The Press. — London, England, 1855-11-17 00:00:00

NOVEMBER 17, 1855. RZSPECTABILITY. • Dear, bad the world in its caprice Deigned to proclaim " I know you both, Have recognised your plighted troth, Am sponsor for you—live in peace !" How many precious months and years Of youth had passed, that speed so fast, Before we found it out at last, The world, and what it fears? How much of priceless life were spent With men that every virtue decks, And women models of their sex, Society's true ornament, — Ere we dared wander, nights like this, Thro' wind and rain, and watch the Seine, And feel the Boulevart break again To warmth and light and bliss? I know the world proscribes not love ; Allows my finger to caress Your lip's zontour and downiness Provided it supply a glove. The world's good word !—the Institute ! Guizot receives Montalembert ! Eh? down the court three lampions flare — Put forward your best foot ! Those last lines are suspicious. We will not say that the poem does not contain profound meaning, that Mr. Browning's admirers may not discern innumerable beauties in it, but we will be bound to say that the annals of Bedlam could supply volumes of matter of very similar kind—proofs of the poetic inspiration of its inmates. Let us try again. Here is a longer and more ambitious piece : WOMEN AND ROSES. I DREAM of a red-rose tree. And which of its roses three Is the dearest rose to me? Round and round, like a dance of snow In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go 'Mating the women faded fur ages, Sculptured in stone, on the poet's pages. Then follow the women fresh and gay, Living and loving and loved to-day. Last, in the rear, flee the multitude of maidens, Beauties unborn. And all, to one cadence, They circle their rose on my rose tree. Dear rose, thy term is reached, Thy leaf hangs loose and bleached: Bees pass it unimpeached. Stay then, stoop, since I cannot climb, You great shapes of the antique time! How shall I fix you, fire you, freeze you, Break my heart at your feet to please you? Oh! to possess, and be possessed ! Hearts that beat 'neath each pallid breast! But once of love, the poesy, the passion, Drink once and die!—ln vain, the same fashion, They circle their rose on my rose tree. Dear rose, thy joy's undimmed; Thy cup is ruby-rimmed, Thy cup's heart nectar-brimmed. Deep as drops from a statue's plinth The bee sucked in by the hyacinth, So will I bury me while burning, Quench like him at a plunge my yearning, Eyes in your eyes, lips on your l►ps ! Fold me fast where the cincture slips, Prison all my soul in eternities of pleasure ! Girdle me once! But no—in their old measure They circle their rose on my rose tree. Dear rose without a thorn, Thy bud's the babe unborn : Filet streak of a new morn. Wings, lend wings for the cold, the clear! What's far conquers what is near. Roses will bloom nor want beholders, Sprung from the dust where our own flesh moulders What shall arrive with the cycle's change? A novel grace and a beauty strange. I will make an Eve, be the artist that began her, Shaped her to his mind !—Alas! in like manner They circle their rose on my rose tree. f any of our readers admire this piece, and fancy they can understand it, we recommend them to purchase Mr. Browning's volumes at once. The right books will then get into the bands of the right readers. The sample is a favorable one of Mr. Browning's poetic powers; in fact, the verses are about as unintelligible (Mr. Brown ing's great claim to distinction) as any in the whole collection. Those poems in which there is some glimmer of meaning are very little more satisfactory than those of which nothing can be made. Early in the first volume there is a piece headed "Evelyn Hope." Beautiful Evelyn Hope died at sixteen. She had scarcely heard the name of the gentleman who moralises over.her. But he claims her for big own : Is it too late, then, Evelyn Hope ? What, your soul was pure and true, The good stare met in your horoscope, Node you of avirit i fire, and dor—, THE PRESS. And just because I was thrice as old, Aud our paths in the world diverged so wide, Each was nought to each, must I be told? We were fellow mortals, nought beside ? There seems little natural connection be tween this girl of sixteen, made of " spirit, " fire, and dew," and the gentleman of forty eight who claims her. He has no doubt, how ever, of receiving her iu the end : No, indeed ! for God above Is great to grant as mighty to make, And creates the love to reward the love — I claim you still fur my own love's sake I Delayed it may be for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse, nut a few — Much is to learn and much to forget Era the time be come fur taking you. But the time will come—at last it will, When, Evelyn Hope, what meant, I shall say, In the lower earth, in the years long still, That body and soul so pure and gay? Why your hair was amber I shall divine, And your mouth of your own geranium's red— And what you would do with me, in fine, In the new life come in the old one's stead. So he gives her a leaf to keep as a pledge of their engagement, and concludes : See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand. There, that is our secret ! go to sleep; You will wake, and remember, and understand. It would be useless to analyse further, or quote more. The dramatic fragments in the collection are best. That one headed "In a Balcony," though it has the faults of the spasmodic school, is not without a certain kind of indicative passion. As for the extravagance of expression to be found here, it passes all that we have been accustomed to meet with even in tho undisci plined raggedness of modern verse. A church in Florence has Its face set full for the sun to shave. And one poem ends with the emphatic question, Do I carry the moon in my pocket? Affectation is the monster vice of our modern poets. It greatly disfigures the song of Tennyson, but Mr. Browning's poems are affectation and nothing else. To be sure, the defence which has been set up for " Maud," may be set up for " Men and Women." If there be men of hysterical temperament, why should we not have a hysterical poem ; and if there be men of affected intellect, why not have affected verse ? For no other reason than this, that the aim of poetry should be to elevate or refine the mind, never to dwarf or debase it. NEW NOVELS. 