The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-12-24
From the New York Post.


 O mund Gosse in the preface to bis Portraits and Sketches (Scribner). q think that Algernon Swinburne was the most extraordinary" He is also 'ab- solnutely certain" that, whatever vicsi- tudes of taste our literature may under so, Swinburne will end by taking his place as one of the few unchallenged inc mortals, about whose personal and intel lectual habits no faithful record is un- welcome" MT. Gosse's record of the poet is deeply interesting. He devotes a page to This unique appearance" Swinburne was short, with sloping shoulders, from which rose long and slender neck, sur mounted by very large head" A little further on, we have this picture:
 He required very little sleep, and occa- sionally when have parted from him in tho evening after saying Good night" he has simply sat back in the deep sofa in his sitting room, his little feet close to- gether. his arms against his side, folded in his frock coat like a grasshopper in its wing covers. and fallen asleep, appar- crtly for the night, before I could blow
 
 door.
 In the streets Swinpurne ''had the movements of d somnambulist, and often have seen him passing like @ ghost across the traffic of Holborn, or thread ing the pressure of carts eastward in Gray's Inn road, without glancing to the left or right, like something blown before the wind.''
 Swinburne had no small talk" and during any discussion of the common topics of the day his attention Jagged. "the glazed eyes botraying that the mind was far away" Nor did he have any taste for science, and his lack of musi- cal ear was a byword among his &C., quaintances. MT. Gosse once witnessed a practical joke played upon him as re- suit of this last deficiency A lady, hay irg first taken the rest of the company into her confidence, told Swinburne that she would render on the piano an ancient Florentine ritornello which had just been discovered. She proceeded to play Three Rlind Mice'-and the poet was enchanted. He remarked that it reflected to perfec- ton the cruel beauty of the Medicis- which, agrees MT. Gosse, perhaps it does. We have mentioned in this column Swim burne's amiable habit of suggesting that he had a new poem to read. Ordinarily, his delivery Twas delightful as long as he sat quietly in his seat" Sometimes, however, The lost control of his emotions, the sound became scream. and he would dance about the room, the paper flutter- ing from his finger tips like a pennon in a gale of wind"
 Philip James Bailey says MT. Gosse was at 23 the most "promising" of living English poets, and at S6 that promise was still to be fulfilled. In 1902, as in 1s39 he was the author of 'Festus." neither more nor less. Had he died in the last men toned year he would have retaine1 a foremost place among our inheritors of unfulhlled renown;' he would be habitual- ly mentioned with Chatterton." "Orion" Horne is almost in the same class. Words wcrth and Tennyson, Leigh Hunt and Landor had all praised his poetry. Car lyle had declared that ''the fire of the stars was in him. and Lewes that he vas "a man of the most unquestionable gem jus" Yet for what do we remember him now? For the Brownings' interest in him and because he once hit Keats with srowball Says Mir Gosse:
 He used to tell us in his old age .h>.t he was once scaInpering out of school. when he saw the chase of Mr. Ham mend. the surgeon, standing at the door. John Keats, wno was Hammond's sp- prentice, was holding the horse, his head sunken forward in brown study; the boys. who knew how pugnacious Keats was dared Horne to throw snowball at h;m. which Horne did. hitting Keats in tle back of the head, and then escaping round the corner at a headlong pace. It used to be very thrilling, in the eighties. to hear the old gentleman tell how he had actually snowballed Keats; almost as though one should arise and say that he had sold Shakespeare a cheese cake"
 Mandell Creighton was transatlantic visitor of rare species. MT. Gosse re- calls that, after his return from visit to America, the historian expressed his disappointment at not having beer able to gu out west. 'One rather superfine or nament of Massachusetts society lament ed to him that he must find America so crude My dear sir said Creishton. in his uncompromising way, mot half so
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