Studies in Literature and History
his metrical variations and musical phrasing bring out and extend the
capacity and fertility of our language as a poetic instrument; he is
master of his materials. No doubt there is some repetition, some
iteration, which becomes slightly wearisome, of his favourite rhymes,
indicating, what has been observed independently of reference to this
particular writer, that the resources of the English language for
terminal assonance, under the stringent conditions required by the
modern rules of versification, are inevitably limited and show signs
of exhaustion.
In a Note on Poetry appended to his latest volume of verses,[35] Mr.
John Davidson has classed rhyme as a kind of disease of poetry. Rhyme,
he says, is probably more than seven hundred years old--in Europe, he
must mean, for it is far older in Asia, whence it originally came--and
since the days of the troubadours and Minnesingers it has corrupted,
in his opinion, the ear of the world. At best it is, he thinks, a
decadent mode, imposing shackles on free poetic expression; and
though in these fetters great poets have done magnificent work, in
their finest rhymed verse he finds a feeling of effort. They have
always been obliged to throw in something that need not have been
said, some words inserted under compulsion, to bring the rhyme about.
Mr. Davidson declares that the true glory of free untrammelled poetry
shines out in the rhythmic periods of blank verse. That there may be
some truth, or at least some convenience, in this theory of the poetic
art, the modern poet may not be concerned to deny; for, as we have
already said, rhymes will not withstand incessant and familiar usage;
they become commonplaces, and the rhymer wanders away from the natural
direction of his thought in search of fresh ones. The most devout
admirers of Browning must admit that his verse is often distorted in
this way--so that a fine stanza sometimes finishes with a jolt and
ends with a tag--and it must be allowed that this necessity of making
both ends meet is bad for the poetic conscience, a temptation to
indefensible laxities. Even Mr. Swinburne, the inventor of exquisite
harmonies, whose work is indisputably sincere, can be occasionally
observed to be diverging from the straight line of his impetuous
flight, hovering and making circuits that lead up skilfully to the
indispensable rhyme. More frequently, perhaps, there is a tendency to
interpose some metaphor, or rather far-fetched allusion, for the sake
of the clear, full, recurrent intonation of echoing words that can
only be marshalled into their places by artistic ingenuity.
We may so far agree with Mr. Davidson that most of the sublime
passages in English poetry are in blank verse, though it may be
noticed that the four lines which he quotes from _Macbeth_,[36] as
containing the 'topmost note in the stupendous agony of the drama,'
are rhymed. The management of rhyme is a difficult and very delicate
art; it is an instrument that requires a first-class performer, like
Mr. Swinburne, to bring out its potency; to this art the English
lyric, the ode and the song, owe their musical perfection. Mr.
Swinburne, in an essay upon Matthew Arnold's _New Poems_ (1867), has
said, truly, that 'rhyme is the native condition of lyric verse in
England'; and that 'to throw away the natural grace of rhyme from a
modern song is a wilful abdication of half the charm and half the
power of verse.' To this general rule he might possibly admit one
exception--Tennyson's short poem beginning with 'Tears, idle tears,'
which is so delicately modulated that the absence of rhyme is not
missed. At any rate it is certain that all popular verse needs this
terminal note; for a ballad in blank verse is inconceivable. On the
other hand, the proper use of rhyme demands a fine ear, which is a
rare gift; for our language has no formal rules of prosody, so that in
maladroit hands rhyme becomes an intolerable jingle. At the present
day, however, there is a tendency to run into excessive elaboration,
largely due to superficial imitation of such masters of the poetic art
as Tennyson, and especially Swinburne, so that we have a copious
outpouring of feeble melodies.
Mr. Swinburne, on the contrary, is never feeble; he combines technical
excellence with the power of vehement, often much too violent,
expression. His character may be defined by the French word 'entier';
he is uncompromising in praise or blame. He insists (to quote his own
words) that 'the worship of beauty, though beauty be itself
transformed and incarnate in shapes diverse without end, must be
simple and absolute'; nor will he tolerate reserve or veiled
intimations of a poet's inmost thought.
'Nothing,' he has written, 'in verse or out of verse is more
wearisome than the delivery of reluctant doubt, of half-hearted
hope and half-incredulous faith. A man who suffers from the strong
desire either to believe or disbelieve something he cannot, may be
worthy of sympathy, is certainly worthy of pity, until he begins to
speak; and if he tries to speak in verse, he misses the implement
of an artist.'
He is pained by Matthew Arnold's 'occasional habit of harking back and
loitering in mind among the sepulchres.... Nothing which leaves us
depressed is a true work of art.' Yet, it may be answered, the habit
of musing among tombs has inspired good poetry; and when doubt and
dejection, perplexed meditation over insoluble problems, are in the
air, a poet does well to express the dominant feelings of his time;
and a modern Hamlet is no inartistic figure.
