the publishers. He was not, however, forgotten. During the interval, there had been growing in many minds a sense of his merits. In the year 1842 appeared a reprint of the most of his pieces, some having been omitted, in consequence probably of the strictures of the reviewers, and some of them having been slightly altered, together with a series of new poems; the whole forming two small octavo volumes. Without external aid of any kind, these volumes found favour with the public, and in three years ran through as many editions. Suddenly it became the fashion to consider Alfred Tennyson as a great poet, if not as the poet of the age;' meaning, we presume, the greatest poet of the age, for in no other respect can the phrase be applicable, seeing that the age is one of hope and of progress, while Mr Tennyson's genius is essentially retrospective. The true poet of our age will be one of a more popular character than Mr Tennyson.

The prevailing characteristic of his style is a quaint and quiet elegance, and of his mind a gentle melancholy, with now and then touches of strong dramatic power, the whole coloured by the peculiar scenery of that part of England where he has long resided. Any attentive reader of his poetry, who may have been ignorant that he is a dweller amid the fens of Lincolnshire, would soon suspect this to be the case when he found such constant pictures of fens and morasses, quiet meres, and sighing reeds, as he so beautifully introduces. The exquisitely modulated poem of the Dying Swan affords a picture drawn, we think, with wonderful delicacy :

Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky
Shone out their crowning snows.

One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above, in the wind, was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will;
And far through the marish green and still,
The tangled water-courses slept,

Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow. The ballad of New-Year's Eve introduces similar scenery :

When the flowers come again, mother, beneath the waning light,

You'll never see me more in the long gray fields at night,

When from the dry dark wold the summer airs blow

cool

On the oat-grass and the sword-grass and the bulrush in the pool.

Another characteristic of Mr Tennyson's style is his beautiful simplicity. Let no one underrate so great a merit. The first poetry of barbarism, and the most refined poetry of advancing civilisation, have it in common. As a specimen of great power and great simplicity, we make the following extracts from his poem on the old legend of the Lady Godiva :

She sought her lord, and found him where he stood About the hall, among his dogs, alone.

* She told him of their tears,

And prayed him, If they pay this tax, they starve.'
Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,
You would not let your little finger ache

For such as these?' 'But I would die,' said she.
He laughed, and swore by Peter and by Paul,
Then fillipped at the diamond in her ear:
Oh ay,
oh ay, you talk!' 'Alas!' she said,
But prove me what it is I would not do.'
And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand,

He answered, Ride you naked through the town,
And I repeal it;' and nodding, as in scorn,
He parted.

So, left alone, the passions of her mind-
As winds from all the compass shift and blow-
Made war upon each other for an hour,
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all
The hard condition; but that she would loose
The people. Therefore, as they loved her well,
From then till noon no foot should pace the street,
No eye look down, she passing; but that all
Should keep within, door shut, and window barred.
Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim earl's gift; but ever at a breath
She lingered, looking like a summer moon
Half dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,
And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reached
The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapped
In purple, blazoned with armorial gold.

Then she rode forth, clothed o'er with chastity;
The deep air listened round her as she rode,
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.
The little wide-mouthed heads upon the spouts
Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur
Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's footfall shot
were full of chinks and holes; and overhead
Light horrors through her pulses: the blind walls
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she
Not less through all bore up, till last she saw
The white-flowered elder thicket from the field
Gleam through the Gothic archways in the wall.

Then she rode back clothed on with chastity;
And one low churl, compact of thankless earth,
The fatal byword of all years to come,
Boring a little auger hole in fear,

Peeped; but his eyes, before they had their will,
Were shrivelled into darkness in his head,
And dropped before him. So the powers, who wait
On noble deeds, cancelled a sense misused:
And she that knew not, passed; and all at once,
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clashed and hammered from a hundred towers
One after one; but even then she gained
Her bower: whence reissuing, robed and crowned,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away,
And built herself an everlasting name.

The ballad of Lady Clara Vere de Vere might also be cited as a specimen of extreme simplicity united with great force; but we prefer making an extract from a poem less known. The Talking

Oak is the title of a fanciful and beautiful ballad of seventy-five stanzas, in which a lover and an oaktree converse upon the charms of a sweet maiden named Olivia. The oak-tree thus describes to the lover her visit to the park in which it grew :

'Then ran she, gamesome as the colt,
And livelier than the lark,
She sent her voice through all the holt
Before her, and the park.

And here she came and round me played,
And sang to me the whole

Of those three stanzas that you made
About my "giant bole."

