Such were the movements of the pure intellect of some of the most enlightened sons of France which led to that revolution which Mr. Buckle contemplates in the retrospect with a satisfaction almost as great as was the prophetic horror infused by it into Mr. Burke. Mr. Burke saw it perhaps through a medium in which feeling and sentiment were blended in somewhat excessive proportions with intellect, and erred in the opposite direction to Mr. Buckle. But how stands the case with France itself relatively to the progress of her civilization in the last seventy years? She has arrived through seas of blood at that condition involving a practical reductio ad absurdum, which I believe will generally be arrived at in the conduct of life, whether of individuals or nations, where intellect is unpurified by moral sentiment; and freedom having been to her the type of social progress, she is now only too happy in having attained the control of a powerful dictator, but is liable at any moment to be replunged into her disturbed state, if the attempt on the life of the Emperor Napoleon should be repeated with success. It is no answer to these remarks to say that the excesses of the French Revolution were occasioned by the interference of neighbouring States with a procedure, to which the French had acquired a right under the manifold defects of their government. In some degree it had become necessary that we should interfere, for in England the spirit of prose lytism was gaining ground, and the counter-irritant of war had become an almost necessary resource. Such are the remarks elicited from a friend of Mr. Buckle by the first part of his magnificent contribution to the literature and philosophy of the age. One of the most seductive points in his ethical doctrines, and which his own case remarkably illustrates, .is, that it rarely enlists in its service men whose character does not guarantee them against the suspicion of being personally actuated by their avowed notions on the subject of morality. The bad dare August, 1859. not avow such notions; they will be afraid to take up the gauntlet in defence of views which are liable to be imputed to their own freedom from moral impulses and restraints. The good can afford to talk pure utilitarianism. If I am not deceived as to the force of my remarks, they make out an omission in Mr. Buckle's theory of the human mind, which involves one of two results; either he must undertake to reconsider the subject of morals in relation to the discovery of their laws; or he must concede the points, that of the two great causes of European civilization, as connected with the operations of the human mind on external nature, one only has obtained from him an amount of consideration adequate to its requirements as a social agent. Finally, let me remind him that the view which he adopts in some degree militates against his lucid exposition of that twofold division-the one head determining knowledge, the other duty-on which he rests it, unless he supplies the latter element with a new definition. According to the generally received definition of morals, he has, I am inclined to think, only one mental cause of civilization. He speaks indeed of morals as well as of intellect, but not in the sense of the word in which enlightened men are agreed to use it. The moral faculty of Mr. Buckle cannot decide without a consideration of consequences. For what but that can he mean by the two agents, morals and intellect being so related that the one must obey the laws of the other, or become merely a source of perturbation to its authority? Hitherto it has been the province of a justifiable casuistry to determine the points at which the right must occasionally be disentangled from the expedient, or cease to be right. But the view with which I am at issue, enables intellect at once to cut these knots; or, to use another metaphor, the court at which morals could formerly be heard versus intellect, is abolished, if these views prevail. I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant, THOMAS MAYO. IDYLLS OF THE KING.* IN the fragment of an epic, of which King Arthur's death was the subject, published in Mr. Tennyson's earliest collection of poems some five-and-twenty years ago, are to be recognised many of the finest features of his poetry. Musical verse, and warmth and fulness of imagination, combined with a passionate pathos and a particular force of expression to give a character of singular and masculine beauty to those few pages of narrative called the Morte d'Arthur. These qualities are developed into a more complete perfection, with a more definite and finished outline, and with a more exact symmetry of proportion, in the volume bearing on the same fabulous period of history just now given to the world. In these Idylls we find the abstract character of woman exhibited in its distinct aspects-the first and last of the series standing out in strong contrast, forming a complete antithesis, representing, as it were, the opposite poles of the circuit. Enid, the subject of the first tale, is the pure submissive wife, whose patience will undergo all trials, supported by the strength of her love and reverence for a suspicious and almost brutal husband. Guinevere, the detection of whose course of guilty passion is the groundwork of the last story, is the impure and disloyal wife, false to a lord incapable of wrong, or of a thought of wrong to her. The second and third Idylls, the connecting links between these extremes, show a cunning wanton, by name Vivien, practising her wiles to entrap the old sage Merlin; and an innocent maiden, Elaine, dying of love for Sir Lancelot, the paramour of the guilty Queen. Although each of these poems may be read singly, as being perfect in itself, they are yet interwoven, so that each gains something by being read in conjunction with the other. And the fatal influence of Guinevere's crime is to be traced throughout the action of the histories. It is the taint