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are of especial interest to the student of
Mrs. Browning's poetry, as giving, in connection with her judgment upon most English poets, her theory of the true nature of the poetic art. This theory, which is closely allied to the theory of the realists in painting, may be stated as follows: There is poetry wherever God is and the works of God are. There is as true poetry in man and whatever pertains to man, of whatsoever grade of society or degree of cultivation, as in the grandest objects of nature.
The poet must delineate what he sees and express what he feels.
As
Mrs. Browning herself afterward finely says in “
Aurora Leigh” :--
Never flinch,
But still, unscrupulously epic, catch
Upon the burning lava of a song,
The full-veined, heaving, double-breasted age,
That when the next shall come the men of that
May touch the impress with reverent hand and say,
Behold,--behold the paps we all have sucked.
...
This is living art,
Which thus presents and thus records true life.
And again, with reference to that part of the poet's office which has to do with the expression of his inner nature, she says:--
The artist's part is both to be and do,
Transfixing with a special, central power
The flat experience of the common man,
And turning outward with a sudden wrench,
Half agony, half ecstasy, the thing
He feels the inmost.
Describe what you see and tell what you feel, is, then, the sum of
Mrs. Browning's poetic creed.
We can but think that this theory of the poetic art leaves out of view one of its
