ILLUSTRATIONS OF TENNYSON.
That great poets are sometimes obscure, needs no proof. That the greatest poets will necessarily be so to the ordinary reader, seems to me equally indisputable.
Not without effort can one enter into the spontaneous thought of another, or even of himself in another mood. How much more when that other is distinguished from his fellows by the greatness and singularity of his thoughts, and by the extreme subtilty of their connecting links. Obscurity is not a blemish but an excellence, if the pains of seeking are more than compensated by the pleasures of finding, the luxury of μαθησις, where the concentrated energy of a passage, when once understood, gives it a hold on the imagination and memory such as were ill sacrificed to more diluted clearness.
Grandis præfatio tenui incepto—a sort of apology to Tennyson for implying that he needs illustration. Some time ago I made a few notes on particular passages in Locksley Hall, which I now enclose. Some of them are, I dare say, superfluous—some, possibly, erroneous. If so, they will stand a fair chance of being corrected in your valuable publication.
By the bye, if a "Notes and Queries" had existed in the days of Æschylus, we might have been saved from many a recourse to "corrupt text" and "lacunæ admodum deflendæ."
Notes on Locksley Hall.
Stanza 2. "Dreary gleams:" in apposition with "curlews." I know the construction of this line has puzzled a good many readers.
Stanza 23. "Yet it shall be." Yet "decline" thou certainly wilt.
Stanza 28. "He will answer," &c. With an oath, it may be—at the least with a coarse rebuff.