E450400A. A Drama of Exile.
The Southern Literary Messenger, April 1845, pp. 235–243.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 378–384.
In looking over the English Literature of the present century, we have often been surprised at the station occupied by female writers. Mrs. Tighe, Caroline Bowles, Joanna Baillie, Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Norton, L.E.L., and a host of others, who at once present themselves to the memory, show that the “cacoëthes scribendi” has not confined itself to the sterner sex, and that man is no longer to enjoy an unquestioned supremacy on the rugged peaks of Parnassus. We have, therefore, thought that it might prove a not unacceptable thing to our readers to examine the claims on immortality of some of these fair poets; and, as exemplifications of the different schools most in vogue, we have selected Miss Barrett, Eliza Cook, and Mrs. Maclean, (L.E.L.)
The doctrine has been often and stoutly held forth, that criticism should not be applied to the [p. 236→] productions of a female pen; that all the beauties may be pointed out and enthusiastically admired, but that no gentleman, (and these dogmatists emphasize the word,) that no gentleman would breathe a word of censure on the faults. This, we think, is an error. The respect and gentleness, with which women are and should be treated, arise from her delicacy and retiring disposition. In her own sphere and in the private scenes of life, she should meet with all the tenderness and attention that she can desire, but when she voluntarily leaves her empire, and comes forward before the world, she relinquishes her privileges, and must be tried by the standard which the world has established. No one, worthy of the name of a gentleman, would be guilty, towards a woman, of that coarse personality which some critics mistake for wit; but her faults and her excellencies should be pointed out with an impartial and discriminating hand:—in short, she should meet the candor and justice which ought to be the guiding line of all criticism. It is no compliment to the sex to treat them with such compassionate deference. What generous mind would not disdain to have its faults excused on account of alleged incapacity to endure their recital?
We confess that we are of those who hold that no woman can ever be a great poet. They who argue for intellectual equality between the sexes, attribute the rarity of poetic powers in woman to her retired and quiet life. This is absurd. Woman has certainly the faculty of feeling, and feeling as deeply as man. She shares his vicissitudes, bears numberless cares in common with him, and can oppose to those peculiar to himself, sorrows as vivid and as poignant of her own. But it is not the feeling or the suffering alone which constitutes the poet; it is the poetic temperament on which they work, and which is merely, as it were, educated by them. The convict at the Old Baily, who is sentenced to death, but whose punishment is commuted to transportation, by the time he reaches Sydney, has had as much cause for suffering as half the bards of the present century; but is he therefore a poet? Byron, on the contrary, endured but what is an every day occurrence in the great world, but his woes are chronicled for eternity. No; the conclusive proof of the incapacity of the female mind to become essentially poetic, exists in the simple fact, that no woman has ever been able to achieve a name among the great masters of the heart. Of the nine Lyric Muses of the Greeks, if we may judge from the fragments which have reached us, Sappho was the only one who deserved her place. Corinna’s victory over Pindar was owing far more to her face than her lyre. But Miss Barrett’s inconsiderate admirers claim for her a seat as a poet of the highest rank, and advance claims, which, if allowed, would place the old gods of Parnassus in danger from the assaults of these new female giants. We propose to examine these pretensions, and in defiance of Saadi, to bring our farthing candle to light this radiant sun.
We would first, however, put in a few words respecting the style of criticism adopted by the admirers of the Tennysonian school, in which Miss Barrett is so eminent a disciple. Condemned to the sad necessity of defending and praising all the confused and debased imaginativeness which marks this class of poets, they are reduced to the most fantastic combinations of words, and introduce Germanic compounds and reduplications in a manner quite startling to those accustomed to drink of “the pure well of English undefiled.” To extract sense from that which has no sense, to find meaning in meaningless jargon, is a confessedly difficult task, which they set about with a determination worthy a better cause, and more successful result. To do this, they explore deeply what they are pleased to term our “physical natures,” and hair-split feelings and passions, with a vigor and self-satisfaction quite amusing to behold. Give them some juvenile production from “Original Poems for Infant Minds,” christen it Tennyson’s, and they will comment on it gravely and earnestly for a couple of pages, and then hold it up with their explanation to the world’s admiration, as a piece of searching and refined knowledge of human nature. Gifted with such friends, it is easy to write poetry, for the merest jumble of words, passed through the sieve of their intellect, comes forth immortal verse. They are determined to see no wrong, and, as if conscious of the weakness of the fort, defend the exposed and untenable outposts with the strongest vigor. It is amusing to hear some of these gentry crying out against the illiberality of the world that does not take for granted their ipse dixit, while, in reality, they are the least Catholic of all schools, and will allow of no salvation beyond their own narrow limits.
Miss Barrett comes before us with claims for a high station. She says, in her preface, “In any case, my poems, while full of faults,—as I go forward to my critics and confess,—have my heart and life in them: they are not empty shells. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing; there has been no playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause (Qy. end?) of poetry;* nor leisure for the hour of the poet. I [p. 237→] have done my work, so far, as work.” Her poetry is of an order that we especially like—not smooth and flowing inanities, where the author first takes up his pen, and then strives to find an idea for it. She has been praised by every critic who has noticed her; pens that usually abound in gall, for her have been charged with honey, and her admirers have pronounced eulogies, which, if true, would place her in the front rank of England’s great ones. She has been alternately pronounced Dantesque, Miltonic, and—Tennysonian. From the words of her mouth, therefore, should she be judged, and we shall endeavor to weigh her pretensions with her merits, in a calm and impartial spirit.
________
*This is right; pleasure is not the result of Miss Barrett’s Poetry. The above remarks are again embodied in a stanza from “Pan is dead.” We may be allowed to remark that there is about an equal amount of poetry in each,
Truth is fair; should we forego it?
Can we sigh right for a wrong?
God Himself is the best Poet,
And the Real is His song.
Sing His truth out fair and full,
And secure His beautiful.
This is all very pretty, no doubt, and very ennobling to Poetry, but where, we may ask, is the high purpose, the “heart and life” manifested in such lines as the following, from a serious poem, “To Flush, my Dog”?
Blessings on thee, dog of mine,
Pretty collars make thee fine,
Sugared milk make fat thee!
Pleasures wag on in thy tail,—
Hands of gentle motion fail
Nevermore to pat thee!
________
To be a poet of as high an order as that in which Miss Barrett’s friends place her, requires a rare combination of qualities, exclusive of the poetic temperament itself. These may be divided into the intellectual and the sensual. The intellectual consist of the power of forming great designs, harmonious in all their parts, and keeping the one object steadily in view to its completion; of imagination and fancy; of knowledge of man’s passions and intellect, and familiarity with nature; and of taste. The sensual may be divided into the power of producing harmony and melody, in versification; in the choice of words and selection of epithets; in rhyme, and the power displayed over words, and the mastery of language shown in producing clear and elegant sentences, notwithstanding the trammels imposed by our system of versification. Now, of these several requisites, we think that the result will bear us out in saying that Miss Barrett possesses few of the intellectual, in a minor degree, and none of the sensual.
We must, of course, look to her principal poems for the manifestation of the power of forming a great design, and adhering steadily to one object. If found any where, it should be in the “Drama of Exile.” This poem is on a bold subject, requiring both powerful and delicate management, and it labors, withal, under the disadvantage of provoking a comparison with Milton and Byron, especially the latter. But the design, if faithfully adhered to, would have kept her clear from this. In the preface she remarks, “My own object was the new and strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from Paradise into the wilderness; with a peculiar reference to Eve’s allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her womanhood, and the consciousness of being the organ of the fall, to her offence, appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more expressible by a woman than a man.” Thus far, all is right, but whether the metaphysical rhapsody which follows is properly carrying out this beautiful and delicate plan, is a question which the world will be apt to answer in the negative. The drama is cast in the form of the Greek tragedy, not unlike Byron’s “Heaven and Earth.” The choruses are borne by spirits, who are introduced in all possible forms. For instance, on p. 95, we have a chorus in which the strophes and anti-strophes are sung by “infant voices,” “poet voices,” “philosophic voices,” “revel voices,” “love voices,” and “old voices.” As might be supposed, these various “voices” produce a singular effect. Eve’s “allotted grief,” the grand subject of the piece, occupies but a very small portion of it. She refers to it once or twice, but is generally saved from dwelling on it too long by the appearance of Lucifer, or a chorus of spirits, with whom she talks metaphysics. The Drama has another radical defect in wanting a direct end. Its conclusion leaves Adam and Eve almost where they were at the commencement, and it might be cut off in the middle, leaving scarcely more sense of incompleteness. We can never see what the actions of the characters are to lead to, for they seem to have no definite result. In “Cain,” we see every action, every word from the very opening, conduce to the catastrophe,—not an expression, not an epithet is heedlessly introduced. Miss Barrett, on the contrary, seizes the happy idea of picturing Eve, but lacks power sufficient to carry it out, or to frame an action that would naturally exhibit it. The personages merely discourse together, sometimes amiably, and sometimes spitefully, filling up whole pages with conversation like this.
