must be pronounced, and transfers it to the word new-starrèd, where it would not be pronounced if he did not take due care to superfix a grave accent. This use of the grave accent is, as our readers may have already perceived, so habitual with Mr. Tennyson, and is so obvious an improvement, that we really wonder how the language has hitherto done without it. We are tempted to suggest, that if analogy to the accented languages is to be thought of, it is rather the acute (') than the grave () which should be employed on such occasions; but we speak with profound diffidence; and as Mr. Tennyson is the inventor of the system, we shall bow with respect to whatever his final determination may be. The north wind fall'n, in the new-starrèd night Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond The hoary promontory of Soloë, Past Thymiaterion in calmèd bays.' We must here note specially the musical flow of this last line, which is the more creditable to Mr. Tennyson, because it was before the tuneless names of this very neighbourhood that the learned continuator of Dionysius retreated in despair επωνυμίας νυν ἔλλαχεν ἄλλας Αἰθίοπων γαίη, δυσφωνες εδ' επιήρους Μεσαις, ἔνεκα τασδ' έγω ουκ αγορευσομ' απασας. but Mr. Tennyson is bolder and happier— • Past Thymiaterion in calmèd bays, Between the southern and the western Horn, We pause for a moment to consider what a sea-captain might have expected to hear, by night, in the Atlantic ocean he heard 'neither the warbling of the nightingale Nor melody o' the Libyan lotus flute," but he did hear the three daughters of Hesper singing the following song: The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowèd fruit, Guard it well, guard it warily, Singing airily, Standing about the charmèd root, Round about all is mute ' mute, though they sung so loud as to be heard some leagues out at sea 'all is mute As the snow-field on mountain peaks, Sleep, and stir not: all is mute.' How admirably do these lines describe the peculiarities of this charmed charmèd neighbourhood-fields of snow, so talkative when they happen to lie at the foot of the mountain, are quite out of breath when they get to the top, and the sand, so noisy on the summit of a hill, is dumb at its foot. The very crocodiles, too, are mutenot dumb but mute. The 'red-combèd dragon curl'd' is next introduced 'Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stolen away, For his ancient heart is drunk with overwatchings night and day, Sing away, sing aloud evermore, in the wind, without stop.' The north wind, it appears, had by this time awaked again— Lest his scaled eyelid drop, For he is older than the world' older than the hills, besides not rhyming to curl'd,' would hardly have been a sufficiently venerable phrase for this most harmonious of lyrics. It proceeds If ye sing not, if ye make false measure, We shall lose eternal pleasure, Worth eternal want of rest. Laugh not loudly: watch the treasure In a corner wisdom whispers. Five and three (Let it not be preached abroad) make an awful mystery.'-p. 102. This recipe for keeping a secret, by singing it so loud as to be heard for miles, is almost the only point, in all Mr. Tennyson's poems, in which we can trace the remotest approach to anything Îike what other men have written, but it certainly does remind us of the chorus of conspirators' in the Rovers. Hanno, however, who understood no language but Punic-(the Hesperides sang, we presume, either in Greek or in English)appears to have kept on his way without taking any notice of the song, for the poem concludes, 'The apple of gold hangs over the sea, Bound about All round about The gnarlèd bole of the charmed tree, The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowèd fruit. Guard it well, guard it warily, Watch it warily, Singing airily, Standing about the charmèd root.'-p. 107. We hardly think that, if Hanno had translated it into Punic, the song would have been more intelligible. The The Lotuseaters a kind of classical opium-eaters Ulysses and his crew. They land on the charmed island,' and eat of the charmed root,' and then they sing Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry. This is lovelier and sweeter, Men of Ithaca, this is meeter, In the hollow rosy vale to tarry, Like a dreamy Lotuseater-a delicious Lotuseater! We will eat the Lotus, sweet As the yellow honeycomb; In the valley some, and some At the limits of the brine, The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline.'—p. 116. Our readers will, we think, agree that this is admirably characteristic, and that the singers of this song must have made pretty free with the intoxicating fruit. How they got home you must read in Homer:-Mr. Tennyson-himself, we presume, a dreamy lotus-eater, a delicious lotus-eater-leaves them in full song. ་ 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. We have not room to hang many of these chefs-d'œuvre, but for a few we must find space.