R640625B. Dramatis Personæ.
Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 25 June 1864, p. 6.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 343.
We have never been able to offer the same mede of encomium to the poems of Mr. Browning which has been awarded by other critics. Indeed, we have hitherto failed to ascertain that he is a poet at all, and most assuredly the present volume of poems—as they are called—will not induce us to do so. We can find neither rhyme nor reason in them, and are utterly confused by the reiteration of words, which, to our comprehension, positively signify nothing. One class of critics compare Mr. Browning with Mendelssohn, and assert that what that great writer was to music, he is to poetry! If it had been said Wagner instead of Mendelssohn, we could have understood the reference, inasmuch as there is now and then a kernel or two of genius to be discovered amongst the chaff, just as in Wagner’s music(?) there is sometimes, but seldom, a glimpse of melody. The pièce de resistance of the “Dramatis Personæ” is “Mr. Sludge, the Medium.” and never, to our mind, could a more appropriate term than “sludge” have been found to describe its characteristics. To wade through it is terrible work, since it not only wearies, but leaves anything than pleasant reminiscences behind it. In fact, it is the veriest jumble of words that ever could be put together, and reminds us of nothing else than a mass of crude materials burled down indiscriminately which will require the labour of many hands and days to smooth and regulate without producing anything satisfactory as the result. Had we space at our disposal we could quote passage after passage to show that all which can be said for Mr. Browning’s genius is that his “poetry” is nothing else than “prose run mad.” There may be something in it, just as there are myriads of insects in the water drop; but as in the one instance, so in the other, it requires a microscopic lens of double magnifiying power to ascertain that there is either meaning, sense, or rhyme, in the shapeless lines, which resemble nothing else than the hideous animalculæ which live and disport themselves in mere stagnancy.
Reviewed:
Dramatis Personæ (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1864.
___________________
