It
is even a little amusing, indeed, that these two Pro-Italian poets
almost conducted a political correspondence in rhyme. Mrs. Browning
sternly reproached those who had ever doubted the good faith of the King
of Sardinia, whom she acclaimed as being truly a king. Swinburne,
lyrically alluding to her as "Sea-eagle of English feather," broadly
hinted that the chief blunder of that wild fowl had been her support of
an autocratic adventurer: "calling a crowned man royal, that was no more
than a king." But it is not fair, even in this important connection, to
judge Swinburne by _Songs Before Sunrise_. They were songs before a
sunrise that has never turned up. Their dogmatic assertions have for a
long time past stared starkly at us as nonsense. As, for instance, the
phrase "Glory to Man in the Highest, for man is the master of things";
after which there is evidently nothing to be said, except that it is
not true. But even where Swinburne had his greater grip, as in that
grave and partly just poem _Before a Crucifix_, Swinburne, the most
Latin, the most learned, the most largely travelled of the Victorians,
still knows far less of the facts than even Mrs.
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