If unforgotten! should it cross thy dreams, So might it come like one that looks content, etc. Page 87. THE GOLDEN YEAR. The original reading in lines 5-8 was: — And found him in Llanberis; and that same song He told me; for I banter'd him, etc. Llanberis, a village to the northwest of Snowdon, is one of the points from which the mountain is ascended. On the counter side,' or the opposite side of the valley, are the lakes,' Llyn Padarn and Llyn Peris, and beyond them the heights of Elidyr-fach (2550 feet) and Elidyr-fawr (3033 feet). Line 18. Catch me who can, etc. Alluding to a familiar children's game. Line 29. Seas that daily gain upon the shore. Compare Shakespeare, 'Sonnet' 64. 5: When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, etc. Line 45. Clear of toll. There is to be universal free trade' in this good time coming,' Line 63. O'erflourish'd with the hoary clematis. Covered with the flowers of the Clematis vitalba, the traveller's joy' of 'Aylmer's Field. Line 76. From bluff to bluff. In a letter received from Lord Tennyson, commenting on this and other passages, he says: Uff, uff gives almost exactly the echo of the blasting as I heard it from the counter side to that of Snowdon.' Page 89. TITHONUS. When it was published in the Cornhill Magazine' Thackeray was the editor, and was very proud of having secured the poem. The first line was originally Ay me! ay me! the woods decay and fall;' and line 39 had and that wild team.' Line 25. The silver star. The morning-star. Line 62. Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing, etc. See note on Enone," lines 39, 40. Page 90. LOCKSLEY HALL. In line 3 the original reading was 'and round the gables.' Line 4. Dreary gleams about the moorland, etc. The construction of 'gleams' has been much disputed. I always regarded it as referring to the curlews, which in flying over the hall might seem like dreary gleams in the sky; and I was gratified when this explanation (printed in my Select Poems of Tennyson' in 1884) was confirmed and aptly illustrated by Dr. Horace Howard Furness, who says (in a private letter which he permits me to quote here): The cur lews have dusky backs, indistinguishable at twilight, but white breasts, and as they fly in coveys are not noticed until on wheeling they show for a moment these "gleaming " breasts. I saw them first when I was riding at sunset across the dreary plain of La Mancha in Spain, and I could n't imagine what these momentary flashes of light were until I happened to see a flock near at hand, when I involuntarily exclaimed "Locksley Hall!" and the line which had long puzzled me was explained.' But Lord Tennyson afterwards wrote me that the gleams are not curlews at all, and that dreary gleams flying is put absolutely — while dreary gleams are flying.' Dr. Furness also sent me two unpublished stanzas of Locksley Hall' which Mrs. Kemble transcribed many years ago into his copy of the edition of 1842. They were inserted after the 19th stanza (And our spirits rush'd together,' etc.), and were as follows: I am left within the shadow, sitting on the wreck alone. Since these were first printed in the 2d edition of the 'Select Poems," the poet has introduced them, with slight changes, in 'Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.' Line 9. Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts. This is the original reading, altered in the 'Selections' of 1845 to 'Locksley Hall, that half in ruins overlooks,' etc. Line 76. That a sorrow's crown of sorrow, etc. Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Line 162. Swings the trailer from the crag. Originally droops the trailer,' etc. Line 182. Let the great world spin for ever, etc. Originally, Let the peoples spin,' etc. The next line had the world' for 'the globe.' Line 184. A cycle of Cathay. Cycle' is used of course for an indefinitely long period, or an age; but some criticaster has plumed himself upon the discovery that a Chinese 'cycle' is less than fifty years (I forget the precise length); and somebody else takes the cycle to be the Platonic 'great year.' Page 95. GODIVA. The old story on which the poem is founded is thus told by Sir William Dugdale in his 'Antiquities of Warwickshire,' 1656: The Countess Godiva, bearing an extraordinary affection to this place [Coventry], often and earnestly be sought her husband that, for the love of God and the Blessed Virgin, he would free it from that grievous servitude whereunto it was subject; but he, rebuking her for importuning him in a manner so inconsistent with his profit, commanded that she should thenceforward forbear to move therein; yet she, out of her womanish pertinacity, continued to solicit him, insomuch that he told her if she would ride on horseback naked from one