Poems and Ballads (Swinburne)/Advertisements
ATALANTA. By
ALGERNON
C.
Ecap. 8vo,
SWINBURNE.
cloth, 6s.
John Camden Hotten.
OPINIONS OF THE '
PRESS.
He
has produced a dramatic poem which abounds from the first page to the last in the finest constituents of poetry—in imagination, fancy, feeling, sentiment, passion, and knowledge of the human heart and soul, combined with a dominant mastery over every species of verse, from the stateliest pomp He has something of of epic metre to the fluent sweetness of song.
...
that creative force which all great poets have had, whether they were Greek, Italian, or English— a native and inborn strength, which scholarship may mould, but can never originate. If, as we are given to understand, Mr. Swinburne is a young writer, we do not hesitate to assert that his volume is extraordinary, not simply for strength and vividness of imagination, but (what is more remarkable with inexperience) for maturity of power, for completeness of self-control, for absolute mastery over the turbulent forces of adolescent genius. . . . That strange, sad, hopeless mood in which the ancient Greek regarded the mysteries of life and death—that austere setting
far
of the soul against the iron will of Destiny which is so full of an immense that divinely sorrowful despair of things which can dignity and pathos suffer to the miserable end, and sees no after compensation, and yet goes down to death in majesty, and beauty, and power— these characteristics of
—
the old Greek faith, or want of faith, or whatsoever we may call it, are reflected by Mr. Swinburne with amazing truth and discrimination. There are from the very roots of human passages in his poem which seem to wring experience the sharpest extract of our griefs."—London
Review,
8th April,
1865.
" Mr. Swinburne has judged well in his choice of a subject. The legend of is one of the most beautiful in the whole compass of the Greek mywithout any of those thology fresh, simple, romantic, solemn, and pathetic, yet horrors which shock us in the stories of Thebes or Argos—no Jocasta, no Calydon
out in the Thyestes, but figures full of heroic truth and nobleness, standing A careful study clear bright light of the early morning of Greece. to and their him to catch reproduce manner, of the Attic dramatists has enabled
...
felicitously
many
of their turns of expression.
The
scholar
is
struck, every few lines, by some phrase which he can fancy a direct translation from the Greek while yet it is in its place both forcible and unaffected. The matter, although not really Greek in Its essence, is thrown with great cleverness into a mould which almost boguiles us into forgetting the author, and imagining that we are listening to one of the contemporaries of Euripides who sought to copy the manner of Hechylos. . . . He is, indeed, never more happy than in painting natare, knowing and loving her well, and inspired by her beauty into a vivid force and fulness of expression."—Sarvepay Review, 6f4 Boy, 1865,
"The passion of Althma is much the finest part of the play. The naturalism of maternal instinet straggling with the feeling of what le dae to the shade of her mother and her brothers, goes far beyond the struggle in Antigone or Orestes, Out of many noble passages depicting this feeling we chooee the last and most passionate—passionate beyond the limite of Greek passion, and too little ingrained with the Greck awe,-but still exceedingly fine.""—Sreetatog, April 15th, 1865.
"He is gifted with no small portion of the all-important Divine fire, without which no man can hope to achieve poetic success; he possesses considerable powers of deseription, a keen eye for natural seenery, and a copious vocabulary of rich yet simple English. . . . We must now part from our author with cordial congratulations on the suovess with which he has achieved so diffieult task."—Times, June 6th, 1865. . es
"'Atalanta in Calydon' is the work of a poot, . . . Let our readers say whether they often meet with pictures lovetier in themselves or more truly Greek than those in the following invocation to Artemis; . . . Many straing equal to the above in force, beauty and rhythmical flow might he cited from the chorus. Those which set forth the brevity of man's life, and the Garkness which enfolds it, though almost irreverent in their impeachment of the gods, are singularly fine In expression, . . . We yet know not to what poet since Keates we could turn for's representation at once so large in its design and so graphic in its particalars. In the noble hyperbole of deseription which raisee the boar into the veritable scourge of Artemis, there is imagination of the highest kind. . . A subject for many a painter to come—s grand word-picture, in which the influence of no contemporary can be traced, . . . In the fervour and beauty of his best passages we find no reflection of any modern writer, . . . We must not close without a reference to the Greek lines, plaintive and fall of classic grace, which the writer has prefixed to his work in honour of Walter Savage Landor,"—ATHENRUM, April 1st, 1865,
"The choruses are so good, that it is difficult to praise them enough. Were our space unlimited, we would transfer them without abridgment to our columns; as it is not, we can only give a few extracts; but we may fairly assume that every one who cares for poetry of a truly high order will make himself familiar with Mr. Swinburne's drama, . . . As we listen to them they seem to set themselves to a strange but grand music, which lingers long on the ear. . . . . Sometimes we are reminded of Shelley in the lyric passages, but it is more tho movement of the verse and its wonderful music, than anything else which . . . Mr. Swinburne has lived with the great suggests a resemblance. Athenian dramatists till his tone of thought has somewhat assimilated to theirs, but he has learnt rather to sympathize with them as a contemporary artist, than to copy them as a modern student."— Reader, April 22nd, 1865.
