expect; for, in the absence of any universal have been our verdict, had we not known who standard, the public are wont to weigh the ac- was the writer; and we feel a double disaptions, words, and writings of each man separ-pointment now when forced to record it ately, and to decide upon their merit according against a poet of such deserved reputato previous achievement. It may be a posi- tion. But it is the best course to express tive misfortune to have succeeded too early. our opinion honestly, and without reservation. There is much more in the word "Excelsior" My. Tennyson's indiscriminate admirers than meets the common eyes, or, we shrewdly may possibly think it their duty to represent apprehend than reaches the understanding of this, his latest production, as a magnificent the men who use it so freely. A man may triumph of genius, but they never will be able rise to fame by one sudden effort; but unless to persuade the public to adopt that view, and he can leap as high, if not higher, again, he we trust most sincerely that the Laureate will will presently be talked of as a cripple by not permit himself to be confirmed in practical multitudes, who, but for his first airy vault, error through their flatteries. We say this would have regarded his second with astonish- much because we see no reason for attributing ment. It is the consciousness of the universal the inferior quality of his later poems to any application of this rule of individual compari- decay of his native or acquired powers. We son which, in all ages, has forced poets and believe that he can, whenever he pleases, delight other literary men to study variety. Having the world once more with such poetry as he achieved decided success in one department, enunciated in his youth; but we think that he they doubt whether their second effort can has somehow or other been led astray by potranscend the first; and being unwilling to etic theories, which may be admirably adapted acknowledge discomfiture, even by themselves, for the consideration of dilettanti, but which they essay some new feat of intellectual gymnastics. That the world has been a gainer thereby we do not doubt. "New fields and new pastures" are as necessary to the poet as to the shepherd; only it behooves him to take care that he does not conduct us to a barren

moor.

are calculated rather to spoil than to enhance the productions of a man of real genius.— Theories have been ere now the curse of many poets. For example, who will deny that, but for their obstinate adherence to theory, the reputations both of Wordsworth and of Southey would have been greater than they presently are?

Now let us examine more particularly the poem before us. Had Maud been put into Maud is a monologue in six-and-twenty our hands as the work of some young unrecog-parts, each of them intended to depict a nized poet, we should have said that it exhib- peculiar phase of the mind of the speaker, ited very great promise-that it contained at who is a young gentleman in decayed cirleast one passage of such extraordinary rhyth- cumstances, and therefore morbid and misanmical music, that the sense became subordi- thropical. The poem opens thus:nate to the sound, a result which, except in

wood,

Its lips in the field above are dabbled with bloodred heath,

The

red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood,

And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers 'Death.'

For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found,

His who had given me life-O father! O God!

was it well?—

the case of one or two of the plaintive ancient "I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little Scottish ballads, and some of the lyrics of Burns, has hardly ever been attained by any British writer of poetry-that such passages, however, though they exhibited the remarkable powers of the author, were by no means to be considered as manifestations, or rather assurances, of his judgment, even in musical matters, since they alternated with others of positively hideous cacophony, such as we should have supposed no man gifted with a tolerable ear and pliable fingers would have perpetrated -that sometimes a questionable taste had been exhibited in the selection of ornaments, which were rather gaudy than graceful, and often too ostentatiously exposed-that there were other grave errors against taste which we could only attribute to want of practice and study that the objectionable and unartistic And portions of the poem were, leaving the mediocre ones altogether out of the question, grossly disproportionate to the good-and that the general effect of the poem was unhappy, unwholesome, and disagreeable. Such would

Mangled and flatten'd, and crush'd and dinted into the ground:

There yet lies the rock that fell with him when he fell.

Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a
ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever
great speculation had fail'd,
wann'd with despair,

And out he walk'd when the wind like a broken
worldling wail'd,

And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air.

eight or ten stanzas of that wonderful poem, but makes up his mind to have nothing to say until he has possessed himself with its music, to her :

which we have just quoted, and he will imme-"Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether wodiately perceive the woeful difference. The

contrast between the breathings of an Eolian I will bury myself in my books, and the Devil

world, of which he seems to entertain a very glimpse, in a carriage, of "a cold and clearbad opinion, and finally comes to the conclu- cut-face," which proves to belong to Maud, sion that war upon a large scale is the only and he thus describes her :

I kiss'd her slender hand,
She took the kiss sedately;

Maud is not seventeen,

But she is tall and stately.

