THE ‘FLESHLY SCHOOL’ PRESS CUTTINGS

The Examiner (7 October, 1871)

     Literary criticism is particularly abundant in the magazines this month. Blackwood gives nearly a third of its space to reviews of several English and American books. In the ‘Fortnightly’ Mr Sidney Colvin reviews at length Mr Browning’s ‘Balaustion’s Adventure.’ and the ‘Dark Blue’ has the first of a series of papers by Mr Dickenson West, on “Browning as a Preacher.” In the ‘Dark Blue’ there is also the first part of “A Study of Walt Whitman,” by Mr Roden Noel, who says:

     We did want some infusion of robuster and healthier blood among the pallid civilised brotherhood of our poets. If admirers arise who strive to imitate Whitman’s gait and form, they will probably make themselves ridiculous, puff themselves out and collapse; yet will he certainly give our jaded literature the prick and fillip that it needed. He, at any rate, is no closet-warbler, trilling delicately after the music of other singers, having merely a few thin thoughts and emotions only a quarter his own, and a clever aptitude for catching the tricks of another man’s manner.
     He bears, however, a marvellous resemblance ( I often think) to Oriental prophets. He is in manner of life, as well as in manner of thought, feeling, temperament, marvellously like a reincarnation over there in the West of that special principle of personality which has been so much more frequently manifested in the East—in Dervishes, for instance, and Sufis. He has so thoroughly assimilated Bible poetry on account of his profound personal identity with the writers of it. Yet is her very un-Hebrew after all. He is more Egyptian, Persian, Indian. Pantheist is he to the backbone; a nature worshipper, seeing God everywhere—God in all, even the meanest thing; bowing before good and evil as integral and correlative elements in the universal scheme of things, all going (as Hegel demonstrates) by the principle of identity in contraries. He is a desperate and shameless asserter of the sacredness of the flesh, the body, beauty of form and colour, and the fleshly instincts. This he is (let us freely admit and regret) wantonly, inartistically coarse in asserting; unutterably shocking, of course, to those who are unutterably shocked with nature for making us of flesh at all, and who hold that the only way to remedy her immodest mistake is to hush the fact up altogether.

     Mr Ruskin says in the new number of his Fors Clavigera, “There was an article—I believe it got in by mistake, but the editor, of course, won’t say so—in the ‘Contemporary Review,’ two months back, on Mr Morley’s Essays, by a Mr Buchanan, with an incidental page on Carlyle in it, unmatchable (to the length of my poor knowledge) for obliquitous platitude, in the mud-walks of literature.” Many will be disposed to say nearly the same of an article in this month’s ‘Contemporary,’ by a Mr Thomas Maitland, who commences a series of strictures on “The Fleshly School of Poetry,” with seventeen pages about Mr Dante Rossetti. It opens thus, and the whole essay is in keeping with the first paragraph:

     If, on the occasion of any public performance of Shakespeare’s great tragedy, the actors who perform the parts of Rosencranz and Guildenstern were, by a preconcerted arrangement, and by means of what is technically known as “gagging,” to make themselves fully as prominent as the leading characters, and to indulge in soliloquies and business strictly belonging to Hamlet himself, the result would be, to say the least of it, astonishing; yet a very similar effect is produced on the unprejudiced mind when the “walking gentlemen” of the fleshly school of poetry, who bear precisely the same relation to Mr Tennyson as Rosencranz and Guildenstern do to the Prince of Denmark in the play, obtrude their lesser identities and parade their smaller idiosyncrasies in the front rank of leading performers. In their own place, the gentlemen are interesting and useful. Pursuing still the theatrical analogy, the present drama of poetry might be cast as follows: Mr Tennyson supporting the part of Hamlet, Mr Matthew Arnold that of Horatio, Mr Bailey that of Voltimand, Mr Buchanan that of Cornelius, Messrs Swinburne and Morris the parts of Rosencranz and Guildenstern, Mr Rossetti that of Osric, and Mr Robert Lytton that of “A Gentleman.”

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The Pall Mall Gazette (19 December, 1871)

     Two months ago a violent attack on some living poets, and especially on Mr. Dante Rossetti, appeared in the Contemporary Review. The article was entitled “The Fleshly School of Poetry,” and signed “Thomas Maitland.” The public was therefore asked to accept it as the production of some unknown writer bearing that name. The Athenæum, however, informed its readers a fortnight since that Maitland was a nom de plume for Mr. Robert Buchanan, and by implication that a review which is in the habit of printing articles with authentic signatures had departed from its rule in producing this fierce onslaught of a poet upon his brethren of the craft. This charge has been met by the publishers in a brief note to the editor of the Athenæum, which sounds like a distinct denial of the statement. “You might,” they say, “with equal propriety, associate with the article the name of Mr. Robert Browning, or of Mr. Robert Lytton, or of any other Robert.” Unfortunately for Mr. Buchanan’s publishers, that gentleman, as if to stultify them, sends a letter at the same time on his own account, in which he owns that he did write “The Fleshly School of Poetry,” and adds that “the publisher is best aware of the inadvertence which led to the suppression” of his name/ Mr. Buchanan has never lacked boldness, and we are glad to see that, while confessing to the authorship of the article, he is able to add that he had nothing to do with the signature. We suppose, therefore, that he either did not see a proof sheet of the paper, or that the name of Thomas Maitland was accidentally substituted for his own after the proof had left his hands.

