STEWED PRUNES AND PRISM
perfect parallel one cannot find in the shoddy sentimentalism
of Tennyson.
Even where the vision is true and beautiful it is quite out
of place.
The young gentleman waits in the park for his young lady;
and sees, quite clearly and nicely :
“ And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.”
Apart from the villainous cacophony and bad taste of the
wording, the vision is true enough ; I was once young myself,
in a park—and the rest of it; and that is exactly the vision.
But what a point of view! The young gentleman must
certainly have been a curate.
At such moments the heart should race, the veins swell,
the breath quicken, the eyes strain, the foot—not a word of the
struggle not to show impatience, the tenseness of the whole
being ofa man!
No! this is indeed a glimmering ghost, a bloodless, vacant
phantom.
Note, too, the degradation of the symbols.
To compare a girl to a “ghost”; to disenchant the glow
and glamour of her to a “ glimmer.’
To compare a volcano in eruption to the puffing of a steam-
engine; the sun in heaven at high noon to a farthing dip.
The vision is accurate enough; but the point of view is
throughout that of a flunkey, of a tradesman, of a gelded
toady, of a stewed prune!
So too the very perfection of form which marks Tennyson
is a shocking fault, a guide to the governess’ mind of the
creature. He is so determined to keep all the rules that he
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