passage.

88. Fur he ca'd 'is 'erse Billy-rough-un. For he called his horse Bellerophon. Similarly, the name of the warship Bellerophon is said to have been corrupted by the sailors into 'Billyruffian.'

99. Siver the mou'ds rattled down upo' poor owd Squire i the wood. Howsoever (however) the mould (earth) rattled down on the poor old Squire's coffin.

107. Hes fur Miss Hannie the heldest hes now, etc. This is the reading of the English editions; but elsewhere in the poem we have Miss Annie' and 'es' (foras) except in the preceding line, where it is misprinted as.'

121. Hugger-mugger they lived. They lived in a slovenly way (Century Dict.). The word, whether as noun or adjective, often means in privacy or secrecy. Compare Hamlet, iv. 5. 84:

and we have done but greenly, In hugger-mugger to inter him.

126. coach). Page 468. IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL. Line 10. Drench'd with the hellish oorali. A drug, also known as 'woorali' and 'curari' (or curara'), extracted from the Strychnos toxifera. It acts by paralyzing the nerves of motion without impairing the sensibility. It is used by the South American Indians for poisoning their arrows. The reference here is to the practice of vivisection for purposes of physiological investigation. Tennyson evidently sympathized with the criticisms, not wholly groundless, which have been urged against it, and which have led in England to the enactment of laws restricting and regulating it.

Roomlin' by. Rumbling by (in his

Page 470. DEDICATORY POEM TO THE PRINCESS ALICE.

Line 7. Thy soldier-brother's bridal orangebloom, etc. Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, was married at Windsor, on the 13th of March, 1879, to Louise-Marguerite, Princess of Prussia. Page 470. THE DEFENCE OF LUCKNOW. Line 20. The brute bullet. The senseless bullet; antithetical to the sentient brain.'

25. Mine? yes, a mine! Sir James Outram, describing the siege, says: I am aware of no parallel to our series of mines in modern war. Twenty-one shafts, aggregating two hundred feet in depth, and 3291 feet of gallery have been executed. The enemy advanced twenty mines against the palaces and outposts; of these they exploded three which caused us loss of life, and two which did no injury; seven have been blown in; and out of seven others the enemy have been driven and their galleries taken possession of by our miners.'

Page 472. SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE.

Line 5. Scribbled or carved upon the pitiless

stone. Like the carvings by prisoners of state still to be seen on the walls of the Beauchamp Tower in the Tower of London.

16. The proud Archbishop Arundel. Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, a zealous persecutor of the Lollards.

19. Bara. Bread (Welsh).

20. Vailing a sudden eyelid. The 'vailing' is the obsolete word meaning to lower or let fall. 21. Dim Saesneg. No English; that is, I do not speak English.

24. Not least art thou, thou little Bethlehem, etc. See Micah, v. 2.

26. Little Lutterworth. Lutterworth, the parish in Leicestershire of which Wiclif was

rector.

77. Sir Roger Acton. A prominent Lollard. 78. Beverley. John of Beverley, who was martyred January 19, 1413-14.

79. Thy two witnesses. See Revelation, xi. 3. 84. Him, who should bear the sword, etc. Henry V. The poet seems here to identify the speaker with the Sir John Oldcastle who appears as one of Prince Henry's wild companions in the old play of The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth,' on which Shakespeare founded his 'Henry IV.' and Henry V.;' and it is well known that 'Sir John Oldcastle' was originally the name of Falstaff in the Henry IV. plays. The dramatist changed the name to avoid offending the Protestants and gratifying the Roman Catholics. See the epilogue to 2 Henry IV. Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man.' Fuller, in his Church History' (lib. iv.), says: 'Stage poets have themselves been very bold with, and others very merry at, the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, whom they have fancied a boon companion, a jovial royster, and yet a coward to boot. . . . The best is, Sir John Falstaff hath relieved the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, and of late is substituted buffoon in his place."

93. Or Amurath of the East. A Turkish Sultan. Compare 2 Henry IV.' v. 2. 48: — This is the English, not the Turkish court; Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds, But Harry Harry.

159. Sylvester. Sylvester II., who became Pope A. D. 999.

Page 476. COLUMBUS.

