Chapter LXV (3)

"No nightingale delighteth to prolong
Her low preamble all alone,
More than my soul to hear her echoed song
_Throb through the ribbed stone_;

"Singing and murmuring in her feastful mirth,
Trying to feel herself alive;
Lord over nature, lord of the visible earth,
Lord of the senses five.

"Communing with herself: 'All these are mine;
And let the world have peace or wars,
'Tis one to me.' She--when young night divine
Crown'd dying day with stars,

"Making sweet close of his delicious toils--
Lit light in wreaths and anadems,
And pure quintessences of precious oils
In hallow'd moons of gems,

"To mimic heaven; and clapt her hands, and cried,
'I marvel if my still delight
In this great house, so royal, rich, and wide,
Be flattered to the height.

"'From shape to shape at first within the womb,
The brain is modell'd,' she began,
'And through all phases of all thought I come
Into the perfect man.

"'All nature widens upward, evermore
The simpler essence lower lies;
More complex is more perfect, owning more
Discourse, more widely wise.'

"Then of the moral instinct would she prate,
And of the rising from the dead,
As hers by right of full-accomplish'd Fate;
And at the last she said--"

Now this surely is not writing which can commend itself to the judgment of any impartial critic. One cannot possibly admire this medley of topics, moral and physiological, thrown pell-mell together, and mingled with descriptions which are themselves a puzzle to understand. To hear one's own voice "throbbing through the ribbed stone," is a startling novelty in acoustics, and the lighting up of the apartment is far from being a lucid affair. We can understand "the wreaths and anadems;" our experience of an illumination-night in the streets of London, where little lamps or jets of gas, assume these festive shapes, comes to our aid, but "moons of gems" would form such globes as even the purest quintessence of the most precious oil must fail to render very luminous.

_The Vision of Sin_ commences after this fashion:--

"I had a vision when the night was late:
A youth came riding toward a palace-gate;
_He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown_,
_But that his heavy rider kept him down_.

And from the palace came a child of sin,
_And took him by the curls, and led him in_,
Where sat a company with heated eyes,
Expecting when a fountain should arise."

Thus it commences, and thus it proceeds for some time, in the same very intelligible strain. It is our fault, perhaps, that we cannot interpret the vision; but we confess that we can make nothing of it till the measure suddenly changes, and we have a bitter, mocking, sardonic song, a sort of devil's drinking-song, through which some species of meaning becomes evident enough.

In a vision of sin we may count upon a little mystery; but we should expect to find all clear and beautiful in _A Dream of Fair Women_. But here, too, everything is singularly misty. Those who have witnessed that ingenious exhibition called The Dissolving Views, will recollect that gay and gaudy obscurity which intervenes at the change of each picture; they will remember that they passed half their time looking upon a canvass covered with indistinct forms, and strangely mingled colours. Just for a few minutes the picture stands out bright and well defined as need be, then it breaks up, and confuses its dim fragments with the colours of some other picture, which is now struggling to make itself visible. Half our time is spent amongst mingled shadows of the two, the eye in vain attempting to trace any perfect outline. Precisely such a sensation the perusal of this, and some other of the poems of Tennyson, produces on the reader. For a moment the scene brightens out into the most palpable distinctness, but for the greater part we are gazing on a glittering mist, where there is more colour than form, and where the colours themselves are flung one upon the other in lawless profusion. In the _Dream of Fair Women_, the form of Cleopatra stands forth magnificently; it is almost the only portion of the poem that has the great charm of distinctness, or which fixes itself permanently on the memory.

We cannot bring ourselves to quote line after line, and verse after verse, of what we hold to be bad and unreadable: we have given some examples, and mentioned a considerable number of the pieces, on which we should found a certain vote of censure; the intelligent reader can easily check our judgment by his own,--confirm or dispute it. We turn to what is a more grateful task. Well known as these poems are, we must be permitted to give a few specimens of those happy efforts which have secured, we believe, to Tennyson, in spite of the defects we have pointed out, an enduring place amongst the poets of England. We shall make our selection so as to illustrate his success in very different styles, and on different topics. We shall make this selection from the volume of _The Poems_, and then dwell separately, and somewhat more at large, upon _The Princess_, which is comparatively a late publication.

We cannot pass by our especial favourite, _The Lotos-Eaters_. This is poetry of the very highest order--in every way charming--subject and treatment both. The state of mind described, is one which every cultivated mind will understand and enter into, and which a poet, in particular, must thoroughly sympathise with--that lassitude which is content to look upon the swift-flowing current of life, and let it flow, refusing to embark thereon--a lassitude which is not wholly torpor, which has mental energy enough to cull a justification for itself from all its stores of philosophy--a lassitude charming as the last thought, before sleep quite folds us in its safe and tried oblivion. No need to eat of the Lotos, or to be cast upon the enchanted island, to feel this gentle despondency, this resignation made up of resistless indolence and well-reasoned despair. Yet these are circumstances which add greatly to the poetry of our picture. To the band of weary navigators who had disembarked upon this land--

"Where all things always seemed the same--
The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.

