THE BOOKSHELF.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 16, 21 April 1909, Page 48

THE BOOKSHELF.

Reminiscences of Swinburne. IN the year 1886 the literary world of London was in a ferment of excitement over a new book by a young poet, whose name had twen all but unknown till the year Before. The English public—-even "the literary public”—is not wont to grow excited over the appearance of a volume of verse; indeed, to awaken its real interest, there must in a general way be almost as much mediocrity as talent; and had not the immediate but more dubious success of “Poems and Ballads” been in some measure owing to the why in which the book was assailed, the ordinary reader would have paid little heed to the critical polemics as to whether “this young fellow Swinburne” ■was worthy of the laurel or of severe condemnation. A year earlier, all who kept scrupulous watch on the central tendency of literature recognised that a new voice had joined the elder music—that, in truth, a rival to Tennyson and Browning had appeared. For in 186.5 “Atalanta in Calvdon” had come like a comet from the literary horizon (already “t'hastelard” had been written, though not published till early in 1866). “Atalanta in Calvdon” was not a book to appeal to a wide circle of readers, but by the few who cared for literature as literature it was hailed as one of the most remarkable productions of the Victorian age, and the more remarkable as the work of a writer still well within his “twenties.” True, in 1860 he had published in small volume two short dramas, “The Queen Mother” and “Rosamund,” but the slim book had been ignored by all save the young poet’s

own circle of friends and the very few to whom some rumour of the exceptional promise of Algernon Swinburne had reached. Now and again, in the early sixties, a poem appeared above his signature, ami even the conventional “Spectator” painted verse so unconventional as “Faustina.” In 1864 a short tale of the ultra-romantie kind appeared in “Once a Week,” with a fine drawing by Lawless; but “Dead Love” was too much in the genre of Rossetti’s “Hand and Soul,” or William Morris' short Arthurian romances, to attract special attention. There had been nothing like “Atalanta in Calydon” in English literature. The effect of its publication was as though a new gate had been opened in a vast garden, with vistas of novel and entrancing beauty. Here the English language was used with new force and flexibility-, with a subtlety beyond the achievement of Shelley himself save on rare occasion, and equalled only byColeridge in his greatest work. Of the author little was known. . Even when in the following year “Ch as tela rd” and “Poems and Ballads” were published, and all the English literary world from London to Edinburgh was talking about the new poet, few- people kneV" anything about his personality, whether he was young or (as some of the reviewers of “Atalanta” averred) of mature years, whether a Londoner or a country-man, a Scot or what we should now- call an outlander —the last of these suppositions having some colour from the fact that in his poetry there was an element alien to the English genius or the English tradition—emotions, views and sentiments further revealed in " Songs

before Sunrise,” where his republican sympathies and his worship of Mazzini, Aurelio Safli and Victor Hug > were given startling expression. From a chronicler’s point of view-, there is little to be said about Mr. Swinburne’s private life. Outwardly it was an uneventful one: a happy boyhood and youth, in favourable and often exceptionally pleasant circumstances; a few visits to Italy and France; early fame, happily Without the penalty so often coheurrent

with a great reputation won in first manhood; a few years in London as one of the most brilliant figures in a brilliant circle of genius; and then a weariness of London, and of most things save poetry and the sea, and a withdrawal to the comparative isolation of a house near Wimbledon Common where (with brief intervals on’ the South coast or in the Channel Isles, for Mr. Swinburne long retained his old passion for swimming, and could not long be away from the sea, which he had so loved since boyhood, and so continuously paid homage to in song) he lived for the last quarter of a century with the companionship of his closest friend, the Theodore Watts of old days, the Watts-Dunton of to-day. To a friend of Mr. Swinburne’s of long standing, the late Mr. William Bell Scott, we are indebted for one or two vivid pages concerning the poet’s early years. Though born in London, Mr. Swinburne is in no other sense a Londoner, for it was owing to the accident of a temporary residence of Admiral Swinburne and his wife in the Metropolis that the poet was not born either in the Isle of Wight or in Northumberland. His mother, LadyJane Henrietta Ashburnham, daughter of the third Earl of Ashburnham, bad married Captain Charles Henry- Swinburne, the second son of Sir John Edward Swinburne, of Capheat on in Northumberland— a- representative of one of the oldest families in the North of England. The original feudal family of “ Swinburne of Swinburne Castle” ended apparently with one Adam de Swinburne, in the time of Edward IL, but the younger or Capheaton branch brought the family name into prominence again during the reign of Henry.HL, in the person of Sir William de Swinburne, from whom the poet is descended. The present head of the family is his cousin, Sir John Swinburne; and it was at the family seat in Northumberland, or at his father's beautiful home near Bonchurch in the Isle of Wight that Mr. Swinburne spent his early boyhood. For many months at the time Mr. Scott first knew the boy who was afterwards to become so famous, the latter Was at Oxford; and it was as he rode to and fro that Mr. Scott came to notice the brighteyed. yellow-haired boy riding fast, with a hurrying look on his face and his ruddy locks in the wind. One day- Mr. Scott

