ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, a celebrated English poet and critic, was born in London, April 5th, 1837. His studies were begun in France and completed at Oxford, which he left without a degree in 1857. It is possible, however, that he did not leave a better Greek scholar behind him at the university, which failed to honor him. His love for Greek and French verse decided his career and his style. He became the most melodious versifier of his time. The English language as he employed it by joining Saxon alliteration to classical “staff rhyme” showed a capacity for melody before unsuspected. He employed this in his earlier poems and ballads (republished in America in 1866 as “Laus Veneris”) to express a spirit of intense revolt against modern moral and social restrictions. This is more or less apparent throughout all his work, which in his later years shows an increasing tendency to prefer melody to meaning. In his youth he was a fierce Republican, a disciple of Landor and Hugo; but among his latest poems is a strongly patriotic ode in favor of crushing the Boers of the South African republics. He has published numerous essays, chiefly critical. Some of them have been collected in his “Prose Miscellanies,” published in 1886.