k to his popularity. A few personal friends
admired it and praised its fine lyrics; but as a dramatic narrative it
failed to please the reviews. The most interesting of the critiques
(unfortunately too long to be reprinted here) appeared in _Blackwood's
Magazine_, XLI (311-321), of September, 1855,--a forcible, well-written
article, which, incidentally, shows how much the magazine had improved
in respectability since the days of the lampooners of Byron, Shelley,
and Keats. The authorship of the article has not been disclosed, but we
know that W.E. Aytoun asked permission of the proprietor to review
Tennyson's _Maud_. (See Mrs. Oliphant's _William Blackwood and his
Sons_.) The publication of the _Idylls of the King_ (1859), turned the
tide more strongly than before in Tennyson's favor, and subsequent
fault-finding on the part of the critics was confined largely to his
dramas.

153. _Catullus_. See Catullus, II and III--(_Passer, deliciae meae
puellae_, and _Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque_).

153. [Greek: Eithe lyre, k. t. l.] Usually found in the remains of
Alcaeus. Thomas Moore translates it with his _Odes of Anacreon_ (LXXVII),
beginning "Would that I were a tuneful lyre," etc. Lockhart proceeds to
ridicule Tennyson for wishing to be a river, which is not what the
quoted lines state. Nor does Tennyson "ambition a bolder metamorphosis"
than his predecessors. Anacreon (Ode XXII) wishes to be a stream, as
well as a mirror, a robe, a pair of sandals and sundry other articles.
See Moore's interesting note.

155. _Non omnis moriar_. Horace, _Odes_, III, 30, 6.

156. _Tongues in trees_, etc. Shakespeare's _As You Like It_, II, 1, 17.

157. _Aristaeus_. A minor Grecian divinity, worshipped as the first to
introduce the culture of bees.

164. _Dionysius Periegetes_. Author of [Greek: periegesis tes ges], a
description of the earth in hexameters, usually published with the
scholia of Eustathius and the Latin paraphrases of Avienus and Priscian.
For the account of AEthiopia, see also Pausanias, I, 33, 4.

167. _The Rovers_. _The Rovers_ was a parody on the German drama of the
day, published in the _Anti-Jacobin_ (1798) and written by Frere,
Canning and others. It is reprinted in Charles Edmund's _Poetry of the
Anti-Jacobin_. The chorus of conspirators is at the end of Act IV.

169. _The Groves of Blarney_. An old Irish song. A version may be seen
in the _Antiquary_, I, p. 199. The quotation by Lockhart differs
somewhat f