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.