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II
What is especially apparent in the preceding correspondence is that though Swinburne's revisions were first published in the Poems of 1904, he did not compose them (but for certain exceptions subsequently to be noted) specifically for that edition. At the very outermost, they can conceivably be dated of the summer of 1890; but the likely time is considerably earlier, quite possibly soon after the volume's appearance in 1880. Two reconstructions seem to me possible. Swinburne, whose parodic powers are hardly to be matched in English literature, received an early issue of the Heptalogia and reimmersed himself in the several parodies. Having made his revisions, he transcribed them into certain of the presentation copies — to Burne-Jones, to Nichol, perhaps to others. The possibility of a second edition so soon after the first was probably furthest from his mind: the revisions, rather, were in the nature of a private pleasure, what Nichol scrupulously termed a "private communication." Seen in this light, their closest parallel occurs in the day-to-day correspondence with these same friends: those parodic flights on the wings of Dickens, Sade, a newspaper clipping, the Old Testament; Swinburne could hardly restrain himself at such moments, and they make a considerable joy for the reader of the letters.
The alternative construction would have the poet returning some time in the 1880's to the text, making the changes, transcribing them in other copies of the first edition, and then sending them for some unclear reason (perhaps as yet unclear) to Burne-Jones, Nichol, and possibly others. Nor is it likely, even disregarding the restraining hand of Watts-Dunton, that Swinburne would have had hopes for a new edition some time in the 1880's. The book's initial reception had been far from happy, as Swinburne may be heard complaining in the Letters; and he resigns himself once more to the lack of a readership. Having learned long before to expect little, he can hardly be disappointed.[11]
And so the matter rested, until the poet's request of Georgiana Burne-Jones in 1899. It is doubtful that the allusion in that letter to a "reprint" implies that he was contemplating a separate issue of the Heptalogia. But for Swinburne himself, all those he had taken as fair game were long dead; the volume by itself was not likely to matter much as a greeting to the new century. Very probably his intent was to prepare a complete version for the forthcoming Poems, which had been in the planning at least as far back as 1896: by then he had already begun composing the "Dedicatory Epistle" to Watts-Dunton.[12]
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