The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Vol. I.
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
PREFATORY NOTE.
In a recent "Memoir of Elizabeth Barrett Browning," by John H. Ingram, it is observed that "such essays on her personal history as have appeared, either in England or elsewhere, are replete with mistakes or misstatements." For these he proposes to subst.i.tute "a correct if short memoir:" but, kindly and appreciative as may be Mr. Ingram"s performance, there occur not a few pa.s.sages in it equally "mistaken and misstated."
1. "Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward Moulton Barrett, was born in London on the 4th of March, 1809." Elizabeth was born, March 6, 1806, at c.o.xhoe Hall, county of Durham, the residence of her father.[A]
"Before she was eleven she composed an epic on "Marathon."" She was then fourteen.
2. "It is said that Mr. Barrett was a man of intellect and culture, and therefore able to direct his daughter"s education, but be that so or not, he obtained for her the tutorial a.s.sistance of the well-known Greek scholar Hugh Stuart Boyd ... who was also a writer of fluent verse: and his influence and instruction doubtless confirmed Miss Barrett in her poetical aspirations." Mr. Boyd, early deprived of sight from over-study, resided at Malvern, and cared for little else than Greek literature, especially that of the "Fathers." He was about or over fifty, stooped a good deal, and was nearly bald. His daily habit was to sit for hours before a table, treating it as a piano with his fingers, and reciting Greek--his memory for which was such that, on a folio column of his favourite St. Gregory being read to him, he would repeat it without missing a syllable. Elizabeth, then residing in Herefordshire, visited him frequently, partly from her own love of Greek, and partly from a desire for the congenial society of one to whom her attendance might be helpful. There was nothing in the least "tutorial" in this relation--merely the natural feeling of a girl for a blind and disabled scholar in whose pursuits she took interest. Her knowledge of Greek was originally due to a preference for sharing with her brother Edward in the instruction of his Scottish tutor Mr. M"Swiney rather than in that of her own governess Mrs. Orme: and at such lessons she constantly a.s.sisted until her brother"s departure for the Charter House--where he had Thackeray for a schoolfellow. In point of fact, she was self-taught in almost every respect. Mr. Boyd was no writer of "fluent verse," though he published an unimportant volume, and the literary sympathies of the friends were exclusively bestowed on Greek.
3. "Edward, the eldest of the family," was Elizabeth"s younger by nearly two years. He and his companions perished, not "just off Teignmouth,"
but in Babbicombe Bay. The bodies drifted up channel, and were recovered three days after.
4. "Her father"s fortune was considerably augmented by his accession to the property of his only brother Richard, for many years Speaker of the House of a.s.sembly at Jamaica." Mr. Edward Moulton, by the will of his grandfather, was directed to affix the name of Barrett to that of Moulton, upon succeeding to the estates in Jamaica. Richard was his cousin, and by his death Mr. Barrett did not acquire a shilling. His only brother was Samuel, sometime M.P. for Richmond. He had also a sister who died young, the full-length portrait of whom by Sir Thomas Lawrence (the first exhibited by that painter) is in the possession of Octavius Moulton-Barrett at Westover, near Calbourne, in the Isle of Wight. With respect to the "semi-tropical taste" of Mr. Barrett, so characterised in the "Memoir," it may be mentioned that, on the early death of his father, he was brought from Jamaica to England when a very young child, as a ward of the late Chief Baron Lord Abinger, then Mr.
Scarlett, whom he frequently accompanied in his post-chaise when on Circuit. He was sent to Harrow, but received there so savage a punishment for a supposed offence ("burning the toast") by the youth whose "f.a.g" he had become, that he was withdrawn from the school by his mother, and the delinquent was expelled. At the age of sixteen he was sent by Mr. Scarlett to Cambridge, and thence, for an early marriage, went to Northumberland. After purchasing the estate in Herefordshire, he gave himself up a.s.siduously to the usual duties and occupations of a country gentleman,--farmed largely, was an active magistrate, became for a year High Sheriff, and in all county contests busied himself as a Liberal. He had a fine taste for landscape-gardening, planted considerably, loved trees--almost as much as his friend, the early correspondent of his daughter, Sir Uvedale Price--and for their sake discontinued keeping deer in the park.
Many other particulars concerning other people, in other "Biographical Memoirs which have appeared in England or elsewhere" for some years past, are similarly "mistaken and misstated:" but they seem better left without notice by anybody.
R. B.
29 DE VERE GARDENS, W.
_December 10, 1887._
FOOTNOTE:
[A] The entry in the Parish Register of Kelloe Church is as follows:-- Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett, daughter and first child of Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett, of c.o.xhoe Hall, native of St James"s, Jamaica, by Mary, late Clarke, native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was born, March 6th, 1806, and baptized 10th of February, 1808.
[Ill.u.s.tration: c.o.xHOE HALL, COUNTY OF DURHAM.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF MRS. BROWNING.]
