And I reflect that there is great
stuff in Putney for a poet, and marvel that Swinburne never perceived it
and used it. He must have been born English, and in the nineteenth
century, by accident. He was misprized while living. That is nothing. What
does annoy me is that critics who know better are pandering to the
national hypocrisy after his death. In a dozen columns he has been sped
into the unknown as "a great Victorian"! Miserable dishonesty! Nobody was
ever less Victorian than Swinburne. And then when these critics have to
skate over the "Poems and Ballads" episode--thin, cracking ice!--how they
repeat delicately the word "sensuous," "sensuous." Out with it, tailorish
and craven minds, and say "sensual"! For sensual the book is. It is fine
in sensuality, and no talking will ever get you away from that. Villiers
de l'Isle-Adam once wrote an essay on "Le Sadisme anglais," and supported
it with a translation of a large part of "Anactoria." And even Paris was
startled. A rare trick for a supreme genius to play on the country of his
birth, enshrining in the topmost heights of its literature a lovely poem
that cannot be discussed!... Well, Swinburne has got the better of us
there. He has simply knocked to pieces the theory that great art is
inseparable from the Ten Commandments.
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