features in the strange scenery of his pilgrimages rather than
dominating portraits. In his descriptions he uses a splendid rhetoric
such as no other living writer of English commands. He has revived
rhetoric as a literary instrument. Aubrey Beardsley called Turner a
rhetorician in paint. If we were to speak of Mr. Graham as a painter in
rhetoric, we should be doing more than making a phrase.

But Mr. Graham cannot be summed up in a phrase. To meet him in his books
is one of the desirable experiences of contemporary literature, as to
hear him speak is one of the desirable experiences of modern politics.
Protest, daring, chivalry, the passion for the colour of life and the
colour of words--he is the impersonation of these things in a world
that is muddling its way half-heartedly towards the Promised Land.

XXII

SWINBURNE

1. THE EXOTIC BIRD

Swinburne was an absurd character. He was a bird of showy strut and
plumage. One could not but admire his glorious feathers; but, as soon as
he began to moult--and he had already moulted excessively by the time
Watts-Dunton took him under his roof--one saw how very little body
there was underneath. Mr. Gosse in his biography compared Swinburne to a
coloured and exotic bird--a "scarlet and azure macaw," to, be
precise--and the comparison remains in one's imagination. Watts-Dunton,
finding the poor creature moulted and "off its feed," carried it down to
Putney, resolved to domesticate it. He watched over it as a farmer's
wife watches over a sick hen. He taught it to eat out of his hand. He
taught it to speak--to repeat things after him, even "God Save the
Queen." Some people say that he ruined the bird by these methods. Others
maintain that, on the contrary, but for him the bird would have died of
a disease akin to the staggers. They say, moreover, that the tameness
and docility of the bird, while he was looking after it, have been
greatly exaggerated, and they deny that it was entirely bald of its old
gay feathers.

There you have a brief statement of the great Swinburne question, which,
it seems likely, will last as long as the name of Swinburne is
remembered. It is not a question of any importance; but that will not
prevent us from arguing it hotly. The world takes a malicious joy in
jibing at men of genius and their associates, and a generous joy in
defending them from jibes. Further, the discussion that interests the
greatest number of people is discussion that ha