R660100A. Lyrics of Life.
The Boston Review, January 1866, p. 152.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 391.
The publishers have found enough that is intelligible and, in a sense, popular in Browning’s works, to make up this addition to their nice little series of poets, for universal circulation. This son of the Muses is eccentric, brilliant, orphic, metaphysical, rich in a weird sort of cutting, Mephistophelian irony. He carries it to the very verge of the impious sometimes, in expression, as in the
There’s a great text in Galatians.
Yet he does not seem to mean to be wicked in this daring: rather you detect some sharp hit which he would give to something which to him, at least, appears worthy of death—whether it is, however, may admit of a doubt. Then there is another side to him—an almost womanly tenderness which gushes up, here and there, with indescribable beauty. This little volume will endear Mr. Browning to many who have not ventured before to form the acquaintance of so wizard-like a genius.
Reviewed:
Lyrics of Life (RB), Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1865.
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