and young, I became thus first acquainted with the poet's name. The review now appears savage and unfair; the critic, undoubtedly, was of the family of Bunyan's Mr. Bats'-eyes, in his inability to discern the germs of greatness, and the already unfolding beauties which make this old thin duodecimo to us so precious; but in fairness it must be added, that Mr. Tennyson had given some provocation to satire. His verses were not simply dull, like Lord Byron's Hours of Idleness,' in which no human being can to this day perceive the clements of a ' Childe Harold ;' but were often exquisitely ludicrous in their puerile simplicity. Here is the description of his study, over which the Quarterly made merry :

'O! darling room, my heart's delight,
Dear room, the apple of my sight;
With thy two couches, soft and white;
No little room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.
For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
And Oberwinter's vineyards green,
Musical Lurlei; and between

The hills to Bingen I have been,—
Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene
Curves towards Mentz, a woody scene;
Yet never did there meet my sight,

In any town, to left or right,

A little room so exquisite,

With two such couches, warm and white;

Nor any room so warm and bright,

Wherein to read, wherein to write.'

Now it is no real discredit to Mr. Tennyson to have written, even to have published things like this. His after-achievements not only make amends for the act; they justify it. The youth is conscious of the gift; but at first knows not how to exercise it. The faculty is there, but immature and untrained. Of this insufficiency also he is conscious, and practises his powers on light and trivial materials. Like the young sculptor who shapes his little rude images of clay, or the young artist who by his sketches of grotesques, and pretty impossibilities, acquires sweep and power, or the young novelist who delights in inventing the fanciful and childish contrivances of the fairy tale-so the young poet employs his unripe faculties on material which, if he spoils, does not much matter, and by failure learns how to succeed. His very genius, while it makes the earliest successes more beautiful, makes his earliest failures more absurd. It is instructive to compare the quotations in that Review, as well as those made by 'Blackwood' a little earlier,* with Mr. Tennyson's later republications of those same

* May 1832.

juvenile poems. The 'little study warm and white' has disappeared, of course; many sketches, pretty enough, but childish, have been also condemned; in other pieces the absurd expressions and lines sneered at by the critics have been amended, and sometimes, indeed, a slight change has made all the difference between ludicrous weakness and exceeding beauty. The elements of beauty were there before, but they needed just one magic touch to blind them into perfect loveliness. Many illustrations might be quoted. Thus, in the 'Miller's Daughter' the damsel is leaning from the window above the stream, when her lover passing by, looking lazily into the water, is startled by her reflection there. In the earlier edition, he thus tells the tale :

'A water-rat from off the bank

Plunged in the stream. With idle care
Down-looking through the sedges rank,
I saw your troubled image there.'

This is not very picturesque, perhaps; and the reviewer makes very merry with the water rat.' But now let us look at the

modern version:

'There leapt a trout. In lazy mood
I watched the little circles die;

They past into the level flood,

And there a vision caught my eye;

The reflex of a beauteous form,
A glowing arm, a gleaming neck,
As when a sunbeam wavers warm

Within the dark and dimpled beck.'

Again, in A Vision of Fair Women,' the Poet had pictured the phantom of Iphigenia, arising before him to tell the dread story of her sacrifice by the hosts of Greece.

'Dimly I could descry

The stern blackbearded kings with wolfish eyes,

Waiting 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,
Slowly-and nothing more.'

'What touching simplicity!' sneers the reviewer-'what pathetic resignation he cut my throat-nothing more! One might indeed. ask what more she would have?'

To such criticism Tennyson replies, by remodelling the last stanza as follows::

'The high masts flickered as they lay afloat,

The crowds, the temples wavered, and the shore;
The bright death quivered at the victim's throat,
Touched; and I knew no more.'

Is the critic satisfied?

We may trace a similar progress in the poet's manner of treating deeper themes. Already in his youthful days he shewed that the mysteries of being were a topic of his thoughts, and he essayed occasional flights into the realms of philosophy. But he did not try to astonish the world with a 'Night and the Soul,' or a Festus.' My readers may smile at the following extracts from a philosophic poem of Mr. Tennyson's, which made Christopher North at the time very angry, and the readers of 'Blackwood' very merry. I need not say that it has now vanished from the collection.

'I am any man's suitor,

If any will be my tutor :
Some say this life is pleasant,
Some think it speedeth fast;
In Time there is no present,
In Eternity no future,

In Eternity no past.

We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die,
Who will riddle me the how and the why?

6 The bulrush nods unto its brother;

The wheat-ears whisper to each other:

What is it they say? What do they there?

Why two and two make four ? why round is not square?
Why the rock stands still, and the light clouds fly?

Why the heavy oak groans, and the white willows sigh?

Why deep is not high, and high is not deep?

Whether we wake, or whether we sleep?
Whether we sleep, or whether we die?
How you are you? Why I am I?

Who will riddle me out the how and the why?

'The world is somewhat: it goes on somehow,
But what is the meaning of then and now?
I feel there is something, but how and what?
I know there is somewhat, but what and why?
I cannot tell if that somewhat be I.'

Here, undoubtedly, is at least the germ of vast metaphysical questions, and a very evident, although faint and inadequate expression, of a sense of their difficulty. Perhaps, too, the poet intended to set forth the nothingness of all human knowledge, or as our modern philosophers might express it, the impossibility of attaining a knowledge of the Absolute. This intention appears yet more plainly in the tone of banter into which the poem immediately degenerates :

'Why the life goes when the blood is spilt?
What the life is? where the soul may lie?
Why a church is with a steeple built?
And a house with a chimney-pot?

Who will riddle me the how and the what?
Who will riddle me the what and the why ?'

But now let us listen to our poet's later discoursings on the same theme. The same, I say, for although the above may be doggrel, its theme is substantially one with that of the noblest songs in 'In Memoriam.' It is the same mind too that still strives to pierce to the heart of the mystery, and urges still unanswered questions, but in how altered a mood, and with what different music! True, there is something more in the change than the mere artist's growth. The influences of a sacred sorrow have done much to call forth the true being of the man. He has not only studied, but he has wept and endured. The later, as compared with the earlier verses, disclose the history of a chastened heart as truly as of an expanding intellect. Where another poet might have only chafed against his trouble and striven to fling off his burden in indignation, or to defy it with a proud despair, Tennyson accepts the sorrow with humility and love, derives from the hour of patient endurance new insight into the secret of life, new yearnings towards the heaven of eternal truth; and the very language in which he records the insufficiency of all human knowledge becomes a lofty hymn of praise.

'A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answered "I have felt.'"

But still Faith pretends not to be knowledge. Let the spirit of speculation succeed to the spirit of trust, and

'I falter where I firmly trod:

And, falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope through darkness up to God,

'I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.'

Few lessons are more valuable to young men of intellect and
genius than those suggested by this comparison of the past with
the present of Alfred Tennyson. There is an old proverb, 'The
poet is born, not made.' Rather should we read it, 'The poet is
born, and made.' Men there may have been as richly dowered
at the first as he. But they have disdained to wait, to labour.
Life with its lessons has been unheeded, or has only ministered
to the idolatry of self. Perhaps with a wild impatience they
have meddled at once with the highest themes, girded their un-
trained energies to a task of might, or exhausted the wealth of their
minds in one prodigal display. I have referred to 'Festus.' Many
still vividly remember the impression made upon them by that
wild, wonderful, fantastic, yet often deeply thoughtful and most
musical poem. Take it for all in all, this generation has seen no
such outburst of genius. But this was twenty years ago.
What
has its author done since? Who now speaks of "The Age, a Satire?'
The advertisements inform us, indeed, that the writer has again
taken up his pen; but it is to write an Essay on the International
policy of the Great Powers.' Has he then abandoned poetry? Not, it
should seem, until poetry has abandoned him.
Now the very
slightness of Mr. Tennyson's first attempts, the calmness with
which he accepted the rebuffs of the critics, the consciousness of
power which stimulated his long-continued and patient toil, the
persistency of his self-culture and the humility of his self-restraint,
are to me as glorious as anything in his poetic gifts, and vindicate
his right as much to a moral as to an intellectual supremacy among
the poets of the age.

Select material, ye who write,' says the wise old Roman, 'equal to your powers. The young poet is often ambitious to soar at once to the starry heights of thought. It would be better for him to wait until his pinions are strengthened. To train one's