoress never written a poem but her Cry of the Children, it would show how deeply she can feel, and with what graceful ease she can wring and soften the heart. We think we almost see the little sufferers before us, imploring protection and rest, and we are struck with the mournful truthfulness of every complaint they utter. Indignation against the oppressor, sympathy for his victims, and sorrow that the young and innocent should have to bear so heavy a load of misery, are the feelings which struggle with each other, while we read stanza after stanza, and bless the noble woman who scarcely leaves us any control over our emotions:
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man’s hoary anguish draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy—
“Your old earth,” they say, “is very dreary;
Our young feet,” they say, “are very weak,
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary—
Our grave-rest is very far to seek;
Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold,
And we young ones stand without in our bewildering
And the graves are for the old;”
“True,” say the children, “it may happen
That we die before our time;
Little Alice died last year—her grave is shapen
Like a snowball in the rime.
We looked into the pit prepared to take her—
Was no room for any work in the close clay;
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,
Crying, “Get up, little Alice! it is day.”
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
With your ear down, little Alice never cries!
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For the smile has time for growing on her eyes.
* * * * * * [p. 180→]
“For oh,” say the children, “we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap—
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping—
We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.
For, all day, we drag our burden tiring,
Through the coal-dark underground—
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.
For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning—
Their wind comes in our faces—
Till our hearts turn—our heads, with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places—
Turns the sky in the high window, blank and reeling—
Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall—
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling—
All are turning all the day, and we with all!
And all day the iron wheels are droning;
And sometimes we could pray,
“O ye wheels” (breaking out in a mad moaning),
“Stop! be silent for to-day!”
Ay! be silent! Let them hear each other breathing
For a moment, mouth to mouth—
Let them touch each other’s hands in a fresh wreathing
Of their tender human youth!
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals—
Let them prove their inward souls against the notion
That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!—
Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,
As if fate in each were stark;
And the children’s souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.
There is, if possible, a still more touching pathos in the ballad of Bertha in the Lane. In every line of this we see the anguish of a broken spirit—one, indeed, too good and pure for earth, but still human. The two sisters have loved one man. In time the younger wins him for herself, and leaves the [p. 181→] older desolate. The blow is too heavy for her to bear; yet not a murmur does she make—no word of reproach escapes her lips. Like a true heroine she submits to her fate. She is as confiding and affectionate as ever to the one that has wronged her, and while only waiting, as it were, for the grave to open for her, she does all in her power to quiet the scruples and contribute to the happiness of her successful rival. It is true that women, capable of sacrificing themselves in this way, are few, but that some such there are is not to be denied. Almost daily experience proves it. Only those who have no sensibility themselves, and who have not been placed in circumstances to know how disinterested women can be in the hour of trial, in friendship as well as in love, have any doubt of the fact.
The dream of the injured, patient mind,
That smiles at the wrongs of men ,
Is found in the bruised and wounded rind
Of the cinnamon, sweetest then.
If the story of Bertha in the Lane were not founded in nature, even Mrs. Browning could not fill us with sympathy, as she does, in reading it. She fails to do so, as we have seen, in her Drama of Exile, her Seraphim, and her Prometheus, because, with the exception of Adam and Eve, all the characters are supernatural, and even our parents are placed in circumstances which we may indeed try to imagine, but not realize. But what woman that has ever loved, and been at the same time devotedly attached to a sister, can read these simple stanzas, a mere fragment as they are, without a moistened cheek? nor need any man be ashamed to pay the same tribute to truth and genius:
But the sound grew into word
As the speakers drew more near—
Sweet, forgive me that I heard
What you wished me not to hear.
Do not weep so—do not shake—
O, I heard thee, Bertha, make
Good, true answers for my sake. [p. 182→]
Yes, and He, too! let him stand
In thy thoughts untouched by blame.
Could he help it if my hand
He had claimed with hasty claim?
That was wrong, perhaps—but then
Such things be—and will again!
Women cannot judge for men.
* * * * * *
Could we blame him with grave words,
Thou, and I, dear, if we might?
