Chapter VII: Part 7

"What though, for shewing truth to flattered state,
_Kind Hunt_ was shut in prison, yet has he,
In his immortal spirit been as free
As the sky-searching lark and as elate.
Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?
Think you he nought but prison walls did see,
Till, so unwilling, thou unturn'dst the key?
Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!
_In Spenser's halls!_ he strayed, and bowers fair,
Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew
_With daring Milton!_ through the fields of air;
To regions of his own his genius true
Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair
When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?"

The absurdity of the thought in this sonnet is, however, if possible, surpassed in another, "_addressed to Haydon_" the painter, that clever, but most affected artist, who as little resembles Raphael in genius as he does in person, notwithstanding the foppery of having his hair curled over his shoulders in the old Italian fashion. In this exquisite piece it will be observed, that Mr Keats classes together WORDSWORTH, HUNT, and HAYDON, as the three greatest spirits of the age, and that he alludes to himself, and some others of the rising brood of Cockneys, as likely to attain hereafter an equally honourable elevation. Wordsworth and Hunt! what a juxta-position! The purest, the loftiest, and, we do not fear to say it, the most classical of living English poets, joined together in the same compliment with the meanest, the filthiest, and the most vulgar of Cockney poetasters. No wonder that he who could be guilty of this should class Haydon with Raphael, and himself with Spencer [_sic_].

"Great spirits now on earth are sojourning;
He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake,
Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing:
_He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake_:
And lo!--whose steadfastness would never take
A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.
And other spirits there are standing apart
Upon the forehead of the age to come;
These, these will give the world another heart,
And other pulses. _Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings?----
Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb._"

The nations are to listen and be dumb! and why, good Johnny Keats? because Leigh Hunt is editor of the Examiner, and Haydon has painted the judgment of Solomon, and you and Cornelius Webb, and a few more city sparks, are pleased to look upon yourselves as so many future Shakespeares and Miltons! The world has really some reason to look to its foundations! Here is a _tempestas in matula_ with a vengeance. At the period when these sonnets were published Mr Keats had no hesitation in saying that he looked on himself as "_not yet_ a glorious denizen of the wide heaven of poetry," but he had many fine soothing visions of coming greatness, and many rare plans of study to prepare him for it. The following we think is very pretty raving.

"Why so sad a moan?
Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown;
The reading of an ever-changing tale;
The light uplifting of a maiden's veil;
A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;
A laughing school-boy, without grief or care,
Riding the springing branches of an elm.

"O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
That my own soul has to itself decreed.
Then will I pass the countries that I see
In long perspective, and continually
Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass
Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass,
Feed on apples red, and strawberries,
And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees.
Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places,
To woo sweet kisses from averted faces,--
Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white
Into a pretty shrinking with a bite
As hard as lips can make it: till agreed,
A lovely tale of human life we'll read.
And one will teach a tame dove how it best
May fan the cool air gently o'er my rest;
Another, bending o'er her nimble tread,
Will set a green robe floating round her head,
And still will dance with ever varied ease,
Smiling upon the flowers and the trees:
Another will entice me on, and on
Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon;
Till in the bosom of a leafy world
We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'd
In the recesses of a pearly shell."

Having cooled a little from this "fine passion," our youthful poet passes very naturally into a long strain of foaming abuse against a certain class of English Poets, whom, with Pope at their head, it is much the fashion with the ignorant unsettled pretenders of the present time to undervalue. Begging these gentlemens' pardon, although Pope was not a poet of the same high order with some who are now living, yet, to deny his genius, is just about as absurd as to dispute that of Wordsworth, or to believe in that of Hunt. Above all things, it is most pitiably ridiculous to hear men, of whom their country will always have reason to be proud, reviled by uneducated and flimsy striplings, who are not capable of understanding either their merits, or those of any other _men of power_--fanciful dreaming tea-drinkers, who, without logic enough to analyze a single idea, or imagination enough to form one original image, or learning enough to distinguish between the written language of Englishmen and the spoken jargon of Cockneys, presume to talk with contempt of some of the most exquisite spirits the world ever produced, merely because they did not happen to exert their faculties in laborious affected descriptions of flowers seen in window-pots, or cascades heard at Vauxhall; in short, because they chose to be wits, philosophers, patriots, and poets, rather than to found the Cockney school of versification, morality and politics, a century before its time. After blaspheming himself into a fury against Boileau, &c. Mr Keats comforts himself and his readers with a view of the present more promising aspect of affairs; above all, with the ripened glories of the poet of Rimini. Addressing the manes of the departed chiefs of English poetry, he informs them, in the following clear and touching manner, of the existence of "him of the Rose," &c.

"From a thick brake,
Nested and quiet in a valley mild,
Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild
About the earth. Happy are ye and glad."

From this he diverges into a view of "things in general." We smile when we think to ourselves how little most of our readers will understand of what follows.

"Yet I rejoice: a myrtle fairer than
E'er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds
Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds
A silent space with ever sprouting green.
All tenderest birds there find a pleasant screen,
Creep through the shade with jaunty fluttering,
Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing.
Then let us clear away the choaking _thorns_
From round its gentle stem; let the young _fawns_,
Yeaned in after times, when we are flown,
Find a fresh sward beneath it, overgrown
With simple flowers: let there nothing be
More boisterous than a lover's bended knee;
Nought more ungentle than the placid look
Of one who leans upon a closed book;
Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes
Between two hills. All hail delightful hopes!
As she was wont, th' imagination
Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone,
And they shall be accounted poet kings
Who simply tell the most heart-easing things.
O may these joys be ripe before I die.
Will not some say that I presumptuously
Have spoken? that from hastening disgrace
'Twere better far to hide my foolish face?
That whining boyhood should with reverence bow
Ere the dreadful thunderbolt could reach? How!
If I do hide myself, it sure shall be
In the very fane, the light of poesy."

