E620100A. Poems (New York, 1862).
The Christian Examiner, January 1862, pp. 65–88.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 367.
Carlyle says of the death of Goethe: “In the obituary of these days stands an article of quite peculiar import,—the time, the place, the particulars of which will have to be often repeated, and rewritten, and continued in remembrance many centuries,—this, namely, that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died at Weimar on the 22d of March, 1832.” The year 1861 [p. 66→] furnishes to many a record as memorable and imperishable. Elizabeth Barrett Browning died at Florence, Italy, on the morning of the 19th [sic, for 29th] of June, half an hour after daybreak. The sad significance of this fact can be fully comprehended only by her contemporaries. Posterity will merely rejoice that such a poet lived and sung. It is for her own age to mourn her departure with a peculiar and personal grief, quite different from the regret usually felt at the death of a favorite author. She has so directly spoken to the hearts of her readers, and won so entirely their sympathy and affection, that to admire and appreciate the poet is with them to love and venerate the woman. Her own heart and life are in her poems, shaping them into wonderful harmony and completeness. Hence in part their fascination; hence, too, the fact that the woman is dearer than the poet, though personally unknown to thousands reverently cherishing her memory. It is not our purpose, however, to dwell upon the loss the world has sustained in her death. We would rather consider what the world has gained by her life,—what it owes to her, not only as a poet, but also as a teacher and exemplar. The fitting time has come to do this, and as far as practicable by her own standard. She writes:—
Measure not the work
Until the day’s out and the labor done.
Then bring your gauges. 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.
The calm dignity of this appeal is statuesque. It is impersonal in its quiet might and majesty, and instinct with a consciousness of power, marred by no light vanity or glorification of self. It does more than command admiration. It rebukes alike the blind partisan and the narrow hypercritical spirit. The one would be as unworthy and unjust as the other.
In order to get a true conception of “the labor done,” it is essential, not only to examine the merits of Mrs. Browning’s poems, but likewise to note the revelation in them of her own life and character. The agreeable task which we propose to ourselves, therefore, is not so much to review critically her [p. 67→] various productions, as to delineate the noble qualities they embody and express.
Mrs. Browning united loftiness of thought to intensity of emotion. As prodigal of ideas as an Eastern poet of images, the ideas are warmed into throbbing life by the inspiration of attendant feeling. Hence she excites in the reader an intellectual and moral vitality responsive to her own,—a twofold effect, that indicates the harmonious sources of her strength, and gives to her writings the vivid power that wins an active sympathy. An author thus endowed could hardly be wanting in vigor of description; and consequently this is among her prominent excellences. She sketches scenes with outlines so strongly drawn, and colors them with tints so richly glowing, that they stand out from the framework like the painting of a great master from the canvas. “The Rhyme of the Duchess May” is an instance of this executive force. A series of pictures pass before the mind’s eye in rapid succession, each making a distinct and vivid impression. As illustrations of both the beauty and completeness of the images thus presented, we recall and emphasize a few of the finest passages:—
Calm she stood; unbodkined through, fell her dark hair to her shoe,
Toll slowly.
And the smile upon her face, ere she left the tiring-glass,
Had not time enough to go.
. . . . . .
Low she dropt her head, and lower, till her hair on the floor,—
Toll slowly.
And tear after tear you heard fall, distinct as any word
Which you might be listening for.
. . . . . .
Oh, and steeply, steeply wound up the narrow stair around
Toll slowly.
Oh, and closely, closely speeding, step by step beside her treading
Did he follow, meek as hound.
On the east tower, high’st of all,—there, where never a hoof did fall,—
Toll slowly.
Out they swept a vision steady,—noble steed and lovely lady,
Calm as if in bower or stall.
The scene on the castle wall rivals in intensity and tragic force Coleridge’s description of the doomed ship’s crew in “The Ancient Mariner,” though the subjects and the emotions [p. 68→] they excite are of a widely different nature. The recital which detained “the wedding guest” overawes and chills with a sort of passive horror; for there is no struggle indicated in the story, but simply resistless, remorseless destiny seizing its victims; while Mrs. Browning’s narrative is effective from its display of heroic action, and consequently excites less painful emotions.
Twice he wrung her hands in twain, but the small hands closed again.
Toll slowly.
Back he reined the steed,—back, back! but she trailed along his track
With a frantic clasp and strain.
. . . . . .
Thrice he wrung her hands in twain,—but they closed and clung again,
Toll slowly.
Wild she clung, as one, withstood, clasps a Christ upon the rood
In a spasm of deathly pain.
She clung wild and she clung mute, with her shuddering lips half shut.
Toll slowly.
Her head fallen as half in swound,—hair and knee swept on the ground,
She clung wild to stirrup and foot.
Back he reined his steed, back thrown on the slippery coping-stone,
Toll slowly.
Back the iron hoofs did grind on the battlement behind,
Whence a hundred feet went down.
. . . . . .
They have caught out at the rein, which Sir Guy threw loose,—in vain.
Toll slowly.
For the horse, in stark despair, with his front hoofs poised in air,
On the last verge rears amain.
