Page:Under the Microscope - Swinburne (1899).djvu/29

 of "gross profanity it gave evidence of emasculate obscenity," and a deliberate addiction to "the worship of Priapus." The virtuous journalist, I have observed, is remarkably fond of Priapus; his frequent and forcible allusions to "the honest garden-god" recur with a devout iteration to be found in no other worshipper; for one such reference in graver or lighter verse you may find a score in prose of the moral and critical sort. Long since, in that incomparable satiric essay which won for its young author the deathless applause of Balzac—"magnifique préface d'un livre magnifique"—Théophile Gautier had occasion to remark on the intimate familiarity of the virtuous journalist with all the occult obscenities of literature, the depth and width of range which his studies in that line would seem to have taken, if we might judge by his numerous and ready citations of the titles of indecent books with which he would associate the title of the book reviewed. This problematic intimacy the French poet finds no plausible way to explain; and with it we must leave the other problem on which I have touched above, in the hope that some day a more advanced stage of scientific