E630508A. Essays on the Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (New York).
The Congregationalist (Boston), 8 May 1863, p. 4.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 369.
“The voice of the turtle is heard in the land. The green book of the earth is open, and the four winds are tuning the leaves.” Thus opens Mrs. Browning’s review of the English Poets, now first given to our American world, although published in a British periodical many springs since. The first sentence is an unveiling of the spirit of the whole. The sunshiny warmth of poetic sympathy, the geniality and catholicity which characterize genius alone, make for the book its own peculiar atmosphere. We feel in reading that there are Southwinds and violet-resurrections in criticism even—when the critic is also a poet. Indeed, this just and sisterly appreciation of our great masters of song, Chaucer, Spencer, and Wordsworth, suggests the idea that only poets have a right to criticise poetry. There is a freshness in what is here written—as if nothing had been said on the subject before, as if this reviewing were not the most hackneyed affair in the world. There is also the advantage of obtaining Mrs. Browning’s own philosophy of Art; although a faithful reader of her poetry will have gathered it thence already. The first half of the volume is devoted to the Greek Christian poets, some of whom, seen through the medium of a poet’s enthusiasm, wear haloes unseen before; while others are unceremoniously jostled from their stolen Pegasus.
Of Mrs. Browning it may well be said, in her own words, written of one of these same Greek poets, that, whether she speaks through prose or verse, her voice “is a voice with a soul in it, clear, and sweet, and living; and we who have walked long in the desert, leap up to its sound as to the flowing of a stream, and would take a breath by its side both for the weariness which is gone and the repose which is coming.” Her closing extract from Daniel’s “Musophilus” gives an insight into her exalted idea of the poet’s work, that it is a heroism, a martyrdom, if need be. She, surely, had a right to stand among the anointed bards, and say,
“This is the thing that I was born to do,
This is my scene, this part must I fulfill.”
Reviewed:
Essays on the Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets (EBB), New York: James Miller, 1863.
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