Section VI Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“It is characteristic of this century, that women play a more important part in literature than previously. Not only have women of genius commanded universal homage, but the distinctive characteristics of the female nature have been exhibited with more exquisite analysis and more powerful truth than heretofore.”
Peter Bayne, A.M.
EPIC POETRY.
The principal of poetical compositions is the epic, otherwise called the heroic. It gives an imaginative narrative of some signal action or series of actions and events, usually the achievements of some distinguished character, and intended to form the morals and affect the mind with the love of virtue. The longer poems of the epic genus embrace an extensive series of events, and the actions of numerous personages. The “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” are the principal Grecian epics. The “Æneid” is the most distinguished Roman epic. “Jerusalem Delivered” and the “Divina Comedia” are the most celebrated Italian epics. “Paradise Lost” is the greatest English epic. These are epic poems by way of eminence, but there are several species of minor poems which from their nature most also be ranked as epics. One of these is the “idyl,” a term applied to what is called pastoral poetry. The ballad is another species of minor epic. Critics agree that this sort of poetry is the greatest work human nature is capable of. But attempts at epic poetry are now rare, the spirit of the age being against this kind of composition. It is believed that several of our immortal epics could not have been written in the nineteenth century; because the mind would never produce that of the truth of which it could not persuade itself by any illusion of the imagination. In the room of epic poems, we have now novels, which may be considered as the epics of modern civil and domestic life. We have, however, minds of both sexes, in our midst, capable of furnishing us with epics, so far as genius is concerned.
BIOGRAPHY.
Elizabeth Barrett was born in London, about the year 1809. Her father was an opulent country gentleman, and not a West India merchant as several biographies represent him to have been. She passed her girlhood at his country-seat in Herefordshire, among the lovely scenery of the Malvern Hills. At least she says:—
“Green is the land where my daily
Steps in jocund childhood played;
Dimpled close with hill and valley;
Dappled very close with shade:
Summer snow of apple blossom
Running up from glade to glade.”
She seems to have been a very precocious child, and the culture which she received in her youth was fair, liberal, and sound. Classics, philosophy, and science were studied with enthusiasm and success. We welcome gladly the evidence that society is beginning to recognise woman’s right to be as highly educated as her capacity will allow. She is to be man’s companion, and what can better enable her to be a fit companion for him, than a due comprehension of what he comprehends; an appreciation founded upon knowledge of the difficulties he has mastered, and power to stand beside him and help him in his intellectual labours. Without disregarding the fact that all women do not follow in the footsteps of men, and therefore do not require the same course of learning, Elizabeth Barrett participated largely in the education given to her brothers by a very able tutor, Mr. Hugh Stuart Boyd, the Grecian.
From a very early age her ear was ever attuned to catch the deep and mysterious and hope-inspiring whisperings of nature. At the age of ten she began writing in prose and in verse, and at fifteen her talent for literary composition became known to her friends. She was a most diligent student, and soon became a contributor to periodical literature, and a series of articles on the Greek Christian poets not only indicated how deeply she had entered into the spirit of these old authors, but proved that she was possessed both of recondite learning and true poetic genius. If, as some critics aver, her earlier style resembles that of Tennyson; this arises, not from imitation, but from similarity of genius and classical taste. Proofs of rare reading and deep reflection abound in Miss Barrett’s first attempt at authorship, published in 1826: “An Essay on Mind, and other Poems.” Her next literary enterprise was a version of one of the greatest and most difficult masterpieces of classical antiquity; “Prometheus Bound,” which appeared in 1833; and of which she has since given an improved translation. In 1838 appeared another volume of original poetry, “The Seraphim, and other Poems;” the external peculiarity of which was its endeavour to embody the ideas and sentiments of a Christian mystery in the artistic form of a Greek tragedy. This was followed in 1839, by a third work, “The Romaunt of the Page.”
Life’s joys are as inconstant as life itself. Temporal disappointments often distress us, and God’s providential visitations often cause us to change our plans.
“How fast treads sorrow on the heels of joy.”
About this time, a melancholy accident occurred which for years clouded the life of the poetess, and all but irretrievably shattered her naturally delicate constitution. She burst a blood-vessel in the lungs. Happily, no symptoms of consumption supervened; but after a twelvemonth’s confinement at home, she was ordered by her physician to the mild climate of Devonshire. A house was taken for her at Torquay, near the foot of the cliffs, close by the sea. She was rapidly recovering, when one bright summer morning her brother and two young men, his friends, went out in a small boat for a trip of a few hours. Just as they crossed the bar, the vessel swamped, and all on board perished. Even their lifeless bodies were never recovered. They were sepulchred in the great ocean, which has wrapped its garment of green round many of the fairest and noblest of the sons of men, and which rolls its continued requiem of sublimity and sadness over the millions whom it hath entombed. This sudden and dreadful calamity almost killed Miss Barrett. During a whole year, she lay in the house incapable of removal, whilst the sound of the waves rang in her ears as the moans of the dying. Literature was her only solace. Her physician pleaded with her to abandon her studies; and to quiet his importunities she had an edition of Plato bound so as to resemble a novel.