Lucifer. What is this thought or thing
Which I call beauty? Is it thought, or thing?
Is it a thought accepted for a thing?
Or both? or neither? a pretext—a word?
Eve. Which it is.
Adam. The essence of all beauty I call love.
The attribute, the evidence, and end,
The consummation to the inward sense,
Of beauty apprehended from without,
I still call love. As form, when colorless,
Is nothing to the eye; that pine tree, there,
Without its black and green, being all a blank;
So, without love, is beauty undiscerned
In man or angel. [p. 53–4.
Now we can very readily imagine Miss Barrett, Tennyson, and R. H. Horne, chattering in this innocent manner over a pleasant fire, but to put such speeches in the mouths of such personages, on the very day of the Fall, argues a total want of all the knowledge necessary for a poet. Thus it is throughout; the spirits all sing in the same key, [p. 238→]
And I build my song of high, pure notes,
Note over note, height over height,
Till I strike the arch of the Infinite;
And I bridge abysmal agonies
With strong, clear calms of harmonies.—[p. 31.
The Spirits of the Earth, lamenting over the Fall, and assailing Adam and Eve in the bitterest manner, break out into the following piteous lamentation,
I was so beautiful, so beautiful,
My joy stood up within me, bold and glad,
To answer God; and, when His work was full,
To “very good,” responded “very glad.”—[p. 69.
It is profanity thus to call up ridiculous ideas in conjunction with sacred subjects. Here is another instance, in which she attempts a higher flight. It is a prophecy in an angel chorus, concerning the time when
Mors stupebit, et natura
Resurget cum creaturá
Judicanti responsura.
The horse alluded to, is the pale horse of the Revelations.
Cleaving all that silence, cleaving all the glory,
Will the Tamer lead him, straightway to the Throne.
“Look out, O Jehovah, to this I bring before Thee,
With a hand nail-pierced,—I who am thy Son.”
Then the Eye Divinest, from the Deepest, flaming,
On the horse-eyes feeding, shall burn out their fire:
Blind the beast shall stagger, where It overcame him,—
Meek as a lamb at pasture—bloodless in desire—
Down the beast shall shiver,—slain amidst the taming,
And, by life essential, the phantasm Death expire.
To this we certainly are justified in applying the term blasphemous, if making food for laughter out of all the mysteries of religion merit the expression. Southey was fiercely assailed for far less in his unfortunate “Vision of Judgment.”
Still, though Eve often expresses her “allotted grief” in such lines as,
Grant me such pardoning grace as can go forth
From clean volitions to a spotted will.—[p. 75.
she sometimes gives utterance to a delicate and feminine thought, which proves that Miss Barrett is not utterly dead to her subject.
Behold this rose!
I plucked it in our bower of Paradise
This morning as I went forth; and my heart
Hath beat against its petals all the day.
I thought it would be always red and full,
As when I plucked it—Is it?—ye may see!
I cast it down to you that ye may see,
All of you!—count the petals lost of it—
And note the colors fainted! ye may see:
And I am as it is, who yesterday
Grew in the same place.
This, notwithstanding the rugged language and inartistic versification, is beautiful and touching, and if the poem consisted of such passages, we would not have the heart to breathe a word against it; but, unfortunately, these are the rarities, while the staple of the poem is formed of mere commonplace, frequently diversified with passages like those first quoted.
Another instance of her utter want of power in carrying out her designs, may be found in the next longest poem in these volumes, entitled “The Vision of Poets.” Of it she says, “I have attempted to express in this poem, my view of the mission of the veritable poet, of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the uses of sorrow suffered in it, of the great work accomplished in it through suffering, and of the duty and glory of what Balzac has beautifully and truly called “la patience angélique du genie.” The poem occupies no less than fifty-six pages of terzains, and nearly all of the ideas, certainly the best of them, may be found exquisitely expressed in Shelley’s beautiful “Defence of Poetry:”—the execution of this design no one will claim from her, as it is altogether artificial and forced. A poet, in a vision, meets with remarkable adventures, and sees all the high bards of ancient and modern days; whom she describes briefly, one by one, allotting three lines, more or less, to each. Here are a few of her characters.
