II

I set the trumpet to my lips and blow,

said Swinburne in theSongs before Sunrise,when he was the trumpeter of Mazzini.

And yet, it must be remembered, Swinburne has always meant exactly what he has said, and this fact points an amusing contrast between the attitude of the critics thirty years ago towards work which was then new and their attitude now towards the same work when it is thirty years old. There is, in theSongs before Sunrise, an arraignment of Christianity as deliberateas Leconte de Lisle's, as wholesale as Nietzsche's; in thePoems and Ballads, a learned sensuality without parallel in English poetry; and the critics, or the descendants of the critics, who, when these poems first appeared, could see nothing but these accidental qualities of substance, are now, thanks merely to the triumph of time, to the ease with which time forgets and forgives, able to take all such things for granted, and to acknowledge the genuine and essential qualities of lyric exaltation and generous love of liberty by which the poems exist, and have a right to exist, as poems. But when we are told thatBefore a Crucifixis a poem fundamentally reverent towards Christianity, and thatAnactoriais an ascetic experiment in scholarship, a learned attempt at the reconstruction of the order of Sappho, it is difficult not to wonder with what kind of smile the writer of these poems reflects anew over the curiosities of criticism. I have taken the new book and the old book together, because there is surprisingly little difference between the form and manner of the old poems and the new. The contents ofA Channel Passageareunusually varied in subject, and the longest poem,The Altar of Righteousness, a marvellous piece of rhythmical architecture, is unusually varied in form. Technically the whole book shows Swinburne at his best; if, indeed, he may ever be said not to be at his best, technically. Is there any other instance in our literature of a perfection of technique so unerring, so uniform, that it becomes actually fatiguing? It has often foolishly been said that the dazzling brilliance of Swinburne's form is apt to disguise a certain thinness or poverty of substance. It seems to me, on the contrary, that we are often in danger of overlooking the imaginative subtlety of phrases and epithets which are presented to us and withdrawn from us in a flash, on the turn of a wave. Most poets present us with their best effects deliberately, giving them as weighty an accent as they can; Swinburne scatters them by the way. Take, for instance, the line:

The might of the night subsided: the tyranny kindled in darkness fell.

The line comes rearing like a wave, and has fallen and raced past us before we haveproperly grasped what is imaginatively fine in the latter clause. Presented to us in the manner of slower poets, thus:

The tyrannyKindled in darkness fell,

The tyranny

Kindled in darkness fell,

how much more easily do we realise the quality of the speech which goes to make this song.

And yet there is no doubt that Swinburne has made his own moulds of language, as he has made his own moulds of rhythm, and that he is apt, when a thought or a sensation which he has already expressed recurs to him, to use the mould which stands ready made in his memory, instead of creating language over again, to fit a hair's-breadth of difference in the form of thought or sensation. That is why, in this book, in translating a 'roundel' of Villon which Rossetti had already translated, he misses the naïve quality of the French which Rossetti, in a version not in all points so faithful as this, had been able, in some subtle way, to retain. His own moulds of language recur to him, and he will not stop to think that 'wife,' though a good wordfor his rhyme scheme, is not a word that Villon could have used, and that

Deux estions et n'avions qu'ung cueur,

though it is perfectly rendered by Rossetti in

Two we were and the heart was one,

is turned into a wholly different, a Swinburnian thing, by

Twain we were, and our hearts one song,One heart.

Twain we were, and our hearts one song,

One heart.

Nor is 'Dead as the carver's figured throng' (for 'Comme les images, par cueur') either clear in meaning, or characteristic of Villon in form. Is it not one of the penalties of extreme technical ability that the hand at times works, as it were, blindly, without the delicate vigilance or direction of the brain?

Of the poems contained in this new volume, the title-poem,A Channel Passage, is perhaps the finest. It is the record of a memory, fifty years old, and it is filled with a passionate ecstasy in the recollection of

Three glad hours, and it seemed not an hour of supreme and supernal joy,Filled full with delight that revives in remembrance a sea-bird's heart in a boy.

Three glad hours, and it seemed not an hour of supreme and supernal joy,

Filled full with delight that revives in remembrance a sea-bird's heart in a boy.

It may be that Swinburne has praised thesea more eloquently, or sung of it more melodiously, but not in the whole of his works is there a poem fuller of personal rapture in the communion of body and soul with the very soul of the sea in storm.The Lake of Gaubeis remarkable for an exultant and very definite and direct rendering of the sensation of a dive through deep water. There are other sea-poems in the two brief and concentrated poems in honour of Nelson; the most delicate of the poems of flowers inA Rosary; the most passionate and memorable of the political poems inRussia: an Ode; the Elizabethan prologues. These poems, so varied in subject and manner, are the work of many years; to those who love Swinburne most as a lyric poet they will come with special delight, for they represent, in almost absolute equality, almost every side of his dazzling and unique lyric genius.

