-

on a theme of this kind with the correct and stately march of Mr. Wordsworth's verse, and the clear succession of his thoughts and images in treating a similar subject. In the passage of 'The Excursion' all is bold, distinct, orderly; in the ballad, thoughts and images are heaped one upon another like storm-clouds gilded by the struggling sunshine. An effect is produced upon the feelings by the exhibition, but the mind is bewildered in attempting to discover its plan. The startling phænomena of some of Mr. Turner's later pictures, with their strangely mingled hues and forms-if form that can be called which certain form hath none to the common eye- have been defended on the very deep and wide ground, that so great a painter must know what he is about better than any of his critics, and is a far more competent judge both what Nature is and how she ought to be put into a picture, than men who have not spent their lives in studying her and drawing her portrait. This is a sort of apology which Homer and Shakspeare, Raphael and Correggio have never needed. We cannot help thinking that there must be some common ground on which cultivated minds in general and the mind of the painter and the poet can meet, and that this is the true ground of art; though doubtless there is some difficulty in ascertaining what it is, and what cultivation qualifies those who are not themselves painters and poets to judge well of painting and of poetry. Be that as it may, the vision of the world in 'Lockesley Hall' is worthy of Turner in his wildest mood of lavish gorgeousness-more especially the argosies of magic sails, pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales,' and the ghastly dew' that 'rains from the airy navies grappling in the central blue,' together with the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunderstorm.' We cannot but think that such a passage as this occurring in an ancient author would become a locus vexatissimus; and, after giving rise to a crowd of conjectures, would be dropped as hopelessly corrupt, with sighs of regret to think how fine it would be if it were but intelligible. For it would be gravely observed that 'pilots of the purple twilight' could not drop down with costly bales,' or stand in apposition to argosies with magic or any other kind of sails; that navies engaged in conflict do not rain dew ;' that the south wind can never be a world-wide whisper;' and that all this commotion of the elements, though it might be used metaphorically to represent great changes in the social machinery of the world, produces utter confusion when thus huddled in by the side of them, as if the two were homogeneous.* Both

* We cannot forbear adding a few words in connexion with the subject of moral

poetry

Both parties of his admirers alike have been looking with lively interest for the appearance of a new publication; but if there are any who have expected to see his poetry condense into the philosophic or expand into the epic style, to them the present performance must be at first a disappointment, although it is such a work as none but a man of genius would have wrought, and worth far more than most philosophies and religions in verse with which the world has been edified. In the extravagance of the plan, in the cast of some of the characters, and sometimes in the flow of the verse, it resembles Beaumont and Fletcher's plays more than any other productions. Those plays, seen in skeleton, would seem incapable of assuming an aspect of beauty; yet by the filling up they become, if not regular beauties, yet very fascinating irregular ones.

The Princess,' however, is not a drama, nor is it a fairy tale in verse, but a fantastic metrical romance. It commences with a prologue. Sir Walter Vivian gives an entertainment to the people on a summer's day in his grounds. The sports and spectacles denote the advance of science and the taste of the wealthy giver of the feast, a great, broad-shouldered, genial Englishman-a lord of fat prize oxen and of sheep.' While the festivities are going on, his son and daughter have a playful dispute concerning the rights and duties of nature's noblest work, the lasses O,' and the latter declares that if she were a great princess she would found, far off from men, a college for ladies, and teach them all things. In pursuance of this thought the author tells the tale of The Princess'-tales being told for pastimeand makes himself the hero-an Adonis of course ::

A Prince I was, blue-eyed and fair of face,

With lengths of yellow ringlet like a girl,' &c. &c.

The story is composed of such small and numerous parts that a close analysis of it would be tedious; it would be as if one were to display the lacy vein-work of a leaf apart from the cellular tissue, or the anatomy of a butterfly's wing from which all the fine fairy plumage has been brushed away. The Crown-Prince of a country somewhere in the north is betrothed in childhood to the Princess Royal of a country somewhere in the south. Arrived at marriageable years, the damsel, instead of being ready to fulfil her engagement, flies off to a summer palace, granted to

poetry on the Spenserian spirit of a poem by Mr. Milnes, The Northern Knight in Italy. In this production, a subject which Titian might have chosen is treated almost with the tenderness and piety of Perugino or Fra Angelico. It has not the affluence of Spenser, but is remarkable for that interfusion of a Christian spirit with the materials out of which a gay and graceful Polytheism carved a semi-divine system of religion, which is conspicuous in the ‘Faery Queen.' 2 G 2

her

her with some reluctance by her father, King Gama, and there founds an university, in company with two widows (both mothers, too), who have promoted her enthusiasm, and volunteered an active part in bringing it to bear-to wit, the lovely and blooming Lady Psyche, and the Lady Blanche, who has outlasted her natural bloom.

