R500420A. Poems (Boston, 1850).
The Saturday Evening Post, 20 April 1850, p. 2.
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 16.
Letter from Grace Greenwood.
New Brighton, March 28th, 1850.
Gentlemen:—The spring opened for us very genially, with a few delicious sunny days, most favorable for riding and rambling, and inspiring pleasantest ideas of all sorts of out-door enjoyment. But Jack Frost seems to have taken the back track, bringing quite a young winter upon us. We are shut up in out dull houses, to mope over dull books, looking out occasionally to make faces at the weather, “and give back frown for frown.” What wonder if one is reduced to miserable expedients for dissipating one’s ennui; such as making scrap-tables, and writing letters for the press.
There are a few books lying on my table, which should have received some notice long ere this, and if you will indulge me a little while, I will say my unofficial, unauthoritative, yet most independent say, concerning them.
First of all, I have read Browning, carefully and thoroughly. This poet has been so little read in our country, as to be best known to many as the husband of Elizabeth Barrett, but abroad, he has a higher distinction, a greatness which even here cannot overshadow; and there, he need not fear being pointed out “as the man whom Ninon married.” He is one to whom Landor, in a most beautiful sonnet, paid that splendid compliment–
Shakspeare is not our poet, but the world’s;
Therefore, on him no speech! and brief for thee, Browning!
One is almost afraid to venture a word, after that.
This poet is, I believe, a great problem to the critics. His style is often singularly involved, dreamy and mystical; but he is never meaningless. If one has patience to trace the delicate thread of sense through the intricate labyrinth of expression, he comes to something at last.—His darkest places are, after all, “sun-dropped shades,” where the beauty is deeper and richer for the partial obscurity. His masses of word-drapery do not cover poor, manikin ideas, but full-grown and royally-proportioned thoughts; and from amidst his mists and cloud-mazes, gleam out no false, inconsiderable lights, but stars of the first magnitude.
Browning has been called unmusical, and, judged by common rules, I suppose his verse lacks melody; but for me, there is always in it a sort of spiritual harmony, which overrules the mere word-sound, and renders him one of the most musical of poets.
For all Browning’s power, and learning, and strongly marked peculiarities, much of his poetry seems to me of a most natural and primitive kind. It is simply poetic reverie, and given in the dreamy, diffuse, inexpressive language of reverie, every word obediently written down as it slid from the murmuring lips of his muse, without question and without hesitation. In such, nothing is direct or connected, but all wandering and distracted, and the reader, to comprehend the poet, must, by some process, place himself in a similar somnambulatory state—must reverize with him, and go on weaving almost invisible threads of thought, through an infinitude of words.
But when Browning is awake, he is alive all over;—witness some of his “Dramatic Lyrics,” such as “Cavalier Junes,” “Count Gismond,” “Incident in the French Camp,” “How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.”
I suppose that “Paracelsus” is esteemed the most powerful work of Browning’s genius, and is certainly very great, for the thought it embodies and its many magnificent bursts of poetry. But to me it seems too diffuse, oftentimes heavy and obscure, and sometimes verging on profanity. The most remarkable thing in it, in my estimation, is the beautiful allegorical poem introduced into part IV.,
Over the sea our galleys went.
But I love most “The Blot in the ’Scutcheon.” This is a beautiful drama—rapid in action, clear and musical in language, and most touching and mournful in its story. It inculcates a heavenly lesson of charity, and displays a wonderful knowledge of the human heart—of woman’s heart. I have read it many times, and always with intense admiration, with irrepressible tears. “Colombe’s Birthday,” and “The Flight of the Duchess,” are also very fine, but I cannot say that I like “Rippa [sic] Passes,” “A Soul’s Tragedy,” or the play, “King Victor and King Charles.” The impression left by these is neither deep nor altogether pleasant.
Yet Browning is a wonderful poet, though speaking oftener to our intellects than our hearts,—and here I come to remark upon the want which I perceive in him—a lack of strong human affinities, of empathies with his age and his race. He is not a poet as Burns, and Goldsmith, and Shelley and Elliot, were poets—as Longfellow, and Lowell and Whittier, are poets. We recognize in his poetry no earnest progressive spirit—no distinctness and intensity of purpose—no high, unselfish aim—in short, no consecration. He writes as he might write if man and the world had no need of him—if he stood alone in God’s universe, and put forth his thoughts as a tree puts forth its leaves, in obedience to an inward necessity, and responsive to the call of nature.
Thus sang the earliest poets, doubtless; but the time has come when mightier influences from without must act upon the poet’s mind, and holier obligations rest upon his spirit.
All things now are put to use—and when the elements are brought into subjection, and made to work, shall the poet, who is created from the two finer, refuse to labor with the laboring universe?—refuse to be useful as well as ornamental?
The warrior-bards live no more, and God gives us no longer his holy prophets; so it is that we now require of the poet more than they of old time—valor, heroism and the rapt faith and far-reaching vision of prophecy. With the strength and earnestness which once swung the battle-axe and drove home the sword, his song must have that intense vitality, that divine fervor once borrowed from God’s own altar. But the poet is not required to live so much in advance of his age, as to live out its highest and strongest life. While his spirit transcends that of his fellow-men, he must stand breast to breast with them, in all the common sympathies of our nature—in all the common sorrows of our lot.—With the wants, and wrongs, and woes of his race crying to him in a thousand voices, oh, how can he mistake the work to which he was called!—how can he rest, how can he trifle, how can he betray his trust!
The day of love-sonnets, madrigals, quaint conceits, dainty affectations, and small prettinesses having gone by, we demand in poetry, strength well directed, and a large, healthful, and beneficent life. Though an ideal realm, inasmuch as truth and beauty are therein transfigured, yet profoundly real in its adaptation to the world’s great needs. Of old, the few danced to the gay measures of the poet, but now, the mass labor to his strong, inspiring strains; thus he, however grand his genius, who fails to respond to this democratic spirit in the literature of to-day, can never make his home in the hearts of the people.
Reviewed:
Poems (RB), Boston: Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1850.
___________________
