had given Tennyson another idea when he tracked the streamlet "dancing down its waterbreaks." In the Ode on the death of the Duke of Wellington we find the man praised who Gain'd a hundred fights, Nor ever lost an English gun, forcibly reminding us of Massinger's hero, whose "fights and conquests hold one number." Not once or twice in our rough island-story was a crystallising of the Iron Duke's own remark on being told that the word "glory" never occurred in his despatches. "If glory had been my object," he said, "the doing my duty must have been the means." Again, in the same poem, the Laureate puts words into the lips of the dead Nelson Who is he that cometh, like an honour'd guest, With banner and with music, with soldier and with priest, Tickell, writing of Addison's interment in Westminster Ne'er to these chambers, where the mighty rest, Since the foundation came a nobler guest. Coming to In Memoriam, I again find that all the coincidences have not been noted. Tears of the widower when he sees A late-lost form which sleep reveals, And moves his doubtful arms and feels irresistibly reminds one of Milton's pathetic lines Methought I saw my late espoused wife But oh! as to embrace me she inclined, I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night. Campbell, in a well-worn phrase, has told us that distance Y lends enchantment to the view; Tennyson informs us that "the past will always win A glory from its being far." Thackeray twice over wrote that 'twas better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all; the second of the references is usually overlooked-"To love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best" (Pendennis, vol. ii. cap. ii.). The beautiful stanzas commencing 'Calm is the morn without a sound" is Wordsworth's sonnet with exquisite variation— Calm is all nature as a resting wheel. Now, in this blank of things, a harmony, Next come the well-known lines There lives more truth in honest doubt, The most likely parallel is from Bailey's Festus— Who never doubted, never half believed, Where doubt, there truth is-'tis her shadow.1 Lastly, there is the section dealing with the mutability of the things of earth: There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars, hath been Tennyson might have come fresh from the reading of Art, empire, earth itself to change are doomed; And where the Atlantic rolls wide continents have bloomed. 1 Tennyson was a great admirer of Festus. He said he dare not trust himself to express all that he thought of it. Two parallels with Emerson's writings are rather striking. Thirty years before Tennyson had stored a mighty truth in those compact lines Little flower. . . if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, the transcendental philosopher had written— Through a thousand voices Spoke the universal dame : The Laureate has told us We are ancients of the earth, Emerson in his essay on Politics had quite as strikingly expressed a like opinion-" We think our civilisation near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star." There is danger in pushing these conclusions too far, and were it not that Tennyson's method of working was well understood, there would doubtless be more hesitation in proclaiming the discovery of a "parallel" when probably there is only a mere coincidence. "Are not human eyes all over the world looking at the same objects, and must there not consequently be coincidences of thought and impressions and expressions?" The shells upon the shore of the ocean, Knowledge, are free to all who will gather them; it is only the pearls of the great deep which the mighty can find, and which to them must belong when found. Tennyson's mission has been to seize upon good ideas conceived in other times, and impart to them a modern aspect. He recommends to our understanding what otherwise we might ignore, and presents in favourable form what in its original state we might have been loth to receive. In his hands ancient dogmas appear as shining truths, he gives splendour to uncouthness, and makes melodious the harsh utterance of bygone ages. His spell is irresistible. Passed through the Tennysonian sieve the coarse ore of literature is refined, the dull hue disappears, and touched by his fingers sparkles with animating fire. Surely that service is not small or to be contemned which rescues treasures from the dust in which they are buried, and skilfully fashions them into images of rarest beauty.1 1 While this work was passing through the press Mr Harold Littledale's Essays on Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King was published. I am disposed to think that the chief value of the essays will be found in the numerous parallelisms which Mr Littledale has discovered in the Idylls. He shows that the poet was specially indebted to Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, and Shelley. (Vide pp. 184-191, 235, 297, &c.) See also Literary Coincidences, by W. A. Clouston (p. 93); Alfred Tennyson, by Walter E. Wace (cap. xiv.); and Tennysoniana, by R. H. Shepherd (cap. xi.). I ought to add that my own chapter does not traverse the ground already covered in these volumes. CHAPTER XVIII. A NOTE ON TENNYSONIAN VOLUMES AND MANUSCRIPTS. "Sallow scraps of manuscript, -To E. Fitzgerald. ALTHOUGH Lord Tennyson spoke slightingly of the "love of letters, overdone," and seemed to regard bibliography as an abused art, he had no reason to regret the interest displayed in the various editions of his works. Enthusiastic collectors have had to pay very dearly for their hobby. The value of the first editions of Tennyson's poems has been constantly rising, and what would seem to the man of the world an extravagant price has been willingly paid to procure those rare slim green volumes which were issued before "popular" editions were contemplated. Possessors of Poems by Two Brothers, Poems chiefly Lyrical, in two volumes, In Memoriam (noted for its dark binding), and of copies of those earliest productions, Timbuctoo and The Lover's Tale, must deem themselves extremely fortunate. These are the prizes. Not long ago a collection of Tennysoniana was offered for 12 guineas, this being almost at the rate of a guinea a page. There were the original proofsheets of The Window; or, the Loves of the Wrens, with numerous corrections and addenda in the Laureate's own writing. It was doubtless the latter circumstance that made the 13 pages so precious, for the poet's autograph was seldom seen, and even the contents of his waste-paper basket were not permitted to pass into vulgar hands. An edition of Tennyson's poems for 1833 once fetched £26, 10s.; the Poems chiefly Lyrical, in two volumes, 1842, |