R551124A. Men and Women.
The Illustrated Times (London), 24 November 1855, p. 403.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 298–302.
Why, in the name of wonder, cannot our modern poets “stop at home and mind their business?” Their legitimate home, we take to be England in the nineteenth century; their business to write poetry of a nature for Englishmen in the nineteenth century, to care for and appreciate. But what do they do? They go “meandering” as Dickens’s old woman has it, about Italy and the middle ages; and, of course, as it is the nature of poets to do, receive and write from such impressions as are formed by the scenes and studies they go through. They, or their friends for them, complain of a want of popularity. They would be popular enough if they wrote in the Italian language, and published their books in Florence; or if they would print their works in black letter, and distribute them among archæological and learned societies generally. But they have no more right to expect comprehension and sympathy from a struggling and hoping British people, than a French or German poet has: simply because they treat of matters and speak a language that the people do not understand.
Of course, a man has a right to do what he likes with his own—even with his own Pegasus. If Mr. and Mrs. Browning choose to put up their poetical chaise and pair in the Casa Guidi Villa, at Florence, feeding the interesting “team” on the chaff-cuttings of early Florentine literature, they are quite at liberty to do so. A poet may go to Italy, or to Jericho, if he finds that the natural or historical influences of either place will most suitably assist his muse, and nobody shall blame him. But he must take the price of his vagaries in unpopularity.
We have for some time past believed Robert Browning to be one of the greatest poets of this age. We believe so yet, with the full consciousness that not one general reader in a hundred knows more of him than his name. Mr. Browning’s few admirers are indignant with the world for not better appreciating their idol. We admire him as much as any of them, but utterly repudiate the cry. It serves Mr. Browning right. He has now written half-a-dozen volumes of, for the most part, excellent poetry, the whole of which (with the exception of a few dazzling minor pieces) must be utterly unintelligible except to minds approaching pretty nearly to Mr. Browning’s own standard of cultivation. It may be said that Mr. Browning only writes for the select few. Be it so, by all means. But do not, in that case, charge with obtuseness and injustice an unfortunate public, whose only failing is, that it has no time to study the history of the Middle Ages, and is prevented by circumstances from residing habitually at Florence.
Mr. Browning, after some years’ absence from this country (spent—in Florence, of course—apparently in the exclusive society of Andrea del Sarto, Giotto, Fra Lorenzo, the House of Medici generally, and other persons equally interesting to the present century), has returned to England, bringing back with him two volumes of poetical studies, entitled “Men and Women,” now under notice. That the characters indicated are men and women—living and breathing—we do not dispute; but, unfortunately, the men wear long-toed shoes, and furred surcoats, and the women either walk about in brocaded hoods and farthingales, or ride on pillions and palfreys. They also speak, not English, but very choice Italian (we are speaking metaphorically, of course). There are only two exceptions to the rule. One of these is a man—Mr. Browning; the other a woman—Mrs. Browning, who have not been very long married, and whose billings and cooings form a considerable item in the collection,—we are bound to add, notwithstanding the egotism of the subject, by no means the least interesting part of it.
The last allusion, though meant parenthetically, bears really upon our main objection. A lyric poet must be an egotist. He can only write from his inward emotions and experiences. Every line Byron wrote was about himself, and we were never tired of hearing of him. His joys, his doubts, his failings, his affectations, were all made public property, and the public welcomed the gift. But Byron wrote for the public, and was always intelligible. Mr. Browning writes for Mrs. Browning, and is no doubt intelligible to Mrs. Browning; but he is not always so to the public. There cannot be a more legitimate subject for a poet’s efforts than the love of a young wife, who has the additional attraction of being an admired poetess. We would gladly hear all that Mr. Browning has to say on the subject, if he would say it to us. He is too great a writer not to be able to make himself understood if he chose. But the curse of modern poetry is the ostracism of which we have already complained. Poets write for themselves, or a small circle of admirers. Nay, it would be fairer to say that they do not write at all. They simply think and feel, and jot down any jingling indications of their thoughts and feelings that may come uppermost, trusting to the discovery of a few cultivated and congenial spirits, capable of thinking and feeling exactly as they do themselves, for their comprehension.
