SWINBURNE AND THE "SPECTATOR."

OF all the "enfants terribles" of the Victorian age, Swinburne was perhaps the most obstreperous. Among his reproving elders sat the Spectator, censuring with the rest, indeed, but with a certain degree of insight. And it would now and again take the others aside and whisper " We must not, of course, say it in front of him; yet we fancy that the child has genius. Look, for instance, at this poem "—and would tentatively submit " The Sundew," or even " Faustine," for their approval. And as their interest grew, the Spectator would speak up for its protege before them all, and pat him proudly on the back.

They met his first sallies, however, with uncompromis- ing severity. These were The Queen Mother and Rosa- mond, two plays which they read through " with some difficulty," sceptical " that any criticism will help to improve Mr. Swinburne.... He has some talent, but it is decidedly not of a poetical kind ; and the language is painfully distorted, vague, elliptical, and bristling with harsh words."

Yet the Spectator soon forgot that Mr. Swinburne wrote " upon a strongly rooted bad principle " ; for in the same year (1862) it printed no fewer than seven of his poems, four of which are famous, and all of which are characteristic.

• In that year, too, the Spectator criticised Modern Love —" clever, meretricious, turbid pictures "—by George Meredith, whom the reviewer disposed of as " a man of some vigour and jaunty manners," but " without literary genius, taste or judgment," and " without any vestige of original thought or purpose which could excuse so unpleasant a subject."

Next week the editor received and published the following outburst from Swinburne :— " '62. June 7th.

MR. GEORGE MEREDITH'S MODERN LOVE.' [Letter to the Editor.] SIR,—I cannot resist asking the favour of admission for my protest against the article on Mr. Meredith's last volume of poems in the Spectator of May 24th. That I personally have for the writings, whether verse or prose, of Mr. Meredith a most sincere and deep admiration is no doubt a matter of infinitely small moment. I wish only, in default of a better, to appeal seriously on general grounds against this sort of criticism as applied to one of the leaders of English literature. To any fair attack Mr. Meredith's books of course lie as much open as another man's ; indeed, standing where he does, the very eminence of his post makes him perhaps more liable than a man of less well-earned fame to the periodical slings and arrows of publicity. Against such criticism xto one would have a right to appeal, whether for his own work or for another's. But the writer of the article in question blinks at stating the fact that he is dealing with no unfledged pretender. Any work of a man who has won his spurs, and fought his way to a place among the men of his time, must claim at least a grave consideration and respect. It would hardly be less absurd, in remarking on a poem by Mr. Meredith, to omit all reference to his previous work, and treat the present book as if its author had never tried his hand at such writing before, than to criticize the Legende des Siecles, or (coming to a nearer instance) the Idylls of the King, without taking into account the relative position of the great English or the greater French poet. On such a tone of criticism as this anyone who may chance to see or hear of it has a right to comment. " But even if the case were different, and the author were now at his starting-point, such a review of such a book is surely out of date. Praise or blame should be thoughtful, serious, careful, when applied to a work of such subtle strength, such depth of delicate power, such passionate and various beauty, as the leading poem. of Mr. Meredith's volume : in some points, as it seems to me (and in this opinion I know that I have weightier. judgments than my own to back me), a poem above the aim and beyond the reach of any but its author. Mr. Meredith is one of the three or four poets now alive whose work, perfect or imperfect, is always as noble in design as it is often faultless in result. The present critic falls foul of him for dealing with a deep and painful subject on which he has no conviction to express.' There are pulpits enough for all preachers in prose ; the business of verse-writing is hardly to express convictions ; and if some poetry, not without merit of its kind, has at times dealt in dogmatic morality, it is all the worse and all the weaker for that. As to subject, it is too much to expect that all schools of poetry are to be for ever subordinate to the one just now so much in request with us, whose scope of sight is bounded by the nursery walls ; that all Muses are to bow down before her who babbles, with lips yet warm from their pristine pap, after the dangling delights of a child's coral ; and jingles with flaccid fingers one knows not whether a jester's or a baby's bells. We have not too many writers capable of duly handling a subject worth the serious interest of men. As to execu- tion, take almost any sonnet at random out of the series, and let any man qualified to judge for himself of metre, choice of expression, and splendid language, decide on its claims. And, after all, the test will be unfair, except as regards metrical or pictorial merit ; every section of this great progressive poem being connected with the other by links of the finest and most studied workmanship. Take, for example, that noble sonnet beginning We saw the swallows gathering in the skies,' a more perfect piece of writing no man alive has ever turned out ; witness these three lines, the grandest perhaps of the book And in the largeness of the evening earth, Our spirit grew as we walked side by side ; The hour became her husband, and my bride ' ; but in transcription it must lose the colour and effect given it by its place in the series ; the grave and tender beauty, which makes it at once a bridge and a resting- place between the admirable poems of passion it falls among. As specimens of pure power, and depth of imagination at once intricate and vigorous, take the two sonnets on the rose ; that other beginning :— I am not of those miserable males Who sniff at vice, and daring not to snap, Do therefore hope for heaven.'

And again that earlier one :— All other joys of life he strove to warm.

