_Passage in "Locksley Hall"_ (Vol. vi., p. 272.; Vol. vii., pp. 25.
146.).--Of these three commentators neither appears to me to have hit
Tennyson's meaning, though CORYLUS has made the nearest shot. I ought to
set out by confessing that it was not originally clear to myself, but that
I could not for a monument doubt, when the following explanation was
suggested to me by a friend. The "curlews" themselves are the "dreary
gleams:" the words are what the Latin Grammar calls "duo substantiva
ejusdem rei." I take the meaning, in plain prose to be this: "The curlews
are uttering their peculiar cry, as they fly over Locksley Hall, looking
like (to me, the spectator) dreary gleams crossing the moorland."
I could supply A. A. D. with several examples _in English_, from my
commonplace-book, of the "bold figure of speech not uncommon in the vivid
language of Greece;" and among the rest, one from Tennyson himself, to wit:
"Now, scarce three paces measured from the mound,
We stumbled on a stationary _voice_," &c.
But I doubt whether the poet had those passages in his thought, when he
penned the opening of his noble poem "Locksley Hall." Of course I do not
_know_, any more than A. A. D., and the rest; and I suppose we shall none
of us get any enlightenment "by authority."