And where they fall men build the beacon-tower (vii. 219.) CHAPTER Swinburne then allies with Landor in preaching this doctrine: he raises Landorism as a banner against the spirit of fatalism. And he does more than this. He lays hold upon Landor as a faith. In the midst of the flow and uncertainty and distress of things, he seizes upon him as example and proof of the abiding Soul; and raises to him a memorial which is an extension into the drama itself of the perfect praise and trust of the Greek dedicatory verses. Obviously he is thinking of Landor in this picture of the life glorious and the death desirable, which are greater than all else: The sweet wise death of old men honourable, Who have lived out all the length of all their years And filled with gracious and memorial fame And alien lips and native with their own. Mow down the strength and life within their limbs, And these, filled full of days, divine and dead, CHAPTER VI. And such as loved their land and all things good And whatsoever on earth was honourable But nearer than their life of terrene days. The passage is one of the most beautiful in Atalanta. But its general beauty is no greater than its particular tenderness and perfect fitness as tribute to the" old demigod " to whose memory the drama is dedicated; whose life and death to find here described perfectly requires only recollection of those great commemorative poems, "Thalassius" and the " Centenary Song," previously noted; and hardly of those, in the light of the Greek dedication which gives him hail in death: "know that thou hast honour before men and gods, if god there be over those beneath the earth. Hail, sire; hail, beloved father, the best by far of singers whom we knew." It is true that after this profession of faith in song, and this great tribute to a human ideal, Atalanta grows sombre and ends in a cry of helplessness. But there is no need, because of the darkness to forget the light that shines in it, especially since Swinburne's later work shows that this light (which we have thought to call Landor's), grew brighter into a more perfect day where faith in man, and faith in the power of Song ran hand in hand to proclaim the Republic that should regenerate the nations. CHAPTER VII TRANSITION 66 VII. DURING the period of the production of Poems CHAPTER and Ballads Swinburne was a somewhat ardent exponent of a narrowly conceived doctrine of "art for art." He seems to have conceived and expressed it under necessity of opposition to the theory that would make art the "hand-maid of religion." But "handmaid of religion," he answered, exponent of duty, servant of fact, pioneer of morality, she cannot in any way become." Her one business is not to do good, but to be good; and any attempt at compromise with Puritanism, any indulgence in "the deleterious appetite of saving souls or helping humanity in general along the way of labour and progress"(170) is worse than suicidal. Of his product of this period and theory it is worth noting that the best of contemporary criticism (that attributed to John, now Lord, Morley) said that it was deficient in large human sympathy. "The greatest men,' the critic explained, “are neither mere subtleminded elves frisking about in the heated places of passion simply for the joy of frisking, nor mere giants surveying all life indifferently as epicurean gods." CHAPTER In 1872, just after the production of Songs VII. before Sunrise (1866-1871), Swinburne made another, and a somewhat advanced, confession of artistic faith. Still maintaining that "the only absolute duty of art is the duty she owes to herself," he announced that the "doctrine of art for art is true in the positive sense, false in the negative." "The worth of a poem has properly nothing to do with its moral meaning or design ...; but, on the other hand, we refuse to admit that art of the highest kind may not ally itself with moral or religious passion, with the ethics or the politics of a nation or an age" (171). The devotion of the Singer before Sunrise to the Spirit of Freedom and Progress connects itself, naturally, with this creed: I am the trumpet at thy lips, thy clarion or a little later in the same poem, " Mater Triumph- The new creed and the new deed were one. The poet who had thought to serve art as an ideal separate from the interests of life as a whole, had come to find a more perfect service. Here art and morality, love of beauty and moral passion go hand in hand. And the love of beauty is the nobler because allied with a virile inspiration which, though it allow no "sharpening or slackening of strings," no delight of languorous and lovely subtleties, keys song into grander harmony. The difference between these two creeds, VII. between the two series of poems of which they CHAPTER are counterparts, is the difference between Swinburne's youth and his maturity. It is to be measured not in terms of external influence, but in terms of his growth. Yet, in so far as development does answer to external influence, we may be permitted to refer to one of the influences that stimulated this growth-the influence of Landor's precept and example. He did not conceive of great art except as the union of great mastery of expression with real exaltation of thought. For Landor," invention, energy, and grandeur of design [are] the three requisites to constitute a great poet" (172); and he found the combination in no modern poet since Milton. Energy, he calls the "soul of poetry"; but energy without ideal beauty, that sublimer emanation of things sensible, gives us - - Byron: "a large grasp of small things, without selection and without cohesion" (173). Design is the better for something of severity, for that "hath always been appertaining to order and to grace; and the beauty that is not too liberal" (perchance, that does not sharpen or slacken strings" at the dictates of the moment) "is sought the most ardently and loved the longest " (174). Gravity and solemnity, however, fitness and propriety in every part, mere perfection of workmanshipthese do not by themselves alone define a work as noble. No human works are so perfect as some of Catullus'; "but many are incomparably greater" (175). "Invention" is the distinguishing characteristic of great poetry; and this we may understand to be synonymous with "Imagina 66 L |