E570529A. Aurora Leigh.
The Montrose, Arbroath, and Brechin Review, 29 May 1857, p. 5.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 339–340.
Our day has seen the high and full development of a new feature in literature and authorship. Here man, in the pride and strength of his intellect, was wont to walk majestically alone. Gradually it has become apparent that there are other fountains of thought besides his, which may spring to swell the tide of the world’s hereditary knowledge. If woman is unfitted to sway the public mind by eloquence of lip and tongue, she has an undoubted influence, rightfully possessed, to use the power and magic of the pen. We have now female writers on science—lady contributors to the stock of knowledge. Whether this be part of their function admits of a doubt. There is one department, however, in which no one can fail to allow that they are peculiarly at home. Where hearts are needed to feel, and give forth that feeling in warm and fitting language, there are at once revealed the place and power of womanhood. The mighty thought, which is too exalted for the bulk of men to comprehend, may be beyond their reach; but where we seek for expression full of grace and truth of the tenderest emotions, the homeliest sorrows and wants of human life, in verse that chimes with the sweetest melody, glad or mournful, and reaches forward even to touch the finest chords of the human heart, we have our wish gratified, and the treasured companions of a pensive hour given to us by lady-writers. They can feel, and tell what they feel, till both the feeling and the expression of the feeling are rich in music. There is, however, a greater expansiveness of sympathy possible to the poetess—a sympathy not only with private and individual joys and griefs, but with the whole swell of accumulated human suffering, and the outcry of a groaning world. The deepening misery of men thrown as if into darker relief by the increasing brightness of advancing civilisation and refinement weighs heavily in the minds of our great thinkers, and the whole of the intellectual world is heaving with the problem. Some, able and distinguished, too, may be engaged in the upbuilding of a sect, or the propagation of a dogma, and hinge the amelioration of the world’s woe upon that; but there are others who can see deeper into the need, and who discard such measures as Carlyle has for ever stigmatised by the name of “Morison’s Pill Remedies.” Mrs Browning is one of these; and though animated by the fullest sympathy with the miseries of the children of men, she can see plainly, and she reveals in this book, Aurora Leigh, the fallacy that lurks under the attempt to cure, by surface application, a sore that is rankling at the heart. By such revelation in her noble verse, she does a service to the world, and gives the message with which Carlyle and Kingsley and such as they, are charged, in the dress of rhythmic melody and fine poetic thought. It is an era in the history of mankind, and the thought of mankind, when a woman thus steps forward and takes her place not ungracefully in the very forefront of the battle. The book is the drama of a life charged, not with the usual and commonplace sentiment, but with the highest thought and the boldest aspiration. It is in the form of a tale, an autobiography of the poetess, Aurora Leigh. She and her cousin Romney are both vexed with the problem of man’s condition and the gangrened state of society. Both seek to be reformers—she to reach men’s souls by her verse, and instil such God like truths as shall expel the foul fiend from his throne in the heart first, and then produce an outward change—he, by a thousand merciful appliances, to reform and improve external circumstances, believing, in fact, that “cleanliness will be the parent of godliness,” and that bodily comfort will lead to morality. Each is self-sufficient and intolerant of the other. Both are in a measure right, but from half views neither can fully succeed. With a confession of mutual error, they are reconciled at the end, and at the same time comes also a confession of mutual love which had smouldered secretly through all their alienation. But we must not spoil the story for the reader. There is a little of love-making in it, of course—for what tale could please without it?—but this love-making is entirely subordinated to wider influences and aims. There is much of exalted speculation, by no means, however, merely ladies’ philosophy, a farrago of showy nonsense, but quivering with life and truth. The thoughts are fine very often, and the language too, though perhaps just a little too spasmodic sometimes. Here is one:
I had a father! yes, but long ago—
How long it seemed that moment. Oh, how far,
How far and safe, God, dost thou keep thy saints
When once gone from us! We may call against
The lighted windows of thy fair June-heaven,
Where all the souls are happy—and not one,
Not even my father, look from work or play
To ask, ‘Who is it that cries after us,
Below there, in the dusk?’ Yet formerly
He turned his face upon me quick enough,
If I said ‘father.’ Now I might cry aloud:
The little lark reached higher with his song
Than I with crying. Oh, alone, alone—
Not troubling any in heaven, nor any on earth,
I stood there in the garden, and looked up
The deaf blue sky that brings the roses out
On such June mornings.
Reviewed:
Aurora Leigh (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1857.
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