Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/467

 read in certain directions; Algernon having, from a very early age, been 'privileged to have a book at meals '.

He came to Eton at Easter 1849, arriving, 'a queer little elf, who carried about with him a Bowdlerised Shakespeare, adorned with a blue silk book-marker, with a Tunbridge-ware button at the end of it'. This volume had been given to him by his mother when he was six years of age. Up to the time of his going to Eton he had never been allowed to read a novel, but he immediately plunged into the study of Dickens, as well as of Shakespeare (released from Bowdler), of the old dramatists, of every species of lyrical poetry. The embargo being now raised, he soon began to read everything. It is difficult to say what, by the time he left Eton, 'Swinburne did not know, and, what is more, appreciate, of English literature'. He devoured even that dull gradus the 'Poetæ Græci,' a book which he long afterwards said 'had played a large part in fostering the love of poetry in his mind'. In 1850 his mother gave him Dyce's Marlowe, and he soon knew Ford and Webster. He began, before he was fourteen, to collect rare editions of the dramatists. Any day he could be found in a bay-window of the college library, the sunlight in his hair, and his legs always crossed tailor-wise, with a folio as big as himself spread open upon his knees. The librarian, 'Grub' Brown, used to point him out, thus, to strangers as one of the curiosities of Eton. He boarded at Joynes's, who was his tutor; Hawtrey was headmaster.

It has been falsely said that Swinburne was bullied at Eton. On the contrary, there was 'something a little formidable about him', considerable tact , and a great, even audacious, courage, which kept other boys at a distance. He did not dislike Eton, but he cultivated few friendships; he did not desire school-honours, he never attempted any game or athletics, and he was looked upon as odd and inaccountable, and so left alone to his omnivorous reading. He was a kind of fairy, a privileged creature. Lord Redesdale recalls his taking 'long walks in Windsor Forest, always with a single friend, Swinburne dancing as he went, and reciting from his inexhaustible memory the works which he had been studying in his favourite sunlighted window.' Sir Greorge Young has described him vividly: 'his hands and feet all going' while he talked; 'his little white face, and great aureole of hair, and green eyes,' the hair standing out in a bush of 'three different colours and textures, orange-red, dark red, and bright pure gold.' Charles Dickens, at Bonchurch in 1849, was struck with 'the golden-haired lad of the Swinburnes' whom his own boys used to play with, and when he went to congratulate the poet on 'Atalanta' in 1865, he reminded him of this earlier meeting. In 1851 Algernon 'passed' in swimming, and at this time, in the holidays, caused some anxiety by his recklessness in riding and climbing; he swarmed up the Culver Cliff, hitherto held to be impregnable: a feat of which he was proud to the end of his life. Immediately on his arrival at Eton he had attacked the poetry of Wordsworth. In September 1849 he was taken by his parents to visit that poet in the Lakes; Wordsworth, who was very gracious, said in parting that he did not think that Algernon 'would forget' him, whereupon the little boy burst into tears (Miss Sewell's Autobiography). Earlier in the same year Lady Jane had taken her son to visit Rogers in London; and on this old man also the child made a strong impression. Rogers laid his hand on Algernon's head in parting, and said 'I think that you will be a poet, too!' He was, in fact, now writing verses, some of which his mother sent to 'Fraser's Magazine,' where they appeared, with his initials, in 1849 and again in 1851; but of this 'false start' he was afterwards not pleased to be reminded. It is interesting that at the age of fourteen many of his lifelong partialities and prejudices were formed; in the course of 1851 we find him immersed in Landor, Shelley and Keats, in the 'Orlando Furioso,' and in the tragedies of Corneille, and valuing them as he did throughout his life; while, on the other hand, already hating Euripides, insensible to Horace, and injurious to Racine. In the catholicity of his poetic taste there was one odd exception: he had promised his mother, whom he adored, not to read Byron, and in fact did not open that poet till he went to Oxford. In 1852, reading much French with Tarver, 'Notre Dame de Paris ' introduced him to Victor Hugo. He now won the second Prince Consort's prize for French and Italian, and in 1853 the first prizes for French and Italian. His Greek elegiacs were greatly admired. He was, however, making no real progress at school, and was chafing against the discipline; in the summer of 1853 he had trouble with Joynes, of a rebellious kind, and did not return to Eton, 'although nothing had