roguery has been made out, and even if the deception were shown to have been wilful, she would bespeak forgiveness. If he wrongs his friend, he "wrongs himself more," and in "the silent court of justice in his breast," in which he is both judge and jury, he will be condemned. Perhaps, after all, he meant well. The husband remains unconvinced. In that silent court of hers, a man may, he says, be counsel for himself, and then he quotes what he calls an "old satire," but which really is a masterly imitation by Tennyson of our old English satiric style. I am not sure whether it was Dryden or Cowper that he had in view, and I cannot help thinking that he must have been influenced, in composing the lines, by Crabbe. The first line will recall Dryden's "With two left legs and Judas-coloured hair.”

"With all his conscience and one eye askew,

So false, he partly took himself for true;
Whose pious talk, when most his heart was dry,
Made wet the crafty crowsfoot round his eye;
Who, never naming God except for gain,
So never took that useful name in vain.

Made Him his catspaw and the Cross his tool,
And Christ the bait to trap his dupe and fool;
Nor deeds of gift, but gifts of grace he forged,
And snake-like slimed his victim ere he gorged;
And oft at Bible meetings, o'er the rest
Arising, did his holy oily best,

Dropping the too rough H in Hell and Heaven,

To spread the Word by which himself had thriven."

He asks his wife how she likes this. Her answer honours Tennyson, and is, by implication, one of the noblest tributes ever paid to the heart-wisdom of woman.

"Nay," she said,

"I loathe it; he had never kindly heart,
Nor ever cared to better his own kind,

Who first wrote satire, with no pity in it."

It is impossible for me to quote the dreams, one dreamed by the clerk, the other by his wife, to which the poem owes its name, and apart from which it might seem an ethically

suggestive but somewhat prosaic performance. In one of them-the husband's-the results of speculation are poetically contrasted with those of honest work; in the otherthe wife's there seems to be an imaginative shadowing forth of the general revolutionary movement of these times, and of the battle of Churches and Sects, of creeds and scepticisms, through all which,-an echo, shall I say? of the indestructible harmony in her own heart,—she hears a note of Divine music. Readers will find much food for musing in these dreams. But we have not quite done with the narrative part of the poem. The wife has seen some one from the town, and has news "later by an hour" than her husband's. She speaks:

"The man your eye pursued.

A little after you had parted with him,

He suddenly dropt dead of heart-disease."

"Dead? he? of heart-disease? what heart had he
To die of? dead!"

Ah, dearest, if there be

A devil in man, there is an angel too,

And if he did that wrong you charge him with,

His angel broke his heart."

The woman has her triumph. "I do forgive him," says the husband. There is not a nobler heroine in literature than this wife of a city clerk, and I see no reason to believe that there are not many such to be found in London.

In Enoch Arden, Tennyson deals with a subject which might have had charms for Crabbe, but Crabbe would have loaded the shadows too much; in Tennyson's handling the poem is sad but not painful. The hero, Enoch Arden, is beyond rivalry the principal personage in the tale, and his heroism is at once of the loftiest and simplest order. He is an unlucky man, but invincible; his brain is ordinary; morally he is sublime. His duty, however hard it may be, is always clear to him; and, without any consciousness that

he is acting heroically, he always proves equal to it. Harder duty, however, has seldom fallen to any man than his.

Enoch Arden, a rough sailor's lad, Philip Ray, the miller's only son, and pretty Annie Lee, played together as children beneath the cliffs that faced the breakers, on the beach of a small seaport town—

Played

Among the waste and lumber of the shore,
Hard coils of cordage, swarthy fishing-nets,
Anchors of rusty fluke, and boats updrawn.

The literal accuracy of these lines is almost comical. Go to Deal and you will see precisely such a shore. Enoch and Philip both love Annie, and the three play at keeping house in a cave which runs in below the cliff. Annie was willing enough to be "little wife to both," but at heart loved Enoch best. He was at first successful; prospered in his fishing, made himself full sailor on board a merchantman, and before he was twenty-one, purchased a boat, and married her. First a daughter, then a son, were born to them, and all things continued to go well with Enoch until he fell from a mast and broke a limb. While he lay recovering, a third son, a sickly one, was born. Meanwhile, some one stept in and snatched away his trade:

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And on him fell,
Altho' a grave and staid God-fearing man,
Yet lying thus inactive, doubt and gloom.
He seem'd as in a nightmare of the night,

To see his children leading evermore

Low miserable lives of hand-to-mouth,

And her he loved, a beggar: then he pray'd,

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'Save them from this, whatever comes to me."

While he prayed," the master of the ship in which he had served heard of his misfortune, and came and offered to take him as boatswain. Enoch consented at once, "rejoicing at that answer to his prayer." He resolved to sell his boat, set Annie up in a little shop stocked "with all that seamen needed or their wives," and go on a long voyage.

Annie disliked the scheme, was sure that evil would come

of it, and entreated him not to go. It was in vain.

All his Annie's fears,

Save, as his Annie's, were a laughter to him.
Yet Enoch, as a brave God-fearing man,
Bow'd himself down, and in that mystery
Where God-in-man is one with man-in-God,
Pray'd for a blessing on his wife and babes
Whatever came to him.

Very notable is the stress which the poet lays upon the religion of Enoch. This is an entirely different thing from the virtue of Dickens's poor men, which, except for an enthusiasm about Christmas, dependent chiefly on roast turkey and plum-pudding, has no more connection with Christianity than with the gods of Homer. The fact is that, generally speaking, those of our villagers and sailors who are conspicuous for morality and virtue are religious men. At last Enoch bids Annie farewell.

Before he went he kissed his two elder children; the sickly one, asleep in his cot, he would not waken.

But Annie from her baby's forehead clipt

A tiny curl, and gave it: this he kept
Thro' all his future; but now hastily caught

His bundle, waved his hand, and went his way.

The sickly child died. Annie had no success in trade, and but for the delicately tendered help of Philip Ray, would have sunk into poverty. When ten years had gone by and nothing had been heard of Enoch, Philip asked her to marry him. In the twelfth year she became his wife.

Enoch, meanwhile, had been wrecked upon a tropic island.
There, year after year, with bounteous supply of all his
animal wants, but infinite hunger of heart, he remained.
The sights and sounds of his home haunted him.

Once likewise, in the ringing of his ears,
Tho' faintly, merrily-far and far away-
He heard the pealing of his parish bells;
Then, tho' he knew not wherefore, started up
Shuddering, and when the beauteous hateful isle
Return'd upon him, had not his poor heart
Spoken with That, which being everywhere
Lets none, who speaks with Him, seem all alone,
Surely the man had died of solitude.

A ship took him off, and he returned to England. So completely was he changed that it was easy for him to live in the same town with Annie and Philip without being discovered. In the darkness he went and looked in at the window, and saw his wife and children in perfect comfort round Philip's hearth. After this peep into the domestic heaven which he had lost, he crept from the garden "out upon the waste." There he fell prone, and prayed.

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“Too hard to bear! why did they take me thence ?

O God Almighty, blessed Saviour, Thou

That didst uphold me on my lonely isle,

Uphold me, Father! aid me, give me strength

Not to tell her, never to let her know."

He had now a new purpose in life, and with heroic fortitude he set himself to carry it out.

He was not all unhappy. His resolve
Upbore him, and firm faith, and evermore
Prayer from a living source within the will,
And beating up through all the bitter world,
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,
Kept him a living soul.

But he did not live long. When he knew death to be at hand, he told the woman with whom he had lodged, under promise on the Book of secrecy until after his death, who he was, and bade her give Annie the lock of his dead child's