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THE SATURDAY REVIEW London, England 22 April 1916 (page 398)
To the Editor of the Saturday Review.
Sir,—In his examples of Swinburnian “inversions” Mr. Madden is unfortunate.
“Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores, The myrtle to death”
Is on its own showing, by internal evidences an intentional and deliberate inversion. The other two instances given are not inversions at all, but, respectively, amatory and metaphysical commonplaces. Swinburne is always most careful in his English symbolism and mythology: he would no more represent Grief with “a glass that ran” than Horace would write of Saturn’s caduceus of Juno’s sheaves.
“Ordinary intelligence”, in any case, is preferable to pedantry, and ordinary intelligence and common sense say that Mr. Scott is right in his correction.
Yours faithfully, |