C30 



S\VINIU HNE. 



author, both M an artist and an a man, admitted that 

 in tin- Rejection of some of his subjects he bail been 

 injudicious and unfortunate. The outcry against 

 book and author was sn sudden, sharp. u 1 

 phatic, that his publishers, the Messrs. Moxon & 

 .i-.hdrew the book almost immediately from 

 circulation. It was reissued with little delay, how- 

 ;..i':-.:-her, at whose instance, and in 

 whoso behalf, Mr. Swinburne published a brief )- 

 ply to bis as-suilant-s, Xotes on 7Wi.< <nul AVriir, in 

 the ooane of which he says : " The book is dramat- 

 ic, many-sided, multifarious, and no utterance con- 

 tained therein can properly be assumed as the asser- 

 tion of the author's personal feeling or faith. . . . 

 If literature indeed is not to deal with tlio full 

 life of man and the whole nature of things, let i: 

 be oast aside with the rods and rattles of children. 

 Whether it affects to teach or to amuse, itis equally 

 trivial and contemptible to us ; only less BO than tlio 

 charge of immorality. Against how few really great 

 names has not this small and dirt-incrnsted pebble 

 been thrown. ... I know that belief in the 

 body was the secret of sculpture, and that n past ago 

 of ascetics could no more attempt or attain it than 

 the present age of hypocrites" 



Mr. Swinburne was not content to bo known and 

 criticised as a poet. He turned critic himself, and 

 .11 sorts of literary and artistic .subjects in 

 the current reviews. His prose work materially en- 

 hanced lii.s reputation in certain quarters, whilo 

 much of it also has been sharply criticised and even 

 ridiculed. 



Although the immediate descendant of two very 

 old and exclusive families of the Euglish aristocracy 

 himself barely without the pale of the titled aris- 

 y. and only through the operation of the Eng- 

 lish laws of primogeniture. Mr. Swinburne early 

 e<p-itised the most radical opinions politically, and 

 sought by his pen to promote the cause of republi- 

 canism in Europe. In A Song nf Italy he apos- 

 trophizes almost to apotheosis Garibaldi an. 1 Ma/.- 

 zini. His republican ardor and hopes for tlio future 

 found still further expression in the Ode on i.v /'. 

 rlaiiHiti-m iif the French RtpnbUc,Vlu fvi;/s before Sun- 

 rite, and the Note of an English Jiejtublican on the J/s- 

 tviti Gru." 



In 1871 Robert Buchanan, the poet, published in 



one of the reviews, under the assumed name of 



" Thomas Muitland," an article, "The Fleshly School 



:ry." This was aimed more especially at Mr. 



Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but in the acrimonious 



discussion which ensued Mr. Swinburne a ua:m 



personal friend of Rossetti's and classed with the 



Utter, by Mr. Buchanan, in the obnoxious "Fleshly 



I " became involved, and published a reply (to 



lehanan) entitled I'mlir the Microscope. In 



irse of this paper he also gave expression to 

 Borne of his opinions respecting American poets and 



!'>< and Whitman were singled out as de- 

 nerving of high commendation, but most of their 

 fellow-craftsmen in America were characterized us 

 "mocking birds," or, where really independent of 

 ni".ie|s, as "corn-crakes" because of the harshness 

 and worthlessnesH of their song. 



ili-'i* is a second classical drama. It is gen- 

 erally regarded as inferior to Atnlaiila. The \ 



'imrliilte llronli is a brochure full of enthnsi 

 and exupcd pruise of Miss Bronte, in which the gifted 

 author of Juiia Kifi-f and her sister Emily are rated 

 with Mrs. Browning, and far above George Eliot, 

 George Sand, and other women in the world of let- 

 tar*. A t'e-ir'* Lettert hi/ Mr*. Horace Manner* is 

 Mr. Swinburne's first and thus far his only effort 

 in tins field of prose fiction. 



