ABSTRACT
The irresistible impression made upon the mind of an unprejudiced reader by these selected poems of Mr. Browning must be, that he is, beyond all question, a man of very remarkable faculties. We perhaps may incline to the belief that his special intellectual province is to be looked for rather in an extraordinary power of psychological analysis than in what is usually regarded as poetical inspiration; but even if this attribute were separated from his other gifts, and not allowed to count at all, there would still remain behind so much real originality and strength that we cannot wonder if the partial friends whom genius such as his is sure to make and to keep are surprised and mortified at his comparative unpopularity. We say comparative unpopularity because we have always understood that among those who are fond enough of poetry not to be repelled by a manner which his friends describe as ‘marked and peculiar’, but which we should speak of in terms somewhat more unfavourable, he has never wanted an attentive, and seldom an admiring audience. Comparatively unpopular, however, he certainly is. For example, Mr. Longfellow, of whom we wish to speak with the utmost respect as a thoroughly accomplished versifier and something more, has taken the young ladies of England by storm. Now, in our judgment (and we say again, with perfect sincerity, that no sneer is aimed at the American author) Mr. Browning contains within himself a mass of solid metal which might be beaten thin into a couple of Longfellows at least. And yet we apprehend that (on principles somewhat similar to those on which the Dutch estimate of female beauty is said to rest) what Horace calls the columna, and what we call the trade, would pronounce the latter to be the greater poet of the two by ever so many copies annually sold. Some such incapacity, or disinclination at least, on the part of Mr. Browning, to adapt himself to the taste of the day, appears to intercept the natural effect of his
we honestly appreciate his great and various merits, we shall be glad if we find ourselves mistaken. One of these faults of form, as it appears to us, is an ineradicable passion for every contorted and unimaginable rhyme which the English language, turned inside-out, can be coaxed or tortured into supplying. We readily concede that Mr. Browning dances in his self-imposed fetters with unusual lightness and ease; nevertheless, he is forced often to sacrifice conciseness and propriety of style, and sometimes the whole beauty of his image, to this somewhat mean exhibition of a merely mechanical skill.