From some verses addressed to various amiable individuals of the other sex, it appears, notwithstanding all this gossamer-work, that Johnny's affections are not entirely confined to objects purely etherial. Take, by way of specimen, the following prurient and vulgar lines, evidently meant for some young lady east of Temple-bar.

"Add too, the sweetness
Of thy honied voice; the neatness
Of thine ankle lightly turn'd:
With those beauties, scarce discern'd,
Kept with such sweet privacy,
That they seldom meet the eye
Of the little loves that fly
Round about with eager pry.
Saving when, with freshening lave,
Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave;
Like twin water lilies, born
In the coolness of the morn
O, if thou hadst breathed then,
Now the Muses had been ten.
Couldst thou wish for lineage _higher_
Than twin sister of _Thalia_?
At last for ever, evermore,
Will I call the Graces four."

Who will dispute that our poet, to use his own phrase (and rhyme),

"Can mingle music fit for the soft _ear_
Of Lady _Cytherea_."

So much for the opening bud; now for the expanded flower. It is time to pass from the juvenile "Poems," to the mature and elaborate "Endymion, a Poetic Romance." The old story of the moon falling in love with a shepherd, so prettily told by a Roman Classic, and so exquisitely enlarged and adorned by one of the most elegant of German poets, has been seized upon by Mr John Keats, to be done with as might seem good unto the sickly fancy of one who never read a single line either of Ovid or of Wieland. If the quantity, not the quality, of the verses dedicated to the story is to be taken into account, there can be no doubt that Mr John Keats may now claim Endymion entirely to himself. To say the truth, we do not suppose either the Latin or the German poet would be very anxious to dispute about the property of the hero of the "Poetic Romance." Mr Keats has thoroughly appropriated the character, if not the name. His Endymion is not a Greek shepherd, loved by a Grecian goddess; he is merely a young Cockney rhymester, dreaming a phantastic dream at the full of the moon. Costume, were it worth while to notice such a trifle, is violated in every page of this goodly octavo. From his prototype Hunt, John Keats has acquired a sort of vague idea, that the Greeks were a most tasteful people, and that no mythology can be so finely adapted for the purposes of poetry as theirs. It is amusing to see what a hand the two Cockneys make of this mythology; the one confesses that he never read the Greek Tragedians, and the other knows Homer only from Chapman; and both of them write about Apollo, Pan, Nymphs, Muses, and Mysteries, as might be expected from persons of their education. We shall not, however, enlarge at present upon this subject, as we mean to dedicate an entire paper to the classical attainments and attempts of the Cockney poets. As for Mr Keats' "Endymion," it has just as much to do with Greece as it has with "old Tartary the fierce;" no man, whose mind has ever been imbued with the smallest knowledge or feeling of classical poetry or classical history, could have stooped to profane and vulgarise every association in the manner which has been adopted by this "son of promise." Before giving any extracts, we must inform our readers, that this romance is meant to be written in English heroic rhyme. To those who have read any of Hunt's poems, this hint might indeed be needless. Mr Keats has adopted the loose, nerveless versification, and the Cockney rhymes of the poet of Rimini; but in fairness to that gentleman, we must add, that the defects of the system are tenfold more conspicuous in his disciple's work than in his own. Mr Hunt is a small poet, but he is a clever man. Mr Keats is a still smaller poet, and he is only a boy of pretty abilities, which he has done everything in his power to spoil.

[Quotes almost two hundred lines of _Endymion_ with brief interpolated comment.]

And now, good-morrow to "the Muses' son of Promise;" as for "the feats he yet may do," as we do not pretend to say, like himself, "Muse of my native land am I inspired," we shall adhere to the safe old rule of _pauca verba_. We venture to make one small prophecy, that his bookseller will not a second time venture L50 upon any thing he can write. It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to "plasters, pills, and ointment boxes," &c. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a little more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than you have been in your poetry.

Z.

--_Blackwood's Magazine_.

ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

_Timbuctoo: a Poem, which obtained the Chancellor's Medal at the Cambridge Commencement_, _by A. Tennyson, of Trinity College, Cambridge._

We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any good reason, that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period after the great generation of poets which is now passing away. The age seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner, for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should least expect it, namely, in a prize-poem. These productions have often been ingenious and elegant, but we have never before seen one of them which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have done honour to any man that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to affirm, is the little work before us; and the examiners seem to have felt about it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to its author, though the measure in which he writes was never before (we believe) thus selected for honour. We extract a few lines to justify our admiration.

[Quotes fifty lines beginning:--

"A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!
A rustling of white wings! the bright descent," etc.]

How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?--_The Athenaeum_.

_Poems by Alfred Tennyson_. pp. 163. London. 12mo. 1833.

