6. A Record of Friendship, pp. 9, 1910, 8vo.

7. A Criminal Case, pp. 15, 1910, 8vo.

8. Thomas Nabbes, pp. 14, 1914, 8vo.

9. Christopher Marlowe in relation to Greene, Peele, and Lodge, pp. 21, 1914, 8vo.

10. Félicien Cossu. A burlesque, pp. 32, 1915, 8vo. 11. Théophile, pp. 35, 1915, 8vo.

12. Ernest Clouet, pp. 21, 1916, 8vo.

13. A Vision of Bags, pp. 12, 1916, 8vo.

One of the projects of his youth which Swinburne most reluctantly abandoned, if he ever abandoned it at all, was the composition of a cycle of prose stories of passion, which should be tied together, in the old Italian manner, by some gracious fable of friends, met in an idle mood at farmstead or forest palace, who tell one another romantic stories of their adventures in love and war. The whole was to be called the Triameron, and the contents of two days were actually planned and largely composed. The following list, written probably in 1861, was found among his papers, written out on the back of a stray leaf of the draft copy of Chastelard :

Of all these stories one only has hitherto been known to the world, if indeed it can be said to be known. This

is Dead Love, which, at the introduction of George Meredith, was printed in Once a Week, in October 1862, and afterwards by Swinburne himself as a pamphlet, which has never been reprinted, in 1864. More about the Triameron will possibly be divulged, when the poet's early correspondence is examined. At present we know of the existence of five of the stories mentioned in the list. The Marriage of Monna Lisa, which Mr. Wise privately printed in 1909, is certainly one of these, under a different title.

VERSE NOW FIRST COLLECTED

The Ballade of Truthful Charles, and other Poems, pp. 32, 1910, 8vo.

Eolus, pp. 13, 1914, 8vo.

These had already appeared in Magazines but remained uncollected at the date of the poet's death.

PROSE NOW FIRST COLLECTED

The Saviour of Society. Two Sonnets and a Controversy, pp. 34, 1909, 8vo.

Letters to the Press, pp. 114, 1912, 8vo.

"Les Fleurs du Mal," and other Studies, pp. 95, 1913, 8vo.

"Les Misérables," pp. 51, 1914, 8vo.

Pericles, and other Studies, pp. 83, 1914, 8vo.

The five articles on Les Misérables of Victor Hugo and the long study of Baudelaire, appeared anonymously in the Spectator in 1862.

Finally, Watts-Dunton arranged with Mr. Wise that the latter should collect such portions of Swinburne's correspondence as were available, and should protect these by issuing them in limited editions, preparatory to the arrangement of the whole for general publication. This was done in nineteen pamphlets between 1909 and 1915. Of these letters such a selection as would

appeal to the wide literary public will in due time be published. Swinburne was not a voluminous letterwriter, but he never wrote without having something to say, and it is difficult to take up his briefest note without finding some element of interest in it. At his best, Swinburne will be admitted to high rank among purely literary letter-writers.

NOTE

SOME additional information regarding Swinburne's early youth has reached me too late for insertion in the body of this volume. In each case, though by a coincidence, the Sewell family is involved.

PAGE 27

Immediately after leaving Eton, Swinburne met, at the house of Miss Elizabeth Sewell and her sisters, Ashcliffe, Bonchurch, an Italian lady who was staying in the Isle of Wight. This was Signora Annunziata Fronduti, who still survives in her eighty-fifth year, and who now resides at Gubbio, in Umbria. Miss Fronduti was greatly impressed by the simplicity of the boy, whose "great shock of red hair, fits of silence, and earnest gaucherie" she still vividly recalls. She discovered that he had a passion for Italian poetry, and she exercised for his benefit her practised gifts of reading and recitation. He would "make her do it by the hour," and would sit gazing into space, absolutely transfigured and absorbed by the magic and the music of the classic Italian verse. Signora Fronduti remembers that on these occasions his great eyes were filled with a sort of devouring flame "for the poetry, not the reciter," as she naïvely protests. It seems to have been Dante that she chiefly read to him, as Ariosto had already been introduced to him by Lady Jane Swinburne. Signora Annunziata Fronduti was a friend of Lord Houghton, and it is possible that it was she who, in 1860, made Algernon known to him. I have to thank Miss Janet H. Blunt for having kindly made this communication to me.

PAGE 34

Some light is thrown on Swinburne's religious convictions as an undergraduate by reminiscences very obligingly transmitted to me by Mr. Walter Bradford Woodgate, who was educated at St. Peter's College, Radley, near Oxford, from 1850 to 1858. The Warden of Radley was William Sewell

(1804-1874) of Exeter College, the brother of Miss Elizabeth Sewell. William Sewell dispensed a rather lavish hospitality at Radley, and Mr. Woodgate recalls several visits paid there by Algernon, especially one which lasted some weeks, and probably took place during the Long Vacation of 1856. He ate at "high table" with the masters, but "he mostly associated with us boys, and was elected honorary member of the prefects' common room." There can be no question that it was the wish of his family that, through the introduction of Miss Elizabeth Sewell, the high-church principles which had been so carefully instilled into Algernon at Bonchurch should be supported at Radley. But Mr. Woodgate remembers him only as devoted to literature; "he did not go in for games, but was enthusiastic about poetry." On one occasion, at the School Debating Society, one of the older boys propounded as the subject of debate a condemnation of Tennyson's Maud, which had recently (1855) been published, and which had been received by the public with a strange outburst of critical misapprehension. The speaker declared that this poem "detracted from Tennyson's reputation." Algernon Swinburne, who had just read Maud with ecstasy, was extremely indignant. Before the debate began, he heartily ridiculed the proposed censure in a conversation in prefects' room, and when the discussion was about to begin, he jumped up, and crying out, "You're a lot of Philistines,' bounced out of the room. After "this insult to true poetry"

he refused to attend the meetings of the society.

On the next occasion, however, when the poet's visit was expected, Sewell informed the Sixth Form that he should not in future be able to allow Algernon Swinburne to come to Radley. The Warden said that he had felt himself forced to cancel the general invitation to him to come over from Oxford on Sundays for the day. He said that the reason was that Swinburne had contracted "theories of free-thinking in religion" which were diametrically opposed to the views of his family and shocking to Sewell himself, who insisted on High Anglican ceremonial at Radley. Sewell told the Sixth Form that he feared lest Swinburne might "inoculate boys with his sinister tenets." This was, doubtless, at the end of 1856 or beginning of 1857, soon after Mr. Woodgate was made a prefect.