Swinburne and Walt WhitmanAuthor(s): Georges LafourcadeSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Jan., 1927), pp. 84-86Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3714071 .

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Miscellaneous Notes Miscellaneous Notes

thyself with God' etc.) be directly related to Vaughan's Rules and Lessons (of which Cowper marked 11. 3-4 and 7-12)? Certainly there were many other factors which might have encouraged Cowper to find

pleasure in external Nature and to approach its manifestations in a

spirit analogous to Vaughan's. But though we may be unable now to define the scope of this influence, it seems to have been real and to have received less attention than it deserves.

L. C. MARTIN. LIVERPOOL.

SWINBURNE AND WALT WHITMAN

Of all the recantations and repudiations which Swinburne was led to

pronounce in his later years, none has perhaps attracted more attention and censure than his so-called repudiation of Walt Whitman in 18871. It has been asserted: (a) that this attack was incompatible with his earlier praise of the poet; (b) that this unaccountable change in his attitude was altogether due to Watts-Dunton's influence. It is difficult to accept these two statements when one studies the case in the light of Swinburne's works and correspondence, and especially in the light of a page of criticism which has remained unpublished, or rather uniden- tified, for nearly sixty years.

Swinburne's first introduction to Whitman probably dates from 1862. In this year he writes enthusiastically to Lord Houghton about A Voice

from the Sea2; in 1866 he expresses to the same correspondent his warm

appreciation of Drum Taps. However, the last pages of the critical essay on William Blake (composed circa 1864) contain a more reticent and elaborate statement; Swinburne recognises that Whitman's (like Blake's) poetry has 'the melody and laxity of a fitful stormwind' although he has no 'place or time or wish' to dwell on the shortcomings and errors of either poet. In 1867 Nichol compels Swinburne to admit that even Drum Taps has its weaknesses3. Then comes the beautiful poem pub- lished in 1871 which is dedicated to the 'strong-winged soul':

With consonant ardours of chords That pierce men's souls as with swords

And hale them hearing along....4 It is of this poem that one chiefly thinks when one speaks of Swinburne's later 'apostasy.'

1 'Whitmania,' FortnightlyReview, August 1887. Reprinted inStudies inProse and Poetry. 2 Letter to Houghton, 18 August 1862. Quoted in Gosse's Life, p. 95 (only part of

Swinburne's letters to Lord Houghton have been printed). 3 Letter to Nichol, July 1867, privately printed. 4 Songs Before Sunrise: To Walt Whitman in America.

thyself with God' etc.) be directly related to Vaughan's Rules and Lessons (of which Cowper marked 11. 3-4 and 7-12)? Certainly there were many other factors which might have encouraged Cowper to find

pleasure in external Nature and to approach its manifestations in a

spirit analogous to Vaughan's. But though we may be unable now to define the scope of this influence, it seems to have been real and to have received less attention than it deserves.

L. C. MARTIN. LIVERPOOL.

SWINBURNE AND WALT WHITMAN

Of all the recantations and repudiations which Swinburne was led to

pronounce in his later years, none has perhaps attracted more attention and censure than his so-called repudiation of Walt Whitman in 18871. It has been asserted: (a) that this attack was incompatible with his earlier praise of the poet; (b) that this unaccountable change in his attitude was altogether due to Watts-Dunton's influence. It is difficult to accept these two statements when one studies the case in the light of Swinburne's works and correspondence, and especially in the light of a page of criticism which has remained unpublished, or rather uniden- tified, for nearly sixty years.

Swinburne's first introduction to Whitman probably dates from 1862. In this year he writes enthusiastically to Lord Houghton about A Voice

from the Sea2; in 1866 he expresses to the same correspondent his warm

appreciation of Drum Taps. However, the last pages of the critical essay on William Blake (composed circa 1864) contain a more reticent and elaborate statement; Swinburne recognises that Whitman's (like Blake's) poetry has 'the melody and laxity of a fitful stormwind' although he has no 'place or time or wish' to dwell on the shortcomings and errors of either poet. In 1867 Nichol compels Swinburne to admit that even Drum Taps has its weaknesses3. Then comes the beautiful poem pub- lished in 1871 which is dedicated to the 'strong-winged soul':

With consonant ardours of chords That pierce men's souls as with swords

And hale them hearing along....4 It is of this poem that one chiefly thinks when one speaks of Swinburne's later 'apostasy.'

1 'Whitmania,' FortnightlyReview, August 1887. Reprinted inStudies inProse and Poetry. 2 Letter to Houghton, 18 August 1862. Quoted in Gosse's Life, p. 95 (only part of

Swinburne's letters to Lord Houghton have been printed). 3 Letter to Nichol, July 1867, privately printed. 4 Songs Before Sunrise: To Walt Whitman in America.