The final volume of the greatest lyrical poet since Shelley contains three books, each published at an interval of ten years: theMidsummer Holidayof 1884, theAstrophelof 1894, and theChannel Passageof 1904. Choice among them is as difficultas it is unnecessary. They are alike in their ecstatic singing of the sea, of great poets and great men, of England and liberty, and of children. One contains the finest poems about the sea from on shore, another the finest poem about the sea from at sea, and the other the finest poem about the earth from the heart of the woods. Even in Swinburne's work the series of nine ballades in long lines which bears the name ofA Midsummer Holidaystands out as a masterpiece of its kind, and of a unique kind. A form of French verse, which up to then had been used, since the time when Villon used it as no man has used it before or since, and almost exclusively in iambic measures, is suddenly transported from the hothouse into the open air, is stretched and moulded beyond all known limits, and becomes, it may almost be said, a new lyric form. AfterA Midsummer Holidayno one can contend any longer that the ballade is a structure necessarily any more artificial than the sonnet. But then in the hands of Swinburne an acrostic would cease to be artificial.

In this last volume the technique whichis seen apparently perfected in thePoems and Balladsof 1866 has reached a point from which that relative perfection looks easy and almost accidental. Something is lost, no doubt, and much has changed. But to compare the metrical qualities ofDoloresor even ofThe Triumph of Timewith the metrical qualities ofOn the Vergeis almost like comparing the art of Thomas Moore with the art of Coleridge. In Swinburne's development as a poet the metrical development is significant of every change through which the poet has passed. Subtlety and nobility, the appeal of ever homelier and loftier things, are seen more and more clearly in his work, as the metrical qualities of it become purified and intensified, with always more of subtlety and distinction, an energy at last tamed to the needs and paces of every kind of beauty.

'Charles Lamb, as I need not remind you,' says Swinburne in his dedicatory epistle to the collected edition of his poems, 'wrote for antiquity: nor need you be assured thatwhen I write plays it is with a view to their being acted at the Globe, the Red Bull, or the Black Friars.' In another part of the same epistle, he says: 'My first if not my strongest ambition was to do something worth doing, and not utterly unworthy of a young countryman of Marlowe the teacher and Webster the pupil of Shakespeare, in the line of work which those three poets had left as a possibly unattainable example for ambitious Englishmen. And my first book, written while yet under academic or tutoral authority, bore evidence of that ambition in every line.' And indeed we need not turn four pages to come upon a mimicry of the style of Shakespeare so close as this:

We are so more than poor,The dear'st of all our spoil would profit youLess than mere losing; so most more than weakIt were but shame for one to smite us, whoCould but weep louder.

We are so more than poor,

The dear'st of all our spoil would profit you

Less than mere losing; so most more than weak

It were but shame for one to smite us, who

Could but weep louder.

A Shakespearean trick is copied in such lines as:

All other women's praiseMakes part of my blame, and things of least accountIn them are all my praises.

All other women's praise

Makes part of my blame, and things of least account

In them are all my praises.

And there is a jester who talks in a metrethat might have come straight out of Beaumont and Fletcher, as here:

I am considering of that apple still;It hangs in the mouth yet sorely; I would fain know tooWhy nettles are not good to eat raw. Come, children,Come, my sweet scraps; come, painted pieces; come.

I am considering of that apple still;

It hangs in the mouth yet sorely; I would fain know too

Why nettles are not good to eat raw. Come, children,

Come, my sweet scraps; come, painted pieces; come.

Touches of the early Browning come into this Elizabethan work, come and go there, as in these lines:

What are you made God's friend for but to haveHis hand over your head to keep it wellAnd warm the rainy weather through, when snowSpoils half the world's work?

What are you made God's friend for but to have

His hand over your head to keep it well

And warm the rainy weather through, when snow

Spoils half the world's work?

And does one not hear Beddoes in the grim line, spoken of the earth:

Naked as brown feet of unburied men?

An influence still more closely contemporary seems to be felt inFair Rosamond, the influence of that extraordinarily individual blank verse which William Morris had made his first and last experiment in, two years earlier, inSir Peter Harpdon's End.

