| <Christian Remembrancer>
| <Art. III ~~ THE MINOR POETS OF THE DAY>
| <pb n="346">
| It is not easy to determine how far originality is a legitimate 
| aim in composition. For a man to sit down to say over again, 
| and in the same manner as has been used a thousand times, 
| certain facts or views, is a manifest absurdity. Each bard, the 
| humblest that ever strung verses together, must be buoyed up 
| by the fancy that there is some novelty, some sort of 
| freshness, something of the morning dew about his efforts. 
| However utter his failure, however trite and familiar are his 
| thoughts, images, versification; however our ears may 
| recognise the same sing-song, our memories echo the same 
| reflections, images, descriptions, our understanding trace the 
| origin of every thought, not to its alleged source, but from 
| son to father, through the whole genealogy of poets, the 
| writer has at least laboured under the impression that some 
| grace, some subtle distinction stamps upon his effusions the 
| image of his individual mind, and separates his work from all 
| that has gone before. But this feeling, which is inseparable 
| from the impulse which leads men to write at all, is very 
| different from the conscious desire of saying things because 
| they are new. Whatever has been intensely, deeply felt within 
| the heart, in process of time, as the mind has leisure and 
| calmness to contemplate and meditate upon what has so 
| stirred it, ~~ to see its bearings, to reckon up its 
| consequences, ~~ excites a longing for utterance and 
| expression. It is part of the contribution of our being to be 
| relieved, benefited, strengthened by the setting in order and 
| communicating our thoughts, it is an instinct with some 
| minds, ~~ from a vivid realization of their 
| <pb n="347">
| own impressions and emotions, from a consciousness of 
| power, from an experience that they can influence, charm, do 
| good to their fellow men, ~~ to seek their sympathy, to 
| compel them to feel what they feel, to see what they see ~~ to 
| know what they know. But here is the intensity of their 
| feelings or convictions which impels them, a sense of their 
| reality, importance or sacred value, not any deliberate 
| speculations on their novelty; indeed they are actuated by a 
| contrary intention, not to tell what is new, but their 
| experience, which to them is old. 
| <reg orig="Every one"> Everyone </reg> who studies his 
| own nature, who comprehends himself, and in that process 
| necessarily compares his mind with other minds, knows that 
| there are differences innumerable between himself and all 
| others. This impression need not be conscious, but it will yet 
| actuate him to express fearlessly his own conceptions and 
| sensations, untroubled by the apprehension that others have 
| felt or thought the same. We cannot realize that we have a 
| soul without being also aware that it stands alone, distinct and 
| different from all that has gone before, or will follow after. It 
| is quite another matter, of course, whether a writer has power 
| to express this difference; but with that we have at present no 
| concern. The consciousness of it is enough to set the mind at 
| ease.
| <paragraph>
| But it is one thing to trust in this separateness of our natures, 
| and another to aim at producing evidences of it. The poet's 
| true object should rather be to excite sympathy in spite of it, 
| to strike upon
| those chords which prove the whole world kin; and to do this 
| he must either choose topics which concern men alike ~~ 
| men as men ~~ the hopes and fears we are born with, the 
| sorrows, the affections that come to us with the air we 
| breathe; or, if his genius leads to strange or high things, he 
| must connect them with what is familiar by clear, tangible, 
| unmistakeable links of association; so that by the things seen 
| we may apprehend what is not seen; which certainly needs at 
| least an equal degree of experience of life and thought, with 
| more common and simpler themes. There must have been a 
| slow maturing process somewhere, at some time, to produce 
| any new or valuable thought, and therefore, men's most 
| original conceptions are not those which at once strike 
| themselves as such. They get familiar with them by degrees. 
| What a correct critical judgement owns as such is struck out 
| by the imagination working upon thought, reflection, 
| memory, habits of comparison, and a world of silent hidden 
| powers, on which it acts as the light, bringing forth into order 
| what these seething elements have long been secretly 
| preparing; and ten to one, when a man dashes off what he 
| denominates to himself, with conscious complacency, an 
| original idea, which he believes has never occurred even to 
| himself before, it is a sham, a delusion, a clap-trap, 
| <pb n="348">
| some notion which he has borrowed and travestied from his 
| next neighbour, and which either youth or the perpetual 
| immaturity of an unreflecting nature suffers him to be 
| dazzled with: and if he possesses a showy style, or has the 
| confidence to shade what he indistinctly apprehends himself, 
| in language still more dim and oracular, the world for a time 
| will be dazzled too.
| <paragraph>
| It cannot be doubted by <reg orig="any one"> anyone </reg> 
| versed at all in the poetry of 
| the day, that there is in its writers much of that deliberate aim 
| at originality which we deprecate. It is, we may say, the 
| fashion to be
| original ~~ the fashion to strike out new lines of thought ~~ 
| to say things ~~ the like of which have never been said 
| before; a fashion, we venture to say, quite as easily adopted 
| and needing as small a
| stock of gifts, in spite of all its pretension, as any other 
| costume which has preceded it. In one age it is the fashion to 
| be metaphysical, in another, amatory, in another, pastoral: at 
| one time every poet is compelled to look back into the past, 
| in another to worship the present, sometimes all men are real, 
| at another all are ideal. Sometimes the muse is cased in 
| armour; sometimes prim in powder and pomatum. Now, her 
| hands and feet are embarrassed by her crook and her sheep; 
| then again, she is over the hills with hound and horn: at one 
| time she is muffled up to the throat, at another we are glad of 
| a rag to cover her. Now <hi rend="italic">  
| <foreign lang="French"> </foreign> 
| </hi> Now, every poet aims at dressing her to his individual 
| taste, thinks for himself, and looks at things from a new point 
| of view, explores new fields, and plunges into the empyrean 
| vast. But lo! at the same precise moment, it turns out that 
| <reg orig="every one"> everyone </reg> 
| else is guided by the same desires, is influenced by 
| the same lofty ambition, and the muse has still no change of 
| raiment, but even on common days must wear her mystic veil 
| and star-be-spangled mantle, forced into ceaseless 
| speculation and unvarying doubt We are naturally impressed 
| by the profundity of such an age of thinkers, till the very 
| universality of the gift raises doubts of its genuineness; and, 
| shaking of the awed bewilderment which at first enthralled 
| us, we call common sense to our aid, and look about us, and 
| after a process of slow disenchantment come in time to the 
| conviction, that many a poet who now sets us upon doubting 
| our own existence, or, ~~ emulating the Titans, ~~ would fain 
| scale heaven, a hundred years ago would very contentedly 
| have indited sonnets to Delia through his whole poetical 
| career, nor dreamt that he had missed his vocation. We do not 
| deny that, the present being in truth an intellectual age, his 
| verses are better now than they would have been with only 
| Delia for his inspiration. The age does so much for those who 
| live in it that they all more or less share its characteristics. 
| We are all probably cleverer than we should have been a 
| hundred years ago; we probably use our minds 
| <pb n="349">
| more, and on more important things. It does so much for us 
| all. And this influence of our age is no doubt a talent 
| committed to us. But it cannot make really precious things 
| common ~~ it can work no miracles ~~ it cannot make the 
| shallow waters deep, nor change lead or brass into gold. 
| Great qualities will still be rare ones in all ages. And on the 
| other side of the picture, and to counterbalance advantages to 
| us all, we have acknowledged ~~ most thankfully 
| acknowledged ~~ as derived from an age of intellectual 
| activity, there is one temptation peculiar to it, and to which, 
| as belonging to it, we all are liable, in the form of an idolatry 
| as degrading, as slavish as any past one which men have 
| learnt to loathe, ~~ perhaps, as touching our noblest part, 
| more deeply debasing ~~ the worship, we mean, of 
| intellectual power; the submission of the individual mind to it 
| as to a divinity above itself, which sometimes in men's 
| writings does not scruple to express itself in a deliberate 
| preference of the idol to God himself, and without this 
| hyperbole of impiety is yet evident as a prevailing principle 
| of the day wherever we turn, and especially through the 
| whole range of literature. Authors, indeed, and poets, have a 
| sort of interest in fostering this delusion, and persuading men 
| to worship greatness wherever they see it: for, believing 
| themselves to belong to the privileged class, ~~ the men of 
| progress, the model men, the regenerators of their species, ~~ 
| they may hope by nourishing the spirit of servile adulation to 
| come in for their share of it in time, and thus exalting genius 
| in general terms are all the while organizing a band of 
| devotees for their own future service.
| This is a fact too generally granted perhaps to need 
| illustration; but as a proof that we cannot exaggerate in our 
| statement, we will present our readers with a passage from 
| Paracelsus, by the author at the head of our list, Mr. 
| Browning. Aureole Paracelsus, "the master-mind", the 
| "thinker", the "explorer", the "creator", after a very 
| discreditable career, is dying in an hospital, his respectable 
| religious friend, Festus, is watching the ravings of delirium 
| by his pillow, and thus addresses the object of his unshaken 
| (unshaken by everything that ought to have shaken it) 
| allegiance: ~~
| <quotation>
| <pb n="350">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| But in order to win this homage, in order to reach the idol's 
| envied seat, it is needful to follow the requirements of the 
| times, to be an "explorer, a creator," and how is this to be 
| brought about? Of necessity it must be by some means of 
| which the author is himself vividly conscious, or he will not 
| be sustained by his own enthusiasm. The first and 
| indispensable step is to dismiss judgment from her place, ~~ 
| that obstinate, questioning, critical, restraining power, which 
| checks so many high flights in us all; and thus freed, he must 
| force himself ~~ and it will not be difficult ~~ into an 
| unbounded self-reliance ~~ an indiscriminate confidence in 
| every suggestion of the fancy. <quotation> </quotation> 
| says Mr Bailey, the 
| ingenuous author of Festus, <quotation> 
| </quotation> A great step is here gained: the history of all 
| sects shows what apparently marvellous effects are produced by 
| this one persuasion; and under such encouragement and the 
| reins thus entirely abandoned, those must be very dull brains 
| indeed that will not produce something uncommon ~~ 
| something that we shall all stare at; nor is it of dull brains that 
| we would be understood to speak. it is not, perhaps, a very 
| safe speculation, yet all our readers must be aware that there 
| are a great many subjects which they leave unexplored, 
| because having no guide through them, it would be wrong to 
| speculate upon them. But, if suddenly released from this 
| salutary restraint, and at the same time excited by the 
| stimulants of vanity and ambition, 
| <reg orig="any one"> anyone </reg> ventured on such 
| a course, he might elicit from his own unassisted thoughts 
| something new, strange, startling, which he would himself be 
| afraid to look upon, and which, therefore, might not unlikely 
| excite in other minds of an indiscriminating character, 
| sensations of fear or awe or curiosity, which would reflect 
| upon the originator of them a character of daring invention. 
