he Sundering Flood," is a war story which attains an
air of geographical precision by means of a map--like the plan of Egdon
Heath in "The Return of the Native"--but the region and its inhabitants
are alike fabulous. Romances such as "The Water of the Wondrous Isles"
and "The Wood beyond the World" (the names are not the least imaginative
feature of these curious books) are simply a new kind of fairy tales.
Unsubstantial as Duessa or Armida or Circe or Morgan le Fay are the
witch-queen of the Wood beyond the World and the sorceress of the
enchanted Isle of Increase Unsought. The white Castle of the Quest, with
its three champions and their ladies, Aurea, Atra, and Viridis; the
yellow dwarfs, the magic boat, the wicked Red Knight, and his den, the
Red Hold; the rings and spells and charms and garments of invisibility
are like the wilder parts of Malory or the Arabian Nights.

Algernon Charles Swinburne was an early adherent of the Pre-Raphaelite
school, although such of his work as is specifically Gothic is to be
found mainly in the first series of "Poems and Ballads" (1866);[57] a
volume which corresponds to Morris' first fruits, "The Defence of
Guenevere." If Morris is prevailingly a Goth--a heathen Norseman or
Saxon--Swinburne is, upon the whole, a Greek pagan. Rossetti and Morris
inherit from Keats, but Swinburne much more from Shelley, whom he
resembles in his Hellenic spirit; as well as in his lyric fervour, his
shrill radicalism--political and religious--and his unchastened
imagination. Probably the cunningest of English metrical artists, his
art is more closely affiliated with music than with painting. Not that
there is any paucity of imagery in his poetry; the imagery is
superabundant, crowded, but it is blurred by an iridescent spray of
melodious verbiage. The confusion of mind which his work often produces
does not arise from romantic vagueness, from the dreamlike and mysterious
impression left by a ballad of Coleridge's or a story of Tieck's, but
rather, as in Shelley's case, from the dizzy splendour and excitement of
the diction. His verse, like Shelley's, is full of foam and flame, and
the result upon the reader is to bewilder and exhaust. He does not
describe in pictures, like Rossetti and Morris, but by metaphors,
comparisons, and hyperboles. Take the following very typical
passage--the portrait of Iseult in "Tristram of Lyonesse" (1882);

"The very veil of her bright flesh was made
As of l