Chapter 17

Now this seems very surprising. It has sometimes, though we regret to say rarely, happened, that, as in the present instance, we have been able to deal out unqualified praise, but never found that the dose in this case disagreed with the most squeamish stomach; on the contrary, the patient has always seemed exceedingly comfortable after he had swallowed it. He has been known to take the 'Review' home and keep his wife from a ball, and his children from bed, till he could administer it to them, by reading the article aloud. He has even been heard to recommend the 'Review' to his acquaintance at the clubs, as the best number which has yet appeared, and one, who happened to be an M.P. as well as an author, gave a _conditional_ order, that in case his last work should be favourably noticed, a dozen copies should be sent down by the mail to the borough of ----. But, on the other hand, when it has happened that the general course of our criticism has been unfavourable, if by accident we happened to introduce the smallest spice of _praise_, the patient immediately fell into paroxysms--declaring that the part which we foolishly thought might offend him had, on the contrary, given him pleasure--positive pleasure, but _that_ which he could not possibly either forget or forgive, was the grain of praise, be it ever so small, which we had dropped in, and for which, and _not for our censure_, he felt constrained, in honour and conscience, to visit us with his extreme indignation. Can any reader or writer inform us how it is that praise in the wholesale is so very agreeable to the very same stomach that rejects it with disgust and loathing, when it is scantily administered; and above all, can they tell us why it is, that the indignation and nausea should be in the exact inverse ratio to the quantity of the ingredient? These effects, of which we could quote several cases much more violent than Mr. Tennyson's, puzzle us exceedingly; but a learned friend, whom we have consulted, has, though he could not account for the phenomenon, pointed out what he thought an analogous case. It is related of Mr. Alderman Faulkner, of convivial memory, that one night when he expected his guests to sit late and try the strength of his claret and his head, he took the precaution of placing in his wine-glass a strawberry, which his doctor, he said, had recommended to him on account of its cooling qualities: on the faith of this specific, he drank even more deeply, and, as might be expected, was carried away at an earlier period and in rather a worse state, than was usual with him. When some of his friends condoled with him next day, and attributed his misfortune to six bottles of claret which he had imbibed, the Alderman was extremely indignant--'the claret,' he said, 'was sound, and never could do any man any harm--his discomfiture was altogether caused by that damned single strawberry' which he had kept all night at the bottom of his glass.--_The Quarterly Review_.

[Footnote O: See Quarterly Review, vol. XIX, p. 204.]

[Footnote P: The same Camelot, in Somersetshire, we presume, which is alluded to by Kent in 'King Lear'--

'Goose! if I had thee upon Sarum plain, I'd drive thee cackling home to Camelot.' ]

_The Princess; a Medley_. By Alfred Tennyson. Moxon.

That we are behind most even of our heaviest and slowest contemporaries in the notice of this volume, is a fact for which we cannot satisfactorily account to ourselves, and can therefore hardly hope to be able to make a valid excuse to our readers. The truth is, that whenever we turned to it we became, like the needle between positive and negative electric poles, so attracted and repelled, that we vibrated too much to settle to any fixed condition. Vacillation prevented criticism, and we had to try the experiment again and again before we could arrive at the necessary equipose to indicate the right direction of taste and opinion. We will now, however, note our variations, and leave them to the public judgment.

The first lines of the prologue were repulsive, as a specimen of the poorest Wordsworth manner and style--

"Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun Up to his people: thither flock'd at noon His tenants, wife and child, and thither half The neighbouring borough with their Institute Of which he was the patron. I was there From college, visiting the son,--the son A Walter too,--with others of our set."

The "wife and child" of the tenants is hardly intelligible; and the "set" is but a dubious expression. Nor can we clearly comprehend the next line and a half--

"And me that morning Walter show'd the house, Greek, set with busts:"

Does this mean that Sir Walter Vivian inhabited a Greek house, and that the college "set" were guests in that dwelling "set with busts"? To say the least, this is inelegant, and the affectations proceed--

"From vases in the hall _Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names_, Grew side by side."

Persons conversant with the botanical names of flowers will hardly be able to realize (as the Yankees have it) the idea of their loveliness; the loveliness of Hippuris, Dolichos, Syngenesia, Cheiranthus, Artocarpus, Arum dracunculus, Ampelopsis hederaca, Hexandria, Monogynea, and the rest.

