"Abraham's bosom all the year, And God is with them, when they know it not. tive, not stony, silent, and motionless, | soul and the loving heart-often it is not still less misanthropical and disdainful; even a conscious emotion at all-but, in like him, she was gentle, playful, they Wordsworth's language, they lie in could both run about their prison garden, and dally with the dark chains which, they knew, bound them till death. Mrs Hemans, indeed, was not, like Shelley, a vates; she has never reached his heights nor sounded his depths, yet they are, to our thought, so strikingly alike as to seem brother and sister in one beautiful but delicate and dying family. Their very appearance must have been similar. How like must the girl, Felicia Dorothea Browne, with the mantling bloom of her cheeks, her hair of a rich golden brown, and the ever-varying expression of her brilliant eyes, have been to the noble boy, Percy Bysshe Shelley, when he came first to Oxford, a fair-haired, bright-eyed enthusiast, on whose cheek and brow, and in whose eye, was already beginning to burn a fire, which ultimately enwrapped his whole being in flames! In Mrs Hemans' writings, you find this pious tendency of her sex unsoiled by an atom of cant, or bigotry, or exclusiveness; and shaded only by so much pensiveness as attests its divinity and its depth; for the gloom which often overhangs the earnest spirit arises from its more immediate proximity to the Infinite and the Eternal? And who would not be ready to sacrifice all the cheap sunshine of earthly success and satisfaction for even a touch of a shadow so sublime? sweet After all, the nature of this poetess is more interesting than her genius, or than its finest productions. These descend upon us like voices from a mountain-side, suggesting to us an elevation of character In Mrs Hemans' melancholy one "sim- far higher than themselves. If not, in a ple" was wanting, which was largely transcendent sense, a poet, her life was a mixed in Shelley's-that of faithless de- poem. Poetry coloured all her existence spondency. Her spirit was cheered by with a golden light-poetry presided at faith-by a soft and noble form of the her needlework-poetry mingled with her softest, noblest faith-a form reminding domestic and her maternal duties-poetry us much, from its balance of human, po- sat down with her to her piano-poetry etical, and celestial elements, of that of fluttered her hair and flushed her cheek Jeremy Taylor-the "Shakspere of di- in her mountain rambles-poetry quivines." Although, as we have said, her vered in her voice, which was a poetry is not, of prepense and purpose, sad melody"-poetry accompanied her to the express image of her religious thought, the orchard, as she read the "Talisman," yet it is a rich illustration of the religious in that long glorious summer day which tendency of the female mind. Indeed, she has made immortal-and poetry atfemales may be called the natural guar-tended her to the house of God, and dians of morality and faith. These shall listened with her to the proud pealing always be safe in the depths of the female organ, as to an echo from within the veil. intellect, and of the female heart-an in- Poetry performed for her a still tenderer tellect, the essence of which is worship- ministry: it soothed the deep sorrows, on a heart, the element of which is love. which we dare not enter, which shaded Unhired, disinterested, spontaneous is the the tissue of her history-it mixed its aid they give to the blessed cause; lean- richest cupful of the "joy of grief" for ing, indeed, in their lovely weakness, on her selected lips-it lapped her in a Christianity, they, at the same time, prop dream of beauty, through which the sad it up through the wide and holy influ- realities of life looked in, softened in the ences which they wield. Their piety, too, medium. What could poetry have done is no fierce and foul polemic flame-it is more for her, except, indeed, by giving that of the feelings—the quick instinc- her that supreme vision which she gives tive sense of duty-the wonder-stricken so rarely, and which she bestows often as a curse, instead of a blessing! Mrs Hemans, on the other hand, was too favourite a child of the Muse to receive any such baleful boon. Poetry beautified her life, blunted and perfumed the thorns of her anguish, softened the pillow of her sickness, and combined with her firm and most feminine faith to shed a gleam of soft and tearful glory upon her death. Thus lived, wrote, suffered, and died "Egeria." Without farther seeking to weigh the worth or settle the future place of her works, let us be thankful to have had her among us, and that she did what* "Mourn rather for that holy spirit, MRS ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. IN selecting Mrs Hemans as our first specimen of Female Authors, we did so avowedly, because she seemed to us the most feminine writer of the day. We now select Mrs Browning for the