E630900A. Essays on the Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (New York).
Boston Review, September 1863, pp. 529–530.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 376.
It is sad to think that this posthumous volume, given to us by her husband, is the last we are to have from a woman whose genius was as great as her reputation. Mrs. Browning’s researches in the little explored region of Greek Christian Poetry, are curious, in the peculiar character of the spoils she has brought away, and as illustrating the wide range of the tastes and studies of the authoress. [p. 530→] The extracts—some of which have not a little of poetic fire and real beauty—furnish a new illustration of some things which were known before; as, that those Greek Fathers were not always successful in their scriptural exegesis, or sound in their theology. They did not always put off their shoes at the burning bush. They were right, undoubtedly, in the belief that the Bible supplies grander themes for song than any which Homer or Hesiod essayed: but they themselves are far better Christians than poets.
“The Book of The Poets,” sets out with a rather severe, and yet, withal, a good-natured and witty criticism of “the Book,” as, on page 123. “The thing is good, in that it is at all. Send a little child into a garden, and he will be sure to bring you a nosegay worth having, though the red weed in it should ‘side the lily,’ and sundry of the best flowers be held stalk upwards. Flowers are flowers, and poets are poets, and ‘A book of the poets’ must be right welcome at every hour of the clock.”
The essay is an interesting critique on English poetry, from its earliest origin down to Wordsworth. How much at home Mrs. Browning is on such a theme appears in the following:
Our poetry has a heroic genealogy. It arose where the sun rises, in the far east. It came out from Arabia, and was tilted on the lance-heads of the Saracens into the heart of Europe, Armorica catching it in rebound from Spain, and England from Armorica. It issued in its first breath from Georgia, wrapped in the gathering cry of Persian Odin: and passing from the orient of the sun to the antagonistic snows of Iceland, and oversweeping the black pines of Germany and the jutting shores of Scandinavia, and embodying in itself all majestic sounds, even to the rude shouts of the brazen-throated Cimbri—so modified, multiplied, resonant in a thousand Runic echoes, it rushed abroad like a blast into Britain. [p. 125.]
Of course Elizabeth Barrett Browning could not be otherwise than enthusiastic and glowing when writing on the English poets; but her criticisms are carefully weighed and judicious, frequently original and brilliant. She helps us in our admiration of our favorites, as Ruskin helps us in our admiration of a tree or a cloud.
Reviewed:
Essays on the Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (EBB), New York: James Miller, 1863.
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