We are much indebted to the distinguished foreign scholar who has at length freed us, to a certain degree, from this lamentable state of things by the publication of his Saxon Grammar. In its arrangement he has taken the liberty of thinking for himself, and by doing so has shown us the errors which have originated from a superstitious adherence to the dogmas of his predecessors. An extensive acquaintance with the early languages of the north has enabled him to explore with greater safety the intricacies of our own, and by the aid of this species of comparative anatomy he has, in several instances, detected the springs which direct and influence certain peculiarities of formation, the principle of which would have probably been hidden from one who had directed his attention solely to the study of the Anglo-Saxon language. The limits within which we are necessarily limited prevent us from offering to our readers more than a very general outline of the work. We would, however, direct the attention of the student to the important light which Rask has thrown upon the principles of the language, by what he has advanced regarding accentuation. The darkness in which this radical organization of the Saxon has hitherto lain, is marvellous, the more especially when we notice its adoption in early manuscripts, and how essential a knowledge of it is towards a comprehension of the elements of the tongue. A pretty extensive examination of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, in which lie the proofs of the truth or the incorrectness of Mr. Rask's system, enables us to say that these manuscripts fully support the soundness of his views, and that the few instances of misapprehension and omission discoverable in his Grammar only leave the more room for us to wonder at their paucity. The division of nouns into simple and complex, of adjectives into definite and indefinite, are new to us in England; and the clearness of this arrangement forms an admirable contrast to the endless subdivisions, exceptions, and annotations, which perplex the unhappy wight who has been laboring under the guidance of Hickes. But it is in the investigation of the verbs that Rask appears to the greatest advantage, and his classification of them is simple and obvious: of its accuracy there cannot be a better proof than the order and perfect regularity which it enables us to discover in numerous formations previously considered as irregular. His observations upon prefixes and postfixes are written with less care than the previous portion of the Grammar, probably from his not considering the subject as one meriting a deeper discussion. The same excuse cannot be urged for the slighting manner in which he has treated another branch, that of Syntax; in this part, although all the more prominent rules are exhibited, those more deeply hidden and nicer peculiarities, of which we cannot suppose him to be ignorant, are passed over without notice. This portion of the work, therefore, appears to great disadvantage when compared with the manner in which he has treated the verbs. The chapter upon the laws of Saxon poetry is excellent, and Rask displays a 14 + VOL. II. NO. I. decided superiority over the dogmas of Hickes, Conybeare, and W. Grimm. The volume concludes with a very good praxis, by the aid of which, and the other helps which this Grammar affords to the student, the labor of acquiring a tolerable knowledge of the language has been materially shortened and facilitated. It would be unjust to withhold our thanks from the gentleman who has conferred such a benefit upon English scholars as that of introducing to them, in an English dress, a publication upon which all subsequent investigations into the history and formation of the language of our forefathers must be mainly founded. The preceding observations were committed to paper some months since in the interval which has elapsed between their coming before us in types, the melancholy tidings have arrived that the distinguished author is now beyond the reach of our praise or censure, - Erasmus Rask is no more! In the Literary Intelligence of the present number, under the head of Denmark, will be found such particulars of the life and literary labors of this remarkable scholar and linguist as we have been able to collect together. * [From "The Quarterly Review, No. 97."] Poems by Alfred Tennyson. London. 1833. 12mo. THIS is, as some of his marginal notes intimate, Mr. Tennyson's second appearance. By some strange chance we have never seen his first publication, which, if it at all resembles its younger brother, must be by this time so popular, that any notice of it on our part would seem idle and presumptuous; but we gladly seize this opportunity of repairing an unintentional neglect, and of introducing to the admiration of our more sequestered readers a new prodigy of genius, — another and a brighter star of that galaxy or milky way of poetry of which the lamented Keats was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on the subject of "Endymion." We certainly did not † discover in that poem the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has carried it through we know not how many editions; which has placed it on every table; and, what is still more unequivocal, familiarized it in every mouth. All this splendor of fame, however, though we had not the sagacity to anticipate, we have [* This notice we have given in a following part of our number.] See "Quarterly Review," Vol. XIX. p. 204. the candor to acknowledge; and we request that the publisher of the new and beautiful edition of Keats's works now in press, with graphic illustrations of Calcott and Turner, will do us the favor and the justice to notice our conversion in his prolegomena. Warned by our former mishap, wiser by experience, and improved, as we hope, in taste, we have to offer Mr. Tennyson our tribute of unmingled approbation; and it is very agreeable to us, as well as to our readers, that our present task will be little