MR. SWINBURNE'S ESSAY ON "KING EDWARD III."
[ro THE EDITOR OP THE"SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In an essay published in this month's number of the Gentleman's Magazine, I have made the remark that "for the sake of verbal convenience, if not for the sake of literary de- cency," we ought now to call the age of letters in which Shake. spear° wrote after the name of Shakespeare, rather than after the name of Elizabeth or of James.
In the Spectator of yesterday I read the following remark on that article ;—" Mr. Swinburne writes about the 'Nee-Shake- spearean synagogue,' whatever that may mean, and the vanity of expecting literary decency' from that mysterious body." I charge the writer of this sentence with the public utterance of a wilful and deliberate lie.—I am, Sir, &c..
August 10th. ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. [We quote the passage, to Cur criticism on which Mr. Swin.
burne applies this tremendous language ;— "There is another point which the Neo-Shakespearean synagogue will by no man be expected to appreciate ; for to apprehend it re- quires some knowledge and some understanding of the poetry of the Shakespearean age—so surely we now should call it, rather than Elizabethan or Jacobean, for the sake of verbal convenience, if not for the sake of literary deeency ; and such knowledge or understand. ing no sane man will expect to find in any such quarter."
—En. Spectator.]
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