80
TENNYSONIANA.
drawing his pen through one poem, and revising another, till it is scarcely recognizable as the juvenile production from which it sprung.
All this while, too, section after section of "In Memoriam" is being painfully and slowly elaborated; and at last comes out of the furnace, like the refiner's silver, seven times purified. The world, however, did not see it until 1850.
But at length, in 1842, after many and repeated calls for a new edition of the former volumes, which had long been out of print,[1] appeared:
- ↑ "One of the severest tests by which a poet can try the true worth of his book, is to let it continue for two or three years out of print. The first flush of popularity cannot be trusted. Admiration is contagious, and means often little more than sympathy with the general feeling—the pleasure of being in the fashion. A book which is praised in all the reviews thousands will not only buy, but be delighted with; and thus a judicious publisher may contrive, by keeping it cleverly in people's way, to preserve for years a popularity which is merely accidental and ephemeral. But if this be all, the interest in it will cease as soon as it becomes difficult to procure. Let a man ask for it two or three times without getting it, he will take to something else; and his curiosity, unless founded on something more substantial than a wish to see what others are looking at, and a disposition to be pleased with what others praise, will die away. If, on the other hand, a new edition be perseve-
