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Swinburne: Changes of Aspect and Short Notes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Clyde Kenneth Hyder
Affiliation:
The University of Kansas

Extract

Two manuscripts in the Huntington Library—Changes of Aspect and Short Notes, written by Algernon Charles Swinburne—cast light on their author's relations with his contemporaries. One of them shows his sensitiveness to charges of inconsistency; both illustrate the power of his invective.

Type
Other
Information
PMLA , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , March 1943 , pp. 223 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1943

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References

1 Swinburne wrote in a copy of a book which accused him of inconsistency: “The weathercock says to the sundial—You renegade!” See my Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame (Durham, N. C., 1933), p. 317.

2 In The Quarterly Review, cxcvi (July, 1902), 20–39.

3 Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, p. 88.

4 See Mackail's Life, ii, 74,

5 Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, p. 87.

6 The Quarterly Review, cxcvi (July, 1902), 29, 31, 35, 37.

7 Thomas Hake and Arthur Compton-Rickett, The Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne (London, 1918), pp. 183–184.

8 George Henry Lewes, “Dickens in Relation to Criticism,” The Fortnightly Review, xvii (February 1, 1872), 141–154. Swinburne may have learned of Lewes' editorial interpolations in a review of Atalanta in Calydon. See Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, p. 18. See also Swinburne's Letters, ed. Gosse and Wise (New York, 1919), ii, 248.

9 The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, ed. Gosse and Wise (London, 1925–27), xiv, 77 (I shall hereafter refer to this edition as “the Bonchurch Edition”). Lewes is called “a past-master in the noble science of defamation.”

10 Samuel C. Chew, Swinburne (Boston, 1929), pp. 258–259.

11 Swinburne's earlier essay on Byron may be compared with Wordsworth and Byron (in Miscellanies) as well as with certain passages in Under the Microscope.

12 Swinburne attributed to a supposititious French critic passages really composed by himself. See Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, p. 285, note 27.

13 See ibid., pp. 88 ff., and the index for a fuller account; also the Bonchurch Edition, xiii, 353, and xiv, 94, 155, 157–158, 201.

14 Cairns, “Swinburne's Opinion of Whitman,” AmLit, iii (May, 1931), 125–135; Lafourcade, “Swinburne and Walt Whitman,” MLR, xxii (1927), 84–86.

15 Archer's article “Webster, Lamb, and Swinburne,” The New Review, viii (January, 1893), 96–106, opposes the Lamb-Swinburne view of the Elizabethans.

16 Swinburne had in mind dramatic criticism like Shaw's when he wrote (Bonchurch Edition, xii, 134): “The reviler of Shakespeare can be no other than a scurrilous buffoon, ‘a decent priest where monkeys are the gods,‘ and where Ibsen is the idol.”

17 For a brief summary see Chew, Swinburne, p. 293 n. See also the Bonchurch Edition, xx, 397 ff., and Thomas James Wise, A Swinburne Library (London, 1925), pp. 167–168, 192.

18 Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, pp. 149–150.

19 For Swinburne's relations with Tennyson see ibid., pp. 85 ff.

20 Ibid., pp. 171, 301; Wise, A Swinburne Library, pp. 66, 70 ff., 82–84; Letters, ed. Gosse and Wise, ii, 103.

21 Bonchurch Edition, xiii, 244. For a full discussion see pp. 242 ff. See also a letter quoted by Georges Lafourcade, La Jeunesse de Swinburne (Paris, 1928), i, 252.

22 See Fred Norris Robinson, “Satirists and Enchanters in Early Irish Literature,” Studies in the History of Religions Presented to Crawford Howell Toy, ed. D. G. Lyon and G. F. Moore (New York, 1912), pp. 95–130.

23 Bonchurch Edition, xvi, 28.

24 Ibid., xv, 342.

25 Ibid., xi, 236.

26 Ibid., xi, 374.

27 Ibid., xv, 268.

28 Ibid., xi, 111.

29 Ibid., xi, 403.

30 Ibid., xiv, 115.

31 Ibid., xv, 269.

32 Ibid., xiv, 39.

33 Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, p. 185.