Of the shorter poems which give character to the book I haVe not space to speak here ; and as the critic has omitted noticing the most valuable and important (such as The Beggar's Soliloquy,' and ' The Old Chartist,' equal to Beranger for completeness of effect and exquisite justice of style, but noticeable for a thorough dramatic insight, which Bellinger missed through his personal passion and partialities), there is no present need to go into the matter. I ask you to admit this protest simply out of justice to the book in hand, believing as I do that it expresses the deliberate unbiassed opinion of a sufficient number of readers to warrant the insertion of it, and leaving to your consideration rather their claims to a fair hearing than those of the book's author to a revised judgment. A poet of Mr. Meredith's rank can no more be profited by the advocacy of his admirers than injured by the rash or partial attack of his critics.

A. C. SWINBURNE."

• [We insert this gladly, from personal respect to our correspondent, whose opinion on any poetical question should be worth more than most men's, but must reiterate that it was not after a hasty, but the most careful study of Mr. Meredith's book that we passed our judgment upon it, a judgment which would not have been so severe had not Mr. Meredith earned a right to be judged as a man of some mark. We do not know to what school Mr. Swinburne may allude as writing the childish-moral poetry. No eminent poets of the kind are known to us. —En. Spectator.] But the Editor's faith in his contributor was shaken only, not broken. And he proved his confidence by entrusting him with the review of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (1862). In this review Swinburne brandished before the world his belief in i he independence of ethics and aesthetics—a doctrine only darkly hinted at in his defence of Modern Love. He complains that " a French poet of the present day is expected to believe in philanthropy ; and the critical students seem to have pretty well forgotten that a poet's business is presumably to write good verses, and by no means to redeem the age." He rails against " This impotent appetite for meddling in quite extraneous matters," and applauds " the courage and sense of a man who at such a time ventures to confess and act on the conviction that the art of poetry has absolutely nothing to do with didactic matter at all. . . . His perfect workmanship makes every subject admirable and respectable." But there are those who must be satisfied that the medicinal powder is really hidden in their jam, before they can whole- heartedly enjoy its delicious flavour ; and these Swin- burne assures that " there is not one poem which has not a distinct and vivid background of morality to it ; —only, the background is not out of drawing."

In 1865 appeared Atalanta in Calydon ; and while convinced " that this is full of true poetry," the reviewer was puzzled to decide " its real place in modem poetry," and he could not help feeling that " there is usually something a little perverse in the mind of a man who must go back to Greece." He lamented the fact that " the young ladies of the chorus believe in nothing in particular," and that therefore the choruses are " beautiful but chaotic." Finally, he was " convinced that the Greek form is a mistake."

In the same year the reviewer of Chastelard affirmed that " Mr. Swinburne's poetry runs clearer year by year," and that " no one with a grain of feeling for poetry can doubt that it is both remarkably original, and luxuriant with a luxuriance rare even among true poets." Yet this very luxuriance was too exotically profuse for him •; for, says he, " there is so little relief to the luscious voluptuousness of passion that we lay the drama down in utter weariness."

The year 1866, in which he published Poems and Ballads, was the crisis of Swinburne's career; and though grieved by his escapades, the Spectator did not altogether fail him. The book had at once met with such an outcry from offended modesty that SwinbUrne had withdrawn it ; and the Spectator reviewed the reissue, together with " a very foolish and furious pamphlet against his critics, in which the clever, overstrong, shrieking words express nothing but weakness; white rage, studied ferocity, immeasurable thirst for ven- geance."

The Spectator had not criticized- the original volume, and now it admits that this is " a sad descent from the imaginative and moral level even of Chastelard," in which play it had not detected " this canker of morbid life." But the editor is uncomfortable ; for had not seven of these " Poems and Ballads," including the very questionable " Faustine," appeared first in his paper four years ago ? • He decidei to put a bold face on it—but surely not a bold bad face ?—and hazards :- " Faustine ' seems to us a picture of some grandeur. . . . We do not know why it is not just as much the work of a poet to paint such forms of evil as those other forms which are always the subject of tragedy." And then the Spectator blows its counterblast to Swinburne's aesthetic theory, declaring that " the great law, aesthetic and moral, is only this—that evil be painted as evil, and not disguised as good." It is through defiance of this golden rule, and because of " a spurious emphasis to the most morbid elements of sensual feeling . . that his last volume appears so unmanly, so unworthy, and so impure."

" All the horrid savagery of lust runs through poem after poem, till "—once again !—" we lay down the volume with positive loathing." And to Swinburne's feeble plea that " Shelley has written some things as liable to criticism as his own," the Spectator drily replies, " No doubt. Shelley's poetry has a diseased element in it that crops out not infrequently."

From henceforth, though many might still look askance at him, no one could dispute Swinburne's high estate as a poet. He no longer needed either the encouragement or the chiding of his old friend. But his admirers to-day owe their thanks to the Spectator for its enterprising hospitality to Swinburne at the outset of his career. And they must remember that though the Spectator's reviewers were continually laying down Swinburne's works with disgust, and criticizing them somewhat indiscriminately, yet it was creditable of them, at that date, to read the scandalous stuff at all, and to praise the beauties to which no prejudice could blind them.

K. S. LEAF,