E441100C. A Drama of Exile.
The Knickerbocker, November 1844, pp. 467–468.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 363.
Mrs. Barrett apprises us in her preface that the present edition “precedes the English one by a step, a step eagerly taken, and with a spring in it of pleasure and pride.” She observes farther, that her “love and admiration have belonged to the great American people as long as she has felt proud of being an Englishwoman, and almost as long as she has loved poetry itself.” Criticism is disarmed by words so kind and gracious, coming from a woman, in a distant land; and we are quite certain that under the circumstances her handsome volumes will be as cordially welcomed by American readers as if they exhibited an order of literary merit superior to that which marks the performances of our own female writers; such for example as those of Mrs. Sigourney, Miss H.F. Gould, Mrs. Nichols, [p. 468→] Mrs. Welby, and other of our more popular lady-poets. Mrs. Barrett expresses, as her “favorite wish,” that her work “may be received by the public as a deposit, ambitious of approaching to the nature of a security for a future offering of more value and acceptability.” That it will be so received, we cannot doubt. She adds: “I would fain do better; and I feel as if I might do better; I aspire to do better.” We are decidedly of the fair writer’s faith, and consider her aspiration as alike creditable and in its purpose feasible. The spirit in which the work has been written is most praiseworthy, as may be gathered from these closing sentences of the preface: “Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and life has been to me a very serious thing. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry nor leisure for the hour of the poet. I have done my work, so far, as work; not as mere hand and head work, apart from the personal being, but as the completest expression of that being to which I could attain; and as work I offer it to the public; feeling its faultiness more deeply than any of my readers, because measured from the height of my aspiration: but feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was done, should protect it in the thoughts of the reverent and sincere.” We commend the volumes heartily to our readers.
Reviewed:
A Drama of Exile, and Other Poems (EBB), New York: Henry G. Langley, 1845.
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