The Sun.
London, England, 1850-07-25 00:00:00

LITERATURE

CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY.
A Poem. By Robert Browning.
Any metrical effusion from the hand of the author
cf "Paracelsus" is certain to secure from the critic
en attentive examination. His poetical capabilities
have been altogether so conspicuously exhibited in
that masterpiece of composition, that it would be im-
possible for a reviewer endowed with an ordinary
degree of discrimination to confound the genius of
Robert Browning with the merely cultivated talents
of the majority of contemporary versifiers. Not but
that the writings of Mr. Browning have repeatedly
failed to rise above the level of the surrounding me-
diocrity. Unfortunately this has been too frequently
the case among his most recent productions. Inso-
much that his a Irnirers have found themselves com-
pelled to revert to the earlier products of his imagi-
nation, when withstanding the sneers of the captious
and the scorn of the depreciative. Failing to recog-
nize in them beauties in any degree comparable to
those crowded together in the dramatic biography of
the philos ,pher, the most ardent and infatuated en-
t husiaete about the mind from which " Paracelsus" had
emanated, have been reluctantly constrained to f rego
the luxury of indiscriminate panegyric upon "13,11 s
and Pomegranates." They have unwillingly confessed
that, with all their predisposition to be satisfied, they
have, in their reglrd, experienced for the most part a
grievous disappointment. The beautiful features of
poesy were still visible, but the light and glory of
intelligence had departed from its countenance. Oe,
if perceptible, it was only at intervals, like the flashes
of sanity occasionally glimmering through the chaos
of some gorgeous hallucination. The music of the
rhythm was still audible, but, at the best, it consisted
of those intermittent harmonies of language which of
themselves constitute but an indifferent compensation
for the absence of a sustained purpose—a unity at
once clear and harmonious. At the same time it must
be averred that whoever might presume from this
casual failure of a very refined,intellect in embodying
its most copious and mobile emanations, that the
genius of Mr. Browning had become dwarfed and
stunted immediately after the production of " Para-
celsus" (like the exotic aloe shedding its one delicious
blossom and then withering down to a mere stalk),
would betray either a total ignorance of his writings,
or a lamentable incapacity of appreciation. For our-
selves, without in any way deteriorating from the
remarkable excellence of " Paracelsus," we would say
that its author has penned various poems yet more
forcibly demanding the commendations of aesthetic
criticism. His " Pippa Passes," of all his works our
especial favourite, presents to the imagination of the
reader a series of pictures of voluptuous beauty and
impassioned eloquence. His " Colombe's Birthday,"
a flower in flavour racy of the soil of the Roman
peninsula, and sparkling with aradiance caught from the
Italian skies, has about it a multitude of charms invest-
ing its dramatic dialogue with irresistible attractions.
"A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," though conceived in defi-
ance of the venerable laws affecting the literary ex-
tent of tragedy, is no feeble or ineffective offering at
the shrine of Melpomene. " The Last of the Druses,"
in spite of the confusion of its structure and the en-
tanglement of its interests, possesses powerful claims
on our admiration. While many of his minor compo-
sitions, such as the love songs in the Venetian gon-
dola, abound in passages of verbal loveliness, com-
manding the eulogiums even of the prejudiced or
indifferent. With these recollections of what the

abilities of Mr. Browning had already accomplished,
and with this cordial estimate of his genius as a poetic
contributor to our literature, we opened and perused
the volume now lying before us for consideration. With-
out circumlocution of any kind we will acknowledge
at once that we have experienced something more than
mere disappointment from its examination. We have
been pained at the violation it evinces of all the most
subtle and exquisite ordinances of msthetics. We have
been distressed to find a lover of the pure and the beauti-
ful like Robert Browning:condescending to trifle with
the gross and the meretricious—mistaking for once,
it would seem, the fantastic for the sublime ; the
vulgar for the natural ; the grotesque far the original.
In its ulterior design the poem of " Christmas. Eve
and Easter-Day"—divided into two parts, dedicated
respectively to the Nativity and the Resurrection—is
generous and elevating. Yet these very laudable
qualities have been so overloaded with the blemishes
and indecorums already particularised that their
merit is almost entirely obliterated. The
author wishes to render the idea of

