istinguish the younger poet, who
may be destined to be the last survivor of an illustrious company.

If we accept the theory that art, like nature, follows the principle
of continuous development, that its existing state is closely linked
with its past, it is not easy to affiliate Mr. Swinburne to any direct
literary predecessors. Undoubtedly we may assign to him poetical
kinship with Shelley; he has the same love for classical myths and
allegories, for the embodiment of nature in the beautiful figures of
the antique. Light and shade, a quiet landscape, a tumultuous storm,
stir him with the same sensuous emotion. He has Shelley's passion for
the sea; he is fond of invoking the old divinities who presided over
the fears, hopes, and desires of mankind. He has also Shelley's
rebellious temper, the unflinching revolt against dogmatic authority
and fundamental beliefs which rightly shocked our grandfathers in
'Queen Mab' and a few other poems; he is even less disposed than
Shelley to the hypocrisy which does unwilling homage to virtue. On the
other hand, Mr. Swinburne's pantheism has not Shelley's metaphysical
note; the conception of an indwelling spirit guiding and moulding the
phenomenal world has dropped out; there is no pure idealism of this
sort in Mr. Swinburne's verse.

It may be said, truly, that some of Mr. Swinburne's poetry shows the
influence of the later French Romanticists, of the reaction toward
mediaevalism which is represented in England by Scott, and which
culminated in France with Victor Hugo, for whom the English poet's
admiration is unmeasured. That movement, however, had almost ceased on
our side of the Channel at the time when it had reached, or was just
passing, its climax in France. And, indeed, by 1835 the style and
sentiment of English poetry was undergoing a remarkable change. Its
magnificent efflorescence, which the first quarter of the nineteenth
century had seen in full bloom, had faded away. It had sprung up in an
era of great wars and revolution, amid the struggles of nations to
shake off the incubus of despotisms, to free themselves from the yoke
of foreigners. The cause of political liberty inspired the noblest
verse of Shelley, Coleridge, and Byron:

Yet Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying,
Streams like a thunderstorm against the wind--'

But in England this ardent spirit had evaporated during the years of
industrial prosperity and mechanical progress which came in with a