34 Ibid., p. 178.

35 Ibid.

36 Bonchurch Edition, xx, 410.

37 Ibid., xvi, 397.

38 Ibid., xvi, 398.

39 Ibid., xiv, 12.

40 Ibid., xv, 250.

41 Ibid., xi, 46.

42 Buchanan had used a pseudonym in attacking Rossetti and others in his article, “The Fleshly School of Poetry.” See Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, pp. 171 ff.

43 Bonchurch Edition, xvi, 422–423.

44 Ibid., xiii, 137.

45 Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, pp. 178, 285, 308. Chew, Swinburne, p. 162 n., briefly discusses Swinburne's attitude towards Carlyle.

46 Bonchurch Edition, xi, 140.

47 Ibid., xv, 283.

48 Ibid., xrv, 178.

49 Ibid., xi, 115. “Philosophaster” is the word used in the original text of A Study of Shakespeare.

50 Ibid., xi, 221.

51 Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, pp. 186 ff. See also p. 188.

52 Hugh Kingsmill, More Invective (London, 1930), p. 5.

53 Bonchurch Edition, xvi, 372.

Note 1 in page 229 Swinburne is of course thinking of his position on Home Rule for Ireland.

Note 2 in page 230 Macbeth, i. iv. 7–8.

Note 3 in page 231 For a partial explanation of these personal charges see Samuel C. Chew, Byron in England (New York, 1924), p. 316 n. See also Swinburne's Letters, ed. Gosse and Wise (New York, 1919), ii, 167, 180.

Note 4 in page 231 One of the “poetasters” whom Swinburne mentions, Alfred Austin, had exalted Byron at the expense of contemporary poets, including Tennyson and Swinburne himself. His Poetry of the Period (1870) had been answered by Swinburne in Under the Microscope, which also contains discussion of Byron and Tennyson.

Note 5 in page 231 In Hallam Tennyson's Memoir (London, 1897), ii, 285.

Note 6 in page 231 Swinburne at first wrote “servility.” He is probably thinking of To the Queen, prefixed to the first Laureate Edition (1851).

Note 7 in page 231 Substituted for “shameless.” Swinburne has also eliminated mention of “the pusillanimity which fell silent for nine or ten years under the lash of Lockhart….” This passage begins after “favour.”

Note 8 in page 231 Quoted from Tennyson's “The New Timon, and the Poets,” Punch, x (February 28, 1846), 103; included in the appendix to the Student's Cambridge edition. The poem was written in answer to Bulwer-Lytton's satire of Tennyson in The New Timon. See Thomas R. Lounsbury, The Life and Times of Tennyson (New Haven, 1915), pp. 517 ff.

Note 9 in page 232 The verses which now bear the title The Spiteful Letter in Tennyson's collected works were first published as “On a Spiteful Letter,” Once a Week, i, n. s. (January 4, 1868), 13. Cf. Hallam Tennyson's Memoir, ii, 62 n. Professor William D. Paden saved me some trouble by supplying these references.

Note 10 in page 232 Swinburne first wrote “disgraces.”

Note 11 in page 232 Tennyson's Art for Art's Sake reads:

“Art for Art's sake! Hail, truest Lord of Hell!
Hail, Genius, Master of the Moral Will!
'The filthiest of all paintings painted well
Is mightier than the purest painted ill!'
Yea, mightier than the purest painted well,
So prone are we towards the broad way to Hell.“—

Quoted in A Memoir (1897), ii, 92. Cf. the Introduction on the date of Changes of Aspect. For the suggestion that Tennyson may have had Swinburne in mind see Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, p. 87.

Note 12 in page 233 Songs before Sunrise.

Note 13 in page 233 Swinburne at first wrote “was never much more than a sort of pseudo-Wordsworth.” In his essay Charles Dickens (see the Bonchurch Edition, xiv, 85) Swinburne refers to Arnold as “a man whose main achievement in creative literature was to make himself by painful painstaking into a sort of pseudo-Wordsworth.” An early letter of Arnold's calls Swinburne “a sort of pseudo-Shelley.” See Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, p. 88.

