E450300A. A Drama of Exile.
The Christian Examiner, March 1845, pp. 206–207.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 372.
[This article reviews seven volumes including works by Christopher Pearse Cranch and James Russell Lowell. We reprint only the comments about EBB.]
Miss Barrett we have put first on our list, as being in some important respects the most remarkable poetic genius of this day. We place her in the centre of that con- [p. 207→] stellation of our favorites, Keats, Hood, Sterling, Tennyson, Emerson, Lowell, and a few others; of whom she reminds us by her old and antique freshness; by the quaintness, originality and unexpectedness of her rhymes; by the delicacy, not sinking into daintiness, of her mind’s ear; by her power of condensing a poem in a word, not always a rare word, nor one in itself remarkable, but by its manner of introduction and application showing itself fresh from the mint of genius; and, finally, by that union of bold imagination, beautiful fancy, and tender humanity in which she surpasses all other living writers. Elizabeth Barrett is herself, and not another or others. A genius at once so daring in its undertakings and so child-like in the simplicity of its execution we rarely see. Amidst the most unearthly flights of her imagination, the wildest horrors of her subterranean passages, she retains the same deep, sweet humanity, of which she had given an earnest in that exquisite dedication to her father and in her preface to the American edition, and which disarms us of the heart to criticise as mere purists. Her very bluntnesses and prosaisms of expression have to our credulous souls the grace and impress of genius. We are sorry not to be able to quote from these volumes. We should be glad to give entire, at least her picture of the whole of that awful company of buried poets she saw in the mystic church around the altar,
pale and crowned,
With sovran eyes of depth profound,
or the close of her “Rhyme of the Duchess May,” which we think will bear to be named in the same breath with the dirge in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline.
We do not presume to say that Miss Barrett has reached the ideal of poetry, but if, (as we begin to think) that is the greatest poetry which grasps and moves in the greatest degree the greatest proportion of the feelings and energies of the human soul, then must this sweet singer take a high place in our admiration—a deep place in our affections. It is inspiring to meet such lofty genius blended with such meek simplicity of Christian faith—such purity—such peace.
[Charles T. Brooks]
Reviewed:
A Drama of Exile, and Other Poems (EBB), New York: Henry G. Langley, 1845.
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