The Romantic Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Robert Browning. Robert Browning

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      Equestrian Statue of Ferdinando de’ medici,

       by Giovanni da Bologna.

       in the piazza dell’ annunziata, florence.

      “There’s a palace in Florence the world knows well, And a statue watches it from the square.”

      The Ring and the Book.

      The success of “Aurora Leigh” was immediate, a second edition being called for within a fortnight, and edition after edition followed. This work, of which, twelve years before, she had a dim foreshadowing, as of a novel in verse, has the twofold interest of a great dramatic poem and of a philosophic commentary on art and life. To estimate it only as a social treatise is to recognize but one element in its kaleidoscopic interest. Yet the narrative, it must be confessed, is fantastic and unreal. When the conception of the work first dawned upon her, she said she preferred making her story to choosing that of any legend, for the theme; but the plot is its one defect, and is only saved from being a serious defect by the richness and splendor of thought with which it is invested. The poem is to some degree a spiritual autobiography; its narrative part having no foundation in reality, but on this foundation she has recorded her highest convictions on the philosophy of life. Love, Art, Ethics, the Christianity of Christ,—all are here, in this almost inexhaustible mine of intellectual and spiritual wealth. It is a poem peculiarly calculated to kindle and inspire. What a passage is this:

      “... I can live

       At least my soul’s life, without alms from men,

       And if it be in heaven instead of earth,

       Let heaven look to it,—I am not afraid.”

      A profound occult truth is embodied in the following:

      “Whate’er our state we must have made it first;

       And though the thing displease us,—aye, perhaps,

       Displease us warrantably, never doubt

       That other states, though possible once, and then

       Rejected by the instinct of our lives,

       If then adopted had displeased us more.

       ······

       What we choose may not be good;

       But that we choose it, proves it good for us.”

      No Oriental savant could more forcibly present his doctrine of karma than has Mrs. Browning in these lines. Her recognition of the power of poetry is here expressed:

      “And plant a poet’s word even deep enough

       In any man’s breast, looking presently

       For offshoots, you have done more for the man

       Than if you dressed him in a broadcloth coat,

       And warmed his Sunday pottage at your fire.”

      Poetry was to her as serious a thing as life itself. “There has been no playing at skittles for me in either poetry, or life,” she said; “I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet.”

      In the success of “Aurora Leigh” she was herself surprised. Private letters from strangers filled with the warmest, even if sometimes indiscriminate, praises, rained down upon her, and she found the press “astonishing in its good will.” That her “golden-hearted Robert” was “in ecstasies about it, far more than as if it had been a book of his own,” was apparently her most precious reward. Milsand, who she had fancied would hardly like this poem, wrote a critique of it for the Revue which touched her with its “extraordinary kindness.” He asked and obtained permission to translate it into French, and in a letter to Miss Sarianna Browning she speaks of her happiness that he should thus distinguish the poem.

      Soon after their arrival in Florence came the saddest of news, that of the death of John Kenyon, their beloved friend, whose last thoughtful kindness was to endow them with a legacy insuring to them that freedom from СКАЧАТЬ