Now he hangs, he rocks between, and his nostrils curdle in!
Toll slowly.
Now he shivers head and hoof,—and the flakes of foam fall off,
And his face grows fierce and thin!
And a look of human woe from his staring eyes did go,
Toll slowly,
And a sharp cry uttered he, in a foretold agony
Of the headlong death below.
And “Ring, ring, thou passing-bell,” still she cried, “I’ the old chapelle!”–
Toll slowly.
Then back-toppling, crashing back,—a dead weight flung out to wrack,
Horse and riders over fell.
Great art is shown in concentrating the interest at last upon the steed, and his agony is most vigorously depicted. [p. 69→]
The death of Aurora’s aunt is another example of tragic intensity in scenic representations.
There she sate, my aunt,—
Bolt upright in the chair beside her bed,
Whose pillow had no dint! She had used no bed
For that night’s sleeping,.. yet slept well. My God,
The dumb derision of that grey, peaked face
Concluded something grave against the sun,
Which filled the chamber with its July burst
When Susan drew the curtains, ignorant
Of who sate open-eyed behind her! There
She sate .. it sate .. we said “she” yesterday.
Mark the significance of the line,
She sate .. it sate .. we said “she” yesterday.
The contemplated wedding, in the same poem, where “half St. Giles in frieze was bidden to meet St. James in cloth of gold,” is as powerful, if not as terse, a description. So also the sculpturing of the lion in the “Drama of Exile.”
On a mountain-peak
Half-sheathed in primal woods and glittering
In spasms of awful sunshine at that hour,
A lion couched, part raised upon his paws,
With his calm, massive face turned full on thine,
And his mane listening.
Here are two pictures of natural scenes, both finely executed; the first from “The Romaunt of the Page,” and the other a view of Aurora’s English home, seen from her chamber window.
Our troop is far behind,
The woodland calm is new;
Our steeds, with slow grass-muffled hoofs,
Tread deep the shadows through;
And in my mind, some blessing kind
Is dropping with the dew.
First the lime,
(I had enough, there, of the lime, be sure,—
My morning-dream was often hummed away
By the bees in it;) past the lime, the lawn,
Which, after sweeping broadly round the house,
Went trickling through the shrubberies in a stream
Of tender turf, and wore and lost itself
Among the acacias, over which, you saw [p. 70→]
The irregular line of elms by the deep lane,
Which stopped the grounds and dammed the overflow
Of arbutus and laurel. Out of sight
The lane was; sunk so deep, no foreign tramp
Nor drover of wild ponies out of Wales
Could guess if lady’s hall or tenant’s lodge
Dispensed such odors,—though his stick well crooked
Might reach the lowest trail of blossoming briar
Which dipped upon the wall.
The beauty of the last extract is mostly in its suggestiveness; and the hint as to the height of the wall is very ingeniously given.
“Lady Geraldine’s Courtship” abounds in exquisite sketches, both of figures and landscape. We select two of the richest color.
Thus, her foot upon the new-mown grass, bareheaded, with the flowing
Of the virginal white vesture gathered closely to her throat,—
And the golden ringlets in her neck just quickened by her going,
And appearing to breathe sun for air, and doubting if to float.
With a branch of dewy maple, which her right hand held above her,
And which trembled a green shadow in betwixt her and the skies,
As she turned her face in going, thus, she drew me on to love her,
And to worship the divineness of the smile hid in her eyes.
Soh! how still the lady standeth! ’t is a dream,—a dream of mercies!
’Twixt the purple lattice-curtains, how she standeth still and pale!
’T is a vision, sure, of mercies, sent to soften his self-curses—
Sent to sweep a patient quiet o’er the tossing of his wail.
With a murmurous stir uncertain, in the air, the purple curtain
Swelleth in and swelleth out around her motionless pale curtain
While the gliding of the river sends a rippling noise forever
Through the open casement whitened by the moonlight’s slant repose.
The purple curtains, the river, and the moonlight, form a perfect background for “the vision of a Lady.”
But “Marian’s Babe” is Mrs. Browning’s masterpiece. Raphael never painted a more exquisitely natural and tender picture. It needs a mother as well as an artist to mix such colors.
There he lay, upon his back,
The yearling creature, warm and moist with life
To the bottom of his dimples,—to the ends
Of the lovely tumbled curls about his face;
For since he had been covered overmuch
To keep him from the light glare, both his cheeks [p. 71→]
Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose
The shepherd’s heart-blood ebbed away into,
The faster for his love. And love was here
As instant! in the pretty baby mouth,
Shut close as if for dreaming that it sucked;
The little naked feet drawn up the way
Of nestled birdlings; everything so soft
And tender,—to the little hold-fast hands,
Which, closing on a finger into sleep,
Had kept the mould of ’t.
As a portrait hinting at character, the sketch of Aurora’s aunt is admirable for quaint originality and fidelity.
