Sims.) There are poems of Tennyson, of Wordsworth, even of the speciously
recondite Browning, that have entered into the general consciousness. But
nothing of Swinburne's! Swinburne had no moral ideas to impart. Swinburne
never publicly yearned to meet his Pilot face to face. He never galloped
on one of Lord George Sanger's horses from Aix to Ghent. He was interested
only in ideal manifestations of beauty and force. Except when he grieved
the judicious by the expression of political crudities, he never connected
art with any form of morals that the British public could understand. He
sang. He sang supremely. And it wasn't enough for the British public. The
consequence was that his fame spread out as far as under-graduates, and
the tiny mob of under-graduates was the largest mob that ever worried
itself about Swinburne. Their shouts showed the high-water mark of his
popularity. When one of them wrote in a facetious ecstasy over "Dolores,"
_But you came, O you procuratores_
_And ran us all in!_
that moment was the crown of Swinburne's career as a popular author. With
its incomparable finger on the public pulse the _Daily Mail_, on the day
when it announced Swinburne's death, devoted one of its placards to the
performances of a lady and a dog on a wrecked liner, and another to the
antics of a lunatic with a revolver.
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