itten in his eyes and mouth and forehead. The face of a man who
had lived with fine, austere, passionate thoughts of his own! By the
heavens, it was a noble sight. I have not seen a nobler. Now, I knew by
hearsay every crease in his trousers, but nobody had told me that his face
was a vision that would never fade from my memory. And nobody, I found
afterwards by inquiry, had "noticed anything particular" about his face. I
don't mind, either for Swinburne or for Putney. I reflect that if Putney
ignored Swinburne, he ignored Putney. 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. His greatest poem was written in
honour of a poet whom any English Vigilance Society would have crucified.
"Sane" critics will naturally observe, in their quiet manner, that
"Anactoria" and similar feats were "so unnecessary." Would it were true!

THE SEVENPENNIES

[_29 Apr. '09_]

Some time ago a meeting (henceforward historic) took place between Mr.
Longman, Mr. Macmillan, Mr. Reginald Smith, Mr. Methuen, and Mr.
Hutchinson [All baronets or knights now, except Reginald Smith, who is
dead] of the one part, and Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. Maurice Hewlett, and Mr.
Anthony Hope of the other part. Mr. Longman was the ho