R350816B. Paracelsus.
The Weekly Dispatch, 16 August 1835, p. 298.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 349.
This is a truly singular production from the pen of Mr. Robert Browning. The author avows his intention in a brief preface, and states that he wishes to institute something like a new school of poetry—treating his subject as a drama, so far as character and dialogue are concerned; yet divesting himself of those adventitious aids which are generally courted by writers for the stage. The history of Paracelsus is, in itself, a meagre theme for poetic imagination, and truth compels us to state that it has been handled with corresponding weakness. We do not mean to say that, here and there, we cannot discover some happy thoughts and well-turned periods, but they are so completely overwhelmed by a mass of eccentric conceits and fitful digressions, that we really do not remember a single work which has so thoroughly puzzled us or afforded us so little satisfaction. Our author’s ear, too, must be singularly faulty, for every fourth or fifth line furnishes a specimen of false quantity. If Mr. Browning can take advice when kindly meant, he will not attempt so lofty a strain again. He says himself that this is his first effort. Let him remember, then, that “the nestling eaglet flutters ere it flies,” and learn to repress those wild imaginings which, if they indicate any thing, only afford evidence of a distempered and morbid sensibility.
Reviewed:
Paracelsus (RB), London: Effingham Wilson, 1835.
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