LITMIR.BIZ

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level of culture, his character, and his recollections of what he has read.

      Besides Dante Gabriel Rossetti, it has been customary to include Swinburne and Morris among the pre-Raphaelite poets. But the similarity between these two and the head of the school is remote. Swinburne is, in Magnan’s phrase, a ‘higher degenerate,’ while Rossetti should be counted among Sollier’s imbeciles. Swinburne is not so emotional as Rossetti, but he stands on a much higher mental plane. His thought is false and frequently delirious, but he has thoughts, and they are clear and connected. He is mystical, but his mysticism partakes more of the depraved and the criminal than of the paradisiacal and divine. He is the first representative of ‘Diabolism’ in English poetry. This is because he has been influenced, not only by Rossetti, but also and especially by Baudelaire. Like all ‘degenerates,’ he is extraordinarily susceptible to suggestion, and, consciously or unconsciously, he has imitated, one after another, all the strongly-marked poetic geniuses that have come under his notice. He was an echo of Rossetti and Baudelaire, as he was of Gautier and Victor Hugo, and in his poems it is possible to trace the course of his reading step by step.

      Completely Rossettian, for example, is A Christmas Carol.[101]

      ‘Three damsels in the queen’s chamber,

      The queen’s mouth was most fair;

      She spake a word of God’s mother,

      As the combs went in her hair.

      “Mary that is of might,

       Bring us to thy Son’s sight.” ’

      Here we find a mystical content united to the antiquarianism and childish phraseology of genuine pre-Raphaelitism. The Masque of Queen Bersabe is worked out on the same model, being an imitation of the mediæval miracle-play, with its Latin stage directions and puppet-theatre style. This, in its turn, has become the model of many French poems, in which there is only a babbling and stammering and a crawling on all fours, as if in a nursery.

      Where he walks in Baudelaire’s footsteps, Swinburne tries to distort his face to a diabolical mien, and makes the woman say (in Anactoria) to the other unnaturally loved woman:

      ‘I would my love could kill thee. I am satiated

       With seeing thee live, and fain would have thee dead.

       I would earth had thy body as fruit to eat,

       And no mouth but some serpent’s found thee sweet.

       I would find grievous ways to have thee slain,

       Intense device, and superflux of pain;

      … O! that I

      Durst crush thee out of life with love, and die—

       Die of thy pain and my delight, and be

       Mixed with thy blood and molten unto thee.’

      Or, when he curses and reviles, as in Before Dawn:

      ‘To say of shame—what is it?

       Of virtue—we can miss it,

       Of sin—we can but kiss it,

       And it’s no longer sin.’

      One poem deserves a more detailed analysis, because it contains unmistakably the germ of the later ‘symbolism,’ and is an instructive example of this form of mysticism. The poem is The King’s Daughter. It is a sort of ballad, which in fourteen four-lined stanzas relates a fairy story about the ten daughters of a king, of whom one was preferred before the remaining nine, was beautifully dressed, pampered with the most costly food, slept in a soft bed, and received the attentions of a handsome prince, while her sisters remained neglected; but instead of finding happiness at the prince’s side, she became deeply wretched and wished she were dead. In the first and third lines of every stanza the story is rehearsed. The second line speaks of a mythical mill-stream, which comes into the ballad one knows not how, and which always, by some mysterious influence, symbolically reflects all the changes that take place as the action of the ballad progresses; while the fourth line contains a litany-like exclamation, which likewise makes a running reference to the particular stage reached in the narrative.

      ‘We were ten maidens in the green corn,

      Small red leaves in the mill-water:

      Fairer maidens never were born,

      Apples of gold for the King’s daughter.

      ‘We were ten maidens by a well-head,

      Small white birds in the mill-water:

      Sweeter maidens never were wed,

      Rings of red for the King’s daughter.’

      In the following stanzas the admirable qualities of each of the ten princesses are portrayed, and the symbolical intermediate lines run thus:

      ‘Seeds of wheat in the mill-water— … White bread and brown for the King’s daughter— … Fair green weed in the mill-water— … White wine and red for the King’s daughter— … Fair thin reeds in the mill-water— … Honey in the comb for the King’s daughter— … Fallen flowers in the mill-water— … Golden gloves for the King’s daughter— … Fallen fruit in the mill-water— … Golden sleeves for the King’s daughter— …’

      The King’s son then comes, chooses the one princess and disdains the other nine. The symbolical lines point out the contrast between the brilliant fate of the chosen one and the gloomy destiny of the despised sisters:

      ‘A little wind in the mill-water; A crown of red for the King’s daughter—A little rain in the mill-water; A bed of yellow straw for all the rest; A bed of gold for the King’s daughter—Rain that rains in the mill-water; A comb of yellow shell for all the rest—A comb of gold for the King’s daughter—Wind and hail in the mill-water; A grass girdle for all the rest, A girdle of arms for the King’s daughter—Snow that snows in the mill-water; Nine little kisses for all the rest, An hundredfold for the King’s daughter.’

      The King’s daughter thus appears to be very fortunate, and to be envied by her nine sisters. But this happiness is only on the surface, for the poem now suddenly changes:

      ‘Broken boats in the mill-water;

       Golden gifts for all the rest,

       Sorrow of heart for the King’s daughter.

      ‘ “Ye’ll make a grave for my fair body,”

       Running rain in the mill-water;

       “And ye’ll streek my brother at the side of me,”

       The pains of hell for the King’s daughter.’

      What has brought about this change in her fate the poet purposely leaves obscure. Perhaps he wishes to have us understand that the King’s son has no right to sue for her hand, being her brother, and that the chosen princess for shame at the incest perishes. This would be in keeping with Swinburne’s childish devilry. But I am not dwelling on this aspect of the poem, but on its symbolism.

      It is psychologically justifiable that a subjective connection should be set up between our states of mind for the time being and phenomena; that we should perceive in the external world a reflection of our moods. If the external world shows a well-marked emotional character, it awakens in us the mood corresponding to it; and conversely, if we are under the influence of some pronounced feeling, we notice, in accordance with the mechanism of attention, only those features of nature which are in harmony with our mood, which intensify and sustain it, while the opposing phenomena we neither observe nor even perceive. A gloomy ravine overhung by a cloudy sky makes us sad. This is one form of associating our humour with the outer world. But if we from any cause are already sad, we find some corresponding sadness in all the scenes around us—in the streets of the metropolis ragged, starved-looking children, thin, miserably kept cab-horses, a blind beggar-woman; in the woods withered, mouldering leaves, poisonous fungi, slimy slugs, etc. If we are joyous, we see just the same objects, but take no notice of them, perceiving only beside them, in the street, a wedding procession,

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