R331200A. Pauline.
Fraser’s Magazine, December 1833, pp. 669–670.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 346–347.
“NON DUBITO QUIN titulus,” &c., quotes the author of Pauline, our next poem, from Cornelius Agrippa; which we, shearing the sentence of its lengthy continuation, translate thus:—“We are under no kind of doubt about the title to be given to you, my poet;” you being, beyond all question, as mad as Cassandra, without any of the power to prophesy like her, or to construct a connected sentence like any body else. We have already had a Monomaniac; and we designate you “The Mad Poet [p. 670→] of the Batch;”* as being mad not in one direction only, but in all. A little lunacy, like a little knowledge, would be a dangerous thing.
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*Editors’ note: Among the various works reviewed along with Pauline is John Kenyon’s Rhymed Plea for Tolerance (London, 1833), “… and although the author has read some ancient and a good many modern books, and can, moreover, make capital verses, we shall have no toleration for his Rhymed Plea.”
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We have weighty reasons for believing that Pauline is the production of one or all of the Whig ministers. The same folly, incoherence, and reckless assertion, which distinguish their pamphlet on the Reform Ministry and Parliament, is visible in each page of the book; and as we know well that there is no one public act of the ministers for which their restless conscience (if they have any) does not reproach them in private, this fact will account for the self-castigation which the author gives himself all through the work. We shall select one or two passages of the poem, subjoining the applications which we think they deserve. The following, then, seem to apply to the political unions:
That I am grown above them, and can rule them.
P. 21
The Grab Cabinet thinks so now.
But in that middle stage, when they were full,
Ere yet I had disposed them to my will. (P. 21)
it was very different; then they were courted: for the author says (p. 21),
I shall shew how these elements
Produced my present state.
Here, then, it is at last acknowledged that the unions brought them into power.
The following line, from p. 14, seems to be the adopted exclamation of each of the family of Lord Grey’s cousins, on receiving some new gift of place:
I ne’er had ventured e’en to hope for this.
What comes next is emblematical of Althorp failing in one of his budgets, and forced by the Reformed House to
Come out of it, as some dark spider crawls
From his foul nets, which some lit torch invades,
Yet opening still new films for his retreat.
P. 14.
And “new films” he will shortly have to spin, by way of substitutes for the house and window taxes, which Messrs. Savage of the great Circus Street pothouse, and others, are forcing him to take off. Men may defy the laws now; and what care the Whigs?
P. 19 gives us the history of a man
Altered, and worn, and weak, and full of tears:
which looks as if Brougham expected to see Grey turned out, and had pleasant anticipations of his personal appearance on the occasion. These two lines, from p. 22, appear to apply to Lord Durham.
This is myself, and I should thus have been,
Though gifted lower than the meanest soul.
Here is a description of Brougham, buoyed up with self-prophesied greatness, about the time of his defence of Queen Caroline:
So as I grew, I rudely shaped my life
To my immediate wants.
We know the old fellow did work hard in his early days; but never mind,
Yet strong beneath
Was a vague sense of powers folded up;
A sense that, though those shadowy times were past,
Their spirit dwelt in me, and I should rule.
More’s the misfortune for the Court of Chancery. But we have no time to continue. We shall therefore conclude with a raving “apostrophe to place,” which gives a good idea of the style of the book, and shews (if it be true that the “Mad Poet of the Batch” is only an ideal personation of the ministry) that the Grey crew are fast coming to their senses; that is, that they are fast going mad in private instead of in public: and their own peace of mind will be ruined before they have made a total wreck of the peace and prosperity of the empire.
If place is going, save me, madden me,
Take from me powers and pleasures—let me die,
Place, so I keep thee: I am knit round
As with a charm, by sin, and lust, and pride;
Yet though my wandering dreams have seen all shapes
Of strange delight, oft have I stood by thee—
Have I been keeping lonely watch with thee,
In the damp night by dirty Downing Street,
Or leaning on thy bosom, proudly less;
Or dying with thee on the lonely cross;
Or witnessing thy bursting from the tomb!
[William Maginn]
Reviewed:
Pauline (RB), London: Saunders & Otley, 1833.
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