, ':.i , V* 4 It ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE AS DRAMATIC CRITIC BY ALITA FERNE UPTON B. A. Eureka College, 1921 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 1922 URBANA, ILLINOIS 1 : /5 Jas 3 4A r 1922 Up 8 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS THE GRADUATE SCHOOL July -1922- I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAI’ THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION BY_ AT.TTA FF.RTJF. TTPTOW ENTITLED_.AL_GEE1;I0H-.-CHARLES SW IN EURITE: dramatic cr itic BE ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGT.TRH In Charge of Thesis c/T t " Head of Cl^partment Recommendation concurred in* Committee on Final Examination* •Required for doctor’s degree but not for master’s 509410 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/algernoncharlessOOupto TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical 1 I. Pereonal Char act eri at ice 2. !!♦ Shakespearean Criticism 12 III, A Study of Ben Jonson 34 IV. Contemporaries of Shakespeare 49 V. Summary 74 Bibliography . 85 I 1 0 f BIOGRAPHICAL Algernon Charles Swinburne, son of Admiral Charles Henry Swinburne and Lady Jane Henrietta, daughter of George, third Earl of Ashburnham, was born in London on the fifth of April, 1837, During hie early life he spent the winter months at his father's home in the Isle of Wight, and the summer months on his grandfather’s estate in Northumberland. After some years of private tuition, Swinburne was sent to Eton, where he remained for five years. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1857, leaving without a degree in 1859. In the following- year he published The Queen Mother and Rosamond, Anxious to associate with men of his own tastes and syinpathies, Swinburne took rooms in London and entered more fully upon his poet- ical career. By the close of his thirtieth year, in spite of hos- tility and detraction, Swinburne had attained a high position among contemporary poets. About 1880 Swinburne's friendship with Theodore Watts-Dunton grew into almost more than brotherly intimacy. They took up their residence together at the Pines, Putney, where Swinburne devoted himself entirely to the pursuit of literature, T/hile Watts-Dunton acted as a guardian to keep the poet free from disturbing irifluences. On the tenth of April, 1909, after a short attack of influenza, followed by pneumonia, Swinburne died at his home in Putney, and was buried at Bonchurch, Isle of Wight. 2 0HAPTER I Personal Characteristics Swinburne's criticism is to an extraordinary degree a reflec- tion of the man himself. In order to understand it, and correctly to evaluate it, we must ever bear in mind as a groundwork for our analysis the distinctive personal characreri sties which so greatly influence hie literary work. Swinbiirne's personal appearance, the best description of which we owe to Mr. Edmund Gosse, was, like the character of his genius, unique. He was five feet four and a half inches in height, the tiny framework of his body and his sloping shoulders giving him a girlish look. The unusual size of his head, carried proudly erect on a long neck, was emphasized by a great shock of fiery red hair, which he wore very much fluffed out at the sides. Swinburne's small, greenish' gray eyes were deeply set, and of singular intensity. The piercing fixity of his gaze and the lofty brow contrasted sharply with the weak mouth and receding chin. I quote Mr. Adams' impression of the poet's appearance in 1862,- "A tropical bird, high-crested, long- beaked, with rapid utterance and screan*s of humour."^ Swinburne was rarely still. As he stood talking to his friends his hands were constantly moving, and he skipped restlessly from one foot to the other, often pressing the heel of one foot with the toe of the other. This excess nervous energy made a vivid impression upon all who came in contact with the poet. Unusual, almost uncanny in their unexpectedness, his actions often were. Mr. Gosse was 1. Adams, Education of Henry Adams . 1918, p 139. '(t , ' /V-;' \> ‘ .\y ' ‘ , I ' V ', . frWIo ;* it' ^ ;■ I ^^ t'lf V'* '® TtA ' • , %4 ::■ .T \‘>;t .V ,jj‘ ■' lu j, . ; • .^ iT.hi'*? /il r- '■■■■* . ... j-jy^ ■j .*i.; vv X-?f ^ ir ;■ i • '* ;|J<1 ■ *''''-- ':5 .. V * "t- j- ■ t . . .^ - ^ ■...■■:■ i.^r< ' * , >4 . ► 4 i 4'l» •• ' *♦ \ ...' ■ ' ■ , , ." " ‘'. i\l .'v .. ' .' T.Jiil ■ k .•’■'Oi:fXf' '(. : V.i ; • i A ' ^-'.v ■ .;. .■ ..'.•> ; -r-ue* . t * • t; r • 0.) V J . ■.■’1 •''.„.i! .i,i\. • ' ■J.,,.;- ■ "'■* :I.T !••'■• .. V)V , o jj„.Xc«,rv ' r . 'j ^ '!’ \).uf ;'■■ .X''-'. - 'u. . :''^ ■>*»?>?* * »-' j^- '; 3 presented to Swinburne in 1871, and writes thus of the meeting:- ”As he talked to me, he stood, perfectly rigid, with his arms shiver- ing at his sides, and his little feet tight against each other, close to a low settee in the middle of the room. Every nov/ and then, with- out breaking off talking or bending his body, he hopped on to this sofa, and presently hopped down again, so that I was reminded of some orange-crested bird - a hoopoe, perhaps, - hopping from perch to perch in a cage."^ Intellectual pleasure produced an extraordinary effect upon Swinburne, causing his whole body to shake and twitch under the stimulus of it. He was quickly sent into an almost convulsive state by even very slight emotional excitement. As lir. Gosse puts it, "He was like that little geyser in Iceland which is always simmering, but which, if it is irritated by having pieces of turf thrown into it, instantly boils over and flings its menacing column at the sky. "2 These periods of excessive exaltation and excitement were generally followed by corresponding periods of depression and gloom, when he looked at the world through dark spectacles, and felt lonely and abused. There were certain interests which Swinburne carried with him throughout hie entire life. He was passionately fond of beauty, and keenly appreciative of its various forms as expressed in nature, in literature, and in the work of men*s hands. This love of beauty, which amovinted almost to worship, is seen at second hand through hie own poetical work and through his delight in beauty of thought, 1. Goese's Life of Swinburne , p 201. 2. Gosse: Portraits and Sketches , p 13. 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' . « iJi' ^ 4 expression and melody as he found it in the work he criticized. Mr, Coulson Kernahan gives a delightfully intimate picture of the poet’s direct and highly emotional reaction to natural beauty. The particu- lar occasion was a gift of flowers presented by Mr. Kernahan. "In an ecetacy of delight, he took the flowers from my outstretched hand as reverently as the communicant takes into his hands the consecrated bread of the sacrament, as tenderly as a young mother takes into her arms her new-born child. He bent his head over them in a rapture that was almost like a prayer, his eyes when he looked up to thank me for the gift alight and brimming over with thoughts that were not far from tears. For many minutes he sat holding themi, turning them this way and that, too rapt in his worship to speak or think of any- thing else. He rose in hie quiet way, the flowers in his hand and left the room. In a few minutes the door reopened, but only wide enough to let him slip through, and he stole, rather than walked, to his chair, where he sea-ted himself among us again, almost as noiselessly as a card is shuffled back to its place in the pack."l He gave himself over just as ecstatically to the enjoyment of loveli- ness in literature. "I have seen hini literally dance and caper and whistle (yes, whistle) over some new toy treasure trove, in the shape of a poemi, by himself or a friend or a coveted first edition."^ His life-long love for the sea, his habitual reverence for old age and adoration for infancy, his hatred of h 3 rpocrisy and tyranny, color his poetry and to a lesser extent are reflected in his critical work. His interest in Shakespeare and his contemporaries (the chosen field 1, Kernahan: In Good Company , p 27, 2. Ibid: p 30, Wj ab#XM« i«i .VI , “ ' '■ y -^i.. . — - ' 'i ■'■ i» ^ w r"...:..".,: ,.,. .. .u, ■ .;. , .■; ..:Ji _ :.ii. '♦* ;:. -' .:? V > ; * . ' ' ^ ’*— r . . ' ‘ •- '^•■• y^-c/»?:*i 7fy=t>Xi ;aaat Jf i‘.!j . ■»• ■ ■■ i 'I '' IP ‘ iT\ I ■'L ' E ' ■;<• #Sf^ ' ■• I' ■ . JK|i * ’isi ,Ti 't'''/^ ''i^^ , ., i' .■.»? ■. ^ -V " ' ^ ‘■“' \i #K:-;«7' - t*'.asi.t 9.z.^-, >di liitir tiJtii'b'rfX i' u" ‘'' ' •' ‘’'' '■! ;.■ .>'■•'* •■fPF.Ti® j 1 *3 'q a"*; ,1!'^ ^■/.lo.-'.? ' xT.tbXr^t/dJj^ - a- !» I .' •''' , ' '• ’" .,'{ - ' , ■ " ■ ##< B .v'fi.Xo -r*' :v ^;^'^ of \*t:: .>o|’'' 6ii,-/;Jt, - tz.?'*'£3k'ri:' ^ir- ' :ii ?■' -?ft4 J3*: , !• X pcfei , \i':iA , t I'X X*’"' . . X 2* ^ ' i^>- ‘ * ’ 't ' ■ ♦ ^ ■ .> ' , ■' V ' " ™ ' T'V®' lui } ' , Z ’ . ' Va' S ■ X^. .-j eft > '>X M'^^.X'; u »*i .'Otf ' i. «3" V ■ t h . >. . .. ^rnws:'.-,, M^-P^ tlmpVi i^^t♦^ '7XV-8' '• =^.- 83h>iV'YtJtvb»;'rq'it, vi4i i'-* V,^ , rs ' ^ ,' ' ' ■ ’ '’'■ '!'■’/ ’'X^ »x ‘^■^. ■ *•**' " Off ■*!? r ,:X , 1 H j tv^« XXa iJl %^L0O-^;x* 5 of his dramatic criticism) was manifested early in his life. When he first entered Eton he carried hie treasured Bowdler's Shakespeare in his arms. Mareton, Nabbes, Marlowe, Massinger, and Ford, as well as others of this period, were familiar to him ever since his thirteenth year. It was his first ambition, he writes, ”to do something worth doing, and not utterly unworthy of a young countryman of Marlowe the teacher and Webster the pupil of Shakespeare. And my first book, written while yet under academic or tutorial authority, bore evidence of that ambition in every line."^ Beautiful poetry entranced Swinburne, than whom perhaps no other English poet was more widely acquainted with the literatures of foreign countries and of ancient times. Of the Greeks, he particularly admired Aeschylus, and took occasion to express that admiration over and over. Swinburne was a man of violent attachments and prejudices. Sometimes his devotion was stedfast and of long duration, as in the case of Shakespeare, Hugo, Landor, Mazzini, - sometimes enthusiastic admiration was suddenly changed to gall and hatred by an inadvertent remark, a chance trampling upon ground which was sacred to him , - or the change might be due to the influence of some friend’s opinion upon his own. There was no half-way place for Swinburne. He either intensely admired a man or he heartily disliked him. For those whose names are mentioned above, he had only words of boundless praise and loyalty; for those who fell under the ban of his disapproval no words of criticism or of scorn could be too harsh, no behavior too extrava- gant to express his utter contempt and hatred. During his Oxford days he created no little excitement by his spectacular violence. An 1. Swinburne; Poems , first series, 1866, Vol.l, p X. ^ HP I ' 1 wif ■"\- .'AC! 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IT 6 ardent Republican, his abuse of Napoleon III assumed a most fantastic form, as he danced around the room, giving vent to his feelings with shrieks of hatred and screams of defiance. He secured a picture of Orsini, who had attempted the assassination of the emperor, hung it on the wall opposite the portrait of Mazzini, and indulged in an abandonment of worship of the two. Even hie innate love of invec- tive will scarcely serve to excuse the violence of the tirades hurled against those whom he had formerly admired, especially when, as is often the case, there was such inadequate ground for so radical a change. The reversal of his relations with Whitman typifies the ex- travagance of hie abuse under such circumstances. In the early days Swinburne had been on friendly terms with Whitman, and had praised some of his work very highly. He said in 1872 that as far as he knew, he was "at one with Whitman on general matters no less than on political", and that the attitude toward life which Whitman held seemed to him altogether "acceptable and noble", perfectly credible and sane."^ As late as 1885 he wrote, "I retain a very cordial ad- miration for not a little of Whitman’s earlier work"^ and sent friendlj- ly greetings to the American poet. And yet in 1867 we have this from his pen, - "The muse of Whitman is a drunken apple-woman, indecently sprawling in the slush and garbage of the gutter amid the rotten *7 refuse of her overturned fruit-stall." "His Venue is a Hottentot wench under the influence of Cantharides and adulterated rum."^ "He 1. Quotation from Swinburne in Thomas' Swinburne . p 105. 2. Swinburne's Letters . Vol.II, p 154. 3. Quotation from Swinburne in Gosse's Life , p 276. 4. Quotation from Swinburne in Thomas' Swinburne . p 106. 7 has the dirty, clumsy paws of a harper whose plectrum is a muck raok."^ This serves to illustrate the Influence of Watts-Dunton,who confessed that he hated Whitman most heartily, upon the opinions of Swinburne. Another instance of this influence is the sudden violent attack upon Whistler in the Fortnightly Review of June , 1888. Whistler had been a warm friend of Swinburne's, and the latter had written to Mrs. Lynn Linton in 1880, "The paintings of Whistler are second only to the very greatest works of art in any age. "2 But Watts-Dunton had never liked Whistler, and he frankly admits that he persuaded Swinburne to write "the really brilliant article,"^ which in reality is only a regrettable outburst of irony and hyperbole. Watt s-IXmton was an over-officious nurse, and Swinburne was but too apt to listen to everything he said as coming from the lips of a mas- ter. Thus Swinburne cries enthusiastically, "If every page upon which they (Watts-Dunton* s Athenaeum essays) were printed, represents a hundred pound bank note; if the back and sides of the cover were of the finest beaten gold - that would not be too costly a raiment for the noblest critical work, dealing with first principles, that has 4 ever been given to the world." A few words were often enough to change Swinburne's entire at- titude. His friendly relations with W.B. Scott had continued up to the time of the latter's death in 1890, when Swinburne addressed him . 5 as "poet and painter and friend, thrice dear." However, on the 1. Quotation from Swinburne in More's Shelburne Essays. Third Series, p 122. 2. Quotation from Swinburne in Gosse's Life , p 273. 3. Quotation from Watts-Dunton in Gosse's Life . p 273. 4. Quoted from Swinburne in Zernahan's In Good Company , p 25. 5. Quoted from Swinburne's poems in Gosse's Life. x> 72. f mm -.-r ^?t ; ‘^ • • ^ ;■. . t ■. :) , v;.: t<,', 4> : (j ‘ : '^ vr:^3 . ^ ':d'' •^’' . “''uiC ;'' ■ t'.'~ : r»C , M ■J . :^-.l O;’-*' ? *' 'ajJ : '.* ii .i . 7 r ti-*v.f- ♦ n V i .. r- , 'i r; .v., .roja :•!>'& ?; ^ " i' IW .•• '5.9 . ? A 5*yi-*v- ;• i. ; . • X i / • • • V . * * ’ ^ ♦ i'.i ..‘t'AW> *' «- •'. +' ■ r. n.'‘/ Y' ' K ■i V i* .v^ ^ ' ' 1 .virj-,:*' of " : [ nr !* ifeeiTrt'j 1 . .. \ ■ ' t: V..V :W £*c>': ; / i i .'■'■< Y > 4 -. t f -« ■ • . . . ,, _ : ■ : .i i ^ v ■: :^ 'Vi: Ti' *;».'■<’ ' •.-•t' - X Cx%- .••.*3 ' I ,. :' ' ' * ' .4it . . .;■ . -O H'l V>TJ' v:rif-nir ,ic .^S':j,.ii .‘ r'"v ...f'. t ■ ■>::. 9^;^ “ o s ;,n M' :vyiiid 'x(i i[v i ■ ■ ...... '..;.j.':. f ' ?, f;!V :i‘:v3 ■ fi • T * ,*^'.*U* -75 ' •! ;=r. , ''' Jki ^ ' * iw #?•: 1 '< 8 appearance of Scott’s Autobiographical Notes In 1892, an editor re- corded Scott’s ;)ealousy of younger and more famous friends. This was enough to fire Swinburne, and he Immediately published a violent denunciation of Scott. A chance phrase In Matthew Arnold's Letters (1895) referring to "a sort of pseudo-Shelly called Swinburne A turned his enthusiastic admiration for Arnold, expressed over and over In extravagant terms, to hatred, Swinburne was essentially a child of emotion and passion, and when under the sway of Intense feeling expressed himself In hasty words which his saner judgment would have withheld. As his father says of him, "God has endowed my son with genius, but He has not vouchsafed to grant him self-control^ But Swinburne would justify himself with some such remark as, "I don’t know whether you can reasonably expect me to be very much weaker thah a tame rabbit, or, "Even milk would boll over twice to be treated In that way."^ Mention has already been made of Swinburne’s fondness for In- vective. It must be recognized that the extravagance of vituperation heaped upon one or another of the men who had. the fortune or the mis- fortune to be the objects of Swinburne’s literary criticism may be due not entirely to the critic’s dislike for him as a man or as an artist, or to the Influence of another’s opinions, or even to a sud- den gust of passion. These elements are all apparent In Swinburne’s work, but, with the exception of the latter, are, we might say, 1. Quoted In Gosse’s Life . p 314. 2, Quoted In Brock’s Essay on Books , p 72. 3, Quoted In Gosse’s Portraits and Sketches , p 38, 4. Ibid. V.' il'T ifr m i! : : 1 ' zi- "V- ► vl: ^^ I . '• fl" ■ ■ ' . I ' . . ■ , :. . .. :i : ' \fr< ' ::?i ' n 1 I#- . :.Lo . * ■ v;,as Iv C I %.•' - 1 \’j t *,•' V ■-C '■ ' i' '■' .' i> ■, - i' ■y/’f* 4x- - f . -t3 "5-- ■. . ■y’s..‘r \ »' j” frv'-. : •• f "* :i • l *;■ •/; .'1 ^ "V V ^ ; I .»■? ; « * A ( ii i* J . I '" '■ ^.' 5. ^ : I i--: 3'l j Ivi •6' / >" ’ ' ' u ' ' ' ::• :. >.■ '■■ . ■‘ -vj:., ^ ■ . r, •.. u>.’- ■' " ■.•■*'. ^ f»a; '^0 .’ - ' ■. '.'..t, ii-UJ Ly .;v-;^-f'* , j. ft. R*. ... r ' v-f' t . t - > ' . s • 5 • . t 9 acquired or circumstantial. Love of invective for its own sake seems to have been inherent in Swinburne. He had a marvellous command of denunciatory phraseology, and enjoyed the flame and bang of firework language quite apart from any personal feeling. In this connection a story of his college days by Lord Bryce is Interesting. "I remem- ber once he had been gated by the dean for non-attendance at chapel. Someone said, *Let us condole with poor Swinburne', and so we went to his rooms to cheer him up. He launched into a wonderful display of vituperative language "(and here is the significant part), " He was not really angry , but he enjoyed the opportunity, and the resources of his imagination in metaphor and the amazing richness of his vocabulary had never, I think, struck us so much before."^ Ever so slight a provocation was sufficient to draw from Swinburne a torrent of abuse, even when the victim chanced to be a friend. In a certain line of Mr. William Michael Rossetti's edition of Shelley there is an interpolation of the word "autumn". This is Swinburne's manner of speaking of it:- "For the conception of this atrocity the editor is not responsible; for its adoption, he is. A thousand years of purgatorial fire would be insufficient expiation for the criminal on whose deaf and desperate head must rest the original guilt of defac- ing the text of Shelley with this damnable corruption."^ He im- patiently condemned Keats' early verses as "some of the most vulgar and fulsome doggerel ever whimpered by a vapid and effeminate rhyme- ster in the sickly stage of whelphood. While in this abusive strain, he chose to consider Tennyson's Idylls of the King as a 1. Quoted in Gosse's Life . p 59. 2. Quoted in James' Views and Reviews , p S3. 3. Quoted in Thomas's Swinburne , p 104 10 "lewd circle of strumpets and adulterers revolving around the centra; figure of their inane wittol."^ This Swinburnian characteristic wil] appear more fully when we consider his dramatic criticism. Swinburne was extreme in everything, and his behavior was fre quently as startling as some of his utterances. If irritated, he was likely to do or say just what the impulse of the moment suggest- ed, with no consideration of the proprieties. At one time he was in- veigled into attending a meeting which held no interest for hiip. After agonizing for some time, Swinburne arose and stalked from the room. Immediately thereafter a crunching noise was heard in the vestibule, which upon investigation proved to be Swinburne, taking vengeance for the dullness he had endured by jumping on some scores of silk hats. Swinburne was often unjust and extravagant, but never mean or little. With selfishness, timidity or hypocrisy he had nothing to do, although he could be splendidly absurd. Hie extravagances grew out of enthusiasms and emotions which were part of his endowment as a man of genius. He was blessed with a vivid imagination, which at times played tricks upon him, for an appeal to it was sure to cast a rosy light around the most common object. A lady once told Swinburne that she would play upon the piano a very ancient Florentine ritornel lo which had been recently discovered. She thereupon sat down at the piano and played Three Blind Mice . Swinburne was fascinated by it, declaring that in it he could feel the cruel beauty of the Medici s. The brilliance and power of Swinburne's mind was astounding, and the retentiveness of hie memory a source of amazement to all who knew him. One reading was sufficient to fix in hie mind great 1. Quoted from Thomas: Swinburne's Under the Microscope , p.l09, tr. A ,. • H .- TAi ■ .ili{*i:.t(- 1. -' ' ' t f *’ 'j f , ^ '''' K ’ i ‘.A " -li^ , •,- '.I'i-i : ^ . . I ■ '*.■? /.,o I-' . .;. 1 > Mil'll' ; ,4 . * ^ ■ ' • v'^ ‘ ** • •» : y['\ ;U;,.: w 1 , / tvv. •: .'^•i '-4<> i: '.• y 4 ^ ,.', -N?wj qr *,• ^ :J: £: u,iai.*-':'"> cr . 1 I ' V ■ . X. ' V ! I . C ■•? .:*t » . L ,1 - > '.. . t iv^; . w X ’ • ' ■ ' • % ^ ^0 itfcr ^f.Zo'i-ftrrQ If’* * *■ _ ^ '. V '*.' ' *^. "; fc ci^J' ijJ^;-:.. iit-az*;. C»ri — ^’- ,tal^ idtrff- I ■ ' ^ » '■ •■T^«r“'' • ■ V ■t>.'j'- 5 *. H 6 t'.^:x 5 •, ^ u^y*- hr ^ 44 k- r v. ■ V;- • ^•»**v* vt'^X-vTOfr W'»icvff , ' - ' , " ’ ' ‘"f '..^i. 3 ..'#^-^V.- 5 '', K- \:t/ . Xi t :tr'r^ f»^. c t.'^ . rt'.^i ' * f-\‘4ii-iJita. t^ftn , 20 'cx .isssasM^' r^Pt s'**^ ' K.n-.,; i-ti^;!:- •<«>»-: 'ii&m ini' S^/ixl »(i!rW.qi,'*‘iT^ «■: ‘iJiPc ■ tt;i ai;Njojw;iife ' ' ''"w" f- .I' • «■ ': ' 't- ■■ . , ' . -,/’' > ,' f ■. y ^ \ 5 »^xTiidS 9 ^«^ 4 r ;, ■*' *.^yS . " .: ■ -^ ■ -.'