This is, as some of his marginal notes intimate, Mr. Tennyson's second appearance. By some strange chance we have never seen his first publication, which, if it at all resembles its younge[r] brother, must be by this time so popular that any notice of it on our part would seem idle and presumptuous; but we gladly seize this opportunity of repairing an unintentional neglect, and of introducing to the admiration of our more sequestered readers a new prodigy of genius--another and a brighter star of that galaxy or _milky way_ of poetry of which the lamented Keats was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on the subject of 'Endymion.' We certainly did not[O] discover in that poem the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has carried it through we know not how many editions; which has placed it on every table; and, what is still more unequivocal, familiarized it in every mouth. All this splendour of fame, however, though we had not the sagacity to anticipate, we have the candour to acknowledge: and we request that the publisher of the new and beautiful edition of Keats's works now in the press, with graphic illustrations by Calcott and Turner, will do us the favour and the justice to notice our conversion in his prolegomena.

Warned by our former mishap, wiser by experience, and improved, as we hope, in taste, we have to offer Mr. Tennyson our tribute of unmingled approbation, and it is very agreeable to us, as well as to our readers, that our present task will be little more than the selection, for their delight, of a few specimens of Mr. Tennyson's singular genius, and the venturing to point out, now and then, the peculiar brilliancy of some of the gems that irradiate his poetical crown.

A prefatory sonnet opens to the reader the aspirations of the young author, in which, after the manner of sundry poets, ancient and modern, he expresses his own peculiar character, by wishing himself to be something that he is not. The amorous Catullus aspired to be a sparrow; the tuneful and convivial Anacreon (for we totally reject the supposition that attributes the [Greek: Eithe lure chale genoimen] to Alcaeus) wished to be a lyre and a great drinking cup; a crowd of more modern sentimentalists have desired to approach their mistresses as flowers, tunicks, sandals, birds, breezes, and butterflies;--all poor conceits of narrow-minded poetasters! Mr. Tennyson (though he, too, would, as far as his true love is concerned, not unwillingly 'be an earring,' 'a girdle,' and 'a necklace,' p. 45) in the more serious and solemn exordium of his works ambitions a bolder metamorphosis--he wishes to be--_a river_!

SONNET.

'Mine be the strength of spirit fierce and free,
Like some broad river rushing down _alone_'--

rivers that travel in company are too common for his taste--

'With the self-same impulse wherewith he was thrown'--

a beautiful and harmonious line--

'From his loud fount upon the echoing lea:--
Which, with _increasing_ might, doth _forward flee_'--

Every word of this line is valuable--the natural progress of human ambition is here strongly characterized--two lines ago he would have been satisfied with the _self-same_ impulse--but now he must have _increasing_ might; and indeed he would require all his might to accomplish his object of _fleeing forward_, that is, going backwards and forwards at the same time. Perhaps he uses the word _flee_ for _flow_; which latter he could not well employ in _this_ place, it being, as we shall see, essentially necessary to rhyme to _Mexico_ towards the end of the sonnet--as an equivalent to _flow_ he has, therefore, with great taste and ingenuity, hit on the combination of _forward flee_--

------------'doth forward flee
By town, and tower, and hill, and cape, and isle,
And in the middle of the green _salt_ sea
Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a mile.'

A noble wish, beautifully expressed, that he may not be confounded with the deluge of ordinary poets, but, amidst their discoloured and briny ocean, still preserve his own bright tints and sweet savor. He may be at ease on this point--he never can be mistaken for any one else. We have but too late become acquainted with him, yet we assure ourselves that if a thousand anonymous specimens were presented to us, we should unerringly distinguish his by the total absence of any particle of _salt_. But again, his thoughts take another turn, and he reverts to the insatiability of human ambition:--we have seen him just now content to be a river, but as he _flees forward_, his desires expand into sublimity, and he wishes to become the great Gulfstream of the Atlantic.

'Mine be the power which ever to its sway
Will win _the wise at once_--

We, for once, are wise, and he has won _us_--

'Will win the wise at once; and by degrees
May into uncongenial spirits flow,
Even as the great gulphstream of Flori_da_
Floats far away into the Northern seas
The lavish growths of southern Mexi_co_!'--p. 1.

And so concludes the sonnet.

The next piece is a kind of testamentary paper, addressed 'To ----,' a friend, we presume, containing his wishes as to what his friend should do for him when he (the poet) shall be dead--not, as we shall see, that he quite thinks that such a poet can die outright.

'Shake hands, my friend, across the brink
Of that deep grave to which I go.
Shake hands once more; I cannot sink
So far--far down, but I shall know
Thy voice, and answer from below!'

Horace said 'non omnis moriar,' meaning that his fame should survive--Mr. Tennyson is still more vivacious, 'non _omnino_ moriar,'--'I will not die at all; my body shall be as immortal as my verse, and however _low I may go_, I warrant you I shall keep all my wits about me,--therefore'

'When, in the darkness over me,
The four-handed mole shall scrape,
Plant thou no dusky cypress tree,
Nor wreath thy cap with doleful crape,
But pledge me in the flowing grape.'

Observe how all ages become present to the mind of a great poet; and admire how naturally he combines the funeral cypress of classical antiquity with the crape hat-band of the modern undertaker.

He proceeds:--

'And when the sappy field and wood
Grow green beneath the _showery gray_,
And rugged barks begin to bud,
And through damp holts, newflushed with May,
Ring sudden _laughters_ of the jay!'

Laughter, the philosophers tell us, is a peculiar attribute of man--but as Shakespeare found 'tongues in trees and sermons in stones,' this true poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities but with human functions--the jay _laughs_, and we find, indeed, a little further on, that the woodpecker _laughs_ also; but to mark the distinction between their merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr. Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human laughter, if any silly reader should catch the infection from the woodpeckers and the jays.