We believe we have explained pretty correctly the puzzle (for such it is to many) of Mr. Browning’s want of popularity. The present volume will in no degree add to his scanty possessions in that desired commodity. Nevertheless, it contains some most exquisite poetry, in its way, as fine as anything in the language. But its way is a very bad way. The book contains abundance of “noble thoughts,” that only “shape themselves into harmonious numbers” occasionally, and as it would seem by accident. To the bulk of readers, the volume would seem a mass of fog and lunacy. We admit the fog, but there is no saner man breathing than Robert Browning. He is only a careless man of genius, vitiated by the habits of his age and order. He sets all rules of metre at defiance (except in the case of blank verse, for which he has a remarkable faculty); invents new ones that you cannot possibly read aloud to any music whatever; repeats himself incessantly; adopts the clumsiest images, and often destroys his thoughts, laboriously, for the sake of bringing in rhymes—on the household principle that “lazy people take a great deal of pains.” Finally, he disfigures fine passages as in pure wantonness, by the most preposterous and far-fetched “Ingoldsby” rhymes; and the worst of it all is, you feel throughout that those glaring faults arise not from incompetency, but from the veriest recklessness—from a want of proper respect, for the poet’s vocation, or rather for his audience.
What does the reader say to the following passage (from “A Lover’s Quarrel,” Vol. I., p. 15.)
What of a hasty word?
Is the fleshly heart not stirr’d
By a worm’s pin prick,
When its roots are quick?
See the eye of a fly’s foot blurred—
Ear, when a straw is heard
Scratch the brain’s coat of curd!
What do the last two lines mean? And is not the whole insufferably slovenly and detestable? Would it not require a very hopeful disposition indeed to go on with the work after opening it at such a passage?
The seventh poem in the first volume is called a “Toccata of Galuppi’s.” Immediately preceding it is another (one of the best in the book, by the way) entitled “Fra Lippo Lippi.” The latter turns out to be Lippino, the painter of the time of Cosmo di Medici. A “Toccata” is an old-fashioned piece of music, and “Galuppi” a forgotten composer. In order to read an English poet, is it necessary to be always furnished with Italian and biographical dictionaries?
Turn to page 190, in the same volume, and try and read aloud a poem (based on a charming thought), entitled “A Pretty Woman”—if you can. Take the first stanza—
That fawn-skin dappled hair of hers,
And the blue eye,
Bright and dewy,
And that infantine fresh air of airs.
“Blue eye” is supposed to rhyme to “dewy.” You must therefore read “blewy” or “dew-eye ”—either of which is intolerable.
Try two more passages (stanzas 4 and 6).
And in turn we make you ours, we say—
You and youth, too,
Eyes and mouth, too,
All the face composed of flowers, we say.
But for loving, why, you would not, sweet,
Though we prayed you,
Paid you, brayed you
In a mortar—for you could not, sweet.
Fancy—after the indelicacy of offering a young lady pecuniary remuneration for her affections—the cruelty of braying her in a mortar! It means nothing—it is purely for the sake of the rhyme! This is worse than the laziness of Thomson, who eat peaches from the tree with his hands in his pockets. It is swallowing them, slugs and all.
Take the following as specimens of the “Ingoldsby” atrocities we have alluded to—
Is the creature too imperfect, say?
Would you mend it,
And so end it?
Since not all addition perfects, aye!
* * * * *
Rosy rubies make its cup more rose,
Precious metals
Ape the petals,
Last, some old king locks it up morose.
We have long had a rythmical bone of this description to pick with Mr. Browning, for making, in one of his earliest and most beautiful poems (the “Flight of the Duchess”) “ins and outs” (the accent on “ins”), rhyme with “thin sand doubts.” But Mr. Browning was a young writer in those days, and, as such, claimed an impunity for numerous eccentricities to which he is no longer entitled. What excuse is there for a man of forty—a poet of nearly twenty years’ standing—writing such stuff as the following—
Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive—
Four overbears them all, strident, and strepitant—
Five—O Danaides, O sieve!
