The Sun.
London, England, 1847-04-08 00:00:00

MAGAZINES—(CONTINUED.)
TAIT.
Before Mr. Tait resigned the proprietorship of this
magazine it arrived with all possible punctuality, and
enabled us to give an early criticism upon its contents
among the leading monthly periodicals. Since the
retirement of its original publisher Tait has so loitered
upon the road that we are compelled to afford each
number a less careful perusal and a more hurried con-
sideration. We hint thus much that the transmission
may be speedier henceforth. From his first appear-
ance we have welcomed the compositions of Mr. Gil-
fillan ; we have always read them with a gusto, and
have generally found them on a parity Kith their
themes. Besides his volume of " Literary Portraits,"
he has occasionally sketched the ideal likeness of con-
temporary bookmen in the pages of Tait. The
idiosyncrasies and writings of Sir E. L. B. Lytton,
of Thomas Hood, and of James Montgomery have
been commented upon with much that is subtle and

more that is earnest and passionate in his style of

criticism. Here he seizes a most fruitful subject—
Alfred Tennyson—the master of the young poets

now living—and we confess oursQlves utterly and un-
utterably disappointed. Mr. Gilfillan shows no ca-
pacity whatever for appreciating the genius of Ten-
nyson. We doubt very much whether he have ever
read one quarter of what Tennyson has written—
little as that unfortunately is. That Alfred Tenny-
son is a more remarkable poet than Mr. Gilfillan takes
him to be is proved by one significant fact, namely, that
his poems have risen in little more that a dozen years

to a distinguished celebrity,unaided and unpuffea. A
young man, the son of a Lincolnshire clergyman,
scarcely emancipated from the scholastic bonds of
Cambridge, publishes, in 1831, a little book of poems.
The book is unparaded; it creeps quietly enough
into existence; but it has the true spirit, the true
verve—the divine afflatus. It seizes upon the ima-
ginations and hearts of Englishmen ; its verses have
the golden ring about them ; -their numbers are in
every mouth; they become a part of our household
memories. A few years float over and a second vo-
lume is added to the first : coupled together they are
on bookshelves in odd corners all about England, side
by side with Keats and Coleridge. The name of Alfred
Tennyson becomes as familiar as the most eminent of
modern classics to every lover of real poetry, and
Government ultimately confirms the plaudits of the
people by a pension of two hundred pounds per an-
num. Mr. Gilfillan, to our thinking, therefore, shows
but little discrimination in the manner of this strag-

gling and indifferent article. Many of the figurative
sentences are, of course, inimitable—it would be diffi-
cult for Mr. Gilfillan to write anything, however
carelessly, without casual gleams of beauty, both in
thought and expression. There is truth, no doubt, in
these brilliant sentences :—Speaking of the verses of
Tennyson, "It is the voice and lute of Ariel ; but
heard not in a solitary and enchanted island, but in a
modern drawing-room, with beautiful women
bending round, and moss-roses breathing, in their
faint fragrance, through the half opened windows."
. . . . " From the sublime to the snug, and vice
versa, is with him but a single step. We may liken
him to the sea-shell, which, sitting complacently and
undistinguished among the commonplace ornaments
of the mantelpiece, has only to be lifted to give forth
from its smooth ear the far-rugged boom of the ocean
breakers." . . . . "By sobs of sound, by half.
hints of meaning, by light, hurrying strokes on the
ruddy chords of the heart, by a ringing of changes
on certain words and phrases, he sways us as if with
the united powers of music and poetry." . . . .
" paints vivid and complete pictures in a few
lively touches, and by a few airy words, as if caught
in dropping from the sky." So far there is accuracy
in these delineations of the peculiarites of the intel-
lect of Tennyson—but no farther. Mr. Gilfillan

views that intellect only from one point. He cannot
turn it on a pivot, like those whirligig poetasters who