IV.

"Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each; but whoso did receive of them,
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave,
Far, far away, did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep asleep he seemed, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.

V.

"They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon, upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, 'We will return no more;'
And all at once they sang, 'Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.'"

CHORIC SONG.

I.

"There is sweet music here, that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leav'd flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

II.

"Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest: why should we toil alone?
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,
Still from one sorrow to another thrown:
Nor ever fold our wings,
And cease from wanderings,
Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;
Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings,--
'There is no joy but calm!'
Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?

* * * * *

IV.

"Hateful is the dark-blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.
Death is the end of life: ah! why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence,--ripen, fall, and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease!"

VI.

"Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives,
And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?
Let what is broken so remain.
The gods are hard to reconcile:
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There _is_ confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labour unto aged breath." . . .

VIII.

* * * * *

"We have had enough of action; and of motion, we,
Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,
Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind."

As at once a companion and counterpart to this picture, we have a noble strain from _Ulysses_, who, having reached his island-home and kingdom, pants again for enterprise--for wider fields of thought and action.

"It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly.

I am become a name;
For, always roaming with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known; cities of men,
And manners, climates, councils, governments;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

* * * * *

"This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port: the vessel puffs his sail:
There gloom the dark-blue seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and, sitting well in order, smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die."

_St Simeon Stylites_ is a poem strongly and justly conceived, and written throughout with sustained and equable power. Those who have objected to it, that it is not the portrait of any _Christian_ even of that distant age and that Eastern clime, have perhaps not sufficiently consulted their ecclesiastical history, or sufficiently reflected how almost inevitably the practice of penances and self-inflictions leads to the idea that these are, in fact, a sort of present payment for the future joys of heaven. Such an idea most assuredly prevailed amongst the Eastern eremites, of whom our Simeon was a most noted example. But we cannot quote from this, or from _The Two Voices_, or from _Locksley Hall_, or from _Clara Vere de Vere_; for we wish now to select some specimen of the lighter, more playful, and graceful manner of our poet. We pause betwixt _The Day-Dream_ and _The Talking Oak_; they are both admirable: we choose the latter--we rest under its friendly, sociable shade, and its most musical of boughs. The lover holds communion with the good old oak-tree, and finds him the most amiable as well as the most discreet of confidants. May every lover find his oak-tree talk as well, and as agreeably, and give a report as welcome of his absent fair one! On being questioned--

"If ever maid or spouse
As fair as my Olivia, came
To rest beneath thy boughs,"

The oak makes answer:--

"O Walter, I have sheltered here
Whatever maiden grace
The good old summers, year by year,
Made ripe in summer-chase:

"Old summers, when the monk was fat,
And, issuing shorn and sleek,
Would twist his girdle tight, and pat
The girls upon the cheek;

"And I have shadow'd many a group
Of beauties, that were born
In teacup-times of hood and hoop,
Or while the patch was worn;

"And leg and arm, with love-knots gay,
About me leap'd and laugh'd
The modish Cupid of the day,
And shrill'd his tinsel shaft.

"I swear (and else may insects prick
Each leaf into a gall)
This girl for whom your heart is sick
Is three times worth them all;

"I swear by leaf, and wind, and rain,
(And hear me with thy ears,)
That though I circle in the grain
Five hundred rings of years--

"Yet since I first could cast a shade
Did never creature pass
So slightly, musically made,
So light upon the grass:

"For as to fairies, that will flit
To make the greensward fresh,
I hold them exquisitely knit,
But far too spare of flesh."

The lover proceeds to inquire when it was that Olivia last came to "sport beneath his boughs;" and the oak, who from his topmost branches could see over into Summer-place, and look, it seems, in at the windows, gives him full information. Yesterday her father had gone out--

"But as for her, she staid at home,
And on the roof she went,
And down the way you use to come,
She look'd with discontent.

"She left the novel, half uncut,
Upon the rosewood shelf;
She left the new piano shut;
She could not please herself.

"Then ran she, gamesome as a colt,
And livelier than a lark;
She sent her voice through all the holt
Before her, and the park.

"A light wind chased her on the wing,
And in the chase grew wild;
As close as might be would he cling
About the darling child.

"But light as any wind that blows,
So fleetly did she stir,
The flower she touch'd on dipt and rose,
And turn'd to look at her.

