Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene The actors or spectators? To this he finds no adequate answer, but simply concludes that As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow. Even the melody is incomparable, and so soothing that we are almost lulled by it to forget the harshness of the sentiment. But Tennyson deals with the hand of affliction differently, and, personifying the sentiment, he asks with all the tenderness of a lover: O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me Here Shelley would have made Sorrow reply, most probably with great harshness, and at least he would have pursued the theme, arguing the point pro and con.; but in Tennyson's case Sorrow so invoked makes no sign, and the poet passes on to a new theme. On another occasion we have something that takes us back to Lycidas; for both subjects seem to have dreamed of greatness: O hollow wraith of dying fame, Fade wholly, while the soul exults, And self-infolds the large results Of force that would have forged a name. But still abundant space is left for human deeds in endless ages: the world therefore should not grudge the loss of one who might have left his mark had he lived a little longer. we In these days, when the critical faculty is so busily at work to detect plagiarisms in authors, perhaps the least of any liable to such a charge, it has just struck us here to ask, how much Henry Heine, who, we see, is again coming into favor, owed to his frequent perusal of Shelleydo not refer to his unpleasant flippancy regarding things divine, for Shelley on that ground was never flippant, but as regards his language and ideas. What reader of Heine has not been struck with that beautiful image in his works, when, watching by the seaside the skies of Holland fleeting overhead, he speaks of the fleecy clouds as daughters of the air"? And yet the idea had been far better expressed by Shelley long before in "The Revolt of Islam,”. 66 There is also, it must be confessed, an obvious loss of harmony in Tennyson's later works- "Maud," and the "Idylls -as compared with what he now, in his safe elevation, would perhaps call his Juvenilia. This want of harmony is still more apparent in his dramas, where there is even a lack of cadence as compared with the great masters of that art. And yet, if we remember well, the ring of his early verse was sweetly melodious, free in its movement, soothing, and sometimes even stirring, as Sir Philip Sidney thought a good ballad should always stir us with the sound of a trumpet." If we still have power, and that is undeniable, we also miss that quaint and quiet elegance, which was both original and natural. This marked change unquestionably results from the causes we have mentioned. "as After the "In Memoriam," Alfred Tennyson became a learned and almost metaphysical poet. His epic treatment of the legend of King Arthur, compared even with Dryden's dithyrambic contribution, can hardly be said to be sympathetically moving. A national poet, it may be sup posed, might here have warmed himself up into saying something about the valiant resistance made by his countrymen might possibly have made it the primary motive. We have indeed a beautiful and graphic picture of ancient chivalry, and perhaps as fine a moral tone as pervades the Odyssey itself; but we have no enthusiasm. The author of "Enone" and the " Ulysses was quite equal to have accorded us that; but we never hear the tones of the lyre, which either among gods or men is always supposed to be a necessary accompaniment to verse, and indeed an instrument which a poet should never have out of his hand. The effect of this, the greatest effort of his muse, is certainly not spirit-stirring. All throughout, though figures and images of beauty pass and repass before us, is still Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe. It is not our business here to criticise the "Idylls of the King," but the general conclusion seems to be, that it is a sound and unique performance -a complete and exhaustive picture of a possible mediæval society. The personages are not only heroic, but regal, and stand apart from ordinary mortals in their power of passive endurance and the depth of their inner but half-suppressed emotions. Its great originality is manifest from the fact that it bears no resemblance to any existing epic, unless we might instance the Nibelungenlied. And yet there is the unmistakable couleur locale of Britain throughouta Britain, indeed, of the imagination, where history furnishes us with no clue, and yet where we seem to wander on not unfamiliar ground, and feel that we can claim a sort of kinship with the beings described. Here gems abound in golden lines of good counsel, where the moral tone of the writer rises above the characters whose speech he dignifies by his language. Its superiority as a pure poetic creation is at once attested by a comparison with the "King Arthur" of Lord Lytton, who has attempted to tread the same magic ground. A want of free expansion and a measured slowness of movement are the inevitable consequences of research, and of the habit, too much indulged, of psychological self-analysis; for we all know that a poet may, and often does, exercise a self-analysis by dissecting the breasts of the figures he passes in review. Both Dante and Shakespeare have done this not designedly, however and perhaps the tendency is inevitable in all cases. Hence there is the supreme danger of subsiding into mere monologue, when the thoughts, however good, do not flash upon us like the signal seen from the watch tower in the " Agamemnon," waking up our sleepy senses, but smoulder faintly, occasionally springing into life, only to be soon lost in obscurity, or to become extinct again. Tennyson's later manner of handling his themes, when we put out of sight the archaisms, most resembles the style of Leigh Hunt's "Story of Rimini " in its dreamy monotony. