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positions of the multiplex character which has been described. It is a kind of writing, therefore, to which some species of rythmical movement is indispensable, as any one will find who attempts to draft a difficult and comprehensive enactment, with the omission of all the words which speak to the ear only and are superfluous to the sense.

Let me not be misunderstood as presuming to find fault generally and indiscriminately with our modern manner of writing. It may be adapted to its age and its purposes; which purposes, as bearing directly upon living multitudes, have a vastness and momentousness of their own. All that it concerns me to aver is, that the purpose which it will not answer is that of training the ear of a poet to rythmical melodies. And how little it lends itself to any high order of poetical purposes, may be judged by the dreary results of every attempt which is made to apply it to purposes of a cognate character to prayers, for example, and spiritual exercises. Compare our modern compositions of this kind with the language of the liturgy-a language which, though for the most part short and ejaculatory and not demanding to be rythmic in order to be understood, partakes, nevertheless, in the highest degree, of the musical expressiveness which pervaded the compositions of the time. Listen to it in all its varieties of strain and cadence, sudden or sustained,-now holding on in assured strength, now sinking in a soft contrition, and anon soaring in the joyfulness of faith-confession, absolution, exultation, each to its appropriate music, and these again contrasted with the steady statements of the doxologies;-Let us listen, I say, to this language, which is one effusion of celestial harmonies, and compare with it the flat and uninspired tones and flagging movements of those compounds of petition and exhortation (from their length and multifariousness peculiarly demanding rythmic support) which are to be found in modern collections of prayers for the use of families. I think the comparison will constrain us to acknowledge that short sentences in long succession, however clear in construction and correct in grammar, if they have no rythmic impulse-though they may very well deliver themselves of what the writer thinks and means will fail to bear in upon the mind any adequate impression of what he feels-his hopes and fears. his joy, his gratitude, his compunction, his anguish and tribulation; or, indeed, any assurance that he had not merely framed a docu

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ment of piety, in which he had carefully set down whatever was most proper to be said on the mornings and evenings of each day. These compositions have been, by an illustrious soldier, designated fancy prayers,' and this epithet may be suitable to them in so far as they make no account of authority and prescription; but neither to the fancy nor to the imagination do they appeal through any utterance which can charm the ear.

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We have inserted these observations of the author of Philip Van Artevelde, at length, as they may, perhaps, induce some of our readers to consider the topics discussed; and in thus reading and considering they will learn the secret of many a poetic failure in our days.

We have not written of Maud without much debate and close attention; we not only reprobate the poem as a work unworthy Alfred Tennyson, but we also censure it for its probable effect upon the taste of those who are the admirers and followers of the school of modern verse writers who model their style upon that of the Laureate. Doubtless the age of slip-slop and of Della Crusca was pitiable, the age of "Brummagem" Byronic passion, and turn down collars was absurd, but neither was so objectionable as that style which may spring, in this age, from a succession of publications such as Maud. That the Laureate can produce better and more worthy things none will doubt, none would willingly doubt; and his millions of readers would regret the decadence of his genius, as friends mark the traces of decay and time upon the face of one loved in youth and primal freshness.

Let this Maud be the last of failures, or of books issued because a certain time may have elapsed from the succeeding publication let the singer be silent till the spirit of song be upon him, and then, even though, as Tennyson himself tells us, the

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"Youth was full of foolish noise," yet a nobler time will come for the poet, and amidst all the immortal band who have been the glory of our language, the author of Maud will live for ever, and his reputation be that of one

"Who wears his manhood hale and green."

See "Notes from Life, in Six Essays," By Henry Taylor. London: Murray, 1848, p. 170.

But, some blind adorer of the Tennysonian muse may exclaim, this Maud is an allegory; an allegory of what? of the War? So much the worse, because in this case it is so unlike an allegory, that it requires some such explanation as that furnished by the botch painter, who, intending to draw a cock, painted something so unlike the chanticleer, that he was forced to write under, "This is a cock." If it be an allegory,who is Maud? Is she Turkey, "with a sensitive nose;" "only the child of her mother?" Are England and France the lover with "a waxen face," A rabbit mouth that is ever agape?" Is Russia the "big brother?""That oiled and curled Assyrian Bull ?" If Maud be an allegory it is a mistake, wild, aimless, and false as the first line of Locksley Hall, which, though the poem is of our own time and age, tells the comrades of the jilted suitor to "sound upon the bugle horn," when they want him. In truth Maud is not an allegory, it is only a wild, carelessly written poem, "full of sound and fury," but too often "signifying nothing."

