Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/86

 favour, any clever young fellow from a university can force them. And it thus happens that the Fleshly School, without ever reaching the general public, is in favour with the literary amateurs who yearly swarm from college, and ruin the profession of literature by writing anywhere and everywhere free of charge.

From time immemorial, poets of the Artificial School have written in the same way, and been admired for the same tricks; and indeed our modern poets can stand no comparison, even in subtle grossness, with their progenitors. Here are Cowley's lines on a paper written in juice of lemon, and read by the fire:—

Nothing yet in thee is seen; But when a genial heat warms thee within, A new-born wood of various lines there grows, Here buds an L, and there a B, Here spouts a V, and there a T, And all the flourishing letters stand in rows;"

which the reader may advantageously compare with Mr. Rossetti's description of a love-letter in p. 198 of his volume. The master above quoted, in his "Davideis," has the following awful passage:—

The sun himself started with sudden fright, To see his beams return so dismal light!"

This is performing a miracle certainly, but Mr. Rossetti performs a greater—he makes the "Silence" speak:—

But therewithal the tremulous Silence said: 'Lo, Love yet bids thy lady, &c. (Page 206.)

Thus sings, or screams, Mr. Swinburne:—

Ah, that my lips were tuneless lips, but pressed To the bruised blossom of thy scourged white breast! Ah, that my mouth, for Muses' milk, were fed On the sweet blood thy sweet small wounds had bled!