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THf
tLQmia COUfcftay
A ieviewcr lias recently crowned Hie
name of Christina Rossetti as that of the
"greatest of woman poets.” As he makes
no reference to Sappho, it is possible he
would have us understand by this the
greatest of woman poets whose work has
been in English. Taking as his text “The
Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning”
and the “Life of Christina Rossetti,” the
reviewer enters into an interesting com
parison of the work of these two gifted
women, a comparison In which he rele
gates Mrs. Browning to the second place.
Tie says in the Quarterly Review:
"In Mrs. Browning the woman and the
poet were rarely far away the one from
the other, and were never wholly parted.
Not so with Chritina Rossetti. The wom
an breathes low in her writings; if she
raises her voice, it is in the character of
a saint or a mystic. There is a certain
aloofness in her poetry; the emotion in
it is of a more abstract character than
that which utters itself sometimes, in
deed, with too shrill a note—in the poems
of Mrs. Browning. It is as though, when in
the mood to sing, she betook herself to
some far-off domain, in the world, per
haps, yet not quite of it, where the pas
sions of the world, though strong, are not
stormy, where emotion, though it possess
the singer, may not master her. . . .
Her (Miss Rossetti's) outer life, as pic
tured in the biography, gives an impres
sion of monotony, of being bound down
to the level of the commonplace; but
there is nothing commonplace or mow •
onous in the poems. Quaint, often, in dic
tion, approaching occasionally to collo
quialism in phrase, the touch is always
sure and distinctive, the language, though
child-like sometimes, is never trivial.
Take, for example, these two stanzas
from ‘Bird or Beast’;
Did any beast come pushing
Through the thorny hedge
Into the thorny thistly world
Out from Eden's edge?
I think not a lion.
Thought his strength is such;
But an innocent loving lamb
May have done as much.
“The last stanza especially is wellnigh
prasaic. both in rhythm and in the choice
of words, and just misses, in fact, being
ridiculous; yet it is poetry, not prose, and
though almost fantastic in its extreme
simplicity, is not absurd. Pew writers'
could have rendered so quaint a fancy so
quaintly, but Christina Rossetti's
poems contain many instances of the
kind; and so strongly characteristic are
they of her individuality that one is
tempted to advance the seeming paradox
that it is in her least personal poems,
those in which symbolism and allegory
predominate, that we get the truest pre
sentment of her personality. ....
“Christina Rossetti is a woman poet
whose finest work is uncolored by her in
dividual experiences or opinions; and in
this, that her pnemv express her abstract
spiritual self, lies her greatest distinction.
This it is which gives her a higher place
in the poets’ kingdom than can be ac
corded to Mrs. Browning, whose work,
larger in volume, greater in scope, more
intellectually thoughtful than that of her
sister poet, has yet less originality of im
agination, and is lacking also in beauty
of form, the sense of which was a never-
failing element in all that Miss Rossetti
put forth. For in Mrs. Boowning, as the
woman is never quite submerged in the
artist, so the imaginative idea is con
stantly colored by the emotional impulse.
In her longest poem. “Aurora Leigh,’ we
are conscious throughout of the author's
point of view. Elizabeth Barrett Brown
ing speaks in the person of her heroine,
acts as she would have acted had she
been a man in the position of Romney
Leigh, feels as she would have felt had
she suffered the wrong suffered by Marian
Earle. And her attitude toward the
problems with which she deals is not dra
matically negative, but clearly manifest;
it is emphatically the attitude of the gen
erous woman, who, beginning to rellect
upon certain facts and inequalities of so
cial life, is stirred to emotion, keen, in
dignant. and somewhat sentimental, and
Who is deliberately defiant of the conven
tional standard of propriety of her day.