"
Our extracts have shown that we much prefer to let Mr. Swinburne present own marvellous earnestness and rich delivery of manner than to essay in this, our necessarily brief review, a lengthened criticism or analysis of such a remarkable work of promise. Apart from the serious endeavour and high devoir to which he has devoted himself in his first appeal to public attention, we would remark the sensuousness, brilliancy, and fervour of the which here and his
lyrics,
more sombre and sterner phases of the poem. Assuredly and most complete effort which has for a long time announced that a scholar and a poet has come amongst us."—Mobning Hebald, there relieve the
.
.
.
this is the choicest
April 27th, 1865.
"One
grave error, which Mr. Swinburne has almost entirely avoided, is the use of thoughts or expressions which, current now, would be out of place in a tragedy of Greece. He has, with rare artistic feeling, let scarcely a trace of modern life. The Poem is all with alive the life a appear of classic past
.... July
The whole play
is
instinct with
power of varied kinds."— Examinee,
15th, 1865.
"We have before said Mr. Swinburne is a subtle analyst of human motive, and possesses great tragic power. The present work shows him to have imagination of the highest order, wonderful play of fancy, and a complete command over every form of versification. He has command of imagery as great as his control of language. He has power which rises to sublimity; passion which deepens into terror; daring which soars beyond reach or control We have said enough to convince our readers that we regard this
- poem as a worthy companion to Chastelard,' and look upon its author as perenrolled manently among great English poets."— Sunday Times, December 31st,
...
.... 1865.
"These lines are marked by that melancholy that always characterizes the poetry in proportion to the absence of faith. . . . Could he have faith, of is not a trace throughout the poem, except the miserable vacuum created by its absence, he might do wonders as a poet."—The Tablet, August which there 12th, 1865.
"As
to the tragedy itself, we find in it everything to praise and nothing to It is one of the few really great poems that have been contributed
censure.
to English literature since the death of Shelley; and it entitles to a place among the great poets of his country.
its
author, at once
... A tragedy, on the
Grecian model, which
and
is
remarkable for its intense emotional
struction, and the combined Albion, November Uth, 1865.
"Not
stateliness, severity,
vitality,
the richness
and finish of its conand music of its diction."
reality of its imaginative images, the perfect precision
—
the least remarkable and interesting pages of this volume are those to which, the author has consigned a tribute of veneration to the memory of Walter Savage Landor, in two compositions of Greek elegiac verse. The first is a dedication addressed to Landor while living, in the form of a valediction, on the occasion of his last return to Italy; the second, much the longer of the two, an elegy on his death. No one who has felt how the spirit of the iEschylean tragedy breathes through the English poem, will have been surprised to find—rather, every such reader would have been disappointed if he had not found—that Mr. Swinburne's thoughts move with scarcely less ease and freedom on a moderm theme (if indeed Landor may be properly said to belong to his own age so much as to that of Pericles and Augustus) in the language and measures of Callinus and Mimmerus than in his native speech . Of the Greek we will only say that it is not that of a Cambridge prize ode, but something much better even if more open to minute criticism than the best of such; not in the least like a cento of dainty classical phrases, but the fresh original gushing of a true poetical vein, nourished by a mastery of the foreign language, like that which Landor himself in his Latin poems . . . . It is evidently the produce, not of the tender lyrical faculty which so often waits on sensitive youth and afterwards fades into the light of common day, nor even of the classical culture of which it is itself a signal illustration, but of an affluent and apprehensive genius, which, with ordinary care and fair fortune, will take a foremost place in English literature. . . . His abstinence from all overdrawn conceits is remarkable in a young poet of any time, and his careful avoidance of the shadowy border land of metaphysics and poetry in which so many versifiers of our own day take refuge from the open scrutiny of critical sunlight, deserve full praise and recognition."— Edutbuegh Review, July, 1865.
