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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
Of fountains spouted up and showering down
In meshes of the jasmine and the rose:
And all about us peal'd the nightingale,
Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare."

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
Bows all its ears before the roaring east:
Three ladies of the Northern Empire pray
Your highness would enroll them with your

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,

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"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,
The Princess: liker to the inhabitants
Of some clear planet close upon the sun,
Than our man's earth; such eyes were in her
head,

And so much grace and power, breathing down
From over her arch'd brows, with every turn
Lived through her to the tips of her long hands,
And to her feet."

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 :

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A long, melodious thunder to the sound
Of solemn psalms and silver litanies,
The work of Ida to call down from Heaven
A blessing on her labors for the world."

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,
Have we not made ourselves the sacrifice?
You are bold indeed: we are not talk'd to thus.
Yet will we say for children, would they grow
Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them
well.

But children die; and let me tell you, girl,
Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die.
They with the sun and moon renew their light
Children-that men may pluck them from our
Forever, blessing those that look on them.
hearts,

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,
I prize his truth; and then how vast a work
To assail this gray pre-eminence of man!
You grant me license; might I use it? Think
Ere half be done perchance your life may fail;
Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan,
And takes and ruins all; and thus your pains
May only make that footprint upon sand
Which old recurring waves of prejudice
Resmooth to nothing: might I dread that you,
With only Fame for spouse and your great deeds
For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss
Meanwhile what every woman counts her due,
Love, children, happiness?'

And she exclaimed: 'Peace, you young savage of the northern wild.

May move the world, though she herself effect
But little: wherefore up and act, nor shrink
For fear our solid aim be dissipated
Of frail successors. Would indeed we had been,
Of giants, living each a thousand years,
In lieu of many mortal flies, a race
That we might see our own work out, and watch
The sandy footprint harden into stone."

After their philosophic equitation they luxuriate in a tent,

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elaborately wrought
With fair Corinna's triumph; here she stood
Engirt with many a florid maiden cheek,
The bearded victor of ten thousand hymns,
The woman-conqueror; woman conquered there

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,
My one sweet child whom I shall see no more!
For now will cruel Ida keep her back;
And either she will die from want of care,
Or sicken with ill usage, when they say
The child is hers-for every little fault,
The child is hers; and they will beat my girl,
Remembering her mother: O my flower!
Or they will take her, they will make her hard,
And she will pass me by in after-life [dead.
With some cold reverence worse than she were
Ill mother that I was to leave her there,
To lag behind, scared by the cry they made,
The horror of the shame among them all.
But I will go and sit beside the doors,
And make a wild petition night and day,
Until they hate to hear me like a wind
Wailing forever, till they open to me,
And lay my little blossom at my feet,
My babe, my sweet Aglaia, my one child;
And I will take her up and go my way,
And satisfy my soul with kissing her:
Ah! what might that man not deserve of me
Who gave me back 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,

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The forum, and half crush'd among the rest
A little Cato cower'd. On the other side
Hortensia spoke against the tax; behind
A train of dames: by axe and eagle sat,
With all their foreheads drawn in Roman scowls,
And half the wolf's-milk curdled in their veins,
The fierce triumvirs, and before them paused
Hortensia pleading: angry was her face.

(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:
Sad phantoms conjured out of circumstance,
Ghosts of the fading brain they seem'd; nor

more

Sweet Ida; palm to palm she sat; the dew
Dwelt in her eyes, and softer all her shape
And rounder show'd: I moved; I sighed; a
touch

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,
I ask you nothing; only if a dream,
Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night.
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die!"

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,
Crown'd passion from the brinks of death, and up
Along the shuddering senses struck the soul,
And closed on fire with Ida's at the lips;
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose,
Glowing all over noble shame, and all
Her falser self slipt from her like a robe,
And left her woman, lovelier in her mood
Than in her mould that other, when she came
From barren deeps to conquer all with love,
And down the streaming crystal dropt, and she
Far-fleeted by the purple island-tides
Naked, a double light in air and wave,
To meet her graces where they decked her out
For worship without end, nor end of mine,
Stateliest, for thee!"

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,
Majestic in her beauty will I sing,
Inheritress of all the crowning heights
Of sea-beat Cyprus, whence the wat'ry breath
Of Zephyr bore her lapped in softest foam
Across the loud-resounding ocean wave.
Her lovingly the golden Hours received
And clad in robes immortal; and they set
Upon her head divine a golden crown
Well wrought, and fair to look on; in her ears
The flower of mountain-brass and precious gold;
And they decked out with necklaces of gold
Her tender neck and silver-shining breasts.
With such the golden Hours themselves bedeck
When they betake them to the pleasant dance
Of deities, and to their father's home.
So having all her person thus adorned
They brought her to th' Immortals, who rejoiced

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:

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'Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The fire-fly wakens; waken thou with me.

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,
And slips into the bosom of the lake,
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me."

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,
Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world,
I loved the woman: he that doth not, lives
A drowning life, besotted in sweet self,
Or pines in sad experience, worse than death,
Or keeps his wing'd affections clipt with crime;
Yet was there one thro' whom I loved her, one
Not learned, save in gracious household ways,
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants,
In angel instincts, breathing Paradise,
No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt
Interpreter between the gods and men,
Who look'd all native to her place, and yet
On tiptoe seemed to touch upon a sphere
Too gross to tread; and all male minds perforce
Sway'd to her from their orbits as they moved
And girdled her with music. Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him.""

And this is his satisfactory conclusion:--
"My bride,
My wife, my life, O we will walk this world,
Yoked in all exercise of noble end,
And so thro' those dark gates across the wild
That no man knows. Indeed I love thee; come,
Yield thyself up: my hopes and thine are one:
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself,
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."

Enter the General.
THE GENERAL. Well, Carl, what's on

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?

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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

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