.'V 'cvf:? rih 1 ' |^'>ji- -rTA *j 4 ajt>;&os.S, .a'v ^ ^.e' Ktfii;* ii -,| '■ I: •«^-'' ^ ^ i ax^ . , t>»vi4sil^t0i^'' 13 chapters to show in what way Swinburne *s personal characteristics be- come a part of his critical faculties, how far this enhances or im- pairs the value of his work, and whether his work on the whole ehoulc rank him as a good or a bad critic. And in considering Swinburne as an impressionistic critic, it will be well to bear in mind Mr. Coul- son Kernahan’s comment upon the difficulty of judging such men;- "How is it possible to judge men and women of genius, - men and womer to whose great brains the live blood rushes at a thought or at a word; whose passions are like a laid fuse, ready to take fire and to explode the mind at a touch - by the same standard which we apply to the cold-blooded, sluggish-brained, lethargic and perhaps mors for- tunate mortals to whom impulse is unknown, upon whom passion has no sway, and who rarely commit themselves to any expression or to any action, noble or mean, wise or indiscreet, without first of all care- fully weighing the results and counting up the costs, Or as Mr. Welby writes,- ”To demand of such a poet that he should be less easi- ly moved, that he should choose more wisely from among his emotional experiences, is to demand that he shall deny his genius,"^ The style of the three essays on Shakespeare is distinctly Swinburnian. In his criticism as in his conversation, when he might speak of a telegraph pole as "an incomparably disgusting object," Swinburne dealt in superlatives, heaping adjedtive upon adjective until the otherwise admirable choice of words lost power through con- stant usage. Mention has previously been made of the intoxicating effect of words upon him. He revelled in a drift of antitheses, similles and metaphors, and wound himself into the intricacies of 1. Kernahan: In Good Company , p 5. 2. Welby' 8 Swinburne , p 190. jL. 4 . .■ j»i» yrv ,mwM^ ^ a:. . ■ ►.i'^-W.-SSj f^'.» 77. •.v:^ vW4 - ii’i c>0 ' ' /. ' •* fc.v-Y>- '■’ , «p- •-. .,,*4. *3 ''^ -f? s-v-L-i *:..'*> Iter: ■; , . ' '"' ' . ■ , ;:>^^; , ■■'ft H ' ■ ^itti^.vy u.i'rJ *»'dtl4 irfj oxU<| I>008 >r »4 I ’ ' i ■ ' ‘ '" ''^ ■■ ' 1 .-'.^Ljirot.-t,, io .:€u?yv . ^ ‘ ■' ■ ' ' Jp. ■•«• '' ' i ’ ?” ^ ‘ .. Jif .'joot ..5 fS jil&;iliUl '^itH,--ii(V\£' &tl^_^t4bxdi L- ■ ■ -^' ' ''^ . ,'■■ . ra £ m etil' •;. U' f ■« ?iA<^taaWr{-.jjk^o4f/ ■•«. Vii«r i^jr£,t?4i4^ 4V4waf ~ 4ic ftili«^je;?^|] ! jiO(i - ^ :. ® ^ :.' ;. ^ m 1 44^ tioIu»i4iV . a-i'i' /iU'irf. . TV'-Ai/fij .ill' '■: ,^'i ■ . ,. _;j?^-fe*.''^' ^»*ia o^ I'o. i:oi v:’f ;-j flhiti; oAw X/tft ■'’ • - - ■ -V / , ;i' - :«.: ir.i. io-'-i-aT^- .■ti, tds#X5oi^ • f -* V , r wf> -^* . • i ,J. CIU Aftiffti/t/O' t.'(m :» AiL^t i^-U’/c{i.‘ S-iJtKt-'a .e'ti. ^^1; .’ jt-/' ® ,..iiir', ' 'f'* , *i ' r-' ' r* 4trt.i3i ?tif* 5:?rtw' i / : I • ■ (inittf srUoutSi £ cea^ »aim • :-f ' j.^.”. , J' -- . ‘ ■'■•* ■•* ' ■' •■ ■ ■ ' j ^'- ’- si t o4’n £ T ^ 1 ©^1^^ tUierffdUVa ^4^ !»fe,XX©v&t ah^of^W £d9i^» C, •:/. ’ 'i'- ■ ■ ■ ‘ I ■'; X’:t^ i A . ,.- If/’ '■ “ » « V - .-. './>. .' '’Ki'-'^^. \:i' -• *#.ii>. ?94k- ' :> j •. , ' . -Vvl' 14 ling:uistio mazes. In one of his studies of Shakespeare we find this: "It is a truth more curious than difficult to verify that there was a time when the greatest genius ever known among the sons of men was uncertain of the future and unsure of the task before itj when the one unequalled and unapproachable master of the one supreme art which implies and includes the mastery of the one supreme science precep- tible and accessible by man stood hesitating between the impulsive instinct for dramatic poetry, the crown and consummation of all phil- osophies, the living incarnation of creative and intelligent god- head, and the facile seduction of elegiac and idyllic verse, of medi tative and ■uncreative song: between the music of Orpheus and the music of Tibullus."^ Or again, "It was his and his alone to set be- fore us the tragic problem of character and event, of all action and all passion, all evil and all good, all natural joy and sorrow of chance and change, in such fullness and perfection of variety, with such harmony and supremacy of justice and of truth, that no man known to historic record ever glorified the world whom it would have been so utterly natural and comparatively rational to fall down be- fore and worship as a god. For nothing human is ever for a moment above the reach or beyond the scope or beneath the notice of his all but superhiiman genius."^ For the purpose of comparison, let us note what Hazlitt, an equally sincere and reverential admirer of Shakespeare, though more restrained and careful in the expression of his approbation, has to say of the master dramatist. Hazlitt, while belonging to the impressionistic school of critics, does not allov/ his enthusiasm to sweep him off his feet into a tangle of hyphenated 1. Swinburne, Three Plays , pp 5-9-60. 2. Swinburne, Three Plays , pp 43-4. 15 words or a cumulative surge of adjectives of the superlative degree. He says just as much as Swinburne, but his style is simple, clear, concise; there is no need to sift hie sentences or to trs^nslate them into English of "human nature's daily food." This quotation from his lecture on Shakespeare and Milton will serve to illustrate the foregoing remarks:- "He was nothing in himself, but he was all that others were, or that they could become. Hie genius shone equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the monarch and the beggar. He was like the genius of humanity, changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with our purposes as with his own. He turned the globe round for his amusement, and surveyed the generations of men, and the individuals as they passed, with their different concerns, passions, follies, vices, virtues, actions, and motives - as well those that they knew as those which they did not know, or acknowledge to themselves. Years are melted down to moments and every instant teems with fate."^ Let us follow this witl one more quotation from Swinburne, a sentence from hie discussion of Cymbeline :- "Here above all is the most heavenly triad of figures that ever even Shakespeare brought together; as it were a living god- garland of the noblest earthborn brothers and love-worthiest heaven- born sister. "2 Much the same effect of the intoxication of language for the poet is to be noticed in another aspect of his criticism which is peculiarly Swinburnian. He seems to wish to impart to us through the magic of the words he usee the atmosphere of the play under con- sideration, and he often times spends almost as much time in 1. Hazlitt, Works , ed. Waller and Glover, 1902, V.5, p 47ff. . fiiK' WJl »t t' ,t Iti;- » ^1 L, rtf' '■ * 3^ •■ V . ^ .[“ ‘^^^^11®®.-’ ■^6 ■ ' . ■iiiHHr'' *’ '■' ' ''^' ^ -P' ‘ .-71 *• ■ ■' ' 4 a . ;l!". ■'^■^, :''v W^£.- .. ^ 1., V" .'.i . , ■'xn M ;*6*^ ■ ;, *'’*^<> T'» »* s "-’• ■x*n- •asfji.'V* , _, . ., , t-'j ^ Ir-o^vv^iCTf. ^‘k'i , "'V'« %3’V0^‘ '^f^:^-Jtii ! i dTt '->.••■:* V. s4i!-;iiii.?'rlL.tJ ' i,.,^ " . ■■' ■ _ *'t 'k‘- ■ 1 ’% i-‘b V{p^, .ic'tftw ?►««■. vir fc«.. -»Ai' ^rd;f ia.0 : ■ £'f if, ''-U' '■ n^ti. \ r t, ta x'l j:.i^' i.<- iPta^r, »■ ' ■ '■ : f ' ^ ' ' V ■ ;■■■', •^■' ■ " M . T./' ' vWf'AfVU n .Jr., j ■-I*, ' ■ k' ■ A •t ;> j .) . ', ' ' *’**''.M.‘>i '' . '. !w .- ’^'•. j / 'A , ■ ‘ .^' j XGimii ■; , '^XA^ndt ;• . <^.V ’’■, 16 introducing us into the spirit of the play as he does in actual criticism. In writing of Pericles . he talks of the “blood-red Tyrian purple of tragic maternal jealousy; the flower-soft loveliness of maiden lamentation over the flower-strewn seaside grave of Marina's old sea-tossed nurse; the storm above all storms ever raised in poetry - it blows and sounds and shines and rings and thunders and lightens far ahead of all others."^ We are placed in the midst of the elemental passions involved in the play of King Lear in the fol- lowing manner:- "We look upv/ard and doi/mward, and in vain, into the deepest things of nature, into the highest things of providence; to the roots of life, and to the stars; from the roots that no God watei to the Stars that give no man light, over a world full of death and life without resting place or guidance. In this most tragic of tragedies the sovereign and incarnate god of pity and terror can be said to have struck with all hie strength a chord of which the reso- nance could excite such angry agony and heartbreak of wrath as that of the brother kings when they emote their staffs against the ground in fierce imperious anguish of agonized and rebellious compassion, at the oracular cry of Calchas for the innocent blood of Iphigenia. This habit of speaking in the superlative sometimes leads the critic into contradictions of a minor nature. For example, in the Study of Shakespeare . 1880, he speaks of Romeo and Juliet as "the loveliest of love plays," and in Shakespeare . 1905, says that Anthony and Cleopatra is "the greatest love-poem of all time;"3 in 1. Swinburne, Study . 1880, p 208. 3. Swinburne: Study . 1880, pp 171, ff. 3. Swinburne: Study . 1860, pp 226-7. -' w t,* t - ■ - jjir * • ‘.■tMj-y6^ t^X-\.'iMk &h:''W'-fif^ iol. if ^h%i i^’wm P^ 'P : .. . 'irL.: „■,' >;;,. ' •; t ' ,* fS^iVi \ ■ ., .... - ... . •■■fe " ■ >, i.’* '■». ., '.a - ■ ■■» ' TfBf . .'n ■ t ’ tu '/;>■ i*,a i m* ,; /ri ■ a U'Ufi ' f t&A v". 4i otJ“ - ■Mi ' '' ' .-' ' V;' ■ V -,w 4 ’ ■’ ^ ^.1 yv _ ' ' 't " ' ■ ., n ’ ' ' ■" ' ?-X / A!kj- ni- S' <14. etf t; i«x . .-Tici i' miJi I F * 'AflA -•;t9an«4|p5ffiv70i ^ p' »fe> ^tt.v ^/t‘ 9ijt ■ ^ ■l|^ i. ' 'ff-'-' I tn% 4 ?4o0?. «», ''v.ist* ..,*w»v>:j; ^^4 .r/i It ' ^i.JC; \. e'-:* E ! ’.. «Av- •«"*-r' w ' ‘-aii^ s»^*l * Tr *>. A •'^‘ ^ : ■ r ■'Lil'S 4^ ' " t '/i. r ^.' hft- .tI i- SI? 'Ti'.;^. .to.^j^s . tt 6:' ■ ' ■' i .’.. '^. ■' ' 'V-' ^ ..V- • ^ 3 > a£.j^l#?i*5C»^Wirjb ■ ,• t . <»4ai‘Ji>’0: :tJ* .! H?*.'** fji C .^:i ^ st^til 'lA^t *i ■' /tit ' lo 4idb#,5 '4T;^K \t. ■’ ... >■• ■ .^. - ■ Tl’fi- ^^^^'^^ *'*' \ao.gi;' ' rtViss^^sufe^ 'a;. '5'‘;»aiJ iC.li''l(v. zi T^yS.:Ji^i\i^‘i* ”' . .,„ >..’,4- ij. .< ''.»r- ■■>1, *. — < t . ^ . ~i . .W,. a s«\f -^’*31. ,-xa. »i ‘■tafiZ "“ Vt^' ®*" ,. '. jn the Study of 1880 he calls King Lear "the most tragic of tragedies,"^ and In Three Plays of Shakespeare , 1905, applies exactly the saine 9 words to Othello ."' I was able to discover but one other contradic- tion or distinct change of feeling in all hie Shakespearean criti- cism worthy of note, though this was not due to the defect in style just mentioned. In the Study of 1880, in discussing Shakespeare's 0 " treatment of the original Taming of the Shrew . Swinburne says,- "The recast of it shows tact and delicacy perhaps without a parallel in literature. No chance of improvement is missed, while nothing of value is dropped or thrown away."^ But in the Shakespeare of 1905, with the same subject under consideration, we find these words: "Though Shakespeare has in some degree toned down the somewhat rough and broad brutality of the original humor, he has rather refined than improved on it. And he has not only struck out one Or two fine touches of living hiimor, he has cancelled the whole of the ad- mirable conclusion or dramatic epilogue which is morally and dra- matically necessary to complete and harmonize the work as a comic poem. Shakespeare's marvellous power of character creation made a great appeal to Swinburne. He never ceased to wonder at the knowledge of human nature and the unerring instinct in the portrayal of it evinced by the master dramatist, as well as his judgment in the combination of certain characters or sets of characters. Of men and of women 1. Swinburne: Study . 1880, p 176. 2. Swinburne: Three Plavs . 1909, p 55. 3. Swinburne; Study . 1880, p 125. 4. Swinburne; Shakespeare . 1905, p 28. c-iV'A> W'lM'- frf-Isip *)il o-ofiX e;i4' rv. •- ‘ ■ i,w; .. - ' •* '■ ■ S- ■ .-, ... . ■ . " - ^ . !. b .T4^bnv'^i.‘i{£C*S' XX«. tii ’’:/;.ttf/#\ L 6i:^^ .'f;i ^th ^SSCiAi .J.'3TO^t>;^^,, ’Ilf !^'i0tl; iw I'll # >?i;. pjy ^Xm\ to r'4,.,Hil^'-i' t:.'^^sft'■ ■»',.*•', 7 f 4 i»'X 5i^ Jscsi . It' -t^,^;i^,^oo‘.t' * - ' ' '■ ;-' '■ ; ♦?, .. . * iT * 1 frBir^v'i^i^i. l-Ct. .(^AdS at ^ ■ ■ ‘'- ;..X r 3 . - '^t* ; '.. '■ _ , » • . . '. •» - . , • . ' . .-■ ' fc'" ' tc ‘*,t Er .«^ ■its f.rP%3 ^ ifo; ox ■' mJii- r *Jtg. .-: b- ] ' w^‘ ■ f ;j L:0i:io\y 'A' i>r T; .■i‘‘sr'^i>l^r?oc ' is?- ' , .*3 ;^, V.V.J • .^r-i'f “V.. . .ii^uov. rVsi4\:r« Mt ct'SoS tfX"" V • . . * , ' '•^•>- •3 *4&!^ 'ok' ^xcvitijr^l .;i^ut^ito' ijjBoi4'vto? "■ ■ ■' ■ • . ^ -' .' t • ; H it) '^^ra%.r^;,^ 4 ‘^i‘y 4>% j «utO tuo '(l£iO iKtj Cflt ivCA , , ■ . ", , / ;.'' '..'--ill'- I -M ihif- ‘i'i *£ad|r ^dt ‘bellf^nst) axxi &d ■Mcyil' tv ■ 4 .^ fe ’■ ‘ J* Vrxi: at ,-A;a^' a^-gA.vtij^ "r;> A'^tv^Xcv'tOi' oj5p%tU':''f Jj i * . * ' - ' • '-•’ ■- 2 ^'' 'I' i j " M v:,;.r^ V . fi , ;■ -r.i'Si''^ lO'M'l lO’. 3:0 ii’-Cfl to, : & ^ . . ' ‘ .< , ■ ^ ' '■ ':' V, -; ' r \ • . ' ■ .;!■ ' u ■ .V . ■■'■*■- -— ' ~i ^j ■*^ L r 'M ♦lt{,t -tSj£S'-js-iS8ai ,s.^^ ;s«,ivdct*ft<,5. '■ ‘■.■■'kf ', 0 'S 18 there is no poet who has created so many so surely endowed with everlasting life. All that can he known of manhood, of womanhood, and of childhood, he knew better than any man ever born."^ Shakespeare, at the opening of the second stage of his work, began to give "proof of a power never shared in like measure by the mighti- est among the sons of men, a sovereign and serene capacity to fathom the else unfathomable depths of spiritual nature, to solve its else insoluble riddles, "2 "For the first time in all the literature of the world we are confronted with a great as well as a greatly wicked man" (King Richard III),® "The incomparable genius of the greatest among all poets and all men approved itself incomparable forever by the possibly unconsolous instinct which in this supreme work induced or compelled him to set side by side the very lowest and the very highest types of imaginable humanity. Kent and Oswald, Regan and Cordelia, stand out in such relief against each other that Shakes- peare alone could have wrought their several figures into one perfect scheme of spiritual harmony,"^ The figures of Cordelia, Kent, and the Fool form a "heavenly counterpoise against such a triad of most toad-spotted traitors."® "As surely as Othello is the noblest man of man's making, lago is the most perfect evil-doer, the most potent demi-devil. ”6 Swinburne: Shakespeare , 1905, P 83 Swinburne : Study, p 77. Swinburne : Shakespeare . 1905, P 13 Swinburne : Three Plays. 1909, P 12 Swinburne: Shakespeare . 1905, P 66 Swinburne : Study. 1880. p 177 •• < .... \ r, 'y*rr.f 0 # ,i'..‘<;.. ';:• .. • ‘V :/ .v d '* , ,j i .'T,iio ., . . ' ■* r: C"' \'t- "it. 5 M.i.; oqw 1 1 • > '' »yi 3 ^ f ‘ . . ; 'jir.: I • 4 f. * i ^ U * ,V . ,U- • ».. V J. w V . i' I! ■ ,> :lu .... - 'j y- ...t;. ... ,.,a , •_• i '• . "'' C’ .- .■' .''“S ?■ ■ .;■ ‘ - :. ■: -^rxif Sr -. i\ i. -y ■ '■ ■ . VJi . ? Wo , .^.? .V f.-‘‘ :. •• v; .l .' fsT ', ■•':* . . l'. V c .-u. ■ ( . . ‘’, i . ■j * ‘ ' ' •.: 4 t \ili‘ m: - :.i ^ i::) " v’ /J; ■A ,| /.V'T.: ;■ 'ImV ■ h.. i .. I * 1 .,2 ;i i!s f-’-f ? ^ v*i * v>. t _ . . . i ’, 5. . . ■, '.f; , . .. t.-. ' ■ .vxx : ,r- 1 • t . ♦» A ::fry ' . )* :•! yB-4* ^ ^ . ? f 9 *.' - 4 « .V, j *. ‘ * rj/ . , ' j ■ r "i :r:\20j‘ Jri i‘ 30 a n.*: ; •' .A--- H '. 19 Being so essentially a poet himself, Swinburne is especially interested in the poetry of Shakespeare, and in the struggle for mastery evidenced in his earlier work between rhyme and blank verse. The epitome of his discussion of the latter question may be found in an excerpt from the Study of 1880,- "In this play, ( King Henry VI . Part I), then, more decisively than in Titus Andronicus . we find Shakespeare at work, so to speak, with both hands - with his left hand of rhyme, and hie right hand of blank verse. The left is loth to forego the practice of its peculiar music; yet, as the action of the right grows freer, it becomes more and more certain that the oth- er must cease playing, under pain of producing mere discord and dis- turbance in the scheme of tragic harmony."^ Swinburne's admiration for Shakespeare as a poet is boundless, and is expressed over and over in hyperbolic terms. A few examples from the many possible ones will be enough to illustrate this. " A Midsummer Night * s Dream is outside as well as above all possible or imaginable criticism. It is probably or rather surely the most beautiful work of man. No human hand can ever have bequeathed us anything properly or rational- ly comparable with this."^ "Out of this material ( Troilus and Cres- sida ) Shakespeare has been pleased to fashion some of the most glori- ous poetry in the world. The majesty, the magnificence, the depth and breadth of creative thought, the height and reach of in- terpretative imagination, which inform and inspire the matchless 3 music of the verse ". "The Winter's Tale is as unique among poems as Shakespeare is among men. Such a divinely human and 1. Swinburne: Study . 1880, p 34. 2. Swinburne: Shakespeare . 1905, p 33. 3. Swinburne: Shakespeare . 1905, p 47. . i. ©-. < it. ' . < ». ■<♦■ t * T*- : i *x . 'id 'ia 4. til'' ’Itii, . • • ‘ : 'a S’’. t: »» r» . ; ^ •. ■ ,{l i r>«» c^.7 '. r » rprtf ‘X ; ,(.( r : i ' J:^a io :'* ',ij. ^ ■ ’ \ "V ^ 1-- td:^L .11 4i . "i- ! Vi ■ :.•: ;cs . '*';')n>v- '■ ■• •T U ...'ll /I: tv ■ i 1 Vi ?:r : If ■■• tVv'-' .'--t ',iX < f ■ ’• ;* -■ 'i.v rC'’ I 1 .-V» ■ 1 : t . t '^'V- o: ■■ iti' a'Viv ■ ;»» ' T * ..b' ’* • *f't -I. , ..0 ^dt 1 1 ,C ■' : c T •. '., ...•^: V.:. Plot '■ J ■'“ ,'v ■: 1 .... •. v-J >■;. L-y:-n-'\ o;#' Jtf; ’ „-.r i-' 1 "ui nJuv iii --.'T.Z', ■ • , '.' C, •'>■:*;; . ).;i' 3 ‘ * A'C -5.7 ■'.' .-. : M »^■' i :...'. A \r c Y* 20 naturally superhuman melody as no touch but one musician’s could leave to vibrate forever in the ear of the spirit."^ "Of poetry pure and simple, imaginative and sublime, there is no master who has left us more. "2 "In Othello we get the pure poetry of natural and per- sonal emotion."^ Swinburne shows his fondness for classical drama by repeated references to the dramatists of the classic periods, and comparison of their work with that of the men he is passing under review. Aeschylus is to him poetry incarnate, the only man with whom Shakes- peare can be ranked. "The tragedy of King Lear , like the triology of the OrestejLa, is a thing incomparable and unique. Outside the work of Aeschylus, there is no such poetry in the world no such realism."^ "In all poetic or dramatic or patriotic literature there is nothing of its kind comparable with the Persae of Aeschylus but Shakespeare’s King Henry V . "Shakespeare excelled all other men of all time as a poet in the most proper and literal sense - as a creator of men and women. In the more technical and lyrical sense of the word, no lees than in height of phophetic pov/er, in depth of reconciling and atoning inspiration, he is excelled by Aeschylus; though surely, on the latter score, by Aeschylus alone."® "As a poet and thinker, Aeschylus was the equal, if not the superior, of Shakespeare; as a creator, a revealer, an interpreter, infinite in 1. Swinburne: Shakespeare . 1905, p 54. 2. Ibid, p 82. 3. Swinburne: Three Plays , p 55. 4. Swinburne: Three Plays . 1909, p 5. 5. Ibid, p 24. 6. Ibid, p 42. ■ •» l-V 'I - ,it ' f ! \ j, ^ . j . . . » ■■ ' ■ ' --..ilV *! C jili: " -Af. u ■ - 'V' i* . U , . 'y- • ...1, .. I ; . -., A ■ ' , j ■•••.■. > ’J * W ' . ^ Jn. .i. '« . K * il'A fv .-x.v- V ‘ ^ . ,.t f 1 y I„, 7:B ■ 4 - t ti'aeit,. !■-'■ ■' A !•> a t >.V' ,/ ■ ’ .}• ^ . 'A3 j. ? ‘‘I b jt ,/• . 1'. ! '■■ “ cj^ V'' V - ^ t i LJ.. ' ,•>* jv T4 .rkiA-ui. : /iWCicU»^ ^ - 'r Mi - I •■ -•rfiOi f- ' V .J* i i i i J 21 his insight and his truthfulness, his tenderness and hie wisdom, his justice and his mercy, no man who ever lived can stand beside the author of Othello."^ But Aeschylus was not the only man who exerted a considerable influence upon Swinburne's thought, and the poet, bending now under one influence and now under, according as the star of Hugo, of Landoi of Mazzini or of Watts-Dunton happened to be in the ascendency, was interested in tracing the effect upon Shakespeare of other men's work. Greene exerted an influence upon Shakespeare which is es- pecially obvious in King Richard II . To the critic, the "legendary choice of Hercules was of lees moment than the actual choice of Shakespeare between the influence of Robert Greene and the influence of Christopher Marlowe." The influence of Marlowe is more predomi- nant in King Richard III than in any other of Shakespeare's plays, though "in all his earliest historic plays, the influence of the older poet, the echo of hie style, the iteration of his manner, may perpetually be traced."'^ From Rabelais, another important factor in Shakespeare's earlier work, he "learnt nothing and borrowed nothing that was not wise and good and sweet and clean and pure. The come- dies of Twelfth Night and As You Like It stand forth confessed as the common offering of the same spiritual period by force and by right of the trace or badge they proudly and professedly bear in common, as of a recent touch from the ripe and rich and radiant in- 4 fluence of Rabelais." Closely connected with the question of influence, and of 1. Swinburne: Three Plays . 1909, p 55. 2. Swinburne: Three Plays . 1909, p 60. 3. Swinburne: Study . I860, p 52. 4. Swinburne: Study. 1880, pp 156-7. ^naet.-Ai -J 3 k- I -•:■■■■. ri -jh' i /ir. ;' j :s "0 ,; ' ■ ,:: i ii •?--- t. • - * '< rr. • » ■ . ' , vr. j C'^yAt ’".Q •*” . ■ lOift '• ;1> TO ^ 3'Ai A ^ ’'ir:! ' i :; JU >> c nrw/X^ ' * i * j>T ' . i V * * • ; ■ . ..' M- •*-*■*« * ^7 •' f iril t A-' «■*:'. l JiLL'i. . Ju '. > •• Ivl'u vi ■w A ; X r I'. . X ■ ‘ V '?»'’•{ .0 & 0 a. -.’ '’. ' j; f. I' ■• ' "r * f J 0 ..'■. : : : ‘f rr>'-r * ■; :^/ 3 i i.' : rr/_ ^ txil ' Vr:i;c r- * '? A I ^ V* * 'J ' Ki ;t ^ ' ^ 1 J ■" :' ki >1^ , :;*:r' incjxJ •flip*. ■ f- A Nf! M , >i:' .ai-- • '‘AAApilrrt Vv X '-. ' j ,, u 'i i ' * , f V -’*i V . j r ■•■ T . .' :. :.t> , 9 -3 v« I . « „ ; A.^jiir'cnjr f 1 u- '' *• -A .*-S ^ . ' . ^ : ‘ it y ■'p'^ '"^Vr-j^O:.' 