So many influences, then, are seen at work on the form at least of these two plays, published at the age of twenty-three.Fair Rosamond, though it has beautiful lines here and there, and shows some anticipation of that luxurious heat and subtle rendering of physical sensation which was to be so evident in thePoems and Ballads, is altogether a less mature piece of work, less satisfactory in every way, than the longer and more regular drama ofThe Queen-Mother. Swinburne speaks of the two pieces without distinction, and finds all that there is in them of promise or of merit 'in the language and the style of such better passages as may perhaps be found in single and separable speeches of Catherine and of Rosamond.' But the difference between these speeches is very considerable. Those of Rosamond are wholly elegiac, lamentations and meditations recited, without or against occasion. In the best speeches of Catherine there is not only a more masculine splendour of language, a firmer cadence, there is also some indication of that 'power to grapple with the realities and subtleties of character and of motive' which Swinburne finds largely lacking in them. A newspaper critic, reviewing the book in 1861, said: 'We should have conceived it hardly possible to makethe crimes of Catherine de' Medici dull, however they were presented. Swinburne, however, has done so.' It seems to me, on the contrary, that the whole action, undramatic as it is in the strict sense of the theatre, is breathlessly interesting. The two great speeches of the play, the one beginning 'That God that made high things,' and the one beginning 'I would fain see rain,' are indeed more splendid in execution than significant as drama, but they have their dramatic significance, none the less. There is a Shakespearean echo, but is there not also a preparation of the finest Swinburnian harmonies, in such lines as these?

I should be mad,I talk as one filled through with wine; thou God,Whose thunder is confusion of the hills,And with wrath sown abolishes the fields,I pray thee if thy hand would ruin us,Make witness of it even this night that isThe last for many cradles, and the graveOf many reverend seats; even at this turn,This edge of season, this keen joint of time,Finish and spare not.

I should be mad,

I talk as one filled through with wine; thou God,

Whose thunder is confusion of the hills,

And with wrath sown abolishes the fields,

I pray thee if thy hand would ruin us,

Make witness of it even this night that is

The last for many cradles, and the grave

Of many reverend seats; even at this turn,

This edge of season, this keen joint of time,

Finish and spare not.

The verse is harder, tighter, more closely packed with figurative meaning than perhaps any of Swinburne's later verse. It is lessfluid, less 'exuberant and effusive' (to accept two epithets of his own in reference to the verse ofAtalanta in Calydon). He is ready to be harsh when harshness is required, abrupt for some sharp effect; he holds out against the enervating allurements of alliteration; he can stop when he has said the essential thing.

In the first book of most poets there is something which will be found in no other book; some virginity of youth, lost with the first intercourse with print. InThe Queen-MotherandRosamondSwinburne is certainly not yet himself, he has not yet settled down within his own limits. But what happy strayings beyond those limits! What foreign fruits and flowers, brought back from far countries! In these two plays there is no evidence, certainly, of a playwright; but there is no evidence that their writer could never become one. And there is evidence already of a poet of original genius and immense accomplishment, a poet with an incomparable gift of speech. That this technical quality, at least, the sound of these new harmonies in English verse, awakened no ears to attention, would bemore surprising if one did not remember that two years earlier the first and best of William Morris's books was saluted as 'a Manchester mystery, not a real vision,' and that two years later the best though not the first of George Meredith's books of verse,Modern Love, was noticed only to be hooted at. Rossetti waited, and was wise.

The plays of Swinburne, full as they are of splendid poetry, and even of splendid dramatic poetry, suffer from a lack of that 'continual slight novelty' which great drama, more than any other poetical form, requires. There is, in the writing, a monotony of excellence, which becomes an actual burden upon the reader. Here is a poet who touches nothing that he does not transform, who can, as inMary Stuart, fill scores of pages with talk of lawyers, conspirators, and statesmen, versifying history as closely as Shakespeare versified it, and leaving in the result less prose deposit than Shakespeare left. It is perhaps because in this play he has done a more difficult thing than in any other that the writer has come to prefer this to any other of his plays; as men in general prefer a triumph over difficulties to a triumph. Asimilar satisfaction, not in success but in the overcoming of difficulties, leads him to say of the modern play,The Sisters, that it is the only modern English play 'in which realism in the reproduction of natural dialogue and accuracy in the representation of natural intercourse between men and women of gentle birth and breeding have been found or made compatible with expression in genuine if simple blank verse.' This may be as true as that, in the astounding experiment ofLocrine, none of 'the life of human character or the life-likeness of dramatic dialogue has suffered from the bondage of rhyme or has been sacrificed to the exigences of metre.' But when all is said, when an unparalleled skill in language, versification, and everything that is verbal in form, has been admitted, and with unqualified admiration; when, in addition, one has admitted, with not less admiration, noble qualities of substance, superb qualities of poetic imagination, there still remains the question: is either substance or form consistently dramatic? and the further question: can work professedly dramatic which is not consistently dramatic in substance and form be acceptedas wholly satisfactory from any other point of view?

