Mr. Mortimer Collins and others are recently down, somewhat hypercritically we can’t help thinking, on Mr. Tennyson’s occasional natural history references throughout his poems. The fun is that in almost every instance in which fault is found with him, Mr. Tennyson is right and his critics wrong! Here is one example of this hypercriticism in which Mr. Mortimer Collins is fairly hoist with his own petard. Mr. Tennyson writes—
“In spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast.”
Upon which Mr. Collins comments—“As a fact, that fuller crimson comes in autumn, as all know who watch the half-shy, half-familiar bird—
“That ever in the haunch of winter sings.”
Here Mr. Mortimer Collins is partly right and largely wrong, while Mr. Tennyson is altogether right. It is true that our native song-birds, moulting in autumn or early winter, assume at this season a thicker, warmer, fresher plumage after all the wear and tear consequent on the labours of nidification, incubation, and love-making throughout the spring and summer; but it is equally true that it is only in spring, as Mr. Tennyson correctly asserts, that our wild birds assume their gaudiest and gayest attire, every colour and shade of colour in the individual bird’s feathering there and then only being at its best and brightest. And when we remember that spring is the season of love and incipient song, we should be very much surprised, and with good reason, if the fact were otherwise. So far as our recollection serves us, Mr. Mortimer Collins, or any one else, will find it rather difficult to catch Mr. Tennyson tripping in the direction indicated. We should say that the Poet Laureate was rather remarkable than otherwise for his fidelity to nature and truth in all his local colouring.
Some time ago, by the way, we had occasion to call attention to the exceeding frequency of misquotation in our current literature, and in quarters, too, where one would least expect it. Here is a curious and very unpardonable instance, all things considered. In a review of the South Kensington Handbooks, in the Times of the 18th January, a sentence opens thus—“It is well-known that weary lies the head that wears a crown.” Every one will see that the manifest intention here is to quote from the monologue of the poor harassed and sleepless King in Shakespeare’s Henry IV. (part second), one of the finest things that even Shakespeare ever wrote, and we had thought too well-known by every one with any pretensions to literature to be misquoted. The concluding lines are these:—
“Can’st thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,