310 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 259. 



Tennyson? There is certainly a water-lily in 

 both, as there is an M in Monmouth and in Mase- 

 (lon ; but the application of it, the treatment of it, 

 by the two poets, is as different as light from 

 darkness. Longfellow merely sees a resemblance 

 between the presence of a lily on water, and the 

 continued obtrusiveness of his mistress' image on 

 the current of a lover's meditation. The simile is 

 a very sliallo-v one, for the only point where the 

 two things compared touchy is in their floating. 

 Except for the peculiar beauty of the flower, any 

 other weed or plant that floats and swings back- 

 ward and forward with the current of a stream 

 would have answered Mr. Longfellow's purpose 

 equally well. 



But is it so with Tennyson ? 



" Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, 

 And slips into the bosom of the lake ; 

 So fold thyself, my dearest thou, and slip 

 Into my bosom and be lost in me." 



Can anything be more beautiful? Here is an 

 entirely different attribute of the water-lily dis- 

 cussed, and brought into use as a vehicle to con- 

 vey the poet's finer shades of meaning ; and how 

 happily it is seized, and moulded, and expressed, 

 I leave to the appreciation of readers and lovers 

 of poetry. One attribute did I say ? There are 

 four distinct attributes of the lily introduced, 

 each in its degree shadowing forth the yielding up 

 of a maiden heart into the hands of her chosen 

 lord. The simile touches in four places. There 

 are first and second the folding up of the lily, and 

 its being lost within the water, which beautifully 

 typifies the absorption and loss of the woman's in- 

 dividual character, when in marriage she becomes 

 a part of her husband, in such marriage as Shak- 

 jspeare alludes to when he says : 



" Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

 Admit impediment." 



There is next the " sweetness " of the lily and of 

 the maiden, the force of which is almost increased 

 by the carnal manner in which it is introduced. 

 Finally, there is the gradual and gentle nature of 

 the change, so clearly told by the word " slips," 

 " And slips into the bosom of the lake." 



There is no sudden wrench, no plucking away 

 from old habits, and ties, and ideas ; but quietly 

 and smoothly, as the lily slips into the water, does 

 the woman, all unconsciously, shape herself unto 

 the man, showing and proving how fittingly they 

 are mated. 



But to return to the parallelism which your cor- 

 respondent thinks he has detected. It resolves 

 itself after all into this : Mr. Longfellow sees a 

 resemblance between a certain feeling and a lily 

 that floats on the water ; whereas Mr. Tennyson 

 sees a resemblance between a feeling and a lily 

 that sinks m the water. In short there is no pa- 

 rallelism at all ! 



Next, let us examine the coincidence between a 

 passage in Wordsworth's Excursion^ and one in 

 Keble's Christian Year. According to Words- 

 worth, the book in which the dried flowers are 

 preserved is merely and simply an almanac, a 

 lover's memorandum-book, by the aid of which 

 the disappointed and disgusted man is enabled to 

 recall the spots where he met the lady of his love, 

 and the conversations they had held on particular 

 occasions. So far the use of the dried leaves is 

 essentially prosaic. The " Daily Souvenir," at the 

 end of Punch's Pocket Book, would have been far 

 more useful than such a " memoria technica." 



Unfortunately I have not got a copy of Keble's 

 Christian Year, and am unacquainted with the 

 passage quoted by Norris Deck ; but from the 

 fragment he gives it is easy to see that Keble 

 likens the leaves to something. This Wordsworth 

 does not attempt to do. The one narrates the 

 existence of a book containing dried plants, as a 

 fact in a narrative ; the other draws an image 

 from the general habit of putting dried leaves into 

 books, and assimilates these leaves to something 

 else, at present unknown. I do not think, there- 

 fore, that in this case either any real parallelism 

 can be traced. If all the poets who have used the 

 moon as a simile, in some shape or other, were to 

 be enumerated, and the passages in which they 

 have done so counter-columned, there would be 

 no library large enough to contain the volume. 



Finally, what atom of resemblance is tliere be- 

 tween the last two parallel passages selected by 

 NoRRis Deck ? I can see none whatever. For 

 surely your correspondent does not mean to found 

 any charge of imitation or plagiarism on the 

 " Weave we our mirthful dance " 



of Moore, and the 



" Wove the gay dance " 

 of Keble ? The expression " to weave a dance " 

 is as old as the hills, and has been the common 

 property of all poets, poetasters, ballad-mongers, 

 and what are called " fine writers," for the last 

 dozen centuries : and if not on this account, I am 

 quite at a loss to know why the two passages in 

 question have been collated. Perhaps your cor- 

 respondent will kindly inform me ? 



I have been betrayed already into a much 

 longer "note" than t had intended originally, 

 butl must beg leave to trespass a little farther on 

 your patience and that of your readers. My ob- 

 ject is to remonstrate against these fancied re- 

 semblances which many of your correspondents 

 are so fond of drawing. For I miorht just as 

 easily dissect and disprove the similarity which 

 Serviens discovers in Vol. ix., p. 73., between a 

 poem of Thomas Campbell's and the prose of the 

 author of a History of the Stage. The object of 

 your correspondents is to imply plagiarism. Tliey 

 don't say out and openly, " Here has so-and-so 



