Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 402, April, 1849

"I was at school – a college in the south:There lived a flay-flint near; we stole his fruit,His hens, his eggs; but there was law for us;We paid in person. He had a sow, sir: sheWith meditative grunts of much content,Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud.By night we dragg'd her to the college towerFrom her warm bed, and up the cork-screw stair,With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow,And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.Large range of prospect had the mother sow,And but for daily loss of one she lov'd,As one by one we took them – but for this,As never sow was higher in this world,Might have been happy: but what lot is pure?We took them all, till she was left aloneUpon her tower, the Niobe of swine,And so returned unfarrow'd to her sty."

The Princess; a Medley, now claims our attention. This can no longer, perhaps, be regarded as a new publication, yet, being the latest of Mr Tennyson's, some account of it seems due from us. With what propriety he has entitled it "A Medley" is not fully seen till the whole of it has come before the reader; and it is at the close of the poem that the author, sympathising with that something of surprise which he is conscious of having excited, explains in part how he fell into that half-serious, half-bantering style, and that odd admixture of modern and mediæval times, of nineteenth century notions and chivalrous manners, which characterise it, and constitute it the medley that it is. Accident, it seems, must bear the blame, if blame there be. The poem grew, we are led to gather, from some chance sketch or momentary caprice. So we infer from the following lines, —

"Here closed our compound story, which at first,Perhaps, but meant to banter little maidsWith mock heroics and with parody;But slipt in some strange way, cross'd with burlesqueFrom mock to earnest, even into tonesOf tragic."

– However it grew, it is a charming medley; and that purposed anachronism which runs throughout, blending new and old, new theory and old romance, lends to it a perpetual piquancy. Speaking more immediately and critically of its poetic merit, what struck us on its perusal was this, that the pictures it presents are the most vivid imaginable; that here there is an originality and brilliancy of diction which quite illuminates the page; that everything which addresses itself to the eye stands out in the brightest light before us; but that, where the author falls into reflection and sentiment, he is not equal to himself; that here a slow creeping mist seems occasionally to steal over the page; so that, although the poem is not long, there are yet many passages which might be omitted with advantage. As to that peculiar abrupt style of narrative which the author adopts, it has, at all events, the merit of extreme brevity, and must find its full justification, we presume, in that half-burlesque character which is impressed upon the whole poem.

The subject is a pleasing one – a gentle banter of "the rights of woman," as sometimes proclaimed by certain fair revolutionists. The feminine republic is dissolved, as might be expected, by the entrance of Love. He is not exactly elected first president of the republic; he has a shorter way of his own of arriving at despotic power, and domineers and scatters at the same time. In vain the sex band themselves together in Amazonian clubs, sections, or communities; he no sooner appears than each one drops the hand of his neighbour, and every heart is solitary.

The poem opens, oddly enough, with the sketch of a baronet's park, which has been given up for the day to some mechanics' institute. They hold a scientific gala there. Rapidly, and with touches of sprightly fancy, is the whole scene brought before us – the holiday multitude, and the busy amateurs of experimental philosophy.

"Somewhat lower down,A man with knobs and wires and vials firedA cannon: Echo answered in her sleepFrom hollow fields: and here were telescopesFor azure views; and there a group of girlsIn circle waited, whom the electric shockDislinked with shrieks and laughter: round the lakeA little clock-work steamer paddling plied,And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls,A dozen angry models jetted steam;A petty railway ran; a fire-balloonRose gem-like up before the dusky groves,And dropt a parachute and pass'd:And there, through twenty posts of telegraph,They flash'd a saucy message to and froBetween the mimic stations; so that sportWith science hand in hand went: otherwherePure sport: a herd of boys with clamour bowl'dAnd stump'd the wicket; babies roll'd aboutLike tumbled fruit in grass; and men and maidsArrang'd a country-dance, and flew through lightAnd shadow." —

Here we are introduced to Lilia, the baronet's young and pretty daughter. She, in a sprightly fashion that would, however, have daunted no admirer, rails at the sex masculine, and asserts, at all points, the equality of woman.