Look, a horse at the door,

And little King Charles is snarling.
Go back, my lord, across the moor,
You are not her darling."

O dear, dear! what manner of stuff is

this ?

But that Assyrian Bull of a brother is again in the way, and treats Misanthropos cavaliely; notwithstanding which he proposes to Maud, and is accepted. We make every allowance for the raptures of a lover on such an occasion, and admit that he is privileged to talk very great nonsense; but there must be a limit somewhere; and we submit to Mr. Tennyson whether he was justified, for his own sake, in putting a passage so outrageously silly as the following into the mouth of his hero :—

"Go not, happy day,

From the shining fields,
Go not, happy day,

Till the maiden yields.
Rosy is the West,

Rosy is the South,
Roses are her cheeks,

And a rose her mouth.
When the happy Yes

Falters from her lips,
Pass and blush the news
O'er the blowing ships.

Over blowing seas,

Over seas at rest,
Pass the happy news,
Blush it thro' the West;
Till the red man dance
By his red cedar tree,
And the red man's babe
Leap, beyond the sea.
Blush from West to East,
Blush from East to West,
Till the West is East
Blush it thro' the West.
Rosy is the West,

Rosy is the South,

Roses are her cheeks,

And a rose her mouth."

It seems to us a splendid piece of versification, but deficient in melody and passion, and much too artificial for the situation. Others, however, may think differently, and therefore we extract the conclusion:

"Is that enchanted moan only the swell
Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay?
And hark the clock within, the silver knell
Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white,
And died to live, long as my pulses play;
But now by this my love has closed her sight,
And given false death her hand, and stol'n away
To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell
Among the fragments of the golden day.
May nothing there her maiden grace affright!
Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell.
My bride to be, my evermore delight,
My own heart's heart and ownest own, farewell.
It is but for a little space I go:
And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell
Beat to the noiseless music of the night!
Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow
Of your soft splendors, that you look so bright ?
I have climb'd nearer out of lonely Hell.
Beat, happy stars, timing with things below,
Beat with my heart more blest than heart can
tell,

Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe
That seems to draw-but it shall not be so:
Let all be well, be well."

Then follows some namby-pamby which we shall not quote. There is to be a grand political dinner and dance at the Hall, to which Misanthropos is not invited; but he intends to wait in Maud's own rose-garden until the ball is over, when he hopes to obtain an interview for a moment. Then comes a very remarkable passage, in which Mr. Tennyson gives a signal specimen of the rhythmical power which he possesses. The music of it is faultless;

and we at least are not disposed to cavil at the quaintness of the imagery which is almost Oriental in its tone. We treasure it the more, because it is the one gem of the collection— the only passage that we can read with pure unmixed delight, and with a perfect conviction that it is the strain of a true poet. Other passages there are, more ambitious and elaborate, studded all over with those metaphors, strange epithets, and conceits which are the disfigurement of modern poetry, and which we are surprised that a man of genius and experience should persist in using: but they all seem to us to want life and reality, and surely the ink was sluggish in the pen when they were written. Only in this one does the verse flash out like a golden thread from a reel; and we feel that our hands are bound, like those of Thalaba, when the enchantress sang to him as she

Mr. Halliwell some years ago published a
collection of Nursery Rhymes. We have not
the volume by us at present; but we are fully
satisfied that nothing so bairnly as the above is
to be found in the Breviary of the Innocents
The part which follows this is ambitiously and
elaborately written, and we doubt not will find spun:-
many admirers. It is eminently rhetorical.

and replete with graceful imagery, but some-"Come into the garden, Maud,
how there is not a line in it which haunts us. For the black bat, night, has flown,

From the lake to the meadow and on to the tion, demeaning himself by putting his name