Served with the soldier's sword, the poet's pen, Of silent adoration, that make strong The better portion of men's days and deeds! Robert Lord Lytton was Governor-General of India, under Lord Beaconsfield's administration (1874-1880). A. C. Swinburne. Algernon Charles Swinburne, born in 1843 at Holmwood in Surrey, belongs to a noble family, his mother being a daughter of Lord Ashburnham, and his uncle a baronet of ancient descent. The poet received his early education in France, and afterwards studied at Eton and Oxford. When at the university, he highly distinguished himself as a Greek scholar. In 1860 he published two plays in verse, the Queen-Mother and Rosamond, which attracted no attention, but about the same time he became known as the author of some poetical contributions to the London Spectator, which were looked on as a sort of protest against the puerilities of the "good boy" school of poetry. It was in the spring of 1865 that he produced his drama, Atalanta in Calydon, and, like Byron, he awoke one morning. and found himself famous. The Athenaeum said that "no one since Keats could touch him"; the Saturday Review declared that "we were listening to one of the contemporaries of Euripides, who sought to copy the manner of Aeschylus"; and the other reviews and journals bestowed on it unstinted praise. Chastelard, a tragedy in the style of the Elizabethan school, the subject of which was the passion of the young French poet for the unfortunate Queen of Scots, appeared in the following year, but met with a very different reception from that of the classical Atalanta. The warmth of its colouring gave great scandal to sober-minded readers, and it was denounced as "morally repulsive", "licentious", and "overladen with sensuous images." By one section of the reading public, indeed, who longed for something beyond feeble imitations of Wordsworth, Chastelard was hailed as the welcome harbinger of a new era of vigorous and masculine English poetry; but in 1866, on the appearance of the Poems and Ballads, in which all the faults of Chastelard were repeated in an exaggerated form, the apologists were fain to subside into silence. So loud an outcry was raised against the immorality and aggressive atheism of the new volume, that the publishing house of Moxon expunged the book from their list; and the author had to look for a new publisher. The London Punch changed the name of the poet into Swine-born, and the joke was everywhere repeated with laughter and applause. Swinburne remonstrated in his Notes on Poems and Reviews; urging that he did not write for mere boys and girls, but for men; and that there is a higher class of literature than the bread-and-butter and pinafore school. In 1867 he gave vent to his republican sympathies in his Song of Italy, dedicated to Mazzini; and again in 1870, in his Ode on the Proclamation of the French Republic, which he dedicated to Victor Hugo. In 1871 he gave to the world his Songs before Sunrise, in which, mixed up with much extravagance, we find some of his finest verses. His later published productions are: A Midsummer Holiday, Les Casquets, an incident connected with the lighthouse rock off Guernsey, Ode to Victor Hugo, Cradle Songs, Five years old, and In Sepulcretis, a poem in which he castigates those indiscreet admirers of eminent men, who publish, after their death, what was never intended to see the light. Mr. Swinburne is not only a great poetical genius, notwithstanding all his blemishes, but also no ordinary prose-writer. In 1872, he and his friend, Mr. Rossetti, were violently attacked by Mr. Robert Buchanan, the author of Napoleon Fallen, a lyrical drama (1871), in a magazine article, afterwards reprinted in a separate form, with the title: the Fleshly School of Poetry and other Phenomena of the Day; to which Mr. Swinburne wrote his able reply, Under the Microscope. This time the public generally took the side of Swinburne and Rossetti, thinking that a rival poet could hardly be looked on as an impartial critic. From these observations it may be gathered, that in Swinburne's poetry there is very little which we should feel justified in quoting in such a work as the present. One of his least objectionable pieces, his Ode to Victor Hugo, will give some idea of his poetical powers: Thou art chief of us, and lord; Keen-edged and scented in the blade from flowers; Lift younger eyes, and see Less of high hope, less light on wandering hours; But thine imperial soul As years and ruins roll To the same end, and all things and all dreams Drift on the dim same shore, Still in the bitter foam and brackish streams In Swinburne, says Mr. Justin M'Carthy, we find everywhere "the same cry of rebellion against established usage, the same hysterical appeal to lawlessness in passion and art." D. G. Rossetti. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the poet and painter, is of Italian origin, but was born in London in 1828. As an artist, he belongs to the pre-Raphaelite school, and in 1857 he supplied the illustrations for an edition of Tennyson's poems. His principal literary productions are, his Early Italian Poets, from Civollo d'Alcana to Dante (1861); his Translation of Dante's Vita Nuova (1866); and his Poems (1870). Mr. Rossetti's poetry is noted. both for sweetness and power, but as has been hinted, it possesses many of the defects, as well as the merits of Swinburne. From his House of Life we select some stanzas, which will give an idea of the height and sublimity Mr. Rossetti is capable of reaching: No quiet, which is death's, it hath Listen alone beside the sea, Listen alone among the woods; Shall have one sound alike to thee: Hark where the murmurs of thronged men Still the one voice of wave and tree. Gather a shell from the strown beach The Rossettis are a highly gifted family. Gabriele Rossetti, the poet's father, who left Naples and settled in London in the year 1871, was himself a poet and a Dante commentator. Mr. William Michael Rossetti, the poet's brother, translated Dante's Inferno into English blank verse. Miss Maria Rossetti, the poet's elder sister, published not long ago an elucidation of the Divina Commedia; and Miss Christina Rossetti is the author of the Prince's Progress, Goblin Market, and some tales for children. The mother of this talented progeny was an English lady of Italian descent. W. Morris. William Morris (born in 1834), is usually classed among the poets of the new or Swinburne school, but his colouring is rarely so vivid, or his language so passionate, as that of Swinburne or Rossetti. His earliest poetical effusion appeared in 1858, under the name, Defence of Guinevere, and other Poems, and was followed, in 1867, by his great poem, the Life and Death of Jason. In 1868, he published the Earthly Paradise, and in 1872 Love is enough. Professor M. Arnold. Matthew Arnold (born in 1822), Professor of Poetry in the university of Oxford, and son of the late highly popular Dr. Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), Head-master of Rugby School, is a poet who has nothing in common with the Swinburne school. Mr. Arnold published Cromwell, a prize poem; the Strayed Reveller, and other Poems, in 1848; Empedocles on Etna in 1853; Poems in 1854; Merope, a tragedy in 1858; besides a great number of prose-works on various subjects. In the following elegant lines, the poet reminds us that man especially the young man must be always up and doing, and that life is essentially active and unquiet: Ah, no! the bliss youth dreams is one Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well. But 'tis not what our youth desires. |