rather than served
him. Nowadays, there is such an abundance of anti-Christs that the part
seems hardly worth playing by a man of first-rate ability. Consequently,
we have to remember the circumstances in which they were written in
order to appreciate to the full many of Swinburne's poems and even some
of the amusing outbursts of heresy in his letters. Still, even to-day,
one cannot but enjoy the gusto with which he praised
Trelawney--Shelley's and Byron's Trelawney--"the most splendid old man I
have seen since Landor and my own grandfather":--

Of the excellence of his principles I will say but this: that I did
think, by the grace of Saban (unto whom, and not unto me, be the
glory and thanksgiving. Amen: Selah), I was a good atheist and a
good republican; but in the company of this magnificent old rebel,
a lifelong incarnation of the divine right of insurrection, I felt
myself, by comparison, a Theist and a Royalist.

In another letter he writes in the same gay, under-graduatish strain of
marriage:--

When I hear that a personal friend has fallen into matrimonial
courses, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing
into theism--a holy sorrow, unmixed with anger; for who am I to
judge him? I think at such a sight, as the preacher--was it not
Baxter?--at the sight of a thief or murderer led to the gallows:
"There, but for the grace of----, goes A.C.S.," and drop a tear
over fallen man.

There was, it is only fair to say, a great deal in Swinburne's
insurrectionism that was noble, or, at least, in tune with nobleness.
But it is impossible to persuade oneself that he was ever among the
genuine poets of liberty. He loved insurrectionism for its own sake. He
revelled in it in the spirit of a rhetorician rather than of a martyr.
He was a glorious humbug, a sort of inverted Pecksniff. Even his
republicanism cannot have gone very deep if it is true, as certain of
his editors declare, that having been born within the precincts of
Belgravia "was an event not entirely displeasing to a man of his
aristocratic leanings." Swinburne, it seems, was easily pleased. One of
his proudest boasts was that he and Victor Hugo bore a close resemblance
to each other in one respect: both of them were almost dead when they
were born, "certainly not expected to live an hour." There was also one
great difference between them. Swinburne never grew up.

His letters, som