'Then let wise Nature work her will,
And on my clay her darnels grow,
Come only when the days are still,
And at my head-stone whisper low,
And tell me'--

Now, what would an ordinary bard wish to be told under such circumstances?--why, perhaps, how his sweetheart was, or his child, or his family, or how the Reform Bill worked, or whether the last edition of his poems had been sold--_papae_! our genuine poet's first wish is

'And tell me--_if the woodbines blow_!'

When, indeed, he shall have been thus satisfied as to the _woodbines_, (of the blowing of which in their due season he may, we think, feel pretty secure,) he turns a passing thought to his friend--and another to his mother--

'If _thou_ art blest, my _mother's_ smile
Undimmed'--

but such inquiries, short as they are, seem too common-place, and he immediately glides back into his curiosity as to the state of the weather and the forwardness of the spring--

'If thou art blessed--my mother's smile
Undimmed--_if bees are on the wing_?'

No, we believe the whole circle of poetry does not furnish such another instance of enthusiasm for the sights and sounds of the vernal season!--The sorrows of a bereaved mother rank _after_ the blossoms of the _woodbine_, and just before the hummings of the _bee_; and this is _all_ that he has any curiosity about; for he proceeds:--

'Then cease, my friend, a little while
That I may'--

'send my love to my mother,' or 'give you some hints about bees, which I have picked up from Aristaeus, in the Elysian Fields,' or 'tell you how I am situated as to my own personal comforts in the world below'?--oh no--

'That I may--hear the _throstle sing_
His bridal song--the boast of spring.

Sweet as the noise, in parched plains,
Of bubbling wells that fret the stones,
(_If any sense in me remains_)
Thy words will be--thy cheerful tones
As welcome to--my _crumbling bones_!'--p. 4.

'_If any sense in me remains!_'--This doubt is inconsistent with the opening stanza of the piece, and, in fact, too modest; we take upon ourselves to re-assure Mr. Tennyson, that, even after he shall be dead and buried, as much '_sense_' will still remain as he has now the good fortune to possess.

We have quoted these first two poems in _extenso_, to obviate any suspicion of our having made a partial or delusive selection. We cannot afford space--we wish we could--for an equally minute examination of the rest of the volume, but we shall make a few extracts to show--what we solemnly affirm--that every page teems with beauties hardly less surprising.

_The Lady of Shalott_ is a poem in four parts, the story of which we decline to maim by such an analysis as we could give, but it opens thus--

'On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and _meet the sky_--
And _through_ the field the road runs _by_.'

The Lady of Shalott was, it seems, a spinster who had, under some unnamed penalty, a certain web to weave.

'Underneath the bearded barley,
The reaper, reaping late and early,
Hears her ever chanting cheerly,
Like an angel singing clearly....

'No time has she for sport or play,
A charmed web she weaves alway;
A curse is on her if she stay
Her weaving either night or day....

'She knows not'--

Poor lady, nor we either--

'She knows not what that curse may be,
Therefore she weaveth steadily;
Therefore no other care has she
The Lady of Shalott.'

A knight, however, happens to ride past her window, coming

----'from Camelot;[P]
From the bank, and _from_ the _river_,
He flashed _into_ the crystal _mirror_--
"Tirra lirra, tirra _lirra_," (_lirrar_?)
Sang Sir Launcelot.'--p. 15.

The lady stepped to the window to look at the stranger, and forgot for an instant her web:--the curse fell on her, and she died; why, how, and wherefore, the following stanzas will clearly and pathetically explain:--

'A long drawn carol, mournful, holy,
She chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her eyes were darkened _wholly_,
And her smooth face sharpened _slowly_,
Turned to towered Camelot.
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house on the water side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott!
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
To the planked wharfage came;
Below _the stern_ they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.'--p. 19.

We pass by two--what shall we call them?--tales, or odes, or sketches, entitled 'Mariana in the South' and 'Eleaenore,' of which we fear we could make no intelligible extract, so curiously are they run together into one dreamy tissue--to a little novel in rhyme, called 'The Miller's Daughter.' Millers' daughters, poor things, have been so generally betrayed by their sweethearts, that it is refreshing to find that Mr. Tennyson has united himself to _his_ miller's daughter in lawful wedlock, and the poem is a history of his courtship and wedding. He begins with a sketch of his own birth, parentage, and personal appearance--

'My father's mansion, mounted high,
Looked down upon the village-spire;
I was a long and listless boy,
And son and heir unto the Squire.'

But the son and heir of Squire Tennyson often descended from the 'mansion mounted high;' and

'I met in all the close green ways,
While walking with my line and rod,'

A metonymy for 'rod and line'--

'The wealthy miller's mealy face,
Like the _moon in an ivytod_.

'He looked so jolly and so good--
While fishing in the mill-dam water,
I laughed to see him as he stood,
And dreamt not of the miller's daughter.'--p. 33.

He, however, soon saw, and, need we add, loved the miller's daughter, whose countenance, we presume, bore no great resemblance either to the 'mealy face' of the miller, or 'the moon in an ivy-tod;' and we think our readers will be delighted at the way in which the impassioned husband relates to his wife how his fancy mingled enthusiasm for rural sights and sounds, with a prospect of the less romantic scene of her father's occupation.

'How dear to me in youth, my love,
Was everything about the mill;
The black, the silent pool above,
The pool beneath that ne'er stood still;

The meal-sacks on the whitened floor,
The dark round of the dripping wheel,
_The very air about the door,
Made misty with the floating meal!_'--p. 36.

The accumulation of tender images in the following lines appears not less wonderful:--

'Remember you that pleasant day
When, after roving in the woods,
('Twas April then) I came and lay
Beneath those _gummy_ chestnut-buds?