When eventually removed to London and her father’s house in Wimpole Street, it was in an invalid carriage, and at the slow rate of twenty miles a day. In a commodious and darkened room, to which only her own family and a few devoted friends were admitted, she nursed her remnant of life; reading meanwhile the best books in almost every language, and giving herself heart and soul to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess. The following beautiful and graphic verses were written to commemorate the faithful companionship of a young spaniel (“Flush, my dog”), presented to her by a friend, in those years of imprisonment and inaction.
“Yet, my little sportive friend,
Little is’t to such an end
That I should praise thy rareness!
Other dogs may be thy peers,
Haply in these drooping ears,
And in this glossy fairness.
“But of thee it shall be said,
This dog watched beside a bed
Day and night unweary;—
Watched within a curtained room,
Where no sunbeam broke the gloom,
Round the sick and weary.
“Roses, gathered for a vase,
In that chamber died apace,
Beam and breeze resigning—
This dog only waited on,
Knowing that when light is gone,
Love remains for shining.
“Other dogs in thymy dew
Tracked the hares, and followed through
Sunny moor or meadow—
This dog only crept and crept
Next a languid cheek that slept,
Sharing in the shadow.
“Other dogs of loyal cheer
Bounded at the whistle clear,
Up the woodside hieing—
This dog only watched in reach
Of a faintly uttered speech,
Or a louder sighing.
“And if one or two quick tears
Dropt upon his glossy ears,
Or a sigh came double,—
Up he sprang in eager haste,
Fawning, fondling, breathing fast,
In a tender trouble.
“And this dog was satisfied
If a pale thin hand would glide
Down his dewlaps sloping—
Which he pushed his nose within,
After—platforming his chin
On the palm left open.”
It was during those six or seven years of seclusion and study that she composed or completed the most striking of those poems, published in two volumes in 1844, which first brought her into notice as a poetess of genius. “Poetry,” said the authoress in her preface, “has been as serious a thing to me as life itself, and life has been a very serious thing. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for the hour of the poet. I have done my work, so far, as work, not as mere hand and head work apart from the personal being, but as the completest expression of that being to which I could attain; and as work I offer it to the public, feeling its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured from the height of my aspiration, but feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was done should give it some protection with the reverent and sincere.”
In 1846, she became the wife of a kindred spirit, Robert Browning, the poet. Never were man and woman more clearly ordained for each other than Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. They were imperfect apart; together they were rounded into one. With marriage came Mrs. Browning’s welcome restoration to health and strength. The poet-pair started for Italy, staying first at Pisa, and then settling at Florence. In that metropolis of one of the most wealthy and powerful of the Italian States, she witnessed, in 1848-49, the struggle made by the Tuscans for freedom. Mrs. Browning published her collected works in 1850. In 1851, she issued her important work, “Casa Guidi Windows,” a semi-political narrative of actual events and genuine feelings.
Inspirited by what she saw around her, and by a new tie, an only child, a boy of great intellectual and musical precocity, the genius of Mrs. Browning had become practical and energetic. “The future of Italy,” says our authoress, “shall not be disinherited.” Then came, in 1856, “Aurora Leigh,” a long and elaborate poem or novel in blank verse, which our poetess considered the most mature of her works, into which her highest convictions upon life and art were entered. “Poems before Congress” followed in 1860.
After a brief illness, Mrs. Browning died at Florence on the 29th of June, 1861. When the sad news reached England, universal regret was expressed for the loss of the talented lady; the press confessing with singular unanimity that the world had lost in her the greatest poetess that had ever appeared.
She was borne to the tomb amidst the lamentations of Tuscany no less than of her own dear England. Above the door of a decent little house in Florence is a small square slab, with an inscription in Italian, which may be thus translated:—“Here wrote and died Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who to the heart of a woman joined the science of a scholar and the spirit of a teacher, and who made with her golden verse a nuptial ring between Italy and England. Grateful Florence places this memorial.”
PLACE AS A POETESS.
In no languages, save Greek and English, so far as we remember at present, have poetesses achieved special fame; and we think all competent judges will unhesitatingly rank Mrs. Browning as the Queen of song. But we do not wish to judge her by a less elevated standard or less rigid rules than those we apply to the poets generally. “Good for a woman,” is the sort of praise she would have rejected with scorn. She entered fairly into the lists against all the world, and she claims a place among literary worthies as such. Genius is of no sex. What place shall we assign her?
