SWINBURNE SEPARATES THE MEN FROM THE GIRLS: SENSATIONALISM IN POEMS AND BALLADS

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MR. SWINBURNE, DECLARED THOMAS BAYNES in the Edinburgh Review, is a “poet of what is known as the sensational school of literature.” Swinburne’s predilection for sensuous subject matter, and the premium on physical sensation in his poetry, Baynes argued, produce in the reader neither “ideal pleasures” nor “any purely mental effect,” but a “physical commotion in the frame — a ‘flutter of the blood’” (93–94; 89–90).