O ABOUT NOTHING.

In the chancel of Clevedon Church, Somersetshire, rest the mortal
remains of Arthur Henry Hallam, eldest son of our great philosophic
historian and critic,--and the friend to whom "_In Memoriam_" is sacred.
This place was selected by his father, not only from the connection of
kindred, being the burial-place of his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham
Elton, but likewise "on account of its still and sequestered situation,
on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel." That lone hill, with
its humble old church, its outlook over the waste of waters, where "the
stately ships go on," was, we doubt not, in Tennyson's mind, when the
poem, "Break, break, break," which contains the burden of that volume in
which are enshrined so much of the deepest affection, poetry,
philosophy, and godliness, rose into his "study of imagination"--"into
the eye and prospect of his soul."[36]

[36] The passage from Shakspeare prefixed to this paper, contains
probably as much as can be said of the mental, not less than
the affectionate conditions, under which such a record as
_In Memoriam_ is produced, and may give us more insight into
the imaginative faculty's mode of working, than all our
philosophizing and analysis. It seems to let out with the
fulness, simplicity, and unconsciousness of a
child--"Fancy's Child"--the secret mechanism or procession
of the greatest creative mind our race has produced. In
itself, it has no recondite meaning, it answers fully its
own sweet purpose. We are not believers, like some folks, in
the omniscience of even Shakspeare. But, like many things
that he and other wise men and many simple children say, it
has a germ of universal meaning, which it is quite lawful to
bring out of it, and which may be enjoyed to the full
without any wrong to its own original beauty and fitness. A
dew-drop is not the less beautiful that it illustrates in
its structure the law of gravitation which holds the world
together, and by which "the most ancient heavens are fresh
and strong." This is the passage. The Friar speaking of
Claudio, hearing that Hero "died upon his word," says,--

"The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of her life
Shall come apparelled