there are touches of sweet and sincere emotion; but the most remarkable points in his poor little book, and those which should be most memorable to other small poets of his kind (if at least the race of them was capable of profiting by any such lesson), are, first, the direct and seemingly unconscious transference of some of the best known lines or phrases from such obscure authors as Shakespeare or Wordsworth into the somewhat narrow and barren field of his own verse; and secondly, the incredible candour of expression given in his correspondence to such flatulent ambition and such hysterical self-esteem as the author of "Balder" must have regarded with a sorrowful sense of amusement. I may add that the poor boy's name is here cited with no desire to confer upon it any undeserved notoriety for better or worse, and assuredly with no unkindlier feelings than pity for his poor little memory, but simply as conveying the most apt and the most flagrant, as well as the most recent, instance I happened to remember, of the piteous and grievous harm done by this false teaching and groundless encouragement to spirits not strong enough to know their own weakness.'

So much for the temper, the taste, and the breeding, that distinguish a critic of the absolute school of criticism. But now what are these absolute laws on which all art, according to Mr. Swinburne, is based? What makes a work of positive excellence as judged by the special laws of the art to whose laws it is amenable'? We suppose it is generally allowed to be an absolute truth that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, though Mr. Mill was disinclined to make even this concession; and it is a demonstrable truth that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. But, though we have naturally searched with eagerness the pages of Mr. Swinburne for principles of art which, if discovered, must henceforth necessarily put an end to critical war, we fail to find even the shadow of a definition or the ghost of a rule to establish the position which he so courageously asserts. The nearest approach to a principle which we have encountered is the following dogma as to the nature of poetry :

'In all great poets there must be an ardent harmony, a heat of spiritual life, guiding without restraining the bodily grace of motion, which shall give charm and power to their least work; sweetness that cannot be weak, and force that will not be rough. There must be an instinct and resolution of excellence which will allow no shortcoming, or malformation of thought or word; there must be also so natural a sense of right as to make such a deformity or defect impossible, and leave upon the work done no trace of any effort to avoid or to achieve.'

Very well. But does not Mr. Swinburne see that those words, at least, in this passage, which we have printed in italics are merely

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merely relative? And for the rest, how can we decide, except by our natural sense of right,' what ardent harmony,' 'strong sweetness,' and 'chastened power' really are? Is this sense absolutely identical in all men? Did Voltaire perceive in Shakespeare, or Byron in Wordsworth, the qualities which Mr. Swinburne is disposed to allow those poets? Or supposing, as is not improbable, that we have a difference of opinion with Mr. Swinburne about the merits of some living poet, how will it settle the question if he declares dogmatically that the work of this poet has an instinct and resolution of excellence which will allow of no shortcoming or malformation of thought or word'? If we, as insensible Philistines, are unable to see the matter in the same light, one of two things either he must refer us to some indubitable principle of beauty which is illustrated by the works he admires, or he should be content to part with us in a good-tempered manner, as barbarians who are beyond the reach of sweetness and light.' For if he could tell us in plain words what the absolute laws of beauty are, it is surely his interest to do so; and we suppose that even he would not think it worth his while to fall into a passion with an adversary who denied that two and two make four.

Since, then, Mr. Swinburne is so chary of general principles, let us try what we can make of the absolute in his particular instances. And we will first examine his criticism on Victor Hugo, whom he will doubtless be supposed to judge by the 'special laws to which the art of the novelist is amenable.' This is what he says about 'L'homme qui rit':—

"L'homme qui rit" is a book to be rightly read, not by the lamp light of realism, but by the sunlight of his' (Hugo's) imagination reflected upon ours. Only so shall we see it as it is, much less understand it. The beauty it has and the meaning are ideal, and therefore cannot be impaired by any want of realism. Error and violation of probability, which would damn a work of Balzac's or Thackeray's, cannot even lower or lessen the value of a work like this. . . . This premised, I shall leave the dissection of names and the anatomy of probabilities to the things of chatter and chuckle, so well and scientifically defined long since by Mr. Charles Reade as anonymuncules who go scribbling about;" there is never any lack of them, and it will not greatly hurt the master poet of an age that they should shriek and titter and hoot inaudibly behind his heel. It is not every demigod who is vulnerable there.'

And so, after the manner of the sophist, Thrasymachus, in Plato's Republic,' having deluged our ears like a fishwife with his copious and unbroken torrent of words,' Mr. Swinburne 'intends to take his departure.' But, by his leave, we will detain

him for a little. For we thought just now that every work of art was to be judged absolutely by the laws of the special art to whose laws it is amenable.' Apparently, however, we are not to be allowed to do anything of the kind with L'homme qui rit,' which is to be read by the sunlight of M. Hugo's imagination reflected upon ours. Can it be, then, that Mr. Swinburne thinks M. Hugo's imagination an absolute law of art? We suppose he must, for this is what he says of the character of Dea in 'L'homme qui rit :

'Some of her words have the light of an apocalypse, the tone of a truth indubitable henceforth and sensible to all. "You were not born with that horrible laugh were you? No! It must be a penal mutilation. I do hope you have committed some crime. No one has touched me. I give myself up to you pure as burning fire. I see you do not believe me, but if you only knew how little I care! Despise me, you that people despise! Degradation below degradation what a pleasure! the double flower of ignominy I am gathering it. Trample me underfoot. You will like me all the better. I know that. Oh! I should like to be with you in the evening while they were playing music, each of us leaning back against the same cushion under the purple awning of a golden gallery in the midst of the infinite sweetnesses of the sea. Insult me. Beat me. Treat me like a street-walker. I adore you."