"And here she came, and round me play'd,
And sang to me the whole
Of those three stanzas that you made
About my 'giant bole;'

"And, in a fit of frolic mirth,
She strove to span my waist;
Alas! I was so broad of girth
I could not be embraced.

"I wish'd myself the fair young beech,
That here beside me stands,
That round me, clasping each in each,
She might have lock'd her hands."

It is all equally charming, but we can proceed no further. Of the comic, we have hinted that Mr Tennyson is not without some specimens, though, as will be easily imagined, it is not a vein in which he frequently indulges. _Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue_ is not a piece much to our taste, yet that

"Head-waiter of the chophouse here,
To which I most resort,"

together with the scene in which he lives and moves, is very graphically brought before us in the following lines:--

"But thou wilt never move from hence,
The sphere thy fate allots:
Thy latter days, increased with pence,
Go down among the pots.
Thou battenest by the greasy gleam
In haunts of hungry sinners,
Old boxes, larded with the steam
Of thirty thousand dinners.

"_We_ fret, _we_ fume, would shift our skins,
Would quarrel with our lot;
_Thy_ care is under-polish'd tins
To serve the hot-and-hot.
To come and go, and come again,
Returning like the pewit,
And watch'd by silent gentlemen
That trifle with the cruet."

But this is not the extract we promised our readers, nor the one we should select as the best illustration of our author's powers in this style. In a piece called _Walking to the Mail_, there occurs the following description of a certain college trick played on some miserly caitiff, who, no doubt, had richly deserved this application of _Lynch law_. It is not unlike the happiest manner of our old dramatists,--

"I was at school--a college in the south:
There lived a flay-flint near; we stole his fruit,
His hens, his eggs; but there was law for us;
We paid in person. He had a sow, sir: she
With meditative grunts of much content,
Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud.
By night we dragg'd her to the college tower
From her warm bed, and up the cork-screw stair,
With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow,
And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.
Large range of prospect had the mother sow,
And but for daily loss of one she lov'd,
As one by one we took them--but for this,
As never sow was higher in this world,
Might have been happy: but what lot is pure?
We took them all, till she was left alone
Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine,
And so returned unfarrow'd to her sty."

_The Princess; a Medley_, now claims our attention. This can no longer, perhaps, be regarded as a new publication, yet, being the latest of Mr Tennyson's, some account of it seems due from us. With what propriety he has entitled it "A Medley" is not fully seen till the whole of it has come before the reader; and it is at the close of the poem that the author, sympathising with that something of surprise which he is conscious of having excited, explains in part how he fell into that half-serious, half-bantering style, and that odd admixture of modern and mediæval times, of nineteenth century notions and chivalrous manners, which characterise it, and constitute it the medley that it is. Accident, it seems, must bear the blame, if blame there be. The poem grew, we are led to gather, from some chance sketch or momentary caprice. So we infer from the following lines,--

"Here closed our compound story, which at first,
Perhaps, but meant to banter little maids
With mock heroics and with parody;
But slipt in some strange way, cross'd with burlesque
From mock to earnest, even into tones
Of tragic."----

However it grew, it is a charming medley; and that purposed anachronism which runs throughout, blending new and old, new theory and old romance, lends to it a perpetual piquancy. Speaking more immediately and critically of its poetic merit, what struck us on its perusal was this, that the _pictures_ it presents are the most vivid imaginable; that here there is an originality and brilliancy of diction which quite illuminates the page; that everything which addresses itself to the eye stands out in the brightest light before us; but that, where the author falls into _reflection_ and _sentiment_, he is not equal to himself; that here a slow creeping mist seems occasionally to steal over the page; so that, although the poem is not long, there are yet many passages which might be omitted with advantage. As to that peculiar abrupt style of narrative which the author adopts, it has, at all events, the merit of extreme brevity, and must find its full justification, we presume, in that half-burlesque character which is impressed upon the whole poem.

The subject is a pleasing one--a gentle banter of "the rights of woman," as sometimes proclaimed by certain fair revolutionists. The feminine republic is dissolved, as might be expected, by the entrance of Love. He is not exactly elected first president of the republic; he has a shorter way of his own of arriving at despotic power, and domineers and scatters at the same time. In vain the sex band themselves together in Amazonian clubs, sections, or communities; he no sooner appears than each one drops the hand of his neighbour, and every heart is solitary.

The poem opens, oddly enough, with the sketch of a baronet's park, which has been given up for the day to some mechanics' institute. They hold a scientific gala there. Rapidly, and with touches of sprightly fancy, is the whole scene brought before us--the holiday multitude, and the busy amateurs of experimental philosophy.