of her foul This fault that spreads the jealous poison in the heart of Enid's lord; the same taint sends Arthur forth in a vexed mood, and inspires in Vivien the hope of winning him; baffled in which scheme she spins her web to catch Merlin, by way of redeeming her lost credit. The same locks Lancelot's heart in bondage, and kills the sweet Elaine ; the same at last brings down upon the King his bitter doom, and consigns the wretched perpetrator of the sin to a late but avenging remorse. pervading sorrow, this impending fate, makes of these separate Idylls one poem, and transfuses through them each and all the deep sensation of an abiding regret. In the first Idyll it lends some interest to, it furnishes some excuse for the suspicions of Sir Geraint, whose story otherwise could lay little claim to our sympathy. Through all the splendour and dignity, through all the devotion and trust that surround and guard the Queen, he discerns her frailty. The knowledge is a load upon his heart: his peace is disturbed: his faith in virtue is shaken. He had thought to trust his Enid to the keeping of that majestic lady, but he withdraws her from her presence as from a great infection. He becomes a prey to foreboding fears and doubts, and surpasses Othello and even Leontes in the foolishness of jealousy. His wife, in her meekness, emulates that Griselda who is the subject of Chaucer's only tiresome poem, with its artificial contrivances of trial and its unnatural exhibition of obedience; and that of Enid might well compete with it in this regard but for some redeeming passages of singular beauty, and for that skill with which the musician has struck the chords which bring it into harmony with the general tone and passion of his theme. To the hurried and impetuous reader who loves to get over the ground quickly, in whose eyes the beauties of the scene must glance and flash or he does not see them, this Idyll will appear a tedious work. The * Idylls of the King. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet Laureate. London: Moxon and Co. 1859. And while he waited in the castle court, Breaks from a coppice gemm'd with green and red, The quantity of incident suggested by these few lines, the exactness of the poet's observation, the wideness of its range, and the small compass of words into which it is pressed, call to mind the peculiar power for which Dante, beyond all other poets, is celebrated. in which it is prized, the far seas over which it flies, the country, the season, the vernal adornment of the coppice in which it is heard-the attention that it awakens shown by the suspended conversation of two friends, or the suspended work of We the labourer-and the return from would note especially the eight con- this to the starting point-the voice cluding lines, where we have place, of Enid heard at the open casement time, circumstance, and sound all -pleasant to the ear as the voice of at once brought before us. The the singer coming back after devious note of the nightingale, the manner warblings to the original melodySo fared it with Geraint, who thought and said, 'Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me.' In his mastery over language, in his keenness of perception, in his power of concentration, and in the intensity of his passion in its highest moods, Tennyson resembles Dante, but he is less restrained, and therefore less majestic. He is an essentially passionate poet; more skilled in the description of passion than in the construction of story and character, he is greater in the lyric than in the epic. He can sound the depths of a powerful emotion; he is master of the storms working from within; with the turbid, contending struggles of the soul he holds an intimate and privileged intercourse. In the analogies suggested by sentiment, emotion, pas His sion-between the outward visible world of nature, and the being of man, moral or physical-he is abundant, original, and true. knowledge of nature is both vast and detailed, and in dealing with her various characteristics, his variety, like her own, is infinite. His Two Marianas' may be quoted as fine examples of his power in this way; but to know it in its perfection, the reader should make the volume of In Memoriam his careful study. Here the blending of the movements of external with internal life, the influences of his emotion upon nature, and of nature upon his emotion, make the very essence of the poem. 1859.] Wordsworth and Tennyson. One regret, a single grief, is the subject of the volume, but its chang. ing phases, the varying aspects of the universe seen through them, the gradual transition of the affection from a dark despair to a divine hope, give to this elegy an interest deep as that of the noblest epic or of the most moving drama. Be cause of his close sympathies with nature, Tennyson has frequently been compared with Wordsworth; but a comparison must rather tend to set forth the difference than the likeness between them. They are very unlike. Wordsworth is diffuse: Tennyson is compact. Wordsworth's meditation is still, philosophical, and serene: Tennyson's is swift, agitated, and rousing. Wordsworth withdraws himself into the silent recess and contemplates the quiet face of nature, till he gathers peace: Tennyson invests her with his own passion. Wordsworth's is the constant rumination, the still devotion, the brooding thought; and the tendency of his works is soothing and elevating, rather than stirring and penetrating: Tennyson heats the imagination, kindles the quick sense, and leaves the mind of his reader strained to the highest possible degree of tension. Nature,' says Wordsworth, never does betray the heart that loves her.' And so he sits down in a sweet and solemn sadness, to spend his pensive hour, lending himself to the affections of a scene of 303 stillness, and leading his reader to share with him a tranquil hope. Wordsworth persuades: Tennyson constrains you to sympathy. In Tennyson's poem of Maud -the