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Birmingham Daily Post (20 December, 1871)

     A very pretty literary quarrel is being waged in the columns of the Athenæum. It began thus:—Two months ago a slashing, coarse, and in many respects vulgar, article appeared in the Contemporary Review, on the “Fleshly School of Poetry.” Like all the articles in this high-class magazine, the article was signed by the author, a Mr. “THOMAS MAITLAND.” It was a severe attack on Mr. D. ROSSETTI, not only as a poet and painter, but as a man;; and, it must be confessed, was quite unworthy of the Contemporary. It soon transpired that there was no such person as “THOMAS MAITLAND,” and it was openly stated that the real author was a rival poet—no other than Mr. ROBERT BUCHANAN. Strange to say, in last Saturday’s Athenæum there appear two communications which, read in the light of each other, place Mr. BUCHANAN and the publishers of the Contemporary in a very awkward position. Messrs. STRAHAN and Co. write: “You might with equal propriety associate with the article ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry’ the name of Mr. ROBERT BROWNING, or of Mr. ROBERT LYTTON, or of any other Robert.” Mr. ROBERT BUCHANAN himself writes: “I certainly wrote the article, but I had nothing to do with the signature. Mr. STRAHAN, publisher of the Contemporary Review, can corroborate me thus far, as he is best aware of the inadvertence which led to the suppression of my own name.”

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Glasgow Herald (20 December, 1871)

A PRETTY quarrel is just now being performed on the literary stage. In a recent number, the Contemporary Review published an article entitled “The Fleshly School of Poetry,” under which succulent designation was specially singled out for exposure and denunciation a volume of poems published some time ago from the hand of Mr Dante Rossetti. That volume attracted a great deal of attention, and a number of singularly favourable opinions were expressed by the ablest organs of criticism regarding it. Indeed, the critics could not have spoken more loudly if they had been paid twice for their labour, or if the poet had been their most excellent friend. But there was one person who could not conscientiously join this cry of triumph; so he wrote the article in the Contemporary, and signed himself “Thomas Maitland.” Now, this piece of work was undoubtedly a spicy performance, and some people went so far as to think that a second Daniel had actually come to judgment. But who was “Thomas Maitland?” For a time the answer was just “Thomas Maitland,” and nothing more, the proof being that the Contemporary Review had from the first adopted the principle of authenticating each article by the genuine signature of the writer. Still, as “Thomas Maitland” was a new name in criticism, many persons were anxious to know something about his personal identity. There were a few unusually shrewd persons who entertained doubts as to the genuineness of the name, and set themselves to study the style of “Maitland,” to see if they could discover whether he was the “true Thomas”—on the theory, we presume, that a critic may be known by his bite, as a dog is known by his bark. These investigators must have succeeded, for very soon it began to leak out that “Thomas Maitland” was an impostor, had stolen somebody’s article, and sent it to the publisher as if it were his own. It was naturally assumed that the Contemporary would not change its wholesome habit of letting each contributor receive the credit and glory of his own work. To whom, then, did the article on “The Fleshly School of Poetry” belong? Gossip replied, in its usual knowing whisper—“Mr Robert Buchanan, the Poet.” For a moment this announcement was received with blank amazement. It seemed difficult to believe that, in this singularly honest and humane age, one British Poet would assault another British Poet as fiercely as the article in question had assaulted Mr Rossetti. All the more difficult was it to credit the theory that Mr Buchanan could be the author of an article, in certain passages of which Mr Buchanan was himself rather favourably spoken of. Was Mr Buchanan not a modest man? Public opinion shook a dubious head; and it was quietly hinted that Mr Buchanan had once before, if not praised, at least reviewed, Mr Buchanan’s own poetry in one of his own essays. It was further insinuated that Mr Buchanan, in assailing Mr Rossetti, was simply repaying an old debt; for, it was asked, had not Mr Rossetti, in defending his friend Mr Swinburne from the onslaughts of Mr Buchanan, called Mr Buchanan by the most hateful of all names, a “poetaster?”
     These hints and whispers became at length quite unendurable; and it was a great relief when the inky battle entered upon a more authentic phase. A bit of gossip having crept into the Athenæum, to the effect that Mr Sidney Colvin was preparing an answer to “The Fleshly School of Poetry” article, Mr Colvin wrote denying the accuracy of the statement, and adding a few pungent remarks on the general question—on the fact that the Contemporary should have departed from its deliberately adopted system of open signature, and on the unseemly circumstance that Mr Buchanan should condescend to imitate the Fenians and shoot at Mr Rossetti, his fellow-singer, “from behind the shield of a putative Thomas Maitland.” The battle now waxed hotter and fiercer. In the last number of the Athenæum appear three letters—one from Mr Rossetti, one from Messrs Strahan, and one from Mr Buchanan himself. The latter two make each other look exceedingly awkward. One or the other of them ought certainly never to have been written. Regarding the authorship of the article on “The Fleshly School of Poetry,” Messrs Strahan say that the Athenæum “might with equal propriety associate with the article the name of Mr Robert Browning, or of Mr Robert Lytton, or of any other Robert.” Whatever this was intended to mean, it certainly seems to mean either that Mr Buchanan was not the author of the article or that the Athenæum had no right to an opinion on the subject at all. The latter view is absurd, as it turns out the true “propriety” lay in associating Mr Buchanan’s name with the article, and it would have been highly improper to associate any other “Robert” with its authorship. In his letter, Mr Buchanan confesses himself to be the author, and lays the responsibility of the fictitious “Thomas Maitland” upon Mr Strahan. He says, at least, that he “had nothing to do with the signature,” and that Mr Strahan is “best aware of the inadvertence which led to the suppression of my own name.” We can understand how the omission of Mr Buchanan’s name might be an inadvertence, but we cannot see how the suppression of it could be so, especially in connection with the fact that there could not possibly be any authority for affixing to the article a name which the real writer does not bear, and apparently did not intend to assume. It is not easy seeing how there could be any inadvertence in the matter.
     Mr Rossetti’s letter is a defence of his own poetry and poetic theories against the alleged misconceptions of Mr Buchanan. As the latter has resolved to republish his article separately, “with many additions, but no material alterations,” it may be as well to postpone anything like a discussion of the controversy until the article lies before us in its complete form. It may be permissible to say, however, that if Mr Rossetti writes fairly in his letter, as he seems to do, he undoubtedly convicts Mr Buchanan of something very like misunderstanding; unfair, because incomplete, quotation; and, therefore, of misrepresentation. Mr Rossetti says that “the primary accusation on which this writer [Mr Buchanan] grounds all the rest, seems to be that others and myself ‘extol fleshliness as the distinct and supreme end of poetic and pictorial art; aver that poetic expression is greater than poetic thought; and, by inference, that the body is greater than the soul, and sound superior to sense.’” “It is true,” adds Mr Rossetti, that “some fragmentary pretence at proof is put in here and there throughout the attack, and thus far an opportunity is given of contesting the assertion.” Mr Rossetti examines the “fragmentary pretence at proof” of the frightful accusation, and succeeds in showing, as we think, that Mr Buchanan, in doing what seems enormously less than justice to his brother poet, has perpetrated upon himself a wrong which, had any other person done it, would have galled him to madness. He exhibits himself as if he were actuated by very inferior motives—with no higher aim, apparently, than to damage the reputation of a Poet whose poems have been applauded by the acutest of modern critics. Indeed, Mr Buchanan, in that unfortunate article of his, looks like a person who is haunted by the suspicion that there exists a person who is probably greater than himself in his own domain. He accuses Mr Rossetti of plagiarism from various other poets, and, worst of all, from Mr Buchanan himself. This, however, is an impossibility, as Mr Rossetti declares that he has never read his assailant’s works. Mr Buchanan charges Mr Rossetti with “bad blood” and “insincerity;” and Mr Rossetti, in paying this back, says that “every word” on Mr Buchanan’s tongue (in this controversy) “is covert rancour, and every stroke from his pen perversion of truth.” These are stinging words; but Mr Rossetti puts his own name to them, and his address is well known in London.
     “Yet, after all,” adds Mr Rossetti, “there is nothing wonderful in the lengths to which a fretful poet-critic will carry such grudges as he may bear, while publisher and editor can both be found who are willing to consider such means admissible, even to the clear subversion of first professed tenets in the Review which they conduct.” It may be said for Mr Buchanan that he has a right to his opinions, such as they are. The public have a right to expect, however, that opinions so violent, and having the appearance of personal rancour, should not be shot in the dark, but in the open daylight of an honest signature. Plain people like ourselves, who have not been blessed with poetic inspiration, will naturally, and perhaps stupidly, be of opinion that had the article in the Contemporary been wholly fair and just, the name of the writer would not have been inadvertently suppressed. There is an air of scandal in the whole affair. It reminds one of the time, in the barbarous days of Pope, for instance, when poets were in the habit of attacking each other anonymously in pamphlets like so many masked assassins. let us hope that those evil times are really not about to return, and that the present outbreak of an old disease is due merely to a temporary aberration of temper and judgment.

