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INTRODUCTION.
So much has been written on the life and works of
Swinburne that I shall certainly not try to do again
what has been done already, and done well. The best
study of the poet, in my opinion, is that by G. E.
Wood-berry (London, 1905). But neither the book of Theodore
Wratislaw nor the Swedish doctoral treatise of Svanberg is
wanting in merit.
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As, however, a treatment of the forms and means of
expression of a poet cannot be very well undertaken without
at least a survey of the ideas they express, I will here give
a short general appreciation of that part of the poet’s work
which is here to be investigated. I accept on the whole
the opinions held by Woodberry.
There is one quality of Swinburne’s that characterizes
the whole man and all his work, and that is his
enthusiasm. He was a spirit regenerated from that great time
of regeneration called the Renaissance; one of these
intensively personal spirits to whom every halfness is death.
And his enthusiasm has two sides: it is a capacity for
enraptured admiration and for unquenchable hatred. When
it is concentrated on a person or an idea, what forms this
admiration or this hatred will take! What proportions Victor
Hugo and Walter Savage Landor get when regarded through
the medium of Swinburne’s imagination and enthusiasm!
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