Page:Posthumous poems (IA posthumousswinb00swin).pdf/11



poems which, with the help of Mr. Thos. J. Wise, I have endeavoured in the following pages to present, as far as possible, in chronological sequence, belong to the whole range of Swinburne's career as an author. The earliest was composed in 1857, the latest is dated 1907, and accordingly they cover, in their rapid and fluctuating passage, exactly half a century. Various circumstances, some of which will presently be told, though the majority have doubtless ceased to be discoverable, led to their being suppressed or forgotten, but none of them were destroyed by the poet, and of none of them have we found any evidence that he wished for their destruction. The only exception is the unsuccessful prize poem of 1858. This, there is reason to believe, Swinburne did wish, in the exasperation of disappointment, to wipe out of existence. But his father's care in concealing this innocent from the massacre of his son's juvenile verses, was justified by the merit of so remarkable a poem, which, on historical and critical grounds alike, we have determined to