Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/81

 that the reader feels a horrible sense of sliminess, as if he were handling a yellow serpent or a conger eel. Let me try blindfold once more for another "draw." This time my prize is from "Troy Town;" but, before I quote, let me once more premise that the poem as a whole is fleshlier and sillier than any extract. Helen's breasts, described by herself:—

Each twin breast is an apple sweet!Mine are apples grown to the south (O Troy Town!) Grown to taste in the days of drouth, Taste and waste to the heart's desire; Mine are apples meet for his mouth!"

So that Paris, poor fellow, has a fair prospect of being suckled by Helen, and is likely, after "tasting" her "apples" or "breasts meet for his mouth," to "waste" them (whatever that means) "to his heart's desire."

But already I hear the amazed reader cry, with Macbeth, "Hold, enough!" I have thus piled example upon example, all out of one small volume of verse; and I might readily go on quoting for pages more. I reject altogether the insinuation that my criticism was based on private grounds. I do not know Mr. Rossetti, have no grievance against him, and I can quite believe that in private life he is a most exemplary person; but in his poetry—to go no further at present than that very small phase of a portentous phenomenon—there is a veritably stupendous preponderance of sensuality and sickly animalism. I base that belief, not merely on stray expressions such as I quoted, not merely on lines about the "lipping of limbs," bubbling of kisses, "fawning of lips" in bed, munching of mouths, and