R551117A. Men and Women.
The Athenæum, 17 November 1855, pp. 1327–28.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 293–296.
These volumes contain some fifty poems, which will make the least imaginative man think, and the least thoughtful man grieve. Who will not grieve over energy wasted and power misspent,—over fancies chaste and noble, so overhung by the “seven veils” of obscurity, that we can oftentimes be only sure that fancies exist? What they are meant to typify or illustrate cannot always be detected by the eyes of even kindred dreamers. Again, in the versification of these new poems, there is an amount of extravagant licence, belonging to a superfluity of power, for which only those who have studied versification as an art will be able to account or apologize. That some among the poets having the finest musical sense have written the most irregular verses, is a fact strange and true. They have relied on the sympathy of the interpreter: they have expected him here to lean on a cadence,—there to lend accent to the rhyme, or motion to the languid phrase; in another place, to condense a multitude of syllables, so as to give an effect of concrete strength. Indeed, it may be generally declared, that for those who have not this fine artistic sense, a large proportion of modern verse is not verse at all, by reason of its licence and assumption. The artists show themselves, by their exigencies, to be less masterly than the artists of old, who had their fullest praise from the few, but their full praise also from the many,—who knew that, whereas their thoughts raised them to heights where only a limited number could bear them company, the perfection of form was such that their works, if incompletely apprehended by the ignorant, the timid, and the frivolous, had still a complete charm of their own for these,—a charm of music, a charm of imagery,—a charm which kept the idea of poetry as a separate and refined art select and holy in the popular mind. Our poets now speak in an unknown tongue,—wear whatever unpoetic garniture it pleases their conceit or their idleness to snatch up; and the end too often is, pain to those who love them best, and who most appreciate their high gifts and real nobleness,—and to the vast world, whom they might assist, they bring only a mystery and receive nothing but wonder and scorn.
We fear that no one who goes through these volumes can question the justice of our remarks on their general style; no one, we are sure, can read them with understanding, and not again and again pause over thoughts, verses, pictures,—oases in the wilderness of mist and of sand,—of a bloom and a freshness such as few modern magicians are able to conjure up. What—to give an instance from the second poem in the collection—can be more lyrical than the first verse of “A Lovers’ Quarrel”?—
Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night’s rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
Only, my Love’s away!
I’d as lief that the blue were grey.
But when the Lover begins to recall the happiness he enjoyed with his Lady-love in the cold winter time, ere they had quarrelled, we imagine that the most tolerant of lovers will find such reminiscences of past happiness as the following somewhat prosaic:—
What’s in the “Times”?—a scold
At the emperor deep and cold;
He has taken a bride
To his gruesome side,
That’s as fair as himself is bold:
There they sit ermine-stoled,
And she powders her hair with gold.
Too many of Mr. Browning’s fifty poems are flawed by impertinences such as these, borne out by an audacity in Hudibrastic versification in which our author is without a rival. We do not recollect to have ever seen syllables “tossed about” with such unhesitating legerdemain, as in the lyric called “Old Pictures in Florence.” But in this poem the ease is too much the ease of the acrobat, who by much practice has learnt how to disjoint his limbs, and fling himself into any conceivable attitude; and the effect is dislocation—not grace. When, however, Mr. Browning is avowedly humorous, his mastery over diction and language takes forms of a quaintness which will be precious to all who relish humour. We have a great liking for “Life up at a Villa,” as described by “An Italian Person of Quality,”—one of those dear, insipid, voluble gentlefolks—poor, but pleasure-loving—whom Goldoni loved to draw; who hate what stands to them for country as devotedly as Millamant loathed walking in green fields. Listen only how the Signor or Signora (the latter it must be, we should say, could we forget how Italian men gossip over their cups of water) babbles about town and country:—
Is it ever hot in the square? There’s a fountain to spout and splash!
In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foambows flash
On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash
Round the lady atop in the conch—fifty gazers do not abash,
Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash!
All the year long at the villa, nothing’s to see though you linger,
Except yon cypress that points like Death’s lean lifted forefinger.
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix in the corn and mingle,
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle.
Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill,
And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill.
Enough of the seasons,—I spare you the months of the fever and chill.
Ere opening your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin:
No sooner the bells leave off, than the diligence rattles in;
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
By and by there’s the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth;
Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
At the post-office such a scene-picture—the new play, piping hot!
And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.
Above it, behold the archbishop’s most fatherly of rebukes,
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke’s!
Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero,
“And moreover,” (the sonnet goes rhyming,) “the skirts of St. Paul has reached,
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached.”
Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!
Let us now show how Mr. Browning can turn his metrical facility to more serious account, by a capital mastery of the terza rima, in his opening of “The Statue and the Bust,” an Italian legend.—
There’s a palace in Florence, the world knows well,
And a statue watches it from the square.
And this story of both do the townsmen tell.
