ENOCH ARDEN, etc. By ALFRED TENNYSON, D.C.L., Poet Laureate.
Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1864.

Tennyson has so many devoted admirers, that this volume cannot fail to
receive due attention. The principal poem therein, Enoch Arden, is one
of touching pathos and simplicity. Three children, Enoch Arden, Philip
Ray, and Annie Lee, grew up together on the British coast a hundred
years ago. Both youths loved Annie: she loved and married Enoch. They
live happily together until three children are born to the house: then
poverty threatens, and Arden leaves home to provide for the loved ones.
He is cast away on an island, is not heard, from for ten years, and
Annie reluctantly consents to marry Philip, who has been a father to her
children during their long orphanage. Arden returns at last to his
native village, so old, gray, and broken, that no one recognizes him.
He hears how true his wife had been to him until all hope had died away,
and how Philip cared for her peace, and cherished his children. The
wretched man resolves to bear his grief in silence, and never to bring
agony and shame to a peaceful home by disclosing his return. He does
this in a spirit of Christian self-abnegation, lives near the
unconscious darlings of his heart, earns his frugal living, watching
round, but never entering the lost Paradise of his youth. He dies, and
only at the hour of death, reveals to Annie how he had lived and loved.
The _theme_ of this tale has often been taken before. It has been
elaborated with passion and power in the 'Homeward Bound' of Adelaide
Procter, a poetess too little known among us.

There is great purity of delineation and conception in Enoch Arden. The
characters stand out real and palpable in their statuesque simplicity.
There is agony enough, but neither impatience nor sin. The epithets are
well chosen; but the usual wildering sensuousness of Tennyson's glowing
imagery is subdued and tender throughout the progress of this melancholy
tale.

'Aylmer's Field,' about the same length, is a poem of more stormy mould.
It hurls fierce rebukes at family pride, and just censures at tyrannical
parents.

The volume contains many shorter poems, some of which are already
familiar to our readers.

AZARIAN: An Episode. By HARRIET ELIZABETH PRESCOTT, Author of 'The
Amber Gods,' etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

We like 'Azarian' better than any work we have yet seen from Miss
Prescott. Ruth Yetton, the heroi