R560600A. Men and Women.
The Dublin University Magazine, June 1856, pp. 673–675.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 400–401.
[The article in which this review appears begins with general comments on poetry; these we omit.]
We took up Mr. Browning’s poems not without the recollection of the tone of the criticisms which have issued from the press upon his latest work, “Men and Women.” When we had read it through, we laid it down with a very different appreciation from that which it has received elsewhere; we could not but feel that this man was himself, and no one else. In style, in mode of expression, in an abrupt careless strength of thought, in often times an acute analysis of supposed states of existence, and the action of the mind therein, he stands alone. To be a distinct spoke in the wheel of literature is, at least, something to be praised for. But at times his originality locks its legs around his throat, like the Old Man of the Sea, and chokes his distinct utterance. There is always a pearl in the oyster-poem, but it is so encrusted with barnacle words, and long trails of entangled sea weed sentences, that the reading public would abandon the task of opening the meaning from want of the knife of patience. A little trouble on Mr. Browning’s part would, with his strong and acute mind, satisfy both himself and the public better. We are far from imagining that poetry of this class must be understood at once, but there is a needless obscurity and uncouthness in Mr. Browning’s modes of expression which might be avoided. The same strength of thought which produced this rough wild etching could, if brought more within the ordinary rules of art, produce more delicate pencilling, without losing a bold reality. To be useful to many is better than to be useful to a few. But this careless strength is Mr. Browning’s idiosyncrasy. Well, we only wish Mr. Browning not to be content with himself; let him pass on from Æschylus to Sophocles; we have had the great rough block of pure marble, let us have it carved into the finished statue.
We cannot approve of such poems as The Heretic’s Tragedy—the gross irreverence which some excuse, because it is necessary to the character, might be avoided by not treating of such a subject at all. There is much affectation and stone breaking verbiage in a poem called “Old Pictures at Florence,” mixed with much acute thinking. It is a great misfortune that Mr. Browning should persist in writing in a style which resembles that of Don Juan, rough cast, with here and there an enormous block of wit, too heavy for any one to carry away without a groan.
“In a balcony” is, though not incomprehensible, at least most unnatural, yet full of scattered beauty. Here are a few lines:—
This eve’s the time—
This eve intense with yon first trembling star,
We seem to pant and reach; scarce aught between
The earth that rises and the heaven that bends.
All nature self-abandoned, every tree
Flung as it will, pursuing its own thoughts,
And fixed so, every flower, and every weed.
No pride, no shame, no victory, no defeat:
All under God—each measured by itself.
This is good, but we heartily hope Mr. Browning will cease writing lines which much offend every ear and taste, and which are not manly, because they are careless and nonsensical—nonsensical, because the meaning can be expressed just as forcibly in other words. Let the reader form his opinion of this verse:
Why, you would not bid men sunk in such a slough,
Strike no arm out further, stink and stick as now;
Leaving right and wrong to settle the embroilment,
Heaven with snaky hell in torture and entoilment.
There is one poem in Mr. Browning’s first volume which exhibits [p. 674→] more delicacy of thought and more finish (excellences we, perhaps, owe to the subject) than any other almost in the book. It is entitled “By the Fireside,” and is addressed to his gifted wife, whose poetry all have read with pleasure. The fine analysis of the connexion of ideas which gradually lead him from the hazel trees, among which his children steal out to play, to the ruined chapel on the Alpine gorge, is a rarity in literature. The description of the approach and of the landscape we quote. The very words, in parts, are almost vocal with the scenery:—
A turn, and we stand in the heart of things,
The woods are round us heaped and dim,
From slab to slab how it slips and springs,
The thread of water single and slim,
Through the ravage some torrent brings.
Does it feed the little lake below?
That speck of white just on its marge
Is Pella; see, in the evening glow
How sharp the silver spear-heads charge,
When Alps meet heaven in snow.
And yonder at foot of the fronting ridge,
That takes the turn to the range beyond,
Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge,
Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond,
Danced over by the midge.
The chapel and bridge are of stone alike—
Blackish grey, and mostly wet;
Cut hemp stalk steep in the narrow dike,
See here again how the lichens fret,
And the roots of the ivy strike.
* * * *
And all day long a bird sings there,
And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times,
The place is silent and aware
It has had its scenes, its joys, its crimes.
But that is its own affair.
And then by his fireside comes the remembrance of his evening walk with her who sits opposite, and how they crossed the crumbling bridge, and were about to return—“but wait”—
Oh, moment one and infinite!
The water slips o’er stock and stone,
The west is tender, hardly bright;
How grey at once is the evening grown,
One star—the chrysolite.
We two stood there with never a third,
But each by each, as each knew well,
The sights we saw, and the sounds we heard,
The lights and the shades made up a spell,
Till the trouble grew and stirred.
This is quite perfect, and gives us what we want, and what we accused Mr. Irwin of not possessing, the power of disclosing to us the bearing which nature has on humanity, and the assistance it gives us by chiming in with our feelings, and calling them forth by a silent sympathy.
A moment after, and hands unseen
Were hanging the night around us fast;
But we knew that a bar was broken between
Life and life; we were mixed at last,
In spite of the mortal screen.
The forests had done it; there they stood,
We caught for a second the powers at play;
They had mingled us so, for once and for good,
Their work was done—we might go or stay,
They relapsed to their ancient mood.
How the world is made for each of us.
We wish that Mr. Browning had written more poems like this. There is one strange poem in his collection, which will give many curious thoughts to any one fond of psychological enquiries. It is a letter from a Syrian physician who has met Lazarus. It would be too long for us to give an analysis of this strange poem, but it is interesting and novel, and treated in a manner which discloses great subtlety of thought and metaphysical imagination.
Mr. Browning is a lover of art. His criticisms are distinguished by the same “dash,” which we half suspect to be affectation. Still, the words of a man who thinks are always worth reading. “Andrea del Sarto” will well repay a careful perusal. The following lines [from “Fra Lippo Lippi”] seem to us so true an analysis between the spiritual and material in painting, and how each should never stand alone, but be always the complement of the other, that we cannot forbear quoting them, and it shall be our last quotation; moreover the quotation will give the reader an idea of Mr. Browning’s dashing style:—
A fine way to paint soul, by painting body
So ill, the eye can’t stop there, must go farther,
And can’t fare worse. [p. 675→]
Why can’t a painter lift each foot in turn,
Make his flesh liker, and his soul more like,
Both in their order? Take the prettiest face,
The Prior’s niece——is it so pretty
You can’t discover if it means hope, fear,
Sorrow or joy? won’t beauty go with these?
Suppose I’ve made her eyes all right and blue,
Can’t I take breath, and try to add life’s flash,
And then add soul, and heighten them three-fold—
Or say there’s beauty with no soul at all—
(I never saw it—put the case the same)
If you get simple beauty and nought else,
You get about the best thing God invents;
That’s somewhat—and you’ll find the soul you have missed
Within yourself when you return him thanks.
[This article concludes with notices of works by Charles Mackay, Thomas Aird, Rose Kirwan and Frances Maria Roche (“Rose” and “De Lupe”), and Eliza Anne Ogilvy, which we omit.]
[Editors’ note: The article containing this review is attributed to Robert Bulwer Lytton in The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, but see letter 3488, note 9.]
Reviewed:
Men and Women (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1855.
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