R500500A. Poems (Boston, 1850).
The Christian Examiner, May 1850, pp. 361–372.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 373–377.
art. ii.—browning’s poems
Mr. Browning’s earliest productions were so obscure, involved, and egotistical in their character, as rather to repel than to excite the admiration of ordinary readers. Nor are his later poems entirely free from these vices. [p. 362→] But in his revised edition those pieces which most severely exercised his readers have been quietly dropped. Few persons will regret their omission; and we think our poet has acted wisely in rejecting them, as they must have tended greatly to circumscribe his popularity if printed in connection with his other works. We do not suppose, however, that he will ever become a general favorite, or attain to the same degree of popular regard which is now enjoyed by Mr. Tennyson, the only English poet of the day who approaches him in excellence. He discloses a pride of self-conceit in his manner of treating a subject, which is somewhat repulsive to those who are accustomed to the current forms of poetry. In other words, he exhibits an ungracious superiority to his audience, and commands rather than invites their attention. Hence his works are poems for the thoughtful few rather than for the thoughtless many,—dramas for the closet rather than the stage. They must be studied rather than be glanced over in a few leisure moments, or be indistinctly caught from the lips of mouthing actors amidst the glare of gas-lights, the tinsel of a theatre, and the impertinent gossip of idlers. The cold, calm, passionless student may well spend the midnight oil over them; and with each new perusal he will discover new beauties and new food for thought. There is hardly another English poet now living, in the full exercise of all his faculties, who is so suggestive of new ideas, who shows so keen an insight into the mysteries of character, or whose works are so strongly impressed with the marks of genius. Mr. Tennyson alone, as we have intimated, can dispute the preëminence with him; but the works of that deservedly popular poet are too often disfigured by a feebleness and effeminacy which we nowhere find in Mr. Browning’s poems. And although Mr. Browning has little or none of that airy fancy and musical harmony which delight us in Mr. Tennyson, he possesses a much stronger imagination and a more manly style. There is a masculine energy in his poetry which we fail to discover in Mr. Tennyson’s pieces, and which reminds us of the great dramatists of the age of Elizabeth,—those intellectual giants of the sixteenth century. We might cite, in proof of this, many instances of that happy boldness of imagery which is a prominent characteristic of their works; but we shall [p. 363→] content ourselves with giving one or two illustrations only. The following, from the dying words of Paracelsus to his friend Festus, is a striking picture of a restless life:—
Well!
Well: ’t is a strange thing. I am dying, Festus,
And now that fast the storm of life subsides,
I first perceive how great the whirl has been:
I was calm then, who am so dizzy now,—
Calm in the thick of the tempest, but no less
A partner of its motion, and mixed up
With its career. The hurricane is spent,
And the good boat speeds through the brightening weather;
But is it earth or sea that heaves below?
For the gulf rolls like a meadow, overstrewn
With ravaged boughs and remnants of the shore;
And now some islet, loosed from the land,
Swims past with all its trees, sailing to ocean;
And now the air is full of up-torn canes,
Light strippings from the fan-trees, tamarisks
Unrooted, with their birds still clinging to them,
All high in the wind. Even so my varied life
Drifts by me.
—Vol. i. pp. 137, 138.
A still finer illustration occurs in the guilty conversation between Sebald and Ottima, in Pippa Passes:—
Buried in woods we lay, you recollect;
Swift ran the searching tempest overhead;
And ever and anon some bright white shaft
Burnt thro’ the pine-tree roof,—here burnt and there,
As if God’s messenger thro’ the close wood screen
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,
Feeling for guilty thee and me: then broke
The thunder like a whole sea overhead.
—Vol. i. pp. 180, 181.
In his less lofty flights of imagination, Mr. Browning exhibits the same richness of imagery. Indeed, all his poems are thickly set with these verbal gems, which flash and sparkle with true poetic beauty. We can give only two examples, taken almost at random. Thus, when Festus, listening at the death-bed of Paracelsus, perceives a faint gleam of reason through his friend’s incoherent and feverish murmurings, he exclaims:— [p. 364→]
A sense
Will struggle through these thronging words at last,
As in the angry and tumultuous west
A soft star trembles through the drifting clouds.
—Vol. i. pp. 127, 128.
