ABSTRACT
We have here yet another proof of Mr. Browning’s fertility. Though his manner changes less than might be wished-since the mist, if it rises and reveals a clear prospect for half a page, as certainly falls again,— there are few of his contemporaries who embrace so wide a field of subjects; be they of thought, or description, or passion, or character. Sometimes baroque, Mr. Browning is never ignoble: pushing versification to the extremity of all rational allowances, and sometimes beyond it, with a hardihood of rhythm and cadence little short of Hudibrastic, —he is rarely careless. His aims are truth and freedom. His art is sometimes consummate-‘Wherefore not always?’ is a question, the reply to which might lead to threadbare dissertations on taste, self-renunciation, and the like. Instead of these, we shall be more just to our author if we give him room to exhibit himself in his strength, and in his variety. Let us begin by illustrating Mr. Browning’s descriptive powers. The first of these Dramatic Ballads tells of a night-ride from Ghent to Aix, and is thrown off with an animation which Bürger himself hardly exceeds. There is a picture in every verse.…
[Quotes the first and fourth stanzas of ‘How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix’.]
We must leave untouched the study of ‘Saul’ leaning against his tent-pole,— the love verses, in which the book is rich, and the new version of the well-known story of ‘King Francis, the Lady, the Glove, and the Lion,’—in which Mr. Browning most chivalrously defends one who has been be-sung and bescandalized as the cruellest of her sex.— Enough has been given to prove that these Romances will add to the poet’s reputation.