She stood straight and calm,
Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight
As if for taming accidental thoughts
From possible pulses; brown hair pricked with grey
By frigid use of life, (she was not old,
Although my father’s elder by a year,)
A nose drawn sharply, yet in delicate lines;
A close mild mouth, a little soured about
The ends, through speaking unrequited loves,
Or peradventure, niggardly half-truths;
Eyes of no color,—once they might have smiled,
But never, never have forgot themselves
In smiling; cheeks in which was yet a rose
Of perished summers, like a rose in a book,
Kept more for ruth than pleasure,—if past bloom,
Past fading also.
Whilst Mrs. Browning’s skill in detecting and describing shades of character is unquestionable, she does not possess in an equal degree the creative power which gives life and individuality to the children of the brain. Her delineations are often rather abstractions than flesh-and-blood creations, except when clothed and vitalized by her own individuality. Take the characters in “Aurora Leigh.” Aurora is the reflex of Mrs. Browning, and has therefore some form and color. Still she is more interesting as a revelation of the inner life of the author, than as a purely imaginative embodiment. Romney has no exclusive personality of his own. He represents a certain class of reformers, and is both the expounder and refuter of their doctrines. Aurora describes Marian charmingly, but when she speaks for herself, she talks as pedantically as the [p. 72→] poet. It is true, her conversations are presumed to be always reported, but the import is her own, if not the mode of expression. A woman of no cultivation, whose life had been passed chiefly among the cruel and the coarse, might, by the force of her own sweet, intelligent nature, discourse feelingly and eloquently, but never learnedly. This specimen will explain our meaning.
For the rest
I am not on a level with your love,
Nor ever was, you know,—but now am worse,
Because that world of yours has dealt with me
As when the hard sea bites and chews a stone
And changes the first form of it. I’ve marked
A shore of pebbles bitten to one shape
From all the various life of madrepores;
And so, that little stone, called Marian Erle,
Picked up and dropped by you and another friend,
Was ground and tortured by the incessant sea
And bruised from what she was—
We find the same inconsistency in Lady Waldemar. So long as her character is merely described, and her acts narrated by a third party, we have some conception of what she really is,—though a woman of the world, as she is represented to be, would hardly make such confessions. But whenever she herself comes upon the stage, we hear the prompter’s voice, and all personality vanishes. The defect we are indicating will be made evident by comparing any of Mrs. Browning’s characters with Tennyson’s,—Marian, for example, with that of the old woman in “The Grandmother’s Apology.” The difference of the two in essential warmth and life is at once apparent, In the one case, it is the poet who speaks in the person of Marian. In the other, it is the spirit of the Grandmother which has taken possession of the soul of the poet, and guides his pen. Hence, in the latter creation there is no incongruity either of thought or expression. The author is not seen or heard. It is the garrulous old woman and her touching reminiscences we listen to,—her character that is unfolding itself. In this impersonality Tennyson is truly Shakespearian. He never intrudes himself; and is so superior to Mrs. Browning in this respect, though she excels him in tragic power and depth of feeling. She is too thoroughly a woman to be many- [p. 73→] sided. Her own strong and decided individuality cannot easily be thrown aside. Like Byron, she reveals herself, but not, like him, egotistically or morbidly. She felt as deeply as she thought powerfully. Thus the very harmony of her nature, whilst it undoubtedly in some degree hindered her genius, made her all the more strong and original in her own sphere of song.
It is owing also to this tendency of her mind that she fails as a dramatic poet. “A Drama of Exile,” and “The Seraphim,” notwithstanding great beauties,—for Mrs. Browning never wrote feebly on any theme,—are as a whole defective, and the least popular of her poems. But, in passing judgment upon them, it must be remembered that they were among her earliest productions, and that she herself felt and acknowledged their imperfections. To be a great dramatist, an author must put off his own personality, and live only in the creations of his imagination. This Mrs. Browning has never done, and consequently has attained little or no success in dramatic poetry. As “In Memoriam” and “Aurora Leigh” are the two great poems of the age, so “The Blot in the ’Scutcheon” is the great drama. Their authors form an illustrious trio. Tennyson is the greater artist; Browning has more dramatic power; but for nobility and strength of thought, we should award the palm to the woman poet.
We have spoken mainly of the vigor of Mrs. Browning’s poems and the beauty and reality of her descriptions. These are the most striking, but by no means her only excellences. She is very successful in the portrayal of actions which reveal, by their significance, hidden emotions. She accomplishes this generally by a few terse sentences, and occasionally by a single expression. The fall of the Paynim sword in “The Romaunt of the Page,” and the sensations of the victim, are both expressed by one word:—
She felt the scimitar gleam down.
Aurora Leigh, speaking of the smile she gave her aunt, says:—
Some tears fell down my cheek, and then I smiled,
As those smile who have no face in the world
To smile back to them. [p. 74→]
One of the most curious effects of a new and startling sorrow, one also most difficult to put into words, being so vague and subtile a feeling, has been fully expressed in these lines from “Bertha in the Lane”:—
And I walked as if apart
From myself, when I could stand—
And I pitied my own heart,
As if I held it in my hand,
Somewhat coldly,—with a sense
Of fulfilled benevolence
And a “Poor thing” negligence.
