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"Said he, wake me by no gesture, sound of | ornaments of the goddess more than of breath, or stir of vesture

PETERS. Excuse me, but I never yet undertook to admire Miss Barrett, and would much rather you should read straight on.

BENSON. It is a pity to interrupt so fine a passage.

"I could no more, but lay like one in trance That hears his burial talked of by his friends, And cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign, But lies and dreads his doom. She turned; she paused;

She stoop'd; and with a great shock of the
heart,

Our mouths met; out of languor leapt a cry,
Crown'd passion from the brinks of death, and up
Along the shuddering senses struck the soul,
And closed on fire with Ida's at the lips;
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose,
Glowing all over noble shame, and all
Her falser self slipt from her like a robe,
And left her woman, lovelier in her mood
Than in her mould that other, when she came
From barren deeps to conquer all with love,
And down the streaming crystal dropt, and she
Far-fleeted by the purple island-tides
Naked, a double light in air and wave,
To meet her graces where they decked her out
For worship without end, nor end of mine,
Stateliest, for thee!"

PETERS. I suppose our classical poet had one of the Homeric hymns to Venus in his mind, when he sketched that comparison. BENSON. Possibly, but there is no verbal resemblance that I recollect. Let us

see. Here is the shorter Hymn to Aphro

dite. You shall have it word for word:

"Fair Aphrodité, goddess golden-crowned,
Majestic in her beauty will I sing,
Inheritress of all the crowning heights
Of sea-beat Cyprus, whence the wat'ry breath
Of Zephyr bore her lapped in softest foam
Across the loud-resounding ocean wave.
Her lovingly the golden Hours received
And clad in robes immortal; and they set
Upon her head divine a golden crown
Well wrought, and fair to look on; in her ears
The flower of mountain-brass and precious gold;
And they decked out with necklaces of gold
Her tender neck and silver-shining breasts.
With such the golden Hours themselves bedeck
When they betake them to the pleasant dance
Of deities, and to their father's home.
So having all her person thus adorned
They brought her to th' Immortals, who rejoiced
To see her."

Homer, as you perceive, dwells upon the

her native charms. But now for our Prince and Princess again. He has slept.

"Fill'd thro' and thro' with Love, a happy sleep,"

and is awaked by her reading a sort of ser-
enade to him, and a beautiful one it is
Listen:-

"Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The fire-fly wakens; waken thou with me.

Now droops the milk-white peacock like a
ghost,

And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thought in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake,
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me."

By-and-by they come to an explanatio He makes an admirable confession of E faith, and a more admirable explanati and history of it, even thus:—

"Alone,' I said, from earlier than I know,
Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the wor
I loved the woman he that doth not. lives
A drowning life, besotted in sweet self,
Or pines in sad experience, worse than death
Or keeps his wing'd affections clipt with ch
Yet was there one thro' whom I loved her,
Not learned, save in gracious household wa
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants,
In angel instincts, breathing Paradise,
No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt
Interpreter between the gods and men,
Who look'd all native to her place, and yet
On tiptoe seemed to touch upon a sphere
Too gross to tread; and all male minds per-
Sway'd to her from their orbits as they
And girdled her with music. Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things
Comes easy to him.'"

And this is his satisfactory conclusi
"My bride,
My wife, my life, O we will waik this we
Yoked in all exercise of noble end,
And so thro' those dark gates across the
That no man knows. Indeed I love thee; en
Yield thyself up my hopes and thine are o
Accomplish thou my manhood and these
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to a

Enter the General.
THE GENERAL. Well, Carl, what's

the tapis now? One of the nine male muses of Boston, eh?

PETERS. No, indeed! but Tennyson's Princess, which our friend is well nigh enchanted with.

THE GENERAL. It is two years or more since I heard Carl talking of that poem. The literati in England must have been expecting its appearance for a long time. And it seems to me surprising that they have not shown more disappointment-that is, if, as seems perfectly natural, they meant to judge it by the standard of the author's former works.

BENSON. Then you are greatly disappointed?

THE GENERAL. Not greatly, for I never was a violent Tennysonian. But I shall be surprised if you are not dissatisfied.

