R641101A. Dramatis Personæ.
The Manchester Guardian, 1 November 1864, p. 3.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 358.
[Also reviewed in the article containing this review are works by Alfred Tennyson, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Goodwyn Barmby, and Joseph Ramsbottom. We include only those comments pertaining to RB.]
Dr. Browning’s “Dramatis Personæ” begins curiously enough, also with a poem bearing a very humble name, “James Lee;” but, unlike “Enoch Arden,” it is composed of a series of separate parts in various measures. It is the key-note of the work, and deals in the same spirit as do the following poems with the two great themes, love and life. That the author is self-contained, original, and “full of power,” everybody knows. But Dr. Browning’s muse is strangely fitful and difficult to interpret. The more so that she [sic] assumes an-involved style of utterance which is apt to alarm the timid and confuse the unpractised. Intensity of thought and terseness of diction may be alike claimed for this characteristic poet, who endeavours to grapple with the most solemn questions that arrest our attention, in a mode always telling, occasionally startling. “James Lee,” “Too late,” and “The worst of it,” may be selected as specimens of his lighter pieces, if the term light can be applied to poetry which is so full of laboured imagery. “Rabbi Ben Azra” [sic] exhibits an old theme in a new light; “The Potter’s Wheel,” as representative of the dealings of God with each single soul:—
Ay, note that potter’s wheel,
That metaphor! and feel
Why time spins past, why passive lies our clay,—
Thou to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,
“Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!”
Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Time’s wheel runs back or stops: potter and clay endure.
He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee, and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.
What though the earlier grooves
Which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim
Scull-things in order grim,
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner dress.
Look not thou down, but up!
To uses of a cup:
The festal board, lamp’s flash and trumpet’s peal;
The new wine’s foaming flow;
The master’s lips aglow!
Thou! Heaven’s consummate cup, what need’st thou with earth’s wheel?
But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since not even while the whirl was worst
Did I—to the wheel of life,
With shapes and colours rife,
Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst;
So, take and use Thy work.
Amend what flaws may lurk;
What strain o’ the stuff; what warpings past the aim.
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned;
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.
Perhaps the most interesting, if not the most powerful, poem is “A Death in the Desert,” the death of St. John, the beloved apostle, into whose mouth Dr. Browning puts words of strangely appropriate solemnity and pathos. Such a poem is worth a thousand lyric trifles. “Caliban upon Setebos, or Natural Theology in the Island,” is a title very like the author, and suggests his favourite subjects and his peculiar style. It is a perfect realisation of the workings of Caliban’s mind on such questions as fate, inequalities of gift, position, &c. and may be read as a poet’s hint to the framers of creeds and theologies in the real religious world. The longest poem is “Mr. Sludge, the medium,” a severe, searching, and truthful analysis of the mind, faith, and actions of one of the latest novelties in society, a spirit rapper. Dr. Browning is quite at home in this curious effort, and shows himself a master of human motive as well as of human portraiture. The poem recounts the self-told history of a detected medium. We must not forget to notice “Abt Vogler,” whose soliloquy after he has been extemporising upon the musical instrument of his invention is true to the life. Its meaning may be gathered from the penultimate stanza:—
And what is our failure here but a triumph’s evidence
For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonised?
Why else was the pause prolonged, but that singing might issue thence?
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe,
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome; ’tis we musicians know.
Reviewed:
Dramatis Personæ (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1864.
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