"Is it in the right place, Romola?" asked Bardo, who was perpetually seeking the assurance that the outward fact continued to correspond with the image which lived to the minutest detail in his mind. "Yes, father; at the west end of the room, on the third shelf from the bottom, behind the bust of Hadrian, above Apollonius Rhodius and Callimachus, and below Lucan and Silius Italicus." As Romola said this a fine ear would have detected in her clear voice and distinct utterance a faint suggestion of weariness struggling with habitual patience. But as she approached her father, and saw his arms stretched out a little with nervous excitement to seize the volume, her hazel eyes filled with pity; she hastened to lay the book on his lap, and kneeled down by him, looking up at him as if she believed that the love in her face must surely make its way through the dark obstruction that shut out every thing else. At that moment the doubtful attractiveness of Romola's face, in which pride and passion seemed to be quivering in the balance with native refinement and intelligence, was transfigured to the most lovable womanliness by mingled pity and affection; it was evident that the deepest fount of feeling within her had not yet wrought its way to the less changeful features, and only. found its outlet through her eyes. But the father, unconscious of that soft radiance, looked flushed and agitated as his hand explored the edges and back of the large book. "The vellum is yellowed in these thirteen years, Romola?" "Yes, father," said Romola, gently; "but your letters at the back are dark and plain still-fine Roman letters; and the Greek character," she continued, laying the book open on her father's knee, "is more beautiful than that of any of your bought manuscripts." "Assuredly, child," said Bardo, passing his finger across the page as if he hoped to discriminate line and margin. "What hired amanuensis can be equal to the scribe who loves the words that grow under his hand, and to whom an error or indistinctness in the text is more painful than a sudden darkness or obstacle across his path? And even these mechanical printers who threaten to make learning a base and vulgar thing-even they must depend on the manuscript over which we scholars have bent with that insight into the poet's meaning which is closely akin to the mens divinior of the poet himself-unless they would flood the world with grammatical falsities and inexplicable anomalies that would turn the very fountains of Parnassus into a deluge of poisonous mud. But find the passage in the fifth book to which Poliziano refers. I know it I know it very well." Seating herself on a low stool close to her father's knee, Romola took the book on her lap and read the four verses containing the exclamation of Acteon. "It is true, Romola," said Bardo, when she had finished; "it is a true conception of the poet; for what is that grosser, narrower light by which men behold merely the petty scene around them, compared with that far-stretching, lasting light which spreads over centuries of thought, and over the life of nations, and makes clear to us the minds of the immortals who have reaped the great harvest and left us to glean in their furrows? For me, Romola, even when I could see, it was with the great dead that I lived; while the living often seemed to me mere spectres-shadows dispossessed of true feeling and intelligence." THE CHOIR INVISIBLE. Oh, may I join the choir invisible Which martyred men have made more glorious ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. In the veins of this poet flows the blood of an English admiral and of a peer of the realm. This fact is significant in estimating his literary career. An aristocrat by birth and associations, he turned, by a sort of reaction, to a sentimental radicalism, to which much of his poetry gives expression. His politics are emotional, but the emotion is violent, and Swinburne's unequalled powers of statement and superb imagination tempt him to indulge more than he otherwise might in the pleasure of wordy warfare. As Disraeli once said of Gladstone, he is at times "intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity." Swinburne's intellect is active and subtle, and his cunning in the use of forms of speech has never been surpassed; yet his intellectual weight is but moderate, and in judgment and self-restraint he is markedly deficient. Neither his political nor his literary criticism has serious value, except as specimens of English composition, and as characteristic effusions. Even his poetry, voluminous though it is, is narrow in its scope and monotonous in its mastery of rhythm and melody; but it is real poetry, and no English writer has ever surpassed it in the qualities which give it distinction. Its sensuous beauty and splendor are often amazing, and were it as commendable in point of ethics and common sense, Swinburne would be the poet of the century. His early work was received with a mingling of astonishment, rapture and denunciation; but his advance since then has been small. "Atalanta in Calydon," published in 1864, when the author was twenty-eight years old, has passages as delicious as anything he has since accomplished · and in his "Laus Veneris," which appeared two years later, though written previously, he gave his measure and quality, and struck a keynote of feeling and character which has not been essentially modified since then. Swinburne was educated at Eton and Oxford, though he took no degree; he is a good classical scholar, and his love of Greek paganism is apparent in all his writings. He has touched many subjects, but this classical bent is traceable throughout. In English history he has made studies of Henry II.'s Rosamond, of Mary Queen of Scots ("Chastelard,” "Bothwell," "Mary Stuart"), "The Armada" (a magnificent poem), and some minor pieces; in prose literary criticism he has produced "William Blake," "George Chapman,” “A Note on Charlotte Bronte," "A Study of Shakespeare,” “A ”“ Study of Victor Hugo," "A Study of Ben Jonson," and other essays; he has tried his hand in Arthurian legend, in "Tristram of Lyonesse," and is the author of a Greek and of an Italian tragedy-" Erechtheus" and "Marino Faliero." He has even written a novel of English society—and a very good one-published serially in London in 1879, under the penname of "Mrs. Horace Manners." It was called "A Year's Letters," but has never been reprinted, or acknowledged by the author. Whatever he has done has fascination and distinction, and is irreproachable in form. But his best and most lasting work is to be sought in his poems and ballads, and in passages of his dramas. He sees and depicts character vividly, but always through a Swinburnian atmosphere, sa that he cannot be regarded as a dramatist in the Shakespearian sense. He has wit, irony and passion, but not humor. Speaking broadly, he is a sign of the times, but not a leader nor a maker. Moreover, with all his beauty, there is something unwholesome and unsound about Swinburne. His passion is woman ish rather than masculine, and yet not normally womanish. He is violent rather than powerful. His delicacies and refinements are something other than manly. In youth he had a tendency to finger forbidden subjects; his later work is free from such improprieties. Whatever he does shows good workmanship, and possesses literarv importance; but his stature has not increased of late years, and, at the age of sixty, he had lapsed into the background of things. THE MAKING OF MAN. (Chorus from "Atalanta in Calydon.") BEFORE the beginning of years There came to the making of man Grief, with a glass that ran; And life, the shadow of death. And the high gods took it in hand From under the feet of years, And dust of the laboring earth, In the houses of death and of birth; And death beneath and above; For a day and a night and a morrow, That his strength might endure for a span With travail and heavy sorrow, The holy spirit of man. From the winds of the north and the south They gathered as unto strife; They breathed upon his mouth, For the veils of the souls therein; |