ed the imagination of
Tennyson. And his attitude is still further apart from the
intellectual tendencies discernible at the present moment in pure
literature, which is now less concerned, we think, with these
questions than when Mr. Arnold wrote _Literature and Dogma_, and seems
more disposed to leave theology in the hands of the physical
scientists and the professional metaphysicians. However this may be,
it is to be seriously regretted that Mr. Swinburne's peremptory,
unscrupulous manner of dealing with religious forms and beliefs which
the world, perhaps, would not unwillingly let die, though by painless
extinction rather than by violence, has alienated reverent minds from
him, and has tarnished the brilliancy of his strenuous verse. The
sensuous frenzy of his juvenile poems is still remembered against him;
it betrayed a lack of moral dignity, of what the Greek poets, whom he
so much admired, meant by the word [Greek: aidos]. But we very
willingly acknowledge that of these excesses hardly a trace is to be
found in the very numerous pieces that fill the later volumes of his
collected poetry.

From these causes it has resulted that Mr. Swinburne does not, in our
opinion, now hold the position or command the influence which would
otherwise be accorded to one who may be reckoned the chief lyrical
poet of the second half of the nineteenth century; for after the
publication, in 1855, of _Maud_, Tennyson had passed his lyrical
climax, and Mr. Swinburne's superiority, as a lyrist, over all other
writers of that period is incontestable. His neo-paganism, moreover,
jars upon the realistic modernity of a generation for whom primitive
symbolism is obsolete as a form of expression, and whose prevailing
thought is too profoundly rationalistic to be attracted by a pagan
paradise. All this is to be regretted, since Mr. Swinburne undoubtedly
has the pagan virtues. His aspirations are concentrated on ideals that
ennoble the present life, on justice, inflexible courage, patriotism,
the unsophisticated intelligence; he loves liberty and he hates
oppression in all their shapes. He is throughout an optimist, who
believes and predicts that a clearer and brighter prospect is before
humanity. To Mr. Swinburne, in short, may be applied the words with
which Matthew Arnold summed up his essay upon Heine: 'He is not an
adequate interpreter of the modern world; he is a brilliant soldier in
the liberation war of humanity.' And future generations