Mr. Swinburne has shown a most remarkable 

 power of imitating the characteristic style of other 

 poets of various ages and countries. The Heptalogia 



was an anonymous imitation of Tennyson, Browning, 

 uml others ; himself included, the better todivertsus- 

 pieiou from him as the author. But though the 

 authorship in this cose did not remain undiscovered, 

 some work of this sort by Mr. [Swinburne has de- 

 ceived the very elect among the critics. Cliattetanl ; 

 Jliifltirrll ; and Mury Mnurt form, together, a dra- 

 matic trilogy on the Scotch Queen, whom Kwinhurno 

 condemns for reasons peculiarly his own. JUnrina 

 Faliero is certainly superior to Lord Byron's tragedy 

 of the same name. 



Swinburne's rightful place among the poets is tlio 

 subject of wide almost violent dispute. \V Idle some 

 regard him ft-s an unintelligible "langtmge-slinger " 

 an insatiable word-monger or ceding his 



poetic genius, deplore the sensuous tone of his 

 muse. A poet of acknowledged jiower has said that 

 in all his many volumes " ho has written no line that 

 lingers in the memory, has uttered nothing that re- 

 sembles a thought ;" which has been indorsed by a 

 reviewer in the sentence : "A severer criticism could 

 not be conceived and a truer one its author never 

 uttered." On the other hand, judges are cot wanting 

 who rate Swinburne not merely among the poets of 

 high rank, but who assign him a high position in 

 that select coterie. Among his defects may I/. 

 tioned, first, a fatal facility for the selection of un- 

 fortunate if not positively inartistic themes tin mes 

 that to a vast majority of cultured people are pin si- 

 cally or morally repulsive, if not both: second, an in- 

 ability to exercise true artistic restraint- extrava- 

 gance in the treatment of his subjects overdoing, 

 generally, in what ho says and in his way of .saving it : 

 third, a readiness to subordinate, if not actually to 

 sacrifice, sense to sound, to rate formal execution of 

 import than insight, theoutcome of which ten- 

 dency is to render his poetry often mere word-music 

 devoid of sufficient thought to vitalize it : fourth, a 

 pronenessto bo vague, indefinite, unintelligible nay 

 more, to bo at times positively inane. Beyond this, 

 severer critics assert that he is a man so wiapped in a 

 self-limited world that he is constitutionally incapa- 

 ble of broad human sympathies. This want of com- 

 munity of feeling with his fellows is shown by tho 

 slight tendency of his poetry to find lodgement in tho 

 minds and memories of men. "By necessity, pro- 

 clivity, delight, men quote," and from none more 

 than from the great writers of all time 

 r Biblical, classical, or modern yet mankind 

 are not given to quoting Swinburne. However 

 learnedly some men argue about him, however prone 

 some are to praise him, they are slow to quote him. 

 Prolific as his pen has been, it has added next to 

 nothing to tho deathless and divine in literature 

 which graves itself at once and indelibly on huiran 

 hearts and memories. And in proportion as this 

 ]K)int is well made, it would seem to argue some 

 vital defect in him us a man, and consequently as an 

 artist, which must ever exclude him from the circle 

 of tho worl-i nets. 



As for his merits, his champions aver that all his 

 work, prose as well as poetry, evinces a knowledge, 

 vast and varied, of the world's best lore; an eager 

 and passionate love of beauty ; an enthusiastic de- 

 votion to art for its own sake ; an impetuous, luxu- 

 riant, and wholly distinctive individuality of style; 

 a quickness to perceive and a readiness to praiso 

 everything in tho work of his fellows that seems to 

 him meritorious ; a lofty artistic hnuti-iir- an implicit 

 1" !i< f in himself \vhieli, however egotistic it appear 

 to the vulgar crowd, has always been, still remains, 

 and must ever continue a prime reipii.Mtc of (ienius. 



They call attention, in his verse, to his facile al- 

 literations, to his pleasant surprises in metre and 

 rhythm, to the originality and scope of his melodi- 

 ous variations ; to his curiously intricate stauzaio 

 forms, all singularly felicitous in their ever-recur- 



