ingenious ideas and the object is gained. In the verses which I give as a specimen I think I succeeded in this. A lady, the fair Jemima Jones, had told me to write some complimentary verses in her Album, in which she was to be compared to an Album or anything else upon the table. She left me to accomplish this task; smilingly telling me that if I wrote "a good exercise" she should consider me a greater poet than Smith, and that if I could find a rhyme for Album she would dance a quadrille with me that evening. She left me in despair: for a long time the nearest rhyme to Album that I could think of was Stallbaum, till at length the accusative case of "Balbus" suggested itself. I sat down and wrote; here is the result.

When first my Muse sweet girl you tasked

To write within your Album:

I felt as puzzled as when asked

At school the case of “Balbum.”

But when those charms divine I viewed
With love and trepidation;

I wrote; I sang, my heart imbued
With fervent inspiration.
For who with Album, pen and ink,
While on those charms he gazes,
Would hesitate to sing like wink-
-ing thy unrivalled praises?
Thy eye is grayer than the quill,
With which I now am writing;
Thy brow is fairer than this sil-
-ver ink-pot so inviting:
Thy hand is softer than the calf
Which forms thy Album's cover;

More black than ink those locks by half

Which captivate thy lover.

But when I sing thy mental charms

I falter and I blunder;

My burning love my pen disarms,

I sigh in silent wonder.

Yet though my love no words express

Believe thy humble Rhymer,

While thus my feelings I confess,

I love but thee Jemima!

And now concluding my remarks, I wish my readers, one and all, a merry Christmas, a happy New Year, and last, not least, a pleasant Valentine's day.

"DUODECIMO DIDDLER."

SULPICIA.

Tibullus Eleg. IV. ii.

SULPICIA est tibi culta tuis, Mars magne, Calendis,
Spectatum e coelo, si sapis, ipse veni.
Hoc Venus ignoscet: at tu, violente, caveto
Ne tibi miranti turpiter arma cadant.
Illius ex oculis, quum vult exurere Divos,

Accendit geminas lampadas acer Amor:
Illam quidquit agit, quoquo vestigia flectit,
Componit furtim, subsequiturque decor:
Seu solvit crines, fusis decet esse capillis;
Seu compsit, comptis est veneranda comis:
Urit, seu Tyriâ voluit procedere pallâ;
Urit, seu niveâ candida veste venit:
Talis in æterno felix Vertumnus Olympo
Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet.
Sola puellarum digna est cui mollia caris
Vellera det sucis bis madefacta Tyros;
Possideatque metit quidquid bene olentibus arvis
Cultor adoratæ dives Arabs segetis,
Et quascunque niger rubro de littore conchas
Proximus Eöïs colligit Indus equis.

Hane vos, Pierides, festis cantate Calendis,
Et testudineâ, Phoebe superbe, lyrâ.

Hoc solemne sacrum multos celebretur in annos:
Dignior est vestro nulla puella choro.

SULPICIA.

Tibullus Eleg. iv. ii.

ON thy Calends hath my Ladye robed to pay thee honour due;
Come, if thou be wise, great Mavors, come thyself her charms to view!
Venus will excuse the treason; but do thou, rude chief, beware,
Lest thine arms fall in dishonour, while thou gazest on the fair!
In her eyes, whene'er her pleasure wills the hearts of gods to fire,
Lamps, a pretty pair, are burning, ever lit by young Desire:
Whatsoe'er the maid be doing, wheresoe'er her steps she bends,
Perfect grace is shed around her, perfect grace in stealth attends:
If she leave her tresses flowing, grace o'er flowing locks is poured,
If she braid them, in her braidings is she meet to be adored;