—'The Madonna' 'The maid mother by a crucifix, In yellow pastures sunny warm, The use of this latter, apparently, colloquial phrase is a deep stroke of art. The form of expression is always used to express an habitual and characteristic action. A knight is described 'lance in rest'-a dragoon, sword in hand'-so, as the idea of the Virgin is inseparably connected with her child, Mr. Tennyson reverently describes her conventional position- babe in arm.' 6 His gallery of illustrious portraits is thus admirably arranged:The Madonna-Ganymede-St. Cecilia-Europa-Deep-haired Milton-Shakspeare-Grim Dante-Michael Angelo-LutherLord Bacon-Cervantes-Calderon-King David- the Halicarnassëan' (quære, which of them?)-Alfred, (not Alfred Tenny son, son, though no doubt in any other man's gallery he would have had a place) and finally 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 standing naked in the open air! In this poem we first observed a stroke of art (repeated afterwards) which we think very ingenious. No one who has ever written verse but must have felt the pain of erasing some happy line, some striking stanza, which, however excellent in itself, did not exactly suit the place for which it was destined. How cu riously does an author mould and remould the plastic verse in order to fit in the favourite thought; and when he finds that he cannot introduce it, as Corporal Trim says, any how, with what reluctance does he at last reject the intractable, but still cherished offspring of his brain! Mr. Tennyson manages this delicate matter in a new and better way; he says, with great candour and simplicity, If this poem were not already too long, I should have added the following stanzas,' and then he adds them, (p. 84 ;) -or, the following lines are manifestly superfluous, as a part of the text, but they may be allowed to stand as a separate poem,' (p. 121,) which they do ;-or, I intended to have added something on statuary, but I found it very difficult;'-(he had, moreover, as we have seen, been anticipated in this line by the Blarney poet)—' but I had finished the statues of Elijah and Olympias -judge whether I have succeeded,' (p. 73)—and then we have these two statues. This is certainly the most ingenious device that has ever come under our observation, for reconciling the rigour of criticism with the indulgence of parental partiality. It is economical too, and to the reader profitable, as by these means We lose no drop of the immortal man.'. The other vision is A Dream of Fair Women,' in which the heroines of all ages-some, indeed, that belong to the times of 'heathen goddesses most rare '-pass before his view. We have not time to notice them all, but the second, whom we take to be Iphigenia, touches the heart with a stroke of nature more power ful ful than even the veil that the Grecian painter threw over the head of her father. dimly I could descry The stern blackbearded kings with wolfish eyes, Watching to see me die. The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat; The temples, and the people, and the shore; One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat— What touching simplicity-what pathetic resignation-he cut my throat nothing more! One might indeed ask, 'what more' she would have? But we must hasten on; and to tranquillize the reader's mind after the last affecting scene, shall notice the only two pieces of a lighter strain which the volume affords. The first is elegant and playful; it is a description of the author's study, which he affectionately calls his Darling Room. O darling room, my heart's delight; No little room so warm and bright, We entreat our readers to note how, even in this little trifle, the singular taste and genius of Mr. Tennyson break forth. In such a dear little room a narrow-minded scribbler would have been content with one sofa, and that one he would probably have covered with black mohair, or red cloth, or a good striped chintz; how infinitely more characteristic is white dimity!-'tis as it were a type of the purity of the poet's mind. He proceeds For I the Nonnenwerth have seen, And Oberwinter's vineyards green, The hills to Bingen I have been, . Yet never did there meet my sight, In any town, to left or right, A little room so exquisite, With two such couches soft and white ; Not any room so warm and bright, Wherein to read, wherein to write.'-p. 153. A common poet would have said that he had been in London or in Paris-in the loveliest villa on the banks of the Thames, or the most gorgeous chateau on the Loire-that he had reclined in Madame |