PREFACE
PREFACE
When the history of the calamities and quarrels of modern authors comes to be written out in detail it is very certain that the period in English letters between 1860-1875 will demand and receive respectful attention. Foremost among the documents humains, which the bitter animosities aroused by Robert Buchanan's blatant and brutal attack[1] upon Rossetti, Swinburne and Morris, brought to the surface, must ever remain, "through glad and sorry years," the rare pamphlet we now reprint.[2]
Irradiating and informing Under the Microscope is a rapture of rage unmistakably Swinburnian. Junius, Swift even, might have borrowed from such an exhaustless vocabulary of vituperation. Compared with this terrific invective, the earlier printed protest of Rossetti is almost in the nature of a compliment![3]
We have sometimes thought that the origin of Buchanan's attack might be assigned to a caustic handling of his young friend and protégé, David Gray, whose slight claims as poet were set forth and disallowed by Mr. Swinburne in 1867.[4] Either this or an unwise desire to pose as literary censor, mixed with and marred by immedicable envy of the men he singled out for reprobation, seems to us the secret source of irritation lying back of the entire controversy.[5]
Under the Microscope was written in the plenitude of Swinburne's poetic powers: unequalled for bitterness, save by some of Swift's murderous pamphlets, it is never uncritical nor, provocation considered, unjust. Its justification should be sought—if sought at all—in the effect Buchanan's mendacious essay produced upon Rossetti. It is certain that this arraignment of his motives embittered the great poet's life and was the direct cause of the suppression of one imperishable sonnet and the re-writing of several others in The House of Life. No greater artistic mistake was ever made than that of deferring to this preposterous criticism, as it is conceded that the original text of the Poems (1870) was of unblemished beauty.
In after years an attempt at reparation and conciliation with Rossetti was made by Buchanan,[6] but it is not on record that an apology was ever tendered the author of Under the Microscope.[7] Nevertheless, the whirligig of time may be said to have brought in its revenges unaided by Mr. Swinburne. Buchanan, after successively, if not successfully, posing as poet, novelist, playwright and critic at large, has, in these later days, turned publisher on his own account. As for Mr. Alfred Austin,—that gifted author of The Poetry of the Period is now poet-laureate in place of Tennyson, the illustrious predecessor whose poetry to the astute critic of that day seemed so deserving of moral disapproval. Truly the gods that preside over literary destinies could do no more—or much less—for either gentleman!
That Mr. Swinburne did not meekly submit to the strictures passed upon his poetry let Under the Microscope make manifest. It remains as a portent and a warning should a later generation be confronted with a later moralist-critic like "Thomas Maitland" Buchanan.
- ↑ The Fleshly School of Poetry and Other Phenomena of the Day, By Robert Buchanan, Strahan & Co., 56, Ludgate Hill, London, 1872. Octavo, pink wrapper, pp. x: 97.
- ↑ Under | the Microscope. | By | Algernon Charles Swinburne. | London: | D. White, 22, Coventry Street, W. | 1872.
Collation:—Crown octavo, pp. iv.+88; consisting of Half-title (with blank reverse), pp. i.-ii.; Title-page, as above (with imprint: "London: | Savill, Edwards and Co., Printers, Chandos Street, | Covent Garden," upon the centre of the reverse), pp. iii.-iv.; and Text pp. 1-88.
Issued in stone-coloured paper wrappers, with the Title-page (enclosed in an ornamental ruled frame) reproduced upon the front—"Two Shillings and Sixpence" being added at foot. Inserted at the end is a slip with the following Errata:—
Page 32, last line but one—for monsieurs, read messieurs.
Page" 61, line 19—for Πολλὸς, read Πολὺς.
Page" 72, line 18—for Hugos, read Hugo's.
Page" 72," line 19—for Brownings, read Browning's.
Upon examining any copy of Under the Microscope it will be observed that Sig. d 5 (pp. 41-42) is a cancel-leaf. The original leaf was wisely suppressed, as certain of the expressions used in relation to the characters of Tennyson's Idylls of the King were unduly harsh. The following passage, describing "the courteous and loyal Gawain of the old romancers" as "the very vilest figure in all that cycle of strumpets and scoundrels, broken by, here and there, an imbecile, which Mr. Tennyson has set revolving round the figure of his central wittol," is unjust as well as severe. It is believed that only two copies of this cancelled leaf were preserved.
The manner in which the copies of Under the Microscope have been absorbed is remarkable. Five hundred copies were printed in 1872, and until quite recent years examples of these were readily obtainable at 5s. or 7s. 6d. each. Now copies occur at increasingly lengthened intervals, and find a prompt and ready sale at fifty shillings, and even three guineas each.—(Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century: Edited by W. Robertson Nicoll and Thomas J. Wise. London, 1896. Vol. II., p. 326.) - ↑ The Stealthy School of Criticism in the Athenæum for December 16, 1871. Reprinted in Rossetti's Collected Works, 2 vols., 8vo. (London, 1886.)
- ↑ See Matthew Arnold's New Poems by A. C. Swinburne in the Fortnightly Review for October, 1867, since re-issued in his Essays and Studies (1875).
- ↑ The animus against his brother, according to Mr. W. M. Rossetti, should be regarded as a vicarious expression of resentment at the following remark which opened his review entitled Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, a Criticism (1866): "The advent of a new great poet is sure to cause a commotion of one kind or another; and it would be hard were this otherwise in times like ours, when the advent of even so poor and pretentious a poetaster as a Robert Buchanan stirs storms in teapots." (Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Family Letters with a Memoir by W. M. Rossetti. London, 1895. Vol. I, p. 294.)
Buchanan from the beginning appears to have indulged a penchant for ridiculing his fellow poets. See Appendix I. - ↑ See Appendix III.
- ↑ On the contrary he printed a rather neat rejoinder in one of the defunct periodicals of that day. See Appendix II.