"A conscience for his own soul, not his realm;
A twilight conscience lighted thro' a chink;
Thine by the sun."
And the same character hits upon a really vigorous image in describing, as he watches them, Harold's exploits on the battle-fields:
"Yea, yea, for how their lances snap and shiver,
Against the shifting blaze of Harold's axe!
War-woodman of old Woden, how he fells
The mortal copse of faces!"
We feel, after all, in Mr. Tennyson, even in the decidedly minor key in which this volume is pitched, that he has once known how to turn our English poetic phrase as skilfully as any one, and that he has not altogether forgotten the art.
CONTEMPORARY NOTES ON
WHISTLER VS. RUSKIN
I. Originally published as an unsigned note in The Nation, December 19, 1878. The jury allowed Whistler one farthing damages.
II. Originally published as an unsigned note in The Nation, February 13, 1879.
The pamphlet here referred to was entitled Whistler vs. Ruskin: Art and Art-Critics. London: Chatto & Windus. 1878. This essay was afterwards reprinted in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, London, 1890.