E620329C. Last Poems.
Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 29 March 1862, p. 6.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 367.
“What is poetry coming to?” Again and again are we constrained to ask this question, when we are called upon to notice the various attempts at versification constantly thrust before the public, and paraded as specimens of power and originality, which completely outshine the productions of a past age. If we take up Tennyson, it costs more time than the labour is worth to pick out the few kernels from the bushels of chaff which that writer hurls down in a heap under the name poetry. It demands the same amount of trouble to extract, here and there, the few gems hidden in enormous masses of worthless rubbish, which escape from the brain of Owen Meredith; and so long as Mrs Browning was living, it was anything but an occupation of pleasure to undertake the thankless task of attempting to elicit talent or meaning from her method of stringing words, of sound but little sense, which that lady designated by the name of poems. It is not a grateful duty to speak in strongly condemnatory terms of any last effusions from one who, whilst living, had a name, whether deserved or not, for special talent. It seems to be, as it were, an undignified reversal of the old Latin direction—
De mortuis nil nisi bonum;
for against such a reversal feeling naturally revolts, upon the score that charity at least would allow the grave to hide faults that are both patent and positive. If, however, it is no new thing to be compelled to point out mistakes of style, and to show the utter folly of designating any specimens of writing, whether in poetry or prose, as worthy of commendation, because the author has gathered the applause of a coterie, which tyrannises over public opinion, plain speaking may doubtless be pardoned. It is on this ground alone that we enter a protest against the publication of these “Last Poems” of Mrs. Browning. Whilst that lady lived we invariably referred to the faults of her effusions, and spoke explicitly of their being little else than specimens of prose run wild. We have, therefore, the less hesitation in explaining why we entertain the same opinion respecting the contents of the volume before us, which we cannot but think it would have been better for the memory of the deceased not to have published at all. That criticism was entirely lost upon Mrs. Browning is quite certain. The moment we read any one of these “Last Poems,” it is self–evident that she was led astray by the praise of injudicious friends, and induced to treat with contempt the strictures of those, who, like ourselves, were unprepared to endorse the eccentric method she had of showing her so–called talent. Had she lived, she might, perhaps, have been induced to have revised many of these last efforts, since it is scarcely fair that they should have been given to the world in their untrimmed form and fashion. In one respect, however, they must have remained unaltered. Nothing could have improved their rhythm, which—we say it without hesitation—as a general rule, is neither poetry or prose, but a mere stringing together of words, from which it is impossible to obtain sense or meaning. That we are justified in speaking thus strongly we will endeavour to prove by letting a few passages, in different kinds of measure, and selcted at random, bear witness for themselves. Here is a specimen, the meaning of which it would puzzle a conjurer to discover:—
Meek, obedient in your sight,
Gentle to a beck or breath
Only on last Monday! Yours,
Answering you like silver bells
Lightly touched! An hour matures:
You can teach her nothing else.
She has seen the mystery hid
Under Egypt’s pyramid:
By those eyelids pale and close
Now she knows what Rhamses knows.
Let it be remembered that the words thus thrown together at random are said to be poetry, and then let it be discovered if possible, whether the following passage also deserves a similar designation:—
He thinks that, when done with this place,
All’s ended? he’ll new-stamp the ore?
Yes, Cæsar’s—but not in our case.
Let him learn we are waiting before
The grave’s mouth, the heaven’s gate, God’s face,
With implacable love evermore.
Sleep.
Implacable love is a strange façon de parler, assuredly! But let that pass. It is poetry, indeed, both in measure and meaning, when compared with the next passage upon which we have stumbled:—
I love my Walter profoundly,—you, Maude, though you faltered a week,
For the sake of . . what was it! an eyebrow? or less still, a mole on a cheek?
And since, when all’s said, you’re too noble to stoop to the frivolous cant
About crimes irresistible, virtues that swindle, betray and supplant,
I determined to prove to yourself that, whate’er you might dream or avow
By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than you have now.
The veriest schoolboy of a lower third form would be ashamed to call such word–stringing as this poetry! What, however, is to be made of such a specimen as the following, the first stanza of a poem entitled “Nature’s Remorses?”:—
Her soul was bred by a throne, and fed
From the sucking-bottle used in her race
On starch and water (for mother’s milk
Which gives a larger growth instead).
And, out of the natural liberal grace,
Was swaddled away in violet silk.
Here is another quaint speciment of poetry(!) from the same “Remorses”:—
And a fire-stone ran in the form of a man
Burningly, boundingly, fatal and fell,
Bowling the kingdom down! Where was the king?
She had heard somewhat, since life began,
Of terrors on earth and horrors in hell,
But never, never of such a thing!
The following stanza, we frankly confess, fairly beats us. What it means is not explained in any shape or fashion. Certainly it is not poetry. Is it prose?:—
What will ye put in your casket shut,
Ladies of Paris, in sympathy’s name?
Guizot’s daughter, what have you brought her?
Withered immortelles, long ago cut
For guilty dynasties perished in shame,
Putrid to memory, Guizot’s daughter?
We can, indeed, almost believe, after such effusions as these, and many more, which we have neither the patience, nor the room to extract, that there is a considerable amount of truth in the often repeated assertion of the present day, that there is no longer such a thing in existence as poetry.
Reviewed:
Last Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
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