A good description of the demi-scientific sports of the Institute follows; but the house company and inmates retire to a ruined abbey:--

"High-arch'd and ivy-claspt, Of finest Gothic, lighter than a fire."

This is a curious jumble in company, two lights of altogether a different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in which the noisy babble of the College Cubs is satirically characterized: we

"Told Of college: he had climb'd across the spikes, And he had squeez'd himself betwixt the bars, And he had breathed the Proctor's dogs; and one Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men But honeying at the whisper of a lord; And one the Master, as a rogue in grain Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory."

The dialogue happily takes a turn, and the task of writing the _Princess_ is assigned to the author, as one of the tales in the Decameron of Boccaccio. A neighbouring princess of the south (so the story runs as the prince tells it) is in childhood betrothed to a like childish prince of the north:--

"She to me Was proxy-wedded with a _bootless calf_ [?] At eight years old."

Both grew up, the prince, all imaginative, filling his mind with pictures of her perfections; but she turning a female reformer of the Wolstencroft [_sic_] school, resolved never to wed till woman was raised to an equality with men, and establishing a strange female colony and college to carry this vast design into effect. In consequence of this her father is obliged to violate the contract, and his indignant father prepares for war to enforce it. The prince, with two companions, flies to the south, to try what he can do for himself; and in the disguise of ladies they obtain admission to the guarded precincts of the new Amazonian league. He, meanwhile, sings sweetly of his mistress--

"And still I wore her picture by my heart, And one dark tress; and all around them both Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen."

And of his friend--

"My other heart, My shadow, my half-self, for still we moved Together, kin as horse's ear and eye."

His evasion is also finely told--

"But when the council broke, I rose and past Through the wild woods that hang about the town; Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out: Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees: What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth? Proud look'd the lips: but while I meditated A wind arose and rush'd upon the South, And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks Of the wild woods together; and a Voice Went with it 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win!'"

Almost in juxtaposition with these beauties, we find one of the disagreeable blots, so offensive to good taste, which disfigure the poem. The travellers are interrogating the host of an inn close to the liberties where the princess holds her petticoated sway:--

"And at the last-- The summer of the vine in all his veins-- 'No doubt that we might make it worth his while. For him, he reverenced his liege-lady there; He always made a point to post with mares; His daughter and his housemaid were the boys. The land, he understood, for miles about Was till'd by women; all the swine were sows, And all the dogs'"--

This is too bad, even for medley; but proceed we into the interior of the grand and luxurious feminine institution, where their sex is speedily discovered, but for certain reasons concealed by the discoverers. Lectures on the past and what might be done to accomplish female equality, and description of the boundaries, the dwelling place, and the dwellers therein, fill many a page of mingled excellence and defects. Here is a sample of both in half a dozen lines:--

"We saw The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood, Melissa, with her hand upon the lock, A rosy blonde, and in a college gown _That clad her like an April daffodilly_ (Her mother's colour) with her lips apart, And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes, _As bottom agates seem to wave and float In crystal currents of clear morning seas_."

Curious contradictions in mere terms, also occasionally occur. Thus, of a frightened girl, we are told that--

"_Light_ As flies the _shadow_ of a bird she fled."

Events move on. The prince reasons as a man in a colloquy with the princess, and speaks of the delights of maternal affections, and she replies--

"We are not talk'd to thus: Yet will we say for children, would they grew Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them well: But children die; and let me tell you, girl, Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die: They with the sun and moon renew their light Forever, blessing those that look on them: Children--that men may pluck them from our hearts, Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves-- O--children--there is nothing upon earth More miserable than she that has a son And sees him err:"

A song on "The days that are no more," seems to us to be too laboured, nor is the other lyric introduced, "The Swallow," much more to our satisfaction. It is a mixture of prettinesses: the first four triplets run thus, ending in a poetic beauty--

"O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, And tell her, tell her what I tell to thee.

"O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each, That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, And _dark_ and true and tender is the North.

"O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, And _cheep and twitter twenty million loves_.

"O were I thou that she might take me in, And lay me on her bosom, _and her heart Would rock the snowy cradle till I died_."

