George Meredith.
As a poet, Meredith attained, when he chose (and he often did choose) to a pitch of obscurity no less deserving of admiration, and of interpretative commentaries, than the darkest verses of Browning. He did not begin in this manner; his early verses, such as "Juggling Jerry," "The Old Chartist," "Marian," "Love in the Valley," have the charm of being fresh, natural, and easily readable by him who runs; while, like most of Meredith's verses, they are the poetry of a lover of the Earth, with all that she bears and nourishes. Many poems read like hymns to Earth by an Earth-intoxicated pagan. But "Modern Love"—a long sequence of pieces of sixteen lines, which exceed the sonnet in length without possessing its answering and echoing rhymes—contains a story, and a sad story, of the pangs of two wedded lovers. What that story is, perhaps some commentator has told in prose; if not, the poet needs such a commentary. The preluding sonnet to "Modern Love" may contain the secret, it closes thus:—
But listen in the thought; so may there come
Conception of a newly added chord,
Commanding space beyond where ear has home.
In labour of the trouble at its fount,
Leads Life to an intelligible Lord
The rebel discords up the sacred Mount.
We "listen in the thought," but conception of a newly added chord does not readily arrive, not where ear has home at all events, and nothing leads us to an intelligible Lord, if that means an intelligible poet. Persons cultivated enough to love English poetry more obscure than an "unseen" piece of Pindar, find much matter in verses like these.
The two lovers, married apparently, in "Modern Love," are "condemned to do the flitting of the bat," but, in the dark, we lose sight of them, and can only admire luminous breaks of two or three lines here and there, glow-worms in the darkness of the grass. The mystery of Byron's "Manfred," reckoned fine in its day, the new poet explains as "an after dinner's indigest". Byron, no doubt, could have said something not less witty about "The Nuptials of Attila".
Meredith's manner, in short, "is not of the centre". Great poets rarely conceal their meaning like hidden wealth; he who does so, values too cheaply the leisure of the reader, or values too highly the reader's industry and ingenuity.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Elizabeth Barrett, later the wife of the poet Robert Browning, was born on 6 March, 1806 (died in 1861). Her father was a man of considerable wealth and eccentricity; at least he appears to have resented almost as much as Queen Elizabeth the idea of any one marrying. His daughter had a good education, some knowledge of Greek, and wrote verse early. In several of her most pleasing verses, such as "Little Ellie," and "Hector in the Garden," we hear echoes of the memories of her childhood. She translated from the Greek, and also wrote a kind of romantic ballads (not in the manner of the Border ballads) which had abundant life and movement. She took up the cause of children overworked in factories at an age when they should not have worked at all. Her health became deplorable, her life that of a valetudinarian, till, in 1846, Robert Browning married her and took her out of her father's sphere of influence. Thenceforth her health improved; at this time her fame and popularity as a poet of great variety and passion far exceeded those of the author of "Men and Women". Her sonnets, really original, though published as "From the Portuguese" were not so popular as her lyrics and romances, but her genius, somewhat too eager and careless, especially in her recklessness of correct rhymes, was in need of the formal restraints of the sonnet. Her "Casa Guidi Windows" (1851) and other poems displayed her enthusiasm for a free and united Italy; her "Aurora Leigh," a tendenz novel in verse, attracted much attention, if it does not bear the test of time so well as her briefer poems; her "Poems before Congress" were of somewhat temporary interest. Mrs. Browning, with Miss Rossetti, holds the highest place among the women-poets of England, but her Muse is neither trimly girdled nor neatly shod; and her manner not infrequently does injustice to the pity and passion of her sympathies, conceptions, and emotions.
Christina Rossetti.
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) as a poet resembled her brother as much as a woman who lived a somewhat fugitive and cloistered life, practising the rites of her religion and in the exercise of good works, could resemble an artist so unapt for self-control as Dante Rossetti. Both felt the same half-exotic influences of a family half-Italian; both shared the same early enthusiasm for mediaeval art, and there is a certain sameness in the colour and harmonies of their verse and in their use of words. In 1862 Miss Rossetti published, in brief, irregular rhymed lines, "Goblin Market," a tale of the affection of sisters dwelling in a rural England that marches with a country of fantastic malevolent elves, a species of fairy of her own invention. The whole effect is magical yet moral "which is strange," and the moral is not strained or didactic, but natural, and a great part of the charm of this delightful composition. "The Prince's Progress," in the same way, is suggested by the beautiful tale of "The Black Bull of Norroway," but the suggestion is remote and the bewitched Prince comes too late to his bride. The best lyrics of the author are singularly musical with an anticipation of some of Swinburne's effects, as in "Dreamland".