| For instance, if he would choose, availing himself of the few 
| glimpses inspiration furnishes us with, to compose scenes in 
| heaven ~~ to dramatise incidents, to make angels and the 
| Creator of angels speak in his language, and express his own 
| thoughts; so long as he had any power over numbers, any 
| knack at sounding blank verse, to cover the too manifest 
| impiety, we are much mistaken if he would not find many 
| readers to think it fine, and to congratulate themselves on 
| having experienced some new, agreeable sensations. What 
| was the fruit in the writer of simple irreverence, would not 
| improbably seem to them the noble flight of genius not to be 
| judge by common rules.
| <paragraph>
| A choice, then, of an unusual subject, one which for any
| <pb n="351">
| cause has been hitherto avoided, is one road to this desired 
| object. Another is a new mode of treating old ones. There is a 
| certain code of morals, for example, which through all ages 
| has been received and acknowledged. Vices, breaches of this 
| code, of various kinds, have it is true, been always invested 
| by immoral authors with interest, they have sought to make 
| men sympathise with error, but all the while admitting it to be 
| error. The new mode of treating the question is, to justify and 
| defend it; to maintain that sin is either a necessity of our 
| nature, or a chosen selected road to good, and to encourage 
| men by these arguments to the practice of it; and thus the part 
| of the modern master-mind is not to throw an illusive, 
| attractive halo round the sinner, but with unscrupling fidelity 
| to depict him as he is, and to defend the sin. Such is the 
| <hi rend="italic"> tendency </hi> of modern modes of thought, 
| in those who think themselves enlightened; not often to be 
| seen developed, though we think fully brought out in one 
| poem in our list. Profaneness in the familiar treatment of 
| sacred names and things, a quality which may be said indeed 
| to be a main ingredient in the preceding modes, is also, in its 
| own unaided nature itself, another distinct means; not indeed 
| an invention of modern times, for it has before been 
| successfully used to produce the same result; but 
| systematized in this, and often enhanced by a kind of 
| religious gloss. The defence of sin may be done in language 
| scarcely to shock our ears, but the profaneness we speak of 
| makes its chief assault on our senses, and aims to surprise 
| them by unexpected combinations. Scripture names and 
| characters familiar to us only through one set of associations, 
| are brought forcibly before us in another, and made to speak 
| in wholly new language. We entertain ideas, strict, formal, 
| conventional, it may be, of certain awful or sacred characters; 
| we feel that it would be unsafe, with our limited knowledge, 
| tainted imaginations, worldly aims, to intrude in unwarranted 
| speculation on their uninspired life and common existence, it 
| would indeed be fatal to reverence for such to become a habit 
| of mind; and therefore here is another unfrequented field for 
| the experiments of the searchers after novelty of effect. 
| Sentiments which would hardly keep our attention for a 
| moment, when spoken in the writer's own name, arrest it 
| when put into the mouth of some saint of the old 
| dispensation, and all the more effectually the more they are 
| out of character; and one trained in a stern exclusive code is 
| made to utter the thoughts and desires of modern liberalism. 
| Out of character, we say, buy t there is a contrary view at 
| which the admirers of this style arrive, who consider these 
| startling juxtapositions of the ancient with the modern in the 
| same person as proving a profound insight into human nature, 
| looking through the husk of manners, habits of thought, 
| associations,
| <pb n="352">
| deep down into the heart itself. There was an example to the 
| purpose in one of the earlier numbers of Mr. Dicken's 
| "Household Words," where, in a little dramatic scene, the 
| patriarch Abraham, whose especial call it was to leave a land 
| of idolators, and to separate himself from worldly 
| associations, is made to acknowledge his error in refusing the 
| right hand of familiar fellowship to a fire-worshipper, and not 
| allowing him to be exactly on a par with himself in God's 
| favour and approbation.
| <paragraph>
| One other means we must mention out of many which might 
| be particularized, and then pass on from this part of our 
| subject. It used to be a part of the common law of literature, 
| that before a man presented his thoughts to the world, before 
| he committed himself to type and all the formalities of 
| publication, he should at least know himself what he wished 
| to say, ~~ he should have some distinct definite idea on the 
| subject he understood to treat of. Nothing can be further from 
| the thought of modern regenerators. They understand better 
| the principles of intellectual <hi rend="italic"> chiaro scuro, 
| </hi> and are aware of the value of mists, hazes and distances 
| in giving mystery to the familiar, and importance to the 
| trivial. Whatever is clearly seen, defined against the broad 
| light of common sunshine, is known for what it is, and gains 
| no adventitious value or importance; therefore it must have 
| an intrinsic value to stand inspection. A contrary method 
| entails as it were a double advantage to the author, for by 
| raising a mist of indistinctness around his crude conceptions, 
| he is both spared the trouble of facing them and ascertaining 
| their real value; and by presenting them in a cloud to his 
| readers her secures their being received by a certain portion 
| of them for something infinitely grander and more important 
| than they really are. The blinded reader, finding a difficulty 
| to unravel, concludes it is caused by the inherent depth of the 
| thought, and worships with the more fervour the mystery of 
| the oracle.
| <paragraph>
| But it is time to turn from general reflections, necessarily 
| bounded and imperfect, to the individual examples at the 
| head of our article, which have so far themselves suggested 
| them, as they appear in different ways specimens of current 
| modes of thought and of subservience to the age, though very 
| distinct in character, and deserving of widely different 
| treatment from the critic's hand. A poet may be tinctured by 
| his own day, yet will retain, so far as he has inherent force or 
| genius, his individuality unimpaired. One bond necessarily 
| connects the works at the head of our list in our first mention 
| of them, however separate in their own aim and nature, and 
| that not a common one in the relation of books to each other, 
| and productive no doubt of endless confusion to booksellers 
| and publisher. Almost at the same time husband and wife, the 
| poet and the poetess, issue each
| <pb n="353">
| two thick, close-printed green volumes, identical in their 
| aspect, and bearing the same name; "Mr. Browning's Poems, 
| in two vols.," a new edition; "Mrs. Browning's Poems, in two 
| vols.," a new edition. There is a harmony, a domestic 
| agreement in this arrangement so pleasing, suggestive of such 
| happy thoughts, of a household conducted on such melodious 
| principles as quite to atone for the confusion our minds 
| suffer, and the mistakes which pursue us in taking up the 
| volumes. Fortunately the similarity is confined to name and 
| outsides, and when we open the page something generally 
| shows at once the sex of the speaker; some tender new 
| coinage of the fanciful poetess, who never can find dictionary 
| words enough to suit the capricious exigencies of her verse, 
| betrays the Miss Elizabeth Barrett of our earlier acquaintance, 
| while on the other side too often some rough indecorous 
| rhyme and unscrupulous word declares the movements of a 
| manly pen. Some such distinction must needs have been to 
| produce those differences absolutely necessary in the 
| conjugal relation. If Mr. Browning had been in the habit of 
| writing of "Dream-breath and ble," or of a
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| or if Miss Barrett had made "Gallio" rhyme with "tallyho," or 
| "vestiment" with "testament," we venture to pronounce in our 
| utter ignorance of the real state of things, or of the authors, 
| except as known to us in their works, that it could never have 
| been a match.
| <paragraph>
| Mr. Browning possesses one distinction, of which his friends 
| make a boast, as placing him in the rank of original writers: 
| he is with the commonalty of readers unpopular, by many is 
| regarded as simply unreadable. He has excited much notice in 
| the reading world, he is said to be in high favour in American 
| literary circles ~~ but the multitude as yet turn from him and 
| refuse to listen. He has his devotees, however, and he is 
| evidently proud of them, and likes very well to be a leader; 
| on the other hand talking cavalierly, as men will, of the 
| people who criticise his verses, loftily admitting the truth of 
| their small carpings, but implying that they are incapable of 
| entering into his keener train of thought, and new mode of 
| expressing it, who will be hindered by such slight 
| impediments. The general reader complains of a want of 
| beauty; there is nothing pleasing, no fair scenes, no illusions, 
| no music, no harmony of thought or diction, and is revolted 
| besides, by far more grave and serious faults. His enlightened 
| admirers, on the other hand, hail him as a teacher who comes 
| with a mission, with real things to say, which he can say but 
| in one way, a way which we must tolerate till we learn to 
| love it: offering their
| <pb n="354">
| own rule as our example in the needful submission of our 
| private judgment; which seems to be, in every case where the 
| mind is shocked on a first perusal, to read the passage again 
| and again, till it learns to like it. Paracelsus, Sordello, Pippa 
| Passes, his latest work, "Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day," are 
| to be regarded as a poet's "revelations." Nature has made him 
| what he is, and he acts on her dictates; he cannot be expected 
| to adopt received modes; he has a higher task, they say, than 
| to create beauty; force, action, life, are his elements, his 
| genius is purely dramatic; it is forced to express itself in this 
| didactic, harsh, severe form; and a host of other arguments, 
| which are good or bad according to the merits of their 
| subject. His longer poems are most of them, it is true, cast in 
| the dramatic mould, but, as we hope to prove when we reach 
| that part of our subject, this is a wholly different thing from 
| having genuine dramatic genius. We believe that his power 
| lies generally in his shorter pieces and less ambitious efforts, 
| which implies of course our want of faith in this "mission;" 
| yet siding as we do with the multitude in their general 
| judgment, we must yet admit that there is a real  
| <hi rend="italic"> force </hi> in his poems. We feel this both at 
| the time of reading them, and, what is even a better test, 
| because they stand forth distinctly in the memory out of the 
| midst of many other volumes of poetry read at the same time. 