When Columbus returned to San Domingo on his third expedition, the colony was in a deplorable condition. Things went from bad to worse, and the Spanish monarchs sent an officer of the royal household, Francis de Bobadilla, to make investigations, with authority to send back to Spain any cavaliers or other persons whom he thought proper. It is not probable that the intention was to include Columbus in the list of persons subject to arrest; but Bobadilla, soon after his arrival in the island, put the great admiral in chains, and sent him to Spain, where he arrived in November, 1499. Line 18. The great Laudamus.' The Te Deum.

25. The Dragon's Mouth. The name (Bocca

del Drago) which Columbus gave to a channel between the island of Trinidad and the mainland of South America.

26. The Mountain of the World. The Mountain of Adam,' or Mountain of the Gods,' the highest peak in Ceylon, on the summit of which the print of Buddha's foot is supposed to be visible.

46. King David call'd the heavens a hide, a tent. See Psalms, civ. 2.

48. Some cited old Lactantius. An eminent Christian author, who flourished early in the 4th century. The 1st edition of his works, one of the oldest of printed books, was brought out at Subiaco in 1465.

74. Guanahani. The native name of the first island discovered by Columbus.

107. The belting wall of Cambalu, etc. The royal residence of the Khan of Cathay. Compare Milton, Paradise Lost,' xi. 388: Čambalu, seat of Cathayan Can.'

109. Prester John was a mythical Christian king of India. Compare Much Ado About Nothing,' ii. 1. 274: I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the furthest inch of Asia, bring you the length of Prester John's foot.'

117. Howl'd me from Hispaniola. The name which Columbus gave to the island of Hayti.

125. Fonseca, my main enemy at their court. Juan Rodriguez Fonseca, a bigoted Spanish prelate, who called Columbus a visionary and treated him with persistent malignity.

126. Bovadilla. The Francisco de Bobadilla mentioned above.

144. Veragua. A province of New Granada in South America.

190. The Catalonian Minorite. Bernardo Buil (Boyle), a Benedictine monk, according to the best authorities (not a Minorite, or Franciscan), who was sent by the Pope to the new Indies in June, 1493, as apostolical vicar. He hated Columbus, but there seems to be no evidence that he excommunicated him.

206. Colon. The Spanish form of Columbus.'

Page 479. THE VOYAGE OF MAELDUNE.

Line 22. Fainter than any flitter mouse-shriek. The cry of the bat, which in England is popularly called flittermouse' (fluttering-mouse), 'flickermouse,' or flindermouse.' Compare Ben Jonson, Sad Shepherd,' ii. 8: And giddy flittermice, with leather wings,' etc.

26. They almost fell on each other. This idea, which occurs so often in the poem, is not to be found in the old legend.

48. The triumph of Finn. Finn, the son of Cumal, was the most renowned of all the heroes of ancient Ireland. He was commander of the Feni, or Feni of Erin,' a sort of standing army maintained by the monarch for the support of the throne. Each province had its own soldiers under a local captain, but all were under one commander-in-chief. Finn was equally brave and sagacious. His foresight was, indeed, so extraordinary that the people believed it to be a preternatural gift, and a legend was invented to account for it. He was killed at a place

called Athbrea, on the Boyne, A. D. 284. Ossian, or Oisin, the famous hero-poet, to whom the bards attribute many poems still extant, was the son of Finn.

55. The Isle of Fruits. The poet may have got the hint of this island from the isle of intoxicating wine-fruits' in the Celtic tale; but the rich details of the picture are all his own.

.

77. That undersea isle. The description here is developed from the simple statement in the old legend that they could see, beneath the clear water, a beautiful country, with many mansions surrounded by groves and woods.' So far from being tempted to dive down to the place, the sight of an animal fierce and terrible' which infests it makes them tremble lest they may not be able to cross the sea over the monster, on account of the extreme thinness of the water; but after much difficulty and danger they get across it safely.'

105. The Isle of the Double Towers. If I had not read the old tale, I should have said that this quaint and wild conception must have been taken from it; but, though it seems so thoroughly like a Celtic fancy, there is nothing in the legend that could have suggested it.

115. Saint Brendan. One of the most famous of the ancient Celtic legends is that of 'The Voyage of Saint Brendan,' undertaken in the sixth century. He set out from Kerry, sailed westward into the Atlantic, and, as some believed, landed on the shore of America. The adventures he met with were as varied and surprising as those of Maeldune.

Page 484. PREFATORY SONNET TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.'

Line 3. Their old craft, seaworthy still. The Contemporary Review.'

