A CRITICISM.

POEMS AND BALLADS.

A CRITICISM

BY

WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI.

"Let us for a moment stoop to the arbitration of popular breath.
Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a
flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a madman.
Observe in what a ludicrous chaos the imputations of real or ficti-
tious crime have been confused in the contemporary calumnies
against poetry and poets."-SHELLEY.

AZ 822

LONDON:

JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, PICCADILLY.

1866.

[All rights reserved.]

PREFATORY NOTE.

66

THIS criticism was written, on my own spontaneous offer, with a view to its publication in the "North American Review," the leading Quarterly of the United States. Before I had completed it, I discovered that that Review had already committed itself, in a notice of Mr. Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon" and 'Chastelard," to a view of his poetic powers with which mine is considerably at variance. I therefore deemed it hardly desirable to obtrude upon the deservedly respected Editors a criticism which they might feel embarrassed in inserting, and pained in rejecting; and, as I found about the same time that Mr. Swinburne's present publisher would willingly take my MS., I have adopted this mode of publication. I have preferred, however, to leave the form of the critique strictly unaltered, which will explain an occasional peculiarity, as it might otherwise seem, in the shape in which matters are put.