White Stains

PREFACE 7 plagiarists ; he alone caught the fierce frenzy of Baude- laire’s brandied shrieks, and his First Series of Poems and Ballads was the legitimate echo of that not fierier note. But English Art as a whole was unmoved, at any rate not stirred to any depth, by this wave of debauchery. The great thinkers maintained the even keel, and the windy waters lay nor for their frailer barks to cross. There is one exception of note, till this day unsuspected, in the person of George Archi- bald Bishop. In a corner of Paris this young poet (for in his nature the flower of poesy did spring, did even take root and give some promise of a brighter bloom, till stricken and blasted in latter years by the lightning of his own sins) was steadily writing day after day, night after night, often working forty hours at a time, work which he destined to entrance the world. All England should ring with his praises ; bye-and-bye the whole world should know his name. Of these works none of the longer and more ambitious remains. How they were lost, and how those frag- ments we possess were saved, is best told by relating the romantic and almost incredible story of his life. The known facts of this life are few, vague, and unsatisfactory ; the more definite statements lack cor-