Shakspeare was of us, Milton was for us, [graves!
Burns, Shelley, were with us-they watch from their
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,

He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

II.

We shall march prospering-not thro' his presence;
Songs may excite us-not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done-while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task unaccepted, one footpath untrod;
One more devil's triumph, and sorrow to angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!
There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain;
Forced praise on our part-the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!

Best fight on well, for we taught him,-come gallantly,
Strike our face hard, ere we shatter his own;
Then let him get the new knowledge and wait us,

Pardoned in Heaven-the first by the throne!'

There are some expressions here to which one might object, but the whole poem exhibits a strength, solidity, and sobriety uncommon in contemporary writing. There is no affectation of thought in it; there is none of the pretension which usually mars such poems. The feeling is true, and is manly in its sorrow; and if poets ever listened to the advice so liberally offered them by critics, we would counsel Robert Browning to spare us his caprices, and give us more such writing. He is still young, but he is old enough to have outlived the tendency which urges inexperienced poets into a fantastic and unreal region, simply because they have not sufficiently penetrated into the world of reality. For as Jean Paul, in his Vorschule der Esthetik, admirably says, 'the novelty of their feelings makes them suppose 'that the objects which excite them are also novel; and they 'believe that through the former they produce the latter. Hence 'they plunge either into the unknown and unnamed, in foreign lands and times; or, still more willingly, occupy themselves ' with the lyrical: for, in the Lyric, there is no other nature to 'be represented than that which the Lyrist brings with him."

味

This period Browning has outlived; and from him now, if ever, we ought to expect works that are the transcript of real experience.

But will he pardon us if we say, that we would more gladly meet him on the next occasion as a writer of prose? It may seem a strange compliment to pay a man who comes before us as a poet; yet a compliment it is. We could say the same to few of his rivals: mediocre as is their poetry, their prose we suspect would be detestable. By dint of assiduous study, 'a reasonable good ear in music,' and a fluent rhyming faculty, they produce verses which, if they do not touch the heart, nor stir the soul, do nevertheless, in some measure, gratify the ear. But if we pause for a moment to consider the material of their works, we shall find it so weak, vapid, common-place, or false, that to think of it in prose is alarming. They do not seem to have thought enough and seen enough to be able to be reasonable in prose. This is not the case with Browning. His works have many defects, but they have not that; they show a clear, open mind, prone to reflection; they show that he thinks for himself, and such a man is worth hearing. But he would be better worth hearing in prose than in verse, because, as Göthe said of the rhymers of his day, it is a pity to hear men attempt to sing what they can only speak.

'Ihr Guten-grosser und Kleiner—

Ihr singt euch müde und matt;
Und singt doch keiner

Als was er zu sagen hat!'

Browning is certainly not a born singer, and what is more, he has not caught the echo of another's music-he wants the melody and grace of which verse should be made. The sense of Beauty is not keen in him; and thoughts, however noble, conceptions, however grand, will not supply the place of beauty.

'Pinxisti Venerem, colis, Artemidore, Minervam,
Et miraris opus displicuisse tuum?"

asks Martial, and we may put the same question to Browning. The exigences of prose would be beneficial to him, by curbing his capricious flights, and making him pay more attention to the ground plan than he now does. He will understand our meaning if we refer to Pippa Passes-one of the most admired of his Bells and Pomegranates,' and one that really contains some charming writing. What his purpose was, we know not; what the piece means, we have in vain asked ourselves and others. It opens with Pippa springing out of bed on New Year's Day, and

in an irregular lyrical monologue informing us that she means to enjoy her holiday.

6

For am I not this day

Whate'er I please? Whom shall I seem to-day?

Morn, Noon, Eve, Night-how must I spend my day?"

She then intimates her intention, though very vaguely, of personating several characters

'The brother,

The bride, the lover, and the mother

Only to pass whom will remove

Whom a mere look at half will cure

The Past, and help me to endure

The Coming.... I am just as great, no doubt,
As they !'

Pippa passes. In this way throughout the piece Pippa is made, as it were, the conscience of the personages. The whole piece is but a collection of anecdotes or scenes, with that slender thread. At length we are conducted through this maze of writing to the final scene, which is Pippa's chamber. Her day is ended, and she returns home to favour us with some more unintelligible monologue. In the course of this she runs over the names of the personages introduced into the various scenes at which she passed, and she tells us that she has been these persons. Hear her:

Ah, but-ah, but, all the same,

No mere mortal has a right

To carry that exalted air;

Best people are not angels quite

While not worst people's doings scare

The devils; so there's that regard to spare!

Mere counsel to myself, mind! for

I have just been Monsignor,

And I was you, too, mother,

And you, too, Luigi! How that Luigi started

Out of the turret-doubtlessly departed

On some love-errand or another

And I was Jules the sculptor's bride.

And I was Ottima beside,

And now what am I? tired of fooling!'

This is tolerably explicit, and further on she says:

'Now one thing I should like to really know :

How near I ever might approach all these

I only fancied being this long day.'

From these indications we are led to suppose that all we have had passed before our eyes in the preceding scenes was but the pageant of a dream-a reflection of what was passing in the busy fancy of Pippa. If such was the poet's intention-and we can guess none other-he has very faintly in the piece indicated that which should have been clear as day; and he has, moreover, employed what appears to us a very clumsy and unsatisfactory machinery. Nor can we understand his purpose in giving us such a dream, or fancy-picture. Was it to show that even in the pure innocent soul of a young girl, there were contained the elements out of which (if thoughts were incarnated into acts) could be created the adulterer, the murderer, the egotistical artist, &c.? If so, he has not made out his case:-it is a paradox he has not made plausible.

But it is needless for us to multiply objections-none of his admirers have been able to tell us what was his intention in writing it; and, for ourselves, when we compare the passage wherein Pippa says, that the mere act of passing this bride, lover, and mother,

' will remove

Whom a mere look at will half cure.
The past, and help me to endure
The coming...

with her subsequent declaration that she has been these very persons, we are utterly bewildered. He may have had a purpose, and know what that purpose is, but he has failed to impart it to his readers.

To express in one sentence our disapproval of Browning's obscurity, we should say that it is not the obscurity which is suggestive, but the obscurity which is tiresome: it is not owing to the subtlety or profundity of the thoughts, but to the want of steadiness and clearness in the handling.

One ill consequence of his negligence in bringing out his purpose clearly, when he has one, is the transitoriness of the impression he leaves upon the mind. The Blot on the 'Scutcheon is a play we have read, and of which we otherwise have some knowledge, yet we have totally forgotten all about it, except that it seemed to us more Spanish than English in its feeling, and thoroughly false in the delineation of motives and passions. The Flight of the Duchess is a favourite with most readers, and contains some admirable writing; but surely never was a story worse told. In this singular poem we see Browning's merits and faults fully displayed. Its somewhat ostentatious luxuriance of rhyme has scarcely been surpassed by Butler, Pulci, or Byron; and some of the descriptive bits are admirable.

'Ours is a great wild country:

If you climb to our castle's top,

I don't see where your eye can stop;

For when you've passed the corn-field country,
Where vineyards leave off, flocks are pack'd;

And sheep range yields to cattle tract,

And cattle tract to open chase,

And open chase to the very base

Of the mountain, where, at a funeral pace,

Round about, solemn and slow,

One by one, row by row,
Up and up the pine trees go,
So, like black priests up, and so