The trilogy on Mary Queen of Scots must remain the largest and most ambitious attempt which Swinburne has made. The first part,Chastelard, was published in 1865; the last,Mary Stuart, in 1881. And what Swinburne says in speaking of the intermediate play,Bothwell, may be said of them all: 'I will add that I took as much care and pains as though I had been writing or compiling a history of the period to do loyal justice to all the historic figures which came within the scope of my dramatic or poetic design.' OfBothwell, the longest of the three plays—indeed, the longest play in existence, Swinburne says: 'That ambitious, conscientious, and comprehensive piece of work is of course less properly definable as a tragedy than by the old Shakespearean term of a chronicle history.' Definition is not defence, and it has yet to be shown that the 'chronicle' form is in itself a legitimate or satisfactory dramatic form. Shakespeare's use of it proves only that he found his way through chronicle to drama, and to take his work in the chronicle play as a model ishardly more reasonable than to takeVenus and Adonisas a model for narrative poetry. But, further, there is no play of Shakespeare's, chronicle or other, which might not at least be conceived of, if not on the stage of our time, at least on that of his, or on that of any time when drama was allowed to live its own life according to its own nature. Can we conceive ofBothwelleven on the stage which has seenLes Burgraves? The Chinese theatre, which goes on from morning to night without a pause, might perhaps grapple with it; but no other. Nor would cutting be of any use, for what the stage-manager would cut away would be largely just such parts as are finest in the printed play.

There is, in most of Swinburne's plays, some scene or passage of vital dramatic quality, and inBothwellthere is one scene, the scene leading to the death of Darnley, which is among the great single scenes in drama. But there is not even any such scene in the whole of the lovely and luxurious song ofChastelardor in the severe and strenuous study ofMary Stuart. There are moments, in all, where speech is as simple,as explicit, as expressive as speech in verse can be; and no one will ever speak in verse more naturally than this:

Well, all is one to me: and for my partI thank God I shall die without regretOf anything that I have done alive.

Well, all is one to me: and for my part

I thank God I shall die without regret

Of anything that I have done alive.

These simple beginnings are apt indeed to lead to their end by ways as tortuous as this:

Indeed I have done all this if aught I have,And loved at all or loathed, save what mine eyeHath ever loathed or loved since first it sawThat face which taught it faith and made it firstThink scorn to turn and look on change, or seeHow hateful in my love's sight are their eyesThat give love's light to others.

Indeed I have done all this if aught I have,

And loved at all or loathed, save what mine eye

Hath ever loathed or loved since first it saw

That face which taught it faith and made it first

Think scorn to turn and look on change, or see

How hateful in my love's sight are their eyes

That give love's light to others.

But, even when speech is undiluted, and expresses with due fire or calmness the necessary feeling of the moment, it is nearly always mere speech, a talking about action or emotion, not itself action or emotion. And every scene, even the finest, is thought of as a scene of talk, not as visible action; the writer hears his people speak, but does not see their faces or where or how they stand or move. It is this power ofvisualisation that is the first requirement of the dramatist; by itself it can go no further than the ordering of dumb show; but all drama must begin with the ordering of dumb show, and should be playable without words.

It was once said by William Morris that Swinburne's poems did not make pictures. The criticism was just, but mattered little; because they make harmonies. No English poet has ever shown so great and various a mastery over harmony in speech, and it is this lyrical quality which has given him a place among the great lyrical poets of England. In drama the lyrical gift is essential to the making of great poetic drama, but to the dramatist it should be an addition rather than a substitute. Throughout all these plays it is first and last and all but everything. It is for this reason that a play likeLocrine, which is confessedly, by its very form, a sequence of lyrics, comes more nearly to being satisfactory as a whole than any of the more 'ambitious, conscientious, and comprehensive' plays.Marino Faliero, though an episode of history, comes into somewhat the samecategory, and repeats with nobler energy the song-like character ofChastelard. The action is brief and concentrated, tragic and heroic. Its 'magnificent monotony,' its 'fervent and inexhaustible declamation,' have a height and heat in them which turn the whole play into a poem rather than a play, but a poem comparable with the 'succession of dramatic scenes or pictures' which makes the vast lyric ofTristram of Lyonesse. To think of Byron's play on the same subject, to compare the actual scenes which can be paralleled in both plays, is to realise how much more can be done, in poetry and even in drama, by a great lyric poet with a passion for what is heroic in human nature and for what is ardent and unlimited in human speech, than by a poet who saw in Faliero only the politician, and in the opportunities of verse only the opportunity for thin and shrewish rhetoric pulled and lopped into an intermittent resemblance to metre.

