ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

IN the veins of this poet flowed the blood of an English admiral and of a peer of the realm. This fact is significant in estimating his literary career. An aristocrat by birth and associations, he turned, by a sort of reaction, to a sentimental radicalism, to which much of his poetry gives expression. His politics were emotional, but the emotion was violent, and Swinburne's unequalled powers of statement and superb imagination tempted him to indulge more than he otherwise might in the pleasure of wordy warfare. As Disraeli once said of Gladstone, he was at times "intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity." Swinburne's intellect was active. and subtle, and his cunning in the use of forms of speech has never been surpassed; yet his intellectual weight was but moderate, and in judgment and self-restraint he was markedly deficient. Neither his political nor his literary criticism has serious value, except as specimens of English composition, and as characteristic effusions. Even his poetry, voluminous though it is, is narrow in its scope and monotonous in its mastery of rhythm and melody; but it is real poetry, and no English writer has ever surpassed it in the qualities which give it distinction. Its sensuous beauty and splendor are often amazing, and were it as commendable in point of ethics and common sense, Swinburne would be the poet of the century. His early work was received with a mingling of astonishment, rapture and denunciation; but his advance after that was small. "Atalanta in Calydon," published in 1864, when the author was twenty-eight years old, has passages as delicious as anything he since accomplished; and in his "Laus Veneris," which appeared two years later, though written previously, he gave his measure and quality, and struck a keynote of feeling and character which was not essentially modified later.

Swinburne was educated at Eton and Oxford, though he took no degree; he became a good classical scholar, and his love of Greek paganism is apparent in all his writings. He touched many subjects, but this classical bent is traceable throughout. In English history he made studies of Henry II.'s Rosamond, of Mary Queen of Scots ("Chastelard," "Bothwell," "Mary

Stuart"), "The Armada" (a magnificent poem), and some minor pieces; in prose literary criticism he produced "William Blake," "George Chapman," "A Note on Charlotte Bronté," "A Study of Shakespeare," "A Study of Victor Hugo," "A Study of Ben Jonson," and other essays; he tried his hand in Arthurian legend, in "Tristram of Lyonesse," and was the author of a Greek and of an Italian tragedy-"Erechtheus" and "Marino Faliero." He even wrote a novel of English society-and a very good one-published serially in London in 1879, under the pen-name of "Mrs. Horace Manners." It was called "A Year's Letters," but has never been reprinted, or acknowledged by the author. Whatever he produced has fascination and distinction, and is irreproachable in form. But his best and most lasting work is to be sought in his poems and ballads, and in passages of his dramas. He saw and depicted character vividly, but always through a Swinburnian atmosphere, so that he cannot be regarded as a dramatist in the Shakespearian sense. He had wit, irony and passion, but not humor.

Moreover, with all his beauty, there was something unwholesome and unsound about Swinburne. He was violent rather than powerful. His delicacies and refinements were something other than manly. In youth he had a tendency to finger forbidden subjects; his later work is free from such improprieties. Whatever he did gave evidence of good workmanship, and possesses literary importance; but his stature did not increase in late years, and, at the age of sixty he had lapsed into the background of things.

THE MAKING OF MAN.

(Chorus from "Atalanta in Calydon.")

BEFORE the beginning of years
There came to the making of man

Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance, fallen from heaven;

And madness, risen from hell;

Strength, without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light;

And life, the shadow of death.

And the high gods took it in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand
From under the feet of years,
And froth and drift of the sea,

And dust of the laboring earth,
And bodies of things to be,

In the houses of death and of birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter, And fashioned with loathing and love, With life before and after,

And death beneath and above;

For a day and a night and a morrow,

That his strength might endure for a span With travail and heavy sorrow,

The holy spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the south

They gathered as unto strife;

They breathed upon his mouth,
They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the souls therein;
A time for labor and thought,
A time to serve and to sin.

They gave him a light in his ways,
And love, and a space for delight;

And beauty and length of days,

And night, and sleep in the night. His speech is a burning fire,

With his lips he travaileth; In his heart is a blind desire,

In his eyes foreknowledge of death;

He weaves and is clothed with derision;

Sows, and he shall not reap;

His life is a watch or a vision

Between a sleep and a sleep.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Not if men's tongues and angels' all in one

Spake, might the word be said that might speak Thee. Streams, winds, woods, flowers, fields, mountains, yea,

the sea,

What power is in them all to praise the sun?
His praise is this, he can be praised of none.
Man, woman, child, praise God for him; but he
Exults not to be worshiped, but to be.
He is; and, being, beholds his work well done.
All joy, all glory, all sorrow, all strength, all mirth,
Are his without him, day were night on earth.

Time knows not his from time's own period.
All lutes, all harps, all viols, all flutes, all lyres,
Fall dumb before him ere one string suspires.
All stars are angels; but the sun is God.

BEN JONSON.

BROAD-BASED, broad-fronted, bounteous, multiform,
With many a valley impleached with ivy and vine,
Wherein the springs of all the streams run wine,
And many a crag full-faced against the storm,
The mountain where thy Muse's feet made warm
Those lawns that revelled with her dance divine
Shines yet with fire as it was wont to shine
From tossing torches round the dance aswarm.
Nor less, high-stationed on the grey grave heights,
High-thoughted seers with heaven's heart-kindling lights
Hold converse: and the herd of meaner things
Knows or by fiery scourge or fiery shaft

When wrath on thy broad brows has risen, and laughed,

Darkening thy soul with shadow of thunderous wings.

IN A GARDEN.

BABY, see the flowers!
-Baby sees

Fairer things than these,

Fairer though they be than dreams of ours.

Now the flowers curl round and close their cells.

Baby, flower of light,
Sleep and see
Brighter dreams than we,

Till good day shall smile away good night.