show you all the phases and side; of their mental
character at once ; and he won't take the trouble to
make a circuit round it himself. Hence the paper is
crammed full of inconsistencies. He likens Tenny-
son's verse, for example, to Ariel ; but Ariel, be it
observed, in a drawing-room among moss-roses and
beautiful women. The " Two Voices" are marvel-
lously like the voice of Ariel ! The " Vision of Sin"
is wonderfully suggestive of a modern drawing-room !
The lamentations of " St. Simeon Stylites" are exces-
sively like the breathings of moss-roses I Absurd,
literally absurd, as these metaphors are when
employed not as illustrative of a single cha-
racteristic, but as indicating the entire grasp
and disposition of the poet; they are endur-
able when compared with the self-sufficiency of
the notices of the separate poems. " Mariana at the
Moated Grange," the "Talking Oak," the "May
Queen," and "riana " are dismissed with their
mere enumeration. Thei " Lotos Eaters," a piece
brimming with the very dew of the "land of drowsy-
head" is slurred over with an impertinent kind
of half compliment. " Dora" is summarily dismissed,
after being likened to a "deep quiet pool." And
" Godiva "is considered in just fifteen lines. While
the whole of the latter part of the article is de-
voted to an extravagant panegyric upon the author of
" Festus," as if the talent of the author of " Festus"
had anything to do with Alfred Tennyson ! Why,
the little poems we have named are worth fifty " Fes-
tuses," with their "buttered thunders r The paper
is apparently intended as a dispassionate and complete
survey of the capacity of Tennyson, and yet nothing
is said about the exquisite poem of "The Sleeping
Beauty ;" nothing is said of the impassioned wailings
of " St. Simeon Stylites ;" nothing is said of the chaste
and perfect ballad of "The Miller's Daughter;" no-
thing is said of the " Lord of Burghley," of the
" Walk to the Mail," of the "Gardener's
Child," of " Lady Clara Veve de Vere " of the " Lady
of Chalott," of the fragment " dorte d'Arthur,"
or of " Elianore." As we enumerate these solely
from recollection, it will be manifest that the over-
sights of Mr. Gilfillan are extraordinary, when he
professes in one part to mention the more remarkable
of Tennyson's writings. Several of those we have
have just mentioned as altogether unnoticed by him
are among the most remarkable of Tennyson's poems.
It is some compensation, however, to find that the
writer can appreciate the sentiment of " Locksley
Hall," and that he is so far incited to enthusiasm by
the refrain about " the golden prime of good Ha-
roun Alraschid," as to speak of the " Arabian Night s
Entertainments" in this wise :—" The Thousand-, ,
and- one Nights' is one enchantment—more powerfu.'
than the lamp of Alladin, or the open sesame of Alt
Baba. The author, were he one—not many—is a
magician—a genii—greater than Scott, than Cer-
vantes, equal to Shalespere himself. What poetry,
passion, pathos, beauty of sentiment, elegance of
costume, ingenuity of contrivance, wit, humour, farce,
interest, variety, tact in transition, sunniness of spirit,
dream-like wealth of imagination, incidental but pre-
cious light cast upon customs, manners, history, re-
ligion—everything, in short, that can amuse or
amaze, instruct or delight, the human spirit!" If we
could sympathise in no other particular with Mr.
Gilfillan we could to the uttermost in his admiration
for those glorious hoards of poetry and treasuries of
fiction. After a pithy but dry essay upon " Success
in Life," the readers of Tait are presented with a
condensed continuation and completion of " Mrs.
Thornton's Truth and Falsehood," a tale that was
suddenly interrupted by the publication in the ma-
gazine of Mrs. Gore's very feeble and very unworthy
novel of " Temptation and Atonement." Thomas
de Quincey is nearly bereft of what Bardolph
would call his " seven sentences," when speaking of
Wordsworth. It is well paganism is exploded, other-
wise we should be in danger of seeing the Opium
Eater one of these fine days offering a kid and let-
tuces before the shrine of the Poet Laureate, or pour-
ing a libation of the decoction of poppies upon Rydal
Mount. The paper by-De Quincey, headed "Milton
versus Southey and Landon," is a clever but bewil-
dering rhapsody. Mr. Burton's "Lives of Lord
Lovat and Forbes of Culloden," forming an excellent
supplement to Mrs. Thomson's "History. of the
Jacobites," are reviewed, and a biography of the late
James Calder, one of the old school of reformers, is
contained among the miscellaneous contributions.
Besides a temperate article upon " Government
Education" there are minor criticisms, and the usual
Political Register. Alluding to the aid received by
Lord George Bentinck from the Hon. Gentleman the
Member for Shrewsbury, Tait caustically observes—
' " His Lordship's sting is in his tail, and it is pitiful
that the tail of a very medium person should be of
such rare and sterling genius !" It is the genius, the
slave of the Lamp.

CHRISTOPHER TADPOLE. By Albert Smith.

Part VIII.
The 25th chapter, which commences the prom
number, jumps over a space of six years :
" And you must allow your author to carry you to
another land. You must imagine a strange and noise-
less city, with silent highways of water for countless
boats, instead of rattling thoroughfares for cabs and
carts, looking for all the world like rows of ruined Re-
form Club-houses built on the banks of the Serpentine.
Strange black looking craft, like floating hearses, glide
about the streets, giving you the idea that one half of
the population is burying the other half ; and every now
and then you come upon a view, which you appear to be
already well acquainted with, from a perforated card,
water-coloured drawing in an album, or a print in an
annual, or some dining room picture, associated with an
agreeable party, heat-frosted claret jugs and early
asparagus.
" You will see no trees—a Bloomsbury-square lilac
would be a grove by comparison. And you will meet
no horses—the most wretched cab-hack in London
might be kept for a show, and create a great sensation.
The thoroughfares are all alleys, and the alleys are
nothing but back-doors leading to narrow bridg's
crossing small stagnant canals making you think
every instant that you are coming to some docks.
But you are not, nevertheless. And you may soon
miss your way if you lose sight of any of
the landmarks, resembling square parish churches,
with cheap obelisks ou their summits, which
rise iz to many directions. The boats are called gen-