Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/198

 responsible criticism—qualities due to no prescription of academic authority, but in part to natural sense and self-respect, in part to the code of habitual honour which rather impels than compels a man to avow his words and his works—these qualities, which preserve from mere contempt even the Philistines of French literature when we turn from them to their English fellow-soldiers, have I suspect blinded Mr. Arnold to the real colours under which they also serve. As yet however they have not made a prey of him; Delilah has merely woven the seven locks of the champion's head with the web and fastened it with the pin; he has but to awake out of his sleep and go away with the pin of the beam and with the web. But next time he goes to Gaza and sees there the Academy he must beware of going in unto that siren, or in the morning he may find the gates too heavy to carry off. We may trust indeed never to find him there eyeless at the mill with slaves; but it is no good sign that he should ever be blind of this eye or deaf of that ear—blind to infirmities on this side, or deaf to harmonies on that. I write not as a disciple of the dishevelled school, "romantique à tous crins;" all such false and foolish catchwords as the names of classic and romantic I repudiate as senseless, and revere form or harmony as the high one law of all art. It is because, both as poet and critic, Mr. Arnold has done the service he has in the front rank of an army which finds among us few enough of able recruits, that I grudge in him the least appearance of praise or dispraise unworthy of his rank and office. Otherwise he would be as welcome for me as another Englishman to deny the power and variety, the supple sweetness and the superb resources of French verse in its depths and heights of song;