Browning's New Work.

Evening Star, Issue 7177, 2 April 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

Browning's New Work.

. Browning may be said to dispute with Tennyson the honor of being the first living representative poet of their time. Brit the difference between them is greater than that between Byron and the Lakers. * Locksley Hall ’ and ‘ Parleyings ’ are as far apart as ‘Childe Harold’ and the ‘Excursion’; and it follows that the two bards hatro for admirers very opposite classes of readers. Tennyson is sweet and melodious even at fourscore. Brooming at seventy - five is still harsh, and sometimes dissonant. There can be no doubt as to which of the men hat the wider circle of worshippers. The Laureate is here an easy first. But, to make up for their paucity in number. Browning’s adherents are tenacious arid enthusiastic. They would say of theiriselves that they are fit though few. And, as with the disciples of Wagner, the more their master is abused, the more fondly and devotedly they cling to and applaridhliri. What Carlyle is to prose, Browning is to poetry. That is to say, both men are to a certain extent mystics. Both deal at times in occult language. Both hate with a holy hatred the commonplace. Both disgust the average reader by their obscurity, their oumbrousness of speech, their' apparent affectation of the circuitous and strange. Both have founded schools, few as may be their scholars. Both are tembly in earnest, and both, when they choose, are terribly strong, } iThis book of 1 Parleyings’ does in verse, after a fashion, what Walter Savage Landof in his ‘lmaginary Conversations’ does in prose. It begins with a prologue, like an old play, and ends with an epilogue. The persons in the prologue are John Apollo and the Fates. The persons in the epilogue are John Fust and his friends. Sandwiched between these curious passages are the * Parleyings* being respectively between the author, Bernard de Mandeville, Daniel Bartoli, Christopher Smart, George Babb Bodington, Francis Furini, Gerard de Lairesse, and Charles Avision. In the prologue, the Fates are busy at their usual occupation of spinning the web of destiny, when Apollo enters and challenges their estimates of the value of human life and its pleasures in a talk wherein the Fates seem to have rather the best of it. We append the part wherein the god makes his entrance:—

LAOBSBIB. Go,—brave, wise, good, happy 1 Nov chequer tbs thread I He is slaved (or yet loved by a god. I unloose him A goddess-sent plague. He has conquered, is wed, Hen crown him, he stands at the height,— ATKOFOB. He is dead . . . apollo. (Entering; Light.) “Deadff* Nay, swart spinsters 1 So I surprise you Making and marring the fortunes of Man 7 Huddling—no marvel, your enemy eyes ydfe^ Head by bead bat-like blots under the ban - Of daylight earth’s blessing since time began! , Till FATES. Back to thy blest earth, prying ApoHo I Shaft upon shaft transpierce with thy beams Earth to the centre,—square but this hollow Hewn out of Night’s heart where Mystery seems Hewed from day’s malice; wake earth ftpm her dreams I APOLLO, Crones, ’tis your dusk selves I startle from slumber.; Day’s god deposes yon-queens Night-crowned t —Plying your trade in a world ye encumber. Fashioning man's web of life—spun, wound. Left the length ye allot till a dip strews the ground. Behold 1 bid truce to your doleful amusementAnnulled by a sunbeam: Even at the threshold of his poem we thus see at once that Browning preserves unchanged bis distinctive style. Perhaps the finest piece in this volume is the Gerard Ee Lairesse. Ee Lairesse wrote a book called ‘The Art of‘Painting,’published and translated more than a century ago. He seems to have been a man ol exquisite taste. He was also one afflicted by bitter misfortune; for, his eyesight being the source of his purest delights and the prime need for his special vocation, he was suddenly stricken blind. We copy , two excerpts from this poem—but it should be read in its entirety by. such as would fitly take in its beauty Ah, but -because yon were etrnok blind, could bless Your sense no longer witb the actual view Of man and woman, those fair forms you drew • In happier days so duteously and ttue— Must I account my Gerard De Lairesse All sorrow-smitten 7 - He wae hindered, too —Wss this no hardship 7-from producing, plain To us who still havo eyes, the pageantry Which passed and passed before ms busy brain, And, captured on hie canvas, showed our sky Traversed by flying shapes, earth stocked with brood Of monsteta-oentaurs bestial, satyrs lewd— ■ Not without muoh Olympian glory, shapes Of god and goddess in their gay escapes From the severe serene; or happily placed ; The antique ways, God counselled, nymph embraced. Some early human kingly personage Such wonders of the teeming poet’s age Were still to be.

Say am I right ? Your sealed sense moved your mind, Free from obstruction, to compassionate . Art’s power left powerless, and supply the blind; With fancies worth all facts denied by fatfe Mind could invent things, add to—take away, . At pleasure, leave out trifles mean and base , Which vex the sight that cannot say them nay. But, where mind plays the mas'er, have no plate. And bent on banishing was mind, be sate !■ All except beauty from its mastered tribe, . Of objects apparitions! which lure - . Painter to show and poet to describe— ‘ That imagery of the antique song Truer than truth’s self. Fancy's rainbow birth,.: Conceived mid elonds in Greece, could glance along Your passage o’er Dutch veritable earth. As with ourselves, who see, familiar throng : About our pacings men and women worth Nowise a glare so poets apprehend— Since naught avails pouitrayiog them in verse: While painters turn up the heel, intend To spare their work the critic’s ready curse . Due to the daily and undignified. How far ‘Parleyings ’ will be adjudged,to take rank with bis highest efforts, whether it will be classed with ‘Hen and Women,’ ‘ The Bing and the Book,’ or withthe slighter and more freakish work that preceded or followed them, is scarcely in a cursory examination to be more than foreshadowed. That there are passages in his latest work of singular merit is pertain.That there are passages that are conn spicnously inferior is equally so. Some, may ; say that among the detached pieces there is nothing that has the peculiar stir ' and ; swing of ‘ How they Brought Good .News" from Ghent to Aix,’ or little of the quaint, humor of ‘ The Pied Piper of Hamelin /j and others may say that the fantastic character of Browning’s muse remains, bat not her ragged power. But everybody will read the book with an interest heightened: by the splendor of the writer’s past achieve? ments, and by the fact that, whatever else may bo urged of * Parleyings,’ it is a remarkable piece of work to come from the hand of a man entering upon his seventysixth year.—American paper.