. Then, looking over his shoulder, he uttered
a half-audible word or two, which, being plainly not addressed to me,
must have been addressed to somebody else. Presently, out of the
shadows, a somebody else emerged. This was a person remarkable for the
large size of his head, his longish hair, his insignificant stature, and
his singularly sloping shoulders. I was introduced to him without
catching his name. Dinner was announced forthwith. It was evident that,
except for myself, this person was to be the sole guest. In the
candlelight of the dinner table I realized that this person was
Swinburne.

The dinner passed off pleasantly. Swinburne showed himself an
intelligent, though by no means a brilliant, talker; and as soon as we
had returned to the drawing room, where we drank a cup of coffee
standing, Jowett, who had some engagement, abruptly left us to finish
the evening by ourselves. On Swinburne the effect of the Master's
disappearance was magical. His manner and aspect began to exhibit a
change like that of the moon when a dim cloud drifts away from it. Of
what we discussed at starting I have not the least remembrance, but
before very long Swinburne was on the subject of poetry. His
observations at first consisted of general criticisms. Then he began to
indulge in quotations from various poems--none of them, I think, from
his own; but, however this may have been, the music seemed to intoxicate
him. The words began to thrill me with the spell of his own recitation
of them. Here at last I realized the veritable genius who had made the
English language a new instrument of passion. Here at last was the
singer for whose songs my ears were shells which still murmured with
such lines as I had first furtively read by the gaslight of the Brighton
theater. My own appreciation as a listener more and more encouraged him.
If he began a quotation sitting, he would start from his chair to finish
it. Finally he abandoned the restraints of a chair altogether. He began,
with gesticulating arms, to pace the room from one end to the other,
reciting passage after passage, and appealing to me, who managed to keep
pace with him, for applause. "The most beautiful lines that Tennyson
ever wrote," he exclaimed, "were these, from 'Maud':

"And like silent lightning under the stars
She seemed to divide in a dream from a band of the blest.

"Yes," he went on, "and what did the dream-Maud tell her lover when she
had got him? That the