Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/468

 been said during the half about his leaving'. When he left he was within a few places of the headmaster's division.

In 1854 there was some talk of his being trained for the army, which he greatly desired; but this was abandoned on account of the slightness and shortness of his figure. All his life he continued to regret the military profession. He was prepared for Oxford, in a desultory way, by John Wilkinson, perpetual curate of Cambo in Northumberland, who said that he 'was too clever and would never study.' He now spent a few weeks in Germany with his uncle. General the Hon. Thomas Ashburnham. On 24 Jan. 1856 Swinburne matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford, and he kept terms regularly through the years 1856. 1857, and 1858. After the first year his high-church proclivities fell from him and he became a nihilist in religion and a republican. He had portraits of Mazzini in his rooms, and declaimed verses to them ; in the spring of 1857 he wrote an 'Ode to Mazzini,' not yet published, which is his earliest work of any maturity. In this year, while at Capheatop, he formed the friendship of Lady Trevelyan and Miss Capel Lofft, and was for the next four years a member of their cultivated circle at Wallington. Here Ruskin met him, and formed a very high opinion of his imaginative capacities. In the autumn Edwin Hatch [q.v.] introduced him to B. G. Rossetti, who was painting in the Union, and in December the earliest of Swinburne's contributions to 'Undergraduate Papers’ appeared. To this time belong his friendships with John Nichol, Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris, and Spencer Stanhope. Early in 1858 he was writing his tragedy of ’Rosamond,' a poem on 'Tristram,' and planning a drama on 'The Albigenses.' In March 1858 Swinburne dined at Farringford with Tennyson, who thought him 'a very modest and intelligent young fellow' and read ’Maud' to him, urging upon him a special devotion to Virgil. In April the last of the 'Undergraduate Papers' appeared. In the Easter term Swinburne took a second in moderations, and won the Taylorian' scholarship for French and Italian. He now accompanied his parents to France for a long visit. The attempt of Orsini, in January 1858, to murder Napoleon III had found an enthusiastic admirer in Algernon, who decorated his rooms at Oxford with Orsini's portrait, and proved an embarrassing fellow-traveller in Paris to his parents. He kept the Lent and Easter terms of 1859 at Balliol, and when the Austrian war broke out in May, he spoke at the Union, 'reading excitedly but ineffectively a long tirade against Napoleon and in favour of Orsini and Mazzini'. He began to be looked upon as 'dangerous,' and Jowett, who was much interested in him, expressed an extreme dread that the college might send him down and so 'make Balliol as ridiculous as University had made itself about Shelley.' At this time Swinburne had become what he continued to be for the rest of his life, a high tory republican. He cultivated few friends except those who immediately interested him poetically and politically. But he was a member of the club called the Old Mortality, in which he was associated with Nichol, Dicey, Luke (who was drowned in 1861), T. H. Green, Caird, and Pater, besides Mr. Bryce and Mr. Bywater.

Jowett thought it well that Swinburne should leave Oxford for a while at the end of Easter term, 1859, and sent him to read modern history with William Stubbs [q. v. Suppl. II] at Navestock. Here Swinburne recited to his host and hostess a tragedy he had just completed (probably 'The Queen Mother'). In consequence of some strictures made by Stubbs, Swinburne destroyed the only draft of the play, but was able to write it all out again from memory. He was back at the university from 14 Oct. to 21 Nov., when he was principally occupied in writing a three-act comedy in verse in the manner of Fletcher, now lost; it was called 'Laugh and Lie Down.' He had lodgings in Broad Street, where the landlady made complaints of his late hours and general irregularities. Jowett was convinced that he was doing no good at Oxford, and he left without taking a degree. His father was greatly displeased with him, but Algernon withdrew to Capheaton, until, in the spring of 1860, he came to London, and took rooms near Russell Place to be close to the Burne-Joneses. He had now a very small allowance from his father, and gave up the idea of preparing for any profession. Capheaton was still his summer home, but when Sir John Swinburne died (26 Sept. 1860) Algernon went to the William Bell Scotts' in Newcastle for some time. His first book, 'The Queen Mother and Rosamond,' was published before Christmas; it fell dead from the press.

When Algernon returned to London early in 1861 his friendship with D. G. Rossetti became intimate; for the next ten