the Incarnate Divinity an object of more
universal veneration, and be endeavours to ac-

complish this by associating the divine phantom of
the Redeemer with everything mean, debasing, and
pitiful. He desires at the close of the effusion to
enfold in his all-embracing tenderness every form
and species of worship practised under the august
name of Christianity ; and in order to arrive at this

conclusion he pertinaciously depicts these forms of
worship under aspects the most degrading, and in
colours the most ludicrous. Than this never was

there more egregious perversity of- judgment. Even
the manner of the poem is as provocative of exception
as the matter, the style having in some parts a pure
rodomontade of rhetorical fustian, and in others a
jingle of eccentric rhymes, partaking rather of the
character of doggrel than of poetry. As indicative
of the enormous mistake of the. whole book, we may
observe that the scene at first selected by the pet for
description is, perhaps, the most thoroughly unpoetical
that could be chosen in the entire range of humanity
—a little Ebenenr Chapel, or a little Zion, or a little

Bethel, or whatever You may please to call it.
Granted that the painting of this scene in words is
as wonderfully faithful and lifelike as if it had been
copied in colours by the brush of Hogarth, yet the
very vividness of the vraisemblance only renders an
object in bare idea disgusting, doubly and trebly
loathsome. We by no means despair of proving this
by quotation, though we must confess that in forcing
such extracts upon the attention of our readers we
entertain the most poignant feelings of com-
punction. Mr. Browning stands in the door-
way of the wretched edifice; the night is drizzling;

and, in seeking that shelter, the poet finds himself in

close proximity with discomfort as well as squalor.
He describes the entrance with wonderful exactitude

even to the " scold of the crazy hinge"—as if he
wished to nauseate us prematurely by his punctilious
attention to the minutest particulars. Of the wor-
..

shippers who thronged into the dirty " sheepfold"
he says :

the most turned in yet more abruptly
From a certain squalid knot of alleys,
Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly,
Which now the little chafe! raffle.;

And leads into day again,—its priestliness
Lending itself to hide noir beastliness

So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason).
And putting so cheery a whitewashA.fuce on
Those neophytes too much in lack of it.
That, where you cross the common as I did,
And meet the party thus presided,

'Mount Iton,'.wit'ti Love-lane the back of it," &?.
Enough of this preposterous play upon words, how-
ever. Another specimen will afford a clearer
notion of the absurdities and vulgarisms, the coarse-
ness and uncomeliness of the creatures depicted in
this extraordinary production. Hear them enume-
rated as follows :

SIRS. GAMP'S DOUBLE.
"
Panting and bewildered, down clapping
Her umbrella with a mighty report,
Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,
A wreck of whalebones; then, with a snort,
Like a startled horse, at the interloper
Who humbly know himself improper,
But could nut shrink up small enough, '
Round to the door, and in—the gruff
Hinge's invariable scold
Making your very blood run cold."
THE SLATTERN WITH THE BATTENS.
" -- the many tattered
Little old-faced, peaking sister-turned-mother
Of the sickly babe she tried to smother
Somehow up, with its spotted face,
From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;
She too must stop, wring the poor suds dry
Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby
Her tribute to the dour-mat sopping
Already from my own clothes' dropping,
Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on;
Then stooping down to take off her pattens,
She bore them defiantly, in each band one,
Planted t.%ether before her breast
And it; babe, as good as a lance in rest."
Then comes a horrible fellow, of whom we shall hear
more presently—
a tall, yellow man,
like the
penitent thief,
With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief."
Meanwhile the poet is still screening himself from the
rain in a doorway, under a " tallow candle" in a
"cracked lanthorn." After hesitating a little he en-
ters thus elegantly in the wake of an uncleanly shoe-
maker's
" With wizened face in want of seep,
And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope,
After stopping outside, for his cough was bad,
To get the fit over, poor gentle creature,
And so avoid disturbing the preacher,
Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise
At the shutti"g door, and catered likewise."
We shall not pause while Mr. Browning is expatia-
ting with a sort of indignant gusto over "the hot
smell and the human noises," or while he is indecently
rhyming with a sort of half-joke " equipt yours"
with the "Holy Scriptures;" but come at once to
the crowning grossness and vulgarity of the delinea-
tion. I- is the effect of the preacher's sermon on the
congregation and on the poetical interloper. Here
it is :

