This really is a pretty picture; its worst, and perhaps its only fault, being that it constantly reminds us of the superior original artist. Throughout the book indeed, and incorporated in many of the poems, there occur images to which Mr Tennyson has a decided right by priority of invention, and which the _Strayed Reveller_ has "conveyed" with little attention to ceremony. For example, in a poem which we never much admired, _The Vision of Sin_, Mr Tennyson has the two following lines-- "And on the glimmering limit, far withdrawn, God made himself an awful rose of dawn." This image is afterwards repeated in the _Princess_. Thus-- "Till the sun Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all The rosy heights came out above the lawns." Young Danby catches at the idea, and straightway favours us with a copy-- "When the first rose-flush was steeping All the frore peak's awful crown." The image is a natural one, and of course open to all the world, but the diction has been clearly borrowed. Not only in blank verse but in lyrics does the Tennysonian tendency of our author break out, and to that tendency we owe by far the best poem in the present volume. "The Forsaken Merman," though the subject is fantastic, and though it has further the disadvantage of directly reminding us of one of Alfred's early extravaganzas, is nevertheless indicative of considerable power, not only of imagery and versification, but of actual pathos. A maiden of the earth has been taken down to the depths of the sea, where for years she has resided with her merman lover, and has borne him children. We shall let the poet tell the rest of his story, the more readily because we are anxious that he should receive credit for what real poetical accomplishment he possesses, and that he may not suppose, from our censure of his faults, that we are at all indifferent to his merits. "Children dear, was it yesterday (Call yet once) that she went away? Once she sate with you and me, On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea, And the youngest sate on her knee. She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well, When down swung the sound of the far-off bell. She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea. She said, 'I must go, for my kinsfolk pray In the little gray church on the shore to-day. 'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me' And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee.' I said, 'Go up, dear heart, through the waves, Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves.' She smil'd, she went up through the surf in the bay. Children dear, was it yesterday?