ABSTRACT
If we except Scott, and still more Coleridge in England, and Goethe in Germany, we have since the beginning of the century been in the hands of the subjective school of poets. Poets, that is, who view the universe of men and things through a medium supplied by their own idiosyncrasies, and whose poetry comes to us savouring strongly of the mind and heart of the individual poet. Against this style of poetry Mr Browning’s works supply a welcome and long desired reaction. More productive than Coleridge, and far surpassing Scott in delicacy of touch and finished treatment, we find him free from Mr Ruskin’s ‘pathetic fallacy’, which attempts to depict external nature by investing it with human characters, and then painting it according to the tone of the artist’s mind. In scenery, he gives us things as he sees them; and in dramatic poetry, which he chiefly loves, he thinks out his characters to the very heart’s core, and then makes them speak for themselves, without coming forward like a chorus to explain the situation or scatter moral reflections over the drama. But it is in the work now before us that Mr Browning’s genius reaches the culminating point. Henceforth, his place in the very first rank of English poets must be conceded without a murmur or a doubt. He has added a new lustre to English literature, and enriched our language with a possession for ever.… In Count Guido, Caponsacchi, and especially in Pompilia, we have distinct creations, characters which stand forth in clearness and completeness like Macbeth, Hamlet, or Cordelia. Pompilia is exquisite in her beauty, her unconscious grandeur and nobility of soul, her simplicity, and withal her dignity, maintained alike amid great sufferings and petty persecutions more lowering than sublime trials. We cannot point to a creation worthy of being compared with her in the whole range of English literature. For the choice of subject we have nothing but condemnation. It is Mr Browning’s luck. But granting this, there is no mark of great and lofty poetry wanting in the elaboration of this noble masterpiece. There is no departure from the true concrete artistic treatment in any line of the whole poem; no putting aside the poet for the didactic teacher; no thrusting forward of the author’s individuality to speak for the characters, or to interpret them to his readers.