was in the drawingroom at Wallington when the lad entered, in a great state of excitement, carrying in his hand an Eton school prize, an illustrated volume of Victor Hugo’s "Notre Dame de Paris.” Mr. Scott no doubt speculated too far when he added in effect that here we have the source of all Mr. Swinburne’s “Gallomania,” and of the whole later “ Francophil school.” He gives us another picture of th? youthful poet a year or two later, when the Scotts were settled in

Newcastle. Mr. Scott would come homo he says, and find young Swinburne lying on the floor before the fire, surrounded by books; many of which he had read through with astonishing rapidity, and glanced at others, with a memory so tenacious that months or even' years afterwards he eould recall not merely the! substance, but even special arguments and particular passages, and the method and manner of their exposition. But the most memorable picture he has given us is of a winter’s day- on the -then wild and desolate Tyneside coast, where be and Mrs. Scott, at the last moment unexpectedly joined by young Swinburne, then oa vacation from Oxford (or perhaps a year or so later), had gone for a holiday. They walked along the wind-swept sands, and by the grey stormy seas, while in his peculiar chanting voice the young poeS recited “ Laus Veneris ” and the “Hymrt to Proserpine ” —never to be forgotten as recited in his strange intonation, which truly represented the white heat of the enthusiasm that had produced them, and “ to the music of the breaking waves running the whole length of the long level sands towards Cullercoats, and sounding like far-off acclamations.” On several occasions Mr. Seott spoke to me of his early- impressions of Mr. Swinburne, and all he said confirmed what earlier or later I had heard from Rossetti, Burne-Jones and others, who knew him at the dawn of his career. None bore out the early (and as it proved rash) judgment of the famous Master of Balliol—“A brilliant youth: too brilliant a youth: it’s all youth.” I recollect Rossetti' saying that even before the publication of “Atalanta ” he had no doubt that “A. C. S. would outstrip the lot of us”; and a year or so before his death, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, when speaking of his early Oxford days with Morris and others, told me that no one could possibly be with Swinburne at that time, as later, and not instantly realist that he was a man of genius. “ There was something in his appearance,” he added, “which vividly enhanced his look. His sensitive face, his eager eyes, his peculiar nervous excitability, the flame-like beauty of his wavy- mass of hair, his swift speech and extraordinary swiftness of thought and apprehension, and a certain delightful inconsequence of all his own.

made him quite the most remarkable, certainly the most poetic personality I have ever known.” This portrait could be confirmed by Mr. Holman Hunt, Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., Mr. George Meredith, and Others still living who eould remember the poet in his. early London days, both before the appearance of his first high

