R551201A. Men and Women (Boston, 1856).
The Albion, 1 December 1855, p. 573.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 310–311.
But for the appearance of “Men and Women,” this year, prolific as it has been in verse, would have been a barren year for song. Tennyson, Longfellow, and Bailey have all published long poems; but what are they? “Maud” is in some respects a failure; “The Song of Hiawatha” a burlesque; and the incomprehensible “Mystic”—there’s no telling what sort of a thing that is. But these “Men and Women” are wonderful. They not only show that Browning has not retrograded, like many of his contemporaries; some of them excel all his former creations, and place him in the front rank of the world’s great dramatists.
Since Shakespeare, it may be doubted whether we have had any dramatist to compare with Robert Browning. To be sure, he has produced no successful acting play: but he has done something better; he has written that sweetest, saddest tragedy of youth and sin—“The Blot on the ’Scutcheon;” that chivalrous and beautiful love-play—“Colombe’s Birthday;” the passionate scenes of Sebald and Ottima, in “Pippa Passes;” “The Last Duchess;” and dramatic lyrics innumerable. That indefinable something, which we call the dramatic element, is the life and soul of Browning’s poetry. He is a dramatist, or nothing. He cannot for the life of him write a subjective poem, no matter how short. His mind projects itself into imaginary existences which colour his themes. There is no such man as Robert Browning among his “Men and Women.” In his stead, we have Fra Lippo Lippi, Bloughram [sic], Andrea del Sarto, Norbert, and many a nameless shape:
They come like shadows, so depart.
There is, however, one peculiarity about his dramatic pieces, which will prevent them ever being widely read; they are not clear enough at first. You read line after line of certain passages, in a kind of dream, not understanding what you read. It seems to you that you are about to obtain glimpses of strange deeps of character, mysterious insights into the nature of man; but just at that moment, something thwarts Browning or yourself, and presto, all is obscure again. Instead of giving results, he gives processes; and leaves you to deduce results. His characters think while they speak:—their thoughts may be plain to them, but they are Greek to you. Their soliloquies are full of questions that need no answers: of answers to imaginary questions; of sudden starts and apostrophes; in short, they are as chaotic as the minds and hearts from which they spring. Browning works, as the Germans have it, “from within, outwards.” This method is a serious drawback to successful dramatic writing; but he overcomes it splendidly. You confess the spell of his genius, even when it perplexes you most; and when you lay down the book, his nebulous matter slowly comes out into constellations.
The volume before us has all his faults and excellencies. Its range of subjects is wide, and their treatment is original and striking, though we must admit that many of the measures are cramp and harsh, “Like sweet bells jangled out of tune.”
In no former volume has Browning shown so great a mastery over language. He does whatever he pleases with it. The words ring, and crack, and snap; the crabbed lines are alive. Here and there are wonderful gleams of description, “words which are things.” Browning’s love of nature is intense: he has the eye of a painter, and the minute knowledge of a naturalist. In the way of grouping what can be finer than the following from “Fra Lippo Lippi?”
And hereupon they bade me daub away.
Thank you! my head being crammed, their walls a blank,
Never was such prompt disemburdening.
First, every sort of monk, the black and white,
I drew them, fat and lean; then, folks at church,
From good old gossips waiting to confess
Their cribs of barrel dropping, candle-ends,
To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,
Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there
With the little children round him in a row
Of admiration, half for his beard and half
For that white anger of his victim’s son
Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,
Signing himself with the other because of Christ
(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this
After the passion of a thousand years)
Till some poor girl, her apron o’er her head
Which the intense eyes looked through, came at eve
On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf,
Her pair of ear-rings and a bunch of flowers
The brute took growling, prayed, and then was gone.
The bulk of the volume is a series of dramatic studies. The best of these are “Lippo Lippi,” “Andrea del Sarto,” and “In a Balcony.” They are superb. “Evelyn Hope;” “Any wife to any husband;” “The Statue and the Bust;” “How it strikes a Contemporary;” and “The Patriot,” are excellent. Were this our journal a book of selections, we should quote them all. But the poem of poems is “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.” It has all the best parts of Tennyson’s “Marianna,” and Hood’s “Haunted House,” with a terrible power and wildness entirely its own. We quote it to-day, at length, on our first page. Read it carefully, we pray you. Read also the following, in livelier vein, with a dash of most pleasant satire. It is almost too long for our space; but we can’t find it in our heart to cut it.
up at a villa—down in the city.
(As distinguished by an Italian person of quality)
Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square.
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!
Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one’s life is a perfect feast;
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.
Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull
Just on a mountain’s edge as bare as the creature’s skull,
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull!
—I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair’s turned wool.
But the city, oh the city—the square with the houses! Why?
They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there’s something to take the eye!
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry!
You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by:
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high:
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.
What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights,
’Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights:
You’ve the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze,
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive trees.
Is it better in May, I ask you? you’ve summer all at once;
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns!
Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell,
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.
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 couch—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 to see though you linger,
Except yon cypress that points like Death’s lean lifted forefinger.
Some think fire-flies 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 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!
Bang, whang, whang, goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;
No keeping one’s haunches still: it’s the greatest pleasure in life.
But bless you, it’s dear—it’s dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate.
They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate
It’s a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city!
Beggars can scarcely be choosers—but still—ah, the pity, the pity!
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with gowns and sandals,
And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles.
One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross with handles,
And the Duke’s guard brings up the rear, for the better prevention of scandals.
Bang, whang, whang, goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!
Whilst we thus exalt Robert Browning, it must be borne in mind that what he writes is not meat for babes; and that whilst we recognise his grand poetic power, we don’t adopt his credo.
Reviewed:
Men and Women (RB), Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1856.
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