a verse-writer of not unusual talent and insignificance, whose affluence
of words was inselective and merely abundant, and whose poverty of
thought was something less than a national disaster. Swinburne's failure
of intellect was, in the fullest and most serious sense, a national
disaster, and his instinct for words was a national surprise. It is in
their beauty that Swinburne's art finds its absolution from the
obligations of meaning, according to the vulgar judgement; and we can
hardly wonder.

I wish it were not customary to write of one art in the terms of another,
and I use the words "music" and "musical" under protest, because the
world has been so delighted to call any verse pleasant to the ear
"musical," that it has not supplied us with another and more specialised
and appropriate word. Swinburne is a complete master of the rhythm and
rhyme, the time and accent, the pause, the balance, the flow of vowel and
clash of consonant, that make the "music" for which verse is popular and
prized. We need not complain that it is for the tune rather than for the
melody--if we must use those alien terms--that he is chiefly admired, and
even for the jingle rather than for the tune: he gave his readers all
three, and all three in perfection. Nineteen out of twenty who take
pleasure in this art of his will quote you first

When the hounds of Spring are on winter's traces
The Mother of months, in meadow and plain,

and the rest of the buoyant familiar lines. I confess there is something
too obvious, insistent, emphatic, too dapper, to give me more than a
slight pleasure; but it is possible that I am prejudiced by a dislike of
English anapaests (I am aware that the classic terms are not really
applicable to our English metres, but the reader will underhand that I