OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON POET LAUREATE VOLUME III. MAUD; IN MEMORIAM; THE PRINCESS; BOSTON AND NEW YORK 1891 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. MAUD in its first form was published in 1855, and was considerably enlarged in 1856. The division into parts was a subsequent arrangement, and the addition to the title, A Monodrama, was made when the collective edition of 1875-77 was issued. The stanzas beginning "Oh that 't were possible," Part II., section IV., had already been published in 1837 in The Tribute; a Collection of Miscellaneous Unpublished Poems, by Various Authors, Edited by Lord Northampton. In their first appearance they had, of course, no relation to the monodrama, which was clearly incited by the state of England at the time of the Crimean war. It is stated, however, that a criticism passed upon these stanzas, to the effect that they needed something to explain their story, suggested to the poet the construction of a longer poem. In Memoriam was first published in 1850; the friend commemorated was Arthur Henry Hallam, son of the historian. He was for five years the college mate and intimate friend of Tennyson, and died at Vienna, September 15, 1833. In the fourth edition, published in 1851, the stanzas now numbered LIX., "O sorrow, wilt thou live with me," were inserted, and later, in the edition of 1872-73, a second poem was inserted, that numbered XXXIX., beginning "Old warder of these buried bones." An acute critic, John F. Genung, in Tennyson's In Memoriam its Purpose and Structure, indicates very clearly the part played by these intercalary poems in defining the structure of the work. The entire study by Mr. Genung is very helpful toward an intelligent apprehension of In Memoriam. The epilogue celebrates the wedding of the poet's younger sister, Cecilia Tennyson, to Edmund Law Lushington, sometime Professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow. The Princess, in its first form, was published in 1847, but four successive editions in 1848, 1850, 1851, and 1853 contained extensive changes, additions, and omissions, so that the poem as it now stands is greatly different in form from the original issue. The six intercalary songs, with the passage beginning "So Lilia sang," were added in the third edition, the fifth of these songs, "Home they brought her warrior dead," being a free translation from the Anglo-Saxon fragment, Gudrun. All the passages relating to the Prince's "weird seizures" were added in the fourth edition. A great number of minor changes were made in the several editions. The poem was originally dedicated to Henry Lushington, brother of the husband of Cecilia Tennyson. Enoch Arden was first published in 1864. Tennyson intended to give this and other poems grouped with it the title of Idylls of the Hearth, but abandoned the name. |