MODERN ENGLISH POETS II.* A. CH. SWINBURNE. [Westminster Review, April, 1867.] And a THE artisan hero of Mr. Charles Kingsley's earliest and best novel, in recounting the poetic influences which had especially swayed and shaped his mind, assigns the highest place in this work to Mr. Tennyson. generalizing from this fact he asks and answers question. 'Why is it,' he says, 'that the latest poet has generally the greatest influence over the minds of the young? Surely not for the mere charm of novelty? The reason is, that he, living amid the same hopes, the same temptations, the same sphere of observation as they, gives utterance and outward form to the very questions which, vague and wordless, have been exercising their hearts.' The fact alleged and the reason given are strictly and even obviously true. The forms of thought and feeling of living men are wrought upon more vitally by a third-rate living poet than by dead Homers and Dantes and Shakspeares. And so it is a great calamity to any age, that it should fail to produce * Atalanta in Calydon: a Tragedy-Chastelard:_a Tragedy-Poems and Ballads-Notes on Poems and Reviews. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. London, 1866. English Essays II. 1 |