'A water-rat from off the bank
Plunged in the stream. With idle care,
Downlooking through the sedges rank,
I saw your troubled image there.

'If you remember, you had set,
Upon the narrow casement-edge,
A _long green box_ of mignonette
And you were leaning on the ledge.'

The poet's truth to Nature in his 'gummy' chestnut-buds, and to Art in the 'long green box' of mignonette--and that masterful touch of likening the first intrusion of love into the virgin bosom of the Miller's daughter to the plunging of a water-rat into the mill-dam--these are beauties which, we do not fear to say, equal anything even in Keats.

We pass by several songs, sonnets, and small pieces, all of singular merit, to arrive at a class, we may call them, of three poems derived from mythological sources--Oenone, the Hesperides, and the Lotos-eaters. But though the subjects are derived from classical antiquity, Mr. Tennyson treats them with so much originality that he makes them exclusively his own. Oenone, deserted by

'Beautiful Paris, evilhearted Paris,'

sings a kind of dying soliloquy addressed to Mount Ida, in a formula which is _sixteen_ times repeated in this short poem.

'Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die.'

She tells her 'dear mother Ida,' that when evilhearted Paris was about to judge between the three goddesses, he hid her (Oenone) behind a rock, whence she had a full view of the _naked_ beauties of the rivals, which broke her heart.

'_Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die_:--
It was the deep mid noon: one silvery cloud
Had _lost his way_ among the pined hills:
They came--_all three_--the Olympian goddesses.
Naked they came--

* * * * * *

How beautiful they were! too beautiful
To look upon; but Paris was to me
_More lovelier_ than all the world beside.
_O mother Ida, hearken ere I die._'--p. 56.

In the place where we have indicated a pause, follows a description, long, rich, and luscious--Of the three naked goddesses? Fye for shame--no--of the 'lily flower violet-eyed,' and the 'singing pine,' and the 'overwandering ivy and vine,' and 'festoons,' and 'gnarled boughs,' and 'tree tops,' and 'berries,' and 'flowers,' and all the _inanimate_ beauties of the scene. It would be unjust to the _ingenuus pudor_ of the author not to observe the art with which he has veiled this ticklish interview behind such luxuriant trellis-work, and it is obvious that it is for our special sakes he has entered into these local details, because if there was one thing which 'mother Ida' knew better than another, it must have been her own bushes and brakes. We then have in detail the tempting speeches of, first--

'The imperial Olympian,
With arched eyebrow smiling sovranly,
Full-eyed Here;'

secondly of Pallas--

'Her clear and bared limbs
O'er-thwarted with the brazen-headed spear,'

and thirdly--

'Idalian Aphrodite ocean-born,
Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian _wells_--'

for one dip, or even three dips in one well, would not have been enough on such an occasion--and her succinct and prevailing promise of--

'The fairest and most loving _wife_ in Greece;'--

upon evil-hearted Paris's catching at which prize, the tender and chaste Oenone exclaims her indignation, that she herself should not be considered fair enough, since only yesterday her charms had struck awe into--

'A wild and wanton pard,
Eyed like the evening-star, with playful tail--'

and proceeds in this anti-Martineau rapture--

'_Most_ loving is _she_?'
'Ah me! my mountain shepherd, that my arms
Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest
Close--close to thine in that quick-falling dew
Of _fruitful_ kisses ...
Dear mother Ida! hearken ere I die!--p. 62.

After such reiterated assurances that she was about to die on the spot, it appears that Oenone thought better of it, and the poem concludes with her taking the wiser course of going to town to consult her swain's sister, Cassandra--whose advice, we presume, prevailed upon her to live, as we can, from other sources, assure our readers she did to a good old age.

In the 'Hesperides' our author, with great judgment, rejects the common fable, which attributes to Hercules the slaying of the dragon and the plunder of the golden fruit. Nay, he supposes them to have existed to a comparatively recent period--namely, the voyage of Hanno, on the coarse canvas of whose log-book Mr. Tennyson has judiciously embroidered the Hesperian romance. The poem opens with a geographical description of the neighbourhood, which must be very clear and satisfactory to the English reader; indeed, it leaves far behind in accuracy of topography and melody of rhythm the heroics of Dionysius _Periegetes_.

'The north wind fall'n, in the new-starred night.'

Here we must pause to observe a new species of _metabole_ with which Mr. Tennyson has enriched our language. He suppresses the E in _fallen_, where it is usually written and where it must be pronounced, and transfers it to the word _new-starred_, where it would not be pronounced if he did not take due care to superfix a _grave_ accent. This use of the grave accent is, as our readers may have already perceived, so habitual with Mr. Tennyson, and is so obvious an improvement, that we really wonder how the language has hitherto done without it. We are tempted to suggest, that if analogy to the accented languages is to be thought of, it is rather the acute ([']) than the grave ([`]) which should be employed on such occasions; but we speak with profound diffidence; and as Mr. Tennyson is the inventor of the system, we shall bow with respect to whatever his final determination may be.

'The north wind fall'n, in the new-starred night
Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond
The hoary promontory of Soloe,
Past Thymiaterion in calmed bays.'