Again, when Luigi is arguing with his mother that he is peculiarly a fit person to destroy his country’s tyrant, he tells her:—
Every one knows for what his excellence
Will serve, but no one ever will consider
For what his worst defect might serve; and yet
Have you not seen me range our coppice yonder
In search of a distorted ash? it happens
The wry, spoilt branch’s a natural perfect bow!
—Vol. i. p. 210.
Mr. Browning farther possesses a keen and lively wit, a quiet humor, a decidedly sarcastic turn of mind, and a hearty dislike of all the conventional follies of our boastful age. But these characteristics are more apparent in his shorter poems than in his elaborate dramatic pieces. In Waring, for instance, he shrewdly asks:—
Who’s alive?
Our men scarce seem in earnest now:
Distinguished names!—but ’t is, somehow,
As if they played at being names
Still more distinguished, like the games
Of children. Turn our sport to earnest
With a visage of the sternest!
Bring the real times back, confessed
Still better than our very best!
—Vol. ii. p. 292.
In the Englishman in Italy he thus sarcastically indicates his political belief:—
“Such trifles,” you say?
Fortù, in my England at home,
Men meet gravely to-day
And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
Is righteous and wise,
—If ’t is proper, Scirocco should vanish
In black from the skies!
—Vol. ii. p. 340.
The Flight of the Duchess seems to be designed [p. 365→] chiefly as a satire upon the “Middle-Age-manners-adapters,” as our poet calls them, who, through the almost impenetrable darkness of the Middle Ages discover the brightness of a meridian light, and who sigh over a greatness which exists only in their own diseased imaginations, or upon the rose-colored pages of the Tractarian writers. A brief analysis of the poem will help to confirm this view, and enable us to present several fine extracts, illustrative of his various characteristics as a poet and thinker.
The story is told by an old forester, who has grown gray in service, while sitting over his bottle of wine with a friend. After professing a full knowledge of all the circumstances attending the flight of the Duchess, he thus describes his master’s ancestral territories:—
Ours is a great, wild country:
If you climb to our castle’s top,
I don’t see where your eye can stop;
For when you’ve passed the cornfield country,
Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed,
And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,
And cattle-tract to open-chase,
And open-chase to the very base
Of the mountain, where, at a funeral pace,
Round about, solemn and slow,
One by one, row after row,
Up and up the pine-trees go,
So, like black priests up, and so
Down the other side again
To another greater, wilder country,
That’s one vast red, drear, burnt-up plain,
Branched through and through with many a vein
Whence iron’s dug, and copper’s dealt;
Look right, look left, look straight before,—
Beneath they mine, above they smelt,
Copper-ore and iron-ore,
And forge and furnace mould and melt,
And so on, more and ever more,
Till, at the last, for a bounding belt,
Comes the salt sand hoar of the great sea-shore,
—And the whole is our Duke’s country!
—Vol. ii. p. 361.
Upon the death of the old Duke, his infant heir is left in charge of the Duke’s wife, a termagant of the first order; but the lady is dissatisfied with her wintry home, [p. 366→] and carries her son into foreign lands to be educated. At length they return, little improved in the eyes of the honest retainer:—
And he came back the pertest little ape
That ever affronted human shape;
Full of his travel, struck at himself.—
You ’d say, he despised our bluff old ways.
—Not he! For in Paris they told the elf
That our rough North land was the Land of Lays,
The one good thing left in evil days;
Since the Mid-Age was the Heroic Time,
And only in wild nooks like ours
Could you taste of it yet as in its prime,
And see true castles, with proper towers,
Young-hearted women, old-minded men,
And manners now as manners were then.
So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it,
This Duke would fain know he was, without being it;
’T was not for the joy’s self, but the joy of his showing it,
Nor for the pride’s self, but the pride of our seeing it,
He revived all usages thoroughly worn out,
The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn out:
And chief in the chase his neck he perilled,
On a lathy horse, all legs and length,
With blood for bone, all speed, no strength;
—They should have set him on red Berold,
With the red eye slow consuming in fire,
And the thin, stiff ear, like an abbey spire!
—Vol. ii. pp. 364, 365.
After a short time our Puseyite Duke concludes that it is good for a man to marry, and takes to himself a wife:—
She was the smallest lady alive,
Made, in a piece of Nature’s madness,
Too small, almost, for the life and gladness
That over-filled her, as some hive
Out of the bears’ reach on the high trees
Is crowded with its safe, merry bees.
—Vol. ii. p. 365.
