THE SCOTTISH REVIEW

London, England

October 1899

(Pages 411-412)

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

SHORT NOTICES.

Jephthah and Other Mysteries—Lyrical and Dramatic, by Aleister Crowley (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.), is of a wholly different character. Its author has been a diligent student of Mr. Swinburne, and dedicates his work to him. He has caught some of Mr. Swinburne’s fire, and naturally has adopted some of his verse forms. But he out-Swinburnes Swinburne’s passion, and gets carried by it sometimes altogether beyond ordinary comprehension. His bête-noir seems to be the God of the Old Testament and of the current Christian faith. The divine name seems to act upon him as a red rag on a bull. He can hardly find epithets gross enough to give vent to his hatred of Him. When he gets out of that province his verse, though unequal, is sometimes chaste and his teaching reasonable. His book as a whole is, however, much too extravagant in its heat and obscure in its diction to prove pleasant or profitable reading to anyone who is not of the highly “intense” order.