E630418B. Essays on the Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (New York).
The World (New York), 18 April 1863, p. 2.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 369.
The biographers of Mrs. Browning, if she can be said to have a biographer yet, have frequently mentioned the first of the two essays which make up this volume, and have doubtless excited in the minds of her admirers a desire to see it, and whatever else she may have written in prose. That poets cannot write prose has long been believed, and like most other beliefs there is some ground for it; at any rate few poets have written prose well, though many indeed have attempted it. That Mrs. Browning has failed, then, as we think she has, is not so much her fault as that of the noble brotherhood to which she belongs, and in which she has already taken her place as the greatest woman-poet. The defect of her prose may be indicated by saying that it is too enthusiastic, impassioned, poetical. It lacks the clear arrangement, the judicial calmness, the nameless something, which separates prose from poetry, thought from feeling. Her judgment on the poets whom she summons to the bar of criticism, while it is in the main just, is not particularly noticeable for novelty, especially that on the English poets, most of whom have engaged the attention of abler critical pens than hers. As her opinion, however, of some of the members of her divine order, it is worth preserving among her writings, every scrap of which we are persuaded will be demanded by an admiring posterity. Her paper on the Greek poets, originally contributed to the Athenœum in 1842, pleases us better than its sister-essay, possibly because its material is less hackneyed. Knowing her excellence as a Grecian, we turn with interest to her notices of Clemens Alexandrinus, Gregory Nazianzen, Synesus, Paul Silentiarius, and other of the later Greek singers of sacred song, whom, it is easy to perceive, she has read with loving tenderness. We may not in every instance agree with her estimate of their powers, still we sympathize with her in her admiration of them, and are glad to obtain the specimens which she gives us of their writings: as translations they seemed informed with the true Greek spirit.
Reviewed:
Essays on the Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (EBB), New York: James Miller, 1863.
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