L mark, together with what you said just before about his picturesqueness, reminded me of it. I certainly am inclined to think with you, that Tennyson, like Shelley, will always be "caviare to the general," and therefore but we won't quarrel. I have one more question to ask you. Don't you think that Tennyson owes some of his present reputation to clever friends? Isn't he the pet of his university? Is there not a certain club of Cambridge men that you once told me of? BENSON. They are not all Cantabssome Oxonians like Arnold's pupil and biographer Stanley, and some non-university men like Carlyle. They comprise lions of all sorts, greater and less; humorists, with Thackeray of Punch at their head; artists; literary men of fashion; theologians, (did you ever read Maurice's Kingdom of Christ?) and plenty of reviewers. A poet who has generally one of his club in the Edinburgh and occasionally another. in the Quarterly, stands a chance of having full justice done him. At the same time it is only fair to remember, Fred, that laudatory criticism is at times essential to justice, especially after unjust and onesided treatment, like the first notice the Quarterly took of Tennyson. Nor can the Tennysonians be charged with anything nore than this. You cannot justly impute o them any mere puffery, or extravagant because unqualified panegyric. Take Stering's review, (lately republished in a olume of his works;) there is no horror f fault-finding in it. When he doesn't like poem he says so. How different from he mutual criticisms of a society of muual admirationists! PETERS. You are brim-full of your auor, I see, and ready to lecture on him. uppose you give me some account of his ew poem there, (sotto voce,) especially as ere will be more chance of getting someing to drink after it. BENSON. That will I. It is a queer ing certainly, this poem. "A medley" calls it, and so it is-a medley of grave d gay, where, like his own holiday russ, he in one place pursues sport and phisophy hand in hand, in another, pure ort. The poet goes to see a jolly baronet, hose son, Walter, is one of his college ends. It is a fair summer day, and there So they come to the ruins, where Sister Lilia has amused herself by dressing up an old ancestor's statue in new and fashionable woman's attire, and the young men begin to "talk shop," that is, in the present case, to talk college, which brings up the old question of female rights and female capacities. At last the guest is called on for a story that shall be moral and amusing both. PETERS. Unreasonable requisition! BENSON. Nevertheless, with Cantab assurance, he sets about "making a shot" at it; but, says he "One that really suited time and place, Were such a medley we should have him back Who told the Winter's Tale to do it for us: A Gothic ruin, and a Grecian house, A talk of college and of ladies' rights, A feudal knight in silken masquerade, And there with shrieks and strange experiments, For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all, The nineteenth century gambols on the grass. PETERS. Ah, each man a canto: that would afford room for some pleasant diversities of style and thought. BENSON. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there is nothing of the kind. The seven cantos, or parts, or fyttes, or whatever you may choose to call them, are all in one continuous vein. Lilia wanted to be a Princess and have a college of her own: he therefore must be a Prince at least, and accordingly a Prince he is, BENSON. "And nearly canonized by all she knew, This northern Prince had in his boyhood been betrothed to a southern Princess in her girlhood-a regular affair of business, as royal betrothals are. PETERS. Only royal ones, Carl? BENSON. Don't interrupt me, Fred, for I am like one of your fast trotters, very hard to start again after breaking. So when he was coming to man's estate, his father sent after the lady to fetch her, as per agreement; but instead of the Princess comes "A present, a great labor of the loom," and a letter from her father to the effect that she has "a will and maiden fancies," and in short won't be married at any price. You may fancy the old warrior monarch tearing up letter and present, and threatening an appeal to the ultima ratio. PETERS. The Prince resolves to go himself incognito, I suppose. BENSON. Precisely so, as you shall hear. "Then ere the silver sickle of that month Became her golden shield, I stole from court With Cyril and with Florian" (These were his two friends, and the latter has a sister in the Princess's court) "With Cyril and with Florian, unperceived. Down from the bastion walls we dropt by night And flying reached the frontier; then we crost To a livelier land, and so by town and thorpe. And tilth, and blowing bosks of wilderness, We gain'd the mother city thick with towers;" (How