R460400B. Pippa Passes and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics.
The Eclectic Review, April 1846, pp. 421–426.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 375–377.
[Also noticed in the article containing this review were works by Robert Southey, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, and R.H. Horne. We include only those comments pertaining to RB.]
The “Bells and Pomegranates” of Mr. Robert Browning, are poems chiefly in a dramatic form, published in numbers. They possess all the beauties and the blemishes of the writer, and these are many and great. Mr. Browning would be a poet of a high order, if he could free himself from his affectations, and set before himself a great aim in poetry. That aim should be the advocacy of great principles, and inculcation of great sentiments. As it is, with powers capable of all this, he makes himself merely a puzzle to those that see here and there really brilliant passages in him, and to the general reader—caviare. For a long time we were inclined to believe him really insane. We could not bring ourselves to believe that any man who possessed the power evidenced in his writings would voluntarily assume a form of confused and crazy eccentricity, merely for the poor pleasure of making people wonder. But we came at length to his drama of “The Blot in the ’Scutcheon,” written for representation at Drury-Lane, and then the conviction was forced on us. Here all is as clear and rational in language as any plain understanding can desire. Mr. Browning, then, can be intelligible, if he will. He can be sane at his pleasure, and we beg [p. 422→] of him that if he must indulge in mystification, he will do it in some private circle, and not before the public. If he really understands his own powers, he ought to know that the lasting reputation of a poet cannot spring out of the buffoonery of a barbarous style, but out of great truths, truthfully and clearly enunciated. We see in the progress of these “Bells and Pomegranates” symptoms, hopeful symptoms, of this knowledge dawning upon him. In the first, “Pippa Passes,” the craziness is outrageous; in the second, “King Victor and King Charles,” there is scarcely less of it; in the third, “Dramatic Lyrics,” there is enough; in the fourth, “The Return of the Druses,” pretty well; in the fifth, the “Blot in the ’Scutcheon,” all is clear; in the sixth, “Columbus’s Birth-Day,” there is not much to complain of; and in the last, there is not only clearness but higher purpose.
But besides muddiness of style, Mr. Browning has also much muddiness of matter to get rid of. There is a sensual taint about his writings which will bring him one day a bitterness that no amount of reputation will be found an antidote for. Let him purify his style and his spirit, and we shall hope to meet him again on a future day in a far higher and nobler position. Let us take a specimen of the cloudy and the clear, leaving the licentious for the author to purge it out of his next edition. The title of “Pippa Passes,” is derived from an Italian girl, Pippa, who, during the progress of a dramatic sketch, which actually comes to no conclusion, though there is murder in it, is constantly passing and saying something. She jumps out of bed in the morning, uttering a very incoherent soliloquy, and goes to bed with another as incoherent, of which the following is an extract:—
Pippa’s chamber again. She enters it.
The bee with his comb,
The mouse at her tray,
The grub in its tomb,
Wile winter away:
But the fire-fly, and hedge-shrew, and lob-worm, I pray,
Where be they?
Ha, ha, thanks my Zanze—
“Feed on Lampreys, quaff Breganze”—
The summer of life’s so easy to spend!
But winter hastens at summer’s end,
And fire-fly, hedge-shrew, lob-worm, pray,
Where be they?
No bidding you then to … what did Zanze say?
Pare your nails, pearlwise, get your small feet shoes,
And like .... what said she? … and less like canoes.’ [p. 423→]
Pert as a sparrow .... would I be those pert
Impudent staring wretches! it had done me,
However, surely no such mighty hurt
To learn his name who passed that jest upon me.
No foreigner, that I can recollect,
Came, as she says, a month since, to inspect
Our silk-mills—none with blue eyes, and thick rings
Of English-coloured hair, at all events.
Well, if old Lucca keeps his good intent,
We shall do better—see what next year brings—
I may buy shoes, my Zanze, not appear
So destitute, perhaps, next year!
Bluf—something—I had caught the uncouth name
But for Monsignor’s people’s sudden clatter
Above us—bound to spoil such idle chatter,
The pious man, the man devoid of blame,
The .... ah, but … ah, but, all the same—
No mere mortal has a right
To carry that exalted air:
Best people are not angels quite—
While not worse people’s doings scare
The devils; so there’s that regard to spare, etc. etc.
—p. 15.
If this were meant for the mental ramblings of a crazy girl, it were admirable, but three-fourths of the people in the drama talk more confusedly. Who would believe that these ravings and “The Flight of the Duchess,” “The Lost Leader,” “Italy in England,” and “England in Italy,” with many smaller poems, rich with descriptive power and brilliant thought, were the product of the same mind? Let us take a portion of “Italy in England,” as our second specimen:—
ITALY IN ENGLAND.
That second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her bloodhounds through the country side,
Breathed hot and instant on my trace,
I made six days a hiding-place
Of that dry, green old aqueduct
Where I and Charles, when boys, have plucked
The fire-flies from the roof above
Bright creeping through the moss they love.
—How long it seems since Charles was lost,
Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed
The country in my very sight;
And when that peril ceased at night,
The sky broke out with red dismay
Of signal fires; well there I lay [p. 424→]
Close covered o’er in my recess,
Up to the neck in ferns and cress,
Thinking on Metternich our friend,
And Charles’s miserable end,
And much beside, two days; the third
Hunger o’ercame me when I heard
The peasants from the village go
To work among the maize; you know
With us, in Lombardy, they bring
Provisions packed on mules, a string
With little bells that cheer their task,
And casks, and boughs on every cask,
To keep the sun’s heat from the wine.
These I let pass, in gingling line,
And, close on them, dear noisy crew,
The peasants from the village too;
For at the very rear would troop
Their wives and children in a group
To help, I knew; when these had passed,
I threw my glove to strike the last
Taking the chance. She did not start,—
Much less cry out, but stooped apart
One instant, rapidly glanced round,
And saw me beckon from the ground.
A wild bush grows and hides my crypt;
She picked my glove up while she stripped
A branch off, then rejoined the rest
With that; my glove lay in her breast:
Then I drew breath: they disappeared:
It was for Italy I feared.
An hour, and she returned alone
Exactly where my glove was thrown.
Meanwhile came many thoughts; on me
Rested the hope of Italy;
I had devised a certain tale
Which, when ’twas told her could not fail
Persuade a peasant of its truth;
This hiding was a freak of youth;
I meant to give her hopes of pay
And no temptation to betray.
But when I saw that woman’s face
Its calm simplicity of grace,
Our Italy’s own attitude
In which she walked thus far, and stood,
Planting each naked foot so firm
To crush the snake and spare the worm—
At first sight of her eyes, I said,—
“I am that person on whose head [p. 425→]
They fix the price because I hate
The Austrians over us; the State
Will give you gold—oh, gold so much,
If you betray me to their clutch!
And be your death for aught I know,
If once they find you saved their foe:
Now, you must bring me food and drink,
And also paper, pen, and ink,
And carry safe what I shall write
To Padua, which you’ll reach at night
Before the duomo shut; go in,
And wait till Tenebrae begin:
Walk to the Third Confessional,
Between the pillar and the wall,
And kneeling, whisper whence comes peace?
Say it a second time; then cease;
And if the voice inside returns,
From Christ and Freedom: what concerns
The cause of Peace?—for answer, slip
My letter where you placed your lip;
Then come back happy, we have done.
Our mother service—I, the son,
As you the daughter of our land!”
Three mornings more she took her stand
In the same place, with the same eyes:
I was no surer of the sun-rise
Than of her coming: we conferred
Of her own prospects, and I heard
She had a lover—stout and tall,
She said, then let her eye-lids fall,
“He could do much”—as if some doubt
Entered her heart,—then, passing out,
“She could not speak for others—who
Had other thoughts; herself she knew”:
And so she brought me drink and food,
After four days the scouts pursued
Another path: at length arrived
The help my Paduan friends contrived
To furnish me; she brought me news:
For the first time I could not choose
But kiss her hand, and lay my own
Upon her head—“This faith was shown
To Italy, our mother;—she
Uses my hand, and blesses thee!”
She followed down to the sea-shore;
I left, and never saw her more.—pp. 4–5.
That is the mode of writing; let Robert Browning pursue that, and he will not only be well understood, but justly esteemed. [p. 426→] There is a sense of what is noble in these lines, which, if followed, will lead on to a fame far beyond all the wonder to be excited by eccentricity and strange phrases. Perhaps, however, there is nothing in these numbers fuller of the evidences of great poetical power than the small piece, “Pictor Ignotus.”
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates. No. I. Pippa Passes (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1841.
Bells & Pomegranates. No. VII. Dramatic Romances & Lyrics (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1845.
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