And Sappho, crowned with aureole.
Of ebon curls on calmed brows—
O poet—woman! none foregoes
The leap, attaining the repose!
Of Virgil, she says:
For his gods wore less majesty
Than his brown bees hummed deathlessly.
Lucretius, nobler than his mood!
Who dropped his plummet down the broad,
Deep universe, and said, “No God,”
Finding no bottom!
And poor, proud Byron,—sad as grave
And salt as life! forlornly brave,
And quivering with the dart he drave.
There are no less than forty-one poets summarily despatched, in stanzas like the above, many of them even more incomprehensible. We need say no more than that she displays about as much skill in unfolding the scope and end of poetry, as in describing the poets.
The same strength of purpose and weakness of execution run through nearly all her pieces. We may except the “Romaunt of the Page” and “Lay of the Brown Rosarie,” which are far superior to her ordinary verses.
Another of the points in which she is remarkably deficient is in knowledge of man and of the world. It may be argued by her friends, that this naturally arises from her long continued sickness, and protracted confinement. This may be so, but we have nothing to do with causes—we only attend to facts. Her want of this necessary power is shown through- [p. 239→] out all her writings, in which we scarcely find a character strongly and truthfully drawn, or an observation which shows us that she has looked attentively into the heart and soul of man. Thus, in the Drama of Exile, a poem admitting, nay, requiring powers of the highest degree, Lucifer is neither the glorious fallen divinity of Milton, nor the proud and powerful inciter to evil of Byron, but a changeable, silly, metaphysical kind of old woman; now lamenting the loss of his morning star, and now exchanging retorts with Gabriel; now chatting amicably with Adam and Eve on metaphysical points, and now trying to frighten them through mere impish spite and malice. As for Adam and Eve, they have no characters, and leave no distinct impression on the mind; while the spirits of Heaven and earth differ from any immortal beings hitherto brought upon the stage, unless it be the Cocklane Ghost.
Miss Barrett, however, sometimes endeavors to picture the life of the present day, and then her small knowledge of man’s feelings and passions is even more apparent. One of her greatest failures in this line is “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.” This poem has numerous and enthusiastic admirers, and we are therefore willing to believe that there is therein more than meets the eye, but we can safely ask the candid reader if such passages as the following are to be received as poetry, in a century which has witnessed Byron, Shelley and Moore?
And because I was a poet, and because the people praised me,
With their critical deductions for the modern writer’s fault;
I could sit at rich men’s tables,—though the courtesies that raised me
Still suggested clear between us the pale spectrum of the salt.
And they praised me in her presence: “Will your book appear this summer?”
Then, returning to each other. “Yes, our plans are for the moors;”
Then, with whisper dropped behind me—“There he is, the last new comer!”
O, she only likes his verses! what is over she endures.
“Quite low-born! self-educated! somewhat gifted though by nature,—
And we make a point of asking him,—of being very kind;
You may speak, he does not hear you, and besides he writes no satire—
And that antique sting of poetry is all we need to mind.”
The whole poem is, like the above, a feeble attempt to expose some of the follies of society. To what a pitch of poetical degradation have we arrived when such weak satire, without even the recommendation of metre, is presented to us for admiration! Of the same calibre are the “Cry of the Human” and “Cry of the Children,” in which, indeed, her failure is even more signal. In the latter she makes it the chief grievance of the factory system that the wheels will persist in turning round, despite the uncomfortable feelings which it causes in the eyes and brains of the children. Such poetry is positive injustice to its subject, as it makes us laugh and forget the hideous evils that it strives to unveil. This same ignorance of life runs through nearly all her pieces; we suppose that she intended the following anticlimactic lines to illustrate some long hidden truth, though what it may be is far beyond our comprehension.
Then we wring from our souls their applicative strength,
And bend to the cord the strong bow of our ken;
And bringing our lives to the level of others,
Hold the cup we have filled to their uses at length.
“Help me, God! love me, man! I am man among men,—
And my life is a pledge
Of the ease of another’s!”