In tenderness and pathos Mrs. Browning is unsurpassed. As love-poems there is nothing finer in the language than “Sonnets from the Portuguese.” They are not only of deep interest, as disclosing passages in the life of two great poets, but have rare merit in themselves. Such purity, sweet humility, lofty self-abnegation, and impassioned tenderness have never before found utterance in verse. Shakespeare’s sonnets, beautiful as they are, cannot be compared with them, and Petrarch’s seem commonplace beside them.
“Catarina to Camoens” is an exquisitely tender and touching poem, and glowing passages in “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship” and “Aurora Leigh” express the utmost intensity of feeling.
“Bertha in the Lane,” “The Poet’s Vow,” and “Isobel’s Child,” are remarkable for their sweet, sorrowful pathos. “The Lay of the Brown Rosary” is purely ideal, and of high excellence, and proves how successful its author would have been had she devoted herself more especially to this species of poetry.
The effect of some of Mrs. Browning’s poems is marred and weakened by needless amplification, and the too obvious endeavor to elaborate and point the moral. A descriptive poem whose conclusion is tragical needs no epilogue. Thus the “Rhyme of the Duchess May” should have ended with the headlong leap of the horse:—“Isobel’s Child” with the lines,
The babe upon her arm was dead!
And the nurse could utter forth no cry,—
She was awed by the calm in the mother’s eye;—
and “The Poet’s Vow” with the death of the poet,— [p. 75→]
For when they came at dawn of day
To lift the lady’s corpse away,
Her bier was holding twain.
A poem, like a picture, should leave something to the imagination. Mrs. Browning is by no means always faulty in failing to remember this. The interest in “The Lay of the Brown Rosary,” “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” and “The Romaunt of the Page,” ceases only with the last line. The great charm of the last of these pieces is in its suggestiveness. The page lies dead, and, whilst the requiem “from the convent on the sea” “sweepeth solemnly,” the mind wanders to the knight, picturing his sorrow and remorse, and losing itself in a thousand conjectures. The subject of the poem is old, but it is treated with a fresh originality; and the introduction of the convent episode is a mark of genius.
In justly estimating Mrs. Browning’s excellences, her faults must not be overlooked. Clear as was her intellectual vision, and lucidly and acutely as she thought and reasoned, she did not always manifest these powers. It is much to be regretted that one who had such command of ideas and of language should so frequently mar the beauty of her verse, and weaken its strength, by occasional vagueness of meaning, and too constant obscurity of expression. The matter of her poems was well and thoroughly studied, and had she expended a little of the time upon the form that she lavished on the substance, her high merits could have been acknowledged without qualification. On account of these and some other blemishes, criticism has been more ready to admit that she wrote great books than great poems. Metaphysical disquisitions, such as she is prone to indulge in, are not poetry, even when disguised by rhythm; and, though learned allusions may be evidence of scholarship, they do not heighten the beauty of song. Pedantry, always disagreeable in any writer, is almost, if not quite, intolerable in a poet; and from pedantry Mrs. Browning is not entirely free. Her wise range of study served, no doubt, to discipline and expand her mind; but it is unfortunate that her knowledge was allowed to injure the simplicity and interrupt the melody of her song. When she draws from the resources of her own genius, she is always clear and sparkling. When [p. 76→] she leans too heavily upon her learning, her movement is constrained. She delighted in vague classic allusions,—only pertinent and graceful when perfectly understood. This was a useless display of erudition, and renders numerous passages almost meaningless to ordinary readers. It is also often hard to apprehend her meaning, on account of too frequent use of parentheses and subsidiary clauses, and references to natural and scientific phenomena. She takes for granted too much and too varied acquisition on the part of the reader, and leaves her thought half defined.
Another cause of Mrs. Browning’s obscurity is fondness for new and ambiguous terms, and a habit of coining words from Greek and Latin roots. We sometimes meet with sentences which Locke would call “a curious and inexplicable web of perplexed words.” Such liberties are an abuse of language; pernicious errors in themselves, apart from the injury they do to the style of writers who invent the novel phrases.
Mrs. Browning never outgrew this faultiness of expression. In other respects there is evidence of marked growth and development; but in this, no improvement is discernible. Indeed, the style of her later poems is even more open to criticism than that of her earlier efforts. This is especially true of “Poems before Congress,” and of some of her fugitive pieces upon Italy. Designed as they were to stir the popular heart, and move the masses, their ruggedness is the more to be lamented; since the want of an attractive dress must more or less endanger the purpose for which they were written. “A Court Lady” is an exception to this remark, as are also some stanzas in “Napoleon III.”; which are very grand. On the other hand, not to refer to other examples, “Italy and the World” is rough, and the thoughts are clumsily expressed. We select two verses at random:—
Florence, Bologna, Parma, Modena,
When you named them a year ago,
So many graves reserved by God, in a
Day of judgment, you seemed to know,
To open and let out the resurrection. [p. 77→]
Bring us the higher example; release us
Into the larger coming time;
And into Christ’s broad garment piece us,
Rags of virtue as poor as crime,
National selfishness, civic vaunting.
