rhyme be of no importance, is an equally | Thou, too, when thou against my crimes would good line. Now take a passage in Ulysses," where the question is in no degree complicated by assonance, and we find that no change at all is needed.

Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be sion. The wail of Enone and the plaint

Nor when Mr. Tennyson would "tell a tale of chivalry" do his notes ring like those of trumpets to set the blood dancing in the veins. He does not seem to get beyond the plume and the glancing of the spear-heads. He speaks of battle, but "all the war is rolled in smoke,” and we see nothing; his combats are as unreal in the "Idylls of the King as they are in "The Princess," when the poor little prince, exerting all his force, felt his veins

Stretch with fierce heat, a moment hand to
hand,

poets of course avail themselves of the heritage of the past, and there are few poems of any length which do not owe their origin to some story, event, or other circumstance outside of their author's brain. Not to dwell on Shakespeare's work and that of other dramatists or playwrights, and on story-tellers, as Boccaccio and Bandello, we may instance the use of older material by Mr. Browning in his "Dramatic Idylls." It was at once pointed out by many critics, that "Halbert and Hob" is the expansion of a few lines in Aristotle's "Ethics," and the first told wherever Russian life and Russian incident of "Ivan Ivanovitch" is a story wolves are named. seized the principle only of Aristotle's story, and given it a special English and Puritan interest, while in the sequel to Just so, and the Lancelots and Arthurs, the poor mother's tale le rises to the though we are told they were wounded, rank of the creator, the original poetic and groaned, and swooned, or mowed genius. But the restraint which Mr. their enemies before them, still leave on Tennyson has laid on himself is different us the impression that they are but shear- both in kind and in degree. In very ing feathers; it is all like a pageant of many instances he has not taken an incibattle on the stage; there are sparks in dent and expanded it, but taken the inciplenty flashing from the swords; the com-dent already described and expanded to batants tumble about, and we sit un-its fullest extent, and by a touch here and moved, knowing it all unreal.

And horse to horse, and sword to sword we
hung,

Till I struck out and shouted; the blade
glanced,

I did but shear a feather.

A third cause of Mr. Tennyson's popularity is his freedom from coarse expressions; it is much to have an author as decorous as Cowper or Keble, while far more varied. There is scarce a word in all his writings at which the most fastidious can take exception. And the ordinary reader cares about words. It is true that the things are not always as harmless. Fatima, Lucretius, Merlin, and Vivien are not good reading for girls, neither is the confusion in " Queen Mary" between dropsy and pregnancy; but they are not understood by the majority, and, taken all together, the poems are good and wholesome reading from which we can only rise pleased and improved.

Within the limits of his power, Mr. Tennyson's workmanship is perfect, and in the long run good work is sure to tell. We shall now examine the limits and the workmanship, having enumerated the main causes of the popularity of these poems: their easiness, homeliness, decency of diction, and excellence of work.

When we consider the limits within which Mr. Tennyson restricts himself, we are inclined to think that few save careful students are aware how very considerable a portion of his poems is deliberate rendering into pure melodious verse what has already existed in another form. All

The true artist has

there, has transmuted the whole into a living poem. So an artist hand will arrange the mass of flowers and green foliage which the gardener brings from conservatory or parterre into the perfect bouquet for bridal or for ball.

How largely this has been done in the case of the " Idylls of the King" is of course known to all, yet a few familiar passages will best exhibit Mr. Tennyson's peculiar mode of working. Our first instance shall be from "Gareth and Lynette," and the text so fairly embroidered by him is from "Popular Romances of the Middle Ages," in which many of the old stories can be consulted most conveniently.

there came into the hall two men on whose King Arthur was holding high festival when shoulders there leaned the fairest and goodliest youth that ever man saw, as though of himself he could not walk. When they reached the dais, the youth prayed God to bless the king and all his fair fellowship of the Round Table. "And now I pray thee, grant me three gifts, which I seek not against reason: the one of these I will ask thee now, and the other two when twelve months have come round." "Ask," said Arthur, "and ye shall have your asking." Then," answered the youth, "I will that ye give me meat and drink for a year." And though the king bade him ask something better, yet would he not: and Arthur said, "Meat and drink enough shalt thou have; for

