Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

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possesses - and Mr Swinburne, though he were
to try his worst, cannot write many pages
without giving us something of value - will
be found in scattered pieces of bright, penetrating
and original comment.
(3 January 1880)
Dowden has to admit that the book's prose sometimes obscures
the brightness of its penetrations:
But when one comes to translate auch passages
the pen drives heavily amid the radiant riot
of flower-soft speech, and the supreme cpilth
Oi starry syllables. One whose understand:, ig
has been darkened by verse tests finds himself,
too, as he copies, half unconsciously at v/ork
On a painful series of prose tests, including
the alliteration-test, the abusive-epithet
test, the triple-redundant adjective test,
and the never-ending hyperbole test.
Swinburne is a man "with whom the infallibility of genius
seems to be a foible", and Dowden reminds readers of Colaridce'3
suppositions regarding the chronology of the nlays, as an
example of the "baseless opinions" to which "mere general
impression, even when the impression of a man of genius, may
lead". The author's rude rejection of verse-tests seems
reprehensible to Dowden, in so far as it exhibits a contempt
for the new-found scientific spirit of English Sftakespoare
studies. The anti-rationalism of Swinburne's criticism was
summed up in T.S.Eliot's essay in The Sacred Wood:
There are to be no conclusions, except that
Elizabethan literature is very great, and
that you cm have pleasure and even ecstasy
from it, because a sensitive poetic talent
has had the experience. One is in risk of
becoming fatigued by a hubbub that does not
march; the drum is beaten, but the processoion
noes not advance..
Swinburne appears to be attacking not merely the New Shakespere
Society but the spirit of rational enquiry.
The lush prose of A Study of Shakespeare is embarrassing
not only on account of the ornamentation suggested in Dowden's
"prose-tests" but the devotional piety -which informs its
rhapsodies and occasional reflective moments. Prom the dedication,
in which jv.dnburne writes Hallivvoll-?liillipps's na;.ie
above his own on "the votive scroll" which "attaches" his
"offering" to "the shrine of Shakespeare", to the concluding