Algernon Charles Swinburne

Our narrative of the events in Algernon Charles Swinburne's life has been for long interrupted because of the need to consider the poetry of his middle years, the Arthurian narratives, the tragedies, and the critical essays. But when due account has been taken of his work in other departments of literature it becomes the more apparent that it is by his achievement as a lyric poet that he must be judged; and it is appropriate therefore to devote this paper to the lyrical, meditative, elegiac, satiric and political poetry of the long last period of his life. But first it is necessary to resume the few external events of these thirty years and to take some account of the conditions in which he lived.

The loneliness, ill health and hard drinking of the middle years brought the poet to a desperate pass in 1879. In June of that year his mother made a last despairing effort to save him from himself, but, no sooner had he left home and returned to his London chambers than he began a drinking bout which by September had reduced him to a state not far from death's door. Lady Jane Swinburne then appealed by telegraph to Watts-Dunton; and that faithful solicitor hurried to Algernon Charles Swinburne and by force and persuasion bundled him into a cab and drove him out to Putney. There he was Watts-Dunton's guest, and a guest he remained for thirty years. He was put upon a strict regimen whose results were manifested in the sudden renewal of poetic and critical work in the following year. Stories are told of how Watts-Dunton gradually, tactfully and firmly weaned him from the brandy bottle and through the intermediate stages of port and sherry brought him to the ration of one bottle of ale each day. These tales may be apocryphal, but as allegories of Watts-Dunton's influence they are sufficiently near the truth.

In "March: an Ode" Algernon Charles Swinburne puts the question in springtime: What has become of the raging winds which a month ago roared around us? Where has gone that energy? In the answer there is a hope of the survival somewhere in the universe of the influence of all great vanished power. The idea is Arnoldian; and in "Neap-tide", too, we are again reminded of Arnold; but while Arnold, in "Dover Beach", sees in the ocean's "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" a symbol of the receding tide of faith, Swinburne accepts joyfully the lowest high tide of the month, confident that high water will return. Often a nature poem is but the decorative surface of a thought connected with literature or history.

The earth may be "a wide sweet smile"; the great wind may "grapple" with the sea; March laugh gladly; "the flower-soft feet of refluent seasons" glide beside the mill stream - but never in all Algernon Charles Swinburne's poetry have we one picture so concrete, definite, intimate, so firmly attached to earth as, for example, the opening lines of "Tintern Abbey." Yet during the earlier years at Putney he wrote many poems descriptive of nature. For this misdirection of talent Watts-Dunton was doubtless responsible; but the question must in fairness to him be asked: How else would Algernon Charles Swinburne have occupied himself? There was no need "to endow his purposes with words", but there was a real need to endow his words with purposes. The quest of a subject bore hard upon him, as it had done upon Tennyson in old age; and Watts-Dunton spread before him an illimitable range of poetic themes.

Not all these elegies are prompted by such genuine emotion, for in later years Algernon Charles Swinburne came to feel it almost a duty to celebrate in fitting terms the achievement of this or that person illustrious and lately dead. More often than not it is a man of letters who is thus honored, a fact which leads us from these "occasional" pieces to poems on subjects from literature among which we may read, or attempt to read, those in honor of Sir Philip Sidney ("Astrophel"), of Marlowe ("Inscriptions for the Four Sides of a Pedestal"), of Dante ("The Festival of Beatrice"), of Bruno, of Burns, and of others among the great departed.