Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844

By the Actual's tension
Sped the arrow worthy
Of a pure ascension."

We have said that the lyrical effusions interspersed throughout the "Drama of Exile," are very slovenly and defective in point of rhyme. What can be worse than "Godhead" and "wooded," "treading" and "Eden," "glories" and "floorwise," "calmly" and "palm-tree," "atoms" and "fathoms," "accompted" and "trumpet," and a hundred others? What can be worse, do we ask? We answer that there is one species of rhyme which Miss Barrett is sometimes, though, we are happy to say, very rarely, guilty of, which is infinitely more reprehensible than any of these inaccuracies. We allude to the practice of affixing an r to the end of certain words, in order to make them rhyme with other words which terminate in that letter. Writers who are guilty of this atrocity are not merely to be condemned as bad rhymesters: they are to be blamed on the far more serious ground that they give the sanction and authority of print to one of the vilest vulgarisms which pollutes the oral language of certain provincial societies. What makes the practice so offensive in literary composition is the fact, that the barbarism is one which may sometimes be actually heard falling from living lips. But for this, it would be pardonable. We verily believe that Miss Barrett herself does not talk of "Laurar" and "Matildar;" we verily believe that she would consider any one who does so no fit associate for herself in point of manners or education: – yet she scruples not to make "Aceldama"(r) rhyme to "tamer," and "Onora"(r) rhyme to "o'er her." When we think of these things, we turn to the following "stage-direction" with which her "Drama of Exile" concludes – "There is a sound through the silence as of the falling tears of an angel." That angel must have been a distressed critic like ourselves.

Next to the "Drama of Exile," the longest poem in the collection is the composition entitled "A Vision of Poets." This poem is designed, says our authoress, "to indicate the necessary relations of genius to suffering and self-sacrifice." It is stamped throughout with the thoughtful earnestness of Miss Barrett's character, and is, on the whole, a very impressive performance. But it would have been more impressive still if it had been composed after less vicious models, or if Miss Barrett had trusted more to a style prompted by her own native powers, and less to the fantastical modes of phraseology which have been introduced into literature by certain inferior artists of this and the preceding generation. We cannot read it, however, without appreciating the fervour which stirs the soul of the authoress through all its depths, when she declares and upholds the sacred mission of the poet, and teaches him that he must embrace his destiny with gratitude and pride, even though the crown which encircles his living brows be one in which the thorns far out-number the laurel leaves. We shall grace our pages with a series of portraits, in which Miss Barrett sketches off first the true poets and then the pretenders. They certainly contain some good points, although many of her touches must be pronounced unsuccessful. Let Homer lead the van: —

"Here, Homer, with the broad suspense
Of thunderous brows, and lips intense
Of garrulous god-innocence.

"There, Shakspeare! on whose forehead climb
The crowns o' the world! Oh, eyes sublime —
With tears and laughters for all time!

"Here, Æschylus – the women swoon'd
To see so awful when he frown'd
As the gods did – he standeth crown'd.

"Euripides, with close and mild
Scholastic lips – that could be wild,
And laugh or sob out like a child

"Right in the classes. Sophocles,
With that king's look which down the trees,
Follow'd the dark effigies

"Of the lost Theban! Hesiod old,
Who somewhat blind, and deaf, and cold,
Cared most for gods and bulls! and bold

"Electric Pindar, quick as fear,
With race-dust on his checks, and clear,
Slant startled eyes that seem to hear

"The chariot rounding the last goal,
To hurtle past it in his soul!
And Sappho crown'd with aureole

"Of ebon curls on calmed brows —
O poet-woman! none forgoes
The leap, attaining the repose!

"Theocritus, with glittering locks,
Dropt sideway, as betwixt the rocks
He watch'd the visionary flocks!

"And Aristophanes! who took
The world with mirth, and laughter-struck
The hollow caves of Thought, and woke

"The infinite echoes hid in each.
And Virgil! shade of Mantuan beech
Did help the shade of bay to reach

"And knit around his forehead high! —
For his gods wore less majesty
Than his brown bees humm'd deathlessly.

"Lucretius – nobler than his mood!
Who dropp'd his plummet down the broad
Deep universe, and said 'No God,'

"Finding no bottom. He denied
Divinely the divine, and died
Chief poet on the Tiber-side,

"By grace of God. His face is stern,
As one compell'd, in spite of scorn,
To teach a truth he could not learn.

"And Ossian, dimly seen or guess'd!
Once counted greater than the rest,
When mountain-winds blew out his vest.

"And Spenser droop'd his dreaming head
(With languid sleep-smile you had said
From his own verse engendered)

"On Ariosto's, till they ran
Their locks in one! – The Italian
Shot nimbler heat of bolder man

"From his fine lids. And Dante stern
And sweet, whose spirit was an urn
For wine and milk pour'd out in turn.

"And Goethe – with that reaching eye
His soul reach'd out from far and high,
And fell from inner entity.

"And Schiller, with heroic front
Worthy of Plutarch's kiss upon't —
Too large for wreath of modern wont.

"Here Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim!
The shapes of suns and stars did swim
Like clouds on them, and granted him