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The Pall Mall Gazette (23 December, 1871)

CORRESPONDENCE.

“THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETRY.”

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

     SIR,—My attention has just been called to a paragraph in your paper of the 19th inst., in which you refer to a note addressed by Strahan and Co. to the editor of the Athenæum, on the subject of the article on “The Fleshly School of Poetry,” in a recent number of the Contemporary Review. Permit me to say, by way of explanation, that that short and hurried note did not at all enter, and was not meant to enter, into the question of the authorship of the article. It was simply intended as a protest against the intolerable system of gossip-mongering to which out firm has been so frequently subjected.
     I admit it is a pity that the language used was so indefinite, and that the writer, instead of merely questioning the “propriety” of publishing gossip (such as that Mr. Sidney Colvin was preparing to reply in the Contemporary Review to Thomas Maitland—a quite unfounded statement, as Mr. Sidney Colvin himself demonstrated the following Saturday), did not address himself directly to the bit of gossip in hand. But there is this to be said in excuse, that a former experience of the editor of the Athenæum’s sense of fairness did not lead us to hope that the note would ever be published. And it was not published when it should have been; indeed, not until Mr. Buchanan’s letter was received; and it was evidently thought that, by putting the two together, an appearance of contradiction could be established, and Strahan and Co. be thus made to look ridiculous. I have no objection to appear in this light, provided it will have the effect of ridding us henceforth of the attentions of the gossip-collectors and inventors of the Athenæum and other journals.
     This now notorious article will shortly be published in separate form by Strahan and Co., and I may here state for the information of any one interested, that the question raised as to the use of pseudonyms may possibly be discussed in the introduction to it. Enough to state here that the Contemporary Review has always adhered to the practice—as well under Dean Alford’s management as under that of the present editors—of admitting articles whether signed, unsigned, or signed with a nom de plume, as might be thought best in view of all the circumstances of the case. All statements to the contrary, whether made by Mr. Rossetti or his friends, are mere inventions, and must not be allowed to divert attention from the main issue—the merits of The Fleshly School of Poetry.
     And touching the signature “Thomas Maitland,” I cannot help remarking that it did not strike me, as publisher of the Review, that there was any injustice done to Mr. Rossetti by allowing an imaginary person to say what required to be said about his poetry. The criticism was thus stripped of all factitious importance of every kind, and made to stand simply and purely upon its own merits, “Thomas Maitland” being as destitute of influence to sway a single mind as the A, B, and C of Euclid’s Problems. Had any eminent name been used, with the view of overpowering the reader, of course the position would be different. But this was not the case, and I know that “naught was set down in malice,” nor any desire entertained to be other than strictly fair and impartial. If Mr. Rossetti, however, would have taken more kindly to the article had it borne the initials A.B.C. or X.Y.Z., I can only say that it is much to be regretted that he was not gratified in this particular, all the more so that it could have been so easily done.—Yours, &c.,