| They assert their superiority over verse of a more poetical 
| character by this power. What Mr. Browning wishes to say is 
| frequently not worth saying, and very often would be better 
| unsaid; it is heathenish or coarse, or asserting the supremacy 
| of our lower instincts and passions, or gloating over our 
| nature's savage propensitites, and often (though we believe 
| not with a full realization) profane: also the verse is generally 
| extremely unmusical, and seldom conveys the peculiar 
| pleasure it is the duty of numbers to convey ~~ though once 
| or twice we have passages of melody, which show what he 
| might have attained to had he cultivated instead of wilfully 
| vitiated his taste ~~ but he has the power of imprinting what 
| he desires to say on the mind. We exclude from these 
| remarks altogether the Dramas, in which he cannot make us 
| realize the scenes he dwells upon. But in his Lyrics, and his 
| Dramatic Poems, if either can be properly so denominated, he 
| can produce a forcible impression. Many of the minor pieces 
| in his collective poems might be adduced as examples, and 
| several descriptive passages from his latest work, 
| "Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day." The first judgment of most minds, 
| on glancing over this avowedly religious poem, would be, that it 
| was written in intentional irreverence and impiety. The 
| choice of the metre, the grotesqueness of the rhymes, often 
| suggesting to the reader that he stumbled on some forgotten 
| page of Hudibras; the tone of
| <pb n="355">
| rough humour contrasted with the sacredness of the subject, 
| and of the Vision which guides the poet in his search for 
| truth, would justify the opinion; but though all this is in its 
| nature profane and irreverent, we fully exonerate the writer 
| from any intention of the sort. We even believe after its 
| perusal, as opposed to the impression left by many of his 
| works, that he considers religion a real and important thing, 
| that he would willingly strengthen his faith, that the work was 
| written with this aim. But it betrays the workings of a coarse, 
| rude, though powerful mind, incapable of spiritual elevation, 
| and despising flights because it cannot attain to them. In all 
| systems it seeks the visible, the gross, the earthy; without this 
| element religion seems to possess to him 
| <reg orig="no body"> nobody </reg>. But before 
| proceeding to his religious views, or to the choice which 
| terminated his doubting bewildered search, we will give some 
| specimens of his secular manner. The following passage from 
| Paracelsus gives his views of social regeneration. Paracelsus, 
| we must explain to such as are unacquainted with the poem, 
| is the mind's life of one of this earth's noblest spirits. As an 
| historical character he does not come out very well, having in 
| his intense burning desire for knowledge taken to forbidden 
| arts, and at length, to win popular favour, condescended to 
| the most base and humiliating means for obtaining money 
| and distinction. One of his names, Bombastus, has become a 
| byword, from the form of eloquence he chose to adopt in his 
| charlatan career. Such as he was, however, he is asserted to 
| have been the father of modern chemistry, and therefore a 
| master spirit, and deserving of all the fine names which 
| Festus, according to the passage already quoted, heaped upon 
| him. It is thus that towards the close of his career he 
| prophesies of progress. What this progress means, what is 
| especially means from the lips of those who admit the 
| inevitable stating point of each soul of the human family to 
| be an utterly fallen nature, we do not pretend to say; but 
| probably our present author had no theological difficulties to 
| interfere with the free expansion of the grand theory. We give 
| it at length, to put our readers in possession of the views on 
| this subject of a growing school of opinion: ~~
| <quotation>
| <pb n="356">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| This high-flown rant must be considered as the sentiments of 
| our author. The impatience at the <quotation>  
| </quotation> that exists now is perhaps not unnatural to minds who 
| are for such wholesale methods of restoration. The quiet 
| axiom, "Let each one mend himself," and the like, falls coldly 
| on ears which listen to promises of men being reformed 
| altogether by a universal abstract "thirst for good." But we 
| need not moralize to our readers at length on such visions, 
| nor on the small connexion such aspirations have with any 
| practical self-improvement. The following, in a different 
| style, are we think very spirited lines, and express with keen 
| truth feelings common to all who have loved and lost their 
| idol. Many a one may sympathise with a line here and there, 
| who has not been forsaken and betrayed for the love of gold 
| or distinction, who takes no part in the general tone, in the 
| implied feelings outraged, nor in the threat of ceaseless 
| uncompromising war, but only because he too has loved and 
| known the bitterness of desertion. Whenever there is real 
| feeling and pathos in the heart, these emotions
| <pb n="357">
| will force themselves into harmonious eloquent expression; 
| we do not meet with many verses in Mr. Browning's volumes 
| that read off so flowingly: ~~
| <quotation> </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| "Count Gismond" is another example of nervous, forcible 
| expression. The heroine of the story tells the history of the 
| terrible day in which first she knew her husband, and was 
| saved by him from ignominy. There is much truth and power 
| in the abruptness, hurry, and simplicity of the narrative, and 
| the absence of mere poetical decoration, all contrasting 
| favourably with the deliberation of the action in Mr. 
| Browning's Dramas: ~~ <quotation>
| <pb n="358">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| Gualtier then makes his false and infamous charge: ~~
| <quotation> </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| The knight gives the lie to Gualtier both by word and blow, 
| and she already feels herself cleared. In the following stanzas 
| the exclusive rest and trust of her thoughts in her champion, 
| is of a piece with all the author's notions of true affection: ~~
| <quotation> </quotation>
| <pb n="859">
| <paragraph>
| Much of Mr. Browning's force of expression unquestionable 
| lies in the development of sentiments and passions which 
| form no fit subject for poetry, ~~ few desires, fiendish 
| revenge, sordid hate. There is a singular scene entitled "The 
| Bishop orders his Tomb in St. Praxad's Church," which 
| excels in this vein. The poet has thrown his mind into the 
| subject, and delights in portraying in the person of a dying 
| Churchman that absolute subjugation of the soul to the body, 
| which a life of selfishness and sin may reduce men to. 
| Another styled "Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister," and 
| beginning
| <quotation> </quotation>
| is of the same character, where impotent hatred is expressed 
| in a strain of apostrophes, interjections, curses, animal hisses 
| and groans, perfectly adapted to convey the desired 
| impression. We are brought into direct close contact, through 
| the power of the poet's imagination, with something infinitely 
| low and base. Again, wherever his delineation of love has 
| any force, it is as a lowering and degrading passion, a thing 
| of sight and sense only, and never considered full and 
| complete till it has renounced for its idol's sake all higher 
| hopes and desires; as in "Time's Revenges," where a poet and 
| author, after describing his faithful friend, thus rhapsodizes: 
| ~~
| <quotation> </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| His women are forward, and often immodest; qualities, 
| however, which very little affect their admirers, who are 
| enchained solely by personal charms: "great eyes," "smooth 
| white faces," "coiled hair." Nothing can be less intelligent 
| than their love; no reserves are kept up, and the ladies 
| generally make the first advances. Most of those depicted, 
| show something which would disqualify them for the society 
| of their own sex. these faults are all so common with a certain 
| class of writers as to have needed no notice here, but for the 
| stand Mr. Browning takes as one of the lights of the age; in 
| his way a teacher, a guide to a higher state of things. The 
| following extract is in illustration of the propensity of modern 
| writers to invest sacred characters with their own fancies. For  
| no reason that can be gathered from any appropriateness in 
| the poem, any
| <pb n="360">
| catching of the ancient spirit in thought or language, he has 
| chosen to employ his own notions of the animal joys of 
| existence in this psalm of David. Never was presumption less 
| rewarded. How dull must the ears have been which could 
| listen to the sweet Psalmist of Israel, and parody his strains in 
| such words as these. Abner summons David to charm the evil 
| spirit under which Saul was subject. The opening lines give 
| the description of the darkened tent, and the attitude of the 
| possessed monarch: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| Though "Pippa Passes" is styled a drama, it is so much more 
| really a poem with some dramatic scenes, that we will 
| mention it here. The idea is a good one. Pippa, a poor Italian 
| girl, rises in the morning, resolved to enjoy to the uttermost 
| her one holiday throughout the year, and falls to musing over 
| the great and rich of her town, <quotation> 
| </quotation> who through accident have attracted 
| common attention. They all have the
| <pb n="361">
| whole year to enjoy themselves in; in their abundance they 
| could well allow some drawbacks to the perfection of that 
| single day <line unreadable> scenes, in which these 
| personages are engaged during that day, in each of which, as 
| Pippa passes down the street, singing in careless unconscious 
| happiness, some words of her song strike on their ears in 
| some critical juncture, and wholly change their plans and 
| purposes. The guilty lover is smitten with remorse; the poor 
| tricked student who has been cheated by his companions in a 
| revengeful frolic into a degrading marriage, recovers from his 
| despair, and resolves to make the best of his poor bride; the 
| young Italian patriot rushes off under her inspiration to act 
| the regicide's part; the crafty unscrupulous churchman is 
| terrified out of schemes of infamous aggrandisment. There is 
| power and beauty in many passages, characterised and 
| disfigured by the faults we have noticed; but one great defect 
| lies in the total inadequacy of Pippa's songs to produce the 
| alleged effect. It requires a repeated perusal to make any 
| sense at all out of them; how they could have struck on 
| <reg orig="any one's"> anyone's </reg> 
| ear or conscience is past conjecture. Nothing short of a 
| miracle could have educed such effects from such causes. We 
| give the following scene as an example. The villanous 
| intendant is in conference with the avaricious priest, and is 
| proposing to betray poor Pippa, who is it seems the true 
| heiress of the wealth the churchman is seeking to obtain, and 
| to carry her off the scene. Monsignore is on the highway to 
| assent, when the voice of the unknown girl awakes his 
| conscience.
| <quotation>
| <pb n="362">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| Besides Paracelsus, and Pippa Passes, both in the dramatic 
| form, these two volumes contain six regular plays, five of 
| which are tragedies, and these embrace more than half Mr. 
| Browning's poetical works. It is clear, therefore, that he feels 
| his genius to lie especially in the drama; that he believes it to 
| be the best and aptest means for the expression of his powers. 
| If pursuing this persuasion to its probable conclusion, he goes 
| on to think that he writes good drams, that he has the gifts 
| needed by a dramatic poet, we do not think he could have 
| made a greater mistake. We would adduce these six plays as 
| examples of failure. What merits they possess are not 
| dramatic merits: in dramatic requirements they are essentially 
| wanting, and therefore these plays are failures beyond their 
| real deserts. When a composition is in a dramatic form, our 
| taste has certain requirements, which <hi rend="italic"> must 
| </hi> be satisfied, which no substitute will atone for the want 
| of. Every composition suffers if it is not what it pretends to 
| be: no borrowed graces make up for the absence of qualities 
| inherent in the thing aimed at; a sermon should be a sermon, 
| a novel a novel, a poem should be a poem, a play a play. The 
| drama, active, stirring, and full of change and incident, the 
| very reflection of man in his moments of greatest excitement 
| and elevation, is perhaps of all compositions the grandest and 
| most exciting; but if we have only its husk and outer form, 
| some of its external qualities and not the heart of it, it 
| changes its nature into something more wearisome, 
| unprofitable, trite and unattractive than any vehicle for 
| thought and invention men have ever hit upon. If its form has 
| been adopted to supply certain intellectual deficiencies in a 
| writer rather than to express his fullness and play of 
| invention, the result is something irksome beyond ordinary 
| dullness. The dramatic talent, it need not be said, does not 
| consist in bringing out a given event in conversation; this is 
| often the resource of want of power. Simple narrative is 
| commonly the best mode of telling things, but it is not 
| everybody's gift.  We have no doubt it is easier to many 
| people to put a story in the form of dialogue, than to relate it 
| in their own person. Narrative implies a <hi rend="italic"> 
| style; </hi> again, narrative must be terse, connected, to the 
| point. In dialogue, on the contrary, there is no need of style; it 
| is enough to be natural, and it is, we all know, only too 
| natural to be diffuse, discursive, irrelevant; it is natural not to 
| keep to the point; thus an author can, as it were, throw all his 
| weakness upon his characters, and make them bear the blame. 
| Narrative, then, simple, straight-forward, graphic, smooth, is, 
| we repeat, a great test of an author's powers; it is, moreover, 
| the only proper
| <pb n="363">
| mode in most cases for conveying information. Take some 
| grand event easily comprehended, if no already familiar, 
| acted in by personages great in proportion to the event, and 
| we have materials for tragic interest. But the proceedings in 
| politics or war, or love, of ordinary people in an unknown 
| insignificant field, are best told in the simplest fashion. Our 
| demands in this form of composition are more inexorable and 
| positive than in any other, our interest is more difficult to 
| excite. If when we look for action we have prolix talking in 
| its stead, ~~ for nature, we have only the repetition in each 
| character of the poet's own mode of thought, ~~ for passion 
| itself, we have only a cold deliberate description of its 
| workings, all our legitimate expectations being disappointed, 
| we are in no mood to take what is offered to us in exchange 
| for the more stimulating pleasure we had a right to expect. 
