Page:Tennysoniana (1879).djvu/154

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144
TENNYSONIANA.

purporting to explain the Scriptures, but too often darkening counsel by words without knowledge.[1]

It would also be interesting to trace the influence of the great poets of antiquity on Tennyson's writings: of his classical scholarship abundant proofs might be adduced. In his earliest volume there are quotations from Cicero, Claudian, Horace, Lucretius, Ovid, Sallust, Tacitus, Terence, and Virgil; the incidental allusions to ancient history and mythology in his later works are numerous, and his two translations from the eighth and

  1. Among many others I will indicate the passages on Adam and Eve, in Lady Clara Vere de Vere, in The Day Dream, § L'Envoi, in In Memoriam, xxiv. 2, and in Maud, xviii. 3; on Jacob, in the poem To ——— (Poems, 1830); on Lot's Wife, in The Princess, p. 132; on Sinai, In Memoriam, xcvi. 5-6; on Joshua, in Locksley Hall; on Gideon, in the Sonnet on Buonaparte (Poems, 1833); on Jephtha's daughter, in A Dream of Fair Women; on Elijah, in the first version of The Palace of Art; on David, in Merlin and Vivien (Idylls of the King); on Solomon, in The Princess, p. 46; on Hezekiah, in Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue; on Jonah's gourd, in The Princess, p. 39; on Vashti, in The Princess; on Esther, Idylls of the King, p. 39; on Lazarus and Mary, In Memoriam, xxxi., xxxii.; on Herod, in The Palace of Art; on Stephen, in The Two Voices; on St. Paul, In Memoriam, cxx.1. The attentive student of Tennyson will be able to add to these many other passages of equal beauty and significance.