PETERS. Carl looks incredulous: he wants your reasons, General.

THE GENERAL. He shall have them. First, let us begin with the vehicle and dress of the ideas, the mere structure of the verse. Knowing that you all agree with me in the importance of this, I have no fear of being thought hypercritical. Every one must see on reading the poem, that much of the versification is on

the

Italian model. Now this may be a perfectly proper innovation. It is possible that "O swallow, swallow if I could follow and light,"

is as natural and suitable a line in the one language as

"Molto egli opro con senno e con la mano" is in the other; so I will not dwell on this point, though it certainly admits of dispute. But there are many lines built on no model at all, in short, not verse at all. What do

you say to this?

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Now we have a particular right to animadvert upon these things in Tennyson, because his harmony of versification is always insisted upon (and in many cases I admit with all justice) by his admirers. Here, then, he fails upon his own ground. And it cannot be from haste, for we know that the Princess has been some years in preparation; it must be either from wilful carelessness, or some perversity of theory. So much for the first charge.

Next, there is to be found in this poem a superabundance of quaint and harsh expressions. I do not refer to the affectation of dragging in antiquated words, such as "tilth," and "thorpe," and "enringed;" but to such phrases as these :

"And then we past an arch Inscribed too dark for legible." "On some dark shore just seen that it was rich." "Seldom she spoke, but oft Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men Darkening her female field; void was her use,”

meaning that "her occupation was gone,” I suppose; but it is not easy to get that sense, or any sense out of the words.

The next fault I have to find is a very serious one. Your pet poet, Carl, is terribly gross, repeatedly and unnecessarily There, don't make such large eyes, but listen. The Princess

So.

"Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf,"

to the Prince. Where was the need of allusion or reference to this barbarous and disgusting custom of a dark age? You can't say it was introduced to preserve historical accuracy, for there is no historical or chronological keeping in the poem. The Princess talks geology and nebular hypotheses, and the Prince draws his similes from fossil remains. Then, again, the break at the close of the innkeeper's speech-why, the suggestion conveyed by it would be low for Punch, and only in place in the columns of a Sunday newspaper. And why the Prince's question about the want of anatomic schools in the female University, but for the indiscreet inuendo which it conveys?

BENSON. You grow over nice, General.

THE GENERAL. Nay, if I did, you would hear me objecting to the whole scene of the three young gentlemen's dis

covery; master Cyril growing tipsy and introduction of comic characters, (though striking up a questionable ditty,

"Of Moll and Meg, and strange experiences Unmeet for ladies;"

and the Prince "pitching in" to him. BENSON. Can you suggest any better mode of bringing about the discovery? THE GENERAL. If no better can be devised, that only throws the objection upon the choice of such a subject.

PETERS. That brings us to the point. Come, General, don't be nibbling all around the poem, like a mouse about a big cheese, but tell us what you think of it as a whole.

THE GENERAL. As a whole, then, let me ask Benson if he considers it to add much to Tennyson's poetic reputation?

BENSON. Is it perfectly fair to expect that each successive work of an author shall equal or surpass his former masterpieces?

THE GENERAL. Somewhat of a Quaker answer, that, but it involves an admission which I accept as a satisfactory reply.

he must have seen by this time that humor the Winter's Tale is not without meaning, is not his forte ;) even the very reference to But Tennyson is said to be a modest man, and it is hardly fair to tax him with such impudence. But at any rate the Princess goes far to confirm me in the opinion I held before, that long poems are not Tennyson's line, so to speak. And he must have an inkling of this himself, else why does he not finish Morte d'Arthur?--which is surely worth finishing, though it might not perhaps be "one of the epics of the world," as Carl thinks. There are many exquisite little gems in the Princess-many of "those jewels five-words long," that the author speaks of; but as a whole, I should be slow to call it a great work of art.

BENSON. There are certainly also mary things in it to which the General has taken exception, and which I am not prepared to defend. The thought has struck me that for some or all of these occasional lapses, we may have to thank the so-called “Water Cure" which the author underwen between his former volumes and this.

PETERS. Not a bad idea that, Carl The result was exceedingly likely.

