In the course of a singularly brilliant career it is not surprising that Mr. Swinburne should have been the subject of many fierce literary attacks. The history of these feuds must await the advent of another Isaac D’Israeli to add a Chapter to the “Calamities and Quarrels of Authors”; interesting as the topic most certainly is, it cannot be dealt with here. Suffice it to say that the principal grounds for adverse criticism have been the asserted voluptuousness and immoral tendency of his romantic poems, and the inconsistency of his political writings. As an instance of the latter failing _The Daily News_ of May 2, 1887, reprinted a poem Mr. Swinburne wrote for _The Morning Star_ (a Radical paper, now defunct) in November 1867 in favour of the Fenians then lying under sentence of death for the murder of Serjeant Brett. This poem Mr. Swinburne had also included in his volume, _Songs before Sunrise_, published in 1871, and it certainly presents a marked contrast to his recent utterances on the Irish question. As to the alleged immoral tendency of his works much has been written, and by many pens, one of the bitterest of his assailants being Mr. Robert Williams Buchanan, whose own early writings were, most assuredly, open to adverse criticism on the same ground. In his little work entitled, “The Fleshly School of Poetry,” published in 1872, Mr. Buchanan not only attacked Swinburne, but he was also most malignant in his criticisms of the poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the kindest, gentlest, and purest of men. The controversy this aroused raged for some years, and the last word was only spoken when Mr. Edmund Yates published his article on “A Scrofulous Scotch Poet,” severely castigating Mr. Buchanan, in _The World_, September 26, 1877. Long prior to this, the following verses relating to Swinburne, had been attributed to Buchanan. It is doubtful whether in 1866 Mr. Swinburne’s name was sufficiently established to entitle him to a place in such distinguished company as is here mentioned. THE SESSION OF THE POETS. “_Di magni, salaputium disertum!_”――――CAT. LIB. LIII. “At the Session of Poets held lately in London, The Bard of Freshwater was voted the chair: With his tresses unbrush’d, and his shirt-collar undone, He loll’d at his ease like a good-humour’d Bear; ‘Come, boys!’ he exclaimed, ‘we’ll be merry together!’ And lit up his pipe with a smile on his cheek; While with eye like a skipper’s cock’d up at the weather, Sat the Vice-Chairman Browning, thinking in Greek.