of her heart seems bounding with the beat of humanity, while the other half is ossified. What we miss in her is instinctiveness, which is the greatest charm of women. No doubt she displays it now and then, and sometimes very conspicuously, but it is not made the general attribute of her nature; and in her dealings with Romney Leigh, instinct disappears altogether. For we hold it absolutely impossible that a woman, gifted as she is represented to be, would have countenanced a kinsman, whom she respected only, in the desperate folly of wedding an uneducated girl from the lowest grade of society, whom he did not love, simply for the sake of a theory; thereby making himself a public laughingstock, without the feast chance of advancing the progress of his own preposterous opinions. There is nothing heroic in this; there is nothing reconcilable with duty. The part which Aurora takes in the transaction, degrades rather than raises her in our eyes: nor is she otherwise thoroughly amiable; for, with all deference to Mrs Browning, and with ideas of our own perhaps more chivalric than are commonly promulgated, we must maintain that woman was created to be dependent on the man, and not in the primary sense his lady and his mistress. The extreme independence of Aurora detracts from the feminine charm, and mars the interest which we otherwise might have felt in so intellectual a heroine. In fact, she is made to resemble too closely some of the female portraits of George Sand, which never were to our liking. In Romney we fail to take any kind of interest. Though honourable and generous, he is such a very decided noodle that we grudge him his prominence in the poem, do not feel much sympathy for his misfortunes, and cannot help wondering that Aurora should have entertained one spark of affection for so deplorable a milksop. Excess of enthusiasm we can allow; and folly, affecting to talk the words of wisdom, meets us at every turning but Romney is a walking hyperbole. The character of Marian is very beautifully drawn and well sustained, but her thoughts and language are not those of a girl reared in the VOL. LXXXI.-NO. CCCCXCV. midst of sordid poverty,vice, and ignorance. This is an error in art which we are sure Mrs Browning, upon mature consideration, will acknowledge; and it might easily have been avoided by the simple expedient of making Marian's origin and antecedents a few shades more respectable, which still would have left enough disparity between her and Romney to produce the effect which Mrs Browning desires. Lady Waldemar is a disgusting character. Mrs Browning intended her to appear as despicable; but it was not therefore necessary to make her talk coarse and revolting. As an example let us cite the following passage : "Of a truth, Miss Leigh, I have not, without struggle, come to this. I took a master in the German tongue, I gamed a little, went to Paris twice; But, after all, this love! love, -you eat of And do as vile a thing as if you eat Of garlic-which, whatever else you eat, Reminds you of your onion. Am I coarse? Tastes uniformly acrid, till your peach Well, love's coarse, nature's coarse-ah, there's the rub! We fair fine ladies, who park out our lives From common sheep-paths, cannot help the crows From flying over,-we're as natural still As ready for distracted ends and acts catch love For And trundles back his soul five hundred years, Past moat and drawbridge, into a castle- Oh not to sing of lizards or of toads Some beauteous dame, half chattel and As dead as must be, for the greater part, Nay, if there's room for poets in the world A little overgrown (I think there is), That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, And spends more passion, more heroic heat, Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms, Than Roland with his knights, at Roncesvalles. To flounce, Anything very hideous or revolting No character or glory in his times, flinch from modern varnish, coat or "But poets should "; should have eyes comprehensively point of sight, mately deep, Never flinch, That, when the next shall come, the men of that May touch the impress with reverent hand, and say, 'Behold, behold the paps we all have That bosom seems to beat still, or at least This, in our apprehension, would lead to a total sacrifice of the ideal. It is not the province of the poet to depict things as they are, but so to refine and purify as to purge out the grosser matter; and this he cannot do if he attempts to give a faithful picture of his own times. For in order to be faithful, he must necessarily include much which is abhorrent to art, and revolting to the taste, for which no exactness of delineation will be accepted as a proper excuse. All poetical characters, all poetical situations, must be idealised. The Let us strive for language is not that of common life, which belongs essentially to the domain of prose. Therein lies the dis tinction between a novel and a poem. In the first, we expect that the language employed by the characters shall be strictly natural, not excluding even imperfections, and that their sentiments shall not be too elevated or extravagant for the occasion. In the second, we expect idealisation-language more refined, more adorned, and more forcible than that which is ordinarily employed; and sentiments purer and loftier than find utterance in our daily speech. Whilst dealing with a remote subject the poet can easily effect this, but not so when he brings forward