style, so laboriously exact that it is considered a mark of greater skill to translate a plain thought into some involved phrase resembling the Greek, than to express it in a line of forcible English. The heroic couplet has been discarded, and has been replaced either by blank verse scientifically precise, and not unlike the iambic in its pauses, or by a revival of the decasyllabic metre, as it was first used by Chaucer, but with even more than its rudimentary incoherence. Such, as it appears to us, is the double process that has long been separating the English poets from the thought and language of their country. The phase of literary poetry has, we think, received its fullest expression in the school of writers whose works we now propose to examine. We call them a school, because, though differing from each other in their choice of subjects and in their style, a common antipathy to society has produced in them a certain community of perception, and even occasional resemblances of language. An atmosphere of what is called materialistic feeling pervades the poetry of all three. Atheism, which is quietly avowed by one, is passionately professed by another, not as the supplanter of superstition, but as the rival of Christianity. Love is a favourite theme in their works, but the word has an esoteric signification; the objects of their devotion resemble not so much the sainted lady of Dante, or the honoured mistress of Lovelace, as the models of the painter's studio. Finally, the inspiration of all three has a literary source, for while two professedly revive the practice of ancient masters, the third, though dealing with contemporary interests, expresses himself in a borrowed style, which gives his verse all the ring of ancient rhetoric. Mr. Swinburne is already known as the author of several works, notably ‘Atalanta in Calydon,' and 'Poems and Ballads.' The former is a reproduction of Greek drama, with ingenious imitations of the original language, and an extraordinary variety of melodious and flowing metres. The latter is even more remarkable for the unprecedented dexterity of its versification. This volume contains many poems marked by an uncleanness of fancy, not the less pernicious because it is exercised on such remote themes as a love-fragment of Sappho, an extinct type of Roman lust, and the statue of the Hermaphrodite in the Louvre. But there are besides a number of pieces framed upon mediæval types, in which the feeling of the originals is caught with a precision that reveals an imitative faculty of the highest order. In his latest work, entitled 'Songs before Sunrise,' the author takes a serious farewell of the remote themes which had once attracted attracted him, and announces himself as the poetical apostle of the Universal Republic. While we are quite prepared to congratulate Mr. Swinburne upon the more manly tone he has adopted, we cannot say that we think he has at present shown the qualities of a great political poet. In the first place, he scarcely appears to us fortunate in his theme. That the cause of the Revolution could stimulate poetical fancy to high enthusiasm is sufficiently proved by the poetry of Shelley. But the themes that fired the enthusiasm of that unique genius were the downfall of dynasties, the overthrow of superstition, the regeneration of the human race. Such was the direction which the spirit of destruction at first took, and such are the objects over which the fancy of Mr. Swinburne still broods, but such is no longer the life of the Revolutionary cause. It is not now the destruction of empires, with which the most advanced apostles of Revolution are really concerned, but the organisation of labour against capital, and the confiscation of property. This may be a more practical scheme than that of the old French philosophers, yet it would scarcely have roused the enthusiasm of Shelley. All that is left of the old republican faith is its phraseology. Liberty, fraternity, equality, are as much as ever the party catchwords; the months are still called by their Revolutionary names; the Bible is still perverted and parodied according to the old traditions, except that, while Camille Desmoulins spoke of 'le bon sansculotte Jesus,' the modern Communist speaks of Marat as a Messiah. Were the qualifications for a political poet nothing but the ability to decorate a party dialect, no more fitting representative than Mr. Swinburne could be found. To an unequalled command of metre he adds a faultless instinct as to the capacity of a phrase, or even of an idea, for the purposes of metrical expression, and an equal skill in transplanting, without any appearance of effort, the old flowers of rhetoric into his own style. These are great gifts, but they cannot cover the absence of that strong expression of genuine conviction which is demanded by the subject which Mr. Swinburne attempts. We cannot estimate his qualities better than by comparing him with the poet whom above all others he admires. It is clearly his belief that he has received his poetical torch from the hand of Shelley, as Shelley from the hand of Milton, yet we think his genius has scarcely anything in common with either of these poets. The mind of Shelley, to use his own words once more, was 'nourished on musical thoughts,' which he instinctively clothed in appropriate language. Mr. Swinburne's mind has been nourished on musical metres, to which he adapts thoughts and words as they appear appear conformable. Shelley's atheism is rarely thrust into prominence; his leading thought is always the golden future of mankind, and his assaults are directed against what he considered superstition as the hindrance to the ultimate happiness of the race. Yet, whenever he attacks Christianity, his style is marked by an almost appalling plainness, which is too repulsive for quotation. But if any one who is curious on the subject will compare Shelley's lines, beginning O that the free would stamp the impious name' with those of Mr. Swinburne's * Thou madest man in the garden; thou temptedst man and he fell ’— he will be struck with the difference between the two poets. There is something frightful to the ears of Christians in the energy of Shelley's invective, but there can be no doubt of the earnest conviction of the writer. Mr. Swinburne's words are in themselves more horrible than Shelley's; but the expression of the