end of the town to the other, in sight of all the people, he would grant her request. Whereunto she replied, " But will ye give me leave to do so?" And he replying "Yes," the noble lady, upon an appointed day, got on horseback naked, with her hair loose, so that it covered all her body but her legs; and thus performing her journey, she returned with joy to her husband, who thereupon granted to the inhabitants a charter of freedom. . . . In memory whereof the picture of him and his lady was set up in a south window of Trinity Church in this city, about Richard II.'s time, his right hand holding a charter with these words written thereon: J, Zuriche, for Love of thee It is said that the inhabitants all withdrew from the streets and from their windows while the lady was passing through the city; but one man, a tailor, could not resist the temptation to look forth. He was struck blind at the moment, and to this day the effigy of Peeping Tom' may be seen in the upper part of a house at the corner of Hertford Street as a monument of his disgrace. . The Procession of Lady Godiva,' said to have been instituted to commemorate the service she rendered Coventry, has been satisfactorily proved to have originated in the reign of Charles II. It was kept up annually until 1826, and has been reproduced several times since. In its palmy days it was graced by the presence of the civic authorities, and was attended with great pomp and display. Lady Godiva was represented by a beautiful woman dressed in a closely fitting suit of flesh-coloured material. She was preceded by the city guards in old armor with a band of music, and followed by the mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs, the ancient companies and benefit societies of the city with their insignia and decorations, other bands of music, and various historical and mythological characters. Line 3. The three tall spires. That of St. Michael's Church, 303 feet high (built 1373-1395), that of Trinity Church, 237 feet high (built 1664-1667, to replace one blown down in 1664), and that of Christ Church, which originally belonged to the Grey-friars' Monastery, founded in the fourteenth century. The monastic buildings were destroyed in the time of Henry VIII.; but the beautiful spire escaped, and was made part of the present edifice built in 1832. Line 11. A thousand summers back. be taken literally, Earl Leofric having flourished in the first half of the eleventh century, Not to if we accept the tradition that he founded the Benedictine Priory in Coventry in 1043. It is said that both he and his lady were buried in a porch of the monastery, of which some fragments still remain. Page 96. THE DAY-DREAM. Line 15. Then take the broidery-frame, etc. Originally, So take,' etc. Line 78. She lying on her couch alone, etc. The reading in 1830 was: The while she slumbereth alone, The maiden's jet-black hair had grown. 'Purpled' was retained in 1842. The first line of the next stanza had in 1830star-braided' forstar-broider'd.' Line 81. On either side. The 1830 reading was on either hand.' Line 112. Or scatter'd blanching on the grass. The early reading was in the grass.' Line 126. The Magic Music in his heart. Compare The Princess,' prol. 190: She remember'd that: Line 92. The spindlings. Until 1850 the reading was 'The poor things.' Page 102. WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE. The Cock tavern in Fleet Street, just inside Temple Bar, was a favorite resort of the poet and some of his friends during his early years in London. The building was torn down several years ago, but some of the furniture of the grill-room, including a fine old oak fireplace, was transferred to a new tavern with the old name, on the other side of the street, opposite Chancery Lane. One of the ancient tankards, with the inscription, A pint-pot neatly graven,' was presented by the proprietors to the poet, who, in his letter of acknowledgment, said that he would keep it as an heirloom in his family, in memory of the vanished tavern. Line 24. In' was originally To.' Line 35. Against its fountain upward runs, etc. The reading until 1853 was this: The 16th stanza (The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought,' etc.) was added in 1851. Line 7. They two will wed, etc. Both the onevolume and the seven-volume editions of 1884 misprint They too.' Page 107. THE LORD OF BURLEIGH. The ballad is a narrative in verse, with the usual poetic licenses, of the wooing and romantic marriage of the tenth Earl and first Marquis of Exeter.' See Napier, Homes and Haunts of Tennyson,' pp. 103-111. Page 109. SIR LAUNCELOT AND QUEEN GUINEVERE. Line 34. By night to eery warblings. Warblings' is here a trisyllable (war-ble-ings), being lengthened after an Elizabethan