1 ; - . ,' '• i\' X . 7!, :.. /r;;:V 0 - . ^, I' '^AA <■•£"> It ' !S ? ’ i V ' l; A. , 12 yfJli 1 . rr vT .V 4 J^ll • VJ . 32 almost equal interest to Swinburne, is Shakespeare's treatment of his originals. He is highly pleased that Shakespeare was inspired to fuse together the legend of Lear and his daughters with the story of Gloucester and his sons, and with the revised solution. "To have turned the ugly and unmanageable legend of Gordella's ultimate sui- cide in prison into the glory of a martyrdom unmatched for its tragic effect of terror and of pity, to have made its inevitable conse- quence the agony which now strikes out not the reason but the life of her father, is the supreme feat of Shakespeare as a spiritual craftsman."^ Swinb\irne regrets that Shakespeare had not used in Romeo and Juliet the narrative of Bandello instead of an Inferior and suiulterated version of the tale. The finest Incident in the story, the last words interchanged by the dying Romeo and Juliet "would have been the tenderest and noblest passage in the loveliest of all tragedies of love."^ In his discussion of the tale of bar- baric butchery which was the original of Othello . Swinburne remarks: "Such humorous realism - and it is excellent of its kind - as half relieves and half intensifies the horror of Cinthio's tale may serve as well as any other point of difference to show with what matchless tact of transfiguration by selection and rejection the hand of Shakespeare wrought hie will and set his mark on the materials left ready for it by the hand of a lesser genius."® Comparisons such as these besides marking the later poet's taste, show as well his splen- did range of reading, which was of inestimable value to him in his critical work. 1. Swinburne: Shakespeare . 1905, pp 66-7. 2. Swinburne: Shakespeare . 1905, p 9. 3. Swinburhe: Three Plays . 1909, p 44 23 From the discussion of the sources of Shakespeare's plays, Swinburne turns to the Shakespeare apocr 3 rpha. Than our critic, none was better able to pronounce upon this subject. Swinburne's piercing insight into a matter which so intrigued his interest, his delicate aesthetic sense, his brilliant intuition of spiritual harmonies rather than technical similarities, stand him in good stead in con- sidering such a problem. Of The Two Noble Kinsmen he has this to say:- "In the play which is undoubtedly the joint work of these two poets (Shakespeare and Fletcher) the points of contact and the points of disunion are unmistakable by the youngest eye. In the very last scene of The Two Noble Kinsmen we can tell with absolute certainty what speeches were appended or interpolated by Fletcher."^ "Even setting apart for once and for a moment the sovereign evidence of mere style, we must recognize a beautiful and significant ex- ample of that loyal and loving fidelity to the minor passing sugges- tions of Chaucer's text which on all possible occasions of such com- parison so markedly and vividly distinguishes the work of Shakes- peare's from the work of Fletcher's hand. (Other passages are) exact and typical examples of Fletcher's tragically prosaic and prosaical- ly tragic dash of incurable commonplace."^ Of Arden of Fever sham he feels that "the wonderful skill, absoluteness of intuition and inspiration, with which every stroke is put in that touches off character or tones down effect, seems siniply logical and just to set doY/n this poem as the possible work of no man's youthful hand but Shakespeare's,"^ "In The Yorkshire Tragedy the submissive devotion of the miserable heroine to her maddened husband is merely doglike. 1. Swinburne: Study . 1880, p 90. 2. Ibid, p 216. 3. Ibid, p 136. p\., ¥ AT ‘'1 . ■ •• ^ . V' ; - ."-n '. ^ \ I® C’S c ‘ 'ic 'H-h TiTC . ■. • ‘ii , •:: i ?;■' j rji. -i’r^ ,1 ^ i ,i . • f« ^ .. ■ ti'^. ij 'l i. t’-'i «. ■'. ^^I ; ;-i.' ? *:-5 '1. f :»' ;r ’J ’. 1.' V' Xd4&‘^ T. 5 e:^ tllfr';' . Instill ^ ■i.Iii. Su .*■ T[-;; " X'l* .■ ;. . .' . v'^'T^?^XT . -• • I ■; ■■ i .'. •' ,:i '' ■• I ,^, ’ 'r--9<5pft • . ] 1“20 -■ f) 0, i;' xnT ;i T t ? '■ ( ' - N ? i- ll , f I . r. ' . r’^ fN.* ••’< .( . ►r: J : ■■: ^ i - ■'•••. j r-o ■'.'•*■’•, -j-.x."- ‘ ■■ ..' ■ • A ‘‘b •1 .. i ^ * [. . V( .,:■. 'i.'t:X?l/^Ji . ' ■'• •’ ■' -•■" • 61J.I-K -- -'■ •- . i y w .: ‘ • -: ■ > 3 rr i v >t -£*1 ■ t*? 'f tS ■: *»0 .:' : rvs ' P'tf fi' “■( ^ oXfljio .■ >v>. ‘ctso^^ y i Xi ’ • aa iJO^fTiTT; I .«»■ ' I? ■K''. rr I li !. t ■I'''- .vxot . ■• .f*"'-.: -' ■ ' L . ■ :> . /w'5 ’ f.\- ■I .>i. L. ./ ' ■ . . , -. V '. ; ! .’w'V i i "v?;W‘' .v; m ' 1 ; .. 1 . . i-i,;. f. -■ • ■ , ^ -• J17 ,-ii) ♦ - . .. ■ A.-r; . W - ,0^ ' i:;?./-:. ■:. IS' ; a: - oXst: . '\0l ■y.lf '>5a., r ti ■.- U*:* ; W-'i, if. !':o 1 ; % ^ 1 34 There is no likeness in this poor and trampled figure to 'one of Shakespeare's women', - Griselda was no ideal of his."^ While Swinburne recognizes in King Henry VIII that "much of the play is ex- ternally as like the usual style of Fletcher as it is unlike the usual style of Shakespeare, yet there is an aptness of phrase, or abstinence from excess, a 'plentiful lack' of mere flowery and super- fluous beauties, which we may rather wish than hope to find in the most famous of Shakespeare's successors. The author is content to dispense with all the violent or far-fetched or fantastic excitement from which Fletcher could hardly ever bring himself completely to abstain. Instances of adverse criticism of Shakespeare are rare in Swinburne. Though the latter cannot himself escape the charge of be- ing at times rhetorical and bombastic, he recognizes this quality as a defect in Shakespeare's earlier work. "Of all Shakespeare's plays King John and King Henry VIII are the most rhetorical; there is more talk than song in them, less poetry than oratory. "The same ef- fusion or effervescence of words is perceptible in King Richard II as in the greater (and the less good) part of Romeo and Juliet ."^ "In King Richard II the rhetorical quality is for the most part in excess of the dramatic."® The form or dramatic construction of Shakespeare's plays does not interest Swinburne' at all, unless, as in one instance, the play does not satisfy his artistic sense of 1. Swinburne: Study . 1880, p 142. 2. Ibid, pp 83, 85. 3. Ibid, p 69. 4. Ibid, p 37, 5. Ibid, p 43, 35 unity, and then it is mentioned as a defect in Shakespeare's art. The comment is that of a poet and artist rather than that of a crit- ic. If his sense of the necessity of the perfect unity and blended whole of a piece is satisfied, he is content; if not, his manner of voicing his disapproval of it, as I have said, is the mark of a poetical rather than of a critical temperament. The following ex- ample, which is purely Swinburnian, is to be found in the discussion of King John and King Henry VIII in the Study of 1880. "Scene is laid upon scene, and event succeeds event, as stone might be laid upon stone, and story might succeed story in a building reared by mere might of human handiwork; not as in a city or temple whose walls had risen of themselves to the lyric breadth and stroke of a greater than Amphion."^ But the greater part of Swinburne's criticism which is not altogether encomiastic is called forth by Shakespeare's occasional failure to observe poetic justice, equity and moral fitness, as the critic conceived it should have been done. He quotes the meting out of perfect justice to Hotspur and to Hal alike as sufficient to prove "the flawless equity, the impeccable intelligence, the il- limitable syn^athy and infallible apprehension of noble nature and 2 living truth," to be found in Shakespeare. But that he did not con- sider hie equity absolutely flawless after all is obvious a few pages farther on in the same book, in his discussion of As You Like It . "There is something questionable in the rapid and facile transformation of character from atrocity to penitence and from tyranny to asceticism which serve to wind up the action so 1. Swinburne: Study . 1.880, p 69. 2. Swinburne: Shakespeare . 1905, p 23, e ■ • : ' . r:.A ,:, i. I . -I _ . > 0 -; /■ h.,'} it';'’;? ’ ' . ’V' v,x : ■ ' M ; j '■ ' ., ';„i 1 '3 ,1 *: :"i 'L ivac. ©4 • ' 1 . ■ : Lhvi.‘"t:. 'v.o. * rJ' r\, * ■ M ' J • I «iiV ^ '' ' * i /*, ,C:^otv !; i ^ - ' "X ' ■ v,;‘ a: 'ti'' ■' .'C- :>r r'Vi' />!*,. ,«.r:; ".■•• t.t;'. T \) ■" r ; ^ . ; i.Tcf / TA ' ' ' ir . . ' IT «4 ’ 1 - ' ij ' V 1 “ ■{■ , <1 I 4 4 » « ‘ . V - . i ■' : ^r. t... ^^ no‘h. ar;v 1 ■' / w^il: > \i z V. 'feaix > ■ .. . w”:...'q ^I't. ■ »■•> •^■'17^3 , , ,'’i> ■’ " .5 3 .. I ^ ■'. ■ i' r. ^ ;■: r;- ; ;;A;T^%tl*\' ,, ■ u ■r ■■• r. ty.r : :i . ; -'^.r . ■ ■33 "■ 'V'ii. ., *. i u 7 .1 r , , — r i 1 ’ ■>' ' '■) ^''f: 7 i fT ■ -t'v ■' ■ '• t 70 «. ^ 1 ''^'. V' .'^vf c ' 4 .** J a.' vv’.' ' ^ ’ r/ i '■•' - i' i r:v ... ■ ,. ■' i: \ > .1 I’l/i £i:.i;X f, ' T" !/»''■ , 'ii-' if t-'ljSiCfl '-{T '..1 ■ ■; j|j .: 2 -j .;< V *(«d ’ •> I* <> V-’ I'i . . Tif-' ■ , . •'■*• ~ « m t ' - ' ‘ o '• > .a 26 comfortably and so suddenly, so instantly and so easily. Even in the half-heavenly forest of Arden, we cannot but feel that some- thing of a breach is made in the natural law of moral instinct by the mere prospect of union between the very vilest of intending fratri- cides and the very sweetest of sisterly friends. Even fairyland has its ethics."^ The same defect is observed in the solution of Measure for Measure . "It is undeniable that for such monsters of base and abject atrocity as Oliver and Angelo a lifelong seclusion from inter- course with the humanity they dishonour would be the irreducible mini- mum of the penalty demanded rather than deserved by their crimes of intention and of action. This moral defect in the equity of dramatic art for once or twice brings down Shake ^eare as a playwright to the ethical level of Fletcher. "2 Swinburne objects to Trollus and Cres- sida on moral grounds, and regrets that two such characters as Pandaras and Ther sites should occur in the scheme of a single play. This may seem singular in an author whose Poems and Ballads of 1866 created such a furor of virulent attack, in which the poet was called "an unclean fiery imp from the pit," "the libidinous laureate of a pack of satyrs", a man who had "revealed to the world a mind all aflame with the feverish carnality of a schoolboy, over the dirtiest JZ passages in Lenqpriere", that the publisher immediately withdrew the book from sale. But Swinburne, however he might himself write, was quick to note the presence or absence of moral tone in the plays he criticized, and to praise or condemn accordingly. And a dramatist who preached failed as signally in Swinburne's estimation as one whos( 1. Swinburne: Shakespeare . 1905, p 38. 2. Ibid, p 39. 3. Quoted in Gosse's Life . p 152. 27 plays were altogether lacking in moral tone. His artistic sense de- manded the observance of the golden mean in the work he admired. Swinburne makes a comment upon the witches in Macbeth which seems to me original and e^eoially fine, and which shows the critic's deli- cate sense of the fitness of things. "It seems too great and strange a transmutation and downfall that the prophetic agents of a doom sublime enough to change the face of kingdoms and destroy the souls of heroes should be found begging chestnuts and killing swine. Middleton's witches would disdain such work; it is hardly worthy of the village crones rather photographed than painted by Heywood, by Dekker, and by Ford."^ The same nice sensitiveness prompts the fol- lowing sympathetic remark upon the Fool in King Lear . :-"We cannot honestly overlook the one great and grave oversight or flaw to be found in this tragic work: the sudden and inexplicable disappearance of Lear's only comrade and support in the first horror of his expos- ure as an outcast to the storm. That the Fool should vanish with the tempest, never more to be thought of or mentioned by Lear or by Cordelia, can neither be explained or excused by any possible audacity or felicity of conjecture."^ Such ardent sympathy, such in- tuitive understanding and appreciation are chief among the delightful aspects of Swinburne's Shakespearean criticism. Another feature of Swinburne's criticism which is unique, and which pleases or displeases the reader in varying degrees, is his habit of introducing little touches which show his personal interests and prejudices. Swinburne was intensely patriotic, and a zealous champion of the cause of liberty. This characteristic comes to the 1. Swinburne: Shakespeare . 1905, p 62. 2. Swinburne: Shakespeare . 1905, p 67. 3. Swinburne; Study. 1880. p 175. 28 front over and over again in his criticism. He delights in discover- ing in his favorite poet feelings similar to those which he himself entertained. "A poet of revolution he is not, as none of his country- in that generation could have been, but the author of Julius Caesar has approved himself in the best and highest sense of the word at least potentially a republican. In the same Study . Swinburne speaks of "the national side of Shakespeare's genius, the vein of patriotism that runs like a thread of living fire through the world- 2 wide range of hie omnipresent spirit." Of the opening scene in the second act of King Richard II . Swinburne says, "It is not of the speaker or the hearer that we think as we read the most passionate panegyric on hie country ever set to hymnal harmonies by the greatest 3 of patriotic poets but Aeschylus alone: it is of England." He feels justified in considering Shakespeare a free thinker and a socialist. "That Shakespeare was in the genuine sense, - that is, in the best and highest and widest meaning of the term - a free thinker this otheinnrise practically and avowedly superfluous effusion (soliloquy on reason and resolution) of all inmost thought appears to me to supply full and sufficient evidence for the conviction of every 4 candid and rational man." "There is evidence given in King Lear of a sympathy with the mass of social misery more wide and deep and direct and bitter and tender than Shakespeare has shown elsewhere. He has avowed himself in the only good and rational sense of the words a spiritual if not a political democrat and socialist."® 1. Swinburne: Study . 1880, p 175. 2. Ibid, p 73. 3. Swinburne: Three Plays. 1909, p 68. 4. Swinburne: Study, 1880, p 165. ■ '7vl ' i' ■' -iY' X ZK: ' s i 'i rt ‘ .T ' ..v’x^'-' 'i'^' .'.'*? 29 Swinburne was extremely fond of little children, and his heart warmec to the person who felt this love with him. "From Homer’s day to Hugo’s there has been no such loving and faithful picture of a child as Shakespeare has given in the tragedy with which the ?/inter’s Tale opens. We find the cat celebrated in hie poems, as v;ell as little children, and this favoritism of Swinburne’s creeps into his criti- cism, too. "He (Lear’s Fool) cleaves to his master with the divine instinct of fidelity and love which is not, though it should be, as generally recognized in the actual nature of a cat as in the proverbial nature of a dog."^ Nor does Swinburne's love for the sea fail to find expression. "Deep and pure and strong and ador- able always and terrible and pitiless on occasion as the sea is the great soul of the glorious hero" (Othello). As Swinburne maintained! a traditionally reverent attitude toward women, he naturally dwelt somewhat at length upon Shakespeare's treatment of women, which was in such marked contrast to the attitude held by most Elizabethan dramatists. "No poet of the time but Shakespeare and Webster has shown so noble an instinct for elevating and purifying the character of women or of men whom the chronicles they followed with close and meticulous fidelity had presented as merely debased and contemptible criminals."^ "Shakespeare has elsewhere given us in ideal incarnation the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the per- fect daughter, the perfect mistress or the perfect maiden; here (in Antony and Cleopatra) only once for all he has given us the perfect 1. Swinburne: Shakespeare . 1905, p 52. 2. Swinburne: Study . 1880, p 181. 3. Swinburne: Three Plays . 1909, p 21. 4. Swinburne: Shakespeare . 1905, p 14. -i*- , • V > V ^ • . • •• ^ t .. ' t'f .. vr« s W ' • ^ ^ ^ ..o«4 *' I j H ■ '-:•' . s*'. r. »i ;:-r.y j i? * >•;•.♦ • co* t •. ■; ^4/.:v.)!: iio'i-. .v.^ ; ■ 3'j;^ auv.r^* fcjyii . ‘ ■ -■- ■ • •: . ,yr ^ , ',■ ■•y'tfUi.. .Oi - >' ■ ?• t; :* .’•• :-'V r . , ■ ■ Ur:‘ .^C) '’..•- ■ a • Ow ■:' . .t-ni*r, ‘ .' 'Ml V ' }j C l “ i..‘ ' . ' ' j - ■ • ■ , ' * . ■ ^ j '. ■ ,, 'l.!.Tj ' j. , "'c 1"^ I -■ '.•'!• Vlsi: .:, •' •• , :• •■ ft 7v»l ' * .<.• :t a/^- , “ ^ ' tb ■’ ' '.7 j OviX-K ; .. '■ • r . */.4 '4;.^ v^ .U -;" .' i^ry • '■••’ ' /- •• • c . --• •‘< t- 7 • f ’■' t'.ytMp V. o.ii rsft^c ft? V‘ri‘7, .:i. C> ■ .! ■'." ■-' '. •*’ ' '1 .'-C 4^' I . .4 :ui •. 't i'-'' - /'r.ii .r.,j7r- 30 and the everlasting woman. The critic closes his Study of Shake 8~ pea re . 1880, with these words:- ”In Imogen we find half glorified already the immortal godhead of womanhood. I am therefore something more than fain to close my book upon the name of the woman best be- loved in all the world of song and all the tide of time; upon the name of Shakespeare’s Imogen."^ Nor can Swinburne refrain from personalities of a sharper cast When he is discussing a subject which has been previously reviewed by German critics, a school which especially had come under the ban of Swinburne’s disapproval, he cannot pass by the opportunity of in- dulging in ironical remarks concerning them. Witness, for example, the interpolation in his critical work of comments such as these:- trust it will be taken as no breach of my past pledge to abstain from all intrusion on the sacred ground of Gigadibs and the Germans, if I venture to indicate a touch inserted by Shakespeare for no other per- ceptible or conceivable piorpose than to obviate by anticipation the indomitable and ineradicable fallacy of criticism which would find th< keynote of Hamlet’s character in the quality of irresolution."^ "Any point in the character of Hamlet unseized by the Germans yet."^ "A German will rush in with an answer where an Englishman (non angelus sed Anglus) will naturally fear to tread."® There are plenty of "cold-blooded and perhaps more fortuna-fe 1. Swinburne: Study . 1860, p 191. 2. Ibid, p 227. 3. Ibid, p 160. 4. Ibid, p 160. 5. Ibid, p 200. 31 mortals" who fill out both the credit and the debit side of Shakes- peare's ledger, who involve themselves in dry and meaningless techni- calities and architectural points in the framework of the plays, who give the whole subject strictly objective treatment in a very re- served manner, and who succeed in boring the reader to such an ex- tent that his personal feeling toward the great dramatist suffers in consequence, but Swinburne stands in a class by himself. Swinburne’s enthusiasm for Shakespeare was genuine, sincere, infectious. But it must be admitted that there are many serious charges to be laid at hie door as a Shakespearean critic. We can find no deep analysis of characters or of plays. Simply to say that Imogen is the very crown and flower of all her father's daughters, or that Othello is the noblest man of man's making may fittingly express the poet's predi- lections, but it is no true criticism. The comment on Troilus and Cressida . that "Alike in its most palpable perplexities and in its most patent splendours, this political and philosophical and poetic problem, this hybrid and himdred-faced and hydra-headed prodigy, at once defies and derides all definitive comment,"^ may be accepted as the ravings of an alliterative fanatic, but it is meaningless as criticism. In the following extracts from the Study of 1860 we gain nothing but an idea of Swinburne's frantic admiration for the plays to which he alludes:- "And now, before we may enter the 'flowery square* made by the summer growth of his four greatest works in pure and perfect comedy 'beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind' of all happiest and most fragrant imagination, we have but one field to cross, one brook to ford, that hardly can be thought to keep us out 1. Swinburne: Study . 1880, p 200. ( S«Jr, fJ... [ ' * ^ ivr-'.'Ti '/« .■'(;»' V i. ■■; ■' 1 - i '.ifM /r S'- "■ ‘ij , V. !x n’ni.i.:; '■• • • ' .'. . - I tv- i f -•ii'.i ,r.-- J€ ,.j' ’ -rj, ’i 'i :ic , Qjl^f 'Jlj: ■■ :’t-; v.;;i r' ' , 7 ,. , 0 0 - . tftCK' 1^; -.„ ' ■ .1* r ‘j V ■ f. \ \\ I JK o o ij. .*:a,rf-' : .. . .in/*,.^ ■' ■'. . jc„ V i;..j'> ix.fi'i- _ , .i..., ,. * ^.T' C - . ■ I'OJ; i'iJXit.Oii '.'i'' ■; ■^) 1. j. . ' £ i .’■ ■’ ^ .r A .' '■ *. -." .-ri :, •■• .' CA« »«ii|, ,^. 11 #: > < .^or ^ . '-.robi * 'tt .'. ■' :»■{-■ Y-.' ■ ji!"-.*i '-r* "iiiiV-W o:'. i,' , xtiXo-:, { q< ^ ■,... o''j ’’ . ‘jvTtt ills' ■ ll • 0 ■ .•• •-.• i • . fiK. JtiTffc, ' "i^ ‘ • •’ D. ’ S, . $ I 'I ’■^ -■ i ' - •■ -)d' i. ( 1 I ‘ ^ • , ■ •■ / ' » I V? dW’ ■•: V. ) : .;/j'.i J‘ ; ■•j 0 TV n'.o "»■•'* j t ■■■.'- i ■'■>• •:••• •■-•••" : o' i- 4 a .•■••, ‘ ■'-•0 *•■ ... .ivi-f. ..1 'At' :fOC I I . • TV'S ’ t,5' ^ , ^ t ^ - 1 ; . . !i ; . c: : i r I ^ itx 5 D 'it,Xr-o": '# . L- ^ , « • *>j V- *' tCiSB.: 32 of Paradise. In the garden-plot on whose wicket is inscribed All * s Well that Ends Well , we are hardly distajit from Eden itself 'About a young dove's flutter from a wood'".^ "At the entrance of the heaven- ly quadrilateral, or under the rising dawn of the four fixed stars which compose our Northern Cross among the constellations of dramatic romance hung high in the highest air of poetry, we may well pause for very dread of our ov/n delight, lest unawares we break into mere bab- ble of childish rapture and infantile thanksgiving for such light vouchsafed even to our ' settentrional vedovo sito' that even at their first dawn out of the depths 'goder pareva il ciel di lar fiammelle'. Beyond these again we see a second group arising, the supreme starry trinity of the Winter's Tale , the Tempest . and Cvmbeline ; and beyond these the divine darkness of everlasting and all-maternal night. We miss also any real attempt at criticism of dramatic form or con- struction. In this connection, Mr. Drinkwater in his Estimate . says, "There is nothing in the essays to show that form is a considerable aspect of Shakespeare's art, while there is everything to shov/ that he could recognize all degrees of attainment in loveliness of verse with unerring instinct."