13 FEBRUARY 1904, Page 16

TENNYSON AND THE MO'ALLAKA.T.

[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Something has gone wrong—perhaps owing to the accidental omission of a line by the printer between the bottom of p. 221 and the top of p. 222—with the review of Mr. W. S. Blunt's version of the Seven Arabian Odes in your issue of February 6th. The reviewer is made to assert that the couplet about the Pleiades in " Locksley Hall" was "borrowed from a translation by Sir Charles Lyall." But this cannot be his meaning, for " Locksley Hall" was pub- lished in 1842 (and was at least partly written in 1830,—see Hallam Tennyson's Memoir, I., p. 195), when Sir Charles Lyall was still unborn. That the idea of "Locksley Hall" came from the Mo'allakitt (in Sir William Jones's version) is mentioned by Hallam Tennyson, /oc. cit. ; and Sir Alfred Lyall, at pp. 49-50 of his recent book on Tennyson, only describes, on Sir Charles Lyall's authority, the principal points of resemblance, giving, in the latter's rendering, the probable Arabic original from which the couplet on the Pleiades was derived.—I am, Sir, &c., INDICUS.