REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

The Poems of Alfred Tennyson. Two vols. 12mo. Boston, William D. Ticknor. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart.

Of the works of cotemporary English poets of the second class, perhaps none have been more commented upon or less read in America than those of Alfred Tennyson. The chief reason may be that never until now having been reprinted here, and a very small number only of the first English impression having been imported, they have not been accessible to many whom the praises or the reviewers would have led to examine into their pretensions. The Cardinal de Richelieu, it is said, fancying himself as skilled in poetry as in diplomacy, wrote a tragedy, which having been damned on its anonymous presentation to the critics, he tore into atoms and burned. For like cause Mr. Tennyson, soon after the publication of his “Poems, chiefly Lyrical,” committed all the copies of them he could regain to the fire. But the cardinal and our cotemporary erred. Time, not fire, is the trier of verse. Upon the surface of the stream of ages the good will at some period rise to float forever, the middling for a while live in the under current of the waters, and in the end, with the utterly worthless, sink into the oblivious mire at the bottom. To this conclusion Mr. Tennyson seems now to have been brought, for he has this summer republished his early poems, with many new ones which, though free from some of the more conspicuous faults of his first productions, generally lack their freshness, beauty and originality. We look in vain in the second volume of the edition before us for pieces surpassing his Mariana, Oriana, Madeline, Adeline, Margaret, The Death of the Old Year, or parts of The Dream of Fair Women. He excels most in his female portraitures; but while delicate and graceful they are indefinite; while airy and spiritual, are intangible. As we read Byron or Burns, beautiful forms stand before us, we see the action of their breathing, read the passionate language of their eyes, involuntarily throw out our arms to embrace them; but we have glimpses only of the impalpable creations of Tennyson, as far away on gold-fringed clouds they bend to listen to dreamlike melodies which go up from fairy lakes and enchanted palaces.

Tennyson has been praised as a strikingly original poet. He has indeed a bold and affluent fancy, whereby he tricks out common thoughts in dresses so unique that it is not always easy to identify them; but we have not seen in his works proofs of an original mind. He certainly is not an inventor of incidents, for most of those he uses were familiar in the last century. Dora he acknowledges was suggested by one of Miss Mitford’s portraits, and the Lady Clare by Mrs. Farrar’s Inheritance; The Day Dream, The Lady of Shalott, and Godiva, are versions of old tales, skilfully made, but showing no creative power. There is a statue-like definiteness and warmth of coloring about the following stanzas from the first of these poems which we have not elsewhere observed in his writings:

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY.

Year after year unto her feet,

She lying on her couch alone,

Across the purpled coverlet,

The maiden’s jet-black hair has grown.

On either side her tranced form

Forth streaming from a braid of pearl:

The slumbrous light is rich and warm,

And moves not on the rounded curl.

The silk star-broider’d coverlid

Unto her limbs itself doth mould

Languidly ever; and, amid

The full black ringlets downward roll’d,

Glows forth each softly-shadow’d arm

With bracelets of the diamond bright;

Her constant beauty doth inform

Stillness with love, and day with light.

She sleeps! her breathings are not heard

In palace chambers far apart,

The fragrant tresses are not stirr’d

That lie upon her charmed heart.

She sleeps: on either hand upswells

The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest:

She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells

A perfect form in perfect rest.

There is also a beautiful passage in Godiva, which we cannot forbear to quote:

Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there

Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt,

The grim earl’s gift; but ever at a breath

She lingered, looking like a summer moon

Hair dipt in cloud; anon she shook her head

And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee;

Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair

Stole on, and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid

From pillar unto pillar until she reached

The gateway.

A specimen of description, graphic, but not very poetical, is the following from the Miller’s Daughter:

I see the wealthy miller yet,

His double chin, his portly size,

And who that knew him could forget

The busy wrinkles round his eyes?

The slow, wise smile, that round about

His dusty forehead daily curled,

Seemed half within and half without,

And full of dealings with the world.

In The Day Dream, from which we have already quoted, the following lines will suggest to the reader’s mind the story of Rip Van Winkle, or Sleepy Hollow:

And last of all the king awoke,

And in his chair himself uprear’d,

And yawn’d, and rubb’d his face, and spoke,

“By holy rood, a royal beard!