opposite reason that she is, or at least is said by many to be, the most masculine of our female writers. there nothing in Madame de Stäel, in Rahel the Germaness, in Mary Somerville, and even in Mary Wollstonecraft, to suggest the idea of heights, fronting the very peaks of the "Principia" and the "Paradise," to which woman may yet attain? Thirdly, has not woman understood and appreciated the greatest works of genius To settle the respective spheres and as fully as man? Then may she in calibres of the male and female mind, is time equal them; for what is true appreone of the most difficult of philosophical ciation but the sowing of a germ in the problems. To argue, merely, that be- mind, which shall ultimately bear similar cause the mind of woman has never fruit? There is nothing, says one, which hitherto produced a "Paradise Lost," or the human mind can conceive which it a "Principia," it is therefore for ever cannot execute; we may add, there is incapable of producing similar master-nothing the human mind can understand pieces, seems to us unfair, for various rea- which it cannot equal. Fourthly, let us sons. In the first place, how many ages never forget that woman, as to intellecelapsed ere the male mind realised such tual progress, is in a state of infancy. prodigies of intellectual achievement? | Changed as by malignant magic, now into And do not they still stand unparalleled, an article of furniture, and now into a and almost unapproached? And were it toy of pleasure, she is only as yet undernot as reasonable to assert that man, as going a better transmigration, and "tithat woman, can renew them no more? midly expanding into life." Secondly, because the premise is granted -that woman has not-does the conclusion follow, that woman cannot excogitate an argument as great as the "Principia," or build up a rhyme as lofty as the "Paradise Lost?" Would it not have been as wise for one who knew Milton only as the Milton of "Lycidas" and "Arcades," to have contended that he was incapable of a great epic poem? And is Almost all that is valuable in female authorship has been produced within the last half-century-that is, since the female was generally recognised to be an intellectual creature; and if she has, in such a short period, so progressed, what demiMahometan shall venture to set bounds to her future advancement? Even though we should grant that woman, more from her bodily constitution than her mental, ́is inferior to man, and that man having | name the depicter of the death of Beagot, shall probably keep, his start of cen- trice Cenci with that heroine herself; or turies, we see nothing to prevent woman with Madame Roland, whose conduct on overtaking, and outstripping with ease, his the scaffold might make one in "love present farthest point of intellectual pro- with death?" If to die nobly demand the gress. We do not look on such produc- highest concentration of the moral, intions as "Lear" and the "Prometheus tellectual, and even artistic powers-and Vinctus" with despair; they are, after if woman has par excellence exemplified all, the masonry of men, and not the such a concentration-there follows a conarchitecture of the gods; and if man may clusion to which we should be irresistibly surpass, why may not woman, "taken out led, were it not that we question the of his side," equal them? minor proposition in the argument—we hold that man has often as fully as woman risen to the dignity of death, and met him, not as a vassal, but as a superior. song. "Most wretched men But wrong is not always the stern schoolmistress of song. There are sufferings springing from other sourcesfrom intense sensibility-from bodily ailment-from the loss of cherished objects Of woman, we may say, at least, that there are already provinces where her power is incontested and supreme. And in proportion as civilisation advances, and To say that Mrs Browning has more of as the darker and fiercer passions which the man than any female writer of the constitute the fera natura subside, in the period, may appear rather an equivocal lull of that milder day, the voice of wo- compliment; and its truth even may be man will become more audible, exert a questioned. We may, however, be perwider magic, and be as the voice of spring mitted to say, that she has more of the to the opening year. We stay not to in-heroine than her compeers. Hers is a sist that the sex of genius is feminine, high, heroic nature, which adopts for the and that those poets who are most pro-motto at once of its life and of its poetry, foundly impressing our young British" Perfect through suffering." Shelley minds are those who, in tenderness and says:sensibility-in peculiar power, and in peculiar weakness are all but females. Are cradled into poetry by wrong; And whatever may be said of the effects They learn in suffering what they teach in of culture, in deadening the genius of man, we are mistaken if it has not always had the contrary effect upon that of woman; so that, on entering on the far more highly civilised periods which are manifestly approaching, she will but be breathing the atmosphere calculated to nourish which also find in poetry their natural and invigorate, instead of weakening and vent. And we do think that such poetry, chilling, her mental life. Mr De Quincey if not so powerful, is infinitely more pleashas, we think, conceded even more than ing and more instructive than that which we require, in granting that woman can is inspired by real or imaginary grievance. die more nobly than man.