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 Athenæum.

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"?

66

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 wishedBack to One, goes the case bandied!

One says his say with a difference

More of expounding, explaining!

All now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance

Now there's a truce, all's subdued, self-restraining— Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.

One is incisive, corrosive

Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant—

Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive

Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant—

Five. . . O Danaides, O Sieve!

Now, they ply axes and crowbars—

Now they prick pins at a tissue

Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's

Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?

Where is our gain at the Two-bars?

Est fuga, volvitur rota!

On we drift. Where looms the dim port? One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quotaSomething is gained, if one caught but the import— Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha!