BENSON. I have seen heaps of English women quite ungraceful enough to be men in disguise for that matter. Their entry is beautifully described. They come into "A little street half garden and half house; But could not hear each other speak for noise Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling On silver anvils, and the splash and stir PETERS. Good! and then? BENSON. Of course they mean to be on Lady Psyche's side, as a Cantab would say, for she is the younger, prettier, and better tempered of the two tutors. So the Prince "sat down and wrote In such a hand as when a field of corn own As Lady Psyche's pupils."" And accordingly, "At break of day the College Portress came : She brought us academic silks, in hue The lilac, with a silken hood to each, "And then we strolled From room to room :--in each we sat, we heard The grave Professor. On the lecture slate The circle rounded under female hands With flawless demonstration: follow'd then A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out And quoted odes, and jewels five-words long, That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time Sparkle forever: then we dipt in all That treats of whatsoever is, the state, The total chronicles of man, the mind, The morals, something of the frame, the rock, The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower, Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest, And whatsoever can be taught or known; Till like three horses that have broken fence, And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke : 'Why, sirs, they do these things as well as we."" PETERS. And to be sure they might, if they were only taught. BENSON. And so might most men sew And zoned with gold; and now when these and play the piano if they were only were on, And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons, She, courtseying her obeisance, let us know The Princess Ida waited." PETERS. Ah, now for the heroine! BENSON "There at a board by tome and paper sat, With two tame leopards couched beside her throne, All beauty compassed in a female form, And so much grace and power, breathing down How do you like her? PETERS. The sketch is too shadowy methinks. Not definiteness enough of touch in it, and—surely one of those lines halts? BENSON. Yes, it is one of Tennyson's crotchets that flower and power are full taught. But whether it would pay is another question. Here is an after-dinner picture : A long, melodious thunder to the sound You see the finest of these descriptions have an amusing double sense. They are at once a parody on, and a description of English University life. What! tho' your Prince's love were like a god's, But children die; and let me tell you, girl, Great Who learns the one Pou STO whence afterhands PETERS. Yes, I remember going to Trinity Chapel with you, and those five hundred young men in surplices. How inno-Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves. cent and virtuous they did look-at a dis- O children! there is nothing upon earth tance! I wonder if Princess Ida's girls More miserable than she that has a son tattled and gossipped as much when they And sees him err: nor would we work for fame, pretended to be kneeling at prayers. There Tho' she perhaps might reap the applause of were two youngsters just in front of us that night who were settling the next boat-race all service time. But certainly there are many delightfully picturesque features in a Cantab's life. By the way, Carl, what has become of your sketches? BENSON. Infandum jubes renovare. They were so free-spoken that no one in this land of liberty dared publish them. But we live in hope. Do you recollect what Titmarsh says of the great Jawbrahim Heraudee, how after having circumvented his enemies and made a great fortune, he 'spent his money in publishing many great and immortal works?" That's what we mean to do some day, so help us Puffer Hopkins! PETERS. Ominous invocation! But how fares the Prince meanwhile? BENSON. He is invited to take a geological ride with the Princess. You may be sure he seizes the opportunity to discuss the plan she had made for herself in contrast with that which others had made for her, not forgetting to say a good word or two for himself. "I know the Prince, And she exclaimed: 'Peace, you young savage of the northern wild. May move the world, though she herself effect After their philosophic equitation they luxuriate in a tent, elaborately wrought And all the men mourned at his side." There is an instance, one out of many in the poem, of the admirable way in which all the adjuncts are artistically in keeping. Tennyson always seems to keep in mind Fuseli's rule "that all accessories should be allegorical," and this makes him emiAnd now nently the painter of poets. comes what all the critics consider the gem of this work. PETERS. Isn't it a blank-verse song about "the days that are no more ?" I remember seeing that quoted in three London periodicals the same day. I bought them at the railway station. BENSON. Even the same. There is a unanimity of opinion about it, which it may seem ridiculous to oppose, but I do candidly confess to you that I don't like it as well as some other things in this very poem. with the sentiment. The past is for me a Perhaps it is from utter want of agreement sweet season, not a sad one at all-in consequence no doubt of my fearfully antiqua ted conservative sympathies. I never could feel, even though a great poet has sung it before Tennyson, "That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things," and therefore PETERS. That is the true critical fashion, Carl, to dilate upon your own feelings and neglect your author. BENSON. Straightforward is the word then. In vino veritas. When they begin to drink, the secret's let out and great is the flutter. The Prince, scornfully expelled, lights on the camp of his own father, who had heard of his danger, (it was a capital offence for any male to infringe on the University limits,) and marched down to rescue him. Poor Psyche is there; she has lost herself and her child: hear what a touching lament she makes for it: "Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah my child, very garden wall the mêlée has taken place, comes down with her maidens and opens her gates in pity to the wounded, and so the women lose their cause in gaining it. You may imagine the catastrophe -the Prince ill in bed, and the Princess nursing him and reading to him, and what must follow thence. But it is beautifully worked out. He lies in delirium, until she from watching him, and listening to his mutterings, and casting sidelong looks at "happy lovers heart in heart," (what a felicitous expression!) begins herself to know what love is. Át last he wakes, The forum, and half crush'd among the rest (How the lion-painters had had it all their own way! There is great humor in that picture, as well as artistic keeping.) I saw the forms; I knew not where I was: more Sweet Ida; palm to palm she sat; the dew Came round my wrist, and tears upon my hand: Then all for languor and self-pity ran Mine down my face, and with what life I had, And like a flower that cannot all unfold, The medley is true to its name. After So drench'd it is with tempest, to the sun, this pathos we have some fighting, for Yet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her there are three brothers of the Princess, Fixt my faint eyes, and utter'd whisperingly : tall fellows all, and one, Arac, a tremen-If you be what I think you, some sweet dream, you to fulfil yourself; dous champion. He bullies the Prince, and I would but ask thereupon the North and South agree to fight it out, fifty to fifty. I am sure Tennyson had the Ivanhoe tournament in his head when he wrote this. Arac knocks over every one, ending with the Prince ; but nobody is killed, though there is much staving in of iron plate and bruising of heads. Then the Princess, under whose But if you be that Ida whom I knew, Do you remember a somewhat similar appearance in Miss Barrett, where the Lady Geraldine visits her poet-lover, and he takes her for a vision ? "Said he, wake me by no gesture, sound of | ornaments of the goddess more than on breath, or stir of vesture PETERS. Excuse me, but I never yet undertook to admire Miss Barrett, and would much rather you should read straight on. BENSON. It is a pity to interrupt so fine a passage. "I could no more, but lay like one in trance That hears his burial talked of by his friends, And cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign, But lies and dreads his doom. She turned; she paused; She stoop'd; and with a great shock of the heart, Our mouths met; out of languor leapt a cry, PETERS. I suppose our classical poet had one of the Homeric hymns to Venus in his mind, when he sketched that comparison. BENSON. Possibly, but there is no verbal resemblance that I recollect. Let us see. Here is the shorter Hymn to Aphro dite. You shall have it word for word: "Fair Aphrodité, goddess golden-crowned, To see her." Homer, as you perceive, dwells upon the her native charms. But now for our Prince and Princess again. He has slept, "Fill'd thro' and thro' with Love, a happy sleep," and is awaked by her reading a sort of serenade to him, and a beautiful one it is. Listen: 'Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white; Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost, And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars, And all thy heart lies open unto me. Now slides the silent meteor on and leaves A shining furrow, as thy thought in me. Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, By-and-by they come to an explanation. He makes an admirable confession of his faith, and a more admirable explanation and history of it, even thus: "Alone,' I said,' from earlier than I know, And this is his satisfactory conclusion:-- Enter the General. the tapis now? One of the nine male muses of Boston, eh? PETERS. No, indeed! but Tennyson's Princess, which our friend is well nigh enchanted with. THE GENERAL. It is two years or more since I heard Carl talking of that poem. The literati in England must have been expecting its appearance for a long time. And it seems to me surprising that they have not shown more disappointment-that is, if, as seems perfectly natural, they meant to judge it by the standard of the author's former works. BENSON. Then you are greatly disappointed? THE GENERAL. Not greatly, for I never was a violent Tennysonian. But I shall be surprised if you are not dissatisfied. PETERS. Carl looks incredulous: he wants your reasons, General. THE GENERAL. He shall have them. First, let us begin with the vehicle and dress of the ideas, the mere structure of the verse. Knowing that you all agree with me in the importance of this, I have no fear of being thought hypercritical. Every one must see on reading the poem, that much of the versification is on the Italian model. Now this may be a perfectly proper innovation. It is possible that "O swallow, swallow if I could follow and light," is as natural and suitable a line in the one language as "Molto egli opro con senno e con la mano” is in the other; so I will not dwell on this point, though it certainly admits of dispute. But there are many lines built on no model at all, in short, not verse at all. What do you say to this? Now we have a particular right to animadvert upon these things in Tennyson, because his harmony of versification is always insisted upon (and in many cases I admit with all justice) by his admirers. Here, then, he fails upon his own ground. And it cannot be from haste, for we know that the Princess has been some years in preparation; it must be either from wilful carelessness, or some perversity of theory. So much for the first charge. Next, there is to be found in this poem a superabundance of quaint and harsh expressions. I do not refer to the affectation of dragging in antiquated words, such as "tilth," and "thorpe," and "enringed;" but to such phrases as these : "And then we past an arch Inscribed too dark for legible." "On some dark shore just seen that it was rich.” "Seldom she spoke, but oft Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men Darkening her female field; void was her use," meaning that "her occupation was gone,' I suppose; but it is not easy to get that sense, or any sense out of the words. The next fault I have to find is a very serious one. Your pet poet, Carl, is terribly gross, repeatedly and unnecessarily so. There, don't make such large eyes, The Princess but listen. "Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf," to the Prince. Where was the need of allusion or reference to this barbarous and disgusting custom of a dark age? You can't say it was introduced to preserve historical accuracy, for there is no historical or chronological keeping in the poem. The Princess talks geology and nebular hypotheses, and the Prince draws his simi les from fossil remains. Then, again, the break at the close of the innkeeper's speech-why, the suggestion conveyed by it would be low for Punch, and only in place in the columns of a Sunday newspaper. And why the Prince's question about the want of anatomic schools in the female University, but for the indiscreet inuendo which it conveys? BENSON. You grow over nice, General. THE GENERAL. Nay, if I did, you would hear me objecting to the whole scene of the three young gentlemen's dis |