New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1882-09-12
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
-, c,,-,Np,rpNr,s NEW POEM.

Mr. Swinburne is the third Engnsh poet VINO mas
appeared within the last fifty years concerning
whom the critics have made a mistake, and he IS
mora fortnnate than his predecessors, Mr. Philip
James Bailey and MIR. Alexander Smith were. IN
that the critics who first discovered him aud
sounded his praises have dealt moro generously
with him than with Them and than is the won't OF
that cautious guild. lie was at once gwen hgh
rlace for the genius that was brilliantly mani
tested in ATLANTA in Calydon," and from that DAY
20 this period of sixteen or seventeen years. nc
has escaped criticism, and has been accepted lor
what ne promised to he rather than Tor Wllat no
was and is. Everything that he has written except
the first series Of his Poems and ballads' mas
been accented without question, wheh IL shoulu
have been questioned closely, both with II view oi
ascertalning what it WAS, and what IL WIS le"''ns
TO IL docs seem little curious In Wow OF the Ten
5encx of the modern English mind toward literary
study. that no one has yet made study oil Mr..
Swinburne's genius and his methods of working,
both of which are remarkable and remarkably
family. We say remarkably faulty, for, measured
by the large methods of the great English poets
and the scope and styIe OF their work. the genius
OF Mr. Swinburne is exceedingly narrow, and ms
manner Of writinL singularly tricky and SHALLOW
lie has published dozen or more volumes OF verse;
and he has written no lice that fingers III the
memory and has uttered nothing that resembles
thought. This could not have been the case we
think if he had been gifted with unusual mental
endowmcnts for many lesser poet has sometimes
thought TO some purpose and has written copy OF
verses that is remembered One Vt the delvctS Oh
Mr.. Swipbnrnc. perhaps his prime defect is the
brillancc and force of his vocabulary No English
poet ever excelled him in the profu,lon with which
he throws Of rich. and picturesque and spirited
words; he is a perfect master CT epithets. HIS
pages are luminous mists OF language, the exact
meaning OF which and ther bearing upon the
matter in hand 1t is generally difficult TO as
cover they are so bravey put forth. and with such
sonorous pomps of sound For Mr. SwnbWnes
music is less but often more than his sense.
lie is a wonderful musician, If nothing else. MI
Swinburne appears to have good command OF
words but when one looks into his manner care
fully one is struck with the really small number
al his command, or TO state it more critically, with
tic rapidity with winch the same words are per-
pcuay turning up. and the little that they really
signify. The effects of brightness, for example are
indicated five times in the first nine lines of the
Prelude to "Tristram OF LyOncsSe, and are scat
tered bewillering'y throughout the whole poem.
EVERYTHING is suggestive of imagery, but when one
attempts 10 grasp the imagery 1t is fGtd morGtRd
winch disappears, fitting from page to page and
resting howhere Mr.. Swinburnc ahOunds with
illusions to the great objects Of nature, the sky
anG the sun, and day AMI night, but he never
brings them before as we are accustomed TO see
them for the simple reason, perhaps, that he has
never seen them as they are. but as they seem to
him through the confused haze of what he would
call his imagination. The world as 1t flashes and
sunlers in his lines is very different world from
the spot winch men call earth. obeyng other plan
etary conditions than that and exhibiting fora
and fauna of startling novelty. The qualities of
IL itlpttfI in he
work of Mr.. Swinburne as III his latest, though
they were not 50 abundant there. nor of such per-
maneut sienihcance There was time when he
might lave overcome them, ut least have put
them under the strong restraint of his critical
powers, which are considerable, but unfortunately
for Us who have to read him that time Is past. for
what at first was mere manner has now become
determined vice which mars all his intellectual
efforts 1t is due TO him TO say that 1t did not
originate with him. though no living poet has in
0ulged in 1t to such rs hes, but that IT be-
longs in a measure to the poetic history of the CEN
fury and that it embodies the romanticSm of
Victor Hugo in an Enolish form. 1t runs through
the first poems of William Morris and Dante
Gabriel Rossett which preceded his in priority of
writing though RoSsetti's first book was not pub
lished until five or six years after Atalanta IN
Caydon" and it is the motive of all the young
English poets OF tho day. who are nothing If not
romantic. The romantic poet as far rs we under
stand him, is a gentleman. IN sODie cases very
young gentleman who is wiser than the poets " no
have preceded him. and against whom he protests
by his choice of subjects and his manner of han d.
ling them The difference between him and the
masters is that they had something to say and said
it, and that he has nothing to say and says it with
an abundance of words. They sincere i'll
their work. at least they convinced their con-
,a,n Inf ba IL in
yesterday as a lover today atheist, and to-
morrow-but after Tristran of Lyonesse" sutf-
Gent unto the day is the evil thereof. What the
romantic poet chiefly protests against is the gen
erdl intelligiblty, the common sense, OF all the
dead and gone English lOets,-as strongly against
Shakespeare and Milton as against Byron tand
Scott whose aesthetic misfortune 1t is that
understand them Zach from his point OF
view, and by the light that was in him and his
times looked into his heart and mind and at the
world of nature AMI men in which he found him
self and painted what he saw and felt Milton
chiefly what be Imagined in impershable coors.
TO mention these great names is to think of long
procession of immortal figures and to remember
great Thoughts that authenticate themselves for
ever In large sense their work is Mr.. Mathew
Arnod's criticism of life" OF what, pray IS ROs-
settis work, or Morriss work or Mr. Swinburne's
work criticIsm' AS likely not Of the c:irrent
exhibition at the GrOsvenor Gallery, for they are
inspired by insignificant pictures often as great
actions, and are never more themsel,e s than when
emuating their favOrite painters, they plling
up rich words. which bear the same relation TO
poetry that the cOlors mixed palette do to fin
ished pictures. Scott and Byron have hitherto
been ranked among the romantic poets of England.
but ompaled with this later brood of singers they
are classical poets for they simple. direct and
n lelI
told it, as IN "Marmion )" and " The Lady of the
Lake; when Byron had poetic story to tell he
too told it, as in l he Corsair The Giaour" and
Parsina' Even Keats more purely poetic poet !