Dedication
_TO MY FATHER_
_When your eyes fall upon this page of dedication, and you start to see to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be of the time far off when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you who were my public and my critic. Of all that such a recollection implies of saddest and sweetest to both of us, it would become neither of us to speak before the world, nor would it be possible for us to speak of it to one another, with voices that did not falter. Enough, that what is in my heart when I write thus, will be fully known to yours._
_And my desire is that you, who are a witness how if this art of poetry had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted hands before this day,--that you, who have shared with me in things bitter and sweet, softening or enhancing them, every day,--that you, who hold with me, over all sense of loss and transiency, one hope by one Name,--may accept from me the inscription of these volumes, the exponents of a few years of an existence which has been sustained and comforted by you as well as given. Somewhat more faint-hearted than I used to be, it is my fancy thus to seem to return to a visible personal dependence on you, as if indeed I were a child again; to conjure your beloved image between myself and the public, so as to be sure of one smile,--and to satisfy my heart while I sanctify my ambition, by a.s.sociating with the great pursuit of my life, its tenderest and holiest affection._
_Your_ _E. B. B._ LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET, 1844.
PREFACE
TO THE FIRST COLLECTED EDITION OF MRS. BROWNING"S POEMS.
The collection here offered to the public consists of Poems which have been written in the interim between the period of the publication of my "Seraphim" and the present; variously coloured, or perhaps shadowed, by the life of which they are the natural expression,--and, with the exception of a few contributions to English or American periodicals, are printed now for the first time.
As the first poem of this collection, the "Drama of Exile," is the longest and most important work (to _me_!) which I ever trusted into the current of publication, I may be pardoned for entreating the reader"s attention to the fact, that I decided on publishing it after considerable hesitation and doubt. The subject of the Drama rather fastened on me than was chosen; and the form, approaching the model of the Greek tragedy, shaped itself under my hand, rather by force of pleasure than of design. But when the excitement of composition had subsided, I felt afraid of my position. My subject was the new and strange experience of the fallen humanity, as it went forth from Paradise into the wilderness; with a peculiar reference to Eve"s allotted grief, which, considering that self-sacrifice belonged to her womanhood, and the consciousness of originating the Fall to her offence,--appeared to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more expressible by a woman than a man. There was room, at least, for lyrical emotion in those first steps into the wilderness,--in that first sense of desolation after wrath,--in that first audible gathering of the recriminating "groan of the whole creation,"--in that first darkening of the hills from the recoiling feet of angels,--and in that first silence of the voice of G.o.d. And I took pleasure in driving in, like a pile, stroke upon stroke, the Idea of EXILE,--admitting Lucifer as an extreme Adam, to represent the ultimate tendencies of sin and loss,--that it might be strong to bear up the contrary idea of the Heavenly love and purity. But when all was done, I felt afraid, as I said before, of my position. I had promised my own prudence to shut close the gates of Eden between Milton and myself, so that none might say I dared to walk in his footsteps. He should be within, I thought, with his Adam and Eve unfallen or falling,--and I, without, with my EXILES,--_I_ also an exile! It would not do. The subject, and his glory covering it, swept through the gates, and I stood full in it, against my will, and contrary to my vow,--till I shrank back fearing, almost desponding; hesitating to venture even a pa.s.sing a.s.sociation with our great poet before the face of the public. Whether at last I took courage for the venture, by a sudden revival of that love of ma.n.u.script which should be cla.s.sed by moral philosophers among the natural affections, or by the encouraging voice of a dear friend, it is not interesting to the reader to inquire.
Neither could the fact affect the question; since I bear, of course, my own responsibilities. For the rest, Milton is too high, and I am too low, to render it necessary for me to disavow any rash emulation of his divine faculty on his own ground; while enough individuality will be granted, I hope, to my poem, to rescue me from that imputation of plagiarism which should be too servile a thing for every sincere thinker. After all, and at the worst, I have only attempted, in respect to Milton, what the Greek dramatists achieved lawfully in respect to Homer. They constructed dramas on Trojan ground; they raised on the buskin and even clasped with the sock, the feet of Homeric heroes; yet they neither imitated their Homer nor emasculated him. The Agamemnon of aeschylus, who died in the bath, did no harm to, nor suffered any harm from, the Agamemnon of Homer who bearded Achilles. To this a.n.a.logy--the more favourable to me from the obvious exception in it, that Homer"s subject was his own possibly by creation,--whereas Milton"s was his own by ill.u.s.tration only,--I appeal. To this a.n.a.logy--_not_ to this comparison, be it understood--I appeal. For the a.n.a.logy of the stronger may apply to the weaker; and the reader may have patience with the weakest while she suggests the application.
