plain of the want of rhyme, there being in the first part of each verse no less than four lines jingling together. A refrain of this description may have its appropriate place in a song of two or three verses; but when persevered in throughout a poem of some length, it becomes intolerable. The attention is perpetually called off from the poem itself, to watch how the writer brings in his invariable endings of Camelot,' and ' Lady of Shalott.' It is as if in travelling along some highway, whatever might be the interest of the scene over which the broad day was pouring, we were compelled by some ridiculous fascination to watch the recurrence, at stated intervals, of the tall, empty lamp-posts that stand beside the road, and so journey on from post to post, incessantly on the look out for what we feel to be the absurd object of an involuntary curiosity. We would as willingly be sent back to read acrostics, or study anagrams, or peruse those pretty little poems that were written in long and short lines, so dexterously arranged as to imitate the wings of Cupid, either folded or outspread, as best accorded with the sentiment.

On this subject of versification it may be worth while to observe that it is evidently the tendency of our best modern writers to adopt in verse the same manner of pronouncing and spelling all words as is usual in prose; and, as it seems to us, with very good reason. As the termination (ed) of our participle is never, or rarely, pronounced, we cannot understand why it should be thought necessary, in metrical compositions, to spell it with the mark of elision. In the first line, for instance, of the above extract, why should it not be written hushed, as well as hush'd? No one would ever think of pronouncing this as a word of two syllables, unless constrained to do so by some caprice of the versifier. So, too, if the final vowel in the article the, when followed by a word commencing also with a vowel, is so faintly pronounced as not to constitute a separate syllable, we may safely leave it standing; there is no necessity to write it thus, th', in order to put us in mind of a rapid pronunciation, which we should naturally adopt. Neither does this orthography truly represent the pronunciation it would intimate, for the vowel, though faintly and rapidly sounded, is not entirely dropped. In such a line as this of Milton's,

"Whom thus th' angelic," &c.

Having alluded to this subject of versification, we may as well insert here a remark which Mr. Tennyson must have provoked from every one who has an ear for "Whom thus the angelic Virtue answered mild," the music of verse. He is fond of making experiments in versification, and in order no one feels the least redundancy, yet no to obtain a novel measure, he occasionally one would pronounce it, sacrifices that melody which is the very essence of all metre, and which, even in prose, is found to be the natural companion of all pathetic language. No prose, we are sure, could be produced more rough and more jarring to the ear than some of Mr. Tennyson's experimental verse. We venture to say that, even in the language of conversation, no one ever puts together such jerking, jolting, unmodulated diction. as may be found in the following example. It is the second verse of a piece entitled 'A Song,' a very plain misnomer, since there is scarcely a musical line in the whole composition:

The air is damp, and hush'd, and close,
As a sick man's room when he taketh repose
An hour before death;

My very heart faints, and my whole soul grieves
At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves,
And the breath

Of the fading edges of box beneath,
And the year's last rose.

Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i'the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.'

A verse is not a verse because it is made to count; it must be a verse to the ear, and that without any torturing of the language. Still less can we approve of such an abbreviation as the following

"Over its grave i' the earth so chilly."

No one living leaves out the consonant in the monosyllable in. Examples cited from the older poets, in whose time, no doubt, the word was occasionally pronounced in this manner, cannot justify a recurrence to the practice now, when such a pronunciation would be considered either a vulgarity

an affectation. Poetry should surely employ the best English that is spoken, and not, in the exigencies of metre, have recourse to what, out of verse, would be censured as a vicious, slovenly, or pedantic pronunciation. Usage may, in some instances, sanction a departure from the ordinary orthography and pronunciation of

prose; but these instances should be re- nursery rhymes. They have the requisite stricted, and not multiplied. Common freedom from meaning, but the phrase is sense tells us that a poet can gain nothing, too learned; they lack that coaxing simand may sacrifice much, by calling our at-plicity of language which wins the immortention to petty singularities of language, tality of the nursery. Is it enough to say or by manufacturing his line out of what, of such verses that they are imitations at best, are the admitted artifices of the of certain antique specimens, found predistressed versifier. served, perhaps, in Shakspeare and others We perceive that we have veered round of the elder dramatists, which themselves imperceptibly to the cold and windy side have no possible interest apart from their of the hill, and must now proceed with our antiquity, or the use made of them by these strictures and censures upon our author. poets? Is it very wise or profitable to be This is a part of our critical function, to manufacturing modern antiques, whose best us by no means the most agreeable. We recommendation is a very indifferent imitawould rather occupy the remaining space tion of rust? Or is this a specimen of that we can devote to Mr. Tennyson, in culling rejuvenescence of our literature, which, out the admirable passages of his works. according to some, took place on the reBut it is a review, an estimate of the poet, vived study of the Percy Ballads? we have undertaken, and not the more pleasing and easy task of selecting 'elegant extracts.' We have already intimated that Mr. Tennyson shares in the two prevalent and very different failings of modern poetry; on the one hand, trifling with its reader by its negligence, caprice, and puerility; and, on the other, losing itself in obscurity by vain efforts at philosophical profundity, or over subtle imaginations.