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, if we are more pleased when in the "In Memoriam" he takes one parting look - the last almost he ever takes at his old loves, and brings them again upon the scene. Thus, when he describes the betrothal, and the marriage that is to be, by making it a consummation in his dreams; the putting on of the ring, The "wilt thou" answer'd, and again The "wilt thou" ask'd, till out of twain Her sweet "I will" has made ye one; and the signing of the names in the parish register, poetically described as names which shall be read, we feel a little restored, and begin to breathe more freely. But where he gives us the picture of the bride and bridegroom passing out in full view of the happy faces around, and we are in the actual presence of the maidens of the place, That pelt us in the porch with flowers, Tennyson is himself again. We fancy that even now there are some English maidens who would be inclined to pelt the poet-laureate after this very fashion for keeping them so long from visionary revivals of "sweet pale Margarets" and "Eleänores," and the sly musings of Ed. win Morris on the subject of matrimonial delights, written when Alfred Tennyson was of opinion that God made the woman for the use of man. Even in an In Memoriam he could no more forget his early tendencies, than could Shelley forget the dangerous ground he had persistently cultured even from his boyhood, when in the "Adonais" he once more gives us many a reminiscence of his prevailing sentiment regarding the injustice of the providential ordering of things, which he fancies he can put right after weakly brooding over thoughts of revenge. Sometimes he attempts, but vainly, to find comfort in the idea that a happier change has taken place; but the effect is momentary, and he soon relapses into the harshness of the original strain: Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep He hath awakened from the dream of life – knife Sweet lamp! my moth-like muse hath burnt his wings! So, Shelley is all nature nature's very self indeed. He never shuts himself up in the unexpansive embodiments of his own self-worship; but, like a true son of antiquity, manifests by endless evolutions his far-stretching kinship with humanity -erring spirit though he be. The tear which he drops upon the bier of Keats at the close of the "Adonais " is at once sin. cere, generous, and affectionate, though terribly ominous of his own impending fate : It will be apparent to all readers that nyson mainly differs from Shelley—who, these three monodies bring out all the be it remembered, was almost a contemdistinctive characteristics of the several porary-in that, if he starts doubts, he poets in Milton, the irrepressible ten- at once proceeds to exorcise them by readency to classicism; in Shelley, the ever- son and religion; while the other scatters recurring protest against eternal laws; in at his wild will a dangerous seed, which Tennyson, the beauty and the consolation in some breasts may ripen into the same of self-examination. The exercise, uncon- species of suffering as he himself expesciously to the authors themselves, throws rienced throughout his short but fitful on their page the fierce light of that evi- existence. Yet Shelley, as we all know, dence which consists in a personal cross-could be tender and even harmlessly playexamination. In truth, the remarkable ful when his good dæmon was by his side. peculiarity of an In Memoriam seems What more artless image can be found in to be, to unfold by a gradual process, not the whole realm of poetry, than that by the nature of the persons of whom they which he so gently reproaches the lady themselves profess to descant, but to lay whose attractions were too powerful for open to view their own spiritual personal- him? ity. Tennyson, as we have said, nowhere betrays his prevailing faculty, which has become even more predominant with time, more than here. Arthur Henry Hallam is a mere shadow; so also is John Keats, there being hardly any direct allusion to the personality of the latter except where Shelley denounces Gifford, not indeed by name, but by poetic prosopopeia, as the "noteless blot on a remembered name,' and the hand that had unstrung "the silver lyre "forever—a delusion which has long since been dissipated. The review of Keats's works, which appeared so many years ago in the pages of the Quarterly, was in reality sound and just, though perhaps rather sternly just, as was always the case with Gifford, who did good service in his day by sweeping aside the swarm of petty aspirants to fame, who obstructed the march of the greater poets of the generation. It is well known