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Miscellaneous Notes

The pamphlet entitled Under the Microscope (1872) is far more critical: we are told that there is in Whitman a poet and a formalist, and that the latter is unworthy of the praise deserved by the former; and although Swinburne is entirely at one with Whitman on life and politics, yet 'it is not enough to have a new creed, you must deliver it well,' and some of the American poet's 'undigested formulas' are worse than Pope's or Boileau's. The critical attitude is still marked in a letter of 1875 in which it is stated that 'when Whitman is not speaking bad prose he

sings, and when he sings at all he sings well '; and it definitely hardens in 1876 when he is declared to be writing 'such damned and damnable rubbish2.' The storm is gathering when in 1885 Swinburne, while pro- fessing to retain admiration for 'not a little' of Whitman's earlier works, denounces his 'habit of vague and flatulent language3'; and with the

sultry days of August 1887 came the cloudburst, the article 'Whitmania,' from which endless amazing quotations have been and could be made to support the view of an actual recantation; the following sentence, though less striking and vituperative than many others, is perhaps clearest and most definite: 'I never have meant to imply...that I re-

garded Mr Whitman as a poet or a thinker in the proper sense.' This rapid collation of the most important documents is sufficient to

lighten Watts's responsibility considerably and to show that Swinburne's reticence grew normally and logically and did not spring into existence like a monstrous toadstool. However, there seems to be a break in his attitude before and after 1871; Under the Microscope stands in clear contrast to William Blake and the review of l'Homme qui rit in that

respect. But this is merely an appearance. As early as 1867 Swinburne was making on Whitman's poetry the very reservations which he was to develop later. The gap can be filled and his intellectual attitude

proved to be continuous. In 1868 J. C. Hotten published a volume of 'Poems by Walt Whitman,

selected and edited by W. M. Rossetti'; the editor in a prefatory note

attempts to clear Whitman of some charges, but first, 'not to slur over 1 Letter to E. C. Stedman, 20 February 1875. The Letters of A. C. Swinburne (Heine-

mann), London 1918, I, p. 201. 2 Letter to Lord Houghton, 29 March 1876. Letters, I, p. 279. In an unpublished letter

(dated 4 April 1876), which I have just come across, I find a longer and more significant passage which I am given permission to quote here: 'Pity he [Whitman] has no friend at hand to keep him from writing such damned nonsense about poetry and verse as I saw quoted in the Examiner-the most blatant bray of impotent and impudent ignorance I ever heard except from the throat of Bavius-Buchanan or Maevius-Maitland. These are the things that make it difficult always to remember and compromising often to assert the existence of his really high qualities.' This supplies a new 'landmark' which is by no means to be neglected.

3 Letter to Edmund Gosse, 21 February 1885. Letters, II, p. 153.

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Miscellaneous Notes

his defects' he will 'extract some sentences from a letter which a friend, most highly entitled to form and express an opinion on any poetic question-one too who abundantly upholds the greatness of Walt Whitman as a poet-has addressed to me....' This friend was Swinburne.

Since September 1867 W. M. Rossetti had been corresponding with Swinburne about his intended volume of selections from Whitman. On 10 October 1867 he informed Swinburne that he had 'bodily translated into his preface' a passage from one of his letters about Whitman's 'bluster,' and had quoted it as the opinion of a friend 'highly entitled to express his opinion,' etc. The letter is in the library of Mr T. J. Wise whom I have to thank for allowing me to examine the Swinburne- Rossetti correspondence. It clearly proves the authorship of the passage which I now quote:

I don't think that you quite put strength enough into your blame on one side, while you make at least enough of minor faults or eccentricities. To me it seems always that Whitman's great flaw is a fault of debility, not an excess of strength- I mean his bluster. His own personal and national self-reliance and arrogance, I need not tell you, I applaud and sympathize and rejoice in; but the frothy and blatant ebullience of feeling and speech, at times, is very feeble for so great a poet of so great a people. He is in part certainly the poet of democracy; but not wholly, because he tries so openly to be, and asserts so violently that he is-always as if he was fighting the case out on a platform. This is the only thing I really or greatly dislike or revolt from. On the whole my admiration and enjoyment of his greatness grows keener and warmer every time I think of him.

(W. M. Rossetti altered 'frothy and blatant' to 'blatant' and 'very feeble' to 'feeble.')

This interesting page is not merely a sound piece of criticism; it may not unfairly be considered as the key and justification to Swinburne's whole attitude: here are, expressed or implied, all the main points upon which Swinburne will fasten later in his franker and less measured censure of Whitman; and this short letter is moreover in strict accordance with Swinburne's Lesthetic theories in the 'sixtiets. Some adjectives ('frothy,' 'blatant,' etc.) are strong enough to have been borrowed from 'Whitmania.' If we take into consideration that between 1867 and the publication of the 'recantation' many years had elapsed, that age and deafness had brought irritability, that a man's style changes with the years, that all that Whitman had published was not equally excellent, and if we carefully add to this mixture of considerations three or four drops of Wattsian influence, it strikes me that the revolution (or evolu- tion) in Swinburne's attitude has been very sufficiently accounted for.

GEORGES LAFOURCADE. LONDON.

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