* For whether The turbid torrent is not the proper miris the writing or the doing of a great tra- ror for reflecting the face of nature; and gedy the higher achievement? Poor the none but the moody and the discontented attitude even of Shakspere, writing "Mac- will seek to see in it an aggravated and beth," to that of Joan of Arc entering into distorted edition of their own gloomy the flames as into her wedding-suit. What brows. The poetry of wrong is not the comparison between the face inflamed of best and most permanent. It was not a Mirabeau or a Fox, as they thundered, wrong alone that excited, though it unand the blush on the cheek of Charlotte Corday, still extant, as her head was presented to the people? And who shall *See a paper on Joan of Arc in the Selected Works of De Quincey. questionably directed, the course of Dante's and Milton's vein. The poetry of Shakspere's wrong is condensed in his sonnets -the poetry of his forbearance and forgiveness, of his gratitude and his happi k ness, is in his dramas. The poetry of in which she indulges, to those distant Pope's wrong (a scratch from a thorn and daring themes which she selects, she hedge!) is in his "Dunciad," not in his is urged less, we think, through native Rape of the Lock." The poetry of tendency of mind, than to fill the vacuity Wordsworth's wrong is in his "Prefaces," of a sick and craving spirit. This is not not in his "Excursion." The poetry of peculiar to her. It may be called, inByron's wrong is in those deep curses deed, the "Retreat of the Teu Thouwhich sometimes disturb the harmony sand;" though strong and daring must of his poems; and that of Shelley's in be those that can successfully accomplish the maniacal scream which occasionally it. Only the steps-we had almost said interrupts the pæans of his song. But of despair-can climb such dizzy heights. all these had probably been as great, or The healthy and the happy mind selects greater poets, had no wrong befallen subjects of a healthy and a happy sort, them, or had it taught them another and which lie within the sphere of everylesson, than either peevishly to proclaim day life and every-day thought. But for or furiously to resent it. minds which have been wrung and riven, Mrs Browning has suffered, so far as there is a similar attraction in gloomy we are aware, no wrong from the age. themes, as that which leads them to the She might, indeed, for some time have side of dark rivers, to the heart of deep spoken of neglect. But people of genius forests, or into the centre of waste glens. should now learn the truth, that neglect "Whither shall I wander," seems Mrs is not wrong; or, if it be, it is a wrong Browning to have said to herself, "to-day in which they often set the example. to escape from my own sad thoughts, and Neglecting the tastes of the majority, to lose, to noble purpose, the sense of my the majority avenges itself by neglecting own identity? I will go eastward to Eden, them. Standing and singing in a con- where perfection and happiness once dwelt. gregation of the deaf, they are senseless I will pass, secure in virtue, the far-flashenough to complain that they are not ing sword of the cherubim; I will knock heard. Or should they address the mul- at the door and enter. I will lie down titude, and should the multitude not lis- in the forsaken garden; I will pillow my ten, it never strikes them that the fault head where Milton pillowed his, on the is their own; they ought to have com- grass cool with the shadow of the Tree pelled attention. Orpheus was listened of Life; and I will dream a vision of my to; the thunder is; even the gentlest own, of what this place once was, and of spring shower commands its audience. If what it was to leave it for the wilderneglect means wilful winking at claims which are felt, it is indeed a wrong; but a wrong seldom if ever committed, and which complaint will not cure; if it means, merely, ignorance of claims which have never been presented or enforced, where and whose is the criminality? ness." And she has passed the waving sword, and she has entered the awful garden, and she has dreamed a dream, and she has, awaking, told it as a "Drama of Exile." It were vain to deny that the dream is one full of genius-that it is entirely original; and that it never once, To do Mrs Browning justice, she has not except by antithesis, suggests a thought complained of neglect