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THE ENGLISH REVIEW
from the lips, but—" with hollow mouth "—he poured out
his heart. It is perhaps in the nature of the time that modern
verse must be analytical. There are to-day so many things to
see, so many to " take stock of," that we none of us dare to
generalise. We realise very fully that if to-day we generalise
in one direction, to-morrow fresh facts will come to upset our
theories. In consequence we are thrown back on ourselves : we
have grown personal, intimate, subjective. Mr. Swinburne
was none of these. He had convictions, and the courage to utter
them. Whether he were right we will not say : possibly he
was wrong : at any rate he was temerarious. But what a fine
temerity !
It is possible that his fame has in England suffered a little
eclipse in these latter days, but he remains for the world that
surrounds these islands the best-known Englishman, and the
Continent, which has not forgotten Byron, will still less forget
the name of Swinburne. To the Germans his splendid rhetoric
appeals ; he learned his art of the French Romantics ; the early
days of Italy and Greece inspired him. From England he took
only the magic of Elizabethan verbiage : thus, if in England his
work had a derivative aim, to Europe which ignores our verbal
subtleties it was and remains new and very modern. And no
doubt even in England a day will come when—the fashions of
to-day being forgotten—the once splendid name of Swinburne
will once again be splendid among the names of the greater
poets. For of the Victorian poets he was the most generous
in the outpourings of his heart, the most nobly unthinking,
the bravest, the most flamelike.
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