Nay, if by chance you hear of any such,
Speak not thereof- -no, not to your best friend,
Lest you should be confounded with it. Still -
Perinde ac cadaver — as the priest says,
You know your Latin-quiet as a dead body.
What was my Lord of Devon telling you?
Eliz. Whether he told me anything or not,

I follow your good counsel, gracious uncle.
Quiet as a dead body.

Howard. You do right well.

I do not care to know; but this I charge you,
Tell Courtenay nothing.

He hath no fence when Gardiner questions him;
All oozes out; yet him- because they know him
The last White Rose, the last Plantagenet
(Nay, there is Cardinal Pole, too)—the people
Claim as their natural leader-ay, some say
That you shall marry him, make him King belike.
Eliz. Do they say so, good uncle?

Howard. Ay, good niece!

You should be plain and open with me, niece.
You should not play upon me.

Eliz. No, good uncle.

Howard.

[GARDINER now enters and summons ELIZABETH to the QUEEN'S presence.]

See

This comes of parleying with my Lord of Devon.

Well, well, you must obey.

Your time will come.

Eliz. I think my time will come.

Uncle,

I am of sovereign nature, that I know,

Not to be quelled; and I have felt within me

Stirrings of some great doom when God's just hour

Peals but this fierce old Gardiner - his big baldness,
That irritable forelock which he rubs,

His buzzard beak and deep incaverned eyes

Half fright me.

Howard. You've a bold heart: keep it so.

He can not touch you save that you turn traitor;

And so take heed I pray you. You are one

Who love that men should smile upon you, niece.

They'd smile you into treason, some of them.

Eliz. I spy the rock beneath the smiling sea.

We will contrast with this a scene from the last Act. Pole is complaining to Mary that the Pope has disgraced him.

Pole.

[I]

Have done my best, and as a faithful son

That all day long hath wrought his father's work,
When back he comes at evening, hath the door
Shut on him by the father whom he loved,

His early follies cast into his teeth,

And the poor son turned out into the street
To sleep, to die — I shall die of it, cousin.
Mary. I pray you be not so disconsolate:

I still will do mine utmost with the Pope.
Poor cousin.

Have I not been the fast friend of your life
Since mine began, and it was thought we two
Might make one flesh, and cleave unto each other
As man and wife.

Pole. Ah, cousin, I remember

How I would dandle you upon my knee

At lisping-age. I watched you dancing once
With your huge father; he looked the Great Harry,
You but his cockboat: prettily you did it
And innocently. No-we were not made
One flesh in happiness; no happiness here;
But now we are made one flesh in misery:
Our bridemaids are not lovely- Disappointment,
Ingratitude, Injustice, Evil-tongue,
Labor-in-vain.

Mary. Surely, not all in vain.

Peace, cousin, peace! I am sad at heart myself. Pole. Our altar is a mound of dead men's clay,

Dug from the grave that yawns for us beyond;
And there is one Death stands behind the Groom,
And there is one Death stands behind the Bride
Mary. Have you been looking at the "Dance of Death"?
Pole. No; but these libellous papers which I found

Strewn in your palace. Look you here, the Pope
Pointing at me, with "Pole, the heretic,

Thou hast burnt others, do thou burn thyself,
Or I will burn thee"- and this other, see!-
"We pray continually for the death

Of our accursed Queen and Cardinal Pole."
This last - I dare not read it her. [Aside.
Mary. Away!

Why do you bring me these?

I thought you knew me better. I never read,
I tear them: they come back upon my dreams.
The hands that write them should be burnt clean off
As Cranmer's, and the fiends that utter them
Tongue-torn with pincers, lashed to death, or lie
Famishing in black cells, while famished rats
Eat them alive. Why do they bring me these?
Do you mean to drive me mad?

Pole. I had forgotten

Alice.

How these poor libels trouble you.

Your pardon,
Sweet cousin, and farewell! "O bubble world

Whose colors in a moment break and fly!"

Why, who said that? I know not-true enough!

If Cranmer's spirit were a mocking one,

And heard these two, there might be sport for him. [Aside.