     56, Ludgate-hill, London, Dec. 22.                                                               A. STRAHAN.

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[Note: The above letter was also published in the Glasgow Herald on 25th December, 1871.]

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The Era (4 February, 1872)

     TINSLEY’S FOR FEBRUARY is quite a brilliant number, having for the piece de resistance a new story called London’s Heart, by Mr. Farjeon, who writes a very lively story, somewhat in the Dickens school. Musical Recollections of the Last Half Century are full of interest; and, for a tale of adventure, The Red Dragon, by Mr. Grant, will assuredly be welcome. Mr. Forman breaks a lance with Mr. Robert Buchanan, in which that not very remarkable poet comes off second best. Mr. Buchanan should devote his time to better purpose than abusing more popular bards. Two or three very agreeable poems are to be found in this number, Under the Linden Trees being one. Fiorella, a waif, and Home, Sweet Home, are continued; and there is a lively paper on The Influence of Travel, by Mr. Henry Kingsley.

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The Derby Mercury (14 February, 1872)

MAGAZINES FOR FEBRUARY.
[THIRD NOTICE.]

Tinsley’s Magazine. No. LV., February. London: 18, Catherine-street, Strand.

.....

Mr. Robert Buchanan has given great offence to a writer in Tinsley by certain criticisms on “The Fleshly School” of poetry as represented by Rossetti, Swinburne, and Morris. We think, however, that the criticism was fully justified, and that the Tinsley writer’s defence is very weak. The fault of Mr. Buchanan was that he did not accept the responsibility of his opinions in a magazine which adopts the plan of appending the writer’s signature to the various articles, but wrote under a nom de plume.

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The Graphic (17 February, 1872)

THE FEBRUARY MAGAZINES.

.....

     We have not till now read any of Mr. B. L. Farjeon’s novels, but we are bound to say, judging from the first instalment in Tinsley’s, that “London’s Heart” promises to be a very attractive story. .....

—Lastly, we note a severe castigation of Mr. Robert Buchanan for his article in the Contemporary of last October, on “The Fleshly School of Poetry.” Mr. Buchanan deserves sharp rebuke for masquerading under the apparently real name of “Thomas Maitland,” and for professing afterwards that the suppression of his own name was an “inadvertence.” Curiously enough the same number of the Athenæum which contained Mr. Buchanan’s confession, contained a letter from the publishers of the Contemporary, virtually denying that he was the author. But the reprehensible character of these shifts and evasions does not affect the question of the soundness of the critique on Mr. Rossetti’s poems. In spite of a great deal of exaggeration and needless personality, an impartial observer cannot but admit the general reasonableness of the pseudonymous critic’s complaints.

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The Examiner (18 May, 1872 - Issue 3355)

MR BUCHANAN’S PAMPHLET.

The Fleshly School of Poetry and other Phenomena of the Day. By Robert Buchanan. Strahan.