Thy brown eyes have looks like birds,
Flying straightway to the light:
Mine are older—hush—look out—
Up the street! Is none without?
How the poplar swings about!
* * * * * *
Do not weep so, dear, heart-warm!
It was best as it befell!
If I say he did me harm,
I speak wild—I am not well.
All his words were kind and good—
He esteemed me! Only blood
Runs so faint in womanhood.
Then I always was too grave—
Like the saddest ballad sung—
With that look, besides, we have
In our faces who die young.
I had died, dear, all the same—
Life’s long, joyous, jostling game,
Is too loud for my meek shame.
We are so unlike each other,
Thou and I; that none could guess
We were children of one mother,
But for mutual tenderness.
Thou art rose-lined from the cold,
And meant, verily, to hold
Life’s pure pleasures manifold.
I am pale, as crocus grows
Close beside a rose-tree’s root!
Whosoe’er would reach the rose,
Treads the crocus under-foot— [p. 183→]
I, like May-bloom on thorn-tree—
Thou, like merry summer-bee!
Fit that I be plucked for thee.
Colder grow my hands and feet—
When I wear the shroud I made,
The folds lie straight and neat,
And the rosemary be spread—
That if any friend should come,
(To see thee, sweet!) all the room
May be lifted out of gloom.
And, dear Bertha, let me keep
On my hand this little ring,
Which at night, when others sleep,
I can still see glittering.
Let me wear it out of sight,
In the grave—where it will light
All the dark up, day and night.
On that grave drop not a tear!
Else, though fathom-deep the place,
Through, the woollen shroud I wear
I shall feel it on my face.
Rather smile there, blessed one,
Thinking of me in the sun—
Or forget me—smiling on!
Art thou near me? nearer—so!
Kiss me close upon the eyes—
That the earthly light may go
Sweetly as it used to rise—
When I watched the morning gray
Strike, betwixt the hills, the way
He was sure to come that day.
So, no more vain words be said!
The hosannas nearer roll—
Mother, smile now on thy dead—
I am death-strong in my soul!
Mystic Dove, alit on cross,
Guide the poor bird of the snows
Through the snow-wind above loss! [p. 184→]
Jesus, victim, corresponding
Love’s divine self-abnegation—
Cleanse my love in its self-spending,
And absorb the poor libation!
Wind my thread of life up higher,
Up through angels’ hands of fire!
I aspire while I expire!
The grief of the gentle one who thus pours out her soul, is scarcely less overwhelming than that of Dido; nor is it less affecting. In spite of the different circumstances in which the two heroines are placed there is considerable similarity in their emotions. The points in which they differ are those in which the moral sentiments are influenced by religion. Dido is not the less a woman because a goddess. Everything she does and says, from the moment she learns that Æneas is about to leave her until she determines on destroying herself, is perfectly natural. She, too, finds relief in confiding the story of her love to her sister; but she wants patience and resignation—those virtues which serve so much to deepen our sympathy for the Christian heroine. It is no disparagement of Mrs. Browning’s poem that many of its tenderest allusions are similar to those of Dido and her sister Anna, in the fourth book of the Æneid. Dido delicately alludes to the modesty of her sex;* so does the heroine of Mrs. Browning. The Pagan woman is full of affection of her sister;** so is the Christian [p. 185→] woman. The Roman poet alludes to the characteristic timidity of the gentler sex;*** so does the English poetess. The Pagan woman makes use of the endearing words, cara dulcis dilecta, &c., in connection with sister;**** the Christian woman does exactly the same. We do not mean by this that Mrs. Browning has borrowed from Virgil; nothing of the kind. We know of no more original ballad in the English language. We merely note, in passing, that it is not in vain she has studied the classics, and we meet with evidence of the same fact in almost every poem she has written. Sometimes, indeed, her English style is marred, rather than improved, by her classic lore; but one good, forcible idea, that strikes the imagination and makes an impression on the memory, as something too valuable to be lost, makes amends for almost any number of harsh or inappropriate words, and such ideas are more abundant in the poems of Mrs. Browning than in those of any other modern poetess.
