Poet and prose writer, born in London, son of Admiral Swinburne; educated at Balliol College, Oxford, went to Florence and spent some time there; his first productions were plays, two of them tragedies, and "Poems and Ballads," his later "A Song of Italy," essay on "William Blake," and "Songs before Sunrise," instinct with pantheistic and republican ideas, besides "Studies in Song," "Studies in Prose and Poetry," etc.; he ranks as the successor of Landor, of whom he is a great admirer, stands high both as a poet and a critic, and is a man of broad and generous sympathies; his admirers regard it as a reproach to his generation that due honor is not paid by it to his genius; born 1837.