     It is not likely that anything Mr Buchanan says will have the smallest effect upon those whom he attacks. Mr Rossetti and Mr Swinburne will not hide their heads from his fury, or, moved by his admonitions, confess their sins in sackcloth and ashes, and burn their books in the orthodox Ephesian manner. Nor can we imagine the sale of their works being in any way affected by the same cause, unless, indeed, persecution should produce its frequent result, and enhance the value of the things persecuted. And, therefore, to attempt a defence of Mr Buchanan’s enemies is the very last thing we should think of doing.
     But though ineffective in one sense, Mr Buchanan’s republication of his exploit against what he is pleased to call the “fleshly school of poetry” is very effective in another. We have been accused of being a nation of shopkeepers, and have lately been haunted with misgivings that such may be the case in some respects. The sale of Church livings, of political interests, or of national influence may not be pleasant things to think about; still such transactions have generally possessed the redeeming feature of honesty; we have known the value of what we gave, and we have received its equivalent. The reproach intended in the word shopkeeper certainly did not originally contain any idea of fraud. Latterly, however, even this consolation is beginning to slip away from us. The word shopkeeper has ceased to be invariably associated with the idea of unquestioned integrity. We have grown only too much accustomed to cunningly-dressed windows, artificial lights, substitutions of an article inferior to that which we purchased; and every one who is at all initiated into the mysteries of social economy knows that such advertisements are not the symbols of legitimate trade, that those who are attracted by them are really those who pay for them, that, though they may attract unwary and simple-minded persons, they are passed by unnoticed by all who are really experienced in business and who desire to receive good value for their outlay.
     Regarded in this light, Mr Buchanan’s great advertisement is effective; for though it may, like other advertisements, ensnare the innocent and unsuspecting, to the experienced it affords a very exact means of estimating Mr Buchanan himself. What he is not he tells us very plainly; what he is may be gathered by inference. “There is,” he says, “on the fringe of real English society, and chiefly, if not altogether, in London here, a sort of demi-monde, not composed, like that other in France, of simple courtesans, but of men and women of indolent habits and æsthetic tastes, artists, literary persons, novel-writers, actors, men of genius and men of talent, butterflies and gadflies of the human kind, leading a lazy existence from hand to mouth. These persons ‘write for the papers.’ They publish books, often at their own expense. They, some of them, have titles. They belong to clubs, and they go to dinner-parties. . . . They are clever, refined, Interesting, able, querulous. Nothing delights them more than to tear a reputation to pieces, or to diagnose the seeds of moral disease in the healthiest subjects. Their religion is called culture, their narrowmindedness is called insight.” Such is Mr Buchanan’s description of his antagonists; and we are perfectly willing to take his own word for it, that he himself is the reverse of all this. Indeed, we were quite ready to be convinced, even without Mr Buchanan’s own word for it, that he is neither a man of genius nor a man of talent; that he does not publish books at his own expense; that he neither belongs to clubs nor goes to dinner-parties; that he is neither clever, refined, interesting, able, nor querulous; that his religion (and of these last items we are more sure than any) will never be called culture, nor his narrowmindedness insight.
     If this, then, is what Mr Buchanan is not, it might well be asked what he is. This, we said, might be gathered by inference; and inference leads us to a conclusion by no means pleasant. It may be well for the vendor of a quack medicine to endeavour to get a market by attacking an established profession: it may be well for manufacturers of starch or of patent sauce to warn the public against all manufactures except their own—though we confess that we could easily dispense with such practices. But the spectacle of a man who professes to be a poet endeavouring to attract attention to himself by crying down the works of his contemporaries, praising his own work by implication in the contempt he seeks to cast upon the work of others, is less common, and is a spectacle which, if it became frequent, would justly lay us open to the charge of being a nation of shopkeepers, not only in the old sense of placing a monetary value on our every act, but in the new and far more degraded sense of endeavouring to make a market for inferior goods at the expense of truthfulness and self-respect. Were Mr Buchanan a poet of more assured reputation and wider fame than those two whom he chiefly attacks, his act would be disagreeable enough; were he even their equal we might be better content to let him rail at pleasure; but, having regard to the fact that by all cultivated people he is estimated as infinitely inferior to either of them, the impertinence and indelicacy of his proceeding are really intolerable. The only explanation which can be offered is that Mr Buchanan (to employ his own phrases with regard to the Elizabethan poets), not having been sufficiently admired in his generation, not having received his full of the spikenard of praise and the nard of flattery, has been compelled to have recourse to the unworthy means of paragraph advertisements (for his pamphlet is nothing else) and libels on his competitors.
     We can assure Mr Buchanan, in conclusion, that if society is rotten, this pamphlet of his is much more a sign of its rottenness than would be ten times the existing taste for such poetry as he presumes to criticise. It is, no doubt, true that a too exclusive contemplation of such subjects as are treated by Mr Swinburne, is not unattended with danger; but, on the other hand, we venture to say, that even the most pronounced poem he ever wrote exhibits, to those who are capable of appreciating such things, a tragic force and an imaginative power which, far from encouraging the accession of sensual ideas, repel them and hold them in check. It would be misleading were we to quote the well-worn saying, that to the pure all things are pure; but we do say, most emphatically, that this pamphlet is a striking instance of the manner in which coarse and uncleanly minds can only extract from their environment that which is coarse and uncleanly. There may be better things in the world than flesh; but flesh that is living and beautiful is better than the same flesh after it has been subjected to the decomposing process of writers like Mr Buchanan, and in acknowledgment of his invention of the expression “fleshly poetry,” we would recommend him to consider whether there may not be such a thing as “dunghill criticism.”

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The Graphic (29 June, 1872 - Issue 135)

     We are the more forcibly impressed by the possibility of such treatment, after reading “The Fleshly School of Poetry, and other Phenomena of the Day,” by Robert Buchanan (Strahan), in which there is, to our thinking, more objectionable stuff than in anything we have seen lately. The pamphlet is an amplification of the magazine article by which the writer made himself slightly conspicuous some time ago. It is almost a pity that he was found out, as there is undoubtedly room for wise and thoughtful admonition to some of our modern poets, and failing such a warning, even the remarks of “Thomas Maitland” might have been of some use; but who will regard the dicta of a man who can find “a radically absurd line of thought” in the “Vita Nuova,” who calls Gower a “nonsense-writer,” sneers at Surrey, Wyatt, Carew, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Suckling; pretends to detect indecency in one of Crashaw’s most beautiful religious poems, and winds up his precious dissertation by a eulogium on Walt. Whitman and—Paul de Kock. As Touching the value of his criticism in other matters pertaining to poetry, we may mention that Mr. Buchanan seems to think that rhyme depends entirely upon identity of accent, and that he objects to burdens in songs! We wonder if he ever read any Scottish ballads! Of what the author has to say respecting Mr. Rossetti it is not our purpose to speak; there is, as we have already said, some truth in his strictures, but its value is almost negatived when it is put forward by one who cannot find “one single note of sorrow” (sic.) in “The Blessed Damozel,” and who can find any impurity in “Willow-wood.”

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The Examiner (6 July, 1872)

MR SWINBURNE AMONG THE FLEAS.

Under the Microscope. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. D. White.

