Swinburne.He was,above all,"a mighty-mouthed inventer of harmonies,"and one looked eagerly for his next poems.They came with disappointment and trouble.
The famous "Poems and Ballads"have become so well known that people can hardly understand the noise they made.I don't wonder at the scandal,even now.I don't see the fun of several of the pieces,except the mischievous fun of shocking your audience.However,"The Leper"and his company are chiefly boyish,in the least favourable sense of the word.They do not destroy the imperishable merit of the "Hymn to Proserpine"and the "Garden of Proserpine"and the "Triumph of Time"and "Itylus."Many years have passed since 1866,and yet one's old opinion,that English poetry contains no verbal music more original,sonorous,and sweet than Mr.Swinburne wrote in these pieces when still very young,remains an opinion unshaken.Twenty years ago,then,he had enabled the world to take his measure;he had given proofs of a true poet;he was learned too in literature as few poets have been since Milton,and,like Milton,skilled to make verse in the languages of the ancient world and in modern tongues.His French songs and Greek elegiacs are of great excellence;probably no scholar who was not also a poet could match his Greek lines on Landor.
What,then,is lacking to make Mr.Swinburne a poet of a rank even higher than that which he occupies?Who can tell?There is no science that can master this chemistry of the brain.He is too copious."Bothwell"is long enough for six plays,and "Tristram of Lyonesse"is prolix beyond even mediaeval narrative.He is too pertinacious;children are the joy of the world and Victor Hugo is a great poet;but Mr.Swinburne almost makes us excuse Herod and Napoleon III.by his endless odes to Hugo,and rondels to small boys and girls.Ne quid nimis,that is the golden rule which he constantly spurns,being too luxuriant,too emphatic,and as fond of repeating himself as Professor Freeman.Such are the defects of so noble a genius;thus perverse Nature has decided that it shall be,Nature which makes no ruby without a flaw.
The name of Mr.Robert Bridges is probably strange to many lovers of poetry who would like nothing better than to make acquaintance with his verse.But his verse is not so easily found.This poet never writes in magazines;his books have not appealed to the public by any sort of advertisement,only two or three of them have come forth in the regular way.The first was "Poems,by Robert Bridges,Batchelor of Arts in the University of Oxford.Parva seges satis est.London:Pickering,1873."This volume was presently,I fancy,withdrawn,and the author has distributed some portions of it in succeeding pamphlets,or in books printed at Mr.Daniel's private press in Oxford.In these,as in all Mr.Bridges's poems,there is a certain austere and indifferent beauty of diction and a memory of the old English poets,Milton and the earlier lyrists.I remember being greatly pleased with the "Elegy on a Lady whom Grief for the Death of Her Betrothed Killed.""Let the priests go before,arrayed in white,And let the dark-stoled minstrels follow slow Next they that bear her,honoured on this night,And then the maidens in a double row,Each singing soft and low,And each on high a torch upstaying:
Unto her lover lead her forth with light,With music and with singing,and with praying."This is a stately stanza.
In his first volume Mr.Bridges offered a few rondeaux and triolets,turning his back on all these things as soon as they became popular.
In spite of their popularity I have the audacity to like them still,in their humble twittering way.Much more in his true vein were the lines,"Clear and Gentle Stream,"and all the other verses in which,like a true Etonian,he celebrates the beautiful Thames:
"There is a hill beside the silver Thames,Shady with birch and beech and odorous pine,And brilliant under foot with thousand gems Steeply the thickets to his floods decline.
Straight trees in every place Their thick tops interlace,And pendent branches trail their foliage fine Upon his watery face.
A reedy island guards the sacred bower And hides it from the meadow,where in peace The lazy cows wrench many a scented flower,Robbing the golden market of the bees.
And laden branches float By banks of myosote;And scented flag and golden fleur-de-lys Delay the loitering boat."I cannot say how often I have read that poem,and how delightfully it carries the breath of our River through the London smoke.Nor less welcome are the two poems on spring,the "Invitation to the Country,"and the "Reply."In these,besides their verbal beauty and their charming pictures,is a manly philosophy of Life,which animates Mr.Bridges's more important pieces--his "Prometheus the Firebringer,"and his "Nero,"a tragedy remarkable for the representation of Nero himself,the luxurious human tiger.From "Prometheus"I make a short extract,to show the quality of Mr.
Bridges's blank verse:
"Nor is there any spirit on earth astir,Nor 'neath the airy vault,nor yet beyond In any dweller in far-reaching space Nobler or dearer than the spirit of man:
That spirit which lives in each and will not die,That wooeth beauty,and for all good things Urgeth a voice,or still in passion sigheth,And where he loveth,draweth the heart with him."Mr.Bridges's latest book is his "Eros and Psyche"(Bell &Sons,who publish the "Prometheus").It is the old story very closely followed,and beautifully retold,with a hundred memories of ancient poets:Homer,Dante,Theocritus,as well as of Apuleius.
I have named Mr.Bridges here because his poems are probably all but unknown to readers well acquainted with many other English writers of late days.On them,especially on actual contemporaries or juniors in age,it would be almost impertinent for me to speak to you;but,even at that risk,I take the chance of directing you to the poetry of Mr.Bridges.I owe so much pleasure to its delicate air,that,if speech be impertinence,silence were ingratitude.{2}