But,
though this hunting, and checking, and floating, and flying in metre may
be to strain the arts of prosody and diction, with how masterly a hand is
the straining accomplished! The spear, the arrow, the attack, the
charge, the footfall, the pinion, nay, the very stepping of the moon, the
walk of the wind, are mimicked in this enchanting verse. Like to
programme-music we must call it, but I wish the concert-platform had ever
justified this slight perversion of aim, this excess--almost
corruption--of one kind of skill, thus miraculously well.
Now, if Swinburne's exceptional faculty of diction led him to immoderate
expressiveness, to immodest sweetness, to a jugglery, and
prestidigitation, and conjuring of words, to transformations and
transmutations of sound--if, I say, his extraordinary gift of diction
brought him to this exaggeration of the manner, what a part does it not
play in the matter of his poetry! So overweening a place does it take in
this man's art that I believe the words to hold and use his meaning,
rather than the meaning to compass and grasp and use the word. I believe
that Swinburne's thoughts have their source, their home, their origin,
their authority and mission in those two places--his own vocabulary and
the passion of other men. This is a grave charge.
First, then, in regard to the passion of other men. I have given to his
own emotion the puniest name I could find for it; I have no nobler name
for his intellect.
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