Sometimes, however, when she makes less pretension, she succeeds better; the “Romaunt of the Page” and “Rhyme of the Duchess May,” notwithstanding the barbarous form in which the latter is cast, have more of a real air about them, and, as they do not require the same power as every day life, to give them verisimilitude, really interest us.
If she has any idea of her ignorance of man’s heart and character, she evidently thinks that it may be excused on account of the deep insight which she manifests into his mind. This she attempts to display on every occasion, whether in place or not, by small pieces of transcendental philosophy mostly manufactured for the occasion. Darwin used to congratulate himself that personification was so easy in the English language. It was only, he said, to put a capital at the beginning of the word, and take way the article, and it is personified at once. Exactly in the same manner does Miss Barrett make her metaphysics. She drags verbs, adverbs, adjectives and other unwilling parts of speech to do the duty of nouns, places a capital at their head, and has her Kantian wisdom ready for service. We have given some specimens of this in our remarks on the Drama of Exile, and must be content with a few more, assuring the reader that there is scarcely a page free from them.
Man desecrates the eternal God-word, Love,
With his No-more, and Once.
’Till the heavenly Infinite
Falling off from our Created,
Left our outward contemplation
Opening into ministration.
To front, with level eyelids, the To-come.
Pealing down the depths of Godhead.
How, with a holy quiet, did your earthy
Accept that Heavenly, knowing ye were worthy.
But it is useless to repeat examples; any one who will take the trouble to glance over her volumes, will be satisfied of the truth of what we have stated, and will find that the instances which we have carelessly selected are not unusually ridiculous. [p. 240→]
One of the points on which Miss Barrett’s admirers principally ground their veneration for her, is her imagination. This quality she certainly possesses to a considerable degree, but it, unfortunately, is not under the dominion of taste. It is not a fervent imagination that hurries her along with it, and makes her project herself into the position that she is describing, and paint the sufferings and joys of her characters as though they were her own. It is a strange, wild, fantastic faculty, under no restraint, and continually leading her into situations whence her small command over language renders it impossible for her to withdraw with credit. This one quality, especially when in such a peculiar form, is rather unfortunate, and can never of itself make a poet. Miss Barrett exhibits it in the extremely figurative language that she uses, and in the constant employment of images. This alone would be fatiguing, were they selected with taste and judgment: but, half expressed, frequently unintelligible, and still more frequently ill-chosen, they constitute one of the deformities of her verse. We are continually struck by such images as,
The burden of the song
Drops from it, like its fruit, and heavily falls
Into the lap of silence.
Thou, certes, when thou askest more,
O sapient angel! leanest o’er
The window-sill of metaphor.
’Twixt dew and bird,
So sweet a silence ministered,
God seemed to use it for a word.
Until these surges, having run
This way and that, gave out, as one,
An Aphrodite of sweet tune.
Gabriel adjures Lucifer:
I charge thee by the choral song we sang,
When up against the white shore of our feet,
The depths of the creation swelled and brake,—
And the new worlds, the beaded foam and flower
Of all that coil, rolled outward into space,
On thunder edges,—leave the world to God!
These, with a little hard study, we can comprehend, but the following, we confess, soar beyond us.
A poet, entreating an angel for fame, says:
Accept me, therefore,—Not for price,
And not for pride my sacrifice
Is tendered, for my soul is nice,
And will beat down those dusty seeds
Of bearded corn, if she succeeds
In soaring where the covey feeds.
This image evidently springs, not from imagination, but from the want of a rhyme. Here is another, from an angel-chorus.
While our feet struck glories
Outward, smooth and fair,
Which we stood on floorwise,
Platformed in mid air.
In a “Rhapsody of Life,” we find some children singing, we know not why or wherefore.
And with small childish hands we are turning around
The apple of life, which another has found.
It is warm with our touch, not with sun of the south,
And we count as we turn it, the red side for four.
Such unmeaning follies as these meet us on every hand, and prove, most conclusively, her utter want of that most necessary ingredient in all poetry—Taste. As though anxious, however, to leave us in no doubt of the fact, she has manifested it in many other places and manners. Thus, in the Drama of Exile, Christ is introduced to make a long speech of two pages and a half against the Spirits of the Earth. Some disgusting stage-play enures, wherein he is transfigured, and gradually vanishes. It is ludicrously lamentable to see these mysteries, among the most sacred parts of our religion, handled with such ignorant presumption by a sciolist.