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i.

that I never stinted to friend or foe. But | had this day all that our hearts would wish,

what is thy name?" "That I cannot tell," said the youth. Strange," said the king, "that thou shouldest not know thy name, and thou the goodliest youth that ever mine eyes have seen." Then the king gave him in charge to Sir Kay, who scorned him because he had asked so mean a gift. "Since he has no name," said Sir Kay, "I will call him Pretty-hands, and into the kitchen shall he go, and there have fat brose, so that at the year's end he shall be fat as a pork hog."

"For see ye not how weak and hungerworn
I seem leaning on these? grant me to serve
For meat and drink among thy kitchen-knaves
A twelvemonth and a day, nor seek my name.
Hereafter I will fight."

To him the king,
"A goodly youth and worth a goodlier boon!
But so thou wilt no goodlier, then must Kay,
The master of the meats and drinks, be thine."
He rose and past; then Kay, a man of mien
Wan-sallow as the plant that feels itself
Root-bitten by white lichen,

"Lo ye now!

This fellow hath broken from some abbey,

where,

God wot, he had not beef and brewis enow,
However that might change! but an he work,
Like any pigeon will I cram his crop,
And sleeker shall he shine than any hog."
The words "I will call him Pretty-hands,"
and other touches in the prose, are not
omitted, but given a few lines further on
in the poem.

Compare again the following passages on the Holy Grail:

but we might not see the Holy Grail, so heed-
fully was it covered; and therefore now I vow
with the morrow's morn to depart hence in
quest of the holy vessel, and never to return
until I have seen it more openly; and if I may
not achieve this, I shall come back as one that
may not win against the will of God."
And all at once, as there we sat, we heard
A cracking and a riving of the roofs,
And rending, and a blast, and overhead
Thunder, and in the thunder was a cry.
And in the blast there smote along the hall
A beam of light seven times more clear than
day;

All over covered with a luminous cloud,
And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail
And none might see who bare it, and it past.
But every knight beheld his fellow's face
As in a glory, and all the knights arose,
And staring each at other like dumb men
Stood, till I found a voice and sware a vow,
I sware a vow before them all, that I,
Because I had not seen the Grail, would ride
A twelvemonth and a day in quest of it,
Until I found and saw it.

These are not isolated or in any degree exceptional passages; the whole of the "Idylls of the King" are in the same way translated from the prose Arthurian legends, in great part from the "Mort d'Arthur," by Sir Thomas Malory, from Lady Charlotte Schreiber's version of the Mabinogion," and in part from lessknown sources. Touches are brought in from other books, and it is a curious instance of the range and versatility of Mr. Tennyson's reading, and of his retentive memory, that he has in the same way adapted passages from Crofton Croker's "Irish Legends" and fitted them into the Arthurian story. Thus the little maid's of "spirits and men, before the coming of account in "Guinevere" of the gladness the sinful queen," "how the fairies came In the evening, when they had prayed in the dashing down upon a wayside flower," how great minster, and as the knights sat each in "down in the cellar many bloated things his own place, they heard cracking of thunder shouldered the spigot, straddling on the as though the hall would be riven through; butts while the wine ran," are taken from and in the midst of the crashing and darkness a light entered, clearer by seven times than two of the tales in that excellent collecever they saw day, and all were alighted of the tion, published in 1825, and no doubt the Grace of the Holy Ghost: and as each knight delight of Mr. Tennyson in his youth, as looked on his fellows, behold all were fairer it has been of so many young people than any on whom their eyes had ever rested since. The same volume was pressed into yet. But all sate dumb, and in the still silence the service of one of the earlier Idylls, came the Holy Grail, covered with white" Walking to the Mail," where the story samite, but none might see it, or the hand of the farmer who intended changing which bare it; and with it came all sweet house because of a ghost, but remained odors, and each knight had such food and drink as he loved best in the world; and then when he found the ghost meant to go too, the holy vessel was borne away, they knew is slightly altered from the legend of the not whither. Then were their tongues loosed, and the king gave thanks for that which they had seen. But Sir Gawaine said, "We have

Cluricaune.