Mary. Clarence, they hate me; even while I speak

Mary.

There lurks a silent dagger, listening

In some dark closet, some long gallery, drawn,

And panting for my blood as I go by.

[SIR NICHOLAS HEATH enters and announces the loss of CALAIS.]

I hoped I had served God with all my might;

It seems I have not.

Sheltered in Calais.

Ah! much heresy

Saints, I have rebuilt

Your shrines, set up your broken images;
Be comfortable to me. Suffer not

That my
brief reign in England be defamed
Through all her angry chronicles hereafter
By loss of Calais. Grant me Calais ! Philip,
We have made war upon the Holy Father

All for your sake: what good could come of that?

I am a by-word: Heretic and rebel
Point at me and make merry. Philip gone!
And Calais gone! Time that I were gone too!

Lady Clar.
Mary.

Lady Clar.

[She picks up a paper and reads]

"Your people hate you as your husband hates you."
Clarence, Clarence, what have I done? what sin
Beyond all grace, all pardon? Mother of God,
Thou knowest never woman meant so well
And fared so ill in this disastrous world.
My people hate me and desire my death.
No, Madam, no.

My husband hates me and desires my death.
No, Madam; these are libels.

Mary. I hate myself and I desire my death.

Lady Clar. Long live your Majesty! Shall Alice sing you
One of her pleasant songs? Alice, my child,
Bring us your lute. They say the gloom of Saul
Was lightened by young David's harp.

Mary. Too young!

And never knew a Philip. Give me the lute.
He hates me!

[She sings.]

Hapless doom of woman happy in betrothing!

Beauty passes like a breath and love is lost in loathing:

Low, my lute; speak low, my lute, but say the world is nothing-
Low, lute, low!

Love will hover round the flowers when they first awaken;

Love will fly the fallen leaf and not be overtaken :

Low, my lute; oh low, my lute! we fade and are forsaken
Low, dear lute, low!

Take it away! not low enough for me!

Alice. Your Grace hath a low voice.

Mary. How dare you say it?

Even for that he hates me. A low voice

Lost in a wilderness where none can hear !

A voice of shipwreck on a shoreless sea!

A low voice from the dust and from the grave.
[Sits on the ground.]

There, am I low enough now?

The question which presents itself to the thoughtful reader, is, since Mr. Tennyson saw fit, not to write a tragedy, but to dramatise a period of English history, why did he choose this period when others, so much better adapted to dramatic purposes, lay within his reach? The reason for this preference, if we can find it, will give us the true motive, the dominant idea, of the work.

The impression left upon the reader's mind, as the final result of the work, is that he has had placed before him, very vividly, a time when cruelty, misery, and humiliation spread like a heavy pall over all England, all in consequence of the fact that Mary was a bigoted Catholic and looked to the interests of Rome rather than those of her own people. And we are forced to the conclusion that the Poet Laureate has produced this work as his contribution to the antiCatholic movement of the day. With this movement in its political and religious aspects, the literary critic has nothing to do; but from the stand-point of literary criticism, we protest against the subordination of art to such a motive. Art may rightfully be called in as an ally to religion or patriotism, but she may not be made a drudge and souffre-douleur to polemics and politics. Mr. Tennyson is a great

poet, and we would never speak of him but with respect; but we can not avoid the conclusion that in this drama he has not been wholly loyal to his art; and if so, his punishment will be the final verdict that as a whole, Queen Mary is a great poet's great mistake.

W. H. B.

The Mountain of the Lovers, with other Poems of Nature and Tradition. By Paul H. Hayne. New York: E. J. Hale & Son. ONE of the sweetest of our Southern poets has enriched us with a volume of poems again. It is a voice from the South, delicately suggestive of its blooming savannahs, the witchery of its pines and the charm of its landscape. To say that Mr. Hayne has a subtle sense of natural beauty would be to express the truth in halves. His whole nature seems steeped in a rich sensibility to outer phases of landscape. This volume abounds in observation; and though it does not exhibit striking originality, extreme novelty of theme, or great variety of treatment, it is still redolent of an airy grace and tenderness which are none the less pleasing because they seem to be getting more and more rare. For our part we prefer those short suggestive little poems in this volume into which Mr. Hayne has breathed the whole soul of the moment, to the two longer ones with which it opens. There is a charm in some of these tiny Bohemians which it is difficult to analyse; while the longer narrative poems, though daintily and poetically treated, lack the grace and warmth of the landscape bits, the sonnets, or the fine odes to Henry Timrod and Canon Kingsley. The sonnets are particularly noteworthy. Mr. Hayne succeeds in throwing into this difficult form poetry and feeling enough to make it live and glow. He is especially fond of noticing peculiarities of nature - the storm, the star, the setting sun

