cal, familiarized it in
every mouth. All this splendour of fame, however, though we had not the
sagacity to anticipate, we have the candour to acknowledge: and we
request that the publisher of the new and beautiful edition of Keats's
works now in the press, with graphic illustrations by Calcott and
Turner, will do us the favour and the justice to notice our conversion
in his prolegomena.

Warned by our former mishap, wiser by experience, and improved, as we
hope, in taste, we have to offer Mr. Tennyson our tribute of unmingled
approbation, and it is very agreeable to us, as well as to our readers,
that our present task will be little more than the selection, for their
delight, of a few specimens of Mr. Tennyson's singular genius, and the
venturing to point out, now and then, the peculiar brilliancy of some of
the gems that irradiate his poetical crown.

A prefatory sonnet opens to the reader the aspirations of the young
author, in which, after the manner of sundry poets, ancient and modern,
he expresses his own peculiar character, by wishing himself to be
something that he is not. The amorous Catullus aspired to be a sparrow;
the tuneful and convivial Anacreon (for we totally reject the
supposition that attributes the [Greek: Eithe lure chale genoimen] to
Alcaeus) wished to be a lyre and a great drinking cup; a crowd of more
modern sentimentalists have desired to approach their mistresses as
flowers, tunicks, sandals, birds, breezes, and butterflies;--all poor
conceits of narrow-minded poetasters! Mr. Tennyson (though he, too,
would, as far as his true love is concerned, not unwillingly 'be an
earring,' 'a girdle,' and 'a necklace,' p. 45) in the more serious and
solemn exordium of his works ambitions a bolder metamorphosis--he wishes
to be--_a river_!

SONNET.

'Mine be the strength of spirit fierce and free,
Like some broad river rushing down _alone_'--

rivers that travel in company are too common for his taste--

'With the self-same impulse wherewith he was thrown'--

a beautiful and harmonious line--

'From his loud fount upon the echoing lea:--
Which, with _increasing_ might, doth _forward flee_'--

Every word of this line is valuable--the natural progress of human
ambition is here strongly characterized--two lines ago he would have
been satisfied with the _self-same_ impulse--but now he must have
_increasing_ might; and indeed he would require all his might to
accomplish his object