We have now shown Mr. Tennyson's mode of writing when he has a story

which pleases him. The applications of | are classical epithets less well translated:
it are numerous. Thus "Dora" is trans- the "black pigeon " of Herodotus becomes
lated from Miss Mitford's "Dora Cres- the "swarthy ring-dove; " Horace's corvix
well " in "Our Village," and greatly annosa "the many-wintered crow;
"ad
improved in the translation. "Enoch unguem factus "finished to the finger-
Arden" and "Aylmer's Field" were told nail;” trisulca fulmina" the triple forks."
by a friend to the poet, who, struck with Under the same head also will come the
their aptitude for versification, requested usage of words of other poets, so bravely
to have them at length in writing. When adopted, with no weak fear that so great
they were thus supplied, the poetic ver- a genius could be dreamed a plagiarist,
sions were made as we now have them. as "Love wept and spread his sheeny
Readers who are also students may fol- vans for flight," borrowed from Milton
low up this clue for themselves, and the
wider their own reading the more will
they find that the poet knows more than
they of the books they know the best.
But the fact goes even beyond what they
will find; some of the poems which seem
most spontaneous are not so, and, with
the true art which conceals art, the
thoughts of others are made the poet's
own. We have been told that when the
Laureate was at Cambridge, a friend of
his own age and set, himself well known
in literature since those days, delivered a
speech at the Cambridge Union which
made at the time a profound impression.
But few of the enthusiastic boys who
heard it could have supposed, even in the
wildest flights of admiration, that their
orator's thoughts and many of his words,
would live as long as the English language
in the form of the fine stanzas, "You ask
me why, though ill at ease,'
""Of old sat
Freedom on the heights," and "Love thou
thy land.”

It is needless here to specify how far Mr. Froude and Mr. Freeman have respectively contributed not only facts but phrases to the dramas of "Queen Mary and "Harold," because here the poet is following in the steps of all dramatists, and his action has in it nothing which is peculiar to himself.

Another limitation which Mr. Tennyson has set to his creative powers is of the same kind but on a smaller scale. It is to be found in the vast quantity of translated epithets and sentences to be found in his works, where a man of less reading and equal imagination would have often preferred to invent his own appropriate words. We do not of course mean only in such poems as "Lucretius," little more than a cento from the writings of that author, nor of the memories of Homer, so abundant in "Ulysses," "The Lotos-Eaters," and "Enone." But "Ulysses," again, is thronged with thoughts of Dante, as e.g., Inferno xxvi. 90-140, and the Dante student will find him at every turn, and always happily rendered. Nor

"His sail-broad vans he spreads for flight" (Paradise Lost, ii. 927); or, "The right ear that is filled with dust," from Shakespeare's "My liege, her ear is stopped with dust," (King John, act iv. sc. 2); "Brow bound with burning gold," from Shelley "And thine omnipotence a crown of pain, To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain" ("Prometheus Unbound"); "Read... deepchested music, and to this result," from Keats"His voice leapt out, despite of godlike curb, to this result" ("Hyperion "); "The wild team which beat the twilight into flakes of fire," from Marston "See the dapple-grey coursers of the morn beat up the light with their bright silver horns" ("Antonius and Mellida "); "Sipt wine from silver praising God," from the old proverb "The cock when he drinks praises God," explained by George Herbert thus,

And as birds drink and straight lift up their
head,

So may I sip, and think
Of better drink

may attain to after I am dead.