"Convention beats them down;It is but bringing up; no more than thatYou men have done it; how I hate you all!O were I some great princess, I would buildFar off from men a college of my own,And I would teach them all things; you would see.'And one said, smiling, 'Pretty were the sight,If our old halls could change their sex, and flauntWith prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.… Yet I fear,If there were many Lilias in the brood,However deep you might embower the nest,Some boy would spy it.'"At this upon the swardShe tapt her tiny silken-sandal'd foot:'That's your light way; but I would make it deathFor any male thing but to peep at us.'Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd;A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,And sweet as English air could make her, she."

Hereupon the poet, who is one of the party, tells a tale of a princess who did what Lilia threatened – who founded a college of sweet girls, to be brought up in high contempt and stern equality of the now domineering sex. This royal and beautiful champion of the rights of woman had been betrothed to a certain neighbouring prince, and the poet, assuming the character of this prince, tells the tale in the first person.

Of course, the royal foundress of a college, where no men are permitted to make their appearance, scouts the idea of being bound by any such precontract. The prince, however, cannot so easily resign the lady. He sets forth, with two companions, Cyril and Florian. The three disguise themselves in feminine apparel, and thus gain admittance into this palace-college of fair damsels.

"There at a board, by tome and paper, sat,With two tame leopards couch'd beside her throne,All beauty compass'd in a female form,The princess; liker to the inhabitantOf some clear planet close upon the sun,Than our man's earth. She rose her height and said:'We give you welcome; not without redoundOf fame and profit unto yourselves ye come,The first-fruits of the stranger; aftertime,And that full voice which circles round the graveWill rank you nobly, mingled up with me.What! are the ladies of your land so tall?''We of the court,' said Cyril. 'From the court!'She answered; 'then ye know the prince?'And he,'The climax of his age: as tho' there wereOne rose in all the world – your highness that —He worships your ideal.' And she replied:'We did not think in our own hall to hearThis barren verbiage, current among men —Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment:We think not of him. When we set our handTo this great work, we purposed with ourselvesNever to wed. You likewise will do well,Ladies, in entering here, to cast and flingThe tricks which make us toys of men, that so,Some future time, if so indeed you will,You may with those self-styled our lords allyYour fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.'At these high words, we, conscious of ourselves,Perused the matting."

In this banter is not unfairly expressed a sort of reasoning we have sometimes heard gravely maintained. We women will not be "the toys of men." We renounce the toilette and all those charms which the mirror reflects and teaches; we will be the equal friends of men, not bound to them by the ties of a silly fondness, or such as a passing imagination creates. Good. But as the natural attraction between the sexes must, under some shape, still exist, it may be worth while for these female theorists to consider, whether a little folly and love, is not a better combination, than much philosophy and a coarser passion; for such, they may depend upon it, is the alternative which life presents to us. Love and imagination are inextricably combined; in our old English the same word, Fancy, expressed them both.

Strange to say, the princess has selected two widows, (both of whom have children, and one an infant,) – Lady Blanche and Lady Psyche – for the chief assistants, or tutors, in her new establishment. Our hopeful pupils put themselves under the tuition of Lady Psyche, who proves to be a sister of one of them, Florian. This leads to their discovery. After Lady Psyche has delivered a somewhat tedious lecture, she recognises her brother.

"'My brother! O,' she said;'What do you here? And in this dress? And these?Why, who are these? a wolf within the fold!A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me!A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin all!'"

All three appeal to Psyche's feelings. The appeal is effectual, though the reader will probably think it rather wearisome: it is one of those passages he will wish were abridged. The lady promises silence, on the condition that they will steal away, as soon as may be, from the forbidden ground on which they have entered.

The princess now rides out, —

"To takeThe dip of certain strata in the north."

The new pupils are summoned to attend her.

"She stoodAmong her maidens higher by the head,Her back against a pillar, her foot on oneOf those tame leopards. Kitten-like it rolled,And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near:My heart beat thick with passion and with awe;And from my breast the involuntary sighBrake, as she smote me with the light of eyes,That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shookMy pulses, till to horse we climb, and soWent forth in long retinue, following upThe river, as it narrow'd to the hills."

