BOOKS.

AURORA. LEIGH.*

THE poem "Aurora Leigh," perhaps the most wonderful literary production ever given us by a woman, makes here a new ap- pearance heralded by a characteristic preface by Mr. Swinburne. Mr. Swinburne's judgments are invariably interesting, written as they are at white heat, and having, for that very reason, merits and defects alike conspicuous. Yet it is extra- ordinary that he should deem such a sentence as this to be criticism : "The piercing and terrible pathos of the story is as incomparable, and as irresistible, as the divine expression of womanly and motherly rapture which seems to suffuse and imbue the very page, the very print, with the radiance and fragrance of babyhood." Nor even here are we spared the inevitable reference to Marlowe, "that prince of poets," or to Hugo. Still, in spite of his whirling extrava- gance and splendid affectations, Mr. Swinburne has here, as so often before, "placed his finger on the spot" when he says : " It is one of the longest poems in the world, and yet there is not a dead line in it." This is undoubtedly the general and final impression left on the mind after reading a poem which attempts so much, fails so often, yet never for one moment flags, never for one moment or for one line loses its incipient fire. And to one somewhat melancholy reflection has this poem given rise. Whatever may be said against it— and if one should begin to attack it, there is practically no limit of opportunity—it has behind it a force and power of intense conviction and passion. Now until recently, English poetry has suffered from that very absence of any burning and sincere faith, that rapturous purpose, which can alone give life to art. Stylists more or less exquisite we have had, patient and elaborate workmen ; but for many years the ship of poetry has been becalmed, and is only now beginning to feel the breathings of some stronger and more compelling wind. This is why " Aurora Leigh " has not " one dead line in it "; and this is why so much of modern verse, incom- parably more faultless, has scarcely a living line in it. Briefly, then, this poem of Mrs. Browning lives, and will continue to live, by a force of passionate conviction. That, however, is far from an exha ustive statement of its merits. Take as a piece of light and excellent description the following passage, where Aurora Leigh epitomises typical criticism :

My critic Hammond flatters prettily, And wants another volume like the last.

• Aurora Leigh. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning. New Edition. With Pre- fatory Note by Algernon Charles 8winbnrne. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. [3s. 6d.]

My critic Belfair wants another book : Entirely different, which will sell (and live ?), A striking book, yet not a startling book, The public blames originalities (Yon must not pump spring water unawares Unon a gracious public full of nerves) : Good things, not subtle, new—yet orthodox, As easy reading as the dog-eared page That's fingered by said public fifty years, Since first taught spelling by its grandmother, And yet a revelation in some sort : That's hard, my critic Belfair. So—what next ? My critic Stokes objects to abstract thoughts ; `Call a man John, a woman Joan' says he, 'And do not prate so of humanities."

Could anything be better than the line-

" A striking book, yet not a startling book " ?

We have quoted this passage not by any means as an example of Mrs. Browning's imagination or power, but merely to show that she can be brilliantly garrulous, and with it all, sincere. There has been much talk lately of the poetry of London, and almost all our modern singers have sought to bring some aspect of her or another into their verse. But have any of them surpassed this splendid description of the sun pushing through the fog?— "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 nnflickering outline of dead heat, From which the blood of wretches pent inside Seems oozing forth to incarnadine the air), Push out through fog with his dilated disk, And startle the slant roofs and chimney pots With splashes of fierce colour. Or I saw Fog only, the great tawny weltering fog, Involve the passive city, strangle it Alive, and draw it off into the void,

Spires, bridges, streets, and squares, as if a sponge

Had wiped out London."

It may easily be objected to this description, as indeed to the whole poem which contains it, that the line about " the blood of wretches pent inside " is overcoloured, hysterical some- what ; and that the image of the sponge, though originally Eschylean, has here a smack of Alexander Smith ; yet the passage " grips " and carries away the mind, and when that is so, facile objections are out of place. So far, then, Mrs. Browning as a painter of cities. But she can analyse keenly enough a character of the kind which is familiar to us all.

Aurora's aunt- " Stood straight and calm

Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight,

As if for taming accidental thoughts From possible pulses : brown hair pricked with gray By frigid use of life (she was not old, Although my father's elder by a year,) A nose drawn sharply, yet in delicate lines ; A close mild mouth, a little soured about The ends, through speaking unrequited loves

Or peradventure niggardly hall-truths."

The episode of Marian Erle seems to us perhaps the best thing in the poem. The description of the hospital, "with wonderful low voices and soft steps "; the terrible scene where the mother drags out her child to sell her to the squire; the waiting of the crowd before the marriage service which was not to take place ; and incidentally the character-sketch of Lord Howe,—all these exhibit a free and varied power and are in their way and in their manner unparalleled in English poetry. Certainly, to the present writer, Mrs. Browning appears to hit off modern types, whether aristocratic or humble, far more successfully than did Tennyson. Tennyson often achieved success here, as in " Maud " ; but there is an ease and excellent volubility about Mrs. Browning's portraits, while the other has not succeeded so clearly by elaborate stroke on stroke. Surely, too, in another point where Tennyson chiefly excelled, Mrs. Browning is no less successful. Here, then, are two English scenes depicted by poet and

poetess :-

"And one, an English home, gray twilight poured On dewy pastares, dewy trees,

Softer than sleep : all things in order stored A haunt of ancient peace."

So sings Tennyson at the height of his characteristic excel- lence. Now Mrs. Browning, in no less characteristic fashion :

"I dared to rest or wander, in a nest

Made sweeter for the step upon the grass, And view the ground's most gentle dimplement (As if God's finger touched but did not press

In making England), such an up and down Of verdure,—nothing too much up or down, A ripple of laud."

That last expression, " a ripple of land," is surely exquisite and faithful.

This poem, then, makes a very high and varied claim. We find in it a passionate sincerity and faith, a natural and fluent gift of portraiture, a power of deboription equal on the one side to the picture of an emerging London sun, equal on the other to a presentment of a slope of English verdure. Beyond and above all this there is an innate fire, which burns through the story from beginning to end. Against these excellences can be urged a loose and bewildering technique, an almost constant jar and jolt of metre, situations, if not absolutely impossible, at least improbable in the extreme, and an utter failure to depict the central male figure of the book. When Tennyson and Fitzgerald sat down to elaborate the most Wordsworthianiline which they could invent, they produced— "A Mr. Willkinson, a clergyman" ; but Mrs. Browning again and again has lines which suffer little by comparison. Wordsworth himself might have written :—

" Leave the lamp, Susan, and go up to bed,"

or-

" A little money for his pressing debts,"

or again—

"The same he wrote to,—anybody's name."

Curiously enough, however, while in Wordsworth we are stopped short in sheer ridicule by lines of this nature, in Mrs. Browning we pass them by, not certainly in admiration, but without any sudden jar; and the reason, no doubt, is that the one or two lines of the kind are carried on and lost in a passionate torrent of words and thoughts. But, as we have said before, to find faults in "Aurora Leigh" is a task to which a child could be set. The defects are obvious, glaring; but in a narrative poem of such sustained force and rapid power, it seems to us that the best office of criticism is to praise and to give thanks.