OF IMAGINATION AND FANCY. BY ALFRED TENNYSON, POET LAUREATE. ELEGANTLY ILLUSTRATED. PHILADELPHIA: PUBLISHED BY E. H. BUTLER & CO. ADVERTISEMENT. ALFRED TENNYSON, like his great predecessor on the Laureate's throne, claims no title but that of poet. His pen has never stooped even to "numerous prose." In Lotos-eating dreams he murmurs melodious verse. Life with him is a pageant of the Muses. Love rejoices in rhyme, or renders its despair in moaning refrains. Death calls for poetic grief, and inscribes noble verses In Memoriam on the urn of the lost. Such devotion to his art would in itself produce excellence; but his gifts far exceed his acquisitions. He is the most harmonious of the English Poets. We cannot say simply that he adapts the sweet words to the thoughts; the words are the thoughts: they are instinct with life; paraphrase them and the spell is broken. Apart from this his descriptive powers are also very great. (ix) 294418 Who but Tennyson could, in this age of the real and useful, have so re-inspired the mythic history of Arthur, as to charm every reader, awakening our admiration and pity as though the magnificent prince really armed and mounted in our presence, and the sinning and repentant Guinevere stood in her speechless and tearful beauty before our very eyes? |