________
*Sed mihi vel tellus optem prius ima dehiscat;
Vel pater omnipotens adigat me fulmine ad umbras,
Pallentes umbras Erebi noctemque profundam
Antè pudor, quàm te viola, aut tua jura resolvo.
Virgil.
Life’s long, joyous, jostling game,
Is too loud for my meek shame, &c.
Mrs. Browning.
**Anna refert: O luce magis dilecta sorori, &c.,
* * * * * *
Anna soror quæ me suspensam insemnia terrent?
Virgil.
And, dear Bertha, let me keep
On my hand this little ring, &c.
Mrs. Browning.
***Eia rumpe moras: varium et mutabile semper
Fæmina.
Virgil.
Only blood
Runs so faint in womanhood.
Mrs. Browning.
****Testor cara Deos et te germana tuumque,
Dulce caput magicas invitam accingier artes,
Tu secreta hyram tecto interiore sub auras,
Erige, &c.
Virgil.
Sister, help me to the bed,
And stand near me, dearest-sweet,
Do not shrink nor be afraid, &c.
Mrs. Browning.
________
Poems of a different kind from Bertha in the Lane, are The Lost Bower, and the Lay of the last Swan. Neither lays so strong a hold on our sympathies. The aim of each is to awaken our sensibilities by means of simple incidents. Both remind us vividly of those little regrets which most of us feel more or less when we find the enthusiastic illusions of [p. 186→] youth have left us forever. The Romance of the Swan’s Nest is another of those graceful effusions which can emanate only from a woman. There is a charming simplicity in the story of little Ellie, which shows how fully the kind-hearted poetess can sympathize with children in their enjoyments as well as their sorrows. Those who have not read the whole will be able to form some estimate of its unpretending worth from the opening stanzas:
Little Ellie sits alone,
’Mid the beaches of a meadow,
By a stream-side, on the grass;
And the trees are showering down
Doubles of their leaves in shadow,
On her shining hair and face.
She has thrown her bonnet by,
And her feet she has been dipping
In the shallow water’s flow—
Now she holds them nakedly
In her hands, all sleek and dripping,
While she rocketh to and fro.
Little Ellie sits alone—
And the smile she softly useth
Fills the silence like a speech;
While she thinks what shall be done—
And her sweetest pleasure chooseth
For her future within reach!
Little Ellie in her smile
Chooseth—“I will have a lover,
Riding on a steed of steeds!
He shall love me without guile,
And to him I will discover
That swan’s nest among the reeds.”
But the chef d’æuvre of Mrs. Browning is Aurora Leigh. This is truly a great performance. It contains more original and striking thoughts, more beautiful descriptions—in a word, more true poetry than all her other poems put together. In this work she relies wholly on her own resources, and sets at defiance all conventionalities, save alone those that happen to [p. 187→] fall in with her own opinions. The story of Aurora Leigh is a sort of poetical novel, somewhat in the form of an autobiography. This affords ample scope for the exercise of the author’s various powers, and she avails herself of it to the fullest extent. Not a topic of the least interest in a social, moral, or political point of view, does she fail to notice or allude to in one form or other. Thus, here we have a fine description of local scenery; there an admirable portraiture of character; now we are enabled to enjoy a lively and trenchant satire, and anon a generous tribute of praise; so that at almost every page we are sure to have something new—something that rivets our attention, and, in spite of a great many uncouth turns of expression, far-fetched metaphors, jarring words, and obscure allusions, leads us along, willing captives, from book to book, until we come to the close. But with all its multifarious beauties no one who reads it can wonder that it is not one tenth as popular in England as many works in poetry and prose of less than one tenth its merits. Mrs. Browning is too frank and outspoken, too fond of truth, too great an enemy of what is false and hollow—in short, too honest, to please the multitude, who, to be won, must be flattered, even when they most deserve to be censured. Nor is she more indulgent to the faults of the favored few than she is to those of the masses. At the former she hurls her scorn just as freely as at the latter, when they deserve it as much. Of the structure of the story, if such it may be called, it is now needless to speak, and it is equally needless to speak of the author’s design. Each is sufficiently known. Let it be our task, therefore, merely to cull such extracts as seem to us best calculated to do justice to the author as a poet, a philanthropist, a true reformer, aye, and a true woman—for few authors, male or female, have been more harshly treated by the critics, for the reason already intimated. As she justly and forcibly says herself, in Aurora Leigh:
If the day’s work’s scant
Why call it scant? Affect no compromise;
And in that we have nobly striven,
At least deal with us nobly, women though we be,
And honor us with truth, if not with praise.—p. 159. [p. 188→]
In a different mood, she says elsewhere, in the same poem:
By the way,
The works of women are symbolical;
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you’re weary—or a stool
To tumble over and vex you—“curse that stool”—
Or else at best a cushion where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake.—p. 15.
