Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/179

Rh a practical English philantliropist; they appear to be introduced only to discredit the "Christian Socialism" of such men as Maurice, Charles Kingsley, and their compatriots. No such rabble as that present at the projected wedding in St. James's could have been gathered together within an English Church, nor could English gentlemen and gentlewomen have talked and acted as Mrs. Browning makes her dramatis personæ do. The poem leaves the impression on the mind of having been written by a great poet, but by a great poet whose knowledge of the world had been gained from books and not from actual contact with its men and women; not from personal experience of its daily toils and troubles, its hard-earned triumphs and undeserved defeats.

Of the artistic imperfections of Aurora Leigh much has been said and much could still be said. Of its halting metres; its long passages of pure prose; its pedantic allusions, and needless coarsenesses; its continual introduction (in an apparent reckless way) of names the generality of readers hold in reverential awe; of a fondness for repeating quaint and unusual words, and of many other blemishes the critics have already told the tale. For ourselves, we deem that when these imperfections—for imperfections they are—occur, they are either wilfully introduced by the poetess, or they are the result of hasty execution. Mrs. Browning should not have published her great work so rapidly; she should have retained it by her and have revised it carefully, instead of throwing it off in haste and then giving it to the world in still greater haste.

When all has, however, been said against Aurora Leigh that can be said, how grand a monument of genius it remains! What genuine bursts of poetry is