In this respect, however, Mr. Swinburne may have found reason to
qualify, latterly, the absoluteness of his poetic principles. He has
been from the first a generous critic of those contemporary poets whom
he recognised as kindred souls. He awards unmeasured praise to Matthew
Arnold, while of his defects and shortcomings he speaks plainly. He
does loyal homage to Browning in a sequence of sonnets, and his
tribute to Tennyson was paid in a lofty 'Threnody,' when that noble
spirit passed away. For Victor Hugo he proclaimed, as all know,
nothing short of unbounded adoration--he is 'the greatest writer whom
the world has seen since Shakespeare'; though it may be doubted
whether in his own country Hugo now stands upon so supreme a pinnacle.
To other eminent men of his time his poetry accords admiration,
chiefly to the champions of free thought and of resistance to
oppression; and, in a poem entitled 'Two Leaders,' he salutes two
antagonists as he might do before crossing swords with them. The
leaders are not named; the first is evidently Newman:
'O great and wise, clear-souled and high of heart,
One the last flower of Catholic love, that grows
Amid bare thorn their only thornless rose,
From the fierce juggling of the priest's loud mart
Yet alien, yet unspotted and apart
From the blind hard foul rout whose shameless shows
Mock the sweet heaven whose secret no man knows
With prayers and curses and the soothsayers' art.'
The second is
'Like a storm-god of the northern foams
Strong, wrought of rock that breasts and breaks the sea,'
in whom we recognise Carlyle. They are the powers of darkness, doomed
to fall and to vanish before the light; yet their genius commands
respect and even sympathy.
'With all our hearts we praise you whom ye hate,
High souls that hate us; for our hopes are higher,
* * * * *
Honour not hate we give you, love not fear,
Last prophets of past kind, who fill the dome
Of great dead Gods with wrath and wail, nor hear
Time's word and man's: "Go honoured hence, go home,
Night's childless children; here your hour is done;
Pass with the stars, and leave us with the sun."'
The concise energy of these lines, their slow metrical movement,
invest them with singular weight and dignity. The poet is confronting
two representatives, in principle, of Force and Authority, whose
prototypes in bygone times would undoubtedly have sent him to the
scaffold or to the stake; nor is it improbable that both Carlyle and
Newman, though in all other opinions they differed widely, would have
agreed that a revolutionary firebrand and a pestilent infidel
deserved some such fate. The poet might console himself with the
reflection that they must have abhorred each other's principles quite
as much as they detested his own.
In his later verse Mr. Swinburne still continues to wield his flaming
sword against priests and despots, against intellectual and political
servility. What may be termed the historical plea, the excuse for
ideas and institutions that they are the relics of evil days long
past, is no palliation for them to his mind; he would stamp them out
and utterly destroy them. In this respect his temperament has
unconsciously a strong tincture of the intolerance which he denounces;
he would sweep away Christianity as Christianity swept away
polytheism. Toward its Founder, as the type of human love and purity,
he is uniformly reverential; there is nothing in that supreme figure
that jars with that Religion of Humanity, which 'The Altar of
Righteousness' proclaims with high dithyrambic enthusiasm:
'Christ the man lives yet, remembered of man as dreams that leave
Light on eyes that wake and know not if memory bids them grieve.
* * * * *
Far above all wars and gospels, all ebb and flow of time,
Lives the soul that speaks in silence, and makes mute the earth
sublime.'
But of theology reigning by force and terror he is the implacable
enemy; and his intemperate violence leaves a stain on the bright
radiance of his poetry. It amounts to an artistic fault, undiminished
even in the later years which should have brought the philosophic
mind. Moreover, it has materially lessened the influence which so fine
a poetic genius should have exercised over the present generation,
among whom polemical ardour and bitterness may be thought to have
perceptibly cooled down, and to have become much less aggressive, in
science, philosophy, and literature, than among the preceding
generation. An age of tacit indifference, content with rationalistic
explanations, with the slow working of disillusion, dislikes and
discountenances outrageous scorn poured upon things that are
traditionally sacred; and to the English character extremes are always
distressing.
Mr. Swinburne's dramatic work, at any rate, takes us out of the strife
and turmoil of theologic war; we are on firm historic ground, dealing
with authentic events and persons. The plays of _Chastelard_,
_Bothwell_, and _Mary Stuart_ form a trilogy in which the most
romantic and eventful period of Scottish history is presented; they
constitute the epic-drama of Scotland, to adopt a definition applied
by Victor Hugo to the tragedy of _Bothwell_. It is impossible, in this
article, to find space for an adequate criticism of these remarkable
productions. Every leading poet of the nineteenth century has made
excursions into the dramatic field. We doubt whether any of them has
come out of the adventure much better than Mr. Swinburne. All of them
have given us, each in his own way, fine poetry, and, if we except
Byron, they have shown that the masters of lyrical music can strike
with power the high chords of blank verse. None of them have produced
plays that took any hold of a theatrical audience; in most cases they
were not intended for the stage.
The play of _Chastelard_ is too deeply saturated with amorous essences
throughout to be forcibly dramatic. The hero is in a high love-fever
from first to last, the passionate strain becomes monotonous, and
though he dies to save the Queen's honour, our minds are not purged