PETERS. I have heard it objected to the Princess, that it was too evidently written with a moral and for a moral, and therefore could not be a really great poem. THE GENERAL. So then the same cans BENSON. That is really too bad, Fred. will account for the difference betwees According to that rule, no allegorical pic-Evangeline" and "The Voices of the ture can be a great painting. To go no Night," and that between the Princess and further, what would such a critic say to Locksley Hall. Cole's Voyage of Life?

THE GENERAL. It certainly is not the objection I should make either. The idea that a great poem cannot have a moral, seems to me as one-sided and untenable as the theory of the extreme Wordsworthians, that a great poem must have a moral. My animadversion would be just of the opposite kind-that the subject of the Princess is too slight. It would be well enough for a semi-ludicrous trifle; it is not sufficient for an elaborate poem, the work of years. While reading this production, the suspicion has crossed my mind-a mere suspicion which it is perhaps uncharitable to utter-that Tennyson has intended and striven to be eminently Shakspearian in it. Hence his peculiar phraseology, his changes from grave to gay and from gay to grave, his rigorous artistic propriety combined with his almost systematic chronological discrepancy, his

BENSON. Well, we are agreed on point at any rate. And having settled s much satisfactorily, let us refresh our in man. Lift up the top of that oak windowseat, Fred; you are the nearest to What do you find there?

PETERS. Something that looks very a páté de foie gras reposing upon some of music; and a little basket with an assort ment of soda buscuit and wafers, andis there a Bologna in this roll of yellow paper?

BENSON. Precisely. Where's the Ga eral? Oh, one naturally looks to th other window-seat for the liquids. Q right.

You will find some jolly old Cor there, and a bottle of the real "Dr Maraschino, if you are not above so ladylike a vanity. Help me to clear the tab. Fred. Put Dr. Arnold on the top Vanity Fair, and pitch those Boston, re views into the chiffonier basket. Spros

this Literary World out: it will do for an = extempore table-cloth. There, we have the - edibles and potables arranged : let us give = a good account of them.

THE GENERAL. We will endeavor to do them justice, as we have been trying to | do justice to the Princess.

HUDSON'S LECTURES ON SHAKSPEARE.*

In reading Mr. Hudson's assurance in his dedication, that he has, "in writing these - lectures, rather studied to avoid originality than to be original," we know not, to use a part of one of his characteristic sentences, "whether it be more incredible, that he should say what he did not believe, or that he should believe what he said." For it is of the very essence of his mind to be original, and to allow it to be seen that he tries to be so. His very avowal is original; | the thought, it is true, is not new, but the | light in which it is presented is colored with a peculiar personal shade. It was meant to tell in a particular direction, and it does so. How it must startle the drowsy senses of those who have fallen into that state of morbid conceit, which it is the fashion of the soi-disant transcendentalists to develop and nourish, to read a sentiment so directly in opposition to one of their cardinal dogmas, as the following:He who is always striving to utter himself, will of course be original enough; but he who wishes to teach will first try to learn; and as, to do this, he will have to study the same objects, so, unless his eye be a good deal better or a good deal worse than others, he will be apt to see, think, and say very much the same things as have been seen, thought, and said before..

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This is a plain common-sense thought put into a Johnsonian wrapper and fired out of the Hudsonian rifle at a particular object, viz., the worshippers of certain avowed Self-Utterers in New England and elsewhere; which object this thought is peculiarly adapted to hitting, (as silver bullets are for witches,) and which, in this instance, it hits, in the very point aimed at.

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| The writer intimates that he could have been original, in the transcendental sense, i. e. unique, outre, odd, absurd, nonsensical or ridiculous, had he chosen, but that being a man of honesty, and having some reverence for the learning of thinking, he has endeavored to study his subject with the assistance of other students, and then to travel on with them in the great highway of wisdom. It is the false originality then which he has studied to avoid, that which mistakes Deviation for Progress, and selfillumination for general enlightenment. In this sense only can he say of himself with truth that he has studied to avoid originality.

