day had its charm at nrst-nay, even its wisdom-but now the gloss of it is over-and the repeaters of the same tone have become fade and sickly the echoes of an echo:-the newer aspirants to Parnassus have united with these models, models even more dangerous, and draw their inspiration now from Keats, and now from Herrick, or copy one line from the Sonnets of Shakspeare, in order to pillage the next from the Fragments of Shelley. The genius of Keats and Shelley scarcely redeemed their own faults; and it is more than doubtful whether the former will ever rank with posterity among the classic names of the age. Judge, then, how inexcusable must be their imitators, who, in copying their faults, have not even originality to plead for them!-they get, by half poisoning their muse, the paleness of their master, but no cummin juice can give them his genius.

Mr. Tennyson has much in him worthier of a better fate than, if he mind the pens of reviewers, he will attain to: he is full of faults; and his faults have been so bepraised, that he runs the natural danger of thinking them beauties. He has filled half his pages with the most glaring imitations, and the imitations have been lauded for their originality. He will be angry with us for attempting to undeceive him; but if the prime of his life be consumed in the pursuit of fameof which a few sickly peculiarities he may now easily eschew is able to deprive him, he may hereafter confess we did not act an unfriendly, though an unpleasing part by him, in assuring his young muse, that to resemble an old poet is not to be original-that Keats and Shelley are abominable models-that the public are better judges of literary merit than reviewers, and that the applause of the latter (the most jealous of all traders) is the surest proof of the neglect of the first-his legitimate-tribunal!

We appeal now to all impartial readers-not drunk with the Wordsworthian pap-whether there be any just cause or reason, besides the rhyme, why the two following specimens of Mr. Tennyson's genius should be called poetry :

O DARLING ROOM.

I.

O darling room, my heart's delight,
Dear room, the apple of my sight,
With thy two couches soft and white,
There is no room so exquisite,
No little room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write.

II.

For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
And Oberwinter's vineyards green,
Musical Lurlei; and between
The hills to Bingen have I been,

Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene
Curves toward Mentz, a woody scene.

III.

Yet never did there meet my sight,
In any town, to left or right,

A little room so exquisite,

With two such couches, soft and white;
Not any room so warm and bright,
Wherein to read, wherein to write."

TO CHRISTOPHER NORTH.

You did late review my lays,
Crusty Christopher;

You did mingle blame and praise,
Rusty Christopher.

When I learnt from whom it (?) came,
I forgave you all the blame,

Musty Christopher;

I could not forgive the praise,
Fusty Christopher."

The severity of the last poem is really scalding; an infant of two years old could not be more biting.

Mark now the magnanimous scorn of rhyme in the following stanza :

From the bank, and from the river,

He flashed into the crystal mirror,
Tirra lirra, tirra lirra,'

Sang Sir Launcelot.

Again, what gratuitous affectation!

Sometimes, with most intensity
Gazing, I seem to see

Thought folded over thought, smiling asleep,

-

Slowly awakened, [what does this mean?] grow so full and

deep

In thy large eyes, that, overpowered quite,

I cannot veil, or droop my sight,

But am as nothing in its light.

And this, too, is love-poetry, which ought to be simple, true, and wholly unaffected, or Burns is a fool at it.

Among the many sins of later poets, which fully excuse the public for contemning their poetry, is a want of all manliness in love. They languish, and drawl, and roll the eyes, and faint; drivel without tenderness, and gloat without being voluptuous. There is an eunuch strain about them; their lachrymose whinings only weary; their unintelligible raptures only disgust. From this sin, Mr. Tennyson, who may serve in many respects as the incarnation of Modern Poetry, is of course not free; but at times there are lines and thoughts which show he is above his system, and that he could be really amorous if he only knew how to set about it. We quote two stanzas which, though not quite free from the taint of affectation, are yet full of beautiful feeling, and serve to show that our poet is worthy the trouble of admonition :

Look through mine eyes with thine. True wife,

Round my true heart thine arms entwine,

My other dearer life in life,

Look through my very soul with thine.

Untouched with any shade of years

May those kind eyes for ever dwell;

They have not shed a many tears,

Dear eyes! since first I knew them well.

I've half a mind to walk, my love,

To the old mill across the wolds,
For look! the sunset from above

Winds all the vale in rosy folds,
And fires your narrow casement-glass,
Touching the sullen pool below.
On the chalk-hill the bearded grass

Is dry and dewless. Let us go.

There is a metaphysical poem in the volume called "The Palace of Art;"—we shall only say of this edifice, that Shelley found all the materials; " A Dream of Fair Women,"-a most conceited title, has also a strong Shelleyan savour. Other poems, called "The Hesperides," Enone," again are of the best Cockney classic; and Keatesian to the marrow,—ex. gr.

and "

1

'O mother Ida, hearken ere I die.
First spake the imperial Olympian
With arched eyebrow smiling sovranly,
Fulleyed Here.

But as a counterpoise to these, are two very sweet and natural poems, called "The May Queen," and "New Year's Eve." If Mr. Tennyson would lean more to the vein manifest in these poems, he would soon insensibly detach himself from his less wholesome tendencies, and would be in everybody's mouth, and out of the reviewers' good graces. There is also in his little volume another poem of remarkable beauty, called the "Death of the Old Year;" we extract it in justice to Mr. Tennyson, though we can ill afford the space:—

Old year, you shall not die.
We did so laugh and cry with you,
I've half a mind to die with you,
Old year, if you must die.

IV.

He was full of joke and jest,
But all his merry quips are o'er.
To see him die, across the waste

His son and heir doth ride post-haste,
But he'll be dead before.

Every one for his own.

The night is starry and cold, my friend,
And the New year blithe and bold, my friend,
Comes up to take his own.

V.

How hard he breathes! over the snow
I heard just now the crowing cock.
The shadows flicker to and fro:

The cricket chirps: the light burns low:
'Tis nearly one o'clock.

Shake hands, before you die.

Old year, we'll dearly rue for you.
What is it we can do for you-
Speak out before you die.

VI.

His face is growing sharp and thin,
Alack! our friend is gone.

Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:

Step from the corpse, and let him in
That standeth there alone,

And waiteth at the door.

There's a new foot on the floor, my friend,

And a new face at the door, my friend,

A new face at the door.

Yet even in this fine poem the reader will perceive the strong love of imitation, and recognize the style and verve of our elder minstrels. In this instance the imitation has been felicitous. O! si şic omnia!

The advice we would give to Mr. Tennyson is applicable to the generality of the "gentle craft" of the day-Sapere principium et fons. Common sense should be the staple of fine verse as of fine prose. The public would rather bear (and very properly) a return to the simplicity of Goldsmith or the polish of Pope, than the unmetrical affectations of second-rate imitators of third-rate men, whom the world has “willingly let die:"-Midases who prefer Pan to Apollo, and

"Whose muses on their racks

Scream like the winding of ten thousand jacks."

Thank Heaven! it will never be the fashion to grate the ear and to puzzle the mind; and it will be in vain to convince the public-a better critic, let Mr. Tennyson be assured, than the Aristarchs of the Westminster Review-that good poetry is manufactured by setting horrible metaphysics to still more horrible music. The style of " Anne's Day," and that of "George the Third," had at least the unpretending merit

of plainness, and that is better than an emasculate floridity. There is a "Bad Florid" in verse as in prose; we do not tolerate the last; but the reviewers, and the recent poets, desire to make us tolerate the first. In whatever new volumes of poetry we open we see the same stamp and character: in some, Folly sitting complacent in its fetters;-in others, as in the case of Mr. Tennyson, Genius struggling to escape. We have been thus harsh with our young poet because we have more hopes of him than of most of his contemporaries. And it is time for a POET once more to arise; arise from the puerilities, the conceits, the effeminacies that cling around the School and Time, from which he must emerge, and awake to the noble and masculine views of his high vocation. Thus duly awakened, and befittingly inspired, how lofty is the position he may occupy!-how magnificent the objects which surround him! The elements of the old world shaken-the mine latent beneath the thrones of kings, and the worm busy at their purple-the two antagonist principles of earth, Rest and Change, mightily at war!— Every moment has its history; and every incident in the common streets of men is full of the vaticination of things to come. A poet, rapt in the spirit of this age, will command the next! What themes and what fame may be reserved for one whose mind can be thus slowly nurtured to great thoughts by great events; steeped in the colours of a dread, yet bright time; elevated with the august hopes that dawn upon his species; and standing on the eminence of one of those eras in the records of the world, in which

"WE SEE, AS FROM A TOWER, THE END OF ALL!”

FOUL parent of fair child! swoll'n Bread tax, thou,
On plunder'd Commerce, didst beget Reform:

We read a bright to-morrow on her brow,

And make our hope thy nursling of the storm!
But many a fanged worm, and human brute,

On whose dark hearts the eye of Love ne'er smil'd,
Would fain the promise of her morn refute.

Die, then, Dread Power, and have no other child!
For it is written, that thy second-born,—

If second-born thou have,-shall thunder-strike
Temple and tower, of strength and splendour shorn
By hands with famine lean; and, Sampson-like,
Shaking the pillars of the gold-roof'd state,
Whelm high and low alike in one remorseless fate.