There are few finer pieces of poetical inspiration than the closing scene,
where the friend and lover returns blind and helpless, and the woman's
heart, unconquered before, surrenders to the claims of misfortune as the
champion of love. After a happy life with her husband and an only child,
sent for her solace, this gifted woman died in 1863.
HER FAULTS.--It is as easy to criticize Mrs. Browning's works as to admire
them; but our admiration is great in spite of her faults: in part because
of them, for they are faults of a bold and striking individuality. There
is sometimes an obscurity in her fancies, and a turgidity in her language.
She seems to transcend the poet's license with a knowledge that she is
doing so. For example:
We will sit on the throne of a purple sublimity,
And grind down men's bones to a pale unanimity.
And again, in speaking of Goethe, she says:
His soul reached out from far and high,
And fell from inner entity.
Her rhymes are frequently and arrogantly faulty: she seems to scorn the
critics; she writes more for herself than for others, and infuses all she
writes with her own fervent spirit: there is nothing commonplace or
lukewarm.
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