1. Simplicity and Fascination ; or, Guardians and Wards. By Anne Beale Three Vols. 2. Cross Purposes. By Catherine Sinclair. Three Vols. London : Bentley. 1. Tms book may be best described as a family novel. It relates the fortunes of a young family who are early left orphans by the death of both parents: their guardians are prominent persons in the narrative ; and as the story extends over a period of twenty years, ample time is afforded for the growth of character and the relation of incident. The scene is laid in the country. The only Inheritance of the orphans is a mortgatzed farm in Somersetslaire ; and a very pleasing portion of the tale consists in the persevering efforts made by the eldest sister, Jessie, to manage the farm and clear it from encum brance. The authoress is well acquainted with rural life, and we do not know any writer of the day who can picture nature with more truthful simplicity. It is, however, a draw back to the reality of her sketches that they wear too uniformly a smiling aspect. She pictures only the poetic side of rural life. At "harvest-home " there is no end of village revelling, and at Christmas the farmhouse sports and feasting are in the style of Mr. Dickens's highly-coloured descriptions. The authoress indulges too freely in pictures of rustle hospitality, of bounteous harvests, and of merry-making , and overlooks the necessary cares, crosses, and economy of rural existence. No farmer could have thriven who lived as " Uncle James " is described to have done : His abode a large, rambling, farmhouse, and his style of living was profuse to mantva6ance. Dread, and cheese, and 1101 cider, milk, cream, butter, and bacon, must have almost learnt to walk into the mouths of the various grades of visitors and beggars that assailed the door and uto the huge hall-table, it was never uuapread. All his eatables and drinkable(' were procured from his own land, and ho never grudged them, scarcely indeed knew how much RIM consumed in his house. All he knew was, that as soon as one batch of bread, flue rich cheese, or gammon of bauon was gone, there were plenty more to be had, and he never stopped to inquire who had eaten the one or was likely to devour the other. This fondness for the Arcadian side of country life is common to female writers, and is par. ticularly observable in the works of the late Miss Mitford. In the present work, however, it is seldom carried so far us to appear other wise than pleasing. The authoress is unie formly happy in her delineation of home affections. Jessie is one of those simple, self sacrificing, 'quiet characters which aro often met with in reality, and sometimes in the pages of the higher order of novelists. Her agony on discovering that her brilliant young sister, over whose happiness she has watched with a mother's tenderness, has supplanted her in the heart of the man she loved, and by whom she fondly hoped she might be loved in return, is described with exquisite pathos. The character of Annabella—wayward and coquettish, but with strong feeling and high spirit—is sustained from first to last with great animation. Some of the happiest passages of the book are those describing her residence in the family of Lady Georgians Meredith, as governess. The dispositions of this lady and of her mother, the Dowager Countess, with the different views they take of the attachment of their nephew, Mr. Michel son, to Annabelle, show to advantage the. authoress's talent for social portraiture. quite a different style, and displaying con siderable humour, is the account of the attach ment of " Uncle James " for " Aunt Betsy.' He loved her when she was a handsome, sprightly jilt; and he remains constant in his devotion when she seems to most persons merely a formal, vain old maid. Their marriage at last, and the unexpectedly happy life they lead, are as amusingly and, we think, as truthfully drawn as any of the pleasant adventures to be found in the tales of Crabbo. What must strike every reader throughout this novel is its thorough good-heartedness. There is not a touch of snarling or satire in it. With one or two exceptions, and they repent, as they should do, at last, all the people are honest, straightforward, good people—with foibles and errors—but with warm hearts, and free from any vice or malignancy. Hence, if the novel wants elements of strong excitement, it is always agreeable ; there is not a page which offends us. The whole narrative is tranquil engaging reading—the invention of the authoress being quite fertile enough to keep the reader's attention alive, and to con tinually heighten the interest of the story. Though not of a nature to excite a sensation, the novel has merit of a much higher kind than many of those fictions which are the wonder of a day and then forgotten. Its place is midway between the works of Miss Austen and Miss Bremer—not equal to the peculiar merits of' either, but combining much of the extreme reality and close observation of the one, with the tenderness, pathos, and emotional feeling of the other. 2. To the volumes before us may be conceded the merit of containing an interesting story, though the most. is scarcely made of the mate rials. A. murder, a Jesuit, a forgery—young ladies enough to people a colouy, and a cor• responding number of very eligible young men ;—here we have all the ingredients which can be desired for composing at once an ex citing and amusing tale. Yet, somehow or other, the mixture lacks savour; the events are inextricably entangled, and the denouement commonplace. There is, however, great power shown in the delineation of character. O'Hara, the Irish factor, though not without defects, is, on the whole, a striking portrait, and there is truthfulness in the conduct and conversation of Anne Brownlow. O'Grady we do not like—in fact, we are getting a little tired of the cold, im passive countenances, snakelike eyes, and cat• like tread, of this class of scoundrels ; and there seems, moreover, no necessity to have made O'Grady a Papist at all—the crimes he commits are not peculiar W gut; comaiunioui uor