ABSTRACT
After a silence of some years, Mr. Browning has again addressed the public in the book before us, which forms the fourth part of what, when it is completed, will be one of the longest poems in the world. The present volume contains 4, 657 lines, which, upon the principle of ex pede Herculem,1 may be taken as a fair basis for comparing the whole work with the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, or the Orlando Furioso. When we tell our readers that in the published sample of this gigantic poem we find but little of the obscurity which made a riddle of Sordello, and nearly all the power and subtlety of thought which went to the creation of Paracelsus, Pippa Passes, Karshish, and Cleon, they will understand that The Ring and the Book does not promise disappointment. Yet, no doubt, there will be some, even among Mr. Browning’s warmest and most intelligent admirers, who will regret the choice of his subject and the style in which he has thought fit to develop it. The poem is written uniformly in blank verse. It contains but few of those "lyrical interbreathings" which relieved the monotony of this metre in the works of our dramatists; and the frequent perplexities and involutions of language which impede the easy progress of the reader seem to have arisen from the constant effort to elude the prosiness into which narrative blank verse is apt to fall, rather than to have been forced upon the poet by the intricacy of his thoughts or the sublimity of his imagination. Mr. Browning has so amply proved his power of pouring forth the most exquisite strains of lyrical music, and of photographing subtle and ob scure phases of mental activity and emotion in condensed and artistic pictures, that we cannot but regret the absence of short pieces from his volume. Still it is ungracious, with such a gift conferred upon us,
pleasure in this piecemeal presentation of a bygone tragedy: this minute analysis of facts and motives,—this many-sided exhibition of a single problem. For those, however, who have the patience and the intellect to follow the elaborate and subtle working of the most profound of living artists, who are capable of delighting in the gradual unfolding of an intricate plot, and of weighing and comparing conflicting evidence, this poem offers attractions of the very highest order. As in a novel of Balzac’s, their patience will be rewarded by the final effect of the accumulated details grouped together by the artist, and their intellect will be refreshed with the exhibition of prodigious power carefully exerted and marvellously sustained. It is certain that, as the chain of incident and comment gradually uncurls, each link will add some fresh sensation, until, when its huge length has been unwound, our minds will retain an ineffaceable and irresistible impression of the whole as conceived in the wonder-working brain of Mr. Browning. We are contented to peruse the facts and pleadings of a modern lawcase; why should we not bring the same freshness of interest to bear upon this tragedy, not stripped, as happens in the newspapers, of its poetry, but invested with all the splendours of a powerful imagination, while retaining the reality of incidents and details that bear a crime of yesterday home to the hearts of every one?
