R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

Prefacecould be. In this he inherited a tradition, under which,from the time of the Tudors and yet more remotely,English literature had subsisted—if it had sometimesstarved. A tradition changed and dying in his day: it mayalmost be said to have died with him. ' Patronage' has aless pleasing sound to modern ears: we relegate it tocharity concerts and country bazaars. But condescensionis still the dictionary's last gloss upon the word,and by the authentic thing itself much good work in thepast has been, in a proper sense, protected and supported.There was, we may be sure, no condescension, nothing ofthe Chesterfield in Houghton, nor did Nineteenth-centuryauthorship depend upon dedication and subscription.What he did, beside his many acts of personal kindness,was to help form public opinion. That was a thing worthdoing. Sir Edmund Gosse cites instance after instance ofsuch watchful interest in Swinburne. He did not, be itnoted, set out to make his young poet a best-seller; thesales of Poems and Ballads to date would probably, forthat matter, leave a best-selling publisher of today bewailing.But he could see to it—and he did—that educatedpublic opinion recognised and acknowledged the significanceof the new thing. Swinburne's books might sellor not sell, be praised or abused; but, with Houghton forsponsor, he could not be neglected.An easier task no doubt—a more grateful one certainly—so to dominate on occasion the Victorian forum, thansingle-handed to set about inoculating the mob-mind ofto-day. How that has to be done is a study for thecurious cynic, though a part of the process is visible enoughin the costly columns of advertisement which support (inmore than one sense) a newspaper's 'literary' pages andleaves mere criticism to show like chinks of faint light inbetween! Good work, as well as bad, it may be owned,can be planted on the public in this costermonger fashion.ix