like a journey in Fairy land it is, with all those quaint Elizabethan words!) "And in the imperial palace found the king. His name was Gama; crack'd and small his voice, A little dry old man, without a star, This little old king, who was as oily as one of your third-rate, shake-your-handwith-two-fingers diplomats, explained tha his daughter had been put up to founding a university for maidens by two widows. (one of them Florian's sister;) whereat the Prince, chafing him on fire to find his bride, "Set out once more with those two gallan boys, Then pushing onward under sun and stars (for the summer palace where this female university was founded lay on the norther frontier,) came to an inn near the place, and after a consultation with mine host, hit or the plan of turning ladies for the occasion. "We sent mine host to purchase female gear: Which brought and clapt upon us, we tweezers out What slender blossom lived on lip or cheek Of manhood; gave mine host a costly bribe To guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds, And boldly ventured on the liberties." PETERS. "And so they renished them to ride On three good renished steeds." But the thing is an absurdity already. Do you suppose three men among a little town of women, could escape detection three minutes? Do you know three of your acquaintance, that you would trust in such a position? 7 And to her feet." How do you like her? PETERS. The sketch is too shadowy mehinks. Not definiteness enough of touch n it, and-surely one of those lines alts? BENSON. Yes, it is one of Tennyson's crotchets that flower and power are full dissyllables. But the Princess will define herself better by and by. Of course, Psyche finds out her brother, and of course she is persuaded to give them a little grace; else how should they and we see and hear any more of this Female University life? And here is some of what they saw and heard: "And then we strolled From room to room :--in each we sat, we heard PETERS. And to be sure they might, if they were only taught. BENSON. And so might most men sew and play the piano if they were only taught. But whether it would pay is another question. Here is an after-dinner picture: A most lady-like substitute for the small terrier that a Cantab would be promenading about. "Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by, In the orange thicket; others tost a ball So we sat; and now when day Droop'd, and the chapel tinkled, mixt with those Six hundred maidens clad in purest white, Before two streams of light from wall to wall, While the great organ almost burst his pipes Groaning for power, and rolling thro' the court A long, melodious thunder to the sound You see the finest of these descriptions have an amusing double sense. They are at once a parody on, and a description of English University life. PETERS. Yes, I remember going to Trinity Chapel with you, and those five hundred young men in surplices. How innocent and virtuous they did look-at a distance! I wonder if Princess Ida's girls tattled and gossipped as much when they pretended to be kneeling at prayers. There were two youngsters just in front of us that night who were settling the next boat-race all service time. But certainly there are many delightfully picturesque features in a Cantab's life. By the way, Carl, what has become of your sketches? BENSON. Infandum jubes renovare. They were so free-spoken that no one in this land of liberty dared publish them. But we live in hope. Do you recollect what Titmarsh says of the great Jawbrahim Heraudee, how after having circumvented his enemies and made a great fortune, he "spent his money in publishing many great and immortal works?" That's what we mean to do some day, so help us Puffer Hopkins! PETERS. Ominous invocation! But how fares the Prince meanwhile? BENSON. He is invited to take a geological ride with the Princess. You may be sure he seizes the opportunity to discuss the plan she had made for herself in contrast with that which others had made for her, not forgetting to say a good word or two for himself. "I know the Prince, I prize his truth; and then how vast a work To assail this gray pre-eminence of man! You grant me license; might I use it? Think Ere half be done perchance your life may fail; Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan, And takes and ruins all; and thus your pains May only make that footprint upon sand Which old recurring waves of prejudice Resmooth to nothing might I dread that you, With only Fame for spouse and your great deeds For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss Meanwhile what every woman counts her due, Love, children, happiness?' And she exclaimed: 'Peace, you young savage of the northern wild. What! tho' your Prince's love were like a godi Have we not made ourselves the sacrifice? You are bold indeed: we