It is singular, that one so keenly alive to all that is lovely and harmonious in art and nature could have been so negligent or indifferent as to her own infelicities of style. Yet so it is, and her best defence is the opinion she expresses through Aurora Leigh:—
What form is best for poems? Let me think
Of forms less, and the external. Trust the spirit
As sovran nature does, to make the form;
For otherwise we only imprison spirit,
And not embody. Inward evermore
To outward,—so in life, and so in art,
Which still is life.
Mrs. Browning’s imperfections, however, certainly do not deserve the undue prominence given to them by some critics, and when compared with her beauties they sink into insignificance. “Every great original writer,” says Coleridge, “in so far as he is truly original, has to call forth the power to understand, and create the taste to enjoy him.” This is true of both the Brownings. They richly repay study, and much that at first seemed unintelligible becomes, by familiarity with the intricacies of their verse, clear and tangible. Sympathy and affection are as necessary to the understanding of the author as of the man. A keen critical eye will always be able to detect surface faults, but hidden beauties reveal themselves only to the reverent and loving spirit.
But aside from this cursory survey of the merits and demerits of Mrs. Browning’s poems, viewed simply as works of art, there are in them other characteristics to be considered, more peculiarly her own, and intimately connected with the aim and purpose of her writings. Her life and song were united in earnest endeavor to elevate and ennoble her age. Essentially a poet, she was in a still greater degree a worker. Dearly as she loved, and highly as she honored her vocation, it was to her a means to an end. Thus she be- [p. 78→] came pre-eminently the representative poet of her time. We say she became so; for she did not at first clearly recognize her mission. It dawned upon her through “Casa Guidi Windows,” and the world saw its perfect noon in “Aurora Leigh.”
It is fortunate that she was so soon and so fully conscious of the decided bent of her genius. Hers was not the faculty of breathing upon dry bones, and animating them anew with life. She comprehended all the significance of the past, and its uses as regards the present, but she did not reproduce it, or seek to glorify it at the expense of more vital and living themes. Her most stirring lays, therefore, and those most nobly sung, were of her own age. The constitution of her intellect and the breadth of her culture admirably fitted her to become one of its teachers. In connection with the prophetic faculty, which is part of the inspiration of the truly poetic, she possessed a wise discernment which is the attribute of the philosophic mind. The philosopher has been defined as one; “to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest mounted up, who is the equal and kindly brother of all.” Such a philosopher was Mrs. Browning. To the broadest and liveliest sympathy she joined a just appreciation of the truest needs of humanity. Her insight is thorough and accurate, and her philosophy based upon a conservative religious faith singularly free from extremes. She took more than intellectual interest in the leading practical questions of the day, and fearlessly recorded her protest against wrong toward God or man, wherever or by whomsoever committed. A brave woman, but not a bold woman, she was not blind to the existence of great sins in the world, neither did she shrink from their exposure. She “who had clipt the curls before her eyes” saw and stated facts plainly, but never coarsely; and nowhere is the matchless purity and delicacy of her own nature more manifest, than in such statements. But while keenly alive to all social and political evils, the perception of them did not so engross her vision as to prevent her from discerning the elements of greatness and goodness underneath all the corruption.
Philanthropists who begin by thinking they are to regen- [p. 79→] erate the world, are very apt to end by cordially hating it. They become soured by disappointment, and lose their charity and forbearance. Generally self-sacrificing, and of earnest and deep convictions, the concentration of all the energy and intensity of their nature upon one idea gradually narrows their conceptions and freezes their sensibilities. Their one purpose of life grows in magnitude by constant contemplation, and, confident of the justice and purity of the end in view, they are often unscrupulous as to the means they employ, and careless whom or what they sacrifice in their efforts to accomplish it. Mrs. Browning’s philanthropy had a wider scope, if not a higher aim. Recognizing Christ as the great Regenerator, she never lost her faith in her fellow-man, or became disheartened or despairing when individual exertions were failures, and a sacred cause seemed hopeless. Such at least is the philosophy she professes to teach by her poems, and especially through the medium of Romney in “Aurora Leigh.” He is the type of those reformers “who have a pattern on their nail,” and hope to carve the world anew after it; forgetting, in their presumptuous arrogance, that “God alone sits high enough above to speculate so largely.” But the world will not run smoothly on any axis of man’s contriving; and Romney failed, as men fail every day, by not comprehending humanity, and by making “too small a part for God” in his schemes of regeneration.
To our thinking, the eighth and ninth books of “Aurora Leigh” contain a clear, candid exposition, as well as a forcible and logical refutation, of the theories of many enthusiastic and self-sufficient reformers. From these we make a few extracts, to let Mrs. Browning state her own doctrines.
Is there any common phrase
Significant, when the adverb’s heard alone,
The verb being absent, and the pronoun out?
But we distracted in the roar of life,
Still insolently at God’s adverb snatch,
And bruit against Him that his thought is void,
His meaning hopeless;—cry, that everywhere
The government is slipping from his hand,
Unless some other Christ .. say Romney Leigh ..
Come up, and toil and moil, and change the world, [p. 80→]
For which the First has proved inadequate,
However we talk bigly of His work
And piously of His person. We blaspheme
At last, to finish that doxology,
Despairing on the earth for which He died.