characters of his own age. We have been told that both the late John Kemble and his sister Mrs Siddons had become so accustomed to the flow of blank verse that they carried the trick of it into private life, and used sorely to try the risible faculties of the company by demanding beef or beer in tragic tones and rhythm. That which would have sounded magnificently on the stage was ludicrous at a modern table. Mrs Browning has evidently felt the difficulty, but she cannot conquer it. In this poem she has wilfully alternated passages of sorry prose with bursts of splendid poetry; and her prose is all the worse because she has been compelled to dislocate its joints in order to make it read like blank verse. Let us again revert to the experiment of exhibiting one or two of these passages printed in the usual form :— "We are sad to-night. I saw-(goodnight, Sir Blaise ! ah Smith-he has slipped away) I saw you across the room, and stayed, Miss Leigh, to keep a crowd of lion-hunters off, with faces toward your jungle. There were three; a spacious lady five feet ten, and fat, who has the devil in her (and there's room) for walking to and fro upon the earth from Chippewa to China; she requires your autograph upon a tinted leaf 'twixt Queen Pomare's and Emperor Soulouque's; pray give it; she has energies, though fat; for me, I'd rather see a rick on fire than such a woman angry. Then a youth fresh from the backwoods, green as the underboughs, asks modestly, Miss Leigh, to kiss your shoe, and adds, he has an epic in twelve parts, which when you've read, you'll do it for his boot,-all which I saved you, and absorb next week both manuscript and man." it prose? If so, it is as poor and "Parted. Face no more, voice no more, love no more! wiped wholly out and slate-ay, spit on, and so wiped out like some ill scholar's scrawl from heart been too coarse, too human. Have we utterly by some coarse scholar. I have business in our rank with blood in the veius? I will have henceforth none; not even to keep the colour at my lip. A rose is pink and pretty without blood, why not a woman? When we've played in vain the game, to adore,-who have resources still, and can play on at leisure, being adored: here's Smith already swearing at my feet that I'm the typic She. Away with Smith!-Smith smacks Socialist within three crinolines, to live of Leigh, and, henceforth, I'll admit no and have his being. But for you, though insolent your letter and absurd, and though I hate you frankly, take my Smith! For when you have seen this Erle to a noble Leigh (his love astray famous marriage tied, a most unspotted should not want his love, beware, you'll on one he should not love), howbeit you want some comfort. Smith; take Smith!" So I leave you What a rare specimen of a rhythmical fashionable letter! Still more becomes articulate :singular is the effect when the mob "Then spoke a man, 'Now look to it, coves, that all the beef and drink be not filched from us like the other fun; for beer's spilt easier than a woman is. This gentry is not honest with the poor; they bring us up to trick us.' 'Go it, Jim,' a woman screamed back, 'I'm a tender soul; I never banged a child at two years old, and drew blood from him, but I sobbed for it next moment-and I've had a plague of seven. I'm tender : I've no stomach even for beef, until I know about the girl that's lost-that's killed, mayhap. I did misdoubt, at first, the fine lord meant no good by her or us. He maybe got the upper hand of her by holding up a wedding-ring, and then . . a choking finger on her throat. last night, and just a clever take to keep us still, as she is, poor lost innocent!'" Reading such passages as these so flat, distorted, and unworthy shall we not exclaim with Mrs Browning herself, "Weep, my Eschylus, But low and far, upon Sicilian shores?" It is not the part of critics to strain their vision so as to detect spots on the disc of the sun; but it is their duty to mark the appearance of even a partial eclipse. It is far easier, as it is more pleasant, to praise than to condemn; but praise, injudiciously or indiscriminately bestowed, cannot be commended, since it leads to the perpetuation of error. In dealing with the works of authors of high name and established repute, it is of the utmost importance that the judgment should be clear and calm; for we know by experience that the aberrations or eccentricities of a distinguished artist are immediately copied by a crew of imitators, who, unable to vie with their original in beauties, can at least rival him in his faults. We doubt not that, before a year is over, many poems on the model of Aurora Leigh will be written and published; and that conversations in the pot-house, casino, and even worse places, will be reduced to blank verse, and exhibited as specimens of high art. To dignify the mean, is not the province of poetry-let us rather say that there are atmospheres so tainted that in them poetry cannot live. Its course is in the empyrean or in the fresh wholesome air, but if it attempts to descend to pits and charnel-vaults, it is stifled by the noxious exhalations. We by no means confound the humble with the mean. The most sanctified affections, the purest thoughts, the holiest aspirations, are as likely to be found in the cottage as in the castle. Wherever there is a flower, however lowly, beauty may be seen; the prayer of a monarch is not more heeded in heaven than the supplication of an outcast; the cry of a mother is