In this, as in former extracts, we have taken the liberty of italicising lines which strike us as particularly tender, forcible, or beautiful, although we have on some occasions put words and phrases in italics as instances of peculiarities of style, or what may be called Browningisms, deeming it needless to explain that such was our object.
Our poetess alludes to the severity of her own studies, as follows:
What my father taught before
From many a volume, Love re-emphasized
Upon the self-same pages: Theophrast
Grew tender with the memory of his eyes,
And Ælian made mine wet. The trick of Greek
And Latin he had taught me, as he would
Have taught me wrestling or the game of fives,
If such he had known—most like a shipwrecked man,
Who heaps his single platter with goat’s cheese
And scarlet berries.—p. 23.
That her poems in general are not without faults—that they contain mistaken ideas as well as blemishes of style, the author herself is fully aware.
For me, I wrote
False poems, like the rest, and thought them true,
Because myself was true in writing them.
I peradventure have writ true ones since
With less complacence.—p. 33.
* * * *
Came a sigh
Deep, hoarse with resolution—I would work
To better ends, or play in earnest. Heavens,
I think I should be almost popular [p. 189→]
If this went on! I ripped my verses,
And found no blood upon the rapier’s point:
The heart in them was just an embryo’s heart,
Which never yet had beat, that it should die.—p. 85.
Her description of the sights that meet the eye in certain streets of London, is anything but flattering to the state of society in the great metropolis. A more dismal picture has seldom been drawn, and it is in the main as true as it is dismal:
Faces! phew!
We’ll call them vices festering to despair,
Or sorrows petrifying to vices;
Not a finger-touch of God left whole in them;
All ruined—lost—the countenance worn out
As the garments, the will dissolute as the acts,
The passions loose and draggling in the dirt,
To trip the foot up at the first free steep!
Those faces! ’Twas as if you had stirred up hell
To heave its lowest dreg-fiends uppermost
In fiery swills of slime.—pp. 135, 136.
As long as Mrs. Browning persists in telling truths of this kind, without any regard to the national vanity and self-love which she wounds by it, she will never be popular, especially while she draws other cities in very different colors, as, for instance, Florence:
No sun could die, nor yet be born unseen
By dwellers at my villa: morn and eve
Were magnified before us, in the pure
Illimitable space and pause of sky,
Intense as angels’ garments blanched with God,
Less blue than radiant. From the outer wall
Of the garden dropped the mystic floating gray
Of olive trees (with interruptions green
From maize and vine), until ’twas caught and torn
On that abrupt black line of cypresses
Which signed the way to Florence. Beautiful
The city lay along the ample vale.
Cathedral, tower and palace, piazza and street,
The river trailing like a silver cord
Through all, &c.—pp. 255, 256.
But Mrs. Browning has done what is much more annoying [p. 190→] than to contrast Florence with London. It is so much the fashion to praise Italy that no other country need be jealous of it. With France, however, it is otherwise. But the author of Aurora Leigh cares not for this. She speaks of all countries as she finds them. She can see vices at home as well as abroad, and virtues abroad as well as at home; and she gives her impressions of each accordingly. Her last poem on France is not the only instance we have in her writings of this enlightened and liberal spirit. We have thoughts and suggestions in Aurora Leigh on the same subject, which are quite as unpalatable to England as anything to be found in Napoleon III. in Italy. There is not a happier hit in all Goldsmith’s writings than that in which he makes one of his characters say, “I hate the French because they are slaves and wear wooden shoes.” But Mrs. Browning indicates the national prejudice in much plainer language, instituting a comparison that is anything but encouraging to it. The sixth book of Aurora Leigh opens thus:
The English have a scornful insular way
Of calling the French light. The levity
Is in the judgment only, which yet stands;
For say a foolish thing but oft enough.
