things in the Old Testament--not to mention
the New Testament--calculated to make "the most innocent or sensitive
maiden" vomit; things that might abash a prostitute and make a satyr
squeamish. We suggest, therefore, that Mr. Hughes should cease canting
about "purity" while he helps to thrust the Bible into the hands of
little children.

The reward of Tennyson's purity, according to Mr. Hughes, was that
"he was able to understand women." "The English race," exclaims the
eulogist, "has never contemplated a nobler or more inspiring womanhood
than that which glows on every page of Tennyson." This is the hectic
exaggeration in which Mr. Hughes habitually indulges. Tennyson never
drew a live woman. Maud is a lay figure, and the heroine of "The
Princess" is purely fantastic. George Meredith beats the late Laureate
hollow in this respect. He is second only to Shakespeare, who here, as
elsewhere, maintains his supremacy.

Mr. Hughes's remarks on _Locksley Hall_ are, to use his own expression,
amazing. "How terribly," he says, "does he [Tennyson] paint the swift
degeneration of the faithless Amy." Mr. Hughes forgets--or _does_ he
forget?--that in the sequel to this poem, entitled _Sixty Years After_,
Tennyson unsays all the high-pitched dispraise of Amy and her squire.
_Locksley Hall_ is a piece of splendid versification, but the hero is a
prig, which is a shade worse than a Philistine. Young fellows mouth the
poem rapturously; their elders smile at the disguises of egotism.

Loveless marriage was reprobated by Tennyson, and Mr. Hughes goes into
ecstacies over the tremendous fact. Like the Psalmist, he is in haste;
he cannot point to a poet who ever hinted the dethronement of love.

A choice Hughesean sentence occurs in this connexion. "I very much
regret," the preacher says, "that Maud's lover was such a conventional
idiot that he should have been guilty of the supreme folly of
challenging her brother to a duel." Shade of Lindley Murrey, what a
sentence! A boy who wrote thus would deserve whipping. And what right,
we ask, has a Christian minister to rail at duelling? It was unknown to
Greek or Roman society. Indeed, it is merely a form of the Ordeal, which
was upheld by Christianity. The duel was originally a direct and solemn
appeal to Providence. Only a sceptic has the right to call it a folly.

Enough of Mr. Hughes as a stylist, a critic, and teacher. What he really
shines in is invention.

His story of the converted