fashion. Compare assembly,' resembleth,' 'fiddler,' membrance, etc. in Shakespeare. Page 110. THE BEGGAR MAID. re For the old ballad on which the poem is founded, see Percy's Reliques.' Page 114. To E. L. ON HIS TRAVELS IN GREECE. Edward Lear was also the author of those classics of the nursery, the Nonsense Books.' Page 115. THE PRINCESS. The poem was at first received with little favor by the critics. It was thought scarce 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' (Wace). Even so late as 1855, when the poem had received its last touches, the Edinburgh Review' said of it: The subject of "The Princess, so far from being great, in a poetical point of view, is partly even of transitory interest. .. This piece, though full of meanings of abiding value, is ostensibly a brilliant seriocomic jeu d'esprit upon the noise about men's rights," which even now ceases to make itself heard anywhere but in the refuge of exploded European absurdities beyond the Atlantic. A carefully elaborated construction, a "wholeness," arising out of distinct and wellcontrasted parts, which is another condition of a great poem, would have been worse than thrown away on such a subject. . . . In reading the poem, the mind is palled and wearied with wasted splendor and beauty.' wo On the other hand, there were a few eminent critics who were prompt to recognize the true merit of the poem. Professor James Hadley, of Yale College, wrote a long and appreciative review of it for the New Englander' (May, 1849), which has been reprinted in a revised form in his Essays, Philological and Critical.' Charles Kingsley, in Fraser's Magazine' (September, 1850), said of the poem: In this work Mr. Tennyson shows himself more that ever the poet of the day. In it, more than ever, the old is interpenetrated with the new; the domestic and scientific with the ideal and sentimental. He dares, in every page, to make use of modern words and notions from which the mingled clumsiness and archaism of his compeers shrinks, as unpoetical. Though his stage is an ideal fairy-land, yet he has reached the ideal by the only true method-by bringing the Middle Age forward to the present one, and not by ignoring the present to fall back on a cold and galvanized Mediævalisin; and thus he makes the "Medley" a mirror of the nineteenth century, possessed of its own new art and science, its own new temptations and aspi rations, and yet grounded on, and continually striving to reproduce, the forms and experiences of all past time. The idea, too, of "The Princess" is an essentially modern one. In every age women have been tempted, by the posses sion of superior beauty, intellect, or strength of will, to deny their own womanhood, and attempt to stand alone as men, whether on the ground of political intrigue, ascetic saintship, or philo sophic pride. Cleopatra and St. Hedwiga, Madame de Staël and the Princess, are merely different manifestations of the same self-willed and proud longing of woman to unsex herself, and realize, single and self-sustained, some distorted and partial notion of her own as to what theangelic life" should be. Cleopatra acted out the pagan ideal of an angel; St. Hedwiga, the medieval one; Madame de Staël hers, with the peculiar notions of her time as to what "spiritual" might mean; and in "The Princess" Mr. Tennyson has embodied the ideal of that nobler, wider, purer, yet equally fallacious, because equally unnatural analogue, which we may now meet too often up and down England. He shows us the woman, when she takes her stand on the false masculine ground of intellect, working out her own moral punishment, by destroying in herself the tender heart of flesh: not even her vast purposes of philanthropy can preserve her, for they are built up, not on the womanhood which God has given her, but on her own self-will; they change, they fall, they become inconsistent, even as she does herself. till at last she loses all feminine sensibility; scornfully and stupidly she rejects and misun derstands the heart of man; and then, falling from pride to sternness, from sternness to sheer inhumanity, she punishes sisterly love as a crime, robs the mother of her child, and becomes all but a vengeful fury, with all the peenliar faults of woman, and none of the peculiar excellences of man. How Mr. Tennyson can have attained the prodigal fulness of thought and imagery which distinguishes this poem, and especially the last canto, without his style ever becoming overloaded, seldom even confused, is perhaps one of the greatest marvels of the whole production. The songs themselves, which have been inserted between the cantos in the last edition, seem, perfect as they are, wasted and smothered among the surrounding ... fertility,- till we discover that they