^ A summary of the points which Coleridge emphasizes in his criticism of Shakespeare as his outstand- ing characteristics, will perhaps serve as well as anything else, by way of comparison, to show in what respects Swinburne's critical work is lacking. They are as follows:- Unity of feeling and of character which pervades every drama; expectation in preference to surprise; 1. Swinburne: Study . 1880, p 146. 2. Ibid, p 148. 3. Drinkwater: Swinburne.. An Estimate , p 181. f ) ■ i IX'- &»:ir«ra>nvKaiivii^'r .V •M' ' a tf V ^0' :rt*> r 33 signal adherence to the great law lOf nature, that all opposites tend to attract and temper each other; keeping at all times in the high road of life, never inverting the order of nature and propriety; in- dependence of the dramatic interest on the plot; independence of the interest on the story as the groundwork of the plot; interfusion of the lyrical, not only with the dramatic, but also in and through the dramatic; leaving the characters of the dramatic personae to be in- ferred by the reader; following the main inarch of the human affec- tions.^ Swinburne's criticism is certainly not all-inclusive in dealing with all phases of the subject as is Coleridgeb. Swinburne was too impulsive. His heart-whole yielding of himself up to the stress of feeling of the moment often leads him into ill-considered and unguarded flights of oratory and panegyric, and abuse as well, which are far outside the province of a critic. Stimulating and picquing as his criticism ever is, care must be taken by the reader that he does not substitute Swinburne's Shakespeare for the real Shakespeare. It is through the medium of Swinburne's soul that we see the fineness of his master, the aestheti<: and spiritual side of his genius. However, if the reader can realize that all of Swinburne's criticism is high-pitched, and if he is blessed with the ability to separate a kernel of wheat from a bushel of chaff, from the perusal of Swinburne's essays he will turn to Shakespeare with a renewed interest and a deeper appreciation of the inner harmonies of his work. 1. Coleridge: Works . Vol.IV, 1866, passim, 61-4. ' r . 'j 1 'i ' ■ ■ ' u ;v i j*'!i :.’:^ %: I . ■ 5 • . ^ n . - k 1 w M j . A h i ** . f f > *" ' • .' ■ •^.•v j,*J •• •• ' l ^ ' , K .’ f « ^ ‘ ’ «. ‘ • ^ ' s * •...,. ...1 .tlfCT . 'i' ■ j ■/• 1 ’ . y^iTi tC“ , L.OiT'/I ila Qt <»-•' II r - • ^ * -di :- ai ,yn '. 'a f.v ■ I ' i :?!;"!.;:. .' ^ ', r 0 ,u.( . ■' : ! • 0 7 A II ..„’ I r ‘13 ! I *- - J ^ , .6 'to ', an a'; { < tit f - .*■... tv ', a -'"' ; ! i .rrjl^ .Sn V .*i 1 1 r: *>.t7 ■« :••■ ■ .; ••t.ji|*«a.'1F; . A of'' ;' ■ ' fc r#7.;,.'^ Xt7?5|C! f ^ . 1 , .^', 1 t V ' : , Oti.-i v. : :-.; ■ ' .o tp ‘ ‘ ,=>.. k Vf .- . • " ,; ■■ ! iXv ' •., ' ‘ •,..{': ■>:. I/,-.. •A-^''j '..• Xi . yn ■, rtf . td 05 Jlr , 4 •* a - j *}! ■ 1 I ' b ' i '--'r / ■ ,’" •■ ' ■ "‘^'"•'■’ W..i;t ^ ■• ' ‘ ■■ '■'.:‘U' >■» ■ • - 1 .1 1 . “O' '-I "'•/ , '. 34 CHAPTER III A Study of Ben Jonson "If poets may be divided into two exhaustive but not exclu- sive classes - the gods of harmony and creation, the giants of energy and invention - the supremacy of Shakespeare among the gods of English verse is not more unquestionable than the supremacy of Jonson among its giants."^ The opening sentence of Swinburne's Study of Ben Jonson , the first section of which is devoted to a consideration of his dramatic work, strikes the keynote of his criticism of Jonson as a playwright. That Swinburne should rank Jonson as "a giant of en- ergy and invention" implies the distinguishing mark of difference be- tween his Shakespearean and his Jonsonian criticisrru Jenson's genius was not inspirational or will-o'-the-wisp in character, but was the result of the combination of a wonderful intellect with an indomitable determination and a rigid conception of purpose. The sort of criticism applied to Shakespeare, a kind of runningpfire of eulogistic appreciation of his aesthetic and spiritual qualities to the almost entire exclusion of analysis of character and points of technique, would manifestly be incongruous here. Swinburne must have realized this, for as far as is possible for such a child of emotion as he, the style of A Study of Ben Jonson (and throughout this dis- cussion, when mention is made of this book, it will be understood to mean only that part of it with which we are concerned, the section dealing with his dramatic works) is restrained and sane, and more fitting for the nature of the man and the works he is reviewing. 1. Study of Ben Jonson . 1889, p 2. 35 Swinburne entertained a very real admiration for Ben Jon son, but it was far from the excessive attitude of worship and adoration which he held toward the greatest of dramatists. When not blinded to exist- ing faults by over-enthusiastic devotion, his criticism could frankly acknowledge and condemn the defects as well as heartily praise the merits of any particular work dr author. Assuredly, there are many more defects to be acknowledged in Jonson than in Shakespeare, but just as assuredly the calmer feeling for Jonson is responsible in large measure for the more equable and balanced manner of treatment accorded him by Swinburne. Not that the Study of Ben Jonson is an example of complete and well-rounded criticism; it was inherently im- possible that Swinburne could ever achieve that; but the defects of an impressionist and stylist, while still visible, are much less in- sistently and persistently intrusive than in the essays on Shakes- peare. The quality which above all others in Jonson attracts Swin^- burne’s first attention, is the quality of conscience and laborious effort, completely lacking in inspiration or impulse. "Conscience is his first and last consideration: the conscience of power which un- doubtedly made him arrogant and exacting made him even more severe in self-exaction, more resolute in self-discipline, more inexorable in self-devotion to the elected labor of his life."^ Jonson had "a stern and austere devotion to the principle which prohibits all ex- uberance of expression, and immolates on the alter of accuracy all eloquence, all passion, and all inspiration incompatible with direct and prosaic reproduction of probable or plausible dialogue."^ "The 1. Study of Jonson . 1889, p 7. 2, Study of Jonson. p 12. < 'V u p -i. - ~ fL -JiT, 1 1/ ., F'W'TKSE'^.':^ - ^ -''Slifla :■" ; f>. ■ '» • f r y ^ — • . . . " 1 jBT'' ' " ^ » n '*'■. . *' •'*'^‘' I*'' Hi LtJttW^J Ixldif [! ^ I.' . "V "^ ’••.. * -^..i ■ ,', 4’ - ’■-'^’ J!. “ ’*i ■■■' b4j irsW' ? 3i> rj£^.sie; t }■ ’ V I H • '■ ~ „’ ■ 'f ^ i r; r:i ■.,! «o:.-n':>6. -fo* '?©.4x:i}Of«MW I \] V 1%: » s ,r £' " V * ^''7 it !xi _^^'ui''- •£' s'&:mljiit ’.‘^T« ' '•’' ' '^ ■ V ' .*’ 5.'- ' 1 \,X.T j .t., ioi 3 1 to Xa'^fl.i;,drr-r X^i?'' . %■”: ' . ' .‘1 .‘" ...:v T ?!V «! T| ■ ^ '■ ... ' ■■-vT fcV:. , f4. ' X. ..... , ■ V... , ' j , ^4 A^ itii.-fio Xfia r^otSh 4cX4‘«w4^Uai>^^^ 53>X yp:£0 fxoo.^ v.(yt-x:nejr. .,#rf.r %i fiVxt; ^ J ai£|fe . Sa '* — ^ — » Eff'i'c.'*/' 'Vi Xi*ihi-^^t rCVf^l 4M&-4£4r- J.'J> .,.v (fjfsj T^, n<,: M.i l^~- ; " '2’. *'!^''^*' '*fl ' Vif' ' ’ " ' J I _» , .tojcL ■ «Vft4’^XX tf;f^- ,:ly • ' ^ '^‘ X ■■•' ' ' / '*4| ■’ *4Xi4.lvfoi2(^ aii-^ ■ !’* I I ( * ‘.fr'i^., . jj ■ I,C4 .%c -XisXXJs, sift^ ;Xi4 * V'^'I ■ .' '.", .'t” * . . ' ' I-' ■ffr'il*' Vi ' '"■ ' ^ fysAtt if^Atti.* €X4'Kt©^*,^;(f XX a ■»«© .•■•;*dXt^^J:# ,.- fiv .v"’ -^ijr ^C,"^y. CK yf , ' ^.1 » . • ( ■ X CSl i ^ *‘. .V>? .... :VsiJ¥&!.. (► . ,«» ■ .2 i%.. « .t»| . -■ ,. •. iff-.ri- ., .; wv-fii4 "•tef li'-" ’**j(S^ -■■’^i.'.i’-sX 36 famous men whose names may most naturally and most rationally be coupled with the more illustrious name of Ben Joiison came short of the triumph which might have been theirs in consequence of their worst faults or defects because they preferred self-interest in the one case and self-indulgence in the other to the noble toil and the noble pleasure of doing their best for their art’s sake and their duty’s, to the ultimate satisfaction of their conscience."^ "He was careful and troubled about many things absolutely superfluous and supererogatory; matters of no value or concern whatever for the pur- pose or the import of a dramatic poem. "There is nothing accidental in the work of Ben Jonson: no casual inspiration, no fortuitous im- pulse, ever guides or misguides his genius aright or astray. "3 This conscientious restraint and laborious effort is but too plainly evidenced in his characterization. Jonson 's men and women are rarely more to us than clearly-defined puppets with one pre- dominant feature in their make-up, whose actions are dependent upon the manipulation of the strings in the hands of their maker. As Coleridge has said, Jonson’ s characters are, almost entirely, "either a man with a huge wen, having a circulation of its own, and which we might conceive amputated, and the patient thereby losing all his character: or they are mere wens themselves, instead of men - wens personified, or with eyes, nose, and mouth out out; mandrake fashion." The characters do not evolve or develop; the different facets of theii being are shown to us by an accumulation of one heap of details upon 1. Study of Jonson . p 6. 3. Ibid, p 27, 3. Ibid, 1899, p 9. 4. Coleridge: Works . Vol.IV, ed Shedd, 1868, p 192. ■ 6 :j. '* * , rrti \i*- ^ c- Xo ■ •'C:' *Tk ■....:-.v * , ^ " 0 1 ’.* ) '; . •' •• " ■M ‘\ • '. ' t- , ..'i ■ '<■ ^ L~ ■ “!' Wt I* ■'• • ' - «' «> V 9 • f ■y - . ^ . •■ _ . - 1 .. > ■’‘^. ri' :■ ■■: ', ■ * f. >• ■ i ■, ' ' ^ •' ■ [■i >f: >/' J.j ’^'.■'^.'■’TJi L '. - • -4 ' \ ^ ' .. -it '••» - ' •ij’ 7/.. i ', C' X ^ ■ : -:'f k!.-.l V/) '.- J j •t 1 » * (1 '^n <■! 1 •. . , ' > '/V ' », •* . r . i «. / *.* ' ... 'v . ■ * ' . • V ■ '■ / -ki V V 1 .' , . 1. i ■ 'i 1 ■. •-' • & : . ' * j u'.'i A Hf « ■ '■ ’tJ? £.rXn V « i j .. *’ 1' ' i* t^: •£v 57® > c' ■ ■? I'. ' ' /•■fc*. '■- i ^ '*• ■ ir ■' ii t 1 ' 1 1 > L .' /s* J . - ' • . \ I # .’ji'/y' i/f _.j>c .- 5 : 1 V *3 '!■.., . ' ,5- ' ■ • . ;;i ’V? .‘uV=''X7^i'r..Ci.v • . T"^ ' f •;'. ■■■• ■ , trX i ' 'a ?■' .'^ ' ’ • •') V • - ' * . 1 ^-: ■ n :.'4> 4?^ „ 'V't^ . ■rA, | Y r, J' •■fl_- : . , lovC^xnr, t>a;v)V ' ®%ea!c mj'' P’'/? ; i- ;• |^t.'ii ' • ..V. :. [:■ ‘y j V ^ V ^ ■ * ■ ' t t *. ■•"*• -4 o ^ '■■•-'• -^* 'j fy»nrf i iiiff ■> ij. i" ’ I -‘m. Vtf.- 37 another, often exceedingly ingenious in themselves, but the evidences of an inferior method of characterization. ”The author has fallen into the excusable but nevertheless unpardonable error of the too studious and industrious Martha the one thing needful, the very condition of poetic life and dramatic interest, he utterly and per- sistently overlooked. (In speaking of Tiberius in Sejanus) no praise, - of the sort which is due to such labors, - can be too high for the strenuous and fervid conscience which inspires every line of the laborious delineation: the recorded words of the tyrant are wrought into the text, his traditional characteristics are welded into the action, with a patient and earnest fidelity which demands applause no less than recognition: but when we turn from this elabo- rate statue - from this exquisitely articulated skeleton - to the living figure of Octavius or of Antony, we feel and understand more than ever that Shakespeare 'hath chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from him'."^ This "good part," sympathy with his characters and ability to make them real flesh and blood creatures, pulsating with life, convincing us that just so it must have been, anc not otherwise it could have been, was beyond the reach of Jonson. "Cataline is so mere a monster of ravenous malignity and irrational atrocity that he simply impresses us as an irresponsible though crimi- nal lunatic: and there is something so preposterous, so abnormal, in the conduct and language of all concerned in his conspiracy, that nothing attributed to them seems either rationally credible or logi- cally incredible."^ "If the play ( Tale of a Tub ) be a failure, it is through the writer's want of any real sympathy with his characters, 1. Study of Jonson . 1889, pp 27-8. 2. Ibid, p 57, }>\» ’ jy; ■ ■: ' 4 :,' v 5w a;. • ■ C f . 'V!: 9..y t .• I-’ '4 -■cmtfi-'-c : o; i/vtir i.4, :*•,■ , *=" \ . X, .i rj‘'.r'ie\ ' r. ‘ ■ ;(r f ,: ,Va ’ . . 'r)i 'z.o":iU ! it ., ^ •, r ^ «■; d- 'j.v 3 : I' k, S'-tcxSJ Ui^S'. * • Cr. •j:q,, -' a.! . ‘': ;>nhi -'“i .4 . 4.4 •- '■ 4 '■ I ' " 'V * ■:' ^,1 , ' 7; f| I vt. OS 'll t \ r ytV'' •.* ivvr iwritfK I . ..;«'U. n ^ C va J>' ,'• CT - 4 . il-. Vi 1 ^ ''i 'N jf'^- ' .Cy-:; t y, ;' i Li-i‘ i'j jr'\ 'j 'v,; 'i:,>;’ \l . 'I V . ,4 4 ,L,4, ■ : t'/;-4r.'p''a'4ri ’ " ■ ■■ . 4 I '-‘..I,. ; ■ I-?;f ( '.r* r> .'iiiJL j-00jbcs0,0 ViiX^ '.tti*;'- _ V ' ' .• .*'' ’ 4 . . ., '. Ti '^4 ,'/ ''^1' ' I ■■ t. /'}■. ■?»’: tillJ ^ 'r-:t: ' - • "•: jt'.; ^",VN ^ '■;:... UK ip'.'i I f( ./T ■'.'* 38 any hearty relish of hie subject."^ "It is difficult to believe that Jonson can have believed with some half-s 3 rmpathetio or half-sardonic belief, in all the leading figures of his invention."^ "There is lack of any cordial interest in the men and women represented on the stage. The whole interest is concentrated on the intellectual com- position and the intellectual development of the characters and the scheme. Love and hatred, sympathy and antipathy, are superseded and supplanted by pure scientific curiosity. The genius of Ben Jonson is distinguished from that of "the very greatest imaginative humor- ists - Aristophanes or Rabelais, Shakespeare or Sterne, Vanbrugh or Dickens, Congreve or Thackeray" by this quality. "Each of these was evidently capable of falling in love with his own fancy - of rejoic- ing in his own imaginative humour as a swimmer in the waves he plays with. There is the life-blood of eternal life which can only be in- fused by the sirmpathetic faith of the creator in his creature - the breath which animates every word, even if the word be not the very best word that might have been chosen, with the vital pulse of infal- lible imagination."^ Nevertheless, there are one or two times when Jonson outdoes himself in the realm of character, when he seems to have caught for a little while a glimpse of the higher gift of char- acterization. "One figure, indeed, among all the multitude of Jonson *8 invention, is so magnificent in the spiritual stature of his wickedness, in the still dilating verge and expanding proportion of his energies, that admiration in this single case may possibly if not 1. Study of Jonson . 1889, p 85. 3, Study of Jonson . 1889, p 39. 3. Ibid, p 29. 4. Ibid, p 39. vm 'WV ■■ ''’^v '■ V \j-a. ' ;,1 1* 7iixs*(;« .',0 • ,fl(i i^'O' iM -..'isi /Yxs«j •••i ^'1 ■’■ T'Sn ■ y ,.i - 'ij^. .a I ' Tif.di • at f 1l (»!: tX» j.»4 fc ^ ■ 0- ' ' ■' p.-^i;)QO I." :/i .ttt4' f Xi? ? at ■< /p3 •' ^ t .ts ^I6ts^ ‘J... '■"•'"•^V '’sg ::'. [^r,«T. is ■'^rt,v* 95'^ ’Sp ,.'itije»i5'>X,W«iJi^ .i*Wy^XXo^^^ • .<£:•..•■ , ’’iHjP ■' . ',i' - *'• . .-^ '^'V-- { i ••^.■> vr I' 8- •:© '. '^*fe a tX: \j/ #4>C*W(# 1*^ ' ■ i; 'B aTJ 3 i,»votT;,j '“■’'''' J ^ ’ ' ■■‘•i .' j» ' . 4^.* / . • 7n X ‘ '■ V “^. ' *■<»«». 4^ -T-y-n^jia 0'tr.f irv<^'i;:^a^xxa^^ 'to ■' Kc 4X%T «,«r-' ». V r,:l •ai^.v Jl^ei . 4 .*4 !^p^§ Xifv «i! -kS •r''’’^' r^V f?"c >/it?X4v 9iXi. , i.>^€ 5'9'' V> ■ |^;'3?f- s, ' '' ' „. " ' ; ' *, " ,»>:, ' .'^ ‘^'>'..i!Sf--<^' 'V ', ;. --■ ; i'M? U^iiz ti'.f ^on Qi <1^ K , • '^1 " i - ' . '■ 'Cf 'S rr f T»— ■■^- :iw ir, noXi#iii'^c*T^'( ^ ... . : -■ •' I i ■ ^, T ■'■_ ■ . '■ .«V^ ,'.v:. ^ 7# f '"'i,' '' 7, i7*’ ■’’S''^ '.■■■"■■,"n "A 4, ’S'.d ■al'jX.tf ' 3*P-W .'^•■'.'i* A^J.\ f -(V '’^’ ’ j' ' ■'>■ ■*v\ ' ''M ' » ■ .'J ’■« 'Jt^; ''fiCitH J'-fi' i«R«<^t&X! >/' .a^' ■.'.' '‘‘' V ""■' . ■ -»7 , . -■ : ' c ^ ‘T; ^;7v■“ . ■'Sfo; m s ! ,. '1^1 ' feiiS , ' vilX'oiL... /•' .., ^ ;- 7 “.'^' C', . • r^. *>,1 , tWB ^ H i': > .> . ■ y>. ' V .W “ vi .ijr ■ i ' .; -^jjkJSijji^ * ^ r’«< . ' j *' n ?" . '*i p r . i » * ‘ < w ■■^i) ji » ^ **!p .»j;_ii » ifaj ^ ■• li* -'i- ' '.‘kl 39 probably overflow into something of intellectual if not moral sympa- thy. The genius and the courage of Volpone, hie sublimity of cynic scorn and hie intensity of contemptuous enjoyment - his limitless capacity for pleasure and his dauntless contemplation of his crimes, - make of this superb sinner a figure which we can hardly realize with- out some sense of in^^erious fascination."^ "I admire as a master- stroke of character the haughty audacity of caprice which produces or evolves his ruin (Volpone ’s) out of his own hardihood and insolence 2 of exulting and daring enjoyment." "Nor is it possible to resist a certain sense of immoral sympathy and humorous congratulation when Face dismisses Surly with a promise td bring him word to his lodging if he can hear of ‘that Face* whom Surly has sworn to mark for his if ever he meets him. From the date of Plautus to the date of Sheridan it would surely be difficult to find in any comedy a touch of glorious impudence which might reasonably be set against this."^ Some of Jonson's characters furnish Swinburne an opportunity of making a comparison of Jonson with other dramatists. "The treat- ment of character (in Cat aline ) is hardly more serious as a study of humanity than Seneca's, though the style of writing is immeasurably better than that of the ranting tragedian. "Moliere himself has no character more exquisitely successful in presentation than the immortal and inimitable Bobadil."^ "As to the chief l'* Study of Jonson . 1889, p 31. 2. Ibid, p 42. 3. Ibid, p 38. 4. Ibid, p 57. 5. Ibid, p 14. .-M »4 - •» ^ -V, . 3 -^ X^i:, t'vi C , 5 ,,; ^'ii . 'uC/OX 'V ;0 '■j'.h-li. ■ f*-.: 1 . : ■- . Vt)' * i ; .U ; -. i if; «■' - s i| 4 . . ,>.w y "V ^ -Jp . 1 • '.I r > .1 • ,/;{j i.t /i’i -) : u ■ p i; ' "'ni.-y/.*- ► r *r ('• »-v ■^.. *- M Tj 1 y ii , ** I ,.5 r .•:jn,**' ■'*/>■'•- .v'ii ;.XXr - L , .a:::. r- ijdft: oc ■ = ^rf *7 *■; - 1 ’ ■ t ■.,:rtv cc'' ‘'i «>V '^' *<■ sf I 0 ' '.■■■,• '■(■> ■■'’■■? i U 0 ,,^ ‘Ji', I ;■ , ' f V !«K ■::t A fti.'- t,;i. wv'- 1 ":i- ft/'i iV s ;.v, r ‘ 4 J ■ '. .- C < fc' i ' •’* jift ■' 1 . u ■,«,/ ri . 0 -^. rJiift Ton . I;, • V ■). 'I.V ."JO ;: X . HP.' :i' 'fj X ro'xdvj rv.' '’■':r. ;y MX v '''-• :;n i! ' ': i J XX ' : ; . ’ '’'til . •■ .',-&i - *' f;: ^ V..,- _ .:':_;;,.-L. ■. if \i i lO oX',' • « V ■ -I i. Ij. vV X [< I ' 1 I f .1 W 4 T rr -■.•'t/n. •»; “ f: :t Ui. :x; ■!f i / Ti' * k 4 1 'V . ' i .r »■ 40 character, (in The Silent Woman ) he is as superior to the malade Imaginaire, or to any of the Sganarelles of Moliere, as is Moliere himself to Jonson in lightness of spontaneous movement and easy grace of inspiration,"^ Other interesting comparisons, though not connected with characterization, may more fittingly be given at this point than later. "A play of this kind ( The Silent Woman ) must Inevitably challenge a comparison, in the judgment of modern readers, between its author and Moliere; and Jonson can hardly, on the whole, sustain that most perilous comparison. The Nemesis of the satirist is upon him: he cannot be happy in his work without some undertone of sarcasm, some afterthought of allusion, aimed at matter £ which Moliere would have reserved for a slighter style of satire, and which Shakespeare would scarcely have condescended to recognize as possible objects of even momentary attention."^ "Shakespeare himself stands no higher above Milton and Shelley than Jonson above Dryden and Byron. "Among the very few poets who could sustain a comparison with Catullus no man capable of learning the merest rudi- ments of poetry will affirm that Ben Jonson can be ranked. "In the year 1620 the comic genius of Jonson shone out once more in all the splendour of its strength. News from the New World Discovered ir the Moon is worthy of a prose Aristophanes: in other words, it is a satire such as Aristophanes might have written if that greater poet had ever condescended to write prose," 1. Study of Jonson . 1889, p 53. 2. Ibid, p 51. 3. Ibid, p 2. 4. Ibid, p 47. 5. Ibid, p 70. 1 S ' s ' I lil » ^.1 : osii ,“. 4fi or ■M A>fi •.C.f -0 , Cv‘> i r .' 13 ;j' :.■» ‘ -.- i C <:•’ >0i 'j. -i<'C O , T-ax -liof i ~C ■''• '.e^ r ■•JL j. . nou - j . i j ' < I \L vXd^tv j i ^ :-U J •> I ,.f ■ f I e II •' * •'v i:. •> VI 1| tu ‘ X*l «» ■ -T^JPX •* -. r»o ,^rV«iJr ^ , _ t,7 te‘r;-.' ; '1 '• *1 *?; t< ' '. -•.< : .'i ' ' » n ^ i xoK i6i.:‘. ■'• — ^ 1 >i: .ijt"'! r^' .'I.' t^vro i-- V ' -V X 111**1 _:,v A e; ■, >it 7 _ k a : 7 Si rt'" > » X , 1 -m'. m •• I ' / JV .'•• x^Ta i* "ri 41 Despite the fact that the majority of the comparisons which Swinburne makes between Jenson and other poets and dramatists tends to give him second or third place, there are some respects in which the critic holds that Jonson's work entitles him to very high praise and a rank equal with that of the greatest play^vrights, or even, in consideration of hie genius for construction and invention, above all others, Swinburne regards The Alchemist and Oedipus Tvrannus as 4 the "greatest of tragic and the greatest of comic triumphs in con- struction ever accomplished by the most consummate and the most con- scientious among ancient and modern artists."^ They are blameless ir their "ingenuity of composition and absolute impeccability of de- sign."^ "I know not where to find a third instance of catastrophe comparable with that of either The Fox or The Alchemist in the whole range of the highest comedy; whether for completeness, for propriety, for interest, for ingenious felicity of event or for perfect com- bination and exposition of all the leading characters at once in su- preme simplicity, unity, and fullness of culminating effect."