Ages ago, a lady there,
At the farthest window facing the east,
Asked, “Who rides by with the royal air?”
The brides-maids’ prattle around her ceased;
She leaned forth, one on either hand;
They saw how the blush of the bride increased—
They felt by its beats her heart expand—
As one at each ear and both in a breath
Whispered, “The Great-Duke Ferdinand.”
That self-same instant, underneath,
The Duke rode past in his idle way,
Empty and fine like a swordless sheath.
Gay he rode, with a friend as gay,
Till he threw his head back—“Who is she?”
—“A Bride the Riccardi brings home to-day.”
Hair in heaps laid heavily
Over a pale brow spirit-pure—
Carved like the heart of the coal-black tree,
Crisped like a war-steed’s encolure—
Which vainly sought to dissemble her eyes
Of the blackest black our eyes endure.
And lo, a blade for a night’s emprise
Filled the fine empty sheath of a man,—
The Duke grew straightway brave and wise.
He looked at her, as a lover can;
She looked at him, as one who awakes,—
The past was a sleep, and her life began.
As love so ordered for both their sakes,
A feast was held that self-same night
In the pile which the mighty shadow makes.
(For Via Larga is three-parts light,
But the Palace overshadows one,
Because of a crime which may God requite!
To Florence and God the wrong was done,
Through the first republic’s murder there
By Cosimo and his cursed son.)
The Duke (with the statue’s face in the square)
Turned in the midst of his multitude
At the bright approach of the bridal pair.
Face to face the lovers stood
A single minute, and no more,
While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued—
Bowed till his bonnet brushed the floor—
For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred,
As the courtly custom was of yore.
In a minute can lovers exchange a word?
If a word did pass, which I do not think,
Only one out of the thousand heard.
That was the bridegroom.
Those who love old Italian stories will not be long, we imagine, ere they get to the end of the tale so powerfully begun. If its moral be avoided, this legend may almost pair off with its author’s “Laboratory,” which, of its order, we have always held to be one of the most complete poems existing in any language. The following short lyric is also full of power, picture, and prophecy, though the last verse is clumsier than it needed to have been.—
It was roses, roses, all the way,
With myrtle mixed in my path like mad.
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day!
The air broke into a mist with bells,
The old walls rocked with the crowds and cries.
Had I said, “Good folks, mere noise repels—
But give me your sun from yonder skies!”
They had answered, “And afterward, what else?”
Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun,
To give it my loving friends to keep.
Nought man could do have I left undone,
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.
There’s nobody on the house-tops now—
Just a palsied few at the windows set—
For the best of the sight is, all allow,
At the Shambles’ Gate—or, better yet,
By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow.
I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
A rope cuts both my wrists behind,
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
For they fling, whoever has a mind,
Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds.
Thus I entered Brescia, and thus I go!
In such triumphs, people have dropped down dead.
“Thou, paid by the World,—what dost thou owe
Me?” God might have questioned; but now instead
’Tis God shall requite! I am safer so.
With “The Patriot” may be grouped “Holy-Cross Day”—a lyric of Roman Jews, forced to attend the sermon when the annual batch of Jewish converts to Catholicism is displayed—and the “Heretic’s Tragedy,” a grim version of the rejoicings amid which Jacques du Bourg-Molay was burnt at Paris, a.d. 1314; but the first is too unctuously coarse in its heresy, and the second too ghastly in its bigotry, to be welcome, albeit both must be recognized as remarkable examples of power. Old crucifixions, martyrdoms, and saintly legends could be cited by Quintin Matsys and like painters, which the most devout lover of the ancients passes in a picture gallery shuddering, though their reality and the brightness of the colours forbid him to [p. 1328→] give the order for their expulsion. Such are these two poems.
In other of Mr. Browning’s “Men and Women,” his love poems, we have power and passion without this hideous unloveliness; and, together with power and passion, a tenderness such as few men now command. The melancholy trust and affection breathed in that farewell of a dying woman, “Any Wife to any Husband,”—the music and picture in “A Serenade at the Villa,” tempt us; but perhaps more manageable, and in point of form and delicacy of feeling newer, is the opening of the lyric “In a Year.”—
Never any more
While I live,
Need I hope to see his face
As before.
Once his love grown chill,
Mine may strive—
Bitterly we re-embrace,
Single still.
Was it something said,
Something done,
Vexed him? was it touch of hand,
Turn of head?
Strange! that very way
Love begun.
I as little understand
Love’s decay.
When I sewed or drew,
I recall
How he looked as if I sang,
—Sweetly too.
If I spoke a word,
First of all
Up his cheek the color sprang,
Then he heard.
Sitting by my side,
At my feet,
So he breathed the air I breathed,
Satisfied!
I, too, at love’s brim
Touched the sweet:
I would die if death bequeathed
Sweet to him.
