Reviews

E500914B.  The Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (New York, 1850).

The Christian Inquirer, 14 September 1850, p. 2.

As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 311.

We welcome this new and beautiful edition of Mrs. Browning’s Poems. She is, in our judgment, the first poet of her sex—the Milton among women. Her poetry, like Milton’s, is learned, yet impassioned—intellectual, yet tender—somewhat saddened by a deep sense of the power of sin and sorrow in the world, yet cheered ever by a Christian faith and hope. She deserves a crown of amaranths for that exquisite ode, so full of pathos, “The Cry of the Children.”

We know of no book better suited to the wants of the author’s own sex than this. Here a poetry with all of a true woman’s sensibility in union with that intellectual power, which is so much needed to check the weak sentimentalism so prevalent. Mrs. Browning need not avail herself of any chivalrous courtesy, to procure a place of honor among men in their highest circle of genius. Her mission to woman, however, is peculiar. We can think of a score of noble girls who need the ministry of just such a spirit as hers, to save them from the frivolities which lie in wait for them. If the better class of parents, who desire purer intellectual aliment for their daughters than the usual styles of poetry and romance afford, would run their eye over these beautiful volumes, in a week not a single copy of the book would be left on the shelves of the publishers.

Reviewed:

Poems (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis, 1850.

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