R551205A. Men and Women.
The Morning Post, 5 December 1855, p. 2.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 328–330.
We have placed these two books* under one heading, because we wish to compare them, and briefly to point the moral of the contrast. Both works are admirable in their respective uses, though those uses, it must be admitted, are somewhat dissimilar. “The Scald’s” poems are beautiful to read; Mr. Browning’s poems are beautiful—to line trunks with. Indeed, we do not remember ever to have seen better poems for the latter purpose than these of Mr. Browning, the paper is so spotlessly white, and the type is in such a pretty letter (as is always the case with Chapman and Hall’s books), that it really has something of a pictorial effect, and looks withal chaste and unique—in the inside of a box. Crede experto. In their literary qualities there is no manner of resemblance between the books, for, whereas “The Scald” is tender, pathetic, earnest, eloquent, melodious, and, above all, true to nature, Mr. Browning is in all these things his “great reverse.” It is needless to say that the sensations which the books respectively awaken are altogether dissimilar—as unlike, in fact, as any two things on earth, or elsewhere, can be imagined to be. When you have taken up “The Scald’s” poems the difficulty is to lay them down again, so do they touch the heart and fascinate the fancy; but read five lines of Mr. Browning, and—unless you be some unfortunate reviewer, with whom it is a point of honour and a matter of obligation to be deterred by no twaddle, however outrageous to common sense, just as it is the duty of a British soldier to show a bold front to a Russian—your first impulse will be to drop the book like a red-hot cinder. The reason of these dissimilar emotions is, that one of the authors is true to nature, while the other spits in nature’s face every hour of the day. One writes under the influence of spasm, the other under the influence of a genuine afflatus. The one makes you believe that he is inspired; the other that he is unwell. The prevailing idea throughout Mr. Browning’s poems, and that which is continually presenting itself to the imagination of the reader is that they must have been written under an intolerable pressure of bodily pain. You think that the author must have had St. Vitus’s dance, or that he must have swallowed a live eel, or that he must have been walking barefooted on broken glass while he was composing them. They read like the things dictated by a mad author to an idiot amanuensis, and “set up” by a compositor in a dream; and what is by far the most painful part of the business, they make the reader think that he is standing on his head and with the soles of his feet to the stars. If Mr. Browning, or any other man, is to be allowed to vitiate and desecrate the English language, and to violate common sense in this outrageous manner, the critic’s craft is a sham and a mockery, and the sooner that our reviewers throw their pens into the fire the better for the interests of literature.
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*Also noticed in the article containing this review is The Sea by “The Scald.”
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That we may vindicate the asperity of our censures, and prove to our readers that the judgment we have pronounced on Mr. Browning is not more severe than the occasion warrants, we will press our type into the service of lunacy, and quote a few of his verses. The following are from the poem entitled “One Word More:”—
Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon’s self!
Here in London, yonder late in Florence,
Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
Curving on a sky imbrued with colour,
Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,
Came she, our new crescent of a hair’s-breadth.
Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,
Rounder ’twixt the cypresses and rounder,
Perfect till the nightingales applauded.
Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,
Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs,
Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,
Goes dispiritedly,—glad to finish.
What, there’s nothing in the moon note-worthy?
Nay—for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy)
All her magic (’tis the old sweet mythos)
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman–
Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,
Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—him, even!
Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal—
When she turns round, comes again in heaven,
Opens out anew for worse or better?
Proves she like some portent of an ice-berg
Swimming full upon the ship it founders,
Hungry with huge teeth of splintered chrystals?
Proves she as the paved-work of a sapphire
Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?
Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu
Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,
Stand upon the paved-work of a sapphire.
Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved-work,
When they ate and drank and saw God also!
What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.
That is true enough, at all events. Aye, reader, you may rub your eyes, and doubt their faculty of vision; or you may vilify that scapegoat of all literary men’s offences, the abused of all abusers, the printer—but there is no mistake: the printer has given these lines to you as he found them, he has copied them with critical accuracy, and if you have any misgiving on the subject, you may satisfy yourself by referring to pages 138–39 and 40 of Mr. Browning’s second volume. And, now, should you like to read the poem called “Before?” if so here is a gem!
Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far.
God must judge the couple! leave them as they are
—Whichever one’s the guiltless, to his glory,
And whichever one the guilt’s with, to my story.
Why, you would not bid man, sunk in such a slough,
Strike no arm out further, stick and stink as now,
Leaving right and wrong to settle the embroilment,
Heaven with snaky Hell, in torture and entoilment!
Which of them’s the culprit, how must he conceive
God’s the Queen he caps to, laughing in his sleeve!
’Tis but decent to profess oneself beneath her.
Still, one must not be too much in earnest either.
Better sin the whole sin, sure that God observes,
Then go live his life out! life will try his nerves,
When the sky which noticed all, makes no disclosure,
And the earth keeps up her terrible composure.
Let him pace at pleasure, past the walls of rose,
Pluck their fruits when grape-trees graze him as he goes.
For he ’gins to guess the purpose of the garden,
With the sly mute thing beside there for a warden.
What’s the leopard-dog-thing, constant to his side,
A leer and lie in every eye on its obsequious hide?
When will come an end of all the mock obeisance,
And the price appear that pays for the misfeasance?
So much for the culprit. Who’s the martyred man?
Let him bear one stroke more, for be sure he can.
He that strove thus evil’s lump with good to leaven,
Let him give his blood at last and get his heaven.
All or nothing, stake it! trusts he God or no?
Thus far and no farther? farther? be it so.
Now, enough of your chicane of prudent pauses,
Sage provisos, sub-intents, and saving-clauses.
Ah, “forgive” you bid him? While God’s champion lives,
Wrong shall be resisted: dead, why he forgives.
But you must not end my friend ere you begin him;
Evil stands not crowned on earth, while breath is in him.
Once more—Will the wronger, at this last of all,
Dare to say “I did wrong,” rising in his fall?
No!—Let go, then—both the fighters to their places—
While I count three, step you back as many paces.
Let the consequences be what they may, in the interest of common sense and of the Queen’s English, we denounce this twaddle as a sin against both. What are we coming to? or when is this to end? Shall it be said that trash which 50 years ago would have been received with a shout of derision from one end of the empire to the other, shall be welcomed in our day, with acclamations of applause, and that no man will have the courage to cry, “out upon it!” To the trunk-makers with it, say we. With respect to “The Scald,” we do not mean to say that he is a poet of the very highest order of inspiration. But, if he has not reached sublimity, he has at least attained elegance. He is graceful and graphic, melodious and pathetic, and, moreover, he is that which Mr. Browning scorns to be—he is intelligible. You can understand him, which we do, in our conscience, believe is more than Mr. Browning can say of himself.
[This review continues with several verses from The Sea; these we omit.]
Who could suppose that Mr. Browning and the author of these affecting verses write in the same dialect, and that “Chatham’s language” is the mother tongue of each?
Reviewed:
Men and Women (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1855.
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