The Life of Algernon Charles Swinburne

WHEN Swinburne was in his thirty-fourth year an incident occurred which would be too trifling for record in the career of a man of action, but which exercised on his cloistered spirit an extraordinary influence. In 1864 he had been elected a member of the Arts Club, to which many of his immediate associates belonged. Swinburne, whose movements in London were extremely precise, was accustomed to spend a part of every day in the Club, where he wrote his letters, enjoyed the conversation of his friends, and occasionally entertained strangers. In a life so monotonous as his, the Club was a wholesome and an important element of daily change. Unfortunately, during the summer of 1870, in circumstances which were widely related at the time, he had a difference with the Committee of the Arts Club, and he was asked to resign. He considered that he had been harshly treated, and there arose in his mind a spirit of resentment and suspicion which took up its abode there, and never completely left him. From that day forth, Swinburne never consented to be a candidate

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