are not talk'd to this Yet will we say for children, would they grow Like field-flowers everywhere! we like the well. But children die; and let me tell you, girl, Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves. Great There is an instance, one out of many the poem, of the admirable way in whie all the adjuncts are artistically in keeping Tennyson always seems to keep in mi Fuseli's rule that all accessories shoals be allegorical," and this makes him em nently the painter of poets. And now comes what all the critics consider the gen of this work. PETERS. Isn't it a blank-verse song abou "the days that are no more ?" I remem periodicals the same day. I bought then ber seeing that quoted in three Londor at the railway station. BENSON. Even the same. There is a unanimity of opinion about it, which it may seem ridiculous to oppose, but I do candidly confess to you that I don't like it as well as some other things in this very poem Perhaps it is from utter want of agreement with the sentiment. The past is for me a sweet season, not a sad one at all-in consequence no doubt of my fearfully antiqua ted conservative sympathies. I never could feel, even though a great poet has sung it before Tennyson, "That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things," and therefore PETERS. That is the true critical fashion, Carl, to dilate upon your own feelings and neglect your author. BENSON. Straightforward is the word then. In vino veritas. When they begin to drink, the secret's let out and great is the flutter. The Prince, scornfully expelled, lights on the camp of his own father, who had heard of his danger, (it was a capital offence for any male to infringe on the University limits,) and marched down to rescue him. Poor Psyche is there; she has lost herself and her child: hear what a touching lament she makes for 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 from want of care, Or sicken with ill usage, when they say The child is hers-for every little fault, The child is hers; and they will beat my girl, Lemembering her mother: O my flower! Or they will take her, they will make her hard, and she will pass me by in after-life [dead. Vith some cold reverence worse than she were I mother that I was to leave her there, 'o lag behind, scared by the cry they made, 'he horror of the shame among them all. ut I will go and sit beside the doors, nd make a wild petition night and day, ntil they hate to hear me like a wind Tailing forever, till they open to me, nd lay my little blossom at my feet, y babe, my sweet Aglaia, my one child; nd I will take her up and go my way, nd satisfy my soul with kissing her: 1! what might that man not deserve of me ho gave me back my child ?" very garden wall the mêlée has taken place, comes down with her maidens and opens her gates in pity to the wounded, and so the women lose their cause in gaining it. You may imagine the catastrophe -the Prince ill in bed, and the Princess nursing him and reading to him, and what must follow thence. But it is beautifully worked out. He lies in delirium, until she from watching him, and listening to his mutterings, and casting sidelong looks at "happy lovers heart in heart," (what a felicitous expression!) begins herself to know what love is. Át last he wakes, "sane but well nigh close to death, For weakness; it was evening; silent light Slept on the painted walls, whereon were wrought Two grand designs; for on one side arose The women up in wild revolt, and storm'd At the Oppian law. Titanic shapes, they cramm'd The forum, and half crush'd among the rest (How the lion-painters had had it all their own way! There is great humor in that picture, as well as artistic keeping.) I saw the forms; I knew not where I was: more Sweet Ida; palm to palm she sat; the dew I Came round my wrist, and tears upon my hand : Then all for languor and self-pity ran Mine down my face, and with what life I had, And like a flower that cannot all unfold, The medley is true to its name. After So drench'd it is with tempest, to the sun, is pathos we have some fighting, for Yet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her ere are three brothers of the Princess, Fixt my faint eyes, and utter'd whisperingly : 1 fellows all, and one, Arac, a tremen-If you be what I think you, some sweet dream, us champion. He bullies the Prince, and ereupon the North and South agree to ht it out, fifty to fifty. I am sure Tenson had the Ivanhoe tournament in his ad when he wrote this. Arac knocks er every one, ending with the Prince ; t nobody is killed, though there is much ving in of iron plate and bruising of ads. Then the Princess, under whose would but ask you to fulfil yourself; Do you remember a somewhat similar appearance in Miss Barrett, where the Lady Geraldine visits her poet-lover, and he takes her for a vision ? |