The prince saves the princess from being drowned, when the secret explodes like a roll of gun cotton, and a grand turmoil ensues. The rival kings approach to confines in battle array, and the princess resumes the declaration of war:--

"A tide of fierce Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips, As waits a river level with the dam Ready to burst and flood the world with foam: And so she would have spoken, but there rose A hubbub in the court of half the maids Gather'd together; from the illumin'd hall Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes, And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes, And gold and golden heads; they to and fro Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, same pale, All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light, Some crying there was an army in the land, And some that men were in the very walls, And some they cared not; till a clamour grew As of a new-world Babel, woman-built, And worse-confounded: high above them stood The placid marble Muses, looking peace."

She denounces the perils outside and in--

"I dare All these male thunderbolts: what is it ye fear? Peace! there are those to avenge us and they come: If not,--myself were like enough, O girls, To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights, And clad in iron burst the ranks of war, Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause, Die: yet I blame ye not so much for fear; Six thousand years of fear have made ye that From which I would redeem ye: but for those That stir this hubbub--you and you--I know Your faces there in the crowd--to-morrow morn We meet to elect new tutors; then shall they That love their voices more than duty, learn With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame to live No wiser than their mothers, household stuff, Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame, Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time, Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels, But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum, To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour For ever slaves at home and fools abroad."

Ay, just as Shakspere hath it--

"To suckle fools and chronicle small beer."

The hero also meets the shock, at least in poetic grace:--

"Upon my spirits Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy, Which I shook off, for I was young, and one To whom the shadow of all mischance but came As night to him that sitting on a hill Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun, Set into sunrise."

It is agreed to decide the contest by a combat of fifty on each side--the one led by the prince, and the other by Arac, the brother of the princess. And clad in "harness"--

"Issued in the sun that now Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, And hit the northern hills."

To the fight--

"Then rode we with the old king across the lawns Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring In every bole, a song on every spray Of birds that piped their Valentines."

The prince and his companions are defeated; and he, wounded almost to the death, is consigned at her own request to be nursed by the princess:--

"So was their sanctuary violated, So their fair college turn'd to hospital; At first with all confusion; by and by Sweet order lived again with other laws; A kindlier influence reign'd; and everywhere Low voices with the ministering hand Hung round the sick."

The result may be foreseen--

"From all a closer interest flourish'd up. Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these, Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears By some cold morning glacier; frail at first And feeble, all unconscious of itself, But such as gather'd colour day by day."

And the agreement is filled up:--

"Dear, but let us type them now In our lives, and this proud watchword rest Of equal; seeing either sex alone Is half itself, and in true marriage lies Nor equal, nor unequal: each fulfils Defect in each, and always thought in thought, Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow, The single pure and perfect animal, The two-cell'd heart beating with one full stroke Life"

"O we will walk this world, Yoked in all exercise of noble end, And so through those dark gates across the wild That no man knows. Indeed I love thee; come, Yield thyself up; my hopes and thine are one; Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."

Who will question the true poetry of this production, or who will deny the imperfections, (mostly of affectation, though some of tastelessness) which obscure it? Who will wonder at our confessed wavering when they have read this course of alternate power, occasionally extravagant, and feebleness as in the long account of the _emeute_? Of the extravagant, the description of the princess, on receiving the declaration of war, is an example:--

"She read, till over brow And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom As of some fire against a stormy cloud, When the wild peasant rights himself, and the rick Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens."

The heroine, it must be acknowledged, is much of the virago throughout, and the prince rather of the softest; but the tale could not be otherwise told. We add four examples--two to be admired, and two to be contemned, in the fulfilment of our critique.

"For was, and is, and will be, are but is,"

is a noble line; and the following, on the promised restoration of a child to its mother, is very touching--

"Again she veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and so Like tender things that being caught feign death, Spoke not, nor stirr'd."

Not so the burlesque eight daughters of the plough, the brawny ministers of the princess' executive, and their usage of a herald. They were--

"Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men, Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain And labour. Each was like a Druid rock; Or like a spire of land that stands apart Cleft from the main, and clang'd about with mews."

And they--

"Came sallying through the gates, and caught his hair, And so belabour'd him on rib and cheek They made him wild."

Nor the following--

"When the man wants weight the woman takes it up, And topples down the scales; but this is fixt As are the roots of earth and base of all. Man for the field and woman for the hearth; Man for the sword and for the needle she; Man with the head and woman with the heart; Man to command and woman to obey; All else confusion. Look to it; the gray mare Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills From tile to scullery, and her small goodman Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell Mix with his hearth; but take and break her, you! She's yet a colt. Well groom'd and strongly curb'd She might not rank with those detestable That to the hireling leave their babe, and brawl Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street. They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance: _I_ like her none the less for rating at her! Besides, the woman wed is not as we, But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy, The bearing and the training of a child Is woman's wisdom."

