RECENT WORKS SUITABLE FOR BOOK-SOCIETIES. The Gospel of St. John; a Series of Discourses. By Frederick Denison Maurice, M.A. Macmillan. [This volume has only just come into our hands; but we can even now say that it is full of characteristic beauty and insight.] Mediæval Philosophy, between the 4th and 14th centuries. By Rev. F. D. Maurice. Griffin and Co. [Something much more than a "Manual for the use of Students." Mr. Maurice does not carefully sketch systems; but gives at a few points some living insight into the deeper thoughts that worked in the hearts of the greatest medieval philosophers. More than any book we know it realises the intellectual problems of the middle ages.] The Office and Work of Universities. By J. H. Newman, D.D. Longman and Co. [With all the charm that belongs to most of its author's writings, this book does not always adhere very closely to its subject. It ranges away from the history of Universities into universal history. It is strong in its Roman-Catholic virtue of "detachment" from all but ecclesiastical interests.] Lectures on Shakspere and Milton. By S. T. Coleridge. With a List of all the Ms. Emendations in Mr. Collier's folio, 1632; and an Introductory Preface, by J. Payne Collier, Esq. Chapman and Hall. [This is far the pleasantest literary product of the present quarter. Milton's name, however, has no business in the title; all the lectures upon him having been lost. The recovery of these lectures is the recovery of a little of Coleridge's very best criticism. Mr. Collier's recollections of his conversation are good; and the complete list of the "emendations" has long been wanted.] The English of Shakspere illustrated, in a Philological Commentary on his Julius Cæsar. By George L. Craik. Chapman and Hall. [A very good unpretending book. It professes to be meant only for the unlearned; but few who have not devoted much time to the philological study of English, and of Shakspere's English, will find it unprofitable reading.] Vol. 2. Critical and Imaginative Essays. By Professor Wilson. Blackwood. Aurora Leigh. By Elizabeth B. Browning. Chapman and Hall. [A modern novel in verse, in which the full riches of the author's genius are employed in illustrating the capacities of women, and the existing conditions of their life in England. Extreme things find an extreme utterance; and vigour sometimes degenerates into spasm.] Dramatic Scenes. By Barry Cornwall. Chapman and Hall. [This is a handsome and lavishly illustrated drawingroom-table book. Some of the illustrations by Birket Foster are very pretty and even poetical. The new poems are not such as will add to Mr. Procter's reputation as a poet.] Poetry from Life. By C. M. K. Smith, Elder, and Co. [Many of these verses have a certain quiet beauty, though they are very deficient in strength. The little flower-vignettes at the end of each piece are remarkably fresh and pretty.] Modern Manicheism, Labour's Utopia, and other Poems. J. W. Parker. [There is a distinctly intellectual cast about most of these poems, and now and then considerable vigour. The poems from which the volume is named seem to be the poorest.] Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria. By Mrs. G. P. Everett Green. Richard Bentley. [An exceedingly valuable book. It is the fruit of much labour in Queens of Scotland. By Agnes Strickland. Vol. 6. wood. The Girlhood of Catherine de Medici. By T. Adolphus Trollope. Chapman and Hall. [The work of an accomplished student of Italian history. The nominal subject is rather a peg, on which to hang a disquisition on the times, than the author's real theme.] Memorials of James Watt. By George Williamson, Esq. Printed for the Watt Club. Constable. [These memorials have an antiquarian cast; and will be especially welcome to the inhabitants of Greenock, the birthplace of Watt. Nevertheless they have much general interest; and the fine engravings of Watt, and other valuable plates which enrich the book, contribute to make it a work of great value. The memoir on the application of steam-power to the navigation of the Clyde is new and curious.] Life and Correspondence of Sir John Malcolm. By J. W. Kaye. Smith, Elder, and Co. [One of the most interesting of the recent biographies of our great Indian statesmen. Malcolm has a buoyancy of nature which gives perhaps more personal interest to his life than to that of either Munro or Metcalfe; and there is rather more variety in the scene of action.] Life of Cornelius Agrippa. By Henry Morley. Chapman and Hall. [A book founded on careful and conscientious investigation: it has been less thoroughly worked up, however, into its author's imagination than his earlier biographies.] The Discovery of the North-West Passage. By Captain R. M'Clure. Edited by Commander Sherard Osborn. Longman and Co. [A clear and spirited narrative. Its fault, if any, lies in drawing attention too frequently to a gallantry that is sufficiently conspicuous to every reader on a bare recital of the facts.] Arctic Explorations. By Dr. Kane. 2 vols. Trübner. Later Biblical Researches in Palestine and the adjacent Regions. By Edward Robinson, D.D., LL.D. John Murray. [Travels of interest, but given in needless and wearisome detail.] Southern Africa. By F. Fleming. Hall and Co. Letters from the Seat of War. By a Staff-Officer. Murray. Ancient India. By Mrs. Speir. Smith, Elder, and Co. [A very good book; the foundation is laid in real and solid knowledge; the style is tasteful; and the book is beautifully illus trated and got up.] Twelve Months with the Bashi-Bazouks. By Edward Money, Lieut.Col. Imperial Ottoman Army, and late Captain Bashi-Bazouks. Chapman and Hall. [A very amusing book, written by one who had good opportunities for observing and a pleasant faculty for recording.] Pen and Pencil Pictures. By Thomas Hood. Hurst and Blackett. [There is humour and fancy in this book, though it is deficient in intensity for a young man's first effort. There is a little tendency to the manufacture of fun and sentiment.] Florence Templar. Smith, Elder, and Co. [Graceful and very interesting, with considerable artistic skill. Like so many other recent novels, it is life seen entirely from one point of view-painted on the camera-obscura of a woman's mind; but the observing medium is in this case clearly a delicate and thoughtful one.] Ivors. By the Author of "Amy Herbert," &c. Longman and Co. [Miss Sewell's stories are too moral and ecclesiastical in mould for perfect nature or perfect grace. We are tired of her everrepeated Christian mothers. This tale, however, has rather more variety, and perhaps less divinity.] Tender and True. By the Author of "Clara Morison." 