The late Edward Thomas, killed in the war, was certainly in error when he concluded that Swinburne did not directly express personal emotion and that few of the pieces could have been addressed to one woman and that he never expressed a single hearted devotion to one woman except in "A Leave Taking." We need not insist that one woman was always in his mind, but one woman inspired most of his love passages. New information may show that other women inspired some of his love verse.[E] Another phase in studying the poet that has interested readers is whether he actually figured in the light and lewd loves he sang. This is rather dangerous ground, and one cannot delve with certainty here. Nor is this matter so important as the question of the connection between a grand passion and the poems. The poet says in his notes in reply to critics that "Dolores" and "Faustine" are merely fanciful. Gosse has been censured for not having written an honest biography and for having passed over certain episodes in the poet's life. It had often been rumoured that the poet did lead, occasionally, a dissipated life. In the late seventies he was rescued by his friend Watts-Dunton from the effects of presumable long dissipation. After that time the poet's life was normal and the publication of the early poems of passion became a source of regret to him. He never again returned to that strain and incidentally rarely wrote work that was equal to his first period. It may then be true that some light loves and immoral women inspired poems like "Anima Anceps," "A Match," "Before Parting," "Rococo," "Stage Love," "Interlude," "Before Dawn," "Faustine," "Dolores," "Fragoleeta," "Aholibah," etc. Swinburne then, who of all lyric poets was the one deemed least to have drawn on his personal life for material, has done so in great measure. His "Thalassius" gives us his spiritual autobiography. At the age of fifty-five he recurred to his childhood scenes and gave us memories of them in his drama _The Sister_ (1892) where he drew himself in Clavering. His _The Tale of Balen_, published a few years later, is also personal. In spite of the fact that the poet elaborated and gave us such rich verse, he wrote from the unconscious. The first stanzas of "A Vision of Spring in Winter" were composed in sleep. He awoke at night and penned the verses he had composed. His "A Ballade of Dreamland" was written in the morning without a halt. Swinburne worked from impulse.