"Somewhat lower down,
A man with knobs and wires and vials fired
A cannon: Echo answered in her sleep
From hollow fields: and here were telescopes
For azure views; and there a group of girls
In circle waited, whom the electric shock
Dislinked with shrieks and laughter: round the lake
A little clock-work steamer paddling plied,
And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls,
A dozen angry models jetted steam;
A petty railway ran; a fire-balloon
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves,
And dropt a parachute and pass'd:
And there, through twenty posts of telegraph,
They flash'd a saucy message to and fro
Between the mimic stations; so that sport
With science hand in hand went: otherwhere
Pure sport: a herd of boys with clamour bowl'd
And stump'd the wicket; _babies roll'd about
Like tumbled fruit in grass_; and men and maids
Arrang'd a country-dance, and flew through light
And shadow."----

Here we are introduced to Lilia, the baronet's young and pretty daughter. She, in a sprightly fashion that would, however, have daunted no admirer, rails at the sex masculine, and asserts, at all points, the equality of woman.

"Convention beats them down;
It is but bringing up; no more than that
You men have done it; how I hate you all!
O were I some great princess, I would build
Far off from men a college of my own,
And I would teach them all things; you would see.'
And one said, smiling, 'Pretty were the sight,
If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt
With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,
_And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair_.
. . . . Yet I fear,
If there were many Lilias in the brood,
However deep you might embower the nest,
Some boy would spy it.'
"At this upon the sward
She tapt her tiny silken-sandal'd foot:
'That's your light way; but I would make it death
For any male thing but to peep at us.'
Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd;
_A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
And sweet as English air could make her, she_."

Hereupon the poet, who is one of the party, tells a tale of a princess who did what Lilia threatened--who founded a college of sweet girls, to be brought up in high contempt and stern equality of the now domineering sex. This royal and beautiful champion of the rights of woman had been betrothed to a certain neighbouring prince, and the poet, assuming the character of this prince, tells the tale in the first person.

Of course, the royal foundress of a college, where no men are permitted to make their appearance, scouts the idea of being bound by any such precontract. The prince, however, cannot so easily resign the lady. He sets forth, with two companions, Cyril and Florian. The three disguise themselves in feminine apparel, and thus gain admittance into this palace-college of fair damsels.

"There at a board, by tome and paper, sat,
With two tame leopards couch'd beside her throne,
All beauty compass'd in a female form,
The princess; liker to the inhabitant
Of some clear planet close upon the sun,
Than our man's earth. She rose her height and said:
'We give you welcome; not without redound
Of fame and profit unto yourselves ye come,
The first-fruits of the stranger; aftertime,
And that full voice which circles round the grave
Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me.
What! are the ladies of your land so tall?'
'We of the court,' said Cyril. 'From the court!'
She answered; 'then ye know the prince?'
And he,
'The climax of his age: as tho' there were
One rose in all the world--your highness that--
He worships your ideal.' And she replied:
'We did not think in our own hall to hear
This barren verbiage, current among men--
Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment:
We think not of him. When we set our hand
To this great work, we purposed with ourselves
Never to wed. You likewise will do well,
Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling
The tricks which make us toys of men, that so,
Some future time, if so indeed you will,
You may with those self-styled our lords ally
Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.'
At these high words, we, conscious of ourselves,
Perused the matting."

In this banter is not unfairly expressed a sort of reasoning we have sometimes heard gravely maintained. We women will not be "the toys of men." We renounce the toilette and all those charms which the mirror reflects and teaches; we will be the equal friends of men, not bound to them by the ties of a silly fondness, or such as a passing imagination creates. Good. But as the natural attraction between the sexes must, under some shape, still exist, it may be worth while for these female theorists to consider, whether a little folly and love, is not a better combination, than much philosophy and a coarser passion; for such, they may depend upon it, is the alternative which life presents to us. Love and imagination are inextricably combined; in our old English the same word, _Fancy_, expressed them both.

Strange to say, the princess has selected two _widows_, (both of whom have children, and one an infant,)--Lady Blanche and Lady Psyche--for the chief assistants, or tutors, in her new establishment. Our hopeful pupils put themselves under the tuition of Lady Psyche, who proves to be a sister of one of them, Florian. This leads to their discovery. After Lady Psyche has delivered a somewhat tedious lecture, she recognises her brother.

"'My brother! O,' she said;
'What do you here? And in this dress? And these?
Why, who are these? a wolf within the fold!
A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me!
A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin all!'"

All three appeal to Psyche's feelings. The appeal is effectual, though the reader will probably think it rather wearisome: it is one of those passages he will wish were abridged. The lady promises silence, on the condition that they will steal away, as soon as may be, from the forbidden ground on which they have entered.

The princess now rides out,--

"To take
The dip of certain strata in the north."

The new pupils are summoned to attend her.

