the age of chivalry and romance, the attempted amalgamation of the farcical with the sentimental, renders 'The Princess' truly a medley, and produces an unpleasant grotesque effect."

The result of criticism is thus summed up by Mr. Wace in the following passage of his "Study of the Life and Works of Tennyson":

"Although "The Princess was admittedly brilliant, it was thought scarcely worthy of the author. The abundant grace, descriptive beauty, and human sentiment were evident. But the medley was thought somewhat incongruous, and the main web of the tale too weak to sustain the embroidery raised upon it. In 'Blackwood's Magazine' we read: 'Its beauties and faults are so inextricably interwoven, and the latter are so glaring and so many, nay, often apparently so wilful, that as a sincere admirer of Tennyson I could almost wish the poem had remained unwritten. I admit the excellences of particular passages, but it has neither general harmony of design nor sustained merit of execution.'"

A verdict more favourable, but somewhat in the same strain, may be said to be that now generally accepted. One reviewer, however, instinctively touches the key-note of the poet's meaning in a thoroughly appreciative review, written in 1849, before those gems of language and sentiment-the intercalary songs—were inserted in the poem. The words of the review are these :

"Many passages in it have a remarkable reference to children. They sound like a perpetual child protest against Ida's Amazonian philosophy, which, if realised, would cast the whole of the childlike element out of the female character,

and at the same time extirpate from the soul of man those feminine qualities which the masculine nature to be complete must include."

It may be of interest to state that amongst the few who resisted the general unfavourable impression, and who recognised "The Princess" as a work of art of very high order, was the Rev. Charles Kingsley, a critic as able as he was sincere, and a contemporary both at the University and in the world of letters of the Poet Laureate.

These reviews suffice to show the feeling with regard to the poem which was rife during its early years, and which, modified and mellowed by longer experience of the moral and social lessons conveyed by the poem, and a closer and more universal acquaintance with its merits, is still predominant.

The poem has undergone great modifications since its first appearance in 1847. A second edition was issued in the following year, in which the poem was slightly retouched, and a dedication was added to Henry Lushington, whose brother, Edmund Law Lushington, subsequently married Miss Cecilia Tennyson, a daughter of the poet.

In 1850 appeared the third edition, not rewritten, as has been suggested, but with considerable additions, among which are the six intercalary songs. already alluded to. The artist's meaning became more fully disengaged in this edition, and the poem became substantially what it is at the present time. The fourth edition was issued in 1851. In this all

the passages relating to the "weird seizures" of the Prince were added, to the detriment, it is generally considered, of the poem. In the fifth edition, published in 1853, a passage of fifteen lines was added to the Prologue, commencing with "O miracle of women," an addition which is of great use in its place in the Prologue in helping to develop the meaning of the poem. With this addition the text was definitely settled.

The songs and the interlude, like choruses in a Greek play, suggest the underlying meaning of the poem, and the concluding Canto contains an interesting and useful explanation of the form in which "The Princess" is written. The whole poem is an apt illustration and verification of the opinion expressed by the Rev. F. W. Robertson, well known as the author of several volumes of sermons, and a devotee of Tennyson, that the Laureate's popularity might be ascribed in great measure to his "vision" or "insight," and that Tennyson might justly be regarded as the interpreter of his age. This opinion will bear a moment's consideration. A great poet truly is more than a seer of the things which are : he is a prophet of the things which are beginning to be. He is the exponent of the aspirations and the tendencies of his age. He reduces into coherent form and clothes with beauty the unuttered thoughts of which his age is dimly conscious.

Now this
this poem

"The Princess contains Tennyson's solution of the problem of the true

position of woman in society, a profound and vital question upon the solution of which the future of civilization depends. But at the time of its publication the surface-thought of England was intent solely upon Irish famines, corn laws, and free trade. It was only after many years that it became conscious of anything being wrong in the position of women.

The idea was not relegated to America, as one reviewer so contemptuously suggested, but it was in England that, many years after the publication of the poem, it began to take practical shape in various ways, notably in collegiate education for women; and now we may say with Ida:

"The little seed they laugh'd at in the dark

Has risen and cleft the soil."

To these formless ideas Tennyson in 1847 gave form, and with poetic instinct discerning the truth he clothed it with surpassing beauty.

We may now proceed with the poem itself, bearing in mind always the circumstances under which it was written, the position of women in society at the time, and the gradual amelioration of that position which even now is proceeding from point to point, slowly but surely. Tennyson regards with a quiet humour and amused banter those women, the self-elected champions of their sex, who identify the cause with themselves and not themselves with the cause, and are thus its

greatest hindrances; and ladies who are tempted to resent this element in the poem should remember that their sex in all its more tender attributes, and confined to its legitimate and natural sphere, has not a more reliable or more devoted champion than Alfred Tennyson, and the closer the acquaintance with his writings and the lovely types of women which he has portrayed, the more profoundly does the student of his works become convinced of this fact.

The Prologue and the Epilogue are the setting of the poem. The place, the South of England; the occasion, a festival upon the grounds of Sir Walter Vivian, a wealthy Baronet; the actors, a party of collegians on vacation during the summer months, who with a few of the well-born and cultured girls of the Hall and the neighbouring country seats, had made a select picnic of their own in a ruined abbey.

One of the collegians, a dreamy youth-the poet himself has been rummaging about in the library, and his head is full of the knightly deeds of the medieval ancestors of the owners of the stately Hall. He joins the party, taking a volume with him and keeping his finger in the place where is told a story of a fearless dame who defended her castle against a lawless king, and who, sallying out at the head of her retainers, utterly routed the king and his army.