Keats, who understood the beauty of words and died too soon to care for the heart of man; in Rossetti, in Elizabeth Barret Browning, whose work is so touching, so ineffectual, but who has the greater glory in that her one profound and finished work was Robert Browning; in Browning himself, who sings only when he thinks of her he loved, of whose work we may say very truly in his own words "how sad and mad and bad it was, but then how it was sweet". And if in Tennyson and Matthew Arnold we seem to discern a stricter ideal, a more classic touch, we have but to read "Fatima" or "The Lotus Eaters," or " Vastness or "Rizpah" or "The Forsaken Merman" to understand that they, too, are Romantics with perhaps a stricter ear, a nicer sense of rhythm, a more precise order of words. There remains to us one splendid and immortal singer of all that great company of poets which from the times of Chaucer and Wy yatt and Surrey have continually laid their treasure of indestructible verse upon the brows of England renewing the garlands of old time--Algernon Charles Swinburne. A figure beautiful and a little tragic, we may think, since he is left alone, nor has our little day seen fit to do him honour who has given us immortality. Amid the splendour of his music we, who being but young have not lost our reverence for the beautiful and great, hope in our hearts he does not heed the indifference of those to whom he knows Shakespeare is a superstition, Milton a name. E. H. The Editor wishes to express his thanks to Col. T. Methuen Ward for much valuable help freely given to him during the preparation of this little book and to Messrs. Macmillan & Co. for permission to reprint several poems. |