Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/94

 hours," "Loves" with "gonfalons," damsels with "citherns," "soft-complexioned" skies; flowers, fruits, jewels, vases, apple-blossoms, lutes: I see no gleam of nature, not a sign of humanity; I hear only the heated ravings of an affected lover, indecent for the most part, and often blasphemous. I attempt to describe Mr. Swinburne; and lo! the Bacchanal screams, the sterile Dolores sweats, serpents dance, men and women wrench, wriggle, and foam in an endless alliteration (quite in Gascoigne's manner) of heated and meaningless words, the veriest garbage of Baudelaire flowered over with the epithets of the Della Cruscans.

"One moment!" observes a candid person as I write; "the emptiness and grossness of these may be admitted; but are not these writers quite unimpeachable on the ground of poetic form, and is that not a certain merit?" Something on this head has been said already. Let it be further said that no unsound soul is clad in a sound form; and that what holds true of matter and thought holds equally true of manner and style: both may seem rapid and strong, but neither will bear five minutes' criticism. Imagine an English writer pluming himself on his careful choice of diction, and publishing such a verse as the following:—

Nothing is better, I well think, Than love; the hidden well-water Is not so delicate to drink: This was well seen of me and her." Poems and Ballads.

Or this other of Mr. Rossetti:—

In painting her I shrined her face 'Mid mystic trees, where light falls in Hardly at all; a covert place Where you might think to find a din