--_The Literary Gazette_.

ROBERT BROWNING

_Paracelsus_. By Robert Browning.

There is talent in this dramatic poem, (in which is attempted a picture of the mind of this celebrated character,) but it is dreamy and obscure. Writers would do well to remember, (by way of example,) that though it is not difficult to imitate the mysticism and vagueness of Shelley, we love him and have taken him to our hearts as a poet, not _because_ of these characteristics--but _in spite_ of them.--_The Athenaeum_.

_Sordello_. By Robert Browning. London: Moxon. 1840.

The scene of this poem is laid in Italy, when the Ghibelline and Guelph factions were in hottest contest. The author's style is rather peculiar, there being affectations of language and invertions of thought, and other causes of obscurity in the course of the story which detract from the pleasure of perusing it. But after all, we are much mistaken if Mr. Browning does not prove himself a poet of a right stamp,--original, vigorous, and finely inspired. He appears to us to possess a true sense of the dignity and sacredness of the poet's kingdom; and his imagination wings its way with a boldness, freedom and scope, as if he felt himself at home in that sphere, and was resolved to put his allegiance to the test.--_The Monthly Review_.

_Men and Women_. By Robert Browning. Two Volumes. Chapman and Hall.

It is really high time that this sort of thing should, if possible, be stopped. Here is another book of madness and mysticism--another melancholy specimen of power wantonly wasted, and talent deliberately perverted--another act of self-prostration before that demon of bad taste who now seems to hold in absolute possession the fashionable masters of our ideal literature. It is a strong case for the correctional justice of criticism, which has too long abdicated its proper functions. The Della Crusca of Sentimentalism perished under the _Baviad_--is there to be no future Gifford for the Della Crusca of Transcendentalism? The thing has really grown to a lamentable head amongst us. The contagion has affected not only our sciolists and our versifiers, but those whom, in the absence of a mightier race, we must be content to accept as the poets of our age. Here is Robert Browning, for instance--no one can doubt that he is capable of better things--no one, while deploring the obscurities that deface the _Paracelsus_ and the _Dramatic Lyrics_, can deny the less questionable qualities which characterized those remarkable poems--but can any of his devotees be found to uphold his present elaborate experiment on the patience of the public? Take any of his worshippers you please--let him be "well up" in the transcendental poets of the day--take him fresh from Alexander Smith, or Alfred Tennyson's _Maud_, or the _Mystic_ of Bailey--and we will engage to find him at least ten passages in the first ten pages of _Men and Women_, some of which, even after profound study, he will not be able to construe at all, and not one of which he will be able to read off at sight. Let us take one or two selections at random from the first volume, and try. What, for instance, is the meaning of these four stanzas from the poem entitled "By the Fireside"?--

My perfect wife, my Leonor, Oh, heart my own, oh, eyes, mine too, Whom else could I dare look backward for, With whom beside should I dare pursue The path grey heads abhor?

For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them; Youth, flowery all the way, there stops-- Not they; age threatens and they contemn, Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops, One inch from our life's safe hem!

With me, youth led--I will speak now, No longer watch you as you sit Reading by fire-light, that great brow And the spirit-small hand propping it Mutely--my heart knows how--

When, if I think but deep enough, You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme; And you, too, find without a rebuff The response your soul seeks many a time Piercing its fine flesh-stuff--

We really should think highly of the powers of any interpreter who could "pierce" the obscurity of such "stuff" as this. One extract more and we have done. A gold medal in the department of Hermeneutical Science to the ingenious individual, who, after any length of study, can succeed in unriddling this tremendous passage from "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," the organist:--

First you deliver your phrase --Nothing propound, that I see, Fit in itself for much blame or much praise-- Answered no less, where no answer needs be: Off start the Two on their ways!

Straight must a Third interpose, Volunteer needlessly help-- In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose, So the cry's open, the kennel's a-yelp, Argument's hot to the close!

One disertates, he is candid-- Two must dicept,--has distinguished! Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did: Four protests, Five makes a dart at the thing wished-- Back to One, goes the case bandied!