We must here note specially the musical flow of this last line, which is the more creditable to Mr. Tennyson, because it was before the tuneless names of this very neighbourhood that the learned continuator of Dionysius retreated in despair--

----[Greek: eponymias nyn ellachen allas
Aithiopon gain, dysphonous oud' epierons
Mousais ouneka tasd' ego ouk agoreusom' apasas.]

but Mr. Tennyson is bolder and happier--

'Past Thymiaterion in calmed bays,
Between the southern and the western Horn,
Heard neither'--

We pause for a moment to consider what a sea-captain might have expected to hear, by night, in the Atlantic ocean--he heard

--'neither the warbling of the _nightingale_
Nor melody o' the Libyan lotusflute,'

but he did hear the three daughters of Hesper singing the following song:--

'The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit,
Guard it well, guard it warily,
Singing airily,
Standing about the charmed root,
Round about all is mute'--

_mute_, though they sung so loud as to be heard some leagues out at sea--

----'all is mute
As the snow-field on mountain peaks,
As the sand-field at the mountain foot.
Crocodiles in briny creeks
Sleep, and stir not: all is mute.'

How admirably do these lines describe the peculiarities of this charmed neighbourhood--fields of snow, so talkative when they happen to lie at the foot of the mountain, are quite out of breath when they get to the top, and the sand, so noisy on the summit of a hill, is dumb at its foot. The very crocodiles, too, are _mute_--not dumb but _mute_. The 'red-combed dragon curl'd' is next introduced--

'Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stolen
away,
For his ancient heart is drunk with overwatchings night and day,
Sing away, sing aloud evermore, in the wind, without stop.'

The north wind, it appears, has by this time awaked again--

'Lest his scaled eyelid drop,
For he is older than the world'--

older than the _hills_, besides not rhyming to 'curl'd,' would hardly have been a sufficiently venerable phrase for this most harmonious of lyrics. It proceeds--

'If ye sing not, if ye make false measure,
We shall lose eternal pleasure,
Worth eternal want of rest.
Laugh not loudly: watch the treasure
Of the wisdom of the west.
In _a corner_ wisdom whispers. Five and three
(_Let it not be preached abroad_) make an awful mystery.'--p. 102.

This recipe for keeping a secret, by singing it so loud as to be heard for miles, is almost the only point, in all Mr. Tennyson's poems, in which we can trace the remotest approach to anything like what other men have written, but it certainly does remind us of the 'chorus of conspirators' in the Rovers.

Hanno, however, who understood no language but Punic--(the Hesperides sang, we presume, either in Greek or in English)--appears to have kept on his way without taking any notice of the song, for the poem concludes,--

'The apple of gold hangs over the sea,
Five links, a gold chain, are we,
Hesper, the Dragon, and sisters three;
Daughters three,
Bound about
All around about
The gnarled bole of the charmed tree,
The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit,
Guard it well, guard it warily,
Watch it warily,
Singing airily
Standing about the charmed root.'--p. 107.

We hardly think that, if Hanno had translated it into Punic, the song would have been more intelligible.

The 'Lotuseaters'--a kind of classical opium-eaters--are Ulysses and his crew. They land on the 'charmed island,' and 'eat of the charmed root,' and then they sing--

'Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry.
This is lovelier and sweeter,
Men of Ithaca, this is meeter,
In the hollow rosy vale to tarry,
Like a dreamy Lotuseater--a delicious Lotuseater!
We will eat the Lotus, sweet
As the yellow honeycomb;
In the valley some, and some
On the ancient heights divine,
And no more roam,
On the loud hoar foam,
To the melancholy home,
At the limits of the brine,
The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline.'--p. 116.

Our readers will, we think, agree that this is admirably characteristic, and that the singers of this song must have made pretty free with the intoxicating fruit. How they got home you must read in Homer:--Mr. Tennyson--himself, we presume, a dreamy lotus-eater, a delicious lotus-eater--leaves them in full song.

Next comes another class of poems,--Visions. The first is the 'Palace of Art,' or a fine house, in which the poet _dreams_ that he sees a very fine collection of well-known pictures. An ordinary versifier would, no doubt, have followed the old routine, and dully described himself as walking into the Louvre, or Buckingham Palace, and there seeing certain masterpieces of painting:--a true poet dreams it. We have not room to hang many of these _chefs-d'oeuvre_, but for a few we must find space.--'The Madonna'--

'The maid mother by a crucifix,
In yellow pastures sunny warm,
Beneath branch work of costly sardonyx
Sat smiling--_babe in arm_.'--p. 72.

The use of the latter, apparently, colloquial phrase is a deep stroke of art. The form of expression is always used to express an habitual and characteristic action. A knight is described '_lance in rest_'--a dragoon, '_sword in hand_'--so, as the idea of the Virgin is inseparably connected with her child, Mr. Tennyson reverently describes her conventional position--'_babe in arm_.'

His gallery of illustrious portraits is thus admirably arranged:--The Madonna--Ganymede--St. Cecilia--Europa--Deep-haired Milton--Shakspeare--Grim Dante--Michael Angelo--Luther--Lord Bacon--Cervantes--Calderon--King David--'the Halicarnassean' (_quaere_, which of them?)--Alfred, (not Alfred Tennyson, though no doubt in any other man's gallery _he_ would have a place) and finally--

'Isaiah, with fierce Ezekiel,
Swarth Moses by the Coptic sea,
Plato, _Petrarca_, Livy, and Raphael,
And eastern Confutzee!'

We can hardly suspect the very original mind of Mr. Tennyson to have harboured any recollections of that celebrated Doric idyll, 'The groves of Blarney,' but certainly there is a strong likeness between Mr. Tennyson's list of pictures and the Blarney collection of statutes--

'Statues growing that noble place in,
All heathen goddesses most rare,
Homer, Plutarch, and Nebuchadnezzar,
All standing naked in the open air!'