A third limitation also is that by which Mr. Tennyson restrains his fancy in the creation of incident. Here, too, where Dante or Milton, where Keats or Shelley would have given a loose rein to thought, the more modern poet refrains from the making of ideas. There would scarce seem any occasion so fitted for it as the visions which the sinful soul which built the Palace of Art saw when, lest she should fail and perish utterly, God plagued her with sore despair. The most terrible of all these, when she came unawares "on hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame," is borrowed from "Vathek"-the torment which Beckford imagined for the lost in the Hall of Eblis was that of a heart eternally on fire: "Soliman raised his hands toward heaven in token of supplication, and the caliph discerned through his bosom, which was transparent as crystal, his heart enveloped in

flames ("The History of the Caliph | does the sweetness cloy, as now and then Vathek," ed. in Bayard series, p. 115); with Keats - the verse flows always meand the image of the soul's perplexities lodiously, never straining after effect; is taken from the Book of Wisdom. each word is the best, and in its true But there is no need to multiply in-place. The metre, too, is always the fitstances, each student can do so for him- test; it would seem impossible that any self; and the further he goes in the gar- poem should ever have had another form den of literature the more will he find than the actual one. This is a matter that Mr. Tennyson has been before him, which would take long to prove, each and culled its fairest flowers deliberately, reader must verify it for himself; but if thus restricting his own creativeness. any one will compare the earlier and pres Greek, Latin, Italian, and English appear ent editions of the poems, they will see to be the branches of literature best how all the changes made have been in known to the poet; there is little trace of the direction of softness and sweetness; French influence on his mind or writings, how a plural word has been changed to a and save one or two possible allusions singular before s in order to avoid the colto the Faust, there is no sign whatever lision of sibilants; how carefully chosen of acquaintance with the German lan- have been the dominant letters of the guage or literature. This gives us a lines, e.g., fourth limitation to the field within which the poet has worked, this last perhaps more accidental than voluntary and delib

erate.

So all day long the noise of battle rolled.

Made noise of bees and breeze from end to end.

and splits.

Strikes

I heard the puffed pursuer; at my ear
Bubbled the nightingale,

and will feel themselves wrapped round
with melody always satisfactory, gently
sensuous, but never in excess.

We have now to see what are Mr. Ten- On a wood and takes and breaks and cracks nyson's relations to his age, and what, within the defined limit, he has taught the crowd of eager readers; what it is in which he stands unrivalled in our own age. His work may not be all claimed for it by enthusiastic girls who thumb their Tennyson Birthday Book" as though its sentences were those of an oracle, or by schoolboys who, unable to afford the price of the poems, copy out the whole of "Locksley Hall," as did many years since the writer of the pres

66

ent notice. But it is none the less the work of a consummate artist; of an able interpreter of nature and of science, of one who is considered, and perhaps considers himself, to attain to something of prophetic strain.

Mr. Tennyson's handling of words is of quite a different kind to Mr. Browning's, or Shelley's, or Keats's. His model in his blank verse is evidently Milton; in his lyrics his only rule would seem to be his own delicate ear. His fastidious taste has preserved him from all temptation to tours de force, to surprises exciting now and then our admiration, now and then our anger. There is nothing half so clever as Browning's "Le Byron de nos jours," with its quaint double rhymes, its metre and rhythm, apart from anything which had ever been done before. There are no deliberate roughnesses before or after passages of sweet sound, as though to point the contrast; no astonishing rhymes as in Browning and his sweet and strong poet-wife; sound never runs away with sense as now and then with Shelley; nor

As an interpreter of nature, Mr. Tennyson is, again within his own limits, quite be those imposed by shortsightedness, unequalled. The limits would seem to to be grasped by the vision, but intensify. refusing to allow details of a great scene looked into and examined close at hand. of details in all that can be ing the grasp Thus when any stretch of landscape is named, that which has attracted the poet

has been color and sound rather than feature.

One show'd an iron coast and angry waves.

You seem'd to hear them climb and fall

And roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves
Beneath the windy wall.

The landscape is vague, the sound is predominant.

Again in the picture from "The Palace of Art," quoted above, the tawny yellow cornfield against the grey undersides of the olive-leaves is what has struck the poet, and he gives that to us. An eye of greater power to see distant objects would have given us a flash of color in the reaper's costume, but such a surface is not broad enough to be noticed by short sight. The reader will find that in no distant landscape are details dwelt on as, for instance, by Scott when he would describe the Trossachs, or Byron when