The form ofLocrinehas something in common with the form ofAtalanta in Calydon, with a kind of sombre savagery in the subject which recurs only once, andless lyrically, inRosamund, Queen of the Lombards. It is written throughout in rhyme, and the dialogue twists and twines, without effort, through rhyme arrangements which change in every scene, beginning and ending with couplets, and passing through the sonnet, Petrarchan and Shakespearean, ottava rima, terza rima, the six-line stanza of crossed rhymes and couplet, the seven-line stanza used by Shakespeare in theRape of Lucrece, a nine-line stanza of two rhymes, and a scene composed of seven stanzas of chained octaves in which a third rhyme comes forward in the last line but one (after the manner of terza rima) and starts a new octave, which closes at the end in a stanza of two rhymes only, the last line but one turning back instead of forward, to lock the chain's circle. No other English poet who ever lived could have written dialogue under such conditions, and it is not less true than strange that these fetters act as no more than a beating of time to the feet that dance in them. The emotion is throughout at white heat; there is lyrical splendour even in the arguments: and a child's prattle, in nine-line stanzasof two rhymes apiece, goes as merrily as this:

That song is hardly even as wise as I—Nay, very foolishness it is. To dieIn March before its life were well on wing,Before its time and kindly season—whyShould spring be sad—before the swallows fly—Enough to dream of such a wintry thing?Such foolish words were more unmeet for springThan snow for summer when his heart is high:And why should words be foolish when they sing?

That song is hardly even as wise as I—

Nay, very foolishness it is. To die

In March before its life were well on wing,

Before its time and kindly season—why

Should spring be sad—before the swallows fly—

Enough to dream of such a wintry thing?

Such foolish words were more unmeet for spring

Than snow for summer when his heart is high:

And why should words be foolish when they sing?

Swinburne is a great master of blank verse; there is nothing that can be done with blank verse that he cannot do with it. Listen to these lines fromMary Stuart:

She shall be a world's wonder to all time,A deadly glory watched of marvelling menNot without praise, not without noble tears,And if without what she would never haveWho had it never, pity—yet from noneQuite without reverence and some kind of loveFor that which was so royal.

She shall be a world's wonder to all time,

A deadly glory watched of marvelling men

Not without praise, not without noble tears,

And if without what she would never have

Who had it never, pity—yet from none

Quite without reverence and some kind of love

For that which was so royal.

There is in them something of the cadence of Milton and something of the cadence of Shakespeare, and they are very Swinburne. Yet, after readingLocrine, and withAtalantaandErechtheusin memory, it is difficult not to wish that Swinburne hadwritten all his plays in rhyme, and that they had all been romantic plays and not histories.Locrinehas been acted, and might well be acted again. Its rhyme would sound on the stage with another splendour than the excellent and well-sounding rhymes into which Mr. Gilbert Murray has translated Euripides. And there would be none of that difficulty which seems to be insuperable on the modern stage: the chorus, which, whether it speaks, or chants, or sings, seems alike out of place and out of key.

The tragic anecdote which Swinburne has told inRosamund, Queen of the Lombards, is told with a directness and conciseness unusual in his dramatic or lyric work. The story, simple, barbarous, and cruel—a story of the year 573—acts itself out before us in large clear outlines, with surprisingly little of modern self-consciousness. The book is a small one, the speeches are short, and the words for the most part short too; every speech tells like an action in words; there is scarcely a single merely decorative passage from beginning to end. Here and there the lines become lyric, as in

Thou rose,Why did God give thee more than all thy kin,Whose pride is perfume only and colour, this?Music? No rose but mine sings, and the birdsHush all their hearts to hearken. Dost thou hear notHow heavy sounds her note now?

Thou rose,

Why did God give thee more than all thy kin,

Whose pride is perfume only and colour, this?

Music? No rose but mine sings, and the birds

Hush all their hearts to hearken. Dost thou hear not

How heavy sounds her note now?

But even here the lyrical touch marks a point of 'business.' And for the most part the speeches are as straightforward as prose; are indeed written with a deliberate aim at a sort of prose effect. For instance:

Almachildes.God must beDead. Such a thing as thou could never elseLive.Rosamund.That concerns not thee nor me. Be thouSure that my will and power to serve it live.Lift now thine eyes to look upon thy lord.

Almachildes.

God must beDead. Such a thing as thou could never elseLive.