In this poem we first observed a stroke of art (repeated afterwards) which we think very ingenious. No one who has ever written verse but must have felt the pain of erasing some happy line, some striking stanza, which, however excellent in itself, did not exactly suit the place for which it was destined. How curiously does an author mould and remould the plastic verse in order to fit in the favourite thought; and when he finds that he cannot introduce it, as Corporal Trim says, _any how_, with what reluctance does he at last reject the intractable, but still cherished offspring of his brain! Mr. Tennyson manages this delicate matter in a new and better way; he says, with great candour and simplicity, 'If this poem were not already too long, _I should have added_ the following stanzas,' and _then he adds them_, (p. 84;)--or, 'the following lines are manifestly superfluous, as a part of the text, but they may be allowed to stand as a separate poem,' (p. 121,) _which they do_;--or, 'I intended to have added something on statuary, but I found it very difficult;'--(he had, moreover, as we have seen, been anticipated in this line by the Blarney poet)--'but I have finished the statues of _Elijah_ and _Olympias_--judge whether I have succeeded,' (p. 73)--and then we have these two statues. This is certainly the most ingenious device that has ever come under our observation, for reconciling the rigour of criticism with the indulgence of parental partiality. It is economical too, and to the reader profitable, as by these means

'We lose no drop of the immortal man.'

The other vision is 'A Dream of Fair Women,' in which the heroines of all ages--some, indeed, that belong to the times of 'heathen goddesses most rare'--pass before his view. We have not time to notice them all, but the second, whom we take to be Iphigenia, touches the heart with a stroke of nature more powerful than even the veil that the Grecian painter threw over the head of her father.

----'dimly I could descry
The stern blackbearded kings with wolfish eyes,
Watching to see me die.

The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat;
The temples, and the people, and the shore;
One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat--
Slowly,--and _nothing more_!'

What touching simplicity--what pathetic resignation--he cut my throat--'_nothing more_!' One might indeed ask, 'what _more_' she would have?

But we must hasten on; and to tranquillize the reader's mind after this last affecting scene, shall notice the only two pieces of a lighter strain which the volume affords. The first is elegant and playful; it is a description of the author's study, which he affectionately calls his _Darling Room_.

'O darling room, my heart's delight;
Dear room, the apple of my sight;
With thy two couches, soft and white,
There is no room so exquis_ite_;
No little room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.'

We entreat our readers to note how, even in this little trifle, the singular taste and genius of Mr. Tennyson break forth. In such a dear _little_ room a narrow-minded scribbler would have been content with _one_ sofa, and that one he would probably have covered with black mohair, or red cloth, or a good striped chintz; how infinitely more characteristic is white dimity!--'tis as it were a type of the purity of the poet's mind. He proceeds--

'For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
And Oberwinter's vineyards green,
Musical Lurlei; and between
The hills to Bingen I have been,
Bingen in Darmstadt, where the _Rhene_
Curves toward Mentz, a woody scene.

'Yet never did there meet my sight,
In any town, to left or right,
A little room so exquis_ite_,
With _two_ such couches soft and white;
Nor any room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.'--p. 153.

A common poet would have said that he had been in London or in Paris--in the loveliest villa on the banks of the Thames, or the most gorgeous chateau on the Loire--that he has reclined in Madame de Stael's boudoir, and mused in Mr. Roger's comfortable study; but the _darling room_ of the poet of nature (which we must suppose to be endued with sensibility, or he would not have addressed it) would not be flattered with such common-place comparisons;--no, no, but it is something to have it said that there is no such room in the ruins of the Drachenfels, in the vineyard of Oberwinter, or even in the rapids of the _Rhene_, under the Lurleyberg. We have ourselves visited all these celebrated spots, and can testify in corroboration of Mr. Tennyson, that we did not see in any of them anything like _this little room so exquis_ITE.

The second of the lighter pieces, and the last with which we shall delight our readers, is a severe retaliation on the editor of the Edinburgh Magazine, who, it seems, had not treated the first volume of Mr. Tennyson with the same respect that we have, we trust, evinced for the second.

'To CHRISTOPHER NORTH.
You did late review my lays,
Crusty Christopher;
You did mingle blame and praise
Rusty Christopher.

When I learnt from whom it came
I forgave you all the blame,
Musty Christopher;
I could _not_ forgive the praise,
Fusty Christopher.'--p. 153.

Was there ever anything so genteelly turned--so terse--so sharp--and the point so stinging and _so true_?

'I could not forgive the _praise_,
Fusty Christopher!'

This leads us to observe on a phenomenon which we have frequently seen, but never been able to explain. It has been occasionally our painful lot to excite the displeasure of authors whom we have reviewed, and who have vented their dissatisfaction, some in prose, some in verse, and some in what we could not distinctly say whether it was verse or prose; but we have invariably found that the common formula of retort was that adopted by Mr. Tennyson against his northern critic, namely, that the author would always

--Forgive us all the _blame_,
But could _not_ forgive the _praise_.

