The Sun.
London, England, 1851-06-20 00:00:00

e
.3124

I.ITERATURE.

CASA GUIDI WINDOWS. A Poem. By
Elizabeth Barra It Browning. Chapman and Hall.
Renmi:bering, a a we did, so many exquisite effu-
sions from the ham of our authoress, we welcomed
with all eagerness the verses contained in the present
volume, immediate ly on their first appearance. It
was an additional attraction to us that they were
poetic blossoms which had bloomed in the midst of
the sunshine and the verdure of an Italian landscape.
Hence the book beci tme to us a twofold object of fas-
cination. We imag fined to ourselves in the current
of these lucubratioris the luscious flavour imparted
by the ripening influences of the " warm south," a
draught of—

" the Er ae, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bpi bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-sta'ulei mouth!"
In no respect have our anticipations been realized.
" Casa Guidi Windows," as the work of one who has
already given indications of genius, has in fact
yielded us only the most painful end vexatious disap-
pointment. Its argument is incoherent throughout,
its diction affected, its style artificial, its whole cha-
racter that of prose jingling into rhyme without the
merit of the smoothness usually found in even com-
mon-place versification. Yet, miserable failure as the
volume i?, containing as it does scarcely three pages in
any way worthy of Mrs. Browning, it has been
lauded to the skies by ber mistaken eulogists, who
would cram the veriest balderdash down our throats
as poetry simply because it emanated from her pen.
Poetry, forsooth ! if this is poetry we never read one
line of poetry before, and trust most devoutly we
may never again be subjected to a similar infliction.
Why, a fifth form boy never perpetrated more me-
lancholy doggrel than may be encountered in profu-
fusion by just skimming over the pages hapbazard.
Take the following as a sample ; it occurs in the
18th page:—

" This was he,

Savonarola, who, while Peter sank,
With his whole boat-load, called courageously,
' Wake Christ I Wake Christ ! '—who having tried the

tank
(Y 0 rhyme, of course with sank.)
Of the church-waters used for baptistry,
Ere Luther lived to spill them, said they stank 1"
Poetry ! The praise lavished upon stuff like this is
ignominy scattered over the ashes of the really illustri-
ous. But it may be argued by those who are infa-
tuated into the indulgence of a blind admiration that we
are unfairly extracting injurious specimens prepense.
In testimony of the contrary, take the very opening
lines of this much vaunted " Casa Guidi Windows"—
" I heard last night a little child go singing,
'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,
0 Lelia tiber ta, 0 bella !' stringing

(Another word dragged in neck and crop, in defiance
of all euphony, solely and exclusively for the sake of
the rhyme.)
The same words still on notes he went in search,
So high for,
(Rather blundering that : a sixpenny dictionary
might have suggested of as more grammatical.)

you concluded the upspringing
Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch," &o.
(Perch, just in the same way to chime with search
and church.)
Occasionally, moreover, the text runs into the
baldest prose, recounting the most obvious matters
of course. As, where gazers from the casements are
spoken of—
" By whom, if flower or kerchief were thrown out,
From any lattice, then the same would fall
Into the river underneath, no doubt.'
No doubt ! the reader, answers like an echo. How
solemn in its arresting awfulness also is that passage
in which the writer points out the shade of the buried
Buonarrotti, beginning flippantly—" That's Michael
Angelo !" Indeed. What shall be said likewise in
extenuation of such a fragment as that in which Mrs
Browning speaks
"Of poets sonneteering in their sleep
'Neath the pale olives, which droop, tickling some
On chin and foreheadfrom a dream too deep," &c.?
It is because we see a volume crowded with speci-
mens of this kind of composition panegyrised as a
master-piece of poetic eloquence, and held up as a
model of mingled grace and sublimity —it is
because we hear it designated by all the
most encomiastic words in the phraseology of
literary vassalage, and because we see these
things, and at the same time love and reverence in
our heart of hearts such poems as the " Lycidas” of
Milton, or the " Alastor" of Shelley, or the "Lusiad"
of Camoens, or the " Colin Clout" of Spenser,
or the " Fridoline" of Schiller, and because we
regard works like these as poetry, that we must pro-
test, with all the emphasis of which emotion can
render us capable, against those who would compel
us to bend the knee in homage before a book like
" Casa Guidi Windows." True, no doubt, a woman
like Mrs. Browning could not exactly write two or
three hundred pages of versification, however indif-
ferent they might be in the aggregate, without scat-
tering over them occasionally a clever thought or an
ingenious expression. But, simply because at p. 7
we find the dawn described as " haggard like the
sleepless," and because at page 22 we find it observed
that " happy accident turns holy art," and because at
page 2 the national songs of the Roman Peninsula
are designated " pangs sheathed into music," therefore
we are not bound to accept the mass of wearisome
and stilted affectations in which these minute atoms
of excellence are almost lost sight of altogether, as a
masterpiece of divine eloquence and preternatural
inspiration. Yet in these extravagant and hyperbo-
lical terms of panegyric the volume before us has
been mentioned, and our present emphasis of con-
demnation is attributable to the disgust with which
we have noticed this ill-judged servility of criticism
to an empty name upon an indifferent title-page. It
is this contemptible spirit of subserviency to mere
reputation, which tends to cast such a malign and de-
generating influence over literature—criticism, more-
over, being thrown into contempt by its indiscriminate
regard for cliquerie and its abject attention to mere
favouritism. To such an absurdity have we seen this
wretched evidence of infatuation carried in the in-
stance now under consideration, that we have observed
italicised such lines as the following—italicised as spe-
cimens of poetic ability
slashed our sleeves like patriots, nor foreswore
The true Republic in the form of hats.

