He always made a point to post with mares;
His daughter and his housemaid were the boys:
The land he understood for miles about

Was till'd by women; all the swine were sows,
And all the dogs "-

But while he jested thus,
A thought flash'd thro' me which I clothed in act,
Remembering how we three presented Maid
Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast,
In masque or pageant at my father's court,
We sent mine host to purchase female gear;
He brought it, and himself, a sight to shake
The midriff of despair with laughter, holp
To lace us up, till, each, in maiden plumes
We rustled him we gave a costly bribe
To guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds,
And boldly ventured on the liberties.'

This is the plot, which is carried out in a poem of 183 pages, and which in refinement and delicacy is quite in keeping with the old host's facetiousness. Three young gentlemen-one of whom is described as 'of temper amorous, as the first of May' are to be domesticated for an indefinite period in a female college, like Achilles in the court of Lycomedes; and— honi soit qui mal y pense-let no one, remembering his adventure with Deodamia, entertain or hint a suspicion of the consequences, or the Tennysonians will set him down for a Philistine. The trio are received with an appropriate address by the Princess: 'At those high words, we conscious of ourselves, Perused the matting; then an officer

Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these:
Not for three years to correspond with home;
Not for three years to cross the liberties;
Not for three years to speak with any men;

And many more, which hastily subscribed,

We enter'd on the boards: and "Now," she cried,

"Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall!
Our statues! not of those that men desire,

Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode,

Nor stunted squaws of West or East; but she

That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she

The foundress of the Babylonian wall,

The Carian Artemisia strong in war,

The Rhodope, that built the pyramid,

Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene

That fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows
Of Agrippina.'

We remember the time when it was considered the depth of

Vol. 131.-No. 262.

2 c

ill-breeding

ill-breeding and bad taste to allude to Odalisques or Anonymas in good society, it being assumed that matrons and damsels of high degree were not aware of the existence of such a class. It is rather strange, therefore, that the Princess should be so familiar with male objects of desire. There is one line in the Princess's speech which does not sound or look like a verse:—

'Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall.'

We have marked other lines in other places which we are equally unable to reconcile to either eye or ear as verses, e. g. :— 'For when the blood ran lustier in him again.'

*

*

'His eyes glisten'd: she fancied, is it for me?'

*

*

'Would she had drowned me in it, where'er it be.'

The undergraduates (including the new arrivals) attend lectures and listen to a discourse such as Mr. John Stuart Mill might deliver on his favourite subject; to another that smacks of Darwin and Tyndall; to a third worthy of Lyall or Murchison. Between the lectures they converse with their fellow collegians on the topics that puzzled Milton's angels; and one of their pleasantest evening rambles ends thus:

'And then we turn'd, we wound
About the cliffs, the copses, out and in,
Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names
Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff,
Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the Sun

Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all
The rosy heights came out above the lawns.'

They transgress the boundary, and become aware that the University police includes Proctors and their attendant (in college phrase) Bulldogs.

'Scarce had I ceased when from a tamarisk near
Two Proctors leapt upon us, crying, "Names."

They haled us to the Princess where she sat
High in the hall: above her droop'd a lamp,
And made the single jewel on her brow
Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-head,
Prophet of storm: a handmaid on each side
Bow'd toward her, combing out her long black hair
Damp from the river; and close behind her stood
Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men,

Huge

Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain,
And labour. Each was like a Druid rock;

Or like a spire of land that stands apart

Cleft from the main, and wail'd about with meus.'

The avowal of the intruder's sex leads to a scene of confusion—

'And so she would have spoken, but there rose

A hubbub in the court of half the maids
Gather'd together: from the illumined hall
Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press
Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,
And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes,
And gold and golden heads; they to and fro
Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale,
All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light,
Some crying there was an army in the land,
And some that men were in the very walls,
And some they cared not; till a clamour grew
As of a new-world Babel, woman-built,

And worse-confounded: high above them stood
The placid marble Muses, looking peace.'

A companion picture to this has been painted by Byron in his description of the group of young ladies amongst whom Don Juan, disguised like the Prince, was unexpectedly introduced :Many and beautiful lay those around,

Like flowers of different hue, and clime, and root,

In some exotic garden sometimes found,

With cost, and care, and warmth induced to shoot. One with her auburn tresses lightly bound,

And fair brows gently drooping, as the fruit

Nods from the tree, was slumbering with soft breath,
And lips apart, which show'd the pearls beneath.
'One with her flush'd cheek laid on her white arm,
And raven ringlets gather'd in dark crowd.
Above her brow, lay dreaming soft and warm;

And smiling through her dream, as through a cloud
The moon breaks, half unveil'd each further charm,
As, slightly stirring in her snowy shroud,

Her beauties seized the unconscious hour of night
All bashfully to struggle into light.