"She stood
Among her maidens higher by the head,
Her back against a pillar, her foot on one
Of those tame leopards. Kitten-like it rolled,
And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near:
My heart beat thick with passion and with awe;
And from my breast the involuntary sigh
Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes,
That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook
My pulses, till to horse we climb, and so
Went forth in long retinue, following up
The river, as it narrow'd to the hills."

Here the disguised prince has an opportunity of furtively alluding to his suit, and to his precontract--even ventures to speak of the despair which her cruel resolution will inflict upon him.

"'Poor boy,' she said, 'can he not read--no books?
Quoit, tennis-ball--no games? nor deals in that
Which men delight in, martial exercises?
To nurse a blind ideal like a girl,
Methinks he seems no better than a girl;
As girls were once, as we ourselves have been.
We had our dreams, perhaps he mixed with them;
We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it,
Being other--since we learnt our meaning here,
To uplift the woman's fall'n divinity
Upon an even pedestal with man."

Well, after the geological survey, and much hammering and clinking, and "chattering of stony names," the party sit down to a sort of pic-nic. And here Cyril, flushed with the wine, and forgetful of his womanly part, breaks out into a merry stave "unmeet for ladies."

"'Forbear,' the princess cried, _'Forbear, Sir,' I_--
And, heated through and through with wrath and love,
I smote him on the breast; he started up;
There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd."

That "sir," that manly blow, had revealed all; there was a general flight. The princess, Ida, in the tumult is thrown, horse and rider, into a stream. The prince is, of course, there to save; but it avails him nothing. He is afterwards brought before her, she sitting in state, "eight mighty daughters of the plough" attending as her guard. She thus tauntingly dismisses him:--

"'You have done well, and like a gentleman,
And like a prince; you have our thanks for all:
And you look well too in your woman's dress;
Well have you done and like a gentleman.
You have saved our life; we owe you bitter thanks:
Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood;
Then men had said--but now--
You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'd
Our tutors, wrong'd, and lied, and thwarted, us--
_I_ wed with thee! _I_ bound by precontract,
Your bride, your bond-slave! _not tho' all the gold_
_That veins the world were packed to make your crown_,
And every spoken tongue should lord you.'"

Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough usher them out of the palace. We shall get into too long a story if we attempt to narrate all the events that follow. The king, the father of the prince, comes with an army to seek and liberate his son. Arac, brother of the princess, comes also with an army to her protection. The prince and Arac, with a certain number of champions on either side, enter the lists; and in the _mêlée_, the prince is dangerously wounded. Then compassion rises in the noble nature of Ida; she takes the wounded prince into her palace, tends upon him, restores him. She loves; and the college is for ever broken up--disbanded; and the "rights of woman" resolve into that greatest of all her rights--a heart-affection, a life-service, the devotion of one who is ever both her subject and her prince.

This account will be sufficient to render intelligible the few further extracts we wish to make. Lady Psyche, not having revealed to her chief these "wolves" whom she had detected, was in some measure a sharer in their guilt. She fled from the palace; but the Princess Ida retained her infant child. This incident is made the occasion of some very charming poetry, both when the mother laments the loss of her child, and when she regains possession of it.

"Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah my child!
My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more;
For now will cruel Ida keep her back;
And either she will die for want of care,
Or sicken with ill usage, when they say
The child is hers; and they will beat my girl,
Remembering her mother. O my flower!
Or they will take her, they will make her hard;
And she will pass me by in after-life
With some cold reverence, worse than were she dead.
But I will go and sit beside the doors,
And make a wild petition night and day,
Until they hate to hear me, like a wind
Wailing for ever, till they open to me,
And lay my little blossom at my feet,
My babe, my sweet Aglaïa, my one child:
And I will take her up and go my way,
And satisfy my soul with kissing her.'"

After the combat between Arac and the prince, when all parties had congregated on what had been the field of battle, this child is lying on the grass--

"Psyche ever stole
A little nearer, till the babe that by us,
_Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede_,
_Lay like a new-fallen meteor on the grass_,
_Uncared for, spied its mother, and began_
_A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance_
_Its body, and reach its fatling innocent arms_,
_And lazy lingering fingers_. She the appeal
Brook'd not, but clamouring out, 'Mine--mine--not yours;
It is not yours, but mine: give me the child,'
Ceased all in tremble: piteous was the cry."

Cyril, wounded in the fight, raises himself on his knee, and implores of the princess to restore the child to her. She relents, but does not give it to the mother, to whom she is not yet reconciled--gives it, however, to Cyril.

"'Take it, sir,' and so
Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailèd hands,
Who turn'd half round to Psyche, as she sprang
To embrace it, with an eye that swam in thanks,
Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot,
And hugg'd, and never hugg'd it close enough;
And in her hunger mouth'd and mumbled it,
And hid her bosom with it; after that
Put on more calm."