The Prince and his two friends, Florian and Cyril, visit this new university, disguised as women. They are introduced to Ida, The Princess, who remarks on their height, but takes them for what they pretend to be; afterwards Florian is recognised by the Lady Psyche-her ladyship happening to be his sister-and the whole plot of the visitors becomes known not only to her, but also to the pretty daughter of Lady Blanche, by name Melissa, and by and bye to her mother; but these ladies, from different motives, conceal the fact from their Head, in violation of the rules of the institution, and in disregard of the inscription on the gate,Let no man enter in on pain of death.' Descriptions are given of the college, and some lecturing of one of the professoresses is reported. The strangers accompany the Head and her train on a scientific excursion, to take the dip of certain strata, during which the love of the Prince is converted from a dream into a waking reality, but receives no encouragement from the lofty discourse of the Buckland in petticoats. The whole company enter a satin-domed tent, most elegant and luxurious, and there the adventurers betray themselves in consequence of a brawl between the Prince and Cyril, when the latter gentleman, being affected by the contents of the flask, and at all times given to bursts and starts of revel,' begins to troll a careless tavern catch, unmeet for ladies. The Princess hastily takes to horse with her maidens, and in flying away falls into a river, whence she is rescued, in accordance with several orthodox precedents, by her lover. Cyril makes his escape; after a while the Prince and Florian are pursued, seized, and dragged before the princess. Lady Psyche has fled; Lady Blanche, in spite of a bitter exculpatory harangue, is dismissed; Melissa remains in the college, by her own wish and her mother's permission; and Psyche's babe is retained by their offended mistress, for her own gratification and the unhappy mother's punish

ment.

Ida

Next come letters to Ida, one from the good easy little man Gama, informing her that he has fallen into the hands of the prince's father, by whom he is kept hostage for his son; another from that stern old gentleman himself, denouncing war. dismisses the prince and his friend with high disdain, causing them to be pushed out of doors by her body-guard. The Prince's father,

father, on regaining his fair son, releases Gama. Psyche is in despair at being separated from her babe Aglaïa, spite of attempts at consolation on the part of Florian and of Cyril :—

'She veil'd her brows, and prone she sank, and so,

Like tender things that being caught feign death,
Spoke not, nor stirr'd.'-p. 99.

Arac, the stalwart brother of Ida, takes up his sister's cause, and after some parley and consultation it is agreed that the two parties, that for the Prince and that for the Princess, shall determine the matter by tourney-fight. The lists are prepared and the combatants meet, fifty on either side. Arac and his men prove victorious. The Prince falls grievously wounded in a close encounter, and is left for dead on the field; Cyril and Florian are also among the wounded, and lie in evil case not far from him.

Ida, who has beheld the battle from on high with Psyche's babe in her arms, is overcome by pity at beholding her lover's woful plight :

'Her iron will was broken in her mind;

Her noble heart was molten in her breast.'-p. 126.

On Cyril's interference she restores Aglaia to her deeply-distressed mamma. After a warm remonstrance from her own father, who tells her that she has no heart at all, or such

As fancies, like the vermin in a nut,

Have fretted all to dust and bitterness,'-p. 134.

and some keen reproaches from the father of the Prince, she becomes reconciled to her once dear friend Psyche, admits her lover and his wounded companions into the college, and sends home till happier times the fair academicians, except a few 'held sagest,' who are kept to nurse the sufferers and to advise.

The last portion of the poem shows how Psyche tends Florian, and how Florian, who had been smitten before, obtains the hand and heart of Melissa, who is often present at the nursing; how Cyril, after due difficulty and delay, prospers in his suit with Psyche; how Ida watches over the Prince in his desperate prostration, while he 'lies silent in the muffled cage of life;' how sadness falls on her soul at the frustration of her high plans, and how she finds fair, peace once more among the sick;' how, in this critical conjuncture of events and circumstances, she undergoes a change of thoughts, feelings, and purposes; discovers that it is best for women to play a feminine part in the drama of life, and learns to return love for love. In the end she renews her plighted faith, and with a colloquy between the re-affianced pair on the diversity of man and woman, and of their walk in this world, the tale of The Princess' comes to an end. The subject

of

of the prologue is resumed with spirit and finished in a brief conclusion.

The moral of this poetical history has already been intimated; it is a truth which has been known and acted on ever since Adam received a helpmate, not to do his work, but other work which he could not do; the simple truth that woman, in soul as in body, is no duplicate of man, but the complement of his being; that her sphere of action is not commensurate or parallel with his, but lies within it, sending its soft influence throughout his wider range, so that the two have an undivided interest in the whole. Woman is to man not as one side of a building to the opposite side, but as the lightsome interior of a fabric to the solid and supporting exterior, or as the silken inner vest to the outer tunic of strong cloth. But hear how the Prince gives the lesson himself:For woman is not undevelopt man,

But diverse could we make her as the man,

Sweet love were slain, whose dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.

Yet in the long years liker must they grow

The man be more of woman, she of man;

He gain in sweetness and in moral height,

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care:
More as the double-natured Poet each-

Till at the last she set herself to man,

Like perfect music unto noble words.'-p. 156.

If any shade of doubt has ever rested on such plain truths as these (and would that Mr. Tennyson always expressed the truths he has to tell with the same perspicuity), it is not merely because we cannot see the soul or measure the intellect, as we can discern the comparative smallness of woman's head or the delicate proportions of her cylindrical arm, but because men have not clearly distinguished between that part of our complex being which is conformed to a mere earthly existence, and that higher portion, the reasonable and moral mind, which is to fit us for a state where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriagethat heaven of the soul, spread like a deep blue sky above its earthly part, in which men and women are on an equality. There are two lines of the gentle poet Spenser which are most unchivalrous :

'Of work divine

Those two the first and last proportions are;
The one imperfect, mortal, feminine,

The other immortal, perfect, masculine.'

Women might say to poets, who speak thus, what the lion said

to