as plaintive from the dungeon as though it sounded from the halls of a palace. This very poem which we are reviewing affords a remarkable illustration of the æsthetical point which we are anxious to enforce. We have already said that the character of Marian Erle is beautifully drawn and well sustained, and yet it is the humblest of them all. But in depicting her, Mrs Browning has abstained from all meanness. If she errs at all, it is by making the girl appear more refined in thought and expression than is justified by her previous history, but that is an error on the safe side, and one which may be readily excused. Marian, little better than a pariahgirl, does undoubtedly attract our sympathies more than the polished and high-minded Aurora, the daughter of a noble race-not certainly as the bride of Romney, but as the mother of a hapless child. There, indeed, Mrs Browning has achieved a triumph; for never yetno, not in her "Cry of the Children," one of the most pathetic and tearstirring poems in the English language. has she written anything comparable to the passages which refer to Marian and her babe. Take for example this description :— "I saw the whole room, I and Marian there Alone. Alone? She threw her bonnet off, Then sighing as 'twere sighing the last time, Approached the bed, and drew a shawl You could not peel a fruit you fear to away: bruise And, staring out at us with all their blue, As half perplexed between the angelhood He had been away to visit in his sleep, And our most mortal presence,-gradually He saw his mother's face, accepting it In change for heaven itself, with such a smile As might have well been learnt there, never moved, But smiled on, in a drowse of ecstasy, So happy (half with her and half with heaven) He could not have the trouble to be stirred, But smiled and lay there. Like a rose, I said: As red and still indeed as any rose, Now contrast that with the stuff which we have put into the form of prose, and then tell us, good reader, if we are not justified in feeling annoyed, and even incensed, that a lady capable of producing so exquisite a picture, should condescend to fashion into verse what is essentially mean, gross, and puerile? We must have no evasions here, for this is an important question of art. We may be told that Shakespeare, in his highest tragedies, has introduced the comic element; and his example, so distinguished as almost to amount to an unimpeachable authority, may be cited in defence of Mrs Browning. But, on examination, we shall find that there is no analogy. In the first place, whenever Shakespeare descends to low comedy, he makes his characters discourse in prose, thereby marking broadly the elevation of sentiment and dignity which belongs to verse, and he does so even when low comedy is excluded. When Hamlet is familiar, as with the players, Polonius, the gravediggers, or Osric, he speaks in prose; and the rhythmical periods are reserved for the higher and more impassioned situations. So in Othello, in the scenes between Iago, Cassio, and Roderigo. So in Julius Caesar (in which, being a classical play, the temptation lay towards stateliness), whenever the citizens or the cynical Casca are introduced; and in Henry V., in the night-scene before Agincourt, there is even a more remarkable instance of this. It was evidently the view of Shakespeare that verse is the proper vehicle for poetry alone: he would not dignify ignoble thoughts or common sentiments by admitting them to that lofty chariot. Mrs Browning follows the march of modern improvement. She makes no distinction between her first and her third class passengers, but rattles them along at the same speed upon her rhythmical railway. There is no instance of a poem of considerable length which is free from faults and blemishes; and whatever may be said to the contrary, the detection of existing faults is the real business of the critic. He either is, or is supposed to be, the holder of the touchstone, by means of which true metal is distinguished from that which is base, and he is bound in duty to declare the result of his investigation. In the present instance, while dealing with Aurora Leigh, we have been at some pains to arrive at the metal. Our task has been rather that of an Australian or Californian gold-seeker, who puts into his cradle or his pan a spadeful of doubtful material. From the first shaking there emerges mud from the second, pebbles-but, after clearance, the pure gold is found at the bottom, and in no inconsiderable quantities." If we have not been able conscientiously to praise the story, either as regards conception or execution, no such restriction is laid upon us while dealing with isolated passages. Mrs Browning possesses in a very high degree the faculty of description, presenting us often with the most brilliantly coloured pictures. In this respect, if we may be allowed to institute such a comparison, she resembles Turner, being sometimes even extravagant in the vividness of her tints. By this we mean that she has a decided tendency, not only to multiply, but to intensify images, and occasionally carries this so far as to bewilder the reader. The following sketch of London is drawn in her most florid manner :"So, happy and unafraid of solitude, I worked the short days out,—and watched the sun On lurid morns or monstrous afternoons, Like some Druidic idol's fiery brass, With fixed unflickering outline of dead heat, In which the blood of wretches pent inside |