R411211A. Pippa Passes.
The Athenæum, 11 December 1841, p. 952.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 399–400.
Mr. Browning is one of those authors, whom, for the sake of an air of originality, and an apparent disposition to think, as a motive for writing,—we have taken more than common pains to understand, or than it may perhaps turn out that he is worth. Our faith in him, however, is not yet extinct,—but our patience is. More familiarized as we are, now, with his manner—having conquered that rudiment to the right reading of his productions—we yet find his texts nearly as obscure as ever—getting, nevertheless, a glimpse, every now and then, at meanings which it might have been well worth his while to put into English. We have already warned Mr. Browning, that no amount of genius can fling any lights from under the bushel of his affectations. Shakspere himself would, in all probability, have been lost to the world, if he had written in the dead languages. On the present occasion, Mr. Browning’s conundrums begin with his very title-page. “Bells and Pomegranates” is the general title given (it is reasonable to suppose Mr. Browning knows why, but certainly we have not yet found out—indeed we “give it up”) to an intended “Series of Dramatical Pieces,” of which this is the first; and “Pippa Passes” is a very pretty exercise of the reader’s ingenuity, which we believe, however, on reading the poem, we may venture to say we have succeeded in solving. A curious part of the matter is, that these “Dramatical Pieces” are produced in a cheap form (neatly printed in double columns, price sixpence,) to meet and help the large demand—the “sort of pit-audience”—which Mr. Browning anticipates for them! How many men does Mr. Browning think there are in the world who have time to read this little poem of his? and of these, what proportion does he suppose will waste it, in searching after treasures that he thus unnecessarily and deliberately conceals: “Of course,” he says, “such a work as this must go on no longer than it is liked;”—and, therefore, we are speaking of it, now, with that reverence and forbearance which one is accustomed to exercise towards the dead. Still-born, itself, it is also, no doubt, the last of its race—that is, if their being maintained by the public is a positive condition of their being begotten. Yet it has its limbs and lineaments of beauty, and exhibits the traces of an immortal spirit.
The idea of this little drama is, in itself, we think, remarkably beautiful, and well worth working out in language suited to its own simple and healthy moral. One of the daughters of labour, Pippa, a young girl employed in the silk-mills of Asolo, in the Trevisan, rises from her bed, on new-year’s morning,—her single holiday of all the year: and, as she pursues the long, but willing, labours of her toilet, the map of its boundless enjoyments unfolds before her imagination. Then, among the light-hearted girl’s thoughts, come those which must intrude upon the speculations of the poor—the contrasts with her own lowly lot presented by the more fortunate forms of life which she sees everywhere around her. Her neighbours of the little town of Asolo pass in review before her, with their several circumstances of what, to the outward eye, is advantage; and a touch of the envy and ill will, from which even the humble cannot be wholly exempt, mingles with her purer fancies, and dims the brightness of her holiday morning. But, in the breast of this joyous-hearted girl, these feelings soon take a healthier tone,— resolving themselves into reliance upon providence, contentment with her lot, which has in it this one chartered day—now only beginning—and a sense that she is a child of God as well as all the others, and has a certain value in the sum of creation, like the rest:—and so, she breaks away out into the sunshine, merry as a May-day queen,—
Down the grass-path grey with dew,
Neath the pine-wood blind with boughs,
Where the swallow never flew
As yet, nor cicale dared carouse,—
with a song expressing such sentiments, and her own joy:—
The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn:
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew pearled:
The lark’s on the wing,
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in his heaven—
All’s right with the world!
And then, the poem, which has no unity of action,—is held together by the single unity of its moral, and is dramatic only because it is written in dialogue-form—introduces us, by a series of changes, into the interiors of certain of those dwellings which the envious thoughts of Pippa had failed to pierce: and we are present at scenes of passion or intrigue, which the trappings, that had dazzled her eye, serve to hide. One of these, between the wife of a rich miser and her paramour,—on the night which conceals the murder of the husband, by the guilty pair, but just as the day is about to dawn upon it—is written with such power of passion and of painting (with a voluptuousness of colour and incident, however, which Mr. Browning may find it convenient to subdue, for an English public) as marks a master-hand,—and makes it really a matter of lamentation, that he should persist in thinking it necessary for a poet to adopt the tricks of a conjuror, or fancy that among the true spells of the former are the mock ones of the latter’s mystical words. Into this scene of guilt and passion,—as into all the others to which we are introduced,—breaks the clear voice of a girl, singing in the young sunshine. By each and all of them, “Pippa passes,”—carolling away her one untiring burthen of gladness,—carrying everywhere her moral that “God’s in his heaven,” and the world beneath his eye—scattering sophisms and startling crime. Before this one natural and important truth, taught to a cheerful and lowly heart, the artificialities of life severally dissolve, and its criminals grow pale. Surely, there is something very fine in this! Not only have we the trite, but valuable, moral that happiness is more evenly distributed than it seems, enforced in a new form,—but also that other and less popularly understood one, which it were well the poor should learn,—and still better that the rich should ponder,—that the meanest of them all has his appointed value in God’s scheme,—and a higher part may be cast to him who has to play it in rags, than to the puppet of the drama who enacts king, and walks the stage in purple. This despised little silk-weaver, like a messenger from God, knocks at the hearts of all these persons who seem to her so privileged,—and the proudest of them all opens to her. Again, we say, this is very fine;—and Mr. Browning is unjust both to himself and others, when he subjects it to the almost certainty of being lost. Why should an author, who can think such living thoughts as these, persist in making mummies of them?—and why should we, ere we could disengage this high and beautiful truth, have had to go through the tedious and di[s]agreeable process of unwrapping?
We could not give our readers any specimen of the author’s beauties, exceeding a few lines in length, without stumbling upon some of his obscurities: and will content ourselves, therefore, with a short example or two of his manner, when it is most natural and unencumbered:—
I have
Enjoyed these fifteen years of mine too much
To leave myself excuse for longer life—
Was not life pressed down, running o’er with joy,
That I might finish with it ere my fellows,
Who, sparelier feasted, make a longer stay?
I was put at the board-head, helped to all
At first: I rise up happy and content.
God must be glad one loves his world so much—
I can give news of earth to all the dead
Who ask me:—last year’s sunsets and great stars,
That had a right to come first, and see ebb
The crimson wave that drifts the sun away—
Those crescent moons, with notched and burning rims
That strengthened into sharp fire, and there stood,
Impatient of the azure—and that day,
In March, a double rainbow stopped the storm—
May’s warm, slow, yellow, moonlit summer nights—
Gone are they—but I have them in my soul!
And the following song:
You love me yet!—and I can tarry
Your love’s protracted growing:
June reared that bunch of flowers you carry,
From seeds of April’s sowing.
I plant a heartful now—some seed
At least is sure to strike,
And yield—what you’ll not care, indeed,
To pluck, but, may be, like
To look upon .. my whole remains,
A grave’s one violet
Your look?—that pays a thousand pains.
What’s death?—You love me yet!
[Thomas Kibble Hervey]
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates. No. I. Pippa Passes (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1841.
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