Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  The three or four years which preceded the publication of Bothwell formed a period in Swinburne’s life which differed from any before or after it. He came but little into the sight of the public, and his wonderful productive force seemed to be checked. This was, however, only apparent; during these years he was engaged, almost furiously, in preparing for the occupation of the rest of his life. He was studying Shakespeare and Æschylus with the avowed intention of capturing the secret of their art. He was experimenting in many forms of poetry. He was steeping himself almost to satiety in the literatures of England and France. In particular, about the year 1872, the plan which he had formed in early boyhood of continuing and systematising the critical work of Charles Lamb as applied to the old English dramatists took definite shape. To Furnivall, with whom he was now on friendly terms, he suggested the publication of the works of Cyril Tourneur. This came to nothing, and the earliest evidence of his new enthusiasm was a study on John Ford, which Swinburne never surpassed, and never perhaps equalled in that special province. This essay deserves close attention, for it is one of Swinburne’s greatest achievements in the art of concentrated and comparative eulogistic analysis. In form it displays his earnest discipleship of Paul de Saint-Victor, but it has a dignity and a breadth which surpass the qualities of his great French master. It has also, it must be admitted, not a little of that exaggeration of praise and tumid heat of attack which were in later years so seriously to impair the value of Swinburne’s criticism. Beautiful and valuable in itself as is the “John Ford,” we discover in it the germ of blemishes which ultimately made such essays of his old age as those on Dekker or Nabbes scarcely readable.

  On October 23, 1872, Théophile Gautier died, and early in the following year the publisher Lemerre issued a handsome volume in quarto, Le Tombeau de Théophile Gautier, in which the French poets of the day, led by Victor Hugo, celebrated the merits of an admirable artist. To this anthology — at the suggestion of José Maria de Heredia, transmitted by Mr. (now Sir) Sidney Colvin — Swinburne contributed no fewer than ten poems, no other writer sending more than two.

  Swinburne had been influenced by Théophile Gautier, most of all no doubt by the preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, almost to excess, but he had not known him well. Indeed, in opposition to what has been alleged, it is doubtful whether he met Gautier more than once, when he was presented to him in the Salon Carré of the Louvre. So, at least, a fortnight before his death, he assured Professor James Fitzmaurice-Kelly.

  Of the English poet’s sheaf of tributes, two were in English, two in French, one in Latin and five in Greek, epigrammata epitumbidia eis Theofilon. These latter had received the somewhat hurried revision and approval of Jowett, who particularly praised the Latin choriambics. In these learned exercises Swinburne was happy to believe that he had no competitors in English poetry except Milton and Landor, neither of whom, moreover, was master of French composition. The sonnet and the ode in that language, on this occasion, were impeccable in prosody, and were admired in Paris. The French poems of Swinburne, as a French critic once wittily explained to me, are perfectly correct, and as like real French verse as the best Renaissance Latin poetry is like Catullus. The two English poems in the Tombeau of 1873 are the impish sonnet on Mademoiselle de Maupin:

  This is the golden hook of spirit and sense,

  The holy writ of beauty, composed in derision of the Philistines, and a noble elegy, splendid “in clear chryselephantine verse,” which is valuable as showing that Swinburne’s lyrico-elegiac genius had not begun to decline. Here, for the first time, he makes elegy serve as a species of ceremonial criticism on the life and work of a great man dead, an innovation which he was further to develop later.

  That he was not unaware of the dangers which attended the excessive facility in versification which he had now attained is shown, curiosity enough, in connection with these very “Memorial Verses to Gautier,” in a letter to Mr. John Morley (Nov. 21, 1872):

  The metrical effect is I think not bad, but the danger of such metres is diffuseness and flaccidity; I perceive this one to have a tendency to the dulcet and luscious form of verbosity which has to be guarded against, lest the poem lose its foothold and be swept off its legs, sense and all, down a flood of effeminate and monotonous music, or lost and spilt in a maze of what I call draggle-tailed melody.... I am going over the part already thrown off, to brace up the verses, — tighten the snaffles and shorten the girths of the Heliconian jade.

