Page:Under the Microscope - Swinburne (1899).djvu/13

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

PREFACE

When the history of the calamities and quarrels of modern authors comes to be written out in detail it is very certain that the period in English letters between 1860-1875 will demand and receive respectful attention. Foremost among the documents humains, which the bitter animosities aroused by Robert Buchanan's blatant and brutal attack[1] upon Rossetti, Swinburne and Morris, brought to the surface, must ever remain, "through glad and sorry years," the rare pamphlet we now reprint.[2]

Irradiating and informing Under the Microscope is a rapture of rage unmistakably Swinburnian. Junius, Swift even, might have borrowed from such an

  1. The Fleshly School of Poetry and Other Phenomena of the Day, By Robert Buchanan, Strahan & Co., 56, Ludgate Hill, London, 1872. Octavo, pink wrapper, pp. x: 97.
  2. Under | the Microscope. | By | Algernon Charles Swinburne. | London: | D. White, 22, Coventry Street, W. | 1872.
    Collation:—Crown octavo, pp. iv.+88; consisting of Half-title (with blank reverse), pp. i.-ii.; Title-page, as above (with imprint: "London: | Savill, Edwards and Co., Printers, Chandos Street, | Covent Garden," upon the centre of the reverse), pp. iii.-iv.; and Text pp. 1-88.
    Issued in stone-coloured paper wrappers, with the Title-page (enclosed in an ornamental ruled frame) reproduced upon the front—"Two Shillings and Sixpence" being added

vii