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But is this the poetry which Alfred Tennyson should present us? In the prime of existence; living as he pleases; with no necessity to fear to-day lest to-morrow may bring its galling struggles of sordid poverty-thus placed in life, with the great field of nature and of the human heart, with all their phases of hope, and love, and ever changing, yet ever living passionwhy has he written this Maud? He who has been tender; so deep in pathos; so fierce in the energetic expression of wild and bitter feeling; he who was himself so earnest a lover, and so true a painter of material nature, making her beauties more beautiful by the hues of his own bright, sunny fancy, was Maud the poem for him to write? Heaven knows, the prizes of life are few, and are only attainable after the dust and sweat of the arena have been endured: but, if the prizes of common life be thus difficult to secure, surely the Poet's wreath is, in this age, the most doubtful in attainment of all: why then should he, who has borne it honorably away, be careless of the lustre of its ever sparkling sheen, or forget that if it shine not amongst the great poets of the past,-those "Lights of the world and demi-gods of fame," it shines not at all.

What matters it that Moxon has sold 3,000, or 5,000, copies of this first edition of Maud: 3,000, or 5,000 people who estimated Alfred Tennyson as a Poet have been forced, by Alfred Tennyson himself, to suspend their judgment, and to consider that he may be, after all, but a verse-spinning, prose-in

verting, phrase-monger. What Moxon may sell, or may not sell, is no longer the question: he cannot sell future poems of Alfred Tennyson, if they be not far superior in composition, in fancy, and in thought to Maud; and such a poem as the world now demands the Laureate can never more write unless he keep before his mind the philosophy of Wordsworth's thought, and can cry, addressing Poetry,

"Be mute who will, who can,
Yet will I praise thee with impassion'd voice!
Me didst thou constitute a priest of thine
In such a temple as we now behold,

Rear'd for thy presence; therefore am I bound
To worship, here and every where."

If this be his spirit, Tennyson can once more claim readers by hundreds of thousands; but if the maudlin Maud style be repeated, few will "vex the poet's mind" by criticism- for few will read the poetaster's verses.

ART. II.-JOHN BANIM.

PART VI.

LIFE IN FRANCE. ILLNESS. LETTERS. DISPUTES WITH PUBLISHERS. COMPOSITION OF "THE SMUGGLER," AND OF "THE DWARF BRIDE." WRITES DRAMATIC PIECES FOR THOMAS ARNOLD. "THE DEATH FETCH, OR THE student oF GOTTINGEN," REPRESENTED AT THE ENGLISH OPERA HOUSE: STRICTURES OF "THE TIMES' ON ITS PLOT. LETTERS. ILLNESS OF BANIM'S MOTHER: BEAUTIFUL TRAITS OF HER LOVE FOR JOHN. LETTERS. DEATH OF OLD MRS. BANIM. LEITERS. KINDNESS OF FRIENDS IN BOULOGNE. TROUBLES OF AUTHORSHIP. DISPUTES WITH, AND LOSSES BY, PUBLISHERS. WRITES FOR THE ANNUALS." LETTERS. ILL HEALTH

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AND PECUNIARY EMBARRASSMENTS. A SON BORN. SICK OF
THE CHOLERA; A RELAPSE. PUBLICATION OF THE CHAUNT
OF THE CHOLERA." PUBLICATION OF "THE MAYOR OF
WINDGAP," AND OF MISS MARTIN'S "CANVASSING,'
SERIES OF "TALES BY THE O'HARA FAMILY."
VISIT OF MRS. BANIM TO LONDON. DEBT AND EMBARRASS-
MENT. AFFECTING LETTER. APPEAL ON BANIM'S BEHALF
IN "THE SPECTATOR," AND BY STERLING, "THE THUNDERER,'
IN THE TIMES." LETTER FROM BANIM TO THE TIMES.
MEETINGS IN DUBLIN, CORK, KILKENNY, AND LIMERICK, IN
AID OF BANIM. REPORT OF THE DUBLIN MEETING: MORRISON'S
LARGE ROOM GIVEN FREE OF CHARGE FOR THE MEETING:
THE LORD MAYOR PRESIDES: SHEIL'S SPEECH THE RESO-
LUTIONS AND NAMES OF SUBSCRIBERS AND COMMITTEE.
COMMITTEE ROOM OPENED AT MORRISON'S HOTEL: P. COS-

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TELLOE AND SAMUEL LOVER APPOINTED HONORARY SECRETARIES. LIBERALITY OF THE LATE SIR ROBERT PEEL. LETTERS. A SON BORN. REMOVAL TO PARIS. LETTERS. LINES TO THE COLOSSAL ELEPHANT ON THE SITE OF THE

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BASTILE." ILL HEALTH; COPY OF OPINION ON HIS CASE

BY FRENCH AND ENGLISH SURGEONS. VIOLENT REMEDIES : THEIR UNHAPPY RESULT. LETTERS. ANXIETY TO RETURN TO KILKENNY. THE JOURNEY FROM PARIS TO BOULOGNE; MISHAPS BY THE WAY: LINES," THE CALL FROM HOME." "Whether Hope and I shall ever become intimate again in this world, except on the pilgrimage to the next, is very doubtful," wrote Robert Southey to Henry Taylor, when grief

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