But if going ahead in the right path of thought, that which runs parallel with what men understand by common sense, in a peculiar characteristic fashion, be true originality, then Mr. Hudson has tried to be original, and has succeeded. He is consciously peculiar in his thought and expression, more from a natural idiosyncrasy than because he intends to be strange. He writes antitheses, and makes points, and scatters shot here and there, because he is a wit. He is full of individuality both in style and thought; but in the general, though many of his traits as author are against good usage, he is on the right side, the old, true side, the side of honesty and sincerity. He is neither a Weeper nor a Seeker. He does not bear his candle aloft and cry, "Behold the sun!" he merely lets it so shine that men may see his good works.

With our Progressing friends Mr. Hudson is not a particular favorite; they do not consider him a "perfect person." This

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* Lectures on Shakspeare. By H. N. HUDSON. 2 vols. New-York: Baker & Scribner, 1848.

question respecting his originality, which | as his own. Except in the instances al

they were the first to raise, affords a curious instance by which to observe a characteristic motion of the advancing Mind. Mr. Hudson has made a free and generally a fair use of the thoughts of other writers on Shakspeare; in a few instances, one of which we shall extract, it seems that he has, instead of quoting, given the thoughts of others in his own language. This could not have been intended for plagiarism, since those thoughts have now become so common that there could have been no felonious intent; still it was unnecessary, and is a blemish.

Not relishing, when these lectures were delivered, the blunt sense and pointed sarcasm which characterize almost every paragraph of Mr. Hudson's writing, and make it very original-the advancing Mind, or rather some of those nameless persons to whom he frequently alludes as "some people," fastened upon these instances, and pronounced him a mere laborious compiler. We did not hear the lectures, but remember seeing them spoken of in that wise in sundry newspapers, by individuals as inferior to him in wit, good taste, scholarship, and industry, as superior to him in the wisdom which is born of conceit, and is engendered by fanning the inward light.

Now, since his book has appeared, and it has been seen that he professed to have studied to be un-original, in their sense only, they have been rather taken aback; they have been obliged at least to commend his prudence. They imply (we have read thus in a newspaper notice) that as he was accused of wanting originality, he has now very adroitly met that objection by confessing it was intentional.

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All this while the progressing Mind, some people," must be as perfectly aware as he is himself, that he is truly one of the most original writers that has for a long while come before the public. His style is quite peculiar; no one else has ever written it. His course of thought is like that of no other mind which had contributed to enrich our literature; it is a beautiful spray of innumerable little jets of wit. As for what he has borrowed from other writers, he has so remodelled it in the mould of his fancy that he has a right to pass it

luded to, which though in bad taste could not have been written to mislead, there is no charge which could be brought against these lectures with less foundation in truth than that of wanting originality.

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Yet such is the nature of the mental progression of the some people" aforesaid, that they cannot be brought to admit aught which tends to lessen them in their own esteem. Something must be said against Mr. Hudson, because he does not subscribe to the Harbinger; but his piquant sallies are too cutting not to be acknowledged to have some force; the shift then is, to pretend to feel no smart, and assuming a high level of "self-respect," to accuse him of want of originality. This is especially the modus operandi of "some people," the imitators of Mr. Emerson and Lord Nozoo, who are perpetually "welling out" in our newspapers and magazines. Lacking utterly all basis of good sense, and all respect for study, they are in our lierature the exact counterpart of the Democratic party in our politics-only, thanks to the mighty dead who repose in our libraries, to the nobler qualities of the human soul, and to the chivalry of such valorous knight-errants as Mr. Hudson, they are not quite so formidable. For our own part, we are so much disposed to trust in the natural vigor of the understanding, that we look upon the vagaries of these progressives as mere harmless manifestations of weakness that will always be showing itself in some form or other; we as little think of allowing transcendentalism to disturb our repose as Mormonism; we defy all attempts to be drawn into seriously dispelling any such momentous Nonsense that is always obscuring the air of the soul. It is nothing but fog; though at a distance it looms heavy, and seems to envelop all things in Cimmerian gloom, yet, if we walk boldly on, we have always a clear space around us. We believe in Bigotry: the ignorant are to be pitied and benevolently instructed, not contended with. The Pinel method of treating the insane should be extended to many other infirmities. Still, when boys have behaved very badly indeed, not studied well, but relied on their effrontery to carry them through, and been altogether vain, assuming and disagreeable,

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