Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/153

Rh written, and none at all that it should have been published. It is far pleasanter, and indeed juster, to look back upon what is really satisfactory in the work of this erratic, factitious, passionate, myopic, but most real poet of ours, the inspired schoolboy of Parnassus.

Let us recall the power and fearlessness of his exposition; the instinct which has so often put its finger onto vague artistic notions floating about in the critical atmosphere, and made their actual truths perceptible to us ail; the special scraps of criticism really valuable. Let us recall the snatches of incomparable song, the wonders and splendours of rushing rhyme, the incomparable, gorgeous glimpses of face and form which we have had in our progress through the tropical jungle of his poetry. Then let us pause a moment in front of the shrine of a masterpiece! that rarest of terrestrial gifts, dipping our fingers in the holy shell, bending our heads to the wonderful image of Life and Death and Beauty which has made the three names of Baudelaire and Swinburne and Immortality sound as one.