It is not necessary for the purposes of criticism that a scale of genius should be formed, that a list of the orbs of song should be made out. Shakespeare is the greatest author of mankind; for generations he has been hailed as the mightiest of mere men. Mrs. Browning is not Shakespeare; but we do not talk amusingly when we claim her as his counterpart. Milton was endowed with gifts of the soul which have been imparted to few of our race. His name is almost identified with sublimity. He is in fact the sublimest of men. In fitness of conception, terseness of diction, and loftiness of thought, the following lines have all that Miltonic genius could impart:—
“Raise the majesties
Of thy disconsolate brows, O well-beloved,
And front with level eyelids the To Come,
And all the dark o’ the world. Rise, woman, rise
To thy peculiar and best attitudes
Of doing good and of enduring ill,—
Of comforting for ill, and teaching good,
And reconciling all that ill and good
Unto the patience of a constant hope,—
Rise with thy daughters! If sin came by thee,
And by sin, death,—the ransom righteousness,
The heavenly light, and compensative rest,
Shall come by means of thee. If woe by thee
Had issue to the world, thou shalt go forth
An angel of the woe thou didst achieve,
Found acceptable to the world, instead
Of others of that name, of whose bright steps
Thy deed stripped bare the hills. Be satisfied;
Something thou hast to bear through womanhood,
Peculiar suffering, answering to the sin;—
Some pang paid down for each new human life,
Some weariness in guarding such a life,
Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust
From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved
Too loyally, some treason; feebleness
Within thy heart, and cruelty without,
And pressures of an alien tyranny
With its dynastic reasons of larger bones
And stronger sinews. But, go to! thy love
Shall chant itself its own beatitudes,
After its own life working. A child’s kiss
Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich;
A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong.
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest.”
In seeking to ascertain the precise position which Mrs. Browning occupies in relation to other writers, critics of general common sense will select a class of favourites who have exerted a mighty sway over the strongly pulsing heart of common humanity. Some will place in this list Burns, Moore, and Scott. With others, Byron, Wordsworth, and Tennyson will figure as chiefs. Now, in this selection, we venture to affirm Mrs. Browning has been often enrolled by men as well as by women; by some high upon the list, by others, of course, upon a lower level. There are not many good sonnets in English literature, but in this most difficult and elaborate form of composition Mrs. Browning was eminently successful. We could select half a dozen excellent sonnets from Mrs. Browning with more ease than from Shakespeare, or Milton, or any other writer save Wordsworth.
Of her mere literary style we care to say but little, and still less of her faults. She was essentially a self-taught and self-sustained artist. Her correspondence with Mr. John Kenyon, the poet, did not commence till she was thirty years of age, and consequently she owed less to his influences than some of her critics suppose. Her style is strong and clear, but uneven and abrupt. A sentence or paragraph often limps a little after the hastening thought, and a degree of stiffness is sometimes given by a pet word, coined, or obsolete, or picked up in an old book. It would be absurd to deny that certain characteristics of her poetry withhold it from the many and confine it to the few. The true and eternally grateful notes are struck without show of art or self-conscious ambition. Still, following the rule that she ought to be judged by her best, it must be admitted that she is the rose, the consummate crown, the rarer and stronger and more passionate Sappho of our time.
CHARACTER OF MRS. BROWNING.
It must have been about 1835 that Miss Mitford first saw Miss Barrett, and to this period the following portrait in the “Recollections of a Literary Life” doubtless referred:—“My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen years ago. She was certainly one of the most interesting persons I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her said the same; so it is not merely the impression of my partiality or my enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness, that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that the translatress of the “Prometheus” of Æschylus, the authoress of the “Essay on Mind,” was old enough to be introduced into company; in technical language—was out.” But although not strikingly fair to look upon, her nature was so gentle, and her manners so interesting, that they stood her in the stead of health and beauty.
Mrs. Browning was endowed with the highest imaginative and intellectual qualities. In her poems are passages which admit of being compared with those of the few sovereigns of literature; touches which only the mightiest give. We admire and reverence the breadth and versatility of her genius; no sameness; no one idea; no type character; a woman of great acuteness and originality—one of the prime spirits of this century.
Our poetess laid her splendid powers on the altar of God. Deep chastened affection, and nobleness of faith glow and sparkle in her life as well as in her verse, with a rare brilliancy. “She is a Christian,” to quote the words of a popular writer, “not in the sense of appreciating, like Carlyle, the loftiness of the Christian type of character; not in the sense of adopting, like Goethe, a Christian machinery for artistic self-worship; nor even in the sense of approaching, like Wordsworth, an august but abstract morality; but in the sense of finding, like Cowper, the whole hope of humanity bound up in Christ, and taking all the children of her mind to Him, that He may lay His hand on them and bless them. It is well that Mrs. Browning is a Christian. It is difficult, but possible, to bear the reflection that many great female writers have rejected that gospel which has done more for woman than any other civilizing agency; but it is well that the greatest woman of all looks up in faith and love to that eye which fell on Mary from the cross.”