by Samuel C. Chew. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 4to. viii+335 pp. Illus. $3.50.
SUCH an admirable example of creative scholarship as Professor Chew’ s study of Swinburne affords ample scope for ‘the noble pleasure of praising.’ Though completed more than a decade ago. the book was deliberately set aside to await the long-deferred publication of the definitive Bonchureh Edition of Swinburne’s Works. This latter having recently appeared in twenty magnificent volumes, lasting monuments to the patient, indefatigable scholarship of the late Sir Edmund Gosse and his colleague, Mr. Thomas J. Wise, Professor Chew’s book now appropriately follows.
Obviously, Mr. Chew is obliged to reiterate much that has already been adequately dealt with in previous critical biographies of the poet. This is inevitable. But, while incorporating the best work of his predecessors, at every step he adds new material of his own gleaning, with the result that this study is the most thorough and complete that has yet appeared. Mindful, no doubt, of the disproportionate emphasis placed by many writers upon certain unpleasant aspects of the poet’s life, Mr. ( hew has elected to give this relatively negative phase of his subject as little attention as its importance merits, properly preferring to confine his discussion to a study of the peculiar intellectual influences which quickened the strange genius of Swinburne, rather than to perpetuate or enlarge upon the already abundant store of sensational and scandalous anecdotes connected with the poet’s pre-Putney days. These, albeit often highly diverting, have no place in a serious critical estimate of Swinburne’s work.
One of the many gratifying innovations introduced in this book is Mr. Chew’s just vindication of the much abused Theodore Matts-Dunton. Two years after that gentleman’s death, Mr. E. V. Lucas, in an article entitled ‘A Visit to “The Pines,”' set the fashion of indulging in a generally malicious species of alleged witticism at the expense of Swinburne’s most faithful friend. However ridiculous the author of Aylwin may have been, and it must be confessed that be was in several respects undeniably absurd, yet, as Mr. Chew points out, ‘the man who won the confidence of Tennyson, upon whom Rossetti came to rely, who was the close friend of so selfcontainer! a person as William Morris, and who became the “best and dearest friend” of Swinburne, is not thus lightly to be put aside. ... It is as the friend of poets that he will be remembered.’
The final impression of the book is one of unqualified respect for the impressive wealth of material, and of gratified admiration for the perspicacious and fair-minded manner in which it is presented. Altogether, Professor Chew’s notable study of the last of the great Victorian poets indisputably takes first place among the many critical estimates of his work. It is indeed a fitting companion to the monumental Bonohurch Edition.
EDWARD B. HALL