     Mr Swinburne gives further proof of his skill in the writing of prose, but he will not otherwise enhance his reputation, by this pamphlet. Mr Alfred Austin and Mr Robert Buchanan, the writers in the Quarterly Review and other periodicals who have attacked him and his fellow-poets, Mr Rossetti and Mr Morris, may be, as he says, no better than “the parasites that leap or creep about the place of rest or unrest” of a traveller lying in a strange and dirty bed; and he may be right in thinking that “the lodger in the house of art or literature who for once may wish to utilize his waste moments must not scorn to pay some passing attention to the critical tribe.” But, if so, he has not pursued his studies with sufficient calmness; nor is there much profit in the way in which he has chosen to make them known to the world. His own prefatory words condemn him. “If the traveller,” he says, “be a man of truly scientific mind, he will be careful to let no sense of irritation impair the value and accuracy of his research. Such evidence of sensitiveness or suffering would not indeed imply that he thought otherwise or more highly of these than of other parasites; it is but a nameless thing after all, unmentionable as well as anonymous, that has pierced his skin if it be really pierced, or inflamed his blood if it be indeed inflamed; but those are the best travellers whose natures are not made of such penetrable or inflammable stuff.” Unfortunately, Mr Swinburne shows that he has been very severely bitten, and instead of resolving that he will lie no more in such beds as fleas are likely to haunt, or, if he chooses to do so, that he will submit meekly to so much of their plaguing as he cannot avoid, he catches one or two of them, and one in particular, puts then “under the microscope,” and then describes them in language worthy of an elephant or a jabber-wock. Assuming that Mr Buchanan is to Mr Swinburne as a flea to a man of science, how highly will the flea be complimented at being painted in such words as these!

     Well may this incomparable critic, this unique and sovereign arbiter of thought and letters ancient and modern, remark with compassion and condemnation how inevitably a training in Grecian literature must tend to “emasculate” the student so trained: and well may we congratulate ourselves that no such process as robbed of all strength and manhood the intelligence of Milton has had power to impair the virility of Mr Buchanan’s robust and masculine genius. To that strong and severe figure we turn from the sexless and nerveless company of shrill-voiced singers who share with Milton the curse of enforced effeminacy; from the pitiful soprano notes of such dubious creatures as Marlowe, Jonson, Chapman, Gray, Coleridge, Shelley, Landor, “cum semiviro comitatu,” we avert our ears to catch the higher and manlier harmonies of a poet with all his natural parts and powers complete. For truly, if love or knowledge of ancient art and wisdom be the sure mark of “emasculation,” and the absence of any taint of such love or any tincture of such knowledge (as then in consistency it must be) the supreme sign of perfect manhood, Mr. Robert Buchanan should be amply competent to renew the thirteenth labour of Hercules.

“One would not be a young maid in his way
For more than blushing comes to.”

Nevertheless, in a country where (as Mr Carlyle says in his essay on Diderot) indecent exposure is an offence cognisable at police-offices, it might have been as well for him to uncover with less immodest publicity the gigantic nakedness of his ignorance. Any sense of shame must probably be as alien to the Heracleidan blood as any sense of fear; but the spectators of such an exhibition may be excused if they could wish that at least the shirt of Nessus or another were happily at hand to fling over the more than human display of that massive and muscular impudence, in all the abnormal development of its monstrous proportions. It is possible that out Scottish demigod of song has made too long a sojourn in “the land of Lorne,” and learnt from his Highland comrades to dispense in public with what is not usually discarded in any British latitude far south of “the western Hebrides.”

     After that Mr Swinburne says very truly, “The savours, the forms, the sounds, the contortions, of the singular living things which this science commands us to submit to examination need a stouter stomach to cope with than mine.” He only dignifies the fleas by putting them “under the microscope” at all, and when he has thus magnified them, he seems to think them large and formidable enough to be attacked with hatchet and sledge-hammer. He must not wonder, if, in return, the fleas consider themselves his equals, and, finding how successful have been their previous efforts to “penetrate” and “inflame,” assail him more vigorously than ever.
     Mr Swinburne’s pamphlet gains in interest, though not in compactness, by the fact that it is not all made up of warfare against the fleas who have bitten him. It contains three important digressions concerning Byron, Mr Tennyson, and Walt Whitman. It is possible, though not likely, that Mr Swinburne has introduced this with the design of showing how, though he regards most critics as fleas, it is possible to be a critic without being a flea. At any rate they do show that; and we only wish that they had been in better company, and that the first of them had been itself purged of all flea-like properties; though we can almost forgive his rancour when it is expressed in such wonderful vituperation as this against Lady Byron and Mrs Stowe, “the blatant Bassarid of Boston, the rampant Mænad of Massachusetts.”

     To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office; but it is no proof of critical sense or judgment to set about the vindication of a great man as though his repute could by any chance be widely or durably affected by the confidences exchanged in the most secret place and hour of their sacred rites, far from the clamour of public halls and platforms made hoarse with holiness,

Ubi sacra sancta acutis ululatibus agitant,

between two whispering priestesses of whatever god presides over the most vicious parts of virtue, the most shameless rites of modesty, the most rancorous forms of forgiveness—the very Floralia of evangelical faith and love. That two such spirits, naked and not ashamed, should so have met and mingled in the communion of calumny, have taken each with devout avidity her part in the obscene sacrament of hate, her share in the graceless eucharist of evil-speaking, is not more wonderful or more important than that the elder devotee should have duped the younger into a belief that she alone had been admitted to partake of a fouler feast than that eaten in mockery at a witch’s sabbath, a wafer more impure from a table more unspeakably polluted—the bread of slander from the altar of madness or malignity, the bitter poison of a shrine on which the cloven tongue of hell-fire might ever be expected to reappear with the return of some infernal Pentecost. All this is as natural and as insignificant as that the younger priestess on her part should since have trafficked in the unhallowed elements of their common and unclean mystery, have revealed for hire the unsacred secrets of no Eleusinian initiation. To whom can it matter that such a plume-plucked Celæno as this should come with all the filth and flutter of her kind to defile a grave which is safe and high enough above the abomination of her approach?

