From skies of glass
A Jacob's ladder falls
On greening grass,
And o'er the mountain-walls
Young angels pass.
Has the Poet no friends about him who can point out that by the publication of such painfully weak effusions, the once great reputation of Tennyson is being surely, if slowly, undermined; and that the rising generation will be little encouraged, by such specimens of his genius, to read his early works. It is well known that the Poet Laureate is exceedingly vain of his writings, and does not hesitate to place them on a par with those of Milton; this is a point we may leave to posterity to decide, but it seems most improbable that even the finest works of the laurelled, pensioned, titled bard of our days, will ever be considered worthy of a place by the side of the glorious and imperishable poems of the stern old puritan.
As parodies of Tennyson's poems are constantly being produced, a supplementary collection of them will be published separately at some future date.