"England's trident-sceptre roams
Her territorial seas,"
merely because the unfortunate sceptre has to rhyme somehow to
"English homes."
But I have a further complaint against Mr. HENLEY. He presumes, in the
most fantastic manner, to alter the well-known titles of celebrated
poems. "_The Isles of Greece_" is made to masquerade as "The Glory
that was Greece"; "_Auld Lang Syne_" becomes "The Goal of Life," and
"_Tom Bowline_" is converted into "The Perfect Sailor." This surely
(again I use the words of Mr. HENLEY) "is a thing preposterous, and
distraught." On the whole, I cannot think that Mr. HENLEY has done
his part well. His manner is bad. His selection, it seems to me, is
open to grave censure, on broader grounds than the mere personally
equational of which he speaks, and his choppings, and sub-titles,
and so forth, are not commendable. The irony of literary history has
apparently ordained that Mr. HENLEY should first patronise, and then
"cut," both CAMPBELL and MACAULAY. Was the shade of MACAULAY disturbed
when he learnt that Mr. HENLEY considered his "_Battle of Naseby_"
both "vicious and ugly"?