     That outburst, however, is only a parenthesis within a parenthesis. It is followed by some very shrewd remarks on the limits and range of Byron’s poetic genius; and after this we have strictures no less noteworthy on the moral flaw in Mr Tennyson’s Arthurian idylls, “the Morte d’Albert, as it might perhaps be more properly called,”—especially prominent in “Vivian,” and on the mixture of poetry and formalism in Walt Whitman’s writings. We leave our readers to study these passages for themselves. They are certainly worth studying, and no one who reads them can help regretting that Mr Swinburne does not oftener use his powers as a prose-writer and a critic, and that, when he does, he is not more careful of marring his good work by such coarse abuse of his enemies as appears in ‘Under the Microscope.’

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The Galaxy (Vol. 14, Issue 3, September 1872 - p. 421-423)

     “THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETRY,” By Robert Buchanan. London: Strahan.

     The literary career of Mr. Robert Buchanan has certainly not been lacking in variety, nor has his choice of themes been so limited as to afford distress to those who delight in myriad-minded men. He has depicted with some success the simple life of the Scottish peasantry; he has made friendly calls, in the search for poetical subjects, upon the heroes of Norseland; he has dabbled in the “purely antique”; and when other topics have failed, he has printed some new panegyric of his friend David Gray, a young poet of some promise, who, because be was poor, poetical, and consumptive, has always been lauded by Mr. Buchanan as a second Keats. Scarcely had Napoleon reached Chiselhurst before the versatile Scotchman published a poem about the Man of Sedan, which was hastily written and hurriedly published while the author’s mind was in mortal dread lest he be anticipated in so good a subject; and now, when “Napoleon Fallen” has faded into the obscurity enjoyed by its illustrious hero, Mr. Buchanan has turned his attention to Swinburne, Morris, Rossetti, and their companions, to whose literary castigation the present volume is devoted.
     Mr. Buchanan is right in supposing that a new poetical school has arisen, and one of sufficient prominence to attract the careful attention of critics. To be sure, the old “pre-Raphaelite” movement among the artists of London has now become a rather tiresome topic, nor have its effects upon art been as marked as was once hoped. The general public dimly suspects, perhaps, that the socialistic fellows, who in the days of the “Germ” were about to revolutionize art, had no very clear idea of their object or of the means of its attainment, and that they accordingly took refuge in slouch hats, big beards, and lofty observations about King Arthur, “meres,” “wolds,” “ emprise,” etc. And thus, like our own Transcendentalists, the members of the “P. R. B.” shortly found themselves without much common sympathy and without any marked success, either as iconoclasts or reformers.
     But despite their partial failure, they have, like their New England prototypes, exerted a very marked and probably permanent influence upon literature. Mr. Swinburne is unlike Mr. Rossetti; Mr. Morris is still more widely removed from iMr. Swinburne; while among the minor bards Philip Bourke Marston and John Payne do not adopt the precise literary methods of Mr. O’Shaughnessy, who has apparently studied Baudelaire with something of the diligence devoted by Swinburne to Victor Hugo and Walter Savage Landor. And yet these authors have many points in common—a love of the mediæval and antique, a straightforward simplicity of diction, a deliberate hatred of philosophizers and preachers in verse, and an undisguised fondness for splashes of color and threads of music; so that it becomes far easier to class them together as a separate guild in literature than to unite poets so dissimilar as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, or even dramatists so closely resembling each other as Beaumont, Fletcher, Ford, and Massinger.
     Against this whole company Mr. Buchanan wages bitter war. His essay, which first appeared under an assumed name in the “Contemporary Review,” and gave rise to some unpleasant equivocations on the part of his publishers, would naturally demand attention simply as a poet’s criticism upon his contemporaries; but since Mr. Buchanan’s attacks are based upon grounds of morality and literary ethics, it becomes still more necessary to give them consideration. Mr. Buchanan’s criticisms are more especially directed against Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but include the other poets as well; and he charges Rossetti and Swinburne with a deliberate choice of the worst subjects and an objectionable treatment of them, asserting that their books are so disfigured throughout by a glamour of impropriety, as to be wholly indefensible and dangerous. Besides this, he thinks that his rivals have made unnecessary attempts to revive and popularize an antiquated and useless poetical style.
     In defence of these charges, which are certainly sufficiently serious to warrant the trouble, Mr. Buchanan applies himself to the work of hunting up objectionable passages in the books of his fellow poets, and succeeds in discovering certain lines to which, aided by his annotations, an objectionable meaning can be attached; and, besides these, he prints other excerpts which are unquestionably indelicate. Having accomplished this congenial task, Mr. Buchanan imagines his work completed, without reflecting that a much larger collection could be made from Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Marlowe, to say nothing of Byron, Shelley, and Moore, authors whom he would not wish to banish from our libraries. That the literary tastes of the present day are different from those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is very true; but that Rossetti and the rest have written, in our time, books similar in moral tone to those of Congreve, Wycherley, or Mrs. Behn, is not true.
     The simple fact is, as Mr. Swinburne urged six years ago, that nearly all of his own and Mr. Rossetti’s poems are dramatic in character, and that their authors are no more responsible for the sentiments of their men and women than Shakespeare for Shylock, Marlowe for Dr. Faustus, or Milton for Satan. The controversy thus returns to questions which have been frequently discussed before, and to a line of argument which, years ago, made Byron responsible alike for the inconsistent characters of Don Juan and Childe Harold, and which to-day endeavors to discover in the hero of the last novel the true sentiments and character of its author. Mr. Rossetti’s “Jenny,” for instance, is no whit more objectionable than Mr. Buchanan’s own “Liz”; but the latter gentleman would hardly care to be held responsible for the ideas held by his heroine, or to be accused of searching for subjects in the slums of London, while the good qualities of the aristocratic neighbors of St. James’s Park yet remained unsung.
     We will not speak of the singular lack of taste which led Mr. Buchanan to make, originally under an assumed name, a bitter and partisan attack upon poets whose literary position, whose artistic faithfulness, and whose quiet isolation entitled them to fairer treatment. Mr. Buchanan, indeed, is not above the suspicion of having initiated in his own writings the very men at whose immodesty he is now greatly shocked; and it was with some idea of his own position, probably, that among the authors flayed in his first masked attack, signed “Thomas Maitland,” was Mr. Robert Buchanan himself. That his essay, with its innuendoes and its forced catalogue of isolated quotations, will render service to literature or to his own reputation, can well be doubted; and its publication is, to say the least, singularly unfortunate.

