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Politics of Despair.

191

form of feudal despotism. It is strange and lamentable that Mr. Carlyle should find nothing worth mention in modern English history, except a few brief periods when England spent blood and money in Continental wars; nor can I imagine why, even if we accept this view, it should be less kingly for modern Englishmen to check the encroaching despotism of Napoleon under Wellington, than it was for their fathers to check that of Louis XIV. under Marlborough. Still more difficult is it for me to conceive why it should be in the nature of things impossible, even if war is granted to be a nation's only noble work, for a self-governing nation to understand the necessity of having, especially in time of war, a strong executive. Swine do not wish to be well governed, but rational men do. After what has been effected by consuls of Rome, by marshals of Republican France, by generals of Republican America, and by commanders of constitutional England, it is really too late to maintain that work as vigorous as the work of despots cannot be done by the servants of a free nation. Another question is, why the England which listened to, accepted, obeyed, exulted in Pitt, should have subsequently become incapable of recognising heroic men, and even unworthy of being "asked kindly" by them for the authority to do great things in her name. But it is unnecessary to go further into these questions.

The Life of Frederick was Mr. Carlyle's last great book. His volume upon the Early Kings of Norway, though interesting from its Carlylian mannerism, and though wonderful as the work of a man nearly fourscore years of age, is not equal in power to his earlier writings; and his Niagara brochure, a protest against the latest extension of the franchise in England, is but the last and most extravagant of the Latter-Day Pamphlets.

From the books of his afternoon and evening I turn, for manlier and stabler truth, to the books of his prime. His

magnificent exposition of the uses of great men, his spiritstirring exhortation to us to recognise and respect them, to select them for our governors and loyally to obey them, cannot, if we are wise, be neutralised for us even by his own astounding doctrine of despair that we, the many, are for ever incapable of discerning those gifted few who are our natural governors. And if we exhaust the lessons of his books we have still the lesson of his life to fall back upon; a life instinct with true epical grandeur; a life upon which even calumny and slander have never cast a tarnishing breath; a life based upon realities.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

H

CHAPTER I.

HIS FIRST VOLUME.

OW vividly I remember the place and hour when I first became acquainted with Tennyson's poetry! Two volumes, one of them very tiny, then contained all that he had given to the world, and, as I carried these home from the library of King's College, Old Aberdeen, I stole one or two glances at my treasure. I was perfectly familiar with the poetry of Scott and Byron, had dipped into Keats and Shelley, and had read with passionate and boundless admiration the principal dramas of Shakespeare. The first thing in Tennyson on which my eye fell was the word-portrait of Lilian.

Airy, fairy Lilian,

Flitting, fairy Lilian,

When I ask her if she love me,
Claps her tiny hands above me,
Laughing all she can;

She'll not tell me if she love me,
Cruel little Lilian.

This, at least, was new, and I thought it exquisitely nice. It reminded me of nothing I had ever read in poetry or in prose. No strong feeling was produced, but I experienced a distinct sensation of pleasantness like that of seeing a delicately tinted, quaintly shaped china cup, or finding a curiously veined, richly flushed shell on the sea-shore not far from which I was walking. The picture of Lilian was

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