What are we to think of the attempted pun at the end of the following Rosa Matilda lines. The stanza is the conclusion of a really pathetic ballad.
Jesus, Victim, comprehending
Love’s divine self-abnegation,—
Cleanse my love in its self-spending,
And absorb the poor libation!
Wind the thread of life up higher,
Up through angel hands of fire!
I aspire, while I expire.
Though we have more passages marked down, it is surely not worth while to instance them. Either of the above argues a total absence of taste.
The want of this quality is also exhibited in her choice and selection of epithets. This is a test, a criterion, among the surest for a truly poetic mind. In our difficult versification, it is a most trying thing always to fit the right word into the right place, yet this is a faculty ever to be found among the real masters of the lyre. Miss Barrett is singularly unfortunate on this point: her epithets seem to be forced on her by the necessity of the metre, or to have struck her fancy by their singularity, not to have been naturally suggested to her by the promptings of a poetic mind. Of course, it would be impossible here to give instances of these delicate distinctions; all we can do is to refer our readers to our various quotations, selected on account of every other kind of fault, and we feel certain that we shall be justified in our assertion.
With respect to those qualities which we have called the sensual essentials of poetry, we must candidly say that we have never met with published volumes which displayed so lamentably their utter absence. We scarcely know where to begin our [p. 241→] strictures, so numerous are the faults of the material of her poetry. If we expect melodious and flowing verse, we are met on every page with lines like,
The shapes of suns and stars did swim.
Cripples once danced i’ the vines, and bards approved.
Beauty to soul, Body to tomb.
If saddest sighs swell sweetest sound.
Crowned with crimson cupola,
From a sunset solemn.
If we look for artistic versification, we find that her command over language is so limited, that she is led into all kinds of expedients to make out the measure of her verse; such as,
And the Silence, as it stood,
In the Glory’s golden flood,
Audibly did bud—and bud!
Here every thing is introduced through inability to make up the stanza with sense. Indeed, passing over the reduplication in the last line, it would be uncharitable to suppose, that, unless hard pressed, she would be guilty of the folly of making silence, as it stood, but audibly in a flood of glory. What can be said too harsh of lines so rugged as,
Grief by grief, sin by sin. A crown by a crown.
“Yet, O God!” (I said,) “O Grave,” (I said,) “O mother’s heart and bosom.”
Broad the forest stood, (I read,) on the hills of Lurteged,
and of hundreds of others that might be quoted? We think that we may say “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship” is the most inartistic specimen of versification that has ever appeared before the public. The following stanza is a fair sample of it:
Here she paused,—she had been paler at the first word of her speaking;
But because a silence followed it, blushed scarlet as for shame;
Then, as scorning her own feelings, resumed calmly, “I am seeking
More distinction than these gentlemen think worthy of my claim.”
The harshness of this is only to be equalled by “Loved Once.” Here is the opening stanza:
I classed, appraising once,
Earth’s lamentable sounds; the welladay,
The jarring yea and nay,
The fall of kisses on unanswering clay,
The sobbed farewell, the welcome mornfuller;—
But all did leaven the air
With a less bitter leaven of sure despair,
Than these words—“I loved once.”
Her want of ease in the management of language is singular in one so long an author, and so hard a student. In general, her ideas are completely subservient to her words,—she bows the intellectual before the sensual, and they agree not with a good grace. Every where we meet with ideas, brought in either to suit the rhyme or to fill up halts in the versification; and, when this resource fails her, she employs some useless, redundant, or incongruous word. Frequently, however, the intellectual endeavors to regain its wonted supremacy, and then the language is lengthened, or curtailed, or patched, to suit its Procrustean bed, in a manner most disagreeable both to eye and ear.
For instance, there are no less than three omissions in the last line of the following stanza:
“Ay, ay,” she said, “it so must be,”
(And this time she spoke cheerfully)
“Behooves thee know world’s cruelty.”
And in the following, from the same poem, how evidently every idea and image is brought in to suit the measure and rhyme, which, on the other hand, are most ungratefully harsh.
Drayton and Browne,—with smiles they drew
From outward Nature, to renew
From their own inward nature true.
And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben—
Whose fire-heart sowed our furrows, when
The world was worthy of such men.—[Vol. II., p. 22.
God’s prophets of the beautiful,
These poets were, of iron rule,
The rugged cilix, serge of wool.—[Vol. II., p. 23.