Fewer programmes: we who have no prescience.
Fewer systems; we who are held and do not hold.
Less mapping out of masses, to be saved,
By nations or by sexes. Fourier’s void
And Comte is dwarfed,—and Cabet, puerile.
Subsists no law of life outside of life;
No perfect manners without Christian souls;
The Christ himself had been no lawgiver,
Unless He had given the life, too, with the law.
The presumptuous self-reliance, as well as the impatience, of such reformers, is thus rebuked:—
Though we fail indeed,
You .. I .. a score of such weak workers .. He
Fails never. If He cannot work by us,
He will work over us. Does He want a man,
Much less a woman, think you? Every time
The star winks there, so many souls are born,
Who shall work too. Let our own be calm:
We should be ashamed to sit beneath those stars,
Impatient that we’re nothing.
But if Mrs. Browning’s reverence for Him who made and governs the world guards her against giving an undue importance to the work of man, she does not fall into the opposite error of undervaluing or depreciating it.
Be sure, no earnest work
Of any honest creature, howbeit weak,
Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much,
It is not gathered as a grain of sand
To enlarge the sum of human action used
For carrying out God’s end. No creature works
So ill, observe, that therefore he’s cashiered.
The honest, earnest man must stand and work;
The woman also; otherwise she drops
At once below the dignity of man.
Accepting serfdom. Free men freely work:
Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease.
The old Greek adage, that the end of man is action, not a [p. 81→] thought, is recognized in almost every page of Mrs. Browning’s writings. Other authors have spoken well and wisely of the dignity of labor, but it is the constant burden of many of her songs;—not a mere utilitarian work solely,—though that has its uses and its ends, which she does not overlook,—but work for a higher purpose, work as a privilege earned for us by Christ, and as a preparation for a more glorious labor hereafter. “I found that heaven itself is only work to a surer issue.” It is a great thing, by the power indwelling in one intellect, to force other minds to think correctly, and other hearts to feel deeply; but to incite the whole nature to a persistent course of beneficent activity is even greater. It is due to the influence of writers like Mrs. Browning, that the precious effects of work as a divine institution are being gradually but surely comprehended. There is truth in what she says;—
After Adam, work was curse;
The natural creature labors, sweats, and frets.
But after Christ, work turns to privilege.
But there is still more to be learned from “Aurora Leigh.” Aurora is the representative of the spiritual and æsthetic spirit of the age, as Romney is of the materialistic and utilitarian. She is the priestess of true Art. Through her is exemplified its noble ends, and the high character of its office as one of God’s most efficient agents in purifying the world. In the final triumph of the woman over the artist, Mrs. Browning enforces another great truth; namely, that, noble and glorious as Art is, the pursuit of it will never satisfy the heart, nor insure a perfect development of character, if “the artist’s instincts” are to be exalted “at the cost of putting down the woman’s.” If she recognizes fully, not only a woman’s right to labor, but its Christian necessity, she is no advocate of any regulations that are to supersede religious and natural ties. Her own sweet instincts were too powerful, and she knows too well in what consists the happiness and true welfare of woman, to desire either to unsex her or unsphere her. Not alone in “Aurora Leigh” is she explicit on this point. In the exquisite little poem, “Crowned and Wedded,” she bravely asserts the true dignity [p. 82→] of womanhood. It seems to us no woman can read it without emotion.
She vows to love who vowed to rule—(the chosen at her side)
Let none say, God preserve the queen!—but rather, Bless the bride!
None blow the trump, none bend the knee, none violate the dream
Wherein no monarch, but a wife, she to herself may seem.
Or if ye say, Preserve the queen!—O, breathe it inward low,—
She is a woman and beloved!—and ’t is enough but so.
Again, in her Address to Prince Albert:—
Esteem that wedded hand less dear for sceptre than for ring,
And hold her uncrowned womanhood to be the royal thing.
Yet, in thus vindicating the beauty and sanctity of human affection, Mrs. Browning does not lose sight of still holier sentiments.
And since
We needs must hunger,—better for man’s love,
Than God’s truth! better for companions sweet,
Than great convictions! let us bear our weights,
Preferring dreary hearths to desert souls.
In considering the aim and purpose of Mrs. Browning’s poems, the worth of her sonnets must not be overlooked. Characterized by a serene majesty and patience, they strengthen the weak and console the dejected by a Christ-like tenderness, and their practical teachings are destined to exert a growing and permanent influence. The poet is evidently as earnest and sincere, as her words are sublime and impressive. She therefore sways the hearts of her readers, as the impassioned orator sways the hearts of his hearers, carrying them away by the force of her own convictions.