(And here’s the secret of a hundred creeds—
Men get opinions as boys learn to spell,
By reiteration chiefly), the same thing
Shall pass at last for absolutely wise,
And not with fools exclusively. And so
We say the French are light, as if we said
The cat mews, or the milch-cow gives us milk;
Say rather cats are milked, and milch-cows mew,
For what is lightness but inconsequence,
Vague fluctuation ’twixt effect and cause,
Compelled by neither? Is a bullet light
That dashes from the gun mouth, while the eye
Winks, and the heart beats one, to flatten itself
To a wafer on the white speck on a wall
A hundred paces off? Even so direct,
So sternly undivertible of aim
Is this French people.
* * * *[p. 191→]
Set your orators
To blow upon them with loud windy mouths
Through watchword phrases, jest or sentiment,
Which drive our burly, brutal English mobs
Like so much chaff whichever way they blow—
This light French people will not thus be driven.
* * * * *
And so I am strong to love this noble France,
This poet of the nations, who dreams on
And wails on (while the household goes to wreck)
Forever after some ideal good—
Some equal poise of sex, some unvowed love
Inviolate, some spontaneous brotherhood,
Some wealth, that leaves none poor and finds none tired,
Some freedom of the many, that respects
The wisdom of the few. Heroic dreams!
Sublime to dream so.—(pp. 198, et seq.)
Nor is the tribute she has lately paid Louis Napoleon the result of any change in the modern Cassandra’s mind, or woman’s whim. Thus, in the same page from which we have just quoted, she says:
However she have sighed
Her great soul up into a great man’s face,
To flush his temples out so gloriously
That few dare carp at Cæsar for being bold! [sic, for bald]
What then? This Cæsar represents, not reigns,
And is not despot, though twice absolute;
This head has all the people for a heart, &c.
If the poetess has since drawn a more elaborate picture—one still more complimentary to the French and their Emperor—has there not been ample reason for it? Her love of Italy alone would fully account for it. But before we turn to her new poems we will quote yet another passage or two which would be sufficient to explain by themselves why it is that Mrs. Browning is not appreciated by her countrymen in a manner commensurate with her genius. An English marriage is thus described:
Half St. Giles in frieze
Was bidden to meet St. James in cloth of gold;
And, after contract at the altar, pass [p. 192→]
To eat a marriage-feast on Hampstead Heath.
Of course the people came in uncompelled—
Lame, blind, and worse—sick, sorrowful, and worse,
The humors of the peccant social wound,
All pressed out, poured out upon Pimlico,
Exasperating the unaccustomed air
With hideous interfusion: you’d suppose
A finished generation, dead of plague,
Swept outward from their graves into the sun,
The moil of death upon them.
* * * *
They clogged the streets, they oozed into the church
In a dark slow stream, like blood. To see that sight.
The noble ladies stood up in their pews,
Some pale for fear, a few as red for hate;
Some simply curious, some just insolent,
And some in wondering scorn—“What next? what next:”—pp. 134, 135.
Behold a scene from life in “free, happy England,” on whose dominions we are told the sun never sets! But truth-telling and boasting are very different things. The former is for the poet, the latter for the politician. Mrs. Browning speaks out accordingly:
We boast, and do not: we put up
Hostelry signs where’er we lodge a day—
Some red colossal cow, with mighty paps,
A Cyclops’ fingers could not strain to milk,
Then bring out presently our saucer full
Of curds.—p. 307.
