Swinbourne, always to be associated with the Circes of old
Rome or mediaeval Italy, who did not leave the victims whom
they had snared in the meshes of their beauty, the poor choice
between the poison -bowl and the stiletto? Are we, when
the poet surrounds us with lovely women, always to have the
fable of the Syrens accepted in its literal sense, and the best
handiworks of God's creation .pourtrayed as banqueting on
men's flesh, surrounded with the skulls of one generation, and
gloating over the ruin of another? This is only a corner, — a
very waste corner of passion, emblematic of the effects of its
unbridled indulgence. Why should it be thrust forward in the
foreground, as if it constituted the whole of the picture ?

There is so much the less excuse for the one-sided develop-
ment of "Chastelard," as the author has shown in his "Atalanta''
great power of dealing with the broader range of human action,
even when trammelled by the narrow rules of Greek art, and
has produced a play which will live probably as long as anything
of the sort in the language. The plot is worked out and the



342 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS.
