Wagner, Baudelaire, Swinburne: Poetry in the Condition of Music‪.‬

I. Swinburne's Ideal of Harmony Whitman made this remarkable challenge a keynote of his epochal book, and since then many-poets and scholars alike-have sought to demonstrate the truth of his bold claim. Swinburne, as we know, responded enthusiastically to the "majestic harmony" of Whitman's verse. (2) Enthusiastically but not uncritically. "Whitmania," as he called it, drew Swinburne to lay out his 1872 critical analysis of the American's work. Whitman's free verse led the classicist Swinburne to his analysis of "the radical fault in the noble genius of Whitman," his "formalism":