The last “colossal cow” is the Great Eastern, and one that has yet hardly yielded even a “saucer-full of curds.” But the numbers on our sheets admonish us that we must take leave for the present of Aurora Leigh—not however without a parting word.—What a variety of emotions does the poem excite! Almost every chord of the heart is touched in turn in its perusal, although the predominant feeling is one of sorrow, such as few tragedies are capable of awakening. There is a terrible lesson for the innocent and unwary in the story of Marian Erle. Her own account of her wanderings is too frightful for tears. We can only make room for the concluding lines: [p. 193→]
And there I sate one evening by the road,
I, Marian Erle, myself alone undone,
Facing a sunset low upon the flats,
As if it were a finish to all time—
The great red stone upon my sepulchre,
Which angels were too weak to roll away.
Knowing from experience what she had to expect for paying a new tribute to French heroism, generosity, and gallantry, she addresses her countrymen in her preface thus sensibly and nobly: “Yet if the verses should appear to English readers too pungently rendered to admit of a patriotic respect to the English sense of things, I will not excuse myself on such grounds, nor on the ground of my attachment to the Italian people, and my admiration of their heroic constancy and union. What I have written has simply been written because I love truth and justice quand meme ‘more than Plato’ and Plato’s country, more than Dante and Dante’s country, more even than Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s country. And if patriotism means the flattery of one’s nation in everything, then the patriot, take it as you please, is merely a courtier, which I am not, though I have written ‘Napoleon III. in Italy.’” If she had excused herself she would hardly have been censured anything the less. Not that she has said an unfair or unjust word in the poem in question. The worst that can be said of her in this respect is that she is perhaps rather enthusiastic in her praise of Louis Napoleon; but let us bear in mind that although her estimate of his character as a ruler, a statesman, and a philanthropist, is very high, it is by no means peculiar. Some of the greatest thinkers of our age, including Englishmen, entertain pretty much the same opinion of Napoleon III. It is not the less true, however, that he has failed to impart much inspiration to the poet, highly as she admires him. There are at least a dozen of her former poems that possess much higher merit than Napoleon III. in Italy. We search in vain in it for those fine touches of nature with which she so often surprises and captivates us in the majority of her other poems. Not but there are beauties and noble thoughts in this, too. Without such Mrs. Browning could not have [p. 194→] written nineteen long stanzas; though in a metre which is by no means suitable to the subject. At all events the chief attraction of Napoleon III. in Italy, that which will cause it to be most read, is that it embodies the frank and honest opinions of a woman of undoubted genius—undoubtedly the best of living female poets. It is no slight honor to be the hero of such a woman. What would not Napoleon I. have given for equal admiration from Madame de Stael, and a much greater than De Stael is here. But we must let the fair and gifted Islander speak for herself. The following explains itself, and it is elevated in its tone, and forcible withal:
The thinkers stood aside
To let the nation act.
Some hated the new-constituted fact
Of Empire, as pride treading on their pride;
Some quailed lest what was poisonous in the past
Should graft itself in that Druidic bough,
On his green now;
Some cursed, because at last
The open heavens, to which they had looked in vain
For many a golden fall of marvellous rain,
Were closed in brass; and some
Wept on because a gone thing could not come.
Every one remembers how distasteful the event was to England. The poetess had too much of the prophetic spirit to take part in the national abuse of the new Emperor:
That day I did not hate,
Nor doubt nor quail nor curse.
I, reverencing the people, did not bate
My reverence of their deed and oracle,
Nor vainly prate
Of better and of worse
Against the great conclusion of their will.—pp. 10, 11.
Napoleon might easily do worse than take advice from Mrs. Browning. She offers it thus plainly:
An English poet warns thee to maintain
God’s word, not England’s: let His truth be true [p. 195→]
And all men liars! With His truth respond
To all men’s lies. Exalt the sword and smite,
On that long anvil of the Appenine
Where Austria forged the Italian chain in view
Of seven consenting nations, sparks of fine
Admonitory light,
Till men’s eyes wink before convictions new.
The spirit evinced by Italy is finely described in the eighth stanza:
Each broken stone that long ago
She flung behind her as she went,
In discouragement and bewilderment
Through the cairns of Time, and missed her way,
Between to-day and yesterday,
Up springs a living man,
And each man stands with his face in the light
Of his own broad sword,
Ready to do what a hero can.—(p. 17.)
