Tennysoniana/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
THE PRINCESS: A MEDLEY.
To what period we are to assign the composition of this work is uncertain; it did not, at any rate, appear until 1847, when the two volumes of minor poems had passed through four editions.
Through five successive editions did the Poet alter, enlarge, and retouch this work. The original sketch differs as much from the present text as does the first rough draught of "Hamlet" from the "Hamlet" "enlarged to almost as much again as it was." The intercalary songs, six in number,[1] with the passage beginning "So Lilia sang," were added in the third edition (1850), in which, besides a hundred more or less important additions, alterations, and omissions in the body of the poem, the Prologue and Conclusion were entirely rewritten. All the passages relating to the Prince's "weird seizures" were added in the fourth edition (1851), and the fifteen lines which now stand in the Prologue (p. 3) from
"'O miracle of woman,' said the book,"
to
"So sang the gallant glorious chronicle,"
were added in 1853, in the fifth edition.
The following passage, in which the Prince describes his flight from his father's court, has been very curiously altered and re-altered. We give the readings of three different editions.
"Down from the bastion'd walls we dropt by night,
And flying reach'd the frontier."
"Down from the bastion'd wall, suspense by night,
Like threaded spiders from a balk, we dropt,
And flying reach'd the frontier."
"—from the bastion'd walls
Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt,
And flying reach'd the frontier."
Here is another instance, from the description of Gama, the father of the Princess, in which the edition of 1850 has a reading peculiar to itself:
"His name was Gama; crack'd and small his voice,
But bland the smile that pucker'd up his cheeks"
"But bland the smile that like a wrinkling wind
On glassy water drove his cheek in lines."
The first and second editions contained many very beautiful and forcible lines, which for various reasons the Poet has since omitted. The italicized lines in the following passage, as it originally stood, afford an instance of this:
Like almost all the rest if men were wise,
By gentleness than war. I want her love.
What were I nigher this altho' we dash'd
Your cities into shards with catapults,
And dusted down your domes with mangonels.'"
But the most important and remarkable case of omission occurs in the answer of the Princess to Lady Blanche, from which twenty-five lines have been excised. They are very vigorous and full of burning satire, but the Poet probably thought he derogated from the dignity of his heroine in making her talk so much like a scold.
The reader will understand, then, that in order to possess and study this poem in all its forms and transitions, to trace its growth and development from the first sketch of it to its present state, he must obtain the first five editions, published respectively as follows:
First edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
1847 | |
Second edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
1848 | |
Third edition (with the songs for the first time) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
1850 | |
Fourth edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
1851 | |
Fifth edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
1853 | |
The dedication to Henry Lushington was added in the second edition, where it stands thus: "To Henry Lushington, this volume is inscribed by his friend, A. Tennyson. London, January, 1848."[2]
- ↑ The fifth song, "Home they brought her warrior dead," of which another version is given in the volume of Selections, is a translation from the Anglo-Saxon fragment "Gudrnn," which may be found in Conybeare's "Anglo-Saxon Poetry." The difference between the ancient and the modern ballad affords a fine illustration of the poet's wonderful sensitiveness of touch.—Communicated by a Correspondent.
- ↑ "In 1841 Mr. Lushington was enabled to gratify a long cherished wish, by forming the acquaintance of Mr. Alfred Tennyson, whose family became afterwards connected by marriage with his own. The dedication of 'The Princess' to Henry Lushington commemorates the cordial intimacy which followed. To the end of his life there was scarcely any companion whose society was so attractive to Mr. Lushington. . . . It will, I hope, not be a violation of confidence, to quote Mr. Tennyson's frequent remark, that of all the critics with whom he had discussed his own poems, Mr. Lushington was the most suggestive. His taste was, perhaps, in this instance, rendered more exquisite by his personal anxiety for the perfection and success of works which could scarcely have interested him more if they had been his own composition. If all Mr. Tennyson's writings had by some strange accident been destroyed, Henry Lushington's wonderful memory could, I believe, have reproduced the whole."—Memoir of Henry Lushington, by G. S. Venables (London, 1859), pp. 26, 27.