The reader will no doubt observe how difficult, nay, often impossible, it is to force a grammatical construction on Miss Barrett’s sentences. This arises from the same fault, and is most disagreeabale. We may challenge any one to decypher the meaning of, or construe the three stanzas last quoted, each of which is a sentence perfect in itself. It is this which makes nearly a third of her poetry unintelligible; we are continually stumbling over sentences which would make Lindley Murray tear his hair, and Priscian cover his head with plasters. Who can unravel the Sphyngian enigma contained in the following stanzas, which occur within a few pages of the above?
If to search deep the universe
Must pierce the searcher with a curse,—
Because that bolt (in man’s reverse,)
Was shot to the heart o’ the wood, and lies
Wedged deepest in the best!—if eyes
That look for visions and surprise,
From marshalled angels, must shut down
Their lids, first, upon sun and moon,
The head asleep upon a stone.—
Miss Barrett’s faults are equally great on the score of rhyming. With the generality of poets [p. 242→] we can tell whether an idea was fitted to the rhyme, or a rhyme to the idea; but Miss B. transcends all our powers of discernment. The ideas are so incongruous that we are tempted to pronounce them introduced purely for the rhyme, but then the rhymes are so uncouth that we can conceive them used only in the direst necessity, when to alter an idea would be treason to Apollo. By a too great submission to the trammels of rhyme, poets sometimes injure their verses, but attention to this point, in our peculiar versification, is a necessary ingredient in the pleasure that is the aim of poetry, and this is most materially injured by the introduction of such jingles as,
the lady’s face
Did melt back in the chrysopras
Of the orient morning sky, that was
Yet clear of lark.
Or,
To the poppy plains, keeping
Such breath and such ble’
That the angels, there stepping,
Grew whiter to see.
And these, as the reader must no doubt have already observed, are rather mild examples of her unsuccessful introduction of images and words for the rhyme. Her utter want of ear has, we think, already been proved, and can scarcely be further established by the repetition of such attempted rhymes as “raiment” and “lament,” “doorway” and “evermore may,” “doorway” and “glory,” “stars” and “unawares,” “across me” and “enclose me,” “palm tree” and “calmly,” “palm bough” and “psalm now,” “desert” and “unmeasured,” “folded” and “behold not,” “sewed” and “shroud,” “solitude” and “God,” “flowings” and “poems,” “warder” and “door were,” mine be” and “pine tree,” “spice” and “Ptolemies,” “know from” and “snow-storm”—but our list is becoming ridiculously long, and we will spare our readers further infliction, assuring them that such examples occur on every page.
Her utter inability to master her language is also evinced by the strange words and phrases which she is forced to introduce, to accommodate herself to the uneasy chain of versification. Her writings all smell of the lamp; though there is so great a carelessness displayed throughout as to the ordinary material charms of poetry, yet we at once recognize the truth of what she says in her preface, that her work has been done as work, and that poetry has never been an amusement for leisure hours. It has evidently been work, and hard work; it comes invitâ Minervâ, with much hesitation and ruggedly. Thus, those lapses of expression which would be unpardonable in a beginner, strike us with the utmost astonishment when produced with so much care and labor by one who is placed, by her admirers, almost at the head of English poetry. We are continually disgusted with meeting such expressions as “mind” for “remind,” “chrism of beauty,” “ware” for “aware,” “perfecter,” “mandom,” “westering clouds,” “abeles,” “curse-mete,” “reboant,” “abeilles,” “dispread,” “aureole,” “gloriole,” “nympholeptic,” “an eye so gray of blue,” “to fine down this childish beauty,” “grapelets of gold,” “vanishings of glory,” “láment,” “applicative,” “súpreme,” “individúal,” and hundreds of other instances, where her unskilfulness has forced her to coin new words, or to pervert old ones from their proper meaning or accent. Her defenders may call this a beauty, a redundancy of expression; but surely when Byron, and Scott, and Moore, in their graphic and glowing descriptions of all the phases of human nature and passion, never found it necessary to add to the stock of our glorious old Anglo Saxon, are we to be told that Miss Barrett so far transcends them in her knowledge of mankind, as to make a new word necessary in every second line?
Miss Barrett is said to be the most learned female writer of the day. Of this we cannot judge, but we will hazard the opinion that she is the most pedantic. Pedantry is bad enough in a man, but in a woman, insufferable.
