Chapter 2

--POEMS OF 1831-1833.

By 1832 most of the poems of Tennyson's second volume were
circulating in MS. among his friends, and no poet ever had friends
more encouraging. Perhaps bards of to-day do not find an eagerness
among their acquaintance for effusions in manuscript, or in proof-
sheets. The charmed volume appeared at the end of the year (dated
1833), and Hallam denounced as "infamous" Lockhart's review in the
Quarterly. Infamous or not, it is extremely diverting. How Lockhart
could miss the great and abundant poetry remains a marvel. Ten years
later the Scorpion repented, and invited Sterling to review any book
he pleased, for the purpose of enabling him to praise the two volumes
of 1842, which he did gladly. Lockhart hated all affectation and
"preciosity," of which the new book was not destitute. He had been
among Wordsworth's most ardent admirers when Wordsworth had few, but
the memories of the war with the "Cockney School" clung to him, the
war with Leigh Hunt, and now he gave himself up to satire. Probably
he thought that the poet was a member of a London clique. There is
really no excuse for Lockhart, except that he DID repent, that much
of his banter was amusing, and that, above all, his censures were
accepted by the poet, who altered, later, many passages of a fine
absurdity criticised by the infamous reviewer. One could name great
prose-writers, historians, who never altered the wondrous errors to
which their attention was called by critics. Prose-writers have been
more sensitively attached to their glaring blunders in verifiable
facts than was this very sensitive poet to his occasional lapses in
taste.

The Lady of Shalott, even in its early form, was more than enough to
give assurance of a poet. In effect it is even more poetical, in a
mysterious way, if infinitely less human, than the later treatment of
the same or a similar legend in Elaine. It has the charm of
Coleridge, and an allegory of the fatal escape from the world of
dreams and shadows into that of realities may have been really
present to the mind of the young poet, aware that he was "living in
phantasy." The alterations are usually for the better. The daffodil
is not an aquatic plant, as the poet seems to assert in the first
form -

"The yellow-leaved water-lily,
The green sheathed daffodilly,
Tremble in the water chilly,
Round about Shalott."

Nobody can prefer to keep

"Though the squally east wind keenly
Blew, with folded arms serenely
By the water stood the queenly
Lady of Shalott."

However stoical the Lady may have been, the reader is too seriously
sympathetic with her inevitable discomfort -

"All raimented in snowy white
That loosely flew,"