ABSTRACT
Having read Atalanta in Calydon, which he thought ‘promising and vigorous’, Bulwer-Lytton came to Swinburne’s aid with advice and moral support after Moxon withdrew Poems and Ballads. The poet gratefully accepted an invitation to spend a few days at Knebworth. Bulwer-Lytton’s later remarks show some misgivings about Swinburne’s future. His son Robert expressed depreciatory opinions of Swinburne, as in letters to John Morley and in a note which he published in his father’s novel The Parisians. Swinburne always remembered Bulwer-Lytton with gratitude but responded to what he referred to as the son’s ‘scribblings’ by composing epigrams and a merciless parody for his Heptalogia, ‘Last Words of a Seventh-Rate Poet’.
