"

Passing over other things, we now come to smoother water--the Essay on
Tennyson. Here there is, of course, much to say "on both sides." Many of
us would have liked a little less poet-worship, and a little more
scrutiny. "The Princess" is dismissed with a line or two of
apology--but it is far more, for Dr. Bayne's purpose, than "a
serio-comic poem,"--it contains, indirectly, a great deal of
self-disclosure. There is something very wrong about M. Taine's way of
looking at Mr. Tennyson's domestic sweetness, but he has a glimpse of a
truth about the poet and his work. Whatever the worshippers of Mr.
Tennyson may say, his poetry contains more feeling after human passion
if haply he may find it, than of passion itself; and he _is_
conventional. He has never been right out and away into the
wilderness. His poetry wants largeness, boldness, and breadth of
atmosphere. We find no fault--being profoundly grateful for what this
exquisite singer has given us; and knowing better than to expect
contradictory qualities from the same harp; and certainly M. Taine has
made a great blunder in setting up Alfred de Musset on the other side of
his antithesis--but it is a fact that Mr. Tennyson has shown in his
writings a tendency (or sub-tendency, if the phrase may pass) to please
Mrs. Grundy, as well as the higher Pallas--a tendency which does a
little to excuse those who insult the poor old soul without occasion;
and who, indeed, are sometimes thought to be grimacing at the Divine
Wisdom, when they are only teasing the old lady.

The subject of "Emendations" interests Mr. Bayne more than it does us,
and we decidedly disagree with him in his general apology for the
digging up of early writings which the writers may be presumed to wish
kept dark. The alteration in the words of Iphigenia in the "Dream of
Fair Women" is not as good as it might be, and Mr. Bayne most justly
condemns "the bright death," but it is quite clear that the lines as
they originally stood--

"One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat
Slowly--and nothing more--"

did not, grammatically considered, express the poet's meaning; and are
certainly open to ridicule on other grounds. The words, "And _I knew_ no
more," _do_ express the meaning.

The alterations and additions in "Maud" appear to us to be about as bad
as they could be. Explanatory additions were wanted, but not those flat
prosaic lines, though Mr. Bayne appears to like them. On the other hand