R491201A. Poems (1850).

The Albion, 1 December 1849, p. 573.

As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 346.

For doing such honour to “immortal verse” as may be done in the mechanical process of book-making, Boston certainly bears the bell; and there is a simple and unpretending beauty about some of the Ticknorian puttings forth, that merits oft-repeated commendation. Here is Browning, the most unintelligible of modern versifiers, introduced to your notice reader; and choice spirits here and there will take pains to work through his husk of obscurity, that they may find the kernel of poetic fancy which it encloses. Many sound critics and many men susceptible in feeling have highly lauded him. It may be, that those who do not like him do not comprehend him; but something that shall live he must have in him, or he would not have kept his place even for a few years.

Reviewed:

Poems (RB), Boston: Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1850.

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