ABSTRACT
Several of the earlier poems in Browning’s last volume, Dramatis Personae partake but too much of that obscurity, of which he gave so surpassing an example in Sordello. ‘James Lee’ is, we believe, a theme of unrequited love; and here and there, where the meaning is intelligible, the feeling is delicately touched, and the verses musical. ‘Gold Hair’, a legend of the Pornic, is a pretty story, and worked out with a little more definition than the other. ‘The Worst of It’ is very cloudy, as is also ‘Dis Aliter Visum, or Le Byron de nos Jours’, and ‘Too Late’. The first theme in the volume, indeed, which possesses a clear poetic interest, is that entitled ‘Abt Vogler’, a monologue of the musician, after he had been extemporizing on a musical instrument of his invention. The dramatic soliloquy or monologue is a form which Browning much affects, and which is admirably chosen to body forth the peculiar turn of his mind. Many of the first pieces in his previous volumes are thrown into this shape, and, with the exception of three or four, all in his Dramatis Personae.…
There are many shorter poems in the volume, such as ‘Confessions’, ‘May and Death’, ‘Youth and Art’, &c., which are treated with Browning’s characteristic dramatic power; and also a long soliloquy, ‘Mr. Sludge, the Medium’, in which he develops, with great power, though somewhat too much at length, the type of a complete scoundrel. So disagreeable a subject, and one admitting so little of any poetic faculty except the dramatic, was hardly worthy of such enlarged treatment; but, taking it as it is, rude and plain, in its prosaic language, it must be admitted to be drawn with great power of characterization, and knowledge of the basest springs of nature.