“O sieve” is suppose to rhyme to explosive. The allusion to the Danaides is dragged in head and shoulders for the sake of this priceless gem of wit and melody. The only possible excuse for such apparent mid-summer madness, is, that Mr. Browning, during his long residence among the vines and picture galleries of Florence, has forgotten the sound of his own language.
We have somewhat ungraciously, as it would seem, devoted the greater bulk of the space allotted to us to exposing the faults of Mr. Browning’s poems, without a word as to their beauties. We consider such a course the critic’s first duty, especially when the faults are so prominent as to conceal the beauties. Had we a less high opinion of, and hopeful admiration for, Mr. Browning, we should have let him alone, or contented ourselves with selecting a few of his most presentable morsels for quotation. But it pains us to see a noble edifice disfigured by heaps of rubbish that absolutely prevent approach to it. We could occupy, however, far more space, and that far more pleasantly, in calling attention to the countless beauties of the work, than we have been compelled to devote to an indignant protest against its glaring improprieties. If Mr. Browning has allowed himself to fall into carelessness in the matter of workmanship, his intellect has, in the meantime, been acquiring force and expansion. He writes more like a man who has gone through the difficult process of “making up his mind,” than when he wrote “Paracelsus” and “Pippa Passes,” certainly than when he wrote “Strafford” and “Sordello.” As a collection of poems, the present is inferior to the author’s first publication, from the blameable slovenliness we have so severely commented on, which has, in almost every case, prevented satisfactory development of the original idea. There is nothing in the book so great as “Pippa Passes,” or so exquisitely beautiful as “The Flight of the Duchess,” and we look in vain for anything so tersely dramatic and breathlessly exciting as the “Ride from Ghent to Aix;” it is true that we might look equally in vain for a parallel to that remarkable poem in the works of any other writer, still it is as certain as anything we have stated that no other living writer could have produced “Men and Women.” The fundamental excellences make its defects of surface all the more intolerable. “Fra Lippo Lippi”—one of those “dramatic lyrics” (the term is the author’s own happy invention) in which Mr. Browning most excels—is an admirable study of history and character. Here is an extract from it describing the education of a self-taught artist—
But, mind you, when a boy starves in the street
Eight years together, as my fortune was,
Watching folks’ faces, to know who will fling
The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,
And who will curse and kick him for his pains.
* * * * *
How say I? Nay, which dog bites, which lets drop
His bone from the heap of offal in the street!
The soul and sense of him grow sharp alike;
He learns the look of things, and none the less
For admonitions from the hunger pinch.
It is difficult to believe that the above fine lines, worthy of the best Elizabethan authors, can have been written by the author of the tuneless doggrel previously quoted.
After so much unavoidable censure, it is pleasant to quote a gem of tenderness and crowded thought like the following:—
a woman’s last word.
Let’s contend no more, Love,
Strive nor weep—
All be as before, Love,
—Only sleep!
What so wild as words are?
—I and thou
In debate, as birds are,
Hawk on bough!
See the creature stalking
While we speak—
Hush and hish the talking,
Cheek on cheek!
What so false as truth is,
False to thee?
Where the serpent’s tooth is,
Shun the tree——
Where the apple reddens
Never pry—
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I!
Be a god and hold me
With a charm—
Be a man and fold me
With thine arm!
Teach me, only teach, Love!
As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love,
Think thy thought——
Meet, if thou require it,
Both demands,
Laying flesh and spirit
In thy hands!
That shall be to-morrow,
Not to-night:
I must bury sorrow
Out of sight
—Must a little weep, Love,
—Foolish me!
And so fall asleep, Love,
Loved by thee.
Is not the above condemnation out of the poet’s own mouth—as showing what he can do when he takes pains?
Mr. Browning has not visited Italy for nothing. The following apostrophe to his favourite country (a false rhyme in it, by the way) could make us forgive much unnecessary devotion to the Florentine interests.
I follow wherever I am led,
Knowing so well the leader’s hand—
Oh, woman country—wooed, not wed—
Loved all the more by earth’s male lands
Laid to their hearts instead!