We did not fight
Exactly, we fired muskets up the void.
To show that victory was ours of right.

We proved that Austria was dislodged, or would,
Or should be, and that Tuscany in arms,
Should, would. dislodge her in high hardihood."
And so on inexhaustibly drenching us with the di-
luted balderdash, and calling it forsooth by that divine
appellation which belongs of right only to the sweetest
and the wisest utterances of humanity. Gladly do
we turn from such trash as makes up the bulk of
these vaunted quotations to the subjoined passage, one
which stands forth conspicuously as one of nervous
and thoughtful beauty. The writer is speaking of
violets strewn over the grave of Savonarola.
"We who are the seed
Of buried creatures, if we turned and spate
Upon our antecedents, we were vile.
Bring violets rather! If these had not walked
Their furlong, could we hope to walk our mile?
Therefore bring violets! Yet if we, self-baulked,
Stand still a-strewing violets all the while,
These had as well not moved, ourselves not talked
Of these. So rise up with a cheerful smile,
And, having strewn the violets, reap the corn,
And, having reaped and garnered, bring the plough
And draw new furrows 'neath the healthy morn,
And plant the great Hereafter in this Now."
A vigorous outburst like this we can admire, but not
those spurious exclamations, which, coming from the
lips of our authoress, are mistaken by her worshippers
for the blended oracles of a poet and a metaphysician.
Two metaphors, and two only out of the whole book,
appear to us to be in any way deserving of com-
mendation : the first where it is prettily said—
" I wove these stuffs so subtly that the gold
Swims to the surface of the silk like cream,
And curdles to fair patterns;"
the second where, speaking in a grander mood, and
with a voice more powerful in its resonance, it is re-
marked—
" This model of a steam-ship moves your wonder?
You should behold it crushing down the brine,
Like a blind Jove who feels his way with thunder."
Elsewhere we come upon such very dilapidated
figures of speech as (at page 46) that about the lion
shaking from his mane the dewdrops. Once, and
only once, Mrs. Growing rises from the dead level of
her present mediocrity and writes as formerly wrote
the vigorous hand of Elizabeth Barrett. It is where
she pronounces, in numbers not unworthy of her
theme, the funeral panegyric of the late hero-king,
Charles Albert of Sardinia. She has been lamenting
over one grave, and thus continues :
"Another is
At Genoa, where a king may
fitly lie,
cannon'ssteed a enydesfeflotrththei skys
Who berating that heroic heart of his
At lost Novara, that he could not die,
thriceinto d
shuddering
g
lieTphinuunggh
edhis s h
Reel back between the fire-shocks;—stripped away
The ancestral ermine ere the smoke had cleared,
And naked to the soul, that none might say
His kingship covered what was base and bleared
With treason, he went out an exile, yea,
An exiled patriot! Let him be revered.
"Yea, verily, Charles Albert has died well:
And if he lived not all so, as one spoke,
The sin pass softly with the passing bell.
For he was shriven, I think, in cannon smoke,
And taking off his crown, made visible
A hero's forehead. Shaking Austria's yoke
He shattered his own band and heart. So best,'
ILis last words were upon his lonely bed,—
' I do not end like popes and dukes at least—
Thank God for it.' And now that he is dead,
Admitting it is proved and manifest
That he was worthy, with a disorowned head.