Note 14 in page 233 “Matthew Arnold's New Poems,” The Fortnightly Review, viii (October 1,1867), 414–445; reprinted in Essays and Studies (1875).

Note 15 in page 234 Swinburne is probably thinking of the rôle of the frogs in Aristophanes' play. Elsewhere (Bonchurch Edition, xv, 251) he refers to Arnold's “effusive Oxonolatry.”

Note 16 in page 234 Thomas Rymer (1641–1713) is notorious for his condemnation of Shakespeare in A Short View of Tragedy.

Note 17 in page 234 Emerson had written to Carlyle: “I delight in Matthew Arnold's fine criticism in two little books.”—The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston and New York, 1894), ii, 317. For a statement of Arnold-Emerson relations see Ralph L. Rusk, The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York, 1939), i, xxxviii. For Emerson's depreciatory judgment of Shelley see ibid., i, xxxvi f.

Note 18 in page 234 Swinburne may have in mind particularly a passage in Arnold's On the Study of Celtic Literature and On Translating Homer (New York, 1899), p. 100. It is possible, by tbe way, that Swinburne resented Arnold's criticizing (p. 136) Lord Ashburnham for keeping Celtic manuscripts from students. The third Earl of Ashburnham was Swinburne's grandfather; the fourth Earl, his uncle.

Note 19 in page 235 In Arnold's poem Haworth Churchyard Emily Bronte's name is coupled with Byron's for “passion, vehemence, grief.”

Note 20 in page 235 For other expressions of Swinburne's indignation over the fate of General Gordon and of his animosity towards Gladstone see the Bonchurch Edition, xx, 491 ff., and Thomas James Wise, A Swinburne Library (London, 1925), pp. 133–134.

Note 21 in page 235 “Whose too bold dying song,” a line in Arnold's Haworth Churchyard, refers to the poem Swinburne describes, Emily Bronte's No Coward Soul is Mine.

Note 22 in page 236 Swinburne quotes the phrase from Arnold: “quite other matters from the fundamental matter of the primitive gospel”—Last Essays on Church and Religion (London, 1903), p. 123.

Note 23 in page 236 This is another of Swinburne's answers to a recurring criticism. Cf. Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, p. 230.

Note 24 in page 236 Quoted from chapter xl of Dickens's Pickwick Papers.

Note 25 in page 236 “Lucretius” is canceled.

Note 26 in page 236 “They say, best men are moulded out of faults.”—Measure for Measure, v. i. 444.

Note 27 in page 237 See The Lord of Burleigh, lines 79–80.

Note 28 in page 237 Swinburne is thinking of such poems as Youth's Agitations and Growing Old.

Note 29 in page 237 Cf. The Merchant of Venice, i. iii. 111.

Note 30 in page 237 Edward George Geoffrey Smith Stanley, fourteenth Earl of Derby (1799–1869), published a translation of the Iliad (1864).

Note 31 in page 237 Cf. Swinburne's comment in Short Notes.

Note 32 in page 238 For other admiring comments on the two poems see the Bonchurch Edition, xiv, 303 ff.; Letters, ed. Gosse and Wise, i, 27, and ii, 78.

Note 33 in page 238 Antony and Cleopatra, ii. v. 85–86.

Note 34 in page 238 Quoted from Mrs. Anne Benson Procter's preface to her privately printed Letters Addressed to Mrs. Basil Montagu and B. W. Procter by Mr. Thomas Carlyle. “Malignant lies” occurs in an earlier passage, but “He should beware … hand” comes at the end of the preface, with no indication of borrowing from a previous writer. Charles Lamb, however (in his Specimens from the Writings of Fuller, the Church Historian), attributes to Thomas Fuller this sentence: “O let him take heed how he strikes, that hath a dead hand.”

