which both, in cheapness of form and foolishness of sentiment, may be
called the worst couplet in the world's literature. In his real poetry
(even in the same poem) his rhythm and rhyme are as original and
ambitious as Browning; and the only difference between him and Browning
is, not that he is smooth and without ridges, but that he always crests
the ridge triumphantly and Browning often does not--

"On thy bosom though many a kiss be,
There are none such as knew it of old.
Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe,
Male ringlets or feminine gold,
That thy lips met with under the statue
Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves
From the eyes of the garden-god at you
Across the fig-leaves."

Look at the rhymes in that verse, and you will see they are as stiff a
task as Browning's: only they are successful. That is the real strength
of Swinburne--a style. It was a style that nobody could really imitate;
and least of all Swinburne himself, though he made the attempt all
through his later years. He was, if ever there was one, an inspired
poet. I do not think it the highest sort of poet. And you never discover
who is an inspired poet until the inspiration goes.

With Swinburne we step into the circle of that later Victorian influence
which was very vaguely called Æsthetic. Like all human things, but
especially Victorian things, it was not only complex but confused.
Things in it that were at one on the emotional side were flatly at war
on the intellectual. In the section of the painters, it was the allies
or pupils of Ruskin, pious, almost painfully exact, and copying mediæval