" My old fat woman purred with pleasure.
And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,
While she, to his periods keeping measure,
Maternally devoured the pastor.
The ma►e with the handkerchief, untied it,
Showed us a horrible wen inside it,
Gave his eyelids yet another screwing,
And rocked himself as the woman was doing.
The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking,
Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking!

My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it,
And saying, like Eve when she plucked the apple,
wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it,'
I flung out of the little chapel.
. The nausea produced by such writing as this is
surely too perceptible to require any explicit defini-
nilion. We ourselves "fling out of the little
chapel," as Mr. Browning gracefully expresses it,
quite as eager to escape from its " hot smell and
human noises," to the free atmosphere of heaven, as
the poet himself. Bather than undergo a repetition
of it we would undergo the chance of a ducking.
It has left off raining, however, and our
author, under the clear night sky, is in a
some what apter mood for poetry. Nevertheless,
he cannot as yet quite rid himself of his " hobby-
horsical" inclination to pen doggrel, ex gr.—
" A tune was born in my head last week,
Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek
Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;
And when, next week, I take it buck again,
My held wilt sing. to the engine's clack twain,
W rile it only makes my neighbour's hunches stir."
Altogether his perceptions in regard to syntax
appear to be about as confused as in reference to pro-
sody. So that we find him, at page 18, saying that
God is removed from man, "as it were an hand-
breadth off." Why "an handbreadth ?" Suddenly,
however, we are swept away from all attention to
defects of composition, by a strange lunar rainbow in
the sky, and the appearance of a phantom of Christ—
clinging to whose robes the poet is conveyed through
the air to Rome and to Gottingen. At Gottingen
he listens to the lecture of a sympathiser with Strauss,
" proving " the Redeemer of mankind to be a myth and
an unreality. At Rome he witnesses the gorgeous wor-
sh.p of the Catholics in the Basilica of St. Peter's.
Here it is that, drawing inspiration from his sub-
ject, Mr. Browning has 'penned the only noble pas-
sage in his volume. The lines italicised in the tbl-
lowing quotation require no comment; their exceed-
ing beauty appealing at once to the mind and heart
of all who are capable of appreciation.
"Now I see: it is no dream:
It stands there and it does not seem;
For ever, in pictures, thus it looks,
And thus I have read of it in books,
Often in England, leagues away,
And wondered how those fountains play,
Growing up eternally
Each to a musical water- tree.

The dark is rent, mine eye is free
To pierce the crust of the outer wall,
And I view inside, and all there, all,
As the swarming hollow of a hive,
The whole Basilica alive!
Men in the chancel, body, and nave,
Men on the pillars' architrave,
Men on the statues, men on the tombs
With popes and kings in their porphyry wombr,
Alt famishing in expectation
Of the main altar's consummation.
Fur see, for see, the rapturous moment
Approaches, and earth's best endowment
Blends with heaven's: the taper-fires
Pant up, the winding brazen spires
Heave loftier yet the baldachin;
The incense-gaspings, long kept in,
Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant
Holds his breath and grovels latent,
As if God's hushing finger grazed hint,
(Like Behemoth when He praise 1 him)
At the silver bell's shrill tinkling,
Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling
On the sudden pavement strewed
With faces of the multitude."
After that one magnificent passage we are loath to
resume our task of particularizing the blemishes of a
poem as terribly defaced with flaws as any perhaps
ever before printed from the manuscripts of a man of
intellect. We close the book, then, and our criticism
with a sensation of profound regret, lamenting that
one who can write so well should have written so
bddly, tagging rhymes instead of penning poetry—
celebrating ugliness and vulgarity instead of dedicating
his powers alone to the homage of the Godlike and
the Beautiful.

LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING,

JUL Y 25, 1850.

NEW LAW of the FRENCH PRESS.
The Bulletin des Lois and. the ilfoniteur publish
the new law on the press, with the signature of the
President of the Republic. We sul-join a summary
of this" law for the information of those persons who
may not have paid particular attention to its chimes
during the discussion in the National Assembly :
Article 1 orders the deposit of caution money, the
legal interest of which will be allowed fur all political
journals and periodicals. In the departments of the
Seine, Seine-et-Oise, Seine-et-Marne, and Rhone,
the amount is fixed at 24,000 f., if the publication ap-
pear more than three times a week, and 18,000 f. if only
three times or less. In towns of a population of 50,000
and under the caution money of journals appearing
more than five times a week shall be 6,000 f. In
the other departments, ashen be 3,600 t., and respec-
tively the half of these sums for journals and periodi-
cal publications appearing five times a week, or at
more distant intervals. By Article 2, a delay or
one month is granted for compliance with these con-
ditions of the law. Article 3 orders that every
article of political, philosophical, or relioous dis-
cussion shall he signed by the author, end that a
penalty of 500 f. for the first offence, and 1,000. for
the second, shall be imposed for every false signature,
not only upon the person who has signed, but also
the author who has permitted u false signature, and
the publisher of the journal. Article 4 orders
that this clause shall also apply to all articles
in which the acts and opinions of citizens and indi•
vidual or collective interests are discussed. By ar-
ticle 5 it is ordered that where a second prosecution
has been couunenced against a journal before a first
prosecution has been brought to trial, a sum equal to
one-half of the maximum of fines determined by law
shall be added to the caution money. Article 6 de-
clares that fines inflicted by a court of law shall be
paid in three days after the sentence. Article 7 regu-
lates formalities to be observed; and articles 8 and 9
order the suppression of the journal if the pecuniary
clauses be not conformed to. By article 10 it is de-
clared that during the 20 days preceding an election
the circulars and addresses of candidates, after copies
have been deposited with the Procureur of the Re-
public, may be posted up, and distributed with-
out authorization of the municipal authorities.
Article 11 declares that the laws of June, 1819, July,
1826, on the press remain in force on all points
not contrary to the present law. Article 12
states that from the Ist of August next journals
or periodical publications, or periodical collections of
engravings, or political lithographic prints of less than
10 sheets f from 25 to 32 decimetres square, or of
less than five sheets of from 50 to 72 decimetres
square, shall be subject to a stamp duty of five cen-
times per sheet of 72 decimetres square, and under, in
the departments of the Seine and Seine. et- Oise, and
of two centimes for journals, engravings, or periodical
publications published in any other department. By
article 13 non-periodical publications, treating; of
political matters, or of social economy, which are not
now in course of publication, or which prior to the
present law had not fallen into the public domain, if
they are published in one or two numbers, having less
than three sheets of text, of from 25 to 32 decimetres
square, are subjected to stamp duty of five cen-
times. For 'every additional 10 decimetres, 111- cen-
times extra is charged. This clause is also applicable
to non -periodical writings published in a foreign
country, which, on importation, shall be liable to the
same duty as if published in France. Article 14 pro-
vides that every romance or novel published as a
feuilleton in a journal or its supplement shall pay
a stamp duty of one centime each number in the
departments of the Seine and Seine-et-Oise, and half
that sum in other departments. Articles 15 and
16 declare that the stamp duty charged shall free the
journals from postage on the following conditions :
The stamp of five centimes for the transport and dis.
tribution throughout the whole territory of the Re-
public, and that of two centimes for the transport of
journals and periodical writings in the interior of the
departments (other than those of the Seine and Seine-
et-Oise) where they are published, and those.adjoining.
Journals or periodical publications which pay a duty
of two centimes must, in order to be transported and
distributed beyond the above•mentioned limits, pay
a postage of three centimes. Article 17 states that

COURT OF COMMON COUNCIL.
Oa Tuesday a Ccurt was held for the continuation of
the discussion upo❑ the reports of the Markets Improve.
meat Committer, and the motion and amendment sub-
mitted oa the subject of the removal of Smithfield-
market.