On a graver point I must take leave to touch, in further reference to my dramatic poem. The divine Saviour is represented in vision towards the close, speaking and transfigured; and it has been hinted to me that the introduction may give offence in quarters where I should be most reluctant to give any. A reproach of the same cla.s.s, relating to the frequent recurrence of a Great Name in my pages, has already filled me with regret. How shall I answer these things? Frankly, in any case. When the old mysteries represented the Holiest Being in a rude familiar fashion, and the people gazed on, with the faith of children in their earnest eyes, the critics of a succeeding age, who rejoiced in Congreve, cried out "Profane." Yet Andreini"s mystery suggested Milton"s epic; and Milton, the most reverent of poets, doubting whether to throw his work into the epic form or the dramatic, left, on the latter basis, a rough ground-plan, in which his intention of introducing the "Heavenly Love"
among the persons of his drama is extant to the present day. But the tendency of the present day is to sunder the daily life from the spiritual creed,--to separate the worshipping from the acting man,--and by no means to "live by faith." There is a feeling abroad which appears to me (I say it with deference) nearer to superst.i.tion than to religion, that there should be no touching of holy vessels except by consecrated fingers, nor any naming of holy names except in consecrated places. As if life were not a continual sacrament to man, since Christ brake the daily bread of it in His hands! As if the name of G.o.d did not build a church, by the very naming of it! As if the word G.o.d were not, everywhere in His creation, and at every moment in His eternity, an appropriate word! As if it could be uttered unfitly, if devoutly! I appeal on these points, which I will not argue, from the conventions of the Christian to his devout heart; and I beseech him generously to believe of me that I have done that in reverence from which, through reverence, he might have abstained; and that where he might have been driven to silence by the principle of adoration, I, by the very same principle, have been hurried into speech.
It should have been observed in another place,--the fact, however, being sufficiently obvious throughout the drama,--that the time is from the evening into the night. If it should be objected that I have lengthened my twilight too much for the East, I might hasten to answer that we know nothing of the length of mornings or evenings before the Flood, and that I cannot, for my own part, believe in an Eden without the longest of purple twilights. The evening, =erev=, of Genesis signifies a "mingling," and approaches the meaning of our "twilight" a.n.a.lytically.
Apart from which considerations, my "exiles" are surrounded, in the scene described, by supernatural appearances; and the shadows that approach them are not only of the night.
The next longest poem to the "Drama of Exile," in the collection, is the "Vision of Poets," in which I have endeavoured to indicate the necessary relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice. In the eyes of the living generation, the poet is at once a richer and poorer man than he used to be; he wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles: and the evil of this social incrustation over a great idea is eating deeper and more fatally into our literature than either readers or writers may apprehend fully. I have attempted to express in this poem my view of the mission of the poet, of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the great work involved in it, of the duty and glory of what Balzac has beautifully and truly called "la patience angelique du genie;" and of the obvious truth, above all, that if knowledge is power, suffering should be acceptable as a part of knowledge. It is enough to say of the other poems, that scarcely one of them is unambitious of an object and a significance.
Since my "Seraphim" was received by the public with more kindness than its writer had counted on, I dare not rely on having put away the faults with which that volume abounded and was mildly reproached. Something indeed I may hope to have retrieved, because some progress in mind and in art every active thinker and honest writer must consciously or unconsciously make, with the progress of existence and experience: and, in some sort--since "we learn in suffering what we teach in song,"--my songs may be fitter to teach. But if it were not presumptuous language on the lips of one to whom life is more than usually uncertain, my favourite wish for this work would be, that it be received by the public as a step in the right track, towards a future indication of more value and acceptability. I would fain do better,--and I feel as if I might do better: I aspire to do better. It is no new form of the nympholepsy of poetry, that my ideal should fly before me:--and if I cry out too hopefully at sight of the white vesture receding between the cypresses, let me be blamed gently if justly. In any case, while my poems are full of faults,--as I go forward to my critics and confess,--they have my heart and life in them,--they are not empty sh.e.l.ls. If it must be said of me that I have contributed immemorable verses to the many rejected by the age, it cannot at least be said that I have done so in a light and irresponsible spirit. Poetry has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing: there has been no playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry; nor leisure, for the hour of the poet. I have done my work, so far, as work,--not as mere hand and head work, apart from the personal being,--but as the completest expression of that being to which I could attain,--and as work I offer it to the public,--feeling its shortcomings more deeply than any of my readers, because measured from the height of my aspiration,--but feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was done should give it some protection with the reverent and sincere.
LONDON: 50 WIMPOLE STREET, 1844.
A DRAMA OF EXILE.
SCENE--_The outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast with cloud, from the depth of which revolves a sword of fire self-moved. ADAM and EVE are seen, in the distance flying along the glare._
LUCIFER, _alone._
Rejoice in the clefts of Gehenna, My exiled, my host!
Earth has exiles as hopeless as when a Heaven"s empire was lost.
Through the seams of her shaken foundations, Smoke up in great joy!
With the smoke of your fierce exultations Deform and destroy!
Smoke up with your lurid revenges, And darken the face Of the white heavens and taunt them with changes From glory and grace.
We, in falling, while destiny strangles, Pull down with us all.
Let them look to the rest of their angels!
Who"s safe from a fall?
HE saves not. Where"s Adam? Can pardon Requicken that sod?
Unkinged is the King of the Garden, The image of G.o.d.
Other exiles are cast out of Eden,-- More curse has been hurled: Come up, O my locusts, and feed in The green of the world!
Come up! we have conquered by evil; Good reigns not alone: _I_ prevail now, and, angel or devil, Inherit a throne.
[_In sudden apparition a watch of innumerable Angels, rank above rank, slopes up from around the gate to the zenith. The Angel GABRIEL descends._