'envies me me my gift that way.' After this approval, I will not submit myself to the birch on that account.'

We have seen that he had been taken in 1858 to dine with Tennyson, who then wrote of him as "a very modest and intelligent young fellow" and now the Laureate, having read Atalanta, remarked, "It is many a long day since I have read anything so so fine.' In December 1865, when the manuscript of Poems and Ballads was being put together, Tennyson came up to London on one of his rare visits, and Palgrave asked Houghton to bring Swinburne to see his illustrious guest. But the visit was not wholly a success; after a few words of civility had passed between the poets, they found nothing more to say to one another. Swinburne withdrew, with G. H. Lewes, to another room, and monologuized in rather falsetto tones about Blake and Flaxman. He was unduly excited, and, in short, he behaved in a way which greatly incensed Houghton, who, while taking him back to his lodgings, administered to him "an avalanche of advice" as to how to behave in presence of his elders and betters, advice which was very angrily resented and led to a temporary cooling of friendship.

This incident was highly characteristic, and may be taken as a type of much which has been repeated and may be repeated again. Swinburne was now becoming unfitted for general society, y because the presence of many persons, and particularly of strangers, fretted him, and because he was unable to resist the tide of excitement which considerations of literature and art loosened in his

being, and which flooded his brain, distracted his voice, and disarticulated his limbs.

It is thought to have been in 1866 that Swinburne became acquainted at the Arts Club with Dr. George Bird, already the intimate friend of the Burtons and the Spartalis. This excellent physician, whose tastes were markedly intellectual and artistic, and who had enjoyed the intimacy of Leigh Hunt in his last years, was an unqualified admirer of Atalanta in Calydon. He had a nature, sympathetic and serene, which instantly commended itself to Swinburne, who soon became a constant visitor to him and to his sister, Miss Alice Bird, at their house in Welbeck Street. Algernon's meetings here with Richard Burton have already been mentioned. Dr. Bird became Swinburne's guardian-angel, as well as his doctor, and in the double capacity saved him from many results of his wild impulsiveness. Once, some years later than the point which we have now reached, the poet completely vanished, to the extreme alarm of his family. Admiral Swinburne came up from Holmwood in great agitation, and, helpless to discover the truant, applied to Dr. George Bird and his sister. Alone with Miss Bird for a few moments, the Admiral said, with pathetic solicitude, "Miss Bird, God has endowed my son with genius, but He has not vouchsafed to grant him self-control." On this occasion, and on others of a more or less distressing kind, the prodigal was found and restored to his lodgings by the devotion and cleverness of Dr. Bird, to whom, it is not too much to say, he owed his life not once nor twice.

The little breeze with Houghton, who displayed on these occasions a most amiable patience, soon blew itself out, and the preparations for collecting the lyrics went forward undisturbed. In January 1866 it was decided to make a beginning by issuing, as a test, a small privately printed edition of what was, oddly enough, looked upon by the friends as the most dangerous of the pieces, namely, Laus Veneris. Accordingly, Moxon issued a very few copies of this poem as a little book by itself. Of the genesis of this interesting pamphlet, Swinburne gave an account in later years. "It was," he wrote, "more an experiment to ascertain the public taste - and forbearance! - than anything else. Moxon, I well remember, was terribly nervous in those days." The reference is to the firm, since Moxon himself was dead, but his business was tinued by a certain J. Bertram Payne, who, no doubt, represented "Moxon" to the poet's consciousness.

In spite, however, of the imprint on Laus Veneris, there certainly had been a proposal that the ancient firm of Murray should publish the complete collection, and Lord Houghton, rather prematurely, submitted the manuscript to Albemarle Street.. Swinburne was not quite pleased; "I do not," he wrote to Joseph Knight, "overmuch like my poems sent as it were for approval like those of a novice." This anxiety was well grounded, for Mr. Murray at once refused them (March 4), and in terms which stung the poet to fury. He said that he would permit more interference, and "Moxon" finally

no

deciding to take it, the thick volume now entitled Poems and Ballads was in the hands of the printers by March 1866. On the 19th of April Swinburne was correcting proofs of this and of a prose book on Blake of which he had sent part to press before the close of 1865. If the timidity of publishers should seem to us to-day excessive, let it be recalled that as lately as 1841 Edward Moxon himself had been prosecuted, and heavily fined, for issuing a reprint of Shelley's Queen Mab. In the light of subsequent action, we may well believe that the shadow of this conviction still troubled the dreams of his successor.

Meanwhile, still early in 1866, Swinburne published with Moxon a judicious selection from the lyrical work of Byron, and prefixed to it a long critical study. In later years, when his attitude to Byron had become one of pronounced hostility, he disliked any reference to this early essay, which is now little known. It is, however, not merely a sound, clear, and weighty piece of criticism, but is written in a style of unusual purity and restraint. No more faultless passage of prose was ever composed by Swinburne than that with which the Byron of 1866 concludes:

His work was done at Missolonghi; all of his work for which the fates could spare him time. A little space was allowed him to show at least a heroic purpose, and attest a high design; then, with all things unfinished before him and behind, he fell asleep after many troubles and triumphs. Few can ever have gone. wearier to the grave; none with less fear. He had done enough to earn his rest. Forgetful now and set free for ever from all faults and foes, he passed through the doorway of no

ignoble death out of reach of time, out of sight of love, out of hearing of hatred, beyond the blame of England and the praise of Greece. In the full strength of spirit and of body his destiny overtook him, and made an end of all his labours. He had seen and borne and achieved more than most men on record. "He was a great man, good at many things, and now he had attained his rest."

Here the cadences are exquisite, and they are proper to the instrument of prose. The Byron of 1866 begins with a handsome compliment to Matthew Arnold, but it is probable that to Arnold himself was due Swinburne's later prejudice against Byron, since he bitterly resented Arnold's depreciation of Shelley as a mere satellite of Byron, and so was drawn to meditate upon Byron's shortcomings as a poet and as a man. It was arranged that Moxon should follow the Selections from Byron by a similar Keats arranged, with a critical preface, by Swinburne; but in the confusion which presently ensued this project was dropped. So also was the scheme of a literary magazine he was to edit.

In the case of a collection of lyrical verse so important as Poems and Ballads, it would be interesting to possess some indication of the dates at which the successive pieces were composed. But, so far as our present our present knowledge goes, this is impossible. We are not able even to conjecture what actuated the poet in the existing arrangement, or rather lack of arrangement, of the poems. He seems to have shuffled them together, like cards in a hat, with an intentional confusion of subject, date, and style. That