at the same time raw in experience and unripe in judgment. Open, sympathetic, and generous natures, thirsting to enjoy everything that is fresh and stimulating in literature, and anxious to enrich their minds from all legitimate sources, would welcome Mr. Swinburne's lighter, descriptive, and lyrical pieces; and would naturally be disposed therefore to believe that the obscure conceptions and suggestions of his more serious and passionate moods might embody profound truths and valuable experiences, the result of earnest meditation and matured thought. Those who are not accustomed to look carefully into the operative principles and pervading motives of a poet's work may easily be mistaken as to its real drift and deeper meaning. And while we quite acquit Mr. Swinburne of being intentionally obscure, he nevertheless often is so, and many of the oracular utterances of his later volumes will not be intelligible to half his readers. It will be a service, therefore, to them if we attempt to point out and illustrate in some detail the leading principles of Mr. Swinburne's muse as exemplified in the main body of his recent poetry.

Although we are by no means indifferent to moral considerations, it is on literary and artistic rather than on moral grounds that we purpose judging Mr. Swinburne and his latest work. This is the standard by which he himself claims to be tried; and we are quite willing to admit the claim and accept the challenge he gives to his critics. In the last paragraph of his published defence of perhaps the least defensible part of his writings, he speaks as follows:

'When England has again such a school of poetry, so headed and so followed, as she has had at least twice before, or as France has now; when all higher forms of the various art are included within the larger limits of a stronger race; then, if such a day should ever rise or return upon us, it will be once more remembered that the office of adult art is neither puerile nor feminine, but virile; that its purity is not that of the cloister or the harem; that all things are good in its sight out of which good work may be produced. Then the press will be as impotent as the pulpit to dictate the laws and remove the landmarks of art; and those will be laughed at who demand from one thing the qualities of another-who seek for sermons in sonnets and morality in music. Then all accepted work will be noble and chaste in the wider masculine sense, not truncated and curtailed, but outspoken and full-grown; art will be pure by instinct and fruitful by nature; no clipped and forced growth of unhealthy heat and unnatural air; all baseness and all triviality will fall off from it, and be forgotten; and no one will then need to assert, in defence of work done for the work's sake, the simple laws of his art, which no one will then be permitted to impugn.'

Here Mr. Swinburne admits that poetry has its laws and landmarks, its guiding principles in the selection and use of materials, its higher and lower forms; and he lays it down. that the higher forms-all legitimate forms, indeed-will be noble and chaste in the wider masculine sense, pure by instinct and fruitful by nature, no forced growth of unhealthy heat and unnatural air, and free from all baseness and triviality. On this ground we join issue with Mr. Swinburne, our main objection to his work being, that in several vital respects it reverses the laws and removes the landmarks of the grand poetical art, that much of it is not virile or even feminine, but epicene; and, that so far from being chaste or noble in the masculine or any other sense, it is impure and base to a degree unparalleled in English literature. Happily there is a poetical art, with laws and principles of its own, to which appeal may be made. Not the mere prosody of a verse,' to adopt Milton's language, but that sublime art which in Aristotle's poetics, in Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro, Tasso, Mazzoni, and others, teaches what the laws are of a true epic 'poem, what of a dramatic, what of a lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand masterpiece to observe.' He goes on to add that those instructed in this sublime art would soon 'perceive what despicable creatures our common rhymers and playmakers be, and understand what religious, what glorious, and magnificent use might be made of poetry both in divine ' and human things.' It is something to have a writer like Mr. Swinburne admitting the existence of such an art, although to judge from his practice its laws are recognised only to be broken. At all events the only laws he observes with any uniformity are the external mechanical ones-those of versification. In all other and higher respects, in choice of subject, in strength and dignity of poetical conception, in elevation of feeling, and the imaginative forms through which the nobler passions are expressed, in the strict subordination of parts to the whole, and the temperance of diction and imagery essential to unity of poetical effect, he is utterly deficient. What Milton terms decorum, which is the masterpiece to observe, is habitually violated in the most flagrant manner throughout his writings. Decorum, in this sense, refers to the subject chosen, and especially to the method of treatment, and, by calling it the masterpiece, Milton means to intimate that the subject chosen being a noble action, passion, or emotion as the poem is epic, dramatic, or lyrical, the poet must rigidly observe the vital laws of proportion, the mingled pregnancy and reserve of poetical expression, which artistic unity and completeness of

construction and effect imperatively require. Now, as we shall presently see, in most of Mr. Swinburne's longer poems, there is hardly any trace of internal organisation at all. They are molluscous rather than vertebrate; and the few that seem to spring from a germ, and have their form determined by an internal principle of life, are heated fungoid growths rather than sweet herbs, strong well-proportioned trees, or graceful flowers. With all his admiration for the ancients, and especially for the Greeks, the central principle of their plastic and poetical art embodied in the word 'owppooúvn' seems to have no place in Mr. Swinburne's mind. Judging from the result, indeed, it would almost seem as though having made an unholy compact with his evil genius, he had read this central precept of the poet's creed backwards; in other words, had assiduously studied what 'indecorum' is as the great model to observe. In his reaction against all laws human and divine, Mr. Swinburne has, in fact, revolted from the primary conditions of higher excellence in his own art. If the main characteristics of his writings were to be summed up in a single word, it would be lawlessness or license, or rather, since these terms express an energy of volition which the weak and violent temper, the febrile vehemence and impetuosity, exhibited in the poems hardly justify, incontinence would perhaps be the most appropriate word. They are incontinent in the use of strained and violent language, incontinent in hot and garish imagery, incontinent in verbal tricks, mannerisms, and conceits, incontinent in sweet but cloying melodies, incontinent, not only in the details of licentious indulgence, but in loathsome allusions to morbid letches, incontinent in denouncing all seemly social observances, all recognised moral restrictions. Mr. Swinburne's muse is, indeed, in the fullest sense, naked and not ashamed, destitute of any natural sense of reverence or respect, indulging in voluble abuse of the decencies of life and hysterical admiration for things essentially contemptible and base.