^ "The stedfast and imperturbable skill of hand which has woven so many threads of incident, so many shades of character, so many changes of intrigue, into so perfect and superb a pattern of incomparable art as dazzles and delights the reader of The Alchemist is unquestionably unio^ue - above con^arlson with euiy later or earlier example of kin- dred genius in the whole range of comedy, if not in the whole world of fiction. It is the most perfect model of imaginative realism and 4 satiriheLl comedy the world has ever seen." 1, Study of Jonson , 1889, p 39. 2, Ibid, p 40. 3, Ibid, p 42. 4, Ibid, p 37. ^ h\» r-v '; vj»>:<^ ■ v^-Wi f»trtr v*-f ' '. , ' ■i'''-'^^ '?■ ’ ^ ,1 ^ »^' ^ ‘7 ■' >iW nl '*‘ „oo \o fe!W» ^ J-Aob, ;^s ■>.-.? vi^Aukty^^sJO ru.l -ag tO' to'j iTe; ■ •' ', . ■ , ■:•' * ‘.# 3 "i -r/J(p>- ZL »o«c- *v S^;;i^*^I &df ISa*^ tg tXo^mXd ] s.UiTfibl^Xi-O' hy . ^ ;' , , ^ '^i'' •''■ ■ zam' ek$d> >ioX 4 ff Jbqii - ■ ^ ' . . ,a Jr, ,• ■ ■ -«• O' ai: t^ysA^aX I b‘ rX:a4^JNlS&3:c> M ^.*.i t r ,' - ' • ' . -i: \ .'' ' ' -r-.^ ’ * •AXiAir ttlod^r <»^:t. Hi ^Ofs *kt ^ylidAoo etf-Sijj iVijfi a«ix^i5*x «viy^iA:>3ttiJt tb" X&Mwit tx>®tas.q fa^ia .iro.ti^tte' Sc . 1 - ,> . '^■ '*^'* ■ ■x«viJ 'iwiiit yAflboo X«ijt 4 ‘ . i ' ^ V . "i - '...s‘../!A.. >»">!(, a-Pr .■; MHBBl^Vr^ \ '-9'- ^-it^ 42 Swinburne praises Jenson for the "power of his verse and the purity of his English"^ and for the forcefulness of his satire when it does not approach too nearly the borderline of intolerance and snarling. "The fervour and intensity of the verse which expresses his loftier mood of intolerant indignation, the studious and implar- cable versatility of scorn which animates the expression of his dis- gust at the viler or crueller examples of social villainy then open to his contemptuous or furious observation, though they certainly can not suffice to make a play, suffice to make a living and in^er- ishable work of dramatic satire which passes so rapidly from one phase to another of folly, fraud or vice."'^ The general abstinence of Jonson from vulgarity for its own sake is also commended by Swinburne. "Not only was the genius of Jonson too great, but hie character was too radically noble for a realist or naturalist of the meaner sort. It is only in the minor parts of his gigantic work, only in its insignificant or superfluous Components or details, that we find a tedious insistence on wearisome or offensive topics of in- artistic satire or ineffectual display. Nor is it upon the ignoble sides of character that this great satiric dramatist prefers to con- centrate his attention. As even in the most terrible masterpieces of Balzac, it is not the wickedness of the vicious or criminal agents it is their energy of intellect, their dauntless versatility of dar- ing, their invincible fertility of resource, for which our interest is claimed or by which our admiration is aroused. In Face as in Sub- tle, in Volpone as in Mo sea, the qualities which delight us are vir- tues misapplied; it is not their cunning, their avarice, or their lust, it is their courage, their genius, their wit, in which we take 1. Study of Jonson . 1889, p 28. 2. Ibid, p 16. V V ,, :’:v -7 I. '.. '.:• . ■" • . 'lo, »■■»•■/.■. .:'•»< '»&.fi.u.l''''ri * '1, U**^ • -■ J '’ ■' t* ’ ' ''.I J ' it. ciut.v. v r'> .I'. oo 'lev iv ' '■ ' > ; Jt-.: r I* ^ ** '* : j.\uq •; ■ , .. Tift r »=.n,t I ^ ..rcr^ • ■■ V ^ ', .^:.,iv ,)-:'>i:yr ‘ . +,t i. ti.\. • ' L-r I|v :*.• ; •:•■.’» ': •■ •' : r- xWfiC?uv>'. : ♦ o i ‘ t -• ''^ .’ cr iiT C'^ ,'..' .' ■ . -J 3 ■'. '?.> -V .“i i ^ ' ; , , • ri '•■ y ' .jr:<..'.r>j-‘ • c- rt z is I t: /■.r . ■ ■ • - '.: , .jyj- a .v. ilvy '.. ! ' W-. : J/’,..'"'. ^'o‘r-.r 4 ' :: .--i itof} .130 •;> 't; t-JtT'; . ■ !• ■«.. '-• i* A ^ c, i-I i;7 . ' t rr . V ' ^/;^ Xi/T 'I f • I o; ’i :.iirJ •; •■■•’^ 5P. ■. <» ;.!. .'j' :...:■; ir.iiJ?'' ql. ■■'\I I-, ii A ". 0 ^’ -ai' T'ac" ■ , ; <5 T' ■' ^ •■* ‘S ■ '■ •^*' .V “.I i 'J T ft .'*■ V o -v.'': *xi* •' X’rr'^ aorij . .*'*oj.varTwt' " a.'' . r» f l» «r ' Cy J M i ■ ^ « > ,,. ’ 1 X , .* X' ■ , • A, ' f\ ' , • ■♦• 'll ■ ■■’' t ‘ ■ '.:■ , ' *■ a ■ •* ^ • •• /.i •‘* , / ir- -* - -V" .i • } a V »T t' ' '’’'V*?T) ' 1 */v r.X ^ / ^ ."i. i\X I.'. BL* ^-ts t :: ■K • r 4 , .’- fJ ti a X Xii/J ‘.'. ■ :'■ ' •/.j tx : '■ : ,'rf>, . ■ O-'-av ^ 1 ' e.C ?>,U 0 C{XoX V \>X '' TO, ^n.i7-y r .Xfo ’'-a«b.‘: tijr a awi. • 3 '’^ r.cl it: ♦ • ' ^ - s < ■ ' *S ' 0 ., v.;;o' 4 l , y !. c,’.: ^ •*>/^ rt • 7 "'*-V^y?aW#r -r-.'Tr/y— . I ^ n ■ I 4 ^ ::^i4 - • :7^- 43 no 'ignoble or irrational pleasure."^ Joneon’e marvellous learning and his great scholarship are also qualities appreciated by Swin- burne. Much as the critic finds to admire in Jonson, - his energy, his ingenuity of invention, his singleness of purpose, his conscien- tious expenditure of great labor and effort, the forcefulness of his characterizations, the purity of hie English, the moral tone which is implied if not expressed, his great skill in construction and com- position, his wonderful learning and scholarship, - there are many qualities which by their presence or absence call forth varying de- grees of regTet, disapproval, or indignation from Swinburne. Men- tion has been made in a previous connection of two of the chief of these defects, lack of any real sympathy with his characters and a too conscientious devotion to a rigid principle which precluded everything of fancy or impulse. His characterization is too often "a study, not of humanity, but of humours. His very genius for invention is at times a doubtful blessing. "The prodigality of elaboration lavished on such a multitude of subordinate characters, at the expense of all continuous Interest and to the sacrifice of all dramatic harmony, may tempt the reader to apostrophize the poet in his own words: *You are so covetous still to embrace More than you can, that you lose all*. " His serious verse is too often defaced "with grotesque if not gross deformity of detail."^ "The simple subject of the play ( Tale of a 1. Study of Jonson . 1889, pp 44-5. 2. Ibid, p 57. 3. Ibid, p 66. 4. Ibid, p 49. r- A t.r-fiT.9l }»..'■': ifv ^ V . • , > ^ . 1.^ \ ..vc vL ;• .:_J..^ . -si;. ( ■ 'i i f- ,) , i !■.) w .>c .; ,i. :.f ■ .. .’•■:•'> i. • - T;n -Oi oivX'i:> 'jd" ■ 7v> • . r , ,.z .‘ 1 1 • * - ■•' ' : « ■ . A , ■ 'oc 'iX- '■,. 1 r * jiii ;b X ,i ^ 'J 'J'"-- \cu' -..- ;}:yirz::v :: s- . . ■*• . 1 '^ w :■ - :.-/i ., . ill . An •, 4 > : ^ -V,. \.4 ' n/ ^ f:' ■ 1 / ’I"' "t 1 ' ■'' ^ ' 'if •"I ' ! 1 «J V ^ ^ . •.. r. •: M . ' -^ (,‘ •..' 70,1 ■■■■:. '■ /.!' ■ -.Klf'zr: ;.. 1 . ;-..c \ jrq-':' :;'>:■ -{:i: ■ ^ 'izX's:^i ' •■0'.'3 u' ;;o^.:;tv' vt: , . ■ T ■■ ■■;,,,v Vf '^’r: :7 .«v>:Cv>Vt;*. 5 .(/j 7 o." '<>.'> 7 ’ *t > • i?.*. '5 v,a-i.dtyT:*7‘-^/. » :h . •-' ! ■N.l' .. 1 >-n -t ‘ •rvfo . ■ ..OJ". \o f. j.: . . . ,.•• -’i'O'- U..0 :/•' I ,,,..■ j '•:, 'fc'"; i.' i' '» c Xc .,Ti'.Sj| 5 V' i' b *V V v> ': f:/. •'. J'd^Tv. L -X .•• .'C-j vxu 4*t- 0 * i ■ '^ l. V ii" » ■ . !.-- .■xi 7 • j 1 11 / .. ,,. i ■ Y ■ ■ rV - . t I . ., ,* l,j F. .•■»> 0, .. 1 . *- n: ■ ',’-■■■ j?) ' V, .’ .1 * . . ■!■ 44 Tub ) and the homely motive of the action are overlaid and overloaded by the multiplicity of minor characters and episodical superflui- ties."^ Restrained and careful in other respects, the great drama- tist was prone to give too free a rein to his satiric vein. "Scorn and indignation are but too often the motives or the mainsprings of his comic art; and when dramatic poetry can exist on the sterile and fiery diet of scorn and indignation, we may hope to find life sus- 2 tained in happiness and health on a diet of aperients and emetics." "The sneer of the superior person - Dauphine or Clerimont - is always ready to pass into a snarl; there is something in this great classic 3 writer of the bull-baiting or beat-baiting brutality of his age." As a playwright, Swinburne holds Jonson responsible for various dra- matic errors or "magnificent mistakes." In Every Man Out of His Humour a speculator, who has become rich through the sufferings of the poor, hangs himself in consequence of an incident which benefits his victims. The peasants cut down the man whom they find swinging in mid-air in time to save his life, but as they recognize him as their persecutor, break forth into loudly expressed regrets for their act of mercy, whereupon the speculator at once becomes a beneficent and penitent philanthropist. Swinburne quotes this conversion of character as an instance of Jonson' s "capacity for dramatic error - for the sacrifice at once of comic art and of common sense on the alter of moral or satirical purpose."^ Of Sejanus the critic says, "That the subject is one absolutely devoid of all but historical and 1. Study of Jonson . 1889, p 84. 2. Ibid, p 39, 3. Ibid, p 51. 4. Ibid, p 19. f) - ' >5 ' 1 i fi '-* . ' »w'Vl ., ni* V * >0 '/ n v-J„ Xrt_ _ fi ori,"- ( . :.;Trr iMMt' : 45 literary interest - that not one of these scenes can excite for one instant the least touch, the least phantom, the least shadow of pity or terror - would apparently have seemed to its author no argument against its claim to greatness as a tragic poem."^ But Cynthia's Revels , that "voluminous abortion of deliberate intelligence and conscientious culture", is quite the worst. "The intolerable elabo- ration of pretentious dullness and ostentatious ineptitude for which the author claims not merely the tolerance or the condonation which gratitude or charity might accord to the misuse or abuse of genius, but the acclamation due to its exercise and the applause denianded by its triumph, - the heavy-headed perversity which ignores all the du- ties and reclaims all the privileges of a dramatic poet,- the Cyclo- pean ponderosity of perseverance which hammers through scene after scene at the task of ridicule by anatomy of tedious and preposter- ous futilities - all these too conscientious outrages make us wonder that we have no record of a retort from the exhausted audience - if haply there were any auditors left - to the dogged defiance of the epilogue. 'By God 'tis good, and if you like 't you may, o - By God 'tie bad, and worse than tongue can say'."® Of Jonson as a poet Swinburne has not much to say, except that the lyrical quality, in all but one or two instances, seemed to be utter- ly wanting. "More than justice has been done to him as a lyric poet. There is no surer test of the born lyric poet than the presence or absence of an instinctive sense which assured him when and how and where to use or to abstain from inversion. And in Jonsoi 1. Study of Jonson . 1889, p 31. 3. Ibid, p 20. ^ ,-wm 'i 4 'v'»wiw 3 ^.‘:fe ^ i 5R^TtCi> '7>'^ V .'i«5-‘(:£ £"v ■ >' J JLA;»< < flX :f ^^. •■ !'«^ ’' ..- fj ^ • > . • i,-»... ‘ /■'^■'^ f‘ d fr w'; ^^-::^^:i£i.'!0,f^ .u« id •. ^ ' ‘ ',%i, V' ■ ^. ,,^r%,-. •;. \ -'A' ’vr '^'^ Ovir./.'rfry.fc ^iA :f* Hfi^ I I *-c7 ,f’. •p O- ** / ’Wfe''-'' >W*’^ L*-i? ■JjT-'^ iloisv - i' *ki'l .- ^ ■ ■■ :■• ■ . , ,■ ^ , \-> ' . ‘ ■ -- i *' ' \ •■■ ' \ • ' ' , L' ■ ' '- I'-;. *■ ••?* f I ‘iL‘*<'V-' ' .«' ' I 'i'J Ttft© 0 ‘V*Uj ■>/** v:^ ^r* ■ . u 1 . <) .: '4 ; :V sX ’* liO ' '-.‘.v ix. ■ ■ ’. s ,'s ' •'.:-i''' . . . ^^s 4 j liO '-. c ^ vt. .^i•J^i^ -i i.' |5 - a^^^ t /X ri wt>' vjr.vUV.' X^ts'.ieo:" ‘l0. Wonet/'HP:' - ; ■ ■- *.'■» i,"# ‘^-s ..Swi'l ?Wioi A % j* -jLU ^ ' ' ' ' • ‘ r . ' ;kBlr.. L t ' - ' *S -‘ji i?# It'' i 'V ■' ' i;;>y . ,--v 'f • .- _ i. Jl I ''' '^' '•Cl''’ ■^'2}* ■ 'v ' '' ' '^' ‘ '•• '-^' . • ' ' ' • • ' {■' ‘^-‘ ,'■" .. •■ ' . ■ ' SI .. .*"• r '■ ■«'t;t#vtor,®'ijSJf|! ..v.itvV’r, fit' _‘ ‘ - 1 a:v ^ ' - . - ’i'^' . *■ . i . . .. i * ■ i ,■''’ ., **.S»»X'V »Uf]5'‘*i- ^ ft , . .- xj *<' 1^0, 1*1: CC? ft4f rihrrf' V^.Ji fo 's;jfTWoXi>!V'*^-^ 0-3’ id'dilb ocyv.Qif d -■,' ' .. ■■ ■*’''■ * 7 ' ^’'7 -i *^v2Xv^C w- : q4pir' ‘J 'V, ■' . 't ■ ’ ' ' ') , f? '^■' ‘ :.>'(!' ‘. 'ij a ' .-.' !•* •: * •r* ’nvi‘ , , . ■ .v' ^ ?E ^ '■•v "• I , ,.f ^Jm4s^JAJL41 ^ I .^i,r i.ii«‘.^ffid '*-''** r faif r-a 9j:‘t •sol ^ ' i^ ’/ ‘ i ‘ .i, t:' 'vcf*:fV. -c XJk>.e/aiX j^Sl' , lii,t,.,'i-*yMfev*-’X lit u4c^>'?©> 6K (^:cir rt f.s^oa'tc !, :• . ,^, ,,,\ ■ '. ....,.* ^ ’■ f}} ’( . -c X -.*>■?, i a '7? t'rxe V .♦ . wr >4 1 ' '*.. ■ ' , ■'«"*' ’it .><^ ^ y< ' ■ 1 ' ■ ■ - m; -'-?iv*^* Zl ^l^.'*^ ..1.' ItO fTciJ43yX*pr.a,altX'^*'>t?j o{Jt^^ff4B>^. - " / z.zif 7^.^l'rff({rr.t :^|ja .“io tcfl^fon^-^V/O^t I ■ ‘ ' -7 '-‘t . !' '7, ' f- i ^ I ’:i Vi T 1 rr i !; • 1 j? ;/ii «tft. 2^>'.9ycf >i!r^ SfK. tit. 'Yo< fjitii -civ^^nt xo^Toisf. or* Of' in* ^ , tl6: e'^T^otr^ ,, ' <& ■> / ‘ )f . V - , '’'. ffl4-V'.-.o nc’fUip a-‘.'V ■ - *s-4t^‘»ti <*o« :iei4? t#l‘i rti i.orUXor.i ^:;;t V. ■ » ,., tyffi dOCC jixi, I >-’■■ ' tso'iT %* iy .2^/" .-rjif vv . ' ,' - -)* ' ’''* 'r:^ >a '■ -'V ■ V- ^ fci.. ij- . ..a . ■. ■. ,^t - ,i'.- *>'■' ^ ^K -j» .'V JPfi^‘'V‘-. e’liT f^Tt'^7:;'? 4- ,l‘ .'i , ■’ V'*'v; *j^:' 'i« ;. ►■‘•1 ••■ ' , , -V,. "/"^' - , :• ,'<:V‘ • ""' ■ ■ 1-0 '-si : xi' • :,^I f 't'i. ••.■■.'*' ' ■' I .*'• ...^. . ' 49 The limits of this paper preclude the consideration of very many of these essays of dramatic criticism, or a lengthy dissertation on any one of them. I have chosen five which seem to me to represent very well Swinburne's method of criticism, not taking time to deal with all the points which he raises in connection with each of them, but selecting those qualities or characteristics which seem to make the strongest appeal to the critic. The essays on Chapman, on Beaumont and Fletcher, and on Webster are, on the whole, among the beet and the most well-balanced of Swinburne's essays on Elizabethan dramatists. In these he keeps closer to the straight path of criti- cism and allows fewer of hie own peculiarities as a critic to in- trude than in most of the other essays from hie hamd. I have in- cluded Marlowe and Tourneur because they have called out a different side of Swinbutne's criticism. In Marlowe we see again Swinburne- the enthusiast, bowing every energy and faculty in the dust, offer- ing incense and tribute, unconscious of or blind to any hint of clay in his idol, Tourneur makes an enormous appeal to the critic on ac- count of his marvellous command of vehement eloquence and the depth and fire of his emotions. There seems to be a sort of personal touct between reviewer and reviewed. But let Swinburne speak for himself. Christopher Marlowe Swinburne's enthusiasm for Marlowe is almost as unrestrained and unreasoning as his adoration of Shakespeare. What he writes of Marlowe cannot be called criticism; it is an outpouring of excessive admiration, and shows clearly the poet's attitude of almost frantic worship of Marlowe, but with cool and sane appreciation it has noth- ing to do. We need spend no further time with Swinburne's treatment '^.’v ' '' ' ■..^. . ■ : ' ■'!> . I-'. 'yi cv ': ■:• . ft. .«»•' ••?'•' tc'-i..-. 1 »•- ‘ ■(>,. » ' ' ' (!•»!». V/ )» W '■4 !! i> . ■ i: . i. : ' a;" “jo , .* ’i. ?*'•:? ^y. ■ f -ut , -r. : •/, :>;i -^oirfr . ■ ' .) j'’o '• 4 '■■ O'!- <• ; I a , ■•» ■ ‘ -t r .v% • . " . ^.•‘> '} i-:- 1 r' ‘ ., . i' i C’oU' ' ? , ■V .. .#.- '. 'q/. ^ . /iO 0 ! •'• t *:-j 'y.-' V-.,, * '• f ' ’■ V " ''1 ■ V - 'r/j :Da .-•■ r fa't 4 . qiiis ''io- 'rr.-gi'r'ju. ■■' . n/ i'i i '-y •. <'‘‘' •j. ' .. '!Z& ,/W '' '. .6 r ’• ' V -t-H'I .%• . '-. H k-.^-r. V > ,H Vi/* *.sJ I ■ t'SO \ V? '■* • X a.' ■ ' . .... -t'.'. • <'>r. rr. •.; > *•■>? : •..> ■>. ■; ^ ■ ■ 1 / r ^ M ^ .' ‘if* *, »j *, «, Ml ^ ' 1 li 0 ^ •■■' kliV/Ti ' !fot ■ ■ ’ ' ’ Air' vl-ii'. i ;■ :■. OTSSatli. ' - '.- r : :. ::• t; a * ^■■f. . ^ ■ 'y ' - ;.t,v .-■; ; 0 *- .^'‘i . V (?*.■ ■■■ r — j iir, -^iiii- 50 of this contemporary of Shakespeare than to give a series of quota- tions which will suffice to indicate the character of hie criticism, if we may call it that, of Marlowe. "He alone was the true Apollo of our dawn, the bright and morning star of the full midsummer day of English poetry at its highest. Of English blank verse the genius of Marlowe was the absolute and divine creator. By mere dint of original and godlike Instinct he discovered and called it into life he left the marvellous Instrument of his invention so nearly perfect that Shakespeare and Milton came to learn of him."^ "In the heaven of our tragic song the first-born star on the fore- head of its herald god was not outshone till the full midsummer meridian of that greater godhead before whom he was sent to prepare a pathway for the sun. Through all the forenoon of our triumphant day, till the utter consummation and ultimate ascension of dramatic poetry incarnate and transfigured in the master-singer of the world, the quality of his tragedy was as that of Marlowe’s, broad, single, and intense; large of hand, voluble of tongue, direct of purpose."^ "Sublimity is the test of Imagination as distinguished from inven- tion or from fancy: and the first English poet whose powers can be 3 called sublime was Christopher Marlowe." "It has not always been duly remarked, it is not now always duly remembered, by students of the age of Sheikespeare that Marlowe is the one and only precursor of that veritable king of kings and lord of lords among all writers and 1. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 128. 3. Swinburne; Shakespeare . 1905, p 77. 3. Swinburne; Age of Shakespeare, p 1 r ' ''M . ■vW^ ' ^ «<«-•%'« '/*' i > . 1 - '■, ■ 0 i .rtSf. 1 , , ^olL r I ^ I •■ :'■ ;tr'i ■ m i 4*. . . . . * l. -*?',• Y ^ 'V. r ' . -••• n- . •;, . I . . ' t » ^ i ' * ^ ■ .* ...iC^ ^v • " --l.Oiw" , ■ a "■ !-’:• ■ t "w)i>’ :.c ■■ >ort \.,^i j t J. i tr ■ V.v/ ■ ^'. .' . v;'., :ib'. : • ^ 2 t.:; - . :.. / ■■?•.'■ '(•! ■>..■•?;;*’■.*;• •>'.Ci;' .' >0$*! ‘I •>♦?' y i. /• ,' , • * '*■ '■■' -cr;.-, \’-0 to irV-noi-f 1,44' ^I" "■' ' . 'LI j: .■•<>■: ,, ii^-5 ;iio' J-.:;-: ' ^ ,■-:> /ri.;i.::- .■1 l■ •' ''l-j \ 0 (V ■ -“•■'■ ; :..*,(I*ii:ir4rii.."a iU i,-'- •■■;.);. •>•»* V ->t' ..;■:« i : ■ I ': io; : v.l * ' ^ ;i ; ■ . . ;. .' ti'- '. ' -• ' '^■"’^! * ■ . ^ ,:S.L 'i-.lii w'' : ■ ^ r A • ’*.*?• • I V ' * ^ ^ •' /. ' -.V^i J\ 1, X » »!> i.f ^ ,* -fe< 43 '',ytVsr^« ’'^jl T-- ■ ■■ : iK , : ,r. . .’ :■ I * :nv *i\i I j '■-..if «* *•' — < ^ 51 all thinkers of all tlme."^ "Marlowe differs from such little people as Peele and Greene not in degree, but in kind, not as an eagle dif- fers from wrens or titmice, but as an eagle differs from frogs or tadpoles,"^ "In Marlowe the passion of ideal love for the ultimate idea of beauty in art or nature found its perfect and supreme expres- sion, faultless and xmforced. The radiant ardour of his desire, the light and flame of hie aspiration, diffused and shed through all the forms of his thought and all the colours of his verse, gave them such shapeliness and strength of life as is given to the spirits of the greatest poets alone. "In its highest and most distinctive qualities in unfaltering and infallible command of the right note of music and the proper tone of colour for the finest touches of poetic execution, no poet of the most elaborate modern school, working at ease upon every consummate resource of luxurious learning and leisurely refinement, has ever excelled the best and most representa- tive work of a man who had literally no models before him. "In the most glorious verses ever fashioned by a poet to express with subtle and final truth the supreme aim and the supreme limit of his art, the glory and the joy of his labour, the satisfaction and in- sufficience of its triumph in the partial and finite expression of an infinite delight and an infinite desire, Marlowe has summed up all that can be said or thought on the office and the object, the means and the end of this highest form of spiritual ambition, which 1. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 4. 2. Ibid, p 9. 3. Ibid, p 128. 4. Swinburne: Age of Shakespeare , p 2. ' r • :>'■ ■ ', ;'• f,:;: -rr ' '• •-;«r %W‘’^ '' ' r.-.«- 1 - -■ •' ■ Cv V ' /■< ■ S. l,l ■ ^ f-. -••' •’■'•• .« ;-r' • .*-Tr.^:?»t;t5.x^;]iiri- i^'^V 4o;’ »%0 rj \rtJtS|«tf' ■ ■ ,-^,, - ^v , fij-v. 'J. ^ ^-v- ^ .*A , aU.* 3 t)X <10 Sa'.T'ISQh ' ‘ - ■ h ' ' ^ r IllfTl:, liJ '•♦* « 4 .t Y <1 a»*«« ■‘ '«vX*iorti«5,iw :>!X3. !■,-■■ , 7 ^'-" ’®' '.t/' '■''loriiL* s' li) tic'Xr trL'ul'^- '^.at 5 P .,i ■:\ ' X'/ z© ^ ^ . . U^^tn'tfTk .^ocx*- aJte'Xr ’■ ,>'^*'’v/ ■’ ^ '•;' * ■/’. . -Xk- T 1 , ffr; -#v M- ■ ‘i ■. Ml ':^.<- 'I' h*. '{ifi \ ■ *, l‘ !i '/ ’A^ a; ■ •■ : - X' ■ ji)i ^ t iJbX5. ■ •^v 1' •'■'J lA. ■V ■ wr": d-' i '<^'<1 '■ -^, .■' 4 -‘ -V^i:-5>,.' d,-.' a ^ .^vMtzvf 'i ro:v«fYi5Vf^;Tyi»ritwV;.:^ 'i ' f ’ ' ' . . ■ : vs - (2y 4>-iW /ja y.vf Jj4)yc‘ .■ 0 „ ' ■. ^ ■ ■' * ' ' ■ ' j iii.?.' ‘‘A^V ' ? ..;■ I ,, 'W. 'jA.< ■ • " ' ■ '► ., ■< ' ” ■ '^\ '■ j4-''' ' ' "*T ’ ' '«! ' ■ ■' 'P ■'?! 1. ' Mit ■ ', ■; -;^ fl”f., ‘w , ' • l ' ’ I 'li • ,,(/;, • |JE> ■,. ; ; '■■ L (■ ■i|A'i, , ' ‘•■'ri‘"43 sftiirTi-y ‘ x^o^-a ■I’V'it X,. f; fc?, •' ift- A . I' ■■ ■ * \ .«l^:tl!>, '|,D ■ W K - .' *'■ " wA ,A -■ ■■'>; . ■ V ,. ■ , ■ : .' 'r ■ pasfe'' ■■' ■^'" ■ ^ ’ •■ '" . A ;-: ■’'^■■ ':'>'y-/l'^^- .'•'y& 'vj»SvA4i^ -Jo A'*(1 ;,. • ,v;TfeA”{>,jJ,ilf'^ ';t,^ ‘ I- mm ... iSp . , V ■ >' ' ■ . i' A" rwsj^srnf:"^;:? 53 sincere and natural grace, the stiffness and density of hie more ani- hitious style may perhaps be attributed to some pernicious theory or conceit of the dignity proper to a moral and philosophic poet."^ "In almost every page of Chapman’s noblest work we discern the struggle and the toil of a powerful mind convulsed and distended as by throes of travail in the effort to achieve soqiething that lies beyond the proper aim and the possible scope of that form of art within which it has set itself to work."^ Chapman had a "native tendency to the grotesque and tedious® and his style was often full of "crabbed turgidity and barbarous bombast."^ Too often the author inflicts upon us "hurried, broken-winded rhetoric, the heavy and convulsive movement of broken and jarring sentences."^ But this massiveness and vigor has also its finer side when V purged of the superfluities which more generally present themselves as stumbling blocks than as stepping stones. "He had a singular force and solidity of thought, an admirable ardor of ambitious de- votion to the service of poetry, a deep and burning sense at once of the duty Implied and of the dignity inherent in his office; a vigor, opulence, and loftiness of phrase, remarkable even in that age of spiritual strength, wealth, and exaltation of thought and style; a robust eloquence, touched not infrequently with flashes of fancy, and kindled at times into heat of imagination."