bad, and then I put two pegs into a
piece of drift wood and so made a chair, and after that it pleased God
to send me a chill.' In real life his piety would scarcely have gone
beyond that.

It will indeed be said, that though the sailor had no words for, and
even no explicit consciousness of the splendid details of the torrid
zone, yet that he had, notwithstanding, a dim latent inexpressible
conception of them: though he could not speak of them or describe
them, yet they were much to him. And doubtless such is the case. Rude
people are impressed by what is beautiful--deeply impressed--though
they could not describe what they see, or what they feel. But what is
absurd in Mr. Tennyson's description--absurd when we abstract it from
the gorgeous additions and ornaments with which Mr. Tennyson distracts
us--is, that his hero feels nothing else but these great splendours.
We hear nothing of the physical ailments, the rough devices, the low
superstitions, which really would have been the _first_ things, the
favourite and principal occupations of his mind. Just so when he gets
home he _may_ have had such fine sentiments, though it is odd, and he
_may_ have spoken of them to his landlady, though that is odder
still--but it is incredible that his whole mind should be made up of
fine sentiments. Beside those sweet feelings, if he had them, there
must have been many more obvious, more prosaic, and some perhaps more
healthy. Mr. Tennyson has shown a profound judgement in distracting us
as he does. He has given us a classic delineation of the 'Northern
Farmer' with no ornament at all--as bare a thing as can be--because he
then wanted to describe a true type of real men: he has given us a
sailor crowded all over with ornament and illustration, because he
then wanted to describe an unreal type of fancied men, not sailors as
they are, but sailors as they might be wished.

Another prominent element in _Enoch Arden_ is yet more suitable to,
yet more requires the aid of, ornate art. Mr. Tennyson undertook to
deal with _half belief_. The presentiments which Annie feels are
exactly of that sort which everybody has felt, and which every one has
half believed--which hardly any one has more than half believed.
Almost every one, it has been said, would be angry if any one else
reported that he believed in ghosts; yet hardly any one, when thinking
by himself, wholly disbelieves them. Just so such presentiments as Mr.
Tennyson depicts, impress t