R551208A. Men and Women.
John Bull, 8 December 1855, p. 780.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 331.
We confess ourselves unable to follow the flights or to appreciate the pranks of the Pegasus who disports himself in this androgynic circus. Our critical scent is utterly at fault in following the poetic fox which so cunningly hides itself within the two verdant covers—pasteboard—mysteriously spread out before us. Despairing, we hardly know whether of Robert Browning’s intellect or of our own,—pinned on the horns of the terrible dilemma that either we or our author must have painful relationship to the asinine race—we think it best to leave the matter to the judgment of our readers by presenting to them the following sketch of our author’s ideal of a poet:—
I only knew one poet in my life:
And this, or something like it, was his way.
You saw go up and down Valladolid,
A man of mark, to know next time you saw.
His very serviceable suit of black
Was courtly once and conscientious still,
And many might have worn it, though none did:
The cloak that somewhat shone and shewed the threads
Had purpose, and the ruff, significance.
He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane,
Scenting the world, looking it full in face.
An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels.
They turned up, now, the alley by the Church,
That leads no whither; now, they breathed themselves
On the main promenade just at the wrong time.
You’d come upon his scrutinising hat,
Making a peaked shade blacker than itself
Against the single window spared some house
Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work,—
Or else surprise the ferrel of his stick
Trying the mortar’s temper ’tween the chinks
Of some new shop a-building, French and fine.
He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade,
The man who slices lemons into drink,
The coffee-roaster’s brazier, and the boys
That volunteer to help him turn its winch.
He glanced o’er books on stalls with half an eye,
And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor’s string,
And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.
He took such cognisance of men and things,
If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;
If any cursed a woman, he took note;
Yet stared at nobody,—they stared at him,
And found, less to their pleasure than surprise,
He seemed to know them and expect as much.
It is only fair to add that we suspect this sketch to be meant for the portrait of the author himself, the whole of the verses which fill the two volumes reading very much as if they had been struck out of the pavement by the poetic cane aforesaid.
Reviewed:
Men and Women (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1855.
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