To Frederick Stanley Smith, Esq.
SWINBLAKE: A PROPHETIC BOOK, WITH HOME ZARATHRUSTS.
Every student of Blake has read, or must read, Mr. Swinburne’s extraordinary essay, William Blake: a critical study, of which a new edition was recently published. It would be idle at this time of day to criticise. Much has been discovered, and more is likely to be discovered, about Blake since 1866. The interest of the book, for us, is chiefly reflex. And does not the great mouth laugh at a gift, if scheduled in an examination paper with the irritating question, ‘From what author does this quotation come?’ would probably elicit the reply, ‘Swinburne.’ Yet it occurs in one of Blake’s prophetic books.
How fascinated Blake would have been with Mr. Swinburne if by some exquisite accident he had lived after him. We should
have had, I fancy, another Prophetic Book; something of this kind:
Swinburne roars and shakes the world’s literature—
The English Press, and a good many contemporaries—
Tennyson palls, Browning is found—
Only a brownie—
The mountains divide, the Press is unanimous—
Aylwin is born—
On a perilous path, on the cliff of immortality—
I met Theodormon—
He seemed sad: I said, ‘Why are you sad—
Are you writing the long-promised life—
Of Dante Gabriel Rossetti?’—
He sighed and said, ‘No, not that—
Not that, my child—
I consigned the task to William Michael—
Pre-Raphaelite memoirs are cheap to-day—
You can have them for a sextet or an octave.’—
I brightened and said, ‘Then you are writing a sonnet?’
He shook his head and said it was symbolical—
For six and eightpence!—
A golden rule: Never lend only George Borrow—
A new century had begun, and I asked Theodormon what he was doing on that path and where Mr. Swinburne was. Beneath us yawned the gulf of oblivion.
‘Be careful, young man, not to tumble over; are you a poet or a biographer?’
I explained that I was merely a tourist. He gave a sigh of relief: ‘I have an appointment here with my only disciple, Mr. Howlglass; if you are not careful he may write an appreciation of you.’
‘My dear Theodormon, if you will show me how to reach Mr. Swinburne I will help you.’