achievement and after “Atalanta in Calyxion,” “ Chastelard,” and “ Poems and Ballads ” had made their author’s name a signal for discussion throughout the whole literary world, and given him in less than "two years, and while still in his “ twenties,” one of the highest and most assured places in Victorian literaWILLIAM SHARP. T'rancis Marion Crawford. The death of Francis Marion Crawford, at the comparatively early age of 65, will leave a blank in the literary world which the better class of readers Will find hard to fill. The son of an American sculptor, he Was born in Italy in 1854. He was educated partly in America and partly in England; firstly, by a private tutor, Who prepared him for Cambridge, where, at Trinity, he afterwards graduated. From 1874-6 he studied at Karlsruhe. In 1878 he passed at the University of Home, studying Sanscrit. In 1879 he became editor of the “Indian Herald,"’ published at Allahabad. Returning to America in 1881. he remained there two years, after which he went to Italy, where, with the exception of a visit to Turkey, he has since resided, his home being at Sorrento, Mr. Crawford was best known as a writer of novels, though work of a more serious nature is down to his credit in the realms of philosophy and philology, sciences which have helped him largely in the understanding not only of the English, but • of the Latin - speaking races. Italy, bo beloved by Marion Crawford, is principally the seene of the many superb romances that have emanated from his virile and faeile pen. There has been t and there is no other living writer that lias so consistently demonstrated the high ideals women can aspire to and

reach. And, indeed, all his characters are cast in heroie mould. Few are the readers that could read one of Marion Crawford’s stirring romances without feeling his heart new braeed to re enter upon life's struggle. Not that Marion Crawford did not depict sin and struggle, a s w'J) as high

romance, for he was a past master in the art of depicting the most naked, the most deadly, the most subtle, the most refined, the most spineless, and the most strenuous, forms of sin and temptation. But never sin wholly triumphant, or struggle rainless. Though we agree that some of Mr. Crawford’s later works show evidence of a higher and a more powerful mentality, while still retaining the culture, refinement and close human grip of his earlier works, we, out of the thirtynine books which we can reckon to his credit,- confess that our thoughts linger most pleasurably round that charming trilogy of novels that deal with Qie

history of the Saraeinesca, “A Cigarettemaker’s Romance,” and a book, not so well known as others of his, entitled “With the Immortals.” This last mentioned story, or properly speaking, fantasy, tells how its principal character stored a sufficient supply of electricity to create an artificial atmosphere, and then proceeded to conjure up spirits from the nether world, and also records the conversation that ensued. So long ago is it since we read this weird fantasy that we can only quote Queen Elizabeth in particular as one of the spirits raised. But we do remember that the spirit who engaged her in conversation would be as little to her taste as would be the spirit of Toni Paine to John Bunyan, if they wore conjured up to confer together on the writing of a new “Pilgrim’s ProMore than one, we think (we are writing without data other than the information afforded by cablegram) of Mr. Crawford’s books have been dramatised, notably. “A Cigarette-maker’s Romance” Mr. Crawford adapted “Paolo and Francesca’’ for Sarah Bernhardt. Singularly enough, both Mr. t rawford’s and Mr. Stephen Phillips’ adaptations of this giim, terrible tragedy were being presented at the same time in Paris and London. It is impossible in the limits of a review to do more than briefly record our appreciation of this writer who in’our thoughts, lias always stood in the relation of a charming, yet wise, intimate friend, whom we shall always cherish in our heart of hearts. From hint no secret of the mind and human heart was hidden because he possessed the key to all that was human in the human heart and mind. And whatever there was of passion, grossness, or ill-doing in anything he ever penned, it was nullified by the pure aim that ever animated him I’rancis Marion Crawford, iq spite of his knowledge as a man of the world, in the cosmopolitan sense, remained ever mire at heart - DELTA. ' John Suckling’s Tercentenary. An interesting literary event of this month is the Tercentenary of Sir John buckling, who was horn early in February, 1609. Handsome, wittv' profligate Soldier, courtier and poet, Sir John fought under Gustavus Adolphus through some months of the Thirty Lears’ War, and was afterwards one of the most brilliant figures at the Court ot Charles I. A gentleman of fortune, he raised a troop of horse in the King’s service but being involved in a conspiracy to rescue Stafford from the Tower, he fled o Paris, and there, exiled and hampered Ly poverty ended his life,, with poison at the age of thirty-four. Suckling is one of the gayest and most daintily fanciful of that glorious company of Jacobean lyrbsts that includes Lovelace, and Herrick. Except for an occasional exquisite line, his lines are very dead reading, and of his small sheaf cf poems probably the niost popular is the ballad “Upon a Wedding,” with its familiar, careless opening, “I tell thee, Dick, where I have been.” and its haunting, much-quoted verses describing the bride: Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice stole in and out, As if she feared the light; But oh, she dances such a way! No sun upon an Easter day Is half so line a sight. . . Her lips was red, and one was thin. Compared with that was next her chin (Some bee had stung it newly) ; But, Dick, her eyes >o guard her face, I durst no more upon them gaze Than on’ the sun in July. This, indeed, and >omc three or four easy, airy, witty ‘The Constant I.over,” for one; ‘Th l Remonstrance” U’Why-so pah* ami wan, fond lover?”) lor another—make up Ids entire pas-port to immortality. It has brought him safely down to u- through the dust and changes of three hundred years, and keep- him still in the enjoyment of what someone (wa-n't it Ben Johnson 9 ) bus ealled “Great glory, Hit not broad.” —From the February “Bookman.” A 250 Gnhiea 'Winner. Miss A. G. Jacomb, the winner of the two Hundred ami fifty guinea prize in Mr Melrose’s First Novel Competition,