  On January 9, 1873, as the result of an operation, the dethroned Napoleon III. died in exile. The event was one of lively interest to Swinburne, although the wretched monarch had ceased to exercise power or even influence. At first he waited to see “whether the Master will be minded, —— as he was in the case of Saint-Arnaud, — to bestrew with any funeral flowers the new tomb at Chiselhurst” (Jan. 18). But Hugo was silent, and in May Swinburne published in the Examiner certain uproarious sonnets entitled “The Saviour of Society.” The Spectator, which regarded the language of these as disrespectful to the memory of John Stuart Mill, who had just died (May 8), reproved Swinburne severely for “a gross parody on the most sacred of subjects,” and the poet defended himself with spirit both in prose and verse. “To expose the grossness and absurdity of the insult or parody implied in [styling Napoleon III.] ‘Messiah of Order’ and ‘Saviour of Society,’ [Swinburne] thought good to cany the parallel a little further in an ironical address or form of prayer to be offered by his worshippers to the new Redeemer of their kind.” That was all very well, but the Spectator still expressed “horror and disgust,” and the poet was certainly ill-advised. The controversy, which attracted a great deal of public attention, brought forth no sign of repentance from Swinburne, and the sonnets, without modification, were reprinted two years later in Songs of Two Nations.

  Swinburne was much occupied with France at this time, but his face was obstinately turned backward. Here he could not comprehend the problems of the future, nor forget the injuries of the past. His extreme and unwavering detestation of Napoleon III. was a remarkable characteristic of his temper. It dated back to his childhood, and was no doubt connected with the coup d’état of 1851, the results of which impressed his schoolboy imagination at Eton, but it was certainly confirmed from year to year by the attitude of Victor Hugo. Nothing Swinburne wrote exceeded in virulence some of the attacks on Napoleon made by the great exile from Jersey. But when Napoleon III. died, in pain and obscurity, at Chiselhurst, having ceased for three years to be a power for good or for evil, France partly forgave him, and even Victor Hugo forgot him. Yet Swinburne neither forgot nor forgave, and to him it seemed as just to continue to execrate this miserable man six months after his death as it had been to abuse him six years before it.

  The truth was that to the transcendental English poet Napoleon III. was not a man, but a symbol. All that the Christians in Rome had thought of Nero, Swinburne thought of Louis Bonaparte; to him the name represented tyranny in its feeblest, its most cruel, its most treacherous and debauched manifestation. It was a principle of evil which could never be pardoned. The essence of the series of sonnet-curses, Dirae, was ecstasy that “we have lived to say, The dog is dead.” Swinburne enjoyed cursing, and he cursed extremely well, but it was not Hutton of the Spectator only who objected to these vociferous Dirae.

  Late in this year Swinburne enjoyed a brush with Emerson, of all people in the world. In the course of 1873 Emerson and his daughter had visited England and Egypt; it was to he his last excursion to Europe. He had scarcely returned to Concord when a blazing “interview” with him appeared in an American newspaper. This article caused a certain scandal, for in it Emerson was reported as animadverting with great severity upon several leading English contemporaries. Swinburne, in particular, was singled out for abuse of a singularly revolting kind. A copy of the American newspaper was sent to him, marked, and he was exceedingly perturbed. He wrote to Emerson, expressing his conviction that the philosopher had been entirely misrepresented, and
begging for a line of assurance to that effect.

  It was a courteous and reasonable letter, and it is a great pity that Emerson did not think proper to reply to it. We know now that Emerson’s health was not then very good. His silence, however, seemed outrageously injurious to Swinburne, who could not be prevented from writing a second epistle, of matchless invective. He admitted to me, when I mildly objected, that it was “perhaps mere furious scolding,” but he sent it off all the same. Emerson remained silent. Swinburne then censured the person and character of the philosopher in a series of Latin epigrams, which he displayed with exultation to his friends. If these “Uranian or Cloacine” verses reached Emerson himself, the Sage of Concord was probably (and fortunately) unable to construe them. Against Carlyle, too, there was some arrogant manifestation. The fact is that Swinburne was at this time in a state of acute intellectual irritability, which betrayed itself in his personal relations. His friendships cooled; he saw less of Lord Houghton, and gradually ceased to be in close relation with Rossetti, Morris, and even Burne-Jones. He was justly incensed with Howell, who, certainly, had never deserved his confidence; he contrived to quarrel with the indulgent Joseph Knight; and his association with Purnell began to close.

