NATURAL SCIENCE: 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress. 



No. 9. Vol. I. NOVEMBER. 1892. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Tennyson. 



AMID the numerouscriticismsof Tennyson's work, there is one aspect 

 which does not seem to have received the recognition it deserves, 

 and which forbids that his recent death should be here passed unnoticed. 

 It is that which has placed him as one of the foremost of English 

 Nature-poets. Tennyson's Nature-touches are well worthy of study, not 

 only for their own intrinsic beauty, but because they are in many ways 

 typical of the limitations, as well as of the strength, of his genius. 

 Other poets may have surpassed him in their depth of insight, or their 

 originality of thought ; but as a close and accurate observer of Nature, 

 and as an interpreter of her charms in exquisitely-melodious English, 

 Tennyson stands unrivalled. His works are crowded with allusions 

 to the phenomena of Natural Science, and it is httle exaggeration to 

 say that each of them is absolutely perfect. Take, for example, his 

 famous picture of the birth of the dragon fly in " Two Voices " : — 

 ". To-day I saw the dragon-fly 



Come from the wells where he did lie. 



An inner impulse rent the veil 



Of his old husk : from head to tail 



Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. 



He dried his wings ; like gauze they grew ; 



Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew 



A living flash of hght he flew." 



His allusions to birds, especially of those of " the level waste " of 

 his early home on the Lincolnshire coast, show his close familiarity 

 with their cries and habits : his rarer references to " scarped cliff and 

 quarried stone," and to " Oh, Earth ! what changes thou hast seen," 

 show his acquaintance with the principles of geology. It is, how- 

 ever, upon his botanical allusions that his fame as a naturalist will 



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