passion of which, whatever adverse criticism may say, is strong and true-the variations that nature undergoes, according to the varying moods of the lover's mind, are not to be numbered. The flowers, the stars, the breezes, the rivulets, become convulsed with the convulsions of his individual existence, and change with the changing gusts of his passionate fancy. The vigour of the poet's sensations is in none of his poems to be more strongly felt than in this, the most unhappy, the most tempestuous of love stories. The strange, gloomy asperity of a suspicious heart, the growth within it of a new tenderness, the increase of that tenderness into an overwhelming passion, and its passage on to a fatal termination, are conducted with the utmost skill; a skill which must have been universally acknowledged but for the reflections on the political aspect of the time, and the unwelcome disquisitions on social evil which interrupt the flow of the narrative and disfigure the work. Let the reader ponder upon the lines that follow, extracted from Maud; they occur immediately after the lover's acceptance. What an ecstasy of passion, what a wealth of imagery they contain: I have led her home, my love, my only friend. And never yet so warmly ran my blood, And sweetly, on and on Calming itself to the long wished-for end, Full to the banks, close on the promised good. None like her, none. Just now the dry-tongued laurel's pattering talk And shook my heart to think she comes once more; There is none like her, none. Nor will be when our summers have deceased. O, art thou sighing for Lebanon In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East, Sighing for Lebanon, Dark cedar, tho' thy limbs have here increased, Upon a pastoral slope as fair, And looking to the south, and fed With honey'd rain and delicate air, And haunted by the starry head Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate, And made my life a perfumed altar-flame; Mr. Spedding, in his few pages of preface to Bacon's De Sapientia Veterum,-pages which contain much philosophical thought, expressed in a style that makes philosophy what Milton tells us it always ought to be,-has a passage which may fitly be extracted here in illustration of some of the characteristics of Tennyson's poetry : Even within the last ten years (says Mr. Spedding) an instance has occurred of the simple language of poetic passion being translated out of poetry into mythology. Alfred Tennyson speaks, in In Memoriam, of returning home in the evening Before the crimson-circled star Had fallen into her father's grave, not thinking at all of any traditional pedigree, no more than when he speaks of Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun, And ready thou to die with him; but expressing by such an image as the ancient Elian might have resorted to, his sympathy with the pathetic aspect of the dying day. Critics, however, asked for explanations: what star, whose daughter, what grave? And it turns out curiously enough that all these questions can be answered out of Greek mythology quite satisfactorily. The planet Venus' (says a Belgravian correspondent of Notes and Queries, 1851, iii. 506), 'when she is to the east of the Sun, is our evening star, and as such used to be termed Hesperus by the ancients. The evening star in a summer twilight is seen surrounded with the glow of sunset, crimson-circled. . . . Venus sinking into the sea, which in setting she would appear to do, falls into the grave of Uranus, her father, according to the theory of Hesiod. would not indeed have any one remember this explanation when he is reading the poem, for it is fatal to the poetic effect; but the coincidence of the expression with the mythic tradition is curious, and might almost make one think that Tennyson, while merely following the eternal and universal instincts of the human imagination and feeling, had unconsciously reproduced the very image out of which the tradition originally grew.' Tennyson's meaning is, in fact, always definite, though his imagery is not unfrequently far-fetched and difficult to follow, and his sense strained and obscure. His thought is so condensed, shut up in so narrow a space, that you must, as it were, unpack in order to get at it. This is true also of Dante and, though in a less degree, of Goethe, and thence arises the necessity of labour for the student who aims at anything like an adequate understanding of their works. Some indolent readers will hardly suffer the poet to demand any exertion of the faculties, and in the pages of a grave critic the present writer has actually met with a sentence defining poetry to be Any metrical composition, from which we can receive pleasure without a laborious exercise of the understanding.' If we accepted this interpretation, we should at once reject the three great poets whom we have just mentioned, and certainly Shakspeare and Milton also; nor is there, we will venture to assert, any real poet who does not insist upon some labour of the mind to arrive at the appreciation of his genius; but let it not be supposed that an involved sense is in itself a merit, and let young poets beware of fancying themselves in a Tennysonian atmosphere when they surround themselves with a mystic fog, thinking to look large through it. The notion of size afforded by this vagueness of outline is soon dissipated; the reader becomes troubled and oppressed, and longs for the sight of day. Tennyson himself is never vague; if he is dark, his darkness is such as you find in the pictures of Rembrandt, where, if you look well into them, you discern through their deepest shadow the most exquisite exactness of design and elaborate finish of execution. In the poems, however, more especially at the present moment under our consideration, there occurs hardly one obscure line. The narrative moves on smoothly, the thoughts are uninvolved, the language is a fine example of clear and beautiful English. But in the poem of Enid there is in |