God must be

Dead. Such a thing as thou could never else

Live.

Rosamund.

That concerns not thee nor me. Be thouSure that my will and power to serve it live.Lift now thine eyes to look upon thy lord.

That concerns not thee nor me. Be thou

Sure that my will and power to serve it live.

Lift now thine eyes to look upon thy lord.

Compare these lines with the lines which end the fourth act:

Almachildes.I cannot slay himThus.Rosamund.Canst thou slay thy bride by fire? He dies,Or she dies, bound against the stake. His deathWere the easier. Follow him: save her: strike but once.Almachildes.I cannot. God requite thee this! I will.[Exit.Rosamund.And I will see it. And, father, thou shalt see.[Exit.

Almachildes.

I cannot slay himThus.

I cannot slay him

Thus.

Rosamund.

Canst thou slay thy bride by fire? He dies,Or she dies, bound against the stake. His deathWere the easier. Follow him: save her: strike but once.

Canst thou slay thy bride by fire? He dies,

Or she dies, bound against the stake. His death

Were the easier. Follow him: save her: strike but once.

Almachildes.

I cannot. God requite thee this! I will.[Exit.

I cannot. God requite thee this! I will.

[Exit.

Rosamund.

And I will see it. And, father, thou shalt see.

[Exit.

In both these instances one sees the quality which is most conspicuous in this play—a naked strength, which is the same kind of strength that has always been present in Swinburne's plays, but hitherto draped elaborately, and often more than half concealed in the draperies. The outline of every play has been hard, sharp, firmly drawn; the characters always forthright and unwavering; there has always been a real precision in the main drift of the speeches; but this is the first time in which the outlines have been left to show themselves in all their sharpness. Development or experiment, whichever it may be, this resolute simplicity brings a new quality into Swinburne's work, and a quality full of dramatic possibilities. All the luxuriousness of his verse has gone, and the lines ring like sword clashing against sword. These savage and simple people of the sixth century do not turn over their thoughts beforeconcentrating them into words, and they do not speak except to tell their thoughts. Imagine what even Murray, inChastelard, a somewhat curt speaker, would have said in place of Almachildes's one line, a whole conflict of love, hate, honour, and shame in eight words:

I cannot. God requite thee this! I will.

Dramatic realism can go no further than such lines. The question remains whether dramatic realism is in itself an altogether desirable thing, and whether Swinburne in particular does not lose more than he gains by such self-restraint.

The poetic drama is in itself a compromise. That people should speak in verse is itself a violation of probability; and so strongly is this felt by most actors that they endeavour, in acting a play in verse, to make the verse sound as much like prose as possible. But, as it seems to me, the aim of the poetic drama is to create a new world in a new atmosphere, where the laws of human existence are no longer recognised. The aim of the poetic drama is beauty, not truth; and Shakespeare, to take the supreme example, is great, not because hemakes Othello probable as a jealous husband, or gives him exactly the words that a jealous husband might have used, but because he creates in him an image of more than human energy, and puts into his mouth words of a more splendid poetry than any one but Shakespeare himself could have found to say. Fetter the poetic drama to an imitation of actual speech, and you rob it of the convention which is its chief glory and best opportunity. A new colour may certainly be given to that convention, by which a certain directness, rather of Dante than of Shakespeare, may be employed for its novel kind of beauty, convention being still recognised as convention. No doubt that is really Swinburne's aim, and to have succeeded in it is to show that he can master every form, and do as he pleases with language. And there are passages in the play, like this one, which have a fervid colour of their own, fully characteristic of the writer who has put more Southern colouring into English verse than any other English poet:

This sun—no sun like ours—burns out my soul.I would, when June takes hold on us like fire,The wind could waft and whirl us northward: hereThe splendour and the sweetness of the worldEat out all joy of life or manhood. EarthIs here too hard on heaven—the Italian airToo bright to breathe, as fire, its next of kin,Too keen to handle. God, whoe'er God be,Keep us from withering as the lords of Rome—Slackening and sickening toward the imperious endThat wiped them out of empire! Yea, he shall.

This sun—no sun like ours—burns out my soul.

I would, when June takes hold on us like fire,

The wind could waft and whirl us northward: here

The splendour and the sweetness of the world

Eat out all joy of life or manhood. Earth

Is here too hard on heaven—the Italian air

Too bright to breathe, as fire, its next of kin,

Too keen to handle. God, whoe'er God be,

Keep us from withering as the lords of Rome—

Slackening and sickening toward the imperious end

That wiped them out of empire! Yea, he shall.