CHASTELAED. By
ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE.
Fcap. 8vo, cloth,
7s.
John Camden Hotten.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
"The portraits of Mary and of Chastelard are exaggerated, but only as Michael Angelo's heroic statues are. The consistent steady madness of Chastelard's passion, which, mad as it is, lies deeper than madness, and, wild as it is burns always without flame, is displayed in a way which is, most masterly. As for the Queen, we are quite of opinion that Mr. Swinburne has brought that woman to light again. It will not do, perhaps, to peer closely into her portrait as it lies in these pages; if we do, we become uneasily conscious of blotchy workmanship, with lights too sudden, and shades too deep, and broken harmonies of colour. But close the book, and look at the portrait reflected from it into the mind, and none was ever painted of her so true. It is a portrait which painters and historians alike have only confused; it awaited a poet's hand to this day, and now we have got it. So think we, at any rate, and in saying so we do not exhaust the praise which is due to the author of 'Chastelard.' The dramatic force of the scenes in the latter half of the poem remains to be applauded, but that, luckily for a critic who has come to the end of his tether, is a thing which can only be applauded and cannot be described; we give it our homage. But it is very much to the purpose of this article, that just when the poem becomes more dramatic its faults begin to disappear; and before we come to the admirable scene between Mary and Chastelard in prison, we are blinded to whatever remains. The fact seems to be that Mr. Swinburne is less a poet than a dramatist; it is certain that he is capable of writing in a way which entitles him to small consideration as the one, and to great consideration as the other. . . . But in any case it can never be denied that he is a true man of genius."—Pall Mall Gazette, April 27th, 1866.
"The two principal figures stand out boldly, and on them the poet ha£ The scene in which, having sent bestowed all the riches of his genius for Chastelard, she talks to him in a strange wild mood between love and regretfulsubtle and It will not be doubted by any one is fine ness, extremely
who has instinct
the pulse of poetry in his blood that this is noble writing— writing And in the speech of spirit of the Elizabethan Muse.
with the highest
Chastelard, when waiting for the Queen in her chamber, we have something of the large, imperial style of Shakspeare himself. The scene between Chastelard and the Queen in prison is also pervaded with the highest inspirations
....
of impassioned poetry; and though the love-ravings of Chastelard almost pass the bounds commonly permitted to poets, the shadow of fate, lying dark and heavy
In passages such as these, Mr. all, seems to cool and moderate the glow. Swinburne again proves his right to take a permanent stand among our English Of power, he has abundance; of passion, perhaps more than poets enough; of poetry, in its fierce, luminous, and fiery shapes, a wonderful and Whatever his faults, however, he is a man of prodigal richness genius of the most unmistakable mark. We do not know when it has fallen to the ' lot of any poet to produce within one year two such plays as ' Atalanta in Calydon and ' Chastelard '—dramas conceived and written in two totally distinct styles, and with marked success in both He has earned a conspicuous name with singular quickness, and we trust that even greater triumphs lie before him in his onward path." London Review, December 9th, 1865.
