BOOKS.
SWINBURNE'S LETTERS.*
THE editors state clearly that they make " no pretence of presenting the complete correspondence of Swinburne." Many of his letters are lost—perhaps irrecoverably (as those to Mazzini)—or have been destroyed, while the inspection of more than one group is " still denied to the general public." On the whole, judging from this instalment, these omissions can be regarded with equanimity. Mr. Gosse speaks of the revelation in these letters as being " moral as well as intellectual." " No one can attentively read them without seeing shine out of them, the courtesy, the generosity, the delicate glow of friendship, which were characteristic of this noble poet." From the context it appears that this eulogy applies to his literary letters in general, and in particular to those inspired by his " extraordinary devotion to the minor dramatists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." This is true, but with reserves. Swinburne could, and often did, behave with the courtesy and chivalry of a perfect gentleman—like an aristocrat in the best sense. But in moments of passion these instincts went by the board, and on the smallest provocation he was capable of lapsing into the moat violent and ill-conditioned invective. There are many examples in these pages in which authors not long dead are pilloried in flaming and ferocious rhetoric which cannot but be extremely painful to their friends and their children. Swinburne becomes, to adapt Disraeli's phrase, inebriated with the exuberance of his own objurgation. Also he was capable of violently abusing the very same writers and people whom he violently praised, so that his criticisms cancelled out.
Swinburne's indebtedness to Lord Houghton as critic, adviser, and patron is sufficiently set forth in Mr. Geese's Life, and the great bulk of the letters to him in this collection are written in the most intimate and affectionate strain. Yet when he heard that Lord Morley had entrusted the reviewing of Bothwell to Lord Houghton, he wrote to protest on the ground that he cared rather less than nothing for Lord Houghton's opinion, and that had he known of Lord Morley's intention sooner be would have requested him as a personal favour to give the book in preference to " any other writer alive—say Mr. Robert Buchanan. I have never shrunk from attack or blame, deserved or undeserved ; but I must confess that I do shrink from the rancid unction of that man's adulation or patronage or criticism." Yet Swinburne wrote to Lord Houghton to say that he had read his article with pleasure, and there is nothing in their further correspondence to indicate any relaxation of their intimacy. But when all deductions have been made for temperament, inconsistency, and mere indulgence in the bravura of obloquy, it is difficult to justify the publication of such passages as the savage attack on the Roman. Catholic
• The Letters of Algernon Charles Mr:aurae. Edit.d by Edmund Gone, C.S., and Tkomaa James Wtse. 2 vols. London : W. Heinemann. 121s. net.] Church a propos of Newman's strictures on the morality of Swinbunie's and Rossetti's poetry. Again, Swinburne was, theoretically at any rate, a Republican and democrat with a special 'talent -for -execrating Sovereigns. Yet he was not only aristocratic in his tastes and a very " unsocial Socialist," but he found Frederick the Great's state of mind, in its cold self-sufficing courage, "looking neither upward nor around for any help or comfort, much more admirable than Cromwell's splendid pietism. . . . Besides, as a King and a private man, Frederick is to me altogether complete and satisfactory." But then Frederick was free from " perverse Puritan Christianity " ; he approached nearer the enlightened Olympian paganism which Swinbume worshipped in his early prime. In this context it is worth noting that Swinburne's enthusiasm over Carlyle's work was short-lived, and he speaks with exultation of the amusing and gratifying amount of wrath excited by his sonnets on the Reminiscences " among the posthumous sycophants of that virulent old sophist." Swinburne, it is true, remained constant in his adoration of his chief heroes : Lander, Victor Hugo, and Mazzini ; but his views on many other notable men and authors underwent considerable modifications. We have mentioned Carlyle and Lord Houghton, and may add Forster and Whitman ; it is evident that his later view of the American poet is not altogether to be attributed to the influence of Watts-Dunton. And it needs to be remembered that he did not choose the champions of democracy or leaders of the people as the beat subjects for dramatic treatment—not Gracchus or Garibaldi or Lincoln—but Mary Queen of Scots. Lucretia Borgia was his " blessedeat pet " ; and, though he never fulfilled his intention, he has left it on record in a letter in 1882 that 'the life and death of Cesare Borgia was " the one groat subject for historic tragedy." Happily these volumes reflect Swinburne in many moods, often generous and sometimes entirely sane. His literary criticisms, though marked by extravagance of adulation and dispraise—e.g., his inability to recognize the shining moments of Emerson—are always interesting and often acute. He cordially acknowledged the greatness and profundity of Browning, while deprecating his eccentricities. He " jumps upon " Mr. Gosse for the curious infelicity of the epithet " laborious " as applied to the versification of Catullus.
Swinburne's severest critics could not put the case against. his metrical excesses more forcibly than he has done himself in a letter to Lord Morley. He was seldom moved to speak with absolute confidence as to his achievements, or to apply to them the unstinted praise which he lavished on his contemporaries, rivals, and forerunners. He was a great lover and hater, but in literature more concerned to secure recognition for forgotten or neglected genius than to gibbet mediocrity or incompetence. Nothing is more curious than the way in which the tone and temper of his letters are coloured by the characters of his correspondents, those to Lord Morley being the most reasonable and sell-contained. The autobiographical details furnished to Mr. Stedman have already been largely used by Mr. Goose in his memoir, but we do not remember to have seen before Swinburne's strange confession that he could not " see a cat without caressing it, or a dog without feeling its fangs in my flank," or his envy of his friend Kirkup's experience of snakes " I should like, above all things, to have them play with me and my eats." Curious too are his remarks on danger. Where it arose from natural causes, he could be rash to foolhardiness in swimming or climbing. But where machinery came in, he was timid, and would probably have never cared to emulate the exploits of d'Annuuzio. Yet he would have become a soldier if his father had not forbidden it.
The great majority of these letters throw light on the idiosyncrasies of the writer. Those, and they are very numerous, concerned with his minute and abiding preoccupation with the works of old and often obscure dramatists are not as attractive as .Mr. Gosse seems to think. Very few bear a date later than 1890 ; of these we may mention Sv.inbume's judicious refusal to undertake the Life of Sir Richard Burton ; a vitriolic description of the appearance of George Eliot and G. H. Lewes; and a generous acknowledgment of Mr. Hardy's gift of his Dynasts, in which admiration for the poem is tempered by regret at the author's abandonment of creative romance for epic drama. Mr. Gnse has been sparing of notes ; the sardonic reference to Watts-Dunton's invariable habit of pronouncing Swinburne's last poem to be his finest might have been spared, and the reference to " Brother Stockdolloger "—to mention only one cryptic allusion—calls for explanation. We seem to remember a story in Household Words or All the Year Round which supplies the eke. There are also some bad misprints:
" L'Assomoir" in II. p. 12, and a to w" for "a to " in I. p. 171.
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