The atmosphere of the play is that of June at Verona, and the sun's heat seems to beat upon us all through its brief and fevered action. Swinburne's words never make pictures, but they are unparalleled in their power of conveying atmosphere. He sees with a certain generalised vision—it might almost be said that he sees musically; but no English poet has ever presented bodily sensation with such curious and subtle intensity. And just as he renders bodily sensation carried to the point of agony, so he is at his best when dealing, as here, with emotion tortured to the last limit of endurance. Albovine, the king, sets bare his heart, confessing:

The devil and God are crying in either earOne murderous word for ever, night and day,Dark day and deadly night and deadly day,Can she love thee who slewest her father? ILove her.

The devil and God are crying in either ear

One murderous word for ever, night and day,

Dark day and deadly night and deadly day,

Can she love thee who slewest her father? I

Love her.

Rosamund, his wife, meditating her monstrous revenge, confesses:

I am yet alive to question if I liveAnd wonder what may ever bid me die.. . . . There is noughtLeft in the range and record of the worldFor me that is not poisoned: even my heartIs all envenomed in me.

I am yet alive to question if I live

And wonder what may ever bid me die.

. . . . There is nought

Left in the range and record of the world

For me that is not poisoned: even my heart

Is all envenomed in me.

And she recognises that

No healing and no help for life on earthHath God or man found out save death and sleep.

No healing and no help for life on earth

Hath God or man found out save death and sleep.

The two young lovers, caught innocently in a net of intolerable shame, can but question and answer one another thus:

Hildegard.Hast thou forgiven me?Almachildes.I have not forgivenGod.

Hildegard.

Hast thou forgiven me?

Almachildes.

I have not forgivenGod.

I have not forgiven

God.

And at the end Narsetes, the old councillor, the only one of the persons of the drama who is not the actor or the sufferer of some subtle horror, sums up all that has happened in a reflection which casts the responsibility of things further off than to the edge of the world:

Let none make moan. This doom is none of man's.

As in the time of the great first volume ofPoems and Ballads, Swinburne is still drawn to

seeWhat fools God's anger makes of men.

see

What fools God's anger makes of men.

He has never been a philosophical thinker; but he has acquired the equivalent of a philosophy through his faithfulness to a single outlook upon human life and destiny. And in this brief and burning play, more than in much of his later writing, I find the reflection of that unique temperament, to which real things are so abstract, and abstract things so coloured and tangible; a temperament in which there is almost too much poetry for a poet—as pure gold, to be worked in, needs to be mingled with alloy.

There is, perhaps, no more terrible story in the later history of the world, no actual tragedy more made to the hand of the dramatist, than the story of the Borgias. In its entirety it would make anotherCenci, in the hands of another Shelley, and another Censor would prohibit the one as he prohibits the other. We are not permitted to deal with some form of evil on the stage. Yet what has Shelley said?

There must be nothing attempted to make the exhibition subservient to what is vulgarly termed a moral purpose. The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself.

A great drama on the story of the Borgias could certainly have much to teach the human heart in the knowledge of itself. It would be moral in its presentation of the most ignobly splendid vices that have swayed the world; of the pride and defiance which rise like a strangling serpent, coiling about the momentary weakness of good; of that pageant in which the pagan gods came back, drunk and debauched with their long exile under the earth, and the garden-god assumed the throne of the Holy of Holies. Alexander, Cæsar, Lucrezia, the threefold divinity, might be shown as a painter has shown one of them on the wall of one of his own chapels: a swinish portent in papal garments, kneeling, bloated, thinking of Lucrezia, with fingers folded over the purple of his rings. Or the family might have been shown as Rossetti, in one of the loveliest, most cruel, and most significant of his pictures, hasshown it: a light, laughing masquerade of innocence, the boy and girl dancing before the cushioned idol and her two worshippers.

