E450600A. General Review Essay.
The Knickerbocker, June 1845, pp. 534–542.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 390–391.
[Reviewed in this article were works by Tennyson, RB (see page 393), Patmore and Horne. We include only the comments pertaining to EBB.]
When we consider the matter-of-fact character of the present age, in which no great questions, such as moved the minds of men and nations during the half-century preceding it, are agitated; when it also occurs to us that national minds, at least in any one department of genius, seem to require a certain time to lie fallow after being worked to their utmost, these reflections will be fully sufficient to account for the recent dearth of good poetry in England. At one time it appeared as if, while the great masters of the last generation were successively dropping away, there was no likelihood of their places being filled. Though this fear is far from being entirely removed, no small part of it has been dissipated by the actual performance of some of the new school, and the promise already given by others.
[Reviewed in this article were works by Tennyson, Patmore, and Horne which we omit; also Browning (see page 393).] [p. 540→]
Next to Tennyson, (proxima sed longo,’) comes Miss Elizabeth Barrett Barrett. In genius she may be nearly his equal, in mere power she is his superior; but her genius, utterly unaided by art, is continually running wild, and cannot display itself to proper advantage. She has studied Æschylus, (not over critically perhaps, but where scholars cannot agree, ladies may be excused for mistranslating,) and is frequently at least as wild and puzzling as her master. If asked to describe her poetry to one who had not read it, we should define her as a Christian Shelley without Shelley’s art. In her writings we find thrilling description, intense pathos, wonderful effectiveness in the management of the supernatural, and equally wonderful psychological knowledge; but we also find multitudes of half-formed thoughts thrown out upon society to make themselves understood if they can; numerous passages which, in their trial of our ingenuity to extract a meaning from them, fairly distance Pindar and Æschylus, and must be left to those wise men and women who profess to understand Emerson; lines which defy the most dex- [p. 541→] terous reader to shape it into metre; strange affectations of quaint words and quainter uses of legitimate words, and combinations of syllables standing in place of rhymes, which to call even very imperfect rhymes, taxes our courtesy to its utmost. Thus a great part of the “Drama of Exile” is not to be understood. In one of the most impressive passages in that thrilling goblin legend, “The Brown Rosarie,” we are horrified by the cockney rhyme of “o’er her” and “Onora.” The final g in rhyming terminations is every where utterly disregarded: e.g. “Children” and “bewildering.” The lovely story of “The Lost Bower” is disfigured with affectations like these:
If it were a bird—ah, skeptic!
Give me yea or give me nay;
Though my soul were nympholeptic,
As I heard that virelay.
You might stoop your pride to pardon, for the guilt would pass away.
In the very touching “Lay of the Children,” Miss Barrett attempts the long German trochaic, a magnificent metre, but one which allows no liberties to be taken with it. By turning the first foot into an iambus,
The old tree is leafless in the forest,
of which sort of lines half-a-dozen or more occur together in more than one place, she utterly destroys the metre.*
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*It is some excuse for Miss Barrett, that hitherto only one man (Aytown) has succeeded in this stanza. Bulwer attempts it in his translation of Goëthe’s “Bride of Corinth,” and breaks down in the very first line.
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Miss Barrett says that writing is to her no easy task. Certainly, reading her is any thing but an easy task. She requires to be studied like any classical author. When we have become used to her mannerisms, the meanings of many passages before unintelligible, begin to unfold themselves. Thus in the opening of “The Duchess May” we are told that the castle of Linteged
Five hundred years had stood mute adown each hoary wood,
Like a full heart having prayed.
An ordinary reader is apt to be puzzled as to the point of the comparison. But one who knows, from a careful study of the author, that one of her most common styles of simile is from the various states of the human soul to inanimate objects, soon discovers that the second line is exegetical of the word “mute” in the first.
If Miss Barrett’s sins in rhythm and expression sprang from mere carelessness, our hopes of her might be more sanguine; but of the many pieces which she has retouched, none of them except one (the “House of Clouds”) seems to be a gainer by the process. The additions, especially, appear to us not always in the best taste. The “Brown Rosarie,” for instance, if we are not greatly mistaken, originally ended with those powerful verses in which the demon spell is broken by the indignant renunciation of the fatal vow, and
The fiends tried to laugh at the choristers’ hymn,
But moaned in the trying.
As the poem stands at present, it is weakened by a conclusion which provokes unfortunate comparisons with the similarly-added conclusion of Tennyson’s “May Queen.” It is questionable whether the last-mentioned poem gained by the addition, but at any rate it was suitable to the character of all that preceded it. In Miss Barrett’s conclusion we feel, and we trust such feeling is no sign of a Puritanic or vindictive spirit, that Onora has escaped too cheaply from the consequences of her apostacy. The calm and peaceful extinction, a sinking into slumber rather than death, well befitted the village maid, whose worst sins had been vanity and coquetry; but we naturally expect a more stormy end in the case of one who had deliberately vowed that
She would not thank God in her weal, nor seek God in her wo.
In short, we feel ready to despair of Miss Barrett as an artist. [p. 542→]
But whatever her faults may be, it is impossible for any one to read her volumes through, (many people are frightened off at once, by stumbling on some unlucky passage,) without feeling great admiration for her genius. “Margaret,” “The Lost Bower,” “The Page,” “The Cloudy House,” “Onora,” spite of its blemishes, and most of all, the “Dutchess May,” with its wonderfully adapted refrain; these are poems to be read and felt. We have read them, we are ashamed to say how often, and like them even better than before. Let us therefore pray that Miss Barrett may learn to make all her thoughts explain themselves, all her lines scan, and all her rhymes rhyme. So shall Tennyson not have all his “aureole,“ (to speak Barretticè) to himself.
C[harles]. A. B[risted].
Reviewed:
General Review Essay (EBB).
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