® "The breadth of brow, 1. Swinburne; Age of Shakespeare , p 257. 2. Swinburne; Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 132. 3. Ibid, p 18. 4. Ibid, p 21. 5. Ibid, p 23. 6. Swinburne; Age of Shakespeare, p 257 . 54 the weight of brain, the fullness of speech and the fire of spirit make amends for the harsh voice and stammering tongue that imperfect- ly deliver the message entrusted to them. The fervid vitality transfigures and atones for all clumsiness of gesture or deformity of limb."^ Of The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charkes Duke of Byron . Marshal of France . Swinburne has this to say,- "No poem, I syppose, was ever cast in dramatic form which appealed so wholly to the pure intellect. The singleness of purpose and the steadiness of reso- lution with which the poet has pursued hie point have made his work that which it is: a sculptured type and monument of hie high and austere genius in the fulness of its faculties and the ripeness of c its aims."® "It has an epic and Titanic enormity of imagination, the huge and naked solitude of a mountain rising from the sea, whose head is bare before the thunders, and whose sides are furrowed with stormy streams."^ It is hie inexorable determination and perseverance, his great learning and his massiveness which furnish the critic the chief basis for comparison of Chapman with Joneon. "He alone, as far as I can see, among all the great men of his age, had anything in common with Jonson for good or evil. A weight of learning bowed and deformed the genius of Jonson and of Chapman. Chapman, being the lesser scholar, was naturally the greater pedant of the pair."^ "Here again we find that Jonson and Chapman stand far apart from their fellow men of genius. The most ambitious and the most laborious poet 1. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 97. 3. Ibid, p 77. 3. Ibid, p 83, 4. Ibid, p 122. 1 1'^ J ■ •- ' “, -l.v''’^ * - ;.S'^ .i V A - .1 m' 't*’ ■ .. T , '■ ' ' ■! ' 1 . ' :'•' / e-'-'vjA ^. i^f ': •i ♦ :-i ■ Ci^' .’.'’I?.” i'>;ii ••,■:• '/t' J '% * " ' ' »-. '' • ■■ ■ - ' ' ■ "A V..I :. ' ' '/ . «*' ■ ^ ■ .Z'. 1 - _. "VtCl-.T f- -V *.. t - r. * •',. ■■' V .V ■ ■-f , ’ »* ■'!? V " , “ ^ -Ip' J < >,.. ,. '• ;. — ul^6?rU ^ M > : " 0 . 2v •5» ,.‘V ., ./' ::.z:>K-. ^ ^ ‘ .r^O-:^ ;■; ■ '^■ ■ M-r ^;^.•. i j h -. •■ ; ' ^ ■ fv ' -, *' ' ■" V • • ..i , , j’, / V . ' ■ / . . t 4 J,' ■ • : 1‘^^i 1 •m K, • * ^,0 • • , . 1 ♦ J ^ ' ,.f .■ 1 "•"li -^’ ■ ■ ' ■ \ ' 1 1 . , ,■ *• •-• '• ■wi •■ ».< 1, 1 ^ • ^ C ••■< 1 • • . •. '^ S .' , . 1 i £■ W' • ' .’X-U-i'' ffh ' > s f: , ■ , - "v ' ' ; •- £*t.*4 iV •■ tii. ;>i .’■'♦O' '■ .■f • a •<} » . . . ^ ^ ' -J i i'.'r.'O .,’: ,( '.'0 -f': .t ■■■'•* '*« V i; *v>< W' T ■ g,'TI [ji-i rf^rji : * 55 of their day, conscious of high aims and large capacities, they would be content with no crown that might be shared by others; they had each hie own severe and haughty scheme of study and invention, and sought for no excellence which lay beyond or outside it; that any could lie above, past the reach of their strong arms and skilful hands, past the scope of their keen and studious eyes, they would probably have been unable to believe or to conceive. And yet there were whole regions of high poetic air, whole worlds of human passion and divine imagination which might be seen by humbler eyes than theirs and trod by feebler feet, where their robust lungs were power- less to breathe, and their strenuous song fell silent."^ "The hard effort of a strong will, the conscious purpose of an earnest ambi- tion, the laborious obedience to a resolute design, is as percepti- ble in Jonson and Chapman as in Shakespeare and Marlowe is the in- stinct of spiritual harmony, the loyalty and the liberty of impulse and of work."^ "There is an absence or insignificance of feminine interest in both. The wide field of Chapman's writings will be found well nigh barren of any tender or noble trace of passion or emotion kindled between man and woman. The 'shaping spirit of imagination' proper to all great men, and varying in each case from all other, reforms of itself its own misshapen work, treads down and tri\imphs over its own faults and errors, renews its faltering forces and re- sumes its undiminished reign. But he who in so high a matter as the dramatic art can sin so heavily, and so triumphantly tread under the penalty of his transgression, must be great among the greatest of 1. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 127. 8. Ibid, p 132. 3. Ibid, p 125. 56 hiB fellows. Such, with all his excesses and shortcomings in the way of dramatic work, was Jonson; such, certainly, was not Chapman."^ As a portrayer of character. Chapman is inferior to Jonson, but in respect to the method of characterization, there is at least one point of similarity between the two dramatists. "A few broad strokes often repeated suffice to complete the simple and vigorous outline which is all he can give us of a character. Chapman is al- ways least happy when he tries hie hand at analysis; he only does well when he brings before us a figure at once full-grown, and takes no care but to enforce the first impression by constant deepening of the lines first drawn, not by addition of fresh light and shade, by O softening or heightening minor tones and effects."® Chapman's characters find little but condemnation from Swinburne. "The charac- ters (of An Hiimorous Day’s Mirth ) are a confused crowd of rough sketches, whose thin outlines and faint colours are huddled together on a ragged canvas without order of prdportion. " "No poet ever shov/ed less love or regard for women, less care to study or less 4 power to paint them." "There is no depth or delicacy of character discernible in any of the leading characters (of Bussy D'Ambois); in some cases indeed it is hard at first to determine whether the author meant to excite the sympathies or the antipathies of the audience for a good or for a bad character; the virtue of his heroine collapses without a touch, and friends and foes change sides with no more reason shown than that the figure of the dance requires it. Any 1. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 125. 2. Ibid, pp 79-80. 3. Ibid, p 46, 4. Ibid, p 123. • * * r ■T V •• ■"> .■' ; '^ . O'i '. j:>.- ■■ (. . • '■/ !..'> .’ j > '■ ■ ' " ) ' 4?'. r V., . ■' :. ./:■ \ " •'.■ ■ •■' - j, •I . ': *) i.iioc ^'^rio’ j . i/ W i-r-' i ?)0Ci40 ; * r’t-j nytt' wrf-t v'l . ;■ ' 70 f ■) \ t i'> I ;i i2 %■ . j: or'.ji^ . .j 'rj ', V ’■ '* 57 child may see and object that no man ever died with such a funeral oration on his lips. The privilege of tragic poetry to exceed the range of realism is here strained to the utmost. The epic decla- mation of the speaker breaks the last limit of law to attain the last limit of licence possible to a style which even in outward form keeps up any pretence of dramatic plausibility."^ Like Jonson, too. Chapman was blessed and cursed with a fer- tile genius for invention, but he does not know how to handle as skillfully as does the greater dramatist the wealth of material whict he accumulates. Some parts of his plays are too thickly besprinkled with allusions and unnecessary episodes, while in other parts we feel a lack of incident, or a waste of material which promised well but which was not developed. "His philosophy is apt to lose its way among brakes of digression and jungles of paradox; his subtle and sleepless ingenuity can never resist the lure of any quaint or per- verse illustration which may start across its path from some obscure corner at the unluckiest or unlikeliest time; the rough and barren highways of incongruous allusion, of unseasonable reflection, or pre- posterous and grotesque S3rmbollSffi, are more tempting to his feet than the highway of art. But from first to last the grave and fre- quent blemishes of his genius bear manifestly more likeness to the deformities of a giant than to the malformations of a dwarf. "More than once indeed the author has managed his overture, or what in the classic dialect of the old French stage was called the exposition, with a skill and animation giving promise of better things to come than he has provided; as though he had spent the utmost art his 1. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 75. 2. Swinburne; Contemporaries of Shakespeare, p 16. 58 genius could command in securing the interest of his audience at the first start, and then left it for chance to support, letting his work float at will on the lazy waters of caprice or negligence. (In Monsieur d’Olive) The underplot, diverting enough in a slight way for one or two scenes, is stretched out on the tenter hooks of farcical rhetoric or verbose dialogue till the reader finds himself defrauded of the higher interest which he was led to expect, and wearied of the empty substitute which the wa 3 rwardness or indolence of the author has chosen to palm off on him in its stead, The moral tone of an author *s work, hie interest in the emo- tions and his sympathy or lack of sympathy with his characters al- ways obtained notice from Swinburne. As a rule, he considers that Chapman exhibits "a singular force and depth of moral thought,"^ although "it will be admitted that the moral tone of his two earli- 3 est comedies is not remarkably high." In cliticising Caesar and Poaroey . Swinburne says, - "I know of nothing in moral or contempla- tive poetry more admirable than the speech in the first scene on fear or distrust of the gods, and the soliloquy in the last act on sleep and death. The serene and sublime emotion of heroic wisdom is in either passage so touched and tempered with something of the per- sonal ardour of a noble passion that its tone and effect are not merely abstract or didactic but thoroughly dramatic and human, "He was ready enough to read lectures on love or lust but of pure passion and instinctive simplicity of desire or delight there 1. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 58. 3, Ibid, p 16. 3. Ibid, p 45. 4. Ibid, p 95. \\ fkl ,K'> M I 59 is little more trace than of higher emotion or deeper kicowledge of such things as belong alike to mind and body, and hold equally of the spirit and the flesh, "The quality of pathos is not among the dominant notes of Chapman *s genius."^ " The Gentleman Usher is dis- tinguishable from all his other works by the serious grace and sweetness of the love scenes, and the higher tone of feminine charac- ter and masculine regard which is sustained throughout the graver passages."^ "At all times Chapman took occasion to approve himself a true son of the greatest age of Englishmen in his quick and fiery syn^pathy with the daring and the suffering of its warriors and ad- venturers,"^ Swinburne has charged Chapman with not being able to resist the lure of any illustration which may chance to cross his path at the unlikeliest time. The same 'accusation, somewhat modified, may be brought against the critic. He is too ready to go off at a tan- gent at any opportunity which presents itself for an expression of his especial prejudices or favoritisms. The connection which Chapman had with Marlowe through the poem Hero and Leander gives Swinburne a chance to expatiate on the splendid qualities of Marlowe j but the best example of this type of digression is the eleven-page discussion which in this essay he devotes to Browning. In speaking of the obscurity of Chapman’s style, Swinburne takes occasion to re- ply to the charge of the same fault which some critics had brought against Browning. Swinburne has a good point; he compares the heavy, 1, Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare ,pp 126-7. 2, Ibid, p 80. 3, Ibid, p 56. 4, Ibid, p 41. ' 1 . , ■’ '-''i Coit ;si« ■ •L'l-v^rw-' ’i, .W ' -. } ■ i’ ' fj. •j '.I ' i» » I i.- C ;ri ci.v', j'-: ’i .1 .. ., .W:?. e : . 7 ■■ /y.. : .r ' ' i ‘‘i 1 ': .. . ;:, , • . ..V.* ',13 i ■ _■ .).£■ M?* "to ,B.^ I* r • -‘V 1X4 ;■ " •» ,?i _ »•« *. B - •eeif -OT 7i•I4^ l>r -r o i'. 0^ -. ^ '■■ . • '••,-.:,r. :v ' r ..■' - ..' •'. , A ' : •"f jt -> ‘iii' . ::i. "i’ ' .;• r.'u: -/ vt- «*£y. ; V*-4. ^4J 77',.,; .. o ..'. /V c-if^ f'f' . «-f . f. -» ,fc . • . . ": 1 :'l\'c^o t V. .-■) .; t- •: I/.iL- « T. . 6 : a { ,;y" t uAtmh.l vtZo v:14'_§5t 'i - ‘ ' - • '• ■ ■ .-. r t - t>rtv;. w-:^ 'wX , f ■* OXq . i’-vo' fliiiT ^D.i 1 *ni'/ . ■■;> hi .ivT ^ :^2hr0i^''|r ^ f- :>* t-'f . / 74 - .- -eS «■ K -.i A'-: I t ' >A iJt »■ (»' T pr^-h^ i^::rf ^3 09 60 slow-moving intellect of Chapman, his "random thinking and random writing which alone can produce obscurity. "^with the "spider-like swiftness and sagacity of Browning^ building spirit which "leaps and lightens to and fro and backward and forward as it lives along the animated line of its labour, springs from thread to thread and darts from center to circumference of the glittering and quivering web of living thought woven from the inexhaustible stores of his per- ception and kindled from the inexhaustible fire of his imagination. But not content to make the distinction between real obscurity in- herent in a writer’s intellect and style, and the charge of obscurity which some readers lay at the door of an author through their own inability to follow the "swift and fine radiations, the subtle play and keen vibrations of the sleepless fires" of an "intelligence which moves with such ceaseless rapidity"^ as does Browning’s, Swinbiirne moves on from this comparison to a several page discussion of Fif ine at the Fair and Sardello . However, aside from these two instances, the essay on Chapman is remarkably free from interpolations of ex- traneous matter and from frequent or marked evidences of prejudices or biases peculiar to Swinburne. Beaumont and Fletcher "For any man born only a little lesser than the greatest, a little lower than the angels or the gods of song, it is the heaviest and most enduring of all conceivable misfortunes to have been rated 1. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 27. 2. Ibid, p 26. 3. Ibid, p 27. ; ' i,V .J..-'., *->.' . '' .a’TiL >a O-'.i . ’ . ■ ' «*< _T^- iff ,i\-r^'-r- n'mik :f>'Vd'£»dtii''o'Ay '9i»fe a ii’^'iiSft|i54v:| 3 ^ ,0. • ' ... :' ’ :'4 A l| viT't ,*j/jv*i i Vfxi: i»i:v- n’iTG ^X'54.1 fljffj‘--':d[^ :ro.4.v4 hid ... ^• ^ / V' .' . - ' . Ti |; ij mrL. ftHc^fi I'r^roV’Olf K. .c:^*": ‘ . /'A..: %VK;t' - - - .... ^ 'x!0 ■ '{J»'|^'^i&i?- -‘tv-X ^U.v - •:« ijie.i** ^*:y,S '' - ^ ^ 'g*^"g 5l.5ijr^^ ■ . I I ' i ( ■ ■ 1 i .} ;r- f, •' • '■ ■ ' ' ' . ^tnU: ■■ ' ' -.0 aq ni '■ . J'OiI of .) 0 rf*k 7 _A '.. VB 'IJJOXoO 10 a vSlfO^"JUi od '{J-'.U rij:[ £;n L,u\i a::;5nJ«ia’5;l Z‘ Ti; ^nrxOisd .:'X" .^i'oaa.oL lo aJ-' ri: jia-ir... IL ■■t.. iailiiir. - ■ r.l ,-i' .1 i . ' -•Ji .• V.< 62 poet, or one of slower tread, would have stuck fast, and come forth bemlred to the knees. His crown of praise is to have created a wholly new and wholly delightful form of mixed comedy or dramatic romance, dealing merely with humours and sentiments of men, their passions and their chances; to have woven from these a web of emotior and event with such gay dexterity, to have blended his colours and combined his effects with such exquisite facility and swift light sureness of touch a fresh incomparable charm, force and eas6 and grace of life which fill and animate the radiant world of his romantic invention."^ This easy grace of expression and light skipping from one flower to another militated against any deep consideration of human emotion and passion or any vital analysis of character. "In Fletcher's tragedy, however we may be thrilled and kindled with high contagious excitement, we are never awed into dumb delight or dread, never pierced with any sense of terror or pity too deep or even deep 2 enough for tears.® "Fletcher's highest studies of female character have dignity, energy, devotion of the heroic t 3 rpe; but they never touch us to the quick, never waken in us any finer and more profound sense than that of applause and admiration. To excite compassion was enough for Fletcher, as in the masculine parts of his work it was enough for him to excite wonder^ to sustain Curiosity, to goad and stimulate by any vivid and violent means the interest of readers or 3 spectators." Forceful and consistent characterization seemed 1. Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 11th Ed., Vol.III, p 595. 2. Ibid, Vol.III, p 595. 3. Ibid, p 594. ■- 1 - ic ti '< ’*. •! 1 :>o ■ ■' ^ ' . •!* rr; yet; ^ 5 ' ■ I 'Nk r ';.i' .; C ', ■ Uwii ■; ' ’ J I :.-r <*»#: ltJ 3 G u * f ir > '■■ €' ■ '..K:* ii-',.^y :.h ri*'’ ::if , i. k i,r S:*.- V. r -V- ?.":,;■* t’\Xt "■• oa;'vy .. • • v’;;i. ot;-, .■=.;. ''. . „» . 'i) ,. ' - i . ■,'i«_i:i i 4 [i e 'ri. ' ••; 0 . 'idijo;. , , ■ I '.:- :.o vAj'Ir ■. ■-> no'i * - - •;- vV ■V'.:.': ii-r i/.'-v;: *:• vs;„i :;.w.'^ •' ^ lrjjL^ -..:i:zt;,'^i[\o() il '•‘' . ■' ' ■• 7 / '»■ ;■' • ♦vi'd ’ t* >' > •' " < >■» * *•■.- oi’t"-."'* ■'■*’■, Cl •'xot .^.•:- .toV. 5 . , ., - i’ , 4'i ■. > " I ff'i'iii* tr. *■-■.* i-M 1 V . . • - . •r.'K '. • . . ' ■ C2T'. _■ , . ' ,^ .' ; ■ ;.i /iifl • ■ v; I. " ' ... i ,'., - 'i „ i .y:.v'=T , 1 'll b:v. t - . 1 ’ ,-C ■■•O : 1 ,. '•' V- - '.' i ', 'V .'■: ,(. fl i ',■ . ■ .1 , ■ .. : . , - . , “T ,' -i- : iv*; ' •^,r.s y-^r 1 ; • ' • V *• 1 *^ , *V / . ■ . . ;C'0 ■ '■ .; " . •• . ■'. . . ^ '■■<■' #r ' ,)C'ovii; ir 63 beyond the power of these dramatists to attain. There was inherent in them "a boyish or feminine incapacity to draw even in outline, to paint even in monochrome, the likeness of a man. Among all their tragic or serious heroes we may look in vain for the lifelike figure of a conceivable and acceptable man. "We find Fletcher to the very last only too liable, through mere weakness of handling or uncertainty of design, to such error or such perversity as impairs or effaces the effect intended; his heroes swagger like cravens, his constancy is \metable as water, and hie chastity is more immodest than wantonness itself."^ "The monstrous and abnormal criminality of the almost incredible heroine (in The Captain ) is more like the impudent fancy of a naughty boy than the corrupt imagination of a 3 depraved man. " The failure of Beaumont and Fletcher to make their characters real personages to us is due to a great extent, and especially is this true in the case of Fletcher, to their striving for stage ef- fect. "The reader of Fletcher's tragedies can never quite get away 4 from the besetting sense of the theatre." "Often Fletcher will sacrifice all seemliness and consistency of character to the present aim of stage effect, and the instant icpreesion of strong incident or audacious eloquence. Hie heroines are too apt to utter eentimente 5 worthy of Diana in language unv/orthy of Doll Tear sheet." In A King 1. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 148. 3. Ibid, p 188. 3. Ibid, p 159. 4. Ibid, p 165. 5. Encyclopaedia Brittanica , 11th Ed., Vol.III, p 595. 4 \j\' ' j >» » ' . . V M V ' 4 'V ■'f jBK ^ . . V . 'N. ^ I .*; ^iSJk :., ..S ^>w ^ ... 1 :^ i ' • Mi' ?.:%.. Qiit '’Mky.i:i" ■^t ."tUr-So tDi;..,. .TJ. a > • , :r.tAr ,* ■X^ ?.t >j- . * '.< W . vi" .1 ^ * v_jL i J- '" ' . ■ ' “■' ' .' ' ■^' • "I ' . . ' ' :' ... ■' ■■•• \ 7 ’-.: " v%i '■', •?» & A::oia.:^ 6’i. to -t ..jUmV .fi .> -t-\- ■'•.>■ i:y r;«a( v'^r • Jt.ii • ■i: ;■' r. ..^.4 ' . , ,- V(. 1 -■ ■'" ■“: ■■ I., r, 00 1 r '■ ^ ^ v« - • - adj '!,o ,(?'%' ''Jj-il .ti‘ 9ci ;/d t)ia i oil ha^ 0s-04liX.VlSti4'; £S£ ,7cnixo,*Ja • \lX W ^ '^■‘ ■ '-* **.11 w-.I j Lns w ^ V. ‘2- ■ ,-t V *K 2i ® ;TS V -f i * • ii 3 f ■i- . * "50., 0-^3^ * .: - '4-:i Sj to _■ £i ji. ■;: :■ ar/* t-^O : -« - . n« >'■,5' , ;j*ri « y ^wpiiw» n- ('.o'(i< 64 and No King , "all serious study of character, all rational or moral evolution of conduct, is wantonly if not shamelessly sacrificed to the immediate effect of vehement if not sometimes galvanic sensation or surprise."^ " The Maid * s Tragedy is the first example of an English play in which all other considerations are subordinated to the imperious demands, the dominant exactions, of stage effect."^ "In theatrical magnificence of incident and effect A King and No King as as supreme a triumph as is Othello or King Lear in poetic sublim- ity and spiritual intensity of truth. "In the magnificent melo- drama or tragicomedy of The Little French Lawyer , it would be impos- sible to overpraise the brilliancy of invention, the deftness of com- position, or the splendour of its execution, but the brutality of boyhood is as evident as its joyfulness, Absence of moral tone brings, as usual, a note of dissatis- faction from Swinburne. He finds that "Fletcher is liable to confuse the shades of right and wrong, to deface or efface the boundary lines of good and evil, to stain the ermine of virtue and palliate the nakedness of vice with the same indecorous and incongruous laxity of handling. "The riotous and outrageous farce of Wit at Several Weapons is such a play as might conceivably have been written in his nonage by a bastard son of Ben Jonson who had inherited more of the worse than of the better qualities, intellectual and moral, of his 1. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 153. 2. Ibid, p 150. 3. Ibid, p 152, 4. Ibid, p 160, 5. Encyclopaedia Britt anica . 11th Ed., Vol.III, p 595, 65 illustrious father. (The opening scene) is the most seriously and odiously revolting passage in all the various and voluminous work of these great dramatic poets - or of any that I can remember among their fellows. And this comes of taking life and character too lightly and too stagily."