whither the wayfarer was soon to follow. There is a marvellous hope and pathos in the melancholy of these all but the latest songs, reminiscent of youth and love, and even of the dim haunting memories and dreams of infancy. No other English poet has thus rounded all his life with music. Tennyson was in his eighty-first year, when there “came in a moment” the crown of his work, the immortal lyric, _Crossing the Bar_. It is hardly less majestic and musical in the perfect Greek rendering by his brother-in-law, Mr Lushington. For once at least a poem has been “poured from the golden to the silver cup” without the spilling of a drop. The new book’s appearance was coincident with the death of Mr Browning, “so loving and appreciative,” as Lady Tennyson wrote; a friend, not a rival, however the partisans of either poet might strive to stir emulation between two men of such lofty and such various genius. X. 1890. IN the year 1889 the poet’s health had permitted him to take long walks on the sea-shore and along the cliffs, one of which, by reason of its whiteness, he had named “Taliessin,” “the splendid brow.” His mind ran on a poem founded on an Egyptian legend (of which the source is not mentioned), telling how “despair and death came upon him who was mad enough to try to probe the secret of the universe.” He also thought of a drama on Tristram, who, in the Idylls, is treated with brevity, and not with the sympathy of the old writer who cries, “God bless Tristram the knight: he fought for England!” But early in 1890 Tennyson suffered from a severe attack of influenza. In May Mr Watts painted his portrait, and “Divinely through all hindrance found the man.”