Here the disguised prince has an opportunity of furtively alluding to his suit, and to his precontract – even ventures to speak of the despair which her cruel resolution will inflict upon him.

"'Poor boy,' she said, 'can he not read – no books?Quoit, tennis-ball – no games? nor deals in thatWhich men delight in, martial exercises?To nurse a blind ideal like a girl,Methinks he seems no better than a girl;As girls were once, as we ourselves have been.We had our dreams, perhaps he mixed with them;We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it,Being other – since we learnt our meaning here,To uplift the woman's fall'n divinityUpon an even pedestal with man."

Well, after the geological survey, and much hammering and clinking, and "chattering of stony names," the party sit down to a sort of pic-nic. And here Cyril, flushed with the wine, and forgetful of his womanly part, breaks out into a merry stave "unmeet for ladies."

"'Forbear,' the princess cried, 'Forbear, Sir,' I—And, heated through and through with wrath and love,I smote him on the breast; he started up;There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd."

That "sir," that manly blow, had revealed all; there was a general flight. The princess, Ida, in the tumult is thrown, horse and rider, into a stream. The prince is, of course, there to save; but it avails him nothing. He is afterwards brought before her, she sitting in state, "eight mighty daughters of the plough" attending as her guard. She thus tauntingly dismisses him: —

"'You have done well, and like a gentleman,And like a prince; you have our thanks for all:And you look well too in your woman's dress;Well have you done and like a gentleman.You have saved our life; we owe you bitter thanks:Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood;Then men had said – but now —You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'dOur tutors, wrong'd, and lied, and thwarted, us —I wed with thee! I bound by precontract,Your bride, your bond-slave! not tho' all the goldThat veins the world were packed to make your crown,And every spoken tongue should lord you.'"

Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough usher them out of the palace. We shall get into too long a story if we attempt to narrate all the events that follow. The king, the father of the prince, comes with an army to seek and liberate his son. Arac, brother of the princess, comes also with an army to her protection. The prince and Arac, with a certain number of champions on either side, enter the lists; and in the mêlée, the prince is dangerously wounded. Then compassion rises in the noble nature of Ida; she takes the wounded prince into her palace, tends upon him, restores him. She loves; and the college is for ever broken up – disbanded; and the "rights of woman" resolve into that greatest of all her rights – a heart-affection, a life-service, the devotion of one who is ever both her subject and her prince.

This account will be sufficient to render intelligible the few further extracts we wish to make. Lady Psyche, not having revealed to her chief these "wolves" whom she had detected, was in some measure a sharer in their guilt. She fled from the palace; but the Princess Ida retained her infant child. This incident is made the occasion of some very charming poetry, both when the mother laments the loss of her child, and when she regains possession of it.

"Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah my child!My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more;For now will cruel Ida keep her back;And either she will die for want of care,Or sicken with ill usage, when they sayThe child is hers; and they will beat my girl,Remembering her mother. O my flower!Or they will take her, they will make her hard;And she will pass me by in after-lifeWith some cold reverence, worse than were she dead.But I will go and sit beside the doors,And make a wild petition night and day,Until they hate to hear me, like a windWailing for ever, till they open to me,And lay my little blossom at my feet,My babe, my sweet Aglaïa, my one child:And I will take her up and go my way,And satisfy my soul with kissing her.'"

After the combat between Arac and the prince, when all parties had congregated on what had been the field of battle, this child is lying on the grass —

"Psyche ever stoleA little nearer, till the babe that by us,Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede,Lay like a new-fallen meteor on the grass,Uncared for, spied its mother, and beganA blind and babbling laughter, and to danceIts body, and reach its fatling innocent arms,And lazy lingering fingers. She the appealBrook'd not, but clamouring out, 'Mine – mine – not yours;It is not yours, but mine: give me the child,'Ceased all in tremble: piteous was the cry."