And in a fit of frolic mirth,

She strove to span my waist; Alas! I was so broad of girth,

I could not be embraced.

'Oh muffle round thy knees with fern,
And shadow Sumner chase-

Long may thy topmost branch discern
The roofs of Sumner place!

But tell me, did she read the name

I carved with many vows,

When last with throbbing heart I came
To rest beneath thy boughs?'
'Oh yes; she wandered round and round
These knotted knees of mine,

And found, and kissed the name she found,
And sweetly murmured thine.

A tear-drop trembled from its source,
And down my surface crept;

My sense of touch is something coarse,
But I believe she wept.

Then flushed her cheek with rosy light;
She glanced across the plain;
But not a creature was in sight-
She kissed me once again.

Her kisses were so close and kind,
That, trust me, on my word,

Hard wood I am, and wrinkled rind,
But yet my sap was stirred.

And even into my inmost ring
A pleasure I discerned,

Like those blind motions of the spring
That show the year is turned.

*

I, rooted here among the groves,
But languidly adjust

My vapid vegetable loves

With anthers and with dust;

For ah! the Dryad days were brief
Whereof the poets talk,

When that which breathes within the leaf
Could slip its bark and walk.
But could I, as in times foregone,

From spray, and branch, and stem,
Have sucked and gathered into one
The life that spreads in them,
She had not found me so remiss;
But lightly issuing through,
I would have paid her kiss for kiss,
With usury thereto.'

'Oh flourish high with leafy towers,
And overlook the lea;
Pursue thy loves among the bowers,
But leave thou mine to me.
Oh flourish, hidden deep in fern:
Old oak, I love thee well;
A thousand thanks for what I learn,
And what remains to tell.'

The poem of Saint Simeon Stylites is of another character, and portrays the spiritual pride of an ancient fanatic with a simple and savage grandeur of words and imagery which is rarely surpassed. It is too long for entire quotation, but the following extracts will show its beauty :Although I be the basest of mankind, From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin; Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet For troops of devils mad with blasphemy, I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold

Of saintdom, and to clamour, mourn, and sob,

Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayerHave mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.

Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God;
This not be all in vain; that thrice ten years,
Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs

In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold;
In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps;
A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud,
Patient on this tall pillar I have borne

Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and

snow;

And I had hoped that ere this period closed,
Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest,
Denying not these weather-beaten limbs
The meed of saints-the white robe and the palm.
Oh! take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,
Not whisper any murmur of complaint.

Pain heaped ten hundred fold to this were still
Less burden, by ten hundred fold, to bear
Than were those lead-like tons of sin that crushed
My spirit flat before thee.

Oh Lord, Lord!
Thou knowest I bore this better at the first;
For I was strong and hale of body then,
And though my teeth, which now are dropt away,
Would chatter with the cold, and all my beard
Was tagged with icy fringes in the moon,

I drowned the whoopings of the owl with sound Of pious hymns and psalms, and sometimes saw An angel stand and watch me as I sang.

*

Good people, you do ill to kneel to me.
What is it I have done to merit this?

I am a sinner viler than you all.

It may be I have wrought some miracles,

And cured some halt and maimed; but what of that?

It may be no one, even among the saints,

May match his pains with mine; but what of that?
Yet do not rise; for you may look on me,
And in your looking you may kneel to God.
Speak, is there any of you halt or maimed?

I think you know I have some power with Heaven
From my long penance: let him speak his wish,
For I can heal him. Power goes forth from me.
They say that they are healed. Ah, hark! they shout
Saint Simeon Stylites!' Why, if so,

God reaps a harvest in me.

It cannot be but that I shall be saved,

Yea, crowned a saint. They shout Behold a saint!'
And lower voices saint me from above.
Courage, Saint Simeon; this dull chrysalis
Cracks into shining wings.

Oh, my sons, my sons!
I, Simeon of the pillar, by surname
Stylites among men-I, Simeon
The watcher on the column till the end-
I, Simeon, whose brain the sunshine bakes
I, whose bald brows in silent hours become
Unnaturally hoar with rime-do now,
From my high nest of penance, here proclaim
That Pontius and Iscariot by my side
Showed fair like seraphs.

*

While I spake then, a sting of shrewdest pain
Ran shrivelling through me, and a cloud-like change
These heavy, horny eyes. The end! the end
In passing, with a grosser film made thick
Surely the end! What's here? A shape, a shade,
A flash of light. Is that the angel there
That holds a crown? Come, blessed brother, come!
I know thy glittering face. I've waited long!
My brows are ready! What! deny it now?
'Tis gone 'tis here again: the crown! the crown!
So, now, 'tis fitted on, and grows to me,
And from it melt the dews of Paradise.

music itself:

Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?
All things have rest. Why should we toil alone?
We only toil, who are the first of things,
And make perpetual moan,

Still from one sorrow to another thrown.

