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By Root 16533 0

perfect enigma, what does the word ‘fell’ mean? ­[[Greek text:]] xxx [[:Greek text]] we suppose — that is, ‘not to be trifled with.’ But surely it sounds very strange, although it may be true enough, to say that his ‘fellness’ is occasioned by ‘inner entity.’ But perhaps the line has some deeper meaning which we are unable to fathom.” Perhaps it has: and this is the criticism — the British criticism — the Blackwood criticism — to which we have so long implicitly bowed down! As before, Miss Barrett’s verses are needlessly involved, but their meaning requires no OEdipus. Their construction is thus intended: — “And Goethe, with that reaching eye from which his soul reached out, far and high, and (in so reaching) fell from inner entity.” The plain prose is this: — Goethe, (the poet would say), in involving himself too far and too profoundly in external speculations — speculations concerning the world without him — neglected, or made miscalculations concerning his inner entity, or being, — concerning the world within This idea is involved in the metaphor of a person leaning from a window so far that finally he falls from it — the person being the soul, the window the eye.

Of the twenty-eight “Sonnets,” which immediately succeed the “Drama of Exile,” and which receive the especial commendation of Blackwood, we have no very enthusiastic opinion. The best sonnet is objectionable from its extreme artificiality; and, to be effective, this species of composition, requires a minute management — a well-controlled dexterity of touch — compatible neither with Miss Barrett’s deficient constructiveness, nor with the fervid rush and whirl of her genius. Of the particular instances here given, we prefer “the Prisoner,” of which the conclusion is particularly beautiful In general, the themes are obtrusively metaphysical, or didactic.

“The Romaunt of the Page,” an imitation of the old English ballad, is neither very original in subject, nor very skilfully put together. We speak comparatively, of course: — It is not very good — for Miss Barrett: — and what we have said of this poem will apply equally to a very similar production, “The Rhyme of the Dutchess May.” The “Poet and the Bird” — “A Child Asleep” — “Crowned and Wedded” — “Crowned and Buried” — “To Flush my Dog” — “The Four fold Aspect” — “A Flower in a Letter” — “A Lay of the early Rose” — “That Day” — “L. E. L’s Last ­Questio” — “Catarina to Camoens” — “Wine of Cyprus” — “The Dead Pan” — “Sleeping and Watching” — “A Portrait” — “The Mournful Mother” — and “A Valediction” — although all burning with divine fire, manifested only in scintillations, have nothing in them idiosyncratic. “The House of Clouds” and “The Last Bower” are superlatively lovely, and show the vast powers of the poet in the field best adapted to their legitimate display: — the themes, here, could not be improved. The former poem is purely imaginative; the latter is unobjectionably be cause unobtrusively suggestive of a moral, and is, perhaps, upon the whole, the most admirable composition in the two volumes: — or, if it is not, then “The Lay of the Brown Rosarie” is. In this last the ballad-character is elevated — the realized — and thus made to afford scope for an ideality at once the richest and most vigorous in the world. The peculiar foibles of the author are here too, dropped bodily, as a mantle, in the tumultuous movement and excitement of the narrative.

Miss Barrett has need only of real self-interest in her subjects, to do justice to her subjects and to herself. On the other hand, “A Rhapsody of Life’s Progress,” although gleaming with cold corruscations, is the least meritorious, because the most philosophical, effusion of the whole: — this, we say, in flat contradiction of the “spoudiotaton kai philosophikotaton genos” of Aristotle. “The Cry of the Human” is singularly effective, not more from the vigour and ghastly passion of its thought, than from the artistically-conceived arabesquerie of its rhythm. “The Cry of the Children,” similar, although superior in tone and handling, is full of a nervous unflinching