SOURCE: “Robert Buchanan's Critical Principles,” in PMLA, Vol. LXVIII, No. 5, December, 1953, pp. 1228-32.

In the following essay, Storey discusses evidence of personal animosity on the part of Algernon Swinburne and William Rossetti for Buchanan that predates Buchanan's controversial review of Swinburne's Poems & Ballads (1866).

John A. Cassidy's recent article, “Robert Buchanan and the Fleshly Controversy” (PMLA, LXVII, 65-93), is the first complete and wholly impartial account of the celebrated quarrel to be published. Mr. Cassidy has showed that the attack on Rossetti, “while reprehensible, was not made without some provocation” (p. 65), and that despite his later apology to his “old enemy” Buchanan was subjected to unrelenting harassment by Rossetti's friends. In his study Cassidy emphasizes the personal side of the controversy. But if, as seems certain, personal animus was not the sole motive on Buchanan's side, an additional note will perhaps be helpful to clarify our understanding of the...