Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/141

Rh the face of a really extraordinary insistence on all sides that the prose was all and the poetry next to nothing, it says something for the critical intuition of the man who could flatly deny this. This judgment on Arnold is not taken as a solitary example. Mr. Swinburne has rarely failed to recognise high fellow-workmen, and his recognition has been followed by praise, if sometimes forced, almost always generous. In his pet affections as in his pet aversions (to have spoken ill of the former is at once and for ever to make a man one of the latter) he has been extreme; but, on the whole he has been loyal to his perception of high fellow-work, if not of high fellow-workers, and that, for a man of letters, is something—nay, it is much. Let us take some samples of his criticism of individual poems.

Here is Arnold's little poem, 'Requiescat.' 'Without show of beauty or any thought or fancy, it leaves long upon the ear an impression of simple, of earnest, of weary melody wound up into a sense of rest' How admirable! Again: Rossetti's 'song of the sea-beach, called "Even So," which dies out with a suppressed sigh like the last breath or heart-beat of a yearning, weak-winged wind.' (There is a little touch of 'preciousness' here, but that is nothing.) And critical scraps like these are to be found passim. Add, then, that same unerring intuition which