The Press.
London, England, 1857-04-11 00:00:00

PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

THE National Review contains an able critique on
" Aurora LAgli." It is quite free from that tone of
extravagant adulation which has characterised some
of Mrs. Browning's reviewers; but it does full
justice to her true poetical genius and high and
pure feeling. The following passage is, in our
opinion, very just :

When we say that Mrs. Browning has to s-ime extent mis-
conceived the sphere of verse in her n mei of " Aurora
Leigh," and embarrassed herself with details of incident
too complex fur the rhythmical vehicle of expression, we
make the assertion with as much modesty as a critic is
capable of, and with a due consciousness that our con-
clusions are liable to be upset by any poet who chooses to
produce a great and harmonious poem under conditions
which we have pronounced to be ill adapted to his art.
There is this strung fact, however, against the attempt to
clothe the modern novel in verse—that verse was not the
natural and spontaneous mode of expression which that
kind of literature assumed. In all its stages of develop-
ment, up to its present complex firm, in which it fuses
into a homogeneous new mould the old distinctions of
epic and dramatic, it has always been in prose that its
many gifted masters have found the medium for their
utterance. At this day, to attempt to translate it into
verse seems to us like an attempt to imitate in sculpture
the " Transfiguration " of Raphael, or the " Blind
Fiddler " of Wilkie. It does not follow, because verse is
the highest instrument of expression, and finds a voice
more ample and perfect than any other for the passion
both of the imagination and the heart, that it has any
claim in itself beyond this very fret of its being such true
expression, or that you gain anything by employing it for
its own sake. It seems to us a decided loss of power to
attempt to give a ihythmical form to the varied narration,
the detailed conversation, and the minute and full-length
representations of the modern conditions of social and
individual life, which have already been so ably and so
fully embodied in prose forms. We should go farther
than to say merely that verse wants pliancy to adapt itself
to those line ramifications of external observation to which
we have become accustomed, or that the contrast is too
immediate between the everyday forms of speech which
we are in the habit of using, and the same reproduced with
a rhythmic cadence ; we urge that there are many things
which, from their very nature, it is a breach of those
essential hirmonies to which, of all men, the poet should
be most alive, to attempt to embody in the language of
the imagination A greater master teaches another
lesson. AVlien his matter descends, Shakespeare's forms
descend with it ; and wherever the nature of his subject-
matter demands it, he intersperses prose scenes, or even
prose-speeches, in his dramas; and more remarkable
than these changes are the subtle variations in the
rhythm, and in the warmth of the imaginative colouring,
answeringeverywhere in the nicest correspondence to the
level of the subject-matter. But Mrs. Browning maintains
her high unstopping flight over all the varied surface of
her story. She dresses her poetry as the ancient actors
did their persons; and like them, she loses in truthfulness
and nicety of expression what she gains in external
display; and it repels the modern reader to find, instead
of changing feature and modulated voice, the rigid tragic
mask and sounding mouthpiece of the Greek theatre.
We observe a tendency in some of the writers of this
review to dogmatise on insufficient data. For
instance, in the article on " Secondary Punish-
ments" all the mass of argument that has been
brought to bear in favour of a return to transporta-
tion is coolly ignored—both that which relates to its
utility and that which upholds its possibility. In
the paper on our foreign policy the writer attempts
to establish a distinction between interference with
kings who govern by their own strength alone, and
those who do so by the aid of foreign allies. In the
latter case he says interference is justifiable. But
surely that is only removing the difficulty a step further
back. If a British Minister must interfere in such
a case, let him go at once to the fountain head of the
evil. Qui facit per alium pelt per se. If the King
of Naples rules only by the dread of Austrian
bayonets, Austria, not Naples, is the power to be
appealed to, Another silly assertion is that the

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