Much Ado about Sonnets [pp. 212-222]

MUCHI ADO ABOUT SONNETS.
the sources whence Shakspere procured this or that or the other
phrase, some hint, perhaps, of William Shakspere's own treatment
of that feature of commentary, could he only come back again,
may be gathered from a case quite in point. Last year a Canadian gentleman, a Mr. S. E. Dawson, wrote a little essay upon
Baron Tennyson's Princess. Mr. Dawson sent a copy to the poet
and received a reply, a portion of which —as showing how a living poet must feel towards voluntary and dilettante commentary
upon his work-is worth reprinting. Says Baron Tennyson:
"I do not object to your finding parallelisms. They must always recur.
A Chinese scholar some time ago wrote me that in an unknown, untranslated Chinese poem there were two whole lines of mine almost word
for word. Why not? Are not human eyes all over the world looking at
the same objects, and must there not, consequently, be coincidences of
thought and impressions and expressions? It is scarcely possible for any
one to say or write anything, in this late time of the world, to which, in the
rest of the literature of the world, a parallel could not somewhere be found.
But when you say that this passage or that was suggested by Wordsworth
or Shelley or another, I demur; and, more, I wholly disagree. There is, I
fear, a 5rosaic set growing up among us, editors of booklets, book-worms, indexhunters, or men of great memories and no imagination, who impute themselves
to the fioet, and so believe that he, too, has no imagination, but is for ever foking his nose between the pages of some old volume to see what he can at5frofriate. They will not allow one to say'ring the bells' without finding that
we have taken it fromnt Sir Philip Sidney, or even to use such a simple expression as that the ocean'roars' without finding the precise verse in
Homer or Horace from which we have plagiarized it (fact!)... Here
is a little anecdote about suggestion: When I was about twenty or twentyone I went on a tour to the Pyrenees. Lying among these mountains, before a waterfall that comes down one thousand or twelve hundred feet, I
sketched it (according to my custom then) in these words:
"' Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn.'
When I printed this a critic informed me that' lawn' was the material
used in theatres to imitate a waterfall, and graciously added:' Mr. T.
should not go to the boards of a theatre, but to Nature herself, for his suggestions.' And I had gone to Nature herself."
Is it speaking too harshly-would the commentators have any
warrant to themselves complain of the harshness of the characterization-to apply the sentence we have italicized in the laureate's criticism of his critics to the legions who advertise
themselves as Shaksperean cicerones? The trade began about
the days of Malone-I78o-I790. Of those ten years Sir James
Priors writes vividly:" Editors and commentators appear at
every turn in all societies. In the club-house we meet three or
* Lfe of Edmund Malone. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
216
[Nov.,