| There may be wise sentiments, we heed them not, for they are 
| out of place either in the time or in the speaker. There may be 
| a flow of poetry, it stops the business of the play, and we 
| regard it as an impertinence, ~~ profound metaphysical 
| inquiries, but they are felt as simply ridiculous if the 
| personages of the piece stand idly by analysing their separate 
| peculiarities, instead of being influenced by them; and in this 
| perpetual disappointment of what we consider our just 
| expectations, we grow weary and impatient.
| <paragraph>
| We appeal to our readers, if a modern play is not amongst the 
| most difficult feats of reading they are ever called upon to 
| undertake ~~ if they do not commonly rise stupefied and 
| confused from its perusal, with the haziest possible notion of 
| what has been the drift of the whole. The dramatist in poring 
| over some unfrequented because uninteresting fields of 
| history, has formed his plot, ~~ a cast of characters not much 
| to be cared for, playing off a maze of intricate schemes upon 
| one another. If the story were told intelligibly and shortly, ~~ 
| it would scarce repay perusal; but the dramatist has other 
| plans. We are to discover the plot for ourselves, and the 
| characters of course are to be developed by it; while in order 
| to show his depth, and his knowledge of the hidden workings 
| of the heart, nobody means what he says, which is a grievous 
| hindrance to our catching the clue. The people talk at length 
| for our benefit, and detail their schemes for crowns, or places, 
| or hearts: and we, in a region of mistrust, have to gather what 
| it all means from "asides," and hints carelessly let fall. We 
| read on in doubt, incapable of ever taking a side, perpetually 
| asking ourselves, with the children, "Is he good? is he 
| naughty?" and nobody till the end of the piece tells us. A king 
| of whose existence we never heard, but who does exist in 
| some genuine record, comes forward reading a letter, or 
| dictating to his secretary about Spain, and France,
| <pb n="364">
| and the Pope, and the Legate. The secretary is ambiguous, we 
| alternately suspect him of being a spy, or a lady in disguise, 
| for we feel it necessary always to keep our wits unnaturally 
| and suspiciously on the alert; he proves to be nothing but a 
| secretary after all, some impersonation of worldly wisdom 
| discussing the pretensions of the European powers with the 
| king, who seems inextricably involved with them all. They 
| are overheard by a personage hid in a closet conveniently at 
| hand; he appears in the scene, followed by the prime minister 
| and some courtiers ~~ more about Spain and Austria, and the 
| Pope, who gives occasion for clap-trap sneers against 
| priestcraft as often as he is mentioned, then the lady comes 
| in, and either joins in the plotting, or is its victim. Somebody 
| is disinterested and somebody is selfish, somebody is devoted 
| and somebody is ungrateful. We turn to the  
| <hi rend="italic"> dramatis personae </hi> to help us, for by 
| some mismanagement in the choice of names, perhaps a 
| single vowel is the sole distinction between these opposites, 
| the friend being signified by such an abbreviation as Cor, the 
| enemy by Car, which is scarce difference to enable us always 
| to distinguish between the hypocrite and the honest man. 
| Towards the end of the play people get reckless of the time 
| and patience of their hearers. The last scene is "a feat of 
| loquacity;" they have all their motives to explain, a process 
| which always takes time; at length, after the longest and most 
| elaborate harangue of all, the one speech most distinguished 
| by self-possessed rhetoric, the speaker dies; why he should 
| die in the evident possession of such health and strength 
| would be a difficulty, were it not solved by the exigencies of 
| the play, which demand this sacrifice to constitute it a 
| tragedy. We look back, and find within the last scene or two 
| that the hero had taken poison; but the dose had affected his 
| mind, and, as it would seem, appearance so little, that the 
| incident might well escape our recollection. In the play 
| throughout everything has given way to talk; the action has 
| invariably waited till the speakers have finished what they 
| had to say; the scenes have been throughout "reciprocal 
| declamation." Yet the dramatic talent lies not in talk but in 
| action; we should see a plot developing, tending towards its 
| accomplishment in every scene. In the dialogue everything is 
| irrelevant which works not towards this end; and this end in 
| view keeps the characters true to nature, as the forgetfulness 
| of it leads to that endless prose and generalization which is 
| fatal to the modern drama. In these "pro and con poems," as 
| they have been termed, there is always time for whatever 
| people have to say. <hi rend="italic"> Our </hi> patience 
| may weary, but we know by experience that the action will 
| wait. The battle will not be lost, nor the city taken, nor the
| <pb n="365">
| critical moment let slip for all the misplaced talking, which in 
| real life would stretch us on the tenter hooks of unendurable 
| suspense.
| <paragraph>
| Take for example Mr. Browning's tragedy of "Luria." There 
| are good passages and some just observations, but as a 
| dramatic effort it is simply monstrous, a monstrous 
| impossible fidelity, playing upon and set off against an 
| equally monstrous treachery. All the characters of the piece, 
| however else opposed, man or woman, soldier or civilian, 
| crafty Italian or half-savage Moor, agreeing in talking 
| metaphysics in the precise moment for action; analysing to 
| one another, in the most critical junctures, and in situations of 
| the most direct hostility, their own motives and their views of 
| life; and this with a prolixity and zeal for philosophical 
| inquiry not to be equalled by any class of human debaters 
| ever met together for the sole purpose of discussion. Even the 
| semi-barbarian Hussein talks of, <quotation> 
| </quotation> The characters are all 
| impersonations of abstract qualities. Luria is generosity, and 
| always generous; Braccio is deliberate self-justifying 
| treachery, and always treacherous; Dometzia is revenge; 
| Hussein the Moor is instinct; and all act up to their 
| characters, till in obedience to the author's turn of thought the 
| reformation begins, and it proves that ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| Luria, the Moor is the Florentine general; Tiburzio is the 
| Pisan general; the two states being at war with one another. 
| The tragedy is at its close. Turn over the leaf, and half-way 
| down, Luria dies from the effects of poison he had taken for 
| reasons it is not very easy to divine. Circumstances had given 
| Tiburzio the advantage, which he has rejected on the 
| following grounds. The action itself; the grounds for it; the 
| deliberate detail of motives to a dying man, are all, we 
| maintain, outrages to nature and probability.
| <quotation>
| <pb n="366">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| In "Charles and Victor" the plot is taken from some obscure 
| passage of history, and never, we may say, elucidated from 
| beginning to end. The story is at once unintelligible, as far as 
| Mr. Browning has brought out the motives of the actors in it, 
| and devoid of interest. "Colombo's Birthday" leaves us often 
| in the same sea for actuating motives, nor can we account 
| satisfactorily nor in accordance with our notions of feminine 
| propriety, for the duchess so instantaneously falling in love 
| with a chance advocate that comes to her court. In "The 
| Return of the Druses," the reader is kept in a mist which 
| never clears. The choice of subject is in itself fatal to interest; 
| up to the very end we neither know nor can bring ourselves to 
| care, which of the two lovers the heroine prefers. The "Blot 
| in the Scrutcheon" has more human interests, and has one or 
| two effective scenes, but the story is objectionable, nor is 
| there anything distinctive in the author's treatment of it.
| <paragraph>
| Every reader of dramatic poetry must be alive to the happy 
| effect of relieving its severer beauties by the occasional 
| introduction of the more directly poetical lyric element, and 
| have felt the exquisite repose which Shakspeare often infuses 
| through this means. But for this purpose it is evident there 
| should be some connexion between the pure poetry our minds 
| are thus led to, and the prevailing subject of the drama. We 
| however have noticed a modern fashion of inserting passages 
| of this description without any regard to this rule. 
| Descriptions of nature, for instance, are inserted in critical 
| scenes which bear no relation either to the poet's own mind, 
| or to the situation in which they are brought to bear. The 
| highest poetry can assimilate nature to our feelings, the 
| preoccupied mind only can assimilate nature to our feelings, 
| the preoccupied mind only seizes upon what harmonizes with 
| its sensations. The poets of whom we speak think it enough 
| to take a square yard our of a hedge or river bank, and simply 
| describing, catalogue-wise, all the plants that grow, all the 
| birds that haunt, all the vermin that burrow within its limits, 
| lay it like a plaister upon the diseased mind, expecting it to 
| possess some marvellous healing power. It is very pleasant 
| and a healthy exercise to peruse in this minute spirit some 
| piece of real nature: in painting too, where the eye
| <pb n="367">
| is at least delighted by the truth of imitation, there is also 
| considerable pleasure from such an accurate investigation; 
| but it is otherwise in description: there the impressions on 
| sense are faint, and the fancy to be pleased must see fitness. 
| When we are engaged in the contemplation of some mental 
| struggle, there is almost an impertinence in the sudden 
| transporting of our attention to the alluvial formation of some 
| river bank, as in the following passage. Paracelsus is dozing; 
| his friend sits by him, and in order to gain his attention, sings 
| thus: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| In Mr. Browning we recognise one of the numerous class 
| who possess more faculties than soul, more intellect than 
| aims, comprehension and insight without commensurate 
| aspirations: he fails because he has not spirituality enough to 
| use his own powers aright. And yet men are so necessarily 
| estimated by what they can do, that it is a hard matter for one 
| distinguished by the possession of any powers, to be as alive 
| as other men to his own deficiencies. Because in certain 
| things he is above his fellows, it would be difficult to 
| persuade him that in many material points he is as far below 
| them; that there can be a whole class of elevating instincts 
| and intuitive convictions that most men have, and that he is 
| without. We believe, however, that it is these deficiencies, 
| these wants, these points of inferiority which have originated 
| Mr. Browning's latest poem, "Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day."
| What can be said of a man who is without reverence, 
| without ready sympathy for the unseen, who ill discriminates 
| between the pure and the base, who confesses himself more 
| than others tied down to earth and
| <pb n="368">
| incapable of looking beyond it; but that he is inferior to 
| others, not the less really inferior in these vital points, though 
| he can ably express his wants, and others could very 
| inadequately express their fulness. It is the possession of 
| wealth, not the power to count his possessions, which 
| constitutes the rich man. Something of these higher 
| deficiencies of comprehension is visible in the following 
| passage, which yet has much feeling and beauty in it. He is 
| speaking of the new reign of love which Christianity brought 
| in: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <pb n="369">
| <paragraph>
| It is under these impressions that he reviews the various 
| forms of religious profession, despising as he supposes, 
| illusions of reality rejecting the meaning and spiritual aims of 
| each, and facing and as it were delighting in the gross, carnal, 
| earthly corruptions which disfigure them. In the Roman 
| Catholic ceremonial he delights to picture direct idolatry. The 
| smoke of incense is not a vapour that aspires, but a fume 
| which inebriates the senses; the taper's burning puts out the 
| light of day; transubstantiation is described in revolting 
| language, but such as he alone apprehend. Even to the flimsy 
| unsubstantiality of German rationalism, which he despises, 
| and which translates every sacred doctrine and fact into a 
| myth, he contrives to give a body in the coughing and spitting 
| of the professor; while apparently the form of Christianity in 
| our own land which attracts him and most fulfils his longings 
| and instincts, is the service in a Ranters' meeting. Very few 
| religious characteristics there are, but he makes what he can 
| of them, and as it were brutalizes them to fulfil the 
| requirements of this taste for body and reality. Thus he 
| carefully records the close smell of the chapel, the lath and 
| plaster of the building, the personal vulgarities and 
| deformities of the worshippers, the gross illogicalness and 
| prosiness of the preacher, the <quotation> 
| </quotation> of the singing, and the conventicle twang of the 
| hymn, ~~ all are positive inducements to him in the choice, 
| we know not whether real or only poetical, of a 
| denomination. The fair order of our ritual, the spirituality of 
| our sacraments, the exquisite  beauty of the language of our 
| services, the sweet tones of our organs, the correct 
| accentuation and cultivated delivery of our preachers, would 
| all be so many drawbacks and act repulsively to the 
| necessities of a vitiated taste, which needs something which 
| <hi rend="italic"> all </hi> parts of our nature may embrace, 
| not only the refined and elevated, but what every coarse and 
| vulgar element of our being will also find congenial.