She wins all hearts by her sweetness of temper and the gentleness of her demeanour; but her husband shows little affection for her, and her mother-in-law makes her home any thing but a pleasant abode. The fair bride’s health gradually breaks down under the constant ill treatment [p. 367→] to which she is subjected, when the worthy Duke bethinks himself that it would be proper to give a grand hunt.
Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning,
When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning,
A drinking-hole out of the fresh, tender ice
That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice,
Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold,
And another and another, and faster and faster,
Till, dimpling to blindness, the wide water rolled:
Then it so chanced that the Duke our master
Asked himself what were the pleasures in season,
And found, since the calendar bade him be hearty,
He should do the Middle Age no treason
In resolving on a hunting-party.
Always provided, old books showed the way of it!
What meant old poets by their strictures?
And when old poets had said their say of it,
How taught old painters in their pictures?
We must revert to the proper channels,
Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels,
And gather up woodcraft’s authentic traditions:
Here was food for our various ambitions,
As on each case, exactly stated,
—To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup,
Or best prayer of St. Hubert on mounting your stirrup,—
We of the household took thought and debated.
Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin
His sire was wont to do forest-work in;
Blesseder he who nobly sunk “ohs”
And “ahs” while he tugged on his grandsire’s trunkhose;
What signified hats if they had no rims on,
Each slouching before and behind like the scallop,
And able to serve at sea for a shallop,
Loaded with lacquer and looped with crimson?
So that the deer now, to make a short rhyme on ’t,
What with our Venerers, Prickers, and Verderers,
Might hope for real hunters at length, and not murderers,
And O, the Duke’s tailor,—he had a hot time on ’t.
—Vol. ii. pp. 368, 369.
Having made these preparations, the Duke commands his wife to perform her part as set forth in the musty tomes of the old chroniclers; but she refuses, on the plea of physical inability. The chivalric lover of old-fashioned sports is horror-stricken at this breach of feudal discipline; and his amiable mother comes to his assistance [p. 368→] in a fierce harangue about the ingratitude, conceit, and arrogant presumption of her daughter-in-law. Still the lady persists in her refusal; and the hunt goes on without her. Just, however, as the party is about to start, a troop of gypsies make their appearance. The leader, a villanous looking old hag, accosts the Duke; but he is deaf to her words until she tells him that she has come to pay her duty to the new Duchess. A smile at once lights up his sombre countenance, and bending forward in his saddle and whispering a few words in her ear, he commands the forester to set the old gypsy to telling stories to his wife during his absence. The servant gladly obeys, conducts them back to the castle, and remains outside of the room during the interview, occasionally catching the strangely melodious sound of the gypsy’s voice; but at the most important moment he falls asleep, and is only aroused by hearing the Duchess come out of the chamber followed by the gypsy. They proceed to the stable, where he instinctively saddles a horse; and the Duchess mounting, with the gypsy behind her, rides off, and is never heard of more:—
Brief, the Duchess was gone and the Duke was glad of it,
And the old one was in the young one’s stead,
And took, in her place, the household’s head,
And a blessed time the household had of it!
—Vol. ii. pp. 389, 390.
Mr. Browning’s sly humor is perhaps seen to the best advantage in The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a charming child’s story told in a somewhat quaint manner, but full of genuine touches of nature. His power of vivid description has already been sufficiently shown in the foregoing extracts; but we cannot refrain from citing the following spirited ballad, which forcibly reminds us of Mr. Macaulay’s Armada:—
“how they brought the good news from
ghent to aix.”
[16—.]
i.
I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
“Good speed!” cried the watch as the gate-bolts undrew;
“Speed!” echoed the wall to us galloping through; [p. 369→]
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank 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 by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
iii.
’T was moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
At Düffield, ’t was 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.
v
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,—ever 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 upwards in galloping on.
vi.
By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, “Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault ’s 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 we were left 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, bright stubble, like chaff; [p. 370→]
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 there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which could alone 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.
x.
And all I remember is, friends flocking round
As I sat 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.
—Vol. ii. pp. 318–320.