passage is too fluent for strong feeling; we detect also that the rhetoric is borrowed partly from the Hebrew prophets, partly from the English Litany. We have a shrewd suspicion that Mr. Swinburne formed his style before he elaborated his opinions. Nor is this the only deduction to be made from the force of the passage; for we have already been told— 'God, if a God there be, is the spirit of men, which is Man.' What, then, is the meaning of all this vapouring against a Being who is believed to be a nonentity? It is simply an invective against the idea of God, or, to speak more plainly, against the primary instincts of the society that holds the insulted belief. Such trivial tricks of rhetoric betray a want of common sense beyond what can be attributed to Shelley. They fail even to excite the feeling that was intended; for, instead of being astounded at the poet's blasphemous daring, the reader is disgusted at his shameless indecency. Mr. Swinburne might have remembered that Shelley was wise enough to suppress the publication of 'Queen Mab.' Shelley perceived that atheism, being mere negation, was incapable of being exalted into a creed; but Mr. Swinburne, caught with the abstract idea, is determined to embellish it, and, not content with invectives against Christianity, parades, by way of contrast, a worship of his own. Hertha, an embodiment of Heraclitus's doctrine of the identity of contraries; Isis, or the Earth, the ghost of God, the mother uncreated;' and a certain 'Mater Triumphalis' (Mr. Swinburne's deities are always femiVol. 132.- No. 263. F nine), nine), such are the empty abstractions before which he literally prostrates himself with an air of religious fervour. These theatrical postures are so strangely blended with expressions of passionate conviction, that in remarking on the attacks which, for the sake of his goddesses, as it appears, Mr. Swinburne makes on the Christian religion, we are in doubt whether to blame him most for his want of decency or want of sense. In the more purely political poems, the same stage effects are repeated, with the same effort to compensate for deficiencies of feeling by exuberance of language. Though the different odes in the volume are apparently far more definite in their scope than the visionary flights of Shelley, the thought expressed in them is really much more indistinct. It appears to us that, with a few alterations, the Ode on the Cretan Revolt' might serve equally well for one on the Liberation of Italy, or for a future uprising in Ireland. There is, indeed, no lack of perfervid protestation. The different nations are appealed to in amorous language, but the constant intrusion of the poet's personal concern into his poems seems to us less passionate than impertinent. Take, for instance, these lines upon Italy : 'O sweetest, fairest, first, O flower, when times were worst, Thou hadst no strife wherein we had no share! Have not our hearts held close, Kept fast the whole world's rose? Have we not worn thee at heart whom none would wear?' Were this the composition of an Italian patriot, we should certainly blame his effeminate taste in comparing his country to a flower, but we should accept the feeling of the passage as genuine. Coming, however, from an Englishman, a mere wellwisher of Italian unity, the words are sheer nonsense. We are, therefore, of opinion, on the whole, that Mr. Swinburne has chosen his themes not so much under the influence of political enthusiasm as from a keen literary perception of the advantages they offered to his peculiar rhetoric. And, viewing him as a master of metre alone, it is impossible to admire too much the taste that has led him to perceive, and the tact with which he has applied, the poetical resources of the religion which he so grossly assails. The solemn supplications of the English Litany are transferred to the nations of Europe in the appeal to their mother Earth. Imagery, borrowed from the Crucifixion, the Burial, the Resurrection, is applied to the revival of Italy, while France is represented under the character of the repentant Magdalen. No praise, we think, can be too high for the metrical faculty that has discovered a musical modulation in the simple words 'Therefore Therefore thy sins, which are many, are forgiven thee, Of the arts of rhetoric, on the other hand, which extend beyond artifices of style, Mr. Swinburne knows little. He describes himself not inaptly, when he says I have no spirit of skill with equal fingers, At sign to sharpen or to slacken strings.' His verse is always pitched in the highest key. With the use of contrast and relief he is unacquainted, and of exaggeration he knows enough only to abuse it. Exaggeration is, doubtless, a legitimate resource of poetry. Thus it is flattery, but poetical flattery, when Virgil, at the opening of the Georgics,' raises Augustus by anticipation among the stars. Yet, even when applied to the great and famous, there is danger of such complimentary poetry passing into the ridiculous; and the keen-witted Sylla paid a poet who had composed an ode in his honour not to recite it. Far more perilous is it when it is employed to exalt persons of little distinction, or is exchanged between members of a mutual admiration society. In a poem, called 'Blessed among Women,' Mr. Swinburne addresses the Signora Cairoli as the superior of the Virgin Mary. Her claims to this position rest on the fact that four of her sons perished in the revolutionary crusade against Rome: 'Four times art thou blest, On whose most holy breast Four times a godlike soldier-saviour hung; Given to be sacrificed, To the same cross as the same bosom clung.' The poem is in a perfectly serious strain; and as Mr. Swinburne seems to have no suspicion that this passage is offensively profane, it is, perhaps, no wonder that he does not see it is ridiculous. His poems do not aim at terseness, and many of them run to an inexcusable length through their iteration and diffuseness. So ignorant is he of the value of conciseness, that he fails to perceive that the point of Byron's inscription, Cor Cordium,' on the tomb of Shelley lies in its brevity, and expands it into a sonnet, in which the following interjections occur in the space of nine lines: "O heart of hearts, the chalice of love's fire! O wonderful and perfect heart! O heavenly heart! O heart whose beating blood was running song!' |