Every heart is fired to see her, walk she robed in purple bright,
Every heart is fired to see her, come she dressed in snowy white:
So Vertumnus, blest Immortal, in Olympus' heavenly hall,
Hath a thousand varied dresses, and the thousand grace him all.
Unto her alone of maidens meet it is that Tyre produce
Precious gifts of softest fleeces, doubly dyed in costly juice;
Her's alone be all the perfumes, which on scented meadows wide,
Tills and reaps the wealthy Arab, at his fragrant harvest tide;
All the shells the dusky Indian, on the Erythrean shore,
Neighbour of the steeds of Eos, heaps in many a shining store.
Her upon your festal Calends, sing ye, bright Pierid quire!
Sing her praises, haughty Phoebus, on thy tortoise-fashioned lyre!
Through the course of future ages let the annual rite be done :
Never maiden was more worthy to be numbered with thine own.

TENNYSON.

AMONG the occasional aids, which are sometimes accessible to the student of literature, few will prove so valuable in helping him to realize fully the ideas that were working in the mind of the author, or will enable him to watch so closely the operation of the laws of the poetic or philosophic faculty, as the corrections and alterations introduced into successive editions. In proof of this it would be sufficient to refer a doubtful reader to Hare's Guesses at Truth, Vol. 11., where the alterations in some of Wordsworth's Poems are discussed with a delicate minuteness which it is to be wished reviewers generally had endeavoured to imitate ;-this would be sufficient were it not that a still more satisfactory course is open to me,-I can give him an opportunity of testing it for himself.

In 1837, Lord Northampton edited and Murray published a collection of original Poems called the Tribute, which contained, besides contributions from Wordsworth, Southey, Moore, W. S. Landor, Trench, Monckton Milnes, Henry Taylor, Dr. Whewell, Sir W. Hamilton, Rev. C. T. Tennyson, Dean Milman, Lord J. Russell, Alford and many others,some stanzas by Alfred Tennyson, Esq., which have lately been republished, with various alterations, omissions and additions, as § xxvI. of Maud.*

I subjoin the lines which have been altered, as they appeared in this Edition, and also the verses that have been omitted, referring the reader to the last Edition to see the nature of the alterations. Those words only which are italicized vary in the two Editions. I may add, that this will also be a favourable opportunity for testing the accuracy of what has always appeared to me to be the exaggeration of a wholesome Truth in the volume before referred to, viz. that

The profits resulting from this work were for the benefit of the family of a then recently deceased clergyman.

† In numbering the lines and verses, I have followed the Edition of 1856,

when a poem is once completed any attempt at improvement

is sure to fail.*

"Oh! that 'twere possible,"

Verse I. line 1.
Verse II. line 3. "
Verse III. line 3.

Of the land that gave me birth,” "Ah God! that it were possible"

Verse V. lines 2 and 3 not in the original Edition, and the word "doze" (line 4) was misprinted "dose."

line 6. "For the meeting of to-morrow,"

In place of verses VI. and VII. was the following:

"Do I hear the pleasant ditty,

That I heard her chant of old?
But I wake-my dream is fled.
Without knowledge, without pity-
In the shuddering dawn behold,
By the curtains of my bed,
That abiding phantom cold."

With a single alteration in the positions of lines 4 and 5, which have been interchanged, the last five lines have been retained as the conclusion of verse VII.

Verse VIII. This verse originally followed verse XIII. and was as follows:

"Get thee hence, nor come again

Pass and cease to move about—
Pass, thou death-like type of pain,
Mix not memory with doubt.
'Tis the blot upon the brain

That will show itself without."

The only alteration being a different arrangement of the lines.

Verse X. line 3. "It crosseth here, it crosseth there." Verse XII. followed verse VIII. in the Edition of 1837, lines 2 and 6 have been added.

If, as these stanzas lead me to believe, the general plan of 'Maud' was conceived, and to some extent executed at the time they were first published, if they were in 1837 extracted from Maud, and not in 1855 inserted in it, one cannot but wish that the existence of the Tribute' had been known to the reviewers of that Poem, they might then perhaps have hesitated before criticizing so harshly what on this supposition must have been no hasty offspring of the Poet's brain, but one carefully meditated and long matured.