I wrote a
reminiscential essay. From that essay I made an extract, which I gave
to Mr. Gosse. From that extract he made a quotation in his enchanting
biography. The words quoted by him reappear here in the midst of the
whole essay as I wrote it. I dare not hope they are unashamed of their
humble surroundings.--M. B.]
In my youth the suburbs were rather looked down on--I never quite knew
why. It was held anomalous, and a matter for merriment, that Swinburne
lived in one of them. For my part, had I known as a fact that Catullus
was still alive, I should have been as ready to imagine him living in
Putney as elsewhere. The marvel would have been merely that he lived.
And Swinburne's survival struck as surely as could his have struck in
me the chord of wonder.
Not, of course, that he had achieved a feat of longevity. He was far
from the Psalmist's limit. Nor was he one of those men whom one
associates with the era in which they happened to be young. Indeed, if
there was one man belonging less than any other to Mid-Victorian days,
Swinburne was that man. But by the calendar it was in those days that
he had blazed--blazed forth with so unexampled a suddenness of
splendour; and in the light of that conflagration all that he had
since done, much and magnificent though this was, paled.
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