E630525A. The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets.
The Standard, 25 May 1863, p. 2.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 369.
Englishmen though Christians, are not, therefore, free from idolatry. We do not mean to produce the stale gibe about mammon worship, but we do assert the fact, and here is an instance of it. Mrs. Browning has gone to her rest, leaving a whole troop of worshippers behind her. They reverence every line she ever wrote, they idolise every verse she ever sung, they pay homage to every sentiment she ever expressed. It may be a thing of one or a thing of twenty years ago, but it is all the same to them, so long as it is hers. Now, Mrs. Browning in her time wrote many glorious things, but she also indited many foolish ones. This, which is true, a real Browningite will no more admit than he will allow, what is not true, that she was altogether a shallow and spasmodic poet. He will admit no variation or shadow of turning in the worth of everything from her pen, and he cherishes her every line as he would cherish some article of religious faith. It is to the existence of such a Browning–olotry that we owe this little volume. Not by any means that the book is not worthy of publicaton; it is, indeed, very readable, very able, very judicious; but that it is Mrs. Browning’s is the sole reason that it sees the light. We think the worshippers of the Browning star are doing much harm to their poetic divinity. They are everywhere so exaggerating her merits that they will speedily inspire a re-action. The world will not be forced to admit her super–eminence among the modern poets; and in self–defence, the world will soon be driven to deny that she had notable merit at all. This would be deplorable, but it seems not unlikely to be inevitable. Mrs. Browning’s admirers will do well to take the hint.
Yet we are glad that this volume has been issued. It shows Mrs. Browning as a critic, and a goodly and generous critic too; a learned critic withal. We like it better than many of her poems, and every reader will like it better too, some than this poem, some than that. It is divided into two parts, both being reprints of criticisms which appeared in the Athenæum of 1842. The first part less criticises than passes in review the poets of the early Eastern Christians. It is a field that at that time was little worked, and in which there will yet be many a pleasant year spent by explorers—a field, we were nearly saying inexhaustible, but certainly not to be grubbed bare in our day and generation. In the hundred pages of this essay there is collected a wonderful amount of interesting information, and it cannot be said that injustice is done to any of the poets mentioned, for all receive a fair measure of inquiry at the hands of the writer. Dr. Neale has gone deeper into the mine, but they are many who have no time for his dissertations, which are, besides, different not only in kind but in intention; and in Mrs. Browning’s essay these will see much of the subject—in as it were a telescopic bird’s–eye view—depicted by a hand strangely, as we would have thought, calculated for such work. There is little doubt that had Mrs. Browning revised this essay she would either have suppressed it altogether or have brought its matter down to a later stage in our knowledge of the subject. As she wrote it, however, it is here, and though incomplete, if judged by the strict standard of to–day, it is the best summary of the subject we have ever met with. We have not less warmth, though less length, of praise for the second part, a critical essay on the English Poets from Chaucer to Wordsworth. In the first part there was a bye–path of poetry to be described; here is the beaten high road along which every one travels. And yet what novelty and freshness there are in the notes upon it. We have not time to examine or room to quote, so we must e’en let this essay alone; simply saying that to half the world it will seem better, because fresh and new where so much has been stale and old, than the other; while the other moiety of readers will pronounce inferior, because less attractive by novelty. Anyhow, no one can deny that these essays are a valuable contribution to handy literature, and if they have been produced to meet a sort of devotional craving, still out of evil cometh good, and out of this evil much, very much pleasure and instruction for ordinary people, to whom we commend this book with less reserve than we have ever attached to any of Mrs. Browning’s works.
Reviewed:
The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1863.
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