"The choruses, in 'Atalanta' were astonishing for their imaginative insight, their richness of imagery, their depth of impassioned thought, the nervous suppleness of their language, and the lyrical flow of their versification; and many of the
over
— speeches of the characters were full of poetry and dramatic truth, In 'Chastelard,' again, we have a splendid example of the poetry that lies in vehement and absorbing passion; but there is some reason to fear that Mr. Swinburne is wanting in the higher beauty of moral dignity and sweetness,"—London Review, December 30th, 1865,
" We can only say that it abounds in passages of great poetic merit, and the passion of love is described with all that delicacy and vividness that can only be found in the writings of a poet endowed with extraordinary genius, Mr. Swinburne bas well comprehended the character of Mary Stuart, and she is made to stand before the reader a reality, her nature being wonderfully well exhibited. Other characters are represented with marvellous distinctness, and give to the tragedy interest and vitality."—Ponure Ortx10™, December 16th, 1865,
" The style is so forcible that there is little that would render the play unfit for the stage, were it not for the great amount of amativeness which the parties have to display before they are disposed of,"—Court Cincetan, December 23rd, 1885.
"The picture with which this burst concludes, though too much elaborated, has undeniable grandeur. We could point out passages which, in a dramatic point of View, are yet Ener. Those given to Mary Deaton—the only touching character in the play—often reach the height of tragic intensity. Nor is itto be disputed that Mr. Swinburne shows at times a keen insight into the subtleties of human motive, but his chief characters are out of the pale of our sympathy; besides being inherently vicious, the language will offend not only those who have reverence, but those who have taste."—AruEwacra, December Xird, 1905,
" A tragedy—in which we think he best develops his genius. Once before we said we thought his genius essentially lyric, but he himself has convinced us, not of the contrary, but of the co-existence in him of the dramatic and lyric power,""— Covsr Jouanat, December 19th, 1905,
"The poem, in fact, is morally repulsive, and all its gilding of fancy and feeling only makes the picture more revolting . . . The dramatic power, the grace of the beauty of the tragedy no one candeny, . . . His insightinto hidden human motives is marvellously indicated, Altogether, if the poem fhila to plense, that most be attributed to the subject and the author's mind of it, not to any lack of workmanship of the very highest and most delicate order."—Artas, December S0vk, 1985.
"Ttis an unpleasant book, and one by all means to be kept out of the hands of the young and pure-mindod, for the Meentionsness of many of the images and profanity of not afew of ihe sentiments are sueh aa happily are not offen found in English pocts, . . . We cannot doubt that the less sensnous brotherhood of our Northern poote, would join us in denouncing with indignation and dlagust such a lamentable prostitution of the English muse,"—Jour Bets, December 23rd, 1885.
" There aretwo parts of the play deserving of special pralse—the second act, and the closing scenes of the fifth. It is in these, and more particularly in the latter, that Mr, Swinburne displays » combination of dramatic and poetle power beyond what is seen in anything thet his pen has yet produced, «oo + Werelt not for their exquisite clegance of expression, these constant exhibitions of passion would deserve severe reprobation, . . . Regarding the work as a whole, we ey sank ee Swinburne for a dramatic poem of great power, careful elaboration of plot, artistic disposition of scenes; for admirable descriptions of human emotion and passion; for terse, forcible, yet sweet exprossion, and a generally scrupulous melody of rhythm."—Reapgr, December 2ud, 1965.