'This is no bull, although it sounds so; for

'T was night, but there were lamps, as hath been said.

A third's all pallid aspect offer'd more

The traits of sleeping sorrow, and betray'd

Through the heaved breast the dream of some far shore
Beloved and deplored; while slowly stray'd

(As night-dew, on a cypress glittering, tinges

The black bough) tear-drops through her eyes' dark fringes.

202

'A fourth

'A fourth as marble, statue-like and still,

Lay in a breathless, hush'd, and stony sleep;
White, cold, and pure, as looks a frozen rill,

Or the snow minaret on an Alpine steep.

In grouping, colouring, and expression, Byron's picture strikes us to be decidedly the finer of the two. We need hardly say that there are many graceful flights of fancy, many pleasing bits of description, many happy epithets, many fine thoughts, scattered over The Princess'; but the prosaic so predominates over the poetic element, that it fairly passes our comprehension how it ever passed muster as a whole. Byron certainly contrived to mix up an extraordinary variety of heterogeneous subjects in Don Juan'; but Don Juan' was composed in a mocking, laughing spirit: it runs over with wit and humour ; and we should feel much obliged to any one who would point out either wit or humour in 'The Princess.'

These faults of subject and construction were carefully eschewed in 'The Idylls of the King,' published in 1859, which raised the author to the seventh heaven of popular favour. He was reported to have realised seven or eight thousand pounds by this small volume in a year. It was literally one which no library, drawing-room, or boudoir, could be without. It was the common topic of conversation amongst the higher classes; and the votaries of the dainty artificial style in composition raised shouts of triumph at its undeniable success. The malcontents were obliged to hold their tongues, or murmured aside with Old King Gama in 'The Princess':

'These the women sang;

And they that know such things I sought but peace;
No critic I would call them masterpieces:

They mastered me.'

Fashion, we repeat, must always have a great deal to do with the popularity of any work of art that appeals to an acquired taste and affects independence of the ordinary sources of interest. Canning said that whoever pretended to prefer dry champagne to sweet, lied. This was going a little too far; but the preference is confined to a limited circle of connoisseurs with educated palates; and those who honestly prefer blank verse to rhyme are not more numerous than those who honestly prefer dry champagne to sweet. Then, again, Mr. Tennyson's tales of chivalry had none of the attractiveness of Scott's. The main narrative in each would merely have formed an episode in the genuine epic or regular romance. Although drawn from the same repository of traditional lore, and steeped in the same carefully-prepared

carefully-prepared dye, 'The Idylls,' four in number, look like so many pieces of rich tapestry, worked after a pattern for separate panels. The more we study them, the more forcibly are we impressed with the fertility of the author's fancy, the purity and elevation of his general tone of mind, his insight into the best parts of human nature, his comparative ignorance of the worst, and the poverty of his inventive faculty in constructing or embellishing a fictitious narrative. Surely the adventures that befell Geraint and Enid, when she is undergoing her trials, might have been varied with advantage. Her first transgression of his strict command to precede him without speaking, is caused by the discovery of three knights in ambush. These, duly warned by her, he slays, strips of their armour binds it on their horses, each on each,

'And tied the bridle-reins of all the three
Together, and said to her, "Drive them on

Before you;" and she drove them thro' the waste.'

Her second transgression occurs exactly in the same manner. She gives timely notice of three lurking robbers, and identically the same action is repeated. He kills them all, binds their armour on their horses, and issues exactly the same order to the uncomplaining wife :

'He follow'd nearer still: the pain she had
To keep them in the wild ways of the wood,
Two sets of three laden with jingling arms,
Together, served a little to disedge

The sharpness of that pain about her heart.'

He has a third encounter with an entire troop, whom he disperses with equal ease, after unhorsing their leader; and when he is supposed dying from his wounds, with his head in Enid's lap, he is suddenly roused by her sharp and bitter cry against an insult offered her by his enemy :

:

"This heard Geraint, and grasping at his sword,

(It lay beside him in the hollow shield),
Made but a single bound, and with a sweep of it
Shore thro' the swarthy neck, and like a ball
The russet-bearded head roll'd on the floor.

So died Earl Doorm by him he counted dead.'

We are content to read tales of chivalry in the same spirit as 'Don Quixote.' A knight of the Round Table (or the Table Round, as the exigencies of verse require it to be called throughout) would not be worth his salt if he could not demolish any number of assailants by his single arm, or cut off a giant's head at a sweep; but we cannot help thinking that 'Enid's' task

was