*

Lo! in the middle of the wood

The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steeped at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls and floats adown the air.
Lo sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All is allotted length of days;
The flower ripens in its place,

Ripens, and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.

ease.

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half-dream!

To hear each other's whispered speech;
Eating the lotos, day by day;

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray;

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood, and live again in memory
With those old faces of our infancy,

Heaped over with a mound of grass,

Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass.

THOMAS B. MACAULAY.

MR THOMAS B. MACAULAY, who held an important office in the administration & Lord Melbourne, and is one of the most brilliant writers in the Edinburgh

Review, gratified and surprised the public by a volume of poetry in 1842. He had previously, in his young collegiate days, thrown off a few spirited ballads (one of which, The War of the League, is here subjoined); and in all his prose works there are indications of strong poetical feeling and fancy. No man paints more clearly and vividly to the eye, or is more studious of the effects of contrast and the proper grouping of incidents. He is generally picturesque, eloquent, and impressive. His defects are a want of simplicity and tenderness, and an excessive love of what Izaak Walton called strong writing. The same characteristics pervade his recent work, The Lays of Ancient Rome. Adopting the theory of Niebuhr (now generally acquiesced in as correct), that the heroic and romantic incidents related by Livy of the early history of Rome, are founded merely on ancient ballads and legends, he selects four of these incidents as themes for his verse. Identifying himself with the plebeians and tribunes, he makes them chant the martial stories of Horatius Cocles, the battle of the Lake Regillus, the death of Virginia, and the prophecy of Capys. The style is homely, abrupt, and energetic, carrying us along like the exciting narratives of Scott, and presenting brief but striking pictures of local scenery and manners. The truth of these descriptions is strongly impressed upon the mind of the reader, who seems to witness the heroic scenes so clearly and energetically described. The masterly ballads of Mr Macaulay must be read continuously, to be properly appreciated; for their merit does not lie in particular passages, but in the rapid and progressive interest of the story, and the Roman spirit and bravery which animate the whole. The following are parts of the first Lay :

[The Desolation of the Cities whose Warriors have
marched against Rome.]

Tall are the oaks whose acorns

Drop in dark Auser's rill;

Fat are the stags that champ the boughs
Of the Ciminian hill;

Beyond all streams, Clitumnus

Is to the herdsman dear;

Best of all pools the fowler loves,

The great Volsinian mere.

But now no stroke of woodman
Is heard by Auser's rill;

No hunter tracks the stag's green path
Up the Ciminian hill;
Unwatched along Clitumnus
Grazes the milk-white steer;
Unharmed the water-fowl may dip
In the Volsinian mere.

The harvests of Arretium,

This year old men shall reap;
This year young boys in Umbro
Shall plunge the struggling sheep;
And in the vats of Luna,

This year the must shall foam
Round the white feet of laughing girls,
Whose sires have marched to Rome.

[Horatius offers to defend the Bridge.]
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The captain of the gate:
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods,

And for the tender mother
Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
His baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens

Who feed the eternal flame, To save them from false Sextus

That wrought the deed of shame?

Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me,
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon straight path a thousand
May well be stopped by three.
Now, who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me?'

Then out spake Spurius Lartius;
A Ramnian proud was he;
'Lo, I will stand at thy right hand,
And keep the bridge with thee.'
And out spake strong Herminius;
Of Titian blood was he;
'I will abide on thy left side,
And keep the bridge with thee.'

'Horatius,' quoth the Consul,

'As thou say'st, so let it be.'

And straight against that great array
Forth went the dauntless three.
For Romans in Rome's quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old.

Then none was for a party;

Then all were for the state; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great; Then lands were fairly portioned; Then spoils were fairly sold; The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old.

Now Roman is to Roman

More hateful than a foe,
And the tribunes beard the high,
And the fathers grind the low.,

As we wax hot in faction,

In battle we wax cold;

Wherefore men fight not as they fought In the brave days of old.

The Fate of the first Three who advance against the Heroes of Rome.]

Aunus from green Tifernum,

Lord of the Hill of Vines;

And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves

Sicken in Ilva's mines;

And Picus, long to Clusium,

Vassal in peace and war,

Who led to fight his Umbrian powers

From that gray crag where, girt with towers, The fortress of Nequinum lowers

O'er the pale waves of Nar.

Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus
Into the stream beneath:

Herminius struck at Seius,

And clove him to the teeth;

At Picus brave Horatius

Darted one fiery thrust;

And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms Clashed in the bloody dust.

Then Ocnus of Falerii

Rushed on the Roman Three; And Lausulus of Urgo,

The rover of the sea;

And Aruns of Volsinium,

Who slew the great wild boar,
The great wild boar that had his den
Amidst the reeds of Cosa's fen,

And wasted fields, and slaughtered men,
Along Albinia's shore.

Herminius smote down Aruns:

Lartius laid Ocnus low: Right to the heart of Lausulus Horatius sent a blow.

'Lie there,' he cried, ' fell pirate!

No more, aghast and pale,

From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark
The track of thy destroying bark.
No more Campania's hinds shall fly
To woods and caverns when they spy
Thy thrice accursed sail.'

[Horatius, wounded by Astur, revenges himself.]

He reeled, and on Herminius

He leaned one breathing-space;

Then, like a wild cat mad with wounds,
Sprang right at Astur's face.
Through teeth, and skull, and helmet,
So fierce a thrust he sped,

The good sword stood a handbreath out
Behind the Tuscan's head.

And the great Lord of Luna
Fell at that deadly stroke,
As falls on Mount Alvernus
A thunder-smitten oak.
Far o'er the crashing forest

The giant arms lie spread;
And the pale augurs, muttering low,
Gaze on the blasted head.

On Astur's throat Horatius
Right firmly pressed his heel,

And thrice and four times tugged amain,
Ere he wrenched out the steel.

'And see,' he cried, 'the welcome, Fair guests, that waits you here! What noble Lucumo comes next

To taste our Roman cheer?'

[The Bridge falls, and Horatius is alone.]

Alone stood brave Horatius,

But constant still in mind;

Thrice thirty thousand foes before, And the broad flood behind. 'Down with him!' cried false Sextus, With a smile on his pale face. 'Now yield thee,' cried Lars Porsena, 'Now yield thee to our grace.' Round turned he, as not deigning Those craven ranks to see; Nought spake he to Lars Porsena, To Sextus nought spake he; But he saw on Palatinus

The white porch of his home;

And he spake to the noble river
That rolls by the towers of Rome.

'Oh, Tiber, Father Tiber!

To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman's life, a Roman's arms,
Take thou in charge this day!'
So he spake, and speaking sheathed
The good sword by his side,
And, with his harness on his back,
Plunged headlong in the tide.

No sound of joy or sorrow

Was heard from either bank; But friends and foes in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges

They saw his crest appear,

All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany

Could scarce forbear to cheer.

[How Horatius was Rewarded.]
They gave him of the corn-land,
That was of public right,
As much as two strong oxen

Could plough from morn till night: And they made a molten image,

And set it up on high,

And there it stands unto this day
To witness if I lie.

It stands in the Comitium,
Plain for all folk to see;
Horatius in his harness,
Halting upon one knee:
And underneath is written,
In letters all of gold,

How valiantly he kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.

And still his name sounds stirring

Unto the men of Rome,

As the trumpet-blast that cries to them
To charge the Volscian home:
And wives still pray to Juno

For boys with hearts as bold
As his who kept the bridge so well
In the brave days of old.

And in the nights of winter,

When the cold north winds blow,
And the long howling of the wolves
Is heard amidst the snow;
When round the lonely cottage
Roars loud the tempest's din,
And the good logs of Algidus
Roar louder yet within;

When the oldest cask is opened,

And the largest lamp is lit,

When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
And the kid turns on the spit;

When young and old in circle
Around the firebrands close;
When the girls are weaving baskets,
And the lads are shaping bows;

When the goodman mends his armour,
And trims his helmet's plume;
When the goodwife's shuttle merrily
Goes flashing through the loom;
With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,

How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.

The War of the League.

Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories are!

And glory to our sovereign liege, King Henry of Navarre!

Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance,

Through thy corn-fields green, and sunny vines, oh pleasant land of France!

of war,

To fight for his own holy name, and Henry of Navarre.

The king is come to marshal us, in all his armour drest; And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest.

He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye; He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high.

Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing,

Down all our line, a deafening shout, 'God save our lord the King'

And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may

For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody frayPress where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war,

And be your oriflamme, to-day, the helmet of Navarre.' Hurrah! the foes are moving! Hark to the mingled

din