u a Londoner by birth, and untC recently had lived all her life Lb Siu. studied art under Professor Frv*4 •Brown at South Kensington, has done some journalism, and written a few ebort stories, but no complete novel until the wrote “The Faith of His Father-.*’ REVIEWS Tono-Bungay': Ji. G. Wells. London: Mai inilluii and Co.. St. Martin’sstreet.) Hitherto we have only la'en a lukewarm admirer of Air. IL G. Wells’ work, not hiving leanings towards the p-uedo--cienliliu. or the fantastic in fiction. Bui our admiration for Mr. Wells has overflowed in the perusal of this, excel dingly cleverly wiitten romance which: would seem to be a rechauffe of the material that has been left over in th© making of the -many masterly books Mr. Wells has down to his credit. To begin with, the title “fetched” us, and though the book reached us at a very much occupied moment, we could not resist opening it to discover the whereabouts of Tono Bungay. a designation so foreign to ns as to make us decide that it was purely fictitious. Then through our mind Hashed thoughts of a new Socialistic settlement, a new Eldorado, a new explosive, a new cult, or a new beverage, ami then, having exhausted our powers of guessing, we read on, ami discovered that TonoBungay was the name of a patent medicine, concocted and placed on the world’ll market by “Edward Ponderevo,” the book's chief character, whose methods of doing business were, as Mr. Wells says, truly Napoleonic, both in initiative and disastrous ending. Mr. Wells would seem to have exhausted every emotion and every experience under the sun in his depiction <»! the various characters that crowd the history of TonoBungay. and ho seems equally at home in the depiction of the most private, the most public, the most simple, the most subtle, the most commonplace, the most adventurous, the most luxurious, and the most squalid phases of existence, that present themselves io the notice of man. Never was sudden rise and inevitable fall more voraciously and graphically told than in the case of Edward Ponderevo, the promoter of the various companies, which, while raking in annually hundreds of thousands of .pounds from the credulous British public, had no assets beyond those purely personal, or the furniture of the palatial offices from which the sensational, lying advertisements which are such an important factor in the selling of the useless, and often hurtful commodities are issued. But for the fact that the buyers of these patent frauds are seldom readers of books of the Wells stamp, we could imagine that Tono-Bungay would deal a great blow to the vendors of patent medicines. These are pictures drawn from the upper classes, the middle classes, and the lower classes, which stand out as vitally distinct and clear, as though tho scenes depicted were taking place before the reader's eyes. And we quite agree with Mr. Wells where he declares that England is devoted body and soul to speculative commerce and to the amassing of colossal fortune-, (often, as in the case of Tono-Bungay, dishonestly obtained). which are in turn frittered away on “(rest Hills.” extravagant display, and on useless invention, while thousands of tin* victims from whom these fortunes have been filched are being daily impoverished or ruined. With every wish in the world *to prove Mr. Wells a romancist or a pessimist on the subject of England's degeneracy, it is impossible not to believe that Mr. Wells is in earnest in his wish to help to cleanse the Augean stables of English society and commerce. Everybody should read “Tono Bungay.” Two shillings and sixpence is the pride of the colonial edition, and readers may rely upon the book as a sound investment, a- it contains something of interest for everybody. Our copy lias reached irs through the courtesy of M win ilia n ami Co.