3 APRIL 1926, Page 20

In this " ghastly, thin-faced time of ours " (we

qUote Swinburne, of course) what would be said if the Spectator published, as it did in 1862, the shuddering apostrophe " To Faustine " ? Mr. Harold Nicolson has written a notable monograph on Swinburne (Macmillan. 5s.). He justly describes the narcotic quality of much of the poet's verse, where sound pursues and all but engulfs sense, as one wave follows another, but to the immortal " Atalanta in Calydon " and to the " Poems and Ballads " he pays a tribute of fine and generous criticism. We cannot dismiss this able study in a paragraph—a column would be all too short.