* * * * * ILLUSTRATIONS OF TENNYSON. That great poets are sometimes obscure, needs no proof. That the greatest poets will necessarily be so to the ordinary reader, seems to me equally indisputable. Not without effort can one enter into the spontaneous thought of another, or even of himself in another mood. How much more when that other is distinguished from his fellows by the _greatness_ and _singularity_ of his thoughts, and by the extreme subtilty of their connecting links. Obscurity is not a blemish but an excellence, if the pains of seeking are more than compensated by the pleasures of finding, the luxury of [Greek: mathesis], where the concentrated energy of a passage, when once understood, gives it a hold on the imagination and memory such as were ill sacrificed to more diluted clearness. _Grandis praefatio tenui incepto_--a sort of apology to Tennyson for implying that he needs illustration. Some time ago I made a few notes on particular passages in _Locksley Hall_, which I now enclose. Some of them are, I dare say, superfluous--some, possibly, erroneous. If so, they will stand a fair chance of being corrected in your valuable publication. By the bye, if a "NOTES AND QUERIES" had existed in the days of AEschylus, we might have been saved from many a recourse to "corrupt text" and "lacunae admodum deflendae." _Notes on Locksley Hall._ Stanza 2. "Dreary gleams:" in apposition with "curlews." I know the construction of this line has puzzled a good many readers. Stanza 23. "Yet it shall be." Yet "decline" thou certainly wilt. Stanza 28. "He will answer," &c. With an oath, it may be--at the least with a coarse rebuff. Stanza 29. "The heart's disgrace." The disgrace, the injury, and degradation the heart has suffered--its prostitution to a mercenary service by a marriage of interest. Stanza 34. "Never." Alas! I never can. Stanza 35. "In division of the records of the mind." In dividing my recollections of her into two groups, and erasing the one. Stanza 38. "The poet is" (as I think has been already pointed out) Dante. Stanza 40. "He hunts," &c. He--thy husband. Stanza 42. "Never, never," &c. Never again! (joys never to return) sung by the ghosts of years departed. Stanza 51. "I have but an angry fancy"--my only _qualification_. Stanza 53. "But the jingling of the guinea," &c. But there is no fighting now: the nations get over their quarrels in another way--by the jingling of the guinea, instead of the clang of arms. Stanzas 54. "Mother-age."; 93. "Mother-age, for mine I know not." This mother-age is a great difficulty. At first I took it for _the past of history_, but now understand by it _the past of his own life_, at least its earliest and brightest period--that age which had been as a mother, the only mother he ever knew. Stanza 70. "Youthful joys." The bright hopes of his youth. (?) Stanza 75. "Blinder motions," Less rational, less well-guided emotions.