imaginative nature, and we here find the matter brought to the test of sensation, and decided against gloom and despair, even without the irresistible voice of revelation.

The Ulysses is very finely done: there, however, the merit ends. Originality does not belong to it: Tennyson took the idea from a paper in Leigh Hunt's Indicator, and Lamb supplied Hunt with the subject in a conversation one night, when that fine old wit amused them with an extempore fantasia, or imaginary biography of the Grecian wanderer, after his return to Penelope, or, as he jocularly called her "the weaver," or "stocking darner."

In Ænone the poet has attempted to infuse his own life into the pallid statues of antiquity: as an evidence of his variety, he reverses the attempt in his Death of Arthur. There are fine passages in this fragment of an epic, but not withstanding the beauty of some of the thoughts it leaves a weariness on the mind which convinces us the poet has failed in the great object of poetry. We do not consider the blank verse of Tennyson as a success; it is feeble and diluted; even the more felicitous passages are open to many objections; the sweetness of occasional lines cannot redeem the want of vigour and rythm.

In Dora the poet has carried his style to a scriptural simplicity.

From these extracts it will be made evident that the characteristics of this fine poet are delicacy, refinement, and a subtilty which etherialises all his conceptions. We do not expect that he will ever produce any great work; his mind is unequal to a long flight; he is master of one or two instruments, and his power over them is perfect; his orchestra is not, however, full enough to bring out

that mighty volume of sound which sleeps in the Epic and the Drama. His last production, "The Princess, a medly," has been a great disappointment to his friends, as it convinces them he is unequal to a sustained undertaking. We do not see why they should be surprised or grieved at the failure; this is not an age for long narrative, it is essentially the "age of emphasis," every production now must be intensed. Men will not sit to be lectured or read asleep; they want to be aroused, excited, and kept awake. They do not look for instruction, they demand power and sensation!— delight in their object, not quiescence or tranquillity. Soothing syrups are past: electrical flashes are in Vogue. We have epics, dramas, narrative poems, and sermons in abundance: we require some new truths, or at all events some old facts presented in a novel and startling shape; or else we want common every day life shaped and heightened into beauty listen to an old fact, a reality, made ideal and immortal by Tennyson: it is founded on the marriage of the Marquis of Exeter's grandfather to the daughter of a respectable farmer. Here the poet enrolls this sweet creature into one of God's nobility, a Duchess of Arcadia's Aristocracy.

In her ear he whispers gaily,

If my heart by signs can tell,
Maiden, I have watched thee daily,
And I think thou lov'st me well.

She replies in accents fainter

'There is none I love like thee,'

He is but a landscape painter
And a village maiden she.

He to lips that fondly falter

Presses his without reproof,
Leads her to the village altar,

And they leave her father's roof.

'I can make no marriage present,
Little can I give my wife,
Love can make our cottage pleasant,
And I love thee more than life.'

They by parks and lodges going,
See the lordly castles stand;
Summer woods about them blowing,
Made a murmur in the land.

From deep thought himself he rouses,
Says to her that loves him well,
'Let us see these handsome houses,
Where the wealthy nobles dwell.'

So she goes, by him attended,
Hears him lovingly converse,
Sees whatever fair and splendid,
Lay betwixt his home and hers.

Parks, with oak and chestnut shady,
Parks and ordered gardens great,
Ancient homes of lord and lady,

Built for pleasure and for state.

All he shows her makes him dearer,
Evermore she seems to gaze

On that cottage growing nearer,

Where they twain will spend their days."

Our space will not allow us to quote the entire ballad: we must, therefore, refer our readers to the volume.

A disproportioned marriage becomes beautified and raised for ever on a pedestal, even as the sculptor's hand takes a common block of marble and turns it into a Venus de Medicis, or a Greek Slave.

Let us select another every day fact, the desertion of a trusting girl by her lover, and the revenge of her friend or sister; the magic garment is on, and it is transfigured to an admiring posterity: we shall allude again to this poem as elucidating or illustrating another phase of the poet's mind.

THE SISTERS.

"We were two daughters of one race,
She was the fairest in the face:

The wind is blowing in turret and tree-
They were together and she fell--
Therefore revenge became me well-
O the Earl was fair to see.

She died-she went to burning flame,
She mixed her ancient blood with shame:
The wind is howling in turret and tree-
Whole weeks and months, and early and late,
To win his love, I lay in wait-

O the Earl was fair to see.

I made a feast, I bade him come,

I won his love, I brought him home:

The wind is roaring in turret and tree-
And after supper, on a bed,

Upon my lap he laid his head-
O the Earl was fair to see.

I kissed his eyelids into rest-
His ruddy cheek upon my breast:

The wind is raging in turret and tree-
I hated him with the hate of hell,
But I loved his beauty passing well-
O the Earl was fair to see.

I rose up in the silent night,

I made my dagger sharp and bright:
The wind is raging in turret and tree

As half asleep his breath he drew,

Three times I stabbed him through and throughO the Earl was fair to see.

I curled and combed his comely head,

He looked so grand when he was dead:

The wind is blowing in turret and tree

I wrapt his body in the sheet,

And laid him at his mother's feet!

O the Earl was fair to see."

MARGARET.

"O sweet pale Margaret,
O rare pale Margaret,

What lit your eyes with tearful power,
Like moonlight in a falling shower?
Who lent you love, your mortal dower ?
Of pensive thought and aspect pale.
Your melancholy sweet and frail

As perfume of the cuckoo flower?"

The opening to none is a fine chaunt

"There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier far

Than all the valleys of Ionian Hills,

The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters slowly down. On either hand
The lawns and meadow ledges, mid-way down,
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars
The long brook, falling through the cloven ravine,
In cataract after cataract, to the sea."

In "Locksley Hall," we have the indignant rebuke which a young poet pours out to the world, occasioned by the lady of his love marrying another -a dull every-day sort of husband. The hopeless desolation of the abandoned lover is finely expressed. The sufferer, invoking his betrayer, her loveliness and her falsehood, by the memory of their former happiness, says that such a memory is a crown of

sorrow

"Drug thy memories lest thou learn it. lest thy heart be put to proof,
In the dead unhappy night, when the rain is on the roof,
Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,
To thy widowed marriage pillow, to the tears that thou shalt weep.
Thou shalt hear the never, never,' whispered by the phantom years,
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears."

In no poem has Tennyson displayed more the peculiarity of his genius than in the lotos-eaters : the truth of the picture is heightened by the fascinations thrown round it; like a supernatural portrait, you know it to be such by the light of its halo. There is a haunting music in the lines, which seem to droop beneath the weight of their drowsy perfume.