Cyril, wounded in the fight, raises himself on his knee, and implores of the princess to restore the child to her. She relents, but does not give it to the mother, to whom she is not yet reconciled – gives it, however, to Cyril.

"'Take it, sir,' and soLaid the soft babe in his hard-mailèd hands,Who turn'd half round to Psyche, as she sprangTo embrace it, with an eye that swam in thanks,Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot,And hugg'd, and never hugg'd it close enough;And in her hunger mouth'd and mumbled it,And hid her bosom with it; after thatPut on more calm."

The two kings are well sketched out – the father of Ida, and the father of our prince. Here is the first; a weak, indulgent, fidgetty old man, who is very much perplexed when the prince makes his appearance to demand fulfilment of the marriage contract.

"His name was Gama; crack'd and small in voice;A little dry old man, without a star,Not like a king! Three days he feasted us,And on the fourth I spoke of why we came,And my betroth'd. 'You do us, Prince,' he said,Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,'All honour. We remember love ourselvesIn our sweet youth: there did a compact passLong summers back, a kind of ceremony —I think the year in which our olives failed.I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart; —With my full heart! but there were widows here,Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;They fed her theories, in and out of place,Maintaining that with equal husbandryThe woman were an equal to the man.They harp'd on this; with this our banquets rang;Our dances broke and hugged in knots of talk;Nothing but this: my very ears were hotTo hear them. Last my daughter begg'd a boon,A certain summer-palace which I haveHard by your father's frontier: I said No,Yet, being an easy man, gave it.'"

The other royal personage is of another build, and talks in another tone – a rough old warrior king, who speaks through his beard. And he speaks with a rough sense too: very little respect has he for these novel "rights of women."

"Boy,The bearing and the training of a childIs woman's wisdom."

And when his son counsels peaceful modes of winning his bride, and deprecates war, the old king says: —

"'Tut, you know them not, the girls:They prize hard knocks, and to be won by force.Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to themAs he that does the thing they dare not do, —Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comesWith the air of trumpets round him, and leaps inAmong the women, snares them by the score,Flatter'd and fluster'd, wins, tho', dash'd with death,He reddens what he kisses: thus I wonYour mother, a good mother, a good wife,Worth winning; but this firebrand – gentlenessTo such as her! If Cyril spake her true,To catch a dragon in a cherry net,And trip a tigress with a gossamer,Were wisdom to it.'"

With one charming picture we must close our extracts, or we shall go far to have it said that, with the exception of scattered single lines and phrases, we have pillaged the poem of every beautiful passage it contains. Here is a peep into the garden on the college-walks of our maiden university:

"ThereOne walked, reciting by herself, and oneIn this hand held a volume as to read,And smooth'd a petted peacock down with that.Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by,Or under arches of the marble bridgeHung, shadow'd from the heat."

It may be observed that we have quoted no passages from this poem, such as we might deem faulty, or vapid, or in any way transgressing the rules of good taste. It does not follow that it would have been impossible to do so. But on the chapter of his faults we had already said enough. Mr Tennyson is not a writer on whose uniform good taste we learn to have a full reliance; on the contrary, he makes us wince very often; but he is a writer who pleases much, where he does please, and we learn at length to blink the fault, in favour of that genius which soon after appears to redeem it.

Has this poet ceased from his labours, or may we yet expect from him some more prolonged strain, some work fully commensurate to the undoubted powers he possesses? It were in vain to prophesy. This last performance, The Princess, took, we believe, his admirers by surprise. It was not exactly what they had expected from him – not of so high an order. Judging by some intimations he himself has given us, we should not be disposed to anticipate any such effort from Mr Tennyson. Should he, however, contradict this anticipation, no one will welcome the future epic, or drama, or story, or whatever it may be, more cordially than ourselves. Meanwhile, if he rests here, he will have added one name more to that list of English poets, who have succeeded in establishing a permanent reputation on a few brief performances – a list which includes such names as Gray, and Collins, and Coleridge.