stand there, not merely for the sake of their intrinsic beauty, but serve to call the reader's mind, at every pause in the tale of the Princess's folly, to that very healthy ideal of womanhood which she has spurned.' Mr. Dawson, in his 'Study of The Princess' (Montreal, 1884), remarks that the following extract from Rev. F. W. Robertson is perhaps the most justly appreciative criticism of Tennyson which has ever appeared.' It is from a lecture upon English Poetry, delivered to the workingmen of Brighton in 1852: 'I ranked Tennyson in the first order,1 because with great mastery over his material, words, great plastic power of versification, and a rare gift of harmony, he has also vision or insight; and because, feeling intensely the great questions of the day, not as a mere man of letters, but as a man, - he is to some extent the interpreter of his age, not only in its mysticism, which I tried to show you is the necessary reaction from the rigid formulas of science and the earthliness of an age of work into the vagueness which belongs to infinitude, but also in his poetic and almost prophetic solution of some of its great questions. Thus in "The Princess," . . . he has with exquisite taste disposed of the question which has its burlesque and comic as well as its tragic side-of woman's present place and future destinies. And if any one wishes to see this subject treated with a masterly and delicate hand, in protest alike against the theories which would make her as the man, which she could only be by becoming masculine, not manly, and those which would have her to remain the toy, or the slave, or the slight thing of sentimental and frivolous accomplishment which_education has hitherto aimed at making her, I would recommend him to study the few last pages of "The Princess," where the poet brings the question back, as a poet should, to nature; develops the ideal out of the actual woman, and reads out of what she is, on the one hand, what her Creator intended her to be, and on the other, what she never can or ought to be.' Mr. Dawson says well that Psyche's baby is the conquering heroine of the epic.' He adds: Ridiculous in the lecture-room, the babe, in the poem, as in the songs, is made the central point upon which the plot turns; for the unconscious child is the concrete embodiment of Nature herself, clearing away all merely intellectual theories by her silent influence. Ida feels the power of the child. The postscript of the despatch sent to her brother in the height of her indignation, contains, as is fitting, the kernel of the matter. She says: I took it for an hour in mine own bed 1 The lecturer had divided poets into 'two orders; those in whom the vision and the faculty divine of imagination exists, and those in whom the plastic power 'Rash princess! that fatal hour dashed "the hopes of half the world." Alas for these hopes! The cause, the great cause, totters to the fall when the Head confesses I felt Thy helpless warinth about my barren breast Whenever the plot thickens the babe appears. It is with Ida on her judgment-seat. In the topmost height of the storm the wail of the "lost lamb at her feet" reduces her eloquent anger into incoherence. She carries it when she sings her song of triumph. When she goes to tend her wounded brothers on the battlefield she carries it. Through it, and for it, Cyril pleads his successful suit, and wins it for the mother. For its sake the mother is par doned. O fatal babe! more fatal to the hopes of woman than the doomful horse to the proud towers of Ilion; for through thee the walls of pride are breached, and all the conquering affections flock in.' While reading the poem with a class of girls many years ago, I remarked that the babe might almost be called its heroine. I was gratified to find my opinion confirmed by Mr. Dawson's; and more so to find it indorsed by the author, in the interesting letter to Mr. Dawson printed in the preface to the 2d edition of the Study.' Tennyson there says:— I may tell you that the songs were not an after-thought. Before the first edition came out I deliberated with myself whether I should put songs in between the separate divisions of the poem: again, I thought, the poem will explain itself; but the public did not see that the child, as you say, was the heroine of the piece, and at last I conquered my laziness, and inserted them. You would be still more certain that the child was the heroine, if, instead of the first song as it now stands, As thro' the land at eve we went, I had printed the first song which I wrote, "The Losing of the Child." The child is sitting on the bank of a river, and playing with flowers: a flood comes down -a dam has been broken thro' the child is borne down by the flood the whole village distracted; after a time the flood has subsided- the child is thrown safe and sound again upon the bank, and all the women are in raptures. I quite forget the words of the ballad, but I think I may have it somewhere.' There are also some admirable comments on The Princess' in Mr. E. C. Stedman's Victorian Poets.' 