Page:Under the Microscope - Swinburne (1899).djvu/52

 "In Memoriam" with the Psalms of David as a work akin to these in scope and in effect; who compare the dramatic skill and subtle power to sound the depths of the human spirit displayed in "Maud" with the like display of these gifts in Hamlet and Othello. They are the men who would set his ode on the death of Wellington above Shelley's lines on the death of Napoleon, his "Charge of the Light Brigade" beside Campbell's "Battle of the Baltic" or Drayton's "Battle of Agincourt," the very poem whose model it follows afar off with such halting and unequal steps. They are the men who find in his collection of Arthurian idyls,—the Morte d'Albert as it might perhaps be more properly called, after the princely type to which (as he tells us with just pride) the poet has been fortunate enough to make his central figure so successfully conform,—an epic poem of profound and exalted morality. Upon this moral question I shall take leave to intercalate a few words. It does not appear to me that on the whole I need stand in fear of misapprehension or misrepresentation on one charge at least—that of envious or grudging reluctance to applaud the giver of any good gift for which all receivers should be glad to return thanks. I am not aware—but it is possible that this too maybe an instance of a man's blindness to his own defects—of having by any overt or covert demonstration of so vile a spirit exposed my