"Let us for a moment stoop to the arbitration of popular breath.
Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a
flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a madman.
Observe in what a ludicrous chaos the imputations of real or ficti-
tious crime have been confused in the contemporary calumnies
against poetry and poets."-SHELLEY.

LONDON:

/KONINKLIJKE
BIBLIOTHEEK

JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY.

1866.

[All rights reserved.]

LONDON:

R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,

BREAD STREET HILL.

PREFATORY NOTE.

66

THIS criticism was written, on my own spontaneous offer, with a view to its publication in the "North American Review," the leading Quarterly of the United States. Before I had completed it, I discovered that that Review had already committed itself, in a notice of Mr. Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon" and Chastelard," to a view of his poetic powers with which mine is considerably at variance. I therefore deemed it hardly desirable to obtrude upon the deservedly respected Editors a criticism which they might feel embarrassed in inserting, and pained in rejecting; and, as I found about the same time that Mr. Swinburne's present publisher would willingly take my MS., I have adopted this mode of publication. I have preferred, however, to leave the form of the critique strictly unaltered, which will explain an occasional peculiarity, as it might otherwise seem, in the shape in which matters are put.

The reader will find in one place a reference to the writings of a member of my own family. I advisedly keep this exactly as it stood, being better pleased that it should be published with my name to it than (as would have been done according to the original scheme) anonymously. I should not have shirked to have the anonymous tribute traced home to me; and am still less loth to avow that tributesaying in it, as I have done, nothing beyond what I know or believe to be true. The last man who need love the anonymous system is a self-respecting critic acquainted with many of the persons concerning whom it is his lot to write.

I may be asked: "But Mr. Swinburne himself—is not he too your friend?" I gladly acknowledge that he is; and affirm that there is nothing, in the tone or the details of my criticism, to indicate, in any way which damages or taints its soundness, the fact of our friendship. The opinions expressed may be correct or incorrect: they are at any rate sincerely and impartially mine.

18th October, 1866.

W. M. ROSSETTI.

SWINBURNE'S POEMS AND BALLADS.

A CRITICISM.

THE advent of a new great poet is sure to cause a commotion of one kind or another; and it would be hard were this otherwise in times like ours, when the advent of even so poor and pretentious a poetaster as a Robert Buchanan stirs storms in teapots. It is therefore no wonder that Mr. Swinburne should have been enthusiastically admired and keenly discussed as soon as he hove well in sight of the poetry-reading public, for he is not only a true but even a great poet; still less wonder, under all the particular circumstances of the case, that, with his last volume, admiration and discussion should have ended in a grand crash of the critical orchestra, and that all voices save those of denunciation and repudiation should have been well-nigh