SOME REMARKS BY Mil. SWINBURNE.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 62, 10 September 1904, Page 11

SOME REMARKS BY Mil. SWINBURNE.

Tho first volume in the new edition of Mr. Swinburne's poems is out, and prefixed lo it is a "Dedicatory Epistle" to hiu friend, Mr Theodoro WattsDunton, in which the author delivered himself of some highly characteristic remarks.- The- most seriously interesting pas-sago in tho introduction is that which implies that "ho finds nothing that ha could wish to cancel, to alter, or to unsay iv any page he has ever laid before his readers ; but somehow wo rocogniso a moro thoroughly Swinburnian touch in the-w HUftve Tinea:— "Tho half-brained creature to whom books are other than living things, may wee with tho eyes of a bafc and draw with the. fingers of a mole his dullard's distinction between books and life ; those who live the fuller life of a higher animal than he, know thai books nro to poets as much part of that life ns pictures aro to painters or as musio is to musicians, dead matter though thoy may be to tho spiritually still-bom children of dirt and dulness, who find it passible and natural to live while dead in heart and brain." If anything could be funnier than this it would be the public confession of Mr. Arthur Wnugh, written to «how how hti bus been entranced by this dedicatory epistle. "To read it," ho says, "ia to enjoy tho sensation of listening to some miglitymouthed Druid of tho grove, speaking down ai sunset avenue of o;iks, to the accompaniment of distant harmouy, and of^a fragrant smouldering altar. And where, indeed, shall wo find prose more susceptible to tho melodies of phraso and langungc, more emotional, more wavelike, or more- haunting?" Where, indeed! "Spiritually still-born children of dirt and dulnewj 1" Mr. Waugh repeats the words with unction. "Could any nontonce be more magnificently fresh and young," he asks, "as of somo now knight errant of the pen, setting forth in tho spring mortr'ug along tho white highroad, in quest of adventuro and a name?" No ; we do nob believe any sentence could. — Now York Tribune.