Swinburne

Swinburne, ALGERNON CHARLES (b. 1837), poet and dramatist, was born in London and educated at Balliol College, Oxford. His first plays, The Queen-Mother and Rosamond (1860), attracted little attention, but Atalanta in Calydon (1865), a tragedy on the Greek model, at once established his reputation. Poems and Ballads, published in 1866, was followed by the magnificent Ode on the Proclamation of the French Republic (1870) and Songs before Sunrise (1871), in which he gave free expression to his revolutionary ardour. Chastelard (1865), Bothwell (1874), and Mary Stuart (1881) form a trilogy on the subject of Mary, Queen of Scots, whilst Erechtheus (1876) is a drama of the same class as Atalanta in Calydon, which in some respects it excels. The Sisters, a tragedy, was published in l892, Astrophel in 1893, The Tale of Balen in 1896, Rosamund in 1899. In his Essays and Studies (collected 1875), his Studies of Shakespeare (1880), Victor Hugo (1886), and Ben Jonson, (1889), and various other works, Mr. Swinburne has shown himself a critic of a high order. His lyrical faculty is very remarkable; he combines fine energy with an inexhaustible flow of language and a keen sense of rhythmical beauty; indeed, it may be said that in the mastery of miusical sound he is not surpassed by any English poet.