Now this seems very surprising. It has sometimes, though we regret to say rarely, happened, that, as in the present instance, we have been able to deal out unqualified praise, but never found that the dose in this case disagreed with the most squeamish stomach; on the contrary, the patient has always seemed exceedingly comfortable after he had swallowed it. He has been known to take the 'Review' home and keep his wife from a ball, and his children from bed, till he could administer it to them, by reading the article aloud. He has even been heard to recommend the 'Review' to his acquaintance at the clubs, as the best number which has yet appeared, and one, who happened to be an M.P. as well as an author, gave a _conditional_ order, that in case his last work should be favourably noticed, a dozen copies should be sent down by the mail to the borough of ----. But, on the other hand, when it has happened that the general course of our criticism has been unfavourable, if by accident we happened to introduce the smallest spice of _praise_, the patient immediately fell into paroxysms--declaring that the part which we foolishly thought might offend him had, on the contrary, given him pleasure--positive pleasure, but _that_ which he could not possibly either forget or forgive, was the grain of praise, be it ever so small, which we had dropped in, and for which, and _not for our censure_, he felt constrained, in honour and conscience, to visit us with his extreme indignation. Can any reader or writer inform us how it is that praise in the wholesale is so very agreeable to the very same stomach that rejects it with disgust and loathing, when it is scantily administered; and above all, can they tell us why it is, that the indignation and nausea should be in the exact inverse ratio to the quantity of the ingredient? These effects, of which we could quote several cases much more violent than Mr. Tennyson's, puzzle us exceedingly; but a learned friend, whom we have consulted, has, though he could not account for the phenomenon, pointed out what he thought an analogous case. It is related of Mr. Alderman Faulkner, of convivial memory, that one night when he expected his guests to sit late and try the strength of his claret and his head, he took the precaution of placing in his wine-glass a strawberry, which his doctor, he said, had recommended to him on account of its cooling qualities: on the faith of this specific, he drank even more deeply, and, as might be expected, was carried away at an earlier period and in rather a worse state, than was usual with him. When some of his friends condoled with him next day, and attributed his misfortune to six bottles of claret which he had imbibed, the Alderman was extremely indignant--'the claret,' he said, 'was sound, and never could do any man any harm--his discomfiture was altogether caused by that damned single strawberry' which he had kept all night at the bottom of his glass.--_The Quarterly Review_.

[Footnote O: See Quarterly Review, vol. XIX, p. 204.]

[Footnote P: The same Camelot, in Somersetshire, we presume, which is alluded to by Kent in 'King Lear'--

'Goose! if I had thee upon Sarum plain,
I'd drive thee cackling home to Camelot.'
]

_The Princess; a Medley_. By Alfred Tennyson. Moxon.

That we are behind most even of our heaviest and slowest contemporaries in the notice of this volume, is a fact for which we cannot satisfactorily account to ourselves, and can therefore hardly hope to be able to make a valid excuse to our readers. The truth is, that whenever we turned to it we became, like the needle between positive and negative electric poles, so attracted and repelled, that we vibrated too much to settle to any fixed condition. Vacillation prevented criticism, and we had to try the experiment again and again before we could arrive at the necessary equipose to indicate the right direction of taste and opinion. We will now, however, note our variations, and leave them to the public judgment.

The first lines of the prologue were repulsive, as a specimen of the poorest Wordsworth manner and style--

"Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
Up to his people: thither flock'd at noon
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half
The neighbouring borough with their Institute
Of which he was the patron. I was there
From college, visiting the son,--the son
A Walter too,--with others of our set."

The "wife and child" of the tenants is hardly intelligible; and the "set" is but a dubious expression. Nor can we clearly comprehend the next line and a half--

"And me that morning Walter show'd the house,
Greek, set with busts:"

Does this mean that Sir Walter Vivian inhabited a Greek house, and that the college "set" were guests in that dwelling "set with busts"? To say the least, this is inelegant, and the affectations proceed--

"From vases in the hall
_Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names_,
Grew side by side."

Persons conversant with the botanical names of flowers will hardly be able to realize (as the Yankees have it) the idea of their loveliness; the loveliness of Hippuris, Dolichos, Syngenesia, Cheiranthus, Artocarpus, Arum dracunculus, Ampelopsis hederaca, Hexandria, Monogynea, and the rest.

A good description of the demi-scientific sports of the Institute follows; but the house company and inmates retire to a ruined abbey:--

"High-arch'd and ivy-claspt,
Of finest Gothic, lighter than a fire."

This is a curious jumble in company, two lights of altogether a different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in which the noisy babble of the College Cubs is satirically characterized: we

"Told
Of college: he had climb'd across the spikes,
And he had squeez'd himself betwixt the bars,
And he had breathed the Proctor's dogs; and one
Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men
But honeying at the whisper of a lord;
And one the Master, as a rogue in grain
Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory."

The dialogue happily takes a turn, and the task of writing the _Princess_ is assigned to the author, as one of the tales in the Decameron of Boccaccio. A neighbouring princess of the south (so the story runs as the prince tells it) is in childhood betrothed to a like childish prince of the north:--

"She to me
Was proxy-wedded with a _bootless calf_ [?]
At eight years old."

Both grew up, the prince, all imaginative, filling his mind with pictures of her perfections; but she turning a female reformer of the Wolstencroft [_sic_] school, resolved never to wed till woman was raised to an equality with men, and establishing a strange female colony and college to carry this vast design into effect. In consequence of this her father is obliged to violate the contract, and his indignant father prepares for war to enforce it. The prince, with two companions, flies to the south, to try what he can do for himself; and in the disguise of ladies they obtain admission to the guarded precincts of the new Amazonian league. He, meanwhile, sings sweetly of his mistress--

"And still I wore her picture by my heart,
And one dark tress; and all around them both
Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen."

And of his friend--

"My other heart,
My shadow, my half-self, for still we moved
Together, kin as horse's ear and eye."

His evasion is also finely told--