that A the author of "Endymion " was dying of slow consumption long before that review was written, and that he went to Italy for the benefit of his health. However this may be, it does not affect what we have affirmed, namely, that an In Memoriam not only affords a good example by which we may test the powers of a poet, but also presents to view all his leading characteristics, and discloses what we would call the indoles animi, for in his confessions of one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, sorrow the writer cannot help removing the conventional robe which wraps him as the tomb of Caius Cestius, in that spot an individual. It is perhaps a useful ex- which the Roman Church, jealous of all ercise, therefore, in a critical point of encroachment on its own God's-acre, has view, to compare these several produc- set apart as the last resting-place for tions with one another. We think that those pilgrims of our race whom the hand such an examination tends to throw addi- of death may have struck down while contional light on the idiosyncrasies of the templating the wonders of this classic writers, and if you would really know land. But if there was no tragic ending them, it is there that we should look. It in the subject of the "Adonais," as in will be observed from the casual and spar- the "Lycidas," Shelley made it so by the ing quotations we have given, that Ten-accident of his own sudden and unfore Go thou to Rome, - at once the Paradise, Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. Here rests Keats, contemplated by "the starlight smile of children," in the tomb which this brother poet and others had raised as a tribute to his memory. But Shelley had unconsciously constructed a monument for himself, and within one short year he found almost the same grave as his friend, near seen death in the stormy Bay of Spezzia, | in her story "The Cabane des Lataniers" where he was snatched away literally We are inclined to think that, when men's speeches shall have become more charitable, and they have learnt to forgive, but not to forget, and when the next ages shall have arrived, although the full vindication can never be the fame of Shelley as a poet will enlarge into a riper maturity and become in a measure purified by time. It is to him, rather than to Milton, that we would prefer to attach the description of a poet's place a soul which, as a star, might fittingly dwell apart. In any case, whatever his faults, England must ever be proud of his genius, and proud too of having produced three poems In Memoriam unmatched either in ancient or modern times. The subject chosen is indeed a fitting one, for England is the land of relics: nowhere are effusions more generously accorded to the memory of departed friendship, and nowhere are monuments more venerated or better preserved. SURROUNDED by the literary society of Paris, Madame de Krüdener began herself to write. Her first essay was the composition of some very mediocre verses, which she submitted to a friend's revision. "Revise them!" was the answer. "Who could? The whole thing would have to be written over again!" She next tried fiction, at first not very successfully. Sometimes, if the agreeable sound of a word took her fancy, without reference to the sense she would use it. For instance, VOL. XLVII. 2428 LIVING AGE. (the very name of which was a blunder of the kind) she wrote about les courlis harmonieux. "Les courlis harmonieux," said one of her friends, "do you know what courlis (curlews) are?" "Yes, of course," was the quick reply, "they are birds, to he sure.' "Not at all," was the serious answer, to the lady's complete discomfiture. "I assure you they are a sort of large fish." Whereupon the authoress took refuge in silence, not sure enough of her ground to venture to dispute further. Two months after her husband's death she began to think seriously again of her old dreams of a country life, and, after some hesitation in favor of Geneva, decided to settle near Lyons, where a house which suited her was to be had cheap. "Dear friend," she wrote to Dr. Gay, a young man she meant to protect and introduce to her friends, "I like to tell myself that in the qualities and noble vir. tues I find in you this soul of mine, ever hungering for enthusiasm, will find food for enthusiastic admiration. . . . As to my affairs, the emperor promises to pay all my late husband's debts; so that in that respect I am free, and I inherit, moreover, property of his which, added to what I have of my own, will give me a very handsome fortune. I want to buy a small property near Lyons, where I hope sometimes to see my friends, and you also, dear Gay, amongst them. The winters we will spend in Paris. . . . You will always find here your own room, fruit from my garden, milk from my cow, and fish from the Saône, which runs beneath your bedroom window. . . . Only thirty thousand francs is asked for the place, and the house alone is worth more.. The purchase was effected, and the move to Paris for the winter season was deferred, in the hope that Mademoiselle de Krüdener would consent to marry a gentleman in the neighborhood, in every respect a suitable match, whom she had refused, as well as other suitors, because she feared marriage would separate her from her mother. The winter