How say you? we have slept, my lords.

My beard has grown into my lap.”

The barons swore, with many words,

’Twas but an after-dinner’s nap.

Tennyson frequently exhibits a rare sense of the beautiful, “a spirit awake to fine issues,” and, in his own language,

does love Beauty only

In all varieties of mould and mind,

And Knowledge for its beauty, or if Good,

Good only for its beauty.

Yet this sense is sometimes dead in him, and he exhibits as little taste as is possessed by ante-diluvian McHenry. A critic for whose judgment we have great respect, and who seems determined to believe Mr. Tennyson “the first original English poet since Keats, perhaps the only one of the present race of verse writers who carries with him the certain marks of being remembered hereafter with the classic authors of his language,” points to St. Simeon Stilites as the finest of his productions. It is not his worst, but if he had not written better we should desire none of his companionship. In the opening lines a devotee prays, in the very language of old cloister legends⁠—

Altho’ I be the basest of mankind,

From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,

Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet

For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy,

I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold

Of saintdom, and to clamor, mourn and sob,

Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer,

Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.

Recounting his mortifications, he says⁠—

O take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,

Not whisper, any murmur of complaint.

Pain heap’d ten hundredfold to this, were still

Less burthen, by ten hundredfold, to bear,

Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush’d

My spirit flat before thee. . . . . .

O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul,

Who may be saved? who is it may be saved?

Who may be made a saint, if I fail here?

Show me the man hath suffer’d more than I.

For either they were stoned or crucified,

Or burn’d in fire, or boil’d in oil, or sawn

In twain beneath the ribs; but I die here

To-day, and whole years long, a life of death.

Bear witness, if I could have found a way

(And heedfully I sifted all my thought)

More slowly painful to subdue this home

Of sin, my flesh, which I despise and hate,

I had not stinted practice, O my God.

For not alone this pillar-punishment,

Not this alone I bore; but while I lived

In the white convent down the valley there,

For many weeks about my loins I wore

The rope that haled the buckets from the well,

Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose,

And I spake not of it to a single soul,

Until the ulcer, eating through my skin,

Betray’d my secret penance, so that all

My brethren marvel’d greatly. More than this

I bore, whereof, O God, thou knowest all.

Three winters, that my soul might grow to thee

I lived up there on yonder mountain side.

My right leg chain’d into the crag, I lay

Pent in a roofless close of ragged stones,

Inswath’d sometimes in wandering mist, and twice

Black’d with thy branding thunder, and sometimes

Sucking the damps for drink, and eating not

Except the spare chance-gift of those that came

To touch my body and be heal’d, and live.

And they say then that I work’d miracles,

Whereof my fame is loud amongst mankind,

Cured lameness, palsies, cancers. Thou, O God,

Knowest alone whether this was or no.

Have mercy, mercy; cover all my sin.

Then, that I might be more alone with thee,

Three years I lived upon a pillar, high

Six cubits, and three years on one of twelve;

And twice three years I crouch’d on one that rose

Twenty by measure; last of all, I grew,

Twice ten long weary, weary years to this,

That numbers forty cubits from the soil.

I think that I have borne as much as this⁠—

Or else I dream—and for so long a time.

At length the miserable fool, with no rebuke for the heathen thought that God is moved by penances like these instead of active efforts to promote His cause and human happiness, working miracles such as the earliest saints performed, climbs up into his airy home and there “receives the blessed sacrament.” Where is Mr. Tennyson’s “high, spiritual philosophy,” and “transcendental light?” The ideas, imagery and style of expression in this poem are familiar to all readers of monkish stories, and from the beginning of it to the end there are not half a dozen lines to be remembered when the book is closed.

We cannot foretell to what degree of popularity these poems will attain in America. The fewness of the copies here, before the appearance of the present edition, enabled some persons to steal the author’s livery and achieve great reputation among a class who will now transfer their admiration to him who “stole at first hand from Keats.” That Tennyson has genius cannot be denied, but his chief characteristics pertaining to style, they will not long attract regard. We have better poets in our own country—Bryant, Longfellow, and others—who put “diamond thoughts in golden caskets;” and all true critics will prefer their simple majesty or beauty to the fantastic though often tasteful and brilliant displays of Tennyson. The difference between them is like that which distinguishes the sparkling frost that vanishes in the sun from ingots of silver that may be raked into heaps and will last forever.