* When cats run home, and light is come,
And dew is cold upon the ground,

And the far-off stream is dumb,
And the whirring sail goes round,
And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone, and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

'When merry milkmaids click the latch,
And rarely smells the new-mown hay,
And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
Twice or thrice his roundelay,
Twice or thrice his roundelay;

Alone, and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.

Thy tuwhits are lull'd, I wot,
Thy tuwhoos of yesternight,
Which upon the dark afloat,
So took echo with delight,
So took echo with delight,
That her voice untuneful grown,
Wears all day a fainter tone.

'I would mock thy chaunt anew;
But I cannot mimic it;

Not a whit of thy tuwhoo.
Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,
Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,
With a lengthen'd loud halloo,
Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o.'

So much has been written on this matter of abused simplicity in the various reviews of the poetry of Wordsworth, who chose to veil his genius occasionally under a very peculiar affectation; and the subject appears to be now so generally understood, that we shall not here enlarge upon it. We shall content ourselves with relating a little German fairy tale, which may not inaptly illustrate this species of literary rejuvenescence.

In those olden times, when the marvels of witchcraft and alchemy put to the blush the wonders of our modern chemistry, a certain mysterious damsel had concocted for herself the elixir of youth. Whenever she detected the least inroad of time upon her beauty, she had recourse to this liquid, and a few drops immediately repaired the damage. A handmaid who waited on her, at length discovered the secret of her perpetual freshness. She, too, had a few years, or a few wrinkles, that she would gladly lay aside. One day, in the absence of her mistress, she stole into her chamber, and seized the precious liquid; but in her eagerness to be again restored to perfect youth, she took so large a draught that she found herself suddenly dwindled-to a little child! She had drunk herself back to infancy, and stood there-like some of our modern poets-in lamentable conviction, at once, and punishment, of her fault.

To

But it is in the somewhat contradictory error of a profound obscurity that Mr. Tennyson more frequently offends. metaphysics, in metaphysical garb, we willingly address ourselves with all becoming patience. We are prepared for difficulties, and do not shrink from their encounter. | But here, in poetry, in what should be the

luxury of letters, to be confounded by ob- Cleaving—took root-
scurities which, at all events, in depths of
shadow might rival the chapters of Kant or
Hegel-it is too much. After having read
on, with due attention, to the end of a
poem, to have deliberately to recommence,
to analyze, to apply as many tests as a

And so on to the end, in the same unintelligible or extravagant style, and in the same jarring, dislocating verse, framed, as it were, for the purpose of producing discord, of balking the ear, and adding as much as possible to the confusion and obscurity of the sense.

most.

chemist in order to discover some meaning There is an ambitious Ode to Memory, in it-this, we say, is a grievance of which we have just right to complain. Perhaps, lamentable instance of a vain and painful the whole of which might be quoted as a at length, we detect some glimpse of meanaffectation of profundity. Every reader ing, some vague general idea, which when of English poetry is acquainted with the we attempt to express in our own humble ode of Wordsworth, where he traces in prose, looks very like an old acquaintance, childhood the intimations of an ante-natal whom there was no necessity to disstate of existence. In this ode a philoguise in so much mummery. And be the idea new or old, what is to be said of that sophical fancy is pushed, we feel to its utexposition of a truth which first presents simple and innocent period of existence, so Childhood is no longer the most you something as a riddle to be guessed at, full of free, fresh, uncareful life; it comes and when that something is divined, leaves you without a shred of appropriate lan-trailing clouds of glory' from the heavens. It is not enough that its young eye, so senguage to invest it with leaves you, in fact, sitive to all impressions, kindles at the noto huddle it up, after all, in whatever coarse vesture of your own may first come to hand? velty of this world; it is not indeed the To show the dark, perplexed, absurd novelty of this world, but the reminiscence of a brighter, that calls the light into its manner in which our poet, elsewhere so adquick, inconstant gaze. For our own part, mirable, can write, we will quote some verses of a piece entitled The Poet. It nothing short of the beauty of that poet's opens boldly and well.