As “Aurora Leigh” solves social, so “Casa Guidi Windows” solves many political problems. In her modest Preface, Mrs. Browning speaks of this last poem “as a simple story of personal impressions, and not to be considered as an exposition of political philosophy.” It is much more than this. It is vigorous with original thought; and, whilst it reads in part like a fulfilled prophecy, contains acute and subtile reasoning upon law and liberty. Much that she wrote in 1848 upon the relation between war and peace, and the true significance of the latter, may be applied to ourselves in our [p. 83→] present struggle. A poet does not write for one country or for one age, but for all nationalities and for all time. “Casa Guidi Windows,” also, is the best memorial of its author’s high-minded and unwearied efforts in behalf of Italy. That country owes a great debt of gratitude to her, who gave more than hearty sympathy and co-operation in the hour of conflict,—even words of hope and cheer when the boldest patriots threw down their arms almost despairingly. The spirit of the following lines, written when the Italian cause looked prosperous, is the spirit she maintained throughout all its reverses.
But never say “no more”
To Italy’s life. Her memories undismayed
Still argue “evermore,”—her graves implore
Her future to be strong and not afraid;
Her very statues send their looks before.
It is not the cause of Italy alone, however, that Mrs. Browning espouses in “Casa Guidi Windows,” but the catholic cause of right and freedom. Turning away her eyes mournfully from the contemplation of the wrongs of her adopted country, she addresses each civilized nation in turn, beseeching mercy for the oppressed. The sin of slavery could not fail to move a thinker and worker like Mrs. Browning; and she did not content herself with the laconic protest against it in this general appeal. Her most effective poem on this subject is “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point.” “The Curse for a Nation” is a passionate, prophetic expostulation; but, as a whole, it is rough, and in energy and force not to be compared with “The Cry of the Children,” one of her noblest productions. There are no lines in the former equal to these:—
“How long,” they say, “how long, O cruel nation,
Will you stand to move the world, on a child’s heart,—
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your home amid the mart?
Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,
And your purple shows your path!
But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath.”
But, though we may not put “The Curse” among Mrs. Browning’s best efforts, we cannot, as others have done, find [p. 84→] fault with its spirit, which is humane and womanly,—more sorrowful than angry. She who scorchingly rebuked the sins of her own nation could not be expected to treat more tenderly the sins of other lands. But we are a sensitive people; and our iniquities, as well as our weaknesses, must be handled delicately!
Mrs. Browning’s admiration for Napoleon III. has been another cause of dissatisfaction; and in so far as she would endeavor to prove him good as well as great, there is reason for censure. The time, however, has not come for the just measurement of such a man; and posterity may yet assent more fully than we think to the poet’s judgment. “Every age, through being held too close, is ill discerned”; and it is genius alone that can exert “a double vision.”
Not only as a poet and a worker, whose worthy aims were worthily executed, is Mrs. Browning to be honored and reverenced. The life she led is part of her “accomplished work.” In beauty and purity, it is an unwritten poem; and its silent, indirect influence will be potent and permanent as the more obvious and positive effect of her writings. United, they exert a twofold power, and claim a twofold homage. They are also mutual interpreters. We see how the woman has moulded and shaped the poet, and the poet the woman; and it is through the poet especially that we learn to understand the woman. Consequently, in an analysis of her character, we must chiefly confine ourselves to this source of revelation. No biography, however minute and accurate in details, can ever be as significant as the “Sonnets from the Portuguese” and “Aurora Leigh.” What she felt, as well as what she thought, is revealed in these. In the career of the poet is disclosed the inner life of the woman. And though all facts relating to her personal history will be eagerly sought and carefully treasured up, there is no memoir that could so easily be dispensed with as that of one who has already given us the autobiography of her inmost soul. What she says of herself is infinitely more precious than anything that could be said of her.
Her individual characteristics require little commentary. Her poems, as we have intimated, are the faithful transcript of her moral and intellectual traits; and we have only to [p. 85→] look at her through the medium of these to obtain a distinct portrait. Thus viewed, we have the likeness of one who was truly and beautifully feminine. Her intellect, as we have already said, was in harmony with her heart; and the proportions of each in her spiritual constitution were so perfect, that we can detect no undue preponderance of either,—the intellectual power visible in her poems never obscuring the essential essence of womanhood. No one, indeed, but a woman could have written such poems.
“Fortitude, constancy, and devotion” have been termed the crowning excellence of the feminine character. To these must be added a gentle nature and a pure heart, and Mrs. Browning possessed them all in no stinted measure. Miss Mitford says of her: “Such is the influence of her manners, her conversation, her thousand sweet attaching qualities, that they who know her best are apt to lose sight altogether of her learning and of her genius, and to think of her only as the most charming person they ever met.” She seems always to have retained this winning simplicity and perfect freedom from outward pretension. Hers was indeed “a true, princely courtesy of inward nature,” not affected by any worldly distinctions. The woman who took far more pride and pleasure in being identified as “the mother of that beautiful boy,” than as the author of “Aurora Leigh,” had certainly no craving ambition for either power or fame to gratify. Her actions were prompted by a self-forgetting love, and she sought the welfare of her age far more than its applause. Such a union of whatever is great and lofty in genius with all that is pure and lovely in woman, is very rare; so rare that it will be interesting to trace some of the causes that contributed to the exquisitely blended development. Grief, the first agent, did its work thoroughly. Insight is one of the attributes of genius, but a great grief quickens marvellously the perceptive faculties. “Eyes that have wept much see clear,” and Mrs. Browning owed not a little of her intimate knowledge of the human heart and her entire and earnest sympathy with all phases of suffering to those sad years unavoidably so introspective. Patience and submission are the compensating blessings the invalid may gain, and these were [p. 86→] hers to the fullest extent. The silent heroism of this period of her life is inexpressibly touching. There is no pining wretchedness in the bearing of her cross. Sorrow and illness wrought their best discipline, bringing to her that peace which is akin to blessedness. The poems written during the season of seclusion and grief breathe a subdued thankfulness, and tell of a serene resignation. The Sonnets from the Portuguese reveal what life had been to Elizabeth Barrett, and also what life became to her when, by the recuperative power of a great passion, she triumphed over sorrow and the grave. For love was the next teacher, perfecting what grief began. Moved by this, she looked out upon the world with still deeper and clearer vision, her sphere of duty growing wider as her heart expanded. New light and brilliancy are reflected in her verses. As a great happiness steals into her life, her song rings out with a richer and more triumphant tone. Peace has risen to joy; but still to joy partaking largely of the nature of peace.