"Mr. Swinburne has written a tragedy, which not only is one of the moet retnarkable of modern days, but which in originality of conception 'and boldness of treatment bas never been surpassed. The triumph which Mr, Swinburne has achieved in ' Chastelard' is the mare noteworthy, since the splendid gifta of which its composition proclaims him the possessor ara totally distinet from thoge which in ' Atalanta in Calydon' 'gained him a foremost position among modern poets. In the earlier production, amid all the sublime imagery and Iyrical sweetness, the grace truly classic, the boldness of thought and the exquisite charm of versification which oonetituted it a work of accomplished and 5il bus unrivalled baeuty, there was no foreshadowing of the dramatic fire and he weird and almost unholy power which characterize its successor, . ., . From this point, where the interest has already reached what appears a climax, each aitustion is more dramatic and more stirring than the one preceding it. 'The skill with which—the passions being already at white hest—the action is heightened without anti-climax is absolutely wonderful. . . . The last few words we give in their integrity; no word of ours can add aught to their terrible pathos and dramatic force, With them, and without an added word, we shall conclude our notice of this most remarkable tragedy of modern times.""—Sumpar . Trans, December 3rd, 1885,
Hero, in his new poem of ' Chastelard,' is Mr. Algernon Swinburne writing Preach chansoas of which Chastelard himself or Ronaard might have been proud. So good are they that by many they are imagined to be merely quotations, transcripts from the original French author. But there is no dowbt they are Mr, Swinbarne's own composition. Here are two which are exquisite in taste, feeling, and spirit."—Monwire Sram, December 25th, 1666,
" Here and there occur passages which we unhesitalingly affirm are not surpassed in the language."—Lrvaxpoor Anaioy, January 6th, 1906,
"The public to which Mr. Swinburne appeals will consist exelusively of thone readers who enjoy a work of art for its own sake, and who care more for the power of the representation than for any worth in what Is represented. . . . Mr. Swinburne has prodaced's poem which many may dislike bat which none ean contemn, which many will lay down unread but which few will read once only. It cannot be ealled an advance upon ' Atalanta," for it is something totally @fferent, except in its disregard of conventional propricties, and its independence of the poetical habits of the day. There is the same richness without tawdriness of language, the same novelty without strangeness of expression, the same continual sense of the indispensable duty of melody in verse, which some of our most pretentions poets cither forgetor disown. . . . The scene in the Queen's chamber is very beantifal, but ingeniously wicked as the rest. . . . For dex terity of fence, both in feeling and language, this scene may rank with the masterpieces of our older drama. . . . The gyrations are so unexpected, and the changes so numerous, that in less masterly hands the effect would be rather that of a psychological puzzle than of a dramatic evolution. . . . It is impossible that this play should not highly raise Mr. Swinburne's reputation. There are artistic defects in it, but not to be mentioned beside the artistic merits. His preface to Moxon's 'Selections from Byron' is another instance of the fact, too often forgotten, that there is no education for the writing of superior prose like the serious practice of poetry; and with this double power, Mr. Swinburne's future career must be an object of much interest to all who estimate aright the worth and weight of British literature in the intellectual and moral history of mankind."—Fortnightly Review, April 15th, 1866.
"He fills out this bold outline, and supplies missing links in the story, and imparts life and form and colour to the whole picture, and reproduces contemporaneous personages and scenery, and, with deep probing of human nature and fine play of imagination, unveils the pathetic tragedy that has so long slept hidden in the dry and trite historic page. The result is a masterpiece of literary art, whether contemplated as to conception of character, ideals of love and heroism, treatment of a grand and moving theme, majesty, beauty, and purity of style, or lesson to the heart and mind."—The Albion, December 23rd, 1865.
"The is and There is little
to relieve vaguely story ineffectively presented. the repulsive character of the whole tone of the play. It dwells pertinaciously and too warmly upon scenes which are neither noble, edifying, nor decent."—
Boston Daily Advertiser, December 14*th, 1865.
"We have but re-echoed the judgment of all competent
critics, in
saying that
Swinburne rightfully ranks with the few great poets of this and of other ages. His present work is one of the finest artistic efforts which we have ever chanced
- to encounter. It has more human interest than his Atalanta in Calydon,' while ' is richly dight' with it is couched in the same vigorous and splendid diction, and His portraiture is one of the . melodious and sweetly magnificent songs. and most most thoroughly elaborated, gorgeously coloured, in the whole amplest, wide range of British poetry." New York Weekly Review, December 9th, 1865.
"The sustained and elastic strength of the fourth act, in which the turns and windings of Mary's will as Chastelard's death are drawn out—her perplexity, a weak man and for a cruel unknightly man, fear of for ruthlessness, contempt public scorn, remorse for her love, vindictive bitterness against Darnley, all .
chasing one another over her mind, with the subtlest changes—make one of the for which a drama of character gives room. We feel that the
most superb scenes
writer is rejoicing in his own skill in unravelling the changeful mysteries of a highly complex character. He exults in his mastery over the Queen's rapid passage from one mood to another, and in the magic by which he can produce and control her Protean transformations."— Saturday Revibw, May lllh, 1866.