| <paragraph>
| We have given Mr. Browning credit for some real feeling and 
| genuine anxieties on the subject of religion, but our extracts 
| from his works may all give a different impression. In justice 
| to him we must, therefore, give one passage in support of our 
| favourable construction. In an imaginary argument with a 
| friend, he speaks of the "Eternal and Divine" dwelling with 
| man on earth: ~~
| <quotation>
| <pb n="370">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| In the following passage he decides in favour of the 
| conventicle, and at the same time makes his apology for 
| whatever may have struck people as profane in his poem. The 
| measure and rhythm are in admirable accordance with the 
| substance of the whole.
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| The readers of Mr. Browning's collective works will be very 
| well satisfied to leave him singing a Christian hymn to any 
| tune.
| <pb n="371">
| It is time for us to pass on to Mrs. Browning's softer, purer, 
| but too ambitious muse. In a very serious preface to the 
| <line unreadable> she has written: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| Probably an extreme estimate of the value and consequence 
| of the work in hand is necessary to the poet. Reduce him to 
| the state of cool dispassionateness of his critics, and it would 
| be impossible for him to write at all. The fervour, the 
| impetuosity, the impression of importance must be there to 
| sustain him in his labours of composition; we cannot expect 
| him to be always justly weighing his own value. What 
| preacher could preach with effect if he did not attach to his 
| own thoughts and words and choice of subject an importance 
| so far undue, that he accords it to 
| <reg orig="no one"> no-one </reg> else, so that he 
| weighs and considers and looks for results which he would 
| think unreasonable in another man, which as a listener he 
| could not sympathise with? It is not just to be hard in 
| contemplating this feeling even when unsanctioned by the 
| event. Nothing probably has been well done that has not been 
| regarded as of some consequence in the doing, and whose 
| progress has not been cheered ~~ at the moment at least ~~ 
| by a feeling of success. It depends on the natural temper how 
| long this feeling lasts, and when diffidence and mistrust, if 
| ever, succeed to it. Mrs. Browning says that an author's love 
| of his manuscript should be classed by moral philosophers 
| among the natural affections; with her, therefore,
| <pb n="372">
| the impression is not transient. Granting all this, we yet 
| believe that the force of this persuasion in the author is no 
| test of the real value of his work. Poetry used to be called a 
| divine madness: there are many authors who have the 
| madness, ~~ the feeling of inspiration, though we see no trace 
| of divinity in the result; ~~ who value those works most, 
| where they have most fancied this influence, disregarding 
| lighter efforts more according to their natural genius, and 
| therefore flowing more easily from them, and centering their 
| hopes of fame where the struggle and effort has been most 
| apparent to themselves. And the disappointment is almost 
| equal to total failure, if they find the world willing to accord 
| praise to what cost them little trouble, while resolute in 
| disregarding or disparaging the labour and toil of their lives. 
| It is provoking to be valued for a ballad or a song, when they 
| had aspired to make us familiar with paradise in an epic; to 
| perceive that where they rejoice in a conflict with difficulty, a 
| battle followed by a victory, we see only an inglorious defeat, 
| an attempt to build a tower without the means to finish it.
| <paragraph>
| Yet while we criticise these higher attempts and prove them 
| unsuccessful, they may yet give indications of power; the too 
| ambitious flight may show at least that the spirit has wings, 
| which we common treaders of the ground know not the 
| temptation of. We should be lenient of failures where 
| anything has been done well; for, every happy thought, every 
| graceful fancy, every musical stanza, bringing to our hearts 
| something brighter and better than the common things of 
| every day, is a boon ~~ something for which we owe thanks 
| ~~ an argument for indulgence, a plea for our most 
| favourable judgment of its author.
| <paragraph>
| These thoughts, these resolutions, towards a favourable 
| construction are, it must be owned, not seldom called for by 
| the poets of our day. There is an arrogant prying into 
| mysteries amongst them; and many stare, or would stare, at 
| the sun, who are not eagles, and so mistake the rings and 
| spots and fleeting light of a dazed eyesight for a vision of the 
| sun in his strength; who not being able to see down to the 
| bottom of their thoughts, mistake morbid shallows for depths; 
| and because their language is ambiguous, suppose they are 
| speaking oracles. In spite of our sincere admiration of some 
| of Mrs. Browning's poems, the genuine lasting pleasure we 
| take in their perusal, it requires all our forbearance and 
| charity to feel tolerably patient towards some of her more 
| ambitious efforts, to do them the justice they deserve, to 
| believe there is something real and genuine in what is 
| expressed with so much affectation, that there can be genius 
| in a mind at times so infinitely mistaken in its own 
| capabilities, that there can be awe and reverence in a design 
| which in its
| <pb n="373">
| execution expresses so many irreverent ideas, that there can 
| be a poet's knowledge and sympathies with universal nature, 
| where she so often outrages our taste, our instincts, and our 
| deeper sensibilities.
| <paragraph>
| It is common to regret the affectations and quaintnesses of 
| this author's phraseology as if her choice of words were 
| something independent of her mode of thought, and as if, 
| were these simplified and made natural, simple and natural 
| thoughts would shine through them. But in fact this defect 
| furnishes the key to the secret of failure wherever there is 
| failure. Simplicity never clothes itself in affected language, 
| nor clear thoughts in obscure words, nor distinct ideas in 
| misty involved expressions. It is because the ideas are 
| farfetched, strained, unnatural, inconsequent, ill-developed, 
| that the wording in newfangled, elaborate, affected, crabbed, 
| confused. When Mrs. Browning has a simple, connected, 
| pathetic, human feeling to express, she does it in perfectly 
| appropriate, natural, graceful language. Where she has 
| fancies half-defined, the fruit of memories and dreams, not 
| distinctly apprehended by the head or embraced by the heart, 
| ~~ conceits they would once have been called, ~~ she has 
| composed a language for them which seems from dreamland 
| also, so showy, so pretentious is it, so little adapted for 
| wakeful thoughts or waking ears.
| <paragraph>
| In writers of more impressibility than imagination, more 
| retentive than observant, it is often interesting to trace 
| through to which all nature ministers strikes off a scene or an 
| image and forgets it to give place to others, as Beethoven 
| throws a few bars of exquisite melody into the solemn mystic 
| march of his harmonies, and never returns to them again, for 
| other airs equally divine sound through his soul in their stead; 
| but the dreaming musing fancy, which feeds itself from 
| within and treasures and counts up its stores, never parts with 
| an idea which it has once loved, which has once made an 
| impression. The same fancy, perhaps, conceived in 
| childhood, or even infancy, a scene, a glimpse, a stir, an 
| aspect, a motion only, something instantaneous, but vividly 
| expressive of the pathetic, the attractive, the interesting, the 
| terrible, to tat individual mind recurs again and again, is part 
| of the writer's self, so that none of these qualities can be 
| described without these symbols being used in the expression 
| of them. If his line lies in works of imagination, however 
| varied may be his subjects, these original impressions will 
| always be there; some scene or situation, some perplexity or 
| delicate embarrassment, some conflict of feeling and duty, or 
| it may be only mysterious associations with nature as viewed 
| under these impressions,
| <pb n="374">
| some effects of light and shade, some position of lines or 
| curves, aspects too evanescent and trivial to be described, 
| will always characterise his delineations of feeling, 
| sentiment, or passion. This we hold to be very perceptible in 
| Mrs. Browning's writings, and may occasionally make a 
| legitimate excuse for the irritating mannerism of her poetry; 
| the action of <hi rend="italic"> leaning, </hi> e.g. which all 
| things animate and inanimate perform with her, ~~ sunbeams, 
| clouds, flowers, trees, human souls, memories,  
| <reg orig="&c. &c."> etcetera etcetera. </reg> <quotation>  
| </quotation> ~~ must have associations with which the 
| reader can have no sympathy, but genuine with her. The 
| words <hi rend="italic"> oblique </hi> and  
| <hi rend="italic"> slant, </hi> possessing no doubt some  
| affinity with the first, frequently come in, giving the same 
| impression; <hi rend="italic"> trailing </hi> and  
| <hi rend="italic"> rustling </hi> too, both of constant recurrence, 
| have some arbitrary associations in her mind, or in speaking 
| of angels she could have written, <quotation> </quotation>
| nor of the roar of wild beasts <quotation> </quotation> 
| which to us has no meaning. The word <hi rend="italic"> 
| drifted </hi> in like manner is made to serve many uses for 
| which we do not see its fitness, but for which some 
| recollection we will hope adapts it to the author's own mind. 
| This habit has of course a tendency to reduce language to a 
| kind of cypher, unintelligible except to the initiated. It cannot 
| be called <hi rend="italic"> figurative, </hi> because no 
| attempt is made, nor we think <hi rend="italic"> could </hi> 
| be made, to draw an analogy ~~ it is for the most part purely 
| arbitrary, except for these hidden associations, as in the 
| schoolboy who chose to call his hat his cadwallader on no 
| other ground but because he chose.
| <paragraph>
| If we did not believe in our authoress as really gifted, as 
| possessing real poetic power, we should not spend time in 
| reprobating this unfortunate habit, which must have in great 
| part arisen from her resolute choice of subjects above the 
| power of all but the highest genius. She has chosen themes 
| from which Dante and Milton shrink ~~ hold back in reverent 
| fear, ~~ and this mystic indefinite vague jargon (we will call 
| it) hides from herself the extent of the presumption and the 
| failure. Because her angels do not speak like men, she hopes 
| that they speak like angels. In two poems, "The Seraphim," 
| and the "Drama of Exile," angels and demons are the 
| principal speakers. In "The Seraphim," her earlier work in 
| this class, she had not adopted the grand unintelligible style 
| to the same extent. We are therefore all judges how far she 
| can represent the sublimer intercourse of supernatural 
| intelligences.
| <paragraph>
| We will give our readers some specimens of angel-talk from 
| the opening scene of "The Seraphim." The time is the 
| crucifixion. Two seraphs, "Ador the strong one," and "Zerah 
| the bright one," stand on the outer side of the shut heavenly 
| gate: ~~
| <pb n="375">
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| These opening words give us an insight into the two 
| characters. The Strong One is the instructor, the Bright One 
| the "uncomprehending" listener. They converse on the most 
| awful mysteries in a strain not to increase our awe.
