But the
first fact is this, that these epigrams of hers were never so true as
when they turned on one of the two or three pivots on which contemporary
Europe was really turning. She is by far the most European of all the
English poets of that age; all of them, even her own much greater
husband, look local beside her. Tennyson and the rest are nowhere. Take
any positive political fact, such as the final fall of Napoleon.
Tennyson wrote these profoundly foolish lines--
"He thought to quell the stubborn hearts of oak
Madman!"
as if the defeat of an English regiment were a violation of the laws of
Nature. Mrs. Browning knew no more facts about Napoleon, perhaps, than
Tennyson did; but she knew the truth. Her epigram on Napoleon's fall is
in one line
"And kings crept out again to feel the sun."
Talleyrand would have clapped his horrible old hands at that. Her
instinct about the statesman and the soldier was very like Jane Austen's
instinct for the gentleman and the man. It is not unnoticeable that as
Miss Austen spent most of her life in a village, Miss Barrett spent most
of her life on a sofa.
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