Mrs. Browning finds much more inspiration in General McMahon than in Napoleon III.:
Take up the child, McMahon, though
Thy hand be red
From Magenta’s dead,
And riding on in front of the troop,
In the dust of the whirlwind of war,
Through the gates of the city of Milan, stoop
And take up the child to the saddle-bow,
Nor fear the touch as soft as a flower
Of his smile as soft as a star!
Thou hast a right to the child, we say,
Since the women are weeping for joy as those
Who, by thy help and from this day,
Shall be happy mothers indeed.
They are raining flowers from terrace and roof,
Take up the flower in the child.
The Tale of Villafranca in the same slender volume, is a great deal more lively and graceful, and at the same time more poetical than Napoleon III. in Italy. The fears excited [p. 196→] among the great Powers, especially in England, are hit off with a master’s hand:
These sovereigns, statesmen, north and south,
Rose up in wrath and fear,
And cried, protesting by one mouth,
“What monster have we here?”
A great Deed at this hour of day?
A great just deed, and not for pay?
Absurd—or insincere.
And if sincere the heavier blow
In that case we shall bear,
For where’s our blessed “status quo,”
Our holy treaties where—
Our race to sell a race or buy,
Protect and pillage, occupy
And civilize despair?
* * * *
A great Deed in this world of ours,
Unheard of the pretence is;
It threatens plainly the great Powers;
Is fatal in all senses.
A just deed in the world?—call out
The rifles! be not slack about
The national defences.
Much has been said of a poem in the new volume, entitled A Curse for a Nation. It is not very clear whether it is intended for the poet’s own country or for ours. Nor is it of much importance which, although it has caused some indignation on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed there are few, if any, of Mrs. Browning’s denunciations in which there is so little bitterness. It is evident that her indignation was not at its full height when she wrote it. Assuming that the curse is meant for the United States it can do us no great harm. The stanzas meant to be most severe are the two following:
When wise men give you their praise,
They shall pause in the heat of the phrase
As if carried too far.
When ye boast your own charters kept true, [p. 197→]
Ye shall blush; for the thing which ye do
Derides what ye are. Write.
When fools cast taunts at your gate
Your scorn ye shall somewhat abate
As ye look over the wall,
For your conscience, tradition and name,
Explode with a deadlier blame
Than the worst of them all.
This is the curse. Write.
Did the “Curse” really show hate, or any such feeling, which it does not, the “Prologue” would make amends for it. In the latter, the hardest knocks fall upon England. If the Curse is finally “sent,” in compliance with the command of the angel, it is not because the poet thinks anything of the kind is more deserved abroad than at home.
I heard an angel speak last night,
And he said, “Write—
Write a nation’s curse for me,
And send it over the western sea.”
I faltered, taking up the word;
“Not so, my lord!
If curses must be, choose another,
To send thy curse against my brother.
For I am bound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
By brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to me.”
* * * *
“For an oligarchic Parliament,
And bribes well meant,
What curse to another land assign,
When heavy-souled for the sins of mine.”
“Wherefore,” the voice said, “shalt thou write
My curse to-night;
Because thou hast strength to see and hate
A foul thing done within thy gate.”
“Not so,” I answered once again,
“To curse choose men; [p. 198→]
For I a woman have only known
How the heart melts and the tears run down.”
“Therefore,” the voice said, “Shalt thou write
My curse to-night;
Some women weep and curse, I say,
(And no one marvels) night and day.”
Surely there is nothing in this that we have any reason to be offended at. On the contrary, the whole Prologue is rather pleasing, no bad specimen of the ballad style of poetry. Few like to be cursed in jest or earnest; and Mrs. Browning is rather fond of cursing. She makes most of her characters curse in one form or other, beginning with Lucifer. We might expect such things from the latter, but others ought to be allowed to settle their affairs by gentler means. Indeed, this fondness for imprecations is one of the worst of our poet’s faults. One of her tenderest effusions—The Cry of the Children—is marred by the same habit. A part of the closing stanza will serve as an example:
How long they say, how long, O cruel nation,
Will you stand to move the world on a child’s heart—
Stifled down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart;
Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,
And your purple shows your path;
But the child in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath!