The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above;

verse could reconcile us to a strain of sentiment so forced and unnatural, and which robs childhood of its true and genuine charm-greater far, we think, than any

Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, which a Platonic philosophy can supply. The love of love,'

After this, the whole poem is one dim and preposterous rant.

'He saw thro' life and death, thro' good and ill, He saw thro' his own soul.

The marvel of the everlasting will,

An open scroll,

Before him lay.'

Mr. Tennyson, falling into the same strain of thought, swells into still greater exaggeration, and speaks of

The deep mind of dauntless infancy!'

We presume, at least, that he is here following in the same track of Platonic contemplation, but our readers shall judge

The poet was manifestly something other for themselves; we will give them an op

than mere mortal man.

'with echoing feet he threaded The secret'st walk of fame:

The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed
And winged with flame.'

They must have been visible at least at both
ends.

'Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue,
And of so fierce a flight,

From Calpe and Caucasus they sung,
Filling with light,

And vagrant melodies the wind which bore
Them earthward till they lit;

Then like the arrow-seeds of the field flower,
The fruitful wit

portunity of trying their own acuteness and
perspicacity on the verse of our poet.

'In sweet dreams, softer than unbroken rest
Thou leadest by the hand thine infant hope,
The eddying of her garments caught from thee
The light of thy great presence; and the cope
Of the half-attained futurity,
Though deep, not fathomless,

Was cloven with the million stars which tremble
O'er the deep mind of dauntless nfancy.
Small thought was there of life's distress;
For sure she deem'd no mist of earth could dull
Those spirit-thrilling eyes so keen and beautiful;
Sure she was nigher to heaven's spheres,
Listening the lordly music flowing from
The illimitable years.

Oh, strengthen me, enlighten me!
I faint in this obscurity,

Thou dewy dawn of memory.'

There are probably two, and only two |ing verses from a poem addressed To J. S., of these lines, (they occur several times in on the occasion, as we learn from the poem the course of the poem, and are repeated itself, of the loss of a dear brother. as if for our relief, as a sort of refrain,) which the reader follows with a consenting mind

'Oh, strengthen me, enlighten me!
I faint in this obscurity.'

But he must not prefer the petition they express to our author; for we assure him that throughout the whole piece there is not a single fragment a whit more intelligible or more likely to enlighten him, than what we have quoted.

In The Palace of Art one gathers something of the intention of the poet-one catches at a certain general idea-but one gathers, at the same time, that he has failed in any forcible exposition of it. To borrow an expression from a sister art, 'nothing is made out.' The Two Voices, again, is a very long and tedious dialogue between the better and worse parts of our own nature; if not so obscure as others, it is, owing to its greater length, full as wearisome.

some

In this last poem, however, there is a brief passage so excellent that we cannot resist the pleasure of quoting it. And this we do the more readily, because it fairly illustrates the current strain of Mr. Tennyson's poetry, which, to its praise be it said, is quite free from that Byronic gloom and sullenness which infected many of the minor poets of our age.

Whatever crazy sorrow saith,

No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.

"Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh, life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that we want.'

'God give us love. Something to love
He lends us; but, when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone.

'Let grief be her own mistress still.
She loveth her own anguish deep
More than much pleasure. Let her will
Be done to weep or not to weep.

'Words weaker than your grief would make
Grief more. "Twere better I should cease;
Altho' myself could almost take

The place of him that sleeps in peace.

'Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace:
Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul,
While the stars burn, the moons increase,
And the great ages onward roll.

'Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet.

Nothing comes to thee new or strange,
Sleep full of rest from head to feet;
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.

MODERN FRENCH PHILOSOPHY.

From the British Quarterly Review.

Here we must part company with Mr. Tennyson. We have been very sparing of quotations brought forward to justify our critical charges against him; for what can be more tedious and distressing to our readers than to have the dark spots selected from an author, and brought together in gloomy contiguity? We are confident we are far more obliging them, as we are gratifying ourselves far more, when we cull out what is beautiful and worthy of admiration. As we have exercised this forbearance in THIS is a posthumous and incomplete adverse quotation, we may still have space work of the lamented Jouffroy, the disciple Its chief article to conclude with one more extract of a and succcessor of Cousin. pleasing description. We take the follow-is a long and elaborate "Treatise on the

Nouveaux Melanges Philosophiques, par THEODORE JOUFFROY, Membre de l'Institut, Professeur de Philosophie à la Faculté des Lettres, précédés d'une notice et publies par PH. DAMIRON. Paris, 1842.