The naturalism of all that is absolute,' says Mr. Swinburne, "you hear the words pant and ring.' We cannot pretend to say what 'absolute nature' is, but we can certainly say that if the above speech be natural, then the highest creations of Homer and Shakespeare are wild improbabilities; and the speeches of Viola and Andromache, which we have been accustomed to regard as models of beautiful eloquence, are torrents of idiotical drivel. Does the passage remind us of anything in Nature? does it strike in our hearts any chord of pity or sympathy? When Andromache is making her last appeal to Hector, who thinks of anything but the truth and beauty of the lines in relation to his own feelings? But in reading the speech of Dea, who thinks of anything but the absolute oddity of M. Hugo?

Mr. Swinburne, however, would have us believe that Victor Hugo's work is simply of a different order from that of other great poets. His pathos, says he, is absolute. The pathos of Eschylus is no more like Dante's, Dante's is no more like Shakespeare's, than any of these is like Hugo's.' We agree: but how is this to the purpose? Mr. Swinburne will allow that, though the modes of pathetic writing may be many, the passion of grief and sympathy to which the poet appeals is one. judging, therefore, of a poet's pathos the standard of reference should be the nature of the passion, and the manner in which

In

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the passion is most powerfully moved. And here we think something is to be learnt from comparison and illustration. 'Pathos,' says Longinus, ' is most moving when it seems not to be elaborated by the orator, but to spring out of the occasion.' One of the most beautiful instances of the truth of this remark is that scene in The Antiquary' where Oldbuck comes suddenly on the mourning in the fisherman's cottage over the body of Steenie Mucklebackit. What can be finer than the description of the father's grief?

'The old man had made the most desperate efforts to save his son, and had only been withheld by main force from renewing them at a moment when, without the possibility of assisting the sufferer, he must himself have perished. All this was apparently boiling in his recollection. His glance was directed sidelong to the coffin, as to an object on which he could not steadfastly look, and yet from which he could not withdraw his eyes. His answers to the necessary questions which were occasionally put to him, were brief, harsh, and almost fierce. His family had not yet dared to address to him a word either of sympathy or consolation. His masculine wife, virago as she was, and absolute mistress of the family, as she justly boasted herself on all ordinary occasions, was by this great loss terrified into silence and submission, and compelled to hide from her husband's observation the bursts of her female sorrow. As he had rejected food ever since the disaster had happened, not daring herself to approach him, she had that morning with affectionate artifice employed the youngest and most favourite child to present her husband with some nourishment. His first action was to push it from him with an angry violence that frightened the child: his next to snatch up the boy and devour him with kisses. "Ye'll be a bra' fallow an ye be spared, Patie-but ye'll never, never can be, what he was to me. He has sailed the coble wi' me since he was ten years auld, and there was na the like o' him drew a net betwixt this and Buchanness. They say folks maun submit-I will try."'

See with what slight means this great effect is produced; the suddenness with which the reader is brought face to face with the moving scene described with such swift and unstudied touches, the simplicity of the language, the inexplicable poetry

of the whole passage. And then compare with it the artistic

pathos of a story like 'Les Travailleurs de la Mer,' which consists in the elaboration of an idea, the narrative of the unrequited service of a heroic lover. What vast pains the writer has taken to aggrandise his effect! The images are all above nature, but they are all essential to each other, and to the evolution of the central idea; the action of the tale, with its violent contrasts, is, if Mr. Swinburne will, like (stage) thunder in a clear sky. The colossal and protracted exertions of Gillyatt, on the rock,

form

form the proper artistic preparation for the instantaneous demolition of his dreams when he discovers that Deruchette loves another; the supernatural calm of his self-suppression and selfsacrifice is the proportioned antecedent to the tremendous climax of his suicide:

'Gillyatt's eyes continued fixed upon the vessel in the horizon. Their expression resembled nothing earthly. A strange lustre shone in their calm and tragic depths. There was in them the peace of vanished hopes, the calm but sorrowful acceptance of an end far different from his dreams. By degrees the dusk of heaven began to darken in them, though gazing still upon the point in space. At the same moment the wide waters round the Gild-Holm-'Ur and the vast gathering twilight closed upon them.

'The Cashmere, now scarcely perceptible, had become a mere spot in the thin haze.

'Gradually the spot which was but a shape grew paler. Then it dwindled and finally disappeared.

'At the moment when the vessel vanished on the line of the horizon the head of Gillyatt disappeared. Nothing was visible now but the sea.'

Of course this is very effective, but in what sense? believe there are few who could read the passage from 'The Antiquary' without emotion; but we feel sure that there are many who will read the closing sentences of Les Travailleurs de la Mer' with something like a profane smile. And why this difference? Because one passage is an effect of Nature, and the other is an effect of the stage.

Let us now try Mr. Swinburne's principles by seeing how he applies them to the poetry of Mr. Rossetti, on which some comments have been made in a former number of this Review.* We find him admiring this poet for much the same kind of qualities, though displayed in a different form, that he sees in Victor Hugo.

In the work of Mr. Rossetti, besides that particular colour and flavour which distinguishes each master's work from that of all other masters, and by want of which you may tell merely good work from wholly great work, the general qualities of all great poetry are generally visible and divisible; strength, sweetness, affluence, simplicity, depth, light, harmony, variety, bodily grace and range of mind and force of soul and ease of flight, the scope and sweep of wing to impel the body and weight of thought through the air and light of speech with the motion of mere musical impulse; warm as breath and fine as flower-dust, which lies light as air upon lyric leaves that open with song; the rare and ineffable mark of a supreme singing power, an