ABSTRACT
To those who watch, with a humorous and yet reverent sympathy, the turns of human life, it will be a strangely interesting task to note how Mr. Browning’s swan-song of Asolando reverts to his better style. There is here so little as to be almost nothing of the small mannerisms which have gained him the plaudits of fools, so much as to be almost everything of the large manner which has gained him the admiration of wise men-and women. No volume of his for a whole quarter of a century has contained so many poems, and hardly any, except Jocoseria, has contained even one such poem, of the kind which we indicated here last week as his masterpiece. Here we have at least half a dozen such, any one of which would make the fortune of an ordinary book of verse. Such are ‘Now’, ‘Humility’, ‘Summum Bonum’, ‘A Pearl, a Girl’, ‘Speculative’, part of ‘Bad Dreams’, and not a few more.… [Brief quotations from several poems have been omitted here.]
We must leave to readers ‘lmperante Augusto natus est’, ‘Development’ (an excellent morality), and two singularly beautiful poems-‘Rephan’ and ‘Reverie’—in the most ‘thoughtful’ style of the author, but not in that style in which ‘thoughtfulness’ induces verbiage and mannerism. Indeed, the whole volume gives a very curious and delightful example of reversion late in life and work to the best characteristics of each. In hardly any one of his bookscertainly in none for nearly a generation-has Mr. Browning put so many of his different qualities at his best as here.