  In this comparative isolation the friendship of Jowett was of the highest value to him. During these years, which were frequently painful, the great Master of Balliol preserved an influence that was serenely beneficial over the most wayward and the most brilliant of his old pupils. Visits to Oxford, protracted sojournings in Cornwall, at Holmwood, and — through successive autumns —— in Scotland, long walks and long talks in which all came out that was best in the oddly-assorted couple, these more than anything else carried Swinburne across the reefs of a dangerous and critical time. Jowett displayed a wonderful tact in dealing with his guest, cajoling, calming, interesting him and even submitting his own translations to his disciple’s judgment. Swinburne used with pride to tell how, when once staying at Balliol, the Master asked him to go over his first version of the Symposium of Plato with the Greek text, and see if anything seemed to him to need correction. Graciousness could go no further from the official representative of Greek at Oxford to one whose Oxonian career had culminated in “total and scandalous failure.” Swinburne bent ardently to the task, and, “feeling that it would be a rather mean and treacherous sort of deference or modesty which would preclude him from speaking, he took upon himself to say diffidently that if he had been called upon to construe” a certain sentence “he should have construed it otherwise. Mr. Jowett turned and looked at him with surprised and widened eyes: and said after a minute or so, ‘Of course that is the meaning. You would be a good scholar if you were to study.’”

  The anecdote is characteristic of the mutual relation of the two in these years. Jowett was indulgently amused at Swinburne’s violence of opinion. It was probably at this time that Mr. Asquith met the poet when both were guests at the Lodge of Balliol. Jowett chaffed Swinburne with having defended the propriety of regicide when he was a member of the Old Mortality at Oxford, and pretended to wonder what the other members of that society thought of his taking that view. “There was not one of us,” Swinburne drew himself up and replied, “who would have questioned for a moment that sacred duty.”

  He gave way at this time, during his London visits, to great eccentricity, and Miss Bird informs me of an incident sufficiently droll. Her brother, the doctor, took Swinburne to a public dinner, where were present a considerable number of journalists. The poet was politely asked whether he would be so kind as to propose the toast of “The Press.” Dr. George Bird, knowing Swinburne’s invincible objection to public speaking, declined the honour for him, but, on the request being repeated, was petrified to see Swinburne rise to his feet and shriek out the words: “The Press is a damnable institution, a horrible institution, a beastly institution,” and then sink back into his seat, and close his eyes.

  A new friend had appeared and then disappeared in the course of 1872. Theodore Watts, a lawyer of St. Ives in Huntingdonshire, came up to London with an ardent enthusiasm for the group of Pre-Raphaelites. He made the acquaintance of Rossetti and Morris without difficulty; to gain that of Swinburne was not so easy. His first attempt, which Watts used in later years to describe with considerable humour, was so unsuccessful that the door of hope seemed closed to him. However, towards the end of 1872, Madox Brown, after hearing of the misdeeds of Howell, recommended Swinburne to place his business affairs in the hands of Theodore Watts. Nothing very definite came of this until, in the autumn of the following year, Swinburne moved into rooms at 3 Great James Street, which he was to continue to occupy until he left London for good in 1879. He had some difficulty in getting free from earlier liabilities, and Watts, who had determined to settle in London, now stepped in with the proffer of professional advice, which was accepted. He called on the poet, and was further consulted about Swinburne’s agreements with publishers, which his previous agent had sadly mismanaged. The result was that Swinburne impulsively but wisely placed his affairs in faithful and competent hands. To his few intimate friends he announced the fact with a certain solemnity: for example, to Mr. John Morley he writes (Dec. 16, 1873):

  I am negotiating through a legal friend whom perhaps you know — Mr. Watts, a friend of Rossetti and others of my near friends, for the future publication of my works by Chapman and Hall. Mr. Chapman proposes to issue a cheap edition of my entire poems in the same form as his cheap edition of Carlyle. I have written at once in reply, expressing my readiness to [agree to] that.

  But of this scheme nothing came.

  The great labour of these years was the building up of Bothwell, a gigantic enterprise which, taken up in 1871 and dropped, was the almost unbroken occupation of 1873. It was a mounting structure, at which Swinburne toiled without, for a long time, any clear conception of its limits. It dilated in bulk and material at every step he took. He was well aware of its vastness. He wrote to Mr. John Morley:

  If ever accomplished, this drama will certainly be a great work in one sense, for, except that translation from the Spanish of an improperly named comedy in 25 acts published in 1631, it will be the biggest (I fear) in the language. But having made a careful analysis of historical events from the day of Rizzio’s murder to that of Mary’s flight into England, I find that to cast into dramatic mould the events of those eighteen months it is necessary to omit no detail, drop no link in the chain, if the work is to he either dramatically coherent or historically intelligible; while every stage of the action is a tragic drama of itself which crics aloud for representation. The enormity of the subject, together with its incomparable capability (if only the strength of hand requisite were there) for dramatic poetry, assure me as I proceed more and more forcibly of the truth, which I suspected from the first, that Shakespeare alone could have grappled with it satisfactorily, and wrung the final prize of the tragedy from the clutch of historic fact. But having taken up the enterprise I will not at least drop it till I have wrestled my best with it.

  He kept his word; and in March 1874 he closed the last scene of Bothwell. The giant drama was published three months later. It was received with great favour by the critics, and it pleased the public more than anything which Swinburne had published since Poems and Ballads. Frankly, the buyers of books admitted that they had had enough of his Republican odes and Italian aspirations, and they welcomed in Bothwell the chronicle-rendering of a story which was of perennial British interest. In spite of its portentous length (it ran to 532 full pages), it was bought and read.

  The question had hardly begun to be asked in England whether theatrical literature not intended for the theatre had any right to exist. In bulk Bothwell resembles one of the five-act Jidai-Mono or classic plays of eighteenth-century Japan, and it could only be performed, like an oriental drama, on successive nights. Swinburne, as may be gathered from his letter to Lord Morley quoted above, was little concerned in approaching his subject from the point of view of stage-conven
ience. He poured out all that his memory and his imagination presented to him. When he wrote the opening scene, in August 1871, and gave it to Jowett to read, Jowett pronounced it much too long. Swinburne was surprised, but, having a great respect for Jowett’s judgment, took the criticism very seriously. Accordingly next day — they were living in the hotel at Tummel Bridge — Swinburne stayed in bed all the morning to work on the scene. He produced it triumphantly at luncheon, when Jowett dryly observed that it was three lines longer than it was before. This was told to Mr. A. C. Bradley by Edwin Harrison, who was present; and I have in measure confirmed it by an examination of the manuscript.

  Later on, at one of Jowett’s reading-parties at West Malvern, R. W. Raper saw Swinburne suddenly fling himself on the floor at Jowett’s feet, and heard him say, “Master, I feel I have never thanked you enough for cutting four thousand lines out of Bothwell.” Jowett laughed and said, “Oh! I don’t know, I don’t know! I daresay I was quite wrong!” Public taste has changed in the course of forty years, and readers are now almost as impatient of unactable “poetic” dramas as playgoers are. This initial difficulty of bulk, therefore, cuts Bothwell off from our sympathy to-day, which is unfortunate, since it contains, in profusion, evidences of its author’s genius in its most attractive aspect.

  There is no other work of Swinburne which displays so unquestionably his gift for creating situation and interpreting character. There is none in which the language is of a more spirited simplicity or the verse more fluid. It is not, of course, the best piny, but it is the finest dramatic romance produced in England throughout the nineteenth century, and among the myriad blank-verse imitations of the Elizabethans beloved of Charles Lamb, Bothwell floats supreme, a leviathan.

  In a fine sonnet dedicatory to Victor Hugo, originally written, as appears from a letter to Mr. (now Sir) Sidney Colvin, on the 17th of January 1873, but afterwards much revised, Swinburne points out that over the scenes of Bothwell —