Fleshly school of poetry is a derogatory term used by the Scottish poet and critic Robert Buchanan, writing under the pseudonym Thomas Maitland, in his review of the fifth edition of Rossetti’s Poems (1870) in The Contemporary Review (Oct. 1871) to describe the artists and writers D.G.Rossetti, A.C.Swinburne, and William Morris and their followers, especially, Philip Marston, and the poet and translator John Payne.
Buchanan regarded these writers as decadent, morally irresponsible, aesthetic (in the pejorative sense), and over interested in the carnal or sensual.
Buchanan was a misguided man and his vituperations caused considerable controversy. He subsequently withdrew from the criticisms it contained, and it is chiefly remembered by the replies it evoked from Rossetti in a letter to the Athenaeum (December 16, 1871), entitled The Stealthy School of Criticism, and from Swinburne in Under the Microscope (1872).
See also: Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: Pre-Raphaelite Poetry, Its Characteristics