This second volume was reviewed in a strain of ironical praise in the "Quarterly Review," July, 1833.[1]
- ↑ Vol. xlix pp. 81-96.
his late embassy to this country, was one of Alfred Tennyson's college mates, and except by death Tennyson has lost none of his early friends. This poem closes, with infinite propriety, this series of beautiful writings. It is like the prelude to the solemn harmonies that follow, the sublimest parts of which have been stricken from the soul of the poet by the hand of the Angel of Death, who, in bearing from this earth one of the purest spirits and brightest intelligences that ever visited it, deprived Tennyson of a friend who was to have become his brother. Of this most admirable youth, the eldest son of the historian Hallam, it is perhaps departing from our prescribed limits to speak; yet, as his memory has been the sacred muse of our poet since the intercourse of the living with the living has become to them the more intimate spiritual intercourse of the living with the dead, it may be pardoned if we here offer this tribute of homage to virtue and genius, which, united in a most uncommon degree with all the loveliest graces of youth, seemed almost to account for the early departure of such a being to a higher sphere of existence. His going hence, indeed, was cause of infinite grief, but his abiding here would have been a greater cause of wonder. To the solemn and tender spirit-union which still subsists between Tennyson and this his brother we attribute the inspiration whence emanates the sublime poetry and philosophy of 'Locksley Hall' and 'The Two Voices.'—New York Democratic Review (January, 1844, p. 76).
