R460400A. Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.

The Christian Remembrancer, April 1846, pp. 324–330.

As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 374–375.

[Noticed in the first part of the article containing this review were works by Henry Alford and Thomas Hood. We begin with the comments pertaining to RB.]

The work of Mr. Browning is published in the well-known cheap form which betokens an author sure of his admirers. Therefore it would be unseemly altogether to dismiss him without notice of his merits, though his offences are many and unpardonable. How much power he possesses of exciting real, living, human interest, our readers shall see from the following extract, taken from “The Flight of the Duchess.”

Now in this land, Gypsies meet you only,

After reaching all lands beside;

North they go, south they go, trooping or lonely,

And still as they travel far and wide

Catch they and keep now a trace here, a trace there,

That puts you in mind of a place here, a place there:

But with us, I believe, they rise out of the ground,

And nowhere else, I take it, are found,

With the earth-tint yet so freshly embrown’d; [p. 325→]

Born, no doubt, like insects which breed on

The very fruit they are meant to feed on.

For the earth—not a use to which they don’t turn it,

The ore that grows in the mountain womb,

Or the sand in the pits, like a honeycomb,

They sift and soften it, bake and burn it—

Whether they weld you, for instance, a snaffle

With side-bars never a brute can baffle;

Or a lock, that’s a puzzle of wards within wards;

Or if your colt’s foot inclines to curve inwards,

Horseshoes they’ll hammer, which turn on a swivel,

And won’t allow the hoof to shrivel.

Then they cast bells, like the shell of the winkle,

That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle:

But the sand—they pinch and pound it like otters;

Commend me to Gypsy glassmakers and potters!

Glasses they’ll blow you, crystal clear,

Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear;

As if in water one dropped and let die

A bruised black-blooded mulberry;

And that other sort, their cunning pride,

With long white threads distinct inside,

Like the lake-flower’s fibrous roots, which dangle

Loose such a length, and never tangle,

Where the bold sword-lily cuts the clear waters,

And the cup-lily couches with all the white daughters.

Such are the works they put their hand to,

And the uses they turn and twist iron and sand to.

Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, p. 15.

Truly said Aristotle, that in wandering one sees how man is akin to man. Mr. Browning resembles the noted Mr. Borrow, in his cosmopolitic sympathies, and in his power over the ways and thoughts of foreign lands. But as, on the one hand, he has no Bible Society mission to excuse his ravings about “their Saints, their Priests, their Pope,” and the like,—so, on the other, he has none of the aversion to foreign vices to which that character must in some degree have pledged him. As his poems stand at present, there is not one of their small twenty-paged sections which can be read freely and without reserve. Would that he might be induced to supplant all his objectionable poems by such tales as that quoted above, and such children’s stories as the “Pied Piper of Hamelin.” We cannot refrain from an extract.

Out of the houses the rats came tumbling;

Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,

Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,

Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,

Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,

Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,

Families by tens and dozens:

Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives,

Followed the Piper for their lives .....

..... Until they came to the river Weser,

Wherein all plunged and perished [p. 326→]

—Save one, who stout as Julius Cæsar,

Swam across and lived to carry

(As he the manuscript he cherished)

To Rat-land home his commentary;

Which was, “At the first shrill notes of the pipe,

I heard a sound, as of scraping tripe,

And putting apples, wondrous ripe,

Into a cider-press’s gripe;

And a moving away of pickletub-boards,

And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards,

And a drawing the corks of train-oil flasks,

And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks;

And it seemed as if a voice

(Sweeter than by harp or psaltery

Is breathed) called out, O rats, rejoice!

The world is grown one vast drysaltery!” &c. &c.

With so much of the power commonly called dramatic, it is strange that Mr. Browning’s professed dramas should fall so far short as they do of his other works in his own peculiar excellence. His historical plays cast little light upon the characters and the times which they profess to realize. The “Blot in the Scutcheon” has been acted, it appears, with success, at a leading theatre; and though free from the intellectual faults of which we have been speaking, is yet false in sentiment, and questionable in morality.

[This article continued with reviews of works by Henry Alford, R.H. Horne, and Thomas Cooper. These we omit.] [p. 329→]

For good-humour’s sake, we will end with a stirring ballad of Mr. Browning’s, which brings us thoroughly back to Rembrandt and his Burgomaster:—

how they brought the good news from ghent to aix.

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;

“Good speed!” cried the watch, as the gatebolts undrew;

“Speed!” echoed the wall to us galloping through;

Behind shut the postern, the lights sunk to rest,

And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

II.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace

Neck by neck, stride for stride, never changing our place—

I turned in my saddle and made the girths tight,

Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,

Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,

Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

III.

’Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near

Lokeren, the cocks crew, and daylight dawned clear;

At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see,

At Düffeld ’twas morning as plain as could be,

And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,

So Joris broke silence with “Yet there is time!”

IV.

At Aerschot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,

And against him the cattle stood black every one

To stare through the mist at us galloping past,

And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,

With resolute shoulders, each butting away

The haze as some bluff river-headland its spray. [p. 330→]

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back,

For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;

And one eye’s black intelligence—even that glance

O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!

And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon

His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on.

VI.

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, “Stay spur!

Your Roos galloped bravely, the faults not in her,

We’ll remember at Aix,” for one heard the quick wheeze

Of her chest, saw the stretched neck, and staggering knees,

And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,

As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

VII.

So left were we galloping, Joris and I,

Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;

The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,

’Neath our feet broke the brittle white stubble like chaff,

Till over by Dalhem, a dome-spire sprang white,

And “gallop,” gasped Joris, “for Aix is in sight!”

VIII.

“How they’ll greet us,” and all in a moment his roan

Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;

And then was my Roland to bear the whole weight

Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,

With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,

And with circles of red for his eye-sockets’ rim.

IX.

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,

Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,

Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,

Called my Roland his pet name, my horse without peer;

Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,

Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is, friends flocking round

As I sate with his head ’twixt my knees on the ground,

And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,

As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,

Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)

Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

No. vii. p.1.

Reviewed:

Bells & Pomegranates. No. VII. Dramatic Romances & Lyrics (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1845.

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