THE BIRDS OF TENNYSON.
The Birds of Tennyson. By Watkin Williams, BA. (R. H. Porter. 6s. net.)—This is a very pleasant book on an interesting subject. Tennyson ranks with Wordsworth and Shakespeare in his accurate renderings of natural sights and sounds. Birds, of course, figure largely in his verse, and almost always with a remarkably exact following of fact. As Mr. Williams points out, he enjoyed during his long life uncommon opportunities of observing bird life. The larger birds of prey alone among the feathered inhabitants of the British Isles were unknown to him. Expert opinion is practically agreed in allowing the credit for this knowledge to the poet, the knowledge not of the scientific ornithologist, but of the accurately observing layman. "The swallow stopped as he hunted the bee" has been criticised. Probably it was an error, though it is certainly a popular error; anyhow, Tennyson recognised the force of the criticism by alter- ing " bee " to " fly " in a later edition. The censure on- " Where now the sea-mew pipes, or dives In yonder greening gleam" is unjust. The kittiwake is a gull, and dives, and "pipe" may be used poetically for a shrill note or cry. So a precisian might object to the line— "The many-wintered crow that leads the clanging rookery home "— on the ground that crows do not live with rooks. Obviously " crow " is used to avoid the inconvenient repetition of the word.
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