and faggots,
Worms and maggots,"

as Aytoun writes on the other fly-leaf, are indeed the matter of "The
Death Wake."

Then, why, some one may ask, write about "The Death Wake" at all? Why
rouse again the nightmare of a boy of twenty? Certainly I am not to say
that "The Death Wake" is a pearl of great price, but it does contain
passages of poetry--of poetry very curious because it is full of the new
note, the new melody which young Mr. Tennyson was beginning to waken. It
anticipates Beddoes, it coincides with Gautier and _Les Chimeres_ of
Gerard, it answers the accents, then unheard in England, of Poe. Some
American who read out of the way things, and was not too scrupulous,
recognised, and robbed, a brother in Tom Stoddart. Eleven years after
"The Death Wake" appeared in England, it was published in _Graham's
Magazine_, as "Agatha, a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras," by Louis
Fitzgerald Tasistro. Now Poe was closely connected with _Graham's
Magazine_, and after "Arthur Gordon Pym," "Louis Fitzgerald Tasistro"
does suggest Edgar Allen Poe. But Poe was not Tasistro.

So much for the literary history of the Lunacy.

The poem begins--Chimera I. begins:--

"An anthem of a sister choristry!
And, like a windward murmur of the sea,
O'er silver shells, so solemnly it falls!"

The anthem accompanies a procession of holy fathers towards a bier;

"Agathe
Was on the lid--a name. And who? No more!
'Twas only Agathe."

A solitary monk is prowling around in the moonlit cathedral; he has a
brow of stony marble, he has raven hair, and he falters out the name of
Agathe. He has said adieu to that fair one, and to her sister Peace,
that lieth in her grave. He has loved, and loves, the silent Agathe. He
was the son of a Crusader,

"And Julio had fain
Have been a warrior, but his very brain
Grew fevered at the sickly thought of death,
And to be stricken with a want of breath."

On the whole he did well not to enter the service. Mr. Aytoun has here
written--"A rum Cove for a hussar."

"And he would say
A curse be on their laurels.
And anon
Was Julio forgotten and his line--
No wonder for this frenzied tale of mine."

How? asks Aytoun, nor has the grammatical enigma yet been unriddled.

"Oh! he was wearied of this passing scene!
But loved not Death; his purpose was between
Life and the grave; and it would vibrate there
Like a wi