of pity, until he begins to
speak; and if he tries to speak in verse, he misses the implement
of an artist.'

He is pained by Matthew Arnold's 'occasional habit of harking back and
loitering in mind among the sepulchres.... Nothing which leaves us
depressed is a true work of art.' Yet, it may be answered, the habit
of musing among tombs has inspired good poetry; and when doubt and
dejection, perplexed meditation over insoluble problems, are in the
air, a poet does well to express the dominant feelings of his time;
and a modern Hamlet is no inartistic figure.

In this respect, however, Mr. Swinburne may have found reason to
qualify, latterly, the absoluteness of his poetic principles. He has
been from the first a generous critic of those contemporary poets whom
he recognised as kindred souls. He awards unmeasured praise to Matthew
Arnold, while of his defects and shortcomings he speaks plainly. He
does loyal homage to Browning in a sequence of sonnets, and his
tribute to Tennyson was paid in a lofty 'Threnody,' when that noble
spirit passed away. For Victor Hugo he proclaimed, as all know,
nothing short of unbounded adoration--he is 'the greatest writer whom
the world has seen since Shakespeare'; though it may be doubted
whether in his own country Hugo now stands upon so supreme a pinnacle.
To other eminent men of his time his poetry accords admiration,
chiefly to the champions of free thought and of resistance to
oppression; and, in a poem entitled 'Two Leaders,' he salutes two
antagonists as he might do before crossing swords with them. The
leaders are not named; the first is evidently Newman:

'O great and wise, clear-souled and high of heart,
One the last flower of Catholic love, that grows
Amid bare thorn their only thornless rose,
From the fierce juggling of the priest's loud mart
Yet alien, yet unspotted and apart
From the blind hard foul rout whose shameless shows
Mock the sweet heaven whose secret no man knows
With prayers and curses and the soothsayers' art.'

The second is

'Like a storm-god of the northern foams
Strong, wrought of rock that breasts and breaks the sea,'

in whom we recognise Carlyle. They are the powers of darkness, doomed
to fall and to vanish before the light; yet their genius commands
respect and even sympathy.

'With all our hearts we praise you whom ye hate,
High souls that hate us; for our hopes are higher