R640914A. Dramatis Personæ (Boston, 1864).
The Springfield Republican, 14 September 1864, p. 1.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 344.
There is no denying the genius of Browning. He is a man of vigorous thought, and thought in the poetical form. But his forms of expression are so angular and obscure that his thoughts are inaccessible to by far the greater part of his perplexed and mystified readers. He does not coin his gold for general circulation; he does not even offer it in ingots, of unquestioned value if not in an available form. No; but he gives you the quartz rock, rich indeed in the precious metal, but yielding it only after such processes of severe labor and nice chemical analysis as few are willing to attempt. Dramatis Personæ, the new collection of his poems just published by Ticknor & Fields, will be admired understandingly by an appreciative few, and taken on trust by a great many more, while the mass of readers, if they ever take up the book, will drop it in despair. It contains eighteen poems, several of which have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. Among those new to us one of the longest is a satirical monologue in blank verse, known as “Mr Sludge, the Medium,” which is almost as intelligible as it is severe. We subjoin a pungent extract:—
Some impulse made me set a thing on the move,
Which, started once, ran really by itself;
Beer flows thus, suck the siphon; toss the kite,
It takes the wind and floats of its own force
Don’t let truth’s lump rot stagnant for the lack
Of a timely helpful lie to leaven it!
Put a chalk egg beneath the clucking hen,
She’ll lay a real one, laudably deceived,
Daily for weeks to come. I’ve told my lie,
And seen truth follow, marvels none of mine;
All was not cheating, sir, I’m positive!
From a poem on the Parisian practice of wedding youth with gray hairs we cut four striking lines:—
He did not say, The truth is, youth
I want, who am old and know too much;
I’d catch youth: lend me sight and touch!
Drop heart’s blood where life’s wheels grate dry!
Rabbi Ben Ezra is a plea for old age, one of the best things in the book, and containing some passages which we hope to quote hereafter.
Reviewed:
Dramatis Personæ (RB), Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1864.
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