nor injury at all. of Milton's more massive and palpable But she has acknowledged herself inspired vision. Her paradise is not a garden, it by the genius of suffering. And this seems is a flush on a summer evening sky. Her to have exerted divers influences upon her Adam is not the fair large-fronted man, poetry. It has, in the first place, taught with all manlike qualities meeting unher to rear for herself a spot of transcen-consciously in his full clear nature-he is dental retreat, a city of refuge in the a German metaphysician. Her Eve is clouds. Scared away from her own heart, herself, an amiable and gifted bluestockshe has soared upwards, and found a resting, not the mere meek motherly woelsewhere. To those flights of idealism man, with what Aird beautifully calls the "broad, ripe, serene, and gracious fits her for, the high position she has ascomposure of love about her." Her spirits sumed, uttering the "Cry of the Human." are neither cherubim nor seraphim And whom would the human race prefer neither knowing nor burning ones-they as their earthly advocate, to a high-souled are fairies, not, however, of the Puck or and gifted woman? What voice but the Ariel species, but of a new metaphysical | female voice could so softly and strongly, breed; they do not ride on, but split so eloquently and meltingly, interpret to hairs; they do not dance, but reason; or, the ear of him whose name is Love the if they dance, it is on the point of a deep woes and deeper wants of "poor needle, in cycles and epicycles of mystic humanity's afflicted will, struggling in and mazy motion. There is much beauty vain with ruthless destiny?" Some may and power in passages of the poem, and quarrel with the title, "The Human," as a sweet inarticulate melody, like the an affectation; but, in the first place, if so, fabled cry of mandrakes, in the lyrics. it is a very small one, and a small affectaStill we do not see the taste of turning tion can never furnish matter for a great the sweet open garden of Eden into a quarrel; secondly, we are not disposed to maze-we do not approve of the daring make a man, and still less a woman, an precedent of trying conclusions with Mil- | offender for a word; and, thirdly, we fancy ton on his own high field of victory- we can discern a good reason for her use and we are, we must say, jealous of all of the term. What is it that is crying encroachments upon that fair Paradise which has so long painted itself upon our imaginations-where all the luxuries of earth mingled in the feast with all the dainties of the heavens-where celestial plants grew under the same sun with terrestrial blossoms, and where the cadences of seraphic music filled up the pauses in the voice of God. Far different, indeed, is Mrs Browning's from Dryden's disgusting inroad into Eden-as different, almost, as the advent of Raphael from the encroachment of Satan. But the poem professed to stand in the lustre of the fiery sword, and this should have burned up some of its conceits, and silenced some Gracefully, from this proud and giddy of its meaner minstrelsies. And all such pinnacle, where she had stood as the conattempts we regard precisely as we do scious and commissioned representative the beauties of the Apocrypha, when of the human race, she descends to the compared to the beauties of the Bible. door of the factory, and pleads for the chilThey are as certainly beauties, but beau-dren enclosed in that crowded and busy ties of an inferior order-they are flowers, hell. The "Cry of the Factory Children' but not the roses which grew along the moves you, because it is no poem at all banks of the Four Rivers, or caught in it is just a long sob, veiled and stifled their crimson cups the "first sad drops as it ascends through the hoarse voices of wept at committing of the mortal sin." the poor beings themselves. Since we "One blossom of Eden outblooms them read it, we can scarcely pass a factory withall." out seeming to hear this psalm issuing Having accepted from Mrs Browning's from the machinery, as if it were protestown hand sadness, or at least seriousness, ing against its own abused powers. But, as the key to her nature and genius, let to use the language of a writer quoted a us continue to apply it in our future re-little before, "The Fairy Queen is dead, marks. This at once impels her to, and shrouded in a yard of cotton stuff made VOL. I.-N aloud through her voice to Heaven? It is not the feral or fiendish element in human nature. That has found an organ in Byron-an echo in his bellowing verse. It is the human element in man-bruised, bleeding, all but dead under the pressure of evil circumstances, under the ten thousand tyrannies, mistakes, and delusions of the world, that has here ceased any longer to be silent, and is crying aloud, in a sister's voice. The poem may truly be called a prayer for the times, though some may think its tone daring to the brink of blasphemy, and piercing almost to anguish. |