SWIN'BlJRNE. ALGERNON CHARLES (1S37 —). Au English poet. son of Admiral Charles Henry Swintairne and Lady Henrietta Jane. daughter of the third Earl of Ashburnham. He was born in London. April 5, 1s37, and was edu cated at Eton and at 1ial1iol College, Oxford]. There he contributed prose and verse to Under graduate Papers, by .Tulin After three year; he left I)xford (1860) Nvithout a degree and traveled on the Continent, visiting Land, r at Florence (1864). Returning to England, he be came closely associated with his brother ro mantics, Dante Cabricl IZossetti and William :Morris. Having written The Queen Mother and nosuniond (1s60), two dramas recalling the fire of the Elizabethan age. he published Atulo»ta in ralmlon ( 181151 , a beautiful lyric drama east in tin- mold of ancient tragedy. The next year he awakened violent criticism with Poems and Ballads. To Id; assailants Swinton-tie re plied with unmeasured scorn in :Votes POrnIS and Iterimrs (1S(161. the few pieces that reasonably disturbed the moralists, the vol nine contained melodlions lyrics covering a wide of motives, Hebrew, Greek, and media-val. Swinlimme now' emnposed a series of eloquent odes, which won universal attention and again exposed him to censure. Beginning. with "A Song of Italy" (1867), they reach a point where "the beinids flash" in S'onas Ifrfore (10,71). celebrating the conflict between darkness and dawn. tyranny and freedom in revolutionary Europe. in the meantime bad appeared several lyrics on other themes, of which the finest was alque Vale" (1868), in memory of Bantle laire. In 1865 Swinburne published Chastelard, a romantic tragedy on the first period in the career of \iary Queen of Scots. Ile eontinued her history in Bothwell (1874) and afterwards completed it in Mary Stuart (1881). The im posing trilogy is a ehroniele history cast in dramatic form with no view to the stage. The poems thus fa r enumerated fairly represent Swinburne, his originality. his extraordinary command over hitherto unsuspected sources of melody, his passion and vehemence.
With occasional fall in power, Swinburne pro duced Erechthens (1876), a second and more restrained classical drama; a second series of Poems and Ballads (ISIS) ; the grand odes to Victor lingo; various beautiful sonnets; trans lations from Villon; Songs of Two Nations (1575) ; Songs of the Springtides (1SSO) ; Studies in Song (1880) ; Tristram of Lyonesse and Other Poems passionate verse haunted by the rhythm of the sea; A Century of Roundels (1883) : A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems (1884) ; Marino Faller°, a tragedy (1885) ; Loerine, a tragedy (1887) ; a third series of Poems and Ballads (1880) ; The Sisters, a tragedy (1592) ; Astrophel old Other Poems (1804) ; The Tale of Palen (1896) ; and Rosa mund, Queen of the Lombards, a tragedy (1899).
The earlier attitude of defiant revolt against the conventional social order, against kings and priests, prevented his appointment as laureate on the death of Tennyson in 1892. though be was acknowledged as the greatest surviving English poet. In his later years, however, the note of re bellion was less violently sounded, and other feelings, characteristically English, the love of the sea and of little children, held a large place in his poems. As an artist in verse, by his un surpassed command of all the resources of metric al technique, he takes a unique position. He invented a number of new rhythmic forms, and used none of the old without developing new beauties in them. His chief defect was the natural outcome of his exceptional facility of utterance and impatience of restraint, which al lows him frequently to pour forth long sequences of sonorous strains with but little regard to sense. In criticism Swinburne 's attention is paid chiefly to the Elizabethan dramatists, though he has indeed made excursions elsewhere, not sparing contemporary singers. These es says have been partially collected in Essays and Studies (1875), A Study of Shakespeare (1880). and Miscellanies (1886). Into his prose Swim hurne carried something of the passion of his verse. Notwithstanding the occasional exaggera tion. into which this leads him, and much faulty reasoning, his conclusions are likely to he true. With wonderful insight he sees the truth, but deceives himself when he conies to state the way in which be arrived at it. His prose, too, has caught the alliteration, resonance, and undulating rhythm of his verse. Consult: Stedman, l'ietorian• Poets (rev. ed.. Boston, 1587) ; Theodore Wratislaw, Algernon Charles Swinburne: a Study (London, 1901) ; and Shep herd, The Bibliography of Swinburne (ib., 1887). Also The Fleshly School of Poetry pamphlet in which Robert Buchanan attacked Rossetti and Swinburne—and Swinburne's reply in Under thc Microscope (1872).