Among the love poems may be classed the dramatic scene “In a Balcony,”—a tragedy of three scenes. The persons are an old Queen, who loves one of her statesmen, the man himself, and the young noble lady whose hand he seeks from his sovereign, as guerdon for the benefits he has rendered her. Let any one compare Mr. Browning’s sketch of the elder woman, surprised by her misinterpretation of Norbert’s entreaty to her into an avowal of her own passion for him, with the “Marie Tudor” of Victor Hugo, and the intimate knowledge and delicacy of the English dramatist will assert themselves in all their superiority. A few speeches may be detached, though by detaching them they suffer. The younger woman is waiting in the balcony for the result of Norbert’s suit to the Queen. The Queen, as we have said, has misunderstood this, owing to the manner in which it was phrased.—
Constance. You did not hear.. you thought he spoke
Of love? what if you should mistake?
Queen. No, no—
No mistake! Ha, there shall be no mistake!
He had not dared to hint the love he felt—
You were my reflex—how I understood!
He said you wore the ribbon I had worn,
He kissed my hand, he looked into my eyes,
And love, love was the end of every phrase.
Love is begun—this much is come to pass,
The rest is easy. Constance, I am yours—
I will learn, I will place my life on you,
But teach me how to keep what I have won.
Am I so old? this hair was early grey;
But joy ere now has brought hair brown again,
And joy will bring the cheek’s red back, I feel.
I could sing once too; that was in my youth.
Still, when men paint me, they declare me .. yes,
Beautiful—for the last French painter did!
I know they flatter somewhat; you are frank—
I trust you. How I loved you from the first!
Some queens would hardly seek a cousin out
And set her by their side to take the eye:
I must have felt that good would come from you.
I am not generous—like him—like you!
But he is not your lover after all—
It was not you he looked at. Saw you him?
You have not been mistaking words or looks?
He said you were the reflex of myself—
And yet he is not such a paragon
To you, to younger women who may choose
Among a thousand Norberts. Speak the truth!
You know you never named his name to me—
You know, I cannot give him up—ah God,
Not up now, even to you!
Constance. Then calm yourself.
Queen. See, I am old—look here, you happy girl,
I will not play the fool, deceive myself;
’Tis all gone—put your cheek beside my cheek—
Ah, what a contrast does the moon behold!
But then I set my life upon one chance,
The last chance and the best—am I not left,
My soul, myself? All women love great men,
If young or old—it is in all the tales—
Young beauties love old poets who can love—
Why should not he the poems in my soul,
The love, the passionate faith, the sacrifice,
The constancy? I throw them at his feet.
Who cares to see the fountain’s very shape,
And whether it be a Triton’s or a Nymph’s
That pours the foam, make rainbows all around?
You could not praise indeed the empty conch;
But I’ll pour floods of love and hide myself.
How I will love him! cannot men love love?
Who was a queen and loved a poet once
Humpbacked, a dwarf? ah, women can do that!
Well, but men too! at least, they tell you so.
They love so many women in their youth,
And even in age they all love whom they please;
And yet the best of them confide to friends
That ’tis not beauty makes the lasting love—
They spend a day with such and tire the next;
They like soul,—well, then, they like phantasy,
Novelty even.
Ere we have done with the love verses in these volumes, we must advert to the last poem, the epilogue in which the Poet lays his work at the feet of his wife; and from this take its opening lines as our last extract.—
There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together.
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.
Rafael made a century of sonnets,
Made and wrote them in a certain volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
Else he only used to draw Madonnas:
These, the world might view—but One, the volume.
Who that one? you ask. Your heart instructs you.
Did she live and love it all her life-time?
Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,
Die, and let it drop beside her pillow
Where it lay in place of Rafael’s glory,
Rafael’s cheek so duteous and so loving—
Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter’s,
Rafael’s cheek, her love had turned a poet’s?
You and I would rather read that volume,
(Taken to his beating bosom by it,)
Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael,
Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas—
Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno,
Her, that visits Florence in a vision,
Her, that’s left with lilies in the Louvre—
Seen by us and all the world in circle.
You and I will never read that volume.
Why one who can pour out his thoughts, fancies, stores of learning, and emotions, with an eloquent and direct sincerity such as this, should, so often as Mr. Browning has here done, prefer to rhyme the pleadings of a casuist, or the arguments of a critic, or the ponderous discoursings of some obsolete schoolman—why he should turn away from themes in which every one can answer to his sympathies, and from modes of the lyre which find their echoes wherever hearts and ears know aught of music—is an enigma no less painful than perplexing, the unriddling of which is possibly reserved for no contemporary. We had hoped that “Men and Women” would enable us to register progress in the poet’s mind (always rich to overflowing) and in the artist’s hand (always able to draw whatever its owner pleased). The riches and the ability are there, but the employment and the expression of them seem to us, on the whole, more perverse, personal, and incomplete than they were formerly.
[Henry Fothergill Chorley].
Reviewed:
Men and Women (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1855.
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