The two kings are well sketched out--the father of Ida, and the father of our prince. Here is the first; a weak, indulgent, fidgetty old man, who is very much perplexed when the prince makes his appearance to demand fulfilment of the marriage contract.

"His name was Gama; crack'd and small in voice;
A little dry old man, without a star,
Not like a king! Three days he feasted us,
And on the fourth I spoke of why we came,
And my betroth'd. 'You do us, Prince,' he said,
Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,
'All honour. We remember love ourselves
In our sweet youth: there did a compact pass
Long summers back, a kind of ceremony--
I think the year in which our olives failed.
I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart;--
With my full heart! but there were widows here,
Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;
They fed her theories, in and out of place,
Maintaining that with equal husbandry
The woman were an equal to the man.
They harp'd on this; with this our banquets rang;
Our dances broke and hugged in knots of talk;
Nothing but this: my very ears were hot
To hear them. Last my daughter begg'd a boon,
A certain summer-palace which I have
Hard by your father's frontier: I said No,
Yet, being an easy man, gave it.'"

The other royal personage is of another build, and talks in another tone--a rough old warrior king, who speaks through his beard. And he speaks with a rough sense too: very little respect has he for these novel "rights of women."

"Boy,
The bearing and the training of a child
Is woman's wisdom."

And when his son counsels peaceful modes of winning his bride, and deprecates war, the old king says:--

"'Tut, you know them not, the girls:
They prize hard knocks, and to be won by force.
Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them
As he that does the thing they dare not do,--
Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes
With the air of trumpets round him, and leaps in
Among the women, snares them by the score,
Flatter'd and fluster'd, wins, tho', dash'd with death,
He reddens what he kisses: thus I won
Your mother, a good mother, a good wife,
Worth winning; but this firebrand--gentleness
To such as her! If Cyril spake her true,
To catch a dragon in a cherry net,
And trip a tigress with a gossamer,
Were wisdom to it.'"

With one charming picture we must close our extracts, or we shall go far to have it said that, with the exception of scattered single lines and phrases, we have pillaged the poem of every beautiful passage it contains. Here is a peep into the garden on the college-walks of our maiden university:

"There
One walked, reciting by herself, _and one
In this hand held a volume as to read,
And smooth'd a petted peacock down with that_.
Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by,
Or under arches of the marble bridge
Hung, shadow'd from the heat."

It may be observed that we have quoted no passages from this poem, such as we might deem faulty, or vapid, or in any way transgressing the rules of good taste. It does not follow that it would have been impossible to do so. But on the chapter of his faults we had already said enough. Mr Tennyson is not a writer on whose uniform good taste we learn to have a full reliance; on the contrary, he makes us wince very often; but he is a writer who pleases much, where he does please, and we learn at length to blink the fault, in favour of that genius which soon after appears to redeem it.

Has this poet ceased from his labours, or may we yet expect from him some more prolonged strain, some work fully commensurate to the undoubted powers he possesses? It were in vain to prophesy. This last performance, _The Princess_, took, we believe, his admirers by surprise. It was not exactly what they had expected from him--not of so high an order. Judging by some intimations he himself has given us, we should not be disposed to anticipate any such effort from Mr Tennyson. Should he, however, contradict this anticipation, no one will welcome the future epic, or drama, or story, or whatever it may be, more cordially than ourselves. Meanwhile, if he rests here, he will have added one name more to that list of English poets, who have succeeded in establishing a permanent reputation on a few brief performances--a list which includes such names as Gray, and Collins, and Coleridge.

ARISTOCRATIC ANNALS.[12]

[12] _The Romance of the Peerage, or Curiosities of Family History._ By GEORGE LILLIE CRAIK. Vols. I. and II. London: 1849.

_Celebrated Trials connected with the Aristocracy in the Relations of Private Life._ By PETER BURKE, Esq., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law. Pp. 505. London: 1849.

_Anecdotes of the Aristocracy, and Episodes in Ancestral Story._ By J. BERNARD BURKE, Esq. 2 Vols. London: 1849.

