R561129B. The Keepsake.
The Illustrated Times, 29 November 1856, p. 363.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 407.
The “Keepsake” comes to us this year bound in its accustomed gorgeous red and gold covering, but with contents widely different from those of bygone years. Formerly the names of Messrs. Dickens, Thackeray, and Sir Bulwer Lytton were to be found amongst those of the contributors, but of late they have been absent from its pages. The professional litterateurs who have written for the present number, are Mr. and Mrs. Barrett Browning, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Owen Meredith, Barry Cornwall, Henry Chorley, Charles Swain, Albert Smith, and Edmund Yates, some of whom have contributed prose, some poetical articles, but none exceeding three or four pages. The rest of the book is filled up by tales and verses by amateur ladies and gentlemen, who have apparently found their way into print—or, at all events, into circulation—for the first time, and are determined to make the most of their chance. From this category I must except the fair editress, Miss Marguerite Power, whose sketches, both in prose and verse, are finished and artistic. Mr. Chorley’s lines on the “Portrait of Lady Molesworth,” are graceful and tender without morbid sentimentality. Mr. Owen Meredith’s “Story of a Little Blue Flower,” though reading like a translation from the German, is extremely pretty, and the scraps of verse interspersed throughout it, bear strong proofs of that refined poetical taste for which he is gradually establishing his reputation. Mr. Albert Smith narrates strange stories and legends believed in by the chamois hunter of his territorial Mont Blanc. Mr. Hawthorne gives a most picturesque and interesting description of his visit to Uttoxeter, the scene of Johnson’s school days. Mr. Yates versifies upon that not very poetical subject, a Brighton swimming-bath. Mrs. Browning’s stanzas, “Amy’s Cruelty,” are certainly not what might have been expected from her, but her husband makes amends in the following verses, certainly the prettiest in the book:—
MAY AND DEATH.
by robert browning.
I wish that when you died last May,
Charles, there had died along with you
Three-parts of Spring’s delightful things;
Ay, and for me, the fourth part too.
A foolish thought, and worse perhaps
There must be many a pair of friends
Who, arm-in-arm, deserve the warm
Moon’s birth and the long evening-ends.
So, for their sake, prove May still May!
Let their new time, like mine of old,
Do all it did for me; I bid
Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.
Only, one little sight, one plant
Woods have in May, that starts up green
Except a streak, which, so to speak,
Is Spring’s blood, spilt its leaves between,—
That, they might spare,—a certain wood
Might lose the plant; their loss were small:
And I,—whene’er the plant is there
Its drop comes from my heart, that’s all.
The prettiest engravings in the volume appear to me to be portraits of Lady Molesworth and of Mrs. Palk, and a fancy sketch called “Beatrice.” Mr. Solomon, a picture of whose, exhibited in last year’s Academy, and called “The Bride,” is reproduced, has much reason to be dissatisfied with the treatment it has received at the engraver’s hands.
Reviewed:
The Keepsake, ed. Margaret Power, London: 1857.
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