" Motion—That this Court do agree with the com-
mittee in their reports, and that it be referred back to
the committee with instructions to send an answer in
conformity with their report to Mr. Cornewall Lewis,
and with power to communicate or confer with the Go-
vernment if necessary, and to report to this Court.','
`° Amendment —That the consideration of ,the report
be adjourned, and that the committee _be directed to
ascertain the nature and extent of the powers her Ma-
jesty's Government would be disposed to confer on the
Corporation for the control and management of a new
market beyond the limits of the metropolis."
The paper contained notices of several other public
questions.

THE LATE SIR 'ROBERT PEEL.
The Tobin Clerk read the following comwucioation
to the Court :

" Whitehall-gmlens,July 17, 1850.
" My Lord,-1 am directed by Lady. P. el to convey
to you her sincere thanks for the kind manner in which
yen have communicated to her a resolution which has
been carried unanimously by the mayor, aldermen, and
commons of tho city of London in Common Council
assembled, expressing their admiration of the character
and services of Sir Robert Peel, and the deep emotions
of sorrow with which they received the fearful intel-
ligence of his death.
"Lady Peel desires gratefully t> acknovilegge the
tribute of respect to the memory of Sir Robert Peel
from the Common Council of the city of London, and
has derived a melancholy satisfaction from the assurance
of their symptyhy with her in the affliction which has
befallen her and the members of her family.
"I have the honour to be
" Your Lordship's obedient servant,
"FREDERICK PEEL.
" The Right Hon. the Lord Mayor, &c."
Upon the motion of Mr. RICHARD L. JONES (se-
conded by Mr. RICHARD TAYLOR), it was ordered that
the letter should be entered upon the journals of the
Court.
THE TERMINATION OF THE SMITHFIELD-MARKET

the franking resulting from the payment of the stamp
duty is only available for the day on which the jour-
nals are published ; the editors of journals or periodical
publications will, however, have a right to sand to a
subscriber on the same terms the back numbers for a
period of three months. Article 18 declares that a
supplement which shall not exceed 72 dClimittres
square published by journals which appear more than
twice a week shall be exempt from the stamp duty,
on condition that they only contain political news, the
debates of the Assembly, the proceedings of the tri-
bunals, and the reproduction of and discussion on
Government documents. The supplements of tip,
Ilioniteur, whatever may be their number, are exempt
from the duty. According to article 19, whoever,
except the editor, shall send a journal or periodical
publication by the post must pay the postage of 5c
or 2c ,as the case may be. In the event of its not
being paid as above, it will be charged as a singly
letter. Article 20 provides that an allowance of 1
per cent. will be made to the editors of journals for
spoiled stamps. An allowance of one centime per
journal will be made to editors who distribute Orel,

own juurnals in Paris and the banlieue. The condi-
tions to be observed to obtain this reduction will be
fixed by a decree of the Minister of Finance. Arti-

Iles 21, 22, 23, and 24 relate to the carrying the law•
into execution, and the measures to be observed in

case of contravention.

Article 25 orders thAt the

stamp duty on subscriptions entered into before the
operation of this law shall be reimbursed. Article
26 allows a delay of two months for compliance with
the provisions of the law ordering all articles to be
signed by their authors. Article 27 states that all
journals or periodical publications printed in France
in a foreign language, but destined for circulation out
of France, are exempt from caution money and stamp
duty.