We must, however, pass on to a more detailed examination of Mr. Swinburne's work. This will supply abundantly the evidence on which the general verdict we have pronounced rests. The first point to be considered is the choice of subject, and this, according to the unanimous judgment of the highest authorities-poets as well as critics-is the most important point of all. Mr. Swinburne, indeed, in the defence we have quoted, appears to make light of this vital consideration. He suggests that all things are good in the sight of art out of which good work may be produced. But this statement is obviously

too general to be of any use or relevancy in the discussion. Swift wrote a poem largely occupied with the lower functions of nature, and the work is very good of its kind, but the verses will never cease to be disgusting from the subject. And no one entitled to speak will maintain for a moment that all subjects, whether beautiful or ugly, pure or impure, noble or vile, loathsome or attractive, are equally suitable for art. Mr. Swinburne himself abandons this ground, and virtually maintains that the different kinds of poetry are determined as higher or lower by their choice of subject. He complains that the poetry of the day is too much restricted to one class of topics, one level of experience, and to the poetical form through which this common level of experience finds its natural and most appropriate expression.

'With English versifiers now, the idyllic form is alone the fashion. The one great and prosperous poet of the time has given out the tune, and the hoarser choir has taken it up. His highest lyrical work remains unimitated, being in the main inimitable. But the trick of tone which suits an idyl is easier to assume; and the note has been struck so often that the shrillest songsters can affect to catch it up. . . I shall not be hounded into emulation of other men's work by the baying of unabashed beagles. There are those with whom I do not wish to share the praise of their praisers. I am content to abide a far different judgment:

"I write as others wrote,
On Sunium's height."

I need not be over-careful to justify my ways in other men's eyes; it is enough for me that they also work after their kind, and earn the suffrage, as they labour after the law, of their own people. The idyllic form is best for domestic and pastoral poetry. It is naturally on a lower level than that of tragic or lyric verse. Its gentle and maidenly lips are somewhat narrow for the stream and somewhat cold for the fire of song. It is very fit for the sole diet of girls; not very fit for the sole sustenance of men.'

Now the main subject of domestic and pastoral poetry is love in its milder and more equable manifestations. And Mr. Swinburne intimates that such a subject is unfit for the higher level of tragic and lyrical verse. The idyllic form may be all very well for the gentle pains and pleasures, smiles and tears, of the tender passion, but Mr. Swinburne, leaving the idyl-mongers to work at their humble trade amongst their own people, betakes himself to the higher level, resolving to write as others wrote on Sunium's height, and produce sustenance for men instead of food for girls. What subjects does he choose for this purpose? As we have seen, he virtually renounces the passion of love. What other great primary affections of our

nature does he select instead of the discarded theme? Are ambition, jealousy, or revenge chosen as fitter for development through the higher poetical forms he attempts? The answer to this question derived from an examination of his poems is simple enough. It turns out that he chooses the same general subject as the idyl-mongers, and differs from them only in restricting himself to its corrupt, depraved, and illegitimate aspects. He simply deals with the animal side of the passion-with lust instead of love with the sensual appetite instead of the strong and pure spiritual feeling. And in handling this repulsive topic he lavishes the whole wealth of his imagination on its physical aspects and influences, rather than its mental elements, its internal working, and moral results. This is in all respects a fatal choice, so far as good or noble work is concerned. No music of language, no splendour of imagination, can ever make that fair and attractive which is intrinsically vile and even horrible. And were Mr. Swinburne an archangel he would be predestined to eternal failure in such an attempt. It may indeed be a question-and it is an old question in criticism-whether the passion of love affords in itself the most suitable materials for a tragedy. But however this may be, it is beyond question that no amount of literary alchemy can ever extract the materials of a great tragedy or a great lyric out of the carnal details of mere lust. Yet these things constitute the substance of Mr. Swinburne's leading tragedies and lyrics. Take Chaste'lard' for example. The mere action of the drama is slight and trivial in the extreme. A weak nature, deluded by Mary's amorous wiles, and enamoured of her throat and lips and brows, breaks into her bedchamber on the night of her marriage with Darnley, is seized and imprisoned, subsequently liberated, but, after a second offence of a like kind, condemned and executed, Mary herself, under a perfidious show of pity, hastening his end. Of characters, again, there are, strictly speaking, none in the drama. The writer only attempts to delineate the two leading persons of the play, and this is done in the most superficial manner, chiefly by the repetition of external characteristics. The so-called tragedy, indeed, largely consists of elaborate. descriptions of the bodily features and movement provocative of desire, with the animal feelings and wanton toyings they produce. Mary, Queen of Snakes and Scots,' illustrates the active side of lust, its ungovernable caprice and heartless cruelty; Chastelard the more passive, insensate, and permanent influence of the same feeling. There is hardly a trace of the genuine passion of love in Chastelard.' He is enamoured