and framing them like delicate etchings in the ivory frame-work of a sonnet. His sonnets are poetic miniatures from which peep faces, experiences, scenery, remembrances; and these faces, experiences and remembrances are dipped and idealised in a light peculiar to Mr. Hayne's genius. There is a fervor in his utterance which is altogether Southern. It is the scenery of the South that he celebrates his skies have a Georgian richness; his beloved pines echo the music and mystery of tropic latitudes; his imagery is dyed in the warm hues of a land of perpetual midsummer. There are many felicities of language which both ring in the ears and reproduce before the eye. There are favorite words that recur continually, and display not so much a poverty of diction as a peculiar fascination in them for the poet. It is easy to see that Mr. Hayne is a dreamer, a liver apart from the garish world, a dweller in the purple Debateable Lands, a worshipper of mystical and ideal worlds, a lotos-eater if not a lover of the poetry of the afternoon. He loves music hidden away among the trees mountains capped in cloudssunshine muffled in mist mist that is a golden haze wherein all this swims in dim and indistinguishable gold.

On the first page is a dedication to the most gifted of Southern poets - Mrs. Margaret J. Preston. What he says of the day on which the poem was written may be applied to the poem itself

:

Flushed like a Dryad's tender face

With early spring-time's happiest grace.

Mr. Hayne excels in dedicatory poems, as witness this and the poem to his wife preceding The Wife of Brittany. The Mountain of the Lovers, while not so attractive to us as the rich tropical coloring of The Vengeance of the Goddess Diana a subject which Morris, under the title The Lady of the Land, has also treated, but later than Hayne - nevertheless contains many fine lines. Mr. Hayne loves these antique legends, about which he may twine garlands and shake incense and breathe sweetness. It is evident that he prefers skeletonlegends already existing in ancient chronicles, which he may luxuriantly clothe with the wealth of his own fancy, to new ones of his own invention. He follows the retrospective tendency of his age, and with Tennyson, Browning, and Morris, works up the faded canvasses of the past into fresh and beaming realities. Our stiff language, in his hands, acquires a flexibility and melody that disclose a most musical ear as well as long and earnest study. It is not every year that Mr. Hayne gives us a volume of poems, and hence he can afford to put the utmost possible polish on those which, at rare intervals, he is kind enough to publish.

In our restricted limits it is difficult to give the reader a just notion of the contents of the book. The Vengeance of the Goddess Diana, the author tells us, was published sixteen years ago in a volume of comparatively youthful poems, but reappears now increased by many lines. Its subject is just the opposite of Keats's Lamia. Such pictorial passages as

and

occur.

Sown with rank poisonous grasses, where the dew
Of hovering exhalations flickered blue

And wavering on the dead-still atmosphere

The Voice of the Pines concludes with this fine stanza:

Beneath the drowséd sense, from deep to deep
Of spiritual life its mournful minor flows,
Streamlike, with pensive tide, whose currents keep
Low murmuring 'twixt the bounds of grief and sleep,
Yet locked for aye from sleep's divine repose.

The Solitary Lake has lines like these:

A something strange and rare
O'errules this tranquil earth and air,
Casting o'er both a glamour known
To their enchanted realm alone;
Whence shines as 'twere a spirit's face,
The sweet, coy genius of the place-
Yon lake, beheld as if in trance-
The beauty of whose shy romance
I feel whatever shores and skies

May charm henceforth my wondering eyes,
Shall rest, undimmed by taint or stain,