^ And, finally, the distinctive characteristics of the twin dramatists are summed up in the following manner:- ”To Beaumont his stars had given tragic pathos and passion, tender power and broad, strong humour; to Fletcher a more fiery and fruitfiil force of inven- tion; a more aerial ease and swiftness of action, a more various readiness and f\ilness of bright exuberant speech. The genius of Beaumont was deeper, sweeter, nobler than his elderb; the genius of Fletcher was more brilliant, more supple, more prodigal, and more voluble than his friend's. Beaumont may fairly be said to hold of Shakespeare in his tragedy, and in his comedy of Jonson; rather as an ally than as a follower; but the more special province of Fletcher was a land of hie own discovering, where no later colonist has ever had power to settle or to share his reign. Swinburne’s ire is excited by the unfortunate estimate of an Oxford critic, which placed Fletcher above Shakespeare, and he turns aside to blast this instance of presumption, and incidentally treads on the toes of another critic. "That typical Oxonioule, the Rev. William Cartwright, 'the most florid and seraphioal preacher in the the university, ' not only daiiined himself to everlasting fame, but did what in him lay to damn the reputation of Fletcher by assuring 1. Swinburne: Contempcraries of Shakespeare , p 162. 2. Encyclopaedia Brittanlca , 11th Ed., Vol.III, p 595. 66 his departed spirit that "Shakespeare to thee was dull, obscene, in- artistic, scurrilous* The criticism is worthy of Mathew Arnold; and even he could not have surpassed it in perversity of cultivated in^ertinence and audacity of self-erratic conceit."^ But, like the essay on Chapman, Swinburne *s criticism of Beaumont and Fletcher follows the path on which it first sets out with remarkably few devi- ations. The criticism is not complete, as he deals mainly with the earlier plays of the dramatists, and leaves out of consideration the usual points in which he is not particularly interested, but what he has said has the ring of sincerity and carries with it the impres- sion of sane judgment. John Webster "The first quality which all readers recognize is of course his command of terror. Except in Aeschylus, in Dante, and in Shakespeare, I at lea.st know not where to seek for passages which in sheer force of tragic and noble horror may be set against the subtlest, the deepest, the sublimest passages of Webster. Other gifts he had as great in themselves, as precious and as necessary to the poet; but on this side he is incomparable and unique. Neither Marlowe nor Shakespeare had so fine, so accurate, so infallible a sense of the delicate line of demarcation which divides the impres- sive and the terrible from the horrible and the loathsome. Again and again his passionate and daring genius attains the utmost limit and rounds the final goal of tragedy; never once does it break 2 the bounds of pure poetic instinct." 1, Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare, pp 145-6. 2. Swinburne: AR-e of Shakespeare , p 33. ■ ■''i f ■ 1 ^ ■ N. ’■•' ' '<. z * ’ r* r ^ I'l ' * ' ^ .n I ••< 'JW!* vlai :. • i *^a' .-J-' ■• ; ' ' ‘ 1 ' \ 'x': «v r:- ■ •* ■ < Cr *70 4 * / i > t .. ‘T t i': : ? • ^, 1- - • - « <>v.; - Qi. i . :;;-;:.u^'-: • *;« / Zo 1 :.i'.u” n'w n,i: .licjcf. I ,;.„ 'iji... >c»- ,3,..ti • vi V fci V •„• fii L*?i -i 1 . >■*" ^ •■_ f ■ ^■^ : •. jianii 0':i ,, . J-. ': irbr.>. . ■ : t»:. •> i ^ oUa " • I ,'S. 3 * •A* ^ • fc* ’ • ^ k, M* • i ” ' '•I.’ ,: ■(' t‘ -' ■ X '.rill , X*' ' V o'i*X4' '■•‘ .ij.r '/, •: > ’•Ota; to;.. ? ?. vri i ^ c -V , t.-’ r X, ••■',' j :.(■■■ ' ‘J i't " , ,U^' t >■* ^. '■* .'X & 4 n t . V p* "o *■-*'*; ,. ■■ i' 'ixrrT lo '■rAiimocT ^;.,| * ■*■. * 'i‘ , Sf? •:. u:. IP : ..- ^ ' . t- ^ 'f 67 Swinburne's admiration for Webster is largely concerned with the power, the force and the depth of his conceptions, and with the high nobility of his poetic ideals. The critic places Webster in the next rank to Shakespeare, and the comparisons which must inevit- ably be made between the two are as little as possible to the dis- credit of the later dramatist. Swinburne is here following his own dictum that the critic should be attracted to his subject by the lov« of praising, rather than by the desire to pick flaws. The judgment which Swinburne passes on Webster is on the whole trustworthy and authoritative. What he says, though expressed in a manner different from that which others would probably have used, wakens responsive echoes of similar feelings in the reader. Every student of Webster has been struck again and again with hie command of terror, as ex- pressed by Swinburne in the quotation given above, and with the powea and forcefulnese of his genius. "It is only with Shakespeare that Webster can ever be compared in any way to his disadvantage as a tragic poetj above all others of his country he stands indisputably supreme. The tragedies of Webster share in so large a measure with the tragedies of Shakespeare a plenitude and perfection of dramatic power in construction and a dramatic subtlety in detail."^ "The force of hand, the fire' of heart, the fervor of pity, the sympathy of passion, not poetic or theatric merely, but actual and immediate, are qualities in which Webster is not less certainly or less \mmie- takably pre-eminent than Shakespeare. And there is no third to set beside them,"^ "In the deepest and highest and purest qualities of tragic poetry Webster stands nearer to Shakespeare than any other 1. Swinburne: Age of flhakespeare . p 58. 2, Ibid, p 16. 68 English poet stands to Webster. Not one among the predecessors, con- temporaries, or successors of Shakespeare and Webster has given proof of this coequal mastery of terror and pity, undiscolored and undistorted, but vivified and glorified, by the splendor of immedi- ate and infallible imagination."^ This quality of imagination, which is so essential to a poet, was particularly worthy of praise as found in Webster. "There are only two poets in the age of Shakespeare who make us feel that the words assigned to the creatures of their genius, are the very words they must have said, the only words they could have said, the actual words they assuredly did say. The crowning gift of imagination, the power to make us realize that thus and not otherwise it was, that thus and not otherwise it must have been, was given - except by exceptional fits and starts - to none of the poets of their time but 2 only to Shakespeare and to Webster." "The nobility of spirit and motive which is so distinguishing a mark of Webster's instinctive genius or natural disposition of mind is proved by his treatment of facts placed on record by contem- porary annalists. He has recognized, with Shakespearean accuracy and delicacy and elevation of instinct, the necessity of ennobling and transfiguring his characters if their story was to be made ac- 3 ceptable to the sympathies of any but an idle or ignoble audience." "The immeasurable superiority of Aeschylus to his successors in this quality of instinctive righteousness is shared no less by Webster than by Shakespeare. The grave and deep truth of natural impulse is 1. Swinburne: Age of Shakespeare , p 46. 2. Ibid, p 15. 3. Ibid, p 38. t % m yir. t; al ©sli/qsi: xi:\ N .M' '. ‘ L, ^ , •> 9;d^*31 69 never Ignored by these poets when dealing either with innocent or with criminal passion."^ "Webster, notwithstanding an occasional outbreak into Aristophanic licence of momentary sarcasm through the sardonic lips of such a cynical ruffian as Ferdinand or Flamineo, is without exception the cleanliest, as Marston is beyond comparison the coarsest writer of his time."^ "There is no poet morally nobler than Webster."^ The characters of Webster are never wholly immoral or without any redeeming feature. "There is a cross of heroism in almost all Webster’s characters which preserves the worst of them from such hatefulness as disgusts us in certain of Fletcher’s or of Ford’s; they have in them some salt of manhood, some savor of venturesome and humorous resolution, which reminds us of the heroic age in which 4 the genius that begot them was born and reared." Webster’s originality as a poet also receives notice from Swinburne. "In his command and in his use of the metre first made fashionable by the graceful improvisations of Greene, Webster seems to me as original and as peculiar as in his grasp and manipulation of character and event. All other poets have used it for none but gentle or gracious ends; Webster has given it the cadence and the color of tragedy."® To sum up, Webster's "more distinctive qualities are intensity of idea, concentration of utterance, pungency of expression and ardor 1. Swinburne: Age of Shakespeare , p 36 • 2. Ibid, p 60, 3. Ibid, p 36. 4. Ibid, p 18. 5. Ibid, p 50. 70 of pathos." We find in hie works that "especial note of tragic style, concise and pointed and tipped as it were by fire, which makes it impossible for the dullest reader to mistake the peculiar pres- ence, the original tone or accent, of John Webster."^ Cyril Tourneur To Swinburne, the impetuous eloquence and fiery rush of words which characterize the plays of Cyril Tourneur, was a source of de- light and inspiration. Much akin to the critic himself in this re- spect, the genius of Tourneur flashes forth in unforgetable vehemence of sentiment and phraseology. But unlike Swinburne, Tourneur exer- cises at will a steadying hand over the flood of words and emotions. Swinburne, able to appreciate in all its fullness the fineness of Tourneur's scathing eloquence and moral indignation, also recognizes, though \mable to exemplify the practice in his own life and works, the value of the restraint which the dramatist at times imposes upon his genius. "There are few indeed outside the pale of the very greatest who can display at will their natural genius in the keenest concentration or the fullest effusion of its powers. But among these 2 fewer than few stands the author of The Revenger ' s Tragedy . " "The startling and magical power of single verses, ineffaceable and in- eradicable from the memory on which they have once impressed them- selves, distinguishes and denotes the peculiar style of Cyyil Tourneur's tragic poetry."^ "The strange and splendid genius which inspired The Revenger ' s Tragedy seems to drink such deep delight 1. Swinburne: Age of Shakespeare , p 27. 2. Ibid, p 287. 3. Ibid, p 285. 71 from the inexhaustible wellsprings of its wrath, that rage and scorn and hatred assume something of the rapturous quality more naturally proper to faith and hope and love."^ Swinburne likes to make comparisons between Tourneur and Shakespeare, especially in respect to this impetuosity of speech and style. "In his noblest hours of sustained inspiration he is at least the equal of the greater dramatist on the score of sublime and burning eloquence, poured forth in verse like the rushing of a o mighty wind.® "It cannot be too often repeated that in mere style, in commanding power and pUrity of language, in positive instinct of expression and direct eloquence of inspiration, Tourneur stands alone in the next rank to Shakespeare. The fiery ;jet of his molten verse, the rush of its radiant and rhythmic lava, seems alone as in- 3 exhaustible as that of Shakespeare's." "The fusion of sarcastic realism with imaginative passion produces a compound of such peculiar and fiery flavor as we taste only from the tragic chalice of Tourneur or of Shakespeare."^ "More splendid success in pure dramatic dia- logue has not been achieved by Shakespeare or by Webster than by Tourneur in his moments of happiest invention or purest inspiration.*^' "It is certainly indispiitable except by the blatant audacity of im- medicable ignorance that the only poet to whose manner and style the style and manner of Cyril Tourneur can reasonably be said to bear g any considerable resemblance is William Shakespeare." " The 1, Swinburne: Age of Shakespeare , p 269. 2, Ibid, p 270. 3. Ibid, p 280. 4, Ibid, p 281. 5. Ibid, p 263. 6. Ibid, p 276. ... f:' ’ ', ■ . ' >. '!7- . v.>ii|.; T, ''i- , ' ■ ' .'.ft’.'f' j.t '. ^ <;„fr . C irjii rw. ■j VI .y .l i^li. K ML, iL .‘■. .oii 'iO' / >> \ i- . •iL’^ '-.i* ,^*■^ ■* *• •• '' ■ ■ " , ' ' ■ -. . ^ 4. rj^ ■•■ I . . ■> ', wr ■ ■ > r, > ■• » ' -/ ■ ' . '■ .,r-.' ^ ■■X -... V : -■ ,.’. .i L ' i • .,) C'H'.-r - '' '■ ■ ' i' .i. ^ u ■ '> • .. . .... _ . • , '. .. . ' ;■ ■ .. .■ . ,: >/ ■ s- : i;.:T' 'J, i .JV'iT.'.iv L’ ,1 . \. . .' i ''•'•■' ' *• • ".- • '*•! ‘.I."’ ■- ' '■!' ■ ■5.'^^ xri'it \ * ,t . - ■. - ■vjii£7 ^7i .... 'l'* j' .nj ■'r ’:o '. . ■ '(■ ' ... ■ .•.- ■•/, •• ■-• .V‘.*s;r‘ j:u‘> ‘ '•:£S'; ? , i : • ..■, .:i ^ . ..2 ■ . 7 jr L '.' / ’ v j j .7 f .', ,*!». i‘ ,1 . .j i. 2'X‘* ' ' “ :! ' ■ ' '■ . • t'j.ra ; ;.: ’ ■ - h-v. " ’ . ' * . ■ . Hi, ' . :r.('c . ‘i\r : ^TAX'^r r.ITYv ■ 7 , ( B t , j>;.’, X. t 'f-i ’'^'7 ■’VTl.^i * •*• ■ : -r £ 1 . I ' . V ** - ’ < • » , .,^X< ■ ■ ’■ r ■ lv:r' * a. i.V ^ '■Ylf -kU'' > .*• F. : HBiir 'iii!^' 72 Revenf?er*s Tragedy , the most perfect and most terrible Incarnation of the idea of retribution impersonate and concentrated revenge that ever haunted the dreams of a tragic poet or the vigils of a future tyrannicide, is resumed and embodied in a figure as original and as impossible to forget, for anyone who has ever felt the savage fasci- nation of its presence, as any of the humaner figures evoked and immortalized by Shakespeare."^ Tourneur's style has individual merits aside from those re- spects in which it is comparable to Shakespeare's. "The verse is unlike any other man's in the solemn passion of its music. It is so rich and full and supple, so happy in its freedom and so loyal in its instinct, that its veriest audacities and aberrations have an indefinable harmony of their own. "As a writer, he is one of the very few poets who in their happiest moments are equally fault- less and sublime. We recognize in this great poet one more of those Englishmen of genius on whom the direct or indirect influence of the Hebrew Bible has been actually as great as the influences of the 3 country and the century in which they happened to be born. " There are some excellent characters in the plays of Tourneur, but although they are well, if hastily, drawn, their aptness and goodness impress one as being rather incidental. Swinburne is right when he emphasizes the moral passion as the most outstanding moti- vation and characteristic of Tourneur's dramas. He was "a poet whose line of work was naturally confined to the limits of moral or ethical tragedy" in whom "the noblest ardour of moral emotion, the most 1. Swinburne: Age of Shakespeare , p 273. 2. Ibid, p 270, 3. Ibid, p 281. s«n , I A ^: ,;jL i>riv: ";ov* i ,-' . ', "* M'-i' ; A'' t .'-^ki-ip' •• , ; ,'. « 1^. ■'o :/ ;. ^', A *" ^ 'J i >>*,wi*> ' A. ■i; ■■[,'■ i ■ t i. .'i *i»>rA- ^.rtci^Yd u ^ 1 ” ..:'tf ■ t *f' 's.;ovn .'>■'1: r*. . ;. £•' ittib O'" . \. f ' ■'' '".I.M' Jo {i ■; . ;, '■ ir . A *J;'> tte,«t \ •• ’ . ir«i| v'i ■'*z>:^iX■a!^4f,^:ul Vt ’.vi:~ : .••r'l A 'a s ^ ' i»ewii . «,cvj _ , I , T; eX>' CJ^tLCi ri* I . ^4 12 , e * 'I t .' 'i .■ ' -‘ •:: i bm tirjl ntfa ~.o' “ “■ ’ "'i- ' •1 . . •'2 :k A» ' r /V, . < r. :• . •;• i : r:;.. ;/^r c f. o-<. ■ / ’ ' -;^c - ^i; t ' ’■ ','!?' '' '’.AT „.'f A?.fc»A v' '&c /•■?':; .A, ;.. ' . ■ i" ;. I . " ■' - <'* S': ..rr'...v 4 ' ■'"•.• ;!. ■■'-.' - •'■••i'i: 9oi^ iiii «*•.■.; .'t .;^'A '! f c'o,;- v , »■/■: . .:IT n.o J -’ i •e ■ju r,;v!S: K» ‘ ! ■ ! '’ • >i;/;i^;3'',; ;v At.i ‘h * 1 'V ■ '.' u w. , ' , •' ^ CliU , IttiiJT^ ,-| - MA M h'-T/.. tJA"; ' f . *' (* >L' I'JI . 1 , .i».i .■,■■ i . :■( jf^t .T.cUt^i ■' • •■:■ .■■ ••* ; £:int %ii. ;:’A, fJ ’ n., \t 'C'o '-.t ■ 'AA:-'*:;.. ' ttU' no.A: V , / ■; ': 'i 1 i' i; 'A ;A'. ,vr. 1:0 a. -10:1 >'. q vtoA.'^f;. ■• ♦fjl - ,'■ . , • .ji ..• . :i*i A ;aA4'-' '0 4r ■ twiii ■ .li-' . 73 fervent passion of eager and indignant sympathy with all that is best and abhorrence of all that is worst in men and women. burned high. "The obsession of evil, the sensible prevalence of wickedness and falsehood, self-interest and stupidity pressed heavily on hie fierce aftd indignant imagination; yet not so heavily that mankind came to seem to him the 'damned race'."^ Indeed, the "intensity of moral passion" was such that it often "has broken the outline and marred the symmetry of the general design. The character and quality of his work is rather well defined and summed up when Swinburne says that the genius of Cyril Tourneur "holds absolute command in a strictly limited province of reflection and emotion. The double mainspring of its energy is not difficult to define; its component parts are simply adoration of good and abhorrence of evil; all other sources of emotion were subordinate to these; love, hate, resentment, self-devotion, are but transitory agents on this lurid and stormy stage which pass away and leave only the sombre fire of meditative indignation still burning among the ruins of shattered hopes and lives. 1. Swinburne: Age of Shakespeare , p 289. 2. Ibid, p 264. 3. Ibid, p 263, 4. Ibid, p 263, 74 CHAPTER V Summary Swinburne was essentially a subjective critic. If Shakes- peare unlocked his heart in his sonnets, Swinburne may much more cer- tainly be said to unlock his heart in all his work, critical as well as poetical. Something of self-revelation through one’s writing cannot be avoided, but few indeed have penned themselves into their literary work as has Swinburne, This fact renders his criticism doubly interesting and doubly difficult to evaluate. Most of the characteristics or peculiarities of Swinburne which affect his criti- cal work have been mentioned in previous chapters; the purpose of this chapter is to recapitulate or enlarge upon the points that have already been made, and to endeavor to gain from the summary of these an estimate of the value of Swinburne's dramatic criticism. Swinburne was a stylist as much as an impressionist. Wratislaw, in his book on the critic, says of his style,- "The writer is intoxicated with hie own power over words, and scatters them broadcast like jewels, oblivious in the delight of coloring sen- tences of his duty as a critic."^ "In Views and Reviews Henry James writes,- "His genius is for style simply it is without measure, without discretion a dozen times too verbose. One half of his sentence is always a repetition, for mere fancy's sake and 2 nothing more, of the meaning of the other half." This habit of linking together nouns, adjectives or phrases in two's and three's, this trick of switching parts of speech, is at times extremely an- noying, In the essay on Marfeton we find this sentence,- "Some 1. Wratislaw: Algernon Charles Swinburne , p 158. 2. James: Views and Reviews, p 55, 75 perversity or obliquity will be suspected, even if no positive in- firmity can be detected, in hie intelligence or in hie temperament: some taint or some flaw will be assumed to affect and to vitiate his 1 creative Instinct or hie spiritual reason." Or we run across such meaningless and provoking distinctions as these,- "almost as loath- 2 somely ludicrous and almost as ludicrously loathsome"; "they are unhealthily conscious of their unconscious healthiness,"^ Swin- burne's fondness for alliteration and antithesis received sufficient illustration in the second chapter. The following quotation is cited as an example of the long involved sentences which are the de- light of the author and the despair of the reader. "A dunce like myself, who measures verse, whether in his reading or writing les- son, by ear and not by finger, is naturally compelled to sit down (if he can) on the lowest form among boys who get up their Euclid by the simple process of committing it to memory; for it must by this time be known even to the poor votaries of an inferior form of speech, who believe that verse (the lower form) is distinguished fron prose (the higher form) by the faculty of song or verbal music, and who are led by the ear (like the animals they most resemble) to per- sist in their preference for the lower form over the higher on this most inadequate and absurd account - even to sense, I say it must be notorious that a grand jury of Parnassian pedagogues has established as a primary axiom or postulate that verse, or the music of correspor sive words, in common, I presume, with the other kind of music, does not appeal to the ear but to the fingers; and by the fingers only. 1. Swinburne: Age of Shakespeare , p 112. 2. Ibid, p 112. 3. Swinburne: Studies in Prose and Poetry, 1904, p 137. rap ■ T:»' a 1^.. . ■. -i. -- : ■ • -.. ^. . i v'\ ' ,>cV' ■■^ jiSSV'^Vr _ .'^i '.-..M r.i f "-j'i ri”'-. ■i, ■>, ' W 4 » iVO'i’JUl' ^-,. V,' .■,M;:.>¥ii :; O i? :■■■■' ■ ''.V-' - r-j i;^:itjL:il -a. i -. r ■ X •• irT'' .:, / •• . a • 2 ., t» X -^Xi.- ’“a *. i. ..J . i.-. : . i. % ■ i :^ ••. _.uio ' wr./.; V si", •^■* X 0 ii i A B ■ ■ .. •.’ ' ii *j 4 ■ ’ if •. ' j ■Ux.V . > :r: '.,'‘;^:> ii:; / 44k* 7:!^' :‘(||tj-;. -"t-ft ^ - “■ ,;,vX'..' vr Xi I... ^ ‘ '.r- ,'?si:f-'*-. J'w. inf/.;. ■j. . oj jj.' i. ., 'fd u ./ X :: ;r;X .' •; ,X;; 7 io 0‘.*‘^ .X '• \.''<4.1 *i4l i 'l O' ,' '. o 4,"'..! , li-H ] ■ ■ .0 . /< ?'■;■';?£■■ '/2 t ' ' « • ’ i.b-itti.i •rv’t'i *y ^ tv -i (;;xo* ,;. •,^.’ ' y.Jit ..• v\iX- ''" ■. ” rs»' ' • ■• . ••**” '• ■•' -'J '' '■ ■' X t 7 {' ' e.vi <• . « f\ ik' r . ( ■ '.A -X.O;*' i>;;;x ;:' 'I,-' : . _ ri . ‘ , '■"* . ' .'4' •■' .>*’■;• X;' ■; L Af'vr^; cTi^^'dnW' ■•S •■ 0';. £' ' ':i■C.Jl^;.; Jl V : . 5^ 1 0 :> '■ . . mollL TO t T .nod^iiOo ■i’* k -st'W ^‘.'-U! , ■ 4i •' ,4- i..'JU . /■:' ; Xv 9v.V V /jj." X.- ' (* 78 and in no case by the ear, can it be judged."^ ”At times," as Thomae says in his book on Swinburne, "he seems to write for the sake of constructing formally perfect and sonorous sentences, more often the kind of sentence he prefers is dictated as much by that preference as by his thought. Now he must find something unqualified to say about everybody; again he must qualify everything, and institute dis- tinctions founded apparently rather on a love of repeating phrases than on subtlety."