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| But our readers have had enough to show that intelligible 
| angels are not Mrs. Browning's forte. One short example of 
| the unintelligible we must give from the "Drama of Exile," 
| which we ought to say has in the person of Eve some pathetic 
| expression, though there is little throughout that can be called 
| truly imaginative. Adam generally speaks in geometrical 
| lines and curves, a new, and, we may add, feminine mode of 
| representing his supremacy.
| <quotation>
| <pb n="376">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| But we will not multiply examples of mingled confusion and 
| poverty of expression, of which this is after all scarcely an 
| average specimen. Nothing can be more helpless, weak, and 
| powerless than her angels; they do nothing but talk, and talk 
| very badly. The angel Gabriel is the whole of one scene 
| telling Lucifer to <hi rend="italic"> depart, </hi> and the 
| fiend maintains his ground, will not go till he pleases, and 
| moreover insults the archangel by a charge of bad logic: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| It would be unfair to dwell at length on defects and failures in 
| a task of such difficulty, were not the difficulty self-imposed, 
| and the attempt itself a perpetration. Genius is so far an 
| inspiration that certain powers do sanction an entrance upon 
| certain fields of speculation. But our authoress had abundant 
| warnings that the task was above her handling, that it was 
| presumption in <hi rend="italic"> her </hi> to attempt it. If 
| the analogy of a woman's minuter sphere and range of 
| observation and weaker physical powers did not of itself 
| dictate a choice of subject more in conformity with her nature 
| and experience, the straits she was put to for language should 
| have acted as a check; ~~ but here has probably lain the 
| unfortunate mistake ~~ it was presumed that the theme was 
| above words, could only be approached, never reached by 
| them, and that all these symbols were an actual approach. 
| "The Vision of Poets," though not open to the same serious 
| objections, labours under similar drawbacks; it is fatiguing, 
| though implying real powers in the writer, because we are 
| constantly reminded of their inadequacy for the task imposed 
| on them. How refreshing are often Mrs. B.'s simpler lays and 
| ballads, flowing smoothly, full of human feelings and human 
| interests, after these ineffectual soarings and broken flights 
| ~~ poems which, perhaps, as they have cost her little effort, 
| she may value in proportion, ~~ "The Swan's Nest," "My 
| Doves," "Bertha in the Lane," though this is tinctured by 
| new-coined words, "The Lost Bower," "The Romaunt of 
| Margret," and many others, all evidencing deep sensibilities, 
| a tender human heart, and adequate powers of expression. 
| This
| <pb n="377">
| last, as first published in the late edition, though we should 
| not guess recently written, we will extract. The quaint turn of 
| the words in here necessary to sustain the weird supernatural 
| character of the story. It is simple, pathetic, and natural, and 
| the sympathy of external nature with each failing of cherished 
| love leaves a sad, impressive weight on the reader's mind. 
| Each stanza has the burden "Margret, Margret!" which, for 
| economy of space, the reader must supply. For the same 
| reason we omit the opening stanzas, which picture Margret 
| sitting by a running stream, whose cheerful flow harmonizes 
| with her pleasant thoughts. The time is a summer night, when 
| all nature shares the soothing influence: ~~
| <quotation>
| <pb n="378">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| The father loves his daughter, but still better his castle and his 
| state, and at the spirit's refutation the moon and stars grow 
| dim.
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <pb n="379">
| <paragraph>
| This image of trusting love must be contrasted with another 
| in Mrs. Browning's more peculiar vein, ~~ from which, 
| however, we have space for only a short extract ~~ more 
| ambitious, with some vigour of description and a certain real 
| interest in the story, but appealing very little to our personal 
| sympathies. "The Courtship of Lady Geraldine" is enacted by 
| a poet of great genius but low birth; the genius of course must 
| be taken on trust, but we think there are various indications of 
| "the low birth" to be gathered from his own narrative. In fact, 
| the poet is not a gentleman. He shows himself affected by 
| details of mere show and splendour which he pretends to 
| despise, humbled by the consciousness of a difference of 
| position where he need not be, and insolently resentful of 
| slights which were never intended, and which only a very low 
| form of pride would take as such. It is wonderful to us how 
| the authoress can take any pleasure in her own creation, ~~ 
| can admire the style of character she has so truthfully drawn. 
| For us, we can only say we never encountered a more 
| inflated, pragmatical, and we believe, if seen in real life, 
| insufferable fellow. The poet writes the history of his loves. 
| he is visiting the heiress, falls in love with her, and narrates 
| the conflict of his feelings to his friend. His part in the affair 
| has certainly a very selfish interested look; he thinks  
| <hi rend="italic"> only </hi> of himself, hates and despises the 
| society he comes in contact with, and yet is afraid of it. We 
| have no end of his scorn and contempt for rank, wealth, 
| station, everything he does not possess, along with an 
| inordinate value for himself; and all the while an eye for 
| state, for property and fine things, which must have betrayed 
| themselves to his associates and rendered him an object of 
| little respect to the, The Lady Geraldine, however, sees 
| nothing of all this; his poetry has won her heart, and his pride 
| and other disagreeable qualities seem only to rivet the chain. 
| he has been some time at her castle in Sussex, his feelings all 
| the while working up to a high pitch of suppressed 
| excitement; when he overhears, as is the custom in fiction, a 
| nobleman making the Lady Geraldine an offer; she refuses 
| him, on which the earl says something inaudible to our 
| friend.
| <quotation>
| <pb n="380">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| He then condescends to a strain somewhat less abusive, and 
| speaks of her beauty and his love; consoling himself by 
| casting this stain on her "ermined pride," that I ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| The calm of the word and voice overcome our hero, till at 
| length he is ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| that utterly prostrated by his won vehemence and her 
| gentleness, he falls at her feet in a dead faint; and when he 
| comes to himself, finds himself alone, and writes his whole 
| narrative to his friend,
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <pb n="381">
| Throwing himself back in his chair, after this exciting task, a 
| vision meets his eyes. The Lady Geraldine has, unheard, 
| entered the open casement of the moon-lit room; illuminated, 
| we must presume, by other light as well, or, standing, as she 
| is described, with her back to the light, we know not how the 
| eyes, <quotation> 
| </quotation> could have exercised such power. 
| The pictures, however, are often unformed and indistinct. The 
| scene is a pretty one.
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| But we have not space for his uncertainty, or her slow 
| advance; till at length ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| We cannot but hold it a great mistake to make the poetic gift 
| stepping-stone to worldly station, ~~ to represent a man as 
| making a "good thing" of his genius, so that it should induct 
| him into the actual possession, title deeds and all ~~ not that 
| spiritual possession which he always had, beyond their real 
| owners ~~ of manors, and woods, and streams. It is bringing 
| the real too close upon the ideal. The poet above all men 
| should have nobility enough to ennoble his wife; he needs not 
| to be aggrandised by her. And unquestionably Geraldine 
| would see her Bertram's genius degenerate. He would cease 
| to be a poet in the absorbing cares and pleasures of a landed 
| proprietor, and in this capacity would make a very poor and 
| awkward figure; it is not in nature but she mist in time grow 
| ashamed of her choice.
| <paragraph>
| This poem is distinguished by many characteristic 
| ambiguities of language, which we are not bound to believe 
| can by any ingenuity be unravelled into sense; as for example 
| where Bertram gets into a passion, and ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| or where Geraldine leaves the room with <quotation> 
| </quotation> or where <quotation> </quotation>  
| Again, very little meaning is there in the following 
| declamation: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <pb n="382">
| <paragraph>
| We wish we could present our readers with some varied 
| specimens of  our authoress's happier manner, but our space 
| will not allow us to do her this justice. The merit of her best 
| poems lies not in the felicity of the parts, but in the agreeable 
| flow, and the pleasant impression the whole leaves behind. 
| The faults are easily caught and laid before another eye, the 
| beauties elude this treatment; and so it happens that we can 
| <hi rend="italic"> prove </hi> the one, and can only ask the 
| reader unacquainted with the volumes themselves to believe 
| the other. We have been struck, pleased, our sympathies have 
| been roused, but we find that in order to make our readers 
| share these feelings with us, they should read the whole 
| poem. She is too diffuse, too little careful, to finish, correct, 
| polish, to have passages of choice excellence of expression. 
| She is fanciful rather than imaginative, and Fancy, as 
| opposed to her severer loftier sister, is lavish and luxuriant. 
| Fancy lets her tendrils and waste branches grow wild in 
| careless profusion. Imagination condenses her powers into 
| the very excellence of her tree ~~ its fruit. There are notices 
| throughout Mrs. Browning's works of a state of suffering and 
| ill-health, from which we trust she is now recovered, which 
| may well account for this omission of the most irksome 
| part of a poet's duties, and perhaps also for the restless diffuse 
| flow of the verse: that excitability which rousing the fancy 
| tends to obscure the judgment. We are not without warm 
| sympathy for the possible cause, while in our present 
| capacity we have only to do with results. Descriptions of 
| nature, for example, may well not be characterised by exact 
| accurate truth, from a "Prisoner" who ever says ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| A season of mental or bodily suffering is certainly not the 
| most favourable for clear thought or beautiful expression. But 
| the memory of pain ~~ the recollection of sorrow and 
| suffering in some form, is indeed almost essential to that 
| mind which is to have influence over others. It must have had 
| losses, to realize, so as to be able to show to others, its gains; 
| and whatever losses Mrs. Browning's mind may have 
| sustained by unusual trials and privations, all that it possesses 
| of truth, feeling, pathos, and knowledge of the true ends of 
| life, no doubt owes much of its force and persuasiveness, its 
| claim on our sympathies, to these soul-exercises.
| <paragraph>
| But we have lingered unduly on these two poets of one name. 
| That which follows on our list at least ought not to present 
| any such temptation: "Festus: a Poem, by Philip James 
| Bailey."