Note 35 in page 238 Entry under March 6, 1754, in Boswell's Life (Oxford, 1934), i, 268.

Note 36 in page 238 William Bell Scott. For details regarding Swinburne's objections to certain passages in Scott's Autobiographical Notes, edited by William Minto (1892) after Scott's death, see Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, p. 219. Cf. Letters, ed. Gosse and Wise, ii, 226.

Note 37 in page 238 Swinburne had dedicated the third series of Poems and Ballads to Scott and had written memorial verses in his honor.

Note 38 in page 239 Most of this paragraph occurs also in Swinburne's preface to William Blake, added in 1906; the manuscript of the 1906 preface is in the Huntington Library. William Blake appeared in 1868.

Note 39 in page 240 After the publication of Aldis Wright's The Life and Letters of Edward Fitzgerald (1889), which contained disparaging remarks about Mrs. Browning, Robert Browning sent some verses on Fitzgerald to The Athenaeum. For further information and the text of Browning's “rejoinder,” see Letters of Robert Browning, ed. Thurman L. Hood (New Haven, 1933), pp. 377–378.

For Fitzgerald's comments on Swinburne, which may have annoyed that poet, see Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame, pp. 87, 91.

Note 40 in page 240 Fabian Fitzdottrel, a character in The Devil is an Ass; as the name suggests, a simpleton.

Note 41 in page 240 “Half-thinking, sensual France, a natural Slave” comes from a stanza now usually omitted from the text of Coleridge's Ode to Tranquillity. See Coleridge's Complete Poetical Works, ed. E. H. Coleridge (Oxford, 1912), i, 360 n.

Note 42 in page 241 Sardou and Ibsen are also coupled in Charles Dickens (Bonchurch Edition, xiv, 67). Cf. note 54.

Note 43 in page 241 Substituted for “Æschylus and Sophocles.”

Note 44 in page 241 To Walt Whitman in America. For Swinburne's relations with Whitman see the Introduction.

Note 45 in page 241 Cf. Judges v. 20.

Note 46 in page 242 Laurence Eusden (1688–1730), made poet laureate in 1718. Swinburne at first wrote “Blackmore.”

Note 47 in page 242 According to Allibone's Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1891), ii, 1712, Charles Small Pybus was the author of The Sovereign; a Poem (London, 1800) and other works.

Note 48 in page 242 Henry James Pye (1745–1813), made poet laureate in 1790.

Note 49 in page 242 The English Tupper was Martin Tupper (1810–89), widely known for his Proverbial Philosophy. In referring to Longfellow as “the American Tupper” and “the gilded Tupper” Swinburne is of course unjust. Cf. Letters, ed. Gosse and Wise, ii, 234.

Note 50 in page 242 This comparison has been used by Bacon, Herrick, and other writers. See the index to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

Note 51 in page 242 Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, line 308.

Note 52 in page 242 Cf. Romans iv. 6.

Note 53 in page 243 Swinburne originally wrote “genius.”

Note 54 in page 243 For other comments on Ibsen, see the Bonchurch Edition, xii, 134, and xiv, 58, 67, 74, 82. For comments on Zola, see Letters, ed. Gosse and Wise, ii, 12, 32–33, and the Bonchurch Edition, xiv, 74, 82 f.; xv, 315. See also the Introduction for discussion of Swinburne's criticism of Ibsen, Lewes, and Arnold.

Note 55 in page 243 Alfred Bunn (1796–1860), an English theatrical manager and translator of operas.

Note 56 in page 243 Edward Fitzball (1792–1873), an English dramatist.

Note 57 in page 243 G. W. M. Reynolds (1814–79), a translator and author of sensational novels.

Note 58 in page 243 Substituted for “Margites who knew so many things and knew them all so badly.”

Note 59 in page 243 Her Serene Highness.

Note 60 in page 243 Rossetti, as a passage in Changes of Aspect indicates.

Note 61 in page 243 For other harsh comments on Euripides, see the Bonchurch Edition, xv, 252, and Letters, ed. Gosse and Wise, i, 224–225.