TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM."
[To THE EDITOH OF TIIE "SPECTATOlt."] SIE,—May' I be allowed to say that the point on which I expressed a difference of opinion from Professor Bradley (Spectator, September 7th) in regard to Tennyson's lines— "My love has talked with rocks and trees;
He finds on misty mountain ground • His own vast shadow glory•crown'd ; He sees himself in all he sees"— •
was as to the interpretation of the reference to the Brocken shadow, a reference which I supposed most readers recognise ? Is is curious that of the two gentlemen who wrote to you last
week pointing out that Tennyson had this phenomenon in mind, one agrees with Mr. Bradley that the lines are not specially significant, and one agrees with his reviewer that they are. Mr. Baker-Gabb say : "The meaning, of course, would be that the poet's affection finds resemblances even in the most unlikely places." I am sorry that any critic's cer- tainty does not carry conviction to my mind. I should say that his paraphrase must be ruled out of Court by the fact that the lines are a prologue to the description of one of the likeliest possible places to find love ; namely, in the hearts of a husband and wife. It seems more probable that as the verse means that love finds evidence of itself everywhere, the " rocks " and " trees " of the first line represent Nature, and
the "misty mountain ground " represents super-Nature. Such an interpretation receives support from a very different use of much the same image in the lines— "What find I in the highest place
But mine own phantom chanting hymns ?"— where "in the highest place" does not mean "in the unlike- liest place." I am happy to find 'that so competent a scholar as the Master of Trinity Hall is with me in the matter. All your readers will have been interested by his letter.—I am,
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