On the mountains of memory, by the world's well-springs, In all men's eyes, Where the light of the life of him is on all past things, And here is The Halt before Rome': 'Serve not for any man's wages, Pleasure nor glory nor gold; Not by her side are they won I give but the love of all ages, And the life of my people of old."' And then there are the words he addressed to the mother of the Cairoli, which must come home to so many English mothers to-day, as the very message for their sorrow and their pride: 'Somewhat could each soul save, What thing soever it gave, But thine, mother, what has thy soul kept back? To serve thee and be thy son, Feed with love all thy days, lest one day lack; All thy whole life's love, thine heart's whole, Thou hast given as who gives gladly, O thou the supreme soul.' And how many soldiers to-day are replying, as Swinburne's Pilgrims reply, to an inner or outer cynical voice that will not yet be quite silenced: And ye shall die before your thrones be won. Dead; but if she too move on earth and live, Life being so little and death so good to give.' That is the note that rings all through these wonderful poems, a note that in such days as these, none perhaps, except the soldiers and the mothers, can hear without shame mingling with the inspiration. Swinburne has never received his full meed of gratitude for sounding it so finely. His greatness has been too little remembered, the weak things in him too much. He was always a child, or at least never a grown man, in politics as in so much else. One can more easily fancy him writing almost any of Wordsworth's greatest poems than the pamphlet about the Convention of Cintra. But of the high ardour and true instincts of youth no one has had more, nor of the pure utterance of poetry by which the breath of a moment achieves eternal life. There is much else in him to remember; but that is the thing which calls most for remembrance to-day. This article was already in type when the volume of Posthumous Poems appeared. It is edited by Mr Gosse and Mr Thomas James Wise, who has done so much for Swinburne and Swinburnians. Mr Gosse gives some account of its contents in an interesting preface. Most of the poems were found after Swinburne's death in old newspaper bundles of miscellaneous rubbish, which it had been the poet's curious habit all his life to pack together when the litter of paper on his table grew intolerable. They were then stowed away in shelves, and carried about whenever he moved his abode, but never again opened. Neither time nor space admit of any detailed discussion of the volume. As to the contents of the volume, nearly half of them are ballads written in Swinburne's Rossetti period, but apparently considered by Rossetti to be 'too rough and bare' for publication. They represent Swinburne's conviction that the manner of the old ballads could be followed by modern poets much more closely than had been thought. Whether the result is quite a living thing will be a matter on which opinions differ. The best of the new ballads is, perhaps, 'Duriesdyke,' because it has most of that bareness which is the power of the ballad at its finest, and least of the irrelevant and garrulous detail which is its bane. But few will think even this as fine a thing as 'The Bloody Son' of Poems and Ballads,' with its beautiful unity and monotony. For the rest, there is a miscellaneous collection of poems of no very great importance. Several of them are those tributes to great men, Landor again, and Shelley and Mazzini, and Leconte de Lisle and Karl Blind, in which Swinburne was more abundant than any poet. There is an early version of the 'Dies Iræ,' a parody of Tennyson and a parody of himself, amusing as showing he was aware that his readers had some excuse for getting tired of his rhapsodies about the sea. But the finest thing in the volume is the rejected Newdigate on The Death of Sir John Franklin, which, one hopes with Mr Gosse, was rejected unread because it was not in the heroic couplet. In all essentials it is the Swinburne of the later volumes; only, of course, it is not maturity but youth. It must be by far the finest thing ever sent in for the Newdigate. And that Swinburne was entirely himself from the first may be seen by such lines as these, which describe the dying men thinking of spring in England: 'And how the meadows in their sweet May sloth or by the last lines of all, which, like so many of his most famous poems, end with his first and last love, the sea: 'These chose the best, therefore their name shall be Part of the royal record of the sea.' It is just a little young. But, except for that, the passage might have its place in any poem of his prime. And, indeed, the best part of Swinburne was always young. The boy's love of the sea grew into the man's love of poetry and liberty