6

7. This roaring moon of daffodil. Compare The Winter's Tale,' iv. 4. 118:

daffodils

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.

Page 484. TO THE REV. W. H. BROOK

FIELD.

Line 6. We paced that walk of limes. Compare In Memoriam,' lxxxvii.:

Up that long walk of limes I past

To see the rooms in which he dwelt.

11. Our kindlier, trustier Jaques. The allusion to As You Like It' needs no explanation. Page 484. MONTENEGRO.

Line 12. Great Tsernogora! Or Tzernagora, the native name of Montenegro.

Page 488. To E. FITZGERALD.

Line 15. Your table of Pythagoras. For the allusion to the vegetarianism of the old philosopher, based on the doctrine of metempsychosis, compare Twelfth Night,' iv. 2. 54:

Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild-fowl?

Malvolio. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.

Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion? Malvolio. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.

Clown. Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness. Thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam.

For the poet's account of the vegetarian dream, see the Memoir,' vol. ii. p. 317. The visit to Fitzgerald was made in 1876.

16. A thing enskied. See 'Measure for Measure,' i. 4. 34: 'I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted.'

28. Of Eshcol hugeness. See Numbers, xiii. 23.

32. Your golden Eastern lay. The 'Rubaiyát of Omar Kayyam, translated by Fitzgerald in 1859.

46. My son. Tennyson.

Hallam, the present Lord

Page 489. TIRESIAS.

Line 9. My son. Used in a familiar figurative way. Menaceus, whom he addresses below, was the son of Creon, and directly descended from Cadmus, who had offended Ares (Mars) by killing the dragon guarding a spring sacred to the god.

25. Subjected to the Heliconian ridge. 'Subjected' is used in its etymological sense of lying below.

38. There in a secret olive-glade I saw, etc. The description of the goddess is nowise inferior to that of the same goddess and her companion deities in Enone."

96. The song-built towers and gates. The walls of Thebes rose to the music of Amphion's harp, as those of Troy to Apollo's. Compare 'Enone.'

Page 495. DESPAIR.

Line 21. In the drear nightfold of your fatalist. The 1881 reading was dark nightfold.'

75. Tho' glory and shame dying out for ever, etc. The 1881 reading was: Tho' name and fame dying out,' etc.

Page 504. TO-MORROW.

Line 31. The white o' the may. All the English editions have May;' but I have no doubt that the reference is to the blossoms of the white hawthorn, as in The Village Wife,' line 80. See note on that passage.

48. The Sassenach whate. The Saxon (English) wheat.

Page 508. PROLOGUE TO GENERAL HAMLEY. Line 5. You came, and look'd, and loved the view, etc. The view from the poet's summer residence at Aldworth.

28. Tel-el-Kebir. A village in Lower Egypt, about fifty miles northeast of Cairo. Here, on the 13th of September, 1882, the English under General Wolseley defeated the Egyptian insurgents under Arabi Pasha, whose surrender soon followed.

Page 509. THE CHARGE OF THE HEAVY BRIGADE AT BALACLAVA.

Line 5. When the points of the Russian lances arose on the sky. Originally, broke in on the sky.'

14-21. Thousands of horsemen had gather'd there on the height, etc. For these eight lines the first version had:

Down the hill slowly thousands of Russians

Drew to the valley, and halted at last on the height, With a wing push'd out to the left, and a wing to the right

But Scarlett was far on ahead, and he dashed up alone Thro' the great gray slope of men,

And he wheel'd his sabre, he held his own

Like an Englishman there and then;

And the three that were nearest him follow'd with force, etc.

Page 510. EPILOGUE.

Irene. The name, which is the Greek word for peace,' is in keeping with the character.

Line 14. Or Trade re-frain the Powers, etc. The hyphen is apparently intended to call attention to the derivation of 're-frain' from the late Latin refrenare, to bridle or hold in with a bit (frenum).

17. Kelt. Elsewhere the poet uses the form 'Celt.' Compare In Memoriam,' cix.: The blind hysterics of the Celt; A Welcome to Alexandra': Teuton or Celt, or whatever we be,' etc.

45. I will strike,' said he, etc. See his Ode (i. 1. 35, 36):

18. The Northern Island sunder'd once from all the human race. Compare the first Eclogue,' 67: Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.' Page 513. EARLY SPRING.

Line 19. The woods with living airs. Originally, by living airs.'

