THE LAUREATE'S COUNTRY.* Ma. Catraca has performed what he calls
his "humble" task "of writing the letterpress for a series of illustrations," in the manner of one who takes a very deep interest in his work; and so far as the present reviewer is concerned, he must confess that he cares a great deal more for the letterpress of this little book than for the illustrations which accompany it, though
they are effective enough, and suggest many a beautiful scene. But Mr. Church's interest in Tennyson's poetry is so sincere and deep, that to any one who knows his Tennyson, the talk about him and his verse is a great deal more interesting than even pictures of Somersby Brook, of the Lincolnshire coast, of Caistor, of the Lime Walk at Cambridge, of Farringford, Freshwater, and Ald- worth. Of all these places it is interesting to see views, though the size of the volume needful for the purpose of large illustrations makes the book one awkward to handle, and we have often found ourselves wishing that we could have had the comments of Mr. Church without the pictures which fur- nished the subject for comment. For instance, it is pleasant to know that when Tennyson's grandfather was told that his son had made a volume of poems, he only remarked that he would sooner have heard that he had made a wheelbarrow, not because the remark was a wise one, quite the reverse, but because it was so frank a piece of narrow-mindedness (at least on the assumption, which we may, we think, be justified in making, that the old man should by that time have known enough of his grandson to be sure that he had not written out of mere vanity, or without some real capacity to express that higher class of thoughts and feelings which are the very salt of human life). And no doubt it is a very useful education to a poet to be made to feel keenly the narrowness of the limitations within which his life is moulded, and the little room there is for ex- pressing the ideal aims of man, so as to delineate also the hearts and imaginations of " such creatures as we are in such a world as the present." But Tennyson evidently learned the lesson duly. And we rather wonder that, in his discourse on the Lincolnshire life of the poet, Mr. Church has not referred to those two masterly delineations of "The Northern Farmer (Old Style)" and " The Northern Farmer (New Style)," which show us, more than any other poems he has written, how sensitive Tennyson has been to the narrow conditions of our life here, and how vividly he can picture all the oddities, all the roughnesses,—all the gnarledness, if we may so speak, of that provincial life of which we get a glimpse in his old grandfather's crusty remark on the first volume of Tenny- son's poetry. It is interesting, too, to know that when Byron died, Tennyson, being then just fifteen years of age, thought " the whole world had come to an end," so great was Byron to the boy at that time. And it is interesting to know bow different the Somersby Brook of Tennyson's Lincolnshire home is from the Brook which has made Tennyson's name so well known not merely to the lovers of his poetry, but to the lovers of music for its own sake, in the fascinating musical setting which it has obtained. Indeed, the pleasant gossip of Mr. Church's letterpress is to us a great deal more attractive than even the best of the pictures which he has written to illustrate, and we only wish that he had given us more of his local com- mentary on the scenery of his friend's poetry. We might well have had something, for instance, on that lovely poem of his old age in which he tells us how he would like the end to come when he " puts out to sea," is propos of the scenery of his Farringford home. We have absolutely no fault to find with anything that Mr. Church gives us ; but we should much have liked more of the same sort. All that Mr. Church tells us about Tennyson's Cambridge prize-poem on " Timbuctoo " is of real and great interest.
With regard to Mr. Church's story of the mission of Monckton Milnes to Oxford, with Arthur Hallam and the brilliant Mr. Sunderland, of whom so little is known, to con- vince the Oxonians that Shelley was a greater poet than Byron,
• The Laureate's Country: a Description of Places eounerted with the Lift of Alfred Lord Tennyson. By Alfred J. Church, M.A., lately Professor of Latin in University College, London. With many Illustrations from Drawings by Edward Hull. London Seeley and Co , Limited.
it is a pity that he should have narrated from hearsay what Lord Houghton said, according to Mr. Church, at a Wordsworth Society "dinner." There was no such dinner. The speech was made at an afternoon meeting of the Words- worth Society in Lord Houghton's own house, and the record of that speech is contained in the Transactions of the Society, by which Mr. Church would do well to complete and correct his account in future editions of this agreeable book. This was what Lord Houghton said :— " Yon know that, according to the formula of University life at Cambridge, you cannot be out for a night without what is called an exeat '—a permission to be away—which can only be obtained from the Master of the College ; and I was deputed to obtain this from Dr. Wordsworth, the Master of Trinity, and did obtain it. I have always had some compunction in having done so, because I cannot think that that reverend theologian would have favour- ably given us the permission if he had known we were going to advocate the poetry of Mr. Shelley. I have always had a dim suspicion—though probably I did not do so—that I substituted the name of Wordsworth for Shelley. Nevertheless, I so wrapped up in my language the definition of our object—which was mainly, as I put it, the destruction of the wicked influence of Lord Byron—as to make Dr. Wordsworth believe that what was intended to substitute for Byron was not Shelley, but Wordsworth. However, we did go, and I have no doubt that with our laudation of Shelley we combined the laudation of Wordsworth, at the same time, in our representations to the University of Oxford. We were of course very much shocked to find that the name of Shelley was utterly unknown at Oxford ; indeed, one of the speakers said he did not know a line of Shelley, except- ' My banks they are furnished with bees.'
We discovered he thought it was Mr. Shenstone, not the poet of world-wide reputation, we had gone down there to discuss."
There are some few errors that should be corrected. For example, in the drawing of Somersby Church, which is ex- pressly stated to be one of the north side of it, the sun-dial, which is always, of course, on the southern side, as Mr. Church himself tells us that it was in this case, is exhibited where, if it had been, it could not possibly indicate the time. And we have found some difficulty in finding the exact passage to which some of the notes refer, for which, in one or two cases, the figures in the text have been omitted. But, with all qualifications fully allowed for, the book is one which for all Tennysonians will have a true interest.
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