without loss or change, for to his poet's vision the three were one, a spiritual unity which remained all his life unbroken. To him, in age as in youth, the sea meant poetry, and poetry meant liberty, and, again, liberty and poetry, in their turn, meant the freedom, the boundlessness, the exaltation of the sea. JOHN BAILEY. Art. 13. THE COURSE OF THE WAR. THE principal fighting of the past three months on the western front has taken place on either flank of the line to which the German armies had withdrawn, in the latter part of March, between Arras and the Aisne. Whatever designs may have prompted the German retreat, the Allied Commanders were not lured into advancing across the belt of devastated country, styled by Hindenburg the 'prepared battle-field,' to attack the new positions. They contented themselves with following up the retreat, and pressing the enemy back to his main line of defence. In a series of intermittent operations, spread over the past three months, the French have advanced their front to the margin of the upper Coucy Forest and the forest of St Gobain, and captured the villages of Moy (on the Oise, due east of Cerizy), Urvillers, and Gauchy; while the British occupied a line embracing Fayet, Gricourt, Pontru, Lempire, Gouzeaucourt, Havrincourt Wood, and Boursies.* Our troops hold the heights overlooking the Somme Canal east of Le Verguier, and have reached the Scheldt east of Epehy. An attack on a front of ten miles, on April 2, gave them possession of Noreuil, Ecoust St Mein, Croisilles, and Henin sur Cojeul, and brought them in contact with the enemy's main positions between the Bapaume-Cambrai road and the Sensée, where the so-called Hindenburg line embraces the villages of Quéant, Bullecourt, Fontaine lez Croisilles, and Chérisy. The early days of April were characterised by the aërial activity which usually precedes great battles. On the 5th and 6th engagements were fought between large forces; and extensive raids were made against the enemy's aerodromes, depôts, and communications. The losses. were heavy on both sides, 46 German machines being destroyed, or driven down in a damaged condition, while 48 of ours failed to return. This appears to be the last occasion on which the enemy has made a serious attempt to gain supremacy in the air; for, though many engagements have since been fought, our pilots have had * See map in the Quarterly Review' for April. The French have lately taken over part of this line, as far north, at least, as Gricourt. to seek their foes behind the German lines. Our ascendancy has increased until, at Messines, on June 7, the hostile aeroplanes were debarred from taking any part in the battle. As on the Somme, the officers of the Royal Flying Corps have been free to attack the hostile infantry with bombs and machine-guns, a form of activity which, as testified by captured official documents, has had a demoralising effect on the troops concerned. In the meantime preparations had been pressed forward for an offensive on the Arras front, where assembly and communication trenches, telephone lines, light railways, and all the other provisions for a great battle were already in existence, and had only to be extended or supplemented. It may, indeed, be surmised that most of this work had been already done, in anticipation of the probable development of the spring offensive, as originally planned. The opposing lines were in close contact, obviating the tedious process of capturing a succession of advanced positions, which had been in progress for some time in front of the new Hindenburg line. The attack was delivered at 5.30 a.m. on April 9, on the front between Henin sur Cojeul and Givenchy en Gohelle. The blow was sudden and effective; and, if the Germans were aware of our intention, their preparations for meeting the attack at the moment of its delivery were inadequate, and their attempted counter-attacks were belated and abortive. On the right wing Neuville Vitasse and Tilloy lez Mofflaines were taken in the first rush, together with the intervening positions on Telegraph Hill and Observation Ridge, features of the long spur which stretches from the neighbourhood of Monchy au Bois to beyond Monchy le Preux, and divides the waters of the Scarpe and its tributary the Cojeul. In the centre Blangy and St Laurent, suburbs of Arras, also fell to the first assault; while, on the left, La Folie, and all but the northern extremity of the historic ridge of Vimy were captured. In the second stage Feuchy, Athies, and Thelus were occupied. An ample supply of munitions enabled the attack to be prepared by a bombardment far surpassing in intensity all records of the Somme. Progress, however, was impeded by heavy snowstorms, which continued for several days; and the advance of the artillery was hampered by the sodden condition |