Here are three books analogous in subject, and nearly coincident in publication, but of diverse character and execution. We believe the vein to be rather a new one, and it is odd that three writers should simultaneously begin to work it. Mr Craik claims a slight precedence in date; his work differs more from the other two than they from each other, and is altogether of a higher class. He is very exact and erudite--at times almost too much so for the promise of amusement held out by his attractive title-page. In his preface he explains, that it is with facts alone he professes to deal, and that he "aspires in nowise to the airy splendours of fiction. The romance of the peerage which he undertakes to detail is only the romantic portion of the history of the peerage." He has adopted the right course; any other, by destroying the reality of his book, would have deteriorated its value. And the events he deals with are too curious and remarkable to be improved by imaginative embellishment. He is occasionally over-liberal of genealogical and other details, which few persons, excepting those to whose ancestors they relate, will care much about; but as a whole, his book possesses powerful interest, and as he goes on--for he promises four or five more volumes--that interest is likely to rise. Of the two volumes already published, the second is more interesting than the first. Both will surely be eagerly read by the class to which they more particularly refer, but probably neither will be so generally popular as Mr Peter Burke's compilation of celebrated trials. Here we pass from historical to domestic romance. There is a peculiar and fascinating interest in records of criminal jurisprudence; an interest greatly enhanced when those records include names illustrious in our annals. Mr Peter Burke has done his work exceedingly well. He claims to have assembled, in one bulky volume, all the important trials connected with the aristocracy, not of a political nature, that have occurred during the last three centuries, "divested of forensic technicality and prolixity, and accompanied by brief historical and genealogical information as to the persons of note who figure in the cases." He has been so judicious as to preserve, in most instances, in the exact words in which they were reported, the evidence of witnesses, the pleadings of counsel, and the summing up of the judges; thus presenting us with much quaint and curious narrative as it fell from the lips of the noble persons concerned, and with many eloquent and admirable speeches from the bar and the bench. The volume, wherever it be opened, instantly rivets attention. We can hardly speak so laudatorily of the third book under notice. "Flag is a big word in a pilot's mouth," says Cooper's boatswain, when Paul Jones forgets his incognito--and Burke is an imposing name to stand in initialless dignity on the back of Mr Colburn's demy octavo. The Burke here in question is well known as the manufacturer of a Dictionary of Peers, of a Baronetage, and so forth. As a relief from such mechanical occupation, he now strays into "those verdant and seductive by-ways of history, where marvellous adventure and romantic incident spring up, as sparkling flowers, beneath our feet." The sparkle of the flowers in question is, as his readers will perceive, nothing to the sparkle of Mr Burke's style. _Ne sutor_, &c., means, we apprehend, in this instance, let not Burke, whose prename is Bernard, go beyond his directories. Instead of wandering into picturesque cross-roads, he should have pursued the highway, where his industry had already proved useful to the public, and doubtless profitable both to himself and to his worthy publisher. Better far have stuck to Macadam, instead of rambling amongst the daisies, where he really does not seem at home, and makes but a so-so appearance. Not that his book is dull or unamusing; it would have been difficult to make it that, with a subject so rich and materials so abundant. But it certainly owes little to the style, which, although quite of the ambitious order, is eminently mawkish. Of the legends, anecdotes, tales, and trials, composing the volumes, some of the most interesting are unduly compressed and slurred over, whilst others, less attractive, are wearisomely extended by diluted dialogues and insipid reflections. People do not expect namby-pamby in a book of this kind. They look for striking and amusing incidents, plainly and unpretendingly told. They do not want, for instance, such inflated truisms and sheer nonsense as are found at pages 194 to 196 of Mr Burke's first volume. We cite this passage at random out of many we have marked. We abstain from dissecting it, out of consideration for its author, who, we daresay, has done his best, and whose chief fault is, that he has done rather too much. We have read his book carefully through with considerable entertainment. It is full of good stories badly told. Fortunately, being chiefly a compilation, it abounds in long extracts from better writers than himself. But every now and then we come to a bit that makes us exclaim with the old woman in the church, "that's his own!"

The first section of Mr Craik's book extends over nearly a century, "that most picturesque of our English centuries which lies between the Reformation and the Great Rebellion," and owes its priority to its length and importance, not to chronological precedence, which is due rather to some of the narratives in the second volume. The history of the Lady Lettice Knollys, her marriages and her descendants, occupies nearly the whole volume, including much interesting matter relative to various noble English families, as well as to Queen Elizabeth, Amy Robsart, Antonio Perez, and other characters well known in history or romance. Here there is temptation enough to linger; but we pass on to a most interesting chapter of the second volume, which illustrates, as well and more briefly, the merits of Mr Craik's book. It is entitled _The Old Percys_--a name than which none is more thoroughly English, none more suggestive of high and chivalrous qualities. Mr Craik begins by a tilt at Romeo's fallacy of there being nothing in a name, instead of which, he says, "names have been in all ages among the most potent things in the world. They have stirred and swayed mankind, and still do so, simply as names, without any meaning being attached to them. Of two sounds, designating or indicating the same thing, the one shall, by its associations, raise an emotion of the sublime, the other of the ridiculous. There can hardly be a stronger instance of this than we have in the two paternal names, the assumed and the genuine one, of the family at present possessing the Northumberland title. The former, Percy, is a name for poetry to conjure with; it is itself poetry of a high and epic tone, and may be said to move the English heart 'more than the sound of a trumpet,' as Sidney tells us his was moved whenever he heard the rude old ballad in which it is celebrated; but when Canning, or whoever else it was, in the _Anti-Jacobin_ audaciously came out with--