Mrs. Browning felt passionately, and the
passionate emotion characteristic of her
self and evident in her letters is charac
teristic also of her best work, forming
at once its greatest strength and the chief
element of its weakness. For intensity
of emotion may find full expression only
when the treatment of it is dramatic;
when it is lyrical-and Mrs. Browning's
poetry isgenerallylyrical in spirit, though
it is various in form—emotion, If it be not
bound fast to dignity by the strong bands
ot artistic restraint, tends to become ex
aggerated. This exaggeration of senti
ment into sentimentalism mars with its
weakness much of what tho poet made;
but in the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’
the woman and the poet would seem to be
fused in a combination which, in the re
sult, has the effect of an abstract person
ality. . . . Written out of the heart of
a, woman to the man she loved, the poet’s
soul informs them, raising love from ‘an
emotion to a motive,’ changing it from
a fire- that burns to a light that illumines,
subduing the wail of desire to the chant
of endurance. We seem to hear in these
sonnets something of the same note
which distinguishes the love poems of
Christina Rossetti, a note which forbids
tumult and defeats despair, a joy in love
which is concerned, not with the fulfil
ment of its cravings, hut with the realiz
ation of its finest capacities. Vet, in
these two lovers of Italy, the one with the
Italian blood in her veins preserves the
greater austerity; the south maintains
more constant restraint that the north.
Christina Rossetti’s work, indeed, is in
stinct with the quality, not critical so
much as clear-sighted, which intuitively
discerns and inevitably complies with the
requirements of the three graces of cre
ative achievement: proportion, treatment,
ami form. It is rare, this gift of discern
ment, especially rare among women,
whose creative work, as a rule, is the
outcome of something which they have
strongly felt or thought or realized, and
as strongly desire to express, the desire
for expression being constantly in ex
cess of the sense of form.”
MAJOR MARCHAND, FRANCE’S HERO.
Paris is intensely excited over the return of Major Marchand from his African
campaign. He is expected to reach tho city early in June. The Cercle Militaire will
hold a great military fete in his honor, the major having sent his acceptance of the in
vitation extended by the Cercle. Marchand is the hour’s hero in France.
Page 1.—Great Women Poets.
Page 2.—Lost Man’s LaneJ serial—Wash
ington as a Youth—One on Depew.
Fage 3.—Great South: That Lynching—
Georgia Slate Fair—Textile Interests—
Zeno Fitzpatrick, Sr.—Stock Raising in
North Carolina—President for One Day
—Maxims of Marriage.
Page 4.—Our Household: Our Own Af
fairs—Henry Timrod—Easy Way to
Wash—Our Letter Box—On Kissing.
Page 5.—Household, continued: “Till
Death Do Us Part.” two-part story—
In the Library Corner—American Salon
by Mrs. Gould—To Our Beloved House
hold-Summer Days —An Unfinished
Story.
Page 6.—Editorial: A New Friendship—
Old Folks in Other Lands—Warning to
Wall Street Men—The Change in Men’s
Clubs—Bill Arp’s Letter—Irish Wit-
Have We a National Literature?—
A Good Word for Nero—The Southern
Girl—Future of the Negro—Talked Too
Much.
Page 7.—Ex-Governor W. J. Northen—
Roses or Diamonds? short story.
Page S.—Our Boys and Girls: The Oddit
ies of Genius—Larry the Wanderer,
serial—Pessimism—Pointed Paragraphs,
Miscellany.
Page 9.—By Streams of Song—Three Eas
ter Sundays.
Page 10.—Confederate Vets’ Page: Beau
tiful Tributes—The Biggest Battalions—
A Daring Raider.
Pago 11.With Lee in Virginia, serial.
Page 12.—National Dangers, Dr. Tal-
mage's Sermon—Man Didn’t Know His
Wife—The Word Proposition.
WILLIAM T. STEAD.
Mr. W. T. Stoad, the famous English editor, has great faith in the coming disarma
ment conference. lie is on clos > friendly terms with the czar and says the conference
was suggested in good faith. Mr. Stead says that there will some day bo a confedera
tion of European states, modeled somewhat on the plan of the United States.