Underlying these mighty influences was yet another and a mightier, her deep and steadfast religious faith. This was as strong and active as her reasoning powers were acute and subtile, and the pride of the latter never overcame the convictions of the former. With nothing morbid or narrow in her piety, she held to the doctrines of the church in which she was born and nurtured. From the following and similar passages, it is easy to discern the foundation of her religious trust.
Alas! long-suffering and most patient God,
Thou need’st be surelier God to bear with us
Than even to have made us! thou, aspire, aspire
From henceforth for me! thou who hast, thyself,
Endured this flesh-hood, knowing how, as a soaked
And sucking vesture, it would drag us down
And choke us in the melancholy deep,
Sustain me, that, with thee, I walk these waves,
Resisting!—breathe me upward, thou for me
Aspiring, who art the way, the truth, the life,—
That no truth henceforth seem indifferent,
No way to truth laborious, and no life,
Not even this life I live, intolerable.
Mrs. Browning’s genius and virtue, taken in connection with [p. 87→] the peculiar blessings of the fifteen last years of her life, make her career without a parallel in the history of illustrious women. The lives of women of genius have been so frequently sullied by sin, as well as darkened by sorrow, that it has been accepted almost as an axiom, that their intellectual gifts are a curse rather than a blessing, and that those who are endowed with them must forego the purer and better joys which are the portion of their less eminent sisters. The justice of this broad inference may well be doubted. In the greater number of instances of marked unhappiness in the cases in question, it will be found, we imagine, that it was not on account of their serious defects either in character or education. Such defects are quite as common in others of the sex. The errors and sorrows of the illustrious are widely known and discussed. But lives without distinction and publicity are blighted every day, and many are sinful and unfeminine who are destitute of mental power and wanting in mental culture. One of the saddest memoirs ever given to the world is that of Charlotte Bronté; but her genius had nothing to do with the circumstances that threw such gloom over her young life. On the contrary, this was her solace and support. It peopled with glorious visions the little room in the Yorkshire parsonage, which the sisters paced unmindful of the cold and the darkness; and by its kindly aid she emerged into a healthier atmosphere, and the genial sunshine. In the compensations of this world, if genius has more acute sensibilities, it has greater resources. “Une plus grande intensité de vie est toujours une argumentation de bonheur; la douleur, il est vrai, entre plus avant dans les ames d’une certaine energie, mais à tout prendre. Il n’est personne, qui ne doive remercier Dieu de lui avoir donné une faculté de plus.” This acknowledgment has more weight, coming from the lips of one of incomparable abilities. In intellectual strength Madame de Staël is the peer of Mrs. Browning, while in the comprehension and statement of abstract thought she is somewhat her superior. As a prose-writer, she holds the same rank among those of her sex that Mrs. Browning holds as a poet. “L’Allemagne” and “Aurora Leigh,” as works of art, may stand side by side. But [p. 88→] while they are rivals in greatness, there is a wide distance between them in goodness. Madame de Staël penned exalted sentiments and uttered profound truths, but these did not permeate her being and react upon her life. Her noble and intense nature was undisciplined, and her feminine graces few. Her career was feverish and tumultuous, and with all its triumphs she was in the main weary-hearted and disappointed. As an author she wins our respect and admiration, but as a woman she cannot content us.
Mrs. Browning’s moral strength equalled her intellectual. Virtue with her was no passive sentimentality, no vain aspiration. She who worked by precept worked also by example. A thorough understanding of the mission of the poet did not make her unmindful of the weighty import of the duty of the woman. She may therefore well command a world-wide homage. Pure and lovely in private, her public career as an author was noble and dignified. More fortunate than many writers and patriots, she not only lived to see the completion and success of “Aurora Leigh,” the book to which she had consecrated her matured and ripened genius, but the independence of Italy, the land of her adoption and of her prayers. The work thus well done is not finished yet. It has a still more glorious errand to discharge. The spirit of it will endure and act far into the future; and generations to come will reverence and honor the great woman-poet of our time.
[Isaphene M. Luyster]
Reviewed:
Poems (EBB), New York: James Miller, 1862.
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