| <pb n="383">
| It seems only candid, and putting our readers in possession of 
| the real merits of the case (such, we should say, as have not 
| fallen in with this "remarkable" poem,) before expressing our 
| own opinion, to present them with some selection from the 
| host of enthusiastic testimonials with which the volume 
| comes garlanded and hung about, within and without. Six 
| royal octavo pages of close-printed rapture we may be 
| excused from transcribing; we cull the following sentences, 
| which are of greatest brevity, and in justice to the author, by 
| well-known names: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| How can we give any just idea of the enthusiasm of the
| <pb n="384">
| London, Provincial, and American press?  the  
| <hi rend="italic"> Britannia </hi> announces that 
| <quotation></quotation> The <hi rend="italic"> 
| Eclectic Review </hi> <quotation></quotation>
| The <hi rend="italic"> 
| Manchester Guardian </hi> pronounces 
| <quotation></quotation> the work altogether of 
| <quotation></quotation> It reminds the  
| <hi rend="italic"> Dial, U.S. </hi> 
| <quotation></quotation>
| also <quotation></quotation> 
| the editor also <quotation></quotation> 
| The <hi rend="italic"> Nottingham 
| Review </hi> announces, <quotation></quotation>
| The <hi rend="italic"> Liverpool Chronicle </hi> considers 
| <quotation></quotation>
| the <hi rend="italic"> Sunbeam </hi> holds it as 
| <quotation></quotation> 
| The <hi rend="italic"> Athenaeum </hi> <quotation></quotation>
| has kept the <hi rend="italic"> Sunday 
| Times </hi> <quotation></quotation> 
| The <hi rend="italic"> Era </hi> prophecies 
| that <quotation></quotation> 
| The <hi rend="italic"> Universaist Quarterly. </hi> 
| U.S. <quotation></quotation> 
| With the <hi rend="italic"> Boston Paper, 
| </hi> U.S. it is <quotation></quotation> The <hi rend="italic"> 
| Christian Examiner, Boston, </hi> U.S. classes it with 
| <quotation></quotation> The <hi rend="italic"> 
| New Quarterly </hi> says <quotation></quotation>
| <hi rend="italic"> Tait's Magazine </hi> admires it 
| because in it <quotation></quotation> 
| In Festus <quotation></quotation> In the 
| judgment of the <hi rend="italic"> Dublin University 
| Magazine </hi> <quotation></quotation> 
| The <hi rend="italic"> Critic </hi> sees in it  
| <quotation></quotation>
| The <hi rend="italic"> metropolitan 
| </hi> thinks it <quotation></quotation> 
| The <hi rend="italic"> Nonconformist 
| </hi> regards it as <quotation></quotation> 
| <paragraph>
| As we were on its first arrival, reading the gay cover on 
| which some of this homage is enshrined, "Festus," the book 
| itself, was taken up by a friend, who, unconscious of the awe 
| which
| <pb n="385">
| ought to encircle so much genius, spoke a running 
| commentary in hastily turning over the leaves. The words 
| thus addressed to eye and ear encountered each other ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <quotation></quotation> was the spoken criticism,  
| <quotation></quotation> ~~ <quotation></quotation>
| ~~ <quotation></quotation> 
| We can 
| assure our readers, if they will only trust us, that this hasty 
| summary, this unimpassioned first impression is far the 
| soundest, far the most rational and judicious judgment that 
| his eyes have yet fallen upon.
| <paragraph>
| We will not say that there is no genius, no poetry in Festus, 
| but this we will say, with the fullest and heartiest conviction, 
| that the huge impiety of the book must have increased 
| people's estimate of these qualities an hundred-fold, on the 
| principle on which country practitioners are always called 
| clever if they are drunken; and that what is often called 
| intellect and genius in this work is simple daring profaneness. 
| We cannot account for certain names which have given so 
| contrary a testimony, but neither can we over-state ~~ of this 
| we feel certain ~~ the impiety of the book, its evil moral, evil 
| tendency, and insolent denial of revelation: its outrageous 
| defiance of all modesty, its blind audacity in meddling with 
| mysteries,  its utter imperviousness to all emotions of awe, or 
| sacredness, or majesty, its subjugation of reason and religion 
| to sense and brute instinct. The work was originally written in 
| 1839, twelve years ago, but lately republished in a third 
| edition with additions. In the dedicatory sonnet to his father, 
| the author says: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| Perhaps no means will more easily put the reader in 
| possession of the nature of the plan, and help him to an idea 
| of the execution, than a transcript of the <hi rend="italic"> 
| scenes </hi> of Festus, as they occur, with some of the 
| Dramatis Personae, only omitting, as inconsistent with the 
| character of these pages, his unscrupulous insertion of the 
| Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity; under which names he 
| does not scruple to give his own opinions at great length.
| <quotation>
| <pb n="386">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| For the sake of the work itself we should not have thought it 
| either worth while or desirable to give this ocular 
| demonstration of a wild, flighty, outrageously bad book. We 
| owe apology to our readers for doing so. We do it, however, 
| to invalidate the testimony of high literary names. In these 
| days, when private judgment is so much preached, we think 
| that men are in some ways more than usually tempted to give 
| up their own rightful judgment, and (whole often exercising it 
| against authority where they ought not,) to practise a 
| voluntary humility, to yield a degrading subservience to 
| genius and accredited names, in things where they would do 
| better to be guided by their own instincts and impressions
| <pb n="387">
| <paragraph>
| It cannot be denied that there is a certain novelty, which we 
| conclude is called imagination in placing your scenes ~~ now 
| in the sun, ~~ now in a lady's drawing room, ~~ now 
| "elsewhere," ~~ now "everywhere," ~~ now in a town 
| market-place, ~~ now knocking at hell-gates; and in the flow 
| of familiar talk, saying with an easy air, <quotation></quotation> 
| ~~ now asking for a world without sin <quotation></quotation>
| Milton has not done it, ~~ nor 
| even Goethe, ~~ nor even Byron. It may therefore be thought 
| to imply a new and daring familiarity with grand ideas. We 
| attribute the whole plan and execution of the poem to that 
| total insensibility to fear which belongs to ignorance. Such a 
| mind cannot possess the ordinary perceptions of God's 
| attributes and Being (which are indeed distinctly denied) 
| which men in general are gifted with. We believe the fumes 
| of a mad and insolent speculation have obscured the image of 
| God in the soul, so that the author plays with sacred names 
| and things as a madman would; and plays with them for the 
| same reason, because he has lost the power of rightly 
| apprehending them. We can only say that we have failed to 
| see the imagination and genius which are so much extolled. It 
| is not possible for those divine impulses to range through the 
| invisible world of thought, to embody the Holy or the 
| terrible, without being penetrated with awe or fear. it is a 
| noble cause for Milton's blindness, suggested by a poet's 
| sense of justice and fitness, that the loss of sight was the 
| penalty of an insight into dazzling mysteries. There is no 
| touch of sublimity, no moment of realization, from the 
| beginning to the end of Festus, to raise any such thoughts in 
| hi readers. heaven's floor is no more to him than the 
| market-place. Even where not profane, he never reaches the height  
| of his argument. he can give no impression of grandeur or 
| mystery to his impersonations. They all talk much like 
| leading articles of newspapers put into blank verse. The 
| reader would find it generally difficult to guess whether 
| Festus or Lucifer were speaking. All are prolix to a degree 
| which would not be credited. No real sermon was ever longer 
| or duller, than Lucifer's in the market-place. Festus details his 
| views to a rambling discursive length, which no listeners in 
| any region would tolerate. The author's disbelief and bad 
| theories are buried under a weight of heavy blank verse, 
| which we should suppose had hid them from men's eyes ~~ 
| but why then praise them so much? this dulness is often 
| relieved by a perfectly startling bathos, of which we think we 
| can offer the reader an example from the very opening scene, 
| in the person of the "Angel of Earth;" the whole may be taken 
| as an example of the poem: ~~
| <quotation>
| <pb n="388">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| What excuse, we would ask, on the score of soaring genius, 
| for such profaneness? What can be more miserable on every 
| principle of taste, than the angel's plea? This same Angel of 
| Earth is not more favoured by the lyric muse; 'tis thus he 
| elsewhere sings: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <pb n="389">
| and finishes after requesting Time <quotation></quotation>
| by asking ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| "Poor angel!" says Festus, and for once all parties must be 
| agreed in an epithet. The aim of the work seems to be a sort 
| of frantic antinomianism, which not only allows sin in the 
| elect, but considers it a chosen pathway to salvation.  
| <quotation></quotation> nor does anything 
| meet with genuine reprobation from the poet but the several 
| articles of the Christian faith: for example, 
| <quotation></quotation> where in speaking of 
| death it is asserted: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| But the eternal punishment of the wicked is perhaps the point 
| chiefly attacked, which is no matter of wonder. It will not be 
| expected that the morals of such a work should be in advance 
| of its faith. One old-fashioned virtue is especially combated 
| ~~ <hi rend="italic"> constancy; </hi> and this not by 
| halves; even the ardent lover who, loving a fair lady ardently 
| attached to him ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| had a certain "point of taste," which made him fall in love, 
| collaterally with this adored one, with every beauty he met 
| with. <quotation></quotation> says Helen. To which 
| the characteristic reply is given, 
| <quotation></quotation> But when it 
| is asserted that <quotation></quotation> 
| our readers will not exact from us further 
| examples to prove our assertion, but willingly take it for 
| granted. But why dwell longer on such a work? Less 
| fortunate than "the bard," the "I." the type of himself, of 
| whom when Festus was asked, if he had written any work but 
| <hi rend="italic"> the </hi> one, it is answered: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| Mr. Bailey has written another work, to give the lie to all the 
| talk of <hi rend="italic"> promise. </hi> There is no promise 
| in a bad book. there is a lamp which we are told shall be put 
| out, and we witness such an extinction in his last work, "The 
| Angel World," a book not really higher in faith or principles 
| than the other, but happily redeemed by an unreadable 
| dulness. It is a sort of allegory, in which all our received 
| notions of heaven are reversed;
| <pb n="390">
| where angels are of different genders, where they have 
| fathers and children, where they tell each other what  
| <hi rend="italic"> we </hi> know, in long-winded 
| complimentary strains, and also what as <hi rend="italic"> 
| intelligences </hi> they ought to know if it were really so: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| But it is perfectly unnecessary to go further into the merits of 
| a work which nobody will ever read, and nobody, we must 
| suppose, will ever think it worth while to puff ~~ and yet in 
| this little volume, among the minor poems, are some lines to 
| the River Trent, the river of the poet's birthplace, which are 
| really pleasing, have genuine feeling, and seem to show what 
| he might have done had he not rioted away his faculties and 
| powers in the wanton dissipation of Festus.
| <paragraph>
| "Reverbations" (which has obtained some notice for the flow 
| of its verse) is the work of a thorough-going disciple of 
| Progress ~~ its religion consequently is of the peculiar 
| character of that school, being founded on a law, not of 
| constancy, but of necessary change ~~ not of faith, but of 
| perpetual abandonment of creeds, not because they are bad, 
| but because they are old. There is a great deal of religion in 
| these two little volumes, many scriptural allusions, and a 
| belief expressed with some fervour; but looking into them 
| more narrowly we detect them to be really a sort of 
| sentimental elegy on the departure of Christianity, whose fate 
| it is, along with other "cherished creeds," the Grecian deities, 
| the Scandinavian Thor and Balder, <reg orig="&c. &c.,"> 
| etcetera etcetera </reg> to yield to the inevitable laws of 
| progress and social advancement. It is sad that it should be 
| so. The author regrets it. But then it was also very sad and 
| very ungrateful too in the Northmen to give up the god Thor, 
| who had killed "The Frost Giants," and set up the Cross in his 
| stead.