She is equally prone to introduce the name of the Deity, though in her recent poems she has not erred in this way as much as in her former efforts. It is pleasant to observe that her style in general has considerably improved. She is seldom now guilty of such bad taste, for example, as making “treading” rhyme with “Eden,” “calmly” with “palm tree,” “wooded” with “God-head” &c. In her earlier poems she was rather fond of forcing monosyllables to do the work of dissyllables. This defect, too, she had got over, at least to a considerable extent. In a similar manner she has avoided using [p. 199→] too many adjectives and participles substantively. Here and there we still meet with instances of this kind; but not more than are to be found in Paradise Lost, or the Night Thoughts. Mrs. Browning has too much good sense to correct herself, even at the eleventh hour. Most of her peculiar forms of expression have been borrowed from the Greek and Latin—chiefly from the former, which is her favorite language. The Greeks made more use of the participle than any other people. Not only did they use it where we use the infinitive mood of the verb, and many other forms, but also where we use the conjunctions, because, and, since, although, &c. They had similar habit of using the adjective without its substantive; and Mrs. Browning thought she might do something similar in English. Hence it is that we find such expressions in her poems as “falling from our created,” “chanting down the golden,” “the full sense of your mortal,” &c. But she has learned by this time that what is both graceful and harmonious as well as lucid, in Greek, may be stiff and obscure in English, and she acts accordingly. Some of her rhymes are still bad. Thus, in the poem entitled Italy and the World, in her last book, she makes the article “a” rhyme with “Modena,” “food” with “good,” “amber” with “remember,” &c. But could all the defects in her various poems be put into the balances against her beauties, they would weigh little more than the chaff placed against the wheat. That she can please the eye and charm the ear, when she wishes to do so, as well as soften the heart and fill it with sympathy, no stronger proof need be adduced than the following stanzas, with which we close our extracts, and take our leave of one of the greatest enchantresses of the age:
COWPER’S GRAVE.
It is a place where poets crowned
May feel the heart’s decaying—
It is a place where happy saints
May weep amid their praying— [p. 200→]
Yet let the grief and humbleness
As low as silence languish;
Earth surely now may give her calm
To whom she gave her anguish.
O poets! from a maniac’s tongue
Was poured the deathless singing!
O Christians! at your cross of hope
A hopeless hand was clinging!
O men! this man in brotherhood,
Your weary paths beguiling,
Groaned inly while he taught you peace,
And died while ye were smiling.
And now, what time ye all may read
Through dimming tears his story—
How discord on the music fell,
And darkness on the glory;
And how, when, one by one, sweet sounds
And wand’ring lights departed,
He wore no less a loving face,
Because so broken-hearted.
He shall be strong to sanctify
The poet’s high vocation,
And bow the meekest Christian down
In meeker adoration;
Nor ever shall he be in praise
By wise or good forsaken;
Named softly as the household name
Of one whom God hath taken!
With sadness that is calm, not gloom,
I learn to think upon him;
With meekness that is gratefulness,
On God, whose heaven hath won him.
Who suffered once the madness-cloud
Toward his love to blind him;
But gently led the blind along,
Where breath and bird could find him;
And wrought within his shattered brain
Such quick poetic senses
As hills have language for, and stars
Harmonious influences! [p. 201→]
The pulse of dew upon the grass
His own did calmly number;
And silent shadow from the trees
Fell o’er him like a slumber.
The very world, by God’s constraint,
From falsehood’s chill removing,
Its women and its men became
Beside him true and loving!
And timid hares were drawn from woods
To share his home-caresses,
Uplooking in his human eyes,
With sylvan tendernesses.
But while in darkness he remained,
Unconscious of the guiding,
And things provided came without
The sweet sense of providing;
He testified this solemn truth,
Though frenzy desolated—
Nor man nor nature satisfy
Whom only God created.
[M.G. Lloyd]
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis, 1860.
Aurora Leigh (EBB), 4th ed., London: Chapman & Hall, 1859.
Napoleon III in Italy, and Other Poems (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis & Co., 1860.
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