ARISTOCRATIC ANNALS.12

Here are three books analogous in subject, and nearly coincident in publication, but of diverse character and execution. We believe the vein to be rather a new one, and it is odd that three writers should simultaneously begin to work it. Mr Craik claims a slight precedence in date; his work differs more from the other two than they from each other, and is altogether of a higher class. He is very exact and erudite – at times almost too much so for the promise of amusement held out by his attractive title-page. In his preface he explains, that it is with facts alone he professes to deal, and that he "aspires in nowise to the airy splendours of fiction. The romance of the peerage which he undertakes to detail is only the romantic portion of the history of the peerage." He has adopted the right course; any other, by destroying the reality of his book, would have deteriorated its value. And the events he deals with are too curious and remarkable to be improved by imaginative embellishment. He is occasionally over-liberal of genealogical and other details, which few persons, excepting those to whose ancestors they relate, will care much about; but as a whole, his book possesses powerful interest, and as he goes on – for he promises four or five more volumes – that interest is likely to rise. Of the two volumes already published, the second is more interesting than the first. Both will surely be eagerly read by the class to which they more particularly refer, but probably neither will be so generally popular as Mr Peter Burke's compilation of celebrated trials. Here we pass from historical to domestic romance. There is a peculiar and fascinating interest in records of criminal jurisprudence; an interest greatly enhanced when those records include names illustrious in our annals. Mr Peter Burke has done his work exceedingly well. He claims to have assembled, in one bulky volume, all the important trials connected with the aristocracy, not of a political nature, that have occurred during the last three centuries, "divested of forensic technicality and prolixity, and accompanied by brief historical and genealogical information as to the persons of note who figure in the cases." He has been so judicious as to preserve, in most instances, in the exact words in which they were reported, the evidence of witnesses, the pleadings of counsel, and the summing up of the judges; thus presenting us with much quaint and curious narrative as it fell from the lips of the noble persons concerned, and with many eloquent and admirable speeches from the bar and the bench. The volume, wherever it be opened, instantly rivets attention. We can hardly speak so laudatorily of the third book under notice. "Flag is a big word in a pilot's mouth," says Cooper's boatswain, when Paul Jones forgets his incognito – and Burke is an imposing name to stand in initialless dignity on the back of Mr Colburn's demy octavo. The Burke here in question is well known as the manufacturer of a Dictionary of Peers, of a Baronetage, and so forth. As a relief from such mechanical occupation, he now strays into "those verdant and seductive by-ways of history, where marvellous adventure and romantic incident spring up, as sparkling flowers, beneath our feet." The sparkle of the flowers in question is, as his readers will perceive, nothing to the sparkle of Mr Burke's style. Ne sutor, &c., means, we apprehend, in this instance, let not Burke, whose prename is Bernard, go beyond his directories. Instead of wandering into picturesque cross-roads, he should have pursued the highway, where his industry had already proved useful to the public, and doubtless profitable both to himself and to his worthy publisher. Better far have stuck to Macadam, instead of rambling amongst the daisies, where he really does not seem at home, and makes but a so-so appearance. Not that his book is dull or unamusing; it would have been difficult to make it that, with a subject so rich and materials so abundant. But it certainly owes little to the style, which, although quite of the ambitious order, is eminently mawkish. Of the legends, anecdotes, tales, and trials, composing the volumes, some of the most interesting are unduly compressed and slurred over, whilst others, less attractive, are wearisomely extended by diluted dialogues and insipid reflections. People do not expect namby-pamby in a book of this kind. They look for striking and amusing incidents, plainly and unpretendingly told. They do not want, for instance, such inflated truisms and sheer nonsense as are found at pages 194 to 196 of Mr Burke's first volume. We cite this passage at random out of many we have marked. We abstain from dissecting it, out of consideration for its author, who, we daresay, has done his best, and whose chief fault is, that he has done rather too much. We have read his book carefully through with considerable entertainment. It is full of good stories badly told. Fortunately, being chiefly a compilation, it abounds in long extracts from better writers than himself. But every now and then we come to a bit that makes us exclaim with the old woman in the church, "that's his own!"