E450700A. General Review Essay.
The American Review: A Whig Journal, July 1845, pp. 53–55.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 391–392.
[In this review of Rufus W. Griswold’s The Poets and Poetry of England, we include only those comments pertaining to EBB.]
But probably the greatest female poet, that England has ever produced, and one of the most unreadable, is Elizabeth B. Barrett. In the works of no woman have we ever observed so much grandeur of imagination, though often disguised in an elaborately infelicitous style. She has a large heart and a large brain; but many of her thoughts are hooded eagles. That a woman of such varied acquirements, of so much delicacy of sentiment and depth of feeling, of so much holiness and elevation of thought, possessing, too, an imagination of such shaping power and piercing vision, should not consent always to write English, should often consent to manufacture a barbarous jargon compounded of all languages, is a public calamity. “The Cry of the Human” to her, is, “Be more intelligible.” The scholar who was in the custom of “unbending himself over the lighter mathematics,” might find an agreeable recreation in Miss Barrett’s abstruse windings of thought, and terrible phalanxes of Greek and German expressions. A number of her poems are absolutely good for nothing, from their harshness and obscurity of language. Her mind has taken its tone and character from the study of the Hebrew Prophets, Æschylus and Milton; and she is more familiar with them than with the world. Vast and vague imaginations, excited by such high communion, float duskily before her mind, and she mutters mysteriously of their majestic presence; but she does not always run them into intelligible form. We could understand this, if she displayed any lack, on other occasions, of high imagination; but her frequent inexpressiveness is a voluntary offering on the altar of obscurity. “We understand a fury in the words, but not the words.” In one of her sonnets, “The Soul’s Ex- [p. 54→] pression,” we are made acquainted with her condition of mind, when she wishes to utter her deep imaginings. Nothing could better represent a heart possessed by the mightiest poetic feeling, yet awed before its own mystical emotions. It is the soul “falling away from the imagination.”
the soul’s expression.
With stammering lips, and insufficient sound
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
Both dream, and thought, and feeling interwound,
And inly answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and height,
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual ground!
This song of soul I struggle to outbear
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
And utter all myself into the air—
But if I did it—as the thunder-roll
Breaks its own cloud—my flesh would perish there,
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.
Miss Barrett’s genius, though subjective in its general character, is of considerable range. She is especially powerful in dealing with the affections. Her religious poetry is characterised by a most intense and solemn reverence for divine things, and often swells into magnificent bursts of rapture and adoration. Her feeling for humanity is deep and tender, and she has a warm sympathy with its wants and immunities. Her sonnets, though of various degrees of merit, and some of them crabbed in their versification, have generally a rough grandeur which is very imposing. “The Drama of Exile,” though teeming with faults, has noble traits of intellect and passion, which no faults can conceal. Many of her minor pieces show a most delicate perception of beauty and sentiment, expressed with much simplicity and melody of style. Mr. Griswold’s selections are not made from her last publication, and therefore do not contain some of her best poems. We cull a few extracts in illustration of her powers: the Drama of Exile was fully commented upon, with extracts of great power, in our first number.
earth.
How beautiful is earth! my starry thoughts
Look down on it from their unearthly sphere,
And sing symphonious—Beautiful is earth!
The lights and shadows of her myriad hills;
The branching greenness of her myriad woods;
Her sky-affecting rocks; her zoning sea;
Her rushing, gleaming cataracts; her streams
That race below, the wingëd clouds on high;
Her pleasantness of vale and meadow;—
Hush!
Meseemeth through the leafy trees to ring
A chime of bells to falling waters tuned;
Whereat comes heathen Zephyrus, out of breath
With running up the hills, and shakes his hair
From off his gleesome forehead, bold and glad
With keeping blythe Dan Phœbus company;—
And throws him on the grass, though half-afraid,
First glancing round, lest tempests should be nigh;
And lays close to the ground his ruddy lips,
And shapes their beauty into sound, and calls
On all the petal’d flowers that sit beneath
In hiding-places from the rain and snow,
To loosen the hard soil, and leave their cold,
Sad idlesse, and betake them up to him.
They straightway hear his voice—
A thought did come,
And press from out my soul the heathen dream.
Mine eyes were purged. Straightway did I bind
Round me the garment of my strength, and heard
Nature’s death-shrieking—the hereafter cry,
When he o’ the lion voice, the rainbow-crown’d,
Shall stand upon the mountains and the sea,
And swear by earth, by heaven’s throne, and Him
Who sitteth on the throne, there shall be time
No more, no more! Then, veil’d Eternity
Shall straight unveil her awful countenance
Unto the reeling worlds, and take the place
Of seasons, years, and ages. Aye and aye
Shall be the time of day. The wrinkled heaven
Shall yield her silent sun, made blind and white
With an exterminating light: the wind,
Unchainëd from the poles, nor having charge
Of cloud or ocean, with a sobbing wail
Shall rush among the stars, and swoon to death.
Yea, the shrunk earth, appearing livid pale
Beneath the red-tongued flame, shall shudder by [p. 55→]
From out her ancient place, and leave—a void.
Yet haply by that void the saints redeem’d
May sometimes stray; when memory of sin
Ghost-like shall rise upon their holy souls;
And on their lips shall lie the name of earth
In paleness and in silentness; until,
Each looking on his brother, face to face,
And bursting into sudden happy tears,
(The only tears undried) shall murmur—“Christ!”
what are we set on earth for?
What are we set on earth for? Say to toil!
Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines
For all the heat o’ the sun, till it declines,
And death’s mild curfew shall from work assoil.
God did anoint thee with his odorous oil
To wrestle, not to reign—and he assigns
All thy tears over like pure crystallines
Unto thy fellows, working the same soil,
To wear for amulets. So others shall
Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand,
From thy hand, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer,
And God’s grace fructify through thee to all!
The least flower with a brimming cup may stand
And share its dew-drop with another near.
despair.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In hearts, as countries, lieth silent, bare
Under the blenching, vertical eye-glare
Of the free charter’d heavens. Be still! express
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death,
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless wo,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it spectator? Are its eyelids wet?
If it could weep, it could arise and go!
[Edwin Percy Whipple]
Reviewed:
General Review Essay (EBB).
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