^ Swinburne’s excesses in style are the outgrowth of that same feature of his ten^erament which demanded from him the violence of vituperation and the extravagance of adulation which he was too ready to indulge. His enthusiasm combined with his fondness for piling up epithet and for losing himself in a storm of rhetorical effect to produce a type of criticism peculiarly Swinburnian. St. John E. C. Hankin makes a good comment upon the main current of Swinburne's critical work when he says that the critic recognizes two classes of writers, "one to be overwhelmed by obloquy, the other to be praised so extravagantly that we lose sight of any dividing line between the lesser and the greater masterpiece, while the nicer points of criti- cism tend to disappear altogether in tempestuous eulogy or scorn. When he is not hurling anathemas at the goats, he is respectfully petting the sheep. Mr. Swinburne is a poet, not a critic. He has the vehemence of sympathy, the violence of repulsion, which belong to the poetic temperament. He has not the sobriety, either of style or of judgment, which makes criticism weighty. However just the author’s view may be, the weight of his opinion is diminished rather 1. The Academy . Vol.IX, Jan. 15, 1876, p 54. 2, Thomas: Algernon Charles Swinburne , p 120. 7i', MJM'V 1 lV« ■ 'ui»V«'L4CI‘* :T V' jj , !;?w ..... . ,'. ■:.v, '“I • 1 f.f ' 1 •' »<.».*, •% . " *.r0 fr I* ' ■» ,J. 1 ^ -/ , ■. ;fi't..c. ; !‘". , )' ;] : ' a ■Bf •ca*:- Y.’r .7^ ■' DHI > ‘ IHr^ * ■ ‘ i ', ^ ^ • '"V ^ '■ .* •• * ) ... ..>0 !^.i ' l.b‘ ;. t , b; ■'■:^ >■ I'l ■' I '.'i--:' y . ~ fc ** L ' \ • ■*■ .. p. > • *. •, :‘^il *. i l. . -i,. tc^■ ^,1 'Ty’” • . 4 T ... iiOiXif & ^ |;-;j V ' ■ I?-: - M: *T;.,,.y: ’y •f;*; Yi>- i'i. -X 1. ? •* o .Tii .“-j-ii'o /, 1 •virc T.‘ ’{ifi* .*: •• «j • .j!:' ^>tv:^ ^ ■ '^ ' •.".C!,-’'i. -c • :t-c ii 4 t- *’ ■')0t a.t ’ ■ ? :'! ^ ’, ' } • ’. w.<^, ;► A ? 'Vtr, lev* V *' " . :-trC - tvJ'ffv ;'.l A.i. , .. ‘ilti iSR.' ' ' ; ■•X'wr7,'-2jLii7 ;• •■ ’ *' r,v' ■J*' :Z.M i . 1 I , JJ’-T :'5fV r* ; • “t'' u.fr : ii 0*5 ■ -. I ,' ^ i;;‘> ' " .V v.^ u';'. ^ ',J r"’ V y f# fi t ■ . . X *1 ■ n , ' I W fit ' ..iv.J, . V- ■‘' 'o, .'•-'-..•y.r •'. “ ■ I >5^.1^ •'. •• it g j- w^Ic* V i:o^'V=0‘' -i : '■'. 'vH . . 7-rio ;. ' :- '-\c 'i. Ji’ci V4,i' 'h U' ^ ' T ,v;f J. . 'ft ' £ ■; • ,f '"a 1'*.'’ !e};4; * ,);■£ ; ‘‘ 5^) Vil'.fiV . 'i';. 1 i . # 1.. .U'.i ('■ .a.-u - v‘‘ ..W. t'^1 17!:' ■■ ■ ' - A ' ' . 'aJ r ,'. r ’.- 1 ,sf< ■ ■ , ' -•* ( • , ' ti- »<*•.»:'■ ’ • * ..:v.‘X . , •'■ ■' .■i'~'‘‘f ■r! . I •■■ # ■• • . «..< » I « .1^' * j'M’A ■> .. ; 1.-V : ,. oc. * ' . I I * 77 than increased by the intemperate violence of his expression. Unhappily his style and his judgment are so far one that both are marred by the same defect."^ In considering Swinburne’s work, then, his judgments must be weighed against hie prejudices, his enthusiasme and his fondness for linguistic effect even at the expense of thought, in order to strike a true balance, or estimate the worth of hie critical opinion. But the very fact that many of his essays would bewilder rather than enlighten the average reader scores a serious count against the critic. Lucidity is one of the prime requisites of good criticism, but lucidity is too often a minus quantity when Swinburne opens the flood-gate of his eloquence. As Paul Elmer More says, "The reader of Swinburne feels constantly as if his feet were swept from the earth and he were carried into a misty mid-region where blind currents of air beat hither and thither he longs for some anchor to reality. It is good to walk with head lifted to the stars, but it is good also to have the feet well planted on the earth. Not only must care be taken to dilute to the proper consist- ency the thick sirup of praise or the acrid vinegar of scorn with which Swinburne covers the objects of his habitual love and hatred, but another possible misunderstanding must be guarded against. Wratislaw has said of him.- "As Shelley’s skylark was an unbodied joy, he is an unbodied intellect subject to continual irritation."^ Swinburne yielded himself up too entirely to the impulse of the mo- ment, and expressed himself in such a manner that a reader who chanc< i 1. The Academy . Vol.XLVI, p 547, Dec. 39, 1894. 3. More: Shelburne Essays . 3rd Series, 1907, p 102. 3. Wrathislaw: Algernon Charles Swinburne , p 174. i'- t K . ’C ! .: i <■’ i C , '• •f»n-' . xj ..f; ■ot..#r/:, i a, > - <*iV. f /■. ' S'.. ^.," .c. , ; ’ s’. *'■ ■ ■■ -t t, .7 ■ , ' ->. 5 . ;i- Y,V. ■> ' ’■^. "l ' L"i lyft i\ '*0x^1 ^ \: ■.>7. '•■**' •='■''• , •■'/.: 1 . 1 ? • tW , --:v'> ,■'-1 , 4 . 5 *r 'I ■’f >r > ■ )' ^ *.'•. ; f ^ ■. „• . V 1 . i,-*; 'f t* <;rr !■ -.1 .y. v.Tii . ■ '• ■, > v :)a^> 'J'O r:;^ : ■ '. " VI ••« « a ... ^ ■■ r . : . •■ea-v- g.;: • ■<■ / \‘a: :■ y ■«' ■' 1 '^ - ■ ■”.'< ■ ' ■ t. > '. - 1 :' ' « j ' * ' 'i V iJi t i-, ci . ■ : ' -.r;.';:; v < j rva ' /;r':*' .li % V . ,f. . I L' ) ••■<» ■■•■» V*x •'•' ; ' .fc * ■•Xj t-iio r. r .,'vTO'>. .rs- >»;•’< VV " ! ; 1 * L. aOl' «ii^ f :^ ■ Oc C ' ' •/ 'j.. r ‘ ■ ' ' '■^ ^'- 1 * Ha "•• i u;. ^ t' i 'X' 16 ?£lvj -X •.•:•' -\:i '.. XI ii. i; ' ..^t^Jii, ;-vi: * I .'ft' & A . I ;,1 v..r ■ lA ' .".-v: ^ *.f i X . V' «• . •? . T. g. ^ ,rA- \ iy-T' / r- i ': 78 upon one passage would receive an altogether different impression than from another passage in the same essay. In the heat of his re- sentment at some piece of inferior work from the hand of a writer whom otherwise he admired, the denunciation in which he allowed him- self to indulge would give the reader who did not know the critic’s real opinion the impression that he considered the author altogether negligible and of no account. Two quotations from Swinburne’s criticism of Shirley will illustrate the different effects which, as a result of this characteristic, would be gained from extracts from the same essay. ”Very possibly he never wrote anything quite so bad, so insolently faulty, as the very worst improvisations of his master Fletcher; but even such otherwise unqualified rubbish as the Sea Voyage and The Nice Valour have the one qualifying merit, the one extenuating circumstance, of being readable - not without irri- tation, indignation and astonishment, but at all events without stupefying fatigue and insuperable somnolence.”^ ” The Cardinal is a model of composition, simple and lucid and thoroughly well sustained in its progress towards a catastrophe remarkable for tragic origi- nality and power of invention, with no confusion or encumbrance of episodes, no change or fluctuation of interest, no breach or defect of symmetry. Although Swinburne's attitude toward the dramatists discussed in this paper was practically the same throughout his entire life, in considering him as a critic it is well to remember that his opin- ions sometimes suffered radical change, often with absurdly insuf- ficient cause. A brief resume of the evidence given in Chapter I 1. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 277, 2. Ibid, p 303. 79 which substantiates the foregoing statement will suffice to bring the Swinburnian characteristic more clearly to mind. His early at- titude of admiration and cordial regard for Walt Whitman continued until 1887, when he began to pour upon the American poet a flood of sarcasm and vituperation. Whistler, who had been a warm friend of Swinburne's, suffered a violent attack from the latter in the Fort- nightly Review of June, 1888. Watts-Bunton was with Swinburne during these years, and for Whitman he had alY;ays dntertained only feelings of hearty dislike. In regard to Whistler, he confessed that he had never liked the painter, and had persuaded Swinburne to write the article. In the essay on Chapman Swinburne devoted several pages to glowing praise of Browning, but after Browning accepted the presi- dency of the Shakespeare Society ^with which Swinburne was offended, no invective could be too harsh for the critic to use in speaking of Browning. In Matthew Arnold's Letters of 1895, Swinburne read a reference to "a sort of pseudo-Shelley called Swinburne", and his previous admiration for the critic was turned to gall and hatred. In 1892 Swinburne allowed himself to print a fiercely denunciatory article on Vv.B. Scott because an editor had recorded his jealousy of younger and more famous writers, although at the time of Scott's death in 1890, Swinburne had considered him a very dear friend. Such changes, due to personal grudge or to the influence of another's will on hie, add another blemish to his career as critic. There are certain points of criticism which we may expect to find emphasized in each of Swinburne's essays, and there are other features of generally accepted criticism which receive little or no attention from him. A rapid review of the essays we have studied will serve to show more clearly than ever that it is a poet's 80 criticiem we are considering,- a poet highly gifted in emotional and imaginative faculties, but lacking in calm, measured and sustained judgment. All degrees of attainment in verse-making are carefully noted; the quality of spontaneity or of laborious effort is commended or condemned; the tendency to rhetorical display is censured; the question of the influence of other men's work receives attention. There is always a great deal to be said about the moral tone, and slips in poetic justice and equity are never overlooked. Of dramatic construction or coherence Swinburne has little to say, so long as his artistic sense of the necessity for the blended unity of the whole is satisfied. The critic talks a great deal about character- ization, but makes no real analysis of character, touches it not at all upon the psychological side, is not concerned with the play- wright's method of presenting his characters. His comments upon characters are mainly confined to ranking them as "the noblest man of man's making," or "the most potent demi-devil"; to the antithetical effect produced by the juxtaposition of one character to another in the same sentence; to compliments upon their bravery and cunning, and disapprobation of their cowardice and meanness. Points of dra- matic technique or stage device do not intrigue the interest of the critic, nor do little tricks introducing the element of surprise or of expectation claim his attention. The dramatist's portrayal of the life and manners of the period, his adherence to or defiance of the laws of nature, awaken no response in Swinburne. He does not criticize from any sense of necessity, but because he wants to, and the same feeling prompts him to select for consideration those ele- ments which appeal to him. Because he did not follow any rigid standard of critical treatment, but wrote for the pleasure he found i] I ' 'ma • .i' IMI I ■ ■ i ; ' >>■■ . . ■ ■ - ■ ■ V V :> 7 i.. J o'i ' , .* . V ■ ■•' :j !: f* - 1 . t V V i. V : ■ 4: ..■;i/^ .• }' ’’ . . - . ii . *• t • -f >♦ ‘ 5 ' F' L ■. ' .. t/f- '/ J O w -, / 1 ^ ; ;: r< tK t r t ' <• ea-'.l ***f " 'T'-^ ' * L. .. '> - 'f' . r".' 'to .: ■ '■ ,- 0/.i p.. i-^ 'iT'ii-. .;i : I ■; I? W- . %■ 4^ v» <1% V - ■• f ^ : v' • • ^ 5i r . i- JJB ia; t . .,. U- •• .•2^.1 • V w... |. .. i ''T 1 OtVf^ <*' . '■ ' ’.': .} ; vc-t rvl^ ^ rf ^ ’ j^,L. ; 3 1 j?' . ■'•. itJ :,. . ‘'■t . ni^irq )[''• j > 1 V, i i.;, V... .-W . j! j , :.V.: -t *V1 • • : . i'. ;> ■• • r ■• : ': : I >^V •• | ' .‘^ *> t I * 1 . ^7 f 1 'I.- c ; rr I.’ ‘.S . ■''I', o 'J ^ .■ - ' ^' '• , ' if . r . tif'T .V- ‘A- ■, • ' * ) .: ■\ A t a. > ':- ' ■! ’.'i rvii/'efi w. - .. V -T '■Vw. 81 in it, his work has a much more personal and human interest than that of most critics. We learn as much about the writer as we do about the man being passed under review. We see Swinburne, the man of ardent sympathies, of passionate loyalties and violent prejudices; Swinburne, the enthusiast over literary masterpieces of all countries and all ages; Swinburne, the reverer of woman and the champion of the weak; Swinburne, the artist and the poet; Swinburne, the child of nature and of the sea, worshipping beauty in every form; Swinburne, the advocate of republicanism and liberty; even the Swin- burne who preferred a cat to a dog. In some of the digressions in which he takes the rea.der into his confidence, we are given interesting glimpses of Swinburne’s attitude toward other critics. For the school of German critics, as has already been mentioned, he has neither respect nor patience. He even hesitates to use the word "unique” because it has "such a tang of German affectation in it."^ Of Sir Walter Scott in this capacity, Swinburne says that he was "neither a profound nor a pretentious critic - neither a refined nor an eccentric theorist: but his judg- ments have always the now more than ever invaluable qualities of clearness and consistency."^ In speaking of Arnold’s criticism of Shelley, the critic says, "Averting our faces from the clouds and the sunsets whose admirers give so much offence to Mr. Arnold, what we see in his ovm judgment on Shelley and Byron might be symibolically described as a sunset of critical judgment in a cloud of hazy para- dox."^ Swinburne commends "the earnest search or labour after 1. Swinburne: Age of Shakespeare , p 27. 2. Miscellanies , p 91. 3. Ibid, p 103 82 righteousness of judgment and absolute accuracy of estimate which always, whether it may finally succeed or fail, distinguishes the critical talent of Mr. Rossetti."^ It is amusing to hear fromi the lips of Swinburne the following innocent remark: ”The curious laxity with which educated and able men will fling about epithets when en- gaged in critical comment is rather singularly exemplified in the terms applied by Dyce as well as by Hallam to so magnificent a work of comic and tragic genius as The Custom of the Country . Swin- burne admires very much the "exquisite critical sense of Coleridge",^ but Lamb is the critic who receives his full measure of praise and devotion. In speaking of what others have said about Lamb, the man who objects to the curious laxity with which educated and able men fling about epithets when engaged in critical comment expressed him- self thus: "The syncophant Moore and the backbiter Carlyle have added what was in them to add to the memorial raised by Wordsworth: the witness of the toad and the homage of the scorpion to a creature who could not crawl and would not sting. A very few of the many possible quotations will suffice to set forth Swinburne's attitude toward that earlier impressionistic critic of the Elizabethans. "To attempt the praise or the description of anything that has been praised or described by Lamb would usually be the veriest fatuity of presumption; and yet it is impossible to write of a poet whose greatness was first revealed to his countrymen by the greatest critic of dramatic poetry that ever lived and Tfrote, and not to echo his 1. Swinburne: Miscellanies , p 6. 2. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 153. 3. Ibid, p 31. 4. Swinburne: Miscellanies , p 158. "(I 1 •■ J I !! ;l ii' 'k- I ' f ^= hT r. t. *^v •• - 1 - • ^- • .’: ■■ ‘ , . * • ■ ■ -f ' rt'^ • • ■; ' " lri^ . j , •#> •/ • r ' ' L’' ^ 1 ■ : * , _ - 1 - •' .JZ'O a» - • ' V • , *‘r /.♦ Of. • u.y . -st.-. ;S j.' , . ■"■■', ■•■ • ■ ,TO. ■ .'0 .'■• c f .t irtl \ -a ■ •> ' - : 1 •! ,N :- ■■■■—•- 1 .. „jt,' .'. S '"l 2.;X0.^ ,u.. r ■ -*• ^ ' r r=» ■ ■ S r - - 4 • . > - .1 . i* - fioL ' V:' c^: ■..., • ■- ..7^ i. -. • -• •. - A ''' < * 'Ul' . '■ • ■., ' t 'i • ■ ' ; •'■ v.r*. i.l V 70 ' •■''■■ I ^.1 ',1 , ■'• ■ - ' i/ JL.I.H'-' ^ 5^ I lV‘. *1 ■ — ». ^ . fc * k , . . ' ,..i. •---.# ■•■ r i : - ,. 7 1 1/ : 'i r ")* . -. w :> « \ -* r- V i ■• ■'-?“ I'JyXi .:i\i ls,o£r ’ * : ■ ■'ilO '>/■■ '/f < « f:. ■A > ■»* ; - 1 , - % I*’ ♦ .’ ‘ ‘ r 1 . ^ -..O* )■.“ *'lr,; rX^fSi '■■ ', •: ,r JLo. f.f, ; 0 y- Oj -I i "i'jr..; ' •*# •» ‘ ' -oU,!. -'. • •' » ; ^ * * * ' * *n if J>.: O' ■ 'V ■ ■ '■ ' - ; '■ 'r-.;o 3:*.- ^ 1 .■ ■ • -t 3 I .1 . irw' . ■ '■■■1 .''• ■ ■: ' ! •*’ :• o ’ : ■:■■ . 1 . . : ’ 3 : ' • '' ■ .; ' -'-hVttt' 1 « 1 * ^ . 4.V ^ 4. ^ • -. '-'t ' ■ . ^ ' :>•' -I'., .t; ’• •■'. 0<'»> ' ' 7r ;. A. /., . . . ,% ; ' ■' t ;orii i- •: ' ^scTiT ' 'i‘ . I /, > \ 'i\ ! 'r* vl i\ 'i 'v^ I -•‘J If j ri p % r rJtlO 3 ^ •>,’:■ . :^ . 'IS ■ • ; • '■•■■ - '- ■ ^ ■;«. ‘ 7>: o-v-7 |: it'wjictRiiV : It 1 Z>vV f * • ' f ir •? •.,‘...:;il»^££'. . ;i ...:I * tCfT^T 3// 83 words of righteous judgment and inspired applause with more or less feebleness of reiteration."^ "That divine cockney"^ was the greatest and surest critic that ever wrote or ever will write on a subject of unsurpassable interest to any historic student of English letters anc of English character."^ "The depth and width of his knowledge, the subtlety and the sureness of his intuition place him far ahead of any other scholar or critic who has ever done any stroke of work in any part of the same field. "A far greater than they (Campbell and Dyce) or than any other critic of our great dramatic poets has n6t only embalmed its noblest passages ( Cupid’s Revenge ) in the deathless amber of a priceless volume, but has selected it for the supreme honour of a condensed rendering into narrative prose after the fashion of his incomparable Tales from Shakespeare ."^ Than our critic, none other has ever possessed surer and more extensive knowledge in his chosen field of labor. His wide reading, his extraordinary retentive faculties, and his marvellous power of expression are evidenced in every page of his writing. Though his judgments rarely have to do with any really deep appreciation or analysis, he is an imaginative commentator of high rank, possessing keen intuition and an almost infallible poetic taste. If we see the danger of 'allowing ourselves to be bewitched by the spell of hie eloquence and the fascination of his enthusiasm into accepting for our own purely Swinburnian habits of thought and criticism, the study 1. Swinburne: Age of Shakespeare , p 384. 2. Ibid, p 187. 3. Ibid, p 253. 4. Ibid, p 200. 5. Swinburne: Contemporaries of Shakespeare , p 154. ^ , V ' ' .1 ” MV 84 of his work cannot but be of great value to anyone interested in the Elizabethan and Jacobean drajiiat i et s . If we are able to keep our own standards intact and our own opinions steady enough to measure the value of his real judgment, disguised as it may be by the peculiar Swinburnisriie we have noted, his criticism will prove to be of the most stimulating and picquing kind. No one of his studies is satis- factory as a whole; each is marred by some defect of temperament, style or judgment, but they come straight from the heart of the critic, and may very generally be said to go straight to the heart of the reader, I wish to quote in conclusion a paragraph from Murdoch's Memories of Swinburne , which seems to me to express very well the essential quality of Swinburne as critic. "The truth is that Swin- burne's fascination is different from that of most great critics; and while Coleridge compels attention by strength and depth of mental vigor, while Lamb appeals owing to his capacity for perception and judgment, and while Pater bewitches through his gift of expression, his power of shaping his innermost thoughts into words, Swinburne wins readers' hearts as much as intellects, and makes a demand which commonly belongs to poetry rather than to prose. He is essentially the poet as critic, for he seems never to essay criticism except und- er an impulse bordering on inspiration; and his criticism is the glorious antithesis of that of the academic school, whose professors handle literature as if it were a Greek text or a mathematical prob- lem. The main excellence of Swinburne is that notwithstanding his scholarship, his writing is above all things emotional, and sprung from life itself. "1 1. Murdoch: Memories of Swinburne , pp 18-19, 85 BIBLIOGRAPHY Swinburne ' s Works Age of Shake speare » New York and London, 1908, Contemporaries of Shake sneare , ed. Gosse and Wise, London, i919. Essays and Studies , 2nd ed,, London, 1876. Letters , 2 vols., ed Gosse and Wise, New York, 1919. Miscellanies . 2nd Ed., London, 1895. Poems and Ballads . 1st series, London, 1863. Shakespeare . London and New York, 1909, Study of Ben Jonson . London, 1889. Studies in Prose and Poetry . London, 1894. Study of Shakespeare , London, 1880, Three Plays of Shakespeare. New York, 1880 . Biographical, Critical, and Illustrative Works Brock, A.C.: Essays on Books . 2nd ed., London, 1921. Cambridge History of .English Literature . Vol. XIII, Coleridge, Samuel T_: Works , ed. Shedd, New York, 1868, Vol. IV. Drinkwater, John: Swinburne - An Estimate . London, 1913. Dryden, John: Essays , ed, Ker., Oxford, Vol. I, 1900, Elton, Oliver: Modern Studies . London, 1907, Encyclopaedia BritVanica . 11th ed., Vol, III. Gosse, Edmund: The Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne . New York,- 1917 Gosse, Edmund: Portraits and Sketches . London, 1913, Hazlitt, William: Works . ed. Waller and Glover, London, Vol. V., 1902. Henderson, W.B.D-: Swinburne and Landor . London, 1918. James, Henry: Views and Reviews , Boston, 1908 86 Kernahan, Coulson: In Good ComTpany . New York, 1917. Leith, Mrs. Disney: Boyhood of Algernon Charles Swinburne . London, 1917. Maokail, J.W.: Swinburne . Oxford, 1909. Meynell, Alice: Hearts of Controversy . London, 1918. More, Paul Elmer: Shelburne Essays , ed Series, New York and London, 1907. Murdoch, W.G.B.: Memories of Swinburne , Edinburgh, 1910. Thomas, Edward: Algernon Charles Swinburne . London, 1912. Welby, T. Earle: Swinburne ^ A Critical Study . London, 1914. Woodberry, G.E.: Literary Essays . New York, 1920, Vol.III. Wratislaw, Theodore: Algernon Charles Swinburne . London, 1910. Magazine Articles Academy IX, p 54, Jan. 15th, 1876. Article on rhyme and metre by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Academy XXXVI, p 331. Article on the Study of Ben Jon son by John Dayidson. Academy XLVI, p 547. Article on Studies in Prose and Poetry by St. John E.C. Hankin. Contemporary Review XCV, p 537. Article on Swinburne by V/. Robertson Nicoll. Dlstl VII, p 156. Article on the Miscellanies by M.B. Anderson. Fortnightly Review XCI, p 1037. Article on Swinburne by Edmund Gosse UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA