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I loved those sessions in that Tupperossettine dining-room, lair of solid old comfort and fervid old romanticism. Its odd duality befitted well its owner. The distinguished critic and poet, Rossetti's closest friend and Swinburne's, had been, for a while, in the dark ages, a solicitor; and one felt he had been a good one.
Lee, whose education in a French convent, aided by her father's influence, had introduced her extensively to the knowledge of Catholic families in England land, and who had herself an invitation to the same house at the same time, wrote to offer the use of her carriage to convey all three i.e., herself, my sister, and her governess to Mr. Swinburne's.
The narrative does little to advance the general plot. In the original of Malory it has no connection with the Lancelot cycle, except as far as it reveals the treachery of Gawain, the gay and fair-spoken "light of love," brother of the traitor Modred. A simpler treatment of the theme may be read in Mr Swinburne's beautiful poem, The Tale of Balen.
In about a quarter of an hour, the gun-boats opened their fire with their long thirty-two pounders, and their first shot went right through the hull of the brig, just abaft the fore-bits; fortunately, no one was hurt. I turned round to look at the captain; he was as white as a sheet. He caught my eye, and turned aft, when he was met by Swinburne's eye, steadily fixed upon him.
I looked at him in surprise and a little alarm he spoke with so much suppressed anger, and his eyes glittered so strangely. "No," I answered frankly. "I never saw her leave the room." "I did," he said. "She slipped out like a ghost, or a witch, or an angel, while I was singing the last verse of Swinburne's song. Do you know Swinburne, mademoiselle?"
Though Milton and Shakespeare made their grand Soul-Symbols, by virtue of a cosmic force moving them as it has moved no others in the language, you cannot find in their works, or in any works of that age, such clear perceptions or statements of spiritual truth as in Swinburne's Songs before Sunrise; nor was the brain-mind of either of those giants of the Middle Period capable of such conscious mystic thought as Wordsworth's.
Those who will not change will die! We always have this assurance, and in this battle for independence, many a woman has found comfort in poor Swinburne's pagan hymn of thanksgiving: From too much love of living, From fear of death set free, We thank thee with brief thanksgiving, Whatever gods there be!
"Atalanta" was a revelation; there was a new and original poet here, a Balliol man, too. In my own mind "Atalanta" remains the best, the most beautiful, the most musical of Mr. Swinburne's many poems. He instantly became the easily parodied model of undergraduate versifiers. Swinburnian prize poems, even, were attempted, without success. As yet we had not seen Mr. Matthew Arnold's verses.
All at once there flashed through her mind again, as on that night so many centuries ago, when she had slept the last sleep of her life as it was, Swinburne's lines on Baudelaire: "There is no help for these things, none to mend and none to mar; Not all our songs, oh, friend, can make death clear Or make life durable...."
Now I'll just tell you an instance it was at a party somewhere it was at that tiresome Mrs. Swinburne's, where the evenings are always so stupid, and there was nothing worth going or staying for but the supper except Mr. Carleton and he never stays five minutes, except at two or three places; and it drives me crazy, because they are places I don't go to very often "
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