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... wished to be a lyre and a great drinking-cup; a crowd of more modern sentimentalists have desired to approach their mistresses as flowers, tunics, 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 ear-ring," "a girdle," and a necklace") in the more serious and solemn exordium of his works ambitions a bolder metamorphosis; he wishes to be — a river! Mine be the strength of spirit fierce and free, 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; 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, 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 savour. 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.... "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 - The Lady of Shalott was, it seems, a spinster who had, under some unnamed penalty, a certain web to weave. . . . 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 no other care has she, The Lady of Shalott. A knight, however, happens to ride past her window, coming from Camelot; From the bank, and from the river, Sang Sir Launcelot. 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. . . . 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 - "Enone," "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. Enone, deserted by Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted 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 evil-hearted Paris was about to judge between the three goddesses, he hid her (Enone) behind a rock, when she had a full view of the naked beauties of the rivals, which broke her heart. . . . They came all three - the Olympian goddesses. 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. 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 violeteyed," and the "singing pine," and the "overwandering ivy and vine," and "festoons," and "gnarlèd boughs," and "treetops," 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.... 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.... His gallery of illustrious portraits is thus admirably arranged: The Madonna Ganymede-St. Cecilia - Europa - Deep-haired Milton Shakespeare Grim Dante- Michael Angelo - Luther -Lord Bacon - Cervantes - Calderon - King David"the Halicarnassean" (quare, 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, 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 statues Statues growing that noble place in, All heathen goddesses most rare, |