Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/134

122 however, not quite so 'fiery a fidelity,' as Mr. Swinburne says, to historical truth:

'I am the Queen of Lesbians, My love, that had no part in man's, Was sweeter than all shape of sweet.'

And so on. To tell the truth, it reads rather more like an adapted extract from a poem called 'Anactoria,' where the fidelity of historical truth is also not as fiery as it might be. Nor is this trick the sole one here. There is the detestable trick of pure word-play, from the thraldom of which Mr. Swinburne has never quite freed himself. Did he not write the Sestina in the second series of Poems and Ballads, stans pede in uno, in the presence of at least three credible witnesses?

There is not a truly satisfactory poem in the book. It might easily be retorted that no one claimed that there was: that this is in reality only a first book, and that it is foolish to be emphatic about it. All this would be true enough if one were not ready to follow up Mr. Swinburne's lyric work and point out that, of the vast number of his poems, those which are truly satisfactory can be counted on the fingers, and perhaps on the fingers of one hand. It is all, or almost all, over-luxuriant promise and over-luxuriant fulfilment. There are verses and snatches in this first book that are lovely beyond words; but a verse