Rich as are Mr. Browning’s powers of imagination and description, his chief excellence lies in his delineation of individual character; and we know of no other living poet who so thoroughly conceives or so finely portrays the differing shades of it found in actual life. His personages have a vitality and idiosyncrasy of their own, while they are always true to nature and never degenerate into caricatures. Take almost any one of his principal characters, and we at once perceive this excellence, although we occasionally find them dealing quite too much in metaphysical arguments and discussions about abstract ideas. But, apart from this defect, which is, to a greater or less degree, inherent in nearly all his creations, we have little to object to his conceptions of character. Among his female characters, the preference, we suppose, will generally be given to Pippa, who is one of the sweetest creations of modern poetry. It is impossible to resist the beautiful simplicity and purity of her charac- [p. 371→] ter, as it is developed in the few brief glimpses which we catch of her during her single holiday. Widely different from her and from each other are the clear-headed but faithful Polyxena, the gentle Mildred, the spotless and affectionate Guendolen, the fond mother of Luigi, the tender-hearted and patriotic Colombe, the devoted Anael, the cunning Domizia, and the thoroughly wicked Ottima; yet all are admirably conceived and sharply drawn. We at once pierce to the very heart’s core of each of them, and read her whole disposition at a glance. In his delineations of male character, Mr. Browning shows equal skill. Luigi, Sebald, Monsignor, King Victor, King Charles, D’Ormea, Valence, Thorold, Austin, Henry, Gerard, Luria, Puccia, Braccio, and Tiburzio, are all living realities to the mind. From this enumeration of Mr. Browning’s best characters, we have purposely omitted all mention of the characters in Paracelsus, his earliest published poem. They seem to us too much like mere metaphysical abstractions, and too nearly approach the dangerous borders of caricature. They are the offspring of his immature years; and, notwithstanding its many beautiful passages, the poem, considered as a whole, is intolerably wearisome, and conveys but a faint idea of the powers displayed in Pippa Passes, A Blot in the ’Scutcheon, and Luria.
Mr. Browning’s mind is eminently dramatic; and all of his works have a dramatic tone. Even his lyrical and narrative poems are very properly denominated “dramatic lyrics.” Most of them, however, are dramatic poems rather than dramas, and might just as well have been cast in a different form. They lack those salient points and that briskness of movement which are needful in an effective stage-play. Mr. Macready’s powerful patronage and his own acting failed to interest a London audience in them because they were deficient in these qualities; and they were speedily laid upon the shelf.
We have left ourselves little space in which to speak of particular pieces, and can barely indicate their general character and relative merits. Paracelsus is the longest poem in the collection, and fills nearly half of the first volume; but its merit is by no means commensurate with its length. Mr. Browning’s next two publications, Sordello, and Strafford, are now withdrawn from circula- [p. 372→] tion, and probably will not again be brought forward to vex the public. Pippa Passes is the second poem in the present edition, and is altogether the sweetest and most graceful of his published works. The originality of the design, the simplicity and beauty of the story, and, above all, the character of Pippa herself, commend it to the reader, and must always make it one of our poet’s most popular pieces. King Victor and King Charles is, upon the whole, a favorable specimen of the historical drama; but it lacks interest, and the artistic execution is inferior to that of some of the other pieces. Colombe’s Birthday is a sprightly and pleasant dramatic sketch, in which the interest centres wholly in the two principal characters, and we care little for the accessories. A Blot in the ’Scutcheon comes next, and is undoubtedly Mr. Browning’s masterpiece; but it must be read as a whole in order to be fairly appreciated, for no extracts can do justice to its great power and beauty. It possesses a simple and massive grandeur to which none of his other works can lay claim. The reader’s mind is completely overwhelmed and led captive during its perusal; and he rises from it with the full conviction that no one but a poet of the highest order could thus have chained his attention. The Return of the Druses falls far short of this height of excellence, and ranks even lower than King Victor and King Charles. Luria is a powerfully conceived and skillfully executed tragedy, full of admirable passages, and only inferior to A Blot in the ’Scutcheon. A Soul’s Tragedy is properly a dramatic poem, with little incident and only a slight attempt at characterization. The second part, however, is full of quiet humor and pointed satire. Few pieces are more characteristic of Mr. Browning’s mind than this second part; and if we had not already exceeded our limits, we should be glad to present some extracts from it.
Of the dramatic lyrics, which occupy not quite half of the second volume, we think the best are, My Last Duchess, Count Gismond, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, “How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,” The Italian in England, The Lost Leader, The Laboratory, The Flight of the Duchess, Earth’s Immortalities, and those exquisitely beautiful little cabinet pictures, Meeting at Night, and Parting at Morning.
C.C. S[mith].
Reviewed:
Poems (RB), Boston: Ticknor, Reed, & Fields, 1850.
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