2 vols. Smith, Elder, and Co. [The merit of this tale lies in a grave quiet simplicity of tone. It is more agreeable reading than many more pretentious novels.] Kathie Brande: The Fireside History of a Quiet Life. By Holme Lee. Smith, Elder, and Co. [Grave and quiet, as it professes to be; but able and characteristic writing, and interesting reading.] Kate Coventry. By G. J. Whyte Melville. John W. Parker and Son. [This story is a reprint from Fraser's Magazine. It appears to be decidedly clever; it is unquestionably very fast.] Round the Fire; Six Stories (for Children). Smith, Elder, and Co. [Simple, and very interesting for children.] THE NATIONAL REVIEW. APRIL 1857. ART. I.-AURORA LEIGH. Aurora Leigh. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning. London: Chapman and Hall. 1857. Poems. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Fourth Edition. 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall. 1856. Ir is a rash and futile effort of criticism to limit the forms in which poetic conception is to embody itself. The criticism of artistic forms is the science of an art. It measures a world which is always growing; and its dry system is at any moment liable to be burst asunder by the vital energy of the life to which it professes to assign its appropriate framework. Its work is the same as that of the lawyer, who, having reduced a medley of judicial decisions to an ex-post-facto "principle," as he fondly calls it, is suddenly called on to make room in it for a new decision in the Exchequer Chamber. For the poet is greater than the critic; and when the latter says, "thus far shalt thou come, and no farther," he stands like the flattered king upon the sands, and every new wave washes the ground from under his feet. So, too, of the distinctions between prose and poetry, the discussion of which is but a branch of the same school of inquiry. It is idle to attempt to assign them beforehand their respective boundaries. To use one of Mrs. Browning's metaphors with as much boldness and as little appropriateness as she herself is apt to employ them, they "Play at leap-frog over the god Term." That certain rules of composition sustain themselves at all, is due to the fact, that creative genius of a high order is not impatient of forms; but rather loves, on the contrary, to have certain limits No. VIII. APRIL 1857. defined for it, and to be freed to some extent from "the weight of too much liberty." Shakespeare did not fret because tragedies are limited to five acts, nor Milton quarrel with the formal conditions of an epic poem. Still, art is free; and when it chooses to break through old conditions which have been considered essential, and assume fresh forms, the new work vindicates or condemns itself. If it recommend itself to that ultimate human judgment with which the verdict lies, it takes its place in spite of all canons to the contrary; if not, it sinks into obscurity, or, if it lives at all, it is because some inner worth outweighs the faultiness and unfitness of the form in which it is embodied. When, therefore, we say that Mrs. Browning has to some extent misconceived the sphere of verse in her novel of Aurora Leigh, and embarrassed herself with details of incident too complex for the rhythmical vehicle of expression, we make the assertion with as much modesty as a critic is capable of, and with a due consciousness that our conclusions are liable to be upset by any poet who chooses to produce a great and harmonious poem under conditions which we have pronounced to be ill adapted to his art. There is this strong fact, however, against the attempt to clothe the modern novel in verse, that verse was not the natural and spontaneous mode of expression which that kind of literature assumed. In all its stages of development, up to its present complex form, in which it fuses into a homogeneous new mould the old distinctions of epic and dramatic, it has always been in prose that its many gifted masters have found the medium for their utterance. At this day, to attempt to translate it into verse seems to us like an attempt to imitate in sculpture the "Transfiguration" of Raphael, or the "Blind Fiddler" of Wilkie. It does not follow, because verse is the highest instrument of expression, and finds a voice more ample and perfect than any other for the passion both of the imagination and the heart, that it has any claim in itself beyond this very fact of its being such true expression, or that you gain any thing by employing it for its own sake. It seems to us a decided loss of power to attempt to give a rhythmical form to the varied narration, the detailed conversation, and the minute and full-length representations of the modern conditions of social and individual life, which have already been so ably and so fully embodied in prose forms. We should go farther than to say merely that verse wants pliancy to adapt itself to those fine ramifications of external observation to which we have become accustomed, or that the contrast is too immediate between the every-day forms of speech which we are in the habit of using, and the same reproduced with a rhythmic cadence; we urge that there are many things |