Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/469

 years they 'lived on terms of affectionate intimacy; shaped and coloured, on his side, by cordial kindness and exuberant generosity, on mine by gratitude as loyal and admiration as fervent as ever strove and ever failed to express all the sweet and sudden passion of youth towards greatness in its elder' (from an unpublished statement, written by Swinburne in 1882). This was by far the most notable experience in Swinburne's career. Rossetti developed, restrained, and guided, with marvellous skill, the genius of 'my little Northumbrian friend,' as he used to call him. Under his persuasion Swinburne was now writing some of his finest early lyrics, and was starting a cycle of prose tales, to be called 'The Triameron'; this was to consist of some twenty stories. Of these ' Dead Love ' alone was printed in his lifetime; but several others exist unpublished, the most interesting being 'The Marriage of Mona Lisa,' 'A Portrait,' and 'Queen Fredegonde.' In the summer of 1861 he was introduced to Monckton Milnes, who actively interested himself in Swinbume's career. Early in 1862 Henry Adams, the American writer, then acting as Monckton Milnes's secretary, met Swinburne at Fryston on an occasion which he has described in his privately printed diary. The company also included Stirling of Keir (afterwards Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell) and Laurence Oliphant, and all Milnes's guests made Swinburne's acquaintance for the first time. He reminded Adams of 'a tropical bird,' 'a crimson macaw among owls'; and it was on this occasion that Stirling, in a phrase often misquoted, likened him to 'the Devil entered into the Duke of Argyll.' All the party, though prepared by Milnes's report, were astounded at the flow, the volume and the character of the young man's conversation; 'Voltaire's seemed to approach nearest to the pattern'; 'in a long experience, before or after, no one ever approached it.' The men present were brilliant and accomplished, but they 'could not believe in Swinburne's incredible memory and knowledge of literature, classic, mediæval and modern, nor know what to make of his rhetorical recitation of his own unpublished lyrics, "Faustine," "The Four Boards of the Coffin Lid" [a poem published as "After Death "], "The Ballad of Burdens," which he declaimed as though they were books of the " Hiad." 'These parties at Fryston were probably the beginning of the social 'legend' of Swinburne, which preceded and encouraged the reception of his works a few years later. It was at Milnes's house that he met and formed an instant friendship with Richard Burton. The relationship which ensued was not altogether fortunate. Burton was a giant and an athlete, one of the few men who could fire an old-fashioned elephant-gun from his shoulder, and drink a bottle of brandy without feeling any effect from it. Swinburne, on the contrary, was a weakling. He tried to compete with the ’hero' in Dr. Johnson's sense, and he failed.

He was being painted by Rossetti in February 1862 when the wife of the latter died so tragically; Swinburne gave evidence at the inquest (12 Feb.). In the spring of that year he joined his family in the Pyrenees, and saw the Lac de Gaube, in which he insisted on swimming, to the horror of the natives. He was now intimate with George Meredith, who printed, shortly before his death, an account of the overwhelming effect of FitzGerald's 'Rubaiyat' upon Swinburne, and the consequent composition of 'Laus Veneris,' probably in the spring of 1862. In this year Swinburne began to write, in prose as well as in verse, for the 'Spectator,' which printed ' Faustine' and six other important poems, and (6 Sept.) a very long essay on Baudelaire's 'Fleurs du Mal,' written ' in a Turkish bath in Paris.' A review of one of Victor Hugo's books, forwarded to the French poet, opened his personal relations with that chief of Swinburne's literary heroes. He now finished 'Chastelard,' on which he had long been engaged, and in October his prose story, 'Dead Love,' was printed in 'Once a Week' (this appeared in book form in 1864). Swinburne joined Meredith and the Rossettis (24 Oct. 1862) in the occupation of Tudor House, 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. Rossetti believed that it would be good for Swinburne to be living in the household of friends who would look after him without seeming to control him, since life in London lodgings was proving rather disastrous. Swinburne's extremely nervous organisation laid him open to great dangers, and he was peculiarly unfitted for dissipation. Moreover, about this time he began to be afficted with what is considered to have been a form of epilepsy, which made it highly undesirable that he should be alone.

In Paris, during a visit in March 1863, he had made the acquaintance of Whistler, whom he now introduced to Rossetti. Swinburne became intimate with Whistler's family, and after a fit in the summer of 1863 in the American painter's studio,