Victorian Poetry

JOSEPH BRISTOW

to legitimate how and why Marian must not marry Romney. By the end of
the poem Romney's "phalanstery" has been razed to the ground, the flames
leaving him blind. But this literal lack of sight converts him to Aurora's
vatic perspective. "Fourier's void," he finally concedes (IX. 868). Such
words give Aurora her cue to reiterate how "The man, most man, / Works
best for men .../... gets his manhood plainest from his soul" (IX. 880).
As a result, her poetic vocation turns out to be her romantic fulfillment,
triumphant over his reformist designs.
Barrett Browning herself never endured such a tumultuous courtship.
Early in her intense correspondence with Robert Browning (which led to
their clandestine marriage in September 1846), she celebrated their shared
respect for Carlyle: "the great teacher of the age... who is also yours &
mine." 33 "He fills," she added, "the office of a poet - does he not?" Even
though Robert Browning at times expressed misgivings about Carlyle's
outbursts (he felt that "Shooting Niagara" resembled a "grin through a
horse-collar" - in other words, a bad joke), 34 he reproduced the sage's
teachings about poetry, most explicitly in his "Essay on Shelley" (1852). In
his youth, he emulated Shelley to the point that he professed, like his idol,
atheism. But soon afterward the adult Robert Browning recovered his faith
to espouse a distinctly religious model of poetry. In his essay, he examines
the relative merits - ones that Hallam and Mill analyzed twenty years
before - between two types of poet. He begins by detailing the limited gifts
of the "objective poet": "one whose endeavour has been to reproduce
things external," and whose insights enhance the "average mind." 35
Altogether greater is the "subjective poet," the "seer" whose work stands
not in reference to "the many below" but to "the supreme Intelligence
which apprehends all things in their absolute truth" (I, 1002). The
"subjective poet" "struggle[s]" toward "[n]ot what man sees, but what God
sees - the Ideas of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine
Hand." Such reasoning provides the basis of his belief that "had Shelley
lived he would have finally ranged himself with the Christians" (I, 1009).
Although Robert Browning does not say it, one imagines that reading
Carlyle's essays would have finally disabused Shelley of "mistaking
Churchdom for Christianity, and for marriage... the law of sexual
oppression," ensuring that the radical poet focused his attention on "the
Divine" (I, 1010) rather than the people.

IV

To conclude this chapter, I want to look briefly at two contrasting responses
to the models that critics and writers put forward to secure a place for

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