ALFRED TENNYSON is the son of a clergyman in Lincolnshire, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Since leaving the university he has lived in retirement. His first appearance as an author was in 1830, when he published a small volume of verses, which was succeeded two years afterwards by another entitled Poems chiefly Lyrical. In 1843 appeared his collected writings in two volumes, the first containing a selection from his previous publications, and the second his later compositions.

Mr. TENNYSON, says LEIGH HUNT, in a notice written several years ago of his earlier poems, "is of the school of KEATS; that is to say, it is difficult not to see that KEATS has been a great deal in his thoughts; and that he delights in the same brooding over his sensations, and the same melodious enjoyment of their expression........ Much, however, as he reminds us of KEATS, his genius is his own: he would have written poetry had his precursor written none; and he has, also, a vein of metaphysical subtlety, in which the other did not indulge........ He is a great lover of a certain home kind of landscape, which he delights to paint with a minuteness that in the Moated Grange becomes affecting, and in the Miller's Daughter would remind us of the Dutch school if it were not mixed up with the same deep feeling, though varied with a pleasant joviality. He has yet given no such evidence of sustained and broad power as that of Hyperion, nor even of such gentler narrative as the Eve of St. Agnes and the poems of Lamia and Isabella, but the materials of the noblest poetry are abundant in him."

The general judgment was less favourable than that of Mr. HUNT. TENNYSON's poems were keenly reviewed in several of the leading journals of criticism, and he is said at an early day to have withdrawn from the market and burned all the unsold copies. Yet the volumes published in 1830 and 1832 contained Mariana, Oriana, Madeline, The Death of the Old Year, The Miller's Daughter, Enone, and other pieces quite equal to the larger number of his more recent productions.

Locksley Hall is in my opinion the best of TENNYSON's works the poem in which there is the truest feeling, the most strength, directness, and intensity. He is sensible of his want of the inventive faculty, and rarely attempts the creation of incidents. Dora was suggested by one of Miss MITFORD'S portraits, and the Lady Clare by Mrs. FARRAR'S Inheritance; The Day Dream, The Lady of Shalott, Godiva, and other narrative pieces, are versions of old stories; and the poetry of The Arabian Nights was ready made to his hand. He excels most in his female portraitures; but while delicate and graceful they are indefinite, while airy and spiritual are intangible. As we read BYRON or BURNS beautiful forms stand before us, we see the action of their breathing and read the passionate language of their eyes; but we have glimpses only of the impalpable creations of TENNYSON, as on gold-bordered clouds they bend to listen to dream-like melodies which go up from fairy lakes and enchanted palaces. There are exceptions: as the picture of the Sleeping Beauty, in the Day Dream, which is rarely excelled for statue-like definiteness and warmth of colouring. Some of his portraits of men also are fine. It would be difficult to discover any thing in its way more graphic than this description from The Miller's Daughter:

I see the wealthy miller yet,
His double chin, his portly size,
And who that knew him could forget

The busy wrinkles round his eyes?
The slow, wise smile, that round about
His dusty forehead daily curl'd,
Seem'd half within and half without,

And full of dealings with the world.

There are equally felicitous stanzas in several of his longer poems, which are generally, more than those quoted in this volume, disfigured by affectations of thought and expression. Mr. TENNYSON has studied KEATS, SHELLEY, and the Greek poets, and, of the last especially, has made free and unacknowledged use. The peculiarities of his style have attracted attention, and his writings have enough intrinsic merit, probably, to secure him a permanent place in the third or fourth rank of contemporary English poets.

2 P

445

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,

Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Aijalon!

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range;

Let the peoples spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Through the shadow of the world we sweep into the younger day:

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

Mother-Age, (for mine I knew not,) help me as when life begun:

Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the sun

set;

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not Ancient founts of inspiration well through all my fancy yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!

Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt, Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunder-bolt.

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;

For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

GODIVA.

I WAITED for the train at Coventry;

I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,
To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped
The city's ancient legend into this :-

Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past; not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well
And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim earl who ruled
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax
Upon his town, and all the mothers brought
Their children, clamouring, "If we pay, we starve;"

About the hall, among his dogs, alone,
His beard a foot before him, and his hair
A yard behind. She told him of their tears,
And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax, they starve."
Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,
"You would not let your little finger ache
For such as these?" -"But I would die," said she.
He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul:
Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear,
"Oh ay, ay, ay, you talk!"-"Alas!" she said,
"But prove me what it is I would not do."
And from a heart, as rough as Esau's hand,
He answer'd, "Ride you naked through the town,
And I repeal it;" and nodding, as in scorn,
He parted, with great strides among his dogs!

So left alone, the passions of her mind,
As winds from all the compass shift and blow,
Made war upon each other for an hour,
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all
The hard condition; but that she would loose
The people, therefore, as they loved her well,
From then till noon no foot should pace the street,
No eye look down, she passing, but that all
Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd.

Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt, The grim earl's gift; but ever at a breath She linger'd, looking like a summer moon Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head, And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee; Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid From pillar unto pillar, until she reach'd The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt In purple blazon'd with armorial gold.

Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity: The deep air listen'd round her as she rode, And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spout Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's footfall shot Light horrors through her pulses: the blind walls Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she Not less through all bore up, till, last, she saw The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the field Gleam through the Gothic archways in the wall.

Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity: And one low churl, compact of thankless earth, The fatal byword of all years to come, Boring a little auger-hole in fear, Peep'd-but his eyes, before they had their will, Were shrivell'd into darkness in his head, And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait On noble deeds, cancell'd a sense misused; And she, that knew not, pass'd: and all at once, With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless

noon

Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred towers,
Onc after one: but even then she gain'd

Her bower; whence re-issuing, robed and crown'd,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away,
And built herself an everlasting name.