“Up at a villa down in the city” is a life-like bit of description, conveying some thoughtful satire. “Evelyn Hope” is the most perfect lyric of the collection, viewed in all its proportions. It is much the same idea of love after death as had been previously treated by Edgar Poe, in “Annabel Lee.” We regret that want of space prevents our quoting it.
“In a Balcony” is a short dramatic fragment, in which we are not at all surprised to find—for Mr. Browning is essentially a dramatist—the condensed materials of a complete tragedy, and a very good one. Here is a specimen of the language;—the speaker is an old Queen who is led to believe she has inspired a young man with love.
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 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, makes rainbows all around?
You could not praise, indeed, the empty couch;
But I’ll pour floods of love and hide myself.
We must content ourselves with one more quotation, from “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came”—a Hood-like landscape of desolation.
If there pushed any ragged thistle stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped—the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves—bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness? ’Tis a brute must walk
Pashing their lives out, with a brute’s intents.
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy—their dry blades pricked the mud,
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his very bones astare,
Stood stupified how ever he came there——
Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud!
Alive? he might be dead for all I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck astrain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane.
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe:
I never saw a brute I hated so——
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
And the mention of Hood suggests a lesson to Mr. Browning, with which we will conclude our notice.
Perhaps the two most popular poets of our time, and the two who will be most popular with posterity, are Hood and Longfellow. Mr. Browning possesses a grasp of mind and a degree of poetic insight infinitely greater than either of those exquisite writers. But they have both been—what Mr. Browning has not—hard-working authors—literary men, in fact, mixing with, and working for, their fellow human sufferers—fighting the battle of life and letters manfully. They served their apprenticeship. The result was, that each, in time, learnt to do full justice to such faculties as he possessed. To us a common-life metaphor (which will disgust some of Mr. Browning’s distinguished admirers a little), “work turned out” by them was complete. They were of and for their time, and knew too well the importance of their calling to slur its duties over. There is no obscurity in their writings. Whatever they had worth saying, they knew it was their duty to say well and clearly. Mr. Browning’s admirers will, no doubt, be scandalised at our placing their great poet in the same category with two writers who appeal to an audience of millions with throbbing hearts, instead of hundreds with cambric shirt-fronts and college degrees. Mr. Browning himself, we are convinced, will feel differently. If he is the true poet at heart we take him for, he cannot look upon the exquisite symmetry and laborious perfection (the labour only apparent to the practised eye of a poet) of “The Bridge of Sighs” or “Evangeline,” without a feeling of shame at his own negligence of great gifts. Mr. Browning knows as well as we do, that he has never written a poem so perfect as either of the two we have cited—both by poets inferior to himself. Slovenliness in painting is no longer tolerated. Were Sir Joshua Reynolds living, he would not be allowed to content us with mere handsome faces, looking through cloudy draperies, with green dabs of a pound brush behind to indicate trees. A painting to charm—and (let us not blink the fact, for it is a necessity of the age)—to sell, must be finished; not moral, blurred and indicated. Is it not discreditable that poets should be behind painters in recognising the tendency of the age—and that the most practical teaching should fail to reform them? Why do people crowd, weep, laugh, and wonder round the canvases of Hunt and Millais; and neglect, (or at all events only buy, when it is the fashion) the books of Browning? Because the former pay them the homage of labouring at their works till complete and presentable, while the latter insults them with the loose sweepings of a common-place book in lieu of finished poems.
Mr. Browning is still a young man, and his mind is evidently of the slowly-developing order. Let him, by the love of humanity he evidently possesses, and the hope for honest fame he cannot be free from, abandon the applause of coteries, or the still more reprehensible indifference of egotism, and plant himself in a wider field. God has given him the power of song—to abuse which gift is a sin. He may not sing in an unknown tongue, or neglect one single string of his lyre. He is too good a man for this century to lose, and we have sufficient faith in his conscience and perceptions (putting any affectation of the influence of our individual warnings out of the question), to believe that he will yet become a great poet, instead of what he is now—a mere suggester of great poems to other people.
Reviewed:
Men and Women (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1855.
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