THE POETRY OF SWINBURNE. 3 



Bothwell we find Mary Stuart, 1881, ' Marino Faliero,' 1885, and 

 ' Locrine,' 1887. In all there are ten plays in the six thick volumes 

 of his collected poetry. Only one of them, Locrine, has ever been 

 put on the stage, and, as an eminent critic who was present on the 

 occasion has said, it was not so unsuccessful as one might have 

 expected. The plays are written to be read, not to be acted, and 

 show not the faintest trace of being influenced by the modern realist 

 school. Of course these last thirty years of the poet's life were not 

 given solely to the drama. Indeed the volume of his lyrical poetry 

 written since 1874 is as great as the whole production of many of 

 our English poets. In addition to these hastily enumerated plays 

 and lyrics there is one long epic, Tristram of Lyonesse, a poem that 

 has many short passages of singular beauty but is woefully lacking 

 in interest as a story. 



One hesitates to say anything that will seem discordant with 

 the general praise of the dead poet, especially since it was he who 

 said, ' I have never been able to see what should attract men to the 

 profession of criticism but the noble pleasure of praising.' And yet 

 one must point out that no poet has done more to divorce poetry 

 from life and from the respect of the ordinary man. This is due, I 

 think, to two causes, to Swinburne's amazing detachment from the 

 ordinary interests of life and to his conception of what constitutes 

 great poetry. 



His detachment from the ordinary interests of life is the result 

 of his temperament and circumstances, and still more of his associa- 

 tion with the pre-Raphaelite group, especially with Morris and Ros- 

 setti. Perhaps his early recognition and present reputation are also 

 to some extent the result of that association, for one has only to look 

 over old files of the ' Athenaeum ' to see how a small group of pre- 

 Raphaelites, forming what a cynic might call a Mutual Admiration 

 Society, Limited, practically controlled its literary judgments from 

 1865 on, and persistently praised each other's work. 



His theory of poetry was a natural outcome of this association 

 and of his own temperament. In his essay on Wordsworth and 

 Byron he holds " that the two primary and essential qualities of 

 poetry are imagination and harmony ; that where these qualities are 

 wanting there can be no poetry, properly so called ; and that where 

 these qualities are perceptible in the highest degree, there, even 

 though they should be unaccompanied and unsupported by any other 

 great quality whatever — even though the ethical or critical faculty 



