ABSTRACT
Mr Browning’s last poem is, we think, very little worthy of him. What has come to him in these latter days? What bewildering spirit has carried him round the fatal circle and landed him once more in those wilds of confused wordiness which made Sordello the wonder and the fear of all readers? The noble interval between which he has peopled with the Men and Women of his most perfect poetical effort, and with the three great figures which, amid much indifferent matter, we find in the Ring and the Book, has given absolute proof that he is not compelled by any mystery of nature to entangle himself in those uncouth shrouds of diction, the complicated parentheses and inharmonious syllables, which, by some perverted operation of taste, he chose to begin with, and which he has come back to with such fatal effect. Here is another terrible result of Greek, as appalling as any which Mr Symonds1 has put before us in the history of the Renaissance. A profligate prince is a very horrible and dangerous thing; but he affects us less in this well-protected island than does a wasted poet, Alexander VI. at this long interval we can ignore or forget; he has served a great many purposes since, and pointed the moral against the Papacy to the utter obliteration of all good Popes and the perfect satisfaction of every good Protestant for generations, so that even his depravity may have had its uses; but what is there to console us when we make our moan over our poet wasted, our anticipations deceived? Mr Browning threw himself into this perilous path of Greek with a fervour which we pardoned in that first adventure of Balaustion, which embodied the drama of Alcestis, one of those efforts of the great muse of Greece which is most in harmony with later tenets of art and the workings of the modern mind. A translation of one poet by another, though we may demur to it as a waste
pages long, between a half-tipsy Greek, half buffoon, half philosopher, and an enthusiastic poetess as long-winded as himself. There can be no doubt, however much it is to be deplored (if it is to be deplored), that three-fourths of the readers of English poetry are absolutely indifferent to the question why Aristophanes attacked Euripides in his comedies, which is exactly one of those details which the dilettante critic delights in, but which convey neither information nor edification to any one else. A good translation of a great poem is a totally different matter. We have our own opinion as to the difficulty of such an effort, and the almost impossibility of conveying any high conception of the poetry (as poetry, distinct from the character or story conveyed in it) of one language into another; but it is the very foolishness of scholarship to suppose that the world of today can be excited by an explanation of the motives which led the comic to assail the tragic poet with such broad sarcasm and pointed jest as delighted the vulgar crowd of Athenian spectators. The fact is not pleasant in the first place; though it may be so far instructive as to the unchanged tenor of human nature, that it shows how Wit gibed at Wisdom a thousand years ago, and how the meaner and grosser public enjoyed the sport when a real poet, unworthily occupied, poked fun at Socrates and Plato. Mr Browning, however, attempts to show the English reader, to whom the whole matter is absolutely indifferent, and who probably never heard of the quarrel, that Aristophanes was partially ashamed of himself all the while; and to explain how he was beguiled into it, by motives which certainly have not ceased to tell upon critics, by the dogmatism of the philosophers’ followers, and the exaggerated commendation of the poet’s admirers. We have seen parodies of Mr Browning himself, which a little crowd of University-men, closest and narrowest of all clique-audiences, chuckled and exulted over, as infinitely cleverer and better than the original; a decision which very probably these young heroes would have been ashamed of, had any indignant young Balaustion flashed down upon them the lightning of her enthusiasm. But it is the very extravagance of faith to believe that any fame of any poet would carry into the popular heart a long discussion-however mixed with digressions into general human sentiment —of the excellence of Euripides, and the reasons why a contemporary should have gibed and laughed at him in works almost as notable as his own. We should be disposed to laugh too, if the question were not so serious; but, unfortunately, it is very serious. Let us allow that Greek is sublime, that even its jokes-though a shallow modern intellect, destitute of the pure classic flavour, may find them coarse or even stupid, like other buffoonery-are of more value than jokes are nowadays. Yet the fact remains that Englishmen are not Greeks, and that no poem nor other work plentifully besprinkled with classic vocables, and made up of classic allusions, ever will or can be anything but caviare to the multitude, and
the penalty is certain, and can no more be escaped than any other natural punishment.
