Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/14

x phases of his own will be unlikely to make himself the conscious or unconscious mouthpiece of a single school or a select coterie. So much I think may justly be claimed for this book; that it is not a channel for the transmission of other men's views on art, a conduit for the diffusion of praise or blame derived from foreign sources or discoloured by personal feelings. Twice only have I had occasion to review some part of the work of two eminent poets whose friendship I had enjoyed from my early youth: a fact which in the opinion of certain writers is more than sufficient to disqualify me from passing any sentence on their work that may be worthy of a moment's attention. The accident of personal intimacy, it should seem, deprives you of all right to express admiration of what you might allowably have found admirable in a stranger. I know not whether we are to infer that the one right which remains to a man in this sad case is the right of backbiting and belying; but it is certain that any indiscreet attempt to vindicate his right of praising what he finds to be praiseworthy will at once expose him to the risk of being classed among the members of a shadowy society which meets or does not meet for purposes of reciprocal adulation. In the present instance the fact of reciprocity might at first sight seem somewhat difficult to establish; considering that neither the one nor the other of the poets whom, though my friends, I have allowed myself to admire, and though their fellow-craftsman have permitted myself to praise, has ever published one sentence or one syllable of friendly or of adverse criticism