Sed quædam ex libris et non intelligat. Odi
Hanc ego, quæ repetit volvitque Palæmonis artem,
Servatâ semper lege, et ratione loquendi,
Ignotosque mihi tenet antiquaria versus.
Her pedantry displays itself in numberless, almost indefinable ways. The little scraps of Hebrew, the constant allusions to the Latins and Greeks, the stilted language, the compound words, now Greekish and now Germanic, the strange and far-fetched expressions, and many other peculiarities attest its presence most disagreeably. Shelley could translate Plato and Euripides, and yet continue magnificently the Prometheus Vinctus without showing that he had ever read a line of Greek. Miss Barrett translates the Prometheus and manifests her consciousness of the feat on almost every page. Thus, when she talks of “chrism of beauty,” “nympholeptic,” “reboant,” “dew-pallid,” “curious-eyed,” “pale-passioned,” “worldpraisers,” “jest-wise,” “world-laugh,” “world-wrath,” “fine-heart,” “sleep-smile,” “spirit-ruth,” &c. &c., we think at once that in her eagerness to acquire foreign languages she has forgotten her own. Sometimes she is more scientific, as when she makes Lucifer speak of “Eden fruits and Saurian fossils,” or puts into Adam’s mouth an anatomical remark, like
With its dynastic reasons of larger bones
And stronger sinews,
or when Adam, in his second speech after the fall, speaks of the burning sword “swinging its gnomon of red fire!”
But we are weary of the thankless duty of fault-finding, especially as we know that the greater part [p. 243→] of our critical brethren are opposed to us in opinion, concerning this lady’s poetry. In order, however, to assure our readers that we have not been adducing passages of unusual poverty and distortion, we will quote two which have received high praise from benevolent critics, and which will show what it is that her admirers like. Have we selected a passage more incomprehensible, or in worse taste than these four lines?
She has halls, and she has castles, and the resonant steam-eagles
Follow far on the directing of her floating dove-like hand
With a thunderous vapour trailing underneath the starry vigils,
So to mark upon the blasted heaven the measure of her land.
Those who are throughly imbued with the Tennysonian spirit are expected to understand this curious stanza by intuition. We confess ourselves of the uninitiated, but, by dint of hard study, have made out the “resonant steam-eagles” to be, in plain prose, locomotives. The rest might as well be Chaldee for all we can guess at it, unless it means that the Lady Geraldine, (who is the unfortunate subject of it,) is standing on her front door steps, and with her “floating dove-like hand,” laying out the line for a rail-road around her property. This, we suspect, is as near an interpretation as the thing will admit of.
Again, we would ask, have we quoted a more superlative instance of ill-expressed, dreamy, metaphysical no-meaning than the following. Who that knew the human heart would put it in the mouth of a dying girl, describing her feelings when she found that her lover had deserted her for her sister?
I fell flooded with a Dark
In the silence of a swoon—
When I rose, still cold and stark,
It was night,—I saw the moon;
And the stars, each in its place,
And the May-blooms on the grass,
Seemed to wonder what I was,
And I walked as if apart
From myself, when I could stand—
And I pitied my own heart
As if I held it in my hand
Somewhat coldly, with a sense
Of fulfilled benevolence,
And a “Poor thing” negligence.
When we read such verse as this, we groan inwardly for the time when poets wrote, and were listened to by the world—not by a clique of “reboant” admirers. In those days, when a pretender ignorantly thrust up his head among the Men of Eternity, some vigilant critic was ever on the watch to drive him out with ignominy; and, if occasionally the punishment was incurred by some one deserving, like Keats, a better fate, it arose from his own fully in disguising his fair proportions. In those days of wholesome severity, a single stanza, so utterly devoid of all claim on admiration, for ideas, expression, rhyme, versification or other requisite for poetry, as the following from a chorus of angels,
Then a sough of glory
Shall your entrance greet;
Ruffling round the doorway,
The smooth radiance it shall meet.
would, in itself, have been sufficient to blast an incipient reputation. Now, alas! times are changed, and the more outrè and unnatural a writer is, the more lavishly and unscrutinizingly is praise heaped over him. When shall we hope for a new Zoilus, some Τεννυσωμαστιξ, who may lash this crowd of pretenders back to their native oblivion?
[?Henry C.] L[ea]
Reviewed:
A Drama of Exile, and Other Poems (EBB), New York: Henry G. Langley, 1845.
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