| <quotation>
| <pb n="391">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| Again, in a poem entitled <hi rend="italic"> Genesis, </hi> 
| and opening with the assertion, ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| it says, in expressing, as Schiller has done, the same regrets 
| for the fading of creeds, comparing their decay with the 
| longer endurance of the planetary system: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| And after speculating on the inhabitants of the starry regions, 
| and how far they have joys, and sorrows, and <hi rend="italic"> 
| railroads, </hi> like this earth, asks: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| In other parts we have painful allusions to the truths and 
| mysteries of faith travestied and perverted, yet with the 
| assumption of a religious tone and a certain unction which 
| makes it more unpleasing; treating them, it is evident as  
| <hi rend="italic"> fables, </hi> and myths to be spiritualized: 
| as for example: ~~
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| the author erects a sort of Pantheon of worthies, who partly 
| constitute and partly contribute towards the new divinity of 
| the Future which he sets up, ~~ Lamennais ~~  
| <quotation></quotation> whom we 
| interpret to mean George Sand, Emerson, the American 
| Carlyle, <quotation></quotation>
| <pb n="392">
| our soberer English names of Mill, and Grote, and also M. 
| Conte, <quotation></quotation>
| <quotation>
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| Our readers will perhaps wonder at our bringing before them 
| a work of so directly infidel a character. But there may be use 
| in different worlds of opinion having occasional glimpses of 
| each other. We hope and believe that the world of which Mr. 
| John Chapman is the publisher, is a very small one, and one, 
| too opposed to the practical English mind to have much 
| influence. But this world thinks itself the only enlightened, 
| and speaks with a confidence which is simply amazing to the 
| uninitiated, affording a lesson, we think, against all 
| confidence founded on a private sense of superior judgment 
| or intellect, and deeper insight into things; in whatever school 
| it may be found. It cannot be denied that in the world of 
| literature there is a sympathy with this new Pantheistic 
| school; direct sympathy of aims, or only as welcoming and 
| delighting in something new, in the relaxation of the 
| trammels of custom, we cannot always tell. poetry, which 
| ought to be the very essence of truth, has always enjoyed a 
| strange impunity, so that men generally are not half so 
| jealous of false opinion or dangerous doctrine in verse as in 
| prose; and many who would shrink from an infidel catechism 
| are pleased with a poem which embodies precisely the same 
| views. Such being the fact, it is consolatory that the poet of 
| the new regime can only make very bad verses when he 
| comes to lay down his Future ~~ that his aims and wishes are 
| not amongst those high thoughts <quotation></quotation> 
| ~~ as witness the following apotheosis 
| of free trade, with which we will take leave of our author: ~~
| <quotation>
| <pb n="393">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| Mr. Westwood's pretty poems suffer rather from the size and 
| dignity of the volume in which they are enshrined, which 
| leads to expectations beyond the aim and intention of the 
| writer, whose pretensions take no higher stand than they 
| attain to, and who pleads the pleasure and facility of 
| verse-making as his excuse for being a poet. 
| He sets himself against 
| some of the poetic vices of the age with spirit, in his lines on 
| the mystic and oracular style which now prevails; and there is 
| a tone of brightness and cheerfulness throughout which he is 
| not without the power of imparting to his readers. But his ear 
| has too readily caught the echoes of other minstrels' strains; 
| his very facility ~~ (that stream of easy verse which we feel 
| has cost so little effort) is the result we fear of unconscious 
| imitation, nor do we often meet with a new conception which 
| would have compelled him to the labour of characteristic 
| forcible expression. The following, however, are striking 
| lines, and contain a clear thought vividly expressed: ~~
| <quotation>
| <pb n="394">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| "Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell" are remarkable as 
| being the first efforts of undoubted genius to find some 
| congenial form of expression. The sisters who have equally 
| surprised the world, and shocked their more scrupulous 
| readers in their <hi rend="italic"> debut </hi> as novelists, 
| came before the public first in a volume of poems, which 
| attracted very little attention at the time; nor do we know that 
| the fame of their writings has since brought them into notice., 
| and yet they are not common verses, but show many of the 
| vigorous qualities which have characterized the prose works 
| of the same writers, while they are free, though not without 
| kindred faults, from that unscrupling, unblushing coarseness, 
| which made it hard, in spite of so much internal evidence, to 
| credit that "Jane Eyre" and above all "Wuthering Heights" 
| could be from a woman's pen. It is impossible to think of the 
| author of Jane Eyre, without perhaps unjust regrets at what 
| must have been the faults of early training or adverse 
| circumstances, which could have warped and obscured the 
| whole moral views of so clear, powerful, and sympathising a 
| mind ~~ which could set it at permanent war with the 
| common proprieties of life, and give her such bitter 
| impressions of the tyranny of society over her own sex, a 
| tyranny which she would teach them to escape from, by an 
| abandonment of those reserves, that delicacy, which are the 
| charm as well as the safeguard of purity of mind. We 
| conceive, we know not how fairly, that she must have been 
| the victim of early construction, of harsh and injurious 
| treatment, to have retained such lasting exasperation of spirit; 
| that the experience of the three sisters must have thrown them 
| among men more than commonly selfish, overbearing, and 
| debased, to give them such impressions of woman's evil fate 
| among them; and indeed their works have throughout vague 
| hints of a certain brutal monstrous oppression, from which 
| women have suffered and died. But we are aware that it is 
| neither safe nor reasonable to form such imaginary excuses 
| for positive errors. All have to bear some of this world's 
| trials; many have borne whatever amount of disappointment, 
| weariness and uncongenial labour may have pressed upon 
| these sisters, and in their resignation have profited by trials 
| which impatient and rebellious spirits 
| <pb n="395">
| have struggled and beat against in impotent resistance. The 
| poems are characterized by this sense of wrong; of woman's 
| sufferings under her tyrant, beginning in the person of Pilate's 
| Wife, who is represented, while musing on her dream, as 
| revolting with her whole heart from her wicked lord; and 
| carried through the book in allusions, remembrances, visions, 
| and tales all with the same aim. There is a story called 
| "Gilbert" which is powerfully told. He is haunted by the 
| woman whose love he has betrayed, and pursued by the 
| writer (Currer) with a sort of vengeful vindictive fury, which 
| has something almost personal in it, till he finally blows his 
| brains out, to her evident contentment. The apparition of his 
| victim weltering and sinking through the ocean waves, is 
| described with a very vivid imagination. This author does not 
| shrink from depicting the pangs of unrequited love as one of 
| the woes of her sex; and that with so realizing a hand, that 
| what might seem maudlin and ridiculous under other 
| treatment, has with her the dignity at least of real sorrow. We 
| do not know how far this is a thing to be remedied by any 
| reconstruction of society, but we recollect that in "Shirley" 
| she makes her Caroline very nearly make the Offer, and make 
| all the love throughout the courtship. But throughout (the 
| so-called) Currer Bell's verses, with a great deal of feeling, 
| vigour, and some imagination, we see that verse is not her 
| natural element; her thoughts do not gain much by this dress; 
| there is a want of sweetness and harmony, and the harshness 
| and bitterness of the thoughts too often accounts for the 
| deficiency. We extract the following verses by Ellis Bell, as 
| more pleasing from their subject. We know not whether our 
| readers will enter into our feeling of real pleasure and 
| admiration for these lines, which seem to us to possess that 
| eloquence which is the garb of true emotion: we cannot doubt 
| that it is a real remembrance and a true circumstance. The 
| alliterations and repetitions, whether accidental or by design, 
| and the apparent disregard of rules, greatly assist the 
| impetuosity; as of a mind giving way to a rush of thought in 
| which it was commonly forbidden to indulge, and delighting 
| in the mere repetition of the same idea in the same words. It 
| is written in the proper condition for composition, ~~ the 
| memory, that is, dwelling upon past emotions, and delighting 
| to express them with fervour and vehemence, seeking the 
| indulgence of adequate expression: <quotation>
| <pb n="396"> 
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| The following lines we must suppose to be descriptive of the 
| same event ~~ the death of the lover who is so long mourned. 
| The opening passion of rebellious grief is in character with 
| the writer. We do not extract it for admiration, but as a 
| genuine transcript of a certain stage of undisciplined feeling. 
| The reader must observe the change to the trochaic measure 
| when the narrative begins: ~~
| <quotation> 
| <pb n="397">
| </quotation>
| <paragraph>
| We believe there is great truth in this description of the eyes 
| of the dying, the fruit, no doubt, of actual observation 
| quickened by earnest feeling and sympathy. Whatever value 
| this volume possesses is from the impress it leaves of this 
| actual experience as opposed to the wider range of poets by 
| profession, whose vocation it is to <hi rend="italic"> 
| imagine, </hi> and who, unless their imagination is in a very 
| vivid and active state indeed, must fall into mannerism and 
| often describe things of which we are all judges, by symbols 
| rather than by severe truth and nature. Many of the poems 
| <pb n="398">
| are poor, especially those of Acton Bell. There is sympathy 
| with doubt and with that form of worldliness which consists 
| in preferring worldly to heavenly affections, which is 
| sometimes carried to an extreme length, as in the poem called 
| "Apostasy," by Currer, where the author evidently goes along 
| with the speaker to the point of admiration, if not of positive 
| approbation, of this very shocking sentiment. 
| <quotation>
| </quotation> 
| <paragraph> 
| The love of nature which characterises Currer Bell's prose 
| works pervades the whole of the present volume, but we have 
| space for no more extracts; our article has already run to a 
| length which in these times of stirring interests, and of 
| subjects of all-pervading importance, may be thought 
| unreasonable.
| <paragraph>
| One deduction we think may be drawn from the review we 
| have taken of recent minor poetry, simply as poetry, which is, 
| that those licences in morals, those errors in belief, that 
| absence of reverence
| leading to unlawful or unprofitable speculation, which should 
| all be first viewed in their moral aspect, and reprobated on 
| that ground mainly, have yet their mischiefs as points of mere 
| taste, as disturbing and violating the best rules and laws of 
| composition. They are found to disturb and pervert the 
| imagination as much as they dull the conscience; they 
| interfere with the proportionate development of the intellect 
| as much as every moral failing must affect the soul and 
| character; they mar the pleasure of the intelligent reader as 
| much as they wound his religious sensibilities. We think it is 
| clear that in so far as these writers had been humbler, purer, 
| of a more submissive faith, they would have been better 
| poets, though perhaps less showy writers; truer to nature, 
| more open to her influences, possessed of a more genuine 
| pathos, a more intimate sympathy, that in aiming at less they 
| would have attained to more; that in humbling the pride of 
| unchastened thought and intellect which has now led them 
| astray, they 
| <pb n="399">
| would have been exalted to heights which they can never 
| now attain. The great law of moderation which an apostle has 
| prescribed for our moral guidance should have equally its 
| place in the direction of the understanding and imagination. 
| This law cannot be outraged without lasting injury to their 
| free growth and action. It cannot be uniformly disregarded 
| for the sake of startling effects and ambitious displays, such 
| as we have witnessed, without a permanent loss of real 
| power.