more than the selection, for their delight, of a few specimens of Mr. Tennyson's singular genius, and the venturing to point out, now and then, the peculiar brilliancy of some of the gems that irradiate his poetical crown. A prefatory sonnet opens to the reader the aspirations of the young author, in which, after the manner of sundry poets, ancient and modern, he expresses his own peculiar character, by wishing himself to be something that he is not. The amorous Catullus aspired to be a sparrow; the tuneful and convivial Anacreon (for we totally reject the supposition that attributes the 'Ei98 lúon xalŋ revoluηy to Alcæus) wished to be a lyre and a great drinking-cup; a crowd of more modern sentimentalists have desired to approach their mistresses as flowers, tunicks, sandals, birds, breezes, and butterflies; Mr. all poor conceits of narrow-minded poetasters! Tennyson (though he, too, would, as far as his true-love is concerned, not unwillingly be "an earring," "a girdle," and "a necklace," p. 45) in the more serious and solemn exordium of his works ambitions a bolder metamorphosis, - he wishes to be, · river! SONNET. rivers that travel in company are too common for his taste, "With the self-same impulse wherewith he was thrown," a beautiful and harmonious line, "From his loud fount upon the echoing lea:— Which, with increasing might, doth forward flee," α Every word of this line is valuable, — the natural progress of human ambition is here strongly characterized, two lines ago he would have been satisfied with the self-same impulse, - but now he must have increasing might; and indeed he would require all his might to accomplish his object of fleeing forward, that is, going backwards and forwards at the same time. Perhaps he uses the word flee for flow; which latter he could not well employ in this place, it being, as we shall see, essentially necessary to rhyme to Mexico towards the end of the sonnet, as an equivalent to flow he has, therefore, with great taste and ingenuity, hit on the combination of forward flee, "doth forward flee By town, and tower, and hill, and cape, and isle, Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a mile." A noble wish, beautifully expressed, that he may not be confounded with the deluge of ordinary poets, but, amidst their discolored and briny ocean, still preserve his own bright tints and sweet savour. He may be at ease on this point, he never can be mistaken for any one else. We have but too late become acquainted with him, yet we assure ourselves that if a thousand anonymous specimens were presented to us, we should unerringly distinguish his by the total absence of any particle of salt. But again, his thoughts take another turn, and he reverts to the insatiability of human ambition: we have seen him just now content to be a river, but as he flees forward, his desires expand into sublimity, and he wishes to become the great Gulf-stream of the Atlantic. "Mine be the power which ever to its sway Will win the wise at once,· We, for once, are wise, and he has won us, And so concludes the sonnet. - — p. 1. The next piece is a kind of testamentary paper, addressed "To a friend, we presume, containing his wishes as to what his friend should do for him when he (the poet) shall be dead, not, as we shall see, that he quite thinks that such a poet can die outright. "Shake hands, my friend, across the brink Of that deep grave to which I go. Shake hands once more; I cannot sink Horace said "Non omnis moriar," meaning that his fame should survive, Mr. Tennyson is still more vivacious, "Non omnino moriar,' "I will not die at all; my body shall be as immortal as my verse, and however low I may go, I warrant you I shall keep all my wits about me, therefore "When, in the darkness over me, The four-handed mole shall scrape, Plant thou no dusky cypress tree, Nor wreath thy cap with doleful crape, Observe how all ages become present to the mind of a great poet; and admire how naturally he combines the funeral cypress of classical antiquity with the crape hatband of the modern undertaker. He proceeds: "And when the sappy field and wood Grow green beneath the showery gray, And rugged barks begin to bud, And through damp holts, newflushed with May, Laughter, the philosophers tell us, is the peculiar attribute of man, -but as Shakspeare found " tongues in trees and sermons in stones," this true poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities, but with human functions, the jay laughs, and we find indeed, a little further on, that the woodpecker laughs also; but to mark the distinction between their merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr. Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human laughter, if any silly reader should catch the infection from the woodpeckers and jays. "Then let wise Nature work her will, And on my clay her darnels grow, And at my head-stone whisper low, Now, what would an ordinary bard wish to be told under such circumstances?—why, perhaps, how his sweatheart was, or his child, or his family, or how the Reform Bill worked, or whether the last edition of the poems had been sold,―papa! our genuine poet's first wish is "And tell me if the woodbines blow!" When, indeed, he shall have been thus satisfied as to the woodbines (of the blowing of which in their due season he may, we think, feel pretty secure), he turns a passing thought to his friend, and another to his mother, "If thou art blest, my mother's smile but such inquiries, short as they are, seem too common-place, and he immediately glides back into his curiosity as to the state of the weather and the forwardness of the spring, Undimmed, -if bees are on the wing?" No, we believe the whole circle of poetry does not furnish such another instance of enthusiasm for the sights and sounds of the vernal season! -The sorrows of a bereaved mother rank after the blossoms of the woodbine, and just before the hummings of the bee; and this is all that he has any curiosity about; for he proceeds, |