E620718A. Last Poems.
The Dublin Evening Mail, 18 July 1862, p. 4.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 368.
In this little volume we have what completes the literary productions of a very wonderful and gifted, but a mismanaged genius. In fact, Mrs. Browning should have been a man, in order to have had her mind properly disciplined and directed for producing solidified, laboriously-wrought poems, which were entitled to last, and would last among the literature of mankind. As it is, though her native talent is beyond all doubt, she neglected to undergo that discipline of hard work—training—without which the poet is born in vain. She certainly was a wonderful scholar, but she failed to turn her learning to the best account. She looked on genius as the gift direct from God, and thought that all she had to do was to empty herself of fancies as fast as they filled her brain. To borrow her own imagery her “Being”—herself—was such a complete poetic phenomenon, that she never cared to go beyond it. She was in one respect the very contrary to Milton. None but the most splendid genius could have supported the load of learning—the weight of discipline—that Milton imposed on his; none but a truly powerful genius could have proved superior to the mismanagement of the other kind of Mrs. Browning. In the gifted lady whose last effusions are before us the world possessed a conductor, as it were, of much fine and deep poetic sentiment. We can only say possessed, because she can scarcely be said, despite all the efforts of discerning critics, to be recognised even yet. She has been writing from the death of Byron up to the time of her own decease last year, persistently and ambitiously, and yet the world has never been able to understand her. Never was the poetic gift so precociously developed. She began writing when only ten years of age; she was an authoress in print some few years later; her whole soul and nature in the work; and yet she must be looked on as a failure on the whole. We say this with regard to her more pretending and important works, on which her claim to immortality could alone be based. The smaller and less imposing poetic trifles, in which she made no effort to realise her “Being” in print, remain as really very beautiful trifles. In the “Last Poems” we have a collection chiefly of the latter kind, and consequently a very beautiful poetic miscellany it is. Those poems, particularly, in which her own feeling and womanly nature appear, are most pleasing, and many interesting extracts might be made from them. We give a few verses from one which presses on us the sorrows and wrongs of the neglected children with whom all our great cities abound:—
In the alleys, in the squares,
Begging, lying, little rebels;
In the noisy thoroughfares,
Struggling on with piteous trebles.
Patient children,—think what pain
Makes a young child patient—ponder!
Wronged too commonly to strain
After right, or wish, or wonder.
Wicked children, with peaked chins,
And old foreheads! there are many
With no pleasures, except sins,
Gambling with a stolen penny.
Sickly children that whine low
To themselves and not their mothers
From mere habit—never so
Hoping help or care from others.
Little outcasts from life’s fold,
The grave’s hope they may be joined in
By Christ’s covenant consoled,
For our social contract’s grinding.
If no better can be done,
Let us do but this—endeavour
That the sun behind the sun
Shine upon them while they shiver.
On the dismal London flags,
Through the cruel, social juggle,
Put a thought beneath their rags,
To ennoble the heart’s struggle.
Oh, my sisters! children small,
Blue-eyed, wailing through the city—
Our own babes cry in them all:
Let us take them into pity.
The peculiarities of Mrs. Browning’s genius being such as we have adverted to, it was to be expected that she should naturally feel disappointed with the world for not fully appreciating her poetry, and for not understanding those peculiar strains which she considered it her direct mission to utter. Accordingly, we find here, in her “Last Poems,” a very touching lament, entitled “My Heart and I.” The following verse gives us an affecting view of the evening of a poet’s days:—
How tired we feel, my heart and I,
We seem of no use in the world;
Our fancies hang grey and uncurled
About men’s eyes indifferently;
Our voice which thrilled you so will let
You sleep; our tears are only wet:
What do we here, my heart and I?
The small volume before us, being chiefly a collection of trifles, does not properly come under the dominion of stern criticism. There are several spirited odes and verses relative to incidents in the late Italian revolution. Some of these, however, ought never to have been reproduced in a permanent form. They are far too colloquial. One, for example, about Garibaldi closes thus:—
My King, King Victor, I am thine!
So much Nice-dust as what I am
(To make our Italy) must cleave.
Forgive that. Forward with a sign
He went.
You’ve seen the Telegram?
Palermo’s taken, we believe.
For the translations which are placed at the end of the volume we have not much to say. The execrable manner in which the most beautiful of all the beautiful passages in Homer—the parting of Hector and Andromache—is rendered has put us quite out of humour with them all. Any more ridiculous blunder than to publish this unfortunate attempt among the poems which form the last legacy of the gifted author to the world, it is impossible to conceive. A translation may be a poetic parallel, like Pope’s; or it may (and had better be) a strict rendering of the original. But what are we to say to the following drawling, inanimate paraphrase? We venture to mark a few words in italics:—
Thus Hector spake, and stretched his arms to his child,
Against the nurse’s breast. With childly cry
The boy clung back, and shunned his father’s face,
And feared the glittering brass and waving hair
Of the high helmet, nodding horror down.
The father smiled. The mother could not choose
But smile too. Then he lifted from his brow
The helm, and set it on the ground to shine:
Then kissed his dear child—raised him with both arms,
And thus invoked Zeus and the general gods.
* * * * * *
With which prayer to his wife’s extended arms
He gave the child; and she received him straight
To her bosom’s fragrance—smiling up her tears.
Hector gazed on her till his soul was moved;
Then softly touched her with his hand and spake—
“My best one—’ware of passion and excess
In any fear. There’s no man in the world
Can send me to the grave apart from fate;
And no man, sweet, I tell thee, can fly fate—
No good nor bad man. Doom is self-fulfilled.”
For the sake of any of our fair friends who may not have the passage from the “Iliad” in their minds, we will give, instead of the last five lines, what it is that Homer says:—
Beloved, let not thy heart be over sad on my account; for no man can send me prematurely to Hades. But, as for fate, there is no one of men that has ever escaped it after he has once been born, neither the coward nor yet the brave man.
We would suggest that this translation at least be left out of the next edition of Mrs. Browning’s works. In closing the book, we feel a compassionate regret to think that this highly-gifted woman has closed her account with critics and mankind, and that, too, without having learned how to fulfil the destiny for which Nature seems to have designed her.
Reviewed:
Last Poems (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1862.
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