'Duke Smithson of Northumberland
A vow to God did make,'

he set the town in a roar." The case is neatly made out, and the writer then investigates the etymology of the name of Percy. The popular version is, that a Scottish king, the great Malcolm Canmore, was slain in the latter part of the eleventh century whilst assaulting the castle of Alnwick, whose lord ran his spear into the monarch's eye, and thence derived the surname of Pierce-eye. This is so pretty and romantic a derivation that one is loath to relinquish it, but unfortunately the Percys were Percys fully two centuries before Malcolm's death. Geoffrey, son of Mainfred the Danish chieftain, accompanied Rollo in his invasion of France, and became lord of the town of _Percy_ or _Persy_, in Lower Normandy, and this became his _sur_-name--originally _sieur_-name or lord-name--an appellation derived from territorial property. Two of the _de Percys_, fifth in descent from Geoffrey, followed William the Conqueror to England, where the elder of them became one of the greatest lords in the country. "About a hundred and twenty lordships in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and other parts, are set down in Domesday Book as his property. He was, of course, a baron of the realm. His family name being probably reserved for occasions of form and ceremony, he was familiarly known in his own day as _Guillaume al gernons_--that is, Will with the Whiskers--which puts us in possession of at least one point in the personal appearance of this founder of the English house of Percy. Hence _Algernon_ became a common baptismal name among his descendants.... Will with the Whiskers must have been a good fellow, if it be true, as we are told by an old writer, that his wife, Emma de Port, was the Saxon heiress of some of the lands bestowed upon him by the Conqueror, and that 'he wedded her in discharging of his conscience.'" We here observe a variance between Mr Craik and Mr Bernard Burke, who devotes more than one chapter to anecdotes of the house of Percy, which he states to have enjoyed an uninterrupted male descent from the date of the Conquest to the death of Jocelyn Percy, the eleventh earl, in 1670. Mr Craik, on the other hand, whilst noticing that the line has thrice ended in a female, and been revived through the marriage of the heiress, fixes the date of the first of these extinctions and revivals in 1168, or rather later, about a century after the Conquest, when the death, without male heirs, of the third Lord Percy, left the wealth and honours of the house to his two daughters. Maud, the eldest, died without issue; Agnes, the younger, married Jocelyn of Loraine, whose house was one of the most illustrious in Europe, boasting relationship with the dukes of Hainault, and collateral descent from the emperor Charlemagne, but whom she took for her husband only on condition of his assuming her ancestral name. Mr Craik gives Collins' _Peerage_ as his authority; Mr Burke would probably refer us to his own: but we do not feel enough interest in the subject to attempt to decide where doctors of this eminence differ. Amongst his celebrated "Peerage Causes," Mr Burke gives some curious particulars of the claim made by a Dublin trunkmaker to the titles and estates of the Percys, on the extinction of the male line in 1670. This man, whether the blood of the Percys flowed in his veins or not, showed no small share of the pluck and boldness for which that family was so long distinguished, by upholding his pretensions for fifteen years--at first against the dowager Countess of Northumberland, and afterwards against the proud and powerful Duke of Somerset, who had married the heiress, Lady Elizabeth Percy. When it is remembered that this occurred in the reign of Charles II., whose tribunals were not renowned for their equity, (and when a long purse was often better than the clearest right,) and that the influence and position of the countess and duke gave them incalculable advantages, it may be thought that the box-builder from Ireland was almost as bold a man as the Hotspur he claimed for an ancestor. He got hard measure from the House of Lords, and was rebuked for presuming to trouble it. He tried the courts of law, suing persons for scandal who had stated him to be an impostor--an indirect way of establishing his descent. After one of these trials, Lord Hailes, dissatisfied with the decision of the court, which was unfavourable to the plaintiff, is stated to have said to Lord Shaftesbury, when entering his coach--"I verily believe he (James Percy) hath as much right to the earldom of Northumberland as I have to this coach and horses, which I have bought and paid for." In the reign of James II., Percy again petitioned the Lords, but ineffectually. His final effort was in the first year of William and Mary, when his petition was read and referred to a Committee of Privileges, whose report declared him insolent; and ultimately he was condemned to be brought "before the four courts in Westminster Hall, wearing a paper upon his breast, on which these words shall be written: THE FALSE AND IMPUDENT PRETENDER TO THE EARLDOM OF NORTHUMBERLAND." This was accordingly done, and, thus disgraced and branded as a cheat, the unfortunate trunkmaker was heard of no more.