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London Society (September, 1872)

THE TALK OF THE TOWN.

.....

     The amenities of literature have recently been more than usually exposed to view in a modern battle of the bards. Mr. Robert Buchanan objects emphatically to what he calls the Fleshly School of Poetry, and subjects to a severe analysis the poems and sonnets of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rosetti. It is plain that the individual distinguished by such a name could not help being a poet, and his friend (both in the spirit and in the flesh), Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne, has impaled the hostile critic upon a revengeful pin, and kept him wriggling under a Microscope of eighty-eight page power. Undoubtedly, it is a very pretty quarrel as it stands; and the author of ‘The Man Accurst,’ by representing the Almighty as bathing in the Waters of Life, and casually asking an angel sitting at the gate of Paradise what the miserable Last Man is doing, certainly lays himself open to material repartee from the heroes of the school he condemns. It has been urged against Milton that he committed a grave error in making God argue with Satan, and Mr. Buchanan’s strange notion of the Omniscient ever and again asking, ‘What doth the man?’ while the strange lavation of the Deity in the Waters of Life goes on, is equally open to considerable animadversion. Still, Mr. Buchanan may plead in justification the opening of the Book of Job, and so, perhaps, can quote higher authority than the amatory poets; unless, indeed, these choose to fall back upon the Song of Solomon. The looker on, however, upon the direful strife, who has no overwhelming partiality for one poet or the other, will not improbably arrive at the conclusion that, as far as the controversy has at present gone, Mr. Buchanan has not suffered much from being placed under Mr. Swinburne’s Microscope; nor has Mr. Rosetti much benefited by his friend’s chivalrous but scarcely discreet defence. If such a mere prose writer as myself might venture an opinion, I should be inclined to say that Mr. Swinburne would have done wisely if he had left Mr. Rosetti to answer for himself; and then he would not have been betrayed into the publication of a pamphlet which resembles an angry scream, and which is chiefly remarkable for its absence of dignity, and its profusion of coarse invective. The author of ‘Our Lady of Pain’ and ‘Before a Crucifix,’ is gifted with a fatal facility of writing, a breathless fluency of language, a tropical and feverish brilliancy of imagination, an unpardonable disregard of the venerations of nineteen centuries, and an apparent desire to enthrone vice in the seat of virtue, and to colour the former with rose hues while he blocks up the other with a wall of ice. To hear the gentleman who can ‘hunt sweet love and lose him between white neck and bosom,’ and who can publish such a revolting episode as ‘The Leper,’ complaining that Mr. Tennyson’s ‘Vivien’ is nothing but a vulgar and repulsive offender against morality, would be amusing if such subjects could amuse. Imagine what ‘Vivien’ would be in Mr. Swinburne’s hands! No, let us not imagine it; for his warm genius would have been probably more terribly misapplied in describing Vivien’s fleshly charms, and her seduction of Merlin, than in ‘Laus Veneris,’ or ‘Before Dawn.’
     It is, I think, to be regretted that Mr. Buchanan did not single out Mr. Swinburne as the object of his attack, and not Mr. Rosetti. He has undoubtedly selected the weakest adversary, and not the worst. Mr. Rosetti’s writings possess neither the fascination nor the flow of Mr. Swinburne’s, nor can he boast the inborn genius or glowing imagination of his friend. Possibly he may personally be the happier for the fact; and he may, perhaps, to a certain extent command our sympathy, that David should have mistaken an ordinary son of Anak for Goliath of Gath. He is, however, to be congratulated that Mr. Swinburne considered that the round stone fitted his own forehead, and has presented his unabashed visage to the hostile sling. The Philistine, however, takes a deal of killing; and I do not believe that Mr. Buchanan will take another shot; nor would the public care to pursue the controversy further. The process of dissecting the Fleshly School of Poetry is by no means appetizing; and the more its peculiar economy is laid bare to our gaze, the less we like it.

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