'Other works of our poet,' he says, are greater, but none is so fascinating as this romantic tale, - English throughout, yet combining the England of Coeur-de-Lion with that of Victoria in one bewitching picture.' The Prologue. The scene of the Prologue was suggested by Park House, the residence of Mr. Edmund Lushington, who had married the of shaping predominates, -the men of poetic inspira tion, and the men of poetic taste.' poet's sister Cecilia. In some reminiscences contributed to the Memoir' (vol. i. p. 203), Mr. Lushington says: 'He was present on July 6th, 1842, at a festival of the Maidstone Mechanics' Institute held in our Park, of which he has introduced a lively description in the beginning of The Princess." Line 9. Five others: we were seven at Vivianplace. Added in the 3d edition. Line 20. Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere. Referring to Chinese ivory balls within balls. The line is a striking example of the correspondence of sound and sense, the words seeming to roll round like the sphere in sphere. Lines 35-49. O miracle of women. the gallant glorious chronicle. Added in the 5th edition of the poem. Line 69. Whom the electric shock. The 1st American edition misprints 'from the electric shock.' Line 80. Went hand in hand with science. The early editions 1 have With science hand in hand went.' Lines 131-138. Ah, were I something great! with her curls. For these eight lines the early editions have only the following: ... 'I remember that: A pleasant game,' she said; 'I liked it more Lines 197-208. The rest would follow. 'The rest would follow; so we tost the ball: Line 211. Like a ghostly woodpecker. The first four editions have: an April woodpecker.' Lines 214-239. Turn'd to me,. the story and the songs. In the early editions the remainder of the Prologue reads thus: turn'd to me: 'Well-as you will — Just as you will,' she said; be, if you will, Yourself your hero.' 'Look, then,' added he, Since Lilia would be princess, that you stoop No lower than a prince.' To which I said, 'Take care then that my tale be follow'd out 1 By the early editions' I mean the 1st and 2d, unless otherwise stated. By all the lieges in my royal vein: A talk of college and of ladies' rights, Line 222 was added in the 5th edition. Part I. Line 2 is not in the early editions. Lines 5-21. There lived an ancient legend, etc. This passage, like all the others referring to the weird seizures,' was added in the 5th edition. For mutter'd epilepsy' the original reading was 'call'd it catalepsy.' I am inclined to agree with Dawson that 'these additions seem not only unnecessary and uncalled for, but are actually injurious to the unity of the work.' He adds: They confuse the simple conception of his character, and graft on to his personality the foreign and somewhat derogatory idea of catalepsy; for in that light does the court doctor regard them. The poet must have had some definite object in inserting them. Can it be that they are to indicate the weakness and incompleteness of the poet side of the Prince's character until he has found rest in his ideal? Then only can he say: My doubts are dead, My haunting sense of hollow shows; the change, This truthful change, in thee has killed it. 'The dreamy Prince, haunted by doubts, and living in shadow-land, by the healing influence of a happy love, wakes up to the purpose and dignity of life.' Line 23. Half-canoniz'd by all that look'd on her. The early editions read: And nearly canoniz'd by all she knew.' Line 26. He cared not for the affection of the house. This line is not in the early editions. Line 33. Prory-wedded with a bootless call. Marriage by proxy was common in the Middle Ages. For another instance in poetry - an historical one- compare Longfellow's 'Belfry of Bruges': I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling humbly on the ground; I beheld the gentle Mary hunting with her hawk and hound; And her lighted bridal chamber, where a duke slept with the queen, And the armed guard around them, and the sword unsheathed between. The author's note on the passage says: 'Marie de Valois, Duchess of Burgundy, was left by the death of her father, Charles-le-Téméraire, at the age of twenty, the richest heiress of Europe. She came to Bruges, as Countess of Flanders, in 1477, and in the same year was married by proxy to the Archduke Maximilian. According to the custom of the time, the Duke of Bavaria, Maximilian's substitute, slept |