whelming grief for the loss of his friend, and the desire to perfect himself in his art.
A record of this ten years' apprenticeship to the Muses would be deeply interesting, could we get it; but we must not pry too closely into the private history of a poet:
No blazon'd statesman he, nor king."
At any rate he has been profiting by the admonitions of reviewers, friendly or inimical, and is pruning, clipping, cutting, and clearing his garden of weeds and noxious excrescences. That is to say, he is ruthlessly
eighteen years afterwards incorporated into the poem of "Maud;" " recovered," says George Brimley, "from the pages of a long-forgot ten miscellany, and set as a jewel amid jewels." Mr. Swinburne has more recently spoken of them as "the poem of deepest charm and fullest delight of pathos and melody ever written even by Mr. Tennyson;" since recast into new form and refreshed with new beauty "to fit it for reappearance among the crowning passages of 'Maud.'"—Academy, January 29, 1876.
"The Tribute" also contains two short pieces by Charles (then the Rev. Charles) Tennyson, "To a Lady" and "Sonnet on some Humming Birds." The literary association of the two brothers was renewed at a more recent period, when they both became contributors to "Macmillan's Magazine."