was a gay one for the newly made widow, who was more admired than ever in the shawldance, with her daughter Juliette as her partner. I am quite an élégante here," she wrote to one of her friends, "in my old horripios, as Vallin calls them; the old Turkish and Persian dresses, and the lace and diamonds, give me the kind of air such things do give." The composi tion of "Valérie " also belongs to this winter, the manuscript of which was submitted to literary friends, and carefully revised and corrected according to their criticism. In spite of all her faults, Madame de Krüdener had real virtues. She was kind to her dependants, affectionate to her children and stepdaughter, faithful to her friends of either sex. She had, it is true, a predilection for exercising her influence upon men, and generally had in her retinue a male friend; but although various persons in succession held this position, the predecessor's place in her good offices was never usurped by the successor, and she owed her power over others as much, probably, in the long run to her genuine kindliness of heart as to the living spell of her presence, which caused her faults to be forgotten in the charms of her fascinating grace. It is difficult always, and especially in relationships between men and women, to distinguish between influence and fascination, even where there are great discrepancies of age and position, but if Madame de Krüdener's vanity did falsify her power over others, that power, whatever its source, was never exerted ruthlessly, and her admirers never became her victims. Yet it is difficult, amidst the freaks of her fantastic capacity for self-deception, even upon the poor plea of that all pervading capacity, to excuse her last desertion of her husband, or to believe in her having been sincere when she exercised her talent for description by drawing those imaginative portraits of him which caused it to be said "she never remembered his existence except when she wanted to make a portrait of him;" and it is equally difficult to believe she really deluded herself as to the means she used to introduce "Valérie" to the world. The book, which competent critics have not hesitated to compare with Madame de Lafayette's "Princesse de Clèves" for exquisite simplicity and purity of style, intrinsically deserved success. But Madame de Krüdener had heard and believed that no work of an unknown writer could afford to stake its reception simply upon its merit, and she selected a certain number of her acquaintances to puff and advertise her book, chief amongst whom was Dr. Gay. The literary world was to be worked up to the proper pitch of excitement before "Valérie " appeared. The author was to be talked of and asked for. "I have something to ask you,” she wrote to Gay; "have some good verses made for our friend Sidonia." (Sidonia, the heroine of the "Cabane des Lataniers," was, like Valérie, an impersonation of the author.) "These verses, which I am sure I need not urgently recommend to your good offices, should be simply headed To Sidonia,' and will demand why she dwells in the provinces, why she hides her grace, her talent, in retreat. Does not her success call her to Paris, where her grace and talent would receive the admiration they deserve? Your enchanting dancing has been de scribed" (in Delphine"), "but who can. describe exactly what it is in you which attracts notice?... My dear friend," she goes on, "to your friendship I confide this task. For Sidonia I blush, because I know her modesty, and you, too, know that vanity is no fault of hers. I have, of course, reasons more important than any motives of petty vanity about her for asking you to have these verses made, and made at once. Lay special stress on her living in retirement, and that in Paris alone is real appreciation found. Take care no one finds you out, and have the verses, if possible, printed in an evening paper; pay for the insertion and send me the paper at once, or if the paper will not take the verses send them to me and I will have them printed here. It is a fact that Sidonia was the model for the dance in 'Delphine;' read it, because it will please you, but mind the verses do not say where the dancing was described. You will much oblige your friend, who will explain all when we meet. You know her love of solitude and retirement, you know how little she cares for praise, but you will be doing her real service. If you see Madame de Vertamy, tell her you have heard from me; she is a charming woman, and may be of use to you, for she knows a great many people, and if you say I send her my kindest regards, I am sure she will receive you very cordially. . . . I cannot tell you, my excellent friend, how eagerly I desire to contribute to your acquisition of the reward your talents and virtues deserve. . You will introduce me to La Harpe, I will do what I can with B. de St. Pierre, Chateaubriand, and others, and we shall succeed because pure intentions always succeed. . . .” In the next letter she says, "Sidonia is deeply pious; the verses must not say her talent for dancing has been described,' but merely 'a skilful hand has described your dancing; your success is known,' etc." The result of all this contrivance was "Une Elégie," which Sidonia approved, and for which, after discovering it unex |