Swinburne inThe Duke of Gandiahas not dealt with the whole matter of the story—only, in a single act of four scenes, with the heart or essence of it. The piece is not drama for the stage, nor intended to be seen or heard outside the pages of a book; but it is meant to be, and is, a great, brief, dramatic poem, a lyric almost, of hate, ambition, fear, desire, and the conquest of ironic evil. Swinburne has written nothing like it before. The manner of it is new, or anticipated only in the far less effectualRosamund, Queen of the Lombards; the style, speech, and cadence are tightened, restrained, full of sullen fierceness. Lucrezia, strangely, is no more than a pale image passing without consciousness through some hot feast-room; she is there, she is hidden under their speech, but we scarcely see her, and, like her historians, wonder if she was so evil, or only a scholar to whom learned men wrote letters, as if to a pattern of virtue. But in the father and son live a flame and a cloud, the flame rising steadily to beat back and consume the cloud.It is Cæsar Borgia who is the flame, and Alexander the Pope who fills the Vatican and the world with his contagious clouds. The father, up to this moment, has held all his vices well in hand; he has no rival; his sons and his daughter he has made, and they live about him for their own pleasure, and he watches them, and is content. Now one steps out, the circle is broken; there is no longer a younger son, a cardinal, but the Duke of Gandia, eldest son and on the highest step of the Pope's chair. It is, in this brief, almost speechless moment of action, as if the door of a furnace had suddenly been thrown open and then shut. One scene stands out, only surpassed by the terrible and magnificent scene leading up to the death of Darnley—a scene itself only surpassed, in its own pitiful and pitiless kind, by that death of Marlowe's king in the dungeons of Berkeley Castle, which, to all who can endure to read it, 'moves pity and terror,' as to Lamb, 'beyond any scene ancient or modern.' And only inBothwell, in the whole of Swinburne's drama, is there speech so adequate, so human, so full of fear and suspense. Take, for instance, theopening of the great final scene. The youngest son has had his elder brother drowned in the Tiber, and after seven days he appears calmly before his father.

Alex. Thou hast done this deed.Cæsar. Thou hast said it.Alex. Dost thou thinkTo live, and look upon me?Cæsar. Some while yet.Alex. I would there were a God—that he might hear.Cæsar. 'Tis pity there should be—for thy sake—none.Alex. Wilt thou slay me?Cæsar. Why?Alex. Am I not thy sire?Cæsar. And Christendom's to boot.Alex. I pray thee, man,Slay me.Cæsar. And then myself? Thou art crazed, but ISane.Alex. Art thou very flesh and blood?Cæsar. They say,Thine.Alex. If the heaven stand still and smite thee not,There is no God indeed.Cæsar. Nor thou nor IKnow.Alex. I could pray to God that God might be,Were I but mad. Thou sayest I am mad: thou liest:I do not pray.

Alex. Thou hast done this deed.

Cæsar. Thou hast said it.

Alex. Dost thou think

To live, and look upon me?

Cæsar. Some while yet.

Alex. I would there were a God—that he might hear.

Cæsar. 'Tis pity there should be—for thy sake—none.

Alex. Wilt thou slay me?

Cæsar. Why?

Alex. Am I not thy sire?

Cæsar. And Christendom's to boot.

Alex. I pray thee, man,

Slay me.

Cæsar. And then myself? Thou art crazed, but I

Sane.

Alex. Art thou very flesh and blood?

Cæsar. They say,

Thine.

Alex. If the heaven stand still and smite thee not,

There is no God indeed.

Cæsar. Nor thou nor I

Know.

Alex. I could pray to God that God might be,

Were I but mad. Thou sayest I am mad: thou liest:

I do not pray.

There, surely, is great dramatic speech, and the two men who speak face to face are seen clearly before us, naked to the sight. Yet even these lines do not make drama that would hold the stage. How is it that only one of our greater poets since the last of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and that one Shelley, has understood the complete art of the playwright, and achieved it? Byron, Coleridge, Browning, Tennyson, all wrote plays for the stage; all had their chance of being acted; Tennyson only made even a temporary success, andBecketis likely to have gone out with Irving. Landor wrote plays full of sublime poetry, but not meant for the stage; and now we have Swinburne following his example, but with an unexampled lyrical quality. Why, without capacity to deal with it, are our poets so insistent on using the only form for which a special faculty, outside the pure poetic gift, is inexorably required?

A poet so great as Swinburne, possessed by an ecstasy which turns into song as instinctively as the flawless inspiration of Mozart turned into divine melody, cannot be questioned. Mozart, without a specialgenius for dramatic music, wroteDie Zauberflöteto a bad libretto with as great a perfection as the music toDon Giovanni, which had a good one. The same inspiration was there, always apt to the occasion. Swinburne is ready to write in any known form of verse, with an equal facility and (this is the all-important point) the same inspiration. Loving the form of the drama, and capable of turning it to his uses, not of bending it to its own, he has filled play after play with music, noble feeling, brave eloquence. Here in this briefest and most actual of his plays—an act, an episode—he has concentrated much of this floating beauty, this overflowing imagination, into a few stern and adequate words, and made a new thing, as always, in his own image. It is the irony that has given its precise form to this representation of a twofold Satan, as Blake might have seen him in vision, parodying God with unbreakable pride. The conflict between father and son ends in a kind of unholy litany. 'And now,' cries Cæsar, fresh from murder,

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