recognizes her brother Florian and agrees to keep the secret, inasmuch as the penalty of their being discovered is death, according to an inscription over the gates, which in the darkness they had not seen; but a girl, Melissa, overhears them and is taken into the plot of secrecy, and her mother, Lady Blanche, the rival of Lady Psyche, discovers the matter also, and she keeps silence for reasons of her own. The second day is devoted to a picnic in the woods. At dinner Cyril sings a too masculine song, and the Prince, being angry, betrays the sex of the intruders by both a blow and a word; confusion follows, the Princess falls into the river in her flight, the Prince rescues her, and night falls on the scene. Cyril escapes with Lady Psyche, but Florian and the Prince. are captured and brought before the Princess for judgment; then, at the critical moment, despatches come from her father saying that the Prince's father has invested her palace with an army, taken him prisoner, and holds him as a hostage. The Prince pleads his suit in vain, and he and his friend are thrust out of the gates at dawn and go to the camp. Meanwhile, during the night, the Princess's three brothers have come to her relief with an army; and it is agreed to settle the trouble by a tournament between these brothers and the Prince and his two friends, each with a party-fifty on a side. This is the event of the third day. In the fight the Prince and his party are overthrown, and himself dangerously hurt. On the field the Princess decides to convert the college into a hospital for her wounded friends, and she at last directs that the wounded of the opposite party shall be admitted also, with the Prince himself. Here the rapid action ends, and the time of the poem continues through the days of illness and convalescence, and concludes with the yielding of the Princess, who had come to love the Prince in caring for him.

From this outline it will be seen there is a connected story; but it is regarded as a weak one. This is partly

because of the obvious absurdity and transparent unreality of the incidents; but something of the impression of weakness is due to the general tone or treatment. It is plain that the college is looked on somewhat as a joke; and the Prince's disgraceful trick can be saved from contempt only by considering it as a prank; in certain parts, such as the conversation of the host, the expulsion of the Prince, and the return to the camp, the poem touches mere burlesque. Throughout there is the suggestion of comic opera, with very beautiful scenery, tableaux of girls in crowds, a glittering combat, and the rest. An important defect in the action, as it would generally be considered, demands especial attention. This is the fact that the controlling element in the plot lies outside the story as it is told above. The Princess does not yield because of anything that the Prince or anyone else does or says; she yields because she feels nature stirring within her, the instincts of motherhood and the affections that cling about them. She begins to soften when she is caring for the child of Lady Psyche, which has been left behind when the latter fled. This child is the true hero of the poem, as Tennyson himself said; the influence of the child masters the whole development of the story, so far as the chief issue, the winning of the Princess, is concerned, and is felt in the minor parts of the plot also. But the child is not a character; it accomplishes nothing by its personal action; it is not a child, but the child-that is, it is the symbol of the power of nature, being itself an embodiment of the domestic affections, and by its mere presence, its beauty, helplessness, and, in one word, its childhood, awakening emotion and guiding the way of natural love. This is the intention of the poet, and the meaning of the fact that he introduces the child into critical points of the narrative, as in the judgment scene, and uses it not only in the softening of the Princess's nature toward the Prince, but also as an instrument in such lesser matters as the wooing of Cyril and the recon

ciliation of the Princess with Lady Psyche. The main motive itself, which the child represents in the narrative, the domestic or nature motive, as you may prefer to call it, is echoed in all the intermediate songs, and so brings them also into the structure of the poem, and makes them an essential part of it, as is pointed out in the longer notes in the appendix to this edition.

Now, one may say that this symbolical use of an infant for the nature-motive which dominates the story, is a defect in the plot, since it lies outside the action, in a true sense; or one may say that it supplements the plot and enlarges its scope, heightens and betters it, by referring the action to its sources in primary thoughts and feelings, and the fundamental power of nature in human life. Either of these is a correct view. But, perhaps, it may be better to observe simply that as the burlesque element in the poem centres in the feminine disguise of the Prince and his friends-they playing at being women in their clothes, as the women are playing at being men in their minds-so the serious element in the poem, its thought and spirituality, and its finer beauties of insight and feeling and emotional conviction, centres in the child. In this way one is enabled to keep the threads of this "medley' somewhat more distinct, and see how they interweave in the unity of the whole; for, though it is hard to grasp it, the poem is a whole.

