Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/255

 idea, by the rapture of the music and the glory of the colour which clothe with sound and splendour the subtle and luminous body of its thought, by the harmony of its most passionate notes and the humanity of its most godlike raptures, it holds a foremost place in the works of that poet who has now for two generations ruled and moulded the hearts and minds of all among his countrymen to whom the love of poetry has been more than a fancy or a fashion; who has led them by the light of his faith, by the spell of his hope, by the fire of his love, on the way of thought which he himself had followed in the track of the greatest who had gone before him—of Æschylus, of Lucretius, of Milton; who has been more to us than ever was Byron to the youth of his own brief day, than ever was Wordsworth to the students of the day succeeding; and of whom, whether we class him as second or as third among English poets, it must be in either case conceded that he holds the same rank in lyric as Shakespeare in dramatic poetry—supreme, and without a second of his race. I would not pit his name against the sacred name of Milton; to wrangle for the precedence of this immortal or of that can be but futile and injurious; it is enough that our country may count among her sons two of the greatest among those great poets who have also been prophets and evangelists of personal and national, social and spiritual freedom; but it is equally certain that of all forms or kinds of poetry the two highest are the lyric and the dramatic, and that as clearly as the first place in the one rank is held among us by Shakespeare, the first place in the other is held and will never be resigned by Shelley.