Our attention has been directed to resemblances between the poems of Tennyson and those of our own quaint and felicitous humorist, Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes. We have not space for a parallel. The first is a man of fortune who has given twenty years to the poetic art; the last a young physician who, devoting all his time to a laborious profession, has little leisure for dalliance with the muse, and no ambition to win “a poet’s fame.” Yet even as a versifier Holmes is equal to Tennyson, and with the same patient effort and care, he would in every way surpass him as an author.

Forest Life: By the author of “A New Home—Who’ll Follow?” Two Vols. 12mo. New York, Charles S. Francis. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart.

These are charming volumes, written with a freshness and spirit that delights and would surprise us were we not familiar with the first work of their author. Mrs. Kirkland has opened a new vein in our national literature. Her sketches of forest scenery and wood-craft, with all its varied details, are not less true than graphic. We Americans are probably inclined to think too lightly of the vigor and intelligence displayed in them; that bad old adage about the estimate of a prophet in his native land unfortunately applies with force to Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Brooks and some other writers of this country whose works, while they excite comparatively little attention here, are passing through numerous editions abroad. All the world has read the pleasant stories in “Our Village,” by Miss Mitford. We institute no comparison between her and our own “Mary Clavers,” but we think our countrywoman has exhibited powers infinitely superior to those of the popular delineator of English rural life. She is sometimes extravagant, indeed; but a tendency to extravagance has its foundation in nature, and is necessary in all works of art, from pen or pencil, to produce a true impression. Having made a pedestrian tour through the country about “Montecute,” a few years ago, and gained by observation some knowledge of its inhabitants, we thought after glancing at a few of Mrs. Kirkland’s chapters that she had exaggerated too much their peculiarities; but on closing her volumes we are as confident of their truth as of their extreme cleverness. One or two of Miss Mitford’s stories may be read with pleasure, and a philosopher can endure a third; but the fourth invariably induces sleep or weariness. There is, however, no monotony to pall in “Mary Clavers;” the tragic and the comic, the pathetic and the droll, succeed each other so rapidly in her works that they are as various in their tone as the inimitable “Don Juan.”

We might find some faults in “Forest Life,” but its good qualities so predominate that the task becomes both difficult and ungracious. We will allude to one only—the too frequent introduction of French words and phrases—not, certainly, from vanity, for no woman has less affectation than our author—but doubtless from habit and a desire of condensation. A pithy French phrase of three words, to those who understand the language, will frequently convey more meaning than half a dozen English lines; but, Mrs. Clavers, there are in this world a vast number of very decent people who know as little of French as a politician does of honesty.

The American in Egypt, with Rambles through Arabia Petræa and the Holy Land, during the Years 1839 and 1840. By James Ewing Cooley. Illustrated with numerous Steel Engravings, and Etchings by D. C. Johnston. One vol. 8vo., pp. 610. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1842.

We have seen few American books comparable to this in elegance of paper, typography and embellishments. The richest productions of the printers of London and Paris do not surpass it. Of its literary character—having read but a few chapters—we can speak with less confidence. The author, with his family, we believe left New York in the autumn of 1828, and making pleasure the principal object of his pursuit, passed through the most interesting portions of Europe, Africa and Asia. He was in Egypt during an important period, and enjoyed there all the facilities he could well desire for the acquisition of information. But so numerous are the works relative to that country, which have been published within a few years, that little in regard to its antiquities or social condition was left to be discovered, and instead, therefore, of presenting familiar statistics and minute descriptions of fallen columns and crumbling arches, Mr. Cooley has given us a gallery of character-sketches in which the various classes of travelers, exiles, and other “Franks,” encountered on the banks of the Nile, on the deserts and among the ruins, are exhibited. We cannot tell to what degree of confidence these portraitures are generally entitled, but we fancy the English tourists are not truly represented in his “Wrinklebottoms” and “Sneezebiters;” and we are sure our intelligent consul at Cairo, Mr. Gliddon, is not the real original of the picture which bears his name. Mr. Cooley sometimes writes carelessly and incorrectly; such phrases as “fellow-townsmen” and some others in the volume before us, may pass without reproof in hasty conversation, but it is not easy to excuse their appearance in a printed book. Though far from faultless, “The American in Egypt” is an instructive and amusing record of travels and observations.

A History of the Life of Edward the Black Prince, and of various Events connected therewith, which occurred during the Reign of Edward III., King of England. By G. P. R. James, Esq., Author of “Darnley,” “Richelieu,” “The Gipsy,” etc. Two vols. 12mo. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart.

Mr. James has probably written more than any other living English author. We have not now a list of his works, but a London bookseller advertises a set of them, as “nearly complete,” containing one hundred and twenty-three volumes. Many of them are historical, and one is poetical; but the greater number is composed of novels and romances. These last have some excellent qualities which distinguish them from nearly all other works of their kind, especially from the romances of Walter Scott. They are truer as histories than the chronicles and biographies of the author of Waverley. Whatever incidents he may invent, Mr. James draws his real characters with scrupulous fidelity. Philip Augustus, Richelieu, and Henri IV. are great historical pictures, of which the details are imaginary, but the general impression given so correct that a man may learn nearly as much by reading them as from Sismondi’s History of France for the periods to which they relate. While Scott’s histories are as unworthy of credit as his novels, James, in his historical writings, is singularly careful as well about their minutest incidents as their principal effect, so that he is in a way one of the best of living historians. Of The Life of Edward the Black Prince we have not space for a review; but we have found it exceedingly interesting, and we gladly commend it to the favorable attention of our readers.

The United Irishmen, their Lives and Times. By R. R. Madden, M. D., author of “Travels in the East,” “Infirmities of Genius,” etc. Two vols. 12mo. Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard.

Any work descriptive of the characters and events of the great Irish rebellion of 1798, must possess considerable interest. The volumes before us, while they are written with a kindness and candor which distinguish few of the chronicles of the stormy period to which they relate, are constructed so carelessly, are so destitute of continuity and method, as to deserve little praise for their literary execution. The notices of Emmett, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the brothers John and Henry Sheares, to whose fate the indignant eloquence of Curran imparted such interest, and many others will, however, enchain the reader’s attention and well reward him for laboring through the more heavy passages. It is estimated by the most moderate judges that the number of persons slain during the rebellion was not less than seventy thousand; twenty thousand on the side of the government, and fifty thousand on that of the insurgents; and it is generally admitted that more were murdered in cold blood than fell on the fields of battle. The judicial investigations which followed were mere mockeries, and the whole conduct of the triumphing government so atrocious as to shock the sensibilities of the whole civilized world. The history of these scenes cannot yet be written. Doctor Madden has but added material to the accumulating stores which await some laborious and skilful writer of the next century. His work will fulfill its office by attracting a momentary attention to the subject, and afterward by appearing as an authority in quotations on the margins of a successor’s pages.

The Man of Fortune, and other Tales. By Mrs. Gore, Author of “Greville,” “Preferment,” “The Lover and the Husband,” etc. Two vols. 12mo. Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard.

Female writers have generally a superior tact in painting manners; a discerning eye for the lights and shadows of social life; and their pictures of the family or the ball are marked by a certain detail which we seldom find in the writings of the other sex. Mrs. Charles Gore has an excellent reputation for this kind of ability. Her characters are well drawn, the interest of her stories is well sustained, and their moral is always correct. Of the volumes before us we have read but a moiety, though enough to see that they are worthy of their author. The first contains The Man of Fortune, and Ango, or the Merchant Prince; and the second, The Queen’s Comfit Maker; A Legend of Tottenham Cross; The Young Soldier, or Military Discipline; A Lucky Dog; The Fatal Window; The Railroad; The Mariners of the Pollet; The Wife of an Aristocrat; Neighbor Grey and her Daughter; and The Jewess.

Romantic Biography of the Age of Elizabeth, or Sketches of Life from the Byways of History. Edited by William Cooke Taylor, LL. D., Author of “Natural History of Society,” etc. Two vols. 12mo. Philad. Lea & Blanchard.

We have room only to announce the appearance of an American edition of this work, and to remark that it is a collection of the most entertaining memoirs in our language.