E630328A. The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets.
The Athenæum, 28 March 1863, p. 425.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 369.
It may be recalled that in this journal attention was first drawn to the remarkable originality of Mrs. Browning’s genius—which, appearing as it did a quarter of a century ago, like other utterances in advance of its time, bewildered more persons than it bewitched. The public had been somewhat enervated by the easier pleasures which other muses had afforded. The flowing and pathetic sweetness (consistent with a certain high-hearted enthusiasm) of Mrs. Hemans was then in all the fullness of a charm which, though diminished in its force, has not yet died out. Miss Landon, too, who had been thrust into a fame beyond her deserts by self-interested friends, had her votaries—a race well nigh extinct. Therefore, a music so fearless, so new, and so deep, as that of the minstrel of “The Romaunt of Margret” had to “bide its time.” It is a pleasure to recollect that from the first sound of it the Athenæum was convinced that such time was sure to come for such music ere long. For this journal, moreover, the contents of the volume before us were written in the year 1842. It was their author’s purpose, Mr. Browning thinks, to revise and amplify them. As they stand, they are only too rich in allusion, definition and epithet. With their writer, where her view was the clearest, image suggested image, distinction distinction, even within the compass of a sentence. This was singularly evidenced in her literary correspondence—a large and varied one—which it may be hoped will be arranged for publication, if not published, while those are alive and in vigour who have the right, the sympathy, and the taste to examine, to select, and to sanction with a view of publication. Only a part of Mrs. Browning’s life was expressed in her poetry. Into that, as time passed on, there entered something of mannerism, something of experiment betokening a consciousness born of strong will, attended by great and deserved success. She indulged herself in licenses which involved the confusion of the styles of prose and verse. Her prose, on the other hand, was from first to last always the richer for her poetry. There are many passages in these essays which could be set to music, so loftily lyrical are they; a few are flawed by conceits referable to the seclusion in which, it is no treason to say, many of their writer’s years were passed, and to the recondite and peculiar nature of her studies. This volume, however, is one of remarkable and abiding interest: whether it be accepted as illustrating a personality of genius, rare in one of her sex—not over-common in the history of Poetry,—or whether it be considered with regard, solely, to its instructions and suggestions,—so many quaintly-set precious stones, in a strong and lasting casket.
[Henry Fothergill Chorley]
Reviewed:
The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1863.
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