Apart from the plot, the characters individually should receive some attention. They are very simple characters indeed. The Prince himself is a conventional lover; personally he is amiable, gentle, and attractive, but he is a dreamer, and has taken no active part in the world; he has only the beginnings of a man in him. His "weird seizures" are spoken of in the longer notes; but so far as he is concerned, they only emphasize the visionary and sensitive temperament that he always displays. It is, perhaps, worth while to notice that he has no touch of that wrath in love that Tennyson's more mortal lovers

are characterized by, in "Locksley Hall," "The Letters," and "Maud." On the other hand, he does not approach, as a type, the sighing youths of Shakspere, of whom the "gentle Romeo " is the lovely pattern. But, for all that, he sustains his simple part with much grace and pity, and shows a noble nature, and his eloquence deepens and rings very true at the close. He is easily forgiven for his "saucy tricks," which were no more than the light-mindedness of a boy. His two companions belong to the same school; they were youths,-Florian only his friend and "half-self," and Cyril the more vital and masculine wooer of Lady Psyche, in whose make-up there is, possibly, a thought of Romeo's Mercutio. The three women who take the corresponding leading parts are the Princess, Lady Psyche, and Lady Blanche. The first of these makes as doubtful an impression as does the Prince. It is as difficult for the poet to make her lovable as to make the Prince heroic. They knew her at home very well; the description which her father first gives of her "all she is and does is awful"—is true of her as she appears externally, and the phrase in which, toward the end, her favorite brother sums her up—“ she flies too high "—will probably echo the reader's opinion; it is only after the change in her that she appeals in a womanly way to our sympathy, and really interests us. Her figure itself, in the earlier part, always seems to have a pose; she has the hardness and wilfulness of inexperience; and though her aims are high and her motives noble, the falseness that permeates her whole conception of life and duty is so apparent as to obstruct appreciation of her virtues; it is not easy to present a character which is fundamentally in error as admirable. The scene in which her first character, as the Princess of the college, gives way when she yields to the entreaty and remonstrance of all the others and restores the child, is reconciled to Lady Psyche, and opens her palace to the wounded of both sides-is the turning-point of her own career;

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and in her later character as the Princess of the sickroom, she is remade into true womanhood. Her two friends, like those of the Prince, are less complex. Lady Psyche is a good sister and mother, and joins very cheerfully in wedlock with Cyril. Her desertion of her child is not to be too seriously considered in her disfavor, since it was plainly necessary to the machinery of the plot that the child should be left, and on her part she never showed any lack of tenderness or solicitude which would have made the act natural to her or truly characteristic. Lady Blanche is the villain of the piece, and drawn certainly with sufficient unamiability. As she could not wed with Florian, her daughter Melissa takes her place in the pairing off of the leading characters. The contrast of the honesty of the men's friendship among themselves with the treachery of that of the women is striking, but it is to be remembered that the foundation of the latter was wrong, owing to the false circumstances in which the women were placed; it should not be inferred that Tennyson meant to write slightingly of female as opposed to male friendship, nor should the comparison of his treatment of the subject with Shakspere's be pressed. Of the remaining characters, only the two kings need be considered. They also are a contrasted pair; the Prince's father a man of masculine self-assertion and energy, the Princess's a man of weak fibre and yielding policy; and it is plain that the position of the women in his court, their having their way, is thought of by the poet as a result of his relaxed and inefficient character as a king. The two represent the extremes of man's traditional policy toward woman,-severity and indulgence.

The scenes, or situations, in the poem should be observed as points in the development of the narrative, but they require little remark. The principal ones are the king's anger at the return of the embassy, with the dialogue; the recognition of Florian by Psyche, with its domestic converse; the presentation to the Princess, which is nearly all