Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/91

 conceit in the true Della Cruscan style, from Mr. Rossetti's works. A very shadowy Entity is speaking, in a poem affectedly called "A Superscription:"—

Look in my face: my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell; Unto thine ear I hold the dead sea-shell," &c. (Page 234.)

This passage, although quite in the ancient manner, was perhaps composed on one of those days when Mr. Rossetti goes poaching in Mr. Swinburne's French "Slough of Uncleanness," for we find Baudelaire making use of very similar language:—

Trois mille six cents fois par heure, la Seconde Chuchote: Souviens-toi! Rapide avec sa voix D'insecte, Maintenant dit: Je suis Autrefois!" Fleurs de Mal, p. 245.

Truly, this sort of reading is wearing to the brain!

I have already alluded more than once to the foolish fleshliness which permeates the contemporary treatment of even avowedly religious themes. For example, when Mr. Rossetti writes about the Virgin Mary, he begins in the true fantastic spirit of those older writers who spiritualised sensualism in their addresses to the Bridegroom and the Magdalen.

he exclaims; and then proceeds with the following jargon:—

Handmaid perfect in God's sight, Now sitting fourth beside the Three, Thyself a woman-Trinity,— Being a daughter born to God, Mother of Christ from stall to rood, And Wife unto the Holy Ghost!!"

The poem improves as it proceeds, but it is fleshly to the