33. A gleam from yonder vale. Originally, 'Some gleam,' etc.

Page 514. Frater Ave Atque Vale. The Latin quotations in the poem are from Catullus, the Frater ave atque vale' being the end of his lament for the loss of his brother (101.10).

Page 514. HELEN'S TOWER.

Line 4. Mother's love in letter'd gold. The

ume.

Page 515. HANDS ALL ROUND.

The version of this song in the 'Examiner' was as follows:

First drink a health, this solemn night,

A health to England, every guest; That man's the best cosmopolite

Who loves his native country best.

May Freedom's oak for ever live

With stronger life from day to day;
That man 's the true Conservative
Who lops the moulder'd branch away.
Hands all round!

God the tyrant's hope confound!

To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends, And the great name of England, round and round.

A health to Europe's honest men!

Heaven guard them from her tyrants' jails! From wronged Poerio's noisome den,

From iron'd limbs and tortured nails! We curse the crimes of Southern kings,

The Russian whips and Austrian rods -
We likewise have our evil things;

Too much we make our Ledgers, Gods.
Yet hands all round!

God the tyrant's cause confound!

To Europe's better health we drink, my friends,
And the great name of England, round and round!

What health to France, if France be she,
Whom martial prowess only charms?

Yet tell her better to be free

Than vanquish all the world in arms. Her frantic city's flashing heats

But fire, to blast, the hopes of men. Why change the titles of your streets? You fools, you'll want them all again. Yet hands all round!

God their tyrant's cause confound!

To France, the wiser France, we drink, my friends, And the great name of England, round and round.

Gigantic daughter of the West,

We drink to thee across the flood,
We know thee most, we love thee best,
For art thou not of British blood?
Should war's mad blast again be blown,
Permit not thou the tyrant powers
To fight thy mother here alone,

But let thy broadsides roar with ours.
Hands all round!

God the tyrant's cause confound!
To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends,
And the great name of England, round and round.

O rise, our strong Atlantic sons,

When war against our freedom springs!
O speak to Europe through your guns!
They can be understood by kings.

You must not mix our Queen with those
That wish to keep their people fools;
Our freedom's foemen are her foes,
She comprehends the race she rules.
Hands all round!

God the tyrant's cause confound!

To our dear kinsmen of the West, my friends,

And the great cause of Freedom, round and round.

All the reprints (not excepting that in the 'Memoir,' which has the tyrant's' in the 3d stanza, and 'great kinsmen' in the last) are more or less inaccurate. Only the first stanza of this version appears in the present song, which was written to be sung by Mr. Santley, at St. James's Hall, London, on the Queen's birthday, May 24, 1882.

The 6th line then had 'larger' for 'stronger,' and the 11th line had the great,' as also in the 11th line of the other two stanzas.

This new version as printed in the 'Tiresias' volume had true Cosmopolite' and 'best Conservative.' In 1889 it took its present form. Page 516. FREEDOM.

Line 3. The pillar'd Parthenon. Sometimes printed (without authority, as Lord Tennyson told me) the column'd Parthenon.'

17-20. Of Knowledge fusing class with class, etc. This stanza was not in the poem as first printed.

21. Who yet, like Nature, etc. Originally, Who, like great Nature,' etc. The next line had our Human Star.'

Page 516. POETS AND THEIR BIBLIOGRA

PHIES.

Line 6. Adviser of the nine-years ponder'd lay. See Horace, Ars Poetica,' 388.

8. Catullus, whose dead songster never dies. Lesbia's sparrow.

Page 517. LOCKSLEY HALL SIXTY YEARS AFTER.

For a long review of the poem by Mr. W. E. Gladstone, see 'The Nineteenth Century' for January, 1887. In the closing paragraph there is a reference to a criticism in the "Spectator (of December 18, 1886) bearing the signs of a master hand,' and finding a perfect harmony, a true equation, between the two "Locksley Halls; "the warmer picture due to the ample vitality of the prophet's youth, and the colder one not less due to the stinted vitality of his age.' I add a portion of the article to which Mr. Gladstone alludes:

"The critics hitherto have done no justice to Tennyson's "Locksley Hall," if, indeed, they have carefully read it. We venture to say that it is at least as fine a picture of age reviewing the phenomena of life, and reviewing them with an insight impossible to youth into all that threatens man with defeat and degradation, though of course without any of that irrepressible elasticity of feeling which shows even by the very wildness and tumult of its despair that despair is, for it, ultimately impossible; as Tennyson's earlier poem was of youth passionately resenting the failure of its first bright hope, and yet utterly unable to repress the promise and potency" of its buoyant vitality. The difference between the "Locksley Hall' of Tennyson's early poems and the "Locksley Hall" of his latest is this that in the former all the melancholy is attributed to personal grief, while all the sanguine visionariness which really springs out of overflowing vitality justifies itself by dwelling on the cumulative resources of science and the arts; in the latter, the mel

66

ancholy in the man, a result of ebbing vitality, justifies itself by the failure of knowledge and science to cope with the moral horrors which experience has brought to light, while the setoff against that melancholy is to be found in a real personal experience of true nobility in man and woman. Hence those who call the new "Locksley Hall" pessimist seem to us to do injustice to that fine poem. No one can expect age to be full of the irrepressible buoyancy of youth. Age is conscious of a dwindling power to meet the evils which loom larger as experience widens. What the noblest old age has to set off against this consciousness of rapidly diminishing buoyancy is a larger and more solid experience of human goodness, as well as a deeper faith in the power which guides youth and age alike. Now Tennyson's poem shows us these happier aspects of age, though it shows us also that exaggerated despondency in counting up the moral evils of life which is one of the consequences of dwindling vitality. Nothing could well be finer than Tennyson's picture of the despair which his hero would feel if he had nothing but "evolution" to depend on, or than the rebuke which the speaker himself gives to that despondency when he remembers how much more than evolution there is to depend on, how surely that has been already evolved" in the heart of man which, itself inexplicable, yet promises an evolution far richer and more boundless than is suggested by any physical law. The final upshot of the swaying tides of progress and retrogression, in their periodic advance and retreat, is, he tells us, quite incalculable by us - the complexity of the forward and backward movements of the wave being beyond our grasp;-and yet he is sure that there is that in us which supplies an ultimate solution of the riddle.

'On the whole, we have here the natural pessimism of age in all its melancholy, alternating with that highest mood like "old experience which, in Milton's phrase, "doth attain to something like prophetic strain." The various eddies caused by these positive and negative currents seem to us delineated with at least as firm a hand as that which painted the tumultuous ebb and flow of angry despair and angrier hope in the bosom of the deceived and resentful lover of sixty years since. The later "Locksley Hall" is in the highest sense worthy of its predecessor.'

Line 1. Half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts, etc. Compare the opening lines of the first Locksley Hall.'

13-16. In the hall there hangs a painting, etc. These two couplets were originally written for the first Locksley Hall.' See the notes on that poem.

29. Cross'd! for once he sail'd the sea, etc. The crossed feet indicate that the knight was a Crusader.

42. Cold upon the dead volcano, etc. Compare Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal': The soul partakes the season's youth,

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe

Truth for truth and good for good! The good, the true, the pure, the justTake the charm "For ever" from them, and they crumble into dust.

Has Tennyson ever written anything which concentrates into a single line more of the wisdom of maturity than the last line here quoted?'

73. Gone the cry of Forward, Forward!' Compare the first Locksley Hall': 'Forward, forward let us range,' etc.

78. Let us hush this cry of Forward!' till ten thousand years have gone. Compare The Golden Year':

Ah, folly for it lies so far away,
Not in our time, nor in our children's time,
"T is like the second world to us that live;
'T were all as one to fix our hopes on heaven
As on the vision of the golden year.

89. France had shown a light to all men, etc. Referring to the French Revolution. 'Demos (Suos) is the Greek name for the common people.

95. Peasants maim the helpless horse. The allusion, as Lord Tennyson wrote me, is to 'modern Irish doings.' The next couplet refers to an actual instance of wanton cruelty reported in the newspapers at the time.

103. Cosmos. Order and harmony as opposed to chaos.' 'The fabric of the external universe first received the title of cosmos, or "beautiful "' (Trench).

110. Equal-born? oh, yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat. The critic of the London Academy' (January 1, 1887) asks: 'Is it defensible to twist the Radical's demand for equality" of rights into a statement that all men arе equal-born" in order to pour a very natural contempt upon it?' It is this equality of inalienable rights,' not equality of rank or endowments, which the Declaration of Independence claims for all men.

116. The voices from the field. The vote of the laboring classes.

130. Thro' the tonguesters we may fall. Tennyson has tonguesters' (which he may have coined) again in Harold,' v. 1.: