Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/143

 of these was the copy I had when a schoolboy—how snatched betimes from the wreck and washed across my way I know not; but I remember well enough how then as now the songs of Callicles clove to my ear and memory. Early as this was, it was not my first knowledge of the poet; the "Reveller," the "Merman," the "New Sirens," I had mainly by heart in a time of childhood just ignorant of teens. I do not say I understood the latter poem in a literal or logical fashion, but I had enjoyment enough of its music and colour and bright sadness as of a rainy sunset or sundawn. A child with any ear or eye for the attraction of verse or art can dispense with analysis and rest content to apprehend it without comprehension; it were to be wished that adults equally incapable would rest equally content. Here I must ask, as between brackets, if this beautiful poem is never to be reissued after the example of its younger? No poet could afford to drop or destroy it; I might at need call into court older and better judges to back my judgment in this; meantime "I hope here be proofs" that, however inadequate may be my estimate of the poet on whom I am now to discourse, it is not inadequate through want of intimacy with his work. At the risk of egotism, I record it in sign of gratitude; I cannot count the hours of pure and high pleasure, I cannot reckon the help and guidance in thought and work, which I owe to him as to all other real and noble artists whose influence it was my fortune to feel when most susceptible of influence, and least conscious of it, and most in want. In one of his books, where he presses rather hard upon